A slim, cloaked figure stands at the foot of the stairs and raises a pale face capped with hair like black wool.
“What offering do you bring me?” the stranger’s voice has the smoothness and clarity of youth, but the weariness of untold age. He is a Gen—or something more.
The frozen ache in his soul, more than his confusion, makes Sulaiman grimace. “Why expect an offering of me?”
“Is that not the office of a priest?”
Sulaiman’s grip on his sword tightens. “You claim divinity?”
The stranger’s agate eyes—ringed with circles like dark bruises—peer at the white scimitar. “Your blade is cunningly wrought. But I’ve seen better.”
“I neither seek nor have time for your appraisal; nor have I gifts to give. Make way, or draw arms if you would bar my path.”
The stranger’s lips curve slightly, but his eyes are sad. “I stood once where you stand now, and another priest of Midras held my place. His death lasts till the gears of Kairos stop.”
Sulaiman levels his blade at the stranger’s throat. “For laying hands on one sacred to Midras, and for hindering his justice, I condemn you to die.”
With a movement as mysterious as the motions of Kairos, the stranger draws a sword and parries the thrust aimed at his neck. The stranger’s speed isn’t what leaves Sulaiman gaping, but the fact that he holds a white scimitar identical to Sulaiman’s own.
Perhaps not identical. The jolt of power through their crossed blades leads Sulaiman to believe that the stranger’s boast was understated. Proof comes when the stranger slices the air above and behind Sulaiman’s head, and one set of cold shadowy claws falls limply away from his life cord.
“Death is too good for me,” the stranger says, “but I’ve delayed yours long enough to see your task through.”
He extends both hands to Sulaiman. One still holds his mirrored sword; hilt first. “In return, I require your nascent Elohim. You mustn’t go unarmed, so you may borrow mine.”
Like a puppet on strings, Sulaiman offers his sword as he takes the stranger’s. The white metal feels uncomfortably hot in his hand, but the shades that still seek his life recoil from it.
“Have a care,” the stranger warns as he tucks Sulaiman’s sword beneath his black cloak. “Don’t try to remove the shades on your own, or you’ll like as not finish their work for them.”
Sulaiman knows better than to ask such a being’s name. He says only, “My question awaits an answer.”
“I do not claim divinity,” the stranger says, “though others claimed it for me. He who fulfills what I began—a soldier of the Night Tribe—is here, though not yet fully awake. But that is not your concern. Bonds faster than blood try my resolve. Go now, before it fails.”
“One question more. Why do you aid me?”
The stranger’s face hardens. “I have pondered here on my dealings with your accursed race since the Guild brought their final verdict against me. How I have longed to be quit of you! Blessedly, my work is done for now.”
Allowing no response, the stranger turns aside and fades into the inscrutable darkness.
So passes Almeth Elocine, Sulaiman thinks, for so tormented a Gen can be none other.
Sulaiman’s own errand calls. He hastens up the steps, an image of the engine room aboard the Exodus held firmly in his mind.
Right after Sulaiman entered the gate, the view of Kairos vanished, leaving Tefler staring at a blank wall of dark metal. Smith resumed his amorphous state.
I’ve seen that white sword before, Tefler thought. “Open up. I want to watch.”
“Screw what you want,” said Smith, “because I didn’t close the gate.”
“Who did?”
“Could only be someone on the other side.”
“How will he get back?” asked Tefler.
“Assuming he left Kairos, he must wait for the years to pass; but if he stays on the edge of eternity, he can interact with any point in time and exit to any other.”
Silence fell. Tefler felt unseen eyes watching from the shadows of the workroom.
“Did Sulaiman succeed?”
Smith’s face sank into his mass of gears with the brusqueness of a man turning his back. “Had he succeeded, you wouldn’t be asking.”
48
Zan brought the Serapis out of the ether. At first he doubted the vision the ship shared with him, but even Malachi saw two suns.
Astlin pressed her hand to the bridge canopy as if she could touch the fiery orbs shining beyond its smooth curve. “This can’t be right.”
“I followed the course the navigator set,” Zan said to ease his shame.
It helped that the navigator, like the rest of the normal bridge crew, had gone to bed after their latest double shift. Since the skeleton crew from the Irminsul needed all the hands they could find, they’d left Zan, Tefler, and Astlin in command—along with the ship’s true captain, though that was Zan and Malachi’s secret.
“Keth only has one sun,” said Astlin, standing at the window in her black dress like a war bride awaiting her love’s return from an unmarked grave.
“Navigation link established,” the Regulator droned from below the Wheel. “Closest sphere confirmed as Keth by six thousand points of reference.”
Astlin wheeled toward the station where Tefler sat tinkering with the Worked head. “What’s that thing doing here?”
Tefler’s eyes never left his project. “Seemed like a waste leaving Th’ix’s job undone.”
“At least he got to go home.” She said softly, “Unlike Sulaiman.”
“If he’d brought me along, we’d be toasting Thera’s corpse by now.”
Astlin’s palms slammed down on Tefler’s desk. “Normal people don’t like to kill!”
Tefler finally looked up from his work. “Anyone here seem normal to you?”
Astlin held up three fingers and counted on them as she spoke. “Someone beat us to Thurif. I killed Hazeroth but lost Xander. Sulaiman tried to kill Thera and failed.”
“What’s your point?” asked Tefler.
“That we should stop trying to avenge the old world and start fighting for this one.”
Tefler pointed a screwdriver at the canopy. “We won’t have much competition.”
Zan knew that Tefler had little tact, but his harshness toward Astlin was troubling.
He resents having been cheated by the priest, said Malachi, just one of many to be so ill-used.
All expression faded from Astlin’s face, but Zan saw the anger and hurt in her eyes. She turned back to the burning sphere. “What happened?”
The Cataclysm must have ignited the atmosphere, said Malachi.
Zan repeated the Master’s words.
“It’s all gone,” said Astlin. The despair in her voice left an almost physical wound on Zan’s heart.
“I’m still here,” he said tenderly.
Astlin smiled at him. “Thanks. I’ve been too caught up in myself lately. Sorry I neglected you.”
“We’re the last of our kind,” said Zan, returning her smile. “It’s only right that we should comfort each other.”
“Smith will be hurt you left him out,” said Tefler.
Zan let Malachi’s words flow from his mouth. “Xander pledged himself to you, but death annulled his vow. I would make my own, if you’ll accept it.”
Astlin stared up at him for a silent eternal moment.
“Xander and I shared a soul.”
Zan felt as if he’d swallowed live coals. His voice became as cold as Astlin’s had been impassioned. “Then I’m nothing to you?”
Astlin walked to the foot of the Wheel, reached up, and offered Zan her hand. He took it warily.
“You’re everything to me,” Astlin said. She looked back at Tefler. “All of you.”
“Xander died for you,” said Zan. “Would you do the same for me?”
She met his eye and spoke with no hesitation. “I would.”
“Show me.” Zan stretched out
his silver hand while the other tightened its grip on hers.
Tefler leapt from his chair, sending it skidding across the deck plates. “Shaiel’s Will!?”
“Nothing so crude.” Whether it was Zan or Malachi who spoke no longer mattered. The Void’s flow lashed him to the Wheel. “I bow to no god, hence my cursed state.”
Astlin breached his mind’s outer defenses before he repelled her.
“You’re not the one that took Neriad,” she said. “Who are you?”
The electric discharge that arced from Zan’s hand interrupted Tefler’s attempt to channel prana, leaving him twitching on the deck. The stench of burned cloth cycled into the air filters.
“Though you aided me in removing the other kost,” Malachi said to Tefler, “your limited usefulness beyond this point obviates your continued presence.”
Initiate bridge lockdown, he ordered through the Wheel, authorization Malachi, teth, nine, nine.
A bulkhead of transessed ceramic steel—the tiniest extension of himself—slammed into place over the bridge doors.
“Zan,” Astlin said, a warning in her voice, “stop this. You don’t need to hurt anyone.”
Malachi looked down at the female souldancer in Zan’s grasp. “On the contrary, it is not only a matter of need, but of right. The priest stole my vessel. I know from Zan that he will not suffer my command under any circumstances. The best response is to remove him, as every captain should do with pirates.”
“Keep the ship,” said Astlin. “Just let everyone else go. I can take them in the Kerioth.”
“No. You stay—along with my original crew and their successors. We’ll need every able hand to cleanse hell of the Gen.”
Astlin fought against strength that Zan had never dared use. “You are a Gen!”
“A situation I intend to correct,” said Malachi. “As luck would have it, souldancers are quite easy to possess, and I would prefer one that had originally been human.”
Astlin scowled. “You mother—”
Lightning flashed from Zan’s silver finger and over Astlin’s head with a peal of thunder that silenced her curse. The canopy shattered, and a furious wind tried to wrench her from his grip. Tefler slid toward the void’s jagged maw.
Zan stood anchored to the Wheel, his hair writhing like a nest of white serpents. He leaned forward, offering Astlin his silver hand.
Astlin gazed sadly into his eyes, and searing pain lanced up his arm. The jet of plasma-state prana that had been her hand burned through his. A silent roar escaped Zan’s throat as the vacuum tore her from him.
Tefler hurtled into the abyss. Astlin blazed after, gained on, and overtook him. The souldancer abandoned her human guise for the gate that was her true nature, and Tefler passed into unquenchable fire.
Standing on the Wheel and writhing in agony caused by someone he loved stirred Zan’s memory. At last he remembered how he’d come to be as he was. His own daughter—a fellow pilot of the Night Gen fleet—had betrayed him to his tormentors.
His pain and rage were tempered by Malachi’s ruthless logic. Together they activated the ship’s disruption field. Instead of prana, the Void surged from his frigid soul. The blackness around the ship turned to gold. The fire gate faded to an ember.
Malachi lowered the field and the portal bloomed once more. He let flow his malice again and again, ravaging Astlin’s soul till it succumbed to chaos.
Wedged beneath a console, the Regulator’s head flashed a recognition code with its eyes. Something tugged on Zan’s coat. Malachi looked down and met grey eyes in a leering reptilian face.
Th’ix scrambled onto the Wheel and drove a knife made from the Regulator’s Worked steel into Zan’s chest. The air souldancer tried to scream in the airless room as Malachi grabbed Th’ix’s left arm. The imp kept cutting despite the potent shock coursing through him, slitting the kost-souldancer from sternum to collarbone.
With a burst of otherworldly pain, the wound in Zan’s chest opened on a vacuum that sucked the knife from his foe’s grasp. The souldancer’s torso collapsed into the howling vortex. Th’ix clawed at the rail but the rift took them both.
49
Xander died and found himself on a stone causeway in a crystalline sea. A gentle breeze cooled his skin and brought a pleasant salty scent to his nose.
“I am alive.”
“Yes you are,” said a feminine voice. “I’m sorry for the wait; not that you noticed.”
Xander turned toward the tower at the causeway’s end. A slender young woman stood in the doorway. Her long hair varied between light brown and dark blond as clouds passed over the sunset. Her eyes were as bright and hard as rose quartz.
“Have we met?” he asked.
The woman gathered her white skirt and glided near on bare feet. “Not directly, but you know my priest.”
The pit of Xander’s stomach sank. “Thera emitte sherrad!”
“That would require a crude duplication,” said Thera, her face impassive.
Xander raised his arms and yelled into the sky. “Why have you condemned me?”
“Zadok hasn’t condemned you or anyone,” Thera said. “Not yet.”
“Why should I believe the Mother of Demons?”
“I only have one child. Now listen. I brought you here for a reason.”
“You revived me?” Xander asked.
Thera shook her head. “I recreated you. It’s easy to rethread a silver cord through my nexus. But you’re also part of Zadok, so I had to wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“Cover, for one thing. Szodrin’s theosis served perfectly. But there was still the problem of Astlin.”
Cold sweat soaked Xander’s skin and clothes—both gifts from Thera. “She is in danger.”
“She’s gone.”
Nesshin lore spoke of fates worse than death. Thera’s words subjected Xander to one of them. “Serieigna is dead?”
“As close as people like she and I ordinarily get, yes.”
Xander’s knees buckled. He anticipated striking hard stone but fell back onto silk cushions.
“I understand your loss.” Thera stepped from beside the couch and stood before a tall window that ran the length of the room they now occupied. “She was the best part of me.”
Xander shook off the confusion caused by his sudden relocation. “You do not know my pain. My clan is dead. My love is dead, and if you insult her again, I’ll kill you.”
The subtle contortions of Thera’s face suggested a conflict with half-understood emotions. “So passionate. So loyal. That’s why she loved you.”
Xander clenched his fists. His body shook as he fought back tears.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Thera said. “All I want is to be left alone.”
“If what you say is true,” said Xander, “please bring her back to me.”
“She’s gone. I told you.”
Xander rose. His cry echoed from the high ceiling. “So revive her!”
“You misunderstood,” Thera said. “Her life cord is intact, but it runs to a fiery rift in space. Losing my part of her soul drove Astlin mad before; withdrawing it now will have no effect. Doing more than that would take Zadok’s cooperation since she’s mostly from his Nexus.”
“Why would the All-Father deny me?”
“Ask Nessh about Zadok’s justice. He’d sooner destroy Astlin than heal her.”
Xander held his head. “You are his daughter. Can’t you ask him?”
“It’s out of my hands.”
“How can anything be out of your hands?”
“There’ve been some disruptions due to Shaiel’s coming.”
“He has escaped?” Xander asked.
“Not that Shaiel,” said Thera. “What your people call Zadok’s Awakening.”
Xander approached the window and stared at the endless desolate sea. “Zadok comes to judge all things,” he quoted from Nessh’s prophecies. “None know what fate he shall decree.”
“I have a fai
r idea,” Thera said. “He almost woke up once before. I intervened but only delayed him a few years.”
“You do not sound hopeful.”
“What little hope we have is why I called you here.”
Xander recalled something that his mother had once said about rain clouds. “Can a mortal change God’s judgment?”
“Not according to most prophecies. My priest is trapped on the Fire Stratum. I’m sending you to find him.”
“Tefler is on the Fire Stratum?” A grim scenario played out in Xander’s mind.
“Astlin saved his life,” said Thera, “but her dissolution stranded him.”
“You cannot go yourself?”
“Hasn’t anyone told you it’s unwise to question gods?”
“You are not a god.”
A smile turned up the corner of Thera’s mouth. “I’m no less a prisoner than Shaiel is. I can’t free myself without freeing him.”
Xander wrestled with a simultaneous urge to laugh and scream. “It is you! The souldancer holding Shaiel captive is the Souldancer.”
“You’re smarter than Hazeroth,” said Thera. “But hunting my former hosts was never about freeing Shaiel. He has other plans for them.”
Xander sighed. “At least Astlin is beyond his reach.”
“Don’t be too sure. She’s still joined to you through me.”
“Are we in danger?”
“We’ll see. Speaking of which, we have one last item of business.”
Blinding pain suddenly stabbed through Xander’s head and left him just as quickly. In its wake, he felt his left eye moving independently of its mate.
Xander clutched his face. “What have you done to me?”
“I can do anything I like to you,” said Thera. “In that context, this is quite minor.”
A movement of Xander’s will pulled the mirror from its corner across the room to float before him. A low choking sound escaped his mouth when he saw a rose quartz iris gleaming in his left eye.
“You restored me to life. Why afflict me with this curse?”
Thera moved to his side. Three rose eyes looked back from the mirror. “It’s my way of watching over you. There’ll be no more need when your job’s done.”
Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) Page 35
