The Far Dawn (13 page)

“Where we were sacrificed. Where our earthly bodies lie frozen,” said Rana.

“That's right,” I said. “Paul found your bodies, and that's where he got the genetic samples to search for the Atlanteans in the first place. And . . .”

Then it hit me. “That's how he knows.”

“Knows what?” said Rana.

“If Paul saw Kael in Sentinel form, and also saw the bodies,” I said, my pulse pounding, “he probably figured out what you are. And if he knows that the Heart of the Terra has that kind of power . . .”

I remembered his words from the skull chamber, which felt like days ago:
the one true quest, the oldest quest there is.

He'd already practiced cheating death once, but only by bringing the Cryos in EdenSouth back as mindless drones. Now he would have the power to conquer death fully. All his experiments, the bodies in the Eden lab, the program that raised the Cryos, maybe this was what he was really working toward all along.

The power of immortality.

I struggled to my feet, everything sore, my wrist absolutely burning. “How long have I been out?”

“A day and a half,” said Rana.

A spike of panic surged through me. “What happened to Lilly and the others?”

“Your enemy, Paul, had too many soldiers. They escaped. I think the Medium girl, my sister, could have gotten away, but she would not leave her wounded friend.”

“No,” I said, hating and admiring Lilly's loyalty, “she wouldn't. Why didn't they take me?”

Rana's head cocked. “Because you were not here.”

“Not here? At all?”

“When I stabbed you, you disappeared until just moments ago.”

“Okay.”

“Also likely because you are not of the Three.”

“No,” I said. “I'm not.” Lilly, Mateu, and Evan were the Three. Evan standing in for Leech. The Three who would fail. Did Paul know that part? How could he? After all, the actual Three didn't. Only me.

I wanted to think through it more, all of it, not least about how I had actually time traveled, but Paul had a head start and I needed to hurry.

First, I needed to know where they were going. The Mariner's knowledge I'd had led only as far as this place.

“Are there any bodies here?” I asked Rana. “Of soldiers?”

“I threw them into the chasm,” said Rana. “They dishonored this space. Also, they were beginning to smell.”

“Ah,” I said. They might have had a gamma link pad I could have used.

“I did, however, keep this.” Rana indicated a black bag beside her in the shadow of the chair. Just my looking at it incited a white glow. “It is mine,” said Rana, “I think. I can't enter it, but that is how it feels.”

Come home, Rana,
the skull called to me, glowing, as if it only needed my attention turned toward it.

“Yeah,” I said. “Lilly's—and your—skull. Did you kill the woman who was carrying this?”

“It was dark,” said Rana with a shrug, “but I do think I remember a woman's scream. And when I saw the glow in her bag, I rescued it from the chasm.”

A little burst of adrenaline coursed through me, thinking of Francine being gone. The part of me that had wanted vengeance felt cheated. I should have been the one to kill her, not that I could actually imagine killing someone. Still, I was the one she'd wronged most. Maybe I'd have a chance with Paul. Paul who now had Lilly. It always came back to him. And I could all too easily imagine evening the score.

But something about the glowing bag bothered me. “And the soldiers didn't come back for this? Try to get it from you?”

“No. Perhaps they were too afraid.” Rana sounded proud.

“Yeah, but . . . they need that skull. Lilly needs to know how to communicate with the Terra. Isn't that what your skull teaches? How to be the Medium and talk to the Terra?”

“Yes. The Medium is the one who can talk to the Terra by singing her soul. Then she is the one who can actually free the Terra by answering the Terra's question.”

“What question?”

Rana seemed to shrug. “No one knows. But the shamans divined that the Terra could be freed by answering a simple question that she would pose to the one who could speak with her. That was the true role of the Three. Not just to protect the Terra but to free her.”

But the Three would fail, and so the Terra had chosen me instead. My worry grew, making the skull glow brighter as well. “Maybe Lilly had already communed with the skull. Maybe she already knows. But when I was in the skull, Rana—sorry, you—didn't tell me about the question.”

“The skulls are designed to reveal more information the closer the Three get to the Heart of the Terra,” said Rana. “It was a defense mechanism: in case of capture, it would keep the Three valuable and alive and keep the secrets. It was also to protect the Three from corruption of the spirit.”

“What's that mean?”

“It was believed that the Heart of the Terra is so powerful, even the most courageous would have second thoughts about freeing her.”

I turned all this over, struggling to put it together. It seemed like Paul would have known, or at least suspected, this feature of the skulls. And yet he'd left it behind without a thought. . . .

But maybe that made sense, too. If Paul was after the immortality power of the Terra, he'd have no need to free her from her cage. He didn't need the skull, just Lilly, to help run the Paintbrush, to activate the handprints.

After that, though, she'd be expendable.

“Okay, I've got to go,” I said, wanting to move, needing to move. . . .

But then I remembered my craft was gone.

I slumped back to the floor and looked out the window at the endless mountains. No supplies, not even boots to hike out in. And hike out to where in the sun and heat, and lethal cold at night? I wasn't getting out of here soon, or likely ever.

“What is it?” Rana asked.

“We came here in an Atlantean craft,” I said.

“The one hidden with the Aeronaut skull?”

“Yeah.”

“That was Lük's favorite ship. We once flew it cross hemisphere, to see the mammoth migrations in Siber. I miss him.”

“Yeah, well, it was a great ship. It got me and Lilly all the way here, but it's gone now.”

“Where is it that you need to go?”

“To Atlante,” I said. “Those men that were here, their leader, Paul, has the three Atlanteans. He's going to find the Paintbrush and use it. And there's nothing I can do.”

Rana sighed again, like a night wind through the Yellowstone caverns. “Poor boy,” she said.

“Yeah, poor me.”

“You are not of the Three.”

“Right, I know. Are you going to stab me again?”

“You are of the One. Chosen by the Terra to save us all.”

“I guess, but I'm not exactly having much luck at that.”

Rana stepped down off her throne. “I will help you.” She slid her sword into its scabbard, and I saw that she still had the twin blades, one on each hip. “This way. Bring the skull.”

“Wait, where?” I picked up the skull bag with my good hand, slung it over my shoulder, and followed her. I kept my broken wrist by my stomach, trying to keep it from moving, but every step caused deep waves of pain.

She walked out the wrecked door. “It is this way.”

Rana led me back down the wide staircase around the central chasm. We spiraled farther down than the skull chamber, crossed a stone bridge, and ducked into a tunnel, the carved walls lit only by her ethereal white. The passageway led straight for a while, then opened up into a wide space. Her light began to describe angles in front of us, and now I saw familiar wood and copper seams.

It was a craft. Quite a bit larger than the one I'd flown. It was maybe twenty meters long, of a diamond shape. Rana floated to where ladder rungs had been carved into the hull. We climbed up to a deck. Two copper masts lay flat, ready to be raised and attached to bronze fittings. Sails were rolled and stowed against the folded booms. Near the front, a semicircle of crystal glass as tall as me stood on its side, shielding an almost nautical-looking steering wheel from likely winds. There were pedals in the floor.

I gazed around, getting to know the ropes, imagining how the craft would move in the wind. But something obvious was missing. “No vortex engine.”

“Here.” Rana was standing over a trapdoor. I opened it by pulling up a metal ring. We dropped into a small, dark compartment; and in Rana's light I could see a large black sphere, as wide as the spread of my arms, made of gleaming obsidian.

“This is one of the larger-scale vortex engines.” It was ten times the size of the one in my old craft. Rana indicated a lever on the wall. I had to push hard, and it lowered with a heavy click and then gears began to grind. A section of the craft's hull slid open. A gleaming silver antenna extended down from the sphere, down beneath the craft, and I saw that it was headed for a circular notch in the floor. When the antenna hit this, there was a rumbling of rock and two sections of the floor spread apart. As they did, blue light seared my eyes. Beneath the floor was a swirling pool of vortex energy nearly as wide as this craft, but its glow was dim. It still had power, but not nearly what it had probably held ten thousand years before.

But it was more than enough for our purposes. The antenna lit up nearly molten and the light surged up into the black sphere. There was a familiar whine that eased my worried mind, and the giant vortex turbine began to hum deeper and stronger than anything I'd ever felt before.

The blue light from below faded, the last charge of this great Atlantean battery being sucked dry, and when the swirl had returned to its mercury silver, the antenna lost its glow. I threw up the lever and the system closed.

As we moved back to the deck, I could already feel that we were hovering off the ground.

I took the wheel with my left hand. I was right-handed, and wondered if I could pull this off. The wheel hummed with potential energy, like Sinassa, ready to pounce. Rana floated beside me and placed a hand on the wheel. “I can help. Let's go.”

I glanced at her, standing there, twin swords at her waist. “You're coming with me?”

“Your enemy, Paul, has an army. I will be yours. The army of the Terra. Also, I know how to get there.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“And when it is over, I will beg the Terra to free me from this lingering.”

There were rock walls on all sides except forward, where blackness beckoned.

I pressed the pedals and we leaped forward. “Whoa.” I could feel Rana looking at me. “Lük was probably way better at these things,” I said.

“Yes. But you're doing well enough.”

I flew into the darkness, guessing the passageway led straight ahead. After a few moments, a hint of silver beckoned. I increased our speed, and we hurtled out into the starlight. Looking back, I saw that we'd emerged from a cliff face, far below the high spire where Lilly and I had entered days—it felt like years—ago.

I brought us up, level with the peaks, and moved to try to lift the masts and unfurl the sails. After struggling with one hand, my broken wrist throbbing with every movement, Rana glided over and helped. Their rigging wound down into the deck, so that the ship's wheel could control them. Once we had it set up, I asked, “Which way?”

“Higher.”

“I meant which direction.”

“I know,” said Rana. “First, higher. This is a distance craft, meant for the curve of the atmosphere, the upper wind currents, where the air is thinner and faster. Then, south.”

13

THE MOUNTAIN PEAKS FELL AWAY BELOW US AS WE rose into the night, higher still until, far to the east, there was a meniscus of daylight. The temperature dropped, and the air grew nearly impossible to breathe.

Rana pointed to a lever by the wheel. I pulled it, and with a whine of pulleys and gears, the crystal windshield slid over our heads, more emerging from the deck, until it created a glass globe around us. I found locks to fasten it down, and then warm air began to filter in through small vents in the deck, keeping us warm and able to breathe in the thin, high air.

“Now . . .” She yanked on the bottom of the wheel, and with a snap it flipped up to a horizontal position. She slid a compartment open in the center of the wheel, and a glass ball rose up. There was a sphere inside the glass, striped with glowing orange lines.

“Those are the magnetic field lines of the planet,” said Rana. “They run from pole to pole and are particularly strong in certain places. We must angle until we can line up with this one.” She pointed to the glowing line that was nearest to a meridian etched in the glass. “It will lead us to Atlante.”

“But Atlante was destroyed,” I said.

“Yes,” Rana agreed. “We will have to see what shape it is in. I have heard that it was covered in ice for most of the last ten thousand years.”

“You've never been back?”

“No.”

I oriented to the force line, and once I was aligned with it, I climbed higher and pushed the pedals to the floor.

We hurtled above the clouds and nearer to the stars, so high that there was always dawn, first to the west, and then to the east.

The ship was fast, maybe five or six times the speed of Lük's craft. Flying it reminded me of those first moments when we'd taken off from Lake Eden, the feeling of having this power, this control and purpose . . . and of having Lilly by my side. The purpose was still there, but the ache of missing Lilly was worse than ever, especially not knowing where she was or what had happened to her while I had been in the white realm.

Owen, hurry.
The Terra's voice again.
They are very close.
I pressed down harder on the pedals, the wind outside the glass becoming a roar, and hoped we weren't too late.

Rana hovered next to me, her eyeless gaze aimed straight ahead, her mouth always curved down like she was sad.