Obviously not Revik...but someone.
Maybe even Salinse, that crazy seer in the mountains who originally hired Revik to kill the boy, thus turning him into Syrimne. Although that didn’t make a whole lot of sense, either. Even if Salinse wanted Allie out of the picture, there was still a good chance that Revik would die, too. The fact that he’d disappeared not long after the shooting could mean a number of things...but dying was one of a fairly short range of possibilities.
In any case, Jon would likely never know the whole truth.
When the trucks finally did stop, no one waited for them on the other end of that locked steel door. It opened to blue skies and snow-covered mountains, whitewashed houses and painted wooden roofs. They all climbed out, dazed, and found themselves in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Although he’d said he would be right behind them, Balidor hadn’t appeared by the end of that first week...neither had Dorje.
It only occurred to Jon later that the Adhipan leader might have assumed that the rest of them might try to kill him, too.
Jon also kind of wondered why they hadn’t.
Looking out over the tile rooftops, he found himself focusing on the monastery where he knew the rest of the seers had holed up to wait out whatever they expected to come next. Maybe they feared Revik coming after them.
Maybe they were in shock...paralyzed, like Jon.
After all, Jon only lost a sister. They’d lost the reincarnation of one of their holy people...an “oldest soul” intermediary who was supposed to make the current period of war and chaos into an evolutionary step that would bring advancement to all the races.
Gods, how Allie had laughed about that.
She found the whole thing so ridiculous, and Jon couldn’t really blame her. She went along with it for Vash, and later because the seer community did seem a bit adrift...leaderless and somewhat lost in terms of how they should interact with the humans. Leaderless and somewhat lost on how to deal with a sociopath like Terian.
Then leaderless on how to deal with Revik.
Syrimne’s return was what really forced her hand. She’d had no choice but to take charge then. The broader seer and human communities had both gone into a full-fledged panic after the Rebels bombed out Seertown, attacking Washington D.C. and Terian. But things didn’t really spiral out of control until that same group installed Syrimne as their new mascot.
Only the Bridge could save them from Syrimne.
That had been the logic of most of the seers, anyway, as far as Jon could tell. The fact that they lived so much inside their stories about evolution and souls and the end of the world was something he’d tried very hard to understand about them, but had never quite succeeded.
Feeling his jaw tighten, Jon made up his mind.
He left the deck, walking past potted trees and scattered plastic chairs, as well as a stretch of astroturf that covered one portion of the white-washed patio. Heading for the opening in the far corner, he took the stairs two at a time once he’d reached it, wrapping the thick coat he wore tighter around the thermals and t-shirt he had on underneath. He had good boots at least. After being warned over and over about winters in the Pamir, Dorje talked him into getting a real set from Delhi, but he still didn’t quite layer up enough for their colder weather.
It was February now, Jon thought...maybe even March. It was so hard to care out here, to even keep track for more than a few weeks at a time.
Trudging across ground that crunched a little under his feet with ice, Jon crossed the small field to the dirt path leading up to the monastery, shivering a little as he shoved his hands in his pockets and trudged faster.
They’d stayed on the edge of the city to avoid crowds, but with everything going on in the seer and human worlds, tourists were few and far between.
Jon got some stares as he walked past.
Still, he’d been pretty blown away at the size of the city. Somehow, he’d pictured something a hell of a lot smaller than a million people. He’d ridden down a few times with Cass and Baguen to check out the markets, and wander through the main plaza at Durbar Square. He’d been a little overwhelmed by the sheer numbers wandering around the Royal Palace and in and out of bazaar stores. He’d gotten a decent coat there, though, along with a number of books in English, the latter being somewhat difficult to come by in Seertown for the past year or so.
Baguen got even more stares than he did.
The Nepalese humans saw seers all the time, of course, a fair number of them in fact...but Wvercians didn’t tend to wander that far south. In fact, most Wvercians avoided humans altogether. Being a bit of a rogue ethnicity among seers, they were some of the earliest recruits of Salinse and his team, if only because most lived as natural outlaws already. Although some had been stolen into the human world, mainly as athletes and bodyguards and occasionally as curiosities due to their coloring and generally imposing demeanor, they were even less common sights in the human world, in that they were one of the few types of seers who couldn’t pass at all, even with blood patches. The majority of them still lived in the mountains, avoiding both humans and other seers, as well as the conflicts within and between groups.
Ironically, that probably meant they’d be the ones to survive whatever war ended up coming.
Jon walked faster, rubbing his hands together as he entered the wooden gate to the seers’ monastery.
Four of the twenty or so infiltrators they’d had with them when they disappeared into the mountains had gone. Balidor, Dorje, Tenzin and Illeg. The ones who remained at the monastery in Nepal, Jon didn’t know quite as well. The one he’d probably spoken to the most, Unge, had been a bit cold since they’d arrived, and his invitation to come visit them on the monastery grounds felt perfunctory only.
They’d been Balidor’s people mainly; although a few of them, like Tenzin and Dorje, had once been members of the Seven’s guard. Since the attack on Seertown, the two groups had essentially collapsed into one, anyway.
No one had seen Chandre since Delhi. Or Garensche.
Everyone, including Allie, assumed Chan had gone over to Revik’s side. That, or she’d been killed in the bombing. But Allie hadn’t seemed to believe her to be dead, and now that he pondered it, neither did Jon. He remembered watching Chan change too, after the thing with Allie in D.C. All of her latent anger at humans seemed to come out full force, and she’d never really been as vehement as the others about their need to stop Revik.
Hell, Jon wasn’t even sure what he thought at this point.
After seeing the burned out remains of Seertown again, along with headlines of the hysteria going on in the human world, he had no idea what it would take to save any of it. The vast majority of humans sure seemed willing to hear only bad about seers...and their hysteria around losing control over them as a population brought out the worst sides of their xenophobia and racism. Most humans probably would be more than happy to round them up en mass and nuke the lot of them...call it species survival and be done with it.
But the powers that be were making too much money off seers for that to ever happen. They’d just as soon blow up the oil fields of the middle east.
Jon knew more now, too. Dorje told him a lot about the seer slave camps, where he, Chandre and the majority of the others had spent most of their childhoods. Dorje had known Chan a little back then, and had some idea of what the females had been forced to endure especially...although the males had hardly been exempt.
Dorje shared his own experiences as a child with Jon in some detail. He’d told him more than Jon had really wanted to know in some respects, especially about what they did with the seers who mentally broke from the strain.
Hell, given all that, he was surprised more seers didn’t want to see all of the humans die. Who was he, really, to tell Revik he was wrong? Jon knew from Allie that Revik had his own past in that regard, and it hadn’t exactly been all candy and roses either.
But at the thought, his jaw hardened.
He remembered the h
umans being shot like cattle as they left the bomb site in New Delhi. He remembered watching people wander out, covered in blood and ash, their faces stunned, almost open-seeming in their complete and utter terror and loss.
No one deserved that. No one.
Jon reached the top of the stairs and entered through the converted temple, passing a number of seers kneeling and sitting on the floor. They looked at him, and he could feel frowns as they realized what he was. He tried to keep his thoughts respectful, in light of whatever praying they seemed to be doing, but he could tell it didn’t really help.
Ignoring their angry looks as best he could, he headed for the east side of the building, where he knew Unge and the others stayed.
It wasn’t them he’d come to see, though. Not really.
He ran into Yumi first, a female seer with a tattoo over one side of her face. The thick black marks almost looked like writing, but could have been a religious symbol of some kind.
Jon had trouble not staring at it whenever he talked to her.
He fumbled with his request, watching her dark eyes narrow at him on a face that looked like an odd mishmash of Asian humanity—Tibetan, Nepalese, Chinese maybe.
Seer, really...just Asian seer.
The woman finally held up a hand, interrupting him.
“What do you want with him?” she asked in Prexci, the same language Jon had been butchering. Most Asian seers still didn’t speak English.
“Just let me see him, Yumi,” he said. “I won’t do anything.”
For a moment she only scanned him.
Then, clicking out, she glanced backwards down the long hallway behind her. In the pause, Jon found himself staring at the religious tapestries lining the dark stone walls, noting the elaborate depictions of Gods and Goddesses standing in clouds above the earth...again seer, although reminding him somewhat of Chinese images he’d seen.
He glanced at one of a boy beside a sword and sun image, holding the hand of a girl wearing all white and carrying lightning in her hand. Swallowing as he stared at the image of the girl, he couldn’t help notice that the depiction looked a lot like Allie.
After another pause, Yumi sighed, clicking softly.
“Can I see him?” Jon said.
She gestured affirmative, but her eyes retained the wary look.
“No funny business,” she said in broken English.
Jon smiled; he couldn’t help it.
“No funny business,” he promised. “Trust me. We’re old friends.”
The female didn’t smile.
Her eyes continued to look at his, slightly off-focus, which told him she was still scanning his light. Unlike Balidor, she didn’t bother to be subtle about it.
Even as he thought it, the reality hit him again.
Balidor had killed his sister.
He shot her, right in front of him.
When he looked up next, the female’s eyes had softened. She touched his arm, her fingers warm. He felt sympathy in the touch.
“You can go,” she said. She motioned with her head, her dark eyes still sharp, but less hostile. “He is at the end of the hall. Tell Poresh I said it is okay.”
Jon bowed to her, holding up a hand in a gesture of respect.
“Thank you,” he said, using the formal version in Prexci.
Her eyes lit up in a pleased surprise.
“You are polite, human,” she remarked. She touched his face with the back of her fingers. “Come see me after...if you want.”
Jon flushed a little. He felt the pull from the female seer’s light.
Allie had shown him how to identify things like that, and apparently he was pretty sensitive for a human. Still, he hadn’t quite gotten used to getting hit on by sexually aggressive female seers. He managed to handle it poorly, every time.
She must have been reading his thoughts still, because she frowned.
“No females?” she said.
Jon shrugged. “Sorry, cousin. I have a predisposition.”
Clicking at him regretfully, she shrugged with one hand, seer fashion, and walked away.
“Okay.”
Shaking off the last tendrils of her light, Jon snorted a faint laugh and followed the direction in which she’d originally pointed.
He walked the stone slab floors, feeling like his boots made a lot of noise on the polished surfaces. When he reached the end of the second hall, he found the male seer named Poresh, or “Pori,” as Allie had called him, sitting on a folding chair.
He barely gave Jon a glance before waving him inside.
He caught Jon’s wrist though as he was about to pass, speaking in Prexci.
“Think loud if you need me,” he said, pointing at his temple and smiling. “I’ll stay in that part of the construct...”
His teeth looked shockingly white in the dim space by the end of the hall. Looking down, Jon noticed that the seer was sewing with a needle and thread, repairing a shirt with a tear along one seam.
Jon gestured affirmative, and smiled in return.
“Thanks.”
Sometimes the seer thing did make things easier. He didn’t have to repeat himself all the time, the way he did with humans.
Pushing through the metal door after Poresh leaned back to unlock it, Jon entered the monk’s cell warily, glancing around in the dark. After the door closed with a loud click behind him, he stood next to it for a few minutes without moving.
He jumped almost violently when he saw the seer staring at him.
Crouched in a corner of the six by eight cell, Feigran gazed up at him, his hands held out, open-palmed, on his knees. He looked like he was praying.
Or maybe taking a shit.
The seer giggled.
In a single, smooth movement, he rose to his feet. Turning around in awkward circles a few times, despite the chains...he knelt on the floor, patting his palms against his thighs.
He smiled up at Jon, his face eager.
“Talky-talky...yes?”
Jon found himself wondering what he was doing.
Still, he’d come this far.
Sighing a little, he approached the owl-eyed seer, watching him prod at the paving stones with his fingers, as if he expected them to jump out of the mortar and attack him. Terian mumbled something to himself as he continued to prod and poke, something that sounded like he was quoting something, or maybe singing something.
Jon didn’t have the patience to ask.
“Feigran,” he said. “...or Terian. Whatever.”
“Yes, Jon?”
Jon sat down on a stool on the far side of the cell, out of the range of the shackles that held Terian to the opposite wall.
“I’d like to ask you some questions,” he said.
The seer didn’t look up.
Jon watched, biting back impatience as he began to once again trace patterns on the stone with his fingers. His movements jerked, aflame with a frenetic urgency that was distracting...and, frankly, kind of annoying, although Jon couldn’t have said why, exactly.
“Tell me about the four, Feigran,” Jon said.
“Bridge, Sword, Rook...” the seer muttered.
“Yeah,” Jon said, folding his arms. “Bridge, Sword, Rook...that’s what you told Allie.”
Pausing, Jon swallowed, his throat tightening a little.
“What’s your role, Feigran? What is the Rook?”
“Rook...yes...” the seer muttered, still tracing with his fingers. “Yes...”
“What does it mean?” Jon said.
“Rook...yes. That is me...”
Jon bit the inside of his cheek. “Aren’t the Rooks the Dreng, who live up there?” Jon pointed vaguely up, which is how he still couldn’t help thinking of the Barrier, although he knew it wasn’t strictly accurate.
“...How can that be you, and also them?” he asked.
The seer muttered more words, still tracing with jerking fingers.
“Work with them...portal...need to be here...Galaith understood...”
> “Galaith understood what?”
“Need a portal. Need a way through. Not always though. Not always...not every day. Just a role. Like clothes...”
“Like clothes.” Jon wrinkled his nose a little, glancing at the uncovered hole in the corner that Terian had been using as a toilet.
“Yes, yes...they must be united...”
“The four?”
“Yes, yes, the four...” Terian looked up at him. “Haven’t you been listening? What have we been talking about, Jon?”
Jon frowned. “Okay. So what happens if the four aren’t united?” he said, trying a different tack. “What happens if you’re all that’s left, Terry?”
Terian laughed loudly, making Jon jump in the small space. The seer stared up at him with those owl-like eyes, suddenly predatory.
“Sick, is he?” he said, sounding almost like his old self, the psychotic who’d cut off Jon’s thumb and forefinger. “Not feeling too well...should have kept a tighter hold on his wife, shouldn’t he?”
Jon fought a flush of anger. “Yeah. Okay.”
“His job. Keep her safe. Not my fault...not my fault...”
Jon’s frown deepened. He started to wonder again, what he was doing there. He wouldn’t get anything out of this lunatic but more random bullshit...nothing that would be of use to anyone. Why had he wanted to visit this broken-minded serial killer in the first place? Was it something to do with Allie? Some pathetic attempt to understand her purpose here?
Or maybe just the purpose of her death?
For the first time, Jon felt his chest close. He struggled to breathe his way past it, but the tightness in his throat worsened. Wiping his eyes, he closed them, sitting there without moving as he tried to pull it back.
Of all people to cry in front of, it had to be this psycho.
“Sorry, Jon.”
Jon looked up, found the owl-like eyes staring at him. Real sympathy seemed to live there, in those yellow irises. The seer clicked softly as he continued to hold Jon’s gaze.
“Sorry, Jon. Sorry. My fault, too...”
Jon shook his head, laughing a little bitterly, but mostly at himself.
“Yeah, Terry,” he said. “It was your fault, too.”
Allie's War Season Two Page 19
