Shadow Hunters (26 page)

Jake stepped forward, both fiercely curious and deeply worried.
I’m not going to
like what I’m going to see, am I?

I … do not believe you will.

Rosemary was already stepping forward cautiously. Jake and the protoss folowed.

Jake’s gaze was fixed on the nearest container. Curiosity burned in him, of course.

How could it not? But he was also wel aware that anything that so unsettled Zamara was something he needed to have a healthy caution about so he—

Jake cried out, as did the protoss around them. Rosemary whirled, her weapon at the ready. “What is it?”

Jake had falen to his knees and for an instant thought he would pass out at the sickening psionic buffeting he was receiving. Zamara quickly erected a barrier and he started breathing again. He looked up at the other protoss—they’d felt it too.

“The containers,” Ladranix said. “It emanates from them.”

Al the protoss were shaken by what they had felt, but they were in control again.

Jake took a deep breath. He did not want to go anywhere near those tanks.

“What do you think’s in them?” asked Rosemary.

“I don’t know and I sure don’t want to find out,” Jake said in voice that shook.

“Agreed,” said Ladranix. Jake glanced at Alzadar. The former templar was highly distressed. Jake sent him a private, focused thought.

Those tanks weren’t in here before, and whatever’s in them is certainly not
wholesome. You sense it too.

A single word, laced with pain and confusion and stubborn refusal to believe:
Xava’tor … ?

“Let’s get what we came for and get out of here,” Rosemary said. “Those tanks even give me the creeps.”

“That … might not be as easy as we’d like,” Jake said. He pointed wordlessly. The giant crystal they had come in search of was hovering directly over one of the vats.

Rosemary swore. Jake silently echoed her sentiment. “Does the crystal have anything to do with the, uh … whatever’s in the tanks?” she asked.

“Zamara doesn’t know,” Jake replied.

“So if we touch the crystal, or the vats, we could be tripping some kind of alarm.

Hel, we could even be waking up whatever’s in there.”

Jake paled at the thought. He looked from the vat to the crystal and then to Rosemary, and shrugged helplessly. “Entirely possible. But what are we supposed to do? Zamara needs a piece of the crystal. We’ve come this far, we can’t leave without it.”

Rosemary nodded, resigned. “Wel, we’l just have to be ready for anything then.

Ladranix, you stil think you can reach it?”

Jake realized that none of them had budged. It took almost a conscious effort to put one foot in front of the other until they were standing below the crystal—right beside one of the tanks. Jake edged closer to the open container and looked down. The blackness of the sludgy liquid was impenetrable. Faint wisps of chemicaly created smoke floated lazily off the surface, and he coughed.

The water rippled. Jake jumped back about a foot, staring, his heart racing.

Something brushed against the side of the tank, something soft and sinuous and unspeakably
wrong.
The barrier Zamara had erected protected him from any psionic disturbance, but he didn’t need that to be sickened and scared to death by the partialy glimpsed
thing.

He was not alone; everyone had taken a step back. For a moment there was silence.

Then Ladranix spoke, a trained warrior, no trace of fear or worry in his thoughts.

“I can reach the crystal, although it is more chalenging with the open container below me. There is no margin for error. I must leap cleanly and not fal.”

“And hope you don’t wake up everything in the place,” Rosemary added. She, too, spoke calmly, though Jake knew she was as rattled as the rest of them. “Good luck.”

Ladranix nodded. With a final squeeze to Alzadar’s shoulder, he stepped forward and analyzed the task in front of him. He crouched for a moment, settling himself, and again Jake was reminded of the lethality of Ladranix’s ancestors as they ran through the jungles of ancient Aiur. Ladranix sprung higher than Jake anticipated, easily reaching the hovering crystal and clinging as expertly as Little Hands the primate might.

The surface of the tank did not move.

The moment Ladranix’s fingers touched the smooth surface, Jake felt his reaction.

They al did. Ladranix’s joy poured over them like warm honey, filed with a sense of connection, of unity, and Jake gasped with it. A heartbeat later, Zamara had erected a barrier.

You are not protoss, although in spirit you are our kin, Jacob,
she said sadly.

This place—you cannot come here. Your mind cannot handle it. It would kill
you.

Jake realized that he had been close—perilously, gloriously close—to entering the Khala. The crystal had facilitated the mental journey to a degree that even Ladranix had never experienced, and Jake was fiercely envious of the protoss. He would never know such union; the closest he would ever come was that moment, seemingly so long ago now, when he had brought the human minds together for that one brief moment.

“Looks like our luck is holding,” Rosemary said, providing a much-needed distraction. Al she had seen, had felt, was Ladranix’s successful leap to the crystal. “I guess the xel’naga never expected anyone would get here who wasn’t supposed to be here. So there was no need to protect the crystal. And it looks like it has nothing to do with the creature. We caught a break.”

Jake got control of himself with an effort. “Yeah,” he said.

Ladranix had recovered from his surprise and now moved quickly down the length of the radiant stone toward the smal cluster of smaler crystals at its base.

“This may be difficult,” he said. “Jacob—I can sever a smal crystal easily enough, but I wil need the usage of at least one hand to hold on to the main crystal. You wil have to catch it and make sure it does not fal into the vat.”

Jake’s stomach clenched.
I will catch the crystal, Jacob. Do not fear.

“Okay,” Jake said. “I’l try to be better at catching than I was as a kid.” He stepped closer to the vat, although every instinct urged him to put as much distance between it and himself as possible.

“Careful,” Rosemary warned. “Don’t touch the sides at al.”

He froze and realized he was only a few centimeters away from the side of the container. The sickly mist floated upward. The surface of the liquid was flat now, and he tried not to think about the thing that lurked beneath it. He swalowed hard.

“Right,” he managed. He stepped back and let Zamara, with her milennia of knowledge on how to move with grace and assuredness, have control of his body.

“You may proceed, Ladranix,” Zamara said. “We are ready.”

Ladranix nodded, shifting his position for the best possible grip, taking his time. Jake felt him readying himself. The protoss held on with one hand and both legs, extended an arm, and closed his eyes. The golden armor around his wrist glowed softly, and suddenly the bright psi-blade flashed into existence. Ladranix bent and brought his arm down in a sure stroke. The glowing blade of focused mental energy sliced through a smal shard at the base of the crystal like a knife through cheese. The severed crystal dropped, turning slowly end over end through the air, faling toward the vat.

Without his realizing it, Zamara extended Jake’s arm, moving as smoothly and as easily as the protoss had, and caught the crystal in his outstretched palm.

Most immediate was the sensation of the crystal in his hand. The feelings that washed through him were startling. Shivers chased each other down his spine. Warmth flowed over him, soft as water, strong as stone. At first it was pleasant, but then the sensation grew more and more intense and Jake puled out his shirttail to hold the crystal. He glanced at Ladranix, who had dropped down in near-silence beside him.

This is … extremely powerful,
Zamara said, and Jake realized that she stil had her shield up. The crystal had managed to penetrate it to a degree.
I hope it will be
sufficient. Come, Jacob. Now we must retreat.

“Is that gonna work?” Rosemary asked.

“She hopes so,” Jake replied, tearing off a piece of his shirt and wrapping the crystal in it. He started to place the shard in one of the many pockets of his jacket, but something was already there. He took it out and stared at one of the fossilized shels from Nemaka. He’d put it in there that fateful night when he’d figured out the code, the universal ratio, that had led him to Zamara and this moment.

Jacob …

Jake shook his head and replaced the fossil. Hel, he might want it someday, if he made it through this alive. It would be a great souvenir. Sticking the shard in another pocket, he said, “Okay, time to get out of here.”

He almost couldn’t believe how lucky they had been. Those things in the vats—he shuddered, not wanting to think about them anymore. But he couldn’t help it. He hadn’t seen much, but even as it horrified him he found he was curious. What were they? And were they, as he suspected, Ulrezaj’s doing?

He turned with the others and hurried back the way they had come. But as they passed through the first chamber they had entered, he slowed and stopped.

“Jake, what is it?” Rosemary asked, alert.

What was it indeed? There was something about this room … he looked around, comparing what he saw before him to what Temlaa had seen when he entered.

“There’s something wrong,” Jake said slowly. And then he knew. “The platforms.

When Temlaa and Savassan were here, the platform was extended. It’s not now.

Someone’s retracted it since then.”

Jake looked at Alzadar, who stil looked very uncomfortable. “I know how to open the alcoves.”

Rosemary frowned slightly. “We just got very lucky back there, Jake. I don’t like the idea of wasting time and taking chances opening cupboards around here.”

Jake ignored her; ignored Zamara, who was echoing the human woman’s words. His thoughts were for Alzadar.

You know what Temlaa saw,
he said to Alzadar, his words for the templar alone.

Those ancient bodies could still be there. Or there could be nothing there.

Alzadar’s worry, fear, and guilt washed over Jake.
I know what you suspect … and
I do as well. Do it. I must know. What was in the tanks could have a reasonable
explanation, but …

I think—I know what we’re going to see there.

Gods help me, so do I.

“Jake? You listening? I said I don’t think opening those things is a good idea.”

“Me neither. But I think I have to.”

Jake moved to the console. He looked at the rectangle of smal, glowing gems, and as Temlaa had done before him, tapped out the ara’dor. The soft, sweet humming issued forth, and the crystals pulsed as each was touched in turn. When he touched the last one in the pattern, the gems al lit up, then their radiance faded.

Jake turned to the wal. Everyone mimicked him, watching intently. A glowing line appeared on the wal and moved slowly to form a rectangle of the same perfect proportions as the giant one that hid the chambers from careless eyes. Jake’s heart was racing. The platform’s probably empty, he told himself.

It was not.

But what he saw, despite its gruesomeness, filed him with relief. Six ancient bodies lay there. They looked exactly like the ones Temlaa had found. Jake exhaled and opened his mouth to say something when Alzadar’s mental cry pierced him to the bone.”

“Rukashal! Tervoris … Azramith … !”

The bodies weren’t ancient after al. They were protoss that Alzadar and the others had known.

“The Xava’kai …” breathed Rosemary. “Guess this is what Ulrezaj was doing with his loyal folowers when he took them away.”

Alzadar rushed forward to the desiccated corpse of what had once been a friend, as if it wasn’t already too late and somehow he could be rescued. Quick as a thought, Ladranix raced after him. He seized his felow templar and shoved him away from the platform.

“Let me help him!” Alzadar cried. He struggled in Ladranix’s grasp and to Jake’s shock twisted free. Maddened with grief and outrage, his hand closed on one of the bodies.

An eerie, otherworldly wailing shattered Jake’s ears. Alzadar had rung the dinner bel.

“Damn it!” Rosemary yelped, shooting the protoss an angry glance. “Let’s get out of here!”

Ladranix bodily lifted Alzadar. Alzadar shook his head, recovering himself, and with one heartbroken glance back at the corpses of his murdered friends, rushed to flee with the others. As they raced toward safety, not too far now, Alzadar cried, “They are coming! The Xava’kai—they are coming. Do not shoot them, I beg you!”

No chance, then. Jake could hear them now, running swiftly and almost, but not quite, silently down the corridors. He expected Rosemary to ignore Alzadar’s plea.

To his surprise, she scowled, and while she did not drop her weapon, neither did she fire. Ladranix and the other Shel’na Kryhas closed in around the two humans, forming a protective ring with their bodies.

The whispering sound of running protoss increased, and suddenly there they were, moving with shocking speed, their lambent eyes fixed fiercely on Jake. Seconds later they were surrounded. There were many of them, true, but not nearly as many as Jake had expected. The thought chiled him as he realized that although the Forged had once had far greater numbers than Those Who Endure, the very being they caled the Benefactor had been slowly, stealthily decreasing their numbers, faster even than the zerg would have.