by Jack Conner
“He butchered them,” Hildra said. “He just fucking slaughtered the poor bastards.”
“He didn’t need them anymore,” Sheridan said. “He only needed them to open the doors. After that, they were in the way.”
“Is that what you would do?” Janx asked her, an edge to his voice.
Her eyes became flinty. “I would’ve conserved my bullets.”
“Enough,” said Avery. It saddened him that Janx and Sheridan remained enemies. The whaler had been on the verge of trusting her, of thinking of her as an ally, back at Curluth Point, but that trust had evidently been shattered by her assassination of the Voryses.
The group followed the trail of bodies. Ani was with them, Avery thought. She must have seen Segrul slaughter these priests. Avery’s heart twisted, and for a moment grief and fear rose in him, almost taking over. With an effort, he forced it down.
Some of the walls were transparent, if cloudy, while others were more opaque. Sometimes they shifted, becoming murky, then flooded with light and transparency. Light glowed from the walls, but subtly, so that the group passed through largely dark avenues with high, unseen ceilings, lit only by scant alien illumination. It was cold in here, and strange smells washed over Avery, scents he could not place, and moods tugged at him, anger, sorrow, and other unnamable emotions, breaking over him in foaming psychic crests. The others shook their heads and swore, and he knew he was not alone.
“This place was not meant for us,” Layanna said. “Any of us. We cannot abide here long.”
Nodding, Uthua said, “It will drive us mad.”
The thought of an insane Uthua made Avery shiver. They passed down more halls, sometimes going up, sometimes down, sometimes around. They crossed thin crystal bridges over purple-black chasms and scaled nearly vertical surfaces, finding hand- and footholds in the crystal faces. Several times they hit a dead end and had to return to the last branch and find another avenue.
“Place is a maze,” Hildra said, wiping sweat from her brow as they hit another fork.
“It is a maze,” Avery said. “A labyrinth in three dimensions.”
“Or more,” Layanna added. “And hidden inside is the Tomb. I wonder ....”
“Yes?”
“Perhaps only one of the royal line, one of those altered by the Ygrith, can find the Tomb.”
Janx swore and gestured for the group to stop.
“It’s them,” he hissed. “Segrul and his lot.”
They hunched low, looking in the direction he pointed, through the nearest semi-transparent wall. Past glowing pulses of light and drifting bubbles Avery saw a group of people making their way along a ridge of crystal above a great chasm, on a level or two higher than the one on which Avery’s group hunkered. Segrul, great and white (not gray as his title implied) and fleshy, mutated into a sort of bipedal clam, picked his way ahead of the others, leading the way, a cane in one hand, pistol in the other. Another cane was strapped to his right leg, propping it up, as it appeared to be boneless. The pirate admiral was bleeding from his face; the blood, bizarrely, was red. The others were armed with assault rifles, venom whips and venom spears. Some of the spears dripped phantasmal blood. Apparently they had seen some action, possibly when they were massacring the priests. Avery looked for Ani among them, but of her there was no sign. Fear constricted his breathing. Where are you?
Avery’s group flattened themselves against the floor, waiting for the thirty-some pirates to pass by. If they see us, we’re dead. All too slowly, the reavers moved along, and, when they were gone, Avery gulped down a breath.
“That was close,” he said, feeling his fingers tremble. “Did any of you see Ani?”
“I didn’t,” Janx said and frowned, deep lines forming around his mouth and eyebrows.
“I don’t understand,” Avery said. “She should be with Segrul … right? I mean, where else could she be?”
“Maybe Segrul put her somewhere,” Layanna suggested. “For safekeeping.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” But Avery wasn’t convinced, and he didn’t think she was, either. None of the others seemed to have any answers, though. “Segrul needs Ani to open the Tomb,” Avery went on. “He certainly hasn’t yet. I didn’t see anything that could have been the Sleeper with him. Did any of you?” Going off their null responses, he added, “If she got away or if she got separated … that means he must be hunting for her.” Avery swayed, actually dizzy at the implications.
“We need to find her before he does,” Sheridan said.
Avery forced himself to nod. This is all going wrong.
“Come on, bones, let’s hurry this up,” said Hildra. “Place gives me the creeps.”
They began to push on, but almost immediately Avery stopped dead.
“What is it?” Sheridan said, cocking her gun.
He waved the weapon away. Silently, he slipped forward and around a bend. Yes, he thought. He’d really heard it. Moving toward a shadowed recession, the sound of crying grew louder. It was a stifled sound, as if whoever made it was trying and failing to keep quiet.
Daring to hope, he said, tremulously, “Ani?”
The noise stopped. The shadows stirred.
“Ani?”
Please, he thought. Please gods, let it be her, alive and unharmed.
Before he could fully prepare himself, she sprang from the darkness. She barreled into him, almost knocking him over. He had to stop himself from laughing. A deep love poured through him, and a relief so profound he felt his eyes burn with tears and his throat constrict. He lifted her up and hugged her tight. She felt so small in his arms.
“Papa, I thought you were dead! They said you were dead!”
“Quieter, kiddo,” Janx cautioned, coming up.
Trembling, she nodded. Avery saw that her face was pale and streaked with tears. Gently, he set her down. His arms shook, and he didn’t trust himself to speak.
“It’s been so long,” she said. “I never thought anyone would come.”
Layanna knelt beside her, and the girl embraced her.
“How long have you been here?” Layanna said.
“Days, I think.”
“This place does things to you,” Hildra said. “It may not have been that long.”
Darkly, Uthua said, “It may have been longer. Time is ... strange ... here. I can sense it. The old tales say the Ygrith could move in time, or at least see around the edges of it. To them it was just another dimension. Just as my kind exist across many planes, so do they, but one of those planes, perhaps more than one, is time.”
Layanna watched him. “Does that have anything to do with why you seek the Sleeper?”
“You know why I’ve come,” he said. “But, yes, I hope it can tell us how to prevail. I hope for ...” His eyes shone, looking far away. “... a prophecy.”
Avery returned his attention to Ani. Clearing his throat, he said, “I’m so glad you’re all right. Did … Segrul and his people hurt you?”
“N-no,” she sniffed. “But what they did to the priests—oh, it was awful, Papa.”
He kissed her forehead. “I know, honey. You’re safe now. How did you get away?”
“When they were shooting the priests, I ran. One of the pirates grabbed me, but I ...” Her face screwed up into an odd expression, half fear, half concentration. “... I thought at him, and he let go.”
“You thought at him?”
Slowly, she nodded. “What does that mean, Papa?”
“I don’t know. I guess whatever power you have that will allow you to open the Tomb gives you other abilities, too. Psychic ones. Both the Duke and Empress Issia showed similar abilities. They may even be stronger in this place.”
“Do you have the Codex, Ani?” Sheridan said.
Ani straightened. “Where did you come from?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Uthua said.
Her eyes went huge when she noticed him. “And you! What is he doing here, Papa?”
“He’s … helping us,” Aver
y said.
“Tell us, child, where is the Codex?” Uthua said, and Avery thought that when the Collossum was trying to sound mild and gentle he sounded even more sinister than usual.
Ani swallowed. Then, visibly shaking, she reached into the shadows of the recess and pulled the Codex out, all sparking red facets, and hugged it to her chest.
“I’m not letting you touch it,” she told Uthua.
“That’s fine, Ani,” Avery said. “Come, we’d better put some distance between us and Segrul. We just saw him not far away.”
When he nodded his head in the direction Segrul had been, Ani frowned. “No,” she said, “that’s not right. I just saw him a few minutes ago. That’s why I was hiding. He was going in that dir—”
Sounds sprang from the channel she’d pointed down. Footsteps, many of them.
“Hells,” Janx said. “This place tricked us.”
“Whine later,” Sheridan said. “Run now.”
She jogged up a ramp, beckoning for the rest to follow. Avery gathered Ani in his arms and went after her, and the others came with him. Uthua’s claws clicked on the crystal floor as he moved. Avery could feel his daughter’s heartbeat crashing wildly against her ribs, and he knew his wasn’t beating any slower than hers was. Sweat stung his eyes, and the cut on the side of his head throbbed. His tongue ached from where he’d bitten it earlier.
They passed down a narrow corridor lined by high walls, then spilled out into a great cavern. The path they were on became a bridge, and it arced over an abyss seemingly without bottom. Purple walls faded into blackness below. Having no choice, they fled across the span, and Avery tried not to peer over the side. Multi-faceted stalactites drooped down from the shadowy ceiling, glinting with otherworldly lights. Ahead loomed a great crystal wall. Running behind Uthua, Avery could see no door or passage through it, but perhaps Uthua was blocking it.
They reached the far side and fanned out on the shelf of crystal, staring up at the wall. Dread filled Avery.
“Fuck,” said Hildra.
There was no door. No way through. They were trapped. Janx slammed his fists against the crystal, but only winced and drew his hands away.
“Can you get through, blondie?” he asked Layanna.
She placed a palm against the wall, perhaps feeling it out on other-planar levels.
“I can do nothing,” she said.
They spun as the sound of their pursuers reached them. Segrul’s party burst out into the great cavern chamber. The pirates paused, sizing up the situation. From across the chasm, Avery heard Segrul laugh.
“Trapped! Rats caught in a maze! I love it.” Segrul strode to the edge of the bridge, and as he did Avery noticed something strange about him, although he couldn’t place it at first. “Come, little one,” Segrul called. “Anissa, come back to us. We won't harm you. If you stay with them, you might get hurt.”
Ani drew behind Avery, and he blocked her from Segrul’s view with his body. “Leave her alone,” he shouted back. “You’ve done enough.”
Segrul’s mouth quirked. “Oh, but I’ve just gotten started.” He started to bark an order to his men, but Avery, overcome by anger, lifted the pistol Sheridan had forced on him and fired at Segrul. He fired until the gun clicked empty. Segrul yelped and hunkered low. Blood coursed down his cheek from where one of Avery’s bullets had strafed him, and for a moment Avery rejoiced. Then he realized that that one graze was all he’d accomplished.
“Fire!” Segrul said.
His men let loose. They aimed high, not wanting to hit Ani, and at first the bullets simply ricocheted off the blank face of the crystal behind Avery’s group. Then they began to grow lower.
“We can shelter them while they do something,” Layanna told Uthua.
Without another word, her other-self erupted from her, radiant with otherworldly light and bobbing in defiance of any perceivable gravity. After only a moment of thought, Uthua drew his other-self about him, as well, and the two terrors positioned themselves in front of the rest of the group. Bullets stitched into the Collossum’s amoebic sacs, but they couldn't so much as penetrate them.
Janx, Hildra and Sheridan, taking aim from around the edges of the beings, fired back at Segrul’s party. The pirate leader barked another command.
A dozen of his people moved forward ... and disrobed. Avery was shocked to see a bunch of pirates strip naked on the edge of a bottomless chasm, but then he understood.
“It’s them,” he heard himself say, just as the naked pirates rippled into invisibility. “It’s the mystery party.” For a moment, he saw the blurs of air moving toward the bridge and across it, then he lost them.
Layanna and Uthua blocked off the span, preventing the mystery party from coming across, but the invisible shapes tore into the Collossum, slashing them with venomous limbs. Avery could see the humane forms of Layanna and Uthua wince and writhe as the poison tore at them, and unhealthy blue veins rippled throughout their sacs, turning some of their organelles gray. This was harder to see with Uthua, as his sac was black and nearly opaque, but Avery could see enough to confirm that the poison ate at him just as it did Layanna.
Avery wished his gun had another clip, but as it was he couldn’t help them.
“Ani, can you do something?” he said.
“What do you mean, Papa?”
“Can you … think at them? Like you did with the pirate before?”
“I’m too scared! I can’t think. I can’t even think to think. But ...”
Hope flared inside him, bright and painful. “Yes?”
“I might ... I feel something in the wall ... like ... a weakness ...”
“Try it, Ani. Whatever you feel you can do, do it.”
Wonderingly, she moved to study the dark face of the crystal wall, gazing into its glints and facets as the battle raged behind her. Avery turned to see Layanna’s and Uthua’s amoebic sacs fading under the barrage from the mystery party. The unseen assailants could only advance along the bridge, which was fortunate, and both of the Collossum, though groping blindly, had grabbed up one or two of their assailants. As the Collossum’s limbs crushed them, they became visible, but only briefly, as they were soon flung away into the abyss showering blood and gore.
Others of the mystery party, utilizing their tentacles, had apparently advanced along the sides or underside of the bridge and were assaulting Layanna and Uthua from unexpected directions. As the Collossum’s sacs shrank, Janx, Hildra and Sheridan were forced to reposition themselves. Their guns managed to pick off a few of the pirates, but the enemy had hunkered low, finding cover behind upthrusts in the crystal, and they proved hard to get at.
Some of the pirates hurled venom spears that struck deep into the Collossum. Some of the weapons were absorbed, and some fell away after gouging a hole.
“Hurry, Ani,” Avery said.
She laid her hands on the wall and closed her eyes. As he watched in awe, one of the tiny veins or fissures in the crystal lengthened, running up the length of the wall, then—Avery felt his mouth fall open—widened. The crack in the wall grew steadily, swiftly, becoming a hall in what seconds before had been solid matter. On the far side lay open space.
“You did it!”
She looked stunned. “I ... just felt it.”
“Come on!” he called to the others.
Looking over their shoulders, they saw him gesturing to the newly-formed avenue. He stepped into it, taking Ani’s hand, and the others fell back from the fray. Janx, Hildra and Sheridan came first, then Layanna. Only one Collossum could fit in the tight space, so she let her other-self go. Uthua remained surrounded by his amoeba-facet, having to squeeze his bulk into the narrow defile. The mystery party continued to lash him even as he withdrew, but their attacks were more cautious now; they couldn’t surprise him by striking from another direction, and his blind groping was now brutally effective.
The group passed through the channel for perhaps fifty feet, then came out into another hall. Uthua lashed the a
ir near the mouth of the tunnel, preventing any of the mystery party from exiting it. Behind their unseen forms came the rest of the pirates, guns drawn and venom spears ready.
“Can you close the tunnel?” Avery asked Ani.
She closed her eyes and stepped forward.
“Close,” she said, waving a hand. Perhaps that was some sort of focus for her mind to do its work. Either way, the walls buckled, then began to close in. Avery heard cursing from the mystery party, sounds which quickly diminished as they fled back the other way, the pirates with them. The walls slammed closed, and he wasn’t sure if Segrul’s party had been caught or not. He wasn’t sure which one he preferred. If they were dead, his daughter had killed them. Please, Ani, he thought. I know you can’t help what you are. The Ygrith made you this way. But don’t become a monster. He would always love her, no matter what, but he didn’t want her to become a killer.
“What now?” said Hildra, glancing around. Three different routes branched off. “Anybody know where we are?”
“Ani, can you feel the presence of the Sleeper?” Avery said.
She closed her eyes a moment, frowning, then shook her head. “I can kind of feel it, but ... I have to focus. The feeling’s ... misty.”
“While you work on that, kiddo,” Janx said, “we need to get going. If he’s still alive, and I bet he is, Segrul will be finding another route. He could come on us anytime. He knows what direction we’re in.”
Agreeing, the group set off in a random direction, soon finding themselves on a ridge overlooking another chasm.
“Wait,” Avery said. “I recognize this place. It’s where we saw Segrul before.” He pointed to the far wall, which was just barely translucent from this angle, revealing the dim form of a hall. “That’s where we hid.”
“But he never came that way,” Janx said. “That was just this place playing tricks on us.”
Avery snapped his fingers. “The blood! The blood was fresh ...”