CHAPTER 54
THE STRAIGHT WAY
Vorgossos.
Long had that dread world haunted my dreams.
So often in memory I had wandered the pillared galleries and storied halls of the palace of the Undying; felt the still, dead air of that place on my skin; seen the shadows of the wonders and the horrors of the Garden of Everything projected across the interior of my skull. Well I recalled the Exalted titan, Calvert, and the fruits of the tree of false life—the children of Kharn Sagara hanging like apples from the roof above. Even now, I can feel the touch of Brethren’s hands; taste cold, salt water filling my mouth; hear its hushed whispers like a pressure on my mind.
Always I knew I must return, though I had almost convinced myself that the daimon’s words were madness. Falsehood. Brethren had said I must return, that we would meet again but once.
For one final time.
But the Judicator Ragama had told me I must go, that I must seek the weapons of the enemy—of the old enemy—and turn them against the new.
Seek hardship.
And so I knew my time had come.
The day after Selene left me on the platform outside the pyramid palace of Kharn Sagara, I returned with Lorian to the Mistwalker. The Gadelica would remain in that mighty vessel’s hold for the long journey to Merope—one of the Pleiades—where we were to rendezvous with the Imperials and the Chantry’s Sentinel fleet.
Even with the mighty engines of the Extrasolarian fleet, we would be nine years at sail.
I said before that I had long ago ceased to haunt my ships for the long voyages between our stars—stalking the chambers and corridors as I had when I was young—and so it was on that journey. I am relieved to say that even in my altered state, my consciousness was destroyed for a time, and I drank of the waters of Lethe and oblivion, and so forgot the world.
In time, I was awakened, and so met the worthies the Imperium had sent to support the fleet of the Monarch. I confess, I almost expected to find Bassander Lin waiting beyond the heliopause in Merope. The man had the strangest habit of appearing, like a second shadow, where I least expected him.
But it was not to be.
Instead, the command fell to Lord Ohannes Douro, Baron of Anarias, a strategos of high blood and ancient dignity. He was accompanied by a Sentinel commander called Kedron, who to my shock wore the blindfold of a cathar across his face. I misliked them both at once. Douro because he was more politician than soldier, Kedron because he was Chantry.
I do not think I had ever had occasion to meet one of the Chantry Sentinels before. They were the guardians of Earth, the watchmen who protected the homeworld and system, as well as watched over the graveworlds—the sites they had themselves destroyed.
They were mostly seen by the dead.
Theirs was the blazing sword of the God Emperor, the fires of judgement that had extinguished countless lives. That sword was sailing for Vorgossos alongside—unknown to all but a few—the exiled master of that dark world. Their bombs would rain upon Vorgossos, and we would stride into the ashes and the fallout like William Rex and his worthies on the Day of Advent when the hammer fell.
I thought of telling Lorian the truth, that his master was part and particle of the very enemy we sailed against; that he longed only to reclaim the throne of Vorgossos, the mastery of his slave daimon, and eternal life; that the New Order and world Lorian fought for was only a tool of that reconquest, the work of centuries.
But I did not. Could not.
Harendotes’s spies were sure to be everywhere aboard the Mistwalker, his eyes . . . his hands. His knives. Therein lay the second reason the Gadelica had not been released. It was slow, yes, too slow to reach Merope with the rest of the Latarran fleet, but so long as Lorian—and through Lorian, Harendotes himself—held my people, he held me in check. Pinned as a pawn to the flank of his emperor.
Unable to move.
I had no choice but to have faith in Selene. My note would not be enough to cause the Empire to withdraw its support—they needed the Latarran telegraph, and Latarran support in the war—but it would put them on their guard. Douro and Kedron and the Imperial fleet would know who it was they sailed to aid. Selene would have put the note directly into her father’s hands, and I knew that I could count on Caesar to understand that we were hostages.
Perhaps it was then that the seed was planted, watered, started to grow.
As long as she was by my side, Cassandra was in danger. If she were safe, I might speak the truth, tell Lorian all I knew, and win free of the labyrinth at last.
But I could not win free.
Not without first plumbing the labyrinth to its uttermost depths.
The time had come to return and face the beast that dwelt in its heart, as Theseus had done of old.
Always forward, always down.
And never left nor right.