Escape slid away and Enos’ gut clenched. Should have told Majus Ayama where I was going.
“Follow close,” Dunarn said, as she threaded a smaller chain through a link in the front of the collar to matching links on the manacles. Enos wouldn’t even be able to stretch her arms out to full extension. “Us, we have not yet bound your legs. But we will drag you if we need to.”
The two guards entered the tunnel and Dunarn gave Enos another shove so she stumbled into the corridor. She tried to stop, but her gaits had turned into a sort of bouncing skip. There was even less pull from the ground than the one time she had been to Etan with her family’s merchant caravan.
Dunarn shoved her forward and the guard’s robes drifted up in the air with each bounce. Their boots were high enough that none of their scaly skin showed. Enos was familiar with that skin. She had changed herself into a Sathssn when they visited the Aridori in Gloomlight Prison. She’d unwittingly worn the skin of those who’d subjugated the remainder of her species.
She was trapped, but still not without options. Eventually, the Life Coalition would slip up. I’ll gather what information I can, and then I will free myself.
She cataloged the tunnel they passed through, but it was simple stone, with occasional torches for light.
Inas had been injured and shaking off the effects of the Aridori in the Gloomlight Prison when he was captured. Enos was, if not prepared, then at least well rested and free from sickness. She would do better. Well, they hadn’t stopped her from speaking, had they?
“Is this a moon of Sath Home?” she asked.
She looked back in time to see Dunarn’s cowl twitch in surprise. “You Aridori, you are a prisoner. You need not know where we are.”
So Majus Ayama had been right.
“We are coming for you. You can’t hide here forever.” She tried to make the threat sound realistic. Dunarn only grunted.
They were far above Sath Home. How had the Sathssn opened a portal here? Maji had to have been to both ends of a portal before making one, or have another majus communicate the music at the other end. It wasn’t as if they could fly through space. Enos recalled the failed attempt by the Methiemum several cycles back to build a majus-powered rocket. It had crashed. Had the Sathssn somehow duplicated the design in such a brief time? But to dig these tunnels, through rock, would have taken a long time
They turned off the main corridor and passed into a larger area, the rock walls looming overhead until the shadows hid them from torchlight. Dunarn pushed a rusty iron door shut behind them. They must keep the portal room separated from the rest of the area. Another layer of secrecy?
There were other figures in black cloaks here, though Enos couldn’t be certain they were all Sathssn. The Life Coalition army that attacked the Dome of the Assembly had consisted of all ten species. She soaked up all the details: signs of construction in that corner, a Methiemum with his cowl back there, carrying a load of rocks, no Systems in evidence, all inside one giant cavern.
The Life Coalition were still expanding, with no help from the Assembly. They were confident in what they were trying to do.
How far can I get if I run?
Not very far, and she’d rather have the use of her legs. Dunarn’s casual threat about dragging her hadn’t been made with hatred in her voice—merely certainty.
Cloaked figures stopped their work as they passed. Several took steps toward her, but Dunarn waved them away.
Enos raked in sensations as they walked. Stone walls and rough floors, the stale smell of air too long in one place, mixed with the tang of broken rock. It was like a mine, but it couldn’t be open to space, could it? Those who built the shuttle on Methiem said there was no air to breathe in space. So they were trapped in a floating rock, likely with no exit save by portal.
She heard indistinct voices, discussing her as she passed. Clangs and crashes sounded in the distance where the Coalitioner had come from with the load of rocks. Probably digging a new tunnel.
If I gather enough memories, even if I cannot access the Symphony, I may be able to tell Majus Ayama of it, if I get back. When I get back.
The tension raised her shoulders and tightened her back. At least Inas was no longer here. She would survive, and he would recover. Perhaps her mentor would work with him to forge another connection between the two of them.
Or will I open one when they shove me into one of those boxes, formless and terrified?
She had told no one where she was going, except for Rey. She silently pleaded he would see through his disgust long enough to tell the others. He would take Inas to Sam. He had to.
Dunarn halted and Enos stopped her bouncing stride with a hand against the rough wall, leaving scrapes on her palm. The guards took up stations to either side of a crude door.
“This, it is where you will stay,” Dunarn said, gesturing with one glove to the slab of rock. “Once we know the other beasts, they will not immediately kill you, you will join them. We must start your training as soon as possible.”
Enos realized Dunarn was talking about other Aridori prisoners—multiple prisoners. Her heart thumped at the prospect of seeing them, for good or ill.
* * *
After Dunarn closed the slab of a door, no one touched Enos or even paid her any attention. The room they locked her in was tiny, with a bed hewn from stone, and a roll of some animal’s fur spread over it. The manacles and collar constrained her every move, but did nothing to actively harm her. If only the Symphony was not so far away. Investigation of the manacles showed the House of Healing had a part in the System. It must be a smaller version of what had kept her and Sam trapped in the cell. But there, they’d been able to hear the Symphony. This must be a refinement of the technology.
That night—or what she assumed was night—she settled on the hard bed. The animal fur did little to cushion it, and the guards had removed neither her collar nor her manacles. She would have been able to open a portal if they had.
The second day, Enos tested the locked door to her room on a schedule. Three hundred breaths, bang on the slab. It brought no one, and by the middle of the day, she paced, clenching and unclenching her hands. She longed to stretch her arms, but that was impossible.
The Symphony was a tiny voice, rather than the usual raging crash of music. Enos managed some sleep, but after a full day, the manacles and collar chafed her wrists and neck. She’d even tried—once—to change the shape of her hands, to escape the manacles. It had taken five minutes for her to stop screaming and the burning feeling to leave her. The collar left a ring of reddened skin around her neck.
By the third day, Enos sat huddled on the bed, her stomach rumbling, her mind roving in ever darker circles. She’d given up banging on the door when it finally opened and a cloaked figure slipped through, as quick as thought.
“These accommodations, are they to your liking?”
Enos recognized the silky voice. She’d heard it, alongside Dunarn’s, when they’d taken Inas. This was the Sathssn that even Majus Ayama could not beat in a fight. Nakan.
She tilted her chin up, but said nothing. She felt nothing.
Inas is safe.
“I see. You, you will learn to answer when spoken to. We must train you like the other blasphemers to the Form.” Enos couldn’t see anything of the Sathssn’s face beneath his dark cowl, but his words sounded like he was smiling. “My people, we are the ideal choice to restrain the remnant of the Aridori. No one else wanted the task and so, it fell to us.”
Enos couldn’t keep from speaking. “Yet you never told the other species, for a thousand cycles?” Her family could have taken in the other prisoners, if they’d known.
“No one else would have rehabilitated the last of your miserable species as we have,” Nakan said. “Now, you come with me. Us, we have work to do.”
“What about food?” Enos asked. At least when she and Sam had been caged, they’d been provided regular meals. That had been before the Life Coalition knew she was Ar
idori.
An aura of blue and dark purple formed around Nakan’s gloved hands, and he reached out toward her collar. A shock like a knife cutting into her belly doubled Enos over.
“Food, it comes as a reward for our pets,” Nakan told her. “Now come.”
Enos gasped, levering up from the bed and straining to put one foot in front of the other. The aura came back as Nakan raised his hands, and Enos tried to move faster, to obey.
“I’m coming,” she said. “I’m coming.”
“Good. A benefit of seeing the colors, it seems,” the Sathssn mused. “For me, there is less need to discipline.”
They went back into the maze of tunnels, passing other figures draped in the dark fabric the Sathssn wore, but Enos kept her eyes on Nakan’s back. Sometimes she saw a member of another species, their cloak thrown back as they carried a load, or chipped away at the stone to build a new tunnel. Was this the same way she had come before? All the tunnels looked the same, poorly lit by torches.
She tried to pay attention to detail, but her mind wandered in her hunger and pain. The collar sent shivers of agony down her neck.
I will escape this place, and I will bring back any of my people I can.
Then they stopped, and Enos leaned against the wall in relief.
“This, it is our training room.” Nakan extended a hand toward a door like all of the others. He unlocked it with a complicated-looking key and pushed it open.
Inside, the room was bare but for two small iron boxes, at the opposite edge of the room. The little cubes captured Enos’ eyes. They were only about knee-height.
Nakan’s laugh was rough and grating as he shut the door behind them. “This, it is where our disobedient pets go. These two, they never learn. Not even after a thousand cycles.”
The confirmation was enough to jolt Enos from staring. “You have Aridori still alive from the war?” She assumed the original ones had reproduced since then. She was expecting to see children of those Aridori, not the ones who started the confrontation.
Nakan turned to her, and light from the torch that illuminated the room caught his slitted eyes beneath his cowl. “You know little of your own species, do you? Your kind, they can live for very long times, if properly encouraged.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Enos. She strained to gather her strength. The walk here had given her a second wind.
Can I escape through the door?
Nakan could set off the collar from a distance, and if the Sathssn knew more about her people than she did, that reduced her odds. Enos wondered how much Inas had learned. Would he have even been able to tell her, in his state?
“Let us see, shall we?” Nakan hissed, and strolled toward the two cubes. Enos followed as if a leash tied them together.
On both boxes, Nakan punched hidden buttons, and the auras of the Symphony sprang up around them, though Enos could hear nothing. The top unfolded, and beneath were undulating masses of flesh. Sickness crept up her throat. Enos couldn’t tell if the substance was skin, or muscle, or in between.
Then the flesh roiled, bunching up in both boxes. Enos’ mind went to the box in Gloomlight Prison, with the tendril of substance rising from it. These shapes, however rose into identifiable creatures in a few seconds and Enos’ eyes widened at the speed of their change.
Both had iridescent scales of green and purple down their chest, turning to almost silky black on their arms and legs. Their heads were dark, with long snouts and tendrils under their chins. Large eyes under black-scaled ridges looked down on Enos, one set purple and the other blue.
“Meet your fellows,” Nakan said. “We call this one Zhaddi,” he pointed to the one with blue eyes, “and the other one is Putra.”
Enos looked between them. This must be what her species looked like. It was the second time she’d seen this form. He parents had never shown her, and she wasn’t certain they’d known.
Enos swallowed. Even with the collar and manacles, a sense of awe rose in her at seeing these ancient Aridori close up.
“I am Enos.”
Putra—the one with the purple eyes—snorted. “That is not a true Aridori name.” Their voice was rough and low. “No doubt you come from one of the pathetic tribes who tried to hide amongst these insects.” Putra flicked a finger at Nakan.
“Look—she knows nothing of her people. I can tell just from the way she stands,” said Zhaddi, the one with blue eyes. Their voice was higher than the other one.
“Now pets,” Nakan said. “Be nice to Enos. Us, we will choose a new name for her soon, and you must teach her proper respect for her betters.”
“Respect?” Putra sneered. “For you, you degenerate cockroach? I would rather spend another cycle inside my box, without form.”
“That can be arranged, slave,” Nakan said, a whipcrack in his voice, and Putra shook their head like a horse refusing direction. Nakan turned to Enos. “Them, they are both quite unhinged, unfortunately. As you will certainly be, after a few cycles of our training. It is unavoidable, to train obedient assassins.”
“Never insane. We are royalty of our kind!” Zhaddi flung one hand out, and now it had claws, sharp as needles, lengthening as Enos watched. Nakan dodged quicker than Enos could follow, the blue of the House of Grace springing up around him. Then Zhaddi shook and collapsed, the tiny scales melting into each other until the Aridori’s form was indistinct, drooping over the side of the container that still held both creatures’ feet trapped.
Nakan raised a hand from a device he wore on his wrist, which glowed with colors of several Houses. Enos closed her mouth. What could make an Aridori lose their shape like sand dissolving in water?
“Even without the collars, we still have control,” Nakan told her, centering his cowl over his head again. “You, come with me. We will go back to your room. Prepare yourself. Tomorrow, you will meet the others. Them, they will want to show you how to change as fast as these two. A blasphemous thing, but necessary.”
Enos followed in Nakan’s wake, as helpless as a fly caught in a swift stream’s current. She remembered the lash of emotions the last time she changed her shape. It interfered with every little task, trying to pull her to feel more, seek out another satisfying thrill.
The Life Coalition would make her change her shape constantly. She ground her teeth.
More information is my only way out. I’ll gather as much as I can, and then I’ll take Putra and Zhaddi with me.
CHAPTER TEN
The Wall
- The walls of the Nether are curious things: thought to be impenetrable, looming far above civilization, made of some strange crystal substance that responds to both thought and touch. I have long been interested in further research, but without a sample, detailed analysis was impossible. How to study a substance that cannot be cut? This Nether crystal not only forms walls, but the basin which holds earth, stone, and civilization. It also presumably creates a ceiling, far overhead. I am surprised more people do not think of the crystal which encloses the Nether.
Morvu Francita Januti, Etanela explorer and big game hunter
Rilan came around the side of the table, laying a hand on Ori’s shoulder as she looked over the pile of papers and parchment in front of him. Some looked quite old. Soft music resonated through the halls of the House of Healing and despite the fabric she’d attached to her new apartment’s door, she could still hear it.
“How long have you been up?” she asked. She’d only awoken with the morning’s chill and realized Ori wasn’t with her.
“I have been researching the sound that keeps ringing through the Nether,” he said absently, his crest still slicked back in concentration. “It appears to be restricted to the city of the Imperium, from reports I am to be hearing. The committee the Assembly has detailed to investigate has been less than useful, as usual. There must be an explanation, but I am not to be finding it, and neither are they.”
Rilan pointed at a parchment. “The bridge connected to the House of Comm
unication? The one that arcs to the nearest wall? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Possibly much,” Ori said. “I believe Sam has mentioned it, and I long wondered about its use. It continues to come up in my research, though Tuulan is deriding my belief in it. They have always been recalcitrant concerning legend—one reason the committee they lead is not to be getting anywhere. In two ancient accounts, I have found it to be linked to ‘calls for conference,’ whatever that is to be. It has been the only lead I can find on the chimes.” He sat up straight, looking to a timepiece on one wall. “In fact, if the sequence is to be continuing the way it has, it should be starting right—.”
The whole apartment shook as the bass chime sounded, resonating like a bell the size of a building, and Rilan clutched at Ori’s shoulder. The music from the hallway splintered and halted, as a porcelain vase her father had purchased on Etan rocked and pitched to the floor, too quickly for her to catch it.
“Shiv’s nosehairs!” she swore. She had little enough to remember him by.
Rilan had encountered one earthquake in her childhood in Dalhni, with a similar effect. “The shaking gets worse each time!” she shouted over the noise. “So you think the bridge has something to do with it?”
Ori nodded, his crest ruffling. He stared at the shards of pottery. “It is likely to be the place where the call is answered, if this parchment is correct.” He jabbed a finger downward, his curved, clawlike fingernail spearing one passage. “I am believing this document was translated from another source just after the Aridori War, though the rest is to be lost. The author may have been intending to save information that would otherwise have been destroyed.”
“So this has happened before?” Rilan yelled. There were several historic buildings in High Imperium that sustained damage after the last ten-day of shaking. If it kept up much longer, the historic district would need serious renovations.
“There are also to be two mentions of movement.” Ori screwed up his face and his crest came to a point in frustrated confusion. “I cannot be telling if this movement is in the Nether, or part of the Nether, or whether the chimes are an alarm connected to it, though that is what I suspect.”
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