Astlin didn’t know where she was; or what, or why. Her few lucid moments were spent agonizing over her victims and contemplating the justice of hell earned after the fact.
But change came; long after she gave herself to despair. It came in the unlikely form of a stocky young man with brown skin and a mirthful face. He held the missing part of her inside him. In desperation she tried to take it by deceit, but he saw through her guise. He saw what she was and what she’d done, and somehow he forgave her.
Astlin realized that all she wanted from Xander was himself.
Xander saw Astlin under harsh red lights; saw her ashamed yet relieved face and knew it wasn’t his.
“We need to stop doing that,” he panted.
Cook set Xander back on his feet. “Welcome back.”
“Is the gold lady all right?” asked Zan.
“As close as I ever get,” Astlin said.
Tefler and Zan released her.
“What happened?” asked the priest.
Astlin bowed her head. “Xander has part of my soul. I accidentally started taking it back.”
Cook’s voice was wary. “Are you sure it was an accident?”
Dismissing the question, Xander lifted Astlin’s chin. “It was my fault. I pressed you.”
She managed a faint smile. “Do you remember how to fly?”
Xander laughed. “How could I forget?”
27
Ilmin paced the Ashlam’s hold to quell his restless mind. His conscience wasn’t to blame. He’d unburdened it along with his ship back on Mithgar.
The Nesshin are better off buried on Mithgar than damned here on Cadrys.
The captain kept glancing at the oblong crate at the center of the hold—the only cargo he’d taken on from the bleak sphere below. Its conspicuous placement and the somber lighting evoked a deposed tyrant lying in state, unattended but for Ilmin.
Perhaps ignorance of the crate’s contents was setting him on edge. The Lawbringers who’d brought it aboard hadn’t forbad him to open it, but there’d been no need. A technician had revealed the metal box’s function as a Guild-era refrigerated container. When asked to speculate, he’d said it could hold anything from produce to meat to chemical weapons. There was one certainty. Unequipped for life support or suspension, the crate contained nothing that lived.
Enough, Ilmin decided. It was past time he let his cargo mind its own morbid secrets. Captain to bridge, he projected via the ship’s telepathic comm. Proceed to Mithgar at best possible speed.
Ilmin began to feel at ease. The Cadrys Lawbringers had given him a problem. Their Irminsul chapter would soon solve it.
The Irminsul receded in a green blur, and Xander soared through heavy clouds on jet black wings. Vivid though Astlin’s memories were, they’d failed to prepare him for the wonder and terror of flight.
I never could have imagined it. I’m not riding the wind. I am the wind!
“Where are we going?”
Xander’s awareness turned from the open sky to the Kerioth’s bridge. The curved walls confined his senses, and he felt as if he were trapped inside a giant white lentil. Behind him Tefler and Cook manned two of the few stations not marred by dark oily smudges.
I should not have raised the lights, Xander thought before asking, “What did you say?”
“Where are we going?” Tefler repeated. “We stole the ship, but the job’s not done till we get away with it.”
The blunt question left Xander at a momentary loss for words. “As far from the tree as we can,” he said at length.
“What then?” Tefler asked.
“Then we take Astlin home.”
“What if Keth is uninhabitable?”
Xander glowered at the greycloak. “Do you have another suggestion?”
Tefler leaned back and rested his feet on the console. “After spending my life in a giant tree, I’m glad to be anywhere else.”
“Then be glad we are going to Keth.”
“Do you know how make the ether transition?” asked Cook.
“Not entirely, but Astlin can teach me.”
“That’s fine,” said Cook, “but have her use a different teaching method.”
Xander fell silent. He was still sorting out Astlin’s memories. Her mind held disturbing visions, but their perspective troubled him most. She hadn’t just shown him events from her life. She’d so immersed him in her memories that he’d thought them his own.
Now I know what it is to murder someone, Xander thought. True, his hands were already red. He’d killed men, beasts, and beasts with men’s shapes; but always to defend himself or his friends. Astlin killed for reasons that even she hardly knew.
And it was not just killing. Much of the physical and mental brutality she’d inflicted could only be called torture. Xander tried to excuse Astlin’s behavior as the product of a pain-warped mind, but the visceral pleasure she’d taken in such acts made him doubt. Her deep gratitude for his acceptance made him ashamed for doubting.
The fledgling pilot submerged his awareness in the ship’s senses. Clouds parted before the knife-edged bow. Beyond it, the sky stretched to eternity.
Astlin woke with a start amid darkness pierced by scattered points of light and heat. The smooth, yielding surface where she lay confused her till she recalled where she was.
A ship—but not like Dad’s.
The hiss of an opening door gave Astlin another shock. She rose and turned toward the sound. Zan stood in the doorway, his pale face etched with fear.
“I woke you.” He tried to shrink inside his coat as he retreated.
Astlin reached out to him. “Please stay.”
Zan hesitated a moment before creeping back inside. His pearlescent eyes darted back and forth.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I came to ask the gold lady that.”
“I’m feeling better.” Astlin sat with her legs folded under her, and patted the spongy floor. “Here, have a seat.”
Zan took a halting step forward, but paused and remained standing. “The bald man will be angry.”
A faint smile tugged at Astlin’s lip. “He won’t. Please, you must be tired.”
“Transessed flesh doesn’t tire,” said Zan. “Only the mind.”
He’s got that right. Though Astlin rarely gave it much thought, her body never got tired. She’d sometimes stayed awake for days until losing consciousness from sheer mental fatigue.
“Do you know a lot about…us?” she asked. “Besides you, I’ve only met Irallel.”
“She won’t speak to me.”
Burning curiosity drove Astlin on. “I will.”
Zan paused briefly before asking, “Why do you hide your gold?”
“So I don’t burn everything I touch.”
“No one can see how beautiful you are.”
Astlin couldn’t face Zan’s naïve smile. “It’s not beautiful. It’s a curse.”
“You’re hurting.”
The words tore her emotional wounds’ fragile bindings. “I deserve it. I should die for what I did.”
“Should I?”
The question caught Astlin off guard. She looked askance at Zan. “For what?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Do you remember anything?”
Zan raised his head. His white eyes seemed fixed on something far away. “I was on a ship like this; then a place where they hurt me.”
Astlin cautiously leaned forward. “What happened?”
Zan raised his metal arm. His pale lips parted, revealing a mouth full of silver teeth.
The padded floor seemed to liquefy. Astlin planted both hands to keep her balance. Her transformation had been horrific, but she saw the sense in strengthening her flesh to contain the Fire. Zan had simply been tortured. She pitied him but wondered how well she could know someone who didn’t know himself.
Zan stepped closer. “Sometimes I remember someone else. I don’t know what she looked like anymore. Can you help me remembe
r?”
Astlin drew back. “You might not want me to.”
“You helped the bald man.”
“It’s hard with our kind. I couldn’t read you. I barely broke through to Irallel.”
“The rifts in our souls lead to other Strata,” said Zan. “Our life cords pass through and absorb their substance. It interferes with Workings and nexism.”
“I’m sorry,” said Astlin. “I don’t understand.”
Zan turned to leave. “Neither do I.”
The Kerioth passed over green hills surrounding the Irminsul, skirted the Tower Graves, and flew on until its trefoil shadow fell upon white wastes. Xander felt glad to see desert again, but this was not his tribe’s land. Dunes marched to the horizon, blazing in the setting sun like powdered diamond.
“What is this place?”
“I’ve never left the tree before,” Tefler said.
“It looks like a dry seabed,” said Cook. “Ostrith used to stand by the ocean. The Cataclysm must have boiled it off.”
Xander peered into the distance but saw no end to the shining sands. The thrill of flight was giving way to fatigue. “I need to land soon.”
“Not here,” Tefler warned. “We’ll stand out like an oil stain on a white shirt.”
The bridge doors opened. Zan shuffled through and took a seat off to one side.
Where has he been? Xander thought.
A hard jolt ran through the ship. The starboard wing pitched sharply downward, nearly throwing Xander from the dais.
“What hit us?” Tefler yelled.
Xander regained his balance and focused his awareness through the ship’s senses. A dark blocky shape brooded just aft of starboard. “Another ship!”
Cook wrestled with his station. “It’s the Exarch.”
“Can you outrun them?” Tefler asked.
Great endurance was not among Xander’s gifts. Weariness gripped him like the end of a runner’s first wind. “I do not know.”
“What about weapons?” asked Cook.
Tefler’s hands glided over his console. His shifting eyes skimmed the readout. “I don’t understand any of this.”
The priest’s complaint gave Xander a flash of inspiration. He was nexically bonded to the ship—seeing through its eyes and feeling its pain when struck. The memory of Sem’s foiled spear thrust came to mind.
Xander focused his will through the ship’s sympathetic interface. His heart leapt as a protective shroud began spreading over the Kerioth.
But the motion-sapping envelope was only half-formed when a second blow sent the nexus-runner pitching sharply to port and threw Xander from the dais.
The world inverted.
28
Tefler lay upon smooth cushions. Sea breeze cooled his skin. His eyes were open, but sight returned to him slowly. He found himself in a large room built from light-colored stone. There were no walls, only thick square pillars at each corner supporting the lofty roof.
I died in the crash.
“No,” said an airy voice. “You haven’t rejoined me just yet.”
Tefler rose from the low couch of silk and curved wood. Turning, he gasped to see himself. A slight young woman with ginger-brown hair cascading to her waist appeared from behind the full-length mirror that had briefly tricked him.
“I’m dreaming,” he said.
Thera looked back at him with eyes like rose quartz. Something in them recalled the cold mote in his vision of the light. “Not exactly.”
“Then what am I doing here?”
Thera’s long white gown made her seem to glide across the floor as she approached. “You’re already doing it—asking questions I’m inclined to answer.”
“That’s great. But now?”
“It’s as good a time as any.”
Tefler collapsed back onto the couch with a sharp exhale. Thera stood behind him, grasping the offset backrest.
“I forgot my cat,” he said. “It’s still in the tree.”
“That’s not all you forgot.”
“What do you mean?”
Thera drummed her fingers on the hardwood frame. “You forgot to think.”
“I got that kid and his girlfriend out.”
“You stole a nexus-runner with only a vague thought of where you were going.”
Tefler raised his voice. “I didn’t know you had a better plan. Have you considered coming out and telling me these things?”
“I am now.”
“Great. I’m all ears.”
Thera moved toward the rosy panorama framed by two pillars. She rested her hands on the parapet and looked out to sea. “You’re careless.”
“So is Hazeroth.”
“He’s bloodthirsty and rash, with the strength to afford it. You have far less room for error. Anyway, you should’ve expected a spy.”
“A spy?” Tefler repeated.
“He hid his transmissions, but you saw power flow to the translator before the crash.”
“Now that you mention it, that did seem odd.”
“But you didn’t pursue it. You’re paying the price of ignorance.”
Tefler pondered the rebuke. At length he asked, “Did you lock Shaiel inside the fire girl?”
Thera gave her priest a backward glance. “No.”
“Just asking. He thinks one of the souldancers is his way out.”
“Souldancers?”
“That’s what they call the folks whose souls got cored out to make you.”
Thera turned back to the sunset. “Corrupting trite words is redundant.”
“Call them what you want,” Tefler said. “Which one is Shaiel after?”
“The wrong one.”
“How can you be sure?”
“A Nexus knows everything that anyone cloven from it knows,” Thera said. “Mine is shut out of Zadok’s, but some people are aspects of both.”
“Is that how you knew about Astlin?”
“I’m not in her, but she’s in me. I’m all of them. I know things they forgot or never knew about themselves.”
“Anything important I should know about her?” Tefler asked.
“You have no idea.”
Xander dragged Cook from the smoking wreck through the bridge escape hatch. His lungs ached, and his head swam. He left his coughing friend seated on the ruined hull and slid down onto the peak of a steep dune.
Five men lurked in the dune’s shadow. Two wore Lawbringers’ cloaks. Two had the tan jackets and ashen skin of Night Gen. He nearly overlooked the lean fellow with short black hair dressed in drab hunter’s clothes.
Zan followed Xander, bearing Tefler’s senseless form. The priest lacked visible wounds, but he stared in glassy-eyed catatonia.
Xander suppressed a coughing fit. “Where is Astlin?”
Zan gestured to the wreck of the Kerioth. Its sharp-edged hull lay across two hills and the narrow trough between. The main boarding ramp lay buried under tons of sand.
“Well met,” a harsh voice said from below. Though barely above a whisper, the words echoed across the twilit dunes. “Now attend your master, Zan.”
The souldancer trembled. It may have been a trick of the failing light, but his white face seemed to grow paler.
Down in the valley, greycloaks and Night Gen parted ranks before a boyish fellow clad as a hunter. He strode to the dune’s base and thrust his hand at Zan. “Attend me, or pay the cost of despising my command.”
“Do you speak so proudly to make up for your dainty stature?” Xander asked.
The hunter pivoted, revealing a strange trophy slung across his back—a pair of huge antlers, or possibly wings. Either way, Xander shuddered to imagine the beast they’d adorned.
The hunter’s eyes glistened like blood. “Your speech names you Nesshin.”
“You know my accent,” Xander said, “but I cannot place yours.”
Grinning with the malice of all rabid filthy things, the hunter said, “Rejoice in that. Mine was the last voice your kinsmen heard.”
> The lingering shock of the crash slowed Xander’s comprehension. Understanding brought ice cold rage.
“Hazeroth,” he cursed, “Thera emitte sherrad.”
“Such discourtesy,” said Hazeroth. “Your father spoke better of you.”
Xander’s cold wrath burst into flame. “You have no right to invoke him.”
“I claim right of conquest. Your name died on his lips when I slit his throat.”
“Liar,” Xander fought back hot tears.
The demon raised a clawed finger. “‘Tis a poor hunter who lies about such an easy kill. Better to deny my slaughter of your clan. They all made meager sport.”
Xander’s power must have slipped its leash, for the air around Hazeroth erupted in a scouring cloud of sand. Something struck Xander’s shoulder, knocking him back onto the dune. His vision cleared, and he saw a fist-sized chunk of black crystal—part of the ship’s hull—lying beside him.
One of the Night Gen shares my gift, he thought, grateful that he’d kept up his cushioning shield.
Zan helped him to his feet. “We have to run.”
“I would like nothing more,” Hazeroth chided from behind them. Xander turned and saw the demon perched atop the wreckage. “You should lead a better chase than your feeble kin.”
An oblong shadow fell over the crash site. Craning his neck, Xander recognized the blocky grey ship that had brought his down.
“The horn winds for home,” Hazeroth said. “Now where is your brazen bitch?”
Xander heard a sound like a stout club striking a leather bag. The demon winced and arched his back.
Cook stood behind Hazeroth, his overgrown frame poised in a fighter’s stance.
Xander watched in morbid awe as the cook—his face bleeding, calmly defied the demon.
Zan tugged Xander’s arm, alerting him to the greycloaks and Night Gen ascending the dune to surround them.
Cook rolled past with a pained grunt, arresting his fall in a controlled slide that took him halfway down the dune face. He wiped fresh blood from his lips and started to rise, but Hazeroth fell upon him. Their battle unfolded in an intricate dance that confounded Xander’s eyes.
Cook’s fluid blows connected only twice before Hazeroth’s serpentine strikes battered him to his knees. Unscathed, the demon moved behind his beaten foe.
Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) Page 21
