The guards were dispersing, some leading black-robed prisoners to the exits. Maybe they’ll get answers about the Life Coalition. From their midst, a figure shot out, running to Majus Origon’s group. Majus Ayama halted, then conferred with the others, throwing one arm back the way she came. Above them, crowded in the lower seats, the maji were scattering. The Drain was too strong, and their concentrated effort had failed. Good. They need to leave. I remember that much.
First the maji would leave. The premonition was hazy in his memory. Next, Majus Ayama jerked a hand in the air and Majus Cyrysi answered calmly, gesturing to where Sam was kneeling behind one of the great chairs. We have to take Sam with us. But he was telling me to rescue Inas and leave him. He had some strange plan, and I think the boy might actually be on to something. Sam waggled his head back and forth as he silently narrated the conversation.
He was up next. Shakily, he clutched the back of the chair as if it held him to the ground, used its weight to lever himself up. Without that and the remains of the effects from the Effature’s device, he’d be curled on the floor. So cold. His breath was like ice crystals. The fireplace in his house rose in his mind, and Aunt Martha dying in the cold. No. Can’t stop. Have to keep going. He had learned how to deal with new places and unexpected events in the Nether. He shivered, fingers and watch rattling on the back of the chair, then raised the other arm and waved.
The others were facing him, deciding, he knew. The maji in a little clump, Enos off to one side. He wanted to run to her, to go find Inas instead of this path, but that was death. There was only one way out.
They were too far away to hear, and Sam pointed one finger at an exit and jabbed at the air. “Go!” he shouted, and his breath misted out white in the cold. Get out of here. Leave. They would get his intent. His voice sounded dead, flat. Is that the Drain’s doing?
Majus Ayama turned to Majus Cyrysi, gesturing angrily, and he once again made calming gestures, then pointed to Sam. Sam pointed back, and outside the Dome. The former councilor threw up her hands, and gestured for the others to stand back. A white aura surrounded her, the majus bowed her head, and jerkily, a portal formed, ringed in her colors. It was not the most probable option from the mass of cause and effect he had experienced, though he couldn’t remember what other way she would have chosen. One by one, the others went through. Enos was second to last, and threw him a long look before she disappeared into the ring of blackness.
No, I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, Sam answered her unspoken question. I’m supposed to be here, though. You find the Life Coalition. Rescue Inas.
He gave Majus Ayama one last wave, and she shook her head, then entered her portal. It closed, like a ripple on a lake.
Sam looked up and swallowed. His watch was digging into his hand, clenched between his fingers and the chair. The last of the guards and maji were almost out, and he was the only one foolish enough to stand in the path of the Drain.
He stopped trying to control his anxiety, let it flood him. Start from the beginning. Slowly, he sank to the floor, breathing escalating, heart racing. His eyes raced around the Assembly, and the walls seemed to waver, though he knew that was his own fear, distorting things. Recognize what you see. Accept it. Move forward. He closed his eyes. Time breaths to seconds. He held the watch to his ear. Three breaths per beat. Two breaths. One. He forced a deep breath in, opened his eyes, pried his hand from the chair, and took a step forward, toward the Drain.
You think you can stop this? The voice was mocking.
Back again? Sam thought to it. Where did you go?
I went nowhere, the voice taunted. You will fall into oblivion if you stay.
I don’t think so. Sam listened for the Symphony of Communication, waded through the loftier phrases defining air, speech. Many were half-eaten by the Drain, limping discord instead of smooth harmony. Far underneath was that repeating, looping music, octaves lower than anything else in the Symphony. It would show him the truth. He pried it apart with his notes and pathways of cause and effect erupted again, far fewer choices now everyone was gone. Older lines displayed the chaos of the battle.
You have found that out by yourself. Clever. The voice was obviously a different personality. It had been speaking to him since he first arrived here. Sam didn’t know how he hadn’t realized the deception before now. Shame you are too late. Now this seed has been planted in what you call the Nether, it is unstoppable. I have carefully prepared its field, over thousands of cycles, culminating in my little group of acolytes.
Then you do work with the Life Coalition, Sam thought at the presence. He studied the possibilities, standing under the Drain, shivering. They were hard to see, ever shifting. The pathways also showed how long the Drain would take to kill him. Comforting. He could almost see the one way that didn’t end in failure…
Ha! The laugh made Sam’s mind throb. Work with them? I am their god! As will you be.
“What?” The lines dissolved. He shook his head, nearly fell. Watching those lines took away his notes, as if they poured into a chasm between raised cliff faces.
Yes! The voice was exuberant. You can be the god of these little people. You are not like those so-called maji, those degenerate copies.
I’m of the House of Communication, Sam thought.
You act as these maji taught you. Were there not times when you outstripped your mentor, left him wondering at the chords of the Grand Symphony you could change? See your true color!
You’re lying, Sam thought back.
Something happened, deep within the notes that made up his being, like two musical scores, base and treble clef, combined into one piece of music. They had been two things before. Sam gasped at the sting, though it wasn’t like losing notes.
It didn’t matter anyway. This time, he had remembered. In all the possibilities, there had been one opportunity left. He addressed the voice, wanting it to hear. Nothing can touch this Drain, but the maji’s ward fit around it. Could the Drain fit through a portal, if it was big enough?
The voice in his head was silent.
Got you.
He only had to make a portal big enough to fit half the Great Assembly through. Where would the other end be? He searched his memory. Dalhni? Too changed from his memory for a portal to work. Gloomlight? He couldn’t put a Drain there. Where else did he know so well he could place a portal? Where else was devoid of people?
Nowhere.
Searching fingers scooped and scoured his mind. Locations became confused, blurry.
What are you doing?
Ensuring my goals are not compromised.
Dalhni and Gloomlight grew fuzzy, indistinct, and the music that defined them faded. Other places disappeared from his memory, and Sam grasped at his notes, trying to get them back. The phantom fingers were far too strong.
Get out of my head!
No answer. Panic rose again, grasping at his chest, running up his spine. Sam shrunk to the floor—the crystal floor of the Nether below him. The whole Assembly was like one giant pane of never-ending glass. The voice was silent when my panic was in control. The voice was connected to the Drain, somehow. To stop one was to stop the other.
He looked down, into the repeating, reflecting, bottomless depths of the Nether and the tightness in his chest rose like a tide. The grasping fingers wavered and disappeared.
Sam curled on his side, on the freezing floor. The Drain was still growing, a malignant cancer hovering above his head. He dove into his anxiety, letting his fingers knot and his teeth clench, going the one place he never did. He was hyperventilating, colors flashing in his vision like a kaleidoscope. He relived the day his parents died.
* * *
Origon stepped into a cavern, dimly lit by a guttering torch, and instant warmth flooded through him. A shiver ran down his spine and his crest flared, then settled. He hoped Sam was getting clear of the Dome. It was lost, with the Drain so large. The young man had been quite certain about l
eaving him, that he had another trick to try. Maybe he also knew he would be a hindrance in this new environ. Yes, he could go with the other escaping maji. Even as strong as Sam was, surely he couldn’t take on the Drain by himself.
A dark-cloaked figure was just visible, down a corridor to his right. Origon let the Symphony of Communication permeate him, listening to the way the air moved. He added a few notes here and there and started after the figure.
“Ori, wait,” called Rilan as the portal closed behind her. “It might be a trap.”
He skidded to a halt. By his grandfather’s chinfeathers, of course it was a trap, how careless did she think he was? Too late now. The figure was gone. He turned to the others, Caroom wobbling on their feet, Hand Dancer bent-shouldered, and even Rilan, her jerkin all a mess and her hair coming out of her braid.
Enos stomped forward. “We have to go after them. They have Inas. I’m not losing both he and Sam today.” She looked a challenge into Rilan’s face. “We can’t let them get too far away.”
“I agree, there is to be no telling what the Life Coalition would do with another Aridori,” Origon said. The musty air of the cavern tickled his nose. “Yet as Rilan says, we will need to walk carefully.” He motioned them forward, into the dark tunnel connecting their dead-end room with the rest of the Life Coalition’s hiding place.
“These caverns are underneath Poler somewhere,” Rilan said. “Is anyone familiar with them?”
No one spoke. Origon hadn’t known there were caverns in the Nether at all, but didn’t say so. He had been to Poler once. The city was an oddity, like the Imperium in concept, but different. It was still almost a frontier town, though larger than Gloomlight. It was on the other side of the Nether from the Imperium. In retrospect, a perfect place for the Life Coalition.
The first tunnel they went through was deserted. It led into a “T,” and one direction ended in another small cavern. The other direction split, and they went up the right path. Origon scanned the tunnel, both with his eyes and listening to the Symphony, hoping to catch changes left by maji.
There were no physical traps, no lethal Systems to catch the unwary. The caverns were empty. Gradually their group loosened, and Hand Dancer, Rilan, and Enos scouted side rooms while he and Caroom kept to the main corridor.
It was maybe half a lightening before they found the chamber with Vethis, still in the tatters of his black cloak. He was tied to a rough chair, inside a chamber with a rock door half open in front. The System clinging to a palm-sized artifact in the rock wall buzzed, surrounded with brown, white, and blue.
“It is the same device they used on us,” Enos said. Her lip twisted as she looked at it.
“You’re turning it off?” Rilan questioned as Origon reached for the button.
He paused, then shrugged. “Would you like to go in before I shut it off?”
“Very much so.” He did not like the gleam in Rilan’s eye.
Hand Dancer signed. He cast a special flick of his fingers toward Origon, who understood it to mean the same as a significant look. They were definitely still in the Nether. Origon nodded back.
“Caroom, Enos, and I will guard the entrance. Be quick.”
* * *
They pushed the rock aside, and Rilan and Hand Dancer went in. The others were watching the corridor, but Ori was keeping an eye on Rilan. She would not kill the traitor. Probably. She was already disconcerted by leaving Sam in the Assembly. Yet Ori had been insistent his apprentice had some other trick to try. It was madness.
Rilan slapped Vethis, not softly. His head lolled onto the back of the chair, and he jerked awake. His right eye was swollen shut and it looked like someone had been plucking out his silly-looking moustache.
“Oh, thank all the gods you’re here,” he told her. She snorted. His affected lisp was gone. “Untie me before they come back.”
“Untie you?” Rilan asked. How stupid was he? “After you went traitor on the Council of the Maji?”
“I had no choice,” Vethis pleaded. A trickle of blood ran from his nose as he spoke. “They knew about me, about—things I had done, people I owe. They wanted me to spy for them.”
“Likely,” Rilan grunted. She had suspicions, but no proof, of some less than legal actions the slippery weasel was involved in. “Yet they trusted you enough to bring you to their meetings.”
“It was the first, I swear it,” Vethis said. He jerked his bound hands against the ropes. “Get me out before they come back. They, they desecrated my form—so they would have to kill me, you understand. They’re crazy Sathssn.”
“Anything—what do you want to know?” How had a cowardly wretch like Vethis succeeded her in the Council of the Maji?
“What do you know of worth?” she asked, half hoping he couldn’t think of an answer.
“Do you know where my brother is?” Enos called. Ori shushed her, but Rilan waved him off. The location of the Aridori was connected to the Life Coalition.
“It’s a valid question,” she told Vethis. “Answer that, and where they’ve gone, and I’ll take you to the Council myself. Let them do what they want with you.”
Vethis stared at Enos in confusion, the remains of his moustache sagging like a small, dead furry animal. “Her brother? How would I know—” Then he broke off and disgust washed over his face. “Oh. Oh, she’s another one? I thought they made a poor joke when they said they captured an Aridori, but then they brought the boy back. There are some loose? I thought they kept the vile thing contained.”
“Where is he?” Enos yelled. She was in the room now, and Vethis pressed back in the chair.
“They have him,” he said, “and welcome to him. Bad enough you’re still around.” He looked up at Rilan. “You’re so much better, aren’t you? You judge the Life Coalition, but you’re running around with the likes of her.”
“I can still leave you here,” Rilan warned, but Vethis only smiled back, a trace of blood oozing from a split lip. He knows he has something we can use. I’ll have to stop him talking about Enos. Somehow.
“I’m beginning to wonder which is better.” Vethis barked a laugh, and his stare took them all in. “You need me. I know other places the Life Coalition has been hiding, gathering adherents. They’re all over the ten homeworlds. You’ll never find a trace of them if you don’t take me with you.”
Rilan’s lips pinched so tight her face hurt. “Help me get him out of here,” she said, her voice flat.
* * *
Sam’s parents died on a vacation in Alaska. The icy beach floated in his mind with perfect clarity.
I said I didn’t want to go, playing in the sand and rocks. I pitched such a fuss, they kissed me, and sat me down to stack rocks into a castle. It was a deserted beach. What could be wrong with them walking just a little ways down the shore, to see if they could catch sight of whales on the ocean? It was what we had come to Alaska to do, but I only wanted to play with rocks, looking down at the ground as always. The cold of the rocks stung my hands, the salt stung my nose, but I was happy.
The angry storm front came down out of the sky like a tornado of ice. It was strangely small and concentrated, chewing through the beach like it was sugar.
I clung to the rocks, feeling a cold so much deeper than I had ever felt before. I thought the ocean was rising up to eat me, and called for Mom, for Dad, but they didn’t come to save me. I’d never experienced anything like this before, flung side to side among the sharp outcrops. I could barely see for the sand and salt, like sandpaper against my skin.
It felt like one moment and a whole year, then the storm disappeared as suddenly as it appeared, leaving an eye of disturb
ed clouds in the sky, staring down at me in judgment.
Rocks were everywhere, and the sea was filling in a new hole in the beach. I ran across the sand, stumbling and tripping over loose rocks, and fish and shells thrown from the ocean. A sea lion called, a rasping, coughing bark, from where it lay on a huge boulder, a bloody gash in its side. I was screaming, crying for anyone to save me.
My parents were gone. At first I thought they were only hiding from the storm, but then I found the heel of my mother’s shoe, sheared away as if cut with a knife. A little farther was half of the belt my father had put on that morning. I held it up, smelling the old leather, remembering it hanging in their closet. The spot where they disappeared seared itself into my mind, never to be forgotten, buried deep inside.
I called out to the empty beach for hours, shouting and yelling, but no one came. Only the gulls called back. The waves crashed on the rocks, and I clenched grit between my fingers and I searched. I found no other sign of my parents. It was hours before I wandered back to the fishing village, nearly dead from cold. They greeted me with suspicious stares when I told my story, crowds of people, twice my size, glaring down as if I had caused the storm that destroyed their beach. It was days until the police went away and I was sent to live with Aunt Martha.
On the floor of the Great Assembly, curled fetal, Sam created the dirge defining that place, a memory poised in time. He took every rock and pebble, the call of seagulls, the crash of waves, the salt and dirt and grit and skinned knees as he fell while running and shouting. Tears ran freely down his face as he melded the dirge to the Symphony of the rotunda, using his notes to patch minor chords and freeze sustained notes until the two were the same. It had already happened, but now he knew what made that terrible storm. In a way, he had known since he first arrived in the Nether.
The Seeds of Dissolution Page 44