Captive's War 1: The Mercy of Gods

Twenty-Seven

How long have we spent looking for other people?” Dafyd asked.

Else shrugged as they turned down the hallway toward the cathedral-wide common room where their alcove once was. “Depends on how you count it,” she said, but Dafyd was too much in his own mind to follow her thought.

“And as soon as we had the translator, we found them. The same day. I keep wondering, if we’d thought to ask the librarian for one of these of our own, would it have given it to us?”

The square itself was in his hand. Lighter than its size would suggest. There was a loop where a strap or a lanyard could go, but there was nothing there. No place to open it, no way to access its interior, nothing that showed where it took its power from. When it functioned, the whole body of the thing vibrated and grew cool, like its effort drew in more energy than it put out. There were a million mysteries that the object posed, and Dafyd was too excited by the idea of using it to pause at any of them.

“If they were easy to get hold of, it wouldn’t have been much of a peace offering,” Else said. Her voice was tense in a way he thought he understood.

“Maybe,” Dafyd said. “But when the Carryx see us carrying it, they don’t seem to care. So either we’re not prohibited from having one, or enforcement of the rules is surprisingly lax.”

Ahead of them, the flow of traffic thickened, but today the overwhelming strangeness of the bodies that passed was leavened by Dafyd’s sense of possibility. Before, they had all been like animals in a pandemonic zoo, inmates in a prison separated by impossible gulfs of language. Now, each one was the chance to know more. To understand more. To get his head around what had happened to him and everyone he’d known.

A broad-shouldered thing with six legs and bright rills down its sides lumbered by, crossing paths with a group of four fast-crawling stilt-legged things with iridescent black shells. A swarm of not-quite-insects rolled past in the high air.

“So,” Dafyd said. “Where do we start?”

It is the size of a large horse, covered in chitin the color of bone. Its legs articulate strangely, folding with each step, and then extending until they seem to thin to almost nothing. Its eyes are deeply set, and a bioluminescent glow flickers at its joints like static charges grounding out. When it speaks, it chitters.

We were the Phylarchs of Astrdeim, once. Once, we were, though that was long ago. We hold the memory of those times close, and we share it so that it never fades. A hundred worlds we called our own, though they were shared with the Elmrath and Colei who were found wanting in the eyes of the great ones and thus culled. They are gone now, but we carry their bones in our songs and memories.

We built palace worlds and temples to our own ingenuity with roots that sank to the planetary mantle and rose to the edge of space. They lived, those buildings. They held worlds within them, and we were proud, or that is the history. We were proud, and the proud are brought down, our philosophers warned, though now we call them prophets.

The Carryx came and yoked our young. They bound the architects and stripped the stations of the gods to use for storage sheds. The Elmrath, they drove from their paper hives and drowned in the sea. The Colei, they took as they took all things then, to a white plain above a lavender sea. Under that cold sun the beautiful Colei lost their will to live, withered, and passed to dust. But we, we carried our souls within us. Cut from all we had known, we built.

All of this you see, we built. Not the Carryx. They live well within it. They make use of it. Even then, they see only its use, not its spirit. They have no soul for it. We do not weep for them. One servant sees a slice of the spectrum, hears a fraction of the music, and is content. Why should the masters be different? No, no, we are grateful. The Carryx have given us a wider sky to grow into. A thousand more palace worlds than we had dreamed to construct. We are grateful for the chance to build and pleased with our place within the function of the whole. We remember our childhood playmates. The Elmrath. The Colei. We are grateful, grateful, grateful not to be them. We are not Phylarchs any longer, nor will I see the spires of Astrdeim before my eyes are dust. But what we still are, we still are, and if I were not pleased by that, I would not be anything at all.

Do you see? Do you hear that? We love them, and we live. We eat their leavings and we smile and they give us our draft of pleasure. I would not say this if I were not valued, but you are young. Do as we have done. It is the best life that remains to you.

If they’re individuals, then they’re the size of horseflies, but fleshy and pink. If the cloud of them is only one animal of many parts, then it’s a little smaller than a child’s ball. The buzzing it makes varies in timbre and volume, but the change that comes when it speaks is a scent like cabbage and mint.

No. I will not talk with you. I will not tell you my name. Whatever it is you’re planning will fail and all of your kind will burn. Go away. We will not burn with you. Go away.

The alcove is structurally similar to the one they had for their research: a little length of hall leading off from the vast main chamber. There, however, the similarity ends. The walls here are crusted with ropy tendrils like finger-thick vines. A soft ticking sound comes from them, and a deep, rich, swampy scent fills the air. Glimmers of golden light flicker on and off again, illuminating pale grubs that cling to the surfaces. When it speaks, nothing in the room seems to change. It isn’t clear if the vines are speaking or the grubs. Or the room.

History? I have no history. Maybe I did once, but how would I know? To rise isn’t the same as to un-fall. What is lost is lost, and why regret a dream I had when I was young just because the universe woke me from it? I’m here, and I have no ambition to be elsewhere. Other instances are in other places. They do what the great ones need them to do. Scrub air in places where it’s tainted. Take in what is polluted and put out what is pure, depending on what the great ones say is tainted and what they want made pure. It doesn’t matter to me. My place is here, in this space. I learn how to do what it wants, and then I am harvested, and I learn again, but I never leave. How would I?

Nothing here has a history except for the Carryx. I don’t. You don’t. None of those things muttering outside do, even the ones who think they do. They can’t. Having a past of my own with the Carryx is like having a shadow in the dark. It might be pleasant or it might not, but since it’s impossible, it isn’t either one.

My homeworld? I don’t understand the question. I don’t have a homeworld. I don’t have a home. I don’t have a world. Wherever I was plucked from, I was plucked from. From. I have a task, and I do it. Anything more than that hurts.

Name? I had a name. I don’t know what it was.

You should stop. I don’t like talking with you anymore.

It is a little over knee high, and twice as broad. The form of its shell suggests that it evolved in liquid. It looks made to slip through something thicker than air. Its three sets of legs are short, wide, and flexible as tentacles, though there are distinct and visible joints. It has strips of cloth and brightly colored stones as clothing or adornment.

If I talk to you, I will be killed.

It is a standing flicker of blue, like a flame without the heat. There are shapes inside the light, generating the glow and shaping it like a swarm of gnats built from crystal. They’re hard to see. Hard to look at. When the voice box translates, it doesn’t make sounds, but glimmers.

We are the Carryx. There is no difference between them and us.

Yes, yes, yes, I know about bodies. They aren’t significant. But all nature is porous. Once, there was the Carrying One, but its children are gone. Its harp is broken. The singing of the stones has gone quiet. There is no sorrow in that, but joy. None of those things were the Carryx, and we are. Why would we celebrate the enemies of what we are?

Before, we sang for base reasons. We were in service of nothing, of ourselves. Now we are part of the greatness. We sing the songs of war, and through our singing, spread that which we are.

Yes, I know, but we are the Carryx. What ennobles the Carryx, ennobles us. What strengthens the Carryx, strengthens us. This is the beautiful way. Submission to glory is glorification, and we are glorious.

“I have to sit down,” Else said. Her face had gone ashen. Dafyd followed her to the edge of the huge chamber. The voices and sounds of a thousand individuals from hundreds of worlds filled the air, and it sounded weirdly like a train station. As if all the hubbub, however exotic the setting and the source, was on some level also all the same.

She sank to the ground, her elbows resting on her knees. Dafyd sat down beside her. After a moment, he put a hand on her shin, comforting her without knowing exactly why she needed comfort.

“Overwhelmed?”

“There’s so much,” she said. “Half a day. Half a day, and look how much more we know. All the things I’ve seen up to now. All the things I’ve learned. We know more about the Carryx… And then it turns out we’ve barely taken a sip.”

She gestured out at the passing crowd. Dafyd saw another of the Phylarchs of Astrdeim lumbering gently among the bodies, and it was almost like recognizing a friend. The eeriness wasn’t gone, but it was less because he knew something.

“We could find clues about what worlds they all came from,” she said. “What they all do for the Carryx. How the Carryx gather them up, domesticate them, use them. We could know so much.”

“We will, given time,” Dafyd said. It didn’t seem to reassure her. “But really, who are we going to tell?”

Her gaze shifted, the dark of her eyes fixed on him like she was seeing him there for the first time. The ashen look was fading, and something that was almost a blush was coming in its place. She opened her mouth as if she were going to speak, but then closed it again and shook her head.

“Is something going on?” Dafyd asked. “I mean, you seem… I don’t know.”

“Like something’s going on?” she said, and her voice was low and teasing, like a gently mocking viol.

“Well. Yes?”

Her eyes softened, and a small, rueful smile appeared on her lips. “I would like to be able to tell you everything. Even the parts that are hard.”

“That’s what I’m here for. That’s all I want.”

The smile widened, complicated, teased. “That’s not all you want.”

“It’s not. But it is part of it.”

Something huge passed between them and the light at the top of the cathedral. The shadow fell over them and passed in a flicker. Else curled her fingers around his.

“I’m not going to be good for you,” she said. “I’m not going to make you happy.”

“You already do. Look, I understand that we don’t have much freedom. We are powerless to choose most of the things that shape our lives. But what we do have? What we can have? I want. Does that make sense?”

“Not absolutely,” she said, then shook her head. “I mean, we’re not absolutely powerless. We’re just… mostly powerless.”

“A deep and subtle difference.” It made her smile. That was a victory.

“I’m not what you think I am, Dafyd.”

“I look forward to meeting you. Over and over and over.”

She laughed. “Oh, you have no idea what you’re saying.”

“I’m in love. People in love never know what they’re saying.”

Her fingers were warm on his cheek, but her smile had gone rueful again. Something in the crowd caught her attention, and the moment was gone. Else sat forward and gestured with her chin, pointing out and to their right. “Is that… our librarian?”

The Carryx moved through the crowd with an escort of Rak-hund. Aliens of a dozen species shifted and jumped to clear its way. Dafyd recognized it by the way it moved and the colors of its flesh as clearly as if it had had a human face. The librarian of the human moiety.

He didn’t answer Else except by rising to his feet. She followed him as he moved along the cathedral wall past the entrances to half a dozen other alcoves. The librarian moved forward, lumbering with its massive forelegs, its abdomen hurrying to keep up. He couldn’t have said why, but he had the sense that the Carryx scholar was pleased. It moved forward for a few minutes, then turned, curving to a place at the wall.

A familiar place, it turned out.

Another of the Carryx was waiting at the mouth of the Night Drinkers’ alcove. It was broader than the others Dafyd had seen, and a wide chip was missing from its head, like something had taken a bite out of it when it was young.

The little feather-haired, amber-eyed Night Drinkers were jumping from the holes in the fungal sponge that filled their space, running madly out into the crowd, then fleeing back to disappear into the wall. Dafyd took the translator, pointing it as best he could toward the cacophony of their screeches. It didn’t do anything.

As their librarian approached, the notch-headed one lowered itself, spreading its dark, powerful arms to the side and pressing its body to the ground. The act of obeisance and surrender was strange to see in a Carryx body. Like seeing his father naked or vulnerable. The Night Drinkers scurried over to the debased Carryx, plucking at the air like they were trying to haul it back up through main force of will.

“This can’t be good,” Else whispered.

Dafyd shook his head, but he wasn’t sure if he meant No it can’t or I don’t know. He thought he caught the bass chirp and trill of the Carryx native tongue, but it was hard to be sure in the noise, and his translator box was making no attempt to interpret. Other aliens were pausing to watch. A crowd was forming, making the same rough circle that surrounded violence since the first schoolyard. Dafyd took Else’s hand and drew her through the press of bodies. The vault above them echoed with inhuman voices. Whatever this was, he needed to see it happen.

The notch-headed Carryx spread out its legs—four from the abdomen, the two thick, dark ones from its thorax. Even the pair of pale feeding arms. Eight limbs spread. The librarian of the human moiety shuffled slowly around its colleague, paused, and then with a crack like a whip, its huge arms snapped out and down onto one of the thin legs of the other Carryx’s abdomen. The Night Drinkers shrieked and wailed, but the notch-headed Carryx only hauled itself up to its feet. The one leg hung broken and limp, but the others were enough to support it.

Whatever the ritual meant, it seemed to be over. The two librarians stood face to face, and from closer in, Dafyd was sure he heard their rumbling birdsong. Their demeanor seemed less like attacker and victim than two workers commiserating over a cup of coffee. After a few moments, the humans’ librarian shifted its attention to the pale Rak-hund soldiers, and the soldiers swarmed forward.

Knifelike legs shuddered against the spongy wall, ripping it apart. The Night Drinkers poured out in a group with lengths of metal like blunt-headed spears in their small hands and rushed at the minions of the Carryx. When they struck, the spearheads popped like a gun, and pale blood poured out of the Rak-hund’s sides. There was no grabbing at the air. No attempt at surrender. This was life or death.

And it wasn’t life.

It only took a flicker of one of the Rak-hund’s bone legs, and a Night Drinker would fall. Some of them screamed as they went down. Others just folded. Two of the Rak-hund turned their attention from taking down the wall, and put their full efforts into slaughtering the animals that came out of it. At the side of the ongoing extermination, the Carryx chatted. The viewing crowd jostled for a better view, but they seemed to understand that Dafyd and Else had some connection to the abomination playing out before them.

It took more than an hour to slaughter all the Night Drinkers and tear what had been their home out, piling it into a heap of crust, ink-black blood, and weirdly beautiful amber eggs that Dafyd had never seen before. In the end, a handful of the little aliens gave up on protecting their home and tried to flee, clutching armfuls of the eggs as they ran. They were cut down.

Then, as if by common agreement, it was over and the crowd unknotted. The Rak-hund kept hauling bits of dark substances out of the exposed alcove, but with the demeanor of janitors cleaning up a mess. The bodies of humanity’s little rivals lay in a heap that rose as high as Dafyd’s hips. All dead. Dafyd thought about vengeance for Irinna, and then almost threw up but choked it back. This wasn’t anything more than a massacre. He wanted to flee from the scene but couldn’t, not certain why he wasn’t moving. Else stood beside him, her face calm.

“Was this us?” he asked, and his voice seemed to come from a long distance.

“Was what us?” Else asked.

“When we got them to surrender, did that mean… this?” he said.

Else sighed. “What is, is,” she said, quoting the oft-repeated Carryx saying, and Dafyd finally vomited.