Steel and Stone: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  Two of them, a young man with long hair and an older woman, looked terrified, trying to escape by dashing back up the tiers toward the back door. Stone was about to plug them with another spell when Errin tossed something in their direction. It hit the door in front of them and exploded in a billow of smoke that flowed around them, clinging to them. Shrieks of fear sounded from the middle of the cloud as it gathered closer around them, making them look like oversized, humanoid clumps of dark-gray dryer lint.

  “It’s attracted to magic!” Errin called to Stone with a grin as he shot her a questioning glance. “Stay away from them.”

  That wasn’t a problem. Olystriar glared at Stone and threw a showy blast at him, shattering one of the benches. It looked good—anyone who didn’t know better would have thought the chaos of the fight had thrown his aim off, but Stone was close enough that there was no way he could have missed. Except on purpose, of course.

  Stone yelped, diving sideways, doing his best to sell it to the rest of the group. Then he answered with his own spell, slamming a blazing—but illusionary—fireball into Olystriar’s chest. The man caught on fast: he screamed and clutched himself, slumping down as if unconscious. The illusionary fire continued to “burn” for a few seconds before fizzling out.

  One more dignitary remained, a tall red-haired man who looked terrified at how quickly Stone had taken Olystriar down. Stone’s contempt rose: as was the case with many classic bullies back on Earth, the arrogance of these self-proclaimed “Talented” deserted them when they didn’t have the upper hand. “Can’t take being on the other side, can you?” he yelled, blasting the red-haired man back into the far wall. This time, the spell wasn’t illusionary.

  Jeritha, meanwhile, was dealing with one of the guards at the front of the room. The Traveler woman wasn’t throwing showy magic and she didn’t look angry or even stressed; in fact, her entire demeanor appeared peaceful and unruffled as she pointed her hand at the man.

  He stopped in the act of preparing a spell, looking suddenly bewildered, as if he had no idea where he was. Stone didn’t have time for more than a quick glance, but he saw the man blink a couple times, then lower himself to one of the benches and stare straight ahead. He looked like a moviegoer taking in a film.

  “Hurry,” Jeritha called. Despite her apparent calm, her face was lined with tension. This wasn’t as easy on her as she was trying to make it seem.

  The other guard at the front of the room grabbed something from her pocket and threw it at Jeritha. Before any of Stone’s group could react, it wrapped itself around the Traveler and constricted, locking her arms to her body, and she fell over backward against one of the benches.

  “No!” The voice came from the back, where Tanissa had been standing, so far not involving herself in the fight. Now, though, her eyes flashed with anger. She gestured at the guard.

  The woman’s eyes bulged, panic blooming across her face as her hands flew to her neck. She tripped and went down, her shield dropping.

  “Damn you, you won’t win!” Chalandra’s face was red, her dark eyes smoldering with rage. Before Stone could stop her—before it registered that Jeritha had been holding a shield on Errin and was no longer doing so—she lashed out and flung a handful of glowing, magical knives.

  Stone had no time to consider or to aim. In desperation he threw a shield in front of Errin.

  Most of the glowing knives hit it and fizzled into nothingness—but not all of them. Errin shrieked in pain as two of the missiles slipped around the edge of Stone’s shield and tore into her—one into her leg and one across her abdomen. Blood flowered and she dropped.

  “No!” Stone screamed. He stepped back, whirled on Chanandra, and raised his hands to prepare a killing spell.

  But as he did, he got a glance past the Councilwoman, through the glass partition dividing the tiered seating from the laboratory area. A chill ran down his spine.

  Harrison was awake.

  He still looked like he should be dead. He still hung suspended from the chains in the transparent cubicle. The tubes still snaked from his arms, delivering gods knew what vile concoctions into his body.

  But his eyes were open, and never in his life had Stone seen such cold, unmitigated rage.

  46

  It happened fast after that, which was why Stone was able to see it before Chanandra or any of the others could attack him. One moment Harrison hung there in the cubicle, eyes blazing, teeth gritted, cords standing out on his neck—and the next second Stone felt the power growing in the room.

  “Down!” he screamed, not caring if their opponents heard too. He flung himself sideways next to Errin, pulling up a shield he hoped would cover the others as well.

  The room erupted with the booming sound of something heavy shattering, and then the air was full of missiles. It only lasted a couple of seconds, but as Stone huddled under his shield, covering Errin with his body as well as his magic, it seemed as if the whole building might come crashing down around them.

  That didn’t happen, though. Shield still raised, Stone poked his head up.

  “Bloody…hell…”

  The room had been transformed. The transparent barrier between the seating area and the lab was gone; the only sign that it had ever been there was the jagged edges along the walls and the shimmering layer of shards coating the benches, the floor, the fallen combatants.

  Inside the lab, the cubicle had shattered too. Harrison was on his knees on the floor, the manacles still locked around his wrists but the other ends of the chains lay loose on the ground like a pair of snakes. His back, slashed and bleeding, rose and fell with his fast breathing, and the two IV lines still stuck out of his arms. The bottles at their other ends lay shattered on the floor.

  Stone, shocked into immobility, watched as Chanandra, perhaps realizing now that whatever plans she’d had weren’t going to progress as she’d hoped, tried to sprint up the tiered steps toward the back door, where the two human-shaped lint balls had finally fallen. She moved fast—too fast—and faded from view as she ran.

  Damn you, no! You’re not getting away! Stone switched to magical sight and readied a spell—

  Chanandra shimmered back into view, her high, keening shriek rising to the ceiling as her body came apart.

  Later, when he’d had more time to process the situation, Stone would describe the scene as what might have happened if the Councilwoman had swallowed a bomb and it detonated inside her. One moment she became visible, arms and legs pumping, eyes bulging in desperation as she tried to reach the door, and the next she erupted into a red haze of blood and flying limbs. Her severed, wide-eyed head hit the wall behind a terrified Tanissa with a ripe thunk and rolled back down the steps, coming to a stop just ahead of the blasted-out partition.

  Stone leaped up. “Tanissa! Help Errin!” he yelled.

  “Stop them!” Jeritha called, struggling against the magical bonds that still held her. “They’re escaping!”

  For a second Stone wasn’t sure what she meant, but then he looked back into the lab. Harrison lay face-down and unmoving on the floor now, the effort of blowing out the partitions and killing Chanandra evidently exhausting the last of his will-driven strength. But now Vestereth, the male half of the mad alchemist couple, crouched next to him. Before Stone could stop him, he jammed something into Harrison’s back, then leaped up and followed his wife toward a door in the back part of the lab—a door that hadn’t been there before. The door was already closing behind Millia, who had already passed through it. She held it partially open, waiting for her partner to catch up.

  Suddenly, the door slammed shut with a deafening bang. Millia screamed as the edge severed her fingers, and Vestereth’s cry of panic answered hers. He clawed at the door, trying to wrench it open, but something held it fast.

  Stone’s first thought was that Harrison had somehow roused himself again, but a quick glance revealed him still unconscious on the floor, a pool of blood spreading beneath him and shards of shattered glass sh
immering against his black hair. Who, then—?

  But it didn’t matter. Stone’s eyes narrowed as he focused back on Vestereth. He remembered the two combatants in the Arena, driven to homicidal madness by the horrific brews this man and his wife had concocted. He remembered the couple’s hungering, excited expressions as they watched the two men kill each other—the expressions of scientists observing rats in a maze, not human beings watching brutal murders.

  As he raised his hands, Vestereth’s gaze met his own, panicked and pleading.

  Stone smiled and let his illusionary disguise drop for just a few seconds—long enough for the man to see his true form.

  Vestereth’s eyes went even wider and more terrified—the eyes of a man who’d just seen the ghost of someone he’d killed.

  “Should have picked a different line of work,” Stone called, unleashing power fueled by every bit of the rage he’d been forced to stifle while in these people’s custody.

  Vestereth screamed as flames rose around him, catching his clothes, his hair, cooking his skin. He gave up trying to wrench the door open and took off across the lab toward the ruined partition, licks of flame trailing in his wake. He made it only halfway before dropping first to his knees and then to his hands, twitching and shrieking a few feet away from the fallen Harrison. The smell of burned flesh filled the air. A strange-looking hypodermic needle clattered to the floor next to him and rolled away. Stone watched with dispassionate attention as the man’s screams quieted and ceased.

  Sudden silence filled the room. Stone spun back toward the others, convinced something else must have happened, but saw nothing except the fallen forms of friend and foe alike. The two lint-balls lay unmoving on the floor near the door, and the guards were all dead. A slick of blood and gore from the exploded Chanandra covered most of the seating area, including Tanissa, who knelt next to Errin, Jeritha, shaking herself free of the magical bonds, and Olystriar, rising from his feigned unconsciousness.

  “Is everyone all right?” Stone demanded. “Tanissa? Is Errin—”

  “She’ll be all right,” Tanissa puffed. And indeed, Errin was already stirring.

  “You have to go,” another voice called.

  Stone turned to see Olystriar rising, pulling himself up by the edge of one of the blasted benches. Something snapped into place. “The door—did you—”

  “Yes. Not fast enough, I fear.” The Councilman kept glancing toward the door at the top of the tiered steps as if expecting someone to knock it down. “You have to go. Now. All of you. I can get you back to Drendell, but—”

  Jeritha got up, helping Tanissa pull Errin to her feet.

  “We can’t go yet,” Stone protested. “Errin’s hurt. And Harrison—” He turned back toward the lab, hoping Harrison had somehow pulled yet another miracle out of his hat, but no such luck. He hadn’t moved. Stone didn’t know if he was even alive.

  “You don’t have time,” Olystriar urged. His voice shook, but held firm. “Millia will summon help, if the others haven’t already found the guards. You need to go now, before we’re overrun. I can send them on false trails, but only if you’re gone before they arrive.”

  Stone exchanged glances with Errin, who nodded reluctantly. She looked pale, but at least she was on her feet.

  “All right, then,” he said. “Show us.” He hurried back to the lab and hefted Harrison in a fireman’s carry, grateful his accelerated physical training program had augmented his strength enough to do it. If he had to use magic to lift him later he could, but for now this would do. On a whim, he snatched the spent hypo Vestereth had dropped and stuffed it in his pocket.

  “This way.” Olystriar headed for the same door Millia had left through. It opened easily now.

  Stone followed with Harrison, trying not to look at the grotesque little pile of bloody, severed fingers on the floor nearby. Behind him, Jeritha and Tanissa helped Errin.

  Beyond the door was a hallway, with a teleport pad at the end. “What is this—some kind of secret lab?” Stone asked bitterly.

  “I didn’t know about it,” Olystriar said. “Not until today. I think Millia and Vestereth set it up to show off some of their handiwork. Give me a moment, please—I need to adjust these settings.”

  Stone lowered Harrison to a seated position against the wall, looking him over as the Councilman worked. Good—he was still breathing, at least. If he could recover from a point-blank gunshot wound to the chest, he could recover from this. They’d just need to get him back to the Nexus.

  Errin, looking pale but better, knelt next to them. “How is he?”

  “Bad. But you know him—he’ll pull through.”

  “I know. But I hate seeing him like that.”

  “How are you?”

  She touched her bloodstained shirt. “Still hurts some, but I’ll be fine, thanks to Tanissa.”

  Stone was about to ask the healer if she could take a look at Harrison when Olystriar spoke again.

  “All right, I’ve got it. You can all go in one group. This will send you near the edge of Drendell. I urge you—don’t remain long. If you have a way to get out of the city, use it. The Council will not take kindly to this, and as soon as Millia gets the word out, the town will be overrun with the Guard. She’s vengeful, and she has a lot of influence. You won’t be able to hide anywhere.”

  “We’ll go,” Errin said. “Out into the Wastes—they won’t follow us there.” She touched Olystriar’s arm. “Thank you. For everything. Please—don’t blow your cover for us. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Go. Now.” Olystriar cast another tense glance at the door. “Hurry.”

  Stone lifted Harrison again and joined Errin, Jeritha, and Tanissa on the pad. When they were all settled, he nodded to the Councilman.

  An instant later, the electrical-jolt sensation of the Talented’s teleporters took them, and Olystriar faded from view.

  47

  It was dark where they reappeared. The air smelled like old wood and dusty oil, overlaid with a faint coppery tang from Harrison’s bloody wounds and their gore-spattered clothes. Stone shifted to magical sight, looking for auras, but saw none. “Jeritha, do you see anyone?”

  “No. I think we’re alone.”

  “Does anyone know where we are?” Stone raised a hand and summoned a light spell around it; the glow illuminated what looked like the interior of a warehouse. The teleport pad was hidden behind a stack of wooden crates.

  Nobody replied, except to shake their heads.

  “We need to get out of here and back to the ship. We—oh, bloody hell.”

  “What?” Jeritha asked.

  “We can’t go to the ship. We might be able to fit Tanissa in if she sits on someone’s lap, but Harrison’s in no shape to send himself back. We can’t get both of them in.”

  “Let me take a look at him,” Tanissa said. “Maybe I can help.”

  Stone lowered Harrison down and laid him on the floor. “We don’t have much time. We still need to find a vehicle. Not a chance we’re walking.”

  “I’ll find us one,” Errin said. She pulled her coat closed to cover her bloody shirt.

  “No. You’re still recovering, and it’s not safe out there. You heard Olystriar. The Guard will be—”

  “I’ll go with her,” Jeritha said. “You stay with your friend.”

  Stone didn’t like it—it wasn’t a good idea to separate with so many threats nearby, but they didn’t have a choice. At least Errin’s odds looked better with Jeritha’s powerful magic backing her up. “Do you still have your gadgets?”

  Errin slung the bag around so he could see it. “Good to go. We’ll find something.”

  “We need something that can traverse the Wastes,” Jeritha reminded her. “The terrain is difficult, and we might need to take an alternate route.”

  “On it.” Errin gripped Stone’s shoulder and glanced at Harrison. “Take care of him—see if you can wake him up. If he can go back on his own, we’ll be in better shape.”

 
; After they departed, Stone stationed himself against the wall where he could keep an eye on both entrances: a roll-up door that was currently closed, and a normal-sized one through which Errin and Jeritha had departed. He kept the light spell going so Tanissa could see what she was doing.

  The healer knelt next to Harrison, passing her hands over him as she concentrated. He lay as still as ever; Stone didn’t think he’d moved since they’d arrived. After a few moments, she rocked back on her heels and let her breath out.

  “What is it?” Stone demanded. “Can you help him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is—I’ve never seen anyone like him before. His body doesn’t react as I would expect.”

  “How so?”

  She gestured at him. “His physical injuries aren’t life-threatening, though they should be. Already I can sense his body healing. Based on what I’ve seen, I think if I just left him on his own, he’d heal without my help. I can speed it along—I already have—but—”

  “But what?” Stone cast another glance at the doors, shifting to magical sight. He felt suddenly vulnerable, and realized he’d begun to rely on Jeritha’s strange Traveler ability to see magic more deeply than he ever could. Where were they? Had they been captured? He didn’t know how long they’d been away, since he had no watch.

  “But—I’m sensing problems with not just his body, but his mind. I think they’ve…done something to him.”

  Stone tensed, studying Harrison. He slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrew the strange hypo Vestereth had dropped. “Can you tell anything from this?”

  She examined it, her gaze shifting as if looking at something Stone couldn’t see.

  She remained like that for quite some time. While she worked, Stone alternated between casting nervous glances toward the two doors and watching Harrison. He still hadn’t moved; at least he wasn’t bleeding any longer, but Stone had no way to know if he had internal injuries, or if Millia and Vestereth had poisoned him. He tried to console himself by remembering how Harrison had looked after he’d been shot. Both he and Verity had been certain he’d die, even after they’d done their best to heal him—but not only hadn’t he died, he’d recovered enough to move under his own power less than an hour later.