The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy, #2)

by James Islington

A flicker of sadness. Ruarc swallows. Nods as he composes himself. “Yes. Well. I assumed the other versions of me never made it. I was never able to do anything like that.” He gestures to my glinting arm. “I am fortunate, in many ways. If they had survived, I may never have learned the truth. I would have been hunted. As I had to do with you.” He lets the last part hang. “Why?” I don’t bother to hide my frustrated confusion at the confession. “And why just give yourself up, now, after all of this?” “I surrendered because everything has changed. One of your counterparts has made a terrible mistake, Silverhand, and it became imperative that we speak. No matter the cost to me.” He puts his hands to his throat and removes his torc. Holds it out to me. “As for the rest? Answers, if you would have them. The truth behind the war we are fighting, and the reasons for what I had to do. For what must yet be done.”

“The draoi. Do not tell them what you are, Silverhand. Do not tell anyone who you truly are or you may find yourself responsible for far worse than a few hundred dead.” He calls it after me. Pleading. “Say nothing, do nothing, until I have explained everything to you. Promise me.” I shiver at both the certainty of his words, and their import. Nod slowly. “Not until I have heard you, Ruarc.” I shut the door behind me, and stride toward the breaking dawn.

“Even so. When a man is Synchronous, sometimes things bleed through. Small things. Inexplicable impressions, instincts you may not normally have. A whisper of the memory of knowledge. And I think, perhaps—unless the coincidence is extraordinary—this is why we are speaking now.” Another pause. Face still shadowed. “Do you know my purpose, Catenicus?” “To cause another Cataclysm.” No point in pretending. “No. That is means, not purpose.” The dark shape shifts. “More than nine in every ten dead, in this world. It is a horror and heartbreak that cannot be explained in numbers or words. But that sacrifice is to save the one in ten. It is to prevent the obliteration of two worlds, and the enslavement of whichever remains.” A pause. “And as of a few hours ago, you are now the only man alive who can fulfil that purpose.”

PLOT TWIST!!!

He glances at the iunctus uneasily. “Why would the Concurrence have brought us here?” “The Concurrence have not brought you here.” We both flinch and curse at the statement of the dead man in front, abrupt in the hollowness of the thin chasm. He turns to us, and I can suddenly see an awareness in his gaze that hasn’t been there since Caten. “They are the enemy. Humanity’s enemy, which I have fought my entire life. Do not conflate us.” Delivered emotionlessly again, but he pauses, staring at each of us as if to ensure we understand, before moving on.

“Who are the Concurrence, then?” I say it into the hush as the iunctus lights a lantern, and we forge into the darkness of the tunnel. The iunctus moves steadily ahead of us. “Not a ‘who.’ A ‘what.’ A self-contained latticework of iunctii. The remnants of a rogue system which once controlled the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the world. Across the world, before the Rending.” I exchange a look with Eidhin, who shakes his head slightly. Equally baffled. “A system?” “A great, independent machine made up of the dead. Interlinked, each one carefully purposed. More vast and complex and impossible to fight than you can imagine.” We’ve taken a different path to the one Emissa led me along, and a dead end suddenly looms in the form of a massive obsidian slab, divided into three distinct panels. The gilded symbol of the Hierarchy slices down the one in the centre.

A magical AI that uses dead people as processors. Skynet here is more like "Corpsenet".

Filling it—not just along the pathways of our level but on the tiered ones above—are bodies. I stare. Frozen. Even the numbed, ongoing agony of my legs temporarily forgotten. The entire mountain, the entire Agerus mountain range, must be hollowed out to accommodate this massive crypt. At first I think it’s a much larger version of the ruins near the Academy; certainly it feels the same, with its jade light and corpses splayed upright against white stone slabs. None of them have blades pinning them through the heart, though. They’re not naked, instead clothed in identical, simple black shifts. And—as I peer at one of the closest ones—they stare glassily ahead. Dead, certainly, but the eyes of these corpses have not been removed. It’s a small comfort, confronted with the scale of the thing. There are thousands of them. Tens of thousands. They stretch on forever.

“Vis?” Eidhin’s voice. Distant beneath my pounding heart. “He has made his choice,” comes the iunctus’s soft reply. As soon as the second iunctus has ceded to me, I’m moving across to the third impaled form. There’s motion in the corner of my vision. The first one is on his feet, descending from the platform with calm, mechanical intent. I imbue the third man. Watch the black, glimmering sliver of stone retract. Allow him to give up half his Will to me. Then take a weary seat as he stands and heads purposefully after the other two. Minutes pass as I just watch in horrified, vaguely sick silence. First there is only the movement of the three iunctii. Then six. Then a dozen. On and on, a widening ripple of waking corpses. The Will being ceded to me builds in ever growing increments. My weariness begins to wash away, even if my misgivings do not. “They will continue until each node is filled to its most efficient level,” says the iunctus behind me. “Once their pyramids are set, they will be unable to attack one another, or you, or leave—but will otherwise regain control of themselves. Their memories. Any further restrictions will be up to you.”

“Diago?” My heart stops at the female voice cutting through the low hubbub, from off to my left below. I turn slowly. Disbelievingly. Scan the milling crowd. I spot them. Rows back but pushing their way forward and through. Dark, curly hair and sun-kissed skin. The younger’s long hair tousled, wild in a way it never is. The older’s is the same, just the way I remember it. Their deep brown eyes, mirrors of each other’s and my own, on me. I don’t move. Don’t breathe. I cannot speak. And then I am scrambling down the stairs as fast as my broken legs will take me toward my mother and sister. The confused crowd parts like water before my rushing and suddenly I’m there. Standing in front of them. It’s them. There are tears on both their smiling cheeks.

When my tears clear enough to focus again, I see Eidhin has descended after me. He’s staring. At first I think it’s at Ysa, but then I realise his gaze is fixed behind, over my shoulder. For the first time since the Iudicium, I see him smile. And before I can turn, before I can process it, the familiar voice emerges from the murmurs behind. Wry, and quiet, and utterly perplexed. “Hail, Vis.”

Callidus?