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

by JC Andrijeski

  He’d waited for her. For goddamned years, he’d waited.

  They’d promised him that he wouldn’t have to be alone. They’d promised him, taught him all the ancient texts. They showed him how they said all the same things, that he wouldn’t be alone, not once she came. They said she would recognize him, too.

  They said she belonged to him.

  He had to find her. He couldn’t let her go.

  She was raised human, she wouldn’t understand. He would have to help her. But he had to get out of here first. She wouldn’t have waited.

  Salinse’s people wouldn’t have let her. They’d want her safe.

  And anyway, why would she wait for him now?

  The humans would be waiting, though. Terian’s people, too. His aleimi sought out opportunities, weapons. That part of him felt comfortable… working in that space, doing what it had always done, better than he’d ever done anything else.

  Hunting was easy, uncomplicated.

  Combustible gases, broken piping, liquid fuel, wooden pieces of wall and curtains like tinder already burning, residual powder, exposed wiring. He’d seen fireplaces in the plan.

  There’d been gas somewhere, too––maybe the kitchen.

  He’d heard the bombs. That meant planes. Fuel.

  The two sides worked together, but separate… on separate rails.

  The know-how, so familiar despite its years of absence, mixed with the military side of him, the part that planned the op to get inside. His fractured mind worked best with concrete goals. It only really derailed when he thought about––

  Pain tried to take over his light once more.

  He had to find her. He had to convince her… make her listen.

  The doors of the elevator slid open.

  He found himself facing the ground floor.

  He stood there, a heartbeat too long, and the doors started to close. A guard saw him when he stuck out his arm, stopping the doors before they could meet. As the organic panels reopened, the black-clad human raised an automatic rifle.

  Revik concentrated, briefly…

  …and the gun broke apart in the man’s hands.

  The shell exploded backwards into his face.

  The SCARB agent yelled as metal burnt flesh, but not for long because Revik broke his neck before he finished exhaling on the first scream.

  He didn’t have time to feel this.

  He felt another gun go up and scanned.

  He broke the firing mechanism before he snapped the owner’s spine, causing another of the armor-plated soldiers to crumple. He stood there, panting, staring at the two men lying on the wide, red carpet runner, their bodies motionless, like broken toys.

  For a second, he hesitated, filled with doubt.

  Then a kind of wonder came over him as he looked from one man to the other. He gave a startled laugh, and it sounded loud in the hollow hall.

  Something new pinged his light, and his focus returned again, sharper.

  He stepped the rest of the way out of the elevator, reaching up high into parts of his aleimi that felt so much like him his chest actually hurt.

  He remembered this!

  Terian was right.

  He remembered…

  Epilogue

  PAMIR

  I SAT NEXT to Vash, cross-legged.

  We were mostly alone inside an enormous cave, next to a fire that burned high and hot.

  I say mostly because the cave lay inside a vast network of other caves that wound deep into the Pamir range and beyond, between Tajikistan and China.

  Since the bombing of Seertown, those caves slowly filled with refugees from northern India. After D.C., more refugees came, the new ones hailing from the human world. The political climate for seers shifted a lot in the wake of the terrorist attack on the White House. Refugees continued to trickle in from Europe and the Americas, and even Africa and parts of Asia, joining us in what was fast becoming the new (old) seer stronghold in Asia.

  The circle really was revolving back to where it started, I guess.

  The monks who’d lived here before all of this, more or less entirely on their own and in self-imposed religious seclusion, were kind enough to welcome all of us into their home. I knew we’d pretty much decimated the peace of their previously silent enclave, though.

  Luckily, the caves were massive.

  Even so, none of us were ever really alone in them, not anymore.

  Despite their vast size and complexity, the whole place was a giant construct. That construct was now being actively maintained by the Adhipan as they took on even more of their traditional duties in the wake of “the incident,” as most of us referred to it now, or simply “the thing in D.C.”

  Fire illuminated the cave walls around us, including a tall mural covered in fading images of animals and people.

  I stared up at it, remembering the first time I’d seen it.

  A turtle sat under the world, next to a king and a queen and a knight that weren’t from the chess board, and a dragon that swam through the ocean and star-filled skies. The Bridge stood holding lightning in her hands, next to a laughing boy holding a blue-white sun, his eyes filled with joy.

  I tore my eyes off the boy’s face, taking a sip of my cup of chai.

  The cave was warm, surprisingly so, given how damp and dead-seeming the maze of tunnels had been just a few weeks earlier, when we first arrived. Already, power was available in over half of the occupied caves, with the others in some stage of progress as the techs scrambled to keep up with the influx of residents.

  Even with the technological advances, however, I knew we were only now rolling into the hottest months of summer. From what I’d been told, most of us younger seers were in for a shock when we hit our first real storm in the later months of that year.

  Most of us in the Seven were settling in to stay, just like the seers had for millennia before us.

  Tarsi even lived with us now.

  Well, more accurately, she lived with Vash.

  They shared one of the cave rooms together, which surprised me, I guess––as did Cass's decision to bunk down with a giant Wvercian she’d met somewhere while I’d been held in captivity.

  Actually, the Cass thing surprised me less, although I could tell there was still some pretty serious tension with Chandre.

  Even Jon seemed to be getting on better in the world of the seers.

  He and Dorje played chess every night in the largest of the now-occupied common spaces, and I’d seen him in the sparring ring a few times, too, learning mulei from Tenzi and Garensche and some of the others.

  He was certainly doing better than me.

  It was quiet here, living in the mountains, but it wouldn’t be for long. Nor was it particularly quiet in the world outside. I still had access to feeds, thanks to Balidor’s people and a number of pretty high-tech organic satellite dishes arrayed further up in the mountains and protected by weatherized covers.

  The United States was in full-fledged lockdown.

  Martial law had been declared in most major cities as riots raged, primarily in seer-related districts and businesses, but also against the Chinese, who were blamed for colluding with seer terrorists, thanks to Terian’s war-mongering of the previous year. The United States borders had closed to all seers and a large percentage of human foreigners. They’d installed mandatory DNA tests for entry into all government buildings as well as major banks, anything to do with Wall Street, and a lot of other businesses.

  Those seers still living in the United States––meaning those unable to leave in time, or to disguise themselves adequately––were already being rounded up.

  We didn’t have a lot of intelligence on the details yet, but we knew it was bad, even just from glimpses in the Barrier.

  Washington D.C. remained a quasi-militarized zone.

  No one in the Adhipan had managed to find Feigran, either.

  His capsule splashed down somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, but Balidor hadn’t been able to dir
ect any of his people to his best guess at the coordinates in time. The heavy organics in the machinery made the exact location difficult to pinpoint, even apart from the logistical difficulties, given everything else going on.

  Most in the Seven were fairly distracted even before the attack on the White House and later, the full-blown shooting war that erupted in downtown Washington D.C.

  By the time ships made it out to where satellite images saw the capsule land, the organic container had either sunk, or was no longer there.

  While the fate of Feigran himself remained under debate by infiltrators in the Adhipan and the Seven, however, one thing appeared indisputable––all of the other Terian bodies were dead.

  Wellington had been found dead in his bunker along with the Secretary of Defense, Andrea Jarvesch. The young girl the Wellingtons adopted a year earlier, Melissa Wellington, died mysteriously, too. The unexplained deaths hadn’t stopped reverberating throughout the human world. Nor had the fact that I had apparently “disappeared” from under some of the heaviest security ever deployed to guard a single seer… and seemingly without a trace.

  Everyone from the Chinese to homegrown insurgents to seer terrorists from the Middle East had been blamed for the attacks. The Americans dropped a second set of bombs on the White House after Tobias drugged me and carried me off the grounds. Apparently that second bombing had been done in response to the deaths of Wellington and Jarvesch, in a desperate attempt to destroy the last of the terrorist cell.

  It hadn’t.

  By then, no one had been left inside, apart from corpses and the odd straggler from Secret Service. The Scandinavian Terian had been there, too, his body dragged out of the underground chamber with at least three bullet holes in his limbs. According to the coroner, however, it wasn’t the bullets that killed him. He’d died before the wounds could bleed out.

  Instead, he was pronounced dead from “unexplained causes,” like the others.

  The usual talk of conspiracies and cover-ups made the rounds of the lesser-known feeds.

  There was talk of a new weapon, something developed with seer tech. There was talk of telekinetic seers, of me and a “child seer” who’d been subjected to testing for telekinesis while I’d been held at the White House.

  Elan Raven hadn’t resurfaced yet. Nor had Maygar.

  But I didn’t much care about any of that.

  I found myself thinking, now and then, about Haldren, however.

  Otherwise known as former United States President Daniel Caine, also known as Hraban Novotny in Eastern Europe during World War I, or simply as Galaith––I still thought of him as Haldren in my head.

  It had occurred to me more than once that the name Galaith meant “Shield” in the oldest of the seer tongues.

  The shield had certainly crumbled since his death.

  During his life, Galaith managed to maintain treaties within both the human and seer worlds. He’d protected the Seven in his own way, by keeping the rebels in the mountains under control, and keeping human passions in check when some might have wanted a more aggressive stance against the free seers in Asia. He’d created SCARB as a means to assuage human fears of uncontrolled seers, and then infiltrated it with his own seers to keep them from getting overzealous.

  He’d even done what he’d claimed to do all those years ago.

  He protected the world from Syrimne.

  “No one’s heard from him?” I said, unnecessarily.

  “Since yesterday?” Vash said gently. “No, Alyson.”

  “And you’re sure he got out of the United States before they closed the borders?”

  “Quite certain, yes,” Vash said.

  He looked at me, and I saw concern in those dark eyes, a near worry, for the first time since I’d known him.

  “Now that he is whole,” he added. “…and uncollared, of course, he cannot hide his light so easily behind the Barrier, Alyson. He is a beacon now. Much more visible than even he probably knows.” Vash shrugged with one hand. “He’ll learn to compensate for this, I’m sure. Until then, we can monitor him, at least. Attempt to discern the progress of his reintegration, and its possible effects.”

  I nodded, only half hearing him.

  I wasn’t up to asking again, why no one had told me––or told Revik––who he really was. I could hear their reasons a hundred million times, and they still wouldn’t make sense to me.

  Nor would they change anything.

  “It is dangerous,” Vash said softly. “What you are doing.”

  I didn’t bother to ask him what he meant.

  “I haven’t done anything yet,” I said.

  “You must be firm in your mind, Alyson. You cannot compromise on this. You cannot. You must see how dangerous such a fiction is.”

  I nodded to that, too.

  But I didn’t feel it.

  Sometimes I think the whole of human and seer thought is nothing but a story we tell ourselves, usually about things we would have done anyway, explaining it all to ourselves and anyone who will listen in retrospect.

  “Alyson,” Vash said softly. “The man you knew as Dehgoies Revik––he is dead. You must accept this. You must feel it as true.”

  He paused, likely waiting for me to look over.

  I didn’t.

  “The other two personality configurations were always dominant,” he said. “At least since he was a child, since Menlim broke his mind.”

  When I didn’t look over that time, Vash sighed, clicking softly in consternation.

  Sadness whispered from his light, more of that worry that felt so different from how I normally perceived him. I felt guilt there, too, I realized. I closed my own light in response, squeezing my knees against my body, as if to block out everything else.

  Vash clicked again, softly.

  “We are running out of time, Alyson,” he said. “Once he integrates the different sides of himself more fully, he will become even more dangerous.” He paused, again as if waiting for me to turn. “There will be aspects of him that remind you of your mate, but he will not be your mate. He will never be again, Alyson. Never. You need to understand this.”

  He sounded almost afraid now.

  “Sooner would be good,” he added. “Tarsi said she told you. She warned you in the cave. You may have to kill him, Allie. It may be necessary.”

  “It would be suicide,” I said, feeling my jaw harden.

  He laid a hand on my knee.

  I don’t think he’d ever been so gentle with me.

  “Perhaps not,” he said. “You did not fall in love with the other personalities, Alyson. I do not think his death means yours anymore… if it ever did. You married someone else. Someone who no longer exists.”

  Sliding my fingers into my hair, I held my head in both hands, staring at the fire, trying not to think about his words.

  He let the silence stretch.

  Longer than I could.

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” I said. “I can’t, Vash. Not now. And it doesn’t matter, anyway. He hasn’t come near me.”

  “You cannot afford to wait,” he warned. “You have seen how dangerous he is. You must know, having seen who he was then… and from your time spent with the boy. He will only grow more dangerous, Allie. He is not a child anymore, but his mind still operates as one, in many ways. It may always, given what he was forced to endure.”

  I let my eyes scale the wall, taking in the high mural of images.

  I focused on the painting of the boy, and my eyes blurred. The depictions looked exactly as they had in my dreams, only the paint had faded.

  There was probably some kind of metaphor in there somewhere, but I didn’t want to think about what it was.

  Instead, I climbed to my feet.

  One nice thing about seers, you didn’t have to make up a reason to leave.

  You could just go.

  I walked down a narrow passage that twisted out of Vash’s cave. Reaching another turning, I veered right, taking the mid
dle passage to make my way back to my room––or whatever one called a cave that was carpeted and had power. It was fully furnished, too, with a bed, a desk, bookshelves, a lamp. It even had a comfy chair. The electricity came from organic generators, so didn’t tend to flicker or brown out like the power had in India.

  The section of cave I’d chosen for myself was closer to the outside entrance than any of my friends, a fact which drove Balidor crazy for security reasons.

  And yet, the decision hadn’t been carelessness on my part.

  Vash was right. I was being stupid.

  Anyway, he would be crazy to come here.

  Thousands of years old, the construct inside the caves made what I’d felt in the White House seem like a child’s toy. I’d nowhere-near figured out all of the complexities residing within it, either in functionality or in terms of the information stored in its folds; the construct contained more rooms and realities than the cave structures themselves. It housed places and memories that stretched back to the time of Elaerian.

  My people, or so Tarsi claimed.

  Our people, I supposed.

  The thought made my chest hurt all over again.

  I’d already been warned that my current room might get pretty cold in the winter, if I didn’t find a way to shield myself from the wind that tunneled through the openings in the mountain walls. That was in spite of the significant number of windbreakers and shields housed outside those doors. Winters in the Pamir, so I’d been told over the past few weeks, put a whole new spin to the concept of “seasons.” Everything died outside the caves. Everything that wasn’t artificially sustained in some way, at least.

  In this part of the world, everything living was reborn every year, starting over again from nothing, from death itself.

  But I’d already made up my mind.

  I couldn’t stay here.

  I’d put them all at risk if I stayed.

  Anyway, I’d already decided I couldn’t just hide out with the other seers. It was time for me to go back, to do something. I’d have to leave quietly, of course; Balidor would pitch a fit if he knew I was even contemplating leaving the Pamir.