The morning in Wippeldon was bright and clear, rainwashed and sun-dried. Gentlesir Festen Aringher and his friend Mistress Vasari stood at the rail of the portsled carrying them away from the spaceliner’s grounded shuttle and looked about.
“Entibor at last,” Aringher said. “Entibor after a full night’s sleep, which is even better.”
“Do you suppose that The Milliner’s Daughter is any good?” Mistress Vasari asked, with a nod toward the row of advertising flats that ran down the center of the portsled. “I could use some entertainment.”
“Something advertised to new arrivals? I have my doubts. But I’m sure a bit of searching will reveal rare delights of entertainment.”
“Something advertised to off-worlders would suit me fine.”
“Where is your sense of adventure?”
“Packed in the bottom of my suitcase.”
“The younger generation. I despair.”
“‘Younger generation,’ hah. You’re the same age as I am.”
“I,” he informed her, “am wise beyond my years. But now, I fear, it’s time for us to depart.”
They descended from the portsled and made their way through the open doors of the main concourse toward the luggage recovery point. Aringher took Mistress Vasari’s hand as they walked, and squeezed it gently.
“I hope that Customs isn’t too punctilious,” he said, as his fingers moved in the rhythmic patterns of the pressure-code.
Trouble here. Look how many slots there are on the logboard, how few in and out ships posted.
Vasari laughed at him. “What have you got to worry about? This isn’t some dreary outplanet where everything’s illegal.”
Maybe it’s a slow day, her hand replied against his.
I don’t think so. “I don’t know how you feel about some total stranger pawing through your good socks, but I don’t like it.” I think there’s a problem.
“Poor dear.” What kind?
“You mock me. But see how you feel when it’s your frilly underthings spread out across the table.” Too early to tell. But keep close and keep your eyes open.
“Always such concern,” Vasari said aloud. “Let’s go straight to the hotel as soon as we’re checked through. I want to freshen up before I look around Wippeldon.”
Customs proved strict but courteous. When the inspection was over, Vasari and Aringher collected their baggage, summoned a hovercab, and entered the bustle of spaceport traffic. They were bound for lodgings on the slopes of Mount Kelpen, a little to the local south of the spaceport—a remote spot, yet one from which they could watch the activity at the port.
“Might as well hang ‘we’re spying’ signs around our necks,” Vasari had complained to Aringher when she first learned where they would be staying.
“No,” he’d replied, “the thing is, we aren’t spying. So anyone who thinks that we are is plainly mistaken. But from little mistakes—well, I grieve to see my fellow-creatures make mistakes, but they’re all instructive, don’t you agree?”
“Instructive,” Vasari had muttered at the time.
And “Instructive” she muttered again now that they were here, threading through the outskirts of Wippeldon and onto a narrow road leading up into the foothills. They went straight to the lodge on Mount Kelpen, in case someone was following or taking interest in a pair of well-to-do visitors from Galcen. When they arrived, their accommodations proved luxurious enough to raise Vasari’s eyebrows.
“Who’s paying for this?” she asked, once they were ensconced in a double suite on the most exclusive floor of the best wing.
“I am, my dear. Don’t you recall my granduncle’s legacy?”
“I didn’t even know that you had a granduncle.”
“I was devastated, I assure you, to learn of his untimely death. But enough about such sorrowful matters—we have work to do.”
Vasari shook her head and wandered off to unpack. In the meantime, Aringher opened the doors onto the balcony. He sat there. sipping a room-service mixed drink and looking out over the valley with a pair of binoculars set to Record All. When Vasari emerged from her rooms, Aringher rose, and offered her a clone of his own drink.
“Thank you,” she said, and downed it at a gulp.
“You never were such a hard-drinking woman before,” Aringher said. “What happened?”
“I never traveled with you for this long before,” Vasari replied. “Shall we go?”
“Certainly.” He held out his arm, she took it, and together they ambled from the suite and down to the lobby below.
“It occurs to me,” Vasari said a while later, as they walked through the streets of Wippeldon, “that if we linger on Entibor for very long, at some point the Domina may see us.”
“Quite likely,” Aringher said. He fed a coin into a news kiosk and waited for the printout, then flipped through the pages of flimsy as they walked. “Why should I be concerned if the Domina sees us?”
“Because she might recognize you.”
“I doubt it. I’m not wearing the same clothes. But even if she does—what could she possibly say?”
“Nothing,” Vasari admitted. “If you’re not worried, we might as well move on to the capital.”
“Whatever for?”
Vasari raised her eyebrows. “Why did you decide to come to this planet?”
“To attend the annual chamber-music festival,” said Aringher with a straight face. “And you?”
“As it happens,” she said, “I have letters of introduction to some of the very best people. My relatives back on Galcen are most anxious that I should pay the proper courtesy calls.”
“The rooms at the lodge are booked for a week. No refunds.”
“Let your great-uncle’s legacy worry about the bill,” Vasari said. “We don’t want to miss the accession ceremonies. You can stare at the scenery later, if that’s what amuses you.”
“Since you put it that way—”
“I do. And I must admit, a chance to go shopping in the capital would be nice.”
Aringher nodded. “I wouldn’t mind that myself. To An-Jemayne, then; and we’ll see what happens once we’re there.”
After several hours of watching the shifting colors of the Pleyveran Web through the ‘Hammer’s viewscreens, Perada grew restless and went back into the body of the ship. The lights were out in the common room, and the gravity was off. Part of saving power, she supposed. She made her way to the galley, pulling herself along with the ladder rails set in the overhead. Then she made cha’a, transferred it to a zero-g flask according to the helpful instructions on the side of the pot, and took the flask back with her to the ’Hammer’s cockpit along with a handful of drinking bulbs.
She arrived in time to hear a perturbed rumble coming up on the comm link from the engineering spaces.
“I know, Ferrda,” the captain replied. “Just hold them together for two more hours. That’s all I need.” He glanced over his shoulder at Perada. “Thanks … I could use a mug of cha’a.”
Perada filled two of the drinking bulbs and passed them to the captain and Errec Ransome. “Should I take some to the others, too?”
He nodded. “Tilly and Nannla, anyhow. Ferrda’s not going to want anything until we get through.”
Perada went back through the common room to the access tubes for the gun bubbles. She went down first—or the direction that would have been down, had there been gravity. Tillijen was there, looking out through the curved armor-glass walls of her bubble, spinning in the gimbal-mounted seat.
As Perada came through the hatch, the number-two gunner keyed on her headset.
“Beacon coming up—one-two-one occulting, green. Bearing zero-niner-zero.”
She clicked off and spun around so that she looked upward into the tube. “Cha’a,” she said, extending an arm for a drinking bulb. “Your Dignity, you’re a lifesaver.”
Perada blinked. She must be tired. That’s the first time she’s slipped and used proper form. Aloud, she said only, �
��My dignity isn’t quite up to managing zero-g in skirts, but it’ll survive.”
The gunner leaned back in her seat and took a long pull of the bulb of cha’a. “How’s everyone else holding up?”
Perada looked down at the gunner. Of course, from her point of view it probably feels like I’m looking up. Unless she’s worked in zero-g so often that she doesn’t think about “up” and “down” any more. “All right, I suppose. Gentlesir Ferrdacorr seems worried about the engines.”
“Ferrda always worries about the engines. He’s got a point, though.”
“Are the engines likely to present a serious problem?”
“Not unless we get unlucky,” Tillijen said. “But this junk out here—” She waved her free hand at the glowing masses of light outside the bubble. “—it’s hard on everything. And the engines can’t be shielded, so they take more damage than anything else.”
“If getting through the Web is so difficult,” Perada said, “I’m surprised that anyone bothers to visit here at all.”
“That’s because you haven’t seen Pleyver.” Tillijen sighed. “It’s a lovely world, almost as pretty as—well, never mind. And rich, too; lots of natural resources, and right on the route from anywhere to anywhere else. Whoever was the first one to find it, though, coming through this soup—”
The clouds of light parted, and there was the system spread out below them—the central sun and the planets, with Pleyver close at hand.
“It’s beautiful,” Perada said.
“It surely is,” Tillijen said. She keyed on the headset again. “Pleyver in sight. Numerous ships in orbit. I make two lifting.”
She turned back to Perada. “No offense, but I think you ought to take Nannla her share of the cha’a and then go strap down. Pleyver was all right the last time I was here, but things can change fast these days. If any old friends or casual acquaintances are waiting for us, things might get rough.”
ERREC RANSOME: ILARNA
(GALCENIAN DATING 970 A.F.; ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 34 VERATINA)
ERREC WOKE abruptly, as if from a sudden noise—heart racing, breath suspended. For a minute or two he lay quiet and listened, but his ears caught nothing beyond the usual sounds of the Amalind Grange Guildhouse late on a snowy winter’s night.
His mind catalogued them all, and found them harmless. A faint rattle as the wind first gusted, then died, then gusted again: lozenges of window glass stirring in their leaded frames. Distant, muffled creaks and snaps: house timbers flexing and shifting as the building settled into the cold of the night. And underlying everything, a steady, peaceful rhythm—the breath and heartbeat of every living thing sheltered within the Grange’s wooden walls.
Why, then, had he awakened?
Not from a nightmare … he knew the feel of that too well, after his time on Galcen. Such awakenings always held as much relief as they did leftover apprehension, and there was no relief for him here. Whatever had brought him to full consciousness out of an untroubled sleep, he felt sure that it had come from a source outside his own mind.
And it was continuing. He sensed it—a thrumming in the air, a vibration along his nerve ends like the note of the lowest string on a megaviole. He sat up and looked around the bedchamber. Nothing had changed since he’d composed himself earlier and dropped off to sleep. The heat-bar, its ceramic element a dull red against the shadows, glowered at him from the hearth like a slitted, malevolent eye.
There was no point in trying to go back to sleep. He’d experienced fits of wakefulness before, and knew that there was no help for the affliction except to rise and walk it off. He pushed aside the blankets and began getting dressed: the trousers and shirt from his formal blacks, that he’d hung over the back of the bedside chair a few hours ago; a pair of warm socks; the leather boots he’d bought off-planet.
Then he reached out for his staff, and drew a sharp breath. The six-foot length of Ilarnan whitebole wood was vibrating under his touch.
He jerked his hand away. When he touched the staff again, he felt only the cool smoothness of the wood beneath his fingers. He told himself that he had imagined the brief sensation; that the illusion, and the sudden waking that had preceded it, were the products of unresolved tension—the legacy of a stay on Galcen that had not brought him the knowledge he had expected to gain.
I didn’t imagine it, he protested to himself. Whatever I felt, was real.
But if it had been real, why wasn’t every Master and apprentice in the Amalind Guildhouse as tense and wakeful as he was? The situation bore investigating. He picked up the staff—with some trepidation, but it continued to behave like ordinary inert wood—and stepped out of his bedchamber.
The air in the hall was chilly and unmoving, unstirred by drafts. The only light came from a blue low-power glow-cube set above the stairwell. Errec considered for a moment, then ducked back into his room and took down his dark woolen night-robe from the hook on the back of the door. He belted on the robe over his shirt and trousers and, feeling somewhat warmer, continued his explorations.
All the doors up and down the central top-floor hall were shut. He eased the nearest one open. A gentle snoring met his ears. He took a step forward, calling a faint light into his staff. The sleeper turned over restlessly—even that much change in the flow of Power was enough to disrupt the slumber of a sensitive Adept. Errec recognized Allorie Sandevan, the youngest daughter of a banking family from the southern continent. She’d been a senior apprentice when he left for Galcen, and living in the long dormitory instead of the main house. He remembered Allorie as being one of the best students in her year; it was inconceivable that the menace he had felt—if it had been real—would leave her asleep.
For a moment he debated waking her, but in the end he stepped back into the hall and closed the door, leaving her undisturbed. There was no point in forcing anyone else to share his midnight prowling. He moved off quietly down the hall.
Thick black velvet curtains hung across the end of the hallway opposite the stairwell. Errec knew that they masked a small, windowed alcove—in warmer weather, a good place for solitary meditation, or for looking out over the fields and outbuildings. He let the faint glow from his staff die away, and slipped in between the velvet folds.
Outside the windows, heavy, silent flakes of snow fell onto the rolling hills of the Amalind district. And as quietly as the snow, but vastly more ponderous, the wing-shaped black raiding ships were lowering themselves to the ground on glowing nullgravs.
VI, GALCENIAN DATING 974 A.F.
ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 38 VERATINA
JOS METADI brought Warhammer down into the secured landing area near Flatlands Portcity. The final approach to Pleyver had gone without a hitch. Nobody had jumped him on the way out of the Web, or demanded that he submit to boarding and inspection, or any of the other bad things that could happen to a more or less law-abiding privateer outside his normal range of operations. Flatlands looked like a safe port, at least for now; Errec and the others could finish up their interrupted dirtside liberty while he kept an eye on the Domina.
“She’ll need help,” he said to Errec. They were in the ’Hammer’s cockpit, shutting down the systems after an uneventful touchdown. “Flatlands may be safe, but that doesn’t mean it’s the sort of town she ought to be running around in all by herself.”
“You think so?”
Jos didn’t know whether to call Errec’s expression amused or not. A lot of Errec’s reactions were like that—off-center, somehow—and it didn’t do any good to try and figure them out, because you couldn’t.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think so. She hasn’t been out of school long enough to dry off behind the ears.”
Errec shrugged. “Don’t underestimate her, is all.”
“You sound like you don’t trust the lady very much.”
“It’s not a matter of trust. She’ll keep her bargains. But—”
“But what?”
“She wants something from you. She came to Waycro
ss on purpose, trying to get it, and she won’t have forgotten about it just because the two of you have been sharing a bed ever since we lifted from Innish-Kyl.”
Jos looked at his copilot thoughtfully. Such blunt speaking wasn’t like Errec. Most of the time the Ilarnan was reserved about such matters, especially compared to Ferrda and the two gunners. “You think I’m making a mistake, going along with her like this?”
“I can’t tell.” Errec sounded doubtful, not evasive. “All I know is that there’s pain and trouble in it for somebody, somewhere along the line.”
“I suppose you think I ought to drop her as soon as we get to Entibor.”
Jos wasn’t surprised to find himself disliking the idea. Perada Rosselin was a warm armful, and good company no matter how many star systems she happened to own.
Errec shook his head. “Nothing so easy. There’s pain and trouble that way, too.”
“Fine,” said Jos. “Then I’ll do what I please and to hell with the omens.”
“Not omens,” Errec said. “Patterns. Currents. The universe moves, and sometimes the path is visible.”
“Whatever,” said Jos. He’d given up trying to follow Errec’s explanations a long time ago. “Come on, let’s go tell the others they can get ready for a good time portside.”
Perada was already waiting in the common room. It looked like she was planning to go incognito again: she didn’t have the velvet mask anymore, but she’d improvised something almost as effective with a sheer black scarf and one of Nannla’s hats. She wasn’t wearing braids, not even the two long schoolgirl plaits; instead her unbound hair flowed down past her belt in a long, pale waterfall.
His breath caught at the shimmering beauty of it, and at the memory of what it felt like, falling down around his face in a silken curtain. He forced his mind back to practical matters with some difficulty.
The Gathering Flame Page 9