Chapter Two

Everyone was staring at her. She found that mildly unnerving.

“Why are you to saying ‘no’?” the Tsarevich asked. His voice sounded like rotten peaches being poured out of a rusty can. Cicatrix had a look on her face of deep concern. Did she understand? Did she realize this had all been a set-up?

The voice of the disembodied brain raged and railed inside Ayaan’s head, but she refused to move. How dare you, I’ve given you a command! You will do as I say, and you’ll do it now, lass, because there is one fucking lot more riding on this than you think. I—

You’ll what? she asked, silently. No reply was forthcoming. The voice had disappeared with as little warning as it came. She turned and stared at the brain. It didn’t move at all, of course. Its energy was unchanged. Why had it stopped in mid-sentence?

Before she could even begin to wonder she was knocked off her seat. Semyon Iurevich had come at her with a spike in his hand, growling for death. She rolled across the floor and came up in a stiff-legged crouch only to realize that he wasn’t trying to kill her after all. He’d been aiming for the Tsarevich.

His plan had failed—his programmed assassin had refused to kill on cue. So he had gone with a contingency plan. He would throw away his own life to murder the Tsarevich. Unfortunately there was one problem with his thinking. Like all liches, like all undead things, his motor skills were quite poor.

The spike in his hand was little more than a sharpened metal rod. One of the crudest weapons imaginable. He probably had meant to push it through the Tsarevich’s eye but his hand went wide and he caught the point in the skin of Cicatrix’s neck. Bright red blood erupted from the wound and splattered Semyon Iurevich’s bath robe, pooled in the Tsarevich’s twisted lap. The hypnotist lich tried to pull his spike free for a second attack but the green phantom swooped into the middle of the room and held out one hand and the would-be assassin collapsed in a volitionless heap.

The lights flared up—Erasmus had switched them on. MAD-O-RAMA’s dark corners were speared by floodlights that showed every speck of dust and curl of old peeling black paint.

“I must have,” Cicatrix said, her voice high and brittle with shock. “I must have the machines with crash cart, it is being promised to to to me, I live forever!” She sounded like a mewling cat as her blood ran away across the floor. Erasmus dragged Semyon Iurevich’s motionless body out of the room as Ayaan lifted Cicatrix down from the throne. She tried putting pressure on the wound but the spike had gouged out half of Cicatrix’s throat. It didn’t hurt that the Tsarevich had already drunk enough of her blood to leave her anemic and weak as a kitten.

“Is good life, I want more,” the scarred woman begged, but there was nothing Ayaan could do. Clearly she had been promised eternal life as a lich. Instead in a few minutes she would die and rise as a ghoul.

Ayaan looked up at the Tsarevich, who was literally foaming at the mouth with excitement. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

The single eye rolled in her direction but the prince of the dead said nothing.

“Damn you,” Ayaan said. Cicatrix had lost consciousness and was barely breathing. “There’s no time to make her a lich, even if I thought it should be done. I can keep her from coming back, though.”

The Tsarevich sucked on his lower lip and convulsed in his throne. Was it a nod, a shrug, or merely an involuntary spasm?

It would have to be good enough. Ayaan frowned and pulled power into her hands. She leaned forward and closed Cicatrix’s eyes. In a very perverse way the living woman had been her closest friend in the camp of the liches. She kissed the shaved head and said a brief prayer for Cicatrix’s salvation, begging Allah to see past the woman’s decadence and her fraternization with monsters.

Then Ayaan brought up her hands and blasted Cicatrix’s head until the skin and muscle and fat melted away and the skull beneath turned yellow. She kept it up until the bone scorched and steam fizzed out of Cicatrix’s eye sockets.

For a long moment while she hovered over the dead woman Ayaan could think only of Dekalb. At the end of his life she had offered this same service. He had refused, and she had simply walked away. She’d always regretted that, leaving such a hero to become just another shambling, mindless wanderer. Perhaps this duty made up a little for her previous failure.

Eventually she rose to her feet and straightened her hair. She felt drained. She felt hungry and wondered if any of the goats from the farm in Pennsylvania were still available. A tang of disgust bit into the back of her throat—she had just boiled the brains of a friend, she had turned Cicatrix’s eyes to running custard. She should hardly be thinking of food. Yet she was a dead thing and she knew the hunger would never stop.

“Be taking this one away,” the Tsarevich said. Ayaan looked up, startled, expecting to be accosted by handless ghouls. The Russian lich had been talking to the green phantom, however, who grabbed up Cicatrix’s pink ankles in his skeletal hands. He dragged her from the room without further ceremony.

Ayaan turned to face the mummy who held the brain, then at Nilla, who just looked sad. She glanced back at the Tsarevich. “I will take them to a safe place,” she announced. “There could be a follow-up attack. I recommend finding a hiding place for yourself.”

It turned out the Tsarevich was capable of nodding after all.

Nilla led her small procession out of MAD-O-RAMA and up the boardwalk, the silver planks of wood echoing like drums under her boots. Before they had taken a hundred steps the brain spoke to her again.

Bollocks, he swore. I can assure you we won’t get a chance like that again. We could have killed him! Slaughtered him where he sat! From now on he’ll be expecting an attack. He’ll take precautions, perhaps hide himself away again where no one can find him. And it’s all your fault.

Ayaan looked at Nilla. The blonde lich pushed her hair out of her eyes with one pale hand but the breeze off the sea kept fluttering her locks down across her eyes.

The brain sputtered inside Ayaan’s mind. Don’t worry about her, she and I are friends from far back. You can speak as you please. Now tell me, lass, did you lack courage? When it came to the fatal moment, did you lose your bottle? Tell me just what in the blooming bastard hell were you thinking?

Ayaan addressed the brain directly, leaning down toward the mummy’s hands to get closer. “I was thinking I don’t trust you.”

Hah! You don’t trust me?

“I don’t trust the Tsarevich either, if that’s what you’re driving at. He turned me into a monster and I will never forgive him. But how much do my feelings matter in this? He is the only one who can rebuild this sad empty world. He is the only one who has the power. I saw as much in Pennsylvania.”

Strength should never be concentrated in the hands of one man. It must always be tempered with the wisdom of those who went before. It sounded like a recitation of holy scripture. Ayaan ignored it.

“You told me he had to be destroyed, that he had a plan of ultimate evil in mind. Now that grand secret plan is revealed—he simply wants to heal his broken body! I should kill a crippled man because he wishes to be whole?”

I'm not sure you understand. He has forced me to teach him the necessary magics. He has prepared the way to absorb all the energy of the Source into himself. That kind of power can do anything. It can reshape his body, fair enough, and mayhaps that's all he wants. Yet coupled with his level of control there’s not a lot he couldn’t do. He could end your life with an eyeblink, lass, if he chose. Cause wanton destruction, vanquish all who stood before him without lifting a deformed finger. He could rule by fire where before he’s always ruled by iron.

“He needs to take power into his own hands if he’s to do anything valuable.” Ayaan scowled. Why couldn’t she make the brain understand? Humanity needed a leader. It needed a leader who could work miracles. It was the only hope, for any kind of a future.

She felt the brain trying to turn over in its jar. It’s an ugly stretch of road from here to there. Do you truly expect him to do his best by all the wee folk in his wake? He mutilates their corpses!

“That’s true. Who ever built a mosque, though, who didn’t tear down hovels to make room? If you gave me a good enough reason, if you had given me any kind of reason at all I would gladly have sacrificed myself and yes, all of his followers, to destroy him. But you didn’t. You decided instead to pollute my mind with post-hypnotic suggestions. Why should I give you my loyalty, when you try to take it by force?”

The brain was silent for quite a while.

You’ve gone soft.

Ayaan roared with disgust.

Fathers before us. You’ve actually fallen for the cod’s wallop that tosser spews out, haven’t you? You’ve turned. I had our Semyon lie on your behalf but he needn’t have, eh? They brainwashed you just fine.

“Be careful what you suggest,” Ayaan told him. “I happen to be a specialist in laying the dead to rest. I’ve never killed a ghost before but I’m willing to learn how.”

If only it were that simple.

Ayaan stormed away from him, but only for a few paces. She was alone, all alone in the midst of monstrosity. She was enmeshed in secrets and lies and plans she didn’t have a hand in forming. She could not afford to give anything up. “What about you?” she demanded, staring at Nilla. “What’s your part in this?”

The blonde lich turned to face the sun. “I’ve already told you, I’m nobody. And that’s what makes me special.”

Ayaan shook her head and dropped to sit on the sand. She hated nothing more in the world than riddles. Studiously she tried to ignore them. She stared out at the water as it broke on the sand. The sun had moved visibly across the sky by the time she noticed something flailing in the surf, something yellow and red and black with a bit of silver on one end and white spars sticking out of the sides.

Its limbs extended and then dropped, digging deep into the sand. It reared up, water pouring from its orifices and crevices and nooks and crannies. It had been human, once. It looked like a portioned chicken. The silver bit had been a helmet, strapped to its head. It had slipped down to cover one of its eyes; the other eye socket was empty and raw as if it had been gnawed on. Long strips of its skin had come off in the water while the salt had washed its exposed bones quite clean. It was the ugliest thing Ayaan had ever seen.

“What now?” she demanded.

The brain answered. That’s one of Amanita’s foot soldiers. If it came here on its own that can only mean one thing. She must be dead.