Chapter 20

20.

         “So,” Tristian said in a bored tone, “would you like to tell us what this is all about?”
         Pressed up against the wall, the person in question said nothing, his eyes never moving from the shimmering red blade at his throat. The pale crimson light was reflected in his eyes, lighting two distant fires in his pupils. Contrasted with his suddenly pale complexion, it gave him a wasted and drawn look.
         There was a flurry of motion in the doorway, a clatter of rapid footsteps. Without moving the sword, Tristian glanced over to his right, just in time to see a man run into the doorframe, start to fall into the room, grab hold of the wood in a desperate attempt to stay upright, before giving up and falling to his hands and knees, his stomach and chest heaving as he vomited all over the floor. Beyond him, Tristian could see the shadows of three other men, all either on the floor or heading in that direction, the combined splatter of their vomit striking the floor sounding almost rhythmic, achieving a sort of percussive resonance when coupled with their sporadic groans and coughs.
         In the midst of this Ranos strode unconcerned into the room, stepping carefully to avoid pools of undigested food and moaning bodies, making a face as a drop landed on the tip of his boot. Pausing, he bent down to grab a handful of the nearest man’s shirt and casually wiped off the offending stain.
         “Find anyone else?” Tristian asked.
         “Nothing,” Ranos answered. “Other than our new friends, we are alone here.” As he spoke he smoothed over the covers on the bed and then sat down, resting one ankle on the opposite knee and turning to stare at Tristian. “Any luck with him?”
         “Not yet,” Tristian replied, looking down the blade of the sword at the man. “But then we were just starting to have a serious chat.” He waved the sword ever so slightly under the man’s chin. “Weren’t we, now?”
         The man, almost a boy really, swallowed tightly, appearing to try to press himself deeper into the wall. “I . . . I . . .” he said, his eyes flickering quickly to Tristian and then back to the sword again. “You’re in my house. What are you doing in my house?” he asked, his voice a frayed whisper. The thin sheen of sweat forming on his face gave him the complexion of a polluted lake. Looking up at the ceiling and closing his eyes, he added in a rush of words, “Please don’t kill me. Please.”
         “Hm,” was all Tristian said at first. “Don’t kill you, hm? What do you think, Ranos? He hasn’t been too helpful so far. Comes in here, threatens us, now he wants mercy. I don’t know. We’ve killed for lesser reasons, honestly. Remember the last fellow who pleaded with us? He begged for a good five minutes.”
         “But he was most persuasive,” Ranos commented, his face a mask of seriousness. “You didn’t kill him, if I recall.”
         “I didn’t need to,” Tristian said evenly. “After I cut his legs off, he threw himself off the nearest cliff.” Giving a derisive sniff, he added, “That will teach him to watch where he’s walking.”
         “Ah, that’s right,” Ranos said, nodding knowingly. Pausing for a moment, he then said, “Have we ever discussed your easily aroused temper and penchant for brutal violence?”
         “No,” Tristian growled, leaning in just a fraction of an inch closer so that the tip of the sword just barely brushed against the man’s Adam’s apple, drawing a bright spot of blood. Eyes still closed, he tensed at the tiny scratch, and swallowed again, but said nothing else. A muscle at the base of his jaw was pulsing rapidly. “Not that I recall. Why do you ask?”
         “Oh, no reason,” Ranos said lightly, shrugging. Beyond the door, there was the sound of someone dry heaving, followed by a hollow thud as something hit the floor. “Call it a passing whim.”
         “If you insist,” Tristian told him in an equally offhand fashion. Turning his attention back to his prisoner, he said, “And as for you . . .”
         “My sister’s room,” the man blurted out suddenly, causing Tristian to blink in surprise. “This is her room . . . and now . . . and now you’re here . . .” his words stumbled over each other, throwing out concepts instead of sentences, as if afraid he might not have the time to finish. “Her room . . . and now you’re here, I come home and . . . and you’re here and . . . she’s not here and . . . and what . . . what the hell am I supposed to think? Okay?” He was shivering slightly now, hands pressing so tightly against the wall that his fingers were turning bone-white. “Where is she?” he asked tightly, tensing for a blow that he expected to come any second. “Just tell me that. Just tell me. What you did with her. That’s all. That’s all I want to know.” He finished with a taut explosion of breath, stopping just short of panting, looking like a man understanding that he was about to die and not feeling at all ready.
         Tristian looked at Ranos, who merely raised an eyebrow.
         “What do you think?” he asked the other man.
         Ranos shrugged. “He did say please,” he noted.
         “Right,” Tristian said, flicking the blade away from the man’s throat, keeping it loosely at his side. “We don’t know where your sister is,” he said to the man. “We’re travelers who just got here . . . the woman here rented this room out to us. She never said anything about anyone else.”
         Slowly, the man opened his eyes, although he didn’t move away from the wall. “What . . .” he said softly. “What are you talking about? My sister . . . this is where she lives . . . this is her room . . .”
         Ranos stood up from the bed. His head came less than a foot shy of the ceiling. Without a word he went around the bed, stepping past Tristian and the man, over to the dresser sitting nearby. Delicately he picked up the small pillow that rested there, his hand grasping it gently, as if it were made of dust and might disperse if handled too roughly.
         “Did this, perhaps, belong to her?” Ranos asked simply, holding it up so the man could see.
         His eyes widened when he saw it. “Yes . . . yes that was . . . that was hers, Mum . . . she made it just before she was born, my sister, she . . . she would, when she was little she’d hug it to her when she slept,” his hands unconsciously mimed the motion, forming fists and crossing over his chest.
         “The woman we spoke to said she’d never seen it before,” Tristian said. Outside the door the last man finally collapsed in exhaustion, having nearly turned himself inside out, no doubt losing a not insignificant amount of weight in the process. It suddenly became much quieter.
         “That . . . it, it would have had to been Mum, but . . .” his face took on the look of a man who had swallowed something unpleasant and was considering cutting it out or letting it rot inside. “But why would she say that? That doesn’t . . . why would she . . .” he stopped, put a hand to his hand as if preventing something from bursting free, before peering at Tristian and Ranos with a distrustful gaze. “You’re lying,” he said, eager to be proven right. “You have to be. Otherwise . . . it, it makes no sense.” He stared intently at them, willing them to disappear, leaving his sister in their place. “It doesn’t. What did you do with her? Why are you doing this?” There was a desperate pleading in his voice. Tristian could understand it. If he and Ranos couldn’t produce her, it meant she was truly missing.
         “We don’t have her,” he said, honestly, bluntly. “Like I said, we just got here and that’s what we were told. When was the last time you saw her?”
         “Just . . . just yesterday,” the man said, looking nervous again. “During the day, after dinner maybe . . . I don’t even remember if I said anything to her, I . . .” he glanced at the doorway, perhaps expecting reinforcements. “Mum said she had gone to bed early, when I got back and . . . I thought she was just sleeping late this morning.”
         “Perhaps she merely went for a walk somewhere,” Ranos offered. “Although it doesn’t explain her mother’s denial.”
         “No,” Tristian replied, furrowing his brow and casting a glance at the floor. “No, it doesn’t.” The light from the sword cast harsh highlights on everything in the room, staining the wall bloody. Turning away from the man, who released an audible sigh of relief, he paced toward the door, swinging the sword in an easy, low arc, scattering the shadows and sending them, bleeding and battered, toward the far corners. “Something isn’t right here, Ranos. When I was out there, people . . . a lot of them didn’t seem to have any . . . purpose, they were just wandering around, aimlessly. I didn’t notice it at first. And those that weren’t wandering were building, fences and houses and God knows what else, just constantly constructing. But even when they were wandering, they all looked . . . preoccupied, even the most aimless wandering randomly with a sense of purpose. One boy was sitting in the middle of a walkway, sketching a face in the dirt with a stick and saying over and over, `Of course he’ll find her. Of course he will. Then he’ll kill her’.” Tristian stopped, staring at the walls, the blank surface shouting all the answers he was likely to get. “I don’t know who he was talking to. For some reason, I think it was me.” Turning, he bent down to check the breathing of a man sprawling in the doorway, taking a second to gently move his face away from the puddle of foul vomit it was lying in. “Someone kept following me, very obviously, and when I confronted him about it, he acted like he didn’t know where he was, began to cry hysterically and then ran off. When I ran around the corner to try and catch him, there was no one there.” He stared at the blade of the sword for a moment before turning it off. The room somehow became that much darker. Hefting the hilt in his hand, he stood up and said, “I passed people who paced back and forth, grinning broadly and never noticing the rut they were forming in the ground. People walking by didn’t pay it any attention, as if it were this commonplace occurrence not worth wondering about.” He crossed back over to Ranos, taking the pillow from his hands and squeezing it slightly, running his thumb over the embroidered name. “Something is wrong in this village, and I don’t think it’s isolated.” He balanced the pillow in one hand, slowly raising his eyes to meet the impassive gaze of his friend. “Ranos, what did Joe and Kara run into here? What’s going on? What did we send them into?” His voice held a sort of distant horror, the tone of a man who had cut off his hand and was only just realizing that maybe it hadn’t been such a smart idea.
         “I . . . don’t know,” Ranos replied, backing up a step and resting his hand on the dresser. Looking at the man, who had been watching all of this in worried silence, “But I believe . . . I am beginning to get an idea . . .” Suddenly stepping past Tristian he bore down on the man, who attempted to slide away sideways, his demeanor more frantic with Ranos than it had ever been when facing Tristian. “There are mindbenders here,” Ranos said to Tristian, even as he backed the man into a corner, his tall frame casting a warped shadow over the other man. “I caught one, I believe, but she disappeared before I was able to confirm it. I am sure there are others and she will warn them. And then it’s only a matter of time before they find us.” The man’s posture suggested that Ranos was pressing down on him, as his knees bent and the back of his head touched the wall. Ranos hadn’t touched him once. Sometimes all you need is presence. “There is a lingering illness here and what we’re seeing . . . aren’t the symptoms . . .” the man’s breathing was faster now, more labored and he appeared to be repeating the same word over and over, even as Ranos maintained a dissonant calm, “but more like a body’s fight to eject something foreign, an infection so ingrained . . .”
         The man appeared to abruptly seize, his back flopping like it was made of loose rubber, slapping against the wall even as his hands blindly reached out for purchase, a fingertip just brushing the edge of Ranos’ robes. He gave a strangled sort of cough and turned away, his breathing a harsh rattle, almost a sob, his head resting against the wall, eyes closed.
         “. . . that it no longer remembers the source, or for how long the battle has been fought,” Ranos finished, clasping his hands behind his back.
         Placing the pillow back, Tristian said, “And they’re fighting the mindbenders?”
         Ranos shook his head. “No, they’ve lost. Perhaps right from the onset. But losing is not an easy thing for the body to accept. Isn’t it?” The question was directed to the now cowering man, who appeared to be bracing himself for another blow, although Ranos had not struck him once.
         “I . . . I don’t know,” the man shuddered, as if in response to an entirely different question. “I feel . . . I feel so sick, what did you do to me, I . . .” with a sudden sharp motion he spun on Ranos, his eyes wild, “you never said. What you did with my sister. You bastards, tell me what the hell you did with her . . .”
         He lunged forward, lashing out into a punch.
         Tristian tensed, began to move forward, already reaching for the sword.
         But Ranos only stepped deftly aside, leaving the man to crash to the floor in a limp bundle, where he lay face down and unmoving, one arm outstretched before him as if leading a charge.
         “What was that all about?” Tristian asked, kneeling next to the man and checking for a pulse. It was there, and strong, although he was unconscious. “We don’t want to make these people afraid of us.”
         “Nor will we,” Ranos replied. “It appears they have worse things to be frightened of.” Bending over, he grabbed the man’s ankles, motioned for Tristian to take hold of his arms. “As you know, there are of those of us who can alter and erase one’s memories.” Together they lifted the man up and set him on the bed, the mattress creaking as his weight was dumped on it. Ranos continued explaining. “However, it is not something done easily, or cleanly. It is generally impossible to do it without leaving some kind of trace, debris, if you would, no matter how meticulous the mindbender is.”
         “And you found some evidence?”
         “Yes,” Ranos said, glancing at the door, as if expecting someone to walk through at any moment. “I found definite traces of some kind of alteration . . . most of them tiny, like small scars. But there are significant ones as well . . . and it all appears to be the work of the same person.”
         “How can you tell?” Tristian asked. “Does it leave a sort of fingerprint?”
         “In one sense, yes.”
         “Do you recognize it?”
         “No,” Ranos said simply. “But . . . if you can imagine the alterations all forming one over the other, like layers of dirt . . . when I had scraped all the rest away, there remained, deeply buried, a sharply etched image, almost a brand.” He glanced at the man, resting still and silent, his face still wearing traces of a ghostly anxiety. “It was of a house.” His eyes flickered to Tristian. “And I suspect we’ll find that house in this village, somewhere.”
         “But will it mean anything,” Tristian wondered, already heading for the door, frowning as he tried to negotiate the pools of drying vomit and slumped bodies. “It could just as easily be a false lead.”
         “It’s all we have to go on at the moment. Either way, we should not stay here.”
         “Yeah, you’re right,” Tristian said from the hallway, sounding weary. Pausing for a moment, he then added, “Think we should clean this up?” sweeping his arm out to indicate the mess not lying strewn around them. There was a spark of old humor in his voice. “After all, we did cause it.”
         “Yes, but we didn’t start it,” Ranos argued, nudging a prone man with his foot, before sniffing and moving on further. Shrugged, he added, “It’s not up to us to sweep up after the foolish actions of others.” He stalked for a few more steps down the hallway, before pausing and turning to the lingering Tristian. “Besides, it could have easily been avoided if they had not indulged in such large meals, am I correct?”
         Tristian gave a brief chuckle and moved to follow him. “Well, since you put it that way . . .”
         The house was remarkably easy to find, situated in the one of the few uncluttered areas of the village. In the distance they could hear the cacophony of new construction but this home sat almost separate from the others. Its design was totally different, reminding Tristian of conventional houses from his own planet, even sporting a kind of lawn of brown-green scraggly grass surrounded by a low wooden fence. He almost expected to find toys on the walkway leading up to the front door and a tree with a large tire suspended from it along with what was already there.
         “This is it,” Ranos confirmed as the two of them stood at the edge of the fence, just outside the grounds. The windows were dark and no movement could be seen in the interior.
         “Should we go to the front like respectable visitors or just crash through the roof?” Tristian asked, already slipping the sword off his belt and into his hand, although he kept the blade sheathed.
         A ghost of a smile twitched at the edge of Ranos’ face briefly. That had been one of their old jokes, from a long time ago, which over time had become a sort of running bit of humor. At one point they had sought to keep track of how many places they entered in which fashion, but Ranos had forgotten which method had been winning out. In the end, it probably evened out. Most things do. In the end.
         “I suggest the front door,” he replied. “I don’t sense the presence of any mindbenders inside and this way if he does return we won’t tip him off beforehand through the hole in his roof.”
         Even Tristian grinned at that. “Yeah that would give us away, wouldn’t it?” His smile faded as he considered the house again, his eyes also scanning the blue skies beyond. Standing in the shadow of the house, the air felt slightly cooler. “Part of me hopes he does come back,” he said, taking a few steps toward the house. “I have a lot of questions I’d like to ask him. I’d like to make sure he answers them.” The tone of his voice was veiled, and even Ranos couldn’t be sure exactly what he meant by that.
         There was no lock on the door, and it opened easily, without a sound. It led directly into a dim hallway, that ended with a window staring back at them, sunlight stretching elongated fingers toward them. At the end of the hallway it seemed one could go either left or right.
         Tristian went in first, staying close to the wall. A second later his finger twitched and the blade of the sword appeared, biting at the tips of the sun drenched fingers, snapping with bloody teeth at the shadows. Ranos wondered what exactly he expected to find here, to bring the sword out so soon. The quiet was unnerving, but it was nothing they hadn’t experienced before. Perhaps he just wished to be ready. Ranos could understand that. If the mindbender here was the one that had attacked the soldiers, if it came to a fight it would be a formidable one indeed. Ranos didn’t look forward to that.
         Tristian crept to the end of the hallway, holding the point of the sword low to the ground. Gingerly, he poked his head around the corner, glancing in either direction. He appeared to be deciding which way to go. Ranos hoped that he wouldn’t suggest they split up. Nothing good had ever come of such tactics.
         But, no, he slipped to the right, glancing back and indicating for Ranos to follow him. Once again, Ranos mourned the loss of their mental link, especially since silence might be key to their success here. But he had to respect Tristian’s wishes and a part of him had to admit that after so many years of changes, many of them draining and battering, he had little desire to see what was in Tristian’s head these days, even as he wished to help repair what damage still lingered there. Sometimes the people you find yourself closest to are the ones you fear the most.
         This hallway had two doors, one all the way down the hall, and the other set in the wall about halfway down. Tristian went to that door first, slipping in with a graceful ease, his movements almost choreographed in their lack of hesitation. No matter what the situation, the basic script always remained the same. Time and distance and changes could not alter that. If there was a best way to accomplish something, it generally stayed the best for a reason.
         Something caught Ranos’ eye on the wall, opposite the door. Going over, he bent down to take a closer look at it. It was a dark smear, almost a stain. He scraped at it with his thumbnail, watching flecks flake off and tumble helplessly to the floor. Holding his nail up to his eyes, he examined it, and took a quick sniff. Dried blood. He had seen it enough times to know. He stood up, running his hand along the wall, he noting that in one spot it was indented slightly, tiny cracks snaking away alone and in clusters. There were more hints of dried blood, vague afterimages, as if the wall itself had absorbed it. It appeared recent, but he couldn’t tell for sure.
         What happened here? he questioned the silence. The quiet was slowly taking on a new, smothering quality, more like an atmosphere holding its breath as opposed to a mere empty house, the same way an abused animal would sit back, tense, waiting for the force of the punch it knew would be coming, as it always inevitably does. Some things are merely a matter of when.
         “Ranos,” Tristian called out quietly from inside the room. “Come in here.”
         It was dark inside, the type that remained opaque even after your eyes had adjusted. As he entered, his foot struck something hard that skittered across the floor, which he saw was a wooden block, one among many others. Tristian was standing on the other end of the room, near what appeared to be a cradle. For some reason, he had turned off the sword.
         He reached in to touch something inside the crib that Ranos couldn’t see, his face carefully expressionless. Glancing at his friend, he said quietly, “It’s dead.”
         “What’s dead?” Ranos asked, coming forward, although he already suspected. A look inside the cradle a second later only confirmed his guess. Being correct didn’t please him at all.
         “The baby. It’s dead,” Tristian said again, his voice a monotone construct. The infant was still, wrapped in blankets, eyes closed, appearing for all the world to be a doll. He withdrew his hand from the cradle, placing it on the railing. “Feel it, it’s cold. It’s been like this for a while. Dead. Why?” The last question wasn’t for Ranos. “Every place we turn we’re finding things are more and more bizarre.” Face impassive, he looked down at the silent baby again, his eyes unreadable. “We have to find out what’s going on here, Ranos. I want to know now.”
         “Don’t forget why we’re here,” Ranos said softly.
         “I don’t. I won’t,” Tristian replied tautly. “But I think when we figure out what the story is . . . then we’ll find Kara. And Joe. Anything before that, and we’re just guessing.” His eyes seemed to blaze with a pale light in the darkness of the room. “We can’t afford to keep guessing. Because eventually, they’ll find us.” The result of that was left unsaid, but both men knew it wouldn’t be pleasant.
         Ranos said nothing, couldn’t think of anything to say. The give and take of a partnership was a foreign beast to him for a long time now, and more often than not he was finding himself following Tristian’s lead, letting the other man control of the drive of their expedition. That was a dangerous path to go down. He knew from experience that Tristian was not infallible. He needed a counterweight, a friction to fight against, to grind his conceits to a more manageable form. Unchecked, he might try to save every person on every world. And he couldn’t. And he knew that. And he didn’t care. Because it was no excuse, to him.
         “Let’s see what’s in the other room, then,” Tristian said abruptly, turning on his heel and stalking from the room. The door at the end of the hallway was shut. Ranos thought he caught the glimpse of a presence inside, but before he could warn Tristian the other man swung the door open. There was a hiss and a flash of crimson as the blade appeared again.
         As Ranos followed behind he heard a muffled shriek. They had entered a bedroom, most of the space taken up by a large double bed, the sheets white and almost shining in the dim light. A young woman was curled up under them, her eyes wide and face panicked at the sight of them.
         “W-who are you people?” the woman asked, her voice touching the edge of hysteria. She didn’t seem to be able to decide whether to stare at the slash in the air that was the sword, or Ranos’ unusually tall frame. “How did you get in here?” Her hands clutched at the bed sheets, under the covers her legs bent, poised to run, although there were no other exits to the room.
         “It’s not her, is it?” Tristian said to Ranos. The other man only shook his head. Taking a few steps closer, he said to the woman. “Does anyone else live here?”
         “Yes . . .” the woman replied, her voice nearly inaudible. “Just me . . . me and my husband. He’s . . . oh, I hope you didn’t hurt him. Where is he? What did you do to him? What is that thing?” she asked, shying away from Tristian, her eyes riveted to the sword.
         Ranos had been watching all of this with a thoughtful expression, his eyes searching the woman’s face. Finally he strode toward the bed, standing across from where the woman had sequestered herself. Leaning down with both his hands sinking into the sheets, he said, “Everything is fine,” in a calm voice. She stared at him, a bird trapped in a cage with invisible walls, and said nothing.
         “Tell me, miss,” Ranos asked, stabbing into the dark and praying he didn’t draw blood, “is your name Fiona?”
         Out of the corner of his eye he could see Tristian give him a startled look that quickly faded into approval.
         The woman, however, only shook her head nervously, her eyes darting all around, like she was seeing six of Ranos, all sitting around in a fly’s eye view cluster. “No,” she whispered, and the tears in her eyes belonged to another person, “no, it’s not. That’s not my name. I’ve never heard that name before.”
         “That’s because,” said a voice behind them, as the woman’s face broke into a nearly pathetically relieved smile, “her name is Jula.”
         Both men spun around to see another man, his clothes tattered and shredded, his face bruised and battered, standing in the doorway, one hand on the doorframe.
         “And I’m her husband,” the man continued, and Ranos heard a dangerous hum rising out of the mental background static he always heard, a monster pushing up relentlessly from the depths, not caring who he managed to disperse above him as long as he reached the surface.
         Lips drawn in a tight line, eyes smoldering with a fire that was more choking smoke than flame, he growled, “Now get the hell away from my wife.”