CrossTown

by Loren W. Cooper

  Subtlety and strength always make a bad combination for the opposition. In this case the opposition meant me. I can’t say I was happy about that.

  The place had been reduced to a ruin. Corvinus’s equipment had been ground to powder—no pieces big enough even to be considered rubble remained. The walls and floors and ceiling showed signs of damage on a large scale. It looked as if someone had become a bit frustrated when they found nothing. Fortunately, the section of wall with Corvinus’s Keystone hadn’t taken much more than surface damage and the Keystone itself hadn’t been so much as chipped. I loosened it carefully, pulled the long stone out of its place, turned it around, and slipped it back into the wall.

  Corvinus had designed the Keystone well. I knew the theory, but I didn’t have the craft. He had taken his skill with the WanderWays and built a small, specialized, and conditional AccessWay into a limited space. That access only existed when the Keystone and the wall were in a harmonious configuration. When the Keystone slid into place reversed, as it had been when I came into the workshop, the AccessWay collapsed and was nearly undetectable.

  The Keystone warmed under my hand. I touched it lightly, manipulating the Way within, and it opened into a narrow stone room. My nostrils pinched at the dead air moving past me, mixing with the fresh air of the lab. The room couldn’t have been more than five paces wide, ten paces long, the ceiling within easy reach of an outstretched arm. Burning white crystals placed in tall stands made of twisted iron illuminated the room with harsh, unforgiving light. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all seamless and smooth. Corvinus had hollowed out or found a perfectly rectangular pocket deep in a thick layer of bedrock. The dark stone always felt cool to the touch. The air always tasted stale. I knew that place. I had been there before. It was Corvinus’s cache, his safe place, his hidey hole. And it was nearly empty.

  The only contents of the room aside from the lights were three objects resting on a long, plain, waist-high wooden table at the end of the room. Everything else had vanished. Considering the hoard of monetary and sorcerous objects that Corvinus had kept there, I wondered for a moment if it had been a robbery. Approaching the table slowly, I discarded the idea that this had been a robbery, since no thief would have left all this so neatly for me to find.

  I studied the table and its contents. In the center lay a dark lump of stone the size of a child’s fist. A multitude of tiny crevices marred the misshapen surface, giving the stone the appearance of petrified flesh. On the right side of the stone lay a spirit trap in the form of a crystal. It glowed brightly, occupied. To the left of the stone lay a small, glossy brick of stiff material. I recognized that glossy brick. I’d used one before for Corvinus, when he’d sent me on an errand that required traveling through a radioactive wasteland. It was a nanotech recovery suit. I could survive high pressure, temperature extremes, radiation, or even hard vacuum for a time. The suit would sustain me by using my waste heat and sweat and breath as fuel and building blocks. Evidently, Corvinus had been making plans for an errand. Without a doubt, he had left these things for me.

  I pocketed the suit, careful not to disturb the activation tab. I picked up the stone, and realized that it had been resting on a folded pouch of soft leather, tied with a long thong. I slipped it into the pouch and hung the pouch around my neck, inside my clothing. With my coat closed, it might be tough to notice, but with just a shirt it made a sizeable lump. Still and all, it would be more difficult to lift from my person without my knowing while hanging around my neck.

  Corvinus’s spirit trap I didn’t touch. I probed it cautiously, noting that it had been sealed with Corvinus’s characteristic style. That didn’t reassure me any. It wouldn’t have been beyond Corvinus to supply a little insurance to his cache by leaving this behind, perhaps containing a Tindalan Swarm or something worse.

  I probed further, still cautious, and received a light touch. I sat back, shocked, before recovering and opening the trap quickly. Sapienta tumbled out, her sparkling cat eyes amused. “Careful, but not careful enough. Another that knew you well could have used my signature.”

  I grinned. “Anyone hostile that knew me that well wouldn’t need to go to such lengths.”

  “Matthias told me that you would open the trap for me before any other.”

  “Was he wrong?”

  The green eyes danced. “Of course not.”

  I thought about the trap and frowned. “You know that Corvinus is dead?”

  Sapienta radiated assent and a subtle mixture of emotions. “I felt him go.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. He had his time. He pushed too far, in the end. He paid for his greed and his hunger for knowledge.”

  I paused awkwardly. I didn’t know what to say.

  She sensed my hesitation. “I’m sorry you lost your teacher. And I remember many good times with Corvinus. He treated me well. But I was still a slave. He was my master. I will not weep, now that he is gone. I am free.”

  The thought came to me, as it would to any sorcerer, to bind her, and take her into the Legion. But she was not some wild thing to be tamed or consumed. Sapienta threatened no one. She had often acted during my apprenticeship as my instructor for the small things, the things Corvinus couldn’t or wouldn’t spend time on. With some regret, I reined in my instincts. “Do you have a message for me, then?”

  “My last task. To deliver a message for a dead man.”

  I heard a bitterness there I had never heard before in her, and I wondered again about my own Legion. Of course there were those like the White Wolf who openly chafed at their bonds, but what of Blade? How many held rage and hate against me in their hearts? How many would aid the Jigsaw Man if it meant destroying me, and so breaking the chains that bound them? What member of the Legion would not turn against me in the name of freedom?

  Would the Legion be my salvation, or would it destroy me in the end?

  I concealed as much of this sudden concern as I could. “What message?”

  Sapienta blossomed into a green flame, and within the flame the familiar outlines of Corvinus’s face took shape. “Zethus. If you’re listening to this, then we’ve had our talk, or I’m no longer able to talk. Take the heart of stone …”

  The message never made it any further than that. The flame broke apart into green smoke, smashed under the spiritual blow of a figure filling the doorway behind me.

  I turned to see an almost familiar presence. I recognized Fetch easily enough, but he had changed. A second skin of power as gray as death and as pale as a winding sheet clothed his limbs and features. The eyes in the mask of his face crawled with the inhuman strength and hunger of pure entropy.

  I had an “oh, shit” moment then as pieces fell into place. Titania’s invite to Sidelines Altaforte had effectively isolated me from Corvinus during his murder. Fetch could have broken Corvinus’s defenses, though that didn’t explain Shaw’s NightTown killer. Perhaps Shaw had sensed Fetch on multiple levels. Certainly, Fetch and Titania looked much better as Corvinus’s killer, which meant Fetch had come to me at Sidelines Altaforte fresh from murdering my master.

  I suddenly understood why Titania wouldn’t have wanted me dead, at least not right away—I doubt she would have shed any tears had I happened to fall to any of the hunters she’d set on my trail. Pale believed Corvinus’s research had been the motive for the murder. Say that was so. If Titania wanted Corvinus’s research badly enough to kill him for it—maybe to keep it, most likely to make sure it was destroyed—then she would keep on after it if she or her errand boy Fetch didn’t find it once he’d killed Corvinus.

  Corvinus would have been tough enough that taking him and squeezing him for information would have been difficult. He had probably forced Fetch to kill him without giving up any information on what he’d hidden. That would leave Titania still in need of the research. So she’d dangled me out there in Faerie, knowing she could take me at any time, but holding me as insurance, as an alternate path to my master’s
research. She could motivate me by keeping the pressure on. If I happened to be good enough or lucky enough to survive the first few attempts on my life after the bounty had been posted, she had to figure that I had the best chance of uncovering what Corvinus had concealed.

  Fetch had probably been dogging my steps since I’d left Faerie. Since he was enforcing a broken contract, neither Fetch nor Titania would have to worry about CrossTown authorities, as my death would have been sanctioned. She’d covered the traces sufficiently well during Corvinus’s murder, so neither of them would have to worry about paying the piper for the deed. Titania and Fetch had played me like a wild card in a game where I didn’t even understand the stakes. What the hell had the research been? What could have been so important that Corvinus and I both had to die?

  Whatever the answer to those questions, now that I had opened Corvinus’s hidden vault, Fetch’s motivation for keeping me alive had vanished. He had his orders. I owed him a life.

  My first thought was flight. I had touched Fetch’s strength. I feared him. The only Way out led past him, but when I tried to move, I found that my limbs responded only sluggishly. My intended lunge became a drunken stumble. Instead of evading destruction, I bumbled toward its embrace.

  I tried to call to the Legion, but only silence greeted me. Fetch. Or had the internal corruption finally struck? Either way, I stood alone. When I looked into his face, I saw Death looking back.

  He moved against me in an inexorable but leisurely way. I felt his will closing over me like the fist of a giant. I caught myself hoping that the Tindalans stuck in his craw like a fishbone in a dog’s throat when I realized that he stood just over the threshold of the room. A thought came to me then. If I could force Fetch back far enough, I could break the link to this place and escape him for a little while. Even Fetch would have a difficult time finding Corvinus’s random pocket of air in all possible beds of stone. I didn’t have any idea as to what I might do after that, but it seemed to beat dying.

  All this flashed through my mind as I threw everything I had into pushing him back one step. One step would be enough. He began pulling me down into that deepest darkness. Color leached out of my vision, leaving me in a flat world painted in shades of gray. I drew on reserves of strength I had not been forced to tap in years. I fought his strength as it closed over me, lifting my head and turning my stumble into something more coordinated, pushing at him physically and psychically. I sensed his amusement as he took one step back to stand at the halfway point of the passageway. I became intimate with despair as the last ties began closing over my will.

  Then my outstretched hand touched a familiar rock face. I hit the Keystone with a single desperate stroke along the Way, pulverizing it, destroying the lynchpin that had held the Way open. Caught halfway between both locations when the Keystone shattered, Fetch’s grip on me fell away, brushing me with the agony of being torn between two overpowering forces. Color and life and warmth flooded back into me as he drew back. I scrambled away, watching as for a moment it (in that moment I could not think of Fetch as anything other than “it”) stood there, holding the bridge open by will alone. Fetch seemed to be trying to work his way back to the ruins of Corvinus’s workshop.

  Then the bridge slammed shut. I lost all touch with the workshop. Bits and pieces of cold power flailed across the unrelieved stone of the chamber before fading like the memory of a hallucination. I sat for a moment, breathing heavily and trying to recover.

  My mind was already working overtime, attempting to find some means of escape from the trap I had closed around myself. I had only a few hours of air at best. I had permanently shut the only Way out of Corvinus’s chamber. I had traded immediate certain death for a slightly delayed certain death. Of course, I could always use the suit to extend that, but at some point I would be just as dead if I didn’t figure out a way out of this. I found comfort in the thought that I had faced Fetch and hurt him badly. Perhaps I had even killed him, if that was possible.

  A small consolation, at best.

  Worse, a delayed reaction from the fight or fatigue or something else had seized the opportunity to drag me into unconsciousness. I was slipping into darkness, despite my desperate attempt to focus. I only hoped I would wake up before I consumed all of the available oxygen.

  CHAPTER XVII

  I FOUND myself walking down a long, straight road lined with tall, bare trees. The bark of the trees was as white as bone. Bodies hung from the trees like enormous, misshapen fruit. I avoided looking at the faces. I feared that I would recognize them. The air tasted like corruption. The stones of the road felt unnaturally hard under my feet, bruising them with every step.

  A tall figure walked beside me. He wore a serene expression on his pale, bearded face like another man might wear a mask. “You grow weaker,” he said.

  I looked him in the eye. “You grow bolder.” Despite his change of form I recognized him as the spirit I had given to the Captains of my Legion in Vincent’s apartment building. “I took you once. I can take you again.”

  His expression never changed. “May the second taking bring you more joy than did the first.”

  I looked back, along the road. Behind us stretched a line of bloody footprints. I looked at his feet and saw that the laced sandals he wore were full of blood, every step sloshing fresh blood down to the stones of the road.

  Remembering the dreams of the children, I reached up and caught him by the beard. The skin of his face sloughed off into my grasp. The thing beneath the mask grinned at me. I recoiled in spite of myself. The Jigsaw Man put one hand on my chest and gave me a single hard shove. I fell backwards, slamming into the ground hard enough for my teeth to pop together like ivory castanets. Then I sat bolt upright, once again in the sealed room of my prison, the bright light of the crystals glaring down at me.

  My feet hurt. So did my teeth.

  The White Wolf and the others had been right. I had been terribly wrong. The Jigsaw Man had gained strength. It might have become strong enough that I would not be able to defeat it. I called to my Legion, but received no answer. I had been afraid of that. Fetch hadn’t cut me off from my Legion. I had allowed the Jigsaw Man to cut me off instead.

  For the first time in all the years I had been a sorcerer, I feared entering the stronghold of my soul, but I knew that I could not escape this thing so easily. I had to face it, or it would consume me from within. I withdrew to the fortress of my spirit. Open gates yawed before me. A gloom of gnats swallowed the courtyard held by the high walls, the grounds, and the central ring of towers. The buzz of their presence wound through the warm air like the heavy stink of rotting flesh that met my incorporeal nostrils. I pulled the cloth of my shirt over mouth and nose, knowing that it wouldn’t help, but unable to resist the impulse to try. Saliva filled my mouth. I fought spasms of retching as I entered the gates cautiously. I saw no sign of the Legion. I took my time, easing toward the single tower at the heart of the fortress, stumbling in the gloom.

  I found the first signs of the Legion at the entrance to the central keep. Statues of black basalt I had never placed stood at the open corridor and lined the passages. The faces of the statues contorted with rage and pain and fear and hate. The gnats covered everything like a heavy blanket, breathing with unholy life.

  I counted the statues as I passed. I recognized each of them, of course, the soldiers of my Legion bound in torment. I wondered where he had put the rest. I did not see nearly enough to account for the entire Legion.

  I came at last to the great hall under the central tower. I moved inward toward the high seat at the center of the room, stepping carefully to avoid the rivulets of blood that ran from the fountains and overflowed to soil the white flagstones. My enemy had set the Captains of the Legion in place around the throne like an honor guard. The White Wolf crouched at his feet. All of them were bound in stone. They stood silent, unmoving, accusing.

  My adversary lolled on my throne, the shape of a man covered with countless wounds,
blood flowing from the wounds to run down into a pool at his feet. Rivulets of blood snaked out across the floor of the hall from the pool of blood. “So, you’ve come at last. This place is mine, Blood and Bone. I give you one chance, mortal. Kneel.”

  I gave him the fig, then a couple of other nasty gestures I’d picked up over the years. “Up yours, cupcake.”

  He blinked. I think that the last thing he’d expected was insolence. I had pegged him as taking himself too seriously anyway.

  He came up off the throne with a roar. I tried to avoid him as he charged me, but he snagged me with a long arm and pulled me close to grapple. He had a stronger will than I had anticipated. I had relied on the Legion for many years. I had also been a sorcerer for more than one mortal lifetime. I ripped free of his grasp and hurt him. He turned and flexed a finger, and Bane came rippling to life.

  I sneered at my adversary. “I should have taken you myself.”

  He laughed at me. “Fool that you did not. Now it is too late.”

  He stepped back. Bane moved past him, silver eyes gleaming, pale limbs rippling with long ropes of muscle, claws flexing against the stone underfoot as he advanced.

  I met Bane’s silver gaze. “He can’t force you.”

  “But he can offer a better deal,” Bane responded. “He told me of the road you’ll be traveling. I want no part of that. I’ve decided to accept his bargain.”

  I threw myself back from the strength of his reaching hands, caught his silver eyes, and drove him to his knees. I had taken him in the beginning, after all.

  But I looked past Bane as he knelt before me. I saw Shadow rippling to life. Behind him I could see the movement of myriad small others, edging closer hungrily. I knew then where the missing members of the Legion had been. They had gone over to the Jigsaw Man’s side, rather than fall to his hunger and strength.