The Seedbearing Prince: Part I (56 page)

“Clear men never sleep, offworlder,” the
beggar cackled. “He whispered your face across the Belt, but I’m
the one who’s found you!”

The beggar stood back as his ragged fellows
advanced. Eager leers contorted their faces, while their hands
opened and closed unconsciously in the way of greedy men. One held
a length of rope.

Dayn backpedaled, scrambling for anything he
could use as a weapon. There were nothing but trinkets. He lamented
over not keeping Milchamah’s staff. He reached out to Send again,
but could not concentrate through his fear. The stench of the men
overpowered his nose. They let loose a chorus of ugly laughter,
relishing the fact that he would struggle. One of the wide-eyed old
patrons pointed wordlessly to Dayn’s left.

“Stop playing, you fools―grab him!” the
beggar called out urgently. Dayn reached for the wall, just as the
ragged man grasped his sleeve. Dayn wasted no time doubling him
over with a jab to the ribs. That blessed old man had pointed out a
curious length of rippled wood with strange markings, just enough
for the makings of a short staff.

The rod was horribly balanced, barely strong
enough not to snap. It hissed in Dayn's hand, when he twisted it,
startling him. He looked questioningly at the Montollene elder.

“Rain stick.” The man shrugged.

“Take him now!” The men frowned over their
fallen cohort, but quickly lunged for Dayn. The two Montollene
scuttled to one side as another beggar closed, a man with pimples
covering his face and a bulbous nose. Dayn brought the rain stick
upward between the man's legs. He collapsed with a squeal of
pain.

“More for the rest of us. Take him! The clear
man wants him alive!”

Whipped into a frenzy by their leader, the
men still pressed Dayn. They were woeful fighters compared to the
Aran swordsmen, and offered little resistance. One by one they
fell, crashing into shelves and knocking paintings from their
stands. The man holding the rope was the last to throw himself
forward with a desperate cry. The rain stick broke against his
temple, and he flopped to the ground like a gutted fish.

Tiny white pebbles poured from the broken
haft of the rain stick in a dry hiss. Dayn faced the last beggar.
“I helped you earlier,” he growled.

“There’s no help for the World Belt,
Shardian. Nothing can save it from the void,” the beggar snarled as
he disappeared through the doorway. “It’s already broken. You just
don't know it yet!”

Dayn stooped to grab his pack―he barely
remembered putting it down before the fight started―and began to
rush after the man, but stopped. Evlyn lay still, an ugly purple
bruise rising upon her forehead. He feared to move her. The Rain
Shoppe was completely wrecked, but the two old men peeked out from
behind one of the shelves.

“You two can see to her?” Dayn carefully
wrapped the shopkeeper's hand around a half dozen of his gems. A
meager apology, but the best he could do for bringing such misery
upon her. “And get the Prevailers to deal with these men?”

They nodded. “Aye, offworlder. Are...are you
really from Shard?”

But Dayn was already rushing out the door,
hurrying to find Vake's haven and the Ringmen.

A strange scene outside of the Rain Shoppe
stopped him. The beggar had disappeared, but a crowd of Montollene
had gathered on the tower's ribbon. Their attention was not on Dayn
at all, but a transport that had rammed the tower’s pathway. The
crumbling ribbon was impassable, save for a narrow strip of stone
near the tower wall.

“Transports are not allowed within the city!”
An indignant wayfinder, sweat staining his yellow tabard, thumped
vigorously on the transport's hull door as onlookers sullenly edged
around the bottleneck. “Prevailers will be here soon. Let these
good people by, I say!”

The wayfinder looked positively exuberant on
finding a task so unlike his mundane days. The crowd spurred on
their unlikely hero as he circled around the craft to peer into the
hangdeck’s crystal.

The rear hatch began to open. Dayn started to
push through the crowd, away from the transport, fighting his own
rising dread.
Peace, it was supposed to be safe here. Everyone
said Montollos is safe!
The Preceptor's mental trainings felt
like a distant dream as his insides curdled with fear. He felt a
voidwalker’s presence inside, and he could not bear their touch
again.
The clear men never sleep.

More Montollene congregated upon the
pathman's cries. The voidwalker's presence crept through them
unnoticed, like blink fungus spreading over a rotting carcass.

A woman with brown hair looked at the
ribbon's edge, her eyes unfocused. “We used to dangle my little
brother, for fun,” she whispered. Dayn spared her an agonized look
as he pushed further from the transport. A terrible pallor took
hold of the woman's face as the voidwalker's thrall brushed her
mind. “He would cry and cry. Why did we do that?”

As if in a dream, she stepped closer to the
ribbon's edge. Next to her, a strapping man in his middle years
carefully placed a bundle before him, Dayn heard the clink of
tools. He calmly rose, then slammed a hammer onto his forearm so
hard bone cracked. The screams began. Men groaned and women cried
aloud.

A keening moan forced Dayn to turn around. A
swirl of brown hair wreathed the Montollene woman’s terrified face.
Her eyes fixed on Dayn’s as she stepped off the ribbon.

Peace take you, you didn't even lift a
hand to help her!
He wrenched himself away, shoving roughly to
escape, but even more Montollene were gathering to see the trouble
and pushing him back. He bowled one final confused onlooker to the
ground and bounded powerfully into the air, holding his pack
tight.

“Run!” he shouted. That, he could do at
least. “Run!”

People gasped and pointed as he soared over
their heads, crashing to the ribbon some twenty spans away. He
lurched into a run, looking for a skybridge. Bounding above the
people helped get him away faster, but he might as well tie bells
around his neck for anyone giving chase. He buffeted ribbonwalkers
with no apologies, leaving a trail of angered shouts in his
wake.

Dayn heard no signs of pursuit, but did not
slow his sprint. He fought to quell his panic with Lurec’s lessons,
but fear and the need to escape ruled him utterly. He ran for what
felt like miles, circling around the floating towers and dashing
down ribbons as fast as he dared.

He finally stopped in the shadow of a
haventower, clutching his knees as Montollos folk eyed him
curiously. No pathman stood near for him to ask about Vake’s haven.
If he could not find the Ringmen, he would go to the Tower Axios.
The Regents may discover his presence, but at least his friends
would be there.

Distant warning shouts pulled his gaze upward
immediately. He saw no voidwalker, nor that thrice-cursed beggar.
Surely neither could have matched his pace.

“Look out!” There was no movement to be seen,
only more confused Montollene around him, looking for the source of
the warning shout. He searched the ribbon’s lace intently.

“There!” A man pointed and Dayn looked up. An
upward ribbon shifted to reveal a glint of light through the midst
of a distant cloud of white dust. Ragged chunks of a skybridge
tumbled downward, breaking apart upon ribbons as it fell.

“Peace keep us,” Dayn whispered.

The transport roared into view, heading
straight at him. The craft's speed and bulk were never built to
navigate the complex intertwining of the ribbons. One moment, it
was a faraway speck on the horizon. The next instant, a rushing
squeal of wind filled the air. The tower wall to Dayn’s right
exploded. The force of it knocked him down. Shattered stone and
screaming Montollene hurtled in every direction.

Pandemonium raged. Some people remained,
attempting to free others buried under the tower's rubble. The
transport was far from destroyed, though its crystal viewport was
hopelessly smashed. White smoke issued from a mighty rent on the
starboard side of the hull. The craft creaked back from the wound
in the tower, spilling more debris onto the ribbon below as it
slowly came about.

Dayn backed away on his hands and knees.
Shaking his head to rid himself of the humming in his ears, he
regained his feet amid dazed Montollene and broken bodies, turning
again to flee. A black cloaked figure appeared at the far end of
the tower ribbon and he froze.

Moridos called to him. “There is no place I
will not find you, boy.”

Dayn looked around wildly. There were no
entrances to the inside of the tower on this stretch of ribbon. He
could bound over the transport, but had no idea if the ribbon was
intact on the other side. Leaping for the nearest skybridge meant
risking a fall that would kill him.

Moridos lurched into a run, loping closer as
though he sensed Dayn’s desperation. Frantically, Dayn prepared
himself to leap from the broken ribbon.

Suddenly the voidwalker pitched to the
ground, losing his menacing air for a moment as he went sprawling.
He...tripped
? Dayn wanted to laugh hysterically. An iron
grip closed on his shoulder. He howled in fear, flailing
wildly.

“Calm yourself, Shardian!” For a wonder, the
Defender had appeared beside him on the ledge, fully armored.
Merciful peace be praised!
Dayn felt ready to faint in
relief.

“Peace, Nassir! The voidwalker, he's―”

“I know. Your Sending warned us.”

“Where’s Lurec?”

“Helping as best he can.” Nassir thrust a
harness and wingline into his hands. The wingline came with a
barbed talon and coursing clutch, same as the Defender used. “Strap
this on, quickly!” Dayn fumbled at the clamp while Nassir smeared
him with sheath. Moridos rose to his feet. Nassir yanked the
harness to make sure it was tight.

“Follow me!” The Defender charged for the
ribbon edge and dove out of sight. Dayn forced his terror down and
leaped after him. His stomach lurched as he dropped into a
freefall.

Dayn kept up with the Defender easily,
coursing between ribbons and swooping through the towers. They
alighted on another ribbon, running past some startled Montollene
who cried out as they leapt off the edge, descending deeper into
the heart of Montollos.

Nassir hooked onto a skybridge hovering above
them, using it to rappel down the side of a building. Dayn readied
his wingline to follow, aiming his talon. An instant later the
transport appeared, pulverizing the skybridge in a spray of rock
and debris that blasted into the nearby tower. With his talon lost
in the crash, the Defender dropped like a stone.

“Peace protect us!” Helpless Montollene
plummeted to the tower depths below as Dayn stared in horror. He
gathered himself and leaped after them. Nassir would be down there
somewhere.

“Shardian, wait!” Nassir swung past Dayn on
another line without so much as a dent in his armor. He dropped to
a floating plaza, shoulders sparking against the stone as he rolled
to a stop. Dayn snagged the railing with his talon, using his own
momentum to arc beneath the plaza and rise up on the other side.
Nassir reached out to steady Dayn as he landed in a sprawl.

Dayn handed the Defender an extra talon from
his pack. Nassir took it wordlessly as he watched the transport
slowly pull free of the skybridge’s wreckage, fifty spans above
them.

“There’s no way they can catch us with that,”
Dayn said. The distant screams of Montollene came from every
direction above them, as people fled what they undoubtedly believed
to be a navigator gone mad. Dayn and Nassir now stood among the
lower stretch of the towers, the sky barely visible between the
ribbons above them.

“Transports were never designed for a world's
surface,” Nassir agreed, unconsciously retracting his wingline into
his talon-clutch. He tensed suddenly, looking around with a new
urgency in his eyes.

“What? What is it?” Dayn asked. A loud
screeching noise sounded above them.

“Impossible,” Nassir breathed, open shock
painting his face. “Run! Into the tower!” He bounded from the
plaza, sailing over twenty spans with nothing but the hazy heart of
Montollos beneath him. He landed easily on the ribbon leading into
a distant tower.

Dayn refused to look down as he leaped. The
depth reminded him too much of the Dreadfall. Nassir steadied him
as he landed, then sprinted off. A large wall of glass and metal
stood before them, twenty spans high and dim with disuse. The
Defender made directly for a door at the center, looking for a
place to hide. The screeching sound faded as Dayn followed the
Defender inside.

“Quiet, Shardian.” Nassir peered into the
tower's depths, haste honing his movements to razor precision. Dust
lay heavy in the air, causing Dayn to cough. Weak light filtered
through the crystal, but failed to penetrate beyond where they
stood. Nassir beckoned Dayn deeper into the blackness.

The crystal wall shattered behind them.
Nassir did not even bother turning around as he raced into the
tower. The screeching returned even louder, like a pack of wolves
set on fire. “For your life, Shardian!”

He scampered after the Defender’s loping
strides as the Ringman crashed through an open door at the end of a
huge chamber. They slowed after just a few steps, for the guts of
the tower were terribly dark. Nassir strode forward cautiously. Dim
lighting outlined a small, windowless room at the end of a cramped
hallway.

“These Thar’Kuri have a fleshweep under their
control.”

Dayn shivered, remembering the strange tracks
from Ara. The Defender felt along the floor. With a sharp
click,
the metal grating beneath their feet swung up to
reveal a hidden crawl space. “I’ve never seen them take such a
risk.” Nassir frowned in the near darkness.