Shadow Over Avalon (46 page)

“Change of order. I’ll follow Ambrose with Arthur behind me, then Ector with Kai at the rear.”

Ambrose started, with each of them following in order. Arthur focused most of his attention behind him, very much aware Shadow made conscious sacrifices. She wanted the strongest for the final conflict.

Ambrose crossed the next sentinel, then Shadow, followed by Arthur, but Ector miss-stepped. The entire floor vanished into a hole. Arthur joined with Shadow in a desperate bid to grab the falling bodies with their combined psi power. They made contact, fighting against gravity and their own limitations to slowly levitate those two. Ambrose stood ready to haul the frightened pair onto solid ground. Ector sagged to the floor a few moments before an ashen-faced Kai joined him in safety.

“He’s finished, Shadow,” Ambrose said. “We’d best leave him.”

“Not while I can carry him,” Kai objected.

“We can make a chair for him between us,” Arthur offered.

“No, I can manage. I don’t have psi powers needed here.” The auburn-haired Brethren got to his feet. His expression changed to shock, and he pointed.

“Ambrose. Come back!” Shadow started after the man, and then she turned, shrugging.

Arthur unclenched his will. He’d been preparing to turn her if necessary. Without Ector, they hadn’t a hope of controlling Ambrose, who had walked away with supreme confidence. It meant he knew something he hadn’t shared, a typical racial trait among Submariners. Unlike Brethren, they weren’t very good team players, and the higher the ranking, the more individualistic they became. Arthur suspected Ambrose hadn’t wanted inclusion in the first place if he wasn’t the leader. Ector would automatically defer to Shadow on her own personal quest, but not Ambrose, who still considered Brethren as primitive death-mongers. He could see from the tension in her back that Shadow fought rage at this deplorable action. She’d let Ambrose go because she couldn’t risk weakening herself further in a trial of wills and Arthur guessed she cut her losses by having Ambrose spring the next trap. The time lapse since Ambrose’s departure confirmed his conjecture. He became aware of her intense scrutiny.

“Thoughts, Arthur? You probably know the man better than I ever will.”

“His hobby is ancient forms of communication. I’d guess he learned more from those symbols than just how to get us across.”

“Can you access his mind?”

“He’ll be prepared for a fight. He wants all the glory,” Arthur said. “I will if you really want.”

“Kai?” she asked.

“I don’t sense any danger for him, wherever he is.”

“Then we go forward. Who cares who finds the quest end, as long as it’s found?”

Arthur helped Kai get Ector up from the floor and settled into a carrying position, and then he and Shadow walked in advance. The passage elbowed to the right in the light of their torches.

“He walked with too much confidence for any traps,” Arthur supplied. “We haven’t heard any screams, so it’s probably safe.”

“How much time?” Kai huffed from behind.

“Ten minutes.”

“Brother mine, you’ll have to introduce me to Circe if we ever get out of this.”

“Kai.” Shadow glared back at him.

“Sorry, Mother, it’s a man thing.” Kai sighed. “I would like to anticipate some sort of reward at this point.”

“If I can find a way to suppress your viability, we have a deal,” Arthur offered, ignoring Shadow’s outraged expression. As Kai said, this was man talk. “We wouldn’t want seers to become augmented by fey qualities—they’re bad enough as they are.”

“If you two have quite finished?”

“We’ll reconvene later, since the corner is just coming up. Where you can’t hear us, I think,” Arthur added, smiling to himself. If they survived this, if they could, he’d enjoy having a brother like Kai.

They saw Ambrose at once. He stood at the end of the passage in a rectangular room with a raised dais to the right and he studied a wall splattered with the same ancient symbols as on the falling floor. On the dais, a console invited more attention than the wall that Ambrose scrutinized with such concentration. The other walls appeared sculptured with scenes from a long-dead surface world, if Arthur judged the lack of saurians and other mutations aright.

“Leave Ector here,” Shadow ordered. “One of us must return, if possible. He has enough psi power to call for help when he recovers.”

Kai laid Ector down against a wall with Arthur’s help. Shadow strode over to Ambrose with Arthur just behind her. They passed the dais before he realized Kai wasn’t following.

“It looks as if—” Ambrose began, turning to them, and then his face froze in horror.

Arthur spun around. “No, Kai!” he yelled, too late to prevent Kai taking the steps up to the dais.

His weight already committed, Kai tried to turn. Lethal blasts of plasma bolts shot from ports in the stairs. Wet smacks sounded. Blood gushing from his body, the young Terran crumpled instantly.

“Kai!” Shadow sprinted to her younger son’s side, dropping to her knees. She pressed her hands over the bleeding holes in a desperate effort to stop blood loss. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Arthur knelt down beside her to help. A spurt of blood shot between his fingers to hang, motionless. Time slipped out of sequence. A rushing sound in his ears drowned out the death rattle in Kai’s throat. Shards of darkness flew at him as his awareness shattered into a sudden vision of the cave-sitter. His soul wrenched free from his body, while the damp cavern of his dreams encased his essence like a tomb.

“Sacrifices for the common good are a harsh burden.” The young-old man’s matte-black eyes appeared to radiate a red light from some inner source. The smooth skin of his face glowed above a snow-white beard. “Let your sibling go.”

“No!” Helpless, Arthur wished for the strength to strangle this being. “I know you now. The Archive knows who Kai is and what his powers are. Only the Archive—
you
—have reason to want him dead before he plays his part. I can save him. I won’t let go. I won’t cede his life.”

“He is forfeit,” the cave-sitter said, raising those terrible eyes to Arthur, bringing an intractable will to bear on him.

“Too late.” Arthur clenched his teeth. Beads of sweat began to drip off his brow.
He hasn’t killed me. Why?
He was at the Archive’s mercy, so why did the creature hold back? Why want Kai dead? A glimmer of understanding produced a motive: “If my body dies, you lose. You wanted to take over my mind. Well, I won’t relinquish Kai.” He drew a deep breath, fighting against the being with his entire telepathic ability. “Sacrifice unacceptable. Every last shred of my strength, I bequeath to him.” Arthur directed his energy at Kai.

“Nooo . . . oo . . . o . . . ” the cave-sitter wailed. A fading sigh and darkness closed around them. The scene whirled into a tangled mess of black fragments spiraling into light.

Arthur opened his eyes to see his brother still breathing, but Shadow? She looked as if she stared through stone, a Brethren expression that frightened him.

Kai’s wounds were beyond any emergency supplies in their packs. Arthur’s hands aligned with his mother’s to stem the flow while he thought. If the organs weren’t too badly smashed, an octet of seers could instigate tissue regeneration by telepathy. They used their own life force as raw energy if the victim were important, or one of their own. An octet ranked a combined psi power of approximately forty, since they wouldn’t commit all their will. It left him at least four points short, even with Shadow’s help.

“Ambrose, get over here will you?” he yelled.

“Can’t. I’m trying to stop every other weapon being discharged. Kai triggered all of them.”

Ector groaned as Ambrose called his warning. He lurched, stumbling with fatigue, to Shadow. Arthur committed in that second. He used seer techniques to body scan. The damage looked bad, with many deep puncture wounds, but if he used every ounce of his will . . .

“Shadow, link with me. I need everything you’ve got for Kai to have any chance.”

She raised her tear-drenched face to his in misery. Arthur wondered, for a split-second, if any other woman cried without sobbing, or getting a red, splotchy face. Her tears just flowed, a liquid grief he couldn’t bear.

“I can’t lose two of you.” She grasped his arm in a painful grip. “You’ll be open to attack the instant you commit to saving him.”

“I already have.” Arthur gently pried her fingers loose, aware she hadn’t realized which hand she used in the grief. “My brother is more important to me than your quest. Even now, the Archive searches for me. You don’t have to choose between us. The choice no longer exists.”

Hope, followed by determination flashed across Shadow’s face. Arthur plunged into her now open mind, taking from her and Ector. Every hair stood on end when he focused. Will flowed from energy into matter. The body under his hands glowed as it healed. Tissue and organs regenerated at a far greater rate than had ever been achieved by an octet, but then the outcome meant nothing to them compared with Arthur’s determination to save his brother.

Too much blood loss needed a life-force correction. Arthur didn’t require Shadow’s frantic warning, coming just before he sucked the last of her strength out, to know his blood type wasn’t compatible to Kai’s, any more than Ector’s, or hers. He had to make Kai work with him, and for that, he needed a proscribed joining. Arthur didn’t hesitate. His mind severed connection with the others to blend as one with Kai. Full flow of life started to return to his brother moments before Arthur ceased to be an individual. There was a second of exultation, followed by a moment of pure horror as a force reached out to snatch his essence from Kai. Molten fire flickered through his nerves. If he let go now, Kai would die and what would happen to Arthur? He sensed the Archive’s presence trying to claw him through his brother. In that moment, he committed totally. If it wanted him that bad, it would have to pull him back from death, for he would not return without Kai.

The force wavered and Arthur merged with Kai.

The creature that arose from the floor of the chamber wasn’t human. Tentacles of light emerged from a brilliant glow of pure energy. It stretched, feeling the power flow through its essence, aware of being a gestalt, an amalgam of two living creatures, but not disturbed by this knowledge. Almost as an afterthought, it directed two of its eyes at the man still trying to circumvent weaponry no longer of interest. It gloried in resources others couldn’t even begin to imagine. Graceful beyond human capacity, it levitated to the podium where its many limbs activated a program previously buried in antiquity. An ocular magnifier rose from the center of the structure to focus on the projection of a combined retina pattern.

“Security scan approved. Voice-coded password from ruling planetary council now required,” a disembodied voice requested.

“Armageddon.” The gestalt’s multi-toned answer came from the depths of its racial memory.

“Access granted.”

The experience of direct sensory playback paled into insignificance before the wealth of data the gestalt absorbed. Centuries of history rolled into the awareness. Terrible facts registered in the gestalt’s mind in those moments. At the end, a single voice screaming one word burst forth:

“Free . . . !”
Then the cave-sitter’s voice faded away into nothingness.

For an instant, the gestalt glimpsed the creature breaking its ancient bonds before it, too, spiraled into darkness.

*

Sound came from a long way away, a faint clicking accompanied by a clinical smell. Pain pounded with each tiny noise. It grew with the volume until Arthur writhed in agony.

“Easy, lad. Can you hear me?” Ector’s voice came at a nerve grinding intensity.

Arthur wanted to scream, but sound pulverized him. He whimpered as a door rumbled open and someone thudded across the plasglass floor. The sound of a slap-shot against the skin of his upper arm hurt more than medication being forced deep within. His temporary link with reality faded into silence.

Smell returned first: the dry, sterile odor Arthur associated with Sanctuary. He wanted to retreat before sound came, but there was nowhere to hide.

“It’s all right now. Just take your own time,” Ector said, his voice coming at a bearable level.

Arthur tried opening his eyes. The room lurched enough to make him feel sick, but compared to the results of an interrupted sensory playback, it seemed mild. Ector sat by his bed wearing deep blue infirmary sleepwear with a glyph standing for Sanctuary on the right sleeve.
Caught, and they have Ector, too.
Despair swept through him, and then he remembered Kai’s hurt, his own commitment and a sense of absolute horror.

“Arthur, do you recall what happened?”

“Kai?”

“He recovered quicker than you did, maybe because he doesn’t possess psi powers.” Ector’s expression creased into a frown. “You’re both lucky to be alive. We are still unsure how you managed to separate yourselves. Now, what did you see after you formed a gestalt?”

Arthur wondered who really asked. He reached out to the Archive in a deliberate challenge. His questing mind met emptiness. Disturbed by his apparent loss of ability, he tried Ector next. This covert probe gained instant access. Ector’s fear hit him hard. The man wanted answers. That fear overrode all other thought processes to the point where further, deeper sifting held no purpose.