The Essence Gate War: Book 01 - Adept (47 page)

He slid to a halt
in a sunlit clearing, his skin prickling with warning. His eyes narrowed. He tightened his grips on the swords until the muscles of his arms stood corded in sharp relief, and he began a slow circuit of the clearing, moving with a panther’s stride. He reached his arrival point and stopped, frowning. Something was amiss here, he could feel it. He scanned the ring of trees and saw nothing out of place. His gaze fell then upon the grassy center of the clearing, and he froze. He saw his trampled path circumscribing the glade, except for one side where it veered gently inward, away from the perimeter. He had not meant to do that, and did not remember altering his path in that manner. He stalked toward it, and found himself abruptly at the edge of the clearing. He whirled and saw that he had swerved again, away from that spot.

Setting his jaw, he took slow steps in that direction, pausing after each stride to assess his progress
. Resistance rose against him, as if he walked against a river’s steady current. He concentrated upon the forest ahead, refusing to allow his eyes to slide to either side. He thought at first he was looking at a portion of the forest draped in deepest shadow, and then it seemed that it must instead be a looming, amorphous wedge of rock. His mind struggled to fill the void in his perception. He growled to himself. Damn it all, but this was his forest, in his dream, and he would not be deceived. He concentrated, reaching for what he could not see, and like a parting veil it finally yielded its secrets to him in halting stages.

It was no natural structure, but a cottage or small house of some kind, nestled back amid the trees and sheltered
in the lee of the hill behind it. He could not place the architecture, with its strange, almost delicate flowing lines, and yet somehow it struck him as oddly familiar. Revealed at last, it stood in solitude there at the edge of the glade, blending and not blending, as beautiful and out of place as a sparkling jewel lying in a field of grass. Before him was a door, hanging ajar in its graceful, high-peaked arch. A muffled noise echoed within, and Amric’s puzzlement and caution dissolved in the heat of remembered purpose. He shouldered the door aside and plunged into the cottage, one sword crossed before him and one held low and away.

The interior of the place was no less otherworldly, and
the décor baffled his eye as he tried to place its origins. It was not from any of the western nations. Pakhrian then, or perhaps Illirian? Somewhere remote, certainly, but again he had an overwhelming sense from the instant he crossed the threshold that he should know this place. He had little time to ponder the matter, however; the figure he sought was ahead, crouching over something in a shadowed alcove with its back to him.

Amric leapt forward, raising his blades to cut down this ghostly predator
before it could complete its sinister objective. The figure spun to meet him with appalling speed, those grasping hands reaching for him once more––and Amric froze in shock. The figure was wholly human, and its features were his own.

The figure offered no resistance, and its features
––his features––were settled into unfamiliar lines of sorrow and resignation. Determination flickered there, and his double took a sliding step to interpose his body before the alcove at his back, blocking Amric’s view. There was a dizzying moment as Amric was wrenched from his own body, and he saw as if through the eyes of his double. From there he beheld himself, a hard, frightening, vengeful man in dark leather and oiled mail, standing with wicked blades upraised to deal the killing blow. He saw his own face twisted into a mask of rage and hatred, with that mask cracked in places to reveal confusion. He reached out with open hands toward the other, not grasping or threatening at all, but rather beseeching. And hopeful, ever hopeful.

He watched suspicion cross the battle-hardened visage, watched the
raptor gaze of the warrior dart from his face to his outstretched hands, and from there to the shadowed recess behind him. He could not tell if it was the light of comprehension he saw there, or merely the split second decision in battle of the warrior born, but either way the features closed like ironbound doors and walled away the last of his hope. Hatred and fury blazed in those grey eyes that were mirrors of his own, and the swords flashed toward him.

Amric’s eyes flared open and his fist tightened convulsively on the hilt of the sword lying at his side
. He did not otherwise move or make a noise, but instead took shallow, controlled breaths as he drank in his surroundings. The chill night air of the desert washed over him in a questing breeze, and the lean trees of their elevated campsite swayed overhead. The dry whisper of rustling ferns and the slow bubbling of the spring-fed pool reached his ears, punctuated by the occasional grumbling snort from one of the horses.

Rolling his head slightly to the side, he could see Innikar standing watch near the downward trail
. The Sil’ath warrior sat cross-legged on a flat rock with one sword bared across his knees; he was motionless except for the occasional swivel of his head. He kept glancing in one direction, and Amric tilted his head to follow the stare. Bellimar stood there, perched on the outer edge of the crown of rock like some great bird of prey, cloak wrapped tightly around him as he gazed down at the wasteland far below. From below, Amric thought, he must look like just another patch of midnight against the scowling peak of rock. He gave a grim smile; he wondered who was more discomfited by the nighttime watch arrangement, Innikar at discovering that the old man never needed to sleep, or Bellimar at Amric’s insistence that an additional person always keep watch with him. The vampire had given no sign that his word––or his self-control––could not be trusted, but even a relaxed tiger was still a tiger.

Amric
let the tension drain from him, and he released his white-knuckled grip on the sword. With all quiet at the camp, his thoughts turned to the strange dream. For a fleeting instant upon awakening he had felt near to some burgeoning understanding of what he had seen, but now it escaped him. He struggled to recall the details, which only moments ago had seemed so vivid, before his conscious mind could bury them further. The pursuit over familiar ground, the elusive foe with his features, the alien and yet somehow familiar hidden structure, the jarring shift in perspective at the end; he turned it all over and over in his mind.

There were many troubling aspects to the dream, but most troubling to him were his own actions at the end, when he had clearly seen his quarry to be unarmed and reaching out to him, and yet he had still chosen to attack
. He had slain many in battle, but he had never killed in cold blood, and the depth of the hatred marring his expression nagged at him. And what was striking down himself, in essence, meant to signify? Some unsatisfied hostility toward a blood-family he had never known? He had dwelled on such matters as a child, as was to be expected, but in all honesty he could not remember considering the subject for many years now.

He frowned and
shook his head, chiding himself for a fool. The morrow would be draining enough without losing sleep to mull over some silly dream. The others were waiting on him to produce a strategy that would get them all safely to and from the hive with their rescued friends in tow, and he had no idea as of yet how he was going to manage that particular feat. He closed his eyes, firmly pushed the lingering remnants of the dream from his mind, and he began sifting once more through all he knew of the hive and the bleak terrain surrounding it.

An hour later,
when Valkarr rose from his bedroll to relieve Innikar at watch, Amric was still lying awake as his mind chewed relentless circles around the problem.

“Is it a trap?” Sariel whispered in the Sil’ath tongue.

Amric gave a slow shake of his head without glancing at her
. They were lying prone, pressed to the stones like a coating of moss as they peered over the edge and onto the wasteland below.

“It is an unnecessary
ruse,” Innikar replied in a low tone from the other side of Sariel. “If they knew we were here, they could have swarmed up even that narrow path and overwhelmed us by sheer force of numbers by now.”

“Still, the timing is suspect,” Sariel mused.

Innikar grunted assent. The trio fell silent, squinting into the gritty, biting wind blowing at them from the north. In the distance, the last of the cloth-wrapped black creatures were disappearing into that swirling haze of sand.

Innikar cleared his throat with an oblique glance toward Amric
. “The old man was awake throughout the night,” he said.

“I know,”
Amric responded.

“
He said that he requires no sleep. Is he truly a…?”

“Yes
. Is or was, and not even he knows which anymore.”

Innikar rested his chin on his fist a
nd pondered that for a moment.

“
Then,” put in Sariel, “he is likely telling the truth about the rest, about what he saw last night.”

“Yes
, I believe him on that count as well.”

“I can think of only one destination to the north for them to march against in force,”
Innikar said after a moment.

Amric met the Sil’ath warrior’s eyes
with a grim nod: Keldrin’s Landing. A veritable army of the creatures had swept over the wasteland in the hours since dawn’s first light, issuing forth from the hive in determined batches ranging in size from a handful to as many as twenty. The sun hung directly overhead now, struggling to pierce the tempestuous haze, and he estimated that more than three hundred of the strange creatures had passed within sight of their perch over the course of the morning. Even more troubling was Bellimar’s report after a long night’s vigil that the exodus had been going for many hours before daybreak, such that they had seen only the trailing portion of it, and the lesser portion at that. The creatures all seemed to be headed due north, and there was not much in that direction to offer as a target save the city itself. If indeed their path went so far, then Keldrin’s Landing was likely in for a concerted attack, and that assault could come as early as nightfall.

“We cannot know the minds of such alien creatures,” Amric said
. “They might be abandoning one nest to create another elsewhere. We should not draw conclusions until we see inside this hive for ourselves.”

Sariel nodded, her expression tight
. Amric placed a hand on her arm and smiled gently.

“You are right to think the city is in jeopardy,” he said
. “It is still the most likely explanation. But there is little we can do from here. We cannot get ahead of that ragged army of fiends in time to warn the city’s people. There are now far too many foes between here and there, and even though a good horse can outrun those things for a time, they never seem to tire.” It was true; they had seen it before, and every group that had burst forth from the hive that morning had traveled at a dead run, soundless and unflagging, until disappearing over the horizon.

“You misunderstand,” she said
. “I am indeed concerned for Keldrin’s Landing and its people, but I am troubled by something else as well. The creatures bore no captives in their departure.”

“Yes, I noted that as well
.”

Sariel turned a stony gaze upon him
. “This implies that sufficient forces remain behind to restrain the captives,” she said. “Or that the captives no longer require restraining.”

Amric’s jaw clenched
. “We shall know which is the case soon enough.”

He narrowed his gaze against the stinging wind. The black creatures were lost to view, leaving the rippling dunes as unblemished as a vast, crumpled sheet of canvas. He lowered his head and slithered down and backward until he was safely out of sight from below, then sprang to his feet and padded to the other side of the grassy bowl, skirting the pool as he went. He slid into place beside Valkarr and looked down upon the wasteland from the southwestern edge of the tall crag’s crown of rock.

The hive was quiet,
with nothing more than a black, yawning hole atop a massive dome of sand to reveal its presence. At first glance the structure could almost blend with the more natural landscape surrounding it, but its height and the odd uniformity of its conical shape soon exposed its subterfuge. Upon further observation, it became evident that this eerie monarch of the dunes was the only one among its brethren seemingly immune to the capricious, clawing wind that frayed the mounds around it. Here the wasteland shifted and remade itself continuously; only the hive remained unchanged.

Amric watched the hive for long, crawling minutes, and then made his decision
. He sprang to his feet and strode for the horses, tethered and hooded against the blowing sand.

“Mount up
, everyone,” he said.

Gone was
his waking plan to send the stealthiest among them on foot to the entrance of the hive in order to get an undetected glimpse inside. That plan had never satisfied him, but it was the best the situation had offered. The Sil’ath were renowned for their ability to fade like ghosts past enemy fortifications, and he and his warriors were some of the best among a race who excelled at such things, but the terrain offered precious little cover and he doubted even their odds of getting close enough against the swarm of activity around the hive. The circumstances had changed, however, and trap or not, coincidental timing or not, he would have that closer look at their enemy now.