The Chronicles of Jonathon Postlethwaite: The Seed of Corruption (19 page)

                            Jonathon woke suddenly and grief fell upon him like a leaden overcoat. A name burned in his head and iIn his heart .Milly! He leapt to his feet and searched the roof top for her. Perhaps she had eluded them. He had found no sign. She had not died here!

The rotten toothed musket man had begun to stir from  his  enforced  sleep  and  Jonathon  accelerated  his return to consciousness with the feeling of the cold steel of his dead comrades sword at his throat.

                            The man staggered to his feet, his chin balanced on the sword tip. He looked his antagonist in the eyes and spat out blood and the remnants teeth on to the blade. “Where’s the girl! " Jonathon growled. The High Hat slowly shook his head, a surprised, innocent look on his face. “What girl!" he gulped incredulously.

                            Jonathon pushed the sword tip into the skin of the High Hat's throat, a dribble of fresh blood ran down the sword blade to meander around the broken brown teeth which rested there. He waved his hands in protest. "Please  sir."  he  begged,  "  There  was  a  young  boy,

I  suppose a boy, but we didn't get much chance to find out" he chuckled thickly. The humour quickly evaporated as the sword tip cut fractionally deeper. He grunted in pain. “Caldecott took him to Flax. Flax wants the boy Flyer real bad."  he  said  smiling.  “Look  mate"  he begged,  but  a  cunning glint appeared in his eyes. “I had no part in any of this I never killed no-one. Take the sword away and I'll tell you how to get 'im back, I know stuff, y'know." The sword remained at his throat.

Jonathon was not that naive.

“Just tell me where she is, or I'll kill you just like you killed my friends."

                            The High Hat stepped backwards, repelled by the venom in Jonathon's words, but the sword followed him. Now the High Hat was frightened, a strange brightness burned in this Flyer's eyes - it scared him.

“I told Caldecott that one was no boy." he blubbered. “But he said no girl got such fine muscles, so firm." the High Hat shrugged his shoulders " Caldecott’s eyes isn’t so good you know and he said he had no time to lose, before Flax went, he had to claim his reward "

Jonathon jabbed the sword point into the High Hats neck again and he yelped. “Okay! Okay!, there was a big meeting at the Leopard on Chain Street, all the big knobs went, Amaril had to take the boy, err, girl, some party or something, he had to go quick like." Jonathon stared into the. man's eyes - it was the truth. He could feel it. But he could also feel the hatred rising in his prisoner too. Given the slightest opportunity this man would kill him.

As he looked at him the High Hat's eyes continually

glanced over Jonathon's left shoulder. The High Hat nodded. It was the oldest trick in the book and Jonathon fell for it.

For  one  brief  moment  he  took  his  eyes  off  his prisoner and dropped the sword a fraction, it was time enough for the High Hat to pull a stiletto from his coat sleeve and slash at Jonathon's face.

                            Instinctively Jonathon stepped backwards, but fell over the corpse of the other High Hat, the sword flying from his hand. His assailant fell on him in a flash. A hand around his throat and the stiletto was poised above his chest, the High Hats' eyes burned triumphantly as he laughed, spitting blood from his broken gums onto his would be victim's chin.

“Fell for it wanker! Who's on top now then flying man? You gonna beg me while I cut off your bollocks - you hurt me you did!! “Then, with a jerk and surprised shriek of pain, the High Hat crumpled forward, dead on top of him.

Struggling free of the High hat's dead body, Jonathon saw a throwing knife buried deep in his spine. He scanned the roof tops and saw the Turkanschoner staring down from a roof ridge, mumbling to himself.

                            At least Jonathon thought it was the Turkanschoner. Now he looked and seemed different from the naked and savage beast he had encountered in the well shaft. Now he was dressed in a leather tunic, his belt stuffed full of throwing knifes like the one which had killed the High Hat. A great shield adorned his back and a monstrous horned helmet sat on his head. He was now more than the creature which hunted out of desperation and bent to the will of his Tallmen tormentors. Jonathon saw that he had clothed and armed himself but, more importantly Jonathon felt that the Turkanschoner was now more than a trained animal which had wished to feast on Rislo's flesh and fulfil his fiendish programming.

                            The Turkanschoner smiled, at least attempted to, although the effect would have sent many running in fear of their lives, but Jonathon recognised that he had nothing to worry about and now the appearance of large, brown eyes did much to soften his fearful visage.

“Bad man" he spat. “like Tallmen " he pointed a talon to the corpse. Smell of badness, we kill all badness master? he grinned again. Jonathon shrugged, heavy with grief. During his previous encounter with this being, Jonathon had seen little to threaten in the soul of the Turkanschoner – he was not  evil.  The  only  threat  came  from  his undoubted physical abilities as a perfect  merchant  of death, propelled by his pain inflicted conditioning.

                            His new master had been able to glimpse more of the beast's past than he himself had been able to recall himself. He was a warrior, but had a sense of justice and an abhorrence of unnecessary violence. The Tallmens’ conditioning had changed all that. He had seen himself as a predator that lived for the hunt and the rewards it had brought, his own survival. But now this part of him, the Tallmens’ conditioning, was fast unravelling, prompted by Jonathon's catalytic psychic contact.

                            The Turkanschoner was not entirely aware of this. He only knew that he owed this unique person something, he believed him to be the master now, a good master who had rewarded him with the strength to partially free himself from the mental chains of the Tallmen.

                            He now saw Jonathon  as  a  master  who himself was a warrior as he himself had been, but did not know it. He felt an empathy with him and  would fight with him against  Jonathon's  enemies  the malignant soul of Dubh and its dark champion Silus Flax. But the beast saw something else in this young white knight. The purpose and will to destroy his enemies were there, but something else still stood between him and the actual perpetration of the ultimate act of destruction at which he would eventually arrive.

                            The beast saw that the young man doubted he could do it,  doubted  that  his  morals  would  allow  him to send the millions of beings here in Dubh to their deaths,  despite  their  corrupted  souls.   He   had   not yet the strength to judge and damn them.  This disturbed the Turkanschoner.  It  would  mean  defeat for Jonathon and victory for the dark force which had consumed Dubh if he did not find the power to take that final step. He would lose his master and with him the hope the beast placed in him for the momentum for the salvation of his own soul and past Jonathon had already,   albeit   inadvertently   begun.

                            Jonathon saw all these fears reflected in the mind  of the Turkanschoner, who had looked into his soul. The servant beast implored his master to become carry out his oaths, to crash through the barrier of self doubt. The monstrous creatures brown eyes beseeched him to strengthen his resolve. Jonathon felt a soft, grey mocking laughter drifting up from the city.

“Yes, become like us, become like me Me."

It knew too, It listened to his thoughts…always. But how could he do it he asked himself!  How could he commit such an act of mass murder and not become one with the city itself? In such an  act  he would lose himself, defeat himself His  eyes  met  the  Turkanschoner's. Something  flowed              between              them              and              the              City's laughter              was              silenced.

“Love,  honour,  justice,  compassion  -  It  knows nothing,  people are lost forever, know nothing but pleasure, pain." the beast said.

“But I am not a God, I cannot judge and condemn them all." Jonathon replied.

The Turkanschoner snorted cynically. “No god here, God is dead, only you, Avatar - must do duty! " it implored again.  Jonathon  reeled  back  from  the beast's  mind  in  shock. Something was happening there again, he felt a power there. The lost being, that was before the Tallmen captured him, was reconstructing itself, aided by forces beyond Dubh.

                            The beast knew of love and all the virtues and more it had managed to recite to Jonathon, and it knew of the quest for spiritual perfection. Now fragile memories began to surface like flotsam from a ship in the dark river itself. The pleasant memories came first welling up warmly and attracting similar fragments.

                            At first it was pleasurable, but the intensity was alarming, long buried treasured relics lost their dust and began to blaze inside the Turkanschoner's mind and soul. These too stimulated Jonathon's memory. He remembered Dale and Tefkin, his Mother, his Father and Cornelius in better times: better times. Jonathon knew the price that was always paid for these memories. He knew what shadows trailed in  their sparkling wake, he knew what would happen to the Turkanschoner, he had not experienced these memories for many years. They had lain dormant and emotionally volatile, buried beneath the Tallmen's conditioning. Jonathon had lit a candle in the darkness of the beasts buried self. The Turkanschoner would soon have his past; if it did not destroy him first.

                            Jonathon remained in mental contact. He thought he could help. A vanguard echo hit them, a mere breeze of emotion which Jonathon knew was a prelude to the hurricane   which   would   hit   them   soon   and   for   the Turkanschoner, hit unaware, unprepared.

                            Then the newly recollected storm of terror and grief struck surged into both their minds, the deep vaults of the shackled past exploded through the fractures Jonathon had made with his probing - the past emerged, intact and terrifying.

                            The Turkanschoner had lost all in one night of violence and atrocity. His family  his  wife,  his  people. His sanity. His faith. His freedom ... Himself. Jonathon heard a silent scream beginning deep  inside  the battered soul of the Turkanschoner, long before it was to manifest itself physically.

Then it tore vengefully into the heart of the city. A howl of enlightened anguish that hammered the un- hearing walls of the Towers of the Tallmen and reverberated around the domes of the Halls of Machines. Yet no one in the city, apart from Jonathon paid it any attention.

                            In the city it was just the sound of another collapsing, despairing soul that had been heard a million times before. Jonathon's catalytic gift had cracked the great dyke which subdued a great reservoir of emotion in the beast's soul. Now that dyke had heaved  and collapsed. The Turkanschoner had the past he feared he would  lose  with  the  loss  of  Jonathon  back  now,  but Jonathon feared he had destroyed him. Guilt lanced into Jonathon's heart like a hot iron. He could not stay to see what he had done him. He fled, hurling himself across the roof tops with a wild, reckless abandon, a man possessed by the guilt of what he had inflicted on the unsuspecting, trusting Turkanschoner, one ofthe  few  beings still unaffected by the foul soul of the city and he, Jonathon Postlethwaite had destroyed him.

Jonathon raced without rest deep into the Lower City.

                            Eventually he stopped, physically and mentally exhausted and as he  finally  finished  weeping  himself, he   listened   and   the   wails   of    the    still distressed Turkanschoner drifted across the city like a siren, cutting into his heart. He looked down to the street below. Unconsciously he had found his way to Chain Street.

                            An Inn sign hung like a beacon. The only thing left between himself and self destruction was down there somewhere and he had come here unconscious of his own desperate attempt to save himself from his pain. His flying feet had found the way, carried him to the place where he might restore balance  in  his  own grief stricken mind. Down there was his hope, his love, his handhold on reality and his sanity. Down there was  Milly. Jonathon began to weep again. Far across the Lower city, the howls of the Turkanschoner abruptly ceased.

Chapter Fifteen

                            Rislo's trembling had almost ceased by the time he reached the passageways which led to the Tower's of the Tallmen. When he thought that the beast, the Turkanschoner,  had   passed   inches   from   him without tearing  him to  pieces   he  gasped   in   relief. Yet the  memories  of  what  it  could  have  done caused  him  to  weaken at the knees again.

                            He stood, alone in his bubble reassuring light for a while to collect his thoughts,  then took a  deep breath before continuing into the tombs of the Tallmen. His orb light, set a deliberately low level, picked out the sparkling dust and ash particles left in the air after the Turkanschoner's savage desecration of the Tombs. He tip-toed quietly amongst his resting kinsmen, even though his respect for them and their society was, like these Tallmen here, long dead.    He felt like the only survivor of a long lost culture of pride, honour and dignity, yet was still shocked when he saw the damage wreaked in the tomb by the Turkanschoner.