Shadowkill

##

When Jarnys saw her brother die, her concentration went-only momentarily, but it was enough; The cutter-beam sliced into her lander, carved away a third of it, took most of the rightside of her body with it. Dying she went nincs-othran and shut the pain away; the drives were partially intact, she had some power; she fought the machine around, sent it screaming at one of flickering cuttergates in the defense shield, got her timing perfect, and took a large chunk of the Compound with her as she crashed.

Miralys

On the bridge of the Cillasheg Miralys watched the battle below her, her claws shredding the padding of the co-seat. Rohant was dead, his body might still be alive down there, somewhere, but that didn’t matter, he was dead and gone, beyond her reach. She wasn’t grieving yet, she wasn’t even angry now, just grimly determined to take that island down to bedrock, not even a microbe left alive.

Kikun and his Gods

Kikun watched the deathdance on the great forward screen and mourned the lives he’d known and not known. This was what his grandfolks had seen when the daivavig landed their guns on Keyazee’s shores, when they’d flown their hot air balloons overhead and dropped incendiaries around the easterness forces. This is what they’d seen and he could feel the terror of it.

His gods came to him.

Suddenly they were there, watching, demanding… Jadii-Gevas stood behind Miralys, wild black eyes fixed on the screen. He was snorting and jerking his head, the antlertree swaying up and down, forward and back.

Spash’ats stood at the back of the bridge, bigger and darker than before, his darkness pressing against the glow from the screen.

LIFE NOT DEATH, Spash’ats rumbled at Kikun. What must be done, see that it is done without excess, that it is finished quickly and cleanly as such things go. You can do this, Nayol Hanee, you must do this.

Xumady snorted and danced across the control panels and sensorboards beneath the great forescreen, his nimble black paws flickering over and around the nimble clawed hands of the Dyslaera working there, his long limber body humping and flattening. He sang a wordless song of fierce triumph, a hot joyous song of rage and hate as the Mimishay compound began to crumble under the blows from the landers. And when a lander burned to ash or went tumbling in a black arc to the boiling stone, he sat up on his haunches, his long back straight and stiff, his short forelegs stretched wide, and he keened his grief and the Dyslaera grief. He was all passion and heat, his fire beating at the cool restraint of Spash’ats’ dark reason.

’Gemla Mask hung before Kikun, white stripes across the black base flushing red with Xumady’s song, going ice-white and pure when Spash’ats was stronger… change and change again, a rhythm as steady as the splash of waves against the island’s shore. Kikun was Mask, was caught in the ebb and flow…

Then Grandmother Ghost was back, pinching him, her strong ancient fingers as punishing now as they were when she was still alive and he was a small naughty tokon playing in the mud.

Your girl’s down there, chile. You want her alive, you’d best go get her, Her and that Rohant. What I can see, they going to get themselves roasted any minute now. Gaagi, you gormless shade, haul your tail out here and show him…

She pinched at Kikun till he swung his chair about and stared at the emptiness where Spash’ats had drawn back into himself.

Gaagi bloomed from a speck of darkness and stood, a shining black figure against the matte black cloud of Spash’ats. He spread his arms, stood with his head turned so Kikun saw only one glittering eye and the powerful jut of the Raven’s beak. Gaagi did not dance this time, his feet were not defined this time; this time he spread his wings and swayed his torso to make the black scales shimmer. Light came from those shimmers, gathered in a cloudy sphere floating before his chest.

The clouds cleared to crystal and in the crystal Kikun saw two bodies lying facedown on the earth, Shadith and Rohant lying facedown and very still, dangerously close to the creeping melt around the periphery of the Compound.

Shadith/Ginny

Tsipor shook Shadith awake; with an awkward undulant flip of a hand, she pointed at the small screen.

It was divided into several cells, all but one dedicated to the EYEs worming their tortuous ways down toward the Compound kephalos buried deep in bedrock. The singleton cell was tied to the EYE Ginny had grudgingly sent to overlook Rohant; at the moment it was expanded by a factor of three and dominated the screen.

Rohant stood beside his cot, staring at the floor. An android was moving around him with ponderous weightiness and outside the open grill, a robed, cowled ward jigged from foot to foot, rapped the back of his metalled glove against the edge of the heavy steel grill, physical expressions of his agitation.

Shadith knelt beside Ginny, frowning at the image. “What’s going on? Middle of the night, isn’t it?”

“You see what I see.”

She heard the guard scream at Rohant, then watched the trio go trotting off. The_. EYE followed them. She glanced at the other cells on the screen, but there was nothing in any of them to explain the guard’s nervous distress or this sudden summons. “Well, what do you think is happening?”

“I do not know. It has been very quiet down there since the sea beasts died.” Ginny hesitated, reached for the control pad, chew his hand back. “If I were where I should be…” he glanced at her, annoyance in his face and voice, “I would have the resources to explore this properly.”

Shadith snorted. “You can play that tune for someone else, Ginbiryol Seyirshi. If you’d meant to run this from orbit, we’d be there right now. Take too long, wouldn’t it. And you’d be too vulnerable a target. What do you want me to do?”

He gazed at her without expression for a long moment. “I could start another EYE for the Compound, but it would not arrive for an hour and that would most likely be too late. I want you to reach into the Director’s Chamber and tell me what is happening…” He swore shrilly as Rohant stunned the guard and took off running. “That could ruin… I have to know what the Omphalites are doing. Go search, Singer. That fool could bring the whole island down on us.”

“Good ol’ Lion. All right, all right.” She glanced at Tsipor, but the Raska wasn’t offering this time; she was focused intently on the cells of the screen.

Shadith swallowed a giggle, crawled back to the mattress. Rohant was out and running. Free. Running free. He’d done it for himself, he hadn’t been waiting for anyone to come and cut him loose. She felt like whooping, giggling, running out to meet him. She didn’t feel like stretching out and hunting eyes-and-ears inside that Compound, so she took her time getting there.

Ginny swore again as the images in most of the cells began breaking up; he bent over the pad, working frantically to reestablish full contact with his infiltrating EYEs.

“What is it?” she called to him. “What happened?”

“Defense shield came on,” he muttered. “Do what you are supposed to do, leave me alone.”

Shadith wiggled her brows. “Touch-ee,” she murmured, then sighed and crawled onto the mattress. Before she stretched out, she looked again at Rohant’s image. He was running easily, heading toward the mountains, now and again squinting up through the slackening rain at something she couldn’t see because the EYE was focused downward, centered on the Dyslaeror.

Tsipor hissed, scooted for the dome’s lock, was through it before either of the others had time to react.