Ahriman Collection by John French

Author:John French [French, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Published: 2016-01-11T14:50:41+00:00

XV

Connection

‘I don’t like it. Leaving my tower, I mean.’ Silvanus glanced at Hemellion as they turned a corner.

The red-robed serf said nothing, his face a fixed mask inside his hood. Hemellion looked old. His skin was folded, his mouth a line in a pattern of wrinkles. A slight stoop to his shoulders showed through the thick fabric of his robe. In truth he was no more than four or five decades old, but that time seemed to have cut deep marks in passing. Apart from the eyes, thought Silvanus. There was young anger in those eyes, glinting just beneath the surface.

Silvanus licked his lips. They had been walking for three hours, weaving their way through the ship towards its forward decks. Silvanus was already sweating under the layers of his attire. Black velvet and silver gauze covered him head to toe, hanging in heavy swathes. What he had said was true; he did not like leaving his tower. He did not like the other things that walked the Sycorax. He also did not like the way they looked at him: like he was no different. He coughed nervously.

‘Did they say why I had to come now?’ he asked. Hemellion said nothing, but turned through a wide door framed by feathers cast in brass. A platform of worn metal waited beyond, red-lit tunnels extending to a vanishing point at either side. Hemellion and Silvanus stopped in the centre of the floor. The doors closed like biting teeth, and the platform began to clank down the tunnel.

‘We are ready, is that it?’ said Silvanus, raising his voice above the clatter and clunk of the platform. Hemellion looked down, refolded the sleeves of his robes over his hands. The man was wearing gloves, Silvanus noted, rough black leather, worn at the palm. Why am I talking? wondered Silvanus. He does not want to talk, but I want him to so much that I am babbling like an idiot. He shook his head. You are an idiot, that is why, he said to himself. At the back of that thought, another voice wondered if it was because the man was the closest thing to a normal human being he had seen for a long time. ‘But why did Ahriman not come himself?’ he wondered out loud. ‘Or Sanakht?’

Hemellion turned his head slightly, and looked at Silvanus. The expression on his face was the same as if he had been looking at a plate of spoiled meat. He looked away.

The platform was moving faster now, the clatter of its cogged wheels and chains a single vibrating note. Cracked red lamps and dark openings flitted past. Silvanus thought he saw a cavern through one, a vast half-lit space filled with silent machines. He wondered if he had started the wrong way; he had seen Hemellion only once at a distance since the man had come on board.

‘You are Sanakht’s bondsman now, aren’t you?’ Silvanus called the question over the rattle of gears and rush of air. ‘Hemellion, yes?’

‘Slave.

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