Skybuilders (Sorcery and Science Book 4) (13 page)

“The Helleans made their portals with science?” Leonidas asked.

“Yes. Yes. With flashy, bouncy bursts of energy. Technology made to imitate magic.” He shook his head. “But they aren't the same. Not the same at all.”

“How long have you been here?” Ariella asked. “Has it been since you disappeared in the Red Woods?”

“I’ve not seen the red trees since that day.” He coughed. “Many, many days and nights. Running, running, running. Always running.”

Ariella caught him as he stumbled forward. Silas fought the urge to step back. Keys stank like old sweat and fresh blood. And like madness. Most of all like madness.

“Portal went pop. Sucked me up and spit me out. I fell in the water. Cold water under the city. Men in white pulled me out like a fish caught on a hook.”

“Keys was trying to create portals,” Ariella explained. “There was a wave of energy, and then he was gone. And so was the portal. We had no idea where he'd ended up and we couldn’t follow.”

Silas wasn’t surprised that was the secret project he’d been working on. It was exactly the sort of thing a crazy, brilliant man like Keys would try to do. It was too bad the experiment had driven him even crazier.

“So, the portal dropped you into the ocean beneath a floating city, and the Helleans pulled you out,” Silas prompted him.

“Yes. Men in white. Men living in the clouds. Bad men. Very, very bad men. They wanted to know about portals.” His voice shook. “All about portals. Only about portals. They asked and asked and asked. They wanted their own portals.”

Silas looked him over. The dirt and blood were a couple months old, but the crack in his mind was even older. “They tortured him.”

Keys pushed back, out of Ariella’s arms. “So many times they asked. I said nothing. They hurt me. Still, I said nothing. Then they brought out the serums. Vile, horrible potions.” Tears gathered in his eyes and he looked down, shame oozing off of him like thick sludge. “I was too weak.”

“It’s not your fault.” When Ariella set her hand on his shoulder, Keys recoiled. He ran over to the rocks and slid down until he was sitting, his head buried in his knees.

“So the Hellean portals are new,” Leonidas said. “That would explain why we’ve never heard of them before.”

“The Helleans have many secrets unknown to the rest of us. Even to spies,” Silas said.

“That’s true,” replied Leonidas. “And troubling.”

“Though it does seem their portals are a very recent development. And they used Keys’s knowledge to make them.” Silas looked down at the Cipher, whose shoulders shook as he sobbed. “Keys.”

He continued to shake and sob, as though he hadn’t heard. Silas pulled him to his feet. He’d never been tall or strong, but now he looked as frail as a skeleton.

“Pull yourself together. We need answers.”

“Leave him be, Silas,” said Ariella. “Can’t you see there’s nothing left of him? His mind is gone.”

Silas ignored her. “Keys, when the Helleans got everything they wanted from you, they threw you in here?”

Tears streamed down Keys’s dirty face, streaking his cheeks with twisted lines. “Yes. To see how long I’d survive in their laboratories.”

“Laboratories? You mean these strange environments?” Leonidas asked.

Keys nodded. “So many monsters. So many machines. They want to eat me.”

“How many portals are there? Where do they lead?” Silas asked.

Keys's eyes widened, and he screamed out in terror.

“Where do they lead?” Silas repeated, shaking him harder this time. He could hear the man’s bones rattling against one another.

“Silas, stop.” Ariella looked at him, horrified. “He’s already suffered enough. Leave him alone.”

“I'll just extract it from him.”

Ariella put herself between Silas and Keys. “No.”

“He'll be fine.”

“Um, speaking as someone who’s been on the receiving end of two of your extractions, I must disagree.” Leonidas looked at Keys. “Man, I’d just tell the big guy what he wants to know.”

“I’m sure he'd like to,” Ariella told him. “But his mind is not all there.” She matched Silas’s movement as he tried to go around her. “It’s so cracked that an extraction would kill him, Silas.”

Before Silas could move her aside, Keys let out a shrill shriek and took off running, disappearing through the sliver in the rocks. Silas stepped up to it, then spun around to stare down Ariella.

“It’s too small for me too fi through,” he growled.

“I’m sure you could make the crack bigger. By pulling it open. Or smashing it down. Or maybe just hitting it with one of your infamous white-eyed glares until it opened up for you,” Leonidas said.

“This isn't funny, spy.”

Ariella caught his hand and looked up. “We have bigger problems.”

Silas heard them coming. The scrape of flapping metal wings hummed in his ears, growing louder as the flock swarmed in. He could picture their smooth silver bodies and dagger wings. He didn’t even need to look. But if he wanted to have any chance of fighting them, he really had to.

Keys had made it back to the top edge of the cliff. He stood there, his mad eyes staring out at the silver streaks in the sky. Like so many other things Hellean, it was not real. It had been painted in indigo strokes, a color made to hide the distinctive metal beams above. As he’d expected, this environment was part of a floating city. If only Silas knew which one.

Unfortunately, there was no window nearby to stare out of. Not that it really mattered anyway. He could already hear the hum in his ears and feel the buzz against his skin. The next vanishing portal would soon appear, throwing them along to their next destination. Every jump brought them closer to Hayden and Ian. He could feel it in his blood.
Her
blood. They just had to get to the portal.

“Do you have some more of those bombs, Leonidas?” Ariella asked him, her eyes locked on the birds.

The swarm was twice as big this time. They'd be there in seconds.

“Yes, though I’d prefer not to have to use too many. Who knows what friendly monster we’ll meet next.”

Up on the cliff, Keys had closed his eyes and spread his arms wide. The portal was starting to open. Light swirled around Keys, engulfing him. Silas looked at the crack in the rock, the only thing between him and the portal. He pounded his fist down in frustration. Tiny crumbs of broken stone sprinkled off the rock face, but the crack didn’t get any bigger. The portal burst like a firework, and then it was gone. And so was Keys.

Unfortunately, the metal birds were not. And they were nearly there. Silas turned his back on the wall of rock and drew two of his blades.

* * *

526AX August 22, The Golden Canyon

Taking out the birds was actually the easy part. The hard part was finding their way up to the top of that cliff so they could catch the next portal when it appeared. After pounding at the crack in the rock for a good hour, Silas gave up. In all that time, he hadn’t managed to widen it enough for even Ariella to slip through. On the other hand, his fists were bloody and a few of his bones were in the process of mending back together. Again. He’d lost count of how many times they’d already broken and healed.

Leonidas offered to throw a few bombs at the rock face, but he’d probably just bring down the entire hill. And then they’d be no closer to the portal.

So that left only one reasonable option: they had to climb up. With no ropes. Leonidas balked at the idea, and even Ariella didn’t look too pleased. So Silas had told them to suck it up and just climb. And they had.

Exactly one day after the portal’s last appearance, Silas felt the familiar weight in the air. His fingers tingled with the prickles of dancing energy, and he stood up.

“Is that a camera?” Leonidas asked, also standing.

Silas looked up at the seven snowball-sized orbs, bobbing in the sky like tree ornaments. Their clear surfaces allowed them to blend into the sky, spying on unsuspecting visitors. He’d seen them yesterday but had decided not to mention it to Ariella and Leonidas. The two of them were jumpy enough already.

“Several,” Silas said. “We're being watched.”

Ariella rose to her feet. “It really brings you back, doesn’t it?”

Silas nodded at her reference to the flying cameras that had tracked their every move through the Solstice Games.

Leonidas looked up, putting on an exaggerated smile as he waved at the nearest one. “How comforting.”

Ariella caught his hand. “What are you doing?”

“They already know we’re here. They’ve been watching us.”

“Yes, but they don’t know that we know they’re watching.”

His smile faded. “Oh.”

“Very stealthy, spy,” commented Silas. He turned to Ariella. “He’s as bad as Marin. The only thing keeping the two of them from blowing up the world is an inadequate supply of explosives.”

“A lack of explosives wouldn’t stop Marin from blowing something up. She’d manage to mix up a volatile concoction with nothing more than table salt and socks,” Ariella said, smiling.

Leonidas snorted, but Silas was not fooled. The spy’s cheeks were moist with tears. Silas and Ariella pretended to glance up at the cameras again, so he could discreetly wipe them away. Whatever his faults
—
betrayal and lying among them
—
Leonidas really did care about Marin.

The pressure on Silas’s head increased, and everything began to shift around him. The sky’s indigo was melting away, giving way to a pale blue. The golden rocks were fading into a patchwork of white and brown, and the warm humid air was hardening to an icy chill.

“It’s coming,” he announced.

“Where?” asked Ariella.

Silas pointed down at his feet. “Right here.”

“How long?”

“Now.”

A cold wind swallowed them up, puffing and howling as ice particles crept through Silas’s tightly woven synthetic threads. Funnels of snow danced all around him, whirling and twirling toward the ice-blue sky. A mixture of frozen mud and crushed slush crunched under his boots.

A frozen wasteland stretched as far as Silas could see. Even catching the sparkling reflection of snow against metal beams high up in the sky
—
even knowing they were standing inside yet another simulated environment in a floating city
—
he couldn't help but shiver.

Wet with sweat and the humid air of the previous area, all of their clothes began to steam, cloaking them behind a partial layer of fog. Silas focused his eyes, trying to see past the dancing snowflakes and steam soup.

A gap opened, just large enough for him to make out a tall metal structure standing directly in their path. Silas panned up the rounded grey-black surface, his temples pounding ever harder as his eyes worked higher, putting together the pieces of a puzzle he did not want to solve. Feet, legs, torso, arms, hands…a neckless head screwed directly onto wide shoulders.

A golem. Four meters tall, the hunk of polished metal was so masterfully constructed it was easy to forget that it could crush them flat with a single stomp.

Silas looked past the golem, out across the field that spread out in front of them. Three identical constructs lined both sides of the wide path, six together. That was seven counting the giant towering over them. Seven golems. Silas had never seen more than two together, and he'd never taken on more than one at a time. To face one was a death sentence. Seven, on the other hand
…
Seven was an all-out apocalypse.

Silas drew his twin Crescent swords and crouched down, preparing to spring. An arm’s length away, Ariella drew her sword, craning her neck up to take in the golem. And for the first time he could remember, he heard her swear.

CHAPTER TWELVE

~
Field of Giants ~

526AX August 23, The Frozen Field

THE WIND’S ICY fangs bit at Ariella’s cheek, piercing her skin. The bodysuit Leonidas had procured for her was made of some sleek unnatural fabric that kept her dry and warm under most conditions, but it had obviously not been designed to withstand a blizzard. Her skin was damp with sweat. It had been so hot where they’d been, that she’d dipped her head under a fountain at the top of the cliff. Her hair was still wet, and her waterlogged ponytail sagged over her shoulder with the weight of an enormous overcooked noodle.

None of these were reasons to slack off her duty to sow the frozen field with golem parts. She stood ready with Starsoul, its silky violet surface twinkling with the reflected lights of a million tiny snowflakes. Silas had already drawn the largest blades on him, two moderately curved Crescent swords with ninety-centimeter blades and red lanyards attached to the hilts. He liked to joke that they were ‘twin knives’. Twin two-handed swords
—
each wielded one-handed by the behemoth Phantom
—
would have been closer to the truth.

“So, what am I aiming for? Eyes? Ears? Golems’ unmentionable parts?” Leonidas asked.

At Ariella’s side, the spy dug his hands into his pockets, digging out two grape-sized discs. Just one of those bombs had proved potent enough to take out a squad of armored mechanical eagles. Two ought to be enough to bring a few golems to their knees.

Had Marin been there, she would have already dissected one of those bombs and figured out how to make a hundred more. There were times when Ariella really missed having their airship scientist turned bomb maker along, Marin’s starry-eyed tangents into the inner workings of her favorite technological doodads notwithstanding.

“How would I know?” she replied.

“Golems are made by magic, right? Elitions know a lot about magic. I figured you could tell me their weak spots.”

“Before five minutes ago, I’d never seen a golem.”

“Hmm.” Leonidas nodded toward Silas. “But I’ll bet
he
has.”

Indeed it was true that Silas had been eyeing the golems with a wary look that she'd rarely seen grace his face. That didn't bode well for their upcoming fight. As of yet, the golems hadn't shown the slightest sign of aggression. They hadn't shouted, stomped, or swung the swords they held in their hands. They hadn't even budged a millimeter. They could just as well have been inert statues, decorations to dress up the drab scenery.