Sarai nodded with a serious expression.
“Ah, there she is,” Janai said, nodding to the dining hall entrance.
Long auburn hair still tousled from sleep, the youngest ascendant shuffled in, dressed in green shift and slippers. She walked with her hands clasped behind her neck and seemed to be in a world of her own. The smell of food seemed to be the only thing giving her any direction.
The girl shouldered up to the buffet next to a pair of valkyries who forced her to wake up enough to be polite as they asked after her health. The young woman loaded her plate, swung around spotted their group and headed up to them. She set her plate down opposite Janai and went around behind the second princess and gave her a cheek-to-cheek hug.
Janai hummed and patted Daena’s hand. “You okay, Ena?”
Glowing green eyes hooded, Daena nodded. “Thanks for thinking about me.” She rose and sat in front of her plate. She grabbed the juice pitcher from the middle of the table and filled her goblet. She sipped her juice and ate a few bites of food. The girl looked around. “Is it me or are the Shael Dal all acting strange? Tal and Terra were singing like a pair of kids. That Elsbeth lady who always has that cold stare, she actually said ‘good morning’. Even Aarlen was nice. When I passed her in the hall she grinned at me… it was creepy.”
“Yes,” Janai answered. “We’re all feeling a bit frisky. Koass is doing something to the shaladens.”
Daena’s brow furrowed. “It’s not dangerous is it?”
“I—” Janai stopped, then glanced at Ryelle. Who returned her look with pursed lips. “You know, we never asked… I think we assumed…” Her voice trailed off.
“I’m pretty sure Koass wouldn’t put everyone in the Shael Dal at risk,” Bannor said. “Not when a big confrontation might be coming up.”
“So, you look like you’re feeling better, Brother,” Daena said. “Any word from Mother?”
He shook his head. “That’s pretty much what we’re all waiting to hear.”
“Luth, I, and half a dozen Kriar and Shael Dal stood guard on the lab,” Senalloy offered, taking a sip from her cup. “We never heard so much as a peep. Gaea, Loric, Damay, Ziedra, Vanidaar, and eternal Czar have been in there all night.” She forked a few bites of egg into her mouth and gestured with the utensil. “You should have heard the caterwauling from Aarlen and Elsbeth that Loric got to be in on the enchanting. He’s the only one besides the eternal that’s not part of Gaea’s family.”
“Why do you suppose she trusts Loric?” Bannor asked.
Senalloy swirled the juice around in her cup. “I think there was some mention that maybe he and Damay might have been married at some time.”
“Married?” Bannor mused. “They sure act familiar with one another. It would explain why Gaea trusts him.”
“Well, they’re obviously not married now…” Daena pointed out.
“Damay was famous even to the elves,” Ryelle said. “Everything I ever saw about her was she dueled with Aarlen and was killed.”
“There certainly is a fair amount of animosity between those two,” Bannor put in. “More from Aarlen than Damay, but it’s there.”
“That’s not news,” Janai said. “Aarlen used to hate everybody. It’s only recently that she’s become slightly less hostile.”
“She’s scary,” Daena murmured. “And so are her daughters. So, you figure Loric married Cassandra and Desiray because Damay was dead?”
“That’s the strange thing,” Ryelle said. “If you read history, Loric should be dead too. Really dead. The myth goes that the one and only time all the pantheon lords cooperated with one another, it was to obliterate Loric and his followers the Krillar.”
“I guess we shouldn’t be surprised,” Sarai said. “I mean, I’ve been remade three times, and Bannor twice now. Damay could have been wandering around as a tao spirit all this time, and Loric…” She shrugged. “Who knows what kind of tricks these great elders can accomplish.”
“I’m not telling,” Senalloy said with a wink.
“I—” Bannor halted what he was about to say as a wave of dizziness made him catch the edge of the table. A cold shiver went through him and the room seemed to do a slow roll. Without his willing it, his nola-sight shimmered in his normal vision, the primal threads of Eternity dancing and swaying like boat hawsers in gale. “Whoa.”
“My One,” Sarai caught his arm. “What’s—? Uhhh…” She gripped the sides of her head. “Aie!”
Fighting the dizziness, he saw that both Janai and Ryelle were gripping their heads as well. Across the way at another table Megan and Adwena were rocking and shaking their heads in obvious pain.
Daena was holding Janai’s shoulder. “Jan, what’s wrong, what’s happening?”
Forced into his nola-sight, the air throughout the citadel was suffused with a green illumination as the fabric of reality seemed to shudder like a standard flapping in the wind. Accompanying the jarring contortions of space/time was an indescribable screech roaring in his mind.
The disruptions all seemed to originate from a single direction and he struggled to focus enough to still the rapidly vibrating strands of reality creating the torturous experience.
With a grunt and an effort of will he gathered up the elemental and magical threads and willed them to be still. His effort fed back with a backlash that hit him so hard his chair shattered and sent him toppling off the edge of the tier to smash an untenanted table on the terrace below.
He lay on the deck like a slow-shell flipped on its back, grappling with the disorientation and fighting to simply move. In the middle of his struggles, the disruption weakened and died out like the echoes of a yell in a chasm.
“Urgh,” Sarai moaned, turning to look off the ledge. “Bannor!?”
Still holding the side of his head, he gave her a weak wave to indicate he wasn’t seriously hurt.
“Ugh,” Janai pounded the table. “What the frell was that? It felt like my head was going to explode!”
“Some kind of reality distortion,” Senalloy murmured, pressing a hand to her temple. Obviously, she had felt it as well, simply not as strongly as those with shaladens.
All around the chamber, people were picking themselves up, the Kriar officers looked particularly shaken as if they had been pummeled with clubs.
“Bannor are you hurt?” Sarai asked him. “Can you move?”
He scrubbed his face looking up at her. “Damn that hurt, I tried—I tried to shield us—” He winced. “Urgh. I’ve never been hit by backlash so hard. It was like catching—ooof.” He drew a breath and managed to sit up. “Like catching a catapult shell in the chest.”
“Jan are you all right?” Daena asked in a worried voice. “You’re all so pale.”
“Didn’t you feel it?” Janai asked.
“I felt this really tooth-rattling vibration and heard a weird screech, but that’s it.”
“She’s not really tuned in with her telepathy,” Ryelle said. “She uses soul-speak most of the time.”
Sarai hopped down to where he was at, took his hand and helped him to stand. He stood on shaky legs still feeling dizzy. He scrubbed at his forehead. “Ow. Good thing I have strong backlash resistance. That almost took off my head.”
“Are you four all right?” Megan asked, gliding over to stand by them.
“I think so,” Sarai said, glancing up to her sisters who both nodded. “What was that?”
The lead Shael Dal shook her head. “I don’t know for certain, but it emanated from somewhere here in the citadel.”
Senalloy’s jaw dropped. “Damn, could that have come from the lab?”
“Oh frell!” Daena let out. She leaped from her spot at the table half way across the room, bounded up two tiers and was gone out the door.
Feeling the same urgency, Bannor pounded after her, leaping up the stairs and into the corridor, tearing around corners with the sound of screeching leather.
The young savant had a head start, but he caught up to her
after the third turn as they raced down the corridor. Midway down the main hall Daena slid to a stop where Tal and Terra lay collapsed in the passage.
“Spit,” the girl murmured. She turned the big the big warrior over and pressed her ear to his chest. “He’s still alive, thank Gaea.”
Bannor checked Terra. She too was alive but unconscious. “The shock must have been stronger close to the source.”
Sarai, Janai, Ryelle and Senalloy caught up to them.
“Are they okay?” Sarai asked.
“Just stunned,” he reported. He pulled Terra over to the wall and propped her up. “I think they’ll be all right, we better check for others. Anybody in or near that lab may be seriously hurt.”
After propping up Tal, they lit out again toward the lab. Was this something planned? An accident? An attack? Thoughts whirled through his mind as they plunged down a flight of stairs, pelted down the back hall into the northern wing.
Daena slid to a stop by a large figure slumped against the wall.
“Aarlen,” the girl breathed.
Dressed in her formal black uniform, the magestrix lay collapsed in front of an indentation in the rock wall as though she had been blown into it with giant force. Her sleeves, arms, and hands were slashed and bloody as though she had tried to shield herself from a blast. Her face appeared as if she’d been in a desert sun for a day, her pale skin toasted to a rosy color. Brilliant red blood leaked down the sides of her neck from her ears.
He pressed a hand to the big woman’s neck. The pulse was faint. It was hard to imagine something powerful enough to bring this nearly indestructible woman close to death’s door.
“Damn, she’s hurt bad,” he said. “Yell for healers. If there’s anyone else this close they are going to be smashed up bad.”
“As we speak,” Ryelle said.
Senalloy knelt by Aarlen. After a few instants she looked up. “We need to get her to the infirmary immediately.”
He still remembered Sindra’s mental symbol from when they had telepathed in the hall.
He never finished sending the thought, the D’klace woman and her sister Drucilla flared into being right next to him in a sizzle of blue light. Their sudden appearance made everyone jump.
“We’ll take her,” Sindra said in a cool voice. She crouched down and lifted the lid of the Ice Falcon’s eye. The pupil was dilated and a light from her finger did not cause it to contract. “Whoa, she’s below regeneration thresholds.” She scooped the huge woman up in her arms, the weight obviously of no moment to her.
“Wysteri will meet you at the infirmary,” Ryelle told her.
“Thank you,” Sindra said with a nod. She and her sister vanished in a blue flash.
Daena stared at where the two huge twins had been standing an instant ago, blew out her cheeks and shook her head.
“This is bad,” Ryelle said, rubbing the shaladen band on her arm. “The telepathy isn’t working. I had to call Wyst on the private Kriar artifice.” She tapped behind her ear.
“What?” Janai grabbed the weapon. “Damn. You’re right.”
He placed his fingers on the band. The normally warm metal felt cool to the touch. That certainly wasn’t a good sign. It was as if all the power to it had been sheared away. That something could do that seemed boggling. Had the Daergons done something with their genemar? An attack didn’t fit, unless the attack had been on Gaea.
“I was already scared,” Sarai said. “It’s getting worse.”
“Yes,” he murmured, looked up the hall toward the lab. They were still a ways from the epicenter of the disruption. What if somebody more fragile had been even closer?
Daena seemed to shake out of whatever she was thinking and looked down the hall with him. “This is bad,” she said, turning to Janai. “I hope your parents weren’t down here.”
“We better hurry,” he said.
He led the way down the hall. They entered the northern gallery where early morning light shone through stained glass windows casting a rainbow of colors across the polished marble floor. As they approached the far side, Bannor felt a humming in the air.
“Do you feel that?”
Daena stopped next to him and nodded. He glanced back to the sisters. Sarai gave him a single nod to indicate she felt it as well.
The thought sent an icy chill through him.
He hurried forward, taking the stairs on the far side of the archway. As they descended, the thrumming grew stronger. It made his skin itch.
“Damn it,” Senalloy muttered as they filed down the stairwell, hit the landing and switched back. The woman’s deep voice echoed in the tight confines. “It’s not just the shaladens. All kinds of telepathy are jammed, or everyone is deaf. Nobody is answering.”
“What happened to Megan you suppose?” Janai asked.
“She’s probably trying to check on all her people,” he said, clunking to a stop at the bottom. He tried the door and found it locked. He gestured to Ryelle and the eldest sister came forward.
The pale haired sister fished a key out of her pocket and fitted it in the door. She chanted a few words, and the lock unlatched.
That humming sound was really making him nervous. He gently pulled Ryelle back, and willed himself into battleform with a rasp of condensing flesh. A silvery sheen flared into being on the surface of his skin. He pulled the door open.
He gestured for the others to wait.
The oil lamps in this sub-surface level were out, and none of the mage-lights appeared to be in operation. A burning smell lingered in the air. With the door open, he felt the buzzing on his skin.
He frowned. That wasn’t right. There shouldn’t be any tactile sensation in the metalized flesh of his battleshape, not unless he had suffered an extreme injury.
Bannor pushed into his thread sense and frowned. The lines of the universe that normally filled is vision were gone. His nola perceptions were crippled as well. He was blind as well as deaf. He reached out and ever so gently stroked the power of the garmtur through the corridor. He felt threads respond, shivering as his energies brushed over them. So, his power was operating, he simply couldn’t see. Without thread sight, the garmtur was essentially useless.
He shifted forward, his steps clunking on the stone. He sensed no movement in the dark passage. “Sen, can you make some light?”
The Baronian woman stepped through the doorway and raised her hand. A globe of illumination crackled into being at the tips of her fingers. She shined the light around, the beam briefly played over something gold lying on the floor. She trained the light back and they rushed forward.
Two Kriar lay sprawled their backs. Scuff marks on the corridor stone showed their armor had absorbed a lot of the impact as they were knocked tumbling by whatever force had radiated from the lab. The two, a male and a female, twitched and shuddered.
Senalloy unlatched the communication band from around the male’s throat and pulled it around her neck. She thumbed the sender and spoke in the sing-songy Kriar language.
“I called for assistance,” she told him and the others. “The guards are on the way, but they’re on foot, warp techniques and time diving are not working.” She pressed a hand to the jewel on the male’s forehead and then to female’s. “Nothing I can do for them, they’ll need a mecha physician.” She pulled the Mark VI sidearm out of its holster on the Kriar’s side. Standing up, she popped the charge cell checked the level and slapped it closed. She punched the crystals on the side of the weapon in a complicated sequence then thrust the weapon into her belt. “We need to move, if there are others they will need emergency care.”
“Yes,” Bannor murmured. He touched the shaladen on his wrist again. The weapon was completely dead, it wouldn’t respond to his thoughts. If there were enemies, he needed something to fight with besides his hands. He bent down and took the other Kriar’s sidearm.
He sighted down the weapon. Nothing. He glanced
to weapon in Senalloy’s belt. The jewels in the device were blinking to indicate it was active.
“Is this one broken?”
Senalloy shook her head. “No. It’s secured.” She took it from him. She popped the energy cell, slapped it closed, punched the jewels on its side in the same sequence she used before. She flipped the weapon around in her hand and palmed the setting to medium power. The jewels on the weapon lit up and the targeting jewel turned green as she aimed at one of the torch sconces in the corridor. She flipped the safety and handed it back to him.
He closed his fingers around the handle. “Thanks,” he said.
She nodded and headed up the corridor, shining a light ahead of them.
He watched her for a few instants. He wagered that if Marna or any of the other Kriar had seen Senalloy do that, they would be very unhappy. The Kriar were so confident in the abilities of their artifices, for Senalloy to be able to subvert the security measures so easily would certainly be seen as a threat. He pushed the thought away and focused on now, following after the Baronian woman.
Weapons out, they headed to the end of the corridor and the vault-like door that served as the lab entry portal. The humming sound was like a hive of insects here. The resonance made a crawly sensation all over his body as they stepped into the antechamber that served as a foyer to the lab. The area looked as if a hurricane had been unleashed in the ten pace square space. Every piece of furniture smashed into splinters against the wall opposite the lab door. He breathed a sigh of relief. It did not appear anyone had been in the waiting area when the blast went off.
He heard the sisters behind him murmuring their own relief.
The massive mithril door was bowed outward, only held in place by the toggle bars and the massive hinges bolted into the stone.
“It’s so weird,” Daena murmured looking around.
“What?” he said looking back.
She pointed up to the bronze ceiling fixture. “The blast didn’t affect anything made of metal or stone.” She pointed to the wall sconces and to a statue in one corner. “Shouldn’t they be bent or something? They don’t even look disturbed.”
Reality's Plaything 5: The Infinity Annihilator Page 28
