The Reach Between Worlds (The Arclight Saga, Book 1) (24 page)

Abandoned

Kyra breathed like a weight had been lifted off her. “I think we just did the impossible.”

There was a great deal of cheering throughout the engine room.

“There’s one matter to tend to,” Ven said. “Assuming we don’t fall apart mid-air, what’s our destination?”

“Going back to the city is suicide,” Edrin said.

“Kyra is the ranking artificer. It is her decision,” Yoresh said.

Kyra tapped her fingers on the rumbling reactor frame. “We’ll start with Tyrithia, there’s a strong magister core stationed there.”

Taro had been listening intently. “No,” he said. “We should start with Ashwick.”

“Ashwick?” Kyra said skeptically. “Why?”

“Taro, I know you want to get home as much as I do, but Ashwick is tiny,” Ven said. “There are dozens of magisters in Tyrithia, including my parents.”

Taro wasn’t sure how to proceed. On one hand, he knew they had to go to Ashwick first. Exposing Vexis was the only way to beat her, and Mathan’s back-alley mansion was bound to have information.

Taro decided that it was time. Kyra would understand, she had to.

“Can I talk to you in private?” he asked.

They climbed above deck and into the captain’s cabin. Ice caked the walls and cracked windows; maps and books littered the floor, and the door hung by one hinge.

Kyra stood a stool up-right and sat.

Taro took her hands. “We have to go to Ashwick.”

“Okay, spill. What do you know?”

“It’s where Vexis’ whole operation started. It’s where they created the Corruption. If we can find out exactly what Vexis is up to—”

“Slow down. How do you know their plans are in Ashwick?”

This was it. “Before I knew who Vexis even was, Victor Mathan recruited me for some long-term work. All I had to do was... well... join the Magisterium.”

Kyra’s eyes shifted from left to right like she was trying to parse everything at once. “So you joined the Magisterium to help her?”

“I didn’t know who she was at the time. I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, but I just wasn’t sure how to do.”

There was an extended silence as they sat. For a moment, a tiny smile appeared on Kyra’s mouth, but seconds later everything came crashing down.

“You unbelievable son of a bitch.”

“Kyra, you have to believe me, I didn’t know.”

Kyra hushed him. “No lies, no obfuscation, no excuses. That night the Magisterium lost power, did you or did you not help Vexis escape?”

Taro opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Kyra struck him across the face twice, once with her palm and again with a closed fist. Taro made no motion to defend himself. Kyra looked like she had to physically restrain herself from breaking him in half.

“Kyra, please.”

“Please? Is ‘please’ going to bring back my dad.” She punched him again. “How dare you. How dare you touch me.”

Taro scooted away through heaps of debris. “Vexis was—”

“She’d be rotting in prison if it wasn’t for you.” Kyra spoke in a rambling stream of consciousness. “I should’ve known. Vexis let you live. Those creatures wouldn’t attack you. You were the key to all of this.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is! It’s that simple! You had a choice. You could’ve told us at the beginning.”

“I’m sorry,” was all Taro could manage to say. “Can you ever forgive me?”

From the corner of his eye, Taro caught Ven and Suri peering through one of the cracked portholes. They’d heard everything. While Kyra’s eyes were white-hot anger, theirs were bewilderment.

Kyra seized him by the collar and pulled him onto the deck. She pressed him over the embarking ramp. “Get off my ship.”

“He’ll die out there,” Suri said.

“I sure as hell hope so,” Kyra said.

Tears streamed down Taro’s face. “It’s okay, Suri. I’m going.” He hobbled down the ramp into the snow. “Kyra... I... I love you.”

Each of Kyra’s words was slow and deliberate, and felt like a knife through Taro’s heart. “I do not love you.”

Those were the last word’s Taro heard as he touched the snow. By now, the commotion had dozens of artificers above deck.

A moment passed and the ramp retracted. The
Eventide
’s beams creaked and the engines kicked up plumes of snow as the ship rose.

Taro watched the ship speed off without him. He wished he could just curl up and die, and as he sat there, he realized he’d soon get his wish.

Run Away

Taro had become a part of the airship junkyard. Like the mountains of scraps, or the cracked fuselage his head rested against. The worst part was that he knew he deserved this.

The air stabbed at his cheeks and as his eyelids closed for what he expected was the last time. But as they touched, he heard something he didn’t expect: a voice. A very familiar voice followed by the clang of metal. It was coming from just beyond a nearby airship’s hull.

It was Aris picking through scraps and hurling pieces into two piles. Every so often he’d glance back at his wagon and shout.

“You clinking piece of crap.” He stripped the insulation off a pipe. “How am I supposed to find another distributor valve? I’m going to freeze my ass off out here. Some smuck’ll find me in a thousand years, frozen solid.”

Taro hurried towards him as fast as his leg would take him. “The escape pods on the Morning Star have distributor valves.” He pointed towards the smallest airship. “That one there.”

“Taro? What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Vexis threw us out.”

“Well, yes, but I figured you were dead.” He motioned for Taro to get inside. It wasn’t much warmer than the outside, but at least there was no wind. “Are there anymore of you?”

“Plenty. They fixed up one of the airships here and flew off.”

“Brilliant.”

“Thanks, it was my idea.”

“But you’re still here?”

Taro dodged the subject. “I don’t suppose I could get a lift to Ashwick?”

Aris feigned a groan. “I’m just so busy aimlessly wandering around, afraid I’m going to have to kick you out and let you die of hypothermia — of course I’m going to give you a lift back, you idiot.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s a miracle I found you at all. If the Old Girl hadn’t decided to fracture her distributor valve I’d be ten miles away by now.”

Aris retrieved the part from the Morning Star and went to work unscrewing the old valve with his bare fingers and installing the new(ish) one.

Aris peaked up from the hatch in the floor. “Don’t look so glum. You’re going to get to go back home to your family.”

“For how long? Vexis won’t stop with Endra Edûn.”

“She’s already won. The city is hers, the Sun King is dead. There’s not much either of us can do. I’m going back to my old job.”

“Job?”

“Magister Extraordinaire! Plenty of travelling, meeting new people, getting as far away from that god-forsaken city as possible.”

As Aris blabbered on about his plans to go from city to city performing magic shows, Taro finally understood. It was like his eyes had been opened.

He sat up and looked Aris directly in the eyes. “How long have your memories been back?”

Aris looked like he’d just been punched in the gut. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re running. But you’re not running from Vexis, are you?” He spoke his last words slowly. “What do you remember?”

Aris closed the hatch and went to the wagon controls. When he yanked the drive lever down, the wagon lurched forward.

“What does it matter? Vexis won, and nothing’s going to change it, so I might as well move on.”

“You coward.”

Aris stopped the wagon. “Get out.”

“You don’t mean that. You’re not going to send me out to die.”

“You’d be surprised what I’m capable of.”

“You’re leaving because you’re ashamed. What did you do?”

“I don’t want you here anymore. Please go.”

Taro started for the door. “There’s no way I’m going to survive out there. You want that on your conscience?”

Taro stepped one foot outside before Aris stopped him.

“Just be quiet until we get into town,” Aris said. “After that, we’ll never see each other again.”

Aris shut the door and the wagon resumed its trek. He stared out into the tundra like a statue.

“I’m old, Taro. Older than you can imagine.”

“You’re not a magister, are you?” Taro asked somberly. “You’re the magister.”

Aris wrung his hands. “I was a prisoner. Forced to toil to keep the Arclight active, cursed with immortality to continue my task until the end of the world. Vexis helped me escape. Without me, the Arclight couldn’t function... so many people were suffering. But I couldn’t go back to that hell. Dr. Halric devised an elixir that would remove the memories that plagued me. I should’ve known that my body would resist it.”

Aris fished through a drawer and took out the memory elixir. He shook the contents. Aris sifted through some papers and books tucked underneath a counter. They were the books he’d recovered from Dr. Halric’s laboratory.

“The Arclight is the templar of the living world. Mishandled, it could kill every living thing in Endra Edûn.”

Taro felt his heart thump in his chest. “Why would she...”

“In the instant someone dies the reach between worlds thins enough to pull something through. With the deaths of a million people you could pull anything through. Or everything through.”

“How do we stop her?”

Aris knocked Taro on the head. “Weren’t you listening? It’s over. She’s won.”

“We have to try.”

“No, we certainly don’t.”

Taro glared at him. “How can you live with yourself?”

Aris waved the elixir. “That’s the point. I can’t live with myself, but dying isn’t an option. This little vial is all I have. This is my only reprieve. So sit there, shut the hell up, and let me do what I do best: run away.”

There was a long, uncomfortable moment of deep silence.

“I finally understand you,” Taro said. “You act like people annoy you, yet you seek out crowds and cities. When you’re alone, you talk to your wagon or to yourself. A thousand years trapped... you’re afraid to be alone again.”

Aris stepped away from the controls and knelt down in front of Taro. “Let me tell you one last little secret, kid. Let me shatter your naivety. The disease spreading through Endra, the one that’s killing your mother and father. I helped Dr. Halric create it.”

For a moment, Taro couldn’t bring himself to breathe. In seconds it boiled over. He piled every ounce of templar into his fist, and drove it at Aris’ face.

“That’s it,” Aris said. “Get it all out.”

Taro punctuated each of his hits with a word. “I hate you.”

Aris grabbed both of his wrists. “I think you need a time-out.”

He pressed his hand against Taro’s forehead, and Taro felt a jolt ripple through his body. His limbs went limp, and tumbled to the floor. He remained conscious, and could see, hear, and feel everything around him.

Aris set him on the sleeping cot in the corner. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is a fight I’m not strong enough to face.”

The Back-Alley Meeting

Aris leaned over Taro and prodded him with the heel of his foot. “We’re nearly there. If you behave, I’ll remove the binding. Sound good? Drool once for yes, twice for no.”

Taro gained some feeling back in his face, enough to glare up at the despicable man. Aris tapped him on the forehead and Taro’s body released. The moment he was free, Taro tried to strike him again.

Aris seized him by the wrists. “Settle down. A few more minutes and you’ll never have to see me again. Hit me again and you won’t wake up for a month.”

Taro resisted the urge to try again and looked out of the cracked wagon window. The snow was gone and colorful autumn trees rolled by. The wagon rumbled over the bumpy earth and trembled as it neared Ashwick.

Smoke rose in the distance, bristled with the smell death and burning ash. It choked the air and overwhelming the senses as entered town. The wagon crept along on the cobblestone towards the source in the market row.

What Taro saw sent a sliver of ice through his heart. Beside the old fountain were great piles of bodies, wrapped in linen and twine, and arranged in heaps beside a pyre. Warders with cloth wrapped tight around their faces tossed the bodies one by one into the flames.

There was a momentary kink in Aris’ armor, and for the span of a full minute, he had no quip or comment, just a grim disgust that seemed to settle in his throat.

“It’s just like Endra Edûn,” he said.

“Are my mom and dad are in there?” Taro asked.

Aris didn’t answer.

The streets were filled with Helians, all thin and sickly. They pattered at the sides of the wagon pushed toward Walder’s Lane.

Warders barricaded the street, preventing the hordes from entering uncorrupted residential areas. They stopped the wagon and asked their business.

Taro showed the constable his stamped aurom. “I’m from the Magisterium, home on holiday to see my family.”

The warder grazed the aurom with his knuckle. “I suggest you take your family with you and get as far from here as possible.”

Walder’s Lane was as Taro left it, except that the houses had their windows boarded up. He retrieved the spare key (always kept in the loose brick under the stoop) and entered.

It was dark inside and dead silent, but for the creaking of the floorboards as he ascended the stairs. The place looked as though it had been cleaned recently; the floors were bare, and there wasn’t so much as a toy in sight.

He searched through the living room and found an oil lamp resting beside his father’s armchair. Before he could light it, Taro felt something hard smack the back of his head.

“Out! Get out!” Decker’s voice screamed from the darkness. He swung a broom handle again at Taro’s head.

Taro grabbed Decker by the arm. “It’s me!”

Decker’s cheeks were slick with tears. He dropped the beam and squinted, and his face practically lit up the room when he saw it was his older brother.

Taro squeezed him tight. “Where’s your brother?”

Decker wiped the tears from his cheek. “In his room.”

“Mom and Dad?” Taro didn’t wait for a response. He pushed the door to his parent’s room open. His mother and father lay, worn, weary, but still breathing.

Taro dropped to their bedside. When he ran his hand along his mother’s forehead, her eyes cracked open at his touch.

“Taro.” Her voice was so weak he wasn’t even sure he’d heard it. Dry tears caked the skin around her eyes, and she looked like she’d lost another ten pounds.

“It’s okay, you’re going to be okay,” Taro said as he stroked her hair.

Somehow she managed to put her hand onto his. “I knew you’d come back.”

Aris appeared in the doorway. Taro looked at his mother’s frail, pale hand set against his own. There was almost nothing left. The tears came despite his best attempt to stifle them, and he wept like the entire cruel world had finally caught up with him.

“Help them,” Taro said, completely choked with tears.

Aris was shaking. “I can’t.”

“Liar!” Taro beat on Aris’ his chest with his fist. “You made it, you can cure it.”

“There is no cure.”

“You have to do something. You can’t just let them die.”

Aris reached into his pocket and pulled out the memory elixir.

“You can’t bury this forever, Aris.” Taro pushed him towards the bedside. “You can do something here. Now. Look at them.”

Aris backed away.

“Look at them,” Taro repeated more forcefully.

The commotion brought Enam to the doorway.

“Fine. Go ahead you coward,” Taro said.

Aris lowered the vial. He clenched his shaking fist and took in a deep lung-full of air. “What do you want me to do?”

“I just want you to try.”

Enam called from the doorway. “Is the man gonna help Mommy and Daddy?”

Aris composed himself and stepped towards the boys. He knelt down, and rubbed his hand through Enam’s hair. “Yes, little one. I am.”

The table beside the bed had an assortment of medicines and unused syringes scattered across it. Aris took one of the caps off the needles and drew blood from his arm. There was a sizzle and flash as the tiny hole in his skin disappeared.

Aris injected his blood directly into both parent’s veins. Almost immediately they shifted in their beds, groaned, and stretched out their arms and legs. Their skin softened and color returned to their cheeks, but they remained asleep.

“This will stabilize them for a week or two,” Aris said. “The Corruption was forged with magic, only the Arclight can eradicate it.”

Taro wiped the tears onto his sleeve. “So there is a chance?”

“Our odds would increase substantially if we had some help.”

“The artificers might be searching Mathan’s mansion.”

“Then we’ll start there,” Aris said resolutely.

“I don’t think they’ll help you if I’m around. We didn’t part on the best of terms.”

“They have no choice. We’ll offer them the one thing that no army can buy: proof that Vexis orchestrated this whole thing.”

“Taro,” Decker said from the doorway. “Is Nima coming back soon, too?”

Nima’s absence hadn’t gone unnoticed to Taro. He’d expected she was asleep considering the hour.

“Coming back?” Taro’s voice crackled.

“She left with you, right?” Decker said.

Despite the icy shudder ripping through him, Taro managed to maintain his composure. “She’ll be back soon,” he said cheerfully. “Go ahead into the living room for me, I need to speak with my friend alone.”

“I thought you said you sent your sister back here,” Aris said when the boys were out.

“Mathan told me he would.” He glanced sideways at Aris. “If she’s still in the city, we have to get her out.”

“Mathan may have dealt with her already. Don’t trust hope, it will only disappoint you.”

Enam was waiting in the living room for Taro and tugged at the seam of his pants.

“Tar! We missed you,” Enam said.

Taro planted a kiss Enam’s forehead. “You’ve been so brave. Can you be brave just a little bit longer?”

Enam nodded and hugged Taro around his neck.

Taro retrieved one of the spare wooden prosthetics from his bedroom. It didn’t have the mobility of the mechanical leg, and the soft flesh of his limb felt like it was being pressed against broken glass, but it was a relief to be able to walk again.

He and Aris returned to the wagon. It tottered down the muddy road towards Mathan’s back-alley mansion. The streets were bare, and most other houses in the area had boarded their windows and reinforced their doors to protect themselves against the corrupted.

The lampposts flickered against the slick streets and Taro slowed as he came to the mouth of the alleyway. He and Aris tipped over trashcans and skidded through puddles until they came to the painted door. It was torn from the brick wall and tossed aside. The frame hung off the building, covered in scorch marks.

Inside, the mansion was a dump. Every cabinet was emptied, every rug was pulled up, and every door was opened. Banging and shouting came from the corridor leading to the basement, and they followed it down the creaking stairwell.

The cellar laboratory was trashed and Mort was on his knees surrounded by Kyra and four other artificers.

The void apparition on the table had been rotting so long it was barely even recognizable. Flies and maggots swarmed the corpse, and black blood dripped onto the concrete. The stench was like nothing Taro had ever experienced.

“You expect us to believe that?” Kyra shouted at Mort. His suit was tattered and torn, and his cheek was bruised. “You worked for Mathan for, what, years?”

Mort glanced at the corpse on the table. “I wasn’t permitted down here. It’s not my job to ask questions.”

“And what about the smell?”

Kyra grabbed him by the collar and pressed his face into it the putrid slime. “You’ve been playing house here for months and you never smelled this? Do you think we’re idiots? I want to know what they were doing down here and I want to know NOW.”

Ven, Suri, and the others looked at Kyra like she’d lost her mind, but were too afraid to stop her.

“I don’t think he knows anything,” Taro said.

When Kyra looked up at him, her face went white. She dropped Mort and he slid to the floor.

“Taro?” she said, sounding more surprised than angry, but when she moved within arm’s reach she slapped him with the back of her hand.

Taro rubbed his jaw. “You don’t think leaving me to die is punishment enough.”

“Not when it doesn’t work. How in the ever-living hell did you get here?”

“I’ll explain later. We need to put this aside for a moment. There’s not much time,” Taro said.

“Put you betraying us aside? Are you that dense?”

Ven spoke up. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

“Can we maybe move this to another room first?” Aris said, grimacing at the corpse.

That, at least, they could agree on. They met back outside in the alleyway. Aris laid out the books and parchment he’d gotten from the cellar onto an overturned trash bin. Every margin was filled to the edge with his scribbled handwriting.

“I pulled these from this mansion months ago,” Aris said. “It’s taken some time, but I believe I finally understand what Vexis is trying to do.” He pointed to an image of an upside down tower. “I believe she wants to thin the reach between worlds. Doing that, she’ll be able to pull something through.”

“I’ve seen her do it before,” Taro said.

“But only on a small scale, one death, one apparition,” Aris said. “Imagine if she killed a million. Using the Arclight, she could just that: kill every man, woman, and child in Endra Edûn.”

“Where does it say that?” Kyra said, glancing at the notes.

“It doesn’t specifically.”

“Then how do you know?”

“I have an intimate understanding of the Arclight. That’s hard to explain,” Aris said.

“Well, then you’d better get started, because we’re not budging until you do.”

Aris looked like he had a headache. He bowed his head on his closed fist before he spoke. “So... every living thing has a templar, right?”

“Right,” Kyra said.

“The Arclight is a templar in a manner of speaking. It’s the fire that lights all others. But a templar cannot exist without a soul. That’s why the Arclight doesn’t work.”

Ven, Suri, and Kyra all tried to object at the same time. Ven won out. “The Arclight worked for a long time without a soul.”

Aris looked like he was trying to explain trigonometry to cattle farmers. “It did, in fact. It had mine.”

“You are the Arclight,” Taro muttered to himself.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Suri scoffed. “The Arclight is thousands of years old. You’d have to be—“

“One-thousand two-hundred and forty-seven. My birthday’s next week. If you’re planning a cake, anything but vanilla.”

“Bollocks,” Ven said.

“I’d prefer chocolate.”

“You’re twenty five at the worst,” Kyra said.

Aris muttered to himself. “Nobody can just take my word, no, everyone needs proof.” He swiped the sword from Kyra’s sheath.

“If this doesn’t convince you, I swear.” Aris plunged the blade into his neck. To the other’s horror, blood spilled out by the pint.

“Holy shit,” Ven said.

Aris collapsed face-first onto the wet cobblestone in a pool of blood.

Kyra was shaking. “Why would he kill himself?”

“Just wait,” Taro said.

A soft glimmer consumed Aris’ wounds, and his body sewed itself back together. He stood, cracked his neck, and shook off death.

“You should be dead,” Kyra said, completely bewildered.

“I can see they’re letting only the best and brightest into the Magisterium these days.” He handed her back her bloodied sword. “Tell me that was enough to get through to you.”