Keir (13 page)

Rulk started to laugh, the sound a mixture of fear and mockery. “What will you do now, Quin? Kill me?”

“I won’t kill you,” Quin promised, sudden resolve in her voice. “But I’m going to make sure you’ll do nothing more.”

Keir watched as Quin seized Rulk’s head in her hands and white lightning surged over the prone woman. She screamed, a raking sound that clawed through his skull, and he clapped his hands over his ears, trying to shut it out. Rulk convulsed as the energy streamed from her body and spiraled into Quin, who threw her head back and shrieked. Power coruscated around the two women and filled the room with a dazzling brilliance that forced him to cover his eyes and left painful sparks in his vision.

As the light dimmed, Keir crept to Quin’s side. She was shaking, her head bowed and red hair hanging loose over her face. Rulk lay limp and panting beneath her, glazed eyes staring into space.

“Quin.” He raised a hand toward her, his fingers halting just shy of touching her. Her head turned until her gaze met his. Tears streaked her face. “Are you all right?”

“No,” she breathed, and her voice caught. “But I will be.” She pulled herself clear of Rulk and struggled to her feet. Keir rose with her.

Relief eased the pain still thrumming through his head as they stood together and stared down at Rulk.

“What did you do to her?”

Quin hugged herself, and he felt the urge to touch her shoulder, to give her the reassurance she clearly needed, but could not bring himself to do it. “I’ve crippled her,” she admitted hollowly, and shuddered. “Drained off her remaining powers and burned out her memories. She’ll be capable of taking care of the child, but she won’t remember what she is and what she did. I didn’t want to…”

This time he did brush her shoulder at the pain flowing from her. It was an ephemeral gesture, but she gifted him with a brief smile for it. “I did learn one thing though. She wasn’t lying about Ryan. She has no idea where she sent him.”

“So what will you do now?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “With all of time and space to search through, my last hope was finding the Sentiac. Now…” Hopelessness bled from her. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“But you will keep looking?”

“Yes. Somehow. I have to.”

She moved away from him and looked down into the crib. Curiosity drew him to follow. The baby had its eyes open. They appeared black as it gazed up at them both.

“It is hard to believe that this will be my ancestor.” Keir murmured, unnerved by its silent staring. And yet he felt the same connection to it as he had with Rulk, with Quin. They were all bound by the same blood, by that same alien contamination.

“But it means that your origins are human. Whatever Rulk may have been, there aren’t demons in your ancestry. You can see that now, can’t you?”

He could. But even that could not purge the image of the Sentiac from his mind, or the knowledge that he still carried that potential within himself. Pain still throbbed in his head from Rulk’s searing invasion, and his stomach squirmed at the memory. Her touch had branded itself into him body and soul, leaving his skin feeling strung tight and hot around his flesh. As if the blue fire he had seen within her had passed to him, had scorched the blood from his veins.

Quin sighed. “We’re finished here,” she murmured, and with a final scathing glance at Rulk still sprawled on the floor, she led him back out into the night.

Keir paused at the doorway to look back once. He had hoped to find a resolution here. The end to his hatred. The start of freedom. Instead, he had only Rulk’s taint on his tongue. Her contagion in his blood.

Something inside him had changed.

1.       
   Chapter 6
   

Late that night, Keir lay in his bed, curled into a knot as his head blazed in agony. Blue flames seemed to rise from somewhere deep inside his mind, filling him until he felt his skin would split open with the force of it. It scorched along his nerves, seared his veins until every beat of his heart was another surge of unbearable heat. He writhed within the fire, seeking an outlet, an escape from the pressure. With every fragment of strength he had, he thrust himself against invisible restraints and they shattered, freeing him.

With a thought he redirected the fire, spilling the energy outward and twisting time and space to his own design. A gateway opened for him, a crystal pathway beckoning him into the void. Without hesitation he took it.

Walking unseen through the shadows Keir traveled once more to the Poor Quarter of the city, to a dilapidated one-roomed house. He entered to walk across a hard-packed dirt floor that might once have been flagstones.

A woman slept in a shabby, wooden chair, the fire in the grate burned down to a few orange embers gleaming amidst thick, gray ash. Her face was lined with age and sorrow, hair once long and black now gray and roughly cropped around her oval face. Keir reached out to touch the careworn cheek and found he could not. As insubstantial as mist, his hand passed straight through her. A single tear ran down his face.

“Mother,” he whispered.

She stirred then, as if his voice had disturbed her rest, but soon settled back into sleep. Keir stood and watched, unable to do more and unwilling to return to a half-remembered reality a world away.

Suddenly, the door smashed open and a handful of city guards plunged into the room. Serena started from her sleep but a sword pressed at her throat before she could rise. She did not protest or demand an explanation. Instead she clutched the arms of her chair as her eyes flickered from the blade to the shielded face of her captor. The guard said nothing and Keir found his silence unnerving.

Two guards searched the room thoroughly, although there were precious few places for even a mouse to hide. Keir recognized the familiar twisted knot symbol and colors of the Corizi personal bodyguards with a jolt of hatred. For what did they search? Why had the Family sent so many of their elite to harass his mother?

All five now surrounded her, the search concluded, and a cold certainty swallowed his confusion. He was the cause. Their escape from the palace, and Quin’s defense of him against the villagers, would surely have driven the Corizi to fury. They had come for him.

Someone entered the house, his pace regal, his tabard emblazoned with a golden commander’s insignia. Masked like his men, he slowly surveyed the scene before approaching Serena. Four of his men snapped to attention and saluted with their swords. The fifth kept his blade at her throat.

“At ease,” ordered the commander, his voice muffled under his visor.

The soldier stepped back and sheathed his blade, allowing his superior to move closer to the frightened woman. As he place a mailed hand on the arm of her chair and leaned over her, she cowered away from him. Only then did he remove his helmet, revealing a grizzled face as long and solemn as Keir’s, with the same narrow nose, high cheekbones and wide forehead, though his once curly hair was now gray and close-shaven.

Horror shot through Keir and his breath locked in his throat. He could not move, could not think as he watched in silence.

The man looked down his nose at Keir’s mother, his face twisted in fury. “Where is he, Serena?”

She returned his glare. “Even if I knew, I would not betray our son.”

He nodded solemnly, as if he had anticipated her reaction. “I would expect no less from a woman who consorts with demons,” he said. “But we will find him. The time has come to rid Adalucien of this curse. We will begin with you.”

He waved a hand and his guard removed her from the chair to drag her outside. As Rialto followed his prisoner out, he scanned the room, his blue eyes like Keir’s own as he stared straight through his son. Keir tried to snatch at him, crying out in frustration as his blow made no impact. The scene faded away and Keir jerked upright, hands clutched to his head. A scream of fury and despair filled the small room, and his eyes opened to blaze a fiery blue in the darkness.

* * * *

Quin woke with a pounding heart and a scattering of images in her head. She thought she heard Keir call out, full of terrible rage, but couldn’t focus on him. Whatever had disturbed him had closed his mind to her. Concerned, Quin rose and dressed, pulling a long tunic over her head. As she reached the door the alarm on the gateway room began to sound and she broke into a desperate run, knowing she was already too late.

Despite her earlier sense of foreboding, she wasn’t the first to reach the gateway. Sky, Taler, Surei and Mercury were already there, alerted by the security and all closer to hand. Sky stood armed guard over the open doorway, with Mercury at his side, as impassive as ever, following the set protocols for unauthorized use of the gateways.

Surei took Quin aside, her ruffled feathers betraying her agitation.

“Do you know who opened the gateway?” she demanded. Anger had stripped the usual melody from her voice.

“I think it was Keir,” Quin admitted. “I’ve lost track of him.”

“You promised me he wasn’t a danger. You said he didn’t have any of the Sentiac’s abilities. I think he just proved you wrong, Quin.”

“No, I think he learned it from me. I think his mother is in danger and he’s gone back to save her.”

“You’re going to follow him, aren’t you?” Surei’s amber eyes were almost incandescent in her fury. “You should never have brought him here! Why can’t you just let him go?”

“I just can’t. I have to go after him,” Quin protested. “But this time, I’ll take some help.”

“What about Ryan?”

She had turned away, but the words stopped her as though they had impaled her on the spot. The ache that had haunted her for three hundred years returned in full force.

“You’re going to abandon him? For Keir?” Surei pressed, her tone scathing.

“No, I’m not.” Quin gazed back at the medic. “But Keir’s in danger
now
, and until the archivist comes up with some useful data, I don’t even know where to start looking for Ryan. So one thing at a time, huh?”

Without another word, she walked away with a sickening wave of guilt surging in her chest.

One thing at a time…

* * * *

It had all happened as he had imagined it. He had opened the gateway alone, duplicating Quin’s methods instinctively and arriving back in Adalucien before dawn. Hiding in the shadows came as naturally to him as breathing as he entered the city and secreted himself across the square from the ornate bronze doors of the palace.

Wooden scaffolding twined around the North Tower, tumbled brickwork and cracked marble a testament to the damage Quin had caused with her explosion. His mother would be held somewhere inside, either near the inner court or in one of the towers, since she was one of the Family. Cloaked and hooded in the outfit he had worn on his first mission, the fine quality of the cloth should let him pass as one of the high-ranking citizens of the city. With luck he should be able to slip in as part of the aristocratic families arriving for the Dawn Assembly, when court would be held and his mother brought to face charges before the high-born of Adalucien. That is, if Rialto followed tradition. Having acted on impulse and in fear, he had no better plan. There was no possibility of crossing unseen to the palace doors, of penetrating the double walls or passing unconcealed through the well-guarded entrance. Camouflage was his only hope, but what he could do once inside left his mind frighteningly blank. He knew only that he had to try.

As the sun rose over the opulent buildings of the Merchants Quarter, turning the marble facings of the palace gold, the Assembly Bell rang solemnly from the East Tower. Keir had lived here once, in the North Tower, hidden away from the world during the early years of his life. He had sat, concealed from sight by shadows, in a corner of the assembly room, staring in awe at the high, vaulted ceilings with their colorful frescoes and bright decoration.

His father had always read the charges whilst his grandmother sat in judgment, with the elite of the city resplendent on their gilded thrones along either side. The condemned were dragged through the main entrance to stand on a plinth of stone before the Matriarch. Grandmother was known to be harsh but fair, while his father had always taken the side of prosecutor and pushed for the highest penalties. For consorting with demons, Keir knew only one sentence was possible.

The elite of Adalucien began to arrive, some drawing up in front of the palace in elegant coaches or mounted on horseback, others on foot but with a small entourage of attendants and guards. Most were cloaked and hooded against the dawn chill. As they gathered before the ornate bronze doors of the outer wall, Keir joined them, barely earning a second glance. The doors blazed a dull gold in the early morning light as they creaked open to reveal the ceremonial guard lining the way.

Keir walked through with the crowd, suppressing a shudder as he stepped into the shadow of the gateway tower, with armed guards overhead and to either side. He passed the inner doors that led to the barracks. Before him lay the two-story square building that housed the central court, dominated by the North and South towers standing behind it. To either side ran raised walkways, backed by arched alcoves that provided a covered aisle for the elite in poor weather.