by Chris Fox
This mousy little girl did not resemble a member of that Elder Race in the slightest. Also, they were all gone.
“Yes, yes. Not an Alvaren. But not not an Alvaren also. A trace of their blood in her veins, from long ago. Maybe you’ve heard the stories of a human swashbuckler who wooed the daughter of an Alvaren lord, back in the days when man first burst out of his cradle world and spread across the stars? They had a child, and then that child had a child, and again and again. Ten thousand thousand years passed, and here we are. The thinnest of traces, but the blood is true in this girl. The treehold will open for her, I have been assured.”
“Assured by whom?”
The gobber clicked his mouth shut at Kerin’s question and shook his misshapen head.
“Why are you traveling with this creature?” Nala asked, but the girl did not raise her eyes to look at the kyrathi, instead continuing to stare at a spot on the floor.
“Don’t bother, doesn’t speak,” the gobber said. “She’s slave stock, from the catacombs of the Searing Light. She’s only been a pain conduit for rich folk.”
“A pain conduit?” Kerin didn’t like the sound of that.
“You know that faith. A madness. They believe in purity through pain. But the rich believers don’t want to suffer. So they make a big donation, and their punishment is inflicted on one of the temple’s slaves. They get their souls cleansed without any of the trouble, the church gets richer, and only a worthless nameless girl feels anything. Or maybe she doesn’t. Hard to read, this one. Incredible to think that all that blood she spilled in the catacombs could have been so valuable to them, if they had only known.” The gobber croaked another laugh. “But they didn’t! So I bought her for a pittance, and she’s gonna bring me more wealth than the Searing Light’s ever seen.”
“Monstrous,” Nala whispered, crouching beside the girl. “Child, I’m so sorry.” She ran a paw through the girl’s tangled hair; the girl did not flinch, though Kerin thought he saw her eyes briefly flicker to Nala’s vulpine face. The kyrathi had a weakness for the lost and abused, as she also had suffered a hard life after having been thrown out of her burrow as a kitten. His grandfather had saved her by taking her in. Kerin wasn’t his grandfather, though, and their resources were already stretched plenty thin, even without a new foundling to adopt.
But if she was the key to an Alvaren treehold? Kerin couldn’t tamp down a little surge of excitement at the thought. The Elder Races had crafted artifacts and sorcery that were far beyond the capabilities of any of the galaxy’s current denizens. Interstellar empires had gone to war over the right to plunder an unspoiled treehold, the great guilds had beggared themselves to buy their mysterious devices at auction. Even the smallest of useless knick-knacks pulled from an Alvaren ruin could clear the debt his grandfather had left him with, and potentially get him back in good standing with the Starfarer’s Guild.
“We still want to know –”
Kerin. Drifter’s deep voice rumbled like distant thunder in his mind.
Yes?
The Stream’s mouth is approaching. I hadn’t realized we’d gotten so close. We’ll be entering the system momentarily.
“What is it?” Nala asked, rising fluidly when she saw his expression, concern twisting her features. “What is Drifter saying?”
“We’re almost there,” Kerin said, pushing through the saloon’s door. He passed down a short corridor and then stepped out onto the raised deck. Drifter’s massive green and brown head swelled in front of him like a hummock breaching the water after the tide had receded. The giant turtle cocked its head slightly, and Kerin could see himself reflected in a gleaming black eye as large as a Devalii pachyderm.
A point gleamed in the darkness, then quickly began to swell, until a shimmering curtain stretched in front of them. It bent and rippled like an aurora.
They plunged through it, and with a jarring suddenness slipped back into their accustomed dimension.
So many stars, a vast scattering of jewels that filled every direction with twinkling light. Kerin sucked in a lungful of the crisp air, a far cry from the staleness that permeated the Streams. He’d heard rumors that there were some forsaken pockets of the universe where the air had been pumped out of the systems, and this was one reason why most streamsurfers stuck to the well-trodden paths: the thought of emerging from a Stream into a freezing, airless void was the stuff of nightmares. But perhaps such places didn’t really exist, and that was just a tale old handlers told to scare the new recruits.
The system was empty of any large planets, as far as he could see, and the giant star at its center was a sullen red veined with black lines.
“There!” Nala cried as she came up beside him, pointing at a dark shape picked out against the faded glow of the ancient sun. Her eyes were much sharper than his.
Kerin slipped his spyglass from his belt and focused on the hanging object. It was a chunk of rock several hundred leagues wide, dominated by a vast white tree that seemed to grow up out of the stone. It was hard to see detail at this distance, but Kerin thought he saw ruins clustered around the base of the tree’s trunk, and maybe even a pair of great statues flanking what might have been an entrance.
Let’s get a closer look, he thought.
Kerin felt Drifter’s affirmation, and he had to grip the closest railing to keep from falling as the starbeast lurched forward, its speed quickening. Nala seemed unaffected by the sudden motion, shifting her weight perfectly to compensate for the pitching deck.
“Black star!” cursed the gobber as he arrived beside them and was sent tumbling against the wooden railing, which creaked alarmingly. “Your beast is graceless, handler.”
“Fair warning, if he hears you say that, he’ll try and send you spinning off the deck next time.”
The gobber muttered something else under his breath and clutched tightly at the railing.
This was the first time he had seen an Alvaren treehold, and Kerin drank in all the details as they swam closer. The tumbled slabs of stone were in fact the remnants of great buildings – it looked to Kerin like they had not collapsed under the weight of their age, or been felled by wandering space debris, but rather that the mighty tree was in the process of slowly devouring the hold. Great roots as thick around as cloud towers had grown over and through the ruins, gripping the stone with such force that in places the walls had buckled and even burst under the immense strain. The tree itself was a pale, ghostly white, and no leaves adorned its skeletal branches. To be honest, it looked as dead as the rest of the treehold, though Kerin wasn’t sure if that was indeed true. He wished his grandfather could have lived to see this.
Lost in his musings, Kerin didn’t sense the concern swelling in his starbeast.
Kerin, something is coming.
What?
I’m not sure. We’re not alone.
“Look!” Nala cried, and a moment later Kerin saw it, a flicker of movement from behind the floating treehold. “Is that a starbeast?”
“It is,” Kerin said numbly, dread closing around his heart. It was a leviathan, perhaps the biggest starbeast he had ever encountered. A great tapered head emerged first, far larger than the entirety of Drifter, connected to a long sinuous neck. Then finally a massive body like a small moon slipped around the edge of the treehold’s asteroid, great wings outspread.
It was a gigantic dragon, three or four times the size of any he had seen before in his travels. He had never heard of them growing this large. Kerin’s fear deepened when he realized there was no harness around the starbeast’s neck, no chains extending behind the dragon to link it with a trailing ship or structure. A wild starbeast? How had such a creature remained free for all the epochs it would have taken for it to grow to this size?
Drifter. Can you escape?
His starbeast’s reply was heavy with awe. Kerin . . . I’m sorry. This beast is a true ancient. It will devour me before I make it halfway back to the Stream’s mouth. I’ve felt age like this only once before . .
. in that moment I first emerged from my egg I tasted the residue of the Great Turtle . . . and it was the same . . . so very, very old. Stars were birthed and died in this creature’s life span. Drifter paused for a long moment, and when he continued there was a new edge to his words, a flavor Kerin had never sensed before. Fear. His starbeast felt fear. It seems we have swum our last Stream together, my friend. But there’s something else, something strange . . .
“Bones,” Nala murmured. “By tooth and claw, it’s just bones.”
Kerin gasped. She was right: the great starbeast was only a skeleton. Yet it moved like a living creature, flowing toward them. Its vast wings beat up and down, but no membrane stretched between the skeletal fingers. How could it fly? What dark sorcery was animating this monster?
The dragon arrested its approach only a few hundred lengths from Drifter, hovering as it slowly flapped its empty wings. But that couldn’t be what was keeping it aloft, since no great gusts of wind buffeted Kerin and his starbeast.
It was huge. It filled the horizon, occluding the red giant at the system’s core, though snatches of the star could be seen through the gaps in the skeletal dragon.
APPROACH.
The word exploded in Kerin’s mind, and he reeled from the force of the command.
Drifter . . .
We have no choice, Kerin.
I know.
If he intends to destroy us, he will. But he wants something from us, I think.
Tentatively, Drifter pushed himself forward, toward the waiting ancient.
Nala grabbed Kerin, and this time her claws did bite down into his arm. “What are you doing?” she hissed. He turned to her. Nala’s eyes were rounded by fear, and her ears were flat against her skull. The strange girl was beside her, clutching at the kyrathi’s fur, her mouth open. But the gobber wasn’t afraid. He almost seemed to be smirking as he watched their reactions.
Kerin lunged toward the gobber and grabbed a handful of his embroidered kaftan, nearly pulling the smaller creature from its feet. “What do you know about this?” he snarled, shaking the gobber.
“Calm, man. Kivanikurem will not devour us today. Or he will, I should correct, but it will not be our doom.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look,” the gobber said, pointing with a scabrous finger at the dragon’s great skull, which was lowering to meet Drifter’s slow approach. The mighty jaws opened wide, and a great blast of fetid air washed over them as they stood on the deck staring down the starbeast’s abyssal gullet. Kerin’s eyes watered and he wanted to retch from the smell.
ENTER.
Kerin?
Do it.
Kerin found that he was holding his breath as Drifter passed into the starbeast. It was like a fledgling turtle swimming into the gaping mouth of a hoary old crocodile. Yellowing teeth reached down like stalactites, while similarly massive fangs soared upward.
“It’s a cavern,” he said softly, numb from the enormity of the creature. Kerin couldn’t help but imagine what would happen if the jaws suddenly snapped shut.
Drifter angled his way down the great hole in the back of the starbeast’s mouth, which would have led to its throat if any flesh had remained. Instead they swam beneath the dragon’s spine, each bony link about as large as the turtle they stood upon. Shoulder blades reared like mountains above them, while ahead massive ribs curved down from the spine to join with a vast white plain: the sternum of the starbeast.
Something was there, a speck of black on the great sheet of bone. Following Kerin’s hunch, Drifter moved in that direction. Slowly the dark point grew larger, until they were close enough that Kerin could see what it was they were approaching.
The thing was a gigantic throne a hundred span high, carved of some gleaming black substance that Kerin suspected was either onyx or obsidian. The skeleton of a giant humanoid sat straight-backed in the chair, dressed in faded finery, its long black robes decorated with red starbursts and coiling serpents.
“Streamsurfers,” said the gobber, his tone smug, “prepare yourselves to meet Xerivas the Black.”
The great skeleton turned its skull to regard Drifter as the starbeast’s flippers touched bone.
“Oh, nebulas no,” whispered Nala.
A lich. An immensely powerful sorcerer who had somehow avoided the inevitability of entropy by rendering its core essence immortal. There were only a handful who had ever accomplished this feat, and each was legend: Juth-neth-kava, Scourger of Worlds; Nul the Forsaken; The One Who Walks Alone. Empires trembled at their names, paid obeisance when they passed through their systems, sacrificed thousands if they demanded a blood tribute to replenish the ranks of their undead hordes.
But who was Xerivas the Black? Why had Kerin never heard of him? And what could a lich possibly want with them?
“Best we don’t keep him waiting,” the gobber said, stumping over to where a rope ladder was coiled on the deck. Grunting with the effort, he tossed the ladder over the side, and then without glancing back to see if they were following, he started to climb down.
Kerin and Nala shared a long look before turning together to face the huge skeleton. It was clearly watching them as well. A cold blue light glimmered in the depths of its eye sockets.
“I suppose . . .” Kerin began.
“. . . We have to follow,” Nala finished, then smoothed her whiskers. She turned to the ashen-faced girl, who was staring at the lich with an expression of abject horror. “Come, child. I think we’ve all been summoned.”
Soon they stood on the white plain, staring up at the seated skeleton towering above them. The ground beneath their feet was not as smooth as it had appeared from afar: its age was evident, as it was so cracked and pitted that it more resembled coral than bone. At the foot of the throne was a jumble of more human-sized skeletons, some clothed in tattered rags, others not. The gobber shuffled forward and went to his knees, raising his arms in supplication before the lich.
“Lord! I have returned as you commanded, bringing the child you desired.”
Kerin noticed the girl wrap herself around Nala’s slim waist at the gobber’s words, and in response the kyrathi slipped her arm around her protectively.
That was going to make getting out of here alive much more difficult.
“GOOD,” said the lich, its booming voice shivering in the air like the tolling of a great bell. “YOU PLEASE ME. AND YOU HAVE BROUGHT OTHERS.”
“Y-yes,” stammered the gobber. “They were my passage back here. My own starbeast succumbed to the Wilting Plague after I arrived in Jegriddsl.”
“THEY MAY LEAVE.”
The gobber glanced at them with a startled expression – clearly, he had not been expecting such mercy. Hope blossomed in Kerin’s chest at the lich’s pronouncement . . . but then he looked over at the girl clinging to Nala, to the kyrathi’s narrowed eyes and bared teeth. This was not going to end well.
Kerin steeled himself and stepped forward. “Why do you want the child?” he called up at the looming skeleton.
“THE MAN SPEAKS?”
“Silence, you fool,” hissed the gobber. “Take your turtle, go before he changes his mind.”
Kerin ignored him. “The child!” he said, more loudly. “Will you hurt her?”
The gobber muttered something and groveled lower, as if trying to grind itself into the bone.
“THE CHILD WILL OPEN THE TREEHOLD.”
“And after she does that for you, may we take her with us? Surely she can have little use to one as mighty as you.”
“SHE WILL ACCOMPANY ME WITHIN. THERE MAY BE MORE BARRIERS ONLY ONE WITH ALVAREN BLOOD CAN PASS THROUGH.”
A low growl from Nala demonstrated what she thought of that. Kerin swallowed hard. He was going to regret this.
“Then let us go along and aid you, mighty Xerivas. My companion and I have skills that might prove useful inside the treehold – I have some talent with blade and pistol, and she is a mage of the third celestial sphere. Once you have whatever it is
you seek, let the girl join my crew in payment for our help.”
The lich was silent for a long terrible moment. Kerin fully expected to be struck down by a bolt of eldritch energy, but instead the great skeleton slumped in the throne, its neck lolling, as if the life force animating it had suddenly vanished.
A moment later one of the skeletons sprawled at the chair’s base twitched, and then it rose to its feet as smoothly as if a puppeteer had pulled it up on invisible strings. This skeleton – which looked human to Kerin – was clad in a dark robe, and in its bony grip it clutched a long black staff.
He sensed Nala slide closer as the lich’s new avatar shuffled toward them.
“Daring,” whispered the kyrathi. “And heroic, though I’m curious if you’re more concerned with her welfare or whatever treasures are locked up in that treehold.”
“Would you think less of me if I said both?”
“Yes.”
“Then the girl. Though I was most worried about you firing a stream of hellfire into the lich’s eye if you thought he was going to take the girl.”
“You know me too well.”
“Unfortunately, I do.”
The lich halted a few paces away. Staring into its eye sockets, which were lit from within by the blue light that had fled the skeletal giant, Kerin couldn’t suppress a shudder.
“I am Xerivas, last of a vanished people. Do I unnerve you, mortal?” The lich’s mouth remained closed when it spoke, and each word had a menacing sibilance that lingered after being uttered.
Kerin forced himself to meet the creature’s empty gaze. “My apologies. I’ve never encountered one like you before.”
The lich made a raspy noise, which Kerin took to be laughter. “Yes. There are not many who have refused to pass beyond the veil. You should consider yourselves fortunate to meet me.”