by Tara Janzen
A longer pause this time. “No, milord.”
“No,” York added, “and I know ‘em all, Morgan.”
“Dray, Captain—” the girl began.
Morgan cut her off with a hand over her mouth. “Spit it out,” he said, not having to work at a menacing tone. He wasn’t going to have her giving their position away to the desert wraiths.
He uncovered her mouth, and when she hesitated, he grabbed her wrist and held her hand out toward the last of the snakes sliding down the wall. Her eyes grew wider.
“Spit what out, milord?” Aja’s voice came over the tech-jaw again.
“It’s a particularly nasty way to die, geneth.” Morgan’s words were a promise.
She gave him a mutinous look, then spat the tech-jaw into the canal.
Great, he thought. At least one thing was going his way.
“She came in with the Night Watchers up in Racht,” he said to his men. “The captain’s name is Dray. Ever hear of him?”
“Aye.”
“Yes.”
Aja and York both spoke at once.
“A Sha-shakrieg legend—” York continued.
“A hero of the Deseillign Waste, milord,” Aja added.
And he’d passed the boundary into the Old Dominion with a girl, to take a bounty. Mayhaps the Night Watcher captain had the lock sequence. Morgan’s spirits lifted at the thought. The girl should prove adequate bait. All they needed was a setup. Once they reached Tri-opt Four, he would give her another tech-jaw and let her talk all she wanted. For now, they needed to get down into the canal.
“Can you crawl a wall?” he asked, releasing her wrist and unhitching a small hook and line from his belt.
“I could if I had the right equipment,” she said, pulling her arm back close to her body, a flash of fury in her eyes.
Forgiveness would be a while coming for his threat with the snake. He didn’t plan on being around long enough for her to give it, or long enough for her to realize his hand had been closer to the poisonous reptile than hers.
Hell, he was the one with the friggin’ death wish.
“Then I guess you’ll have to come with me.” He leaned away from her, swinging the hook in a gentle arc before lofting it sideways at the wall. It hit and stuck about three meters away from them, enough space to get them over the snake trail. The serpents were all past, but the route they’d taken through the cables would be “hot” for a sennight or more. The rats, ratlings, and kudges scared out of their holes by the crash would keep the snakes busy eating, giving him and the girl a clean getaway to the north.
“We’ll have to take her with us,” he said to Aja, giving the line a good pull. It held, and he locked it into place.
“Aye, milord.”
“Hold on,” he said, slipping his arm around Avallyn’s waist and drawing her close. Her jaw tightened, and he had to fight a grin. She’d started this mess, but she could damn well be sure he was going to finish it.
He looked over his shoulder, trying to guess the distance to the floor through the gloom. She’d estimated it at seven meters, and he could tell nothing more.
Knowing he had six meters of line to feed out, he bent his knees and pushed them off. Again they landed with a jolting degree of force, but he wasn’t able to take the brunt of it. The breath was knocked out of her along with a gasp of pain.
Ridiculously, he felt a pang of regret.
When she’d recovered, they made their descent, reaching the floor without further mishap. To the south, erratic flashes of blue light lit up the piece of junk, each one the strike of a sewer snake. A kudge screamed, the sound cutting through the stagnant air like a knife. Rats were running in every direction.
“Wait here,” he commanded, and started toward the pile of wrecked metal.
Twenty feet away from her, he felt a tug on his wrist and the tracking bracelet grew warm against his skin. Its lights began to cycle faster. At twenty-five feet, the tugging became a constant pressure and the lights shone brighter. At thirty feet, he was stopped cold. He tried to go forward, but the bracelet held him back. He turned to find her right where he’d left her, one hand on her hip, the other on her lasgun, her bracelet flashing as wildly as his.
“Move up,” he ordered. “I want to retrieve the zip line.”
“The way is clearer before us than behind us,” she said, holding her ground.
A daring chit, he thought, but no match for him. If he had to, he could drag her to the pile of metal. He started to do just that when she called out again.
“Palinor will give you a thousand ropes to replace the ones you’ve lost, dread lord.”
He froze where he stood. Dread lord, she’d called him, and in the same breath his memories of Sonnpur-Dzon came clearly to mind. What was it they’d called him? Bo si wong gi?
“Palinor?” He phrased the name as a question.
“My mother. The Northern Waste is her Order’s to rule, and they will give you all that you desire; I swear it. But we must be away.”
Another flash of electric blue light skittered a path up the piece of junk. Another kudge screamed, but the snakes weren’t what kept him from retrieving Aja’s zip line, nor was it the tracking bracelet. It was her, Avallyn Le Severn, and her “dread lord” plea.
He knew who ruled the Northern Waste, and no tracking bracelet on Earth was strong enough to drag him into those desolate dunes, into the lair of the White Ladies of Death, the Priestesses of the Bones.
He looked at their acolyte, her angel face and tattered black robe, her wild hair and desert wraith clothes, and he felt his blood run cold. ’Twas no bounty hunter who had captured him, but a messenger of Death itself.
Chapter 5
“Aye. Let’s be away,” Morgan said, ignoring the tightness in his gut and striding past her, more anxious than ever to be rid of the girl. Aja was a wizard with metal. Mayhaps he could break the tracking seal between the two bracelets, and they could forgo meeting with the desert wraiths.
Night Watchers were a sure sign of impending doom. Every tech-trash denizen of the Old Dominion knew as much. He was a fool to have considered dealing with them. They had saved him from the Third Guard only to deal him a more grievous blow. The Warmonger, for all his innumerable sadistic inclinations and moral faults, could be bought, and Morgan had his price—the Sonnpur-Dzon dragon.
The White Ladies were known only for dealing in death. Their temples were said to be built out of bones, the sun-bleached bones of every man who had ever gone against them.
Sweet Jesu. What had he done to gain their notice? He couldn’t remember offending any women of late, let alone any woman of priestess persuasion.
If Aja could break the lock sequence, they would leave the girl at Tri-opt Four. She would be safe enough there. He didn’t want any death-witch mother of the northern dunes after him for the demise of one of her daughters. Aja could tune one of his tech-jaws to her frequency. Avallyn Le Severn could then call her Night Watchers to her, and they could all go back to the desert where they belonged, and leave him where he belonged.
The thought soured his mood even more. Aye, that would be a good trick, if they could leave him where he belonged, a half-dozen or more millennia in the past.
He lengthened his strides, not worrying if she kept up or not. If she didn’t, he’d be the first to know. The bracelet would see to that.
He looked down at the band of metal she’d put on his arm. Thullein. Conjured shape, indeed. When he’d first emerged from his strange, timeless daze ten years ago, he’d looked the length and breadth of the earth for an explanation of what had happened to him. Unversed in science, he had searched for magic and found naught. To this day, the only two instances of magic he had ever seen had taken place thousands of years ago. One had been on a blank page in a red book, the other in a cave of the Canolbarth beneath Carn Merioneth. In the cave there had been a sorceress named Ceridwen ab Arawn, and her mage had been Dain Lavrans. Brave Ceri had traversed to the otherworld in a dazz
ling display of enchantments, working magic to right the wrongs of the past, and Dain had held the doorways open for her. Between the two of them, they had made the land tremble and had opened up the very ground before them, unleashing the great worms that had unexpectedly brought him to this sorry pass—running for his life down a junk-strewn canal with a chorus of screaming kudges in the background and a desert priestess in tow.
There had been one other bit of magic in all those years long past. The sprite, Llynya, and everyone of her kind had possessed daggers with crystal hilts that gave off light, mostly in varying shades of blue, white, green, and violet. He’d seen a cave called Lanbarrdein come alive with a trailing web of the crystal lights, and at the time had thought himself in the presence of magic.
Since then, he’d seen far more remarkable sights, though with far less effect; since then, he’d learned about the energy inherent in crystalline structures. He’d seen that energy used and exploited in ways no one of his time could have imagined. Just as no one of his time could have imagined what had happened to him.
Of late, since Sonnpur-Dzon, he’d thought of little else but Dain and Ceri, Llynya, Owain, Drew and Rhys, all of the family he’d held so dear, and his companions, all dead these many years, the very land where they’d lived long buried under the sand. It was a heartache to him—and so he drank.
And so he’d come to this.
The way opened up before them, and Morgan realized they were at the first intersection. The girl was still with him, barely a step behind.
“Turning east, Aja. How does it look up ahead?”
“Clear, milord. I’m picking up some disturbance, but it seems to be coming from above. You won’t be out from under the main dome until you pass the second point. From there it’s a straight shot to the east bays and—whoa, wait a—” Aja’s voice disappeared in a wave of static.
Morgan halted. The hairs on the nape of his neck rose. His skin tingled. Whirling, he reached for the girl and pulled her into his arms just as a roaring crack of lightning rent the sky with an explosion of light, sending hot spikes of energy into the square above and electrifying half the place in search of a grounding point.
A split second of pure terror froze them in place as the canal flashed white with the surge of power. Racht’s open ceiling lit up in stark relief against the night, then all the lights went out and only the faint illumination of table lanterns remained. Screams and the smell of burnt flesh and hot metal filled the air.
With any luck, the Third Guard had been at ground zero, but Morgan wasn’t going to count on it. The Warmonger’s troops were noted for their resiliency.
“That was close,” the girl whispered, her voice hoarse from fear.
“Aye.” He nodded, his own heart pounding. “Damn close.”
The first drops of rain fell into the square and sizzled, raising a cloud of steam that tumbled and rolled against the dome. The rain quickly turned into an ice-cold downpour, flooding the floor of the canal. It was enough to remind Morgan of what they were about. Ignoring a damn stupid reluctance to do so, he set her aside. There weren’t any overhangs to protect them, and even if there had been, he wouldn’t have wasted time trying to stay dry. They’d survived one of the sky’s mighty firebolts, fiercer and more deadly than any storm-born lightning of the past, but they were still in danger.
He put his hand on a Luma swatch adhered to his jacket and pressed, igniting the phosphorescent glow gel inside. Aja would have an h-beam to better light their way, but the Luma swatch was enough to keep them from falling into a hole or tripping over a cable.
“Come on,” he shouted over the growing deluge, pulling her along, not yet choosing to let go of her.
“I have a rover waiting in the east bays,” she shouted back, no doubt supposing herself to be helpful.
Morgan swore under his breath. Aja and the Night Watchers had obviously come to the same conclusion about the quickest way out of Racht. He wondered who else might be heading for the east bays and Tri-opt Four.
“Aja. We’ve got a problem. The Night Watchers left their rovers in the east bays. Find us an alternate route to Tri-opt Four.”
“Alternate route?” She balked, pulling him to a stop. “We’re going to the east bays, not Tri-opt Four.”
“No, we’re not.”
She jerked her hand free and drew her lasgun. “I’m giving the orders here. We’re going to the east bays.”
She made a fetching sight, standing in the pouring rain and brandishing her weapon, but Morgan wasn’t buying her threat.
“You didn’t band me and follow me down here just to shoot me.”
“Don’t count on it.” She pumped a charge into the lasgun’s barrel.
An interesting move, but Morgan remained unconvinced.
“Aja, report,” he said when no confirmation of his last message was forthcoming. He kept his eye on the woman, which was no hardship. Even soaking wet, she looked good. He wondered if she was a priestess yet, and the thought gave him a chill. A full-blown priestess just might shoot him.
The continued silence from his captain didn’t portend well.
“Aja,” he repeated. “York?”
“M—gan... we...”
“Aja, repeat.” Now was not the time to lose contact with the boy.
“—cut off... skraelpack in the east bays... retreat to—”
Morgan’s brow furrowed. “Retreat? Aja, come in.”
Static was his only answer.
Uttering a vile oath, he grabbed the woman and moved to the nearest wall, dragging her with him. Looking to either side, he was able to see little more than sheets of dark rain, but the enemy was out there.
“We’ve been cut off,” he told her, releasing his lasgun and slipping in a fresh charge pack. Water ran down the wall behind them and pooled around their boots.
“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”
“If you wanted to shoot me, I’d be dead. I saw how you moved in Racht, and I couldn’t beat you on a draw.” He looked up and caught her gaze, and saw as much truth as he needed. “You want me for something, and until you get it, I figure I’m safe.”
Her mouth tightened. “Actually, I think there’s been a mistake. I don’t think you’re at all what I want.” She seemed very sure of it, which for some reason annoyed Morgan.
“So?” He lifted the bracelet in question.
She gave an abrupt shake of her head. “No. I can’t release the locks.”
Or won’t, he thought, the maddening chit.
“Then we’re stuck with each other, and my priority is getting out of these canals in one piece. How about you?”
“The rovers in the east bays are the quickest way out.”
He locked in the charge. “The east bays are full of skraelings.”
“Skraelings?” she repeated. “Sticks!”
Morgan slanted her a bemused glance. Sticks?
“What about the wild boy?” she demanded. “I assume he’s the one giving you information.”
“Retreating, but I don’t know where. Too much static.”
She made a soft sound of disgust. “We could have used him. They are wily to a fault and good fighters.”
“Aye, well, it’s not like we lost a whole troop. There is just the one boy.”
“One is ofttimes enough,” she said, wiping the rain from her face. “In the north, we use them for scouts, like you do. They invariably pull the tide in our favor.”
Aja had done the same for him more times than Morgan could remember, but it irked him to have her refer to his captain as if he were interchangeable with some scout she’d used in the north, as if she knew more about him than Morgan did.
“The boy’s name is Aja, and there is only one like him in all the galaxy,” he said, clearly correcting her. He checked his comwatch and turned on its finder function to see if he could get a bead on Aja’s position. If the boy was retreating, Morgan wanted to know where he was going.
“One?” she scoffed. “
There are thousands of wild boys in the desert and out on the Sand Sea. They come to the temples to trade chrystaalt, great packs of them from every tribe.”
His headache, which the lightning strike must have scared out of him, returned with sudden intensity, a fierce throbbing in his forehead.
“Aja is an orphan, and not part of any tribal pack.” He forced himself to look in her direction without wincing, his voice taking a firmer tone. “I found him on the streets of the Old Dominion when he was but a child.”
The look she leveled at him called him a fool more plainly than if she’d used the word.
“More likely he found you, dread lord... or someone from his desert sept did.”
Morgan held her gaze for as long as he could, which was an embarrassingly brief moment, then looked back at his comwatch and tried a new setting. Her allegation discomfited him in a way he didn’t like to admit even to himself, in a way it wouldn’t have before Sonnpur-Dzon. It hadn’t exactly been the streets of the Old Dominion where Morgan had found Aja, but in Pan-shei, the west-side market, where the city ended and the desert began. The boy and he had both been covered in sand. The market talk had been about the great storm that had raged out on the dunes weeks earlier, the likes of which had not been seen for twenty years. That had been ten years ago, and Morgan had only the most fleeting memories of anything before that day, except for the memories of his deep past. Those were always painfully clear.
The finder screen red-lined, and he said something foul.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The storm has screwed up the finder.”
“Then let’s make for the rover,” she advised with an edge to her voice. “Even with skraelings in the bays, we have a better chance in a rover than on foot. We left them north of the fuel tanks. The skraelpack might not have even found them yet.”
He ignored her and would swear he could hear her grinding her teeth in frustration.
“You did well to survive in the desert,” she said, taking a different tack, “but whoever found you did you no service. The priestesses could have saved you much pain.”