The Sac'a'rith (26 page)

Narcion’s brother slowly drew his swords and crouched as if getting ready to leap. I closed my eyes and tried to see with Sight. The forest fell out of my vision and I could make out an old, decrepit man standing nearby with his back towards us, searching the woods. He was defined sharply in color, but he was translucent. I suspected
that seeing him in color meant he was a magus of some kind, but I did not understand the significance of being able to see through him.

I opened my eyes and tapped Narcion’s brother on the shoulder. Using the hand signals Narcion had taught me, I told him there was one target nearby and then pointed in the right direction.

He signaled back that he was going wide and I should move on the target once he was out of sight. Before he moved he cupped his hands over his mouth and made a sound just like some of the noises I had been hearing all day. I wondered if it was some form of private communication, and if all the sounds I had heard throughout the day were actually these signals.

I closed my eyes so that I could keep an inner eye on the old man. The man did not move or take any notice of the noise, and Narcion’s brother slipped silently away. I could easily follow him with my Sight, so I did not have to guess when he was in position. I waited until he stopped moving and looked ready to pounce.

I stood up and drew my swords, which made a swooshing sound as they came out of the armored sheaths. The man turned towards me and called out a word I did not recognize while gesturing towards me. I dove out of the way, not knowing what he was doing but assuming it was an aggressive act. Whatever it was, I didn’t move fast enough to dodge it, as I was lifted from my feet and tossed into a tree by a force I could not see.

I managed to hold onto my swords throughout and held them before me as I got back on my feet. Casting must have revealed him because I could now see him clearly with my eyes open. He began to gesture again, and I knew I was too far away to reach him before he casted again. I looked around me for cover and saw little that could hide my large body, so I decided to try a mad rush. Yelling at the top of my lungs, I charged right at him, hoping to break his concentration, but he remained cool.

Before he could finish his spell, he cried out in pain as a blade erupted from his chest and he fell over. Behind him stood Narcion’s brother with a bloody sword. He quickly leaned over and removed the man’s head, asking, “Are you all right?”

I put my swords away and called on the forest’s power to heal me. “Yes. Who was that?”

“I don’t know. I assume he was the leader of that squad we broke up earlier, but I have never seen him before. Any more around?” he asked.

I could not smell much of anything with his foul corpse on the ground before me, so I closed my eyes and reached out with Sight. “No, I don’t see anyone else, but his foul odor is making it impossible for me to scent anything.”

“There is little we can do about that. Leave his body for the scavengers. We are not far from Narcion’s home.”

We entered the meadow where Narcion’s house was hidden and Narcion’s brother walked right up onto the porch. I followed him up into the house, and the others soon joined us.

“What do I call you?” I asked.

“I am Stormblade. These are Ragnar and Fiercewind,” he said.

Something occurred to me at that moment and I ran into the bedroom. I figured if they were related to Narcion, some of those paintings should depict them. Sure enough, in the center of the wall was a painting with Narcion and Stormblade; other pictures showed the four of them in various places. It was clear by the paintings that they were at least close, if not all one family.

“Satisfied?” asked Stormblade from the doorway.

“I guess so,” I said. “But you do not look much like brothers.”

“We have different parents, if that is what you mean. We found him in our wood, in the same way we found you. He stayed with us and eventually joined our clan, making him my brother.”

“So he is not from here either?” I asked.

“No, and we never knew where he was from, or where he went for that matter,” he said.

It was then that I noticed that the door in the back of the bedroom leading to the gate was gone. I assumed it was hidden like the house, but I was not sure if these men knew about it or not. If they didn’t, I wondered if I should be the one to tell them. I decided I would keep it secret for the moment.

“It will be dark soon. We should plan to spend the night here,” said Stormblade.

We left the room and I watched as they prepared the house for the night. It was an odd experience watching them, as they never once used a computer or other control to do anything. They used lamps that generated their light with flames and built a fire in a large, stone cubbyhole, which they used to cook a meal with. Later, as the cool of the night set in, everyone gathered around it for warmth.

After leaving the leader of the Wolf Pack, I slipped back into the vacuum of space. Drifting on eddies of gravity and energy around the station I found the gear I had left out there waiting for me, as I expected. I wondered what I was going to say when I finally caught up with Zah’rak. The personality profile I had constructed told me that he had no love for authority, which meant that saying, “Hi, I’m Special Agent Byron,” would be a poor way to start.

I drifted through space for a while until the trade hauler that I needed to start my journey to my next destination arrived. As I attached myself to the outside of the hauler I felt bad for those inside, who could never know the simple pleasure of drifting freely through space. They could never know the rush of entering jump space unhindered by a physical craft.

Then again, they would also never know what it was to live in fear that someone might find out what you are and kill you. Most people were fairly neutral about race, until it came to the shadow people: then it was acceptable to be racist. I quietly sipped on the power from the hauler as it moved into jump space. It was risky, as they might detect the power drain, but I could not resist the scent of the power right under me. My job required me to spend so much time on stations and in human form that I did not get enough time to eat proper food.

Most of my people just surfed the gravity wakes, and when they found a hauler like this one drained as much power as they could before they were detected and moved on. I had discovered that, by memorizing shipping routes and being discreet, I could use them to travel great distances undetected. Every time a ship traveled through jump space it would have to coast for hours, sometimes days, until its jump drives recharged. While they did that, I merely found another craft to attach to and continued my trip. This allowed me to make better time than even the fastest cruise line.

Soon I had returned to a section of space near where Zah’rak was believed to be hiding. I detached myself with some hesitancy from the ship I was traveling with. The craft I rode in on was a very high-end luxury cruiser and had very clean power. It was a rare treat, but one that I needed to leave behind.

I quietly slipped onto Bonair, the station where Narcion was last seen, resumed my human form, and headed to my favorite eatery. Even though my people lived on raw energy, we still needed some basic materials to survive. Prime on that list was water, and that is exactly what I ordered when I got to the eatery. I sat at my favorite table and leaned back against the wall. From that position I could see the entire room. Unlike the bar that I was last at, I had many friends here and could relax.

As I looked around the room I noticed many races enjoying themselves, feasting and talking. There was more than one pair of lovers among the crowd, leaning in close and stealing moments of intimacy. I envied them, as it was unlikely I would ever find such a mate. There were too few members of my race who were more than animal in nature, and these were spread out over too large an area. It baffled me how some of us could be sentient when the majority of the race was not.

While I relaxed there, someone approached my table. I was not sure of his race, as his clothing obscured most details about him. He was taller than an average human, maybe fifteen or twenty centimeters taller than myself. His hood completely obscured his face except for two piercing yellow eyes. “Hello, Special Agent Byron,” he said. His voice was strong, clear, and commanding.

“I was not looking for company,” I said.

“No, but you are looking for trouble,” he said and took the seat across from me.

“What are you getting at, stranger?” I asked.

“You’re looking for Narcion and his team, and I am here to warn you off. You have no idea what you are about to walk into, and there are so few of your kind left I would hate to see you lost,” he said.

His comment about there being ‘so few of my kind’ drew my attention like nothing else he could have said. Then I recognized him from the picture I had been shown: this was the mysterious man or woman that had met with Zah’rak. “Well, why don’t you give me an idea, then?”

“It’s not that easy. Narcion is heading for trouble and, if he does not stop soon, he will release something that is far worse than anything you have seen before, even in your nightmares,” he said.

“Is he behind these attacks, then?” I asked.

“No. That is some upstart magus who has delusions of grandeur; a
mere child, not even worthy of being compared to Narcion,” he said.

I was torn then between asking about the magus and finding out more about Narcion. “Narcion is gone, probably taken prisoner,” I said.

“He is fine. He will be back when he is back. Yes, he walked into a trap that used Felix as bait, but Narcion is not so easily fooled or captured. I would be more concerned about those who tried to trap him,” he said.

“You seem to know an awful lot about this enemy,” I commented.

“Yes, far more than you, but that is immaterial. That magus will be found and killed sooner or later. It hardly matters in the grand scheme of things. What matters is that I find a way to convince Narcion to back off the trail he is on before it is too late.”

“Why are you telling me all this? You must know I won’t give up just because some stranger told me it was dangerous,” I said.

“You will meet up with Zah’rak in a few days. Zah’rak is the only person Narcion trusts. You must get him to convince Narcion to stop before it’s too late,” he said.

“Too late for what? Stop him from doing what?” I asked.

“He is trying to wake something up, something that needs to stay dormant forever. If he succeeds, you will wish for death and may very well be denied it,” he said.

“You are making no sense,” I said.

He stood up to leave and then said, “Just get the message to Zah’rak; tell him to tell Narcion to leave things be.”

“Just what is he trying to awaken?” I asked.

“Himself,” he said and left.

I watched his back as he walked away. I knew a simple word from me would bring a dozen
men descend
ing on him, but I let him go. The way he carried himself and the grace with which he moved told me he was an experienced warrior. A fight here in this eatery could easily spill over and get innocent bystanders hurt. I would have to catch him another day.

Once he was out of sight, I left and headed to the security office on the station. Using my ID, I got in and went quickly to their video monitors of the station. I played back the scene of me talking with the stranger and watched him leave. I was hoping to find out where he had gone, but he vanished as he left the restaurant.

“Where did he go?” I asked the guard on duty.

“He is probably a magus. They do that to us all the time. The only way you will find him is to look for telltale signs: things like an empty space in the crowd where people are avoiding walking into him, voices without a matching source, people interacting with empty air, and similar giveaways,” he responded.

We tried looking for that kind of thing, but could find no sign of him anywhere near the eatery. After a while I had to give up and concede that he had got away. I asked the guards to keep a look out for him and, if he showed up anywhere, to record everything he did and contact my office.

I decided that it would be better to spend the night in Narcion’s house with his family rather than risk exposing the gate. We took turns at watch throughout the night, but I was not sure what I was watching for. We were sleeping in a well-built, invisible house so it was not as if we were in an exposed position.

I had taken the first watch, which was completely uneventful. In the morning, after a fitful sleep, I awoke to the smell of breakfast being cooked. None of the furniture in the house was large enough for my frame, so I had been forced to spend the night on the floor. This was reminiscent of my years as a slave, but I had become used to the luxury of a proper bed to sleep on. I wondered how Crivreen was making out with his research; hopefully better than I currently was.

“Good morning, Zah’rak,” said Stormblade.

I merely grunted in reply and went out onto the porch to get some fresh air. The sun was just peeping over the trees, and there was a coolness in the wind that helped blow the cobwebs out of my head. I just stood there for a while, enjoying the feeling of being in natural surroundings.

“How long do you plan to stay?” asked Stormblade, coming out with a plate of food.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You are obviously from a great distance away. Your clothes, your language, and even your reactions tell us you are completely unfamiliar with things that are normal here. However, you have none of the equipment that a traveler covering a great distance would normally have,” he said.

“Such as?” I asked.

“Such as a canteen,” he said with a smile. “You recognized this house when we brought you to it, and you went straight to Narcion’s bedroom to look for the paintings. That leads me to conclude you used his gate to get here.”

I spun and looked at him in complete surprise. “You know about his gate?”

“I should; I helped build this house,” he said with a smile. “No one could ever get that gate of his to work, though, not since he left. I assume that gate is how he left us, but he just disappeared one day without a word.”