Trader's Leap (Liaden Universe Book 23)

by Sharon Lee

  “I am, I think, sufficiently well, but you must allow me to wonder in turn—whence came this . . . alteration in your gift?”

  She looked at him blankly, her confusion reflecting back to him along her pattern.

  “Alteration?”

  “I seem to see an expansion since the last time you and I were intimate. Has Lina not mentioned this? Nor Priscilla?”

  Padi shook her head.

  “The concentration has been on shielding and on control,” she said hesitantly. “On close work, in particular, to teach focus and discrimination. Lina says it is akin to learning the small dance, so that there is a foundation to inform the larger moves.”

  “Yes, we had all three discussed that, and it had seemed best—it being roughly the course of study all of us had followed. I wonder—forgive me—if you have been practicing . . . larger moves on your own initiative?”

  She shook her head decisively.

  “No, sir. I do not want to endanger the ship, or to cause any unintentional harm, as when I used my bowl to protect myself.”

  That had been rather an astonishing use of power, Shan allowed. He hadn’t been able to work out quite how it had been done, which was perhaps not amazing, given his status as a mere Healer. That Priscilla had not been able to find the trick of the thing, never mind reproduce it—that was worrisome. To say the very least that might be said on the topic.

  “I understand,” he said. “Well. Since we are gathered together, I wonder if you will ask this”—he placed the flat disk of mottled green and blue stone that he used for a coaster on the desk directly before her—“to please rise and take up a position at approximately twelve centimeters above the desk, so that I may observe your technique.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Shan leaned back in his chair, shields wide open, and watched. He saw the lines of Padi’s pattern intensify as she brought her concentration to bear. Rather a lot of concentration, given the relatively trivial nature of the task but, there, she had already made a misstep or two with this, so was likely somewhat conscious.

  He waited, anticipating the moves she would make in order to lift the coaster. He was not himself telekinetic, but he had watched Anthora often enough that he certainly knew the technique and the level of power required in order to—

  The coaster rose, wobbling slightly. There had been not the faintest flicker of energy, nor did he see the necessary construct of will surrounding the object. Indeed, it seemed, very literally, to be floating in naked air, supported by nothing more than Padi’s strong suggestion that it should do so.

  “I . . . see,” Shan said. “May I ask—”

  Static crackled, bright and cruel, along his link with Priscilla. For a moment, she loomed enormous in his Sight, a giant, filling all his senses until—

  She was gone.

  No, not quite gone. A taste lingered along the link—a taste he recalled too well—dust, and metal, and dire intent. Weapons Hall.

  He may have cursed, very quietly.

  Then, he was reaching along the link—the link that was every bit as solid as it had been; running wide and true from the center of his own being, out, beyond, to the core of his beloved. The link was still in place, merely . . .

  Priscilla . . . herself . . . was not present at the other end. Or say, rather, a shadow of Priscilla was tethered there, like a placeholder in an unfinished equation.

  “Father!”

  He brought himself to center, blinked into the lesser reality enclosed by his office, and looked up into his daughter’s shocked face.

  He took a deep breath, and made his tone easy.

  “Your pardon. Priscilla seems to have met an adventure. I will go to her.”

  Padi was still staring at him.

  “Do you need me? Do you need Lina?”

  “No . . . ” He reached again along the links, touching the chill presence of the shadow. “No, she’s quite safe in her office . . . ” Mostly. “I think she has merely decided to . . . step sideways.”

  He stood. “I regret that the lesson must end early. Please, return the coaster to—”

  “I can’t,” Padi said, swallowing hard.

  He looked at her.

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because—I was startled by the—jolt of energy, and it—I threw it, I think. I’m not really certain where it may be.”

  “ . . . not one of us sane. What would you? We were gods, or near enough, though none so powerful as the Mighty Iloheen, Unmaker of the Universe, Defiler of Angels. The Iloheen were careful, so very careful, that their servants were never so mighty as they. Being what they were—being how they were—they did not suppose that some few of their children might bind themselves together—against them.

  “Thirteen was our number—that was thirteen pairs of Lady and thrall. Thirteen goddesses, let it be said. Together, we produced a Working; weaving templates of ourselves into the living stuff of the universe. We wove Names into our own essences, to anchor us to Life. This, we did in the service of Life. In that, we were nearer unto gods than our makers.

  “It was our hope that we would, by these manipulations, trap the Iloheen within their own trap, and see the Destroyers destroyed.

  “It was a last hope, and a feeble one. Yet we, the Thirteen, pursued it with all our art and energy, deeming any hope superior to surrender.

  “There were others, our partners in deicide. Chiefest among them was Rool Tiazan, who more than any other of us could claim to be a god, and his Lady, who refused any name, and was perhaps the maddest of us all. They would see the Iloheen dead, if they might, but foremost, they would preserve Life.

  “There was another of us, insatiable and cruel as the Iloheen who had made her. Her purpose was the death of the Destroyers, that she might rise into the vacuum of their power.

  “There were also the children, created from the saturation of energies, the blood of angels, and the ceaseless manipulation of Probability.

  “And there was Life Itself, for above all things, Life strives to live.

  “Little enough, you might say, to bring against the Enemy of All Life.

  “In the last hours of the universe’s existence, perhaps inside the same unlikely instant that allowed Rool Tiazan to freeze the ley lines, forcing Probability and Luck into one dense, unnavigable, pool . . . In that instant, I Saw that, to best serve Life, if not to insure my own survival, it was necessary to weave another template—a Fourteenth for my submissive, Lute, who had, no less than Rool Tiazan, been a lord among zaliata—an angel—before he accepted my dominance and became part of our doomed attempt to unmake the Unmaker.

  “The last instant arrived, with the universe already lost and every small life riding on one final throw of Rool Tiazan’s dice.

  “The throw was true, however crooked the dice; Life won through to a new universe and the Iloheen, crystalline in their perfection, remained locked in the old.”

  There was a pause.

  Priscilla, who had been listening to this discourse with some astonishment, blinked and looked about herself.

  She stood in the Witches Hall of Weapons, where she had come, in lives before, as Moonhawk and as Moonhawk’s vessel. On those occasions, she had been wearing the garb of a Priestess of the Goddess.

  On this occasion, however, she was suitably attired as the captain of Dutiful Passage. The woman before her—Moonhawk herself—held a pair of tarnished silver rings in one glowing white hand, standing tall in robes of starlight blue, breasts bare, waist bound with silver chains. Her eyes were . . . odd, as if she were simultaneously blind and all-seeing. She smiled, as if she felt the weight of Priscilla’s regard.

  “The Thirteen survived the destruction of the universe, though twelve had made an error. Eventually, it was a fatal error. They had failed to realize that the godhead sprang from paired energies. They had used—used up—their thralls, sparing not one thought to save them. Thus did they doom themselves. Every century, they dwindled. In these days, they are nothing
more than empty Names, shadow-shreds harried among the golden threads of creation.”

  She extended her hand, displaying the tarnished rings.

  “Lute and I survived. In fact, we have survived too long. Even Rool Tiazan was at last granted an end; dissolution. Peace.”

  Priscilla took a careful breath.

  “Lute is surely not your slave, Lady. The histories—my own experience . . . ”

  Lady Moonhawk swayed a gentle bow, her draperies billowing starfields about her.

  “The gods love Life; it is not given them to be more particular than that. I say to you that Lute is my other half; I could not survive without him, nor he, without me. Nor yet may I die without him; nor he, without me.”

  “My lady . . . ” Priscilla began—and was silenced when Moonhawk raised her glowing hand.

  “Do not speak,” she murmured. “These matters are beyond you, as they should be. I bring them forward so that you may know what you are Seeing, and be at peace, when the moment comes. As for my purpose in bringing you here to me—there are three.

  “Attend me, now.”

  She paused, and it seemed to Priscilla that she became more fully present, solid in this place that existed and yet did not.

  “My first purpose is to make my apologies to the last of Moonhawk’s living vessels, for the use to which I have, and will, put you, and the chaos I have sown into your life. I promise that you will soon be free.

  “My second purpose is to give you—and the Lute in your time—my blessing, which is even yet a potent thing. I approve of this course you have undertaken.

  “My third purpose is to grant to your child strength, and freedom. She will encompass marvels.”

  Priscilla bowed her head.

  “My thanks, Lady Moonhawk,” she murmured, and would have said more—would have asked—but the Goddess made a gesture, and whatever she might have said vanished from mind and mouth.

  “Gently spoken. Your service has pleased me, as I have not been pleased in many hundreds of this universe’s years.

  “Go in peace, Priscilla Delacroix y Mendoza, with the gratitude of a goddess.”

  * * *

  Weapons Hall faded.

  Priscilla opened her eyes to a scrambled black and white abstract. She was cold, panting, and desperately thirsty.

  “Coming,” Shan said cheerily.

  She blinked, reached for her center, and snatched the spinning confusion into sense by a sheer effort of will.

  She was sitting in her chair in the captain’s own office. Shan was at her side.

  “Water for my lady,” he said, extending a glass. She took it in both hands, and he hesitated for a moment, bent close, as if he wished to be certain that she had the strength to hold it.

  She drank greedily, and he shortly took the empty glass away, and brought it, full, back again.

  “Shall I call for a tray?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. She drank the water more slowly this time, and listened to him speaking on comm to BillyJo, in the kitchen.

  She finished the water, placed the empty glass on the desk and sat there, taking stock. There was, she thought, a better than even chance that her legs would buckle if she tried to stand up. Which was simply ridiculous.

  “Not at all ridiculous,” Shan said, leaning over to pick up the glass. “You—or someone—expended quite a bit of energy. The jolt was enough to disturb me at lessons with Padi.”

  He paused, tipping his head to one side.

  “I fear I may have offended innocent ears.”

  Priscilla considered him.

  “Padi served under Ama ven’Tyrlit,” she said dryly.

  “Very true! I was forgetting! Obviously, I can teach her nothing.”

  “How inventive were you?” she asked, taking the refilled glass from him.

  “Depressingly mundane, I assure you. We had been in the middle of having Padi levitate the stone coaster so kindly given me by Ambassador Valeking. The jolt of power was such that I fear it has gone missing.”

  “Gone missing? Gone missing where?”

  “Well, that’s the point, isn’t it? Padi’s not at all certain where she sent it. Or—I suppose we must acknowledge the possibility—when. You weren’t struck on the head by a flat green-and-blue stone when you were a child, were you, Priscilla?”

  “No. Were you?”

  “It would explain a great deal, wouldn’t it? But, no. Ah, the tray.”

  He turned and crossed the room, the chime sounded, and he opened the door.

  “Thank you,” he murmured.

  He brought the tray to the desk and put it down, nimbly avoiding the piles of hardcopy; removing covers with a magician’s flair, pointing at the various offerings of high-caloric foods. The kitchen knew well what to send when they were asked for “Healer Mendoza’s tray.”

  “Eat,” he said.

  “You, too,” she said. “I can’t eat all this.”

  He pulled the visitor’s chair around to her side of the desk and sat next to her. Sighing, she leaned into his warmth, and chose a cheese muffin from the plate.

  “Did I catch a taste of Weapons Hall?” he asked, choosing a muffin for himself.

  “Yes.”

  “I wouldn’t have said our case was as dire as that, but perhaps you’ve had a Seeing?”

  She shook her head.

  “I was called there by—by Moonhawk.”

  Shan had been to Weapons Hall; it was where he had met Lute, acquired the red gaming token, and accepted Soldier Lore into his heart and being. He knew it for a treacherous place, and so it was.

  “Something big is going to happen,” she said; then shook her head sharply. “Something big has already happened. But—Moonhawk is going to die.”

  That had been the wrong thing to say, she thought, as his horror washed through her.

  “Moonhawk is going to die,” he repeated carefully, breaking open his muffin. “And Moonhawk’s—vessel?”

  “I—said that badly,” she said. “Forgive me.”

  She reached for the glass, drank, and met his eyes.

  “Moonhawk’s vessel . . . ” she began, but he held up a hand.

  “Is this event imminent?”

  “I—don’t . . . believe . . . so.”

  “Eat, then. I will contain myself.”

  She ate until she was sated, and the shaking had stopped. She was no longer chilled, but she leaned against Shan’s shoulder anyway, for the sheer comfort it gave her.

  “Moonhawk’s vessel,” she said then, knowing full well his feelings about Moonhawk, Lute, her dedication to the Goddess as Moonhawk-in-this-lifetime, and gods in general . . .

  “Moonhawk’s vessel will not die. In fact, I believe that I’m no longer Moonhawk’s vessel. She called me to her as myself—as Priscilla Delacroix y Mendoza, captain of the Dutiful Passage. I came before her in plain ship clothes, while she stood in her starry robes, holding two old and tarnished silver rings.”

  “Weapons?” Shan asked.

  Priscilla spread her hands.

  “Everything in that Hall is a weapon,” she said. “But I don’t know that she came there to find them. She might have brought them with her. Weapons Hall is a place of considerable power; she could easily draw enough energy to bring me to her there.”

  “Stipulated,” said Shan. “And she called you to her for the purpose of . . . releasing you?”

  “That may have been part of it. She said that her purpose was threefold.”

  She narrowed her eyes, seeing again the glowing face, the fixed gaze . . .

  “First, an apology, for having disrupted my life,” she said. “Second, a blessing, for you and me together, and her approval of the course we have undertaken.”

  Beside her, Shan shifted. She opened her eyes to look at him.

  “In the general way of things, no—goddesses do not apologize,” she said, snatching the thought from his head. “And historically, Moonhawk’s vessel has led a more . . . a
dventurous life than those bearing the other twelve Names.

  “As for the course we’ve undertaken—I don’t know what that is.”

  “We are, therefore, as one in bewilderment,” Shan said. “Continue, please. I’m agog to hear her third purpose.”

  “Her third purpose was to grant to our child freedom and strength. We’re to expect her to accomplish marvels.”

  He sighed.

  “And here I had been hoping for a nice, orderly child, in Balance for having brought Padi to adulthood with a large portion of the universe intact.”

  “She might outstrip all of her kin in orderliness,” Priscilla pointed out. “There are many ways to be marvelous.”

  “Very true. I withhold my despair until she breaks into her first locked room.”

  Priscilla laughed softly.

  “I do not, of course, mean to pry, but was the delivery of these tidings all of Moonhawk’s conversation?”

  “Not quite. When I arrived, she was . . . reciting history from the Old Universe. How the Thirteen wove themselves into the fabric of the Life, and accepted Names so that they were anchored into Probability. There was a good deal of it—what a strange place the Old Universe must have been!”

  “By all accounts. I would like to hear this history lesson”—he raised a hand—“when you have the energy to recall it in fullness. Was there anything else?”

  “Yes. She said that she and . . . Lute had lived too long in this universe. And the rings—I had the impression they were a set, and very old—the tarnish . . . ”

  “Of course,” he said, and sighed.

  “How did your lesson with Padi go on, before I interrupted you?”

  “Surprisingly. I wonder, have you noticed anything . . . boundless about Padi’s pattern?”

  Priscilla frowned at him.

  “I’m not sure I have.”

  “Well. Take a look at her the next time the two of you are in proximity. I would be interested in your analysis.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “Now, I ask—are you able to walk with me to our cabin?”

  “Yes,” she said, and rose with scarcely a tremor.

  “Excellent.”