27. EXILES
EXILES
JACEN
Seth took the stern position as Jacen took the bow, manning the oars while Nines, Ogden, and Urien huddled awkwardly with the cargo.
The boat had just enough space for the five of them and supplies for two days’ journey downriver.
Jacen suddenly found himself with too much time to think, facing the freedom—the terror—of a wide-open future.
He could do anything. He could throw himself into the deepriver.
He could take this boat all the way to Lun or to the plague-riddled north beyond the Burning Hills.
He could take up carpentry, raise pigeons, write poetry.
Next time they made camp, he could corner Seth, close the distance between them, and run his hands over every inch of his body, just as he wished he could have years ago.
Nothing stood in his way now. Not his vows—nothing.
Jacen tried to focus on the rowing, the rhythmic back-and-forth along the lazy current, but it was no use. He had only a fragile hold on his self-control, a filament of spider’s web all that kept him from doing something insane.
To his intense relief, Ogden finally spoke. “Before we arrive in the Shrouded City, there are some things I should tell you.”
“Some,” echoed Seth, twisting over his shoulder to give the old man a pointed look.
Ogden sighed. “In my youth, I ran afoul of the gods. I learned secrets I was not meant to know. Urien helped me escape.”
“I’d guessed that much,” Seth muttered.
“Oh?” Ogden’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Pity. That’s as much of my story as you’re entitled to.” He looked at Urien. “I imagine they’ll have more relevant questions for you.”
That was true enough. Jacen started with the most pertinent: “Why did you betray your people?”
“Why did you betray yours?” Urien countered without a hint of offense. “I imagine we’re more alike than you think. Sometimes, enough is simply enough.”
“What changed?” Seth asked.
“It’s difficult to explain. You know so little of my people.” It wasn’t an insult. In fact, Urien seemed almost apologetic. “Would you allow me to start from the beginning?”
Seth made a show of looking up and down the river. “We have time.”
Urien went quiet, pensive. Then he said, “My people—we call ourselves the Firstborn Empire—come from another planet.”
“What do you mean?” asked Nines.
“A world, not unlike your Celes Lor,” said Urien, “but farther away than any of us can fathom, lit by another sun. We call it Ihrafang.”
“How many other worlds are there?” Nines’ voice was tinged with awe.
“Hundreds of thousands,” said Urien. “More than you or I could ever visit in a lifetime. Many—like this world, like my homeworld—have brought forth sapient life. We don’t know how or why, but without exception, each of these planets is touched by the Source.
Some revere it, some fear it. My people exploited it.
We stripped entire planets bare in the name of profit, and so we viewed the Source, too, as a commodity to be bought and sold.
“In those early days, there lived a man who controlled a great deal of that wealth, who also happened to be an adept telepath. When specialists in his employ discovered a demon that could grant its host exceptional physical abilities and longevity, he took it for himself. His name was Tharanoth, of the great house Eregost.”
“Tharanoth,” Nines repeated, automatic. “The Lord of Hunger.” Urien lifted a finger. “Not quite. You’re an exorcist in training, correct?” She hesitated, then shrugged and nodded.
“You know that all demons, even the most powerful, begin as little more than animals. They learn from their hosts over time. They come to want what their hosts want, believe what they believe. When a demon remains with the same host for hundreds of years, it learns everything there is to know about them. It preserves a near-perfect copy of that host’s mind, with all its memories, intelligence, and personality.
It is as at home in this universe as it is in the Source. ”
“Enough to survive indefinitely, without a living host?” Jacen hedged.
“Indeed. But by the time Tharanoth’s original host expired, he’d had plenty of time to choose his second: his own descendant, created from centuries of selective breeding—and the strongest telepath of their generation.
This process has continued over millennia.
Tharanoth was among the earliest, but now there are over a hundred of his kind.
“Archdemon hosts are possessed very young, when personality is malleable and easily subsumed. They are raised to view themselves as an extension of their ancestor, and consent to integration without hesitation. It is . . . the greatest honor our empire affords.” Urien paused.
“Some would say that the state of our civilization is a tragedy because we’ve given it over to demons.
I do not agree. Everything a demon learns, it learns from us.
What we’ve become is a horror of our own making.
The first man to call himself Tharanoth Eregost desired eternity, supremacy, to rule over worlds, and so, that’s what has been passed down. ”
Jacen felt ill. “So, the gods . . .”
“They’ve all worn countless bodies,” said Urien. “Their bloodlines exist to produce archdemon hosts, bred to genetic perfection.”
“That’s why they look different than you,” Nines surmised.
“Scions of the archdemon bloodlines are larger and stronger than our species’ baseline,” Urien affirmed. “When one hosts a demon, that strength is amplified tenfold. My kind live longer than yours, but an archdemon might wear the same body for a thousand years.”
“And they’re invulnerable?” Jacen recalled the stories he’d heard as an acolyte, of an arrow bouncing off a goddess’s skin. “Human weapons can’t hurt them.”
“That particular advantage is technological,” said Urien.
“Personal shield generators.” He clarified: “Their host bodies bleed and break like ours do, though the point is moot, because I’ve never known them to go without their shields.
Regarding the demons inside, however, you’re correct.
They cannot be harmed by any weapons of this universe. ”
“How did you fit in to all this?” Nines asked.
“I was born on Ihrafang. My family is sworn to the bloodline of Turil Manengol—you call her the Lady of Pain. I came to Celes Lor as an engineer, and for fifty years, I worked on the orbital station.”
Nines narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s that? What were you doing here?” This was the most Jacen had ever heard her speak in a single conversation.
“You’re a pet project of Lord Tharanoth’s.
” Urien grimaced at his own habitual use of the honorific.
“This world is as fascinating as it is deadly. The archdemons can endure the radiation in your atmosphere, but I cannot.” He tapped his helmet.
“I only helped keep the station in orbit, ensuring it blocks out the sun each Harvest season. I never traveled planetside. I . . . knew that the Harvest serves to gather test subjects for certain experiments. I don’t know their exact nature. But the little I discovered—”
“Suffice to say,” Ogden cut in, “it’s worse than you can imagine.”
For the briefest of moments, Seth’s rowing ceased. Part of Jacen wanted to ask for details, but a much greater part couldn’t stand to know. Not today. Seth and Nines appeared to concur; both remained silent.
“Most of my colleagues were just trying to survive.” Urien seemed well aware this wasn’t an excuse, and spoke without emotion.
“I’d hazard that most know next to nothing of the horrors their lords have perpetrated.
Anyone who makes direct contact undergoes rigorous training and evaluation, sworn to secrecy.
We’re told that to accelerate the development of a pre-interstellar civilization is to irreparably harm it, and all we do is for your own good.
” He pressed his lips together. “You think us foolish for believing that, and you’re not wrong.
But we are also afraid. The archdemons punish dissent . . . harshly.”
Jacen was familiar enough with that. It had become a matter of survival to try to look at his own people as abstract concepts, even as atrocities played out before his eyes. Who was he to judge Urien?
“I befriended Ogden when he was among us. Another victim of your Harvest. When I learned what would be done to him—” Urien broke off as Ogden coughed.
“I could no longer ignore reality. I arranged our escape on a cargo shuttle. It remains my greatest shame that it took me so long to act, and my greatest honor that I finally did.”
Ogden laid a metal hand over Urien’s armored one. “It’s been my honor to know you, too.”
There was more to this story, and Jacen itched to know it. But it felt rather monstrously uncalled for, to ask Ogden how he’d lost all his limbs. This was a story to which he, a Priest of the Black Sun, had no right.
“Why are we so interesting to them?” Nines asked. “You said you don’t know everything. But you’ve guessed.”
It wasn’t a question. Urien sighed. “You produce telepaths at higher-than-average rates. That’s of interest to the archdemons. But I have speculated that C5-001 is the principal reason for their . . . considerable investment.” He clarified, “C5-001 is our name for the demon of the canyon.”
Seth’s rowing faltered again. “Neri’s demon?”
“On all the worlds we’ve conquered,” said Urien, “the Firstborn have never encountered demons more powerful than the ones who rule us. C5-001 is the exception.”
“They view it as a threat,” said Ogden. “Or something that could be, in the right hands.”
“Neri’s hands.” Seth exhaled, not quite a laugh. “Is his demon anything like the gods? Will it subsume his personality?”
“No.” Ogden said it with confidence, but what Jacen detected was not certainty. “The extreme longevity of the Firstborn hosts is key here.” He looked to Jacen. “The exorcist might explain it better.”
“Most demons contain only echoes of previous hosts,” Jacen said quietly.
“A possessed telepath can, in theory, commune with them but won’t be consumed.
If there have been too many other hosts, I can imagine it might be .
. . chaotic. But a trained telepath should be able to maintain distinct boundaries—”
Jacen stopped. He’d been thinking aloud—a mistake.
“How many hosts has Neri’s demon had?” Seth asked with dawning horror.
Urien considered before answering. “The Zal documented over a thousand.”
“And Neri isn’t a trained telepath.” Seth laughed again, and this time, it sounded like choking. “Can he handle that?”
Ogden said nothing.
“They may not mean to use him,” said Urien. “They might use your species’ genetics, most notably your radiation resistance, to enhance their own and eventually harness C5-001 themselves.”
To his credit, at least, he seemed to realize it wasn’t a reassuring statement.
“Hold on,” said Seth. “You’re not saying they can breed with us, are you?”
Urien and Ogden exchanged a glance. An uncomfortable silence dragged on.
“We’re similar, biologically speaking,” said Urien. “All worlds touched by the Source have commonalities.”
Ogden coughed and said to Urien, “He’s going to find out. We might as well tell him now.”
They both looked at Jacen. His insides contorted. “Tell me what?” “After you broke into my home,” said Urien, “I felt compelled to do my research.”
Jacen had already begun to guess what Urien was about to tell him. He stared at the water, wishing he could take the question back, holding his theories by a tight rein before they could spiral.
“I tested your genetic material after you bled all over my floor.” Urien’s tone was gentle and far too delicate.
“Out with it,” Jacen blurted. “The Cathedral archives say I’m Zal and I don’t have an original surname. I was given false memories. It’s because I’m—because I’m—”
He stared at Ogden, challenging him to deny it, until the old man said, “Yes.”
Too much made sense now. Jacen’s shoulders sagged. He wanted to keep sinking until he dissolved into the churning black river.
“It’s a hard truth, I know.” Ogden added, as though he thought it might help, “Most likely, you are Zal, and one of your parents or grand-parents had . . . a tryst with a Firstborn field operative.”
Seth rowed on without a word, and Jacen did not dare try to sense what he felt. He dearly wished someone would say something—anything.
“My contacts in the Shrouded City are aware of your heritage,” Ogden said. “I thought it best that you heard it before we arrived.”
Another reason for them to hate him. Jacen was beginning to feel lightheaded. “What does this mean for me?”
“They might find you too useful to kill,” said Ogden. “Telepaths of your caliber are terribly rare.”
“Physically,” Jacen managed to elucidate. If he was not quite human . . . The notion was too abstract to fully grasp. He looked outwardly ordinary enough, but what legacies had his monstrous ancestors left lurking beneath his skin?
“I don’t know,” Ogden admitted. “You may live longer than your species’ norm.”
Jacen had wanted this answer, hadn’t he? He wrung his fingers together, stifling a sudden impulse to count them. Urien noticed. He frowned at Jacen’s hands and seemed about to speak but stopped himself.
“What is it?” Jacen demanded.
“I’d expect you to be . . . well, a bit more like me.” Urien looked askance and demurred, “But I’m no geneticist.”
Jacen gritted his teeth. For gods’ sake, he was a telepath. He knew Urien was leaving something out, something he wasn’t comfortable saying aloud.
“Please.” Jacen struggled to keep his voice level. “Just tell me.”
Urien shifted in his seat. “Most of my people never have any interaction with yours, let alone set foot on this planet. What’s more, there are .
. . certain traits you possess which do not occur naturally in us.
” He lifted a four-fingered hand. “Five digits, for instance. Some of our great houses have engineered it into their genomes for the dexterity advantage. Also, considering your size and strength . . .” He cleared his throat.
“It’s likely—a certainty, even—that your parentage comes from one of those great houses. ”
A violent shudder ran through Jacen. Seth had begun to row with a vengeance. Nines openly stared at Jacen, deep in thought.
Even Ogden was taken aback. “I don’t recommend sharing that theory with our friends in the Shrouded City.” He sighed. “I’ve had a difficult enough time keeping him alive.”
Jacen ignored him, focused on Urien. The strange little man beheld him with a blend of pity, curiosity, and fear.
That fear was unmistakable to a telepath, and Urien’s was familiar.
Jacen had felt it that night in the clinic.
When Urien had frozen at the sight of him, Jacen had thought it odd, but .
. . Perhaps the true object of Urien’s fear was someone else, someone of whom Jacen reminded him.
“Of your great houses,” Jacen said slowly. “How many individuals have visited this planet?”
“That I know of?” Urien exhaled. “Only six.”