Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (38 page)

- Syna Cordos, Andris Gian writer (103 PA)

Xia drove in silence so long that Duaal began wondering if she had forgotten that she wanted to talk to him. Through the dense, loud pack of Pylos traffic, the white-haired Ixthian woman remained quiet. Just driving, focused on her task.

Duaal leaned against the window and pressed his cheek against the cold glass. His skin had the sweaty, brittle feel of a fever. Every inch of him had felt that way since waking up in the back of the truck.

It all felt familiar, dimly familiar. Headaches were normal for spacefarers. Every planet in the galaxy had different air pressure and atmospheric mix, pollens of different plants and the fur, feathers and dander of different animals. A million little variations that could be hard on a body.

But now the hallucination and the fever… This was much more like the early days with Gavriel, when Duaal was just a little boy, living in a half-remembered haze of pain and strange dreams and endless singing. Always singing. A woman singing, he suddenly remembered. Gavriel's voice, yes, but a female voice, too. Singing to him…
at
him.

Xia had finally taken them up out of Pylos and back into the high mountains. Tall pine trees loomed up from the misty afternoon like ragged black spears. A few white swirls of snow eddied through the thinning forest as the road wound its way up toward the base camp.

Duaal rubbed his forehead against the window. The fever-heat was fading. So were the memories, replaced now by other thoughts and a more pleasant warmth.

"We should make sure that Logan comes back to Kemmer's camp tonight," he said. "In case something changes. It would be pretty silly for him to stay in Pylos while we're working together. Wasting that color on a hotel–"

"Damn it, Duaal!" Xia shouted abruptly, slamming her hand down on the steering wheel. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What?"

"Why Coldhand?" she cried. "
You can interrogate me?
That's what you told him! What were you thinking?"

"I was just flirting a little," Duaal said defensively. "What's wrong with that?"

"Why him? Why are you after that man?" Xia asked.

"You just don't like his cybernetics."

"Of course I don't," Xia said, waving one six-fingered hand dismissively. "That's beside the point, Duaal. Coldhand is dangerous! He's a bounty hunter and a killer. He's bad for you!"

"You don't know that," Duaal answered quickly.

"Yes, I do. I've watched you do this for years. Remember that man on Hadra? You came back to the Blue Phoenix with two sprained wrists."

Duaal remembered him, a huge and handsome pounceball player. But Coldhand had found Maeve again and forced them off-planet before Duaal could make a second date.

"And that Lyran woman on Axis?" Xia asked.

"Lyrans have claws. Was that her fault?"

"She didn't have to use them, Duaal! Coldhand may not have claws, but he's even worse. We're working out of a camp full of intelligent young men and women, but you insist on Coldhand?"

Duaal shrugged and looked out the window again. They were crossing an icy bridge and would be back at the base camp soon. "I'm just not interested in any of the others, really. So?"

Xia sighed. "Why not, Duaal? I thought you liked Enu-Io. "

"And I thought you were about to jump back into Xen's arms," Duaal said sharply. "But you managed to surprise everyone. Look, Enu-Io is fine, but he's just…" Duaal trailed off with a shrug.

"Smart? Gentle and caring?" Xia asked bitterly.

Duaal was not sure what to say to that. Snow and stone streaked past the window. After an uncomfortably long silence, the archeologists' base camp finally came into view. Xia pulled the truck to a stop and got out to answer questions from Kemmer and Phillip about their progress in finding Maeve.

"Where's everyone else?" she asked Kemmer suspiciously.

The archeologist's face was stony. "What exactly are you suggesting?"

"Nothing. I just want to know where the others are. Are they all right?"

"They're fine," Phillip said. The geologist pointed up the slope of the moraine. "Doctor Kemmer had us take most of the gear down into the ravine. We should be pretty much moved down there by tonight."

"Then we only have to protect one location." Xia nodded at Kemmer. "That was a good idea."

The Prian offered no answer. He turned and began walking through the snow toward the crevice. Phillip had more questions about what was happening down in Pylos, but Duaal was getting cold.

He went back to the Blue Phoenix tent, turned on the heater and flopped down on his cot. Duaal had thrown his arm across his face and did not see Xia come inside. But he heard her footsteps on the tent's plastic floor and then felt her sit at the corner of his bed.

The mage removed his arm reluctantly. "What do you want?" he asked.

Xia's eyes were a concerned green. She looked down at her hands, fingers laced in her lap. "I just wanted to apologize for my anger before."

"It's fine." Duaal did not want to think about the argument.

"No," Xia told him. She was still staring at her hands. "It's something I've been considering for some time now, but I didn't say it well. I'm surprised how upset I was."

"What do you care who I sleep with? It's none of your business," Duaal asked angrily.

"I know, but I… I worry about you."

"Why?"

"You always seem to hurt yourself. You like dangerous men and women… You're always picking fights with Tiberius and Maeve."

"Wait, I thought you said that those fights were the captain's fault!" Duaal challenged, feeling betrayed. He sat up and glared at Xia. "You said that he was being overprotective!"

She raised her eyes to Duaal's. "He is, but you always make it worse! It's as if you
need
him to be angry with you, or that you want Coldhand to hurt you."

"It's not like that…" Duaal protested.

"Isn't it?" Xia uncurled her silvery hands and put one of them on the young human's knee.

"No, it's not," he said stubbornly.

"Oh? What about Gavriel?"

The heater was doing its job, filling the tent with warmth, but Duaal's blood ran suddenly cold and he began to shiver. "What about him?" he asked through clenched teeth.

Xia hesitated, reaching for the words. "He was terrible to you, but his abuses were the only attention you had for many years."

"So?"

"So maybe you're looking for that again by trying to get Tiberius angry with you, by seeking out lovers like Coldhand."

Duaal did not like it, but had to admit that Xia's idea made a certain perverse sense. He dropped his gaze. "Fine. What does it matter? Just leave me to it, Xia."

"No. I'm not just going to watch you get hurt over and over, Duaal." She moved closer, planting a hand on either side of his hips. Her burnished lips were very close, Duaal realized. Her eyes changed color from green to a dark violet. "I want you to have something better than that. I want to… to give you something better."

He had only rarely seen an Ixthian's eyes turn that deep, lustful color. "But I'm human," he reminded her. "Don't you care about that? You were so angry with Xen about Panna…"

"I don't know anymore," she murmured. "Maybe Xen's right. Maybe he's not. But I know that you deserve someone who isn't going to hurt you, Duaal."

It should not have sounded strange, he thought, but it did. Exotic, a promise of something brand new. Duaal let Xia pull him into her arms and press her cool silver lips against his.

Xia's lovemaking was everything she promised it would be. Her touch was gentle and tender. She denied Duaal nothing and when they finally collapsed sweating into the blankets, the tent had fallen into twilight dimness. Xia touched her fingers to Duaal's forehead and smiled.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Good," Duaal answered with a blush.

"No headaches or hallucinations?"

"None. I do feel a little hot, though."

"So you are." Xia laughed and kissed Duaal, then cocked her head. "Do you hear that?"

Duaal listened. There was the sound of ice crunching under tires from outside.

"They're back," he said.

________

Even if she had any food, Maeve would have traded it away in a heartbeat just to close her eyes for a few minutes. The single lamp burned blindingly in the darkness. The light seemed to stab right through her eyes like blazing needles, but she could not stop herself from looking. A new Nihilist watched Maeve, ready to hit or scream at her if she did more than blink. If he would just leave for a moment, or fall asleep himself, then she could close her eyes…

Maeve's head drooped. The Nihilist laughed and hefted a broken towel rod. With an effort, Maeve looked up again, but not in time to keep the gap-toothed cultist from jabbing the end of the metal pole into her stomach. Maeve coughed. With her good foot, she kicked an impotent spray of dust up at him.

"You stay awake, bird-back," he said. "Lord Gavriel doesn't want you missing any of the fun."

"Your master will have nothing from me," Maeve spat.

The black-robed man laughed again.

________

With Gripper's help – the big Arboran was stronger even than the muscular Enu-Io – the archeologists broke down the last tents and moved the whole camp down into the ravine. Only the trucks and Logan's Raptor remained on the surface of the snow-covered mountain.

"Is it safe down here?" asked Tiberius. He carried a sleeping bag over one shoulder and looked around. The diggers had cleared away more of the rubble to make room along the slanting fissure floor.

"I spent most of the day helping Phil shore up the walls," Ava said from a few yards ahead.

"Unless we get hit by another quake, we should be safe enough," Darius said. The Prian siblings held the last rolled-up tent suspended between them.

Logan followed at the back of the line. Kemmer had only reluctantly agreed to let the bounty hunter down into the ravine. Logan walked carefully behind Panna. He watched her blonde hair rippling across her shoulders, the shoulders that should have had wings stretching out behind them. Funneled by the sheer walls of stone, the wind howled overhead.

Duaal said that there was a Waygate down here, just like those in the White Kingdom.
In the tight confines of the crevice, Logan had a hard time imagining it.

The jagged ground suddenly gave way to something much more broad and even. Logan found himself in a widening of the ravine, painstakingly dug open into something resembling a cavern and ringed all around by spotlights. They steamed and sizzled as snow filtered slowly down from the distant sky.

Most of the domed white tents had already been set up along one side of the cavern, where the overhang protected them from most of the weather. Enu-Io and Gripper took the last tent from the Prian diggers and set about erecting it at the end of the line.

The Lyran mechanic – Gruth, Duaal had called him – followed a red-haired human around the perimeter of the underground camp. Gruth took notes on a datadex as the human man poked a tapered pole against the stone walls.

The flap of the largest tent was still open. The tables inside were arranged in two parallel lines, all covered in computers and equipment that Logan did not recognize. Some of it had the bulky, old-fashioned look of Prian gear, but more of it was trim, sleek and modern. That must have come with the Tynerion team.

Towering over it all was the Waygate. Logan had seen a few pictures, copies of those few images brought back from the original Alliance explorers who had discovered the White Kingdom, a decade before its destruction by the Devourers. But a few schoolbook prints were no match for the real thing.

The Waygate was huge. A segmented stone ring – almost wide enough to fly the Raptor through – sat at the peak of a stepped pyramid so tall that Logan had to crane his neck to see the top. The circular gate glowed with a strange luminescence that swirled like clouds in a storm.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Panna asked.

Logan had no answer for her. What had it been like for Maeve, standing here before the Waygate? Had she been awed, facing the great monument? Or saddened by this enormous and beautiful reminder of her lost home? Or a way back home, perhaps, if there was a home to return to?

She used a Waygate to summon the Devourers, Logan thought. Was it painful to find another Waygate? Frightening? Logan had a hard time imagining Maeve being frightened by much. She had faced even her own death with fierce grace. But what of the Nihilists who had caught her? Was she afraid of them?

Logan turned away. Lovely and impressive as it was, the Waygate would not help him find Maeve.

________

Everyone gathered in the largest tent to share information and some dinner. Logan sat on the end of one table. Most of the archeologists eyed him warily – which suited the hunter just fine – but Panna insisted on sitting across from Logan and grilling him for information.