ROD’H
He floated in a world of tangible nightmares, and no matter how loudly he screamed, no sound echoed back through this empty, isolated bubble of darkness.
After tearing apart the verdani battleship like a pack of Ildiran jackal lizards, spilling the countless frozen Onthos bodies like seeds from a pod, the robot ships had left his ship exposed to the shadow cloud. As fearsome as the Klikiss robots were, the creatures of darkness were far, far worse.
Rod’h hung helpless now … cold, aching, blind. If he were superstitious, he might have believed himself dead—but this limbo was the antithesis of a Lightsource.
“Release me!” he screamed, and a silence as deep as the blackness buried his words. He reached out with his mind and his heart. It felt as if all the comforting strands of thism hung around him in frayed ends. The only faint connection he still felt came from the lifeline to his siblings, and they were much too far away to help.
Gale’nh was there—he could feel his brother inside his mind—but an infinite distance away … and with wrenching despair, Rod’h realized that meant the rest of the warliners had fled. They were long gone, and Rod’h felt very alone. But he remembered that Gale’nh had endured this, too. And survived.
All his life Rod’h had wanted to be recognized for his abilities, to demonstrate his skills and his worth, yet now he felt afraid. What had attracted the shadows to him? What did they want? He understood what his brother had experienced when the Shana Rei captured the Kolpraxa and consumed the entire crew. Still, they had been unable to defeat his brother, and they would not be able to defeat him either. Somehow, the halfbreeds had a strength that the shadows did not understand.
Rod’h had that strength. He knew it.
In desperation, he reached out for Gale’nh, but it felt as if his nerves were being flayed from within. How had his brother been able to endure this?
Unable to connect, he reached out farther, stronger. Muree’n was out there as well, somewhere … probably on Ildira. And Tamo’l was with the misbreeds on Kuivahr.
Finally, there was Osira’h, his strongest sibling. He caught the faintest of threads, a tiny contact, and he followed them but tried even harder to find Osira’h—yes, there she was! He was surprised to discover that she and Tamo’l were together in the sanctuary domes. He shouted to his sisters with his mind, begging them to notice him, but he heard only silence.
“I am strong enough!” he cried out, but the ringing black silence did not give him confidence, and the fear grew like a smoldering fire within him. Like the faeros!
Before he could reach out to the fiery elementals he had touched at Wulfton, his impotent defiance sparked a change in the formless void. Shapes twisted and emerged—a black smear deepened out of the emptiness, and a smoldering incandescent eye appeared out of the center. It was an iconic representation that struck fear into Rod’h, a useless shame.
In the sealed records unearthed by Anton Colicos and the rememberer kith, Rod’h had seen drawings of the ancient Shana Rei. He had thought they were mere drawings, the imaginings of an Ildiran rememberer who wanted to frighten an audience. But this thing was real, and Rod’h faced it now.
A pulsing, hideous voice echoed inside his skull. “We have you. We will know you.”
Dark fingers clawed inside his mind, sifting through his thoughts and ripping away his knowledge. The shadows plucked at his memories, extracted and inspected strings buried deep in his mind.
“I refuse!” Rod’h said.
Another inkblot appeared with its staring eye, then another, until he was surrounded by the maddening manifestations. Rod’h squeezed his eyes shut, but he still saw those blazing eyes inside his mind.
“You are different from other Ildirans.” The voice sawed like a dull serrated edge through his brain.
“You are different from humans … stronger. Interesting.”
“It concerns us.”
“We must understand. We will tear understanding from you.”
“No!” Rod’h screamed.
“How many others are there?”
“He is like the other one we captured.”
“We drained that one, but did not understand him. Nor did we destroy him.”
“We must be more thorough with this one. We will extract everything.”
“Thought by thought.”
“Memory by memory.”
The creatures of darkness pulsed around him, pressed against him, pushed into his mind like leeches. “How many others are there like you?”
“Where do they come from?”
“Are you in league with eternity’s mind?”
Rod’h screamed, and he buried the information deep. He wasn’t even sure what the questions meant. He simply fought back.
Still, they tore knowledge from him. He tried to stop them, but against his will he revealed that Gale’nh was alive, that his brother had escaped from the dead Kolpraxa, and that he was now part of the Solar Navy fleet—which could fight with the searing weapons that had just severely damaged the Shana Rei.
They also learned about Muree’n, his youngest halfbreed sibling, who was on Ildira—also well guarded, another difficult target.
The Shana Rei had rebuilt their ships with the dark material that englobed the Gardeners’ star, but they were wary about suffering too much destruction. They desired an easier target.
Rod’h fought back and could not understand how they were extracting information from him. He tried to empty his thoughts, tried to withdraw into himself before he revealed anything vital.… He even willed himself to die, if that would save his siblings and save the Ildiran Empire, but the shadows refused to let him do so.
The Shana Rei continued to interrogate him, and finally, even though he resisted with all his might, they pulled one last important detail from his mind.
Tamo’l and Osira’h, together.
Both relatively unprotected on an isolated Ildiran world.
Kuivahr.
He wailed and tried to block out the thoughts, yet they weren’t finished.
Another terrifying shape appeared. It looked like a large mechanical beetle with a black metal carapace and a flat geometric head studded with red optical sensors like bright stars in this incomprehensible void.
The Klikiss robot extended segmented limbs from its abdomen plate. Sharp claws opened and closed, reaching toward him with a sharp physical threat that seemed out of place in this nonsensical gulf.
The robot’s voice buzzed. “I have more questions, but the answers do not particularly matter. The pleasure comes in the interrogation itself.”
The robot approached. Even though Rod’h could not hear himself scream, he heard the clacking of the razor-edged pincers.