Discarded Gods: A Bastard Cadre Story Page 6

  Ethan sat back in his chair and looked from Obdurin to Fahlim and back again. None of this made any sense. “I’m not staying here. Find somebody else to train your new and improved bondsan.”

  “I don’t want you to stay here. I would like you to watch over Marin and the child.”

  “And the others?”

  “They will be raised by other people, also away from Peak City,” Obdurin said.

  “I have no interest in raising a child,” Ethan said.

  “I know that. That’s why I am asking you to protect Marin and the child, not raise the child.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Ethan said. “Cadres belong in the capital cities. You want to send eleven babies out into the world and expect them all to survive and make it back to you?”

  “You know that I like elegant solutions, and I believe I have found a solution that may, in the correct circumstances, simultaneously solve many problems. I do not take this action lightly, I have given this much thought, and I believe it can make a difference.”

  “How? How does making a different type of cadre change anything?” Ethan asked.

  “That I cannot tell you,” Obdurin said.

  Ethan studied the Chosen. He wanted to get up and leave, but despite everything, he still trusted this man. He’d left Obdurin when he’d realized he was fallible and susceptible to his God’s manipulation, but he still trusted him.

  “Please consider it,” Obdurin said. “Fahlim could you introduce Ethan to Marin?”

  “With pleasure,” Fahlim replied, standing from his seat.

  Ethan understood they were being dismissed. Still thinking about what Obdurin had said he followed the immortal to the exit, but before he passed through it, he stopped and turned back to Obdurin. He looked small and frail in his oversized wooden chair.

  “Am I one of the problems you’re trying to solve?” Ethan asked.

  “What?” Obdurin asked, deliberately affecting an air of absentmindedness.

  “You said—”

  “I know what I said. I don’t believe you do well on your own. I believe it would be good for you to have people who rely on you.” With that said, Lord Obdurin stood up and walked to a set of stairs that led up to his private room above the audience chamber.

  10

  Ethan followed Fahlim in silence without paying attention to where they went or anything Fahlim said.

  Did he have me followed? Ethan wondered. Was he watching me this whole time?

  Ethan had never noticed anybody keeping an eye on him, but that didn’t mean Obdurin didn’t have people following him.

  Does he know I went up on that ledge? Ethan wondered and felt sick at the prospect.

  The wastelands, devoid of people and meaning, seemed far away now that he was here in one of the few remaining populated centers of Newterra, and his reasons for climbing up on that ledge seemed even further away.

  Can’t stay, can’t leave, Ethan thought. Be around people and the Gods and their deadly games or be alone.

  Ethan knew Obdurin was right. He didn’t do well on his own, but did that mean he should slot right back into doing Obdurin’s and Rhysin’s will?

  “My, my, Ethan, did you eat something that didn’t agree with you?” Fahlim asked from where he stood with his hand on a door handle.

  “What?” Ethan looked around and realized Fahlim had led him to one of the hospitals in Frake’s Stronghold.

  “You know, you’re no fun when you’re not paying attention,” Fahlim said and pushed the door open.

  Ethan followed him inside but stopped at the threshold. The room was windowless and sterile. Eleven plastic cribs mounted on covered trolleys with identical sets of drawers were lined up in a row in the middle of the room. The babies in the cribs looked like they were asleep.

  He asked, “What are we doing here? I thought we were going to meet Marin.”

  Fahlim smiled his insincere smile and said, “We are, but first, I want to show you Lord Obdurin’s latest project. The project you and many others are to play a part in. It’s very important, in fact, it’s so important, all other considerations are to be ignored.”

  Ethan recognized the sarcasm in Fahlim’s tone as a hook and left it dangling. Obdurin’s games were bad enough.

  Eleven identical girls a year or two younger than Taro were lined up and peering into the cribs. Whenever one of the babies wriggled or cooed in their sleep, the girls gasped and smiled and gathered around that baby’s crib.

  “Shard, this isn’t a playground,” Fahlim spoke in a soft tone Ethan had never heard the immortal use before.

  The girls froze, they’d been so consumed with their activity they hadn’t noticed the two men enter the room. With identical expressions on their faces, they looked up at Fahlim and Ethan, before scurrying through the door as one. Fahlim watched them go. When they were gone, he told Ethan, “They’re an odd bunch. Usually, with cadres, I can at least pick out the first-sworn, but with Shard’s cadre, I have no idea which one of them is actually Shard. I think it’s a game they’re playing. I do hope they grow out of it.”

  “Why are we here?” Ethan asked again and stepped all the way into the room.

  “Close the door,” Fahlim instructed.

  When Ethan’s eyes narrowed, Fahlim explained, “We wouldn’t want any nasty bugs to get in here and make the little ones sick, would we?”

  Ethan closed the door and advanced into the room. He glanced at the babies and was surprised how dissimilar they were to each other. A black skinned baby lay in the crib next to a pink skinned baby. Ethan spotted one with what looked like a descendant’s faint scales at its temples and above its eyebrows.

  “Ever since you’ve been gone Obdurin has obsessed over this cadre. He thinks they’ll be something someday.”

  ”But you don’t?” Ethan asked.

  Fahlim shrugged as he walked along the row of cribs, leaning in over each newborn to look at them. “It’s as you said, if they leave Frake’s Peak, it’s unlikely they’ll survive long enough to make a difference.” He made a face at one of the babies and said, “Ugh, hideous.”

  “What does Obdurin plan to do with them?”

  “Tutt-tutt.” Fahlim wagged a finger at Ethan. “Obdurin didn’t want to tell you, what makes you think I will?”

  Ethan returned the immortal’s gaze and waited.

  “Bindings are anticlimactic,” Fahlim said. He drew a dagger he wore on his belt and held it point up. “I was rather hoping something like this would have been used. I imagined wizards and priests overseeing the ceremony and Lord Obdurin in his finest robes, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was fairly clinical. It almost felt tacked on to the weighing and measuring and testing that they do when babies are born. They nicked each child’s wrist and carried one of them around to mix their blood together. This one, I think.” Fahlim poked one of the babies with a finger. “Then its blood was mixed with Obdurin’s. A wizard waved his hands and High Priest Solquist said something, and it was over.”

  Ethan remembered the high priest was dead and felt regret that he couldn’t remember the last time he saw Solquist. He stepped forward, uneasily, watching Fahlim as he waved the dagger idly punctuating his words.

  Fahlim reached the end of the row of cribs and paced around it.

  “I will say this, when Obdurin gets an idea in his head, he goes all in. The care and attention he’s put into forming this cadre is quite remarkable. I think he’s considered every possible aspect of binding a new cadre. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you the people he managed to convince into being parents of this little brood.”

  “Who?” Ethan asked instinctively, then cursed himself for taking the bait.

  Fahlim continued as though Ethan hadn’t spoken. “What do you suppose it’s like, being a Chosen?”

  “I don’t suppose,” Ethan said.

  “And why is that?”

  Ethan glanced at the babies to give himself a minute to compose his answer.

&
nbsp; “For the same reason I don’t think about being immortal.”

  “Oh, do tell.”

  “Because I have no interest in finding out.”

  “More fool you.” Fahlim started to pace along the row of cribs, now behind the babies. “Forgetting your slavish devotion to foolish biological limitations for a moment, tell me why you have no interest in being a Chosen. Surely, it is the highest station a person can aspire to?”

  “Enough games. Do you have a point?”

  “I always have a point. I’m merely ensuring the correct context is provided.”

  “Context? More word games?”

  “Very well. Let me tell you why you do not want to be a Chosen. You’ve been around enough of them to see what their lives become. Imagine for a second, what it must be like having a God crawl around inside your mind, examining your every thought and weighing your soul. Now imagine, just as that is done to you, you must do the same thing with every first-sworn that leads one of your cadres. Bound to them as a Chosen, you would have access to their minds and their inner lives. With so many people inside your skull, how would you keep anything straight?”

  Fahlim paused, and Ethan said, “Go on.”

  “Obdurin is brilliant, but he’s focused on the wrong thing. This cadre is a distraction. Worse, some of the best people he knows are being pulled into his little scheme to act as nothing more than babysitters for these monsters.”

  “You think these children are monsters because he bound them?”

  “Do you remember the Dragon Wars and the Dragon Lords?”

  “Of course not, I wasn’t alive five hundred years ago.”

  “Oh, of course,” Fahlim mumbled as though that detail had escaped him.

  “What are you going to tell me, that the Dragon Lords were monsters and once looked like these children?”

  “While true, I’m sure, that’s not my point. My point is that people think the Dragon Wars are over. They are not.”

  “It’s been half a millennia. The last of the Dragon Lords were killed or driven from Newterra,” Ethan said.

  “The wars are not over, merely stalled for a time. The Dragon Lords are coming back, and this time we’re in no position to oppose them. Five hundred years is no time at all to a God, and the Dragon Lords are Gods just as much as the True Gods. They’re coming back.”

  “If that’s true, why would they wait so long?”

  Fahlim scoffed. “Mortals. You live your lives one minute at a time, but never the minute that you’re actually in, it’s either a minute you already wasted thinking about other minutes, or a minute that will never come in the future, and all the time you’re living your pointless little lives in the wrong minutes, you believe all the minutes of your life will be the same and the world around you won’t change.”

  “The Cleansing proved that’s not true,” Ethan said.

  “I suppose when you’re thinking is limited to minutes or maybe even days for some of you, thinking in terms of months or years or decades or centuries, is simply beyond you. It’s not even really your fault. The confusing thing is why you still want to pretend that tomorrow will be the same as today. Five hundred years is not a long time, Ethan. The Dragon Lords are coming back, and they will keep coming back until we’re all dead and Newterra is theirs again.”

  “Why does this even matter?” Ethan glanced around the room; his eyes landed on the door.

  “Bored?” Fahlim asked.

  “Irritated,” Ethan replied.

  “Well, you’re right to be, but don’t leave just yet. I’ll tell you why it matters. You might have descended into nihilism and decided the world isn’t enough for you, but you could still be of service to those of us who’d like to stick around for a while longer.”

  Ethan felt heat in his cheeks and wondered, Does he know? Out loud he asked, “You preach morality and service to others?”

  “No, never that. I remain a committed hedonist. I’m merely offering you, a man who longs for purpose and meaning, a purpose that would allow my hedonist ways to continue uninterrupted. Like Obdurin, I am a fan of elegant solutions.”

  “What problems do you want to fix?” Ethan asked, skeptical and ready to leave.

  “Look at these children. If Obdurin’s plans for them come to fruition, they will lead extraordinarily miserable lives in service to meaningless ideals. Focused as he is on this cadre as a key to a lock that doesn’t exist, Obdurin is missing the real challenge ahead. I think of all the Chosen, he could provoke the others into preparing for the day the Dragon Lords return.”

  Ethan walked to the door, finally understanding Fahlim’s proposal. “I don’t know why Obdurin lets you stay.”

  “If just one of these infants dies, I think that would be enough to refocus Obdurin’s attention on the correct problem.”

  Ethan’s hand tightened on the door-handle. “You’d murder a defenseless baby?”

  “By the truckload, if that’s what it took. Eleven hardly seems like anything at all in comparison, but I’m only talking about one of them, and it wouldn’t even need to be murder. Neglect will do if you don’t have the stomach for it.”

  “You’re disgusting.” Ethan pulled the door open.

  “Tell me, Ethan, of all the people we’ve murdered in service to Lord Obdurin, do you think it makes a difference how old they were, or how well equipped they were to defend themselves?”

  The question stopped Ethan, but he didn’t answer it.

  “I have no qualms about taking life, any life, if it serves a greater purpose.”

  “Your purpose,” Ethan insisted.

  Fahlim shrugged. “Why, there is no greater purpose than mine. Anything else is a mere abstraction that takes form inside somebody else’s head. My reluctance to do the deed myself comes from the loss of influence I’ll suffer. Without me to guide Obdurin’s hand, he might stumble onto some other pet project to occupy his time and then it would all be for nothing.”

  “Why doesn’t Obdurin see what you are?” Ethan asked.

  “He does. He knows exactly what I am, and that is why he keeps me around. I’m useful. I’m afraid it is you who does not see clearly. You still don’t see what Obdurin is. You still insist on thinking he is merely a man.”

  Something buzzed and Fahlim produced an AI from his suit pocket.

  He glanced at the screen. “Ironic. While we’ve been talking about murder, somebody, with a modicum of backbone, has committed the act. We’re to go back to Obdurin’s audience chamber. It looks like you’ll get your wish after all and see what’s really going on.”

  Fahlim sheathed his dagger and stepped past Ethan into the corridor without sparing a glance for the newborn cadre in the room behind him.

  11

  Ethan stood at a window, as far from Lord Obdurin’s council table as he could, with his back to the people in the room behind him.

  Cities stood on the horizon in solitary defiance of the desert. The blue tinted roads were reduced by distance to thin pencil lines, connecting the cities like the last strands of a decaying spider web pulled apart by the wind.

  This would be high enough, the thought popped into Ethan’s mind, and he scowled at himself. He’d been determined to jump the day before, but first Taro and then James had interrupted him, and he was glad. Coming back to Peak City had shown him there were still people in the world, and he didn’t have to be alone.

  I just can’t stay here, he thought.

  James had provoked him into returning even as the strange man explained that was exactly what he was doing. Who sent him? Ethan dismissed the question before it gained any traction. It didn’t matter. Ethan was out, and he should never have allowed himself to be drawn back in. Telling himself that Obdurin needed to know somebody was manipulating Ethan had been an excuse to return, but even though he wouldn’t stay, he was glad he’d come back. He was glad to have seen Mattatan and Obdurin.

  His thoughts wandered to Nea. I should have let her ride along. There are people out there.
I don’t need to be here, to be around people.

  Voices murmured behind him. Several of Obdurin’s council members and advisors sat at the expensive table. Obdurin was absent, but Fahlim was there, either eager to get away from Ethan or to play his games with somebody else. Ethan had recognized most of the people there when he and Fahlim returned from the nursery. He’d nodded in greeting to a couple of them and then put his back to the room. He listened to their murmurs and shuffling feet as he studied the desert.

  Three cadres of bondsan guarded the perimeter of the chamber. Their hands behind their backs, feet planted firmly beneath them, ready for anything. In addition to Mattatan’s cadre, Pollard’s and Gordon’s cadres were present.

  Mattatan stood a short distance away, and Ethan asked him, “How’s the boy?”

  “Sleeping,” Mattatan replied. “Rattan is outside his door to make sure he’s safe.”

  Ethan nodded and was about to voice his thanks, but instead, he asked, “Is that the only reason he’s guarding the door?”

  Mattatan turned his head to look at Ethan, then stepped closer. “I made you take responsibility for him if he came up here and you agreed. Lord Obdurin took that responsibility and passed it to my cadre.”

  Ethan understood, and, even though Mattatan hadn’t answered his question, he said, “Thank you.”

  “It’s the least I can do. Not everybody brings chocolate when they visit.”

  “And whiskey,” Ethan reminded him with a smile.

  Mattatan grinned and reached into his jacket. He took out a small knife in a leather sheath. He had his back to the council table and held the knife so that only Ethan could see it. The bondsan kept his eyes up and looking out at the desert as he slipped the blade from its sheath. The gray metal had a red cast to it that was brightest where the blade caught the light.