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

by JC Andrijeski

  “Virgin,” I muttered. Jerking my mind back from where it wanted to go, I folded my arms. “So what? People are born with abilities sometimes.”

  “Not this ability, Alyson.”

  “I can’t control it,” I said. “So again, who cares?”

  Smiling faintly, he shrugged, and it was a human shrug. “You are incurious. You are entitled. Still, I would love to hear Revi’s theories on this peculiarity of yours. I’m sure they’re quite fascinating.”

  “What makes you think he has any?”

  “Oh.” Terian chuckled, patting my knee. “I’m quite sure he does.”

  I found myself thinking about this, in spite of myself. He was right, of course. If it was as unusual as all that, Revik would certainly have some kind of theory.

  Truthfully, I was a little miffed he’d never brought it up.

  All I said was, “I’m past-life girl, right? Maybe I just remember how I did it before. Enough to do the basics, anyway.”

  He rolled his eyes, clicking at me in mild disapproval.

  “You don’t believe that. Besides, even if you did believe it… which you don’t… it wouldn’t matter. Syrimne was also an intermediary being. He required training. Intensive training, over many many years, according to those crazy religious-fanatic Sarks I spoke to in the mountains.” He smiled at me. “You know––the ones who actually trained him. I took the time to have a chat with a few after I ran across our boy. They said it took them decades, and those years were not particularly gentle.”

  I stared at him, unable to hide my surprise. “They’re still alive?”

  The idea astounded me.

  Yet, as soon as I thought about it at all, it made perfect sense.

  Seers lived a long time. Of course some of those same seers from the original rebellion would have survived. Vash was still alive, after all. So was Tarsi. A hundred years wasn’t even all that long, really, from a Sark perspective. Revik was still considered “young” by the monks I spoke to, and he’d been around that long.

  Why hadn’t the thought ever occurred to me before?

  I didn’t doubt that Terian had talked to them, either. It made perfect sense that he would go there first after locating the boy.

  From what I’d seen of Syrimne’s life, Terian’s claim was essentially accurate, too; it had been at least twenty years before Syrimne could do much of anything. Twenty years of nearly nonstop training, with every kind of coercion one could imagine.

  Winking at me, Terian called to the boy in a sing-song voice.

  “Nenzi, dear?” He waited for the dark head to turn. “Could you come here, please? I would like to show you something.”

  I watched the boy approach, thinking again about what Terian had said, about Revik having a theory about me. Whatever his issues with Revik, Terian’s admiration of his ex-partner’s intelligence seemed sincere enough. He’d mentioned a few times now that he’d wished he could borrow Revik’s brain for one thing or another, or just ask his opinion.

  Vash mentioned something similar to me in passing once, about how smart Revik was––smarter than most in the Seven knew.

  He’d implied Revik played dumb, actually.

  I’d known he was smart, of course. Anyone who talked to him for more than a few minutes could see perfectly well that he was intelligent. Still, I’d only gotten glimpses of that intelligence on the ship. There, he’d been lecturing me mostly, and often appeared bored. We’d never really talked about anything that might have intellectually challenged him.

  I wondered now if I’d underestimated him, too.

  The boy approached where we sat. I saw him look at the hand Terian had on my knee warily, just before Terian removed it.

  The Scandinavian-looking seer rose to his feet.

  Bending down, he plucked the glass baton off the floor. Hefting it in one hand, he showed it to the boy, letting Nenzi run his fingers over the carved crystal along its sides. The object was about two and a half feet long and several inches thick in the middle, flaring to a larger bulb on one end. It looked vaguely familiar to me from the archeological stores under the mansion in Seertown.

  The boy touched it tentatively, his eyes curious.

  “It’s called an urele, Nenz,” Terian said. “It was designed for sight work.” He must have felt my eyes on it as well, because his tone shifted, growing lighter. “…although it could have its other uses, I suppose.”

  He glanced overtly at me, giving me a wink as he indicated towards the glass rod.

  I fought back a facial expression, biting my tongue.

  “This particular urele used to belong to our friend, Dehgoies Revik,” Terian said, still smiling at me. “It won’t surprise you to know that I stole it from him… after he declined my offer to rejoin our little organization.” Smiling, he looked at the boy. “Seers used them for exams in sight schools, Nenz. Back when such things still existed. They were a way of testing one’s control.”

  I saw Nenzi’s eyes on me. A frown puckered his forehead, making a line out of his lips. He’d seen my anger at Terian.

  He also didn’t like the reference to Revik.

  Shaking my head minutely, I rolled my eyes, nodding towards the Scandinavian.

  Relieved, Nenzi grinned.

  He still seemed to think the back and forth with me and Terian was playful banter––like a brother and sister who bickered.

  Still, I found myself interested in what Terian was saying.

  “Back in those days,” he continued. “There was a real ranking system, not this bastardized, human-approved version the World Court uses now. Just like now, however, in the original system, seers were twice ranked. They had their aleimic rank, based on their potential… meaning, what they were born with. Then they had their working rank, meaning what they’d been trained to actually use.” He smiled at the boy. “I imagine some of the old timers in the Pamir even know their original scores.”

  I thought of Vash, and had no doubt he did know.

  Tarsi popped into my head as well.

  “I’d like to see if I can rank you this way, Nenz.” Seeing the boy’s look sharpen, he smiled. “Just for fun. The urele reacts to aleimic light. It is a bit like playing a musical instrument. You’ll like it. Promise.”

  When Terian looked at me, I raised a skeptical eyebrow as well.

  He smiled, hefting the urele to bounce it in his hand.

  “But it’s virtual, right?” I said.

  “No,” Terian said, looking at me. “The superficial elements of the room are. The birds, rocks, water, glass, texture of the walls and floor. You, me, the boy––we are not. Neither is the urele.”

  “So where are we really, then?” I said.

  Terian merely smiled.

  “Well?” he said, turning to the boy. “How about we see what you can do?”

  Nenzi made a short series of gestures with his hands.

  Pausing only the slightest beat, Terian indicated affirmative with one hand.

  “All right. Me first, then.”

  I exhaled a low snort, but Terian only gave me the barest glance.

  Grasping the thick end of the urele, he walked to the part of the floor beneath the highest arc of the glass sun dome. He flipped the wand over his hand expertly a few times; then, once he reached the center of the wide circle of floor, he tossed it sharply up into the air.

  With Nenzi, I watched it rise.

  About halfway to the domed ceiling, the baton started to glow.

  The wall windows of the sunroom faced virtual east, the glass a tinted dark, so the baton’s glow stood out even under the high dome. I squinted up at it, wishing again that I had access to my sight. The fact that I could see the light at all told me it wasn’t purely a Barrier toy––assuming Terian was telling the truth about the urele being real in the first place.

  The glass wand reached the apex of the arc of Terian’s throw.

  The warm glow transformed into a sharp burst of light.

  I flinched bac
k, as did Nenzi.

  Our eyes didn’t leave the airborne wand. A multi-colored flame flooded the dimmed room, erupting from patterned, translucent glass.

  I glanced at the Scandinavian seer.

  This had to be some kind of virtual trick.

  When I saw his face, though, I wondered. Terian stared up, watching the urele. His amber-colored eyes showed a hint of concentration as he focused on the wand, until slowly… slowly… the light stabilized.

  An elaborate design appeared on the floor in a wide circle.

  Nenzi laughed aloud, clapping his hands in delight.

  I watched the galaxy-like pattern morph.

  The urele started to return slowly… too slowly… to virtual earth.

  It emitted sparks, colored curls of light. The painting below our feet bled with miniature solar flares. The image expanded as the urele fell; the colored light stretched towards opposite walls, covering my skin, the rocks, the clear waterfall. Staring at the patterns on my arms and hands, I marveled at the level of detail.

  The design pulled compulsively at my eyes––a tapestry of intricate threads, each a shade off from the one before, each a separate, living pattern.

  It occurred to me, in a kind of shock, that I was seeing a visual representation of Terian’s light, a part of his aleimic body.

  At that precise instant, Terian caught the urele easily in one hand.

  The image winked out, leaving the room flat-seeming, two-dimensional.

  Sparks continued to erupt off the wand in Terian’s hand.

  Rising to my feet, I walked closer, in spite of myself.

  He held the urele out, so both of us could see.

  Light slid liquidly from one end of the wand to the other, traveling through spiderweb cracks in the glass. His aleimi made colored patterns through hairline trails that hadn’t been apparent before his light infused it. I watched in a kind of wonder as the wand pulsed brighter and softer as Terian reflected parts of himself through it.

  “Of course,” Terian murmured, glancing at me. “This isn’t my whole aleimic body. Still. I didn’t do too bad, did I?”

  I shook my head, unthinking.

  I wanted to touch it.

  I flinched again as an explosion of jeweled beads rained through the green-tinted glass, breaking apart before sliding back to a single pool of light, recombining into narrow threads. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to try it, too. Maybe it was the competitive side of me, or the artist in me, or maybe it just looked incredibly neat.

  Terian must have seen something in my face.

  He laughed, and it was the closest to a real laugh I’d ever heard on him.

  “Sorry, my dear,” he said. “As much as I’d love to see what you can do, I value my skin a bit more than that, I’m afraid.”

  Biting the inside of my cheek, I didn’t look up, still watching light flicker through the transparent wand. Nenzi watched it as well, equally mesmerized. Touching my arm, he looked up at the tall, broad-shouldered seer.

  He must have asked Terian a question.

  “Some other day, perhaps,” he said. Another pause. “Of course,” Terian said then, answering another question from the boy. “The same way?”

  The boy’s eyes blurred; he didn’t lift them from the urele.

  “Well, you can leave it on the floor, sure,” Terian allowed. His voice was magnanimous; he was clearly enjoying the effect the urele was having on the two of us. “Its design is simple, partly to accommodate seers at different levels. A normal Sark would be required to use several modalities in an exam.”

  He shrugged, shaking out another hiri stick from a pocket in his shirt.

  “For example, they might require several throws, each with a different skill level. That could be anything the examiners felt like tossing his or her way, depending on what they knew of their birth rank and current level of skill. As you are telekinetic, you would have been required to hold it airborne while reflecting different parts of your aleimi through it. A gauge of control, you see.”

  Terian placed the wand in Nenzi’s outstretched palm.

  In the boy’s pale fingers, the bottle-green urele looked enormous.

  Nenzi glanced at me. I was getting better at reading his face. I could see he wanted to do as well as Terian. He also didn’t want to make a fool of himself trying.

  So he was competitive with the other male. I had wondered.

  I was still thinking about this when he threw the urele up in the air. He didn’t throw it as hard or as high or as elegantly as Terian had done; the urele went up in a slightly off-kilter line, rising halfway up the curved walls.

  But the less-flattering differences immediately grew inconsequential. I saw the boy’s fingers curl into fists as his eyes followed the bottle-green glass. I wondered if he was trying to figure out how it worked––

  ––When the urele burst out violently in flaming tongues of light.

  I stared up, my mouth open.

  I didn’t blink as light cascaded down around us in a dense rain. Nenzi’s light appeared as three-dimensional beads. A complex, woven dome emerged around the three of us, and instead of Terian’s prism-like, two-dimensional reflection, this looked almost like it was made of real water. As I watched, the consistency of the dome grew more and more subtle.

  Soon it was a curtain of the finest silk.

  From there, it melted to perfectly symmetrical walls of thinned paint.

  My heart suddenly hurt. I felt for the kid, deeply at times; I couldn’t help it. Somehow, seeing his light manifested around me only brought the emotions more sharply into relief.

  What he could do, who he really was––it was incredibly beautiful.

  He should never have been allowed to become a twisted, dark tool of the Dreng––or of that fucked up seer who’d owned him, Menlim.

  That someone like him could have ended up a monster… it was unthinkable.

  The urele floated higher.

  I could no longer see the sunroof, the sun, the blue sky. I gazed up at the zenith of a waterfall of light. The curtain thickened as he raised it higher still. I knew by now he was floating the urele as he experimented with his light in the bottle-green wand. He glanced at me then, and I saw a faint gleam in his eyes, different from the look that normally lived there.

  The expression belonged to someone closer to forty than fourteen.

  I remembered windows shattering in a rusted factory, a scream of triumph as the glass exploded outwards––

  “You like this, Allie?” he said.

  Before I could answer, I saw his eyes squint in a tighter concentration.

  When I looked up, a cluster of light separated from the urele in a burst.

  I watched in disbelief as it transformed into the shape of a bird. The fiery plumage looked like it belonged to a bird of paradise, or a phoenix. His creation winged in and out of the liquid curtain of light like a living being. I let out a little gasp of surprise as it transformed into a dragon with white scales, watching it slide through the watery veil once more before it disappeared.

  “You like it?” he said again.

  “It’s amazing,” I said. “Like magic, Nenzi.”

  “You like me?” he said.

  “You know I do.”

  Stepping closer, he gripped my wrist.

  “Then no more husband with him,” he said. He stroked the inside of my arm with his fingers. “I will take your bargain. But not just for sex. You have to marry me. Marry me, instead of him.”

  Terian laughed.

  I looked at the kid, bewildered, then up at the sparking lights cascading to the floor. Sometimes it was easy to see him as a kind of neurotic adult; other times, he sounded and acted years younger than even his body suggested.

  The lights above his head continued to shower us in sparks, making patterns against his pale skin, hitting the clay tiles like lava, pooling in streams on the floor. I saw the colors change as he spoke, shifting from dark greens and blues to a deep orange, shot thro
ugh with gold and white.

  I looked at his face.

  “It’s too late, Nenzi,” I said.

  I glanced at Terian in spite of myself. I saw the warning in his amber eyes.

  “Would you like to explain… Uncle Terry?” I said, giving him a hard look. “Or do you want junior here to uncollar me so we can get married?”

  I saw him look between my eyes. He shrugged, as if conceding my point.

  “I am sorry to say she is right,” he said easily. “Seers mate for life, my young friend. Sadly, that ship has sailed.”

  When I looked back at Nenzi, I saw his mouth harden. The black eyes stared between mine. There was a bleakness there, a kind of desperate need. Something behind that expression made me pause.

  He touched my arm again. His fingers clasped my skin.

  “Stay with me,” he said. His voice turned gruff. “Or I’ll kill him.”

  I glanced at Terian. He gave me a sideways look, but he was watching the boy intently. Looking back at Nenzi, I shook my head.

  “Then you’ll kill me,” I said simply.

  “Not if I wipe his mind!” he said angrily.

  I stared, gauging his expression warily.

  Caution returned to my voice, but I kept it firm.

  “Nenzi… this won’t make me love you.”

  “You can’t be alone forever,” he said. “You’re a seer. You need companions. You will forget about him… and I’ll be there.”

  The implications behind this statement unnerved me. He’d clearly thought about this way too much.

  “No.” I said, my voice incredulous. “I won’t forget him. More than that, I’ll hate you. And if you erase him, I’ll die.”

  “Stop being married to him! I will kill him!”

  I flinched, looking between his eyes.

  “No,” I said.

  A burst of light exploded over us, a small sun. When I looked back at the boy, his face had contorted in rage, his voice a command.

  “Goddamn it, Allie!” he said. “I mean it! I know where he is!”

  I stared at him, thrown again by the change in tone. He sounded forty again, and more than that, I recognized the look in those black eyes.

  A horrible kind of suspicion grew in me.

  Once it bloomed there, it was impossible to shove entirely from my mind.