Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (22 page)

When was the last time I really tried to feel?
he wondered.
A woman? A chem? Was it the cedrophin on the Temptation?

He had made no more attempts, not since Stray. Not since Maeve. Logan was so used to being numb that he did not even try anymore.

Then what am I doing on Prianus? I came here to hunt the Nihilists, didn't I? Because I thought it would be exciting.

Logan did not feel excited.

________

He rented a room. Not much of a room – just a coffin, as they were commonly called. The tiny, padded cell was just large enough to lie down inside. Coldhand showered in the common bathroom and traded out his torn shirt for a fresh one. He had only brought a single change of clothes from the Raptor. If he ruined any more, he would have to take time out of his hunt to buy new clothes. It would be a small but annoying waste of time, but Logan could not bring himself to care very much.

He climbed up a ladder and slid into his coffin. Logan lay in the darkness, staring at nothing. He was tired, but could not sleep. In the sound-sealed box, the only thing he could hear was his own breath sawing away, unaccountably ragged and frayed as the torn sleeve of his shirt.

Logan held his breath, but that was even worse… The only sound was the dull thudding of his mechanical heart, ticking away the seconds.

Twenty percent.

Zero percent.

Coldhand unlocked the coffin door and climbed back down the rungs into the lobby. The receptionist watched Coldhand cautiously as he left, safe behind her thick window of reinforced glassteel.

It was the middle of the night and the already low temperatures had plummeted. Still damp from his shower, Coldhand's hair felt like icicles against the back of his neck. A low fog filled the streets and turned the coffin motel into a dim, ghostly apparition. There was little light and no warmth outside, but Pylos was far from empty.

A flock of whores – male and female – stood on the crumbling street corner, all dressed in layered clothes of transparent plastic that showed off their wares but kept the killing cold barely at bay. Their scarred pimp lurked just outside of the lamplight. There was a dangerous bulge under his long navy coat that had nothing to do with the attractive merchandise under his protection.

An Arcadian prostitute blew a kiss to Coldhand. He turned away. If he was going to be awake, then he may as well get some work done. A stray thought nagged at Logan, asking why he bothered at all. If he did not think that the Nihilist hunt would bring some kind of excitement, why not leave Prianus? Why not forget about the whole thing?

Logan made his way down into the underground parking lot and swung his leg over the plastihide seat of his rental streetcycle. A thin crust of ice crackled under his weight. Coldhand pulled out into the light midnight traffic. He had no idea where he was going.

As the hunter drove through Pylos – ostensibly familiarizing himself with the city – Logan found his thoughts lingering on the Arcadian girl at the corner. Her wings and the slim, dancer lines of her body. Her black hair and stormy gray eyes…

Black hair? Gray eyes? That's Maeve.

I'm thinking of Maeve.

Logan did not know why, but knew he did not want to. Regrets were bad color, as his mother used to say.
They burn a hole in your pocket, but you can't buy anything with them.

Regrets? Do I have regrets?

Pylos was no lovelier by night. Logan was a child of Highwind, a town that not even the most affectionate residents would call pleasant. But many of those living in his own hometown had left Pylos in search of greener pastures.

One hundred years ago, Pylos had been little different from any other Prian city – no better and no worse. But then the Arcadians appeared. Hundreds, thousands, and then tens of thousands of fairies flooded into the city from apparently empty air. Many of them were injured. They filled the Pylos hospitals and then the streets, even the surrounding forest.

The police did their best to keep order, but those early Arcadians were still frightened by the sudden, unprovoked Devourer attacks. None of them spoke Aver and there was simply no place for them. Not enough food, not enough shelter, certainly not enough jobs. There were not many on Prianus who hated the fairies, but most of those who did lived in Pylos.

Coldhand would have liked to ask the police about Vorus' information. If Arcadians were going missing, then the Prian police were trying to find out how and why. Were the fairies trying to do anything about their losses? If the ones Logan had met so far were any indication, probably not. They were a hopeless, broken people.

Maeve fought. She was one of the rare ones… but even she was just trying to die.

He drove through a particularly thick bank of fog – so heavy that it blotted out even the buzzing yellow street lamps – and skidded to a stop. The road was steep here, where Pylos splashed up against the side of the steep mountain valley. The buildings that lined the dark, empty road were laced with cracks, jagged reminders of Pylos' unstable bedrock. The cracks and broken windows were all patched, but quickly and cheaply, with parkboard planks and strips of plastic sheeting nailed into place.

The leaning building across the street from Coldhand was one of many apartment tower-slabs, built cheap and tall to make the best use of ground space. A long staircase was bolted to the front, but it was crooked and half hanging from the concrete. Logan doubted it would support his weight and probably had not been used in years. The slab had to be an Arcadian tenement. What use were stairs to those with wings?

Coldhand could not see into any of the boarded-over windows, but suspected the same was not true for those inside. Someone was watching him. He could feel it. Logan looked up and caught a glimpse of a white-winged shape on the cornice. It stepped back and out of sight. Coldhand briefly considered giving chase, but the watchful fairy would be long gone by the time he could climb up there.

What did that Arcadian think of the hunter down below? Just a midnight driver with nothing better to do? Maybe a new chem seller looking to expand his business? A thief casing his next hit? Or something worse, something more dangerous?

Like a Nihilist, hunting down my Arcadian prey?

Even if he could find the rooftop fairy, Coldhand doubted he was interested in talking. The Arcadians were closed-mouthed and clannish.

Going door to door and canvassing like a rookie beat cop was not going to yield much, Logan decided. If he wanted to catch the Cult of Nihil, he would have to think like the predator, not the prey.

"We explore the stars at the cost of ourselves, Doctor Andus. What do we ever find but more planets with few resources to offer? We need to focus here and now, on the present needs of the Prian people."

- Varus Galla, Prian minister of education (232 PA)

A week ago, Maeve never would have thought that anything could fascinate Xen as much as Gripper did, but the discovery of a Waygate seemed to have banished all thought of the alien. The archeologists spent each day in the mountain ravine, scanning and studying the Waygate. Xen and Panna scoured every inch of the huge artifact, searching for some genetic trace of its creator. They found nothing, but Professor Xen climbed down into the ravine every day with a wide grin across his angular silver face.

With most of the excavation done, the Prian diggers, Ava and Darius, spent most of their time running hoses up from the ravine to drain the accumulating rainwater and snowmelt. Gruth and Gripper helped them keep the pumps running, melting and chipping away the ice that had a tendency to build up around the intakes.

Morning and evening meals were usually taken together as they huddled around the cluster of heat lamps, eating from cans and mycofoam boxes. But most of the archeologists remained with the Waygate during the relatively warm daylight hours. Xia alone made the journey back up the ladder to see her friends during their lunch break.

"It's absolutely amazing," she told them for the hundredth time in the past few days.

"Have you been able to figure out how it works?" Duaal asked. He sipped coffee delicately from a plastic cup that steamed in the cold air, even under the brightest noon sun.

"Only what Maeve's been able to tell us," Xia answered with a nod toward the groggily blinking Arcadian princess.

Tiberius, who shared responsibility for nighttime watches, was still asleep in his tent. Orphia sat at attention on a perch outside, apparently unaffected by the thin air.

"The Waygates are only a part of the full device," Xia said. "They need an operator, not just to guide the linkup, but to be the center for the entire process."

Maeve was having a hard time making herself listen to the conversation. Her eyes felt like peeled grapes and she desperately wanted to lie down. But the whole thing – A Waygate here in the core! – filled her with a nervous, disquieted energy. Maeve's daytime sleep was plagued by dreams of the Devourers pouring forth from the Kayton Mountains like a swarm of dark, deadly locusts.

More than anything, she wanted a drink. Enough narcohol to drown her fears and put her to sleep for days… She found herself chewing on her nails again, biting them down to the raw red quicks.

"What does that mean, exactly?" Duaal was tired, too, but seemed actually curious. "A center for the process?"

Xia gave him a bright smile. "There's no sort of controls or external interface that we can find. Maeve says that's standard. The operator interacts directly with the Waygate."

"How?"

"Magic," Xia answered with a waggle of her white eyebrows. She laughed and her breath puffed into small, icy clouds.

"Do not mock such forces," Maeve said suddenly. It was stupid to get so angry – Xia was just making conversation – but the rage burned so hot and so sudden that Maeve could not stop herself. She felt sick. "The Waygates are powerful and deadly mysteries!"

"Sorry," Xia apologized. "I don't mean to make light, but it really is quite mysterious. You've opened a Waygate yourself, Maeve, and even you don't entirely understand how. They operate on memory, right? That's what Kemmer said."

"Their operators opened the Waygates to places they know. That is how they make the connection," Maeve said. Kemmer's questions had been more uncomfortably detailed, but Maeve still could not seem to quiet the nervous fluttering in her stomach. "Only those with keen minds and sharp memories were taught at the Ivory Spire. They visited many places during their training in order to memorize as many locations as possible."

"Kemmer and Xen have been thinking about that and–"

"If you can only open a gate to a place you can remember, then how did you find the Devourers?" Duaal asked. He did not seem very tired anymore, despite sharing daytime guard duties. Tiberius still adamantly refused to let him work at night. "You don't know where they come from."

Maeve combed her fingers through her short black hair. It needed to be washed. There was plenty of water up on the mountain, rain and snowmelt, but little way to heat it. Showers were short and infrequent. Maeve chewed at one of her nails again. A bead of blood oozed from the torn skin and she spat it on the rocky ground.

"No, I do not. But I am no Spire adept," said Maeve. "The nuances of the Waygates are far beyond me. I do not know how it happened."

"What about when the Arcadians came into the core, Smoke?" Gripper asked.

Maeve cocked her head at the Arboran. "What of them? Orthain and I devoted ourselves utterly to the closure of the Tamlin Waygate, to banishing the Devourers from the White Kingdom. The evacuation of our people was not my doing."

"But it was some sort of memory, wasn't it?" asked Gripper, enthusiasm still rising. "To open the Waygates?"

"I suppose."

"Well, if the Waygates just need memories, I could go home!" Gripper said. When the others stared blankly at him, he hurried to explain. "Smoke says that Waygates open to a place you remember, right? I remember Arborus! So I could use the Waygate to get back there!"

Xia's jeweled eyes went wide and whirled a bright blue. "Is that true? Could it be that simple?"

Maeve gave Gripper a sad look. "No. The song to open a Waygate is not simple and it is the singer who must know the destination. You do not know the spell and if you were to sing it incorrectly… That is what I did in Tamlin."

"Couldn't we find one of those Spire people?" Gripper was crestfallen. "Can't they just use magic to copy my memories or something? Like a file?"

"I have heard rumors of such charms, but never known if there was truth to them," Maeve said, shaking her head. "There are rumors of all things under the sun."

"Could you teach me, Smoke? You know how to use a Waygate…" Gripper looked at Maeve for a moment with huge, liquid brown eyes and then dropped his head. "I… I'm sorry, Smoke. I didn't mean to… I just want to go home."

"So do I," Maeve answered quietly. She turned away and went back to the tent for some sleep.

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