Escana (55 page)

'I
grew up in a small town off the Ittibaen coastline, have you heard
the phrase “as fresh as an Ittibean catch?”'

Thom
was silent. Gadtor continued, feeling slightly foolish.

'We
were a border town back then, before the grand expansion swallowed
us. Time was you could make a decent living on fresh catch alone, no
need for a second trade or blood money. It was an honest trade and
one my father excelled at. I still remember coming home after a hard
day's work on the lines to a baked fish pie and a rest well-earned.'

'So
if you're a fisherman's boy, why are you heading out into the desert
with me?'

Gadtor
blanched, was he being mocked? He decided to ignore the potential
jibe.

'Things
changed of course, they always do. The war broke out and a lot of us
got drafted and the rest were forced into supplying the armies for a
meagre subsidy. I wasn't old enough to fight in the wars so I ended
up working on the nets in my father's stead.'

'Which
army did you supply?' Thom asked.

Gadtor
paused, wondering how the man would react to this answer, then
remembered the reason he was talking in the first place. They were
both dead, it didn't matter now if he ruffled any feathers.

'I
supplied the Empire's armies but supported the rebels.'

Thom
nodded. 'I'm beginning to see why you caused such civil unrest again
Kelgrimm in Urial. They took your father from you, didn't they?'

He
was surprised by the man's measured response, surely Thom had fought
in the wars against the very rebels Gadtor claimed to have supported?
Maybe he thought it was pointless conflicting over it too.

'Losing
my father wasn't the reason I supported the rebellion, what he told
me was. How he'd come home bloody and beaten for not exporting his
stock. The times they'd send a pair of toughs around to intimidate my
mother when he was out on the lines. They did everything short of
kill our family to make him submit to their will, he kept refusing.'

'So
he was a man of principle then, good,' Thom replied.

'I
asked him why he didn't just accept their money, it was more than we
could possibly earn on our own and it wasn't like we'd be doing
anything different to earn it. He turned to me then with this look in
his eyes, like he was haunted by something. I had no idea what it was
he had seen that scared him so, being young and naïve. He looked
at me and he said that if we accepted the money from the Empire we'd
be no better than those who committed the acts to earn it.

I
didn't understand at the time of course just what he meant by those
words but when war came calling I found out the true extent of their
butchery.'

Thom
stopped him there. 'You were a child slave from the years of war,
weren't you?'

Gadtor
nodded. 'I did my part for the rebels like my Dad told me to, most of
us were sympathetic to their cause. Then the Empire got wind of it
and set a torch to the whole town. They burnt it all to the ground
and sold the rest of us into slavery. I screamed at them as they set
torch to our family home, told them my father was enlisted, even
showed them the papers. They wouldn't listen, they had their orders
and they carried them out with a self-satisfaction that sickened me
to my core.'

Gadtor
waited for the apology, none was coming.

'I
don't like to recall much of my time as a slave, eventually I was
bought by a man called Falarus. He took me to his town called Urial
and I fell in love with it. It was strangely like coming home after a
long and painful nightmare. Then Kelgrimm took power after the great
expansion and things started to go wrong once again. The stench of
the Empire was all over his rule and that was how the formation of
the Black Quail began, only to end futilely after we encountered that
thing.'

Thom
seemed to be paying much closer attention now. 'El-Vador. What did it
do to you that finally brought you to heel?'

He
didn't appreciate the term, it made him sound like a servile dog. 'I
was convinced that Falarus wasn't the man he claimed to be. That he
had hidden a great many things from me and that those invalidated
everything I thought I knew of the man.'

Thom
leaned forward. 'Did his demonstration involve other people?'

'Other
people?' Gadtor frowned. 'Well yes, there were three others brought
into the room.'

There
was a long pause, then a sigh from Thom. 'I don't particularly like
you, I find you abrasive, cocksure and misguided in the extreme. In
spite of this even you deserve to know the truth.'

Gadtor
didn't like where this was going. 'What truth?'

'That
creature can summon illusions at will, it can warp the minds around
it and delve into your own. It will then use those thoughts against
you until you conform to what it decides. It's unlikely that there
was anyone else in that dungeon, everything it displayed to you was
smoke and mirrors.'

It
hit him with a sickening jolt. The one incongruity in the entire
conversation with the creature had been the final words of Falarus.
He had called him his friend, he had forgiven him for what he was
about to do. There had been no anger or fear at his exposition of
character, simply sadness in that final moment.

He
had murdered his oldest friend in cold blood.

S
he
screamed wildly as they fell through the clouds, then abruptly ran
out of breath. El-Vador's hand was still clamped firmly to her own
and he clearly knew what he was doing.

She
stared down at the vast city sprawling beneath them.

'This
is lower Levanin, it differs little from any other large city in
history for the most part.' He pointed to her right. 'Except for
this.'

She
managed to turn her head as it was buffeted by winds, then thought
that her eyes were playing tricks on her.

A
massive column jetted upward into the clouds, luminous without being
blinding. The glowing light it exuded seemed to pulse as if it were
alive.

'What
is that?' Ella asked, so aghast at the sight that she'd almost
forgotten she was falling.

'It
is a beam of pure energy that keeps Upper Levanin afloat in the
clouds. It is what separates the upper caste from the lower caste and
the gifted from the mortal.'

She
blinked and they had stopped falling, instead she found herself being
steadied in a large bright room with a domed ceiling. There was a
roaring noise in her ears that wasn't the passing wind, it came from
the column of light directly in front of them.

'The
humans here attribute this being to the divine will of a God they
call Lektus. This focal point is the main hub of the Church Of
Lektus, whose followers preach that to submit yourself to the divine
energy is to be healed.'

Ella
stared up at the light in wonder, she couldn't fathom such a thing
keeping an entire city aloft in the clouds. 'Is this the work of a
God?'

El-Vador
snorted derisively. 'Of course not, it's the crowning feat of
engineering from the old world but no more divine than I am. Simply
beyond human understanding, which makes it enough to build a religion
around.'

'The
book said you appeared here once to the followers and became a
Godhead, what if the church were to see you now?'

He
walked closer to the beam, apparently unconcerned by the blazing
heat. 'That was not the current incarnation of faith in this energy
source. No, they were an earlier faith and an earlier people that
inhabited the area around the beam. Long have they turned to dust and
ash, good riddance.'

She
thought he seemed callous in his disregard for human life. 'If they
were willing to treat you as a God, why do you look back on them with
such disdain?'

He
turned to look at her, his back illuminated by the flowing energy.
'When one has great power initially it is amusing to exercise that
power on the weak. If one is recognised as a God then such
exhibitions of power are expected by your followers and when
something is expected by your target the novelty is lost. Instead of
having an infinite number of people to be stimulated by, I was bogged
down by a simpering crowd of idiots.'

'So
why not go somewhere else? There must have been places that didn't
see you as a God.'

El-Vador
shook his head. 'It was a very dark time for the world, all the old
races were gone and what was left of humanity was but a fledgling
thing growing out of catastrophe. I would have been greeted with
superstition and fear anywhere I went. In those days I also lacked my
glamour, I'd have been seen for the invader that I was.'

'So
you stayed in Levanin all that time? What happened to your
followers?' Ella asked.

'A
plague took them,' El-Vador said quietly. 'They pleaded with me that
I save them, then when I did not, they begged me to rescind my
punishment. They thought I had brought this upon them, and they did
not know what they had done to displease me. After a time all that
was left living in the city was me.'

Ella
didn't know what to say to that. Apparently El-Vador wasn't done
talking.

'After
that I sank into a deep melancholy for an unmarked number of years.
That was when I decided to aid this fledgling people. I took the war
to the plague that was wiping out all human life.'

'How
can you fight that which you cannot see?' Ella asked, hopelessly out
of her depth.

The
air started to glow around her, making the domed room even brighter
than before.

'It
took me many long years to extend my power outward into the source of
the plague, I could try and explain such a thing to you but unless
you were to experience it yourself it would be entirely beyond your
comprehension. I mean that not as a criticism of your own powers of
deduction, it's simply not demonstrable.'

The
air faded back into transparency, he took a step closer to her.

'I
saved all of humanity, I took them from their dirt huts and their
plague-ravaged lands and helped forge the very Empire you now see
before you. To this day I still travel to every corner of the land to
keep the peace and prevent terrifying things befalling those that
reside there.'

Once
again, Ella thought of Jakob. 'What of Sah'kel, Jakob and Jimmy? Why
did you not help them?'

He
shook his head sadly, as if she had missed some fundamental point and
he was loathe to correct her. 'The orders to take them into the
desert were given for a reason, they are not for me to contradict.'

'You're
capable of such power though, why take orders from anyone?' she
asked.

'The
orders come from the Emperor himself, the pinnacle of the society
that I helped shape, what kind of person would I be if I were to fly
in the face of my own ideals simply because the construction as a
result exhibits free will that isn't in line with my own choices?'

He
had a point, she conceded. El-Vador did not desire the role of
supreme dictator to the people and to commandeer the Emperor's power
by refusing orders and enacting his own would be to become so.

'The
Emperor didn't give specific orders to send them to the desert, that
was Kelgrimm's command alone. Could you not have spared them in your
mercy?'

He
shook his head. 'The Emperor specifically demands that anyone who
attempts to usurp a Justice be sent to Sah'kel. Kelgrimm spared them
a more painful death by sending them to Greyhawk as opposed to what
he did with his two misguided associates who will soon be butchered
on the front line.'

Ella
couldn't believe what she was hearing. 'If you fight for the good of
humanity why do you allow the butchery of war to continue? Do you not
have the power to stop such things once and for all?'

'Sah'kel
is the final frontier of the great expansion, the last wild bastion
uncolonised, the Emperor has his reasons for doing so. There would be
no endeavour if I was sent to negate all the problems they would
encounter. The Empire may be regulated by my presence but it has been
built on the backs of humanity. The losses incurred there are
regrettable but necessary in the greater scheme of things.'

Ella
backed away from him, the light was playing strangely on his face as
he spoke these words of endeavour and regret. 'What do you mean by
the greater scheme of things?' She asked.

'The
expansive plans of the Emperor, how he foresees humanity living in
peace everywhere through their own efforts.'

It
sounded dangerously like the totalitarian forces El-Vador himself
claimed to have opposed in her book. 'You would ally yourself with a
man that would send thousands to their deaths based upon an ideal?'

El-Vador
sighed. 'Every human sent to Sah'kel is either a volunteer or a
criminal that would otherwise have been sentenced to death. The
Emperor is offering these soldiers an opportunity for redemption even
if they are slain and potentially a new home should they succeed. You
would gainsay this?'