Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) (23 page)

From the
Kerioth’s
Wheel, only the topmost branches were visible—a tangle of bare limbs tearing through the clouds to scrape the upper atmosphere.

Thurif shifted his awareness back to the nexus-runner’s white flattened sphere of a bridge. “That’s a marvel, eh?”

He excused the crew’s silence. They’d lost the power of speech when he’d merged their flesh with the machinery of their stations.

Thurif willed the
Kerioth
to descend.
Not so different from an ether-runner,
he mused.

Ahead loomed a sight visible on no other sphere. The full majesty of a tree taller than mountains rose up against an azure sky. The Dawn Tribe had bestowed the august name of
Irminsul
upon this living wonder. They revered it as a visible sign of Faerda’s presence. The
Isnashi
hated it for the same reason. To Thurif, the monstrous tree birthed from fire at the old world’s end epitomized the blind miracle of the Cataclysm.

The world is full of miracles,
he thought as he spied the gleam of grey metal through leaves the size of Nesshin tents. The comparison made Thurif wonder how long his prisoner would survive confinement with his cargo.

The nexus-runner glided downward at a gentle angle, following the only sign of artificiality. The vague grey mass soon took on a definite shape; its sleek contours resembling an elongated clamshell. Its vast hull dwarfed the
Kerioth
, but the
Irminsul
reduced the larger vessel to a kite stuck in a redwood. A network of scaffolds clung to the man o’ war like creeping vines, but Thurif could still read the name emblazoned on its bow.

Serapis
.

Thurif was intrigued to see a second, smaller ship moored beside the dry-docked hulk. Its blocky shape announced it as an old Guild corvette.

And now to cast the die.
Thurif brought the
Kerioth
in to hover just beyond the dock and waited.

Minutes passed. Thurif studied the arboreal port. A colossal branch extended from the distant trunk and forked near the end of its span. The horseshoe-shaped fork was carved into a series of steps that sloped down to the inner edge; forming an overhang below which inverted tiers receded. Dark openings riddled the terrace like giant worms burrows.

A thought suddenly impressed itself on Thurif’s mind.
Nexus-runner
Kerioth
: respond.

This is the
Kerioth
,
Thurif projected back.

You are overdue.

We encountered unforeseen difficulties.

You are not a designated pilot. Where is the captain?

Captain Ruthven went ashore on private business. He failed to return.

The other mind disengaged. It returned a moment later.
Identify yourself.

Rather than limiting himself to a name, Thurif took advantage of the ship’s telepathic communications system to convey a purer self-concept. The party with whom he conversed managed to keep his own anonymity, but his desire to destroy the
Kerioth
with all hands bled through for just an instant.

Please send word of my intentions to Prince Hazeroth before committing actions you may regret,
Thurif warned.

After a long moment, he received the wordless order to land.

Tefler couldn’t see the water’s end. Prismatic waves lapped against the stone causeway where he stood. A breeze carrying the scent of a thunderstorm alerted him to the absence of his cloak. Against the rubrics of Shaiel’s priesthood he wore only a shirt and trousers, both white.

Makes sense,
Tefler thought.
I’m not here as
Shaiel’s
priest.

A few hundred feet to his left, the narrow span ended at the base of a lonely tower. Built from the same pale blocks, the tower seemed an extension of the causeway that bridged sea and sky. A large cutout opened in each wall near the top, leaving the flat peak supported by four square pillars.

I know you’re up there. What are you waiting for?

The priest looked skyward to judge the hour. The cloudy vault above glowed with the hues of a constant sunrise. Or sunset. He couldn’t tell which. Peering into the water, he saw himself reflected against the rosy sky. The wind tousled the light brown hair above his boyish face, but he flinched upon meeting his own eyes, in whose irises a shifting spectrum of all colors and no colors swam.

Suddenly, someone else stared back from the water’s glassy surface. It was a stocky young man with a shaved, sun-darkened head. The kid was searching—in the desert, on the sea, underground—for something; but neither he nor Tefler knew what.

Tefler was still puzzling over the odd images when an even stranger sight appeared. A girl with blood red hair, cream-colored skin, and eyes like blue stars wandered streets overrun with ghosts. That so sad a face held such raging eyes haunted him well after the vision faded.

The sunset became a star-flecked night, afflicting Tefler with a sense of missing time until he saw the fiery vault of cloud still hanging overhead. Below, the stars seemed like embers drifting through black smoke.

One spark caught Tefler’s eye. The radiant point contained a shadow darker than empty space. At first perfectly square, the blackness bent itself into a man’s silhouette and broke its luminous confinement. The scattered lights went out one by one till all life and hope ceased.

Tefler shivered. The vision left him puzzled, and disturbed out of all proportion to its content. He unconsciously looked to the tower.

What is this? Why even show me?

At the edge of sight, Tefler saw the image in the water shift. He looked back into the sea, which once more reflected the rose-colored sky.

But it’s not the sky.

Instead of dawnlit clouds, Tefler found himself staring into a deep rosy fog. He seemed to look through the eyes of something that stalked through the mist, and the sensation drew him in till he felt the warm haze envelop him. Total immersion soon erased the line between himself and the hunter in the mist.

Is this the ether?
The familiar feel of metal decking under his feet implied a ship. A transitioned ether-runner? He crept through a large enclosed space, seeking…something.

But what?

His foot struck a thick cable snaking across the deck. He followed its meandering trail. Soon a figure began to emerge from the fog—a hazy feminine form held aloft on the mist.

Here is my quarry,
he knew. A sense of dire purpose—and weariness deeper than ages—almost overwhelmed him. He drew a white blade, its curved edge bearing a violet sheen, and joylessly advanced on the sleeping victim.

A strong hand gripped his shoulder. Still half-dreaming, Tefler expected to wake in the chapter barracks, his childhood master of novices reproaching him for sleeping late. But he woke up staring at another face from his youth—though time hadn’t improved its mottled features.

“Finally,” the hulking figure said in a paradoxically gentle, high-pitched voice. “I thought you’d never get up.”

Tefler rubbed his eyes to make sure this was really his friend and not another dream. “Cook? How long have you been here?”

“Since the
Serapis
crashed—same as you.”

“That’s just depressing,” Tefler said of his friend’s attempt at humor. “But really, how long?”

Cook stepped back from the chair. “At least five minutes.”

The room’s spice rack smell and cluttered appearance informed Tefler that he sat in his quarters by the
Irminsul
docks. Yet his dream lingered. He stood and threw his grey cloak over his shoulder.

“So I’m five minutes late for whatever you left the galley to tell me about?”

Cook’s bald head nodded.

Tefler sighed. “Sorry. I must’ve really been out.”

“Did Thera send you another vision?” Cook asked hopefully.

Tefler waved the question off. “Killing my folks wasn’t enough; Thera’s got to mess with my dreams. Sometimes I think the only reason I serve Shaiel is the hope that he’ll break out and murder her. Anyway, who sent you?”

“The port authority.”

“Do the shipwrights need me on the
Serapis
?”

Cook sucked air through his jutting under bite. “You won’t like it.”

“Don’t worry about making me mad. I already am.”

“A nexus-runner showed up. The missing one.”

Tefler paused while belting on his charcoal grey scimitar and looked askance at Cook. “Ruthven’s back?”

“It’s not him. Someone else commandeered the ship. Word is he found another Souldancer host.”

“Let me get this straight.” Tefler faced Cook’s overgrown form head-on. Knotted flesh overran the man’s hairless body like gnarled roots, inviting comparisons to a malformed potato. But having grown up in Cook’s presence, Tefler found the man’s deformities endearing. “The missing ship turned up in the hands of a pirate who claims he has one of Shaiel’s kin?”

“Pretty much.”

“So the chapter has good news for middle management—with just enough bad news to make telling him dangerous—and I got the short straw by default.”

Cook shrugged his brawny shoulders. “Sorry.”

Tefler sighed. “Am I Shaiel’s priest or the Blade’s page?”

“This could earn you the chapter’s respect,” Cook offered. “If you survive.”

Tefler peered through the cracked door of a large chamber carved from the huge tree’s living wood. An oil lamp hanging from the domed ceiling’s apex gave the only light, but the dark had never hindered his strange eyes.

Hazeroth stood at the round room’s center, stripped to the waist. The demon’s sinewy frame projected alarming strength in contrast to his soft features. Even more startling was the object in his hand—a hilt of bone and leather with a monstrous stone wing at either end. Composed of rigid membranes stretched over fossilized bones, the wings’ jagged edges faced in opposite directions, forming a rough “S” shape.

Four uniformed Night Gen surrounded Hazeroth; their short swords poised. None of them earned more than a glance from Tefler, whose attention settled on the three spectators lurking at the chamber’s edge.

The first had the face of a female Gen. But green eyes like weathered bronze and a drowned corpse’s skin betrayed her dual nature.

And in Irallel’s case, both natures are fallen.

A dusky youth whose right arm, upper chest, and throat resembled a rough stone carving sat by the woman’s feet. It was said that he’d belonged to the impish thuerg race, though on that subject—as on everything else—the boy called Megido wasn’t talking.

Tefler turned his attention to the room’s last occupant. He too had been a Gen, but unlike Irallel’s tarnished leer, Zan’s pearlescent eyes looked inward. His shoulder-length hair was white as driven snow. His pale flesh was alloyed with silver that reflected the guttering flame.

The priest hovered at the door, unsure if he should interrupt. His dilemma resolved itself when, at some unseen signal, the four Night Gen sprang. Hazeroth’s response was all but invisible. Though it seemed he hadn’t moved—except for a faint blur of cruel wings—the demon’s four opponents lay writhing on the floor; all clutching the ragged stumps of wrists in their remaining hands.

Tefler had worked with Hazeroth long enough to know their efforts were pointless. Those wounds would bleed till there was no more blood.
I should’ve stayed in bed today.

Across the room, the drowned woman smiled while the stone boy cringed. Zan’s distant stare never wavered.

“Come,” Hazeroth ordered, his quiet voice tolling like thunder.

Tefler couldn’t recall entering, yet he found himself at the center of the room facing Hazeroth’s back. Sweat beaded on the demon’s sallow skin, and blood glistened on his blades. Against his better judgment, Tefler thought he saw the stone wings flexing.

It smells like an animal’s den…

“You disturb my exercise,” Hazeroth said. “Why?”

The priest glanced at the maimed Gen crawling toward the door. Hazeroth turned eyes like pools of boiling blood upon him, and he met their gaze unflinching.

“Someone brought the missing nexus-runner back,” Tefler said. Nodding to the three by the wall he added, “There’s a Souldancer host on board.”

The demon’s brow furrowed; whether from the news or Tefler’s undaunted calm, the priest didn’t know.

“Shall I welcome our new sibling?” Irallel asked in a liquid voice. Tefler thought her expression as welcoming as a bared knife.

Hazeroth glanced at her silver counterpart. “Let Zan attend the task.”

Irallel compressed her lips into a pout; trying for alluring but only achieving petulant. “Zan hardly knows where he is. Why not send me?”

“Because he lacks the guile to slay my new charge on sight,” Hazeroth explained like a foreman correcting an unruly apprentice. “Bereft of him, I’d sooner send the mute.”

“Go ahead, Zan,” said Tefler. “It’s the pointy black ship in the harbor. You can’t miss it. There’s someone on board who’s like you—who your friends want to meet.”

Zan slowly returned from whatever airy realm he’d been lost in. He scanned the room as if trying to get his bearings and ambled out the door.

Dark forelocks hid Hazeroth’s bloody eyes as he turned back to Tefler. “Who is the ship’s master?”

“Some leftover guildsman. The port authority’s questioning him.”

“I will receive this…
guildsman
,” Hazeroth said.

Xander lay on the padded floor, resting his head on Astlin’s kneeling legs. Layers of cloth and leather reduced their heat to a pleasant warmth, and the Worked brass beneath was surprisingly supple.

The cell remained dark, but her voice dispelled the sense of isolation. “Do you think anyone on Keth survived?”

“We can hope,” Xander said.

Astlin’s voice was almost a whisper. “I hope Nadia’s alive.”

Xander reached back and squeezed her arm. “We will find out together.”

“Thurif’s mind is slippery,” Astlin said, “but he wants to be God. He’ll use everyone like he used the Gen on this ship.”

Xander meant to respond, but a small, terribly strong hand sheathed in leather covered his mouth and nose. Surprise became panic when he tried to breathe and failed.