Silence (37 page)

It didn’t take a genius to take that
and the missing Supreme Centaurai and put two and two together.
Sheikoh remembered how Vest had used the crescent to control him in
what had seemed another lifetime. His fingers crept to his throat,
but the amulet was on Emili for the time being.

He shivered. He felt exposed and
insignificant. He quickly walked back to find Indigo and Camillio
were. They were huddled together, talking in low voices. They both
looked up when he came into view.

“
Vest got away. He stole a
Swifthooves then killed the others. He could already be back in
Interium by now, and he probably has the codex with him,” Sheikoh
called when the others were in earshot. Indigo cursed
explosively.

“
Well,
that’s...
frustrating
,” Camillio muttered,
irritation breaking on the last word.

The Celestial turned away from them
with a tight set to his features. Sheikoh cleared his throat to
bring the Celestial’s attention back to him.

“
So what do we do now?”
Sheikoh asked Camillio Tyche.

“
I’m sorry?” the Celestial
responded, shaking his head.

“
You might be able to fly
through the air and magic yourself around, but the rest of us kind
of have to rely on Swifthooves, mate. And you can’t magic your new
pet demon around while it’s wearing the amulet-” He glanced down at
Emili and his voice broke. He swallowed. “-and Robocop looks pretty
heavy. Any ideas?”

Indigo looked at the Celestial as
well.

“
Well,” Tyche mused, his
face lightening with a mysterious half-smile. “My place isn’t too
far.”

What?

Sheikoh glanced at Indigo, who
shrugged in response.

“
You talking about your
place over on the West Side? It might not fit us all,” Sheikoh
answered cautiously.

Did Camillio Tyche intend on bringing
them back to Interium? What was he going to do then? Demand that
they steal the codex off of the Arch Centaurai? If Vest was back at
Interium, his seat of power, then it would be him and Indigo
against all of the Century and Cylium Vest himself. As long as the
amulet hung around Emili’s neck, the Arch Centaurai could use that
blade to control him at will. And Indigo as well.

But Sheikoh decided not to bring all
of that up. He and Indigo had practically died here. There was no
way he was giving the Celestial a ready-made excuse not to pay up.
Right now, it looked like he and Dorothi were going to have to get
out of the city and they were going to need anything that they
could get.

“
Plus me and Ghost tried to
assassinate the Centaurai. So if he’s back, Interium might not roll
out the welcoming committee,” Indigo added bluntly.

“
Yeah, there is that,”
Sheikoh murmured, jerking his head at Indigo.

When the other two weren’t looking,
Sheikoh rolled his eyes. So much for keeping things to yourself.
The Celestial raised a hand to forestall any further objections
with a proud gleam in his eyes.

“
The two
of you are simply ludicrous. To presume that
I
would deign to live in
that disgusting hovel. Do you really think that any Celestial could
be content to live in the squalid midst of the West Side?” When
Indigo’s face darkened, Camillio added; “No offense
intended.”

“
None taken, mate. Let’s
see this palace of yours, then,” Sheikoh laughed
uneasily.

The Celestial grinned at him and
raised his hands. His eyes flickered blue. Around them the
landscape began to vibrate and swirl around in dizzy thermals,
rippling as though it was a reflection on a pond. A droning sound,
like a swarm of bees, grew louder and louder as their vision became
more and more distorted.

Then, suddenly, the fire-blackened
landscape bulged into itself and ripped loudly to reveal a deep,
spacey blackness. Shadows dripped away from the center like frozen
air. The darkness slowly gave way before the sight of a heavy,
age-scarred door. Its handle was heavy and made out of blacksteel.
It glowered at them from behind a curtain of menace.

Camillio strode over and opened it to
expose a room of bright colors and modern furniture. Sheikoh could
even see a TV against the far wall. The Celestial smiled at his and
Indigo’s shocked expressions and invited them in.

“
Welcome, please, make
yourselves at home.”

Sheikoh gently picked up Emili and
carried her inside, all the while looking around with wonder.
Indigo followed with Ghost slung over his shoulder.

The interior was decorated
comfortably with pictures of colorful abstract art ranging from
dreamlike scenes painted with the detail and clarity of a
photographs to simple blobs of color that were little more than
shapes. Each of the three open hallways that led into the room that
they were in had a slightly different atmosphere, accented by their
color scheme and the kinds of furniture woven into their layout.
The walls were interwoven with plaster and simple, elegant
wallpaper. Sheikoh whistled, impressed.
Arranging rooms must be Camillio’s secret hobby.

“
Silence,” Camillio
murmured, and Sheikoh’s eyes shot at him wearing a glint of
apprehension. He still wasn’t sure whether Celestial could read
minds. All Camillio asked was; “Would you bring Emili up to my
office?”

“
Sure,” Sheikoh nodded,
shaking himself. He followed the Celestial, carrying the
unconscious Emili. Yawns began bubbling out of his mouth, and he
suddenly realized he hadn’t slept in almost two days.

They went through a room dotted with
strange, drifty green plants that looked like it’d come from a
cabin. Then through a shiny mahogany door. On the other side was a
hallway that sported two more wooden doors on the left and a bald
man covered in swirling, scar-like tattoos of runes that Sheikoh
tried not to stare at. The right side opened up into a massive,
spotless kitchen. Its utilities were all a mix of silversteel
utilities and clinical white porcelain. Another two men sat there,
wearing the same winding patterns of blood runes.

While Sheikoh and Camillio walked
across the hallway, the Celestial explained that the other men here
were various individuals who were committed to freedom, people
whose potential had been sustained with the magic of blood
runes.

Then the Celestial opened the next
door, and Sheikoh gasped. The paned door’s unassuming countenance
hid a peculiar sight. A glass, water-filled tank sloped upwards in
the shape of an hourglass, extending all the way to the very top of
the six or seven floor tower. It was edged in the thin swirl of
stairs that wound up the massive aquarium as it progressively
narrowed. Finally, about two floors in, Sheikoh and Camillio
reached a point where it stopped. Sheikoh looked up the six-story
glass tube, bemused.

They climbed up the stairs silently
and hurriedly, Camillio in front. To Sheikoh’s eyes the aquarium
seemed empty of any life other than the shimmery green fronds
lazily floating around. In the center of the dancing lights of the
blue water jutted a single long, lightning-shaped pillar of black,
pitted rock.

As they climbed higher, Sheikoh looked
down and suddenly realized that the bottom of the hourglass went
deeper than the ground floor. A forest of glinting green fronds
grew in the bottom of the aquarium. They grew wildly in the
crevices of the volcanic, jagging stone pillar, covering all but
snatches of its black rock. He couldn’t help but sense that the
plants hid something alive. Tiny, fish-eyes seemed to glitter in
the corner of his vision, through the curtains of shimmery
green.

The farther up they climbed, the more
the fronds receded though. Sheikoh watched them recede to show the
balding, black pillar in a trancelike state the pillar’s tip
speared into view. It looked like a giant spoon with a spiked end
like a curved spear. Camillio stopped in front of him.

Sheikoh bent his neck around the
Celestial to check out the circular door level with the pillar’s
top. A black mark in its center that he’d originally thought to be
the door knob was actually the intricate, black circle of a
pentacle. He scanned it with interest. Narrow lines made up
geometric designs throughout it, weaving and winding around one
another to make up the foreboding circle.

Upon closer examination, Sheikoh
realized that that the pentacle’s shape wasn’t built of solid lines
rather it was composed of hundreds upon hundreds of minuscule runes
burned into the weathered wood. Something told Sheikoh that the
circle of wood in front of him was older than anything he’d ever
seen before.

“
I think that you would be
the most inclined to appreciate this,” Camillio told Sheikoh with
excitement sparkling in his eyes.

The Celestial turned and laid a hand
on the door’s pentacle. The circular passage swung inwards with an
ominous creak. Sheikoh could barely see Camillio as the Celestial
crossed over the threshold of the sinister, black-bricked room
lined with rough-hewn wooden bookcases. The walls seemed to bow
inwards under the weight of the massive tomes. Sheikoh made out a
spindly blacksteel table crouching in the corner like a pet
spider.

Suddenly, five blue-tinted balls of
white light illuminated the pitch-black room, drifting around and
casting a hazy, aqua shimmer on the grey, stone floor. They flared
into being just long enough for Sheikoh to catch a glimpse of
Camillio disappearing through an archway on the far side of the
room with an ominous ripple. Sheikoh flinched in surprise. Then he
shook his hair from his eyes.

Sheikoh hadn’t seen it until the bulbs
of light had floated into being. The granite archway was covered
with intricate runes spider-webbing over its ancient surface.
Wherever it led was shrouded in deep shadows, so dark that even the
glowing balls of light couldn’t penetrate it.

There was nowhere to go but forward.
Sheikoh took a deep breath to steel himself and then strode across
the room and through the archway. He expected some magical
sensation, but he felt nothing noteworthy. He stepped through the
pitch-black hallway and into the blinding glare of the next
room.

He was stopped cold by memory. His
breath whooshed out in a strangled gasp.

Four, identically stark-white walls
imprisoned the room around him. The indelible blankness of his
surroundings was a chilling reflection of the Transcendent Plane.
Where he’d met the Sycrarian. He glanced down at Emili in his arms.
He couldn’t help being a little relieved at the absence of the
fires in her eyes.

Sheikoh shook himself,
annoyed at the irrationality.
Across from
him a bone-white desk grew seamlessly out of the floor. Behind it,
lounging in a white throne, Camillio grinned at Sheikoh as though
the Celestial expected him to react with delight. Sheikoh’s eyes
met Camillio’s dark blue irises impassively, and he found himself
repressing a tiny shiver.

“
This castle was made
before history’s records, back in the time before the Intrasentient
Empire. I believe that that was when the codex and amulet were
created as well,” Camillio explained with excitement.

“
There was never a ‘before’
the Intrasentient Empire,” Sheikoh responded slowly. “It’s always
just… been.”

“
I
thought so too. Then…” Camillio told him. He cleared his throat and
then swept a hand around the room. “During my travels, I chanced
upon
this.”

The Celestial’s dark blue eyes
sparkled with repressed revelation.

“
I explored these
black-bricked rooms, back before I had renovated, and discovered
books detailing the magics of another time. Some of the inscribed
spells were more powerful and more dangerous than anything I had
ever imagined. Miles-wide curses that remain active for centuries,
hidden blood runes that can empower an ordinary man to the level of
an android, as well as the lost rites to summon and bind the
Sycrarian, I was in ecstasy.“

His voice, which had slowly been
growing in volume, dropped to a dramatic whisper.

“
And that
was before I found
this
room
.”

“
Do you see this around us?
This room doesn’t exist in the same time as the real world. I
believe that this is a doorway to the Transcendent Plane,” Camillio
finished with excitement, staring at Sheikoh.

“
Seems like it, C, but you
might want to be careful with this thing of yours,” Sheikoh
cautioned.

The excited Celestial waved his
caution aside.

Actually that wasn't totally
correct.

Sheikoh's eyes widened.

The Celestial hadn't been dismissing
his concerns; Camillio had been doing some magic.

Beside him the ground bulged upwards.
Sheikoh’s arms tightened around Emili's limp body, as he watched
the lumps of white form themselves into something. A table
staggered up onto four legs like a Swifthooves colt, smoothing
itself out and then freezing still.

At the end of it all, it looked
strangely normal.

“
Put Emili down there,”
laughed Camillio. “Even someone of your remarkable attributes
eventually tires.”