Chapter Twenty-Eight
After leaving the leader of the Wolf Pack, I slipped back into the vacuum of space. Drifting on eddies of gravity and energy around the station I found the gear I had left out there waiting for me, as I expected. I wondered what I was going to say when I finally caught up with Zah’rak. The personality profile I had constructed told me that he had no love for authority, which meant that saying, “Hi, I’m Special Agent Byron,” would be a poor way to start.
I drifted through space for a while until the trade hauler that I needed to start my journey to my next destination arrived. As I attached myself to the outside of the hauler I felt bad for those inside, who could never know the simple pleasure of drifting freely through space. They could never know the rush of entering jump space unhindered by a physical craft.
Then again, they would also never know what it was to live in fear that someone might find out what you are and kill you. Most people were fairly neutral about race, until it came to the shadow people: then it was acceptable to be racist. I quietly sipped on the power from the hauler as it moved into jump space. It was risky, as they might detect the power drain, but I could not resist the scent of the power right under me. My job required me to spend so much time on stations and in human form that I did not get enough time to eat proper food.
Most of my people just surfed the gravity wakes, and when they found a hauler like this one drained as much power as they could before they were detected and moved on. I had discovered that, by memorizing shipping routes and being discreet, I could use them to travel great distances undetected. Every time a ship traveled through jump space it would have to coast for hours, sometimes days, until its jump drives recharged. While they did that, I merely found another craft to attach to and continued my trip. This allowed me to make better time than even the fastest cruise line.
Soon I had returned to a section of space near where Zah’rak was believed to be hiding. I detached myself with some hesitancy from the ship I was traveling with. The craft I rode in on was a very high-end luxury cruiser and had very clean power. It was a rare treat, but one that I needed to leave behind.
I quietly slipped onto Bonair, the station where Narcion was last seen, resumed my human form, and headed to my favorite eatery. Even though my people lived on raw energy, we still needed some basic materials to survive. Prime on that list was water, and that is exactly what I ordered when I got to the eatery. I sat at my favorite table and leaned back against the wall. From that position I could see the entire room. Unlike the bar that I was last at, I had many friends here and could relax.
As I looked around the room I noticed many races enjoying themselves, feasting and talking. There was more than one pair of lovers among the crowd, leaning in close and stealing moments of intimacy. I envied them, as it was unlikely I would ever find such a mate. There were too few members of my race who were more than animal in nature, and these were spread out over too large an area. It baffled me how some of us could be sentient when the majority of the race was not.
While I relaxed there, someone approached my table. I was not sure of his race, as his clothing obscured most details about him. He was taller than an average human, maybe fifteen or twenty centimeters taller than myself. His hood completely obscured his face except for two piercing yellow eyes. “Hello, Special Agent Byron,” he said. His voice was strong, clear, and commanding.
“I was not looking for company,” I said.
“No, but you are looking for trouble,” he said and took the seat across from me.
“What are you getting at, stranger?” I asked.
“You’re looking for Narcion and his team, and I am here to warn you off. You have no idea what you are about to walk into, and there are so few of your kind left I would hate to see you lost,” he said.
His comment about there being ‘so few of my kind’ drew my attention like nothing else he could have said. Then I recognized him from the picture I had been shown: this was the mysterious man or woman that had met with Zah’rak. “Well, why don’t you give me an idea, then?”
“It’s not that easy. Narcion is heading for trouble and, if he does not stop soon, he will release something that is far worse than anything you have seen before, even in your nightmares,” he said.
“Is he behind these attacks, then?” I asked.
“No. That is some upstart magus who has delusions of grandeur; a mere child, not even worthy of being compared to Narcion,” he said.
I was torn then between asking about the magus and finding out more about Narcion. “Narcion is gone, probably taken prisoner,” I said.
“He is fine. He will be back when he is back. Yes, he walked into a trap that used Felix as bait, but Narcion is not so easily fooled or captured. I would be more concerned about those who tried to trap him,” he said.
“You seem to know an awful lot about this enemy,” I commented.
“Yes, far more than you, but that is immaterial. That magus will be found and killed sooner or later. It hardly matters in the grand scheme of things. What matters is that I find a way to convince Narcion to back off the trail he is on before it is too late.”
“Why are you telling me all this? You must know I won’t give up just because some stranger told me it was dangerous,” I said.
“You will meet up with Zah’rak in a few days. Zah’rak is the only person Narcion trusts. You must get him to convince Narcion to stop before it’s too late,” he said.
“Too late for what? Stop him from doing what?” I asked.
“He is trying to wake something up, something that needs to stay dormant forever. If he succeeds, you will wish for death and may very well be denied it,” he said.
“You are making no sense,” I said.
He stood up to leave and then said, “Just get the message to Zah’rak; tell him to tell Narcion to leave things be.”
“Just what is he trying to awaken?” I asked.
“Himself,” he said and left.
I watched his back as he walked away. I knew a simple word from me would bring a dozen men descending on him, but I let him go. The way he carried himself and the grace with which he moved told me he was an experienced warrior. A fight here in this eatery could easily spill over and get innocent bystanders hurt. I would have to catch him another day.
Once he was out of sight, I left and headed to the security office on the station. Using my ID, I got in and went quickly to their video monitors of the station. I played back the scene of me talking with the stranger and watched him leave. I was hoping to find out where he had gone, but he vanished as he left the restaurant.
“Where did he go?” I asked the guard on duty.
“He is probably a magus. They do that to us all the time. The only way you will find him is to look for telltale signs: things like an empty space in the crowd where people are avoiding walking into him, voices without a matching source, people interacting with empty air, and similar giveaways,” he responded.
We tried looking for that kind of thing, but could find no sign of him anywhere near the eatery. After a while I had to give up and concede that he had got away. I asked the guards to keep a look out for him and, if he showed up anywhere, to record everything he did and contact my office.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I decided that it would be better to spend the night in Narcion’s house with his family rather than risk exposing the gate. We took turns at watch throughout the night, but I was not sure what I was watching for. We were sleeping in a well-built, invisible house so it was not as if we were in an exposed position.
I had taken the first watch, which was completely uneventful. In the morning, after a fitful sleep, I awoke to the smell of breakfast being cooked. None of the furniture in the house was large enough for my frame, so I had been forced to spend the night on the floor. This was reminiscent of my years as a slave, but I had become used to the luxury of a proper bed to sleep on. I wondered how Crivreen was
making out with his research; hopefully better than I currently was.
“Good morning, Zah’rak,” said Stormblade.
I merely grunted in reply and went out onto the porch to get some fresh air. The sun was just peeping over the trees, and there was a coolness in the wind that helped blow the cobwebs out of my head. I just stood there for a while, enjoying the feeling of being in natural surroundings.
“How long do you plan to stay?” asked Stormblade, coming out with a plate of food.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You are obviously from a great distance away. Your clothes, your language, and even your reactions tell us you are completely unfamiliar with things that are normal here. However, you have none of the equipment that a traveler covering a great distance would normally have,” he said.
“Such as?” I asked.
“Such as a canteen,” he said with a smile. “You recognized this house when we brought you to it, and you went straight to Narcion’s bedroom to look for the paintings. That leads me to conclude you used his gate to get here.”
I spun and looked at him in complete surprise. “You know about his gate?”
“I should; I helped build this house,” he said with a smile. “No one could ever get that gate of his to work, though, not since he left. I assume that gate is how he left us, but he just disappeared one day without a word.”
I sighed. Had I known they knew about the gate, I could have used it and spent the night back on the ship in the comfort of my own bed. “I don’t know how long I should stay. I have not found anything here to help me. I had hoped there would be something that would give me a clue,” I said.
“You mean, to help you find Narcion?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“This,” he said, and gestured to the area around us, “represents Narcion’s past. He left us long ago, and I doubt there will be much here to help you find out where he is.”
“So he did not come back here on occasion?” I asked.
“No, not at all. Why do you think that he did?” he asked.
I explained to him how Narcion would disappear for extended periods of time. “So when I found the gate in his quarters, I just assumed that this is where he used to go.”
“I can see why you would think that, but there is no reason to assume that the gate you came through can only come out here. There are two kinds of gates: those like the one Narcion has here always connect to another gate at the destination, but the pairing is variable; any two gates can be joined at any time,” he said.
“What about the other kind?” I asked.
“The other kind can only be crafted by a master wizard or master sorcerer. It can open a portal anywhere and does not need to be linked to another gate. Narcion is many things, but a master wizard is not one of them,” he said.
I thought on that awhile. It made some kind of sense, but all this magic stuff was too new for me to really follow. I decided to trust his opinion. “How did I end up here, then?”
“Well, as I said, none of us has managed to get this gate to work. It requires a command word to activate, and then you need to know where you are going,” he said. “How did you know the command word?”
I explained to him what had happened when I’d touched the gate and he was quiet for a while. “How long have you been his apprentice?”
“Apprentice? I suppose I am; I have been working for him for several years now,” I said.
We talked for a while about my life with Narcion. He did not seem to understand all the words I used. Basic words like ‘blaster’ and ‘computer’ seemed to be unknown to him, but I assumed that this was due to an imperfect transfer of my language to him. I was still unsure how that language transfer had happened, but I was grateful it had; I could imagine how much harder this trip would have been without it.
I decided that I had told him enough and needed to start gathering more information. “I need to ask you a question,” I began, with the intention of asking what the Sac’a’rith were.
Before I could ask it, he pointed to the sky and called for the others. There was some kind of light above that shone briefly, but it faded before I could get a good look at it.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Trouble! We need to move quickly!” he called out as he leapt from the porch and ran towards the forest. Fiercewind and Ragnar came running from the house and followed him into the woods. I was not sure what to do, so I followed them. They were moving very quickly through the woods and not making a sound. I had a very hard time matching their pace, and if it were not for the length of my legs I probably could not have.
We traveled for more than half a day until we came to a clearing, in which were more men who appeared to be the same race as, and were dressed similarly to, Stormblade, Ragnar, and Fiercewind. These men were fighting a pitched battle with a mixed group of races, one of which was the same kind we had fought with earlier. I did not recognize the others. My three companions gave a battle cry and charged into the fight.
I hesitated at the edge of the thicket and tried to understand the battlefield. With the addition of the three who had come with me, there were a couple of dozen people fighting against a force with superior numbers. They were all using primitive weapons, and I did not see any ranged weapons. The group attacking Stormblade’s family was definitely inferior in skill but made up for it with their numbers, and two of them were quite a bit larger than an average human. The two larger ones were definitely swinging the fight in favor of the attackers. It seemed to be only a matter of time before Stormblade’s people were routed.
I decided that if Stormblade was Narcion’s brother, then Narcion would want me to help them. I just wished I had my assault rifle with me. I drew my swords and slowly walked out into the clearing, moving towards the largest two attackers. They were maybe a head taller than myself, and had substantially more girth. They wielded large, spiked clubs that looked like they could easily turn a man to pulp.
I batted aside several smaller attackers and gave a low growl. The big aggressors both turned to move on me, and I let the rest of the battle fall away from my concentration. I bent my knees and crouched down as they came towards me. As they closed in, I launched into the air with a great cry and slashed down hard on one of their necks. My blades bit in deep, and flesh tore violently as I ripped them out. I leapt back out of the way before the second one could react.
I spun back towards the second one as the first fell. If killing his partner affected him in any way, he did not let on; he just charged towards me as if nothing had happened. He swung his great club at me, and I dove to the side and rolled clear. At two-and-a-quarter meters tall, I was not used to fighting someone substantially taller than myself. His reach was sufficient to keep me at bay, even though his speed and grace were desperately inadequate.
Donovan had tried to teach me to use an attacker’s size and strength against him, and Narcion taught me to move like air so that I was never there when the attack came. Against this opponent I would need to combine those tactics.
I waited for his swing, and as his great arm went by I slipped out of its path, flowing out of the way like smoke and letting the swing’s momentum carry the great club past me. I came back up on the other side of his swing, slicing with my sword upwards, cutting a deep gash into his upper leg. That caused him to scream in pain and lose focus long enough for me to reverse my swing and slash down at an angle, cutting deep into his neck. I spun off that blow and brought my other sword around in a guard in case another attacker charged in.
I turned towards the battle to see Ragnar and Stormblade running towards me, but they came to a halt as my opponent slammed onto the ground and did not move.
“It looks like you don’t need our help after all,” said Stormblade.
“They were big, but slow and stupid,” I said.
I charged back with them into the heat of the battle, and now I was once again
the largest combatant. The reach that the swords gave me over my knives made it virtually impossible for the smaller and lesser-skilled attackers to get close enough to me to score a hit. I decided that I really preferred the swords and I would use them in place of my knives from then on.
With the fall of their two champions, and the addition of my swords, the tide of the battle turned in favor of the defenders. The attackers were eventually routed and fled into the woods. Some of the defenders gave chase, but most stayed behind to tend the wounded.
I cleaned my blades and leaned against a tree. I needed a moment to come down from the emotional high of the fight. “I don’t suppose you want to tell me what is going on?”
“What do you mean?” asked Stormblade.
“This is the third time we have been in a fight since I arrived. I assume that is unusual,” I said.
“Oh, yes. Well, it is normal at present, but I can understand your point. Humans are expanding in the west, and that is driving creatures like these into our forest. Our numbers are too small to hold such a large area indefinitely, so we will probably end up falling back to the mountains in the east. At the moment, though, we only have problems near our borders,” he said.
“I see,” I said. I was not sure how to take all that, but they seemed like decent folk. “I am going to head back.”
“It is very late in the day. You won’t make it before dark-fall, and this close to the border it is not safe to travel at night. We have an outpost nearby; come stay with us and return in the morning.”
“I think I will be fine,” I said.
“Zah’rak, you don’t know these woods. Please trust me and we will personally escort you back in the morning,” he said.
I looked at the pile of bodies around me, and the strain of the battle combined with a poor night’s sleep made me reconsider. I figured one more night would not change much. “Fine, but what do we do with the bodies?”
The Sac'a'rith Page 21