The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5

by Doyle, Debra

  Mael bent over her. Dark against her pale face, blood trickled across her forehead, and she did not move.

  The earth shifted again, and there, at last, Mael saw the pattern he had sought: the cable of eiran rising out of the earth, a few strands still showing bright amid the tarnish.

  Klea moaned and tried to move.

  “Lie still” Mael said. “I think we have found what we came to find.”

  Kolpag kept the speeding hovercar in view ahead of him. He’d have to be careful of this one. The young man had proved to be far more capable than Kolpag had given him credit for.

  Now that his first flash of anger was over, Kolpag felt only a grim determination. He drove, pushing the hovercar as fast as he considered safe, while at the same time thumbing his blaster down from kill to stun. The boy was coming along to Ophel whether he wanted to or not, and Kolpag would worry about Ruhn later. The silly bastard hadn’t been worth much anyway.

  The hovercar up ahead was steering erratically, and starting to veer off the road. That wasn’t surprising; given that the boy had his hands locked in binders behind his back, it was a wonder he’d been driving at all. Kolpag dropped back a bit to stay clear of the inevitable crash. Then the car ahead swung rapidly to the right, and flashed up out of sight between a pair of buildings.

  Side street, thought Kolpag. He’d been swinging wide left so he could make a high-speed turn to the right. Damn. Well, I know a few tricks too.

  He pushed the yoke in for speed, then twisted it hard right, and at the same time pulled back on the yoke for braking. The vehicle slewed around until it was sliding with its left side forward. When the nose of the hovercar was pointed straight up the side street, Kolpag shoved the yoke all the way in, and scooted forward. It was as close to a square turn at speed as anyone could do and maintain even tenuous control.

  He’d gained on the boy, too. The lead hovercar was up ahead, going down the street but tending to the right. Kolpag saw it drift over until it hit a tree growing from a cutout in the sidewalk. Then it spun to its left and skidded all the way across the street to smash into a building.

  The careering hovercar spun again and went forward the way it had been going, but even more erratically. Finally it came to rest half on, half off the pedestrian walkway as its nullgravs cut out in response to the impacts. The thrusters were still going, making the vehicle tremble and try to inch along the pavement.

  Kolpag got from his car and walked over to the wreck. He looked in. No one was inside.

  “The bastard,” he said. “The bastard!” He pounded both fists on the front of the hovercar, still holding his blaster in one hand.

  Then he straightened. Where could the boy have gone?

  Kolpag turned and walked back down the street. At the moment the boy’s car had made the turn he’d still been aboard, controlling. By the time the car came to rest, he was gone. So somewhere between the one point and the other, he had to be located.

  Kolpag came to a thicket of bushes. The bruised leaves from where the car had sideswiped showed white from their exposed undersides. And there—a broken gap. Big enough for a body to have gone past. Kolpag pushed his way through the broken foliage. A steep hill on the other side, covered with wiry grass, led to a valley. The package wasn’t there.

  This snatch was botched. Kolpag returned to his hovercar, pushing through the crowd of onlookers at the scene of the wreck, got into his vehicle, and drove away.

  Mael Taleion made Klea as comfortable as he could, wrapping his outer robe about her and settling her staff into her hands.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  Then he stood, the black mask on his face, the silver-bound staff in his hand, and opened himself to the universe.

  The eiran came to him, glowing silver against the dark sky. Wind whipped his hair, but Mael did not notice. Skyglow from the city lit the bottoms of the clouds. The rain fell harder.

  Mael grasped the lines and pulled them, trying to reach the center of the great cable. A cord there would be corroded, decayed to nothingness, its shape defined only by the other cords which lay so tight about it. A negative space, the lack of something rather than its presence, like the hollow where a clinging vine had choked the tree it climbed. He pulled harder.

  The light grew along the horizon, splitting the sky from the ground. Mael knew that he had to find the rotted cord. It tarnished everything that touched it, and it passed the corruption on. Already the tarnish had spread farther than he had imagined it could, out to the limits of his sight.

  “I’ve found you! I know you’re somewhere close!” Mael cried aloud as he dragged on first one cord then another. But instead of loosening the knot his actions only drew it tighter.

  The frustration was grinding on his soul. He searched back and forth along the great looping cable of lines, trying to find a more open place. Everywhere the tarnished silver cords opposed him. Still he pulled and prodded, seeking a weak place among the cords that guarded the decayed center.

  Then he became aware of another figure approaching him through the dark and the rain.

  “Klea?” he called.

  “No,” came back a mocking voice. “The wench was mine, and I have made her mine.”

  “No!”

  “Then see!” The newcomer held aloft a staff such as Klea had carried. “Do you recognize this?”

  The staff glowed at once in blue-green, Klea’s color. The light washed down from the staff across the face of the newcomer. In its lurid glare, Mael saw that this was his ekkannikh, not robed and hooded as before, but in plain shirt and trousers like an ordinary man. Ordinary—but the face was a sink of corruption, ruined cartilage and quivering jellies of rotten flesh hanging in tatters from the skull.

  “When does an Adept part with her staff?” the ekkannikh asked. “When she is dead!”

  And with that word he broke the staff between his hands. The fire of the universe glowed brighter in its center, then flowed away in rags and tatters, while some of it ran down the ekkannikh’s arms to pool around its feet.

  “Who speaks of death? The dead?” Mael raised his staff and let light pour into it. “Speak to me of death, you who are already gone?”

  The solidified mass of tarnished cords beside Mael began to sway, as if the wind had taken them and made them vibrate.

  “I died unbroken, my will prevailing,” the ekkannikh said. “Such a fate will escape you; you will break before you die.”

  Beside the ekkannikh a rod sprang from the ground. When the rod had grown as high as a man’s head, the creature seized it, and it became a staff, blazing up white and dazzling. Mael had to turn his face aside to protect his eyes from the glare. The tarnished silver of the eiran glowed in reflected light as if they were once more pure.

  At that moment the ekkannikh attacked.

  Mael sensed the blow aimed for him more than he saw it. He punched the side of his staff up and to the left, diverting the lashing blow and making it slide harmlessly past him. The staves shivered under the impact—this was no insubstantial illusion that he faced, nor a mere phantom of ill-will. This was a physical presence bent on his destruction.

  “I have gained strength in my travels,” the ekkannikh said. “And allies.”

  From out of the dark came a large man, dressed as a Khesatan noble. He walked up to the ekkannikh and grasped hold of it. The two bodies merged, flowing into one another, the form of one and the substance of the other, until they became a man of middle years, a slight, dark-haired man dressed in dusty black. The decay was gone from his face.

  “I grow, I am one,” the spirit said. “I am the greater.”

  “You fight like an Adept,” Mael said. “Come with me to the Void.”

  He turned the peculiar corner which always before had brought him to the land of no-space and no-time, where he might be able to take the ekkannikh to the time and place of its first death. If he could kill it properly there …

  “That way is blocked to you,”
the ekkannikh said, and Mael found that he was unable to move, that the road was truly closed.

  The staff of the ekkannikh crashed onto his back across his shoulder blades, lacing him with a burning agony. He stumbled and fell forward against the tarnished silver lines.

  Jens and Guislen had almost reached the edge of the park. Up a rise, across the roofs of some buildings, they could see the Golden Tower sparkling in the sun.

  “I hadn’t thought to meet you again,” Jens said. “I thought that once named, you were gone forever.”

  “Not yet,” Guislen said. “There is still work for me to do. Shall I take those binders off of you?”

  “I’d been under the impression that you couldn’t do … well … physical things.”

  “Nor can I,” said Guislen with a smile. “But you can. Are you aware of the binders?”

  Jens grimaced. Now that he was free to think about the restraints that clipped his wrists tightly behind him, he seemed to feel every molecule as a separate source of pain. “Only too aware.”

  “Good. Try to touch their nature. Know how they hold you. Find the mechanism. Follow the circuits, watch the electrons flow within them. When you understand them, you will be free of them.”

  Jens concentrated for a moment as they walked, but nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

  “Let me help,” Guislen said. “Concentrate again. Or, if concentration doesn’t bring results, relax and let your mind be empty of all preconceptions about the nature of locks.”

  Then, as with the hatch of the Inner Light on Sapne, Jens became aware of the inner nature of the lock’s materials. He knew the bolt, the catch, the magnet that held them in place, and the lines of flux that wrapped around them.

  He touched the lock with that awareness, and the binders clicked open and fell away. Jens brought his hands in front of him and looked down. Angry red lines circled his wrists. He massaged them while he spoke to Guislen.

  “Did you do that, or did I?”

  “You did it. With some help.”

  “Am I an Adept, then?”

  “You have the talent. But I told you a long while ago that you were meant to be neither Adept nor Mage. Come—we are almost at the Guildhouse, and time grows short.”

  They came out of the park and crossed a street. Around the corner and under a pointed arch, an alley led up to a set of wide stone steps between two buildings.

  “I recall this,” Jens said. “It’s not the Guildhouse. It’s the way to the house of Caridal Fere, the Master of Nalensey.”

  “The Guildhouse and the house of Caridal Fere are the same place,” Guislen told him. “Master Fere has decided to seek temporal power for the Adepts of this world, and to rule its rulers. From here our ways part for the last time. Your task is great, but mine is urgent. Farewell.”

  “Farewell,” Jens said, but he was speaking to no one. Guislen was gone.

  Jens turned, and walked up the stairs toward the upper entrance of the house of Caridal Fere.

  “Freeze right there,” came a man’s voice behind him. Jens recognized the Ophelan slur to the words. “Don’t turn around. Very slowly, walk back this way.”

  “Why, that sounds like my good friend Kolpag,” Jens said. “What brings you here?”

  “Shut up. You’ve cost me too much time and trouble. Keep walking back.”

  From the sound, Jens could tell that Kolpag was keeping well out of range of a kick. And if Jens turned, he’d only buy himself a stun, or worse.

  He reached up to touch the amulet he had worn since Sapne. In spite of the morning’s adventures, it still lay against his chest. Perhaps it worked, perhaps not, but he’d had a great deal of luck lately. He grasped the amulet.

  Luck, he thought. She gave me luck for a reason.

  If he could get some of that luck now … the amulet broke from its cord and fell to the pavement in a tinkle of tiny shards. Without thinking, Jens bent forward to pick it up. A blaster bolt sizzled above his back, inches above his spine.

  He really is shooting at me, Jens thought. So why am I still alive?

  On the heels of the thought came the sound of a body falling to the pavement behind him. Jens straightened and looked around. Kolpag lay on his back partway up the marble stairway. Then Jens turned again and looked forward.

  An elderly woman stood there, dressed like a midclass Khesatan matron on a holiday. She held a blaster in both hands. To Jen’s surprise, he knew her.

  “You’re Tillijen—Gentlelady Blossom from the tea shop!”

  The woman nodded. “And Armsmaster to House Rosselin. Took you long enough to move out of my way so I could get a clear shot.”

  Jens went over to where Kolpag lay on the shallow steps with his head lower than his heels. The blaster-man was dead, his forehead marked with an ugly hole surrounded by seared flesh. Jens reached down and pulled the weapon from the man’s hand.

  “Looks like I’m going to make a career of stealing blasters off of dead bodies,” he said. He straightened and spoke to Blossom. “Do you know where my cousin is?”

  “Somewhere inside, I presume,” she said.

  “Is your partner here too?”

  “Bindweed’s gone around to the front.”

  “Well, I’m going in myself. Please tell her not to shoot me on the way out. I don’t want to ruin a perfect day.”

  Then Jens looked down. The luck amulet lay on the pavement, cracked and broken, shattered by its fall.

  “Good thing the Adepts say that luck isn’t real,” he said. “Otherwise, I’d have to start worrying.”

  With that he walked forward, past Blossom and into the house of Caridal Fere.

  Mael had lost his staff when he fell. He pulled himself to his feet, grabbing the woven cable of silver cord and using it to pull himself away from the blows of the ekkannikh.

  Ahead of him Mael could see the strands flying out from the end of the cable, like a rope unlaying. At the cable’s end stood another figure like the one who still pursued him. Its staff was also a glowing white—and by that glow, Mael saw that its face was a younger twin to that of the creature who followed him.

  Mael felt himself begin to despair. He was trapped between the two phantoms, the cords of life all around him tangled, their right order gone, with the tarnish spreading in all directions and shooting off into the night.

  The wind sang among the wires.

  Mael stopped, and leaned his forehead against the cable. This was the end-point of his vision. No time now to arrange the cords into the pleasing pattern that he knew was required. No place to run.

  He lifted his head to look at his approaching foes with pain-dimmed eyes, then turned to the mass of jumbled cords. With bare hands he grabbed them, seeking the rot at the center to pull it forth and expose it.

  “I will be found doing my duty,” he repeated to himself. “I will be found doing my duty.”

  The light approached him from either side. In the combined glow of the staves, he could see the eiran cords, his hands small and weak beside the great cable. To what arrogance did he owe his belief that he could change this and make it right? All was lost.

  Then the phantom that had awaited him spoke—not to him, but to its elder double.

  “We met once before, on Sapne. You did not face me then—but now you must.”

  “Have it as you will,” said ekkannikh, and struck the first blow, not at Mael but at the newcomer.

  Mael watched them for a while as they fought. The glowing staves wove and plunged, while the crack of wood on wood was like a drumroll, rhythmic and steady.

  Then Mael turned away and began struggling once again to find the place where the great cable unlaid, sending its tarnished strands out into the universe, flying up beyond sight into the dark sky. A gap in the cords appeared, and he could see almost to the cable’s inner core.

  He pushed on farther, though he was torn and scratched by the contact. Daring to grasp the essence of life and luck, that was what wounded men … . There was the in
most, the final strand. Mael could hardly see it. It was lost in its own darkness, as if it sucked in the light.

  He reached out and grasped the deepest strand. It felt hot to his touch, hot and burning. The pain spread up his arm to his shoulder. He would not let go. He pulled harder. Two of the inner cords shifted slightly. Behind him, as he worked, he still heard the noises of combat—the clash of staves and the thud of wood against flesh.

  “I must break you,” said one voice; and—“You shall not,” said the other.

  Mael pulled again. Some of the inner, flexible, rotten cord broke free and slithered toward him. He fell backward, but kept his grip on the burning silver wire. The cord followed him. He seized it with both hands and pulled again. The pain was excruciating, but more of the cords came free. Perhaps it was a trick of the unsteady light from the moving staves behind him, but the eiran seemed to be less tarnished than before.

  Faster and faster the cords unwound. The rotted cord piled up at Mael’s feet, and still he pulled. His wounded back throbbed with every effort, but he didn’t dare let go.

  “They’re both insane,” said Rhal Kasander, drifting toward where Faral and Miza stood. Miza moved closer to Faral, and without needing to think about it, Faral put an arm around her. “You’re off-worlders,” Kasander added, “but at least I know what you are.”

  Chaka growled under her breath.

  *I wouldn’t,* Faral said. To Kasander he said, “My friend tells me that she took the weapon she’s holding from the cold dead fingers of the person you sent to kill her. She wants to know if you prefer the blaster shoved down your throat or up your ass.”

  “This creature is your friend?”

  “Friend, agemate, neighbor, all that. We grew up together. Never expected her to show up here, though.”

  “Please be so good as to inform your agemate that any attempt to kill her was not by my command.”

  Chaka replied, and again Faral translated, “You’re still a mannerless thin-skin who spies on his guests.”