Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) (48 page)

“Fire elementals,” said Th’ix.

“I see him,” Xander told Cook. “Lock onto the coordinates I’m sending you and translate him aboard.”

Several moments passed as Cook wrestled with the translator and the heat mounted. The outmost layer of the ship’s crystal skin began to crack and peel away, and Xander expected his own skin to follow any second.

White-green light obscured the marching column. The brief flash left Xander’s head swimming but plunged the creatures into disarray.

“Tefler is safely aboard.” Cook sprang to his feet. “I’ll go down and lend him a hand.”

Relief washed over Xander, cooling his nexically stimulated nerves. The respite was short-lived, because no sooner had Cook left the bridge than outraged elementals were swarming up toward the ship.

“Take us into the ether!” said Th’ix.

“I do not know the Working,” Xander said.

“Nexus-runners don’t use Workings.”

“How do they enter the ether, then?”

“I don’t know!”

With the first pursuers in claw’s reach, Xander came about and raced for the gate. Panic clutched his heart when the Stratum’s fluid topography hid all points of reference. His sweat running cold, he struggled to maintain a straight return course while flying fast enough to escape the growing cloud of elementals.

Fire burned through the hull amidships. Pain wrenched Xander’s side before klaxons blared. He imagined a red-hot spear tip thrust between his ribs. His strength ebbed, and he folded to his knees.

“We’ve lost propulsion!” said Th’ix.

Xander could no more run than a man with broken legs. He could see the elemental swarm gaining. A ward covered the hull breach, but it wouldn’t keep them out for long.

In desperation, Xander lashed out at the rushing horde. His own power surged from the ship and scattered the first ranks of elementals like cinders in a gale. The effort cost him, though, and it took all of his willpower not to black out.

Xander poured his anguish into the nexic link, spending the last of his hope on the chance that the soul of the infinite fire might hear him.

Forgive me, Serieigna. I have not the strength.

The elementals had regrouped. They were rallying for a final charge when the omnipresent fire erupted. The Stratum swept up its own denizens in burning waves taller than mountains and scoured them from its face. The
Kerioth
pitched and shook as it was driven before a flaming tide. Xander felt scaled claws upon him, and everything stopped.

Is this the second death?
he asked the pervasive darkness before he realized that his eye was closed. Against his deepest fears he opened it and saw that he floated in a rose-colored mist; and that he was still the ship.

“That’s how nexus-runners enter the ether,” said Th’ix, who stood beside the dais holding Xander’s leg in a rough embrace.

Xander was discharged from the
Serapis’
large, mostly empty infirmary with a diagnosis of minor ERIS-like symptoms. The medic on duty grounded him for seventy-two hours.

Tefler was delirious on admission, but his condition quickly improved. When he became lucid again, Xander paid him a visit. The priest’s fading burns inclined Xander to think that he’d been possessed by the ghost of Tefler’s pain.

Tefler pointed sluggishly at Xander. “If you’re here, I must be dead.” His finger moved to the room’s other occupant, and his brow knotted. “Who’re you?”

Nakvin had come straight from the Wheel to wait by Tefler’s bedside. She introduced herself.

“The queen of the Nine Circles?” Tefler asked.

“Technically,” said Nakvin.

Tefler lay back, his face expressionless. “I’m in hell.”

“You’re awake!” said Cook as he strolled into the room. “I’m glad the heat didn’t fry your brain.”

“Okay,” said Tefler. “This can’t be hell if he’s here.”

Xander’s patience reached its end. “You are alive. We all are, and we have been chosen for mighty deeds.”

Tefler eased himself out of bed. “I know. I conspired to commit deicide. It doesn’t get mightier than that.”

“Does that prospect still interest you?” asked Xander.

“Sulaiman’s plan failed. Got a new one?”

Xander turned to Nakvin. “Ask Her Majesty. She promised to explain once we rescued you.”

“Thanks for that, by the way,” said Tefler.

Nakvin stood. Her bearing reminded Xander of a merchant preparing to address the Council, and the way she smoothed her white robe betrayed anxiety.

“Keep in mind, I’m not completely sure of this,” she said to Tefler. “But based on Th’ix’s report, you might be the son of an old friend.”

“Sulaiman said my father must’ve been Thera’s priest. Did you know him?”

Nakvin’s mouth worked silently for a moment before she finally found her words. “Deim was my apprentice—kind of. He was a quick learner, and when an idea got lodged in his head, nothing could shake it loose.”

“Sounds familiar,” said Cook.

“How did he die?” Tefler asked.

Nakvin hesitated. “Serving his goddess.”

“Look where that got him,” said Tefler. “Now I know that killing her is definitely the right move.”

“Okay,” Nakvin said, raising her hand. “Can we drop that subject, please?”

Tefler’s face fell. “Why not discuss killing Thera?”

“Because she’s my daughter,” Nakvin blurted out.

Xander found Nakvin’s claim slightly less shocking than meeting Thera herself. “How can you be mother to the Mother of Demons?”

Nakvin rubbed her temples and sighed. “I thought the Nesshin loved propriety. Never mind. You know how they remade Thera’s soul from parts of other people’s? Well, my daughter was the host.”

“I…I’m sorry,” said Cook.

“That was Sulaiman’s plan,” Tefler said, his face aglow with newfound admiration. “He went back to kill your daughter before she was Thera.”

Nakvin slumped down onto a bed. “Sulaiman went back to kill Elena on the
Exodus
. He almost succeeded before Vaun killed him. That’s how I remember it, so it still must’ve happened that way.”

“You knew,” said Tefler. “You sent out spies to watch him; to stop him when they’d learned how he planned to do it. The only thing you didn’t count on…”

Nakvin fixed chastened eyes on Tefler. “…Was you.”

“Damus and Nahel,” said Xander, “they were your spies as well?”

“Officially I had them looking for other people, but they were backups, yes.”

“And now that they have failed, you’ll make us change history to suit you—with Astlin as your bargaining chip.”

“No,” said Nakvin. A tear rolled down her cheek, though her face was defiant. “I remember Sulaiman’s attempt on Elena. She said she wished he’d succeeded. I’m done changing history—especially with a goddess against me. But I had to try.”

Xander planted himself before her. “How can we help Astlin? What do you want from us?”

“I want you to use Smith’s gate—not to change destiny, but to fulfill it.”

“How do we know you won’t try to take Smith while we’re gone?” asked Tefler.

Nakvin’s glare blazed like a winter moon. “Ruling a place where you can actually
make
time is ideal for self-improvement. If I wanted Smith I’d take him, and none of you could stop me. So how about we stifle the accusations and work together?”

Silence fell. Xander was the first to break it. “Tell us your plan.”

“There’s only one weapon that can kill a god,” said Nakvin. “And I know just the time and place where you can get it.”

Xander stays close to Tefler as they wander between vast blocks of whirring gears. The thought of losing himself in the clockwork canyons makes him shiver.

“If you’re hoping to find Sulaiman in here, I hope you packed a lunch,” says Tefler.

“I just want the sword,” Xander says. “What is this place we’re looking for?”

“Smith called it the terminus.”

Xander shudders again to recall the pranaphage leering down as he stepped through the gate formed of Smith’s body. “We can reach the point Nakvin spoke of from there?”

“Unless she’s leading us into a trap. Or Smith is. Or Thera. Or pretty much anyone else we’ve dealt with.”

Cook’s promise to keep an eye on the souldancer gives Xander small comfort. A resounding noise like thunder on a metal mountain raises a deeper concern. He points to a tower of gears gone suddenly still. “That whole block just stopped moving.”

“That’s bad, right?” asks Tefler.

Xander presses on. Tefler follows. Gear blocks grind to a halt around them with increasing frequency until they leave the ordered grid of clockwork towers.

A narrow bridge spans the abyss that lies ahead. On the far side, stairs rise to a broad platform and darkness beyond.

“That has to be it,” Tefler says.

They cross the white bridge single file and ascend the steps side by side. Anticipation and foreboding besiege Xander at the threshold of the infinite. A thought comes to him, its simple power too seductive to ignore.

“We could stop it—all of it.”

“All of what?” Tefler asks.

“We could stop Zan from being possessed. From killing Astlin.”

“He’d probably appreciate it.”

“Why settle for that?” asks Xander. “I could go back to Keth before the Cataclysm; stop them from taking her; prevent all her suffering.”

Xander feels Tefler’s hand on his shoulder. “I’d be right there with you, but it can’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“You know why,” Tefler says. “Changing the past removes the reason to change it.”

Weariness weighs down Xander’s soul. “Then how can this plan succeed?”

“Nakvin said the sword was taken from the
Exodus
, so who’s to say
we
didn’t take it?”

Xander pauses in mid-stride. “Your logic seems questionable.”

“Then let’s test it.”

The steel-paneled hallway might have been on the
Serapis
but for the palpable gloom. An oppressive sense of menace penetrated the thinning veil of Kairos.

Xander looked down the rows of identical steel plates. “Which one hides Mordechai’s chamber?”

“If Nakvin didn’t know,” Tefler said, “how should I?”

“Searching them all will take forever. Even Kairos does not have that long.”

“What else can we do? Ask for directions?”

“Anyone we meet could unravel our plan,” said Xander, “but not if we hide in the ether.”

Tefler frowned. “Can we do that from here?”

“We are still on the verge of Kairos. Any point in space and time, remember?”

“Okay, but if we mess up and end the world, I’m telling everyone it’s your fault.”

Xander pictured himself fading into the ether. The corridor filled with rosy haze.

“Are we stuck in the past now?” asked Tefler.

“I do not know,” Xander said. “Let’s find the sword.”

Searching behind ethereal walls quickly uncovered a small vestibule. Beyond the far door lay a larger room dominated by a table resting on the backs of dead men. Human bones—and furnishings made from bones—cluttered the chamber.

“He stole my idea,” Tefler said.

“We are in the past,” said Xander. “Vaun thought of it first.”

“Good thing the ship goes down.”

Xander scanned the room’s grisly contents. “Mordechai must have the sword here somewhere.”

“I just thought of something,” Tefler said. “This stuff has been here for a few weeks at most. We shouldn’t be able to see it in the ether.”

“That is true,” said Xander. “Perhaps this is what Nakvin meant when she said the ether seemed more real aboard the
Exodus
than elsewhere.”

“Let’s toss the place and be done with it. I’ll search the real room while you look here.” Without waiting for a response, Tefler faded from view.

Xander’s search ended abruptly when he turned and saw a white scimitar floating above a shelf. Approaching for a closer look, he discerned a ghostly concrete block surrounding the blade. His fingers passed easily through the block, but the sword’s mirrored surface felt solid as steel.

A muted golden flash made Xander wheel around. His mind conjured images of a masked figure wielding the Void, but he was still alone. Then he remembered the room beyond his sight where Tefler searched. He left the ether for Mordechai’s frigid chambers.

Tefler stood panting amid a pile of mummified corpses. He smiled weakly at Xander. “Do you think Vaun will notice?”

“It is too late to worry about that,” Xander said, brandishing the white scimitar he’d pulled from the ether.

Footsteps in the vestibule sent a chill down Xander’s spine.

Tefler grabbed Xander’s arm. “It’s Mordechai. Run!”

They ran. Xander’s fear hindered his focus. He’d only faded halfway into the ether by the time he reached the wall. Passing through the steel panels was like running against a strong wind, but he managed.

Finding himself back in the gloomy corridor gave Xander little comfort. Seeing that Tefler stood beside him gave slightly more.

Softer footsteps, and the whisper of silk on steel, approached from the end of the hall. Xander exchanged a look with Tefler. Moving in concert, they fled back to Kairos.

“I’ll do it if you won’t,” said Tefler.