Damus groaned. “Xander’s triggered a ward.”
The chamber filled with what may have been green light, though the ward alloyed it with blue. The awful brilliance enveloped Thurif and his prize but never entered the hall. Xander had covered his ears after pressing the panel. He lowered his hands to find the hum reduced to a barely audible vibration.
Inside the chamber, Thurif and the fetal horror dissolved into blinding lights that shone white through the blue ward. His reedy scream and its watery cry joined in an ear-splitting squeal as the two lights overlapped.
Darkness returned, tempered only by the ward’s hazy blue glow. The chamber was empty.
“There goes your deal,” Nahel growled at Damus.
“Don’t be obtuse,” Damus scoffed. “I was distracting Thurif to help us escape—successfully, I might add. With some help from that strange light.”
Xander’s shock finally subsided enough for him to speak. “I think it was the same.”
Damus and Nahel both rounded on Xander.
“What was the same?” asked the Gen.
“My last memory before running in the desert from the wolves. I had left my father’s wagon. There was a hum that could’ve split stone, and a blinding light.”
“I just heard screams,” said Nahel. “Saw the light, though. Looks like it couldn’t pass the ward.”
Damus looked askance at Xander. “A ward the might’ve killed us. I still don’t recommend touching it.”
Xander stared into the darkened room. The empty cylinder reminded him of a body without a soul. “Death may be better than Thurif’s fate.”
Damus knelt and wedged the tip of his sword into a floor seam. “Save the morbid speculation for later, and help me pull up the floor.”
“Damus!” Nahel shouted from across the hall, interrupting Damus’ study of the chart hanging amid cracked paint on the Guild facility’s wall. “Xander’s up. Let’s get out of here.”
Damus frowned. He’d suggested letting Xander rest—mostly to buy more exploration time. Between the boy’s liberal use of nexism and the physical exertion of helping pry up floor plates to escape the ward, his recovery had been remarkably fast.
A duty that transcended Damus’ oaths of fealty urged him to decipher the diagram. It promised answers to his deepest questions, teasing him through its thick glass case. He was stymied, but only until he recalled the shape of Mithgar’s pre-Cataclysm coastline.
It’s a map.
The chart showed each major land mass spiderwebbed with colored lines. It resembled Thurif’s map but for one perplexing detail—the scattered placement of large black squares.
Damus took a step back and started over. He noticed the black icons’ placement at major convergences of colored lines. The pattern had to be significant.
What landmarks stood at every major crossroads on the First Sphere? He wondered. Why would a Guild facility display a map of their locations?
Damus cursed himself for a fool. His trembling fingers reached out to claim the only known map to every Guild house on Mithgar. Let this lead me to her, he silently beseeched any god that might listen.
“Damus!” Nahel repeated. “Are we leaving this rat trap or not?”
With a sigh Damus rolled up his treasure and slid it into his flute. His boot heels clicked on moldy ceramic tiles as he crossed to the relatively unspoiled infirmary where the others had taken refuge.
“About time,” barked Nahel.
An antiseptic smell lingered under the musk of mold. Damus swept aside the fragments of some broken apparatus with his boot. “Would you rather I rushed the execution of Her Majesty’s orders?”
“My orders are to keep you safe. It’s too dangerous here for just the three of us to rummage around—no matter what Guild swag we might find!”
Xander sat on the padded table where he’d lain, holding his head. “Would you please stop shouting?”
Nahel grimaced. “Sorry. Your head still hurt?”
“I have never used so much power before. And that earsplitting hum—but you didn’t hear it. Both of you must think me mad.”
“Not so,” said Damus. “Nexism once occurred quite often among higher species.”
“So I am a…nexism?”
Damus resisted the urge to laugh. Though Xander was as bright for a human as he was stout for a Nesshin, he was still young by any standard.
“Nexism is the proper term for your ability. A practitioner of such powers is called a nexist. They were all thought exterminated. But then again, the Night Tribe escaped the Purges.”
The three friends exchanged uneasy looks.
At length Xander said, “The light—you think it came from a Night Gen nexist?”
Damus shook his head. “I doubt there’s any nexist powerful enough to do what we saw. A nexus-runner is another matter.”
“What is a nexus-runner?”
“A nexic ship. It stands to reason that a militarized, nexically adept people whose foes rely on prana would develop them.”
Nahel crunched his way toward Damus over broken glass and tile. “Your imagination’s running wild again, but this time it’s making sense. The Isnashi said his people came here in black ships, and something flew over us when we were in the sewer.”
“I heard the hum then, too!” said Xander. His face paled. “And a shadow fell over the caravan just before the light came.”
Damus folded his arms. “Your support is appreciated, Nahel. But at this point all we know is that certain people have vanished; said disappearances concurrent with a bright light preceded by a large shadow and a loud hum only audible to nexists. A nexus-runner is merely the best working theory.”
Xander’s brow furrowed. “If only the Night Gen have nexism, why can I use it?”
Damus shrugged. “They say nexism is the province of gods. But the Cataclysm turned the world on its head, to paraphrase Thurif.”
“Quote him again, and I’ll lay you out,” said Nahel.
Damus turned toward the door. “Come on.”
Xander rose from the table. “Where are we going?”
“As far from here as we can,” said Damus. “Our enemies—whoever they are—know this place. I doubt Thurif and his ugly friend will keep them busy for long.”
“How do we get past them if they’ve got a ship?” asked Nahel.
Damus tapped his flute against his head. “This place is bristling with Guild technology. In that regard, Thurif was quite honest.”
Xander stared at the dais in shock. The familiar three-tiered platform seemed wildly out of place enclosed by cable-wreathed walls in a secret Guild facility.
Nahel nudged him. “You see a ghost?”
“It looks like the market square at Highwater,” Xander said. “Only smaller.”
Damus looked up from the console he’d been laboring over since leading them to the room. The lights on its surface lit his face from below, giving him a spectral look. “That’s because they built the town on a ruined Guild house. Like Highwater, these ruins still have a gate.”
Damus produced a crystal card from a drawer on his right and inserted it into the console. Xander flinched as a luminous green-white sphere flashed into being. For a moment he feared that the awful light had returned, but the gently humming orb confined itself to the dais.
“Gentlemen,” Damus announced, “We are about to embark on the first gate transport since the Cataclysm.”
“Great,” said Nahel. “Where are we transporting to?”
Damus’ hands glided over the console. “The gates mainly bridged sections of a Guild house. But they could reach other facilities; even those on distant spheres. From here we can access Highwater’s gate.”
“What if their gate’s broken?” asked Nahel.
Damus rummaged through the drawer. “We’ll probably be routed to the next available Guild house.” He retrieved another card and slid it into his coat pocket. “Or we’ll end up in the ether, where summoning help is even simpler for you
than it is here.”
Hope welled in Xander’s heart. “The Highwater city guard is many hundred strong, and they are well armed. We can warn them about the Night Gen.”
Damus’ voice was stern. “Armed with bows and spears, even a thousand men couldn’t fight a nexus-runner. But they won’t have to. If we can get to relative safety without the Night Gen knowing, Nahel can arrange travel back to Avalon.”
“How will that help?” asked Xander.
“At the very least, it will get Nahel and me out of harm’s way. And you. Our queen will definitely want to meet a human nexist.”
“The Night Gen may already have my clan! They are here to take my world. You’d have me hide behind a devil queen’s skirts?”
Damus met Xander’s eye. “My devil queen has resources you can’t imagine. Pleading your people’s case to her is the best hope they’ve got.”
Facing the iridescent globe, Xander thought he heard his mother’s voice. He’d been eager to explore the past in the hope of recovering some part of her and his father. Now he understood that the past harbored its own dark designs.
“Did you really lose someone you loved?” he asked Damus.
Beneath his agelessness, Damus seemed suddenly old. “The Purges divided all Gen into the lost and the bereaved.”
Xander thought for a moment. “I will ask your queen to shelter my people as she has yours.”
“She’s got her hands full keeping her enemies out,” said Nahel. “But it’s worth a shot.”
“Nesshin taking refuge in hell?” Damus gave a bitter laugh. “I thought you were paragons of honor.”
“I am no longer a Nesshin.” Xander drew a pair of thin glass tubes on leather cords from his pocket. “But I’m still honorable. All Mithgarders are my people, and I will save them if I can.”
The vials, which Xander had found in the infirmary, each contained a measure of his blood. Nahel took one and glanced at the gate. “There’s a blood test to ride this thing?”
“It’s a Nesshin custom,” said Damus. “It means he owes you his life.”
Xander bowed to his friends. “You and Damus saved me from the pranaphage. Please accept my blood as a token of the debt I can only repay in kind.”
Nahel tied the vial around his neck and squeezed Xander’s arm. “Thanks.”
Damus accepted a vial and mounted the platform. “Anyone who doesn’t fancy a long slog through the desert is welcome to join me.” He vanished into the gleaming sphere.
Nahel climbed the steps. He turned to Xander and winked before striding through the gate.
Xander stood alone at the base of the platform. Wherever the gate took him, there would be no returning to his life as it had been.
You must never lose hope, his mother had said. But she’d never said what to hope for. At last he ascended the dais and plunged into the pulsing light.
12
Crewmen and petty officers made way for the three masters-at-arms escorting Szodrin through the Ashlam’s cramped halls. Wall conduits humming like angry hornets provided the nexus-runner’s only light, but their hazy green glow was enough for a Gen who’d spent his whole life aboard ship.
As he approached the captain’s quarters, Szodrin brushed straight black hair from his brow with ashen fingers and straightened his tan uniform jacket. Best to appear composed.
The guard at Szodrin’s right pressed his palm against a dark crystal panel in the wall. The panel glowed green, and two of his escorts took up positions flanking the door. His face impassive, Szodrin stepped between them ahead of the third, who marched him into the room. The door closed behind them.
The same emerald half-light that filled the hall prevailed inside, but the air tasted somewhat less stale. Ilmin sat behind a plain table of lacquered oak. It was one of the few articles on board that wasn't made of crystal, synthetic polymers, or metal.
The prisoner snapped to attention. “Commander Szodrin reporting.”
The captain—a gaunt figure several centuries Szodrin's elder, set down a stack of crystal tablets and raised yellow eyes that looked all the more striking for his grey face. “You know why you’re here,” Ilmin said.
“The arresting officers never read me the charge, sir.”
“That’s another matter. I’m referring to the reason I sent for you.”
The commander held his peace. Let him play for dominance. My conscience is clear.
“You think you had no other choice,” Ilmin said.
“I owed it to Sarel.”
“Leaving her son to die in the desert seems poor recompense.”
“It’s preferable to what we had planned for him.”
Ilmin slammed his fist on the table, yet his voice fell to a near-whisper. “That boy was a priority asset. Your actions have made him a liability.”
“To who?” Szodrin asked. “Remember when this was a scouting mission?”
The captain steepled his fingers. “Fleet Command thought Mithgar totally purged. Our objectives changed when we found survivors.”
“Do you mean the fanatics claiming to be our allies, the murderous tyrant holding their leash, or the worse things holding his?”
Ilmin ignored the rebuke. “Shaiel’s Blade sent Kerioth to correct your lapse in judgment.”
Knowing that Hazeroth valued the boy enough to divert a ship from Ostrith tempted Szodrin to doubt himself. Nonetheless, the deed was done. He allowed himself a grin. “The great hunter and his hounds couldn’t catch a portly boy?”
The captain leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table. “Matters requiring Prince Hazeroth’s attention have surfaced. He’s delegated this operation to us in the meantime.”
If the boy was worth rerouting a ship for, what greater prize could lure Shaiel’s Blade from his trail? The answer Szodrin suspected sent a chill down his spine. What if he’s found—
“Twelve hours ago the Kerioth detected a sudden spike in nexic activity originating from a small southern valley,” Ilmin went on. “Our analysts identified the location as Teran Nazim.”
Szodrin scowled. He could hide his contempt for the Isnashi, but thinking of the Transessists’ slaughterhouse made his flesh crawl. “If you summoned me to hear horror stories, I’d rather stay in the brig.”
Ilmin’s face never changed. “All further attempts to raise the Kerioth have failed. Her beacon has gone silent, and scans have found nothing.”
“Then for all you know, the boy’s gone too.”
“That is one half of my dilemma,” the captain said. “The other is that you marked him.”
Szodrin felt the deck sinking under his feet. “You would send a prisoner after a wayward boy?”
“Not just a boy,” said Ilmin. “A human nexist. Our benefactor insists that he be converted.”
“Our dubious benefactor’s bloodthirsty envoy,” Szodrin corrected him. “He calls our degenerate kin his hounds and speaks of conversion with the same irony.”
“Nevertheless, we are now missing an asset and a ship. I pledged to send every hand I could spare, and you’ve made yourself expendable.”
“So you reversed course?”
“Over two days ago. We’ll resume course for Cadrys once you debark.”
Szodrin returned to attention. The captain had put paid to further argument.
“Report to the translator pad,” Ilmin ordered. “You’ll be sent to the target’s last known position. Follow the mark. Find the boy—unless the Kerioth already has.”
“Aye, sir,” Szodrin said, silently adding, I must find him first.
One moment Damus Greystone stood before the coruscating light of the gate. An instant later he emerged on its far side, crossing hundreds of miles in one step.
When the sudden sense of dislocation passed, Damus studied his surroundings in the gate’s fluorescing light. He stood atop a three-tiered dais resembling Teran Nazim’s platform but far larger. The gate chamber inflated this sense of grandeur beyond all proportion. It extended around and above
him on all sides—a vast white box that looked like a packing crate for a mountain. The still air smelled artificial.
Definitely a Guild house, Damus thought. But is it Highwater? I’d thought theirs destroyed except for the gate.
The Gen put his questions aside as approaching footsteps announced Nahel’s arrival. The malakh whistled a single shrill note that failed to echo. “I knew these places were big, but I never imagined this!”
“Your imagination is rather limited,” Damus said. “Still, I’m not sure I’d believe it if I weren’t seeing it. Humans must consider humility a vice.”
“Speaking of humans, where’s Xander?”
“To me the choice between the gate and the desert was obvious. To a Nesshin?” Damus shrugged.
“This place seems pretty dead for a market,” said Nahel. “Are we sure this is Highwater?”
Damus started toward the gate console. “I was just about to check.”
Nahel growled.
Damus turned. The malakh was staring at something off to their left—a dark form perhaps a hundred feet away, cast in sharp relief against the white tiles. The Guild hall’s immensity distorted Damus’ perceptions, making the figure’s size difficult to judge; but he thought it was someone of short stature and slight build.
“Hello, there,” Damus called out. The Guild house swallowed his echo. “We’re just passing through. Is this Highwater?”
The silence that followed was starting to make Damus uneasy when something about the distant figure changed. Twin points of light flashed from its face, leaving blue afterimages in his vision.
“Do you have any idea what that is?” Damus whispered to Nahel, whose growl deepened to a bass rumble.
Damus turned back to the silent figure and found himself staring into the blue lights. He briefly wondered, are those eyes? before a terrible weight crushed his thoughts.
“Listen,” a woman’s voice said. “I love this part!”
Wild, ubiquitous laughter followed.
Xander didn’t wake up. Instead he realized that he’d been awake for a while. His plush seat back and cushion had conformed to his shape. He was looking down on a stage where brightly dressed people strutted and spun. Noise erupted all around him—dozens of voices laughing.
Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) Page 9