Chapter 28
Jayce felt a stiff breeze swirling around him. He opened his eyes and saw a perfectly normal blue sky and white clouds. He flipped over and saw the forest of Illara rushing at him.
He let out a series of panicky noises as his arms pinwheeled and the Veil stone in his hand flared with light. Dirt and broken branches exploded around him as he hit the ground.
He wiped soil off his face and looked around. He lay in a crater, a hiss of Veil energy surrounding him. The stone in his hand had dimmed, but its light was growing back. Something had lessened the impact of his fall, and he wasn’t sure if the stone had done it or he’d willed that action into being through the terror of a sudden and fatal sudden stop against terra firma.
“Ow!” Jayce lifted his hilt to check that it was still there, then lay in the dirt for a moment. He rolled onto his back. The world felt correct, with the smell of rotting wood and mud all around him. The sky was blue and still, but for high wisps of clouds moving overhead. He’d escaped from the Veil, but he didn’t feel like he’d accomplished anything.
Maru was dead. “Leeta” was really an agent for the Tyrant and he’d led the assassin straight into the Pinnacle. Sarai was this Lahash’s prisoner. Jayce had no good idea of where he’d landed, other than somewhere on Illara after he’d broken his anchor. Where had Lahash taken Sarai with his own anchors? They could be close . . .
Jayce struggled to his feet. The stone had mitigated much of the impact but not all of it. He felt where bruises and sprains would begin to hurt once the adrenaline wore off.
At least nothing was broken.
“I need . . . Dastin. He’ll know what to do. Everyone leaves at the same time when they break their anchors, right? So he’s out here. If he’s alive.” Jayce climbed out of the crater and looked around. Insects buzzed in the swampy area, but there were no sounds of vehicles or other people. He had nothing but his weapon, the stone, and the clothes on his back. He fished out the water tube and took a sip, spat out muddy grit, then felt his back. The water blister had torn open at some point.
“I can’t tell if things just got better or worse,” Jayce said.
In the distance, a howl ululated through the forest.
“When am I going to learn not to say things like that?” Jayce tried to ignite his hilt, but he felt resistance from it. “What? I don’t know how much of Sarai’s dad is still in there, but I’m not going to abandon her. She’s—she’s probably on this planet. The Tyrant’s soldiers followed us to this planet . . . she’s still here.”
The blade ignited. The edge was white hot and hurt to look at directly. The howling grew louder, and Jayce knew what was coming for him.
Jayce moved into a clearing. The Pinnacle stone was too large for the ring on his harness. He kept it in his hand and took a deep breath. He felt Reman bounding through the woods. The edge of his senses had an electrical static to them that he didn’t understand.
Maru’s warning about destroying himself with the power of his new stone was still with him. He wasn’t sure which would be worse: the stone blowing up in his face or what Reman would do when he found him.
“I can’t help anyone if I’m dead.” Jayce beat the flat of his blade against his clenched fist around the stone. Plasma tendrils stretched from the weapon to his stone.
Reman burst out of the underbrush and landed on a fallen tree. His cybernetics had been replaced and a Veil stone glowed from his harness. The tips of his hackles pulsed with Veil energy.
“I still have your scent, meat!” The Draug’s metal teeth glistened with spit. He flexed the cybernetic muscles of his right arm and Jayce noted how stiff the fresh implants were.
“Where’s Sarai?” Jayce raised his sword. Light pulsed from between his fingers and Reman slunk back slightly. The alien wasn’t as confident or aggressive as the last time they met.
“Duty demands I take that stone. I’ll kill you for the fun of it!” Reman ignited long Veil-blade claws from his forearm rig and leapt at Jayce.
Jayce punched his stone-bearing fist at the Draug and an energy shield cast from the stone and deflected the claws. He ducked under Reman and jabbed at him with his sword. The tip scraped against Reman’s harness shield and the two swung back around to face each other for the next tilt.
Reman angled one leg behind him to hide whatever damage Jayce might have inflicted.
A buzz built in Jayce’s ears and the stone in his grasp felt like it was about to burst into flames.
Reman rose to standing, head and shoulders over Jayce. He lunged forward and arced his claws downward at Jayce’s face. Jayce sprang to one side and stabbed his blade into Reman’s flesh-and-blood shoulder. Reman’s harness shield flared again, and the alien snarled in pain. Jayce misjudged his next cut and it swept under Reman’s arm. Claws raked at Jayce’s face and the stone in his hand flared brightly.
He felt a sting across his forehead and blood seeped down his face, but he wasn’t injured too badly.
The scent of blood triggered something inside Reman and he launched a flurry of attacks against Jayce.
Jayce intercepted the blows with his sword, slowing them just enough that his own shielding took the brunt of the force, but every hit still landed like a punch. Jayce thrust one leg back and stabbed weakly into Reman’s stomach. The blade cut through the shield and cut a long gash down the Draug’s abdomen.
Reman barked in pain.
Jayce hacked at Reman, beating him back. He jumped up and thrust his sword at his foe’s throat.
Reman jammed his claws together, trapping Jayce’s blade between them.
The two stared eye to eye for a split second. Something twitched behind Reman’s real eye. A moment of fear and doubt. Jayce wasn’t the easy prey he should’ve been.
“This is for Kay!” Jayce landed an uppercut against Reman’s chest, and he felt ribs crack against the Veil-stone power in his fist. Reman’s feet came off the ground and his claws deactivated. Jayce fell back to his prizefighting skills and beat Reman mercilessly with his one fist. He hooked a punch into the Draug’s face and knocked metal teeth out of his mouth. He raised his hand up next to his ear and landed a downward-angled blow that sent Reman to his knees.
Jayce slashed his blade across Reman’s throat, twisting around as blood sprayed into the air. He fell face-first into the bog and didn’t get up.
Reman’s limbs jerked and spasmed for a moment, then he went limp and sank into the mud.
“Ah!” Jayce’s hand felt like it was on fire. He dropped his hilt and fell to his knees, then with his free hand gripped his wrist and fought to control the power coursing through him. The light was so strong that he could see his finger bones.
“No! I can’t—can’t . . .”
Through the pain, a melody chimed. Jayce sucked in a breath and began singing.
“Ahs sodame ko dahl . . . tad arima na egur methar . . .” The power subsided with the pain and Jayce forced his hand open. He looked up, unsure who to thank for the inspiration to calm the stone. He picked up the muddy hilt and shook it clean.
Reman lay dead. Blood pooled around him in the bog.
“Which way?” Jayce looked around. “Which way did you come from? You must have gone in and out of the Veil through the same gate as Leeta—no, Lahash. There never was a Leeta.”
A rumble of engines built in the distance. The skiff skirted over distant treetops, not on an intercept course for Jayce.
“Hey!” He waved his hilt overhead. “Little help!”
The skiff disappeared over the jungle.
“Ah . . . damn i—Oh, what is happening?”
Light broke over Jayce and a shunt portal formed over his head. It fell onto him and Jayce vanished from Illara.
Jayce fell onto the shunt platform aboard the Iron Soul. He coughed hard, then retched out what little water was still in his stomach.
“Jayce? Where are Maru and Sarai? Neither is at the gate.” Uusanar leaned out of his command cradle. The alien’s long neck swayed to and fro as he waited for an answer.
“Shunt Sarai up here.” Jayce rolled off the platform, both arms clutching the tempest roiling through his stomach. “She’s . . . she’s got a stone like mine.”
“I wasn’t entirely sure you were you when I pulled you up,” Uusanar said. “The Veil energy readings are enormous and—”
“Just do it!” Jayce’s guts twisted like there was a knife in them.
“I cannot detect any other Veil emanations similar to yours.” Uusanar blinked, and his eyes went milky white. “I do sense the same Tyrant battleship from Hemenway. It is coming right for us and our escape window is closing.”
“Dastin? Eabani?” Jayce set his face against the deck and appreciated how cool it felt.
“They’ve just boarded the skiff and will dock with us in the next two minutes,” Uusanar said. “I’m violating a number of Pilgrim orbital regulations and I don’t know what will be cheaper: a new black-market transponder or the fines. Where are Maru and Sarai? What happened in there?”
“Maru—Maru is dead. The Tyrant has Sarai.” Jayce groaned in pain. “Why does this hurt so much?”
“Maru is gone? But I was just speaking to him before you all made planetfall. How can the Tyrant have Sarai? The Tyrant is dead by all accounts,” Uusanar said. The deck canted from side to side, which only made Jayce’s nausea worse.
“My shunt lock on you was imperfect as there was a high degree of interference from your new Veil stone. There should be no permanent damage,” Uusanar said.
“I’m not cleaning this mess up.” Jayce slunk to the deck. He gave Uusanar the high points of the journey through the Veil between coughing fits.
Dastin burst into the control chamber. He rolled Jayce over and grabbed him by the shirt and shook him hard.
“Where is she? Where is Sarai?”
“They took her,” Jayce said. “I . . . I couldn’t stop them. Maru’s dead, Dastin.”
Dastin froze in shock for a moment, then relaxed his hold on Jayce.
“As awful as current events have been”—Uusanar raised his four-fingered hands and tapped at holo globes spinning around him—“the Tyrant battleship is closing on us and if we do not engage FTL very soon our problems will compound. Who has command? As this ship is assigned to the Sodality, then Jayce has seniority.”
“We have to—Mmrph!” Jayce struggled as Dastin slapped a hand over his mouth.
“No, he’s not a Paragon yet,” Dastin said. “Get us to Nashar’s Star and then take the ley line straight to Cadorra. We have to tell the Sodality and Prefect Jessina what’s happened.”
“A most prudent course of action,” Uusanar said. “Jumping to FTL in three . . . two . . . one.”
Lahash removed his helmet as his skiff bounded over treetops. Sarai lay at his feet, her hands bound in thick metal covers, her wrists, knees, and ankles shackled together. A dark helmet covered her head and shoulders. Auto injectors hissed as they adjusted sedatives to keep her unconscious.
The dark stone pulsed from a box hanging from a chain around her neck. One of Lahash’s soldiers had been disintegrated when he picked up the stone after Sarai came through the Aperture gate with Lahash, Reman, and the rest of her expedition. Lahash had used a small antigrav device to manipulate the stone into a containment vessel, then placed it around Sarai’s neck.
“We’ve found him.” The helmsman banked the skiff to port and stopped over the muddy clearing where Jayce had impacted.
“Too soon.” Lahash jumped off the skiff and went to Reman’s body. “You’ve crossed over too soon, old friend. The Tyrant needs his acolytes to be sharp and functional. You’re better than a mindless beast.”
He spread the coarse hair on the back of Reman’s neck and watched as a dark gray metal pulsed through his spinal column.
Reman’s arms jerked. One hand slapped the shallow puddle and flailed around. His cyborg shoulder twitched and spat out muddy water from the faux muscles. A moment later, Reman’s head rose up.
His skin was loose; his flesh eye had sunk slightly in the socket.
“I’m alive.” His voice rumbled in his chest.
“Your Grip has taken you closer to the Tyrant’s dream.” Lahash lifted his chin, examining the damage. “Your body is rotting away, old friend. We need to get you into containment before the degradation hurts you even more. Your form is too beautiful for the tanks.”
“The whelp . . . he was stronger than I thought.” Reman touched his chest and pressed broken ribs against.
“You went for him without my permission,” Lahash said. “I tried to warn you.”
“I felt him. If I hadn’t hunted him, he would have slipped away for sure. The same ship must be in orbit. I will face him again and when I do—”
“Our mission was to capture the daughter and stop the traitors from seizing the Pinnacle stones.” Lahash nudged Sarai with his foot. “We accomplished more than that. Now we return to the Purgation without delay.”
“We can take them!” Reman brandished his claws in anger and one broken finger drooped toward the ground.
“No risks. Not now. Not when we’re so close to final victory.” Lahash shook his head. “The girl has a part to play in it.”