Nightsword

by Margaret Weis

  “Halloo, right!” Griffiths’s voice was far away and tired.

  “Halloo, left!” Merinda called back wearily.

  If they didn’t have to be so close to the ground, she thought, they could float quickly above the jungle canopy and get their bearings. She could be back to the Venture Revenge in just a few breezy minutes. Yet she couldn’t do that yet, her mission requiring her to keep close to the ground.

  It’s just like my life, she thought. I feel like I’m drifting through my own jungle, too close to really see what’s going on. I’d like to break loose and soar. Perhaps I could get my own bearing then. Perhaps I could even find my way back home, she thought.

  “Halloo, right!” she called out absently.

  “Halloo, left!” echoed the distant reply.

  Of course, that was ridiculous, she realized. There would never again be a place she could think of as home. She realized that her home would no longer be a place that she returned to but would have to be a place that she forged for herself. Griffiths had found that out, quickly enough, when he’d become prophet of an entire planet—only to discover that he didn’t much care for the job.

  Merinda smiled at the thought of Griffiths. She wasn’t entirely sure as to how such a naïve man had been chosen for what appeared to be a major exploration event by his backward and barbaric people. Still, while he might not appear as dynamic as Flynn, there was something rather endearing about the man. He seemed to her like a young, lost pet: cuddly and cute, yet yapping at all the unknown things around him regardless of how harmful or harmless they were. Merinda smiled at the analogy for a moment then shook her head. No, she didn’t need a pet right now, no matter how cute it might be. It just looked like another bad choice in relationships, and she knew her track record along those lines.

  On the other hand, there was Flynn. He was more dynamic and confident than Griffiths, she thought, but there was something about him that reminded her too much of Queekat. Something hidden, dark and dangerous. Perhaps she was wrong.

  “Halloo, left,” she called out automatically.

  Silence.

  “Halloo left!” she called once more, this time with loud annoyance.

  There was no response from the thick fronds around her.

  “Griffiths?” Merinda shouted suddenly, then reined in her drift and held as still as she could.

  The leaves shifted about her but there was no response.

  Merinda cried out, “Come, right! Come, right!” She rotated forward quickly and, not waiting for the reply from Kheoghi, flew into the jungle at her right. The fronds, leaves, branches, and vines rushed past her as she soared. She avoided the larger branches and smashed painfully through the smaller ones in her haste.

  “Griffiths!” she cried out as she flew with a rush of wind. “Griffiths!”

  Suddenly the jungle wall vanished. Her skin tingled with recognition as she passed through the mystical wall that divided the jungle from the clearing. There was magic working here. She arrested her flight as she emerged, more out of reflex caution than thought.

  Rising before her were the broad steps of an enormous landing claw. So mammoth was the structure that she nearly mistook it for a temple ruin.

  She could hear others of their landing party emerging from the jungle behind her, each of them stopping as they were confronted by the enormous structure rising before them. Merinda looked upward. The beautiful curved lines of the structure could still be seen, despite the encroaching growth which only recently had found its way around the magical barrier surrounding the craft. Higher and higher she looked, up to the curving arms embracing the vast dome glittering in the perpetual twilight of the Bonefield Narrows.

  The Lokan Settlement Ship.

  “Excellent work, Merinda!” Flynn said, suddenly at her side. “You’ve found it!”

  “Griffiths!” Merinda shouted, her eyes searching the structure frantically. “Griffiths, where are you?”

  Her eyes came to rest on two figures struggling at the top of the stairs. She rotated the control globes at once, her levitation belt propelling her upward above the sharply rising staircase. Her eyes remained locked on Griffiths. The astronaut was suddenly twisted around, his arm bent behind his back by a black-cloaked figure beyond. Merinda was barely halfway up the staircase when she caught the glint of a weapon pressed swiftly under Griffiths’s right jaw.

  “Stop now, Neskat, or the barbarian dies!” The husky voice of the dark figure drifted down to them.

  Merinda arrested her ascent at once.

  “Targ!” she growled.

  32

  Shades and Shadows

  “I was wondering when you might get around to coming here,” said Targ of Gandri. His tone was quiet and affable on the surface, but Merinda detected the high quiver of tension that ran through his words. “It was inevitable, of course, that you would come here. The only question was whether I could arrive before you, Merinda.”

  Griffiths continued to struggle but Targ’s hold couldn’t be broken. In a few moments a panting, sweating Griffiths stood passive, his right arm twisted upward into his own back, and Targ’s weapon directed to fire through his skull with all too graphic effect.

  “Don’t be a fool, Targ,” Merinda said with a calm that she did not yet feel. “You don’t want to kill Griffiths.”

  “I’ve already tried to kill him once,” Targ said, pressing the crystalline emitter of his force-projector weapon deeper into Griffiths’s flesh just below his jaw. “Thought that I had succeeded rather spectacularly, too. Having believed I killed him once before, what makes you think I would have any compunction against killing him a second time?”

  Merinda said nothing but drifted downward to stand midway up the stairs. There she stopped a moment and looked up again at Griffiths and the tall figure behind him, Targ’s white hair shining under the twilight sky above.

  “What? Merinda Neskat short of words?” Targ observed with an arch of his eyebrow. “I am astonished indeed. I would have thought that there were a thousand questions you might ask. As head of the Vestis order I am concerned. Why don’t you ask me, say, how it is that I escaped that dungeon you placed me in on Avadon? You might ask me how it is that I came to this place so quickly or how I knew that you would come here so quickly. Indeed, Merinda, I am worried that you are slipping in your skills as a Vestis. Curiosity is supposed to be one of your primary motivations.”

  Merinda looked up. She squinted as though to better see the man who stood above her. “You once told me never to ask a question that I already knew the answer to.”

  Targ replied, “Actually, I said to never ask a question that you didn’t want the answer to. Nevertheless, I have what I have chased you halfway across the galaxy to obtain—the mind of your barbaric friend, here. So, unless you have something more to say to me, I’m afraid we must all be going.”

  Merinda looked into Targ’s eyes and spoke with a quiet, sure voice. “Vestis Prime Targ of Gandri, I hereby arrest you for crimes against the Omnet as specified in the Charter of the Dictorae. Specifically, the attempted assassination of the Prophet of Avadon, the attempted assassination of a fellow Vestis, and exercising your authority outside the bounds of the Charter and to the detriment of the better interests of the Omnet. Further charges are pending a complete investigation of your actions, but these charges are sufficient to detain and try you. How do you plead to the charges brought against you thus far?”

  Targ laughed and shook his head. “I do not recognize your authority to try me, Vestis Neskat. In any event, just who would you get to enforce your sentence? Griffiths?” Griffiths grimaced as Targ pressed the astronaut’s twisted arm painfully upward. “Perhaps you’re thinking of your old friend Flynn and his merry pirate band?”

  Merinda lowered her head.

  “Of course,” Targ said. “You already know that Flynn has been working for me for some time now.”

  “That’s not true, Targ,” Flynn shouted from somewhere down behind Merinda.
“I serve my pirate brothers here on the Maelstrom Wall. My allegiance is to them!”

  “Nobly put,” Targ said in response. “That allegiance, I suppose, included your little response to the Omnet concerning the whereabouts of a certain renegade Vestis of your acquaintance, did it?”

  Merinda turned slowly to look at Flynn and gauge his response.

  Flynn continued to look up at the Vestis Prime high overhead at the top of the stairs. “As a matter of fact, it did, Targ of Gandri. It brought you out of Central didn’t it? You’re here now, and unless I missed my guess, you didn’t exactly bring the entire Centirion battle fleet with you. This entire thing stank from the beginning—and nothing stinks quite the way a man who is suddenly out for himself does.”

  Targ’s lips curled. “Ethics from you? What a sense of humor! I’d love to stay and debate this with you but I’ve got an appointment with my own fate.”

  Merinda saw Targ’s lips begin to move in quiet conjuration. “No!” she yelled, twisting the control globes in her fists full forward.

  It was too late. Both Targ and Griffiths were shrouded in a deep violet aura. Both encased men rose swiftly above her and turned. In a moment the two figures rushed into the black open maw of the Lokan Settlement Ship.

  Merinda didn’t hesitate. “Flynn,” she cried out. “Get moving! If we lose Griffiths, it’s over!”

  The pirate captain and his crew were already soaring toward the steps, but she was far closer. As the levitation belt gathered momentum, she quickly cleared the edge of the platform, spun the globes hard down, and vanished into the well of darkness before her.

  Merinda blinked quickly, trying vainly to get her eyes adjusted to the darkness that surrounded her. The great curving walls of the ship were only menacing shadows whose distance it was impossible to judge as she flew on. She murmured a cantrip that enhanced her vision somewhat but transformed the shadows into eerie green glows still barely above her sight threshold. More importantly, however, the cantrip allowed her to clearly see the residual ether trail left by Targ’s own flight spell. It was fading quickly to her sight. She realized that Targ was moving quickly through the interior of the ruin with a confidence and knowledge that she herself lacked.

  She pressed on, pushing the levitation belt to its limits, twisting and turning in the increasingly complex labyrinth that was the interior of the ship. The walls were closer now; the turns more difficult to navigate. Still the trail before her continued to fade.

  She cursed Targ once more. The man had been the director of the most important organization in the known universe and now he was running with a hostage on some crazed artifact hunt? Targ may have been a capable Vestis and a formidable enemy but right now none of it was making much sense.

  Suddenly a wall appeared out of the darkness directly ahead of her. Merinda cursed again, jerked at the control globes, but only managed to soften the blow. She slammed into the wall with enough force to knock the wind from her lungs.

  Merinda slid painfully down the curving wall and came to rest, gasping for air, at the bottom of the crossing hall. Dust billowed around her, choking her as she struggled to regain her breath. Her vision had blurred momentarily from the impact. The cantrip was still in effect; the walls were still glowing a ghostly green.

  She had lost the trail.

  Frantically, she leaped to her feet in a billowing cloud of dust. The wall was curved from top to bottom. The hallway itself was also curved, its ends gently wrapping around into the distance. A quick glance about her discovered where the directional globes had come to rest after falling from her hands. She quickly picked them up and oriented them. Shakily, she rose into the air again and quickly glided down the corridor to her left.

  She traveled that direction for some time but no evidence of the ether trail came to her. Cursing, she doubled back, soaring past the point where she had hit the wall …

  … And very nearly running directly into Kheoghi in the process. She reined in her momentum just before she collided with the coarse-haired brute.

  “Merinda?” Flynn asked, drifting slowly over to where she now floated. “Where in the Ninth Darkness are you going?”

  Merinda was still slightly out of breath from her collision with the wall. “I lost … I lost them, Flynn! There was a tentative ether trail but it’s gone.”

  Flynn just shook his head. “Wizards and technicians,” he said with a laugh. “Life is so complicated for wizards and technicians. They always wonder how we got along without them for so long. Kheoghi?”

  “Aye, Captain?” said the minotaur, whose massive bulk floated just a few feet away.

  “Do you think you could find our friend Griffiths in this place?”

  “Aye, Captain, if that be yer pleasure,” Kheoghi rumbled. “Humans are a stinking race, beggin’ yer pardon, sire! However, I don’t mind tellin’ ye that it gives me no pleasure!”

  “You’ve got the best olfactory sense of anyone aboard, Kheoghi,” Flynn said. “You’ve tracked no fewer than a dozen men for us in the last month. I thought you took great sport in it!”

  “Oh, aye, sire, trackin’ a man, that I do enjoy something fierce,” the minotaur said, his head lolling from side to side as he spoke. “It’s not that, sire!”

  “Well, then, what’s the problem?”

  “Ye see, sire—I just don’t much care for mazes, that’s all.”

  With that, Kheoghi lifted his head slightly, gave a long sniff through his broad snout, and led them all off down the second right-hand corridor.

  The last corridor ended in massive doors, each of which stood slightly ajar. They had made their way far into the ship, farther than Merinda would have thought possible considering its size. They had broken out chemical torches early in their descent. Now their dim green light was unneeded, for the compartment beyond was obviously lit somehow, its beams spilling through the partially open doorway into the access hall in which they crept.

  Merinda approached the doorway with great caution, keeping her back against the smooth wall and one of the doors between her and the room beyond. She motioned for Flynn, who was next to her, to slide closer to her so that she could whisper to him and be understood. “Targ is mine. You see to the others, but if I don’t take Targ down first, then you’ll have to get Griffiths and your crew as far from here as you can. A person is only given one chance at Targ; after that, it will mostly be a matter of how long I can keep him occupied before he kills me.”

  “Neskat, this is crazy!” Flynn argued under his breath. “We’ve got the cursed map! Let’s just get out of here!”

  “No, Flynn! The map’s no good without either Griffiths or what he’s looking for in these ruins. Get him and the map out of here and you may have a chance to come back later and find the control room. Lose Griffiths now and you’ll never find the core passage in a dozen millennia. Targ will, however, and I just don’t want to know what kind of galaxy his mind would shape. Now wait here until I make my move, then rush the chamber, grab Griffiths, and get the hell out of here!”

  Flynn opened his mouth as though to protest, but then simply sighed quietly and nodded.

  Merinda turned back toward the doorway. With silent, considered steps she made her way across the dust-covered floor. After several eternities passed, she crouched down near the floor and ventured to look into the room beyond.

  The chamber was far more vast than she had imagined it would be. It was at least a hundred feet in diameter, its curved walls ornately decorated. There was a platform at the center of the chamber, lit by a single column of light.

  By the Nine, Merinda thought to herself. This is the command chamber! This is where it all happened to L’Zari Targ all those years ago!

  She took the scene in quickly, her mind analyzing it primarily from a strategic standpoint. Targ stood about twenty-five feet from her, his weapon apparently still dimpling Griffiths’s skin at his neck. Beyond them was the platform of raised panels, lit by the dim column of light from above. Targ and Gr
iffiths both stood in the way of the platform, keeping her from seeing its details.

  It was Targ that kept her attention; that was the focus of every fiber of her being. The Prime was speaking to Griffiths as they stood with their backs to the doorway.

  “… Right here that I stood when it happened. Can you possibly imagine it, barbarian? I was only a boy, really. I stood right here as that Gorgon bastard lifted my father up on his multiple blades and took him from me. All because that old spacer wouldn’t give the Gorgon a stupid map! A piece of paper and ink!”

  Merinda could see that Targ was working himself up toward something. There was an unbalanced, hysterical edge to Targ’s voice that she had never heard before. Targ seemed to be pushing himself towards the edge of some mental abyss that she could barely fathom. It was obvious to her that there wouldn’t be much time left for her to act.

  “Can’t you see it? Can’t you picture it in your little brain, barbarian? Now it’s I that want the map and you are going to give it to me or, so help me, I will do to you what those Gorgons did to my father right on this very spot! I’ve come too far and sacrificed too much to let a backwater, uneducated barbarian from some unknown world stop me now! Show me! Show me the chart!”

  Time slowed down as she moved, her mind focusing on the task at hand, drawing up her resources from within herself and preparing for the battle to come. She had her wits, her considerable Vestis skills, and a simple cutlass. She knew it was all she had. She knew it would not be enough.

  Her first steps into the hall prepared her stance. The cutlass came up, a focal point for the energies of her mystical powers. The edge of the blade had no chance of penetrating Targ’s flesh for the Prime was far too well protected for such weapons. As a conduit for her own powers, however, the metal shaft of the blade would work quite well. She directed the point forward, summoning all her reserves. Her legs bent down as she prepared to accept the recoil of the blow she was about to deliver and prepared herself for the battle which would certainly follow her first strike.