by David Mack
“Y’know,” Dastin said, “if we think those energy readings are worth checking out, so might the Klingons. Maybe they helped that woman ’cause they know something we don’t.”
“Good points.” Theriault weighed the risks against her objectives and made her decision. “Dastin, take point. Follow the Klingons, but keep us at a safe distance—I don’t want them hearing us and setting up an ambush. Tan Bao, watch our six—make sure the natives don’t jump us from behind. And Hesh”—she smiled approvingly at the Arkenite—“keep on scanning with that tricorder, Lieutenant.” She pointed forward. “Stay sharp and tread softly, gents. Move out. ”
7
Violet waves of pain lingered like echoes inside Ysan’s head. She had been unprepared for the invisible assault Nimur had unleashed; the closest comparison the priestess could imagine was being struck by an ocean wave of unexpected strength and slammed beneath the waves, pummeled by the weight of the water into the jagged rocks, coarse sand, and broken shells. Something warm tickled her upper lip. Ysan wiped at it with the side of her hand, which came away smeared with bright green blood. Probing gingerly with her fingertips, she realized the blood had spilled from her nostrils.
Around her, the Wardens stirred and let out muffled groans. The ones who had been struck by the red lightning bolts from the forest sported smoldering divots on their armor. A few lay groaning on the ground, their headdresses knocked off and their lances at their sides. Fear stirred inside Ysan; she had never seen or heard of anything that could overpower Wardens that way. Whatever had done this, it seemed to be helping Nimur—and that could only mean trouble.
Ysan found her staff and used it to help herself stand. She was on her feet while most of the stunned Wardens were still on their knees, bellies, or backs. “Get up!” Her command galvanized the humbled defenders, who struggled to stand and assembled in front of her. She directed her questions at Kitraan, the eldest Warden, whose mark of office was the most ornate of the headdresses, a plumed serpent with great fangs. “How many hurt? How many dead?”
“None dead, and none so badly hurt that they cannot avenge.”
His answer pleased her. “Have you ever seen the likes of that red lightning?”
“No. I was going to ask if the Shepherds ever wrote of such a thing.”
“No, they did not.” Ysan saw her bruised and dust-shrouded disciple stumble toward her. The priestess-in-training tripped and almost fell until Ysan caught her. “Seta! Are you hurt?”
“Dizzy.” The younger girl pressed one hand to her forehead. “Hit my head when I fell.”
Ysan inspected the injury. “The skin is not broken, and the swelling is slight. You’ll feel better soon.” Satisfied her appointed successor was not in imminent danger, she returned her attention to Kitraan. “Did you see who threw the red lightning?”
“No. But I am certain there must have been more than one attacker.”
That was unwelcome news, but Ysan kept her tone neutral. “How many?”
“At least three, perhaps as many as six.”
Seta stepped forward to stand at Ysan’s side. “Why would they help Nimur? Is it possible they’re other Tomol, maybe ones who’ve already Changed?”
It surprised Ysan to hear her best pupil ask such a foolish question. “If her rescuers had been Changed, we would all be dead. No, I don’t know who they were, or why they helped her. None of that matters as much as the fact that Nimur must be found and brought back to finish the Cleansing before she completes the Change.”
Kitraan reacted with cool pragmatism. “How long do we have to bring her to the fire?”
“Maybe a day,” Ysan said. “Perhaps less. It’s hard to say. Summon all the Wardens and task them to the hunt. Nimur is already showing signs of the powers that follow the Change. It’s only a matter of time until the madness takes her. We can’t risk letting her live that long.”
Seta struck a fearful note. “How much stronger will she get?”
The disciple’s innocent question drew all the Wardens closer; they, too, were eager to know the truth about the threat that now ran loose on their island home. Ysan decided the time for comforting euphemisms had passed. “Much stronger. According to the writings on the Shepherds’ wordstone, soon she’ll be able to do far more than strike with an invisible hand. All the elements will bend to her command—water and fire, air and earth. She’ll be able to see into our thoughts, and from there into the past, and the future. The Shepherds wrote of the Changed trampling entire cities underfoot and laying waste the world before this one. But this world is all we have left, and we are its only caretakers. It falls to us to find Nimur and to Cleanse her—before she destroys us all. . . . Kitraan, I want you and your Wardens to set your weapons to their deadliest strength. If Nimur will not surrender and consent to be Cleansed, do whatever you must to stop her and bring her back here to face the fire’s judgment.”
Kitraan sounded troubled by the order. “What of the infant she abducted?”
“Spare it if you can, but capturing Nimur is more important. Do you understand?”
A single, slow bow of Kitraan’s masked head signaled his acceptance of her decree. He turned and barked orders at the other Wardens. “Weapons to full! Order by pairs and fan out! Find Nimur, take her down, and bring her back here! Move!”
The Wardens spoke ancient words to activate their lances, whose bulbous heads crackled with blue lightning. Then the defenders split off into pairs and scattered out of the clearing. Some charged down the trails while others blazed new paths into the jungle. In less than a minute, only Ysan, Seta, and a handful of shocked witnesses from the village remained near the Well of Flames. Ysan gently gripped Seta by her shoulders. “We need to calm the others’ fears and get them to go home and stay inside.”
“What are we going to tell them?”
“The truth. Nimur gave in to fear, and she ran. Now the Wardens are going to bring her back to finish her Cleansing, as they always have.”
“And what if they can’t? What if it’s already too late?”
Ysan sighed with grim anticipation. “Then you and I will have to invoke the power of the Shepherds—and condemn Nimur to the ranks of the Endless.” She started walking back to the village and beckoned Seta to follow. “Come with me. There is much I have yet to teach you about the Shepherds, and all our lives might depend on what you learn tonight.”
• • •
Fury had turned to fire inside Nimur’s head. She felt as if her thoughts themselves were boiling and her free will was cooking off as steam. Her vision blurred even as her new senses turned the black night red in response to its suddenly omnipresent energies.
Tobar and his men were dull shadows in all that glory, ashen figures that shed more heat than light into this rarefied plane of existence to which Nimur had just become privy. He and two of his men moved ahead of Nimur, clearing a path for her. The other three followed her—one guarding against pursuit while the other two hurried to erase all signs of their passage.
All her life, Nimur had lived on this island, but its jungle had never felt more stifling than it did at that moment. Every breath was a labor, every step a struggle. All the familiar sounds of the night submerged beneath a rush of white noise that Nimur soon realized was the pounding of her own heart and the ebb and flow of her own shallow breathing. She clutched her daughter to her chest. It took all her concentration to neither drop Tahna nor smother her.
Her feet grew heavy, and her balance faltered. Unable to distinguish objects from their doppelgangers as her vision doubled, she caromed off one tree and ran headlong into a low branch that blocked her path. The impact knocked her onto her back and left her reeling as her terrified infant wailed in her arms.
Swarthy hands closed like vises on her arms and hauled her upright. “Keep moving,” said Kergol, one of Tobar’s subordinates. “And silence that whelp. Or I’ll do it for you.” He gave Nimur a rough push to force her back into motion, following the trailblazers.
/> She stumbled forward but said nothing. Another throaty cry from Tahna drew baleful looks from the strange warriors, and Nimur suspected Kergol’s threat to harm Tahna had not been an idle one. Knowing it was best for all of them to keep Tahna from giving away their location to the Wardens—who, she had no doubt, were tracking them—Nimur pulled one strap of her dress off her shoulder to expose her left breast and let the infant feed. As she’d hoped, the hungry child nursed eagerly, putting a momentary end to her caterwauling.
The return of relative quiet seemed to placate the Klingons. They pushed on, their pace faster than what Nimur was accustomed to. Wherever they had come from, she realized, it must be not unlike Suba, because they all seemed quite at home in the steamy heart of its untamed jungle. Even the growls and hisses of nearby predators did nothing to slow the Klingons or change their path. They moved through the night as if they knew they had nothing to fear from it.
“Can we rest soon? I need water.”
Tobar sneered. “You can rest when we reach shelter.” He looked away from Nimur as if she weren’t even there, to speak to one of his men. “Kroka, has the Voh’tahk answered yet?”
Kroka pulled a small metallic device from his belt and with a flick of his wrist opened its delicate-looking cover. He eyed it for a moment, then closed it and put it away. “Not yet.”
“If you don’t hear from them in the next two hours, hail them again.”
“Yes, sir.”
No one spoke as the group trudged through the dense undergrowth. Nimur worried when she noticed that the ground sloped gradually upward. The longer they walked, the more tiring it became thanks to the slight but unrelenting uphill grade. Nimur quickened her pace to catch up to Tobar. “Where are we going?”
He seemed bored of her. “To a defensible position, just up the hill.”
The jungle thinned as they climbed. When Nimur glimpsed a familiar rock formation silhouetted against the pale orb of the rising blue moon, a sick chill traveled down her spine. “Not the caves!” She grabbed Tobar’s sleeve, forcing him to stop. “We can’t go into the caves!”
“Of course we can. And we will.” He pulled his sleeve from her hand and kept walking. “There’s only one way in, and the entrance has a clear line of sight down the hillside.”
“Only the priestess and her disciples are allowed—”
“Quiet!” Tobar turned on her like a wild animal, teeth bared. “An hour ago, you were ready to kill your holy priestess to save your scrawny neck. I don’t care what silly superstitions you used to believe in, little girl. Play time is over.”
His refusal to heed the warning made no sense to her. Couldn’t he see the wild energies gathering like a halo above the hilltop? Was he so blind that he couldn’t see that the Shepherds’ wordstone had been roused? “We can’t hide in the caves. The priestess and her disciples will be coming soon, and they’ll bring the Wardens in force. This place isn’t safe!”
“We’re not afraid of your soldiers’ puny fire-sticks. Now, do as you’re told.”
Nimur seethed. As her rage flared she felt the fire of the Change blaze within her, gaining strength and sharpening its focus. The more the power within her awakened, the angrier she became. But her fear of attracting the Shepherds’ wrath remained.
She turned back and ran. Behind her, Tobar roared, “Stop her!”
The three Klingons bringing up the rear tackled her. The crushing impact left Nimur growling and Tahna screaming. A fist slammed into Nimur’s face. One of the Klingons wrestled Tahna from Nimur’s hands, then another flipped Nimur over and bound her wrists.
As they rolled her onto her back, Tobar stepped over her and stood astride her. A fleeting, sadistic smirk crossed his face. “Ready to follow orders now?”
She couldn’t conceal her hatred. “I thought you were here to help me.”
“We are. As long as we help ourselves in the bargain.”
She spat at him. He laughed and wiped her spittle from his chest. “You have spirit. I respect that. But I won’t put up with disobedience.” He beckoned Kergol. The younger Klingon stepped into Nimur’s line of sight; he held Tahna in his burly bare arms. Tobar cracked a sinister smile at Nimur and maintained eye contact with her as he gave his next order.
“Lieutenant Kergol: If the prisoner runs . . . if she disobeys another order . . . or does anything to give away our position to the natives . . . break her baby’s neck.”
8
Silent and single file, the landing party pushed through walls of vines in stealthy pursuit of the Klingon expedition. Each of them had one hand open and free to force past branches and other obstructive vegetation, and one hand gripping a compact phaser.
Theriault had put her faith in Dastin’s tracking skills to keep them heading in the right direction because she didn’t want her people to risk giving away their own position with the glow from their tricorders’ displays. She moved in careful steps, well aware of the Klingons’ reputation for exceptional hearing. Then she remembered the Klingons were also reputed to have superlative olfactory senses. I guess we’ll just have to hope we’re downwind of them.
Ahead of her, Dastin was barely visible. She perceived him and their surroundings as little more than the ghosts of shapes haunting the pitch-black night, profiles limned by brief, broken gleams of dark-blue moonlight that slipped through the jungle’s canopy. It was so hard for her to see even a meter ahead that she almost ran into Dastin’s back when he stopped, raised a fist to signal the landing party to halt, and dropped to one knee.
The first officer recovered her balance and crouched beside the scout. She dropped her voice to the softest hush she could manage. “What is it?”
He lifted his index finger, cueing her to wait a moment. Then he cupped a hand over his mouth and whispered back, “They stopped. Twenty meters ahead. I hear an argument.”
That sounded promising. Dissent in enemy ranks was often useful. “Details?”
Dastin shook his head. “Can’t make out the words. Just the tone.”
Tan Bao inched up behind Theriault and Dastin. “Are we heading uphill?”
“Yes,” Dastin said. “Have been for about half a klick. Based on the maps we made from orbit, I’d say we’re heading toward the large hill in the northeastern part of the island.”
That caught Hesh’s attention. “Commander, I reviewed the geological profile for this island before we left the ship. Our scans showed a network of caves beneath that hill.”
“Artificial or natural?”
“Unknown. The scan was inconclusive. To answer your question with any degree of confidence, I would need to make a more detailed survey of the caves.”
“Well,” Theriault said, “if the Klingons use them for cover, you might get your wish.”
Dastin hissed to silence the others. Theriault strained to hear anything from the Klingons, but all she heard was the nocturnal chorale of the jungle. The Trill scout pivoted back toward the landing party. “They’re moving again. Uphill, straight toward the cave entrance.”
Theriault looked ahead. “All right. Let’s stay with them, see what they’re up to.”
“I’d advise against that,” Dastin said. “The Klingons are using the caves for cover for a reason: because it works. With just two men inside the entrance, they could hold it indefinitely. Our only approach is over open ground. They’d cut us down before we got within ten meters.”
“Great.” Theriault looked back at Hesh. “Did our scans show any other entrances?”
“As I said, they were inconclusive. There are several locations that might offer alternative points of ingress to the cave network, but without visual confirmation of their existence—”
“Forget I asked. Dastin, what if we used our tricorders and phasers to bring down some of those loose boulders from higher up the slope?”
The Trill sounded confused. “To do what? Block them in?”
“If need be. Or at least to create some new cover for a frontal assault.”
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br /> “Trapping them inside won’t gain us anything. It’ll guarantee we have no way of seeing what they’re doing, and they have more than enough air in those caves to last for weeks. Plus, we have to assume they have a ship either close by or coming to get them—which means they could get beamed out of there and we’d have no way of knowing it.”
It was still too soon for Theriault to give up. “Tan Bao? Could you use your medical tricorder to generate the Klingon equivalent of delta waves?”
“You mean to put the guards to sleep from a distance, like a chemical-free anesthetic?”
“Exactly!”
“Sure. If I knew anything about Klingon neurochemistry. Or their sleep patterns. Or what even a baseline Klingon brainwave looks like. Or their susceptibility to subaural frequencies.”
“In other words . . . no.”
“Not a chance.”
“You’re no longer my favorite member of the landing party.”
“Imagine my disappointment.”
Dastin cut in, “Wait, does that make me your favorite by default, or are we treating this like an open position? ’Cause no offense to Hesh, but I really think seniority should count here.”
“Guys, you know that part of the mission where I get fed up and shoot all three of you? We’re coming up on that pretty damned fast.”
Hesh tapped Theriault’s shoulder. “Commander?”
“I mean it, Hesh. We need to figure out a plan to get inside the caves before we—”
“Commander.” The Arkenite’s tone was urgent. “We are not alone.”
Theriault turned and looked back, then up and around. Dastin and Tan Bao did the same, and soon they all were looking at the same thing: a crescent formation of the armored warriors they had seen at the pit of fire. Their massive headdresses caught the cerulean moonlight with every feather, every scale, and every tuft of fur, and their jeweled faux eyes shimmered in the darkness. Most daunting of all, however, were their lances. The pole-arms, which earlier had looked so primitive from a distance, now crackled with pale blue electricity. Even from a few meters away, they presented a palpable threat.
