Death.
He’d failed.
The rebellion was no more.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
SIRIS WALKED, head down, among the blasted ruins of what had once been the rebellion headquarters. Burned bodies lay scattered like fallen branches. The command center was a smoldering heap, not a single wall still standing.
The Worker had known. All along, he’d known. He’d sent machines across the sky to deliver death. Siris fell to his knees near where small bodies lay in a depression, where they’d tried to hide. The children . . . the children he’d played with . . .
The Dark Self stirred. Furious, it wanted to lash out. Siris screamed, stabbing the Infinity Blade down into the ground.
Why? Why hadn’t the people fled? He’d sent messages telling them that the Worker knew where they were! What had gone wrong?
Coughing.
Siris stumbled to his feet, pulling the Blade out of the ground and waving it in the darkness. Burning fires gave light to the armored figure who approached. The figure had lost most of its breastplate and was missing one arm, which ended in a burned stump.
Siris recognized that armor. But moreso, there were few beings who could walk so confidently after taking such terrible wounds.
“Raidriar,” Siris said, lowering his sword. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be back at the hideout?”
In a rare show of trust, the God King removed his helm, ripping it free with his remaining hand. The Dark Self thrashed inside of Siris. It recognized that face, identical to that of the Soulless he had killed shortly before.
“What happened?” Raidriar asked, dropping his helm, then wiping sweat from his brow.
“He knew,” Siris said. “At the palace, your Soulless . . . he was researching the Worker’s plots. He had found them, pulled them up on his screen. The latest was a strike that had been ordered on this very location.”
The God King cursed, stumbling closer. Siris tightened his grip on the Infinity Blade.
“Why are you here?” Siris demanded. What was going on? Isa? She would be back at the hideout, fortunately.
“Why am I here?” Raidriar said. “You summoned me!”
“I tried to send everyone away! My message was an alarm!”
“So he beat us in that, too,” Raidriar said. “He intercepted your communication, twisted it. Damn.” Raidriar glanced at the Infinity Blade, a veiled hunger in his eyes, but he didn’t reach for it. He walked over to a rise of broken earth and slumped down, back to it, breathing out.
Siris turned about, the numb feeling of loss returning. In his mind’s eye, he remembered these people cheering him, saluting him, looking upon him with awe. He’d failed them miserably.
“At least you have it,” Raidriar said. “The Weapon.”
Siris turned the Infinity Blade over in his hand. “He knew I was coming for it, Raidriar. The Worker . . . he knew everything. He even knew that your Soulless was infiltrating his systems.” Siris laughed, feeling as mad as the copy he’d just faced, and settled down on the ground. He pulled out a small mirror—a datapad—and tossed it to Raidriar.
The God King caught it with his single hand. He grunted, reading the illuminated screen.
Siris lay back, staring up at the sky. The only direction he could look and not see corpses.
He could still smell them burning, though. The Dark Self shook and growled. Siris barely kept it contained.
“He was wrong,” the God King said.
Siris sat up. “What do you mean? He knew about this, about the rebellion. He knew about Lux, had lists of our officers . . .”
“He thought you’d have an entire force of Deathless by now,” Raidriar said, holding up the pad. “It says here that this attack was in part meant to clog your rebirthing chamber, force you to spend weeks rebuilding your Deathless army.”
“A minor error,” Siris said with a sigh. “He was right about everything else.”
“It is important,” Raidriar said softly. “It means that he can be wrong.” He rubbed his finger along the outside of the mirror, as if it were some holy relic. “Unless this is some way of manipulating us as well. How to know . . . ?”
Siris groaned, climbing to his feet.
“And what are you going to do?” Raidriar asked.
“Keep looking for survivors.”
“You won’t find any,” Raidriar said, then pointed. “Though if you were going to, they’d probably be that direction. Near Isa’s body.”
Siris froze. “She came with you?” he screamed. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
The God King didn’t reply.
No!
Siris came to himself cradling the burned corpse. He didn’t remember running to it. It was her. Oh . . . it was her. Enough remained of her face for him to make it out.
Raidriar walked up, armor clinking.
Siris hissed, the Dark Self squirming free. He dropped Isa and scrambled for Raidriar, picking up a blackened stone in his hand, the only weapon he could find.
Raidriar leveled the Infinity Blade, which he’d been carrying behind his back. “You dropped something.”
Siris stopped short. Even the Dark Self cowered.
Raidriar held its point to Siris’s chest for a moment, then lowered it. “I am going to go and kill him,” Raidriar said, voice cold. “The Worker goes too far. This wholesale slaughter of my people . . . the indifference he shows for rule. I will cut his heart from him with the Weapon he himself forged.”
“I get first chance at him,” Siris hissed.
“Have you ever fought the Worker?”
“Does it matter?” Siris demanded, stepping forward, clutching his rock.
“Get hold of yourself, Ausar,” Raidriar spat.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was . . .” Siris gasped in breath. “You held off. To bring me pain.”
Raidriar glanced at Isa’s corpse. “I held off to get information. I didn’t want you running off until I knew what had happened. Now . . . forgetting to tell you that she was Deathless . . . that I did to bring you pain.”
“Deathless?” Siris stammered. He spun on Isa’s body.
“She stepped into the Pinnacle of Sanctification before we came here,” Raidriar said. “Her body is new to being Deathless, however. It will take more time than usual to recover. The first times are hard, as you may remember—but no, of course. You do not.”
Siris knelt again beside Isa. Could it be true? Was Raidriar lying?
If Isa was Deathless . . .
Siris looked up, coming back to himself. The Dark Self retreated—it wasn’t pushed down, it merely retreated to smolder like the burning buildings around him. To plot.
Oh, how I hate you, he thought, looking at Raidriar.
Now in control of himself, the Dark Self and his own self working together, he remembered the little precaution he’d put into place. He tapped his finger against his palm and activated the teleportation ring.
The Infinity Blade vanished from Raidriar’s hand, instead appearing in Siris’s own grip.
“Ah, clever,” Raidriar said. “I should have inspected it for a teleportation ring.” He nodded. “This is good. If I should fall while fighting the Worker, you can summon the Weapon back to you, so he cannot have it. It might even save my life, depriving him of the Blade, should the duel turn against me.”
“You really think I’m just going to let you leave with it?” Siris snapped.
“Do you remember fighting him?” Raidriar challenged. “Do you know his favored blows, his techniques? He is a master duelist. He is a master at everything. Have you fought him, Ausar? Do you know how to defeat him?”
Siris hesitated.
“I have,” Raidriar said, soft, dangerous. “I have bested him in sparring matches, on occasion. You will give me that weapon for the same reason that I sent you to fight my Soulless—because in this case, I have the better chance of winning. And we cannot risk losing.”
“We cou
ld go together,” Siris said.
“With one Infinity Blade? It would be pointless. I will go. It is my place. And you . . . you should take that one back to the hideout and place her in the rebirthing chamber. She has no buds yet to return to, and the chamber will ease the difficulty of her first recovery. Her Q.I.P. remains in a fragile state. She will need you near her when she wakes.”
Siris took a deep breath. All around him burned the tattered remnants of Isa’s rebellion. If she still lived . . .
The Dark Self had an idea.
With a sigh, Siris rammed the Infinity Blade into the smoldering earth, then gestured.
Raidriar snatched it up eagerly. “It is well you brought the information you did. We know where to find the Worker, now. I will strike as soon as my arm is regrown.” He raised the Blade. “It feels so right in my hand . . .” He started to walk away.
Then he hesitated, turning back in the night. “Our ship is at the hidden dock in the southern cove. Use it. See to your woman. I . . . I will see the Worker dead. I will chop off his head and set it up on a pole, for all to revile. This has been a long time coming, for me, Ausar. Farewell. Try not to let anyone kill you while we are apart. I prefer to think of that as my personal privilege.”
He stalked out into the night.
The Dark Self stirred, pleased.
I don’t mind if the Worker kills you, Raidriar, Siris thought, gingerly lifting Isa’s body. I’ve had my fill of it. I just want you gone.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
IT DID not take Raidriar long to heal. He inspected his new arm as he rode his horse to the Worker’s bunker, a monolithic stone tower in the middle of a wide expanse of desert.
He was almost to the end. He stopped as he drew near, then unpacked something he’d tied to the back of the animal. Armor, his real armor, finished by Eves, who had met him on the way. The man had gathered several loyal Devoted out from under the Worker’s heel, and Raidriar had sent them on plots even Ausar didn’t know about.
Raidriar put on his armor. He would not go into this particular battle poorly equipped.
Curiously, he saw two daerils guarding the way in. Unusual for the Worker, who normally eschewed daerils in favor of Deathless guards. It seemed something just for Raidriar, a nod to the way he personally had always done things.
That made him even more angry. The Worker knew he was coming, and had set these beings out here for him to fight, as Raidriar himself had always done with the Sacrifice who came to fight him. A subtle message that the Worker knew he’d be coming.
Raidriar growled and stepped up to engage the first beast.
SIRIS ROCKED in the cabin of the ship, wood groaning softly, waves crashing softly outside. Isa lay wrapped in a sheet on her bed, lashed in place. She was healing, slowly. He’d met back up with TEL and Terr, who now guarded his door.
Siris raised a mirror before himself and engaged it. He was immediately rewarded with an image of the God King riding up to the Worker’s stronghold.
The remote viewing device. Siris had slipped it onto the Infinity Blade’s handle. Now, he would watch for the perfect chance. For there was one thing that had been on the Soulless’s datapad that he’d deleted. One thing that Raidriar hadn’t seen and didn’t know.
The Dark Self hummed softly. No, Siris hummed softly, in satisfaction.
The perfect trap.
RAIDRIAR KICKED a daeril off his sword. The dying creature tumbled down the stairs and slammed against the door at the bottom, throwing it open.
Breathing hard inside his helmet, Raidriar followed it down. The deadmind in his armor chirped a quiet bird whistle in his ear, informing him of a minor injection to boost his stamina. Oddly, as he stepped over the corpse, he found himself struggling to remember the name of the bird that had once made that song. One of his favorites, from long ago . . .
It was gone from his mind, lost to the thousands upon thousands of years it had been since his father had left him on that slab of metal. The bird species itself had been extinct for nearly as long, part of the price paid to bring about the era of the gods.
Raidriar entered the chamber. A throne room, after Deathless ways—but then again, also different. Where the Worker sat at the end, lofty and imposing, was a throne for certain. His seat lay on a large dais high above the room, with a long set of steps leading up to it.
But images hovered around him, screens projected into the air—a contrast to the throne. All those screens, powered by deadminds. Images tugged at the edges of Raidriar’s memory. Visions of another time, visions of his youth, when he had been called Jori. The person he had once been.
Huge windows rimmed the upper edges of the room, showing the desert vista outside. The Worker worked in his hub of light, helm on the chair beside him, looking so . . . human, with the light of the screen reflecting in his eyes. He looked old. Not ancient, but certainly middle-aged, with creases in his skin, silver in his hair.
Raidriar hated how human they all looked, once the masks were gone.
“Worker!” he bellowed, crossing the floor of the chamber.
The Worker didn’t look at him.
“I have escaped your prison, Worker! I am here for you.”
“You are such an interesting specimen, Raidriar,” the Worker said, still watching his screens. He spoke softly, as he often did, though his voice always seemed to carry. That voice . . . it pierced. “Do you realize that? You are like a rare butterfly, whose patterns take generations of breeding to perfect.”
“I am not here for word games, Ancient,” Raidriar spat. “You will face me. We will end this.” He raised the Infinity Blade, pointing it at his ancient enemy. The man once named Galath, the one who had given him immortality.
The Worker smiled. “You see? That is what makes you so wonderful! The others, they never really bought in. It’s an act to them. When they put aside the masks, they put aside the god. But you . . . you believe.” He hesitated. “Of course, it does make you damn pretentious on occasion.”
The Worker raised a hand, and a column of light split the ground. A pillar rose, releasing a series of daerils.
“More minions?” Raidriar demanded. “This is pointless. Face me yourself and know my fury!”
“Do you listen to yourself, Raidriar?” the Worker said, amused. “You really are something special.” He turned back to his screens, tapping away at a set of figures. Most of the screens were in motion. Deadminds executing commands. He was working on something big. Something important.
Raidriar didn’t have time to look over much before engaging the first of the daerils. The fight was not terribly difficult. Yes, the creature had been created well, but it could not match the God King, fully armored, with the Infinity Blade in his hands. He dispatched the beast, leaving it to twitch its final moments on the floor.
“A waste,” Raidriar said, shaking his head. “Such a fine creation, slain for no reason.”
“I agree,” the Worker said from above. “It will be a shame to see you dead.”
Raidriar snorted. “Do not play your games with me, Worker. Your life is mine, and I have come to claim it.”
“You see?” the Worker said, tapping on his screen, then moving to the next one. “There you go again. Once in a while, I create something truly remarkable. Thank you for reminding me of that.”
“I am not one of your pawns, Worker.”
The man on the throne above hesitated, then turned. “You really do believe that, don’t you, Raidriar?”
“It is the truth.”
The Worker grinned broadly. “Wonderful.”
“I came to you as a child,” Raidriar said. “I am not some daeril plaything, crafted from the flayed souls of men. I am—”
“—your doom,” the Worker said. “Yes, yes.”
Raidriar hesitated. That had actually been what he’d been about to say. A—
“—fortuitous guess on the Worker’s part,” the Worker said.
Can he . . . read my mind
somehow?
“No, I can’t read your mind, Raidriar,” the Worker said. “Let’s just say I’ve known a few versions of your personality subtype before.”
“I was born, not created!”
“Oh?” the Worker asked. “And there was no interference between your birth and now? No changes made to your Q.I.P. to grant . . . say . . . functional immortality?”
Control, Raidriar told himself. Retain control. He is playing with you. Ausar imprisoned him for a thousand years in the Vault of Tears. If he could read everyone as perfectly as he pretends, that would never have happened.
“Well, fight your way past my guardians,” the Worker said, going back to his typing on the projected screens. “Then we’ll be on with our climactic final duel, or whatever you want to call it.”
So, what trap would the Worker have laid for him? Raidriar approached the throne hesitantly, noting a figure sitting beside the stone stairwell that led to the throne.
The figure wore gold armor, helm on the steps beside him. The face looked . . . beleaguered. A mop of brown hair, too-thin features.
Eyes that had seen eternity.
“Ashimar,” Raidriar said, using the being’s Deathless name. Once, this creature had been known by another name, however. An ancient name. Jarred.
“Jori,” Ashimar replied. He sounded tired.
“So,” Raidriar said, stopping before the steps. “He pits us against each other. Another of his games.”
Ashimar nodded.
“I have not forgotten the kindness you showed me,” Raidriar said, “when I was young. The stories of my father you shared, memories I needed before I truly came to my strength. For that, I will spare you. Lay down your weapon and leave this place.”
“He’s only going to take one with him,” Ashimar said softly, rising. “A seed, he calls it. Me or you. His favorite pets. Everything else will be . . . gone.”
“What are you talking about?” Raidriar snapped.
“You can’t fight him, Jori,” Ashimar said, sighing. “He knows too much. Everything we do is but a string he has pulled.”
“And this?” Raidriar asked, raising the Infinity Blade toward the steps and throne. “I hold the only weapon that can destroy him. It was a mistake to give this back. He is capable of making mistakes.”