Shadow Over Avalon (22 page)

“Make . . . peace for . . . Grimes,” Shadow managed to reply. She failed to see the point of lying to this man when her intentions matched general orders. She could not find the words anyway.

“Fine. Peace for a change. There’s a lean-to at the western perimeter for Outcast mounts. The beast will receive attention, and here are twenty tokens.” The soldier passed across a heap of metal discs. “These can be exchanged for goods in the fair or given up to watch performances. Mingle and collect any information you can. Report any arguments to me. There’s a room near guest quarters on the second level assigned for Brethren, and enough of your kind around to show you the way. Dismissed.”

Shadow collected the discs and remounted. Not what she expected, mingling with the fort-dwellers to keep the peace. She calculated a minimum of two days in High, which might prove useful, since she could see the place without the restrictions of one truly banded.

A smooth-cheeked boy took her mount at the shelter. She made sure the animal had proper attention before heading back to a booth where she had glimpsed a man breathing fire. He was just starting his act as she edged into the back of the crowd and dropped a disc into a passing plate like the other watchers.

Hard hands grasped both her arms from either side to immobilize her. A dark brother stood to the right and left of her, both looking intent on the fire eater. The elder of Outcasts leaned over to her, narrowing slanted eyes set in dark skin.

“Come,” he murmured.

“Working,” Shadow said. She attempted to walk away, but now they held her arms with pressure against each elbow joint and an upward thrust against shoulder sockets. A small circle of revelers opened up around them, eager to enjoy a free spectacle.

“Move,” the brother said.

Since she couldn’t fight without betraying her hidden strength, Shadow had no choice. The Brethren marched her into the depths of High Fort, down to the second level, and along a corridor to a door fourth from the left. There were rows of stacked beds against the two longer walls, also a washstand and a piss pot at the far end that gave off a sharp aroma. A lone occupant stirred at the sounds of entry. One leg swung over the edge of a lower cot to show a fine-tooled boot cracked with age; a second followed. The riding pants were dirty and patched, also once quality wear. The hair on the back of her neck rose.

“A sister,” the older man said.

Both long legs touched ground. A shock of dark auburn hair came into view as the man flowed to his feet with lethal grace. Light violet eyes swept appraisingly over Shadow, and then he made strange movements with his hands.

“Grimes,” the older brown-skinned brother said. “Just in.”

Again his hands moved, fingers flickering. The redhead raised one eyebrow, waiting.

“No, he’s eating.” The darker man responded to the weird gestures.

Shadow was propelled to the vacated bed, flung down to have her hands and feet tied to the bedposts by experts. Her two captors departed to leave her alone with the one man for whom she had accurate memories from the time before, this fey brother.

Dumping his kit between her feet, he rummaged to extract a bone needle and an earring with a polished stone laced in bands of blue, white and a hint of yellow. It had three insertion circles of silver attached to a bar designed to keep the structure rigid. If the situation had not been tense, Shadow might have laughed at the effort to keep her still for the gift of a bauble.

As if sensing her questions, the man pushed back his own greasy locks to display an identical earring. The two smaller hoops fitted through gristle while the lower one attached to the fleshy lobe. Was this the sole motive for her capture? Perhaps physical contact would give her an edge to break through that barrier she had found with other Brethren on the trail.

The needle made an unpleasant scrunching sound as it parted cartilage. She distanced herself from the pain, trying to seep into his closed mind, only to rebound off a barrier more solid than before. All she got was a sense of cynical amusement from the man as he finished.

“My name is Copper. Watch my hands as I make the sign for ‘Copper’,” he said and did so. “Every one of us is cursed with perfect memory from the moment of re-banding, so don’t pretend you forgot.”

Shadow registered the gesture, amazed at his easy speech.

“This is the sign for bed,” he continued, “And this is kiss.” His greasy hair touched her cheeks while his firm lips slid over her tightly sealed ones. He broke off, frowning at her resistance.

“Among Outcasts, I am king over all . . . Shades, you remember me from before your sentence, don’t you?”

“Aye, and your warning.” He said she would be joining them, but she thought at the time he meant they were both going to die. A wave of shock passed through her at how easy it was to speak.

“Yes, that’s the new bauble freeing your voice,” he continued, anticipating her next question. “I came that day to spare you this life, but fate dealt a hand against me. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Shadow had a vivid image of that meeting. A glorious sense of being alive, of riding free, until his warning marred her day. His suggestion seemed absurd.

“An Outcast taking a Colored Band away from home? Not possible.”

“We’ve done it before and since. Say the name you’ve taken.”

“Shadow.” What did he want of her?

Copper made a gesture with his hands. “This is your name,” he said. “I shall not speak it again outside of Haven.”

“Haven?”

“Our base. We’re heading out at dawn.”

“I’m working. I can’t leave until I’ve made peace between Grimes’ heir and the Dragon Duke. There was an unintended insult.”

“The hells you will! Dragon is close guarded. He won’t fight any duels with two brothers accompanying him. I’ll see he gets the message.” Copper ran one finger down her cheek, following the curves. Shadow turned away.

“So you don’t like being touched—not altogether unexpected. You’re Brethren now, subject to me, my lovely. No one dares to interfere with Brethren concerns, so you’ll ride out with me, willing or not, in the morning.”

“I can take care of myself. I stand and fight alone.”

“My subject, my woman, part of my army. If I have to break you to my will, I shall. None of us can survive without each other, learn that now. At Haven, you will function in Brethren mold.”

“What if I refuse?”

“That Black Band makes you mine. Where have you been that Brethren wishes clash with your own? Where did you learn to rape a mind like Harvesters can?” He leaned close. “Our earrings protect us from mind intrusion, but we can all sense another trying to probe.”

The door crashed open. Two brothers gestured at Copper. He leapt to his feet, also gesturing, and then dashed after them.

Shadow considered her options as the door slammed shut. If she submitted to Copper’s authority, she might learn how an earring released her tongue. On the other hand, there was Ector. If she missed the meeting, she was alone. Nestines needed stopping. This was not a question of loyalty, but of need. Shadow tensed her right arm to snap the bonds, experiencing a sensation of pain, if not the same as from living flesh. The other restraints came apart with ease now her special limb was freed. She flicked up a false thumbnail for a tiny capsule of plas-skin sealant. She couldn’t let humans see inexplicable masses of metal in a seemingly real limb.

Where to go now? The brothers had picked her up within moments of entering High Fort, which made for bad odds to risk going through the compound unless they thought she already evaded them. Not out but down; they would not expect a static escape, and she had a pack of stim-tabs under the plas-skin of her forearm. Shadow risked a probe into the corridor, it was empty.

No one looked at Brethren; no one noticed a dark sister in progress. Shadow passed the fifth level down with growing confidence. At the sixth landing, three men lurched out from the stairwell. A deep voice cursing bad wine sent a vivid flashback coursing through her. The shock sent her reeling to knock against a torch bracket, a noise that made one man turn, the dark-skinned brother. Shadow fled.

“Dragon, no!” a voice yelled from above. There was the sound of a fist on flesh, then two sets of feet pounding after her.

Shadow panicked, her feet barely touching the stone steps. The tunnel forked at the bottom level. Voices came from one side, the other silent, probably a priest place. She ran toward the sounds, past laundry, past kitchens, away from the thud of pursuit. A dead-end, an underground river flowing under the depths of High Fort – Shadow dived into the water to the sound of two male voices yelling, “No!”

Icy water flowed over her head. A swift undertow grabbed at her body. Shadow didn’t care that men wanted her out; she was too concerned with staying alive. Nothing else mattered in this black world except avoiding hard rocks in a turbulent current. A light, an impossible light ahead, rushed forward. She slammed into a metal grill with enough impact to deflate the lungs of any normal Terran.

Handholds on the grid helped as the flow went left to what could only be a Harvester domain from Ector’s suggestions, where lights shone as intense as any in Avalon, an incredible find if she lived through the experience. The barrier was a net designed to catch and drown any hapless Terran. Not perfect, as eons of water pounding against rock had worn away an undercut. Shadow squeezed through, retaining her grip on the grid to reach the cave walls once more. Latching struts gave her handholds against the raging torrent, enough to grasp for a glimpse into the unknown.

A vast, domed chamber opened up, lit from above by an array of circular devices. A slick metal sky ship rested in the center like an upended plate. Shadow recognized it from data downloaded from the Archive. A drove of Terrans with vacant expressions shambled to the craft, all of them bearing canisters; male and female, all naked, all mindless, and all directed by a Nestine.

Her stomach knotted at the sight of her enemy. She studied and noted the humanoid shape covered with a thick pelt of fur everywhere except the head and hands. It was naked, although she could not see evidence of sexual organs. The face resembled that other remembered image in its ugliness. It seemed unfinished without a nose, while feral because of the jutting jaws with four pointed tusks. The eyes could have looked at home on the face of a saurian, along with a floppy crest of pink skin on top of its head. Disgusted, she glanced again at the Terrans, noticing that they were dirty, unkempt and uncaring. One by one, they disappeared into the interior of that ship with their burdens. Shadow counted forty Terran slaves before she tore her eyes away.

The Archive needed data. Shadow clung to her handhold while she viewed every aspect of this place. It did not matter that the structures she registered were incomprehensible. The Archive could sort this information. She scanned every detail before she let go. Once again, the rushing torrent claimed her.

A lifetime later she crawled up a deep-cut riverbank into starlight, bruised and hurting, tired beyond aching. She rolled up her right sleeve and bit plas-skin for access to stim-tabs. A flow of pure energy coursed through every cell while she closed up the jagged edges.

Rivers flowed to the southern sea on this side of the ridge of hills. This river would carry her to Ector. During part of the morning Shadow walked through shallows, but the river gained depth and width as afternoon deepened. She came to the estuary by early evening of the third day, wading out onto a sandy beach trembling with exhaustion.

Ector would be out there, waiting under the waves. Shadow took off her earring to send the full force of her mind into the deeps.
Contact.
The effort felled her to her knees. Soon, very soon, he was coming.

A splashing sound roused Shadow. Ector waded to shore.

“Stop or she dies!” a voice shouted from behind – Copper!

“Shadow?” Ector lowered his head in a questing mode.

“Brethren. They have a—”

“Silence!” Copper roared. An arrow thudded into wet sand between Shadow and Ector. “Keep quite still. There are ten more shafts trained on target.”

Ector’s expression was her only warning. The air behind Shadow stirred, a hand yanked her hair and a knife touched her throat as she was forced back to sit on her heels.

“No mind tricks. Tell your fish-friend in words,” Copper said.

Careful with her movements, Shadow reattached her earring one-handed. “He can feel a mind probe,” she said. “I don’t know if—” The knife bit against her throat in warning. “How did you know I’d survive? How did you track me here?”

“Nice try, Shadow.” He relaxed his grip on her hair to haul her to her feet by the collar of her tunic. “How is unimportant. Why is all that matters. You are just a little too lethal, and that’s an edge you didn’t learn from us, which leaves one other band of warriors. We’ve watched them, and doubtless they’ve spied on us. We don’t mess with groups any more, since they infect us with a serious dose of dead. This fish-man looks like he is alone, which raises some interesting possibilities I’ve wanted to pursue for the longest time.”

She kicked back at his shin, hoping to get him off balance enough to fall. The man gasped once, and then forced her into a straddle position with his feet braced on the inside of hers and his hand back in her hair. His knife bit against her neck in warning. She read defeat in Ector’s eyes, and defiance. They had one last move to be played out in this game.