Nightsword

by Margaret Weis

  “Hey, come on, guys!” Griffiths said, shrugging. “You’ve got to be kidding me! How could I possibly know …”

  He stopped midsentence.

  They had asked a question of the prophet.

  “My God, Lewis! I DO know!”

  34

  Resurrections

  “You actually know the way home?” Lewis said, her face split with a huge grin.

  “Yes, I do,” Griffiths replied, blinking as though he were surprised by the knowledge in his own head. “It’s amazing but when you asked the question, I just knew it. Hey, why do you seem so surprised? I mean, I never would have known if you hadn’t asked and you guys didn’t come this far just to talk about old times or anything.”

  Tobler giggled. “I knew you had the answer! It’s just that—well, you know, you can hope for something to be true and believe it to be true but it isn’t until it actually is true that … well …”

  Ellerby spoke up. “It’s just such a relief, Grif! I’ve got a family and kids out there that think I’m dead. They’ve probably already had the funeral.”

  “Well, as they say, reports of my death have been premature.” Griffiths looked around at the command chamber buried deep within the ruins of the ancient ship. “On the other hand, we aren’t out of the woods yet. We’ve got to find a way to get out of here. What about the ship you came in?”

  “Well,” Lewis said, leaning back against the map table in the center of the raised platform, “it certainly could get us home. It’s a remarkable technology—well ahead of anything I’ve seen in all the different zones we’ve passed through. It appears to be some variation of the TFP base technology everyone uses in their synthetic minds. I guess you could call it a morphing techno-mystic approach to everything. The point is that it adjusts itself to whatever conditions are locally encountered. It works better in some zones than others. It’s slow in this particular zone, for example. It’s also somewhat unpredictable, but we haven’t had a complete failure in our travels thus far.” Lewis looked around the command platform and stepped over to a blank console. “In fact, the controls look a lot like these panels. You just place your hands on either side where these indentations are, like this, and …”

  A patch of light sprang into being on the console surface. A chime sounded. Lewis sucked in her breath as six lines of light traced themselves from the center of the panel, illuminating six additional patches of color in turn. Each appearance signaled another sound. Instantly more lines began tracing themselves from the six patches, some of them exiting the panel itself and running down the sides of the console toward additional consoles situated around the platform.

  “Lewis!” Griffiths lunged forward, pushing her hands away from the panel. “Stop!”

  Lewis stood still, shaking slightly next to Griffiths. Both of them stared at the panel as Ellerby and Tobler crowded around them.

  “It’s still functional!” Tobler breathed.

  “Avast!” came the deep, echoing voice across the hall. Kheoghi had no doubt been guarding the exit in case any of them should try to wander off on their own. He held a massive and rather dangerous-looking weapon aimed in their general direction. “What trickery be ye up to?”

  “Nothing at all, Master Kheoghi,” Griffiths called back at the brute, with a smile plastered across his face. “Just getting reacquainted!”

  “That noise be no mere acquaintance, mate!” Kheoghi scowled suspiciously.

  “Oh, that! That noise?” Griffiths nodded. “That’s just … that’s just singing. We make these little singing noises when we meet after a long time. It’s a culture requirement among our people that … that whenever we get together after being apart for a long time we sing … and dance our ritual greeting. If we don’t then … well, then the gods get very angry with us and … and …”

  “Curse?” Tobler offered helpfully.

  “Exactly,” Griffiths continued. “They curse any journey that we are on after that—er, immediately after that. So, we don’t want the curse—so we did the song.”

  Kheoghi’s red eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  “Look,” Griffiths said. He lowered his hands, bending forward slightly, then looked up. “Chung!” he croaked in as close an approximation as he could to the first sound that had come from the panel. He raised his arms slowly and waved them in front of himself as he turned slowly around. “Ding! Whazzah! Thum, pong, dong, KRONG!”

  Griffiths gestured with his hands, encouraging his companions. Lewis rolled her eyes but complied, joining Ellerby and Tobler in the ragged and ridiculous chorus mimicking Griffiths’s moves and sounds. “Chung! Ding! Whazzah! Thum, pong, dong, KRONG!”

  Griffiths shrugged at Kheoghi. “It’s a cultural thing …”

  The minotaur stalked back beyond the chamber door.

  “What a moron!” Griffiths shook his head, then turned back toward Lewis. “What do you think, Lewis? Is this old bucket still operational?”

  “I don’t know,” Lewis responded, her eyes narrowed as she thought through what had just happened. “How old is this ship?”

  “If I understand correctly, about three thousand years.”

  Lewis arched her eyebrows. “I suspect it’s out of warranty, Griffiths.”

  “Yeah, but will it fly?”

  “It’s hard to say without activating all the panels. Some of those sounds we heard were alarms, and there’s bound to be some deterioration in the subsystems. Just because the lights come on doesn’t mean it will launch.” Lewis cocked her head to one side. “Why, Griffiths? Are you joining up again?”

  Griffiths thought about Merinda. Things just had not gone according to plan. Not that there even had been a plan. Still, he thought, what chance did he have with the likes of Vestis Neskat? Perhaps it was, indeed, time to go home.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking away from Lewis as he spoke. “I guess I’m finished playing space ranger for now. The problem is going to be how to get out of here. The Marren-kan ship is out—it requires too many people to sail it effectively. We don’t know if this monster is spaceworthy. If we take the ship you came in, then old Flynn and his crowd will just hunt us down. In this zone, you said yourself, the ship is a bit sluggish. The Venture Revenge would be on us before we ever got close to the quantum front.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Ellerby asked.

  “Maybe the same place we were before,” Griffiths said. “Which of these panels would give us navigational information—headings and craft attitude and such?”

  “That one on the left, I think.” Lewis pointed.

  “Lewis, see if you can activate it. Tobler. Ellerby. Cover us with a little dancing for our ugly friend outside the door.”

  “What are you planning, Griffiths?” Lewis asked skeptically.

  Griffiths turned back to the large parchment map on the table. “I think we may be in a position to bargain after all.”

  “What are you doing?” Tobler asked.

  Griffiths ignored the question, searching about the table for a few moments before discovering a brass ruler with a smooth, straight edge. “Ellerby, do you still have a pen with you?”

  Ellerby chuckled as he reached for his breast pocket. “Am I ever without a pen? Here.”

  He made a small mark on the parchment. “Lewis, give me those coordinates. A few finishing lines on this map and we’ll have something worth bargaining for!”

  Griffiths laid the straight edge on the parchment, orienting it as Lewis called out the final navigation numbers of the Settlement Ship. As he set the pen tip down to the paper, he happened to glance down past the ancient map table to the skeletal remains of the last human to plot a course here.

  The great miter that had once sat upon the skeleton’s head lay next to the broken remains.

  The ancient corpse was that of the Prophet of the Mantle. In the mythic time of Lokan, these bones had been bonded to the Mantle of Kendis-dai—just as Griffiths was now.

  “So, it was your map that the Man
tle knows,” Griffiths murmured toward the dead. A sudden chill ran up his spine. Three thousand years ago, these bones had stood where Griffiths was standing, struggling to finish the same map to which Griffiths was pressing his pen.

  “I hope this works out better for me than it did for you, old comrade,” Griffiths said, sighing.

  Quickly, he drew the first line and began noting the course next to it in small, tight figures.

  “Nice friends you’ve got here,” lewis said casually as she gazed up at Kheoghi’s massive bulk lumbering at her side. “Remind me to talk to your mother about the crowd you’re hanging out with.”

  The group walked under minotaur guard down yet another magnificent, darkened corridor in the bowels of the gigantic ship. Flynn’s crew had placed symbols at various points to aid in finding their way to and from the command center. It prevented them from getting lost in the vastness of the ancient relic. Armed with chemical torches, the minotaurs, Griffiths, and the other Earthers were emerging at last from the depths with a renewed hope.

  Kheoghi seemed suspicious, as did his four brothers that accompanied them. They each had recognized a discernable change in attitude among these barbarian humans, and the minotaurs were certain that all change boded ill for them.

  “They really aren’t that bad,” Griffiths said casually as he walked. The map, now rolled tightly in his fist, swung at his side. “They have a very interesting culture. They have seventeen different terms for friendship, each of which has a different degree of responsibility for both parties involved. Relationships progress through these seventeen degrees, with each one being very hard-won. It’s really quite fascinating.”

  Tobler was trailing Griffiths slightly as they walked but was paying careful attention. “How do you come to know these things?”

  “It’s that Mantle of Kendis-dai,” Ellerby offered. “He’s a walking Encyclopaedia Galactica!”

  Griffiths smiled. “Actually, there is such a thing, though it is more properly called the Galactipaedia. However, you’re wrong about my knowledge of the OomRamn, as the minotaurs call themselves. It didn’t come from the Mantle. I just learned it on my own. Say, I’ve been meaning to ask. Just how did you come to be in this unbelievably forsaken part of the galaxy in the first place? I mean, I’ve heard of coincidence but the chances of your being here at the same time as …”

  “It’s no coincidence,” Lewis said. “It just seems like our fates are bound together for a while. Remember we told you that we decided to come back and ask you for directions?”

  “Yeah,” Griffiths said, grinning. “And apparently you were right to do so.”

  “Well, we turned around and made our way back to Avadon. Our timing could have been a bit better. The Order had returned, this time with reinforcements—heaven only knows where they scrounged them up. There was a pitched battle going on when we popped back into normal space. It was a mess. The Order was attacking the planet, the city-ships were attacking the Order with whatever they had left, and there was even a third fleet mixing it up with the other two.”

  “That would have been the Centirion Fleet.” Griffiths nodded grimly. “They’re the military arm of the Omnet. They must have dispatched ships to Avadon supposedly to protect it—no doubt under Targ’s orders.”

  “Well, Avadon didn’t need any help,” Ellerby chuckled. “As soon as the wraith fleet attacked, the planet itself responded. It seems that Avadon was perfectly capable of defending itself.”

  “So,” Lewis continued, slightly annoyed that she had to wrestle control of the tale back from her companions, “there we were, surrounded by ships of three separate interstellar empires, all firing at each other …”

  “Technically,” Griffiths interrupted, “the Omnet isn’t an empire.”

  “Hey, do I get to finish this or not?” Lewis demanded.

  “Sorry, go on.” Griffiths smiled.

  “There we were, surrounded by ships of the three fleets, all of them firing on each other and the planet erupts with its own magical, glorious defense system. You should have seen it, Griffiths! What a show! Anyway, it turns out that our ship is the only one that the planet will allow to land—we assumed it was because our craft originally came from that world. We put down on the tarmac exactly where you watched us take off only to be met by that Targ of Gandri.”

  “He was waiting for you?” Griffiths asked skeptically.

  “Not exactly,” Tobler answered. “He seemed to have come to the starport looking for any kind of transportation he could find to get off the planet. Of course, none of the Irindris shuttles would lift off—the planetary defense system had put some sort of force field around the entire world and wouldn’t let anyone out.”

  “Anyone but us and our nifty ancient saucer that is,” Ellerby added.

  “Wait a minute.” Griffiths stopped in his tracks, nearly causing the entire group to stumble over each other in their haste to stop as well. “You guys landed on the planet, just happened to meet this Gandri fellow, and decided to follow him across the galaxy?”

  “No,” Ellerby replied, “it wasn’t that simple. A troop of Thought-Knight goons tried to arrest us when we landed. They said someone had tried to murder you and that we were suspected of being involved. Targ used some of his whammy on them and froze them solid—temporal stasis I think he called it.”

  “How nice of him, considering he’s the one who tried to kill me.”

  “Well, how were we supposed to know?” Lewis griped. “Anyway, he recognized us or maybe it was the flight suits—I don’t know which—but he offered to show us where to find you.”

  “Find me?” Griffiths echoed.

  “Yeah, you,” Ellerby continued. “He said something about your pulling a fast one on him and zipping off on some crazed mission across the galaxy with this Neskat woman. He also said that if we wanted to ask the great Mantle anything, that we’d have to ask you, and that he was the only one who knew where you would be.”

  “You bought that?” Griffiths smiled.

  “Hell, no,” Tobler said. “We just thought he was another space-happy alien. Still, his story jibed with what the Thought-Knights had said, although it turned out he left out a few details.”

  “Like the fact that he tried to kill me?”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  Lewis put her hand on Griffiths’s shoulder. “We figured he was our only chance of finding you and asking our question. Now that we have found you, all we need to do is figure our way out of here.”

  Griffiths nodded and began walking again. They could all see the bright twilight of the Bonefield Narrows in the gigantic opening ahead of them. “That’s the entrance. It opens out onto a platform, then a set of stairs down to the ground. You guys stay with me. If we can get to Neskat, she can bargain for us. If we can just convince these cutthroats not to kill us, and maroon us here instead, I think we’ve got a chance of surviving right here.”

  Lewis shook her head. “What good does that do us? Targ can’t fly the saucer, but he isn’t so stupid as to leave us here without disabling it permanently first.”

  “True enough.” Griffiths nodded, then grinned. “I guess it’s too bad that this old Settlement Ship is inoperative.” He glanced meaningfully toward Kheoghi.

  Lewis returned his grin. “Yes, it’s too bad. Still, I suppose living marooned here is better than dead.”

  “Exactly,” Griffiths said smoothly. “We’ll just stay here. Then Flynn and Targ can fight it out for their precious Nightsword. I don’t think we’ll have any problems after that.”

  They were just stepping onto the platform when they noticed something wrong with the sky.

  For as far as they could see above the jungle canopy, colossal ships of unbelievable size filled their view. Griffiths had seen their kind before, although he had originally thought that they were building complexes rather than ships of the stars. Their hulls were spiny and horned. Leathery wings protruded from their decks. Griffiths couldn’t begin to gu
ess the number of craft he was looking at. Even as he watched, a cascade of dragons tumbled over the side of the lead ship, each one righting itself and gliding down toward the bay far below.

  They all turned to run back into the opening but it was too late. Massive dragon heads curled around the sides of the entrance, blocking the way back into the ancient ruin. Griffiths turned to run down the wide staircase and descended several steps before noticing that the clearing itself was rimmed with dragons, each wearing battle armor displaying their individual battle flags and pennants.

  He stopped on the stairs, aware that his friends and the minotaurs were standing just behind him on the platform.

  Griffiths searched frantically for an avenue of escape.

  There was none.

  His eyes came to rest, however, on a gray-robed figure standing at the base of the stairs. There was a darkness about the figure as it moved up the staircase, its face obscured within the folds of its massive hood.

  “A Sentinel!” Lewis murmured.

  The darkness fell away from the figure as it moved closer, drifting up the stairs with ghostlike smoothness.

  Griffiths took a step back.

  The cloaked figure reached up with both hands, grasping either side of the hood. In a single motion, the hood fell back to reveal the face of the Sentinel. His gray, flowing beard fell onto his chest—an ancient man, tall and thin, with a prominent nose and soft gray eyes.

  The old man smiled at them.

  The Earthers all gasped as one.

  “You!” Griffiths said, his eyes wide with wonder.

  “Yes, my boy! How awfully good of you to remember me—both you and your friends!” The old man’s smile was genuine and friendly. “Sorry I’m so late for the party but I’ve brought you a gift!”

  “Zanfib?” Griffiths whispered in awe.

  “Why, yes, of course I’m Zanfib, you doorknob!” The old man seemed somewhat confused. “Or rather I’m pretty sure I am. If you say so then it must be.”

  The old man smiled and put his left hand on Griffiths’s shoulder.

  “I’ve been meaning to give you something.” The old man cackled.