And then, quite suddenly, Ishep ceased being afraid. Beneath the mask, Ishep felt a strange pressure, like that of hands molding clay, and he knew that he was being kneaded into something new and wholly alien. But he wasn’t afraid. Why? How odd…Ishep searched his emotions, turning over the secret places of his heart the way a child tips over rocks for bugs. No, he wasn’t afraid, and he should have been. Instead of fear, there were other emotions: regret for his mother, though she was moving far away in his thoughts now, growing smaller and more distant, a memory that would soon be lost in the mists of time. There was anger at Prince Nartal, that coward, for slinking away after the rest of the funeral procession had left. But, most of all, there was sadness, and grief. Because Ishep knew that he was dying, and there was nothing he could do but watch his life slip away.
The woman’s—Uramtali’s—voice-thought again: Why are you here?
Ishep said, out loud, “I love my father, and I followed the procession here, and then I hid because I wanted to see an Immortal, a dithparu,being born. Only now I don’t know the way out because Nartal left and I got lost.”
Then, more boldly and with sudden inspiration: “That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? The princes have always stayed behind, because they’re supposed to carry a dithparufrom the Well of Souls, that’s what they say.”
That’s true. Now…As Ishep watched, the whirling spirit-shapes bunched, shifted. We have to think what to do next.A pause, then: Maybe you.
Then, as the thing’s thought-fingers wriggled deeper into the crevices of his mind, it was as if its thoughts and Ishep’s merged, and then Ishep knew the truth.
They’re just spirits, and that’sall they are.Ishep grappled after the thought, tried to hang onto it. They’re Immortals, but they need a body, a certain kind of body, a body bred forNight. Only then, for some reason, they have to returnhere, because this is the place where they live; they can’t leave this place on their own. But now Nartal’s broken the line and now everything will change. They’ll never get out anymore, because only Nartal knew the way out,they don’t know the way, because they’re spirits and they can’t know, and now they’re trapped here until time stops, and that’s forever…
Something was happening to the spirit-shapes. As Ishep stared, one portion of the mass seemed to bud, then separate itself from the rest. The figure hovered before Ishep, congealing like cooling glass into something recognizable: a snake with the head of a woman that shifted to a skull then back again, as if it couldn’t quite make up its mind what it was, or would become. The woman’s face, when it was a face, had ridges encircling the brows and tracking down the neck on either side, and the ridges had scales, just as the snake’s body did below the woman’s waist. The woman’s hair was sleek and seemed to have a life of its own, falling in undulating, liquid black waves along its shoulders. Yet the woman’s eyes were cold and flat and the color of slate. The woman-snake—now woman, now skull, now vapor—floated before Ishep, and Ishep saw a welter of emotions chase across its ever-changing features before settling into one that Ishep instantly recognized: hunger.
“Uramtali,” Ishep whispered, his voice breaking. “Are you Uramtali?”
If you like. Prince Nartal was Night.The woman-snake pulsed and grew and reared above Ishep, her clawed fingers unfurling, spreading. But you are the son of a Night King and there is Night in you. Just enough.Then: Would you like to see your father again?
Ishep remembered the woman-thing that had joined the other spirit-shapes. Not his father, of course. These spirit-shapes were the Immortals, the dithparus.His father’s soul was mortal, and so his father was gone, his spirit vanishing along with his last breath.
Still, Ishep said, “Yes.”
Good. Are you afraid?
With a languid movement, Ishep shook his head. A strange warm torpor seized him, as if he were very young and been given too many goblets of wine, and suddenly, he was very sleepy.
Good-bye, Mother.Ishep felt his soul streaming away. His knees buckled. Good-bye.
Aloud, he said only, “No. I’m not afraid.”
In the last instant of his life, Ishep saw something very much like regret flicker in the woman-snake’s cold flat eyes.
You should be,she said, gathering herself. You should be.
And then Ishep screamed—but not for long.
Dawn ate away the night. In the palace, Nartal hid, waiting until the appointed hour when he would emerge and claim his place as the newly anointed Night King, bearing the soul of an Immortal. Except it was a lie, and it was the beginning of an end so far in the future that neither Nartal nor anyone else could possibly imagine it.
Far beneath the skin of this world, in a place where men from distant planets would not walk for another 6,000 years, the boy who had been Ishep sat. Ishep—the boy—was gone. Only the shell of his body, and the thing that was immortal, remained. Above, the world would spin on its axis, and the two suns would rise and set, but things would change, and very soon, because the world needed the Immortal in its shell to tend to the machines and make the light globes float. But the Immortal Uramtali—the dithparu—was trapped. So the world would break, and here was the supreme irony: For all its great powers, the thing was not a mind reader, and only Prince Nartal knew the way out.
Still, maybe it could last until it found another. Maybe.
Chapter 1
If she scanned one more duty roster, Captain Rachel Garrett was certain she would either scream or take her thumbs and pop the eyeballs out of the head of the first unlucky person to set his big toe into her ready room, and probably both.
Oh, weare in a good mood, we are justfull of good cheer, aren’t we, sweetheart?
“Well, I hate this,” Garrett said, talking back to that nagging little voice in her head. She scowled, hunched over yet another ream of scrolling names, and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she had a migraine coming, a real whopper, and wasn’t that just her dumb luck? “And I hate you.”
ButI’m not the one who wanted to be captain.Nooo, you wanted the glamour,you read about all the Archers and the Aprils and the Pikes and the Kirks and the Harrimans of the universe and how they zipped around in their starships and you decided, girl, you want you one ofthose. Only no one ever talked about duty rosters and being short an officer because you were stupid enough to let your XO go on R and R and the crew’s still being on edge because you were too far away to help Nigel Holmes when he needed you most and everything that’s happened since isyour fault, it’s your fault, it’s your…
“Go away.” Blinking against a lancet of pain skewering her brain, Garrett pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. “Buzz off.”
But the voice had a point, and the very fact that she was arguing with that little piece of herself hunkered somewhere deep in the recesses of what passed as her brain meant that maybe she shouldcall it a night, or maybe a day, or…what time was it anyway? Frowning, Garrett glanced at her chronometer and then groaned. She’d worked straight through into the beginning of gamma shift. That meant that her new ops, Lieutenant Commander Darya Bat-Levi, was gone, relieved by the next Officer of the Day. Well, working straight through beta shift would explain why she was hungry, tired, sore—Garrett reached around and massaged a muscle, tight as a banjo string, in her neck. If she hadn’t eaten or moved her aching butt one millimeter for hours, no wonder she was having an argument with a nasty little voice in her head. Except someone had to do this work, and without a first officer to pick up the slack, there really wasn’t anyone else, was there? Not anyone qualified, that is. Oh, she could probably tag one of the bridge officers to step up to the plate. Bat-Levi, maybe, though Garrett didn’t like the idea; the woman was on probation, after all. But Thule G’Dok Glemoor, for example: the Naxeran lieutenant was tactical, good head on his shoulders. In fact, he was OOD this very minute; maybe she should loosen the reins, tap Glemoor to…