The Dreamtrails (95 page)

I turned to say as much to Jak and discovered that he had vanished. I called his name and heard a muffled reply. I followed him, pointing out crossly that we could not go on exploring endlessly, but my words faded when I found him in a small, shiny black room sitting behind the screen of a computermachine.
There were other machines and more screens covering the wall behind the computermachine, as well as panels of levers and colored squares, but all were dark and lifeless. Jak held up his lantern to illuminate the lettered squares, and then he began to tap at them, his brow furrowed in concentration. Nothing happened, and he gave a sigh of anguished frustration. “I might be able to figure out how to make it work, given time, but as it is …”

“As it is, we are here to find plague seeds,” I said firmly. “And in case you haven’t noticed, these lanterns are running out of oil.”

Jak looked at his lantern with the startled air of one waking from a dream. Then he got to his feet. “All right, let’s split up and make a proper search. If there are plague seeds here, they will be in some sort of secure storage place—a small metal box or some sort of sealed cabinet. It will probably have a symbol on it: yellow and black triangles or a red circle with a slash through it. You try through that door on the left, and I will go through the other one.” He gestured to two doors, one alongside the other. Then he opened one and passed through it into the swallowing darkness beyond.

I took a deep breath and went through the other door into another room of shining black surfaces, but instead of being square, this chamber had many sides like the edges of a cut stone. It was empty, and I ran my hand along one of the smooth panels, wondering about the room’s purpose. Then I noticed that light from the lantern was penetrating the dark shining wall.

I held the lantern closer and saw that the panel was made of thick dark glass, behind which was an empty compartment. I looked at the next panel and saw that it was the same. I examined the glass surface and found a recessed hand
shape. There was one in each panel. Heart beating fast, I held my hand above one of the recesses and listened to my inner self for any prickle of premonition. Feeling nothing, I pressed my hand into the recess. There was a click and a hiss, and the segment of glass slid far enough up that I could see into the compartment behind it. It was empty. I pressed my hand to the same place and immediately the glass slid back into place. I went to the next glass segment and discovered another empty compartment. I stepped back and turned slowly around, realizing the place bore a strong resemblance to the healing chambers in the ruins complex. Perhaps this was also some sort of healing complex, but the compartments were much smaller and lacked beds.

I examined the compartment that I had left open and saw holes in the floor. Not a healing chamber, perhaps, but some sort of cage. The compartments were too small to fit a human, even a human child. Small beasts, then? Maybe whoever had built this place had intended to save some beasts from the Great White. I reached into the compartment and jumped as a dim red glow filled it. As soon as I snatched my hand back, the light was immediately extinguished.

I went after Jak, wanting to show him the compartments. I could not see his lantern light and realized with a sinking heart that I would have to go deeper. I stepped into the next chamber and found it identical to the one I had been in, save that it was bigger and so were the glass panels and the compartments behind them. Still there were no beds, so perhaps these had been intended for larger animals.

I called Jak’s name, and when he did not answer, I went through the next door, only to find myself in yet another room full of glass compartments. This was bigger again than the other rooms, and at its center stood a long metal table. Fixed
to one end of the table was a phalanx of computermachines and screens. Memory stirred, and I went to the metal table and touched its cold surface. Suddenly I remembered the table I had been bound to when Ariel and Alexi had used the Zebkrahn machine on me in an attempt to learn the location of the weaponmachines that had caused the Great White.

I turned to look around at the glass compartments and was suddenly and absolutely certain that Ariel had been here, and
this
was where he had brought Domick and Rushton. Fighting a suffocating sense of horror, I went to open one of the glass compartments. Seeing the bare space with its holed floor, I suddenly understood. This was not a healing center; it was a torture chamber.

There was another door at the end of the room. I went to it and opened it merely to escape the horror blooming in my mind, but the chamber beyond was little more than a room full of small metal lockers. I was about to turn away when I noticed a door marked with a yellow and black symbol, above which was a circle with numbers scribed on it. I went into the chamber and saw a lock on the door, but there was no need to open it, for there was a panel of glass set into the metal door. I knelt and held the lantern close to the glass, pressing my face against it, the better to see. I fell back at once, for the surface of the glass gave off such a fierce coldness that I felt as if I had been burned. Rubbing my cheek, I leaned close to the window again, being careful not to touch its surface. I lifted the lantern and its light shone on rack after rack of tiny bottles containing glistening liquids of various colors.

I had no doubt that I had found what we had come for, and I sat back on my heels, wondering if all the ghastly weapons and devices that the Beforetimers had created had been no more than the result of the same voracious,
single-minded curiosity as that which motivated Jak or any teknoguilder. I had never thought of curiosity as bad, yet if it could quench fear, perhaps it could also quench a person’s morality.

The lantern flame began to gutter, and I thought that I must have tilted it, swamping the wick, but when I looked into the reservoir, I was horrified to see that it was almost empty. Suddenly I was horribly aware of the darkness and the many doors and steps that lay between me and the stony, storm-scoured surface of Norseland. I might have panicked if I had not recently been lost in a Beforetime complex. This memory enabled me to control my fear and rise to hurry back through the chambers. If I could find Jak swiftly, we could pool our remaining oil, seek out Andorra, and take hers as well. That ought to be enough to get us back to the surface.

I shouted his name through the door he had taken, but there was no response. Perhaps his lantern had already run out and he had lost his way. I tried farseeking him, but as I had feared, there was too much thick metal between us for the probe to locate and too little oil remained in my lantern to go searching for him. I had to find Andorra. I hurried through the chambers to the metal path and was horrified to remember that I had bidden her investigate the path to see if there were other doors. I peered out into the fathomless blackness, searching for her lantern’s telltale glow, but I could see nothing.

Either the light was too weak or she had already run out of oil. Cursing our foolishness, I was about to shout to her when I heard a muffled scream. It had come from above, but it broke into a thousand echoes that filled the void and seemed as if there were hundreds of people screaming for help. Even after the screams had faded to whispers, I still
stood rooted to the spot, my heart hammering against my ribs with sickening force. I told myself savagely not to be a fool. Andorra had probably noticed that she was running out of oil and had stumbled on the way up the ladder to replenish her lantern. Or maybe she had seen my lantern light and had called out something that the echoes had transformed into a scream. I gathered myself to broach that black void with a call, but before I could utter it,
I heard a low, rumbling growl
.

Every hair on my body stood on end as I thought of the kennels that Jak and Hakim had seen, for it would be so like Ariel to leave some poor dog here to go mad with hunger and thirst. I backed into the chamber of lockers and searched frantically about the door for a means of closing it, but I could find nothing. The lantern flame was guttering wildly, and again I heard another growl. My nerve broke and I fled back through chamber after chamber, knowing that I could always shut myself into one of the glass compartments. Just as I reached the chamber of large compartments, the lantern went out.

I stopped dead, shocked at the complete blackness that enfolded me. I held my breath and listened, praying that the dog or dogs would not enter the complex. I had just begun to relax when I heard something moving through one of the outer chambers. I told myself that it must be Jak, but I dared not call out. Instead, I groped my way to the nearest compartment, felt for the hand-shaped indentation, and pressed my hand into it. The click and the hiss of the opening door sounded alarmingly loud, and I threw myself into the compartment. Instantly, it flooded with ruby-red light, and I cried out before I could prevent myself. Too frightened to wait and listen again, I tore off my boot, set it in the opening, and reached out to press my hand into the recess in the door.
There was a hiss and it slid shut. Or it would have done, if not for the boot.

I forced myself to move quietly to the back of the compartment, where I sat down and made myself as small as possible. As I tried to listen, my red-limned reflection gaped at me in the glass, grotesque with terror, but my heart thundered so hard that it made me feel sick. Or maybe the sickness was merely another symptom of terror. I felt as if ice water were coursing through my veins, yet I was giving out so much heat that the glass inside the compartment was beginning to fog.

I crawled forward to wipe the front panel with my sleeve, and froze.

I could see something moving in the red-tinged darkness outside. Whatever it was looked far larger than a dog. Remaining very still, I sent out a beast-speaking probe but encountered a buzzing static that told me that it wore a demon band. Its size made me wonder if Ariel had captured a wolf and brought it to Norseland to train. It had stopped moving now, and I heard it
sniffing
.

Without warning, it rushed toward me and hurled itself against the glass panel with such ferocity that it rebounded violently back into the shadow with a snarling groan of pain. I had fallen backward, too, in shock, and as I sat up, I heard a loud click and realized that the beast had hit the glass so hard that it had dislodged the boot I had used to jam it open. In that moment, it did not seem bad to be locked away from whatever beast Ariel had left to guard his secrets.

I watched, mesmerized, as it approached the compartment again. Now I saw that it was man-shaped but hunched and shambling as if it were part beast and part human.
A bear?
I thought incredulously. At last it entered the bloody light of
the compartment, and I drew a long, ragged, sobbing breath of disbelief.

For it was Rushton.

I spoke his name, and the sound of my voice seemed to madden him. He hurled himself at the glass again with such reckless violence that I cried out. For one second, I looked into his eyes’ bottomless black insanity, then he reeled backward, clearly stunned by the impact. But immediately he ran at the glass again. This time when he struck it, I heard the distinct snap of a bone breaking. Rushton gave a howl of pain, and when he staggered back in readiness for another charge, he swayed on his feet for several beats, one arm hanging limp. Seeing the rage in his face, I understood that if he had got to me before I entered the compartment, he would have torn me to pieces with his bare hands. That could only mean that his memory had returned and had brought him back here to the source of his torment. I thought of the cry I had heard and wondered, sickened, if he had killed Gilbert or Andorra.

“Rushton,” I whispered.

His eyes fixed on me, and his face distorted with hatred. He gathered himself and ran at the door head down. He struck the glass with a sickening crunch and dropped bonelessly to the floor, where he lay utterly still.

I gazed through streaming tears at his still, crumpled form, praying he had not broken his neck or caved in his skull. If only I could get out to check, but I could not open the door. I crawled to the front of the compartment and peered out at Rushton’s prone form, trying to see if he was still breathing.

Then my gaze settled on the demon band fitted around his neck, and all at once I understood everything.

This was Ariel’s doing, all of it
.

Domick had told me Ariel had made Mika torture Rushton
coercively while empathically imposing my face and voice but that he had failed in trying to break Rushton. But Ariel had not failed at all. He had never meant to crush Rushton’s mind, because he had a more elaborate cruelty planned. When the healers had treated Rushton at Obernewtyn, they had spoken of a long period in which Rushton had dwelt in a drug-induced nightmare world. But neither Domick nor Mika had mentioned drugs, which meant that they must have been administered after Rushton was shifted to Sutrium. That long, bleak, drugged dream he had endured had been imposed only to serve as a screen to prevent any of us from realizing what else had been done to him here.

Rushton had not been left in the Sutrium cloister by chance. He had been left there specifically so that he would be found and brought back to Obernewtyn, where he would be healed physically of his addiction. But not mentally. Ariel had intended all along that Rushton would be broken open slowly and torturously by his constant exposure to me. Ariel had wanted me to witness Rushton’s love for me turning inexorably to hatred and madness.

It all fitted, save one thing. Why would Ariel set Rushton up to kill me when he had gone to such lengths to keep me alive? For he must know that this would be the result of Rushton’s madness. Had he thought I would defend myself? Perhaps he had hoped that I would even be forced to kill Rushton to save myself.

I shook my head, unconvinced that he would take the risk that Rushton might succeed in killing me. But the only other possibility was the most monstrous of all. Ariel had foreseen this very moment: me, trapped safely in a glass compartment with Rushton outside, battering himself senseless to get at me. Yet where would Rushton get a demon band, and why
would he put it on, if not at some coerced instruction? And why would Ariel command it if he had not foreseen this?