by John Hook
Roland shrugged. “Could be that, as I suspected, some of the Dark Men over there began to grow a conscience. When Gerod failed to return, they might have allied themselves with the slaves against the demons and other Dark Men.”
“I think we need to find out.”
Izzy laughed. “Quentin, has anyone ever told you that you’re very distractible?”
“I can’t very well ask Blaise to come with me if we don’t know how bad the situation is here.”
“You came back to take more of my top people?” Roland feigned shock.
“Who would you expect me to take? And they’re my top people, actually.”
“I don’t think we are anyone’s people.” Blaise came up behind us with a grin.
I pointed to Roland. “He’s just jealous because I never ask him to come.”
“Oh no.” Roland shook his head. “Going with Quentin once was quite enough for me. I’ll take my chances here.”
I turned my attention back to the city across the lava flow. We could see nothing from here.
“We need to enter the city and find out what’s going on.”
“The only way in is the gate at the rear of that part of town. They sometimes have come out that way, but they otherwise keep it locked. We have scouts over there and they test it periodically.”
“We need to go in with a small party, but be able to move troops in if we need to.”
“You mean like the contingencies we drew up for using the bridge…” Roland was smirking.
“He blew up the bridge.”
“I was about to point that out.” Roland pointed to the open chasm where the bridge used to be.
“Well, technically, Izzy and Taka did.”
“And a nice job we did of it.”
“Always good to find pride in your work,” I added. “Especially in a place like this.”
“Bottom line,” Roland continued, “we don’t have a bridge.”
“Well, I think I have an idea about that.”
“Am I going to like this idea?” Roland looked at me.
“Do you ever like my ideas?”
“Some. But only after they are over and they actually managed to work.”
“There you go. Think of this as one of those.”
By this point I had spent extensive hours in training and learning to use the blue power. Lazitar might be right that it was related to the dreaming. While I didn’t fully understand the physics of it, I had come to view it as an ability to harmonize myself with energies in my surroundings and to harness those energies to make actual physical changes. Most often they were local changes, such as opening a door. Sometimes I could reach much further, as when I shut down a small pain farm. But Saripha and Azar were convinced that, by harmonizing these energies with a story, I could reshape worlds. That just made my head hurt. I’m not a reshaping-worlds kind of guy, as much as I would love to reshape this one.
When I first began to explore these powers, I created a helpful but silly metaphor from the cartoons I used to watch as a kid. I imagined a piece of blue chalk, which I used to draw simple objects in the air and they became real. What actually happened is that I had changed molecular compositions around me. Impurities and dust in the air collected, crystalized and formed into other elements. I suspected magic was involved as well, as I could, if I concentrated enough, bring large objects into my proximity when gravity should have prevented it. It did not work fast, so was not great as a potential weapon. It was a creative power, not a destructive one.
I probably would have preferred something that went boom, but right now this was going to come in handy if I pulled off what I wanted.
I stepped near the edge.
“Mind you, I’ve never tried doing something with this kind of scale.” I winked at Roland.
“You’re not going to tell me what you plan to do?”
“Trust me,” Izzy jumped in. “It’s better this way.”
I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. I pictured the bridge that had been here in my mind’s eye, concentrating, trying to make the remembered image as sharp and clear as it could be. Every detail had to be there. If there were gaps in my mental bridge, there would be possibly fatal gaps in the real bridge I was creating. Then I pictured myself tracing the mental picture I had of the bridge. I no longer needed the chalk. Blue light flowed from my fingertip and every detail of the bridge was limned in a blue glow. Focusing sharply in a way that Saripha had taught me, I opened my eyes but maintained the image. It now appeared almost as if it were a holographic projection spanning the break where the lava flowed below. Rocks and debris from the shattered bridge rose, as did other debris and elements in the air. Even lava swirled up and changed elements. The bridge that formed was a little oddly shaped compared to the one that had been here, as if built by engineers that weren’t entirely sure what they were doing, but it was solid and would hold weight.
Roland may not have been convinced on that last point.
“You expect us to walk across that?”
“It’s probably no riskier than anything else Quentin has asked you to do,” Izzy noted.
“You have a point there,” Roland muttered.
By now Kyo and others had joined us.
“Kyo, you should probably be with the scouting party. Blaise, ready the troops in case we need to bring a force into the city.”
“We’ll be ready. You sure that bridge holds weight?”
“As sure as I can be without testing it.” I smiled.
“Tally ho!” Blaise nodded.
I didn’t have a plan and no one asked. I took the lead, followed by Roland, Kyo, Izzy and two archers, both female.
Most of the buildings that had been near the bridge had not been occupied. They were a potential defense buffer between Zaccora and whatever the Dark Men called this half city that had once been part of Zaccora. We didn’t see anyone and hadn’t expected to. I took us down a zigzag of alleys that led to the open square where I had met Gerod before I knew he was Knightshade. As soon as we entered, women lined the square along the fronts of the buildings they poured out of. Some still had the glamours of sex slaves, except that they had a defiant look as if the symbols of oppression had been coopted to the revolution. Others just looked defiant and what might have been considered counterculture in my world. A lot of black and leather, although the leather was probably just part of the glamour and not actual animal hide. Many carried the clubs the Dark Men had wielded. A few had stone knives. Some even had bows and arrows, no doubt ones Izzy had helped make. One woman who appeared to carry herself as a leader walked out to us, a club hanging passively but firmly at her side.
She stepped right up to me, eyeing me carefully as well as the others. Her hair was white with black feathered through it. Her eyes were icy blue. If a malamute could take human form, it would have been her.
“Hello. I’m—” I started, but she cut right in.
“My name is Ylanna and I know who you are.” She eyed the others. “I know who all of you are. Why’re you here?”
“Clearly things have changed. We’d like to help you.”
“No thanks.”
“I don’t understand. We’ve restored the bridge. You are no longer trapped here.”
“We don’t need your bridge. We already freed ourselves.”
“Where are the Dark Men?” Roland asked.
Ylanna glared at him and then turned back to me.
“Confined to quarters,” Ylanna said and then smiled. “The lucky ones, anyway.”
I decided not to immediately pursue what that meant.
“What happened here?”
“Why do you care?”
“We’ve been trying—”
“You haven’t been trying anything. You marched through here a couple of times. Sure, you told the Dark Men to stop, but you simply used us for your own purposes and left us in the hands of the Dark Men.”
I couldn’t argue. I was sure that must be what it felt like to
them.
“I’d still like to know what happened.”
“I happened.”
The voice came from above. I knew what it had to be—a Shade. The surprise, however, was that the voice was female.
I turned. It was hard to tell much about the woman as she was dressed in black with some lighter black material wrapped around her head so that the area around her eyes was the only part of her that showed. It didn’t look Muslim or like anything I could distinctly connect to culture. The black cloth was wrapped just loosely enough to allow free movement while still showing the contours of her body. She was slender without being thin and I guessed she was muscular. Her eyes were a brilliant green, like polished stone, and may have had some unnatural illumination. The skin of that small part of her face that was showing certainly had some kind of light on it
What was most odd was what she floated on. I was sure she was a Shade, but she had no platform at her feet. Instead, she appeared to be standing on a billowing rectangle of flame. It wasn’t bright orange, more like a white saturated yellow mixture, but it looked like flame in all other aspects. She rode it like a magic carpet. I knew each of the talismans contained a different elemental energy. That would make her the fire element.
She seemed to be sizing me up as well. The fact that she didn’t launch into some kind of speech immediately also made her different from the other Shades.
“So you are Quentin Case,” she finally said.
“And you must be the new Shade.”
“My name is Zara.”
“Phew. I was worried you were going to call yourself the Black Widow or something else equally cornball.”
“You won’t find me like other Shades.”
“That would be refreshing, although I assume your mission is still to stop me, so the results won’t be much different.”
“I have been awarded this territory, but I don’t take orders from anyone.”
“So, I believe you were starting to answer my question about what happened here.”
“I came here and didn’t like what I saw.”
“Which was?”
“These humans, mostly women, being held captive and being provided as sex slaves for the gray demons.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I drove out the demons. Killed some. Let them kill some.”
“And the Dark Men?” Roland spoke up.
“Some of the Dark Men had begun to question what they were doing but couldn’t stand up to the gray demons. Other Dark Men are set in their ways and had continued to justify the ill treatment of the slaves. The latter were foolish enough to fight even with the gray demons gone.
“What happened to the Dark Men?” Roland pressed.
“The ones who fought were either killed or given to the people here, the former slaves, to be dealt with as they saw fit. Many more died, but only after a lot of pain.”
There was no reading her expression, but I saw smirks on some of the women’s faces. She had floated down to the ground in front of me and the flaming carpet was gone. I could see her eyes much more closely now. I felt almost the same kind of arousal I felt with Rox, which made me feel a little guilty. Then again, Rox and I were having a bit of trouble lately. Like Rox, they were the eyes of someone who had been through very dark experiences. I could see arousal at the mention of pain and pleasure and the link between them.
I wasn’t sure where this conversation was going and Zara wasn’t saying anything, which made me uneasy.
“So let’s reintegrate the city, bring all the people back together.”
“We have no interest in reunifying Zaccora.”
“I don’t understand.” I suspected I did, but I couldn’t think of anything cleverer to say.
“They were enslaved and then abandoned to the demons. They have taken back this part of the city and feel no trust of anyone else. You may keep Zaccora. This place here is our city now.”
“What do you want?”
“They want to be left alone. You may escort the Dark Men who ended up helping the slaves towards the end and during the revolt and take them back to Zaccora. The others will never leave here as anything other than protos.”
I saw Roland start to protest and waved him off. He wasn’t happy but later he would realize that any other answer would have put us into a fight. I turned back to Zara.
“That wasn’t exactly what I asked. I asked what you wanted.”
“Do you really want an answer to that?”
“Yes. I figure we are going to be in a fight at some point. I’d like to know what I’m up against.”
“We don’t have to fight. We want the same thing.”
“I somehow doubt that.”
“I want all former humans free of the pain farms and free of demons and the Angels.”
“And yet you serve them as a Shade. Who’s your Manitor?”
“They made me a Shade, but I serve no one. I have no Manitor.”
“So what do you plan on doing?”
Zara walked over towards the island at the center of the square.
“Come, Quentin, I want to show you something.”
I followed. There was a shallow, round pool of water in the center. She touched the edge and the water lit up with the white yellow flames.
“When I energize water like this, I can use it for scrying.”
“Scrying? Like telling the future.”
“No, more like distant viewing.”
I watched the water. It shimmered and then an image began to form. My breath caught and my chest tightened as I realized what I was seeing. It was the image of a pain farm, seen from above, as if standing on a mountain. It was much larger than anything I had ever seen. I couldn’t count all the towers, but I was sure it exceeded fifty.”
“Is that real?” I asked. I knew it probably was.
Zara looked back at me with those bright, compelling eyes. “There are many like this. This isn’t even the biggest.”
“What do you propose we do?”
“We destroy them. We have powers that can do that.”
“There are people in those towers. We have to free them first.”
“No!” It came out with greater emphasis than I would have expected, even alarm, as if I was crazy for even suggesting it. “That would take too long. We must stop the Angels now!”
“But all those people. They won’t turn into protos. I don’t know why, but they’ll just be… gone.”
Zara stepped close to me. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is we stop the Angels and free the dead who remain.”
“So I agree with our goal, but I’m going to have to say I strongly disagree with your method.”
“So you won’t join me?”
I studied her, trying to gauge what her reaction might be, but veiled as she was, she was a cipher. Except for those eyes that truly were on fire.
“No, I don’t think I will.”
Zara continued to stare at me for what felt like a long time. Then she walked away. A carpet of flame appeared at her feet once more and she rose up slowly, finally turning to face Ylanna, the seeming leader of the former slaves.
“Release the Dark Men who chose to help us and let them return to Zaccora with these.”
Then Zara turned and looked down on me.
“Leave. If you ever cross over into our city again, we will kill you all.”
“There you go. That’s the Shade dialog I have come to know and love.”
A little more of the silent treatment. Then, Zara said: “This is not ended.”
“No, I suspect it’s not. Get in line.”
They released a large group of Dark Men, many former friends of Roland, and we marched back to our side of the lava flow.
The last thing I did, when we were all back, was collapse the bridge again.
5.
Roland sat uneasily at the head of the table in what was essentially his war room. I wasn’t a big fan of conference rooms and meetings around a table, but for
the concrete type of tactician Roland was, it helped him focus. He had a map spread out on the table of Zaccora and the surrounding area. I had used a burned stick to trace a thick charcoal line around the other part of what had been Zaccora to show that it was no longer our territory. Roland was studying the map with a frown.
Around the table were the usual folks Roland consulted with: myself, Izzy, Blaise, Kyo, Cesare and Taka. Roland finally looked up and broke the silence.
“I’m trying to do a threat assessment and I’m still not entirely sure what just happened.”
“And you think I have answers for you?” I laughed.
“Actually, I was kind of hoping you would.”
“I’ll tell you what I think, but most of this is guesswork.”
“Your guesses tend to be pretty good.”
“Except when they’re wrong.”
“I don’t have anything better.” Roland sighed.
“The only thing I’m sure about is what I indicated on that map. The other side of the city no longer belongs to us. The former slaves, led by a new female Shade who calls herself Zara, want nothing to do with us.”
“Are we enemies then?”
“I don’t think so, for now at least. We aren’t friends, but we aren’t enemies. They seem more interested in being left alone for the moment.”
“You don’t think they will try to attack us?”
“Be hard to blame them for seeking revenge, but if nothing else they must know they’re too few. They would be no match for our forces and weapons.”
Roland turned this over in his mind. “They do have a Shade.”
“I agree, Zara is the wild card. I’m not really sure what her agenda is nor even how powerful she is. She acts as if she has somehow freed herself from the chain of command. She even seems to have a problem with the Angels.”
Kyo spoke up. “Is there any reason to believe her?”
“She’s a Shade, so no. Shades have always lied to us about their agendas. But I sense something different here.”
“Yeah, she’s female and you having trouble with your girlfriend.” Blaise grinned.
“All I could see was her eyes.”
“Sometimes that’s all you need, babe.”