Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'Yet we would not abandon them.' Elysiath said. 'So we had them build this place, where we would sleep, and from which we could still work our magics: our great ritual that has been nine hundred years in the making and may last a thousand more for all we know. And we selected those that bore a trace of our blood, or those that were most open to us, and made them our chief servants, and their children, and their children's children, so that they would be able to preserve our ways, and not fall into evil. Even then, our servants were gradually drifting from away us, falling into the error that has now claimed almost all of their kind. Which is why we have some interest, little child, in you.'

'Me?' Che started. She felt Thalric move beside her, and realized that, for him, her voice was the only one to have spoken out loud. The rest — that incredible history — had been played out in her head alone. It is best that way . 'But I'm not of your blood, or the Ministers' blood, whatever you mean.'

Elysiath eyed her pityingly. 'Of course you are not. Do not make the mistake of our servants, who believe it is merely a bloodline that we value. No, it is the ability to hear our call, to hear the old ways. You are of more use to us than all the Ministers this last century has seen. You alone have been purified of the taint of recent years.'

She saw understanding of a sort in Thalric's face. I'm Inapt, yes. So what? But she did know what. It did not just mean she could no longer use a crossbow or turn a key in a lock. It meant that she saw the world differently. Her mind could stretch to different shapes.

'We called to you — as we call to all those with ears to hear. Some of them come to us as we lie dreaming. Few indeed pass our tests.'

A dark thought occurred to Che. 'Kadro,' she murmured, 'the Fly-kinden from Collegium, he went missing.'

'He was curious.' The man at Elysiath's shoulder nodded. 'He had begun to understand. So we called to him. We even met him at the pyramid's summit. Sometimes, when we awake, we miss the sky, even though it is only the stars of a cool night that we can endure.'

'He failed the tests,' stated Garmoth Atennar flatly, 'and his companion took her own life rather than attempt them.'

A shock of anger went through Che, and she took an involuntary step towards the armoured giant, though minuscule in the face of him. 'You killed them!'

'We?' He looked down on her with faint derision. 'We who have the power of life and death, and whose inescapable rule stretches from horizon to horizon?' She met his eyes then, but his stern face beat her down. There was no admission, in that expression, of any kinship or shared humanity. He was the Master, she a servant, the divisions of the world from before the revolution. She wanted to shout and rage at him, but that reaction would have been as incomprehensible to Garmoth Atennar as the Masters' history would be to Thalric. A Fly and a Beetle were dead, two scholars of the College and, to the immortal Masters, it was as though they had been no more than a beetle, a fly, crushed unknowingly underfoot.

'And me?' she asked.

'You have passed our tests,' Elysiath said. 'You have heard our call. From your distant home you sought us out, and now that challenge is behind you, and you stand before us as a supplicant. Now reveal what you would have of us.'

Che stared at them, and she was distantly aware of Thalric's murmur, 'Be very, very careful what you ask.' It was a needless warning. 'I was sent here by my uncle,' she said. 'As an ambassador.'

Elysiath laughed again. It was a beautiful sound, but cold as winter. 'You may have believed that once,' she said. 'Do you still?'

'I …' Che stopped, feeling the world around her totter. Do I? No, Stenwold sent me. There was … I had reasons to investigate an Inapt Beetle city …There is a perfectly rational explanation for my being here . But she found that she did not believe it, not standing before them now. And you, Achaeos, you lured me here, to this place. You have pulled my strings all the way, as well as tormenting my nights .

Achaeos, since you died you've not been the man I knew .

'I had a guide, to lead me here,' she confessed slowly. 'I … am haunted.'

'We see him,' Lirielle said. 'He stands at your shoulder. Have you come this far to be rid of him?'

To be rid of him? Her breath caught in her throat. This final confirmation that what afflicted her was more than just a madness crawling inside her brain sent a shock through her. More than that was her instinctive recoil from the offer. But it's Achaeos … She saw his lost, loved face again in her mind. My poor Achaeos. I can't just discard him like a cape . But then she thought of the ghost, not the man: that lurking, looming grey stain with its continuous demands.

'How?' she asked.

'We need only lend it a little strength,' Lirielle explained. 'It is too weak to exist apart from you now, therefore it leans on you like a sick man. We shall help it to stand alone, then it will be about its business and you shall be rid of it.'

'But what if I am its business?' Che demanded.

Lirielle's expression suggested that this entire conversation was now boring her. She went back to combing her hair.

Che could feel the ghost hovering close, invisible to her but still present. She recalled the Marsh, suddenly: its dragging her towards the Mantis icon, and its shrieking denunciation of the Marsh people, how they had let the old ways lapse so far. Power: it was looking for magic, and why else if not to free itself? She should have considered more that he might want to be free from her, as much as she wanted to be free from him.

She did want to be free from him.

'Please,' she said, 'do it.'

'Che …' Thalric was reaching out, but she shook him off.

'Do it,' she said again, grasping her courage with both hands.

Elysiath sighed. 'You are so impatient, with your mayfly lives,' she said. 'See, it is being accomplished even while you demand it.'

She waved one languid hand, and all eyes followed the gesture.

There was something boiling and building in the air, grey and formless, writhing and knotting. Motes of substance seemed to be drawn to it, flocking through the dim air. It turned and twisted like a worm, as flecks of dusty powder fell into its substance. Slowly it was growing a form, evolving from a blur into something that had limbs, a head, the shape of a man.

'Is there …?' Thalric was squinting, as if trying to make out something he could not quite see. In another place, Che was sure, any number of ghosts would pass him by, but here, where the darkness was layered with centuries, one on top of another in an unbroken chain, the magic was getting even to him.

She thought she saw bones and organs as the apparition formed. It was still colourless, washed-out, still a shadow, a mere reflection in a dark glass. She found that she now feared to set eyes on him. What would he look like after a year in the void? Would it be Achaeos living she saw, or Achaeos dead?

Thalric made a choking sound, and she knew he must now see it, or see something. His lips drew back in a grimace, his hands spreading open to fight. Behind him the Vekken stood expressionless and she could not know what he saw.

'Is that …?' Thalric said. 'What am I seeing? Isn't that …?'

'Yes,' she confirmed, and looked back at the ghost, which was near complete, now — and discovered that it was not.

They had lent it enough of their strength, like a thimble filled from the ocean, for it to become recognizable, and more of it was being filled out even as she watched. She now recognized the tall, lean frame, and those sharp features that were, in their cold arrogance, a match for the Masters themselves. He did not wear the slave's garb they had dressed him in to die, but instead his arming jacket, its green and gold bleached grey. The sleeves were slit up to his elbows to give play to the spines of his arms. Even the sword-and-circle brooch that he had cast aside now glinted from his breast again.