The Last of the Ageless (58 page)

She whispered, “I was going to distribute all his knowledge, disperse it as the Prophet himself did. But this time, to everyone.”

Her gaze moved over Korreth’s crumpled form to Jorrim. Realization dawned in her eyes—the first time Jorrim had seen fear in her expression.

Jorrim said, “Make her pay.”

But Gryid turned away and threw himself to the ground near Kaia’s body. Soledad bolted.

Rage built up in Jorrim, starting in his veins and bursting from his pores. Adrenaline pounded through him, and he pushed himself up against the wall. Fury gave him the strength to chase her through the waist-high grasses.

The anguish inside him said she wouldn’t get away, but the pain in his ankle lanced with every step, and every breath tore from his chest. He fell farther behind, tired and wounded, while Soledad would be forever fresh and unwinded.

“Soledad!” Summoning the last of his strength, Jorrim ignored the pain and raised the rifle. He fired, and the shot sheared off the tops of the grasses beside her. She stopped and faced him, her age paralleling his own. Her dark eyes bored into him, like she was waiting for him to say something. Something important.

He lowered the weapon. “Korreth is dying because of you.”

Still she stared at him.

The words poured out of him in between gasping breaths, “He shouldn’t be the one. It should be me. Korreth has children. A family to go home to.”

Soledad’s lips moved, but Jorrim couldn’t hear her over the whispering of the grasses. She retraced her path through the trampled grasses toward him, her arms open wide, hands catching tufts as she slid toward youth. Her whispering continued until she stood in front of him.

Then she raised her voice. “You should take care of your friend.”

She grabbed his left wrist and looked him in the eye. “Lay your hands on him and say these words:
Curen sus heridas.
Then my friends will take care of you.”

Soledad let go of him and retraced her path toward the north once again.

Jorrim’s chest constricted. He raised the SCL and fired. The red sphere flew through her back, just between the shoulder blades. Soledad fell, disappearing into the grasses. She reappeared as an adult, whole again, with a perfect circle in her shirt above her diaphragm.

“I suppose I deserved that.” She flicked a grass tuft from her sleeve. As he watched, her Ancient clothing repaired itself. “Hurry back to Korreth if you want him to live.”

His eyes widened when the breeze picked up. Jorrim turned on his heel and rushed back to the broken stone wall where Korreth lay. In the heat of the moment, he’d forgotten the words.

Korreth’s head was bathed in blood. He wheezed, his breathing shallow.

The world blurred, and Jorrim grabbed Korreth by the arm. “Your children are waiting for you, Korreth. You can’t leave yet.”

He closed his eyes and focused on Soledad’s lips and the words they had formed. His eyes flashed open, the answer pouring over his tongue. “
Curen sus heridas!
”

He’d known better than to expect magic, but the lack of change in Korreth’s condition crushed Jorrim’s hopes. He stared at his friend, willing his chest to continue its rise and descent.

Soledad had played her final trick, manipulating him one last time. He bowed his head.

He’d been concentrating so hard on his friend, he didn’t notice the changes in his own body at first, but his aches gradually faded. The black and purple stain still spread across his ankle, though the pain was gone.

He’d told Korreth he thought the nanotech took care of the pain first before fully healing their wounds.

His eyes jumped back to Korreth, who looked much the same. Jorrim shivered in the dying light of the day and waited.

He couldn’t be sure, but the bleeding on his friend’s head seemed to slow. He rose and limped over to the giant’s corpse. His cyborg eyes no longer glowed, but Jorrim still found himself tiptoeing by him. Without taking his attention off him, Jorrim scooped up Soledad’s forgotten cloak.

When he returned to Korreth’s side, he wiped the blood from his friend’s face and neck. To his relief, no fresh blood appeared.

Korreth’s cough startled Jorrim awake. He hadn’t meant to doze off, but day faded toward night.

Korreth’s eyelids fluttered. “Jorrim? What happened?”

He took in a chestful of air and smiled. “It’s over, my friend. Zen is dead. We’re safe.”

“Where’s Soledad?”

“Gone.”

“Then… we’re truly free?”

“It was always part of her plan.” Jorrim motioned at the dead cyborg, but Korreth didn’t raise his head to look. “She took the nanotech from us so she could defeat him.”

“And then she gave them back to heal us,” Korreth said. “But didn’t enslave us again.”

“I… wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Chapter 32

Dalan’s three-toed hooves crushed the grasses. With his tail stretched out behind, he nimbly covered the uneven terrain and soon caught up to the Wizard. He flowed through ages, never getting out of breath, but that didn’t mean he could run any faster.

Dalan overtook him and then headed him off. He snaked his muscular tail around the Wizard. As the Ageless shifted ages in his grip, he tightened his hold.

“Look.” The Wizard winced as his ribcage tried to expand. “If you join us, I’ll give up the others, hmmm? In a few years, Zen and I won’t need unwilling allies anyway, we’ll have so many willing ones.”

Dalan’s large nostrils felt dry, his mouth full of cotton. Transmelding would drain him of even more moisture, but he had no choice if he wanted to speak to the Wizard. Keeping his tail and body, Dalan did something he’d considered impossible only a few weeks ago—letting only his head, neck, and upper chest slide closer toward birth form.

“Is far too late for that bargain. Caetl’s already gone.”

“Not necessarily—he could recover. I didn’t realize how weak his mind was, but we need to focus on the future now. Soon we’ll have more technology than any other tribe, and we know how to use it. We’ll become a tribe bigger than any you’ve ever seen—a nation. We can use that knowledge to restart civilization, something most of us have always wanted. You can help us put the world to rights.”

“Release us from the necklaces and maybe you’ll live long enough to see that new world.”

Dalan wasn’t exactly sure what ‘civilization’ meant, but he doubted going back to the way things had been in Ancient times was the best of ideas. Not if the Ancients had fought amongst themselves as much as modern tribes fought one another.

Saquey interrupted, showing him that Kaia circled back toward Searchtown with Zen in pursuit. Dalan’s normal vision soon returned.

“Fine. Just put me down so I can get the amplifier.”

The Wizard had no reason to release them, not when he could keep Nyr and Ti’rros as hostages and slaves, guaranteeing Dalan’s compliance.

Caetl, tell me you’re okay,
he pleaded, forcing his words outward. They disappeared into the void.

If the mystic had answered, the Wizard might have escaped his fate. Still, Dalan couldn’t quite bring himself to act. His whole life, he’d been taught that killing was wrong. Something evil men did, and good men only did as a last resort. He’d hoped to convince the Wizard to release them.

Dalan dropped the Wizard, who grinned as his hand whipped down to his pocket.

“Release them.” Dalan gave him one last chance. He needed to figure out a way to destroy the amplifier if nothing else.

“Don’t be foolish. Join us.”

With his muscular tail, Dalan pulled the Wizard’s legs out from under him. He landed on his back with a huff, and his eyes widened as Dalan’s tail encircled him once more. Driving his front hoof down, Dalan shattered the Wizard’s knee. He shrieked in agony before aging, but kept a tight hold on the amplifier.

“Can heal, but don’t like pain.” This time Dalan drove his hoof down on the Wizard’s foot, crushing delicate bones. The scream pierced his ears, and he wrapped his tail around the Wizard’s mouth.

“What would happen if I suffocated you?”

The Wizard thrashed, aging and de-aging. Dalan’s grip tightened, forcing him to remain young. Every time he tried aging farther, his eyes widened in pain at the pressure around his head and chest.

From the corner of his eye, Dalan caught sight of an unnatural blue light, and something kicked him in the side. Spots flitted across his vision, and his skin jumped and tingled. His legs kicked of their own accord, and Dalan found himself lying on his side with the smell of burnt flesh in his nostrils.

Ti’rros stood a few yards away with the LEC6 in her hands.

The Joey rushed to his side, and Dalan tried to rise, unsure of how much time he had left before the LEC6 recharged. To his surprise, Ti’rros asked, “Dalan, are you alive?”

His body continued to tingle and twitch, and he came to the conclusion his tail-horse form needed too much time to heal the damage from the electrocution. He slid toward birth form and asked, “What was that for?”

“Something happened. I wasn’t aware…”

Dalan’s heart skipped a beat. The Wizard had almost done to Ti’rros what he’d done to Caetl.

He caught sight of the Wizard’s inert form as he struggled to his feet. “Knocked him unconscious?”

“It is unlikely to last long and is probably because you were connected to him. The blue lightning seemed to flow between you both.”

Back in his birth form, Dalan nodded. Every fiber in his being ached for water. He fumbled around for the canteen in his pack and drained it dry. Then he patted the Wizard down, looking for the amplifier.

“Should run away while he’s still down,” Dalan told Ti’rros. “And sorry, but give me the gun.”

The Wizard twitched and moaned.

“You’re the only one who can stop him, Dalan.” Ti’rros handed him the LEC6. “For the first time in my life, I want to live. My people need to know about our true origins, our shared history.”

Without waiting for a reply, the Joey bounded away on her long feet, and Dalan returned to exploring the Wizard’s pockets. His fingertips grazed the smooth surface of the amplifier just as the Wizard’s eyes flashed open.

He grabbed Dalan’s wrist. The Wizard’s foot connected with his knee, and Dalan let out a yell. During the distraction, the Wizard managed to fish out the amplifier.

The Wizard’s eyes lit up as he got to his feet. “Gotcha!”

The word echoed inside Dalan’s head, and pain shot through his temples. He reeled, but the Wizard squeezed his wrist. Before the pain could worsen, Dalan began to transmeld. Though the Wizard held on, he couldn’t prevent Dalan’s transformation.

Dalan’s body ached, his throat feeling tight enough to shatter if he tried to swallow. The world became less flat with the jaguar’s superior vision, but blinking scratched his dry eyes. He might not be able to transmeld again, even to birth form, without copious amounts of water. His rear leg hurt from when Zen had dangled him by it, but he ignored it.

The jaguar let out a growling cough. The Wizard released his foreleg and leaped backwards, which only excited the jaguar’s primal instincts. He pounced and bore the Wizard to the ground.

The motion jarred his rear leg, but the pain fueled his rage. Bloodlust sang, and Dalan’s desires became one with the jaguar’s. He roared, letting the sound fade into a hoarse, cough-like growl, which had the intended effect. The human beneath him went wild trying to escape, his eyes wide with fright.

The jaguar placed heavy front paws on his prey’s upper body and exposed his claws. The Wizard screamed and aged, but the claws pierced his flesh, and he bled anew, age after age.

The jaguar kept his victim pinned with one paw as he lifted the other. He started at the Wizard’s head, stroking his claws across his face, down to his torso. He waited for the Wizard to reflexively age before repeating the gesture.

Saquey hovered above them, but Dalan didn’t care if the All-Seeing Eye itself watched him now.

The Wizard’s cries became more desperate, his blows more insistent.

“Dalan, stop! We don’t have to fight each other! What do I have to do to make you see?”

Since he’d already given the Wizard his demands, Dalan decided he needed to be more convincing. With his body weight on the Wizard’s chest, the jaguar turned and sliced into his victim’s calf. He slid his claws upward to the knee. As his claws traveled even higher, the Wizard bucked and thrashed and cried and begged.

The sound of footsteps in the grasses brought Dalan back to himself, making him ashamed of how much pleasure he’d taken in the Wizard’s suffering.

A silver tail blindsided Dalan, knocking him from his victim. He rolled over in the grasses and faced Ti’rros, who leaped at him. The Joey pummeled him with her fists. Dalan forced the jaguar mind down and sheathed his claws as he struck her. A fist cracked the side of Dalan’s muzzle, sending lightning through his skull.

He escaped through the grasses, trying to lead Ti’rros away and listening for the sound of breathing. He hoped she retained her core self, but without the mystic to act as a buffer between Ti’rros and the Wizard, Dalan feared the worst. From behind, he heard the odd rhythm of the Joey’s gait. If he could lead her far enough away, he might be able to return to finish the job before the Wizard could force her to attack again.