Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2)

by Brian Niemeier

  “I imagine it was easy for him,” Damus said as he walked away. “Someone had put a knife there.”

  The door hissed again, shutting out the light and renewing Astlin’s torment.

  Xander’s strained voice broke the silence. “All my friends die or betray me. Except you.”

  “I did betray you,” Astlin said. “I stole your thoughts.”

  “You showed me just as much of yourself.”

  “What I showed you is gone. Why don’t you hate what I am now?”

  “Because you need me.”

  Astlin pondered his words and realized they were true. “I’m afraid, Xander. I’m so afraid.”

  “Your fear is not for yourself,” Xander said, drawing her into his arms. “I know your heart, Serieigna.”

  Astlin drew the Nesshin word’s meaning from Xander’s mind as he spoke it.

  Beautiful Flame.

  “There’s nothing beautiful about it,” she said.

  “That is not your judgment to make.”

  Gently, tentatively, Astlin returned Xander’s embrace and found firm strength beneath his outer softness. He’d been strong for her sake. He still was, and always would be.

  For the first time since her old life had ended in fire, Astlin knew peace.

  21

  Damus strode through the Kerioth’s permanent emerald dusk, whistling a jaunty tune. He averted his eyes as he passed the bridge. Thurif had sequestered the nexus-runner’s last crew members there. He’d displayed what he called his “galley slaves” during Damus’ brief tour of the ship, and the Light Gen had no desire to think about—much less see—the products of his host’s flesh-shaping gift.

  What kind of fiend have I fallen in with? Damus wondered. But he touched his face and knew why—if not what—he served.

  Damus found Thurif seated behind a metal desk in the former captain’s spacious quarters. His hood with its marred golden trim was pulled low, exposing only his anemic smile and jutting chin. A faint smell like an electrical fire lingered about him.

  “From the look of you, I presume that Master Sykes has rejected my friendship.”

  Damus nodded. “He also suggested that you kill yourself.”

  A sigh escaped Thurif’s grin. “I don’t blame him. I’ve done little to earn his trust—or yours.”

  Absently rubbing his hands raised the phantom of Damus’ vanished burns. “I trust you more than that walking furnace.”

  “Still, you have your doubts.”

  Damus felt a stab of guilt. “Me?” he dissembled. “I consider my grievances with you quite redressed.”

  “Our young Nesshin is right in one respect,” Thurif said. “I betrayed you all. But I am not the man I was. Once I shared the Guild’s narrow view. Now my eyes are open.”

  Dread failed to check Damus’ curiosity. “What do you see?”

  Thurif chuckled. “I see a world waiting to learn how the dice will land. Such moments are rife with possibility. Your queen would say the same.”

  Damus thought for a moment. “Some possibilities must interest you more than others.”

  “The young lady interned below offers one,” Thurif said. “My other half furnished basic concepts for creating her kind. This vessel’s crew supplied more concrete details.”

  “Such as?”

  “You already know that a secret cult tried to revive a god.”

  “Thera,” Damus said. “The Souldancer.”

  “The facts are unclear, but it seems they succeeded—at least in part. Fragments of Thera were taken from nine living souls. The victims survived, but their silver cords tore the ether and assumed properties of other Strata.”

  “That’s grotesquely fascinating, but I fail to see the advantage in it.”

  Thurif laced his pale fingers. “Does all power have equal potential for good or evil?”

  “I suppose so,” Damus said at length.

  “These lesser souldancers are living gates to other worlds. One or more of them likely caused the Cataclysm. Imagine the benefits of such power.”

  Damus’ blood froze. “I’ll wager that the Arcana Divines did.”

  Thurif rose and rounded the desk. “The missteps of pioneers. Standing on their shoulders affords us a clearer view.”

  “So our souldancer is a gate to cataclysmic power?”

  “Perhaps,” Thurif said, “but she will surely interest those who hold the key.”

  Damus took a moment to digest Thurif’s insights into the souldancers. The implications turned his stomach.

  “Do they all suffer like the Kethan girl?”

  Thurif’s expression sobered. “I know whom you long and dread to find. If she has suffered similar hurts, I will devote all my power to mending them.”

  He laid a pale hand on Damus’ shoulder. The Gen couldn’t help flinching.

  Sulaiman clambered over the last of the scree that now covered the ridge’s western face. Reaching the summit marked a milestone in his days-long pursuit.

  Not days. Since time immemorial have I chased Hazeroth of Gheninom.

  He almost admired the artistry with which Despenser had visited Hazeroth’s curse—the just wage of a cutthroat’s folly—upon him. But justice was Sulaiman’s art. Nakvin had given the baal his due. Sulaiman would give the prince his.

  Sulaiman had searched so long that he’d questioned spurning his hidden companion’s aid—until he saw the landslide from afar and thanked his absent god that he hadn’t gained the mountains’ slopes.

  Now he stood atop a broad peak and saw what had rent the sky behind the crumbling hills. As if adding insult to the injuries dealt by the Cataclysm, Ostrith’s Guild house had torn itself asunder. Obsidian shards—some exceeding the acreage of modest farms—lorded over the base debris. Enormous black fragments jutted from towers that they’d almost cut in twain. Below him, chunks of the Guild hall’s shell littered the ridge’s eastern slope.

  The strangest sign of the Guild hall’s passing lay at the dead city’s heart. The stones of Steersmen’s Square had fused into a plane of grey glass. Myriad cubic depressions of varying sizes and depths sank into the gleaming surface; most overlapping several others, as if mad giants had carved a series of aimless stairways.

  Fickle winds brought the smell of lightning. Indeed, varicolored bolts joined a frenzied dance in the sheets of ash that were still raining upon the ruins. The ash fall parted around cube-shaped regions that hung in midair—some empty; some holding views of alien skies.

  This disaster happened recently.

  Sulaiman knew only what was needful of the Guild’s ways, and this knowledge did not include likely causes of the Guild hall’s collapse. His ignorance brought him no comfort.

  A steady hum suffused the air. The land below had the quality of a bell whose ringing persists long after it’s struck. Neither human voices, nor calls of birds, nor cries of beasts came to Sulaiman’s ear.

  Even the few worms that fed on this city’s corpse lie dead.

  Sulaiman set his face to the north. His stolen eyes saw to the curve of the horizon, where a branching form overshadowed high mountains. The sight rivaled Ostrith’s remains for the most startling he’d seen since returning to Mithgar.

  In that far distance, a black speck glinted.

  Thurif’s Master had taught him many secrets. His experience at Teran Nazim had imparted many more. Yet his first sight of the Irminsul rekindled his sense of wonder.

  From the Kerioth’s Wheel, only the topmost branches were visible—a tangle of bare limbs tearing through the clouds to scrape the upper atmosphere.

  Thurif shifted his awareness back to the nexus-runner’s white flattened sphere of a bridge. “That’s a marvel, eh?”

  He excused the crew’s silence. They’d lost the power of speech when he’d merged their flesh with the machinery of their stations.

  Thurif willed the Kerioth to descend. Not so different from an ether-runner, he mused.

  Ahead loomed a sight visible on no other sphere.
The full majesty of a tree taller than mountains rose up against an azure sky. The Dawn Tribe had bestowed the august name of Irminsul upon this living wonder. They revered it as a visible sign of Faerda’s presence. The Isnashi hated it for the same reason. To Thurif, the monstrous tree birthed from fire at the old world’s end epitomized the blind miracle of the Cataclysm.

  The world is full of miracles, he thought as he spied the gleam of grey metal through leaves the size of Nesshin tents. The comparison made Thurif wonder how long his prisoner would survive confinement with his cargo.

  The nexus-runner glided downward at a gentle angle, following the only sign of artificiality. The vague grey mass soon took on a definite shape; its sleek contours resembling an elongated clamshell. Its vast hull dwarfed the Kerioth, but the Irminsul reduced the larger vessel to a kite stuck in a redwood. A network of scaffolds clung to the man o’ war like creeping vines, but Thurif could still read the name emblazoned on its bow.

  Serapis.

  Thurif was intrigued to see a second, smaller ship moored beside the dry-docked hulk. Its blocky shape announced it as an old Guild corvette.

  And now to cast the die. Thurif brought the Kerioth in to hover just beyond the dock and waited.

  Minutes passed. Thurif studied the arboreal port. A colossal branch extended from the distant trunk and forked near the end of its span. The horseshoe-shaped fork was carved into a series of steps that sloped down to the inner edge; forming an overhang below which inverted tiers receded. Dark openings riddled the terrace like giant worms burrows.

  A thought suddenly impressed itself on Thurif’s mind. Nexus-runner Kerioth: respond.

  This is the Kerioth, Thurif projected back.

  You are overdue.

  We encountered unforeseen difficulties.

  You are not a designated pilot. Where is the captain?

  Captain Ruthven went ashore on private business. He failed to return.

  The other mind disengaged. It returned a moment later. Identify yourself.

  Rather than limiting himself to a name, Thurif took advantage of the ship’s telepathic communications system to convey a purer self-concept. The party with whom he conversed managed to keep his own anonymity, but his desire to destroy the Kerioth with all hands bled through for just an instant.

  Please send word of my intentions to Prince Hazeroth before committing actions you may regret, Thurif warned.

  After a long moment, he received the wordless order to land.

  22

  Tefler couldn’t see the water’s end. Prismatic waves lapped against the stone causeway where he stood. A breeze carrying the scent of a thunderstorm alerted him to the absence of his cloak. Against the rubrics of Shaiel’s priesthood he wore only a shirt and trousers, both white.

  Makes sense, Tefler thought. I’m not here as Shaiel’s priest.

  A few hundred feet to his left, the narrow span ended at the base of a lonely tower. Built from the same pale blocks, the tower seemed an extension of the causeway that bridged sea and sky. A large cutout opened in each wall near the top, leaving the flat peak supported by four square pillars.

  I know you’re up there. What are you waiting for?

  The priest looked skyward to judge the hour. The cloudy vault above glowed with the hues of a constant sunrise. Or sunset. He couldn’t tell which. Peering into the water, he saw himself reflected against the rosy sky. The wind tousled the light brown hair above his boyish face, but he flinched upon meeting his own eyes, in whose irises a shifting spectrum of all colors and no colors swam.

  Suddenly, someone else stared back from the water’s glassy surface. It was a stocky young man with a shaved, sun-darkened head. The kid was searching—in the desert, on the sea, underground—for something; but neither he nor Tefler knew what.

  Tefler was still puzzling over the odd images when an even stranger sight appeared. A girl with blood red hair, cream-colored skin, and eyes like blue stars wandered streets overrun with ghosts. That so sad a face held such raging eyes haunted him well after the vision faded.

  The sunset became a star-flecked night, afflicting Tefler with a sense of missing time until he saw the fiery vault of cloud still hanging overhead. Below, the stars seemed like embers drifting through black smoke.

  One spark caught Tefler’s eye. The radiant point contained a shadow darker than empty space. At first perfectly square, the blackness bent itself into a man’s silhouette and broke its luminous confinement. The scattered lights went out one by one till all life and hope ceased.

  Tefler shivered. The vision left him puzzled, and disturbed out of all proportion to its content. He unconsciously looked to the tower.

  What is this? Why even show me?

  At the edge of sight, Tefler saw the image in the water shift. He looked back into the sea, which once more reflected the rose-colored sky.

  But it’s not the sky.

  Instead of dawnlit clouds, Tefler found himself staring into a deep rosy fog. He seemed to look through the eyes of something that stalked through the mist, and the sensation drew him in till he felt the warm haze envelop him. Total immersion soon erased the line between himself and the hunter in the mist.

  Is this the ether? The familiar feel of metal decking under his feet implied a ship. A transitioned ether-runner? He crept through a large enclosed space, seeking…something.

  But what?

  His foot struck a thick cable snaking across the deck. He followed its meandering trail. Soon a figure began to emerge from the fog—a hazy feminine form held aloft on the mist.

  Here is my quarry, he knew. A sense of dire purpose—and weariness deeper than ages—almost overwhelmed him. He drew a white blade, its curved edge bearing a violet sheen, and joylessly advanced on the sleeping victim.

  A strong hand gripped his shoulder. Still half-dreaming, Tefler expected to wake in the chapter barracks, his childhood master of novices reproaching him for sleeping late. But he woke up staring at another face from his youth—though time hadn’t improved its mottled features.

  “Finally,” the hulking figure said in a paradoxically gentle, high-pitched voice. “I thought you’d never get up.”

  Tefler rubbed his eyes to make sure this was really his friend and not another dream. “Cook? How long have you been here?”

  “Since the Serapis crashed—same as you.”

  “That’s just depressing,” Tefler said of his friend’s attempt at humor. “But really, how long?”

  Cook stepped back from the chair. “At least five minutes.”

  The room’s spice rack smell and cluttered appearance informed Tefler that he sat in his quarters by the Irminsul docks. Yet his dream lingered. He stood and threw his grey cloak over his shoulder.

  “So I’m five minutes late for whatever you left the galley to tell me about?”

  Cook’s bald head nodded.

  Tefler sighed. “Sorry. I must’ve really been out.”

  “Did Thera send you another vision?” Cook asked hopefully.

  Tefler waved the question off. “Killing my folks wasn’t enough; Thera’s got to mess with my dreams. Sometimes I think the only reason I serve Shaiel is the hope that he’ll break out and murder her. Anyway, who sent you?”

  “The port authority.”

  “Do the shipwrights need me on the Serapis?”

  Cook sucked air through his jutting under bite. “You won’t like it.”

  “Don’t worry about making me mad. I already am.”

  “A nexus-runner showed up. The missing one.”

  Tefler paused while belting on his charcoal grey scimitar and looked askance at Cook. “Ruthven’s back?”

  “It’s not him. Someone else commandeered the ship. Word is he found another Souldancer host.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Tefler faced Cook’s overgrown form head-on. Knotted flesh overran the man’s hairless body like gnarled roots, inviting comparisons to a malformed potato. But having grown up in Cook’s presence, Tefler found the m
an’s deformities endearing. “The missing ship turned up in the hands of a pirate who claims he has one of Shaiel’s kin?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “So the chapter has good news for middle management—with just enough bad news to make telling him dangerous—and I got the short straw by default.”

  Cook shrugged his brawny shoulders. “Sorry.”

  Tefler sighed. “Am I Shaiel’s priest or the Blade’s page?”

  “This could earn you the chapter’s respect,” Cook offered. “If you survive.”

  Tefler peered through the cracked door of a large chamber carved from the huge tree’s living wood. An oil lamp hanging from the domed ceiling’s apex gave the only light, but the dark had never hindered his strange eyes.

  Hazeroth stood at the round room’s center, stripped to the waist. The demon’s sinewy frame projected alarming strength in contrast to his soft features. Even more startling was the object in his hand—a hilt of bone and leather with a monstrous stone wing at either end. Composed of rigid membranes stretched over fossilized bones, the wings’ jagged edges faced in opposite directions, forming a rough “S” shape.

  Four uniformed Night Gen surrounded Hazeroth; their short swords poised. None of them earned more than a glance from Tefler, whose attention settled on the three spectators lurking at the chamber’s edge.

  The first had the face of a female Gen. But green eyes like weathered bronze and a drowned corpse’s skin betrayed her dual nature.

  And in Irallel’s case, both natures are fallen.

  A dusky youth whose right arm, upper chest, and throat resembled a rough stone carving sat by the woman’s feet. It was said that he’d belonged to the impish thuerg race, though on that subject—as on everything else—the boy called Megido wasn’t talking.

  Tefler turned his attention to the room’s last occupant. He too had been a Gen, but unlike Irallel’s tarnished leer, Zan’s pearlescent eyes looked inward. His shoulder-length hair was white as driven snow. His pale flesh was alloyed with silver that reflected the guttering flame.