“Natelth?”
“No,” said Kief. His voice was still ragged. “It wasn’t your brother who asked the Mages for luck, and it wasn’t your brother who twisted the luck he got until it snapped and took the Circle with it. It was mine.”
Relief surged through Arekhon; he felt ashamed of it, in the face of Kief’s pain and regret. “The guilt is your brother’s, then, and not yours.”
“His—and I broke him for it, ’Rekhe, when I knew! I took back all the luck I had ever given him, and all the luck he had, and the luck of all the eiran he had ever touched … in my anger I took everything. And there’s no way to give it back.”
He spoke truth. In the darkness of the ruined Hall, Arekhon saw the webs and skeins of the eiran wrapped around Kief’s entire body like chains—more luck than one man could spend in a dozen lifetimes, and all of it stained with blood. His heart ached for Kief, trapped in the eiran’s knots and coils.
“Our Circle is smaller than it was,” Arekhon said, “but it isn’t broken. We can take your brother’s luck and use it to finish the working.”
“No.” Kief’s features were set and implacable. “Garrod’s working was a disaster from the beginning, and I won’t waste luck on repairing it. I have another Circle now. Come to us as First, if you like—but Demaizen is dead.”
“Demaizen lives, and so does Garrod’s working.” Arekhon thought of the Circle’s eiran as he had seen them in his meditation, stretching away and out of sight amid the stars. You have to cross the gap, the woman had told him, if you want to mend what was broken. “I can’t join your Circle—not even as First. There’s no place left for me in the homeworlds.”
“I know you, ’Rekhe. You think you can finish a working that killed the greatest Magelord of both our lifetimes. You’ll betray your blood and your ancestors for the sake of your own pride.”
“I don’t think either one of us is going to convince the other,” Arekhon said. He felt an overwhelming rush of sadness and futility. “We should part friends while we still can.”
“You’re right on that, at least. Good-bye, ’Rekhe.”
They embraced again on the steps of the broken Hall. Then Kief let go and moved back. At the foot of the steps he dodged to the right and flattened himself to the ground.
At that moment a twinkle of lights sparkled among the overgrown hedges two hundred yards away. Arekhon felt a burning pain in his side. He fell backward, his knees no longer supporting him, and collapsed across the threshold. A hand, wet and dark with blood, swam into his view, and he realized it was his—his hand, his blood.
A rushing sound filled his ears, and even above the intense pain he felt the floating sensation that meant his body was going into shock. I can’t die here, he thought as the rushing sound grew louder and his vision darkened. I have to cross the gap and finish the working.
At the edges of his clouded sight, the eiran started to glow.
Narin stood on the cliff above the harbor at Amisket. For all her years of absence, she hadn’t fully understood how much she’d missed the Veredden fishing port until she returned there at last in her mind’s interior world. Always, with Demaizen, she had used traditional imagery of ordered parks and gardens, drawn from the common training of all Mages, or—for her private intentions—images of water and the open sea. But never a real place until now, when her quest for understanding brought her home to the town for which she had saved the fishing fleet, and broken her Circle doing it.
She stood on the windswept headland, looking down at the harbor and wondering what her mind—or the universe—was trying to tell her, until a hand on her shoulder brought her abruptly out of her meditative trance. The woman Karil’s voice hissed in her ear.
“Wake! One comes—Arekhon says to wake!”
Narin opened her eyes and saw that the daylight had come and gone since she began her meditation. The grey of early morning had left the sky, and the ruins of the Hall were wrapped in the full darkness of another night. Karil had moved on, and was busy rousing Ty; Narin left her to it and stood up, her staff in her hand.
Moving as quietly as she could, she reached the shadows behind the broken doors just in time to see Kief Diasul bid Arekhon farewell and then step away. An instant later, weapons fire opened up in flashes of light from the shelter of the overgrown hedges, and Arekhon fell backward across the threshold of the Hall.
There was no time for thought. Narin threw herself forward to grab Arekhon by his shoulders and pull him away from the door, sliding his limp body across the ash and rubble. A moment later Ty and Karil arrived, crawling on their elbows and knees. Karil took one look at Arekhon and began tearing away his clothing to expose the dark, ugly wounds where the projectiles had struck. She drew a hissing breath inward between her teeth.
“Is bad.” As she spoke, the Entiboran woman pulled off the fleet-livery tunic she’d worn since leaving the Diamond and rolled the fabric into a bulky pad. She pressed the makeshift dressing against the wound in Arekhon’s side. “Help me please here yes?”
“Yes,” Narin said. With her knife—the same one she’s used to cut the crimson trim from Karil’s livery only the day before—she began slashing at the sturdy fabric of Arekhon’s formal robes, first a wide band of cloth to make a second pad for his chest, then narrower strips to tie both of the pads into place. “You were here when it started. What happened with Kief, and who are those other people?”
Karil wiped her bloodstained hands on the trousers of her fleet-livery and shrugged. “They talk,” she said. “Whatever they want, he says no. Stupid. Dead soon now, bleeding like that.”
“Maybe I should try talking with them this time,” Narin said. She felt responsibility for the Circle settling onto her shoulders like a heavy weight. “Now that ’Rekhe’s wounded—”
“I don’t think they’re interested in conversation,” Ty said. He had crawled forward to peer out around the edge of the doorjamb. His voice was higher than usual, but at the same time curiously flat. He’d sounded the same way, Narin suddenly remembered, after the fighting when the Rain captured Forty-two. “I see at least a dozen of them out there.”
“Too many,” said Karil. “We all die soon, not just him.”
“Not if we can find shelter for long enough to work undisturbed,” Narin said.
“The basement,” Ty said. “If it survived the fire, there’s a way down to the basement behind what’s left of the grand staircase. And if the medical aiketen are still intact—”
“—then ’Rekhe’s got a chance at living,” Narin said, “and we’ve got a place to hide. Let’s go.”
Arekhon stood in the midst of the desolate and rocky place from his meditations, and the eiran glowed around him like a web of polished silver. He could see the pattern clearly now, the true pattern of the great working that Garrod syn-Aigal had barely started, and that had fallen into his own hands. From one side of the galaxy to the other the working stretched, and from age to age, and its beauty was enough to make him shake with awe.
All this is mine to finish … and I’m not worthy.
Weakness swept over him, forcing him to his knees. He braced himself with one hand to keep from collapsing further; the jagged rocks cut into the flesh of his palm.
Unworthy, he thought again.
Unworthy and dying, the fading of his strength here in the nonmaterial world only an image of his body’s collapse. He wanted to weep, for the glory of the pattern that stretched out overhead, and that was destined to remain unfinished.
My fault. I didn’t have the time.
A voice spoke out of the dark behind him. “You can have the time, if you want it.”
Arekhon tried to turn around to see who had spoken, but felt the speaker’s hands on his shoulders pressing him back down. He moistened his dry lips. “How?”
“You’ve seen the pattern of the working. Your life is woven into it, and its energy and yours are one. When the end comes, you will know.”
46:
Year 1130 E. R.
ERAASI: SUS-RADAL EXPERIMENTAL SHIPBUILDING FACILITY
DEMAIZEN OLD HALL
The sus-Radal prototype ship waited underneath a closed construction dome, larger than the domes for the cargo shuttles but looking no different on the outside. An orbital observer might conclude from the visual evidence that the sus-Radal were building a new generation of heavier transports—and Iulan Vai would have put money on Theledau circulating rumors to that effect—but would have no clue to what actually lay under the dome’s retractable roof.
“She’s a wonder,” Vai said to the family representative. “I hope Theledau makes you outer-family at least for this. You’ve earned it.”
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter, to give her the honor of her full name, was a curving wing-shape in nonreflective black, almost twice the size of a sus-Radal cargo shuttle. Most of that extra volume would be given over to the double power system that the family’s engineers had copied—extrapolated, really—from the reports Vai herself had smuggled out on the sus-Peledaen drones. Some of it, though, would be the ship’s guns, more technology stolen from the sus-Peledaen reports. The ship’s main hatch stood open, with a short ramp leading to the floor of the dome.
Vai frowned. “She’s going to burn this whole place down when she lifts.”
“Not the Daughter,” said the representative. “The counterforce units will push her clear before the thrusters fire.”
Vai tried to envision a unit strong enough to hold up a starship. “More sus-Peledaen stuff?”
“Ours, actually. The reports from Octagon Diamond and Forty-two provided some help when it came to the implementation, but the basic research was already done.”
“The things nobody tells me … you’re sure the Daughter will answer to shuttle commands?”
The representative nodded. “As long as you stick to the basic sequences, the ship-mind will handle everything else.”
“Good,” said Vai. She looked again at the sleek black lines of the ship, and squared her shoulders. “If she’s ready as she stands, there’s no point in delaying matters any longer. You’ve been a great help to me, and if luck stays with me I’ll speak well of you in Hanilat.”
She went up the ramp to the main lock. The controls there matched the sus-Radal standard. It took her only a few moments to close and seal the hatch behind her. The ship’s internal layout was similar to that of a fleet shuttle; she found the main control room more or less where she expected it to be, and was pleased to see that the family’s designers had given the Daughter a proper window and not just a bank of monitor screens.
Vai settled herself into the pilot-principal’s chair, strapped down the safety webbing, and hit the first control in the standard lift sequence.
The ship’s main power plant came on line with a muted roar, followed by a low grumbling sound that—after a few seconds—she recognized as belonging to the ship’s counterforce unit. The tiny units that lifted Eraasi’s mobile aiketen gave off a faint hum that, multiplied several thousand times, was the same noise as the one she heard now. Outside the windows, the roof of the construction dome started rolling back, at the same time as the Daughter began steadily rising.
The edge of the open dome slid downward past the windows and out of sight, and the grumbling noise of the counterforce unit grew louder and more labored. Just as Vai thought that the counterforce unit could lift the ship no further, the console beeped at her and she pressed the second control in the basic sequence. The engines roared, and she felt herself pressed back against the padded chair with a long steady pressure.
Standard lift procedure for a sus-Peledaen shuttle went to low orbit as soon as possible; Vai was relieved to see that the Daughter’s command sequence did the same. Safe at the end of gravity’s tether, with nothing but the dark of space outside the cockpit windows, she could rest for a moment and consider where she was going. Hanilat was her first thought, where there was a proper spaceport and where she had last spoken with ’Rekhe and the Circle.
Then, in memory, she heard herself saying that she would meet them at Demaizen—and knew, as soon as she remembered it, that the time to do so was now.
Ty helped Narin and Karil move Arekhon’s limp body away from the broken doors of the Hall and over to the alcove behind what remained of the grand staircase. They were almost there when a trio of explosions sounded behind them—for Ty, the sound brought back a sudden memory of standing sweaty-palmed in the Rain’s muster bay, waiting for Izar to blow the lock.
“What was that?” he asked.
Karil said something in her native language—identifying the things that had exploded, he supposed—and added, “For stunning. They come in soon.”
“We’ll be gone by then,” said Narin. “Here’s the way down.”
The darkness that surrounded them lit up briefly with the glow of her staff. She touched the staff to the door tucked away behind the staircase, and the slab of charred wood swung in and open. A rush of moldy-smelling air came out. Narrow metal steps led down into the basement.
Ty glanced back in the direction from which they had half-carried, half-dragged the wounded Arekhon. The marks of their progress showed plainly wherever the starlight and the magelight touched. “They won’t have much trouble figuring out where we went.”
“It’s all we’ve got,” Narin said. “Let’s go.”
They went down the stairs into the basement, supporting ’Rekhe awkwardly all the way. The lower reaches of the Hall were cold and dark, and water dripped from a distant place. The sound of the falling drops echoed loudly in the passage. Ty couldn’t rid himself of memories of the fighting aboard Forty-two, and finally gave up the effort.
“You and Karil take him from here,” he said. “We’ll be followed. I’ll slow them down until you can find the aiketen.”
Narin didn’t argue with him. He would have found her agreement frightening if he hadn’t already gone beyond fear, back to the corridors of Forty-two and the smells of blood and ionized air. The two women took over supporting Arekhon’s body—Narin at his head, with her still-glowing staff tucked through her belt, and Karil at his feet—and headed off down the narrow passageway. They turned the first corner and vanished from sight, leaving Ty by himself in the dark.
He didn’t have much time. But he knew the layout of Demaizen Old Hall almost as well as he’d known the Port Street Foundling Home. Two long steps took him into a side-room that the Circle, like the sus-Demaizen before them, had used for long-term storage of things they didn’t need but didn’t want to throw away—old clothes, boxes of books, children’s dolls and broken toys. Ty faded back around a corner, into the shelter of a pile of bundled papercopy magazines.
Voices sounded at the top of the stairs, two men having some kind of whispered conference. Trying to decide who went first, Ty guessed. Then came a metallic clink followed by a pair of crashing explosions. His ears rang, and powder from the ceiling sifted down like flour on his face and hair. After a few more seconds, a light slanted down across the darkness outside the open door. Someone was coming with a hand torch.
Ty couldn’t hear the footsteps—he still couldn’t hear anything over the loud roaring that filled his ears—but the light was getting closer. He reached around the corner, found cloth under his fingers, grasped, and pulled.
The attacker had been an excellent fighter with his projectile weapons and his explosives, but Ty had trained long and hard at close-in fighting with a wooden staff. Without pause—almost without thinking—Ty struck against a vulnerable point on the man’s neck, then swept the other end of his staff into the man’s nose, crushing the sinuses. The man fell and lay still.
Ty bent and flicked off the dead man’s hand torch—he didn’t need it, and there was no point in helping anyone outside who did. The man’s projectile weapon had fallen to the floor only a little further away; still stooping, Ty picked it up and curled his own hand around the metal grip.
He knew about such weapons from entertainm
ents and the news, though he had never had an opportunity to use one before. The feel of the releasing studs under his fingers reminded him of what he needed to do next. He stepped into the hall, pointed the weapon toward the stairway, and fired until the device stopped bucking in his grip.
Still holding the empty weapon, he faded back down the dark passage. He shut and locked the doors behind him whenever he could, hoping to slow down the marauders by that much at least, until he came to the portion of the basement that housed the Circle’s infirmary. One glance told him that the medical gear, with its self-contained power units and standby shutdown mode, had survived the fire intact. Arekhon lay on the main infirmary table, his pale skin bathed in the eerie blue glow of the low-power lights, while the aiketen worked over him. Narin and Karil stood watching nearby.
“How’s he doing?” Ty asked. His ears still hurt, and he couldn’t tell whether he was speaking too softly or too loud.
“Garrod didn’t believe in buying cheap equipment,” Narin said. “He’ll make it.”
Karil shook her head glumly. “No use mending him … we all die soon.”
As if to underscore her words, another explosion rattled the room and knocked down more dust from the ceiling, making a dim layer of haze in the blue light. On the worktable, Arekhon coughed twice, a faint dry sound, and tried to sit up.
“Help me.” His voice came out in a papery whisper. “The working isn’t finished. We can’t stop until it’s done.”
The silver cords overlaid the dim infirmary with a network of light. Arekhon saw the pattern in them. It was a only a reflection, or a shadow, of the single pattern he had seen in the nonmaterial world, but carrying out the lesser pattern would further the greater.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position—he was surprised at the effort it cost him, even now that the aiketen had completed their work—and swung his feet off the table onto the floor. His head spun as he stood, and the network of silver cords whirled about him.
The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds Page 38