Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) (35 page)

“You sure you don’t want some time alone?” Tefler asked between panting breaths.

The thought terrified her. “Thanks, but I’ve had more than enough.”

Astlin scanned the curved cliff top. Zan stood nearby, having flown himself up. Mirai Smith had swarmed up the rock face on thousands of creeping limbs. Cook and Sulaiman, who were the strongest natural climbers, sat nearby. The only surprise was Th’ix, who sat apart from the others. Somehow he’d reached the top before her while still carrying the Guild Regulator’s head. Even stranger, the imp didn’t’ seem tired at all.

Looking to the clear sky confirmed Cook’s fear. “There’s no sign of the
Exarch
,” Astlin said.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Cook. “The
Kerioth
is only a couple days’ walk from here. Tefler and I could probably fix it with our new friend’s help.”

“Describe the vessel,” said Mirai Smith.

Tefler made a trident shape with his hand. “A black three-pronged nexus-runner.”

Smith flashed a chitinous grin. “Won’t be difficult.”

Astlin gestured from herself to the other souldancers. “We don’t need to eat or drink. Can the rest of you make it that far?”

Cook scanned the horizon. “It shouldn’t be a problem. Irallel gave us plenty of water.”

When she died,
Astlin thought.
Or worse than died; collapsed into a gushing rift between Strata. Megido, Damus, Xander—so much death.

She glanced at Mirai Smith and wondered about Sulaiman’s plan. Thurif had also sought the clockwork pranaphage. The little she knew of his designs made her wary of Smith and glad of the traitor’s death.

A deep hum interrupted Astlin’s thoughts and made the sand dance at her feet. Her gaze flashed to the canyon’s edge, but she felt nexic waves pulsing from its depths before a black hulk rose into view. Dents marred the
Kerioth’s
sharp planes, and its engines spewed thick smoke.

“Son of a bitch,” Astlin said.

“Souldancer of Kairos,” a reedy voice thundered from the ship. “Your liberator greets you.”

“Known to you?” Smith asked.

Astlin hoped that her madness had returned with a wild hallucination. But if so, everyone else shared it.

“Thurif.”

“Saw him dead below,” the clockwork souldancer said.

“He can mold flesh,” said Tefler. “That corpse must be a fake.”

“You walk free by my design,” the
Kerioth
boomed. “Open your mind, that I may share my vision.”

“State your terms,” said Smith.

Astlin felt telepathic signals streaming from the ship. “Don’t trust him!”

A nexic wave broke over her. Ground, sky, and abyss bled into a harsh whiteout. When the light faded, Mirai Smith was gone.

The second wave building in the nexus-runner’s core left no time for words. Astlin reflexively stretched out her arms and her will. Tefler, Sulaiman, and Cook flew back from the edge as though tied to speeding drifters. A piercing green-white globe burst from the
Kerioth’s
hull, blinding her to their fate. The ground beneath her vanished, and she fell.

Astlin lay next to a dead man. His half-pulped waxen face resembled Thurif’s down to its tumorous growths and misplaced eyes. But the corpse’s trunk was normal—a fact revealed by the Guild robes’ strange absence.

Whoever you were, you didn’t deserve this.

“Are you all right?” Cook called to her from high above.

Astlin looked upward. A smooth quarter sphere had been gouged from the canyon’s lip where the
Kerioth
had translated thousands of tons of stone into oblivion.

“I think so.” Astlin stood and brushed sand from her armor. “How about you?”

“Tefler, Sulaiman, and I are a little bruised, but we’d be a lot worse if you hadn’t thrown us clear. I didn’t know you could do that!”

“Me either.”
I won’t watch another friend die,
Astlin promised herself.

Zan landed nearby, interrupting her brooding.

“I’m glad…
you’re
not hurt,” he said, catching himself before saying something else.

Astlin saw the fading claw marks on Zan’s white face, and guilt gnawed at her heart. “You’re not hurt, either?”

Zan smiled. “I flew away.”

“Good,” she said, returning his grin. “I was worried.”

Zan hovered beside Astlin as she climbed. She welcomed his company, even though it hardly dulled the ache of Xander’s absence.

The souldancers rejoined their comrades atop the cliff, where Th’ix surprised Astlin again. Wondering how he’d escaped raised troubling questions about how she’d saved the others, so she dropped that train of thought. In any case, he ignored her as he tinkered with the Regulator’s severed head.

“Well met, lady of flame,” said Sulaiman.

“I’m a Kethan,” Astlin said, “not a lady.”

“You embody one of the high Strata. Your station bestows great dignity.”

“I’m stuck in the desert, covered in dust like the rest of you.”
Being Xander’s wife was the only station I wanted.

“We mustn’t tarry here long,” Sulaiman said. “The false guildsman holds the smith.”

“Are we sure it was Thurif?” asked Cook.

“It was him,” Astlin said. “Unless someone else stripped the robe off that corpse.”

“The transessed female’s theory is correct,” said a hollow tinny voice. “A metastatic microburst occurred between both translations.”

Astlin stared at the large armored head tucked under Th’ix’s arm. Its eyes glowed a menacing red as they cycled in their tracks.

“It still works?” she thought aloud.

Th’ix’s scaled lips parted over sharp teeth. “I fixed him!”

“Pay no mind,” Sulaiman said. “The imp’s nature inclines him to tinkering.”

“That would’ve helped if we still had the ship,” said Cook.

“Our aims have changed,” Sulaiman said, “yet our means of reaching them have not. Th’ix will conduct us through the ether, where a man on foot may outpace a rider in the Strata.”

“Great,” said Tefler. “Where are we going?”

Cook rubbed his chin. “The
Kerioth
was still pretty damaged. Even if Thurif smuggled in technicians from the
Exarch
—which he must have—he needs a drydock to make full repairs.”

“And there’s only one shipyard on Mithgar,” Tefler said. “The tree.”

“What about off-sphere?” asked Astlin.

Cook shook his malformed head. “Even if there were facilities in orbit, he’d never make it in that shape.”

“That just leaves us with one problem,” Tefler said. “Even if Th’ix gets us to the tree, the dock’s ten miles straight up.”

“The
Irminsul’s
height is no obstacle to Th’ix,” said Sulaiman. “Neither up nor down; east nor west is fixed for him in the ether. He can acquire a ship for us.”

Cook turned to Astlin. “Are you up for this?”

The glittering sand stretched as far as her eyes could see. She imagined a trail of bodies stretching between her and Thurif.

“I caught a glimpse of what happens if Thurif gets his way,” said Astlin. “He’s got to be stopped. I owe it to Xander.”

Thurif docked the
Kerioth
without asking for clearance and hurried to receive his guest. Mirai Smith—for so the souldancer of Kairos had named himself through the ship’s telepathic comm—was waiting in chamber lately occupied by the fire souldancer and the boy. He’d spent the whole flight there in silence.

That one
would
be patient.

To the untrained eye, Smith appeared as a face attached to a restless mass of tiny gears cast from dark metal. Thurif knew better. The gears were symbolic of Smith’s bond with Kairos—the quintessence of time itself. This fact raised other questions, but he curtailed his musing to make introductions.

“Welcome aboard, friend. I am Thurif. I trust you are enjoying your newfound freedom.”

“Is that what this is?”

Thurif spread his robed arms, briefly admiring how his double’s blood had been removed during translation. “You no longer languish in the Guild’s cage.”

Smith raised one mottled brow ridge. “Have I traded theirs for yours?”

“You could’ve left here any time you wished. Your continued presence makes a certain statement, doesn’t it?”

The souldancer’s beak gave a twisted impression of a grin. He flowed across the padded floor and into the twilit hall. “Plundering the Shadow Caste’s hoard takes knowledge, skill, and exceptional audacity. Meeting one with such qualities intrigued me.”

Thurif returned Smith’s smile. “I hope I didn’t disappoint.”

“Depends on why you brought me here.”

“Allow me to sate your curiosity,” Thurif said. He proceeded toward the lift.

Smith followed on multiple self-assembling and deconstructing feet that clattered like spilled ball bearings. The lift ascended to the topmost deck, and they emerged into a short hallway ending at a set of double doors. Thurif led his guest through these and into the spacious, more brightly lit captain’s quarters.

The look on Smith’s skull-like face made Thurif beam with pride. The
Exarch
crewmen he’d modified had not only got the
Kerioth
flying again; they were making great progress converting the captain’s room into a serviceable laboratory.

“Altered with metasomatics,” Smith observed of Thurif’s crew and their single-minded toil.

“Shaping flesh is my specialty,” Thurif said. “I understand you have a similar way with inanimate matter.”

“Is that why you freed me?”

“As I said, I am a liberator. You are but the first of many to come.”

“Come from where?”

Thurif selected one tool from the general clutter of a stainless steel workbench. The white knife’s lightness never failed to awe him. Its finger-length blade represented all of the
Exarch’s
ether metal stores.

He turned back to Smith. “Others used your gifts to revive a goddess of death. I would employ them to raise up a god of liberation who will free men from decrepit moralities, arbitrary limitations, and human nature itself.

“Divinize a mortal? Who?”

“Me,” said Thurif.

The searing flash plunged Hazeroth into frozen darkness. He drifted, blind and tormented, through formless wastes.

At least I have survived my would-be slayer.
Yes. Hazeroth had tasted the Gen’s dying agony, and the memory brought a mite of consolation.

A voice invaded the sightless Void. It spoke secret names with the authority to command even a prince of the Circles. The words drew him through the ether to attend the one who spoke.

The cold and pain left him. Hazeroth felt smooth metal beneath his knees and smelled recycled air. His vision did not return.

“Well come, Blade of Shaiel,” said an unexpectedly fair voice. Its icy echo formed an image of the robed figure before which he knelt.

“Why can I not see?” Hazeroth demanded.

“A question pondered long by many,” the chilling voice said. “’Tis fitting that your senses match your defect of mind.”

“Provoking an unbound demon also suggests a mental defect,” Hazeroth growled.

“Worse is hurling threats against you know not what. Despise not him that judges you.”

Fear chilled Hazeroth as not even the Void could. “Lord Shaiel?”

“You stand before his Will,” the cold voice said.

Anger overcame the demon’s dread. “You summon me blind for your amusement!”

“I summon you for judgment. Your flesh bears your sin’s due wage.”

“What sin?” Hazeroth asked. “Shaiel set me on the souldancers’ trail. I’d have them all but for a treacherous Gen!”

“As a shepherd, not a wolf, were you sent. You were to gather Shaiel’s kin; not condemn them to pain without end.”

“I harmed not a one. Why lay the guilt on me?”

“Knew you well that the Lady of Fire loved the Nesshin,” said Shaiel’s Will. “Had you won his trust, hers would have followed. She is estranged from us by his death.”

Suspicion entered Hazeroth’s mind. “If Shaiel’s prize were truly lost, you would have left me to the Void.”

“Not wholly fruitless were your works, though your chief victory lay in succumbing to Thurif’s guile.”

“I was meant to open the vault,” the demon said. “Why did you withhold knowledge of the key?”

“Why tempt one so prone to rebellion? The smith is free. You have only to find him.”

“What cause have you to trust me now?”

The Will’s voice grew colder still. “Not lightly does Shaiel give honors. We come to Mithgar soon. Perhaps you shall again prove worthy to bear his blade.”

A door hissed open. Hazeroth heard Shaiel’s Will pass through with surprisingly light steps before it closed again, leaving him blind and alone.