The noise stopped as if a switch had been thrown. Teg looked in the direction that everyone was facing and saw a gold-robed figure emerging from the House of Law. The distance obscured the robed man’s words, but Teg felt the cold of his voice and remembered it. The speaker’s face was likewise indiscernible, except where his eyes should have been were two shadowy pits darker than the black sky.
Fallon, Teg thought with a sneer. Nakvin was right. Your body died, but your rancid soul escaped. If I were a betting man, I’d wager that your vas is somewhere in the House of Law.
At length Fallon stopped talking. No cheers hailed the end of his speech. There was only the clatter of ten thousand sets of feet as every company turned at once.
The unease of knowing that Vaun’s whole army was facing in his direction became horror when Teg saw Fallon’s body twist and grow. His golden robe tore away as his skin hardened into dark scales while the flesh underneath rotted. Wings like giant skeletal hands webbed with tattered membranes burst from his back as he fell onto all fours. The long triangular head atop the serpentine neck still had black abysses for eyes.
The dead abomination that Fallon had become filled the landing at the head of the stairs. It was hard to tell for sure, but Teg would’ve wagered that a corvette could land in the same spot.
Fallon’s massive head looked up the street, and a sense Teg couldn’t name screamed that the empty black eyes were about to fall on him. He withdrew his hand, letting the slit in the plastic close, and pressed his face to the soot-stained floor. The pounding of his heart smothered all other sound.
Teg didn’t know how long he lay shivering, breathing in the stench of burned wood, plastic, and more disturbing things. But eventually the paralyzing horror left him. Several moments passed before he worked up the courage to look through the cut again.
The sight that met Teg’s eye convinced him that he’d finally gone mad. The black sky was gone, replaced with silver-grey clouds over a high hill. A foul tarlike substance had been splashed across the woods and towns on its slopes and the fields at its base.
That’s Seele! Teg realized. He opened the hole wider and saw that the image of tarnished greenery stood amid the street like a living canvas ten stories tall. It reminded him of the gate between hell’s Circles that Nakvin had made in the Exodus’ hold.
Half the street was hidden from Teg’s sight, but he saw that Vaun’s troops had marched from the square to fill the road leading to the gate.
They’re not moving, Teg noticed. He considered the possibility that the gate wasn’t fully open. If that was true, then Fallon was probably still down there somewhere, his colossal rotten carcass hidden by the window into Nakvin’s realm.
If you can hear this, Teg prayed to Elena, big trouble’s headed your way. Get ready.
Teg felt a strong urge to call for Elena to pull him back. But reason overruled his emotions. Opening Avalon’s gate; even just a sliver, might let the army at Seele’s threshold get a foot in the door.
Defending Avalon was up to Nakvin, Elena, and Astlin. Teg had his own, arguably more important, mission. If he couldn’t keep Vaun from making new souldancers, the bastard would flood the whole cosmos with Void; and it wouldn’t matter if Avalon stood or fell.
But right now, Teg and Nakvin had the same problem. The army massed to invade her kingdom stood between him and his objective.
He looked to the starry afternoon sky. If you’ve still got a card up your sleeve, he silently implored Celwen, now’s the time to play it.
35
Celwen lay on the smooth, jelly-like sleeping pad in the relative safety of her quarters, but physical distance didn’t obstruct her nexic view of the Sinamarg’s bridge.
The only real obstacles in her way had been other nexists keeping watch for spies. But Celwen’s intimate knowledge of security protocol and the personnel who enforced it allowed her to evade their net.
Now she saw and heard everything on the bridge as if she were present—a vantage that Lykaon and Liquid Sign’s entrance almost made her regret.
Shaiel’s Left Hand stormed across the obsidian deck toward the dais, his armor ringing with each heavy step. Three of his similarly clad sycophants tagged along behind him. The Anomian kept pace with the two-legged wolves, his scaled mantle concealing whatever alien means of locomotion enabled him to simultaneously advance and grovel.
Even if they noticed Gien slipping in through the closing door, the wolves, the Anomian, and the Night Gen bridge crew paid no mind to him—or the hand gestures he made.
“My Prince,” the myriad mouths in Liquid Sign’s bulbous twine ball head pronounced, “They Who Exist have allied with Those That Do Not Exist to nullify all Anomian processes in Avalon. I am the last iteration.”
“How do you know?” Lykaon snarled.
“There is no qualitative division between one Anomian iteration and another. Being informed is a quality shared by all.”
Lykaon scoffed. “If you are all one being, the others’ destruction would have destroyed you.”
“That would be true if we shared one essence,” Liquid Sign corrected him. “Instead we shared a lack of essence, but now I am alone.”
“A worthy sacrifice in service to Shaiel,” said Lykaon. “You will not lose your reward.” Approaching the control dais, he commanded the pilot, “Prepare this ship and the fleet for an assault on Avalon.”
“She Who Exists and The Queen That Does Not Exist are barring the gate,” Liquid Sign objected.
Lykaon’s bloodthirsty smile somehow radiated through the grill of his cruel helmet. “Shaiel’s Right Hand already grasps the key. In a matter of moments the gate will open. Then we shall join with the army under Shaiel’s Will, tear out the harpy’s warbling throat, and feed her people’s flesh to the dogs.”
In the terror evoked by Lykaon’s words, Celwen had lost track of Gien. Now she found him again, standing next to Liquid Sign.
“I heard you’re the last of your kind,” the Magist said. His bearded mouth frowned behind the net that covered his face. “I’m the last of my order, too.”
Liquid Sign’s multiple mismatched eyes regarded Gien. Besides the hideous smacking and sucking of his mouths, the Anomian remained silent.
“You know what’s interesting about Anomians?” asked Gien. “They don’t have minds. Yeah, they’re really just meat machines that run on transessence. So if you know how, you can control them the same way.”
Lykaon finally turned toward Gien, but too late. The Magist’s hand was already on Liquid Sign’s varicolored mantle, loosing the Working he’d fashioned on his way onto the bridge. Gien’s skin from his gnawed fingers to his elbow sprouted colorful scales like butterflies’ wings.
“Oath-breaker!” Lykaon growled. “You swore allegiance to Shaiel.”
Gien’s brow furrowed. “I did? Sorry. After a few centuries your memory starts to go.”
Lykaon’s men loped toward Gien but paused when Liquid Sign’s mantle began to flutter. The strange flesh beneath swelled and bulged, shooting out pale waxy pseudopods that glinted like metal. One tendril engulfed the Sinamarg’s pilot, whose scream was cut off with startling suddenness. The Anomian doubled in size as his body lost all definite shape.
Gien retreated from the chaos at a leisurely pace. His arm regained its normal appearance as alarms blared and the bridge crew scattered.
Lykaon took only a few steps back from the growing abomination. A sickly golden aura surrounded his armored form. With a disgusted grunt, he sank his thick fingers into the all-consuming mass.
Liquid Sign’s flesh blackened and died where Shaiel’s Left Hand touched it, but other tentacles whipped out and ensnared two more hapless crewmen. The Anomian’s already wild growth exploded, forcing Lykaon back as Liquid Sign fed on the crystal and polymer substance of the bridge.
Celwen saw Lykaon’s own flesh swelling, and she thought the Anomian had taken him until his skin split, revealing a thick coat of grey and brown fur over rippling m
uscles. His armor clattered to the deck, and over the heap of iron, bronze, and hides stood a wolf the size of a Yeleq-class boarding craft. Curving horns grew from his head, and his eyes were the same sallow hue as the nimbus that enveloped him.
With an earsplitting roar, the wolf sank teeth like short swords into the Anomian’s spreading mass and tore out a chunk, leaving a black, ragged hole. His dagger-sized claws left wounds that did not heal.
Liquid Sign’s tendrils froze and died when they touched the wolf’s golden aura, so the Anomian drew additional mass from the deck. Lykaon’s bodyguards had also shed their human guises for lupine forms. They growled and paced, shying toward the edges of the bridge as more and more of the deck became an amalgam of crystal and flesh.
Annoyed at his pack’s cowardice, or perhaps just fighting fire with fire, Lykaon turned on his followers. His gaping maw snapped up first one lesser wolf; then another as they yelped in terror. With each act of cannibalism, the great wolf grew, until at last his jagged horns scraped the ceiling.
The Anomian corruption had spread most of the way from the control dais to the main door. Liquid Sign and Lykaon were the only beings left on the bridge. Like a sheet of melting plastic burdened with heavy stones, the deck sank and finally collapsed, plunging both monsters onto the level below. The hellish noise of their combat echoed up through the hole.
“Hey!” Someone called from a great distance. “Get up!”
Celwen sat upright with a start. She cast about her darkened chamber and saw Gien’s robed form bent over her sleeping pad.
“I asked you to help me commandeer the ship,” Celwen said as she rose, “not destroy it!”
Gien’s shoulders slumped. “I am helping. How else did you expect me to get Lykaon out of the way?”
“Not like that!” said Celwen. “Besides, neither Lykaon nor the Anomian is out of the way. The last I saw, they were fighting tooth and nail in the service corridors.”
“They’re away from the bridge,” said Gien.
Celwen straightened her pilot jumpsuit and ran a hand through her long black hair. “But closer to the auxiliary control station, which is where we must go now that the main dais is offline. Do you remember its location on the schematic I showed you?”
“Sure,” said Gien. “I think so.”
Celwen hesitated for only a moment before taking her place beside Gien. Velocitating into a wall was a more merciful fate than Lykaon or the Anomian offered.
“Take us there,” Celwen told Gien.
Holding off Vaun’s renewed attack on her gates was taking its toll on Nakvin.
Elena’s help lightened the load enough to make the burden bearable, and even gave Nakvin enough slack to make time pass at half speed compared to the Strata. Astlin and Xander were using the extra time to help look for survivors of the Anomian attack. Meanwhile, Tefler was back at the drydock helping the Serapis crew with repairs.
“Any minute now,” Nakvin said between labored breaths, “Vaun will lose interest in us and go back to his decorative embalming.”
Seated next to her mother on the palace’s back patio, Elena stared through the lattice above them and into the overcast sky.
“No, he won’t.”
“That was a joke, dear.” Nakvin’s voice held more exasperation than she felt. The real division of labor was closer to Elena hauling a large bucket of water uphill while Nakvin lent a hand to steady it. If that simple effort was wearing her out, she couldn’t imagine the strain her daughter must be feeling.
Like every other structure in Seele, the palace patio blended elegantly with its surroundings. What started near the building as smooth flagstones beneath wooden latticework supported by slender stone pillars gradually gave way to a carpet of lush grass under rows of young trees whose interwoven branches formed a green bower.
The sight of Jaren approaching between the stands of trees lifted Nakvin’s spirits. The slight breeze under the canopy tousled his waist-length red hair as he stepped from the grass to the first moss-covered stones. His boots tapped a casual beat on the bare pavement till he stood before Nakvin with both arms behind his crisp green jacket.
Nakvin smiled. “I’m surprised you’re not helping my grandson tinker with the ship.”
“I have more important things to do.” Jaren’s emerald eyes briefly darted to Elena.
“Why don’t you pull up a seat and we’ll chat a while?” Nakvin gestured to one of three comfortable wooden chairs. “We’ve hardly seen each other in the past six months.”
Jaren didn’t move. “I had important work to do then, also. Thankfully, it’s almost done.”
Unease darkened Nakvin’s gladness. She hadn’t given it a name when Elena stood, knocking over her chair, and cried, “Mother!”
A tremendous force pushed Nakvin out of her chair and onto the lawn beside the patio. But Elena’s concerns proved misguided when Jaren’s right hand emerged from behind his back holding the lavender rod he’d taken from Xander. He pointed the smooth crystal cylinder at Elena.
The ground didn’t quake. There was no peal of thunder or flash of light. The goddess of the White Well simply folded to the ground.
Nakvin couldn’t remember rising to her feet or rushing to her fallen daughter’s side, but that’s where she found herself. Elena wasn’t breathing, although that wasn’t necessarily abnormal.
“What did you do to her!?” Nakvin shouted at Jaren.
“I fixed her,” he said matter-of-factly. “I partitioned your influence—and Astlin’s—away from Thera’s soul. She should be herself in a moment.”
The full weight of Vaun’s will bore down on Nakvin. She fought to keep him out, but her strength soon failed. In the instant before Shaiel crushed her resistance and Avalon’s last defense, Nakvin asked the monster with Jaren’s face, “Who are you?”
A black wave cascaded down Jaren’s red hair like nightfall on an autumn wood. His fine features softened further to become undeniably feminine. The emerald irises paled to resemble silver coins laid on the eyes of the dead. A slender hand emerged from the once empty right sleeve. As if to leave no doubt, wings clad in feathers black as ink burst through the back of the coat. Their tips touched pillars four rows apart.
“Don’t you know your own father?” Zebel mocked.
Sharp nails dug into Nakvin’s arm as she was roughly hauled to her feet. She clung feebly to Elena’s dress, but the white satin slipped from her grasp.
“Come away, daughter,” Zebel said, pulling Nakvin toward a tower that suddenly stood where the lake beyond the patio had been, “You don’t want to be here when she wakes up.
36
Teg had been lying on the burned-out building’s rough concrete floor long enough for the front half of his body to go from agonized to numb and back when a diversion finally came.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the diversion he’d hoped for.
Teg knew the situation had changed when a shrill cry echoed between the concrete canyon walls, followed by the ominous sound of several thousand men marching. Using just his thumb and forefinger he widened the cut he’d made in the plastic that covered the missing wall and looked down the street.
This is bad, he thought.
The column of troops was advancing toward the gate that stood across the road. No, it was worse than that. The soldiers, greycloaks, and feral Night Gen weren’t marching toward the gate. They were marching through it.
Fallon is barging through your door, and he’s bringing thousands of his best friends with him, Teg thought, hoping the warning would reach Elena through the prana thread she’d woven between his soul and her nexus.
There was no answer. Vaun’s army continued pouring through the gate. Teg faced the grim possibility that something had gone horribly wrong; that Avalon was lost, and his friends with it.
So what if they are? Teg steeled himself with a reminder that reality was what it was, and a ha’penny plus all the wishing in the world would buy half a cent’s worth of salt. If he w
as the only one left, then seeing his mission through to the end wasn’t vital; it was mandatory.
Teg watched the column march into Avalon. He would wait until the street was empty; then leave his perch, get to the square unseen, and find a way into the House of Law.
His plan hit a snag when the giant image of green hills under grey skies faded. The gate was closed, but two companies remained in the street. And several more were returning to the square, just to make Teg’s job harder.
Harder, but not impossible. Much of the city had burned down in the Cataclysm, a lot of what survived had been demolished, and most of both had been replaced with new construction. But the street layout seemed largely unchanged.
If Teg’s mental map was correct, the House of Law now occupied the block where City Hall, two of Serapium’s top hotels, and the settlers’ museum had stood. Smugglers’ lore held that a private underground rail line had once connected the Mill to City Hall, supposedly so the Transessists could meet with city officials in secret.
The tunnel was said to have been sealed after an unknown incident, but some—including Jaren—had claimed there were still ways in. Some accounts even mentioned a lift that had gone up to City Hall or one of the hotels.
Searching for a tunnel that he’d never seen himself, that might’ve been just a rumor, and that probably didn’t exist anymore if it ever had, was certainly a long shot. But Serapium’s underground had gotten him this far. With a little luck it would take him the rest of the way.
And considering how today had gone so far, Teg thought his luck was due to change.
Stepping right from her quarters to the Sinamarg’s backup bridge disoriented Celwen; not only due to the sudden transition from darkness to bright light, but because she and Gien had traveled more than a mile in an instant.
At least he did not fuse us with a bulkhead, Celwen thought as her vision cleared.
The Secret Kings Page 31
