“That’s right.”
His guest shrugged. Imam might as well have been describing the loss of a garden to weeds. “Had to end sometime.”
The three clerics drew their robes tighter around them. A wind was rising, whistling through the streets of the upper-class residential quarter. Picking up dust and pollen, the breeze carried it along, flinging it in the faces of those who were too slow to turn away. No casual conversation passed between the men. Though they were confident in their purpose, they were not sure of the outcome of their visit. These days, it was hard to be sure of anything. But a respected member of their own had bid them come, and they had complied. Willingly, if not happily.
Reaching the house, one of them whispered toward the pickup set beside the entrance. Ancient bells, beloved antiques, jangled in response. It was a sound from humanity’s past, cheerful and reassuring. Characteristic also, they knew, of the owner of the house. An unusual man, who had been through things they could only imagine. It was another reason they had come.
The door was opened by a woman in the full flower of her maturity. There was no need to speak. She recognized each of them and, more important, so had the door’s security system. In response to her gesture, the shrouded trio headed for the stairs. Behind them, Lajjun moved to close the door. Something outside made her hesitate. Staring into the darkness, she saw nothing. Just the wind and what it carried. The door closed with a reassuring electronic snap.
As the three clerics emerged onto the upper-floor veranda, Imam turned to greet them with a gesture. Though they responded in kind, no one was looking at him. Their attention was reserved for the visitor nearby.
Imam turned to him. “The one you want is now here.”
Riddick moved forward, seeming to cross the intervening space between himself and the clerics with barely a step. One by one, he pushed back hoods and examined faces. He had no divining equipment with him, needed none. He knew men better than any machine.
Expecting to recognize the culprit, he was momentarily taken aback when none of the three faces proved familiar. No question: they were all strangers to him. His thoughts churned. Was this some kind of test? Was he being played? And if so, to what purpose? He turned to his host. Imam’s face was devoid of duplicity. What was going on here? If these holy men had not been brought here for him to inspect, then why had Imam called them? So they could examine him? What could be the reason for that? Or was there something more? A second glance in his host’s direction suggested as much. But what?
“‘Even if I looked,’” he murmured, echoing what Imam had told him earlier.
A twitch drew his attention to one of the clerics. The first one was nervous, unable to meet Riddick’s eyes. Though he fought hard against doing so, he kept glancing over the big man’s shoulder. Had his first impression been wrong? Riddick mused. Was this increasingly edgy individual the one he sought? Or was he only fighting hard not to look at . . .
Riddick whirled. His blade was out and ready before he finished turning. It halted less than a millimeter from the neck of a fourth visitor. He stared.
“Whose throat is this?”
The woman standing under the knife was smooth and supple despite her evident age. Her attire, like her visage, was new to him. She did not seem strong enough to throw words with any skill, much less a knife. She did not show fear, exactly, but neither was she utterly indifferent to the proximity of the sharp-edged tool to her jugular vein. Verging on the maternal, her expression was disarming, yet Riddick sensed this female creature was anything but ingenuous.
He felt Imam coming up behind him, let the man approach. “This is Aereon. An envoy from the Elementals.” Tentatively, he reached up to lay a calming hand on Riddick’s shoulder. What he felt was more stone than flesh. “She means you no harm.”
Riddick listened, but the blade did not relent.
Aereon’s voice was notably less ethereal than her appearance. “If you cut my throat, I’ll not be able to rescind the offer that brought you here. Nor tell you why it’s so vital that you came. There is much more at stake here, Richard Riddick, than trivialities like bounties and personal revenge.”
“I make my own definition of what’s trivial, thanks. And I’ll take the blade off when the bounty comes off.”
“I see that additional explanation is in order,” she told him.
“I’d say long overdue,” he growled softly.
She smiled—just before pirouetting away from him, and vanishing. The knife moved, but too late.
“There are very few of us who have met a Necromonger noble and lived unconverted to speak of it. So when I choose to speak of it, you should choose to listen.”
“‘Necromonger,’” he murmured thoughtfully. He listened—but he did not put away the knife.
“Be familiar with it,” she told him forcefully. “It is the name that will convert or kill every last human life—unless the universe can rebalance itself.” In response to his questioning stare she added, “Balance is everything to Elementals. Water to fire, earth to air. We have thirty-three different words for this balance, but today, here, now, we have time to speak only of the Balance of Opposites.”
Riddick was one of those rare individuals who was smart enough to know and recognize the extent of his ignorance. “Maybe you should pretend like you’re talkin’ to someone who’s been educated in the general penal system. Places where notions like ‘rehabilitation’ have too many syllables for the guards to pronounce. Fact, don’t pretend. I hear what you’re saying, but I ain’t following where you’re going with it.”
“There is a story . . . ,” she began. Blade at the ready, arm extended, Riddick whirled repeatedly as he tried to track the voice. The three clerics had withdrawn to the comparative safety of a wall. Imam held his ground, watching Riddick as closely as the Elemental.
She seemed to be everywhere on the veranda without alighting anywhere in particular. Wherever and whenever she materialized, it was well clear of the big man’s blade.
Imam took up the tale. “A story, about young male Furyans who, feared for whatever reason, were strangled at birth. Strangled with their own umbilical cords. When Aereon told this story to the leaders of Helion—I told her of you.” The way he said it made it sound as if that was intended to explain everything.
The big man’s brow furrowed. “Furyans?”
Aereon felt confident enough to move a little closer. The clerics watched her movements in awe. Not Riddick. Always calculating, always thinking ahead of his opponent, he had little time to spare on awe.
“The one race, we calculate, that may be able to slow the spread of the Necromongers.” She was eyeing him intently.
It dawned on Riddick why he had been drawn to Helion. Out of touch and glad of it, he had clearly missed hearing about some kind of ominous ongoing conflict. They believed him to be some player in their local drama, some kind of hoodoo hero. He chuckled grimly. He had been called many things in his life, but never a hero. Yet there was no mistaking the intensity with which everyone on the veranda regarded him: clerics, host, and dodgy female visitor alike. Well, whatever. Far be it from him to disabuse the misguided of their consoling delusions.
Sensing his indifference, Imam tried to shore up the Elemental’s somewhat distanced commentary. “What do you know of your early years, Riddick? Of your upbringing, your childhood? Of parents and playtimes? What else was told you besides—”
Aereon interrupted impatiently. There was no time to waste, and she sensed that any attempt at nurturing this man would be just that. “Do you remember your home world? Its name, appearance, climate? Where it was?”
“Have you met any others?” Imam pressed him with particular urgency.
“Others like yourself?” the Elemental added.
Many questions, meaningless in the context of his present existence. Why ask such things of him? He had always focused on tomorrow, with little thought for yesterday. What was past was done, dead as he would one day be. His sole
undertaking was to prevent that from happening. Each day he survived was another accomplishment. What did it matter where he was from? If he didn’t much care, why should anyone else? Yet there was no mistaking the zeal behind their questioning.
You want something from me; give me something first, he mused. He was not the kind to offer up anything freely—not even information. That he did not have the answers to their questions made it that much easier for him to deny them.
“Sister, they don’t know what to do with one of me.”
“If you were to try,” Imam persisted, “to think back as far as you can, it’s possible that . . . what is it?”
Ignoring his host’s entreaties, Riddick had moved to the edge of the veranda and was peering guardedly over the side. The dark street below was no longer empty. Nor did he think the armored and heavily armed figures moving around below were commuters returning from working overtime at their jobs in the commercial sector of the city. Engaged in an active door-to-door search, they were moving swiftly and watchfully. Two would demand attention at a door while their companions covered them with weapons at the ready. Loud, impatient, and insistent, their voices drifted up to him as clearly as he saw them in the dark. A moment later, and they were crowding around the entrance to Imam’s house.
Lajjun appeared at the entrance to the veranda. Her eyes went first to Riddick, then to her husband. “They look for a man who came here today. They think he might be . . . uh, what is the local word . . . ‘ghesu’?”
“‘Spy,’” Imam murmured. Clearly distressed, he turned to the big man. “They must think you’re a spy for the—”
His wife interrupted him, speaking sharply to their guest. “Did someone see you come here? Did they?”
The sound of fists pounding on door floated up from below. It was a decidedly low-tech way of gaining attention, but it worked. Imam spoke to Riddick as he started toward the balustrade. “I’ll send them away, but please—one minute more of your time. Will you wait just one minute more to help save worlds?”
Riddick had vaulted onto the railing of the veranda. Now he paused there, like some mythological creature of the night, a muscular gargoyle balancing effortlessly on a narrow perch, ready to depart at his leisure. Though the nearest building was no easy distance away, Imam had no doubt that his guest could leap the gap.
“Or will you leave us to our fate? Just as you left her?”
Not much of a word—“her.” In the lexicon of admonitions, a feeble one. But it was sufficient to halt Riddick. He stared long and hard at his host, and then without a word he hopped back down onto the veranda.
Polite inquiry, knocking, and then verbal demands laced with intimations of authority having failed, the edgy soldiers outside had resorted to plasma knives. Slicing through hinges and seals, they made quick work of the front door. It didn’t matter that a government delegate lived within. Their instructions included no exceptions. If there was a problem, the owner of the house could take it up later with the bureau that had issued the search orders. Certainly he would be in a position to do so. A year ago, every one of those in the search party would have had second thoughts about forcing their way into the home of so esteemed a personage. But much had changed in a year, and a great deal in the past several weeks. They proceeded without hesitation.
Cut through, the door fell inward and crashed to the floor. The search team swarmed inside, looking for someone to question and, perhaps, to take into custody. Or terminate. Their orders were to take subjects alive if at all possible, but not to take any risks. Fingers tensed on triggers as alert eyes scanned the dim room.
Above, Imam heard the intruders moving around and turned to face his guest. “My associates and I have some sway. Please, stay and let us try and send them away.”
Riddick said nothing. But he remained where he was, eschewing the railing. Seeing this, Imam favored his visitor with a small, hopeful smile. Then he and the trio of clerics headed down the stairs, closing the door to the veranda behind them.
It left Riddick alone on the veranda—except for one. Even as he turned, the Elemental moved. He saw her move, but could not follow her. She did not exactly vanish, or dematerialize. She ran, but too fast for him to follow. And if it was too fast for him to follow . . .
Some day, he vowed silently, he would find out just how she did that.
As he listened, the voices beyond the doors gradually subsided. At first, he had heard Imam and the clerics conversing with others. Now there was only silence. Had his host been able to fulfill his hopes? Moving to the edge of the veranda, Riddick peered carefully over the side. He expected to see soldiers leaving. What he saw instead was more disturbing.
There were figures in the street, all right, but only two were armored. They were keeping watch over the people of the house, who had been hustled outside. The clerics were there also, their expressions a mix of anxiety and outrage. He saw Lajjun and Ziza. The woman said something to one of the soldiers. His response was to push her away. Roughly. Riddick studied the scene below for another long moment. Then he moved away from the railing, completely silent, and over to the door that led inside.
The fit between the antique doors that separated upstairs room from stairway was not perfect. Through the narrow crack between the panels Riddick was able to see down the stairs beyond. It was completely dark inside the study—but not to him. There was no sign of movement. To someone like Riddick, that was more significant than the chatter of voices or the pounding of feet. Noiselessly, he backed slowly away.
On the other side of the doors, pressed against opposite walls, the soldiers waited for command. One held a knife to Imam’s lips. Despite this, he considered crying out a warning. Had it only been his future at stake, he would have done so. But there were others, two others, waiting for him out on the street. So he held onto his words and prayed for the one who thought so little of prayer.
At a sign from the search party’s commanding officer, the soldiers in front responded simultaneously. The doors gave way without much resistance and they surged into the room beyond. It was very dark. The voice that greeted them was perfectly composed.
“Come on in.”
There were ten of them. They were well trained, and extremely confident. A few had even been in actual combat, on other worlds. They knew they were searching only for one man. They knew little about him.
It was not nearly enough.
At first unleashed with some control, some concern for their owner’s immediate surroundings, weapons began to chew up their surroundings with less and less regard for accuracy as one soldier after another was dropped. Sometimes they thought they saw their target. Other times they saw only a shadow, and began firing at it because it was all they saw. Concern rapidly replaced confidence. This was quickly superseded by its edgier relative, panic. Flashes from the muzzles of rapid-fire weapons strobed the room, illuminating less and less movement as more and more of the intruders went down.
On the pedestrian path below, all that Lajjun and the three clerics could see of the fight were those same muzzle flashes, visible behind windows and doorways. Shouts and screams filtered down to street level between shots. Head tilted back as she stared up at the veranda of her home, Lajjun held her daughter close. Ziza gazed wide-eyed at the second-story confusion. Though she was very mature for her age, it was just as well that walls and railings obscured her view.
Sooner than anyone could have predicted, it was quiet once again. Though as curious as anyone would have been to view the aftermath of all the fighting, the occupants of nearby houses sensibly kept their windows shut and their heads inside. Tragically, it was often at the end of violent confrontations that the innocent and uninvolved caught the last stray bullet. While the fighting had taken place right next door, sensible neighbors knew it was better to learn the details via the morning news.
At the top of the stairway, Imam and the young soldier charged with restraining him squinted past the shattered doors at the second-floor room.
Something was coming toward them. A single figure. The soldier momentarily forgot to breathe. The figure was not armored. It was alone. No one flanked it, no one held a gun to its back. Which meant that except for the prisoner, he was also alone. Of his ten comrades there was no sign. The implication paralyzed him as effectively as any nerve agent.
The remaining figure came closer. The man was not especially tall, but very wide. He filled much of the stairway. For a moment, he stared at the young soldier. Then he reached out and calmly removed the knife from the younger man’s grasp. When the soldier did not move, Riddick fluttered an encouraging hand in his direction.
“Shoo, now.”
The soldier remembered to breathe. He also remembered his legs. Recalling the incident later, he considered it a matter of some pride that he had not fallen as he had stumbled down the stairs.
Alone with his host once more, Riddick murmured, “You mentioned—‘her.’”
Sneaking a quick peek past the big man, Imam scanned the upstairs room. It was filled with lumpy, motionless shapes that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. “She, uh—she . . .” It took him a moment to find his voice. “She went looking for you. Followed your footsteps too literally, I’m afraid. People died.”
Riddick inhaled deeply and shook his head. He never wanted that. But despite his best efforts, things had spiraled out of control. No good agonizing over it now. Together, the two men started downstairs. Imam could see that his guest had turned uncharacteristically thoughtful.
“She never forgave you for leaving.”
“She needed to stay away from me.” Shifting his gaze, Riddick met the other man’s eyes meaningfully. “You all do.”
They took care exiting onto the street, but the soldiers who had been guarding Imam’s family and friends had already taken their leave—inspired, no doubt, by the words of the young soldier Riddick had spared. Whether or if they would return with reinforcements did not concern him. Very soon now he planned to be far, far away.
Everyone was staring at him. With expectation? If so, they were going to be disappointed. Imam would be, too. Knowing Riddick a little, he ought to have known better.