“The places weren’t easy to find. All were very well hidden. When we found the first one, we realized we had discovered the slaughterers that committed the Big Kill. Each one of them was still being monitored by some kind of everlasting atomic device; each one was dormant but still capable of being wakened to kill again. The old technicians had caught them in the so-called maintenance loop, but they hadn’t been able to destroy them.” She held up her hand, quelling Abasio. “Don’t ask me why because I don’t know. No one knows. Personally, I think they simply couldn’t get to them, not the way the world was then. By that time, people who tried to go anywhere usually died trying it.
“Difficult or not, we of the clan Do-Lok determined to destroy them utterly. One by one, over a long, weary time, our people found and demolished them. As each one was shattered, one of the ancient monitors went dark. Now only one of them registers the existence of the last slaughterer. We knew from the first that this one was different, for it showed movement where the others did not. We knew where the maintenance machine had been, but we could not find it or find where the creature was! This one, unlike its fellows, had never been completely dormant. It had either been designed differently or it had adapted in ways its creators never considered. The monitor didn’t tell us where either the maintenance device or the slaughterer could be found. It told us only where they had been a hundred years before.”
“As though the inventor was looking ahead, preventing his creature from being found,” said Justinian bitterly.
Precious Wind nodded assent. “Very possibly, Duke of Wold! A hideous joke from the remote past! We went to the place it had been a hundred years ago—a deserted city along the Great Dune Shore, south of Orez’s country, north of Elsmere. We asked questions. Was there a monster here a century ago? Do you know where it went? Men do not live long enough to remember, but sometimes there were local legends, old records. We picked up clues as we went. We tracked the creature through time: to the Big Mud southeast of Merhaven, onto the Highlands of Ghastain, then down toward the Lake Country. Eighty years ago it was here, seventy years ago it was there. We found it, finally, some twenty years ago when Xu-i-lok was stricken by a technology that should no longer have existed!
“You have asked why Alicia and her mother hated Tingawa. They hate Tingawans because they were created by the Old Dark Man to hate the land and the people who destroyed the other slaughterers, and also, perhaps, because in Tingawa there is much intelligence that does not conform! Or, perhaps, merely because they are out of reach.”
“The war with the Sea King!” cried Xulai in sudden enlightenment. “It was to keep Tingawa safe from him.”
Precious Wind heaved a great breath. “Yes. The fictitious war with the Sea People was to keep the slaughterer away from the islands. There had been some slaughterers near Tingawa, but we’d already destroyed them. The Old Dark Man, however, had been created to be more adaptable than the others. It was a new and improved model. It could move its maintenance device from place to place. It did not kill indiscriminately. It made plans. It deferred killing so it could kill a better target. It had not struck at our embassy. It did not strike at me or Bear, not until recently, after the princess died, and it struck at her through its creations.”
“Mirami and Alicia,” said Xulai. “Both of them. The creature made them, taught them, trained them.”
“Directed them,” said Precious Wind. “So we believe. The thing can think a century ahead, and its long-range plans would involve Tingawa directly. So far, we hope, the creature remains ignorant of our larger concerns.”
“Do we know anything else about it?” Abasio asked.
“Prince Lok-i-xan’s group believes that its flesh part dies periodically. It is thought that perhaps it reproduces itself, over and over, using egg cells from some human female coupled with its own DNA. Rebirth, however, would not explain the fact that this particular monster remembers where it has been and what it has done in the past. It has a continuous memory. It knows who it is and what it has done and what it plans to do.”
“I doubt it is reborn,” said Abasio. “Repaired, yes. Maintained, yes. It may grow spare parts using cellular material, yes. Or the flesh of the original volunteer may have been divided up to be used at maintenance time. And maybe it hibernates in its maintenance cocoon from time to time, like a toad encasing itself in mud until the next rainy season. It could live for millennia that way, coming back for a while every century without actually being reborn.”
Precious Wind said, “The cellular material could have been its own. Each slaughterer we found held only parts of the brain and a small amount of the living body tissue from the original volunteer.”
Xulai said, “Then my grandfather may be right about its using cells from women.”
“Perhaps he grows bodies he can harvest from,” said Precious Wind. “We’ve considered that. We now know the creature came to the Old Dark House before or at least during Mirami’s childhood, and we didn’t know that much until Mirami left the place and married Falyrion. She actually spoke of her childhood. Word began to circulate about the things she said. We had people everywhere listening for tales
