by Rabia Gale
And fired.
Rafe held his breath. How would Mirados’ ka-systems react with….?
The two systems, one ancient, the other only stages-old, collided. Ka flared bright, tangles of it fighting each other within the implosion.
Isabella, swim!
Would she make it? Their kyra bond shivered, but remained intact. As the glow died, he saw something black slipping away, shaking off the creature’s remnants, kicking strongly.
Going faster than he’d ever seen a swimmer go. Headed up, for the dark blot that was Renat Island above them.
“Well?” demanded Mirados. “What’re you donkeys waiting for? After her.”
The engines hummed, the Felicity vibrated, and they rose upward, following that beacon of shadow.
Behind them, threads of ka, some still incandescent, all that was left of the kayan’s creation, fell like silent rain.
Chapter Seven
Rafe
AIDED BY SKETCHED MAPS and Mirados’ verbal instructions, Coop piloted the Felicity into a narrow opening, several feet below the water’s surface. The tunnel widened after the opening, but not by much. Coop was hunched over the controls as Felicity nosed her way in, her lights cutting wavering beams through the water.
Rafe stared out of the main glass-paneled window, his mental hands clenched around the kyra-bond he shared with Isabella. She was alive, she was up ahead somewhere—and that was all he knew. She’d damped down the connection they shared to just that much.
Are you all right? He shouted into the space between them, yet another time.
No reply.
You’re a stubborn mule, you know that? he told her, frustration bubbling. Why won’t you let me help you?
Nothing.
Rafe let his breath out in a whistled huff through his teeth.
Felicity bumped against a wall, strongly enough to judder through the vessel. Mirados tsk-ed and Coop slowed down even more, till they were edging along, groping in their limited vision. Furin’s sensors, which had taken them on a true course for all those days and miles, were useless in this tunnel.
There was too much ka on this island.
Rafe saw it as a working of lace, a crocheted design. He dared not probe it yet, lest it turn on him.
Come on, Coop. But there was no point in harassing his friend as he navigated the twists and turns. Rafe felt like he was in a snake-hole, then immediately wished he hadn’t made the comparison.
If there are sea monsters outside… what might be waiting for us inside?
He strained for any movement in the ka. He gripped his walking stick, ready to unfold the origami of ka-shielding he’d tucked inside it.
It was a fitting metaphor. His defenses were paper compared to the blow-torch of the kayan’s magic. Pulling them out would only prolong the inevitable.
And still he waited, tense, ready to release the magic.
Lying down and giving up were not in his nature.
Gravel crunched under Felicity’s belly as she angled up a sloping corridor. Her nose broke the surface, she heaved, then straightened. And there she was, half out of the water, in a huge cavern.
And Isabella was out there.
Rafe was the first out of the control room, but not the first to exit the vessel. Furin stayed down level to baby his machines, while Coop raised the hatch and took the first breath of damp, salty air. He jumped down to secure the Felicity. Mirados was next, following at a statelier pace, and Rafe almost chewed his fingernails down to their beds in his impatience. When the rohkayan was finally crunching over gravel, Rafe hurried down the ladder, missed the bottom rung, and splashed into ankle-deep water. His stumble over a rock and an almost-pitch on to his face convinced him to slow down and use the walking stick thrust through his belt.
Clumsy blind fool.
He found Isabella by the ka patterns still on her, the squid’s defenses still whirling and sliding all over her. She’d done something to her kyra; it covered her in a hard protective shell, but already parts of it were looking soft and spongy, giving away under the onslaught of angry ka.
She twitched as Rafe put his hand on her shoulder. His grip tightened, and the fabric of her wetskin shredded. His fingers were on her bare, chill skin. “Hold still,” he growled.
To his surprise, she did.
The ka was single-minded in its effort to rend, destroy, disintegrate.
Come for me, you parasite.
Ka-snakes slithered for him, poisoned fangs open to bite.
Rafe grabbed them, pinched their little heads, crushed their skulls. Ka stung his hand, was quickly dissipated. The smoky grey quartz inside his walking stick sucked in the ka as quickly as Rafe defanged and shredded the constructs.
Isabella held herself still and tall as he worked. When Rafe finally let his walking stick dangle to his side, she asked, “Done?”
“Yes.” Pain sank teeth into his eyes and brain, as if the ka-snakes writhed in his skull. It was not a good mental image. Rafe’s skin crawled and he suppressed the urge to shake himself.
“Good.” He’d never heard Isabella sound so weary. She dropped her kyra shield, just let it collapse totally and completely. Rafe caught sight of the dark blot, felt an instant of bone-deep exhaustion. A snatch of song brushed across his ears, a loud laugh rang out, golden and brave and strong and….
He was still holding Isabella’s shoulder. Flushing, feeling like he’d seen Isabella naked, he removed his hand, belatedly slammed shut the doors between them. She was close enough that he felt her wince; the force of his embarrassed, clumsy action had rebounded to her.
It made him feel worse. He had no idea what to say.
Isabella broke the silence, speaking in little gasps. “If that… is what… ka is like… maybe it’s… not a bad… idea for… it to stay gone in the world.”
She’s right, thought Rafe. In the wrong hands, ka is destructive. Maybe it is a good thing that most of it is poisoned and unusable. And a part of him wept at the horror that ka—dancing, beautiful ka—could be twisted into.
Footsteps near them. Both Rafe and Isabella came to readiness, turned a swift double-barreled glare at Furin.
Furin stopped, uncertain. “I-I…” He held up a small bag. “I brought your gear, Lady Isabella. Um, your clothing, specifically.” He dropped his gaze and addressed the toes of his boots, “I thought you might need them.”
‘Thank you, Furin,” said Isabella with a graciousness worthy of a queen. Furin, still not looking at her, silently held out her bag. Once it was out of his hands, he hurried away.
Rafe was very glad that his shadowy vision did not show him the full extent of Isabella’s dishevelment. It was enough to cause Furin to behave like a timid callow youth, that was sure.
Isabella elbowed him in the ribs. “Perhaps it was that look you directed him. Your kayan look.”
“What kayan look?”
“The one that is looking inside people’s skins, contemplating which of their organs to unravel.”
“I don’t… I never have…” spluttered Rafe.
“I didn’t say that you did. It’s just what it looks like. It’s very effective. You should cultivate it.” Now she was laughing at him, he was sure, in that Isabella way, where the laughter lurked under her words.
“Go away, and let me get dressed, Rafe. So Coop and Furin can stop carefully not looking in this direction. Go help Mirados or something.”
Rafe didn’t move. In a few moments, they would be all together, and he’d lose his chance. “Isabella…”
“Don’t, Rafe.”
He plowed on. “How long have you had it?”
She shrugged, a ripple of careful unconcern through their kyra bond. “A few years.”
“Was it the one Karzov meant for me in Shimmer?”
She nodded, once, curtly.
“Isabella…”
“I can handle it, Rafe.”
“I meant, can we get it out of you, Isabella?”
“It would be ri
sky, after all this time. The longer it’s had to burrow… and my recovery would be long. I cannot afford to be flat on my back for months. There’s too much to do…” Her cool wasn’t exactly unraveling, but it was stretched thin.
He took her slim capable hands in his. “If there’s anything I can do to… help wall it in or take it out, you know I’ll help you.”
Her voice was soft and steel. “The only thing I’ll need you to do, Rafe, is kill me if I lose control.”
“I told you they wouldn’t know anything about this,” said Mirados smugly, as he straightened from the transparent quartz panel. Layers of ka in the cool colors of ice shimmered within it. Rafe examined them closely, till he could see the fine lines imprinted on a bottom layer. When Mirados put his hand on the panel, ka shifted under it. The Shimmerite’s handprint appeared on in its surface, traced in blue ka, complete with each fine line on his palm and fingers and the throb of his pulse at his wrist. It matched the print on the bottom layer, though this one was sketched with purple ka.
Ah, today’s handprint was identical to one taken some time ago and etched in the ka of memory.
The panel glowed brighter, then dulled.
A door, seemingly made out of layers of translucent glass, slid open silently.
Rafe turned his head, tracking the colors of ka—from blue to purple to green to orange to yellow. Intellectual and physical ka combined to make this one small yet perfect device.
Would the rest of the island be filled with wonders such as these? He could lose himself in it for years, if that was the case, and be happy for it.
Mirados said, “Coming?” with exaggerated patience. He stood in the doorway, clearly pleased with himself.
“We should make sure that all of us are able to enter and exit this way. Just in case.” Rafe probed the identify-and-open ka-spell, skimming across the surface, feeling the minute bumps of the magic.
“We can’t do that,” said Mirados. “We need the Dolmen ledger and that was in my private vaults and…” He stopped as Rafe flipped the entire ka structure over, until the purple layer was at the top. “How did you… what did you do?”
Rafe laid his hand on the purple layer. Coolness traced his skin. The tingle felt like something between touching ice and a paper cut.
Once his print was on the layer, he flipped the structure back over. “Stand back, Mirados,” he said as he pressed his hand on the panel once more.
Mirados frowned, but stepped out of the doorway. The quartz panel glowed again, the door slid down.
“Hmm,” was Mirados’ comment. “So the shahkayan taught you something after all.” He didn’t object when Rafe urged Furin and Coop to place their hands on first the memory layer, then the identification one.
The door slid open and shut.
“You too, Isabella. I don’t want anybody getting stuck on that side.” Rafe waved towards the doorway beyond.
Isabella slapped her hand down on the panel.
It sparked.
Ka, orange and red and yellow, fountained up Isabella snatched her hand away; Rafe thrust her behind him, one hand outstretched, soothing the angry ka, coaxing it back down.
“What was all that about?” said Coop.
“Maybe it was full,” said Rafe, at the same time Isabella said wryly, “Maybe it doesn’t like me.”
“Mirados?” Coop appealed to someone who would counted on not to give a facetious answer. Pedantic maybe, but not facetious.
Mirados shook his head, but Rafe did not like that the man did not take his gaze from Isabella. She matched him, look for look.
She hadn’t, he realized, been surprised that the quartz panel had not taken to her.
“You’d better go,” Coop said, tersely. “The longer we’re here, the greater the chance of discovery.” He was staying behind, to watch the Felicity and keep the engines warm in case they needed to escape quickly.
It was a surprising result—Furin was the engineer. But the two men had gone off to have a private conversation, and the upshot was that Furin came and Coop stayed behind.
His son. He wants to rescue his son.
His emotions could jeopardize the entire mission.
But Coop was the leader, not Rafe. This was an Ironheart mission, and he, disgraced Oakhavenite diplomat, did not have any say about who would guard his back.
Not that the rest are companions I’d have naturally chosen.
A Blackstonian defector whose son was a hostage. A Shimmerite rohkayan with his own agenda.
And a krin-slayer with a krin coiled deep inside her.
And himself. A blind agent-turned-traitor-turned-kayan. The person he barely recognized.
Aloud he said, “Let’s go.”
Chapter Eight
Rafe
THE CHAMBER BEYOND THE doorway was more cavern than room, but it would’ve been wrong to think of it as a cave. It wasn’t damp or musty. It might’ve been dark, but judging by Furin’s indrawn breath and Isabella’s head-tilt back to look up at the ceiling, the others saw at least a shadow of what Rafe did.
Ka.
Sheets of it all over the walls. Not solid and still, but like liquid crystal, moving in slow ripples. The sheets overlapped each other, creating a rainbow of cool colors that shone like opal. More ka stitched these sheets in delicate designs whose purposes Rafe could not fathom.
A hushed silence reigned, queen-like, in the place. Not the silence of abandonment, but the austere silence of prayer. As Rafe looked at the sparse architectural details—the curved walls rising to a domed ceiling, milky-white columns, a floor that felt like marble but was warmer and softer on the feet, the layers of ka floating ghostlike across the walls—he was reminded of the grace of Talari religious writing.
“Those designs,” he said in a lowered voice, so as not to disturb the silence further with an echo. “I came across something like them in underground caverns in the Talar.” A novice shahkayan had held his hands to the carvings, so he could etch into his mind with his fingers what he could not see with his eyes.
“The layout is like that of Ironheart prayer-houses,” said Furin, as he stood in front of a wall where twined blue and green ka made flourishing lines, hands clasped behind his back.
“The chapel of the Selene Sisterhood on the Point,” murmured Isabella, gaze still tipped upwards. That’s right, though Rafe, she was raised by the nuns.
Mirados shrugged, seemingly unaffected by the reverence that gripped them all. “Or all of those are based on this chamber.” He spread his arms out to indicate the whole space. “After all, it came before them all.” His voice was louder than necessary and grated against Rafe’s ears.
How can a rohkayan not feel the majesty of this place? Is he so tone-deaf that he cannot hear the very silence ring out with an admonishment to awe?
“What are these?” Rafe traced the script—he was sure it was writing—formed by the ka, fingertips inches away from the surface.
Somehow it felt like sacrilege to touch the walls of this place. To dip his profane fingers into this pure, water-and-ice ka, to create unintended ripples and disturb its purpose.
“These what?” asked Mirados.
“Writings,” answered Rafe.
Mirados shrugged. “I see nothing,” he said, flat as a cracked bell.
Furin shook his head mutely; Rafe felt Isabella’s attention on him. He thought she was smiling in that eyebrow-arched, ironic way, but he couldn’t be sure. The fluorescing colors caught drew his kyra and ka-sight both. He watched the words ripple and flow. Their lines trailed like tendrils, their loops glided and fluttered like wings.
If he listened really hard, he could hear them sing.
It was a song too high for his ears, as if sung by stars—if stars were made of ice. Another, lower, song joined it—this was the murmur and gurgle of water. If songs could be touched, one would be glassy and cold, the other silky and wet. Yet, their duet was more than the sum of their parts…
I may be the only person in
the world to see and hear this. And the thought pierced Rafe with both awe and loneliness and an aching gratitude.
“I see nothing,” repeated Mirados, cutting across the song. “I only know that there is much powerful ka in this place, sealed within plates of quartz. Ka that I can’t get to. Ka that is flowing there, useless.”
Appalled, Rafe opened his mouth to retort, but Furin got there before him.
“Not everything,” said Furin, hands still behind his back, still turned away from the rest of them, “has to be grabbed at, gotten, and put to use. Some things can just be.”
And this from the Blackstonian that Mirados was complaining could only see quartz on the same level as lumps of coal or a field of gas. Rafe was reminded of Furin’s father Pyotr, who had lived in Moon Alley in Blackstone. Moon Alley, with its silent history written in pieces of stone. The cries and emotions and dreams that its people had carved and chiseled, gouged and polished, into pocket-sized art.
And he knew that Furin understood much better than Mirados, who had presided over lavish parties and flamboyant entertainment, the true value of this place.
“What do you know of this chamber, Mirados?” Isabella was so quiet that her voice and her breath threaded through the silence, joining with it, uplifting it, instead of clashing with it like the rest of them did.
“Nothing. All I know is that it’s called the Chamber of Names.”
Names. Yes, Rafe could see those designs were like calligraphy. But whose names and for what purpose, he didn’t know. Perhaps this was a memorial, but the cavern didn’t feel like a place of sorrow and death. There was a kind of life and power—a waiting, expectant kind. Not waiting to be released, but waiting to be… called upon?
“Once we leave this chamber, we need to be on our guard for Karzov and his kayan. He’ll also have muscle with him, all crawling into every corridor and cranny,” said Mirados.
“You’re certain this is a safe place?” said Rafe.
“There is no indication that there is a door into here from the other side. One cannot even sense the ka within it.”
