Peter David - Out of the Darkness

“There,” Durla said.

“ There? ” She couldn’t believe it. “Wha—what did I do? How did I displease you…”

“You haven’t. Unfortunately we live in a world that is by perception,” he said sadly. “If the others think that I am unmanned by you… that I let you manipulate me in any way… then it can have a very negative impact on me and my fortunes. Even though it is not true. Therefore we need to make clear to any and all who are interested that I am my own man.”

He kicked her in the stomach while she lay on the floor. She doubled up, curling almost into a fetal position, and then, with the side of his boot, he struck her in the face. Mariel, sobbing, rolled onto her back, her legs still curled up. She felt something small and hard in her mouth. She rolled it around on her tongue. It was a tooth. She spit it out and it made a faint tik-tik noise as it bounced across the floor.

“Yes,” he said with satisfaction. “Now any who see you will know that Durla is no woman’s servant. No woman’s slave. You may be my inspiration… but I have no compunction about treating you in the same way that I would treat the lowliest of the low. I do not play favorites. For you see, nothing, and no one, is more important than Centauri Prime. And only if I am strong can I help our beloved world attain its true destiny.”

“Vir,” she whispered, very softly, very hoarsely.

He hadn’t quite heard her, because she said it just under her breath, and while he was still talking. “What did you say?” he inquired.

“Dear… I said… dear… please… don’t hurt me… any more…” She didn’t even recognize her own voice because it was so choked with pain.

“I need the full backing of all the ministers for the full military program that we have planned,” he continued. He crouched next to her, and he spoke as if from lightyears away. “Picture it, Mariel. Picture powerful warships, poised, ready. Needing only the final go-ahead from me to sweep across the galaxy like a black cloud of strength, reordering all the known worlds and uniting them under our rule. But it can only happen if the Centaurum is fully committed. To me. No hesitation, no reservation, no signs of weakness. I can take no chances that anyone think me soft. You understand, don’t you?”

“Yes… I… I do… I…”

“Good.”

Then he really began to hurt her.

And the thing that kept going through her mind was, Vir… Vir will help me… he will save me… Vir… I love you.

Vir Cotto felt the world spinning around him, and he sagged to the ground, staring up in disbelief.

He was just outside the palace. The sun was hanging low in the sky, the rays filtering through the haze as the twilight approached. As a consequence, there wasn’t much light with which Vir could make out the head on the pike in the garden. But there was just enough light to see, and the head was just familiar enough to recognize.

Rem Lanas stared down at him lifelessly. And yet, even in that lifelessness, there was accusation. Why weren’t you here for me, he seemed to say. Why didn’t you help me? Why didn’t you save me? I trusted you, became a part of your cause. ,. and this is what happened to me… because of you… you…

He hadn’t expected such a sight. He had been told to wait in the garden, that someone would be along to escort him in for his meeting with the emperor. But he’d been caught completely off guard.

He wasn’t sure how long Rem’s head had been up there. The weather had not been kind to it.

Then a bird landed on it. To Vir’s horror, it pulled experimentally at Rem’s cheek, trying to dig out what it apparently thought was a particularly appetizing bit of flesh.

“Get away!” yelled Vir, and he clambered up on a stone bench. “Get away! Get away!!!”

The bird ignored him, and Vir, who was gesticulating wildly, suddenly lost his balance. He stumbled backward, struck his head, and lay there, unmoving.

He had no idea how long he lay there, but when he finally did open his eyes, he found that night had fallen. He wondered how…

She could possibly have just been left in the one place, unseen by anyone, for such a period of time.

Then he felt heaviness in his chest, and a distant buzzing of alarm in the back of his skull. Suddenly he began to feel as if someone had clubbed him from behind. Probably, he reasoned, some sort of residual pain left over from falling and hurting himself.

With effort, he looked up at Rem Lanas’ head atop the pike.

It was gone.

His own head was there instead.

It looked rather comical in its way, and he would havelaughed had he actually been able to get the noise out. Instead, though, there was simply an overwhelming desire to scream at the hideous sight. However, he couldn’t get that to emerge either. There was just a repeated, strangulated coughing.

He turned and tried to run, tried to shout for help…

…and there was someone there in the shadows.

The darkness actually seemed to come alive around him as he stared, transfixed, at the being—no, the creature—thatwas moving slowly out of the shadows toward him. It fixed him with a malevolent glare, as if it had already destroyed him somehow and he simply wasn’t aware of it yet. Vir knew it instantly as a Drakh, a servant of the Shadows. But he reminded himself that the average Centauri had never seen a Drakh, and the last thing he should do was blurt out what was on his mind.

“Shiv’kala,” the Drakh said.

The word brought back awful memories. Years earlier, at the behest of the now—dead technomage, Kane, he had spoken that name to Londo. The mere mention of it had gotten Vir thrown into a cell. Later on, working in conjunction with another technomage, Galen, he had come to realize that the name belonged to one of the Drakh. Immediately he understood.

“You… are Shiv’kala,” he said.

Shiv’kala inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment. “Names,” he said, “have power. Power, however, cuts both ways.” When he spoke, his voice was a gravelly whisper. “You mentioned my name once. Do you remember?”

Vir managed to nod.

“When you did so, it drew my attention to you. Why did you?”

“Wh—why did I… what?”

“Why. Did you. Mention. My name?”

Once upon a time, Vir would have panicked at a moment such as this. Confronted by a dark, frightening creature of evil, he would have been reduced to a trembling mass of disintegrating nerves.

That Vir, however, was gone.

Gone, but not forgotten.

Outwardly he was all terror and wide eyes, hands trembling violently and legs buckling at the knees, causing him to sink to the ground in stark—staring terror.

Inwardly, his mind was racing. For he was seeing this entity before him not as some overpowering, terrifying monster, but rather simply as a member of another race. Granted, an incredibly formidable race. But he had been responsible for the destruction of a long—lost Shadow vessel that the Drakh had craved. He had seen Drakh warriors killed before his very eyes. He knew they were not invincible.

They had limits.

And the question posed him by Shiv’kala revealed some of those limits.

In a way it was remarkable. A bare half—dozen years ago, the mere mention of Shiv’kala’s name had struck a chillwithin him. Now he was facing down the owner of the name, and he was analyzing him with methodical precision.

The sight of his own head on the pole had been a nice bit of theatrics, but that had been sufficient to tell him that he was no longer in reality. He was in some sort of dream state, into which the Drakh had inserted himself.

But the Drakh was asking him questions.

Which meant the Drakh didn’t know the answers. After all, if he knew the answers, then why bother to ask at all? Totry to “trick” him for some reason? What would be the point of that?