Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (54 page)

"Fly, Maeve. Go stop this," he told her. "I'll hold these things until it's done."

She spread her bruised wings as Logan turned to face the Devourers. For an instant, he even looked like Orthain, shoulders squared against the faceless black demons coming for him and golden hair glinting in the fitful light as Maeve flew away. What had she ever done to earn the loyalty of such men…?

Maeve landed on top of the ziggurat. The Waygate yawned open before her. The great ring was full of shadows and dim red light. She could see nothing beyond. How many Devourers had come through? No matter the answer, Maeve had little time. She felt it pressing in on her like a lead weight.

Hurry, hurry!

Gavriel had not finished even Maeve's botched spell. Could she close the Pylos Waygate the same way she had the one on Tamlin? Maybe not… but Maeve had no other ideas. She raised her dirty, shaking hands to the huge ring of burning light.

"No!"

In a swirl of angelic white, Xartasia landed before Maeve, holding a slim glass dagger with blood still bright red on the blade. Xartasia spun, dancing close, and sliced her blade against the inside of Maeve's wing. She took to the air again and landed on top of the Waygate. Maeve tried to follow, but her wounded wing buckled and would not bear her weight.

She was confined to the ground, like any coreworlder. It was humiliating, but there was still work to do. Maeve turned back to the Waygate and raised her hands again. From on high, Xartasia called to her.

"Turn away, cousin. What I have done today, I have done for all the White Kingdom. Do not fight me!"

"You told me that before, as Gavriel tortured me!" Maeve cried. "You would have me lie down and die while you sew ruin through the stars!"

"Not ruin," argued Xartasia, "but rebirth!"

Maeve would listen to no more. She closed her eyes and struggled to recall the words she had sung a hundred years ago to seal the Tamlin Waygate. As Orthain fought, just as Logan did now. Yes, she remembered…

"Ai'ae anna cellia bahn, senna eru vaen'na denno selequa'an…"
Maeve began.

Her voice was rough and cracked, but a sweet song did not matter now. The Waygate seemed to hesitate. The ember light faded to a cautious orange.

"Szo ghemma b'ho leng… leng… Leng zhoka,"
intoned the alien voice.

An impossible hope caught in Maeve's throat. She forced herself to continue singing.
"…Ellu oi'va scaeden sen eru'ma–"

On her pinnacle perch, Xartasia spread her wings and began to sing, too.
"Alluna s'aelim wain'ii mae shassa keth am'avain!"
Her charm was clear and reverberated with certain authority. Xartasia was fighting to keep the Waygate open.
"Scennu varii lae ellu'da eira sessar. Qu'ii laess lai jaisha dii aes'ii soshin mae!"

The Waygate burned red again and throbbed with darkness. Maeve stepped closer to the disc of black.
"Aelex ferro mennal'ae,"
she called.
"Aetrix dumma'ii!"

Xartasia slashed the air with her glittering dagger.
"Laennal emanuu shoda'aev ailina latam. Aetrix sumanni eleo ana va'an!"

The Pylos Waygate glowered like an angry, sleepless eye.

________

Logan checked the charge on his Talon-9, ejected the battery and slapped in a new one. He had only one more, and then the hunter was down to his bare hands.

He could pick out individual Devourers now. The cloudy edges of their nanite armor overlapped and turned the aliens into a single seething mass, but it shifted in distinct patterns, following the movements of single creatures inside the dark smoke. Logan counted sixteen Devourers remaining in the ravine. He could hear Maeve and Xartasia's warring songs at the apex of the Waygate. While they were battling for control, at least, nothing more seemed to be coming through. But if Xartasia won, how many more Devourers would descend on Prianus?

Five of them were charging the Waygate now. Maeve needed Logan to protect her. She
needed
him… It was a sweet, painful thought, but there was no time to wonder at it. The Devourers were on him.

The first one up the stairs stabbed a long tendril at him, black nanite cloud coalescing at the last moment into a wickedly curved blade. Logan threw himself against the tall banister. The nanite sword glanced off the edge of the stair, actually slicing a deep wedge into what had seemed impenetrable white material.

The Devourers certainly possessed and knew how to use lasers, but they seemed to favor melee weapons. If they were eating the dead, maybe they did not want to burn away more flesh unless they needed to. It was not much, but it was something. Logan could stand up a little longer against swords than lasers.

He took aim at one of the Devourers and fired. The nanite cloud reacted by condensing into a shield, just like the one that had attacked him in the Raptor. More shots into the same target met with the same resistance. The hand-held Talon-9 was not as powerful as the Raptor's mounted lasers. By the time Logan could thin out the nanite cloud enough to score a meaningful hit, the others would be tearing Maeve apart.

Logan changed tactics, shooting for the Devourer's wide chest instead of the smaller, more defensible head. But in mere fractions of a second, the nanites moved and hardened there, too. Whatever computer controlled the microscopic machines swiftly picked up Logan's firing pattern and anticipated him, presenting a shield for each target even as he aimed.

The Devourers were closing in. Logan had to give ground, climbing up another tall step. There were four of them in range now, all reaching for the hunter. He held down the Talon's trigger and raked a hot line of red light across their indistinct bodies. The nanites hardened to take the fire and the Devourers did not slow.

There was no room. If he stayed on the stairs, he was going to die. And then who would protect Maeve? Logan jumped and scrambled up onto the wide white balustrade. He leapt over a slice from an obsidian sword. The blade lengthened and arced after Logan as he slid down the wet, steep incline. He fired as he went, burning into the nanite armor over and over again. He had to keep their interest.

At the bottom of the steps, the wreck of the Raptor was still smoking. As Logan bolted away from the Devourers, they opened fire with their own lasers. Logan dove behind his crashed ship. It would never fly again, but at least its thick armor was still useful.

More of the Devourers took notice of the scuffle at the foot of the Waygate. Nine… no, ten of the huge, dark aliens charged at Logan now. If he was going to keep them away from Maeve, he had to figure out a way through the nanite armor.

The bounty hunter dashed out from behind cover and emptied the last of the Talon-9's battery into the encroaching Devourers. He aimed high, for the blurry lumps of their heads. One, two, three long burns and still it was not enough to get through.

The Devourers answered with a blaze of return shots. Logan dove back behind the Raptor. The ship's engines were designed to shut down when the craft had suffered this kind of damage and probably would not explode. The heat had melted the last of the snow and left bare, steaming stone.

He ejected the battery from his Talon and loaded the last one. As soon as the indicator glowed green again, Logan leaned over one of the Raptor's broken wings and opened fire on the Devourers again. They had closed most of the distance to the smoking wreckage and sliced at the metal with sharp-tipped nanite weapons again.

The Devourers could not have been operating the vast swarms themselves. There were just too many of the tiny machines. They had to be receiving instructions from a computer. Fast as Logan was, he was not faster than a computer. But computers were also stupid. They would be analyzing Logan's shots, predicting where the next ones would go and thickening the dark armor accordingly.

He shifted his aim, firing into the Devourer's cloud at random. They were clumsy shots, but chaotic enough to confuse the computers, making them hesitate. The Devourer howled in pain as one of Logan's shots struck. The cloud pulled inwards and a dark patch covered the Devourer's leg where he had hit it. Administering medical attention? That meant fewer nanites dedicated to defense.

Logan poured laserfire into the black mass, always changing his target. The nanites swirled in confusion, unable to calculate the Prian's pattern. The Devourer staggered and fell into the melting snow with a loud thud. The last wisps of smoky nanites swarmed furiously around the body. The corpse folded and shrank as the Devourer's own armor consumed it, leaving behind nothing but a greasy-looking smear on the ground.

Through the ravine, the rest of the Devourers hissed in fury. They were all coming for Logan now.

The hunter squinted. The cut on his scalp was sheeting blood again. Rather than fan out and surround him, the Devourers remained close together, their ashy black armor reinforcing one another, but there were enough of them to circle him, and the ring was closing fast.

Even the overlapping nanite clouds did not seem to help the computers understand Logan's randomized attacks. A second Devourer fell and vanished, consumed by its own armor.

Two of the towering nightmares spared nanites enough to create long, thin spears and jabbed them at Logan. He seared through one of them with a wide shot from his Talon, but the other needled through his pants, grazed the flesh beneath and pinned Logan against the Raptor.

Another blurry black giant was suddenly swinging a huge broadsword with a hooked tip. The Devourer spun and sliced down at Logan. The hunter flung himself down with a grunt, but his leg was still pinned. It twisted awkwardly. The huge nanite sword missed, dissolved and formed again.

Logan struggled to rise, but could not get his feet under him. He splayed awkwardly on his back and held down the Talon's trigger. He would buy Maeve every second he could.

________

Sweat streamed down the back of Maeve's neck. She was getting sleepy, as Xia warned she might. A soft, heavy weight tugged at her, urging her to lie down. Just… stop. Stop fighting. Her eyelids drifted down and her song faltered.

Something hissed and there was a sharp crackle. Maeve jerked again as a Devourer reached for her from deep inside the Waygate. She jumped back and fumbled for the words of the closing charm.

"Aetrix dumma'ii!"
she shrieked.
"Ma'an ae sua'nii vanni la shannoel vellius en assai!"

The Waygate shivered again and the Devourer vanished into the hollow darkness of the ring, unable to pass through. Maeve was barring the door, but could not seal it, not with Xartasia perched gloriously on high, crooning her own song. They were locked in a stalemate, at least until Maeve's already faltering strength finally failed her.

Logan was already doing all he could, more than she ever could have asked of him. Down below, the bounty hunter had his back against the ruins of his ship and was surrounded by Devourers, each twice the Prian's not insignificant size. If he was to die, Maeve could at least ensure that his sacrifice was not in vain.

"A'allu sa–"
She broke the song suddenly, took a deep, cold breath and shouted. "Duaal! Help me!"

________

Duaal stood alone in the cloudy gray of the mountain top, waiting. Waiting for salvation or damnation. It could only have been a few minutes since Maeve and Logan vanished into the ravine, but it seemed like an eternity.

The wind tugged at his torn and bloodstained coat, making it flutter behind him like the tattered banner in a losing war. The Waygate's deafening call filled his ears. It was alien, but Duaal did not have to understand the words to know the message. Something was very, very wrong. The buzzing thunder had faltered once, but not for long and had resumed only seconds later.

What was that? Duaal thought he heard his name. He looked back, down the moraine, but no one was there. As he had told her to, Panna was driving the only occupied police van down the mountain, back toward Pylos. But there it was again! Duaal could just hear a frantic voice calling up from the red-lit fissure. It was Maeve, screaming for his help.

The mage ran to the ravine's crumbling edge. It was full of smoke and flashing red light. The sharp-salty smell of blood filled Duaal's nose and he could just make out the tall, impossibly dark shapes of Devourers below. If he went down there… Duaal shuddered.

But Maeve would never ask for his help unless there was nothing else to be done. Duaal squinted through the gloom. There! He could just make out a pair of white-winged figures at the Waygate. One in perfect ivory and the other in tattered rags.

Duaal jumped. It was far easier to lighten gravity's touch than to completely ignore it. The mage fell through the crimson-lit smoke and landed lightly beside Maeve. Xartasia balanced at the uppermost curve of the Waygate ring and stared at Duaal. Her song faltered, but Xartasia was too confident, too regal to be shaken for long.

Huge, angry black shapes strained to push through the Waygate, but it was stuck halfway between open and closed. The vague humanoid shapes shoved and swirled like ink in a glass.

Maeve's already pale skin was as white as snow. She trembled and one of her wings was spattered in blood, hanging useless from her slumped shoulder. Her song was breathless and shook even more than her body. Maeve turned her bloodshot gray eyes on Duaal.