Heights of the Depths (5 page)

He also wondered just how far he was willing to follow the Overseer before he gave it up as a pointless exercise.

The Overseer strode out into the street, his armored feet clanking beneath him. Nicrominus, following, heard a cessation of noise and wondered if the Overseer had simply vanished into thin air. It didn’t seem possible that he could do such a thing, but then again, this was the Overseer they were talking about. Who knew what was and was not within his capabilities?

But no, he could see him through the large glass doors that led out. The Overseer had stopped dead in the middle of the street and he was just standing there. Nicrominus had been hurrying after him, so much so that he was getting out of breath. Now he slowed and then stopped, standing on the sidewalk and just staring at the armored figure.

“You should have seen it,”
the Overseer said abruptly. It so startled Nicrominus that he actually jumped, and his tail whipped around as if seeking to dispatch a foe that had snuck up on him hoping to catch him unawares.
“Back in its hey day, I mean. What I’m doing here…standing out here on Sixth Avenue…you couldn’t do it back then. Far too many cars, packed with people honking their horns, on their way to God knows where. Like so many hamsters sprinting on their wheels, spinning and spinning and thinking they’re getting somewhere when they’re really not. Still…New York was just about the only city in the world that I could tolerate for any period of time.”
His voice trailed off and then he turned and looked directly at Nicrominus.
“You have no goddamned idea what I’m talking about, do you.”

Slowly Nicrominus shook his head. “I have…some goddamned idea, Overseer. I assume you are talking about this city at some point in the past. But…” He had no clue what else to say, and so said nothing.

“What the hell was your name again?”

“Nicrominus.”

“Nicrominus. Hunh.”
He seemed to be considering it.
“Good name. Sounds similar to Nicodemus. You wouldn’t have any idea who that is, would you?”

“No, Overseer, I would not. Should I?”

“A Biblical judge. He helped prepare the body of Jesus for burial after the crucifixion. I don’t suppose you know about any of that, either.”

“I know of that, actually. I have done a good deal of reading into Mort philosophies and history. I know of the Bible. It was a book of mythologies that the Mort appeared to set great store by. This Jesus was one of the central characters. There are a number of pictorial representations of him back in Firedraque hall.”

A strange noise came from the Overseer’s armored figure and it took Nicrominus a moment to realize that it was actually laughter. It seemed a strange thing to hear the Overseer laughing. Nicrominus wouldn’t have thought such a thing likely or even possible. The Overseer was like unto a god. Why would he be laughing? Then again, it had been the opinion of Nicrominus that the gods had been looking down upon the Banished and laughing at their fates for quite some time. So it made a certain kind of twisted sense that their representative in the world would likewise enjoy some merriment at their expense.

“Notre Dame cathedral.”

“I’m…sorry, Overseer?”

“The place you call Firedraque Hall. Its true name is Notre Dame cathedral. I saw it when I was twenty-two, when I was stationed in Paris.”

“You mean Perriz?”

The Overseer had not been looking at him directly, but now he did. He turned and when he spoke his voice was tinged with anger.
“Paris, goddammit. You could, at the very least, say it right. It’s pronounced ‘Paris.’”

“Pah-ris,” Nicrominus said carefully.

“Incredible. Earth was crawling with idiots, and then the idiots are damned near wiped from existence, and who replaces them? More idiots.”
The Overseer was now walking back and forth, pacing, moving a few feet and then pivoting and walking back the other way in agitation.
“They say that hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. But I disagree. I think it’s stupidity. I think that if the entirety of creation were left to fester and drown in the filth of its own ignorance, then that would be a good thing. Instead you’re telling me that I’m supposed to find the remaining humans and encourage them to breed so that we can make more and repopulate the Earth in order to save the whole of creation? And that’s supposed to be my job, is it? Well…what if it’s not? What if my job is to make sure that creation succumbs to the entropy it so richly deserves, and the first step along that path is to watch all life on Earth vanish?”

“With all respect, Overseer…I might better be able to answer that question—presuming it actually requires an answer—if I knew what ‘Urth’ was?”

“You know of the Bible, you know of Jesus, but you don’t know ‘Earth’?”

“If it relates to Mort history or mythology, my readings and understandings are limited due to language barriers.”

“It’s the name of the planet you’re standing on, Nicrominus. It’s the name of the planet that fell to the Twelve Races.”

“Is it?” Nicrominus found that extremely surprising. “I had repeatedly come across what I thought was an old Mort name for it: Ee Arth. But nothing called ‘Urth.’”

“Ee Arth is Earth. It’s pronounced Urth. Ee Arth would be how you said it if you didn’t know how to read it properly.”

“I see.” Nicrominus shrugged. “Truthfully, Overseer, I—as do most of my people—have always simply referred to it as the Damned World.”

“Yes. I know. Are you aware of why that is?”

“Well, the story may be apocryphal, but it is said that the last of the human defenders of the planet, when confronted by those who were about to destroy him, took a final stand and shouted something to the effect of ‘Get off the damned world.’ And that was taken by those present to be the name of this sphere.”

Again the Overseer made that same strange noise that almost sounded like a laugh.
“It is not apocryphal.”

“With all respect, Overseer, how do you know? Were you there?”

At first the Overseer didn’t respond. Then, slowly, he reached up to the wide collar that encircled his head and touched either side. There was a hissing sound, and white mist floated up from the connection point. He reached up and twisted the domed helmet. There was a loud “clack” as something disengaged and then he removed the helmet, lifting it off slowly.

Nicrominus trembled, so much so that he was almost unable to stand. He would have indeed fallen had his tail not managed to balance him and keep him upright.
This is it. I am going to die. To look upon the face of the Overseer is to die instantly.
He had no idea exactly how that death was going to occur. Some said that beholding the face of the Overseer would result in bursting into flames. Others claimed your head would melt. Some even contended that not only did you yourself die, but any and all of your descendants would likewise be struck down instantly, prompting a brief surge of regret for the catastrophe he might inadvertently have visited upon his daughter, Evanna.
Look away! Look away! It still is not too late!
But he could not look away. His curiosity got the better of him.

He could not quite fathom what it was that he was looking at.

The face that stared back at him was lined and wrinkled and haggard and looked for all the world as if it would be perfectly happy to just shut its eyes in final repose but never, ever could. Those eyes were a dark green, and only one of them appeared to be functioning. The other, the left one, was nearly milky white, with only a hint of a pupil. A mass of gray hair clung to the head, sopping, like a lion that had been caught out in the rain.

It was the face of a Mort. A human. A gods damned human.

“It wasn’t just that I was there,”
said the human.
“I was the one who said it.”

the land of feend

I.

The Children’s Crusade of the
Ocular huddled for mutual warmth and
protection deep within the woods. They were cold and tired, and they could not stop staring at the distant green glow that emanated from the far off city.

The children were looking to two of their own for guidance, the two oldest. One was named Turkin, a young, strapping Ocular lad. The other was a female, Berola. Berola had always been a precocious sort, and had far preferred to run with the males than associate with the females. Defying Ocular custom, she had actually shaved her head, which had infuriated her parents and made her quite the talk of the town.

Now she and Turkin were sitting a short distance from the others, and Berola was muttering, “This is ridiculous. We should just head back to the city, that’s all.”

“While it’s glowing?” demanded Turkin. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“So it’s glowing. So what? A glow never hurt anybody.”

“The captain said we wait here for him to get back,” Turkin said firmly. “And here is where we wait. Did you all get that?” he raised his voice so the others could hear him. “We wait here until the captain returns.” Then, once they nodded, he lowered his voice so that only Berola could hear and said, “Between you and me…I think this is all part of the training mission.”

“Eh?” Berola looked at him skeptically.

“Yup. They keep coming up with all sorts of ways to try and keep us off balance. Why, earlier the captain had me follow the high adviser himself, Phemus.”

“Really.” Berola now seemed impressed, which pleased Turkin no end. “Did you find out anything interesting…?”

“He was talking to a Piri.”

“No! You lie!”

“Gods’ truth,” Berola said fervently. “I told the captain, and that’s why he went and left us here: to go back and tell the king himself.”

“But why? Why would he have been talking to the Piri?”

“No idea. Not my job to—”

“Look!” one of the youngsters suddenly called out. “It’s the captain!”

He was right. The captain of the guards was coming through the woods toward them. Berola and Turkin, who had been sitting, were promptly on their feet, shoulders squared, trying to look like capable members of the Crusade.

And then the captain began to stagger.

“Captain?” Berola said. “Is something wro—?”

“Stay back,” said the captain, his voice thick and raspy. He’d been standing in the shadows of the trees, and the moon was covered by a cloud, but now it emerged from hiding and the children gasped. Even from the distance they were at, they could see his skin was blackened and peeling and falling off. His teeth were gone, and his eye looked like it was cracking.

“Don’t…go back,” he managed to say. “Nothing for you…everyone dying…all of them…all…dying…”

“Dying?” gasped Turkin. “Of what? Why? From what?”

“Humans,” the captain of the guard managed to get out, and then he collapsed. Several of the children cried out as he fell, and they started to move toward him.

“Don’t touch him!” shouted Berola, and the children froze.

They heard the captain wheeze horribly for long seconds, and then there was an ugly rattle, and then nothing.

“Is he okay now?” asked one of the children, and another one hit the first child upside the head and said, “No, he’s not okay, he’s dead, stupid!”

And then came wailing and sobbing and cries from all the children that they wanted to go home, that they had had enough, that this was all too terrible. “Shut up!” shouted Berola, putting her hands to her head. “We…we just need to think!”

“Think about what?!” Turkin was clearly starting to panic. “You heard the captain! We can’t go back! Everyone…everyone is going to be like him—!”

“I want my mother!” cried one of the children and they started crying all over again for their parents, and Berola and Turkin looked helplessly at one another. Because, really, all they wanted to do, deep down, was break down and start sobbing as well.

And that was when a voice shouted over all of them, “You don’t have mothers, you don’t have fathers, and you’re not going back!”

They turned and stared, and Berola felt a surge of fear bubbling up in her throat. Turkin tried to control a similar sensation. It was all he could do not to bolt and run. Collective gasps were ripped from the throats of the remaining children.

A female Piri was standing there. She was tall and elegant, but had a haunted look. “All you have,” she said softly, “is me.”

“You?” said Turkin, trying to sound confidently arrogant. “You’re…you’re a—”

“I know what I am,” she said. “But you don’t know what I am. I’m your salvation.”

“You’re not serious,” said Berola.

The Piri nodded. “If you come with me, now, I will protect you from the others of my kind. I can do this for you. And I will train you and help you…and, in time, you will help me. We will be able to protect each other.”

“Us protect you?” asked Berola. “Why should we?”

“Because,” said the Piri, “like it or not…you’re the last of the Ocular. And you’re in trouble. And I’m in trouble.”

Berola studied her, tried to get some sort of sense of her. She noticed the Piri’s left hand. “What happened to your little finger?” she demanded.

“Nothing. It’s fine. It’s just not on my hand.”

“What’s your name?” asked one of the younger Ocular.

“Don’t talk to her!” Berola ordered.

But the Piri ignored her. “My name is Clarinda. What’s yours?”

“Kerda.”

“Kerda…will you come with me?”

“Will you hurt me?” Kerda asked guardedly.

“No. Never. I swear.”

“All right,” said Kerda.

Clarinda nodded, and started to walk off into the dark of the forest. Kerda followed her, and the others started to as well.

“Are you insane!” shouted Turkin. “We were being trained to kill her kind! You can’t…this is crazy! Berola, tell them they’re crazy!”

“You’re crazy!” Berola called.

But the youngsters didn’t stop, following Clarinda. And as the last of them disappeared into the woods, Turkin and Berola exchanged nervous looks, shouted as one, “Wait for us!” and sprinted off after them into the endless night of Feend.

ii.

You are out of your
mind.

The thought kept flitting through Clarinda’s head as she led the Ocular children away from their ancestral home without the faintest notion of where she was leading them to. The only thing she knew that was important was that she had to get them as far away from the immediate area as possible.

She heard huffing and groaning from the children after the third hour of the rapid pace she was maintaining, and she turned and looked at them with obvious annoyance. “I thought,” she said tersely, “that you were all supposed to be warriors. What is all this whining I hear? This complaining?”

“We’re tired,” moaned one of the younger males. Clarinda hadn’t taken the time to learn all their names. There were several dozen of them. Chances were she would never need to know. As soon as they had gotten her clear of Feend, beyond the reach of the Piri, she would take her leave of them and that would be the end of that.

Before Clarinda could chide her, however, the younger female, Kerda, cuffed the complainer on the side of the head. The complainer stopped and looked balefully at Kerda with his single eye. He was at least a head taller than she, but she wasn’t the least intimidated by him. “Stop it,” she said. “Clarinda is doing the best she can.”

“How do we know that?” he said, rallying. “How do we know what she’s doing? She’s a damned Piri! A ground-dwelling, blood-sucking Piri! Are we so desperate for leadership that we’re following our enemies into who-knows-where?”

“Leadership? You think I give a damn about leadership?” said Kerda heatedly. “Right now I’d just be happy to be with someone who knows what she’s doing! Who knows something about the world!”

“And you think she knows aught of the world? She lives underground, for gods sake! What is someone who roots around beneath the dirt supposed to know about anything above it?”

Clarinda hated to admit that it was a perfectly valid question. She had been to various places in the Damned World, but consistently had remained underground. Even when she had wandered so far afield that she had wound up in Trull territory, she had remained safe within the cooling confines of subterranean lairs.

When her mind wandered to her explorations in the land of Trulls—the Underground, as the residents had so dubbed it with the characteristic Trull lack of imagination—naturally her thoughts turned to Eutok. As they did so, her hand drifted to her belly. There was not yet any telltale bulge or swelling as a result of the tiny half-breed dwelling within her. The only reason she knew for certain that his issue was growing within her was what her mother, Sunara Redeye, Mistress of the Piri, had told her.

Sunara had known. No shock there; Sunara always knew.

Clarinda had paid dearly for the knowledge that Sunara had acquired through simple observation. Sunara had tied her up, beaten her so badly with lashes across the back that Clarinda would have collapsed to the ground had ropes not bound her tightly to an upright rock. And then, in order to coax the name of the father from her, Sunara had bitten off the little finger of her left hand and assured her there would be more dismemberment if the name were not forthcoming. Clarinda had screamed then, louder than ever before, and she had howled, “Eutok! Eutok of the Trulls! We met and he was my lover and I did it because I hate you, mother! I hate you! I hate our race! I hate this life! I hate living in fear of mating and being mutilated and turning into a sick, twisted, perverted
monster like you and why not just kill me now a
nd get it over with
!”

In that moment of heat and passion and livid fury toward her mother, she had meant it. The life of the Mistress of the Piri, the title and rank that was hers because of her birth, was not one that she coveted. For the Mistress of the Piri was supposed to be all things to all her people, and thus was required to be turned into some…some asexual thing. Once it was her turn to take on her birthright, she would have her breasts removed, and her nether regions would be burned away, leaving nothing but a scarred and desensitized mass of flesh. She had wanted no part of that, and if her dalliance with Eutok was a means of rebelling against it, well, so be it. She hated her life, she hated her people, she hated the fate that awaited her.

And yet, insanely, for all that, she still didn’t hate her mother. Even though she had said it at the time. Even though her mother had beaten her and maimed her.

What the hell is wrong with me,
she wondered,
that even after everything she did to me, part of me still wants her approval?

The young Ocular were still arguing and the noise brought her attention forcefully back to their situation. “Shut up,” she said tiredly. “Just…shut up.”

To her surprise, that brought the young Ocular to a halt. They stopped their arguing and stared at her expectantly.

They want you to say something. They’re an aspiring army and you’re their leader, and they’re waiting for you to rally them.

She spoke without actually knowing what she was going to say.

“You’re all tired. You’re all hungry. I understand that. We have no shelter. Get used to it. For the time being, we’re going to be living under the stars. As for food,” and she paused and then continued, “which of you is the best hunter? Or at least fancies himself as such?”

Turkin’s hand immediately shot up. A couple of the others were more tentative but joined him in claiming that dubious title.

“All right, then,” she said. “You three head off into the woods. Stay together; this is no time to separate from each other. See what you can find in terms of game for the rest of us.”

The young Ocular had spears and wooden swords, the simple weapons that they had been given by their trainers who thought they would have a lot more time with them before meeting their demise. But they also had bellies that were becoming more familiar with the pangs of hunger with each passing hour, and Clarinda knew that that could be a superb motivator. They headed into the woods, disappearing with as minimal sound as giant beings could make.

“What should the rest of us do?” said Kerda.

“Make yourselves comfortable. We’re going to be here a while.”

“Why here?”

“Why not?” she said reasonably. “Have you a better idea as to where we should be?”

“Back home,” one of the Ocular males said. There was both challenge and frustration in his tone.

Clarinda was in no mood for arguing. “If you wish to return home, feel free to do so. You should be able to find it without too much difficulty. There. You can see the glow in the distance.”

“The Captain said not to,” Berola said firmly. “Or have you forgotten that, you great addled fool?”

“What if he was wrong?”

“You saw what happened to him. You saw how sick he was.” Berola strode toward him and stood there with her hands on her hips, her single eye glaring balefully at him. “You want to end up like him? Do you?”

The male met her glare for a time and then lowered his gaze. He did not respond. He didn’t need to.

Clarinda felt the eyes of the Ocular upon her. Furthermore, she was feeling as hungry as any of them, but she knew that—presuming the others found any game—it would very likely not satisfy her. She had neglected to tell them to bring it alive, and she was not ecstatic about the notion of drinking blood from something dead. The blood of dead creatures, even if the source was only deceased for a few minutes, had a rank and bitter taste to it. Cold blood held no allure for her; she needed warm blood.

And even if they did indeed bring something to her alive, she was not comfortable with the notion of eating in front of the young Ocular. She knew that many of them were still uneasy with the fact that one of the predatory Piri was now in a position of leadership. They might well start to worry that she would turn on them in their sleep and feast on their blood while they lay helpless.