by Monte Cook
Taking a bit of the stretch tape from his kit, Kyre tore it into three strips, and pinched Quenn’s skin together with his fingers. Quenn didn’t flinch when Kyre crossed the tape, nor when he let go and everything stretched together. He made a small sound in the back of his throat, and swallowed it away before it was finished. He’d been with Rillent a long time, then, Kyre guessed. Long enough to come to expect not just death, but pain, the kind that went on without promise of an end.
The ones Rillent chose as trenchers were usually not as slight as this one; bigger, broader, hardier. But perhaps the Aeon Priest was running out of options, taking whatever labor he could. Certainly they knew he’d been speeding up the digging recently, moving at a breakneck speed. Literally. Thorme’s runners had called back three fatal injuries among the trenchers just this season. In the past, fatal injuries didn’t always mean fatal accidents. Trenchers took their own lives sometimes, as a means of escape. It was happening less and less, though, despite the conditions growing worse. If Rillent could find a way to enter a mind as strong as Aviend’s, Kyre couldn’t imagine what he could do to someone with less utter ferocity in their head.
“Better?” he asked as he finished. Quenn opened his mouth to answer, winced as he put a bit of weight on his leg, and then nodded. “We have a true chirurgeon back at our base. She can do a much better job of fixing you up. I promise this is just temporary.”
As Quenn moved, his shirt shifted. Around his neck was what Kyre hadn’t been able to see before, an amulet, green and gold, a hue that matched his hazel eyes. It was a three-dimensional star built of triangles inside triangles. It only took Kyre one glance to recognize the six-pointed symbol as the one that was etched all over their base. The star of Gavani.
So the boy wore one of Gavani’s stars, all of which were long rumored to have been lost or destroyed when the religion faded. He was too young to be a worshiper. His mother then? A grandparent? Or maybe a relic found in the dirt and drit and passed along without meaning. The last was most likely, as Gavani’s followers had died out or given up long ago.
What weirdness was it that the very boy they’d rescued wore the pendant of the forgotten god whose temple they had taken over as their base of operations? If Kyre thought Rillent had any inkling of what they’d been doing or where they were holed up – before tonight, at least – he might have thought the boy a plant. Albeit an obvious one. But he didn’t. Still, where had the boy come by it and what meaning did it have for him?
A mystery for a later time, but one that he was certain to want to ask.
For now, he asked, “Can you walk? It’s a bit of a hike.” Longer, and he wasn’t a fan of lying, but where before he’d wanted to see what Quenn could handle, now he didn’t want to overwhelm him before they’d started.
Kyre could almost see the moment when Quenn chose to shake off the shadows that were encroaching upon him. When he looked up again, his eyes were steady. A soft, smart green. Good. They could also use more smart.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Why were you at the kubric? Do you work for Arch Boure?”
Arch Boure indeed. Kyre almost laughed, except that it was far scarier than it was funny. Rillent always did have a too-high sense of himself. Even Kyre had seen that at the beginning, and Kyre had seen so very little back then.
“I’m Kyre,” he said. He debated whether to tell him who they really were, but held it back. He couldn’t say why. Habit maybe. Or uneven footing. “And I can answer all of the rest of that – and any other questions you have – once we’re to safety.”
“You’re going to take me back to him, aren’t you? I know you are.” The wild eyes were back. So much white. So little green. In the end, it was a good thing that Aviend was stubborn and smart enough to have sent the two of them off together. For all her strengths, Aviend wasn’t that great with strangers in a panic – with most people, really. He could just imagine the two of them trapped in this illusionary box together. Aviend would already be shouting obscenities and Quenn would be running breakneck through the woods in the dark.
“Trust me. We didn’t put our…” He was about to say plan. “Our lives at risk to save you just to put you back in Rillent’s clutches. But we do want to ask you some questions, once your leg is fixed up. See if there’s anything you know that will help us learn more about Rillent. Would that be all right?”
“You’re not with him?”
“Him,” said with both reverence and fear. Anger and love. But, Kyre was glad to hear, more anger and fear than the others.
“No.”
Quenn lowered the glowglobe and Kyre caught a flicker of his expression in the shadows.
“You’re not going to bolt, are you?” Kyre asked him. “At least not until we get your leg sewn up and give you a hot meal?”
The mention of food seemed to do Quenn in. Kyre could see it in the way his shoulders softened. He wouldn’t run. At least not yet.
“Tell me who you are,” he said. “Just… isn’t that a fair thing to ask? I’m tired and scared and I am, honestly, a little surprised to be alive right now. So, please just tell me something, anything, that says you’re not taking me back to him.”
Kyre felt a stab, needlesharp, along his lower back. He hadn’t meant to make him beg. He’d been aiming for efficient, not brutal.
“We’re a small group…” He paused, wanting to be certain about his phrasing. He still wasn’t a hundred percent sure of Quenn’s story. There was a chance – so very small, but still there – that he was a spy, a plant. It had happened before. “…that has been working on a plan to…” Careful, careful. “To rebalance the power in the Stere.”
“By killing him.” It wasn’t a question, exactly, and so Kyre chose not to answer it. They’d tried so many other ways, and none of them had worked. Killing was their last resort. “And I botched that by running away.” Also not a question. Kyre let it go, waiting to see if there was more.
There was. “Right?” If nothing else, Quenn was persistent.
“It was our choice to rescue you,” Kyre said. He felt like he’d said that once already, but maybe that was a false memory. Everything from the point where he’d raised the launcher to his eye until this very moment felt blurry and warped, like trees through a thick rain. And through all his attempts at calm, there was a pulsebeat in his brain. Insistent. Panicked. Aviend.
“You knew,” Quenn said. “About the blackout. Just like I did.” Not a rhetorical question, but one that was a gateway to the knowledge he already had locked in his brain. Kyre saw a flicker in his eyes. He was piecing an understanding together in his head.
Kyre gave him a few seconds to do so. Quenn tucked his lower lip into his teeth and stared at Kyre for a long moment. Kyre focused his impatience into something internal, a hard-pulsed heartbeat, a quickened breath. “Are you going to try again?”
“I don’t know,” Kyre said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I do know we need to go, though. The longer we stand here…”
The refraction’s edges were already starting to waver and disappear. If they stayed here any longer, they’d be completely exposed. It was likely that nothing was out there; they were far away from both the crater and the base, not even close to any of the other kubrics. But Rillent wasn’t the only thing to fear in Steremoss woods. Especially not in the dark.
“Then let’s go,” Quenn said.
“Stay close,” Kyre cautioned. “These woods are impossible in the dark.”
“I know,” the boy said, and left it at that.
The suggestion to stay close was unnecessary, for it took only a few moments before they both discovered that Quenn, for all his bravado, could not walk more than a few steps without having to stop and rest. Kyre stripped off his coat and wrapped its stiff fabric tight around Quenn’s leg, and then offered him a shoulder. It wasn’t fast, and every slow step made Kyre’s panic for Aviend ratchet one step higher. At least they were moving.
This section of the woods was lon
g overgrown, appearing untouched. They’d worked hard to keep it that way. No trail marked their passage, and they had to weave through overhanging trees, grasping vines, and rocky outcrops. The unnamed river ran off to their left, the sound of it Kyre’s main guide toward the base.
This wasn’t the part of the forest they’d grown up in, he and Aviend, but now he was as familiar with it as if it had been part of his life, always. So many practice runs through here. So much wasted time and effort. And, yet, he could hear Quenn breathing beside him and knew they’d done the right thing. Made the right choice. He’d found the hardest decisions were often the easiest to live with, at least on the inside.
“Rillent has traps set in the conduits,” Quenn said. “With teeth and sword.”
Quenn was staring at him. This was a test that Kyre didn’t know how to pass, so he told the truth. “I know,” Kyre said. “I put them there for him. A long time ago.”
He didn’t say any more. Quenn would have to decide on his own what he thought of Kyre’s choices.
They hobbled along in silence for a while.
“You really gave up the chance to kill…” Quenn was silent for so long that Kyre thought at first he’d fallen into silence or changed his mind about the question, but then he said. “Arch… Rillent to save me?” Rillent was Rilnt. And clearly hard for him to say.
Kyre’s first response was more unkind than he meant it to be, and he was glad he didn’t say it out loud. “I made a decision. I believe it was the right one.”
“And that lady? The one with the mean face? Does she believe that too?”
Once, Kyre would have taken umbrage at that. Punched someone, maybe. Or at least tried to defend her with his words. But he knew if Aviend had heard Quenn say that, she would feel proud, not insulted. He hoped the two of them would have the chance to meet. “Aviend,” he said. “Yes. I think she also believes it was the right one.”
Quenn’s footfall cracked a branch, startling a flock of aphalians in mid-feast. They went stock still for a moment, heads lit up in green and gold, chirps broadcasting their alarm.
At the sound, Quenn nearly took off. It took Kyre’s quick hand on his arm to keep him steady. A moment later, the aphalians scattered, spreading brightly lit seeds from their backs as they went.
Morning always came on in the Stere like it was fighting off the night for its right to time. Fast and bright, leaving him blinking. The river off to his side bubbled with energy, growing raucous. They were getting close.
Even though he knew it was almost impossible, Kyre still felt a sliver of hope that Aviend would be at the base when they arrived. That thought alone, of her waiting there for him, was what drove him forward, what kept his feet pushing through the snagging vines and wet branches.
Quenn hadn’t said anything for a few hours, but he’d stayed upright and moving ever forward. He was no longer leaning on Kyre’s shoulder, but following along behind. Shock, probably. Keeping him from feeling the pain. Kyre didn’t push. It was clear that he was determined not to be left behind.
As morning settled in, Kyre caught flickers of movement, purple-grey against the green of the leaves. The famous ghosts of ghost-haunted Steremoss.
As a child, Kyre had thought the apparitions his friends. His only friends, in fact, until he’d met Aviend. He’d been drawn to them, a longing that had no name, a desire to connect and make contact. He thought he’d recognized something in them, a likeness, maybe. A loneliness. A sensation of being lost. Of being in the wrong when or the wrong where.
But he was no longer a child, and he knew the ghosts for what they were – nothing more than anomalies of the earth. Empty and hollow as any other signal, explicable, alien. Not his friends at all. There were more now than when he’d been young. The earth shifting or change in energies, who knew why. He didn’t look at them anymore, but they were always there in the corners of his eyes, as if begging him to once again believe in them.
He didn’t comment on them and neither did Quenn. That meant Quenn had either grown up in the Stere – so used to them that he barely noticed – or that he couldn’t see them at all. Some small percentage of people who lived in the Stere couldn’t see the anomalies. No one seemed to know why.
They were closing in on the base when Quenn spoke for the first time in a long while.
“Mishda paal,” the boy said from behind him. Not the Truth. Some other local dialect? Whatever it was, it was one that Kyre didn’t know.
Kyre turned. Between him and Quenn, a tall thin shape. It was the first time he’d looked at an apparition full-on in a long time, years upon years, and he was startled to remember how human they looked. A body, a face, even an expression – this one of surprise, perhaps. He’d convinced himself long ago that the people he saw in the ghosts were a figment of his imagination, of his desire to make contact. Perhaps that was still true, but he didn’t think so.
He could see Quenn through the vibrating form, his skin greyed by the vision. He was kneeling unsteadily, down on his good knee in the mud, his head lowered. He gripped his star amulet around his neck in one hand, holding it out toward the apparition. Kyre had heard of such things, those who believed that the ghosts were not ghosts, but gods, worthy of their kneel. But he’d never met anyone who believed it.
Kyre stepped forward, meaning to do what? Stop Quenn? Tell him the truth about the ghosts? But something stopped him, and he stayed his movement, letting Quenn continue in his offering.
The ghost reached out a hand – it was so clearly a hand that its very detail convinced Kyre that he was seeing things, that his mind was creating what the world had not from sleep deprivation or stress – and touched the amulet. And then both the ghost and the boy disappeared.
Quenn returned but a moment later, exactly as he’d left, looking as shaken by whatever had just transpired as Kyre felt. The ghost stayed gone, not even a flicker. In fact, there wasn’t another flicker in the whole area that Kyre could see.
Kyre stepped forward, feeling a tingle of doubt as he strode through the spot where the ghost had been, but nothing happened and he was through and kneeling before Quenn without harm.
“What happened?” Quenn asked.
Well, that was an auspicious place to start, wasn’t it? Kyre felt a sinking. He’d been hoping the boy would be the one to answer that.
“The ghosts have never reached for me before,” Quenn said. He sounded awed.
“What did it feel like?” Kyre asked.
“Like nothing,” he said. “No… More… like I went somewhere without moving.”
“Like the dispatcher?”
A blank expression. Kyre tried again. “The device that brought us from the kubric to here.”
“No,” Quenn said. “Not like that. It was warm. Like I went to a better place,” he added, as he shivered in the cool of the forest. It was chilly down here, always, but not enough that he should be shivering in the outfit that he wore. Still, he’d had a long night, and likely a longer day. Perhaps everything was just taking its toll.
Kyre had so many questions, and he missed Aviend deeply. Together, they made sense of the world, broke it apart and put it back together. He felt alone, like he was trying to fix a thing that he didn’t know the purpose or even name of.
He needed to take care of Quenn first. Then Aviend. Then questions.
“We’re almost back to the base,” Kyre said. He wondered whether to tell him about the Gavani connection. Better not to, and allow him the moment to discover for himself. Maybe it would mean nothing. Or everything.
They’d left the river behind and he could smell the boggy peat of the swamp. There was no trail here, less so even than elsewhere. Kyre knew their direction by a tall black rock that rose unnaturally from the ground, pointing left. He stopped at the arrow’s space. Home. He was so grateful to be here. He ached down to his blood. He needed sleep. He needed Aviend. And somewhere in there, he and the team would have to talk about what had happened, what to do now.
�
��Go ahead,” he said.
Quenn stepped through Delgha’s shield screen. Kyre could hear him gasp as he disappeared. He followed, nearly running into Quenn where he’d stopped. For a moment, Kyre was half in and half out of the illusory device. He wondered what he looked like. If someone was following him, did they only see half of him, or did he shimmer in and out of view, as if he too were just another ghostly vision haunting these woods?
And then Kyre was moving forward and he was through. It was as though he were seeing the base for the first time, through Quenn’s eyes.
Their base, its odd metal angles overgrown and hidden, even without the shield screen to mask it. Long tendrils of green and brown wound their way across the black metal, nearly covering it, so that it seemed more like odd-shaped forest floor than anything once created for a purpose. The only unusual bit was that the vine – they called it veilvine – didn’t seem to grow anywhere else in the Steremoss, at least not that he’d ever seen. Its roots dug into the hard metal as if it were soft as dirt, thriving on it without ever seeming to break the material down or apart.
It was this covering that had allowed the base to stay hidden for so long. Stepping forward, Kyre pushed back the vines to reveal a simple metal door. It had no visible handle or hinge, but in its very center was inscribed a three-dimensional star built of triangles.
It was the exact shape of the insignia on Quenn’s amulet.
Behind him, Quenn drew a breath. His words were a syllabic waterfall of questions and crisscrossed excitement. “Gavani’s temple? Here? It’s real? But… I always thought that was just a story my mother told, of her mother and her mother’s mother coming for worship. Are you…?”
So it did matter. Kyre was glad he’d allowed Quenn the moment of discovery.
Quenn looked between the star inscribed on the door and Kyre. “Are you believers?”
“Gavanites?” Kyre shook his head. “No. I didn’t think there were any left. Although, perhaps your grandmother, if she’s still alive?”
