The Reforged Trilogy: Book 1 — Crucible of Stars
Chapter 29
Rune & Ruin
“Love is the name we give to the exquisitely nameless.”
– Alander LiSalle, Kahli artist (165 PA)
The tunnel widened again as Maeve and Coldhand turned down one passage and then another. Only the hunter had seen the layout of the catacombs on his instruments. He wordlessly pointed left, right, and left once more.
Without Coldhand, Maeve would have been lost. But for the last year, she had been the one playing games with him, taunting him and luring him to her own ends. That he had only realized it tonight almost irritated Coldhand.
Almost.
He should have seen it before. How had he missed it? Because Maeve played on his emotions, insulting him and trying to make him angry enough to act rashly. Not that those kinds of tactics ever worked against him… Which was exactly why he had missed them.
It was never difficult to ignore the taunts, to pass them off as a mark’s final act of bravado. The criminals that Coldhand hunted down often begged for their lives, insulted him, cried or screamed. And the marks he would take after the Arcadian princess would do the same. Coldhand expected it from those he hunted, and it was easy to overlook Maeve’s passionate ploy. So why did he see it now?
Coldhand’s flashlight was switched off now and clipped to his belt again. Another light source illuminated the tunnel, probably reflected out from the same place as the strange, broken Arcadian song. The chanting had risen to a roar. Whether because they were approaching the singers or because they were singing louder, Coldhand didn’t know.
Though there was plenty of room, Maeve walked so close next to Coldhand that her wing brushed his shoulder. He could feel it trembling and the skin of her arms was prickled with goosebumps despite the growing heat.
The tunnel ahead suddenly opened up into a massive central chamber — the heart of the huge star. Maeve and Coldhand pressed themselves back against the wall, behind a pile of discarded tailings. They peered together over the jumble of dirt and rocks.
The cavern was smaller than the cathedral, but not by much, and it was filled with people of every species. Hundreds of them, all standing and swaying as they sang. A few recent converts were still dressed in more ordinary clothes, but most wore black Nihilist robes and almost half had white wings extending from slits through the rough, dark cloth.
No… there were a few not wearing the ubiquitous black Nihilist robes. Eight figures in red waited in a ring around a raised mound in the center of the room. Emberguard.
With an effort, Coldhand wrenched his gaze up the little underground hill. Two more Nihilists stood on the top, but he didn’t recognize either of them. One was dressed in a flowing white gown and hooded cloak that didn’t disguise her slight but distinctly feminine curves.
The other was a very old, very skinny human man of indeterminate lineage. Despite his fragile-looking body, he held himself with rigid poise and pride. That had to be Gavriel, founder and leader of the Church of Nihil. His long hair was a yellowed white, like old paper, and his skin was sallow. Unlike his fairy companion, Gavriel wore the same faded black robes as the rest of his followers. He raised one hand and the singing died away.
“We have gathered here in the sight of those already blessedly dead,” Gavriel said in a surprisingly resonate voice. “We are here to make another sacrifice, to take the next step toward ultimate peace for the galaxy.”
“An end to all suffering,” the crowd murmured.
Gavriel pointed up to the cavern ceiling. “Out there, the rich and privileged of the Alliance live in decadence that they do not deserve, while the poor and unlucky live in pain that they do not deserve!”
“Deliver us!” a Nihilist shouted.
“Deliver them!” cried another, raising hands that were covered in scars.
“I am only one man,” Gavriel said. “An old man bent by age and loss, with little to offer you. But tonight, that changes!”
The Nihilist gestured down to a smooth black stone and Coldhand felt Maeve tense beside him. A bundle of dark cloth squirmed on top of the altar and a tiny blue face peaked out between the fold. Baliend’s cheeks were already purple from crying, but the infant Dailon drew another breath and wailed.
Maeve gathered her legs beneath her to leap over the heap of stones that concealed them, but Coldhand grabbed her wrist. She whirled on him with gray eyes blazing.
“Release me,” she hissed. “I am going to get Baliend!”
“Everyone here is watching that baby, including the Emberguard. They won’t let us get anywhere near him,” Coldhand whispered. “We have to wait until we have a clean shot to grab the kid. Is this what Gavriel did to Duaal?”
“No, this appears to be different,” Maeve admitted. “But what does it matter? We must stop this from happening.”
Coldhand was saved from having to answer that by Gavriel’s booming voice.
“Behold! Behold the instrument of our destiny,” the old man said. “Before I came here to Stray, I was a mage of great power. The first human ever to master rim-world magic! But that power relied upon a tool, a tool which I lost.”
Coldhand didn’t know where Gavriel was going with all this. Was this just some kind of speech or rally, some way to pump up the troops? When he was finished, they could recapture Baliend. But Gavriel was still surrounded by his Emberguard… Sweat ran down the back of Coldhand’s neck.
“Is this it?” Tiberius asked.
The Blue Phoenix was hovering over the Church of Nihil, a brilliant spotlight illuminating the frayed cathedral. Duaal checked his displays.
“According to Gripper and Xia, yeah,” he said. His voice cracked. “This… this is it.”
“Where is she? Where the hells is Coldhand? Where are those be-damned Nihilists?” Tiberius shouted. He banged his fist on the console. “Find Maeve!”
“Xartasia has come back to repay her debt,” Gavriel said, sweeping his hand toward the woman in white. Behind Gavriel, the angelic Xartasia bowed her hooded head. “To return the power that I lost and more.”
There were a handful of angry cries from the gathered Nihilists, but the roar of approval drowned them out.
Maeve spat onto the dusty ground. “Xartasia!”
“What?” Coldhand asked. “Do you know her?”
“No, but Xartasia is not a name. It is an oath, and a terrible one. The Dream of Death.”
That sounded fitting, given the company that the fairy in white kept. Coldhand watched, but Gavriel showed no signs of being finished or even slowing down. In fact, the Nihilist seemed to be building up momentum.
“This child will never know the pain of life,” Gavriel said over Baliend’s ragged infant cries. “But with the gift of his blood and his unformed mind, my power shall be restored!”
“No!” Maeve whispered.
Xartasia pressed a slender glass knife into Gavriel’s outstretched hand. They had run out of time. There was no chance of catching Gavriel alone, away from his guards and followers. Maeve yanked her wrist from Coldhand’s grasp and sprinted for the mouth of the tunnel.
“Cavainna, no!” Coldhand snarled. “Stop!”
There were too many Nihilists and far too many Emberguard. Maeve was going to get herself killed. But the fairy didn’t look back. She spread her long, feathered wings and leapt into the hot air, soaring out over the crowd. Cultists turned and looked up, gasping as Maeve flew over them. Her feathers almost brushed the crumbling, decaying roof of the graveyard chamber.
“Gavriel!” Maeve cried. “Give me the baby!”
The leader of the Nihilists and his own fairy companion spun and stared. Maeve folded her wings and dove at the central mound.
But all around the cavern, Emberguard were moving. A huge Hadrian man flung himself between the descending fairy and his master, drawing a nanosword from his belt. Another Nihilist in red — a Dailon with a ragged pit where her right eye had once been — placed herself between Maeve and Xartasia. The rest formed up on the small hill, braced for battle.
The Emberguard weren’t the only ones armed or who wanted to defend Gavriel. Most of the Nihilists were holding lights or a few torches aloft to illuminate the proceedings, but several were freeing weapons from their robes. Knives flashed — both ordinary steel and the oily gleam of nanoblades — and all manner of guns rose up to take aim.
Maeve wasn’t going to reach Baliend if a cultist shot her out of the air first. She had moved in too soon. Coldhand yanked his Talon from its holster and fired — not at one of the gun-wielding Nihilists, but at a gaunt woman holding her torch high and shrieking obscenities at Maeve. His laser cut a charred black line into her skin and the woman dropped her torch, clutching her wounded arm and screaming a new batch of oaths. The torch tumbled to the dirt floor, but not before smearing flaming oil all down the back of the robed Nihilist beside her.
The fire caught quickly in the crowded room. Those who were not burning were shoved out of the way as their companions flung themselves to the ground, trying to smother the flames. Some of Gavriel’s followers simply stood still, their eyes glazed even as they steamed in their sockets, and let the spreading flames consume them. The chamber was filled with screams, prayers and thick, acrid black smoke.
“I’ve got something on thermals,” Duaal shouted, pointing at one of the displays. The image was hazy and distorted, but Tiberius could make out a red bloom of heat. He jabbed his own instrument panel.
“Behind the church,” Tiberius said. “I don’t see anything down there. What’s that interference?”
“It’s underground. That’s why it’s so indistinct,” Duaal told him. “There must be something pretty damned hot down there for us to be picking up anything at all.”
“Underground?” Tiberius asked. “How do we get down there?”
“I have no idea.”
Gavriel grabbed the glass dagger from Xartasia’s hand and brandished it at Maeve.
“I don’t know who you are, child, and I don’t care,” he said. “But you will meet the same fate as all life!”
Maeve was almost on top of the old Nihilist, but a Mirran Emberguard leapt at her with long, powerful legs and bowled the princess out of the air. They tumbled together to the ground and Coldhand lost sight of them in the sea of Nihilists.
Gavriel’s congregation hadn’t overlooked the bounty hunter. A large group was splitting off from the crowd and closing in on Coldhand. At least seven held knives and swords, half again that number leveling laser weapons and NI guns at him. Coldhand ducked a few badly aimed shots, returned a few of his own that dropped three of the death-worshipers, and fell back behind the pile of rubble that had been his hiding spot.
Coldhand waited until the first few Nihilists were running up the sloped side and then kicked a pair of large rocks off the mound. The stones rolled down the heap, smashing into legs and sending Coldhand’s pursuers sprawling in the dust. The bounty hunter put a single red blast of laserfire through each of the prone targets, then pressed his back against the wall as return fire filled the tunnel mouth with flying laser bolts and bullets.
All around the chamber, the Nihilists were in chaos. Many were screaming in terror, fleeing the still-burning fire and unknown assailants, bolting down tunnels that spoked out from the central cavern. But a dangerously high number of them surged forward to protect Gavriel. Several of the Emberguard were fighting back the overzealous throng, spilling at least as much blood as Maeve and Coldhand.
Xartasia slipped around the one-eyed Emberguard, as smoothly as flowing water. She snatched Baliend off the altar and wrapped the baby in her white robes. There was a burst of feathers from the edge of the crowd, and Maeve shot out of the sea of red and black robes. She landed in a splay-winged crouch on top of the dark stone block, bloody spear in hand and her lips skinned back from small white teeth in a furious snarl. The Mirran who had brought her down was chasing her through the congregation, but the Nihilists were packed together into a wall of flesh. Blood glinted dully as the Emberguard cut his way through fellow cultists.
“Give me the baby, vaeli’i la!” Maeve cried.
“You will have death! Which is more than you deserve,” Gavriel thundered. He pointed to her with a long, bony finger. “Kill her!”
The massively muscular Hadrian and smaller Dailon Emberguards advanced on Maeve. In the tunnel, Coldhand almost swore. It had taken the entire crew of the Blue Phoenix and the hunter to kill just one of the Emberguard. Now Maeve faced two — with a third tearing its way toward her through the crowd.
Coldhand raked the toe of his boot across the tunnel floor and kicked loose red sand up into the faces of three Nihilists charging at him. A shot from his Talon through the chest of each one as they recoiled and pawed at their eyes ensured that they would not rise again. Coldhand snatched up a fallen torch before the churned dust could snuff the fire out. Burning oil seeped down onto his cybernetic hand.
The bounty hunter charged into the ranks of shouting Nihilists, swinging the torch like a club and catching one across the temple. An Ixthian woman with silvery skin darkened by disease fell to the ground with blank eyes. Her white hair sizzled and smoldered in the dirt.
Coldhand swung again as a pair of Lyrans grabbed for his arms. One fell away, howling as his fur caught fire, but the torch tangled in his robes and jerked out of the hunter’s hand. Coldhand seized the other Lyran by the front of his robes. Another knot of Nihilists was screaming for blood, pointing at Coldhand.
“Catch the life-clinger! Kill him! For Lord Gavriel!”
Coldhand shattered the Lyran’s shoulder with a single hard blow of his cybernetic fist. He kicked the crippled man aside, but more Nihilists trampled him as they closed on Coldhand. Blood turned the dirt floor to dark, sticky mud.
Up on the central mound, Maeve was faring badly. The Dailon Emberguard held her off the ground, blue arms wrapped around the fairy’s tiny waist. The Hadrian swung his nanosword and red shone on the mottled edge. Maeve was fending them off with her wings and spear, but barely. Her feathers were flecked with blood and every time the sword rang off her glass spear, the princess raised it a little slower to fend off the next blow.
Coldhand brought up his Talon, aiming just above the Dailon Emberguard’s aural hole, where the ear would have been on another species. Icy sweat dripped from his damp blond hair, stinging in his eyes. The Nihilists were a breath away from closing in around him again. Coldhand pulled the trigger. The laser whined and a bolt of red light burned through the underground chamber. The Emberguard dropped to the ground like an empty sack.
Maeve staggered back away from the dead woman, shaking her bleached hair out of her eyes, but didn’t have long to recover. The Hadrian stepped over the other Emberguard’s body without even sparing a glance for his fallen comrade, and thrust his nanosword at Maeve’s exposed belly. She leapt over the carved altar, narrowly avoiding the molecule-fine point.
But Maeve was tired and injured. Her heel caught on the corner of the stone and she fell, sprawling on the sandy ground at Gavriel’s feet. He brandished his wicked glass dagger and smiled grimly at the princess as she struggled to rise. Maeve tried to kick the glittering knife from his hand, but the Mirran Emberguard had finally cut his way through the other Nihilists and pounced on her. He held Maeve as Gavriel brought the dagger down, burying it to the hilt between the fairy’s ribs. He twisted the blade in Maeve’s chest and she screamed.
