Sheppard thought of Linnian; he'd overheard the adjutant's similar comment to Dex outside the place. Both he and Muruw seemed utterly convinced they were right. A scattering of brusque laughter and applause rippled out across the chamber in support of the First Minister's assertion.
"But what about the others?" said Teyla quietly. "What about the Wraith that you do not kill in battle?"
The Magnate's face became fixed, and Sheppard knew straight away that the question had tripped some taboo, crossed some kind of line.
Muruw's expression clouded. "Your concubine is an inquisitive one, Lieutenant Colonel," he said mildly.
"Teyla is not… that." Sheppard frowned. "She's a member of my team."
"Oh," said the Minister. "Forgive me. In our hunt splinters it is typical that the leader takes their favor from a cohort. Pardon the error of my assumption, if the matter is otherwise…" He gave a pointed glance at Dr. McKay instead.
Rodney blinked as Muruw's insinuation registered with him. "Oh, good grief, no!"
Sheppard's temper flared. "We don't… We're not… That doesn't apply to us, Minister." The balding man smiled thinly, and the colonel's annoyance rose. The guy was deliberately provoking him to deflect attention from Teyla's question.
Daus stepped away, moving up the tiers once more. "You will forgive me, but affairs of state preclude me from continuing this discussion. Erony, you and Duke Kelfer will attend to our guests, see that they have rooms in the visitor's wing. Make them comfortable." The Magnate threw a vague nod at the chamber and then he had turned his back on them, dismissing them completely.
"That's it?" said Bishop. "That's the audience? Huh. I was expecting something, you know, a bit more showy."
"Shut it," warned Staff Sergeant Mason.
Erony summoned a servant, who bowed and gestured for them to follow her. Ronon matched pace with Sheppard as they made their way from the hall. "I don't like this," said the Satedan. "They're hiding something."
"So are we," noted the colonel. "Let's just keep our eyes open, huh?"
Chapter Three
She was running. Always running. Her limbs pistoned as she threw herself forward, heedless and unguided through the monochrome landscape. The hills and the twisted, skeletal trees rose up around her, black shadows falling across the dirty white ice that coated the ground. She sensed the wind on her bare arms, her neck and face; it should have been razor sharp and frigid, but her body was flooded with warmth and she felt clammy with sweat. The snow fell in a steep-angled blizzard, washing over her. It was wrong.
She was running. The sky was hollow and dark, the icy rains crossing it like a screen full of static. Where was she going? Did she even know where she was?
Emerging here and there from the snowdrifts were yellowed hummocks of cured hide and canvas, some whole, others ripped open and flapping in the wind. The tents were arranged in a familiar pattern, in the way of the tribes of Athos; but this was a dead village, torn into shreds and murdered in the frozen gloom. There were no bodies. There never were.
She hurtled through the encampment, unable to stop, her pumping legs refusing to give up the headlong pace. In the black out there she could hear the murmur of alien voices, growls and shrieks, animalistic noises. It was wrong. They encircled her even as she fled them, distant and echoing.
She was running. The ground around her spilt and splashed beneath her boots, the snows disintegrating into puddles, melt water pools shrinking and retreating into the dark. Where the ice withdrew she saw that the things that looked like tents, trees, hills, were nothing of the kind. They changed without changing, the earthen ground they clung to turning hard and obdurate. Faded grasses merged into hard stone cobbles, and streets grew up around her. Tall tenements that vanished into the night sky, high chimneys throwing clotted gray ashes from their mouths.
She stumbled and fell, striking the rough-hewn paving stones, scarring her hands; but there was no pain. It was wrong.
With effort she propelled herself to her feet and saw the children there beneath the sickly, sputtering light of a yellowed street lamp, dancing and laughing around the crooked iron pillar. The shrieking, screaming chorus was getting closer, looming along the pitch-black alleys that radiated away from where she stood.
She called to them, but her throat went tight and rebelled against her, stopped her from making a single sound. The children turned their backs, bats and ball in their hands, making play against a red brick wall, jostling one another.
The tremor of the silenced cry shot through her body in a shocking electric wave. Did they not hear? Could they not see to the shadows, the pale-faced things loping and stumbling, closer and closer?
She faced the darkness, the uncountable snarling horrors, ready to fight them; but her training failed her. As if a dam had breached and the reservoir of all her warrior skill had been drained away, she could bring up nothing to battle the beasts with.
It was wrong. She saw them now, the straggle-haired and corpse-pallor killers shambling into the halo of weak lamplight. They were different; the monstrous arrogance in their eyes was gone, replaced by a bestial, brutish manner. They howled like graywolves.
She spun in place, desperate to try one last time to warn the children. The players turned and altered as they finally heard the faint cry that she pressed from her throat. The children were Wraiths, hands distending into claws of black nails, hair fading white, faces crinkling as new features emerged and orchards of fangs split from red mouths. They advanced on her, snapping and purring at one another, and suddenly she understood that they were not in danger.
I am.
And then she was running, running and fleeing, but nothing moved, the road sucked her down, and the Wraith came close, hands extending, each of them desperate for a taste of her.
John heard the scream, and the sound jolted him instantly to wakefulness from the light doze he had slipped into. Before he could properly register it, the reflexive actions of his training had propelled him out of the bedroom with his Beretta pistol in his hand. He was across the anteroom in ten quick paces, bisecting the circular chamber and rushing headlong for the guest quarters provided for Teyla Emmagan. He was dimly aware of movement behind him as Mason and the others were alerted.
Sheppard saw the splintering around the brass handle and the gap where the door was hanging ajar. Leading with the gun, safety off and hammer back, the colonel shouldered the door open and moved swiftly inside.
It was stuffy; he smelled human sweat, feverish and clammy. In the center of the bedroom, identical in layout to each of the chambers off the anteroom, there was a wide bed with a net of gossamer muslin thrown over it. The sleeping pallet was in utter disarray and the silken sheets were a coiled snarl, dangling off the bed and heaped on the wooden floor. John came around the side of the muslin mesh and there was Ronon, also armed, low down in a crouch next to the tangle of sheets. Teyla lay there, shivering.
"Oh," managed Sheppard, a sudden and unexplained dart of resentment rising in him. He pushed it away. "You, uh, were-
"I was outside. Heard her cry out," explained Dex. He jerked a thumb at the door. "She locked it," Sheppard thought he caught a note of awkwardness in the other man's voice. "Came running."
"Yeah, me too." The colonel made his weapon safe, holstered it and bent down to help the Athosian woman extricate herself from the sheets.
"Forgive me, John," she mumbled. "I… It was…"
"Problem, sir?" called Mason from the doorway. "She need a doc, sir?"
"We'll handle this," Ronon told him firmly.
Mason said nothing and backed away.
Teyla took a long draught from a carafe of water beside the bed. As Sheppard watched, her breathing eased. "That was most disturbing."