Etherwalker

by Cameron Dayton

  “Tell me. Did he have power over machines? Did he bear the marks of scale and talon? What was his name? Speak! Where did he go? Where is the Pensanden!?”

  From the table behind him, a clear voice pierced the air.

  “Fool! Tell him nothing!”

  The Baron of Midian rose shakily to his feet and took a lurching step forwards. He had cut through the cords binding his legs with a piece of glass and staggered toward his stunned captor. The lumbering torturer moved to intercept him, throwing the table aside so that it smashed against the wall. Mosk turned, hissing.

  The baron, face flushed red by the last light of day, gathered himself up and made a mighty leap. He collided with a squealing Mishael Keddrik. There was the sound of tearing cloth as the shirt came away in Mosk’s claw, and both men tumbled into the lengthening shadows far below.

  Mosk held the fluttering cloth in the breeze for a moment and then let it follow the two men down into darkness. A black silhouette against the slowly purpling sky, the Swarmlord lowered his arm. The soldier behind him froze as a low-pitched rattle filled the room.

  “You will return to your Clot Primal and ask him to slowly remove your hearts, one for stupidity and the other for sluggishness.”

  “Yes, Hiveking. May my third heart serve you better.”

  The torturer gave a shameful click of regret before turning and shuffling out of the room. Mosk called out after him.

  “And tell the Matron that I need a new Proximate by week’s end!”

  Rewn’s Fork. That was nearby the woods where one of his earlier scout groups had gone missing. It had to have been the Pensanden, and he must have had help from a small army of these Southerners to be able to dispatch an entire Clot.

  Mosk had known Primal Kret, the group’s leader, since First Molt. Kret had been a ferocious, cunning creature.

  Rewn’s Fork, on the edge of the Horeb Wilds. The unbroken forest extended for hundreds of miles to the west—an army could hide there for years. Mosk did not want to wait years. He decided to send a messenger back to the Vestigarchy for more matrons and whatever reserves could be spared from the Border Wars.

  The forests would be black with soldiers in a week. Mosk felt his blood stir as hunting enzymes began to course through his body. As an afterthought, he decided to send a Clot of searchers north, on the off chance that his quarry might try to do the obvious.

  Chapter 6

  “So come one, come all to this carnival land,

  We’ve wasted them tears, filled our pockets with sand,

  And Baby, you’ll see this whole show is a joke,

  A spinning ballet of heartbreak and smoke.

  Yeah, yeah, oh yeah! Yeah! Yeah, yeah, oh yeah!”

  —chorus to “Salt-lick Illusion” by the Dogfish Knights

  Enoch stole a glance at his gangly companion, who was humming merrily as he crouched over the body of a plump coney. With long fingers, no more than bones with gray skin stretched over them like leather, Rictus finished cleaning the small beast and spat it over the morning fire.

  Enoch had half expected the specter to evaporate in the rosy light of dawn like some misty nightmare, yet there he was, licking cracked teeth with a dry tongue and chuckling to himself like an impatient little boy waiting for the morning sausages to cook.

  The previous night had been an odd one, with Rictus leading him through the jumbled ruins as though they were on a carefree jaunt through the meadow, all the while singing and laughing and jabbering in that peculiar dialect.

  Bubble gum? Funk? What are these words?

  Enoch had toyed with the idea of bolting, sure that this towering stack of bones and leather could never match his speed through the tumbled masonry of the ruins, but each time he quelled the urge with reason.

  I don’t need anyone, but he’s done nothing but prove himself a friend. I suppose if things prove otherwise, I can always stir up his wires with a little push.

  He hoped he wasn’t relying too heavily on his newfound powers, but he had nothing to gauge by.

  How much is too much? Pushing the platabruja left me a little tired, but I feel capable of much more.

  He hoped that in the North he would find more people like him. He had so many questions.

  Master Gershom, you left me too soon.

  The loss of his master had left an aching sore in his chest, and it seemed to swell when Enoch had time to reflect on all that had happened.

  Rictus broke him from his reverie by announcing that breakfast was served. The smell of simmering meat made Enoch’s mouth water, and his stomach grumbled noisily.

  “You’d thought that old Rictus had forgotten about the vittles, didn’t you? No sir, I may not require eats nowadays thanks to Nanny,” here he tapped the box at his chest with a bony finger, “but I remember what it was like being a hungry kid.” The specter paused, still absently tapping at the box on his chest.

  “At least I think I do.”

  Rictus yielded the spitted coney, and Enoch set to the hot meat with a passion, ignoring burnt lips as he wolfed down the steaming food. Rictus watched the boy eat with sheer pleasure, eyes half-lidded with imaginary delight, even mimicking the chewing sounds that Enoch made. Enoch laughed at this, and, surprised at the sound, almost choked on a leg bone. The specter swatted him on the back with a chuckle.

  “Slow down, kid. We’ll rest here until nightfall and then be on our way. Odds are, we lost the witch in the labyrinth back there, but I guarantee that she’ll be on our trail soon enough with some new thugs in tow.”

  Rictus crawled under the shade of a leaning monolith, and soon all that was visible from the shadows was the pulsing red light at his chest. For the first time since he’d followed the specter into the ruins, Enoch spoke. His voice sounded husky and tired.

  “Why don’t we travel by day? It will be much easier going, and we won’t be taken by surprise.”

  Rictus’s voice came nonchalantly from the shadows, “The daylight hurts my eyes—one of the unfortunate side effects of my condition. Besides, you’re all dirty and unkempt—we don’t want you scaring people half to death, do we?”

  Enoch’s hand went unconsciously to his face, which was still swollen and smeared with crusted blood. A low, dry laugh bubbled out of the shadow.

  “No sir, folks don’t take too kindly to an unwashed kid. I couldn’t go anywhere with you looking like that.”

  Enoch looked at the garish, skeleton face of his companion, then dropped his hand and smiled.

  This laughter, this unexpected warmth, finally overcame his fear and revulsion of the undead thing. He lay back and closed his eyes, surprised that he could feel this way so soon after his master had died. Enoch wondered if he should feel bad about that, but before the thought could take root, he was asleep.

  Chapter 7

  “And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion . . .”

  —Revelations 13:2 KJV

  From her secret spot in the joint between two girders, Sera watched the wagon being unloaded. The handlers were being extremely cautious, more so than they usually were with Nyraud’s little pets. Sera could tell that this was a special delivery. It had been given a private pen instead of being allowed to roam the garden like the nerwolves, the grendels, and the chee. She toyed with her hair as she mused, winding the long, blue strands between her fingers.

  A delivery from the South. I thought it was still a wasteland down there. Have the jungles survived?

  Instead of the usual pair of handlers, a full dozen of them stood around this wagon, barbed lances held at the ready. Sera reached up and twisted her eye-rings, bringing the details hundreds of feet below her into sharp focus.

  Upper lips and foreheads glittered with sweat, knuckles white with tension. One of the larger men had lifted the door to the pen, and the wagon’s mouth was brought flush with the opening. A rumbling growl thundered from under the canvas tarpaulin, so low and strong
that Sera felt its vibrations in the metal under her feet. She tried to focus deeper into the shadows where the canvas had pulled away from the wagon cage.

  Just then, there was a flash of tawny movement as the rumble spilled into a roar. A scream rang out through the garden, spooking a flock of redjays from a tree just between Sera’s roost and the wagon. The intervening chaos blurred her autofocus, and it was a few moments before she was able to find the wagon again. It had been turned over on its side and was now surrounded by shouting men who were thrusting their lances into its depths. One of the men was on his back in a spreading pool of blood, his torso split open to the sky. Another angry roar echoed from below, and the wagon shook. The handlers began to panic, jabbing repeatedly into the cage. Their lances dripped red.

  Sera detected a commotion at the other end of the garden. Spreading her wings, she quietly glided down to the tree below, remembering to stay distant and in the visual lee of the tree the whole time. She landed on a branch on the far side and crawled around the trunk to the branch the birds had vacated. It was moist with their droppings, something which would certainly have disgusted the other girls back at the Spire—especially Taras and Keyr.

  They’re such children. Some things require maturity.

  Sera started to shake her head and then froze.

  Who would be crossing the sward but none other than King Nyraud himself! He was followed by the usual retinue of counselors, guards, and lesser nobles; many rushed and stumbled to keep up—none wanted to be alone in the Garden. The King usually left such rabble in the court when he went hunting, so their presence now indicated that this had been an unplanned detour. The King looked furious.

  “Idiots! Do you think I had this Ur’lyn brought all the way across the Broken Sea so you could skewer it?”

  Even at this distance, King Nyraud was an imposing figure with his violet cape thrown back over broad shoulders. A giant of a man, his sharp features and slanting eyes bespoke the vain cunning of a hunter. Despite what his subjects thought, Sera knew that Nyraud was more than that—he was a hedonist who relied on a practiced ferocity to sate his appetites. She shivered and moved closer to the trunk where the shadows were deeper.

  The handlers had backed away from the cage as King Nyraud approached, twisting their goads in sweaty hands. The roaring from underneath the canvas had again subsided into a menacing growl.

  Fascinated, Sera quietly soared down to a lower tree. She landed on the far side and then crawled from the shadows along its length, her fear of the Hunter King swallowed up by curiosity.

  What manner of beast kills armed men from inside a cage? Even Nyraud is tense!

  Focusing deeply with her metal eyes, she could see the bunched muscles on the king’s neck as he approached the cage, his nostrils flared. Granted, she could have seen that from above—an angel’s eyes were made for distant viewing. But there was something about being close, about hearing and smelling what she saw—these are the sort of thoughts which had earned Sera her “odd-feather” status back home. This was why Taras and Keyr teased her.

  Maybe I’m more of a hunter than an angel? You ever dally with your upstairs neighbors, good King?

  She mused about that for a moment, then shook her head. As she leaned forward, a twig snapped under her hand.

  In a flash of stormy cloth, Nyraud whirled around. Sera stilled a gasp and slowly crawled back along the branch.

  There is no way he could have heard that. He is two dozen meters away!

  “Surround that tree, men! We have a spy in our midst! Archers! Archers!”

  The sounds of running feet filled the Garden. Sera glanced around fearfully—the tree foliage hemmed her in on both sides and above. To fly she would have to swoop low under the surrounding branches, and already the sound of arrows whistling through the lower canopy ruled out that idea. Nyraud’s booming voice carried through the leaves.

  “To the left, yes! Now aim higher. Higher! Can’t you see her, you fools? There! Underneath the large branch covered with bird scat!”

  An arrow was suddenly embedded in the wood next to her feet.

  Time to go!

  There was plenty of wing space on the branch above her. A quick leap and she had it in her hands. Or almost did. Her fingers slid through warm moisture. Damn birds!

  The Garden floor was rushing up at her, and she barely remembered to spread her wings in time. The trimmed grass bent low under the wind of her passage, and only an instinctual spin to the right saved her from colliding with one of the archers, who, caught in mid-chortle at what he had thought was a downed target, dove to one side and knocked a screaming courtesan on his face.

  I must gain altitude!

  Tilting her tertials forward, Sera soared up into the protective greenery of the trees and began beating her wings furiously. Branches swayed in her wake and leaves drifted down onto the milling crowd below.

  Where is—? Oh!

  A shadow pounced from the branch above her. Sera tucked her wings and twirled, hearing the whistle of a knife through air as Nyraud spun over her to land nimbly on a limb three meters below.

  How did he get up there so fast?!

  Heart beating like a drum, Sera spread her wings and let the velocity of her freefall carry her up and out of the canopy.

  Arrows clattered against the girders around her as she reached the tangled iron safety of the Garden’s roof. No man would follow her there—the upper levels belonged to the birds, the clouds, and the Alaphim.

  Nobody is going to believe that I escaped an encounter with the Hunter King! I don’t believe it myself. Well, not that I can tell anybody that I was here. Stupid treaty.

  Her thoughts turned to curiosity as she rose through a shattered skylight to catch a rising thermal that would carry her to Windroost Spire.

  I’ll have to ask old Lamech what an “Oor-Lin” is. Didn’t he used to fly over parts of the Broken Sea on patrol?

  She sighed.

  Back when there were enough of us to patrol that far.

  The melancholy thought was swept away as quickly as it came as Sera enjoyed the gentle caress of warm air on her pinions. She was young, and what could be better than to spread your wings and stretch as the warm earth exhaled you skyward. Even now, in these dark times, to be an angel was sheer joy.

  It wasn’t until she had landed at the Spire that she reached back and discovered that her ponytail was missing.

  Chapter 8

  “They say that she will never get off the ground. Are they worried that the core won’t reach the suborbital construction site due to faulty engineering? Ha! Nothing so mundane. No, they say she’ll never get off the ground because there are too many people in high places who don’t like the idea of folks starting up all by themselves. Settling a world by themselves. And 70 light years is a long way to send the tax men.”

  — Admiral Ca’uich Na, at the groundbreaking ceremony for El Arko de Xibalba. The last recorded interview before his assassination.

  Despite the danger of entering the city, Enoch found himself trembling with anticipation.

  Babel, the city of a thousand tongues! Mishael Keddrik used to say that it was carved from one of the Serpent’s own fangs.

  Indeed, from this distance the city resembled a broken fang piercing the night sky. Rictus had paused at the sight and pulled back his hood, the tattered remnant of a stolen burial shroud. His eyes were hidden in shadow, and Enoch wondered what kind of memories he might have of this old city. With a light wind pulling at his tattered disguise, Rictus seemed even more ghostly than ever.

  Well, the disguise was his idea.

  Before leaving the refuge of the ruins, Rictus had wrapped the shroud around his body desert-style, telling Enoch that he’d seen nomads from the South dressed so. Enoch had covered himself in similar fashion, cringing at what his master would have surely condemned as desecration. It did, however, hide the nature of the swords he carried. Rictus had whistled through his teeth when he first saw them.


  The signature tools of the Nahuati blademasters, he had said, were rarely seen south of Tenocht. They represented an open invitation to a duel if you were lucky, and gallows if you weren’t. As handy as Enoch was with the weapons, he didn’t feel deserving of such a title just yet—nor did he wish to defend it.

  He reached under the shroud to adjust his scabbard, which was chafing, and sighed.

  I may have been trained in the ways of a Nahuati, but that doesn’t make me accustomed to wearing these swords on a long march.

  Rictus had asked to see what Enoch could do with the weapons on their second night of travel, and Enoch had refused. For some reason he felt that drawing his master’s swords for show would be wrong. The specter just shrugged and said that he could “suit himself.” Enoch wondered if the comment referred to the shabby state of his clothing, but after a quick glance at his companion’s ancient leathers—skins kept from the edge of decay by the same tek which animated their owner—he decided that it must be another remnant of his odd language.

  The journey that night had felt exceptionally long. Trudging through the crumbled foundations of an abandoned temple, Enoch couldn’t help but make a comparison between the setting and his own ruined life. Everything that he had known and loved was gone. Was dead. The numbness he had felt in the days following his master’s burial was leaving—evaporating—in the frigid heat of true sorrow.

  The following night, Enoch had drawn his swords and made an effort to move through the opening steps of Cisne Caido. Rictus was impressed, but he thought that it might be useful to teach Enoch something a little more “lowbrow.” Every night since then, they’d sparred with shrouds wrapped around their weapons to muffle the sounds—and to minimize dismemberment. Rictus was reminded to disconnect the cable and silence his humming longsword after his shroud shivered apart in a flurry of dry powder. Enoch shuddered to think what would have happened if he’d tried to block that first strike.