Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [138]
“She’s not really much of a threat,” Dartun muttered. “I suspect this is more about jealousy than anything else.”
“Sir,” the image protested, “they’ll torture Guntar—kill him even. They now know how you’ve been raising corpses. She wants to unite all the other sects against us. If that happens, they may have us all killed. So what should we do?”
It was a situation he had anticipated, that Papus would be so self-righteous, as if she herself was the moral centerpiece of the Archipelago. He wondered vaguely how she had come to know of his animation of corpses. Those whose transformation was incomplete he had simply released, perhaps a careless decision, but he did not possess the heart to kill them, they were so very nearly life. But the problem with the undead was that they were so unreliable in their different states of decay. And even these failures were side effects of his greater aim, to breed perfect undead men and women.
A private militia. His protection.
“Sit tight, and see what happens,” Dartun sighed. “Let Papus make her moves if she wishes. It will bring her little benefit.”
“One final thing, Godhi,” the image communicated through static. “That Randur Estevu, he says he’s finally got the money together. I assume this was some private business of yours.”
“Yes, yes …” Preoccupied with his own thoughts, Dartun had very nearly forgotten the young man who wanted him to find a way to let his mother live.
“Well, he wants … know when he can pay …” The image flickered, and the voice became distorted before returning to clarity again.
“Did you just say he wants to know when he can pay me?”
“Yes,” the image replied.
“Right. Okay, first you’ll need someone who can gain access to my private chambers.” Dartun then recited information about assembling certain relics so that even from here he could have the Dawnir technology manipulated in the manner he wished. And it wasn’t difficult, ironically, the grand concept of extending life, it was just that only he knew the correct procedure and had kept it to himself for as long as he could remember. None of his fellow cultists would realize what they were creating from following his instructions. Although the methods were clearly not permanent—as he knew all too well now—it might at least give this wretched woman a little extra life.
Dartun said, “If he comes tell him the process will be ready in ten days or so. And I take it there’s no issue with the others from the sect in bringing the undead out to me?”
“No, all is as you scheduled.”
“Very good.” Dartun now manipulated the device so that the projected image faded to nothing, and the air around him was filled with an absolute stillness. But Dartun couldn’t work out why he felt a sudden nervousness; he assumed it might be because he was so near the final stages of what he fervently hoped to achieve. There was always that creeping suspicion that nothing would be at the end of his journey, merely a simple reaffirmation that he could not live forever no matter how he tried to engineer it.
Tineag’l: the mining island lying north of Y’iren, and here the massive mineral belt had long been a supplier of much of the Empire’s metal ores, an old industry of long-suffering workers and slaves. Snow had fallen evenly across the tundra, its serenity undisturbed except when auks darted out of the thick larix forest, their ragged shapes bursting starkly across the horizon. Much of the island’s northern shores had once been heavily populated with dozens of mining communities stretching far beyond the Ring of Iron, as the largest of the Empire’s industrial regions was known. Towns and villages were composed of sprawling wooden structures rather than the grand stonework of Villjamur. Men covered in black dirt would drag their feet toward the mines while women in dowdy clothing would try