Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (51 page)

"Captain! We must reach Gavriel and the Waygate! There is no more important goal," Maeve said when they were close.

"I know," Cerro told her. "But they're thick up there, and we've got Arcadians above us."

As if to prove his point, a quartet of Arcadians wheeled down from the clouds, black robes flapping in the rain and making them look more like bats than birds. Cerro whistled sharply. The smaller black shape of his falcon flew out of the mist and intercepted the closest cultist. There was a splash of crimson blood and the Nihilist veered off course. With a sonorous shriek of pain, he collided with the Arcadian beside him and they crashed together to the ground in a tangle of limbs and wings.

But that left two more folding their wings and diving at the police. Cerro fired at one of the screaming fairies, who veered off and vanished into the low clouds again.

The remaining Arcadian slammed into the ground in a low crouch. It was a woman, with lips skinned back from her teeth and singing a low, angry battle chant. She lunged at Cerro with a crooked nanoknife. A larger foot came down on the back of her heel and then a sharp blow across the back of her neck sent the Nihilist sprawling in the snow, wheezing shallowly. Cerro looked to Logan, who stood over the fallen Arcadian with his Talon in hand.

"Can you hold the southern end of the slope?" Cerro asked.

Logan scanned the shapes racing through the mist. "Yes."

"Good. Go and then we can break their ranks."

"In sixty," Logan said.

Cerro whistled and seven of the other cops darted with him toward the ravine. Maeve and Logan turned and sprinted through the slush along the southern edge of the flat moraine.

"Logan!" Maeve shouted.

Two Lyrans were scrambling through the snow, falling to all fours for better traction. They were only yards away. Maeve leapt, beating her wings as the Lyrans pounced. The cultists hurtled under her and she dove. Maeve fell on one of the wolfin Nihilists, driving her spear through his back. She landed and leveled her glass blade at the second, but Logan was already standing over the Lyran, a thread of steam rising from his laser.

"Fifteen. We need to go," he said.

Logan turned and continued their dash for the southern position. Maeve counted silently. At fifteen, she heard a high, trilling whistle. From Cerro's position, she saw a group of police charge forward, red laserfire clearing the way and…

What was that flash of purple and gold? For the first time, Maeve realized that Duaal was no longer with them. The mage was following Cerro down into the ravine.

________

Duaal watched Maeve and Logan's departure in silence. They could handle things to the south. When he made no move to follow, Captain Cerro looked over at Duaal.

"What's your plan, then?" he asked the young Hyzaari.

"Same as you. I'm getting down to that Waygate." Duaal's eyes were dry now. "That's where Gavriel is."

Cerro nodded curtly and whistled, once to his falcon and then again to the small squad of other cops. One of them was already limping on a badly wounded foot, but his attacker lay in a black-clothed heap a few yards away. A woman with a lined face checked the battery on her Talon. Cerro looked at the other cops.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Yes, sir!" came the chorus of answers.

"Yes," Duaal echoed.

The wet, dark fog was finally thinning, torn by wind and washed away by the rain. Cerro raised his hand. The ravine's edge was lined by Nihilists, like rows of diseased gargoyles. At least fifty of them were already caught in close, bloody combat with other squads of Prian police. There were far fewer cops than Nihilists, but each of the officers was of the toughest Prian stock and trained to fight beak and claw for their homeworld. All the Cult of Nihil had was numbers, but they had those in abundance.

They spotted Duaal, Cerro and the Prians charging the line and turned to face the new threat. Duaal sprinted to keep up.

"Na illya ma'naari su!"
he sang.

Blue-white lightning snapped out like a serpent's forked tongue, following Duaal's gesture, smaller than the jagged bolts jumping from cloud to cloud over the Kayton Mountains, but no less deadly. The curling electricity grounded on one of the Nihilists, who went ridged and fell twitching into the snow.

Imitating Cerro, the young mage ran in a crouch. There was the occasional crack of a gun or the sizzling whine of a laser, but the Nihilists were armed mostly with simple clubs, knives, and an utter lack of regard for their own safety. They threw themselves at the advancing Prians with rapture on their reddened, disease-pocked faces.

A tattered black shadow leapt at Duaal. The mage flexed his fingers into the symbol for fire, but before he could open his mouth to sing, the cultist collided with him. The Nihilist fumbled for purchase on top of Duaal and raised a dagger. A screaming falcon fell out of the sky and tore bright spurts of blood from the Nihilist's face. His dagger went flying. Captain Cerro appeared out of the rain and shot the flailing cultist through the chest.

"We're clearing a path to the ladder," the Prian said. "Come on!"

A sudden burst of laserfire from the south cut into the pack of cultists, forcing them to split their attention. That must have been Logan. Another pack of police hit the Nihilists from the north, two others harrying Arcadian reinforcements swooping out of the clouds.

Cerro whistled. Duaal could not tell if it was a command for the birds or the police, but when the cops charged, he stayed close. A burly Prian took point, shotgun held at waist level, booming continuously. Nihilists scattered before him, falling or retreating. But one of the wounded still clutched his own gun and returned fire. Duaal was close enough to hear the wet, meaty thuds and then the air whooshing from the officer's lungs as the bullets tore through him. The big blond man wobbled, regained his balance and gave the Nihilist the death he wanted so much with a shotgun blast in the gut.

A howling human with an axe took the cop's arm and landed another deep blow into his ribs. With a roar of fury, the Prian staggered the final yards to the edge of the ravine and heaved himself forward. He reached out with his remaining arm as he slammed into the line of Nihilists, taking two of them down over the edge with him.

Duaal's gorge rose. The Prians were as relentless as the Cult of Nihil. And for now, at least, it had earned them control of the ravine. One of Cerro's men gave the reattached ladder a cursory check and began climbing, but it would take far too long for thirty cops to make the decent that way. Cerro pulled bulky cylinders from their belts and fired pitons into the rocky ledge of the ravine with a pneumatic charge. Without hesitation, they leapt over the edge, down into the crevice.

"Move!" Cerro shouted to Duaal.

The young mage swung his legs over and clambered quickly down the wet rungs before the cultists above could regroup. By the time Duaal reached the ravine's uneven floor, Cerro and his remaining officers were hunkered down behind a heap of dig tailings. The rain had turned the ground all around into a sodden mire of mud. Duaal fell to his knees in the muck with Cerro and the rest of the police, heedless of his once-fine clothes.

The Nihilists were gathered around the base of the Waygate to adore their leader, but now they saw the invading police and turned together, swarming through the close confines toward Cerro's position. Duaal could just make out two figures standing before the Waygate, at the tip of the tall white ziggurat. One in ragged black and the other in perfect white. Gavriel and Xartasia.

Without thinking, Duaal ran for the Waygate. He
had
to stop Gavriel. Tiberius had told him to. An Arcadian pounced on him. The ragged thing was too thin and dirty to make out gender, but it hissed at him in its own lyric language and swung a nail-spiked club clutched tightly in pale fingers. The mage jumped back, slipped in the mud and fell.

The Arcadian swiped the club down at Duaal in an inexpert but still potentially lethal strike. Duaal rolled over onto his back and kicked up at his attacker. He hit, forcing the Nihilist to drop the weapon, but not before one of the nails gouged a ragged, bloody line into his boot and the foot beneath.

It was not a terrible wound, but it bled and it hurt. The club spun off into the rain. The Nihilists ran through Cerro's staccato shots and grabbed at Duaal, holding him as the Arcadian pulled a carving knife from his belt. With an effort, Duaal jerked his hands free and hooked his fingers, but could not seem to make his stiff, numb digits properly form the intricate spell symbols.

But they're not important,
he thought frantically.
Maeve said that symbols are for children! Panna said they're just to help me visualize what I need to happen.

"Ka li'ae avael!"
he said. Light smoldered sullenly for a moment in the misty afternoon, faltering and fading.

They're just symbols and they're not important!

Duaal concentrated and fire blazed out in a widening ring. The flames drove the Nihilists back, shouting and swatting at their burning robes. Duaal jumped to his feet and pressed forward again.

Gavriel stood haloed by the Waygate, hands raised over his head. His expression was exultant, victorious as he sang his stolen song. Xartasia stood at his side, a long-bladed glass dagger in her hand. She watched over Gavriel as Maeve must have guarded her brother so many times. All around them, the lights of the Waygate swirled and pulsed.

Duaal could feel Gavriel's magic echoing painfully back along his own thoughts, resonating like a plucked string. The boy dove under a clumsy punch from a stout Axial, and then he was on the oversized white stairs of the Waygate.

"Na illya ma'naari su!"

Xartasia's eyes snapped from Gavriel to Duaal. She held the glass knife out and sang a short countercharm. The crooked line of electricity changed direction and arced into the ravine wall. The rocks popped with a sharp retort and flung granite in every direction. Distracted by the crack of lightning and the shower of stone, Gavriel turned away from the Waygate.

The gate blazed. The pale colors floating over the segmented rings turned suddenly an angry, fiery red. The Waygate hummed like a tuning fork. The note rose deafeningly and then broke, shattering into booming words.

"T'sachka! Klova min hotek szo. Kreng vizizt gzdan k'mella. T'sachka, t'sachka! Klova min hotek szo. Kreng vizizt gzdan k'mella."

For all its volume, the Waygate's voice was flat and toneless. It overlapped with its own echoes as it rebounded from the walls of the narrow ravine.

Gavriel's single eye blazed with fury. "What are you doing, boy?" he howled.

A dozen Nihilists turned away from the Prians and ran at Duaal.

"No! He is mine," Gavriel bellowed. "You never should have stopped running from me, boy!"

The Nihilists parted, but they were not still. Black and the occasional red robe swarmed at the foot of the Waygate, locked in combat with the Prian police. The wind reeked of ozone and gunpowder, heavy and metallic on Duaal's tongue.

"Ka li'ae avael!"
Gavriel sang in a voice only slightly less thunderous than that of the Waygate.

Fire filled the stairs and forced Duaal back, down to the cold, muddy ground. Gavriel strode down the steps of the Waygate toward the boy. The frozen Prian wind whipped his long black robes out around him. His pale, age-spotted skin was like an ancient shroud pulled over the long-dead skeleton beneath. But there was power there, confidence and surety in every step, glowering there in his lone eye.

Beautiful Xartasia stared and then spun to face the angrily pulsing Waygate. Gavriel stepped down from the final ivory stair and narrowed one eye at Duaal. The other wept dark blood down his cheek.

"You fled me and took my power with you," he said. "You were mine, boy. You belonged to me."

Duaal took a lurching step away from the old man. He wanted to say something, anything to Gavriel. The man who had taught him magic, who had taught him fear. Who hurt Tiberius. But his mouth was dry and every nerve in his body screamed at him to run, to get away. Captain Cerro was here, somewhere… Wasn't it
his
job to save Prianus…?

"I'll kill you myself, boy," Gavriel said. "You deserve that much. And then I will finish what I began so long ago."

Duaal fell back another faltering step. Fear choked him and sent the whole world spinning. He was eight years old again, cowering before his master. Gavriel twisted his aged hands into the symbol for fire.

But I'm not a weak little boy.

Xia didn't think Duaal was a child… Gripper had mooned after her for years, but she chose Duaal. Xia had broken all her people's genetic purity taboos and for him. Maeve was alive because of the things Duaal had seen.
He
had saved her! Even Tiberius… Tiberius told Duaal to stop Gavriel. That only
he
could do it.

"Ka li'ae imali!"
Duaal sang, the counterspell to Gavriel's fire.

Smoke curled up from the ancient mage, but nothing more. Gavriel's long knobbed fingers spread and twisted.
"Na illya ma'naari su!"

Duaal hesitated for an almost fatal instant as the air crackled. So many times he felt those very words echoing in his own skull, watching Gavriel's helpless victim writhe as electricity seared through them.