by Julie Ishaya
"Sounds unstable," Kieriell commented.
The kai merely looked at him, steady irritation emerging in the eyes. The kai turned, moved on, and the guard behind Kieriell once more took the opportunity to shove the captive.
Tempering himself, Kieriell watched the cavern life as it passed by. Then the view was lost to the dimness of another tunnel as he was herded on. This passage descended to a lift, which carried the group deeper beneath the crust, until it opened upon a transport bay in a cavern greater than the one above.
Kieriell looked out past the shuttle pad at another spread of village, but in the center his gaze stopped traveling. Reaching up to the ceiling of the cavern and through it stood a palace of stalagmites grown upwards and merging together into a natural monstrosity of spires and crags. Lights glistened out of the more rigid rock.
Kieriell was hurried aboard the shuttle, a simple craft with a windowed deck. He saw the lights of other shuttles moving over this level of village.
The shuttle droned toward a lower palace crag to be swallowed up by darkness. Lights began to bleed through the inkiness, blurry to the shuttle's filmy windows. When it settled down within a small bay, the guards unfastened Kieriell's shackles. He looked down at his hands, flexing his wrists, as he was guided down the ramp. He noticed the lined indentations in his wrists where the cuffs had been tight. Perhaps he was seen as a lesser threat this far beneath the crust, within the mouth of the palace.
Around the bay, he noticed other figures watching, not guards but Shiv clad in clothes to match those of the kai and Rai Jinn. Women and men all watched him curiously. A group of new attendants joined the kai and the guards.
Some of them gathered closer, gaping at him until he felt uncomfortable. Their wonder-stricken gasps told him they had never seen a Nexian this close, and then voices uttered soft objections as bodies were pushed aside, making way for one small Shiv to approach. Kieriell looked down at the gray-faced girl, noting how her eyes were so large and more golden than yellow. Her thick, straight hair was more silver than white and draped over one shoulder in an ornamental clasp that matched the rows of little jeweled rings and platelets decorating her ears and the contours of her cheekbones.
"Is that him?" she asked in Shiv, her tone eager, her voice almost shaking.
"Yes," the kai replied and added irritably, "you will have more time to look at him later, Siri."
Intrigued, Kieriell stared at her, finding her neither beautiful nor ugly with her petit, heart-shaped face. Her blue form-fitting dress described a slender, compact and androgynous figure. The other females were taller, clad in striking colors of reds and violets. They all kept whispering to each other, but this girl only stared. A look of confusion wavered along her brow, and her full mouth drew down with an unbecoming frown.
As Kieriell focused on this one—Siri—he felt for the first time that his eyes had shifted back to their normal state of blue sometime during his descent into the hive. Perhaps his curiosity had overridden his anger and fear. Staying calm became easier.
When he returned his attention to the kai and Rai Jinn, Kieriell found them leaning close, whispering in thicker Shiv, which he could not understand. Rai Jinn nodded and parted from the group.
"You'll pardon me for not making any introductions for now," the kai then said loud enough that others might hear him. He stepped closer to Kieriell and laid a hand on the Nexian's shoulder. "I know that you are tired after your trip. We have accommodations set aside for you." The kai then swept his fleshen hand gracefully about the bay. "Please forgive our lack of formality."
Kieriell glared. "What's this about?" he asked. When he felt the guard behind him nudge the base of his back with the rod of a laser staff, he turned and stared hard at the reflective surface of the Shiv's visor. He "felt his eyes tingling and knew the blue pigment was changing. "I've had enough of that," he hissed. "Shove me again, and I'll open your chest." It was the first violent threat he had ever made invoking his Nexian nature. He wished he could have said it shocked him, but it didn't. It was all he had left for any defense at all.
This drew the kai closer, flashing a quick, almost hidden glare while he pretended not to lose his temper. "I suggest you behave, prince," he whispered. "You will follow my lead before my courtiers, or else. . ."
"Or else what?" Kieriell demanded, then moments later he wished he had never opened his mouth even to breathe.
Adam clenched his hands together before him, squeezed hard, then pulled them apart into fists. His teeth ground, canines on the verge of lengthening. The anger he felt was more toward himself than the Shiv. He should have listened when his son voiced feelings of worry toward the negotiations. But he also should have insisted that Kieriell return to Valtaer no matter how much the boy objected.
I practically set him up myself, Adam thought as he tried not to pace while he waited in Asmodéus' office. His abrupt return to Dyss had been greeted with silent faces and downcast eyes. Not sad for him. No. It wasn't sadness for the loss of the prince that he saw. It was shock. The residents of Dyss were still digesting the knowledge that Kieriell was a transcendant. Or not. The most frustrating thing was that there was no certainty that he was, only that he could teleport, but the Shiv kai had just jumped to a huge conclusion and shared it with the entirety of Nex thus doubling the pressure on the Dyssian order.
In his own mind, Adam still listened to Kallian's report on finding the chamberlain's headless body in the escape shuttle—the body on the floor, the head set neatly in the pilot's seat facing the hatch so that it was the first thing the recovery team saw when they came aboard. Now the body was scheduled to be incinerated, the ashes scattered into space. No ceremony. No grief.
He ascended the dais up to the desk and banked his hands on the edge of the black stone. He hung his head, breathing in slowly and out, setting a pace, then the inner turmoil pulled at his heart again.
They have taken my son and they call him forfeit.
(By our code, Kieriell is forfeited.)
Adam straightened and turned, sending a stabbing glare at his father as Asmodéus came through the passage in a whisper of robes.
The tone of the sending was grim, but not hopeless. (The chamberlain might have been weak,) the emperor continued, (but we must keep faith in Kieriell. He knows the code. In a demonstration of his own will, he must find a way out himself.) Immediately he changed the subject as he hurried toward the inner chamber, motioning for Adam to follow. (Lord Nehmon is waiting on the link. The adversaries are having a time with this.)
(Yes,) Adam replied. (Forgive my lack of patience.)
They went into the chamber and the screen came alive, forming the adversary's face. Nehmon did not smile or even sneer as he looked down at the emperor. Under the circumstances, he should have been masked, but he was barefaced, his hood up to create a line of shade over his eyes, half of his nose and cheekbones. Age lines that had only recently begun to show branched out under his eyes, which glowed as red coals within the cavern of the hood. "My lord," he said first off, "I lend my sincerest sympathy for the loss of your grandson Prince Kieriell."
Asmodéus replied flatly, "I take no sympathy from you."
"Lord Father," Adam whispered with an edge of caution. The absence of bitter humor in Nehmon's face was not easy to miss. "He is not challenging."
"No, I'm not," Nehmon stated, speaking louder over Adam as if to hush him into a corner. "I should make a challenge," he added, "considering that our emperor has kept a valuable secret from his kingdom, and now he has let that secret slip away from him."
Asmodéus looked at the floor and nodded.
Nehmon's voice hardened. "You concealed a transcendant child from the rest of Nex and hoped there would be no price to pay. That was what you were guarding when you insisted that he was not ready for me. You deliberately protected him from my challenges."
"If you are going to chastise me—" Asmodéus replied.
"We don't even know if Kieriell is a transcendant," A
dam said through his teeth. He just had to get that much out, petty and grasping though it might sound. "He has the ability to teleport. He was training, working his way to discovering if he can traverse dimensions, but we don't even know yet if he can."
Nehmon laughed bitterly. The sound died into itself and he stared, quiet for a long time. "Does it really matter whether he is or isn't?"
To Adam the air in the room plummeted from comfortable to frigid, and he understood that no, it did not matter.
"Either way," Asmodéus said, "the Shiv just displayed how powerful they have become psionically while cleverly using our own code against us, not to mention my own court advisor betrayed me."
Adam didn't like hearing that the chamberlain was to blame. That was one issue that bit at him. If the chamberlain had been so easily manipulated, wouldn't the same have happened to the emperor had he attended the opening negotiations? Anyone could have been a target for blame. Anyone whom the Shiv knew Kieriell would trust. Even me, Adam thought.
"Yes, the chamberlain was at fault," Nehmon replied. "But had you shared the knowledge of Kieriell's ability with the rest of Nex, there might have been a greater effort to recover him before it was too late. To the rest of us, that little chase your fighters undertook appeared to be no more than a pattern exercise. You still hoped to the last to recover Kieriell and keep his ability a secret."
Asmodéus came to immediate defense. "Or you, Mantus, and MÆ'lech would have worked to lure him into a test designed for him to fail, just as you did Adam when he was younger."
They're just baiting each other, Adam thought. This is too personal.
"You can't deny that," Asmodéus continued. "You acted out of bitterness then, you would do it again."
The adversary sighed and gave a mannered gesture for silence. "It appears that we are both stymied by our own system. I did not contact you to bicker over the trials I've created before. We are faced with an ulterior trial. All of us."
No greater truth had an adversary ever spoken. Adam's core-being stirred as he wished for the omnipotence to reach out into Shiv space and reclaim his son. He visualized himself a galactic giant, clasping the dust spec of the Shiv world and squeezing. Crushing the life within like the soft insides of an insect. He almost startled when he caught his father's sideways glance and he realized he had just shared his silly imaginary notions in a subtle sending. He returned his attention to the screen.
"You should not try to save Kieriell Shyr'ahm," Nehmon stated evenly.
"No," Asmodéus agreed. "Right now all we can do is monitor Shiv territory and hope for a sign. They are keeping him from teleporting somehow, perhaps drugging him, or he's uncertain of moving from such a long distance across space." He pulled his shoulders back, cleared his throat. "You heard what the kai said. They wish to evolve, to tap the gridcode as a means of escaping their own deterioration."
"Replication may be possible," Nehmon added, "but consider the outcome. Consider what would happen when the Shiv are able to reach other worlds or dimensions with no more effort than a thought."
Adam's face heated, his fist clenching once more. His thoughts were still elsewhere. "He's just an experiment to them," he said under his breath.
"So tell me, how far has he developed since the manifestation of this. . . gift?" Nehmon asked.
Adam shrugged. "Horizontal teleportation only."
"Can he carry others with him?"
"Not that we know of."
"But there must be something more," Nehmon pressed gently.
"I know something of what lies within Kieriell," Asmodéus broke in, his tone dropping to a warning. The other two watched him absently walk a few steps away then turn back. He propped his arm up, elbow in palm, while he tapped a fingertip on his chin.
"Well?" Nehmon asked impatiently.
"Kieriell's link with the grid is bordered by a void, a place of expanded consciousness. It's part of the universal energy collective. We're all part of it, only our physical forms give us a sense of individual self. I saw it in him when he first came to Nex, when I evaluated him. It is why I am convinced that he is a transcendant."
Shaking his head doubtfully, Adam remembered what Kieriell had shared with him in the map room: the void, the thing which Kieriell had feared. "Kieriell gave me a glimpse of it," he said. "I thought it his means to vertical teleportation. And then there are his theories about the center of the grid map."
"Which are?" Nehmon tilted his head, true curiosity in his gaze.
"Kieriell sees our map system differently than the rest of us," Adam explained. "He believes there is a vortex at the center as opposed to our previously accepted simple coordinates. He believes that it either feeds the energy of the full grid, or it draws it in. He didn't get any further than that before. . ." He took another breath, voice faltering. "Before this happened." He crossed his arms to shield himself from a sudden chill touching at his chest. "Maybe the void and the vortex are the same thing, perceived through his natural connection to the grid."
Nehmon fingered his chin in thought. "Then Kieriell does have an adversarial challenge set before him after all," he said softly, a pleased smirk twitching in the corner of his mouth. His true nature was seeping back into play. "Until he tempts this void, our prince will go nowhere." He leaned forward, eyes closing in on the screen until they filled the view. The pupils narrowed to fine lines.
"He will remain a prisoner of the Shiv."
21
Kieriell rolled over on the bunk and raised a hand to his head, having, for the moment, little will to live. He focused on a rough patch of dirty wall in the stark chamber, tried not to think anything too strongly that it might send a spasm of nausea through him. "Gaad," he mumbled, "how many times can they drug me?" It was easier to think out loud.
He recalled, through the veil of intoxication, falling over himself, sputtering at his captors as they had stripped away his dirty clothes to bathe him. He flopped from side to side in their arms, laughing like an idiot until he tried, with partial success, to piss on one of the attendants. Finally lowered into the warm bath water, he had settled back, arms stretched along the lip of the pool, and then fell asleep. Or, he thought he had fallen asleep. Sometime thereafter the attendants managed to dry him off and get him dressed in a clean, white tunic. Then they put him in plain leggings and cuffed ankle boots. It was simple clothing, and a little small for his Nexian build, but comfortable enough.
After a long moment of deep breathing, he sat up on the bunk. A dull soreness on his temple reminded him that the inhibitor was still attached. Slowly he got to his feet and began to pace, working more feeling back into his arms and legs, and looked about. The chamber was reasonably sized, with a small rectangular passage barred by the reddish glow an energy field of some type.
He pushed his sleeves up to his elbows and ran his hands through his still-damp hair. He found his school medallion still tied around his neck on the black cord, and he fingered it, absently detecting the outline of the phoenix and its spread wings.
Approaching the doorway, he stared beyond it into a section of corridor. The field buzzed lowly. He applied three fingertips lightly, expecting a shock, only to be met with a stiffening tingle that trailed up his arm and even after he drew his hand away, the sensation of weakness continued as though the circulation to that arm had been cut off. That curiosity satisfied, he looked about the room again just as a low rumbling sounded, shaking the floor.
Kieriell remembered the kai's explanation of the hive's fusion well, and he thought back to his observations on the balcony above the upper colony. He had seen past the kai and Rai Jinn. He had seen the Shiv race void of the reputation he had come to accept on Nex. He could have gone on hating them as a whole but for that view from the balcony: mothers and fathers and babies, people trying to earn their keep. And every one of them looked so thin, so famished.
Another rumble sounded louder than before, and the movement beneath his feet prompted him to take an immediate seat back
on the bunk. He laid a hand to his temple and felt the hard shell of the inhibitor. His fingertips probed the edges of the shell where tiny neuro wires protruded out and then dug into his skin, through his skull. The skin was tender, a little swollen around the tendrils. When it stung, he jerked his hand away.
His bleak surroundings were nothing compared to this mental prison. Teleportation had become his closest means of travel; other psionics were his communication and defense. Without them there was only the shift which operated within the realm of animalistic instinct, and that he would save as a last resort only.
And then there was the existence of the void. He had not given it any consideration since his abduction. Unable to teleport, could he still perceive the void? He closed his eyes, let his mind go. Avoiding the place where his psionics originated, which would mean pain from the inhibitor, he found white light within, and the edge of a crystalline cliff that dropped into nothingness.
Yes, the void was still there, but muted to him, not so consuming or threatening. But there nonetheless. Somehow he was glad. As afraid of that place as he was, he found it a comfort now.
Another rumble shook the floor.
He opened his eyes, looked up at the ceiling to see bits of dust break away and drift downward. The field sputtered softly. He looked at the red glow and startled when he saw a figure on the other side. Large golden eyes stared back at him, curious, blinking. The blue dress was tinted violet by the overlapping field.
He remembered her from the bay, that small girl, so very thin and gray, silver-haired unlike the rest of her white-haired kind. He stepped closer. An innate desire to be bitter toward her simply because she was Shiv swelled up in him, but he choked it down. He started to ask who she was, when Rai Jinn and two guards appeared behind her; Rai Jinn towered over her by almost two heads as he looked through the field at the prisoner. Kieriell stepped back, glaring.