Sands of the Solar Empire (The Belmont Saga)

by Ren Garcia

  She wouldn’t give in. “Come in, Bel. There are things I want to show you.”

  He sighed and removed his HRN, folding it up and placing it next to the chapter house foundation. Without removing his boots, he waded in. The water was shallow, barely covering his shins. Lilly giggled.

  “All right, Lilly. I’m in the water with you. What did you want to show me?”

  She splashed to the lantern and pointed the lens at him, engulfing him in the yellow beam. “Does that hurt?” she asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Good, that means you’re not evil then,” she said with a wink. Lilly opened a small door near the lens. Inside there was a yellowish, facetted crystal mounted on its points so that it could rotate on its axis, and she gave it a fast spin. Globes of multi-colored light came drifting out of the lantern, racing through the water in rapid, circular pools.

  “I wanted to show you these things that I’ve seen, Bel. I can help you. I want to help you.”

  A blue circle of light moved through the water. In it, an image formed. It was that of a small Fleet vessel, white with a central saucer and three curved tubes arranged around the saucer. It looked like a Fleet scouting ship. The ship was studded with the barrels of run-out guns.

  “I’ve seen this ship quite a bit lately. I think the lady captaining it is hoping to bring you in so she can gloat.”

  In the pool of blue light, the stern, unsmiling face of Captain Gwendolyn came into focus: tall, her brown hair pulled back into her hat, given a wide berth by her crew.

  Her rapier was drawn and held fast in a strong hand.

  “She’s a Zenon woman,” Lilly added. “I think Zenon women are very snobby, don’t you? Not your type at all. She’s coming to kill you, Bel. Look at her sword, look at the guns ready to fire. Her ship is small, compared to yours, but it functions, and she has a crew and she’s armed. I can . . . I can take care of her for you, if you like, Bel. Would you like that?”

  “Take care of her? How so? There’s no Priory on a scouting ship, so you have no way to get aboard.”

  Lilly blushed. “I have my ways.”

  Stenstrom watched the image of the ship as it glided through space, hot on his trail and studded with guns and a captain with a drawn sword. “No, Lilly. I’ll deal with it myself when the times comes.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Of course.”

  Lilly splashed up to him and stood on the tops of his submerged boots. “Oh, you are so quaint, Bel; that’s why I love you so. You have such resources available to you, and you choose to forego them and accomplish things the hard way. What if this Zenon woman aboard the scouting ship shoots her way aboard your ship? You’ll lose your chair, will certainly be sent back to the Fleet, and possibly Barred into trial. You could face censure or worse.”

  “Let me deal with her. I’ve a good ship, even unpowered, unarmed and unlit, and my crew is the best.”

  “All two of them?”

  “They are all I require.”

  Lilly laughed. “All right, Bel, have it your way. When I’m rescuing you from prison as I’m certain I shall soon be doing, don’t ever forget that I offered to spare you such an inconvenience.”

  He struggled to make sense of all this. Though Lilly was speaking plainly, she was never more cryptic. How was she doing this? How was she doing any of it??

  Lilly adjusted the lantern. “Let me show you a few more things.” As the blue pool of light containing the image of Captain Gwendolyn went out, it was replaced by a green one, moving across the water. In the light, Stenstrom saw an odd lumpy shape, green in color, like a great bean sprout. He looked closer, there were two heads sticking out of the sprout. One had blonde hair.

  A-Ram?

  Yes, it was A-Ram, and Stenstrom thought, at first, that A-Ram had been devoured by a gigantic plant with only his head sticking out. On second glance, he saw that A-Ram was actually sitting on the ground huddled up next to a second person whom Stenstrom didn’t know. It was a female with pinned-up black hair. She was wearing a vast green cloak and had it draped around A-Ram, sharing it with him. It looked like a comfortable place to be.

  The green circle of light faded and was replaced by a red one. “Look at this, Bel. I’ve also been seeing this . . .”

  In the red light, he saw a mass of chaotic movement, like looking into a beehive. He appeared to be seeing a multitude of tiny bits of machinery, squared-off, finely crafted and etched, moving in an orderly confusion. There were four distinct colors to the tiny machines: yellow, blue, green and red. Stenstrom and Lilly watched as the tiny machines separated themselves into their respective colors and then began forming roughly man-shaped masses.

  “Do you know what these are?” Lilly asked.

  “No. Looks like robotistry or nano tech. That’s not my area.”

  Lilly gazed at the tiny machines buzzing with movement. “Whatever they are, they mean you no good, Bel, of that I’m certain. Look …”

  In the red light, a man was on his knees, surrounded, hacked to pieces, moments away from death.

  “I’m worried for you, Bel.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “Did you not see that? I think that man on his knees was you.”

  Lilly gazed at the circle of light. “I’ve been searching for these men or machines or whatever they are. So far they’ve eluded me, but when I find them, I am going to finish them for no one will put my Bel on his knees. No one.” There was a hard edge to Lilly’s voice.

  The image faded. The last thing Stenstrom saw was a great yellow circle swirling in the water.

  “I see this circle a lot when I look in on you. Circles and circles.”

  Stenstrom observed the circle. He could see faces locked within its boundaries. He saw himself and Taara and A-Ram. Odd, he saw the squared-off yet pretty face of his pursuer, Lt. Gwendolyn. He also saw four tall figures swaying in the background. Surrounding the circle was a fifth figure clad in gray rapidly approaching.

  Clad in gray? The woman from his fox park nightmare. The Astral Traveler? He looked away. When he looked back the images in the circle were gone.

  Lilly rose up and kissed him, and for a moment he forgot about his situation and his crew and that this creature, with apparently vast arcane capabilities, couldn’t possibly be Lilly.

  The kiss felt like Lilly. It had her warmth and feeling.

  What could she be? What was she? He should be impassive and calculating as his mother taught him when faced with the arcane, collecting data, demanding answers, sorting out truth from conjecture. But, come to think of it, Mother had hand-picked Lilly herself. She picked her not merely for her grace and beauty, but for her normalcy, her seemingly entrenched hold on the mundane and the well-trodden. Mother hadn’t wanted a sorceress for her son, another Tyrol graduate of the black schools, a brewer of poisons and caster of spells. She wanted a quiet, unremarkable woman, someone stately and of society to sit in the parlor and love her son as a proper lady should, balancing his forays into the dark woods of sorcery with the more well-lit paths of the mundane world.

  And, she’d picked Lilly. Nothing odd about Lilly, nothing supernatural about Lilly.

  But look: Lilly appearing from nowhere, Lilly possessing some sort of vast power with access to arcane devices like the Paramel, Lilly triggering his arcane detectors, Lilly fooling his mother into thinking she was from unremarkable Gamboa, when she was, in fact, from the wilds of Vithland in an area simply crawling with the arcane.

  Lilly was some sort of monster.

  But, all that mattered little at the moment. Her embrace was comforting, her kiss sweet and familiar, bringing back all those memories of the woman he loved.

  She leaned against him. He could feel the ovular shape of the locket in his breast pocket pressing against his heart.

  He put his arms around her, savoring her feel.

  “I take back my false words, Bel,” she said between kisses, “I don’t want five years, I never did.
I want you now, with me forever. Make me yours.”

  “I’ve always been yours, Lilly. As before, I extend you my hand.”

  “And I accept. I accept, I accept.” She leaned back and shouted into the cool air: “I ACCEPT!” She screamed it into the air, as if to make her voice heard to those listening from a far. “And now, it’s time that I told you exactly what I am, so that you’ll understand. I …”

  A horn sounded in the distance, filling the clearing and chapter house ruins with a melancholy note. Lilly’s demeanor instantly changed. She cut herself off in mid-sentence, cringed and scowled. She stomped through the shallow water and kicked “No!” she screamed. “It’s not fair! Not fair! I’m not ready!”

  “What?” Stenstrom asked.

  “They’re calling me! I thought I’d have more time!”

  “Who are?”

  “Them!” Lilly pointed.

  Through the trees, Stenstrom thought he could see a domed structure made of gray stone. A door slid open. Sitting inside were four indistinct figures.

  The horn sounded again, and the wooded setting became cloudy. Stenstrom felt himself being pulled back into the dank confines of the Seeker, leaving Vithland and Lilly behind.

  “They did it, Bel!” Lilly shouted as he was pulled away. “They did it all . . .”

  The next moment, Stenstrom was back aboard the Seeker, the yellow light of the lantern fading.

  “Remember, Bel . . .” came the ghost of Lilly’s voice. “You just extended me your hand, and I’m not giving it back.”

  He was standing in the darkened rooms of the Priory. What had he just seen? Was that apparition really Lilly? He hadn’t felt threatened. It seemed like Lilly, smelled like Lilly . . . felt like her.

  The olive Holystone had determined Lilly was of an arcane nature. Lilly had always seemed so grounded to him, so steady and sure, painting her pictures in Gamboa. She was a rock of sanity and sure footing in an occasional turbid shoreline of mysticism and fog-shrouded places his mother took him to.

  And now it’s proved she is of the arcane.

  “I’m not from Gamboa, Bel.”

  He pressed on into the depths of the Priory, finding nothing but overturned chairs and unmade beds, the Sisters long gone and all the magic sucked out of the place.

  “A-Ram!” he cried. “Taara!”

  No answer.

  His mind spun. Lilly not from Gamboa. Lilly something other than just a beautiful woman. He reached a locked door. He took a moment to replace the bad striker in his NTH, discarding the cracked one.

  Lilly couldn’t have been a Soul Devourer in disguise, or she would have attacked. Soul Devourers were driven by their lust and hunger for souls; even the one that was supposed to lead him to Taara and A-Ram couldn’t resist and attacked him en route.

  Lilly didn’t attack him. God’s, what did Lady Alitrix say?

  “I don’t know what she is, but she’s not a woman.”

  And Kaly that time at the dock:

  “I saw you walking down the street with a mannequin.”

  He pulled on the door harder and it wouldn’t budge.

  Locked tight.

  What did Kaly see? What was Alitrix sensing?

  What was Lilly? She had been on the verge of telling him but had been summoned by her masters. Whatever she was, he had just offered her his hand. That, given the circumstances, probably wasn’t wise. He had just committed himself to some sort of monster.

  He sashed his NTHs and had his lock picks ready with a wave of the hand. He stuck his probe in and tested the lock. Though the door appeared old and simple, its lock was complex, very sophisticated and trapped—he could feel a coiled needle hidden in the lock’s working ready to spring.

  “They did it. They did it all!” Lilly said.

  Who was “they?” Stenstrom shuddered to find out.

  He selected his picks and skillfully worked the lock, disarming the needle in the process. Soon, the lock was picked clean. He put his picks back into his HRN and drew his NTHs.

  He pulled the door open. Something fell out to the floor with a limp thud. A thin, sinewy arm lay there. It was a slender arm, like a lady’s, smooth and delicate, only the hand at the end of the arm gave it away that it was something more sinister: the fingers curled, gnarled, and studded with claws. Stenstrom swung the door open wide and aimed down, ready to fire.

  A Soul Devourer lie there, its gigantic mouth and elongated tongue lolled on the floor. It appeared to be dead. It smoked slightly. He knelt down into the grit and inspected the body. Its neck appeared to be broken, and only recently so. It was still warm. Taking no chances, he put two NTH shots into its chest. It collapsed into ash.

  Beyond the door was a long corridor. Continuing on, he found another Soul Devourer lying on the floor, and then another, both dead.

  More bodies waited for him further down. Look at them: piled up in heaps, hanging from the ceiling, curled up on the ground, more than he cared to count; all dead. Some were arranged in fanciful, post-mortem positions. Some were lying there holding hands, and some were propped up against each other chest to chest, fingers inter-laced like they were dancing. Several were seated at a small table as if they were having a tea party. All dead, dead bodies pushed into seated positions around the table in the illusion of merriment, their tongues all tied together in the center, knotted.

  What had happened here? Could Lilly have done all this, killed all these supernatural creatures by herself.

  How?

  The corridor ended in a transparent dome that jutted out the underbelly of the ship, lit up in stars and some sort of bright yellowish cloud that seethed with energy. He wondered what it was for a moment—oh, it’s Druries Belt. He remembered.

  The Sisters’ dome was some sort of meeting place lined with consoles that rolled and sputtered with hazy life. Wooden benches lined the dome, like a courtroom. This must be the heart of the Priory, a place only the Sisters had previously seen.

  More Soul Devourers, everywhere. Dead, mangled, pushed against the dome, slumped over the railing, one dangling by its tongue from a light fixture.

  In the center of the dome was a wooden dais. Two figures were slumped atop it.

  Taara and A-Ram!

  He made his way to the top of the dais. Taara and A-Ram appeared to both be submerged in a deep sleep. They were warm, and their pulses were good. Taara was sitting there in her white untucked shirt and woolen socks. A-Ram’s MOLLY gleamed around her neck. As before, she snored slightly.

  A pink slip of paper was stuffed into A-Ram’s coat pocket. It read:

  I told you they would be fine

  —Lilly

  “Taara!” he said, trying to wake her up. “Taara!” He tapped her twice on the cheek. She didn’t awake. It was the same with A-Ram, deep in sleep.

  He hoisted the two of them over his shoulder and carried them out. They were both so light, like carrying children.

  He went down the long corridor, passing all the carnage along the way. He was glad they weren’t awake to see any of it.

  All the bodies. The charnel house of Soul Devourers, all killed and posed by Lilly.

  Recent events sorted themselves out in his mind.

  Lilly, no longer a stately girl from Gamboa.

  Lilly, an arcane being of great strength.

  “I accept.”

  Lilly, a killer.

  “I accept. . .”

  Lilly, his betrothed.

  “I ACCEPT!!”

  He made his way out of the Priory and back down the long corridor to the bridge, the ship serenading them the entire way. Up the lift shaft and back into the bridge they went, like nothing ever happened, save for the troubling thoughts rolling through Stenstrom’s head.

  Soul Devourers . . .

  Lilly in the dark . . .

  “I ACCEPT!”

  4 Druries Belt

  Stenstrom laid them out on the floor of the bridge. “Taara! Taara, wake up!”

  She stirred. “Hey
, Bel . . . how about a few more minutes? I was having a nice dream. Okay?”

  “Taara, you’ve been asleep for twenty hours; we all have. We’re missing our burn!”

  That news opened her eyes. She sat up. “What? Twenty hours? Bel, we can’t miss that burn, or we’ll be headed out into the Wildlands.” She wobbled to her feet and grabbed her boots.

  They turned to A-Ram and shook him awake. Eventually he stirred and awoke, holding his head. “Gods, I feel like I’ve slept for days,” he said.

  “You have.”

  “I seem to recall dreaming of . . . monsters.”

  Quite appropriate, Stenstrom thought.

  A-Ram made his way to the helm and was shocked. “For the love of Creation, we’ve slept through our burn!”

  Taara pulled on her boots and ran into his office. She checked her sextant, pointing it toward the window. The great yellowish rope of Druries Belt stretched off into the distance.

  She cursed as she worked.

  “Taara, what’s our bearing?” A-Ram asked.

  She stared out the window, gazing through the sextant.

  “Taara!”

  “Give me a minute, will you! Gods, we are well off course!”

  Stenstrom watched her work. “What’s that going to do to us, Taara? Can we get back on course?”

  “We’re way out of the shipping lanes, that’s for sure.” She ran back into the bridge and flopped into the Missive’s chair. She brought up a screen and punched in a series of numbers.

  Feeling drained, Stenstrom plunged into his chair and closed his eyes.

  His leaden thoughts spun.

  Captain Gwendolyn coming in her scout ship to board and possible kill him.

  Lilly killed over a hundred Soul Devourers. He, with just his two pistols, would probably have been overwhelmed.

  “A-Ram, hard to port three turns, Z minus 15 degrees,” Taara said.

  He heard the helm groan as A-Ram turned the pegs.

  “They did it!” Lilly said.

  Who are “they?”

  Taara again, her little voice confident and full of authority. “I’m burning the Westminster for five minutes, in three, two, one . . .”

  The ship shuddered.