Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) (35 page)

“Everyone thinks I have answers for them.” She glanced at Stochman. “They’re wrong.”

The girl’s delicate face looked melancholy under the dark curves of her eyebrows and the light brown waves of her hair. She really was beautiful—like a perfect exit wound.

Mordechai ran an ashen hand through Elena’s forelocks. “You are very special.”

Elena regarded him with one rose-colored eye. “You think you know what I am.”

Mordechai stood. His cloak fell to the deck. Stochman tried and failed to look away as the freak unfastened his shirt and bared his back. Five black dots marked his skin in a pattern matching the girl’s sockets. He turned his back to her, and Stochman could finally avert his eyes.

“We are of a kind,” said Mordechai.

Elena sat up and stared at the marks. “You feel a part of yourself missing. Something taken from your soul.”

Mordechai faced her again but said nothing.

Elena pressed a hand to her heart. “What you're looking for is in me.”

Vaun clasped the girl’s hand between his own. “I don't understand,” he said.

“My soul is made of fragments from many others. Including yours.”

Mordechai's hands dropped to his sides like lead weights. “A composite soul?” he said at last. “Why would anyone commit such wanton butchery?”

“For the reason you suspect.”

“To retrieve a soul from the Nexus.” Vaun spoke slowly, but his voice held growing conviction. “They excised pieces from living souls to reconstitute one of the dead.”

Pain clouded Elena’s face. She lay down and said nothing.

Vaun replaced his shirt, cloak, and mask. “We are siblings, after a fashion,” he said solemnly. “Leave this prison with me, and help me unlock the secret of our plight.”

Elena closed her eyes. “It's too late.”

Overwhelmed with a fear he could not name, Stochman fled the brig.

Teg squeezed through the hole he'd cut in the bronze door and tumbled onto the stairs. He sat up, spat out metallic-tasting water, and let a shuddering breath fill his burning lungs. Water kept pouring through the hole, and he retreated up the stairs in a hasty reverse crab walk.

Teg wondered if the fountain would eventually flood the whole tower. Luckily, the water crested at the second floor landing. After a few minutes—more than enough time to drown a man—the flood began to recede.

Good to know I can leave the way I came,
Teg thought. He stood up and resumed climbing the staircase that spiraled around the tower's inner wall. Window slits admitted just enough hazy dawn light to see by. His swift yet cautious ascent ended at a simple wooden door.

Chastened by his earlier misstep, Teg subjected the exit to the Formula’s full scrutiny. The door itself—made of stout oak—hid nothing sinister.

The door opened on squealing hinges that echoed like startled children. Beyond it, a dim hall curved away out of sight. Teg stepped into the corridor and followed its leftward curve.

The beating of large wings echoed from behind him. Leathery membranes brushed the back of his neck.

Teg spun to find the hallway empty. He heard only the pounding of his heart. He turned again and hurried toward a low arch, beyond which another stairway rose. Cool morning air flowed down from above. Without further delay, he started up.

Teg emerged near the tower's upper east edge. The spire’s top lay under heavy shadow not yet lit by the orange band of light rising over the water. Square pylons rising from each corner supported the ceiling. The open spaces between granted breathtaking views of the dark Fourth Circle to the west, and to the east: vast waters under a brightening sky.

A stout brazier sat atop a three-tiered dais in the middle of the floor. Even in the dim light, Teg saw firewood stacked inside. He readied his lighter and strode forward.

Distorted shapes sprang from the shadows on Teg’s front, left, and right. They took him within arm’s reach of the beacon; not the small yet sinister animals emblazoned on the gate, but nightmarish perversions larger than men. Before he could raise a hand in defense, a long curved chisel drove into his chest. Powerful fanged jaws clamped down on his right shoulder, and a maw filled with wet needles latched onto the left side of his neck.

Sickly red light exploded behind Teg's eyes. His consciousness shrank to three points of intense, rending pain and a hellish chorus of plaintive squealing, deep, feral growls, and high-pitched chittering. If he screamed, the sound was lost amid the creatures' savage cries.

Teg's next action resulted purely from reflex. His hand ignited the lighter to which it had somehow clung, and his arm flung the rose-hued torch onto the dry wood inside the brazier. The fire caught and flashed into a roaring blaze that set the top of the tower alight.

Teg deeply regretted lighting the beacon when he saw the bastard monstrosities that worried his flesh. Though varying greatly in appearance, their misshapen forms each blended human and animal features into blasphemous mockeries of both. Their presence filled the air with the fetid musk of a rabid carnivore’s den. The shock of physical trauma and the horror of the beasts inflicting it plunged Teg into merciful oblivion.

Teg woke from blood-red dreams on a bed of coarse sand. Nakvin knelt over him, bandaging his agonized neck and shoulders. Her hair and robes blended with the mostly dark sky. When he looked at her, a weak smile touched the corners of her mouth.

“Did I make it out?” Teg croaked, his throat dry and burning.

Nakvin pressed a finger to his lips. “Don't say anything—not for a while. You've lost a lot of blood.” Looking toward the tower she said, “When the beacon lit up but you didn't come back, Sulaiman went in after you.”

Despite his physician's orders, a hoarse laugh escaped Teg’s throat. The effort felt like coughing up sandpaper. “He’s crazier than we thought!”

Nakvin held a foil-lined bag to Teg’s lips and squeezed a few ounces of spongy, tasteless gel into his mouth. He chewed a couple of times and swallowed with effort. He stood up, though the medic forced him to nudge her aside.

“You can't walk yet!” she said. “The only place you're going is the infirmary back on the
Exodus
.”

“Jaren wants to haggle with a demon,” Teg said as he hobbled toward the shore. “He couldn't get a good price from Dan without me.”

Teg and Nakvin rejoined the others, who stood peering across the water. Sulaiman glanced at the approaching pair, and the mercenary nodded to the priest in silent acknowledgment of a debt owed. Sulaiman quickly turned his attention back to the river, where a short boat was pulling in to a rickety wooden dock.

The small band watched in silence as the pilot of the flat-keeled craft guided his vessel in with a long wooden pole. Based on Sulaiman’s palpable loathing of the ferryman, Teg had expected a more grotesque spectacle; but there was nothing overtly fiendish about him. He looked to be of advanced age, with a tangled grey beard draped over his rust-colored robe.

The ferryman moored his vessel and regarded his customers with stern, steel blue eyes.

Sulaiman advanced to greet the ancient figure. “Hail, Karun,” he said. “What tidings, old psychopomp?”

Karun’s pale lips peeled back over snags that resembled splintered bones more than teeth. “Hail to the priest of no-one!” he said in a resounding voice that belied his withered frame. “Many a long season has fled since last we met.”

Teg saw that Sulaiman fought to keep his face impassive. “I have brought you custom,” said the priest. “Five of the living, including myself, who would cross to the Fifth Circle.”

Rich laughter issued from Karun's throat, which seemed itself a tunnel to perdition. “You know the toll for the living.”

Sulaiman grasped his metal left arm with his right hand and pulled it free at the shoulder. Then he thrust the Worked limb at the boatman. “Well do I know the price,” he growled, “and gladly do I pay it again, the sooner to be quit of your foul presence.”

Karun chuckled. The steel arm vanished into the folds of his robe, and he stood aside to let Sulaiman pass.

Jaren approached next. Teg thought he would try to negotiate, but Karun waved him on. “The Gen have tendered advance payment,” the ferryman said.

As Nakvin approached the skiff, she rifled through her small pack, coming up with two guilder pieces. Karun shook his hoary head. “'Tis not the weight in gold,” he said, “but the dearness to the bearer that sets the worth.”

Nakvin's face fell. She glanced at Jaren, who gave a helpless shrug; then at Sulaiman, who stood one-armed and brooding on the boat's deck. Sighing heavily, she pulled her Magus’ robe up over her head. Standing on the river bank in nothing but her slip, she folded her badge of rank into a perfect square bordered by its thread-of-gold hem and slowly presented it to Karun. Nakvin flinched as the lustrous ebon robe vanished into the old man's rust red mantle. Then she haltingly took her place beside Jaren. Sulaiman doffed his cloak and threw it around her shoulders.

Teg followed close on Nakvin's heels. Without hesitation he drew one of his zephyrs, ejected and emptied the magazine, and offered it grip-first to the ferryman.

Karun buried the end of his pole in the mud and took the weapon in his spidery hands. He turned the pistol over and over, inspecting it thoroughly. “A zephyr fifty caliber pneumatic pistol,” he said at length. “Eight round magazine; semiautomatic, with filed-down front sights and checkered blue steel grips. Inhabited by a minor air elemental and consecrated to Midras.” Karun chuckled at this last observation and tucked the gun into his belt.

Deim followed Teg, approaching the boat as if unsure of where he was. Teg watched him with concern. The longer his absence from the
Exodus
, the more he seemed to sleepwalk through his days.

The young steersman almost ambled right past Karun, who barred his progress with an outstretched arm. “All must meet my fee,” he said.

Deim's foggy expression contorted into a hideous, mirthless grin. His lips parted over clenched teeth, and his dark eyes blazed with wrath. “I serve the Queen of Doors: Thera Souldancer, Lady of the Void. She will enter triumphant through Tzimtzum's gate.”

Karun stepped back. His weathered face fell, but defiance gleamed in his eyes. “I will not yield to threats,” he said. “Satisfy the price, or wander these shores till you merit the toll for the dead. I care not which!”

“Hey, Deim,” Teg said, holding aloft the gold medallion he'd taken from the tower. “Remember that last conversation between you, me, and Elena?”

Nakvin clutched Sulaiman’s red cloak around her. “Teg, what are you doing?” she asked.

Teg felt Deim's formerly aimless rage come to bear on him. “I nearly lost my skin over this thing,” said Teg, bouncing the necklace on its chain. He flung it at the young steersman, who caught the chain with startling speed.

Karun extended a hand toward the medallion in Deim's clenched fist. “That will suffice.”

“I don't get it,” Jaren said to Teg. “Deim’s never seen that necklace before.”

“It's the sentimental value,” said Teg. “Not his; mine. The medallion was a fair trade once Deim knew how much it pained me to part with it.”

Jaren arched one red eyebrow. “Then why give it to him?”

“I'm no mystic like Sulaiman,” said Teg. “Or an armchair theologian like Vaun. What I am is observant, and from what I’ve seen, the kid's wrapped up in this somehow.”

After falling silent for a moment, Jaren said, “If Deim’s a part of what’s going on, maybe he’d better sit this one out.”

Teg shook his head. “I doubt he knows anything—or knows that he knows. Anyway, if we cut him loose we can’t keep an eye him.”

Jaren nodded in agreement as Deim took his place on the cramped wooden deck. The ferryman pushed off with his gnarled pole and steered toward the horizon.

Though the locals called it a river, the border between the Fourth and Fifth Circles seemed wide as a sea to Nakvin. The western shore had long since vanished behind Karun’s skiff. Up ahead, a thick mist hung over the water like foam on dark ale. Hazy shapes lurked within the fog, perhaps a chain of small islands or the dry peaks of a reef.

Nakvin drew Sulaiman’s cloak around her as the ferry approached the first tiny island. She saw that it wasn't an island at all, but a rotting mat of marine vegetation that bobbed and rolled upon the waves. An armada of similar patches massed nearby, separated by channels of scummy, foul-smelling water. The sounds of churning water and otherworldly groaning drifted toward her on the mist.

“Not all myths are happy,” Jaren said.

Nakvin gasped when she followed his line of sight. Pallid forms squirmed upon the weedy carpets, resembling maggots writhing on a corpse. Their reckless movements caused the mats to undulate wildly.

The leading edge of the closest mat teemed with the pale, bloated things. They dragged themselves aboard the seaweed raft with all too human arms and legs, grasping desperately for purchase.
They’re not demons,
Nakvin knew when she saw the haunted, sunken eyes of the Fifth Circle's denizens.
They used to be men.

The locals' perpetual struggle made for a brutally pathetic spectacle. As large and numerous as the mats were, they couldn’t hold all of the clambering dead, whose mad race to escape the icy waters made the seaweed rafts begin to sink. Those already atop the mats fought just as fiercely to drive the invaders back into the turgid sea, but they were often the next thrown overboard. This mindless cycle perpetuated itself in an orgy of hoarse wailing and splashing so awful that Nakvin finally had to shut her eyes and press her hands to her ears.

By the time Nakvin looked again, the ferry had left the archipelago of shifting mats and rioting drowned men, though their wordless shouts still echoed behind her. Leaden clouds hung overhead, and the sea lane had narrowed to one of countless channels winding between islands. These formations were still composed mainly of dead seaweed; only more solid, resembling layers of compacted peat moss. The stench of rot overtook that of stagnant water.

Nakvin saw sundry collections of drifting junk floating in tidal pools at each peat island’s base. She made a game of identifying pieces of flotsam. There were waterlogged clocks, shoes of every style, empty bottles that had once been filled with wine, beer, liquor, and soft drinks; enough furniture to make a complete—though mismatched—banquet set, and countless other items whose names and original purposes she couldn't begin to guess.