THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 2 — SWORD OF DREAMS
Chapter 13: Shades
“History doesn’t repeat itself. We do. Scholars just love to hear ourselves talk.”
– Kemmer Andus, Prian archeologist (229 PA)
The two archeology teams spent that first day cataloging and calibrating their instrumentation. Kemmer brought only two generators up into the Kayton Mountains. They were barely enough to power his own systems. But Xen, unsure what sort of situation he was shipping himself and his team into, made certain to bring more than enough batteries and generators. Gruth got to work setting them up and running cables out to the rest of the camp.
That left erecting the Tynerion team’s tents to Tiberius and his crew. About an hour before sunset, a dirty Prian man and slightly older woman appeared at the edge of the moraine. They stopped at a safe distance until assured that the newcomers in camp weren’t thieves or worse. Tiberius explained their presence and that they were, in fact, there to protect the archeologists. The Prians introduced themselves as Darius and Ava Jaenes, a brother and sister team who worked for Kemmer as diggers.
“You don’t have anyone else to help you?” Duaal asked. He seemed more than happy to have an excuse to take a break from setting up camp. “It’s just the two of you?”
“We had Dannos to help with the microexplosives,” Darius said.
“Until those rats killed him this morning,” his sister added.
Maeve flexed one wing and then the other, trying to keep warm. She thought Ava sounded more annoyed than grieving.
“Will your lost companion be replaced?” Maeve asked.
“I doubt it,” Darius said. He scrubbed at his dirty cheeks with a sleeve. “Doc Kemmer probably won’t bring anyone else up here. We could have used a larger team from day one, but he doesn’t trust many people.”
“What could he have found up in these rocks that’s worth all this?” Tiberius asked.
The captain stood not far away, shouldering a recently assembled table through the open tent door. Gripper squatted on the other side, pounding some pitons into the stony mountainside. Ava and Darius looked at each other.
“We better let Kemmer tell you about it,” Ava said. “We should check in with him, anyway. As soon as that’s done, we’ll be back out to give you a hand.”
“Thanks,” Duaal said with a wink at the two Prians.
Maeve laboriously flew a radio antenna up out of the glacial valley. The thin, freezing air would barely support her weight, but it was still easier than sending one of the others — even large, strong Gripper — to climb the steep stone.
From above, Maeve could better see the damage done by the groundquakes. The entire glacial bed lay tilted down at a different angle than the rest of the mountainside. Where it had separated from the peak, there was a long, narrow ravine torn deep into the stone. The crevice ran jaggedly along the north edge of the moraine and then turned abruptly east.
A chain ladder was bolted to the edge and dangled down into the ravine. Deeper than that, Maeve could make out only shadows.
Was the base camp safe? The Tynerion geologist, Phillip Arno, had wondered the same and now walked a careful spiral out from the camp. Phillip held a pointed metal walking stick and prodded occasionally at the ground. He scribbled some hasty notes on a datadex, blew some warm breath into his hands, and moved on. His red hair was as bright as a candle flame in the monochrome white and gray of the Prian highlands.
The last thin beams of sunlight played across pale rocks and the dark threads of roads that wove in and around the Kayton Mountains. A thick bank of evening fog and smoke sifted up from distant Pylos, rising like a tide through the forest below and turning tall pine trees into lonely towers. Long-winged birds wheeled and wove between them like lonely ghosts as they returned to their nests for the night.
Maeve perched on the edge of a crumbling granite crag to catch her breath. The view was beautiful, in a cold and harsh sort of way.
But wasn’t that the truth of Prianus and its people? Maeve swept a small pebble down the slope with the tip of her wing. It was not Tiberius she thought of, or the Prian archeologists working below. There were stones softer than Logan Coldhand, and blizzards with a warmer touch, but Maeve felt a sudden, heavy pang of loss.
Why did she miss her hunter? Maeve wasn’t trying to trick him into killing her anymore… Not that she could even afford his rates anymore. Logan commanded a high price and deserved it all.
She stood and stretched her wings. The muscles were tight and stiff, but no longer burned painfully from the lack of oxygen in her blood. Or else too much carbon dioxide… Xia had given them all a brief lecture on altitude sickness, but Maeve couldn’t remember which gas was the source of the problem. The cramping, acidic feeling in her stomach certainly suggested that something was still affecting her body. She would adjust, but it would take more time.
Maeve glided carefully down and back into the archeologists’ camp. She shook a few flakes of snow from her wings and short black hair, then ducked into Kemmer’s tent to report success at her task. The Prian team leader held up a finger to silence Maeve when she tried to get his attention. He stood opposite Xen and Tiberius at a table covered in bagged and labeled stone fragments. Xia was watching curiously over their shoulders. Kemmer placed a pair of datadexes on the table.
“What the hell are these?” Tiberius asked.
Xen picked one up and began reading over the contents. The Ixthian’s eyes whirled a distinctly unhappy reddish color.
“This is a nondisclosure agreement!” he said.
Xia looked at the other datadex. “The terms of this are pretty demanding. No discussion with other sources, on- or off-world. No independently authored files or publications.”
“No publishing?” Xen asked. He seemed to have recovered some of his spirit — previously dampened by the harsh realities of Prianus — but now he frowned. “Doctor Kemmer, I’m taking considerable losses on this expedition, including the cost of hiring Captain Myles to provide us some measure of safety. Need I remind you that I am shouldering the greater share of his fee?”
“That’s not including the color you’re saving by my volunteering to replace Dannos on your dig team,” Xia said. She scanned a few more screens on the datadex. “Free of additional charge, I remind you. The consequences outlined here are steep. And you want any breaches prosecuted on Prianus?”
“I know you think I’m being paranoid,” Kemmer told them. He didn’t look at all apologetic as he rubbed the angle of his jaw. “But I promise you, what I’ve found is well worth any and all precautions. Even signing your name to the find will be enough to get you all the funding you’ll need for life.”
“You’re asking for a lot of faith and a lot of trust,” Xen said. “I still don’t know what you have up here.”
Tiberius scowled at Kemmer. “None of my hawks and doves will be publishing files, except maybe Xia. But I’m going to be conferring with Captain Cerro on his investigation. We’ll need to talk about what’s going on up here.”
“I have no intentions of interfering with the police efforts, of course,” Kemmer told him. “But I expect all of you to be as discreet as possible.”
Tiberius shrugged and signed his name to the datadex. “I’ll pass it around to the rest of my crew.”
Xen twisted a stylus in his silver fingers. “I don’t like it.”
“I can’t take you down to the site until you and your team sign, Professor Xen,” Kemmer said. “Believe me, it will be worth the trouble.”
The Ixthian archeogeneticist sighed. “Fine, I’ll sign. But I want an extra copy of the agreement.”
“You can copy one off whenever you like.” Kemmer could afford to be generous now. Some of the taut set to his carriage eased.
Xen seemed to have absorbed it. He signed his short name with an angry flourish and then pulled a slim white plastic com from his pocket. It was much shinier and newer than the one Maeve carried.
“Panna? Are you back yet?”
Xen’s assistant had spent most of the afternoon in one of the Prian team’s two trucks, making the long drive down into Pylos to purchase adapters for their Tynerion-manufactured computers and equipment. There was a hiss of static over the com.
“I’m back in camp, professor,” Panna answered. “I’m in our work tent, setting up with Gruth. Do you need me?”
“Yes. Come over here.”
A moment later, Panna joined them in Kemmer’s tent. She kept her eyes downcast as she passed close to Maeve and smiled brightly at everyone else in the tent, cheerful as ever. Kemmer — who had heard her voice over the coms all day but was only now finally meeting Panna — smiled right back. Xen handed her the datadex.
“Panna, this is a non-disclosure agreement for everyone on our team,” he said. “I need you to sign it and take it around to Gruth, Phillip and Enu-Io. When you’re done, pull down a copy and start comparing it to the local laws. I want to know what we’re up against if I decide to challenge it.”
Panna’s expression sobered. She looked uncomfortably between Xen and Kemmer.
But the Prian nodded. “It’s fine. If it helps Xen feel better, go ahead. I’ve got copies of pretty much all the Prian judicial codes, if you need them.”
“I’ll get started on that. Do you want to check over the setup in our tents, Professor Xen?” Panna asked.
“I’ll go take a look in a few minutes. First, I want to have a few words with Captain Myles.”
“Sure, professor.” Panna nodded and retreated.
Xen turned toward Tiberius. “Captain Myles, I may very well have just signed away everything I’ve invested in this venture. I need to know that you’ll do everything you can to protect it. This is very, very important.”
“I said that I’d keep you and your site safe,” Tiberius answered. “Leave it with us, professor.”
That seemed to be enough to reassure the Ixthian scholar. He nodded and left to follow Panna, Xia close behind.
Tiberius stood and cracked his knuckles loudly. “Well, we better get started on all that. Kemmer, it’s getting dark and I’d like to post Maeve on watch over your site. Once she signs that agreement, can she do that?”
“Yes,” Kemmer said. “Not that there will be anything to see. All the lights have been shut down for the night. I’d like to place her on the surface, on the north face. That’s just downhill from the site entrance. I can show your Arcadian the place.”
It was hardly the first time someone had talked about Maeve instead of to her, but never a Prian before.
“I know the place,” Maeve said stiffly. “I have successfully placed and secured your new radio antenna. While carrying out that task, I had a clear view of the ravine to our north.”
“That’s the spot,” Kemmer said. “There’s–”
“A ladder. Yes, I saw it.” Maeve snatched the datadex away from Tiberius and signed her name. “I will watch over it until dawn.”
“I’ll cover the base camp. I don’t suppose you have any sort of surveillance equipment?” Tiberius asked Kemmer. “Cameras, perimeter lasers?”
The other Prian snorted. “I did. They stole it all this morning.”
Tiberius rose and gestured for Maeve to follow. “Come on, dove. Let’s get to work.”
Maeve threw the nondisclosure agreement onto the table and left to begin her watch.
The night was cold, but uneventful. The sky glittered with stars, but nothing like the close, brilliant pack of stars in the core. No, this sky was deep and dark, like the skies of the White Kingdom. Only one of the moons, Duos, was in the sky and even that was an irregular gray crescent.
Maeve stood vigil on a jutting spar of stone, wrapped in a reflective silver blanket. The crinkling foil was plainly visible, even in the dark, but Maeve supposed that was part of the idea. Perhaps if thieves realized that the site was protected, they would look elsewhere for their profit. Still, Maeve wished she had her spear. She felt again for the strange weight clipped to the waist of her pants. Xia’s laser pistol was still there, loaned to her earlier that evening. The weapon felt so… alien.
By the time the sun rose, turning the sky a seashell pink and the clouds into scarves of pale gold cloth, Maeve was feeling the effects of a night without sleep. Her bleary eyes were sticky and her fingers stiff with cold. But her job was nearly done. Maeve yawned and stretched. Her wings ached, but at least the weariness dulled her desire for some Vanora White.
Whatever else could be said for the archeologists, they were not lazy or late sleepers. The Prian team — only three of them in total, including Kemmer — woke first, followed shortly by the Tynerion group. The last to rise were the Blue Phoenix crew. Xia, Duaal and Gripper emerged from the furthest tent, squinting and looking disheveled.
Maeve’s com beeped at her. It was Tiberius, calling her back to the camp.
“We’ll check in with Kemmer and the professor, then get some sleep,” he said.
“I will be there very soon,” Maeve answered.
She made the short flight back down into the base camp, where Tiberius and the rest were waiting for her.
“You stayed up all night?” Gripper asked when Maeve landed. “You must be hungry. And frozen!”
“One of the Prians loaned me this,” the fairy said, holding up the thermal blanket. She had folded it up around the small heating control wired into one corner. “It is quite effective.”
“Prians know how to keep warm,” Duaal said. “If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be anyone left on this hunk of rock.”
The Hyzaari, too, seemed to know how to keep warm. He had clothed himself in a more flamboyant version of the standard Prian dress: a long sapphire coat and a multicolored scarf tucked into the collar, with high, polished black boots.
“We should probably have some breakfast and get moving if we want to get down into the dig with everyone else,” Xia said.
“I will leave the archeology to those educated in such things,” Maeve told her. She stifled another yawn.
Xia grinned like a schoolgirl. Maeve supposed on this expedition, that’s exactly what she was. The Ixthian raised an eyebrow.
“If I am to continue my promised work,” Maeve said. “I will need sleep.”
“I’m with Maeve,” Tiberius agreed. His eyes were bloodshot and had purplish circles under them. He stroked Orphia’s feathers. The tawny hawk nuzzled his hand and nipped at his fingers. “I’ll stay up here. But you three can climb down into Kemmer’s secret crack if you want.”
Duaal snickered and Xia sighed.
“You two have the curiosity of turnips,” she said. “Don’t you want to know what’s down there? Maeve, Ava seemed to think that you might be particularly interested. Can’t I tempt you?”
Maeve looked at Tiberius. Even dull and heavy with fatigue, she was curious now… though that might just have been a response to Xia’s taunts.
“I will go,” Maeve agreed. Gripper cheered.
Xia arched her antennae at Tiberius. “What about you, captain? Can we convince you to go?”
“Hmm. Someone’s got to stay to keep an eye on the base camp,” Tiberius said.
“Darius and Ava can cover that, if you’d like to come down for a look,” Panna offered. She had come over to the Blue Phoenix team and held out a stack of steaming mycofoam trays. “There’s some halfway decent coffee in our tent. The cream 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 says he’s happy to share.”
“Thanks!” The Arboran took the food and shoveled it into his wide mouth.
“Doctor 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?”Duaal 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 said, then 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,” Tiberius said. “I’ll go down for a few minutes, just to see what all the fuss is about.”
Both archeology teams and their guards from the Blue Phoenix 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. They sat close and laughed at 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,” Phillip said. “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 can publish anything if you all die in a cave-in or rock slide,” he said.
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.
“A few,” he said at last. “There seems to be some kind of snowdrops on the west slope, where there’s the most sun. 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.
Her long night’s guard 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 impatiently 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 deep 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 opened up into something 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 and 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 bottom,” he said. “Watch your step down there. The ground is wet and frequently freezes over.”
Maeve and the others nodded. Then 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 short distance and then dangled through empty air as the ravine’s wall pulled away. The ladder wriggled unsteadily under her, 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.
Maeve was the last down the ladder. The archeologists switched on lights and shined them around, illuminating uneven walls of craggy stone and an uneven floor 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,” Phillip said. “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 sufficiently older, it might just be deeper than the lava flow.”
The rock passage was getting easier to navigate. It wasn’t 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 the newcomers between two huge piles of tailings that nearly choked the ravine. Far 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. And familiar. The hairs stood up along the back of Maeve’s neck. The excitement was gone and she suddenly wished she hadn’t come, not climbed down into the belly of Prianus to face Kemmer’s secret. The Prian archeologist searched around until he found a 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 seamless white material, about the size of a large house. Wide, deep stairs ran up the center of each face, bordered on each side by intricately carved banisters that stood taller than Maeve.
At the top of the pale ziggurat stood a huge, segmented ring. Each section of the vast circle was crafted from a different material, some with the burnished shine of metal, others with an iridescent 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 joints between them.
Maeve’s stomach lurched sickeningly. She knew it at once.
By Anslin Sky-Knight… It is a Waygate. A Waygate on Prianus.
