Brandione nodded. ‘Tell me in small words. I’m just a soldier.’
Wayward grimaced and raised a finger. ‘And a scholar. A soldier and a scholar. The Last Doubter: a man the Queen saw long ago.’ He waved his hands above his head, as if scrabbling there for the right words. ‘The Queen will only answer what she wants to answer, or what is proper for her to answer. However, she does want to answer. The more specific your question, the more precise you are, the less chance there is that she will respond. But if you are nice and general, then she will speak to you, for she can twist your question as she wishes. Hmm?’
Brandione nodded. ‘I think I understand.’
Wayward nodded. ‘Good. I am not surprised. For you are not just a soldier. You are a soldier …’
The tent began to fade away before Wayward could finish.
**
He was back in the blackness.
‘Question.’
The voice filled the void, the word echoing into the blackness. The eyes were no longer to be seen.
The one-time General searched for a question. There was something pathetic about him, this ridiculous animal, suspended in a world of higher beings, scrabbling around in his fleshy brain for something to say. In his days as a scholar – the days before soldiering, the days before the end of the world – he had read about ancient cultures. They were hives of ignorance, he had been taught, where people saw gods in the trees and the rivers. In some of the old stories, these people had met with their gods, conversed with them as equals, and even tricked them. Here he was, now, playing that same role. He was no different to the savages who walked the Plateau in the days before the Machinery.
But we were never any different, were we? The thought burst to life like a black weed. What was the Operator, if not a god? What was the Machinery?
Her eyes were before him again, no longer angry but hungry, waiting for him to speak. A god, and her mortal. But there were no tricks to be played here. Not with her.
Nice and general.
He opened his mouth, and the eyes widened.
‘What comes next?’ he asked.
The eyes widened. The darkness around them was slowly replaced with the outlines of three faces, and in a heartbeat she was before him, shining in her glory. She had taken a youthful appearance, her hair falling in golden curls, her cheeks rosy and unblemished. She wore three silver dresses, lengthy garments of a gleaming material, shining with the light of the stars and studded with tiny black stones. She grinned at him with three red mouths. She seemed more substantial than usual, though streams of dust fell away from the tips of her fingers.
She was beautiful, but she faded from his mind as soon as he turned away from her, like the memories she showed him. He closed his eyes and the image of her vanished, with only the outline remaining, only the sense of her. But when he opened them again, she was there, more terrifying and radiant and impossible than before.
‘That,’ the Dust Queen said, ‘is a good question.’
Smiles broke out across her three youthful faces, and she raised her hands. The dust at the edge of her fingers began to flow more quickly, falling away into the ether. In a moment she had disintegrated into sand. It swirled forward, encircling Brandione, and he heard her voice in his own mind.
A game.
**
He opened his eyes, and the darkness had gone.
They were on a beach, of sorts, but unlike any the former General had ever seen. The sand beneath his feet was black, and the sun in the dark sky was blood red. The water of the sea beyond crashed rhythmically against the shore, over and over, like the movements of a machine. The air here was cold, and still, and deadening.
‘Where are we?’
The Queen was by his side. She seemed smaller, somehow.
‘The Old Place,’ she said. ‘The Underland. Two of the names it has been given, over the long years.’ One of her figures knelt down, and scooped up some of the black sand in a hand. She lifted the sand up, and shared it with the other two. All of them held it in the air, and allowed it to drop from their fingers.
‘Why is the sand black?’ Brandione asked.
A moment passed, before the Dust Queen answered.
‘It is not truly sand,’ she said. ‘It is a memory. Or more than one, perhaps, fused together, and residing here in the Old Place.’
‘Sand is not black. And the sun is not red.’
The Dust Queen raised her eyebrows. ‘Have you seen all sand, my Last Doubter? Have you seen every beach since the beginning of the world?’ She pointed her three right hands at the burning orb above. ‘Have you witnessed every age of that star? Do you know what it was in its youth?’
Brandione shook his head.
‘No,’ said the Queen. ‘But the Old Place does.’ She sighed. ‘Do you know what it is?’
‘The home of the Machinery.’
The Queen laughed. ‘Yes, yes.’ She pinched three forefingers and three thumbs tightly together, and raised them to her eyes. ‘But only for a sliver of its lifespan: the most recent moments in its long years.’
Brandione blinked, and suddenly the three bodies surrounded him, her faces inches from his own.
‘Everything in this place is a memory,’ she said. She gestured at the beach around them. ‘Memories have power, because humanity was made to die, to burn in beauty and flutter out, in wave after glorious wave.’ She pointed to the sea. ‘The creator hated that: how could he not, when he would live forever?’
‘The creator?’ He thought of the endless chasm, and the intelligence he had felt there, that sense of conflict.
She ignored him.
‘He wanted something to remain: something of each of them, something that would not die. He took mortal memories, and gave them power to make them last forever, so he would always have them to play with.’ She smiled. ‘It was his great mistake. The immortal power he placed in memories grew beyond even his control. Something new emerged: a thing that could rival even him.’ She glanced around, with a blend of love and fear in her eyes. ‘This place.’
She sighed. The three young women flickered into something else: old creatures, balding and stooped, their skin lined and fragile. But the moment passed, and the young Dust Queen returned, staring sadly at the sands.
Brandione looked from this creature of three bodies, to the red sun, then down to the black sand at his feet. Thoughts of the past appeared in his mind, unbidden memories rushing through him in a flood. He thought of his days in the College, and then the army. He looked back on his unrelenting ascent to the top of the Overland’s military hierarchy, his role as Strategist Kane’s senior advisor, and all the things that once seemed weighty in his mind. He was a man of many parts, someone had once told him. He was ambitious, but not boastful: popular with those above and below him, but not a craver of adulation. He had seemed a quiet and modest man, but, in truth, he revelled in his complexity. They never saw him coming, because they did not know what to make of him. A soldier and a scholar.
He looked to his left, and for a moment he caught a glimpse of a figure from his past: Provost Hone, the head of the College. The old man was standing far away, beside a towering black dune. He smiled, and Brandione was reminded of all the love he had been shown by men like that, all the counsel they had given him, all the ways they had lifted him up, and propelled him to glory.
But Hone began to fade