Gowen turned to Galen. Galen realized his hand was clenched around Gowen's arm. He forced his fingers to open. Herazade stood, and Gowen took her place, extending his shield to include the still, black figure. He pulled the tattered remnants of robe away from the red – streaked chest, laid his hands on the heart, sending healing organelles into the body.
Blaylock and Herazade must have done the same, though it hardly seemed possible this blackened statue could be alive.
Galen found Blaylock standing beside him. Blaylock put a hand on his shoulder, guiding him to kneel opposite Gowen. Galen knew what was expected; he must contribute organelles. But with the figure right beside him, he didn't want to look at it, didn't want to touch it. He laid his hands on the chest. It was warm, fluttering with quick, silent breaths.
Beneath, the subtle beating of a heart. His gaze traveled up the burned chest and neck to the face, and the guise of an ancient, peaceful statue had vanished. It was Elric, gouges ripped down his cheeks, Elric's stern face, thin lips, the three lines of grave disappointment – all burned to blackness. He had been forced to curl up on the floor, alone, as his body cooked from the outside in. Galen turned his mind away, looked down at his hands, visualized the equation.
His palms tingled as a wave of organelles passed through his skin and into that fluttering chest below. The extensive facial burns made it likely that superheated air had been inhaled. If the vast surface area of the lungs was seriously damaged, the organelles could not work quickly enough to repair it. Galen visualized the equation again, again. As the organelles passed out of him, he felt a disorienting shift in his blood, as if he'd stood too suddenly. Gowen held the crystal over Elric, using it to gain information from the organelles and... direct them in their healing.
Gowen's eyes were squeezed closed. A tear ran down his face. Galen pulled off his coat, laid it over Elric. He knelt there uselessly, just as he had knelt beside her, waiting for her to die. He could not tell if Elric was conscious. He took Elric's left hand in his. The skin was red, swollen, dry. The hand seemed a strange, foreign object. They had hardly ever touched.
Galen squeezed gently, released. It remained a limp, dead weight. He bent down, brought his mouth beside Elric's misshapen black ear. He could barely catch his breath to speak.
"I'm here. Can you hear me?"
Elric's black lips, slightly parted, remained still. Galen should have been there to watch over him, to protect him. Instead, Galen had rebuffed him, neglected him, condemned him. Perhaps he could still reach Elric, could convince Elric to hold on.
Galen closed his eyes, visualized the equation for an electron incantation. The tech echoed the spell, and he chose as his setting the circle of standing stones on Soom, as Elric always did.
Unlike the standard message spell mages commonly used for communication, the electron incantation worked through means they did not understand at all. One could communicate with another no matter the distance, the connection made without the aid of FTL relays, minds meeting on some dreamlike inner landscape.
Within the spell, they were outside space, outside time. He found himself standing beside one of the tall, moss- covered stones, the scent of the sea sharp on the breeze. In its brilliant lime-green sheath, the massive stone somehow radiated a sense of life and power. As with most objects in an incantation, it carried heightened intensity and significance. He looked into the mist for Elric, but saw only the hulking shadows of the other stones.
"Elric!"
He ran into the circle.
"Elric!"
Galen found him lying on the thick moss at the circle's center. He appeared in the incantation as he imagined himself unburned, restored to the height of his health. His eyes were closed, his hands folded over his chest like a corpse tying in state. Galen rushed to him, fell to his knees.
"I'm here. What can I do? Tell me what to do."
Elric did not move.
Galen grabbed his shoulders, shook him.
"Don't die! Please. You can't leave me."
Elric's body was limp.
"Please. I have to tell you..." Galen's voice broke.
"I know you had to obey the Circle. I know you couldn't tell me the truth. What I did was my fault alone. You taught me to be a good mage. You treated me far better than I deserved. But I have not lived up to your example."
He struggled for voice control.
"You were the best teacher I could have had... and more than that. I appreciate... all you have given..."
He knew what he wanted to say, but the words stuck inside him. He could not leave Elric as he had left her, with the truth unspoken. If he had the chance to bring Elric any pleasure, he must force the words out.
"I love you. I love you more than I ever loved my own father."
Elric's face was slack, unresponsive. He was too late. He had not told Elric when there was still time. He released Elric, straightened. Elric's eyes opened.
"I too have something I must say."
His mouth did not move, but somehow his rich voice vibrated out of the mak, out of the stones around them. He was still alive. His was the life Galen had sensed in the vibrant green moss. With a hard swallow, Galen nodded.
"I have another secret. It is a secret only you and I know; I have told no one else. But you have forgotten it."
Elric's eyes stared into his.
"I cannot tell you this secret; you must remember it on your own. It is a piece of yourself you have long hidden away. I had hoped that you would remember by now, so I would be there to help you. Yet you have not remembered, and I have come to fear that you never will. I tell you because I do not believe you can become a complete person until you reclaim this piece of yourself."
Galen didn't know what he was talking about, didn't care. Only one thing was of any importance. Elric was dying, and Galen couldn't stop it. He would say, though, whatever Elric needed.
"I will not hate you, no matter what it is. Tell me."
"To truly understand yourself, and to truly control yourself, you must know why you do what you do. What is your purpose? Why are you a techno-mage? You have never sufficiently answered that question. Perhaps because you've turned your back on your childhood, when those motivations were formed."
"Those years mean nothing to me," Galen said, his voice quavering. "My life began the day I came to live with you."
"That is not so," Elric said. "I have taught you, helped to guide your development. But your parents formed your foundation."
Galen shook his head. He didn't want to waste these last, precious moments speaking of his parents. Elric's hand rose from his chest, and with a turn revealed his palm. On it lay the ring, with its silver band and ragged black stone. Galen found himself drawn back to that place, to that time so many years ago. Elric emerged from the fire of the spaceship crash, the faint blue cast of a shield giving him the appearance of death itself. Behind him, protected within his shield, floated two supine figures shrouded in sheets. The shapes were irregular, uneven, too small.
Elric stopped before Galen and extended his hand, revealing the ring. For a moment, it seemed as if the ring were Galen's heart, ripped out of his chest, hard, shiny, and black. And though he knew it was not, Galen felt something happening inside him, felt dissolution spreading, felt himself falling apart, felt everything falling apart.
Now it was happening all over again. Everything was falling apart, spinning into chaos. Galen seized Elric's cold hand in both of his, covering the ring.
"You are my true father. You have meant more to me than my parents ever did."
"They are a part of who you are," Elric said. "You, however, are more than they, and you are ready to stand on your own and face them. Only in that way can you heal yourself, which is the first step toward healing others."
"You can't die. You can't die too."
He hunched over Elric's hand.
"We are cursed with violence. We are drowning in it. Now I will lose you to it."
"It is my time," Elric said. "I will await you on the other side. Do not follow me too soon. And do not kill in my name."
Galen rocked back and forth, his body shaking.
"Please don't go. Please don't."
Elric had been the one certainty in his life. Elric had brought him order. He felt as if he would disintegrate, as if he would dissolve into madness.
He whispered, "I don't think I can go on without you."
When Galen looked down, Elric's eyes were closed, his chest and arms partly covered by lime-green moss. In delicate fingers it grew over him, following the contours of his body, his face. It smoothed the creases in his brow; it washed him in a balm of cool green. Galen held tightly to Elric's hand. The green reached up Elric's forearm, his wrist, pushed beneath Galen's skin with soft bristles.
Elric's hand became a clump of moss in his gyp. Galen dropped the hand and threw himself onto Elric, grabbing at the moss-covered body. He would not lose Elric. Beneath him, the curves of Elric's body shifted, flattened. Elric was being absorbed into the planet, drawn down inside it. Galen ripped at the dense green covering, finding only more moss, and dirt, and rock. The ground subsided beneath him, Elric slipping away, vanishing into the mak.
Galen clawed furiously at the ground, dug his fingers deep into the thick, moist vegetation. A sob escaped him. And then from the cold moss, a faint tingling at his fingertips, like the smallest electric shock. The sensation passed inside him, shivering up his hands and arms to his head. There it filled him with longing, regret, a desire to continue. After a few moments, it faded away. He didn't know what it was. Some residual bit of energy, an echo of an echo of an echo?
Galen dug frantically deeper, his fingers meeting rock, scraping against it. The mak had gone flat beneath him. The sensation was gone. Galen cried out, tearing his fingers again and again over the rock. Elric was dead.
C
HAPTER 7
Galen pushed himself up to his knees on the charred tiles where he had fallen. He took in Elric's burned body, his mind an exhausted blank, his body churning with agitating energy. Across from him, Gowen opened his eyes.
Gowen's round face was wet with tears. He clutched the crystal to his chest, looked from Galen to Blaylock and Herazade standing over them.
"The damage was too extensive."
He broke out in sobs.
Galen found himself still holding Elric's hand. He lifted the limp, red weight, laid it across Elric's chest. Then he took its black partner, placed it gently across the first, mimicking Elric's position in the incantation. In the vision, Elric had been healthy, serene. The reality was a ruined shell. What pain had he suffered as he'd been burned alive? How long had he endured, waiting for Galen to answer his call?
"Circe was always so loyal," Herazade said.
"How could she do such a thing?"
They persisted in asking these questions. How could Elizar have killed? How could Circe have killed? How could he himself have killed? The urge was inside them; it was part of them. Even now the great drive to destruction within him was building, the energy welling up, driving through him.
Galen began a mind-focusing exercise.
"She was loyal to her own ambitions," Blaylock said.
"Gowen, keep Circe alive until we return to question her. First we must stop her confederates."
Herazade headed across the room, but Blaylock hesitated, studying Galen. Blaylock would be wondering whether he could be safely left with Circe.
Galen pretended not to notice, returning his gaze to Elric and sitting very, very still. His eyes traced the gouges Circe had ripped down Elric's cheeks.
Elric had been tortured. Elric had been murdered. At last Blaylock left. Gowen wiped at his face, his shoulders still racked with sobs.
"I'm sorry," he said.
His shield slipped off of Galen. The room was clearing of smoke; it was no longer necessary. Gowen crawled across the blackened floor to Circe, turned her onto her back. With one hand on her head, another on her chest, he transferred organelles into her body, beginning the healing process.
Galen stood, walked over to her. Her eyes were closed, her eyelids a swollen, ragged red. Though her bums were not quite as severe as Elric's, they were extensive, and her breath, like his, was rapid and shallow. Galen did not expect she would survive long. Not if he had anything to say about it. He crossed his arms over his chest, holding tightly to the burning energy. He focused on his voice control, issued a command.
"Circe."
Gowen's head jerked up, fear on his face. His sobbing stopped.
"Circe."
Her eyes snapped open.
"Tell me everything."
Her blistered red lips twitched. Her voice was a raspy exhalation.
"Nothing."
More than anything, Galen wanted to conjure the spell of destruction, to feel that great rush of energy, to crush her in the fist of his will.
"Where did you plan to go when you left here? Whom did you plan to see?"
Circe's eyes flicked toward Gowen.
"Protect me."
"Galen. What are you doing?"
Gowen wiped a hand over his forehead.
"You're – hot."
"Sustain her life," Galen said.
His eyes fixed on Circe.
"You will answer me. Or you will know what it feels like to burn alive."
"I would rather die now than" – she coughed – "be flayed later."
Gowen's crystal remained in his lap, his hands at his sides.
"Do," Galen said to him, "as Blaylock directed."
Gowen nodded nervously to himself, held the crystal over Circe, and closed his eyes in concentration.
Galen glanced at Elric's still, ruined body, and his outrage was answered by a surge in the tech. Quickly he added a second mind-focusing exercise to his first. He could not look at Elric again, or he would lose all control.
He visualized the equation, conjured a brilliant blue ball of energy above Circe's head. The red, blistered skin should be supersensitive, raw nerves exposed.