Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

been destroyed long ago ... Instead, they were bright and shining, clearly well maintained and often used, guarded by men with guns in anonymous uniforms and very practical-looking armor. They covered Lewis and Jesamine with drawn energy guns from the moment they appeared, but the passwords Chevron had provided made them instantly back down. The guards actually became obsequious, smiling and bowing and doing everything but tug their forelocks. They mentioned the Shadow Court, and the Hellfire Club, and one of them actually winked at Lewis. He just nodded stiffly and said nothing, thinking all the while, Who the hell is Chevron? How does he know so much?
    '
    Could he really be a part of foul organizations like these?
    Could we he walking into a trap?
    The tram waiting at the empty platform didn't look anything like the ones Lewis had seen on the Quality soap. Instead of the luxurious coaches of fiction, weighed down by every comfort under the sun, Lewis and Jesamine found themselves facing a solid steel bullet, with only the one recessed door, and shutters covering all the windows. But both the centuries-old train and the platform looked absolutely spotless, as though they were used on a regular basis. The door opened as they approached. Lewis made Jesamine wait on the platform while he went in first, and looked suspiciously about him. But there were only empty, reasonably comfortable seats, and no signs of any other passengers. He beckoned to Jesamine, and she stepped quickly aboard. They sat down together, the door slid shut, and the train moved smoothly off.
    Lewis bit his lip, and kept looking about him, more than a little awed at riding in a conveyance out of history. He wondered whether Owen had ever ridden in a train like this, to visit the Empress Lionstone in her awful Court. Jesamine clung tightly to his arm, looking straight ahead, unusually subdued and quiet.
    Lewis wondered if he should be comforting and encouraging her, but he felt strangely numb, overcome by recent events. So much had happened, so much had changed, it was all he could do to keep moving, keep following some kind of plan.
    And he had to wonder again if this was how Owen had felt, when the Empress outlawed him, took away his sensible ordered life, and sent him on the run.
    Deathstalker hick. Always bad.
    Finally the train brought them to another empty platform, then slowed and stopped. The door slid open, but this time Jesamine refused to wait behind while Lewis went first. Her grip on his arm was painfully tight as they stepped out onto the platform and looked around them. There were no other travelers, no guards or guides. Only a series of illuminated arrows that appeared silently, floating a few inches above the platform, pointing off down a featureless steel tunnel. There was nowhere else to go, so Lewis and Jesamine followed the arrows, more of which kept appearing, always a few feet ahead of them.
    The air was hot and dry and still, full of a vague but disturbing tension. The tunnel walls were almost
    organically smooth and curved, as though they were walking through the guts of the city. There were noises up ahead; great sighings and groanings, like a giant turning slowly in his sleep, troubled by bad dreams. One tunnel led to another, and to another, always sloping discernibly downwards. Until finally Lewis and Jesamine turned a sharp corner and found themselves looking out over a great sea of dust. It stretched away before them, apparently forever, too colorless even to be properly gray, under a coolly glowing featureless sky. Logically, Lewis knew there had to be an end to the dust ocean somewhere, just as there had to be a cavern roof somewhere above, but the illusion was perfect. It felt exactly as though he had come to another place, another world. And perhaps he had.
    As Lewis and Jesamine stood close together, hand in hand, at the very edge of the Dust Plains of Memory, huge towers rose suddenly up out of the dust sea, thrusting up and up, studded with rococo detail like the great Clan Towers of old, but still that almost colorless gray. And even as they established themselves, hundreds of feet high, the Towers began to crumble and fall apart, running away in sudden darting streams of dust, only to instantly re-form themselves, drawing on more dust to bolster their shapes from within. Towers, rising and falling at the same time. Around the Towers and in between them, more great shapes moved through the ocean of dust, more