Haven: Book Seven of "The Liminality"

Chapter 22 - The Dormant Node

The cordon marking the area protecting the seam nodes from the raucous and unruly crowd of spectators was marked merely a line of pebbles in the ash. It didn't look like much, but it fiercely guarded by a skirmish line of axe-wielders drawn from the major clans. That the crowd paid so much respect to these lines in the sand told Grehl that some had already paid in blood for trespassing.

The guards knew a Summoner when they saw one. They let Grehl pass unmolested, but James hesitated until Grehl turned and waved for him to join her amongst the cairns. Normally, she preferred to work alone, but she supposed having a resident of the realm whose seam she planned to pry open by her side might make for a good luck charm if nothing else.

She headed straight for the cairn marking the node of the seam they had entered. Immediately, she assumed her usual dowsing stance, head tilted back, arms out wide, fingers stretched. She was not having a good feeling about this. The faint glimmers that usually presaged the presence of an active seam were absent. It made the pit of her stomach clench. James watched her with rapt fascination, but Grehl could not meet his eyes.

When she failed to conjure a signal, she tried the next node over. Each of the five she had found here had provided some signal when she had first dowsed them. At the time, the signal coming from the seam for Root had been stronger than the others by several orders of magnitude. Raking her fingertips through the air near cairn number two, again she felt nothing. The same was true for number three.

James kept his distance as she went through her routine. With the fourth cairn, a faint shimmer tickled the pads of her fingertips, causing her heart to leap. It was so gentle, she was not convinced it was more than a figment of her imagination at first, but repeated dowsing caused it to return. Usually with an active node, she could coax and cultivate a glimmer into full blown ripples, but this one was fickle. It only faded when she teased it. It always came back when she relaxed her will, but was too slippery to reel in.

Buoyed by this mild success, she moved to the fifth and last cairn, thrusting every ounce of mindfulness into the dowsing. This fifth cairn, though, was no more than a pile of rocks. She returned to the fourth cairn.

"How's it going? asked James.

"All were dead, except for this one. But it is not the one we used to gain access to your realm."

"So where does it go?"

"I can't tell," said Grehl. "It is so very weak."

"Could it be another way into Root? A side door?"

"I don't know. Perhaps."

"Let's see if the Sing knows something."

Grehl flinched as James reached out and laid a palm on her shoulder. He clenched his eyes and tucked his chin as if in silent prayer. She expected herself to be transported the way James had facilitated her entry to the Sea of Souls before, but her soul remained in her body.

"Is something supposed to happen?"

"I'm ... hang on ... I'm posing a question."

Grehl waited patiently. She was not used to human contact. To have the weight of this man's hand planted on her skin made her uneasy. Sexual assaults were common in Sheol and she had grown intolerant of casual touch. No one touched a Summoner and go to keep their head when Gijantus and his axe were around.

James sighed and retrieved his hand.

"They got nothing. Just spinning their wheels."

More people had mustered from the camps to watch their proceedings. The rumble of the gathered voices grew despite the guards' efforts to shush them.

"Let me try again," said Grehl, feeling the pressure to perform.

She went back to the first node, paused, took a deep breath and stretched her arms as wide as they could reach, thrusting her head back as far as it would go. She stepped towards the cairn, lingering near its center, then moved past it. Not a molecule of her being was aroused by it at any point in her traverse. The node had gone completely dormant. She collapsed to her knees.

"No dice?" said James.

"It's gone." Tears erupted from her eyes.

James dropped down to give her a hug. Startled, nevertheless, she did not resist. She melted into his arms, giving a shudder as as the Sing swept in and carried off her soul.

***

To Root. The Sing was taking her back to Root. It was going the long way, across half of Sheol, up into the voids and interfaces of the after cosmos. Her soul whisked through the plains through tiny settlements in sinkholes and bluffs. She passed in and out of tunnels, skipping into the sky and into the soul of a bug rider until she found herself back in the little village of New Mendocino, piggybacking onto the mind of Erasmus, who had been in the middle of quaffing some type of brew and immediately started to choke and sputter.

"Are you alright?" asked the woman he had been conversing with, scrunching her brow. "Was it something I said?"

"I have a visitor. Please. Excuse me."

Erasmus got up and made his way out of what appeared to Grehl to be a small pub. He exited to a garden illuminated with strings of small lights. He stood beneath a trellis supporting a dense growth of vines bearing perfect, golden grapes.

"What's up?" he said, loudly, like a stockbroker barking into his Bluetooth mic.

"The nodes have gone dead," thought Grehl, though it felt like speaking.

"Are you sure? You've only been gone a day."

"Has it been a day already?"

"And a lot has happened since you left," said Erasmus. "We have a problem."

"What sort of problem?"

"The Powers are here."

"Do you mean, Overseers?"

"No. The Powers-That-Be. Makers, they call them. They're here with a small army and some devices that are in the process of being deployed."

"Devices?"

"Very large. They look like giant oil derricks. The dragonfly riders say there are two being installed out on the plains and others in the hills."

"What are they? Where did they come from?"

"I'm not sure. They just appeared... from a seam, I suppose. They're very well-guarded. By soldiers. Centurions, they called them."

"This can't be good."

"The locals here are preparing an assault. Our little town has become a staging base of sorts. You should see all the bugs here now. Wasps. Beetles. You name it."

"I need to tell James!"

The Singularity seemed to agree, as Grehl found her soul being tugged away from Erasmus. Through the strength of her will alone, she clung.

"I am afraid that this place is not looking much like our promised land anymore," said Erasmus. A man clad in coarse armor strolled by, staring as he passed.

"I suppose not," said Grehl, still fighting the pull.

"That said, I... we want to stay," said Erasmus. "Even if you re-open that portal. Cinda and I, we've talked about it. We both want to be here, we've decided. Regardless of what happens. We're willing to take our chances."

" Portal or no portal, I am coming back. I owe that much to James. I am probably the cause of all of this."

"Nonsense. These folks were in a war with the Powers long before we showed up."

The force of the Sing surged until it was too great for her to resist any further.

"I'm... slipping."

Her soul gave way and hurtled back from whence she had come, across the landscape and through the interfaces, and back to her flesh.