ElyriasEcstasy (18 page)

Also, no Weapons and Shadowflashes sent off in tandem into
the surrounding Unsafe to wreak havoc among the Passengers. There was no
military. No need for one.

It gripped Urna’s imagination and would not let go. He
reeled with thoughts of the faraway place, though he couldn’t have said why he
was so seized by the concept. He’d never before thought himself particularly
imaginative. But something about what Bongo told him had completely entranced
him. It was like…a magical spell.

Magic was the key. So said Bongo. And he said it with a
fervent light shining in his green eyes.

Urna had enjoyed sex with the male. Afterward, they had
talked, and dozed, and talked some more. As the day had waned Urna had felt the
drug need rising. Now, pacing around the small house’s cluttered ground level,
he felt cool sweat breaking out on his brow. His hands were starting to shake.

“Virge’ll be back soon,” Bongo assured. He was watching the
Weapon a little warily now. “She’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.”

Virge. His other savior. This was her home. She was a
chemist, Bongo had told him, and it was her lab he had evidently broken into.

“Right.” Urna nodded. “Right. Back soon. She’ll take care of
me.” It was like a mantra, like one of those near-nonsensical phrases he had
written on the walls of his quarters back at the Citadel. He squeezed shut his
eyes, this time seeing the Farsafe of his imagination with his chaotic wall
scrawlings superimposed over the lovely vista. Why had those old bits of
language fascinated him so? What had he been trying to learn from the ancient
texts he’d scrounged up? The world Elyria had been before the advent of the
Black Ship was dead and gone. Nothing was left but moldering ruins and odds and
ends of printed matter from that lost age.

He paced into the kitchen. He had no appetite for food. That
was for the best, probably. It didn’t look like there was much of anything to
eat. He spun about to march back out to the untidy front room. Bongo was
standing in his way. What? Did he want to fuck again? Urna wasn’t in the mood
just now. The craving pains were starting to needle his gut. He had to have
some
thing.
Soon.

“Maybe I can help,” Bongo said in a soothing voice, genuine
sympathy showing on his handsome features. He was holding up a piece of metal
no bigger than his thumb. It gleamed. It was roughly egg-shaped. Tiny
characters were etched into it. He went on, “Let me cast a spell of
alleviation.”

Whatever curiosity Urna had felt vanished abruptly. He
recalled the blond man murmuring at a crystal after they’d had sex, something
about a magic spell of protection for him. Urna had dismissed it at the time,
but right now the notion of magical incantations actively annoyed him. It
seemed purely make-believe. His growing need was making him irritable. But
beyond that was something worse—the fear of narcotic withdrawal, and its
attendant physical and mental miseries.

“I don’t have time for this!” Urna snapped, waving dismissively.

But Bongo didn’t step aside so he could resume his pacing.
“Yeah? Got somewhere else to be, do you? Is your mind really so closed? I’m
offering you comfort. You’ve no reason to reject it.”

It wasn’t a persuasive argument. But Urna nonetheless found
himself impressed by the man’s boldness, by the tenacity of his beliefs.
Despite Urna’s own present physical condition, he was wholly confident he could
dispatch this person with minimal effort. No ordinary civilian—or most anybody
else, for that matter—could take on a Weapon. Especially not
the
Weapon.

He let a grin that was halfway a sneer curl his lips. “Okay,
friend. Cast your spell. What do I have to do?”

“Just stand there.” A look of grave seriousness had come to
Bongo’s face. He started a low, atonal chant. He passed the piece of gleaming
metal back and forth in front of Urna’s face. Urna tried to pick out the
individual letters inscribed on the object’s surface but he recognized nothing.
Maybe some ancient Elyrian language he’d never come across in his unofficial
studies before.

Bongo closed his eyes. The chant changed, taking on a
strange melody. Words seemed to be creeping in among the sounds, but Urna
didn’t quite recognize any of them either. Even so, they seemed to have a
hypnotic quality—that, or the drug craving was making him hear things now.

After another moment, the Weapon felt his need easing. Or at
least the chilly sweats had stopped. He found that his own eyes had drifted
shut. Again he saw the Farsafe. He saw water, a huge body of it. It foamed
along the shore in a weird, rolling fashion. The action of that water was
mesmerizing and for an instant he felt like he was actually there. He was on…a
beach? Sand underfoot. What the hell was a “beach”, though?

The chanting had stopped. Some while ago, he realized in
retrospect, as he slowly blinked open his eyes.

Bongo was gazing at him, assessing. He’d put away his metal
object. “How do you feel?”

Urna drew a long breath. It was steady as it slid in and out
of his lungs. “Better,” he admitted, almost reluctantly.

“Good.” Bongo had the good grace not to look too smug about
it.

Urna found his appetite less afflicted than before. Bongo
made a pot of tea and somehow scrounged up some crackers. As Urna sipped he
considered, with a little more clarity now, just what this magic-subscribing
man had been saying about the Farsafe. It was an enchanting tale. No doubt
about it. But, Urna saw, there was a hole in the story through which you could
drive a truck.

Just how the hell did Bongo know about the Farsafe, if it
was all the way on the other side of the world? A world that was infested with
Passengers who would slice up any human they found that didn’t have the means
to defend him or herself.

It had to be myth, then. And his belief in magic? Well, that
was like—what was that word Urna had come across in his reading, something
archaic?—it was like a
religion
. A stubborn belief in something for
which you had no proof. Weird.

Magic was mostly associated with those who resisted the Lux,
he knew. But that was a Guard problem, not something the military had to worry
about.

Urna sipped more tea and helped himself to a cracker,
nibbling it slowly. He further considered the “spell” that Bongo had just
worked on him, the chanting and the foofaraw with the piece of etched metal.
Was that evidence of actual magic? Probably not. More likely the oddity of the
ritual had simply acted as another distraction, delaying the worst effects of
the drug need.

At least, that was what Urna decided. It was easier to
believe that than anything else.

A short time later the woman who had to be Virge Temple came
bursting into the house. She had masses of brownish-blonde hair and darkly
complected skin. In the moment after she’d slammed the door behind her and
before she spoke, Urna judged her to be quite an attractive female.

She gave him a quick appraising look, nodded as if he’d
passed some test, then shot her brown eyes at Bongo. “Has he started climbing
the walls yet?” she asked.

“He’s fine,” Bongo assured. “Nothing a little magic couldn’t
soothe.”

She was breathing hard, as though she had hurried here. “Has
he asked for anything?”

“You want to direct any of those questions at me, just let
me know,” Urna said wryly. “I’m right here, after all.”

She started to shuck off her coat, wincing as though her
shoulder bothered her, then she stopped and fixed him with eyes that were
almost as lustrous as Bongo’s emerald orbs. “Fine. You’re Urna, a fugitive
Weapon. You’ve run away, and your masters want you back. Notice how I haven’t
asked you
why
you ran away?”

“I noticed.”

“Good. Just figure I’m respecting your privacy. Thing is,
though,” she reached into her coat as if to touch something in a pocket, but
she didn’t withdraw it, “I’ve just gotten word from a friend. He says the Guard
are going to be searching every chemical lab in a thirty-mile radius from the
Citadel. The people you ran away from obviously have a good idea of what your
personal chemical needs are. They’re guessing you’ll have to visit one of those
laboratories to obtain some of that precious dope they’ve got you hooked on.
I’d say that they know you pretty fucking well.”

Behind, Urna heard Bongo suck in a sharp breath.

Virge’s eyes flicked past Urna and she nodded. “Yeah.
Trouble.”

“When does the search start?” Bongo asked.

“I don’t have that info. Let’s assume it’s already underway.
But they’ll start close at home and work their way outward. We’re pretty far
out here.”

“Not far enough,” Urna muttered. He wondered now if Rune was
still up there in the sky, circling slowly outward, hoping to catch some hint
of him with his supernatural senses.

And what, he wondered in a remote corner of his mind, would
the Shadowflash think if he learned that his lover had fucked another man?

“No,” Virge said, meeting his eyes again. “Not far enough.”
She had a determined air about her, a strength, a drive. This wasn’t a woman
who spent a lot of time being indecisive, Urna concluded.

But he wasn’t the hesitant type either. After all, hadn’t he
decided to undertake this escape mostly on the strength of that old photograph
he’d found in the Unsafe? He still had that precious picture, tucked away into
his boot. The image of the two adults and the child. The parents and the son—or
so he told himself that was what they were. A family unit. If he’d come from a
family like that he had no memory of it.

“I’d better get going, then,” Urna said. Then from some
vestigial urge toward good manners, he added, “Thank you both for what you did.
I—”

Virge stepped right up to him. “What’ve you got in mind,
Weapon? Where are you going to go?”

He didn’t respond to her obviously confrontational manner.
“If you run that chem lab, like Bongo here says, then the Guard’ll probably
search your home as well as your workplace. It’d be a bad idea for me to be
here when that happens.”

She nodded, evidently impressed. “That’s the same conclusion
I came to.”

“Fine, then. I’ll be on my way.” He went to move past her to
the door.

Virge reached out and grabbed his arm. Instinct almost
caused him to react violently. She had a firm grip.

“You got a plan after you walk out that door?” the woman
with the sparkling brown eyes wanted to know.

Urna wished he had some quick smart answer to that, but he
didn’t, and so gave a terse shrug that dislodged her hand from his arm. “I’ll
head,” he gestured vaguely, “out. Further away from the Citadel.”

“Yes,” said Virge. “That’d be the wise thing to do. But how
do you propose to manage that?”

“I’m not
proposing
anything, goddamn it! I’ll just
go.” But he found himself hesitating now.

Behind him, Bongo murmured, “You won’t get far. Have you got
any idea how well known your face is? I recognized you when you were lying half
under a table, passed out, practically drooling on yourself. You’ll have a
crowd swarming you after three blocks.”

Urna glanced back at the male. “I’m grateful to both of you
for your help, for the place to hide and the food and the chance to rest. I
don’t know why you decided to take care of me, but whatever the reason, it’s
time for me to go.” He spun back on Virge, who of the two seemed to be the one
in charge. “Or do you want to get arrested?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” she spat. Drawing a breath,
she squared her shoulders. “We helped you—you, Urna the Weapon, golden boy of
the Lux—because you defied your overlords. You ran away. You said, in essence,
‘fuck you’ to Aphael Chav. Do I know why you fled? No. But I do know what your
fleeing will mean to a segment of the Safe’s population, to people who’ve felt
put down, oppressed, hopeless for a long, long time. You’re a rebel. You’re the
best of the Weapons, and you’ve turned your back on all that fame, all that
glory.”

It shocked a bitter laugh out of Urna. He returned Virge’s
penetrating gaze. “What fame? What glory?” He thought of his dingy quarters, of
the endless combat drills, the medical tests, the constant parade of women,
half of whom he didn’t even want to fuck and who most probably didn’t want to
fuck him.

He thought of the drugs they’d fed him. And he thought too
of absences. Those forbidding gaps in his memory, a childhood lost to him, if
he’d ever truly had one.

In a much gentler tone, Virge Temple said, “I’m sure you’ve
got your reasons for running away. I just want to help. How ‘bout you, Bongo?”

“Fuckin’ right I want to help.”

Virge smiled. It was quite a warm smile, inviting trust. But
she maintained her steely, determined manner. “Okay,” she said, patting a
pocket of her coat, a different one than before. Urna heard glass clink
together. “I’ve got stuff that’ll take the edge off you if and when your drug
withdrawal acts up—magic spells notwithstanding.” She looked again to Bongo.
“We need to do some smuggling,” she said to him. “The cargo is a person. You
got any ideas?”

Bongo at last came around to stand beside Virge. He squeezed
her shoulder. Something in the familiarity of the gesture made Urna think that
the two were more than just associates.

The blond-haired man grinned, which lit up his face. “I’ve
already had a few thoughts on the matter. If we do this right we can have the
cargo on his way in about an hour.”

* * * * *

Marny Vilst undressed completely before she lifted her head
and met his eyes. Rune didn’t quite know what this indicated about her
personality, but it seemed an odd characteristic tic to him. Then again,
despite the many women he’d lain with, he had little experience with their
idiosyncrasies.

He too had shed his uniform. They were standing on opposite
sides of the curtained-off infirmary bed, the closest place for the two of them
to have some privacy, the Guard underling had told him on the way here. The setting
was fine with Rune. He found himself already responding, cock twitching and
thickening. He felt genuine desire for this female, which hadn’t been part of
his plan. Not that he minded. No reason why this shouldn’t be pleasant for him
as well as a means to an end.