“Where is my staff?” he asked, his voice husky and low. “Did I leave it on Entibor?”
“Lord Garrod,” Delath began, starting toward him. “You’ve been unwell for a long time, and we—”
Garrod opened his mouth to speak again—but nothing came out of his mouth, nothing but blood and bone fragments, and he pitched forward, thrown by the force of the projectiles hitting him from behind. He fell into Delath’s arms, and his weight bore them both down to the floor.
The doorway behind him was full of men carrying automatic weapons. Their leader pointed a handgun down and emptied the magazine into Del and Garrod, then calmly reloaded while the others flowed around him into the kitchen. The pot of soup fell over on the stove and sent up a cloud of foul-smelling steam. Serazao raised her staff, the fire of her wrath blazing, and lunged with a scream of fury at the nearest soldier. He shot her down before she could close half the distance. She collapsed to the floor and did not move.
Kief—still unseen in the shadows of the rear entryway—stood motionless with shock. But not for long. Serazao had died with the fire of the universe running through her; he took her energy into himself before it could escape, and turned it outward again in a burst of crimson, killing wrath.
The man who had shot Serazao died where he stood, his weapon clattering from his hand and blood spurting from his eyes. Kief stepped out into the center of the kitchen. His staff was in his hand, and blazing with a pure red fire.
The men who had brought death into the room were all dead themselves, blood mixed with clear fluid pouring from their ears and noses. But far off, he heard more voices shouting orders: “Spread out! Search the buildings and the grounds! No survivors!”
Kief walked out of the kitchen and into the main part of the Hall. His mind raced along the pathways of power. He saw the betrayal—the illusions and lies that lay beneath the carnage—and none of the men who saw him that night lived to speak of what they saw.
Outside in the rain, a dark line of vehicles waited on the circular gravel drive. Kief recognized them from their pictures: Armored groundcars, designed to fight for one faction against another—brother against brother—in the growing unpleasantness. They were an abomination. He laid his hand on the first one as he passed. The fuel and ammunition inside it exploded, drowning the screams of the men trapped in the blazing hulk.
“City against city,” Kief repeated aloud, as one vehicle after another exploded and lit up the night with fire. “Brother against brother.”
And all at once he knew. He left the Hall behind him and started walking toward Hanilat. His way was lit by the flames that rose from the burning Hall, but he did not turn to see, not even when the roof collapsed and the rain fell inside the blackened walls.
38:
Year 1128 E. R.
ENTIBOR: SECURE LANDING ZONE
Elaeli was riffling through the contents of the portfolio—it was all paperwork in Entiboran, and she was most certainly not going to sign anything she hadn’t read, regardless of who Lord Garrod thought she should be humoring—when the lights went out and the ceiling crashed down.
I’m alive, was her first coherent thought after the noises stopped. She felt like she ought to be panicking, but other things were claiming her attention first. She’d have to panic later, when she had more time.
She still had the Councillor’s portfolio clasped against her chest with her left hand—a// that paperwork probably saved my life; if I hadn’t come over here to look at it, I’d be lying under a pile of rubble right now, instead of standing on my own two feet—so she reached out with her right hand toward where she thought the wall ought to be. Her fingers met the coolness of polished wood; she maintained the contact and shuffled forward toward the room where her companions had been waiting.
The wall ended with the carved molding of the doorway. The air around her was thick with plaster dust and a faint smell of smoke.
Fire? she thought, and strained her eyes apprehensively for a glimpse of flame in the darkness. Instead, she saw a faint glow coming from somewhere ahead and above. Not the ruddy color of firelight, but a cool, steady green. She felt a wash of relief so strong it made her dizzy. One of the Mages, at least, was still alive.
She felt her way forward. The light was coming through a tiny gap, somewhere in the room ahead. Rubble slid and shifted under her feet. She stumbled, caught her balance, and went on, until she came to what had been the center of the room and could go no farther. The way was blocked by two metal beams angling downward, half-buried in blocks and slabs of stone. The green light shone through the gap.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
“Elaeli?” Arekhon’s voice, shaken but clear.
“’Rekhe! What happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I think there’s fighting going on, and we’re in it.”
Elaeli tried to imagine fighting on a scale that could destroy mountains. “No wonder that ship shot at us. They thought we were enemies.”
The light grew brighter. Arekhon was coming closer, his feet crunching on the broken stone.
“Elaeli, listen,” he said. He spoke in an undertone, as if he were afraid that someone might overhear. “Councillor Demazze has some kind of plan involving you. He wants to use you in a political scheme of his own.”
She could hear rocks clicking and scraping as Arekhon spoke, and the green light bobbed and wavered. He was pulling at the rubble on his side—trying to dig through to her. She wondered if he had to dig one-handed, and keep the other hand on his staff as long as he wanted light.
Inconvenient, she thought—she was effectively one-handed herself, as long as she was clutching the Councillor’s portfolio, but she couldn’t bring herself to discard the papers that might have saved her life. But better than the dark.
Thinking about the papers reminded her that Arekhon had not been standing in the room alone. “’Rekhe, where is Councillor Demazze? Where’s Garrod?”
“I don’t know,” he said breathlessly. “I can’t find either of them. Maybe they’re buried under all this junk.”
More scrambling sounds came from the other side of the pile of rubble, and a rock clattered down the pile of debris with a noise like breaking porcelain. Elaeli heard heavy breathing, followed by a faint curse and more clattering. Finally Arekhon gave a heavy sigh.
“It’s no use,” he said. “There’s too much rock, and it’s too heavy for me to move. I’m sorry.”
She heard the scuffle of boots on stone as he moved closer to the gap in the rubble. She put her hand into the gap as far as she could, until she felt his fingers brush against hers.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “Just don’t go away.”
A shaft of light, yellow-white and artificial, cut through the darkness of the buried reception hall. Elaeli heard voices shouting back and forth in Entiboran, and the sound of clattering feet.
“Arekhon!” she called out through the gap in the rubble. “Someone’s coming on this side. If they have tools for digging, we can both get free.”
She felt Arekhon’s hand straining again to touch her own. “Be careful,” he said. “This was a deliberate attack, not an accident. Not all the people here will be our friends—if any of them ever were.”
The noises were coming closer. Another minute, and liveried men with hand-lights and drawn weapons burst into the room. The beams from their lights danced about the room, picking out bits of broken wood and jagged concrete, and here and there a gaudy slab of painted ceiling.
“Here she is!” one of the men called out. A light stopped its random motion and shone directly in Elaeli’s face. “It looks like her, all right.”
Another one of the men stepped forward. He wore different livery and insignia than the others, and she supposed that he was their leader. “Come, my lady,” he said. “Councillor Demazze ordered us to keep you safe.”
“Wait,” she said in her best Entiboran, and pointed at the rubble. “My friend is there
on the other side. All that is blocking the way.”
“Come with us now,” the leader said. “We cannot delay.”
“What about my friend?”
“We will do what we can for him once you are safe,” the leader said. “Meteunese troops are already in the building. Come, now.”
He gestured two of the others forward. They took Elaeli by the arms on both sides, pulling her respectfully but firmly away from the gap in the wall, until she couldn’t touch Arekhon’s hand any longer.
“Let me go!” she shouted. She tried to wrench free of her rescuers, but their grip, while courteous, was determined. “’Rekhe! Do something!”
“Go with them, Ela,” he called through the gap in the rubble as the men bore her away. “Demazze knows what this is about. Let him keep you safe.”
“What about you, ’Rekhe? What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me.” The glow from his staff was gone, driven away by the blaze of hand-lights, and the touch of his hand was just a memory. He was only a voice, rapidly fading behind her into the dark. “I’ll find you again, I promise. No matter how long it takes.”
Garrod had never quite trusted the Councillor, and his mind was primed to recognize a trap. When the lights died, he threw himself to the floor and rolled toward the wall where another of the side tables stood. He was under the table before he could quite recall how he got there. A second later, the ceiling collapsed.
Not a trap, he thought. Memories of his first weeks on Entibor came back to him, bringing images of war machines and cities in flame. An attack.
But thanks to his suspicions, he remained alive; the next problem would be getting to the open air. He inched to his right along the wall in the silence and dark until he bumped into a doorway. He pushed the door open with his extended hand, waited to see if someone lurked outside, then belly-crawled on through. The air on the other side was moving, which was good.
A passage stretched out before him. He cautiously made his way along it, keeping close to the perfumed carpet. Up and out, those were his goals. After he was away from the scene of the action, he could collect his thoughts and try to determine what had happened and how best to act.
Far away, he heard the muffled sound of small arms. Ground troops were in the building, and they were engaging other ground troops. Not a good sign.
He moved as quickly and as quietly as he could. Two turnings and a flight of stairs later he found a lighted passageway. At last he dared to stand and run. The passage turned and branched again. Each time he chose the path that led away from the sounds of fighting.
He heard a shout from behind, and running feet. Garrod sprinted, rounded a corner, and came to a dead end and another door. He yanked it open and plunged on through, then slammed the door shut and locked it behind him.
His new refuge was square and empty—and devoid of doors and windows. Shelves and boxes on three of its four sides suggested that its primary function was as a storage locker for cleaning supplies. There would only be one way out of here, and he didn’t know if he was prepared to take it. Alone, without a Circle to back him …
He had scarcely controlled his breathing before running feet arrived outside. The door rattled, and a voice shouted “Open up!” with a Meteunese growl to the accent.
Garrod said nothing, and did not move to unlock the flimsy barrier. A projectile weapon stuttered outside, throwing slugs through the door to spatter against the far wall. Garrod threw himself face down to the floor.
The door couldn’t take much more. In a moment they’d be through. If these combat troops were anything like those he’d encountered before, the first thing into the room would be a grenade. He drew a breath, caught at the eiran, and twisted himself to leave the material world and enter the Void.
Cold grey mist billowed around him as he rose to his feet. Now he was in a place where his enemies could not follow, but where could he go? He reached out for his Second—no. His Second was gone, and he had no Circle. No anchor. He closed his eyes and began walking in the direction that his inner feeling said was best. When at last the chill of the Void was replaced by a warmth that spoke of friends and home, he stepped back into the world and opened his eyes.
He stood in his glass-domed observatory in the villa of Mestra Adina, and the red, fur-tipped robe lay over the chair where he had placed it only a moment before.
A soft knock sounded on the door. Garrod walked over to it, opened it. Hujerie stood outside.
“Ah, Garrod, my friend,” the old scholar said. “Mestra Adina has guests tonight, and begs you to join her and them for supper.”
“With great pleasure,” Garrod said. “Allow me a moment to freshen myself. I shall attend the Mestra presently.”
Elaeli was gone, carried off against her will into the darkness.
Garrod—Councillor Demazze—had plans for her, Arekhon told himself. He had a reason for telling his people to keep her safe. Once I’m out of here, if I can find his reason I can find her.
First, though, he had to get out himself. He rekindled the light of his staff and entered the maze of passageways that opened off of the reception hall. For some time he wandered, following the eiran of the place—pale and untended though they were—until they took him from the inhabited areas into the rough-walled spaces beyond the shell of the underground complex.
The air here smelled of wet stone, but its faint motion, almost too slight for notice, gave him reassurance. The eiran led him further out into the natural cavern that housed the complex, drawing him on a path that—though it grew rougher and narrower as it went—tended steadily upward. Higher and higher he went, until he reached a place where the air smelled of damp earth rather than stone, and the warm water dripping down came not from broken pipes or from hidden underground watercourses, but from natural rain.
He let the glow from his staff illuminate the tunnel overhead, and soon found the source of the fresh rainfall. The eiran had guided him well: The gap was low enough for him to reach, and wide enough to take his body. He boosted himself into the opening and scrambled upward.
A last tight squeeze, and he squirmed out of the crack in the hillside into the night air. The slope onto which he had emerged was soaked by the driving rain and cratered by—he assumed—the same kind of powerful blows that had brought down the ceiling of the reception hall. From the noise the attack was still going on; he took shelter in the lee of a boulder that had been uprooted and shattered by the impact.
He crouched there for a while, watching streams of colored fire tracing across the sky and listening to the sound of explosions. Then, still keeping himself low, he began working away from the sounds and lights, over the crest line, until he put the bulk of the hillside between him and the fighting.
On the flat ground at the base of the hill, he saw the field where he had landed with Garrod and Elaeli only a short time before. The entrance—or at least, one entrance—to the underground complex had lain on that side of the hill. Perhaps that was where Elaeli had been taken. Carefully, using all of the skill he possessed in being unnoticed by others, exerting his force of will to overcome their own suspicions, he passed down the slope.
The field was silent and mostly dark. The shuttle still waited, ramp down on the hard black earth, but the pole-mounted lights that had shone so starkly before were all dead now. A flash of light from a distant explosion showed him the way to the heavy, armor-plated door, and he took the rest of the distance at a run.
The door was open, but only onto darkness. He stepped across the threshold and called light into his staff.
“Elaeli?”
“Go back to your ship.”
The words were Eraasian; the voice was that of Demazze’s aide who had guided the companions earlier. Master Lenset was standing between Arekhon and the passageway into the complex’s lower depths. The attack had not left him unmarked—his rain-surcoat was ripped and mudstained, and his yellow hair was clotted with blood and earth.
“Where is Ela
eli?” Arekhon demanded in Entiboran. “The young woman who came with me?”
“Go back to your ship.” Lenset didn’t move, or change languages in response. “You must return to Eraasi to finish the working.”
“Not without Elaeli. Men took her—did they come this way?”
“Go back to your ship. You must return to Eraasi to finish the working.”
“No.” Arekhon strode over to confront the fair-haired man directly, gripping him by the shoulder with his free hand and shaking him hard. “What—happened—to—Elaeli?”
To his horror, the man’s head jerked and lolled sidewise with the motion. The limp wet flesh of the earlobe brushed across Arekhon’s knuckles as the head swayed back and forth, making him cry out and snatch his hand away.
With a wet, crunching sound, the head righted itself on the broken neck.
“Arekhon, you fool,” it said, and the accent and cadences of its speech were those of Garrod sus-Demaizen. “She is as safe as I could make her. Safer than you are. Get to your ship and go.”
Arekhon stood his ground. “I have to find Elaeli—I promised, when the men took her away.”
“The great working isn’t complete.” The dead man’s eyes focused on Arekhon’s face, and for an instant it seemed as if Garrod himself stood before him. “Leave it half-finished, and the galaxy will learn that there are worse things than the Sundering.”
“Then come back yourself and finish it!”
“I did come back. You brought me out of the Void through your own efforts. Are bringing me, even now. And left me behind, mad, on Eraasi.” A wet laugh gurgled in the broken throat. “You’ll get no more help from Garrod sus-Demaizen. He’s dead.”
With that, all intelligence vanished from the corpse’s staring eyes, and its voice became a flat, wheezing monotone. “Go back to your ship. You must return to Eraasi to finish the working. Go back to your ship … .”
Arekhon backed away, toward the open door. He didn’t turn around and put the dead man behind him until he had stepped back over the threshold into the night.
The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds Page 32