Damus stood, limped to the upper tier, and produced a small crystal plaque.
“How did you manage that?” asked Szodrin.
The answer flashed into Xander’s mind. “He brought it from Teran Nazim.”
Szodrin bowed his head to Damus. “Well done, my brother.”
“Let us go to Highwater,” Xander said, “and warn them of the Night Gen.”
“We would only endanger them,” said Szodrin. “My people hunt you and the Souldancer’s hosts. The best course is to move their targets as far away as possible.”
“Send me home,” Astlin said.
The three men rounded on her. She stood at the foot of the dais and cast desperate looks at each one in turn. “My family could still be alive.”
The dying embers of Xander’s hope rekindled. Nahel’s death and Damus’ wounds left their queen’s help beyond reach, but Astlin had shown another way.
“Keth can hide us from the Night Gen,” he said. “The four of us, the Nesshin; everyone on Mithgar!”
Szodrin’s expression seemed thoughtful. “We know nothing of Keth.”
“Except that no one there is hunting us,” said Xander.
Szodrin shook his head. “The Cataclysm may have left it uninhabitable.”
Astlin stepped forward. “I’ll go first.”
Damus stared long at Astlin before joining Szodrin at the console. Both Gen fell into a smooth pattern as they worked. At last Damus inserted the card, summoning a coruscating orb that hummed like a beehive.
“It’s done,” Szodrin said.
Astlin approached the light, but Xander caught her arm. “Wait.” He doffed his cloak and offered her the travel-stained garment.
She lowered her eyes to the floor. “I don’t get cold.”
Xander felt heat wash over his face. “Your armor is sturdy, but likely to draw attention.”
Astlin looked at her riotous leather and metal panoply, as if for the first time. She accepted the cloak and pulled its central opening over her head. The square of fabric covered her to the knees in front and back.
“Thank you,” she said.
A knot formed in Xander’s stomach as he watched Astlin ascend the dais. She paused for a moment, gave him a brief backward glance, and entered the light.
Damus rent the card from the console, and the gate vanished.
Xander wheeled on him. “Open it!”
The Light Gen met his eye undaunted.
With a series of sharp cracks, one angled desk broke free of the floor. Xander willed it crushed into a crude sphere and hurled it halfway to the wall. The impact sounded like a distant tree falling.
“Open it. Now!”
Damus stood his ground.
“Perhaps it’s for the best,” Szodrin said. “She is dangerous, and sending her to Keth may place her beyond Shaiel’s grasp.”
Xander heard only his father’s last words. You may find someone who needs you. He felt a piece of himself missing—as if Damus had torn out one of his lungs.
Altor Sykes had often called love an act of will. His son’s will ripped the crystal plaque from Damus’ bandaged fist with a ferocity that left a fresh red bloom on the Gen’s wrappings.
Xander darted to the console as soon as he felt cold crystal in his hand. Ignoring Damus’ shocked stare, he jammed the card home.
The gate opened, and Xander ran through. Violent winds buffeted him as he rubbed the gate’s afterimage from his eyes. His vision cleared, revealing a vast plane of polished black stone. Storm clouds hung far too low overhead, smelling of lightning. Burned towers crowded the east horizon.
I am still in Ostrith. On top of the Guild house!
Astlin stood slightly ahead of him. She turned; her burning eyes wide.
Xander felt the threat before he saw it. A nexic wave crashed over him, heralding the dark three-bladed shape that appeared in the air like a mountebank’s ruse. The obsidian hulk came about, hovering just above the precipice.
I have seen this before. Its shadow haunted his dreams. Its reality brought nightmarish dread.
Xander didn’t notice Damus’ arrival until the Gen had come abreast of him.
“Why did you betray us?” Xander shouted over the wind.
“He did not,” a reedy voice called out.
Lightning struck just beyond the roof’s eastern edge, illuminating a nearby figure who’d gone unnoticed against the dark buildings and clouds. The wind slowed, and Xander discerned that the unknown entity was walking toward him.
It was a man—or something like a man—robed in black. The garment had once been edged in golden thread, but the gold had melted, marring the original pattern. The sharp chin jutting from under the hood seemed to be carved from pale marbled wax.
“I used to ask whence came the gods,” the figure said. “But it was the wrong question.”
“God is one,” said Xander, “and I will send you to meet him, Thurif!”
Bloodless lips curled above the pointed chin. “Good day, Master Sykes. Still clinging to quaint dogmas, eh?”
Damus grunted. He marched toward Thurif.
The traitor raised a pale, purple-veined finger to the ship. “The best battles are never fought. Mark that lesson, Master Greystone. You look rather the worse for wear.”
The Light Gen stopped within arm’s reach of Thurif. His hands balled into ragged fists.
A need he couldn’t name fixed Xander’s eyes on Astlin. She gave him a worried look.
“What have we here?” Thurif gasped. “A rose blooms in the ashes.”
Xander’s bile rose. “Do not speak to her!”
“Your bravado is charming.” Thurif stepped forward and extended a fishbelly-white hand to Astlin. “But we’ve no time for courtship.”
Xander’s will lashed out, lifting Thurif bodily. The black robe billowed like a sail as its wearer pitched backward and struck the Guild house roof with a boneless thud.
Striking Thurif awoke visceral joy that Xander savored until he realized its alien source. That is the Fire’s will; not mine.
Thurif chuckled as he regained his feet. “Manfully done. You’ve mastered your craft.”
His robe’s hood fell back.
The sight made Xander regret his outburst. Inky stains edged the traitor’s left eye. Knobs of flesh like bubbles in flatbread filled the right socket. The misplaced eye lolled in Thurif’s forehead, positioned just right of center beneath a translucent membrane. The milky orb moved independently of its mate.
Standing once again, the deformed creature wiped watery blood from its lips. “Forgive my discourtesy. I forget that my appearance…disquiets the uninitiated.”
Xander gaped. “What happened to you?”
“A chain of events delicate enough to imply providence,” Thurif said. “Had I not found a triumph of the Guild’s nexism research; had nexic interference not led the Kerioth to mistake two targets for one; and had a ward not sheltered you, I would not be what I am now.”
“A twisted freak?” Xander sneered.
“A prodigy,” Thurif said, “freed from the frailties of lesser men.”
“I will free you from the burden of living.”
Thurif casually replaced his hood. “That would be counterproductive. The Guild house—with all its manifold substrata—is about to collapse. I should know. I triggered the sequence.”
“You brought us up here to die?”
“Far from it!”
“Then what do you want with me?”
Thurif’s pale lips turned downward momentarily. Then he laughed. “My interest in you is quite exhausted, Master Sykes.”
The traitor drew a thin crystal rod from his sleeve and gestured toward the gate. The scintillating aperture closed. He flashed a bloodless smile as he waved the rod at Astlin. “My true business is with the lady.”
A radiant globe enveloped her. It lingered for a moment but lost cohesion in a blinding flash.
Astlin stood defiant. “I’m not going with you.”
Thurif’s malformed brow half-creased as he studied the crystal rod. “Your nexic resistance is considerable, but you’ll come around.”
“I’d rather burn you and your ship to ashes.”
“As your sole means of escape,” said Thurif, “I advise burning Sykes and Greystone with me instead of condemning them to suffer the gate’s implosion with you.”
“Or,” said Astlin, her voice calm, “I carve your mind out like a gourd and set a little spark inside.”
Thurif tapped his dark-veined forehead. “The knowledge I gained redefined my notion of sanity. I’m curious how it will affect yours.”
Xander glimpsed Astlin’s invasion of Thurif’s mind as a huge army besieging a city bent into a maze. At last she clenched her teeth, and her eyes flared.
Xander set his will against her wrath. “Do not give him the satisfaction!”
Thurif’s lips curled like two pale worms mating. “I can’t help admiring your arrangement. Few nexists agree on anything, but none can dispute the toll that rigorous use takes on the will.”
He pointed the rod at Xander and sighed. “It seems I’m not finished with you after all.”
Thurif’s sigh became a startled gasp as Damus plunged a matte grey short sword—Szodrin’s, Xander realized—into the traitor’s side.
Thurif uttered a rattling wheeze that turned to phlegmy chuckling. His left arm struck out. Xander watched in horror as the marbled hand sank into Damus’ face. Both men’s flesh melted together until the Gen’s body became an outgrowth of Thurif’s arm. Damus slumped to the ground and lay still.
Xander fought down his gag reflex.
“My gifts differ from that which bestowed them,” said Thurif, “but they’re no less useful. Where were we?”
He looked at Astlin. “Ah yes. Come, child. You know better than these primitives what a Guild hall’s death means.”
Xander charged the traitor with a reckless cry. “Bastard!”
A tremor coursed through the Guild house, spiderwebbing the roof with cracks. Xander felt the smooth stone give way beneath him as blazing white light filled his vision. Afterward he saw and felt nothing.
20
Szodrin floated in a rose-colored mist that smelled of ozone. A fine filament extending before him was the only point of reference. The cord shone like silver, but on closer inspection it appeared to be a coherent beam of light; its endpoint lost in the distance.
Have I died?
Touching his wounded chest produced sharp pain and proved to Szodrin that he still inhabited his body.
I’ve been cast living into the ether. How?
He remembered struggling with the gate controls. The console had been rigged with skill far surpassing his own. No sooner would he stabilize a substratum than the partitions between several others would weaken. In the end all of the substrata had folded in a runaway chain reaction. Opening on infinite dimensions at once, the gate had collapsed like a dying star.
Szodrin thought he saw a tiny black speck floating before him, but its rapid growth proved that he was in fact moving forward at an incredible speed. Primordial fear seized his heart. He poured all his strength into fighting the pyramid’s pull, but the cord drew him onward. Nexism proved equally useless.
The speck soon became a colossal pyramid that filled Szodrin’s view. His silver cord led straight to its center. Belying his initial perception of a solid black mass, the four triangular faces were composed of manifold layers representing every known color and some he’d never seen before.
Other cords passed through the layered planes before vanishing into the ether. Their numbers increased until Szodrin felt as if he’d stumbled upon a cosmic loom strung with silver thread.
This is the Nexus.
If the Atavists were correct, the cords were prana streams flowing from the Well. Each silver cord cleaved a plane from the pyramid and embodied it in the Strata as a living being. The cord emptied of prana at death, drawing the soul it had animated back to the Nexus.
No matter that Szodrin wasn’t dead. The cosmic consciousness would absorb his soul, ending his existence.
Perhaps I’ll find peace.
Entering the Nexus wasn’t like bursting through a wall, plunging beneath cold waters, or leaping into a fire. It came as a sense that he’d been there all along. As he penetrated deeper, the glimmering planes revealed their true nature. Their colors and shapes were mere signs of higher realities—transcendent states of being that no limited mind could grasp.
It’s pure knowledge made manifest!
Szodrin finally found the end of his silver cord. His scream from the heart of the Nexus echoed through time in the subconscious of every living thing.
Astlin didn’t mind the dark—lacking light, she could see by heat—but confinement was another story. Though her current cell was much larger, it instilled the same terror as the box under Steersmen’s Square.
Xander’s body shone clearly against the cool spongy floor. He looked like a player in a certain style of opera where Workings leeched out all the colors. Not a leading man—his heritage and plumpness would have ruled that out. But his quiet courage had its own appeal. Though he was still in shock, his presence gave her comfort.
Astlin sat against the circular room’s curved wall, neither moving nor breathing, and watched him as he stirred.
“Where am I?” he demanded of the darkness.
“On the ship,” Astlin said. “The light dazed you.”
Xander sat bolt upright. His breath came fast and heavy. His hands groped the smooth padding beneath him.
Astlin opened her eyes wide and looked directly at him. “I’m here.”
Xander met her gaze. “Are you hurt?”
“No. Are you?”
“I am all right.” Xander punched the jelly-like surface that covered the floor. He sounded on the verge of tears. “I’m always all right! My people were massacred, but I escaped unharmed. I owed Nahel my life, and he is dead because I wasn’t there to repay him!”
“I’m sorry,” Astlin said. “You weren’t there because I took you.”
Xander’s face softened. “You saved my life.”
Shame reduced Astlin’s voice to a whisper. “I would’ve killed you.”
“If you care nothing for me, why let Thurif bring you aboard?”
“To eat your soul,” Astlin said.
A wry grin tugged at Xander’s lip. “You must not be hungry.”
The cell door slid open with a soft hiss. Someone stood outside, backlit by an ambient green glow. The sudden return of light briefly confused Astlin’s eyes, but she welcomed even this small breach in her cell.
“The stars are twinkling,” said a familiar masculine voice. “I can’t say it’s a pleasure to see them.”
Astlin’s vision cleared, matching a face to the voice. “Damus?”
Xander rose to his feet. “Thank God you are alive!”
“A sentiment I share,” said Damus. He’d swapped his bloody clothes for a black shirt and light-colored pants. But that wasn’t the most dramatic change.
Xander approached the door. “Your wounds…”
Damus looked down at himself. “They’re gone, yes. I think he made some improvements in the bargain.”
Astlin stared at the Gen’s flawless face with mixed wonder and fear. “Thurif did that?”
“He owed me.”
“Yet he is keeping you prisoner,” Xander said.
Damus raised a hand. “You misjudge our host’s intent. We’re not Thurif’s prisoners. In fact, he hopes to resume our partnership.”
“Have you gone mad?” Xander raged. “That traitor’s heirs will carry his curse for generations! Or they would, were his face not fit to make women weep.”
Damus sighed. “He predicted your reaction. That’s why I’m making the offer.”
Xander crossed his arms. “I will accept if he lets us go and slits his own throat.”
“You should be more open-minded,” Damus said. �
��If not for yourself, then for your pet souldancer.”
The Fire blazed. Astlin impulsively sought Damus’ mind but found nothing. “It’s like he’s not even there.”
Damus shook his head. “You’re just as predictable. We took precautions this time.”
“You ask our trust but expect deceit,” Xander accused.
“Spare me your umbrage. Thurif was busy while we wandered the Tower Graves. He learned a great deal at Teran Nazim and even more since then—what she is, for one thing.”
The allure of awful truths drove Astlin to her feet. “He knows what I am?”
“Yes. And what he knows is none too flattering.” Damus smirked at Xander. “She’s a byproduct of blasphemous rites designed to raise Thera. Nothing but dross.”
Desolation cooled the fires of Astlin’s soul.
Xander moved to stand face-to-face with the Gen. “I owe you my life, but a debt is not a shield.”
“This is.” Damus pressed his hand against the seemingly empty space between them. “The Night Gen are quite adept at nexic containment. If this barrier can block your soul-sucking strumpet; believe me, it will block you.”
“Thera emitte sherrad—you and your thrice-damned ward!”
“Don’t curse the ward,” Damus said. “If you hadn’t sprung one at Teran Nazim, it might be you scaring women off.”
“What does Thurif want with us?” Xander asked.
“You’ve already done your part. The girl may be glorified slag, but she’s useful—and dangerous. Thurif knew you had a connection to her. He hoped you’d make her manageable, and you’ve succeeded brilliantly.”
“If the traitor had no use for me, I would be dead.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” said Damus. “You and Thurif share a bond too, though you’d rather not admit it. He’s offering you a place at the table out of respect.”
“Locking someone in a dark cell is not a sign of respect.”
Damus clicked his tongue. “Shall I take that as a refusal?”
“I will die before I help him use Astlin,” Xander said.
Damus turned to leave. “Have it your way.”
Xander slammed his fists against the wall on either side of the door. “You were never so spiteful! Thurif may have healed your face, but he twisted your heart.”
Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) Page 16
