Scavenger of Souls (32 page)

She raised her hand, holding another portable protograph.
This one was in perfect condition, without a scratch or dent to mar its shiny surface. But it was even smaller than Aleka's—suited for a child's fingers, not a man's.

“Is that . . . ?”

“Athan's? No doubt.” She fiddled with the screen, trying to get it to come on. “Maybe it'll show us the way out of here.”

“I think . . .”

Her eyes rose to mine.

“I think there's only one way out,” I said.

She shook the protograph as if that might make it respond, then swore silently and dropped it in her pocket. “The altar?”

“I'm guessing.”

A noise made us both jump. Mercy spun to take in the room. “What was that?”

“I'm not sure.” My eyes flicked around the crowded space. “But I'm pretty sure it wasn't a pony.”

She looked blank for a second, then smiled. “Why, Querry,” she said. “Did you just make a funny?”

She helped me from the chair, her arm bolstering me, our attention shifting to the room's hidden corners. We had reached the exit when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I stared hard at the experimental subjects in their cylinders, but all were still.

Yet in one of the tubes, bubbles climbed slowly through the yellow fluid.

“Mercy,” I said. “The Skaldi—the specimens. They're alive.”

“I sure hope the crazies aren't catching,” she said. “Those babies are stone-cold dead.”

“No, they're not,” I said. “They're in suspended animation. Look”—and I pointed at the wires running from each cylinder. “They were being kept sedated by the energy beam. But someone must have cut the power.”

“Who?” she said. “The evil janitor?”

“Whoever,” I said. “We've got to get back to the cart.”

We backed out the door. The lights died as we exited. A faint luminescence exuded by the tubes showed the creatures flexing as they came out of their comas: clawed fingers opening weakly, blunt heads swiveling toward us. The pitiful monster strapped to the gurney pulled feebly against its bands, its sunken face stretching in the motion of a silent scream.

Mercy lingered in the hallway outside the door. I knew what she was thinking. There were so many secrets here, and once we left, we'd never discover them all. “Let's go, Mercy.”

She looked longingly at the room, but didn't resist as I pulled her away.

“This was a trap,” I said.

“No shit, Sherlock. Any chance you've got turbo boosters on those spindle shanks of yours?”

“That's next year's model.” I clenched her hand, and she pulled me back toward the cart, my useless leg dragging behind me. I swore I heard footsteps that weren't ours
trailing us, but with the noise of my boot scraping the floor, I couldn't be sure.

We reached the spot where we'd left the cart. The embryonic monsters struggled with renewed vigor above our heads.

But the cart was gone.

Mercy turned to me with something like a smile. “I'm beginning to think ours is not an entirely healthy relationship.”

She left me sitting on the tunnel floor while she searched a short distance ahead for the cart, but we both knew she wouldn't find it. When she returned, her face and eyes were calm, with a look of inevitability I didn't like to see.

“You go,” I said. “With luck you can outrun them.”

“Still trying to get rid of me, huh?” she said. “Maybe I like unhealthy relationships.”

She sat, wrapping her arms around me. When I turned to her, I found her lips on mine. They moved invitingly, drawing me in, while her hand on the back of my head pulled me closer. It was all I could do to break away and whisper a single word. “Mercy—”

Then the footsteps I thought I'd heard resolved themselves into a steady drumbeat, and Mercy jumped to her feet as a figure stepped from the shadows.

“What the hell,” she breathed when she saw him. I couldn't blame her.

It was Geller.

His pimpled face spread in a smile. He held two objects: an energy rifle, and the bone-white staff. Behind him, clustering out of the darkness at the edges of the tunnel, came ten or more of Asunder's warriors, armed with spears and stone knives.

“Kind of a private moment here,” Mercy said.

Geller's smile didn't change. But when he spoke, his voice was rapid and jittery, and his eyes shone with fearful enthusiasm.

“It is as our lord Asunder foretold,” he said. “The children of the despoilers have fallen into a snare of their own devising. The day of the Scavenger of Souls is upon us at last.”

They tied us with the brown ropes and hauled us far up the tunnel, where the cart was waiting. Mercy told me to blast them, but even if I'd been able to summon the energy, I couldn't do it with Geller's rifle trained on her. “Thought you true believers weren't into techno toys,” she gibed, but he merely smiled. The smile turned to a manic laugh when he discovered my mother's mangled pistol, and he handed it mockingly back to Mercy, shoving it in her holster while she recoiled at the touch of his hands. My biggest fear was that he'd touch her with the staff, and I tensed every time he approached. But he did nothing but hold it up for the others to admire, waving it wildly over their heads as if he was their new king.

And I guess he was.

They loaded us into the cart, and Geller operated the controls to get it going. He must have understood the system better than Mercy, because whatever he did had us sailing down the tunnel at top speed, whipping around curves under a canopy of unborn Skaldi. Against the screech of the wheels and the howl of the wind, I shouted a few words into Mercy's ear.

“Geller's parents,” I said. “What happened to them?”

“His mom died in the accident,” she yelled back. “His dad was taken by Asunder. He lost a sister, too. Why?”

“Just wondering,” I said, though I'd expected an answer pretty much like that.

An hour or more passed with the rumble of the cart and the roar of the wind the only sounds in my ears. The air grew increasingly hot and sticky as we traveled west, and the mass of Skaldi above our heads thickened to the point that we could practically have reached up to touch them if our hands hadn't been tied. Any thought we might have had of jumping from the cart was flung away by its speed, plus when I looked back I saw another cart racing after us, probably occupied by Geller. All I could do was hold on to Mercy as we careened toward the end of the rail line.

Finally the cart slowed, then came to a rolling stop against thick rubber bumpers. We'd arrived at a huge circular cement pad that lay at the bottom of a cement cylinder, as wide as the pad and shooting up into darkness far above our heads. A few stray Skaldi clung to the sides of the cylinder,
but the heavy mass from the tunnel had finally thinned out and then vanished. Looking straight up, I could easily imagine that the altar of the Scavenger of Souls reared into the sky above us. Warriors dressed in their caveman outfits appeared from the shadows. They dragged us from the cart while its partner came to rest against ours and Geller stepped out, rifle and staff in hand.

“Come, children of the light,” he said to them. As before, his voice sounded unnaturally fast, like someone nervously trying to get through a speech. “
Nidach asa minach
. The Scavenger awaits.”

They scaled the walls with us slung over their shoulders, their bronzed hands gripping rungs affixed to the inside of the cylinder. Mercy and I were too tightly bound to do anything except stare as the cement pad dwindled to a dot the higher we climbed. It got to the point where I had to close my eyes to prevent dizziness from making me fall despite the warriors' grasp on me. I didn't see where we exited, but when I felt the outside air on my face, I opened my eyes to find that they held us at the base of the altar, dawn light breaking from the east. So many warriors ringed the stone mountain, along with the cave-children who now belonged to Geller, it was obvious he'd emptied the canyon to witness the consummation of their dead leader's prophecy.

Geller waved the staff, and Asunder's people bowed low to the ground. He took the time to touch every one of them, the staff descending to their shoulders the way Asunder had done in
Grava Bracha
. I couldn't
help noticing, though, that his hands shook, and once or twice he had to repeat the performance when he missed his target. When he'd finished, he signaled with a nod, and the warriors who'd brought us topside grabbed our arms.

Mercy struggled ineffectually as they pulled us toward the stairs. “You little prick!” she shouted at Geller. “I should have wasted you when I had the chance!”

Geller ducked his eyes for a moment, a flush darkening his scabbed face. But then his smile returned, the feral smile he'd learned or copied from his dead master.

Mercy turned to me. “Kill them!” she screamed. “Hit them with everything you've got!”

“I can't,” I said. “I'll kill you too.”

“Then kill me,” she said. “I'd rather die that way than
his
way.”

I reached inside, tried to summon the power, but got no response. I looked at Mercy, and her eyes told me she knew. Her furious cries cut my ears as the warriors' feet pounded toward the summit.

At the peak of the altar, the scene was laid the way it had been for Wali's sacrifice: warriors holding spears and torches, packed so densely I could just make out a small figure between the horns. The rising sun bathed the summit in blood-red light, and Geller, coming to stand where Asunder had stood, flourished the staff awkwardly, like someone doing a bad imitation of the prophet's elaborate gestures. It
would have been funny if not for what he planned to do. But when the warriors stepped aside and I saw what was bound between the horns, my heart caught in my throat.

It was the drone.

Small as a child, bleeding pale yellow light against the red of the dawn, it hung there with its oversize head lowered to its chest and its emaciated arms dangling like threads from the altar's horns. My hair rose at the touch of its crackling energy. The new ruler of the Shattered Lands stepped toward it, his lips moving silently as if reciting something he'd memorized, and the drone's head jerked upward, blind eyes staring into the sunlight. I knew that the moment Geller contacted the creature with the staff it would explode, drawing the Skaldi that swarmed below into the upper world.

And this time, there would be no one left to stop them.

Geller reached out with the staff. His eyes shone, and his hand shook. Watching him, seeing his fumbling attempts at fulfilling the ritual, it struck me that he was just a kid, only a few years older than me. Maybe Mercy's age, even younger. Too young to inherit Asunder's mantle. Too young to have lost his family in the tragedy that had claimed his master, too young to play the part of his surrogate father. His pimpled face was as scarred as Asunder's, but his scars were the scars of a boy, not a man.

We were both Athan Genn's creatures. The only difference between us was that I'd known my mother, too.

And I remembered her final lesson.

“Wait,” I said, and Geller paused, his eyes shifting to mine. The girl named after that lesson looked at me sharply, but I ignored her. I had no idea if this was going to work, but I figured we were going to die anyway, so it was worth a shot.

“The drones and I are brothers,” I said. “Made by the hand of your master. To serve the same purpose.”

Geller's eyes narrowed. I talked fast.

“I should join my brother,” I said. “If this is to be the end, I should share it with him. With what's left of my family.”

“All will share the same end,” he said, but I thought I heard a note of uncertainty in his voice.

“The more power you command, the more surely the Scavenger of Souls will come,” I said. “With me at my brother's side, the end will be certain.”

“The end is certain,” he said.

“Not always,” I said. “It can leave things undone. Let me join him, Geller. Let us finish this together, so all suffering can come to an end, and you can be with—with the ones you lost.” I caught his eyes, held them. “I promise.”

Geller lowered the staff, his look at once hesitant and keen. He licked his lips as if deciding.

Then he gestured for his warriors to bring me forward. They gripped my arms and dragged me toward the horns.

“Are you insane?” Mercy whispered.

“Must be,” I said, giving her a quick smile before they tore me away from her.

With the drone already bound to the altar, the warriors
had to circle behind the horns to place me there. I balanced shakily on a single foot, hovering over the stunted creature like Archangel over a normal-size human being. I could feel the power radiating from its body, could hear the rasp of its tortured breathing and the crackle of its energy agitating the air. Where its feet touched the surface of the altar, black rock melted to liquid glass. I braced myself as Geller took the final step toward us, the staff raised, an eager light in his eyes.