An Abyss of Light (The Light Trilogy) (43 page)

… jerked him to his feet. “You won’t realize it for days, good friend. But I’m saving your life.”

Together they ran down the hall and out into the storm. From behind a tree, Magisterial soldiers flooded. He heard Rudy’s rifle whine and saw a group explode in a sea of red. The first soldier caught Jeremiel from behind, slamming the butt of his pistol into his temple. Dazed, he whirled and kicked the man hard in the stomach. He stumbled toward the second soldier before the first had even landed on the snow-covered grass.

“Jeremiel!” Rudy screamed. “This way. We’ve got—”

“Jeremiel!” a frail childish voice wailed. “I’m scared.”

He felt himself being pulled up through the layers of consciousness. “What?” he questioned muzzily.

“I’m scared. Could you … could you pat me?”

He shook himself, sitting bolt upright in bed before he could shed the horrible dreamscape. Cold sweat drenched his body and in the coolness of the cave, he shivered. In the far corner, his fireplace still glowed faintly with red coals. Tiptoeing feet whispered near his door, punctuated by muffled sobs and sniffles and he made out a patch of filmy white where her nightgown swayed.

“Jeremiel?” the girl choked.

“Sybil?”

“Yes. I’m scared. I need somebody to pat me.”

“Hold on, honey,” he said shakily. “Let me light a candle. Then we’ll—”

“No! I—I can see good enough to find you. Just keep talking?”

“Okay,” he answered, sucking in deep breaths of the smoky air. “I’m right over here … right here. How are you doing?”

Her steps pattered quickly across the stone floor, muted in places by the throw nip. “Where are you?”

“I’m right over here, Sybil. Follow my voice. There you go. You’re almost here. Just a little further.”

He felt her feet touch the sleeping mat and reached out, then stopped, knowing the terror of unknown hands touching you when you’re frightened. “I’m going to pick you up, all right?”

“Yes.”

He cautiously touched her arm, then lifted her into bed beside him and tucked the blankets around her. Fumbling in the darkness, he found and lit a candle. The glow of the flame refracted through his faceted water glass to land like a fistful of luminous cornsilk across the foot of his bed. Sybil’s puckered face shone swollen and red in the light.

“You feel like ice. How long have you been running around?”

“I came straight here, but it’s farther than I remembered.”

“Yes,” he said, hugging her close. “Especially when you’re scared, twenty minutes in the darkness seems an eternity. How did you find your way around all the twists and turns?”

“I had to.”

He smiled, running a hand through his soaked blond hair. “Desperation lends special talents. I’ve experienced that myself a time or two. Now, what’s wrong, sweetheart?”

She sobbed miserably, burying her face against his bare chest. “I had a bad dream.”

“There, it’s all right,” he soothed, smoothing her tumbled hair. “We’re a pair, you and me. I had one, too.”

Sybil wiped her runny nose. “Do you need somebody to pat you?” Without waiting she stretched her tiny arm across his chest and patted his side comfortingly. “What did you dream?”

“Oh, it was a nightmare I’ve had before. About someone I loved very much.”

Sybil swallowed her tears and looked up, dark eyes wide and afflicted. “Me, too. I dreamed about my mommy and my daddy.”

His heart went out to her. A brave little girl, she was nonetheless a child abandoned to a fiendish new world where she knew almost no one. “Don’t worry about your mother,” he soothed. “She’s fine.”

“You mean because she’s too mean to die?”

He smiled and stroked her back. “I don’t really think that. I just said it because you were afraid and I didn’t want you to be.”

She got up on her elbows and blinked thoughtfully at him. “You did?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think you liked me.”

“What would give you that bright idea?”

“You never play with me.”

“Did you want me to?”

“Sure. That’s how you show little kids that you like them. Didn’t you know?” Her brow furrowed in puzzlement.

He contemplatively scratched his beard, eyeing her in amazement. “No, I guess I didn’t.”

“Haven’t you ever been around kids?”

“Not much. Except when I was very small and in school, but that wasn’t for very long. The Magistrates closed down my school when I was eight and built a Right School on Tikkun. My father wouldn’t let me go. He taught me at home.”

“Didn’t your friends come over to see you?” A small glint of horror sparkled in her brown eyes.

He shook his head. “Most of the kids in my part of town went to the Right School and it wasn’t very long until they wouldn’t come over to my house anymore and my father wouldn’t let me go to theirs.”

“But you know why, don’t you? Those schools tear up children’s minds. They put needles in a kid’s head and tell them what to think. And when they think the wrong things the needles send out fire to burn their brains.” She nodded with utter gravity.

Jeremiel suppressed a smile. “I’ve never heard a better description of mind probes, but I’m surprised you know that.”

“My mommy and daddy told me lots of things most kids don’t know.”

“I can see that,” he responded, noting that her eyes were no longer wide with terror and the tears on her cheeks had stilled.

“Jeremiel, do you miss your friends?”

“Yes, very much,” he answered truthfully. Visions of Rudy’s face that last day on Silmar still lingered fresh in his mind. He could name on one hand the authentic friends he’d had in his life—including one who’d turned out to be no friend at all. “Do you miss yours?”

She croaked, “I miss David and Stella.”

“They were good friends?”

“They came over to play every night after school. We’d build things in my backyard.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll see them again. After your mother, Rathanial, and I get things straightened out here, you’ll—”

“If they’re still alive.”

He let the words hang, not knowing how to respond. This little girl knew too much about life’s hard side to tell quaint “everything works out” lies to.

He pulled her closer, cradling her against him and kissing her dark curls. “What was your nightmare about?”

Sybil sighed and snuggled her cheek against his chest. “I dreamed that Mommy and Daddy were together in the Mashiah’s palace, but they couldn’t find each other. Daddy was in a dark place and Mommy was up in the light. She hunted and hunted, but she couldn’t find the dark place … and she was crying.” Her pretty face puckered again as her shoulders shook. Hot tears stung his chest.

He stroked her back as he watched the flickers of candlelight dancing on the ceiling. “Dreams are strange things, aren’t they?”

“Sometimes they’re scary.”

Too damn many times.
“I know what you mean.”

“Mommy says dreams are your mind’s way of showing you things you don’t really want to look at.”

“Um … often that’s true. There’s a dark place inside your head called your unconscious where those things sort of lurk. You know what I think your dream was trying to tell you?”

“What?”

“That you miss your mom and dad so much you can barely stand it and you’d give anything to have them back together with you. And wanting that is a good thing—” he paused, debating whether to say what he felt, deciding she could take it—“even if it can never be again.”

He felt her eyelashes blink against the blond hair covering his chest.

“You know what I mean?”

She nodded once.

“Do you want to stay here and try to sleep with me the rest of the night? I have to get up pretty early, but you can stay warm in the blankets while I get my things ready.”

“You’re going to see my mommy tomorrow, aren’t you?”

He frowned, glancing speculatively down at her. “Yes, how did you know?”

“Avel told me.”

He felt himself start to stiffen and commanded his muscles to relax. “Did he?”

She nodded and stretched her arm across his chest again, patting him gently. “Jeremiel, will you take care of my mom? Sometimes at night, she has bad dreams, too. She cries a lot.”

“And needs to be patted?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take care of her.”

She heaved a small sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

He kissed her hair again and cradled her against him. It seemed only moments before her breathing fell into the deep rhythms of sleep and her tiny arm went limp, inching, with every deep breath he took, back to rest against her own side.

Carefully reaching over his head, he snuffed the candle and stared longingly into the darkness.

He listened for hours to the broken fragments of conversation Sybil had with her father in her sleep, gazing tiredly at the red eyes of coals growing dimmer in the fireplace.

And wondering why Rathanial had revealed secret information to a simple novice of his order, even though that novice was responsible for Rachel’s daughter? It could not possibly have made an impact on Harper’s duties. Could it? He and Rathanial had agreed that it was best for all concerned not to mention his early departure until after he was gone. Agreed that with the frightening new developments, security had to be tightened. The fewer who knew critical details, the better.

He gazed down at Sybil, eyes narrowing. Had she not suffered a bad dream, he’d never have known the breach had occurred. And he might have walked into … into …
what
without knowing?

His mouth pursed into a hard line. Imagination, he told himself. Rathanial had undoubtedly told Harper of his sooner than anticipated departure because he thought Sybil might need to take care of some final details with him before he left. You know, he told himself, last minute messages for her mother, or requests of him to take care of her—just like the one Sybil had made.

Damn you, stop it! There’s no ambush out there. Rathanial is trustworthy!

And Dannon was.

His breathing stopped. Maybe Rathanial hadn’t told Harper at all? That was purely an assumption on his part. Perhaps the man had found out in other ways? Listening devices abounded. A spy? For who? The Mashiah seemed the most logical, but a Magisterial spy couldn’t be ruled out.
Lord, what if the man’s working for Tahn?
But why would a spy tell a little girl secret information? Because he didn’t expect her to see Jeremiel again? Ridiculous.

Or … could Harper have suspected Sybil would come to see him one last time? Had the slip been deliberate?
A warning?
A tip-off that the leak had occurred and he should be damned careful?

The final possibility was the one he dreaded the most. Had the “listeners” told Harper and, consequently, the Mashiah? He’d waited a month to send Rachel in, watching Seir constantly. Tartarus had made no moves at all.
None!
That’s why he’d given in to Rathanial’s frantic pleading and let her go.

I may have authorized her execution.

If she weren’t already in the Mashiah’s palace and her fate unknown, he’d back out of the whole damn thing and make a run for it. Of course, he could get a message to his forces, go in and grab her and take off. Sure, in maybe six months, and how would they extricate a live Sybil from the hands of the Desert Fathers?

He tiredly rubbed his forehead. This trap had been woven too neatly. Had someone known that his feelings for Rachel grew with every passing day? That her warmth, intelligence and independence reminded him of Syene? And he would not, could not, leave her alone in the lion’s den?

The demanding instincts of fifteen years of war roiled so violently in his gut, he finally had to rise. Easing from Sybil’s sleepy grasp, he slid out of bed and tucked the blankets snugly around her. She slept soundly, mouth slightly open, dark curls twisting across his pillow. He smiled down at her and patted her arm gently. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I’ll get us out of this.”

He dressed quickly, leaving his pistol on the table by the fireplace. No sense in having his favorite weapon confiscated. He frowned suddenly, picking it up and feeling it melt comfortably into his hand.

“Course, I might never see you again anyway,” he murmured. Reluctantly, he put it back and stuffed a few clothes in his pack.

He jotted a quick note to Sybil, telling her not to worry, and left it propped against the nightstand leg where she’d be sure to see it when she awoke.

Exiting quietly, he slipped into the darkness of the tunnel, holding his small lustreglobe out before him to light his path down the winding corridors that led into the city.

CHAPTER 25

Cole Tahn leaned back in his command chair while he surveyed activity on the bridge. It was an oval room composed of two levels; nine people worked the monitors and consoles commanding the
Hoyer.
His chair with its massive array of buttons and computer access links occupied the upper level, giving him a complete view of every action on the bridge. On the lower level, officers sat in twos, stationed side by side at four niches around the oval. He gazed up at the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree screen which detailed the status of all major areas of the ship. At a glance, he could determine energy consumption and food reserves, monitor virtual pair production around the primordial black holes in the engines, determine Lamb shift and adjust photon bombardment, ascertain which segments of navigation or recreation were undergoing repair—anything he needed to know. Just now, his eyes lingered on the communications log of incoming messages.