by Larry Niven
Then, gliding in low over shimmering sands as evening mounted in the East, I realized that this was the one I was seeking. There was no physical distinction to the oil field I approached and then cruised. But it stood in the realm of my sensitivity as if a sign had been posted. The mana level was much lower than at any of the others I had scanned. And where this was the case, one of us had to be operating.
I spread myself into even more tenuous patterns. I sought altitude. I began circling.
Yes, there was a pattern. It became clearer as I studied the area. The low-mana section described a rough circle near the northwest corner of the field, its center near a range of hills.
He could be working in some official capacity there at the field. If so, his duties would be minimal and the job would be a cover. He always had been pretty lazy.
I spiraled in and dropped toward the center of the circle as toward the eye of a target. As I rushed to it, I became aware of the small, crumbling adobe structure that occupied that area, blending almost perfectly with its surroundings. A maintenance or storage house, a watchman’s quarters…It did not matter what it seemed to be. I knew what it had to be.
I dived to a landing before it. I reversed my spell, taking on human form once again. I pushed open the weather-worn, unlatched door and walked inside.
The place was empty, save for a few sticks of beaten furniture and a lot of dust. I swore softly. This had to be it.
I walked slowly about the room, looking for some clue.
It was nothing that I saw, or even felt, at first. It was memory—of an obscure variant of an old spell, and of Dervish’s character—that led me to turn and step back outside.
I closed the door. I felt around for the proper words. It was hard to remember exactly how this one would go. Finally, they came flowing forth and I could feel them falling into place, mortise and tenon, key and lock. Yes, there was a response. The subtle back-pressure was there. I had been right.
When I had finished, I knew that things were different. I reached toward the door, then hesitated. I had probably tripped some alarm. Best to have a couple of spells at my fingertips, awaiting merely guide-words. I muttered them into readiness, then opened the door.
A marble stairway as wide as the building itself led downward, creamy jewels gleaming like hundred-watt bulbs high at either hand.
I moved forward, began the descent. Odors of jasmine, saffron and sandalwood came to me. As I continued I heard the sounds of stringed instruments and a flute in the distance. By then I could see part of a tiled floor below and ahead—and a portion of an elaborate design upon it. I laid a spell of invisibility over myself and kept going.
Before I reached the bottom, I saw him, across the long, pillared hall.
He was at the far end, reclined in a nest of cushions and bright patterned rugs. An elaborate repast was spread before him. A narghile bubbled at his side. A young woman was doing a belly dance nearby.
I halted at the foot of the stair and studied the layout. Archways to both the right and the left appeared to lead off to other chambers. Behind him was a pair of wide windows, looking upon high mountain peaks beneath very blue skies—representing either a very good illusion or the expenditure of a lot of mana on a powerful space-bridging spell. Of course, he had a lot of mana to play around with. Still, it seemed kind of wasteful.
I studied the man himself. His appearance was pretty much unchanged—sharp-featured, dark-skinned, tall, husky running to fat.
I advanced slowly, the keys to half a dozen spells ready for utterance or gesture.
When I was about thirty feet away he stirred uneasily. Then he kept glancing in my direction. His power-sense was still apparently in good shape.
So I spoke two words, one of which put a less-than-material but very potent magical dart into my hand, the other casting aside my veil of invisibility.
“Phoenix!” he exclaimed, sitting upright and staring. “I thought you were dead!”
I smiled.
“How recently did that thought pass through your mind?” I asked him.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand…”
“One of us just tried to kill me, down in Mexico.”
He shook his head.
“I haven’t been in that part of the world for some time.”
“Prove it,” I said.
“I can’t,” he replied. “You know that my people here would say whatever I want them to—so that’s no help. I didn’t do it, but I can’t think of any way to prove it. That’s the trouble with trying to demonstrate a negative. Why do you suspect me, anyway?”
I sighed.
“That’s just it. I don’t—or, rather, I have to suspect everyone. I just chose you at random. I’m going down the list.”
“Then at least I have statistics on my side.”
“I suppose you’re right, damn it.”
He rose, turned his palms upward.
“We’ve never been particularly close,” he said. “But then, we’ve never been enemies either. I have no reason at all for wishing you harm.”
He eyed the dart in my hand. He raised his right hand, still holding a bottle.
“So you intend to do us all in by way of insurance?”
“No, I was hoping that you would attack me and thereby prove your guilt. It would have made life easier.”
I sent the dart away as a sign of good faith.
“I believe you,” I said.
He leaned and placed the bottle he held upon a cushion.
“Had you slain me that bottle would have fallen and broken,” he said. “Or perhaps I could have beaten you on an attack and drawn the cork. It contains an attack djinn.”
“Neat trick.”
“Come join me for dinner,” he suggested. “I want to hear your story. One who would attack you for no reason might well attack me one day.”
“All right,” I said.
The dancer had been dismissed. The meal was finished. We sipped coffee. I had spoken without interruption for nearly an hour. I was tired, but I had a spell for that.
“More than a little strange,” he said at length. “And, you have no recollection, from back when all of this started, of having hurt, insulted or cheated any of the others?”
“No.”
I sipped my coffee.
“So it could be any of them,” I said after a time. “Priest, Amazon, Gnome, Siren, Werewolf, Lamia, Lady, Sprite, Cowboy…”
“Well, scratch Lamia,” he said. “I believe she’s dead.”
“How?”
He shrugged, looked away.
“Not sure,” he said slowly. Then, “Well, the talk at first was that you and she had run off together. Then, later, it seemed to be that you’d died together…somehow.”
“Lamia and me? That’s silly. There was never anything between us.”
He nodded.
“Then it looks now as if something simply happened to her.”
“Talk…” I said. “Who was doing the talking?”
“You know. Stories just get started. You never know exactly where they come from.”
“Where’d you first hear it?”
He lowered his eyelids, stared off into the distance.
“Gnome. Yes. It was Gnome mentioned the matter to me at Starfall that year.”
“Did he say where he’d heard it?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to go talk to Gnome. He still in South Africa?”
He shook his head, refilled my cup from the tall, elegantly incised pot.
“Cornwall,” he said. “Still a lot of juice down those old shafts.”
I shuddered slightly.
“He can have it. I get claustrophobia just thinking about it. But if he can tell me who—”
“There is no enemy like a former friend,” Dervish said. “If you dropped your friends as well as everyone else when you went into hiding, it means you’ve already considered that…”
“Yes, as much as I disliked the notion. I rationalized it by saying that I didn’t want to expose them to danger, but—”
“Exactly.”
“Cowboy and Werewolf were buddies of mine…”
“…And you had a thing going with Siren for a long while, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“A woman scorned?”
“Hardly. We parted amicably.”
He shook his head and raised his cup.
“I’ve exhausted my thinking on the matter.”
We finished our coffee. I rose then.
“Well, thanks. I guess I’d better be going. Glad I came to you first.”
He raised the bottle.
“Want to take the djinn along?”
“I don’t even know how to use one.”
“The commands are simple. All the work’s already been done.”
“Okay. Why not?”
He instructed me briefly, and I took my leave. Soaring above the great oil field, I looked back upon the tiny, ruined building. Then I moved my wings and rose to suck the juice from a cloud before turning west.
Starfall, I mused, as earth and water unrolled like a scroll beneath me. Starfall—The big August meteor shower accompanied by the wave of mana called Starwind, the one time of year we all got together. Yes, that was when gossip was exchanged. It had been only a week after a Starfall that I had first been attacked, almost slain, had gone to ground…By the following year the stories were circulating. Had it been something at that earlier Starfall—something I had said or done to someone—that had made me an enemy with that finality of purpose, that quickness of retaliation?
I tried hard to recall what had occurred at that last Starfall I had attended. It had been the heaviest rush of Starwind in memory. I remembered that. “Mana from heaven,” Priest had joked. Everyone had been in a good mood. We had talked shop, swapped a few spells, wondered what the heightened Starwind portended, argued politics—all of the usual things. That business Elaine talked about had come up…
Elaine…Alive now? I wondered. Someone’s prisoner? Someone’s insurance in case I did exactly what I was doing? Or were her ashes long since scattered about the globe? Either way, someone would pay.
I voiced my shrill cry against the rushing winds. It was fled in an instant, echoless. I caught up with the night, passed into its canyons. The stars came on again, grew bright.
The detailed instructions Dervish had given me proved exactly accurate. There was a mineshaft at the point he had indicated on a map hastily sketched in fiery lines upon the floor. There was no way I would enter the thing in human form, though. A version of my Phoenix-aspect would at least defend me against claustrophobia. I cannot feel completely pent when I am not totally material.
Shrinking, shrinking, as I descended. I called in my tenuous wings and tail, gaining solidity as I grew smaller. Then I bled off mass-energy, retaining my new dimensions, growing ethereal again.
Like a ghost-bird, I entered the adit, dropping, dropping. The place was dead. There was no mana anywhere about me. This, of course, was to be expected. The upper levels would have been the first to be exhausted.
I continued to drop into dampness and darkness for a long while before I felt the first faint touch of the power. It increased only slowly as I moved, but it did begin to rise.
Finally, it began to fall off again and I retraced my route. Yes, that side passage…Its source. I entered and followed.
As I worked my way farther and farther, back and down, it continued to increase in intensity. I wondered briefly whether I should be seeking the weaker area or the stronger. But this was not the same sort of setup as Dervish enjoyed. Dervish’s power source was renewable, so he could remain stationary. Gnome would have to move on once he had exhausted a local mana supply.
I spun around a corner into a side tunnel and was halted. Frozen. Damn.
It was a web of forces holding me like a butterfly. I ceased struggling almost immediately, seeing that it was fruitless in this aspect.
I transformed myself back into human form. But the damned web merely shifted to accommodate the alteration and continued to hold me tightly.
I tried a fire spell, to no avail. I tried sucking the mana loose from the web’s own spell, but all I got was a headache. It’s a dangerous measure, only effective against sloppy workmanship—and then you get hit with a backlash of forces when it comes loose. The spell held perfectly against my effort, however. I had had to try it, though, because I was feeling desperate, with a touch of claustrophobia tossed in. Also, I thought I’d heard a stone rattle farther up the tunnel.
Next I heard a chuckle, and I recognized the voice as Gnome’s.
Then a light rounded a corner, followed by a vaguely human form.
The light drifted in front of him and just off to his left—a globe, casting an orange illumination—touching his hunched, twisted shape with a flamelike glow as he limped toward me. He chuckled again.
“Looks as if I’ve snared a Phoenix,” he finally said.
“Very funny. How about unsnaring me now?” I asked.
“Of course, of course,” he muttered, already beginning to gesture.
The trap fell apart. I stepped forward.
“I’ve been asking around,” I told him. “What’s this story about Lamia and me?”
He continued his gesturing. I was about to invoke an assault or shielding spell when he stopped, though. I felt none the worse and I assumed it was a final cleanup of his web.
“Lamia? You?” he said. “Oh. Yes. I’d heard you’d run off together. Yes. That was it.”
“Where’d you hear it?”
He fixed me with his large, pale eyes.
“Where’d you hear it?” I repeated.
“I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
“Sorry.”
“‘Sorry’ hell!” I said, taking a step forward. “Somebody’s been trying to kill me and—”
He spoke the word that froze me in mid-step. Good spell, that.
“—and he’s been regrettably inept,” Gnome finished.
“Let me go, damn it!” I said.
“You came into my home and assaulted me.”
“Okay, I apologize. Now—”
“Come this way.”
He turned his back on me and began walking. Against my will, my body made the necessary movements. I followed.
I opened my mouth to speak a spell of my own. No words came out. I wanted to make a gesture. I was unable to begin it.
“Where are you taking me?” I tried.
The words came perfectly clear. But he didn’t bother answering me for a time. The light moved over glistening seams of some metallic material within the sweating walls.
Then, “To a waiting place,” he finally said, turning into a corridor to the right where we splashed through puddles for a time.
“Why?” I asked him. “What are we waiting for?”
He chuckled again. The light danced. He did not reply.
We walked for several minutes. I began finding the thought of all those tons of rock and earth above me very oppressive. A trapped feeling came over me. But I could not even panic properly within the confines of that spell. I began to perspire profusely, despite a cooling draft from ahead.
Then Gnome turned suddenly and was gone, sidling into a narrow cleft I would not even have noticed had I been coming this way alone.
“Come,” I heard him say.
My feet followed the light, moved to drift between us here. Automatically, I turned my body. I sidled after him for a good distance before the way widened. The ground dropped roughly, abruptly, and the walls retracted and the light shot on ahead, gaining altitude.
Gnome raised a broad hand and halted me. We were in a small, irregularly shaped chamber—natural, I guessed. The weak light filled it. I looked about. I had no idea why we had stopped here. Gnome’s hand moved and he pointed.
I followed the gesture but still could not t
ell what it was that he was trying to indicate. The light drifted forward then, hovered near a shelflike niche.
Angles altered, shadows shifted. I saw it.
It was a statue of a reclining woman, carved out of coal.
I moved a step nearer. It was extremely well executed and very familiar.
“I didn’t know you were an artist…” I began, and the realization struck me even as he laughed.
“It is our art,” he said. “Not the mundane kind.”
I had reached forward to touch the dark cheek. I dropped my hand, deciding against it.
“It’s Lamia, isn’t it?” I asked. “It’s really her…”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“She has to be someplace, doesn’t she?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
He chuckled again.
“You’re a dead man. Phoenix, and she’s the reason. I never thought I’d have the good fortune to have you walk in this way. But now that you have, all of my problems are over. You will rest a few corridors away from here, in a chamber totally devoid of mana. You will wait, while I send for Werewolf to come and kill you. He was in love with Lamia, you know. He is convinced that you ran off with her. Some friend you are. I’ve been waiting for him to get you for some time now, but either he’s clumsy or you’re lucky. Perhaps both.”
“So it’s been Werewolf all along.”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why do you want him to kill me?”
“It would look badly if I did it myself. I’ll be sure that some of the others are here when it happens. To keep my name clean. In fact, I’ll dispatch Werewolf personally as soon as he’s finished with you. A perfect final touch.”
“Whatever I’ve done to you, I’m willing to set it right.”
Gnome shook his head.
“What you did was to set up an irreducible conflict between us,” he said. “There is no way to set it right.”
“Would you mind telling me what it is that I did?” I asked.
He made a gesture, and I felt a compulsion to turn and make my way back toward the corridor. He followed, both of us preceded by his light.
As we moved, he asked me, “Were you aware that at each Starfall ceremony for the past ten or twelve years the mana content of the Starwind has been a bit higher?”