Vaun’s laughter was like the last breaths forced from a giant’s lungs. “The light beyond is not the only escape from Zadok. Souls wholly given over to Teth find refuge in the Void. I am the lord thereof, and those become one with it are my servants. I raised this city as their abode.”
Shadows stretched from every crevice of the jagged towers and streamed down the narrow streets toward the invaders. A broken chorus of whispers, wails, and mad cackling preceded the writhing torrent.
“Shades of the impure,” Jarsaal cried. “Shun their touch, and cleanse them with light!”
The other Zadokim stood back to back, crowns blazing. The shadows shrank back from the mingled lights’ majesty, only to be burned away by Astlin and Xander’s spears, cut down by Anris’ sword, and annihilated by Jarsaal’s prana bursts. Bullets from Teg’s Worked gun killed the things, but he did his best to conserve ammo.
Tefler broke ranks and waded into the shadowy mass. The shades recoiled from his white sword as if he wore a Zadokim’s crown. The curved mirror of its blade sliced the two-dimensional creatures like they were made of black paper.
While the shades fell before Tefler, a wall of shadow closed in behind him, cutting him off from his friends.
“Tefler!” Nakvin cried. She dispensed with the Compass and simply thrust her hand toward the shades converging on her grandson. Clear globes filled with rosy liquid floated among the shadows. Nakvin pulled her arm back as she clenched her fist, and blue bolts arced between the globes, making them burst into clouds of flame that howled like a whirlwind and smelled of lightning.
Teg didn’t see how the inferno could have missed Tefler. But the flames cleared, leaving him untouched and the road behind him clear as he fought his way forward.
“Follow him!” Teg called to the others. He didn’t know where Tefler was headed, but going there together was better than letting the enemy divide them.
“Smith is that way, too,” said Astlin. “The pain keeps growing the farther we go.”
“I’ll take that as a good sign,” Teg said as a shot from his pistol erased a lunging shade .
The Zadokim advanced. Teg and Astlin kept the path ahead clear while Xander and Anris cut down the shades that harassed them from behind. Jarsaal’s raised hand sent white bolts burning into the shadows encroaching on Tefler. Nakvin supported him with incendiary Workings as novel as they were potent.
They caught up with Tefler at an intersection of six roads surfaced with a web of overlapping iron strands as thick as Teg’s arm. A building that looked to have been formed by pouring molten lead into a giant ant colony reared its craggy towers up ahead.
“Smith’s making the new souldancer in there,” Astlin said. “I think he’s almost done!”
“Then that’s where we need to be,” said Teg. “Are you guys good for one more push?”
Pitch blackness fell again, lifted just as suddenly, and was followed by an even more fleeting darkness. Teg looked up and saw two winged shadows—a huge pool of night with a serpentine neck and tail, and a much smaller but still unnaturally large black bat.
“That can’t be who I think it is,” grumbled Teg.
“Do you know who they are?” Tefler asked, pointing to the building with his sword.
A huge lupine shape came plowing through the lesser shadows between it and the Zadokim. Like the winged terror above, the wolf was joined by a smaller though still freakishly large companion—a giant rat.
Teg remembered standing before a dark signal beacon atop a tower in hell. “Yeah. I’ve met the whole lovable gang.”
The harsh white moonlight turned sickly gold. A chill descended, and shades surged in from the sides, ignoring the Zadokim’s crowns. Xander, Jarsaal, and Tefler fought to hold them back as Nakvin took over the rearguard.
The wolf and the rat charged closer. Pieces of their shadowy flesh boiled away under Teg’s bullets and Astlin’s spear, but the giant shades didn’t slow. The absence of heaving breath through snaggled teeth and the lack of tremors from the beasts’ galloping footfalls gave Teg a disturbing sense of unreality.
“Teg!”
Anris’ cry woke Teg from his daydream. The larger flying shadow was diving at him on silent wings. A flurry of motion above warned him of the likewise inbound bat-shade.
Teg rolled left, brought up the rodcaster, and aimed the barrel upward. His angle lined up both winged shades. The bat’s dark talons were about to tear Teg’s face when he pressed the heavy trigger. A buzzing haze spread from the rodcaster’s muzzle, scattering both giant shades like sunlight on morning fog.
Teg rose from his knees and saw the rat decapitated by a flaming red arc as it neared Astlin. He only remembered the wolf when Anris’ cry became a scream.
The malakh was big, but the shade-wolf had swallowed him whole. Three amethyst lights could be seen dancing in the black like erratic shooting stars as gold light flashed around them.
Worked bullets posed as much of a danger to Anris as they did to the wolf, so Teg hurried to remove the spent rodcaster shell and reload. The used round chimed against the metal web underfoot and fell into the abyss between strands. Teg was slotting his last shell into place when twin prana bursts turned the world into a whiteout.
When Teg’s vision returned, the golden light and the black wolf were gone. Shades still darkened the streets, but they stayed far back from Tefler and Jarsaal, who’d unleashed the Well’s light.
Astlin rushed to where Anris lay on the cold metal web. His once lavender skin was blackened beyond recognition. The feathers of his wings crumbled to powder at Astlin’s touch. She knelt beside him, her eyes closed, for several moments before burying her face in her hands.
Bare feet padded on iron, reminding Teg of a risen corpse treading on the floor of a morgue. Vaun approached from the direction of the metal ant colony, shrouded in grey and holding the same long single-edged sword that had killed Teg.
Tefler advanced to meet the lord of the Void, brandishing Elohim’s white mirrored blade. His armor rang in martial rhythm with each step. His strange eyes held no fear.
“You wish to join your mother?” Vaun asked Tefler. “Your hope is vain. For betraying your holy orders, I shall keep your soul here with me, frozen and blind.”
“Hold him for me,” said Tefler.
Sapphire, silver, and emerald light washed over Vaun like a triple sunrise, but his dead expression never changed as he slowly pressed forward.
“Three of you could not hold my twin,” said Vaun. “You will not detain me. The Harpy has no authority in the city I made, and Cross is a botched nonentity.”
“One you can’t keep dead,” Teg stated as he fired the rodcaster. The Void-disrupting cone slammed into Vaun, who shielded his face and bellowed as buzzing distortion battered against him.
Tefler charged into the disruption cone, wincing slightly as he swung. The white sword cut into Vaun’s stomach and forearms, leaving cauterized wounds in his pale divine flesh.
The last golden shell gave up the ghost, and the buzzing cone vanished.
Now it was up to the Zadokim. They couldn’t stop Vaun, but their combined light slowed his next blow from the speed of thought to inhumanly fast. Teg, Astlin, Xander, and Jarsaal were inhumanly fast, too. They pummeled Vaun with a hail of spears and bullets before his grey sword could cleave Tefler in half.
Of course, there was a chance that Tefler might’ve been hit. But he was in full view and a much smaller target than Anris, so Teg felt comfortable firing at Vaun from the side while Tefler attacked head on.
Vaun was stuck on defense. The Zadokim’s weapons left no lasting damage, but the charred wounds inflicted by the white scimitar refused to heal. Everything was going fine until Vaun disappeared.
Teg had died twice before, and he found the silence left in Vaun’s wake eerily similar.
“Where is he, guys?” Teg called out, casting about the iron city for any sign of Vaun.
“No idea,” Astlin said between heavy breaths. He
r blue eyes were wide with terror beyond what Vaun could inspire. “But something’s happening inside.” She pointed toward the building. “I think something’s gone wrong.”
“Wrong for Vaun? Or wrong for us?” asked Teg. “And how can anything go more wrong for us than the Void taking a Stratum?”
Astlin’s scream came an instant too late for Teg to react. He didn’t blame her. Outside the Zadokim’s light, Vaun was faster than any of them. The familiar icy pain of Vaun’s sword impaling him—this time from behind—immediately numbed his limbs. Teg slouched like a rag doll, held up by the blade and the superhuman strength of Vaun’s arm.
“I dislike loose ends,” Vaun spoke into Teg’s ear. “And much like the late Captain Peregrine, it galls me to leave a job unfinished. You will die beyond my sister’s help and return to the light you forsook, as you forsake all who trust in you.”
A branching chain of iron blocks crackling with electricity rushed toward Vaun through their air. Teg could still turn his head, and he followed what could only be described as electrified metal vines back to Nakvin’s hands.
That one’s really weird, he observed through his agony.
Weird or not, the metal branches turned to red dust on contact with Vaun.
“Your Workings will not avail you, harpy,” Vaun chided Nakvin. “For all your considerable skill, you are not divine.”
Teg knew that Vaun would kill Nakvin when he finally shut up, and that had sounded like a full stop.
He’s right, Teg confessed to the light beyond. There’s never been a cause I went all in on. I’m a mercenary to the core. But when the client says “Go there and do this,” I go do it. So tell you what—my fee is saving my friends’ lives. Pay it, and I’m yours.
Warmth spread through Teg’s body, filling him with courage that shone from his brow like three garnets. He pictured the space behind Vaun and was there, firing his last five rounds with such speed that the subdued reports came right on top of each other. Three went into Vaun’s back, and the last two entered his face as he turned.
“That was for Keth,” said Teg. His throat tightened when he realized that he was defenseless, but Astlin, Xander, and Jarsaal surrounded Vaun.
With a scream to crack planets, Vaun released a sea of sickly golden light. Teg willed himself out of the blast radius. He arrived behind a bladelike building near the sealed entrance. The fractional second of exposure had left his skin blackened and numb.
Astlin appeared next to him. “Focus on making your body look like your soul,” she said.
Teg was familiar with the concept. A moment later, he was whole.
“Looks like you came to terms with the light,” Astlin said, poking one of the deep red stars of his crown.
Teg looked around the corner and down the street. Sallow light emanated from Vaun in waves. Raw Void had already flowed from the intersection into the surrounding blocks. A comparatively small bubble of prana guttered amid the golden flood, sustained by Jarsaal and Tefler with Nakvin inside.
“We reached an agreement,” said Teg, “but the client’s gonna have a hard time holding up his end.”
“The Void is mine!” Vaun raged, his voice carrying across the iron city. “It will rise and drown you all. Abandon hope while Teth and I are one!”
Xander suddenly arrived. “He is right. None of us can leave the city by our own power. All four of us must join forces.”
“But Jarsaal’s pinned down with Nakvin and Tefler,” said Astlin. “If he breaks away to help us, they’ll die.”
“We may all die if he does not,” Xander said, gesturing to a squirming darkness that surged inward from the city’s edge.
The shadows were rallying to Vaun.
Teg pointed to the termite mound towers. “We can’t run now. Not when Vaun’s about to get himself a new pet souldancer.”
Lightning flashed from the metal ant colony’s towers, shattering their roofs. Peals of thunder shook the city’s foundations, but Vaun’s scream was louder.
That must be what “Something going wrong” looks like, thought Teg.
Vaun must have thought so too, because the Void’s light died.
Teg, Astlin, and Xander traversed the distance to their friends in an instant. Thankfully, Jarsaal and Tefler’s prana dome had kept them and Nakvin from harm.
“Are you three alright?” asked Astlin.
“Don’t worry about us. Look at him!” Nakvin said, stabbing a finger toward Vaun.
The lord of the Void staggered back from his foes. His dead face was etched with a pleasingly bewildered look.
“What happened to him?’ asked Xander.
Teg pushed against the fabric of the Void. Nothing pushed back.
“Looks like our boy ain’t divine anymore,” he told the others. “That’s what he gets for playing god with souldancers.”
In the ensuing silence, Tefler approached Vaun. “Give up yet?”
Vaun’s perplexed look hardened into a scowl. “I did not cross the stars, pass through hell, and ascend the throne of the Void to end kneeling at your feet!”
Vaun feinted, Tefler fell for it, and the grey sword ran deep into his right arm.
Nakvin gasped. Teg understood why. Vaun might have lost his godhood, but he was still a better swordsman than Tefler. Their blades crossed only once before Vaun’s grey sword sliced open his opponent’s leg.
“Come, kings and queens of Zadok’s folly!” said Vaun, turning to his small audience. “I who courted godhood am reduced again to nothing. Slay me and show yourselves just!”
Teg looked over his friends’ faces and saw the same scornful pity that he felt.
“You have your humanity back, Vaun,” Astlin said. “Let me send you to the light.”
Vaun advanced on Tefler, who stood on one leg clutching his right arm. Blood stained his white shirt and pants the same color as his cloak.
“Slay me before I slaughter this oath breaker as I did my whorish sister,” ordered Vaun.
Teg was reaching for his knife when Tefler released a flash of prana that healed him and halted Vaun.
Tefler stood firm. “She was my mother,” he said. “Meet her great-granddad.”
The white sword burst into black flames as Tefler swung it down. Vaun raised his own weapon to block, but the flaming scimitar cut through Vaun’s blade and buried itself in his forehead. Black fire shot from his eyes.
Tefler pushed downward, parting Vaun’s skull and cutting down to his throat. Vaun Mordechai’s mortal remains folded to the ground. Sulfurous smoke rose from the corpse.
“Every Kethan’s in your debt, kid,” Teg said to Tefler. “Me and Astlin, I mean.”
Astlin joined hands with Teg, held on tight for a moment, and let go.
Nakvin stared at her grandson in horror. “What did you do?”
“I used a little of what Mom released,” Tefler said, examining the blackened stump of a blade joined to a mirrored hilt that had been the sword called Elohim. His hand no longer glowed with prana, but the white metal didn’t burn him.
“These are ill portents,” said Jarsaal.
Teg started toward the only building he’d ever seen struck by lightning from the inside.
“I’m sure there’ll be horrific consequences for us all,” he said. “Right now, I’m more interested in whatever the hell happened in there.”
44
Nakvin had gone back to Avalon with Tefler in tow; taking Anris’ body with them. Jarsaal, who had little interest in clay tribe perversions like souldancers, had likewise returned to his people on Mithgar.
It fell to Teg, Astlin, and Xander to comb through the wreckage of Smith’s iron city lab. Luckily, its layout matched the one under the House of Law, except the walls were interwoven metal lattices instead of brick. Smith was here, too—at least parts of him.
Xander led the search, following a trail of tiny gears between banks of singed equipment that still smelled of smoke and lightning. The path ended at a pile of gears on the threshold o
f a rectangular door in the room’s far corner.
Several things about the door struck Teg as odd, like its lack of a frame and the huge clockwork towers he glimpsed on the other side.
“That is Kairos,” Xander said somberly, “which means Smith is dead.”
“But what could’ve killed him?” Astlin wondered with audible unease.
“It was the father of thunder,” said a fussy little man in green robes and a black cap who came bustling toward them. “He’s like you, but he’s two people like me.”
Teg instantly recognized him, despite the absence of a net and the presence of copious blood on his face.
“We need to stop meeting in secret evil labs,” said Teg.
Astlin’s brow furrowed. “Gien? What are you doing here?”
Gien laced his bloody hands. “Shaiel found us after we left the lab under his house. He made threats and offered us things.”
“Us?” Teg repeated as a knot formed in his stomach. “Is Celwen here?”
“Yes,” Gien said with a vapid grin and gleaming eyes. “Right here.”
“Take me to her,” said Teg.
Gien frowned, but his smile soon returned. “You don’t understand. It’s hard to explain, so I’ll show you.” He hurried back into the maze of machines.
Xander muttered something in Nesshin. Teg turned to see him and Astlin staring at the Kairos gate. A thin man dressed in black with dark woolly hair and pale skin stood in the doorway and beckoned to them.
“Who the hell is that?” asked Teg.
“I will speak with him,” Xander said. “Go and keep an eye on Gien.”
Xander stepped toward the gate. Astlin shot concerned looks between him and Teg but finally followed Xander.
Teg went looking for Gien and heard him shouting excitedly from a room off the right side of a short corridor. Teg followed Gien’s voice, and what he saw when he set foot inside the doorway riveted him to the spot.
The destruction was worse in here, as if a thunderstorm had broken out inside the relatively small room. Scorch marks on the iron walls showed where lightning had struck, and fierce winds had strewn arcane instruments across the floor. Teg recognized parts of two items—the broken halves of a clear crystal rod and the shards of what had been a large ruby.
The Secret Kings Page 39
