If the call had come a minute before, she would have been tempted to let the answering machine get it, to soak in a bath before going to bed. After all, what could be so important she couldn’t deal with it tomorrow? Deirdre didn’t know, but the message on the computer screen changed everything. She lunged for the phone, unsure who it would be on the other end, though somehow not surprised when it was Travis Wilder.
“Deirdre, I’m so glad you’re home,” he had said, his words clipped. “Can you . . . can you come over right away?”
“Of course,” she had said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.” She hung up and glanced at the computer. The message was gone, but she knew now who had sent it.
It was he. There was no other possibility, even though he hadn’t contacted her in over three years. The last time had been just a few weeks after the events in Denver, when the Steel Cathedral was destroyed, and the truth about Duratek’s involvement in the illegal trade of the drug Electria was revealed. After that, for a time, she had hoped. Every phone call, every e-mail message, had caused a jolt of excitement.
Only they were never from him. Whoever the mysterious Philosopher was who had helped her in the past, he had fallen silent. But hadn’t he said it would be like that? It may be some time until we speak again, he had told her at the end of their first and only telephone conversation. But when the time comes, I’ll be in touch.
That time was now. Yet what did it mean? Something had happened—something had changed—but what?
You know what it is, Deirdre. Perihelion is coming. Earth and Eldh are drawing near. That’s what he told you three years ago. Maybe it’s close now. Maybe that’s why everything is changing. . . .
She turned down a deserted side street, half jogged the last block to their building, and started up the steps. Just as she reached the door, the short hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Again she gripped her bear claw necklace—a gift from her shaman grandfather—and turned around.
The black silhouette of a figure stood on the edge of a circle of light cast by a streetlamp. A thrill of dread and wonder sizzled through Deirdre. Was it him? Surely he was keeping watch on Beltan and Travis. How else would he have known Travis was about to call her?
The figure reached out a beckoning hand. As if compelled by a will not her own, she started back down the steps.
“Deirdre!” a voice called from above. “Up here.”
She turned and looked up. Beltan leaned out of a window two floors above her.
“I’ll let you in,” the blond man said, then his head ducked inside. A second later the building’s front door buzzed, and the lock clicked.
Deirdre glanced over her shoulder, but the circle of light across the street was empty. She pulled on the door before the buzzing stopped, then bounded up two flights of stairs. The door of their flat opened before she could knock on it, and she was hauled inside by strong hands.
“It’s been too long since we’ve seen you,” Beltan said as he lifted her off the floor in an embrace.
“So you’re going to crush me as punishment?” she managed to squeak.
Beltan set her down and straightened her leather jacket. “Sorry. For me, hugs only come in one strength.”
“That would be maximum,” she said, returning his grin. However, her smile vanished as she caught Travis’s troubled gray eyes. He moved forward and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“Thank you for coming.”
“I’ll always come when you call, no matter how long it’s been or how far away you are. But what’s going on? And why couldn’t you tell me over the phone?”
He stepped aside. The first thing she noticed was the broadsword hanging above the sofa; that had to be Beltan’s. Then her gaze moved down, and she saw the woman sitting there. The woman stood, stretching limbs clad in supple black leather.
“Oh,” Deirdre said, and would have fallen to the floor if not for Beltan’s strong hands.
They set her on the sofa, propped her up with a pillow, and pressed a glass of porter into her hand. A few sips of beer revived her enough that she was able to tell them she was fine, though she wasn’t certain that was really the case.
For the last three years, Deirdre had done her best not to think about them. The Seekers had officially closed the Wilder-Beckett case. The gate to the world AU-3—to Eldh—had been destroyed, and Duratek Corporation had been destroyed as well. The company had been dismantled by the governments of Earth; its executives were in jail or, in many cases, dead. There would be other investigations, maybe even other worlds. But the door to this one had been shut. It was over.
At least, that was what she had told herself. But deep within, Deirdre had known it wasn’t over, not truly. They had all of them been waiting, that was all. Waiting for a day when two worlds would draw closer. Waiting for a time they would be called again.
“All right,” Deirdre said, setting the empty glass on the coffee table. “Who’s going to tell me why I’m here?”
Vani and Beltan both cast glances at Travis. He sat down on the sofa next to her and took her hand in his.
“I supposed I always let myself believe it was just a story, that there was nothing behind it.” His gray eyes were solemn. “I thought it would never come. Only now it finally has.”
Deirdre shook her head. “I don’t understand. What’s come?”
“Fate,” Travis said.
Before Deirdre could ask what he was talking about, Vani spoke, and for the next several minutes Deirdre listened as the T’golexplained how and why she had come to Earth, and of her last three years fleeing from the Scirathi. Vani’s words were terrible and fascinating, but Deirdre found it hard to focus on them. A droning noise filled her skull; there was something she needed to tell them, but what was it?
She stared at the T’gol. Vani’s face was sharper than before, but still lovely, even delicate. Tattoos like vines accentuated the exquisite lines of her neck; thirteen gold rings glittered in her left ear. However, Deirdre knew it would be a mistake to let that beauty lull her. Vani was an assassin, trained since girlhood in the arts of stealth, infiltration, and killing in swift silence.
There was much Vani alluded to that Deirdre already knew, things she had learned when she first met the T’goland which Deirdre had included in her reports to the Seekers: how Vani’s people believed Travis Wilder was the one destined to raise Morindu the Dark from the sands that had swallowed it long ago, and how the gold-masked sorcerers, the Scirathi, hoped to reach it first, to steal the magics entombed within for their own purposes.
“Only what exactly is buried in Morindu?” Deirdre said as she rubbed her temples, voicing her thought without meaning to.
“Good question,” Beltan rumbled. The big man sat on the floor, making steady progress through an enormous bowl of popcorn.
“My people cannot say for certain,” the T’golsaid, prowling back and forth before the curtained window. “No records survive from the last days of the War of the Sorcerers. We have only what our storytellers have passed down. Nor were any of the Morindai there at the very end, for the people of Morindu were ordered to flee the city as the army of Scirath approached. Only the Seven A’narai, the Fateless Ones who ruled in the name of the god-king Orú, remained behind. They and the Shackled God, Orú, himself.”
The War of the Sorcerers. Deirdre had heard Vani speak those words before. In Denver, the T’golhad told them of the great conflagration that, three thousand years ago, had engulfed the ancient city-states of Amún on Eldh’s southern continent. The sorcerers, powerful and angry, had risen up against the arrogant god-kings of the city-states, seeking to cast them down and take their place. However, Morindu was unique, for it was a city of sorcerers, ruled by the most potent among them. In fear and mistrust, the other city-states named it Morindu the Dark.