Steel and Stone: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  “Just around this corner,” Errin said through Stone’s earring. “Second floor of the third building down.”

  The area wasn’t crowded, but it wasn’t deserted, either. People walked leisurely up and down the street, and occasionally someone or a small group would enter or leave one of the buildings.

  “Is this safe?” Stone asked. “Will anyone overhear us?”

  “We’ll have to be careful, but it’s part of the treaty between the mage houses that the residence areas of the public sectors are to be kept surveillance-free. That’s in addition to the fact that almost every building in the cities is warded.” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t trust the ‘surveillance-free’ part, to be honest, but unless they suspect us they’ve got no reason to focus their effort on bugging random rooms.”

  Stone hoped she was right, but as they entered the building she’d pointed out, his heart beat faster. He focused on keeping his aura under control so no one would suspect his tension.

  They took the stairs, avoiding the floating magical elevator platform. The second-floor hall was empty, but Stone took a look around with magical sight to verify nobody was lurking invisibly. “You can’t see into the rooms, can you?” he asked Jeritha.

  “No. As Errin said, everything is warded.”

  “All right—let’s do this before somebody shows up.”

  They hurried to the door at the end of the hall and Errin knocked.

  There was no answer.

  Stone exchanged glances with Errin. “Aren’t they supposed to be here?”

  “Yes.” Now she looked tense too. “He should have been waiting for us.”

  “Something’s wrong,” Jeritha said.

  “Should we wait for—” Stone began.

  “No.” Her gaze darted back and forth. “We need to go.”

  Errin tried the door. It pushed open easily. “Not locked. That’s a bad sign.”

  “They’re coming!” Jeritha whispered, even more urgent now. “Go inside!” She gave Errin a little shove in that direction.

  Stone didn’t wait to ask questions. He hurried inside behind them, closing and locking the door.

  They both saw the unconscious body at the same time. It lay on the other side of the room, bloody and flayed—a portly figure in a shredded long coat.

  “Oh, no!” Errin said. “He’s—”

  The figure moaned.

  “He’s alive!” Stone started to hurry over, but Jeritha grabbed his arm.

  “No!” she hissed. “It’s an illusion! They’re—”

  The prone form faded from view as two long-coated figures shimmered into existence, one rising from behind a chair, the other slipping in through an open doorway. Both raised their hands, energy crackling around them.

  Stone, Errin, and Jeritha acted instantly and as one. Jeritha popped up a glimmering shield around them while Stone let loose with a blast of magical energy at one of the attackers. The man’s attack danced and sparked around the shield, but didn’t get through. An instant later he screamed, staggering back and slamming into the wall, his body juddering.

  Errin, meanwhile, fired three rounds from her gun, catching the second figure in the center of the chest, the throat, and the face in quick succession before he managed to erect his own shield.

  “Bloody hell!” Stone swept his gaze around the room, looking for more attackers. “Jeritha, if you hadn’t spotted—”

  “More are coming,” Jeritha interrupted. “We have to go. Now!”

  Errin didn’t hesitate. “Go—out the window!”

  Jeritha was already there, off to the side. She poked her head around only enough to peer out. “I don’t see anyone else out there,” she said. “Come on!”

  Someone tried the door.

  “Go!” Errin hissed again.

  “Stay close!” Stone said, hurrying over. “Jeritha, can you keep us invisible?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do it.”

  Once the window was open, he quickly cast a levitation spell around all of them. His heart pounded harder as he glanced back over his shoulder toward the door, then focused on the task at hand and sent them out one at time: Jeritha first, Errin next, and finally himself. As he cleared the window and used magic to close it behind them, he barely spotted the door slamming open and three more figures swarming into the room.

  “Where?” he whispered. He couldn’t see his friends now, though he could still feel them gripped in his spell.

  “Up,” Errin said. “Across the street, to the roof.”

  Once again, Stone didn’t stop for questions. He lifted them high and then sent them floating across to the opposite building, then lowered them carefully behind the roof line so they wouldn’t be visible to anyone looking out the other window. To his relief, his newly augmented magic seemed to be holding up—the jackhammer thudding of his heart had nothing to do with exhaustion from casting. “What now? Was that supposed to be our contact in the room?”

  Jeritha let her breath out and dropped the invisibility spell, and Stone got his answer from Errin’s grim expression.

  “That was him,” she said. “I’m sure he’s dead. I don’t know how they found out, but—”

  “Do you think they know we’re coming?” Stone asked, re-casting the disregarding spell. “If they had us under observation as we entered—”

  “I don’t know. But we need to get out of here.”

  “Do you know where we can hide? Can you reach—” he dropped his voice even further. “—our high-level contact?”

  “No. It would be suicide—for us and for him—to contact him while we’re still inside the city.”

  “Well, what, then? We don’t know where—our friend—is, do we?”

  “We know where he’ll be. That was in the information we got earlier. But he won’t be there for several hours. We need to find someplace to lie low between now and then. But without any contacts in the city—” She let her breath out. “We can’t stay up here long. Someone will spot us.”

  Stone scanned the area for anyone approaching them, but saw nothing. “There’s no one else you can reach? You don’t have any other contacts in Temolan?”

  “Not that we can trust.”

  “Do you know how to reach the one who helped us earlier?”

  “No. That was on purpose. And it’s worse than you think—I’ve got a location for where they’ll be taking our friend, but it’s deep inside the private sector of the city. I don’t have any idea how to get there.” She let her breath out and her shoulders slumped. “Well, we’d better get down from here and find some place to hide, and change our illusionary disguises.”

  “Damn.” Stone made another quick scan, trying not to dwell on what kind of deep hole they’d dug themselves into. It was possible that the Temolan authorities had merely found out about their contact in the room, killed him, and lay in wait for anyone who came to find him. If that was the case, then changing their illusionary disguises and finding a bolt-hole somewhere might be enough to conceal them for the rest of the day until they could go after Harrison. But if the Talented knew who they were and why they were here, they could be walking into a trap. Assuming, of course, that they could even find Harrison’s location without anyone to show them the way. If only they could—

  “Wait!” He held up a hand as Jeritha and Errin rose and prepared to move.

  “What?” Errin’s posture and expression both suggested she had no desire to remain here any longer.

  “Do you know how to contact people in Temolan? Do they use telephones, the post, or—I don’t know—magical owls?”

  She tilted her head, casting him a look of pure confusion. “What?”

  “How do people contact each other here? Is it like in Drendell? Do they use telephones? Is there a directory?”

  “No telephones—they wouldn’t use something that mundane. They have magical communication orbs.”

  “Can we get to one? Are there public ones?”

  “I think so—but we’d
need to be careful.”

  “Can I or Jeritha make it work?”

  “I don’t think it’s difficult if you have magic. But—”

  “Come on, then.”

  “Alastair, what—”

  “I think I know someone we can contact. But we need to get away from here first.”

  42

  “You need to tell me what’s going on,” Errin said.

  Somehow—Stone wasn’t sure how no one had spotted them, but apparently his disregarding spell and Jeritha’s magic had done the trick—they’d managed to get off the roof, slip down several side streets, and duck into an out-of-the-way alley several blocks from the room where they’d found their contact’s body. Across the street, they’d identified a bar with a communication orb in the back. They watched it now from their vantage point, the disregarding spell at full strength on all three of them.

  Stone hadn’t revealed anything about his plan to Errin and Jeritha—partly because he wanted to get the hell away from where they might be under surveillance as quickly as possible, and partly because he wanted to go over it to make sure he hadn’t missed any potential flaws. It would be dangerous, but they had few options at this point.

  “I know someone in Temolan,” he said. “At least I hope I do, assuming she’s still here.”

  “Who?” Errin asked, surprised. “How can you—”

  “I met her in Drendell. She’s a healer. She worked at the hospital where they took me after I was injured, and she saved my life.”

  “But if she’s in Drendell—”

  “She’s not—at least I don’t think she is. She got recalled to Temolan. I don’t think they had anything specific on her, though—the person I talked to after she left seemed to think they just got tired of her ‘wasting her talent’ healing lowly mundanes.”

  Errin narrowed her eyes. “What makes you think she’ll help us?”

  “If they had a problem with her talking to me, they shouldn’t be watching her anymore. I’m dead, remember? And since I’ve been in disguise ever since then, I doubt they know I’m back. Plus, they also don’t know I have magic.” When Errin still looked skeptical, he added, “We don’t have a lot of choices, do we? We’ve got to do something before tonight. You two stay here and keep a lookout—I’ll go in the shop and see if I can contact her. If she says no, I’ll just hang up and we can find another plan.”

  “She might not only say no,” Errin pointed out. “She might betray us. Alert the authorities that we’re here.”

  “You don’t know her. She doesn’t have this lot’s issues with non-magical people. She wants to help. That was why she was in Drendell in the first place.”

  Errin looked away, then back at Stone with a sigh. “You’re right—we don’t have many other options. Okay, let’s do it.” She hunted in one of her pockets and withdrew a spherical object the size of a large marble. “Put this in your pocket, against your leg. If we see anything suspicious, I’ll trigger it and it will buzz. Get out fast if that happens, then circle back around and meet us in that shop.” She pointed down the street at another small café.

  “Got it. I’ll be back soon.”

  With a new disguise in place to make him look like a balding, middle-aged man, he hurried across the street and slipped into the bar.

  Bars, apparently, didn’t change much based on whether you were a mage snob or a working-class mundane. Dimly lit and intimate, this one had a row of padded stools along the bar itself and a small number of tables on the other side. Behind the bar, a mirror dominated the wall with several shelves of liquor arranged in front. The only indications mages ran the bar were smaller versions of the floating lights, the preternatural newness and cleanliness of the fixtures, and the way the bartender served his customers by floating glasses to them instead of carrying them. Soft, instrumental music played, though Stone couldn’t see any speakers.

  This time of day there weren’t many customers: Stone spotted only two, both men, one at the bar and one at one of the tables. Both glanced briefly up when he entered but then returned to their drinks. He walked to the bar and waited to be noticed.

  The bartender finished serving the other customer and approached him. “What can I get you?”

  Stone had questioned both Errin and Jeritha about local drinks, and ordered one Errin had assured him would be innocuous and wouldn’t raise any flags. He used his American accent, even though he wasn’t sure how his translation spell dealt with accents. As always, no point taking chances.

  Drink in hand (he gave the man one of the silver pyramids and got several more bronze ones in change), he headed to the back. Next to a hallway leading to the restrooms, he found a small wooden cubicle a little larger than an Earth phone booth. Its swinging door featured a half-height window through which he could keep an eye on the front of the bar.

  He pushed inside, finding a milky, bowling-ball sized glass orb on a carved wooden pedestal. Hoping both that the information Errin had given him was accurate and that Tanissa was still in Temolan, he took a centering breath, placed his hands on either side of the orb, and sent a small magical pulse into it.

  Immediately the milky glass went clear, and the orb hummed under his hands. It seemed to be waiting for something.

  “Er—I’m trying to reach Tanissa,” he said. Would it be enough? He didn’t know the rest of her name. How many Tanissas were there in Temolan? He had no idea if it would work, but he concentrated on sending a mental image of her. Once again, his lack of what seemed here to be basic knowledge troubled him. Back on Earth he was one of the foremost experts on magic, but here he felt like an apprentice. Not even an apprentice—a child, perhaps, who’d grown up in a magical family but hadn’t been taught any of the specifics yet.

  The thing hummed for a few more seconds, and once again he got the feeling it wanted something from him. “Er—Tanissa,” he repeated. “I don’t know her address, but she’s just returned to Temolan recently, I heard.”

  More humming, and then the feeling changed from questioning to satisfaction. The globe went milky again, but this time a pleasant blue instead of white. Several seconds passed, and then a familiar face appeared.

  Tanissa looked suddenly wary when her gaze settled on Stone’s disguised form. “Yes…?”

  “Tanissa. How…are you?” Either she wasn’t using an illusion or else she’d been using the same one in Drendell, because she appeared just as he remembered her from the hospital. She looked tired.

  “Do I know you?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “I don’t know you. I think you’ve reached the wrong person.”

  She reached out, and instinctively Stone knew she was about to break the connection. “No!” he said, soft but urgent, leaning forward. “Tanissa. You do know me. I’m—disguised. With an illusion.”

  She frowned, looked around her as if checking to make sure she was alone, then she too leaned closer to her orb. “Who are you?”

  Here goes… He tensed, his heart beating faster again. “I don’t want to say my name on this thing, in case anyone’s listening. You might remember me from your time in Drendell. You saved my life a while back. Remember we spoke about someone I was looking for? Someone you didn’t believe existed?” He took another look to ensure nobody was watching, then turned his back on the bar and dropped his illusion for a couple of seconds.

  Her eyes went wide as he shifted back to his disguise. “No…” she whispered. “It can’t—how can it be? You’re—”

  “I’m alive, and I’m in Temolan. And I need your help.”

  “My—help?” She looked around herself again. “How…how did you—”

  “Look,” he said, “a lot has changed since we spoke last. Some for the better, and some—not so much. Remember the man we spoke of? The one you said was a myth?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Something buzzed against Stone’s leg. It took him only a second to realize what it was—Errin was signaling him. Someone was coming. “Tanissa—listen. I can’t talk now. I�
��ve got to go. But that man is alive. I’ve met him here. That’s how I got my magic back. And he needs our help.”

  Another look around: so far the door remained closed, the bartender and the two customers still going about their own business. He spoke more quickly and urgently. “Tanissa—please. Our contact in town has been killed, and we don’t know anyone else here. We need your help. He needs your help. I know you don’t want to be in Temolan. If you help us, we can get you out of here. Somewhere it’s safe.” He regretted those words almost as soon as he’d uttered them—he had no idea if Errin and Harrison would go along with bringing a stranger into New Argana, and there wasn’t even space for her in the airship—but for now, convincing her to help was paramount. He’d figure out the details later, even if he had to arrange something for her on his own. “We need to meet you. Will you do that? Will you trust me?”

  Silence. Tanissa’s gaze shifted away, not meeting his. Even without the ability to read auras over the connection, he could sense her fear fueling her indecision. He didn’t blame her—she’d barely escaped getting killed or exiled before, just for talking to him back in Drendell. This would ask a lot more of her. And if she wouldn’t help, then—

  “Yes. All right,” she said breathlessly, as if trying to push the words out before she changed her mind. “But you’ll have to come to me.” She gave him an address, and brief directions. “It’s a bakery. My friend owns it. She’s away but I can get in. Meet me there in an hour. Knock three times. Can you do that?”

  “Yes. Yes, Tanissa. We’ll be there. Thank you.” His leg buzzed again, more urgently. “Must go now. Thank you. We’ll see you there.” He broke the connection and turned toward the front of the bar.

  Two long-coated figures had entered. They didn’t appear to have noticed him, but went straight to the bartender.

  Stone didn’t wait. He summoned an invisibility spell, paired it with an illusion to make it look as if he hadn’t opened the door to the communication booth, then slipped quickly and quietly out.