Jetta nodded as if she had solved a piece of a troubling puzzle. “Now I know why I heard that in the Dissembler device.”
A fierce gust of wind nearly toppled both Triel and Jetta. “We have to get down,” the Healer said. “The storm is picking up.”
“Yes, before this gets any worse,” Jetta yelled over the wind, pointing to the thick swirl of clouds blanketing the range below. “Let’s heal the other wolf and get out of here. We can do it now—he will see your change of heart.”
“Are you sure?”
“We really don’t have a choice.”
Triel massaged the webbing between her fingers and tentatively approached White Neck, holding onto her gratitude for Gray Paw’s help in healing Jetta. White Neck looked up at her as she touched his injured leg, a low growl rumbling in his throat, but he settled once Triel joined hands with Jetta. Gray Paw circled noisily, whimpering and yipping as they tried once more to restore the broken leg.
All was going well until the first dart struck the back of her arm. The second and the third planted themselves deep in her right thigh. The Healer tried to call out, but her body washed away in a tidal wave of numbness.
Blackness claimed her. She didn’t feel the fall.
JETTA SLOWLY REGAINED consciousness, greeted by a headache that racked her skull and left her ears ringing. She inhaled sharply, filling her lungs with the pleasant scent of blooming flowers and fresh rain.
Her eyelids felt weighted down. Rubbing them seemed to help. When she finally peeled them back, she found herself surrounded by the dense greenery of a vast forest. Vascular roots formed the forest bed, giving rise to massive trunks that stretched toward what should have been sky but instead was a distant leafy canopy.
Her senses adjusted to encompass the varied songs of birds in the trees and the occasional chirp of another forest dweller alerted to their presence. A light rain fell from above, a cool relief in the uncomfortably warm air.
Jetta tried to pick herself up off the forest bed, but found herself tangled in the purple vines blanketing the nearest gigantic tree. No, not tangled, bound, and when she looked to her right, she saw Triel in the same predicament.
“Triel!” Jetta whispered. “Wake up!”
Triel opened her eyes and went through the same stages of shock and bewilderment. “Where are we? Where are the wolves?”
“I don’t know. But there’s someone here in the forest with us.”
As she regained all her senses, Jetta became aware of the multiple presences fanning out around them, watching them from the protection of the trees. The birds had stopped singing and the forest had become very still, as if holding its breath. “Show yourself!” she demanded, straining against her bonds.
A tattooed man stepped out of the shadows. His face was inked to resemble some kind of predator, and to further the illusion he had filed his teeth to points. He wore the bones and hides of his kills, and fresh blood painted the few areas of unmarked skin on his head and shoulders.
“Jumaris,” Triel whispered.
The Healer’s fear exploded across the psionic divide, causing Jetta to shrink into herself to avoid succumbing to her friend’s panic.
“Let us go!” Jetta shouted, though she knew it was no use. Jumaris didn’t speak Common, and they were brutal towards outsiders, no matter who they were.
Two more emerged. Then six more. In the end they numbered nearly fifty, wielding weapons of sharpened bone and cut stone.
Jetta couldn’t read their thoughts. Though they were humanoid, their minds were incompatible with her own. She couldn’t seem to reach them on any psionic front; even dumping her emotions into them might not have an effect on their alien minds.
The one who had emerged first drew a blade and circled them, pointing to various appendages and licking his lips. He chanted at them in a foreign tongue, repeating the same phrases over and over again. The others joined in one by one until they were all shouting, dancing, and waving their weapons closer and closer to Jetta and Triel.
“Jetta—” Triel whispered, her eyes the size of saucers as one of the female Jumaris used her knife to pantomime a cutting motion across her breasts and then pointed to the Healer.
Where were the wolves? Jetta looked around, but they were nowhere in sight.
Calm down. Think. Find them, she told herself.
Jetta dipped back into the link she had forged with her lupine companions, tracing the lines of their animal thought patterns through the confusing jumble of the Jumaris’ minds.
Help us, please, Jetta called out.
The chanting stopped. The commotion of their dancing stopped. The forest fell under a hush broken only by the light padding of the massive shadowy animals.
“Gray Paw—”
The black wolf carefully approached the group, head down, teeth showing, hair on end. The Jumaris all froze in position, their jubilance lost as the wolf growled and walked toward Jetta and Triel.
Jetta instantly regretted her decision. There were too many Jumaris—they would kill her friend and eat the whole lot of them, both wolf and human-like.
Gray Paw stopped in front of her, his teeth still bared and a growl in his throat. But when Jetta whispered to him, he sniffed at her and licked her face.
“Akata Caumri!” the first Jumari shouted, falling to his knees. The others repeated his words and fell to their knees, humming and mumbling indistinctly. From the trees, someone began clapping
“Congratulations, outsider. You are one of the few to earn the Jumaris’ respect.”
A Sentient of unrecognizable origins stepped out of the brush. His genetics obviously included some human lineage, but his blood-red skin and hairless body spoke of the outerworlds. His eyes were strange, almost iridescent, with nictitating membranes that slid over silver lenses. He wore the briefest of garments and a sighted phase rifle slung over his left shoulder.
“What is going on?” Jetta exclaimed.
The blood-red man smiled. “I am Keyl. I will bring you to your fate.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
But Keyl didn’t answer her. Instead, he made a series of clicking sounds with his tongue, and one of the Jumaris stuck his blade into the exposed pink heart of the tree. The vines that tied them down instantly retracted, and Jetta didn’t waste time getting as far away from the tree as possible.
“Do as I say, outsider,” Keyl said, tapping the butt of his rifle. “Or you will know pain.”
Jetta and Triel followed the Jumaris and the red-skinned man through the thick of the forests, stopping every few meters to hack and slash their way through the stubborn brush and the angry purple vines that snaked across the forest floor.
“Where’s White Neck?” Triel whispered.
One of the Jumaris shot her a cautionary glare, but it didn’t stop Jetta from responding. “He’s close, but that’s all I know.”
“Oh my Gods.” The words escaped her lips before she could take them back. Jetta had to tilt her head back as her eyes followed the stone steps of the massive temple up to where they pierced the clouds.
“Is this the Temple of Exxuthus?” Jetta whispered.
“I think so.”
The steeply sloping sides of the temple were inscribed with flowing, elegant symbols in a language Jetta didn’t recognize. Decorating the facade was a stone relief of men with the faces of demons who acted out some sort of warning in a display of violence and bloodshed that Jetta did not associate with the Prodgies.
“Time to climb,” the red man said, pointing his gun toward the stairs.
Gray Paw had stayed by her side the entire time, but when she set foot on the first step, he did not join her, instead pacing nervously at the base of the temple.
“Come on,” Jetta said.
The red man laughed. “He knows better than to tread lightly up those stairs.”
“Why? What’s at the top?”
The red man smiled, revealing his many rows of teeth. “Whatever you bring with
you.”
Jetta once again commanded the Gray Paw to join her, and he reluctantly followed, his tail tucked snugly between his legs. The entire tribe of Jumaris made the ascent as well, chanting in their odd tongue for what seemed like hours. But Jetta knew that time was deceptive in this place. In fact, everything was deceptive in this place. The climate certainly didn’t match the supposed latitude and longitude, and the higher they climbed, the farther away it seemed to the top.
Jetta’s eyes grew heavy as she plodded on, one foot in front of the other, her muscles screaming in protest.
“I can’t—” Triel began, eyes half-closed as she wobbled on the steps.
Jetta took her by the waist and wrapped the Healer’s arm around her shoulder. “Just lean on me. Keep walking. We’re almost there.” But Jetta’s own legs refused to support the both of them.
Jetta eased Triel down onto the steps as best she could. “Stay here with Gray Paw,” Jetta said between breaths. “I’ll be back for you. Don’t worry, he’ll keep you safe.”
Triel touched her face. “You always go away.”
The Healer’s words faded away in exhaustion, and she collapsed against the wolf. He curled protectively around her on the stairs, laying his head on her shoulders.
“Triel, I—” she began, but the red man cut her off.
“Coming?” he asked impatiently, pointing the rifle at Triel and teasing the trigger. “Don’t you want to see what awaits you?”
Reluctantly, Jetta resumed the impossible ascent. With each step, the pain in her legs and side chipped away at her will, which dissolved into the gray clouds slowly consuming their party. She lost sight of Triel, the Jumaris, even the red man, until she felt as if she was traveling alone in the gray stillness.
“Hello?” she called, but no one answered.
She had to press on, no matter what. Everything was at stake.
I can’t fail again—
Minutes or hours passed; she wasn’t sure. The cool wetness of the mist against her hot skin was her only companion. The strain in her legs had gone past fatigue into an inert numbness, turning her legs into dead things she had to drag up with her onto each stair.
The silence, the isolation, began to eat at her. For all her strides toward independence, she had never liked being alone, or the company it brought.
Jahx. Jaeia. Triel. Galm. Lohien.
Doubt and emotion took turns whittling down the last of her will and reduced her to crawling on her hands and knees.
Finally, her body dropped to the stairs. Something smooth that smelled like polished leather touched her nose. She looked up, seeing his dark eyes before anything else. He gazed down at her, his martial scowl and perfectly cropped mustache just as they had looked on the newsreels and posters all those years ago.
Jetta scooted away as fast as she could. “You’re not real!”
She tried to dodge past Volkor, but he was too quick for her, seizing her by the throat and pinning her against the stairs. Nothing she did could break his hold, even with her augmented strength and advanced combat training.
When Jetta tried to stop him from throwing her off the platform, he broke her right arm with a quick snap of his wrist. He paused, dangling her over the stairs, reveling in her pain and fear. For a moment, Jetta thought she saw more than herself in the shadows of his eyes.
Before she had time to process what she had seen, he threw her, sending her tumbling down the stairs. She fell chaotically, reaching for handholds and managing only to crack bones and break fingers.
At some point she hurtled past Triel, and the Healer cried out for her. Gray Paw howled, and the Jumaris chanted. The red man was there beside her again, descending with her, studying her with his silver eyes as she rolled past the base of the stone stairway and into nothingness.
“SHE’S COMING AROUND.”
Jetta’s arms and legs shot out automatically to stop her fall, but instead they found solid and unmoving purchase. Instead of gray mist, she was surrounded by stone walls and oil lanterns held by a group of strange-looking humans. Two stood out from the group, a man and a woman wearing Old Earth clothing and brimmed hats.
She didn’t understand. Hadn’t she just been tumbling down the Temple stairs? “Where am I? Where’s Triel? Where are the wolves?”
Of the two, one was male and the other female. The male was in his early sixties, portly, with a handlebar mustache and hair that grew wildly out of his ears. The female was around the same age, with weathered features and a thin frame. Her hair was pulled back in a neat braid that fell down the middle of her back.
The others looked like the Jumaris she had seen earlier, though not as menacing. These were darker-skinned and heavily decorated with ink and bone, but not with smears of blood or air of carnal hunger. They carried torches and spears but stood in a circle a good distance from her.
“She is right here. Not yet awake yet, though. She was hit with a few more darts than you.”
Triel was lying next to her, mumbling and twitching from the effects of drug-induced slumber.
“Who are you? What the hell is going on?”
“I am Sir Amargo and this is Lady Helena of the Imperial Order of Intergalactic Archeology. We are both experts in Prodgy history. You have already met Tekay, our interpreter.”
The red skin and alien eyes were gone. He looked like just another Jumari, though he wore Terrestrial clothing and had significantly fewer markings.
“I thought his name was Keyl.”
Amargo laughed uncomfortably. “Keyl means demon in Amiqi, the ancient language of the Prodgy Gods. Where did you get that?”
Jetta massaged her forehead. “I thought it was real.”
“Ah, I see. Yes, the plant neurotoxins coating the darts cause hallucinations. I apologize for that. Our scouts mistook you for the Lockheads that have been raiding our grounds. Our Whisperer spoke to your wolves, and we found out you were running from them.”
Amargo nodded toward a woman swathed in animal skins. She removed the pipe she was smoking and bowed back.
“They also told her that this is a Healer, and that she restored Cano’s broken leg.”
“Cano?”
Jetta stifled her smile as both wolves trotted around the circle of Jumaris and bounded over to her.
“De beq we ni,” the Whisperer said approvingly as Jetta greeted her canine companions.
“Yes. They have names, although they told us you were calling them ‘Gray Paw’ and ‘White Neck.’ The gray-pawed one actually goes by the name Kiyiyo.”
Jetta looked at the Whisperer. “Is she a telepath?”
Amargo shook his head. “Not by textbook definitions.”
As Jetta scratched behind Kiyiyo’s ears, she examined the carvings that decorated the stone walls. They looked exactly like those on the facade of the temple in her hallucination. “Is this the Temple of Exxuthus?”
“Yes, you are inside it.”
“I remember a giant stone staircase that went on as far as I could see.”
“There is no staircase leading here. The Temple is built within the base of a carnivorous tree and hidden within a maze of its shoots that spans thousands of kilometers. It takes insider knowledge to navigate safely.”
Jetta thought about the tree in her dream whose roots had wrapped themselves around herself and Triel, but then she remembered something much more important. Volkor. “In my hallucination I saw... someone at the top of the staircase.”
Amargo looked to Helena. Her voice soft and velvety, she said, “That’s just the effects of their poisons, my dear.”
“Why are you here?” Jetta demanded.
“Whoa, settle down. We have some questions for you. Why are you here? And are you...?”
“Yes,” Jetta said. “I am.”
“Commander Kyron, it is an honor,” Amargo said, removing his hat. “My wife and I were in the shelters on Trigos during the final battle. We thought we were doomed, but you saved us all. We know your story very wel
l, and we are forever in your debt for the sacrifices you made to ensure the safety of the Starways.”
Jetta was accustomed to such praise, but whether it was the kindness beaming from the old woman’s eyes or the chubby fellow’s genuine expression of thanks—or the residual effects of the poison—she found herself touched by the sentiment. She ground her fists into the stone floor to keep her emotions in check. “Thank you.”
Triel opened her eyes and reached out for something or someone that wasn’t there.
“It’s okay,” Jetta comforted her. Cano got down on all fours and licked the Healer’s face. “We were shot with poison darts, but the Jumaris have treated us and taken us to the Temple of Exxuthus.”
“What?” Triel said, pushing the wolf away and holding her head in her hands. Her eyes were still swimming in their sockets, her focus everywhere but Jetta’s face.
“This is Sir Amargo and Lady Helena. They’re archeologists, but I’m not sure why they’re here. I would appreciate an explanation.”
Amargo chuckled and nodded to his wife. “She’s just as headstrong in real life as she is on the reels.”
With a twitch of his mustache he continued. “My wife and I are part of group called the Natari.”
“Promise keepers,” Triel said, her eyes growing wide.
“Yes, that’s the Common translation.”
“I’m not familiar,” Jetta said, looking between Triel and the archeologists.
“They were a group of humans that promised to repay my ancestors for their kindness,” Triel answered.
“My thirty-sixth great-grandfather was Captain Julian Delphius, one of the leaders of the Exodus. He and several others helped orchestrate the evacuation of Earth after the war made it uninhabitable. But they weren’t anticipating how quickly the planet would fall, and they were left with half-operational ships and untrained crewmen.”
“It was a disaster,” Lady Helena added.
“Billions died instantly when the bombs fell, but it is argued that millions suffered much more intensely under the brutal conditions of primitive spaceflight.”
Lady Helena didn’t miss her cue from her husband. “There were no jumpdrives, and on many ships there were no gravitational fields. People literally turned to dust without gravity. Others had no food stores and did unspeakable things in the name of survival.”
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