Ash nodded. "So you'll help. How?"
"We'll decide that shortly. I must know more first, but it's your turn to question me."
"No. I've learned enough. Let's talk about what we can do to save Kieran."
"This 'bubble,' then. You said you and Chaiel are in it; I assume Thelyan put you there."
"That's what Chaiel said. I was in kind of a trance, I don't remember."
"Tell me what it's like. A prison?"
"Yeah. A weird one." He described it to her, but from her expression she was as baffled as he was. "And I can tell you I'm not enjoying being stuck naked to a crazy kid, even if he is supposed to be a god or something. He's even more ticked off about it than I am. At least I can appreciate that he's cute -- too young, mind, and I would never cheat on Kieran, but you see what I mean.
He doesn't even have that consolation. I think he's going to wig out on me any minute."
Medur seemed amused. "We shall have to see if we can prevent that. Now; how is it you know Ka'an is battling your Kieran-Kai? Have you seen this?"
"Yes." He shuddered. "I was connected with him, when Ka'an first came up. At least, I think it was the first time. We fought him down, but Kieran said he was going to come back. Then -long story short, the White Watch caught me but not Kieran, they tranced me, I'm pretty sure they dug through my brain and got everything I know -- the Watch, those are Thelyan's army mages. He's Director of the Watch now. And Chaiel said something about Ka'an running Kai to death. Starving, hypothermic, he said."
"It may already be too late," Medur said gently.
"I refuse to consider that. What am I going to do, give up?"
"I see your point. Very well. If we're to help your Kai fight free of Ka'an, we must pierce that bizarre prison." She sighed. "I will never understand how Thelyan thinks. What a cruel device to have invented. I should like to see it for myself, but to do that I would have to take possession of your body."
"Permanently?"
"That depends on whether you can retain selfhood while I do it. Perhaps it's better not to gamble on that. You could be killed or driven mad."
"Are there any other options?"
"Two. The first is that you could surrender yourself entirely to me. I would do my best to save your lover, but this would do you no good. You would be, effectively, dead."
"If that's what it comes down to, I'll take it."
Respect narrowed her eyes, and she nodded. "I see. Yes, I see. The other possibility is that I could surrender myself to you, and you would then be in possession of my abilities. Thelyan stripped me of my power, and I've built up only a little more since then, so you would most likely survive it. What I question is whether you would be able to get any use from it. My knowlege would not be passed on intact. You might keep some shreds of it, but not enough to tell you how to be what I've been. It would probably not make you an immortal."
"And you'd die."
"I would." Her shoulders sagged a fraction. "Please understand me, Ashleigh Trine. I've held on so long only for the sake of my people. Now it seems Thelyan has conquered them. Could I free them if I took possession of you? Perhaps; perhaps not. You say you're an orphan, and a homosexual. My line of descent is finished in you. Could I force your body to sire children, and continue it? Perhaps. But I'm tired. I'm far behind the times, it seems. I don't understand half of what you tell me. I'm an old, old woman, Ashleigh. I would gladly end... if I had some hope you could accomplish what I wish done. The return of my lands and the posterity of my blood."
He stopped walking the endless beach, turning her by her hand to face him. "Let me get this straight. If I agree to do my best to free Yelorre from the Commonwealth, and -- what -- have a child? Somehow? Then you'll give me all your power, and vanish. Without a fight."
"I've done my fighting, child. It's your turn now, I think."
"It's... a lot to think about." He chewed his lip. "I don't think I could even -- with a girl -- I don't even know any girls."
Medur laughed. "That's the part that worries you? To free a conquered nation is such an easy task?"
"Hell, I'm a rebel already, ma'am. I was going to do that anyway."
"As for continuing my line, if you swear to make the attempt, I shall be satisfied. Or perhaps you have some living relatives, close kin -- siblings, cousins?"
"Nope. It would have to be me. Aunt Isobel never had kids, she's too old now, and we're all that's left of the family. Oh, hell. All right. I promise. I'll do what I can -- but Kieran comes first. Then Yelorre. Then the kid thing." He grimaced. "He's not going to like that."
She patted his arm reassuringly. "From what I've seen, your kind often wishes for children strongly enough to sire them, though at a later age than you are now. You'll manage. But I'd like to be more certain that you can take my power and keep it. What magic have you? Are you a wizard trained, or only a vessel?"
"No training. Not sure what you mean by the other."
"Does it only pass through you, or do you control it?"
"Um... I can turn my empathy on and off, sort of. If I don't get too worked up."
"So you've never shaped a spell."
"I made a sort of charm thingy for Kieran once. It seemed to work. I just made it up as I went along. The Watch has a monopoly on pattern-magic, you see. They own thaumaturgy. Nobody gets trained unless it's with them. But I kind of get the idea that I could do a lot more, if I had some time to study."
She thinned her lips, doubtful. "It could be worse. You seem an intelligent boy. Calm enough, and clear-minded. Do you think you can experience something strange and perhaps painful without pulling away from it?"
"If I've decided to."
"Have you ever seen the figures -- the shapes -- I seem to be at a loss for a word. There was a more accurate one, once. The shapes of life, like interwoven designs surrounding a thing or a person. Have you seen that?"
"I... think so. Through Kieran, when he was calling a storm. He was better at it, he just dived right in."
"Ka'an must have been close to surfacing." She paused for a long moment. Tilting her head, she took his chin in her hand and studied his face. "I find myself stubbornly reluctant. Are you a fit successor? I know so little about you. It seems irresponsible to make this decision without knowing more. Have you even a hope of succeeding?"
He let her look for a little while. Then he gently pushed her hand away. "Ma'am, if there's a way, I'll find it. Giving up is not an option. And if I get half a chance, I'll not only save Kieran, spark up the rebels in Yelorre, and pass on the blood somehow, but I'll kick Thelyan's ass for you as well. Honestly, if I don't have a chance, I doubt you do either."
"You're very confident."
"Call it determined. I'm also seriously scared, but I've kind of gotten used to that lately."
For another minute or two, she stared at him. Then she looked at the sky and took a deep breath.
"Yes," she said.
"Thank you," he said sincerely.
"When you have the power settled, follow the designs, the symbols. They'll show you what you can do. If you reach your Kai while he still struggles against Ka'an, remind him who he is. Ka'an will be undermining his personality, eroding his identity. Remind him of his name, tell him his memories. This while adding your strength to his. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
She gave him another one of those serene, sad smiles. "You're a good lad. I wish I could have known you better. Please mention to Chaiel that all people are his. Are you ready?"
Ash nodded. Medur took his hands.
The scene of the shore went thin, began to smear.
Confusion crashed through him, like the dazedness after a blow to the head. Whirling thoughts and shapes and sensations. He felt too small to contain it, and at the same time stretched thin, scattered. He couldn't grasp it, it was spinning by too fast, he was losing himself --
Kieran. For him. Take it, Ash. Ride it.
A wire, a light; a solid center; himself. He reached, c
atching at the flying sparks of wordless ideas. Little by little, they began to fall into place. Spirals, spheres, braids, key-toothed fronds, clinging vines, settling along the limbs of his mind, grafting there. He healed the joins. He welded. He swallowed. He made room, and things flowered in the space he made. As the task progressed, it changed from pain to pleasure; the quiet pleasure of an intricate task. It was just like a cipher. Once he worked out the key, the rest was already deciphered in principle, and changing it to meaning was only a detail.
--==*==--
He opened his eyes and drew breath. Yes. There it all was. The cipher of himself, and the cipher of Chaiel, and the cipher of the sphere. The latter was a very deep code. Not the same language as a living pattern at all. More like math worked in a strange base. Base thirteen and a half or something. But he could get it. He was sure that he could figure it out, in time.
"Medur?" Chaiel leaned close, peering into his eyes. "Is that you?"
"No." Ash paused, then corrected. "Partly. She gave me her power."
Chaiel froze, horrified. "You ate her?"
"We discussed it, and decided that was the best course. She told me to tell you that all people are yours."
Inhaling sharply, Chaiel pressed his hands to his mouth. A quiet sound came out of him, its meaning unclear. His pattern had drawn in, small.
"This means something to you, I take it."
Chaiel nodded without taking his hands down.
"Much as I'd like to give you time to ponder it, I have a really long to-do list now. So what do you say we pop this bubble and get out of here?"
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kieran felt it when the edge of the Burn touched him. He was barely there, a helpless passenger in his own body, but the first brush of the Burn's raw energy stung him nonetheless.
What are you doing, asshole? You're going to get me killed!
Ka'an didn't reply. For the first part of the night Kieran had been able to get a rise out of him, but after a while the arrogant spirit had stopped responding. Ka'an was taking them straight into the Burn. That was where he'd been going the whole time. Kieran had never stopped fighting him, and was now so tired that he felt like a tissue-thin shred of himself. He was starving, he was stumbling, his head was stuffed up. Ka'an didn't care. All Ka'an cared about was getting something out of the Burn and then, for some reason, killing the Director of the Watch.
Kieran could be all right with that last bit, Thelyan was a prick and might as well die, but he was going to rescue Ash first. That was the plan. This was just a little setback.
All around him, Ka'an swelled with pleasure at the sensation of the Burn surrounding him. He was doing something with it, as he walked. Somehow taking in strength from it. Walking straighter, seeing more clearly. Kieran couldn't sense the patterns now, the way he had yesterday
-- no, day before yesterday -- but he thought he had an idea what was going on. The Burn had looked inviting, when he'd sensed it in the distance before. Probably that had been Ka'an in him, wanting to do whatever he was doing now.
So maybe two could play that game. It was hard to think how to do it, there was no analogy. It wasn't inhaling, because he couldn't reach his lungs; it wasn't grasping, because he couldn't reach his hands. It was like swallowing without a mouth. Sporadically at first, then more strongly as he grew more confident, he copied Ka'an and took power from the Burn.
"Clever, Ghost," Ka'an muttered. "But I've been doing this far longer than you have." His Iavaian was archaic, with double vowels instead of cut vowels. Kieran thought he'd probably pronounce his name something like Kaaaan, like the sound of a kettle falling down stairs.
The thought gave Kieran courage; irrational, to build himself up by mocking his enemy, but if it worked it worked. He accelerated his grasping of power, growing more real by the second, more aware. Ka'an reeled it in harder as well. At the same time, walking sped to running, and the running got faster and faster.
Now Kieran was beginning to be able to see. Rather, to think about what he saw, for he'd been watching scenery crawl by the whole time, but without making sense of it. He'd never been inside the Burn before. He'd heard rumors about what it was like: dead, deader than a salt pan, without even the hardiest plants or insects. And that was what he was looking at, all right. Bare rock and rippled sand, across which Ka'an forced his body to run at an ever-increasing pace.
Soon the ground was flashing by at a speed he wouldn't have thought possible. It was as if he didn't weigh anything at all. He was taking six, ten, fifteen feet at a stride. His coat was cracking like a whip. The soles of his boots were getting hot.
And the sun was going to come up any second now. He'd overheat, his heart would burst. Slow down, shithead, you're going to pop if you keep this up! Of course Ka'an didn't listen.
They were going gradually downhill. On the left, a low squarish shape cruised past and was left behind; in the twilight, it looked suspiciously like a ruined building. A little later, they passed another one, and Kieran realized it really was a ruin. Then they topped a rise and started ripping down the other side faster than an express train on a straightaway, and the growing light showed a city grid spread out below. The ruins rayed out from the shore of an immense lake, the biggest body of water Kieran had ever seen. He could just barely make out that there was land on the other side, just a faint line of purpled hills to prove this wasn't an ocean. Ka'an was driving them straight for it, while the pressure of power from the Burn's whirling pattern increased with every step.
Kieran could feel his skin now, and it was far too hot. Dry, no longer sweating, dehydrated. He ran helplessly along a straight street between dune-buried walls, some broken off at the lowest course of stones, some intact enough to still have a bit of roof on them. He passed a square well that was filled to its brim with sand. A mile jagged by in two breaths.
He took the water's edge in a flat leap that carried him thirty feet from shore, and when he hit he skidded two yards on his steaming heels before he sank in.
The lake closed around him, cutting off the main force of impinging power. It cooled him, and when he bobbed up for a ragged breath he gratefully swallowed the water in his mouth. He could see the pattern now, arrayed above him. So huge.
A moment of pure terror seized him. The Burn filled the sky from horizon to horizon, and all the space between. Its largest form was a many-armed spiral, ponderously rotating. Within that shape, smaller shapes spun, and smaller ones within those, faster as they got smaller. And it saw him, wanted him, beat at him, tried to change him. He could sense the patterns of his body being buffeted by this great power, knew that any moment the walls of his veins would give way, the delicate web of his brain would fray, and he would die in one bloody instant.
But it didn't happen. He stood neck-deep in insulating water, and somehow he didn't die. Ka'an was preventing it. They were both simultaneously in occupation now. Kieran could see what Ka'an was doing, how he was doing it.
Carefully, but with increasing dexterity, Ka'an was pulling in the power as it came. Some of what he took, he used to shore up the body's systems so the Burn wouldn't kill it. The rest, he fed into his own thought-form, so that he expanded within the Burn's shape and took its place. The process was accelerating, going faster as Ka'an got bigger.
That doesn't look hard. If a spoiled brat like you can do it... Kieran copied him, but he left maintaining the body to Ka'an. The spirit wouldn't want to kill his only vehicle, so he'd have to pay attention to keeping it alive. That would free Kieran to work faster.
Doubt nagged, a little; he'd never done anything like this before, never imagined it, never had any idea that stuff like this existed. But what did that matter? He'd discovered long ago that he couldn't expect any warning or practice before the shit hit the fan. Learn fast or die, that was the rule. He was a fast learner.
He reached. He caught. He organized. He went past the point of pressure, to where the power was no longer forcing itself at him, but just beyond
him, and he grew to meet it. With half a thought, he put in an order to his body and walked it out of the lake, to get a better handle on the pattern. His mind's eye focused wider and deeper at once, grasping the intricacies of the greater whorl and its component movements. He disassembled the clockwork. He understood the Burn, and he swallowed it whole.
Then he was standing on the shore of a sterile lake, beside a ruined city, in the slanting gold of dawn. And so was Ka'an. It was hard to tell which of them had taken more power. Neither was in full control of the body they shared. Stalemate.
It would have to be dealt with. No compromise was possible. Their mutual hatred was like a balanced stone, poised to crush whichever weakened first.
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