by Julie Ishaya
The activity in the room increased and the transmission made, Adam moved close to the clear membranous wall that protected the chamber of the neural core. The pulsing organism sat in its nest of harnesses, the milky-white surface healthy, shining, and radiating immense power as it called to the other orders.
Adam thought only of Kieriell, his son's face in his mind beside that of Jenesaazi. Both of them so beautiful. His precious ones.
Then Adam tensed. So close, suddenly, did Kieriell feel. Adam knew it, inside himself, flashing through him like a wave of energy, and then with it came heat. Unbearable heat.
He thought his skin was on fire. The pain of it immobilized him, sent his head spinning as though he were upside down, and he felt disconnected from his own voice when it cried out, deep and agonized, rising to clash with the mutual cry of Asmodéus issuing from somewhere else in the room.
Adam went down on his knees. The dizziness and pain subsided in a greater burst of heat through his core-being. He felt as though he might soil his uniform, but as he leaned forward on one arm, sweat dripping from his reddened face, he breathed for control. A gurgle rose in his throat and he almost choked on it, but the officers had come to his side.
He groaned as his body cooled too fast for him to adjust, and he began to shiver. "Lord Father," he croaked, crawling a short distance though the closest officer tried to help him to his feet. Kallian pushed his way through to look down on the fallen prince, and the emperor followed, a hand raised to the side of his head.
Asmodéus knelt beside his son and took Adam's shoulders. "You felt that too," he whispered, his voice hoarse.
Adam blinked wildly to focus, to chase away plagued nerves. He still shook, the cold building in his heart and ramifying through the rest of his body. Dead cold. "K-Kieriell." He coughed out the name.
"Yes?" Asmodéus pulled his son closer, remaining strong under the weight of so many eyes.
"Prince Adam?" Kallian asked, kneeling beside the emperor and examining the prince's condition.
Adam's mouth fell open, but he couldn't get the words out. Couldn't say what he felt. Eyes watering, he looked from his father to the general, then he drew in breath, steadied it as best he could, then pushed it all out in one staggering command: "Contact the Shiv now and demand a report on Kieriell."
Siri still wept as she followed her father down the corridor away from the balcony over the fusion well. He had said nothing since they had watched Kieriell's body disappear. There had followed a flash of blue so brilliant that it sent a ring of light up the entire distance of the shaft, carrying with it a quaking that reached into the outer distances of the hive. All of the energy sconces in the corridors had gone dim, and the neural core had issued a psionic defense that struck out from its chamber for reasons as of yet unexplained.
That his death should display such brilliance. Siri's mind replayed the sight against her will. First his body, spearing head first down the very center of the shaft. After a certain distance it reduced to nothing but a black speck against the core radiations, then it was gone, swallowed away. It all seemed to be over until the flash.
The beauty of it, and her last glimpse of his face, tore her apart inside. She was certain that his eyes had shifted back to blue when he looked up at her, right before he let go.
(Siri, for the love of the race, be quiet!)
Her father's sending only made her wail louder. How could he be so cruel about it? She smeared the water away from her eyes only to have more flood over. "I'm trying to quit crying," she moaned insistently.
He turned upon her as they reached her chamber door and the neural link opened it in response to their presences. He still had Kieriell's medallion in his fist, and he held it up in front of her.
His teeth gritted with his fury, and the artificial hand quivered with the bronze medallion in its grip. "Did he tell you where he got it?"
She didn't see the point of this. "Yes," and with that came a fresh tirade of tears and sobbing.
He sighed impatiently, taking her shoulders. "Be quiet, girl!" he shouted in thicker Shiv. Then he pulled her close to him, one hand clasping her hair and forcing her head back.
She gasped an objection and shook in his arms, drew back her lips and bared her teeth.
(Siri,) his voice flooded her mind with calm, (look at me.)
In her sorrow, she was resistant to the first intrusion on her psyche, but when his consciousness invaded her again, she stared back blankly and surrendered.
(That's better,) his voice whispered, and she felt him smoothing hair back from her face, caressing her temple gently. (That's much better. I know my girl is hurt.)
A warm clog of mucus had formed in the back of her throat, rustling her breath when her lips parted. Only her father's eyes comforted her, only his voice in her mind. Everything else went away, and on the surface she forgot what she was crying about.
(Tell me what he said to you,) crooned. (Tell me about some of the things you two talked about.)
"Spring rain," she whispered weakly. "He told me about oceans, and. . . moonlight. . ."
He clutched her tighter, warming her shaken body. His gaze remained steady, his mind coaxing silently at her for a moment longer before he said, (What did he tell you about this medallion? I know it must have meant something to him.)
"His school honors," she whispered.
(Interesting. Did he say what school?)
She frowned, staggering over the name because it was a purely Nexian word which she had not become very familiar with. "Ari. . ." She worked her mouth around the sound to get it to come out right. "Ariahm."
"Ariahm," he echoed with surprise. He looked away, lost in thought. "Rai Jinn knows about this school." He eased his hold on her. "Yes, he learned of it when he first stung Kieriell." He looked past his daughter now, through her.
Siri shook her head and blinked, the drug of her father's influence clearing away. "What do you mean?" she sniffled. "Rai Jinn stung Kieriell? When?"
This drew his attention back to her. "Never mind that," he murmured. "There is another who carries the gridcode."
She could no longer deny the rage, weak though it was, kindling in her heart. "Father, I don't give a damn about the gridcode. Kieriell is dead because of it." She heard the tremor in her voice and hated it. Could she not speak just once without sounding pitiful?
"Do not speak to me that way, girl," he hissed. He stepped back and raised his cy-netic hand, the back of it aimed to sweep across her cheek.
Siri opened her mouth to plea forgiveness, then she watched with renewed tears as he stiffened, lowering his hand, and looked away. This change in him confused her; she didn't know whether to escape into her chamber or take his punishment. Trembling, she waited, but then she too felt the psionic touch from the neural system, issued from the walls and all of the protruding neural flesh. It was a summons.
Without a word the kai marched off through the corridor, stepping over some of the gooey vines of neural flesh that Kieriell had damaged when he came through in his shifted state.
Unwilling to quell her curiosity, Siri followed her father down to the laboratory to the most convenient com link. Most of the place remained in upheaval. Technicians scurried about making repairs, trying not to slip in pools of spilled balm. Above all they avoided their leader when he stepped up to the primary screen unit.
Siri lingered in the open passage, staring with her mouth agape at the slashed mess neural flesh leaking upon the floor. Splatters of blood and balm gleamed over console and vine. The extended lab doors were cleared and opened, spilling whiter light from within. She craned her head forward to hear a conversation already begun. She heard a voice speaking Shiv with a strange, more rugged accent that she recognized immediately as Nexian.
A communication screen installed in the wall, near the other screens which displayed the neural core, flickered with static. Facets in the walls caught the light and reflected blues and pale grays, and the knots of neural flesh became ridge
d with threads of shine.
Siri laid a hand across her mouth. She had seen the emperor of Nex in link transmissions before, and she had glimpsed other Nexians in the background. Their contact now alarmed her, shelled her skin in a cold chill that made the backs of her arms prickle.
"Tell me about my grandchild now, kai," Asmodéus said. His squared shoulders were draped over with locks from his crown mane. From her nook, Siri admired those black tresses, how they appeared to absorb into his cloak as the screen image pulled back, and she saw then that the crown prince of Nex was there too.
Kieriell's father, she thought. The face of Adam Asmirrius was still, the eyes reddened and glassy. They knew about Kieriell. Somehow, they knew.
"Kieriell is not your concern anymore," her father replied evenly.
"Oh, but you see, he is," the emperor replied. "A certain document concerning the code as it surrounds a transcendant has been discovered. All of Nex has accepted it. Your manipulation of my chamberlain and the abduction of my grandson will no longer be tolerated. As a transcendant, Kieriell is free of adversarial challenge and the code of strength verses will power. He has a right to an advocate who will stand in for him on these matters."
Siri filtered her gasps through the cracks in her fingers as layer by layer of truth fell into place with Kieriell's claim to having been abducted from Nex. She almost burst out crying again thinking that she might have listened and helped him sooner. The acrid taste of regret filled her mouth and she could not swallow it down.
The kai paused, a tightness in his lack of words, his steadiness betrayed. "No, that can't be," he murmured in thicker Shiv. Then he recovered, threw his head back arrogantly and sniffed. "Kieriell had a right," he corrected.
No, Siri thought. Please, Father, don't. . . He was too angry to think about what he said. His pride and lack of diplomacy threw up an affront to the Nexians. Those others witnessing it radiated unease, but the technicians tried only to mind their tasks.
"What do you mean, kai?" Adam Asmirrius spoke up, acid in his voice. "Had?" His eyes almost glowed red. The pallor of his skin shifted to a dull blue shade. This fascinated Siri while she still pleaded that none of this was really happening. Past the figure of Adam Asmirrius, she saw several Nexian officers also listening. Their grim countenance told her that they were in support of the emperor and the crown prince, and they wanted Kieriell back just as much.
The kai angled his head back arrogantly and the neural flesh crawled, restless as he was. "Kieriell Shyr'ahm is dead." The statement immediately stirred the Nexians. "He died by his own hand," the kai finished and sent out the command to silence the link. He spun away and hung his head, clearly aware of what he had just done. Slowly his eyes lifted and he looked at his daughter.
Just as the screen image warped in on itself and faded away, Siri glimpsed the shock-fury on the crown prince's face. She let her head fall back against the passage frame and stood numb, seeing her whole future, and the future of her people vanishing.
29
The void's light magnified with his descent until it broke up into a pattern of countless threads, all-connected, all-expanding. The lines were so condensed that from the exterior perspective they spread out into a light field. But as he sank into the field, feeling his body dissolve away, leaving only his will, he saw the webwork, and he saw the webs-within-webs-within-webs-within-webs. . .
When he plunged past the outer layer of tilted walls and the triangular chambers they formed, his consciousness spread out across the course of several connected lines like liquid spreading through liquid, molecule upon molecule bonding. Beneath him, a greater framework of the lines reached forever, but he could see the basic structure of its design, the six pointed star.
The grid.
The void was the grid. The whole grid, not just the basic lines as they were fragmented for depiction on maps. Such trivial things, maps; they grasped nothing, while now he saw it all, felt the waves of energy that coursed through the universal framework. Some of the lines pulsed, creating a celestial chorus of tones similar to those of pulsars and he understood why he had felt such an affiliation with stars. The tones rose and fell, and he realized as his light body moved along various lines that they toned with his passage, energized by his presence, though he was but one cell in the structure. He remained totally aware of himself as an isolated consciousness, a solitary entity, stabilized as long as he didn't venture out in too many directions, along too many lines at once. Should he do so, then he would become so ingrained with the grid that he would never leave it again; now, feeling its peace all around him, its absolute freedom, that possibility was not so frightening.
But echoes of his life beyond the structure reached him, pierced the hypnotic distraction of the light lines, the titans that held up the mutiverse. Intuition led him along a series of paths that struck new chords, intoning throughout the inner structure like soft chimes echoing, and he found a familiar place where he could finally rest.
Jarren Rashahn walked back and forth along the center quadrangle, overseeing the new students as they conducted their early morning exercises. This year's enrollment had brought in three potentials, two boys and a girl, their ages ranging from eleven to fourteen. The advanced students were on the other side of the quad, undergoing more intense practices, and the two honor students were sparring in the center yard with their shadow blades crackling in the morning chill.
Jarren counted aloud along with additional commands. "One, and hold. . . two, hold. . ." and he continued as his three charges all moved into a meditative pose with each count and held it for as long as he decided. One of the boys began to teeter forward on his toes while maintaining the difficult chair pose that required the legs to be bent with knees wide apart in a deep squat on the balls of the feet, while the arms were held out straight to aid balance. It was an awkward pose, but over the long course of development it promoted grace and tone. "I said hold," Jarren almost teased. "Hold it, Cam, hold it."
The eleven-year-old tipped forward and reflexively threw one foot out to catch himself.
"You didn't hold," Jarren resigned, and the boy giggled at his own faltering. Jarren found that humor always helped and it kept tensions low. He wiped at his mouth and paused to consider the next technique. "All right, lets go into the swan pose."
All three lined up anew and held their arms out, elbows bent slightly upward, feet together. Their crisp, tan uniforms were beginning to stain with sweat.
"Get some distance between you," he instructed, wiping moisture from his face and blinking when it leaked down into his jade eyes, stinging bitterly. "All right, bend your right leg up, grasp your foot, and lean into it. Take that foot up into the air behind your back. Hold. Good. Hold." He walked down the line, inspecting each one's posture, but as the sound of the shadow blades grew in the distance, his gaze passed up the last youth and lingered on the opponents.
Gehdren and Nalas had been training for professional competition for two years, ever since they had both learned to manifest shadow weapons. Their lean arms were exposed to the air, and their hair was matted to their faces, creating veins of blond and brown.
Gehdren swept Nalas' leg. Nalas parried the strike and locked his blade onto the other to force the angle up away from the ground. The tension between the two forces emitted a long-drawn, hissing scrape of a sound.
Jarren sighed. Nostalgia often caused him to lose his concentration. The school walls could seem such a prison when he considered how most of his friends had moved on. He had remained to work with Maven Ahrden, to advance his studies and secure a future as an instructor at the school. Making new friends, watching them advance and leave had been a sacrifice he was willing to make, and now that he was a guide—though far from becoming a full instructor or even a maven—he watched the youngsters under his care move up in discipline until they were assigned to a new guide.
He still watched the pretend melee, sensed the anger building. The boys had their blades locked again, and th
e tips seared down over the grass as they struggled. Wisps of steam curled into the air from the dewy turf. Then Gehdren went down, his balance pulled out from under him when Nalas hooked his leg.
Jarren turned his attention back to his group and found them all watching with excitement. He laid a hand to the side of his head and frowned to himself. Fine guide he was; he couldn't keep his group of only three focused on their routines. Looking up, he saw that the daystar was rapidly climbing, and the morning would be gone soon anyway. "I give," he muttered. "Everybody go get cleaned up. I'll see you at first repast."
Their voices chimed back hasty thanks at the dismissal and they scrambled for their dormitories. He straightened his uniform and tightened the tie which kept his sun-streaked hair out of his face, then he strode across the quad for his own apartments in a building to the south of the enclosure. As he started to round the far wall into the outer ward, he paused and glanced back, trying to grasp an estimate of when Dara's group would be finished. He saw that Maven Ahrden had come out onto the quad and now skirted Gehdren and Nalas to evaluate their progress.
Sensing the gaze on him, Ahrden turned stiffly toward Jarren, revealing his weathered face. He wore a headband of polished brass low over his brow to tame the white fuzz of his thinning hair. He raised a gaunt hand and waved at Jarren, who bowed his head in response.
Jarren turned for the archway in the dividing wall and in the quietude of the outer ward he slowed his pace to enjoy the walk along a hedge of blooming flowers. The air here was honey-rich, and the walkway led off toward the glass greenhouse where botanical studies were conducted. On the far side of the greenhouse, a shade tree towered over the one-story white-wall house where the student guides stayed. The branches dangled down to sweep the roof installed with rows of narrow skylights. A sea breeze carried over the outer wall and stirred rattling seedpods in the tree.
Heading for the house, Jarren began to consider putting together some sort of outing for his group. He might take the kids down to the market square for an early diner and then perhaps a visit to the shore to gaze at the wall and the distant Nexian siphoning rig under construction at sea. He had been longing for the shore, but his duties had kept him here. Now, however, the seasonal evaluations were almost over, and he could take a few breaks.