“Yes, I am! Conor died, and the Agantzane re-created me in his image.”
“You freed yourself from their influence. You’re my son.”
“Am I? What if they manage to restore their control over me? Will you turn your back on me too?”
Quinn shook his head. “That’s different.”
“Why? Why is it different? Because I’m your son? Because I’m human? We abandoned the dolin, and now we’re abandoning Vyasa. Is that what we do, Dad—abandon our friends?”
Quinn knuckled his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Look, when Ximun left with the Damise, he took her remains. I have no idea where they went. Right now, our priority is to prevent them from taking over the entire cosmos. If we can find them, we may well find her. But if we don’t get off this world, we’re finished.”
Conor averted his gaze and fell into a sullen silence.
Quinn’s heart clenched. He turned back to Zothan, desperate for any distraction. “What are our chances of securing a ship?”
“Ximun said the lower races were fighting for possession of the enclave. In that, at least, he appears to have been honest. While the battle is raging, the sides will be too preoccupied to consider our request. Our best prospect may well be to wait until the conflict is resolved, and then negotiate with the victor.”
Quinn massaged his chin. “No. I appreciate your prudence, my friend, but I don’t think we have that kind of time.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Conor heading for the sphere’s edge. He grabbed the boy’s shoulder and spun him around. “Where are you going?”
“To find Syn-moon.”
“Who?”
“She’s a Kimn who helped me when I was trying to find you. I’m… a member of her family.”
Quinn couldn’t imagine what Conor meant by that last statement, but there were more important issues. “Do you think she’d agree to help us?”
“Maybe. She’s a member of their Sisterhood.”
The Sisterhood was the matriarchy that governed the Kimn. If Conor had influence among them, it might represent the best chance of securing a ship. Quinn smiled. “Okay.”
Conor’s eyes widened. “You’re letting me go?”
“We’ll all go. How does that sound?” Quinn turned to Zothan. “I’m thinking we should make for the Esrach.”
“The seat of the Sisterhood,” Zothan said. “They may be making their stand there, or they may have fled.”
“Still, it seems a reasonable place to start.”
“Agreed. However, if the lower races are battling for control of the enclave, then the fighting will likely be fiercest near the centre of power, and I can only transfer one of you at a time.”
“Dad can transfer himself, can’t you, Dad?” Conor offered.
“That would be unwise for a human,” Zothan said.
For a human. Zothan walked a tightrope of tact. He could just as easily have said for you, alluding to Quinn’s illness, but Quinn had asked him to keep it secret from Conor. The Nemazi hadn’t fully agreed with the reasoning, but he had respected Quinn’s wishes. That’s more than many humans would do.
Quinn weighed in with a swift response. “He’s right. My skills are shaky, and we don’t have the luxury of making mistakes.”
“What about Vil-gar?” Conor asked. The representation of Vil-gar stared up at them wide-eyed, again reminding Quinn of a child.
Quinn gazed at the surrounding sphere. “How long can you maintain this bubble?”
“The device you installed can draw on vacuum energy indefinitely,” Vil-gar said with a note of pride.
Quinn nodded. “Then I think we’re good to go.” He peered beyond the sphere. “The coast seems to be clear.” He turned to Conor. “Zothan and I will transfer to the Esrach. When we’ve determined it’s safe, he’ll come back for you.”
“Okay. Be careful, Dad.”
“Always.” Quinn angled his head at Zothan, and together they approached the sphere’s surface.
Vil-gar’s high, anxious voice sounded behind them. “You’ll come back for me, right?”
Without turning or replying, Quinn stepped onto the street.
~
Quinn and Zothan emerged from a smoke-filled vortex onto a courtyard littered with the wreckage of conflict. Smashed bodies lay scattered amid shattered weaponry. Quinn counted fourteen fallen—all Kimn.
The huge tower known as the Esrach loomed over them, casting half the courtyard in shadow. Acrid air stung Quinn’s nostrils and filled his mouth with rust. His eyes darted. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“The conflict here is over,” Zothan replied. “The opposing forces have moved on. There is no reason for them to return.”
Quinn was forced to agree. Nothing of value remained, unless you wanted to use tweezers. “All right, I’ll wait while you fetch Conor.”
“Can you enter kakkoth-tamah until I return?”
“I thought you said it was safe here?”
“I believe humans have a saying: you cannot be too careful.”
Quinn smiled inwardly. Since the merging of their identities in the time fragment on Nemazi, Zothan had acquired a distinctly human perspective. In turn, Quinn felt closer to this Nemazi than most of his own race. “Very well, my friend. I will see you soon.” Folding the tesseract in his mind, he wrapped the four-space tunnel around him until it settled into a sphere and then watched Zothan vanish in a whirl of smoke.
Quinn sat cross-legged on the patch of ground encompassed by the sphere and surveyed the battlefield. The struggle for the enclave appeared to have gone badly for the defenders. That could well toss a grenade into his hastily sketched plan. Zothan was right. While the Kimn were locked in a battle for survival, they wouldn’t be likely to entertain his request for a ship.
A thought struck him like a splash of cold water. What if the Kimn were defeated? Might he be forced to deal with the lower races? He had only had dealings with the Anghard, the Mogrey, and Vil-gar. The Anghard had nothing but contempt for those who basked in the sun, the Mogrey appeared degenerate, and Vil-gar was a liar and a mass murderer. More importantly, Quinn was fairly confident none of them had access to ship technology.
Of course, he could always go crawling to Ga’zaan—the self-styled Calix of the Medyr. The creature had tricked them into carrying the biotoxin that had decimated the Kimn. Quinn decided he would sooner be boiled in oil.
The tesseract pulsed. As Quinn pushed it back into shape, his head began to pound. Using even basic Shade abilities was getting harder. Dammit, where’s Zothan? What if something or someone had waylaid him? Quinn would be alone and isolated in the midst of a war zone, and Conor would be at the mercy of Vil-gar. How could I have been so stupid?
In the lighted area beyond the sphere, something moved. Quinn jumped to his feet. A horde of creatures flooded into the courtyard. He recognised the Anghard, with their wide mouths and raised eye sockets. Among them were multi-limbed serpent types, like a cross between a snake and an octopus, as well as larger, lumbering bipeds.
According to Zothan, the lower races were not supposed to return to this area. Quinn fought down a rising sense of panic. Zothan couldn’t be expected to foresee every contingency. Besides, I’m perfectly safe so long as I remain here in four-space.
Mogrey slithered among the masses. They had the same vacant stares he remembered, but that didn’t necessarily mean they were mindless beasts. If there was one thing Quinn had learned during his wanderings, it was the folly of pre-judging.
The horde advanced on the tower. Bristling pikes moved between large-wheeled, open-topped vehicles that looked like medieval siege engines. Sound could not penetrate the sphere, but he imagined the creak of wheels and the tramp of feet.
Searchlights swept the gathering. A trio of round vessels hovered like eagles guarding their broods. Did the lower races have ships after all? Quinn blinked. Aside from the facility where Vil-gar was preserved, he had seen no sign of advanced technology during his journey through the lower
levels—at least, nothing that had functioned in thousands of years. Had that been their tactic—to hide their true capabilities and lull the upper-level races into a false sense of security?
The horde slipped past the sphere, their images splayed against its surface. He felt he was in the midst of a bizarre, silent movie.
Pressure gathered at his temples. The folded tesseract rippled. He forced it back into a cube, and it punished him with stabbing pains. Its sides warped, and it began to unfold. Control slipped through his fingers like oil. He felt as if he were being swept over a waterfall.
The sphere popped and vanished. Grunts, growls and the grinding of metal rushed in on him. Heads turned and eyes drilled into him. Pikes lowered, their blades pointed at his throat.
Quinn withered like a salt-sprinkled slug, squeezed his eyes shut, and waited for them to strike.
~
Quinn steeled himself against the flash of agony and the encroaching darkness. Seconds ticked by. At length, he cracked open an eye.
The Anghard squad surrounded him, pikes at the ready, while the rest of the horde flowed past in a seemingly endless river.
A dull headache nagged at him. He was not going to be able to form another four-space bubble, and transference was out of the question. He still had his death touch, but they would cut him down before he could fell more than a handful.
A gigantic biped gazed down from on high. Snub-nosed and dish-faced, the creature’s skin was oily, the colour of a stagnant pond. Its lower torso and upper thighs were clad in supple armour. “Gora-cha nee-kar ga-ko-chan,” it croaked.
Quinn swallowed and spoke in Ardalan. “I am not your enemy. I mean you no harm.”
“You came from nowhere,” the tall creature responded in halting Ardalan.
“I was hiding in four-space.”
“You are not Shade.”
“It’s… a long story.”
A leathery Anghard jabbed his pike at Quinn. “I know this creature. It invaded our level. We captured it, but it escaped custody after expiring two Ascari. It’s dangerous. We should expire it.”
A fresh-faced Anghard shoved the first one’s pike aside. “Humans defeated Ascari but spared the life of our Angius. Mercy begets mercy. It is Ascari code.”
Quinn had no idea what the younger Anghard was talking about, but somehow he was still alive. “Look, I have no stake in your conflict. Please just let me go.”
“Humans are powerful,” the younger one said. “This one could assist us.”
“He is not of the lower races,” the tall creature said. “His skin is warmed by the sun. Why should he help?”
The older Ascari leaned in. “You will assist us if you wish to live.”
~
Quinn marched with the horde in a daze. He had set out with the idea of using Conor’s friendship with a member of the Kimn Sisterhood to secure a ship and escape this planet’s conflict. Now, in a bizarre twist, he was forcibly allied with their enemies. It was not turning out to be a good day.
The tall creature eyed him with curiosity or avarice, Quinn couldn’t tell which. “You were born in the sun.”
Quinn glanced up. “I guess so.”
“I have never seen the sun before today.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” the tall creature replied. “I do not wish to return to the darkness.”
“Guess I can understand that,” Quinn muttered.
“You will crush our enemies.”
Quinn hesitated. If he dismissed the notion out of hand, the horde might decide keeping him around was too much trouble. “I think you have an inflated view of my abilities.”
To Quinn’s utter surprise, the tall creature threw back his head. The laughter that chugged forth was like an old-fashioned steam train. “The Anghard say you defeated the Ascari. They fear you. Your talents must be well hidden. Bad breath, perhaps?” The creature’s laughter boomed across the courtyard.
“I don’t know why the Anghard would say that,” Quinn replied. “Maybe it’s something to do with Conor.”
“Conor?”
“My son. He’s… not here.”
“Perhaps he’s the human we should fear?”
They rounded a corner of the Esrach. A gaping hole marred one section of the wall. Quinn recalled the damage wrought by the dolin during its escape to the lower levels. Clearly the Kimn had not had an opportunity to make repairs. The horde flooded through the breach.
“I didn’t know you had ships,” Quinn said.
“Not us,” the tall creature replied. “The Cethlan.”
Quinn filed away that nugget of information. If he could establish relations with the Cethlan, then maybe he could bargain for a ship after all. “They occupy the level below the Anghard, right?”
“Yes, and we live beneath them.”
“I don’t know your race.”
The tall creature gazed down at him with a solemn expression. “I am Druwyn of the Lampetia. The greatest and wisest of all the races on Pann.”
Quinn couldn’t decide whether Druwyn was joking.
Individuals jostled cheek by jowl as they funnelled through the opening—Lampetia, Anghard, Mogrey, and the octopus-like creatures Quinn assumed must be Cethlan. He thrust his hands in the pockets of his mesh garment to avoid accidentally touching any of them.
He hated to think of taking sides, but it only made sense to be on good terms with the victors, and right now, the lower-level races seemed to be winning hands-down. Besides, why shouldn’t Pann’s lower-level races have the right to a place in the sun?
The great hall was steeped in shadow. War engines creaked, footsteps slowed to a shuffle, and echoes died. There was no cry or clash of conflict, no sign that the horde was meeting resistance of any kind. With the ground floor breached, maybe the Kimn Sisterhood had retreated to the tower’s upper levels and was preparing to make its stand there. Or maybe the Kimn had fled. It seemed the course of wisdom. He didn’t see how they could possibly confront the combined forces of the lower-level races.
Creatures milled in the hall. They seemed in no hurry to surge up through the tower. Perhaps they were content to take their time and savour victory.
The air sang with a high-pitched hum. Quinn whipped his head around. The breach in the wall shimmered like a moiré curtain. Creatures pushed against it, but it pulsed, pushing them back. Beyond it, weapons fire zipped and explosions boomed. A whiff of panic surged through the hall.
They were trapped.
~
Druwyn stared down at Quinn and searched him with sunken eyes. “We are betrayed. Someone warned the Kimn we were coming. They have had time to prepare.”
Quinn shrugged. “Well, don’t look at me.”
“You are the only sun-born among us. And you did try to hide from us.”
“I know nothing about it, I tell you. If I knew what was going to happen, do you think I’d let myself get shut in here with all of you?”
“That would be foolish,” Druwyn admitted. “Unless you intended to use your Shade abilities to escape.”
“I couldn’t if I wanted. I’m… not well.”
The Anghard advanced, pikes bristling. “This human led us in here to slaughter us.”
“I never led you anywhere,” Quinn blustered. “You forced me to come along, if you recall.”
One of the octopus-snakes Quinn took to be Cethlan slithered up. “It’sss ssskinnn isss pale and it’sss appearance is hideousss.”
You’re no oil painting yourself. Quinn shook his head. Name-calling would get them nowhere.
Half a dozen Mogrey pushed to the front and stared with dead eyes. “Anghard are to blame!” one yelled in a squeaky voice. “They promised it was safe to attack the enclave. Then they brought this human among us.”
One of the Anghard moved his pike away from Quinn’s throat and aimed it at the Mogrey spokesperson. The Mogrey hissed and bared rows of needle-like teeth.
The hall filled with light. Creatures shied away or scu
rried for cover. The light resolved into a giant projection. Quinn stared up at the aristocratic, fur-lined features and delicate horns of a female Kimn.
Her voice echoed through the hall. “Denizens of the lower levels! Since ancient times, those who have enjoyed their time in the sun have relinquished their place to the younger races. It is Pann’s most ancient law. By invading our enclave, you have violated that law and threatened the unity of the Consensus. We of the Sisterhood must decide what is to be done with you. However, the rules of the caucus say that the accused must have voice. Therefore, you will choose one from among you to plead your cause. When you have selected your representative, have them stand in the circle of light. They will return once we have rendered judgment.”
The apparition vanished, leaving a bright circle on the floor. Murmuring rippled throughout the hall. The Anghard who had previously spoken drew himself to his full height. “The Anghard lead this expedition. We will represent the lower races.”
The Cethlan rippled its tentacles. “Weee are the technological mastersss. Without usss, you would be nothing!”
“We are in the majority,” the Mogrey piped. “Ours is the right!”
“I’ll do it,” Quinn heard himself say.
The Anghard rounded on him. “Out of the question!”
“Heee cannot represssent usss,” the Cethlan hissed.
“He is sun-born,” the Mogrey squealed.
“Yes, I’m sun-born,” Quinn said, his voice strengthening. “That’s why it has to be me. It’s the last thing the Kimn will expect. It will wrong-foot them and give me a chance to plead your cause.”
He had a name to play with—Syn-moon. According to Conor, she was his friend among the Sisterhood, though it didn’t seem wise to mention it in this company. They might conclude he was in league with the Kimn and turn on him.
“Why should we trussst you?” the Cethlan asked.
Quinn shook his head. “Right now, I can’t think of a reason. But you don’t have a lot of options. Besides, I’m the only one who can be impartial.”
The Arc of the Universe Page 5