Deathstalker Return (43 page)

Jesamine stirred inside his arm, and raised her face to look at him. “We’ve come a long way in a short time, haven’t we? Am I ever going to get my old life back, Lewis? All the comforts and the adulation? Be a star again?”

Lewis, who had never cared about any of those things, took his time replying. “Do you really miss them so much? Do you regret . . . throwing in your lot with me?”

“Only sometimes, darling. And then I look at you, and I remember you’re worth far more than anything I gave up.”

Brett sat morosely in his corner, hugging his knees to his chest, watching each of the hall entrances in turn, half convinced that something nasty was going to come charging in at any moment. He didn’t like the castle. It reminded him of old stories from his childhood, about wicked noble ladies of old, who lured innocent peasant children into their lairs to make pies out of them. He saw Lewis and Jesamine embracing, and would have liked to have called out something cynical and gratuitously offensive, but he couldn’t work up the energy. He was too busy being shit scared. In the past, he’d always known what to do when he felt threatened, by a job or a relationship: he ran. Show the problem his back, and then leave it behind in the dust. Well, he’d run from Finn Durandal, and much good that had done him. Now there was nowhere left to run, and he didn’t know what to do. Rose stirred beside him, her bloodred leathers creaking noisily in the quiet, and it was a sign of how seriously spooked Brett was that he actually found some comfort in her company.

“Why does this place get to you so much?” said Rose. Her voice was calm and completely untroubled. “It’s just an old building. There’s no one here but us.”

“It’s the ghosts,” said Brett. “This place is full of memories, of people who mattered. Jack Random and Ruby Journey, the uber-esper Jenny Psycho, the blessed Owen and Hazel d’Ark. What they did here still echoes on, haunting the halls and corridors. They were
real
heroes, Rose. Not like us. We’re only pretending. I’m a Random’s Bastard, supposedly descended from Jack and Ruby, and somehow I don’t think they’d approve of me at all. I agreed to join up with the Deathstalker because I wanted to be the kind of man my ancestors could have approved of. But after all we’ve been through, I’m still just me. I should have known better. I’m not up to this. I’m not strong enough. I’ve never been strong enough.”

Rose considered the matter for a while, still carefully polishing her sword. “We all want to be more than we are, Brett. Even me. Ever since our minds were linked by the esper drug, I’ve been . . . disaffected with my old life. It’s not enough to be just a killer. Just a monster. I need to be . . . bigger than that. It’s hard trying to learn how to be human . . . especially when all I have to learn from is you, Brett Random.”

He looked sharply at her, and was surprised to see her dark rosebud mouth move in something very like a smile. “Was that a joke, Rose?”

“Perhaps. Even monsters have feelings sometimes,” said Rose Constantine.

Brett smiled in spite of himself, shaking his head. “This is all just too weird. Everything’s changing. There’s nothing I can depend on anymore. Not even me. I’m confused. Take today, when we were fighting the monsters in the jungle. One moment I’m right there beside you, fighting like a warrior born, and the next I come to my senses and I’m running like a rabbit. What was I thinking of? I’m not a fighter, never have been. Maybe I’m having some sort of breakdown . . .”

“No you’re not,” Rose said calmly. “It’s not you, Brett; it’s me. Our mental link works both ways. And just as you have been teaching me about emotions, and humor, and sex that doesn’t involve killing people, so I have been teaching you swordsmanship and tactics and the joys of slaughter. Our minds are linked on every level there is; we can’t help but learn from each other. All the time, we’re growing closer together, becoming more like each other. So neither of us will ever have to be alone again.”

Brett stared at her in horror, his eyes wide, his mouth working silently. He started to scramble to his feet, to run as he always ran, but Rose put a firm, implacable hand on his arm, and held him where he was. He was too terrified to even think of struggling, even as his skin crawled at her touch. She smiled at him again, and he almost cried out.

“Stop that, Brett. There’s no reason for you to be scared. I won’t let anyone hurt you—not even me. I will kill anyone or anything that tries to hurt you. I will stand between you and all harm. And I will not force you to become anything you don’t want to be. I’m just trying . . . to help you. You’re the first person that ever mattered to me, apart from myself. I feel . . . something, towards you. I’m not sure what, yet. But I promise I’ll keep you alive until I figure out what it is. That’s a joke, Brett.”

“Well,” said Brett. “Very nearly.”

He actually did calm down a little as he realized Rose was, in her own very disturbing way, trying to reach out to him. Rose sensed he was no longer going to run, and took her hand off his arm. She went back to giving all her attention to her sword-blade, as calm as though nothing important had just happened, and perhaps for her, nothing had. Brett was still trying to come to terms with the idea that he wasn’t safe even inside his own head anymore. Her thoughts were influencing him all the time, whether consciously or subconsciously, trying to make him more like her. As if one Wild Rose wasn’t more than enough. At least now he understood where all that ridiculous bravery and derring do had come from, in the jungle earlier. He’d known that wasn’t like him. He should have known it was too good to be true. He glared about him sullenly, and sniffed loudly.

“Look at the size of this hall. How big it is, and how small it makes us feel in comparison. Everywhere we’ve been since leaving Logres has been a journey through the ruins of an age of heroes. A greater age than ours. You only have to look at the places they lived in to see that. People like us don’t belong in a place like this. How can we hope to do what Owen and his people did? They were larger than us, even before they went through the Madness Maze. They were heroes.”

“They were people, just like us,” said Lewis. He got up, helped Jesamine to her feet, and then they went over to join Brett and Rose. Though he never would have admitted it, the great scale of the hall of his ancestors was making Lewis jumpy too, and he was glad of an excuse to join the others. He sat down and leaned back against the wall next to Brett. “I’ve seen Owen and Hazel d’Ark, the real people. Shub had records of them in action. And the Dust Plains of Memory, that used to be the Imperial Matrix. Owen and Hazel are legends now, but back then they were just people. A man and a woman, struggling to do the right thing. I’m sure they had doubts and indecisions, just like us. They were ordinary people, and they did extraordinary things anyway, because they had to. And so we go on, against impossible odds, for the same reasons they did: because we have no choice, and because there’s no one else.”

“Don’t put money on it,” growled Brett. “Show me a safe route out of here, and I’d be gone so fast it would make your head spin.”

“I’ve played Owen and Hazel in half a dozen operas,” said Jesamine. “Marvelous roles, of course, but I can’t say I really knew either of them. You only have to look at a place like this to realize they lived in a whole different world from us. We’ve all got soft, since then.”

“Maybe that’s part of what we’re fighting for,” said Lewis. “So that we can all be safe enough that it’s all right for us to be soft.”

“Oh, very deep,” said Brett. “This is all Owen’s fault anyway. He should have stopped the Terror before he left. It’s his unfinished business that’s going to kill us all.”

He knew that was unfair even as he said it, and no one bothered to answer him. Lewis glared around the giant, empty hall as though he could force answers out of it through sheer strength of will.

“You were here before, Oz,” he said abruptly. “Or at least, your progenitor was. What do you think we should do now?”

“It wasn’t exactly me,” the ship’s AI said uncertainly through their comm implants. “When you get right down to it, I’m just a Shub subroutine created around bits and pieces left over from the original Ozymandias. What memories I have from that time are fragmentary at best. Still, this place is more familiar than most. I remember . . . a room full of mirrors, whose shimmering surfaces revealed possible futures. I remember automatons, repair robots in the shape of men, still striding elegantly through the Standing after a thousand years. And I remember finding the Shadow Men, Imperial assassins set after Giles Deathstalker. He killed them, and then put their stuffed and mounted bodies on display.”

“Okay,” said Brett. “This is seriously creeping me out.”

“I never liked Giles,” said Oz. “Never trusted him.”

“Giles Deathstalker,” Lewis said thoughtfully. “The first and founder of my Clan. Our family archives don’t have much on him. Just an old portrait, and stories of some of the great battles he fought. Owen found him preserved here, the last remnant of an earlier time. They fought side by side in the Great Rebellion, and then Giles went bad, and Owen had to kill him. Deathstalker luck . . .”

“Aren’t there any happy endings in your family’s history?” said Jesamine.

“Always a first time for everything,” said Lewis, smiling. “Oz, anything else you can tell us?”

“For some time now, I’ve been trying to make contact with the Standing’s computers,” said the AI. “I can tell they’re all back online now, awake and aware. The amount of power being generated in this castle is simply staggering, and it’s still rising. All kinds of systems are waking up, and I don’t recognize even half of them. Lewis, the castle’s computers have to know you’re here. I’m trying every contact protocol in my records, but they won’t open up to me. They feel . . . strange. Not like any form of computer mind I’ve ever encountered before. I think . . . they’re even older than the Standing itself . . . Lewis, I might have an idea. An almost memory from Owen’s time. You talk to them. Declare yourself, your name and your heritage. And show them the ring. Go on—they’re listening. They’re waiting.”

Lewis rose slowly to his feet, and the others got up with him. He headed towards the center of the hall. The others wanted to go with him, but he waved them back. He stopped in the middle of the great and empty hall, and looked around him. He could almost feel another presence there with him, surrounding him.

“I am Lewis Deathstalker,” he said, not proudly or defiantly, just calmly stating a fact. His voice was strong and clear in the quiet. “I am outlawed now, but still I am the first of my Clan, as Owen was before me. And I have come here as he did, in search of help from my Family. Because if I fall, the Empire falls with me. As proof . . . I bear Owen’s ring. The Deathstalker ring: sign and symbol of Clan authority.”

He held up his hand to show off the chunky black-gold ring, and the castle answered him. All the lights in the hall came on at once, fierce and powerful, blasting away the shadows of centuries. A great viewscreen appeared, floating above the cold fireplace. Images came and went swiftly, of faces familiar and unknown, but all of them Deathstalkers. A great beam of light, shimmering and silver, slammed down right next to Lewis, a spotlight so blinding and intense that they all had to look away. The intensity slowly faded, and when they looked again they saw a single figure standing in the spotlight, held in place like a moth on a pin. He was tall and sparely built, with muscular arms. He had a solid, lined face, with a silver-gray goatee beard, his long hair pulled back in a scalp lock. He wore a set of battered, shapeless furs, bunched at the waist by a wide leather belt. He wore thick golden armlets, and heavy silver rings on his fingers. He bore a heavy sword on one hip, and a gun of unfamiliar design on the other. He looked fierce and dangerous, cold and determined, and every inch a Deathstalker.

“My God,” said Jesamine. “It’s Giles.”

“Ghosts,” said Brett. “I told you . . .”

“Shut up, Brett,” said Lewis. He studied his coldly smiling ancestor for a long moment, and then extended his hand with the ring and thrust it into the light. It felt freezing cold, painfully cold, but he held the hand steady. “I am Lewis Deathstalker.”

“I know you are,” said Giles. “I heard you the first time.” The spotlight snapped off, leaving them all blinking. Lewis snatched back his hand. The holo figure of Giles, if that was all it was, looked at everyone in the group—including Guide, still shrinking away in his corner—and sighed loudly before turning his attention back to Lewis. “I’m not your ancestor, boy. I am all that remains of the computers who once ran this Standing, speaking to you through the image of Giles Deathstalker. Thought it might make this easier for both of us. Two hundred years and more since anyone came calling, to disturb my rest. Should have known only really bad news would bring anyone back here. Why were you outlawed, Lewis?”

“For loving the wrong woman,” Lewis said steadily. “And for speaking out against evil.”

“Yes, that sounds familiar,” said Giles. “I suppose I should ask what’s become of the Family, but since I’m not really Giles, I don’t think I really care. You bear the ring; that’s all that matters.”

“Hey, hold on,” said Brett. “Anyone could just walk in here with that ring on, and claim they were a Deathstalker.”

Giles glared at him, and Brett immediately went back to hiding behind Rose. “No, they couldn’t,” said Giles. “The ring is coded to the Deathstalker line, and it has all kinds of nasty tricks built into it to take care of imposters.”

Lewis deliberately didn’t look down at the ring on his finger, but an icy chill caressed the back of his neck for a moment. If his family line had been just a little further distanced from the main line . . . He made himself smile easily at Giles, even though he found talking to the original Deathstalker more than a little disturbing, given the bad end Giles eventually came to. He wondered if the computers knew.