Broken Vision (30 page)

The corridor stretched before her, blocked by the barrier she couldn't see. Alerik was
imprisoned behind it. She knew it with every fiber of her being. The urgency within her escalated.
There had to be a way through.

She was vaguely aware of Drakal barking orders, of two pairs of fighters moving off. She
edged closer to where she thought the barrier was as, from down the corridor, came the sound of
more voices and thudding boots. Odd how the noise made by many seemed to be magnified in this
white world. When she'd been on her own, everything had seemed so muffled.

And then she blocked it all out, all the voices, all the activity. The barrier had to be close.
Her heart pounded to a matching pulse of pain in her head. Perspiration dampened her skin.

From a far distance, someone called her name.

Alerik!

For a nanonan, hope flared bright and joyous. Without conscious thought, she increased
her pace.

She heard her name again. This time, she realized it came from behind her. The voice was
fainter, yet demanded her attention.

She turned. Shock splintered through her.

Twenty paces down the corridor, a multi-nation group of fighters pushed against an
invisible barrier. Commander Tak had arrived and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Drakal. Both
men gestured her back, their shouts muffled in the vast whiteness.

She took a step toward them, a tiny part of her curious how she had passed through a
barrier that held them all back. All her training demanded she not proceed alone. But the urgency
was hammering at her.

Time was not in their favor.

She made the only choice she could.

Margaine Confluence
The Divide

The white corridor took an abrupt turn and ended just as abruptly in a cavernous room that
appeared to be hewn out of earth and rock. Heat radiated from rough walls bearing jagged symbols
in blood red and bright orange. Kneeling pads littered a metal-smooth floor in no discernable
pattern. A ring of squat columns stood in the room's center.

This had to be Nargune's temple, and it was empty.

So sure she had been about to find Alerik, Maegan stood at the room's threshold and tried
to control a rising panic. The urgency that had driven her had vanished. There was nothing, no
sense that her mate still lived; no instinct that drove her.

Nothing but this terrible panic.

She forced herself to move forward into the stifling heat. Beneath her feet, the floor
undulated and she stumbled. Not metal or any other solid material, it felt like a thick gel with a
hard, flexible skin. Moving more cautiously, she circled the temple, searching for exits.

The painted earth and rock gave up no clues.

Back at the entrance, she faced the circle of columns. As she focused on it, the panic she
had so far held at bay became muscle-weakening terror. Here lay a trigger to her distress, yet she
could see nothing other than the peculiar squat columns. She knew they were inanimate objects.
They couldn't hurt her. Why did they appear so menacing?

She had to examine the circle more closely. Against her instincts, which screamed at her to
run, she approached the columns, the tallest of which was no higher than her shoulder. Their
diameters appeared to be uniform.

Every cell in her body resisted, so it was with a sense of disbelief that she saw her own
hand touch the smooth surface of the short column closest to her. An image from a starpit
nightmare sprang into her mind. A giant of a man lay stretched across the column's flat surface. He
was nude. His arms and legs, spread wide, didn't quite reach the edges. His body, streaked with
crimson, strained against invisible bonds. His mouth gaped open in a scream she couldn't hear. She
didn't know him, yet he was familiar.

She snatched her hand back. The image vanished.

The mottled red material of the columns was like nothing she had ever felt before. The
surface was soft, smooth, yielding to her fingers, yet beneath the softness was a hardness that
vibrated, and shook her to her bones. Unlike the walls of the cavern, no heat radiated from them,
yet her fingers stung as if they had been burned.

The interior of the circle, within the ring of columns, was as large as a small room. The
floor was the same gel substance as the rest of the temple.

She took a deep breath. Fighting the mind-numbing terror, she clenched her fists, and
stepped between two columns. The floor shuddered beneath her feet. Silence hammered at her ears.
Sweat oozed from her pores, trickled down her sides and stung her wound.

Like the earth and the rock, the columns yielded no obvious exits from the chamber.

She forced herself to explore the ring's interior and visually examine each mottled red
column. She couldn't bring herself to touch them again. More and more, they looked like they were
bleeding. The image of the man stretched in agony across one wavered into shape in her head again
and wouldn't leave. Her imagination? Perhaps. That this temple might host human sacrifices wasn't
such a leap. Nargune was fully capable of such unthinkable, barbarous acts.

As she approached the short column again that had inspired the horrendous image, her
breath suddenly escaped her lungs in a long whoosh. She felt as if someone had punched her. She
stumbled and would have dropped to her knees, except that every cell in her body clamored at her
to stay upright. She had to get out of the ring. A palpable sense of threat, dense and smothering,
pressed down on her and threatened to crush her will. She managed one step, and another.

Once outside the columns, the pressure immediately lifted. The image in her head of the
tortured man vanished again. Instead, she felt a growing sense of urgency. Time was running out.
For Alerik and for Morgon.

For them all.

She didn't want to, but she knew she had to go back into the circle. With unshakeable
certainty, she knew the columns held the key to finding the men. As she wove in and out, column
after column, fear shadowed her every step; a nightmare lurked around every turn. She kept going.
Even when she saw the red mottling seep and bleed and spread until the columns became a solid,
glowing crimson, she kept going.

A sudden soft beep split the silence. A deep, almost subsonic grating sounded.

Shocked as she was by the noise, she at first didn't notice the movement. Her foot slipped
on the gel floor. As she regained her balance, she saw the space between two columns narrow. She
whirled.

All the columns were moving. They slid across the gel floor to the escalating sound of
grating. Beneath her feet, the floor undulated in waves that seemed to be increasing in size. As she
struggled to maintain her footing, she realized she was about to be trapped in the circle. She had to
get out. She tried to run and couldn't. Her brain commanded her feet, but they seemed stuck in
place. All around her, the weeping red columns moved, slid closer, until, with a tormented shriek,
they slammed together in a small, tight circle. A circle which had no exit. In the sudden, intense
silence, she forced herself to be still, to breathe deeply, to listen.

A searing white light speared down from the temple's ceiling to illuminate the flat top of
each pillar. The columns, seeming like a single structure now, began to move. She didn't know
which way it was moving, only that it was in motion. Light blinded her. Movement dizzied her. She
dropped to her knees, weak and trembling.

The beams of light vanished. The columns moved silently apart.

Crouched on the floor, she saw she was no longer in the earth and rock temple. This room
was smaller, less cavernous, and had pristine white walls, similar to the corridors above the temple.
As her eyes adjusted to the softer light, she noticed large alcoves built into the walls at regular
intervals. With slow care, she rose to her feet on a solid floor that didn't undulate. Icy air eddied
around her.

A flash of color caught her peripheral vision.

"Maegan. How delightful. I'm surprised it took you this long to find him."

* * * *

Alerik dreamed.

He wanted to wake up, was desperate to wake up. He had to break free, escape from this
strange fantasy world in which he found himself.

He ran through a forest, a place he didn't recognize. Unlike any forest he had ever seen, the
sapling-thin trees bore enormous canopies that dripped trailing vines. The vines writhed in the
heated air and hissed as he passed. His feet stirred up an odor of rotting vegetation.

Someone trailed him in the forest. Friend or foe, he couldn't determine. An aching dread
warred with a deep, affectionate warmth inside of him. Every time he stopped to catch his breath,
he saw only shadows. A flicker of movement.

He was searching for someone, but he didn't know who. He just knew it was imperative he
find them.

So he ran. On and on. And as he ran, the vines reached out for him. Their hisses became
whispers of fear, then screams of despair, as a black cloud oozed from the soil, spread its creeping
tendrils across roots and debris. It circled the trees and obscured their shapes. Muffled the vines
until a thick silence blanketed the forest.

Suddenly the blackness was all around him and inside him and smothering his heart.

* * * *

"Where is he?" Maegan faced Nargune. "Where are they?"

Nargune was cloaked to match the blood red and orange of the temple walls. Only the
lower half of her face was visible. She stood without moving between two slender pillars that
reached only partway to the ceiling.

Maegan was trapped in this white chamber with its ghastly columns. Trapped with a
woman who craved power above all else, and wouldn't hesitate to destroy to get it. She knew she
should feel fear, loathing, hatred...

At the moment, all she wanted was assurance that Alerik was unharmed.

"Here. They're both here." Nargune made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the entire
room. and folded her arms again. "We've been waiting for you."

Maegan turned her head just enough to examine what she could of the room without losing
sight of Nargune. Nothing. No Mariltar males. Nobody but her and the sha-priestess. Nor did she
sense another presence in the room. Surely she would know if Alerik were close. Instinct had led
her here. Wouldn't instinct identify the presence of her mate? She wanted to turn and look behind,
but didn't. "You left me imprisoned in the guest room."

"No. You only thought that for a while. You escaped, didn't you? I knew the bond between
you and your mate was strong, and that you'd come looking for him, but I needed some time with
him first."

"What have you done to him?"

Nargune stirred. Her long, lean body swayed. Her bright robes swirled around her feet. For
a nanonan only, Maegan thought she saw wisps of black smoke spewing from the fabric at the
robe's hem. When she looked again, there was nothing there. "He's well enough."

An evasive answer, if she'd ever heard one. Icy tendrils of fear crept through her veins. She
forced a deep breath and stiffened her knees and her resolve. "What do you want from me?"

Nargune's laughter echoed around the chamber. In it, Maegan detected something forced
and unnatural. As if the sha-priestess was not completely in control.

"Maegan, you are my biggest challenge, just as Alerik Mariltar's mother was my father's.
But I've learned from his failure. I know now what I must do. You're strong, but I'm stronger."

She reached to touch the pillar to her right. The chamber plunged into complete and utter
darkness. The eddies of air became a full-blown icy wind that caused Maegan widen her stance to
brace herself.

"You're wrong, Nargune."

Alerik's mother and Nargune's father? Alerik had never said a word. Did he even know?
Something about that had to be a critical key in all this. She just didn't know what and she couldn't
think about it now.

She began to back slowly away as she waited for her eyes to adjust. She wanted distance
between herself and the sha-priestess. The darkness wasn't as complete as she had first thought.
Shadows writhed above her head. "I'm the stronger one. You didn't get what you wanted when you
had me before, did you? Because you couldn't. And you'll fail again."

The laughter came again, higher and more piercing. "You've convinced yourself of that,
have you? I'm too close to having everything I want. You are one very insignificant barrier. You
cannot stop me."

Maegan bumped up against the wall at the same time she came to the astounding
realization that Nargune might have no knowledge of anything that had occurred outside of the
temple. Beneath her fingers, the wall's surface was smooth and cool, and bore a hint of
dampness.

How could she use the knowledge of the destruction outside the temple to her advantage?
She didn't know if she could get out of this chamber the same way she'd entered. Nor could she
leave without Alerik and Morgon. Nargune had said they were here, but what reason did she have
to trust anything Nargune said? What should she do now?

"Maegan." Nargune sounded close.

Too close. Maegan still couldn't see anything.

"You are safe here." The whisper came from her right.

"You cannot escape." A harsher whisper, this time from directly above her, as if her
tormentor hung from the ceiling.

Her head was beginning to ache and a strange dizziness was sapping her alertness.

"Do you see the pretty light?" The voice was right at her shoulder this time. She should
block it out. It tugged at her, pulling her toward a place she didn't want to go. But resisting its pull
was hard. So very hard.

A small green flame bloomed in mid-air. An arm's length away. Or was it on the other side
of the chamber? She felt no heat from it, and saw no shadows cast by it. That single flare of pretty,
mesmerizing light beckoned her. There was a reason she shouldn't trust it, just like she shouldn't
trust the voice. She couldn't remember why.