The Forgotten City (32 page)

Before Eli had a chance to memorize the maps, Imrad dragged his oar hands in the water to bring them to a halt beside a rocky plateau leading into a cave.

“Through there, my weary travelers,” the boatman said, pointing to the cave. “You’ll find an entranceway.”

“My friend said that LaNoria can only be accessed by magics,” Eli said.

“Then your friend is very right,” Imrad replied.

“Is it safe?” Eli asked.

“Absolutely not,” the boatman said and Eli gulped. He stared into the blackness inside the cavern and nerves crawled in his skin. Ismail was sniffing the air with distrust.

Eli forced himself to stand and step out of Imrad’s boat body. Ismail followed, and when they were both out, the boatman rowed around to face them, saying,“Sometimes this world falls against evil and sometimes it stands. I hope this time it stands.”

“So do I,” Eli said.

He and Ismail turned and walked across the rocks to the shadow of the overhanging cave mouth. They stepped inside the ragged shade. Eli looked back to wave at Imrad, but the boatman was gone, the river was gone, and a black wall stood blocking their exit.

“Dark magics,” Ismail snarled.

Eli turned and saw himself reflected in the scullion’s eyes. He saw the monster hand reaching around his face a second before it wrenched him backward into the wall.

B
y the time she’d almost freed the Dray from the cruel head cage, her hands were shaking so badly she could barely grip the last steel hook embedded deeply in his flesh. She had to hold one hand with the other to finish the torturous task. Throughout the ordeal he hadn’t uttered a sound, just sat forward in the seat with his head lowered. The only indication he was feeling any discomfort was the tightness with which he gripped the sides of the chair and the sweat pouring off him. Croy’s knee was aching horribly from crouching for so long on the hard floor of her house, but the presence of the Dray distracted her from the pain. Always in the past when she had thought of the Drays, she’d imagined some kind of grotesque shadow-form, twisted and inhuman in every way, but nothing about this man suggested demon or monster. His eyes were darker than any she had seen and they shone when the light reflected off them, but they were full of emotions that she recognized and wisdom that she wished she had. He even had parasite-scars and windscars marking the hard muscles of his body, just like a human Fleetsman.

Croy noted that the bruises on his legs from the chains were fresh and the puncture wounds from the cage were not infected. It suggested he was captured just recently, yet some of his other injuries looked dayturns old, or older. She dropped the last of the hooks onto the floor near to the swabbing alcohol and her Firestorm, which she had placed right beside her leg.

She wiped a hand over her face – the freezing storm was still howling outside, but the Dray was radiating heat like a fire. She wasn’t sure if it was actually him or the clothes he was wearing. The top had been ripped and hung off him, but the pants were intact. The fabric looked like some kind of animal skin, with heavy black scales that seemed to blend with the darkness. Croy had tried to cut away the rest of the top to stitch some of his other wounds, but had found that her knife, made from the strongest steel in the city, hadn’t been able to penetrate the material. It made her wonder what had torn his suit up – clearly nothing human-made.

After struggling to her feet, Croy gripped the cage and lifted it completely off the Dray’s head. Sensations bombarded her, feelings so intense that she immediately dropped the cage to the ground with a clatter. She recognized the emotions. She’d felt the same way just after John L had died and she had dreamed of him alive again, only to wake to find him gone. It was that feeling – that ache and void – that longing to see someone again and knowing it would never happen. It surged through her so powerfully that she found herself gripping onto the Dray’s arm, just barely stopping herself from actually climbing onto him and hugging him. This was a dangerous stranger whose true intentions she didn’t know. With supreme mental effort she managed to release him and back away, but only a few paces, where she crouched down and lowered her head so as not to see him. She shook from the effort of keeping away from him and her chest ached with it. The cage had obviously been some kind of barrier to his power.

“Switch it off! Make it stop!” she demanded through gritted teeth.

“I can’t,” he spoke, his deep voice piercing right through her to where she hid in her mind. “It’s the
rete
calling you in.”

“Into where?”

“Into me – into your family line,” he said.

Croy shook her head. “I don’t understand.” The shaking was worsening and her body was dragging her forward, toward him.

“Come closer. I’ll explain everything,” the Dray said.

“No!” Croy responded.

She sensed movement and looked up. He had stretched out his hand and she could see some kind of exotic marking imprinted in the skin of his arms. She couldn’t stop herself, she reached out a shaking hand and placed it onto his. He closed his grip and gently drew her closer until she was sitting at his feet. He leaned down and touched his head to hers. The warmth of him, the scent of him rushed through her. She heard his voice in her mind.

It’s alright. I’m here.

She fully realized that a stranger being
there
shouldn’t be comforting, yet it was. She reached up and put her arms around his neck and all the fear drained out of her, leaving only silence in her mind, and something else she could see – a line stretching out into darkness.

He released her and she leaned back, kneeling beside him. Immediately she felt it – the pain in her knee was gone. She’d never been able to kneel on it like this. She shifted gingerly – but still felt nothing. The shock and extreme relief brought tears to her eyes.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

The Dray looked down at her, his eyes shimmering like flames over dark waters.

“Shah-Jahan RaAhura … Captain of the
Scorpian Manticore
.” He flinched and pressed back in the chair, holding the stab wound in his side. He closed his eyes and seemed to drift into sleep.

Croy watched him for a long time before standing and walking, without any limp, into her bathroom. Feeling as though she was moving in a dream, she unlatched her toilet pail and from her hiding spot dragged out John L’s papers, stashed beneath his leather jacket and his last packet of tigaros. It was some of his research into the Dray. Just before Controllers had raided John’s house she’d hidden the papers, hoping the Conference wouldn’t have enough evidence to convict him, but VP already had more than enough. She stared down at the parchments covered in John L’s black scrawl. Until now she’d never more than glimpsed over it, some part of her always wanting to believe he was innocent and not wanting to see anything that proved otherwise. She realized now how stupid this was. She scanned through the writing and found what she’d been looking for, she had a memory of seeing it once before, the name RaAhura –
Vesuvius RaAhura – Captain of the
Scorpian Manticore – perhaps Shah-Jahan’s father? She read a note beside the name –
the Captain is the core of the family. The strongest of them all, who holds the
rete
together. Through him and by him all cerebral communications pass. Without him the clanship falls apart
.

“Cerebral communications?” Croy whispered. What did that mean? There were many parchment sheets of writing, but the words blurred before her eyes and she found she couldn’t read them. She placed the parchments down and went back out into the lounge room. Shah-Jahan still sat with his eyes shut. She could feel his pain pulsing through her, as well as hunger and thirst.

She went to her food stores, took out a decanter of water and some bread and carried them to him. She touched his arm and his eyelids blinked open. She offered him the water and he took it and drank deeply.

“Why are you here? What happened to you?” she asked him. “Where’s the rest of your family?”

A shadow crossed Shah-Jahan’s face. “The Arequium Mors drove the human ship, the
Chimera
, into the
Scorpian Manticore
and since then they have been hunting me, through humans, through animals – whatever they can possess. The entire family was at risk. I had to leave and cut the
rete
.” He swallowed painfully. “I found my way into the city through air pipes in the Crematorium.”

“The Arequium Mors crashed the
Chimera
?” Croy repeated, trying to understand what he was saying. “What are they?”

“You saw them – the shadows, minions of the Indemeus X – his heralds and hounds.”

“Who is the Indemeus X?” Croy asked.

“A demon,” Shah-Jahan told her. “Set to drag our universe into his underworld. It’s foretold I can stop him … though how, I can’t see.”

“They made the dead move …” Memories from the Crematorium shook her.

“That’s what they do. The Arequium Mors can’t hurt anyone with their own hands, but they wield high influence. They can’t affect Drays, only those with less complicated minds, like humans.”

“If they can influence humans, why couldn’t they influence me? I felt them trying,” Croy said. “My leg … the pain.”

Shah’s eyes moved over her face and she could feel his hands on her even though they held the decanter in his lap.

“What is it?”

“Do you want to hear the truth or a lie that won’t hurt?” he whispered.

Croy had a feeling like the house was about to collapse in on her.

“Truth,” she said, though she wasn’t completely sure.

“You’re human, but you have an implant of Dray bone in your leg – connected at the knee – all the way down there.” He pointed to her scarred knee. “It’s blocking them.”

Croy’s mind absorbed the shock and rejected his words, “I fell when I was little, between a gridway. They said I wouldn’t walk again but I did, I fought for it. John L told me …”

“John L …” Shah-Jahan repeated. “John Lukashenko?”

“Yes,” Croy said, feeling disquiet rippling all over her skin.

“This man and other human men came to my people with a treaty, offering medicine and advancements in technology. We formed an alliance, believing they were speaking on behalf of all humans, but then we discovered they were using us – harvesting our dead to use in experiments on human children – human women – injecting and splicing blood and bone.”

“I don’t understand,” Croy said, her voice faint.

“At first we thought they were trying to create a weapon against us, but then we discovered they were working for someone else – someone more powerful …”

“But there is only us and you.”

Again she felt his comforting touch through her mind. “This is not the whole world – there are above lands – people, city, desert, sky – suns …”

“Above is hell.” Croy said. “The saints escaped down here from there after demons cast them into the fires for their beliefs.”

Shah-Jahan spoke gently, “They came down looking for a place to start again when in the above land humans started breeding into animal bloodlines to survive. Your forefathers believed against it, so they left and told that story of hell so no one would try to go back up. Their intentions were pure, but fast corrupted by greed and jealousy.”

Croy studied Shah-Jahan’s mouth and dark eyes but she couldn’t see a lie or any maliciousness anywhere there. He was telling the truth. She felt shattered, lost for words and thoughts.

“The twins from the Crematorium … The girl knows about this?” she managed to ask.

The Dray nodded. “The boy has a bone implant in his spine, the girl in her head. They were both done later – you were the first. Their father was one of the men who came to us.”

“You remember their names?”

“We never forget anything,” Shah-Jahan said.

“Who?” she said, bracing herself for the answer. “Who were these men?”

“John Lukashenko, Ezra Quartermaine, Rogan Kisslefish, Zeman Kilner, Van Pritchard …”

Croy swallowed and closed her eyes.

“They had a laboratory somewhere here in your city. We tried to stop them, to talk to them, but they didn’t listen. They cut us off. They killed my captain.” He clenched his teeth with pain.

Victoria Kilner’s dead face appeared for a second in Croy’s mind.

“The corpse the twins stole – was she … one of us?” she whispered.

Shah nodded. “I felt her in the
rete
before she died. She could hear the Mors, but didn’t understand what they were saying, what they meant. Her father told her she was crazy. It drove her to death.”

“And what were the Morticians doing with her?” Croy said.

“The Mors were trying to influence the death tenders to take the Dray bone from the girl and splice it into themselves so they could find where I was hiding there.”

“But the twins took her first.”

He nodded and shifted with discomfort, and Croy felt a wave of nauseating pain radiating from him. Shah leaned forward in his seat and she stood and examined his back, finding another older but severe injury low down. She lifted the alcohol to swab it.

“Did the Morticians use the body?” she asked.

He understood her meaning and said, “No.”

“The father?”

“A man who experiments on his own child is not a father – or a man.”

“A monster,” Croy uttered. “John …” She closed her eyes. He’d taught her everything she knew. She thought he’d loved her, but she was just an experiment. A heavy weight pressed down on her chest. She felt no anchor holding her to reality, but then the line she’d seen in the depths of her mind tightened and she felt him there – Shah-Jahan – holding her, keeping her and fortifying her.

She opened her eyes and looked down at him.

He spoke. “If the Drays are allowed entrance into city, they can save the humans from the Arequium Mors. If not, the Mors will drive them all to kill each other. That’s what they feed on.”

“After the sinking of the
Chimera
and the
Teriscoria
there’s no chance of people accepting that,” Croy said. “They wouldn’t believe. I wouldn’t have believed if I didn’t – feel. I need evidence to convince them. You said they had a laboratory here – where?” She hoped it wasn’t the Crematorium, which had just gone up in flames.

He shook his head. “We were never told.”

Croy’s mind went to Kellor Quartermaine. She would know. Everything she had said, though it had seemed like insane babbling, now made sense.

“The twins are being held in Tower. I’ll go to them and get the information."

“It’s too dangerous. I’ll go with you,” Shah said and tried to rise, but sank back down clutching his side in pain.

“It’s better if you stay here,” she said to him. “If any humans see you, they’ll attack, even without the Mors influencing them.”

“They’ll be hunting you to get to me,” Shah-Jahan said, his voice heavy with weariness.

“Then I’ll have to move fast,” Croy said. “All the rest of the food is in there.” She handed him the bread. “I’ll be back.”

He held out his hand to her and she took it, his warm touch radiating courage and strength through her.

I’m with you
, he spoke in her thoughts.

Croy grabbed her Firestorm and left. Everything outside her house looked the same, yet everything inside her had changed.