Requiem (20 page)

Neb could sense the distaste and disregard now in the spider’s careful words and was surprised that he hadn’t sensed it before.
Still, they are not all so. These men have risked their lives to accompany me here.

Yes,
Aver-Tal-Ka said,
but do not mistake that for love. And do not for a moment let down your guard. The children fear the parents and yet long for their baubles.

He wanted to protest this, but the sudden image of Winters’s eyes upon him as he stood over her in his translated form, wrapped in light and infused with the blood of the earth, stopped him. He’d seen the fear in her eyes—in the eyes of everyone in that room but the regent. He had changed, he knew, and that change had terrified the girl he loved. Was it such a stretch to believe it might ultimately have that effect on everyone he’d once counted his friend?

Comfort. No despair.
Now, the spider used his mouth. “I’m sorry to upset you with this talk, Lord Whym. These sessions are meant to help you find peace, not conflict. Perhaps my own biases interfere. Forgive me.”

Neb inclined his head. The spider moved now, climbing slowly to its feet, and as he did, Neb tasted something new upon the wind. He drew in a great breath and separated out the flowers from the trees and grass and sand he smelled. Turning his head in the direction it came from, he saw the smudge of green on their horizon.

“There,” Aver-Tal-Ka pointed. “We will find her there.”

Neb thought about the girl they sailed after. She’d shown up in his thoughts regularly since their encounter, but she’d not appeared in his dreams since that first night. He’d even tried, stretching out for her with his carved kin-raven clutched tightly in his fist, but had not found her. All he’d found was the howling of hounds frustrated by his escape to sea and something else that he could not place—something old that watched him from someplace deep within the aether but did not announce itself.

The island took form ahead of them as Rafe and his men sailed them closer. They circled it once with Aver-Tal-Ka and the others standing at the rails to watch. It was a larger island with a hill rising from the center of it, blanketed by thick jungle that erupted into the cries of birds and the chattering of monkeys as they approached. Neb could hear each distinct voice in the jungle’s choir, and it was like no other music he had ever heard. There was life in it and in the smells that he drank in. The rich jungle loam, the blossoms and the ripening fruit, mingled with the musky, heavy scent of its inhabitants.

Aver-Tal-Ka’s voice slid into his head.
How many monkeys do you hear?

Eleven. No … fourteen.

He felt the spider’s pleasure rolling over him, washing him, and he flushed.
Very good.

Then, the spider scuttled off to ready the anchor and longboat.

It was earthrise when they landed ashore. They’d brought the scout sergeant, Olynder, along with Rafe and Petronus. The two old men carried thorn rifles, and the Gypsy Scout carried a pickaxe and shovel, his bow slung. Aver-Tal-Ka went ahead of them, using three of its arms to clear a path, and Neb followed close behind, the kin-raven clenched tightly in his fist.

Amylé.

When they reached the top of the hill, the spider tore out a swath of ground cover. Then, the scout broke the ground and started shoveling earth away until he struck metal.

Neb recognized the hatch the forester uncovered and knew exactly what the cipher was to unlock it. Kneeling before it, he spun the dials and moved the levers until he’d entered the date of his birth based on the forgotten calendar of the Younger Gods.

Then he swung the hatch open and felt the true presence of her for the first time despite the leagues that still separated them. And, for the first time in his life, despite having been an orphan of the Order, Neb understood just how truly alone he’d been.

Winters

Late-morning sun softened the snow into muddy slush as Winters and Charles rode into Kendrick’s Town. Winters had never been this far south—Windwir had been the farthest she’d visited. It was a quiet town, but it was obvious by the condition of the road that a large army had passed through recently.

She let Charles take the lead, bringing her horse in behind his and hoping that the shadows of her hood would hide her scars. They skirted the edge of the town, and she watched the old man as he paused to measure the sun before steering them away from the cluster of buildings and onto a narrow path that ran through the woods.

The farmhouse and its solitary barn stood in a clearing, half a league deep into the pine forest that surrounded the town. Charles pulled up, then climbed down from the saddle before entering the clearing to approach the house.

Winters dismounted as well, leading her horse as she followed after. The scout knife at her hip whispered for her hand to pull it, but she resisted.

Charles looked over his shoulder and caught her eye. “There are eyes upon us,” he said.

Even as he said it, Winters felt the slightest breeze and heard the muffled cough of magicked feet on snow. She turned in the direction of the noise, but as soon as she did, it stopped.

She stopped as well and waited while Charles stepped up to the door and knocked. The man who opened it wore the clothing of a farmer, but his eyes told Winters another story. He was tall, his salt-and-pepper hair cut close.

“Come in, Brother Charles,” he said. “Gustav will take your horse.”

The door opened wider, and a young man stepped out, tugging on a coat. His eyes, she noted, were also wrong for the attire he wore, and he walked more like a scout than a farm boy.

Charles handed him the reins. “Are you Hebda?”

The man shook his head. “No,” he said. “I am Renard. You met me long ago in the Wastes when I ran them with my father.”

She heard surprise in the old man’s voice. “Remus’s son?”

Renard inclined his head. “The same.” He leaned outside and looked to the left and right. “But let’s continue this conversation inside.” Then, as an afterthought, he smiled. “We have hot chai. And venison stew.”

Winters felt her stomach growl and thought she caught the faintest scent of fresh bread leaking from the house’s door. Charles stamped the snow from his boots and went inside. Winters stepped forward and held out her reins to Gustav, but he did not take them. Instead, the young man shot a furtive glance to Renard.

His smile apologized before he did. “I’m sorry, Lady Winteria. These are Androfrancine matters.”

Winters shook her head. “They are far more than that, now.”

Another voice interrupted from deeper inside the house. “Let her in, Renard. Her dreams are bound up in this. Tertius showed us that.”

Tertius.
The name startled her, flooding her with memories of the old man and his patient smile. He’d been old when her father had brought him to her, and he’d spent his last years teaching her reading, ciphering, and history among other things. And as the dreaming found her in her early years, she talked about them with him and tried to answer his questions.

Gustav took the reins and slipped off to the barn. Winters took it as her cue to climb onto the porch, stomp her own boots free of snow, and follow Charles inside.

Renard closed the door and ushered them down a narrow hallway that opened into a wide room. In one corner, a stove crackled and the kettle upon it hissed. Near it, a gaunt, hollow-eyed man sat at a table. “Come in,” he said, gesturing to empty chairs. “Sit.”

Renard moved to a chair by a curtained window and sat at it, peeking out over the calico fabric to watch the yard.

Charles pulled off his coat and draped it over the back of the chair. “Arch-behaviorist Hebda, then?”

The man nodded. “Yes, Arch-engineer Charles.”

He sat. “Of the Office for the Preservation of the Light?”

Winters pulled her own coat off, hung it in like manner, and sat. Another young man materialized with a platter of bread, two empty mugs, and two steaming bowls.

Hebda nodded. “Yes. Though I doubt you’ve heard of me.”

Charles shook his head. “Not until yesterday.”

Winters watched the man. He moved as if beneath great weight, and his eyes were as devoid of life as the Churning Wastes. “I have heard of you,” she said in a quiet voice.

The man flinched. “I suppose you have at that. Neb’s told you about me.”

She nodded. “Not much. But he thinks you were killed in Windwir. I know he dreamed of you, though.” When the memory struck her, it was like a blow and she was surprised. She remembered a voice and an image, though it was vague. “I dreamed of you, too, I think.”

“Yes,” he said. “You did. And Neb now knows that I’m alive. We spoke before he left.”

She heard Renard’s soft growl from across the room, but Hebda’s words kept her focus squarely upon him. “You saw Neb before he left?”

Hebda sighed. “I did. It was a … difficult encounter.”

She opened her mouth to ask the obvious question, but Charles spoke first. “Then the boy is alive,” the old man said. She could hear the incredulousness in his voice. “He survived the explosion.”

Hebda nodded. “We do not know all of the details, but we do know that somehow Nebios reached the antiphon despite his diversion north.” He looked at Winters when he said it, and their eyes met briefly before he looked away. “Barring the unforeseen, he, Father Petronus and a handful of others—including five of the Sanctorum Lux mechoservitors—have reached the moon and seek the Moon Wizard’s Tower.”

She felt the breath go out of her even as a shudder passed through her body.
He’d reached the moon.
She knew Hebda hadn’t exactly said that, but she had to believe that if Neb indeed survived his encounter with the Watcher then he’d also survive whatever else must be survived and prepare their new home. Because he had to.

Because I need him to.

Charles continued. “How is the Order involved in this? And how many of you have survived Windwir?” He leaned forward with narrow eyes. “I know about Orius. Isaak and I encountered his scouts in the Beneath Places.”

Hebda also leaned forward. “Some of us have survived. Knowing more than that jeopardizes our work and our survival—and the survival of the light. But there are enough that we’ve managed to keep some intelligence assets operational. Not enough to stave off the Y’Zirite invasion. As to how we are involved … I’ll let Micah explain that.”

At the mention of the name, Winters heard the hiss of releasing steam and the grinding of gears as a metal man stirred to life and lumbered into the room.

“Father,” it said as it approached. “It is good to see you.”

This mechoservitor was older than Isaak—more boxlike in its construction—but like that metal man, it also wore robes. Winters watched it approach, then watched the old engineer’s face as he regarded his metal creation. She wished she had the Francine ability to accurately read emotion; in this case, she saw several, though she hesitated to name them.

“You are Mechoservitor Number Four, First Generation,” Charles said.

“Yes,” it said, its bellows giving the voice a reedy quality. “But my chosen name is Micah.”

“Micah,” Hebda said in a low voice, “was the first to approach us about the canticle and its antiphon. He and the other mechoservitors of Sanctorum Lux discovered the artifact and deciphered it, though a mandate coded into it prevented them from involving us initially.”

“The dream was not intended for your kind,” Micah said. “Your exclusion was for the benefit of the light.”

Hebda continued. “I became involved when an infant was brought to me by the mechoservitors and placed into the Order’s care.” He nodded toward Renard. “It was his sister’s child, though now we understand that his sister merely served as an incubator.”

Winters blinked. “Neb is not your son?”

Hebda lowered his eyes. “I’ve tried to love him as if he were. But no. He is not.”

She looked at Renard. “And your sister
incubated
him.” It wasn’t a question, but he still nodded. As he did, something in Winters that she’d tried to keep hidden stirred back to life. The image of Neb, blazing in glory, his face twisted in fear and his eyes full of rage as he burst into her room. The feeling of his hands upon her as the pain fled and her wounds healed. She’d been afraid then, and even now that fear chewed at her heart. But now, that fear went deeper.

“What is he?”

Her question hung in the room uncomfortably until the mechoservitor released a gout of steam and worked its eye shutters. “The Homeseeker is the offspring of the Younger God Whym.”

Winters’s mouth went dry, and when she reached for the mug she realized it was still empty. Hebda saw and stood quickly to fetch the kettle. “He is also somehow a brother of P’Andro and T’Erys Whym, though we do not yet understand it.”

Charles’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t see how that could be possible.”

Hebda filled the mugs. “As I said, we don’t understand it yet either. Any more than we understand how it is that the Marsher dream and the dream buried in the canticle are interwoven. But they are. And that brings us to the matter at hand.” He looked at Winters and then back to the arch-engineer. “We are aware of the dreams you are having, Charles. Glimpses of them are showing up in the aether.”

Charles sipped his chai. “The aether?”

“The aether is an artificially constructed environment to contain and affect dreaming—to share it, even, with others. Something left over from the Age of the Younger Gods. A recreational pursuit, we believe, though there may have been therapeutic and educational uses as well.” He held up a small stone that Winters recognized. One of the mechoservitors had pressed a similar stone to her head when it had revealed the Marshfolk’s new home to her. “This stone allows access.”

She saw competing emotions on Charles’s face now. Frustration and curiosity both vying for primacy. “I’m surprised,” he said, “that I’ve not heard of such a thing until now.” He held out his hand. “May I?”

Hebda shook his head. “The artifact requires a great deal of training to use it properly. And not using it properly could mean betraying our location here.”