Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) (18 page)

Szodrin pointed with his sword. “Look.”

Damus looked. Something had torn the stairwell door from its hinges. The empty frame gave on a vast cage of twisted beams. All around the faces of moonlit towers leered like skulls.

Grasping the door jamb, Damus craned his neck upward and saw the fifth floor’s bare undergirding. The smell that assaulted him suggested the kitchen of an inept cook who kept burning pork roasts. He looked down.

A dark jumbled mass lay strewn across the fourth story’s fallen roof. Damus couldn’t quite make out the pitiful shapes composing the pile, and he thanked whatever powers remained.

Szodrin’s light landed atop the fallen slab. Damus glimpsed the charnel pile, and a wave of vertigo sent him reeling toward the abyss. Only the Night Gen’s steady hand kept him from joining the dead.

Safe back on the landing, Damus paused to catch his breath before rounding on Szodrin. “What in the Nine Circles possessed you to do that!?”

Szodrin’s ashen face was grave. “I had to confirm he’s not there.”

Damus’ rage faded like a ghost. “He isn’t.”

Szodrin gave a curt nod.

“Burned by divine fire,” said Damus. “It’s not how I’d like to go.”

“They burned, but not in the Cataclysm.”

“What else could have done it?”

“They were skin and bones,” Szodrin said. “However they burned, they wasted first.”

Damus swallowed to wet his suddenly dry throat. “Any idea what’s responsible?”

Szodrin lit another crystal and fixed his eyes upward as if he could see through the ceiling. “It’s above us.”

The two Gen continued upward till they reached a fire door on the next landing.

Damus drew his battered rapier. “No sense turning back now,” he said an instant before wishing he hadn’t.

Szodrin handed Damus the crystal and took hold of the latch. With a sharp exhale he opened the door.

The light salvaged a short span of hallway from the gloom. The stale air held an undercurrent of hot copper quenched in rose water.

Szodrin stalked into the darkness. The sound of his boots crunching on fallen plaster slowly receded. Damus almost begged the Night Gen not to leave him, but the stifling blackness silenced his voice.

The crack of rotting plaster ceased. So did the sound of Szodrin’s breathing. Against his better judgment, Damus crept into the dark. Green light fell upon the Night Gen’s lithe form.

There must be a window down the hall,
Damus thought. There, twin stars shone with a fierce sapphire glow. They burned brighter than any known stellar bodies, and Damus recalled arriving at the Guild house.

Those aren’t stars.

The ring of metal striking metal sounded in the dark. Faint at first, it steadily grew louder. The baleful lights drew closer with every thudding chime till they stopped a few feet beyond the circle of light.

Damus saw the mystery of the blue lights resolved. At that distance there was no question that they were eyes, though unlike any he’d seen. Blue coronas wreathed each night-black pupil and gave the whites an iridescent sheen.

Those eyes belong to nothing human.

The burning orbs widened in horror. “Go away,” a feminine voice hissed.

Szodrin advanced a step.

Damus grabbed his shoulder. “Wait. Think of what’s downstairs.”

“I didn’t—” the thing pleaded, its voice breaking. “I never did anything like that before.”

Damus kept his voice even. “We believe you.”

“You’re lying,” the creature said. “You think I’m a monster.”

“Stop thinking,” Szodrin told Damus.

“You don’t mean…” Damus’ voice trailed off as his mind arranged seemingly isolated oddities into a partial image of something unspeakable.

Szodrin spoke anyway. “That nexic power I sensed is here, and it can read our thoughts.”

The blue stars blazed. Szodrin uttered a string of choking gasps. He fell to the floor and lay writhing in the dust.

The thing’s laughter betrayed half-checked hysteria.

“Damned nexism,” Damus cursed.

“They send them here,” the creature rasped. “Orphans. The sick and the old. They come starving. I held the last one while he died.”

“We’re not here to hurt you,” said Damus. “We’ve only come for the boy.”

“Leave!” the creature begged on the ragged edge of sobbing. “
Run!
”

Damus willed himself not to take the thing’s advice. “Not without my friend.” He closed his eyes and began to sing. His foe wouldn’t understand the Gennish words—unless she ripped their meaning from his mind—but the calming Mystery didn’t need understanding.

Damus felt the floor shake and heard ringing metal. He opened his eyes to see the cruel stars staring back. Their fires flared, and Damus heard alien thoughts, only to realize they were his. He wasn’t concerned with Xander anymore; nor did the Fire hold terror for him. Almost too late he recognized that the real threat was his own mouth.

It meant to betray me,
he thought as he slid his sword past his lips.

The sound of footsteps on the hardwood floor woke Xander from troubled dreams. The details were already fading, but he recalled some deadly peril befalling Damus and Nahel which he’d been helpless to prevent. For one panicked moment he forgot where he was, until he saw the city lights gleaming through the window.

I am in Salorien on Keth,
he realized,
in the home of Astlin Tremore.
The latter thought eased his fear but didn’t fully dispel it.

Is someone else here?

Xander’s gaze darted about. Threadbare stuffed animals languished on a shelf in the square of light filtering through the window. The rest of the room was black as the Void.

The floorboards protested as something shifted its weight in the dark.

“Hello?” Xander whispered.

“You’ve been lied to,” someone said in an odd yet vaguely familiar accent.

“Who is there?”

The click of boot heels drew closer. A thin figure in tan clothes emerged to stand near the foot of the bed. “A friend. You’re caught in a lie, but the danger is real.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m called Szodrin. Come with me—
now
.”

At last Xander recognized the stranger’s alien speech. He’d first heard it one evening by the Water’s shore in Medvia, what seemed like ages ago. “An
Isnashi
!”

“No, a Night Gen who saved you from them.”

Xander sat up. “Did you chase me so far to save me from Kethan hospitality?”

“To free you from a trap,” Szodrin said, “but your captor won’t give you up easily.”

Rapid footsteps and muffled cries echoed down the hall. A moment later, the crack of splintering wood split the night. Someone screamed. Xander leapt out of bed, rushed to the door, and threw it open.

“Don’t be deceived,” Szodrin warned.

Xander burst into the hallway. Men in dark suits crowded the living room. He recognized none of them, except for the man with scars curving down his head.

Astlin struggled in Spiral’s grip. The sight woke a visceral rage that Xander had never known before. He charged the guildsmen, loosing a torrent of curses in a half dozen tongues.

Astlin pulled one arm free and elbowed Spiral in the side. He grunted, and struck her face with a closed fist that knocked her to the floor.

Xander was within arm’s reach of Astlin when Spiral shoved something cold and hard into his gut.

“I told you to mind who’s in charge.” Spiral’s tone betrayed his glee at Xander’s lapse. His breath was a fume of strong drink.

Xander recognized the weapon pressed against his stomach—and those the other guildsmen were pointing at him. Firearms survived on Mithgar, but their ammunition was rare enough to render most of them harmless curios.

I doubt these guns are so harmless.

“Xander?” Astlin said in a drowsy voice. She rose to her knees. Her left brow was purpling, and the white of her eye was half red. Spiral retained a viselike grip on her right wrist.

“I am here,” Xander said, trying to hide the panic that clutched his heart. He had one weapon to match the guildsmen’s guns, but no idea how to use it without harming Astlin as well.

Keeping his good eye on Xander, Spiral nodded to his men. “Get her out of here.”

Two other guildsmen grabbed Astlin’s arms. Her face held a condemned prisoner’s despair as they dragged her toward the shattered door.

Suddenly Szodrin stood between Spiral and the other guildsman who wasn’t absconding with Astlin. Neither man reacted to his presence.

“Help me!” Xander said.

Spiral’s scars made his grin seem to wrap around his head. “I’ve got just the help you need.” He stepped back and aimed his gun at Xander’s head.

“Look at the pictures,” said Szodrin.

The pictures?
Xander thought despite the terror clouding his mind. His gaze shot to Astlin’s family portraits.

In their crystal frames.

Long use had honed Xander’s skill at manipulating small objects with his gift. Recent experience was improving his ability to exert brute force on a larger scale. For the first time, he attempted both at once.

First one; then another crystal sheet jerked into the air beside Spiral and his lackey. Only the latter foolishly glanced toward the object floating beside him as it exploded with a sharp crack.

Confining both crystals’ fragments to cone-shaped bursts aimed at the two guildsmen required steady focus. Xander’s panicked state let a few shards evade his nexic grasp, and he felt a cold sting as one of them grazed his cheek. A half-inch to the left would have cost him his eye.

Looking into the burst had cost Spiral’s friend far more. Blood ran between the fingers that covered his face as he writhed on the couch, wailing between wet gasps.

A low groan distracted Xander from the grisly spectacle. Pulped flesh interrupted the paths of Spiral’s old scars as they curved toward the right side of his face. Crystal grains glittered within red craters, and a prismatic sliver protruded from what had been his sole working eye. He was down on all fours, feeling about blindly for his weapon.

There was a flurry of motion near the door. The two guildsmen holding Astlin cast puzzled glances around the room. They didn’t yet connect Xander with the sudden carnage since he’d made no visible moves, but their guns were drawn. He abandoned precision when he tore the weapons from their hands, taking one man’s trigger finger in the bargain.

A loud report left Xander’s ears ringing.

Spiral had found his gun.

The blinded guildsman fired again, this time barely missing as Xander dove to the floor. Spiral’s mangled face jerked toward the sound of the impact. Xander found himself staring down the gun’s black barrel. His focus dissolved in a torrent of fear.

Astlin lunged with a feral cry and drove a crystal shard the size of a tent stake into Spiral’s temple. He sucked in a shuddering breath and collapsed.

Shocked out of his stupor, Xander saw the two remaining guildsmen rushing Astlin. His wrath caught them up and hurled them through the plate glass of her fifth floor window. Their screams harmonized with the chimes of breaking glass.

Astlin huddled beside the feet of Spiral’s now motionless partner. She spoke, but the ringing in Xander’s ears hid her words. He crawled across the glass-strewn carpet to hold her.

“Did you see?” Szodrin asked.

Xander only saw Astlin, who shivered in his arms. The ringing had faded to the point that her shuddering sobs were barely audible right next to him, but he’d heard Szodrin perfectly.

“What in hell are you talking about?” Xander asked. But hadn’t he caught sight of something odd in one of the pictures before it shattered?

Szodrin motioned to the shelves where the other portraits stood. “Look again.”

Xander looked at the pictures, and the floor seemed to fall away, stranding him weightless in midair. Images of Astlin’s family no longer graced the crystal frames. Instead they held portraits that weren’t there before—that couldn’t have been. Among the strangers’ faces Xander recognized a girl he’d met one year in Vale and had never seen again. A portrait of Damus stood beside hers.

“Let go of her, boy,” Szodrin said. “Let go and move away.”

Astlin’s head was bowed. Her hair obscured her eyes, but twin flecks of sapphire light glinted behind the blood red strands.

A memory of Xander’s arrival at the Guild house flashed through his mind and was gone. His arms fell to his sides. “I do not understand.”

“Nothing you saw here was real,” Szodrin said as he helped Xander to his feet.

“It was real,” Astlin said in a harsh near-whisper. The ringing in Xander’s ears was gone as if it had never been.

“Once, perhaps,” said Szodrin. “Now it’s playacting.”

Astlin turned one flashing eye on the Night Gen. “What are you?”

“My people are less ignorant of nexism than yours,” Szodrin said. “We learn to defend against the more dangerous powers—including telepathy.”

Amazement and betrayal strove for dominion over Xander’s heart. “You are a nexist?”

“We have that in common.” Astlin raised her eyes to the ceiling. “But there’s so much more.”

Xander followed Astlin’s line of sight. He somehow looked through ceiling and sky to a familiar, ominous vision—a colossal pyramid darker than any shadow.

A blinding light shone in the distance, mostly obscured by the pyramid. Countless silver filaments streamed from the light to cut through the monolith, but Xander saw two of them intersecting at its heart. One cord plunged into a fiery rift and emerged glowing with orange-red heat before joining itself to Astlin. The other kept its pure silver sheen all the way from its origin in the light to its endpoint in Xander’s soul.

“You have what I lost,” Astlin said.

“What do you mean?”

“She consumes minds,” said Szodrin.

Astlin stood. She clasped her hands as if pleading. “I wanted to stop, but the others were wrong.”

“Others?” repeated Xander.

Her voice wavered. “You don’t know what it’s like—a wound in your soul bleeding fire. I thought they’d close the wound, but it burned them up.”

Xander gazed at Astlin. She instilled deeper fear than the pranaphage and inspired wonder beyond all the Guild’s secrets. “You believe I can heal your wound?”