Deathstalker Coda (62 page)
Authors: Simon R. Green
The details of the place made no sense, as though they’d been added afterwards, as an afterthought; or perhaps they had just seeped in, the products of an increasingly insane mind. The air smelt of dead roses and a woman’s sweat. Beads of sweat ran slowly, continuously, down the stone walls. Far away, Owen thought he could hear someone crying, sobbing and howling as though their heart had been broken. And beyond and beneath that mourning, a slow sullen grinding, like an engine that ran on hate. The whole place felt . . . unhealthy. Like the endless corridors we pace in fever dreams, going nowhere, for forever and a day. Owen chose a direction, and started walking.
Ghosts came to meet him, walking the empty stone corridors, passing around and even through him as though he was the one who wasn’t there. They all looked like Owen. Visions of himself, from various times in his past: sometimes young and uncertain, sometimes brave and heroic, and sometimes battered and bloody. The images were often unclear, distorted and eroded, like the faces of statues worn away by long passages of time. Or perhaps . . . by fading memories.
Did I ever really look that heroic, that certain?
Owen thought.
Or is that just how she saw me? I never knew.
Owen thought.
Or is that just how she saw me? I never knew.
Owen knew what this place was, or would be. He had walked these corridors before, in his past but this place’s future. This was where the Blood Runners had brought Hazel d’Ark after they abducted her from Lachrymae Christi. They had trapped and kidnapped her, when she and Owen were both weakened after the defense of St. Beatrice’s Mission. They brought her here, to their secret place, to torture and vivisect her, to try to steal her miraculous power and potential. Owen had tracked her here, and together he and Hazel had wiped out all the Blood Runners, in a hot savage fury. And they had seen the end of this place, its final destruction, escaping only moments before it disappeared forever. But that was then, and this was now.
Hazel had created this place. Owen knew that, as certainly as he knew anything. The nature of the place was clear to him, the stone corridors all but talking to him, whispering her name. He could even sense the place’s history, as though laid out before him on one of the ancient handwritten scrolls he had studied so long ago, when he was just a scholar and minor historian. Steeped in her madness, driven by loss and need, Hazel had reached the end of the line when she ran out of time, so she dropped out of the time and space that had failed her, and created a secret place of her own, a pocket dimension to hide and plan in. There was no telling how long Hazel had spent here; Time worked differently here, when it worked at all. But slowly Hazel changed, growing and evolving like a caterpillar in an insane cocoon, finally to emerge from her stone chrysalis and burst back into space and time, reborn as the Terror. An almost elemental force now, with little of Hazel’s consciousness in it, driven by a need and a longing and a madness it could barely remember the reasons for.
Disconnected from Hazel’s history, the Terror had lost all track of space and time, and reappeared long ago and far away, in the galaxy of the Illuminati. And there she began her long journey back, heading home, following instinct as much as memory, goaded on by the loss of something it could no longer name, heading back to the Heartworld of the Empire, because . . . because it was responsible for her loss. The Terror started the long journey back, forgetting exactly who or what it was looking for, but compelled to search anyway. Perhaps sometimes the name Owen arose, but the Terror always forgot it again. It went where it had to, not caring who or what it had to destroy in order to raise the power necessary for its journey. It ate souls, and worlds, and civilizations, grinding them up to make its bread. The civilization of the Illuminati was the first to face the Terror’s hunger, but it wasn’t the last.
It took time to produce the herald, that could travel in space while the Terror occupied its own hidden place, and longer still to produce the herald’s ravenous spawn, but once the Terror had found a method that worked, it settled for that. It may not have been the best or most efficient way of doing things, but it was as good as any other to a mad mind with limitless power and no restraints or conscience.
Owen stood very still in the middle of a corridor, bent over as though about to vomit, his arms wrapped tightly around him to keep himself from flying apart. The maze of corridors was full of information, like a library full of books all shouting at once. Here, Time was just another direction, the corridors existing simultaneously in Past, Present, and Future. And it was the only physical existence the Terror had now. Hazel’s original, human body had disappeared long ago, eaten up by the terrible energies it generated and processed. The place that was not a place was the Terror; the herald and its maddening spawn just aspects of the greater whole, projected into three-dimensional space, like a fingertip pushed through a sheet of paper.
This place was the Terror, and it was slowly becoming aware of Owen’s presence within it. Owen could sense something like a great eye, sealed shut by eons of sleep, cracking slowly open to peer within its own self. There was a sound, like a sullen silver bell ringing in the heart of a stone forest at midnight. A slow gusting breeze in the corridors that might have been something breathing. Beads of sweat rolled slowly up the corridor walls, and the floor trembled under Owen’s feet. Something was coming his way, something vast and utterly dreadful.
Hazel d’Ark came walking down the corridor towards him, a memory from the past. She looked just as she had when Owen first met her, so long ago on Virimonde; young and vibrant, red-haired and sharp-faced. She looked the way she used to, back before all the death and war and madness. But at the same time, she was so much more than that, there was so much more to her, as though she existed in more than three dimensions, her physical presence radiating off in directions that even Owen’s expanded mind couldn’t follow. A memory of Hazel, plucked at random from memories that no longer meant anything to the Terror, but invested with its power.
“Hazel,” said Owen. “It’s me. It’s Owen! I’ve found you at last.”
She kept walking right at him, her face blank and subtly inhuman. His name meant nothing to the Terror now. It reached out with its powerful will, and tried to fix Owen in the corridor, like a bug impaled on a pin, just another ghost in the Terror’s collection. Owen fought it, and quickly discerned that even his new strength was nothing compared to this ancient implacable will. Hazel’s mouth opened, and kept on opening, gaping impossibly wide to eat him up, body and soul, just as it had swallowed planets and populations. Owen fought, concentrating on projecting his identity at the Terror, trying to force it to recognize him, and remember him.
The impossibly vast mouth howled out the never-ending scream of the herald’s razor-edged spawn, the terrible howl that had maddened whole worlds, the horrid sound reverberating through all the stone corridors at once. It would have destroyed even Owen, if he hadn’t been able to hear the loss and horror and stubborn love at its heart, that still fuelled the Terror after all this time. It was the scream of Hazel, in her ship over Haden, when she heard of Owen’s death. That same scream, still going on after countless centuries. A howl of loss and rage, at what had been taken from her, and at herself, because she’d never told the Deathstalker she loved him.
And because Owen knew what it was, and embraced it, the scream washed harmlessly over him. He advanced into it, and took the Hazel memory’s hands in his own. He followed the true emotions into the heart of the scream, and from there into the mad mind of the Terror, and deep within it he found the faintest glimpse of another presence, endlessly skewered on the pin of her own creation. A simple, still human presence, endlessly suffering, dreaming an endless nightmare in a sleep from which she could never awaken herself.
The Terror tried to consume Owen, just as it had Donal Corcoran and his mad ship the
Jeremiah
, to absorb and subsume Owen’s mind into its own much greater self, but Owen was too sure of his own identity for that, and there was no madness within him to invite the Terror in. But at the same time, he wasn’t strong enough to fight it off. His power still had limits, because he was still sane. Owen and the Terror struggled together, and neither of them knew for how long, before Owen finally realized that the Terror was quite ready to destroy itself, to be sure of destroying him. And he couldn’t allow that.
Jeremiah
, to absorb and subsume Owen’s mind into its own much greater self, but Owen was too sure of his own identity for that, and there was no madness within him to invite the Terror in. But at the same time, he wasn’t strong enough to fight it off. His power still had limits, because he was still sane. Owen and the Terror struggled together, and neither of them knew for how long, before Owen finally realized that the Terror was quite ready to destroy itself, to be sure of destroying him. And he couldn’t allow that.
So he gave in. He stopped fighting, and allowed the Terror to pull him in. It felt like dying, and yet something more. The Terror absorbed Owen Deathstalker into itself, and his mind headed immediately for the remnants of Hazel d’Ark he’d sensed at the Terror’s core. They came together, and the impact of his presence shocked Hazel awake and sane, for the first time in centuries.
Hello, Hazel.
Owen? My God, Owen! They told me you were dead!
I was, but I got over it. I had to come back, for you.
For me?
Not all of space, nor all of time, could keep me from you, Hazel d’Ark.
You always were a smooth-talking bastard. Oh, Owen, I’ve missed you so much . . .
I know. I know.
And two minds held each other, as tightly as any two bodies that ever were. Two souls, as close as two souls could ever be.
Why did you take so long to find me, Owen?
I was looking in all the wrong places. And you didn’t exactly make yourself easy to find.
Where is this, Owen? Where are we now? Are we both dead?
No. We still have a lot to do yet.
He held her tightly to him, while Hazel accessed his memories of the Terror, and all that it had done. Horror shuddered through her, at what she and her madness had made possible. Owen showed her the future he had come from, and Hazel reached out and stopped the Terror’s herald in its tracks, well short of its next chosen prey, frozen in a moment of space. Now that she was back, Hazel was in charge again, and the people on the threatened world looked on in awe and wonder as the deadly herald hung in space, apparently dead. Hazel was shocked and appalled at all the lives and civilizations lost and gone, because of her, and for a while her madness actually threatened to overwhelm her again. But this time Owen was there with her, to hold and comfort her.
How can I be forgiven, for what I did, as the Terror? How can I ever forgive myself? Could we . . . put everything right again?
Owen considered the possibility.
Well, we’re in the past, as much as we’re anywhere. We could emerge back at the end of your trail, at the dawn of Humanity’s homeworld, and then travel on into our future, changing and healing each event as we came to it. We know the future isn’t set in stone. We’ve met alternate versions of yourself, from different timetracks. Their futures were just as valid as ours. We could undo everything the Terror did; but then our history would never happen. We would never happen. It wouldn’t be our time line anymore. And it might be better or it might be worse; we have no way of knowing what changes our interventions might bring about. We could, with the very best of intentions, make a real mess of things. The only certain thing, is that you and I would never meet.
Well, we’re in the past, as much as we’re anywhere. We could emerge back at the end of your trail, at the dawn of Humanity’s homeworld, and then travel on into our future, changing and healing each event as we came to it. We know the future isn’t set in stone. We’ve met alternate versions of yourself, from different timetracks. Their futures were just as valid as ours. We could undo everything the Terror did; but then our history would never happen. We would never happen. It wouldn’t be our time line anymore. And it might be better or it might be worse; we have no way of knowing what changes our interventions might bring about. We could, with the very best of intentions, make a real mess of things. The only certain thing, is that you and I would never meet.
It might be worth it, Owen—to prevent the Terror, and its crimes.
Yes, it might be, if we could be certain of that. But what’s to stop someone else going through a Madness Maze, and becoming something just as bad, or perhaps even worse than, the Terror?
All right, smart arse, what do you think we should do?
I think we should do nothing.
What? Owen, you can’t be serious!
Think about it, Hazel. At the end of the war against the Recreated, the baby in the Maze worked wonders, bringing dead worlds back to life. Why didn’t he bring back everyone who’d died in the war? Why not undo all the damage, all the wrongs?
All right, I’ll bite. Why not?
Because too many miracles would have gone beyond helping. It would have been meddling, interfering. People have to make their own mistakes, and live with them, if they’re ever to learn anything. The baby only put right what he’d done wrong, as the Darkvoid Device.
All this time, and you’re still bloody lecturing me.
All this time, and you’re still not listening. For all our power, Hazel, we’re not gods. We don’t have the knowledge or the experience to take on that kind of responsibility. We could make things much worse, try to fix them, and then make them really bad, and so on and so on . . . caught in an endless spiral of trying to put right our mistakes. We’re still . . . only human.
Hold everything,
Hazel said abruptly.
Something’s happening. It’s the Terror. It’s . . . fighting back.
Hazel said abruptly.
Something’s happening. It’s the Terror. It’s . . . fighting back.
I thought you were the Terror.
No, I became the Terror, but the final entity evolved out of and around me. And all of those centuries operating as the Terror, exterminating other species and feeding on them, gave the Terror an identity in its own right. And it’s not taking at all kindly to my suddenly waking up and trying to control it.
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