Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) (12 page)

Xander stared at the dais in shock. The familiar three-tiered platform seemed wildly out of place enclosed by cable-wreathed walls in a secret Guild facility.

Nahel nudged him. “You see a ghost?”

“It looks like the market square at Highwater,” Xander said. “Only smaller.”

Damus looked up from the console he’d been laboring over since leading them to the room. The lights on its surface lit his face from below, giving him a spectral look. “That’s because they built the town on a ruined Guild house. Like Highwater, these ruins still have a gate.”

Damus produced a crystal card from a drawer on his right and inserted it into the console. Xander flinched as a luminous green-white sphere flashed into being. For a moment he feared that the awful light had returned, but the gently humming orb confined itself to the dais.

“Gentlemen,” Damus announced, “We are about to embark on the first gate transport since the Cataclysm.”

“Great,” said Nahel. “Where are we transporting
to
?”

Damus’ hands glided over the console. “The gates mainly bridged sections of a Guild house. But they could reach other facilities; even those on distant spheres. From here we can access Highwater’s gate.”

“What if their gate’s broken?” asked Nahel.

Damus rummaged through the drawer. “We’ll probably be routed to the next available Guild house.” He retrieved another card and slid it into his coat pocket. “Or we’ll end up in the ether, where summoning help is even simpler for you than it is here.”

Hope welled in Xander’s heart. “The Highwater city guard is many hundred strong, and they are well armed. We can warn them about the Night Gen.”

Damus’ voice was stern. “Armed with bows and spears, even a thousand men couldn’t fight a nexus-runner. But they won’t have to. If we can get to relative safety without the Night Gen knowing, Nahel can arrange travel back to Avalon.”

“How will that help?” asked Xander.

“At the very least, it will get Nahel and me out of harm’s way. And you. Our queen will definitely want to meet a human nexist.”

“The Night Gen may already have my clan! They are here to take my world. You’d have me hide behind a devil queen’s skirts?”

Damus met Xander’s eye. “My
devil queen
has resources you can’t imagine. Pleading your people’s case to her is the best hope they’ve got.”

Facing the iridescent globe, Xander thought he heard his mother’s voice. He’d been eager to explore the past in the hope of recovering some part of her and his father. Now he understood that the past harbored its own dark designs.

“Did you really lose someone you loved?” he asked Damus.

Beneath his agelessness, Damus seemed suddenly old. “The Purges divided all Gen into the lost and the bereaved.”

Xander thought for a moment. “I will ask your queen to shelter my people as she has yours.”

“She’s got her hands full keeping her enemies out,” said Nahel. “But it’s worth a shot.”

“Nesshin taking refuge in hell?” Damus gave a bitter laugh. “I thought you were paragons of honor.”

“I am no longer a Nesshin.” Xander drew a pair of thin glass tubes on leather cords from his pocket. “But I’m still honorable. All Mithgarders are my people, and I will save them if I can.”

The vials, which Xander had found in the infirmary, each contained a measure of his blood. Nahel took one and glanced at the gate. “There’s a blood test to ride this thing?”

“It’s a Nesshin custom,” said Damus. “It means he owes you his life.”

Xander bowed to his friends. “You and Damus saved me from the pranaphage. Please accept my blood as a token of the debt I can only repay in kind.”

Nahel tied the vial around his neck and squeezed Xander’s arm. “Thanks.”

Damus accepted a vial and mounted the platform. “Anyone who doesn’t fancy a long slog through the desert is welcome to join me.” He vanished into the gleaming sphere.

Nahel climbed the steps. He turned to Xander and winked before striding through the gate.

Xander stood alone at the base of the platform. Wherever the gate took him, there would be no returning to his life as it had been.

You must never lose hope,
his mother had said. But she’d never said what to hope for. At last he ascended the dais and plunged into the pulsing light.

Crewmen and petty officers made way for the three masters-at-arms escorting Szodrin through the
Ashlam’s
cramped halls. Wall conduits humming like angry hornets provided the nexus-runner’s only light, but their hazy green glow was enough for a Gen who’d spent his whole life aboard ship.

As he approached the captain’s quarters, Szodrin brushed straight black hair from his brow with ashen fingers and straightened his tan uniform jacket.
Best to appear composed.

The guard at Szodrin’s right pressed his palm against a dark crystal panel in the wall. The panel glowed green, and two of his escorts took up positions flanking the door. His face impassive, Szodrin stepped between them ahead of the third, who marched him into the room. The door closed behind them.

The same emerald half-light that filled the hall prevailed inside, but the air tasted somewhat less stale. Ilmin sat behind a plain table of lacquered oak. It was one of the few articles on board that wasn't made of crystal, synthetic polymers, or metal.

The prisoner snapped to attention. “Commander Szodrin reporting.”

The captain—a gaunt figure several centuries Szodrin's elder, set down a stack of crystal tablets and raised yellow eyes that looked all the more striking for his grey face. “You know why you’re here,” Ilmin said.

“The arresting officers never read me the charge, sir.”

“That’s another matter. I’m referring to the reason I sent for you.”

The commander held his peace.
Let him play for dominance. My conscience is clear.

“You think you had no other choice,” Ilmin said.

“I owed it to Sarel.”

“Leaving her son to die in the desert seems poor recompense.”

“It’s preferable to what we had planned for him.”

Ilmin slammed his fist on the table, yet his voice fell to a near-whisper. “That boy was a priority asset. Your actions have made him a liability.”

“To who?” Szodrin asked. “Remember when this was a scouting mission?”

The captain steepled his fingers. “Fleet Command thought Mithgar totally purged. Our objectives changed when we found survivors.”

“Do you mean the fanatics claiming to be our allies, the murderous tyrant holding their leash, or the worse things holding his?”

Ilmin ignored the rebuke. “Shaiel’s Blade sent
Kerioth
to correct your lapse in judgment.”

Knowing that Hazeroth valued the boy enough to divert a ship from Ostrith tempted Szodrin to doubt himself. Nonetheless, the deed was done. He allowed himself a grin. “The great hunter and his hounds couldn’t catch a portly boy?”

The captain leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table. “Matters requiring Prince Hazeroth’s attention have surfaced. He’s delegated this operation to us in the meantime.”

If the boy was worth rerouting a ship for,
what greater prize could lure Shaiel’s Blade from his trail?
The answer Szodrin suspected sent a chill down his spine.
What if he’s found—

“Twelve hours ago the
Kerioth
detected a sudden spike in nexic activity originating from a small southern valley,” Ilmin went on. “Our analysts identified the location as Teran Nazim.”

Szodrin scowled. He could hide his contempt for the
Isnashi
, but thinking of the Transessists’ slaughterhouse made his flesh crawl. “If you summoned me to hear horror stories, I’d rather stay in the brig.”

Ilmin’s face never changed. “All further attempts to raise the
Kerioth
have failed. Her beacon has gone silent, and scans have found nothing.”

“Then for all you know, the boy’s gone too.”

“That is one half of my dilemma,” the captain said. “The other is that you marked him.”

Szodrin felt the deck sinking under his feet. “You would send a prisoner after a wayward boy?”

“Not just a boy,” said Ilmin. “A human nexist. Our benefactor insists that he be converted.”

“Our dubious benefactor’s bloodthirsty envoy,” Szodrin corrected him. “He calls our degenerate kin his
hounds
and speaks of
conversion
with the same irony.”

“Nevertheless, we are now missing an asset and a ship. I pledged to send every hand I could spare, and you’ve made yourself expendable.”

“So you reversed course?”

“Over two days ago. We’ll resume course for Cadrys once you debark.”

Szodrin returned to attention. The captain had put paid to further argument.

“Report to the translator pad,” Ilmin ordered. “You’ll be sent to the target’s last known position. Follow the mark. Find the boy—unless the
Kerioth
already has.”

“Aye, sir,” Szodrin said, silently adding,
I must find him first.

One moment Damus Greystone stood before the coruscating light of the gate. An instant later he emerged on its far side, crossing hundreds of miles in one step.

When the sudden sense of dislocation passed, Damus studied his surroundings in the gate’s fluorescing light. He stood atop a three-tiered dais resembling Teran Nazim’s platform but far larger. The gate chamber inflated this sense of grandeur beyond all proportion. It extended around and above him on all sides—a vast white box that looked like a packing crate for a mountain. The still air smelled artificial.

Definitely a Guild house,
Damus thought.
But is it Highwater? I’d thought theirs destroyed except for the gate.

The Gen put his questions aside as approaching footsteps announced Nahel’s arrival. The malakh whistled a single shrill note that failed to echo. “I knew these places were big, but I never imagined
this
!”

“Your imagination is rather limited,” Damus said. “Still, I’m not sure I’d believe it if I weren’t seeing it. Humans must consider humility a vice.”

“Speaking of humans, where’s Xander?”

“To me the choice between the gate and the desert was obvious. To a Nesshin?” Damus shrugged.

“This place seems pretty dead for a market,” said Nahel. “Are we sure this is Highwater?”

Damus started toward the gate console. “I was just about to check.”

Nahel growled.

Damus turned. The malakh was staring at something off to their left—a dark form perhaps a hundred feet away, cast in sharp relief against the white tiles. The Guild hall’s immensity distorted Damus’ perceptions, making the figure’s size difficult to judge; but he thought it was someone of short stature and slight build.

“Hello, there,” Damus called out. The Guild house swallowed his echo. “We’re just passing through. Is this Highwater?”

The silence that followed was starting to make Damus uneasy when something about the distant figure changed. Twin points of light flashed from its face, leaving blue afterimages in his vision.

“
Do you have any idea what that is?
” Damus whispered to Nahel, whose growl deepened to a bass rumble.

Damus turned back to the silent figure and found himself staring into the blue lights. He briefly wondered,
are those
eyes
?
before a terrible weight crushed his thoughts.

“Listen,” a woman’s voice said. “I love this part!”

Wild, ubiquitous laughter followed.

Xander didn’t wake up. Instead he realized that he’d been awake for a while. His plush seat back and cushion had conformed to his shape. He was looking down on a stage where brightly dressed people strutted and spun. Noise erupted all around him—dozens of voices laughing.

One of those voices belonged to someone at his left. Xander swiveled his head. A woman two or three years his senior sat beside him; too engrossed in the spectacle to notice his scrutiny. The hair spilling down past her shoulders was auburn or red. The dim lighting made it hard to tell. She had a pallid complexion, and she wore a strange blend of clothing that looked plain despite its eclectic style.

“How did I get to the theater?” Xander asked, dredging the word from his father’s tales. The woman didn’t respond. Either she couldn’t hear him, or she was pretending not to.