The Dark Places (10 page)

My teeth caught my bottom lip.
Tension knotted my stomach as I awaited his reply.
I’m an idiot—me and my bright idea
. My prayers had been that he
would have an idea or two.
I should have
planned this mad venture better.
Why hadn’t I asked if he knew where to
find the creature several days ago?

I knew why. I’d been afraid to ask.

Just getting him to return here had
become my main focus. And then I thought I’d overcome the next step, finding
the Timirshil-ka entity. My quest to save Matt would come to naught very fast
if we had no clue where the creature might be—
if
it was there.

I’m
a horrible rescuer.

He tilted his head, and a rueful
smile twisted his lips. “No plan, doll?”

Had
he known all along?
I hung my head and stared hard at the icy ground,
forbidding the wet prickling in my eyes to pool and fall.

Matt sighed and pulled me close.
“Sweet, fearless wife of mine, Timirshil-ka found me while I lay dying in the
Fire
Dawn
.
I never found it anywhere afterward in all the time here that I wandered around,
exploring and trying not to go completely insane before my rescue. Although… I
did see strange lights appear and vanish out in the distance beyond the plains
over there.” He nodded off to the right. “Before we left the
Stardancer
, I checked the planet scans
again for life energy signatures. There was nothing—except a brief frequency
burst over in the west, which disappeared within seconds. I say we travel in that
direction and hope to find something interesting.”

My eyes closed with relief. This
sounded
much
better than my
plan—which had been nothing.

“Before we head off over there,
though, we need to backtrack and retrieve our supply bag. I had to drop it in order
to keep up with my fleet-footed moon goddess who’s capable of stooping low to
conquer mere mortals.”

My eyes snapped open. “There’s
no
way you could have found any
Crynishan Dawns around here, Matt—and I think you’ve just mangled some famous
Old Terran writers’ poetry and plays…. And maybe I’ll be better off waiting for
you here.” He’d likely dropped the bag near the gravestone. I didn’t want to go
back there.

“You’re coming with me, doll,
because I’m not letting you out of my sight for a single moment. You’re the
most precious possession I’ve got left. Anything could happen. I’m not chancing
it.” He wrapped an arm around my waist and forced me along at a quick pace
through the wide, jagged snow trails we’d left behind.

We found the dark green bag lying
near some ice-glazed shrubbery a short distance before the grave. Matt snatched
it up without a glance toward the sad grove. He slipped the straps over a
shoulder and caught my hand to retrace our trail back to where we’d stood
arguing after our struggle.

We continued on, walking away from
the
Stardancer’s
solid, reassuring
presence that promised escape when we needed it, and from the
Fire Dawn’s
wreckage. The resentful
guilt weighing down my heart lifted as we left A’lia’s grave far behind.

Chapter Eleven

The tiny red sun had dropped lower
in the sky. Matt’s pace had slowed, and I’d forced him to relinquish the supply
bag. I carried it a long while, until I called a halt. His face wore the same
gaunt, hollowed-out look that had caused me worry for the past few days on the
ship.

“How long do you think we’ve been
walking since we left the ship, Matt?”

He consulted a small, complex
timepiece capable of simultaneously tracking Alliance standard time and three
selected planetary time cycles. “We left the
Stardancer
an hour and fifteen minutes ago, Kai. Minus visits down
my memory lane, sidetracks, and lover’s quarrels, we’ve been walking now toward
our unknown destination for about forty-five minutes.”

Some of his words stung, but I
nodded. It was best not to take umbrage when we were both exhausted. We decided
to rest on a nearby fallen tree’s thick trunk. I tried enticing Matt with the
hot, sweet energy drink that he’d added to our pack earlier. He accepted two
small sips and returned the bottle.
That isn’t
a good
sign
. I impulsively
pressed my hand to the narrow area of his forehead left exposed by the suit’s
hood. Instead of air-frosted skin, my fingers touched hot, dry skin.

Oh,
no!
Matt had inexplicably developed a fever, and I was dragging him through
this frozen wilderness without a single valid plan, in search of an elusive
alien life form that he asserted had imparted life energy to him.
Maybe he’d been delirious and hallucinated about
that entity.
He had been grief-stricken at the time and also in much pain
from a fatal injury.

“We’ll return to the
Stardancer
, Matt. I’ll look around more
tomorrow while you rest on the ship,” I said, rising from the log. It seemed
like the most reasonable way to proceed with this mad mission I’d rashly
plunged us into. “It’s time we returned anyway. It looks like sunset and nightfall
can’t be more than two or three hours away.”

Matt shook his head in stubborn
opposition. “
No
. You’re not searching
out here alone. We search together throughout what’s left of this day. If we’re
not successful, we return to the
Stardancer
and lift from here directly—and
never
return.”

He sounded so definite that I
refrained from dissuading him.

He grabbed the supply bag from
where it rested before I could. We continued across the white wasteland, devoid
of life and featureless except for occasional twisted, bare trees and tortured
shrubbery.

A short while later, the flatlands
gave way to very low-inclined, snow-layered hills that made walking more
challenging, but manageable. We topped another gentle rise and paused for a
rest.

I scanned around, as I’d done all
along, only this time without hope. Bitter despair clouded my thoughts.
Oh
,
please—where
are you? We
must
find you. He needs
your help again. And we’re leaving soon, never to return.
I hated myself
for drawing Matt to this dying system and sad planet, through a hurtful past,
and then dragging him out here on this fool’s chase when he wasn’t well.
He was right: this path I’d set us upon by
opening that accursed ship flight file had pulled us into nothing but pain.

Matt had been staring fixedly at a
point on the horizon. He suddenly pointed somewhere off to our left. “Look
there, Kai!”

I swept my startled gaze across the
shadowed plains to a distant edifice—the only evidence we’d spotted thus far
that we weren’t alone. Nothing had been there moments before when I’d scanned
around in desperation. The object seemed to rest halfway between us and the
horizon across the hills. It appeared constructed of glittering, jewel-bright
blue ice. I glanced at Matt, whose expression was closed and unreadable, but
his dark eyes were alert. The flecks in them sparked with sudden vibrancy.

“Let’s go have a closer look,” he
said, and tramped past me with forced determination in his heavy steps.

I trailed behind him. The terrain
had near drained my energy, and his weariness must be greater. However, Matt
stoically forged through the knee-deep ice crusts overlying the rolling land.
He turned once while edging down a steeper hill to come back for me when my
steps faltered. He encircled me with an arm and led me on beside him.

The crystal construction gleamed
much closer now. It beckoned us on like a beacon, emitting brilliant, sparkling
beams that flared and pulsed momentarily before vanishing, then reappearing to
repeat the sequence.

Something inside my head snagged my
attention.

I wasn’t certain when I’d grown
aware of the probing, foreign touch in my thoughts. It could only have come
from that amazing construction—no one else was here.
Does Matt feel it too
? He must have. His eyes had widened and he
looked surprised, like someone who had just recalled a crucial detail. His pace
quickened toward the construction, almost fifty feet away.

Whatever it was that had touched
our awareness must not have caused him alarm. He strode forth without
reservation, as if he was familiar with whatever dwelled within the sparkling
edifice looming ahead.

“Matt?” Uncertainty made my voice
waver.

“I think we’ve located
Timirshil-ka, Kailiri.” He sounded surprised, as if he didn’t dare believe his
words.

We marched onward to the large,
gleaming mound. My fascinated stare noted the sparkling silver, glittering
points that chased around its outline. Then, without warning, an intense cold
wave emanated from the crystalline construction, more frigid on my face than
the planet’s current air temperature, and it overrode my suit’s internal heat.
This must be what deep space would feel like
in the vacuum outside the ship.
The icy blast forced us to stop and back
away. There followed a heightened burst of what I could only describe as the
tenuous beginnings of a strong emotion. The disorienting mental disruption
besieged my awareness before abruptly ceasing, as did the intensely frigid
tide.

I stared at the crystal
construction, for the projected disturbance upon my senses had, without a
doubt, come from there.

Matt stood motionless, his eyes
closed. He sighed and his eyes opened. Green mists filled them. “Come,
Kailiri,” he said in a low voice. From the intensity he put in those two words,
I sensed his suppressed excitement. He pulled me behind him.

A condensed sublevel of intense
thoughts and emotions projected in a subsonic thrum against my awareness. I
couldn’t decipher or hear it with my physical ears, but the broadcast’s
invisible stream was there, sizzling around my senses.

Before we came within ten paces of
the construction, low droning filled the air. It swiftly increased up the scale
to an almost inaudible peal that rang on forever. The blue crystal edifice
wavered, blurred, and then vanished.

“It’s gone!” I shouted, proclaiming
the obvious. Despair echoed in my cry. Disappointment crushed all my budding
hopes.
Have we failed? Was this our one
chance at contacting the being and we didn’t understand it?

Matt turned, scanning the area. “It
will return.” He looked confident and unperturbed—unlike me.

I didn’t question his positive
assertion. Several tense, silent, cold seconds passed before the unending
shattering from a thousand crystal goblets pierced the air and hung
persistently there. A blinding gleam snagged our attention. We turned as one to
a clear structure sparkling like a jewel-cut diamond that had materialized in a
different location behind us.
A different
construction?
Or the sam
e
?
Was something or someone toying
with us?

I backed away, but Matt’s grip
tightened on my hand, anchoring me beside him while he remained unmoving. His
expression remained calm and certain.

“We have been invited in, Kailiri,”
Matt said with wry humor. His dark eyes gleamed and looked eager with
anticipation. They’d resumed their usual, arresting appearance with their odd,
central flecks. “Shall we go forth?”

It required a strong self-reminder
that I’d started this encounter by seeking to redirect the
Stardancer’s
course toward this planet.
I must see it through to the end, for Matt’s sake.
When would there be another chance for him?
I’d witnessed this world’s effect on him, with its painful memories, and his
health was deteriorating. I had to seize our one chance to confront the
unknown. I nodded in agreement.

Matt gave me an encouraging smile.
“It’s not a bad sort, if my memory about it was correct at the time fourteen
years ago.”

Well,
that’s most reassuring.
My lips curved into a reluctant grin. His
self-assured, detached, dry wit was what had first drawn me to My Real Quiet
One in the Lilith.

He led me toward the crystal
housing. There was no apparent entrance, but he continued forward as if he used
a different vision beyond normal reality. Indeed, green mists occluded his eyes
again. As we approached, a section in the multifaceted, clear wall wavered like
the heat mirages over the Marnu Port’s tarmac. Before I could blink, it
vanished.

Matt stepped without hesitation
through the opening, leading me along. A deeper silence muffled us than what
we’d experienced in the planet’s wilderness. Here, the nonsound hovered as a
tangible presence that one almost could touch. I glanced warily around. We
stood in a dimly lit chamber of sorts, but it there were no visible details,
except that the smooth floor shimmered with its own soft radiance. It appeared
formed of durable crystalline material.

I glanced at Matt and wanted to ask
him what he was sensing, for he frowned with an inward-turned gaze. He looked
as if he was concentrating upon something perplex and taxing. I stayed quiet,
fearful of interrupting whatever silent contact he might be having with the
being that had helped him long ago.

A soft glow from an undefined
source suffused the chamber’s interior. Cool, fresh air filtered gently past my
face, taking away the slightly damp and close smell that pervaded the place.
The illumination revealed the interior was crystalline also, without solid
walls or ceilings anywhere. I could peer all the way through, but not in a
direct line, for reflective surfaces skewed and tricked my sight. These
interior translucent walls were dark blue, while the exterior had been
colorless. But when we’d first viewed this place, the exterior had been blue
too. I shook my head in confusion.

Matt and I pushed back the hoods on
our environmental suits at almost the same time so we could get a better,
unobstructed view of the surroundings. It had also rapidly grown very warm
inside here, so we dialed down the heat settings on our suits.

Then I stiffened. Something most
definitely touched my thoughts—a strong awareness—and it wasn’t mine. It was
different….

Matt whirled around and stared. I
copied his movements a bit more slowly. My mouth dropped open at a translucent
veil of shimmering, living light slowly descended from above. Its amorphous
shape shifted until it assumed a definite sharp-planed outline that mirrored
the construction’s exterior.

Matt smiled and stepped back to
take my hand. His grasp silently urged me forward across the slick floor toward
the hovering presence. The same deep treads on our boots that had helped us
navigate the icy terrain outside also kept us upright upon the supersmooth
floor.

“Timirshil-ka is asking who you
are. It remembers me well, for it has detected portions of its own essence
within me. I told it that you’re my third chance at life, while it gave me my
second chance.”

I gave him a doubtful stare,
bewildered that he could communicate eloquently with the creature without
speaking a word aloud. A weight upon my chest lifted. My irrational plan to
bring him here
might
turn out well.
In addition to not knowing how we would even find Matt’s otherworldly
benefactor, I hadn’t taken in account whether he could still communicate with
it. He’d mentioned on Rikin that it had spoken in his mind. A good thing he was
a sensitive, although it made me squirm whenever I remembered he could pick up
my
thoughts too.

“Timirshil-ka wishes to read you,
Kailiri. Something about you has intrigued its curiosity. Will you allow it to
do so?”

What
is Matt saying? What does he mean?
My startled stare shot toward the light
being, which had become suffused with soft pink color. “I will, if you swear it
won’t harm me,” I said with false bravado.

“It will
not
harm you, doll, but I must warn you that
Timirshil-ka’s
scans aren’t merely physical, but go down to the minute cellular and
biochemical level.” His quiet voice calmed my apprehension only a little.
Cellular level
?
He
removed our supply bag from his shoulder and bent to lower it onto the glowing,
glazed floor. Then he straightened and grasped both my arms.

I was about to reply when a warm
lassitude overcame me, leaving me weak and witless. Matt drew me close in a
protective embrace while the creature’s laser-like awareness sifted through my
being with cool detachment. A sensation like I’d been bombarded by a million
invisible, microscopic sand particles impinged my skin and tunneled within.
Mercy! It’s
vibrating
through every cell
and pore in my body
. The foreign awareness withdrew minutes later, leaving
me cold and shivering. I stared at Matt for an explanation, but his dark brows
had drawn together in a distracted frown. His head jerked and he stared at me
with his brows raised high. I interpreted that look as stunned, open surprise.