Etherwalker (36 page)

“Enoch! Enoch!”

The voice echoed from high above. It was Rictus. Squinting against the brightness, Enoch looked up, tried to wave to his friend. The top was too far away, the sun . . . too bright.

“Ric . . .” His voice came out as a whisper.

I can’t . . . I can’t . . . 

Enoch’s hand slipped on the bent steel, and he slid over the edge, only stopping when his scabbard belt caught on the jagged tip. Enoch swung over the darkness. He couldn’t fight any more. There was nothing he could do.

“Ric . . . help me . . . help me . . . please.”

*  *  *  *

Rictus couldn’t see into the blackness, even with his new eyes.

I’d give my eyes, left arm, and functioning digestive system for one damn rope right now.

He looked over to Sera, who was leaning precariously out over the ledge. She flipped her goggles up and carefully crawled back towards him. Her face was pale.

“He’s bleeding heavily. We have to get him up here. Now.”

G’Nor had already circled the pit twice, and he returned again, signaling to Sera in frustration. Rictus knew what the beast was saying without Sera’s translation.

No dice.

“The ledge that Enoch is on—I can barely see it from here,” muttered Sera. “G’Nor says there is nothing to hold on to for a hundred feet. We can’t climb down there.”

G’Nor growled, lowered his haunches as if to size up the jump. Sera grabbed his shaggy neck.

“No, my friend. The landing is too narrow.”

There was silence as it sank in—they were going to have to watch Enoch bleed to death. There was no way down. After all of the danger they had passed through with the boy, it was ending here.

Sera looked back at her limp wings, shaking her head. Rictus looked down at his hands. His smooth, strong hands.

Damn it.

“There is a way.”

Sera looked up at the specter. She knew. They both knew.

“I . . . I’m afraid of what they would do,” she said. She gathered the primary feathers in one hand, and the metal gleamed in the sunlight. Her voice was soft.

“The . . . what did he call them? The workers in your blood?”

“Saturated, overcharged nanites, Sera,” said Rictus, his old heart heavy. “They are still set on transference and regeneration.”

Eyes closed, Sera nodded.

“He said that they could . . .
fix
me. That they would know what to do.”

Rictus tried to smile. He tried to show something, anything, besides the dread in his stomach.

She has to know that this is going to hurt.

“You don’t have to do this, Sera. Maybe if we look for another way—”

“There is no other way. You know there isn’t.”

Rictus couldn’t stop looking at his hands. In the bright sunlight, a thin sheen of sweat sparkled with grains of sand over firm, taut skin. He clenched his fingers once, twice, and released them with a sigh.

“Let’s do this. Let’s do this now.”

G’Nor signed to Sera, who relayed to Rictus. “He wants to know if this is dangerous.”

“Not for you,” said Rictus, eyes down. “We don’t have time to worry about that now. Enoch is dying.”

He grabbed Sera by the wrist. She was staring down the pit, at the boy whose life was ebbing away in drips and gasps far below.

“We will need a knife,” said Rictus, voice soft.

G’Nor had come up behind the two, and he extended the razor sharp claws on one paw, signing with the other. Sera nodded.

“G’Nor can do it quickly, and he says his saliva has an anticoagulant—it might keep your . . . your
nanites
from stitching you up before enough of them are transferred.”

Rictus smiled and pulled back his sleeve. “I need to remember that our shaggy friend here probably knows more about field-surgery than any of us. Here,” he said, offering his wrist, “dig in.”

Taking their wrists, G’Nor looked at them both in turn.

So polite, for a purebred predator.

Rictus nodded back, and then Sera. G’Nor ran his rough tongue over their skin from palm to elbow. Then he ran a razor-sharp claw down the specter’s wet wrist, parallel to the tendons to avoid unnecessary damage. Rictus grimaced as bright blood welled out, still sparkling with the supercharged nanites.

Before they could seal the wound, G’Nor deftly cut into Sera’s wrist as well and then softly pushed their arms together. There was a jolt that caused both of them to catch their breath as the nanites tapped into Sera’s bioelectrical field. Rictus was surprised that he could
feel
this, feel the vitality draining through his arm.

Off you go, little buddies. Do your business, but please be gentle with the lady.

G’Nor sensed the transfer as well, his sensitive nose following the chemical tang as it passed from the specter to the angel. He wrinkled his snout and exhaled sharply, shaking his head. This was not natural.

Sera began breathing hard. Her back arched, and her wings extended fully behind her—particles of light flowing from her arm, to her shoulders, to her wings.

Rictus kept his eyes down, locked to their joined wrists.

“Let it pass . . .” mumbled Rictus. “The pain is only temporary. Let it . . .”

He couldn’t continue. He remembered his first resurrection. The nanites were wonderful healers, but they didn’t numb the pain. The pain served up valuable analytics, the most accurate gage of nervous system functionality.

And the little buddies can’t let you pass out—you have to stay awake the whole time. That’s how they know everything’s working.

Sera screamed. Her bones twisted inside of her, slid back into the tight spaces where irritated flesh had swollen and filled. Her own bright blood ran down her feathers, feathers that quivered as pain rifled through her wings like a hot breeze. She staggered away from Rictus and G’Nor, breaking the bond as the newly energized nanites shifted into the patterns that Enoch had set them to.

G’Nor huffed in worry, took a few tentative steps towards the trembling angel. He looked back at Rictus, who had his face in his hands.

The Alaphim convulsed and wrapped her wings around herself in one quick moment, transforming into a dome of bronze and crimson-spattered feathers. Lights flashed from within the dome, and Sera screamed again. And again.

Damn it. I remember this. The pain. I shouldn’t have let her do this. What kind of monster am I?

G’Nor growled and took another step forward, but Rictus grabbed at his mane with a thin hand.

“Stay, my friend,” he said, voice weak. “She chose this and she knew what would come of it—Enoch warned her. Let her take this choice on her own.”

G’Nor bowed his great head down to sniff at the specter, suddenly looking up in surprise.

Remember that? The smell of rot?

“Yeah, I made my choice as well.”

Sera’s screaming had stopped, and her wings had grown still. Rictus leaned on G’Nor’s sturdy shoulder and pulled himself to his feet. With a sudden whoosh, Sera’s wings spread wide, extended in a bright crescent over her head.

The angel stood triumphant. Even speckled in her own blood, she gleamed with a new power and vibrancy that echoed the lost glory of her people. The metal of her wings now wove into her flesh with a smooth, muscular curve that echoed the sweep of her feathers. Thin leaves of bronze swept from her shoulders, her brow, her wrists—the feathers that had once seemed so artificial in their juxtaposition with her human features now felt natural. They felt right. The lenses which had once snapped into place on crude joints were now part of a regal headdress which wove through Sera’s cerulean hair like an eagle’s crown.

Rictus smiled a thin smile and nudged the beast at his side.

“That’s worth the ticket price, eh?”

The Alaphim raised her head, and the crown slid down over her eyes like an elaborate eyelid. She smiled, she laughed, and with a mighty lunge she was airborne.

Rictus and G’Nor flinched as a cloud of dust and sand rolled over them. Sera rose into the air with a few powerful flaps of her gleaming wings, circled around the pair, and then dove into the pit behind them.

G’Nor helped Rictus over to the edge, but already the angel had disappeared into the darkness. A minute passed. Two. The beast signed to Rictus, who weakly shook his head.

“I don’t know. She . . . she should have found him by now. She should be—”

And then the sound of beating wings, rising from the darkness. Sera rose into the sunlight, feathers flashing in the noonday sun. She carried Enoch in her arms, and the boy had never seemed so small to Rictus. He was wet and covered in blood.

Rictus and G’Nor hurried over to Sera as she landed. She gently placed Enoch on the sand, using one wing to shade the boy.

“He’s still warm,” she said. “Still breathing.”

G’Nor sniffed Enoch, motioned urgently to his companions.

“Yes,” said Rictus. “He needs to be cleaned and bandaged, and . . .” here he lifted up Enoch’s mangled hand, “ . . . he appears to have lost a few digits.” G’Nor licked at the bleeding stumps as Rictus tore a leather strap from his own jacket and wrapped it tightly around the wound.

“That won’t be enough, though.”

The ailing specter pulled his sleeve back and leaned over Enoch. He sighed.

“Looks like I’m donor of the year . . .”

“No, Ric,” said Enoch. “I need you alive.”

Everybody gasped. Enoch opened his eyes and gave a weak smile, motioned at Sera’s resplendent new wings.

“Do . . . do you like them?”

Rictus rolled his eyes, letting out an exasperated sigh.

“Half dead and half drowned, and
now
you decide to flirt?”

Sera smiled, leaned over, and pushed a strand of wet black hair back from his forehead. “They’re perfect, Enoch. You fixed me.”

She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek.

Enoch blinked and blushed, then closed his eyes. He coughed, shaking his head. Sera tried to quiet him, put her hand to his mouth. Enoch turned his head, amber eyes staring into hers.

“No, that’s where I was wrong. I was wrong the whole time. The pattern was inside of you, Sera. Hidden in the adaptive cells on the boundary between your flesh and the metal—a place far too chaotic and
messy
for an etherwalker to see. Your people created this within themselves…and there is a lot more there that I barely caught a glimpse of.”

Enoch coughed again, and waved away her help.

“The Alaphim were not just fancy letter carriers. I finally realized that. Sera, in a world where Koatul can break through any coded message, your people became
vital
for communication amongst those who fought the Serpent. They transformed themselves into so much more than their original design, and Koatul hunted them just as hungrily as he did the Pensanden. That’s why he turned the Arkángels. He knew that you were capable of…of this.

“I don’t know why, but the design was a part of your frame, a hidden code that only you could find. You had to open it yourself. Sacrifice yourself. That was the only way to—” and here he waved at the transformed angel with a weak hand— “to set these changes free.

“You were already perfect. Already whole.”

Rictus looked at Enoch, then looked over at Sera. Finally he looked across the two of them at G’Nor.

“Can you give me a lift out of here? I’m going to be sick.”

Chapter 24

“Don’t say that it’s two against one,

The sky will shiver and the rivers will run,

Lucky for us, we’re not alone

Lucky for me, I’m not the only one.”

—Dogfish Knights, chorus for “Roam”

Sera flew again. She
flew.

She spun and whirled through the sky, opening her mouth to taste the clouds as she splashed through their thick bellies. She couldn’t remember feeling so strong before this, feeling so much in control of the wind that she caught beneath her pinions.

I can’t wait to show Lamech. To show the rest of them.
This
is what we can be. Not a faded decoration, not some useless reminder of past decadence. Not a twisted spider like the Arkángel. But
this.
A being meant to fly, meant to master the sky and shape it beneath crafty wings.

She could see the caravan below, familiar sounds muffled by the soft wind blowing down from the north.

I am not something made. Not something unfinished.

The sun warmed her wings, and she
felt
it. Her feathers spread wide under the heat, gathering energy that would sustain the new guests in her blood.

Enoch had thought of everything.

“You don’t
need
to keep the nanites going once they’ve triggered your nascent transformation,” he had said. “But I figure you might want to share some of them with your family when we’re done.”

She wasn’t quite sure what “done” meant. Enoch spoke of traveling to Tenocht and looking for more of his kind. He meant to find his home, his real home.

              Oh yeah, and to destroy any of the Vestigarchy that he finds there.

             
Against her better judgment, Sera was beginning to like this shepherd boy.

*  *  *  *

The vehicle crested the rise, and from the driver’s seat, Enoch could see where the swamp finally rose into the dryer ground that signified the borders of Garron. Overhead, he saw the golden flash of Sera’s wings as she scouted out their path. The Alaphim had spent more time in the air than on the ground since Enoch had recovered, and he had decided that the risk of detection was worth her renewed sense of freedom.

“You do realize that’s the last time she will ever let you help her, right?”

Rictus was smiling from the passenger seat, his skeletal grin just as toothy and wide as when Enoch had first met him. After G’Nor had performed an emergency vivisection on the specter to get rid of a half-formed, dying digestive tract, Rictus had been able to rally his remaining nanites to recover—at least, to help him recover back to his withered specter appearance. He promised everyone that he was fine with it. Besides, after returning to the swamp, the Lodoroi had recognized his sacrifice (and Enoch’s gift of death to the undying) by returning his sword. And his guitar. The specter was tuning it as they drove.

Mesha purred from Enoch’s shoulder, apparently having grown fond of Rictus’s music. The shadowcat had forgiven Enoch for his foray into the darkness without her and seemed to have expected this more comfortable passage north. She still snuck out at night for her gifts from the Swampmen, however.

The Lodoroi had followed them from the desert and across the swamp, astride their large reptilian steeds, their hairless swamp murs, and even on foot. Six hundred of them, armed with venomous spears, darts, and clay pots filled with a thousand poisons. Seven chieftains had come to Enoch after he drove from the desert—they came and they offered their fealty. Apparently the Vestigarchy had not left a good impression on them.

G’Nor appeared beyond the rise and signaled a clear trail ahead. He now led a scouting party of veteran Swampmen, and their ability to track and scent potential threats—combined with Sera’s view from above—had lead the small army to the lands just south of Tenocht without incident.

Enoch left the vehicle idling and stepped out of his seat to stand in the crisp wind coming down from the forested hills. Tenocht was still many days journey to the north, and he imagined that an army this size wouldn’t escape the Vestigarchy’s notice for long.

I am ready for them.

He brought his wrists together and watched as the gems on his bracelets glowed a cool blue. The bracelets had a name: the Eurym. This name was one of the first things Enoch had learned in reading through the complex code hardwired into the bracelets—a code language developed by brilliant people outside of the Pensanden sphere. The things Enoch could do with these tools . . .

A holographic sphere formed in his cupped hands, only now Enoch had learned what the sphere was—and what it meant.

It was a map of the world, a map as seen by the satellites that still orbited the planet. Their vision was now his vision, and he could see the forces arrayed around Tenocht—as well as those resisting them from behind the walls.

Then he took the disc from his neck—the disc that Rictus had salvaged for him—and held it in his cupped hands. Light spun from the Eurym, dancing across the disk. They were reading the information left there, he knew. Using the code stored there to open a channel.

The hologram flickered, and for a moment the globe became something else. It was a face, a face made of stars. The endless eyes found his and then smiled before the image began to break apart.

“Enoch.”

It was Ketzel. Enoch had found a channel to Her, to the sky goddess, but the link was not strong enough to hold for more than a few seconds. He would find a clearer connection in Tenocht, he knew. He knew it without knowing how.

And then he would seal earth and sky.

Enoch spread his hands, and the hologram disappeared. He climbed back into the vehicle and drove forward, towards Tenocht. Under the sound of the engine and the brush crunching beneath the wheels, the melody of Rictus’s guitar was sharp and bright.