Chapter Sixteen

“If,” the Tsarevich said, his voice loud enough to roll around the rocks and bones and echo in the still, cold air, “if there are to be no more of interruptions. Then perhaps it is possible to do this thing.”

Some of the cultists had still been screaming. All of them had been shouting for help or for succor. They fell silent at their lord’s command. Those who had been busy before with assembling the machinery around the scaffold and those who had been erecting the two sharp metal spikes at its top got back to work. There were a lot of bodies to be removed from the battlefield, many of them already struggling to get back up, to begin the new and glorious phase of their existence.

No one touched Dekalb’s headless body. It was just so much dead meat to them. Sarah wanted to go to it, to hold her father’s hands once last time, but she knew if she tried to do so the Tsarevich’s troops would simply shoot her. There would be no warnings, no second chances. They would kill her. Without her father to protect and heal her she would just die. And then come back.

A sort of convulsion went through her, wracking her body. Her muscles spasmed and her eyes ached. A sob came up out of her throat and threatened to turn into a wail. She was surprised by the emotional reaction. She didn’t understand it. It was grief, and she had known she would feel grief, but this just wasn’t the time. It wasn’t yet time for her to process everything that had happened.

It shook her and shook her until she dropped to her knees and bowed her head and hot tears fell into the dust. It made no sense. She was tougher than this. She shoved her hands in her pockets to try to keep them from trembling. She found the noose and ran it between and around her fingers as if she were making a cat’s cradle.

Lass, I feel for you, I do. But I’m the last fellow you should be coming to for comfort. You failed me. You failed all of us.

Sarah shook her head, uncomprehending. “What is so important,” she asked, staring into the brain’s jar, wanting to reach into the liquid there and shred the grey matter inside. “What is so important that it had to bring me to my father, and then tear him away from me like this? What is so important that Ayaan had to be turned into a monster? Please, Mael Mag Och, help me. Help me understand.”

The end of the world, he told her. What could be more important than the end of the world?

She stood up, straining her legs to get up off her knees. The mummy holding the jar stood as still as the dead thing she’d once been. A perfect statue, a thing to prop up the jar and nothing more. The mummy didn’t react at all when Sarah stumbled forward and grabbed at the jar with her bound hands. She had trouble grasping it so she put her chin down on its top and supported it from beneath with spread fingers. The mummy didn’t try to stop her. It didn’t even relax its arms—it just stood there, elbows bent, hands extended, waiting for her to put the jar back.

Instead she turned around and started walking. Toward the Source.

What should have been won by strength of arms can still be won by guile, he told her. She ignored him, though she didn’t let go of the noose either. She stepped on a jagged piece of pelvis and nearly fell over but managed to recover her balance.

She took another step and felt the jar grow warm in her hands. The brain inside had no muscles and couldn’t spasm but she could feel its consciousness bashing against the walls of the jar, trying to break free.

Lass! Don’t quit on me now. I took a chance with your Ayaan and she quit on me too soon. That’s why so many had to die. I’m telling you full truth, now. Don’t make the same mistake she did, not if you value the things I’ve given you.

Sarah took another step. Another one. A bubble appeared inside the jar and splattered apart against its lid. She felt Mael Mag Och kick at her hands. It was all in her mind, she knew that, but he was fighting her. He didn’t want to go any farther in.

“My mother. My father. Ayaan. Jack. All of my parents, all of them dead. Undead. And then murdered fucking again,” she chanted.

I feel I really must protest. Ayaan isn’t twice dead, Jack was just a false persona and your mother—

“You know nothing about my mother! Neither do I! That’s the goddamned point!”

She kept walking. The liquid in the jar grew uncomfortably hot. Her chin burned against the metal lid. Her hands ached from his attacks. She took another step and the heat was just too much. She let go and the jar fell away from her. The glass cracked as it struck the carpet of bones. The jar broke apart and half the liquid inside sloshed out. The brain sat in what remained of the jar—a kind of broken-edged cup, half-full of liquid. Steam lifted from between its two hemispheres like a ghostly crest.

Do you think this will kill me? he asked. He sounded quite calm. There’s no point to this, whatever it is you may want, lass. I have as many bodies as I like. I have as many—

She shoved the noose back into her pocket. She didn’t want to hear anymore. She watched the brain turn white and shrink down as the liquid bubbled and hissed and frothed. She watched the brain boil in its own juices. That was the point. It made her feel a little better. That was the point.

A mountain of flesh that stank like an unwashed cultist grabbed her around the waist and hauled her up into the air. Someone had noticed she was missing and had come to bring her back. She didn’t scream. Bodily she was carried back to the Tsarevich’s camp, most likely to be killed.

Life had a little surprise for her. Ayaan was waiting near the scaffolding. Sarah was dumped at the lich’s feet. Ayaan helped her stand up.

“I didn’t like him either, but the Tsarevich had a use for him.” Ayaan shook her head fiercely. “I hate to play at being the adult and telling you not to meddle in things you don’t understand.”

“Then don’t. And I’ll return the favor.” Sarah refused to meet Ayaan’s eyes.

The two women who had attended Nilla as she approached the Source returned. Their wires lead across the valley and up the ridge on the far side. Their faces and hands were covered in a fine powdering of white and yellow dust. A boy with a bucket of water and a ladle ran up to them and let them drink and wash up.

The Tsarevich, still sitting in a wire shopping cart, was wheeled closer to the scaffolding. His head dangled over the side and his knuckles twitched against the bones as he was brought bumping and rattling to the base of the construction.

“This is the master you serve,” Sarah said. She lacked the energy to really belabor the point but she couldn’t let it go without comment, either. “The monster’s monster.”

“He’ll be transformed in a moment. If physical beauty is all you look for in a leader then I’ve taught you poorly.” Ayaan sounded pissed. Sarah wondered how far she would have to go to make the lich attack her. If she was doomed, if she had no more chances, maybe it would be worth it. Maybe she could anger Ayaan so much that her body, or rather her corpse, would be of no use to the Tsarevich.

Sarah’s blood went cold at the thought. Not the thought of being a ghoul. At the thought of dying at all. She knew it was just her biology speaking, her ingrained survival instinct, but it didn’t seem to matter. Her body didn’t want to die, no matter what her mind might decide. It would rebel against her if she tried to commit suicide.

The electronic boxes bolted to the scaffolding started to buzz and the exposed vacuum tubes came to life, glowing a cheerful orange. One of them flared white and then burst into darkness, then another. Cultists were ready for this and switched out the bulbs with remarkable speed. They must have been training for this for months, Sarah decided. Drilling for their one big moment, their contribution to the Tsarevich’s ascendance.

Under the power of his own unequal arms the arch-lich dragged himself up a ladder on the side of the scaffolding. Rung by torturous rung he hauled himself upward. The air smelled of ozone and real heat was coming off the machinery by the time he reached the top. He waved at the crowd, who cheered in return. Then he threw himself forward, right onto the twin giant metal spikes.

He sank downward with a scream that was a little bit violent agony and a tad sexual. The spikes transfixed him. Impaled him. Pure energy rushed through them like water down high-pressure hoses. It flooded into him. Sarah could see it crackling around him like electricity crawling over his skin. His one visible eye went wide with it, his mouth opened in a perfectly round O. A stench of burning hair rushed down off of him and flowed across the spectators. Sarah raised her bound hands to her face.

“You can be part of the future, Sarah. You can come with me and build something. Wouldn’t that be nice? To stop destroying, to stop killing, and build?” Ayaan was shouting in her ear. Sarah hadn’t realized how noisy the little valley had become with all the popping vacuum tubes and crackling skin.

Every bone in the Tsarevich’s left arm cracked with a series of pops like muffled gunshots. The skin of his deformed hand flowed and flexed like a piece of rubber under stress. His face was changing shape, its contours shifting, rebuilding themselves.

“You don’t have to die today. It will be difficult,” Ayaan told her, “but I can convince them. I know I can. I only need you to say yes. I need you to agree to be a part of what we are working for.”

Sarah opened her mouth to reply. Then she closed it.

The Tsarevich’s mouth was moving, his jaw flexing. It looked like he was trying to say something. His right leg, the short one, flapped like a sheet on a clothesline.

The fingernails on his hand curled and bent around themselves. They split the flesh of his fingertips. His hand tried to close in a fist but the fingers spat out wet, dark sparks. His body twisted and shook and pulsed with noisy explosions. Sarah could only imagine that his internal organs were exploding one by one like potatoes left too long in the coals of a campfire.

Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

With a wet splash his good eye burst in its socket. The green phantom hobbled forward and tried to smash at the vacuum tubes with his femur staff. There was no on/off switch on the machinery. Energy slashed out of him and he staggered back. He tried again and got knocked back again. It didn’t matter, after a moment.

Up on the spikes the Tsarevich’s face split open in a horrible grimace as steam built up inside of his head. It shot out of his ears, his nose, his eyes. With a noise of air being sucked into a vacuum his entire body caught fire. He went up like a torch.