The Children of Anthi: Anthi - Book One

by Deborah Chester

  A shadow blocked the light overhead once again, and Blaise looked up, startled. Another black-cloaked figure crouched by the split, cowled and masked like the first. This one spoke in a rapid, excited way, its voice a low rasp, and was answered by a sweep of a black-gloved hand extended palm up. The one outside vanished. With a grunt the creature beside Blaise began prodding Saunders, who moaned.

  Annoyed, Blaise started to speak, then compressed his lips and remained silent. He was not her protector.

  Taking advantage of the creature’s preoccupation with Saunders, Blaise found a hold on the base of the smashed navigations console with his free hand. He was trying to pull himself loose when more figures appeared and began climbing inside. They moved with more care than the first had shown. All were tall, lean, and quick of movement. That they were excited was clear to Blaise, but he wished he could tell whether he and Saunders were about to be welcomed or dissected.

  As if in answer, the first one drew a knife with a flash of green serrated blade and swung it down at Saunders.

  “No!” cried Blaise.

  But the blade struck only the tough cord of the harness webbing, parting the fabric as though it were paper. Saunders fell to the deck like a boulder, jolting the wreckage atop Blaise so that something ground a little deeper into his chest. He went cold, as though doused by icy water, and a tiny muscle in the side of his neck quivered in a brief spasm. The shattered chaos of the bridge blurred for a second, but he fought off the weakness, realizing with a spurt of alarm that they had lifted Saunders over their shoulders and were preparing to haul her out. And he was to be left behind, to die here in the wreckage either of exposure or of his injuries.

  “No!” he shouted, startling one masked figure into glancing back at him. “No, by Demos.” He panted as he struggled to regain his grip on the base of the console. “You will at least lift this muck off me…” The muscles in his neck corded, and sweat broke out along his temples as he strained to drag himself free. Spots danced across his eyes, and the pain in his chest rippled out in a widening circle. Vaguely he saw them boost Saunders’s heavy bulk out and over the side. They were leaving him; the last one was climbing out with a swing of his black cloak. Give up, pleaded something weak and exhausted within Blaise. But with a groan he strained his aching shoulder muscles once again, unwilling to accept defeat. Crimson stained his vision, and sweat poured into his eyes, stinging them; they were blinded now. He knew then that it was useless, but still he gave one last mighty jerk. Something seemed to snap in his chest, filling him with an agony so intense that he screamed. And the sound of that scream went on echoing as he spiraled down into a cold, frightening blackness.

  The deepest, most elemental rhythm of the chanting first stirred him. But it was not until later, when he grew aware of the vibrant off-key tone of the noise, that irritation sparked him back to consciousness. With a glimmer of alertness he forced open his eyes and focused long enough to gain a confused impression of a bleak, dimly lit room. He lay covered on a shelf in the wall. That was all he noticed before he slipped back into the comfort of darkness. From then on it was no longer the deep black void but rather a gray shadowy realm of half consciousness and half sleep, where now and then he was aware of hands shifting his body and voices that faded in and out. Sometimes the harsh sound of his own struggling breaths disturbed him, and other times he cried out sharply in fear, only to have strong hands grip him and a voice repeat words he could not understand over and over until he slipped away again.

  The chanting went on, a beating undercurrent of sound, disturbing him and gradually driving him up to the clarity of annoyance. Abruptly he opened his eyes, snarled an oath, and tried to bring up his hands to cover his ears.

  “So you really are going to live,” said Saunders’s flat voice.

  Blaise blinked for a moment, bringing the world into focus, and finally turned his head to look at her. He frowned. Her broad face was sunken under the flat cheekbones, and her torn, blackened coveralls hung loosely on her big frame. Even more startling was the sight of her flaming hair, which had grown out long enough to float, downy and fine, about her ears in wisps. His frown deepened, and he lifted his hand vaguely to his head.

  “We’ve been here awhile,” he said finally, not pleased to find his voice a rusty croak. He coughed and swallowed with difficulty. “How long—”

  “Wait.” Without gentleness she put her muscular arm under his shoulders to lift him and tilted the full contents of a metal cup ruthlessly down his throat. While he choked and sputtered and tried to regain his breath, grimacing over the cold greasy film left in his mouth, she set down the emptied cup with a bang and said, “We have been here approximately eleven standard days. This planet has a rapid rotation, and the normal sun rises and sets every nine hours.”

  She stopped speaking and gave him a flat, hard stare, her lips compressed in a rigid line. The off-key chanting rose and fell in a distant, steady cadence.

  Blaise looked about the room, which was more a cell hacked from stone, containing only the stone niche in which he lay and the crude stool on which Saunders sat. He looked around, puzzled. “Where is that din coming from?”

  A glimmer of a smile touched her colorless lips for an instant. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at a barred cavity in the wall, through which came an occasional puff of warmed air. “It goes on day and night,” she said. “You’ll get used to it.” After a pause she scowled and added viciously, “We’re caged in this hole and treated far worse than labor drones on an unprotected planet. At least the Institute’s detention center would have treated you humanely—”

  “Demos, Saunders, if you believe that, you’re a fool!” Angrily he started to throw off the rough blanket and get up, but weakness sapped him. Wincing, he let himself fall back, striving to ease the catch in his chest by breathing shallowly.

  “You’ve crushed something, probably your sternum,” she said matter-of-factly. “I don’t know why you haven’t bled to death already, but getting up could ram splintered bone into one of your lungs and finish you off.”

  He gasped for breath, choosing not to tell her that this might have already occurred. If he’d lived this long without treatment, then he would survive, and that was all that mattered. But to taunt her he said with a crooked smile, “You’d like to see the end of me, eh, Saunders?”

  “No!” She jumped to her feet, towering over him with a resentful glare. Then she looked away and muttered, “There are good rewards for bringing in renegade drones—”

  “So that’s all a life—my life—means to you, a promotion!” he broke in furiously, raising himself on one elbow. “Or maybe just a commendation. Well, thank you—”

  “Stop twisting everything to fit your own false interpretations!” she shouted, whirling on him with clenched fists. “Drones aren’t destroyed.”

  “No, just rehabilitated,” he retorted sarcastically. “Drones aren’t worth killing. Wipe clean their minds and retrain them. Dammit, Saunders, I’m not an android you can reprogram! I am a living being.” He slammed his fist down beside him. “And I’ll choose my own way of existence!”

  “What gives you the right?” she snapped back, her face scarlet. “The Institute gave you life, gave you education and training, gave you—”

  “Forget the Institute, Saunders,” he broke in, having no intention of listening to the same stupidity he had heard so many times before. “Forget that damned code of regulations! We are on this planet forever…unless they have space technology.” As he spoke he glanced around the bare stone cell again, noting the crude burning torch propped up at an angle in a bracket bolted to the floor. “And from appearances they do not have it. Listen to me!” He reached out and grabbed her muscular wrist, tightening his grip when she tried to wrench free. “Saunders,” he said intently, “survival is what concerns us now. Not the Institute and not the past. If you want my help you’ll cooperate. Understand?”

  “Your help,” she said harshly, her face twiste
d into something ugly and red. “Where do you get your arrogance, Omari? Right now you couldn’t lift a glass of saok. Do you really think I need your help?” She jerked free of his grasp, and he let her, watching her limp angrily to the opposite side of the cell. She shivered involuntarily and gave her arms a brisk rubbing, keeping her broad back turned to him.

  He sighed, curbing his own temper. It did no good to wish himself unhurt and free of her. As long as he was in shaky shape, she could be useful. Slowly, moving cautiously, he levered himself into a sitting position and shivered as the draft through the grillwork brushed his bare shoulders. The room had the pervading chill only stone can give off, the kind that sinks deep into the bone. He realized that beneath his thin cover he was naked. When he was sure he’d caught his breath, he twisted the blanket around himself in a sort of makeshift sarong. His hands, now that he took time to look at them, were skeleton thin and blue with cold, the taut veins stretching like cords up arms that were sticks of bone and thin muscle with a bit of skin stretched over them. He flexed a bicep experimentally, frowning at how tired that small movement left him. His ribs stuck out around a shrunken stomach like bulkheads without a hull, and he could see a spectacular radius of black-and-green bruises across his chest. He fingered the spot, which was still puffy and sore, and rubbed the knob where bone had knitted improperly.

  With a sigh he scratched irritably through his rough tangle of beard and glanced again at Saunders’s rigid back. “Is there anything more to eat around here?”

  She whirled as though stung and narrowed her eyes at the sight of him sitting on the niche with his legs dangling almost to the floor. She started to speak, then swallowed and shook her head. “Broth is all they bring for you.”

  Her voice was rough and unsteady, her eyes red-rimmed. He stared at her, boggled by the thought of Saunders in tears, but persisted: “What do they bring for you? And how often?”

  She shrugged. “Twice a day. Some broth and something else of an odd consistency. Like dried rubber. I’m fed in my own cell.”

  “Then you’re kept elsewhere? How far away? Is the cell like this?”

  “Smaller,” she said, her eyes betraying her resentment at answering questions—any questions—for him. “It’s on a different level…higher in the citadel, which I think is partly carved out of a mountain’s interior. The old part anyway, like here.” She gestured. “My cell is not this old, and it’s constructed of stone blocks. I have a window.” Her eyes met his briefly. “It’s perhaps the length of my arm and the width of my hand. Useless. It lets in bitter air and a thin crystalline substance like powder—”

  “Snow,” said Blaise absently, his thoughts busy twisting these facts about to find a use for them. He shivered again and thrust his hands under his thighs to warm them, knowing he could think better if he were not so ravenous. “What do these people look like? How do they behave?”

  She walked across the room to the heavily armored door, then to the grilled air duct from which the chanting could still be heard, eerie and off-key. “They are soldiers,” she said finally, placing one freckled hand on the bars.

  He waited for a moment, then frowned, unsure if she was just being difficult or if her powers of observation were really this dull. “That’s all?”

  She turned to him, red faced. “They are soldiers. They bring food twice a day at regular intervals. Once a day they bring me here to tend you. Some of them keep up that damned chant constantly. That’s all!”

  He ignored her rising tone. “They all wear masks?”

  “Yes!” she snapped. “I’ve never seen what they really look like.”

  “Have they tried to communicate with you? Have they shown curiosity about us?”

  “Less in me once they thought you might live.” Then she tightened her jaw, and her gray eyes glazed over with anger, and something else. “They meant to strip me as they did you. They would have…I did not permit them curiosity about me.”

  The wooden tone gave her away. Blaise looked at her, seeing through the fury and resentment. Beneath it all Saunders was very, very frightened, of him as much as of their captors. He could tell that by the way she kept looking at him indirectly like a cornered animal. He decided to ease up on her for the moment.

  “Don’t worry, Saunders,” he said evenly. “We’ll get out of this.”

  “Can that!” she snapped, kicking the stool. “I am an Institute officer. I do not need your false encouragement. I will not be patronized. My superior—”

  “You are hysterical.” His low voice cut through her bellow. And while she paused, furiously struggling for a retort, he went on, coldly. “Reciting your propaganda may work up your morale, Saunders, but all I want from you is a steady nerve when I make my move to get out of here. And if you can’t supply it, then you’re worth flin, Saunders, and nothing more, Institute trained or not.”

  Shaking, she clenched her big fists, drawing in an audible breath with ragged force. “You—”

  Something drew his attention away from the quarrel. He raised his hand to silence her. “Listen!”

  She frowned. “What?”

  He gestured again. Yes, the chanting had stopped, and the last echoes of it were fading within the air duct.

  “I thought you said it never stopped.”

  “It hasn’t before.”

  Uneasy, he edged himself onto his feet and swayed slightly, cursing his weakness. He needed clothing, a weapon, and more food.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, walking slowly over to the air duct and bending to peer into it. The dry, dusty stench of old bones wafted into his nostrils. He pulled back, grimacing. “See if you can work any of those bars free,” he said, grasping the edge of his blanket to keep it from slipping. “The duct is wide enough if we can just get into it.”

  She stood there, hands on hips, eyeing him with hostility. “And suppose we did crawl in? Suppose the duct narrows or brings us to a grillwork we can’t open?”

  “And suppose we rot here for the rest of our lives?” he retorted. “The bars are old, Saunders. Give them a try.”

  “While you do what?” she asked, lifting her square chin.

  “Sit down,” he replied with a gasp, as a sudden throbbing in his chest took him by surprise. He staggered across the room and dropped heavily onto the stool, which creaked beneath his weight. His head seemed suddenly light and cold.

  “Omari!” She hurried over to him with steps that jarred his hearing.

  Breathless and a bit dizzy, he said irritably, “I’m all right. I just need some food—” An odor stung his nose, and he raised his head. “What in Demos is that smell?”

  Her big hand grasped his shoulder. “What are you talking about? Have you fever?”

  The dizziness passed, and he looked up at her impatiently, his nostrils crinkling. “Don’t you smell it? It’s rank enough to topple a Rilgin.”

  She compressed her lips, looking oddly discomfited. “I don’t have a sense of smell, Omari. But…probably it’s me. They don’t give out Drybath—”

  “No, it’s not you,” he snapped, sneezing in a fruitless attempt to block off the odor, which intensified steadily. “It’s like something dead. Damn!” He clamped his hand over his nose and mouth, rigid against the putrid assault.

  Somewhere in the distance a hollow boom reverberated. He looked up abruptly, and Saunders’s fingers dug painfully into his shoulder.

  “They’re coming,” she whispered. “Early. Why?”

  Blaise waited tensely, his heart thudding against sore ribs. There was nothing that could be used as a weapon. He cursed softly and viciously beneath his breath.

  Saunders’s hand tightened into an iron claw. He shifted in an attempt to work free and opened his mouth to tell her to ease up. A clank and rattle outside the door froze him. He glanced once at Saunders and could see only a quick rise and fall of her small breasts and the rigid set of her jaw. Then the door was flung wide with a shriek of rusted hinges. It slammed with a boom into
the stone wall behind. A small trickle of dust and chipped stone clattered down onto the floor beside the torch, which guttered nearly to extinction in the draft of icy air now pouring in. Involuntarily Blaise shivered and hunched himself against that freezing blast, glaring defiance at the masked, black-cloaked figure standing in the doorway.

  For a moment it stood there staring at Blaise as though stunned, then pointed at him. “By’he, ah by’he n thul!”

  It sounded almost like an incantation, and something elemental in Blaise shivered in response. The stench suddenly intensified, wringing an exclamation of disgust from him, and the masked figure turned and fled, shouting.

  Blaise grinned without amusement. “Help me to my feet, Saunders.”

  She did not budge. “Stay where you are. If you could see your face—”

  “Help me up!” he said through his teeth, tired of having to argue over every order. “If that’s the sort of reaction we’re to expect, the stronger I look the better.”

  “That makes no sense,” she said. “And if you think we can just stroll out, you—”

  With a snarl of impatience he pushed himself up off the stool, gripping her arm and swaying until she sighed and gave him a steadying hand. “You do yourself no good with this pretense, Omari,” she said insistently. “You’re just squandering what strength you do have…”

  Her voice trailed off as the soldiers reappeared in the doorway, eleven strong this time. They stared at Blaise for a moment in daunting silence, then abruptly entered the cell, parting ranks to stand on both sides of the door, at attention, black-cloaked, silent, menacing. Another figure came from the shadows beyond with such suddenness that it seemed almost to materialize from nothing. It was covered from broad shoulder to foot in a cloak of midnight blue, upon which the torchlight made liquid sparks of color shimmer. Immensely tall, perhaps eight feet in height, it towered over even the soldiers. Like the rest it was cowled in a hood and wore a mask, but the light caught markings like silver runes upon the mask’s smooth surface, glinting there like little glimmers of life. Power and something more emanated from this figure. It lifted its gloved hand, long and supple, in a slight flick of a gesture, and the soldiers saluted by raising their fists into the air. Through the arch of these upflung arms the figure stepped forward with a gliding gracefulness.