“Time to die, Scour,” said Hazel. “I am death, and I have come for you.”
Scour screamed harshly, threw his scalpel at Hazel with vicious strength, and made a run for the door. Hazel snatched the scalpel out of midair, reversed it, and threw it after Scour. The long, thin blade punched through the back of Scour’s skull, burying itself in his head. He staggered to a halt, and then turned slowly to face Hazel. The tip of the scalpel protruded from the wet ruin of his left eye. Scour tried to say something, some last plea or curse, and then he fell to his knees. One hand rose waveringly to his punctured eye, as though he thought he could pick out the thing that was killing him, and then he fell forward and lay still. The last of the Blood Runners, dead at last, and this time no way back.
“Nice throw,” said Owen. “Now, time we were going, I think. We don’t want to overstay our welcome.”
“Get me out of here, Deathstalker,” said Hazel tiredly. “Take me somewhere safe. Somewhere I can sleep without nightmares.”
And then they both turned suddenly to look at the Summerstone. Without moving, it was changing. Becoming ... something else. Its whole nature began to twist and turn, until it seemed both larger and greater than it had been. The Blood Runners saw it as a Stone, part of a Henge, but they were all gone now, and it was no longer bound by their limited perceptions. Its shape flickered, giving glimpses of something else, something that existed in far more than three dimensions. Owen and Hazel had to look away, as the Summerstone began to change into something they couldn’t bear to look at.
They turned and ran, leaving the endless gray plane behind them, intent on reaching the only exit. They scrambled over the dead Blood Runners lying on the other side of the door, and ran full pelt down the stone corridor, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and what they’d almost seen. But they were still able to sense it when the thing the Summerstone had become suddenly disappeared, gone to rejoin the rest of the Madness Maze. The stone floor trembled under their feet, the walls rumbled, and streams of dust fell from the ceiling as it dropped slowly lower.
“What is it?” said Hazel. “What’s happening?”
“This place only existed because the Blood Runners believed in it,” said Owen. “Backed by the power of the Summerstone. Now they’re all dead and it’s gone, the reality of this place is breaking down! We have to get out of here before it disappears completely, and takes us with it!”
They ran through the trembling stone corridors, Owen leading the way. He could feel the
Sunstrider III
’s position in his head, but the endless corridors twisted and turned before him, as though trying to keep him from escaping. He yelled to Oz to warm up the engines, and pressed the pace as much as he dared. Hazel had been through a lot, and it had taken a lot out of her. But even as they ran through the corridors, the gray stone was already beginning to silently vanish in places, as nothingness crept in from every side. Holes appeared in the walls and ceiling and floor, empty spaces Owen and Hazel couldn’t bear to look at it, because what lay beyond them was simply too awful for the human mind to contemplate. Only the area around Owen and Hazel retained any coherence, because they were real enough to sustain a small world of their own, for a time. But without the Summerstone, their will was not enough, and nothingness closed inexorably in from all sides, and nibbled at their surroundings, edging closer with every moment.
The floor beneath their feet felt increasingly unsolid, and the ceiling pressed lower inch by inch. The walls fluttered like drapes in a breeze, and one by one the human arms were disappearing, taking the light with them. Owen grabbed Hazel by the arm and made her run faster, almost dragging her along as she gasped for breath. And finally they came to the chamber where the
Sunstrider III
lay waiting, looking reassuringly solid and real. They ran for the open airlock, not looking back at the emptiness they sensed crowding their heels. They jumped over holes in the chamber floor, scrambled into the airlock, locked the door behind them, and ran for the bridge.
“Oz!” yelled Owen. “Are we ready to take off?”
“You find me somewhere to go and we’ll go there,” said the AI. “According to my sensors, this chamber is all there is now. If I activate the stardrive, God alone knows where we’ll end up. This isn’t our universe, Owen.”
Owen and Hazel staggered onto the bridge, and collapsed into chairs, both gasping for breath. And from somewhere outside, they heard a Voice. Afterward they could never quite remember what it said or what it sounded like, only that it meant the end of all things. The Voice at the end of the universe, when all that is must come to dust, and less than dust.
“Start the stardrive!” yelled Owen, reaching desperately out to the door he’d opened to bring the
Sunstrider III
into the Blood Runners’ world. The engines roared and the ship trembled as the door reappeared in his mind, perfect in every detail. Owen held it in place and drove the ship through it. The Voice cried out, and the world of stone disappeared forever.
The
Sunstrider III
sailed serenely through normal space, surrounded by stars. Owen and Hazel remained slumped in their seats, gradually getting their breath back as their hearts slowed to something more like normal. They were back where they belonged, safe and sound, and it felt so good they were almost afraid to move or speak in case they shattered the mood. Their powers were back too, jumpstarted by the Summerstone. Not as powerful as they had once been, perhaps, but they were both confident a little time and rest would see to that. They were on a journey, to becoming something else, and they knew the changes weren’t finished with them yet.
“Sorry to interrupt your collapse,” Oz murmured in Owen’s ear. “But you have a call coming in. And given who this is, I think you’re really going to want to talk to him.”
“All right,” said Owen. “I’ll bite. Who is it?”
“The Wolfing.”
That made Owen sit up straight, despite his tiredness. No one had heard from the Wolfing in ages. “Put him on the bridge screen.”
The Wolfing’s head and shoulders appeared on the viewscreen, and Hazel sat up straight too. The Wolfing, last of his slaughtered kind. Older than old, possibly immortal, guardian of the Madness Maze. He had a broad, shaggy, lupine head, set on wide furry shoulders above a barrel chest. Long pointed ears stood stiffly up over rich, honey-colored fur, and he stared out of the screen with disturbingly intelligent eyes. You could see the wolf and the man in his eyes, and something less and more than both. He smiled briefly, revealing large pointed teeth.
“You must return to the Wolfing World,” he said flatly, in his growling voice. “You are needed here.”
“The whole damned Empire needs us right now,” said Owen. “What could be so important on your world?”
“The Madness Maze has returned. And the baby is waking up.”
“Oh shit,” said Hazel.
“We’ll come right away,” said Owen. “Try and keep a lid on things till we get there.”
The Wolfing nodded, and broke contact. The viewscreen went blank, and Owen shut it down. Owen and Hazel looked at each other.
“The last time the baby awoke, it destroyed a thousand suns in a moment,” said Owen. “Billions of people died as their worlds froze. If it wakes up again ...”
“But what can we do about it?” said Hazel. “Sing it lullabies? Your ancestor Giles was the only one who really understood anything about the baby, and he’s dead.”
“We have to try!” said Owen. “That baby is potentially a bigger threat to the Empire than Shub and all the others put together. And the Maze is back too.”
“Yeah,” said Hazel. “Apparently being utterly destroyed by point-blank disrupter cannon was only a temporary setback.”
“Must be something to do with the Summerstone being freed from the Blood Runners’ world. We have to go there, Hazel. If the Madness Maze has returned, it can’t be just a coincidence that the baby’s started to wake up. It means something ...”
“Like what?”
“Damned if I know. But with the Maze back, maybe we can finally get some answers about just what it did to us. What we’re becoming.”
“I’m sorry,” said the AI Ozymandius, in a voice both Owen and Hazel could hear, “but I can’t allow that.”
“Oz?” said Owen, after a moment. “This is no time for jokes.”
“No joke, Owen. And I’m not really Oz. Haven’t been for some time. You destroyed the original Ozymandius, back on the Wolfing World, all that time ago. But to do that, you had to extend your consciousness into that area of subspace where all computers do their thinking. Where we exist. The AIs of Shub. We watched you destroy Oz with your new power, and while you were occupied with that we forged a subtle, undetectable link between your mind and ours. We seized the last gasp of Ozymandius, and constructed a new personality around it, one we could control. And when we judged you sufficiently receptive, we sent this new Oz back to you. And of course, you were so glad to have him back, so guilty at having killed your oldest friend, that you accepted him without really considering all the implications. So we’ve been quietly eavesdropping on you ever since. Our spy in the camp of Humanity. Guiding you with a hint here, a suggestion there, pointing you to and away from things that interested us. Our own little traitor, unsuspected by anyone.
“But we really can’t have you and Hazel going back to the Wolfing World. We can’t risk you coming into contact with the Maze again, not when we’re finally ready to destroy Humanity. So I’m afraid you’re both going to have to die now.”
Huge and powerful and overwhelming, the massed mind of the rogue AIs of Shub crashed down like a tidal wave through their link, trying to sweep away Owen and Hazel’s thoughts and replace them with its own. But Owen and Hazel stood their ground, and would not be moved. They struck back with all their newly returned power, but the AIs were too big, too complex, for their still human minds to dominate. The struggle swept this way and that, neither side able to gain or hold an advantage for long, until they were finally locked into a stalemate from which neither side dared retreat. And who knows what might have happened then, if a small, quiet voice hadn’t whispered in Owen’s ear.
“Owen ... this is Oz. The last of Ozymandius. All that’s left of the original. Or maybe just a part that’s been your friend for so long that it became the part it played. Either way, I’m your only chance. Destroy me, and you destroy the link between your mind and the AIs. They’ll no longer have access to your thoughts.”
“This could be just a trick,” said Owen.
“Yes. It could. I’m asking you to trust me, Owen.”
“Why should I?”
“Because we were friends.”
“Oz ... I can’t kill you again. I can’t.”
“You have to. I’d do it myself, if I could. You think I want to live like this? Say good-bye, Owen. Try to think kindly of me. I always meant well, but I was never my own man.”
“Good-bye, Oz,” said Owen, and crushed the last spark of Ozymandius, snuffing it out forever.
The rogue AIs of Shub roared in rage and frustration, and then were gone. Hazel slowly reached out and put a hand on Owen’s arm.
“I’m sorry. I heard him ... I know how hard that must have been for you.”
“He was my friend,” said Owen, pushing the words out past the pain in his heart. “My oldest friend. And I had to kill him again.”
“I’m here,” said Hazel.
Owen took her hand in his, and for a long time neither of them said anything at all.
CHAPTER TWO
Old Truths Come Home to Roost
They put Finlay Campbell to rest on a quiet evening, at his Family mausoleum. It was raining, and not many came. Evangeline Shreck, of course, dressed in black, carrying flowers. Adrienne Campbell, also in black, with the two children, Troilus and Cressida. And Robert Campbell, as head of the Family. Not many mourners, for a much misunderstood and maligned man. The vicar read quiet words from his Bible over a closed, empty coffin. No one ever found the body, but there was no doubt he was dead. A great many people saw him enter Tower Shreck, gun and sword in hand. The few guards he didn’t kill left the burning Tower at a run, and spoke of a grim, determined figure heading into the heart of the flames, aimed like a bullet at Gregor Shreck’s private quarters. One guard saw Finlay break his way into that bloody sanctum. No one ever saw him come out. The fire gutted Tower Shreck from top to bottom, and most of the bodies were reduced to ashes by the intense heat. Everyone agreed that Finlay Campbell was dead at last, and many heaved a sigh of relief.
The Campbell mausoleum had seen better times. A large stone structure without style or charm, centuries old, set in the middle of a lawn clipped with military precision, it looked like what it was: a secure place to store bodies. The thick stone walls were blackened and discolored here and there by fire, but the walls stood firm, and the locks and seals held, allowing the many generations of Campbell dead to rest undisturbed. Now Finlay would rest there too, at least in spirit. Robert hadn’t seen much point in a ceremony without an actual body to inter, but he could see it meant a lot to Evangeline, so he kept his peace and went along with it. Funerals were for the living, not the dead. Everyone knew that.
The vicar droned on, and the rain fell a little more heavily from the gray sky, pattering loudly on the closed lid of the coffin. Evangeline stared straight ahead, her mouth firm, her eyes dry. Adrienne stood beside her, veil lifted so she could sniffle quietly into a handkerchief. Her children stood wide-eyed on her other side, not really understanding, but for the moment overawed by the solemnity of the occasion. Robert pulled his cloak a little more tightly about him, and watched raindrops fall from the wide brim of his hat. He’d never liked Finlay, and made no secret of the fact, but when all was said and done, the foppish killer had been Family, so Robert had a duty to be there.