CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3
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I
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On regaining consciousness, Seurat must’ve been surprised. The face of the giant, who stood more than thirteen feet tall, was awfully blank. It was unsuited to expressing thought or emotion. Nonetheless, he was surprised—that was clear from his eyes as he gazed at Sue. Not only hadn’t the girl run away when D’s needle had struck him in a vital spot and rendered him unconscious, but she’d also extracted said needle and then used it to dispatch a venomous lizard that had been drawn by the scent of his blood. He agonized over the matter of what to make of her actions, and for a while he could do nothing but stare at Sue as she stood by him.
“It looks like you’ll be okay, right? Wait a second and I’ll go get you some water.”
Sue turned around without waiting for a response from him.
The water was nearby. After all, until thirty minutes earlier, they’d been floating in it. By the bottoms of Seurat’s massive boots was a crevasse, and a mere fifteen feet away the silvery flow ran noisily by the base of a slope.
Sue didn’t have a canteen. Taking care not to slip on the grass, she went down to the water’s edge and put the hem of her now-dry skirt into the water. Once she’d scooped up a good amount, her face was reflected in the water’s surface. This would serve to let her check on her appearance.
Her face was rippling. Seeing that it didn’t look terribly haggard, Sue let out a sigh of relief.
The face smiled—the face on the water’s surface, that is. Sue herself wasn’t smiling.
The water witch?
No sooner had the name Lucienne and the woman’s appearance come and gone in the girl’s head than her watery reflection reached out with both hands. As if drawn to it, Sue reached out her own hands, submerging them to the wrist. There was a jerk, and before the girl could make a sound she was pulled into the water—only she didn’t go under. Huge hands held her ankles up in the air.
Turning, Sue shouted, “Oh, it’s you!” Her tone was one of surprise, pleasure, and excitement.
Still crawling across the ground, the giant made an effort to pull Sue back. She rose about a foot into the air.
The thing clinging to Sue’s wrists was being pulled up. In the sunlight, it glittered like a fascinating piece of glasswork. Seurat kept pulling. In no time, a face emerged . . . but it no longer looked like Sue. Due to a trick of the light, parts of it vanished while others shimmered. This bizarre entity had eyes and a nose and a mouth that the girl could make out whether she wanted to or not. It must’ve been some kind of demonic creature that inhabited the river. Its shoulders appeared, and then its chest.
Was Seurat to be praised for his strength? Was the water demon to be admired for its formidable size? Seurat had already hauled Sue back to the top of the crevasse, but no more than the shoulders of the huge, semitransparent form had emerged yet. The only thing that kept Sue from crying out in pain was that for something so large, the creature weighed little.
Seurat’s right hand reached into his robe, and then a longsword that Sue hadn’t noticed when she was tending to his wound appeared. A striped pattern ran down it from the tip to the hilt. Seurat swiped it through the arms of the watery giant who wouldn’t let go of Sue. Spray shot out, but its hands didn’t come off. As if the man had been cutting through water, the wounds he dealt the water demon had closed immediately.
“It hurts!” Sue finally cried out. The more the watery colossus was pulled from the river, the greater its weight became. Their foe seemed determined to drag its prey into the depths.
Seurat swung his longsword again. The blow seemed entirely wasted.
Sue was watching intently when the gigantic form of the water demon suddenly vanished. At the same time, she went flying through the air, landing softly in a high clump of bushes. Seurat had thrown her. Frantically getting to her feet, Sue saw Seurat making three swipes of his sword, and the tremendous glistening form taking a blow to the head in the very same spot where it’d disappeared, then falling back into the flow without a sound. Seurat must’ve been quite confident, because he didn’t even bother to check the river before going over to Sue with his longsword in one hand.
For the first time, Sue was gripped by a chilling fear. The giant was no longer the wounded person she’d helped, but rather a servant of a Noble who wanted her dead. She tried to get to her feet, but her back wouldn’t move. Though she’d had a soft landing, her back had still taken quite a jolt.
Before her fear-widened eyes, a titanic hand reached closer with fingers spread wide. An intense pressure closed about her waist, and her body rose. She saw a powerful chest covered by what seemed to be leather armor, and the giant’s face above it.
Sue recalled clay figures she’d seen at the village school a long time ago. Among the expressionless horde, there’d been one that looked a little sad. To all appearances it had the same face as the others, but Sue felt it was an exception. The giant before her brought back that memory.
Sue felt the lump of icy fear thawing.
“Are you—” she started to say, and then the giant’s face became that of another person entirely. A tremendous killing lust rose from every inch of him, billowing out like dancing flames, and Sue could actually feel the heat on her cheeks.
Every single sound died out. Even the noise of the water stopped. As all of creation seemed to hold its collective breath at D’s beauty, Seurat’s will to kill was shaken.
Not knowing exactly what had happened, Sue quickly tried turning her head and body to look all around.
Seurat went into action. Still holding onto Sue, he pulled out his club, put its blunt tip against the ground, and began to scribe a gentle curve. When finished, he had a circle a good thirty feet in diameter—only the two ends of it weren’t joined, but rather the final part he’d drawn slipped into the circle a bit. Stepping out through that opening, he went about fifteen feet, then drew another incomplete circle that was about six feet across before setting Sue down in its center.
Once Sue had watched Seurat step back into the first great circle, she saw a figure appear from the forest to her left without making a sound.
“D—uh, Mr. D!”
The girl was naturally overjoyed. However, her heart didn’t leap as much as she’d imagined it would.
D shot a quick glance at her. Perhaps that was enough for him to assess her condition, because he didn’t ask Sue if she was okay before heading toward Seurat. Having ascertained the safety of his charge, all that remained for him to do was slay his opponent. He was a handsome huntsman braving the raging flames of murderous intent.
Once he’d closed to within fifteen feet of his foe, D reached for the hilt of his longsword with his right hand. He made no attempt to learn Seurat’s name or background. The will to kill emanating from the giant was all the proof the Hunter needed.
“D!” Sue called out. She didn’t know what she wanted to say to him.
She saw a second D pull away from the first—Sue had no way of knowing that this was due to his speed, which was so great it left an afterimage emblazoned on her retinas. His sword whined through the wind. It seemed Seurat would be cut in two. However, Sue’s eyes went wide.
The blade that should’ve made contact with Seurat had suddenly vanished. There was no attempt at a second stroke—D was making a great leap to narrowly avoid the club swinging at him. In midair the Hunter launched a rough wooden needle, and then made his landing. But the needle vanished as well.
Sue heard herself gasp aloud.
The blade in D’s right hand had returned.
“Look at the ground!” Sue shouted. “He did something—drew a circle. That has to be the secret!”
Seurat glanced briefly at her, and then quickly returned his gaze to D.
D had probably seen through what Seurat was doing already. Both his blade and his needle had vanished into thin air right over the edge of the circle Seurat had inscribed on the ground. However, the circle wasn’t complete. The line that should’ve closed it deviated instead. If D’s left hand had been there, it might’ve croaked, “Why, it’s a maze!”
If ordinary mazes were intended to confuse the senses of those who entered and keep them wandering around endlessly, then it would come as little surprise that an assassin in the service of the Ultimate Noble might draw up a maze that could befuddle not only people but objects as well. And when those objects lost their way, they vanished from this world—going off in another direction entirely. Only the mazes Seurat drew could do such a thing. Any physical attack would be nullified the instant it crossed that line, while Seurat, on the other hand, was free to strike at will.
“Uh, excuse me,” Sue called over to the giant. “That’s cheating. Fight him fair and square.”
She never thought her words would make a difference. But something astonishing happened. Seurat stepped out of his circle. He did it of his own free will, but his timing was perfect. Sue was ecstatic.
“Best of luck to both of you!” she called to them in a manner that was both innocent and carefree, but her cheers were frozen a second later. As the pair squared off once more, the waves of murderous intent that crashed together in the space between them were intense. It was nearly noon, the ground was blanketed in green, and every time the wind blew the sunlight seemed to highlight the colors around them—but here alone the forest was frozen with the lust for killing.
However, the battle was short. D didn’t make the first move, but the instant the giant’s blow was about to smash down on him, he made a bound that left him standing next to Sue.
“D?” Sue shouted as the Hunter brought his right foot down on the circle that surrounded her—she’d felt him enter it.
When D disappeared from the right foot up to the right shoulder, Seurat raced over and swung his club. Without time enough to dodge, D took a blow to the left side of his chest that was like an explosion, sending him flying head first several yards down into the same spot in the river at the bottom of the crevasse where the water demon had met its fate earlier.
“D?”
Driven by emotion more violent than she could’ve imagined, Sue was about to rush forward. But something odd happened to her. For an instant, it felt like she’d just spun about a full three hundred sixty degrees, and her field of view was painted white. Every sound faded, and Sue realized she was in another place entirely. If she remained there, she might’ve vanished completely from the real world without anyone ever knowing it. However, her return took place almost immediately. As Sue stood, dazed, the enormous figure had stooped down in front of her, erased the broken line, and completed the circle.
Catching the unsteady Sue, Seurat trained his gaze on the silvery flow that had swallowed D. More than satisfaction at victory, it was the solitary air of a huntsman who’d lost the game he’d long pursued that shrouded his massive frame.
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II
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The boy opened his eyes, and suddenly a face he knew well was peering down at him.
“Awake now, are you?”
Sue. He meant to say it, but nothing came out.
“You mustn’t move,” she told him, but he’d already moved both hands and felt an intense pain shoot through them. “You’ve got burns all over your body. I’m surprised you survived.”
Finally Matthew realized he was lying in a bed much like his own, and his entire body was wrapped in bandages like a mummy’s. However, that wasn’t what slammed him deep into a pool of despair.
It’s not her. This girl—she’s not Sue.
Her hair was the same color. There was some resemblance in her features, too. But when he looked at her on fully regaining his senses—she was someone else.
“Just three hours ago, you were lying by the entrance to the village. You took the Heat-Ray Road here, didn’t you? Didn’t anyone warn you about that?”
Matthew’s memory returned to him. After having been rescued by Duchess Miranda, he’d wandered around in search of help, coming at last to a kind of depressed region. Suddenly the light of dawn had become a blistering beam. Though he’d tried desperately to escape, it was so hot his skin cracked, and he’d swiftly become deranged. Even after that, he could recall wandering a good deal longer. That he’d managed to do so was thanks to the strength he’d built up working on his family’s farm.
“Wh . . . wh . . . where . . . am I?” he asked, and the words came out more easily than he’d expected.
“You know the central Frontier?” the girl who resembled Sue inquired.
“Uh, yeah.”
“Well, near its northern edge. In the village of Rushall.”
“The northern edge?”
From the fortress, it was a full week on horseback to the northern Frontier, according to what Count Braujou had told them back at Lamoa. When had he traveled so far?
Perhaps sensing Matthew’s question, the girl continued, “Scientists investigating the Heat-Ray Road have established that its secret lies in a distortion in physical space. The atmosphere that should buffer the sunlight is twisted, so the rays come straight there instead. Apparently the same thing happens in a few different places around the world. I don’t know how many people like you I’ve had to help.”
For a second, Matthew’s mind drifted away. The northern edge—that was the place he and Sue had the most cause to fear. His own feet had ended up carrying him right into hell. Flames of what might be described as pity flared up in Matthew’s heart, and he groaned. The flames had taken the shape of Sue’s face.
“Don’t cry,” the girl said, gently stroking the corner of his eye with a pale finger. “I don’t know who you are or where you come from, but I’ll look after you until you’re able to walk again. The medicine I put on you works real well. Why, in three days’ time you’ll be good as new.”
“Thank . . . you . . .”
“Don’t mention it. When the going gets tough, we’ve gotta help one another. They call me Sue. Um, what’s the matter?”
“I’m . . . Matthew.”
And having managed to reply, Matthew shut his eyes. This Sue’s face vanished, but the face of the other Sue was still in his heart. He silently prayed to God that Sue’s face wouldn’t be replaced by this one’s.
-
“Damn that boy—hasn’t he shown up yet?” a voice muttered from an enormous coffin.
Lacking even a single window, the room was sealed in darkness. Nevertheless, the occupant of the coffin couldn’t come out because it was still midday.
“We’ll meet up soon enough. Get your car to go a little faster,” another voice replied in the darkness. If it’d been light and any human had been there to witness this scene, it would’ve scared the living daylights out of him. Sitting on top of the coffin was a disembodied left hand.
“It’s not as if you don’t know what kind of condition these Frontier roads are in,” the voice from the coffin responded. Needless to say, it belonged to Count Braujou.
“That’s the fault of you Nobles,” the left hand countered sharply. “You used metals that would last forever to build the major highways your carriages took, while you frustrated the humans’ efforts to make roads by leaving tangled forests and supernatural critters everywhere. You made a world of medieval horrors, leaving contemporary people to suffer like serfs, powerless in the midst of monsters and magic. The production of artificial blood had already been perfected. Why didn’t you just wipe out the human race in one fell swoop? Your world has no need for human beings.”
“That question’s been answered by as many people as there are stars in the universe,” the count said. “But not one of them can claim to have the true answer. Perhaps . . .”
As Braujou paused, the left hand inquired, “Perhaps what?”
It wouldn’t have been strange if the question had gone unanswered.
Nevertheless, the count replied, “Perhaps we all knew what the real answer was. Or rather, we know even now.”
“Count Braujou, have you ever wanted something that you couldn’t have?”
The count fell silent at this new and abrupt query. The left hand’s question seemed as effective as an arrow through the very heart of the Nobleman. The voice that issued from the coffin was terribly shaken. And it soon swelled with deep emotion.
“Science, magic, civilization,” the count said, his words hanging like castles in the air. “We reached the pinnacle of each, yet one dream still remains unfulfilled—I can’t help but think that.”
“An unfulfilled dream? A dream? Nothing as warm and fuzzy as a dream exists in your world,” the left hand sneered. “If you have a dream, then make it a reality. Accomplish your every desire—that’s the Noble way. Is that why you allowed the human race to survive? So that your unfulfilled dream wouldn’t be just a dream?”
If the count had responded, he might’ve offered a valuable hint to an issue spanning the history of humanity and the Nobility. However, that was not to be. A warning siren sounded through the air.
“There are life-form readings up ahead,” a woman’s voice informed them. “Two people and one cyborg horse. One is human; the other appears to be a synthesized life form. Distance: two miles.”
“It seems we’ve got one of the kids and an assassin here,” the left hand said sourly. “We’ve been chasing D for two days now. Did we finally catch up to him?”
Just as it said, the two of them—although technically one of them was only a fraction of a person—had left the fortress about an hour after D set off. Transformed into withered branches, all the enemy troops fell to the ground, leaving the fortress secure again. The cause of this was unknown. Having gone out of the fortress to assist D, Count Braujou quickly returned to Lamoa, got the Hunter’s left hand—which had been repairing the atomic reactor—and set out in his car. The assault on the fortress had already ceased. All that remained were androids, and the count and D’s left hand were solely concerned with the fate of the Dyalhis children and the Hunter’s whereabouts. A flying reconnaissance drone had also been dispatched, and it located where the earth had collapsed into the subterranean waterway, as well as where the battle had taken place. But the whereabouts of D, the Dyalhis children, and the assassins remained a mystery. Today, past noon on the third day out, the life-form radar had finally located someone they sought.
“Give us a holographic projection,” the voice from the coffin ordered.
The life-form radar didn’t respond to outward shapes; it perceived the chemical traces of living beings. It was the computer’s job to reconstruct their appearance.
In the pitch blackness, a pair of figures appeared: Sue and a giant.
“Is that you?” the left hand screeched toward the coffin, but realizing there would be no reply, it added, “No, I’m just kidding.”
The giant was every bit as big as the count.
“That guy calls himself Seurat. But with a big fella like that, that cyborg horse has gotta be strained to its limit. Are they taking a break or something?”
“That is correct,” the female voice responded.
“So, what do we do? Go outside and fight him?” the left hand asked sarcastically. Apparently it was rather peeved that its earlier joke had been ignored.
“Stop the car,” the count said.
Without a sound, without even a jolt, the car halted.
It was now the sun-drenched middle of the day. What could the immobilized Braujou do? Making matters worse was the fact that their foe was the same giant, Seurat, who’d sent D flying.
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III
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Over the last two days, Sue had come to feel a certain sort of relief concerning Seurat. She couldn’t completely rid herself of the fear caused by his being an assassin sent by a Noble who wanted her dead, but aside from that she was convinced the giant would never hurt her. He hadn’t said a word to her. It was unclear whether he couldn’t speak or just didn’t feel like talking, but from the outset to this very moment he’d kept his silence. The source of Sue’s faith was the giant’s actions.
Seurat had been incredibly lax. When they were riding the cyborg horse, Sue would sit in front of him and rock from side to side without the giant laying a hand on her. She was equally unconfined when the giant would get off the horse and walk after it became crushed under his weight. When they rested, he would trap her in one of his bizarre “mazes.”
She was worried about Matthew, and she wasn’t about to just stroll into the lair of the very Noble who wanted them dead. Twice she’d tried to escape. When they stopped, she’d jumped off the horse and run before Seurat could make his maze. Both times Sue had encountered supernatural creatures. Fortunately, she hadn’t been caught unaware. The first was a spider dragon, which moved from tree to tree snaring its prey in the mucus excreted by its spherical body. The second was a bewilderer—a creature that used an illusion of a human woman to lure travelers closer. If Seurat hadn’t rushed in just in the nick of time and worked his magic with his club, she would’ve been eaten twice over.
After her rescues, Sue fully expected a beating, but the giant didn’t treat her differently than he had before. As they traveled, he continued to leave her unfettered.
Though the giant seemed like an automaton, he wasn’t, judging from the thoughtful way he reached into his own robe and took out an ointment to put on Sue’s injured feet. The timid movements of the gigantic figure coaxed a smile from Sue. The previous night, the giant had tried without success to apply the same medicine to the wound left by D’s needle. Unable to restrain herself any longer, the girl offered to put it on for him. The giant remained silent and continued his attempts. Though the wound was deep, it was tiny. All he had to do was apply the ointment liberally, but what would’ve been a small brush to an ordinary person looked to be the size of a sewing needle in the giant’s hand, and he seemed to put it on timidly.
I wonder if his motor skills aren’t very sharp, Sue couldn’t help but think. Watching him try to do it twice, only to fail both times, Sue finally told him, “I’ll do that. Let me out of here, please.”
The giant thought for a bit before granting her request.
Taking the brush, she daubed the medicine on him. It was amazing how easy it was to do. Not saying a word, Seurat had taken the brush back from Sue and drawn a maze around her.
Seurat now stared at the cyborg horse, which he’d put inside the same circle as Sue—it was the horse D had been riding. Seurat looked like an owner watching over his beloved steed. Sue realized that the reason they’d stopped pressing forward in the middle of the day was because the horse was fatigued. Had she not known what the giant really was, she’d have been completely at ease with him. The trip would’ve even been enjoyable.
Sue felt an overwhelming tenderness coming over her. The next thing she knew, a soft melody was issuing from her mouth.
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Light and breeze that fill the woods
Kindly take these words
Tell him our yesterdays are forgotten
But our memories of today will be deeper still
Tomorrow, the departed will lie beneath the whispering grass
His voice mine and mine alone
-
Once she’d finished singing, she realized that the giant was no longer concentrating on the cyborg horse but was looking at her instead. Sue was a bit surprised.
“What is it?”
In his great wall of a face, narrow eyes blinked as if struggling with the light. “Your voice . . . is nice,” Seurat said. “It made me remember . . . I was born . . . in the woods . . . too . . . Born in a forest . . . far from here . . . on a mountain . . .”
“What mountain?” Sue asked in spite of herself, feeling a closeness to the giant for the first time.
“I forget . . . But . . . it doesn’t matter . . . anyway.”
“That’s not true. Why, it’s your—” Sue started to say, but then she fell silent. Hadn’t they themselves left their hometown? A feeling of loneliness clung to her bones like a bitter winter wind, freezing Sue in place. Her body trembled as if trying to shake itself free of that spell.
“That’s not true. The place you were born is—”
The sunlight filtering through the branches soaked up her voice. Her words seemed to glow. That glow became an elongated object headed straight for Seurat’s chest that then vanished into thin air. The hand missile in question would probably keep going in another direction for all time.
Seurat stood up. Turning to look, he glared with such intensity in his eyes that Sue felt her breath taken away.
“Count Braujou?”
“It seems you’re safe and sound.” The count reached for a branch that hung in front of him and tried to snap it off, but the branch poked through his fist. “As you can see, I’m an illusion,” Braujou said. Though this three-dimensional representation was a collection of floating molecules, it seemed real enough.
“That’s a maze, is it not?” said the Nobleman. “Whatever’s put inside it can’t be touched from outside. But you can’t strike back, either. Come on out of there.”
Seurat’s massive form rose above the maze, making an unbelievable leap and colliding with the illusional Braujou before dashing clean through the Nobleman. In his right hand he carried his club, while a silvery pair of flaming arrows flew behind him, scoring direct hits just below either shoulder blade. It looked as if a boulder had bounded forward, and pillars of flame burst from either side of his chest. The instant the pair of hand missiles sank into him, the energy they contained transformed into million-degree shock waves.
Seurat fell over, making the ground tremble. Unable to support such weight, the enormous tree that his gigantic form fell against toppled over, tossing up roots and soil in the process. Giant though he might be, Seurat couldn’t bear the million-degree heat waves spreading through his body. His form already shook with a death rattle.
The missile attack had come from behind him—from the direction of the illusional Count Braujou. Indeed, they’d been launched from within his cape. Was the count not an illusion after all?
Walking over to a form every bit as large as his own—one that now trembled with the pain of its death throes—the count grinned. “Depending on the level of cohesion of the floating particles, this illusion can approach solidity . . . enough to launch real missiles or wield a spear. Hmm, you took two hand missiles and still aren’t dead? I shall have to take your head off now.”
The count swung the long spear home with his right hand, but it passed through his fingers and jabbed into the ground about ten feet away at an angle. He’d put great power into his swing; it’d proven too much for the weak collection of molecules. That being the case, was the spear real?
With a sheepish grin, Braujou pulled his spear out of the ground. His movements were cautious. Prodding Seurat’s torso with his foot, he rolled the giant onto his back. The wounds where the heat waves had burst from Seurat’s body narrowly missed his heart. That was what the count would be aiming for. Seurat pressed his right hand to the wound on the side of his chest. The spear was raised high.
“Illusion or not, I’ll have you know it could be deemed an honor to be slain by someone bearing the likeness of Count Braujou,” the count jeered as he brought his spear down.
Several hundredths of a second before the tip of it struck its mark, the Nobleman probably saw it—the unclosed circle Seurat had drawn over his heart with his right hand.
The tip of the spear disappeared, followed by a good portion of the shaft.
“What sort of foolishness is this?”
The count’s mistake was trying to extract the spear. He had only about half of it back out when a sideways swipe of the club came toward his trunk. His spear went flying, and the club passed through his chest before the count made a great leap back, landing in the same place that his spear had fallen. Holding his weapon at the ready, he charged at Seurat. He appeared to be only a few steps from Seurat when something strange happened to the Nobleman. As if an invisible door had opened, he was drawn up into the air.
Suddenly, there was silence. Seurat’s gargantuan form looked terribly out of place lying there in the golden sunlight. After about a minute of trying, Seurat managed to sit up and then put enough strength into his legs to stand. The two holes that had been blown in his chest were already fading. That was the unholy power of his replay cells.
He intended to launch an attack on the count’s vehicle. Greater Noble or not, in this sunlit hour his foe would have no choice but to sleep in his coffin with nothing save the darkness for a companion. This was a perfect opportunity. No matter what kinds of mechanical security devices the car might be equipped with, it had to be worth a try.
The giant was about to start walking, and then he looked over toward Sue. Normally as expressionless as a stone Buddha, his face rippled with shock waves.
There was no sign of Sue.
It was impossible to enter or escape one of his mazes, but in this case someone had completed the circle, which, ironically enough, made escape from it all too easy.