The boy’s eyes opened. They were gray — Call had never seen Constantine Madden’s eyes before, never thought to ask what color they were. They were the same gray as Call’s. Gray and empty as a winter sky. His scarred face was slack, emotionless.
Master Joseph gasped. “What is this?” he demanded, turning to the other mages with fury on his face. “His body lives, if barely, but his soul — where is his soul?”
The scene shifted again. Call was standing in a cave carved of ice. The walls were white, shifting in color where shadows touched them. The floor was scattered with bodies: mages lying crumpled, some with their eyes open, some in pools of frozen blood.
Call knew where he was. The Cold Massacre. He closed his eyes, but it made no difference — he could still see, since the images were inside his mind. He watched Master Joseph pick his way among the murdered, stopping here and there to turn over a body and stare at its face. After a few moments, Call realized what he was doing. He was examining the dead children, not touching the adults. At last, he stopped and stared, and Call saw what he was looking at. Not a body at all, but a set of words, carved into the ice.
KILL THE CHILD
Again, the scenes shifted, and now they were fluttering by fast, like leaves in a breeze: Master Joseph in one town or city after another, searching, always searching, examining the birth records in a hospital, property records, any possible lead …
Master Joseph standing on the concrete of a playground, watching a group of boys threatening a smaller boy. Suddenly, the ground underfoot shook and trembled, a huge crack splitting the playground nearly in half. As the bullies ran off, the smaller boy on the ground levered himself up, gazing around with a bewildered look. Call recognized himself. Skinny, dark-haired, with gray eyes just like Constantine’s, his bad leg twisted beneath him.
He felt Master Joseph begin to smile….
Call came back to reality with a shock, as if he had slammed into his body from a great height. He staggered back, yanking his hand out of Master Joseph’s. “No,” he choked. “No, I don’t understand….”
“Oh, I think you do,” said the mage. “I think you understand very well, Callum Hunt.”
“Stop that,” Call said. “Stop calling me Callum Hunt like that — it’s creepy. My name is Call.”
“No, it’s not,” said Master Joseph. “That’s the name that belongs to that body, that shell you wear. A name that you will discard when you are ready, just as you will discard that body and enter Constantine’s.”
Call threw up his hands. “I can’t do that! And do you know why? Because Constantine Madden is still around. I really, really don’t understand how I can be this person that’s out leading armies and raising chaos elementals and making giant wolves with freaky eyes when that person already exists and is SOMEBODY ELSE!” Call was shouting, but his voice sounded pleading, even to his own ears. He just wanted all this to stop. He couldn’t help hearing the horrible echo of his father’s words again and again.
Call, you must listen to me. You don’t know what you are.
“Still around?” Master Joseph said with a bitter smile. “Oh, the Assembly and the Magisterium believe that Constantine is still actively engaged with the world, because that is what we wished them to believe. But who has seen him? Who has spoken to him since the Cold Massacre?”
“People have seen him …” Call began. “He’s met with the Assembly! He signed the Treaty.”
“Masked,” said Master Joseph, holding up the silver mask he had been wearing when Call had first seen him. “I impersonated him at the battle with Verity Torres; I knew I could do it again. The Enemy has remained hidden since the Cold Massacre, and when he absolutely had to show himself, I went in his place. But Constantine himself? He was mortally wounded twelve years ago, in the cave where Sarah Hunt and so many others died. But as he felt the life ebbing from him, he used what he had already learned — the method of moving one soul to another body — to save himself. Just like he was able to take a piece of chaos and place it inside the Chaos-ridden, he took his own soul and placed it inside the optimal vessel at hand. You.”
“But I was never at the Cold Massacre. I was born in a hospital. My leg —”
“A lie told to you by Alastair Hunt. Your leg was shattered when Sarah Hunt dropped you onto the ice,” said Master Joseph. “She knew what had happened. The soul of her child had been forced out, and the soul of Constantine Madden took its place. Her child had become the Enemy.”
Call heard a roaring in his ears. “My mother wouldn’t —”
“Your mother?” sneered Master Joseph. “Sarah Hunt was only the mother of the shell that contains you. Even she knew it. She didn’t have the strength to do it herself, but she left a message. A message for those who would come upon the battlefield after she was dead.”
“The words in the ice,” Call whispered. He felt dizzy and sick.
“Kill the child,” said Master Joseph, with a cruel satisfaction. “She scratched it into the ice with the tip of that knife you carry. It was her last act in this world.”
Call felt as if he were about to throw up. He reached behind him for the edge of a table and leaned back against it, breathing hard.
“The soul of Callum Hunt is dead,” said Joseph. “Forced from your body, that soul shriveled up and died. Constantine Madden’s soul has taken root and grown, newborn and intact. Since then, his followers have labored to make it seem like he wasn’t gone from the world, so that you would be safe. Protected. So that you would have time to mature. So that you would live.”
Call wants to live. That was what Call had, jokingly, added to the Cinquain in his mind; now it didn’t seem like a joke. Now, in horror, he wondered just how true it was. Had he wanted to live so much that he’d stolen another person’s life? Could that have really been him?
“I don’t remember anything about being Constantine Madden,” Call whispered. “I’ve only ever been me —”
“Constantine always knew he could die,” said Joseph. “It was his greatest fear, death. He tried again and again to bring back his brother, but he could never recover his brother’s soul, all that made Jericho who he was. He resolved to do whatever it took to remain alive. All this time, we have waited, Call, for you to be old enough. And here you are, nearly ready. Soon, the war will begin again in earnest … and this time we are sure to win.”
Master Joseph’s eyes were shining with something that seemed a lot like madness.
“I don’t see why you think I’d ever be on your side,” Call said. “You took Aaron —”
“Yes,” said Joseph, “but we wanted you.”
“So you went through all that effort, the kidnapping, just to get me here to — what? To tell me all this? Why not tell me before? Why not grab me before I even ever went to the Magisterium?”
“Because we thought you knew,” Master Joseph ground out. “I thought you were lying low on purpose — allowing your mind and body to grow so that you might once again become the formidable foe to the Assembly that you were before. I did not approach you because I assumed that if you wished to be approached, you would have contacted me.”