Trapped lop-6

by James Alan Gardner

  She laughed: the artificial type of laugh one gives when feeling awkward, but not half so forced as the laugh the Caryatid gave in response. It's hard to sound jolly when a Spark has just confessed to being mentally unstable.

  Dreamsinger let her laugh fade to an encouraging smile. "But you were talking about your quest. It must be lovely to see the world… meet people… make a difference instead of constantly performing horrid rituals. What is your quest about?"

  "We don't know, milady. There was just this, uhh, sort of a prophecy kind of thing. It said we'd go on a quest. No hint of what we should do."

  "Who gave you this sort of a prophecy kind of thing?"

  The Caryatid cleared her throat. "A detached dog tongue, milady."

  Dreamsinger didn't even blink. "And it didn't give instructions?"

  "No, milady. But we're, uhh, we've run into things that demand attention. Earlier tonight, there was a haunting. At Feliss Academy. And a girl was killed with what my friend believes was an OldTech bioweapon."

  Something changed in the Spark Lord's posture: a sudden stillness, an infusion of icy cold that wasn't quite hidden by the warm Hafsah illusion. "You say your friend believes this?" She looked at me, then Impervia. "One of these people?"

  The Caryatid lifted her hand in my direction and opened her mouth to speak; but before a single word came out, Dreamsinger spun toward me, made the same three-finger gesture that unfroze the Caryatid, and caught me by the lapels as I suddenly fell free of my imprisonment.

  "Your name?" she said.

  "Philemon Abu Dhubhai." Short concise answers. Spark Lords like short concise answers.

  "Clan Dhubhai, Sheba province?"

  "Yes. The late Governor Khadija was my grandmother."

  "Can you prove it?"

  I thought for a moment, then reached into my pocket and pulled out my purse. "Spark Royal gave her this; I inherited it."

  Dreamsinger examined the purse for a moment. Took it in her hand. Slapped it hard on a nearby table. Nothing but a jingle of coins from inside. She tossed the purse back to me. "All right. What's your scientific background?"

  "A doctorate from Collegium Ismaili. Phys-math."

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. My assessment of bioweapons would have been more credible if I'd had a degree in biology or medicine… but at least she realized I wasn't a scientific illiterate. "Describe what you saw," she said.

  "A disease or parasite, like cottage cheese growing in the girl's nose and throat. Death by suffocation. It developed very fast: at supper she showed no symptoms, by 1:00 A.M. she was dead. The girl was the daughter of Elizabeth Tzekich, leader of the Ring of Knives. We thought the mother's enemies might have—"

  Dreamsinger shook me so fiercely my teeth clacked together. If she was an eleven-year-old girl, she was a stunningly strong one. "I see the obvious," she said. The Sorcery-Lord pulled me closer. "Are you certain the substance was like cottage cheese? It was white and wet, not dark and dry?"

  "Very white and very wet."

  Silently, I wondered what kind of bioweapon created dark and dry deposits, but I knew better than to ask. Dreamsinger had moved her face so close to mine I could feel her breath on my nose: the smell of cinnamon and mint, just like my cousin Hafsah. "Now, Philemon Abu Dhubhai," she said, "one last question and you must answer most truthfully. Is the disease contained?"

  I swallowed hard. "To the best of my knowledge, yes. We believe the disease was planted in the girl's room; she caught it there and died without ever going out. Those who found the body didn't touch anything, and the room is now sealed. But, uhh… the girl had a boyfriend. He's missing, and we don't know if he visited her while she was contagious. We don't think he did, but we aren't sure. People are searching for him near the school, but we came down here because he might have—"

  Dreamsinger tossed me aside. Literally. Not trying to hurt me, just removing me from her sight. Like a child who casts away a toy that bores her. She turned back to the Caryatid. "Dear sister, the dead girl's body is still at Feliss Academy?"

  "Yes, milady."

  The Sorcery-Lord reached up and tapped one of the pearl necklaces looped about her throat. At least that's what it looked like to me — someone not befuddled by Kaylan's Chameleon might have seen something different. The necklace made a soft whistle. "Spark Royal, attend," Dreamsinger said. "Give me Rashid. It's urgent."

  The necklace whistled again. Computer-controlled radio transmitter, I thought. Frustrating that I couldn't see it because of the Hafsah illusion. Two seconds later, a male voice spoke from the same necklace. "Damn it, Dreamy, do you know what time it is?"

  "No," she said. "I don't have a watch. My last one got broke." Dreamsinger's voice had acquired a layer of little-girl sulkiness. How old was she? "And even if I knew the time where I am, I wouldn't know what it is where you are. You could be anyplace from Gdansk to the Galapagos."

  "You know where I hang out these days," the man answered. "Right now, it's three-thirty in the morning."

  "A Spark Lord is always on call." Primly reciting a lesson. "We've got a potential outbreak, Rashid. Supposedly a bioweapon."

  "Says who?" asked Rashid — who had to be Lord Rashid, Science-Lord of Spark. He'd once visited Collegium Ismaili and spoken with several of my fellow students. (The promising ones. The ones with goals.)

  Dreamsinger glanced at me. "The report comes from one of the Sheba Dhubhais. He claims he knows science."

  "Hmph," Rashid said… as if he doubted the possibility of my knowing anything. "Which bioweapon is it?"

  "Nothing I recognize. Cottage cheese in the nose and throat."

  "Hmm. Cottage cheese. Not dark and dry?"

  "Not according to this Dhubhai fellow."

  Again, I wondered what threatening substance was dark and dry; but Rashid was speaking again. "All right, I'll check it out. Where?"

  "Feliss Academy."

  "Then I'm close already. Within a few hundred klicks. Meet you there?"

  "No, I have other business." Dreamsinger glanced at me. "Tracking down a boy who may be infected."

  "If there's somebody sick wandering in public—" Rashid began.

  "I know," Dreamsinger interrupted. "First, you tell me if it's really a bioweapon, and if it's contagious. I'll handle the sterilization."

  Rashid didn't reply immediately. Finally, he sighed. "You're first on the scene — it's your call. I'll radio back as soon as I check the academy."

  The pearl necklace whistled once more. Dreamsinger turned straight to the Caryatid. "Dear sister, this boy who's missing… do you have some belonging of his so we can do a Seeking?"

  The Caryatid shook her head, shame-faced. "I tried a Seeking but got nowhere. The boy's a powerful psychic. At least," she added hastily, "too powerful for me to find. So there was no point bringing his possessions with us. Besides, we thought Spark Royal would be annoyed if we removed anything of Sebastian's from the premises. That might be seen as tampering with evidence."

  "True." Dreamsinger smiled: a sweet dimpled Hafsah smile. "This Sebastian is a powerful psychic? That's…" Her voice trailed off. Judging by the look on her face, I guessed some worrisome possibility had crossed her mind; but after a few seconds, she turned to the Caryatid and said, "Dear sister, you'd better tell me everything you know."

  It didn't take long — we didn't know much. Several times the Caryatid looked to me for help, but Dreamsinger glared me into silence: only the Sorcery-Lord's "dear sister" was allowed to speak.

  The Caryatid went through the facts (the dog tongue, the harp, the missing sword) and wisely omitted conjectures (the possibility of a doppelganger Rosalind) until she reached the explosion at Death Hotel. I could see she was aching to ask if Dreamsinger had caused the kaboom, but didn't want to seem insolent. Therefore, the Caryatid tried leading statements such as, "The thread was sorcerer's crimson… like your cape," in the hope Dreamsinger would say, "That was me." No such luck. The Sorcery-Lord stayed silent to the very end of the tale.


  And the silence continued long after the Caryatid said, "So that's everything." Five seconds. Ten. Thirty. Dreamsinger appeared lost in thought, eyes lowered, brow furrowed. The Caryatid met my gaze with a puzzled lift of her eyebrows, but one does not disturb a pensive Spark Lord… not even when she looks like a teenaged girl and a teacher's instinct is to ask such girls, "Would you like to talk about it?"

  But I longed to know what was churning in Dreamsinger's brain. What did she know that we didn't? After all, she'd arrived in the neighborhood before she learned about the bioweapon… so she'd come here for some other reason. If this was a woman who got out so rarely she couldn't remember the last time she left Spark Royal, why had she suddenly left home to come to this turd of a village?

  But I didn't dare ask. Grandma Khadija had drilled into our family the only way to deal with Spark Lords: never question, always obey. Anything else was suicide… or worse. And if you can't picture anything worse than dying, you don't know much about the Sparks.

  With time on my hands, I stole a glance at Impervia. She'd been trapped in solidified air for several minutes; how well was she breathing? I remembered the sensation, like sucking air through a blanket… and Impervia had built up an unhealthy oxygen debt in her exertions during the fight. Now her eyes had an unfocused look, not turning to meet my gaze. She might have passed out inside her invisible cocoon — either that, or she'd deliberately forced herself to slide into some semimystic martial arts trance.

  I hoped that was it. I hoped she hadn't completely suffocated.

  Perhaps Dreamsinger saw me staring in Impervia's direction. With a sudden, "Aha!" the Sorcery-Lord snapped out of her reverie and strode toward the bar. Her goal, however, was not Impervia; she moved to the spike-armed Hump and clapped her hand in front of his mouth. "Speech only," she murmured. "Neck up, release."

  Her words must have been a command to the nanites who held the enforcer in place. While Hump's body remained frozen, a breath exploded from his mouth followed by a great and grateful inhalation. Apparently the spell had let go of his head, allowing him to breathe freely. Dreamsinger gave him five seconds to guzzle oxygen, then squatted beside his shoulder. "Now," she said softly, "tell me about this town's Smuggler Chief. Name. Headquarters. Any defenses I might encounter on a visit."

  Hump gave a snort he probably thought was a haughty laugh. "If you think I'll tell you shit, you're crazy."

  "Oh, sadly," Dreamsinger said, "I am crazy. I walk the Burdensome Path." She glanced at the Caryatid with a Dear sister, why must we suffer expression. Then she returned to the enforcer. "But I am also a Sorcery-Lord of Spark. If you are not my loyal subject, you are an enemy of the human race."

  "Ooo, I'm shivering," the man said. "You might scare these other lollies, but to me you're just a big-titty bitch. Someone taught you a pissy little trick, freezing the air… but as soon as I get loose, I'll show you some real magic, whore. I'll do you with my fist. Make you howl for mercy."

  Uh-oh. Thanks to Kaylan's Chameleon, Hump must have seen Dreamsinger as some penny-a-poke prostitute… which told you something about the man, if that kind of woman most aroused his ardor. On seeing the image of his innermost lusts, his first inclination was to beat her up. What a world. Then again, maybe it was good the enforcer was an utter bastard — I wouldn't feel so bad when Dreamsinger chopped him to sashimi.

  The Sorcery-Lord's face formed a gentle smile — a fond smile — and she patted Hump on the cheek. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, dear friend. Several people in my family say whenever I walk into a room, something bad in my head won't let me leave until I've killed at least one person. They tease me mercilessly; they say I'm compulsive. But you know what?" She leaned close to Hump's ear. "Whenever I walk into a room, I find there's always at least one person who needs killing."

  Dreamsinger placed her hand lightly on the man's shaved head. He growled obscenities and tried to duck away… but she simply squeezed tighter, her gold-painted Hafsah fingernails digging into the man's scalp. With her other hand, she traced a complicated pattern in the air, as if spelling words in some arcane language. Soon she began to hum, a single tone that started in her throat, then moved without changing pitch: traveling into her nose, then opening up to get more lung-power and finally reverberating all the way to her diaphragm.

  Wind rushed past my ears — as if invisible forces were answering a summons, gusting out of the night to do the Sorcery-Lord's will. Nanites, I thought. Nanites gathering by the billion for some hellacious spell.

  The flame on the Caryatid's shoulder — burning all this time, even while the rest of us were frozen — disintegrated into a million tiny sparkles that flew in Dreamsinger's direction: nano-sized particles of magic, ripped from the Caryatid's weak power and drawn toward the Spark Lord's greater attraction. Every atom of enchantment in the room, every high-tech microscopic mite except the ones still holding Hump frozen, came in response to Dreamsinger's call. The unseen shell around Impervia evaporated; she gasped and crumpled out of sight behind the bar. I could hear her pant and wheeze, but didn't dare move to help her.

  The expression on Dreamsinger's face had become beatific… and my friend Caryatid also seemed transformed. Avid. Hungry. Like a music-lover who's spent too long listening to amateurs tweedle on tin flutes, then hears the full glory of a great symphony orchestra: Yes, I remember — this is what it can be like. The Caryatid possessed only modest gifts of sorcery, but she knew the real thing when she felt it.

  The real thing. Magic. Just how good good can be.

  I saw it in the Caryatid's eyes — recognized it from my own eyes twenty years past, when I was going to be amazing. When I was going to wield power. A world-shaking physicist/mathematician/composer/philosopher/hero. Revolutionizing society. Correcting the mistakes of previous generations. Cutting through the crap and never getting bogged down in distractions. Or self-pity. I'd stood on the verge of an epic life, and was certain no great deed would elude me.

  Remember the feeling that anything was possible? How we would ride Life like a wild stallion that only we could tame?

  I knew the Caryatid remembered as she watched Dreamsinger gather sizzles of magical force. My sorcerous friend once told me she'd invented her guild name, the Steel Caryatid, when she was only thirteen years old: a name that would look good in history books. Sorcery came so easily to her compared with everyone else in her little school. Then she went to the big-league sorcery department at her provincial university…

  You can fill in the rest yourself: shock, denial, bouts of crazed studying, bouts of depression, bouts of self-sabotage with men/drink/procrastination, finally leading to acceptance of a humbler destiny. But the Caryatid could still look at Dreamsinger with sharp-edged memories of what it was like to touch greatness. The power that might have been.

  Hump sensed the power too. Sweat glistened on his shaved head as he tried to slide out of Dreamsinger's grip. She held on calmly, never once losing hold despite the man's slick of perspiration. Her smile curled as tranquilly as the Mona Lisa's… even as her hand began to glow a fierce gold.

  The enforcer must have noticed that fingershine — he couldn't see the hand itself, but he couldn't miss a new source of light so close to his head. Especially one as bright as noon. He poured out a new round of curses, but I wasn't fooled by his bluster; panic underlay every syllable. As the light increased in intensity, he yelled, "What do you want, bitch?"

  Dreamsinger didn't answer. Her one-note humming took on a tiny edge of pleasure.

  "I'll kill you, bitch," the man wailed. "I'll fucking kill you." The bravado rang so hollow I would have ignored it… if I hadn't noticed Dreamsinger's lips move at the same time, mouthing the identical words. "Let me go, or I'll rip out your throat." The man spoke; Dreamsinger spoke with him. Her eyes blazed with inner amusement. When Hump jerked his head, trying to snap out of the Spark Lord's grasp, Dreamsinger's head moved too. Duplicating the motion in perfect unison.

  That's when I noticed her own
head had begun to glow: the same golden color as her hand, dim at first, but brightening quickly. Hump continued to curse; Dreamsinger continued to mimic his words and actions; the golden shine grew fierce.

  I realized I was witness to a Twinning.

  Twinning spells were legendary: sorcerers linked their thoughts to someone else as a way to pluck information from the target's brain. People talked about "copying brain waves," but I knew enough about cognition to realize it wasn't so simple. To clone thoughts from one brain to another required drastic restructuring in the receiver's mental architecture — not just writing a few chance thoughts onto the surface, but shuffling billions of neural connections. Our thoughts aren't superficial things; they're the conscious tips of unconscious icebergs, the end results of uncountable electric pulses channeled along complex chemical pathways. To duplicate the knowledge in someone else's head, you need the same chemical pathways: the same underlying linkages. Twinning wasn't just telepathic eavesdropping; it was gouging out your old brain, reconstructing every synapse to match someone else's blueprints, then seeing what useful information you could now recall.

  Some people named it the Sorcerer's Suicide. Certainly, the spell could be used that way. Enchanters who hated their lives (the terrifying rituals, the fear and mistrust from "normal" folks) might grab someone who looked contented and perform a complete Twinning. Exit the sorcerer, enter a duplicate of a more cheerful person. Or rather, a would-be duplicate. Many a sorcerer had Twinned another man's happiness, only to discover the man was happy because he loved his wife, his children, his friends. The sorcerer now loved the same people… but they didn't love him back.

  More misery. Much potential for disaster. Twinning never guaranteed "happily ever after."

  It didn't even guarantee information. Consider Dreamsinger as she Twinned with Hump: presumably she wanted the name and whereabouts of Dover's smuggling boss. To get those facts, she had to absorb some significant quantity of her victim's mind — you can't pick and choose which memories you get first. Eventually, the spell would provide what Dreamsinger wanted… but by then, she might also have absorbed the enforcer's surly personality. She might, in fact, be the enforcer; maybe not a hundred percent, but enough to be unhealthy for those in the same room.