Resurgence of Ancient Darkness (22 page)

“Restart my trading business, I suppose. I still have plenty of stock to sell. Without the crate, it should only take me a couple of years to rebuild,” he said.

“You don’t sound very excited about that,” said Flame.

“Well, I have been in this business a very long time, and the break has made me wonder if that is where I belong,” he said.

We talked for a while longer about his business, and then I showed him to his quarters for the night. “Rest easy. I will deal with the problem of the crate,” I said as I left the room.

Flame and I headed to Glimmer’s ship immediately after leaving him. Rigal was there and seemed to be deeply focused on the ship.

“What is going on?” I asked.

“I have a shield up like you asked, but something is trying to get out. It tests the shields from time to time, but I have not yet figured out what it is,” he said.

“Are your shields holding?” I asked.

“Yes, Master, but it’s not trying very hard,” he said.

“You should have alerted me about this,” I said.

“I am sorry, Master. I had it under control and didn’t think you would want to be bothered by something so minor,” he said.

“Forget it for now, but next time make sure you alert me,” I said. “I am going to board the ship and see what is happening. Do not let it out, whatever it is.”

“Are you sure, Shadow?” asked Flame. “We don’t know what you might be facing, and if Glimmer’s stories are true it could easily be a demon or other spirit in there.”

I decided it was best not to answer that and approached the craft. I merged my personal shielding with Rigal’s shield around Glimmer’s ship so that I could pass through it without leaving an opening.

Once aboard I cast Weave Sense so that I could see what was really going on and noticed that the entire ship was pulsating with spiritual energy. I wanted to kick myself for not doing this before. Flying all around the ship were spirits of various kinds, far too many to count. They flew around the box containing the wands, passing through any solid barrier in their path as if it was not there.

My personal shielding seemed to deter them, causing them to change their course to go around me as I walked through the room. “
Flame, Rigal, do you see this?
” I sent, along with an image of what I was seeing.

“
Shadow, I don’t like it. Come back out,
” sent Flame.

“
Master, there must be something else in there. Those creatures could not be the ones testing the shield,
” sent Rigal.

“
I wish Spectra was here. Flame, who else on board has Spirit as one of his powers?”
I knew there were more such, but I could not think of who they were.

Flame thought for a bit and replied, “
Shadow, I think Kymberly does
.”

“
Excellent. Bring her here,”
I sent.

While I waited for them to get her, I opened the box again. It seemed to be filled with wands of various types, as before. I was not sure what I was expecting to see, but I started pulling the wands out and sorting them by power. After pulling out only a few rows of wands I came across a shallow shelf that completely sealed off whatever was in the rest of the container.

I lifted the false bottom and underneath it was a large compartment divided into three sections. One section was completely empty. The second section was filled with what might have been diamonds. The final section was filled with glowing blue crystals. The blue crystals resembled the diamonds; they might have been another type, but I was not much of a gemologist and could not tell.

The blue ones were full of energy of some kind, and I was about pick one up when Flame sent, “
She is here, Shadow.”

“
Good. I will open a gate for her. Send her through it. I will guard this side, but be on the alert just in case,”
I sent back.

Kymberly was another one of the wizards in my group who had not really fitted in before coming here. It seemed that we had a disproportionately high number of oddities and outcasts among our numbers. Kymberly was a freak and an outcast among her own people, the Zalionians. Her pure white scales and diminutive frame guaranteed that she would never be welcome among them.

As she came through my gate, she gasped and said, “Wow.”

“
Please keep to telepathic channels. What do you see?”
I asked.

“
Master, spirits, lots of spirits, and they appear to be very unhappy,”
she sent. As she walked around the room I noticed the spirits went out of their way to avoid her, just as they did for me. She walked around, only paying attention to the spirits for a few minutes and then sent, “
Master, some of these spirits are very old, impossibly so.
”

“
How old is that?”
I asked.

“
Master, I am not sure, but many millennia at least,
” she sent.

“
Any idea why they are here?
” I asked.

“
No, Master. I would have to try to talk to them to find that out. However, they appear to be trapped here,”
she sent.

“
Trapped? By what?
” I asked.

She looked around the room again as if watching something very carefully. After a moment she walked over to the crate, gasped and slowly took several steps back, as if deathly afraid of what she saw.

“
What is it?”
I asked.

“
Master, spirit traps! Keep away from them! They will suck the life out of any mortal and trap it forever!”
she sent.

I used my telekinesis to put the crate back together and then weaved a spell to lock it tight. “
How do they work?
” I asked.

“
Master, they are designed to look attractive to anyone who sees them. They automatically alter their appearance to something which the person looking at would pick up without thinking about. Once physical contact is made, the trap is sprung,”
she sent.

I thought about how close I had come to picking up one of the gems and shuddered. “
Is that what all these spirits are, then? People trapped by the gems?
”

“
I think so, Master,”
she sent.

That left a couple of questions, but I decided it was time to leave the ship before we sprang any more traps. I asked Kymberly to research everything she could on spirit traps and brief the command staff and myself in the morning. Until then, I told Rigal to ensure the crate stayed tightly sealed with round-the-clock guards.

Stalker, Karlith, Flame, Kymberly, and I met the following morning after breakfast to discuss the situation with regard to Glimmer’s ship. Once everyone was briefed I asked, “Kymberly, is there any way to free the trapped people?”

“No, Master, they are dead,” she said.

“But their spirits are trapped?” asked Flame.

“Yes, Master, but that’s just their life force, not their identity,” she said.

“On the ship, you said they were not happy. If they are just energy, how can they be unhappy?” I asked.

“Master, it’s not quite that simple. A person’s soul is who they are, and their spirit is their life force, but those two are so tightly coupled that the spirit often keeps a shadow of what the person once was. The person is long gone, on to wherever they were destined to go,” she said.

“Kymberly, you said that the spirit traps capture a person’s life force, but you didn’t mention why.” said Stalker.

“Master Stalker, necromancers can use them to summon armies of undead,” she said.

“How big an army?” I asked.

“Master, with the number of traps in that box, a massive army. I am not sure of the exact count, but just one full gem could summon a legion of undead,” she said.

“How many gems are we talking about?” asked Karlith.

“Hundreds,” I said. “The crate itself is a trap, and I am starting to think that the crate has been traveling around for years collecting souls for someone.”

“More like centuries, Master,” said Kymberly.

“How did it end up with Glimmer?” asked Flame.

“It seems obvious to me, Master. He created it,” said Karlith.

“That would make him a necromancer,” said Stalker.

“I do not think he created it,” I said. “The first order of business needs to be to destroy those gems before whoever made them comes looking for them.”

“How do we do that?” asked Flame.

“I’m not sure we can, Master,” said Kymberly.

“What do you mean? We can just slap some antimatter charges on it, and it would be history,” said Karlith.

“Master, the amount of energy stored in those gems would make an average supernova look small. Even if we could somehow detonate it, the explosion would be catastrophic to the entire sector,” said Kymberly.

“Shadow, can’t you just drain their energy off?” asked Flame.

“No. Spirit energy is life force and not really a form of energy; at least, not in the same way that electricity is. I have only limited dominion over it,” I said. “Kymberly, do you know of any way to destroy them?”

“Yes, Master, but it is beyond me. They would need to be taken to the Spirit Realm, and there they could be destroyed. The power they would release would not be much different than the energy that is already there, so it should be safe.”

“What part of it is beyond you?” asked Karlith.

“Master, I could not even get to the Spiritual Realm, never mind cast powerful enough spells to destroy so many,” she said.

“Do you think Spectra could?” asked Flame.

“Oh, yes, Master. I would think so,” she said.

“But she is months away, at best,” I said. “Is there anyone else?”

“Kymberly is the most experienced Spiritualist we have currently on board,” said Flame.

“I might have to travel to the Shadow Fox and see if Spectra can help, but first we need to decide what to do about Glimmer. I suspect he is a victim, but if he is not we need to know right away.”

“I agree, Master. Can we bring him here so we can hear his side of the story?” asked Stalker.

“Good idea,” I said and contacted security to have him escorted to us. Once he arrived I said, “Glimmer, we investigated your crate and would like to ask you some questions about it.”

“Sure, but I don’t really know much,” he said.

“Well, let’s start with where you got it from,” I said.

“It was salvage. We answered a distress call from a small cargo liner, but by the time we arrived everyone aboard was already dead. So we stripped her of anything of value, including the crate, and moved on. My ship logs will have the details of that,” he said.

“How long ago was this?” I asked.

“Several months. We easily sold everything else we’d brought on board, but from that point forward we were plagued by one disaster after another. My crew would literally die at their stations at key times, causing system failures and situations to escalate out of control. We never did find out why they all died. They just fell over like robots whose power cells had run out,” he said.

“But you told us it was the crate’s fault?” I asked.

“It has to be. More than once we jettisoned it, and it kept reappearing in our cargo bay. Once we even jettisoned it into a star, but soon it was back in our cargo like nothing had happened. That's why I was heading to the Wizard … to find you guys,” he said.

I noticed he was much calmer today. His story was similar to the first one he had told, so it was probably the truth; but I was still uneasy. What if he had brought the crate here to fill it with spirit power from all of us?

“
Master
Shadow, whatever it is it is trying to get out again,”
sent Rigal.

“
Can you contain it?”
I sent back.

“
Yes, Master. It is trying harder, but it is still well within my ability to control
,” he sent back.

As he sent that, I noticed that Glimmer’s calm façade was showing signs of cracking. I reasoned that that meant whatever Rigal sensed attacking his shields was the crate trying to return to Glimmer. “Glimmer, is this ship here the same one that you picked up the salvage with?” I asked.

“No, we crashed that one into a Red Giant with the crate aboard,” he said.

“What! Are you telling us that you locked that crate up in a spacecraft, which you then sent into a sun, and the crate still came back? How is that possible?” asked Karlith.

“Yes, that’s what I am saying, but I have no idea how,” he said.

“We have it trapped for now. It has tried to reach you several times since you came on board, but we have it under control. We plan to destroy it. Do you have any objection to that?” I asked.

“No! Please destroy it now! And please lock me up until it’s gone!” he said. I could see sweat building up on his brow, and his hands were grasping hard at the chair. He seemed to be fighting something and losing.

“
Security to the main conference room,”
I sent as Flame asked, “Lock you up? Whatever for?”

“I can feel it calling me. It wants me to rescue it. So pretty, can’t I keep … ? NO! Get out of my head!” he screamed.

“Karlith, hold him till security arrives,” I said.

Karlith grabbed Glimmer with his massive arms and pinned him to his seat, but Glimmer struggled mightily against him. Power was building around Glimmer, and Karlith appeared to be weakening.

“Karlith, look out!” I yelled, as I began to weave a cage around Glimmer. Before Karlith could react Glimmer exploded into action, easily throwing off the massive Zalionian, and turned to run. Before he could get away, I closed my cage of power around him. He flailed against the walls of the cage, screaming, “Get out of my head!” over and over.

I approached Admiral Doug Dougherty’s office and rapped once on the metal door. It had become something of a tradition to knock on his door instead of using the chime, but I wasn’t quite sure how that had developed.

“Come in, Bill,” he called out.

“Good to see you, Doug,” I said as I entered. I noticed that his magus assistant, Starbiter, was present. “I hope I’m not interrupting something?”

“No, you are not. Let me guess: your mother wants us to visit for dinner this week?” he asked.