Chapter 24

Raleigh wheeled to meet her fate. The two Guildsmen and all their comrades closed in on her. She raised her cube to fire when her stomach jumped into her throat. She collapsed, and the whole battle scene rushed upward as fast as gravity could pull her down. She punched through the floor into open space.

Her weapons fell out of her hands. She grasped at nothing, and she plummeted through the floor with nothing holding her up. At the last second, she caught hold of the pants leg of the nearest Guildsman who still stood on something solid. She fumbled for a desperate hold, but her weight hauled him over the brink and he tumbled down with her.

She writhed in all directions for anything to check her fall, but the Guildsman hurtled past her and knocked her hands free. In an instant, he plunged past her and fell screaming toward the Earth far below.

Raleigh caught hold of something. It was a cat’s tail. She yanked it hard and batted her other hand up around the hole through which she fell. The cat yowled in surprise. Raleigh barely got hold of a piece of cloud before her efforts tore the cat off its moorings and it vanished along with the Guildsman.

She dug in her fingernails to hold on. Guildsman and Eol’i stared down through the opening. No one dared come near her now. Her bootheels kicked in the sky. Raleigh looked everywhere for some help. She was completely alone. Dax, Bishop, Angela—all gone.

She turned her pleading eyes on the Guildsmen all around her. Her breath rasped in her throat so bad she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t hold on much longer before she tumbled to Earth like the others.

Those heartless Eochehxea did this to her. Just when she faced the fight of her life, they wiped out the ground beneath her feet. They didn’t fight fair. That was the first and only thing she learned about them.

All of a sudden, her eye lit on the tiny kitten sitting a few rows up in the stands. He scrutinized the whole event in placid indifference. He straightened his whiskers and turned his pointed face back and forth. Nothing surprised him.

“Teif!” she croaked. She swallowed to get her voice to work. “Teif, help me!”

He didn’t respond. A few other Eol’i turned around to look at him. What was she thinking, calling out to him to help her? He was her enemy. He was one of these people. He was a cold-blooded killer. He laughed when the Uk attacked Bishop. He wouldn’t lift a paw to help her now. He probably thought this was entertaining and amusing, too.

Raleigh started to lose hope. “Teif,” she sobbed. “Teif, please help me.”

He looked away with a growl. “Oh, blast it all! I always was a sucker for an attractive female.”

He hopped off the seat, and the moment his dainty paws touched the cloudy floor, he changed. A shimmer of energy rippled up his body from the tips of his toes to his pointed ears. He got longer until a well-built man in a black velvet suit stood in the kitten’s place.

He wore his jet-black hair cropped close to his head on all sides and in back, with longer, straight hair combed to one side on top. His black beard pointed down his chin in a crisp black arrow around his ruby-red mouth.

He drew a sword from a scabbard at his belt and slashed his way into the crowd. He cut down Guildsmen and Eol’i indiscriminately before they realized what was happening. They tumbled before him, and he fought his way to the hole.

By the time he got there, the rest of the crowd recovered their surprise. They pressed in to attack him. He went down on his knee by the hole and fought them off with one hand while he stuck out his other hand to Raleigh. “Catch hold and I’ll haul you up.”

She dared not let go, but she had to. She was done for, either way, and he went to all the trouble of helping her. She summoned her resolve and made a grab for his hand. Her fingers strapped around his wrist.

He didn’t lift her up right away. Too many assailants pinned him down, but he had her. He stopped her from falling to her death. In a few seconds, he drove back his own people enough to raise her to solid ground again.

Raleigh scrambled out of the hole, but she had no time to thank him for his help. She floundered in her pockets and found another cube and a bunch of splatter grenades. She activated one of them and threw it a few feet away. She set off one grenade after another in a circle around her. They blew enough Guildsmen to pieces for her and Teif to inch away from the hole into the stands.

Teif bellowed over his shoulder. “Come on. This way.”

“Where are we going?”

“Away from here,” he called back.

Shoulder to shoulder, they fought their way out of the amphitheater, but all their efforts couldn’t defeat so many. Their assailants cut off their retreat before they got out of the building.

Raleigh’s arms ached from fighting so hard, but Teif lashed his sword in all directions as fast as ever. He pulled a cube from somewhere and squeezed that off between cuts. Who was he really? Raleigh hated to think.

They stood at the top of the steps. Their enemies closed around them in a tight circle when the clouds parted and Dax rushed into view. He took one look around the amphitheater and barreled through the wall of bodies to Raleigh’s side.

“Where have you been?” Raleigh cried. “Where’s Bishop?”

“I can’t find him,” Dax yelled back. “I searched everywhere.”

“The Eochehxea,” Raleigh growled. “They must be hiding him.”

“I can find him for you,” Teif called.

“You!” Raleigh exclaimed. “How would you find him?”

“It’s easy. You must use your Epistemological abilities. Use your mind.”

Dax and Raleigh looked at each other. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“It’s like this,” Teif started to explain. “Close your eyes and concentrate on your subject. Then you…”

“Oh, forget it!” Raleigh screamed. “We don’t have time for that. Dax, use your powers You got us here. Take us to Bishop. It doesn’t matter where he is. Just take us there.”

“I already tried that,” Dax replied. “Since I don’t know where he is, I can’t see him in my mind’s eye. I can’t get to him.”

Raleigh spun around to face him. “Do it, Dax. You don’t have to see him. Imagine him the way he used to look back home. Imagine him standing in Mrs. Mitchell’s kitchen, and go to him. It’s that simple.”

Just for a moment, Dax stood still and quiet. Then his face cleared. He placed his hand on Raleigh’s shoulder, and the whole battle scene vaporized in a puff of cloud. The noise died away, and they stood alone out in the cloudy Solaris landscape where they first appeared in this strange city.

Raleigh pursed her lips to complain, but Dax already turned away to enter the nearest cloud. He stuck his hand through the vapors and pulled. A battered arm came into view, and the next thing Raleigh knew, Bishop stood in front of her.

She blinked at him, and he looked back and forth between her and Dax. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Of the three of them, only Dax kept his composure. “Are you all right, Sir? We’re here to take you home.”

Bishop cleared his throat. “I’m fine now, boy. I’m ready to go whenever you are.”

Raleigh choked back tears. “Take him home, Dax. Take all of us home.”

Dax smiled, but at that moment, the clouds overhead opened up. Thousands of Uk shot down out of the sky. At the same instant, the cloud banks all around Raleigh mistook for buildings cracked asunder. The Guildsmen and Eol’i and many other creatures Raleigh didn’t know charged into view.

She spun around to fight, but she couldn’t decide what adversary to face first. She patted her pockets in search of any weapon when the first Uk struck her in the head. Searing pain shattered her mind. She batted the Uk away, but they stuck fast. More and more bit into her skin from all sides. She couldn’t get rid of them.

Bishop screamed and fought them off a few feet away. She tried to get her mind to work. She formed the words over and over, but she couldn’t get them out. Take him home, Dax. Take us all home. Why didn’t he do it? Why didn’t he transport them all out of there now?

She floundered for her weapons but came up empty-handed. She searched one pocket after another. That’s the only reason she found the chemical. Her heart soared. Of course! She could disable these Uk in seconds.

She took hold of the cork to pull it out when something thumped into her from behind. It jolted her, and the vial hopped out of her hand. It soared in a clean arch and zipped through the cloud at her feet. Nothing checked its fall. It didn’t bounce on any solid floor. It whoofed through the cloud into nothing.

Raleigh cursed out loud and rounded on whatever hit her when she came up against Dax stumbling back. He tripped over her feet, but he couldn’t stop himself. His weight forced her back into the crowd of warriors rushing to destroy them.

Over Dax’s shoulder, Raleigh caught sight of something so terrible she couldn’t get her mind to comprehend it at first. A little way away and slightly above their heads, a massive wall of menacing grey cloud rolled toward them, but it didn’t look like any cloud she ever saw before. The cloud-shapes formed faces, dissolved, and reformed in every visage of hideous countenance she could imagine.

In front of her eyes, those deathly faces glared at her and her friends. They grimaced and snarled, and the low grumble of thunder inside that cloud formed their voices calling out to the world.

In that instant, she knew exactly what they were. They were Eochehxea. No other force in the universe had the power to make the floor disappear under that vial at exactly the moment she prepared to uncork it. They waited all this time, and now they showed themselves. Why?

She didn’t have to wonder about that, either. The young man falling into her arms told the whole story. Only Dax could succeed in stealing Bishop from them, and they waited until this moment to unleash their power on him.

He collapsed into her arms, and they both fell back into the cloud-swept floor. He grunted in agony from some unseen impact, but she couldn’t help him against this foe. As she watched, a curving finger of tornado wind stretched out of that cloud toward her. It seized her mind so she couldn’t fight back. She wanted to cower and cry in terror.

That slithering curl slapped Bishop aside. He tumbled out of view still struggling against masses of Uk, and Raleigh lost sight of him. The twister caught Dax around the ankle and started dragging him into its clutches.

Raleigh tried to hold him back, but the crushing force oppressing her mind wouldn’t let her. She shrank back from him and watched in horror as Dax slid through the cloud-ponds toward the Eochehxea’s cloud.