Of Dawn and Darkness (The Elder Empire: Sea Book 2) (40 page)

After staring into the darkness for any sign of movement, Calder carefully slid a little closer to the books.

On the bottom shelf, dusty scrolls were surrounded by glass cases. On the next, the books were bound by wood and hide—he knelt to examine the spine of one tome bound in polished blackwood, and found that he couldn’t read it.

That fact alone confirmed what he’d already suspected: there were Elders involved. And not the lesser Elderspawn, like Shuffles, who seemed to have little more intelligence than animals, but the higher Elders. Maybe even a Great Elder.

It had been over a thousand years since any language except Imperial was heard among humans. That left two possibilities: either these words did not originate with humans, or they were over a thousand years old.

Either way, that meant Elders.

His memory whispered to him the name of the one sealed underneath Silverreach:
Ach’magut.

Without inspecting that thought any further, he turned back to his crew. They had shown their training and experience by standing with their backs to the candlelight, weapons in hand. Even Jerri looked fierce and ready for battle, though she only held a dagger. If Elderspawn attacked, she’d last even less time than Petal, who held a stoppered bottle of acid ready to throw.

And that was a cheery thought, wasn’t it?

They were still comparing notes. “...I was on the wheel. I didn’t lose consciousness, I didn’t even
blink
, but I found myself here with no warning.” Jerri.

Foster had a pistol pointed off into the gloom as he scanned the shadows. “Doesn’t matter how we got here, we’ve got to go. Now. I’ve been imprisoned by crazy Elder worshipers more than enough in my life.”

“If you’d like to be the first to run off into the dark, Mr. Foster, be my guest.” Andel sounded calm, but he had one hand on his pistol and the other around his White Sun medallion.

“Might as well die out
there!”
Foster shouted. “It’s better than standing around here, waiting to die!”

Urzaia’s voice was even louder than Foster’s. “You will not die here! I will protect you!”

Whatever they decided to do, Calder was certain that shouting wasn’t the way to go about it. Foster started to reply, and Andel opened his mouth to cut him off, but they both froze when Calder’s cutlass cut down the middle of the group. His blade came to rest inches above the candle’s flame.

“That’s enough of that,” Calder said, his voice little more than a whisper. “Urzaia, lead the way. Foster, take the rear. Andel on the left, I’ll take the right. Walk straight down the row of bookcases. Petal, leave a mark on every row we pass.”

“Walk
straight down the aisle?”
Foster choked out, though at least he stayed quiet. “If they’re waiting for us, that’s right where they’ll be!”

“Or they’re waiting for us to go back the other way, or waiting for us to stay here, or waiting for the light to go out so they can take us one by one.” Calder kept his eyes locked on Foster’s as he spoke. “We might be playing into their hands no matter what we do, so we may as well try to escape while we’re at it.”

Foster grumbled under his breath, but Urzaia had already taken up his position and started a slow march. The rest of them followed.

Every few yards, Petal carefully let a drop of acid fall from her stoppered bottle. It scarred the floor with a hiss and a little wisp of smoke, leaving a mark the size of a breadcrumb in the smooth floor.

They had traveled for the better part of an hour, according to Andel’s pocket-watch, when Jerri gently rested her fingers on his arm. “Don’t look up. There’s something moving between the bookcases above us. Do
not
look up.”

Calder resisted the urge to throw his head back and stare straight up, keeping his movement natural. He continued to scan the shadows around them, as he had the entire time, but this time he allowed his eyes to flow a little higher.

For the first minute or two he spotted nothing, which was agonizing in its own way. The only thing more frightening than Elderspawn he
could
see were Elderspawn he
couldn’t
see, and his imagination told him that they were right behind him, descending to the back of his neck on silent threads.

But he kept his calm, and finally he caught something—a flicker of movement at the corner of one of the bookshelves, like an insectoid leg being withdrawn.

His heart pounded, his breath came faster, and he feigned a stumble to grab onto Urzaia’s shoulder. When the Champion looked at him, surprised, Calder whispered the situation to him.

Urzaia’s face darkened, and his hands tightened around his hatchets, but otherwise he gave no sign that Calder had spoken. He continued marching down the hall as Calder and Jerri conveyed the information to the others.

Even as he whispered to Andel, Calder’s thoughts buzzed frantically. The position of the Elderspawn left them with very few helpful options.
They’re above us, so they’re tracking us. They’ll see everything we do. We have to reach the end of this room at some point, so will they drop down on us then? Will they wait so long?

They had seen enough curve of the ceiling at this point to realize that the room did in fact have an end; they weren’t sealed in some sort of Elder-generated dream world. The room had walls, though they were unbelievably far apart. In the back of Calder’s mind, he wondered if the bookcases acted as columns, helping to support the weight of the chamber.

If they stood and fought, the terrain didn’t favor them. How could it, against an enemy capable of leaping down on their backs from above?

Since they couldn’t stop, that left only one option: move forward as fast as they could.

Calder increased his pace, and as soon as the others realized, they matched him. Within ten more minutes, the crew had effectively doubled their speed, and was all but running down the library aisle. They maintained complete silence, so only the pounding of their shoes and their harsh panting breaths cut through the quiet.

Overhead, the flickering movement of the Elderspawn hurried to match them. Calder began to catch them more often, even when he wasn’t focusing, as they hurried from case to case. With enough fragmented pictures—jointed, alien legs and eyes that waved on flexible stalks—he confirmed what he’d already suspected. These were the spawn of Ach’magut, the ten-legged spiders with innumerable eyes. The same ones that had haunted Silverreach four years before. The Inquisitors.

But this time, they were keeping their distance, watching. Observing. Calder was forcibly reminded of Ach’magut’s title: the Overseer. It made sense that any minions of his would keep their distance and watch before engaging, but if that was the case...

Why hadn’t they done so last time?

On the crew’s last visit to Silverreach, the Elderspawn had attacked outright, forcing them into the hands of the cultists. They were acting differently now, more cautiously. What had changed?

It was sheer madness to try and guess the mind of an Elder, but Calder had a disturbing thought. What if they
had
acted this way, four years ago? What if the two Inquisitors they saw were just the Imperial Guard of their kind, sent to take them into custody, while hundreds more watched?

An image formed in Calder’s mind, of Silverreach above with its streets of “empty” buildings. He was beginning to see the town differently now.

Not a town at all. A hive.

But ultimately this was all just speculation, and in reality, the Inquisitors hadn’t attacked yet. The sooner they reached the end of the room, the sooner they could find an exit. The ceiling had curved down low enough now that they should come upon the end any second.

No sooner did the thought come to him than they reached the end of the library, the ceiling flowing down to meet the floor in a polished gray wall. The light of Petal’s quicklamp spilled onto the wall in front of them, illuminating a vast door of bronze.

He wasn’t sure it
was
a door, at first. There were no hinges he could see, and the bronze was almost a perfect circle. It only made contact with the floor at one point. Its surface was covered in symbols and diagrams, interacting in a way that reminded Calder of ancient astronomy texts. Like someone had charted the movements of the stars on this ancient panel of bronze.

It was only when he extended a hand, intending to Read the panel for instructions, that he became certain it was a door. Its Intent flooded his mind, hammered his awareness, as though this was the very
picture
of a door and anything that he had once recognized as a doorway was only a feeble delusion of his pitiful mind.
This
was a door, and all else was but a pale copy.

He trembled at the overwhelming gut-punch of Intent, sucking in a deep breath.

The others had begun to quietly debate what this bronze circle was, and what the diagrams on its surface meant. Maybe they were a map, maybe directions, maybe a dire warning to travelers.

“It’s a door,” Calder said, walking up to it.

“Are you sure?” Urzaia asked doubtfully.

Calder’s nose tingled, as though it was about to bleed, but he put two fingers to his face and they came back dry. The aftermath of his attempt at Reading. “I have never been more sure of anything in my entire life,” he said.

He quested around the edges of the bronze doorway until he found three symbols in a row—like human thumbprints, though the lines were too twisted and irregular. Calder pushed on them, only the slightest application of force, and the door began to slide upwards into the wall.

“Wait,” Andel said, as the door began to move, but it was too late.

If Calder had thought his impressions of the entrance were overwhelming, if he thought the previous wave of Intent was too much for his senses, they were
nothing
compared to the seething ocean of information that violated his mind now.

On the other side was a writhing, pulsing, squirming mass of limbs, eyes, tendrils, ears, appendages without name and without number.

On the other side was a vast book of endless pages, containing all the knowledge of countless years, such an unknowable repository of truth that a thousand humans could not hear it all with a thousand lifetimes of study.

On the other side was a world unto itself, a complex and ancient dream more real than waking.

On the other side was Ach’magut.

Calder stood frozen, all his senses consumed in the Overseer, but in many ways he was more aware than before. He knew when Foster broke free of the spell binding him, turning to flee from the Great Elder, only to come face-to-face with an army of Inquisitors.

He knew that Petal’s fear was crystallizing into the knowledge that she could not fight Ach’magut, which brought with it a measure of relief.

He knew Andel’s revulsion, which was matched only by a bizarre knowledge. The former Pilgrim was disgusted by Ach’magut’s existence, but he was still on the lookout for something to gain from this. As though he could turn Ach’magut’s knowledge against the rest of its kind.

He knew Urzaia’s grim resignation, as the Champion realized that some things could not be fought.

And he knew Jerri was terrified and excited all at once, as though she’d come face to face with everything she’d ever wanted...and it could kill her at any second.

All this, Calder knew in an instant.

The Great Elder’s tentacles slithered between them and among them, analyzing their emotions, their pasts, their physical compositions. He knew them, weighed them, factored them into his plans.

And within Ach’magut, at the nexus where all the tentacles originated, a single eye opened. It was human in shape, but bigger than Calder’s head, with an iris of hypnotic, poisonous blue.

INTERESTING.

The voice scoured Calder’s mind like a desert wind, carrying with it all the meaning one word could possibly have.

YOU ARE THE RESULT OF A DEVIATION.

From that sentence, Calder learned more than he wanted to know about how he’d ended up in Silverreach.

Centuries ago, Ach’magut had allowed an alteration to his grand, cosmic plan. He’d been willing to risk a small change that might disturb the future, in the hopes of opening up new facts and new results. That deviation had resulted in everything in Calder’s past, from the personal to the very distant—everything from the death of the Great Elders to the formation of the Empire, and everything from the meeting of Calder’s specific parents to his birth to his expulsion from the Blackwatch. Everything, as moment toppled into moment, was the inevitable result of Ach’magut’s action in the distant past.

The Elder could see it, could read the potential paths of his choices as easily as Calder could predict how a ball would roll across the floor. But the world was more interesting when it was unpredictable, as the Overseer knew well.

And Calder had ended up in this room, at this moment, with this precise group of people. Which Ach’magut had
not
predicted.

All this and more, Calder learned from what was essentially a single sentence. He didn’t feel like part of a conversation, he felt like a student desperately trying to keep up with a ferocious lecture from an ancient Witness.

THIS OPENS NEW PATHS. NEW DOORS. NEW ANOMALIES.

Calder tried to respond, to barter for his life, but this was nothing at all like bantering with Kelarac. This had more in common with being flattened underneath a collapsing building.

He could feel it when the Great Elder turned his attention from Calder to the others, as though the point of a sword had been taken away from Calder’s throat. To each of them, Ach’magut spoke.

~~~

Petal trembled, facing something that was so much
more
than her that she felt like a grain of sand that would soon blow away. She clutched her quicklamp to her chest as though it might protect her somehow, and the subtle warmth on her fingers was only a distant comfort.

Her one hope, which she clung to even more desperately than her light, was that she was too far beneath Ach’magut’s notice. Maybe the Great Elder would overlook her entirely, as she deserved, and allow her to go on her way. Even if his Inquisitors killed her, it would be better than what the Overseer could do to her.