Casting Shadows (The Passing of the Techno-Mages #1)

by Jeanne Cavelos

  He conjured a fireball, hurled it at the wall to Morden’s left. It exploded in flame.

  Morden flinched and kept walking.

  “Why don’t you kill me?” he yelled. He conjured another. It burst into flames to Morden’s right.

  Morden continued.

  “Why don’t you kill me?” Fire blazed across the ceiling above Morden’s head.

  Morden stopped turned his body silhouetted in flame. Though he spoke in a normal tone, the words carried down the empty passage to Galen.

  “Because you are already one of us.”

  With that, he turned and continued down the passage, eventually turning at the branch in the corridor, disappearing. The lights up and down the hall went out, leaving Galen with darkness and flames.

  The heat left him. He panted, suddenly feeling he had made a horrible error in attacking Morden.

  What had Morden meant?

  As the flames slowly died he turned back toward Isabelle. Candlelight flickered beneath the door to her room, the room in which she lay dying, and he was struck with the reality of what he had done. He slapped his hands to his mouth to muffle a cry. How could he live with his decision? How could he live, knowing that he could have saved her, and had not?

  He had to go back to her. He had to do something. He had to save her. Things could not end like this. He clenched his jaw, desperately calming himself. He must go in.

  He willed himself into movement. He opened the door, went to the bed, drew back the netting.

  Her eyes flew open. “Were you able to get through?” The last two words were a breathy exhalation. Her chest heaved with the effort of drawing air. Reluctantly, he used his sensors on her. Even in the short time he had been gone, the spike had reached C4.

  He sat at her side. “We can’t call out. We’re stuck on this miserable rock until the others come looking for us.” He drew the netting across the bed, cocooning them both inside. Perhaps it would keep out the burned smell from the hallway.

  The urge to do something was overwhelming. “I’m going to walk to the next settlement. With any luck they won’t have heard about the trouble here yet.” The mines had grown extensive before they’d been closed down. In studying this place, he had learned that some tunnels led as far as the next dome. Perhaps there he could find help.

  She argued with him, of course. She would die soon; they both knew that. The next settlement would take him hours to reach.

  He clung desperately to his control, not wanting to break in front of her. He had refused her only chance. Yet he continued to protest, as if there were still some way to save her.

  “I’m dying,” she said. “The wound is too deep. It’s my time.”

  “Stop saying that. I refuse to accept a universe that would choose to take you away from me now that we have found each other.”

  She raised her head again, her eyes straining upward for him. “How improbable was it that we should meet, and fall in love, and spend even this short time together, Galen? There is a design. And we are as much a part of it as my love for you.”

  He was part of no design. There was only randomness and chaos and despair.

  Her voice rose in intensity. “No one here can undo what has been done. Don’t leave me to die alone.”

  Why did he fight her, when he knew she spoke the truth? “I won’t,” Galen said. “I won’t.” He knelt, cradling her head in his arm, hoping that she would be reassured and lie back.

  “I’m cold. Hold my hand.”

  He pulled her limp hands apart, inserted his between, closed her slender fingers in his.

  Her neck remained tense, holding her head up ever so slightly. She raised her eyebrows. “Listen to me, Galen, my dearest love. You have made me happy, and proud, and I regret nothing. My only regret would be... if the fire that I see in your eyes now were to burn your soul to ash in the future. Your soul is too beautiful for that.” She ran out of breath, gasped. “You must learn, one day, to forgive God for His decisions.” Again, her words ran out of air. She closed her eyes, and her words were soft, breathy. “I’m sure it will greatly relieve Him.”

  Her breaths were shallow, rapid. Within her, the spike reached C3, where the last phrenic nerves branched from the spinal cord to the diaphragm. He willed her eyes to open, and they did. All her energy was focused in that fierce gaze, on her struggle to stay with him.

  “If there is a purpose, if there is a design, if there is a way, after I am gone, I will call to you—say your name—send you a message—and you will know I was right.” Again her eyes closed. “As usual.” Her lips pressed together in the slightest of smiles. Then she looked up at him, and he realized her gasping had stopped.

  He could see her failing, the intensity in her grey eyes fading. The words were a whisper of breath. “Kiss me good night.”

  He leaned down and kissed her soft, precious lips. Her final breath seeped into him, and he tried to tell himself that it was her soul entering him, that she would always be with him. But when he pulled away, her head drifted to the side, her eyes blank, her face slack, and he knew that she was gone. The spike had reached her brain.

  Her heart beat a short time more, then slowed stumbled, stopped. The hair faded from her head. All that she was, all that she would ever be, was gone. There would be no message.

  He cried out.

  Galen closed his eyes against the light. The candles had burned out long ago, and he had grown accustomed to the darkness. He had sat there, beside her, for hours, for days, for years, forever—it made no difference. There was nowhere to go. There was nothing to be done.

  Yet the light. And the breeze. He flicked his eyes open and closed. He sat on a bench, outside. His left hand was extended. Isabelle’s hand was not in it.

  He squinted his eyes open. The air smelled of the sea, and home. Beneath his feet was the mak, around him ranged Elric’s circle of stones. Elric stood a few feet away, watching him.

  Galen did not want to be pulled away. Galen did not want to see, do, or say anything ever again. He wanted to be dead, dead with Isabelle in that vast tomb of rock. He folded his hands in his lap, prepared to wait.

  “Isabelle is dead,” Elric deduced.

  Galen said nothing.

  Elric’s lips compressed into a thin straight line, and he was silent for a time. At last he spoke. “Her loss is a great tragedy. These are dark times. I am sorry, Galen, for all you have endured. I would have spared you. If I could.”

  Galen lowered his head. He didn’t want to hear. It comforted him more to be angry at Elric than to know the truth.

  Elric took a step closer. “Carvin is on Brensil 4. She has come to bring you and Isabelle home. But she cannot find you. I have searched for you since receiving your last message—almost three days now. You hid yourself well. It is time, now, to come out. Elizar and Razeel have gone.”

  Elric took another step forward, crouched down before Galen. “It is time to send Isabelle to the other side.”

  Galen met his gaze.

  “And I have much to tell you.”

  Galen waited.

  “And you have much to tell us. We must know what happened with Elizar and Razeel and the Shadows. Only you can tell us. Only then can we decide what is to be done.”

  Galen understood Elric’s words, in a distant, intellectual sense. Elizar and Razeel’s treachery must be exposed. The hand of the Shadows must be revealed. Wasn’t that what he had sworn to do? Yet he could not find the will within himself to move. His eyes drifted to the hands folded in his lap. They were limp, as hers had been.

  “I need you back.”

  The voice did not even sound like Elric’s. It was soft, weak. Galen looked at him. Elric’s lips hung open, uncertain, and the lines of disapproval between his eyebrows had vanished leaving a horrible vulnerability. Suddenly Galen found the will to move. He had to erase that expression from Elric’s face. That, above all.

  He stood.

  “Thank you,” Elric said and his voice, and the
stone circle, faded into silent blackness.

  Isabelle’s hand was back in his.

  Galen stroked the cold stiff fingers. It was not Isabelle. She was gone. She had left him.

  Galen conjured a dim globe of light within the cocoon of insect netting. Her face was slack, waxy. He released the hand pushed the arm down against her body. He yanked back the insect netting, stood on unfamiliar legs.

  He took a deep breath, released it. He picked up his staff, the scarf made by Isabelle. They hung uselessly in his hands. Then the platform was conjured beneath Isabelle and he was moving forward, the globe of light brightening, taking the lead. Isabelle followed like a shadow.

  And so he found himself emerging from the mine.

  Carvin rushed up to him. “Galen, it’s so good—” Her hands fell away from him as she saw Isabelle. “Oh. They told me, but I couldn’t...” She burst out sobbing.

  Galen assumed her ship was at the spaceport. He headed in that direction, Isabelle following.

  — chapter 16 —

  Anna rippled out of hyperspace into the blackness of Quadrant 37. She loved the feeling of the transition, leaping out of roiling red chaos and pushing through the shimmering membrane into vast black stillness. She surveyed her surroundings quickly, hungry for challenge.

  The Eye had told her there would be Narns here, Narns to be destroyed. She had waited long for this day, training, providing stealthy transport, gathering reconnaissance. She had listened eagerly as the Eye had told her the thrill of battle, the exhilarating chaos of conflict, the ecstasy of victory.

  She found three heavy cruisers and ten fighters in unimaginative formation around the outpost on the grey-blue planet below. A petal-shaped sensor array moved in geosynchronous orbit. It was irrelevant. Farther from the planet, a probe lurked in the darkness, watching.

  Puttering through a defensive patrol, one of the fighters crossed right into her path. Excitement gathered in her throat. The slow, clumsy ship barely registered her presence before she attacked. She shrieked out her war cry, the energy blasting from her mouth. The beam impaled the ship, killing it.

  Her sister shimmered into space beside her. She spun, crying out victory at her first kill. Together they fell upon the Narn ships, their mouths screaming destruction, their bodies cutting through the invigorating vacuum, swirling in a dizzying dance of death.

  Soon the Narn ships and the probe were in pieces, and Anna and her sister rejoiced in their power. The Eye showed Anna what she must do next: the outpost below, covered in flames, every building destroyed. Anna cried out to her sister and wheeled closer to the planet, and to the outpost on the grey continent below.

  She held her body in perfect control. Neurons fired in harmony. Cleansing and circulation were synchronized in sublime synergy. The complex, multileveled systems beat out a flawless march. The skin of the machine was her skin; its bones and blood, her bones and blood. She and the machine were one. She felt tireless, invulnerable.

  The outpost was far below, yet she could sense its buildings, its generators, its Narns—more than ten thousand of them. She calculated the most efficient targets within the widespread outpost for maximum destruction, coordinated her speed course. There must be no survivors.

  A weak energy beam shot past her from behind. One short-range fighter had survived. It was unworthy of her attention. She and her sister spread over the outpost like a shadow, shrieking in exultation as they delivered great balls of destruction. Their shrieks sang an oratorio of evolution through bloodshed. The balls plummeted through the atmosphere, and far below, structures exploded in great waves of annihilation.

  One of the fighter’s beams passed across her underside, its touch a brief, startling caress. Anna’s war shriek stilled. Her body, which she had almost forgotten, lay at the heart of the machine, cold, longing for touch. She wanted to turn back, to feel the beam’s caress again.

  The march of the machine’s beat stumbled and the machine seized her. It was so beautiful, so elegant. Perfect grace, perfect control, form and function integrated into the circuitry of the unbroken loop, the closed universe. All systems of the machine passed through her; she was its heart; she was its brain; she was the machine. She kept the neurons firing in harmony. She synchronized the cleansing and circulation in sublime synergy. She beat out a flawless march with the complex, multileveled systems. The skin of the machine was her skin; its bones and blood, her bones and blood. She and the machine were one: a great engine of chaos and destruction.

  She spun to face the fighter, gathering energy in her throat. Her shriek sliced it in two. More energy boiled up into her mouth, and she carved through the sensor array, slicing it into pieces. At last she felt satisfied.

  She and her sister crisscrossed the outpost. The destruction was pure, absolute. Not a single structure stood, not a single Narn lived. They danced among the nighttime clouds, and Anna reveled in the ecstasy of victory. The battle was a complete triumph, and it was but the first of many.

  For now the war had begun.

  On the cliff’s edge, against the fading light of the sunset, Isabelle burned. The blue, magical flames roiled with fierce intensity, roaring like a living beast, consuming all.

  He could see her no longer, though he knew she was there. She lay on a simple flat rock, in a robe of Carvin’s with sleeves too short. Her hands lay together, fingers intertwined. Her scalp was bare. Some wisps of hair had grown during the journey back, and Galen had scoured them from her with a gentle caress, knowing she would want it that way. She had lived for the Code, and she had died for it.

  Around her the mages stood like phantoms in the thin mist, their faces lit irregularly by the flames. The roar drowned out any sound, but Galen could see that a few, like Carvin, shook with tears. Most of them looked more afraid than anything else.

  Elric stood beside Galen, as he had at the deaths of Galen’s parents. Though they did not touch, Galen felt Elric’s presence like a wall of strength and necessity beside him. With Elric beside him, Galen would stand tall; Galen would continue.

  There were no naked slave men, no shower of red poppies from the sky. But those were Burell’s wishes, and Burell had received no funeral. Burell’s body had been taken by Elizar.

  Galen tried to lose himself in the hypnotizing movement of the flames, to think of nothing, to be nothing. When his parents had died, there had been two fires, side by side. Galen had always thought there should have been one, that they should have been burned together, their bodies joining at last as they crumbled to ash.

  The flames billowed high, filled with new energy as they reached the tech in Isabelle’s body. The brilliant fire curled downward, swirled in tight eddies around where her body must lay.

  He could walk into those flames, climb onto the rock and lay beside her. They could be joined in fire. Yet he knew that what lay on that rock was not Isabelle. There was no way to join with her now. She was gone.

  He found that the flames had died, and most of the mages had gone. He had at last been successful in losing himself, for a time. The blackness was lit only by scattered globes shrouded in mist. Elric stood beside him, as he had all night.

  Elric turned to him. “We must go to the Circle now. You must tell them what happened. Do you need to prepare?”

  Galen vaguely remembered Elric asking him that question this afternoon, as he and Carvin had readied Isabelle’s body. Yet his only thought had been to stay with Isabelle, to spend every moment with her until he brought her to rest on the stone. Then, at last, he had separated from her, going with Elric instead.

  Gradually Galen realized the point of Elric’s question. He looked down at himself. He wore the same “Mr. Wilcox” clothes he and Isabelle had joked about a million years ago. Her tan scarf was wrapped around his neck, specks of gray dirt now trapped within the weave. The brown turtleneck was streaked with gray as well, where he had brushed against the rock. His body was unwashed, his head and face unscoured. He should not want to appear before the Circl
e this way. Yet he had no energy to do otherwise.

  With the thought that they might find his appearance disrespectful, a small ember of his anger reawakened. If they had sent him and Isabelle on this task, they should see the results of it. “Let them see me as I am,” he said, and headed toward the tents. Elric followed.

  He passed a few mages—Alwyn, Fed, Gowen. They looked at him with expressions he did not want to read.

  In the shadow of the tent entrance, Fa crouched in her orange jumper, her fists jammed up beneath her chin. Her eyes sought him out, and she gave him a meek wave.

  Galen passed her in silence.

  Within the tents, he stood unmoving outside the chamber where the Circle met, waiting until they called for him. His mind was as blank as the white tent that surrounded him.

  At last he was summoned and he entered the great stone amphitheater to face those mages he had considered the best of them: Herazade, Blaylock, Kell, Ing-Radi, Elric. Yet his awe was tempered now by a shadow of doubt. Elizar had made many accusations against Kell and the Circle. Galen knew in his heart that they must be false, yet something within him clung stubbornly to those accusations. All techno-mages knew the best deceptions were those intertwined with truth. Would Elizar have created the entire story from falsehoods?

  Kell gazed down on him from above, his intense, dark eyes studying Galen. Galen remembered Kell’s wisdom in the challenge imposed on him, remembered Kell’s generosity in allowing him to become a mage, even after his transgression. During his leadership, Kell had turned the mages from a group who spoke the words of the Code into a group who actually believed and followed them. Galen could not believe Kell would hide his knowledge of the Shadows while he sent Galen and Isabelle to search for them. Galen could not believe that he would lead the mages astray.

  Kell used his carved ivory staff to push himself to his feet. He seemed fatigued yet still he carried his large frame with the bearing of a great leader. The short white fur cape over his robe added to his stature.