Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  As for Feigran, he has a role to play as well. His ambition is limitless, it seems, but he is more than that. There is something in his soul, some key to the next step, the ultimate outcome of the Displacement, that I still cannot fathom.

  They still have no idea who they really are.

  A STREAK OF fire illuminates the darkened space of the Barrier. I know in reality that a missile has just exploded, sending up a plume of flame. Trees fall under the blast, birds fly up in a cloud, crying out in fear. A war is going on in the physical down below––what I am seeing is real, not just some light show inside the Barrier itself.

  I see the cloudy, indistinct lights of humans blown back.

  I know they are real people. I know they are being ripped apart down there, limbs torn from torsos, shrapnel embedding in soft flesh and skin.

  Some separate from their bodies totally, ejected at once into the Barrier’s dark sky.

  Attached still to my own body, I watch them. At first, when only a few died out here, I tried to help them. Now, there are too many.

  I still try to reassure those who pass near me in the Barrier’s waves.

  I tell them simple things.

  No, you cannot return to your body. You cannot force your way back into broken flesh. Yes, the vessel really is broken. See it? That’s it, there. That was your body. Yeah, I know it looks bad. No, I’m not God, or an angel. No, I don’t know how to contact your wife…

  Getting them to listen is difficult.

  Most run from me. Their fear causes them to resonate with other lights, to disappear––poof––into some other, more confused Barrier place. They are unused to the Barrier’s dark clouds and shifting appearance. They don’t know that, in principle at least, they can travel as I do here, if only they would just relax.

  But they can’t relax.

  Some, a very few, do listen.

  Other seers try to help, but it is a discouraging process. There are too many of them. And for humans, all of this is too new.

  Trying to help in outside, before they are dead, is even more futile.

  I’ve learned that quickly in the last few weeks, even with Jon and Cass. There are simply no words for some of what is everyday for me now. Even if the idea is interesting to them, I can feel the chasm between their imagination and reality. Like all beings, humans explain life and death in terms of what they know now.

  The problem is, they don’t know anything.

  The Barrier, for the same reason, is officially pronounced mythology by the World Court. They describe our powers as a child does, refusing our explanations because they prefer their own. When their own do not match reality, they grow angry with us, or relegate the phenomenon to the scientific equivalent of “magic.” They look for a better story––a better story being one that appears to explain what was previously unexplained, only without challenging their original assumptions.

  This war, for example.

  To a human, it involves fighting over land and trade rights, the potential for accumulating more little pieces of paper that mean more people will want to have sex with them and total strangers will find them impressive.

  To someone like me, however, and all the seers with whom I work, this war is simply the invention of a mad seer’s mind––a mad seer who hates humans and would like them all to disappear. A mad seer I put in power, in a country capable of making war on all the rest simply by shouting emotion-laden slogans.

  The other seers tell me it’s not my fault.

  No part of me believes that, though. My heart hurts, but not enough. I am numb, unable to feel as much as I should.

  Sir? You have seen enough?

  I turn my head, my consciousness still split. I focus on his face, watching it flash back and forth to his physical one, positive to negative…

  And I lose it.

  My mind snaps back.

  I leave the Barrier. My consciousness resumes its march in real time…

  …SOUND EXPLODED AROUND me.

  Whirring helicopter blades slammed overhead, thudding and rotating in a deafening heartbeat, long metal wings blocking the sun in and out with shadow. Hair whipped my face.

  I locked eyes with the pilot, a tall, Chinese-looking seer named Tenzi.

  We are too close, he sent, apologetic.

  I cursed, angry at how easily I’d been pulled out.

  I needed to get better at being in both places at once.

  For awhile, working with Yerin and Maygar daily, I seemed to be improving. Lately, I’d plateaued, hitting a wall I couldn’t seem to make my way over. I could hold both places simultaneously if no one bothered me, and if nothing startled me.

  Which meant if I stayed away from the world and all people, I was fine.

  Sometimes, like now, I could hold the split for a few seconds of distraction.

  Sometimes, I flat-out couldn’t do it at all.

  It was especially irritating to note in juxtaposition to my aforementioned husband, Dehgoies Revik, who could split his consciousness four or five ways, his attention focused on each to greater or lesser degrees, seemingly for as long as he wanted.

  Most esteemed Bridge, Tenzi sent politely. We cannot stay.

  I gestured dismissively with my hand, seer-fashion.

  Let’s go a little further in, I sent.

  No, Esteemed Bridge.

  I glanced over, eyebrows raised. I hadn’t gotten a flat-out no in a while.

  Tenzi’s thoughts remained stubborn. Sir, we must go back. He surprised me by smiling. You promised, Esteemed One. Vash said to remind you. He said to tell you “no do-overs.” If you persist in arguing, I have license to rule your judgment irrational, and bring you back of my own authority.

  I laughed in spite of myself. “Esteemed One, my ass,” I yelled over the heartbeat of blades.

  Still, he’d managed to make me laugh, no mean feat these days––and while he might be overdoing the politeness thing, he had a mind of his own.

  Glancing down through the plexiglass window, I watched the fires burn, this time with my physical eyes. I focused on the line of smoke through the trees.

  A loud whistle broke into my thoughts.

  Tenzi swerved the joystick-like cyclic sideways, alternating his feet on the anti-torque pedals. Lurching sideways and feeling my stomach drop as we lost altitude, I grabbed the opening of the helicopter door, catching a glimpse of something sliding by above us as the helicopter went down. Whatever it had been, it was loud, and moving fast.

  They are shooting at us, sir, Tenzi sent.

  I caught that. I grinned at him, and he surprised me, grinning back. “Okay. Take us back,” I said aloud. “You win. This time.”

  He was already turning us around, accelerating as we rose above the canopy and headed for the snow-covered mountains to the southwest.

  I remained where I was, gripping the door as I looked back into the near dark. Holding onto the harness strapping me into the chair, I watched flashes from small arms fire light up the dark mass beneath the treetops.

  Then we banked, accelerating faster for the border to India.

  Infiltrators back at Seertown held a shield around us to hide us in the Barrier, mainly from seers working for either the Chinese or the Americans. Still, those same seers had eyes. If they managed to pick us up via drone image-capture, or heck, with binoculars, they might be able to ID me from facial-rec alone.

  From the lack of Barrier imprint, they must already know we were being protected by seers. That could only really mean one of three things: we were seers ourselves, we were important, or we were rich.

  Any one of those things could cause them to take a closer look.

  I remembered Maygar’s grumpy warning the last time I went out. He’d tried guilt that time, and it had come closest to working. If I were to be captured now, he’d reminded me, it would affect more than just Tenzi and myself.

  I’d come anyway.

  Sitting back on the ripped vinyl seat, I closed my eyes, taking in brea
ths of cold morning air. I had plenty to do back at the compound. I now had crates of Galaith’s papers to go through. I’d have more in a few days, assuming the team I sent to Bavaria found anything.

  I could have given some to Vash’s seers to sort through, or even the Adhipan, now that they were starting to trickle into town, but that would mean telling more of them what I’d been up to than I really wanted.

  So far, only a handful of the Seven’s Guard knew what those trips were about. I couldn’t even afford to tell Jon and Cass the whole story. They were human, and vulnerable to being read by any seer for information. I’d let Cass come along, and gave her the same story I gave Vash––that I was looking for artifacts from the Rooks’ pyramid now that it was destroyed.

  Which, essentially, was the truth.

  I found myself staring at seas of ice and snow, lost in my own thoughts as we slid through passes in the high mountains. We rounded a sheer rock outcrop, and a green and brown valley appeared at my feet.

  Familiar tile rooftops began to break up the long valley floor. Houses, shrines and larger structures soon appeared with more frequency, along with white-painted cairns and colorful flags hanging from the roofs of buildings.

  Then I saw the stone house of the Old City high on the crest of the hill with its sprawling gardens and white statuary.

  Seertown market and commons, including Vash’s more modest-looking compound, stretched down the hillside below, where buildings had a much more lived-in look. Laundry hung from balconies, even at the compound itself, and most of the houses had peeling, brightly-colored paint: pink and white, orange and red, sky blue and sea green.

  Monkeys stood on balconies and slate roofs, looking over the noise and bustle of the human and seer town below.

  Tenzi brought us to the center of the white cross marking the helipad above Vash’s house.

  We landed with scarcely a bump.

  Hanging up the sound-muffling headphones on their hook inside the cockpit, I climbed out of the battered seat as the rotating blades powered down with a descending whine. Ducking low, holding my hair ineffectively off my face, I walked out of their range, smiling at the four people waiting for me on the other side.

  I grinned at Jon first.

  “Miss me?” I said.

  “No,” said Chandre pointedly, but she smiled.

  “He’s coming back, you know,” Jon shouted over the blades. “Would be nice if you were alive when he got here…”

  “Who?” I said, giving Jon a quizzical look.

  Cass laughed, long, black and dyed-red hair whipping around her delicate, Asian face.

  I grinned at her, only wincing a little at the thick scar that ran down one side of her forehead and nose, throwing her wide smile off-kilter. I saw her look down the hill from where the helipad sat, taking in the view of Seertown with its colored prayer flags and bamboo-walled houses.

  “I assume he means your husband,” Yerin answered for Jon, drawing my eyes.

  The narrow-faced seer stood perfectly still on the platform, despite the robes whipping around his elongated form. His dark eyes held a thread of humor.

  “And I must say,” Yerin added. “He is likely right that Dehgoies Revik would not approve of these excursions of yours, if my last conversation with him was any indication. He expressed concern that you were not better protected, even in Seertown. He fears you are too visible, given the number of people who already––”

  “Where’s Maygar?” I said, cutting him off.

  They exchanged looks.

  Every last one of them knew Revik and I had agreed to not talk during the period he was away. Even so, no one seemed to get that I didn’t want to hear about them talking to him either.

  Looking around, partly to distract myself from their meaningful silence, it occurred to me that Maygar really was missing. Still my official bodyguard, he never failed to be present on the landing pad to lecture me on the pure stupidity of letting myself be seen beyond the compound’s walls.

  I would have loved, one day, to tell Revik just how alike the two of them really were.

  “Really,” I said. “Where is he? Is he sick?”

  “He’s gone to Cairo, Bridge,” Chandre said.

  “Cairo?” I turned on her in surprise. “Why?”

  “Who knows?” Chandre shrugged. “Good riddance.”

  “Maybe Revik missed him.” Cass gave me a slanting smile.

  There was a silence, filled with nothing but powering down helicopter. Then I choked out an involuntary laugh. Jon and Chandre laughed with me, and even Yerin, who rarely understood our humor, smiled at the joke.

  Revik would be about as happy to see Maygar as he would to be dipped in an unwashed septic tank. Naked.

  3

  FEIGRAN

  FEIGRAN FLOATS. DREAMING… he creates things with his mind.

  Discordances live inside the rolling waves, musings previously held in check behind one or more locked doors. He builds mansions with his mind.

  He builds and builds…

  The Pyramid is gone.

  He struggles to feel. He struggles…

  Wisps of mind twist into and around themselves like dead flowers through cloudy wraiths of light. They belong to him, those clouds, yet their exact relation to himself eludes him. Freed from the constraints of meat and bone bodies, freed from the Pyramid, a crowd congeals over whatever form remains.

  They bring… unease.

  Some in this crowd frighten him.

  He sees shadows. He sees them, and wonders…

  The walls are gone. The part of his mind stuck inside a pale, twisted body inside a drifting metal cone finds this sad.

  His father is gone. Galaith is gone.

  Feigran sleeps. Hurtling through the dark beauty of night and its endless carpet of stars, he slumbers. Dangers lurk just out of reach, in a different darkness, one so deep he cannot bring himself to imagine its folds. Pain lurks there, and worse. It is not the womb-like darkness where he dreams, but the dark of silence, death.

  The end of being.

  Voices whisper, reminding him, causing him to doubt, to wonder at…

  But he is good.

  He, who has suffered misery and redemption, contained more light and intelligence and imagination than a thousand of the ordinary… he is good.

  God watches his footsteps.

  He has seen it, how God singles him out.

  DEEP IN THE basement of a house in the Bavarian mountains, a man dug through piles of documents, cursing.

  Papers circled him in a thick, teetering ring. A fire burned in the grate and he fed handfuls in periodically of those he’d already deemed useless or that simply annoyed him by their monotonous, bureaucratic prose.

  He watched the edges turn black, then curl and crinkle up before bursting into flame. He held them until the fire nearly burnt him.

  Like most humans, Galaith marked every moment of his life worth saving, so sorting the dross from the few things of value proved a complex and time-consuming task. Really, Galaith himself should have been a Nazi, given his obsession with narcissistic self-documentation.

  As it was, Terian could only wade through, and hope his tedious searching would yield fruit.

  This particular Terian body/personality configuration had once been another number in a much longer lineup. However, since Galaith killed most of his bodies, Terian renumbered what remained.

  This body was now Terian-3.

  Scandinavian in appearance, he stood at about six-foot-four. When pretending to be human, his ident cards described him as being in his late twenties. But he wasn’t human. He was a seer, with a sight ranking well above average, and a body approximately one hundred and twenty years old.

  Only a handful of his former selves remained in corporeal form.

  The original copy hadn’t survived––nor had any of the first four. Those earlier prototypes had all been destroyed when his mentor and friend of over eighty years, a being sometimes known as Galaith, someti
mes as Daniel Caine or Roderick Biermann or even as Hraban Novotny, decided to eliminate the body politic that was Terian.

  Terian had colleagues working to correct that problem now.

  Still, even best case scenario dictated that it would take time. A lot of time.

  The reality was, without the Pyramid, it may not be possible at all. Unless he found some way to rebuild the network, he might be forced to live in this fragmented, uncoordinated way until his very last body died of natural––or unnatural––causes.

  It had been many years since the different parts of himself were forced to live in so few bodies. Truth be told, he had grown unskilled at negotiating compromises between the more crystalized elements of his own personality. Before, while they’d been inhabiting separate bodies, he kept all parts compliant through the strict hierarchy of the Pyramid.

  Now, with two or three of those personalities living crammed inside a single physical form, they bled into one another, argued, fought for their own wants and needs, even attacked one another outright.

  And yet, they’d also never been so separate.

  With the Pyramid, Terian had been able to coordinate all of his bodies as a single unit; the Pyramid itself gave them an overarching structure.

  Now they operated as truly separate entities, forced to coordinate as any individuals would.

  This particular Terian, Terian-3, found the intricacies of their power struggles tedious.

  How ordinary seers or even humans dealt with the competing wants and voices of their own minds lived completely beyond his ability to comprehend. It amazed him that more didn’t stick a gun in their mouths to silence the cacophony, once and for all.

  One voice in particular––belonging to what appeared in his mind as a sobbing, despondent boy in constant need of reassurance––made Terian want to gouge out his own eyes whenever it slid to the forefront of his consciousness.

  Yet, this new world had its compensations.

  Galaith was dead.

  Terian was Head of the Rooks’ network now.

  Of course, for now at least, he lived as a king without a kingdom, and without the protection that a kingdom afforded. The beings previously swelling Galaith’s ranks had been scattered across the globe like so many bees without a hive and no way to find their way home. All that remained of the historical records of the Rooks lived in these boxes, and those like them scattered all over Europe and Asia.