The man was very tall and very thin. He wore a suit of the finest cut and quality. Black pants and a jacket of such a dark purple that the color could only be seen in the bulges of creases as he walked. His waistcoat was gray with moon-colored silver traceries embroidered onto it. The stitchery flowed in the same pattern of planets, mathematical symbols, and gears as on the sashes of his troops. In another place, on another man, Grey would have thought it too posh and even silly. Not, however, on this man.
No, there was nothing silly about this one.
He wore a low top hat with a silk band that matched his waistcoat. His shoes were polished to a gleaming finish.
The man walked with a decided limp, though somehow this infirmity did not suggest weakness. Rather it seemed to mark him as one who had been through Hell and walked out, likely alone. He leaned on a slender walking stick whose copper head was fashioned into the snarling face of a kraken — a creature Grey had seen in his books. The tentacles of the beast curled downward and wrapped around the shaft of the stick.
Grey did not need Looks Away to tell him who this was. Who it had to be.
His mouth formed the name but he did not dare speak it aloud.
Aleksander Deray.
A hush fell over the entire plain and the mechanical sound from within the gates likewise ceased. Even the weeping prisoners held their pleas.
Except for the man who still cried for his mother.
The weeping man was fat and lacked muscle; his blubbery skin was covered with coarse hair but his flesh was pale and unhealthy. He clawed at the ground and banged his forehead on it until his skin broke and blood fell like tears.
Looks Away suddenly gasped.
“What is it?” demanded Grey.
“By the Queen’s garters — that’s Nolan Chesterfield.”
Deray approached the circle of soldiers and they parted without hesitation to let him through.
As Deray entered the circle the soldiers closed ranks once more.
The prisoners recoiled from Deray and tried to back away, to flee, but no matter where they turned they encountered a wall of bayonets in the hands of merciless soldiers. In helpless defeat they stopped and stood their ground, chests heaving, faces streaked with tears, eyes empty of all hope.
Deray walked in a slow circle around the men, and they cowered back from him, clustering into a tight knot, their eyes following every movement, every step. The man’s path took him to within a dozen feet of where Grey and Looks Away crouched, and it gave Grey his first chance to study their enemy.
And enemy seemed to be a perfect word for him.
Aleksander Deray had a thin, aquiline face, with the full lips of a sensualist but the narrow nose and hooded eyes of an ascetic. He could have been a monk from some remote monastery, or a composer of dark and dangerous music. His hands were large, the fingers long and white. Grey noted that he wore a star sapphire ring on the index finger of his right hand and an emerald on the other. Both stones were as large as robins’ eggs.
The expression of his face was not haughty or arrogant, which Grey expected to see on so powerful a man. Instead he appeared to be calm, introspective. His eyes roved over the prisoners without apparent animosity, his lips did not curl into a sneer. They were before him and he observed them, nothing more.
Somehow that chilled Grey all the more. For someone to command such power and to have both science and sorcery at his fingertips it would have been more comforting to see the gleam of madness. Instead Grey saw intelligence and insight. This was not a man who could be provoked into some foolish action. Here was a man who calculated the odds and took chances only when the cards were falling his way. Grey had played poker and faro with such men, and he invariably lost.
“Where is he from?” asked Grey, who doubted the man was American.
However Looks Away shook his head. “He claims to be a descendant of Egyptian pharaohs, which I very much doubt. Doctor Saint thought he might be a bastard son of Italian nobility, or maybe a legitimate nobleman who fell out of favor and changed his name. There are a hundred stories about him, and all of them contradict.”
“Not an American putting on an act?”
“Not a chance.”
Deray walked past where they hid and stopped in front of Nolan Chesterfield.
“Look at me,” he said in a cultured voice and Grey could hear the cultured European accent. It didn’t sound Italian, though. More like someone from Eastern Europe. Grey had met a Balkan once. Similar accent, similar cold and imperious bearing.
The quivering man did not respond to Deray’s command.
“Nolan!” said Deray sharply. “Do as I say. Look at me.”
Chesterfield flinched back from the sound of his name. Sobs racked his body, shuddering through his pale skin. He did not raise his head.
With a sigh of disappointment, Deray turned away and looked around him. The officers attached to each foreign army bowed to him from the saddles of their horses. Mounted, they towered above him but everyone there knew that it was he who was the giant here. Everyone was tense, waiting, watching, listening.
“My friends,” said Deray, pitching his voice to address the crowd but not shouting. The spectators who could not hear leaned forward. The effort was theirs to do, not Deray’s. Another sign of the man’s subtle power. “The land that was once America was not born on a quiet bed. It was born in fire and blood. As all great nations are.”
The officers nodded. The soldiers remained stock-still.
“When war split this nation, first in half and then into many parts, the weak were consumed while the strong were forged in those fires. Those who rule earn that right. It was true of Alexander and Genghis Khan. It was true of Alaric the Visigoth and Attila the Hun. Greatness is earned through conquest. Hannibal knew this as did Scipio Africanus. Read the histories of Cyrus the Great and Sun Tzu, of Julius Caesar and Thutmose III.”
The officers kept nodding. These were clearly the saints of their church. The warlords and conquerors.
“And for our generation? How many of us here will write our histories in the blood of those we conquer? Who among us has that greatness burning in their hearts? Who here will ascend to their throne on a stairway of corpses? Tell me, my brothers, who?”
A dozen swords instantly flashed from scabbards as every officer cried out his own name, bellowing loud enough to imprint their arrogance like a tattoo on the flesh of destiny. Every soldier echoed the name of his general. They crashed their rifle butts onto the hard ground and they all spoke with the thunderous voice of conquest.
Deray let it go on and on until fragments of crystal and rock fell like rain from the ceiling. Then he raised his hand. A simple gesture, palm out, at shoulder height. Silence crashed down around them.
Grey heard Looks Away very softly say, “By the Queen’s perfumed knickers.”
The silence held for ten long seconds before Deray broke it.
“Ghost rock,” he said, putting the words onto the humid air. They seemed to hang there, burning. “Earth herself tore open her flesh and vomited it into our world. A stone, ugly and useless to the unenlightened. But to those with vision, to those who dare—?” He paused so that his next word would eclipse what he had already said. A simple word, filled with so much meaning. “Power.”
On the ground, Nolan Chesterfield whimpered.
“Since it was discovered, the wisest, the most devious of our engineers and scientists have labored to unlock its secrets, and much have they discovered. Much have we been able to accomplish. Weapons capable of mass destruction. Machines that will work day and night, and at speeds never before imagined. Warships that can sink any wooden fleet without risking the lives of their own crews. Mechanical wagons with cannons that can chase down mounted cavalry and grind them into the dirt.” He paused and repeated the word. “Power.”