City Of Ruin (25 page)

He had been told he was found wandering through the tundra outside of Villjamur, and assumed to be some kind of prophet at first, then even a god of the creator race, the Dawnir. And when everyone finally realized he knew nothing of the world, that he could give them nothing, they lost interest in him, such was life. He had been kept as an imprisoned guest of the Council ever since, and they had been reluctant to let him outside, for his own good, in case disaffected types hailed him as a religious leader.

Rotting away in his chambers, he had all his books, and had made the most of them, turning nearly every printed page available in a quest to discover who he was and where he came from. The recent opportunity to leave his dark retreat inside the Imperial residence of Balmacara had been a godsend. And now the opportunity to investigate a new-found race . . . well, that was something to be utterly delighted about. For the first time in centuries had come an opportunity to discover his own origins, for if these shell-creatures came from somewhere else, some other world entirely, then they might bring with them pertinent information.

Information was his life. There might now be some answers.

He had to hunch to fit into the room, but still very nearly caught his tusks in the door frame. More than once he had scraped them in these cramped stone shells of his new home. He brushed a hand across his thick body fur as a cobweb smothered his ear, then he lowered his head to focus on Brynd, dominating much of the available space.

‘Commander Brynd Lathraea and Lieutenant Nelum Valore. A pleasure, no? I hear our little
malacostraca
friends are no longer slumbering like cherubs?’

‘Sele of Jamur, Jurro,’ the commander greeted him, apparently amused, as so often, by the words issuing from Jurro’s lips. The Dawnir estimated Brynd highly. He was a sound man, a philosopher as well as a warrior – just as much a warrior, even. The two had conversed during many years in his forgotten chamber in Villjamur.

‘Let’s show you these things, then.’

Jurro felt the gaze of a few Night Guard soldiers fixed on him, as they stood aside to let him through. They always moved so quickly, these humans, as if there was an urgency to all their actions.

It was not easy being the only one of a kind. Even these two Okun outnumbered his own race at the moment. Brynd soon brought him up to speed on their analysis of the situation. They led him over to the Okun, the two creatures now quivering perceptibly on the tiled floor.

They froze as soon as they registered the presence of the Dawnir in the room. Then, as one, both the creatures shambled to something resembling a standing position, though awkwardly, in such an unlikely connection of movements. Together they fell to their knees, as if in the presence of some Jorsalir priest.

The commander turned to his lieutenant. ‘Well, they’ve never behaved like that before.’

‘Intriguing,’ Jurro mumbled, then crouched until he was at eye-level with the humans surrounding him. These Okun were unyielding as they were inspected by the Dawnir. They began clicking again, something quite incoherent at first, and then he began to understand the noises they made on some level. Not understand perhaps, merely recognize? After all, he had been cursed or blessed with spending all those centuries reading the texts within the confines of his chamber in Villjamur. The knowledge he had accumulated was only useful once he was out here, in the real world. It was a relief, finally, that he might serve some function other than as a curiosity.

‘You comprehend these sounds?’ the albino commander enquired.

Jurro turned to face the humans in the room. They all seemed to him the same at first, and it was only the commander’s red eyes that singled him out. ‘I know only that they are asking me for my forgiveness or pardon. Something along those lines, I believe. Yet, I don’t understand quite how I know that. Such random knowledge! I might have read it in a text, you see. Or I have learned it at some other earlier time. I cannot quite tell. How can we trust memory, when it is not accurately documented, when it is perhaps only the shadow of something I remember. My mental vaults have grown vast.’

There were no expressions evident on their faces that he could recognize, nothing to give away their emotion as the expressions of humans or rumel so often did – so easy to read, and childlike. These Okun were something altogether different. It was truly baffling!

‘I think I sense it, rather than know it, but they see me as some threat. Yes, that is so. They know who I am!’ The realization almost stung him, he was so used to appearing as nothing but a myth to those he encountered.

‘Or
what
you are,’ Brynd suggested. ‘Do you suppose there are more of your kind where they come from? And that, in that other place, whoever your kind are actually frighten them?’

Jurro muttered, ‘It may well be.’

He knew for sure that he must ascertain more about them. Although their communication was one way, this was the first time in his long life where he had the opportunity to find out who he was. For so long he had remained an enigma not only to the officials of Villjamur but, more importantly, to himself. He had watched the lives of countless rulers and the general populace come and go, had watched the ice encroaching in recent times. None of it mattered to him, because the pattern just repeated itself: humans and rumel alike making the same mistakes for decade after decade. He himself aged hardly at all, and for all that time he had wanted to know his origins.

‘I must, of course, discover from whence these two little specimens came,’ Jurro announced.

The albino studied him with empathy. He had always been unusually smart, Jurro reflected, this pale thing. ‘I understand,’ the commander replied. ‘You think their invasion force might let you through its ranks?’

Jurro held out his hands to either side, and shrugged. ‘I may need assistance, but before I leave I want to interrogate them as thoroughly as possible. I understand a great deal about forms of language. Perhaps I could gain crucial intelligence.’

‘That would be deeply helpful,’ the commander agreed. ‘Although if you want to leave here you might have to progress on your own. We have to commit all of our numbers to protecting the city.’

Jurro acquiesced, studying the Okun once more. They had risen to their feet again, still focusing their eyes on him, still unmoving apart from their mouthpieces. ‘They seem to fear me greatly, so I doubt very much that their kind will offer me much in the way of hindrance. I shall make plans, and I will need some maps, and your advice, commander, on the routes to follow to find the location of these so-called gates through which these little fellows crawled. And I will need you to allow me some time with them in a cell so that I can press for information.’

With that, he departed.

The Dawnir squeezed through the narrow metal door and lumbered into the cell to engage with the Okun again. The creatures scrambled away from him, thrusting their backs against the stone wall, feet skidding on the floor. Jurro motioned, in whatever forms he thought appropriate, for them to settle, but it wasn’t much use. Fear had possessed them, made them nervous and volatile. He set two lanterns on the floor, as a guard slammed the door behind him, leaving him utterly alone with this new species. No chairs in the room, no tables, nothing civilized here, only bare stone surfaces and a vacant space between them and himself. But they shared a tension, something indefinable.

How could he unlock the secrets intervening between their languages?

Ceasing their twitching, their gaze – or what he took to be their gaze – settled upon him. Bulbous eyes, glossy shells, all those alien features – he was almost frightened of their otherworldly qualities, but knew better than to mistake those for inherent evilness. People were not good or evil simply because of their physiognomy.

A thousand variants in ancient languages, he sifted through all the dialects he knew, while for long, breathless minutes they did nothing but glare at him: ‘Hello.’ Then ‘Greetings.’ ‘Peace.’ ‘Friend.’

A guard came to check on him every few minutes, but witnessed nothing of any interest. Jurro might have to accept that he could not acquire any intelligence for the pale commander, though the thought of returning empty-handed disappointed him. Eventually he tried responding to them in their own fashion, producing a series of surreal guttural clicks from the back of his throat. That finally made them sit up again, their motions coordinated. He could barely form a sentence, obviously missing key elements, but it might be enough to engage them. They stood up suddenly as the guard came to the door once more.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine,’ Jurro replied, waving the intrusion away dismissively.

Further progress, then, by resorting only to further clicks. His heart thumped as the creatures began to sound off in return. He finally began to believe he could understand their reactions. There was something almost recognizable there, as if a corner of his memory had been unlocked.

Who . . . are you?
he thought they were saying.
Why you here? How?

It was impossible to answer them properly, not because of a language barrier but because he couldn’t even answer those questions himself.

You shouldn’t be able to come through here.

Only we know how.

Their next word struck him hard when they addressed him as:
Child.
How could he be a child when he was thousands of years old? Had he, too, slipped through from some other plane of existence? There were books of theory on the subject, concerning the eleven dimensions through which reality could operate.

Suddenly one of the Okun moved nearer to him, began circling him, the other eventually following. They shambled with an awkward gait, feet scraping across the stone floors, yet their movements were synchronized. Throat sounds were emitted, bass and guttural and threatening.

Jurro rotated slowly, twisting his massive torso round to observe them, all the time throwing further attempts at communication towards them.

They had become suddenly unresponsive.

Simultaneously they lunged at him, collapsing him to the ground first as, in the periphery of his vision, he saw a guard come to the cell door. A pain such as he had never felt before surged suddenly through his body. The Okun stabbed their claws into his chest and began ripping him apart, shredding skin and fur, while smashing his head against the floor. How could he have been so stupid? He saw his own blood seep across the cell floor before he faded into blackness, wondering, philosophically, if this was finally true freedom coming his way . . .

*

Brynd was in the midst of planning training schedules when he was called urgently to the cells, all the time the accompanying soldier muttering something about the Dawnir and two dead guards. Brynd urged him to be clearer, but it wasn’t much help. They sprinted towards the cells, the other man now breathless, Brynd with his sabre in his hand. Then the soldier gestured to the grille in the door.

Brynd peeked in between the bars, then lurched back in disgust. ‘Shit . . .’

Jurro had been slaughtered, his carcass strewn across the cell. His entrails were exposed, the slick organs scattered around the room, his hide slopped to one side like a soggy rug. Thick, dark blood flooded half the floor. It was obvious from the other remains that two of the guards had been savaged as they tried to escape towards the door, their arms left outstretched, and all that was recognizable of the rest of the corpses was their faces.

‘I slammed the door so the things couldn’t escape,’ the soldier muttered, still in a state of shock at having witnessed such savagery. His hand was shuddering by his side. ‘I didn’t seal them in to die, I swear on the Emperor. They were dead men by the time I managed to get the door closed to keep those . . . those monsters in.’

Brynd sheathed his sword, rested his hand on the man’s thick shoulder and tried to make strong eye contact. ‘You did well to prevent their escape.’
Soothe him, for the sake of his sanity.
‘Who knows how much damage they would have done otherwise.’

A few minutes later, the guard had finally calmed, and Brynd turned his attention to the Okun, who huddled in a corner of the cell, up against the wall, almost dormant once again.

‘Fetch slop buckets and bring a few other men with you,’ Brynd ordered.

As the guard’s footsteps echoed down the corridor, Brynd slammed his hand against the metal bars in rage. One of the Okun looked up, curious, but lowered its head once again.

He was fucking stupid to have let Jurro in alone, despite the Dawnir’s insistence that he would be fine. This was no dignified way for anyone to go, was hardly a fitting death for such an exotic figure. He would have the Okun killed and their bodies given to the cultists to dissect.

*

That evening the Night Guard, along with dozens of Dragoons, lined up along the perimeter of a small quadrangle inside the Citadel, as they prepared to burn the Dawnir’s body on a towering pyre.

Brynd was particularly keen on giving Jurro a respectful send-off. The creature had barely been known by most people in Villjamur, but the two of them had shared many a conversation and discussed philosophy over drinks, whenever Brynd was not away on various expeditions. It was a curious friendship, between the beast and the albino, but they shared a bond over the fact that they both felt isolated because of what they were.