Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (30 page)

There was a sound, not unlike the crinkling of Maeve's blanket, but she had not moved. Maeve held her breath and listened. She heard the moan of the wind and the slow, low grumble of snow settling on stone. A few distant, muffled bird cries and even further off, the creaking of the trees dancing in the storm.

It was probably just one of the tents shifting, noise carried on the erratic wind… No. Maeve heard it again, closer this time. Behind her. She jumped to her feet and grabbed the handle of the spotlight, swinging it in a wide, searching circle. Those were footsteps, and from more than one pair of feet.

Something moved in the darkness, a blurry silhouette in the blizzard. Maeve cupped a hand to her mouth and called out, but the shadows did not answer. She reached for Xia's gun, but it was slippery and hard to hold in her gloved fingers.

"Who is there?" she shouted again.

No answer. Maeve finally managed to grab the laser and stood her ground in front of the spotlight. Her stark shadow stretched out across the rocks and ice. She could just make out more shapes. Four of them. They stopped just at the edges of the light.

"You will find nothing worth stealing here," she warned. "Return to Pylos."

The shadows moved again. Maeve spun, but she was blind in the glowing snow. She went for her pocket again, searching for her com, but it was gone. Had she dropped it somewhere? Left it in the latrine? Maeve opened her mouth to scream down the mountain to Tiberius, but a man appeared out of the billowing white and kicked Maeve hard in the stomach. The air whooshed from her lungs and she doubled over, choking and coughing.

Her wings and one arm were tangled in the blanket. Maeve could not bring the gun up fast enough. She yanked on the trigger, but managed only to burn a steaming hole in a growing snowbank. Maeve aimed at the next shadow, but one of them was behind her and leapt at the fairy. She staggered as they hit her. Maeve managed to keep her feet, but the gun fell from her cold hand and vanished into the stormy night.

The nearest attacker grabbed her by the shoulders. She slid out of the reflective blanket and dove after the gun. The man – she could see now that it was a man, a bright-eyed Mirran – grabbed at her again. Even in the harsh, blinding light, Maeve could see that he was dressed from head to toe in bright, bloody red.

An Emberguard? Here?

Maeve pushed against him with her wings, and then lashed out with a kick in the other direction. Her foot connected solidly with the lamp. It wobbled and then fell into the snow, plunging the crag into frozen darkness. Maeve leapt into the air. She was unarmed and outnumbered, but would not be so for long, if only she could alert the base camp.

A hand closed around her ankle and tugged Maeve back down to the ground. She lashed out with her other foot as she fell. It hit hard against a tall Hadrian in a long Prian coat with seams splitting over his bulk. He stumbled back, releasing Maeve. She drove him back with a jab up under his ribs, a blow learned painfully from Logan Coldhand. It worked as well against the Hadrian as it had against Maeve. He fell back, tripping over the spotlight toppled in the snow.

Maeve spread her wings once more and shouted. The wind whipped her hair into her face and snatched her cry off into the empty mountains. Two more figures – a yellow-furred Lyran and a stout human – lunged at Maeve. They grabbed not for her body, but at her wings. She was trying to fly against the gusting wind and Maeve couldn't pull away fast enough as her assailants snared handfuls of feathers. They yanked Maeve back down to the icy ground.

The man in red was on her again. His fingers closed hard around Maeve's throat. Was he trying to kill her? But there was a nanosword at his waist, still not drawn. Maeve reached for it, but the Emberguard twisted to one side and her fingers slipped off the cold metal. The striped Mirran lifted her easily of the ground. Maeve clawed at the hand around her neck and kicked at his body. The Emberguard grunted in pain, but did not let go.

The Hadrian had recovered himself. While the other two held her wings, he grabbed Maeve's arms. She snarled and writhed, but held by four larger, stronger opponents, Maeve could not get free.

She tried to scream out, but could only wheeze past the Mirran Emberguard's choking grip on her throat. He reached into his robe with his free hand and pulled out a short syringe. It was full of a thick, dark substance. As he leaned close, Maeve recognized the cloying, syrup-sweet smell.

"No!" she cried.

Maeve thrashed as hard as she could. The Emberguard yanked up her sleeve and stabbed the needle of Vanora White deep into her arm. He thumbed the plunger down. Maeve screamed in fury and a hand clamped down over her mouth. She bit and kicked as hard as she could. The emptied needle went flying and disappeared in the snow, but it was too late. The Vanora White flowed through her veins, stealing away the cold and fear and rage, drowning it all in a thick, viscous lassitude.

As her body went slack in her captors' arms, Maeve's thoughts vanished into the endless white fog.

"No one can hurt you unless you let them."

- Prian saying

When the pavement became too uneven to drive, Logan left his rented streetcycle on the shoulder of the road. Let them keep his deposit or charge his account for the loss. He no longer cared.

Logan walked the final miles. Walked, ran… The forest was a blur, patches of dark pine trees and smears of pale snow, more snow than when he arrived. Wind tugged at his hair and clothes. Ice and sleet were sharp as knives against his skin. There was no blood – whatever the poets said, the cold could not literally cut – but it
hurt
.

The hunter clambered over a zig-zagging ridge of granite. The stone crumbled like chalk in his hands. Where was his Raptor? Logan swore that his computerized heart skipped a beat. Had someone stolen it? It should have been safe this far from Pylos!

He inspected the ridge again. Growing drifts of snow obscured the brush and stones, but he was in the wrong part of the mountains. He had just taken a wrong turn somewhere. There were no trails in the Kayton Mountains. It was hardly a vacation spot. Nowhere on Prianus was.

Logan made his way north, toward a tall crag of rock just visible above the trees. Was that the one that he remembered? More climbing brought him to the foot of the outcropping, but Logan saw no sign of his ship. Was he going to be stranded on Prianus forever?

Alone with my betrayal, my shame, my pain…

A weight in his pocket bumped against his leg and finally reminded Logan of his com. It was programmed with a homing signal for the Raptor. How could he have forgotten? Logan rubbed at his eyes. They were sticky and dry despite the rain and snow. He had slept some the night before, but not much. He could not remember his dreams, but was not sure he wanted to.

Following the Raptor's beacon, Logan corrected his course. He was not far off, in truth, but it would have been enough to keep him wandering through the mountains for days. An hour's careful navigation finally brought him to the edge of the trees and then up onto the narrow ledge where he had landed the Raptor. Snow softened the stark lines, but could not disguise the predatory shape. A brown owl perched on the fighter's nose and hooted at Logan.

He waved the owl off and scraped away the snow until he could unseal the Raptor's canopy. His breath steamed in the cold as he worked. When the cockpit was clear, Logan climbed inside.

I can leave now. I don't have to stay. I could just fly away and go back to the core. I can just leave Prianus behind.

But he could not so easily leave his shame. It did not live on his homeworld, but in his heart. The stupid, maudlin sentiment made Logan smash his fist into the Raptor's controls in frustration. The altimeter cracked. So long trying to feel anything – anything at all – and now that he did, Logan would have cut out his own mechanical heart if he thought that it would stop the bitter, sour shame that gnawed at him.

But Vorus was right. It's not that simple.

The camp that Ballad told him about was not far away, with the old man and the black-haired Arcadian. Gavriel and Xartasia. Logan powered up the Raptor, yanked the throttle and roared off into the roiling clouds.

________

"Maeve's gone!"

The shout jerked Duaal awake. The rest of the camp, too, it seemed. Gripper bolted out the tent flap with such reckless haste that he nearly pulled the whole thing down around the rest of them. Xia sat up in her blankets, raking long fingers through her short hair. She looked across the tent at Duaal.

"Did I hear that correctly?" she asked.

Duaal shrugged and stood. He pulled on his coat and scarf. "I guess so. Maybe Maeve went off for a fly. Come on."

Xia followed Duaal outside. The camp was muted and indistinct under a thick blanket of snow. The mage's boots crunched softly through the ice.

Tiberius and most of the archeologists were gathered in the center of the circled tents. Like Duaal, Xen was bundled up in layers and shivering in the icy wind. By stark contrast, Kemmer had not even bothered putting on a shirt.

"What's going on?" the archeologist asked.

Duaal shouldered his way into the chaos and was surprised to see Panna at the middle of it. The tiny blonde woman was dressed head to foot in quilted black. She looked tired and panicked. But Tiberius seemed to have just woken up. He grabbed Panna's narrow shoulders and shook her insistently.

"When?" he shouted. "When did it happen?"

"What's going on here?" Xen shoved Tiberius away from Panna, or tried to. "Why are you yelling at my student, Captain Myles?"

"Maeve's not at her post and she's not in any of the tents," Tiberius told them. Reluctantly, he let go of Panna.

"I tried to call her this morning, just to check in," she said. Panna looked furious, but not at Tiberius. Angry tears stood out in her eyes. "I should have called earlier! I should have gone up there sooner!"

"Shit," Kemmer swore. "Is anything missing? Did they get down into the dig?"

"The dig? The dig?" Tiberius snarled. "Maeve is gone and you're worried about the
dig
?"

He looked like he might punch the other Prian. Duaal seized Tiberius by the elbow. The captain resisted for a moment, then let himself be pulled back.

"We don't know," Panna answered instead. "The spotlight up there was tipped over. I don't know. It might be broken. But Captain Myles is right. That's not important right now!"

"Is there anything else up there?" asked Xia.

"I don't know. The snow's covered up everything."

"I need to notify Cerro," Tiberius said. Furious, he stomped off through the snow to make the call.

Duaal considered following, but he was feeling more than a little wobbly in the knees. There was something familiar about this… It was hardly the first time Maeve had run off, though it was the only time in recent memory. No, it was something else. Something Duaal had been dreaming about, maybe, but he could not pin it down with any more certainty.

"What… what do we do now?" Gripper asked. "How do we find Smoke?"

"Perhaps she's off flying," Enu-Io suggested. "Somewhere she can't receive your signal."

"She wouldn't do that, not without telling someone," Panna insisted.

Duaal frowned. "Maybe. You don't know her that well. Maeve's got a long and annoying history of winging off without a word to anyone. More often than not, she brings back trouble."

"It's the trouble I'm worried about," said Kemmer. "If your Arcadian left, then I'm sure we'll find her. But if something's happened to her… Well, it was her job to protect what we've got up here."

"Not to be callous, but Kemmer's right," Xen agreed. He looked at Panna with sympathy. "It might actually tell us something if we can find anything missing or broken. If someone was here, we need to know about it."

"But I was watching the camp all night!" Panna cried. "No one was down here. Xen, we have to find her, we have to–"

Xen gave her a stern, red-eyed look. "That's enough, Panna. I know you're tired and upset, but we have work to do."

Kemmer instructed Ava and Darius to go inventory their equipment. Xen told his team to do the same. Phillip returned to the Tynerion tents to take stock, while Enu-Io and Gruth climbed down into the ravine to make sure that nothing was missing from the Waygate site. Panna grudgingly agreed to help them.

"What about us?" Gripper asked when the other teams were gone.

"What?" Duaal raised his eyes. He was still trying to remember his dream and figure out why this felt so familiar. Xia and Gripper watched him, waiting for instructions. Duaal looked back at Tiberius, who was pacing a deep furrow through the snow as he spoke into his radio.

"What should we do, Shimmer?" Gripper asked again.

"I'm not sure," Duaal said, faltering. What
could
they do?

Xen and Kemmer were still there, too, not yet following their teams into the tents. Duaal tried not to be distracted by the shirtless Prian archeologist, but it was difficult.

Something howled overhead. Duaal shielded his eyes and looked up at the sky. The snow was falling gently now, but still made it hard to see. The loud, angular shape was a police Raptor. Was it Captain Cerro? If so, Duaal was impressed at his response time. The mage frowned. If it
was
Cerro, why did he have the big, bulky Long Wings pods fitted over his Raptor?