Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (19 page)

Xia waggled her antennae at Tiberius. "What about you, captain? Can we convince you to go?"

"Someone's got to stay to keep an eye on the base camp," he objected.

"Darius and Ava can cover that, if you'd like to come down for a look," Panna offered. She had come over to the little crowd, holding out a stack of steaming mycofoam trays. "There's coffee in our tent. The cream and mantle is powdered, but it's not bad. Here, I've even got a breakfast pack without meat for you, Gripper. We brought them for Enu-Io, but he's happy to share."

"Thanks!" The Arboran took the food and shoveled it into his wide mouth.

"Kemmer wants us to spend the day familiarizing ourselves with the site and take some scans," said Panna. "He seems to think it's going to take a while. That means there's no work for Ava and Darius today. They're going to stay up on the surface."

"Are they armed?" the mage asked.

"They're Prian," Tiberius answered as though that was all the explanation needed.

"I expect they are. Armed, not Prian. Both, I mean." Panna gave up with a sheepish laugh. "Anyway, they know exactly what kind of threats we're facing up here. Most Prians know at least the basics of handling a weapon."

"Fine. I'll go down for a few minutes, just so I can see what all the fuss is about," Tiberius said.

Both archeology teams and their guardians gathered around a glowing orange heat lamp set up in the circled tents. Ava and Darius were in high spirits, all too happy to spend a day in the open air. The siblings sat close together and laughed over some private joke.

Gruth's brown and white fur stood out, fluffy and full, and was doing as good a job keeping him warm as any of the blankets and coats the other archeologists wore. Ixthians had tough, reinforced skin that made them resilient pilots, but did nothing for the cold. Xen and Xia were as heavily clothed as the humans and had fleece headbands that they kept pulling up over their shivering antennae. Gripper sat close to Xia, providing a large windbreak.

In odd disregard of Dannos' death just the day before, Kemmer seemed to be in a good mood. When he finished his steaming cup of coffee, the Prian archeologist slapped his knees and stood. "Are you all ready?" he asked.

The Tynerion team nodded together.

"I'm just going to take a look for some context," said Phillip. "I'll cut out some samples from the bedrock, but I need to spend most of the next few days mapping out the new fault lines. It looks like the same quakes that uncovered your big secret might have destabilized some of the underpinning stone. I brought some reinforcement injectors to put in around your dig."

It was probably the longest speech Maeve had ever heard from the shy geologist. Phillip seemed to realize that and blushed under his freckles.

"No one gets to publish anything if you all die in a cave-in or rock slide," he said defensively.

The other scholars laughed. Gripper leaned in close to Phillip. "Hey, Strawberry?"

"Yes?"

"Did you see any… any flowers while you were out poking the rocks yesterday?" Gripper asked in a quiet voice.

Phillip thought for a moment. "Yeah, some. There seems to be some kind of snowdrops on the west slope, where there's the most sun," he said at last. "Why?"

"No reason," Gripper answered quickly. He saw Maeve watching and pointed surreptitiously at Xia and mouthed
flowers
. Maeve hoped that the flowers would work out better than the polytomograph had.

They finished eating and gathered up datadexes, imagers, scanners and lights. Twenty minutes later, everyone had climbed up the slope to wait at the edge of the crevice; the same one Maeve had spent her night guarding. Tiberius whistled at Orphia. She cocked her head at him and then took wing, soaring up into the cloud-streaked sky.

The long night's duty still sat heavy and gummy-feeling in Maeve's joints, but it was hard not to be caught up in the rising excitement. Even Xen seemed to have put aside yesterday's tragedy. Xia fidgeted excitedly nearby. Both Ixthians' eyes shone a bright, pleased aqua. Panna could barely stand still and kept flipping a rectangular recorder over in her hands. Only staid Enu-Io seemed unmoved. Duaal was trying to follow that calm, cool example, but was grinning as he stood beside the muscular Dailon man.

The ravine was long and narrow across the top. Even without her wings, Maeve could almost have leapt across the tear in the mountain. But as she followed the others across stones that glittered with frost, the ground felt strangely taut under her boot – hollow, like leather pulled over a drum. The ravine must have been wider below, overhung by the moraine above. But when Maeve looked over the jagged edge, the steeply slanting morning sunlight illuminated only swirling blue-gray mist streaked in indigo shadows.

Kemmer unlocked the rolled ladder and lowered the galvanized rungs down on their coated chains. "The ladder can only take one of you at a time, so call out when you get to the end," he said. "Watch your step at the bottom. The ground is wet and frequently freezes over."

Maeve and the others nodded. One by one, Xen and his team climbed down into the crevasse. When her turn came, Maeve pulled her wings tightly against her back and climbed carefully down the ladder. As she suspected, it only followed the stone for a few yards and then dangled in empty air as the ravine's wall pulled away. The ladder wriggled unsteadily under her feet, but the fairy was light and her wings helped her to keep her balance. By the time she felt stone under her feet again, the sky was a barely visible sliver of light high above.

She was the last one down. The archeologists switched on lights and shined them around, illuminating looming, uneven walls of craggy stone and an uneven floor under their feet, strewn with rocks shattered by the quakes.

"Let's get moving," Kemmer said. His voice echoed eerily off the stone. The Prian archeologist gestured with his flashlight down the ravine. "This way."

Most of the stone surrounding them was mottled granite and pale quartz, but as they followed Kemmer through the zig-zagging angles of the ravine, the stone began to turn dark and glassy. It was obsidian, Philip explained. They were passing through an ancient volcanic flow.

"Wouldn't lava destroy anything down here?" Gripper asked.

"Yes. Unless it's much newer or much older than the volcano. If it's newer, then it could have been laid down or built over the stone after it cooled. If it's older, it might just be deeper than the lava flow."

Their passage was getting easier. It was not just the sunlight beginning to filter down into the narrow crevice. Someone – probably Ava and Darius – had cleared away the tumbled stones and heaped them against the sides.

Finally, Kemmer guided them between two huge piles of tailings that nearly choked the ravine. A hundred feet above, the broken fringes of the stone blocked out most of the sun, but a little light bounced off the water winding in rivulets down the crevasse wall. Ahead, at the end of the ravine, Maeve could catch only glimpses of flat, geometric shapes, curves and glints of… glass? Metal? It was hard to tell.

But it felt strange. Familiar. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck. The excitement was gone and Maeve suddenly wished she had not come, not climbed down into the belly of Prianus to face Kemmer's secret.

The Prian archeologist searched around until he found a boxy generator. "Watch your eyes," he warned. "I'm going to hit the main lights. Ready?"

Kemmer was far too excited to wait for an answer. He hauled back a lever and the generator buzzed loudly. A perimeter of bright lamps flickered to life, one by one, and filled the fissure with harsh white light.

The single shape that rose from the floor of the ravine was too clean, too deliberate to be anything natural. It was a sort of steep, graceful ziggurat made of some seamless white material, as tall and wide as a large house. A line of stairs ran up the center of each face, bordered by intricately carved banisters that stood taller than Maeve.

At the top of the ziggurat stood a huge, segmented ring. Each section of the mammoth circle was crafted of a different substance, some with the burnished shine of metal, others with a pale, moonstone gleam. A faint, wavering light swam over the great ring, flowing like water and moving from one segment to the next with apparent disregard for the different materials.

Maeve's stomach lurched sickeningly. She knew it at once.

By Anslin Sky-Knight… It is a Waygate. A Waygate on Prianus.

"If you worry about what the child will become, you're not worrying about what he
is
."

- Gavriel Euvo, founder of the Cult of Nihil (227 PA)

"We've found one, Lord Gavriel. A man. He says he was on Illisem."

"Bring him to me, then."

Iboe bowed. She was shivering, her patchwork robes utterly inadequate against the cold. She left and returned a few minutes later with another black-clothed Nihilist. Between them, they carried a slumping, white-winged shape and dropped it at Gavriel's feet. The Arcadian fell to his knees, panting.

"Did he fight?" Gavriel asked curiously.

"No, my lord. He's very sick."

Iboe was right. The fairy's wings and skin were patchy with blotches of raw-looking pink. There were scabby, scaly streaks on his cheeks and the back of his bowed neck.

Gavriel stood. "Do you know why you're here?"

The Arcadian looked up at Gavriel with blank eyes. His pale hair was shaved away and one of his ears was missing, leaving only a red stump.
"Ua'li eru Aver."

He did not speak Aver. Gavriel nodded.
"Uma'li eru Arcadi'na."

The fairy at his feet gave him a wide-eyed look of surprise. The Prians harbored little racism toward the Arcadians, but few bothered to learn their language. The ignorant, back-water hicks never saw the point. Gavriel knew better.

"Ai muan?"
he asked.
How old are you?

"Ima'ae lia." Three hundred six.

Gavriel was not sure if that was Arcadian years or the longer Alliance CSYs, but it did not matter. Either way, the fairy was old enough to remember the fall of the White Kingdom.

"Ai na?"
Gavriel asked.
What is your name?

"Timaen."

Gavriel reached down and curled his long fingers around the side of Timaen's face. His skin was rough under the old Nihilist's touch. He was feverishly warm in places and clammy cold in others where disease had killed off the blood vessels.

Gavriel sang, softly at first but with growing power and volume. Timaen's brown eyes went glassy and began drifting closed, lulled into lassitude. As Gavriel's song wound through him, Timaen's eyes snapped open again. He pulled back, away from the old Nihilist, but Iboe shoved the Arcadian to his knees once more. Gavriel held Timaen's face in both hands now, staring into his frightened, bloodshot eyes.

Show me. Show me what I need to see.

The Arcadian's mind opened before his spell like a knife-shucked oyster. Sounds, smells, images and less identifiable sensations washed over Gavriel. Memories… snatches of song, the feel of the rising wind beneath his wings, the bitter taste of ashes on the air as Timaen fled before the Devourers. Blood everywhere, pounding in his ears, darkness that blotted out the sun. Memories of tragedy a hundred years old.

I flew,
Timaen remembered.
The darkness chased me. It flew without wings and reached for me with hooks and fangs. The molten shadows pierced my shoulder and I fell. I screamed. Death was everywhere, an army of storm clouds that flashed with red fire. I was going to die, dying…

A flash of glass. A knight! He caught me out of the air and carried me to the ground. He told me to run. I ran, dragging my wings behind. Useless. Slow… There were screams behind me. Blood on the white stones of the Great City.

I ran.

I ran and I did not look back.

Gavriel's fingers tightened on Timaen, pressing into his broken, ravaged skin. "Show me what I need to see!"

Black clouds… Shadows that tore, shadows full of teeth…

But Timaen's memories were incomplete. He had seen little and even that was clouded by time, fear and disease. Gavriel snarled in anger and pushed the Arcadian to the floor. The other Nihilists backed quickly away. Gavriel leveled a spotted, knobby finger at Timaen.

"Ka li'ae avael!"
he sang.

The fairy on the floor screamed as fire caught in his dry, patchy wings. Gavriel sang it on and the flame spread quickly, hungry as any Devourer. As the fire burned away his clothes and then his body, Timaen clutched at Gavriel's feet.

"Mercy!" he croaked. So he spoke
some
Aver…

"That is exactly what I'm giving you, Timaen." Gavriel said. "Go in peace."

When the flames finally died, Iboe and her companion dragged the smoking corpse away. Gavriel smiled as he stood alone in the darkened apartment. It was good to finally possess the power – the true power – of a mage. He alone wielded fire and lightning and truth and pain… And he did it without Duaal's help.