A whimper escaped her, and had it not been for Tisamon’s hand on her, she would have slid to the ground.
You return to us, little neophyte, with your prize and your temerity. What will we ask? Go and grow. Become great. Don Skryre’s robes and learn the secrets. Go to the ends of the earth if you will. But always know you are bound, bound to us, to our destiny, go you ever so far. One day, in a shadow, in a mirror, in the face of the waters, you shall see us, and we shall ask of you, and that time shall be soon.
‘Achaeos?’ she said, her voice reed-thin with fright.
‘You see them?’ His voice was soft, like that of a hunter who dares not take his eyes from his prey.
‘See? No, but I can hear. There are voices, Achaeos. Who else is here?’
‘Your eyes can cut the dark like mine can, Che. I want you to see.’
She looked around wildly, but there was no one there and, besides, nobody, no ordinary human being, could have given that voice life.
Tisamon, the composite voice of the forest spoke, and the Mantis let go of her and straightened up. Still there was nobody visible between the boles of the dark trees.
Tisamon, it said again, you have been altered since last you passed within these halls.
It shocked her that the Mantis, the most intimidating man she had ever met, gave a soft exhalation of fear.
You were Tisamon the Hollow Man when east you went. Now you are Tisamon of the Purpose. But your purpose is clouded to us, Tisamon. As clouded as it is to you yourself. Do you mean to send the girl into a better future, or weight her with the past?
Tisamon made no answer, but she saw his teeth were bared, his eyes fixed on something ahead. She followed that riveted gaze, and saw.
She collapsed then, hiding her eyes from them. There were so many of them, a score at least, and they were hideous. They were composed of smooth chitin and barbed spines, and knotted bark and thorns and twisted briars, and yet they were human beings, Mantis-kinden features as like to Tisamon’s as to be family. And their eyes were huge, and they stared and stared.
She had only a brief glimpse of them before she wrenched her head aside, but the image, the sight of them, would stay with her for all her remaining days.
Then she felt Achaeos’s hands on her shoulders, heard his voice, low and comforting, and she found that she clung to him because she had nothing else.
‘What are they? Why did you bring me here? Why?’
‘This is the ghost story in the night, Che. This is the dream that is there when you wake. This is the worst of dark magic. And I want you to believe, Che. You must believe.’
She now had her face pressed into his chest, for fear of what she might see beyond him. ‘I can’t believe. I can’t have a world with such things in it. Please-’
‘And tomorrow you will tell yourself they were just men in costume, or that you saw them unclearly, or that you merely dreamt them, but I want you to remember this, Che. You must remember that what you have seen is real, and cannot be explained away.’
At last she dared to meet his eyes. ‘But why?’
‘Because this is my world, Che, and I want you to see it, to acknowledge it. We are the people of the twilight, of the Lore Age, before all your gears and levers. Though we fail and dwindle, we have some power yet. We are the keepers of those secrets that the world yet retains.’
‘You want me to. .’
‘I would share my world with you, if your mind could absorb it. If you could just for once tear away the veil of doubt that surrounds all of your people. I may hate machines, and either destroy them or leave them, but at least I cannot avoid the fact of them. Che, please look. Please.’
And he was begging her and that was what finally persuaded her. He, who could have forced this on her, was a slave to her will in that moment.
She looked past his shoulder, clutching hard to him as her eyes picked them out again between the trees. They were speaking for Tisamon only, now. Their voice was a soft rush that she could not pick out words from. Even now they were not clear: they shifted before her, merging with the trees and each other. Che shuddered as every part of her mind except one demanded that she look away.
She made herself look. With Achaeos’s slim arms about her, with him almost as her shield, she forced her eyes until they saw, they truly saw the abomination that was the Darakyon. Hideous tortured ghosts splayed on the rack of history, had they not been occupied with their living kinsman, their faceted gaze would have flayed her. Instead she felt she was looking into the very soul of Tisamon’s people, ripped out and hung in the air like smoke and cobwebs. They were tall and proud and callous — and lost and sad.
‘What did this to them?’ she whispered, for the pain contained in those crooked things was infinite, as was their power.
Achaeos’s voice was very soft, very solemn. ‘You did,’ he said. ‘You did and then we did.’ And he would not explain further.
Thirty-four
The Wasps had come to Helleron. At first Stenwold thought the city was under siege, for from the east they saw only the tents of the Empire’s soldiers, their gold-and-black barred flags and armoured automotives. Even as they watched, an orthopter in imperial colours ghosted down silently, wings spread to catch the air.
They approached carefully, circling to the south, and from there it became apparent that matters were very different.
There was a very sizeable Wasp encampment outside Helleron, all the men and materials that Stenwold had already guessed at, but beyond them the city went on about its business just the same. There were caravans of goods, roads cluttered with people, the perpetual entrances and exits that turned the money mills of Helleron. The same tent city of traders, foreign buyers, slave markets and hawkers took up where the Wasps left off and yet nobody seemed to care that there were two thousand soldiers from an enemy power camped at the wall-less gates.
‘They have surrendered,’ Achaeos said bitterly. ‘The moment the Wasp army got here, they laid down their weapons.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Stenwold said. ‘What we’re seeing here is not an occupied city. Look, people coming and going as they please, no guards, no sentries or militia. This is Helleron just as it always was.’
‘A thousand Wasps don’t just turn up here to see the sights or go to the theatre,’ Tynisa said.
‘Our answers will be found inside,’ Stenwold decided. ‘We have to meet with Scuto.’
It was strange, entering that city again, for it held so many memories. Flight and fight for Tynisa and Totho, betrayal and capture for Che. Tisamon must be recalling his countless mercenary duels, all those years counted out in meaningless exercise of his skills. Achaeos tugged his cowl over his face and hid his hands. There were a few Moth-kinden in Helleron, but they were despised.
There were Wasps, too, within the crowd. Not many, and doing nothing more than talking to traders or passing on their way, but there they were. They were in armour, in uniform, rubbing shoulders in the weapon markets with Ant-kinden who regarded them suspiciously. Wasp quartermasters could be seen taking up provisions for their men, while Wasp artificers debated with Beetle machine-smiths over the quality of their wares. None of them spared a glance for the incoming train of riders. It was all so strangely unreal.
Stenwold found them stabling for the horses and paid over the high prices Helleron demanded, and then they went to seek out the poor quarter of the city where Scuto had his home.
‘I don’t understand it any more than you,’ the Thorn Bug said. He was perched on a bench in his workroom, with quite a crowd there. Stenwold and his companions had been joined by almost a score of others who were obviously Scuto’s agents within the city. They were a motley and disparate pack of rogues, Che decided: Beetles, Flies and Ants, halfbreeds, an elegant Spider-kinden in fine silks, even a scarred Scorpion-kinden whose left hand was now just a two-pronged hook of metal.