“I saw a really detailed map of the plateau earlier,” Asti stated. “I’ll go dig for it.”
“Ok, thanks. Selina, can you help me sort these pages?” Kirian asked, pointing to a small character in the top right corner of each page. “It’s an old numbering system.”
“Yes, I recognize it. Hand me that stack and I’ll start putting them in order.”
“See if you can find the page that comes after the bell description. It’s incomplete,” he said, reaching over to pick up and collect the rest of the loose papers scattered across the broken tabletop.
“I’ll help. Give those to me,” Minla offered as she knelt down beside her husband.
Selina held out a single leaf and pointed toward the pages in front of her brother. “Here, this is the one you’re looking for.”
Kirian scanned the writing as he put the page down next to the first pair. “Look at this. It describes the special properties of the location. There’s a deep vein of quartz laced with gold running downward below the bell tower, so it must have been built there specifically, right on top— By the Prime,” he swore with a sharp intake of breath. “The bell must resonate with the formation underground and tie into the portal. That’s bloody brilliant!”
“Here, look at these, Kiri,” Selina pressed eagerly. “They’ve got more symbols and drawings.”
Kirian took the stack from his sister and carefully flipped through the crinkled papers, reading the corresponding descriptions for each bell and tower. “They’re all unique—the shape and mineral content of the geological formations below the towers, the structure of the towers themselves. A couple of them have a geometric framework built down into the ground. No wonder the bells were all cast with different shapes and sizes.”
“I believe each one controls a set of gridlines,” Minla explained. “Some of the pages I have give detailed instructions about how to use the bells to activate and reweave the portal strands.”
Closing his eyes, Kirian let his chin drop down to his chest. “Thank you, Tashi,” he whispered. “This is what we’ve been looking for.”
“So why didn’t Dad know about this?” Selina spat out with obvious vexation. “All these years we’ve been trying to fix the portal on our own. If we had had a clue, we could have hunted this down years ago.”
Kirian turned toward his sister and shook his head. “I don’t know. It looks to me like Tashi had to reconstruct all of this knowledge on his own.”
“Wait a minute,” Minla interjected. “I think I saw something he wrote about that at the end of this batch of pages. Yes, here it is. ‘The voices of the five Cagi were brought to life by Yeshe Pasang in order to open and harness the Ustagi portal.’”
“The first yeshe?” Asti exclaimed as she walked back toward them with a scroll in her hands. “That was over a thousand years ago.”
Nodding, Minla continued with her father’s words. “‘For centuries, the Cagi lay asleep, forgotten and unnecessary while the Makhás masters maintained the health of the portal with high expertise and skill. Little did anyone realize that one day we might need to call on them again. When the Shitza broke the portal and we were unable to repair or reopen the disrupted grid, I desperately began to dig for another solution and found the writings of Yeshe Pasang describing his creation of the Cagi and the portal so long ago. While our masters fled and hid the Khalamas, we hunted down the Cagi and raised their voices once more. The gridlines responded as if they would flow with our configurations once again, but the black energetic force the Shitza have installed in Dasa kept them locked in a bondage we couldn’t break. To keep them from harm, the Cagi now sleep until we find the means of exorcising the demon in Dasa.’” Minla’s voice trailed off and she let out a soft exhale. “Those were the last words he wrote.”
“He never got the chance to go back and try again,” Selina lamented mournfully.
“But at least he got this much written down in case he couldn’t go back himself,” Kirian reflected, placing a comforting hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Tashi was a great man, Min. His actions may very well save us. The blockage in Dasa is gone. We can do this! Asti, did you find the map?”
“Yep,” the scholar replied, kneeling down to unroll the scroll and lay it out so the others could see.
“I have a hunch they’re all somewhere on Tsari,” Kirian reflected as he reached out to help Asti handle the old scroll. “We found a book on the mountain’s geological formations in Tashi’s room.” As Kirian read off the names of the bells’ locations, Asti quickly pinpointed the five landmarks, all at various elevations around the foot of the highest mountain in the northern range.
“That’s it. Now I know what we have to do! I’ve got to get Arman back up here.”
“We’ll start collecting everything we need to take out of here while you go call him,” Asti advised as she re-rolled the map, tipping her head toward the hallway. “Why don’t you go out there while we work. It’ll be quieter for you.”
With a nod, Kirian stood up and stretched his long limbs while Selina and Minla carefully stacked Tashi’s papers in the proper order. Walking out into the hallway, he flipped a ball of light up into the air above his head and leaned back against the wall, taking a good, long breath before closing his eyes to focus on his old friend.
Arman! We need to talk. Can you open a link?
An image of the southern capital formed quickly in his mind. The big bellmaker was running down a street in the midst of a crowd of frenzied leonine people. It was obvious from their terrified grimaces that something frightening was going on.
Kirian, hang on a minute!
Alarmed, Kirian held himself back from speaking and watched Arman move to the edge of the running crowd before turning down a dingy side street with several other people in what looked like an older, run-down quarter of Edu. Darting into a dark alley, Arman flattened himself against the wall and watched people run past the entrance in their flight down the dirty cobblestones.
Arman, what the hell is going on?
The Drahks are arriving in droves to take over the capital. The landing fields are swarming with warships and troops under someone named Maránd.
What about Chao Rong?
Dead. Apparently Overlord Eo was fed up with him and sent Maránd in to clean house and set up a new regime. It’s been bloody in the government buildings and the Portal Center.
Portal Center? How would you know?
The bellmaker laughed. I work there.
What??
I’m a janitor—or I was until today. It’s amazing what you can slide by with when people think you’re stupid.
You—
I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d be apoplectic.
Damn it, Arman—you’re right about that. Did you find out anything useful?
Ohhh, yes. The thing that’s keeping us from communicating off-planet is a huge, encased device they call a portal lock and it takes a whole crew of officers and techs to run it. The Shitza call it ‘The Beast’ because it needs blood to operate. I don’t know how many people have been murdered to keep the fucking thing running.
That’s vile.
That’s Drahkian. The Shitza must have had one up on the plateau when they came after the Khalamas. They probably thought it was an unnecessary expense to keep it up there after they thought we were dead.
Arman, I contacted you because I think we have a way to get out. I’m up at the Namkha Sanctuary. We found Yeshe Choden and some of her team dead in the library as well as a cache of giant bells they hid up here from the Shitza.
Giant bells??
Yeah, you’ll split a gut when you see them. They called them the ‘Cagi.’ The first Makhás made them to create the portal and they’ve sat dormant and forgotten ever since. Tashi Choden tracked them down and tried to use them to repair the portal, but had to give up because of the disruption on the plateau.
Damn! Do you think we can do it?
Yes!! Tashi wrote out extensive notes about h
ow to activate the portal and reweave the knotted strands.
Then we’d better do it fast. From what I heard through Senga’s sigils in the capitol, at least from the conversations that weren’t all in Drahkian, Maránd has an agenda for clamping down the whole planet and we’re on the list. They’ll be hunting for us any time and Drahkian warships have underground sensors.
Shit! I need you up here, Arman, to rehang the bells and make sure they’re tuned before we attempt to reconstruct the portal. Lock onto me and come through. You can help me transport the bells to their towers on Tsari.
I need a little time to take care of something first.
What? There’s no point in you staying down there. It’s dangerous! We can listen in through the sigils if we need to.
Kirian—I have a lover.
Completely taken aback, Kirian stood away from the wall and ran a hand over his face. Does she know what you are?
No. She, uh … thinks I’m a little slow and wonders why I always seem to be dozing.
Do you trust her?
Yes. She lost her family to Chao Rong’s slavers and can barely get by, but she took me in when she thought I was homeless. She has a big heart.
Do you love her, Arman?
The bellmaker dropped his head and let out a deep breath. Yes, but I’ll settle things with her before I—
Bring her. I would never ask you to give her up. She’ll be in for a shock when she sees who you are, who we are.
Arman lifted his head again and smiled. I think she can handle it.
Alright. I’ll bring Niyal and Kalden up here to help me get the bells to Tsari, but I’ll leave the hanging for you. I need a few days to study Tashi’s instructions and to get everyone ready to leave. Be ready to transport directly to Tsari when I call. Will you be safe?
I think so. If anything happens in this part of Edu or else I hear any rumblings from the Drahks about hunting Makhás, I’ll contact you or just come home.
Then we’ll see both of you very soon. Stay alive, Arman.
Kirian came out of the link and collapsed against the wall, letting his head fall back against the cold stone. Taking a deep breath of chilly air in the quiet hallway, he was overcome with a bizarre feeling of unreality as the prospect of finally getting his people off of Lyonnae began to sink into his bones. He could almost taste the sweetness of lifting Rinzen from the darkness and shifting her into space, but the elation he had experienced earlier now had a taint of foreboding which he couldn’t dispel. With the arrival of the Drahks, there was no room for hesitation or misstep, or these could very well be the last short days of the Makhás.
The Zephyr hung in suspension in the middle of an ocean of wreckage. Magnus stood in front of the wide window of the darkened forward conference room staring into the debris, all that remained of the Appin and some anonymous reptilian vessel.
It looked so peaceful, silent, a graceful dance of outwardly spiraling fragments. One minute they had been there. In the next, they were gone. There was no one left, nothing but a fine dusting of once inhabited particles. His eyes searched and searched, looking for something he couldn’t bring back.
Without conscious thought, his right hand rose and slipped into his jacket to pull the strange golden object out of his pocket, shifting it into his left hand where it felt more natural. His fingers tumbled the gold and when it nestled into his palm, a subtle blanket of comfort seemed to settle into his bones. The fleeting thought came to him that someone was there, someone he could feel if he simply reached through the gold to look, but the sensation dissipated and floated away, carried off into the ethers like so much useless refuse.
The shimmering gold of Yuri’s Birdwing hovered at the edge of the debris field. Beside it, the bright shape of the Corum looked on with silent concern.
His headset buzzed with busy chatter over the airwaves and a repetitive beeping told him someone was trying to reach him on a private channel. Absently raising his hand, he touched the receiver once and Yuri’s deep voice came pouring into his head.
“Magnus, finally! I’ve been trying to get through to you. Are you alright?”
“Yeah.”
When he offered nothing further and the silence dragged on, Yuri’s voice broke in again. “You don’t sound alright. What’s going on, Mag?”
Magnus blinked and focused on the last place he had seen the Appin, vaguely hoping to materialize what he wanted to see if he stared out there long enough. “I can’t deal with this, Yuri,” he heard himself say.
“Yes, you can. I know you. Talk to me, Mag.”
He let out a long, slow breath and tightened his grip on the gold in his hand. “Maybe later,” he replied in a flat tone, shifting his gaze to an odd batch of debris that seemed to be moving in the direction of the Zephyr.
“Ok, I’m here. I’ll stay until you’re ready to leave. Call me, Magnus, anytime day or night, even after we get home.” The Tori captain waited for a response and after several moments of silence, the channel went quiet.
The dark clumps of matter heading toward the front of the ship grew in size and the muffled sounds of impact with the hull vibrated through the room. Without warning, a chunky mass of flesh crashed against the glass, jolting Magnus backward in startled shock.
“Bloody hell!”
The torn body of a Drahk smeared upward across the window before flying off over the hull out of sight. As Magnus stared at the swath of beaded dark liquid, a second chunk from the body of a smaller reptilian man hit the ship just above the window and spun away.
Touching his headset, Magnus opened a link with the Zephyr’s lead pilot. “Garen, get two fighters out in the field, now! I want every piece of floating flesh they find caught and pushed into the forward starboard cargo hold before it scatters. Send Sandy to meet me at the bay.”
Turning away from the window, he stalked across the empty room and moved on down the corridor to his left, throwing open the door to the small outer office of the wide cargo bay. A few seconds later, the senior crewman came running from the back of the ship, breathlessly bursting into the room behind him before flipping on the lights to the office and the empty hold on the other side of a long window.
“Bleed the bay, Sandy, and open the outer door.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Magnus stood at the window and watched dispassionately as the wide bay door slid open to reveal the starscape beyond. The shiny forms of two sleek fighters appeared moments later, silently herding dark pieces of debris into the brightly lit cargo hold where they floated in macabre suspension in the middle of the depressurized chamber.
The voice of one of the pilots came on over the relay. “That’s all we could find, Captain. Just about everything else out here is pulverized.”
“Understood. Come on back in. Sandy, close up the bay and drop it.”
The outer door slid slowly into position and as soon as the gravity was reestablished, the glistening masses dropped to the floor with a sickening thud. When the green light came on indicating the air in the bay had stabilized, Magnus threw open the door and walked out across the metal plates, scanning the oozing bodies littered across the floor.
Stepping around the hind quarter of a clawed saur and the partial remains of two reptilian men with thick, beast-like heads, he came to a stop beside the long body of a grayish-skinned Drahk. In all the years he’d heard about these men, tracked down stories about them, and fought them over the skies of Merope, he’d never seen one in the flesh.
Heavily muscled and broad shouldered, the huge reptilian made his own six-and-a-half-foot frame seem small. An arm and the lower portion of one leg were missing and most of the features were badly marred, but the crest on the head was still intact as well as the partially exposed rows of razor-sharp teeth. The damaged insignia on the man’s tattered clothing gave no indication whether he was an officer or a subordinate at the bottom of the rigid Drahkian hierarchy.
Magnus stared at the the bloody corpse at his feet. Only moments ag
o, it had been a man with a name and some kind of unimaginable life—so alien, so violent, the cause of so much pain and death.
Reaching down and grabbing the Drahk’s torn shirt in both fists, Magnus pulled the bloody torso up off the floor and shook it forcefully, splattering thickened blood in all directions. He needed to scream, but he couldn’t scream. He needed to hit something, but this thing in his hands wouldn’t feel it.
“Who are you, goddamn it? Is anyone waiting for you at home? Is anyone dying inside because you’re not coming back?”
Flinging the body back down to the floor, Magnus straightened and closed his eyes, his dripping hands falling loosely to his sides. He stood for several minutes in the empty silence, oblivious to the chilly dampness spreading down the front of his clothing before slowly raising his hand to reactivate his headset.
“Hurik, take us up to the ring and get us back to Tarsus. We’ll be down for repairs until … until the bastard goes after Sahara. Tell the crew to stay close to headquarters.”
With the lurch of the ship into motion, Magnus turned his head toward the open office door at the back. “Sandy,” he yelled. “As soon as we land, get a ground crew over to this bay and open it up.”
Without waiting for an answer, the captain walked past the carcasses over to the side of the wide bay and grabbed hold of a rail for support, staring at the bolts in the heavy gray door while the Zephyr made its way back home to Krii.
The ship came down for a soft landing on the air field, winding to a low hum while the loading ramp was extended outside the cargo bay. When the door rolled up, Magnus ducked beneath it and sauntered down the ramp just as Xiangting and his crew of technicians came running across the pavement.
Descent of the Maw Page 14
