Текст книги "The Star Dwellers"

Автор книги: David Estes

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THE STAR DWELLERS

Book Two of

The Dwellers Saga

David Estes

Published by David Estes at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 David Estes

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Discover other exciting titles by David Estes available through the author’s official website:

http://davidestesbooks.blogspot.com

or through select online retailers.

Young-Adult Books by David Estes

The Dwellers Saga:

Book One—The Moon Dwellers

Book Two—The Star Dwellers

Book Three—The Sun Dwellers (coming in December 2012!)

The Evolution Trilogy:

Book One—Angel Evolution

Book Two—Demon Evolution

Book Three—Archangel Evolution

Children’s Books by David Estes

The Nikki Powergloves Adventures:

Nikki Powergloves– A Hero is Born

Nikki Powergloves and the Power Council

Nikki Powergloves and the Power Trappers

Nikki Powergloves and the Great Adventure

Nikki Powergloves vs. the Power Outlaws (Coming in 2013!)

This book is dedicated to all the members and moderators

of my Goodreads fan group.

Your kindness and support is beyond generous, and I’ll always

value the way you make me laugh, cry, smile and sometimes just shake my head.

Prologue

Tristan

Two years ago

My mom didn’t show up for dinner tonight.

Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her all day. Although my schedule was jam-packed—sword training all morning, an interview for a silly telebox show in the early afternoon, a painful two hours of “life lessons” from my father in the late afternoon (where the President “his highness” imparted his unending wisdom upon my brother and me), and barely a half hour to myself to clean up and get ready for dinner—I would still usually cross paths with my mom at some point. But not today. And now she isn’t at dinner, which is very unusual, her designated spot at the foot of the table empty save for the untouched place setting.

“Where’s Mom?” I ask from the center of our mile-long table.

From the head, my father looks up from his juicy prime beef. “She’s gone,” he says so matter-of-factly I think it’s a joke.

“Gone?” I snort. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

There’s no compassion in my father’s dark stare. “Are you dumb, boy? Gone means gone. Vanished, disappeared. She left you.” He wears a smirk, like the joke’s on me.

“She wouldn’t do that,” I say firmly. I know she wouldn’t. She loves me. My brother, Killen, too, who sits across from me watching our exchange with unreadable eyes.

“She would and she did,” the President says. “Her handmaiden found her cupboard empty this morning. She packed up as if she’s never coming back. If you’re ever going to be a man, Tristan, you have to face the truth. She’s abandoned you.”

But that’s not a truth I can face. Not now—not ever. She didn’t leave. She was driven away.

“You did this,” I growl. For a second my father’s face is vulnerable, his eyebrows raised, as if I’ve struck a nerve. A moment later, he’s himself again, unflappable.

“Watch your tone, son,” he says back, his voice simmering with hot coals.

I know not to push him too far, but tonight I can’t stop myself. “I hate you,” I say through clenched teeth. Pushing back my chair, I add, “I’m going to find her.”

Before I can get to my feet, he’s up and moving, barreling around the table, his face a swirling mixture of wrath and fire and his idea of discipline. I’ve seen him bad, but never this bad, and it takes me by surprise, so much so that I’m frozen for a split-second, just enough time for him to reach me.

There’s no hesitation in him as he towers over me; despite my recent growth spurt, he’s still taller by a head. And his frame is that of a man, chiseled from his daily personal training sessions, while I, though athletic, still sport the body of a boy. The strike comes so fast I have no time to react.

CRACK!

My head snaps back as the vicious uppercut lands just beneath my chin. Still half on the plush red velvet cushion of my cast-iron chair, I feel my feet tangle with the chair legs as I go down in a heap, unwittingly pulling the heavy seat on top of me. Pain is shooting through my jaw but I don’t even have time to massage my chin before my father’s vise-like hands are clutching the top of my tunic, pulling me to my feet, and then further, lifting me in the air, my legs dangling helplessly beneath me.

I’m looking down at my father, and I feel the warm trickle of blood from my mouth. I must’ve bitten my tongue when he hit me. Out of the corner of my eye I see Killen watching, his face that of a ghost, white and powdery. I look back at my father when he shakes me, once, twice, thrice, a reminder of the power he holds over me.

“You will NOT speak to me like that!” he spits out. “If anyone’s to blame for your mother’s disappearance”—another shake—“it’s you.”

He drops me, and although I land on my feet, my legs are weak and rubbery, unable to sustain my weight as my knees crumble beneath me. His shadow looms over me and I shudder. Why won’t he just let me be, leave me to my own grief? Because that’s not who he is. I suspect that his cold, uncaring shell of a heart stopped beating years ago.

“You will not leave this house again until I say so,” he commands, and despite the rebellion in my heart, I know I’ll obey him. But someday, when I’m stronger, I won’t.

I never saw my mother again.

Chapter One

Adele

The thunder of marching boots sends shivers through the rock and through my bones.

When I was young my parents used to tell me stories about monsters that roam the underground world we live in. Serpents with glowing eyes the size of dinner plates, longer than ten houses, slithering and slipping through the underground rivers and lakes. Faceless boogeymen, walking the caves, searching, searching…for a child to snack on. I now know my parents were just trying to scare me into not going out alone at night, to trick me into not wandering the outskirts of the subchapter.

These days there are worse things than monsters in the Tri-Realms.

Tawni and I hold our breath as the convoy of sun dweller troops pass us. When we heard them, we managed to extinguish our lights, pull back into our tunnel, and duck behind a finger of rock jutting out from the wall. We’re lucky—they’re not in our tunnel. Instead, they’re passing perpendicular to us, through a tunnel that intersects ours, shooting off to the left and right, the first crossroads we’ve seen since leaving the Moon Realm. Thankfully, they don’t seem to understand the concept of stealth, or they might have seen us before we even knew they were there.

It’s weird: even though he’s nothing like them, the sun dweller soldiers remind me of Tristan. I guess because they’re from the same place. The Sun Realm. A place I’ve only seen on the telebox. A place I will probably never go.

Compared to the ragtag legion of star dwellers we saw back in the Moon Realm, the sun dwellers are polished and professional, with pristine red uniforms adorned with medals and ribbons and the symbol of the Sun Realm on the shoulder—a fiery sun with scorching heat marks extending from the edges. Their weapons are shiny and new, their swords gleaming in their scabbards, their guns black and unmarked. They have bright flashlights and headlamps, which make it easy for us to see them. If one of them aims a light in our direction, they will spot us.

My muscles are tense, as line after line of soldiers march past. Without counting, I know there are more of them than the star dwellers in subchapter 26. If they were to fight, it would be a massacre. But they don’t turn at our tunnel, don’t head for subchapter 26. They pass straight through the crossroads, moving somewhere else—I don’t know where.

Some of them speak. “Damn endless tunnel,” one of them says.

“Damn the star dwellers for their rebellion,” another replies.

“I’ve got to take a piss,” the first one says, breaking off from the pack. He heads right for us, the light on his helmet bobbing and bouncing off the rock walls.

“Well, turn your damn light off,” a guy says. “We don’t want to see you doing it.”

“Shut your pie-hole!” the small-bladdered soldier says, but reaches up and switches off his light, thrusting him into shadow.

I feel Tawni grab my hand as the guy’s boots scrape closer. We can hear his breathing, heavy and loud from his long march. I am coiled as tight as a spring, ready to shove my foot into his groin, or my finger into his eye, if he stumbles on our bent legs.

He stops, and I know he is close, practically right on top of us. Cloth scuffles as he gets his thing out. We hear the soft shhhhh of moisture as he pees right next to us. It splatters on the rocks, spraying tiny droplets of liquid waste on my leg. Tawni is even closer so she gets the worst of it.

He is so exposed I could hurt him badly in an instant. As much as I want to, it would be suicide. The rest of the soldiers would be on us before I could say Pee somewhere else, sucker!

I resist the temptation, trying not to throw up as the tangy scent of urine fills my nostrils.

He finishes, scuffles his clothing some more, scrapes his boots away. I breathe out slowly, and I hear Tawni do the same. The guy flicks his light on and reunites with the other men just as the last line passes through the intersection. Darkness is restored as the torches disappear into the outgoing tunnel. The thunder fades away.

We don’t speak for a half hour, barely move, barely breathe. It could be the first of a dozen convoys for all we know. I feel that if we stumble into the crossroads, a bunch of lights will come on, a net will be thrown over us, and we’ll be dragged away.

My legs are aching from lack of movement. I feel like screaming. I am trying to outlast Tawni, but what she lacks in toughness, she makes up for in patience. I can’t take it anymore.

“You smell nasty,” I whisper.

“Speak for yourself,” she hisses.

“That was really gross.”

“It was worse for me.”

“True.” Silence for another minute. Then I say, “Do you think it’s safe?”

“No.”

“Neither do I, but I don’t think I can sit in a puddle of urine any longer.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, I’m sure there’s some spa in the Sun Realm that claims urine has healing powers, or is good for the skin, or something, and offers urine baths and urine scrubs, but I just don’t buy it.”

Tawni snorts. “You’re nuts,” she says. “Thank God for the modesty of the sun dwellers.”

“Yeah, we were lucky. If they were like the guys in the Moon Realm I know, the whole platoon would’ve peed against the wall, lights blazing full force.”

I pull myself to my feet and help Tawni to hers. We don’t turn our lights on, opting to feel our way along the wall to the intersection. When the rough rock gives way to empty air, we know we’ve reached the crossroads. Tawni holds my hand and pulls me across the mouth of the intersecting tunnel. A bead of sweat leaves a salty trail on my forehead as my anxiety reaches a fever pitch.

No lights come on. No net falls on us. No one drags us away. Not yet.

We make it to the other side safely, and then walk another five minutes to put a safe distance between us and the intersection, before turning our lights back on.

Tawni’s white tunic is yellowed with filth. I don’t look at mine.

“I don’t know if I can go any farther wearing this,” Tawni says, motioning to her soiled garb.

“I’d prefer a hot shower before changing clothes. Check the map and see if there’s a five-star hotel nearby.”

Tawni smirks, but pulls out the map anyway, one of the ones that Tristan’s friend, Roc, gave us before we left them. I shine the light for her while she locates the 26^th subchapter in the Moon Realm. She finds it and nods when she identifies the inter-Realm tunnel we are in. Using her finger, she traces our path along the tunnel. The line ends at the edge of the map.

“We need to switch to a Star Realm map,” she says. Fumbling through her pack, she selects a new map and unfolds it. She turns the map clockwise until she sees an edge with a tunnel going off the page that reads To Moon Realm, subchapter 26. When she pushes the new map against the old one, they match perfectly. “I guess we’re done with this one for now,” she says, folding the Moon Realm map and returning it to the pack.

I’ve officially left the Moon Realm for the first time. It feels weird, like I’m in a foreign land, not on earth anymore. As a little girl, I always dreamed of traveling the Tri-Realms as part of my job as a famous novelist, seeking inspiration for my books. Now I just wish I was at home, with my family.

Turning her attention back to the new map, Tawni continues tracing her finger along the straight blue line, until she reaches a red intersecting line. She taps the key in the bottom right-hand corner of the map. “Blue is for inter-Realm, red is for intra-Realm.”

“Those sun dwellers were traveling within the Moon Realm,” I say.

“Doing what?”

“Helping to squash the rebellion,” I guess.

Tawni nods, goes back to the map. “So if we’re here…”—she places her finger on the blue line just past the red one—“…then we are at least two days’ march from the first subchapter in the Star Realm—subchapter 30.”

“And the nearest hotel?” I joke.

“Probably an hour away,” she replies, “but it pretty much looks exactly the same as where we’re standing right now.”

I groan. I guess the builders of this tunnel didn’t really consider comfort to be a top priority.

“Wait a minute,” Tawni murmurs, peering at the map and once more consulting the key.

“What?”

“Eureka! There’s a blue dot not that far away!”

“Thank god!” I exclaim. “That’s amazing, wonderful! Uh…what’s a blue dot mean?”

Tawni laughs. “Watering hole.”

Yes! Now I really am excited. Our canteens are dry. We are filthy. A watering hole is just what we need. “Perfect,” I say.

Tawni and I are both smiling when we start walking again, our legs no longer sore, our steps bouncy and light. Funny how a little good news can have a physical impact.

We float along for an hour, expecting any second to hear the gentle slap of moving water against a rocky shore. When the second hour passes, I am getting antsy. Perhaps the map is wrong and there is no watering hole. Or maybe the underground lake has dried up, no longer fed by one of the many life-giving tributaries that flow in between and through the Tri-Realms.

“Where is it?” I say when a few more minutes pass without any change in the dull gray scenery.

“I’m not sure,” Tawni says.

“You said it was close.”

“It’s hard to judge distance on this map. Everything looks so close when there are really miles between.”

“We’ve walked for at least eight miles,” I point out.

Tawni shrugs and keeps walking. Having no other choice, I do the same. That’s when I hear it.

At first a soft tinkle, the noise becomes louder, a swishing—and then a gurgle. Water, has to be. Tawni looks at me and we both smile. The map was right!

For only the second time since we entered this godforsaken tunnel, the monotony is broken as the passage opens up to our left. The right wall remains straight and solid, but to the left there is an empty darkness. I feel cool air waft against my face, ruffling my hair. At our feet is water, lapping against the edge of the tunnel floor.

We go a little crazy. Or maybe just I do. Letting out a Whoop! I sling down my pack and thrust my cupped hands into the cool liquid. First I throw a handful into my face. My breath catches as the icy water splashes over my skin. But I don’t shiver—it feels wonderful. It’s like the water is healing me, rejuvenating more than just my skin: refreshing my soul. The wet drips off my chin and dribbles down my neck and beneath the neckline of my tunic. It feels so good I can’t help myself.

With no room in my mind left for embarrassment, or modesty, I pull my tunic over my head and toss it aside, leaving just my undergarments. Oh, and my shoes, too, which I pull off, along with my socks. I leave my flashlight angled on a rock so I can see.

I splash into the knee-deep water, relishing the soft caress of the cooling elixir. The lake bed is covered with long, smooth rocks that massage my sore feet. As I scoop water onto my arms, stomach, and legs, I remember a story my grandmother used to tell me about the Fountain of Youth, a pool of water with life-extending power. The cool touch of this pool feels equally potent, and I half-expect to see myself growing shorter, shrinking to reveal a younger me, the size of my half-pint sister perhaps.

I don’t shrink, but I am cleansed. When I turn around, Tawni is grinning. She tosses me a sliver of soap, which I manage to juggle and then catch. As I use it to wash my body, she methodically uncaps each canteen and fills them. She is the responsible one.

Seeing her with the canteens reminds me of the hungry thirst in my throat. I finish with the soap and hand it to Tawni to use. She is already undressed and daintily steps into the pool, looking as graceful as a dancer, particularly when compared to my own clumsy entrance.

I turn around and splash some more water on my face.

“Where’d you get that scar on your back?” Tawni asks.

Looking over my shoulder, trying to gaze at my back, I say, “What scar?”

She moves closer, places a hand on my back, and I shiver, suddenly feeling cold. Her fingers linger somewhere near the center of my back, where I can’t possibly see, just below my undergarments. “Curious,” she says absently.

“What is it?”

“It’s a crescent-shaped scar, small, but slightly raised off your skin. It looks like a recent scar…”

“Maybe I got it in the tunnels somewhere—or from Rivet,” I say, but I know that’s not right—there would have been blood, and someone would have noticed the wound seeping through my tunic.

“No, it’s not that fresh. Just looks like it’s from something that happened in the last few years. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looks just like…”

I turn to face my friend, taking in her quizzical expression in an instant. “Like what?” I ask when she doesn’t finish her statement.

“Nothing, I don’t know what I was thinking,” she says unconvincingly.

“You were going to say ‘Tristan’s scar’, weren’t you?” I laugh. “You’re nuts, you know that?”

She laughs high and musical. “And you’re not?”

I grin at her and cup my hands, once more using them as a scoop to lift a portion of water to my face. As I open my mouth to receive the glorious liquid, I see Tawni’s face change from mirthful to one of confusion. It looks like she’s playing with something in her mouth, moving her tongue around, side to side. Her eyebrows are lowered. I plunge the water into my mouth, delighting in the slick feel as it slips over my tongue, down my gullet.

“Ahh,” I murmur softly, just before Tawni grabs my arm. Her eyes are wide—she is scared. “What?” I say.

“Spit it out!” Tawni shrieks. Now I am the confused one. “Spit it out!” she says again, reaching around and thumping me on the back.

“I can’t,” I say over her shoulder. “I’ve already swallowed it.”

Tawni releases me and says, “No, no, no, no…this is not good.”

That’s when I taste it. Something’s not right about the water. Like Tawni, I make a face, swish some spit around in my mouth. Overall, the water was refreshing, delicious even, but the aftertaste is not good. The water is…. “Contaminated?” I say.

Tawni nods slowly. “I think so.”

Not good.

As kids, all moon dwellers are taught to look for the signs of contaminated water. Strange coloring, frothy film on the top, a unique odor, strange taste: All are possible clues that the water is not good to drink. At home we used a testing agent every four hours to check our water. If the water turns blue when combined with the agent, it is okay. If it turns green or brown, your water is bad. Even if we had the stuff we needed to test the water, it is too late. We’ve drunk it.

I peer into the water. It looks okay. No film, no discoloring, no malodor. The nasty aftertaste might just be a result of trace metals in the water, picked up somewhere along its winding path through the depths. I doubt we’re that lucky.

“What do you think it is?” I ask. There are a lot of dangers associated with drinking bad water. In mild cases, you might just get a bad case of diarrhea or perhaps light vomiting, but there are many worse diseases and viruses that can be picked up, too. Like…

“Bat Flu,” Tawni says.

“What? No. I doubt it. Can’t be. Why do you think that?” Bat Flu is the worst of the worst. Infected bats release their infected droppings into a water source, which then becomes infected. The symptoms of Bat Flu are numerous and awful: severe stomach cramps; cold sweats and hot flashes in conjunction with high fever; mind-numbing headaches; relentless muscle aches; hallucinations; and in many cases, death. There was a mild outbreak at my school in Year Three. Four kids, a dog, and one of their parents got the Flu. The only one that survived was the dog.

Tawni steps out of the water, leaving a trail of drips behind her. She picks up the flashlight and shines it across the pool. I follow the yellow light until it stops on the far wall, which is pockmarked with dozens of small caves. Bat caves. “That’s why,” she says.

I feel a surge of bile in my throat as I see piles of dark bat poo littered at the tunnel mouths. Each time the bats emerge from the caves, they will knock the piles into the water with the flap of their wings. Evidently, they’re sleeping now—the caves are silent.

I choke down the bitter, acidic taste in my mouth and say, “But this is a key watering hole for an inter-Realm thoroughfare. It’s even on the map.” My words don’t change anything. The water is likely contaminated. I don’t want to be in denial. I just need to deal with what has happened as best I can. My mother always told me to “face the truth with grim determination and a smile on your face.” I’m not sure about the smile. “Okay, let’s assume it’s contaminated. We need to vomit it out, Tawni. Now!”

Without watching to see what Tawni does, I stick two fingers down my throat, gagging immediately, the stomach fire rising so fast I can barely get my hand out of my mouth before I spew all over myself. I retch, gag, cough twice, spit as much of the vile liquid from my mouth as possible. At my feet, my own vomit is floating around my ankles. At my side, Tawni is throwing up, too.

Clenching my abs, I say, “We’re both going to get very sick. But we’ll get through it together.”

“What do we do?” Tawni asks, her voice rising precariously high. Her lips are tight. I’m afraid she might lose it. Since I met her, Tawni has always been strong, even when her best friend was viciously murdered. But now she looks seriously freaked out. She must’ve seen firsthand what the Bat Flu can do to someone.

“Who do you know that had the Flu?” I ask, stepping out of the bile-choked water, Tawni flitting out next to me. We are still filthy, but there’s not much we can do about it now.

Tawni’s eyes flick to mine and then back to the water, to the bat droppings. “My cousin,” she says.

“What happened?”

“She passed.”

“That’s not going to happen to us.”

“It was awful.”

“Tawni.”

Her eyes dart back to mine and stick this time.

“We’re going to be fine,” I say. “Stay with me.”

Tawni’s steel-blue eyes get steelier, and then, after reaching a hardness level I’d never seen in them before, soften, returning to their soft blue. “Right. We’ll be okay,” she says, almost to herself.

I take the soap from Tawni and chuck it, along with the two canteens, across the pool. They clatter off the far wall and plunk beneath the surface.

“We should dry off with our dirty tunics and then chuck them away, too,” I say.

Although it’s kind of gross soaking up the water with our filthy old clothes, we both do it because we have to. It’s the nature of things in our world. Out of necessity you have to do a lot of things you don’t want to do. I wonder if it was the same in the old world, before Armageddon, before Year Zero.

When we are dry and our old clothes have been thrown into the foul water, we each don one of the fresh tunics from our packs. It feels good—the simple act of putting on clean clothes. It’s like a rebirth, a second chance, a new beginning. At least usually. This time neither of us wants to turn the page on our story. But like so many things in life, we have no choice.

“How far to the Star Realm?” I ask.

“We’re in the Star Realm now, technically.”

“But how far to the first subchapter? Subchapter 30, right?”

Tawni consults the map. “Yeah, first we’ll hit subchapter 30. I’d say at least a twelve-hour hike if we move fast.”

“We’ve got to make it in eight,” I say. “Just in case we have the Flu. First symptoms will come fast, perhaps in three hours or so. Worse symptoms after six hours. The very worst at around eight hours. So we have to move fast.”

“What about water?” Tawni asks. Water will be a problem. We had to get rid of our contaminated canteens. We are already dehydrated.

“Any more blue dots on that map of yours?”

Tawni scans the page. “None in this section of the tunnel. There are blue dots all over the place in subchapter 30, but nothing between here and there.”

“We’re just going to have to suck it up. Can you make it?” I don’t know if I can, but I will do everything in my power. I don’t want to die without at least trying to find my mom.

“I don’t know,” Tawni answers honestly. I nod absently. “If I don’t make it, leave me and find your mom.”

“I won’t leave you,” I say.

Tawni opens her mouth, presumably to argue, but then snaps it shut and nods. She remembers who she’s dealing with. I’m not known for changing my mind.

“Let’s go,” I say, shouldering my pack.