Alien Chronicles 3 - The Crystal Eye (39 page)

“No!” she cried and cupped the stone with both hands, trying with all her might to bring the light back.

But except for the faintest vestige of warmth against her skin, it might have all been her imagination.

Several hours later, she was awakened from a fevered doze by the sound of her cell door slamming open. Armed patrollers surrounded her, and one of them kicked her hard.

Pain flashed through her like searing heat. She groaned, choked, and struggled to sit up. She was still on the floor, having never found the strength to crawl onto her bunk.

“Get up!” the patroller commanded harshly. “Prisoner one-four-zero, you are condemned to death. Get on your feet.”

Ampris heard his voice as though from far away. Her head was light, as though floating above her body. She pushed the pain from her mind, ignoring it as she had been taught during her years in the arena. She still had a few reserves of strength, and a great deal of pride. She drew on both now.

Swallowing another groan, she climbed slowly and stiffly to her feet and stood facing the three patrollers. Uniformed in black, they wore the distinctive insignia of a bloody dagger, the badge of the Bureau of Security. Helmeted, with their visors already down, their faces could not be seen.

Ampris did not want to see their faces. She drew her shoulders back and lifted her head. There had been a period in her life when she faced death every day. She had learned to channel her fear into aggression and not let it shackle her. Down the corridor, Ampris could hear other prisoners screaming and pleading for their lives, but she kept her dignity, letting no expression cross her face for the patrollers to enjoy.

All she felt at that moment was regret—regret that she would never see her sons again, regret that she would never see the abiru go free. She felt as though her life was incomplete and unfinished, but she supposed everyone facing death experienced the same emotion.

The sergeant pointed at the door. “To the transport.”

“Why not here?” Ampris asked him defiantly. “Why not kill me here in this cell, or in one of the torture chambers? Why waste fuel transporting me to an extermination camp on the other side of the world?”

The sergeant gestured, and the other patrollers hit her, hard and expertly, leaving her gasping and doubled over. They took her arms and forced her outside.

Ampris had been beaten before. She had been thrown onto transports before. She had known despair and futility before. But this time was different. The other prisoners being herded outside across a paved courtyard to a waiting transport were moaning and yelping in distress. Most were Kelths, Ampris noticed. Several were missing hands, showing they had been punished for thievery. It was dark outside, as though the Viis were ashamed of this evil they did and wanted to hide it from the world. Ampris’s fear faded and she found herself strangely calm. She felt almost safe, which surprised her. But she did not fight this new emotion, thinking it was merciful to feel this way.

She could barely walk because of her injuries. Her crippled leg would not support her, and she had to drag it. The patrollers shoved her into line and moved on. Ampris was not shackled or wearing restraints this time, but like the others she was too crippled and injured to be able to cause trouble.

Yet she found herself glancing around, counting the number of patrollers present, studying their placement. A few were clustered next to the door of the utilitarian building. More were talking at the front of the transport.

A clang and the grating of metal over pavement caught her attention. The gates were being rolled open manually by two sweating slaves. Amusement tickled the back of Ampris’s throat. So even the Bureau, with all the dread and fear it inspired, had breakdown problems. But the open gate drew her gaze again. She found herself calculating whether she could get to it.

Someone prodded her in the back to make her move forward, and she nearly fell. Cold certainty flowed through her at that moment, and she knew she could not escape. All her strength, all her skills, all her courage were not enough this time. Her body was simply too broken.

She wanted to weep and rage, but those emotions were futile. Ampris had never been one to give up, and her tough spirit did not want to surrender now. But she could not do this herself.

Again she felt regret like a sharp stab and longed to see the faces of her sons once more.

But, she knew, it was not to be.

Sighing, she bowed her head and simply opened herself to acceptance.

As though a flower had burst open, the Eye of Clarity began to glow with that same lambent light it had displayed earlier in her cell. The light spread across Ampris’s body, bathing her from head to foot. In wonder she raised her hand and stared at the aura of pure white light that encompassed each of her fingers. It looked so hot and fiery, and yet the feel of it was cool.

She felt filled with renewed strength. When she looked across the courtyard, the buildings, the transport, the condemned prisoners, and the gates had all vanished. Even the darkness was gone.

Instead, it was as though several moons shone in the sky, creating a clear, silvery light that was otherworldly and serene. Before her, she saw a vista of verdant hills and natural meadows, tall grasses waving in a breeze that smelled alien and yet sweetly inviting. She closed her eyes and inhaled, filling her senses with the new scents of greenery, blossoms, living creatures, and rushing water. There was no color in this moonlit landscape, but she did not care. It was as though she had reached a fabled place, a haven, after a long and difficult journey.

She had only to step forward to enter it. She had only to believe.

Ampris hesitated no longer. Although a corner of her mind was certain that if she walked toward this vision she would be shot by the patrollers, she stepped forward anyway.

In her vision, her body was no longer hunched and twisted by injury. Her leg no longer dragged with every step. She felt young and strong again. She walked slowly and steadily toward the meadow stretching before her.

Now she could hear sounds, faint at first, but growing steadily louder: the sigh of wind through the swaying treetops, the sleepy chirp of birds, the rustle of a small night predator stalking its rodent prey in the grass, the rushing gurgle of a stream of water.

She wanted to bathe in that water and be clean again. She wanted to drink that water.

Ampris closed her mind to all fear and thoughts of reality, and kept walking.

If she bumped into anyone she did not feel it. The illusion grew more real with every passing second. She could feel the grass now beneath her feet, soft and pliant, not stiff and crackling from drought. The breeze ruffled her fur, and she raised her nostrils to it, inhaling with pleasure. She had forgotten how pure and clean air could be.

She walked all the way across the long, long meadow. No one came after her. No one shouted at her. No one shot her.

When she reached the stream and knelt at its edge, Ampris dipped her glowing hands into the freezing water. “This is real,” she said in wonder, then drank.

The first swallow was pure and delicious, sliding icy cold down her throat.

Then, without warning, the meadow and stream vanished. Jolted by the abrupt transition back to reality, Ampris found herself lying in a street gutter in some deserted quarter of Vir that she did not recognize. The white aura surrounding her was gone, and her Eye of Clarity hung around her neck as lifeless as usual. The gutter beneath her was dry. The air was thick with pollution, and the street smelled of uncollected garbage, dust, Skek droppings, and transport exhaust. It was still dark, but she sensed that it must be close to dawn. The sky had begun to show streaks of gray that told her the sun would soon be rising.

For now, the street was silent and deserted, but when traffic commenced, she knew, she must not be found here.

Ampris pushed herself to her knees. She was weak and flushed with fever that made her pant. Dizziness made her hold on to the curb to steady herself. The vision had all seemed so real, as though she had actually journeyed to another place. Yet she was here, in Vir, she told herself. She had to be hallucinating.

But what kind of hallucination had gotten her out of the prison? She was far from the patrollers. What force had possessed her and protected her? Did she really just walk out of there, unseen and unnoticed? It seemed impossible to believe, and yet something had happened.

Ampris clutched the Eye of Clarity with a shaking hand. She knew she was on the edge of a great discovery, but she found herself unwilling to believe that it could be so simple. After all these years of trying to unlock the mystery of the Eye of Clarity, perhaps she had been going at it all wrong.

Perhaps all she had to do was listen, believe, and accept.

She leaned forward to grasp the curb with both hands, but she could not pull herself to her feet. She tried once more, and found herself racked with pain. Dizziness assaulted her again, and she whimpered softly. She knew she had to find a hiding place or she would be picked up by a sniffer programmed to find vagrants. You were allowed to starve to death in Vir, but you weren’t allowed to lie in its gutters.

But another effort to move brought collapse instead. She felt herself falling, but the jolt of impact with the pavement seemed far away and not very painful. Ampris sank deep into darkness.

CHAPTER
•SEVENTEEN

Ampris dreamed that she was in a skimmer, flying high over Vir. The great city lay deserted and empty—except in the vast plaza at the end of the Avenue of Triumph. There, surrounded by bronze statues of great kaas, lay piles of Viis corpses, twisted in rigor, their skin frosted an eerie white.

“The Dancing Death,” she whispered. “The Dancing Death.”

“Ampris,” a voice said to her. “Ampris, wake up. You must come back to us now. You have slept long enough.”

The voice continued, pulling her attention away from the sight before her. After a while, the city faded and she could no longer see anything. She floated in her skimmer, flying blind, and then she lost the skimmer too and was only floating, like a leaf in a pond, floating to the surface, to light and the blur of anxious faces hanging over her.

She blinked slowly, hazily, and wondered who they were.

“Mother?” A strong hand gripped hers, crushing her fingers too hard. “Mother, do you know me?”

The face that went with the voice would not come into focus. But Ampris inhaled his scent, and knew him. “Foloth,” she whispered.

Her hand was released, and suddenly there was much noise and movement.

“She knows me!” Foloth said in jubilation. “She knows me!”

“Let me try,” said someone else. Again her hand was gripped, this time not so tightly. “Mother, do you know who I am?”

It was a game, she realized. A guessing game, but she felt too tired to play it.

“Mother, please!”

She found herself being shaken and opened her eyes again. She knew Nashmarl’s voice and tried to smile at him. But another shadow came and took Nashmarl away.

“Don’t bother her,” the new voice said to her son. “She’s very weak. She must rest.”

“She didn’t know you,” Foloth said, boasting and mocking at the same time. “She knew me, but not you.”

“Shut up!”

“Hush, both of you,” said the third voice. “Give her time. She has to rest now.”

Of course I know Nashmarl,
Ampris thought drowsily, sinking back into the eddies of darkness.

When she awakened next, it was very quiet except for the sound of low humming. Ampris opened her eyes and turned her head toward the sound.

At once it stopped, and a shadow came to hover above her. “How you feeling?”

She sniffed for scent and recognized this individual. A rush of affection swept through her, making her smile, while her mind groped for a name.

“Come on, Goldie,” the voice said pleadingly. “Stay awake a little while this time. You need to come back to us, see?”

“Elrabin,” she murmured.

“That’s right.” He rubbed her gently between her ears. “How you feeling?”

“Soft,” she answered.

“Oh? Uh, sure. You feel soft. I guess that’s good. No pain?”

“No.”

He patted her hand. “That’s the way we want it. You going to heal up just fine, see? Jobul’s a medic, or at least an orderly, but he knows what to do. For a Myal, he’s not bad.”

She blinked, and found that things were slowly coming into focus. It was as though she had been looking at white light for so long, seeing things no one should, and had somehow ruined her vision. But it was coming back now.

Relieved, she gazed up at Elrabin’s face and saw his quirky, sly smile and the mischief that always lurked in his eyes. “Hello, old friend,” she said.

He bent over her and gave her face a quick lick. “Hello, yourself. You want some broth?”

“No.”

“Sure you do. Got to get your strength back, Goldie. Can’t lie there forever.”

She smiled and let her eyes fall shut. “You don’t eat in dreams.”

“Maybe not.” He came back with a small chipped bowl and a spoon that he let clatter against the rim. “But this be real life, and you got to eat something, even if it’s just one swallow.”

She smiled at him. “You’re a dream.”

His tall ears swiveled back and he grunted a little as he lifted her gently and propped something behind her. “That hurt you any?”

“No.”

He sighed in relief and picked up the bowl. “Now open wide. Just one swallow, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“I’m tired.”

“Come on. Open the gnashers for me. Just once, okay?”

She had to smile at him, and when she did he pressed the bowl of the spoon to her mouth. Some of the broth trickled across her tongue. It was tepid, but tasted surprisingly good. She swallowed and watched him scoop another spoonful. This time she took it willingly.

“Hey, you be hungrier than you thought, see?” he said with satisfaction, feeding her as fast as she would take it.

“It’s good,” she said.

Her gaze wandered about the modest surroundings in curiosity. They seemed to be in a one-room structure constructed of mud bricks with a low ceiling assembled from an assortment of scavenged building materials. Besides her cot, there were two others lining the wall, plus a mismatched collection of crudely made stools, a sleek chair of Viis design, and a rickety table. A burner supported by bricks and a pail of water in another corner seemed to make up the kitchen.