| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | A Night In A Draughty Castle |
| Date: | Mon, 4 Nov 1996 22:02:21 +0000 |
hell, I lived through it, it doesn't give away anything that could get
me killed that wasn't already given away, and I'm pretty damn proud that
I coped with it. So anyone who wants to see, can do so.
+++++begin trideo
You see a remarkably beautiful view of a sunrise over rolling moors
covered with gorse and heather, recognising after a few seconds Lilith's
point-of-view. Glamis Castle looms on a hilltop nearby, and she and
Quinn seem to be walking along a metalled road towards a stone cairn: as
they reach it you see it's an Ordnance Survey triangulation point.
"This as close as you want me to get?"
Quinn, looking comfortable in jeans and a Barbour jacket, nods. "Yeah.
If I'm not here this time tomorrow, come looking. Carefully. Until then,
don't get any nearer than you are now."
Lilith shrugs. "No problem, unless the deer are particularly frisky. Is
it a stupid question to ask if you're going to be all right?"
The shaman shrugs, for once looking less than certain. "No. I should be
okay, though. You just stay clear."
"The way some of the locals talked, about the last guy to go up
there..."
"What, the tearing-out-his-own-tongue routine? I checked it out, he just
clawed up his face some. He's not very well, though. I guess the place
is pretty thoroughly haunted."
"And you want to live there?" Lilith sounds amused.
"Maybe the spirits are just guarding it for the rightful owner. Which I
hope is me."
"You're not even Scottish, Quinn."
She shrugs and smiles. "Actually I am, dual citizenship, remember? Not
to mention a Knight of the Thistle. Maybe that'll help. And I like the
sound of it. Lady Rodriguez, Thane of Glamis."
"Remember what happened to the last person to try that?"
"But I don't want to rule and I didn't murder my King." Quinn embraces
Lilith. "Take care, you big dumb spotty cat, and have fun chasing the
deer." She turns and walks along the road with her usual shamble: hands
in pockets, blonde hair blowing in the wind. Lilith watches her until
she's out of sight.
+++++
Quinn peers into the camera's lens. "Testing, testing, is this thing
working? How would I know if it wasn't anyway?" The view gyrates as she
sticks the camera on the wall, giving a good view: she's in a small high
room, stone-walled. You see a sleeping bag, a hurricane lamp, a small
hexamine burner, and the cardboard box of a 24-hour ration pack among a
few other items.
"It's been a quiet day." She settles back into the corner, lying on the
sleeping bag. "Nobody's jumped out at me and said 'boo!' No headless
ghosts, no phantasms, no armies of zombies. Or if there was I slept
through it. On the other hand, the sun's going down and the moon won't
come up until two a.m. or so. I seem to remember this place inspired
Bram Stoker, or am I thinking of the wrong castle?" Quinn opens a case
of chips, selects one and slots it into her datajack.
+++++
It's very dark, relieved only by pale light through the window: the moon
must be up. The camera must be rigged for low-light, and seems to be
working pretty well. Quinn suddenly stirs, then sits bolt upright,
reaching for a weapon that isn't there. She snaps her fingers, looks
irritated that nothing happened, and uses a match to light the hurricane
lamp: its soft hiss and white glow illuminate her corner of the room.
The light, though, seems to almost curdle in her part of the room,
leaving the corners darker than before. Quinn frees herself from her
sleeping bag, pulls on a polar fleece jacket and zips her Barbour over
that.
"Okay, so all of a sudden someone turned off the magic. Anyone there?"
She looks around inquiringly.
Figures steps forward from each of the three dark corners: robed women,
one young, one middle-aged, one ancient. Quinn does jump.
"Hi there. I'm Quinn." She rises to her feet, looks from one to another.
"You are Susan Elizabeth Rodriguez, Lady and soldier."
"You are The Mighty Quinn, shaman and shadowrunner."
"You are Suzy Barker, then and now."
Quinn blinks, evidently surprised. "Well done. And you are...?"
"We are the guardians of memory."
"We are the stewards of the past."
"We are those who read the future in the entrails of history."
"I guess you know why I'm here?" The robed women simply nod. "So what do
I have to do?"
"You must see."
"You must remember."
"You must relive." The grey-robed forms step back into the shadows,
leaving Quinn standing alone.
"Why don't I like the sound of that?" she mutters.
You hear faint singing, growing louder, and recognise the tune as "The
Mighty Quinn" as the left wall fades away, revealing a shower room.
Quinn steps into it, incongruous in clothes better suited to country
hiking than taking a shower. Half-a-dozen men stumble through the
entrance, wearing only shorts or jockstraps, most holding beer cans,
circling her mockingly as they sing.
"Fragging useless, you are." one says over the singing. "Useless dead
weight, you are. Can't throw magic, can't shoot, can't do frag all." He
pokes Quinn hard in the chest and she staggers back a little. "Only one
thing you might be any good for at all, and we're gonna give you some
lessons in that."
"Yeah?" As two of them grab her arms, Quinn glares at the leader with
fury. He laughs.
"This is the replay, you dumb bitch, you don't get out of it with a
spell this time." His body flows and changes, a horrific blackened,
melted mask replacing his face and great burns appearing all over his
skin. The charred face still speaks, though white bone shows through the
jaw. "You burned me up real bad with your magic surprise fireball,
little Suzie. Real unexpected, that you'd learn to do magic just because
a few of the guys wanted a good time. Took me three months in hospital
before I died from what you did to me. Now, though, it's payback time,
I'm gonna frag you up worse than you ever did me, but first we're gonna
have us some fun!"
"Replay time?" Quinn manages to resist the first effort to force her to
the floor. "You forgot two things. One, you've been dead six years and I
haven't. Two, I had to learn to fight and I learn real fast. Watch
this!"
Her left hand blurs across the thigh of one of her captors and he
collapses backwards with a great gash opened in the muscle: blood pumps
out in an amazing crimson stream. She pulls the other one in front of
her and, as he flails for balance, cuts his throat with what you realise
are cyberspurs, spinning him around so the great sanguine gush sprays
his friends, who - apart from the burned man - break and run.
"Pretty fancy moves for a jumped-up magician." His own spurs slide out.
"Now I show you how a real man fights. I'm gonna cut you up so bad
you'll wish you'd just laid back and thought of the UCAS!"
He lunges, and you realise he's good; Quinn, though, twists around the
attack, slashing at his extended arm: the three deep cuts ooze a sickly
yellow pus, and hardly seem to affect the blackened corpse as he lashes
out, Quinn leaping back too late to avoid the blow: it should have
taken her eyes, as it was it's merely laid her cheek open to the bone.
Quinn drops to one knee, and you realise it's an attack not a collapse
only when her leg comes around fast in a vicious ankle sweep: the burned
man falls sideways and Quinn is on him in an instant, crouched above him
with spurs cocked above his face: a steady drip of her blood falls on
him.
"You won't do it. You never had the guts-" The spurs slam down, and
Quinn almost frenziedly stabs the body a dozen times or more: head,
neck, chest. Breathing hard, she rises to her feet, then fumbles for a
medkit as the corpses and the blood - except her own - vanish.
"Cute. Real cute." She brushes a hand over the slash on her cheek,
winces, uses the medkit to spray a bandage. "He was an asshole then and
being dead for six years didn't improve him."
She turns suddenly, as the back wall melts away. Beyond it is a city
street, and a burning tenement building. A half-dozen teenagers, all in
white synthleather jackets painted with flame designs, are standing
around the building, cheering and yelling, and a couple more are riding
back and forth on motorbikes. As you watch, a woman runs from the door
of the tenement, only to be shot down by one of the gangers. The others
roar with approval, as the woman - wounded rather than dead - thrashes
on the road and the boy who shot her swaggers up to her: another ganger
hands him a fluid-filled bottle with a rag stopper, which he almost
ceremonially ignites before hurling it at the screaming woman, who is
instantly engulfed in fire.
Quinn takes a deep breath, points at the boy, and he drops as if pole-
axed. She seems surprised. "Okay, the magic's back!" As the gang members
turn, four of them are engulfed in a billowing maelstrom of flame, a
blazing, riderless motorcycle skidding out of the fireball. As it
clears, you see all four down and ablaze, Quinn walking forwards with
purposeful gait.
Two other gangers are turning and raising weapons, and Quinn almost
casually snaps her fingers at one, lightning crackling around his body
and he barely manages to scream before collapsing. The last fires once,
missing, as Quinn reaches down and scoops up the Glock automatic dropped
by the first ganger she killed and shoots him twice in the head.
She pauses, finding a spare magazine in the dead man's pocket, and walks
towards the tenement building's entrance: two motorbikes roar around the
corner and you see the crackle of a barrier just before they slam into
it, the Rapiers passing through unchecked but both riders being swept
off, Quinn aiming and double-tapping both as they sprawl in the road.
The Glock's slide locks back and she drops the empty clip, reloading and
letting the action close.
She raises a hand and points, and water and steam gush from the entrance
of the building, and she runs inside. She's gone for several minutes,
reappearing singed and scorched.
"SONOFABITCH!!!!" Quinn screams, and fires half-a-dozen shots into the
body of the nearest gang member. The street begins to darken and close
in, and she runs back towards the small stone-walled room. "Bastards!
They were dead already! Oh, I'm allowed to do magic to kill people,
sure! Won't let me heal my own parents, though? My foster parents,
looked after me for years, treated me like their own, the one fucking
chance I have to save them and you take it away?" As she rants, the wall
slowly solidifies. She looks down, realises she's still holding the
Glock.
As she stuffs it in a pocket, the right wall fades, revealing a child's
room. Quinn tries to step into it, but is blocked. You see a blonde girl
of perhaps three or four, sitting on the bed and crying as though
heartbroken: a powerfully-built teenage boy sits beside her, arm around
her shoulder.
"Not want to go! Stay with Jon'than!" the girl manages between sobs.
"You've got to go, Suzy. It's important. "
"Stay with JON'THAN!" shrieks the girl, wrapping her arms around him.
He's weeping too, you notice.
A woman - startlingly beautiful, almost ageless, and slightly other-
worldly - enters.
"Suzy, if you don't choose what to take you won't get to keep it with
you."
"Jon'than come with Suzy?"
"No, Susan. It's dangerous. Bad people want to hurt Suzy. Mummy and
Daddy and Jonathan have to go away to stop the bad people hurting you.
"Suzy hurt _them!" the girl manages between sobs. "Suzy help
Jon'than!"
"Susan, your brother will be busy taking care of himself, and you have
to get ready to go now." The woman gently but firmly pries the girl's
arms loose from her brother.
"Jonathan, you know what she'll miss most, would you...?" The boy -
trying not to let his mother see that he's crying - packs a few clothes,
toys and books into a holdall and hands it to his mother, who lifts the
girl off the ground. As she walks towards the door, Susan starts
screaming deafeningly for her brother, who begins to come to her: a
freezing glare from his mother stops him, though, as she carries her
daughter out of the room.
She's gone for several minutes, and the boy walks to a window and
watches briefly... then she comes back. You notice she's wiping her eyes
too.
"Mom, did we have to...?"
"Jonathan, perhaps one day you'll have a child, and perhaps you'll have
to choose between giving her up, perhaps never seeing her again, or
keeping her with you and almost certainly having her killed."
"Is it that bad?"
"Yes. We are in that much danger, Jonathan, that if you were a few
months younger I'd have sent you away too. As it is, you're going to
need everything I taught you. And if we live through this, in a year or
two you and Susan will be back together."
The wall darkens and you realise Quinn is huddled in a corner, crying
almost hysterically. "I'm sorry, Jonathan. I couldn't find you, I
thought you were dead. I'm sorry it took so long."
She gathers herself, slowly but carefully, and rises to her feet and
glares around the room. "Okay. So, what's next?"
The three women reappear, this time smiling.
"All hail Rodriguez, beloved of Coyote!"
"All hail Rodriguez, daughter of the Dragon!"
"All hail Rodriguez, Baroness of Glamis!"
The women melt from view as the grey light of dawn begins to shine
through the window. Quinn draws a deep breath, lets it out, fumbles for
a cigarette.
"I do _not_ want to do that again." she mutters.
+++++
Quinn is carrying the camera, walking down the road: you see a battered
Land Rover parked some distance away, which seems to be her destination.
She turns to see a white-tipped periscope weaving through the heather
towards her, which proves to be a long tail curled up over a leopard's
back. The leopard is carrying a twitching hare in its mouth, and as it
stops in front of Quinn you realise it's Lilith: the vivid dark-blue
eyes smirk at you.
"Thanks." Quinn bends down, takes the hare and kills it with a blow to
the back of the head. "Mind if I cook it?"
Lilith flows into human form, her clothes appearing at the last moment:
you boggle slightly at the rather spectacular view. "Sure. The deer were
too easy, I couldn't bring myself to kill them. Besides, they were all
too big, I'd have wasted some. The hares and rabbits were more fun. Are
you okay? You look like..."
"Like I saw a ghost? Three sets of ghosts, Lilith. Three sets of
ghosts."
"Was it worth it?" Lilith looks concerned.
"Yeah. It was. But it was a high price, and I don't want to pay that too
often.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain..."
Lilith looks at Quinn for a long moment, then smiles.
"You're going to be all right, Susan, if you're quoting The Scottish
Play. Come on. Pie, chips and beer at the Fife and Drum. My treat."
"Eighty Shilling?"
"But of course. What else would we drink here?"
+++++end trideo]<<<<<
-- The Mighty Quinn <21:45:42/04-11-57>
The Right Honourable Baroness Glamis
