Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (51 page)

The Nnyth turned its triangular head one way and then the other, peering into the Blue Phoenix. Colors swirled across the compound eyes, reminding Logan at once of an Ixthian. But while Xia's eyes changed color, they only ever showed a single hue. The eyes staring at them now were a swirling mosaic of a bright, sunny yellow, blue and orange and a deep violet so dark that it was nearly black but for the nearly ultraviolet glow.

But below those eyes were the mandibles; blade-like black hooks longer than Logan's arm and barbed all along the inner curve with razor-sharp spines that could tear fibersteel apart like paper. The Nnyth's mandibles worked open and shut as it studied the Blue Phoenix. Finally, the colorful eyes fixed on Maeve. She gripped the back of Logan's chair so tight that he could hear the plastihide creaking. The huge wasp lowered its head and slowly unfurled long, translucent wings. It spread them wide and then swept them back… Just like the Arcadians did to their queen. The Nnyth was bowing.

Both Duaal and Logan looked back at Maeve. Her gray eyes were wide and she inclined her head in reply. There was no room to move her wings, but the Nnyth seemed to understand. It raised its wings and caught some stellar wind, soaring out ahead of the Blue Phoenix and then turned back to stare at the ship again.

"I think we are supposed to follow," Maeve said.

Duaal let out an explosive breath. "The worst part is," he said to no one in particular, "that this isn't even the weirdest thing that's happened to me in the last year."

But the Hyzaari captain flew the Blue Phoenix after the Nnyth. It led them over the Tower's sharp, shattered end and along the crescent's inside surface. Logan saw many more of the five-sided tunnels, but most were blocked by rubble, shattered pieces of the Tower's chewed stone collected and collapsed by the hive's own gravity. Vast cracks ran down the length of the sundered ring's curve, some so wide that a much larger ship than the Blue Phoenix could have landed easily inside. Deep within, pale blue light flickered fitfully. Not with the steady heartbeat throb of the Pylos Waygate, Logan thought, but lights on the verge of burning out. Something was terribly wrong…

There were more Nnyth. The striped star wasps crouched on the flat facets of the Tower's surface, wings shining in the starlight. There were hundreds of them, but still fewer than Logan had expected. Shouldn't there have been thousands, tens of thousands of Nnyth? Where were the rest?

Their guide – the only Nnyth in the debris-crowded sky – led them to one of the openings in the Tower's side. It had been huge to begin with, a hundred yards wide or larger, but now a jagged crack tore it wide and the stone yawed open like a monstrous mouth. The Nnyth vanished inside. Duaal looked to Maeve.

"This
could
be a trap," he said. "Xartasia and her whole army of fairies and Devourers could be in there, just waiting to tear us apart."

"I know," Maeve answered. She put her hand on Logan's shoulder. He pressed his glass one over it. She drew a deep breath. "We have come all this way to find Xartasia. If this is her trap, let us spring it."

"That sounds brave and all, Maeve," said Duaal, "but we don't have a single weapon on this ship. If Xartasia is here, then what?"

"Then be ready to run."

Duaal gave her a lopsided smile. "Same as usual. Got it. Logan, keep an eye on the proximeters. I don't want to run into anything down there."

"I will," Logan said.

The dark-skinned captain nodded and turned on the Blue Phoenix's internal com. "Attention, everyone. The Nnyth seem to be inviting us into the Tower and Queen Maeve has kindly accepted. Keep your eyes open and your weapons close. We have no idea what's waiting for us in there."

He released the com button and pressed the control yoke gently forward. The Blue Phoenix glided down into the Tower.

"A queen armed with truth needs no spear."

– Titania Cavainna (234 PA)

The Blue Phoenix descended into the darkness. Maeve could make no sense of the numbers and vectors that Logan read off to Duaal, but the young mage nodded at each one and made tiny corrections to their course. The Blue Phoenix's lights played off the tunnel's flat side and the ragged edges of cracked and torn stone. A few Nnyth crawled and flew along the passage's sides. Unable to help in the Blue Phoenix's navigation, Maeve studied the wasps instead. Like their guide, most seemed to be injured. Their wings were torn and limbs were missing. Several had lost eyes or antennae. All of the Nnyth watched the ship pass with huge multicolored eyes.

The tunnel ended abruptly and Maeve's stomach lurched sickeningly. The Blue Phoenix was in a vast chamber, one so large that even the bright dorsal spotlights could not reach the side… Ceiling, in truth. There was gravity inside the huge cavern. Not strong, but enough to tug against the artificial network inside the Blue Phoenix. Duaal rotated the ship to align with the local gravity. Maeve pressed her hand to her mouth and stared around. The Nnyth they followed had landed on the only thing that Maeve could see – a pentagonal pillar of stone that rose from the deep darkness far below.

"Can we land on that?" she asked, pointing.

Duaal consulted with Logan. "I think so. It looks just big enough for the Blue Phoenix. Is there anything else out there?"

Logan scanned the sensor readouts. "More Nnyth. About two hundred. But that's all I can see."

"Two hundred is more than enough to kill us if we set foot out there," said Duaal.

"Two hundred is more than enough to kill us inside the Phoenix, too," Maeve pointed out. "Is there atmosphere?"

"Some. It's pretty thin, but there's enough oxygen for us to breathe. Xia might have her own opinion, though."

Maeve wiped damp hands on the thighs of her pants. "Let us discover what the Nnyth want, then."

Logan followed her from the cockpit as Duaal set the Blue Phoenix down on the black stone pillar. Anthem, Gripper and Xia waited in the mess. They all stood.

"What's going on?" Gripper asked. "Are we inside the Tower?"

Maeve nodded. "There is no sign of Xartasia, but that may mean nothing. The Nnyth seem to want something of us. They have brought us to a place to land. We will go to meet them. But be careful – there is little gravity or air outside."

"I'll get the emergency canisters," said Xia.

"We'll meet you down in the hold," Logan told her.

Anthem was wearing his glass armor and held his spear at his side. He fell into step behind Maeve and Logan as they made their way down into the Blue Phoenix's hold. It was not hot or even particularly warm on the ship, but there were beads of sweat along the knight's hairline. Maeve had not spoken with Anthem since she and Logan had exchanged their oathsongs. Teasing but genuinely pleased comments and smiles from Gripper and Duaal led Maeve to believe that the entire ship had overheard the aftermath, if not the songs themselves. Maeve blushed.

They reached the cargo bay just as the Blue Phoenix jolted gently underfoot. Duaal had landed. He jogged down into the hold a moment later, coattails flapping, followed swiftly by Xia. She held six small yellow canisters and handed them out. "There's about an hour of extra air in each of these," she told them.

"Thanks, Xia," Duaal said, taking one. "But if Xartasia's got something sneaky up her sleeve here, I think air will be the least of our worries."

"Better not to have to worry about it at all," Xia said.

Maeve tucked the extra air into a pocket of her pants and went to the airlock controls. She was no expert in coreworld technology, but the door was simple enough. Her hands hovered over the red-lit button. Maeve looked at her friends. "None of you need go with me," she told them. "This journey was my decision and is my responsibility."

"You're not going alone," Logan told her.

Maeve smiled. She did not expect her enarri to let her face the Nnyth on her own. But she waited for the rest. Anthem stepped wordlessly toward the airlock. Duaal held out gloved hands in a helpless gesture.

"I promised you my ship," he said. "Until this is done, we're all yours."

Xia and Gripper nodded. Maeve pressed the airlock button. The inner doors slid open and they stepped through. Duaal pressed the next large, glowing rectangular button and the doors closed again. There was a hiss and then the outer door slid to the side. Thin, damp air filled the airlock and Maeve felt dizzy. Gripper had to lean against the side of the airlock until he adjusted. And then, one by one, they stepped out into the Tower.

Duaal was right. The stone column was just barely large enough for the Blue Phoenix to land atop. At the back of the ship, they stood only a few yards from a deadly plunging drop into utter blackness. Lights studded the Phoenix, but none of them did much to illuminate the darkness.

Maeve took a step, spread her wings and leapt easily into the air. Duaal shouted for her not to go far and then broke into a fit of coughing. The air was thin, but the Tower's gravity was even weaker and Maeve beat her wings slowly, hovering above the Blue Phoenix. She searched the inky shadows for the Nnyth who had brought them, but there was no sign of the great wasp.

"Now what?" Duaal asked when he had recovered his breath.

"Now we speak," answered a hundred voices in perfect Aver. Each voice was a fluttering, rasping whisper. But together, they made Maeve want to clap her hands over her ears.

A pale blue glow rose from far, far below and filled the chamber. It was not as large as Maeve had supposed. The ceiling was far above, yes, but the walls were much closer than she originally guessed. It was not so much a chamber as a vast shaft.

And it was full of Nnyth. Two hundred wasps clung to the vertical walls, overlapping one another until the whole thing was a cathedral of long diaphanous wings and graceful striped bodies, studded all over by the whirling rainbows of Nnyth eyes. Antennae waved like grass before a wind.

"What happened to the Tower?" Maeve asked, gasping to catch breath enough for the question.

"Titania came," echoed the whispering, shouting answer. It was all the living Nnyth, Maeve realized, speaking in perfect unison. Each single voice was soft, but together, they were a storm.

"Is she here still?" asked Anthem. His question was raw, desperate.

"Titania came," the Nnyth said again. "She came with the First, the eldest of the galaxy. They call themselves Glorious. You call them the Devourers. The first life ever known in these worlds, the firstborn who left the galaxy behind."

"How do you know so much about the Devourers?" Duaal asked, surprised. "We've been trying our best, but all we have are guesses."

"Our individual lifespans are not as long as those of the aerads," said the Nnyth together. "But the memory of the Tower is ancient. Together, we
remember
."

"A hive mind," Xia breathed. Her short antennae twitched.

"As you and your kind have long since forgotten, cousin. The Ixthian passion for life, for the perfection of their families and worlds is no mystery to us. You were once a part of the Tower. You knew the thoughts and needs of one as those of all. The health of one was the health of all."

Maeve beat her wings slowly. It did not take much to remain aloft in the Tower's low gravity, even in the thin air. "Xartasia," she said. "Can you tell us why she was here? Were there Arcadians with her, too?"

"Yes," the Nnyth answered. "Xartasia and the First came with ships full of aerads."

"What did she want?"

There was a rattling, hissing noise that echoed through the Tower. "At the heart of the Tower is a Waygate. The largest of the Waygates, built by the First to carry their ships out of this galaxy in search of food. Only the greatest Waygates would serve her purpose and Princess Titania demanded its use."

"Did you let her?"

There was another great hiss like the wind rasping through grass. "No."

Maeve waited and then asked, "What did she want with it? There are a hundred Waygates across the White Kingdom. What need did she have for yours?"

"Was it a matter of size?" Logan asked, raising his voice to the Nnyth. "We interrupted her work on Pylos. Did she summon more Devourers? With a Waygate this size, she could have summoned entire ships. A fleet of Devourers."

Maeve's blood ran cold as ice. If that was true, there was nothing they could do. With an army of Devourers behind her, Xartasia would take the entire galaxy. Even if the Alliance rose up against her now, it would be far too late. "Is that what happened? Xartasia summoned the Devourers and then destroyed the Tower?"

"No," whispered the Nnyth. "Xartasia did not break the Tower. We did. We would not let Titania take the Waygate."

"You did this?" Duaal said loudly. "We could barely get samples from the Pylos Waygate! It sat through a million years of quakes in the mountains. How did you crack yours in half?"

Hundreds of multicolored eyes fixed on the young Hyzaari man. "Power is as creative or destructive as its wielder. What burns in the heart of stars is within us all to summon forth. You know this, Duaal Sinnay. You have felt it."

"How do you know my name?" Duaal shouted. "How do you know about any of us? Hells, how do you speak such good Aver?"