Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2)

by Brian Niemeier

  The struggle between shame and enlightened self-interest was plain on Damus’ face. A victor soon emerged, and he ran.

  Nahel faced the onrushing wolves, keeping the fault line hard on his right. Damus’ rapid footfalls receded behind him.

  The wolves were within spitting distance. Their barking turned to feral growls. Nahel readied his swords to receive them. Two of the skin changers charged straight at him. He saw their dripping jaws, smelled blood on their breath, and knew a moment of fear.

  One wolf snapped at Nahel’s leg. His right blade sang and came away streaked with black blood as the beast hobbled away on three legs. The second Isnashi reared up to lunge at Nahel’s face. He stepped in to meet it and leaned right, letting his foe drive itself onto his left blade. Black sludge oozed from its punctured chest, along with a noxious stench. The dying beast sank its fangs into Nahel’s shoulder. Its bite stabbed his flesh like electric ice.

  Nahel struggled to free himself from the wolf’s weight. Two more Isnashi circled behind him and dove for his legs. In desperation he released the sword buried in the wolf’s heart and pivoted, sweeping his remaining blade behind him.

  Both wolves retreated, but Nahel saw that another—the pack’s fifth member—had slipped past him as he’d fought the other four. Icy dread gripped the malakh’s heart. His diversion hadn’t bought Damus half the distance he’d hoped.

  He heard the wolf a second before it struck. Nahel reflexively turned at the waist to meet the leaping foe whose missing forepaw named it his first attacker. It was all Nahel could do to block. Another wolf reared up on two legs and bore down against the blessed steel, its maw snapping. Nahel’s shoulder burned.

  Nahel grabbed the wolf’s sinewy throat. Its talons rent his arms as he jabbed his blade deep into its side. The Isnashi’s corpse began to shrivel and contort as Nahel threw it down beside its already reverted pack mate.

  “A lord of heaven treads the base soil,” a guttural voice said in a harsh Gen dialect.

  The chorus of hunger and violence ceased, leaving only the wind sighing across the square. Nahel saw his last foe—the one that had stayed aloof from the fight—pacing toward him on two legs.

  The Isnashi’s face had lost none of its savagery in the change from wolf to Gen. “Faerda does not receive him,” he continued, his harsh syllables taking the cadence of a litany. “Her house lies desolate.”

  Nahel growled. “Shut up and fight!”

  The Gen drew closer. Metal shards adorned his dark braids and bulged under his ashen skin. He held his arms at a shallow angle, his hands pointing at the ground with their palms turned outward. “I bind you, trespasser, with the old names: Aurokthon, Elathan, Aesham-Daeva…”

  Nahel chuckled. “They can’t hear you, pal.”

  An irresistible force pulled at the malakh from somewhere deep below Steersmen’s Square—below the world itself—as if he’d angered gravity.

  “Thera,” the Isnashi said, and for a moment the weird chthonic force ebbed. Confusion shadowed the speaker’s face, only to be replaced with anger. He raised his voice. “And with the new Name—Shaiel.”

  A burst of sickly gold light accompanied the final invocation. The subterranean pull trebled, fixing Nahel where he stood like a moth on a pin.

  The Gen’s metal-studded lips parted in a lupine smile. “Feed.”

  Nahel watched the two Isnashi still in wolf form circle him. He winced—but couldn’t scream—when one of them tore a bloody gash in his right leg. He fell to his knees, and the other wolf ripped open his belly.

  Amid Nahel’s agony, a long neglected aspect of his nature reasserted itself. If you’re really there, he prayed to the only name that hadn’t answered his foe, help Damus find Xander. Help him find you!

  The triumphant barks and yips echoing from the bluffs were the last sounds he heard before the pack leader—still in Gen form—tore Nahel’s throat out with dull, straight teeth.

  The savage music of combat drove Damus’ flight across the square. He kept the grunts and howls to his back and fixed his eyes on the deep chasm at his left. Far ahead, burned towers loomed like fingers clawing their way from titans’ graves.

  Too far, Damus thought. Behind him, the battle’s intensity rose to a crescendo even as increasing distance lowered its volume—except for the sound of heavy breathing through snaggled teeth, which was growing louder.

  One of them is chasing me.

  Looking back would be pointless, as would running, any moment now. Damus frantically scanned the fault for any means of escape—a rock bridge; even a narrowing of the trench. The bluff’s blank face returned his gaze without pity.

  Damus heard the sharp tattoo of claws striking pavement. He thought he could smell his pursuer’s rank breath. Still, he kept his eyes on the bluff. His persistence paid off when he spotted an anomaly.

  Low on the cliff’s sheer face, a recess delved into the stone. The feature couldn’t be natural. A perfectly square opening framed three regular walls, a floor, and a ceiling—all clad in metal. Damus considered whether the alcove, which stood slightly above the chasm, was within range of a running leap. It could be. Or desperation could be playing tricks on him.

  Fangs like rail spikes caught the heel of Damus’ boot. In his panic he tore free, and somehow kept from stumbling. The choice between the wolf and the abyss resolved itself. He surged to the lip of the precipice and leapt.

  For what seemed an eternity, the only sound Damus heard was the rushing of his blood. He hung in midair like a dandelion seed on a still day; then the cliff face rushed toward him. The alcove’s lower edge seemed much higher than he’d estimated.

  I’m going to miss!

  In a last gesture of defiance, Damus stretched his free arm upward till he thought it would rip out of the socket. The shock of his fingers touching the ledge almost made him forget to grab hold. The metal floor had been sheared away from the missing fourth wall, and its sharp edge sliced his hand. Damus nearly slipped to his death on his own blood before he anchored his sword in a seam between rocks.

  Damus hauled himself into the alcove. He sat on his haunches, panting and wiping sweat from his eyes with a bloody hand. His questing mind couldn’t help noting that he was inside a metal box (the ceiling was too low for him to stand). The box would have originally lain far below Steersmen’s Square, embedded in solid rock. It must have been a vault of some kind—a vault that the Cataclysm had torn open.

  What treasures did you hold? Or what horrors? Damus inched farther inside. Dents that might’ve been impressions of small fists scored the thick steel. Every metal surface bore a rainbow sheen, as if it had suffered repeated exposure to incredible heat. But under the burned metal smell there lingered the scent of roses.

  The screech of talons on steel riveted Damus’ attention to the alcove’s opening. A hideous bastardization of wolf and Gen clawed its way onto the ledge, bearing the stench of sickness. It glared at its prey and growled.

  Damus felt as if the metal floor had turned to mud. He stared transfixed at the beast’s wound-marked eye as it climbed into the vault. The Gen-wolf lowered itself onto all fours, giving Damus a view of the square below; of three Isnashi fighting over a corpse with blood-matted russet fur.

  The beast on the ledge lashed out with a clawed hand. Damus ran his rapier through its palm. Mithgar’s terrors had exhausted the last of his fear. Only red anger remained. Wounding his foe brought grim satisfaction, but its tainted flesh quickly closed around the blade.

  Nahel’s swords didn’t hurt them, Damus thought. Only the blessing on their blades did. Dismay threatened to quench his wrath when he considered that his rapier wasn’t blessed. Though well made, it wasn’t even Worked.

  The Isnashi roared. It gripped the rapier’s hand guard in its free claw, pressing the elegant metal cage into Damus’ knuckles.

  Damus’ rage flared. His left hand joined his foe’s grip on the sword, and he threw all his weight into a lunge. The blade passed fully through the beas
t’s hand to embed itself in the back of its wolfish maw.

  Gurgling howls poured from the Isnashi’s throat as it struggled to free itself. Damus endured its thrashing. He held tight to his sword and pushed forward with all his might. The sudden lack of resistance caught him off guard when the Isnashi went over the edge. The beast’s weight pulled him after it, and Damus fell prone with an impact that drove the air from his lungs. He slid across the cold steel floor to the chasm’s edge, where he lay looking down at his entangled foe.

  The Isnashi’s grip tightened, fracturing the rapier’s wirework. Metal splinters pierced Damus’ right hand. He felt similar pain in his chest, and cold sticky liquid pooling under him as he slid further over the brink.

  The wolf’s eyes held no fear of death. Its skewered maw seemed to grin.

  Damus’ left hand released his sword and plunged under his shirt. Broken glass pricked his fingers. He withdrew the shattered vial of Xander’s blood and plunged its shards into the Gen-wolf’s hand. He kept stabbing until, with an agonized shriek, the Isnashi lost its hold. Its twisted form slid off Damus’ blade and into the abyss.

  “Give Shaiel my regards,” Damus said when the depths swallowed his foe’s cries.

  Damus rolled onto his back with a pained grunt. He extracted himself from his sword and pried what metal and glass shards he could from his hands. After a brief rest on the hard floor, he rose to a crouch and searched for a way out.

  The answer soon presented itself. Just to the left of the opening, the rock had been deeply gouged in a more or less regular pattern resembling handholds. Damus craned his neck and saw that the makeshift ladder stretched to the top of the bluff.

  I won’t lose another friend to this damnable place, Damus vowed. He wrapped his aching hands in strips torn from his coat and gripped the first handhold.

  14

  “You live here?” Xander marveled.

  Astlin emerged from the hallway, having settled Nadia into her room. “Sorry. I didn’t have time to clean.”

  Xander looked around the living room. Toys and wrinkled clothes littered the floor. A citrus scent partially masked the smell of spoiled food. Though unkempt, the residence boasted multiple rooms, lush carpets, glazed windows—luxuries to provoke a quartermaster’s envy.

  “I meant no insult. Your apartments are worthy of a prince.”

  Astlin blinked. “Where on Mithgar are you from again?”

  “The Nesshin are nomads. Our road takes us from Highwater to Vale and back again.”

  Astlin’s expression remained puzzled. “Is that anywhere near Ostrith?”

  “Most people shun Ostrith. They say it died in the Cataclysm.”

  “Oh, right,” said Astlin. “The Cataclysm.”

  A collection of crystal plaques arranged on a windowsill caught Xander’s eye. He approached and saw images inside them. Startlingly lifelike, they seemed to be moments frozen in time. He recognized younger versions of Astlin and Neriad, and an infant who must have been Nadia. One image portrayed a dark-haired woman whose melancholy features belied her smile and a red-haired, blue-eyed man whose creased mouth betrayed that he smiled often.

  “You bear your father’s likeness,” said Xander.

  Astlin joined him by the window. “Admiring the Tremore family album?”

  Xander noticed something odd about the images. “Why do none of them hold all of you?”

  “It’s hard to keep us together.”

  An uneasy silence fell. Xander scanned the apartment and realized that most of the people in the pictures were absent. “I understand.”

  “What?”

  Xander hesitated before answering. “Your loneliness.”

  Indignation flashed in Astlin’s eyes but faded quickly. “Your family doesn’t get along?”

  Xander fumbled for a tactful way to explain himself. At last he settled for the truth. “My mother died when I was young. A few days ago I wandered from my father’s caravan. No one has seen him since.”

  Astlin’s face fell, but determination soon replaced her grief. “We have to tell the Guild house. They’ll report him missing to Ostrith.”

  “Thank you, but I doubt my father wants to be found. He banished me from the tribe.”

  Astlin pressed a hand to her mouth. She drew close and touched his arm. “I’m sorry.”

  Xander’s roiling heart calmed. “Sorry for what?”

  “For not listening before.”

  Xander couldn’t help grinning. “You have troubles enough without hearing mine.”

  Astlin managed a faint smile in response. “I should start dinner. Make yourself at home. If you need to wash up, the bathroom’s down the hall on the left.”

  “You have your own bath?”

  Astlin nodded.

  “Save your water for cooking. No need to draw more for my sake.”

  The young woman covered her mouth again; this time to stifle laughter. “We have running water.”

  Xander’s jaw dropped. “Even for the bath?”

  “On the fifth floor? We’d better.”

  “What is your father’s trade?”

  “He’s a steersman, but not a Guild member. He just has a license.”

  Xander ignored Astlin’s slight hesitation. “My father was right,” he said. “The Guild’s riches were beyond count.”

  Astlin’s halfhearted smile returned. “Dinner might change your mind.”

  Breathing heavily through the cloth strips tied over his face, Szodrin looked out across the Salmeara Valley. From his vantage point in the hills, nothing unnatural disturbed the moonlit bowl below. Only a steel arch framing a tunnel far to his right spoke of human artifice. He briefly wondered what lay within its inky depths.

  Szodrin cursed under his breath. He’d always meant to return for the boy, but marking him had been a foolish mistake. His superiors knew that he could track the wayward human’s life cord. It didn’t matter that Ilmin had left for Cadrys. When Szodrin found the boy, the Ashlam would follow.

  Forgive me, Sarel.

  Enough moping. Time was short. Picturing the mark, Szodrin shifted his perception halfway between the Middle Stratum and the ether. The valley seemed to lose substance, filling with rosy mist. The silver glint of an arrow-straight prana line cutting through the haze caught his eye. Momentarily puzzled that the life cord traveled north, opposite the boy’s last known location, the Night Gen drew an intriguing conclusion.

  There’s a gate somewhere nearby. Had the boy entered Teran Nazim and escaped alive?

  Szodrin aligned his own life cord with a level area below the far ridge and willed himself there. His vision whited out as he and his gear reverted to pure prana gliding along the cord. An instant later he stood in the sand ten feet from his intended target. Unaided nexic translation wasn’t exact, but it beat walking.

  Within minutes Szodrin found the door. It gave on a rock-hewn chamber that had half caved in long ago. More recently someone had opened a hatch in the floor. Acrid vapors wafted up from below. Seeing no other way, the Night Gen descended.

  Szodrin couldn’t say how long he wandered through the dim underground. He lost his way often, but he had no doubt of where he was. Walking unchallenged through his enemies’ stronghold gave him smug satisfaction. At the same time, he felt almost cheated.

  Centuries of oppression; centuries more spent planning revenge, and nothing to take vengeance on but crumbling monuments empty even of ghosts.

  The nexic burst sent ripples like a stone tossed into a pond. In an instant Szodrin was fully alert and searching for the source. His keen eyes found the dim hall empty in both directions.

  It’s too soon for Ilmin. Yet it wouldn’t be unlike his captain to leave watchers behind.

  Szodrin weighed his options. Translation was out. With no endpoint in sight, he risked projecting himself into solid rock. One choice remained. Tracing the bundled conduits snaking along the walls, he rushed onward in search of the gate.

  After wending his way through li
ghtless halls and doubling back from frequent dead ends, Szodrin reached an intersection. Faded markings told him that the cross corridor led to the gate complex. He turned right without slowing and charged down the narrow hall.

  Behind him, the warning ripples of nexism came too late.

  Szodrin froze, straining to hear over the thudding of his heart. The abrupt realization that someone stood at his back nearly silenced its beating forever.

  The commander half expected to see a demon of the Circles when he turned, but he saw only another Night Gen wearing a tan Expeditionary Fleet uniform. At first Szodrin took the man for Ilmin’s watchdog, but his shock turned to confusion when he recognized Captain Ruthven of the Kerioth.

  Szodrin cast about for a lie to extricate himself, but seeing Ruthven’s strangely indolent face, he opted for confrontation.

  “Captain, what are you doing here?”

  Ruthven’s expression didn’t change. His empty stare remained fixed on some distant point. His slouched posture and disheveled clothes betrayed a startling lack of discipline.

  “You are captain Ruthven of the Kerioth?”

  “Not since the pale man came aboard,” the shabby figure said.

  Acting on impulse, Szodrin backed away.

  “Where are you going?” Ruthven asked.

  Szodrin paused. “To fulfill my orders.”

  The captain issued a series of petulant whines that made his body shudder.

  Szodrin forced his voice to remain steady. “The Kerioth went missing. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Ruthven’s shuddering stopped, and his eyes snapped into focus on Szodrin. The captain’s face glazed over with a look of genuine confusion. Strands of drool dripped from his mouth.

  “Missing?” Ruthven rasped. His puzzled expression became a smirk, and he jabbed a crooked finger at Szodrin. “You aren’t after the Gen-ship.” Ropy spittle flew from his swollen lips. “You want the human…Xander.”

  Szodrin set his jaw and reached for the short sword at his side.

  The captain’s face melted like wax. His body made impossible contortions, accompanied by sickening sounds like splintering wood.