Seeker

Atop a smaller building, the three Dreads stood watching Traveler’s progress above the busy London streets. Briac Kincaid was with them. He’d insisted it was his right, as the owner of the athame, to accompany them on their quest to get it back. Apparently, Briac did not trust any of the Dreads to fulfill their promise.

He was walking, thanks to whatever the doctors had put into his wound and thanks also to a large quantity of white capsules he had swallowed just before making the jump to London. Privately the Young Dread was glad he’d come. Though Briac’s leg was working better by the hour, he was still severely injured. In this condition, there was every likelihood that he would be killed.

The Young stood by the Old, peering out from beneath her leather helmet at the floating ship in the distance. She wondered what sort of machine could fly like that. Her master had told her, hundreds of years ago, that the world would be different each time she woke up, and yet the transformation she had seen in her last few wakings made all other changes look trivial.

The Dreads spent much of their time on the estate, or following new Seekers on their first assignments, so in her long life, she’d rarely been in a city. She had thought London was big the last time she’d visited, four hundred years ago. Now it must be ten times its former size, a giant forest of metal and glass stretching as far as she could see.

The Old Dread wore his monk’s robe again, but his face still looked strange, bare of its beard. His eyes were following the ship closely, as his fingers made adjustments to the dials on his stone dagger. They had followed Quin’s athame to London, and though she had moved from her entrance point, her ultimate destination was obvious.

From the Dreads’ current location atop a building, they must first go to that place, of course, and from there her master must accurately determine the coordinates of the moving ship. No other athame could bring a Seeker to a moving point, and no man but her master could find his way into something traveling as swiftly as that vessel. The ship had been created, the Young Dread understood, to prevent attacks by Seekers with ordinary athames. Yet whoever had designed the ship hadn’t understood that it could not keep away the Dreads, not when they had her master’s particular athame and his skill in using it.

“I will not kill her, Master,” she told him quietly.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

She had moved close to him, while the other two were some distance away.

“I do not think you will kill her,” he agreed.

“It would be unjust,” she whispered.

“As you say.”

“Will we truly give the athame to Briac Kincaid?”

He did not answer immediately, his eyes on the ship in the distance. Traveler was closer, gliding toward them between tall buildings.

“Our promise is to set things to rights,” he told her, after some time had passed. “If that means putting the athame into the proper hand, should we not do that?”

“Who chooses the proper hand?” she asked quietly.

He did not answer her directly, but after a pause he said, “We three Dreads were not meant to be awake all at once. To decide what is just, one at a time should be sufficient—when all have been trained. An athame is a small thing. To give it to someone requires only one hand. Whose hand would that be?”

As Traveler moved closer, the Young waited silently for the Old to answer his own question. Instead he said, “Now is the time. Are you prepared?”

“I am.”

With that, he called Briac and the Middle Dread closer, made a final adjustment to the dials, and struck the athame against its slender lightning rod. As the vibration engulfed them, the Young Dread’s eyes caught movement far above, near a building so high that it was difficult to see the peak from where she stood. Throwing her sight, she focused on two shapes hurtling through the sky toward the floating ship. These shapes were people, a tangle of weapons and limbs.

Then explosions of color filled the night air, pulling her eyes away from the falling figures. Pink bloomed around Traveler’s nose, followed a moment later by blue, then green. Deep, rumbling booms rolled over them. Quin, it seemed, was arriving on the ship with tremendous fanfare.

The Old Dread carved a portal. The Young turned her eyes from the flashes filling the sky and stepped through the humming doorway after him. The Middle came next and then Briac, who pulled his bad leg behind him as he crossed the surging threshold between here and There.

Before the doorway had closed, her master’s fingers flew over the dials of his athame. Then he struck the lightning rod again. With the first anomaly still hovering behind them, he carved a new doorway, which opened onto a hallway and a cross section of flooring. They were looking at the interior of Traveler through a hole that had been cut between floors, without enough room for them to safely enter.

Without hesitation, the Old Dread’s fingers flew over the dials again, making a subtle adjustment. He struck athame and rod together a third time, turned slightly, and carved another portal. This one opened up into the same hallway, which was now directly in front of them. The Young experienced a moment of dizziness as she stared though both anomalies, each showing a slightly different angle of the same space.

Within both was chaos. The interior lights of Traveler were flashing, men were shouting, and bursts of colored light were coming in from overhead.

Drawing their weapons, the three Dreads and Briac Kincaid stepped through the doorway and onto the ship.