“You’re right.” Teg pulled free and started toward the alley fronting the fence. “But now I know where my ship is. Besides, my friend’s counting on me. Come on.”
Teg jogged up to the fence and was pleased when Celwen followed. Shouts and the sound of sensible shoes rapidly striking wet pavement told him that the local spooks were inbound.
“Give me the jacket,” he told Celwen.
Removing the stolen garment exposed Celwen’s weird black wetsuit and grey skin, but Teg had a more urgent use for it than disguising her Night Gen identity. He threw the jacket over the bladed wire that crowned the fence before leaping up and grabbing hold of the top. He held on with one hand while helping Celwen up with the other, and both of them peered over the top.
The yawning pit on the other side took up a third of the block. The side facing the Strand was a sheer bank four stories high.
A dirt ramp directly below sloped down to a large concrete slab. Halfway between the foot of the ramp and the east wall, a forest of thick metal rods grew up from the slab. A gridwork of bars perpendicular to the uprights gave the appearance of a pit half-filled with cages.
Two smaller slabs rested upon the cages against the far wall, granting a cutaway view of uncompleted basements stacked atop each other. Darkness prevailed within.
A familiar crack echoed in the street behind him, warning Teg that at least one of the spooks had a zephyr. He and Celwen briefly exchanged glances; then vaulted over the fence.
Teg hit slick mud and rolled several feet before sitting up to finish descending the ramp in a controlled slide. The smells of wet sand, rust, and hot concrete washed by rain surrounded him.
Celwen had somehow managed to stay on her feet. She skidded to a stop at the base of the ramp.
The forest of cages rose up ahead, covered in gloom that deepened to pitch blackness under the unfinished slabs.
“I can’t see a thing in there,” said Teg.
Celwen offered her hand. “I can.”
Angry voices shouted from behind the fence. Teg grabbed hold of Celwen’s hand. She helped him regain his feet and led him into the dark maze of dripping metal.
The two of them ran straight ahead for some distance before Celwen veered off to the right. Teg could see nothing beyond arm’s length. The way back was lost behind a wall of overlapping metal lattices and rainy darkness.
“Does this ride ever stop?” he asked.
“I see a hiding place close by,” Celwen said in a harsh whisper. “Keep quiet until we reach it.”
After a few more twists and turns, Celwen brought them to a halt. Teg saw a concrete ledge jutting out from the wall that looked to be flush with the ground, but closer inspection revealed it as the lip of an overhang mostly covering a shallow pit. The babble of running water echoed from below.
“Good eyes,” said Teg. “I never would’ve seen this.”
Celwen got down on her stomach and rolled under the ledge. “The Night Tribe has spent millennia in the outer darkness,” she said softly. “We need little light to see. Are you coming, or will you wait up there to meet the spooks?”
Teg crouched down and felt along the floor under the lip. He soon found that it slanted downward in a moderately steep concrete-lined slope. Squeezing under the ledge took some effort, but once his legs cleared the rim he easily made the descent.
The area under the ledge was a long narrow dugout deep enough to stand in. Rain and thin light trickled in through a metal grate in the ceiling. Water ran through a channel in the center of the concrete floor and spilled down a circular drain.
Celwen sat against the far wall facing the entrance, hugging her black-clad knees to her chest as dark hair spilled down her shoulders. Her relatively lighter hands and face seemed to float inside a Gen-shaped shadow.
Teg slid down beside her, leaving a muddy streak on the wall. He hadn’t smoked in years, but the old urge sometimes came upon him. Digging through his pockets yielded a pack of matches, one of which he stuck between his teeth. The soft wood tasted faintly of peat moss.
“The water should hide our voices, so let’s talk.”
“Did you have a subject in mind?”
“A couple,” said Teg. “Questions, mostly.”
Celwen turned her ashen face toward him. “Ask, then.”
“Those blobs that looked like the spawn of a puffer fish and a bundle of power conduits—what were they?”
“Anomians,” Celwen spat. “They sought freedom through transessence but lost their souls. Now, if they can be said to live at all, it is only to absorb the qualities of other essences.”
Teg nodded. “Parasites. A bit extreme, but they’ve got kindred spirits everywhere. Sounds like you’ve dealt with them before.”
“My people fled into the dark and found them there waiting. After centuries of fighting the Guild, we spent centuries more driving back the Anomian threat. Now our pact with Shaiel brings us into alliance with our ancient foe.”
“Is that why you jumped ship?” asked Teg.
Celwen was silent for a long moment before she answered. “It was the final insult. There are other reasons. Even after we fight his war, I do not think Shaiel will let us live in peace.”
“Trust me,” said Teg. “That bastard won’t let anyone live, period.”
Celwen was about to speak, but Teg thought he heard a noise outside the dugout and hushed her.
He listened. There was only the gurgle of draining water and below that, the faint patter of rain on metal.
At length, Teg risked another question, but he spoke in a low whisper. “Can you find the men who were following us?”
Celwen seemed to look—not at the paved slope, but through it. After a minute or two she said, “No. It is as if they vanished. But they were right behind us when we went over the fence. They could not have left the range of my sight so quickly.”
“What if they were dead?”
Celwen’s frown was audible. “I was searching for men. A corpse is a different being.”
“Do you know the way to my ship?” asked Teg.
“I know where to find the gate that leads to your ship.”
Teg stood. “That’ll have to do. We need to head for the gate. You’re on point. Ready?”
“Wait,” said Celwen. She rose and clutched his arm. “I answered you; now answer me. What danger do we face?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure,” said Teg, “but I think it’s a guy named Izlaril. He’s Shaiel’s Blade.”
Fear and anger mingled on Celwen’s face. “The Blade is wielded by Shaiel’s Left Hand, Lykaon. If the weapon is anything like the wielder, we face a foe as deadly as he is hateful.”
“Sounds about right. Can you get a fix on him?”
Celwen’s eyes took on their eerie thousand-yard stare. Her brow furrowed.
“Did you see anything?’ asked Teg.
She faced him. “I thought I did, but something distorted my nexic vision—like water bending light.”
“He does that, too.” Teg removed the matchstick from his mouth. “We can’t see him, but he’ll have a hard time seeing us in the dark.”
“Unless his eyes are accustomed to it, like mine,” Celwen said.
Teg conceded with a grunt. Izlaril’s makers had bred him with a grab bag of weird, lethal tricks. Why couldn’t seeing in the dark be one of them?
“There are two possibilities if we go out there,” he said. “Either Shaiel’s Blade finds us, or we make it to the gate free and clear.”
Celwen nodded.
“Staying here also has two outcomes,” Teg went on. “The backup spooks that are already on their way find us, or Izlaril does. Either one is pretty much certain if we wait till morning.”
“Then let us go out there.” Celwen turned and started up the slope.
“Decisive,” Teg said as he climbed after her. “I like it.”
Back in the cage forest, Teg kept Celwen from dashing ahead. He pressed a finger to his lips, and she n
odded her assent.
The two of them crept along, led by Celwen’s acute natural and nexic sight. Now and then some sound of stone or metal rising above the rainfall gave her a start, but Teg nudged her to go on. If Izlaril was stalking them, they wouldn’t know it till he struck.
Teg tried to draw a mental map of the rambling path Celwen led him on, but he lost track in the damp steel labyrinth. The Gen ship’s false lightning played across the tops of dark clouds far above.
Celwen spun and tackled Teg to the ground behind a metal cage. Something hit the bars with a resounding clang, striking sparks at what had been the level of their necks.
Teg picked Celwen up and ran.
Walls of metal bars loomed out of the dark, and Teg veered around them at random. More than once he skidded on the slick concrete and banged into a steel cage. The pain was nothing compared to the dread of knowing that each jangling impact would lead his enemy closer.
At last, Celwen squirmed out of Teg’s arms and took his hand, pulling him back along the way they’d come and slightly to the right.
A couple of turns later, the path ahead vanished into total blackness. Teg looked up and saw the leading edge of a concrete slab—the cutaway floor of the mid-basement level above. Celwen led him into the building’s lowest depths, and blindness covered him like a shroud.
They turned one corner; then another, the sound of rain fading as their rapid breath echoed from close concrete walls. Celwen slowed and finally came to a stop.
Teg heard her slide down against a wall and sit back, panting. He followed suit. Running a hand over his wet head, he disentangled a broken chain segment from his hair.
So that’s what the bastard threw at us.
“We shouldn’t stick around here too long,” he said when the burning in his lungs subsided.
“I cannot…” Celwen began, her breath still heaving. “I cannot see well enough to guide our way.”
Teg’s heart sank. He’d planned to circle around and sneak out of the maze, hopefully losing Izlaril in the process. He even had an idea of how to do it.
A lot of buildings on this part of the Strand were connected by old service tunnels. The men who’d turned a dockside fish market into a thriving hub of tourism had dug them to transport money from the gambling houses, bring women to entertainers in the hotels, and move contraband everywhere—leaving the tourists and the local authorities none the wiser.
Teg was pretty sure that a little searching would turn up an entrance to one of the old tunnels. From there they could get into a hotel. Though not impregnable, a VIP suite was far more defensible than a hole in the ground—especially if he could get in touch with Astlin.
The thought raised troubling questions. Why hadn’t Astlin contacted him since she’d ditched him in the swamp? Where was she now? Was she in trouble?
“You felt it when I translated into the marsh,” Teg said to Celwen. “Can you feel other nexists, too?”
“Not nexists; uses and concentrations of nexic power.” Celwen’s breathing had almost returned to normal. “The more nexism is used, the easier it is to detect. For example, I can sense the shield surrounding this sphere at all times, even though it is in orbit.”
“Is that how you knew to hit the deck?”
“I was on guard against our enemy,” Celwen said. “I acted on reflex when something warped my vision again.”
“Good thing you did,” said Teg. “Do you sense anything odd around us now?”
“No, but that is not a guarantee of safety.”
“Nothing is.” Teg stood and fished another match from his pocket. With the lack of fear that comes from a lack of choices, he struck the match head against the wall.
Celwen gasped as the orange-yellow flame’s flickering glow pushed back the darkness. Even such a tiny light hurt Teg’s eyes at first, and he squinted until his vision adjusted.
“What have you done?” Celwen hissed. “You will surely attract our enemy!”
“Yeah,” said Teg. “We can’t run from him, so when he gets here I’ll kill him.”
“Are you sure that you can?”
Teg held her in a piercing stare. His voice became somber. “I’ve run the ether from Keth to Crote, hell to Mithgar, and I’ve seen every law broken but one—anybody can kill anybody else.”
The flame guttered and went out. A warm sulfur smell not unlike spent gunpowder filled Teg’s nostrils. He lit another match and, facing in the opposite direction, saw what looked like a pillar half-hidden around a corner.
Teg strode toward the cylindrical object, which did in fact turn out to be a pillar carved from black marble veined with white.
Celwen ran up behind him. “Why did you leave me in the dark all alone?”
“This shouldn’t be here.” Teg held the match toward the pillar, which was fashioned in a style that he recognized from Stranosi ruins on Mithgar.
Immediately to the left of the pillar was a narrow section of dark grey stone that might have been basalt. This structure turned out to be a jamb framing a door made from wood so white that Teg was sure it had been painted until he ran his fingers across it and felt the bare grain.
The white door turned out to be half of a set of double doors, its mate having been carved from a glossy wood darker than ebony. The black door was also flanked by a basalt jamb and a second pillar of white marble with black veins.
Teg lit a fresh match and bent to study the intricate carvings that covered the doors. The stern, half black and half white face of a man glowered where both sections met. He didn’t recognize the image, but a nagging feeling told him that he should. Twelve panels, six on each door, surrounded the face.
One panel featured a youth—the relief was detailed enough to show that he was a Gen—standing amid a besieged port. The only unrealistic element was a sun, many times larger than normal, filling the center of the sky. An arm was reaching down from the sun to hand the young Gen a bow. Though it appeared on the white door, the bow was jet black.
On another panel farther down, a regal man whose scholarly face fit the thick book in his hand descended from what looked like a giant opal lozenge. Teg would have thought it was an ether-runner if the scholar’s breastplate and the even more primitive dress of the awestruck crowd below him didn’t predate the dawn of ether travel.
Those barbarians look like ancient Kethans…
A panel on the black door drew Teg’s eye. His heart pounded when he saw the image of a huge rat. It stood upright like a man, raising its clawed hands to a flame rising from the floor of what looked like a crumbling tomb. Teg recognized the rat-thing. He also recognized its posture from his long dead mother’s illegal prayer meetings.
The rat was calling to something monstrous in the fire—something that answered.
Celwen’s shriek from the darkness to Teg’s left warned him that she’d wandered off. His match went out as he rushed toward the cry’s point of origin, so it wasn’t until he lit a new one that he saw the body.
Celwen was still as a rock. She stood looking down at a man in a dark blue suit who sat slumped against the wall. His skin was more ashen than hers, and his head lolled at an odd angle.
“One of the spooks who was tailing us,” said Teg. “Looks like Izlaril found him first.”
Celwen let out a ragged breath and bolted into the dark.
Teg heard a door bang open. He hurried toward the noise, taking care not to let the match go out, and saw the nearer door—the black one—standing open.
“That’s not how this works,” he called into the darkness beyond the door. “You really need to check before barging in.”
Teg considered subjecting both doors to the Formula’s full scrutiny, but with a stealth killing machine on the loose and his sole ally lost in an abandoned tunnel under enemy territory—though he wasn’t sure they were even on Temil anymore—Teg said “Screw it,” threw both doors wide open, and marched straight through the middle.
19
The air on the other
side was dry, cold, and uncomfortably still. The loudest sound was Teg’s own breathing.
In the dim light he saw a square hallway running out of sight to his right and left. The walls weren’t concrete but some kind of dark brown stone. As far as he could see the walls, floor, and ceiling were one continuous piece. That meant he was in a tunnel dug through solid rock, though there were no visible tool marks.
There was no telling how far the tunnel went or where either branch led, so Teg stood in place just past the threshold. Listening carefully, he heard the faint sound of breathing down the hall to his right.
Teg snuffed the match. The resulting darkness smothered his sight like a black velvet blindfold. Good. He couldn’t see in total darkness, but neither could anyone else. He snuck down the tunnel with one hand pressed to the rough stone wall, guided by the rhythmic whisper of soft breathing.
The deep, steady breaths grew louder until they suddenly rose to a frightened gasp. Teg heard panicked movements in the dark.
“It’s me,” he said. “Calm down.”
“Show me,” said a voice that was probably Celwen’s.
Teg rummaged in his pocket for another match—the second to last—and struck it against the stone. After walking in utter darkness, the pea-sized flame seemed impossibly bright.
Celwen sat curled up against the wall on his right. Her grey face and green eyes held a mixture of relief, fear, and shame.
“I ran,” she said.
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“I do not know why.”
“You panicked,” said Teg. “It happens under stress. I’ve known seasoned pros who kept their cool through day-long firefights; then snapped when somebody dropped a mess tray back at camp. No shame in it.”
“Teg, what are you really after?”
“I told you. They stole my ship.” At length, Teg sighed. “They also kidnapped the husband of an old friend—I guess sticking my neck out like this makes him my friend, too.”
He offered Celwen his free hand. “Two necks are better than one.”
Celwen studied his dirty callused hand before taking it in her soft slender grip. Teg pulled her up and set her on her feet.
The Secret Kings Page 16