by Dan Schiro
Aurelia burst into laughter. “Perhaps she needed to unburden herself!”
Orion laughed too, uncontrollably, and he realized that something was wrong. They stood there amid the flowers cawing like maniacs, and when Orion looked at Aurelia’s face, he saw terror beneath her rictus mask of mirth. Yet even knowing that something had affected them, Orion couldn’t stop laughing. The flowers seemed to be glowing, even humming, all around them.
“The trees,” Orion gasped, his face stretched and his stomach aching. “We have to get back to the treeeeeee—”
For all Orion knew, he never finished saying the word. Sound elongated, and the field of flowers pulsed with wet color. Orion tried to force his long legs into motion, but he only made it a few steps before the world’s prismatic contortions separated his feet from the ground. He landed slowly, sinking into the bed of fragrant blooms like a falling leaf on a still day. For a few moments or an eternity, he looked up at a sky awash with dazzling abstract shapes, the figures colliding, consuming and transforming. Then darkness swallowed him.
He dreamed a hazy dream that he was back in the Painted Palace, standing beneath the Great Painted Dome. The sephilons crowding the throne room applauded him with their many spidery arms as Queen Lob draped medal after medal over his shoulders, the many ribbons weighing him down even as he basked in the adulation. Then he heard familiar voices and the dream crumbled.
“Star Sentry,” said Vanlith.
“Parliament,” said Zovaco tersely. “Election, campaign.”
Orion couldn’t seem to move, and he couldn’t see anything more than a bright blur through sticky gauze that covered his eyes and stifled his breathing. His heart lurched with a moment of claustrophobic panic, and then his spellblade instinctively came to life. Struggling against his viscous bonds, he conjured a serrated knife and sawed through the thick swaddling until both hands were free. After tearing a gluey caul from his face, he saw that Vanlith and Zovaco’s voices came from the small flying lizards perched around him in the jungle canopy. He had only a moment to realize where he was before the shredded spider webs supporting him failed.
He fell for a terrifying split-second before his smartcloak snagged on a broken branch and left him hanging high above the jungle floor. After a long, slow exhale, he glanced around and saw the green hourglass of Aurelia’s mummified body wedged in the interlocking branches above him. Using the claws of his gauntlet fingertips, Orion grabbed a sturdy branch and hauled himself up through the shredded hole in the canopy-wide webbing. Once he was up in the blazing sunlight, Orion could see the floating island not far away and the lingering smoke from the Star Sentry’s crash site in the other direction. He also saw a bevy of giant spiders skittering toward him across the treetops.
“AD,” Orion called as he conjured a long, double-bladed spear. “Time to wake up, AD!”
The spiders leaped at him, each as big as a hound. They flew through the air with eight clawed limbs, hairy blue bodies, rows of black eyes and wet palpi that glistened with fangs. Using the weight of his spear to keep himself balanced, Orion skipped from branch to branch as he sliced and stabbed, severing limbs and gashing puss-filled thoraxes. “AD, I need you,” he shouted between leaps.
As Orion danced through the treetops, the trembling canopy web summoned more spiders. The arachnids popped up through the blue leaves and traipsed across the intertwined branches from every direction. He spun into a variation of Crag’s Blades of a Wheel fighting form in hopes that he could beat them back, but for every spider he sent crashing to the jungle floor, another skittered in to take its place. “Aurelia Deon,” he screamed. “Exile!”
The blood of the beasts had lit his gauntlet veins with a red glow, and Orion considered burning a spell to save himself. Yet just as he was about to call out the spell-casting word, a ropy strand of webbing spurted forth from a nearby spider and stuck to the staff of his spear. His breath caught as he fell forward through the blue leaves, but he managed to vanish his weapon and hook his left arm over a sagging vine before he could plummet too far. “Wake up, you old bag!”
As the spiders converged above him, Orion heard a quick sizzle and saw a great flash of green fire. Aurelia floated down beneath the blue canopy, a brilliant aura of emerald fire around her. “Burn, vermin,” she cried, raising her hands and hurling a spread of burning jade brands at the leafy ceiling. “Burn, burn!”
The canopy burst into flames above Orion, and he shielded his face against the blaze with his spellblade arm. Giant spiders hissed and popped and fell all around him, and then the vine holding him snapped. Desperately clutching the flaming vine with his left hand, Orion swung high above the jungle floor for a moment. Then the other end of the vine burned through, and Orion fell.
This time he thought he would hit the ground, and he knew his kinetic bodysuit couldn’t absorb all of the impact from this height. Yet Aurelia swooped in on a cloud of green light and caught his forearm with a pained grunt. Orion’s left hand grasped her wrist, his palm sizzling on her white-hot flesh, and they floated to the jungle floor together. Both of them were panting from the effort when they finally disengaged, but they had only a moment to exchange relieved looks before Orion heard the trees rustle above them. Dozens of giant spiders began to descend, dropping through the charred hole in the canopy on thick, silky threads.
“That way,” Orion said, pointing.
They ran, crashing through brambles and ferns and spiky weeds until they broke through the band of trees. A mob of spiders chittered and clucked from the high branches, daring Orion and Aurelia to return to their territory. Taking a moment to catch their breath, Orion and Aurelia looked around. They stood at the edge of a grassy plain that sloped gently toward a lake. Large crystals grew at awkward angles along the shore, and Orion’s floating island loomed hundreds of feet above with twin waterfalls streaming off its sides like long white ribbons.
“I hate spiders,” Orion gasped.
Aurelia looked up at the island for a moment, her face mixing awe and chagrin. “Well, it all worked out for the best.” She cleared her throat. “Here we are.”
Orion lingered on her with a seething glare, then turned his gaze to the levitating landmass. He felt a sharp tingle from his living-metal gauntlet, and he was certain. He could feel the invisible energy connecting his spellblade to whatever lay atop the hovering cross-section of stone, soil and trees. “This is what we’re looking for. It must be.”
“Indeed.” She grinned, her brassy eyes sparkling in the sunlight of the red giant that hung at high noon. “I’ve never felt the old magic this… alive.”
Orion shook his head. “What is it?”
“No idea.” She glanced down at his spellblade gauntlet. “Whatever it is, the Engineers built it. Just like they built that weapon you’ve bonded yourself to.”
“It’s a tool,” Orion reminded her.
They walked down to the muddy banks of the lake, sat and took a few minutes to scrub away the sticky silk remnants of the spider webs. Aurelia seemed content to watch the cotton ball clouds float through the light-green sky in silence, so Orion took the lay of the land. The waterfalls fed the lake, and the lake fed streams that stretched out north and south, but what fed the waterfalls? With a chuckle, Orion realized that one of the waterfalls rushed upward. Somehow, the island’s artificial gravity field had captured the stream when it had risen out of the bedrock. Orion watched for a few moments as tens of thousands of gallons of water rushed hundreds of feet straight up.
Aurelia stretched on the beach. “So, great leader, what say you? Any idea how we get up there?”
Orion got to his feet. “Just one crazy one.”
They hiked around the lake, the ground sodden and loamy beneath their feet. The lake rippled gently in the sunshine, its water tinted ever so slightly bottle green, and soon they neared the reverse waterfall. Orion stopped at the shore and pointed at the gravity-
defying current. “Look closely.”
“It’s… going up.” Aurelia said, her eyes growing wide. She looked at Orion. “You mean to ride that? Surely you joke.”
“Nope.” He unclasped the smartcloak that kept him cool in the sweltering heat and tied the blue-gray shift across his body from shoulder to hip. “Not unless you see a skysled parked in the brush.”
Aurelia folded her arms across her chest. “Orion, be serious. There’s no guarantee that the artificial gravity field will hold our weight if we try to ride the water up.”
Orion smirked. “That’s why you’re staying down here. You might need to catch me again.”
“Orion, really.” She rolled her eyes. “I float, and not for long. I can’t fly like a freyan. You know that.”
Orion shrugged. “You’ll have to do your best?”
“I suppose arguing with you is useless,” she scoffed. “As usual.”
Orion snorted a quick laugh. “You argue with me all the time!”
“Can you even hold your breath that long?” She glanced up to where the reverse waterfall met the floating island. “It might take you a few minutes to reach the top.”
“I don’t plan on holding my breath.” Orion raised his silver gauntlet and flexed its spiked fingers. The silver symbiote shone with the life force absorbed from the spiders and the two-headed beast before that. Though each drink of animal blood didn’t mean much on its own, together they provided ample fuel for spell-casting. He spoke the word he had decided upon during their slog around the lake. “Amphibious.”
Pale fire quivered over Orion’s body. When the reality-bending effect passed, he stood transformed. His skin had taken on a blue-green tinge, and stacked gills flared on both sides of his neck. His heterochromatic eyes had grown a pink membrane for underwater vision, and webs stretched between his elongated fingers. He stood frozen for a moment. This might be the strangest thing he had tried in his short time wielding the Blade of the Word, but it seemed to have worked.
“Very well, then.” Aurelia folded her arms across her chest. “But how do you plan to get down?”
Orion tried to say, “I’m sure I’ll think of something,” but his new gills turned his quip into a frog-like gurgle. With a webbed wave to say goodbye, Orion turned and dove into the rippling lake.
Though his first breaths made him feel like he was drowning, he quickly became comfortable in his new skin. Soon the greenish water filled his lungs as comfortably as if it were air. He glided through the warm, sun-soaked lake toward the reverse waterfall until he felt himself rising, the ancient gravity field of the floating island tugging him along. With great pulls of his webbed hands, he swam straight up through the white-rushing column, exulting in the unique experience that felt like both swimming and flying at once. He even laughed out a burst of bubbles as an unbidden thought crossed his mind — how could overseeing the eco-forming of Venus compare to this?
The coursing water made a sharp turn some minutes later and splashed into a wide channel atop the island. Orion swam to the surface with long strokes and flipped over onto his back to look up at the huge red sun and enjoy a crazy plan pulled off. Then he made for shore with a few languid movements of his webbed hands and climbed up onto a bed of blue grass, ready to relinquish his brief life as an amphibious creature. As he waited for the blood magic to fade, Orion thought it a pity that he could never cast that spell again.
When his webbed digits had receded and his gills had sealed, Orion unfurled his moisture-shedding smartcloak and threw it over his shoulders. As he attempted to spike up his fine blond hair, he looked around to get a sense of where his spellblade had led him. Yet centuries of steady flow had carved a deep channel in the floating island, and Orion couldn’t see much but the glassy green river, its steep banks and the tops of a few trees. Using the clawed fingertips of his silver gauntlet to help him gain purchase in the soft soil, he pulled himself up the grassy slope.
Orion had no idea what he expected as he hauled himself up to level ground, only that it wasn’t this. An elaborate, expertly tended garden stretched out before him, full of healthy trees, trimmed hedges, blooming flowers and clean-swept walkways arranged in concentric patterns. A four-sided pyramid made of white stone dominated the center of the garden, its slanting surfaces polished to a high shine. As soon as Orion saw the temple, he felt a deep shiver run through the living metal in his arm.
Orion suppressed a sudden wave of trepidation. “Come on, man. This is what you’re here for. See it through.”
He gathered his nerve, conjured a nimble tai chi sword and strode toward the pyramid. More of the flying lizards darted between the willowy trees, chattering with bits of the conversation he’d had with Aurelia below. Here and there Orion saw the familiar shapes of the tripods, the same strange, silent creatures that scurried about the Maker Rings maintaining the Engineers’ ancient handiwork. Some tripods polished the stepping-stone walkways with squirts from their forward limb, while others reached up to trim and shape the geometric topiaries that dotted the sprawling garden. Still others tilled the soil of the wedge-shaped flower beds. How long had the creatures been toiling to maintain this garden in the sky, and why? Orion decided he would have to leave these questions to more scholarly minds. He had reached the temple, and the ivory-white surface rippled open as he approached.
Orion stopped and stared into the swirling shadows of the passage for a moment. Calling on his training, he cleared his mind and walked into the darkness.
Chapter 23
Orion found himself engulfed in a darkness that seemed to eddy around him like inky tendrils. Somehow, he could see his own hand in front of his face with perfect clarity, yet nothing of the pyramid’s walls or the hard, smooth surface beneath his feet.
“Hello?” His voice didn’t echo the way it should have based on the size of the stone structure. “Is anyone here? Sorry to just walk into your, ah… big spooky temple like this. Our ship crashed, and we’re stranded far from home.”
He waited a few moments, the only response a slight stirring of the cool air. Reaching out with the sword conjured from his spellblade, Orion walked slowly across the black floor until he should have been beyond the walls of the pyramid. When he turned and counted his steps back to the door where he had entered, he found only more empty space.
“Oh, it’s like that?” Orion muttered. “Look, I’m not here to cause trouble. All I want is to help my friends get home.”
Orion felt a breeze tickle his still-wet blond hair. Then, in the distant dark nothing, Orion saw a shape moving his way. LaVal LaVoy strolled up out of the void in her yellow-and-black bodysuit, as always wearing the helmet with the iridescent faceplate. Unlike Orion’s, her spiked spellblade gauntlet glowed with yellow veins of fresh blood magic.
“You should have joined the Guild when you had the chance,” LaVal said with a tilt of her head. She stopped a few feet from him, her hands on her hips. “I’m afraid the offer has expired.”
A single glowglobe latticed with black metal came to life high above them, and Orion’s surroundings came into focus. He was standing on the floor of an arena-like chamber with a shadowy gallery encircling it. A tall black table curved around the gallery, its seamless apron darker than volcanic glass, and 12 evenly spaced figures sat behind it. The aliens gazed down at them with their visages obscured by the veil of gloom at the edge of the glowglobe’s light. Torpid white vapor drifted up from the cracks in the gray stone beneath his feet, its curling wisps vaguely sulfurous, and Orion realized that he stood in the chamber he had seen through the rip in the fabric of space-time back on Jutera-4.
“Where am I?” Orion asked, sword held at ready.
LaVal opened her arms. “You should feel honored.” Her reflective faceplate caught the gleam of the glowglobe as she looked up at the indistinct aliens. “You stand in the Forum of Fate, the heart and soul of the Assassins Guild.”
&
nbsp; Orion squinted at the dim figures high above them. “How… how is it possible that you brought me here?”
LaVal chuckled through her digital voice filter. “A secret you would have learned if only you had accepted our offer.”
“It doesn’t make sense.” He shook his head, his sword relaxing. “You managed to crash a Union starship… on this specific planet… to lure me here? It’s… it’s not possible.”
“All things are possible for the Guild,” LaVal said with a bow to her masters. “But now is not the time for answers. You are here as a demonstration of my skills and my dedication.” She conjured a straight, narrow tai chi sword to match Orion’s. “You are here so that I can return the Blade of the Word to its rightful owners.” She fell into a familiar fighting stance. “You are here so that I can kill you in front of the Illustrious Masters.”
Orion plunged his mind into the White Room, raised his matching blade and beckoned her. “Saying it and doing it are two very different things.”
They spun toward each other in Skywalk Strike form, faking high and low and meeting in the middle for a half-dozen strikes before they leaped apart, the vapor from the cracks ghosting after them. Again and again they charged, clashed and fell back, and Orion called on all of the fighting forms Crag Dur Rokis Crag had taught him. From Skywalk Strike to Blades of a Wheel to Bull Thrust and Furious Wind, LaVal kept pace with him in every way. And though they were well-matched in technique, LaVal didn’t seem to get tired. Orion did, and after trying a variety of different attacks, he got sloppy. The faceless assassin spun past his clumsy strike and slashed low across the back of his legs. Her razor-sharp tai chi sword cut cleanly through his kinetic bodysuit and into the legs beneath, dropping Orion to his knees.
He spun onto his backside and scrambled away as she gathered herself. Orion saw the electricity building in her silver gauntlet and creeping up her nimble sword, ready to discharge a bolt that would turn him to cinder. Desperate, Orion let his spellblade draw on the red river of life force flowing down the back of his legs, the years off the end of his life be damned. As LaVal pointed her sword at him, Orion said the first word that came to mind.
