From Ruins by M.C.A. Hogarth

Author:M.C.A. Hogarth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction
Publisher: Studio MCAH
Published: 2017-12-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Very few things could pierce Jahir's increasing disorientation. He knew his periods of lucidity were narrowing, and the fear that inspired seemed distant compared to the dreams: of glistering nets of patterns, spreading outward, and increasingly of fire and the howls of monsters, and those dreams in particular felt urgent in their significance. The Usurper still dragged him from his pallet (and that too felt like a pattern, like a shared pattern), and hung him on the wall, and deprived him of sight and hearing and gagged him and he drifted there in the webs of the universe. He did not reach anymore, because he had made a vow, and having made it he felt its rightness, that he should husband his strength for his cousin's arrival, for surely Lisinthir would come.

The Usurper had become inconsequential, save as a source of diffuse information. Jahir no longer needed to sit in his mind to hear his thoughts bleeding, spilling, coloring the fog near him. To focus on him was unnecessary.

Until the yell.

"WHAT!"

Jahir roused himself to attend to the conversation. Two minds in the room with him: the Usurper and his foremost ally, who'd come to reinforce the throneworld. It was that male who answered, "I'm afraid it's true. Kauvauc is still alive."

"Not possible. Not possible!" The Usurper smashed his hands on the desk. "The ambush took care of him. They reported that they killed him!"

"They were either mistaken, or lying."

"They must be punished."

"Yes. But punishment is immaterial to the more pressing issue, which is that he is alive, and he has taken control of some portion of the Navy. My spies report they are planning to come here, to retake the throne."

"Of course he is," the Usurper hissed. "What else. These barbaric males are all alike. Do we know how much of the Navy he controls now?"

"I brought the numbers." Sound of a tablet sliding over the desk. Try as he might, Jahir couldn't see the figures, but he felt the Usurper's surge of satisfaction. "As you can see they are preliminary numbers only. But many ships have abandoned him."

"The system lords." A surge of contempt. "Off to pick at Second's leavings. I see we have acquired not a few of the remaining Naval units."

"They don't believe he can succeed. Either that, or they are disturbed by how he succeeded." Less curiosity then, and more unease, but whatever expression the Usurper was wearing prompted his second to say, "He has learned to mimic the shapes of wingless freaks."

The Usurper's revulsion swamped the room. "He polluted his own body?"

"Multiple times. I have a recording if you want to see."

"No. Even seeing it... no. Bad enough that he didn't die. That he should be worse than dead? But I shouldn't be surprised. He was always too interested in the perversities of nature. Witness his fatal interest in this alien."

They both turned their attention to Jahir, briefly. The Usurper's disgust redoubled. His companion thought only that Jahir looked like a carcass hung for drying.

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