CHAPTER
FIVE

THE SCHOLARS of ancient days had a great deal to say about the soul. They claimed that the idea of an immortal soul was simply wishful imagination. Instead they spoke of the Quantum Identity Pattern: a state of matter that could be attuned to a certain configuration—a set of memories and a personality.

The Q.I.P. allowed every person to remain themselves even as their cells died and were replaced. Scientists explained that there was nothing “eternal” about personality—that it was an illusion, but one that could be manipulated. They said the illusion could be perpetuated, associated with one form after another, to create a sense of a continuing identity.

Raidriar rejected these explanations.

Yes, this science had given him immortality. The scientists themselves, however, did not see the majesty of it all—they saw only bits and numbers. When your eyes were forever squinting at a single tile, you easily missed the beautiful mosaic of which it was part.

He was immortal. The scientists were wrong, and their explanations were the frantic excuses of little men failing to grasp something vast. It was Raidriar’s self—now free from that prison—that flew on wings of time, to true freedom. It was the God King who opened his eyes in his Seventh Temple of Reincarnation. It was really him, immortal ruler, who gasped in a lungful of fresh air—starting these lungs breathing for the first time.

He was not just some personality, fabricated from quantum entanglement and made active by chemical process. It was him. A new body, but an ancient soul, seizing again the life that was his birthright.

He breathed in and out, lying naked on the table, looking up at a fine bamboo ceiling. He did not like how familiar that feeling of death was becoming. Even with his mind partitioned, the trauma of his captivity sequestered, it was like septic flesh. He knew he had died far too often recently. He could not banish every memory of his captivity. He needed some recollection.

Without that, after all, he would not be able to summon the proper spirit of divine wrath against those responsible for his imprisonment. Yes, a little memory would help his vengeance be all the more sweet. Memory of what Ausar had done to him, memory of his pain and frustration.

Vengeance . . . against the Worker.

As Raidriar’s Devoted hurried into the room to serve him, he contemplated his rage. An ember deep within. Not a fire—no, a fire consumed and left its host as ash. An ember was a truer flame—less transient, more powerful.

Yes, he hated Ausar, but that hatred was nothing compared to his hatred of the Worker. It was so clear now, how the Worker had manipulated them all.

Raidriar’s Devoted knelt around his table, eyes down, for he had not yet covered his face. One of them—a hook-nosed man that Raidriar recognized only vaguely—held out a ceremonial mask to him, head still bowed.

Raidriar sat up. He had constructed this room to evoke a sense of serenity. A hushed brook bubbled outside, accompanied by the sounds of rattling bamboo. The floor was draped in finely woven mats, the room lined with plants instead of metal. Metal surfaces reminded him of the old days. Days before . . .

He despised those days.

“How long has it been?” Raidriar asked, reaching for the mask. “How long was I . . . away?” Men such as these did not need to know the details of his imprisonment.

“Nearly two years, great master,” said the Devoted offering the mask.

Two years. An eyeblink by the reckoning of the Deathless, but still a dangerous amount of time. What plots had the Worker executed during such a period? Dared Raidriar hope that the creature had spent the time licking his wounds and recovering from his long imprisonment?

Raidriar took the mask. “Where is Eves,” he asked, “my High Devoted?”

“Dead, great master,” said the hook-nosed Devoted. “Six months ago, in bed. We believe it was his heart.”

Pity. Raidriar had grown fond of Eves. Still, he was accustomed to the fleeting lifespans of mortals. He could not turn a corner without half of his staff dropping dead from one silly malady or another.

He moved to put on the mask, but froze. Quick breathing from the Devoted. Sweat on their brows. Had that been a tremble in the voice of the one who had spoken?

Raidriar narrowed his eyes. There, on the inside of his mask, he spotted a tiny row of very fine needles. Needles that would pierce his skin as he placed the mask over his face.

Poison.

So, he thought, you got to my Devoted, did you?

How inconvenient.

Raidriar twisted from the table, bringing a fist down on the shoulder of the lead Devoted. He then smashed the metal mask into the face of another. The rest leaped to their feet in a frantic, terrified scramble.

“The prophecy is fulfilled!” one of the Devoted yelled, lunging for Raidriar. The fellow was a thick-necked man with wide hands. Raidriar let the man get hold of him, bringing them close enough together that Raidriar could press the mask—and its traitorous needles—against the man’s face. He fell, twitching.

“The Dark Father has arrived!” another was crying. “To arms, to arms! It is—”

That Devoted was cut off as Raidriar grabbed him by the throat and spun him about into the path of several others, who had just pulled out swords to attack. The man he held went down in a spray of blood, and the two who had slain him stepped back in horror at having stabbed their ally. One even dropped his bloodied sword.

Raidriar kicked that up into his hand and sliced it through the man’s neck in one smooth motion.

“Thank you,” Raidriar noted, then caught another Devoted by the arm as the man lunged for him. Raidriar twisted the man about, pulling free his shawl, then kicked him aside. Raidriar reached up and twisted the shawl about his face to hide it from these lesser beings.

“And thank you,” he said to the shawl-less Devoted as he rammed the sword through the man’s back. It was convenient that his priesthood could be so helpful, even as he slaughtered them.

He was still naked save for the shawl, but at least the most important part was covered. These treacherous dogs were not worthy of gazing upon the visage of a full Deathless—even if it would be the last thing they saw.

Four remained, including two who had run into the room when they heard the yell for help. Raidriar’s Devoted could all fight—he made certain of it—but they were no match for him. He was a Deathless with thousands of years of practice, not to mention a body crafted to the peak of physical capability. It was hardly a fair fight.

Still, one of these could always get in a lucky blow, which would be problematic. Raidriar backed carefully around the fallen High Devoted, whom he’d hit first. The man was groaning but climbing to his knees. Raidriar planted a foot in the man’s stomach, then cracked him on the head with his sword butt.

Nearby, a set of armor on the wall awaited Raidriar. It hung on its mountings, opened up like the husk of an insect recently shed. With that, he could . . .

But no. They were ready for his arrival. The living Devoted regarded him as they would a snake. Shouts still sounded down the hallway, passing the word of his awakening.

The Worker had prepared this place well. The armor would be a trap.

Raidriar lunged for it anyway.

The four Devoted relaxed. The change was subtle—a slight lowering of the swords, a release of breath. Ten thousand years taught one to notice such things, if you paid attention.

And Raidriar did. He always watched and studied. He was a king—and you could not properly dominate that which you did not understand.

His lunge for the armor was a feint—he hit the release latch, tumbling the suit to the floor with a crash. He leaped across the slablike table where he had been reincarnated, then separated one of the Devoted from his arm with a swing. The man went down, screaming.

The other three engaged him at once. On one hand, he was proud that they showed such bravery in fighting, rather than fleeing. But on the other, he was disgusted. They knew the ancient protocols known as the Aegis code. True honor lay in engaging foes one at a time. Raidriar himself had instituted these codes millennia ago, seeking a more honest form of combat between men. Even the most brutish of his daerils followed the code. To have his Devoted ignore it, particularly in fighting Raidriar himself, was an insult.

He dispatched the three with little trouble. Such a waste. He stepped over to the High Devoted, but the man was out cold from the knock to the head. That left only the one whose arm he had separated from its shoulder. Raidriar strode over and lifted the bloodied man into the air with one hand.

“What did he say about me?” Raidriar asked, curious. “How did he turn you?”

The Devoted squeezed his eyes shut and started whispering a prayer. To Raidriar himself, of course.

“I’m right here,” Raidriar said, shaking the Devoted.

“I will not listen to you, demon. You may wear the form of my master, but you are not him. He warned us of your coming. In his truth I bask, in his name I die . . .”

“A Soulless,”Raidriar guessed. “The Worker has given my crown to a Soulless, has he?”

A Soulless—a copy, a body awakened without the actual Q.I.P. to inhabit it. Such a thing was possible, but creations such as this were unstable, their memories flawed, their personalities erratic.

“I put protocols in place to prevent something like this,” Raidriar said to the Devoted he held. “Why did you not spot the lies? You were trained better than this.”

The Devoted was too busy dying to reply.

Raidriar sighed, dropping the Devoted in frustration. The rest were dead or unconscious, save . . . Yes, the bulky man that still wore Raidriar’s mask. He knelt beside the fallen Devoted, noting the steady rise and fall of his chest. Raidriar pulled the mask free, needles sliding out of the skin of the cheeks and neck. He smelled the poison . . . what was left of it.

Nightdew. It was meant to bring unconsciousness, not death. A temporary way to incapacitate a Deathless. Left too long under the influence of such drugs, the soul would break free to seek a better vessel, but it would work for a time. The Worker would rather not have Raidriar killed and his soul freed to travel to another rebirthing chamber.

He checked the armor next, but as he’d suspected, it was useless. The joints of the elbows and knees had been welded together. If he had stepped into it and allowed it to enclose him with its automatic locking mechanism, he would have been trapped and immobile.

They should not have tried the mask. If he had simply been allowed to put on that armor . . .

He stood, increasingly annoyed, and investigated the deadminds in the room. He was locked out of any important systems. He could access the lesser functions, however—likely he had been left some small amount of control, so as to not arouse his suspicion should he look at his deadminds before putting on his armor. But anytime he tried to change something, the deadmind gave him some kind of excuse, speaking in a flat-toned feminine voice. The excuses were what might have been called “error messages” in ancient days.

He did manage to find an image of himself, supposedly created only one week before. A powerful figure in lean, smooth armor. The face was masked, so it might not matter if the fake was a true Soulless or not, but it was his voice that accompanied the image.

“My loyal Devoted,” the recording said, “cower and give awe. My prophecy is at hand, and my enemies work to deceive you. Stay alert and serve your lord.”

It did sound like him, but it grandstanded too much. The Worker liked theatrics, but Raidriar despised them. One could know merely by looking at him—seeing the way that he stood, hearing the way he spoke—that he was of the elder Deathless. Trying so hard to emphasize it only made the impostor seem pathetic.

Raidriar shook his head, keeping alert for the arrival of more foes. Daerils would be on their way, those who had been built for fighting. One would not be a problem, but several of them might possibly stand against one of the Deathless.

Raidriar turned to leave the mirrorlike deadmind, but hesitated. What was this? A tidbit of information that he could see, but not manipulate. Prisoners in the dungeons. Not the Soul Cells, but the ordinary cages for mortals. Could it be . . . ?

He could find out nothing more. Well, he would need to pass near those cells in his next task, which would be to reach the central deadmind core of the temple. Perhaps it would be profitable to make a slight detour to investigate.

Before that, however, some clothing was in order.

The armor was useless—no profit in trying to repair it, for he hadn’t the time nor the resources. He pulled some cloth from a cabinet and affixed it about his waist in the form of a simple wrap that hung from waist to knees. It was an appropriate costume for a god, despite its simplicity. The wrap left his chest exposed, displaying a body perfected—it had a certain classical elegance to it.

The cabinet also contained a gold-plated necklace. He picked it up and activated its light-bending properties. The device still worked, and bore no needles or other traps. Likely an item with such simple magic had been beneath the Worker’s notice. Raidriar removed the shawl from his face, then put the necklace around his neck.

He turned to inspect himself in the mirror. The necklace projected an illusion around his head, hiding his divine features. The image was that of a regal green mask with dark eyebrows. Larger than life, the jade mask’s features would not change when he spoke.

No, Ausar had been fond of that style of face. Instead, Raidriar settled on the head of the jackal. The ancient symbol had already been old when he was young.

Knowledge of things like that disturbed him, deep within. Those ancient gods . . . they seemed so similar to Deathless. But Raidriar had been alive when the process to create immortals had been discovered. He remembered it. The cold table. The agony of loss. Coming back for the first time . . .

Too much metal. Even still, he remembered that day because of its metal surfaces, reflecting his face . . . and his tears.

Regardless, the first Deathless had been created near that time, and not before. Of this he was reasonably certain. The ancient gods of before his time could not have been Deathless.

But knowing that did not stop him from wondering anyway.

A tall figure darkened the doorway. Raidriar turned, bringing his stolen sword to the side as the newcomer entered. It was a daeril with hauntingly hollow features and a skeletal ribcage that protruded from its skin. It did not attack immediately, but made the sign of an offered challenge.

Raidriar smiled. His Devoted, so civilized, had shown less honor than this brute. The Worker and Devoted alike undoubtedly hoped the daerils would ignore such protocols, but this thing had been created by Raidriar himself. It was better than that.

“It will be an honor to slay you,” Raidriar said, pointing his sword at the creature. “I do enjoy inspecting my handiwork now and then.”

He stepped into the proper stance, and the contest began.