The Storm by Drake David

Author:Drake, David [Drake, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure
ISBN: 9781481483698
Google: CMx-DwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1481483692
Goodreads: 40538902
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2019-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Aftermath

I’m dead now, I thought. That was just something I was aware of—not a tragedy, not an emotional concern. The weather was mildly warm, and I was going to die shortly.

Before then, I could get Osbourn free. You do what you can.

“Osbourn!” I said, slashing at a rope of fungus that stretched from a clump of russet foliage that looked like a man’s bushy beard. I suspected there was a dead Beast hidden in the vegetation. “I’m going to open the passage while you keep the fungus off as best you can. Here, take my weapon.”

I pressed it into his hand. The hilt wasn’t even warm; it was a wonderful piece of art. I was prouder of having helped rebuild it than I was of any other thing I’d done in my life.

“Get through as soon as you can and don’t try to drag me in after you. That’d wake me out of the trance and the cyst will close on us. Don’t do that. Tell Baga to get you to Dun Add and bring back Louis or one of his people as quick as you can.”

Osbourn was saying something but I ignored him as I lay down on the ground beneath the scar. The soil felt damp. “Just shut up and get help quickly.”

I heard my weapon sizzle on the wet soil. I supposed it would go to Osbourn when they decided I was dead. I dropped into a trance despite the tension I was feeling. By this point in my life it was as natural as holding my breath when I ducked beneath the surface of the water.

The walls of the cyst were more active now than they’d been when we entered. The creature—plant or animal or whatever it was—was fully awake.

I worked on the edges of the cavity, much as I had when we first prepared to enter the cyst. It was easier this time around. That was partly because the wound hadn’t fully set after I’d expanded it the first time, and partly because I was more experienced in what I had to do.

Normally a Maker worked to extend an existing pattern. I usually knew what I was making before I started, but a couple of times I realized that I’d been wrong when I got a little ways into the task. An artifact throws a shadow of its original self onto the mind of the Maker, sometimes clearer than at other times. I was pretty good at interpreting that, but Guntram was better by far; Louis saw not only what a weapon had been but how it could become better than its Ancient creator had built it.

The wall of the cyst used various elements for its crystalline structure—generally calcium carbonate, but there were patches of silica where that had been in the ground in sufficient quantity to incorporate. I was able to see—well, interact with—only about half of the structure, because the remainder of it was Not-Here. I couldn’t affect those atoms—I was only

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