Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1)

by Brian Niemeier

  “Zebel?” Teg wondered aloud.

  “A ruler of the lower Circles,” said Vaun. “Perhaps the most evil creature in existence.”

  Teg stared at Nakvin, who quickly straightened her confused frown. “Do as you're told,” she said to Gibeah’s man. “Your people will leave the ship at once.”

  A servile whine escaped the messenger as he groveled on the deck.

  “Tell him to show us the way out of here,” Jaren said.

  “You will also grant us safe passage to the Middle Stratum,” said Nakvin.

  The messenger's cowering expression gave way to a sly questioning look. He stood and smiled at Nakvin. “Zebel'd never dance to the song of a Gen, though she be Baal Mephisto's whore.”

  Nakvin’s silver eyes narrowed. “What did you call me?”

  Gibeah's man regained his strutting posture, threw back his head, and crowed with laughter. “'Tis a turn. A dodge! Not just the doxy of Mephistophilis; she's been at the harlots herself!”

  “Okay,” Nakvin said. “I have no idea what any of that meant.”

  The messenger flashed a saw-toothed grin. “'Twas a vicious play, my darling, but you've our thanks for being a novelty to those old eyes. A good even' to you, get of Zebel!”

  A prickling at Teg’s neck made him turn toward the window. A swarm of horrors filled the frame, jaws snapping and talons raking glass that suddenly turned thin as air. Gibeah's man burst into piping laughter as demons flooded the bridge.

  29

  Coarse sand warmed Jaren’s back. Dry air stung his nose. He opened his eyes and squinted up at a red sky. His crew’s confused groans reassured him that wherever he was, at least he wasn’t alone.

  Jaren rose, brushed off his coat, and surveyed his surroundings. Undulating sands stretched between sheer mountain ranges that faced each other from opposing horizons. Their faces were a dingy grey, like snow beside a busy road.

  The rapid crunching of footsteps alerted Jaren that someone was approaching.

  “Are you satisfied now?” Stochman asked. He was winded, but his voice had lost none of its hostile shrillness.

  “This isn't the time,” Jaren said. “We should figure out what happened and what to do next.”

  “I'll tell you what happened. They took the ship! Your thoughtless blunder got most of our people killed, and the rest stranded.”

  Jaren shook with rage. “You’re blaming this on me?”

  “I heard how your order to pursue an unknown hostile got us mixed up in that battle,” Stochman said. “And I was there when that jabbering clown called your stupid bluff.

  “It's time we reassessed our relationship,” Jaren said coldly. “I took your backbiting when I needed you to run the ship. But like you said, there's no ship.”

  Leaving Stochman to think about his position, Jaren counted the survivors and marveled at the result. Thirty-one souls had made a last stand on the bridge, but the ship’s original complement of thirty pirates and sixty sailors milled about nearby.

  Jaren found Nakvin tending a wounded officer. The man's injuries were horrific, yet he rose, buttoned his jacket over a torso that looked like butchers’ scraps, and walked away.

  “We need to talk,” Jaren said.

  Nakvin sighed. “If that’s your way of thanking me, you’re welcome.”

  “Please just explain what happened.”

  “It was like opening a gate,” Nakvin said, “but instead of moving between two Circles, I moved us outside the ship.”

  “You’re getting better at this.”

  Nakvin stood and shook the sand from her robe. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure it would work.”

  “What about the ones who weren’t with us?” Jaren asked.

  “I don’t know how they got here,” Nakvin said. “I just know they’re dead.”

  “What?”

  “As far as I can tell they’ve got no vital signs, but they can walk and talk.”

  “Which is amazing,” Jaren said, “considering the state some of them are in.”

  “Some of the dead aren’t hurt at all,” said Nakvin. In fact, their corpses are pristine. Not only are their wounds gone, but so are old scars, tattoos, and birth marks.”

  “Something healed them?”

  Nakvin shook her head. “The closed casket set got spotless replicas. The mostly intact casualties kept their bodies, wounds and all.

  “Just like Crofter,” Jaren said with a bitter laugh. “They're the crew of the damned.”

  “Now that we've defined the problem, what should we do about it?”

  “The first order of business is getting the ship back. Now that we've regrouped, can you get us back on board?”

  “I don't think so,” Nakvin said. “I've been trying to reshape the Circle, but it won’t budge.” She whispered her next words, as if in fear of some invisible eavesdropper. “I think something's blocking me.”

  Jaren breathed a frustrated sigh. He scanned the wastes that stretched for miles in all directions and the dirty mountains hanging in the sky. “The ship is somewhere close.”

  “Why do you think it's still here? The damned thing could be at Mithgar by now.”

  “You heard Gibeah’s messenger,” said Jaren. “I only caught every other word, but he didn’t seem interested in the ship itself.”

  Nakvin folded her arms. “He also said we were carrying a thousand passengers.”

  “He was talking in riddles; not gibberish,” Jaren said, “and all riddles have clues. I think Gibeah is after something hidden on the Exodus.”

  “It sounds like he knows our mission better than we do.”

  Jaren deflected her observation with one of his own. “I think we're in another Circle. This place feels different than the last one.”

  Nakvin nodded her agreement. “The ship must have been crossing the gate when I bailed us out.”

  “I think we flew into a war between the lord of the Third and Gibeah,” Jaren said. “He brought the ship out of enemy territory and back to his own domain.”

  “That would explain why the demons who boarded us were fighting each other,” Nakvin said. “It also explains why I can't re-weave space here. If Gibeah is the lord of this Circle, he probably has much better control of it than I do.”

  “That's why he'll keep the Exodus here,” Jaren said. “The baal wants to feel nice and safe while he roots out his swag. We can exploit his false sense of security.”

  “I don’t see what’s so false about it,” Nakvin said.

  “Gibeah has the home field advantage, but the fact that we’re not dead means he’s overconfident. And for the time being, he’s distracted.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask, but what’s your plan?”

  Jaren explained his plan to Nakvin and the rest of his crew. Teg and Vaun would ascend the nearer mountains to survey the region. Vaun was chosen for his wealth of occult knowledge, and Teg for having the fewest qualms about going with him. The two scouts left at once, the sooner to finish their job and return.

  Jaren hoped that Teg and Vaun wouldn’t be long. Stochman had been quiet since his latest warning, but the small refugee band was starting to divide along familiar lines.

  The pirates and the sailors set up camp on opposite sides of a large standing rock. With nothing more to do, Jaren dug in to wait. No use denying it, he thought. I’m in hell. The admission brought visceral fear and unexpected longing for his own kind—the vanished race he’d only known through a long-dead father.

  The hellish desert kept its own cycle of day and night, despite the lack of sun and moon. Nakvin watched the red sky darken till it looked like dried blood; then an old bruise. Twilight brought no stars, and coal-black shadows covered the land.

  Nakvin faced the night with nothing but her robe and the meagre contents of its hidden pockets. I wish I’d brought some food, she thought, and her stomach grumbled in accord. Still, it wasn’t as if she’d had time to raid the mess hall.

  Even the dead men complained of hunger. Attem
pts at foraging turned up mottled lichen growing on the rocks and a species of small yellow-grey scorpion, but Nakvin wasn’t yet hungry enough to try either delicacy. She feared that time might change her opinion, though. Teg and Vaun had better find something soon.

  Nakvin didn’t realize that she'd fallen asleep until she woke up with cold metal pressed to her throat. Before she could speak, the blade's owner hissed a reproof through clenched teeth. “Quiet.”

  Other voices whispered nearby, joined by the soft rustling of footsteps on sand and an occasional stifled grunt. Though Nakvin lay beneath a looming rock in the black of night, her eyes clearly perceived the sounds’ source. A band of thirty or more men were waking the sleepers and rounding them up at knifepoint. Clad in loose garments over cloth wrappings, the invaders seemed well acquainted with the desert.

  “Stand up,” Nakvin’s captor breathed. She hesitated but decided to go along for the time being. She took care to avoid sudden movements as she gained her feet.

  “Put your hands behind your back.”

  Aware of the knife at her neck, Nakvin complied. She felt the figure stoop slightly, and a strong braided cord looped tight around her wrists. In a motion so fast she wondered if Teg could have copied it, her captor moved the knife point from her neck to her back.

  “Walk,” the man said. His one mistake came when he gave his prisoner a callous shove.

  Though free of the blade for only an instant, Nakvin had time to say, “Drop the knife.” Her voice retained its musical quality even while whispering, allowing the glamer to take effect.

  Nakvin heard something fall to the sand. “Keep still,” she sang softly. At last she turned and saw her assailant—a man of middling height; his face veiled by strips of rag but for his wide quavering eyes. He moved nothing but those eyes as she drew close and sank her fangs into his neck. A moment later, he collapsed with a muffled groan.

  Scanning the area, Nakvin saw to her relief that her escape had gone unnoticed. She quickly bent down and dragged her fallen assailant into a cleft in the rock. Watching the camp from her hiding place revealed much about the raiders. Though their night vision was better than normal humans’, it obviously wasn’t as good as hers since more than one of them passed within spitting distance without noticing her. But their practiced motions and unnatural stealth more than made up for their visual deficiency. They’ve done this before, she thought.

  Not only did the raiders know their business; their victims had made it easy for them. Pirates and sailors had split into two loose camps, and both of those had splintered into several loose clusters—most beyond sight of each other. The rest of Nakvin’s group were already being marched single-file into the night. I can’t free them all, she thought as a raider goaded Deim toward the end of the line. But I can at least save one more.

  “I told you,” said Teg. “They wouldn’t abandon us. Well, Jaren wouldn’t.”

  Vaun’s black eyeholes met Teg’s gaze. “Not by choice, perhaps,” he said.

  Damn, that mask makes him hard to argue with!

  Teg and Vaun had returned at first light to find both camps deserted. Teg tried sending to his crewmates, but his ear stud was of little use without the Exodus to boost its range.

  A heat haze danced on the sunless horizon, and a hot wind carried the smell of burned corpses. “We’d better split up,” said Teg. “You take the navy camp. I’ll poke around here.”

  Not long after parting with Vaun, Teg found Nakvin and Deim sleeping in the shelter of a hanging rock. Irritable after a grueling slog through the hills with his taciturn companion, Teg picked up a scorpion and dangled it in front of Deim's nose. The tiny arachnid wriggled and flailed, pinching the sleeping steersman's left nostril.

  Deim woke with a start, reflexively batting the diminutive creature away. His dark eyes widened when he saw the mercenary's face.

  “I'll take it personal if the others left without me,” said Teg.

  Deim rubbed his eyes, and Nakvin stirred beside him. “You're lucky I lost my knife,” the younger steersman grumbled.

  Teg turned to Nakvin, who sat up with a yawn. Her black hair and robes looked remarkably unruffled considering that she’d slept on a rock. “Rough night?” he asked.

  The lady Steersman’s smile seemed genuine. “If you call nearly being kidnapped rough,” she said, “then yes.”

  “Is that what happened to everyone else?” Teg asked.

  “They took half of us,” Nakvin said. “The rest spent the night in hiding.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Locals,” said Deim, “dead men.”

  “Did you get a good look at them?”

  “I killed two,” Nakvin said, indicating her victims’ resting place with a wave of her hand. “You’re welcome to check the bodies.”

  “They wrap themselves like Nesshin.” Deim’s hands circled around his head, pantomiming the desert traders’ traditional swaddling.

  “Interesting,” said Teg. “So half our people were kidnapped by dead peddlers?”

  “These weren't just vagabonds,” Nakvin said. “They knew what they were doing.”

  “You didn't try to follow them?”

  “Running off into the night wouldn't have done any good. I’m the only one who can see in the dark, and my Workings would've given me away.”

  “What about your glamers?” Teg asked.

  Nakvin extended her arms in a gesture of helplessness. “There were over thirty of them. I can't charm that many at once.”

  “What if they attacked you? Wouldn’t the dog eat them?”

  Nakvin rolled her silver eyes. “If he could come, he would have the second I felt a knife at my throat. The hound is from the Vestibule. I think the same force that's blocking me keeps him out. Now let’s drop the interrogation and focus on rescuing Jaren and the others.”

  “They took Jaren?”

  Deim nodded. “Stochman, too.”

  The air cooled as Vaun ducked under the hanging rock. “What news?” he asked.

  “Some locals made off with half the camp,” said Teg.

  Nakvin turned to Vaun. “Do you know anything about them?”

  “You left none for questioning?” Vaun asked.

  “Nakvin bit one and stabbed the other,” said Deim. “They both died.”

  “If these men are like our own dead,” said Vaun, “that your venom slew them implies a hunter-prey relationship. Their accursed state is proof against mundane wounds.”

  Nakvin glared at Vaun, but Teg spoke first. “I could say the same for you.”

  “A mere conjecture,” said Vaun. “Unproven till I test the corpses.”

  Teg pointed to the pile of rocks that marked the raiders’ graves. “Help yourself,” he said.

  “This is business; not pleasure,” Nakvin called out as Vaun left to attend his task.

  Deim stood and faced Teg. “How was your scouting trip?” he asked.

  “I’ll say this for Vaun: nothing slows him down. He climbed right up the nearest peak.”

  “Did he see anything helpful?” asked Nakvin.

  Teg nodded. “There’s a small settlement in the hills across the desert. I bet that’s where the peddlers’ tracks lead.”

  “Then we follow them,” Nakvin said as she rose.

  30

  Jaren's captors set a breakneck pace through the black desert night. His lungs burned as he struggled to keep up with the dead men before and behind him to whom he wash lashed.

  Jaren cursed the distractions that had robbed him of sleep in recent days. First he'd helped Nakvin through her identity crisis, which had obliged him to question Vaun. There’d been the messy business with Crofter and Teg, and shortly thereafter he'd had a demon infestation on his hands. But Stochman had been the most persistent obstacle, and Jaren reveled to see the commander sharing his captivity.

  I should’ve killed him on sight, Jaren thought. Or let the demons do it for me. He vowed never to let sentiment compromise his command again—if he
lived to hold another command.

  Fatigue drove Jaren to the ragged edge of consciousness. He was near collapse when one of his captors took interest in his heaving breath. “This one's alive!” he informed his fellows. “A good many of them are.”

  “Give them a rest,” said one whose word apparently carried some weight. He may have been the leader, but the raiders’ similar garb and rag-bound faces made them hard to tell apart.

  “What then?” asked another. “Our business is with the damned. No one said nothing about the living.”

  “The dead we treat as usual,” the leader said. “The rest go to the prefect.”

  Hearing the archaic title made Jaren suspect that he'd been captured by a baal’s minions. But the more he considered the context, the less likely it seemed that these men served a demon lord. All of his captors were human, despite being dead. Besides, the Circles' fiendish rulers used the title lord, while prefect spoke of a governor or magistrate.

  After far too little rest, Jaren resumed his midnight march across the hellish sands, knowing only that he didn’t know what to expect.

  “There's some kind of fort in the hills up ahead,” Teg said when he returned to the roadside gully where the rest of the search party was hiding. “Probably the one Vaun saw from the ridge.”

  “How is their strength arrayed?” asked Vaun.

  “There’s a stone perimeter with guards on watch.”

  “What kind of guards?” asked Nakvin.

  “Human,” said Teg, “but they’re operating with military discipline. Judging by the number on the wall, we’re up against a force of three or four hundred.”

  “Were they dead?” asked Deim.

  “Couldn’t tell,” said Teg. “Go ask them.”

  “If force will not avail us, perhaps we can treat with the landholder,” said Vaun.

  “I tried talking with Gibeah’s man,” Nakvin said. “You saw how that worked out.”

  “The fort’s outer wall was built to repel a large force,” said Teg, “but alone, I’d stand a good chance of…”