She struggled to find something that she believed in, to counter the onslaught. She must prove herself, redeem herself, justify.
She scraped around, searching for her reasons, looking under them, and found a surprising lack from which only one or two
bits and pieces stood out. Her mind was not the well-honed home of reason but more like the bargain basement of hand-me-down
platitudes. This was a crushing disappointment but she grasped what she could and said, sure of its power and rightness in
spite of the fact she didn’t even know where it came from, ‘I have faith in kindness.’
He dismissed this with the merest of head shakes. ‘Idiotic. Only the unassailable can afford to be kind.’
‘Like you?’ she spat.
He considered her stomach, head on his arm, waving the water with his free hand in a vague manner. ‘My kindness towards you
has been unending.’
She assumed he meant that she was still alive. ‘Kindness and mercy build better worlds.’
‘Kindness and mercy don’t build anything. They foster weakness and that weakness grows to consume everything in its path.’
He let drips fall off his fingertips and made circle patterns. ‘Perhaps it would be sufficient, if
everyone
were kind and merciful, even if they were self-aware, but there is no population like that, though you won’t find any who
don’t lie about it. Mercy is not a useful path to anything either, except your own death. It is a gate to corruption. Hell’s
royal road. I know you are thinking of the great priests of your culture when you bandy their terms about like banners, but
let me assure you that only the immaculate can be kind and merciful without consequence. First be immaculate. Then you may
be as cruel with your kindness and mercy as you wish. Let all manner of evils riot for your enjoyment and call it fair-mindedness.’
‘So what do we do, kill everyone who isn’t a cold-hearted bastard?’
‘Kill your own weakness. Hunt it, stalk it, root it out. That will be enough. Others can do as they want, they have the same
opportunity. Their choices are their own. Any of them might be the perfect warrior.
The least and worst of them could be. Nothing stops them. Everyone has the power.’
As he said this her mind had churned with images of her own parents and their make-do lives, struggling. They had not done
well but they had tried hard to instill in her that kindness mattered, second chances mattered, there was always hope for
a better future and that things can be learned from mistakes. Where was the point of learning if one mistake was an execution
offence? She burned with resentment, almost hatred for him, a protective fire inside her around the images of all the world’s
luckless victims. ‘Have you no empathy
at all?
’
Teazle considered and swirled the water. He watched the ripples he made reach the shores of her knees and then the far side
of the stone basin.
‘What
you
call empathy is merely the copying of suffering. You see someone in pain and you duplicate the feelings inside yourself and
call that sympathy or empathy or somesuch. Then you wallow in it, and you feel pity and sorrow for the sufferer, first for
them, and then for yourself. I know that you do this because it seems like a way you could lead them out. You go and join
them, then you show the way out. But you can’t lead from a weak position and there you are, in the pit with them. You might
change your state again, but they already chose their state. This braying about moral high grounds by thinking that your big
heart is some kind of barometer of virtue is a junior alchemist’s mistake.’ He glanced at her stony face and shook his head
slightly.
‘I expect some idiot told you that through the effort of pitying and commiserating you can make the world a place of love,
embracing everything with endless forgiveness. But at the same time you can’t stop suffering yourself, though that’s where
you must stop it. That’s how it is done, not by crying along and forgiving the unforgivable. I hear that even your churches
praise suffering as a road to redemption but it is nothing and goes nowhere. Bleed your heart as much as you like, all it
will do is kill you and everyone around you that much faster. Fine, if sacrifice amuses you, then at least it has had some
positive purpose. But that was never the human way, with the exception of a few deluded fools who thought they could achieve
demonhood through vice. Suffer and sacrifice. Redemption for the irredeemable. Devil’s creeds. It is abomination. You are
like the elves. Trying to save themselves from their own hate by turning it inward.
Excellent prey for the devils. Those bastards are grown to their billions in you. In ages past we have come to exterminate
the hosts of such plagues, lest they cover the world.’ He sighed and for a moment his shoulders sank down and he became briefly
limp and gloomy with no prospect of a purifying slaughter in sight.
It didn’t stop her blurting out, ‘Don’t tell me that all the human kindnesses and mercies over the ages are meaningless nothing!’
She was furious. ‘What about parents and children, kindness and love in relationships, or is that all crap and lies as well?
You say this stuff like you have no feelings at all!’
‘Love,’ Teazle said, shifting position, breathing in and regaining himself. ‘Love,’ he repeated slowly. ‘Is behind everything
I say.’
Now she was completely confused. ‘Teazle, you despise everyone and you kill everything and you don’t care. What’s loving about
that?’
‘I do that,’ he said, looking at her as if she had surprised him, baffled him in fact with a blatant mistake. ‘But I don’t
want to. It isn’t my
geas.
’ He paused for another moment, searching her face, and she could see he was honest. ‘Is that what you thought about me all
this time? That I am a demon of spite?’
The
geas
was a demon’s primary calling. Zal’s was music. Teazle’s she had thought, was killing. Now she didn’t want to say yes and
be wrong and even more shamed by her failure and the awful insult that it would be.
‘What, then?’ She felt small and worthless and that she must find an escape, of any kind, lest he find her out. Only a clear
sense that he meant her no harm contained her disappointment and shamed her into biting her lips shut as she waited for the
verdict on her own unkind judgements of him. So she was proven false or at least doubting, untrue where she claimed high ground,
lacking. So what?
‘Stop it,’ he snapped, flicking water into her eyes suddenly with a snap of his fingers. He did look angry now.
‘Stop what?’
‘Feeling sorry for yourself.’
She wiped her eyes. ‘What’s the answer, then?’
‘I’m not going to tell you,’ he said. ‘You can answer it for yourself.’ He snaked his tail over the edge of the tub and around
one of her ankles and gave her a swift tug.
She was jerked down into the water helplessly and could only watch it close over her face, screening his expression with a
mass of
bubbles. When she surfaced he’d left the room. She got out and dried herself and then saw he had left her some clothes.
She remembered he’d done the same thing the day he and Malachi had moved her out of her old apartment. He’d laughed at her
old clothes – even she marvelled at them – and thrown them down the garbage chute, every last piece. Then he’d made her new
ones. Zal used to joke that Teazle had pulled them out of his ass because nobody saw him make them, they simply appeared.
She’d realised since then that he teleported to get them but he was so fast at it that nobody could see the joins.
She examined the one-piece after a moment of uncertainty. It was moss-green with some gold stitching, subtle, expensive and
soft. After a time she figured out how to put it on – it had many cutaways intended to expose various pieces of skin – and
discovered it to be surprisingly tasteful and beautifully tailored. There was a kind of panelled jacket that went with it
and here she discovered a label showing Sorcha’s personal symbol of a red flame. She and the demon had not been the same size,
so she reasoned this was Sorcha’s own brand. These things were antiques now. Collectible. She wished Sorcha were back again
for one, fierce moment, and then put the jacket on and walked back to the bedroom in her bare feet.
Teazle was on the bed, reading something on a palmscreen and listening to Zal mutter in his fitful sleep. On the rug by the
large windows lay a black sabretooth cat the size of a pony, idly licking the matt fur on the back of one gigantic paw. As
it saw her from its orange eyes it opened its claws and dug them deeply into the rug’s ruby pattern.
‘Mal,’ she said, as neutrally as possible. She saw Teazle shoot a glance at her as he paged through his document and then
look back closely at the demonic text, reading as though engrossed.
‘. . . enormous . . .’ Zal mumbled.
The huge cat stared at her and the pupils of his eyes narrowed. ‘You are forgiven,’ he said. His voice was garbled by the
shape of his mouth and his teeth but it was clear enough. She noticed a bearlike quality to him that hadn’t been apparent
before.
‘You’ve changed.’
‘I am changing,’ he said in his deep rumble. It had a slight break in it as though his purr box was broken. ‘All the old fey
are experiencing the same. It is slow, but inevitable.’ He paused. ‘We are declining.’
Teazle looked up now and Lila said, ‘What do you mean, declining?’
‘We revert towards our primal forms.’
‘Like you did in Under?’
‘When you saw me there we weren’t in Under,’ Malachi said. ‘We were in Umeval, the Time of Winter. It was a very old place,
one of the few changeless places that sit at the axis. After it come all the ages of the human races. Before it come the older
aeons, millennia without mark, which in your reference is in time, but in Faery it is geography, or direction, if you like.
They progress back to the time before demons, before elves, before there was anything except the Void and . . .’ he paused
and looked away, whiskers twitching, ‘. . . the machines.’
‘The machines?’ Lila said into the pause that followed Malachi’s statement. ‘The machines were before everything else?’
‘The machines are not physical objects,’ the faery said. He hesitated and she and Teazle saw him struggle with the change
into his human form. For a second he was missing entirely from their world, and then he slowly appeared, trails of flickering
colour at his edges as the threads of his being dragged themselves from their metamorphic cocoon. Lila wasn’t used to seeing
this because usually it took place so fast it was invisible. Her throat contracted with concern.
‘Mal, are you all right?’
He was so tired that he didn’t get up from his seat on the floor. His shirt was open at the collar, and rumpled. He fingered
it as if he were going to close it and then turned to her without getting up and let his hands fall away. His voice was slow
and deliberate as he remembered what he had to say.
‘The machines are possibilities, the potential combinations of energy states that are permissible in this universe. The machines
don’t exist as we exist. They have no energy at all. And before you ask how I know all this, Sarasilien and the cyborg Sandra
Lane told me. At the very first place, before even the Void opened up, there were the machines. The first actualised machine
was the Void itself, the engine out of which all energy came. So when you were made it wasn’t through some secret spy operation
of stolen plans and plotting from a higher machine power. Sarasilien did foist the blueprints upon the humans, because their
technology was already so advanced in that direction. But he got them himself, he drew them by copying machine forms he was
able to see through his dreams. They already existed. He simply found them and passed them on.’
He glanced at Lila with heavy concentration and a frown. ‘He said
you would know this, if you looked, but he expected that you wouldn’t. I’d have to come and tell you. Like I have to tell
you the rest. Before it’s too late.’ He took a breath as if he was struggling for air and his hand went to his throat and
pushed his shirt away even further. He worked his jaw for a moment and swallowed, then made himself sit up correctly. He glanced
at Zal with a scowl of annoyance and then up at Teazle with a more calculating stare and then began to micro-adjust his shirt
buttons and smooth his sleeves as he continued.
‘The trouble was always so little time. But even then it should have been all right, except for the unplanned business with
Under.’ His tone was bitter. ‘
That
was my mistake, and it has cost everything. That fifty-year gap. We were counting on it.’
Lila had forgotten her anger. ‘To do what?’
‘For one of you to rise,’ Malachi said. ‘Yes, surely one of you would make it in that period. But you haven’t. Because you
were robbed. And the others have all fallen, or gone astray, or have no interest.’ Now that his cuffs satisfied him he began
to retuck his shirt with methodical exactitude, taking his belt out a notch in order to be more effective.
‘Mal,’ Lila said firmly. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘You,’ the faery said, creating even pleating on his left and right, although the shirt was so well tailored it was hardly
necessary. ‘I’m talking about you. And Zal. And others you never knew about. Many others. All of them some kind of mongrel.’
He finished and tightened the belt and then moved to stand up so he could put the buckle at exact centre. He cleared his throat
and began to adjust the lie of his pockets. ‘Sandra Lane. She was to be your successor, if you didn’t come back. She had those
years, every long damned day of them, and we tried everything to get her some magical power, but without success. All our
alchemies have failed. Her clones have been most useful as have the other cyborgs. Even the rogues, good in their way. But
none of them stand a chance—’
‘You’re babbling,’ Teazle said sharply. His voice was like a dull whipcrack and it made all of them start, even Zal, who rolled
onto his side to face them, eyes half open.
‘I have a right to babble!’ Malachi snapped. His glare at the white demon was vicious for a moment and his white fang teeth
showed. Then abruptly he caught himself and closed his mouth. He slid his hands into the immaculate side pockets of his trousers
and turned to the windows. Some savoire faire returned to his pose as he addressed
them in their imperfect reflection. ‘By this time we had hoped there would be someone capable of dealing with the threat
that the elves had created long ago when they made the Shadowkin. It’s Sarasilien’s story to tell really, but since he isn’t
here I’ll have to tell it.’
The tall faery walked across to the bed and looked down at Zal critically. Zal blinked up at him, the pupils of his eyes huge
dark centres inside paler rings, his mouth vaguely grinning as though Mal were a halfway decent standup act.
‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yeah,’ Zal’s voice was dreamy and distant but it was clear. ‘We’re all failures. You’re disappointed. We’re all going to
die. Got it.’
Teazle snickered. ‘Speak for yourself, tree hugger.’
A brief, wintry smile flitted across Malachi’s face, making his teeth suddenly shine out against the coal blackness. ‘Your
mother was one of Sarasilien’s students,’ he said. ‘Did you know?’
Zal peered up at Malachi and his grin faded. ‘No.’
‘But you know there was more to your birth than a simple affair.’
Zal swallowed on a dry mouth and and rolled his eyes. ‘Her ideas on genetics and the inheritance of aetheric power were more
than enough to send me to sleep at nights.’ He put up one hand to shield his sight, squinting even though it was quite dim
in the room. ‘But honestly, Mal, what were you expecting? A composite being with all the pluses and none of the faults of
the ancestors? Some kind of . . . what were those things called in the stories . . . you know, we didn’t have any fiction
in the house . . . the creatures that were
summoned and born and moulded and forged and made and dressed and taught and trained to be the best of the best and then some?
’ The last part of his speech had been sing-song, the form of an old poetic story.
‘Up to the test, fierce as beasts, hearts of cold iron and eyes of twin suns, like angels, like anger, the first breath of
spring, the last stride of the race, faultless, matchless, the stars in their places, with strength of ages and minds of sages
. . .’
Malachi continued for him in the same rhythm and tone. ‘Yes. The story of the Titans. Created to stand against chaos so that
the worlds could be formed.’
‘Ah,’ Zal said slowly and he let his hand fall down to the mattress, limp. ‘Hubris has caught up with you. You tried to make
a titan, but you got me and Lila instead. Yeah, well, I see your point. Carry on.’
‘He isn’t serious,’ Lila said to Malachi. ‘He’s mad with succubus venom.’
‘No, he’s right,’ Mal said, thin-lipped. ‘Something like a titan was
needed because something like a titan, or titans, was created. When it couldn’t be contained and proved uncontrollable it
was imprisoned.’
‘In time,’ Lila said, remembering what Sarasilien had told her – the payback was to be deferred.
‘Yes. By a trick, like the one you fell into with the Hunter,’ Malachi nodded and shrugged gently, some of his stern manner
sloughing away from him. ‘And now that time is up.’
‘So Sarasilien created one mess by mixing things up that shouldn’t have been, and now he’s trying to clear it up with another
mess the same?’ Lila said.
‘Oh, you’re
nothing
like the first,’ Malachi waved his hand and snorted contemptuously. ‘After learning that lesson everything else that was
made was made on the strictest principles. This is why Sarasilien and a few allies worked alone on it. Only a few could be
trusted not to fall into the old temptations. And even then . . . there are scattered hundreds of creatures, people and such,
who were made to meet this test. Some will stand at the end I expect, but they will not be enough,’ he shook his head.
‘Mal,’ Lila said, half concerned and half annoyed. ‘This is a bogeyman story. But where’s the bogeyman?’
‘Coming,’ the faery said with affected lightness. He turned on the spot suddenly with a ballroom dancer’s swift and perfect
spin and then sighed his way into a few twirling steps.
Lila glared at him, knowing all too well that if Malachi was dancing then he was deeply uncomfortable. ‘How do you know? Why
this year? Why not next year? I mean, in ages of time there’s got to be some leeway, some give . . .’
‘Yes,’ Malachi said. ‘They are early. Perhaps they discovered a way out of their trap or . . . well, who can say? But the
harbingers are here, so surely they are coming.’
Lila turned to Teazle. ‘If he keeps holding onto the information you can beat it out of him.’ She turned to Malachi. ‘Spill
it already! What harbingers?’
Malachi gave up his brief waltz across the floor and with it all his exhaustion returned. He sat down on the end of the bed
and put his head in his hands. ‘The harbingers are the Returners. New spirits in old forms. The fact that they are here means
that the fundamental separation between the nebulous dimensions and the material ones is becoming thinner. The Titans were
made to destroy the elves’ ancient enemy, the Sleeper. They were imprisoned in such a place, beyond
matter and time and the sway of the elements, so that they could not shape anything or kill anyone. But the charm that held
them has been weakened and they are making their way back here. The Returners approach on their bow wave.’
‘How long?’ Zal murmured. He was rubbing his face, trying to wake up, but the poison kept him logy.
‘Weeks, maybe days now,’ the faery said dejectedly.
‘What was the charm?’ Lila asked.
Malachi turned to her with slow, sad resignation. ‘The Queen’s magic,’ he said.
‘The Queen’s magic that was lost in Under,’ Lila said, for confirmation.
He nodded. ‘Although it would have broken anyway, once the time had run its course. That’s what we couldn’t understand. Why
would the charm fail, unless the condition had been met?’
‘And the condition was?’
‘The rise of a new Titan, naturally,’ Malachi said. ‘So they couldn’t come back before we had a chance.’
‘And that was supposed to be me, or Zal, or Sandra Lane or . . .’
‘Or any of the others, yes.’
‘Well then they have to be somewhere,’ Zal said, and lifted the edge of his pillow to look for them there.
‘We
have looked.
There are no Titans.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Teazle said. ‘The return of these dark Titans or whatever they are . . . this will be the end of the
worlds? Or the end of the worlds will pave the way for their return, in which case there’ll be not much to return to?’
‘What do they want?’ Zal asked almost at the same time.
Malachi held his hands up. ‘It’s not my story, like I say, but I’ll tell it. Ages ago, before the human races, when the elves
were already old, they had great magical power and a massive, enviable civilisation, greatly advanced for the most part, comparable
to the best. But some of them had a great deal of aetheric ability and charm, so much that they were able to leave their bodies
and travel in other planes, or see into other dimensions, and all sorts like that. They discovered Zoom-enon, the place of
the elements, and the Void that lies between and around and inside all things, and they discovered the places of the dead
and the undead and when they were around in there they disturbed something. A malevolent force that was very strong. It pursued
them without rest and tried to use them as conduits to come
into Alfheim. They were convinced that it would never stop until they were all dead and the world with them. And so after
a lot of trouble and talk they made Titans to overcome the beast in its own lair. And you know the rest. The goal of the Titans
was to destroy the Sleeper.’
‘And did they?’ Teazle asked. He had begun to glow again with talk of destruction.
‘Well,’ Malachi said uneasily. ‘Not exactly. The first thing that happened was that most of the mages who had created them
came down with a wasting sickness and died. And so did many others. Not just mages. Ordinary people. That was when it was
decided it had gone wrong and this was the result of all the evil done in creating the Titans and binding them by force to
their task. More was out of the question. There was no way to recall them and so instead they chose to trick the Titans into
a game – the only thing that could contain them. The faery Queen agreed to do it herself because she was the master of trickery.
Her trick meant that she was lost in Under ever after that. This was the days before the fey republic of course, it was the
cause of the republic really. Without her anyone could claim leadership and nobody could keep it. And it was to maintain the
game that we had to lose the evidence of it and forget we knew about it.’
‘Until now,’ Zal said.
‘It worked,’ Malachi insisted. ‘For ages.’
Lila walked over to Zal’s side and sat down by him. ‘So these Titans are going to carry on where they left off, you think?’
Malachi stared at the two of them with dulled orange eyes. ‘The Titans had only one purpose. To destroy the Sleeper. After
that they . . .’ he hesitated and glanced at Lila, ‘. . . they would have dissolved. Dangerous things, worldwalkers, you have
to keep an eye on them always and when they have too much power you have to . . . well. Planned obsolescence, you see.’
She returned his look steadily to let him know this information wasn’t lost on her. ‘So the fact they’re still around means
they didn’t succeed. The Sleeper is still there. It isn’t them who are coming through to cause chaos, it’s the Sleeper, and
they’ll come after. Or they didn’t like your obsolescence idea too much and they’re out for vengeance, or possibly just to
exterminate any possibility that they could be . . . oh, let’s call it
recalled
.’
He blinked at the sharpness of her sarcasm and looked away. ‘We don’t know. Look at Xavi. She didn’t fulfil the purpose, but
she was no Titan anyway. She was a near miss I guess. Maybe the real ones kept
enough of themselves that they could break the geas set on them. Or they thought it would be better to stop short, so that
it wouldn’t be fulfilled. That would make them invincible and probably immortal. Unstoppable.’