Gillian Anderson - A Dream of Ice

That sudden, overwhelming loneliness had paralyzed her for days. The Han woman renting a room in Chinatown to her had thought she was ill and kept trying to ply her with herbal teas. Yokane had only starved and wept and hated Caitlin.

When she regained rational thought Yokane knew that hatred was pointless and irrelevant. She knew she had to watch this woman, learn as much as she could about her. See what light and perspective the woman could provide on the hazy vision she herself had been experiencing.

Now she knew.

Yokane walked on through the lamp-lit night, her hands held at the center of her torso. She pointed the first two fingers of her left hand down, the first two of her right hand up.

Awareness flooded her inner and outer senses. The very spaces between the buildings of the city became as tangible as the buildings themselves. The millions of breathing bodies were knots of density across her field of sensation. Her emptied spirit filled with energy—

She stopped on a corner and leaned against a lamppost. But the energy was being drained.

“No… not again !”

Yokane was suddenly wrenched away, pulled back across fathoms of time and space, to a huge chamber with a domed ceiling, open to the sky. She had been here several times over the last few months but returned now with greater force and sharper awareness. She could not inform Caitlin O’Hara but it was the two souls central to the vision that filled her with dread.

In the heart of the chamber amid water and fire, a dozen people in robes had gathered. A woman at the very center was performing movements and gestures that Yokane recognized from her training. As the woman moved, the others followed her exactly, and Yokane could feel immense pulses of energy rushing in torrents from their hands, through the air, through the walls, and away. The movements were slow but the intention behind them was pure fire, controlled ferocity and rage and conviction. Yokane felt a strange blend of horror and elation, a flood of anger and triumph rising within her, until the door to the chamber slammed open and a voice shouted in Galderkhaani, “Rensat! Gather everyone, quickly!”

It came from a short, elderly man with wildly curling white hair, hurrying as fast as he could across the chamber. The woman at the center never faltered in her movements but spoke simultaneously.

“What is wrong?” the woman asked.

“Out there”—he pointed in the direction from which he’d come—“there are rumors that the Source is active!”

The woman stiffened. “It must be stopped,” she said.

“We cannot access it!” the man said.

“Then we must find those who operate it and stop them!”

“You will kill them?”

“If necessary, as Enzo’s sister tried to do.”

The man stood there, uncertain how to proceed. Suddenly his nose crinkled.

“The air!” the woman said, insisting. “Smell the air!”

The man inhaled as if he were already dismissing the notion, but the result caused confusion. “Sulfur,” he replied. “It’s true—”

The ground-shattering sound of an explosion rocked through the room. It came from outside. The Priests lost their sequence in the movements. Rensat looked up in panic. Visible through the latticed ceiling was smoke, huge, throttling clouds of smoke. The man rushed to the stairs by the wall and lurched up them. He approached the nearest window and looked out, looked east.

“Oh gods,” he breathed. “The khaan …”

The woman beseeched everyone to join hands with another, as many others as they could, and recite the cazh .

“Come to me, Pao!” Rensat cried. “Quickly, while there is time for us!”

“Oh gods!” Pao screamed as he grasped her outstretched fingers.

Then there was fire and torrent and Yokane’s body fell sideways, sliding down the lamppost. She breathed heavily, losing the little energy she had gathered.

“Oh gods,” she murmured, repeating Pao’s last words.

She pushed herself from the streetlight and began to walk. Walking had helped before and it worked now. Soon her head was clear again and the vision of Galderkhaan held only the weight of a memory and the message that had demanded tonight’s action.

She had not wanted to open herself to Caitlin, but she knew she needed help immediately. She knew that working through the boy would force Caitlin’s hand.

Yokane continued to walk but she remained closed to the city and the past. She wanted to avoid Fifth Avenue and Washington Square, continuing over to the east side and down toward her closet-sized room.

She had told Caitlin to contact her—by phone—after her visit to the Group’s headquarters. When that was done, when Yokane had rested, she would know better what had to be done in the past to protect the future.

Mustering her strength, the woman continued to walk. The night had been more exhausting than she had anticipated, and after a few minutes more she decided she had walked enough. It was time to rest. She hadn’t seen many cabs pass by so she hurried for the subway and took the D train to the West Village.

The respite was what she needed—though the buzzing in her pocket as the train passed below the Group’s mansion was noticeable not just to herself but to those nearest her. Most of the passengers probably assumed it was her cell phone, but their annoyed looks put Yokane on guard: she couldn’t afford a confrontation, especially if there was a police officer on board. She wished it were a pet thyodularasi whose smooth flesh she could stroke and calm, and it would calm her… at least, that was the legend. She had only seen the animal’s bones, held in secret and treasured by the generations who had come before her. She left the subway at Lafayette Street—well below the Group’s mansion.

Between her worried thoughts; her increasingly sad, wistful reflections; and the stone buzzing in her pocket, Yokane had very little attention to spare for her surroundings. She walked through Little Italy, then continued east. She only half-turned when approaching footsteps seemed uncommonly close.

Three fingers jabbed into the angle of her jaw and neck and Yokane’s body dropped. Her last thought was of Caitlin and the Group’s headquarters, and the silent scream her body was no longer able to make—

Casey Skett caught her so quickly that to a young woman walking on the other side of the street, she seemed only to wobble. With one arm Casey lifted Yokane just enough so that her feet would not drag on the pavement and walked her to the open passenger door of his Department of Sanitation van. He checked and no pedestrians were looking to see what had happened. He lifted Yokane into the seat, taking care to make it look friendly and romantic in case anyone was gazing from a nearby window. With the female belted into the passenger seat, he shut the door and moved around to get behind the wheel. He drove into the Group’s underground parking spot, parked, unfastened Yokane, and dragged her into the back of the van. There, he pulled the object from her pocket but did not pause to inspect the still-vibrating artifact. He’d known since Arni died what this descendant of the bloody Priestly suicide cult had been carrying. He put the stone in his own pocket, removed a leash hanging from the wall of the van, and strangled Yokane with it until her feet stopped their spasms.

Then he drove straight to the animal hospital to utilize their incinerator.

He would decide later if and when he would tell Flora about any of it… including his ties to the people she sought.

The Technologists of Galderkhaan.

There was a sharp chill in the air and an intermittent wind coming Washington Square Park. Fallen leaves crackled as they skidded along the dimly lit sidewalk and scratched the sides of parked cars.