Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) (54 page)

Six hours later, Jaren sat at a bridge console browsing the ship’s status reports. The senior officers were assembled with him. Elena had returned to her engine room sanctuary and Vaun to his charnel house. Deim had the Wheel.

Jaren rose and stood before the great window to stare at the stars beyond. Suddenly, as if moved by the voices that haunted him, he raised his hand.

“Take us out,” he said. “Half speed.”

Responding to the steersman's will, the ship slid forward into the star-pierced blackness.

Jaren looked over his shoulder at Deim’s feverish face. “Put some distance between us and the system,” Jaren said. The steersman gave a nod.

When he judged that they’d reached a safe range, Jaren asked, “Is Elena there?”

“She’s with me,” Deim said with the conviction of a creedal statement.

The board’s set,
Jaren thought.
Now we'll see if she plays along.
“Transition at your discretion,” he said.

“Not mine,” said Deim. “Hers.”

Jaren’s resolve wavered. He almost granted his crew a last-minute reprieve, but Elena denied him the choice.

“It’s starting,” said Deim.

The engines’ hum rose to a high whine. Jaren reflexively shielded his eyes, but there was no compact nova; not even a golden glow. Instead, Deim began to lose substance, fading to transparency in response to the engines’ rising pitch. Jaren watched in stunned silence as Deim’s translucence spread to the Wheel; then flowed out from the dais to the rest of the bridge. Crew station readouts blurred and shimmered like distant stars, and the banners turned to crimson mist. The dizzy feeling of hurtling through open space beset Jaren until the hazy starscape gave way to an infinite expanse of rose-colored fog.

Without warning, the disorienting process reversed itself. The mist lightened and finally lifted, briefly revealing a scarred landscape of concentric basalt rings alternating with eerily glowing magmatic trenches. Jaren glimpsed a crumbling urban sprawl before the bridge’s familiar darkness enclosed him once again.

Jaren patted down his trunk and face. Feeling them solid, he checked the ship’s clock; then double-checked it against his watch. Both timepieces asserted that the journey through the Strata had taken less than a minute.

“Is everybody still here?” Teg asked.

“A better question is,
where’s here
?” Nakvin said. “I didn’t get a close look, but that definitely wasn’t a Circle we visited before.”

Jaren looked toward the window, which framed a soot-black sky. Downy volcanic ash started accumulating on the huge lens. “Are we even sure this is hell?” he wondered aloud.

“It’s hell,” Nakvin said. “I just pushed on the Circle’s fabric.”

“Did it budge?” asked Teg.

“Not an inch. Something pushed back.
Hard
.”

Teg raised a blond eyebrow. “A baal?”

Nakvin shook her head. “Fighting them for control was like arm wrestling you. This is closer to pulling the
Exodus
with my teeth.”

The rasping of silk and conduits announced Elena’s appearance on the bridge—despite the sealed doors.

Jaren faced her, his face rigid. “You did this.”

Elena extended upturned palms in a gesture of helplessness. “You asked me to.”

Jaren marched toward her. “I
ordered
you to take us back to the Nine Circles!”

“I did,” Elena said.

The captain loomed over the young woman, his body shuddering with rage. “I was expecting the Vestibule,” he growled.

Elena shrugged. “You didn’t specify.”

Never in Jaren’s often brutal career had he intentionally harmed a child, though he doubted the insufferable abomination before him qualified. Rather than striking the girl in anger, he turned his back on her, gritting his teeth with the effort.

Nakvin rushed to her daughter’s side. “Elena, where are we?”

“The Eighth Circle,” Elena said. “It’s faster this way.”

Jaren took two deep breaths. His anger had cooled enough for him to think things over. The walking battery had a point. If he was surprised; so was the baal.

“All right,” Jaren said. “We have one shot at this.” He moved to the ship’s sending console and opened a channel to the lower decks.

No one answered.

Jaren spoke into the comm. “Vaun?”

A sound like oil seeping through frost-cracked stone came over the intercom. A moment passed before the unctuous noise formed itself into words. “Not as you knew him.”

Nakvin held Elena tighter. Surprisingly, Teg took hold of the girl’s hand.

“I knew him as a backstabbing son of a bitch,” said Jaren.

“Mordechai's petty schemes paled before the grand design revealed in the
vas
,” said the voice from the intercom. “The Void shall embrace all.”

“I’m sure,” Jaren said. “If you’re one of Vaun’s projects, tell him we’re taking Mephistophilis.”

The voice creaked like the surface of a frozen lake, but Jaren thought it might have been laughing. “I am Teth become one with Mordechai’s soul,” it said. “He hoped to restore his humanity. Now he is the Void made man.”

“The Void can be at the airlift in ten minutes or be gone when we get back,” Jaren said. He switched off the intercom and turned to Deim.

“What's our position?” Jaren asked.

“I see circles all around us,” the steersman said. “They're radiating outward like a thumbprint. There's a great city at the center.”

“Does anything stand out?”

“A tall tower rising from a temple,” said Deim. “The walls are ringed with demons and forgotten saints. The statues have no faces, except for one eye.”

“That’s the only place matching Despenser’s drop site,” said Teg. “At least I hope it is.”

“Move us over that tower,” Jaren said as he strode toward the door. Nakvin and Teg followed but nearly ran into him when he turned to face Deim.

“Off the Wheel,” Jaren said. “You’re with us.”

Nakvin’s eyes widened. “Did your brain stay on the Middle Stratum? With no steersman, anyone could walk in here and take the ship!”

“Our only chance is to hit the baal with everything we’ve got,” Jaren said. “You can seal the Circle afterward.”

Jaren led his three comrades from the bridge but cast a final glance at Elena. He thought a thin smile touched her lips just before the doors closed on her train of cables.

Vaun hadn’t been idle in the hours following the war council. He'd brooded over the Gen's arrogance on his way back to the hold and had reached a decision by his journey’s end.

Returning to his dismal quarters, the necromancer had set to work. All of the necessary preparations were in place. Till then, he'd lacked only the courage to see the business through.

Vaun soon reached the penultimate stage. He held the ruby
vas
in his palm and contemplated its myriad facets; heard the cries, entreaties, and rants emanating from each one. He knew that one of the voices was his, and at last he would reclaim it.

As part of his self-perfection ritual, Vaun had set the gem into the forehead of his mask. He raised the porcelain face to his own, but pausing to think of Elena's warning.

“
Filling the emptiness also perfects the bond.
”

Yet the ritual had progressed too far for Vaun to stop. The jewel made contact, exposing his vulnerable soul to the contents of the
vas
. All of the fragments rushed into the breach, and the necromancer felt the mad torrent assaulting his very identity. But only one piece fit the ragged wound that had marred his soul for longer than a century. The indescribable sensation ignited in the depths of his being moved Vaun's disused lungs to suck in a great breath of air.

Until that moment, Vaun had clung to the hope that the jewel would fill the hole in his essence, restoring his lost humanity. Instead, the connection was cemented, removing the last barrier between himself and the Void. Teth flooded into his soul, saturating his body from the inside out. The necromancer's final physical act was to cast about for the white scimitar that alone might end his agony. The blade's theft was his fleshly brain’s last thought.

Vaun's body froze, cracked, and crumbled. His cloak managed to stand upright like a wet sheet left out on a freezing night, but it finally toppled and dashed itself into a thousand pieces on the deck.

Vaun’s physical form had come to its end, but something remained. The laboratory's dark corners brooded with a singular intellect, pure in its malevolence. The shadows at last began to move, tentatively reaching out for each other. One dark pool flowed into another, and those into others, until the sentient void finally coalesced into a semblance of its former whole. Seeing that the mask had survived the entropic deluge, the living shadow-mass donned the necromancer’s false face as its own.

The new being stood idle for a time, reveling in its perfection. Reclaiming the scrap inside the
vas
had not only brought union with the Void, but new knowledge as well. Vaun's fragment had learned much from mingling with the other shards.

The Void-thing laughed amid the remains of its former existence. How petty Mordechai's designs had been! The Void being understood the purpose of mutilating souls and the black ship that wasn't a ship at all; the creation of Elena and the voyage through hell. The Arcana Divines' scheme was laid bare, as was Vernon's outrageous attempt to pervert that plan. All had thought themselves in control, when in truth all had been laboring toward the aims of unseen masters.

The creature birthed from the ruin of Vaun Mordechai mocked the conceits of men and devils alike. The Void’s triumph was inevitable, but an empire of living death awaited one bold enough to carve it from Zadok’s frozen corpse.

The Void-thing set fire to Vaun’s workshop and left for the hangar.

Eldrid called Jaren while he was en route to the hangar with Nakvin, Teg, and Deim. “The fire alarm is going off in the hold!” she said.

Jaren tapped his ear stud. “Can you see any flames?” he sent back.

“No,” she said. “Nor do I smell smoke. All seems well here.”

“It’s either a false alarm or a localized fire somewhere in the lower decks,” Jaren said. “Have Jastis look into it.”

“A fine idea,” said Eldrid.

“How’s that job I gave you coming along?”

Eldrid’s voice conveyed a smile. “I’ll be finished shortly.”

“Good. Wish me luck.”

“Rather, I shall pray for you.”

Eldrid signed off as Jaren marched onto the hangar’s white tiles. He knew something was wrong when he saw what awaited him there. Deep shadows surrounded the cloaked form, though it stood directly under the powerful lighting rig.

Nakvin clutched Jaren’s arm. “Vaun?” she whispered.

The pool of darkness receded into Vaun as he approached. Jaren had always thought him one step removed from a wraith, as if his physical existence straddled the line between matter and the Void. Now Vaun’s presence boldly asserted itself. Each thread of his grey cloak stood out in sharp relief, as did every pit and scratch in his porcelain mask. A ruby the size of a quail egg gleamed upon its brow. Vaun was sinister before. Now his presence evoked outright revulsion.

The abomination that had been Vaun Mordechai turned to Jaren, who was startled to see a pair of dull grey eyes regarding him from behind the jeweled mask.

“I’ve come to discharge my debt,” the creature said. Instead of hollowness, its voice brimmed with menace. Jaren recognized it as the one he’d heard through the bridge sending.

“We stand together,” it said, “for victory or death.”

What’s he done to himself?
Jaren wondered. A visceral foreboding about the answer kept him from voicing the question. Instead, Jaren strode toward the airlift. “The sooner we kill Mephistophilis,” he said, “the sooner we crush the Guild.”

The lift deposited Jaren, Teg, Nakvin, Deim, and Vaun on a hot reeking field of volcanic scree before the gate in the infernal temple's wall. Grotesque statues weathered beyond recognition leered down from the parapet, all the more disturbing for their ambiguity.

Teg moved to examine the massive iron gate, but Jaren marched past him and gave the corroded metal bars a shove. The gate swung inward with a jarring screech, and when no reprisal came, the others followed him inside.

Jaren strode into a spacious courtyard longer than it was wide. Sandy soil crunched under his boots. Perhaps the landscape had been lovely once. Now only gnarled, stunted trees and patches of withered scrub clung to the parched dirt.

The temple’s six tiered stories stood directly ahead, topped by a domed tower. A grand flight of stairs soared from ground level to the tower's base, where a low arch gave on blackness.

Jaren didn't stop to admire the infernal wonders. He set a determined pace across the flagstone path to the foot of the stairs and immediately started upward. His comrades’ footsteps quickened behind him.

The arch led into a sanctuary under the vast dome. Jaren wasn’t surprised when he saw the mural dominating the far wall. Thera's image had hounded his crew throughout their voyage. Now, in the flickering lamplight, the winged lady seemed to lord some sinister secret over them. The Souldancer’s gloating visage remained hauntingly familiar, though this time the icon favored neither Nakvin nor Elena, except for one detail.

“The black dots,” Nakvin said. “The pattern is the same as the sockets in Elena’s back.”

Deim mumbled at the back of the line—whether a prayer or a curse, Jaren couldn’t tell.

Jaren drew his rodcaster before crossing the blue flagstone ring carved with alien constellations that encircled the floor. He stopped when he reached the bronze plate at the center. Its surface was embossed with scrollwork resembling marine fossils, and corrosion had eaten a jagged hole in its upper right corner. He peered into the pitch black depths and froze.

“Do you see something?” Nakvin asked, her voice echoing from the cylindrical walls.

It took Jaren a while to process what he saw. Finally he said, “An eye. A human eye.”

“Whatever my lady wills,” Deim said as he fell to one knee.

“Who are you talking to?” Teg asked.