“Ah,” I said politely. “And I thought it was a fashion statement.”
He cocked his head. “What did you plan to do with the Gold?”
I heard the capital, and wondered what he meant by the reference to the Gold? Buried treasure? Redcaps weren’t known for keeping anything humans find of value, except as a lure. Didn’t seem to matter much now. I gave him a look of polite inquiry.
“Don’t bother dissembling,” he said. “They all come for the Gold. It provides me with plenty of opportunity to keep my headgear well dyed, so I can’t complain. Good bait means less hunting. But you’ve thrown a kink in that, sorcerer—you and your Tindalan insurance—so I tell you what. I’ll do you a favor. I’ll set your feet on the right path.”
He tensed. I held myself ready. I felt the physical bonds ease as he pounced. I threw myself against the barrier and sent one great call to the White Wolf. I pushed the message through in that moment of weakness before the bonds fell on me once again. Physically, I had no chance to resist the redcap. His speed and strength surpassed me to such a degree that he handled me as easily as I might handle a small child.
The breeze grew ragged. I heard the White Wolf’s distant howl, but the redcap moved swiftly over the broken ground. The rough hills blurred in my eyes as he tucked me casually beneath one powerful arm and swarmed across the face of the rocks. He traveled like that for some time, until I began to feel the distant pulse of a WanderWay. I felt the first stirrings of hope. The call of the Road grew stronger with his progress. As I thought to reach out and touch the power in it, he came to a stop and threw me roughly to the ground.
I looked around—up at the high, gray walls stretching above me, brushed lightly with scabrous patches of lichen, and down at the land falling away from me. The redcap had dropped me at the edge of a long, steep slope. The cliff stretched down into the distance at an angle that veered only slightly from the vertical. The shape of the hills drew together to join in a straight descending trench which bisected the slope and ran out of sight toward infinity.
That trench spoke in the seductive voice of a WanderWay, promising nasty possibilities. I closed my eyes and called again for the Wolf, trying to punch through the redcap’s remaining binding with every ounce of will at my disposal. I had never seen a vertical Way before, but I had sudden suspicions about the redcap’s intentions.
He confirmed those suspicions when he kicked me over the edge of the cliff. The winds rose about me. The howling of the Wolf became a part of the voice of the winds. I felt my rate of descent slow as the Wolf’s hunters streamed down around me, lending their strength to the White Wolf as he bent the winds of that place to his will. My rate of descent continued to decrease. I reached out to the Way. It resisted my shaping, locked to its destination, the path a well-worn groove of old, dusty footsteps, all pacing inward. It was a one-way path, a unidirectional flow, a turnstile through a locked gate. I might have been able to fight it and redirect my course if the redcap’s bonds hadn’t still lay heavily upon me and had I been walking rather than falling down the length of it. As it was, my divided attention cost me any chance of diverting the Way from its set destination.
Dust rose as the ground rushed up to meet me. The winds of the White Wolf pulled the air from my lungs even as they cushioned the shock of my fall.
I slammed into the ground and lost my breath. I spent a few seconds in timeless agony, trying to relearn how to breathe. When I recovered my breath, the air of the place—stale and dry as it was—tasted as sweet as that of any cool mountaintop. I spent those first moments concentrating on the redcap’s weakening bonds. It took a little work to shatter them away to nothing. As the last traces of the bindings fell away, I realized that I could sense nothing of the White Wolf or his hunters. They had vanished.
CHAPTER VI
THE IRON HILLS were a verdant, pastoral paradise compared to the place the redcap had sent me. A flat, dusty plain stretched before me, a wall of cliffs rising at my back, cut by a single, vertical line in the red-gray stone. Slanting rays of yellow-brown light illuminated the plain, filtered through layers of dust that hung on the still air and coated my throat and lips. The air tasted flat, as if old, tired, unbreathed by any living, vigorous thing.
I stood on a narrow ridge of stone that stretched, straight as an arrow, from the line of the vertical cleft in the cliff behind me out into level ground. Except for that slender path of bare stone, black vines sporting thorns as long as my little finger curled over every visible bit of earth like an enormous dumping ground of military surplus razor wire. In the midst of those vines I could see movement. Small forms crawled lazily among the thorns.
That path had all the possibility of an arranged marriage. I’d need more to work with before I could leave that place through WayShaping. Someone—perhaps the redcap, though I doubted that from his comments and from the feel of the age of the place—had locked down the Way in that place, killing its impulse to wander. Even without that obstacle, I refused to leave without tracking down the White Wolf and his pack of hunters. Though they had eased my fall, they had vanished instead of rejoining the Legion after I hit the ground.
I pulled a kerchief from an inner pocket and tied an impromptu dust mask over my mouth and nose. The dust faded all visual detail into a brown and yellow blur after about a hundred yards. I eased my senses toward the spiritual and extended my awareness gently. I sensed nothing of the White Wolf and his entourage. He had not sought his freedom, since the bonds I had laid on him so long ago remained unbroken, but the traces on all of them lay slack and lifeless. I frowned, puzzled. The traces would not linger if the White Wolf and his pack had been destroyed. To seek freedom they would have had to sever the bonds. I had never before run across anything quite like what I felt then.
I found myself noting a few other disturbing elements. First, the vines and the forms among them did not register as having a spirit I could touch. That was a bad thing. I could touch no will around me, not even the smallest spark of hungry life. That told me that the movement I saw originated most likely with machines. Having no living spirit to touch, machines were immune to my sorcerer’s influence. The place felt more and more like a prison, given the elements such as dead Roads, sentry machines, and the choking absence of life.
I sensed one other thing, perhaps the most disturbing of all. Ahead, straight down the path of stone that lay before me, I could feel a vast, muted power, like the glow from a great fire burning over the horizon. The closest experience I had to anything like that would be the luminescence of a Tindalan swarm. A very big swarm.
“Rose? Blade? Angel? Any ideas?”
The Bright Angel’s voice had all the music of the stars themselves. “Look for the Wolf and his pack ahead. That power would mute any lesser radiance.”
“And I feel the possibility of a loosening of the Way in that same direction.” Blade’s voice was expressionless.
I winced, knowing that he still blamed himself for his moment of inattention with the redcap. I explored ahead, along the length of the Road with my WayShaper’s sense, and felt a thin, confirming pulse. “Limited, but perhaps our ticket to freedom?” I asked Blade.
“Our only visible option, at any rate,” Blade agreed.
“What of the vines, and the crawlers among them?” The usual floral scent of the White Rose sharpened with her asperity.
“No life, no will,” I answered. “Machines, most likely. This place is dead. Perhaps the machines and vines are the lingering weapons of some ancient war.”
“Or the guards to a prison. Does it not bother you that this place is so well suited to your vulnerability?” Rose asked. “You cannot touch these machines directly. They will be immune to any but the most indirect of our powers and most of your physical forces went with the White Wolf.”
“That’s why I’ll need you to give me physical boosts as necessary,” I responded. “And yes, it seems that this redcap was entirely too prepared. Whether Titania merely delights in ki
lling human sorcerers or is trying to make points with Silverhand is irrelevant. We have to survive this place before worrying about that.”
“And then worry about Fetch,” Blade said gravely.
“One impossible thing at a time. Unlike you, I’m only human.”
I heard a few chuckles at that. Tightening my makeshift mask against the omnipresent dust, I began walking briskly toward the distant glow and the dim promise of another Way.
The machines took notice of me before I’d covered a thousand paces. The first sign came when the movement in the vines became a rippling wave of motion that exactly paralleled my course and speed. Shortly after, I saw a small, dark insectile machine scuttle out onto the edge of the road on too many thin, spidery legs. A high-pitched whine slid across the edge of my hearing as the camera cluster dominating the torso spun and focused, tracking me as I walked. The optimist in me hoped quietly that all of the machines were for observation only, but the realist in me pointed out—with as much relish as a bully kicking down a small boy’s sandcastle—that such design specialization probably indicated swarm tactics and narrow roles for each small machine.
The realist in me can be a colossal prick.
I kept my eyes peeled for warrior drones and had the White Rose and Shadow set some of my limited reserve forces to work on readying adrenaline boosts. Their working had a taste both sweet and bitter. I would have preferred a steed of the air, but any forces I had capable of that kind of manipulation had departed with the White Wolf. I followed the ridge toward the living pulse of a possible Way I could feel in the distance. The dust thickened as I walked through an increasingly yellow light, the cast of old parchment.
The machines grew bolder, skittering out along the edge of the road in clusters of two to four. I watched them out of the corner of my eye. All had generally insectile or arachnid shapes, with long, thin legs supporting elongated or globular bodies, but I could identify several distinct types. In addition to the cameras of the observer machines, I saw what might have been folded blades, possibly small powered saws, and other bundles that may or may not have been various implements of destruction on worker or soldier types. The machines could have been a construction or maintenance crew, specialized for various tasks, rather than hunter/killers designed for swarm tactics. Based on long experience and cultivated cynicism, I drew my own conclusions, construction not high on the Pareto of likely functions.
Ahead I could feel that otherworldly presence looming on the horizon. The limp bindings of the White Wolf and the elements of the Legion he had taken with him led in that direction. I decided to move before the machines had me completely trapped, gave Shadow the nod, and watched the motion of the machines slow to almost nothing. I ran, pushing through air that was suddenly as thick as molasses. The machines moved more slowly yet, dropping away into the hanging dust. I did not doubt that they would track me. I couldn’t stay boosted long: while boosted, I consumed my body’s resources at a frightening rate. I could literally starve to death in minutes, though metabolic shock would get me long before that, despite the White Rose’s buffering efforts.
I made the best of my opportunity, driving on down the ridge and through the thickening dust to a place where the light faded to a golden glow. I could feel the proximity of the Way, could even see where it split off from the ridge, but I could also feel something else. A powerful presence loomed into the clouds above me.
I could see the clouds of dust bent and twisted into a great vortex. The noise and the wind would have been terrible had I not been accelerated slightly past the normal flow of time. The regard of the presence at the heart of the storm fell down over me like a towering wave. In the moment of contact, I tasted something of its composite nature. Golden light fell down through the umber body of the whirlwind. The core of the vortex rippled toward violet. The air tasted of electric rage. Looking up through the muted light at the pent fury of the winds, I knew where the White Wolf had vanished, and I had a sudden suspicion as to what the redcap had meant when he had spoken of “the Gold.” Call it what you will, that storm had more than a physical presence, drawing free spirits to itself and locking them into captivity in its raging heart.
What fool would have sought this thing out, in its furious solitude? The redcap said there had been many seekers after the Gold. He had been ready for a sorcerer. If a sorcerer managed to bind such a force to his service, he could increase his power considerably. But under the shadow of that mighty tower of wind, I wondered at the magnitude of foolish ambition that could tempt a man to pursue such a course. I personally wanted as little to do with that thing as possible. The Tindalans had been bad; this looked worse.
And I had other problems to worry about. Like Fetch and Titania and unfulfilled contracts.
I reached the mouth of the Road before allowing Shadow to drop me back into phase with the natural flow of time. I staggered as my body paid the price for thwarting the natural order. My guts churning and my limbs trembling, I had no chance of resisting the full force of the Gold’s rage.
I hadn’t realized how powerful it would be. I threw myself flat on the ground against the hurricane winds. The freight-train cacophony shook the earth. The wind howled like a chorus of damned souls. Dust abraded my skin as the winds ripped at my clothing. I had to hold the loose tail of my coat bunched under my arm to keep from losing it to the winds.
I reached instinctively for the White Wolf, though he had gone from me, and I felt the slightest response in return. I called to that response in desperation, convinced that without some way to tame the wind I would never live to walk the Road that lay behind the Gold.
I could feel the White Wolf fighting, giving me tremendous resistance, even more than when I had originally taken him. When I tightened my grip he fought with me, against the hungry force that sought to pull him back into itself. The resistance I felt came from the Gold, not the White Wolf. Behind the White Wolf I felt the elements of the Legion I had sent with him reinforcing his effort. With that I drew on Bane and Shadow and Bright Angel, leaving only Blade and his forces to man the fortress of my soul. Shadow anchored my will, Bright Angel wove strength into the strand that joined the broken elements of the Legion, and Bane struck past the battle into the heart of the Gold.
I felt its shock. In the moment of its surprise, the Gold’s grip failed on the White Wolf and his party. I ripped them free and used the White Wolf’s strength to calm a bubble of winds around myself.
The Gold reared above me, its winds a thunderous extension of its rage. The ground shook as it searched for me. While the White Wolf’s bubble of winds flexed under the probing attention of the Gold, I reached desperately for the glimmer of possibility I had felt beyond its monstrous girth. Cupping metaphorical hands around limited possibility, I blew on the embers of the Way and kindled a destination from the smoldering ruins of the fading possibilities of that place. I felt a barrier then, an anchor that held the Way shut. I smashed through the barrier with a strength born of desperation as the Gold bent toward me, and I fled that place.
CHAPTER VII
THE WAY shivered under my feet, fighting my control, so I took what options I could find and hammered out a course on the hard-packed surface of limited possibility as I fled along in front of the Gold. The thunder of my pursuer diminished as I twisted and turned through narrower and narrower paths, until the Way became a thin track in the middle of a verdant savannah of rolling hills and clumps of deciduous trees. The winds weakened as I ran. Its earth shaking growl faded to a distant rumble.
The Road twisted like a living thing under my feet. I passed on through the shards of the barrier and came out from under the shadows of storm clouds into a warm sunlit place lush with new growth, the air heavy with the smell of water and free of choking dust. The last traces of the Gold’s distant howl fell to a shimmering whisper and then vanished as the Way closed behind me. As the buffeting winds fell away, the drop in pressure felt like a momentary vacuum. My coat fell slack against my ba
ck and legs. I could taste grit in my mouth and feel the sandpaper rasp of fine dust against my skin as I moved. The last echo of the Gold’s winds fell to the soft sigh of a gentle breeze. The acrid taint of stale air in my lungs vanished before a warm, lush breath of life as I breathed in air that tasted like a lover’s mouth.
The warm, humid air, blue skies, lush green of the grass, the shyly budding leaves of the trees, and the throaty calls of birds in this new land were a far cry from the place I had fled. I had stepped out of a demon’s dance on Bald Mountain and into the chorus of the Rite of Spring.
I wondered at the place I had left behind, the dead prison and its singular prisoner. I shivered in the broad light of day. I shuddered away from the thought that I had freed the Gold in breaking that last barrier. Certainly it had seemed to follow me down the Way. Its winds had reached out after me, though I had apparently lost it behind me. Good for me, bad for anyone it happened to blunder into. I had never encountered anything like that before, a storm with a spiritual center, and I hoped never to do so again.
I tested for alternatives down the limited possibilities I could find in the track where I stood, looked down the branching courses of the traveling Way. I bit back curses when I saw that the Way ran ominously close to the realms of the Fae. I needed more alternatives than that back-country track could give me. If I could find a crossroad, I could look for options, but I would have to both move quickly and with care. Fetch would be waiting to pick up my trail. If I found the proper Way, I would run through places that played to Fetch’s Faerie weakness to iron until I could build a proper foundation I could use to pull myself out of this mess.
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