The Rot's War (Ignifer Cycle Book 2) Page 17

  "Then the world ends," said Sen, quietly now. "Not just in the future or the past, but everywhere." He gestured to the books. "Everything that happened in these will be stolen by the Darkness. I can feel it now, slicing layers away with every breath. I'm already taking too long in this time, in this place, Craley." Now a hint of something new entered Sen's voice, something like her old father's desperation, an addiction to the Scarab, though this was far more destructive. "I'm wearing through the world with my presence. The world is going to end, and you are the last chance to change it. I've invested too much to start all over again. You asked me if anyone else was reading these books, searching for the army? The answer is no. It's only you." He paused, looking at her. There was warmth there, which she clung to. "You have to find the army. But is that even possible? I don't know. I saw it in a kind of vision. I only remember how it felt to watch my friends die as the Darkness took them. I have to turn that back if I can."

  Craley nodded. Honesty was good. She could be honest too. "Even if it means putting me in a cell?"

  Sen rubbed his palm over his right eye, as if massaging an old injury. "It's a measure of faith, Craley. It's all built out of sand. You and I are both following a path neither of us laid out. We have to do our best to make it work."

  Craley screwed up her eyes, making calculations. "Earlier you said I wouldn't have lived to be eight, but I'm already nine. You don't think I'll find the answers soon, so where are we? Have we moved in time like you did with your mother from Aradabar?"

  Now Sen laughed. "You are fast. That's good. I sensed that about you from the start. And yes, it's something like that; we've gone further back. I'd say you've got about thirty years now, until the end of the world."

  Craley leaned back. Thirty years seemed an impossibly long time. "I'll be thirty-nine."

  "That's right."

  "Twice as old as you."

  Sen laughed again. "More than twice, but yes you're right. And I'll still be this age. I'll come and go, Craley. I can't afford to stay here for long."

  Craley rubbed the polished iron trapdoor handle idly with her toe. She'd thought this through too. "You're asking for my life. My whole life, to find this army for you."

  Sen's shook his head. "No. It's not like that. I don't want to take anything from you. If you want to go, you're free to go. I have no right to even ask this of you."

  Craley's eyes met his and held them. "But you have asked. You did dig this hole. You did bring me here, to a place you know I won't be able to leave on my own. You made this to be my cell, didn't you?"

  "Yes," said Sen, his eyes glistening.

  "Then why would you say you don't have the right? You've made the right for yourself. I have no choice."

  A tear broke down Sen's cheek.

  "So be honest," said Craley. "Don't lie to me. You're asking for my life."

  Sen swallowed. "I am."

  Craley nodded, satisfied. "Then I'll do it. I'll do my best to save your world."

  "Our world," Sen corrected.

  He left soon after. There was little more to say. "In a few years," he said quietly by the door. "I'll come back."

  Craley stood in the hidden doorway and watched as her father left the tabernacle and melted into the darkness over the Gutrock. Then she closed and bolted the door behind her. She turned to the dim space, surrounded by books, paper and ink. The possibilities thrilled her. She sat down at the desk, opened a book, and began to read.

  CELL V

  Three years later Craley had read and indexed several hundred of the books, organized thousands more on the shelves, and picked up and righted everything in the library within three stacks of the entrance.

  Sen arrived around the dawn. Craley heard the deep rumbling of his passage long before his knock came on the door; the Gutrock itself trembled and the tabernacle shook. At first she thought it was the end of the world come early, then perhaps minions of the Rot, and briefly she wondered if it were the stars falling down to earth.

  She stood by her desk as the clasp on the door rose, the mechanism engaged, and the cold night air crept in. She raised her pens like small misericorde spikes in her fists and made ready. She voided her bladder and hot liquid streamed down her thighs, as it would only slow her down.

  For three years she'd been completely alone, a quarter of her life, with no other sound and no other person to speak to. Nothing had interrupted her routine but the delicious offerings of the books. Her study had become a wonderful routine, and the scratch of her quill on paper was all the company she needed.

  It wasn't unusual that she might foul herself at her studies, as she once had in the cage of her first father. It was often more important that she finish her thought than go to the waste pot in the corner. Sometimes she'd sit for hours in her own filth, so absorbed was she by the words dancing before her, their meanings at turns tantalizing, mysterious, and powerful.

  Now the door opened and Sen appeared at the entrance. He looked no different than he had three years earlier; even his ghasting suit was the same. Craley could not stop herself from running over and hugging him tight. She hadn't been lonely, but she'd often thought of her new father, out there somewhere lost in time.

  There were no words. There was nothing to say. When they parted she saw Sen was smiling; a better smile than the one she'd dreamed about so many times. "You smell terrible."

  Craley laughed. "It's a bad habit. I thought I might have to fight."

  "Not fight," Sen said, and pointed out through the door, to where a long train of ghasts were sitting wheezing on the Gutrock, perhaps twenty or thirty. "Eat, maybe." The ghasts wore heavy white blindfolds over their heads, and were tethered together by ropes about their waists like linked carriages in a bi-rail train. They held walking sticks strapped to both hands and carried heavy packs on their backs.

  "It's all food and water," Sen said. "We'll unload it then I'll lead them away."

  Craley nodded. That much was obvious.

  "Change your clothes, put on something clean, and we can do it together."

  She went back into the room and did just that. She noticed now, with the door open and midday light streaming in, how filthy the room really was. The acrid smell of her own body shamed her. The puddle of her urine lay damp and soaking into the wooden floor boards.

  She was twelve years old now, and that was enough of that.

  While Sen worked outside she drew a pail of rainwater and scrubbed herself, harder than she had since the Gloam Hallows when the Sisters expected her to wash every day. She scrubbed the patch where she'd urinated, and scrubbed the cooking pot, and gathered up the empty cans she'd eaten, and straightened and shined the whole space.

  It wasn't perfect but it was better.

  She put on clean clothes and realized they weren't clean. She drew more water and scrubbed them too, against a washboard that had lain fallow hung on the wall, never used. She put the clothes on wet and went out into the morning light.

  She had barely gone out for all of the three years, and then only to throw out her used cans and empty the chamber pot. There was nothing to see out there anyway except rock and her growing heaps of refuse.

  Now the light half-blinded her and she squinted against it. Sen looked up from the pile of packs he was gathering and grinned.

  "You look like a wet dog. Here."

  Craley took the balaclava he offered and put it on. She didn't know if she looked like a wet dog, having never seen a dog except in books, but that was all right.

  "Shall we?"

  Craley nodded. She couldn't think of anything to say, perhaps because there was simply so much she needed to say and she couldn't think of the way to begin saying it, so they worked in silence together. Craley couldn't carry a full pack, so Sen first split each one into three parts and laid them out for her.

  "You're getting stronger," he said appreciatively.

  "I had to," Craley answered, "to lift the library shelves."

  Over several hours they refill
ed the stocks in the tabernacle to overflowing. There were three times the cans there had been before, along with stacks of dry breads and waxed cheese wheels, baskets of dried fruit, a barrel of salt and many long rushes of dried peppers, barrels of fresh water and dozens of heaped card boxes of paper, fresh inkstones, quills, along with some forty heavy cylinders of revelatory gas.

  They worked through the day until it grew dark, speaking little. At one point, while Craley was organizing her new surfeit of goods in the tabernacle, Sen led the ghasts away. Craley waited for him to return, setting a fire and making a plate of toasted cheese, peppers and bread. She drifted to sleep for a time, then woke to find Sen standing over her.

  "I've stayed too long," he said. "Craley, I have to go."

  Craley looked up at him, then to the door. It was deep dark outside.

  "Don't worry, they're gone. I led them miles back and jumped them through time; they'll never find this place again."

  Craley blinked and looked up at Sen. "And you have to go already?"

  Sen nodded. "I'm sorry. I didn't plan this well. It's harder to stay here than I thought. I have to be more careful."

  Craley could see the weariness in her father's face. His eyes were red-rimmed and his scars barely glowed at all. She imagined hiking the same distance they'd come, burdened with a load and a train of thirty blindfolded ghasts to shepherd, but that didn't change how she felt. It was good to clean the room. It was good to wash her clothes. She wanted to talk to her father more, and there was so much still to say.

  "Don't go," she said. "Please don't leave me alone."

  Sen shook his head. "I have to, Craley. I'm sorry."

  "Stay a little while longer. I'll make tea. There must be tea leaves in here somewhere."

  "I can't."

  "Why not?" she protested. "Just for a little while. I'll show you some of the books I found, there's some sketches. I found lots of good information about the armies, the ones you're looking for. I'll explain it to you. Please."

  Sen stood before her silently. "Did you find them? Don't lie to me Craley. Did you?"

  "Father," Craley said weakly. Unbidden, she began to cry. "Please. I found ideas."

  For a moment Sen seemed to waver. "But did you find them?"

  Craley could feel the moment slipping. It wasn't fair that she'd be punished for this. She'd spent three years hunting every day. She'd given her life for this. Yes, she could probably have worked harder, slept less, but dreams were a pleasure too and she'd enjoyed cooking and eating, living her simple, hollow life.

  It wasn't fair. "Please." She grasped at Sen's hand and clutched it close to her chest.

  Sen snatched it back violently. Craley fell to her knees, and her tears stopped as she saw the look on Sen's face.

  Anger.

  This wasn't the man who'd taken her from the Levi bank side, who'd made her feel safe and cared for. This was the man who'd imprisoned her and abandoned her, just like her first father.

  Her misery fell away and was at once replaced by a new and surging anger. For three years she'd waited, and this was it? She raised her head defiantly, tears drying on her cheeks, and waited for the blow that would land any moment, that her first father had always delivered.

  It didn't come. Sen was staring at her with wide eyes, trembling.

  Craley had won. "Go then."

  Sen backed out through the doorway and dissipated into the dark, like a ghost.

  * * *

  Tears streamed down Sen's face. He was more drained than he'd ever felt before. He'd spent days in and out of the world hunting for the library and hiring the thieves, then days more leading crews of blindfolded ghasts digging down to it, hours preparing the supplies and readying everything. Months had passed in the real world as he'd supervised them through a series of jumps through the veil, and he hadn't dared sleep in all that time, afraid he might lose another memory gone.

  Yet still there was the sense that he was losing them all the time. Lurching away from Craley's tabernacle like a scarab-addicted drunk, he felt another piece of himself slipping. In his mind's eye there was a tall woman waving, but who she was and what she meant to him, he didn't know.

  He felt sick. He needed to sleep. Not since his days with the Abbess in the Abbey had he felt so alone; she'd always been there in her chancel, seen distantly across the refectory, but they had so rarely spoken. The rest of the time he had been alone.

  Alone when he ate. Alone when he played with imaginary friends around the grounds. Alone when he stood before his mother's grave and dreamed of the life they might have lived together. Now he was doing that same thing to Craley, but for Craley there would be no Alam, no Feyon, nothing good at all in the future.

  He felt stretched tight like a strip of leather in the sun, pulled in two different directions at once. He wanted nothing more than to spend more time with Craley, but every moment he spent with Craley he cut himself further apart, and he couldn't afford to lose any more.

  The thought of losing Alam or Feyon or even Daveron terrified him now more than ever. He had to make these memories last, but the strain was affecting his judgment. He felt thin inside, like a wisp of fog in the Hallows drifting on a breeze. Memories jostled in his head and faded. It hurt to use them, made him sick in his middle, and for every scrap he used he knew there'd be less later. There might not be enough to rally the army, and if there wasn't enough for that then it didn't matter how well Craley prepared. The Rot would still flee to Aradabar, the Darkness would still rise, and the world with all his friends in it would die.

  In all that he hadn't accounted for the needs of a small, lonely girl, and now he could barely afford to. He had to keep moving. For his next jump three more years would pass and Craley would be fourteen, and what then? How much time could he afford to spend with her then? Would he ever be able to treat her the way she deserved?

  Everything rode on this poor girl's shoulders. He staggered away from his adoptive daughter into the night, rubbing at his tears. It came down to faith, again. Avia had done this to him, and now he was doing it to Craley. It didn't feel good on either side.

  He staggered on over rocks into the night, shallow thoughts spinning in his weary head. The look on Craley's face cut into him, transforming from love, idol-worship even, to disgust in a second. It was his fault. Next time what would Craley be like, bedded in after three years of neglect? Would she even still be there?

  Sen walked on over the uneven Gutrock, searching for some measure of clarity. He'd been fooling himself to not know this was coming. Craley had accepted her imprisonment too easily. No person could live in a cell and love their jailer forever. Children grew up, and changed, and grew angry.

  He walked on, and the cool air helped as he increased the distance behind him. Perhaps this was how his mother had felt when she left him behind. Maybe she'd wanted to turn back at every step and go tell her son everything would be all right.

  Perhaps this was growing up.

  He walked until he reached the exhumed crater around the palace of Aradabar. When last he'd come this way he'd been only a few years older than Craley. He'd been confused and angry at that age. It had taken Sharachus' death to turn that around.

  Now he had to be better. He had to grow stronger just as he expected Craley to. He sat at the crater's edge and looked out over the fallen city for a time, long enough to gather his thoughts. There was another supply run to make, three years later. There was a young girl's mind to repair.

  He rose to his feet and flicked a lever in his mind. Blue sparks shot across his scars and he disappeared through the veil.

  HATE

  After the anger and defiance came tears, and when the tears subsided little was left. Craley looked about the dark cell Sen had built for her, overstuffed with supplies. It seemed cold and she was alone.

  She'd never felt that way before. She approached the door thinking she might leave. She could go to the city, even return to the cathedral in the Gloam Hallows. They would welc
ome her, she was sure of it.

  But Sen would not be there. Sen would not be pleased. And the Sisters there would not even know her, some ten years before they'd ever met her. In thirty years it would all come to an end, and what would be the point of living, if she always knew that day was coming?

  She rubbed her eyes and sighed.

  She'd never thought much about fairness. It had never been part of what the Gloam Hallows Sisters had taught her or what her first father had shown her, but she knew what was happening to her was unfair. It was wrong, yet there was no other choice. An orphan Appomatox in the city would be sold to a backstreet provener and kept on an endless scarab high until the day she died, fermenting the scarab drug in her chest mouth. That way she'd drown in her own juice like her first father, an addict lying in squalor and filth.

  Cold rage welled around the memory of Sen yanking back his hand. It suppurated like an infected wound. She knew she wouldn't leave, yet she also knew the wound would never heal completely. Holding on to it made her strong, like one of Sen's scars, allowing her to channel a power that hadn't been there before. It made her righteous. So she let the first spurs of hate fill her mind.

  Still there was the work was. She'd find Sen's impossible army, then hold it over him. What was the world to her? She knew no one out there, and no one knew her. She'd make her father beg.

  She went back to her desk, opened the next book in line, and bent to her work.

  * * *

  Three more years passed.

  Craley was fifteen when Sen returned. She had grown substantially; her concave chest filling out with a larger breastbone-mouth, her translucent sallow skin growing bristles in places.

  She met her father at the door with calm impassion, the hatred long buried. Sen kicked through the piles of cans, cast-off quills, and rain-sodden masks of discarded paper around the tabernacle's door.

  He looked the same. Craley recognized a smudge mark of dust on his ghasting suit's collar, just as it had been three years ago. How long had passed for this strange man who walked through time; an hour, a day at most? For him the impact of their last parting would still be raw. Craley almost felt sympathy for him.