She stared into the man’s rheumy old eyes, trying to find something there, some regret or lingering loyalty to her kingdom, anything she could use to her advantage. But Benion was unreadable.
“There is still time, for both of us,” she continued. “Why die here? Come back to the Order, tell them what you know of her plans and her machines.”
She could hear the throbbing of the aonic forge now, rumbling the walls around her as the ambia inside was slowly over-compressed towards the point of explosion. Lanaya clearly meant to destroy the fortress.
Benion laughed. “The Order of Kion? Do you not realize that your master Orcus Gaelti is akin to my Pai Lanaya?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The difference, Princess, is that my mistress is strong and honest. We serve her passions willingly. Gaelti lies to you, to Phaedon, to everyone. He fights his passions and his true self. And thus, he will lose in the end.”
This was not going well. It seemed that Benion was no weak-willed slave of Lanaya; he was a true believer in her cause.
But Ralley was getting ever closer, Taxamia felt him … He was on this level now, had almost reached her. She needed to keep Benion talking.
The old technician had revealed one weakness: a smug need to gloat in his devotion to his Pai Lanaya.
“But will you die for her?” she asked him.
Benion smiled and shrugged. “We will not die, Princess, but our souls shall burn in her heart forever. The aona which make up our bodies may be scattered, but our connection to her will make our souls immortal. The link will always remain.”
As he spoke, the throbbing from the forge continued, thrumming stronger now, vibrating Taxamia’s teeth and pulsing in her brain.
She thought she could feel an odd tingling in the silver manacles which bound her arms and legs. She had always been sensitive to aon fluctuations, but why would—
Of course! It was basic aon theory, something she’d learn in her first few months with the Order of Kion.
Lanaya’s own abilities with the aon technology were all intuitive, part of the violent passion that possessed her and had made her the red-eyed beast that she was. Her sister was not an aon technician, and she did not understand the principles involved. She wouldn’t have predicted this …
But Taxamia knew that highly compressed ambia energy sent out pulses that would interfere with the bonds between closely related aona. Any aon devices which depended on principles of attraction or repulsion for their operation could go wild under such conditions.
The Order had experienced serious problems with flyers kept near the ambia reservoir while they were compressing the energy into cylinders for use in hand weapons. On several occasions, the craft had taken to the air by themselves, their lofting aona spontaneously re-tuned.
Would the ancient aon technology of the tower also be susceptible to such pulses?
As if in answer to her question, the door of the chamber suddenly slid open, and then hissed shut again. It repeated the motions, slamming harder this time …
“What?” Benion asked.
Now, she could hear the echoes of doors throughout the tower sliding open and slamming shut, over and over.
She felt her aon-clasped manacles quiver, then snap open.
She slipped out of the manacles’ grasp, her feet touched the floor … And then, she sprang forward like lioness, her body burning with the power of the da’ta se.
She threw herself at Benion, using all of her strength to thrust him towards the wall.
His head smashed into the red stone with crack, and the old man slipped to the ground; if he was dead or just unconscious, she did not know.
She had only one concern now. She could feel her love’s presence, his closeness tugging at her like a steely hook, pulling at her. She had to reach him, touch him.
Him!
Ralley Quenn, my love, my counterpart, at last—so close!
As the door drew back once more, she threw herself through the opening.
#
“Free!” Ralley shouted. He stopped in the middle of the tunnel, placing his hands on his forehead and closing his eyes. “She’s free, but … ambia compression explosion, soon? Hurry!”
“Explosion?” Jack asked. “What, another one?”
“Just hurry!” Ralley replied, and then he was running off again.
At the end of the corridor was a door of dark shiny crystal. It slid open and shut rapidly, again and again, the speed building as Jack watched until it became a translucent blur, the pounding sound of the slamming echoing in Jack’s skull.
They’d never make it through without being crushed. Even with that strange fire in him, Ralley wasn’t that fast.
But Ralley was still running forward, and for a grim moment Jack thought his friend might try to throw himself through anyway.
At the last moment, Ralley caught himself, sliding to a stop in front of the violently clashing door. He pulled the silver-tipped instrument which he’d taken from the flyer from his belt.
Using the tool, he prodded a small panel of crystals beside the door. In a moment, the door slid to a halt, halfway closed, but still leaving enough of a gap for a man to slip through. Ralley did so, and Jack followed.
They emerged in a circular chamber. The ceiling rose up in a cone shape, leading to a shaft through which Jack could see the pale blue of the desert sky high above. Below the shaft, in the center of the room, was a round crystal-rimmed pit, like a wide well.
The pulsing glow of ambia energy emanated from it. That unnerving vibration was terrible here, accompanied by a groaning, hissing noise. To one side of the well, a claw of crystal as wide across as a large carriage wheel hovered in the air—suspended, Jack guessed, in a similar manner to how the flyers were lofted.
Ralley stopped and stared hard at the throbbing glow of the well. “Jack,” he said. “It’s irreversible. Reaction building … It’s going to destroy this place. She’s sure.”
“How long?” Jack asked.
Ralley closed his eyes. “Ba … I mean three. Three minutes.”
Three minutes? They’d made it all the way here and now they only had three minutes?
“Ralley, we can’t possibly get out in that time. The tunnel exit is too long and we still have to find her. What can we—“
But Ralley was moving again, using his silver tool to work on the panel on the door on the other side of the room, stopping that door from slamming as well.
When the door was open, Jack saw a brown-skinned female figure in pale blue running down the tunnel. A bolt of ambia shot from behind her, gouging the wall with a whistling hiss.
“Here!” Ralley yelled.
“That’s her?” Jack asked.
He could see the girl clearly now. She was slim and petite, her brown skin shining with sweat, the many heavy braids of her dark hair streaming behind her as she ran. Her feet were bare, and her blue linen dress was filthy and stained.
But her eyes! They were yellow-gold, liquid jewels over a perfect little nose and delicate mouth. She was indeed beautiful; Ralley had not erred on that account.
Behind her, two soldiers in blue-black crystalline armor charged down the hall, their ambia guns raised.
Jack lifted his own weapon, firing a stream of ambia which hit one of the soldiers in the chest. White energy danced over the armor there, but the man kept coming. He aimed higher then, catching the man’s unprotected face.
An instant later, his foe’s headless body dropped to the ground.
The other enemy soldier knelt and fired his own weapon, but the shot was wild. A moment later, Jack finished him, blasting his face. This used the last bit of Jack’s ambia ammunition, and he threw down the empty weapon.
The girl plunged through the doorway. Behind her, another group of guards—at least five of them, perhaps more—was storming down the corridor. Beams of ambia sliced through the air.
Ralley grabbed her and pulled her aside just as a cluster of beams w
histled by. He turned to the door’s control panel, working swiftly with the silver tool. A moment later, the door hissed shut and stayed that way.
They could hear the whistling of the enemy’s guns as the soldiers on the other side tried to blast through the locked door. Jack turned to Ralley to ask how long the barrier would hold …
But Ralley was otherwise occupied.
The red-haired youth and his dream lady leaned against the wall in a tight embrace, their eyes closed and mouths clasped together, lost to the world.
Young love is a fine thing, Jack thought. And he was happy for them—
But Ralley had said—
Three minutes! How long did they have now, two, probably less?
The throbbing of that well of energy in the room’s center was deafening now.
Jack tapped his friend on the shoulder. “Ralley, we need to run.”
The lovers jerked apart, both nodding to him in unison. Her yellow eyes held the same palpable force as Ralley’s, that same willful fire.
God save me, Jack thought, how will I manage two of them?
The girl ran over to the crystal claw, which was still suspended in the air at shoulder height.
“This is shielded from the pulses of the aon forge, as it must be for normal use,” she explained, using Jack’s own language. She hauled herself up on top of the claw, running her hands over the shining surface of its “fingers.”
Jack was hardly surprised that she could speak their tongue—in a lot of ways, she was just like Ralley. The link between them apparently worked both ways, sharing thoughts and words.
She shouted something in her own tongue to Ralley, and he ran over to her, handing her the silver tool he’d been carrying. She slid aside a crystalline cover at the center of the claw, using the tool on whatever arcane mechanism was underneath.
All the while, the horrible moaning and throbbing of the well continued, creating a pain deep inside Jack’s ears. The light of the ambia inside the pit pulsed brighter and brighter. How long did they have now? Less than two minutes, one minute?
“Yes!” she shouted. “It is working!”
At the same instant, the claw jerked up in the air, until it was hovering twelve feet above the floor.
Ralley jumped up onto the lip of the well, then launched himself up through the air, grabbing one of the fingers of the claw and hauling himself up to join his beloved who was perched there.
Jack ran over and stood underneath the giant claw, looking up at his friend and the lady. “Ralley,” he said. “I can’t get up there. I don’t have your strength.”
The moaning of the well was building to a shriek. Jack couldn’t think. In an instant, they’d all be doomed.
I should tell them just to go on, he thought, leave me …
Ralley reached down, holding out his hand. “Get on the edge of the well, Jack. Climb up and grab my hand.”
Jack did as his friend instructed, and Ralley’s fingers curled around his right hand in a clasp of steel. Before his friend could pull him up, the girl poked her instrument into the center of the claw’s mechanism, and they shot upward at alarming speed.
They raced up into the cone of the stone shaft above the well, shooting from the opening in the top of it like a ball fired from a cannon.
And still they climbed, rushing into the open air and sunlight. Rising above the red stone fortress, with the searing desert sands far, far below.
Dangling helplessly in Ralley’s grip, Jack looked down and saw the glow of the well illuminating the entire shaft now, pulsing high, as if the entire inside of the stone tower was now a furnace.
Jack’s arm was already starting to pulse with pain, from the strain of supporting his body, as well as the gash he had suffered earlier. He bit his lip and could only hope that Ralley’s strength held out.
Just then, the girl fiddled with something else and the claw tilted at a sharp angle. Ralley slid for a moment and Jack felt himself slipping.
Helpless, he concentrated on that which he could control.
Raising his free arm, he held his Dragoon’s hat onto his head.
The claw began to move sideways in the air, gathering speed. It didn’t seem a natural plane of movement for it, however, and the whole of the thing began to shudder and shake as they flew onward.
“Have to get away,” the girl shouted. “Must be far, far enough when—“
There was an enormous whistling boom. Jack closed his eyes and the white flash lit up his vision behind his eyelids, while the noise vibrated in his skull and shook his brain.
A second later, a wave of air hit them, throwing them forward like the push of an unearthly hand. Jack felt his body swing into a horizontal position as the unholy wind swept them along, and he prayed for the strength of every one of Ralley’s fingers as the pain cut through his arm.
And then, suddenly, the wind was gone, the claw had stopped shuddering and Jack had a gentle sinking feeling in his gut.
Jack opened his eyes and saw the rock-strewn desert slowly rising to meet them. His braced his legs for the impact, but the girl brought them down to the ground smoothly.
Ralley released his grip at the last moment, and Jack landed on his feet, quickly jogging aside so that the claw could land. It floated down like a falling flower, raising a cloud of sand as it came to rest.
Jack coughed and rubbed his aching right shoulder. Aside from having his arm gouged and now nearly wrenched out of its socket by his dangling ordeal, he felt little worse for wear.
I’ve seen worse, anyways …
He looked to Ralley and Taxamia. The lovers had rolled off the claw and now tightly embraced each other, nestling in the sand, limbs entwined. Yet they were unmoving, clenched together in a manner that looked uncomfortable—their bodies locked in place.
Not wishing to make them uncomfortable with his gaze, Jack looked back towards the red stone tower.
Little remained of the once proud pinnacle except a jagged base. Fresh fragments of rock of all sizes jutted from the sand around its perimeter. He was afraid that there’d still be enemy flyers about, but he saw no sign of anything else moving, either in the sky or on the ground.
After a long while, Ralley finally spoke. “Jack, allow me to introduce you to Princess Taxamia Culcras of Damerya.”
Jack turned back to the lovers. Ralley now held his love’s head to his chest and cradled it there, stroking her braided hair. There was a heavy-lidded weariness in his eyes now. The fiery state was gone, the crisis over.
“A princess, Ralley?” Jack said. “You never mentioned that your lady was of such noble stature.”
“I owe so much to Jack,” Ralley told the girl.
“Both of us do,” the princess said. She stood and faced Jack, then reached out and touched his cheek with her soft hand.
Jack looked down at the sand, feeling the heat of the blush rising on his face.
Really Jack, he thought. Just like a virgin schoolboy. But then, noblewomen had always had that effect on him …
“My father, Pai Phaedon, shall reward you greatly for your efforts,” she told him.
“My lady,” Jack explained, “it was a privilege to aid in your rescue. And the only reward that I need is to see you and Ralley finally together.”
“But we should ask her father to let you fly again, Jack?” Ralley proposed. “I don’t think you’d turn that down, would you?”
Jack smiled and shook his head. “Perhaps not. But first we must see if your people forgive me for what I did to that poor flyer.” He could only imagine the look on that lovely Tesha’s face if he saw her again.
“Her people will find us, Jack,” Ralley explained. “We only have to wait.”
As they rested, Ralley told the Princess of how they had come to rescue her, though downplaying his own role and boosting Jack’s accomplishments so that he seemed to be a veritable heroic demigod.
Well, he thought, there’ll be time to set her straight about that later.
Unless
she already knows, he reminded himself. After all, she and Ralley shared thoughts.
Princess Taxamia then told them that Brace Aubren had been a prisoner in the tower as well, and that he had left with Lanaya, after pleading to her to accept him into her service.
Somehow this wasn’t surprising. Men like that were fickle in their allegiances. He wondered if he would ever cross paths with the cold-eyed Grenadier again …
Jack spent the next few hours scanning the sky as the sun sank towards the horizon and the evening cool began to creep across the desert.
The last of the red-orange light had almost gone when a cluster of shapes swept over the northern horizon, ambia jets flickering behind them, the fading sunlight glittering on their golden trim.
Jack waved to them as they passed over, and awaited their landing. When the party of blue-clad guardsmen stepped forward from the craft, led by the diminutive bald warrior whom Ralley had called Xai Ashaon, Jack doffed his hat and bowed to them.
“Yan wa si?” the bald man demanded. “Taxamia. Yan?!”
Jack held a finger to his lips and led them around the side of one of the larger rocks. There, Ralley and the princess were fast asleep, their arms wrapped tightly around each other. Her brown skin and black braids were set against his pale flesh and flaming locks, two contrasting halves of the same whole.
“Warms the soul, doesn’t it?” Jack said. “Sir, your princess is in very good hands indeed.”
But the Xai Ashaon’s eyes were narrowed slits, and his mouth was twisted into a suspicious sneer. Jack could tell that he didn’t appreciate the significance of this tender scene.
With a sigh, the Dragoon stepped forward to wake his friends for their journey.
-17-
“Hate, hate, hate …Uhh …” Ed Bocke mumbled, lost in delirium.
Mister Starks watched as the dark-haired young man fastened to the wheel-like device shivered and sweated, moaning and ranting. Guardian Crandolph had asked Starks to keep watch, and to let him know when there was a change in the youth’s condition.
Change, Starks thought, so he looks like a dead thing, like him …
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