THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 2 — SWORD OF DREAMS
Chapter 37: By Starlight
“Anyone who says facing your friends is worse than facing your enemies has never fought the Devourers. There is nothing more frightening. Unless, of course, the Devourers are your friends.”
– Duaal Sinnay, Hyzaari mage (233 PA)
Maeve spent the next night under the watchful but often interrupted care of an overworked Prian doctor. But by the next evening, Xia moved her to the city of Pine Spire, back to the Blue Phoenix for observation. The Ixthian medic tended to Gruth, too, whose leg was still in bad shape. He would need a replacement and threatened to crawl back to Tynerion himself rather than face the prospect of a Prian cybernetic.
“I’ve seen that bounty hunter’s hand,” Gruth said. “No way.”
Even with the Blue Phoenix’s limited facilities — which were a little dusty from weeks of disuse — Xia was able to stabilize Gruth for the journey back to Tynerion and close the cuts in Maeve’s skin. Her bones would take longer to knit, but the breaks were clean and Xia administered daily nutrient injections to help them heal faster. Gruth spent most of his time asleep, medicated into unconsciousness against the pain of his ruined leg.
On the second morning after the battle for the Pylos Waygate, the newly promoted Captain Felsus made the journey to Pine Spire. He limped up from the skypad and into the Blue Phoenix. Panna brought him up to the mess, where Maeve, Duaal, Xia and Gripper sat around the table.
Panna took a seat across from Maeve. Her eyes were bloodshot and swollen from weeping. Duaal wasn’t the only one to lose a beloved mentor. Captain Felsus’ cybernetic leg whirred and clicked as he sat.
“I got my hands on the information that you were looking for,” he said.
Xia was sitting beside Duaal and took his hand. She squeezed his fingers.
“Tiberius Myles had no will here on Prianus or in any Alliance records,” Felsus said. He paused and looked at Duaal. “But he listed you as his only family — so it all passes to you, Mister Sinnay. Everything Tiberius had is now yours, including this ship.”
Duaal closed his eyes and twin tracks of tears traced their way down his dark cheeks. He nodded. “Thank you, Captain Felsus. But I’m sure you didn’t come all the way down to Pine Spire just to tell me that.”
“No,” Felsus agreed. He looked around the table. “Where is the bounty hunter?”
“Coldhand said he wanted to see what he can salvage from his Raptor,” Gripper answered.
Felsus frowned. “He’s not going to find anything. There’s a lot we need to talk about, and one of them is the Waygate.”
Panna rubbed at her eyes and sat up. “What’s going to happen to it?”
“It’s already been done,” Felsus told her. “For the moment, that Waygate is far too dangerous to Pylos and the rest of Prianus. This morning, I had demolition charges set all along the ravine. We’ve collapsed the mountain back onto the Waygate.”
Maeve released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. The Pylos Waygate was finally gone, buried down in a stony grave. Panna wasn’t happy about that fate, though.
“What…?” she asked. “What about Doctor Kemmer’s discovery? All of Professor Xen’s work?”
“Their data will be sent back to Tynerion, like Professor Andus requested. If Vostra Nor University can send new archeologists and enough CWAAF soldiers to protect Prianus against more of those creatures, we’ll let them back into the site,” Felsus said. “But until then, it stays buried. Miss Sul, I assume we can entrust the delivery of the professors’ files and samples to you?”
“I can take them back to Tynerion, along with the… the bodies,” Panna answered. She chewed her lip. “But I don’t know if I’m going back right away.”
“Why not, Sprite?” Gripper asked.
Panna smiled at the nickname he had finally chosen, but was still nervous. “Well, that depends on Xartasia and the Devourers. What’s happened to them?”
“They’re gone,” Felsus said. He didn’t look displeased about it… but not entirely pleased, either. “They’ve all vanished. Xartasia, too, along with all the Nihilists who flew off. According to your reports, many of them escaped the initial slaughter, but so far, we haven’t found a single one in Pylos.”
“Are they… gone? Really gone?” Gripper asked.
All eyes turned to Duaal, including Maeve’s. She had never seen magic like what Duaal displayed in the ravine. At the head of the table, the young Hyzaari mage shook his head.
“I banished them all,” Duaal said. “It wasn’t the same spell that Maeve used on Orindell a hundred years ago. I don’t know that one. What I did down there was a guess. I sent all of them away. The Devourers and the Cult of Nihil. Just… away.”
“Where did they go?” Felsus asked.
“I don’t know,” Duaal admitted. “I had to choose a destination, a place I knew and remembered well. But I couldn’t decide. The Devourers are a danger to any city on any planet that we’ve ever been to. I had only a moment and I was thinking of several worlds, trying to choose one. Xartasia could have ended up on any of them.”
“What about the Waygate?” Gripper asked. He stopped chewing on his blunt claws and suddenly looked at Duaal. “It was saying all sorts of things. Did that have anything to do with it?”
Maeve started. “The voice of the Waygate? You understood it? I heard that voice before, in Tamlin, but could make no sense of it. I believed then that it was some result of my poor spell-weaving, but Gavriel never finished my song…”
“That Waygate wasn’t speaking in Aver or Arcadian,” Xia said. “Maeve, you told us once that the Nnyth know the Waygates best. Was that their language?”
“No,” Maeve said. “They have no verbal language.”
“It was kind of like… Arboran, I guess you could say,” Gripper answered. “The language we use back home. It was different, but I understood some of the words.”
“Can you tell us what it said?” Maeve asked.
“Um, sort of.” Gripper thought for a moment. “Error. Opening word — that might have been command or maybe story — has not been completed. Please select destination.”
Maeve and Panna stared at each other.
“Are you sure?” Panna asked.
“Yeah. There’s more,” Gripper said. “Gate — or door — operation interrupted. Technicians have been called to fix the problem. I actually understand it better than I would have before I left home. We don’t really have words for things like technician, but now I know ideas like that. It must have been a recording or something.”
“Gods,” Panna breathed. “It was an error message! It must have been triggered when Gavriel didn’t finish the spell. He didn’t need your memories at all, Maeve. All he had to do was fail to complete the opening ritual.”
Gripper nodded. “The Waygate was just trying to contact its builders for technical support.”
“The Devourers?” Maeve asked. “They built the Waygates?”
“I thought you said no one knew who created the Waygates,” Xia said. “If this thing has recordings in Gripper’s native language, doesn’t that suggest that his people created them?”
Panna pursed her lips and gave Gripper a speculative look. “I’m not sure, but it’s a fascinating question.”
“It is interesting,” Felsus said, tapping a closed fist on the top of the crowded table. “But what about this Xartasia woman and the Cult of Nihil?”
“She wasn’t just following Gavriel’s orders,” Xia said. “Xartasia seemed to have some plan of her own. Maeve, do you know what it is?”
“Me?” Maeve asked. “No, I fear that I do not. I am as surprised as any that she turned on Gavriel.”
“I suppose it would be too much to hope that Xartasia and those monsters were banished out into empty space?” Felsus asked.
“Afraid so,” Duaal answered. “It had to be a place I knew. Space doesn’t exactly have a lot of useful landmarks. They’re somewhere in the core.”
“That’s not going to go unnoticed,” Panna said. “The Alliance and CWAAF have to know what’s going on.”
“We sent word to Axis as soon as your call came in,” Felsus said. “The only answer we’ve gotten is confirmation of transmission. As far as I know, they’ve seen not tail or talon of the Devourers.”
“Whatever Xartasia’s plan, it is nothing as simple as Gavriel’s,” Maeve said. “She wants something other than total destruction, or she would have let Gavriel do as he wished. There is more to this than we know and the Alliance must be warned. But Xartasia is of my own blood. I must fight her on this.”
“Xartasia was willing to let a lot of people suffer and die,” Duaal said. He stood up and circled the table to stand next to Maeve. “We haven’t always gotten along and a crew this small doesn’t really need a first mate, Maeve. You know nothing about managing a ship, or flying or even fixing it.”
“No,” Maeve agreed. After everything else, was she about to lose her home, too? Duaal was captain of the Blue Phoenix now and had the authority to send her away.
“But my ship and my crew are at your disposal, princess,” Duaal said with a sad, satisfied little smile. “We’ll take you wherever you need to go.”
“I’m coming along, too,” Panna told Maeve. She stood, as well, and bowed deeply. “If you’ll let me, princess.”
“It is not my place to permit or authorize anything,” Maeve said quickly. “But… I would be grateful for any help offered to me. I do not know what Xartasia plans, but she is older, wiser and far more powerful than I am. I can refuse nothing and no one that may help me stop her.”
“Good,” Felsus said. He rose, too, with a mechanical creak. He didn’t bow, but inclined his head to Maeve. “I hope you won’t be offended when I say that I hope you leave soon, princess.”
“No,” Maeve answered. “You are right. We cannot afford to waste time here.”
“We’ll be gone after the funerals tomorrow,” Duaal said.
Captain Felsus nodded. After heavy final farewells, he limped out of the Blue Phoenix.
Duaal stood in the cockpit. He traced the deep scratches in the back of the pilot’s chair with one hand. Outside, the sun had long since set behind the Kayton Mountains. Only the faintest trace of violet twilight lingered between the high peaks.
“He was proud of you,” Xia said from the door.
“I know.”
Duaal sat down in Tiberius’ chair. The ship had been untended for a long time while they were up in the mountains…
“It’s getting late. Are you coming to bed?” Xia asked.
Duaal turned on the computer and screens flickered all through the cockpit.
“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. “There are a lot of checks and preflights to do before I even think about taking her back into the black. Go on to bed. Don’t wait up for me.”
Xia stood in the doorway and watched the young captain of the Blue Phoenix for a moment, then turned and made her way back to her own room.
Logan Coldhand stood on the Pine Spire skypad and stared up at the Blue Phoenix. It was late. He had assumed everyone would be asleep, but the cockpit remained lit. Someone was still awake. Was it Xia? Duaal?
Two days had done nothing to clear the hunter’s head. Two days of wandering Pylos and then Pine Spire, even contemplating returning back home to Highwind. He could go back to Vorus, tell his teacher that he had been right all along.
But Vorus knows. He always did.
And then what? Felsus wasn’t looking into the bounty hunter’s identity, but how long would that last? Logan’s crashed Raptor was gone, buried under tons of stone in the Kayton Mountains, along with the Pylos Waygate. He could get a ship — buy or steal one, if he had to — or pay the fare for one of the rare starliners leaving Prianus for the brighter lights of the core.
But he didn’t want to leave.
No, that wasn’t right… Logan didn’t want to leave alone.
Everything ached: his mind, body and soul. Since waking up in the hospital room with a mechanical heart six years ago, all Logan wanted was to feel again. Anything. Pleasure or pain, joy or terror… And now he felt. He felt everything and it was too much. Logan had no idea what to do. The flood of feelings was too alien and strange.
The Blue Phoenix cargo airlock was closed, but Logan remembered the entry codes. No one had changed them. The thick fibersteel door thunked open and Logan stepped through, then sealed it behind him. With any luck, whoever was still awake in the cockpit wouldn’t have noticed the breach.
The ship hadn’t changed much. The hold was empty of cargo and Gripper’s suspended planter garden still hung from the ceiling, overgrown after weeks of inattention. There was a heap of null-field pallets along the wall, straps and webbing hanging from hooks, but none of the archeologists’ equipment had been salvageable. It was all gone.
Logan climbed the fibersteel stairs and crept through the darkened Blue Phoenix. The only lights were the amber strips running along the floor on either side of the small corridor. System displays and network ports glowed green and blue in the bulkheads, but cast so little light that Logan couldn’t see his own feet underneath him.
That was fine… He knew where he was going.
He was in the aft of the ship, in the corridor that ran between the bunkrooms. Tiberius had imprisoned the bounty hunter in one of these rooms, as the Blue Phoenix hurled itself into the corona of Axis’ sun. But that wasn’t Logan’s destination now.
He touched the glowing orange sensor square next to another door and it slid open. More amber lightstrips ran around the edge of the bunkroom, along the joint of the floor and the walls.
Maeve was asleep in her bed, lying on one side with her wings tucked tightly against her back. Her sleep had been restless and her sheets were twisted around her knees. Maeve had certainly been through more than enough to give her nightmares for a lifetime, even a long Arcadian life.
Xia’s work had erased most of the marks of the Nihilists’ torture. There were white scars on her skin, but nothing livid or bleeding anymore. Maeve’s long, sooty lashes rested against her high cheeks. Her black hair was much shorter than it had been on Stray and the inky locks lay softly across her small, fine-featured face.
The bounty hunter stood next to the fairy’s bed, staring down at her. Maeve didn’t stir. She was… what? Beautiful?
She is beautiful. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Alone in her room and sealed away from the Prian cold, Maeve wasn’t wearing much. Just the light, filmy dress of her temperate homeworld — a wisp of pale blue cloth tied around her narrow hips. Every smooth, svelte line of her slim body was bared to the hunter’s gaze.
I don’t know how to feel this way. I don’t know how to feel at all.
But finding Maeve in Pylos had kindled something in Logan, a hot ember inside him that made the blood rush in his ears. He felt it even now. The sight of her, the memory of her kiss… It made the whole world feel tilted on its side and feel full of… of…
I can’t do this anymore.
I need to be like I was. Something has to die again.
Logan slid his Talon-9 out of its holster. It was Maeve. It was always Maeve. She had been a mark, but she wasn’t even that anymore. She was just some fairy woman. Why did she make him feel anything at all?
Somehow, Coldhand knew no one else would ever make him burn like Maeve Cavainna did. He pressed the barrel of the gun to her temple, just above one of her delicately pointed ears. It would be so easy. That was what Maeve had said back on Axis, as she held his gun and tore at his clothes. It would be easy. All he had to do was pull the trigger to remove this problem, this confusing and confounding woman.
His trembling finger tightened on the trigger. Kill her and it would be done. It would be easy, so much easier than feeling all of this pain and confusion.
But I don’t want to… What do I want?
Logan’s thoughts chased each other like moths around a flame, closer and closer to the bright, lovely danger. Logan dropped to one knee beside the bed. He still held the Talon against her temple, and pressed his lips to Maeve’s. She tasted sweet, like honey or some rosy nectar. The ember inside Logan flared.
Maeve stirred in her sleep. Storm-gray eyes fluttered and then opened. Logan knew he should stop. This was a bad idea, an unwelcome advance, and beyond stupid. Logan pulled away, but even with the kiss broken, he still tasted Maeve’s sweetness on his lips.
And then he felt her fingers curled around the back of his neck.
“I thought today that you had gone again,” she whispered.
“I should have,” Logan said in a rough voice. Everything seemed to rush and echo strangely inside his own head. “I can’t do this. After what Hallax took from me… He killed me. But now… What I feel now burns me, Maeve. I want to rip my heart out, but I know it won’t stop.”
Logan’s voice failed. His computer-regulated pulse was too hard, too fast. Had the mechanical pump broken? He pressed the gun against Maeve’s head. Her staring silver eyes were as bright as stars and her fingers twined into his hair.
“I remembered you, my hunter,” Maeve told him. Her soft lips brushed Logan’s ear and a chill raced down his spine. When had she gotten so close? “In the darkness, when Gavriel tormented me, I armored myself with thoughts of you.”
Logan’s metal hand clenched, denting the bunk’s welded frame.
“But Gavriel got exactly what he wanted from you,” he said. “He hurt you, Maeve.”
Her hand trailed along his tight jaw, down his throat and across his chest.
“I had to find you,” Logan whispered so softly, as though trying to keep the secret even from himself. “I… I thought of you every day. I want… I need…”
“Illa enarri eru,” Maeve sang under her breath. None of the delicate Arcadian words were ones that he knew. “I need you, Logan.”
The fairy princess seized a fistful of his shirt and pulled Logan close again, kissing him deeply. The ember inside Logan burst into flame at her touch. His blood was on fire and his skin felt feverish. It was heaven, it was hell and he was burning. The Talon tumbled from Logan’s nerveless fingers, forgotten.
Maeve’s hands trembled as she grasped the hem of his shirt and pulled it up over his head. It wasn’t cold in her room, but Logan shivered. The pale scar left by Hallax’s sword stood out bright white even in the dim light. Maeve’s feathered wings rustled, trembling in anticipation. Her fingers traced the line of the Prian’s shoulders, down his tensed arms and the joint of metal and flesh just beneath Logan’s left elbow. The sensation of her touch was suddenly distant. He started and pulled away.
“What have I done?” Maeve asked.
“There are parts of me that are gone. Forever.” For the first time, Logan felt no anger or loss at his maiming, but shame. “I haven’t been able to be with a woman since this happened. I don’t know if I can do this.”
Logan remained on his knees beside her bed with his unfeeling illonium hand curled uselessly at his side. Maeve stood. She was so small…! Even kneeling, Logan was almost eye-to-eye with her.
Maeve was naked to the waist and tugged once at the knot of her skirt, then even that fell away. The fairy raised her wings high. She stood proud, lovely and defiant before Logan.
“You are a whole man,” Maeve told him. “And I will love every part of you until you never doubt your ability to feel again.”
Maeve took both of his hands in hers and pressed them against her nude body. The cold metal of his left hand raised goosebumps on her pale skin, but her breath caught. Logan caressed the impossible silky perfection of her, trailing his fingertips over her belly and the gentle curve of her hips, then up her arched spine and between her wings. Maeve gasped and a rosy flush spread across her breasts.
She wants me to touch her…
And he wanted it, too, Logan realized. More than anything. He was on his feet in an instant, pressing the fairy back into her bed.
There was one last journey to be made into Pylos. Captain Felsus gave Duaal clearance to set the Blue Phoenix down in the Raptor landing field. Even Gruth limped down the cargo ramp, leaning heavily on a borrowed crutch and dressed in the best of his clothes that could be salvaged from the ruined camp.
North Pylos Police Station Three was just as crowded as before, but subdued. Word had spread about the events in the mountains and even the hardened Prian criminals seemed to retreat for the moment. Perhaps they were afraid, but Duaal liked to think that it was out of respect.
The funerals were held in a back lot behind the precinct station, where the cracked concrete was still wet from days of rain. The crew and passengers of the Blue Phoenix — including Logan Coldhand, Duaal couldn’t help noticing — stood with the other black-clothed Prians, those families left behind by officers killed in the Waygate battle. Most of the hard eyes were sad but remained dry.
Of over thirty officers, only four had returned. Two more died of their wounds in the following days, leaving Felsus and a young female officer, Mell Savorse, as the sole survivors of Captain Cerro’s force.
The bodies of the dead were wound in clean white cloth and lay atop twenty-four biers set up in a long line. Those claimed by the Devourers left no remains, but empty shrouds stitched with the fallen officer’s names were folded neatly on the wood. Duaal and the others gathered at the end of the long line, where Tiberius’ body rested on a pyre under a white-barked birch tree. Orphia sat in the branches above her master, keening softly.
An iron torch burned in a tall black stand. The red-gold flame jumped and sizzled in the rain, but did not go out. Uniformed officers snapped to attention as the tall, weathered Pylos police chief strode across the concrete to stand beside the torch. He squinted at the gathered mourners and raised a fist to the center of his chest in salute.
“Our lives are only the last sacrifice we make in the line of duty,” he said. The wind whipped the torch flame dangerously close, but he didn’t flinch. “The men and women of the Prian Police Force chose hard lives for themselves and their families, lives of honor and struggle in the face of overwhelming odds. There is no higher calling. We gather now to thank them for all they have done and bid them farewell. May God welcome them into the heavens as honored sons and daughters.”
His short speech finished, the tall Prian lifted the torch from its sconce and lit each of the pyres in turn. When he reached Tiberius, he paused. His voice was quiet, only audible to those gathered around the bier.
“You made it all the way to retirement, only to come home and die. But we thank you, Tiberius Myles. You served and protected Prianus long after your due. God welcome you, brother.”
He touched the torch to the wooden pyre and flames licked up all around the shrouded body. The Pylos chief nodded to Duaal and the rest before moving on to deliver curt condolences to stoic spouses and dark-clad children. There was warmer wetness on Duaal’s cheeks than the Prian rain. He bowed his head beside Tiberius’ pyre as smoke rose up into the clouds.
“He wasn’t bad for a Prian,” Gruth said. He shifted his weight on the crutch.
Panna wiped her eyes and then took a deep, shuddering breath. “Tiberius was the gentlest rough man I ever met. Professor Xen didn’t think much of Prians, but he had the greatest respect for Captain Myles and it was well-earned.”
Gripper’s face was a mask of grief and he hiccuped with great, racking sobs. He tried several times to say something, but could only weep like a broken-hearted little boy. Xia took his big, clawed hand and stroked it comfortingly. Maeve stood beside the pyre, dressed all in the Arcadian’s mourning gray, the wind tugging at her black hair and white wings.
“You welcomed a wounded and broken woman onto your ship, Tiberius. You gave to me a home when I had none and your friendship when I deserved none. Your grace and your loss will be remembered always.” The fairy closed her eyes. She raised her face up to the sky and sang in a sweet, sad voice. “En a vaellin saemma var’ii lae…”
Maeve stopped and shook her head. Tears glittered in her dark eyelashes. “No, I will sing in your tongue, my captain, that you may know our sorrow…
“Above the raging storm, the stars burn ever on,
The light of those who came before and sing for us still.
Above the weeping storm, you fly forever on
Unto those silver lights and wait for me until.
That bright day when through the storm I soar,
And we may meet in blue skies once more.”
Maeve opened her eyes again and the tears streaked down her pale face. She held one hand up to the flames of Tiberius’ pyre.
“Farewell, my captain,” Maeve told him. “You were one of the best men that I have ever known.”
Logan stood beside Maeve. Not close enough to touch, but… close. Duaal had never seen the bounty hunter dressed in anything but the most utilitarian of clothes, but now he wore a clean, neat black suit — though his Talon-9 was still visible in an oiled leather holster at his hip. Logan stared into the bright, dancing flames.
“More men should be like you, Myles,” he said.
Duaal stood at the foot of the pyre. They probably expected him to say something, but what was left to be said? Two men had been fathers to Duaal… one terrible and powerful, one brave and noble. Both Tiberius and Gavriel were gone now. One killed by the other and only one mourned.
I’m alone now.
Duaal’s heart ached and his eyes were sore from crying. Gavriel killed Tiberius, but he had paid for that, if not at Duaal’s hands. There was no one else to blame, and nothing to be gained by anger. Duaal looked up at Tiberius’ pyre.
Is this what it means to grow up? he wondered. Knowing the pain is there, but that nothing can be done about it? There’s no one to run to anymore when I’m scared. There’s no tantrum to throw, nothing that can bring Tiberius back. I just have to live with missing him.
Duaal would miss Tiberius every day for the rest of his life, but there were other things to worry about now. Things that Tiberius would have seen to, but which now fell to Duaal.
“Xartasia is still out there. We fly within the hour,” he said. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Logan said.
Xia and Gripper were still crying, but they nodded. Panna did the same.
“No,” Maeve answered. “I do not know that I ever will be. But it is time.”
They all turned away, heading back to the Blue Phoenix. Duaal turned back once and called for Orphia, but the old hawk remained in the tree beside her master’s pyre and would not leave.
