The Godgame (The Godgame, Book 1) (13 page)

“How do you like my view?” Trevor asked.

“It’s grand,” Galahad replied.

He stood with the three-eyed man at the edge of the balcony on the level of the Ziggurat where he kept his quarters. He was still angry from his encounters earlier in the day, first with Lemm and then with the Archon. The Archon would not be persuaded from his war, had already dispatched troops to Nova without so much as a remark to Trevor. It infuriated Trevor that the Archon had acted on such an impulse without first discussing it with him. He was more than infuriated—he was scared. Did he not possess the control he thought he did? Was the Archon displeased with him? Were plots to supplant him already in place? He must discover what was going on. He needed information. He had to act.

“I have travelled far,” Galahad was saying, “on my holy quest. The waters are already beginning to rise on my island. The beaches have been swallowed up. Tell me, Trevor, where can I find this man called Marrow?”

Trevor smiled. “He travels the world on his aerial and stops in Talos from time to time to replenish his supplies and crew. He should be coming here soon.”

“He is a friend of yours?”

“Oh, yes. In a way.”

Galahad sighed. He looked over the balcony, over the City, up to the night sky. He inhaled deeply. “Your city is beautiful,” he said.

“Yes,” Trevor said quietly. “It is.”

“I envy the lives you must live here, such fecundity of resources, culture, and beauty.”

An image of the brean girl flashed in his head again. “Yes,” he said.

“A man could get used to a place such as this. A man might find happiness, a modest living, perhaps even…” Galahad stopped himself. “No, of course not. My life is destined for other things.”

“Say it,” Trevor said. “It’s okay. Say what you were going to say.”

Galahad looked back at Trevor. “I’ve always longed… I’ve wanted…”

“A girl, yes?”

“It is forbidden, but—” Galahad made a sudden choking sound, blood bubbled to his lips. He turned, his eyes bugged in sudden terror. Trevor watched the man reach for the blade that he must usually keep in a scabbard slung over his back, but, of course, there was nothing there.

“It is forbidden,” Mithra said.

“An abomination,” Cadoc said.

“It must not be allowed to happen,” Siriac said.

Trevor stepped back as the hallowgeons surrounded Galahad. Siriac came forward with some sort of microfilament net, wrapping Galahad from head to toe, his exposed skin bulging and bleeding as the filaments cut into him. Cadoc produced a tool with a head of incomprehensible pistons and needles, which wheezed and sputtered like a living mutation, and brought it to Galahad’s mouth.

Trevor took another step back, but he was unable to peel his eyes away as the hallowgeons began their work, slowly removing first Galahad’s fingers, one at a time, and then his organs through an incision across his belly, careful to keep the unfortunate three-eyed man alive and aware while they worked.

Trevor licked his lips. “You see, my friend,” he heard himself saying. “The time has come for action. I must act quickly, if Talos is to be mine.”

Galahad’s three bulging eyes stared at him.

“The heirotimates have too long been ineffectual. It’s time they saw what the common man can do.”

NOVA

LENA

The cometlight warmed her face. She could see the veins in her closed eyelids, crimson striations.
Strange
, she thought.
Where is that light coming from? The shades are closed. I’m sick. How long have I been in this bed?

Her mind swirled. She was burning up. She kept thinking about her sister, about her family, about Marrow...

Her sister never knew how much their father had tried to persuade her from going away with Marrow. She had been their father’s favorite, the one most likely to succeed him in his duties with the House of Peace. Embla was too soft, too compassionate, and too emotional when it came to the executions. Embla was the kind of child who had once brought home a wounded pika she’d found on the street and nursed it back to health, although the streets of Talos were swarming with the vermin.

When they’d both been little girls—Lena eleven years old, Embla nine—their father had taken them to their first execution at the Gallows Tree. He’d made them watch, the accused man begging for his life, claiming innocence. Lena could still remember how the rope had constricted about the man’s neck, his face red, his tongue pushing out between his swollen lips as he failed to breathe, legs jerking in an almost comical way as life fled the man’s eyes. Lena had been fascinated, shocked and scared, but interested just the same, unable to look away. When she finally had, her father giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, she’d looked over to see Embla crying and trembling uncontrollably.

“They cheered,” Embla had said to her later, while they lay in the bed they shared, neither one of them able to sleep. “They were happy. They liked it.”

“Who liked it?” Lena had asked her sister.

“All those people watching. They wanted to see that man die.”

Lena had shrugged and turned over, not understanding what her sister had meant at the time.

Now, of course, as an adult, she understood her sister’s horror. Embla had come to realize something that day. She had learned an important lesson about the nature of humanity. So had Lena.

Am I outside? Why am I so warm? The fever. I’m sick. What’s happened? Wake up. Remember...

By the time Lena was fourteen, her father was taking her to work with him, letting her sit in on meetings, showing her some of the stranger interrogation devices, giving her a taste of her future life, and Lena had liked it. She had been beginning to discover her people skills, as well. Even those much older than her seemed eager to follow her orders. She was a natural leader.

And then Marrow’s letter had come. It had been an opportunity she could not pass up. Her youthful mind had been captivated by the possibilities. She’d had screaming matches with her father over whether she should go, but eventually she had insisted, despite her father’s fury and threats of disownment.

When she’d seen Marrow’s warm and mischievous grin, his strong face, wildly sparkling eyes, she’d forgotten all about her father and fallen for the mysterious man almost immediately. He’d swept her off her feet, and, for a time, it truly had been the adventure for which she’d always dreamed.

Wake up. Remember…

~

“I have so much to learn,” she says.

Marrow sits up in bed. “You have something in you,” he says. “I don’t know. I don’t mean charm, or flair, or good taste. Something else. A quality. A will to do great things.”

“What can I do? I’m just a girl?” she says, turning so that she lies on her side, propping her head up with one arm, her small breasts exposed.

Marrow stands and crosses the cabin, his naked posterior flexing. He sits on a stool and swivels to face her. “Trust me, you have a grand destiny. You have courage, if you can only find patience. I believe in you. Surely that counts for something?” he says, and smiles that smile of his, as if to show her he is only partially joking, as if to really say his smile counts for everything.

“I want to help people. I want to save—”

Marrow raises his hand. “No. Don’t move. Stay...just like that.” He lifts a charcoal pencil and begins to sketch on a fresh canvas he’s placed on the easel before him, looking closely at her, then making some marks on the canvas, then back at her.

She is suddenly self-conscious, feeling the lightly cool air prickling the bare skin of her breasts, the sheets cascading over the curve of her hip, but she holds her position.

Later, Marrow says, “You’re far too pretty for greatness, anyhow.”

“Perhaps I should drown myself,” she says with a smile.

“No, but never marry. Remember who you are. Travel far, give up everything and suffer.” He gives her a wicked look out of the corner of his eyes, as if he knows he’s said something he shouldn’t have and gets an almost boyish glee out of doing it.

Sometimes, despite Marrow’s immortal nature, Lena feels she is older and more mature than he.

~

Wake up. Where are my children? My girls? Remember what’s happened.

Lena opened her eyes. She
was
outside, yet still in bed. It was late afternoon and she could hear the birds conversing in the trees. The sky above her was shockingly bright. The air smelled of freshly-disturbed dust. She could feel the fever burning through her, hollowing her out, leaving her weak, a husk of what she once had been. She drew in a hitching breath and coughed. Her head rattled as she shook. When the coughing stopped, she forced herself to turn on her side, looking around.

Her bed had been carried and placed in the middle of the street. She was in front of the Harlow’s house for some reason. She blinked and tried to concentrate, to remember what had happened. Her memories were a blur, a flash in the pan—sizzling steam—whisked away in a fog of heat.

There is shouting, and someone is hammering on the door. She hears motors outside, whooping and hollering. She hears voices. A loud crack reverberates through the house. Her girls scream…

~

“You have to hide him,” she says, lying in bed, exhausted after the birth.

Her husband leans over the bed. “Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to our little boy.”

She takes a deep breath. “You don’t understand. Our son is a crossbreed. If they come, we can’t stop them. There’s nothing we can do.”

Josef scowls. He cradles their new sleeping baby in his arms, swaddled tightly. “I’d kill them before I’d let them get close.”

Lena struggles to keep herself awake. This is important. “Are you sure? What you said earlier?”

“Yes,” Josef says. “The hallowgeons have never come to Fallowvane.” He smiles. “Never, ever.”

“Good.” Lena feels her eyes sliding shut.

“Besides, Daryn says the hallowgeons are a myth, made up by the Talosians to scare people. Everyone knows that.”

Lena shakes her head. She is tired, so tired. “I’ve seen them.”

“You have?”

Lena nods. “When I was very young.”

“What’s the big deal, anyway? I love you and you love me. That has to mean more than what genesis we’re from. So what if Ashley here is a little different. Different’s good.”

Lena can no longer open her eyes, but she smiles. She loves this man, she loves him very much.

“I love you,” Josef says.

Lena is asleep before she can say it back.

~

Her girls are screaming. Her husband is shouting. There is rifle fire in the house…

She struggled in bed to sit up. Her pillow fell off the back of the bed and plopped in the dirt. She groaned.

“Hello?” she croaked. She ran her tongue over her teeth in a feeble attempt to get the saliva to flow in her mouth again. She forced a swallow, and tried again, “Hello? Anyone?”

Her body began to tremble. She hugged herself and rocked in place. She brought a hand up and peeled the medicine Mother Marlena had made for her free from where it hung like loose skin beneath her eyes. With both eyes clear, she found herself blinking, her eyes watering uncontrollably. She took in a breath to begin another coughing fit, but let out a sob instead.

Emotions flooded her feeble body as she began to awaken. She was still very hot, but the fever seemed to have subsided somewhat, and, slowly, her mind was beginning to come back to her.

~

“Burn your money,” Marrow says, standing before the fire pit, directly between Lena and him, the dimness obscuring the perspective so that Marrow appears to be standing in the fire itself, flames eagerly licking his cloak. “Burn your possessions.”

Lena steps forward, her meager gunnysack in hand. She drops it into the fire.

“Material possessions are temporary and meaningless,” Marrow says. “Leave your old life behind so that you may begin a new one.”

Lena watches Marrow’s face and when the man smiles slightly, she knows it is for her.

“Very good,” he says. “Now if you’ll follow—”

“Wait,” Lena interrupts. She gives Marrow a sly smile and begins to undress. She removes her sandals, then her pants and her top. She pushes her clothes into the fire. Then she removes her panties and tosses them to the flames as well. She stands naked before the fire, before Marrow. She can feel sweat on her bare skin.

That slight, bemused smile cracks Marrow’s face again as he looks at her. “Very good,” he repeats. “Let’s find you new garments for your new life, before I take you to meet the rest of the crew…”

~

It was only later, after Marrow had begun to grow bored of her, as she had begun to lose the initial luster of her youth, she’d realized Marrow had never loved her. She’d been so young back then, with so much to learn, about life, about relationships. Marrow had cheated her, scarred her. She had witnessed the immortal man do terrible things. In the end, however, she knew she was as much to blame for her heartache as he had been.

It was after that, she had begun to pull away from humanity. She had wanted to divorce herself from the selfish ambitions of people. Marrow’s, she had discovered, with his never ending search for meaning and power in the world, was no different from the heirotimates’ quest for wealth and decadence. She wanted no part of it. She wanted a simple life, one free of such greed and selfishness.

And she had found that in Josef, and in the people of Fallowvane. Josef was a simple man who built simple and functional things with his hands for a living. He was content. He smiled easily and didn’t understand why anyone would want more. “I have you,” he had told her once, “my beautiful wife. I have a boy and three wonderful girls. I am a rich man.”

She had thrown her arms around him and squeezed him tight. “And I have you,” she’d said.

He’d pulled back just enough so he could meet her eyes with his own. “Always.”

“I’m a rich woman.”

He’d rolled his eyes. “Sure. If you like.”

They’d laughed together.

Josef... Her husband… Where was Josef?

~

They are laughing as they stomp through the house. They are knocking things over, shattering plates in the kitchen, smashing the walls…

Lena tumbled from the bed and landed heavily in the road.

“Help!” Her throat rattled with each word. “Help! Please!”

There was no one around. The houses were empty. Fallowvane was empty. She was alone.

The bedroom door bursts open. Two men with grim faces—one is wearing a hat with protruding horns, the other bald, his skin covered in scars—look in on her. The bald one lifts his rifle and points it at her, but the one with the horns stops him and grins.

She is being lifted, the entire bed carried out of the house with her still in it. There is a gaping hole in the wall of her house where some sort of explosive has torn it open. The two men are laughing like mad men, showing huge yellow teeth.

The two men carry the bed to the middle of the street. All around, the sounds of rifle fire, of panicked screaming, of explosive charges, revving buggy motors and running. They leave her. “There you go, grandma,” the bald one says. “We’ll leave you as a breeder,” the horned one says. Both men laugh maniacally and then they are gone and she loses consciousness.

Lena began to crawl. She needed to find her husband. She needed to find her girls. The Talosians had come to Fallowvane.