The Human Experience

Seven-Quarter P, day 35, 3416.

When I first arrived at the Keep, massive construction efforts kept an entire floor sectored off. Orcadis told me it was the former throne room, bombed some T-turns ago when Prince Enver tried to usurp the throne, back when the Keep was the royal palace. I’d heard of the momentous event – news like that travels even to the corners of rural Van-Ferrall. Orcadis said he’d been there. He’d been the one to find the Star-King, charred to a crisp and only half-alive, in the crumbling corridor outside the throne room.

The royal guard found and executed Prince Enver before the fires were even put out. He lies in an unmarked grave now. Nobody but the Star-King and the Iron Fist knows where.

I’m not superstitious, but I have to admit that strange circumstances surround that event. Take the earthquake that began only minutes before the bomb went off. A portent of the Prophecy of Twin Kings? If Serasta and Enver had killed each other for the crown that day, as Pyrrhus and Tychon did millenia ago, would apocalypse have claimed Vangarde? Or did they set a slower apocalypse in motion, one that will end with the dreaded Alignment?

eHeHHHhhhd“Good morning.”

“Not anymore it’s not,” Neria grumbled, sinking into her pillows. “What do you want? Why did you call?”

Orcadis thanked the stars he was safe in the Keep, away from her negative energy. Lykus’s griping might have been irksome, but this girl’s wavelengths of dark rage hit him so hard they made him physically ill. “This is instead of thank you, I suppose,” he answered airily. “Really, after all those sleepless nights I spent labouring on that anti-venom tonic. If the Inaulti medics had been more competent in preparing it, you’d have woken days ago.”

Her deep blue eyes pierced him through the screen. “You need me for something else, then.”

There was no hint of a question in her tone. Still playing the obnoxious brat, it seemed. Her act was so transparent, so sad.

So why did a sick feeling clench Orcadis’s stomach whenever she accused him?

“I did, but not anymore,” he said, trying not to wince under her gaze. “I trust Belred has informed you of my son’s kidnap? At one time I hoped you’d recuperate quickly enough to follow Lykus and retrieve Kaed for me. The medics’ stupidity, however, had you bed-ridden longer than I’d expected. The Infected have already been on the road for a week; there’s no chance of catching up with them even if you can get on a horse tomorrow. I sent Solmay to follow Lykus’s tracker several days ago. You, my dear, will return to Vangarde with Belred once you are well.”

“Oh, will I? I hope you don’t mean–”

“Yes, I do – to the Keep.”

Expression of disgust in three...two...one...

Red bloomed in Neria’s cheeks and her eyes flashed. She again looked like the little wild girl he’d taken in, as distrustful of herself as she was of everyone around her. “Let me guess – I’m going to be your hostage, to make sure Hector doesn’t do anything to your boy.”

Again that impertinent stating of questions. “Don’t be ridiculous. You forget that Lykus abandoned you to me quite readily, in a coma, after you’d saved his life. He knew perfectly well you’d be used as a means of getting Kaed back. If you are in any way important to him, child, you certainly aren’t important enough to trade for Kaed – to trade for his revenge.”

It was a low blow. Still, though he taught his Helms that saying bred thinking, saying negative things kept him from pondering them until they coalesced into something solid and hard and more real than words: hatred. Orcadis Durant couldn’t hate. He couldn’t even resent. That was why he felt only pity for the ungrateful creature before him, the one who, in her ignorance and selfishness, hated him for something she couldn’t even remember –

But no: this was a digression. He didn’t smile at the way she cast her eyes down upon her bed coverings, because Orcadis Durant didn’t take satisfaction in others’ suffering.

“You will be escorted here for your safety, Neria. I’m loath to let you wander the realms spreading lies fed by hatred. That could get you in trouble. Of course,” he added, holding up a hand when she opened her mouth, “if you’re not disposed to oblige me, I could always call the less accommodating friends you’ve betrayed. The Rathian rebels will be pleased to find the woman who freed the serial killer they’d hunted for a decade.”

Neria looked at him calmly, the faintest smile of amazement pulling her lips. “I hate you so much, Orcadis,” she said.

“Keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day you’ll believe it.”

“Maybe you’ll believe it. Hector hates you, even your goddamned son hates you!”

The words cut like a barbed knife. In a flash an image appeared: him giving the girl a nice, backhanded slap.

Imagined violence. He blinked away its imprinted remnants, but the anxiety kept building. This had to be handled before it got out of control – and there it was again, a flash of violence! Struggling to blink back the intrusive images, Orcadis reached to terminate the transmission.

“Orcadis!” Neria blurted. He paused, looked at her with his infinite store of patience. She shrunk in on herself in a sort of grudging concession, though he knew his face hadn’t given anything away. “Hector won’t hurt him.”

“How comforting, Miss Alister. I’ll keep your kind reassurances close to my heart.” He gave a tight-lipped smile and tried to terminate the transmission again.

“Orcadis!”

A pang of annoyance. This time he let it read on his face, for the images were coming faster now.

“Did you really make Kaed wear the head-cage for a whole T-turn?”

“Yes. I did.”

He didn’t wait to see the disgust on her face. Orcadis ended the call, placed the phone on his desk, decided the stacked files weren’t quite symmetrical, and got to organizing them into identical patterns on each side of his desk. All the while he hummed the Black Night Hymn.

The sanctum of the mind permits thoughts of one kind.

He’d have to get a new desk – why would they only put drawers on one side?

Those of light make bright your night, but those of gloom portend your doom.

Perhaps it would be better to shift more files to the right, to balance out the drawers.

Cage in the demons, give them not form, for once they are thought, so are they born.

Ah, perfect at last!

White, the light; black, the night; brown, our earth; red, our fight!

“My son loves me!” he bellowed, and with a powerful swipe sent everything on his desk clattering to the floor.

Orcadis blinked at the mess. Loose leafs of paper floated to the ground in the aftermath. No, this wouldn’t do. He’d given the demons form. He’d let Neria plant the seeds of doubt. Or had they already been there? Had she but watered them?

The head-cage had been necessary. Orcadis muttered that over to himself as he paced the chamber, forgetting to censor that unrefined Akkútian stride that still made him feel like a barbarian.

Neria couldn’t judge. She didn’t know how horrible it’d been having a boy whose every word evoked the pain and rage associated with his mother.

Mom would’ve done this, or Mom would’ve said that. Reminding him of her every minute of every day, purposely yanking those negative thoughts from him until he could barely go an hour without completing his circuit in the punishing room. When Orcadis tried to boycott the room, the anxiety would build, the thoughts of anger would worsen, and Kaed would be there, torturing him with her name and her eyes.

Things were better after the head-cage. Kaed had quieted down. His negativity subsided.

Orcadis halted. What if Kaed got Infected? Travelling with those zombies, right in the midst of the most Infected places on earth, they were bound to encounter a Swarm or two. Would the protective device he’d given his son be enough?

With a sinking feeling he recalled what Kaed had said the night Orcadis had installed the device: I don’t care if I get Infected. I hope I do. Maybe then I’ll have someone to talk to.

Surely that had only been his usual drama? The sort of thing that was better off ignored? Oh, it didn’t matter. The pestilence wouldn’t ask his permission, anyways. If it did invade him, in a T-turn Kaed, Orcadis’s only son, would be a catatonic shell with no more ability to generate thoughts than a spoon.

Orcadis tapped the wall rhythmically until the anxiety subsided. No more of these thoughts. There was only one thing to do now.

He pushed aside the massive oil painting of Akkútian anthurium flowers covering his back wall and let the red beam of the scanner imprinted into the wall pass over his eye. The gears in the hidden door clicked and the portal opened. Orcadis started down the corridor, navigating his way expertly even when the door scraped shut and plunged him into darkness.

A dimly-lit chamber opened before him, its low ceiling jagged and the water in the damp, musty air condensing on its walls. Little rivulets trickled down the stone’s crevices, creating an echoing drip.

His boots clinked against the granite floor as he walked, robe rippling after him. Slowly he drew up to the table that stood in the middle of the chamber under a solitary ceiling lamp. Orcadis examined the figure lying there beneath the silk covering, looking so waxen the coal-black hair and beard stood out more than ever against his graying skin.

“What are you doing here?” barked a voice.

Orcadis didn’t startle, though the yell seemed to penetrate the very walls. He hadn’t gone through reflex suppression training for nothing. Gracefully he turned to behold the shadow skulking in the corner, just out of his sensing radius.

“I’ve come to visit our mutual friend.”

“You come often, do you?”

“It’s time to clean his feeding tube.”

“Do you come often, damn you?”

Orcadis dipped his head. “Only as often as is necessary to keep him alive, My Liege. At your behest.”

The Star-King limped out of the shadows and to Orcadis’s side, resentment still gleaming in the bulbous right eye. Lamplight fell hideously over his burns as he rolled that eye down to the table. “I let mythelf in thith morning. Wanted thome peath and quiet.”

“If you’d announced yourself I’d have – ”

The accusing eye veered up to Orcadis’s face and the king’s scars glistened white as his mouth twisted. “No need. I knew I’d find you down here.” The stretched features writhed in some adaptation of...distaste? “I’m thtill better-looking than him, though, haha!”

Ah. Humour. Orcadis frowned, looking down at the pale handsome features of his dearest friend, the sharp nose, the defined cheekbones and thick dark hair. It was always difficult to keep silent when Enver disgraced his brother’s memory like that.

The king went on. “And thuch a liar, too. Oh, the lieth! Raving all the time about me not following hith thupid lawth, and the Helmth having to be eradicated, and how everything wath your fault, and–”

“He only said those things because he was Infected,” Orcadis cut in, blinking away the memories. “His Voice convinced him of many absurdities.”

“Thill on hith thide, are you? You alwayth liked him better.”

“My Liege, that–”

“Thay you liked him better!”

“I will not.”

The king’s jaw worked furiously. “How dare you defy me? Guardth, punch him in the faith!”

Of course there was nobody else here, and Orcadis waited with his hands patiently clasped behind his back for the fool to realize it.

Instead Enver laughed, hobbled over to clutch Orcadis’s shoulder with a mangled claw. “Kidding! But I do like to tetht my men like that. If anyone were to hit you, brother – even on my orderth! – I’d thtrangle them with their own intethtinth!”

“Very touching,” the Greathelm said with a half-smile. And hesitated. “Enver? Do you truly believe the prophecy?”

“I’d thtake my tethticelth on it! Why elth would I keep thith maggot alive? You were there, Orry. You felt the earthquake almotht tear Fort Neoma apart the day we tried to kill him. If it hadn’t been for me pushing him out of that room before the bomb went off, apocalypth would’ve claimed uth all, I tell you. Should’ve theen it thooner! We’re the firtht identical twin printhith of the Vangardian Empire, and we jutht happened to rule during the time of the Alignment? Ech! We’re Pyrrhuth and Tychon, I tell you. When Pyrrhuth killed Tychon he killed himthelf, too (they were conjoint, you thee). Well, when I tried to kill Therathta I almotht damned near blew out my own brainth, too! Ithint it the thame thing? The ship mutht be ready, Orry, ready to leave for Delmira at any moment. Therathta dieth and we die, too.”

Orcadis said nothing. He watched King Serasta’s peaceful face and wondered with dread at the black hole the Voices had made of his once brilliant mind. He’d gone catatonic merely weeks after the assassination attempt, here in this very passage where he was being kept prisoner.

But he’d never given up asserting the same maddening claims. The ones that had forced Orcadis to have Enver dethrone him in the first place.

Surely Orcadis had been right. A good ruler couldn’t be Infected. He couldn’t be spreading lies fed to him by parasites. That Kaed was already Infected. Ridiculous. That the thought-energy detector he and Jesreal had built together was evil and the Iron Helms needed to be destroyed.

Lies.

But as hard as he’d tried not to dwell on a madman’s accusations, with Kaed now under threat Orcadis couldn’t help doubting. If Kaed got Infected on this trip, he’d end up as catatonic as Serasta.

There was a theory. Often he’d thought of testing it on Serasta. Maybe, just maybe, if Serasta and Jesreal had been right about the machine that gave the Helms their ability to detect thoughts, by his calculations it could also restore the ability to generate thoughts. It could reverse the catatonic trance.

To try it on Serasta, though, would mean something worse than a betrayed, dethroned, and impersonated king with all his faculties locked up in the Keep’s catacombs.

It would mean everything, everything, was Orcadis’s fault.

Three nights and three days the horses plodded through thinning vegetation, until the woods were a dark canopied sea behind them and the mountains were filed down to rolling hills. Hector realized he’d taken the rainy western terrain of his homeland for granted; now, in the rain shadow on the leeward side of the Inaulti mountains, he found himself staring an an ocean of yellow grassland. Soon they would enter the savannah province of Lukhra, former dependency of the Akkútian Empire. Zorion, who was well-versed in the Akkútian Empire’s fall several hundred turns ago, rambled about the struggles of its liberated dependencies.

“Grew up in Üfta, I did (that’s the southernmost province, you know), and will you believe it, the Akkútian language is still mandatory in schools! Ugly, guttural sounding thing it is, with all the ‘k’s’ and those harsh rolling ‘r’s.’ Now, Üft is much more melodic. Lukhrese sounds quite like Akkútian, except for some Inaulti roots that date from – oh, I’m not boring them, honey! It’s instructive.”

Syfer, who’d been slouching in his saddle, straightened with his usual princely hauteur. “Perhaps for them. I happen to have an education, thank you.”

Avalyn gave a huff. “If you’re too good to travel with us, My Lord, tell your Voice to seek out your equals!”

“Now, now, everyone, don’t make me take out my walloping stick,” Zorion warned.

The bickering carried them all the way into twilight. Syfer sneered at Avalyn for not knowing how to ride and having to ride with Zorion; Zorion’s Voice told Syfer’s the entire group was incompetent; and when Avalyn wasn’t complaining of the horses’ smell, she groaned about her sore behind.

Hector had long fallen back to ride alongside Kaed. He drew relief from the boy’s silence, considered him a refuge from other people. For hours they only communicated with a shared glance whenever Avalyn said something particularly witless, but by the time they’d dismounted by a pond to water their horses, Hector sensed an unspoken pact had been formed between them. They would ride together henceforth.

As Syfer got to making a campfire and Zorion pitched up the first of the tents, Hector led his horse to the pond. Kaed stood on the bank, water softly licking his boots, his head tossed back to the heavens.

It was that rare time of day when all four celestial objects burned brightly in the sky. Pyrrhus the fiery dwarf, Tychon the golden king, Delmira the queen mother, Amaris the inconspicuous manipulator.

“Which one’s your favourite?” Hector found himself asking. “Star-God, I mean. Everyone has a favourite. Mine’s Pyrrhus.”

Kaed wrinkled his nose. “Pyrrhus?”

A normal reaction. Who would like Pyrrhus the Parasite, Tychon’s conjoint twin and assassin, barely more than a torso protruding from his brother’s side? Scripture had it he killed their shared body with a dagger clenched between his teeth.

“Because people reduce me to my condition, too,” he admitted. “They call me inhuman, and think they can control me because of it. I share a heart with Lykus, but not a brain. Just like Pyrrhus and Tychon.”

Kaed looked across the pond, his profile golden in Tychon’s dwindling rays, highlighting the upturned nose and protruding forehead. When Hector had begun to give up hope that he’d answer, he smiled. “Amaris.”

The goddess of deception, subtlety, and patience? The brothers’ younger sister, the very one who’d counselled Pyrrhus to destroy them both. This ought to be good. “Yeah?”

“Overlooked and underrated,” was all Kaed said.

They listened to the chirping of crickets in silence, Hector’s horse nosing around the pebbles for a weed shoot. Finally Hector took a long breath. “I’m sorry, you know. For taking you with me. When I’m Lykus, I can’t control–”

“You want to know about the radiation, is that it? That’s why you’re talking to me?”

Instinctively Hector stepped back. He’d only wanted to be nice. Hadn’t he? No – a little digging within himself and he found Kaed’s accusation was true. This boy could sense the thoughts he hadn’t even worked out for himself. Disappointment settled over his shoulders like a perfectly-fitting cloak. I knew I wasn’t capable of doing anything unconditionally for anyone...

“Yes,” Kaed sighed, “the Helms know about the silver-flecked rock that draws the Voices. It’s found in the grottos of Van-Doth, the Inaulti Valley, and all across Akkút. Father says the Akkútians built their most famous temples with it. That’s why we can’t pinpoint the next rendezvous point; in Akkút, the stone isn’t concentrated in one spot.”

Hector frowned. “If the Voices can feed off this radiation instead of human thoughts, why don’t people carry trinkets with the rock inside?”

“I did, for a while. Then Father discovered that any rock’s radiation store gets depleted, just like an Infected person’s ability to produce thoughts. Eventually the Voices suck the rocks dry, and then you’re left a fool without a shield, in enemy terrain. They seek the radiation. If you call them to you with it and suddenly find yourself without any, your mind’s done.”

“Is...” Hector hesitated. “Is that what happened to you?”

Kaed’s head snapped toward him. His stony expression made Hector sorry he’d asked. “No,” he said. “I didn’t start wearing the rock till after I was...you know. That way the Voice took over my mind slower. It had the radiation to consume, too. I did it so Father wouldn’t know.”

“But where did you get your hands on one of those rocks, if the closest rendezvous point to Vangarde is in Van-Doth?”

“Don’t you know?” Kaed looked genuinely surprised as he blinked his pale eyes at Hector. “The stone is the core of Father’s thought-sensing machine. Exposure to massive amounts of this radiation is what gives the Iron Helms their ability. Father has some imported from Van-Doth every few P-turns to power his machine. Really, does he tell you nothing?”

Apparently. Hector scuffed the pebbles underfoot, watching his wavering frown in the pond lapping by his feet. The wind had picked up, skirting across the waters to create a ribbed effect. “So the Voices and the Helms feed off the radiation. Didn’t I always say they were both parasites?”

Kaed let a tight-lipped smile past his guard. “The Inaulti rock formations are the reason I could pass the mental exam for access to Cloudreach Crest. While you and the guards were verifying the route, I rode through the valley and chiseled loose a piece of rock that I put in my pocket. My Voice fed off that while I had my mental exam.”

“Clever,” Hector said.

Kaed smirked, but he quickly grew serious again. “Lykus, the New Wolves were on the right track with the radiation. If they figured that out, do you think they figured other things out, too?”

“Like what?”

“It’s just that...their thoughts told me something. I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Let’s hear it, then.”

The boy examined Hector as though unwilling to trust him. Over his head, Amaris’s silvery rim twinkled with triumph as her brothers sank to rest below the horizon.

“They think the Liberator is going to unleash apocalypse during the Alignment. Something to do with blowing up the Amaris moon. In fact, they’re pretty sure of it.”