Chapter 19

BLACKWOOD BETRAYED

“Are you really gonna force me to carry you down this cliff?” Blackwood growled, rounding the dekatite boulder she’d just stashed their parkas beneath. Andrew sat with his back against the other side, arms crossed and face turned away. The position put his face directly toward the midday Early Sun. It couldn’t have been comfortable, even with the sea breeze pushing his fine hair off his forehead, but he made no move to divert his eyes. Maybe he’d closed them.

“Andrew!” she snapped. “I do not have time for this. I have to get down there and figure out how the Dhavvies got the Desert Crab. Figure out why my crew never triggered the suicide switch. See if they’re still alive.”

“Then go.” The wind almost robbed his low words; by his motionless body, he might not have spoken at all.

“What, and leave you up here? On the top of an island in the middle of nowhere?”

Andrew shrugged without turning his head.

“Are you still upset about the Shon Aha thing?”

He did turn his head then, but only enough for her to see him in profile. “I’m fine. Go check on whatever you need to. It’s my fault they’re here, right? Just like it’s my fault we’re here. Anything else my fault, Mila? The Dhavnak gods, maybe? Your freakish lightning powers?”

“What did you want me to say?” she said angrily. “The Dhavvies wouldn’t have come here if they didn’t know this island was special!”

“There’s nothing about this island in the notes!” he shot back. “So it couldn’t have been Cu Zanthus!”

“Yes, but it’s made of dekatite. And there’s plenty about dekatite in there!”

He turned to look at her, his face pinched in suspicion. “The whole island is made of dekatite?”

“Yes.”

He turned his head fully, taking in the steeply-climbing dekatite face that rose to the summit behind her. A thin plume of ash drifted from the top, though it dissipated quickly in the morning sky.

“Not just island,” he said softly. “Volcano.”

“Yeah.”

“You have a research station on a volcano.”

“It makes a good hiding spot.” She waved her hand at the plume. “And it’s been doing that for years. There’s no danger.”

“Is that a fact?”

Blackwood gritted her teeth. “Yes. It’s a fact. Get up, Andrew! Now!”

He glared at her, but shifted his weight to push himself up. Something flashed in his hand, bright enough to blind her for a second. She bolted to his side, knelt, and snatched it from him. It was a round tin, the kind used to package dried travel snacks, depicting a Belzene Ptero R-12 biplane on the lid. She pried off the top and confirmed that the rattle inside was, in fact, nuts, dried fruit, and meat.

“Why do you have this?” she said.

“Why do you think?” he said tightly. “In case I get hungry.”

“Why were you holding it? You didn’t eat anything just now.”

“Well, I was about to.”

She sneered. “That’s about as likely as the Dhavvie gods being real.”

“What are you–”

“Shh.” Blackwood pressed a hand over his mouth, pushing his head against the boulder. “I hear something.”

It was voices. She could barely pick out snatches over the wind, but what she could hear carried the flowing, melodic tones of the Dhavvish language. But why under the suns would they have come up here? Her eyes flicked down to the tin she still held and she got a sick feeling, down in the pit of her belly. No. Please, no. She met Andrew’s eyes. He stared back calmly. Was that what this was about? He’d been trying to keep her here? No. It wasn’t possible.

The men were coming closer, and she could hear the distinct clank of shifting rifles in hands. How many were there? One was clearly giving orders, and it was the responses that gave her the rough count. At least four. Maybe six, although the second voice and the fifth may have been from the same man. Now that they were near the top of the cliff, they were probably spreading out. There was nowhere to run. She had no weapons – the empty pistol had been left behind in shrouding, and she had no idea where the arphanium pipe she’d used to escape the shrouding realm had ended up. All she had was that lightning. The lightning that would surely weaken her now that they were back in their world. The lightning that hadn’t killed anyone at the lab due to her utter lack of control. The lightning that would erase any doubt they were there.

The lightning that may have been given to her by an enemy god. Xeil help me.

“Hai! Arras ansela!”

Blackwood’s head snapped to the right, where a soldier in black had come up on a rise nearby, and stood with his rifle trained on them. Slowly, Blackwood lowered her hand from Andrew’s mouth. Very softly, without taking her eyes from the soldier, she said, “Cu Zanthus tried to kill you. Why did you do this?”

“Who says I did?” Not a hint of surprise showed in his voice, at either the soldiers or her accusation.

Anger burned a slow heat in the back of her head. Her own brother had betrayed her. How had they come to this?

The lightning came easily this time. Too easily. The soldier with the rifle was flung backward from the rock, his clothing and skin singed and smoking. Thunder rolled in the wake of the lightning. Dizziness washed over Blackwood, and she staggered back from Andrew, who was shouting and pressing himself into the boulder. She kept her feet, and sent another lightning strike directly into the soldier running around the other side.

Somewhere in the crash of the second thunderclap, a rifle shot sounded. White-hot pain erupted through her thigh. She went down, still clutching at the energy for whoever appeared next. Someone yelled out, “Staj! Staj!”

She looked up to see Andrew standing in front of her, both hands out in front of him. “Staj!” he cried again. “Chanha marba! Cu Zanthus thurnadh ea chanha marba!”

Hearing Dhavvish come out of her brother’s mouth was almost more than Blackwood could take. How far back did this go? It was hard to focus, as the dizziness pulsing through her was compounded by lightheadedness. She gritted her teeth and struck again, aiming for the soldier approaching on her left. This time, the power didn’t rip through her as easily as it had the last two times, and a wash of weakness threatened to pull her from consciousness. But the soldier still fell.

Again.

She didn’t let the fourth strike fall, though. One of the soldiers had run forward and yanked Andrew back, spinning him around. He pressed a huge knife to the kid’s throat. “Goncor!” he shouted. Another Dhavvie ran up on her right and pressed his rifle to her temple, hard enough to shove her head to the side.

“Ea thurnadh ea chanha marba!” Andrew screamed again.

Blackwood drew in a deep breath through her clamped teeth and raised her hands in the air, just above her head. She was shoved onto her stomach and her hands were tied behind her. But as she lay against the jagged dekatite, it was the desperation in Andrew’s voice that she honed in on. After seeing many sailors through their first moments of combat, she knew exactly what it was.

Andrew had been enthralled by the novelty of what he was doing, and had treated his subterfuge with Cu Zanthus as a game. Even as Cu Zanthus had choked him, he’d probably thrilled in his role in helping. But seeing his sister shot right in front of him… it had destroyed the fantasy. She knew what he’d yelled almost as clearly as if she spoke Dhavvish. Cu Zanthus said he wouldn’t kill her. And Andrew had believed it, with all his heart.

She was yanked to her feet, but before she could regain her balance, the craggy rocks pitched around her like waves on the sea. At first she thought it was her own vertigo from using her power, but the Dhavnak soldiers were reeling too, thrown from their feet to the sharp rocks. Blackwood went down again. With her hands bound behind her, her face smashed into the rocks with a force that left her stunned. She struggled to breathe, and her stomach churned with nausea.

The tremor lasted only seconds. By the time she’d finally caught her breath, she’d been forced up again and tossed over a man’s shoulder. Loud shouts in Dhavvish filled the air, and Andrew’s panicked yells were among them. His hands had been tied now too, and the knife was back at his neck. Another soldier grabbed Blackwood’s face with one hand and gestured angrily toward the dead Dhavvie soldiers with his other. He growled something, pointing back at Andrew. You kill anyone else, and we’ll kill your brother. She thought about spitting in his face. But angry soldiers with knives and guns might take it out on Andrew – or on her. She couldn’t forget the way Dhavnaks treated their own women. She was sure they wouldn’t hesitate to treat her the same.

This is good, she tried to tell herself as they started down. I needed to find a way to get onto the research base anyway. It was also impossible to ignore the fact that she had purposely struck three soldiers, and hadn’t even passed out. Dhavvie god’s powers or not, she was learning to use the lightning to her advantage. She’d have to worry about the implications later. For now, it was all she had.

She raised her head. Andrew was cooperating now, but his mouth hung slightly open and his eyes darted from person to person too fast to possibly take anything in. What was he thinking? Surprised they weren’t treating him like a hero? Or was he just still reeling from the tremor? Probably a little of both. Blackwood looked away in disgust. I’ll kill him. The second I get away–

But no. She halted the thought in its tracks. It wasn’t too late. Without his precious Cu Zanthus there, the romance of his collusion was gone. Once Cu Zanthus showed up – and she knew he would, eventually – Andrew would be lost again. She had to reach him before then. Somehow.

The research base was built into the side of the island, so only a long concrete dock was visible on the outside. The dock was split to allow sea access into two large square openings with ironwood supports, where submarines could seemingly disappear right into the mountain. Two bulbous Dhavnak submarines floated in the water just off the docks, looking dark and impenetrable without the solar cells that Belzene subs carried on their surfaces. The Desert Crab herself was halfway into one of the pens.

They were brought into the submarine pen on the right. The temperature rose the second they stepped into the shaded tunnel, and the smell of sulfur intensified. Steaming water dribbled from the inwardly-curving walls in several places and pooled in small pockets on the rough concrete. The wind was nonexistent in here, and even the sound of the breakers against the dekatite shore were muffled, giving way to the softer laps of the water between the two walkways.

The soldiers dumped Blackwood and Andrew onto the concrete. Blackwood lay gasping, her thigh pulsing in hot pain, as the soldiers tied hers and Andrew’s wrists to the rails right above the waterline – the ones at ground level that sailors used to help lower themselves into the dry docks when the water was drained. Blackwood was lying on her back, and Andrew sat with his legs tucked beneath him and his hands bound at the floor. A soldier came forward and wrapped a bandage around Blackwood’s wound several times, right over her trouser leg. Blackwood kept her legs bent, making sure the wound was above the level of her heart, and put pressure on it with her opposite leg to minimize blood loss. She thought the bullet had just grazed her – maybe even purposely, if the soldiers had been told to capture them alive – but the thought didn’t make the pain any better.

She could just see through the wide concrete supports into the other submarine pen. The Desert Crab was being stripped of its arphanium. The crystal pipes glowed against the other pen’s wall, sending a soft white light throughout the tunnels and barely illuminating their own. Blackwood grimaced. Clearly, they had the inside scoop on arphanium now as well. But why take it out of the boat? Why not just use the boat, if they wanted it for shrouding? And what had they done with the Desert Crab’s crew? Were they still onboard?

She watched the Dhavnaks for several more moments. No, they weren’t stripping the boat; not anymore. They were loading something on. Big, obviously heavy, black blocks were being carried from the outside dock into the Desert Crab. Blackwood’s mouth opened slightly as she saw the loops of wires on their surfaces, as well as the warning labels stamped on the sides. Explosives.

Her breath came short. All this time, she’d thought if the Dhavnaks discovered shrouding, they’d use it to take Belzen. But their plan was so much simpler. They’d stripped the arphanium to keep for themselves and were planning to send her old submarine back to Marldox. Marldox would let the Desert Crab in, unaware that it had been compromised. And the Dhavnaks’ explosives would level the entire naval base, and maybe a good chunk of the city in the process. With Ellemko already fighting for its life, the surprise attack on Marldox would give the Dhavnaks the last push they needed. Belzen would be theirs.

I should strike them with my lightning, Blackwood thought. Right here, right now. But there were five soldiers close by with guns trained on them. She didn’t think they’d kill her for trying – they would want her alive, so she could be trained to use her power for their own ends – but she had no doubt they’d kill Andrew. It wasn’t a risk she could take.

She shifted her weight and pulled herself to an awkward sitting position, with one foot brushing the water and the other propped at her side, so she wasn’t squeezing any more blood from the wound. Andrew hadn’t moved; his legs were still tucked beneath him, his bound hands in tight fists by the floor. His eyes were fixed on the pen entrance behind her. She knew exactly what he was watching for. For Cu Zanthus to come walking in and save him.

Honestly, Andrew, Blackwood thought, what did you think was gonna happen up there? She suppressed the words, though, waited a moment for the flash of anger to dissipate, and then spoke, just loudly enough to be heard over the surf and the loading of the soldiers in the other pen.

“Andrew. We need to talk.”

He didn’t look away from the entrance. “No danger, you said. There was an earthquake.”

“Yes, a tremor,” she answered. “They’re common in places like these.”

“This place could… this whole island could…”

“Andrew, it won’t. The shrouding has been making it somewhat worse, but it’s not gonna blow.”

Andrew set his jaw and gave a quick shake of his head, as if he didn’t believe her. Or maybe it was just his way of ending the conversation.

Blackwood closed her eyes and took three deep breaths before speaking again. She kept her voice as calm as possible. “I need your help.”

Andrew’s lips thinned. He looked down at his hands.

“The notes are gone,” Blackwood continued. “You’ve read them. If we stick to just the bare facts… just exactly what you’ve read, not interpretations or anything like that… do you think you could help me?”

Andrew didn’t look up, but his breathing was slow enough that she knew he was listening.

“Onosylvani,” Blackwood said. “Did she have a mark like mine? Made of dekatite?”

It seemed like an age passed. But Andrew finally gave the barest of nods, so small she would have missed it if she’d blinked.

“Was there anything about her having powers?” she asked.

“No,” Andrew said softly.

Damn. Another dead end.

“But there is a Dhavnak legend.”

Blackwood sucked in her breath. She tried to catch Andrew’s eye, but he was still staring at his hands. “About someone with a dekatite mark?” she said. “Having powers?”

He nodded again.

“Can – can you tell me?”

“It’s not from the notes.”

“It’s OK. Tell me anyway.”

Across the pen, something clanged loudly against the Desert Crab. Behind them, one of the Dhavvie soldiers was telling his companions a story, or at least detailing a long explanation of something. The steady crashing of the sea drifted in as an undercurrent to it all. Andrew finally spoke, layering his words into their surroundings so effortlessly she had to strain to hear them.

“His name was Galene Marduc Craniamanthe. He was an explorer. Legends say that on one of his expeditions, down in a deep South Polar canyon, he ran across a secret entrance into the Aphotic Fields – where Synivists go after death. Accounts differ on what he saw there. The souls of the dead. Fields of rock. A land waiting to be shaped. Not much of a paradise, to us anyway. But to them… there was a community there. A community of labor and – and kinship. Galene Marduc mapped it, over the course of seven years, going in and out freely. He spoke with the gods there, but Vo Hina… this was before the Betrayal, so she hadn’t been exiled yet.”

Blackwood felt chilled. OK, so the kid was smart. He could talk without flying to pieces. But only when he was talking about Synivistic religion, it seemed. She didn’t like the implications.

“The Betrayal,” she said. “Wasn’t that something like a hundred thousand years ago?”

“Yes. Galene Marduc became too close to Vo Hina during his studies. He laid with her in a dekatite crevasse. Came away with godlike powers, and a streak of dekatite burned into his back. This was most likely the source of the legend about gods granting blessings through dekatite, and dekatite being a holy substance. Afterwards, Shon Aha tried to kill them both.”

“What kind of godlike powers?”

“It’s vague. Leans toward earthquakes, volcanoes, traveling between life and death, that sort of thing. In any event, the resulting battle was powerful enough to rip off a section of Mirrix. The chunk ended up in the sky as the Shattered Moon, which to them is Vo Hina. Banished after Shon Aha destroyed her eye.”

“But I thought she was punished for hoarding,” said Blackwood. “Not laying with some human.”

“Right. Galene Marduc was supposedly only one of several humans she got too close to – the final one that pushed Shon Aha over the edge. Vo Hina didn’t allow the other gods access to any of the humans. She wanted to keep them all for herself.”

Blackwood’s eyebrows rose. “She was hoarding… people?”

“Souls,” said Andrew, nodding. “She was hoarding Mirrix’s souls from the other gods.”

Blackwood whistled beneath her breath. That was a twist she hadn’t seen coming.

“Galene Marduc returned to Mirrix, pregnant with her child. This is how Vo Hina’s curse was introduced into the female population–”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Blackwood cut in. “Galene was pregnant with her child? How?”

“It’s in some of the more obscure records. Galene Marduc was neither fully man nor woman, although Dhavnak mythology has shoved him firmly to the male side in modern texts.”

“But how do they reconcile that with…” Blackwood stopped herself. Now wasn’t the time to get pulled into a debate about Synivistic mythology. “What happened after Shon Aha banished Vo Hina?” she asked instead.

“The battle left Mirrix devastated. The planet was cast into darkness for seventeen hundred years. They call it the Age of Fallen Light. Three-quarters of the planet’s population died. It wasn’t until the gods returned, in the forms of the suns and moons, that they were able to save the remnants from the darkness and cold.”

Blackwood nodded slowly. “OK. So there’s an ancient darkness in Synivistic legends. And it was inadvertently triggered by this Galene guy getting a magic mark.”

Andrew blinked. His gaze darted to her arm and back again. “That… yeah. That is sort of how it happened. But…”

“But what?”

“But it was Vo Hina’s betrayal that caused the darkness. And there hasn’t been a betrayal this time, has there?”

Blackwood frowned, caught off-guard. “What?”

“Unless you count Belzen betraying Dhavnakir by hoarding product… cutting off the arphanium trading…”

“Wait. Betraying Dhavnakir? What are you talking about?”

“I’m trying to think of what could trigger another period of darkness!” Andrew said. “And your mark, I- I hadn’t even thought of that…”

“Trigger another period of darkness?” she echoed. “Andrew, you’re talking about a Synivistic legend here!”

Andrew shook his head. “No! It’s not just a legend! Galene Marduc existed. His map existed. Several sources mention the eternal darkness, and the resulting mass extinction. Onosylvani was marked. You have divine powers! Who are you to say none of it is real?”

“Who are you to say any of it is?” she countered.

“Not me. Mother and Father.”

“No. You said this wasn’t from the notes. So what did the notes say?”

“They said the Age of Fallen Light could happen again. They said we could cause it! What if this is what they meant? The betrayal? The war?”

“The notes said it could happen again?” she broke in. “Our parents’ scientific notes?”

“Yes!”

“I don’t believe this!” Her anger spiked, hot and sharp, before she could stop it. “How much has Cu Zanthus been telling you? Can I trust anything you just said?”

Andrew’s eyes widened. “You asked me! Mila, you asked me!”

“That was before I realized Cu Zanthus had completely converted you!”

Andrew stared at her, stricken. A moment later, he backed away, as far as his bonds would allow. “Leave me alone, Mila! Just shut up!”

“But I should have known. You sold out your own sister, after all–”

“Stop! You can’t just ask for my help then ridicule everything I say! You can’t believe only the things you want to–”

“Hai!” one of the guards roared. “Socrach faseos!”

But Andrew’s voice rose, overriding the guard’s. “You can’t assume everything I say has been tainted because of him, you can’t pretend you care when it’s convenient, you can’t hate me one second then ask for my help the next–”

The guard stepped forward and bumped him on the head with the butt of his rifle, and Andrew screamed as he almost pitched into the water. The guard caught him around the shoulders at the last moment and hauled him back. Andrew kicked wildly, still yelling at the top of his lungs. The guard got a hand over his mouth and pinned him down on his stomach, his knee in his back. Andrew breathed so hard and so fast against the man’s palm, Blackwood knew he was hyperventilating.

“Let him go!” she cried.

The guard shot her a scornful look, a condescending curl to his lip.

“It won’t happen again,” she said. “I promise.”

The guard answered her in clipped Dhavvish. He removed his hand from Andrew’s mouth and shoved his face into the walkway before stepping back. Andrew kept his face down, his hands still tied above his head, and gasped into the concrete.

Blackwood tried to slow her own suddenly quickened heartbeat. Andrew is not my enemy. Cu Zanthus is my enemy. Not Andrew. Not Andrew. It was hard to force herself to believe it. But she had to. His time was running out.

“I don’t hate you,” she said, hoping he could hear her.

“Channil a bruidthe!” the guard snapped.

Andrew turned his head just enough to stare at her through redrimmed eyes. He looked too exhausted to respond. Blackwood gave him what she hoped passed for a smile.

Keep it together, she told herself. Ignore the voice that says he deserves it. Ignore the voice that says it’s too late. Ignore the voice that wants to hurt him for what he’s done. Keep it together, or you will lose him. For good.