by Nat Russo
Rows of teeth filled their mouths, but the cichlos weren’t scary-looking…merely different. In some ways they were amusing. Their chameleon-like eyes were able to move in independent directions, making it look like they could stare in two different places at once, and they kept moving their heads up and down as if to examine him from head to foot and back again.
They all wore the same bluish grey clothing, in stark contrast to their otherwise colorful bodies. Every seam, every stitch, every tint appeared identical. Nicolas knew a thing or two about civilizations, and there was no way those clothes were the product of a preindustrial society. They were mass produced.
The tube vaulted over them into a giant arched roof about sixty feet high. Walls seemed to grow out of the tube floor itself to form small buildings not much taller than the cichlos.
The crowd had stopped and people stared at him, speaking words he didn’t understand. One of them yelled something, and another ran farther into the tube.
The sound of marching filled the plaza, and danger pulsed through the necromantic link. The crowd parted as a large cichlos…larger than the others…came toward him, surrounded by several undead cichlos skeletons. He must be a necromancer.
As if in response, an image of a general defeating an army of argram on a battlefield appeared in Nicolas’s mind. This wouldn’t end well.
The undead cichlos looked like fish bones come to life, enormous heads and skinny bones. They were unarmed.
The large cichlos stopped in front of him while the undead circled around. A midnight-blue cowl draped over the cichlos’s leathery shirt and pants down to what Nicolas assumed were the cichlos’s knees. That cowl would be a robe on a human. In fact, it looked like the robes worn by the Mukhtaar brothers in the mural at their estate. But on closer look it was a material Nicolas had never seen before, rippling in the breeze like cloth one moment and shining with a metallic glint the next. None of the other cichlos wore a cowl like this, but that wasn’t the only difference.
While the other cichlos were all colors of the spectrum, this one’s skin—if skin was the right word—was pure white, accented in places by orange stripes and splotches, and his eyes had a distinctive pink tint, which reminded Nicolas of some of the albino tribes he had studied.
The albino made a show of looking Nicolas up and down, and then glanced at the tube wall from where he and Cisic had emerged. The cichlos said something, but Nicolas didn’t understand what he was saying. At least he assumed the albino was a man, but he didn’t know for sure. There was something masculine in his bearing.
The albino turned toward Cisic for the first time and grew agitated. He uttered something unintelligible and waved his hand. A tugging sensation grabbed at Nicolas’s chest, and the necromantic link disappeared from his mind, leaving him with feelings of loss and guilt. Cisic didn’t crumble to the ground in a pile of bones…he vanished.
Mujahid had told him a necromancer couldn’t mess with another priest’s link. It seemed Mujahid had been wrong about that too. The albino had banished Cisic with no discernible effort, and there was nothing Nicolas could have done about it.
He opened his mouth to speak and the cichlos backhanded him with an armored fist, filling his mouth with the metallic taste of blood. He could feel his lip swelling already.
Two penitents lifted Nicolas up, squeezing his arms in vise-like grips.
As the albino turned and walked away, the undead guards dragged Nicolas behind.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nicolas, confused and afraid, tried to stand but couldn’t break the grip of the large cichlos skeletons.
Questions raced through his mind. Where were they taking him? How did Mujahid not know a necromancer could make another’s penitent disappear? And what was his deal with never trying to summon more than one? This albino had four.
His captors came to a stop and released him. They stood like bony columns circling Nicolas.
The albino spoke with another cowled cichlos, but he couldn’t understand them. They were loud and used a lot of hand waving.
He sensed power all around him, so he did the only thing he could think of—he attempted to fill his energy well.
The albino flinched and leaped toward Nicolas with an angry guttural sound.
Nicolas closed his eyes, expecting the full weight of the albino to land on him. Instead, he felt a powerful blow to his head, and his head snapped sideways. He drew as much power as he could, but an impenetrable wall rose up around his energy well, making the power useless.
The albino snorted and kicked him again, this time in the side. Sharp, cracking pain tore through his chest.
The albino tried to kick him again, but the other cowled cichlos yelled and stopped him. The albino snorted, as if frustrated, and withdrew farther down the tube with his undead penitents.
The other guards helped Nicolas to his feet and led him in the same direction the albino had gone. He clutched the side of his chest and winced, doubling the pain when he gasped.
They walked for several minutes then came to a halt so fast he stumbled. There was nothing special about where they stopped. The place was empty. One of the guards turned toward the tube wall and Nicolas had a terrible thought.
They’re going to throw me out!
A hum emanated from the barrier wall, and those mental goose bumps returned. There was a vast ocean of energy just beyond his reach that recoiled every time he tried to draw it in.
A tearing sound startled him, and three bluish-grey wisps of barrier energy, liquid in form, emerged from the thin veil that separated them from the lake. They coalesced into two transparent walls spanned by a liquid ceiling ten feet above the ground. When the viscous energy had formed a hollow cube, it stopped moving and solidified into an opaque barrier wall.
Unlike the wall of the tube, which swirled with multihued wisps like the surface of a soap bubble, this cube looked as if the barrier had transformed into something as hard as metal.
The guards threw Nicolas into the cube, which forced him to grab his side in pain as he hit the far wall. Another aqueous wall rose up out of the floor and sealed him inside the cube. This wall was different from the others, however. It remained translucent and crackled with an energy that gave it a green tint. The guards stared at him and waved their hands around.
Nicolas looked at them through the green barrier as he stepped toward it. Their faces were expressionless, as far as he could tell, but the closer he got to the barrier the faster their gestures became.
He’d been captured, tortured, and even executed on this strange world. He’d survived his own drowning for what? To be beaten for no good reason? Enough was enough.
“You enjoy this, don’t you,” he said.
They backed away.
“You like torturing people? I didn’t even do anything!”
Speaking made him wince in pain, but he didn’t care. The broken rib was nothing next to what he’d already gone through on this hellhole of a world.
A light breeze danced into the cube through the green barrier and tickled his face. He raised his hands, palms out, and placed them about an inch away from the surface of the crackling energy. He moved them across surface of the barrier without touching it, and the cichlos waved their arms faster.
“Oh, this upsets you, but kicking my ass is perfectly fine,” Nicolas said.
He took a deep breath and pushed both his hands through the green barrier.
White-hot energy blinded him, and all sensation disappeared as he was flung backward into the cell. He felt nothing—neither the ground beneath him, nor the breeze that had been circling around his face. He shook his head and sensation came flooding back. His hands felt like they were on fire, and when he looked at them, he wished he hadn’t. His right hand, which must have taken the bulk of the force, was unrecognizable, and the barrier had burned the other to the bone.
The crackling noise stopped, and two of the guards who had been waving ran over to him. One of them knelt beside hi
m and examined his hands. He uttered something unintelligible and waved to the other guard.
Nicolas started shivering, and he didn’t know whether he was going to throw up or pass out.
The sound of marching returned and the crowd parted. The albino had returned. The pink-eyed bastard had probably come to gloat. He didn’t enter the cube, though. He just stood there, staring at Nicolas like a scientist at a lab experiment.
A slow trickle of energy entered his well of power as the albino drew closer, and a patrol of undead cichlos took up position in front of his cell.
A beautiful song filled the cube, giving him a sense of calm that banished the pain. His anger and frustration drained away. Webbed hands brushed hair out of his eyes, and he stopped shaking.
The pain had subsided but it hung at the edge of his consciousness like the memory of a bad injury.
As Nicolas watched, the crowd parted again and another cowled cichlos, orange-skinned with black stripes and splotches, knelt beside him. Nicolas felt his well of power fill.
The guard that had been singing bowed his head and backed away. The orange cichlos examined the injured hands and sang.
The mental goose bumps returned. Intense pain shot through his chest and down his arms to his fingertips. For a moment he thought he was having a heart attack. Then he felt his rib snap back into place, and a tingling sensation, as if the bones were stitching themselves back together. The skin on his mutilated hands began to stretch and pull until they covered the burned flesh, hiding the injury as if it never happened.
Within a few moments his hands and rib were whole again. The orange cichlos stepped toward the albino, who was standing outside the entrance of the cube, and Nicolas’s well of power drained.
Nicolas couldn’t see the orange cichlos’s face, but the albino bowed his head and looked down at the floor. After a few uncomfortable moments, the orange cichlos left and the green barrier returned. The crowd bowed as he passed.
The albino looked at Nicolas through the barrier with both of his enormous, articulated eyes. They moved up and down in their giant orbs, as if examining every inch. He closed one hand into a fist. With his other hand he pointed at Nicolas’s face and said something in the cichlos language. When Nicolas didn’t answer, the albino repeated himself and made the gesture again, more forceful this time.
The only thing Nicolas could think of was to step away from the barrier. The green barrier faded from existence and the albino smiled and entered the cell.
As the albino stepped closer, Nicolas’s energy well filled. Somehow the cichlos were a source of power. No, that wasn’t it exactly. His well only filled when he got close to the cichlos wearing blue cowls.
A section of flooring tore away, the way one large bubble becomes two without breaking. It rose a few feet into the air and hovered, morphing into something that resembled a bench. When the morphing stopped, the bench legs grew down into the barrier floor and formed a seamless connection.
The albino sat on one end of the bench and gestured to a place next to him.
Nicolas saw little choice but to sit. He had no desire for another confrontation.
The cichlos struck his own chest twice and uttered a noise that sounded like jurn. Again the cichlos struck his chest twice and said “jurn”.
Nicolas struck his chest twice and said “Nicolas.”
Jurn looked him up and down again. Then he pointed to Nicolas and said “Nee-kluss.”
Nicolas nodded and repeated “Nicolas.” Then he pointed at the albino and said “Jurn”.
Jurn made a sound similar to harrumph and sat straighter on the bench. He said a word that Nicolas couldn’t understand and the undead guards broke apart, one bone at a time, until they were nothing more than a pile of skinny fish bones on the floor. He turned back to Nicolas and said something that sounded like sabnamo.
Nicolas had no idea what to do. He pointed at the bones and repeated “sabnamo”.
Jurn made another harrumph sound and the goose bumps returned. Nicolas waited for an unseen hand to strike him, but no strike came.
Jurn said “sabnamo,” and an undead guard rose from the pile of bones and entered the cell.
Nicolas didn’t understand what Jurn was trying to do or say, so he repeated the word. “Sabnamo.”
Jurn growled. “Sab Nee-kluss. Namo!”
“Look, I don’t know what the hell a sabnamo is. I’m not trying to piss you off, I just—”
Jurn roared. He raised his right hand, and the hair on the back of Nicolas’s neck stood on end. A ball of crackling blue energy surrounded Jurn’s fist.
Nicolas was at his mercy. Worse, he didn’t think mercy was Jurn’s strong suit.
Jurn smacked his chest twice again and yelled “Sabnamo!” Another undead guard rose and entered the cell.
And then Nicolas understood.
When Jurn first saw him it was with Cisic. Jurn must be testing him to see if he was a necromancer.
Nicolas sat back on the bench, rubbing his sore jaw, and turned his mind inward. He drew power into his well and created a pathway to the skull symbol. He extended his hand toward the pile of bones on the floor. He didn’t know whether pointing would do anything, but somehow it felt right and helped him focus. With an act of will, he cast the power into the bones.
Images came and went and the undead guard rose from the ground. Its bones aligned perfectly, and Nicolas could feel the rage radiating off the skinless beast like heat from a stove. He subdued the guard without difficulty and the necromantic link wove itself into his mind like a thread.
Jurn leapt from the bench. One of his eyes examined the guard Nicolas had raised, while the other looked Nicolas up and down.
Nicolas pointed at his undead penitent and said “Sabnamo?”
Jurn harrumphed once more. He waved his hand and the undead cichlos fell to the ground in a pile.
Nicolas felt as if a piece of himself had been torn away.
“How did you do that?” Nicolas said.
Tendrils of energy entered his mind. It was an odd sensation, like someone was tickling his memories. After a few moments they withdrew.
Jurn snorted. He yanked Nicolas off the bench and pushed him out of the cell.
The undead guard rose behind him and followed him out, bony feet clicking on the surface of the barrier floor.
The undead guards led him farther down the tube. He was tempted to draw more power, but that temptation died when another wall went up around his well.
He had no idea whether being a necromancer was a good or bad thing in this place. But he had a feeling he was going to find out the hard way.
The barrier tube spanned two hundred yards across and had a gentle curve to it, making it impossible to see all the way to the end. Judging by the direction they traveled relative to where Nicolas had entered the city, it looked like they were heading toward one of the large domes at the center.
Every time Nicolas slowed down a guard would shove him forward toward Jurn. There had to be a way out of this…something he could use to escape or overpower them. But where would he go if he did escape?
Multi-hued columns of barrier material jutted up from the floor and connected to the arched ceiling above them. Each column had a refrigerator-sized hole cut in one side, and two blue-cowled cichlos handed out trays of fish to a line of cichlos in front of them. It reminded Nicolas of a bodega or cafeteria—except the shopkeepers never took anything in return.
Could he escape through those columns? Maybe they led out into the lake. But how would he breathe? And could he even get there before Jurn killed him?
The guards led him toward an open room that projected away from the tube. It was one of those crashing bubbles he saw when he and Cisic were approaching the city.
They pushed him in and followed close behind. The bubble sealed and the city rushed by at a frightening rate, though he felt no acceleration.
The bubble raced toward one of the central domes along the outside of the tube,
which Nicolas judged to be about a mile long.
All motion ceased. He heard a strange liquid noise, like a water balloon bursting. The front of the bubble opened, and the patrol led him out into the dome.
He glanced around, looking for another avenue of escape.
The center of the dome was dominated by three gigantic, spherical bubbles, each different in size. Did they work like these strange transport bubbles? Could he use one to reach the surface? Even if he could, he wasn’t sure how to reach them. They floated gracefully, one on top of the other, never coming into contact with anything else, and a barrier grew upwards from the floor in a large circle underneath them, creating a fence-like ring about waist high. Three grey-cowled cichlos reclined on chairs inside the ring, and they appeared to be sleeping.
A guard shoved him out of the central hub, and they crossed into a larger dome with opaque walls. While the hub had been bustling with activity, this one was nearly empty. The expanse of the place made Nicolas feel tiny by comparison. It must have been a thousand yards from end to end and more than one hundred yards tall.
A massive statue, standing as tall as the ceiling, stood at the other end of the dome. It was the figure of Death, in black, hooded robes, carrying a scythe with a blade that was half the length of the statue itself. A cichlos skull looked out from beneath the robe’s hood.
Jurn walked toward the statue, and the guards followed along behind, making sure Nicolas stayed with them.
The detail of the dome was amazing. Etched and embossed images decorated the wall, depicting scenes he didn’t understand. Some images showed a purple sky, with red-skinned cichlos performing a ritual around an altar. Others depicted great battles between armies of cichlos—one army with white skin, like Jurn, and the other army with a mixture of orange and black, like the one who healed him.
