Seen (Heartstone Book 2)

by Frances Pauli

  “We should tie off,” Jadyek said. “Even if we can go it without ropes, one of us might slip or…”

  “Yes.” Dielel nodded and the swift Jadyek produced a length of rope. He tied one end around his own waist and passed the other to Dielel. When they were secured, then, they entered the gap and began their climb…together.

  The stone shaft was so narrow that they could shimmy along it without fear of falling. The pressure of his limbs cramped against the walls was enough to counter the gentle angle. It must go around the other levels, angle out to the surface away from the prison. Dielel snaked along the tunnel with the scraping of Jarn before him and the gentle weight of Jadyek bringing up the rear. He tired quickly. His body had grown soft and weak, but his Heart burned with the same light as the thin lines of stone weaving over the tunnel wall.

  They climbed until he lost sense of time. His arms began to wobble and he heard Jarn curse above him. Jarn was a danger to them. He knew better than to trust the man, and yet he also knew how useful the man might be. Jarn would have resources no two Shrouded would be able to muster once off their own planet.

  “It branches,” Jarn hissed and stopped, plugging the way ahead by curling his emaciated body and twisting around to reach them. “There is light to the left, fresh air.”

  “Wait.” Dielel reached a hand down and back. He found Jadyek’s fingers and watched the lines of stone. “Follow that light, Jarn.”

  “It’s going the wrong way.”

  “Then do as you will, but we’re following the stone.”

  The curse came again, and a dry cough with it. When the way ahead cleared of the man’s shadow again, Dielel could not have said which path the worm had taken. He moved, pressed and twisted forward until he found the side passage too, saw the light and smelled what might have been clean air. The heartstone said otherwise, and he didn’t pause to wonder at that, only moved along in the path the stone set for him. It had been right so far.

  They’d only gone a short ways past when the aftershocks began. Dielel heard Jarn’s breath suck in. The traitor was up ahead, with them after all. Had the other passage collapsed or did it remain clear and open? Either way, he knew they were in the correct one. He knew it, long before the rush of warm, artificial air filled his lungs.

  “It’s open!” Jarn coughed and scraped ahead. He hurried, and they came on behind.

  The heartstone faded in the light pouring from the Shroud—the air held a taste of that, a not entirely safe flavor. The shaft flattened and widened out, and the grit of wind-blown dust coated his skin. Jadyek scrambled almost beside him now, their rope slack and catching on the rough stones. They found Jarn at the mouth of the tunnel, spent and collapsed where their Heart-won exit led out into the prison crater.

  Dielel’s clothes were in tatters. His knees and elbows bled freely and his face was a web of stinging scratches. They needed masks. The Shroud had answered the corequake with a storm of its own, and, his lungs told him, an unfriendly one at that.

  The crater rim blocked the worst of it, but he could see cracks in that wall now, twins to the one they’d used to escape. Several spouted and redirected the Shroud gases into the bottom of the crevasse. The emitters may or may not be working. Debris had blocked the prison doors, and the guards may or may not have made it inside in time. Inside, they may or may not have been crushed.

  What did it matter now? He was free, a fugitive, but heartbound. He dragged himself to a crouch and pushed. There had been a shack here, bikes and supplies. There would be masks somewhere. The only real question was, should he fetch two or three?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Rowri stumbled over a root and her leg caught between the vines. She fell forward, twisted and clawed her way free, and then continued the climb that had seemed like a short walk in beast form. Get to the Temple. She dragged to her feet and moved again, up, climbing toward the changing shed. Except, she was still a woman.

  Her beast had abandoned her and Tchao—Tchao, the temple—had given her another. But that wasn’t right either. She moved forward and tried to untangle the scraps of her mind, the shredded tatters that Dovali’s drugs had made of her thoughts. The temple was home. It meant safety, friends, Mirau and Omira.

  She was nearly there. The leaves still made black smears against her skin, still carried the ashes of the Bumare district like a smoky blanket. The crest of the plateau was only a few more feet from her fingers, and she could see the white tip of the main spire. The Grand Temple.

  She could hear voices. People shouted from above. They’d seen the crashes. She frowned. Two ships down and fire in the sky. Her beast…a beast, goaded her to move. It sang an animal song. Run, run. To the Temple.

  “There’s someone on the slope!” The shout spread. The jungle crackled above as they came for her.

  Run?

  Her body kept on. She climbed up and heard the chant take up her name.

  “Rowri! It’s Rowri!”

  Her vision blurred. She cried soft tears and fought her way up, up toward home. Hands reached down, lifted her to the top of the ravine and supported her while she caught her breath and chased down a coherent thought. Home. White robes fluttering in the Choma breeze…but it was black robes in her mind, rippling like smoke and fire.

  Shayd! The Tolfarians had betrayed them. Tchao Rimawdi wanted their planet, their people to…to…To the Temple!

  “Omira, it’s Rowri!” The priesthood called and helped her walk. They led her to the main gate where the bio-net had once given them a measure of defense, where no force field glowed beneath the symbol of a divided people. Tolfari and Uraru. Now Tchao’s Uraru lived in her mind and she couldn’t silence it. It was not hers to quiet.

  The beast purred inside her head, and something hummed in response from a spot near her waist. She let them lead her, followed the swirl of robes into the gardens and chased a memory that flickered like the broken defenses of her people. The Temple, Tchao’s Uraru, the bomb.

  “NO!” She twisted from them, felt the extra weight of the pack swing and tug at her. The bomb, Tchao’s weapon, and she was the trigger. “The generator is a bomb!”

  The hands dropped away. The Choma clergy stopped their feet and stared at her. Rowri’s vision cleared. She saw the gardens, the alcoves where she and Mirau had waited, spying on the Senior’s speech. The Senior, who had brought Tchao’s gift to the heart of Choma for a blessing that would destroy her. And she’d known it would.

  “Get out! Get everyone out!” she wailed and they stepped away from her. The alien Uraru tried a last time, it snarled through her voice, made her fierce and insane. But Rowri knew it now for what it was. Imposter. Her thoughts cleared and her strength returned. She pushed at it, gave a mental heave and evicted the thing, leaving only the black echo where her own cat should have been.

  “Listen, there’s a bomb in the temple. You have to evacuate.” Shuffling answered her. They were curious, but not moving. “A bomb. Someone, listen to me!”

  “Rowri?” Mirau pushed her way to the front. She still wore the colored robes of an acolyte, but her familiar face shone like a star. “What is it?”

  “Mirau, there is a bomb in the generator. We have to get them out. Get everyone to the ravine.”

  “Omira!” Mirau turned to either side. Now the crowd shifted, a ripple of fear broke over them, spawned by Mirau’s belief. “The Senior is in the sanctuary.”

  “I’ll get her.” Rowri spoke the words without thinking, but she heard an echo in her mind. You will survive this, but I will not. Would she perish too, if she didn’t run? “Go, Mirau, get them out. I’ll fetch Omira.”

  She waited until they moved, until the terror cracked and action swept in to drive them away. The clergy flew to the gates, shouting, calling to the rooms above, and Rowri knew they’d never get everyone out. Tchao would have set the detonator to…detonator. She spun and felt the weight again. The straps hugged her shoulders, and she wriggled free, slid her arms out and let the thing dro
p away to the gravel.

  She reached for it, cringed when it missed her fingers and hit the pathway. Nothing happened. Still, she lifted one of the straps and flung the bag away, out the temple gates. Then she spun and ran, not away with the crowd, but in toward the sanctuary, the generator, and the woman who expected it to kill her.

  That which is seen must come to pass.

  She needed her cat now, but the darkness inside was curled too tightly to reach. She could have used its speed, its courage. Instead, her woman’s heart trembled and her feet flew too slowly. She crossed the garden along the paths where the beast could have plowed straight through the plantings.

  There was a priest hovering in the doorway to the main sanctuary. He darted nervous looks inside and leapt into the air when Rowri startled him.

  “She won’t come,” he said. “The thing is buzzing, and she won’t leave it.”

  “She has seen it.” Rowri set her jaw and glared at him. “Get to the ravine.”

  His trance broke, as if the ritual words had freed his feet. He flew from the sanctuary in a flutter of silky robes and abandoned Omira at a word. Seen. Rowri glared up at the Choman eye, the symbol of all seeing and then stalked into the Grand Temple. She hissed at the few straggling clergy, and they too fled into the garden. Fools. Make the ravine or not, just get out of my way.

  The generator sat below the Senior’s dais. They’d brought the hover sled that far only, perhaps, hadn’t known how to adjust it properly to lift the thing up onto the platform. Now it hummed at the front of the temple, a huge, technological gift that could have healed their world, reunited their peoples, and brought a future of reconciliation.

  Instead, it had death at its core. The humming spelled only their destruction, and the woman standing over it knew that. How much had she known aside from her own doom, Rowri couldn’t say, but if ever a seeing was meant not to come to pass, it was this one. It would be today.

  “Senior!” She shouted from the aisle but kept moving. Omira would not defy her vision willingly. Rowri would have to forcibly drag her from it. “The generator is a bomb.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you brought it here. Why? Because you saw it in a dream? Did you even tell them to evacuate?” Rowri’s anger stirred. How could Omira stand by and let them all die? “Did you warn anyone?”

  “That which is seen—”

  Rowri growled and rushed forward. She felt the surge of her beast again, a distant tickle, and she reached for it, called the cat and felt it sweep home, filling its rightful place again, awake, mighty, and furious beyond imagining. She shifted on the run, let her robes shred and leaped the devil generator in a single, dark streak.

  Dovali’s drugs faded away, and the woman remembered what they’d done to her. The cat screamed and landed on the dais beside the Senior who had had a hand in it, had given Rowri freely to the Tolfarians…all for a vision.

  The humming increased, louder now, and louder still. It made the temple vibrate, one giant chime that sang of death. Omira dropped to her knees and ignored the noise as well as the cat circling her. Which one kills her? Rowri shook the thought away. This was not Tchao’s beast, not the evil, slinking thing that had been penned up too long. This was her Uraru, her, and she remembered how to live inside it.

  She pounced on Omira, knocked the leader of her people to the ground and took the woman’s robes between her teeth. The bomb’s noise shrieked and the walls of the temple trembled. Rowri lifted the Senior by the back of her clothing and sprang over the top of the generator.

  It silenced. When she landed, the world echoed the lack of humming.

  Her muscles bunched again, cat instinct and woman’s fears merged, and she ran for the exit. Omira’s weight dragged her back, slowed the flight so that she’d only reached the last row of seats when the light flared. The bomb screamed again, and Rowri ran and ran with the head of her order in her teeth, the sound of the end on her heels, and the Senior’s warning howling in her thoughts.

  That which is seen must come to pass.

  *-*-*

  Shayd’s arm had broken when his restraints failed. It hung useless at his side while he tried to help free Haftan from straps that had been secured properly. “Hold still.” He twisted to grip the release with his good hand. “Help me.”

  “Which is it?” Haftan grinned. He had blood trickling from a gash on one cheek, but the bastard grinned. “Hold still or help?”

  “Help.” He couldn’t share Haftan’s humor. They’d survived the crash, mostly due to Mr. Prill’s iron calm, direct orders, and the loss of several of his crew’s lives. They’d survived it, but they’d also lost Tchao, and in that respect, lost Rowri as well.

  Prill had checked on them, told them to stay put, and then vanished out the jagged tear in the ship’s hull where they could see a bright, Choman sky between the mesh of greenery.

  “He’s been gone awhile.” Shayd held the straps while Haftan wriggled free of them. “And most of the crew too.”

  They’d been left with the wounded, three men who may or may not still be loyal to Tchao. If they recovered faster than the Shrouded did, things could get tense at best.

  “I know. I think they’re scouting,” Haftan said. He leaned forward and ended up on his knees on the flooring. The ship had come to a stop at about a forty-five degree angle against Choma’s surface. “Or looking for Tchao.”

  “Exaclty.” The Tolfarians with Prill could have killed him and ran for their leader. Shayd tensed. He listened to the sounds of men shuffling, the wind in the fronds outside and the scrape of metal twisting together. He used Rowri’s Uraru as if it were his own now. He sensed the return of Mr. Prill’s group, and he stood, leaning on that dark, invisible cat for strength. “They’re coming back.”

  “Let’s meet them at the door.” Haftan pulled his way up to his feet and they used the bulkhead, the strategically placed railings on each console, to haul and stumble their way across to the hull breach.

  Shayd went slower. He slipped more, and needed Haftan’s help when the rails were on the wrong side, and his useless arm became a hindrance. In his mind, the cat stirred. It stretched and pushed at him to go. Run? He brushed the thought aside and slowed. The next rail was on the far side of Mr. Prill’s chair. He’d need to reach out. The cat snarled. Shayd reached forward, and the beast vanished.

  He fell. Haftan dove for his arm, but the angle was against them. Shayd hit the flooring on his hip and slid down it until the rubble of a torn console blocked his passage. Gone. The beast in his mind had fled. Where? Secured against the console’s bulk, Shayd put his good hand to his forehead and tried to feel it, to feel her. Gone.

  “Are you all right?” Haftan called.

  Was he? He didn’t know enough, didn’t know what it meant and would not allow himself to wonder. “Yes. I think so.”

  Mr. Prill appeared in the cabin, backlit by the bright sky until he sidestepped, leaned down, and put out a hand for Haftan. “We’ll get you out,” he said. “There’s still one working ATV. We can find them if we hurry, if we can figure their trajectory. Maybe.”

  They made a chain of Tolfarians. After Haftan vanished they returned for him, and Shayd let them come. Somewhere outside they had a vehicle. They could still follow, could still save her if…if. He latched onto the blue-wired hand and leaned into the pull. If she still needed to be rescued. If Rowri still lived. The Tolfarians helped him out, hand over hand, until he could drop to the ground and the waiting Haftan.

  Prill came next, and the rest of the Tolfarians remained behind. He waved them along the side of the broken ship, back toward the cargo area…or where it had been once. Now the hull ended in a shredded mess. The fragments of the rear third of the ship lay in their wake for well over a mile and Shayd saw exactly how Mr. Prill’s pilot had saved their lives. He’d absorbed the damage of impact and slowed their planet slide by sacrificing the back half of the transport.

  They’d dug a wide trench in the Choman jungle with
their passing, and looking to the north could see to the distant, gleaming dome of the Grand Temple, to the white spires and the lift of the jungle around it.

  “Tchao meant to take it out,” Prill said. He nodded in the direction Shayd looked, in the direction one would have to look with a view like that. “He was heading directly north when we took the hit.”

  Yet the temple still stood, a glowing pearl against the green blanket. Tchao had failed, and that meant they still had time to find him. It meant he might still be keeping her alive.

  Rowri.

  “We should move quickly,” Prill continued, but he already worked his way farther back. “The ATV is low on power, but it should…”

  The skies of Choma shattered. Shayd felt the explosion like a lightning strike to his heart. He heard the rumble of the bomb, the whisper of the concussion over the trees, but he saw the Temple explode first. He saw it, even as he fell to his knees. The white pearl torn to pieces. The spire falling, and a ball of fire in the sky that called louder than Haftan shouting in his ear. Gone, it said. Gone and gone and gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tchao’s beast ran home to roost. He waited in the hatch until the shouting told him the Chomans had discovered the girl. Then he paced inside the ship, waiting, straining to hear the sound that meant victory was his. He listened, and he reached, and the cat slammed into him like a wall of fury.

  RUN!

  He stopped still and tensed against a wave of tingles. His head filled with the beast’s snarling. He forced it back and down, tried to contain it as he’d always done, but the answer came as a firm, furious refusal. The thing had tasted freedom, and it would take Dovali’s drugs, perhaps, to rein it back under control.