THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 2 — SWORD OF DREAMS
Chapter 29: Into Deep
“There is a coward inside even the bravest man. This is no insult. All men know in their hearts that life is an endeavor of pain, ever to be feared.”
– Gavriel Euvo, Cult of Nihil founder (229 PA)
“What’s wrong with him?” Duaal asked under his breath.
He cocked his head toward Coldhand. The bounty hunter stood with his back to the rest of the camp, Gripper waiting wordlessly at his side.
Xia frowned and shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I don’t know. Something’s happened to Coldhand. He’s usually so collected. But now he’s losing it. And those bruises…”
It had been only one day since Xia gave Duaal very good, very sweet reasons to stop paying attention to the bounty hunter, but he had forgotten all about the marks of violence. Now, Duaal remembered the dark bruise along Coldhand’s jaw.
“He hasn’t been able to do very much,” Panna said, even more quietly. “After all I’ve read, I guess I expected… I don’t know.”
“It’s not his fault. We haven’t done any better.”
This was from Tiberius. Xia, Duaal and Panna looked at him in surprise. The old Prian seemed to realize his own words too late and set his lined, scruffy face in a deep scowl. It was good that Coldhand probably couldn’t hear them. He would be just as flustered as Tiberius.
Prians were so proud. Duaal leaned against the edge of Panna’s table. That was a little hypocritical, he supposed. He was at least as proud as either Tiberius or Logan, Duaal could admit to himself.
Pain flared behind his eyes, white-hot needles of agony that sent him crashing to the ground and grabbing fistfuls of his hair. He was dimly aware of voices calling his name, but he couldn’t answer. A giant’s hand had clamped itself around Duaal’s mind, around his entire being and shook him. Hard. The world spun wildly, and then the alien force flung him out into a blinding-bright void.
Duaal struggled to call out to Xia and Tiberius, but couldn’t make his mouth work. Where was his mouth? His whole body was gone.
But he wasn’t without form. He felt arms and legs, lungs that could not quite draw breath deep enough. Duaal’s back ached. His fingers were as stiff and brittle as twigs, yet he burned. Fire raged unchecked through him, filling him with a poisonous but vital flame.
He was sitting, leaning forward eagerly in a chair that creaked every time he shifted his weight. He sang the old, dark Arcadian songs, the blasphemous spells that Xartasia had taught him with a sad smile on her pretty lips.
Him, not me, Duaal remembered with an effort that would have ground his teeth, if he only knew where they were. This isn’t me!
…Then what is this? Another hallucination?
Duaal’s eyes opened, but not by any effort or will of his own. Maeve was sprawled in the rubble at his feet again, but this time, the expression on her dirty face wasn’t agony. She slumped in her bonds against a metal beam that was dark and scaly with rust. Maeve sang softly to herself as she rocked her head from side to side. Her voice was thick, as though on the verge of turning into another laugh… or a scream.
Duaal’s other voice rose, drowning Maeve’s. As he sang, Duaal found that he could see into the fairy’s misty daydreams. There was ice and clouds, all running like wet paint as she pulled her thoughts away. The song spiraled away across Maeve’s erratically fluttering thoughts.
“But that is a secret. An opal in a stone crown,” she murmured, almost inaudibly. “The gate must sleep. Sleep. I just want to sleep… Please…”
Maeve sobbed quietly and there was a hazy, smoky image of a Waygate there in her thoughts, surrounded by dark shapes that flickered between tall, sharp mountains and soaring, sparkling glass towers. Indistinct winged shapes soared between the diamond spires like dandelion puffs. That had to be Tamlin, the Arcadian city.
Duaal felt himself leaning close again, weaving his charm urgently as he searched through Maeve’s memory. His spell opened the princess’ mind like files on a datadex. Duaal’s heart caught in his chest.
“Sleep,” Maeve sang again, sternly this time.
The image of Tamlin and the great Waygate faded back into blank whiteness. Duaal’s eyes — the eyes that were not his own — turned to the Mirran in red who crouched in the shadows of the tumbled rocks and dirt from the broken wall.
“We’re getting closer. Can you give her more White yet, Hallax? I’m eager to have this done and send her to the pit.”
Duaal knew that voice. Gavriel! He wanted to close his eyes, but he was a prisoner in his old master’s body.
This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real! It was just a dream, some kind of hallucination. Duaal was mixing memories and fears… Hallax grabbed a handful of Maeve’s black hair and examined her glazed eyes.
“Not yet,” he said. “She needs another hour or two, Lord Gavriel, or it could kill her.”
Duaal felt his head tilt in a short nod. “Fine. Go get Xartasia. I need her to help Maeve… focus.”
Hallax rose and bowed deeply, then vanished from the room. Gavriel steepled his fingers and peered through them at Maeve. The fairy’s head wobbled on her neck and she could not seem to meet Gavriel’s gaze.
“We are so close now, sweet princess,” Gavriel said softly. “You crafted your own weaknesses, and now you have broken yourself. You will give me the Devourers.”
The Devourers? Duaal couldn’t recoil from Gavriel’s fantasies of blood and death: Axis in ashes, proud Prian hearts torn from their bodies, gray Zeos consumed in bright and terrible fire. Duaal strained without direction, struggling to wake himself from the nightmare.
Duaal opened his eyes and tried not to throw up. He was on the ground, with his head pillowed in Xia’s lap. There was dirt all over his pants. Duaal groaned.
Everyone gathered around, worry and curiosity on their faces. Ava started to say something to Kemmer, who put his fingers to his lips in an uncharacteristic display of sensitivity to Duaal’s aching skull.
“Back off, everyone,” Tiberius said.
“Is he alright?” Phillip asked. “What happened, Duaal?”
“We’ll let you know when we figure it out,” Xia said. “Thank you for the concern.”
“Back to work, everyone,” Xen called out. He clapped his hands together. “Come on!”
Grumbling, the archeologists scattered and turned back toward the Waygate. Panna looked to Xen, who glanced down at the half-assembled spear on the table and twitched his antennae, but said nothing. He followed the rest of the team back to work.
“Does it hurt?” Tiberius asked.
“Yeah.” Duaal sat up slowly, rubbing his head. “I had another one of those hallucinations. I saw Gavriel and Maeve.”
“What the hells is wrong with him, Xia?” Tiberius asked in a tight voice.
“I don’t know,” she answered. She clenched her silver hands in frustration. “I’ve run every test, every scan I can think of. There are no tumors, no bleeding, no pressure and no imbalances. There’s nothing wrong!”
“It could be Prianus,” Coldhand said. He had gone so quiet that Duaal almost forgot that the bounty hunter was there. “There are things in the air found nowhere else in the core.”
“Environmental regulations on Prianus aren’t as strict as other Alliance planets,” Tiberius admitted. “But no. This started before we came here.”
“But it did get worse on Prianus,” Xia pointed out. “Maybe some toxin or pollutant is aggravating the problem.”
“Wait, there is one common element to his headaches,” Panna said. She perched on the corner of the worktable. “Gavriel. Duaal, you said before that you haven’t had headaches like this since you were with him, right?”
Duaal nodded. “You have another theory, don’t you?”
“Let’s hear it, then,” Tiberius said.
Panna thought for a moment before she answered. “There’s another theory of quantum physics that I’ve been studying in relation to Arcadian magic. It’s called quantum entanglement.”
“Another science lecture? My head hurts plenty already,” Duaal grumbled. Still, he was curious.
“Then I’ll keep it short,” Panna promised. “Quantum entanglement says that two particles can be linked, connected even across vast interstellar distances. If one particle changes its spin, the other one will, too. Now, this is just a guess, but I think that’s what was done to your brain, Duaal.”
“How? And why?” Xia asked.
“I think that’s how Gavriel used Duaal for his magic. It wouldn’t be enough just to tell him what to say. The exact thoughts and memories are too important to the magic. So Xartasia quantum-linked your brains, like networking two computers. I can’t imagine how complex that must have been.” Panna held up her hands. “There’s no way to check, though. It’s just a theory.”
Coldhand gave Duaal a piercing look. “You said you saw Gavriel and Maeve.”
“Sort of,” Duaal told him hesitantly and shuddered. “I didn’t actually see Gavriel. I heard him and felt him, but it was like I was inside of him.”
“If your mind was entangled… networked… with Gavriel’s,” the hunter said, “the link may still be intact.”
Panna snapped her fingers and jumped down from the table.
“You said that these headaches started not long after Stray, after Gavriel took that baby,” she said excitedly. “That was to restore the magic he lost with you, right? Even though you took Baliend back, he must have succeeded.”
“So he’s out there casting spells again?” Tiberius asked. His jaw clenched. “Why’s it hurting Duaal?”
“Parts of their brains are still quantum-linked, the parts responsible for spell casting,” Panna said. “The connection is likely only sparked when Gavriel uses that part of his mind. He must be using more magic now.”
“For what?” Xia asked.
“Hurting Maeve.” Coldhand’s tone was icy and intense. “These aren’t hallucinations. He’s actually seeing Maeve through Gavriel’s eyes.”
“I think so,” Panna said, surprised. “Yes. Yes, if I’m right.”
The bounty hunter turned his pale blue eyes on Duaal.
“Tell us exactly what you saw. Every detail.”
Xartasia stood on the roof. The city of Pylos was quiet under a soft blanket of white snow. Or so it seemed from this height. Pillars of smoke rose from chimneys and filled the air with their murky haze. The princess wrinkled her nose as the wind changed and carried the smell of burning to her.
There were sounds on the cold wind, too. Rough voices and the grinding of vehicle engines… But Xartasia couldn’t hear Maeve. The knowledge of what must be happening below weighed heavily on the princess. She didn’t want the girl to suffer, but Maeve was far too strong and stubborn to give in easily.
So I betrayed my cousin. I told Gavriel of her past with these coreworld drugs, her weakness to them.
It wasn’t truly betrayal, Xartasia reminded herself. Even Maeve’s strength had its limits. Pain and deprivation would have broken her eventually. All Xartasia had done was speed the process along and save Maeve from days of torment.
Xartasia lifted her chin and inhaled deeply, chilly air scraping her throat. They were close now. Soon, none of this would matter. The wind whipped her long hair out like spilled ink. An equally dark shadow fell across her. Xartasia smelled old blood and sour-sweet Vanora White.
“Lord Gavriel has summoned you,” Hallax said.
Xartasia nodded without looking at him, but the Mirran didn’t leave.
“Now,” Hallax told her. “He wants you to help him with Maeve.”
Xartasia still didn’t look up. She studied the long, scree-strewn slope below and ice-cowled Pylos beyond that.
“He wishes more of me?” Xartasia murmured to herself. “When I have given him my own cousin and the means to ruin her? What more must I give?”
Titania stood in the filth and flickering shadows of Axis’ lower levels. She was tired of metal under her feet. She missed the feel of grass and soil, but Titania had gone down as far as she could through the megatropolis of the Alliance’s capital and still found only older, darker and more desolate levels. Here, only one in four lights glowed. Even then, the yellow-green illumination was fitful.
Gavriel stood on an overturned crate with his hands raised. He was dressed all in black, in something that looked like it had once been a suit, but which was now so soiled and torn and rumpled that it hung from his body in rags.
The human man might have looked respectable once. Perhaps even had been respectable. Not unlike Titania herself, she supposed.
She had heard Gavriel’s name and even his voice several times in Axis’ lower levels. A few Arcadians gathered around him, listening raptly as he praised death, an end to all pain. Dirty wings and dirty faces all turned up as they basked in his promise. Titania waited, watching and listening. He gave them something, a hope that Titania alone couldn’t.
I need him.
Gavriel finished his speech and climbed down from the dais of trash. Titania stepped out from the shadowed doorway. There were some humans following Gavriel, too. They eyed the princess suspiciously as she approached, but the Arcadians caught sight of Titania’s black hair and fell to their knees. Gavriel smiled welcomingly.
“Good evening, sister,” he greeted Titania.
“I am Xartasia,” she answered. “I am a daughter of Cavain. You have offered kindness to my people.”
“The Arcadians are a tormented race,” Gavriel said, glancing around at the genuflecting fairies, taking in their reactions and then returning his attention to the princess. “I offer them what I can.”
“You must have greater designs than this,” Xartasia said, warming to her subject. She gestured around the filthy walls of Axis’ lower levels. “Greater ambitions than these. I hear your words, that you desire to spread your faith and your… gift.”
“I do.” The hunger, the passion in Gavriel’s voice was unmistakable.
“I can help you. I can teach you magic, secrets unknown to the coreworld races,” Xartasia said. All around her, the Arcadians gasped. She held up her hand, quieting them. “But I am of the House of Cavain. There is etiquette to be observed. You are a leader among your people, but I am a monarch of mine.”
“Go on,” Gavriel said slowly. He was a younger man then, and not so secure in his power.
“With my magic, you will wield lightning and fire and command the very bodies of those who gather to you,” Xartasia told him. “Or those who would stand against you. But first, you must pay your homages to the line of Cavain. For one Arcadian year — two hundred eighty-eight days — you must show me favor.”
“Favor?”
“You will need to serve me, as I am due,” Xartasia said. “There are places I must go, things that I need to see. You will do these things for me, and then I will teach you.”
Gavriel narrowed his eyes at Xartasia. “That’s a high price.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But I have secrets that no other Arcadian or Jinn or Nnyth know. I will make you the most powerful man in the galaxy. Only give me my year of service.”
“I’ll think about it,” Gavriel said.
He hadn’t needed to think about it long. But that year of service was decades over. Xartasia had what she wanted, had learned what she needed to. Now… now Gavriel required things and she had to give them.
“Lord Gavriel will tell you what he wants,” Hallax said. “And you’ll do it.”
Xartasia finally turned to face the Emberguard.
“Very well. Take me to him.”
High up in the Kayton Mountains, the Waygate’s glow rippled and churned.
Panna examined the map of Pylos, downloaded with considerable difficulty from the city mainstream and displayed on a datadex. She leaned over it with a stylus in her trembling fingers. Logan paced beside the table.
“Uh, the dirt in the room doesn’t narrow it down very much,” Panna said. “There are all sorts of buildings in Pylos that have collapsed walls. The entire city is built in a valley between tectonically unstable mountains!”
“We might be able to compile a list of dangerous and unstable buildings from the police,” Xia suggested. “But there will be a lot of them. What else did you see, Duaal?”
The young mage chewed a fingernail as he thought. “There was a counter on the right wall, with a hole like there used to be a sink. I think it was an apartment.”
All eyes went back to the map. It was several years out of date, according to the file’s timestamp, and took no account of the recent quakes.
“But there are millions of people living in Pylos,” Gripper said. “Look at all the houses!”
“It was dark and full of dirt,” Duaal pointed out. “I don’t think anyone is living there anymore, except for the Nihilists.”
“For how long, if you had to guess?” Xia asked. She tapped the datadex. Districts, neighborhoods and buildings were marked out in different colors, with residential areas shaded in with blue. “If the apartment has been unlivable for a while, it might be in one of these condemned sections. How long do you think it’s been since that place was habitable?”
“Years,” Duaal answered promptly. “The entire place was rotten and falling apart.”
“Then we’re looking at one of these areas.” Tiberius pointed to five different grayed-out areas, and then frowned. “Probably. The apartments might have been condemned more recently, or just not inspected yet. It can take years for someone to get out there and write up a demolition order.”
“And in the meantime, no one’s preventing people from living there?” Panna asked. “That’s dangerous!”
“Welcome to Prianus,” Logan told her. “Did you see anything else, Duaal? What color was the dirt coming in through that wall? Brown might indicate something closer to the center of the Pylos valley. Gray could have washed down from the mountains. It has more stone and less organic matter.”
Duaal thought, but then he shook his head. “I couldn’t see the color. There wasn’t enough light.”
“Any fixtures? Architecture that might suggest the building’s age?” Logan asked.
“It was all pretty basic, and ugly. There’s a post in the middle of the room that Maeve’s handcuffed to,” Duaal said. Then his green eyes widened. “Wait, the post was metal! Steel, I think. It was corroded. Does that help?”
“It might,” Tiberius said. “Steel is expensive.”
“Especially around here,” Logan added. He paused in his pacing and drummed his metal fingers on the edge of the table. “There aren’t any useful mines in the Kayton Mountains. You’re not going to find a lot of steel used in apartments. And a post in the middle of a room?”
Tiberius arched his bushy gray eyebrows. “It’s probably a converted warehouse or something like that.”
Gripper looked down at the map.
“This doesn’t use any of the standard notations!” he complained bitterly. “I… I think this red tag means that the buildings were repurposed.”
“How many are there?” Xia asked.
Gripper’s lips moved as he counted, then whistled. “Um… five hundred seventy-two.”
Tiberius grunted. “We’ve got to narrow that down.”
“You said it was turned from something else into apartments,” Duaal said. He looked over Gripper’s arm at the map. “Look, there are notes on some of these about the sort of conversion the builders made. This one isn’t what we want — it was a housing block that got turned into a… What is this?”
“A falconry,” Logan answered. “So we can focus our search on those buildings converted into apartments.”
“That’s about half,” Gripper said after he checked the numbers. “Still more than two hundred places.”
“If Gavriel’s trying to be quiet about his presence here — and we have every indication that he is — he would use one of those condemned buildings,” Xia said thoughtfully. “He can’t move into an occupied one without someone noticing. These ruins might have some vagrants, but that’s less likely to get serious attention.”
Gripper nodded and shifted his weight from one big foot to the other as he studied the datadex. “That brings us down to about eighty. Most of them are in this block, along the river.”
They all looked at Duaal. He pursed his lips. “No, I didn’t hear or see any water. Everything was in bad shape, but it was dry.”
“Not near the river, then. How many does that leave us?” Panna asked Gripper.
“Fifty-nine buildings.”
“Gavriel said something about a pit,” Duaal said. He sounded uncertain. “There was an image in his mind, just for a second.”
“Did you see enough to help us?” Tiberius asked.
“Maybe…? It’s a huge fissure in the ground,” the Hyzaari mage said. He gestured to the mountain crevasse all around them. “A lot like this, I guess, but smaller. Gavriel throws problems down there. But I got the impression that it was downstairs.”
“So?” Gripper asked. “Lots of buildings have basements.”
“But there’s dirt coming in through the broken wall on another level — a higher one — where Maeve’s being held,” Logan said. “That means the whole building is either built on a slope or that it’s fallen against one.”
“That’s got to put our dove somewhere along the valley’s edge,” Tiberius said, loud and excited. “How many buildings?”
“Um… looking.” Gripper’s hands shook as he traced the lines of the map. “Fourteen.”
“Most of those are along the northwestern edge of the valley,” Panna said. “We can find her in that, can’t we?”
“Yes.” Logan checked his Talon. The charge was at about half. “Gripper, you’re with me. Pull off a copy of that map and let’s go.”
“Yeah,” Gripper said. He slotted some memory chips from his pocket into the computer and copied the map.
“Once we find out exactly where they’re holding Maeve, we’ll call Cerro,” Tiberius said. This close to finding Maeve, he no longer argued with the bounty hunter over authority. Tiberius whistled. Orphia, who had been circling high over the ravine, spiraled down to her master. “We’re going to need his help. Xia, we need you, too. Our dove is injured.”
Duaal and Panna waited. When it became clear that Tiberius was giving no further instructions, Panna cleared her throat.
“I’m coming, too,” she said.
“I could use the extra pair of hands,” Xia agreed.
Panna nodded and ran back to the Tynerion tent to collect her things. When she returned, Panna began collecting the pieces of Maeve’s spear from the table.
“I can finish this on the way,” she said. “She’ll want it, I think.”
“What about me?” Duaal asked.
Tiberius stopped in the act of handing the spear shaft to Panna. “We’re going up against Gavriel and his cult, little hawk. I want you to stay here.”
Duaal’s face fell, but he nodded. “Fine.”
Tiberius held up his hand. “No, Duaal. I want you to stay, but we need you to go.”
“You do?”
Tiberius nodded slowly. Even Logan could see the reluctance in the old Prian’s face.
“We need to be quick about this and can’t spend a lot of time flapping around where the Nihilists might see us,” Tiberius said. “You’re the only one who can recognize the right place on sight.”
“I… I’m going along?” Duaal asked, mouth agape and eyes wide. He shook his head as though shaking off a dream. “You actually need me?”
Tiberius nodded.
Kemmer was working nearby and looked up from his microscope. “Now wait a damned minute! You can’t leave us alone up here again! The northwest side of the valley, right? That’s where you think this Cult of Nihil is?”
“That’s the idea,” Tiberius answered in a tone that invited no argument. “And we’re getting Maeve back from them.”
Kemmer didn’t care if he had an invitation or not.
“That’s just down the mountain from here, Captain Myles,” he said. “You can’t just leave when we’re that close to people that you yourself have said are dangerous! They took Maeve from her post, just up there. They know we’re here!”
“But they don’t care,” Logan pointed out.
“You don’t know that, bounty hunter!” Kemmer snapped. “You drop out of the sky uninvited and think that you know anything about what’s going on here? I don’t know who you are and I don’t care! But I do have an agreement with Captain Myles.”
Now Tiberius frowned. Orphia hopped down from his shoulder and chewed on the corner of the table.
“What are you getting at, Kemmer?” Tiberius said.
“You gave me your word that you would protect our dig, Captain Myles. You took payment and you promised to keep the Waygate safe.”
“I did,” Tiberius said. He closed his eyes and whistled softly at Orphia. The old hawk stopped nibbling and sidled up his arm to perch on his shoulder again. Tiberius opened his eyes again. “Yes, I did promise that.”
“Kemmer, this is about a lot more than just getting Maeve back,” Duaal protested. “I know what Gavriel is trying to get from her. He wants Maeve’s memories of Tamlin and the Devourers.”
“What? Why?” Panna asked.
“To… to summon them,” Duaal said. “He wants the Devourers to wipe out all life in the galaxy.”
Tiberius looked at Kemmer, then at the mage.
“You have to find the place, Duaal,” he said. “Find it and call Cerro. We’re not going to let Gavriel hurt Maeve anymore and we’re sure as hells not letting him get to the Devourers. Got it?”
“Got it, captain,” Duaal said.
Tiberius nodded. “I’ll stay here. I told Kemmer that I’d keep his damned Waygate safe, and I will. You go get Maeve back and stop Gavriel.”
Logan had never seen Duaal smile so hugely.
“Let’s get moving, then!” the mage said.
They made their way through the camp and then up the long ladder, out to the moraine. Rain sliced through the blanket of snow and ran in tiny, frigid rivers down the slope. Duaal pointed up to the Raptor.
“Are you going to bring that?” he asked.
Logan had considered the same question on the climb up. “No. Tiberius is right. We don’t want the Nihilists to know we’re coming and they’re going to notice a fighter buzzing their area.”
“Just the trucks, then.”
Logan hurried down to the trucks and yanked open the nearest door. His blood ran hot and somehow itchy through his veins. He was impatient to be off, to find Maeve. To see her again at last…
Duaal, Xia and Panna climbed into the other truck, but Gripper sat next to Logan, datadex in hand. The two traded a look and then Logan twisted the keychip in the ignition.
