Sea Of Ghosts

CHAPTER 18
AN EXPECTED DEATH

Dear Margaret,

I can’t imagine that this letter will ever find its way to you, which is, in itself, enough to give me the courage to write it. I’ve been lying to you all this time. I never did escape from my Ethugran cell. I don’t know why I lied – it was a moment of weakness and euphoria when everything seemed possible. Over the years it seems as if I have forgotten who I was. Desperation can do that to a man. It looks as if I’ll die in here, and I didn’t want to leave you with false hope. If the truth is crueller, then I’m sorry. You don’t need to send any more money. Mr Swinekicker has taken charge of another jail, and his replacement has more resources at his disposal.

Love,

Alfred

The covered wagon bumped along the forest trail, rocking the four soldiers in the rear to and fro. One of the two men up front slouched over the reins; the other leaned back and warmed his face in the sunlight filtering through the trees. This was old woodland, a tangled landscape of roots and weary oaks draped with veils of eidermoss. Butterflies fluttered across the green verges on either side of the dirt road. Swarms of midges hung in the air like puffs of smoke. Maskelyne closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He smelled wood smoke long before they reached the checkpoint.

The Guild soldier standing beside the barrier raised his hand.

The wagon creaked to a halt. ‘Lazy day,’ Maskelyne said.

‘Don’t let the sergeant hear you say that,’ the checkpoint guard replied. ‘He’s determined to scrub a promotion out of all this.’

‘And where’s he now?’

The guard grunted. ‘Sleeping. Where you headed?’

‘Eagle One.’

‘What’s in the back?’

‘Disgruntled men,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘Commander Rast volunteered us to help with the search.’

‘Lucky you.’ The guard wandered to the rear of the wagon, lifted the flap, and peered in. ‘I need to check this trunk,’ he said.

Maskelyne called back, ‘You think our man is trying to sneak back in?’

‘I just work here,’ the guard said.

Maskelyne heard the man unbuckle the trunk in the wagon bed and throw back the lid. Then he heard the guard whistle softly. ‘Looks like you fellows have a long night ahead,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome to join us,’ Maskelyne said.

The guard strolled back to the front of the wagon. ‘I don’t like heights,’ he said. ‘You know the strangest thing about gem lanterns. Moths never circle them. Why do you think that is?’

Maskelyne frowned. ‘You know, I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it before. Maybe they’ve just got better things to do?’

The guard laughed. He lifted the barrier and waved them through. ‘Good hunting.’

The driver snapped the reins, and the horses clopped forward. Once they were out of sight of the checkpoint, he turned to Maskelyne and said, ‘Why don’t they circle gem lanterns?’

‘Truthfully, Mr Mellor,’ Maskelyne replied, ‘I don’t know. But I suspect it’s one of those mysteries where the answer either means nothing at all, or else holds one of the fundamental truths of the universe.’

‘Like the keys of the Drowned?’

‘Exactly, Mr Mellor. Everything warrants investigation.’

They passed through two more checkpoints. Closer to the palace, the army encampments became larger and ringed with palisades and razor-wire. Acres of forest had been burned to scrub to make way for the barracks, bunkers and gun emplacements. Guild soldiers drilled on quadrangles of dirt. Steel warmed in patchy sunlight. Pickets watched the road and the skies from wooden towers.

In places, the trail joined others circling the palace. Towards the end of the afternoon, the wagon reached one such junction, where Maskelyne ordered them to leave the Port Awl road and head north. The road became rougher, gouged by heavy use and then filled with rock. Occasionally through breaks in the forest he spied the palace towers and pinnacles rearing up like some great black crown. A quarter of a league beyond the junction the road came to an end.

Here a flat outcrop of rock overlooked the valley to the north. A wooden palisade ringed the whole area, encircling a group of low earthen buildings and a huge cannon set against the very edge of the precipice. As the wagon drew up before the encampment barrier, a soldier came out of a nearby hut and hailed them.

‘If you want the captain,’ he said, ‘he won’t be back till seven.’

Maskelyne climbed down from the wagon and stretched his arms. ‘Commander Rast sent us to assist with the search. We’ll be tramping the road tonight from here to Eagle Three.’

The soldier came over. He was a middle-aged man with a thin moustache and a nervous demeanour. ‘Nobody told me anything about that,’ he said, eyeing Maskelyne’s uniform with distaste. ‘Kind of old to be a lieutenant, aren’t you?’

‘Reserves,’ Maskelyne said. ‘I shouldn’t even be here.’

‘What do you do in town?’

‘Mostly, I keep to myself.’

The soldier looked between Maskelyne and Mellor. ‘I know a lot of Guild reserve men. You two don’t look familiar.’

Maskelyne yawned. ‘Your captain will vouch for us,’ he said. ‘Let us through so we can unload this gear.’

‘What gear?’

He jabbed a thumb towards the back of the wagon. ‘Lanterns.’

The moustached soldier wandered round to the back of the wagon and checked the cargo in the trunk, before returning to the barrier. ‘Nobody and nothing gets in here without advance notice,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to wait until I can verify this with the palace.’

Maskelyne sighed. ‘Where’s your telepath?’

‘She’s with the captain,’ the man replied.

Maskelyne raised his eyebrows. ‘And where would we find them?’

The soldier said nothing.

‘Maybe we should go and ask Commander Rast if he knows where they are?’

The man folded his arms. ‘You don’t think the commander knows what goes on?’

‘What’s your name, soldier?’

He didn’t reply.

Maskelyne turned to Mellor. ‘Turn us around. The commander can get this man’s name from the Haurstaf. Let them ask why Eagle One’s captain leaves one cannon unattended to attend to another.’ He climbed back into the wagon.

The soldier shook his head. He hesitated a moment, then strode over to the barrier and raised it. ‘I want your attachment verified as soon as the telepath gets back. You can put your gear in the store.’ He pointed at one of the earthen buildings, then turned around and marched back towards his hut.

‘You heard him, Mr Mellor,’ Maskelyne said.

The wagon moved forward into the encampment and into the shadow of the gun.

‘The Haurstaf abandoned you,’ Torturer Mara said. ‘Which, I am sorry to say, means you are now under the protection of the Guild military.’ He inclined his head at the large soldier, who lifted his baton and struck Ianthe across the face.

Ianthe fell off her chair and hit the floor. She couldn’t stop sobbing. The soldier picked her up again and shoved her back into the chair. Perspiration covered his broad forehead and dripped down his heavy jaw. He had taken off his jacket and shirt, and his muscles shone like marble under the harsh cell lights.

‘Your friend abandoned you,’ Mara went on. ‘Aria chose to deliver you here in exchange for an assured future with the Haurstaf.’ He glanced at the soldier again, who struck Ianthe across the face a second time.

Her jaw cracked against the floor. She clutched her spectacles to her face and wailed miserably, her whole body convulsing with sobs. The concrete floor swam behind a haze of blood and tears. Through the ringing in her ears, she heard them turn on the tap. They hosed her down, blasting her body with freezing water until her limbs were numb.

‘Briana Marks abandoned you,’ Mara said. ‘She ordered me to carry out this procedure. The faster we get to the end, the faster we can proceed with your dissection. For me, that’s where the real interest lies. I expect to find some Unmer in your brain.’

The soldier picked Ianthe up from the floor with one hand. Then he stove his forehead into her nose. She heard the cartilage snap. Her spectacles flew off, and she was plunged into darkness. He let her drop.

She jumped into his mind only to see her own miserable body scrambling across the wet floor. Her robe hung from her like a torn rag; her elbows and knees were bruised and bloody. She picked the spectacles up again and fumbled to put them back on.

The torturer peered down at her, his face expressionless. ‘Your own father abandoned you,’ he said. ‘Did you know he arranged to sell you to the Haurstaf? I’ve seen the letter myself. Of course the Guild does not negotiate with people like that.’

The soldier kicked Ianthe in the stomach.

She felt his boot break her rib. The pain made her vomit. Her lenses shifted to one side, and she felt herself slipping into darkness. She reached up and dragged them back over her streaming eyes. She coughed and sputtered and drew in a shuddering breath. The air tasted of bile.

‘Your mother abandoned you,’ Mara went on. ‘Didn’t she fail to protect you when the Hookmen came?’ He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘She simply allowed herself to slip under the brine.’

Ianthe screamed. She tried to crawl away, but the soldier dragged her upright once more. He punched her in the face, then let her drop. Pain filled every fibre of her body. She couldn’t move, but simply lay on the floor and stared at the drain, shivering uncontrollably.

‘Even Maskelyne abandoned you,’ the Torturer said. ‘Like everyone else, he saw you as a means to an end, a tool to increase his personal fortune. Up until now that’s really all you’ve ever been, Ianthe – something to be used by others.’

He crouched down beside her and spoke softly. ‘But I’m not like them, Ianthe. Can’t you see that I’m the only one who wants to understand you?’ He brushed back her hair. ‘I want to help you achieve something with your life. I’m finally giving you a purpose.’

She closed her eyes.

Mara sighed. ‘Again,’ he said.

While his men unloaded the trunk of gem lanterns from the wagon, Maskelyne went to explore the three earthen buildings within the cliff-side compound. The first held stores of food, water and ammunition. The second turned out to be a small barracks in which he found the gunnery sergeant asleep on his bunk, while two other soldiers played dice on top of a crate. Maskelyne nodded amicably. He tapped the metal door lightly and then ducked back outside and wandered over to the last building. Here he found a tidy chamber containing a single bed, table and chair, and a wardrobe full of pressed linen – evidently the captain’s quarters.

He returned to his men. ‘All good,’ he said. ‘Howlish deserves a medal.’

Mellor looked up from the contents of the trunk and inclined his head in the direction of the hut beside the barrier. ‘What about him?’

Maskelyne puffed out his cheeks. ‘It will have to be done quietly.’

One of the four others slipped a knife from his belt, but Maskelyne shook his head. ‘I’ll deal with it.’ He walked over to the hut and opened the door.

The soldier with the thin moustache was seated at his desk, writing out a report. He put his pencil down when Maskelyne came in.

‘Your gunnery sergeant wants a word,’ he said.

The soldier hissed. He got up and followed Maskelyne out. They walked over to the earthen bunker, whereupon the soldier ducked inside. Maskelyne pulled an ichusae from his jacket pocket, unplugged the stopper and tossed it into the building after the man. Then he closed the door and locked it with the padlock he kept in his other pocket.

‘Watch the door,’ he said to Mellor, ‘in case they try to shoot out the lock.’

His first officer nodded.

The men in the bunker screamed for the first six or seven minutes and then fell silent. Soon afterwards, an endless stream of brine flowed out through the gaps between the door and the frame. Countless gallons of the toxic water surged over the rocky ground and washed along the bottom of the palisade wall, before leaking through and cascading over the edge of the precipice in a honey-coloured waterfall.

‘So much for Awl,’ Mellor said.

‘All good things, Mr Mellor,’ Maskelyne replied.

As two of his men opened the trunk and began lifting out gem lanterns Maskelyne, Mellor and the others dismantled the wagon bed with crowbars. They ripped up planks from the floor, revealing the hidden compartment where they had stored the gas tanks and cutting torches. And then they carried the lot over to the cannon.

Ianthe lacked the courage to return to her body and so she drifted in a sea of ghosts. She floated through a darkness patterned by the things that other people saw. She was a passenger, riding in carriages that didn’t belong to her, a thief who stole moments from other people’s lives, and that knowledge filled her with shame. Deep down she knew that Mara was right. The world she inhabited had never embraced her. She’d never really been a part of it. She would return to him in time and beg him to end her life quickly. By sifting through the wreckage of her life, they might even find some purpose.

But not yet. Her fear held her back, even as it deepened her shame. And so she wandered on through the darkness, a ghost afraid of her own death. She saw the Haurstaf scattered throughout their grand palace, the thousands in the woodland camps outside and the nebulous haze of the millions in the world beyond. She drifted down through the unseen spaces between occupied rooms, past the bright arena of the Unmer rat maze and down to the glass-roofed suites in the foundations.

She found him kneeling on the floor beside his bed, sobbing into his hands. Scraps of a letter littered the floor around him. The shock of seeing him like this almost broke her. All of his armour had gone. He was naked before her, naked before the gaze of the Haurstaf witch in the high-chair above. He had covered his face, as if that could somehow hide his despair.

A sudden fury gripped Ianthe. What gave the Haurstaf the right to preside over the lives of others? Over his life? Over hers? They weren’t mankind’s liberators but its new enslavers. Ianthe reached out into the mind of the witch, gathering together all of the woman’s perceptions and thoughts into a single all-enveloping embrace.

And then she snuffed them out.

‘If you knew how much money I’ve spent on that pirate Howlish,’ Maskelyne said, ‘then you wouldn’t have sold yourselves so cheaply.’

The gunnery captain shrugged. He put his arm around the young Haurstaf telepath. ‘I think we got a bargain, Mr Maskelyne.’

Maskelyne eyed them both. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen, and him eighteen. If he was smart enough to attain his rank at that age, then he was smart enough to know he could have taken Maskelyne for much more. Which meant his reasons for helping them had to be personal. Or was she the one with the reasons? The two of them looked on as Mellor and his men cut through the last of the cannon’s securing bolts.

‘You know Ianthe?’ Maskelyne said to the girl.

The telepath hung her head.

‘You don’t need to know why we’re doing this, Mr Maskelyne,’ the captain said. ‘The money is enough to give us a fresh start.’

Maskelyne grunted.

Mellor switched off his gas torch. ‘That’s us, sir.’

‘Good. Now hitch up the horses.’

The men brought the two horses round and used the wagon hitch to secure them to one side of the cannon. Mellor grabbed the reins and pulled, urging the heavy beasts forward. Nothing happened at first, but then a low scraping sound came from the base of the gun. Slowly, the whole cannon revolved on its vertical axis. When it was more or less facing in the opposite direction, Maskelyne walked around the weapon, checking the new trajectory with a compass.

‘That will do nicely, Mr Mellor,’ he said. From his jacket pocket he took out a map, heavily marked with pencilled circles, lines and crosses. He studied it while the men unhitched the horses and steered them away. Then he made an adjustment to the cannon’s elevation by turning a brass wheel in the side of the gun carriage. The barrel dropped gradually lower.

‘How do you intend to get her out?’ the telepath said.

‘Brute force,’ Maskelyne admitted. ‘It’s the only way to deal with the Haurstaf, present company excluded.’

‘But what if you hurt her?’

‘That’s a risk I’m prepared to take.’

The captain held his girlfriend closer. ‘He knows exactly where they’re keeping her, Regina.’

She didn’t seem convinced.

Mellor handed one of the gem lanterns to Maskelyne, who opened it up and made a small adjustment to the mechanism inside. Then he pulled out his pocket watch and noted the time. Mellor loaded the lantern into the cannon.

‘You know the demands?’ Maskelyne said to the girl.

She nodded.

‘Word for word?’

‘Word for word.’

Maskelyne covered his ears. ‘Fire.’

Mellor pulled the lanyard, and the cannon barrel retracted with a sudden, violent boom. A flare of light shot skywards, arced over the trees covering the hillside above them and disappeared from sight. Maskelyne turned to Mellor’s men and nodded. They set off at once in the direction of the road.

‘I was expecting more of a bang,’ the gunnery captain said.

At that moment, the skies above them erupted with fire. The ensuing blast wave ripped the tops from hundreds of trees, blowing tons of debris far over their heads as a thunderous concussion shook the valley. Maskelyne, Mellor and the young couple dived for the ground. The whole mountain continued to shake for several heartbeats, and then finally settled. Scraps of burning forest drifted down past them.

‘Send the demands, please,’ Maskelyne said to the girl.

She got to her feet shakily, then took a deep breath. After a moment, she said, ‘It’s done.’

‘Any response?’

‘Give them a minute.’

They waited.

The telepath suddenly blew through her teeth. ‘They say…’ She paused and shook her head. ‘They say no, they say…’

‘Word for word.’

‘There’s a lot of it. A lot of argument, hold on…’ She raised her hand. ‘They want you to stop…’

‘Word for word.’

‘You will halt your attack immediately. The Haurstaf do not negotiate with terrorists. They’re… They’re bombarding me with questions, about you, about our location.’

‘That’s to be expected.’

‘They don’t know where the shell came from.’

Maskelyne turned to Mellor, who began to reload the cannon immediately. ‘Tell them the next shell destroys the mountain above the palace,’ he said to the girl.

‘But what about Ianthe?’

‘Do as I say.’

She paused a moment. ‘Wait. They’re willing to talk. They’ve offered to meet you.’ She shook her head again. ‘There’s a lot of confusion. Something strange is going on in there. I’m losing contact everywhere.’

Maskelyne snarled, ‘They’re shutting me out.’

‘No…’

He picked up another gem lantern, set the feedback mechanism and tossed it over to Mellor. ‘Five degrees lower. They’ve had their warning.’

‘What are you doing?’ the telepath cried.

The captain grabbed his arm. ‘This isn’t what we arranged.’

‘It’s in the tube now,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Tick, tock.’

Mellor pulled the lanyard, and the second shell blasted into the air, tracing a fiery arc across the blue sky. This time gunfire crackled on the hillside to the south.

‘They’re on to our position, sir,’ Mellor said.

A second concussion tore across the roof of the world, its flash illuminating the snow-clad mountain peaks. The sound of impact was much heavier than before. The ground shuddered under their feet.

‘That was rock,’ Maskelyne said.

A great grey cloud of ash rose over the forest ridge. Moments later, a hail of small stones pinged against the outcrop all around them. Maskelyne stood where he was, listening intently. ‘They’re still firing,’ he said. ‘Why are they still firing?’

He could hear it more clearly now that the echo of the gem lantern explosion had diminished – the constant rat-a-rat of small-arms fire, accompanied now and then by the distant booming of cannons.

He turned and looked out across the valley. And there he spotted a tiny craft glinting in the sunshine high above the valley floor. It dodged and weaved between puffs of smoke. The Guild military were trying to bring it down. It was an Unmer chariot, and it was heading this way.

Ianthe drifted through the dark spaces of the palace, no longer as a lost and frightened ghost, but as a harbinger of death. While her body lay broken in the torturer’s cell, her mind remained free to travel wherever she wished. And she used it now to wreak destruction. She moved from room to room, possessing Haurstaf minds and shattering them. Their perceptions vanished in her wake, leaving only swathes of darkness.

From the kitchens to the banquet hall she flitted, through floors and walls, snuffing out lives like candle flames. She watched girls fleeing, screaming as their companions fell around them. Hundreds of them fought to get out of the palace. But they were as slow as they were vulnerable and she tore through them like a gale. Their minds were windows they couldn’t close. They could not keep her out and they could not hide.

The palace grew darker as its corridors filled with the dead. Soon the only lights came from the dungeons where the Unmer dwelt, and the scattered human servants who still wandered among their masters’ corpses. Ianthe became weary. She allowed the survivors to leave unimpeded. And then her attention returned to the torturer’s cell.

The torturer’s accomplice was sharpening a knife.

Blasts shook the flying machine as Granger tried to steer it past another Guild compound. The view screens flickered and then settled down again, still focused on a single artillery position at the northern end of a long ridge. Maskelyne had rotated the cannon 180 degrees, so that it now aimed towards the Haurstaf stronghold. Its last shot had brought down half the mountainside. If he lowered the barrel again, his next shot would obliterate the palace itself.

He hunched over the steering console, his feverish eyes darting to and fro as he used one brine-scarred hand to spin the controls erratically in order to keep the craft on an unpredictable course. In his other hand he clutched the grip of the Replicating Sword he’d taken from the transmitting station. He wore a suit of mechanical nerve armour that clicked and whirred softly whenever he moved. His belt held an assortment of small blades, pistols and other small artefacts. And he wore a blood-red crystal shield strapped across his back.

A series of concussions battered the chariot’s hull, knocking it momentarily off course. Smoke blotted the view screens and wafted in through the open hatchway. The engines howled and began to judder violently. Sparks erupted from the console. Granger shut down systems and readjusted the controls with lightning speed, the metal nerves in his mechanical suit compensating for the limits of his own tortured body. The shield on his back started to glow with alternating colours as it absorbed the smoke, using the sudden rise in entropy to energize its sorcerous portals.

As the fumes cleared, Granger spied the artillery position once again, now less than two hundred yards below him. Maskelyne’s man was frantically spinning the gun carriage wheel, trying to bring the cannon’s barrel round to bear on the rapidly approaching craft. But where was Maskelyne himself? Granger grinned. There. He spotted the metaphysicist fleeing for his life across the compound. Granger was going too fast to stop now, so he threw the craft sideways to intercept him.

The rock outcrop filled the view screens.

The chariot struck the ground like a meteor, exploding into a cloud of pulverized rock and metal.

Granger watched the impact from a spot several hundred yards above the compound. The seven simulacrums who stood in the forest around him watched it, too, but none of their positions offered him a better view of the events that had just occurred. It had all happened too quickly. He couldn’t see Maskelyne. But had he actually hit the man? He felt a sudden vibration in the grip of his sword, and his eighth simulacrum appeared. This copy of himself cricked his neck and flexed his shoulders. Good.

That made nine of him again.

He turned away and headed for the palace at a run.

Ianthe’s pain returned the moment she slipped back into her own body. She was lying on the floor. Her chest convulsed and she retched up blood. Every nerve felt shredded. Tears streaked her face. One of her eyes had swollen shut behind its lens, and through the other she saw Mara and his accomplice leaning over her.

‘I thought I’d lost you for a moment there,’ the torturer said. ‘My assistant was a little too eager.’ He scraped the chair through the blood on the floor and sat down. ‘Step one was less successful than I’d hoped,’ he said. ‘But I think we’ll see more results with step two.’

Ianthe tried to speak, but no words came out. Instead, she threw herself into the torturer’s mind.

The sight of her own ruined body lying on the floor sent a pang of despair through her heart. They had been beating her in her absence. Her legs and buttocks were dark with purple bruises. Her robe lay in bloody tatters around her. One of her arms was clearly broken, and lay at an odd angle against her chest. From the torturer’s perspective, she watched herself start to weep.

‘That’s much better,’ he said.

Ianthe reached out, as she had reached out into the Haurstaf minds, trying to embrace the whole of the torturer’s thoughts and emotions. But there was nothing there for her to sense. His human mind would not allow her inside.

‘We’re going to try something different now,’ Mara said. ‘I want to try to associate certain words I say to the particular sensation my assistant makes you feel when I say them. It’s like a game. The idea is to break down any previous associations you have already made with the words, so we can start anew.’ He sniffed and rubbed his hand under his nose, then glanced up at the soldier. ‘The first word will be mother.’

The soldier crouched down beside Ianthe and placed his knife gently into the hollow behind her knee. He gave the torturer a quick nod.

‘Mother,’ Mara said.

The cell door burst open with such force it flew off its hinges and slammed into the opposite wall. A man stood in the doorway, clad from head to foot in metal. Brine burns covered his naked scalp and face. His eyes were as red and wild as those of a berserker dragon. In one gauntleted fist he held a green alloy sword. He was as grotesque a figure as Ianthe had ever seen.

Mara and his assistant retreated as the man strode into the cell, his boots clanking on the concrete floor. He glanced at them and then looked down at Ianthe. The tiny metal plates and filaments in his armour seemed to whirr and chatter as he bent down and picked her up.

And then he carried her out of the door.

She was drifting in and out of consciousness by now, and she must have muddled her dreams with reality, for she saw two impossible things before the armoured man carried her away from that place.

In her first dream she imagined she saw multiples of her rescuer in the corridor outside the cell. Seven or eight of them, identical in every way. Each wore the same armour and carried the same green sword. They looked on as he walked between their ranks. And then they turned away and filed into the torturer’s cell. The last of them closed the door behind him.

She must have woken and blacked out again.

In her second dream he was carrying her through the main palace entrance hall. The sound of his boots rang out like a bell in that huge space. Dozens of bodies lay strewn across the black marble floor. Smoke drifted in through the open door, and she could smell fires burning outside. But before her rescuer reached the door, he halted at a sound behind him and turned around.

The young Unmer prince stood in the shadows, watching them. Ianthe’s vision was blurred and she couldn’t see his face clearly, but she thought that he was smiling. ‘Is she the last of them?’ he said.

‘She was never one of them,’ Ianthe’s rescuer replied. ‘But, no. Others survived.’

The prince nodded slowly. His gaze lingered on Ianthe for a long time, and then he turned away and walked back into the shadows.