Scowling, I stared at the BoKama through one slit eye. The other was swollen shut from her vicious blow in the ship. She ignored me, standing with head held high and hands holding the chains connected to the shackles around my wrists.
The Ikma Scabmal Kama sat on a simple wooden chair placed in front of the dais where stood two empty thrones. She stared at me and cocked her head.
“I see by the quirk of your brow you are confused,” she said. “Why does not the Ikma take her throne, as is her due?”
I couldn’t restrain my nostrils from flaring, but I said nothing.
“My body is too weak to climb the steps,” the Ikma said. “And besides. There is no joy in sitting atop a throne without my sister by my side. This old chair will do.” She gave a dry chuckle, and for a jotik, she resembled a great dam. I could picture little ones at her knee asking for stories. The jotik passed.
“What is my sentence?” I asked. “I return to Ikshe empty-handed and alone.”
“That you do,” she said, her voice thick with mucus. Her cough gurgled, and she spat into a folded cloth she kept in her lap. “Not a drop of the Holy Waters,” she said. “Not a pebble of woaiquovelt. The Quest is unfulfilled. What am I to do with you, Iktheka?”
“Consign me to the archives for the remainder of my natural life,” I said. “While you sew burial cloth,”—I indicated the neat stack of folded white cloths—“I could be researching to find the cause and the cure for the infant burial disease.”
The Ikma raised a brow at me and pursed her lips. Her claws ticked on the arm of the chair with an irregular rhythm.
“Perhaps the quest was unjustly commanded,” she said and glanced at the BoKama. Her features softened just as BoKama’s had done earlier in her ship when thinking of her Sister-Queen. They shared a bond I did not understand. “But you could have sent word at any time. Yet you remained on Ikthe and allowed your Queen to imagine the worst.” She stared at me until I bowed my head. “Furthermore, you harbored a trespasser on our sacred hunting grounds, and judging by her command of our language and the ferocity with which she strove to protect you, you formed an attachment to her.”
I didn’t correct her assumption. A few nights ago, the human Joan had commanded BoKama to unhand “Rax” in BoKama’s attempt to snatch a hunter brother under the Queen’s direction. We hadn’t realized the BoKama had plotted with VELMA to orchestrate a failed abduction in an attempt to leave a ship for those of us trapped on the hunting grounds. BoKama took Raxkarax, Joan’s heart mate, and Joan took exception to it—threatening both the BoKama and the Ikma Scabmal Kama with death. As expected, the exchange had been sight-captured, and doubtless, the Ikma had viewed it.
The “Rax” wasn’t myself, nor did I refute her other deductions. She would scent that I felt no remorse for my actions, nor pity for her weakened state. I’d been astonished to witness her slack skin and hollow eyes. Ikthe may pit its children against death every day, but in the many moons’ time we’d been exiled, the Queen had wasted to a shadow of herself in her own private battle against a mysterious illness.
BoKama coughed, and I looked up to see the Ikma frowning at her sister before turning her attention back to me.
“I puzzle what to do with you,” she said. “For now, the dungeon will suffice. BoKama, take him. We will discuss the alien privately. And do avoid the tower passageway; your cough worsens, and the winds blow cold and fierce from the tower.”
“Ikma,” BoKama said with the bow of her head. Gathering my chains, she led the way to the Lower Stair, the wide passage leading to the catacombs and dungeons. Guards stood on every landing on the way down and at the entrance to the Dungeon Hall.
BoKama and I had no words between us. The stone walls had ears; every guard was a spy, and BoKama didn’t know who would ally themselves to her should she defy the Queen. Opening a cell with her palm, she tossed my helmet into the dank area fit only for insects and rodents, and gestured I should walk in. I held my wrists out, and she touched the release to the shackles, its mechanism activated by her unique energy signature.
“Be well,” she said without looking back, and I watched her tall, slender form disappear down the hall, taking the only light with her.
I’d expected to be accompanied by hordes of prisoners, but the cells to either side and across from me were empty. A steady drip sounded from farther down the corridor, and a brief scurry of rodent paws echoed against the stone floor.
Picking up my helmet, I put it on.
“VELMA?”
“I’m here, Raxthezana,” she said. “I’ve duplicated the BoKama’s electromagnetic resonance. You may leave the cell at any time.”
“Thank you,” I said and opened the cell. It swung on well-oiled hinges, and I smirked at BoKama’s foresight. With the run of the dungeons, I could search here first for the human CeCe. There hadn’t been the slightest thread of a whisper to suggest that an alien had been captured by the Queen of the Theraxl, and yet my gut insisted CeCe’s danger lay at her feet, nonetheless.
Sprinting with quiet treads, I ran the length of the hall and saw cell after empty cell. I wasn’t familiar with all of the dungeons, only those nearest the archives where I’d had occasion to interview their occupants. With an ear tuned to the corridor leading to the Lower Stairs, I chose another hall and explored it as well.
The startling lack of prisoners piqued my confusion. BoKama insisted the Ikma had changed. Had she indeed released all of the prisoners? Might I be better served to sit patiently in my cell and wait for the Queen’s pardon? Mayhap she would assign me the archives. But that left CeCe unfound, and my mind twisted with possibilities.
Distant steps alerted me to someone on the Lower Stairs, and I hastened back to my cell, sliding in and curling up in the corner with a rotik to spare.
No one approached, and my mind retreated to the dream from before as it was wont to do.
The cracked, orange dirt expanse stretched endlessly toward the horizon where it met the hazy pale sky. Puzzling out the location, I marched forward, my boots pounding without sound. When I turned to mark my path, no prints indicated I’d passed. The stillness, isolation, and unfamiliar sky lent a dismal pall to my mood. Looking forward, a dark gray spike shimmered at the horizon where I focused my gaze. The longer I walked, the more the spike wavered in the heat of the coming day. Reality wavered; perhaps I was in a dream? The thought disappeared.
When I searched the sky for the sister suns, I did not see them.
A sense of urgency overcame me, and I found myself running toward the spike. Its shape widened. After running several veltiks, I could see the outline now; it was a ship belonging to a soft traveler. I stopped dead in my tracks.
Heat suffocated me; I tore my helmet off and tossed it to land with a bounce on the scorched ground. I dismantled my armor, letting the pieces fall. When I stood naked before the gaze of the absent suns, I searched the expanse for signs of any life.
Perhaps the ikadax, or a pack of pazathel-nax would come to slay me.
Silence pressed from all sides.
And though I stopped walking, the ship loomed closer.
A gray slash against the dried orange lakebed, mocking me with its passenger.
I knew now, where I was.
Turning in a circle, I studied the splitting angles of dried orange mud. The bones of Lake Wazakashe’s previous inhabitants lay scattered and gnawed.
What happened here?
Why did this cursed ship call to me?
But it did not. I heard nothing.
The tiniest crumb of curiosity bade me walk closer and look into the porthole.
But I would not.
Esra, Naraxthel’s heart mate and the first human we had met, had woken me for my night shift at that juncture, and though I’d spent many a watch pondering its meaning since, I was no closer to it.
My heart, transitioned long years past in my early childhood, did not suffer the pangs and torments that my brethren’s had upon finding their heart mates. But I felt something. An invisible tether? Or more accurately, a weak signal as if from a sight-capture during a thunderstorm. An indescribable connection led me to believe CeCe lay in torment on the other side of it.
When silence pervaded the hall for rotiks more, I determined to explore the next section. How came there to be not a single prisoner?
Tasking VELMA to monitor the area, I traveled through the dark catacombs and found no one.
Returning to my cell, I sat against the wall, head bowed, and rested my fist against my chest panel. Why did my heart stutter so? I knew why. CeCe’s time was running out. I had miscalculated. But if the Ikma Scabmal Kama didn’t have her, then where on Ikshe was she?