Night Quest

by Susan Krinard

  Garret pressed his palms to his temples and sank to his knees. “How do I stop it?”

  “I can show you how to protect yourself,” she said, kneeling beside him. “But if I do it now, you may lose all contact with Timon.”

  Gritting his teeth, Garret shook his head. “Then I...don’t want it to stop.” Tears glittered in his eyes. “God, Timon.”

  “Can you feel where he is?” she asked gently.

  “No. There’s too much—” He broke off, and she was engulfed by his grief.

  Roxana was there, his wife, with her sparkling eyes and undeniable beauty. Loss. Rage and the desire for revenge against someone he had never found. Devastating loneliness.

  “I am with you,” she said. “You are not alone.” She rested her forehead against his. “Try to focus. There is a point where the feelings are strongest. We must find that focal point, because the children will be there.”

  “I’ll find it,” he said, struggling to his feet. He offered Artemis his hand and pulled her up. She knew that his pain wasn’t gone, but there was that familiar determination in his eyes that rejected all obstacles. His fingers traced her face, as if he were committing it to memory. “We’ll do this, Artemis.”

  A kernel of absurd joy burst in her chest. They were in accord again, fully aware of each other and of themselves. Garret squeezed her hand, pressed his lips to her fingers and then just as quickly let her go, moving to the door at the opposite side of the room.

  “Pericles,” he said, his voice calm and level, “don’t reveal that you’re free of Kronos’s influence. Allow whoever we meet to believe that you’re our prisoner.”

  He looked at him mournfully but nodded. Garret tested the door. It was neither guarded nor locked. With Garret leading the way and Pericles between him and Artemis, they passed into a similar room and then entered a narrow corridor, dividing their attention between watching for guards and following their inner senses.

  Remarkably, they met no one at all, not even the servants Artemis imagined a Bloodlord like the Master would require. There were many rooms and halls, some furnished, but none felt as if they had ever been occupied. The emotional core of the building still lay ahead of them.

  So did the danger.

  They had just entered what appeared to be a small meeting or dining area when Garret lifted his head. Artemis knew at the same instant what he was sensing.

  “Timon,” Garret said. He whirled around and ran for a door on the other side of the room. Artemis and Pericles hurried to catch up, and they plunged into another corridor that ended abruptly at a flight of steep, descending stairs. Garret bounded down the steps, only pausing at the bottom to make sure that the others had negotiated the stairs successfully.

  But now they were faced with a new dilemma. Three more corridors—little more than tunnels—branched out from the small room at the foot of the stairs, each smelling of damp, cold earth and stone.

  “Underground,” Garret said. “They’re keeping the children under the castle.”

  Artemis took a deep breath. “Join with me, Garret,” she said. “We can find them.”

  He took her hand again. Emotions exploded like fireworks and then receded to a distant hum. Auras mingled without resistance or discomfort, her abilities and his—the power she had given him—blending as one in full awareness.

  Then they were off again, Garret squeezing into a space barely large enough for an adult, human or Opir. It was only the entrance to a maze of bewildering turns and reverses, stairs and dead ends, clearly built to hinder attempts at rescue or escape.

  But the builders had not anticipated an invasion of empaths. Garret found the correct path, and they finally emerged into a long, narrow room furnished with a single ornate chair near the center.

  To Artemis, it felt as if the entire room had been emptied of air. She sensed the crushing weight of mountain and castle above as if it might collapse in on them at any moment.

  Garret swore. “They’re here,” he said. “Timon—”

  “Yes,” Kronos said, coming around a corner with eight Free-and half-blood soldiers at his heels. “They are all here, and safe. The Master...” He glanced at Pericles, and a flicker of doubt crossed his face. “The Master is temporarily disabled.”

  “By you?” Garret demanded.

  “With great difficulty, yes. I cannot say how long his condition will last.”

  “The Master wouldn’t listen to your proposals?” Artemis asked.

  “He would not hear me at all. He is too far lost in his dreams of power.” He stared into Artemis’s eyes. “I must have your help now. We can stop him before he goes any further.”

  Garret laughed. “Are you so certain you want to stop the Master, Kronos? Why didn’t you kill him?”

  “I am not a murderer.”

  “But if he’s helpless, Artemis and I—”

  Artemis silenced him with a gesture. An idea was developing in her mind, too terrible to acknowledge.

  “Who are these soldiers?” she asked.

  “I have brought them around to my way of thinking.” Kronos looked at Pericles again. “Why is he with you?”

  “He helped us find this place.”

  “Do not trust anything he says,” Kronos said.

  “Because he is no longer under your control?”

  “His loyalties are suspect.”

  So are yours, Artemis thought.

  Garret moved slightly so that Pericles was behind him. “Where are the Master’s soldiers?” he asked.

  “Most have left to deal with problems in the camp.”

  “What does the Master intend to do with the Freebloods?” she asked.

  “Invasion of the Citadels with a Freeblood army, to ensure that Freebloods are granted the rights of full Opiri.”

  “Then why have so many of them rebelled?” Garret asked.

  “The Master was away too long. There are too many Freebloods in camp to dominate easily, and his personal charisma was holding them together. They began to doubt, to fear.”

  “Then he’s not going to have much luck managing them now,” Garret said.

  “Do not underestimate him, vassal,” Kronos said. “You do so at your peril.”

  “But you still won’t kill him.”

  Artemis trembled with the effort to keep her feelings hidden. All she sensed from Kronos was perfect control and a distant feeling of triumph.

  “I am not a barbarian,” he snapped. “But we can stop any possibility of his succeeding in his plans. If we work togeth—”

  “Release the children,” Garret said, “and maybe we’ll help you.”

  “I need none of your help,” Kronos said, with a twitch of his upper lip.

  “Bring them out,” Artemis said, “so we’ll know they’re all right.”

  “They’re far safer where they are.”

  “You’re lying,” Garret said, trying to get past Artemis. “They’re terrified. You’ve done nothing to help them.”

  Artemis touched his arm, projecting sympathy and patience. “What do you intend to do when the Master is no longer a threat?” she asked Kronos.

  “Help the remaining Freebloods, of course. Organize them properly, and teach them as we always planned.”

  Artemis ached with wanting to believe him. But he could not easily have overcome a Bloodlord who had gathered so many Freebloods in a single camp.

  “Garret has come all this way to save his son,” she said.

  “The children will only get in the way,” Kronos said, his voice soothing and persuasive. “When the Master recovers, he could use them against us.”

  “I’ll help you,” Artemis said. “Show me what you want me to do.”

  “Artemis!” Garret said, reaching out to hold her back.

&nbs
p; Without words, she tried to make him see what she planned to attempt. She had to make Kronos believe she trusted him, get him to let down his emotional guard.

  Because if Kronos wanted so badly to join minds with her, there must be a way to use her empathy to stop him.

  “Stay here, Garret,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Pericles, remain with Garret.”

  “Like hell I will,” Garret said.

  “Do not make me command you.”

  “No,” Pericles said, pushing his way past Garret. “Don’t believe anything Kronos says, Artemis. He’ll do to you what he did to me.”

  “What I did to you?” Kronos said with a convincing display of surprise. “I no longer guide you. You serve the Master.”

  “Artemis freed him from your empathic influence,” Garret said, taking a step toward Kronos.

  “He didn’t always try to control me that way,” Pericles said. “I knew him long before he and I met in Delos.” He looked from Artemis to Garret. “I lied when I said I lived in Oceanus.”

  “Be silent,” Kronos growled.

  “I was in the south of old California, near the Citadel of Angelus, when he came to the Freeblood exiles there with stories of a new life for us.”

  “When?” Artemis asked, unthinkingly reaching for the support of Garret’s mind.

  “About six and a half years ago,” Pericles said.

  Not long after Kronos’s supposed “death” in Oceanus, Artemis thought, and around the same time as her exile. She felt Garret inside her mind, suppressing his rage at Kronos in order to help her. She grasped the mental lifeline he offered and shut out everything but Pericles’s voice.

  “Kronos said we could live as well as the lords in the Citadels,” Pericles continued. “There were some mixed human-Opir colonies then, small and not very well protected. He said we should...” Pericles began to speak in a rush, as if fearing he would be cut off. “He said it wouldn’t be wrong to take humans from the colonies, because we would only need them until we created a new society where all Opiri would be equal. Then we wouldn’t keep running out of blood, and humans could have better lives in the Citadels.” His eyes begged Artemis for understanding. “He made us believe him. We would raid the colonies and keep the humans for a while, but many of them couldn’t survive in the wild. Then Angelus’s agents drove us away, and we went north. We found more mixed colonies near Erebus and the San Francisco Enclave. Kronos tried to persuade the Opiri in the colonies to join us. Sometimes we fought them. Opiri and humans died.”

  “His memory is twisted,” Kronos said. “The Master has warped his mind and would turn you against me.”

  “There was one colony where Kronos got to some of the Freebloods who were living peacefully with humans,” Pericles went on, stumbling over his words. “They opened the gates to us. I tried to stay out of the way, but the others killed at least one high-ranked Opir before we got out.” Pericles’s eyes swam with misery. “After that, Kronos...couldn’t control all the Freebloods who followed him. He decided to leave California, and a few of us went with him. He said he had to find a former vassal in Oceanus, and he sent us to find her. We found out she’d been exiled from the Citadel.”

  “Me,” Artemis murmured. Garret moved up behind her, lending her his warmth as well as his emotional support.

  “We split up and started searching the wilderness. But the group I was in broke up, and I...” He looked away. “I was too weak on my own. Chares took me in, and then they took Beth. I found out about other packs stealing children, carrying them north. And just before Chares decided to kill me, I heard a rumor about an exile in southern Washington who sounded a lot like Kronos. But after you saved me and I followed you to Chares’s pack, I never thought I’d see Kronos again.”

  “I was looking for you when the Delosians captured me,” Kronos said to Artemis, his voice beginning to rise. “These other things are fantasies, fruit from a poisoned tree.”

  “But it all makes sense,” Garret said to Artemis. “He couldn’t control the Freebloods in the south. He knew what you were capable of and believed he needed your help the next time he had to assert his dominance.”

  “Over the Master’s followers,” Artemis said. She stared at Kronos. “You allied yourself with him, always intending to take over when you found the means. But what were you doing for him, Kronos?”

  “Nothing,” Garret said, his aura sparking to brilliant life. “He isn’t one of the Master’s allies. He is the Master.”

  Chapter 24

  Kronos sighed and sank into the throne-like chair. “Your vassal surprises me,” he said to Artemis, “though it seems I underestimated him and overestimated you. All the time we spent together on the way here, all the many hints I gave you, and you never guessed.”

  “She believed in you,” Garret said, somehow managing to put himself between her and Kronos again. “How much of that was your mind control?”

  “I saw it not long ago,” Artemis whispered, laying her hand on Garret’s rigid back to keep from falling, “but I couldn’t quite make myself believe. It seems so obvious now.” She moved to stand beside Garret and met Kronos’s gaze. “You sent me into the camp to look for traitors to the Master.”

  “And you found them for me,” Kronos said, “though that was a small thing. I would far rather that you had continued to believe that I needed your help to dominate the Master and stop his ‘evil’ plans.”

  “Then you do admit to your own evil,” Artemis said.

  “Good and evil are limited human concepts,” Kronos said.

  “Why did you send Freebloods to steal half-blood children?” Garret asked, his voice very low.

  “I assure you that they are safe,” Kronos said.

  “That isn’t good enough.”

  “All will become clear in the future.”

  “But your army is defecting now. If you promised these Freebloods the same things you offered the ones in the south, it obviously wasn’t enough to hold them when the ‘Master’ vanished.”

  “Yes,” Kronos said. “I never should have left to find you, Artemis. But even that was not an irredeemable error on my part.”

  Garret’s aura, no longer red like his hair but the color of old blood, seethed with dangerous anger. “You made a fatal error in thinking you could ever get Artemis to help you.”

  For the first time, Kronos let his anger show. “Surely you have more questions, Artemis, before we begin to quarrel in earnest,” he said with biting sarcasm.

  “Why did you change?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice level. “Why war and conquest instead of the separate, independent and peaceful existence you always wanted for our people in Oceanus?”

  “After my supposed death,” Kronos said, “I realized that what I had wanted would never be enough. There had to be redress for those who suffered at the hands of arrogant Bloodlords.”

  “So you plan to set your Freeblood hounds on the elite, steal their serfs and take over?” Garret said.

  “A continuation of the old ways,” Artemis said, “only with a new set of Bloodlords to replace the entrenched rulers. Do you truly think you can overthrow the Citadels with a few thousand troops?”

  “It would not be difficult to rouse the disaffected Freebloods within the Citadels,” Kronos said. “It would only be a matter of recruiting them. A handful of spies would be enough. And I have not entirely discarded the philosophy you and I developed in Oceanus. I intended to offer the aristocracy a chance to surrender. Their capitulation to my demands would give us the opportunity to rebuild our society along more equitable lines.”

  “This isn’t about your concern for Freebloods,” Garret said. “There’s no idealism in you, Kronos.”

  “Vengeance,” Artemis asked. “Your answer to the Bloodlords and Bloodmasters who tried to kill you for turnin
g against your own rank and challenging the status quo. You’ve become just like them.”

  “If I wanted revenge, I could have taken it long ago. There can be no new beginning without tearing the current system down to its foundation.”

  “And you think that after unleashing an army of Freebloods to murder at will, you’ll be able to control them afterward?”

  “That is why I wanted your help, Artemis,” Kronos said. “Why you will help me, because you know that without the proper guidance Freebloods are as savage as humans, and just as destructive.”

  Artemis’s rib cage seemed to press in on her heart. “You will not stop with the Citadels. The violence will spread to the human settlements and Enclaves. Human troops were caught outside your camp. The abductions have already set the spark to the tinder.”

  Garret’s strong hand found hers. “She isn’t yours anymore, Kronos,” he said. “She wouldn’t help you even to save me or my son, so you can put that sick thought out of your mind.”

  “Such devotion,” Kronos said, shaking his head. “But how strong is the edifice of your affection, Mr. Fox? You have every reason to hate her kind. Why did you let her turn you into one of us?”

  “I knew I’d have a better chance of surviving to kill you,” Garret said. “Where are the children?”

  Kronos made a casual gesture, and one of his guards slipped away. Artemis turned to look for Pericles, but he had vanished.

  “I believe you wanted to know what I planned for my little half-bloods,” Kronos said to Garret.

  Garret’s aura burned so intensely that Artemis feared it might do him some physical damage. “It won’t matter once you’re dead,” he said. He lunged toward Kronos but didn’t get more than two steps before Kronos attacked him with such a focused blast of contempt that Garret was utterly unprepared to defend himself against it. Artemis was too slow to help him. He fell to his knees with a sharp exhalation, as if Kronos had kicked him in the belly.

  But there was a sudden, vital flush of fierce exhilaration in the emotions Artemis shared with him, and she realized what he had done. Garret hadn’t run at Kronos out of a reckless loss of restraint. He’d meant to give her a chance to assess Kronos while he was distracted. And he hadn’t given her warning, knowing that Kronos might sense his intentions.