The Secret Kings

by Brian Niemeier

  “First,” he said, “we need a Lawbringer’s cloak. The best place to find one is back inside the House of Law. We should have a much easier time getting in now that the wall’s gone.”

  Entering the House of Law did prove much easier the second time. Hunting down a greycloak and relieving him of his trademark garment was only slightly harder thanks to Celwen’s help.

  They regrouped in a neglected corner of the sub-basement near the tunnel lift doors. Teg pointed out that taking the elevator down when they’d exited the tunnels would have placed them right outside Smith’s lab.

  “I was under threat of imminent death,” Celwen said. “Besides, I am clairsentient; not omniscient.”

  “No offense meant,” said Teg. “Even if you’d found the lab, you’d have missed the nexically shielded guards—not to mention Izlaril. Doing things at the right time is a big part of doing them right.”

  “Go on and do it then,” said Celwen.

  Teg wiped some of the former owner’s blood from the grey cloak before donning it. The cloth was rough-woven, and wearing it actually made him feel colder.

  Since Teg made it a rule to know his enemy, he’d learned all about Lawbringers from Tefler during his six months in Avalon. Their cloaks were Worked with sending, plus a Malefaction that did the same thing only better. He hoped it would add credibility to the con he was about to run.

  “Izlaril Nizari,” Teg said while calling up Fallon’s last sight of Izlaril, kneeling in a bulky Guild Enforcer’s uniform amid strange machines.

  “Yes, Teg Cross?” the answer came immediately in Izlaril’s soft, husky voice.

  The response didn’t rattle Teg. “You speak in haste,” he said with cold menace. “Shaiel’s Will calls upon you. The mercenary attempted to invade my sanctum and is now my host.”

  Izlaril’s voice sounded confused, which was good. “Your vas survived the Night Gen attack?”

  “You doubt me?” asked Teg, letting irritation creep into his voice. He called up another of Fallon’s stolen memories. “You did not question my prior host when he freed you from the bowels of the Mill.”

  “Your pardon, lord,” Izlaril said like a cadet caught with scuffed boots. “If it does not try your patience, why does Shaiel’s Left Hand no longer rest upon me?”

  Teg looked to Celwen. “Was the rat-thing Shaiel’s Left Hand?”

  She shook her head. “Tzaraat was Shaiel’s Voice. The Left Hand was Lykaon. He died on the Sinamarg.”

  “Thanks,” Teg told her. “I get Vaun’s parts mixed up.” To Izlaril he said, “Lykaon has fallen to the Night Gen’s treachery. You may take his place, if you will perform a final task as Shaiel’s Blade.”

  “Shaiel’s Will now holds his Blade,” said Izlaril. Teg could almost hear him groveling. “Wield it as best pleases you.”

  It took all of Teg’s discipline to keep from grinning. “The souldancer Smith conspires with Shaiel’s foes. Kill him.”

  Izlaril’s silence was all the confirmation Teg needed. He threw off the gory cloak, took Celwen’s arm, and dashed from behind the palettes of plastic drums where they’d hidden.

  “Come on,” Teg urged her. “We need to get down there before it’s too late.”

  “What about the guards?” protested Celwen.

  Teg shot her a deadpan look. “The guards are aspects of Vaun. Smith is who Vaun expects to serve him the universe on a golden plate. Izlaril thinks Vaun ordered him to kill Smith.”

  Celwen didn’t look like she understood. She would when she saw the lab. Teg ran with her to the oversized lift doors and called the car.

  Screams and the rattle of automatic gunfire echoed up the shaft as Teg and Celwen rode down. He let go of her arm, but she grabbed his and held on tighter.

  “Still got the pistol I lent you?” he asked.

  Celwen opened a pouch in her jumpsuit’s right thigh and drew out the mate of Teg’s ether metal gun.

  “Good,” he said. “Keep it handy.”

  The lift arrived one floor below the forgotten rail station. Even though the car had stopped, Teg still felt like he was sinking. The large doors opened on an even larger hallway with white brick walls and a red metal grate running along the right side of the concrete floor. The hum of nearby machinery was the only sound filling the damp air.

  “Where is everyone?” Celwen asked as she looked around, holding her gun at the ready.

  Teg didn’t waste words telling her. He disabled the lift controls with his knife and hurried down the empty corridor. The hallway took a right turn up ahead. He rounded the corner and found the first bodies choking a double set of steel doors.

  Celwen stifled a gasp. Teg stepped over the blue-uniformed corpses—each bearing exactly one mortal wound—and entered the room beyond. Celwen groaned as she followed.

  Teg found the lab as Fallon had remembered it for him. The dim, uneven light came only from glowing white screens and tall tubes filled with rose-colored mist. A scent like lightning hung over the banks of strange machines connected by bundled cables running along the walls.

  The only difference from Fallon’s memory was the mass of dead bodies lying about the room. Most wore blue jackets. Some wore grey cloaks. All had been well-armed, but that hadn’t stopped them from being efficiently and brutally slaughtered.

  The machines’ hum was even louder here, but Teg heard halting breaths coming from his right. He picked his way across corpse-strewn floor plates to stand before a figure sitting against what looked like the mutant child of an operating table and a drill press.

  The rasping figure wore a padded grey jumpsuit drenched with blood. Some of it, Teg saw from the bullet holes in the tough fabric, belonged to the uniform’s wearer. Despite the gore that matted the man’s lank black hair and streaked his ugly face, there was no mistaking him for anyone but Izlaril Nizari.

  “You. Lied.” Izlaril spoke between shallow breaths. His eyes remained focused on the hazy twilight ahead of him.

  Teg aimed with steady precision. Three pops put two rounds in Izlaril’s chest and one in his forehead. The labored breathing stopped.

  “Fighting isn’t the best way to win,” said Teg. He knew Izlaril couldn’t hear him, but the lesson would’ve been wasted anyway.

  “It’s safe to come out, Smith,” Teg shouted. “Let’s go home.”

  There was no reply.

  Teg turned to Celwen, who was staring at the dead Son of Haath. “We need to find the vas before backup gets here,” he said. “Let’s split up and—”

  A funnel of small gears twisted down from the ceiling, sounding like a box of screws in a tumble dryer. The oily cogs assembled themselves into an insect-like body with a jaundiced skeletal face.

  “Wait,” said Mirai Smith. “Let me help you.”

  “Like you helped the Magists and Vaun?” said Teg. “Why should we trust you?”

  Smith scowled. “Don’t blame me for doing what I must to survive—which now means showing you this.”

  A metal arm emerged from the shifting mass of gears. Its three-fingered claw held what looked like a large ruby, but Teg thought he saw anguished faces reflected in its blood red surface. He could almost hear their screams.

  An irresistible urge compelled Teg to reach for the gem. Smith tried to pull it away, but Teg was faster. His hand closed around the ruby and pried it from the souldancer’s metal grasp.

  Now Teg definitely heard a voice—a familiar one—calling to him from the stone. This wasn’t the first time a rock had talked to him, and because past incidents hadn’t been remotely pleasant, he almost resisted looking into its facets.

  Teg! the ruby said in an airy feminine voice. Come into the gem.

  “Elena?” he wondered aloud.

  “Yes, Master Cross,” someone said from the doorway. “My obstinate sister inhabits the vas, as in part do I.”

  It was hard not to look at the gem, but Teg finally tore his eyes away from the glittering abyss as a gaunt man with drab brown hair swathed in a gr
ey shroud enter the room. The corpses heaped near the door rotted to black dust in his path, and he trod upon their ashes.

  Celwen pressed her back against the wall, squeezing her eyes shut like a child scared of monsters in her closet. Smith collapsed into a riot of gears that skittered into the darkness.

  Teg found it hard to muster much fear, possibly because the gem was keeping him in a state of dreamlike detachment.

  “Hey, Vaun,” he said. “It’s been a while. Not long enough, really.”

  Teg expected Vaun to lecture him; to make threats or even launch into a rant. Instead the god of the Void did something far worse.

  He smiled.

  “With every living breath you give offense,” Vaun said, “but I take none. Invading my sphere, breaking into my house; even slaying my servants, I shall overlook all for the great service you have rendered me.”

  Let the ruby take you, Teg! Elena pleaded from the heart of the gem. Did it growl with hunger?

  “You wanted all your lackeys dead?” asked Teg. “Wish you’d called me sooner.”

  Vaun now stood within arm’s reach. The cold he gave off should have turned everyone to freeze-dried statues but didn’t somehow.

  “My Will, Hands, Voice, and Blade were a dear but fair price for victory in the game between my sister and me. The stakes are quite beyond your understanding, but the battles at Temil, in Avalon, and in the skies above us are mere echoes of a contest waged in eternity.”

  Teg interrupted with an upraised hand. “I know this speech. I’m an insignificant puppet, and you’re the grand strategist pulling my strings. There. Saved you some time.”

  “Zadok split himself into mortal shards to gain new perspectives,” said Vaun. “Mortals occasionally provide useful insights. My Will was of particular use in that regard. Striking my sister’s death blow through Thera’s vas did not immediately occur to me. But she told you of the possibility, and when my Will learned it from you, so did I.”

  The sinking feeling that had nagged Teg became an express elevator to the Ninth Circle.

  “Oh shit,” he said.

  Vaun’s left hand drew a wicked-looking sword from his shroud. Its straight single-edged blade had a hilt that looked to have been sculpted from coral made iron.

  “I will not demean us both by asking for the vas,” said Vaun. “I will grant you untold honor as the only man to die twice by my hand.”

  Vaun pointed his sword’s tip at Teg’s gun. “You may attempt to defend yourself. Slaying you in a duel and executing you are the same to me. I shall collect the vas afterward.”

  Shots rang out, but not from the gun in Teg’s hand. After a whole magazine’s worth of muted pops, Shaiel turned to Celwen, who stood aiming Teg’s other gun at him. Her face had the passive, vaguely confused look of a passenger on a crashing ship numbed by the enormity of her fate.

  “Cross has been a galling foe, but an honest one,” Vaun chastised Celwen. “His swift noble end is not for traitors such as you.”

  Vaun leveled his sword at Celwen. The shadows around her came alive, stretching into twisted hands that clawed at her, leaving white frostbitten trails on her grey skin. She cried out in fear and pain.

  Sparks flashed from the corner of the room behind Teg. Smith stood on five mechanical legs while the sixth pointed a crystal rod at a smoldering machine.

  “Hurry!” shouted the souldancer. “Escape while the nexic shield is down!”

  “You have crafted a new partitioning rod,” Shaiel said approvingly. “Using it to disable the shield testifies to your genius, but it will be made to serve me.”

  Teg raised his gun and fired; not at Vaun, but at the swarm of shadows holding Celwen in their icy claws. Shadowy arms exploded on contact with the Worked bullets, and Celwen struggled free. She closed her eyes in concentration, and green-white light filled the room. Teg felt himself rising.

  Vaun’s cry of rage made Teg feel like his skull had been replaced with ice and cracked with a hammer. The translator’s light died, leaving Teg, Celwen, and Smith trapped with Shaiel.

  He’ll kill you, Teg, Elena said. You asked me not to let you die. I can’t grant your prayer now. I’m sorry. Thera is loose in Avalon. She’ll kill my mother, Astlin, and everyone there unless you join me in here.

  Teg was reeling from Elena’s sudden revelation when a strange little man in green robes with a net over his face ran in through the wall on Teg’s right.

  Now I’m hallucinating, Teg thought as the newcomer, who was probably some kind of projection judging by their similar beards, grabbed Celwen’s arm and ran with her through the left wall.

  Vaun seemed to see it too, because he said, “Let the Magist and the traitor run. They will face my judgment soon enough.”

  With a motion imperceptible even to Teg, Vaun half-turned and thrust his grey blade through Teg’s chest. The mercenary’s heart froze instantly, and it shattered when Vaun’s right hand struck the sword’s spine.

  Teg might have slid from the blade and fallen among the other dead men. He would never know since his awareness had contracted to black, silent numbness.

  No. Something else was there with him—the last echo of a beloved voice.

  Let the vas take you! It’s your last chance.

  Teg let the vas take him.

  Light, color, and sound returned in one cacophonous flash. Teg floated in a rosy mist. The ruby was gone from his hand. Instead he held a black diamond. Actually, it must have been the other way around since the diamond was way too big to fit in the palm of his hand—or inside most star systems.

  Elena floated between him and the vast diamond, and Teg understood the problem. His mind was trying to process information that went beyond his experience. There was no here or there; big or small. He didn’t really even have a hand.

  “I’m glad you came,” Elena said with a smile. Her long wavy hair and white dress looked brighter than normal. Her eyes weren’t the same rose hue as the ether around them, but were almost the same light brown color as her hair.

  “Me too, honey,” said Teg. And it was true. He was. “Where are we?”

  “This is Thera’s nexus,” she said. “The vas is a silver cord encompassing her entire soul woven into the form of a gem. You let it pull you in when Vaun killed you. That’s how I could bring you here.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” said Teg. A troubling thought came to him. “But why are you here?”

  Elena’s smile faded. Her head bowed, and the sorrow Teg saw when she looked at him again would’ve broken his heart if Vaun hadn’t done it first.

  “Because I’m dead, too,” Elena said.

  Shock eclipsed Teg’s grief. “You’re a goddess. How is that possible?”

  Elena pressed a hand to her chest. “I was the shadow Thera cast on the world. Cut off the light, and the shadow dies. Vaun severed me from Thera, but the silver cord I attached before you left Avalon drew you toward her nexus instead of Zadok’s.”

  “So Vaun killed Thera?”

  “No,” Elena corrected him. “Just me, Thera’s shadow. And it’s a good thing, too. I was about to kill everyone in Avalon and release something that would have killed everyone else.”

  Teg racked his brain and hit upon a solution. “Okay. Your soul’s in the vas, right? And your body’s in Avalon. We get Smith to put them back together, and everything’s fine.”

  Elena shook her head. “Shaiel emptied the vas of everything but the soul fragment that’s still joined to him.”

  “Sounds risky,” said Teg. “Why would Vaun leave part of himself in there?”

  “To be the seed for a new composite soul enslaved to him. He’s taken Smith to the Void, and it will flood Zadok’s creation once new souldancers are made.”

  A sigh passed Teg’s ghostly lips. “I had to try. What comes next?”

  Elena’s smile returned. “You think the world is better off in the hands of the Zadokim. How would you like to be one of them?”

  The question hit Teg rig
ht between the eyes. “Like Astlin and Xander? Didn’t they have to die first?”

  Elena just stared at him.

  “Right,” said Teg. “To be honest, this is weird. I was always indifferent toward the gods. I’m not sure that becoming one is the best idea.”

  “Only the Zadokim have a hope of defeating Shaiel,” Elena said. “Zadok won’t interfere. Astlin and Xander can’t win on their own, but Astlin showed me how I can send others back to help. And no one knows Vaun better than you.”

  “Alright,” said Teg. “How do we do this?”

  Elena stretched her arm toward Thera’s nexus. Teg thought he saw a faint light glimmering through it, a million miles away.

  “Astlin gave you a vision,” Elena said. “Follow it through my nexus to the light of the world beyond. If you make it there, finding the way back will be up to you.”

  “Isn’t that supposed to be as hard as going back to a dream you had years ago at the exact moment you left?” asked Teg.

  “You need something that anchors you to this world,” said Elena, “an attachment strong enough to make you choose the dream over reality.”

  Teg searched his heart. “I don’t think I ever had anything like that,” he said at length.

  Elena’s face fell. She tried to project confidence, but Teg could see the fear in the brown eyes that he found prettier than her rose ones.

  Teg stroked Elena’s hair. “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

  Tears rimmed the girl’s eyes. “Thera’s nexus will take me when you leave. Even if you come back, this is the last time we’ll see each other.”

  A rare feeling kindled in Teg’s heart, and realized that he felt it for her. He hugged Elena. “I love you, kid,” he said. “Take care.”

  She buried her face against his shoulder and wept softly. A wave burst out from the black diamond, and visions flooded Teg’s mind. He saw a young girl lying in the sun on green grass watching clouds, climbing into her parents’ bed during a storm, celebrating a birthday surrounded by laughing friends, and surrendering her heart to a young man with dark hair and olive skin.