Rings of the Inconquo Trilogy

by A. L. Knorr

  “What’s going on?”

  “What the bloody hell was that?”

  “We’re under attack!”

  I reached Lowe’s side as a sound like parchment ripping sang through the air and an enormous crack zigzagged across the floor of the commons.

  “Professor James!” My gaze was torn between Lowe and the rent through Museum Station. “What’s going on?”

  Lowe looked up, his face not just pale but fading to translucent. Thin wisps of ectoplasm shed from his head and shoulders, and as each floated free, he seemed a little less solid.

  “She’s here,” he croaked and curled in on himself as another shredding sound heralded the widening of the split into a chasm.

  “Who?” I screamed, looking around in vain.

  “Daria,” he panted, bent double. “She’s destroying Museum Station.”

  He gave a weak cry of pain, and terror gripped me. I could now see through his face.

  “And she’s killing me. Permanently.”

  22

  “She can’t do that,” I cried, staring at him bewildered.

  Lowe gave me a strained smile as he staggered up from his seat, still clutching his chest.

  “Apparently, she can.” He coughed and took a few halting steps towards the central obelisk. “Quickly, the patient.”

  “To hell with Kezsarak!”

  A fresh surge of panic washed over me when I put a hand under his arm and felt nothing but icy fog. “How do we save you?”

  Lowe stumbled then contorted downward again in agonizing pain. He reached out, stabbing a shivering, translucent finger at the obelisk.

  “The cube,” he croaked. “Shelter … inside the … cube.”

  “With Kezsarak?”

  “NOW!” Lowe screamed hoarsely.

  What he was suggesting––placing himself inside a metal box with a demon––seemed mad, but as I watched him fade even more, I realized there wasn’t time to argue. Launching forward, I raced along the edge of the widening chasm towards the centre of the commons.

  Another thundercrack and I had to zigzag and leap over spider-webbing fractures spreading over the floor. I made the columns just as an incredible shudder ran through the Station, and the floor began to sink. The ground shifted perilously under my feet, and I had to scramble on all fours across shifting sections of tiled floor. Plumes of ectoplasm sprayed up like icy volcanic ash. They clung just long enough to bite my skin with cold and set my teeth chattering before evaporating.

  A tremendous shiver ran through the Station, and I was knocked off my feet. A low, grinding groan warned me that the obelisk was cracking apart and would bury everything around it in rubble.

  “No!” I yanked on Kezsarak’s cube with all my will.

  The first chunks of phantasmic masonry crashed to the ground as the cube came into my grip, and I was running before the rest could land.

  Tucking the cube to my chest, I leapt from one island of crumbling tile to another. Gushes of spectral vapour turned sweat into ice, but somehow, I reached the edge of the commons.

  Lowe was little more than a humanoid silhouette, worked in shimmering grey, and crouched on the floor.

  “Hurry, Ibby!” Jackie’s cry turned to a sob as Lowe grew less distinct.

  I felt the cube in my hands, the binding of sacred metals made from the very body of Kezsarak himself. I should have had the rings fused together to ensure I had the control necessary to open the cube without letting Kezsarak out, but I didn’t have time. In seconds Professor James Lowe, my friend, would be gone forever.

  I pressed my hands and will into the cube as I ran the last few strides to Lowe. With an odd familiarity, the metals responded to my commands, and the bands slid apart. A pale, red light flowed from the seams.

  The potent presence of Kezsarak stirred, sending out unseen ripples of power. He wasn’t pressing against his bindings, but he was very much awake and alert. His awareness felt like the heat of a forge. I muttered a silent prayer that Lowe knew what he was doing.

  “Come on, Lowe!”

  With a shuddering lurch, Lowe slid forward, and his form became liquid, sliding into the cube’s light like water sliding down a drain. The light flickered for an instant, the two wills inhabiting the same space pressing and grappling against each other, not fighting, just trying to find room for themselves. The cube trembled, and I focused all my attention on sealing it.

  “Ibby! Look out!”

  I didn’t know who yelled, but it was too late. I looked up to see a brass-coated fist as it smashed into my face. Pain exploded. The blow to my cheek split the skin, and my head snapped backwards, followed by my body. The cube tumbled from my hands, and my body hit the quaking floor, but I struggled to make sense of what had happened.

  I saw Sark snatch up the cube. Was he about to unleash Kezsarak again?

  But he didn’t call the demon out; instead, he drove one brass coated hand into the cube.

  The world was a fuzzy, discombobulated place, but I heard Sark scream as the scent of burning hair and cooking meat filled the air. Sark drew his smouldering arm out, and I winced at the damage done, but Sark’s scream of pain turned into a shriek of triumph as the light was drawn up from the cube as a pulsing fistful of molten metal.

  Voices.

  Screams.

  Then Sark smashed the glowing metal into his chest.

  There was a flare of brilliant red light so intense that tears sprang to my eyes.

  The fuzzy edges of the world became sharper, and I reached out with my metallic sense. Three separate wills, bound within the flesh and fused metal that was Sark, warred for control. My head still ringing from Sark’s sucker-punch, I couldn’t tell which was which, but for a single, breathless second, all three seemed in an interwoven triple deadlock. Then one will emerged on a surge of desperate energy and with a roar, the world exploded.

  I had a fleeting sense of falling, of cold, before an impact rocked my body, and I knew nothing.

  ---

  A hand shook my shoulder.

  “Ibby,” a voice hissed in my ear. “Ibby, please wake up.”

  I started to rise, disoriented.

  “No stay down,” the voice hissed, and I recognized Jackie’s voice. “They still haven’t found us.”

  I looked around, eyes adjusting to a deep gloom. I was lying on the ground under what looked like a rust-speckled I-beam ceiling just a few feet above me. My senses confirmed many huge metal girders overhead, stretching for several metres in all directions. If I’d managed to actually sit-up, I would’ve brained myself on them.

  I turned towards Jackie’s voice and saw she was on her belly next to me.

  “What happened?” I croaked in a hoarse whisper.

  “Shhh,” she pressed a finger I could barely see to her lips. “We need to move, quietly.”

  I wasn’t happy about my question not being answered, but I didn’t argue. As carefully and quietly as I could, I rolled on to my belly. Following her lead, we slithered under the I-beams. Slivers of crisp, pale light shone through the gaps above us, but these were so narrow and Jackie moved so quickly I didn’t get a chance to see what might lie beyond.

  Jackie wound a twisting route until we came to the edge of the I-beam ceiling and a broad patch of daylight, almost blinding after crawling in the dark; beyond that was more gloom where I could just make out piles of pipe and wire peeking out from under plastic tarps.

  I moved alongside Jackie as she hung at the edge of the light.

  I opened my mouth to ask her, again, what was going on, but she clapped a hand over it.

  Too surprised to protest, I stared at her for a long moment before I saw her finger pointing upward. I heard the dull clang of several feet walking across the girders. They moved in the direction from which we’d come, growing distant. Once they sounded faint enough that I had to strain to hear them over my own thudding heart, Jackie released my mouth and led me wordlessly across the light to the gloomy piles beyond.

&nbs
p; Jackie moved quickly, doubled over, between the piles of forgotten construction supplies. I had to stay right on her heels to keep from losing her in the darkness, so when she finally came to a stop, I nearly collided with her. We crouched behind a stack of disassembled scaffolding taller than I was. I wondered what we were waiting for, straining my ears to hear more footsteps, but only heard the sound of laboured breathing in front of me.

  Squinting into the dark, I made out two tall shapes in front of Jackie, one much thicker than the other. The thinner silhouette, Uncle Iry, sat with his back against the scaffolding with his legs out in front of him, but only the left one stretched out straight. The right leg twisted at a nauseatingly sharp angle just above the knee. The heavy breaths I heard were from him.

  “Ibby’s here, now,” Marcus whispered, and I could just make out the porter gripping my uncle’s hand in quiet, unrelenting support. “We’re going to get you somewhere safe.”

  Jackie shifted so I could move to Uncle Iry’s other side, being careful of his fractured leg.

  “I’m here, a’am,” I whispered, taking his free hand and pressing my face against his. His skin was cold and damp.

  “I … I’m-m,” he began, hissing through gritted teeth, but I bid him be quiet with a gentle shush and a squeeze of my hand.

  “Quiet now,” I breathed in his ear, fighting to keep the tears in my eyes from breaking my voice. “We’ll get you some help, very soon.”

  Uncle Iry nodded and took another deep, shivering breath.

  Still holding his hand, I turned to look at Jackie. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Jackie said, her hushed voice starting to tremble. “Sark attacked you, did something to the cube; there was some kind of explosion, and then we were falling in the dark. When I pulled myself together, I realized we were inside the real Museum Station.”

  I looked up and saw the dilapidated building around us. Only the barest hint of what it had once been remained, the walls nothing but support beams and crumbling concrete and plaster. At the centre of the station was a pile of rubble, including a layer of I-beams. Above that, daylight poured in from gaping holes in the ceiling, the upper levels just fringes of flooring surrounding the pit that plunged to the bottom level.

  Moving amidst the rubble in small groups were men, their movements stiff and ungainly as they picked among the rubble. Clubs, batons, and axe handles were in their fists.

  Remembering the information I’d pulled up last year, I realized that the I-beam ceiling Jackie and I had been crawling under was over the old track. That meant there were several floors above us, although the space felt airy so some of the floors had to be missing.

  Jackie continued, “We’ve heard several groups of men or creatures, and I saw one group armed with clubs and axes.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Don’t know.” Jackie pointed up, and I realized I was right about the missing floors. “But I imagine they work for her.”

  I followed her finger, craning my neck to see beyond the scaffolding, and my heart stopped.

  Suspended by a roiling web of shadow near what remained of the top floor, Daria watched over her minions with cold dispassion.

  A growl rose in my throat, and every muscle was rigid with tension. I might have sprung out right then, screaming bloody murder, but Iry’s fingers clutched tightly to my hand.

  Daria deserved far worse than anything I could do to her, and right now, vengeance wasn’t an option. Uncle Iry was badly hurt, Jackie and Marcus couldn’t hold their own against that many men, and all the fury in the world didn’t change the fact that I was coming off an all-nighter where I’d already gone toe-to-toe with an edimmu.

  We needed out, not another fight.

  I went on full alert, hoping that I’d hear them before they found us.

  “What are we going to do?” Marcus asked, his voice low and soft. “We can’t stay here.”

  I nodded, my gaze sweeping around. I considered finding a way to the upper levels and the street but doubted it was possible given the abysmal state of the place. We needed to move Uncle Iry without hurting him more.

  “With an injury like this, he could be bleeding internally,” Marcus pressed, his voice growing urgent. “We need to get him to hospital ... now.”

  “She knows, Marcus,” Jackie said soothingly. “She knows.”

  I wanted to thank Jackie, but I was too busy searching the level we were on for access. There was a chance that a maintenance corridor could lead us to another station or at least a shaft to the surface. We just needed to find the door.

  There!

  I sensed the steel door in the north corner of the platform, concealed in a patch of shadow. I could just see a dingy sign saying MAINTENANCE ONLY. Thankfully, we didn’t have to cross into the larger patches of daylight and there was plenty of cover between us and Daria. A small knot of men had just passed, so I figured now was going to be our best chance to reach the door unmolested.

  “Marcus,” I turned to him with my voice coming out in a rushed whisper. “Can you carry him?”

  Marcus nodded and without a word carefully scooped up Uncle Iry as though he were a child. Iry sucked in a breath through his teeth at the movement, his fist shaking as he clutched at Marcus’s shoulders.

  “Stay close, follow me.”

  We scuttled from one patch of cover to the next, pausing only long enough to make sure we hadn’t drawn any unwanted attention, following a winding path. Once, as we hunkered behind a pile of broken concrete, I was sure that Daria was looking right at us, but after one eternal heartbeat, her gaze moved on.

  The door was rusty and filthy, but still solid and locked. I applied my gentlest ministrations to the deadbolt on the inside and it slid back with a soft scrape that set my teeth on edge. I pulled the door open with both will and muscle, but the scrape of rusty hinges had me looking over my shoulder for fear of discovery.

  Marcus, carrying Uncle Iry, strode towards me just as one of Daria’s minions emerged from behind a stack of coiled wire, weapon raised to crush the back of the porter’s head. Before I could scream a warning, Jackie, who was behind Marcus, tackled the minion. They smashed into a stack of corroded piping, raising a terrible clamour, before crashing to the floor.

  A cry like hounds on the scent rose from every corner of the building, and a glance up revealed Daria looking down at us, a hungry look in her glowing eyes.

  “Run!” I screamed as I stepped around Marcus to help Jackie. “GO!”

  Marcus threw me a torn look as we passed, but with taurine huff, he went through the door.

  Jackie was on her knees and had dealt a solid blow with a pipe to the ambusher, leaving him senseless on the floor.

  “Come on!”

  Summoning willpower, I mentally dragged huge bails of wire to block our pursuers.

  A second ambusher leapt from the top of a stack of pallets as Jackie stumbled through the pipes rolling across the floor. He landed on Jackie’s back, the axe handle in his hand scything down. The bludgeon was torn from his hands and jutted from Jackie’s back like a pump handle.

  “Jackie!” I rushed toward her, sending a volley of pipes at her attacker.

  She staggered forward, almost to the door when I reached her and put my shoulder under her arm. A long shard of glass had been driven into the handle and now impaled my friend.

  “Just go!” Jackie coughed, sending blood across her chin.

  “Never! Come on!”

  We lurched through the door.

  I directed my anger into a final desperate act, dragging the door, the girders in the wall, and the surrounding piping down to block pursuit.

  23

  We staggered down the corridor lined with pipes. Jackie wheezed and choked with every other step.

  “Almost there.” I gasped for air and adjusted my grip around her waist, trying not to think about the warm blood dripping on my hand. “I think ... I can hear ... a train.”

  It wasn’t a lie eithe
r, as a few yards back, I’d heard a rhythmic pounding drawing near. I refused to believe it was anything except a way out.

  I looked sideways at Jackie and forced a smile that was a lie.

  Her head lolled frighteningly with each step, but she kept her feet under her. Each breath she drew was a little weaker, a little thicker. Her chin and shirt were darkly stained. She coughed again, her head snapping forward, and we were stomping through a spatter that glistened black in the stale gleam of the overhead safety lights.

  “A little further,” I said, unable to keep the sob from my words.

  My back felt like a single knotted mass, and my legs burned with each step. I tried to sense what was ahead, desperate for some sign of hope, but panic and exhaustion scattered every aura into meaningless static.

  “One foot … in front … of the other ... atta girl.”

  The pounding stopped to return moments later with an accelerated pace. Could that be a train?

  Jackie lurched to the side, and I couldn’t keep us from bouncing off the side of the passage. There was a sharp crack, and Jackie issued a weak, rasping cry. The axe handle tumbled to the ground behind her. The glass had broken off, and a quick look confirmed that there was now only an icicle lodged next to her shoulder blade. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but before I turned back, I swore it sank deeper.

  “It’s ... not … not that bad,” I lied again.

  We were nearly on top of the source of the sound when the corridor ended; the door hung open.

  “See.” I forced another manic smile as we squeezed through the door.

  I nearly collapsed when we stepped through into what looked like a utility room with a single mesh gate on the far wall. Marcus was the source of the pounding, throwing himself against the gate repeatedly, drenched in sweat, while Uncle Iry sat, terrifyingly still, his skin ashen, on the floor propped up against a wall.