I swore, threw down the multi-tool once again with a howl of frustration, and spun away from the workbench inside my temporary home. Now look at me, stuck on a frozen icecap with even less company than before. Did I regret the actions that had led to my banishment? No, not for a moment. Was I upset to be here? Very much so. It felt unfair, and if only the Shaman Elders could see what the humans were really like, they never would have exiled me.
No amount of convincing, pleading, and begging had made them leave the Sacred Training Grounds to see Haven with their own eyes, unfortunately. Artek, Corin, and I had all tried. Even Haven’s leader, Zathar, had given it a shot. Theywereimpressed with the budding civilization at Ahoshaga, the Naga-human settlement, but it hadn’t been enough. I had disobeyed a direct order to help Artek save his mate, and that was unacceptable.
I hurled myself back and forth through the small living space, my tail flicking in agitation. It was nice and warm inside the temperature-controlled tent, and I had plenty of food stored to see me through many more months. It wasn’t a home, though, and it was beginning to feel claustrophobic. That was only because being outside was so off-putting that I couldn’t extend my living space that way. The tent had been my home since the moment I’d left the Training Grounds as a fresh new Shaman.It was where I’d lived at Serqethos, and I’d packed it all up and taken it here when I’d been exiled.
I had everything; except a mate. A human of my own. Fine, back to the strange miniature Varkasa, if I could keep my brain focused for more than two seconds. I fiddled with the metal carapace and the strange fur that covered most of its back and tail. The head was not furred but covered in something velvety soft, while the nose was cold as ice and smooth like a gem. It was pinkish too, almost like a real Varkasa. Whoever had built this device had done their best to make it look just like the real thing.
I’d found it frozen under the ice not far from where I currently camped, amid remnants of other items, though the ice had crushed and ground most of it to pieces. The Varkarsa Revenant had been protected inside a strong metal lockbox of some kind. The box sat next to my bed, opened from the wrong side of the thick lid. I’d used a laser scalpel to cut through the hinges.
It wasn’t much of a surprise to find signs of our ancient civilization beneath the ice. Still, this was at least the more exciting part of being here. To dig through history and discover how our people used to live was part of the fun of being a shaman. I knew things most Naga alive now could never even imagine.
Like the fact that the icecaps once resided in entirely different places on our planet. I knew that because we, as Shamans, still knew our history. When the calamity struck our planet and sent us back into an age without technology, it hadn’t been a single event; it had been several. One of those was the shifting of our planet on its axis, not a huge amount, but even a little had beendevastating enough. The poles changed, and now the ice covered parts of our world that had once been inhabited.
I wondered who this little Varakarsa Revenant had belonged to. A child? It looked like a toy, so that would make sense. The Revenants we knew of now—the active ones—were huge, deadly machines of war, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t once built Revenants for much more benign purposes. “Aha,” I exclaimed, because my pondering of the past had done what my earlier musings hadn’t: kept me focused long enough to make progress.
A panel came free from the belly of the little machine, and suddenly I was peering at its strange innards. Cogs, wires, a power source, and slots to interface with my tablet—if I had the right connector. Turning, I headed for a basket with cables and started rooting around until I found the one I needed, my belly full of anticipation. This was it: a way to peer into the brain of one of these thinking machines and find out how they worked.
I’d just connected my tablet to the powered-down Revenant when an alarm went off. That wasn’t good, not good at all. I peered at one of the viewscreens I had lined up on my desk, checking the readings carefully even though I was already certain of what I’d see. A proximity alert, and one of many I’d been having since making camp in this location last week. “Damn it,” I cursed. “If this is just another gust of snow, I’m going to be so pissed.”
Dropping the tablet onto the workbench beside the tiny Varakarsa, I headed for the tent flaps. I’d muted the alarm noises, but lights still flashed across the viewscreen in warning. I slid my nictitating membranes shut against the glare as I began the arduous process of dressing warmly for the icytemperatures outside. I was not cold-blooded, or moving outside would rapidly become nearly impossible, but even so, I needed to bundle up or risk losing a tail or a finger. The temperatures were a bit extreme out there, unlike a good brisk winter back near Serqethos or Ahoshaga.
Tunic, coat, scarf, gloves, and several long segments of fur and leather to slide over my tail. Often called tail warmers by younglings, I’d been forced to make the crude garments myself when I first arrived here. I’d never known an adult Naga to wear them, and I kept feeling like an infant when I put them on. It was not a good feeling, but it was unfortunately necessary. At least there was no one here to see me in them.
Once I slid a fur hat and goggles onto my face, I was ready. Still, when I lifted the flap to slide from the warm interior of the tent into the much cooler entrance area, I shook. Exiting the second set of tent flaps to go outside was like getting slapped in the face. The wind was whirling rapidly, tossing snow everywhere and obscuring my vision. It wasn’t a snowstorm exactly, but it was bad, and very, very cold. I really, really missed warm, sunny Serqethos, and if I could just be back there right now, I wouldn’t even long for a human mate.
The sensors were partially buried under the snow, and I had to dig them out each morning to make sure they functioned. Then there were the more distant sensors I’d set up to seek the answers to the increasing EM field fluctuations on the planet of late. That was one thing the Shaman Elders were definitely right about: it was getting worse, and whatever was causing it was coming from here. Those distant sensors also needed daily maintenance, very frustrating. I hated snow; I much preferred the silky, warm sands of the Serqethos Desert.
The sensor going off now was on the west corner of my tent, and I found it easily because I’d been doing this for three months by now. What definitely wasn’t what I expected was the state of the sensor. Though partially buried, it wasn’t covered yet, which could allow it to be tripped by particularly enthusiastic snow. Except, it was sideways, and the pole I’d stuck into the snow was now crooked. Much more disturbing than a bent, thumb-thick metal pole were the tracks in the snow beside it.
They were filling up with new snow, but they were fresh enough to trace with my eyes. Where they came from was already mostly obscured, but where they were headed was still visible. The tracks were deep, long furrows, like those my sled made when I traveled, only much bigger. I knew of only one thing that could make giant tracks like this out here, where practically nothing lived: a Revenant. Not a small, harmless one like the Varkarsa likeness back in my tent on my workbench. No, a big one made for war and killing.
My hand went to the weapons and protective gadgets hanging from my belt. Should I go after that thing or not? It was dangerous to confront a Revenant, but I was much better equipped to deal with one than most. While I wasn’t as notorious for it as, for example, Zeidon and other Water Weaver Naga, I definitely scavenged a lot. Unlike them, I actually had the skills to figure out what I’d found and how to use it.
Why was it here? And had it simply not noticed my tent, or had it chosen to ignore it? What if this Revenant was key to finding out what the Shaman Council had sent me here to discover? I could not let the chance pass me by, and though it was slightly terrifying to follow the tracks of a deadly killing machine, that’s what I did. If I kept enough distance, what could possibly gowrong? Yeah, I didn’t really believe that either. This was a bad idea.
I still couldn’t stop myself from doing it. The quicker I found answers, the quicker I might be able to get out of here. That was worth a little risk, wasn’t it? How bad could it be? There had been a handful of Revenants I’d seen in my lifetime.
Once, it was a sand one near Serqethos, with six legs and a huge, curling, barbed tail. It had already been destroyed by Serqethos warriors and their dragons, and I’d been called to heal the injured. They’d been lucky, and only one warrior had been killed. The others had all been during my time as a student at the Shaman Training Grounds. Those had seemed like confrontations barely worth mentioning. Chen and Fraersosh, now two of the three Shaman Elders, had been in their prime then, and I’d watched them be part of those takedowns with awe. So really, how hard could it be?
The answer was hard; I knew it the moment I saw what kind of Revenant I was dealing with. For one, it was one of the absolutely massive ones, sliding smoothly along the snow like a giant Rakworm. Except Rakworms looked tiny in comparison to this hulking thing. My pulse spiked at the sight of it, and at the knowledge that it had passed right by my tent and I’d never even noticed. Ten times as long as I was, this snaking creature slid along the snow, smoothly and silently. It was made for burrowing in ice, I soon discovered.
Rearing back, it lifted its massive, flat-faced front end, and a whirring noise started up that made the ground tremble. Blue light flared, and when it angled down and slammed forward, that light shone even brighter. Like a burrowing insect, ittunneled into the blue ice. Ice splintered and flew up into the air like a fountain of crystalline shards. In a matter of minutes, that entire massive machine had chewed a hole into the ice slab and vanished.
My heart was pounding in my chest from the excitement and the fear. I touched the gadgets I’d been so confident in before and knew that if I had to face this thing in a fight, it was very likely I’d die. That was not the same kind of Revenant as the ones I’d seen my teachers face. But as I dared to slither closer to the edge, I wondered if this particular Revenant wasn’t built exactly for what it had just done: burrow. What if it wasn’t a machine of war at all?
The hole was deep, and it angled sideways before it appeared to level off. I could perhaps climb down and continue following it, but what would that achieve except a cold tail? The snow wasn’t coming down so hard now, which allowed me to see the track the Revenant had left behind right up to the edge of the hole it had created. Where was it going? And why was it going anywhere at all?
I pulled free one of the handheld scanners I liked to work with. It was not as powerful as the sensors I’d placed in circles around my tent. This scanner was really meant more for analyzing samples at close range. What it could pick up from much further away was always weak and unreliable. To my surprise, the readings on the small screen seemed to indicate a power source nearby. This wasn’t some random fluctuation; this was something new, or I’d have seen it on the sensors hooked up to the controls in my tent. Something had just powered on, something big.
I had made my choice before I could think better of it. My body slid over the edge, claws digging into the smooth ice wall the Revenant had created. I went down in a whoosh, my descent only barely slowed by the strength of my clawed hands. Then darkness closed over my head, and I was in the tunnel.
Chapter 2
Levant
The ship was stuck deep inside the ice, and the Giant Burrowing Revenant had tunneled straight toward it. For some bizarre reason, it had angled past the ship at the last moment and continued straight on, ignoring the vessel. My scanner told me the power source that I’d been reading strongly when I climbed into this tunnel was now gone again—turned off, vanished without a trace. Perhaps that’s when the Giant Burrowing Revenant had altered course. It had lost interest.
Well, I hadn’t. That ship, it was still separated from me by a wall of ice, but it was thin enough that I could see through it and make out the shadowed shape of the thing. With my light glowing blue against the pale ice, I squinted and flicked my nictitating membranes closed and open several times to get a better perspective. Big, but not massive like the Revenant. It wasn’t shaped in the typical sinuous lines of a Naga vessel, either. Considering the massive layer of ice on top of it, this ship had to have been down here for a really long time.
