First Truth

by Dawn Cook

  The fire shifted. Alissa heard it quite distinctly. One of the logs hadn’t looked quite safe when she began her ill-fated experiment. She carefully divided her attention to hold her bubble and check on the fire simultaneously. Slowly she opened her eyes.

  “What under the Eight Wolves . . .” she gasped. There, suspended in space not an arm’s length away, was a small spot of shimmering glory. Her bubble of thought. “Oh, my . . .” she breathed, incapable of anything more intelligent. It looked about the size of a star on a clear night, and it was just as bright, too, glowing in the semidarkness of the low fire. Alissa’s breath hissed through her teeth as she realized the tiny thing was casting shadows!

  “Bone and Ash,” she whispered, reaching for it. “No,” she said, drawing her hand back. She didn’t know what it was yet.

  She cautiously shut her eyes from the fascinating sight, and with another shock, found that her bubble was no longer mirrored in her thoughts. She had actually moved it. How, she marveled, had she managed that? Alissa gazed in satisfaction at the tiny spot of glittering sunshine.

  “I think,” she decided, “I could let go of that bubble now.” It was growing wearisome, containing its contents. The constant pressure was noticeably stronger. There should be no problem in releasing it, seeing as it was nowhere near her source anymore. Alissa sighed contentedly, pleased she had found a way to nullify the bothersome ward. Soon she would remove it all, but not tonight. She had done enough. With a smile, she dissolved her bubble of thought.

  “Noooo!” Alissa screamed in agony as a white-hot iron lanced through her mind. Searing terror erupted along all her tracings, burning, and burning, and burning. It raged, an inescapable inferno, drowning her in pain until pain was her entire world. But she found a place to hide.

  There was nothing else.

  There had never been anything else.

  There would never be anything else.

  30

  Strell strode up the stone staircase, the twin feelings of failure and helplessness making him feel ill. He had to get her out of here. She thought she was safe. She still didn’t see the danger, and the thought of that frightened him more than Bailic. Upon reaching his door, he flung it open and entered his room.

  “I should have known what he was doing,” he whispered harshly. “I should have stayed awake.” His empty pack lay abandoned in a corner, and upon seeing it, frustration filled him. “I couldn’t stop my music,” he said roughly. “I didn’t want to stop.” He had been so intent on telling her he was sorry, trying to use his music instead of words, that he lost himself. If not for Useless, they would have been found out.

  “I thought I was so clever,” he said bitterly. “I thought I could keep her safe. I’m nothing. I helped him.” His eyes fell upon his chair, ignored since its appearance yesterday. He liked to pretend it wasn’t there, that it might return to its rightful place at Alissa hearth. Now Strell reached out, and with a single finger, he touched the worn fabric. “I failed her.”

  With a new determination he turned back to his abandoned pack. There was no possible way he could keep Alissa safe from Bailic. Trickery wasn’t enough. Guile wasn’t enough. The Keeper dealt in magic. How could he protect her against that?

  Strell’s frustration thickened. He had to convince her to leave. Turning away, he quickly gathered his things in a small pile on the bed. “We are going,” he said urgently. “If I have to tie her feet and carry her all the way to the coast.” It was a death sentence to leave mid-winter, but Strell would rather take his chances with the cold than Bailic. At least their death would be peaceful in the snow.

  Everything disappeared into his pack; only his map, his coat, and Alissa’s old hat remained. He snatched up his coat, stuffing his long arms into the sleeves. Her old hat went on his head. He would go down yet tonight to the cold annexes and steal some blankets. With enough blankets and leather, they might make it. He picked up his map, spreading it on the hearth table. Perhaps there was a shorter way out of these cursed mountains that he had missed. The fire was too low to see, and he knelt to build it up.

  Coward, he thought, throwing piece after piece of wood onto the growing flames. He was a complete coward, dragging Alissa away to die in the snow instead of finding a way to make her safe here. “No,” he said through clenched jaws. “He’s a Keeper. There’s nothing I can do against that. There’s nothing stronger than magic.”

  Higher and higher the flames grew until the heat billowed out into the room. They were leaving. Alissa could fuss all she wanted. He wasn’t going to give her any sway this time. Strell leaned over the map, studying it for a way to the coast that he might have missed.

  “Noooo!” he heard Alissa scream in absolute terror, muffled little by the thick wall between them. It ripped through him like an icy wind, and he froze, stunned as the force of it seemed to reach the very pit of his soul.

  “Alissa,” he whispered, his face gone cold, and he heard a small pop from her room.

  Strell was picked up as if by a giant fist and flung into the far wall as a wave of force expanded into his room through his and Alissa’s shared chimney. His ears were stunned by the immense pressure, feeling more than hearing the tremendous boom that rocked the corner of the ancient fortress to echo and tremble down to the very roots of the mountain.

  He slid to the floor with a muffed groan as the fire went dead, blown apart from the explosion. Barely conscious, he slumped in a heap amid the charred wood and sifting ash. A deathly cold and bitter wind flowed through the window. It pooled on the floor, almost visible as it steadily displaced the warmer air escaping into the night. Like a fog, it streamed out, taking the life-sustaining warmth of the room. The protecting wards were gone, completely overwhelmed by a force they were never intended to endure.

  His thoughts swirled to a confused blur, as if the blackness of the room had invaded his thoughts. Slowly a comforting warmth suffused his limbs, then nothing.

  31

  Bailic reached the top of the stairs and savagely kicked the small table outside his door. It was heavy and well-made. All he accomplished was to hurt his foot. Enraged, he took the table in hand it to push it down the stairwell. Thinking better of it, he contented himself with slamming his door instead. It made a satisfying crash as the thick wood met the stone doorjamb.

  “Talo-Toecan,” he snarled between clenched teeth, “I should have killed you when I had the chance!” It was a boastful claim, but he felt better having said it. Deep in his soul he knew he could never destroy the Master. It had only been by luck and planning that he managed to pin the beast in his own dungeon, enticed by the thought Keribdis had returned and lay ill. Bailic had thought himself safe from Talo-Toecan’s interference, but obviously this wasn’t so. The insidious scholar had found a way around the rules again.

  “You will rot down there,” Bailic vowed vehemently. He swept his arm across his worktable. Paper flew in a whirlwind to settle in quiet squares. The ink pots were next, crashing into the wall to shatter into stains that dripped evil-looking puddles on the uncaring floor.

  “All my plans for naught!” he raged, kicking papers and quills from his path to stand at the edge of the balcony. The dangerous fall often calmed him, but it held no peace tonight. Glaring into the dark, he held his anger still, letting it grow. Only his fingers moved, silently drumming upon his arm.

  It had been an excellent idea, he fumed. A deep trance had always yielded a wealth of information, as his subject willingly complied to almost every suggestion. But he had learned nothing. Nothing! He had never even considered that his plan wouldn’t work. The hardest part was getting rid of that demon-spawned bird. Knowing it would shatter his carefully contrived mood of contentment, Bailic had thrown her into the snow, shutting the door behind her.

  “I could know who the Keeper is right now,” Bailic rasped. He spun, storming to his chair. Throwing himself into his chair, his fingers tapped a steady rhythm on the musty fabric. In his zeal, Bailic had forgotten an uncons
cious person was open to serving as a Master’s mouthpiece. And while the girl hadn’t really been unconscious, she was apparently close enough. He hadn’t been interrogating her. He had been questioning his prisoner still deep within his cell! “Child of the sun and earth,” he said with a sneer, stilling his hand’s motion.

  Bailic rose and paced to his shelves. He was after the salve. The bird had attacked him, marking his hands as he tried to fix a ward of stillness about her darting shape this afternoon.

  At least he hadn’t shattered his story of concerned host too badly, he thought with a derisive scorn. A person serving as a speaker for a Master invariably awoke with no recollection of it. And the piper, Bailic snorted, had lost his volition before the girl. He shouldn’t remember anything at all. It would be foolish to believe they didn’t suspect he was up to something, but he was confident his desire for the First Truth was still his secret. The entire evening, though, had been an absolute waste.

  Bailic stretched to the highest shelf. All the others had been warded by Talo-Toecan, and he couldn’t touch a thing on them. Unable to see the top, he lightly brushed his fingers across it searching for the small jar of potent cream. If it healed raku score, it would certainly help his scratches. He was on awkward tiptoe when a muffled boom shifted the warm, still air. “By the Hounds . . .” he muttered, and then the floor trembled, knocking him off balance.

  Bailic struggled to catch himself without touching the warded shelves, bumping the salve jar. It tipped and rolled noisily down the shelf until, upon reaching the end, it rolled gracefully off. Bailic reached out with his thoughts to catch it. He failed to get a fix on it in time, and it hit the floor with a sickening crack and shattered.

  “Wolves,” he cursed. The precious cream was laced with slivers of stone. Worthless. Then he froze. “Talo-Toecan,” he whispered, suddenly afraid. “What have you done?”

  Only a sudden release of great power could account for the disturbance. Only Talo-Toecan would have dared to try and control such a release. But why? His wards were powerless to act upon anyone or anything within the Hold while he was imprisoned.

  Had he escaped? Bailic wondered, and he stood unmoving, testing the moonlit night for any new threats of death.

  With a shudder that rocked him, he shook off his fear, drawing his borrowed Master’s vest tighter. If there was a way past the bars, the slippery beast would have found it ages ago. “So what are you doing down there, old lizard?” he said. All traces of his anger were gone, replaced by a worried frown. “Perhaps I should find out what and remind you of your new position in life.”

  Stepping carefully around the broken pottery and scattered paper, Bailic slipped into the hall. Down he went until he stood peering into the damp hole in the floor under the stair. Wiping his neck free of his sudden sweat, he paused, listening. Nothing met his questing senses. Reassured Talo-Toecan wasn’t coming up by some miracle, he lit a torch with a quick thought and started his descent.

  Bailic’s knot of tension loosened as he reached the small anteroom and found his prisoner’s massive form waiting behind the black gates, a coiled shadow of wing and hide whose yellow eyes reflected the light from Bailic’s torch. They blinked slowly as Bailic edged to the wall socket holding the expired torch from his last visit. There was no sound but the water dripping and the small echoes of his scuffling feet.

  He paused at the slight tremor in the air, blanching as he realized it was coming from his captive. The raku was rumbling so low that it couldn’t be heard, only felt shifting the damp air. Deciding he would rather hold the torch than cross in front of the raku, Bailic retreated until he was almost back in the tunnel. His eyes never left the beast, motionless but for the slow weaving of the tip of his blunt tail.

  “I am pleased,” Bailic said softly, “to see you—old teacher. I had thought that perhaps you decided to leave.”

  The immense shape simmered, shrank, and became the smaller form Bailic also recognized as Talo-Toecan. Eyes designed to detect prey and claws for rending flesh shifted to those capable of focusing on paper and turning a page. “You still breathe, Bailic?” came Talo-Toecan’s low voice. “Then I’m still here.”

  Bailic drew himself up in a show of bravado. “So you are.” Braver now that Talo-Toecan was in his human guise, he edged closer. “I came to see what you were up to,” he said, lifting his torch to see if there were any physical manifestations of the energy release he had felt.

  “Allow me,” Talo-Toecan muttered, and a brilliant light exploded into existence.

  “Wolves!” Bailic swore as he threw himself to the floor and rolled, his hand refusing to let go of the torch. Flat upon the stone, his eyes narrowed and his face tightened as Talo-Toecan’s scornful laughter filled the small space. Too late Bailic realized what had happened. Furious, he stood and awkwardly brushed the imagined dirt from his clothes, glaring at the raku. He knew he was safe from Talo-Toecan’s wards on this side of the gate, but it was hard to control one’s reactions around the devious scholar.

  For reasons unknown, Talo-Toecan had created a light brighter than the sun under the ponderous weight of the mountain. The wily raku had never done so before. He must have a reason now, Bailic surmised spitefully, other than watching him skitter like a dog from beneath a swinging foot, but at least he could see.

  Bailic leaned close, flushing as Talo-Toecan’s eyebrows mocked his stolen Master’s vest. The beast hadn’t changed in sixteen years, Bailic thought in wonder.

  Talo-Toecan was dressed in the traditional, floor-length sleeveless vest of a Master of the Hold. The gold-colored fabric flowed to the ground, bound tight to his waist with a long scarf of ebony, the ends of which brushed the floor. It contrasted gently with his yellow wide-sleeved shirt. With a start, Bailic realized the Master’s attire was in direct opposition to his own borrowed clothes, with the colors being reversed.

  His complexion was dark despite his long confinement. Clearly Talo-Toecan spent much time at the far gate facing the open sky and western sun, looking at his unattainable freedom. The figure gave the impression of timeless maturity as he stood straight and unbowed, glaring at him. Straight and sharp, his features had few wrinkles, but his closely cropped hair was a stark white. His hands were hidden within his wide sleeves, but Bailic knew Talo-Toecan’s fingers were abnormally long and thin. It was a characteristic all the Masters had shared along with their unnaturally amber eyes. It seemed their shift to human form couldn’t hide all their raku attributes. For a silent moment they appraised each other. Nowhere was there any hint of distress caused by the massive release of force Bailic had felt.

  “What,” Bailic sighed, “have you been up to?”

  “I!” Talo-Toecan shouted, his cool demeanor shattering with that one word. “I? You dare come taunt me with your lies? What have you done!”

  His eyes wide, Bailic took an involuntary step back. Never had he, or anyone else, seen a Master of the Hold lose his temper—and live to tell of it. They always had command of their emotions. Angry? Yes. Annoyed? Often. But enraged to the point of losing control? Never.

  Talo-Toecan stood stock-still before Bailic, his fists clenched. His shout echoed in the immense space behind him, temporarily drowning out the measured drips of water. “Tell me, you cursed, ill-begot effluent of a corpse worm. What have you done to them!”

  It almost seemed as if Talo-Toecan cared, and rakus seldom cared about anything. Cities rose and fell. Tyrants raped and plundered. Never did the Masters interfere in the affairs of men, only watched. The sole exception were their Keepers. Even so, they held the knowledge of themselves and their disciples a well-kept secret. There were tales aplenty of rakus, but nothing to link them to anything other than bloodthirsty beasts. Only the Keepers knew the truth.

  “I swear,” Talo-Toecan rumbled, “if you leave without telling me what you have done, I will carve out your black and twisted soul and personally give it to Mistress Death herself! Don’t expect me to believe the mountain trembled of her own
accord. I felt it even down here.” Talo-Toecan drew close to the bars. “Tell me,” he whispered, “or I will make your eventual end more agonizing, more painful, than even you could devise in a thousand years, Bailic.”

  “My, my, my,” Bailic said, carefully adjusting his shirt. “What a state you’ve gotten yourself into. One would think,” he simpered, “you cared.”

  The Master silently lunged, his eyes glinting with a seething hatred. The ward stood silent and quiescent between them, and believing himself to be safe, Bailic stood his ground as the two powerful forces collided. This could be his end, he thought with a perverse thrill, but his trust in the powers of ancestral rakus was vindicated, and he watched in obscene pleasure as, with a pulse of unseen power, Talo-Toecan was thrown back, repelled by a force stronger than he.

  Talo-Toecan’s light went out, plunging Bailic into a momentary blindness. His grip on his torch clenched, but he forced himself to stand firm as his eyes readjusted. There was the smell of singed metal. By the flickering light of his torch, Bailic watched Talo-Toecan pick himself up, draw himself straight, and shake out his long vest.

  Limping, Talo-Toecan took step after careful step until he was so close, the ward buzzed a harsh warning. “What . . .” he breathed raggedly, “have you done to them?”

  “I’ve done nothing,” Bailic nearly spat, refusing to step back, though it took all his nerve and hatred. “I came to find out what you had done.”

  “It wasn’t you?” Talo-Toecan whispered, his amber eyes going to the ceiling.

  Bailic sneered. “And it wasn’t you,” he said, only now understanding. “Your new student has gotten herself in a bit of a spot now, hasn’t she? Or is it he? Either way, I should find an interesting situation upstairs.” Bailic spun around.

  “Bailic!” Talo-Toecan called, but Bailic hardly heard him, already deep in thought as to what he might find in the rooms on the eighth floor.