The Stone Heart's Lament -
Avaline
The automobilebounced over rough terrain, the ground full of ruts and hillocks, throwing theoccupants from side to side and into each other like they were at sea in roughweather. Rashari found himself thinking that it could not be clearer thatMother Aldlis did not want them here, and almost laughed. Madame Chimera mightbe an exile but she had made a convert of him, it would seem.
Panic had given wayto leaden resignation as the miles sped by. Rashari distracted himself bygazing out of the window, peering around the bulk of the soldier to his right.He was wedged between the two armed and masked men, with Doctor Baillargeonseated in front of him next to Ruthy in the driver’s seat. A plane of clearglass separated the front and passenger sections of the vehicle. Jaquardsprawled in the back of the vehicle, had started whistling tunelessly about ahalf hour ago. Rashari suspected he was doing it on purpose. The djinn wasprobably waiting to see whom would snap first, Rashari, or the guard to hisleft, whose teeth were grinding so loudly it was audible even behind his helmet.Perversely Rashari almost admired Jaquard. He was a consummate bastard, andindiscriminate when it came to replaceing victims.
Rain washed down thewindows, ruining the view and turning the outside world into a dripping mirageof streaming lines and blurred colours. Every now and again Rashari heard thecrash and rumble of thunder, his retinas bleached by the sharp stab oflightning. He was a little disappointed by how normal the storm was; this wasBattlan after all. Surely thunderstorms should be a little more exciting.Multi-coloured meterorites should crash from the clouds, and it should rain mushroomsor man eating monkeys. Rashari suspected that had he and Madame Chimera beenstuck out in the storm they would be awash with killer monkeys, but, thanks tohis accursed luck, when a deluge of homicidal apes might have been useful,there was none to be found.
Rashari sighed andleaned back against the seat. “How long have DeLunde been out here, really?” Heasked Jaquard. (If either of his guards could speak they’d shown no inclinationto do so. It wouldn’t surprise him if the Marre Noir had their tongues removedto protect the secrecy of the mission).
“What makes yer thinkI know?” Jaquard asked, sounding amused.
Rashari craned hishead back against the seat and frowned upside down at the djinn. He reallywasn’t in the mood for coyness. “You mean aside from the fact that you clearlywork for the Marre Noir and know all about me?”
Jaquard grinned,bright and patently false. “Yer don’t really understand how spies work, do yer?The Noir don’t go ‘round sharin’ their plans with ‘the help’.”
“No talking.” Theguard on his right grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him down into theseat. So the guards could speak then, good to know. Briefly he entertaineddisobeying the obvious order, but not for long. The only outcome would be anasty thrashing and he’d need to be in good shape for when they arrived atAdaline.
He sunk into silence.The guards had shackled his hands together in front of him and Rashari nowlooked down into his left palm. The swelling had gone down a little, the skindiscolouration fading. There was a shiny pink scar puckering the flesh justbelow his littlest finger – the place where the poison barb had struck; theonly reminder of his brush with horticultural oblivion. His hand still itchedand dried blood still tracked the lines of his palm. The hole in the centrewhere he’d removed the scion stone fragment stared up at him like a blind eye.The depression itself was nothing more than a rind of old, deadened scar tissueand cauterised meat. It was ugly and unsightly, but painless. Rashari flexedhis fingers, and watched the pull of the technomantic glove, each individualstrand of quicksilver metal sitting just under his skin, crisscrossing his handlike a network of hair thin capillaries. He was so used to the glove that hebarely thought about it, but now he imagined he could feel the tiny particlesof anima-imbued quicksilver flooding through his bloodstream, whispering tohim, working to make him something not quite human – that bit closer to being amachine. There were a great many things inside him that made him not quitehuman; things that made him a tool, a weapon, and a commodity to be possessed.
Weariness set in,draping itself around his shoulders like the mantle of a heavy coat. His eyesfelt heavy, his thoughts dulled. He didn’t want to sleep in this company, butat the same time he didn’t want to be conscious either. He didn’t want to seethe bony spire of the Adaline research facility rushing closer out of thewindow, or the looming shadow of the mountains forming a crust around the GreatWound far to the north. He didn’t want to listen to the incessant pounding ofthe rain against the shell of the car, or Jaquard’s tuneless whistling. He shuthis eyes and tried to replace a better place to be, a happier dream to fall into,at least for a short while.
He must havesucceeded, at least in part, because he jolted awake as the automobile bouncedover a particularly violent bumb. He opened his eyes and immediately knew they hadarrived. The rain had stopped and the view out of the window was dominated by apainful red sky. They were travelling through a natural canyon, the groundblack and hard. Strange rock formations burst out of the ground, ragged spearsof orange-black stone, rough and gritty in places and shiny like glass inothers. The rock formations caught the light, reflecting beams of brilliantorange in all directions. Phantasma; the rock was riddled with veins of pure,natural, unrefined phantasma ore. So much as a nugget of the stuff would fetchthousands of orlens back in the real world. It also rendered the environmententirely uninhabitable. There was so much phantasma in the air and the groundit acted as an airborne contaminant and a contact poison all at once. It wasthe reason the soldiers wore gasmasks built into their helmets.
Ruthy was careful togive a wide berth to each beam of light where it puddle on the ground, burningsmoky holes in the rock. The beams would melt through the metal shell of thecar like a laser. On either side massive escarpments of land rose straight up,corralling them and forcing them to run the gauntlet of the light beams. Thecliff-face was striated with veins of lurid orange phantasma crystal. It lookeddiseased, like the cliff had an infection of boils and weeping sores. Thecrystal outcroppings ranged in diameter from a handspan to several feet across.They throbbed with their own inner light; a dark, red-black pulse in eachfaceted heart. Every window in the car was closed tight, but Rashari couldstill feel the ache of the raw phantasma beating against his brain. On eitherside of him his guards shifted and fidgeted in their seats. Jaquard stoppedwhistling. Through the glass screen Rashari could see that Baillargeon had puton a mask. He couldn’t see Ruthy, but he guessed she too had put on a mask. Ifthe phantasma concentration was bad enough to make him queasy it had to bedeeply uncomfortable for everyone else.
Ruthy navigated thecanyon with ease of practice and soon they were driving up a narrow inclineforming a winding path up the cliff. Peering through the glass barrierseparting the passenger compartment from the drivers, Rashari could see throughthe windshield ahead. He caught his first glimpse of the Adaline researchfacility. The building had been completely rebuilt, exactly as it had been thefirst time Rashari had seen it as a child. A collection of small flat roofedshacks and outbuildings gathered around the base of a tall tower, fenced inwith blackened, eroded chainlink. The tower pressed against the very edge of asheer drop-off, standing tall like a lighthouse, peering down into the AdalineFault. It was built out of the rock of the canyon; orange-black like a mouldycarrot. A series of giant pipes sprouted from the outside of the tower, ruiningthe sleek silhouette. The pipes, massive veins of quicksilver built towithstand the volatile conditions of the Fault, twisted down toward the basewhere they disappeared into the ground like the roots of a tree. Each pipeacted as a funnel; pure anima was released through the pipes to react with thecrystallised phantasma embedded in the rock face. When the anima and thephantasma mixed it produced a potent and highly combustable gas. This gas wasthen sucked up through the pipes and used to power the facility and its lesspleasant experiments; another one of Director Trelawn’s innovations. When theDjinn attacked the base over ten years ago, they had tried to ignite the gas inthe pipes. The explosion would probably have ended up obliterating most of thecliff face– had it not been for Smith.
Soldiers patrolledthe perimeter of the base; their faces covered in high-tech respirators andgoggles, every inch of skin covered by a hood and protective clothing. Thelevel of phantasma radiation here was almost as high as that of the GreatWound. Breathing in the vapours would drive a human mad within a week and killthem within a month. The burning orange light, fierce enough to have dyed thesky and bleached the clouds, damaged the eyes and burned the skin; touching anyof the outcroppings with a bare hand was an instant death sentence. Rashari wasnot most people. The phantasma radiation wouldn’t kill him. It gave him aqueasy headache, gorge rising and forming a lump in his throat, making itdifficult to breathe, but not for the reasons it would an ordinary human. Hischest hurt, ribs squeezing down around his lungs. His pulse sped up and hismouth was dry. His palms started to sweat. The pounding in his head becamewhite noise, a building wall of static. He was like a man addicted todreamsmoke. After years of careful abstinence he was suddenly overwhelmed withan abundance of his own particular addiction.
The effect wasnumbing. He barely noticed that the automobile had stopped. They’d cleared theperimeter without his notice. He stumbled and almost fell when the guard on hisleft shoved him out of the vehicle. Oh gods it was so much worse outside. Noone had thought to provide him with a respirator or a mask. He felt the intenseheat of the air. The dizzying light made him reel. The ground under his feetspun as the world suddenly lurched on its axis. He choked down a throatful ofbile, shuddering. Too much, too soon; it had been too long. He couldn’t takeit, not all at once. He sunk to his knees on the hard, black and scarred groundfalling forward until his elbows smacked into the ground and he was kneelingalmost like a supplicant, forehead just an inch from the floor, shackled handsclutched together before him.
The scorpion surgedupward, out of the fissure in his soul. The icy cold running through his veins wasa relief. He felt the hunger awaken and his skin tingled. Every hair on hisbody stood to attention and his spine grew taut. His nerves felt electrified,his body super-sensitsed until he could feel every pore, every millimetre ofhis skin stretching open and expanding, sucking in the poisoned atmosphere likea sponge.
Hands roughly hauledhim to his feet, and distantly he was aware of voices around him; snappedcommands and angry exchanges. He couldn’t make sense of any of it. His brainwas scrambled, caught like a badly tuned radio between too many frequencies. Hecould feel the song of the dead swelling in his ears -coming from the very air,the rhythm matching the staccato pounding of his heart, drowning out theprattle of the living. He was manhandled toward the nearest of the flat roofedbuildings, and as he breached the threshold, stepping into the too darkinterior, eyes struggling to adjust to the change in lighting, his misfiringbrain picked up another errant signal.
Pumping, pumping, pumping...processing, processing...needmore data...datadatadatadata...need more data.....processing, pumping, processing,data...
Rashari blinked,shook his head and looked around him. He was inside a small room packed withfloor to ceiling machinery. Massive computers, built into giant metal cabinets,lined the walls of the windowless room. Lights and dials flashed and winked athim. One of the gas pipes broke through the ceiling and passed through thefloor in the corner of the room, the metal plating rumbling. The machineshummed with contentment, the subliminal murmur of well maintained equipmentfulfilling its purpose. Rashari tuned his thoughts toward the machines, able todo so thanks to the quicksilver in his glove and in his blood. The voice ofmachinery was as clear to him as the sound and substance of his own thoughts; moreso right now. Rashari had always found the straightforward certainty andsimplicity of machinery a comfort. If it wasn’t for the two soldiers, each withan iron grip on one of his elbows, Rashari would have reached out and touchedone of the computer terminals, just to help ground him in the here and now.
“You back with us,mate?” Jaquard appeared in front of him, rictus grin fixed in place.
“Unfortunately,”Rashari muttered before he could think better of it. There was a commotion fromjust beyond the door and Doctor Baillargeon bustled in, followed closely byRuthy, who looked anything but happy.
“Is he lucid yet?”Doctor Baillargeon rushed up to him, throwing the question outward like arandomly aimed grenade, directed at no one in particular. Not waiting for aresponse he snatched at Rashari’s face, pulling his chin up so he could shine apenlight into his eyes. It was only then that Rashari realised he was seated ina swivel chair next to what must be a technician’s desk. “Pupils areresponsive, and have returned to their natural colour. Skin is warmer,” DoctorBaillargeon recited for no real reason, turning Rashari’s head from side toside before releasing him and waving two of his fingers in front of Rashari’sface. “Tell me how many fingers I am holding up.”
“Two,” His voice soundedhoarse, and rough. He had to cough to clear it.
Baillargeon studiedhim with rheumy eyes, but his next question was sharp as a tack. “How long hasit been since you last absorbed phantasma energy?”
Rashari kept quiet.He’d made a point of absorbing small amounts of death energy from necromanticbullets or refined phantasma ore whenever he came across it –the better to managethe side-effects of withdrawal –but he hadn’t been exposed to pure phantasma inyears; hence his unfortunate reaction just now. He had no intention of tellingBaillargeon anything of the sort, though. The man would figure it out, if hehadn’t already, but Rashari saw no reason to make it easier for him.
“Interesting,”Baillargeon blinked at him. “You can self regulate. Thibeaux, make a note: thesubject has learned to regulate his need to absorb phantasma energy to sustainoptimal physical health. We shall need to test the limits of this control.” Asmall, mousy looking man in a white labcoat hovering near the doorway scribbleda note on to a clipboard. Baillargeon continued talking, ostensibly dictatingto his assistant, but his eyes were rooted on Rashari. “This adds weight to myhypothesis that dependency on phantasma energy is a temporary side-effect ofthe soul conversion process, and one that can be overcome. Just as phantasmafuel is a byproduct of the catalytic breakdown of raw phantasma, so too isphantasma addiction a byproduct of the synthesis of pure souls.” Baillargeonsmiled, his teeth shiny with spit. “Well, my boy, it is good to have you back.Our current batch of test subjects has proved less than ideal. Your presenceshould help bring the project back on track. This bodes very well for our nextventure.”
“Yeah, about that,”Jaquard spoke up. “When are yer going to move on Anjenagh? I’ve already told yerall yer need to know to take the city. Yer’ve got yer human lab rat back – whatmore are yer waiting for?”
The only indicationBaillargeon gave to suggest he’d heard was the tiniest pinching around his thinlips, in every other respect Jaquard might as well have ceased to existcompletely for the all the notice Baillargeon gave him. Rashari saw the way thedjinn’s smile fell from his face and his yellow eyes fired with anger. Ruthymoved forward. She shot him a warning look and then turned to Baillargeon.
“We are waiting forthe Commander-in-Chief and Director TreLawn’s convoy to arrive. Thick miasmaclose to the Aramant border has delayed their departure. They are expectedwithin the week.” Ruthy cut her gaze between the djinn and Baillargeon. “I hopeI don’t need to remind either of you that no further action can be taken untilCommander Orlenaux and Director TreLawn arrive. That includes any extensivetesting on the director’s son.”
“You do not order mewoman,” Baillargeon snapped. “I am in charge of this facility and the soulconversion project. You and your petsavage have already served your purpose.”
Ruthy’s pretty facetwisted viciously. She took a step toward Baillargeon, hand resting on the hiltof the knife sheathed to her belt. “I am here on the express orders ofCommander Orleneaux as a representive of the Marre Noir. Do not take that tonewith me, little man. Or I’ll have youcooling your heels in Fortress Badaille faster than you can blink.”
Baillargeon flushedan unattractive purple, eyes bulging in anger. He turned to Ruthy, ripe retortat the ready. Soon a three-way argument broke out between him, Ruthy, andJaquard, but Rashari barely caught a word of any of it. He was deafened by arush of blood to the brain. His father was on his way. Not just his fathereither, but Theirn Orlenaux himself, the Commander-in-Chief of the AdranImperial war machine and the Emperor’s first born son. What could be happeninghere that the heir to the Adran Empire would make the trip? The man was not ascientist, he was a general, a hound of war and a veteran of more successfulcampaigns than Rashari had had hot dinners. There was only one reason the AdranEmpire’s greatest son would come out here.
War.
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