Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) (27 page)

The slickness evaporated from Irallel’s mind. Once contained it was easy to mold. She paused as though deep in thought, and her face brightened.

“I am Thera’s greatest host. I will become Shaiel’s Blade and leave Hazeroth wailing in the dark!”

Astlin pointed at the tunnel. “Go tell him.”

Irallel’s arm fell to her side, dropping the cloudy trembling sphere into the pool. She left without looking back.

“Think you can get me out?” asked Cook.

Astlin splashed through ankle-deep water to Cook’s side. She knelt and released just enough heat to melt the ice. Then she donned her glove and helped him to his feet. White and purple blisters marred his skin.

“Your hands,” Astlin said.

“It’ll heal. Thanks for showing some restraint.”

“I almost didn’t. How did you stay so calm?”

Cook’s grin sweetened his homely face. “I trusted you.”

“That was stupid.”

He spread his arms. “I’m still here.”

“Serieigna!” Xander called out.

Astlin counted it among the most beautiful sounds she’d ever heard. She saw him staggering from the tunnel beside Tefler, who had his arm slung around Xander for support. Both men were soaked with water and streaked with blood. She and Cook hurried to meet them.

Astlin gently held Xander’s head. An ugly gash marred his stubbly scalp. “You’re bleeding.”

“It looks worse than it is,” he said.

Astlin glanced at the edge with mixed pangs of fear and relief. “I thought you…”

Xander playfully tugged her hair. “Think only of what is before you.”

“Irallel didn’t give you any trouble on her way out?” asked Cook.

Tefler glanced back over his shoulder. “She breezed right past us like a girl skipping to school. That reminds me—aren’t we missing someone?”

“Zan!” Astlin cried.

“Is the green lady gone?” an unseen speaker called out.

“It’s safe,” said Cook.

Astlin couldn’t help smiling as Zan rose up from below the platform. He floated several feet beyond the edge, his white hair and long blue coat tossed by the wind.

“Is the gold lady hurt?”

“I hope not,” Tefler said. “She’s flying us out of here.”

Astlin stared at the ship as if it were a sleeping monster. “I can’t do it alone.”

“I’ll help,” said the priest.

“You all need a medic,” said Astlin.

“No time. Besides, the greycloaks run the infirmary.”

Cook gently nudged Tefler. “Then it’s up to you.”

Tefler sighed. He let go of Xander and said, “Okay. Close your eyes.”

Before Astlin could ask him why, a blinding glow washed over the platform and stunned her to silence. The light felt like ants crawling over her face. When it subsided she saw Tefler standing upright. White blotches still marked Cook’s hands, but the blisters were gone. Much to her relief, the cut on Xander’s scalp had faded to a jagged pink line. The older wound on his arm had vanished.

Astlin stared at the priest. “Was that—?”

“Prana.” Tefler shivered. “I hate handling the stuff.”

Cook patted him on the back. “Thanks.”

“Even if the greycloaks missed the flood,” said Xander, “they must have seen that. We should go.”

Tefler and Cook followed him onto the ship, but Astlin stopped at the foot of the ramp.

Xander stood atop the gangway, his arm outstretched. “Freedom is just a few more steps away.”

Astlin still hesitated. She and the Fire had joined forces, but she knew their truce was fragile.

Zan landed beside her. “Have you flown before?”

“Just an ether-runner.”

“I will help you.”

Even for a souldancer, Zan was weird. But his presence eased Astlin’s mind. She needed all the help she could get, and he might be able to restrain her if she lost control again.

The souldancers ascended the ramp together.

Xander led the search for the
Kerioth’s
bridge by the sparse green glow of recessed lights. The gloom and the corridors’ unfamiliar layout forced him to mind his steps.

“I thought you were in a hurry,” Tefler said.

Xander stopped. “I cannot hurry on a way I don’t know.”

“Hang left; then go straight.”

“How do you know that?”

“It’s on the sign.”

“You see a sign?”

“You don’t?” Tefler asked. “Why are you leading?”

Astlin preempted further argument. “What are you?”

“What do you mean?” Tefler sounded defensive.

“You can see in the dark,” she said.

“So can you and Zan.”

“That is her point,” said Xander. “You also manifested prana—odd for Shaiel’s priest.”

“I’m not really a priest of Shaiel,” Tefler said. “Not anymore.”

“You serve the true God?”

“I serve Thera.”

Xander rounded on Tefler. “That is nothing to joke about!”

“What?” the priest complained. “She’s the goddess of life—Shaiel’s opposite.”

“She is a murderess and the Mother of Demons. If she’s not Shaiel himself; she conspires with him!”

“Get your blasphemy straight,” Tefler said. “Shaiel hates Thera. The Lawbringers say she betrayed him.”

“A lie to mislead you—or perhaps Shaiel. Still, betraying another demon doesn’t make Thera just.”

“Xander’s got a point,” said Cook.

Astlin shouldered her way to the head of the group. “Let’s just find the bridge.”

Xander and the others followed her ringing steps in the direction that Tefler had pointed out. The path ended at a set of doors. Astlin opened them, stepped inside, and screamed.

Xander charged through the door. He nearly ran into Astlin, who stood motionless just inside the entrance.

“What is wrong?”

Astlin didn’t reply. Her staring eyes shone in the lightless room.

Xander strained to see what held her transfixed. He discerned shadowy movement—blind mechanical repetition performed by twisted shapes with the semblance of flesh. A disturbing smell asserted itself.

“Get out,” Astlin said in a curt monotone.

Xander backed out of the room. The doors closed, leaving him and his comrades waiting in the half-light. Alarms blared, and the emerald haze turned bright red.

Astlin emerged with halting steps, followed by oily acrid smoke.

“I burned them all.”

Xander wrapped his arms around her. She made no sound as her body shuddered against his.

Finally she laid her head on his chest. “Was it wrong?”

Xander gently stroked the back of Astlin’s head. “God alone can judge, Serieigna.”

“I thought
I
was insane. But their thoughts…writhing spirals…”

“I hate to interrupt,” Tefler said, “but we really have to go.”

Astlin’s eyes pleaded more urgently than her voice. “I can’t go back in there.”

Embracing Astlin was like holding fire and metal given life. That she sought Xander’s protection humbled him, and gave him new resolve.

“I will.”

“You don’t know how to fly,” said Cook.

Xander cupped Astlin’s face. “You do. Teach me.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Try.”

Astlin hesitated for a moment. Then she held Xander’s head and closed her eyes.

It started as a stream of dry facts, like pages turning in his mind.

“I see it, but I do not understand.”

“Wait,” said Astlin. “I have to go deeper.”

Xander recalled his father—a licensed steersman from Keth.

No. My father made mirrors.

“Don’t fight me,” said Astlin.

He remembered flying to Mithgar and how his father would sometimes let him take the Wheel. Pride warmed his breast.

But that was so long ago.

Bittersweet nostalgia became bleak loneliness. Years passed. His father left on a voyage and never came home.

“Are you all right?” Cook asked from somewhere miles away.

Nothing was all right. They were alone, and no one would help. Peace and freedom vanished as Neriad’s lengthening absences left Nadia in Xander’s care.

One night they came for him.

Astlin’s eyes shot open. Her fear was palpable. “It won’t stop!”

Xander endured days and weeks of semi-consciousness, punctuated by visits from men in dark suits. The jackets became robes, and the world devolved into pain.

Strong hands grabbed Xander from behind. He knew Cook’s voice but couldn’t make out the words. Tefler tried to pull Astlin back but only succeeded with Zan’s help.

A part of Xander’s mind knew what was happening and greeted his separation from Astlin with relief. But physical distance didn’t impede their bond. Xander crawled through layers of rock and dirt, clawing his way upward in the dark. Startled from sleep, he touched a young boy’s face and watched it melt from his skull.

He thrashed against his rescuers. “Don’t let me touch you!”

Fear and sorrow gave way to torment and loathing. He wanted to dash his brains out against a wall. He wanted to explode.

“Do something!” someone said—perhaps in a dream.

Astlin didn’t know where she was; or what, or why. Her few lucid moments were spent agonizing over her victims and contemplating the justice of hell earned after the fact.

But change came; long after she gave herself to despair. It came in the unlikely form of a stocky young man with brown skin and a mirthful face. He held the missing part of her inside him. In desperation she tried to take it by deceit, but he saw through her guise. He saw what she was and what she’d done, and somehow he forgave her.

Astlin realized that all she wanted from Xander was himself.

Xander saw Astlin under harsh red lights; saw her ashamed yet relieved face and knew it wasn’t his.

“We need to stop doing that,” he panted.

Cook set Xander back on his feet. “Welcome back.”

“Is the gold lady all right?” asked Zan.

“As close as I ever get,” Astlin said.

Tefler and Zan released her.

“What happened?” asked the priest.

Astlin bowed her head. “Xander has part of my soul. I accidentally started taking it back.”

Cook’s voice was wary. “Are you sure it was an accident?”

Dismissing the question, Xander lifted Astlin’s chin. “It was my fault. I pressed you.”

She managed a faint smile. “Do you remember how to fly?”

Xander laughed. “How could I forget?”

Ilmin paced the
Ashlam’s
hold to quell his restless mind. His conscience wasn’t to blame. He’d unburdened it along with his ship back on Mithgar.

The Nesshin are better off buried on Mithgar than damned here on Cadrys.

The captain kept glancing at the oblong crate at the center of the hold—the only cargo he’d taken on from the bleak sphere below. Its conspicuous placement and the somber lighting evoked a deposed tyrant lying in state, unattended but for Ilmin.

Perhaps ignorance of the crate’s contents was setting him on edge. The Lawbringers who’d brought it aboard hadn’t forbad him to open it, but there’d been no need. A technician had revealed the metal box’s function as a Guild-era refrigerated container. When asked to speculate, he’d said it could hold anything from produce to meat to chemical weapons. There was one certainty. Unequipped for life support or suspension, the crate contained nothing that lived.

Enough,
Ilmin decided. It was past time he let his cargo mind its own morbid secrets.
Captain to bridge,
he projected via the ship’s telepathic comm.
Proceed to Mithgar at best possible speed.

Ilmin began to feel at ease. The Cadrys Lawbringers had given him a problem. Their
Irminsul
chapter would soon solve it.

The
Irminsul
receded in a green blur, and Xander soared through heavy clouds on jet black wings. Vivid though Astlin’s memories were, they’d failed to prepare him for the wonder and terror of flight.

I never could have imagined it. I’m not riding the wind. I
am
the wind!

“Where are we going?”

Xander’s awareness turned from the open sky to the
Kerioth’s
bridge. The curved walls confined his senses, and he felt as if he were trapped inside a giant white lentil. Behind him Tefler and Cook manned two of the few stations not marred by dark oily smudges.

I should not have raised the lights,
Xander thought before asking, “What did you say?”

“Where are we going?” Tefler repeated. “We stole the ship, but the job’s not done till we get away with it.”

The blunt question left Xander at a momentary loss for words. “As far from the tree as we can,” he said at length.

“What then?” Tefler asked.

“Then we take Astlin home.”

“What if Keth is uninhabitable?”

Xander glowered at the greycloak. “Do you have another suggestion?”

Tefler leaned back and rested his feet on the console. “After spending my life in a giant tree, I’m glad to be anywhere else.”

“Then be glad we are going to Keth.”

“Do you know how make the ether transition?” asked Cook.

“Not entirely, but Astlin can teach me.”

“That’s fine,” said Cook, “but have her use a different teaching method.”

Xander fell silent. He was still sorting out Astlin’s memories. Her mind held disturbing visions, but their perspective troubled him most. She hadn’t just shown him events from her life. She’d so immersed him in her memories that he’d thought them his own.