“Because you might have to kill people you know?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

A thick root slid out of the opening in the floor, wrapped in a network of thinner shoots. I let it rise about three feet and opened the bag. A round white jewel sat inside, as big as a soccer ball and rippling with all the fire of a diamond. The thinner roots bent toward it, scooped the gem, and pulled it to the main shoot, wrapping tightly around it, forming a cocoon. The psy-booster was in place. Hopefully Gertrude Hunt would bond with it in the next few hours.

“I understand the Khanum, Robart, and Nuan Cee.” I shook my head. “I still don’t understand you.”

George sighed, his handsome face resigned. “Very well. I owe you that much.”

He raised his walking stick and gently tapped it on the floor. A huge projection burst out of the top of the cane, curving in front of us, taking up almost the entire half of the ballroom. Jagged mountains thrust through the barren brown and green soil, their yellow cliffs reflecting the light of a green sickly sun, puncturing the sky like an infected wound. Nexus. Hot during the day, cold at night, ugly at all times, yet hiding immense mineral wealth just beneath its crust.

“I was five when my grandfather died,” George said. His voice was hollow. “He was a pirate, a swordsman, and a vagabond. He told the best stories. He was the best grandfather a child could have. Our mother was dead, our father had abandoned us, so it was just my older sister and my grandparents. So when he died, I was very sad.”

On the screen George walked into the desolation of Nexus. He wore plain pants and a simple white shirt. His loose blond hair streamed around him. His face was serene and so beautiful… He was almost angelic, a strange haunting mirage conjured up by a planet wishing for something other than a wasteland.

George’s voice was soft, intimate, the kind of voice that reached deep into your soul. “I was so sad, that I called him back to life.”

The other George kept walking. The jagged cliffs parted and a vast valley, its floor rough and uneven, stretched before him.

“Everyone thinks the dead rise as mindless monsters. It is always that way for necromancers. The dead rise without the burdens of their past lives, without mind, and without pain.”

I sensed what was coming and braced myself.

“The thing that came back wasn’t my grandfather. It had claws and fangs. It devoured stray dogs. But it could speak and it knew my name.”

On the projection George stopped. His blue eyes blazed with a pure white light. He raised his right hand, his fingers pointing up like claws. A wind stirred his hair.

“It remembered me,” George said. “It remembered how the man it used to be died. It remembered the pain of his passing and it mourned the love he had lost.”

The ground broke around George’s feet, as if the dry crust of Nexus’ desert turned liquid. Bodies rose, some rotting, some skeletal, but all reaching to him, hundreds and hundreds of corpses, their limbs held out, as if pleading, and then I heard it, a muted, desperate wail, coming from hundreds of creatures at once, so terrible, I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears and run.

“They say the dead have no memories and know no pain.” George’s voice was barely above whisper, but somehow it was louder than the pleas of the corpses. “It’s not that way for me.”

The dead cried out, louder and louder, grabbing at George’s clothes, begging. George stood in the center of this maelstrom, his eyes brimming with pain. Tears wet his face. He wept and the dead cried with him. White lightning tore out of him. The corpses fell as one. He stood alone.

The real George, the one next to me, touched his cane and the projection vanished.

“The war on Nexus has to stop,” he said. “It won’t be ended by noble means, because if good intentions, compassion, and meaningful dialogue could’ve solved this, peace would’ve been reached already. Sometimes to stop something this terrible, you have to do something equally terrible in return at a great personal cost, and that terrible thing can’t be done by one of the principals in this conflict. They must be able to walk away clean, united and guiltless or the peace won’t last. Someone must bear the blame and the rage. I am that someone. I take the full responsibility for tomorrow. I am the one responsible. I forced it to happen. I’m sorry that you must also be involved. It is unfair that I used you. Nobody will ever know what you have done or what it cost you. Your name and mine will be forgotten quickly, but we will both know and remember what we have done and why it had to be done. The psy-booster runs on magic. I will fuel it for you tomorrow.”

He turned and walked away, leaving me alone on the mosaic floor.

A while ago I told Sophie that George was merciless. She told me that he was compassionate and merciless at once, a contradiction. I understood now. There was no contradiction. George was merciless to himself. At the end of this, everyone, including me, would look for someone to blame for the pain and the suffering that lay ahead. He made sure that he was that someone. He took it all on himself, because the dead wept on Nexus when he returned their memories. He would take all of the guilt and carry it away with him, absolving me, because he had forced my hand. He had even done it a moment ago, when he told me he had used me.

I would have to watch him very carefully tomorrow. He would give as much of himself to the psy-booster as he could. I didn’t want George to die.

Chapter 16

I stood just beyond the door, watching the grand ballroom through a one way window the inn had made for me. The hall shone tonight, the constellations on its ceiling bright, the floor all but glowing. The Holy Anocracy stood on the right, in full armor, shoulder to shoulder, like a phalanx of ancient warriors using their bodies as shields. Across from them the Horde stood grim-faced, arranged in a wedge formation with the Khanum in front, a huge basher on her left, and Dagorkun on her right. Clan Nuan crowded on the left as well, some distance from the otrokari, shielding their matriarch with their bodies. Turan Adin in full armor stood between them and the Horde.