The Far Dawn (15 page)

“It's a machine,” I said, “that can change the climate. But it's dangerous.” I wondered if I should mention the Heart of the Terra, its power, but it seemed best not to complicate things. And I wondered: Could anyone be trusted with knowledge of the Terra's true power? If I was really going to free the Terra, it was probably best that no one know.

“No doubt,” said Mendes. “We've been monitoring Paul and the Edens for years, had spies in and out, but cracking their Project Elysium plans has been tough. Especially since we can't locate their board of directors. We had a mole in that operation back in the early Rise. They had corporate offices in Dubai while the domes were being built, but our attention was turned during the War for Fair Resources, and by the time things settled down, we'd lost track of their whereabouts.”

“I know where they are,” I said. “At least I think. We found coordinates.”

“You did? Where'd you get those?”

“Long story.”

“Corporal,” Mendes called, “we've got coordinates here. Need you to send the birds to check them out.”

“I'm not sure how much battery range they've got left, sir,” the corporal replied.

“Damn batteries,” Mendes muttered. “You know how easy life was back when there was gasoline any time you needed it? You could fly a spy plane around the globe as many times as you wanted.” He looked at me. “Can you relay those coordinates?” he asked.

Somehow I remembered them. “Three degrees north and one fifty-four point seven degrees east.”

“Yeah, we're not going to be able to suss those out until we get a recharge,” reported the corporal. “And we don't have any satellites passing over that vicinity anytime soon.”

“Figures,” said Mendes. “Well, stay on it.” He looked around the deck. “Everyone here?” Then he patted me hard between my shoulder blades. “Take us in, Owen.”

14

I MOVED TO THE CONTROLS, MY NERVES RINGING, and yet for the first time, I felt like I was entering a confrontation with Paul where I actually stood a chance, with a real army behind me. As long as we weren't too late . . .

We rose over the delta and I flew into the valley, following the snaking course of the chalky river back into the black mountains. We passed over the scout team in moments. The distant winter sun couldn't reach in here, and the shadows remained cold and dark. The walls were damp and striped with ice. These surfaces hadn't felt the heat of the sun for months.

The valley narrowed to a canyon, its sides becoming sheer and black and tall. The blue sky receded above us.

“There it is,” said Mendes.

Ahead, the canyon was blocked by the twin walls of blue ice, striped in thin lines of brown, ice built up over millennia, the deepest layers older than Atlanteans, maybe than the first humans.

My hand flexed on the wheel of the ship, twitching back and forth to get the sails just right. There was a wide enough space to enter about halfway up the wall. I lined up with it, and flew into the ice.

The light became dim and pure blue; the air chilled and our breaths made momentary clouds. Somewhere below there was a faint sound of rushing water.

We left the weak daylight behind, winding through the walls of curving glassy ice, and I considered that it would be nearly impossible to turn the craft around.

“Can these things fly backward?” I asked Rana.

She stared ahead intently. “I don't remember ever trying.”

“Things should get a little wider,” the corporal said, scanning his readouts, “about a kilometer in. There may be a vent to the surface there.”

“Stay alert, team,” said Mendes. One of the soldiers had handed him a helmet and a pulse rifle. I felt for the knife in my belt, but wondered what good it would do.

Owen . . .

The voice of the Terra accompanied another scream in my head . . . but this time it seemed distant.

Rana flinched.

“What is it?” The ice leaned closer on both sides and compelled me to whisper.

“I don't know,” Rana said quietly. “Something like screaming.”

The Terra spoke, from far off it seemed now.
He is taking me, Owen. All will perish. He—
Her voice cut off.

The sides narrowed further. There was no daylight above. Only cold blue. The craft nicked an edge, causing splinters of ice to fall away.

“Careful,” said Mendes, his brow knotted with concern. “You're doing great, though.”

“Thanks.” I resisted the urge to get a more steady grip, to try anything with my useless right hand. Luckily, after a few more twists, the fissure began to widen a bit.

There was light up ahead.

“Weapons hot,” said Mendes, giving his team a thumbs-up. The soldiers lowered targeting visors and adjusted their rifles with a series of clicks and hums.

We rounded another corner of glassy blue. The light was brighter, reflecting on the walls like stars.

And there began to be shapes in the ice. Dark geometry, rectangles of shadow with darker forms inside them, blurred by the ice.

“The tombs,” Rana whispered.

“Lord,” said Mendes, whispering, too, “are those bodies?”

“The catacombs of the kings,” Rana added, her head sweeping from one side of the fissure to the other. The bodies were everywhere, but if they had once been organized in orderly rows, the Paintbrush had thrown them into chaos: the ice coffins at cockeyed angles and refrozen within these walls. There were hundreds, or, as I peered deeper into the ice, maybe thousands.

And I remembered the bodies in Atlante, when Master Solan had rolled them out, had brought them back . . . I remembered when Paul had raised the Cryos . . . and now I found myself flashing from shadow to shadow, corpse to corpse, some merely impressions, some close enough that I could see the bronze of their burial headdresses, the silk of their gowns and the gleam of their copper breastplates, sometimes even the mat of their white hair . . . and I couldn't help but imagine them starting to move, to rise against us.

But even then, I didn't know that what Paul had in mind was so much worse.

Another scream sounded, heard by no one else but me and, from her wincing, Rana.

And the Terra's desperate words:
If he takes me, all will perish. Life will go dark
.

Her voice dissolved into a scream that brought tears to my wincing eyes. She was in so much pain. Like she was being torn apart.

Muffled cracks sounded from ahead, muted by the ice, and all the soldiers tensed.

“Sounds like gunfire, sir,” said the corporal.

“Yes, indeed it does. Stay sharp, people.”

“I am going to go ahead,” said Rana.

“Wait now,” said Mendes, “we don't want to—”

“I won't be seen,” said Rana. She lifted from beside me and floated ahead of us, the skull bag hanging below her. Her light glimmered for a moment in the window walls, but then she was out of sight in the curves of ice.

I kept a wary eye on the toppled stacks of shadows in the ice walls.

“Careful!” Mendes called.

My hand slipped, cold with sweat, and the craft nicked the wall again, jarring everyone aboard. “Sorry.” I had to focus! But those screams in my head, those gunshots, and now the stillness around us . . . If Paul and his team were in here, why was it so
silent
?

“Registering approximately thirty heat signatures,” the corporal whispered, “one hundred meters ahead.”

“Activate your targeting sites,” ordered Mendes. “Remember, Eden forces, not hostages.”

I brought us over an outcropping of ice. Even the sound of the river had faded beneath us. There was only the low hum from the vortex, a shallow breath of the cold wind slithering through the fissure, and the rapid breathing of the soldiers and me.

The light grew brighter. There were bright beams just beyond the next turn in the ice. The bodies between us and whatever lay around that corner were backlit, tan colors of skin, the glimmer of jewels and weaponry. . . .

“Status?” Mendes asked the corporal.

“Fifty meters and closing,” said the corporal, “but the readings are uneven. There must be interference. . . .”

Mendes held up a fist. “Ready . . .”

I brought us around the final turn.

We banked into a wide space, the ice walls bowing out to create a cylindrical cavern. A narrow chute opened to the sky and a beam of winter sun bore directly into the space, blinding to our eyes. It illuminated a far wall of ice, the end of this fissure, and reflected off brilliant lines of metal and crystal, complicated angles and gearworks.

There, before us, frozen in the wall: the Paintbrush of the Gods.

It stood in silent majesty, the sun beaming on it, encased in ice except for the nearest girders and gears, which protruded toward us. The ice curved around it, filled its spaces—

Except for a large hole near the top, along the diagonal path of its great telescope-like cylinder. There, the ice had been neatly cut away in a square, forming a hollow cube and immediately I knew what was missing.

I also knew then that we were lost.

But it still took me a moment to accept it, to take it all in.

And that moment cost everyone their lives.

“Where are the hostiles?” Mendes asked.

“They should be right here,” said the corporal, confused.

“Sir,” a soldier called, still speaking barely above a whisper. His gun was pointed directly below us, into the deep shadows.

I brought the craft to a hover. And when I peered over the side, at first I saw nothing but the green ghosts of light from the sun and the Paintbrush. But then, a pale white glow. Rana was far down there, on the floor, where the ice curved in a still flow between jagged black boulders. There were deep blue cracks, and other black forms . . .

Human shapes.

Bodies.

But not frozen, not Atlantean, these were black-clad bodies in helmets, with gold visors that reflected the sunlight.

“Those are Eden forces,” said Mendes.

“They're dead, sir,” said the corporal, “or almost dead. Heat signatures are fading or out.”

My head whipped around wildly. “Where are the—”

“I've got a positive ID on a hostage, sir,” one of the soldiers called, voice rising on rapid breaths as he aimed a sensor at the cave floor. “Male, facial recognition confirms Mateu Owante of Coke-Sahel, age seventeen . . . deceased.”

“Positive ID on a hostage,” another soldier called. “Evan Reynolds, resident of EdenWest, age sixteen, deceased . . .”

No.

“Positive ID . . .”

No.

Rana's light was growing now. She was so far down and there was something glowing in her hands, something pale white—

Come home, Rana.

The skull. She had the skull out, and as its light grew I could see the shape of a body lying twisted on the ice beside her, beneath the skull light

A body—

Dark hair spilling away. Clothes smeared with dirt.

No. The blood . . .

“Lilly Ishani of EdenWest, age sixteen . . .”

No.

Lilly, not moving . . .

None of my muscles wanted to work, my brain didn't want to work. I felt a scream building up in every fiber, in every thought, a single terrible note as I stared down at the bath of white light where Lilly lay on the icy cavern floor. . . .

And then a voice called from above. “Sorry, Owen!”

I twisted my head up, like it was made of lead, along with Mendes and every soldier and weapon and we saw, high above us, a silhouette standing on the surface rim, a lone figure in the sun, a monster.

Paul.

“We only took what we needed!” he shouted. “Gotta run!”

He motioned with his hand, like he was waving a wand, then turned and disappeared from sight. Paul, the treacherous, murderous . . . I felt a blinding rage. All I wanted to do was kill him, a hundred times over.

But a shrill beep echoed through the ice cavern—

Followed by a thump of air, and a low, deep concussion of sound that made my ears scream in pain.

“Sonic charge!” Mendes shouted.

The world seemed to shudder, and then the ice began to break apart all around us.

My head whipped around, back to Lilly, far below—

“Get us out!” Mendes shouted, gripping my shoulder. “This whole place is coming down.”

I felt my body shutting down, seizing up, all of this, Lilly, no, no, no . . .

“Go, kid!” said Mendes.

The first chunk of ice slammed against the craft.

“HANG ON!” I screamed, my teeth grinding. Down or up? I had no idea what to do. Lilly— but NO, I slammed the pedals and spun the wheel, in lurching motions because I only had one weak hand to fly with but still I launched us forward and banked the craft into a steep climb. Everyone with me would die otherwise, and Paul would escape.

Blistering cracks sounded from every direction. Huge chunks of ice began to fall away on all sides. The vortex whined and we shot straight upward toward the window of daylight, ice dust refracting the sunbeams into clouds of diamonds.

Splinters and chunks smashed off the craft, buffeting us side to side. One soldier was impaled with an icicle, another slammed in the head, both falling away, down into the ice—

The ice.

LILLY! I was leaving her behind, down there, I couldn't . . . but Rana was there, and we had to go we had to . . .

We neared the top. The crushing sound of collapse growing louder. Ice all around us.

We weren't going to make it.

Slivers in my eyes, chunks slamming from all sides, a sound like the end of the world everywhere—

But we were close, just reaching the rim of the hole, sunlight catching the bow of the craft. The sky and distant mountains became visible, the sea of ice.

And for a moment, what was maybe only a second, I saw: A thread, like spider silk, gleaming in sunlight, leading straight up into the sky.