This is the tale the Wolfing told.
More than nine hundred years ago, when things were very different, and Giles was an honored hero loved and respected by all, he betrayed his wife and his Family and his Emperor, to have an affair with the Empress Hermione. Hermione became pregnant, her first and only child. Ulric was delighted at the pregnancy, and there were Empire-wide celebrations over the birth of a son and heir to the Empire. Only Giles and Hermione knew that the official genetest was a fake; that the newborn babe was a bastard and a traitor’s get. Even now, I don’t know whether Giles really loved her. If he ever loved her. Or whether he quite deliberately set out to sire a child who would give Clan Deathstalker a claim to the Iron Throne. I’d hate to think his affair with Hermione was just a means to an end, but Giles always was ambitious. Perhaps the plan was to wait until Ulric II met his death, by whatever means, and then Giles would step forward and reveal the true genetest, and the Deathstalker Family would rule the Empire. Giles never told me, and I never asked.
Whatever the truth of his ambitions, it all went horribly wrong. The betrayer was himself betrayed, by his true son, the man you came to know as Dram. Shortly after the royal birth, he told Ulric the truth, currying favor perhaps, for Dram was always ambitious too. And perhaps it was jealousy too; a fear that he would be put aside in favor of his bastard half-brother. Father and son never did get on. Giles was always off somewhere in the ever-expanding Empire, being a hero, creating his legend, while his son was left behind, to grow up in the company of tutors and politicians, and a quiet mousy mother who had no idea how to cope with her increasingly ruthless child.
The Emperor almost went mad with rage when Dram told him the truth about his beloved infant son. Ulric had been childless for many years, and so the insult Giles had done him became unbearable on many levels. He had the Empress Hermione imprisoned, awaiting trial and execution, and put a death warrant on Giles Deathstalker. They say Ulric signed it in his own blood. That’s why Giles really went on the run, all those years ago. Forget that part of the legend. There was no great clash of two godlike men. Just a petty squabble over a miserable betrayal. Giles was forewarned by one of his many allies at Court. He fought his way into the Palace, killing many good men, grabbed the baby, and went on the run with half the Imperial Fleet snapping at his heels. There was only one place in the Empire that Giles could run to, where he wouldn’t be expected: the Wolfing World. No one knew that he had a secret ally there.
Some years before, the Emperor had sent Giles to this world, to hunt down and destroy the last Wolfing. I was a legend then, myself, and a constant threat and thorn in the side to Humanity, so Ulric sent one legend to deal with another. Giles hunted me down easily enough, but when we finally came face to face, with nothing on our minds but battle and death, we were both surprised at what we saw in each other’s eyes. We knew, in a moment that seemed to last forever, that neither of us could defeat the other; that both of us would die if we fought. At long last we had found equals; someone worthy of our respect. We chose not to die. Instead, we sat and talked for hours, like two brothers separated since birth, who had only now found each other. Giles still had honor then, as well as a keen eye for a potential ally. He denied his orders, left me alive, and went back to the Emperor to tell him he couldn’t find the legendary Wolfing. That I probably no longer even existed. Ulric believed him. Why not? His precious Warrior Prime had never lied to him before. Perhaps in that moment, in that first small betrayal, was planted the seed of rebellion, and ambition, and all that was to come. I like to think so. I like to think that in some small way I helped to contribute to the downfall of the Empire that slaughtered all of my kind but me.
So who else could Giles turn to, with all the Empire turned against him, but me? He came here, seeking safety and sanctuary, and a base from which to someday strike back. So I showed him the Madness Maze. No other human had ever seen it before, save the Blood Runners, and they never spoke of it. I explained to Giles the nature and function of the Maze, and what it could do to him, if he dared to penetrate its secret heart. But he was frightened. He valued his humanity too much to give it up, then, no matter what the Maze promised. However, while he wasn’t prepared to risk himself, there was still the baby. What safer place could there be to hide his child, I asked, than in the heart of the Maze? No one would dare go in after him, and he would in time become powerful beyond belief. Giles listened to the Maze, talking through me, its involuntary guardian, and was tempted. His son; a weapon he could use to bring down the Empire that had dared turn against him. And tempted, he fell, and was damned by his own ambition.
I took the child into the heart of the Madness Maze and left him there. I have walked the Madness Maze many times, but it never chose to make me a god. It was enough that it kept me alive when I would much rather have died, and bound me to its service, an unwilling immortal guardian and mouthpiece. I would have killed the child if I could. Because he would soon become what I could not. Because he had come between me and my friend. But the Maze wouldn’t let me. It had its own plans for the child of Giles Deathstalker.
The baby lay in the heart of the Madness Maze, and because he was so very young, with so few built-in preconceptions and limitations, the Maze was able to change him in ways far beyond any others it embraced. He blossomed, and grew, and became very powerful. He became so much more than any other of his species, and laughed aloud in delight at the wonders of the universe unfolding before him. He thought it was all just a game. And when he had learned all his small consciousness could tolerate, he went to sleep, to consider what he had learned.
And to wonder what he would do next.
I watched, from the outside, and dreamed of what I would have done to my enemy Humanity, with such power. But the Maze had bound me to it, and I could not leave its side. I couldn’t even join your rebellion, when you were kind enough to ask.
Now at this time, there was another rebellion going on. The old Empire was not perfect, for all its grandness, and a group of planets had banded together to defy the Emperor’s authority, and demand better treatment. Ulric could have declared war against them, and sent his mighty Fleet to punish them, but the planets were valuable for many reasons, and well defended enough that his Fleet would have suffered badly in any direct conflict. So Giles saw an opportunity. He sent a message to the Emperor, through certain mutual friends, offering a certain proposition. In return for a Pardon, for himself and his child, the Deathstalker would put an end to the rebellion. Guaranteed. Ulric would have refused, but on military matters even a cuckolded Emperor must listen to his advisors, if he wishes to remain Emperor. There was a very real danger the small rebellion could become a large one if it were not smartly nipped in the bud. So Ulric reluctantly agreed.
I took Giles to the entrance of the Madness Maze, or as close as he would go, and he called out to his son. The Maze gently woke the infant in its care, and the baby reached out instinctively to his father. Their minds made contact, and for the first time in a long time, I saw happiness in Giles’s face. He persuaded his baby son that the nearby rebel planets were a threat to both of them, and frightened, the child lashed out at the rebels. You all know what happened next. The baby only flexed his power for a moment, but between one heartbeat and the next a thousand suns blinked out, and the Darkvoid was born. Thousands of planets grew cold, and everything on them died. Billions of men and women and children died, screaming. Horrified by what he had done, by what he had been persuaded to do, the baby cut off all contact with his father and put himself back to sleep, and would not be awakened. Giles called and called, but his son wouldn’t listen to him anymore.
For the first time I saw Giles weep, though whether for the loss of his son’s love, or in frustration at how things had gone so terribly wrong, I never knew. He had been Warrior Prime, sworn to defend the Empire and Humanity, and he was now responsible for the death of billions. Whatever the cause, that day broke his heart. He was never the same after that. All he e
ver cared about from that day on was putting things right. Whatever it took.
The Emperor howled to all his Court that he had been right all along, and no one disagreed. All Humanity was appalled at what the Deathstalker had done with his Darkvoid Device. The Emperor tore up the Pardons, and set the most powerful dogs at his command on the Deathstalker’s trail. Even the mysterious Shadow Men, who had never been known to fail. Giles piloted the Last Standing to Shandrakor, old home of his family, to decoy his enemies away from his son, and the Madness Maze. He had plans for both of them, in the future. Someday, he believed, he would learn to control them both, and use them to make amends for the terrible thing he had done. But it was only when he had emerged from the newly formed Darkvoid, and was well on his way to Shandrakor, that he finally reestablished contact with his old allies, and discovered how much he was required to pay for his ambition.
The Empress Hermoine was dead, executed by royal decree. His wife Marion was also dead, murdered by his estranged son Dram. Giles’s very name had become a curse in the mouth of Humanity. I think he went a little mad, then, at the thought of how much he’d lost, at how all his plans had gone so horribly wrong. He sent assassins after his son Dram, tidied up the last of his affairs, and vanished his castle into the thick, deadly jungles of Shandrakor. There, he set up a conspiracy of his remaining Family and friends and allies, to slowly and carefully plot a foolproof rebellion against the Iron Throne. This time, everything would be planned in detail. Nothing would be allowed to go wrong. But it would take time. So Giles programmed the Last Standing’s computers to take care of things while he was away, and put himself in stasis, to wait however long it took. Wait for some distant descendent to awaken him. And tell him that, finally, he would be able to overthrow the Iron Throne, make himself Emperor, and put everything right again.
But he never got the chance. The descendent who awakened him, murdered him.
But, meanwhile, back at Court ... Dram killed his mother Marion to prove his loyalty to Ulric, to demonstrate how distanced he was from his treacherous father. He didn’t want much from the Emperor, in return. He just wanted to be the new Warrior Prime. But the Emperor had had enough of murderous Deathstalkers. He named the son a monster like his father, put a death sentence on Dram and a bounty on his head, and Dram was forced to flee. His father’s conspiracy would have nothing to do with him.
Ulric gave orders for all the main members of Clan Deathstalker to be put to death. Many died, many more went underground. A distant cousin of the Emperor’s choosing became head of the new Deathstalker Family. Giles’s conspiracy survived, but it was never the same after that. Ulric would have liked to stamp out the whole line, root and branch, but the name, the heroic, already legendary name, had been useful before and might yet be again. The people did so love their precious heroes.
Dram determined to find and kill his father, for many reasons, only to discover that Giles had escaped his reach, disappearing down the corridor of Time, into the future. So Dram put himself into stasis too, using an old secret bolthole on Golgotha that had once belonged to his father. I’m sure the irony pleased him. He didn’t know more than nine centuries would pass before a team of engineers, excavating the depths of Lionstone’s new Palace, found something entirely unexpected. Lionstone awoke Dram, probably not with a kiss, and found a kindred spirit. Monsters always recognize their own kind. Together they set in motion plans that would destroy young Owen Deathstalker’s comfortable life, and send him off in search of his famous ancestor Giles. All they had to do was wait, and follow, and eventually Giles and the Darkvoid Device would fall into their hands. And then ... power and revenge and punishment on a Humanity that had never really loved them.
But during those nine centuries and more, rumors had persisted that a Deathstalker had been personally responsible for the creation of the Darkvoid. That the Device was just a convenient fiction, to hide a more terrible truth; that a man had somehow gained the power of such destruction. Leaks from inside the ongoing Deathstalker conspiracy seemed to confirm something along those lines. So when, some time later, the espers began secretly investigating their own powers and nature, the name and legend of what a Deathstalker might have done suddenly seemed entirely possible. Those rumors inspired what became the super-esper program, that led to the creation of the Mater Mundi. The search for individual super-espers produced only freaks and monsters, so the esper underground made contact with the Deathstalker conspiracy, and after that they worked together, each thinking it was using the other for its own purposes. But the inclusion of espers and later clones meant that the course and nature of the Deathstalker conspiracy was changed forever. Giles couldn’t foresee everything.
None of these people knew that really they were little more than puppets, their strings pulled, however distantly, by the Madness Maze.
“It took me a long time to piece all that together,” said the Wolfing. “But I’ve been in contact with the various conspiracies and undergrounds for centuries, via the computers Giles left me, and I’ve had a lot of time alone here, with nothing to do but think.”
“Giles never really cared about the people or the rebellion,” said Owen. “It was all just a plan to put him on the throne.‘
“Him, and his Family,” said Wulf.
“But Giles always came first,” said Owen. “An Empire-wide rebellion, built not upon honor or justice, but one man’s guilt.”
“Does it really matter?” said Hazel. “Giles may have started the rebellion, but we finished it, for our own purposes. And in the end, the Empire we helped to make is nothing like the Empire Giles had in mind. Only one Deathstalker helped shape Humanity’s future, and that’s you, Owen.”
“Oh yes,” said the Wolfing, his mouth stretching in a broad smile that showed all his teeth. “It’s all down to you, Owen. And your story isn’t over yet. There’s still more you need to know. Let me tell you what the Recreated really are. They’re not aliens and they’re not boogeymen; the truth is really much more horrible than that. Everyone and everything that died during the creation of the Darkvoid is still alive. So many cried out as they died, all those centuries ago, that the baby heard them, even in its sleep. It dreamed they were still alive, and so they were. Without shape or form, they existed in the endless dark, crying out with rage and pain and shock and loss and horror. They soon went insane, and in that madness eventually learned to tap the power that was keeping them alive. They drew, slowly and cautiously, on the sleeping baby’s power, tapping indirectly the power of the Madness Maze itself, and in time they learned how to make new bodies for themselves. But they were insane, and so were the shapes they took. They made themselves into the nightmarish evil aliens that Humanity had always feared meeting, and dedicated themselves to revenge, against the Humanity that sentenced them to death, and then left them alone and abandoned in the eternal darkness.
“They started slowly, afraid to stray too far from the source of their existence. But eventually they reached out, and snatched Captain Fast from the bridge of his own starship. They experimented on him, learning what they could do, and finally made him over into Half A Man, One and Two. And then they sent the first one back, to spread fear and propaganda of the terrible evil aliens waiting Out There, and prepare Humanity for their eventual coming. And all the time, he was their unwitting spy in Humanity’s camp. Alien species that might have been Humanity’s friends and allies were enslaved or destroyed, as the result of a policy formulated by Half A Man. The Recreated were determined that when they finally did burst out of the Darkvoid, Humanity would find itself utterly alone.
“Down the centuries, the Recreated gathered and concentrated their power, moving slowly away from their source, heading for the Rim. And now they’re out. Humanity’s dark, neglected offspring, home to roost at last.”
“Figures,” said Hazel, after a long silence. “Humanity always was its own worst enemy.”
“They aren’t necessarily all evil,” said Silence slowly. “The Recre
ated. I remember voices, coming out of the Darkvoid, trying to warn us of the dangers of the approaching starship Champion. Perhaps... some of them remember who and what they used to be.”
The Wolfing shrugged, a disturbingly supple movement. “If so, they’re in a minority. The Recreated want vengeance and the utter destruction of Humanity, and they won’t settle for anything less. They are vast and they are powerful, and what little remains of the Empire’s forces isn’t nearly enough to stop them.”
“Are you saying it’s hopeless?” said Carrion. “That there’s nothing we can do?”
“There’s always hope,” said the Wolfing, almost reluctantly. “One of you can still make a difference. The circle of your life has almost come to a close, Owen. Time for one Deathstalker to stop what another began, and save all Humanity.”
“Of course,” said Owen. “It always comes down to me in the end, doesn’t it? Damn it. All right, Wulf; what unpleasant and probably fatal thing do I have to do this time?”
“I can’t tell you,” said the Wolfing. “Some things are still withheld from me. Probably so I won’t interfere. You have to go back into the Madness Maze, Owen. All the way back in. You’ll find all the answers you need at the heart of the Maze. But you’d better hurry. The Recreated know about you; they sense that somehow you might be able to stop them. Some of them are already here, hovering over the planet. Their fear holds them back, but it also goads them on. A Deathstalker made them what they are, but another might undo them.”
“How?” said Owen angrily. “Speak plainly, damn you!”
“Don’t get him angry,” Hazel murmured. “He’s a lot bigger than I remembered.”
The Wolfing laughed softly, a dark growling sound. “The Recreated draw their power from the baby in the Maze. If you could interrupt that link, they might just cease to exist. Of course, the only way to be sure of breaking that link would be for you to murder an innocent child.”