by Jack Conner
“Speak clearly,” Uthua said.
“The blood on Segrul’s face when we saw him just now, it was fresh. But when we saw him again at the bridge, he didn’t have a cut on him. Until I shot him.”
“What are you saying?” Sheridan said. “That when we saw his group earlier we were seeing the future him?”
Slowly, Avery nodded. “I think so.” He gave her, Janx and Hildra a significant look, knowing they would remember the apparition they’d seen earlier. Perhaps that had been a future Uthua. He saw understanding flicker across their faces.
“Maybe,” Janx said. “Just maybe.”
Hildra's face was grim.
“I suppose that ties in with the Ygrith’s ability to see into the vagaries of time,” Layanna said. “They have time-oriented abilities, and they could have infused their structures with the same. But what does it mean?”
“For our purposes,” Avery said, “it means that Segrul will be coming this way soon, while the blood on his face is still fresh. I think we should take another branch.”
They backtracked to the intersection and chose another tunnel. Before they were on it long, Ani stopped them.
“This way,” she said, and sounded sure. She set out up a side tunnel, which wound upward, spiraling around the inside of the structure. “I feel the Sleeper now. I ... I can hear the bells ...”
“Bells?” said Hildra.
“Yes. Just like in my dreams …”
Cautiously, Avery and the others pressed on, expecting ambush or disaster at any turn. At last the hall leveled out and stretched toward a great door, sealed and fashioned of the same purple crystal as the rest of the place. As one, the group stopped and stared. The door was immense and emitted a subtle glow, and Avery could feel something from it ... a sort of hum.
“Do you hear them?” Ani said, a strange smile lighting her face. “Bells,” she said. “They’re ringing so loudly.”
Still wearing that eerie smile, she stepped forward, and the others, more reluctant, followed.
“I don’t hear anything,” Sheridan said.
“Singing,” Ani said. “I hear singing, too. My dreams ... I heard the singing in my dreams …”
Ice ran down Avery’s back. Just what is this place? What IS the Sleeper? For he heard nothing, either. Just the same, he didn’t doubt that Ani did. She had been dreaming of this moment for a long time, he was all too aware. More than dreaming, he realized. She had … hells, she’d been experiencing this moment … before she’d experienced it! That was what the dreams were. They were this moment stretching back in time and touching her mind. That couldn’t be, he told himself, aware of beads of sweat popping out on his cheeks and forehead. That just couldn’t be. And yet he absolutely believed that it was. They had ice in their veins, he reminded himself. They had ice in their fucking veins.
Softly, Hildra asked Janx, “Do you think ... ?” She stared at the approaching door as if watching her doom draw nigh. Avery didn’t have to be a mind reader to know she was recalling the other Uthua’s words. If indeed he had been from their future, and he had thought Hildra dead, might what he witnessed have taken place inside the Tomb?
“Don’t think about it,” Janx said, and gripped her hand tight. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She nodded but didn’t seem any less tense.
“Maybe …” Avery said, and Janx and Hildra turned to him even as they continued on. None of the others seemed to pay their interaction much heed; they had too much else to focus on. As Hildra stared at Avery, he saw the desperation in her eyes, and shame tore at him. And sadness. Hildra’s going to die, he thought. Hildra’s going to die and there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing anyone can do. Because he knew without question that the Uthua they’d seen earlier had indeed been from the future. He had believed Hildra dead, which meant, almost certainly, that she had been.
There was no way around it, either. If she fled the Tomb before it was opened she would only get lost in the maze of the Necropolis or run into Segrul’s party, both of which would lead to her death. If she stayed here and didn’t enter the Tomb with the others she would only face the pirates alone when they came, and Avery had little doubt that they would. That would also mean death. At least if she came with the rest she would have the protection of numbers, if nothing else.
But numbers, according to the future Uthua, wouldn’t matter.
Clearly anguished, Hildra gazed at Avery, hoping against hope that he had some way to save her; he could see it just as plainly as he could see the hard set of Janx’s jaws and the worry on his lined face. Janx knew it, too, then.
Giver her some hope, Avery thought, his mind spinning.
“Maybe he was wrong,” he said, keeping his voice low, but flicked his gaze to Uthua so that Hildra could see whom she meant, as if there could be any question. “Maybe he didn’t see what he thought he did.”
Tears, actual tears, spilled down Hildra’s scarred but pretty face, and Janx’s hand on hers dug in deeper. He tilted his head at Avery, thanking him for trying, but both knew that it hadn’t worked. Hildra knew full well that she was going to her end.
Janx’s own eyes were growing moist, and Avery thought he saw the big man’s lips quiver, just slightly, before he ground his jaws even more tightly together.
Avery glanced to Sheridan, hoping she might have something to contribute, but she only looked back at him impassively. No, not completely impassively. He thought he saw a glint of regret in her eyes, maybe even sadness. He wanted to believe it.
This entire drama was lost on Layanna and Uthua, Avery noted; their eyes were only for the door. They were very close now.
As they neared it, the group slowed, all except for Ani, who continued on at the same pace, drawing out from them. Almost reverently, she reached the door and lifted the Codex before her. Avery didn’t know what she was doing at first, but then the glowing red jewel began to spin. He called out to her in alarm, but she stepped back, smiling. The Codex floated into the air of its own accord—no, that wasn’t right, he could see the concentration on Ani’s face—and began to glow brighter. Energy crackled from it, and it spun faster, faster, making those same strange insectile noises as it had before when Ani touched it, but louder. She had grown stronger in this place, and so had it.
The jewel flew before a hole in the door—a keyhole—and hovered.
Ani stepped back.
The Codex plunged into the hole. An explosion of turquoise light flooded out, and the great doors swung inward, revealing a huge chamber wreathed in mist and blurry with blended realities.
Confidently, Ani stepped forward, across the threshold, and into the Tomb of the Sleeper.
Avery glanced at the others, then followed.
Chapter 8
The Tomb was vast, stretching hundreds of yards to either side and vanishing into purple mist and shadows above, but for all that it was largely empty. Like a great cathedral with only an altar in its center, the Tomb was barren save an enormous pedestal looming from its middle. What seemed to be a massive crystal egg squatted atop it, and a sinuous ramp led up to it.
Ani continued moving forward trance-like, at last coming to stand before the pedestal. Avery, feeling faint, came with her, the others right behind. This is no place for humans, he thought, feeling the crackling of exotic energies all around him.
“The Sleeper,” Ani breathed, staring up at the egg.
“In some sort of hibernation,” Layanna mused. “Can you rouse it, Anissa?”
Ani grinned, delighted, as if she had been looking forward to it. “Of course.”
Avery didn’t miss Sheridan’s too-still face or Janx flexing his fingers. He didn’t blame them their unease. He felt it, too, perhaps even more keenly than they. His own daughter was part of this madness.
Lifting her voice, as if this was something she had wanted to do for a long, long time, Ani called, “Sleeper, awake!”
That was all it took.
The chamber qu
aked. The egg cracked, and light spilled out of it, not purple but red, then yellow, then orange. Heat and smoke coiled out of the fissure. The chamber shook, and the mist and shadows stirred. Avery’s knees buckled and he almost sank to the floor. Around him the air buzzed with half-formed realities, the twisting of dimensions and voids beyond his comprehension, and now he heard it ... the sound of bells. They crashed in his head with maddening volume, but they were also beautiful, and the singing, the insane alien singing ...
He realized he was crying with joy and fear and awe. The others wept, too, or clutched at their ears, or braced for battle.
The egg split, its pieces flung apart by the violence, and out of it rose a form, large and indistinct at first. Slowly, the smoke cleared, and the twisting of realities seemed to subside. The form of the Sleeper became visible, but at first Avery couldn’t quite tell what it was. He made out some huge, furry shape uncurling from what might have been a sort of fetal position, supporting itself on hundreds of little legs. Its fur rippled like cilia, and many stalks jutted from its back. The stalks suddenly erupted, and a cloud of spores poured out of the orifices at their ends. The furry shape diminished, withered, shriveled, then melted into nonexistence. The spores danced around in the air where the egg had once been and where realities were still twisting, then coalesced, becoming another form altogether, huge and mountainous and awful, then another, smaller form, still terrible to behold, then still another. The shape wavered, as if the entity it belonged to were deciding on its structure, then snapped into being with such speed and power Avery felt himself jump.
He and others, even Ani, blinked and steadied themselves, then regarded the Sleeper on its pedestal. Larger than a man, perhaps ten feet high, the being in this shape resembled something like a giant slug, its forward third upright, covered in brilliant white feathers, its head a mass of waving cilia and complicated mouthparts. It should have been a horror, but somehow it was beautiful. By the way the air bent and flexed around it, Avery could tell it existed across multiple dimensions.
It spoke, and though Avery doubted it spoke in any language he knew, he somehow understood it perfectly.
“Thank you, O Waker. You have done well.”
Ani curtsied. “I am honored, Sleeper.”
“I sleep no longer.” The creature seemed to stretch and yawn, as if shaking off the cobwebs of a slumber that had lasted thousands of years. “Still, weariness clings to me. I must feed soon.”
Avery didn’t like sounds of that. He bent to whisper in Ani’s ear. She nodded and addressed the once-Sleeper:
“Great One, we have enemies after us. How can we defend against them?”
“Rest assured, child, I do not foresee them bothering us, and I am quite capable of defending myself in any case. I extend that protection to you.”
“Thank you, Sleeper.”
Avery whispered another question, and Ani said: “Great One, can you tell us how you came to be here? We’ve wondered what all this means.”
The Sleeper’s eyes, and it had six of them, were arranged so that red black spider-like orbs, much like the windows of Ysstral buildings, peered out in a row from either side of its mouthparts. With these awful eyes, it appeared to study Ani.
“Very well,” it said. “You deserve that much. A schism split my Order long, long ago, and my people warred with each other. During our conflict, we created terrible weapons, and they only grew more destructive with every tide of battle. In the end we unleashed a type of bomb that warped this world, that twisted its reality beyond what we could tolerate. We changed the physics of your planet, and indeed your plane. The effect did not harm your kind, but they did mine. The two sides of the conflict fled this dimension, each seeking sanctuary in a separate sphere. Only I remained, protected in the bubble dimension that is this room—or was until you opened the door—to await the day when the effects of those bombs would fade. Then I could return to the Monastery, where our great machines are, and work on finding a way to bring my brethren back.”
“Where is the Monastery?”
Instead of answering directly, the once-Sleeper said, “It is shrouded, concealed in a fold of reality that only I can access and bring back into your world. That time is now. The damage to reality should have faded. The two halves of the Codex would have awakened creatures to summon attention to them, and only advanced beings could have opened the structures that housed them. Beings like you, my dear. And only you could have opened this chamber and roused me. For our own protection, we only wanted one from a line of our worshippers to have that honor.”
“But why me?” Ani said. “I don’t understand. They said I was chosen to open your Tomb. Did you choose me?”
“Of course. To make matters smoother, I reached through time and selected the one who would awaken me. The seed of prophecy would grease the wheels of your human bureaucracy, make it easier for the right person to come to me.”
“Why me?” she said again.
“Because you were powerful enough. And because you had a connection that would be able to bring you to the right place at the right time.” The Sleeper’s attention swung to Avery, and Avery shriveled. “Him.”
“Papa?” Ani said. “You Chose me because of Papa?”
“And her.” The Sleeper indicated Sheridan. “She had the will to see things done.”
“Will?” Ani said.
Avery cringed, but the Sleeper merely added, “It made things simpler.”
Avery realized that he was sweating. Ani almost learned the truth of who killed her family.
Before she could press the issue, Uthua declared, “Enough. With all due respect, my people need you to help us, Great One. Even now enemies move against us, and we must act before they do. I don’t know what their game is, but I know they want to get their hands on you. They want access to the Monastery.”
The Sleeper’s voice sounded amused. “And you do not?”
Uthua held his ground. “We'll help you reach it. The world’s in turmoil, and it will be difficult, even for you, Exalted Presence, to undertake a journey through it. We will bring you there. Afterwards we can share this world peacefully between us, and we will show you great honor. We only ask access to the Monastery once there so that we can subvert the plans of our enemies.”
“And carry out your own plans. Oh, yes. I know. I have seen.”
Uthua’s black eyes shone. “What have you seen?”
The Sleeper’s amorphous head inclined forward. “The future has many paths, and much of it is vague and shadowy, R’lothan. I can only access certain parts of it. Yet I see ...”
“Yes?” Uthua’s voice was breathless. “Please, Sleeper, if you can divine those actions that will allow my people to prevail, I would most appreciate it.”
Slowly, the Sleeper nodded. It opened its eyes and pointed a limb at Avery. “Him,” the Sleeper said. “For your kind to prevail, he must die.”
Shocked silence greeted this. Ani gasped.
“No!” she said. “Sleeper, no! You can’t kill my papa!”
“I take no sides,” the Sleeper said. “In truth, I do not care. Your kind are small and limited, confined to small realities. Even you.” He indicated Uthua and Layanna. “You are like children to me.”
“We are no children,” Layanna said.
“Bah!” said Uthua. “Enough.” He moved toward Avery. “If killing you will save my people, then so be it.” A slow grin spread across his fishy face. “I confess that I’ll enjoy seeing it done.”
“Please,” Avery said. “There must be some other way. Some—”
“Go on, little man, beg. It will not save you.”
Janx planted himself before Avery. After a moment, Hildra did, too, then Layanna.
“Bastard,” Janx said to Uthua. “You’ve taken one friend from me. You won’t take a second.”
The air blurred around Uthua. There was no chance, Avery knew. The Mnuthra would kill them all. He was more powerful than Layanna, and mere humans would pose
no threat to him. The great fish-man advanced, and phantasmal shapes began to materialize around him, a prelude to him bringing over his other-self.
And so it ends, Avery thought. He couldn’t have imagined it would end like this, with his companions and himself dying because of some nebulous prophecy, but he should have known. This place was called the Tomb, after all. Only fitting that it should finally have a corpse. For a mad moment he had the urge to drop to his knees and plead for mercy like Sheridan had done, but he knew there would be no mercy this time, not from Uthua.
Uthua took another step, and now the air bent and twisted even more violently around him. He was about to bring his other-self over. Time seemed to move in slow motion, and Avery saw every detail, every glimmering scale that covered Uthua’s body, every tattoo left by its former occupant, every chip in every claw on his grasping hands.
Suddenly, Uthua gasped. Blood burst on his lips.
With a moan, he sank to his knees, the handle of a dagger sticking from his back. Behind him, Sheridan’s face was drawn.
“You will not kill him,” she said.
The intricately-carved handle of the blade sticking out of Uthua’s lower back looked quite familiar. In a flash, Avery realized the truth and almost laughed. That was where it had gone. His god-killing weapon hadn’t gone down with the Valanca, after all. As he had half-suspected, Sheridan had stolen it after the mass aerial sacrifice. He thought she might have done so in order to prevent him from using it on Uthua, and maybe she had, but she’d also kept open the possibility of her using it on him.
“Bitch,” Uthua growled, and swiped a claw at her.
She danced back. “I think not.”
“You’ll pay for this.” He hissed out a breath. The blow didn’t seem to be mortal, but it clearly pained him and prevented him from bringing over his god-self. “I’ll see to that. You’ll never again find harbor with Octung, and every Octunggen will hunt you. I can’t believe you would sacrifice the redemption I’ve given you, but I will make sure you rue that mistake, and bitterly. Your days are numbered.”