Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four (22 page)

“Not in the slightest.”

“Good enough. I’m going to keep heading into Valcua’s land. D, you go back with the two children.”

“That is satisfactory,” Kima said with a bow.

“Just a minute,” the hoarse voice shouted. “I wanna ask you

something. Did you come here to get D to leave? Actually, you’ve already answered that, but why do you want him to go?”

A hint of emotion flashed across Kima’s face. At the same time, there was a stillness as if the air were frozen. An eerie aura that would make a person want to look away had risen from every inch of Kima.

“Very well—I shall be right back with him. Hopefully you’ll see fit to honor our agreement.”

The hoarse voice shouted at him to wait, but only after Kima’s form had rippled like a heat shimmer and abruptly vanished.

“All he leaves us with is questions, eh?” the hoarse voice murmured.

“D, who are you?” Count Braujou said as if in counterpoint, his voice falling like a rumble of thunder menacing the earth.

On a road through the darkness in an unknown locale, a figure in a crimson robe advanced. The black road wasn’t dirt. The black walls that towered to either side couldn’t be called stone. Distant lightning gleamed off the ground and the walls. Everything was steel.

An unfathomable weight hung in the air over Kima like a cloud. Judging by the lightning, there couldn’t have been any ceiling here. The place was at once both incredibly vast, but also apparently inside a mind-numbingly cramped enclosure.

In no time—well, to be precise, what we call time didn’t even exist in this place—Kima halted before a gigantic black steel surface that seemed like a wall of sorts. But only for a second ... and then his form vanished without a sound.

There was a flash. And in the streak of blue light that connected the ground and sky, Kima suddenly reappeared. He tried to stand, but tumbled forward.

“You may not enter, Kima.”

The voice rained down on him. It was far more daunting than the one in Count Braujou’s living room, imbued as it was with a tremendous power.

“Not even your ability to warp space can get you through the antimatter field that covers that building. So, did D accept your conditions? I’m sure he did.”

Frantically picking himself up off the ground, Kima went down on one knee and bowed his head. “You know about that?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t? I’ve said it before. The ether that fills my territory is imprinted with every creature in my domain, living or dead. It even contains the thoughts that were, are, or will be in the past, present, and future. Reading it is a Herculean task. Being who I am, it’s possible. It’s something I, Valcua, alone can do.”

“Of course, milord.”

“Ah, but the world is a strange and wondrous place. No matter how I might concentrate, I wring my brains dry and still cannot, for some reason, read a certain section of the ether. Kima, who is D?” The hooded figure said nothing.

“If need be, I can split your head open right here and put the question directly to your brain. Do you think you can answer me now?” “Regretfully, I cannot.”

“So it’s no use, then? Why not, Kima? Why can’t I, whom they call the Ultimate Noble, deduce the true nature of a lowly Hunter?” “I’m sorry, milord.”

“Bring him with you,” the voice said.

“Excuse me?”

“Bring him the human. And then watch what D does. I want to be informed of his every action.”

“Why is that, milord?”

“I don’t know. Only
you
do. But I’ll press you about that no more. I shall find the answer myself. Go—I’ve taken away the field.”

The figure in red vanished as if he’d never been there in the first place. In the distance, lightning flickered again.

When Kima and Matthew suddenly appeared in the car’s living room, it was less than an hour after Kima’s first visit.

“Took you long enough,” the count spat, while Sue rubbed her eyes and murmured her brother’s name, frozen in place.

The siblings were all alone in the world. No doubt she was happy to be reunited. However, that emotion was quickly effaced by a hint of uneasiness when the girl saw at a glance that something wasn’t right about Matthew.

The boy simply stood there, limbs flaccid and expression slack, and D put his left hand against Matthew’s brow. Slobber dribbled from the boy’s mouth, and he let out an idiotic chortle. But that was all he did, and there was no change in his vacant gaze or in his expression.

The Hunter took his left hand away.

“This ain’t good. He’s got no brain,” the hoarse voice declared, its words hitting the motionless Sue like a thunderbolt.

“When you say that, do you mean his memory’s been wiped clean?”

“No—the brain itself has disappeared from inside his cranium. In its place is something else—his skull’s packed full of ether. All the blood vessels and nerves are connected to some brain imprinted in the ether.”

“Then Matt’s . ..”

“You could think of him as a dead man who’s still breathing.” That much the left hand stated plainly enough.

Sue wrapped her arms around herself and remained that way for a while before slowly walking over to Matthew.

“Matt,” she whispered as she began to shake him by the shoulders. “Snap out of it, Matt. Look at me. Do you understand? Can you tell it’s me? The same girl you tried to have your way with! I’m begging you, you have to remember.”

Sue realized tears were spilling from her eyes. It was strange. She’d nearly been violated, and had then tried to kill him. It was on account of her brother that she was a wreck now, physically and mentally. And yet she was crying.

“You call that giving him back?” D asked, staring at Kima.

“Until I brought him here, he was perfectly normal—though I don’t expect you to believe me.”

“It doesn’t matter whether we believe you,” D said, his tone sharp as an autumn frost. “I promised his mother I’d protect
him,
not a zombie. His mind has to be put back the way it was."

“Will you not trust me once more?"

“I never trusted you from the start,” D asserted coolly.

“We might want to consider ourselves lucky to at least have his body back,” the count suggested, seated in his enormous chair. “It’s probably no use retrieving his brain now. You wait here, D. Hey, Kima! If you want to make amends for this, bring me to Valcua. Then I’ll consider our score with you settled.”

Kima said nothing.

“You have a problem with that? If so, you’ll die here,” the count said, his hand already gripping his long spear.

“My life isn’t particularly dear to me—but as I was the one who didn’t live up to the bargain, I shall bring you there.”

“Then it’s decided. D, those two are in your care. Miranda may be along soon, too.”

As the titanic Noble was about to rise in a motion that would shake the very air, a nimble black figure quietly stepped in front of him.

“I’ll be the one to go.”

“Not a chance," the Nobleman countered, the tip of his spear leveled at the left side of D’s chest.

“It’s foolish for us to be fighting about this. It can’t be helped,” the count said. “In addition to the siblings, Valcua is also after Miranda and me. What’s more, we’re the only ones who’ve fought him. It stands to reason that I should be the one to go.”

“You never would’ve captured Valcua without the help of a human,” D riposted softly. “I don’t know how effective I’ll be, but I intend to do it without anyone else’s assistance. Stay here.”

“No, you stay here.”

A second later, an arrow of murderous intent pierced D’s body and was instantly swallowed up. The arrow fired back was also one of murderous intent—but not exactly the same.

Sensing the awesome tension that hung between the two of them, Sue found her consciousness swallowed by the darkness. But her ears heard someone say, “You should both go.”

“Matt?” Sue exclaimed, identifying the speaker.

His expression still vacant and his head tilted a bit to the right, Matthew continued, “That would be my suggestion, but I imagine you couldn’t very well leave those children unattended. I shall choose. D, come to see me.”

“Wait!”

“I shall deal with you soon enough, Braujou,” Matthew said. The voice he now spoke with belonged to another person, the tone so fraught with terrible force it seemed like it would split his belly open at any second. It was that of the Ultimate Noble. “But for now, wait there. If not, I’ll smash this boy’s body into such a pulp he’ll never look the same again.”

“You vile bastard,” the count growled, the head of his spear trembling with rage. However, the matter was already settled. Five millennia earlier, he’d sworn to protect these children. His long spear shifted into an upright position.

“Kima, bring your master to me,” Matthew ordered.

“What of Matthew’s brain?” the count inquired. His tone was like the roar of a fire dragon.

“I’ll return it as soon as the two of them have made the trip.” “Return it now,” D said. All he had to do was say he wouldn’t go if Valcua refused, and that would be the end of it.

“Very well.”

Matthew put his hands to his temples. His head returned to the proper position. There was a pop from his cranium. Sue gazed in wonder as vitality and reason returned to Matthew’s expression. Unexpectedly the boy staggered, but he managed to keep on his feet and then looked all around.

“Why, this is—Sue, is that you? What am I doing here?”

“Good enough,” D said to Kima.

Standing up, Kima placed his hand on D’s shoulder. At the very moment the two figures vanished, Matthew collapsed on the floor.

D looked up at the huge castle gate towering before him. Kima was by his side. The gate must’ve been the better part of a mile high and in excess of five hundred yards wide. D’s eyesight allowed him to see the top of it through the darkness. The wind whistled overhead. To either side of it were black ramparts, and their darkly lustrous material was undoubtedly metal. One bolt of lightning would probably turn the whole place into a living hell of electromagnetic waves.

“Why aren’t we going through that?” D inquired.

“This is the Gate of the Sacred Ancestor. Lord Valcua alone may pass through it.”

“Wasn’t it the Sacred Ancestor who banished him to the depths of space?”

Apparently this was the Hunter’s way of asking why there was a gate named after him.

The wind howled—and in it a creaking noise resounded that would make any listener want to cover his ears. The huge gate had slowly begun to open down the center. Not waiting for it to finish opening, D stepped through.

The clearing on the other side could only be described as a plain. A sprawling steel wasteland—and in it stood a man in a golden cape, but he emanated an overwhelming power that bore no relation to the lonely figure he cut.

“You’re D, I take it?”

“Valcua?”

When they exchanged names, it wasn’t to confirm each other’s identity. It was more an expression of each man’s intent to see his opponent dead.

“I thought he’d be taller—he sure seems a vain one.”