The Dark Remains

by Mark Anthony

  Vani traced a finger over the map. “No, I don’t think so. They have made only a few makeshift alterations to the exterior for security. I do not believe they intend to stay there long. This base was established for a limited purpose, and when that is completed they will abandon it.”

  Grace glanced at Vani. What was the purpose of the Duratek base of operations? To open a gateway to Eldh? If so, then why were they holding Beltan?

  Maybe he was just a lucky accident, Grace. A bonus prize, something to play with while they figure out they can’t open the gate without Vani’s piece of the artifact.

  “All right,” Travis said, holding the silver coffeepot, his eyes squinty and his goatee pulled down in a frown. “Is everyone in this room a caffeine addict?”

  He tipped the pot over his cup. Nothing came out, earning him four guilty stares.

  Grace unfolded her stiff body from the chair. “I’ll call room service.”

  It was something vaguely useful she could do. She doubted she would be much help planning an assault on the secret base of a sinister multinational corporation. Trying to put her friends back together after they failed—that was her job.

  She dialed and connected to an earful of tinny music; they had put her on hold. Her thoughts drifted. If the Touch worked here on Earth, maybe she could help after all.…

  But it doesn’t, Grace. Not very well, at least. You’re not going to be able to sense where in the complex they’re holding Beltan until you’re a few feet away from him. It’s going to be up to Vani and the Seekers to find him.

  And then what? How were they going to get the artifact and the secret of its use from the Scirathi?

  You’ve seen her fight, Grace. She does things that don’t seem possible given the laws of physics. Vani said she was fated to bring you and Travis back to Eldh. Maybe fate really does exist.

  No. She couldn’t believe that; she was a scientist. There was no such thing as fate; there was no divine providence shaping their lives. If there was a god, then he was a blind idiot.

  But there are gods. You’ve seen one born, Grace.

  All right. So maybe she would take those old spiritual ideas out of the box she had shoved them into years ago, dust them off, and reexamine them. When she had time.

  But it wasn’t just the idea of gods that troubled her. Because if fate existed, then was it fate she had ended up at the Beckett-Strange Home for Children? No, it was better to believe in a random universe, to know that terrible things happened out of stupid luck and not because one somehow deserved them.

  Finally a human voice spoke in her ear. She requested the coffee, hung up, and returned to the others, who still pored over the maps.

  “Vani,” Farr said, “where in the complex have you noticed the largest concentration of security guards?”

  Vani pointed to the topmost drawing. “I believe they are holding him here. But the number of guards is not high. They must be relying on other means to secure the complex.”

  “Of course,” Travis said with a bitter laugh. “Their damned technology. That’s what they’re counting on to keep us out. They think they can do anything with their little gadgets.”

  Deirdre shot him a grave look. “Be careful what you speak, Travis. Duratek has developed many things even the Seekers are not aware of.”

  “But Travis is right on one account,” Farr said. “Duratek is arrogant, they always have been. And whatever their strength, their hubris is a weakness we can exploit to our advantage.”

  Grace opened her mouth but was interrupted by a sharp rapping on the door. All of them jumped—except for Vani. Grace let out a tight breath.

  “Room service,” she said, moving to the door. “I hope.”

  It was the coffee. She shut the door, locked it, and carried the tray back to the table.

  Deirdre traced a finger over one of the maps. “So you think both Beltan and the artifact are in this wing?”

  Vani nodded. “And I believe there is something else there as well.”

  “Something else?” Farr gave her a dark look. “What do you mean?”

  “I do not know,” Vani said. “But whatever it is, it is important to them. As important as the knight Beltan and the artifact.”

  Deirdre turned away, fidgeting with a silver ring on her right hand.

  “All right,” Grace said, since no one else seemed to be willing to ask the hard question. “So how are we supposed to actually get in there?”

  “I have an idea,” Farr said.

  As it turned out, Farr’s idea sounded a whole lot less like a plan than it did an intriguing laboratory experiment with a flock of assumptions attached.

  Grace gave Farr her best skeptical look. “So, do you have any certainty at all that any of this is going to work?”

  “It’s simple enough,” Farr said. “Deirdre and I will lead the police to believe you and Travis are located at an address in north Denver. Of course, Duratek will never trust the police to handle the job alone, so they’ll send a number of agents as well, leaving the complex more or less unguarded.”

  “Hopefully less,” Deirdre said. “It’s going to be up to Vani to get Grace and Travis through the perimeter, find Beltan, and retrieve the artifact.”

  Grace licked her lips. “You didn’t answer my question, Farr.”

  He met her eyes. “Nothing is ever certain, Grace Beckett.”

  “What of your Philosophers?” Vani said to Farr. “Is it not part of being a Seeker that you must swear not to directly interfere?”

  Travis let out a snort. “If that’s the case, I’d say they’ve broken their promise a time or two.”

  Farr bristled visibly, something Grace had never thought was actually possible until that moment.

  “We have a dispensation in this case,” he said.

  Something about Farr’s words bothered Grace. “So why make you go to all the trouble of swearing you’ll do something only to let you break the oath when it’s convenient?”

  Deirdre and Farr traded glances, but whatever the two thought, they did not voice it.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Travis said. “I don’t think I can save anyone smelling like this.”

  He disappeared into one room, and Deirdre and Hadrian started for the other—Deirdre to make a telephone call, and Farr to ready some equipment.

  Farr paused at the door. “You’ll be all right out here, Grace?”

  She glanced at Vani, who stood by the window. “I’ll be fine.”

  Farr gave a stiff nod, then followed Deirdre into the other room.

  A rustling. Vani sat on the sofa next to Grace. Grace had hardly seen her move across the room.

  “How do you do it?” she said. “Move like that, I mean.”

  Vani smiled. “I am sorry, Grace Beckett. I did not mean to startle you. I fear I still forget sometimes that I am no longer within the walls of Golgoru. There, everyone is expected to move in this fashion.”

  Grace leaned closer to the other woman. Vani was dangerous; of that there could be no doubt. Her arms were lean and muscled, and her deep-set eyes and shaggy black hair imparted a fierceness to her aspect. Yet there was a softness to her lips, her visage, that the other things could not quite conceal.

  “Golgoru?” Grace said. “What’s that?”

  “A fortress high in the Mountains of the Shroud. It is where I received my training. Along with these.” She gestured to the tattoos on her arms and neck. “And these.”

  Now Vani brushed her hair from her left ear; the ear was pierced all around the edge. Grace counted thirteen gold earrings.

  “I suppose you would say Golgoru is a school of sorts, although its existence is a secret known to few. It is where the T’gol receive their training in the silent arts. Those who endure, that is. There were twenty who began training at the same time I did. In the end, only three of us became T’gol.”

  Grace considered the evidence, then made her conclusion.

  “The T’gol are assassins, aren’t t
hey, Vani? Trained to kill people.”

  Vani did not even blink. “Some would call us assassins, yes. But in our ancient tongue, T’gol means those who preserve.”

  “How old were you when you went there?” Grace said, wanting to understand. She liked Vani, was grateful to her. Grace would not believe she was simply a trained killer. To kill; to preserve. Could they really be the same thing?

  “I entered Golgoru on my twelfth birthday,” Vani said. “It was late. Most enter the Silent Place when they are no more than ten suns old. But I was of the Blood, and so the Masters could not refuse me.”

  “The Blood?”

  “Yes. Royal blood.”

  “Morindu the Dark,” Grace breathed. “You’re descended from its rulers, aren’t you? You’re a princess there.”

  Vani’s smile was beautiful and fragmentary, an ancient vase shattered by the weight of time. “I would be, I suppose, if Morindu were raised again.”

  Grace went stiff. And you think I’m going to do it, along with Travis. That’s why you came here looking for us. You think we’re going to help you dig up a city we’ve never heard of on a world we can’t even get to.

  “Forgive me, Grace Beckett,” Vani said. “I can see that I have troubled you.” She started to stand.

  “Just Grace.”

  Vani halted. “What?”

  “No Beckett.” Grace looked up. “Just call me Grace.”

  The golden-eyed woman hesitated, then it seemed her lips curved in a faint smile, and she sat again. However, once she did, Grace found she had run out of things to say.

  “The knight,” Vani said, breaking the silence after a minute. “The man Beltan. Are he and Travis … that is, are they very close?”

  Grace laid her hands in her lap. “Beltan loves him,” she said simply.

  “And does Travis return that love?”

  Vani’s eyes were suddenly dull as stones. Something was wrong, but Grace didn’t know what.

  “Why don’t you ask Travis yourself?” she said.

  Vani turned away. Grace started to reach for her, but at that moment the door to one of the bedrooms opened, and Travis stepped out. He was wearing the same black jeans and T-shirt, but his head was freshly shaved and his eyes clearer.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  Vani said nothing, and Grace searched for words, but she was rescued as Farr and Deirdre stepped from the other room. In Farr’s hand was a small, black-and-silver device.

  “I think we’re ready,” he said. “I just need Grace to say a few things into this for the benefit of the police and Duratek.” He held up the device, along with a yellow notepad. “I hope you don’t mind, Grace, but I’ve taken the liberty of scripting your surrender.”

  Grace stared at him, and only when he raised an eyebrow did she realize what she was doing—and the reason why.

  If this plan succeeds, Grace—if you get through the gate and back to Eldh—you’ll never see him again.

  That night a year ago, when Farr first helped her escape the ironheart at the Denver police station, there had been so much she had wanted to ask him. In the chaos since the Seekers’ arrival, she had never had a quiet moment to talk to him. Now, perhaps, she never would.

  Farr drew in a breath, as if to say something. However, Vani stepped forward.

  “There are some items we will need to prepare the artifact for use,” she said. “Unguents, herbs, candles. Ritual things. I have not had time to gather them.”

  Travis rubbed his head and grinned at Grace. She nodded. It didn’t take the Touch to read his mind.

  “I know just the place,” he said.

  54.

  Deirdre stared out the limousine’s tinted window, watching through her reflection as dim images flickered by. For a brief moment, a row of redbrick storefronts were superimposed over the ghostly negative of her own face. She twisted the thick silver ring on her right hand and thought of Brixton.

  That Duratek was the cause of the deaths at Surrender Dorothy was not the question. A mysterious fire was pretty much standard corporate procedure for them. Then there was the Electria. True, these days Glinda could have gotten the drug almost anywhere; Deirdre knew she hadn’t. They had given it to her—to bind her, control her. Only then they had decided to discard her.

  Arion told me tonight.

  Arion?

  The doorman. Everyone’s whispering about it. No one knows how, but they’ve gotten themselves a pureblood. They don’t need any of us now.…

  Again she thought of the forest she had seen when Glinda kissed her, and the solid brick wall the doorman Arion had led her through. Then there was the DNA analysis from Glinda’s skin cells. Farr said he had seen similar genetic patterns in those with otherworldly connections. Deirdre didn’t need blood samples and a lab to know there were others at Surrender Dorothy who would have displayed those same genetic patterns.

  But who were Glinda and Arion and the rest of them? How long had they been gathering at a nightclub in London not three miles from the Charterhouse without the Seekers even knowing about them? And was any of this somehow connected to the present case? Like Glinda’s ring, the questions only led in a circle, circumscribing nothing.

  She sighed.

  “Deirdre?”

  She turned from the window and met green-gold eyes that, for a startling moment, reminded her of Glinda’s and Arion’s in their depth and brilliance. Except that was impossible.

  This time Grace’s voice was more confused than concerned. “Deirdre, what is it?”

  “I’m sorry, Grace. I was just thinking.” At least that was no lie, even if it was not the whole truth. But how could she have told Grace what she was thinking about when she had not even voiced the words to herself?

  You did not before, Deirdre, and maybe you never would have again. But in that moment, when you kissed her, you loved Glinda with all your spirit.

  Grace gave her a wry smile. “Thinking. That’s a bad habit. And one I’ve had a hard time breaking myself.”

  Despite the weight on her heart, Deirdre let out a soft laugh. She knew Grace Beckett more as a name in a file than as a person. Nor had there been many chances for meaningful talk in the chaos of these last days. All the same, Deirdre had a sudden feeling—one so powerful and certain her shaman grandfather would have told her it was a message from her totem guide—that Grace was someone she could be friends with, if time and the distance between worlds allowed.

  Travis and Hadrian sat on the opposite seat, but their heads were bent together, talking in low voices. No doubt Hadrian was questioning Travis about his experiences on the world AU-3. Ever the inquisitor. Vani was riding up front with the driver. I can see better here, she had said.

  “Sometimes I wish I could stop thinking,” Deirdre said. “Just for a minute.”

  Grace’s smile became a grimace. “There’s a way. I just don’t think you’d like it very much.” She lifted a hand, drew her necklace from beneath her sweater, and twirled the jagged pendant absently in her fingers.

  “I’ve never seen it up close before,” Deirdre murmured. “Only in pictures.”

  Grace tightened her hand around the pendant. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your necklace.”

  Like night and day, confusion and understanding passed in alternation across Grace’s visage. “That first night I met him, Farr told me they were interested in runes like the ones on this. The ironhearts. I don’t know why I’ve never had Travis look at it. He would probably know what some of the runes mean. Maybe … maybe I’ve never really wanted to know.” She let go of the pendant. “But you know, don’t you?”

  Deirdre shook her head. “Not much—not what the runes symbolize. But we do know one thing. You’ve heard about Travis’s friend, Jack Graystone?”

  A stiff nod.

  “For centuries, he lived in London under various names, including the name James Sarsin. Then, in the summer of 1883, his bookshop burned and Sarsin disappeared. But we did f
ind an old journal of his that was partially legible. In the journal was a drawing of a sword. A sword covered with runes.”

  Grace brushed her necklace. “The sword this piece of metal is from.” It was not a question.

  “There’s a copy of the drawing in one of the files in the trunk of the limousine. I’ll pull it out and show it to you when we have a chance.”

  “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  There was a whir of finely tuned brakes as the limousine slowed. Then, in a soft voice, Grace spoke.

  “It’s not a blessing, you know. To be drawn to another world.”

  Deirdre thought about this. “Then what is it?”

  Grace said nothing as she tucked the necklace back beneath her sweater.

  The limousine came to a stop. Farr asked Travis one more question Deirdre couldn’t quite hear. There was so much they hadn’t had time to learn about Travis’s and Grace’s experiences. And now, if their plan worked, they would be losing their two prize subjects. What kind of Seeker was she?

  Then again, lately she wondered if she was still a Seeker at all. There had still been no word from the Philosophers. True, Farr had won them a dispensation in this case; they didn’t need to ask the Philosophers for approval for their actions. All the same, the silence felt … strange. Back at the hotel, when Deirdre had called the Charterhouse in London, Sasha had seemed oddly rushed on the phone, her voice clipped, as she explained there was still no message for Deirdre or Hadrian from the Seekers’ governing body.

  You’re doing the right thing, Deirdre. It’s better to let them go than let Duratek capture them.

  Only it was more than that. Travis and Grace wanted to return to the world they called Eldh. And who in this world was Deirdre to tell them they couldn’t go? Maybe the question wasn’t what kind of Seeker she was, but what kind of human being.

  The limo door opened, sunlight flooded in. A lithe, black silhouette stood against the glare.

  “We are here,” Vani said.

  Deirdre climbed out and waited on the sidewalk as the others followed. Farr shut the limousine’s door, and together they entered a dim storefront.