Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (57 page)

"He wasn't bad for a Prian," Gruth grunted. He shifted his weight on the crutch.

Panna wiped her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. "Tiberius was the gentlest rough man I ever met. Professor Xen didn't think much of Prians, but he had the greatest respect for Captain Myles and it was well-earned."

Gripper's face was a mask of grief and he hiccuped with great, racking sobs. He tried several times to say something, but could only weep like a broken-hearted child. Xia took his big, clawed hand and stroked it comfortingly. Maeve stood beside the pyre, dressed all in the Arcadian's mourning gray, the wind tugging at her black hair and white wings.

"You welcomed a wounded and broken girl to your ship, Tiberius. You gave to me a home when I had none and your friendship when I deserved none. Your grace and your loss will be remembered always." The fairy closed her eyes. She raised her face up to the sky and sang in a sweet, sad voice.
"En a vaellin saemma var'ii lae…"

Maeve stopped and shook her head. Tears glittered in her dark eyelashes. "No, I will sing in your tongue, my captain, that you may know our sorrow…

"Above the raging storm, the stars burn ever on

The light of those who came before and sing for us still

Above the weeping storm, you fly forever on

Unto those silver lights and wait for me until

That bright day when through the storm I soar

And we may meet in blue skies more."

Maeve opened her eyes again and the tears streaked down her pale face. She held one hand up to the flames of Tiberius' pyre. "Farewell, my captain. You were one of the best men that I have ever known."

To Duaal's surprise, Logan stood beside Maeve. Not close enough to touch, but… close. Duaal had never seen the bounty hunter dressed in anything but the most utilitarian of clothes, but now he wore a clean, neat black suit – though the Talon-9 was still visible in an oiled leather holster at his hip. Logan stared into the bright, dancing flames.

"More men should be like you, Myles," he said simply.

Duaal stood at the foot of the flaming pyre. They probably expected him to say something, but what was left? Two men had been fathers to Duaal… one terrible and powerful, one brave and noble. Both Tiberius and Gavriel were gone now. One killed by the other and only one mourned.

I'm alone now.

Duaal's heart ached and his eyes were swollen from crying. Gavriel killed Tiberius, but he had paid for that, if not at Duaal's hands. There was no one else to blame, nothing to be gained by anger. Duaal looked down at Tiberius' pyre.

Is this what it means to grow up?
he wondered.
Knowing the pain is there, but there's nothing to be done about it? There's no one to run to anymore when I'm scared. There's no tantrum to throw, nothing that can bring Tiberius back. I just have to live with missing him.

He would miss Tiberius every day for the rest of his life, but there were other things to worry about. Things that Tiberius would have seen to, but which now fell to Duaal. The young captain raised his eyes.

"Xartasia is still out there. We fly within the hour," he said. "Are you ready?"

"Yes," Logan answered.

They turned away, heading back to the Blue Phoenix. Duaal turned back once and called for Orphia, but the old hawk remained stubbornly in the tree beside her master's pyre and would not leave.

"Time lost may never again be found. Or so it is said."

- Titania Cavainna, Arcadian monarch (234 PA)

Commander Dhozo stood at the edge of a withered field of dead grass. Something had changed. Everything had changed. What had been frozen stone and icy rain a moment before was now a heavy sky that seethed with dirty gray-brown clouds that obscured a pair of tiny, pathetic orange suns. Dhozo raised one huge fist. The hissing, buzzing swarm of nanites clung close.

"Halt!" he called.

His squadron – eighteen left of a twenty-five-man squadron, hand-picked for this assignment – formed up around Dhozo. They were not alone on the plain of crumbling grass. A crowd of creatures, many with white wings and nearly all in black clothes, stared in shocked wonder. They huddled behind a single woman. She was small and slight, with a regal bearing that defied her size.

"I know this place," she said. "This is Zeos, Gavriel's homeworld."

Dhozo's nanites translated the woman's words, sending signals back and forth to each other and their central computer, implanted at the base of his skull. A readout lit up at the edge of Dhozo's vision and he bared his sharp predator's teeth in sudden surprise. He thought he recognized the wings, the short, pointed ears… An aerad, a slave from the ancient feeding grounds.

Dhozo's men pressed forward, but he ordered them back again. There was something to be learned here. Something unforeseen had happened. Hunger gnawed at his stomach, but the commander was more disciplined than hungry.

The little aerad woman stood as tall as she could, but was still half Dhozo's height. "You will hear me, Devourer," she said in a clear, strong voice.

"Devourer?" Dhozo answered. His computer made an educated guess at the translation and repeated him in the aerad's language. "My kind has been called by many names. Yours is not new or even very interesting. Why should I listen to you, slave?"

The last word made the woman's violet eyes blaze, but she only smiled. "My name is Xartasia. I can give you what you have lost. What is your name, Devourer?"

"I am Commander Dhozo, of the VSS Forge. What do you think you have to give us, Xartasia, besides the marrow in your bones? My men are hungry, and you are only a slave. We left your race to die long, long ago," Dhozo rasped.

"You were as surprised by the Waygate's call as we. I have lore you also thought long gone," Xartasia said. "There is ancient knowledge that you have lost. I have sacrificed much to find it. But from you, I need only one secret. Let us trade our secrets, Commander Dhozo, to both our benefit."

"Talk holds little interest to me and my men," Dhozo told her. "They are
very
hungry, little aerad."

Xartasia smiled again and gestured to the huddle of aliens behind her. "Let it not be said that I am a poor hostess. You must eat, of course." She held up a white-gloved finger. "But, even knowing your taste for them, you must not touch those with wings. The humans, Dailons, Ixthians and Lyrans are yours. They are happy to die."

All around him, Commander Dhozo's men surged forward, nanites reflexively reaching in sharp, inky tendrils for the cowering creatures. "Hold!" he ordered. "Not yet! There's too much we don't know. Take scans before you eat. Every one of them! And none of the aerads… for now."

They lunged past Xartasia, who stood unflinching as the Devourers tore into their next meal. The creatures in tattered clothes could not run far on the open ground before Dhozo's men tore them apart, devouring skin and muscle, organs and bones. Dhozo's stomachs rumbled, but he was not yet done with Xartasia. He stepped close to make himself heard over the screams of the dying.

"What do you want, little slave?" he asked.

"Show me your face, commander," she said. "Let me see with whom I speak."

Dhozo sent the command to his nanite swarm. It had been burned thin by the human in the fighter, but was still enough to tear Xartasia to bloody rags of skin in seconds, if he wanted to. And they would rebuild themselves, as soon as he could harvest the materials. At Dhozo's thought, the nanites coalesced against his skin. The layer of glistening black was only a millimeter thick and was the only clothes he wore, concealing nothing and revealing all.

He knew how he looked to Xartasia now, how his kind appeared to all aliens: Huge monsters, beasts out of nightmare. Like her, Dhozo had two arms and legs, but no wings. His ears, too, came to points, but were much longer than Xartasia's. Where it was not covered by the nanites, his skin was smooth, hairless and dark gray over thick, corded muscles. His fingers ended in wickedly curved claws that matched the long, sharp fangs filling his wide mouth. His eyes were a solid black over a broad, flat nose. Xartasia looked up at him, that secretive smile still on her red lips.

"Fascinating," she said softly. A stale wind stirred the dead grass around them. "You look much like the creatures I met not so long ago in my search for you. The Arborans, as they are known."

The name meant nothing to Dhozo. He loomed over Xartasia, fanged mouth watering, but she did not bow or flinch. Strange. She did not have the bearing of a slave at all. But then, nothing was supposed to be alive at all in the old feeding grounds. They had been picked clean eons ago. But now there was so much to learn here… and to eat.

"Tell me about this deal you want to make," Dhozo growled.

________

The End

The story of Logan Centra and Arctan Vorus

"Why you hurrying home? No one there for you!"

"Mum's working out late again, yeah? I got some work for her in my pants," jeered another one of Sullis' friends. The gap-toothed teen thrust his hips suggestively. "Her work comes cheap, don't it? Could probably keep her busy all night for ten cen!"

"Fly off!" Logan shouted. He hurled himself at the nearest boy, not one of those who had spoken – not this time, at least – but all of Sullis' gang were the same. Bigger, meaner and stronger than scrawny ten-year-old Logan Centra. He bounced off the much larger boy and sprawled on the cracked pavement.

Sullis laughed sharply. He was six or so years older than Logan, but at least three times bigger, with broad shoulders and pocked skin. His gang tightened their circle around Logan. Sullis waggled his tongue insolently at the boy on the ground.

"Got something to say to your mum, Logan? Why don't you tell me?" he taunted. "I'll be seeing her later tonight. I'll take real good care of her, don't worry."

Logan's eyes streamed with furious tears. He pulled his feet under him, but another of Sullis' boys – a wiry, ruddy-faced young man – kicked Logan in the chest and sent him tumbling back to the grease-stained roadside. Cars raced and rattled by, their drivers taking no notice of the boys fighting just a few yards away. Logan wheezed and tried to jump at Sullis again. He swung a poorly-aimed punch at the gang's leader. Sullis took a single step back, laughing again.

"You can't fight worth a turd," he said, then leered at Logan. "But then, what else you expect from the son of a whore? I bet you know how to ass about just fine. Gonna be a rental like your mum?"

"She's not a whore!" Logan cried. He cast about for a suitable insult. His heart was racing so fast in his chest that he couldn't hear the individual beats anymore, just a thin hum like the pulse of a bird. "But I bet you are! And your buyers don't even know you're a boy until they've got your pants down!"

________

Logan could only see through one eye. The other was simply too swollen. He could only open it a crack and even then, everything seemed muddy and red. Still, he knew the route home from school well enough that he could have made it with both eyes shut. Logan really hoped he wouldn't have to test that.

The sun was setting behind the steep mountains that surrounded Highwind like a crown of great stone blades. The stars would come out before long, but it would be some hours more before they would shine with light enough to pierce the thick miasma of smoke and other pollutants that filled the city air.

Highwind looked not unlike a pile of old boxes, discarded but not empty. Like so many Prian cities, most of the houses were cheap, mass produced as flimsy, barely habitable temporary shelters. They were only designed to stand for a year or two before replacement. Most of the thin-walled cubes or squat apartment blocks were fifty years old or more. They had been patched and repaired so many times that the walls seemed quilted in blotchy rust, water-stained aluminum and flaking paint. The roads of Highwind were as cracked and piebald as the houses matched by the cars and pedestrians that traveled them.

Logan tripped a few times on the uneven concrete, once coming dangerously close to stumbling into a chem dealer lounging on the street corner. The woman glared at Logan through lank blonde hair and prodded the boy onward with a boot against his backside. He moved on without looking back.

Logan climbed the creaking stairs that zig-zagged across the face of his building and reached the faded green door of his mother's apartment. For a panicked moment, he couldn't find his keys. Had they fallen out of his pocket when Sullis kicked him? But no, Logan found them a moment later in his back pocket. The locks took some effort, but he muscled the door open with a grunt.

The small apartment was empty, of course. That much of Sullis' stupid taunting had been true. His mother was working late, as usual. Logan dropped his crack-screened school datadex on the couch and went to the kitchen for some ice. He broke a few cubes from a tray in the freezer and wrapped them in a towel from beside the sink.

Back in the living room, Logan flopped down onto the couch. On the other end, his guitar twanged at the jostling as though gently admonishing its young master. The boy considered playing, but his hands ached and his ribs hurt. He closed his eyes, but couldn't sleep. Logan sat up and pulled the guitar into his lap, curling his stiff fingers around the worn wooden neck and began to play.