Summoning Light (30 page)

"I'm waking him up. Come on, Blaylock, you're not going to sleep through this, are you?"

Galen's view shifted as Rabelna stood and walked around Tilar to see what was happening. He had Blaylock's wrist clasped between his knees, Blaylock's palm facing up.

Galen closed his eyes, but the vision remained. From somewhere Tilar had produced a knife, and he cut a deep channel from the heel of Blaylock's hand down the length of the index finger. Blood spilled down Blaylock's palm. Tilar dug into the wound with the knife, searching for the threads of tech within.

Blaylock's body remained limp, his lips slightly parted, eyes closed.

"Cast me away," Tilar said. "Tell me I'm unfit. You and your pathetic cult of holier-than-thou pompous mono-pricks! Claiming the mages are blessed by God. Do you laugh at night, that so many believe you? Or do you really believe that manure you peddle?" The knife point came out, pulling with it slender strands of gold intertwined with blood vessels, tissue, muscle. Tilar slipped bloody fingers around them, pulled. "Do you hear God, Blaylock? He wants his tech back. He's found you unfit. You ate that extra piece of cake last winter. He saw it." With a yank he ripped the threads out with slimy bits of tissue. A fresh gush of blood ran down Blaylock's hand, soaking into his jacket sleeve and the knees of Tilar's pants, and dripping down onto the floor.

Tilar shook the threads off, started carving a second channel down Blaylock's palm. "Better wake up, or you're not going to be a mage anymore."

Galen forced himself to limp faster, his body racing with fear and adrenaline, the tech echoing it back.

If Tilar wanted to inflict pain, why not use his chrysalis? Elizar had used his tech to flay Kell with clean, surgical lines. Tilar performed the same atrocity, but his method was brutal, monstrous.

Galen had dreamed of doing just the same to Elizar.

He heard footsteps ahead, around the curve in the tunnel. He would not hide; he would not slow. There was no time.

Two aliens came around the curve, wheeling a gurney toward them. The aliens were humanoid, tall and slim, with greyish skin, bulbous heads, large black eyes, and narrow mouths. They appeared unarmed.

The aliens raised their heads, regarding him curiously. G'Leel shoved him forward. "Move it, you low-rent fortune-teller."

Galen stumbled toward them, pain shooting up his leg. He could see, now, a body on the gurney. The woman wore a jumpsuit that looked as if it had once been orange but now was covered with a uniform greyish stain. It was much too big for her. Along her sides lay her hands, thin, almost skeletal. Her fingernails were several inches long, and they had begun to twist into spirals. Dark hair lay in an oily mat against her shoulders and head. Her eyes were closed, with half circles of dark skin below them. Fitted over her head was the delicate metal device he'd seen being produced in a factory. The sculpted formation ran from cheeks to temple to forehead and disappeared beneath her hair.

He regained his balance as he came alongside the gurney. Some sort of energy was emanating from her, or from the device fastened to her. He slowed, trying to analyze it. The frequency of its vibration was strange, like a heartbeat, or the echo of a heartbeat.

G'Leel laid a hand on his back, urging him ahead. Yet for some reason he couldn't look away from the woman.

Her skeletal hand shot out, seized his wrist. Her eyes snapped open, and she trembled with the intensity of her grip. She jerked his hand to the side of her face, to one of the sculpted strands of metal.

The connection formed instantly between them.

Anna.

She hungered for the machine. Without it, she was a bodiless spirit, lacking purpose or direction. She needed to coordinate, to synchronize, to strike, to fulfill the needs of the machine, to follow the direction of the Eye. She longed for the dizzying delight of movement, the exhilarating leap to hyperspace, the joy of the war cry. Even separated from her ship, she could think only of serving, of incorporating herself into the great body of the machine. She needed to have her body back again, to beat out the perfect, flawless march, to shriek the red ecstasy of fire. She and the machine must be one: a great engine of chaos and destruction.

Beside her, she sensed such a machine. Its touch promised all she desired. She must have it.

His breath suddenly became deeper, pain stabbing at his side with each inhalation. Deeper breaths, she judged, were more efficient. His chest rose and fell with hers. The heel of his hand was pressed against her neck, and through it, he felt the eager beat of her pulse. His own pounded in synchrony. His mind's eye flashed with a rapid series of sensor readings, lists of systems and programs stored within him. His leg tingled, and he realized she had discovered the damage and was speeding his organelles in their repair. His control was slipping away, a startling, unnerving sensation.

G'Leel had turned her gun on the aliens. Their black eyes were staring at him.

As if of its own will, his free hand rose, and he watched as it moved toward the other side of her head. She would coordinate his systems, serve as the central processing unit of his body. The bond between them must be made more efficient and complete.

Galen forced his mind's eye to go blank, and with all his will he yanked his hand free. "No!" He stumbled back, the connection suddenly broken.

She reached for him, fingers straining.

Galen found he'd backed against the wall. Yet she no longer frightened him. She'd had no chance of retaining control once he resisted. She was meant to be a slave, while he'd been trained to be a master.

Her dark eyes were consumed with emptiness and hunger.

They had removed her from the wreckage. They were going to wire her into the excavated ship. That connection was what she most wanted.

"Galen!"

He realized G'Leel had been calling his name. "Yes," he said, still struggling to regain his equilibrium.

"These two are unarmed." She had forced the two aliens away from the gurney, but seemed hesitant to kill them. The thin white scar across her nose was prominent in the dim light.

Bits of Anna's memories seemed to have stayed with him. "They are butchers. They turn intelligent beings into components for their machines."

The aliens stared at him. With their large eyes and thin, narrow mouths, they gave the impression of being sad. That, he knew, was not the case.

Galen suddenly realized he'd lost contact with the probe on Rabelna. Quickly he accessed it. She had turned away from Tilar and Blaylock. All he could see was Bunny, sitting in the corner with crossed legs, the top one swinging impatiently.

"I should be going," Rabelna said. "This really is not my area of expertise."

Galen willed her to turn around. He had to see Blaylock.

"We have need of you," Elizar said. "Wait beside the door."

Rabelna did not move.

"Are you finished yet?" Elizar said. "He's not waking."

"He will." Tilar's voice was strained, as if with exertion.

"Galen!" G'Leel said.

He forced his attention back to the stone tunnel. He had to immobilize the aliens, had to get to Blaylock. The smart thing to do would be to use a minimum of energy. Avoid detection as long as possible – if they hadn't already been detected. Giving Anna a wide berth, he went to the aliens. One held up a hand in seeming fear, his long, thick fingers trembling.

Galen palmed two of the tranq tabs from his coat pocket. He made a distracting flourish before the alien's face with one hand, while with the other he reached up to press the tranq on the back of the alien's neck. Then he did the same to the second alien. The tranqs were formulated for Drakh; he had no idea whether they'd do anything to these aliens, whether they'd knock the aliens out or kill them. All he cared was that they do something fast.

"What good was that?" G'Leel asked.

The two aliens fell against each other, wilted to the floor.

"Oh," G'Leel said.

From the gurney, Anna watched him. He couldn't leave her, he realized. He couldn't allow her to be enslaved again to a machine. Killing her would probably be a mercy, but he wasn't prepared to do that. Perhaps there was some way, in time, to help her recover what she had once been. Of course, it was unlikely that any of them would get out of here alive.

"Bring her with us." Galen limped ahead, the pain shooting through him with each step. "Hurry."

G'Leel wheeled Anna, and they found their way through the maze of tunnels to Blaylock's level without encountering anyone else. At this depth, the tunnels were about twice as wide as before. They should have been heavily trafficked. Galen had become certain they were walking into a trap. But there was no time for strategy or deception. He had to reach Blaylock.

They were within fifty feet of Rabelna's probe now; the door to the white room had to be around the next curve.

Galen heard the hint of movement behind them. He looked back. The curve of the tunnel concealed the sound's source.

He stilled G'Leel with a touch, hurried to one of the doors in the side of the tunnel. He pressed a few buttons on the keypad. The door required a specific code. He had no time to decipher it.

"Get against the wall," he whispered to G'Leel. "Quickly."

She wheeled the gurney to the side of the passage, and Galen pressed up against the cold stone beside her. He visualized the equation, conjured an illusion that the stone wall was in front of them rather than behind them, that the curve of the passage was slightly sharper than it actually was. "Be silent," he said.

From their point of view, the illusory wall was no more than a dark screen. G'Leel turned her head anxiously from side to side, looking for whatever Galen had heard. A few seconds later, several aliens came into view, traveling in the same direction Galen and G'Leel had been. They were clearly soldiers, protected by black body armor and carrying heavy-duty weapons of an unfamiliar design. After a moment, Galen recognized them as Drakh.

They were not the same type of Drakh he'd seen before; they had no protuberances on the backs of their heads. These were the second Drakh type described by the mage Osiyrin in his ancient treatise, those who did not speak. Their eyes glowed brilliant red. Jagged white exoskeletons covered most of the grey skin of their heads. They were shorter than the other Drakh, more muscular. Osiyrin had said they were soldiers and workers.

More came down the passage, about two dozen in all, and they passed by Galen and G'Leel, disappearing around the next curve. The Drakh were not trying to keep them from the room where Blaylock was held; these soldiers were here to ensure that they reached it.

Galen looked back the way they had come, saw no more Drakh. He was about to dissolve the illusion when he picked up a hint of static. A sharp-edged shape came into view, moving in the same direction as the Drakh, following at a safe distance. Its silhouette crawled with white dots of interference. The static shifted with that same suggestion of scissor-like action he'd sensed before. He could almost make out legs, ahead.

Beside him, G'Leel shifted, and he realized that she believed they were safe. He pressed her back.

Several other Shadows followed this one. He thought he could see them swiveling their heads, studying the tunnel.

In his mind's eye, Rabelna at last turned, and Galen saw Tilar bent over Blaylock. Tilar was at work on the other hand now, the brilliant white of his shirt drenched in blood up to the elbows. Rabelna moved quickly away to stand near the door.

In the tunnel, one of the Shadows stopped its forward movement, its head tilted toward them. The body of static grew larger as it approached. Galen stopped breathing. He was racing with energy, desperate to reach Blaylock, cursing himself for getting into such a position.

The other Shadows hesitated now, looking toward this one.

The Shadow stopped in front of the false wall, and its head turned back and forth. It moved closer.

"Stop, now," Elizar said within the white room. "This is pointless. He's just going to bleed to death."

The static shape bent toward them, its head arching forward, coming up against the illusion of the wall, penetrating the wall. Something happened to the Shadow as it passed through the plane of the illusion. Through the dark screen came a head of shining blackness, its own veil of illusion vanished.

G'Leel jumped.

Fourteen pinpoints of light formed its eyes, and as they turned from Anna to G'Leel to Galen, they glowed like tiny furnaces of malice. The creature let out a high, piercing shriek.

Galen dissolved the illusion as the spell of destruction formed in his mind like a thunderclap. Energy fell upon him with crushing pressure in layer upon layer upon layer, then shot out, capturing the Shadow in a sphere. Its shriek hushed as the sound was sealed within. Yet other Shadows took up the call.

The sphere began to redden and darken, the Shadow a fading body of static with a head of pure blackness. G'Leel pushed Anna away from it, and Galen followed. Space became fluid, and the back of G'Leel's head rippled as if something beneath were pushing to escape. The tunnel began to distort, stone walls undulating in waves. Twisting and flowing, the other static shapes glided back the way they'd come.

They were responsible for all that had happened. They wrapped themselves in shadows, working behind the scenes, manipulating others. And from that safety, they encouraged treachery, provoked wars, inspired murder.

Galen had held in his anger, his need to act against them, all this time. But he would wait no longer.

The Shadows could hide no more.

He focused on one Shadow after the next, conjuring the one-term equation again, again, encasing one after the next in a sphere of destruction. The energy fell upon him, burned out of him, at last finding its release.

Answering the calls of the Shadows, the Drakh ran down the passage, weapons at the ready. But when they found their masters trapped within the darkening spheres, they hesitated. G'Leel yanked her gun up, fired. Most retreated in confusion around the curve of the tunnel, while the three nearest turned on G'Leel with their weapons. Before they had a chance to fire, Galen seized them within a single sphere.