And now, when I spoke, he could understand every word I said.
“Hello, Ghisanyo.”
He whipped his head towards me.
“Where… Where am I?” His voice was ragged and quiet.
“You are in our home, Ghisanyo.” I cleared my throat, then continued, “Well, to be more precise, you are underneath it.”
He struggled against the bonds that kept him in the chair as he tried to look over his shoulder at me. “What in the seven hells are you doing there in the dark? And where are my men?”
“You followed a floating demon to an island that has risen up from the bottom of the sea.” A small embellishment, for added effect. “How do you know you are not in one of your seven hells right now?”
“I’ve never heard of a demon who needed chains,” he said, lifting his hands and making a symbolic show of trying to free himself from the restraints we had improvised by welding spare cable together. “You are also much too polite,” he added. “I do not understand all of your magics, but you are a man. I am sure of it. A very large one, yes, but still a man.”
I laughed, then said, “You are either very brave, Ghisanyo, or very foolish.”
I walked around and stood in front of him, and as I did so, I held up my hand and released a light orb, letting it float up near the ceiling of the chamber, filling the room with lambent yellow light.
He smiled up at me, then winced with the pain. He lifted his bound hands to his cheek, where Neka had elbowed him, and touched the bruise with his fingers. He raised his eyebrows and squinted his eyes, and I could see that he was exploring the spot from the inside with his tongue.
He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again, a puzzled look on his face.
“What is it?”
“I thought you couldn’t speak my language,” he said.
“I’m a quick study.” I grinned at him.
He spat. “Another one of your magics.”
“You’re right, Ghisanyo. I have many powers.”
He sighed. “Call me Ghis, giant. We are long past formalities.”
“Why did you really come to this island, Ghis?”
“I am a curious man. What was your name again, tall one?”
“Oren.”
“Oren. What would you do if you saw a stone floating through the sky? You strike me as someone who would follow that stone wherever it led you.”
“You’re not wrong, Ghis. But you are no scholar or priest, searching for wisdom or enlightenment. You are a warrior. And every warrior I’ve ever met is looking for the advantage. A better technique. A stronger armor. A deadlier weapon.”
He gave no response to that.
“You want revenge on the Sagain. You hoped that you might find the instrument of that revenge here.”
Still he was silent.
“Your silence tells me enough, Ghis. So now it is left to me to warn you. This island is a sacred place. A place where violence is not permitted. Your arrival forced us to break that precept. You held two of the island’s children as your own captives, and you threatened to kill one of them. The island is angry. Now, it is left to me to decide what to do with you.”
“Careful, pausha,” came Neka’s voice in my ear. “You might be laying it on a little too thick.”
I smiled at her comment. I knew Ghis could not hear her, and I knew that my smile would unsettle him, however much he tried to hide it.
“Ah,” he said. “I see. Shall I have time to prepare my final prayers? Or are you sending me straight to the fiery gates?”
I shook my head. “You misunderstand, Ghis. Violence is not our way. But your arrival here has precipitated certain difficult decisions. It is time for you and your people to understand who we are and why we are really here. We are taking you home, Ghis.”
I touched a thin bracelet on my wrist. Ghis’s bonds slackened and fell from his hands, dropping down to the floor. Then I touched my hand to a certain spot on the wall, and the seam that had been invisible until that moment appeared, framing the doorway as it slid open.
He held his arms out in front of him, clenching and unclenching his fists, wriggling his fingers. He gave a grunt of satisfaction, then stood, slowly, testing his own weight on his legs. He stood on one leg, then the other, shaking each one out in turn. Then he whacked his palms on his thighs. “Gods, that feels good,” he said. “How long have I been tied up?”
“We brought you in this morning. It is almost evening-”
Before I could finish responding, he darted his hand up, snatched the light orb from the air, and hurled it at my head. I batted it aside. It crashed into the wall, shattering. The room went dark. I heard the sound of Ghis’s feet shuffling across the floor. I swung my arm towards the sound, but my hand whooshed through the air.
Ghis’s fist drove into the soft flesh on the side of my torso.
A spike of hot pain lanced up my side.
* * *
Reacher’s voice came into my ear. “Pausha, are you alright?”
I coughed, leaning against the wall, then said, “I am fine. Ghis caught me by surprise. The man moves like a serpent. But he has nowhere to go. Illuminate the hallways for me, will you?”
Dozens of orbs flared to life, casting away the shadows in the halls outside the room we had kept Ghis in.
“Do you have eyes on him, Reach?”
“Yes. He is near the underground river.”
“Good. Create a path for him. Turn off all of the lights except ones that will lead him towards the cliffside. If he tries to take an orb and use it as a torch, turn it off on him. I will meet him at the mouth.”
* * *
I waited in the shadows as he approached the river’s mouth. At first, he had tried to ignore the lights, pushing blindly forward into the darkness. But the underground corridors we’d made were like a maze, featureless walls turning and winding.
Without knowledge of these corridors, the only real landmark was the river. Reacher kept using the lights to tease Ghis back from the darkness, finally leading him here, to the river’s mouth. It poured water down the cliffside into the ocean at low tide, and swallowed it back in when the waves climbed up.
He walked to the edge and looked down at the wet boulders, the crashing waves, the white-feathered birds who had already begun making nests along the cliffs of our newly formed island. He shook his head in frustration, then turned back to look down the corridor from where he’d come. I could almost see him turning over the possibilities in his mind.
I stepped out of the shadows.
He dropped into a crouch, an animal coiled to attack.
I held up my hands, palms out, and said, “Ghis. Wait. You do not have to fight. We will not hurt you. I do not blame you for trying to escape. I would have done the same.”
He held his crouch. He glanced over his shoulder towards the mouth of the cave that led down to the rocks, then back at me.
“There is nowhere to run, Ghis.”
After another moment of consideration, he stood tall, his chest out, and looked down at his arms, pretending to examine his jerkin, using his hands to wipe imaginary dust off the sleeves.
“If you aren’t going to kill me,” he finally said, “does that mean I’ll be fed? I’m ravenous.”
* * *
“Gods,” Ghis said, “Do we have to ride back on this bloody raft? If you magi can make stones fly, why can’t we fly too?”
After much debate, we had agreed that Adjet and Xander could parley with the Kkadie while Neka and Cordar returned to the Sagain. Ghis knew of the island, and unless we held him prisoner or killed him, we had no choice but to attempt to stage an engagement with his people on our terms. We decided to take the initiative.
“Don’t be a fool,” Adjet said. “We already made the mistake of letting you see one of our divining stones floating through the air. What would we do if someone saw us flying?”
“They would say, ‘Look! The mighty Ghisanyo. He truly is the greatest warrior
, flying through the air with his beautiful consort.’” He gave a devilish grin to Adjet. “‘And his men at arms, and…’” Ghis gave Xander a puzzled look. “‘And some sort of strange, pale-eyed demon, who… who he must have captured and made to do his bidding!”
Ghis grinned at Adjet and Xander, pleased with himself.
Xander ignored the joke and kept loading supplies on to the raft.
Adjet snorted with laughter, then said, “Your consort? Do not presume anything of me, little Ghis. I could cut off your manhood as easily as I could look at you.”
“Gods, woman, you are magnificent. Your hair is like the desert sun, your skin is like golden nectar of the gods, and your words are like a whip that drives me forward.”
In the months that Neka and Cordar were among the Sagain, Adjet had perfected the adaptive skin tech that gave the paler members of our crew advanced protection against the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, and also helped them blend in more with the people of the land.
Xander’s freckled, peach skin had turned bronze, and Adjet’s alabaster white had morphed into a honeyed clay. She was no less striking for the change, and Ghis made no effort to hide his attraction to her.
I chuckled to myself and walked away from the group at the raft so I could check in with the others. “They are almost loaded up,” I said, touching my finger to my transponder. “For all our strength, Ghis shows no signs of playing meek. He’s going to make Adjet earn every inch of ground.”
Neka laughed on the other end of the line. “She’s not used to being matched,” she said. “It will be good for her, I think. Poor Xander, though. Separated from his brother, and left to play the straight man to those two.”
I laughed too. “I hadn’t even thought of that,” I said. “He’s up for it though. Xan is a hard person to ruffle.”
“He most certainly is.” She paused for a moment, then said, “We’ll give them a day to get ahead of us on the route towards the main Kkadie settlements, then Cordar and I will make our way back to the Sagain capital in Sur. Are you sure you are going to be okay, pausha? Just the three of you with Reacher? There’s so much work to do.”
“We will make do. This is the best decision.”
“I know. But that doesn’t make it easier. I should go finish preparations with Cordar.”
“Go, Neka,” I said. “We’ll talk tonight, before you depart.”
She nodded and left the beach, heading back towards the ship. I walked back towards the raft. Socha, the Kkadie warrior with the blind eye, was leaning on his sword, staring at me. As I approached, he bowed his head, averting his gaze.
“How’s it coming?” I said.
“We’re almost ready,” Xander said. “I just need to tie these supplies down. Then we can push off.”
“Here. Let me help.” Xander and I finished tying everything down. Then we lifted the front of the raft and dragged it through the sand down to the water.
Adjet leaned over to whisper something into Ghis’s ear. Then she put her hand on his back and shoved him towards the raft. He and the other men climbed on to the raft. Socha watched her as she walked over to me, his eye unblinking.
“What did you say to Ghis?” I asked Adjet.
“Oh, I told him he was clever and strong, but not half as clever and strong as me, and I warned him not to try anything foolish.”
I chuckled. “Still, you must be careful. Whatever else he is, he’s a survivor. He’s not too afraid to seize an opportunity when it presents itself.”
“Neither am I, Oren.” She looked into my eyes, and there was mischief there, but a fierceness too.
Xander walked up. “We’re ready,” he said.
We walked back down to the raft. The three of us hefted the raft and pushed it all the way into the water.
“May the spirit of the Scions travels with you,” I said, touching the interlocking rings of the Fellowship clasped to my cloak.
“And you as well, pausha,” Xander said.
“We’ll see you again, soon enough,” Adjet said.
I smiled, crossing my arms over my chest. “Not too soon, I hope.”
Adjet stuck her tongue out at me. Xander laughed.
They started rowing. The raft crested an incoming wave, and soon after, they caught the current that carried them away from the shore. As they drifted further out, I lifted my hand in farewell.
Everyone waved back. Everyone except Socha. He went on staring at me, tracking me with his seeing eye. I stood on the shore, looking back, until they were just a spot on the horizon.
21 The Pledge
It was late, and I was exhausted, but I could not sleep. Three days had passed in a blur of work since the others had left. As a strategy to adapt ourselves to the conditions of this world, Sid, Xayes, and I were no longer staying in the comfort of Reacher. We had carved out a provisional barracks, small rooms hollowed under the ground, with shafts up to the surface that let in air and light. The same rooms where we had held Ghis and his men prisoner.
I positioned my cot beneath the air shaft, so that I could look up through the cylinder to the stars. The narrow field of view amplified the light, casting each star in sharp relief as it passed above me, the planet turning endlessly through space.
More and more these days, I found my mind wandering back home. To that ice cold night when Transcendence had come to Verygone and my path was set, leading me here, thousands of light years away, to a cave in the ground, on a strange and beautiful world.
My parents were unreachable now. Even though they were bred from the same hardy, long-lived stock as me, I’d travelled across too many light years to ever get back to them. They would be dust before I ever again stood beneath the light of Beallus.
A pang of regret caught me. What if this was all a mistake? What if we disappeared on this planet just like Saiara and her team had? We still did not know what happened to them. Other than the cave drawings, there had been no trace.
All the possibilities Saiara had carried inside of her, and now she was gone. I would never see her again. I would never see my parents again. I was a madman. A fool.
I stood up and paced the room. “Damn it,” I said. I touched the transponder behind my ear. “Reacher, what are you doing?”
“Hello, pausha. All of my maintenance subroutines are at full operational capacity. If a mind like mine can be said to rest, then I am resting.”
“What do you think about, when you rest?”
“Can you clarify, pausha?”
“When everything is as it should be, as you described, what thoughts fill your mind?”
“I think, pausha, that I do not think in the same way that you do. I… I am. And when the world demands that I do, then I do.”
“I envy you, Reach. I want to sleep now. I’m exhausted. But my mind will not turn off. The ghosts of the past keep coming back to haunt me.”
“This is a common human problem, pausha. Would you like me to run you through one of the mindfulness protocols to help you let go of attachment and be at peace with your present existence?”
I laughed, then said, “When you put it like that, Reach, it makes me feel so ordinary. Just another protocol to run. Another problem to solve.”
“Is it bad to be ordinary?”
“No. I mean, it shouldn’t be. But my ego doesn’t like it.”
“Well, pausha, you are not going to subsume your ego in one night. I think we should work on it, together. What if, in the meantime, I gave you something to help you sleep?”
“Thank you, Reach. But right now, I need something to do. Something to occupy my mind.”
“Then come up to the ship. I suppose you are going to want to see this.”
* * *
“Look,” Reacher said. A holo map of all the tunnels we had carved through the island coalesced in front of me.
“The tunnels.”
“Yes,” Reacher said.
“Okay. Is there something specific I should be looking for?”
�
�How many human life forms do you count in the tunnel?” Three circular red lights bloomed inside the purple construct of the holo map. Two were static. Sid and Xayes, sleeping in their underground quarters. A third was moving.
“Eledar’s breath! Someone else is down there. Why didn’t you wake us?”
“I have been monitoring the situation. There is no immediate threat. And you all were sleeping. Or trying to.”
“Show me who it is.”
The holo map resolved, morphing into the figure that the moving red dot represented. I drew in a sharp breath. It was Socha, the warrior with the ravaged eye.
* * *
“You cannot hide down here forever, Socha.”
He froze, his back to me. Then he turned to face me, slow and cautious.
“Here,” I said, holding out my hand to him.
He came closer to me, like a scared dog hungry enough to risk attack, and peered at the small cluster of nanotubes in my palm.
“Take it,” I said, leaning forward, nodding and raising my eyebrows in an encouraging look.
He stepped away from me as I leaned in. I thought for a moment that he might turn and run, but then his fingers darted out and scooped the tube from my hand.
“Put it in your ear.” I mimed the motion, lifting my hand to my ear.
He shoved it into his ear, making a bit of a struggle with it, but, eventually, he had the tubes inside.
“What are you doing down here?” I asked.
He opened his eyes in shock.
“Socha. You can understand me, right?”
He nodded vigorously.
“Then tell me. Why are you here?”
“I was trying to find you,” he said in his native tongue. My own embedded transponder translated instantly.
“Did Ghis send you? Is he really still that foolish to think that he could catch me unawares? You have all seen the power of our magics.”
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