by Frank Morin
She didn’t waste time looking, but drew her sword and severed the spear holding John aloft. He fell in a heap at her feet.
“Let’s get out of here,” Alter said.
“Perhaps not yet,” said a cultured voice behind her that she recognized from long ago.
Eirene spun and found Baladeva standing about twenty feet away. The man in the wide-brimmed hat stood beside him, face still concealed.
Alter sighted on Baladeva but Eirene raised a hand for him to wait. She spoke to the stranger. “Who are you?”
“Up till now, a researcher. In a moment, witness to a dramatic last stand.”
He was not referring to the Spartans.
Without warning, the Persian soldiers all around them snapped out of their stasis. Instead of rushing the Spartan lines, they turned in unison toward Eirene, Alter and John.
Eirene sighed. This was going to get messy. “Why don’t you face me yourself?”
“He doesn’t need to,” Alter muttered, positioning himself behind her, with John between them.
Baladeva saluted, then blew her a kiss before retreating to give the soldiers room. The man in the wide-brimmed hat stood motionless.
John cried out in fear and Eirene snapped, “Use your escape rune, fool.”
That was all the time she had before dozens of enemy fighters swarmed her. She laid about with her sword in huge, double-handed strokes and tried not to notice the feeling of her blade shearing through flesh and bone and bronze. She embraced the battle fury that swept through her and started singing her favorite Roman war song.
The soldiers might be fragments of memory, but they screamed like living men and they bled out with just as much terror as if they had been alive.
Eirene fought with focused intent. Her armor turned dozens of blows and she waded through the enemy, carving a path around John and ever closer to Baladeva and his mysterious companion. Strengthened by the force of Gregorios’ nevron, she could fight all day, and could deal with whatever they threw at her.
Alter fought at her back, snarling at the memory soldiers. His automatic rifle fired impossibly long bursts, but he never ran out of ammo. He tossed grenades that shattered close-packed ranks of soldiers.
Several monsters appeared, either rising from the ground or dropping from the sky, but the soldiers dispatched them. Eirene barely caught glimpses of most of them. She moved one slow step after another, careful to avoid tripping. One stumble and an avalanche of enemy soldiers would bury her. She called to Bastien to wake them, but nothing happened. It seemed only John could do that and he would not or could not get the message out.
Blood coated Eirene’s armor and the stench of battle gagged her. She could barely see through the slits of her helmet and just kept slashing. She hadn’t swung a sword in decades, but could think of no better weapon for such close combat.
She was only five strides away from Baladeva when Alter shouted, “John’s gone! Activated the rune. That’ll pull us out too.”
Everything stopped. The entire battlefield fell silent.
As Eirene began to fade from the nightmare, the man in the wide-brimmed hat spoke into the silence.
“Run if you like. It won’t do you any good.”
His voice chased her into darkness.
“Your world is about to end.”
Chapter Twelve
If Gregorios is right, then Mithridates is a false king and a demigod in disguise. I have heard the tales of Baladeva, but considered them myths. Regardless of his nature, the presence of enforcers in the vanguard bolsters morale. I alone understand the source of their battle prowess. My men only need to witness it, until the day I can negotiate enhancements for them. Then to Rome, where I must convince Shahrokh to grant me the promise of a second life like he has Julius.
~Pompey the Great
John was so shaken by the experience that the medical team sedated him to prevent a heart attack. Sarah didn’t like John, but she didn’t want another person she knew dying in real life.
After the heavy vault doors closed behind the medics and the stretcher wheeling John away, Gregorios turned to the group, hands on hips, his expression sour.
“Someone tell me what happened in there.”
“And how did we get sucked all the way back to Thermopylae?” Eirene added. She looked tired, but otherwise unaffected by the grisly battle.
When they all turned to Sarah, she held up her hands. “Don’t look at me. I was just a passenger.”
“You were with John when the memory first opened,” Eirene said. “What did you see?”
“We were close to the front lines of the battle.” Sarah explained how everything froze and how John started freaking out when he saw Baladeva.
“That concerns me,” Eirene said. “When Alter and I went in to get John, Baladeva was there, trying to kill him.”
“You said he died a long time ago, right?” Alter asked.
“Indeed,” Gregorios said. “About 200 A.D.”
“More like 265,” Eirene said.
“I can’t remember the dates that exactly,” Gregorios said. “It’s been too long.”
“I can’t believe you remember anything from back then.” It still shocked Sarah at times to realize just how old the two of them were. “I can’t even remember much from when I was a kid.”
“Adults remember better,” Gregorios said. “We’d already lived more than one life by then.”
“Facetaker memories are more precise than other humans,” Eirene added. “That’s why Mai Luan needed to use us to hunt for the master rune.”
“Well, that and the fact that no one else has been alive that long,” Alter said.
“True.” Eirene returned to the original topic. “Baladeva was a powerful facetaker and for centuries a sworn enemy to Shahrokh. John finally removed him just prior to the death of King Shapur the First of Persia.”
“Good riddance to them both,” Gregorios muttered.
Tomas spoke for the first time. “If he’s been dead for almost two thousand years, he should’ve been just another memory fragment like everyone else.”
“He should have been,” Eirene agreed. “But he clearly was not.”
“The question is,” Alter said, “was he really aware, or was he just obeying the will of another like the soldiers that tried to kill us?”
“It felt like there was more to him than the others,” Eirene said.
Sarah nodded. “I agree. Baladeva seemed aware of who we were.”
“Maybe it was because he was a facetaker,” Gregorios said.
“No,” Alter said. “If he was a memory fragment, he’d lack the potency to break out of that moment.”
“Then what do you think it was?” Gregorios shot back.
Alter shrugged. “My father might--”
“Leave him out of it,” Gregorios interrupted.
“Baladeva’s behavior is a mystery,” Eirene interjected. “And facing him again after all these years was unsettling, but we’re missing the point.”
“Who is the man in the wide-brimmed hat?” Sarah asked.
She had seen him twice, and both times had unsettled her, especially since she hadn’t seen his face. There was something not right about that man.
“You’re sure it was the same man you saw in Florence?” Gregorios asked.
“Confident.”
“He’s the one we need to track down,” Tomas said. “He has to be a facetaker, a memory walker.”
“Why is he following us?” Sarah asked.
“And how did he get a machine?” Alter added.
“And what are his intentions?” Eirene shared his final warning. “It didn’t sound like an idle threat.”
“Those are the questions we need to answer,” Gregorios said. He turned to Bastien and his other children. “Do you have anything to add?”
Francesca spoke. “If we’re going to do this again, we need to figure out a better way to manage the drain. The more you tamper with the memories, the more yo
u exhaust your nevron and draw upon ours. If we’re not careful, a major conflict could very quickly get out of hand.”
“We’ll work on it,” Gregorios said. “Alter?”
“I’ll see what I can come up with.”
Sarah was glad to hear it. Alter knew runes better than any of them, and he needed projects to keep him focused. When he got much free time, he usually started reverting by default back to plotting ways to kill Gregorios.
Tomas gave Sarah a kiss and left to continue the hunt for Mai Luan’s heka cell. They were still the best lead for tracking down the other machine that seemed to be out there.
The facetakers followed him out, but Sarah lingered in the vault with Alter. He crouched by the machine, hunting for any other runes they might have missed that might explain the bizarre events of the memory experience. When he noticed her lingering, he rose.
“You’re worried about it, aren’t you?” Sarah asked.
He shrugged. “Things don’t happen without a reason. We just need to figure out that reason and then we can counter it.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
Alter drew closer, his expression intent as he studied her face.
“What is it?” she asked, feeling self-conscious under his scrutiny. Those dark eyes, that handsome face rattled her more than she could ever let him know. More than that, his mastery of rune lore drew her to him like a magnet. Studying runes had become something of an addiction to her, with Alter her supplier.
“How are you doing, Sarah?”
“I didn’t get hurt in there.”
“That’s not what I asked,” he pressed, taking her hand.
She felt moved by his obvious concern, but shouldn’t Tomas be the one asking her how she was doing? He’d rushed off to the next challenge, as was his duty as captain, but he’d barely paused to make sure she was all right. Was it because he trusted her, or because he just didn’t think to ask?
“I’m fine, Alter,” Sarah insisted. “Thanks.”
Instead of relenting, he said, “Sarah, I was there in Thermopylae. It was a nightmare. Most people couldn’t handle a scene like that.”
“It’s not the first nightmare I’ve walked through,” she said, but couldn’t suppress a shiver from the memory. It had been terrible. She had been trying not to think about it.
“Berlin was worse,” Alter added softly. “And I left you.”
“You saved us when you helped Eirene,” Sarah pointed out, wishing he hadn’t brought up Berlin. It reminded her of the terror she’d felt when Alter had abandoned the memoryscape to confront Eirene.
“But I left you,” he insisted, his tone bitter. “I left you to the mercies of that Cui Dashi monster. Sarah, you could have died. Anyone else would have, but you defeated her.”
“I had a lot of help.”
“But you did it.” His skin was warm against hers where he held her hand, and his handsome face was earnest. “You have no idea how special you are, how remarkable. I wish…” He trailed off, his cheeks actually flushing, and he finally glanced away.
His sincerity was touching. She squeezed his hand. “We’re all a team, Alter. We won together. We’ll figure out this new threat together. I’m glad you’re here to help.”
She slipped her hand out of his and retreated a step. His intensity was unnerving. She cared for Alter, but couldn’t afford to let him see it. He’d read it wrong, and she couldn’t allow herself to become drawn closer to Alter, not while exploring her relationship with Tomas.
To change the subject, she extracted from her pocket the paper with her partially completed rune. Runes were a topic they could talk about all day, the one way she could get Alter to be himself without worrying about how he’d interpret her every gesture.
She loved how the new rune was turning out. So far it looked like a complex pattern of Chinese characters and Egyptian hieroglyphics intertwined, but she felt on the verge of something magnificent. Her secret fear was that by entering that last memory with the rune in her pocket, somehow it had become partially activated and contributed to the problems they encountered.
“What rune is that?” Alter asked.
“A new rune I’m working on.” She held it up hesitantly.
Alter studied it. “You’re progressing faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
His approval meant a lot and she smiled. She had an innate feel for runes. They called to her like nothing else she’d ever known. As she studied them, she often felt she was rediscovering truths she’d already understood, but had temporarily forgotten. It was exciting, and a bit creepy. Several times, she’d recognized the purpose of a new rune even before Alter explained it.
Eirene had suggested her innate talent might stem from a sensitivity to the soul manipulations the runes represented. Sarah had undergone almost as many soul transfers as Gregorios and Eirene. For a mortal, that was unheard of. Had it not been for the protective properties of the machines, her mind would have fractured into insanity long ago.
She hoped to progress far enough in rune lore to assist Alter in his research on the machines. That would be exciting, and it would offer a tangible proof that she was a contributing member to the team.
“So you like it?”
“I sense great potential here,” he said thoughtfully.
“It’s not finished.” She was happy he hadn’t suggested the rune might have caused issues. She couldn’t see how it might have since she didn’t possess a rounon gift, but felt relieved anyway.
Alter shifted closer and traced a pair of marks near the center of the rune with his finger. “I don’t recognize these.”
They were pieces from the master rune that had appeared over the skyline of 1945 Berlin. She and Gregorios had seen it while fighting Mai Luan. She hadn’t dared incorporate the entire master rune after all the dire warnings from Alter about the dangers such runes represented. They tapped the true fabric of history, or something like that, drawing upon the souls of everyone in the world who had been tied to those pivotal moments.
Those small pieces of the master rune had called to her though, and she couldn’t help but incorporate them. The resulting rune was far more complex than the first rune she had designed, but there was something still missing. She wasn’t sure yet what that might be, but she’d recognize it when she saw it.
She decided not to mention the master rune to Alter. He wouldn’t handle it well.
“I’ll show you where I got them later,” she said, taking the paper from him.
He released it reluctantly as their fingers touched on the paper.
“I don’t think you should tamper with runes that even I don’t know,” Alter said. “You have a natural flair with runes, but if you’re not careful you could hurt someone.”
“The first one worked,” she said defensively.
“It shouldn’t have.”
“Why not? You keep saying that but you haven’t explained.”
Alter sat on one of the nearby chairs. “Only a couple of basic runes work well on the left shoulder blade. That’s a soul point, but it can usually bond only simple runes that magnify strength.”
“So why did my rune work?”
She had designed a rather complex rune, the same one that Alter’s great-grandmother had used. He hadn’t yet known the truth about Eirene. Where Eirene had worn the rune on her right side, just above her hip, Sarah had felt strongly that it needed to be on her shoulder blade. The rune had proven extremely powerful.
“It shouldn’t have,” Alter repeated. “Your rune links several attributes, including agility, reflexes and focus. Tying that complex rune to that particular strength point should have failed. Or when it did bond, it risked throwing your inner balance off, or even triggering opposite effects to those the rune was supposed to enhance.”
“But it didn’t do that.”
“No, it didn’t.” He still looked like he hardly believed it.
“You said some people have managed it.”
“A coupl
e of times,” he admitted reluctantly. He hated sharing deeper runesmith lore. Had anyone but Sarah been in the room, she doubted he would have said anything. “But they were different. They possessed the rarest of the rounon gifts.”
“What kind of gifts.”
That was very interesting. He had never mentioned other types of rune gifts before. It was always the hunter gift or the kashaph abomination, which were variations of the same basic rounon powers.
The vault door opened and an enforcer stepped inside. “Alter, Gregorios wants a status report on when the machines could be ready for another test with additional failsafes installed.”
“I’ll get right on it.” He gave Sarah an apologetic shrug.
Sarah could have throttled the enforcer. She wouldn’t get anything else useful out of Alter now.
As Alter and the enforcer discussed the specifications Gregorios was looking for, Sarah headed for the door.
She turned before exiting. “Alter, I’m ready to make my first rune permanent.”
“You may want to wait a little longer.”
“No. Let’s do it today.”
“But, Sarah--”
“Today. Promise me.”
He sighed. “Fine. I’ll find you later.”
She gave him a wide smile. “You’re the best.”
After the two run-ins with the man in the wide-brimmed hat, she couldn’t shake a lingering worry that waiting was the last thing she should do.
Chapter Thirteen
The glory of a second life achieved with wealth is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.
~Sallust
Sarah was hoping to discuss her rune with Eirene, but learned that Eirene and Tomas were scheduled to leave that evening for Thailand. She cornered Tomas at dinnertime. They had been planning to go out to a nice restaurant, but he couldn’t get away. The task force tracking the heka cell kept him busy late, and he needed to pack.
They grabbed some take-out food from the cafeteria. While he drove them back toward Quentin’s mansion, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to Thailand?”
