Dragonseed (50 page)

As comfortable as he felt in the air, Jeremiah and Anza looked even more at home. They were zooming around like sparrows at play, flitting about in tight loops that Burke doubted he’d have the stomach to attempt.

Vance looked stable in the air, though he avoided the daredevil antics of Anza and Jeremiah. Poocher floated without flapping his wings, as if he were some oversized black and white balloon. The pig didn’t look nervous, but he no longer looked as cocky as he had earlier now that they were hundreds of feet off the ground. Thorny was the only member of their group who looked frightened. His newly restored hands were held out stiffly to each side, as if he was balancing himself on unseen stair rails.

Shay said, “I flew here in about two hours. I think the wings could go faster, but the wind takes your breath away. Also, in daylight, it was easy to follow the Forge Road. You’ll probably need to fly slower so you won’t lose it.”

Poocher snorted. Shay looked at him, and saw the silver visor sitting on his snout. Shay could see in the dark with his visor; he supposed Poocher could too. He took the visor from his eyes and handed it to Burke. “Wear these. You won’t lose the road then. The others can follow you. And, you may as well have this too.” He loosened the long leather holster than held his shotgun and ammo. “It doesn’t sound like it’s going to be much more effective than a pea-shooter where I’m going.”

Burke took the visor and the gun. He’d given Thorny the shotgun he’d fled Dragon Forge with now that he had working fingers again, so the additional firepower was welcome. “You’re going to follow the others to Atlantis?”

Shay nodded, looking apologetic. “As much as I want to fight for Dragon Forge, my heart lies with Jandra. I’m afraid she’s still possessed by the goddess.”

“And what if she is?” said Burke. “How will you free her?”

Shay placed his hand on the hilt of the angel sword. “I don’t know if she can be freed. If she can’t, I have the only weapon that can hurt her.”

“Understood,” said Burke. “I’d make the same choice.”

Shay floated over to Thorny. He slipped his satchel off and said, “You’re a man who knows the importance of books. I found these in the kingdom of the goddess. They aren’t interesting reading on their own, but they provide a key to understanding a lot of the books that survived from the Human Age. Try not to let them get around any open flames, okay?”

Thorny took the bag. “When all this is over and you get back to Dragon Forge to start your school, count me in as one of the teachers.”

“Thanks,” said Shay. He looked at the barn down below. “I should go. You all have a revolution to save.”

“You’re a good man, Shay,” said Burke. “We won’t let you down.”

SHAY SWOOPED BACK
toward the barn. Now that the sun had set, the night was biting cold, with a steady wind blowing from the north. Despite this, the streets were full of men, women, children, and earth-dragons dressed in white, crowding together, watching as he came to a gentle landing on the packed earth of the street.

Someone in the crowd said, “Our healer denies his divinity, but who else would be visited by angels?” There was a general murmur of agreement.

Shay knew nothing of Blasphet save that he was a mass murderer of both men and dragons. He didn’t like the idea that his presence might somehow be helping Blasphet’s reputation. For the moment, however, he had bigger things to worry about.

Within the barn, the underspace gate was still open. Jandra, Hex, and Bitterwood were gone, as was Jandra’s mentor, Vendevorex. Skitter, the long-wyrm, was now in the barn, his copper-scales reflecting the various hues of the rainbow. Zeeky sat alone upon his back, cross-legged, with a glass orb roughly the size of a baby’s head perched in her lap. The surface of the orb reflected the shimmering rainbow edges of the gate. Zeeky didn’t take her eyes off the orb as Shay walked toward her.

“We’re at the end,” she said. “After we go through the gate, I don’t know the future.”

Having lived his life so far without knowing the future, Shay didn’t feel as nervous as Zeeky sounded. He wondered how Skitter had slipped into the barn without him noticing. He must have been more preoccupied with getting Burke and the others on their way than he thought.

Zeeky said, “You know that Jazz is still in control of Jandra.”

“I know,” said Shay. “When she wasn’t coated in silver any more, I had a flicker of hope that Jandra was back, but knew it was too good to be true.  But, I can’t just give up.  Is there no way to save her?”

 “I don’t have any idea. The villagers won’t tell me. They’ve stopped using words. All I hear are howls of rage. They want vengeance against the goddess.”

Shay grew closer. In addition to the rainbow reflected on the surface, there was a tiny rainbow floating inside the orb. When he’d first met Zeeky, he’d been skeptical of her claims that she could hear the voices of ghosts predicting the future. Now that he had wings and a flaming sword, he found it difficult to be skeptical of almost anything.

“I don’t understand how this works,” he said. “How can people be trapped inside this glass ball? Even if they are, how can they see anything other that what’s right here around us?”

“The ball looks solid,” said Zeeky. “But, it’s not, really. Touch it.”

Shay moved his hand toward the glassy surface. His fingers stopped as they encountered a pressure. It reminded him of the magnets that Chapelion had kept for study. Turned one direction, the magnets would pull toward one another. But, if you flipped one of the magnets and tried to force them together, they wouldn’t touch. Some unseen force held them apart. The orb produced a similar sensation on his finger tips.

“There’s a whole world inside this ball,” said Zeeky. “In underspace, people exist as pure thought, ghosts without bodies, forever looking out at the world. Past, present and future are all visible. The villagers tell me that, even though they don’t have bodies, the things they imagine become real inside the void. It’s like they’re gods, creating a new world with their minds.” She looked up at him. “Gods don’t like to be trapped. If they could get out, they’d punish Jazz.”

Shay looked at the gate to Atlantis. The black rip in reality yawned like an open mouth. “If they’re in underspace, can’t they get out through that portal?”

“No,” said Zeeky. “The goddess has trapped this sliver of underspace in the orb. It’s like a loop of space folded in on itself. Until this ball is broken, they can’t get out. Jazz said nothing on earth can hurt it.”

“Really?” asked Shay, his hand falling to the hilt of the angel sword. “Mind if I give it a try?”

Zeeky handed him the orb. “Be my guest.”

The ball was strangely heavy for something that wasn’t solid. He squeezed it with both hands; it was hard as stone. Shay sat the orb on the floor and pulled out his sword, willing it to burst into flames. Skitter jerked backwards as a hot wind washed across the room.

The white-robed women around the room stepped toward him, looking highly alert. Blasphet, who had been watching attentively, said, “Have a care. I’m committed to non-violence, but my followers are zealous in defending me.”

“Lucky for me I’m not planning to attack you,” Shay said, as he willed the blade to white hot intensity. Smoke rose from the frayed edges of his coat sleeve. The hilt of the sword protected his hand, but the air was so hot he could barely breathe. Gritting his teeth, he took a powerful swing at the orb.

The sword bounced off. Needles of pain shot up his wrist from the force of the blow.

Feeling dizzy from holding his breath, he lowered the heat of the blade back to a dull cherry red. The air swirled around him as the temperature dropped. He frowned as he looked down at the orb. The straw around it was burning, and there was a black, glassy gouge on the earth beside it where his sword had hit. The orb wasn’t even scratched.

He stamped out the straw, and then picked up the orb.

“That was my best shot,” he said. “Could Skitter bite it open?”

“I’m pretty sure he can’t,” said Zeeky. “And if he swallowed it, it might take weeks until it, um, came out.”

Shay nodded. “Maybe there’s something in Atlantis that can free them. I should go. I need to chase after Jandra and the others. I mean, Jazz and the others.”

“I’m coming with you,” said Zeeky, uncrossing her legs and taking on a more traditional mounted position astride her saddle. “Bitterwood is probably already fighting the Atlanteans. Let’s hope we find Jazz before they finish the job.”

“You’re right. Once she no longer needs Bitterwood and Hex, she’ll kill them.” He offered her the orb.

She shook her head. “This is the last part of the future they told me. They said you would carry them through the gate.”

Shay frowned. If the fortune-telling ghosts had seen that he would be taking them through the gate, had they seen Jazz possessing Jandra? If so, why hadn’t Zeeky warned him? All of this might have been avoided. But, he decided it was the wrong moment to confront Zeeky on this. He placed the orb into the last bag he carried, Jandra’s backpack, resting it on top of her coat. He ran his finger along the silky fabric. Though it was smudged with soot from their work digging up Jazz’s heart, it still had the smell of the crystal clear pool beneath the waterfall.

His heart caught in his throat at the memory.

He willed the sword to bright yellow flame once more and held it toward the portal. The void within the rainbow devoured the light, revealing nothing, not even shadows. He breathed in slowly through his nostrils, staring into the darkness. Even his bones felt cold, despite the heat of the sword.

Leaping into the unknown was the job of heroes. He was only a skinny former slave with an aching heart and unusually crisp handwriting. It was just as well he didn’t know the future. Closing his eyes, he leapt. The last thing he heard before the void swallowed him was Skitter clattering at his heels.

CHAPTER THIRTY:

PARLOR TRICKS

HAVING BEEN THROUGH
an underspace portal before, Hex was braced for the disturbing sensation of nothingness that enveloped him as he stepped into the gate. Blasphet’s description of death as feeling as if he was falling from his own body echoed the experience, though not fully. For the briefest flicker of time, Hex simply ceased to exist, and all his senses ended.

When he emerged on the other side, the first sense to return was touch. He stepped into air that was positively balmy. It was night; he stood in a well-manicured garden full of statues, male and female nudes of exquisite perfection, their skin and hair crafted from precious metals, gold and platinum and palladium. Bright pink and white flowers filled large terra-cotta pots, lending a sweet scent above the sea breeze that swirled gently around him. In the center of the garden was a fountain made of glass with a central spike taller than Hex. Water poured from a large golden disk atop the spike in an unbroken circle and fell in a shimmering column to the pool below. Goldfish that looked crafted from actual gold darted about in the softly lit pool.

Beside him, Bitterwood tilted his head upward, then higher, then higher still. They were surrounded by towers that rose until they vanished among the stars that shimmered in the cloudless sky.

When he looked down, he found Vendevorex and Jandra standing on the broad glass rim of the pool. She said, “Gentlemen, if you’re done gawking at the architecture, we need to get to work. The second I start construction of the antenna, the city mind will know something is happening. We need to get you ready for the fight.”

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” said Bitterwood.

Jandra smirked. “Your thorn-tipped shafts aren’t going to scratch the guards here in Atlantis. You need an upgrade. Draw an arrow.”

Bitterwood frowned. Hex sensed that the hunter didn’t like being ordered around so brusquely. Bitterwood was here for the same reason he was; not to fight the city, but to stay close to Jandra. He was almost certain that Jazz was the controlling personality within her. That last sliver of almost was enough to keep him from lunging out and snapping her skull between his jaws while he still had the strength. On his empty stomach, he felt every muscle in his body trembling.

Bitterwood drew an arrow from his quiver and stared at the tip, perplexed. The shaft now ended in a tiny rainbow, with an almost invisible spot of black at the point.

“Now when you draw an arrow from the quiver, it will be capped with an electromagnetic field encompassing an underspace gate only a millimeter across,” Jandra explained. “This tip can carve through any matter it encounters and send it on a one way trip to the Mare Ingenii.”

“Where’s that?” asked Bitterwood.

“The far side of the moon. There’s a city there now. If you shot Hex with that arrow, some moon man would no doubt be mystified as to why a long spaghetti-shaped strip of dragon entrails had fallen on him.”

“Spaghetti?” asked Bitterwood.

“Moving on,” said Jandra, turning to Hex. “You’ve suffered brain damage. It’s slowing you down, and I don’t have time to fix it. Luckily, I have a sort of whole body crutch you’ll find useful.”

Hex shook his head. Jandra might be about to put underspace gates on the tips of his teeth, a prospect he found worrisome. “No thank you. I’ve fought with more severe injuries than this.” He hadn’t.

“This really isn’t a situation where you get to choose to accept my help or not,” said Jandra, casting her gaze toward the statues. Suddenly, the gold that coated them began to drip to the ground, exposing naked flesh beneath. Around the garden, men and women fell to their hands and knees gasping as the nanite shells that supported them flowed into a large golden river that snaked toward Hex. Hex flapped his wings and hopped backwards, avoiding the liquid metal.

He landed in an even larger pool of gold. Flecks of the cold metal splashed onto his belly and wings. Instantly, they began to slither and expand, coating his scales. He flicked his wings sharply to fling the metal off, to no avail. The gold crept upward. He craned his neck and held his breath as it reached his jaws. He instinctively closed his eyes as the liquid metal washed over his face. When he opened his eyes, he was completely encased in a flawless sheet of gold.