by Jack Conner
Ani shoots Sheridan. Avery activates the Device. The Over-City falls. The War of Octung is over. But Avery knows that Sheridan is right. Now the R’loth, denied their puppet Octung, will act themselves. Avery braces himself for the worst.
BOOK SIX
The worst arrives. The R’loth send giant beings that look like starfish to obliterate one island after the other, killing millions. The Starfish drive toward the mainland. Avery and Layanna collect samples of Starfish tissue and mean to analyze them, find some weakness of the Starfish.
The band has been picked up by a whaling vessel, and in its medical bay Avery works on Sheridan, saving her life so that Ani will not be a murderer … and maybe for some other reason, too. Layanna is very suspicious of that other reason and she refuses to sleep with Avery because of it.
Sheridan, once well, betrays them into the hands of pirates, who seize the whaling ship. Pirates have replaced Octung as the R’loth’s power at sea, and the pirate fleet, ruled by Janx’s former boss and old enemy Segrul the Gray, worships the R’loth. The band is brought to Davic, a Collossum and Layanna’s former husband. He attempts to kill them, but they manage to escape, after having seen Sheridan be sent off on an important assignment, something to do with an Atoshan relic. She’d been dispatched to Ghenisa, but for what they don’t know.
They arrive at the mainland to find Prime Minister Denaris at odds with Grand Admiral Haggarty, a puppet of Sheridan’s and an agent of Octung. The Grand Admiral is trying to stage a coup and take over the government. Denaris gives Avery’s band refuge and allows them to set up lab in which they analyze the Starfish samples.
During this time the Voryses make contact with Avery. His late wife Mari was a distant relative of the old ruling family, the Voryses, commonly referred to as the Drakes. Despised and hated, they had been dethroned half a century ago and their members killed or driven into hiding, like Mari. Ani is a descendant and they want her to rejoin her family, led by a man called Idris, who would be King of Ghenisa like his forefathers. He wants to take power, using the turmoil to his own advantage. Avery refuses the request, but Idris asks him if Ani’s been having strange dreams. Sure enough, she has, and they’ve been bothering both her and Avery. She dreams of singing, and a doorway. Could these dreams be shared by other Voryses, and might they have some insight into what they mean?
Meanwhile the Starfish drive ever closer to the mainland, wiping out one island after another. There is no sign of Sheridan and no news of what her special assignment could have been. Finally Avery and Layanna have a breakthrough in the laboratory. They discover that the nectar of the rare “ghost flower” allows Layanna to establish a psychic link with the Starfish tissue. In theory, if she can ingest enough fresh nectar and can “plug herself” into the brain of one of the giant Starfish, she can send a psychic pulse out to all the Starfish, killing them and saving the world from the wrath of the R’loth.
The hitch is that the ghost flower only grows in the Crothegra Jungle, also known as the Atomic Jungle. A man named Losg Coleel holds the sole rights to the nectar, and he resides in the war-torn city of Ezzez. Avery leaves Ani with her “Uncle Id”, patriarch of the surviving Voryses, hoping for the best, realizing he can’t take her into the Atomic Jungle, and the four members of the band depart for Ezzez at once, only to learn that Sheridan knows where they’re going … and why.
BOOK SEVEN
They arrive in Ezzez to find a city torn by war. Octung's presence is strong but heavily disputed. The city is also half-overgrown by the Crothegra Jungle, the so-called Atomic Jungle, which is resurgent due to the recent conflict which has distracted those who'd tended it before. Avery and the others make their way through the chaotic city with the help of local rebels, are attacked by Octunggen-controlled soldiers and scatter.
Avery finds Losg Coleel in hiding in the Maze of Dark Delights, and the doctor and Layanna help the merchant find a place of relative safety in the rebel headquarters. In return, Coleel tells them where they can find the ghost flower. He is out of the flower and Layanna needs the raw nectar, so their only option is to journey into the Atomic Jungle itself to seek out the flower.
During all of this Avery's band is menaced not only by Octunggen-controlled soldiers but by a mysterious new enemy, a group of robed figures that appear to be walking, maggot-infested cadavers. The maggots are unnatural. The Infested beings want Layanna for some reason, though Avery's group doesn't know why.
The band ventures into the jungle, finding one of the villages Coleel employs to harvest the ghost flower, but still the flower's nectar is not strong enough. The band will have to penetrate into the "haunted" quarter of the jungle where the ghost flower "vines" originate.
They also discover more Infested beings and believe the source of the "Infection" may stem from the Gomingdon, the so-called haunted quarter ... the same place the vines originate from.
Troops led by Sheridan attack the village and the band is forced into flight. In the chaos Avery finds himself separated from the others. Lost in the Atomic Jungle, he nearly falls prey to local wildlife, but Sheridan, also separated from her group, saves him, and the two travel together. Along the way, they renew their bond somewhat, although neither quite trusts the other.
The Atomic Jungle ends, becoming a strangely mundane jungle, right where the Gomingdon starts, and there, right in the middle of the Gomingdon, is a long-abandoned, pre-human city of great size and eeriness. Avery and Sheridan explore the outer edge of the city and climb one of the spires to its top. Where are the others? They don't know.
They sleep beside each other that night on the building's rooftop, but Avery vows not to make love to her. Despite this vow, in the morning the two begin to make love ... when they are interrupted by the arrival of Layanna, Janx and Hildra, all of whom are horrified.
Janx begins to strangle Sheridan, but Avery convinces him to at least let her speak. She says that her party arrived by dirigibles and that she'll give the band one of the airships if Janx releases her. Reluctantly, he agrees. Without the airships they'd have to find their way back to civilization through the vastness of the Atomic Jungle on foot, a journey which would almost surely kill them.
It's then that Avery notices that Layanna, Janx and Hildra didn't arrive alone. Several of the "Infested" are with them, and they mean to take the group for an interview with the Colony.
BOOK EIGHT
Avery's group is taken by the Infected to a great maggot-like being who is one of the lords of the Infested, and it reveals that it and the others of its kind have been waiting for one who will "awaken the Sleeper". They believe that Layanna is that being, because only one with otherdimensional abilities can do the job. When the great maggot orders Layanna to be taken to the massive black dome at the heart of the city (where she will "retrieve the Key"), it simultaneously orders Avery and the others to be killed.
With some help from Sheridan, they escape with Layanna and make their way to the Dome, which they enter and seal the door behind them. They find the Key at the nexus of the glowing ghost-flower vines. There Sheridan betrays them. She tries to destroy the essence of the ghost-flower nectar and take the Key, but the others stop her. They can't kill her, though, because only with the aid of her dirigible fleet can they make their way out of the jungle alive.
Layanna absorbs the nectar and Sheridan takes the Key. They rendezvous with the airships and separate, Sheridan going with the Octunggen and taking the Key (whatever it is) with her, while Avery's group goes off on their own. They return to Hissig, which they find to be in turmoil. Admiral Haggarty has tried to overthrow Prime Minister Denaris, who is in hiding. There is fighting in the streets. Avery and the others take refuge in the mutant-filled sewers. There they learn that a cult centered around a Collossum is spreading fear and taking human sacrifices. Worse, the Collossum has threatened the city: either Ghenisa turns to the worship of the Collossum or the Starfish will raze Hissig.
Avery and Janx penetrate the lair of the Collossum,
find Denaris and confront the Collossum, a man known as Rigurd. Denaris has been given the Sacrament and is to be given by Haggarty to Rigurd in an official ceremony in the main city square that evening, a symbolic act signaling that Ghenisa now worships the Collossum. While in the lair, Avery learns that Sheridan had delivered a strange artifact to Rigurd, and that only after activating the artifact did the ghost flower nectar become effective. This makes no sense.
Shaking it off, Avery's group stops the ceremony and rescues Denaris. They receive some unexpected help in the form of the Drakes, the old royal family. Among them is Ani, who, oddly, is treated with deference by the other royals.
Stopping the ceremony, of course, only prompts the wrath of the Collossum. The Starfish emerges from the waters and begins to lay waste to the city.
Avery takes over the last known ray, a massive creature, which had been in Sheridan's charge. She is taken captive. Layanna psychically controls the ray and smashes it into the Starfish. With its exoskeleton cracked, Layanna slips in, absorbs the ghost flower nectar and sends her psychic assault to all the other Starfish through this one's brain, killing them all.
But why did Rigurd make the ghost flower nectar effective in the first place? The Octunggen are up to something. When Sheridan turns the tables and makes her escape, Avery comes with her, which she allows. Layanna helps by "pretending" she is through with Avery. Avery worries that the pretence is all too real. Not only that, but his feelings for Sheridan are more complicated than he would have thought.
He goes off with her to a zeppelin controlled by Octunggen, who have accomplished their strange ends. The Starfish may be dead, but the Octunggen's true motive was to obtain the Key, and that they have. The Starfish could not have survived long out of the water and could only have subdued the coasts. Sheridan and the captain in charge of the zeppelin reveal that the Octunggen mean to prevent the R'loth from activating their doomsday weapon, whatever that is, which they will do if it looks like the war will turn against them.
Wondering if he's been on the wrong side all along, Avery agrees to help.
Chapter 1
Freezing wind howled all around him, green or blue energy occasionally snapping between particles of whipping ice, and for the thousandth time Avery wished he were someplace warm and with a drink in hand, not out in the middle of this icy wasteland—and with this group of people—plodding forward in a blizzard that never ended.
Gods, I’ve really fucked up this time. Layanna would probably say he’d gotten what he deserved. At the moment he wasn’t sure she would be wrong.
A line of half a dozen Octunggen soldiers, all bundled up in furs like himself, trudged ahead of him, and a similar number brought up the rear. At the party’s head strode Colonel Jessryl Sheridan—too far away for Avery’s liking. He could still taste her lips on his tongue from the kiss she’d given him before they set out from the zeppelin, just slightly sweet. Whatever he felt for her (and he still wasn’t sure), he wished he could walk beside her. He was surrounded by enemies. He should have felt a camaraderie with the Octunggen, at least of sorts; after all, it was them as a group against this arctic hell. But Avery only felt that he was with one group of enemies surrounded by an even more implacable foe. If anything could be more implacable than Octung.
Crrrrk.
Something broke beneath his feet. He leapt to the side and looked back to see gaping darkness where he’d just been—water, black and rushing, right below the ice.
One of the soldiers steadied him.
“Damn it all,” Avery said. As he spoke, he realized that his lips and tongue were numb. He couldn’t feel his face, and ice tangled in his mustache.
“Be more careful,” the soldier said.
Sure, I’ll try to weigh less, Avery thought, but he just shook the man’s arm loose and kept walking. He had seen something in the distance when he’d been recovering from his near-fall—for a moment he’d been facing a direction none of the others had been—but it quickly retreated to the back of his mind, displaced by the need to put one foot in front of the other, then again, and again.
The line of soldiers behind him veered wide around the hole. The ice was so thin in places one could see darkness through it, but in others it was blindingly white; even this was deceptive, though, as snow and ice could be covering eggshell sheeting. Not only was the water lethal to humans by itself, being part of the Atomic Sea, this far north it was near-freezing.
“Halt!” Sheridan called.
At first Avery thought she did it out of concern for him, but that was foolish; she probably hadn’t even seen him nearly plunge to his death, and if she had she wouldn’t have appeared so unprofessional as to stop the group to comfort him. When he saw her consult with the soldier behind her, who brought out a map, Avery understood. This doesn’t look good. Stomping forward, he joined them, unmindful of the dirty looks the soldiers he passed shot him. He was not one of them, their looks seemed to say. He should not be here. Perhaps they were right.
In a lowered voice, he asked Sheridan (having to carefully form the words with his numbed lips and tongue), “Are we lost?”
Sheridan grimaced at him, then tilted her head in what Avery thought of as the east. All he could see was whiteness, freezing and endless. How could a civilization live out here? He couldn’t even see the sun, though the white insanity was dimmer than it had been. The sun must be lowering.
“Can’t see the landmarks,” Sheridan said, speaking with remarkable clarity despite the frost on her cheeks and lips.
“A-and the compass has stopped working,” added the man with the map. Avery recognized him as Professor Sul Risiglon, military anthropologist, thin and rangy, a key player in the scheme they were about to attempt. His voice was suitably stuttering.
Avery nodded. The Atomic Sea often confused compasses, and the ice they were walking on, much if not all of it Atomic, possessed properties different from the ocean; being frozen altered the phenomena it was capable of. If the sea didn’t frustrate their instruments, the ice would.
“We should see the mountains by now,” Sheridan said. “Hell, we should be on them. Or at least the glacier.”
“Sure we can’t get the Valanca to take us the rest of the way?” Avery asked.
He couldn’t see much of Sheridan with the fur-lined hood and the iced-up goggles, only a quirk of lips and her slightly-squared chin, but even so he could tell she was unhappy with him. Of course, she was somewhat justified; with an inner rebuke, he wondered how many times he’d asked the same question now.
“It was your decision to come with us, Doctor,” she said. So: they were back to Doctor now. Then again, she couldn’t exactly call him loverboy in this gathering, could she? Not that she would. “You know the weather’s too bad for the ship to maneuver here. More to the point, we must stay off radar. When it’s time—when we have it—then I’ll send for the ship. Not before.”
Avery sighed. Remembering what he’d seen earlier, he said, “A few minutes ago, I thought I saw a glimpse of something big—had to be a mountain or a glacier—that way.”
He pointed, and she consulted the map with Risiglon.
“That looks right,” Risiglon said. “Assuming we veered the wrong way around the Gettsix Chasm, as I’d begun to suspect. We should—”
One of the soldiers screamed. Then another.
Avery spun to see something large push up through the ice in the middle of the line of men. One man had half fallen through a crack made by the upthrusting shape and a second was trying to drag him out. The other soldiers scrambled out of the way just as the massive form burst up through the white sheet and briefly towered overhead, where it would have eclipsed the sky had there been any, before thudding back down, crushing three men and devouring two others in an instant.
At first all Avery, gaping and stumbling back, could see of the creature was a great dark blot against the whiteness—more of a grayness now—as shards of ice exploded outward from it. Energy that had been locked in th
e ice crackled between the splinters, frying a couple of soldiers, or at least sending them to the ground. Then the energy dispersed, and Avery’s eyes adjusted. He beheld what had once been—or whose ancestors had once produced—a whale of some arctic variety, tusked and wooly and massive. Mutated by the sea, it sported grasping tendrils, ridiculously small insectile wings rustling and buzzing, and glaring milky eyes down the length of its immense body. Worst of all was its mouth, or maw rather. Avery started as the skin of the maw peeled back like a man’s foreskin to reveal a hideous yellow protruding beak even then closing around a soldier. He was the man who’d helped Avery earlier, and for a moment Avery wished he’d been kinder to the fellow. Then he was crushed in the beak and swallowed down the creature’s gullet.
The Octunggen raised their weapons and fired. They’d formed something of a circle around the animal, and several hastened to get out of their comrades’ lines of fire. Bullets punched into the tusked horror, blood sprayed, but the leviathan barely seemed to feel the impacts as it scooped up three more men in its clicking yellow beak.
Sheridan, armed only with a pistol, marched toward it firing nonstop, her jaw set, aiming at its working eyes. It let out a strange shrieking roar and turned its attention toward her. Avery, hardly daring to believe himself, tackled her to the ground just as its beak snapped at the place where she’d been. Perhaps she could have dodged in time, but perhaps not—it moved with shocking speed. They rolled aside together as it snapped again, then they were clear of it. Avery glanced back to see the thing crawling worm-like out of its hole, tendrils helping propel it.