“By the gods!” breathed Old Phin. The weathered old spacer standing next to L’Zari seemed to be as much in awe of what they had discovered as the youth was. It was somehow gratifying to L’Zari to know that. He had been frightened enough these last few days. It was good to know that an experienced spacer could be dumbstruck just as he had been.
The steps themselves were over thirty feet wide, rising to what appeared to be a landing nearly seventy feet overhead. In numerous places, dirt and moss had collected on the stairs. Grasses and small ferns had tried to take root there but found their growth a hard purchase. The stairs were bounded on both sides by a low wall covered with delicately curved symbols from some ancient and forgotten tongue.
“How could we have missed this from above?” Dupak said, shaking his head as though the act would somehow clear his vision of a sight that he could not believe.
“I don’t know, lads,” Kip said through a brilliant smile. “Maybe they used some sort of stealth cloak to keep it hidden. Maybe they’ve got a technology that keeps them hidden.”
“Technology?” Phin snorted. “This thing’s been here from before time itself. There ain’t no technology that’s good for that long, Captain!”
“Indeed, lads? Do you think so?” Kip again pulled the small globe from his pouch to gaze deep beyond its surface images. L’Zari was suddenly struck with the realization that the globe’s strange design fit perfectly with the incredible architecture soaring above them. “It’s here, lads—what we’re after.”
“Just what is that, Captain?” Old Phin asked, perhaps a bit too pointedly.
“The next step, Phin,” Kip breathed, stepping up onto the first few steps in anticipation. “This is the cursed Settlement Ship of the Lokan Fleet.”
L’Zari watched Phin’s eyes suddenly go wide. “No, Kip! I’ll not be setting foot in there!”
Old Phin took a quick pair of steps backward. L’Zari had watched the man be absolutely fearless in battle not a few hours ago. Now he seemed as afraid as L’Zari was confused. “Lokan flew in the face of the gods! He lusted after the Queen of Creation—mad for her he was! Them that followed him was cursed by the gods and if this be the Settlement Ship”—Old Phin pointed, his finger quivering as he spoke—“then it be doubly cursed, both by the gods and by the sorceries of Lokan himself!”
“Old Phin’s right, Kip,” Dupak said, a sweat breaking out suddenly on his bald pate. “Spacers have been telling tales about this place since before we were born. They were fanatics: crusading after a madman who thought he could free the Queen of Creation from the center of the stars.”
“What’s this?” Kip turned around, incredulous. “We stand on the edge of fame and wealth and you’re quivering over some old granny’s tales?”
“That ain’t no granny’s tale you’re standing on,” Old Phin asserted dubiously.
“No, it ain’t, Phin!” Kip snarled back. “It’s real as the stars and twice as big! Lokan was mad—mad as a drunken Midrik—and he led his people across the disk on a madman’s quest. He tore across the stars leaving chaos in his wake until he came here—right here, boys!—and dropped this marker on the trail for us to follow.”
Kip stepped down toward Dupak. “Lokan’s crusade swept across the stars, boys, and it swept clean: the wealth of a dozen worlds fell to him and his fleet. He’d stolen the Nightsword—remember, boys—and with that blade in his hands nothing could hinder him.
“Well, Lokan passed the Maelstrom Wall and never came back. He took with him all that wonderful wealth and that wonderful sword and became a bedtime story for you ‘brave’ spacers to fear. But it’s not a story now, Old Phin, my friend! It’s here and it’s real. Lokan’s treasure was a curse to him, true enough, but it’s not cursed to us—it’s just been waiting for us to liberate it, so to speak, from its terrible condition.”
“But, Kip …” Phin started again.
“Think of it, lads!” Kip pressed on, holding out the ornately mounted globe before them. “The ancient wealth of the Lost Empire—just waiting for us.”
Dupak and Phin looked at each other hesitantly.
“Boy!” the captain said sharply, turning his gaze directly into L’Zari’s eyes. “Will you show my ‘brave’ crew how a real spacer acts … or are you afraid, too?”
A test.
“I fear nothing,” L’Zari pronounced with the reckless certainty of his few living years.
With that, L’Zari strode defiantly up the tall stairs.
* * *
The Deafening Rumble of the ancient door resounded through an immense space. It was still echoing as a sliver of dim and flickering light pierced the darkness—the first rays to penetrate the chamber in nearly three thousand years. Shadows on shadows hinted at definition to the eye: the suggestion of sweeping arches; the delicate carvings five times a human’s height, all their edges obscured by dust.
All this L’Zari took in with a hesitant glance. His bravado had left him some time earlier. They had all climbed the tall stairs up to the Settlement Ship. From the upper tiers—which apparently had been garden levels but were long since overgrown—the general structure of the ship, as well as its incredible size, had become evident. Indeed, there were three curving arms that reached over from three equidistant points of the ship, as though cradling it in metallic-blue rose petals. Arches and portals with additional wide stairways led down to successive levels from the top, which were capped by a three-sided pyramid of transparent material. Everywhere the surfaces were coated in decaying brown and green smears yet still managed to glint under the light of the many nearby suns.
The hatchways—more like very carefully fitted grand doors—resisted any attempted entry with loud protests. At last, one gave way to force.
It had seemed, at long last, like the grand adventure L’Zari had imagined his father’s life to be. Free traders out among the stars. Explorers in search of treasure and fortune. Yet his enthusiasm had waned as they had made their way deeper into the ever-colder confines of the mammoth Settlement Ship. Worse, he had taken a wrong turn as they moved through the labyrinthian interiors and had gotten separated from Kip and the rest of the excursion party. Adventure was well enough, he thought to himself, but suddenly he would have preferred to live it a little less intimately. Indeed, the flickering of the light against the wall was less due to imperfections in the chemicals of his torch than the shaking of his own hand.
His intentions at this point were less in the spirit of adventure and more in the spirit of escape. For the last twenty minutes—or so he reckoned—he had given up entirely on any dreams of glory, wealth, and adventure and was simply trying to find his way out as quickly as possible. He had tried doubling back on his original path but had somehow, again, gotten turned around and could no longer tell if he was getting closer to escape or simply entrenching himself further in this ancient tomb.
Ancient tomb? His own tomb, he thought. L’Zari moved more quietly now. Faint shadows shifted on the wall as he walked by, their images just outside of definition. Billows of dust kicked up around him no matter how carefully he stepped.
Suddenly he stopped.
L’Zari cocked his head.
“Hello?” he asked, tentatively.
It was there—he was sure of it. Somewhere at the edge of his hearing he was sure that he could hear a voice. He squinted, turning his head slightly from one side to the other, trying desperately to get some definition and direction to the sound, yet it remained just beyond his comprehension.
He shrugged.
Keep moving, he thought, gazing into the billowing dust just before him so as not to make a false step in the darkness. Just keep moving and you’ll find your way out of here yet. Old Phin was telling me something about a right-hand rule when you’re in a maze, something about it eventually …
He stopped again.
“Captain?” he called, his words echoing into the void of the curving hall around him.
Voices. Distant voices.
/> “Kip?” he called out loudly. “Dupak? Who is it?”
A breeze picked up in the hall, rustling his cloak about him as it danced the dust of the floor into whirling eddies about the youth.
“Phin?” he called again with some urgency. Where was the wind coming from?
The dust was being whipped into frenzied, chaotic forms, each shifting about him, stinging his eyes, burning his nostrils. He coughed, blinking furiously at …
… A face.
L’Zari caught his breath at the sight, choking instantly on the dust. His throat spasmed but he remained intent on the image floating before him, too terrified to move.
A woman. Beautiful face with graceful features framed in a wrapped hood. Her dark eyes were …
… Gone.
The image vanished into the dusty swirls careening about his head. His heart racing, L’Zari wondered if he had actually seen the thing or if it had been something that he had imagined in the sputtering light of his torch. Instinctively, he reached out to where he thought the image had been.
The wind moaned about him.
It was a common sound, he tried to tell himself, as the zephyr picked up its tempo from sources still unknown. Yet this common sound in the uncommon place was terribly unnerving. If only the dust wasn’t in his eyes, he could get a better view of …
A gray hand formed in the dust and beckoned him closer.
L’Zari stepped backward. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What do you want?”
Arms with swords assembled themselves out of the dust and dissolved in a moment. Strong male torsos, shapely feminine legs, each in turn drifted about him in a gray pallor, coalescing from nothing and evaporating moments later.
“Kip!” the youth yelled, a break in his urgent voice. “Kip! Dupak! Come here! Quickly!”
A face. Another face. Then yet another. Each dragged itself into existence before him from the swirling dusts. Now they were holding their form longer than before, the hollow darkness of their eyes no longer beautiful to him but hideously bottomless.
The wind rose again, its low moan rising to a crescendo wailing.
L’Zari’s eyes went wide with fear.
The faces began to speak.
“N’oflishasta,” they whispered to him, the sounds barely audible over the rising and falling pitch of the wind about him. “Wilugen abdi tiasa basah Lo’quan ehs.”
What’s wrong? he thought madly. The biosynth implants had made mutual communication something that one took for granted. What are they trying to tell me? What do they want?
“Go away!” L’Zari screamed. “Get away from me!”
Faces. More faces. Each appeared in turn, ash-gray from the dust swirling madly about him. Their faces were angry; their voices more strident, carrying to him over the howling wind that was a vortex about him.
Hands formed among the faces. Hands reaching for him.
“No!” L’Zari screeched, more an animal sound than an expressed thought. Panicked, the youth turned to run, to flee anywhere far from the hideous gray faces with the hollow, hungry eyes.
The ground below his frenzied steps vanished. With a high-pitched scream, L’Zari tumbled into the darkness, the wind and dust following him down.
4
Celestial Tomb
He fell with the ghosts of the dust, whirling with their faces and their hands and their horrible vacant eye sockets. The ghosts drifted in and out of existence under the rustling light of the flare, which somehow he still gripped in his hand. He heard his own panicked screams echoing up in the shaft above him, his voice sounding distant and hollow in his ears. His screams were not alone. The whining shriek of the wind about him rose to a crescendo of voiced agony and despair.
L’Zari’s terror was complete as he flailed at the partial, gray faces about him. Each face exploded at the passing of his arms only to be reborn again as two or three new shrouded visages of swirling dust. He could not touch them but they could touch him, their hands reaching out to him with the chill of a winter gale. They spun him; tipped him; twisted him about in their icy grasp. More solid now, more substantial, they grasped his legs and arms. L’Zari kicked and struggled but they were legion and his strength soon waned. He wondered when they would kill him and if there were things more terrible than death that they had in mind for him.
He realized with a start that he was no longer falling but flying down the center of an immense, curving corridor. In his surprise, he ceased struggling and found himself supported by the ash-formed incarnations whirling about him. They held him upright, his legs held together below him, his chest and head slightly forward with arms extended to either side. He fancied himself in his madness the figurehead on a ship, being blown forward by the hurricane winds that roared behind him.
The howling about him increased. A hundred appalling faces formed and reformed about him, each of them looking forward in the direction of their travel. L’Zari stared with them, his voice hoarse with his own fear. The end of the corridor was rapidly approaching: a wall whose golden ornaments flickered in the light of the rushing torch in his hands. The youth’s eyes went wide at the thought of the impending calamity: slamming at such horrible speed into the all-too-solid reality of the wall before him. At that moment the wall proved to be a massive bulkhead door that rolled back with incredible speed for its apparent size and weight.
Moments later, the keening faded and the gale softly subsided. L’Zari shook as the chill hands lowered him gently to the floor of the chamber. The youth’s legs would not support him. He collapsed as the thick dust surrounding him sifted gently down to cover him.
L’Zari shivered there on the ground, unable and unwilling to look at where the ghosts had brought him. He fought the vague idea of going to sleep—a blessed state of unconsciousness that would allow him to forget the past few minutes while granting him hope that he would awaken in a better place. The sensible part of him knew that it simply would not work. That to sleep would be to surrender to whatever had brought him here. So he lay there debating with himself for some time—how long he could not say—until, at last, he knew he could open his eyes and try to cope with whatever had overcome him.
His eyes opened slowly to a blurry image. The flare had gone out—he wasn’t sure just how much time had passed since he had been dropped here. His mind wondered for a time, then, why he could see at all. A dim, bluish light seemed to come from somewhere far away though he couldn’t be sure. If only he could see.
L’Zari blinked a few times to clear his vision.
His eyes stared, widening.
L’Zari leaped to his feet. His sudden cry was accompanied by a clattering sound echoing into the enormous space around him. Dust billowed around him from the sudden movement. It was only through a supreme concentration of will that he stood motionless, waiting for the drifting gray powder to once more settle atop the bone fragments scattered all about him.
He thought to calm himself: better to stand among the dead than to lie with them. Small comfort, but comfort nonetheless.
He again opened his eyes. The gentle curve of the chamber walls swept smoothly upward from the floor to form the ceiling thirty feet above him. He realized that the entire contiguous surface, from floor to wall to ceiling, was heavily detailed. Mechanism and decoration flowed freely into one another so that L’Zari couldn’t tell where the machines ended and the art began. The chamber appeared to be several hundred feet in diameter, its far wall invisible through the dust drifting in the air.
A massive cluster of rods from the ceiling projected a dim column of light onto a raised platform in the center of the great circular room. Something about the quality of the light made L’Zari think that it must be passive light from outside conducted here by some sort of optical fibers. Natural light in this most unnatural place.
Everything seemed to focus toward the raised platform. The column of light centered there. The radial lines of the room converged there. Even the …
He caught his breath
. Even the bones lying about him, he realized, were all facing the central platform. He had scattered several of them in his earlier panic, but as he examined the floor farther out from where he stood, the symmetry was easily discerned. The thick layer of dust softened the lines but the evidence was still there. Skulls, as far as he could see, were all facing sightlessly toward the platform. Behind them, collapsed rib cages with curled legs. Each set in precise rows. Humerus, radius, ulna—all softly blanketed in gray and each outstretched above the skulls, reaching forever toward the center of the room.
He could picture it as he stood in the stillness. Here they knelt. Here they bowed. Here they died.
“By the gods!” he whispered in awe and fright.
He heard the moaning once more as a chill breeze drifted past him. He caught his breath, not daring to move.
The dust scattered around his feet in the eddies and currents of the shifting air. Then, as he stood frozen in place, the air rushed past him. Dust softly shifted. Bone fragments quietly clattered to one side or another. Clean floor was revealed, shining in the dim light.
A path.
L’Zari hesitated.
The wind rustled through the folds of his cloak. It played at his hair. It danced in his ears.
“Forgive.”
L’Zari drew in a sharp breath. It was a voice beyond hearing. He knew the biolink had nothing to do with it. This was something beyond voice or translation—an understanding he could not deny nor explain.
“What do you want?” the youth asked quietly into the room. His voice sounded too loud in his own ears as it echoed softly through the hall.
“Destiny.”
“I don’t understand,” he whispered.
There was no reply.
L’Zari shook his head. He wondered if he was insane and now living in some hell of his own creation. No, he decided, he wasn’t crazy and if he had somehow found his way into hell then he would just have to find his way out of it. The thought of stepping among the dead, however, was a little further than he cared to go. It was obvious where the ghostly wind was leading him. He suspected that the interests of the spectral faces that had attacked him earlier were most likely not his own. He didn’t like the idea of following, but there seemed to be no sensible—or, at least, acceptable—alternative at the moment.
Nightsword Page 3
