Echoes in the Dark (57 page)

Shouts
of dismay. Bastien stepped forward and put one hand on his wife’s shoulder, the
other on
his
baton. His gaze swept the crowd, but Raine didn’t think he
identified the dissenters.

“You
all know what you signed on to do. It’s more vital than ever that we kill the
Dark.” He gestured to the cluster of Circlets—Marian, Jaquar, Bossgond, others.
“The Circlets speculate that once the Dark is destroyed, the new Master of the
horrors, the monsters themselves, will stop invading. They may even collapse.”

Lifting
her chin, Alexa said, “This endeavor is the best permanent solution of the
problem of the Dark.” Another audible breath from her. “We must pray and Sing
that Lladrana will weather this.” She glanced at Jaquar. “None of the scenarios
that I ever saw speculated about how long it would take for a steady stream of
horrors to overrun Lladrana.”

“The
Circlets of the Tower community are already working on that. We will have the
information for you later today.”

“Good.”
Again Alexa scanned the crowd with her cool, military stare. “What we
are
going to do is invade the Dark’s Nest and destroy it!”

A
cheer went up. Alexa fastened her gaze on Raine. “And we’re going to wring
every bit of speed out of this Ship that we can, right?”

“Right,”
Raine said, calculating course, speed with and without sails, and how she could
shave time off the voyage without risking all.

T
here was plenty
to worry about on the voyage. They had updates from the Castle daily, and the
remaining Marshalls were doing well, but some monsters were slipping into the
country. There were mutterings on the Ship about this and no one could
determine exactly who started them. Raine was pushing herself, the Circlets and
the crew as hard as possible, and the Ship was speeding through the waters, at
a rate that the volarans could not match, not even at night, so the ship was
crowded with them all the time except for brief flights. The two herds—humans
and volarans—were irritated with each other.

But
Luthan worried about Jikata. He said nothing to the others—not that they were
unaware of the changes in her. Of all people, Bossgond the Circlet had informed
the Exotiques that she was not to be confronted, that she must come to the
realization that she was being influenced by the Dark itself.

When
Alexa demanded whether that would happen in time, Bossgond had turned to Luthan
and flat out asked about his visions of the battle—and of Jikata.

Of
course they’d all stared at him. The odds for them all had gone up, and he was
grateful for that, for the shining few that showed all the Exotiques living.
But the visions came more often, and more vividly. He hated that he couldn’t
discuss them with his lover as he’d had. So, in the face of Bossgond’s
challenge, Luthan narrowed his eyes and examined Jikata’s actions in the
visions. He was unsurprised to find that when the battle outcome was the Dark
living and most of them dead, she’d been an uninspired Singer.

Luthan
had stared at Alexa and said, “Twenty percent of the time, Jikata is affected
by the Dark and we fall.”

Alexa
blinked. “Twenty per cent?”

“Ayes.”

“Oh.”
She gave him a brilliant smile and walked away with a bounce in her step, and
that caused a little clutch of his heart. He’d come to love this woman his
brother had wed, and he didn’t want to lose her. His heart would be torn
irrevocably if he lost his brother, too. As for Jikata…he already knew that if
she perished he would, too. They weren’t bound together in a ritual blood
exchange ceremony, but they were close enough that he thought his mind and will
would shatter if she died.

“J
ikata…” Ishi’s
face was lined with concern. “Who are these people? How do you know them? Why
do you trust them?” Ishi’s standard questions for any friend Jikata had spoken
about, wanted to associate with.

Jikata
had nearly forgotten those questions, now memory came rushing back, along with
annoyance and teenaged anger. She’d been in with a
good
crowd when in
school. It was only when she had the first flush of success that she’d traveled
with bad companions for a time, then she’d gotten smart.

In
the dream, she and her great-grandmother were standing on a rocky point of
land, covered with a sheen of ice. Ishi gestured and Jikata looked across the
slate-gray ocean to a mountain rising out of the sea. One mountain, an inactive
volcano, though Jikata sensed molten fire beneath it.

She
sensed something else—the Dark. Close enough, terrible enough, to chill her
insides and make her shiver.

“These
people will get you killed.”

Another
graceful wave of Ishi’s pretty hand and the base of the volcano was littered
with the fragments of a great battle…humans, volarans, monsters all dead and
heaped together.

She
saw Luthan, body shattered in a way that hurt her soul, saw herself, flung far
from him, hair singed, face still. Saw all her friends in a hideous pile, each
death wound more obscene than the last so that she couldn’t look closely, not
that she could tell one from the other except for the size and hair color.

Which
shouldn’t happen because they were disguised, all with black hair and golden
skin, like Lladranans.

The
breath went from her lungs. Her chest constricted as realization blazed through
her.

This
being was not Ishi, had probably never been Ishi. She felt sick from more than
the carnage she saw, the horror of the dream. She had been so gullible! Played
so very well. Because she’d wanted the dream woman to be Ishi.

But
Ishi would never, ever call her “Jikata.” It had been that last change of name
that had Ishi sending her a note of disinheritance. The old woman had seen it
as a betrayal of everything Jikata was, when Jikata had felt it was giving
herself a true name.

She
widened and rounded her eyes at the fake Ishi. “Ishi?”

“Yes,
Jikata?”

It
wouldn’t have been “yes.” They didn’t speak English in Ishi’s home.

“Why
do you scold Jikata?” She made her voice plaintive.

There
was a flash of real anger in those eyes—red-tinged eyes?—that Jikata had always
ignored before.

“Because
you do not listen, Jikata child. You should not be here. You should not join
with these people.”

Ishi
would have called her Fujiko. So she replied in Japanese, “Why don’t you call
me by the name my parents gave me?”

Ishi’s
face went blank, as if the thing that lived behind it had had no clue that
there was more than one language of Exotique Terre, spoken in the States.
Jikata could have switched to Spanish, or French, made her accent Canadian or
British, and the result would have been the same. No effing clue.

She
smiled a terrible smile. “Just
what
are you?”

Ishi’s
laugh started tinkling, then mutated to an awful rasping, gargling gurgle. Then
the mask, the total illusion, was dropped and Jikata retreated a couple of
steps in surprise before she settled into her balance and stood her ground.

The
thing had once been a man. It was not the hideous thing shown in graphic 3D in
Marian’s Lorebook, nor the before-and-after pics that Sevair had imaged of his
former assistant in Bri’s Lorebook. Swallowing, Jikata could see that he’d
warped from that man. No nasty tentacles around his mouth, but a knot of them
growing out of each temple of his head that had a row of yellow spines front to
back. Eyes a pupilless red.

She
swallowed again, put a hand on her hip, examined him up and down. He was
furious and his mind worked fast and loud, broadcasting information. Smiling,
she sneered, “Go back to your hole, you disgusting creature.” Then Sang the
banishing chorus that was part of the weapon knot.

He
snarled, raised deformed, clawlike hands to rake her, but vanished, leaving the
smell of corruption.

Jikata
woke, blood pounding in her head. She reached for Luthan but he wasn’t there. He
had taken to wandering the Ship in the night, soothing volarans.

When
her breathing steadied and she could hear more than the rush of her pulse, she
noticed rustlings in her mind from the other Exotiques, who were gathering in
the cabin. She yearned for their companionship, but had the lowering thought
that they might not want hers. She rose anyway, and left her cabin.

Alexa
was already sitting at the table with a mug, hair sticking up. Calli was there
with trembling hands folded on the table. Bri had her head propped in her
hands, massaging her scalp. Raine was walking to a chair and drawing it out and
Marian was preparing drinks on the tiny counter space of the galley. “Bad one,”
Marian said.

“Yeah.”
Alexa hunched over her drink.

“What
are you having?” Raine dropped heavily into the chair.

“Tea
and mead,” Alexa said.

“Mead,”
Marian said.

“Ale,”
Calli said.

“I’d
like jasmine tea,” Raine said.

“Water’s
here and hot,” Marian said.

“I’ll
pour it.” Jikata moved from blocking the doorway.

They
all froze for a moment, their thoughts checked, too.

“I’ll
take some jasmine tea.” Bri’s voice was muffled.

“How
can anyone drink tea and mead?” Marian asked Alexa, trying for a teasing tone
and falling flat. Alexa shrugged.

“Really
bad dream,” Raine repeated.

Bri
got up and went behind her and began to knead her shoulders, comforting them
both.

It
took little enough time to pour the tea over a strainer packed with jasmine tea
in each of their individualized mugs with a cowboy hat and their name. Jikata
gave the first to Raine, the second to Bri, and took the third, the weakest,
herself.

She
sat and so did Bri. They all drank in silence until Raine said, “We were all
dead, and Faucon…” She shuddered and it went around the table.

“Bad
one,” Calli said and Jikata knew she was seeing the remains of her husband and
herself and her beloved volarans.

After
another long silence, Jikata said, “The new Master sent the dream. It and the
Dark know we’re coming.”

Another
mass shudder. Eyes showing fear then faces turning stoic.

“Shit,”
Alexa said.

Jikata
lowered her voice. “He has dreeths for the volarans, doesn’t think we can reach
the hatchway in the bottom of the mountain.” She’d caught that flash of
knowledge from the Master’s mind.

All
attention focused on her.

Calli
said, “The volarans will be fine.”

They
stared at her, and Jikata was sure everyone was listening hard to her Song and
hearing her absolute confidence…and a secret she hadn’t imparted.

Raine
narrowed her eyes. “They can’t know how fast we’re coming.” She looked at
Jikata. “Did you get that? That he knows when we’ll be there?”

Mulling
over every nuance of her interaction with the Master, Jikata recalled that the
weather seemed colder than she’d thought, more winter than autumn. The setting
had always been determined by Ishi—by the Master Horror.

“Ttho,”
Jikata said. “You’re right, I don’t think it knows how fast we’re coming.”

Raine
switched her gaze to Marian. “You think that because I built the Ship and the
Master doesn’t have any of my DNA or Jikata’s we can get through the island
shield.”

Marian
stirred from brooding at her mead. “Ayes.”

“I
have a secret, too.” Raine looked at Calli, crossed her arms.

The
mood at the table lightened a little.

“Good
enough,” Marian said, then stared at Jikata. “Can you describe the new Master
as he is?”

“Hai.”
Jikata showed
her teeth in a smile. “He doesn’t speak Japanese. He doesn’t know my Japanese
name. He didn’t even
know
there was such a language.”

“No
other languages in Lladrana,
sí?
” Calli’s smile was faint, but true.

“I’ll
want an image of him to pass around,” Marian said with her old professorial
authority.

Jikata
grimaced. “No chance of missing him.” She drank her tea, finally noticing the
good flavor, and sighed. She’d loved it once, but not now. If she made it,
after
they’d
destroyed the Dark, she doubted she’d ever drink it again. “Another
advantage, he doesn’t know our disguises.”

“That’s
right,” Calli said, and swallowed. “I had blond hair.”

Alexa
looked straight across the table into Jikata’s eyes. “Tell me one thing, Singer
and prophet. In your visions, do any of us live?”

“Ayes,
sometimes all of us,” Jikata replied immediately, recalling her previous
visions, nothing the Dark had sent her. She still felt the heat of
embarrassment at being duped, but set that aside, sending them all the truth in
her heart. She looked around the table, hoping she lingered on each face
equally. “And since we’ve been practicing, the more we practice, the better
chance that we live, we
all
live.” Though she hadn’t had that in a
vision lately, she was sure of it in her bones.