by Mark Johnson
“Do you know how to fight them?” Tokkus said.
“Use spears, aim for the joints. Don’t take risks or attempt fatal blows, just let weavers tickle them with vibrations, until the cadvers realize we’re not worth the effort. Vibrations are the energy of life, and cadvers are chaos-producing death. They don’t like being around one another.” He turned his head and spat off the turret. “I assume they’re all the same, whatever the Polis.”
“Good,” said Tokkus. “Spears, bows and arrows are to be found within the armory below. We have recently refurbished the supply, and should the unexpected happen you will not be defenseless. Though likely the gems will do this work for us. Keep your gazes toward the west, and avoid the novices.”
“Aye, Sergeant,” several voices murmured. The lookouts dispersed to begin the night’s watch.
Jespow’s son, Henk, his eyes wide, approached Zale and Paan.
“Aren’t you cold?” the boy said.
Zale smiled. “No. Not really. Paan and I? We don’t get cold like others do. You know how to use a spear yet, Henk?”
The boy shook his head. “No. You fought cadvers?”
“Honestly? I got closer than I wanted.”
The boy waited. There was something his younger self within the lad, Zale realized. That excited eagerness over monster stories and an impatience to see some of the action.
Zale bent a little to meet the boy’s eyes. “I’d thought it would be like guarding against feral power heads, but it isn’t. It’s only when you’re up close that you remember cadvers were once human, and it’s only luck that they’re the infected ones, not you.”
Henk squeezed the folds of his thick jersey.
The first time Zale had ever seen a cadver up close, he’d almost wet himself. He’d been told they were horrifying to behold, but not how. Perhaps he could explain it to this kid, so Henk didn’t drop his spear and run the first time he got close.
“It’s the eyes. Have you ever seen a dead man? Their eyes are deader. Whatever was there is gone, and you’re wondering if anything capable of thinking has taken root, or if the cadver’s just a puppet with sharp fingers. Even the Seekers don’t know if anything’s in there.” He tapped his head. “They’re quick, too. Not strategic, but they change their minds a lot, and what you think is a stab can turn to a grab if they feel like it. And you’d better pray someone’s going to free you, because when they start draining you, you don’t have much time. I’ve seen a man get —”
Jespow’s voice cut through Zale’s. “Henk,” he said, pointing west with one hand, clamping the other on the boy’s shoulder, “tell me which direction home is. Let’s see you guess.”
Henk blinked in the manner of a boy who wondered what he’d done wrong this time, and slouched away with his father.
Tokkus stood nearby. “Colorful pasts, masters. Colorful pasts indeed.”
Zale straightened and closed his eyes.
When he opened them, Tokkus was gone.
8
The sergeant,” Paan said, his breath misting in the gloom. “They say he turned up from further in, years ago. He’s not the only Sumadan in the Territories, but he’s the only one proud to be here.”
“He isn’t buying our story, Paan,” said Zale, checking to see who was near. “He saw right through us.”
Paan shrugged. “Perhaps we should have spoken a little closer to the truth.”
“The truth makes us look like criminals.”
“The truth keeps us from being criminals.”
Zale smiled. “Shut up, Paan. He’ll forget about us soon. We’re just lucky that everyone here’s worried about a cadver siege. As they should be. That thing we unearthed? I want to know what it is, more badly than I want to figure out what the hell the Invocation means.” He gestured out over the Wastes. “Something’s controlling cadvers and cutting them up. And it’s got an interest in our new Wall. Gods, I don’t know. Maybe we’d have been better off if we’d run straight to the Investigators back home, as soon as we woke up.”
Paan cracked his knuckles. “I doubt I’d be better off. We’d have been put straight into another guard unit, and possibly separated from one another. Can you imagine how the seizures would go if that happened? But somehow, Zale, we’re better off right now than we were two years ago. Even if I can’t control the seizures, we’re not indentured, and our guard work is essential here, not considered punishment.”
It wasn’t good to let Paan dwell on the seizures. He blamed himself too much for them, though it was probably his seizures that had saved their lives in the Immersion Chamber.
Zale leaned against the crenulation. “Back home, by now, I’d have started training as our station medic, and I’d have a shot at being a nurse or physical therapist when I completed indenture. My sight is ten times what it was two years ago, but sometimes I can’t turn the sight off when I want to sleep.
“And sometimes, only in the day, when I least expect it, I see Ina. Smiling across the table, or at a corner as I walk past. And she looks at me, waiting, like she’s trying to tell me something.”
Paan went very still. Zale switched to thermal, watching his friend’s temperature increase and heart beat faster.
Why didn’t his friends believe him? He had nothing to gain by sounding crazy.
“But she doesn’t say anything, Zale,” said Paan. “It might be something pretending to be her, or you might be making yourself see her. And even if it is her, she’s gone and you’re here.”
“I know it’s her.”
“Sure,” Paan said delicately. “But you might want to ask yourself why she keeps hanging around. You keep telling me what happened to my family wasn’t my fault.” Paan jabbed a finger at Zale’s chest. “But you’re doing the same thing, blaming yourself for your father and Ina. You’re seeing things because you want to.
“She was murdered in front of you. Of course that messed you up. And on top of that, both your powers blended as she died. It’s not impossible that, well, the results could’ve, ah, affected you, Zale. You might not have completely dealt with her death, and you could be —”
“All right, Paan.”
“I know a thing or two about guilt, Zale. Perhaps you —”
“Quiet.”
“No, listen. Feeling sorry for yourself and —”
Zale punched Paan’s arm. “Quiet!”
“What?”
“Initiate Sarra. She stretched up to Tokkus’s ear. Her heart-rate’s fast, body-heat’s up. Hm. Tokkus is heating up, too.”
At that moment, Nocev passed them, wringing a lock of blonde hair over her ear and peering out into the Wastes.
“Nocev.”
“What?”
Zale stepped in her way. “Sarra got a message from the Tower?”
“How… Yes. They’re saying the repeater stones aren’t working outside the cluster.”
“No messages coming in? Or none getting out?” Zale asked.
“Both. Something cut the links like scissors through thread. Just keep a lookout and say nothing.”
Nocev left, appearing calmer than her heart-rate suggested. Zale checked over the side, sliding through his sight ranges.
“What is it?” said Paan.
Zale didn’t reply until he was certain. “There are some energy fluxes out there. All around, not just on the ground. Like fog. I can’t tell what.” He strode toward the barrack’s enormous gem mechanism, where a crowd of novices were gathered around Tokkus, Sarra and Nocev, whispering fiercely.
“We’re to stay up here,” Nocev announced to the group. “They want Sarra to work the scanning weaves while they supervise from the Tower.” Sarra was at the parapet’s edge, a gem on the flat of her palm. She closed her fingers and raised her fist, which disappeared from sight as the stone within let out the bright white glow of vibrations.
&n
bsp; “Feels like she’s doing something sophisticated,” Paan said quietly.
Zale nodded. He couldn’t weave, nor see into the stones that used weaves. But he could observe the weaves themselves at work. White tendrils of vibration rose from the gem and over the parapet, stretching into tangles and knots more complex than weavers usually made. In fact, the girl’s weaving was remarkable. He’d witnessed difficult weavings before, but only in groups. This girl, perhaps eighteen, was the most accomplished weaver he’d ever seen.
“She’s very good,” Zale said. “She’s weaving a wide stream. Ah, she’s looking for texture differentials. Clever girl. And, huh… That’s odd.”
“What?”
“Her stream just ran up against a flat surface. Like water streaming against glass, and it’s splashing and dissipating.”
“A solid wall of chaos?”
“Some of that, but… there’s something else making the texture that I can’t see. She’s moving the stream around… Ah, Gods,” he swore.
“What now?”
“We’re enclosed by something. A solid ring. Like we’re in the hole of a chaos doughnut.”
“A doughnut?”
“The gems from all four BarracksWalls are making a buffer zone, pushing the chaos out. She’s trying to hit the surface with a hammer. She should be cleaning it so she can see through.”
Paan closed his eyes. “I can’t reach Nic or Cess. There’s too much static.”
Well, someone had to do something. Zale pushed through to the group’s core, where Sarra, Nocev and Tokkus were conferring.
“It’s invisible,” Sarra said, lowering her trembling fist. “I can’t get a read.”
“Did you try the Seeker method?” said Zale. It was the first idea that occurred to him. Behind him, he felt Paan pull his own hair with both hands, like Zale had done something wrong. There was nothing unusual in that. Paan usually thought Zale was doing something wrong, whenever he did anything. So did Cess. And Nic.
Their heads snapped up. “What Seeker method?” Sarra spoke through her teeth.
The sight of the distant, roiling chaos made up his mind. “The one they use when they’re scanning from a distance? You know, when they don’t want to alarm any cadvers hiding in some old basement or something. The Seekers made us stand back while they performed it.”
“What? What do you mean? How would you know?”
He needed a lie plausible enough to divert attention away from him.
“My sister weaves. She’s apprenticed as a midwife but met some Seeker weavers during her training. They talked about piercing thick chaos from a distance, like for a dark shrine or cadver barrow. She explained what the Seekers are doing when they make us wait before moving in.”
The two initiates swapped glances.
“All right,” said Sarra slowly. “I’m listening.”
Zale scratched his head. How could he put the idea in his head into words? He tried sounding confused. “There’s a technique called… dimming?”
She frowned in surprise. Few guards would know the term. “Yes?”
“Maybe combine that with the filter you use for spotting suppressant energy. Implant the filter on your stone, so you lay the filter over the dimming.”
“Got it.”
A panicked mental nudge from Paan, horrified Zale had given them away.
No, he hadn’t. Not yet.
He was prepared to wait, for the process took time. He almost gaped when a thin, white bond stretched between her stone and the gems in mere seconds. The novices whispered to one another in grudging admiration. How could she have done that so fast?
He pretended he hadn’t noticed anything unusual. “Now prepare to project the weave. I guess this is the point you’d bind the barracks gem to power your weave.”
“Yes, I’ve just done that.” She groaned loudly. “Nocev could you please tell the Tower I’m taking advice from someone who’s worked with Seekers? They’re telling me to get back to work.”
Nocev closed her eyes and clenched her fist around her own stone. Zale saw her hand glow white.
“Ah, this is complicated,” Sarra said.
Nocev opened her eyes. “How are you doing that Sarra?” she whispered.
“I have to tie the repeater into a steady feed,” the girl muttered. Gods, she was impossibly talented.
Sarra gripped Nocev’s shoulder like she was dizzy. Nocev patted her encouragingly. A group of novices and guards had gathered around them. At the back, Henk was hopping up, trying to see over people’s heads.
Zale said, “My sister didn’t say anything else, except you’re supposed to make the weave like a net you cast out. I don’t know how thick. But she spoke of it like a net, with vibrations stretched across each grid like a soap bubble. A bubble that will pop if it meets something it disagrees with.”
Sarra blew out her cheeks. She looked up at him suddenly. “Zale, that’s amazing. I’ve never heard of anything like it, but it’s genius, adding in the suppressant filter! How can you know so much?”
Nocev’s eyes were wide as plates. Tokkus rubbed the back of his bald head.
Zale cleared his throat. “We were very close,” he lied. Sarra didn’t look away. “Um, I miss her?”
“Wait,” said Sarra, white tendrils extending from her hands, forming and coiling at furious speed.
“Gods,” Nocev breathed. “How did you make that much detail so quickly?”
Sarra inhaled loudly, and Zale realized she hadn’t breathed for some time. “I made a recursion, but forced it to open and repeat itself within set parameters. Don’t tell Miss.”
Sarra raised her fist, casting the weave into the night: a glowing white network of vibrations, solid bright lines bridged by hundreds of glistening transparent shimmers, powered by the gems behind them. The net faded as Sarra pushed it out, beyond view.
Nocev had immersed herself in Sarra’s stone, watching the weaves. “Your bottom two corners are a little high,” she said. “Yes. No. Push it over like a domino, so you can lay it flat on the ground. Wait. You fuzzed the edges. Repair it. Good. Slow, slow. All the time in the world. Good. Fix the corners where they are, then let it roll down slowly. No, don’t bind it to the ground along the side. There’s no need.”
Finally, Nocev was silent. Sarra exhaled.
“Nothing’s there,” said Nocev to the watching crowd. “We went through that barrier, but it’s empty as ever.” Her eyes widened. “Unless… Sarra, push the weave down, through the ground.”
A few moments of silence, then Sarra grunted like she’d been hit. The halo around her fist trembled and pulsed as if wounded. Nocev gasped and pulled away.
Sarra tossed the stone in the air. It exploded with a sharp crack and a yellow flash.
Everyone raised their hands to their eyes, save Zale, who had no need. As the stone exploded, it pushed out a flaring nimbus of inky-green suppression energy, which flattened into a fluid trail that burned over the BarracksWall’s parapet and down to the ground in an instant.
Zale suspected he was the only one capable of seeing suppression energy. The murky, addictive energy used by the desperate the world over, to numb their emotions.
Before the guards and novices pulled their hands down, the trail of suppression energy sped northeast in a relatively straight line, leaving a faint residue as it passed out of sight in jagged leaps.
Jagged leaps? That meant a trail of repeater stones. He’d never heard of suppression energy using repeater stones because, so far as he knew, suppression energy couldn’t be woven like vibrations or chaos energy. It was supposed to be like electricity in that way.
How could Sarra’s stone have exploded, and what was the purpose of the suppression trail? The only plausible answer, was that her stone had been infected with some sort of warning signal — or beacon — for whoever was conducti
ng this strange energy-based assault on HopeWall.
Tokkus was the first to recover. He bent over Sarra, rolling her onto her back. Zale hadn’t noticed her fall. A chunk of the stone had scraped her cheek, producing blood.
“Sarra!” Tokkus shouted. He pulled her into to a sitting position.
“It… something… saw me,” she wheezed. “I don’t know how. Under the ground. Thin tunnels. Just above Swallowing depth. Chaos energy gathered in points. Big points, like human-sized.” She paused, considering. “Or…”
Something teased at the edge of Zale’s perception. A chorused note, somehow drowned, though growing louder. It rose to the surface, out beyond the limits of Zale’s vision. And then he understood the purpose of the suppression signal.
A screaming erupted over the Wastes: the screaming of many cursed, deformed throats.
“…cadvers,” finished Sarra.
9
Zale looked over the top. in a mockery of death, human-shaped ghouls pulled themselves one-by-one out of the earth, scraping across the hillocks, loping toward the BarracksWalls on four limbs. Their hard, pale skin reflected the moonlight. He counted quickly.
“Sergeant, there’s over a hundred. And about twenty to a group!” he shouted. Twenty to a group. Just like he’d seen while they’d been traveling near the border.
From below came a peal of metallic noise, startling waves of sound rippling across his vision, blurring and warping the straight lines of the Barracks. The sound swam over the Wall, into the night. It was answered by similar sounds from the other BarracksWalls and moments later from the Tower, within HopeWall.
“Stay calm,” Tokkus called between the bell peals. “Keep watch! The Tower will protect us.”
The screaming. This close, the cadvers raised the hair on the back of his neck. Deformed from human shape, their throats made sounds harsher than any mortal voice. Zale pushed his hands over his ears as the infected’s unearthly noise met the waves from the bell. The visual distortion waves, from the impact of those two sounds, nauseated him.
Cadvers hadn’t had that effect on him before. This wasn’t just his sight being better: these cadvers were different. Stronger.