Tyrant's Stars: Parts Three and Four (28 page)

A pale hand reached out.

Perhaps it was due to Valcua’s will that Matthew was able to jump through the door. Nearly tripping over his own feet, he backed away five or six steps before bumping into a thick tree trunk and stopping.

The pale Noblewoman and her men alighted from the vehicle. Red embers glowed in the darkness.

“Where are you going? Didn’t you come here to scout my underlings?” Miranda called out to the boy.

“Quite an interesting discussion you’re having,” said a voice that called to mind a lion’s roar, raining down on Matthew from the tree above him. The voice resembled Count Braujou’s.

Just as the boy was about to bound away, he was snagged by the collar and hoisted high into the air, giving him a panoramic view of the wasteland.

“I have only one thing to say to you,” Count Braujou informed Matthew in a tone that crushed down through the night as the boy dangled from the Nobleman’s hand. “I’ve been following every move you’ve made. I also know that Valcua’s brain is inside yours. The only reason I gave you free rein was to learn what you were plotting. I was going to let you run a bit more, but unfortunately the situation no longer allows that. I may have to get rough, but I shall show you things through something other than Valcua’s eyes. Miranda, would you be so good as to overlook the commandeering incident?”

“I suppose I can, given our relationship.” When she spoke, Miranda smiled in such a manner it was plain she was hiding something. “In return, will you entrust me with the task of correcting the boy?”

For a second, hints of surprise and displeasure skimmed across that gigantic face, but they immediately gave way to a tremendous smile as the count replied, “I suspect you may prove a tad harsh, but they say the best medicine tastes the worst. I shall leave it to you.”

“Let go of me!” Matthew shouted. “Let go! Let go of me now! I’m not plotting anything!”

“You don’t know when to give up. I suppose I could make you one of my followers, coarse as you are. I proposed that once already.” “Do something to him that will make him wish you had instead. That should suffice.”

“Very well,” Miranda said, bringing a dainty hand to her lips and laughing haughtily.

It was at this point that Count Braujou looked up into the sky. A woman’s voice had just echoed in his ears, telling him, “Sue has escaped.”

“What?”
the Nobleman bellowed, his words shaking the darkness and changing not only the expression Matthew wore, but those of Miranda and her lackeys as well. “How—how on earth did she manage that?”

“I’m terribly sorry. Some external consciousness forced my network to experience electronic hallucinations. It seemed as if she were in her room. Please forgive me.”

“No, this is unpardonable!” the giant roared, kicking at the ground. A great clod of dirt landed at Miranda’s feet. Matthew’s body followed it. “He’s all yours, Miranda. Work him over thoroughly, and leave him
purely human
again. I’m going in search of the girl.”

Sue raced blindly across the steel plain that stretched on without end. Though it was level ground and she was running, she was still just a girl on foot. There was only so much distance she could cover. And she would be exhausted long before that.

Sue ran on calmly. Another personality had slipped into her head, and it seemed to have altered her metabolic functions. She could keep running forever—and Sue glowed with joy.

There was only one reason why she’d fled Count Braujou’s car: Matthew had been caught. It was only a matter of time before his brainwashing of Sue was uncovered. Therefore, Matthew had instructed her to flee if it came to that.

In just a single day, Sue had been brainwashed to an incredible degree. She had complete confidence that she would escape. As evidence of this, she had only to look at the countless pale lights ahead, rolling toward her like a cloud of smoke. To her rear there was the sound of an engine. And that was far closer.

Never giving up, she kept moving, but the girl mouthed a prayer that was both unthinkable and impossible: “Help me, O great Valcua!”

It was at that instant that a streak of light from the sky struck the car. The girl’s eyes were seared as midday sprang to life in the darkness of night, and when they finally regained their sight, what they found was the halted vehicle trapped in a pale-blue cage of electromagnetic waves.

Her relief gave her the strength to run as the source of the glowing points—cylinders each equipped with a single yellow eye—swept by her, their innumerable tentacles swaying back and forth all the while. Having no time to watch what transpired between them and the car, Sue ran for all she was worth, but then her body rose into the air without warning. One of the cylinders had used a trio of tentacles to scoop her up before shooting off for the far reaches of the plain at incredible speed.

Sue smiled.

Who could’ve predicted it would come to this? The same girl D had defended, Braujou had rescued, and Miranda had protected was now all too happy to run headlong into a deadly trap.

Her fears forgotten during the smooth flight, Sue began to drop off to sleep. Suddenly, she was violently jostled by a series of tremors.

When she opened her eyes, they were filled with the rapidly approaching ground.

Dropping at a sharp angle, the cylinder barely managed to regain its composure and glided down to the steely terrain. It was faithful to its duty to the very last, setting Sue down on the ground after it came to a stop.

Escaping the tentacles as they opened, Sue was wary of possible explosions as she moved away, watching the fallen cylinder and the bizarre tree that towered behind it.

A woman stood between the cylinder and the tree. Her lips pursed the tiniest bit, and the faint humming that came from them like a night breeze crept into Sue’s ears.

“You’re—”

“Callas the Diva,” the bewitching singer said by way of introduction.

“Why—why did you do this?” She was talking about the cylinder. As far as Sue was concerned, both of them were on the same side, acting on Valcua’s wishes to return her to his castle.

“Bringing the two of you back to the grand duke is
my
job. It’s hardly something to entrust to an android.”

At this point, Sue could’ve been considered one of Callas’s compatriots. Yet as the beauty closed on her in her alluring manner, it was true and undeniable horror that paralyzed Sue.

Halting but a step away, Callas arched one willowy eyebrow a bit as she stared at the girl.

“You’re smiling, aren’t you? Is there something funny about this? Are you having a good time?”

“It’s okay now,” Sue replied. “I don’t have to be afraid of any of you anymore. I’ll be happy to go see the grand duke.”

Sue’s face was colored by a strange glow. The girl’s complexion reflected the gleam Callas’s eyes gave off as she stared at Sue.

Letting all the tension drain from her body, she smiled at Sue. “And to what do we owe this change of heart, I wonder?”

“My brother—Matt told me all about it. All about the grand duke’s vision, and about how wonderful his world is. It all made such great sense.”

Sue’s voice was level, her tone smooth—like she was conversing with a friend.

Turning her eyes toward the ground, the diva said softly, “Is that so? That’s wonderful. Now, would you be so kind as to listen to what I have to say, too?”

“Sure—but out here?”

“Yes. Out here.”

“Okay, let’s hear it.”

Tilting her head a little to one side, Callas began to speak.

Off in the distance, the androids and Count Braujou were probably locked in deadly battle.

“Five thousand years ago, my mother was a soprano in an opera troupe that traveled the Frontier.”

The people who dwelled on the Frontier were positively starved for recreation. The Nobility had their grand parties and balls, but the people had only seasonal festivals and troupes that traveled from village to village to relieve the depression and tedium of their daily lives. One of the divas of that nameless opera troupe was Callas’s mother, and on a visit to a remote village, she caught the eye of Valcua, who gave her a rather insistent invitation to visit his manse. At the time, Callas was only three years old, yet she was already quite popular and the highest soprano in the troupe.

“From that day forward, my mother and I remained at the grand duke’s mansion. I heard the rest of the performers had been handsomely paid and sent on their way—it was only much later that I learned they’d all, in fact, been slain. The grand duke preferred our voices to our blood. Every night, he would listen, enraptured, to mother and me singing. In starkly moonlit gardens, in great halls that held only the three of us, in the grand duke’s bedroom. But the passage of time that was meaningless to him was an all-too-apparent foe to us. The wrinkles were multiplying on my mother’s face, and her singing voice was losing some of its zing. In time, all that would remain for us was the same fate the rest of the troupe had met. Day by day, my mother grew thinner and weaker, perhaps because she could read the grand duke’s fickle mind more plainly than anyone. When we found favor with the grand duke, we seemed to frolic in heaven. But the knowledge of the fate that awaited us was more than my mother could bear. And so she came up with a proposal to ensure the grand duke’s opinion of us wouldn’t change.”

As the mother’s beauty and voice faltered, Valcua shifted his affection to Callas, whom she’d raised into a beautiful jewel of womanhood. The first night her mother had entered Valcua’s mansion and sworn she would sing for him alone for the rest of her days, she’d extracted a promise from the grand duke. He was never to give the kiss of the Nobility to Callas. She must’ve been filled with mettle and maternal love when she struck that bargain.

“Please keep my daughter and me with you—me until I die, and my daughter forever more,” her mother had suggested.

Twenty years had passed.

“One night, the grand duke crept into my bedroom and gave me the kiss.”

However, it was a strange phenomenon that awaited Callas. She didn’t thirst for blood or loathe the sunlight. She didn’t even succumb to madness like so many other victims.

As she wallowed in her despair, Valcua told her, “I’m able to do incredible things. I alone. You will not be my servant, but you will live so long you shall forget all about your human life. However, it won’t be forever, and you shall require the aid of some unholy devices. In return, your voice shall have a power more wondrous than any song that ever came from a human throat.”

Presently her mother died, and Callas buried her with all due ceremony. Afterward, Callas continued her days in peace, elegance, and unimaginable loneliness.

All that came to an end about a hundred years later, the instant the grand duke decided to fight the Sacred Ancestor. Whether it was during his deadly conflicts with fellow Nobles or in the universe - spanning war against the aliens, up until that point there hadn’t been a time when Callas wasn’t by the grand duke’s side, filling the air with her song. However, the opponent the grand duke now faced wouldn’t offer him even a moment’s respite. One after another, Valcua’s vassals were slain—struck down by assassins. In response, the grand duke selected seven of his strongest retainers for a new unit that would guard him against assassination. Callas was chosen to be one of them due to the power of her song.

“I don’t know how many Nobles or humans my songs brought death to. Those were not pleasant days.”

At some point, Callas had circled around behind Sue. Though her hands rested on the girl’s shoulders and a breath like ice blew over her lobe and into her ear, Sue wasn’t scared. She was one of them now.

The second that breath became a song, an acute pain shot through every inch of the girl, for Callas had just sung,
Pain, make your rounds.