I doubt these guns are so harmless.
“Xander?” Astlin said in a drowsy voice. She rose to her knees. Her left brow was purpling, and the white of her eye was half red. Spiral retained a viselike grip on her right wrist.
“I am here,” Xander said, trying to hide the panic that clutched his heart. He had one weapon to match the guildsmen’s guns, but no idea how to use it without harming Astlin as well.
Keeping his good eye on Xander, Spiral nodded to his men. “Get her out of here.”
Two other guildsmen grabbed Astlin’s arms. Her face held a condemned prisoner’s despair as they dragged her toward the shattered door.
Suddenly Szodrin stood between Spiral and the other guildsman who wasn’t absconding with Astlin. Neither man reacted to his presence.
“Help me!” Xander said.
Spiral’s scars made his grin seem to wrap around his head. “I’ve got just the help you need.” He stepped back and aimed his gun at Xander’s head.
“Look at the pictures,” said Szodrin.
The pictures? Xander thought despite the terror clouding his mind. His gaze shot to Astlin’s family portraits.
In their crystal frames.
Long use had honed Xander’s skill at manipulating small objects with his gift. Recent experience was improving his ability to exert brute force on a larger scale. For the first time, he attempted both at once.
First one; then another crystal sheet jerked into the air beside Spiral and his lackey. Only the latter foolishly glanced toward the object floating beside him as it exploded with a sharp crack.
Confining both crystals’ fragments to cone-shaped bursts aimed at the two guildsmen required steady focus. Xander’s panicked state let a few shards evade his nexic grasp, and he felt a cold sting as one of them grazed his cheek. A half-inch to the left would have cost him his eye.
Looking into the burst had cost Spiral’s friend far more. Blood ran between the fingers that covered his face as he writhed on the couch, wailing between wet gasps.
A low groan distracted Xander from the grisly spectacle. Pulped flesh interrupted the paths of Spiral’s old scars as they curved toward the right side of his face. Crystal grains glittered within red craters, and a prismatic sliver protruded from what had been his sole working eye. He was down on all fours, feeling about blindly for his weapon.
There was a flurry of motion near the door. The two guildsmen holding Astlin cast puzzled glances around the room. They didn’t yet connect Xander with the sudden carnage since he’d made no visible moves, but their guns were drawn. He abandoned precision when he tore the weapons from their hands, taking one man’s trigger finger in the bargain.
A loud report left Xander’s ears ringing.
Spiral had found his gun.
The blinded guildsman fired again, this time barely missing as Xander dove to the floor. Spiral’s mangled face jerked toward the sound of the impact. Xander found himself staring down the gun’s black barrel. His focus dissolved in a torrent of fear.
Astlin lunged with a feral cry and drove a crystal shard the size of a tent stake into Spiral’s temple. He sucked in a shuddering breath and collapsed.
Shocked out of his stupor, Xander saw the two remaining guildsmen rushing Astlin. His wrath caught them up and hurled them through the plate glass of her fifth floor window. Their screams harmonized with the chimes of breaking glass.
Astlin huddled beside the feet of Spiral’s now motionless partner. She spoke, but the ringing in Xander’s ears hid her words. He crawled across the glass-strewn carpet to hold her.
“Did you see?” Szodrin asked.
Xander only saw Astlin, who shivered in his arms. The ringing had faded to the point that her shuddering sobs were barely audible right next to him, but he’d heard Szodrin perfectly.
“What in hell are you talking about?” Xander asked. But hadn’t he caught sight of something odd in one of the pictures before it shattered?
Szodrin motioned to the shelves where the other portraits stood. “Look again.”
Xander looked at the pictures, and the floor seemed to fall away, stranding him weightless in midair. Images of Astlin’s family no longer graced the crystal frames. Instead they held portraits that weren’t there before—that couldn’t have been. Among the strangers’ faces Xander recognized a girl he’d met one year in Vale and had never seen again. A portrait of Damus stood beside hers.
“Let go of her, boy,” Szodrin said. “Let go and move away.”
Astlin’s head was bowed. Her hair obscured her eyes, but twin flecks of sapphire light glinted behind the blood red strands.
A memory of Xander’s arrival at the Guild house flashed through his mind and was gone. His arms fell to his sides. “I do not understand.”
“Nothing you saw here was real,” Szodrin said as he helped Xander to his feet.
“It was real,” Astlin said in a harsh near-whisper. The ringing in Xander’s ears was gone as if it had never been.
“Once, perhaps,” said Szodrin. “Now it’s playacting.”
Astlin turned one flashing eye on the Night Gen. “What are you?”
“My people are less ignorant of nexism than yours,” Szodrin said. “We learn to defend against the more dangerous powers—including telepathy.”
Amazement and betrayal strove for dominion over Xander’s heart. “You are a nexist?”
“We have that in common.” Astlin raised her eyes to the ceiling. “But there’s so much more.”
Xander followed Astlin’s line of sight. He somehow looked through ceiling and sky to a familiar, ominous vision—a colossal pyramid darker than any shadow.
A blinding light shone in the distance, mostly obscured by the pyramid. Countless silver filaments streamed from the light to cut through the monolith, but Xander saw two of them intersecting at its heart. One cord plunged into a fiery rift and emerged glowing with orange-red heat before joining itself to Astlin. The other kept its pure silver sheen all the way from its origin in the light to its endpoint in Xander’s soul.
“You have what I lost,” Astlin said.
“What do you mean?”
“She consumes minds,” said Szodrin.
Astlin stood. She clasped her hands as if pleading. “I wanted to stop, but the others were wrong.”
“Others?” repeated Xander.
Her voice wavered. “You don’t know what it’s like—a wound in your soul bleeding fire. I thought they’d close the wound, but it burned them up.”
Xander gazed at Astlin. She instilled deeper fear than the pranaphage and inspired wonder beyond all the Guild’s secrets. “You believe I can heal your wound?”
Her small hands timidly sought his. “I want to have a family again. Just like you. Please stay.”
Szodrin imposed himself between them. “Don’t listen!”
Fascination and pity muted the warning better than gunfire. Xander moved to face Astlin again. “What happened to you?”
A blast of light and heat on his back made him whirl around. Instead of Astlin’s living room, he stood at the threshold of a soot-caked chamber. The stifling air tasted of sulfur and ash. Robed men congregated near the center, their hoods framing faces streaked with grime.
Xander frantically scanned the room. The dim light revealed oddly shaped forger’s tools hanging from the walls above stacks of metal ingots that gleamed with a shaded amber glow. His father had used the same substance often.
Brass.
A red-robed figure entered, seeming to walk through him. The assembly parted for the newcomer, granting Xander a view of the hellish device in their midst—a terrible fusion of torture rack and casting mold. A monstrous furnace loomed behind it.
Astlin was bound to the rack.
Intimate fear joined Xander’s wrath, wrenching a cry of protest from his throat. No one heeded him.
The newcomer’s square glasses reflected the forge’s glow as he studied the girl. If he took pleasure in the sight, his wiry beard
hid his smile. He held a large red gem before her eyes. Menace brooded in its heart.
Astlin’s face was deathly pale. She had the desolate look of one for whom torture no longer brings fear; only weariness. Her haunted eyes stared into the gem’s facets.
Xander felt a gluttonous will tearing at Astlin’s soul. Her exhausted spirit fought back, but the red-robed man produced a crystal rod. An impervious wall partitioned her soul, ending the struggle.
It uses nexism, Xander realized.
The ruby doubled its assault, and the partitioned segment ripped free. The marring of Astlin’s soul, and the way the jewel seemed to groan with satisfaction, made Xander scream at a volume he hadn’t thought possible. The echoes of his frenzied cries overlapped as he watched Astlin’s irises burst into azure flame. Her chest blazed as if fire were consuming her heart.
Two men clad from head to toe in patchwork leathers slid a thick metal cover over the mold and bolted it into place so that only the girl’s head remained exposed—lifeless but for the fires burning in her eyes.
The furnace opened. Infernal heat filled the chamber, parching Xander’s mouth. A crucible emerged, shedding orange-red light from its depths. The cauldron tipped forward, and liquid metal poured into the mold.
Astlin’s fiery eyes widened; her scream of agony died as her lungs disintegrated. Hideous sizzling sounds and the choking scent of charred flesh grew stronger as molten brass devoured skin, fat, muscle, and bone.
The room pitched violently. Xander expected his head to strike warm stone. Instead he felt only cold. His eyes opened on pitted concrete walls, and he smelled dead ashes. A window framed the leaden predawn sky.
Yet blue stars watched him, their centers eclipsed by black moons.
Astlin sat at the base of a nearby column, holding her knees to her chest. Pained longing marred her face. She was clad from neck to toe in a pastiche of dark tanned hides fastened with a jumble of rivets, rings, and buckles.
Xander stood and moved toward her, fighting to hold back his tears. “Why?”
“I had something they wanted,” she whispered.
“Come away, boy.”
Szodrin rose from where he’d crouched against the wall to Xander’s right. Someone lay beside him. A red-stained cloth covered the supine figure’s mouth.
Damus?
Astlin reached for Xander. “Please,” she said like a lost child, “don’t leave me alone.”
“She can twist your mind,” said Szodrin. “Don’t believe her.”
Xander wheeled on him. “If you would help me, then help her.”
“That one is past saving. Her own power has consumed her.”
“Not just me,” Astlin said. Leather creaked and steel chimed as she stood. The reptilian need in her eyes made Xander cringe.
“You’d be mindless; drooling on the floor,” she told Szodrin, “but I gave you back.”
The Night Gen fixed horrified eyes on Xander. “We need to go!”
“I could take you again,” Astlin said. “The Fire’s always hungry. It burns the souls out; then I feed it the bodies.”
Szodrin clutched Xander’s arm. The boy’s vision dissolved in a horribly familiar whiteout, but the roar of a blast furnace merged with a woman’s scream scattered the light and drove them both to the floor.
Xander heard metal ringing and saw Astlin approach, her face an emotionless mask lit with blue flame. She planted a boot in Szodrin’s armpit. Bones cracked and a tremor rippled through the room as she pinned him against the wall. Szodrin struggled, but Astlin pressed harder. Fresh blood darkened his coat.
“Enough!” Xander shouted over Szodrin’s screams.
Astlin seemed not to hear. Her victim’s cries dwindled to tortured groans.
Damus leapt to his feet. Astlin turned as he lunged, and his sword pierced her forehead. The wound wept amber liquid that sizzled against the blade and left a brazen trail down her face.
Astlin grabbed Damus’ wrist, evoking a chorus of sickly popping sounds. His other hand pried at hers, to no avail. His sword clattered to the floor, its tip melted. The wound it had inflicted closed.
A hot breeze bearing the scent of burning roses penetrated Xander’s horror. Blisters rose on Damus’ hands. The Light Gen fell to his knees, but Astlin held on.
Xander stood. “We share part of a soul. You would not kill my friends.”
Astlin released Damus. Her face softened, and the blue fires cooled.
“You shared your life with me,” Xander said, “but I have hid the truth about mine—about my mother.”
“She died,” said Astlin.
Xander’s voice hitched. “She tried to teach me, but I lost control. It was my fault!”
“You?” Szodrin’s eyes held deeper pain than Astlin had inflicted.
Xander hid his face, but gloved hands gently lowered his. Astlin’s expression held no judgment; only grief.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she said.
“I know.”
Astlin cupped Xander’s chin. Her leather-sheathed brass hand tightened like a vise. Her voice quivered. “I just need part of your soul.”
Xander seized the weight bearing down on his heart and hurled all its awful force at Astlin. Concrete pillars down the length of the room crumbled to powder in a series of thundering bursts. He willed her away with all his might. And saw, when his strength was spent, that she had taken a single backward step.
Xander didn’t know how long he and Astlin stared at each other—he in shocked dismay; she in bewildered sorrow. He felt heat pricking his skin; saw the air start to shimmer. But he lacked the will to move.
Astlin threw back her head. The sound that escaped her mouth could not be called a scream. It began like the grinding of half-molten plates deep beneath the world. It grew in hungry rage, and Xander knew.
Ostrith heard this voice when the Fire consumed it.
A pillar of flame engulfed Astlin—its ground-shaking roar an extension of hers. Fire flowed across the ceiling like a ravenous living thing. It would have engulfed Xander, had Damus’ tackle not sent both of them sprawling to the floor.
Each searing breath tortured Xander’s lungs as he struggled to his feet. Damus lay still beside him, bathed in orange light. Their clothing began to smolder in the unbearable heat.
Xander wasted no time thinking. He turned the last vestige of his will on the floor at the fire pillar’s base. Were the concrete not already glowing hot, he doubted his desperate push would have budged it. But the floor sagged, cracked, and crumbled. In the last moment, Astlin seemed to regain herself. Fear and confusion passed over her face, and she vanished through the flame-ringed pit.
Choking black smoke hid everything but the burning crater, which rapidly expanded as the floor collapsed.
What have I done? Xander thought. But what did it matter? He couldn’t see the way out, and lacked the strength to take it besides. Resignation washed over him.
Szodrin lurched through the shroud of smoke. He grasped Xander and Damus’ arms, and the inferno dissolved into white radiance.
18
White light dimmed to grey. Burning walls instantly gave way to a vast space bounded by towering shapes. Gravel crunched under Xander’s feet, and hot wind beat his back. The stench of burning rot remained; diluted by distance.
A loud pop and the sting of pebbles grazing his scalp shocked Xander’s mind into focus. He stood upon a layer of debris that filled a wide city street. The overcast daylight gave him his first real look at Ostrith. Salorien had seemed a strange and dismal place, but Astlin’s dream hadn’t prepared him for the desolate grandeur of the Tower Graves.
Someone groaned. Xander turned and saw a pillar of smoke defiling the leaden sky. He spied the bones of a ruined tower beneath—its heart as red as blazing coals.
I should be glad, Xander thought as flames devoured that prison of sorrow and madness. He’d escaped by abandoning mercy. Now he wondered if, ultimately, such a thing existed.
Debr
is clattered at Xander’s feet. He saw blood on the face of a rubble pile and traced the red streak to where Szodrin lay writhing at the mound’s base.
How was he wounded?
Xander knelt beside him. “You will only make it worse. Lie still.”
To his credit, Szodrin stopped thrashing, but his body shook as Xander turned him onto his side. The Gen’s left shoulder blade was a mass of pulped flesh embedded with stone fragments. Some were intertwined with muscle fibers like beads in a braided cord.
Szodrin feebly stretched out his arm. “The Light Gen,” he gasped between rapid breaths.
Xander’s eyes followed Szodrin’s gesture to Damus, who lay in the rubble with rags binding his face and blisters on his hands. The rise and fall of his chest eased Xander’s fear.
“He is alive,” Xander said. “So am I, thanks to you. What happened to your back?”
Szodrin winced as he sat upright. “I misjudged the arrival point; overlapped with the rubble.”
Xander picked what pieces of rock he could from Szodrin’s back and bandaged the wound with strips of the Gen’s ruined jacket. “Why did you help me?”
“I knew your mother,” said Szodrin.
“My mother was human.”
“And you’re still alive, while I can do nothing for her but mourn.”
A long moment passed before Xander spoke again. “What happened to my clan?”
“My people took them.”
Szodrin’s admission eased the brooding uncertainty that had haunted Xander since he’d woken in the desert alone. But new questions arose with fresh urgency.
“Where are they?”
“We delivered them to Shaiel’s Blade.”
Xander had to swallow a lump in his throat before he could speak. “Why?”
“I’d like to say it was vengeance for man’s crimes against the Gen,” said Szodrin, “but that’s only a pretext for Hazeroth’s bloodlust.”
“If you want vengeance,” Xander said, “leave me and go back to your own kind.”
Pain sharpened Szodrin’s voice. “I betrayed my kind for your sake.”
Stung by the rebuke, Xander stared at the burning tower. “You are not the only traitor.”
Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) Page 14