Steel and Stone: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  “And you don’t know what this sensation was about?”

  “No. I’ve never felt anything like it before. And I doubt we’ll have a chance to go back there and analyze the scene.”

  Ahead of them, Kira Talon came running around a corner. “What’s happened? Anzo said something happened at the Underground.” She looked around. “Where are Trevor and Karol?”

  “Trevor’s not back?” Errin asked, with a disturbed look at Stone.

  “No,” Kira said. “Why would he be? He’d come with you, wouldn’t he? Where’s Karol?”

  “Karol’s dead,” Errin said. “And they took Trevor.”

  Kira’s gaze sharpened. “Took him? Who? Took him where?”

  “Slow down,” Stone said. “We’re still processing all this.”

  “Where is he?” she demanded.

  “Come on,” Errin said. “Let’s go sit down and we’ll catch you up.”

  They adjourned to a nearby conference room, Kira nearly radiating impatience. She didn’t sit down as Stone and Kira both dropped into chairs at the table, but instead paced in front of the window, looking out into the darkness. “Tell me everything.”

  Between the two of them, Stone and Errin filled her in on the night’s events. Halfway through their story, she stopped pacing and leaned wearily against the window. “Damn,” she said. “The whole thing was a setup, then. Poor Karol…”

  Errin looked down at her clenched fists. “Have you heard back from Galen? Have you tried to reach him?”

  “He’s not answering any communications. Was he at the Underground?”

  “I didn’t see him.” She looked at Stone. “Did you?”

  “I don’t know what he looks like,” he reminded her. “He wasn’t the aide, was he?”

  “No. He’s one of our agents in Temolan. He set this up with Rovenna.”

  “Could he have betrayed you?”

  “I can’t believe that,” Kira said. “We’ve worked with him for a long time. He’s helped dozens of people get out of Temolan and come here.”

  “Things change,” Stone said. “Could they have threatened his family? Captured him and…I don’t know…brainwashed him somehow? Offered him something he couldn’t refuse?” He remembered what one of the Talented had told him during his capture: We don’t pay them. We make them offers it would be in their best interest to accept.

  “I don’t know,” Errin said with a sigh. “It’s possible, I guess. We won’t know unless we can track him down.”

  Kira paced again. “What about this Traveler you brought back with you? What do you know about her?”

  “She saved our lives,” Errin said. “Showed us another exit out of the Underground when the Temolan people had the others blocked. She was badly injured—we couldn’t leave her there to die.”

  “Where is she now?” Suspicion showed on Kira’s face as she glanced toward the door.

  “At the infirmary. Illona’s working on her. Maybe she can tell us something when she wakes up—like what she was doing at the Underground.”

  “Why wouldn’t she be there?” Stone asked. “You said the Travelers hate the Talented.”

  “Yes, but they rarely come into the cities, they rarely go alone, and they distrust technology as much as they hate the Talented. They think it’s every bit as responsible for the war as magic was.”

  “But you said you lot sometimes deal with them.”

  “Trevor has some kind of…understanding with a couple of the bands,” Errin said. “They’ll deal with him, but only in the towns. They won’t come here, and they never go to the floating cities.”

  “So now we’ve got one of them here,” Kira said.

  “We can send her home when she’s out of danger,” Errin said. “For now, you need to check the teleporter and see if it’s still online.”

  “We need to go back to Temolan,” Stone said. “Somebody’s got to find Harrison.”

  “Not yet,” Errin said. “They’ll be on the lookout for us. And besides, Trevor said he’d follow. As soon as he can, he’ll come back here. Like I said, he doesn’t need a teleport pad.”

  “But do they know that?” Stone asked. “Do they have any way to stop him from leaving?” He addressed this last question to Kira.

  “We’ve never heard of anything like that,” she said, still looking stressed. “Trust me, the mages in the cities aren’t very innovative. They’ve got a lot of old magical devices powering their infrastructure, but these days most of them don’t know how to do more than repair them when they break. They’ve hardly built anything new in living memory.”

  Stone didn’t like it—he wanted to head back and try to track where they’d gone before the trails faded—but Kira and Errin knew Harrison better than he did. If the Talented didn’t know how hard he was to kill, they might not take proper precautions with him. And if he could teleport back to the Nexus without a pad, it was likely he’d be back as soon as they left him alone.

  “We can’t just sit here,” Kira said, mirroring Stone’s thoughts.

  “Contact our agents in Temolan,” Errin told her. “See if they can figure out where Galen is. If he doesn’t know we suspect him, he might not run.” Her expression hardened. “I’d like to question him, at least.”

  “Good idea,” Kira said. “Call me if anything changes.” She swept out of the room, leaving Stone and Errin once more alone.

  “So, what—we just wait?” Stone asked. “How long do we wait before we act? We can’t just leave him there if he can’t get away.”

  “I agree.” Errin pushed back from the table and stood. “Come on—let’s go see if Illona has Jeritha healed yet. I want to talk to her too.”

  Stone followed her out the door. “You don’t suspect her, do you?”

  “I don’t know what to think. She did save our lives, but the Travelers are…strange. It’s hard to know what their motivations are. I want to know what she was doing at the Underground.”

  They took the teleporter to another floor, with Anzo trailing along behind them. Errin pushed open another door, revealing a small, well-stocked infirmary. Stone spotted two more permanent versions of the magical healing machines, along with three other beds.

  Jeritha lay on one of the beds, covered with a white sheet. Her eyes were still closed, her complexion the same pale gray as before. Next to her, another of the magical-mechanical constructs similar to Anzo rolled back and forth, occasionally checking a reading on a machine.

  Illona, the healer, turned as they entered, looking them both over with a critical eye. “Do you two need to be checked out?”

  “No, we’re fine—just tired,” Errin said. “Long night.” She nodded toward Jeritha. “How is she?”

  “I got her healed—she’s resting now. She’ll be fine. It’s a good thing you got her here when you did, and that she’s a Traveler. Otherwise she might have died.” She adjusted a setting on one of the machines. “She’s a tough one. Her aura’s like nothing I’ve ever worked with before.”

  “Can we talk to her?” Stone asked. “We’ve got some questions.”

  “I don’t think—” Illona began.

  “Listen,” Errin cut her off. “Somebody’s betrayed us, the Talented have Trevor, and we need to know if she knows anything about it. We won’t stay long.”

  “All right.” The healer still sounded reluctant. “I’ll be nearby.” She addressed the little construct. “Let me know if anything changes.”

  Stone shifted to magical sight and examined Jeritha’s aura. It looked stronger than before, but still unlike anything he’d ever seen, either here or on Earth. Its main color was green, but around the edges, in the place where his own had a golden nimbus, hers reached swirling, iridescent tendrils outward. That was what he’d mistaken for jaggedness before—either that, or it had changed since then.

  He touched her shoulder. “Jeritha…”

  She shifted under his touch and tried to move away from him.

  “Jeritha, please wake up. We
need to talk to you.”

  Her eyes fluttered open. They were still the same solid black as before, eerie and unsettling and alien. “What…?” she whispered. Her expression grew fearful and she tried to sit up.

  Errin gently pushed her back down. “It’s all right,” she said. “You’re safe. Your injuries have been healed.”

  Her hand moved under the sheet, touching her side. “Where are we?” she asked, more strength in her voice.

  “We’re from the Nexus,” Errin told her. “That’s where we are now. Do you know it?”

  She nodded and her eyes again.

  “Jeritha,” Stone said, keeping his tone soft. “You saved our lives, and we’re grateful for that. Thank you. We wouldn’t have gotten out of there if it weren’t for you.”

  “Did you know something was going to happen?” Errin asked. “Why were you at the Underground in the first place? I’ve never seen any of your people there.”

  “We were…meeting someone there,” she said. “To trade.” Once again she tried to sit up; Stone helped her, propping a pillow behind her. “The auras were…strange. I knew something would happen, but I didn’t know what.”

  “Why did you help us?” Stone asked. “How did you know who we were?”

  She swallowed. The little construct next to her bed offered her a glass of water; she cast it a quick look of distaste before taking the glass without touching the construct, then drank the water gratefully before continuing. “I recognized your aura,” she said, nodding at Errin. “I have seen it before. You were with the one you call Harrison.”

  Errin’s gaze sharpened. “They took him. You didn’t know about the bomb, did you?”

  “No. I thought the man with them might be planning something, but I couldn’t tell what it was until it was too late.”

  “All right.” Errin sighed. “You can stay here until you’re feeling well enough to leave—we need to get in touch with your people to let them know you’re safe. Can you tell us how to do that?”

  She closed her eyes. “I have…already contacted them. They know I am safe. They know you have assisted me. They are grateful.”

  Stone exchanged glances with Errin, but she only shrugged.

  “Well,” Errin said, “I guess we should—”

  The door opened, and Kira strode in. She looked grim.

  “What’s wrong?” Stone asked.

  “What isn’t wrong?” She motioned for him and Errin to move away from Jeritha’s bed, and then lowered her voice so the Traveler woman couldn’t hear. “I’ve just had a communication from our top contact in Temolan. They have taken Trevor. They’ve got him in some kind of magic-nullification device some of their people have been working on.”

  “So he can’t get away?” Errin demanded.

  “No.” Kira clenched her fist. “He says they’ve got a couple of mad alchemists, and they’ve got Trevor drugged up with something nasty. They’re trying to get our location out of him.”

  “Wait,” Stone said, glancing back to Jeritha, who’d closed her eyes again. “You said mad alchemists?”

  “Yes. I don’t know their names, but he says they’re a bonded pair, as cruel as they are brilliant.”

  “I remember them.” Stone shuddered, recalling the way the two Arena fighters had behaved when dosed on some of the couple’s sadistic concoctions. “Bloody hell.”

  “Can our contact do anything about it?” Errin asked. “In his position, he’s got to be able to—”

  “His hands are tied,” Kira said. “If he reveals himself, you know what they’ll do to him. He’s working on some plans, but he says it will take time. He has to be careful.”

  “Trevor doesn’t have time.” Errin slammed her fist into the wall. “You know what they’ll do to him—and they won’t be able to kill him. Once they figure that out—”

  “Wait,” Stone said. “How do you know any of this is true? You’ve already had one agent go rogue on you. How do you know this one hasn’t too? And how does he know all of this?”

  Kira and Errin exchanged glances, almost as if trying to decide how much they should tell him. Finally, Kira let her breath out. “Our top agent in Temolan is Olystriar, on the High Council. If he was going to betray us, he’s had countless opportunities in the past.”

  “Well, then—what are we waiting for? We need to go back there and break Harrison out.”

  “I’ll gather some gear,” Errin said, already heading for the door.

  “Wait.” Kira held up a hand.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t tell you the other bad part.”

  “There’s another one?” Stone asked.

  “Yes. We can’t get back. The teleporter in Drendell’s been destroyed.”

  36

  Stone froze. “What do you mean, destroyed?”

  “It’s offline. I can’t contact it,” Kira said.

  “Damn!” Errin smacked the wall again in frustration. “The group following us must have destroyed it, either on purpose or accidentally when they threw that fireball.”

  Wait—you only had one teleporter?” Stone demanded.

  “Only one in Drendell,” Kira said. “It’s dangerous to have too many, and up until now it’s been well hidden. We have one in each of the surface towns.”

  “Well, then—can’t we go to one of the other towns and get to Drendell from there?”

  “We need to go to Temolan. We don’t have teleporters there. I told you before—Trevor won’t voluntarily set foot in any of the floating cities. Anybody who wants to meet with him in person has to come to one of the surface towns.”

  “And getting from any of the cities to any of the others is hard,” Errin added. “You need all sorts of permits and authorization papers. It’s bad enough moving from one of the surface cities to another, on the train. Getting to the floating cities is worse. You need papers that will fool their gatekeepers.”

  Stone paced. “And Harrison’s the only one who can travel between them without using a teleporter.”

  Kira nodded soberly. “It’s never been a problem before. Most of the people here don’t want to ever go back, and we’ve been using the teleporters for years without anyone finding them.”

  “So, what do we do? We’ve got to get back there somehow. If they’ve got him, we can’t leave him there and hope he can get out on his own.”

  “We’re not going to,” Errin said grimly. “Let me see what I can do.”

  “Can you build another teleporter?”

  “Yes—maybe—but the problem is, we need to have a functional pad at the destination. If we could get to Drendell, we wouldn’t need to build it.”

  “You can’t build one that will send someone there without a terminal pad?”

  “That’s a lot harder. I might be able to, with Kira’s help. It won’t be fast, though.”

  “Damn,” Kira said. “I can help, but I don’t have Trevor’s mechanical skills, or his knowledge about how magic and technology work together. And like you said, even if we can work something out, it will take too long.”

  “I’ve got his notes,” Errin said. “It’s at least worth taking a look. Between the two of us, maybe we can—”

  “Too bad that airship of yours isn’t functional yet,” Stone said. “We could fly there.”

  “That won’t work.” Errin shook her head. “We’ve got a smaller one that’s functional now, but flying across the Wastes is suicide. There’s no way to know what’s out there.” She turned back to Kira. “Come on—let me hunt up those notes, and we can get started on—”

  “Wait,” said another voice.

  All three of them turned, to see Jeritha sitting further up in bed. Her complexion was still gray, but she looked more alert than she had before.

  “What is it?” Errin asked. “Did you need something?”

  “I might be able to help you,” she said. “I’m sorry to listen, but I heard what you said about the teleporter.”

  “You can get us to Temolan?” Kir
a asked, astonished. “Can you teleport?”

  “I can’t teleport you there,” she said. “But did you say you had a ship that could fly?”

  The three crowded back around her bed. “We do,” Errin said. “Something Trevor was working on. It’s small and fast—just an experiment, really. A toy. But like I said, there’s no way we can fly through the Wastes. We’d crash and burn before we made it halfway there. Too many unpredictable magical fields, pockets of active war magic—”

  “I can help,” Jeritha repeated. “I can navigate through the Wastes.”

  They all gaped at her. “You can?” Kira asked. “How?”

  “Are you sure?” Errin gripped the edge of the bed and leaned in closer to the Traveler woman.

  “I live there,” she reminded them. “With my band. We navigate the dangerous areas every day. I can see the magic, and help you steer free of it.” Her expression was sober. “It won’t be without danger. I cannot guarantee safety. But I am confident I can do this.”

  Errin, Kira, and Stone exchanged glances. “What do you mean, you can ‘see the magic’?” Stone asked Jeritha. “Are you talking about magical sight? Auras?”

  “Yes…but more than that. I know those with the Talent can see magical energy around living beings. But we—the Travelers—can do more. Magic is all around us. We see it all the time.”

  Kira was staring at her as if this were new information. “That’s…”

  “That is how we navigate in the Wastes,” she said. “I should not be telling you this, but you saved my life and I want to repay my debt. If you will take me with you in your flying ship, I can guide you where you wish to go.”

  37

  “I don’t like it,” Kira said.

  She, Errin, and Stone were back in the conference room now, after excusing themselves from Jeritha to discuss their next steps.

  “I don’t either,” Errin said. “Not a bit. But we don’t have any other choice. We can’t leave him there. They’ve been after him for years—I don’t even want to think about what those sadistic monsters are doing to him.”