The creature plummeted out of the shadows directly overhead. Nahel fired but missed his mark. He raised his bow to fend off the monster’s claws but mistook its intent. The creature grabbed the bow with surprising strength, twisted it aside, and locked Nahel in a vicious embrace from behind. Nahel’s hackles rose as the monster’s gnashing beak hovered over his neck. He doubled his resistance, but the creature held firm. Its breath reeked like a drowned corpse.
Nahel was on the verge of panic when Damus’ melodious voice sounded from the center of the pool. The water churned as a horde of large grey rats poured out of the pipes. Thanks to Damus’ Mystery, the chisel-toothed vermin ignored Nahel and swarmed his foe.
The creature sprang into the air once again, hurtling over the chattering plague like a bubble rising through water. Nahel's arm darted out and caught the creature’s ankle. His foe writhed and hissed, but the malakh held fast.
“I found Xander!” Damus yelled, his desperate tone deflating Nahel’s pride. “He’s not breathing!”
Adrift in a deep and tumultuous sea, Xander clung to his fading sense of self. He struggled to stay afloat against towering, froth-capped waves that battered his will. Several times he almost gave in, only to catch a glimpse of something dark and absolute that loomed serenely above the storm-racked sky. Desperate, he prayed that the distant monolith would affirm his existence.
The monster’s thoughts—most too alien and vile to comprehend—echoed in Xander’s mind. It told him he was nothing; his life was folly. At last, he saw that it was telling the truth.
Or at least a half-truth.
All his life, Xander had suffered the recurring fear that he was not himself. Such episodes most often came when he looked too long into his father’s mirrors or when he pondered his own being too deeply. At the brink of oblivion, he saw the false choice set before him—self-deception or annihilation.
Xander chose a third alternative. He let go. Throwing down the walls of denial he'd built over a lifetime, he saw the truth of his nature. The drowning boy escaped within and above himself, leaving the stormy sea for soothing darkness.
The soul once bound to the name of Xander Sykes saw again the black prismatic walls that seemed to hold all being. He raced toward union with the infinite.
But the fleeing spirit hadn’t escaped after all. A thread of silver still tethered him to the world. Did it briefly glint with reflected fire? Drawn like a fish on a line, he fell back toward the Middle Stratum.
Xander woke to a sour taste, a vile stench, and the squealing of rodents. He lay on a rough bed of pulpy vegetation.
Damus hovered over him. The Gen’s mud-streaked face wore a worried look that turned to amazement. “You’re alive.”
Looking past his rescuer, Xander fixed his eyes on the wretched creature fighting to climb the wall ahead of a mounting swarm of rats. Nahel had hold of its foot, but the monster pulled free with another voiceless scream.
Xander rose to his feet. His place in life had always been unsure. Now he found the place in his soul that touched the transcendent, and through it he willed his enemy destroyed.
“You really should lie down,” said Damus.
A roar of thunder turned the chamber into the shell of a drum. A powerful force knocked Nahel off his feet and dashed his foe against the wall. The creature crumpled into a heap, leaving a viscous blood trail.
I did that, Xander thought. He came back to himself and realized that he was shaking. A jolt of fear ran down his spine when he noticed Damus staring at him.
Xander!” Nahel cried from across the chamber. The malakh was down on one knee, clutching his head.
Xander turned to see the wounded monster crawling toward him through the mire, glaring with blind hatred as it loosed a silent roar. Damus fell supine, and the rats scattered, seeking shelter under the sodden filth. Xander stumbled but remained standing.
The broken monster rose and staggered forward, snapping its cruel beak. Xander fumbled for the power he’d unleashed a moment before, but panic shackled his will.
Nahel sprang with a visceral cry and drove his dagger into the creature’s back. The monster turned its debilitating will on the malakh, who faltered long enough for his foe’s bony arms to seize him. Their thrashing churned the murky water white.
Xander forced himself to concentrate. He gathered his will to crush the monster like a paper effigy, but a vast shadow blocked the light that seeped through the vents. His head buzzed like a wasp nest, shattering his focus.
Damus struggled to his feet. Muck stained his silver hair and fine clothes. The shadow passed as he waded into the mire, and his rapier reflected the fickle light slanting in from above.
With meticulous lethality, Damus thrust his blade into the gaunt creature’s side. The monster’s hiss became a gurgle as Nahel pried himself free of its weakening grasp and cast it into the putrid water. The creature flailed sluggishly, but Damus planted his boot on its chest. Bubbles broke the surface as its lungs filled.
“Need a hand?” asked Nahel.
“I'm fine,” said Damus. “See to the boy.”
The malakh dutifully complied. “You all right, kid?”
Xander gave a curt nod and looked at their foe’s pale twisted corpse. “What was it?”
“I don't know,” said Nahel.
Damus withdrew his foot from the motionless corpse. “Pranaphage,” he spat.
Nahel’s canine brow furrowed. “Translation please.”
“A creature that consumes other beings' prana.” Damus stirred a jumble of small bones with his sword. “It must’ve thought us a feast after years of living on rats.”
“Any more of them?” asked Nahel.
Damus washed his sword in the relatively clean outflow and sheathed it. “Don’t ask me. Until now, I didn’t think they existed.”
It was not alone. Xander had seen a shadow haunting the creature’s thoughts—a being it feared as its elder…master…god? The fleeting image faded.
A strange sense of connectedness drew Xander toward the drowned monster. Its face lay beneath the water, wreathed with scraggly yellowed hair that floated on the surface. The pranaphage was no less revolting in death, yet Xander thought he saw something familiar in its warped features. “My God. Was it human once?”
“No,” Damus said. “Pranaphages are descended from Gen.”
Xander fought the urge to retch. True, he’d seen corrupted Gen before, but the savagery of the Isnashi was worlds removed from the pranaphage’s depravity. He rounded on Damus. “How could your people birth something so loathsome?”
Damus shook his head sadly. “Rumors older than the Purges tell of secret Guild breeding experiments.”
Nahel’s ears flattened against his head. “Are they true?”
Damus raised a cautioning hand. “Bear in mind that until today I'd dismissed such tales as pseudo-historical propaganda. But most accounts held that speech and sight were bred out of the captive populations. Later generations could supposedly see silver cords and shear them with their beaks. Malakhs’ cords must be tougher than they’re used to.”
“So killing wasn’t enough for the Guild,” said Nahel. “They had to corrupt the Gen, too.”
“It wasn’t just malice,” Damus said. “Pranaphages gained other faculties that proved useful against the Guild’s rivals.”
Xander knew that asking questions might endanger his secret, but a deep need compelled him to understand his feeling of kinship with the pranaphage. “What kind of faculties?”
Damus gave him a knowing look. “We all have questions in need of answers. Some tremendous force bashed the pranaphage against the wall. Where did it come from?”
Xander’s heart was practically bursting with the need to confess, but fear of judgment warred with his conscience. At last, weariness won by attrition. “It came from me. It is my curse—though I’ve rarely turned it against something so large.”
Damus and Nahel exchanged unreadable looks. Xander’s dread returned te
nfold. Would the malakh slay him outright? Would the Gen drag him down to his demon queen’s menagerie?
A smile cracked Nahel’s muzzle “Good job.”
“Indeed,” said Damus. “Strong work.”
For a moment, Xander stood dumbstruck. Had two otherworldly beings just given him the acceptance long denied by his own kind? “I am able to move things by will alone. Don’t you find that strange?”
Damus clapped a hand on Xander’s shoulder. “Extremely. Our royal mandate is cataloguing oddities, which now includes you.”
Xander had heard others liken admitting a long suppressed truth to casting off a heavy burden. Revealing his curse to Damus and Nahel had felt like exhumation from live burial. The underground sewers may as well have been gardens in the free air.
If such strange folk accept me, perhaps father was right about sending me into exile.
While Xander contemplated his liberation, the others searched the muck for equipment lost in the fall. Nahel had retrieved his swords, and was shaking the water from their blades, when he remarked, “Did anyone see what happened to Arcanadeus?”
“I noticed him missing right before the water pulled us down,” said Xander.
Damus’ face darkened. “Arcanadeus had a map of this place. It’s doubtful he lost his way.”
More strands of the pranaphage’s warped thoughts formed a pattern in Xander’s mind. “Arcanadeus knew what he sought. There is something worse here than the pranaphage, and he conspired with it to betray us.”
Nahel tied a rope to a Worked arrow and shot it into an overhead vent. The missile passed through the grate as smooth as a whisper and clattered back down the duct. He pulled, and the shaft held fast against the bars. “This should hold until we pry the grate off. We can climb out and circle back around to the front door.”
“Good,” Xander said. “There is much I’d like to discuss with the Steersman.”
11
The empty corridors echoed with the wrath of Xander’s steps. He’d been foolish to trust a guildsman, but the pranaphage had cured his folly.
Searching the dark subterrane seemed to take an eternity. At last Xander and his friends reached a door at the end of a long hexagonal passage. Nahel’s light revealed thick conduits covering the ceiling and walls. A faint scent of lightning hung in the air.
“He came this way,” said Nahel. “I can smell him, now that we’re out of the muck.”
Damus pointed to the white ceramic door. “That’s a high security vault.”
“What blasphemy did the Guild hide behind it?” asked Xander.
“One they hoped would stay hidden for good.”
“How do we open it?” asked Nahel.
“Very carefully,” said Damus. “Guild security measures weren’t known for gentleness. At best, they caught trespassers in impenetrable wards. At worst…”
Xander exhaled sharply. “I think I know a way in.”
Damus cocked an eyebrow. “How’s that?”
“I stole a look at the Steersman’s map. There was a drawing of this door and a series of numbers written beside it.”
“That sly bastard had the code,” said Damus.
“Even if I can open the door,” said Xander, “how do we deal with the Master inside?”
Nahel slapped Xander’s back with a furry hand. “Don’t give in before the battle starts. Arcanadeus used us, and he’s gonna answer for it.”
“We have full confidence in your abilities,” Damus said as he took a step back.
Xander reached for the panel beside the door, trying to keep his hand from trembling. The smoked crystal surface was blank at first, but a glowing number pad flashed into view at his touch.
What if I have misremembered? Xander’s fingers moved across the panel uncertainly. When he was done the numbers vanished in a blue glow.
The door slid open on a small vestibule. A six-walled chamber lay beyond, clad in sterile white. Arcanadeus’ shrouded form stood out like a man-shaped void near the center. His hands were pressed against a lambent cylinder that spanned from the floor to the low ceiling. Something moved inside.
Every accusation died on Xander’s lips when he saw what the Steersman coveted. He couldn't fully discern the cylinder's occupant; partly due to the phosphorescent vapor supporting its misshapen form, but mostly because he had no frame of reference for such horror. It resembled an infant, but asymmetrical and bloated. The being’s skin was transparent and mottled with purple veins. Its pale striated muscles evoked images of Medvia's fish market. Yet these terrors paled before the bottled creature’s presence. Just as its body surpassed the pranaphage’s deformity, its power dwarfed the predator’s might.
“Arcanadeus!” Xander found the strength to cry out.
The Master seemed not to hear. He longingly caressed the tank whose occupant’s stunted flippers lazily stirred the mist. At length his cowled head turned to face his pursuers. “Do you address Arcanadeus, young Nesshin? No. That name is false. The Master Steersman lies rotting in sandy ground.”
The traitor’s attention wandered back to the tube. He spoke again, this time to the misshapen being whose bulbous head lolled against the glass as if listening. “Yes, he is mistaken to call me by that name. Those who knew me called me Thurif, but there was an Arcanadeus whom I once called master. I was but a half-feral boy when he took me in; whether to remedy his loneliness or to expiate his guilt, I never knew. I do know that I would have starved if left to fend for myself.”
Damus’ brow knotted. “You’re just an Apprentice?”
“I am no Master.” A wistful grin curled the edges of Thurif’s mouth. “But I learned well enough to kill one.”
“Will you also sacrifice us to your greed?” Xander asked.
The impostor sighed. “Do not blame me for the wages of your ignorance.”
“You betrayed us!” Xander raged. “What could be worth such dishonor?”
Thurif paused for a moment before answering. “I desire ascendance in this fallen age, that all may be raised up with me.”
“You are a madman,” Xander spat. “And a coward, leading us here to die.”
“Not all of you,” Thurif said. “I had need of you Xander. Perhaps I still do.”
“As your guide? I should have left you to the desert.”
Thurif laughed. “That was the malakh’s job. You have skills far rarer than his brawn.”
Xander felt cold fingers brushing down his spine.
“Don’t feign surprise,” the traitor said. “You may have fooled the uninitiated, but rumors travel far, and I knew them for more than idle tales.”
“You thought me cursed,” Xander said. “You tried to destroy me.”
“I reacted with envy; not hatred, when I knew what you had. It was the glory of a few. Now it’s yours—yours and mine.”
“You want to take it from me?”
“Not from you,” Thurif said as he gazed into the tube. “The Guild spent millennia breeding subjects for nexism. This specimen is the penultimate fruit of their efforts, and it will guide me to the zenith.”
Behind Xander’s left shoulder, Nahel snarled and drew his bow.
Damus stepped up beside Nahel and addressed Thurif. “You’re not the first to try this sort of theft. You’ll die trying.”
“Early attempts were crude,” the traitor said, “but the Transessists had centuries to hone their craft. You could still help me, Xander—help us all.”
“You fed me to a monster!”
“My new associate’s idea,” Thurif said. “Regardless, contact with the pranaphage has lowered your inhibitions. Help me. We can repel the Night Gen; perhaps even save your clan.”
“My clan was right to shun me, as they would shun you.” Xander’s wrath burned like a star. Now it contracted to a single infinitely dense point. “I’ll show you how uninhibited I am.”
The more power Xander used, the more will he required to guide it—like wresting control of a dream from the chaotic flow of his s
ubconscious. His rage summoned a force that would have compressed the pranaphage into a bloody, fist-sized ball, and he unleashed it on Thurif.
A will to move mountains surged from the tube, erecting an invisible wall that Xander felt as pins and needles pricking his skin. The wall drank the wave of crushing force like sand absorbing a water drop. On the other side, Thurif’s robe didn’t even stir.
His head swimming, Xander leaned on Damus to keep himself upright. Nahel shot at Thurif, but another motion of the tube creature’s will erased the arrow in midflight.
Thurif’s smile took in his three foes. “If you make obstacles of yourselves, you can be removed.”
Anger helped Xander focus his clouded thoughts. “I already meant to kill you. I’ll double your dying agony for every hurt you cause my friends.”
“Then my pain will only be twofold,” Thurif said. “The Gen’s knowledge is valuable. The same cannot be said of the malakh.”
Nahel drew a sword and gestured with it. “Come over here and say that.”
The traitor ran a spidery hand over the tank. “My new friend would rather open several discrete spatial rifts where you’re standing.”
Damus pushed his way to the fore. “These savages have more pride than sense, but I can see reason. You offered the power of the Guild. As I see it nothing’s changed. If you want my help, you’ve got it.”
Nahel’s canine jaw dropped. “You can’t mean that!”
“The Guild took someone precious from me,” Damus said. “I’d bargain with Zebel to get her back.”
A shrill hum reverberated through Xander’s head. “Something is coming,” he screamed. “Something’s here!”
Thurif swept nervous eyes upward and tightened his hold on the tube. The thing inside squirmed.
Xander knew that sound as the last he’d heard before losing his clan. A deep-seated reflex usurped his hobbled will. He lunged past Damus and mashed the door controls. The smoked crystal pulsed red as a honeycomb of blue light blazed across the doorframe. The pattern spread toward Xander and his friends, covering the corridor walls and ceiling.
Nahel’s light went out. “What happened?” he asked.
Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) Page 8
