Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) (56 page)

“We offer pardon one last time,” Teg's double said in Mephistophilis’ words. “Begone.”

Jaren aimed his rodcaster at the baal. “I never leave a job half-done. I don't know how.”

“You would kill us for what is ours by right.”

“What are these souls to you?” Jaren asked. “You gave a ninth of your kingdom to the Gen, and when that wasn’t enough you imported them from the Middle Stratum. Seems like a lot of trouble to feed a fortune-telling eye.”

Mephistophilis only leered at Jaren with his stolen face.

“He's building more than an oracle,” Vaun said. “Gen souls are far more potent than humans'. Mephistophilis seeks to usurp the Last Working by substituting a deity of his own.”

The baal answered Vaun with a bestial growl.

“The gods did as much harm as good,” Jaren said. “Why not leave well enough alone?”

“The baal can open gates,” said Vaun, “but there are doors that only gods can unlock.”

Teg's double sprang with a feral snarl. His transition from rest to motion was so seamless that Jaren had no time to fire. His foe’s gauntleted fists blurred, forcing Jaren to use his pistols as makeshift shields.

Nakvin’s voice rang out in song. The glamer emboldened Jaren, who abandoned the defensive. He dropped his zephyr and intercepted a blow with his rodcaster. The extra moment was all he needed to draw his sword in a swift motion that flowed directly into a powerful slash.

Mephistophilis began to fall back. His metal-plated gloves sparked as he fought to block the flurry of humming sword strokes raining down on him.

Jaren’s blade flashed, seeking an opening. The baal parried but recovered a second too slow, and Jaren stabbed at his heart with all his strength.

The baal's yellow eyes glinted, and Jaren realized that the overextended parry had been a feint. Mephistophilis sidestepped to his right, avoiding impalement by a hair’s breadth. His left arm slammed down, trapping the blade between his bicep and ribcage. Jaren only had to twist the reciprocating edge slightly to sever his foe's arm, but his lost momentum gave the baal time to deliver a crushing knee to Jaren’s chin.

Mephistophilis released the splintersword and Jaren crashed to the floor. He struggled to rise but could only roll onto his back. The devil pressed a boot to Jaren’s throat, forcing red mist from his bloody mouth.

Jaren’s tear-fogged eyes saw Deim concluding a motion of the Compass. A hypersonic stream of moisture and fine volcanic glass lanced out from his fingertip.

Mephistophilis ducked under the line of water and grit. The powerful jet struck the far wall, drilling a jagged channel through solid stone with a shrill hiss. Deim swept the stream back toward the baal, who twisted his stolen flesh through inhuman contortions, his entire frame moving faster than the steersman's hand. Jaren winced as his foe’s joints popped and cracked.

The Working ended, leaving the sanctuary wall a scarred ruin. Mephistophilis straightened himself to a hideous chorus of protesting cartilage and bone. His face once again split by a bloodthirsty grin, the baal left Jaren supine and sputtering to advance on Deim.

The haphazard shadows cast by the oil lamps suddenly coalesced into a dark pool at the devil's feet. Jaren thought it a pain-induced illusion until Vaun rose out of the zodiac ring behind Mephistophilis.

Teg's doppelganger moved with celerity stretching the human body’s limits. Vaun struck with fluid speed surpassing the bounds of the flesh and locked the baal in his arms. Mephistophilis writhed like a serpent, but Vaun simply moved backward, dragging his victim off his feet. The demon’s fists passed through his captor as if he flailed at a shadow; and his skin turned purple-white at its touch.

“Your Workings were sound,” said Vaun. “I will refashion them in Teth’s service.”

Pale golden light burst from the center of the shadowy mass. The baal’s struggling slowed and finally ceased as devouring cold blackened his flesh. Vaun released his hold, and the demon's lifeless host crumpled onto the starry blue flagstones.

“I think we won,” Jaren gasped when Nakvin reached his side.

“
Vaun
won,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” said Jaren. His knees shook, but he managed to stand. “See to Teg…”

Jaren trailed off when he saw the place where Teg had lain and found it empty.

“Over there!” said Deim, pointing to the bronze circle at the temple’s center. Teg stood beside the pit, holding the last stone cube.

Jaren looked on. There were no words.

Teg’s lips spread over conical, serrated teeth. He released the block.

Seismic rumbling shook the tower and drowned Jaren’s scream. He raised his rodcaster, but the section of wall scarred by Deim's Working collapsed, sending up a choking cloud of dust.

The air cleared. In the doppelganger’s place a robed figure loomed before a hellish vista.

Jaren fought to steady his aim against the tremors shaking the Circle. He lost focus when the bronze plate sank into the deep and the floor started crumbling outward from the center.

Nakvin called his name over the tumult. Keeping his eyes on Mephistophilis, Jaren hastily backed away from the widening pit and joined his companions under the arch.

The whole area bounded by the alien zodiac toppled into oblivion, but the baal stood unsupported over the abyss. Far below, something large was hurtling upward.

Jaren braced the rodcaster with both hands and took his shot. The thumb-sized hammer, inscribed with intricate arcane formulae in diminutive script, slammed down upon the Worked round in the chamber. The complex tethers binding the prana to the cartridge unraveled, blasting elemental forces from the weapon's barrel. The stream of primordial fire passed harmlessly into the baal's chest, leaving a hole in his scapular that glowed like hot iron.

Mephistophilis' oracle burst from the pit in a torrent of stone blocks that engulfed the baal as they coalesced into an enormous whole. The piecemeal god shifted through an infinite series of geometric shapes as it ascended. The sentient mass of rock rose high above the floor, paused for a moment, and soared through the broken wall into the Eighth Circle.

Marshal Malachi swept through the Vigh Guild house in search of the spaceport gate. Sufficient haste might still see him aboard a ship to Mithgar before his report on Shore’s interrogation—however abridged—drew official scrutiny.

Malachi rounded a corner leading into a dim hallway and stopped. He'd visited Temil’s chapter house a hundred times, but the sunken circular room before him escaped his memory.

“Finding one's way is seldom as difficult as it seems,” said someone inside the room. The voice was familiar; its condescending tone alien.

Malachi slipped into the room. It appeared to be a meeting hall of some sort, its upper rim ringed with openings at regular intervals: six counting the one he'd come through. Ulger Narr stood on the floor below.

Malachi descended the short flight of stairs to the main level. “Good day, Master Narr,” he greeted his old colleague. “Excuse my bluntness, but aren't you meant to be on Tharis?”

Narr cocked his woolly head to regard Malachi with one bespectacled eye. “I’m meant to be on Mithgar,” he said. “If you demand specifics, I
was
on Mithgar a moment ago, and I can be again just as quickly. Does that satisfy your thralldom to propriety?”

“How can that be?” Malachi asked despite himself.

“You know the structure of the Guild houses.”

Malachi noted Narr’s unorthodox red-orange robes. The scent of forge-smoke clung to their fabric. He filed the observation away and focused on the matter at hand. “I know of the pocket dimensions accessible from each house's central gate. It is also possible to travel from one Guild house to another, provided the distance isn't too great. I had always thought such movement restricted to locations on the same sphere.”

Narr shook his head. “You thought that because it's what we wanted you to think.”

Malachi's face remained outwardly calm, but the old man's remark had set his nerves on edge. “Are you claiming knowledge denied even to Adepts?”

“You were an Adept until recently,” said Narr. “You tell me.”

Malachi knew what his nominal inferior was implying but found the claim difficult to accept. “You're a Grand Master?”

“Such a rank existed once,” said Narr. “It will serve if you like.”

“And you, a disgraced former minister, are the Guild’s secret head?”

“The Guild was designed to run itself. It has for centuries now.”

Malachi had no time for such frivolity. “I am needed in Ostrith,” he said. “If their Guild house can be reached from here, then show me the way or leave me to find my own.”

Narr eyed his former superior shrewdly. “Before granting you passage to Ostrith, I must know your intentions.”

“I intend to warn our Brothers of a rebel invasion,” Malachi said, his tone betraying his impatience.

“There's more than that. Tell me your
true
motives.”

Malachi set his jaw. “If I refuse?”

“You will never see Mithgar
or
Temil again.”

Narr’s bearing told Malachi that the self-styled Grand Master had indeed threatened his life and was confident in his ability to make good on that threat.

“I suspect,” Malachi said, “that a criminal who once eluded me will be joining the assault on Mithgar. I will bring him to justice.”

“It was twice, actually,” said Narr. “Thrice if you count letting him go in Ostrith.”

Malachi took a deep breath and exhaled sharply. “Are you satisfied?”

“No,” said Narr. “Listen well. You've made this Gen your adversary for purely personal reasons. Why persist in seeking vengeance when there is so much more at stake?”

Malachi had reached his breaking point. “The Gen’s death is required that reason shall triumph, yet I am checked by insufferable nonsense at every turn! What does it all mean?”

Narr calmly weathered Malachi’s wrath. “Heed the wisdom of many lifetimes,” he said. “It doesn't matter. Life may once have had purpose, but the truth is unattainable.”

Malachi rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “I was so sure of what I believed at the start,” he said with a sigh. “Recent events have challenged my certainty.”

Malachi felt Narr’s rough hand on his shoulder and barely resisted flinching.

“My colleagues and I followed the cycle of presumption and doubt countless times before we reached a simple conclusion,” said Narr. “If the truth is unknowable, then we're free to create our own. It's will that drives the world; nothing more.”

Malachi fixed a blazing glare on Narr. “You say that will is absolute? So be it. My will is to slit the Gen's throat!”

Narr's thin smile returned. “In that case,” he said, “you’d best hurry.”

Jaren stood amid the ruins of the oracle's temple with Nakvin, Deim, and Vaun, keeping vigil over Teg's body. The tremors had ceased. A hot wind wailed through the broken wall.

“I don't understand how we killed the wrong one,” Jaren said.

“It was a glamer,” said Vaun. “Cross’ duplication was a ruse.”

“I thought glamers didn't work on you.”

“Most don't, but the Eighth baal's powers are of a higher order than any we've faced.”

Jaren grimaced at his comrade's blackened corpse. “Long story short, we came for Mephistophilis and got tricked into killing one of our own.”

The sound Vaun made could have been a laugh or a sigh. “Sorrow hasn’t diminished your flair for brevity,” he said.

“It’s not a total loss,” Jaren said. “He should get up any time now.”

“I would concur,” said Vaun, “but for the manner of his death. The Void drank his soul.”

“We can't leave him here,” Nakvin said. “We need to get him back on the ship.”

Jaren laid a gentle hand on Nakvin's silken shoulder. “Mephistophilis wants to open a gate,” he said to Vaun. “Where is it?”

“I know not for certain,” said Vaun, “but it is hell’s last.”

“And the baal needs to be someplace on the other side?”

“
The
Place,” said Vaun. “Tzimtzum.”

“What's so special about it?” asked Jaren.

“Many things,” said Vaun, “the foremost being that Zadok stood there when he created the universe.”

“When Thera killed him,” Nakvin said. Her eyes strayed to the jagged hole in the wall where the deity's icon had been.

“Yes,” said Vaun. “Thera was the All-Father's first creation. It is written that her birth was accomplished through the first Working.”

“Wait,” Nakvin interrupted. “How did he use a Working if the Well didn't exist yet?”

To Jaren's surprise, it was Deim who answered the riddle. “Zadok fashioned primeval chaos and malice into his living antithesis,” he said. “The Souldancer.”

“I never understood why they call her that,” said Nakvin.

“When the Void became conscious and saw what her father had done, she struck out at him,” said Vaun. Jaren knew the myth, but he shivered to hear the necromancer tell it.

“Zadok's death sundered his consciousness from his power, which coalesced into the White Well,” Vaun continued. “The Void pulls streams of energy from the Well. When these silver cords pass through the creator's disembodied mind, they draw parts of it into the Strata. Prana and nexus shards: that is the stuff of which souls are made. It is the dance of Thera in the Void and Zadok in the Nexus that causes life to exist.”