Falling prone onto the bridge didn’t save Teg’s back from the flames that shot through the arch, but he fared better than the two men whose screams rose above the roar of the blast furnace he’d made of the chamber.
Teg jumped to his feet as the screams drew closer. A pair of flame-wreathed figures; now fully materialized, judging by the smell of singed hair and burned meat, fled the inferno. They charged onto the bridge, threatening to run him down in their agony.
Instead of running, Teg sprang toward them and delivered a fierce kick that pushed the first flaming guardian into the one behind him. Both men lost their footing and toppled shrieking into the abyss like stars falling in the night.
Teg paused to stamp out his pants leg, which had caught fire from the guardian’s burning robe, before moving back toward the chamber. Ether fires burned out fast. There was no sign that a raging blaze had just swept through the room except for faint smoke reeking of charred wool and flesh.
Celwen lay on the platform with her feet near the arch. Her dark hair was splayed across her back like a cloak. Her strange clinging suit seemed to have spared her legs from the fire, and besides an ugly bruise under her left eye, she seemed unhurt.
Normally Teg wouldn’t have moved someone who’d been knocked unconscious in a fistfight. But leaving Celwen asleep on a small platform that clung to the wall of an infinitely deep shaft seemed like an even worse idea.
It was a good thing she didn’t weight much. Carrying her into the smoky chamber only evoked slight protests from Teg’s still mending muscles. The room’s hidden light source must have been destroyed in the fire, because it was pitch black except for small pools of light at the entrance and exit arches.
Teg carried Celwen to the middle of the chamber and laid her on the steps running the length of the room. The dark gave her a little extra cover, and she could still see there, anyway.
With Celwen resting as comfortably as possible, Teg returned to the platform. It evoked recent memories that made his whole body ache, but retracting the bridge would foil most pursuit.
Teg raised the lever on the control box, and the segmented span whirred as it withdrew from the opposite side. He made sure the bridge locked into place. Then he stepped back through the arch, paused just long enough to hear Celwen’s soft regular breathing, and crossed the darkened room.
21
The exit arch gave on an irregular space larger than the antechamber but cluttered with equipment. Metal plates inset with tracks partially covered the stone floor. Cables ran in parallel bundles along the tops of the walls out of a dark passage where unseen engines hummed. The cold air tasted of rust.
Teg saw no obvious hazards from the archway. He crept forward, taking care to walk on stone and not metal. Floodlights attached to the ceiling cast uneven cones of illumination. Randomly placed rock pillars rose to support the ceiling, and he took advantage of the concealment they offered.
A flurry of motion and a sound like someone dumping ball bearings onto the metal floor prompted Teg to duck behind a pillar. Pressing his burned back to the cold rock, he peered around the side to see the cause of the disturbance.
Two clusters of equipment stood along the far curve of a circular metal platform that all of the tracks and cables ran to. A shape—or a mass of shapes—flowed back and forth between machines with motions resembling a school of dark glossy fish.
The metal mass collected itself near the bank of hardware on the left. It bent over a long clear box that looked like a coffin filled with white light. The shadow of a hand resting against the inside of the box was the only sign that it was occupied.
Teg had no idea what the moving cluster of metal was, or whether it was hostile, friendly, or even intelligent at all. The best way to find out would be to move in for a closer look.
Stooping as low as he could, Teg emerged from hiding and stalked closer to the left cluster of machines. He carefully stepped around the conduits that snaked along the floor. The act recalled an old memory that made him smile despite himself.
A minecart stood against the platform, resting on its track. Crouching down behind it, Teg touched the side of the cart but reflexively withdrew his hand when he found the metal as cold as flagpole in winter.
The cart was filled with chunks of rock blacker than coal. Light only shone on half of the bin, and the rocks immersed in shadow gave off a faint blue glow.
Teg raised his eyes above the cart’s rim for a look at the platform. The metal mass hovering next to the glowing box shifted toward a machine on its left, and Teg saw a hideous face come into view. Jaundiced and gaunt, the thing looked like the personification of famine from one of his mother’s books.
Bony plates where lips should have been parted in a skull-like grin, and the face sank into the mass of what Teg now saw were thousands of small gears, surfacing on the other side a moment later.
Teg still didn’t know what the creature was, but it felt strangely familiar. He watched transfixed as the main mass sprouted an array of tendrils made of gears that grew into complex tools.
One tentacle formed a clamp that held an egg-sized piece of the black rock. Another gear tendril opened a valve on a ceramic tank with a thick black hose running from it. Meanwhile, a third pseudopod deftly operated the hose head to release a single drop of liquid onto the stone. A sour odor stung Teg’s nose as the droplet sizzled away, leaving the rock pristine.
The hose moved to a glass dish holding a few ounces of raw meat. The milky fluid poured in, dissolving the chunk of flesh like hot water poured on snow. The stench was incredible.
Teg knew that compound. It was a synthetic version of a chemical secreted by a rare species of snail. The Bifron shipwrights had used the stuff in the construction of the Exodus. He’d only seen one substance that was more corrosive.
Teg’s reminiscing was interrupted by a green-white light that suddenly blazed beyond the platform and a hum that rose above the machine sounds. He blinked to clear his vision and raised his head.
The light bathed the far passage, and two men strode out. One had short brown hair crowning a long face and a scrawny body robed in red silk as dark as Stranosi wine. The other wore sky blue robes and was bald except for an iron grey fringe of hair and a tidy beard.
Silk slippers whispered on steel as the men advanced along the walkway. Though their faces differed greatly, both had a look that Teg had come to loathe on flag officers from his navy days.
The silk-shod princes stepped onto the platform and faced the gear creature, their expressions impatient. It kept working, indifferent to their presence until the blue-robed dignitary spoke in a Mithgar accent that Teg had only heard from actors in historical dramas.
“Take heed, Smith. It is a poor guest who slights his patrons and protectors.”
The many arms continued their work while the sallow face slid toward the robed men.
“Speak, Magists.”
“Vilneus and I bring you a warning,” said the blue-robed Magist. “Enemies walk within our walls. They have slain our agents and sentries.”
Smith chuckled. “Tell me why I should care.”
“Both intruders pose a serious threat.” The Magist swept his blue-sleeved arm toward the passage where the green light had gone out. “In accord with our brothers, we have deemed it wise to provide you with more secure accommodations.”
Smith’s metal claw rummaged through strange instruments cluttering a steel table and came up with a rod made of polished lavender crystal. He pointed it at the shadowy figure in the box.
“Forget it. My work is at a crucial juncture!”
The bald, blue-robed Magist folded his arms. “All the more reason to safeguard what you have thus far accomplished. Much is at stake.”
A metallic grunt escaped Smith’s beak. “Merging a Stratum with a living soul via transessence and nexism is well-documented. However, the subject poses a number of obstacles, primarily his status as the projection of a soul that transcends our cosmos, and whose ma
terial proxy is infested by a native deity.”
Teg had almost forgotten about the Magist in the wine-colored robe. Now he noticed a distant look on Vilneus’ long face that he’d seen before on Celwen’s.
Thanks to another associate—the late Deim Cursorunda—Teg recognized Vilneus’ intricate hand motions as the start of a Working.
Uh-oh. They saw me.
Diving backwards as far as his legs could push him didn’t get Teg out of the blast radius when the mine cart exploded. Lying on the hard stone, he felt his ears pop, his guts shudder, and his bones rattle as a spray of ice cold gravel bit into his back.
It took a moment for Teg’s hearing to return. When it did, the first thing he heard was his own agonized groaning. The second was Smith and the Magists bickering.
“…could have damaged the prana tank!” Screeched Smith.
“I shaped the blast to avoid anything vital, of course,” someone—probably Vilneus—said in a slightly less archaic Mithgar accent. “Besides, Rathimus and I were in mental contact. He erected the proper defenses before I loosed the Working.”
With an effort Teg rolled over onto his back and winced as icy stone fragments sank deeper into his flesh. Black gravel mixed with twisted shards of the mine cart littered the floor around him. Up on the platform, Smith jabbed a claw at Vilneus.
“Keep being so rash, and you’ll learn the limits of your defenses. Don’t presume to know how the subject will respond if containment is breached!”
“Lord Shaiel will swiftly punish those who dare to confine his host,” a deep airy voice spoke from the direction of the prana tank.
Teg’s eyes darted toward the glowing box and saw what looked like a man-sized patch of warped space, except for a thin diagonal line dotted with puckered wounds on its side.
“Izlaril,” he grumbled.
Rending noises and electrical crackling echoed across the room as the white light inside the box went out. A severed power cable seemed to hang in midair, shedding a few final sparks that danced like fireflies.
The tank filled with sickly golden light. Gears rippled as Smith scuttled to the other side of the platform. His wide eyes with their cog-shaped irises stared from his corpselike face.
“Destroy it!” he screamed.
Rathimus threw his blue-sleeved arms forward, and the tank hurtled across the room to land upright against a stone pillar. A split second later Vilneus loosed a Working that shattered the box and the pillar behind it, causing a cave-in that buried a quarter of the room under tons of broken rock. Mortal terror overcame Teg’s pain, and he narrowly rolled clear of the cave-in.
Up on the platform, both Magists hurried through the motions of fashioning while Smith’s self-assembling tendrils ransacked the table. At last he found what he was after and held it to his greedy eye.
Teg recognized the large, many-faceted ruby in Smith’s grasp. A wave of revulsion dredged up unpleasant memories.
I’ve seen that gem before.
A rose-colored flash drew Teg’s attention back to the Magists, who’d raised their arms as if shielding themselves from a fire.
“The ether is disturbed,” Vilneus told Smith. “Quickly! Abandon your work and flee through the gate.”
The Magists turned to run, but Izlaril’s unsightly naked form appeared at the head of the walkway, cutting them off.
“Why would you flee from justice?” he asked, sounding genuinely baffled.
Vilneus thrust his hand toward Shaiel’s Blade in the accusing gesture that Factors used to release Workings. Izlaril’s arm blurred, and Vilneus’ seemed to vanish from the elbow down. The Magist didn’t scream until a moment after his amputated limb hit the steel plate with a limp slap. The severed end was blackened as if it had been cauterized.
No, Teg corrected himself. Frostbitten.
Izlaril stood rooted in place, his charred hand holding a dagger-like plane of black rock. The Magist’s blood blackened and flaked on its rough edge.
Rathimus gathered up his sky blue robes and bolted.
“Open the way to Kairos!” he begged Smith, who hadn’t moved from the table. “Shaiel’s minions will not harm his kin. Grant me sanctuary within your soul.”
Smith’s cadaverous face swiveled to leer at him. “Make it worth my while.”
Rathimus cast a harried look at his fellow Magist, who’d fallen to his knees, clutching his stump and wailing. He turned back to Smith and licked his lips.
“I know the nine forbidden Mysteries, where the prison of the Nahash lies, and how to open it. I know the lost oracles of the Burned Book and how to trade the fate of man for life everlasting.”
Smith sneered. “Do I look like a man to you? Not even forged ether can cut my life cord.”
“Not so!” Rathimus said, almost giddily. “One blade can sunder your tie to the Nexus. You know its name. Admit me to the intersection of all times, and I will deliver it into your hands.”
Smith’s eyes narrowed, but his face rose above the Magist’s head as his body formed itself into a rectangular frame. Through the gate Teg could see an endless expanse of clockwork towers as large as cities divided by deep canyons.
Rathimus spared a final glance at Izlaril. Shaiel’s Blade didn’t even shift his weight as the Magist darted toward Smith’s portal.
The mountains and valleys of gears vanished. Now the frame gave on a vast plain under black skies with only a line of sickly golden light to mark the horizon. Cold that Teg had only felt once poured through the gate, and the rock fragments burned like dry ice under his skin.
Xander appeared in the gateway, his face still hidden behind Vaun’s emotionless white mask. He threw his cloth-wrapped arms wide as he exited the gate, and the frame shattered in a golden flash. Frozen gears clattered to the floor like hailstones on a tin roof.
The blank white face regarded the sallow corpselike one that soundlessly worked its bony beak amid a pile of gears on the ground.
“Kairos belongs to Zadok, my willful brother,” Xander said in a voice colder than the stone chips embedded in Teg’s flesh. “He does not treat gently with trespassers. You are fortunate that the vas in your possession allowed me to preempt your crime.”
Rathimus’ eyes darted back and forth over the platform. They soon fixed themselves on something lying among the scattered gears, and in an instant the ruby was flying toward his outstretched hand.
At a slight motion of Xander’s forefinger, a torrent of gears, metal shards, and stone fragments swirled into the air. Rathimus’ scream cut off as the rasping torrent scoured away his flesh, bones, and fine robes, leaving only a pair of feet clad in silk slippers.
The ruby floated serenely in midair, new facets catching the light as it turned. It might have been his ears healing from the blast, but Teg thought he heard distant screams coming from the gem.
Xander strode forward and plucked the ruby from the air. The crystal rod flew from the ground into his outstretched left hand. He walked up behind Vilneus and paused.
“Do you remember me?” Vaun asked through Xander.
Vilneus only whimpered.
Xander stepped around to face the Magist. The impassive mask stared down at him.
“I wore another body when last we met—one that you warped and tortured. Worse, you marred my soul. It is only just that I deal with you in kind.”
Seeing Xander point the crystal rod at him loosened Vilneus’ tongue. The Magist said only one word, “No”, over and over; rising in volume each time.
Teg couldn’t tell if the rod had done anything, but Vilneus suddenly went quiet. Xander held the ruby out, and a streak of silver light shot into it from Vilneus’ heart. A golden glow shone through his wine-colored robe.
The light spread from Vilneus’ chest to his extremities, and he started folding in on himself with sharp cracking sounds like ice in the sun. He imploded with a final inhuman scream. The shivering ball of golden light that hovered over the spot where he’d been kneeling gave off a bone-numbing chill jus
t like the portal Xander had stepped through, and Teg’s pierced flesh ached.
“For a century I carried such a wound in my soul,” said Vaun. “It would be just to let you suffer as long. But your flawed designs led to my ascent, so I grant you mercy.”
Xander pressed the ruby to the forehead of Vaun’s mask. There was a glint of blood red light, and when he released the gem it stayed in place on the white porcelain. With a wave of Xander’s hand, the ball of yellow light died.
Teg was pretty sure that everyone had forgotten about him, so he cautiously rose onto one knee. His shredded flesh pained him, and the disturbing realization dawned that his wounds weren’t healing.
Xander’s free hand reached for Smith’s face, toward which streams of gears ran like columns of dark metallic ants. The face flew to Xander, who took hold of the gear tendrils trailing behind it as he marched across the platform.
“I will obtain transportation for the three of us.”
Izlaril stepped aside, clearing the way to the exit.
Xander paused beside the Blade. “Master Cross has outstayed his welcome, if not as long as the Shadow Caste. Tradition affords a god one chance to slay a mortal. I leave his execution to you.”
Izlaril bowed. His master continued down the path to the gate where the Magists had entered.
It’s nice to be remembered, Teg thought. He weighed his options and decided that following Xander was pointless with Izlaril in the way. So he stood on the debris-strewn ground and brandished his knife as Shaiel’s Blade advanced on him, stone dagger in hand.
“Tell me where my ship is, get Vaun’s mask off of my friend, and you can walk out of here,” said Teg.
Izlaril actually grinned. “Your threats are empty.”
“Mine? Possibly.” Teg pointed at Xander’s retreating back. “But that guy’s wife would upend the Strata to get him back, and you do not want to piss her off!”
“The female Zadokim offered little resistance.”
“She got distracted,” said Teg. “Trust me. We wouldn’t be talking if you’d had her full attention.”
The Secret Kings Page 18