Lander

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  He put a hand on the wall next to where the door had been and the room lit up, a soft golden glow like that of his hand.

  The room was sparsely furnished with a set of what looked like cabinets on one side.

  Morgan touched a hand to the floor and lifted it up, and the floor followed, forming a wide table. It looked fragile as ice. “Put her down here.”

  Quince looked around. She’d given up most of her options when she’d followed him inside. They were at Morgan’s mercy now.

  Gently she set Robyn down on the edge of the table and took off her carry sack, setting it aside. Then she laid Robyn’s unconscious form on the table.

  Immediately the table began to change its form, stretching upward with multiple white extensions to envelop Robyn’s body.

  “What’s it doing?” Quince asked, alarmed, and reached for Robyn’s arm.

  “It will make her whole again.” He pulled her arm back gently but firmly. “Trust me.”

  Quince was finding that hard to do, despite her recent warm feelings toward the boy. Or whatever he was.

  Morgan touched the floor again, conjuring up two chairs. “Sit. We will talk.”

  Quince set down her own carry sack and sat down, surprised to find the spindly ice chair quite comfortable. She tried not to look at the table, which had entirely covered Robyn’s body by then, as if it were eating her alive. She shoved those thoughts away too.

  “You called for me,” she said at last, and was surprised to see Morgan squirm in his chair.

  “I did. I… shouldn’t have. It’s not part of the plan.”

  Morgan had spoken of “the plan” once before, when her own life had hung in the balance. “But you did call me. And why me?”

  He nodded. “Part of me called. And because you listened.”

  “Part of you? Morgan, what are you?”

  In response, he stood and put out his arms. A rainbow glow extended around him, forming beautiful wings, like she’d seen in her dream, the night by the lake. Like she’d seen in the tunnel just minutes before.

  “You’re a nimfeach.” She wasn’t as surprised as she should have been. She’d suspected it for some time.

  But he shook his head. “Only part. I am part human too. Like you.”

  All at once, she understood. “Someone made you, didn’t they? To guide us? To get us to do what you wanted us to do?”

  He nodded, looking miserable.

  “Like… the sneach?”

  He shook his head. “The sneach were failures. Hybrids that didn’t follow the plan.”

  Quince shuddered. He meant human experiments. Or experiments on human subjects, at least. “What’s the plan? Whose plan?”

  In response, he stood and walked to the far wall. His hand touched the surface and it turned transparent, like fog and frost retreating from a window.

  Quince stood and went to join him.

  They were looking out on a vast open space, full of white pods eerily similar to the table that now encased Robyn. There were thousands of them, lined up in even rows.

  In between the rows were dozens of golden nimfeach going from pod to pod like worker bees.

  “What are they?”

  “Ithani. They return.”

  JAMESON GATHERED Vestra, Venin, Alix, and Jessa by the lagoon as the setting sun fell past the rim of the volcano. He swallowed hard as he brought out the key. This was the first time he would see Xander since they’d parted near the waystation. The intervening time had only made Jameson more certain of his feelings for him.

  Who could say if it had done the same for Xander?

  At the moment it didn’t matter. There were more important matters to be dealt with.

  He took a deep breath and summoned a waygate, connecting one beach to the other. He gestured for the others to go through and then followed them, snapping the waygate shut behind him.

  Xander was there waiting, along with Alia and a young girl. It took Jameson a minute to recognize her. “Mylin!”

  She grinned. “Welcome to Torr Talam.”

  “Good to see you made it.” Xander’s voice was flat and professional.

  Jameson’s shoulders drooped. “You too. Any… trouble getting here?”

  “Not really. We picked up a number of Erriani on the way. They’ve told me about the situation in Errian.”

  “Good. That’ll save time.” He swallowed again and then pulled Jessa forward. “Xander, this is Jessa. My… fiancée.”

  Xander’s eyebrow went up at that.

  “Nice to meet you.” Jessa held out her hand.

  Xander shook it firmly. “You came looking for him?”

  She grinned. “I couldn’t let Jamie here get in trouble.” She squeezed his arm.

  Jameson felt the temperature on the beach drop by ten degrees.

  “Come on. We can talk in Mylin’s office.” Xander turned and led them to Torr Talam, his shoulders stiff. Only his wings betrayed any emotion, quivering slightly.

  Jameson shook his head and followed Xander into the tower.

  XANDER GRUMBLED under his breath.

  This was not how he’d wanted the reunion to go. Although he wasn’t sure what he had wanted, either, but meeting with his own ex and Jameson’s… fiancée? Ex? When he was still unsure of his own emotions? He felt queasy.

  He ducked into the tower’s cool darkness. He wasn’t used to these gray areas in life. Since he’d been freed from Rogan’s grasp, he’d taken firm control of his fate, first with Alix and later without him. He’d told himself he was done with love. Done with dependency on others. He didn’t need anyone to take care of him.

  Now Jameson was back, and he looked as good as before. Better maybe. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that, but how was he to trust his own heart?

  When Quince returned, she was going to have a lot to answer for.

  Xander turned to address his guests, putting his hands on the table. “This is about the closest we have to a war room. Mylin has been running the camp from here.”

  Jameson nodded, stepping up to the makeshift table. “This represents Errian?” He pointed to a group of spiral shells on one side of the table.

  “I’d say a frontal assault is best.” Xander pointed at the southern edge of the city. “We have more than a thousand skythane now, but if we keep them here too long, we lose the element of surprise. Plus, food will start to be a problem.”

  Mylin jumped in. “We have enough to feed everyone for a couple days, at most.”

  “What kind of food?” Jameson studied the table.

  “Fish from the sea, animals we’ve been able to hunt or trap. Some of the villages sent stores as well.”

  “I can help with that.”

  “Your Highness?”

  “The waygates. I can get us food or access to it.” Jameson turned to look at Xander. “But we have another problem.”

  “I think we have enough fighters to overwhelm the invaders.” Xander had spent the last few hours figuring out who to send where and how to use Jameson’s advantage to take down the invaders without much of a fight.

  “Jessa overheard Danner Black when she escaped.” Jameson’s knuckles were white as he grasped the edge of the table.

  Xander hissed. “He’s here?”

  “Yes. Remember Ballifor?”

  Xander nodded. “But I… oh shit.” Quince’s village had been reduced to slag by some kind of lander tech.

  “They know we’re here. They haven’t come to find you, have they?”

  Xander shook his head. “We thought they were just hunkering down, consolidating their hold on Errian.”

  “I think it’s clear. Errian’s a trap. We have to find another way.”

  “How long do we have?” Xander frowned.

  “Jessa overheard them say three days.” Jameson sounded short with him.

  Xander whistled. “What if we took the fight to them in Oberon City?”

  Jameson looked up, his eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? We’d be u
sing swords against plasma weapons.”

  “Not necessarily. What if we convinced Rogan to fight them for us?”

  “The Syndicate?” Jameson scratched his chin. “And why in the hell would he do that?”

  Xander’s grin widened. “Because we have a room full of pith to trade for it?” He’d been thinking about the OberCorp pith storage room back in Gaelan for a couple days, wondering how it could be put to use.

  “That… that could work.” Jameson held his gaze for a moment, then looked away. “One of us would have to go back to Oberon City to talk with Rogan.”

  Xander nodded. “I’ll go.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” Jameson shook his head fiercely. “I’m not letting him anywhere near you again, not after what he did to you.”

  Xander’s mouth dropped open. “I—”

  “Forget it. You’re not going to play the martyr. I’ll go. After all, I can take him to the pith to show him what we have to trade.”

  “Um, guys….” Alix put his hand on Xander’s shoulder.

  Xander wondered how the two had gotten along these last few days. “What?”

  “So, just to be clear, we’re talking about starting a gang war, in the middle of Oberon City, to stave off a regular war?”

  “Only until they agree to back down.” Xander leaned against the old tree. “I think it’s our only play.”

  “What if I had another?” Alix had a gleam in his eye.

  “Like what?”

  “What if I talk to my mother?”

  That was a surprise. Alix never talked about his family. Xander didn’t even know he had one. “Your mother?”

  Alix met his gaze, looking deadly serious. “Ask her to call all this off.”

  Jameson asked the question they were all thinking. “Who the hell is your mother? The head of OberCorp or something?”

  “Yes.” He smiled grimly. “I may be the only one who can get her to listen.”

  WHEN THE meeting broke up, Jameson pulled Xander aside. “Walk with me?”

  “Sure.” They crossed the beach and headed into the jungle in silence. They traversed the small stream that burbled its way down toward the sea and found a quiet space among the trees to talk.

  Jameson looked around nervously for any of those spider-cat things before sitting down on a fallen log. “How are you?” He was unsure if he should hug Xander or leave him be.

  “Still working things out.” Xander wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  Jameson looked down at his hands—the double moons were fading as the nails grew out, but they were still visible. “I missed you.”

  Xander snorted. “Looks like you’ve had lots of company.”

  “What?”

  “Jessa, your fiancée, traveled a hundred light-years to find you.” Xander turned away. “And Alix doesn’t seem to hate you anymore. Should I be worried?”

  “I don’t know. Should you? If you don’t care about me anymore, I don’t see why it would matter.” It came out more sharply than he intended.

  “You’re not denying it.”

  “Denying what? Look, nothing happened. With Alix or with Jessa. I’m here. Waiting for you.”

  Xander’s shoulders stiffened. After a long moment, he said, “I’m not ready.”

  “Fucking typical.” Jameson looked away. It seemed he was less patient than he’d hoped to be. He took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m going to go. I’ll take Alix to Oberon City and see what we can do, but I don’t want to leave it like this between us. The last time was hard enough.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Xander, look at me.”

  Xander turned reluctantly to face Jameson. His face was tight with pain.

  It killed Jameson to see him like this. “Whatever there is between us, or whatever there will be, I care about you.” He shook his fists in the air. “Fuck it. I love you, Xander Kinnson, even if you don’t love me back.” He put his arms around Xander and pulled him close, feeling Xander’s resistance. “I’ll keep waiting for you, even if it kills me.” Jameson kissed Xander’s cheek and let him go. He squeezed Xander’s hand one more time and turned to walk away.

  “Be careful,” Xander whispered.

  Jameson stopped, squeezing his eyes shut to hold back the tears. His insides were twisted, like he’d been split down the middle by a massive blow, his guts burned to ash. But he couldn’t let Xander see it.

  “I will.” Then he left Xander behind, hoping somehow, someday, his skythane would change his mind.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Xander and Jessa, Sitting in a Tree

  “WHAT ARE the Ithani?” Quince had a pretty good idea, but she wanted to hear it from Morgan himself.

  “They were the masters of Erro, the ones who planned to spin it here, to this new place.”

  “Why?”

  “To escape their enemies, the Dhagani.” He touched his hand to hers, and she was in the middle of a war.

  An entire planet burned. Ships raced past one another in the black depths of space, exchanging fire. A sun went supernova, spewing superheated plasma into the void.

  Morgan let go. “It raged on for two thousand years after the Ithani discovered the Dhagani homeworld. Millions were killed on both sides.”

  Quince struggled to take it all in, breathing quickly. The human race had yet to encounter another sentient race in its spread across this corner of the galaxy. Then again, the portion of the Milky Way so far inhabited by humanity was vanishingly small.

  “What were these dog… dagh….”

  “Dhagani. They were diminutive in size… like me. They were easy to kill in battle.”

  “They don’t sound so fearsome.”

  “They were masters of macro-tech. In the end, they sent a bomb that destabilized our sun.”

  “The flares!”

  “Yes. The Ithani think it was meant to make the sun go supernova, but that something went wrong. Only because of that chance of fate did they survive.”

  “What about the Dhagani?”

  “The Ithani retaliated against them. By then they were few, but they were no longer willing to stay their hand. The Dhagani homeworld was destroyed, pummeled into a radioactive wasteland, but the damage had been done. The Ithani scientists found a way to move the homeworld to a new place, a universe where they could complete the next step in their evolution.”

  Quince rubbed her chin. “And the nimfeach?”

  “We are the servants of the Ithani, here to prepare the way. When the first shift went awry, it fell to us to find a way to complete it. The Ithani couldn’t withstand the energies of the shift unshielded.”

  “How long have they been waiting?”

  “A little more than a hundred thousand years.”

  Quince whistled. “Why couldn’t you just come to me? Or tell me, in a dream or something?”

  “They watch me. The others don’t trust me. You had to come here.”

  “Why are you telling me all this? I have no interest in the Ithani. They can evolve to heaven or hell, for all I care.”

  “The Ithani were almost freed once before. But the part of the world you call Oberon was spun back to your universe before they could be awoken.”

  Quince’s mind raced. Seven hundred and fifty years before, when Elyra and Daedus had stood in the same place where Jameson and Xander had been, in the room under the Mountain.

  “How did you survive?”

  Morgan frowned. “I am a key. After the world shifted, I came back here.”

  It made a certain kind of sense—Morgan was the reason Xander and Jameson had been able to shift Oberon at all. Then it hit her. Why the Mountain had collapsed. “It was you.”

  He nodded. “We did not wish to allow it to happen again. This time our masters will be freed.”

  Without the Mountain, there was no way to spin the worlds apart once again. No way she knew of. And the broken rocthane key, which they had assumed Dani or Kadin had broken… it had been Morgan all along.

 
; She backed away from him, seeking to flee, but there was nowhere to go.

  He was no child. She’d known that for some time. Still, he’d seemed childlike, in need of protection. But this….

  “What… what happens when the Ithani awaken?”

  “They will use the heart of the world to complete their transformation.”

  The heart of the world. “The amalite?”

  He nodded solemnly.

  “But that would destroy Erro….”

  “Yes.” He seemed small now, once again the child Xander had taken him for.

  What if he was? He could have left her and the rest of the skythane—the rest of the human race on Erro—in ignorance. Or he could have left them to die in the cold after luring them here. Unless…

  “You’re not like them anymore, are you?”

  Morgan shook his head, his eyes fixed on hers.

  “Something changed you.” She knelt before him and looked into his big brown eyes. “How did they make you? The other nimfeach?”

  He looked away. The pain in his eyes, in his posture tugged at her soul, but she stayed firm. “Tell me.”

  “There was a boy. In Egeus. He was starving. Near death. They promised him life and he… accepted.”

  Her eyes narrowed. It was horrid, what they had done, stealing a boy’s life. But too much rode on what happened next for her to get sidetracked. She shoved her disgust down into her gut.

  “This boy, what was his name?”

  “Tanner.”

  Quince closed her eyes. “Is he still… in there?”

  “Yes. We’re one now. He is me.”

  Her eyes widened and her breath caught. “What?”

  “We have become one, and I/we are no longer sure about the plan.”

  If Morgan was telling the truth… “Tanner?”

  The boy nodded.

  She pulled him into her arms and hugged him fiercely. For all the things that he was, he was also still a boy. A part of him, anyway. A boy who had called out to her for help.

  If half of him was human, they had a chance. Maybe he did too.

  She let him go. “Can you… the nimfeach part… let him go?”