The Gathering Flame

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  As soon as the noise of the explosion died away, she rose unsteadily to her feet, her ears ringing. She looked first for Nannla, and felt a wave of relief when she saw that her partner was already standing. One side of Nannla’s face was plastered with blood and bits of raw meat, but she wasn’t acting like somebody who ought to be in pain.

  “Are you hurt?” Tillijen asked.

  “No.” Nannla pulled out a handkerchief and ran it over her cheek and jaw. She pulled it away and grimaced at the forinerly-white cloth. “But messy. Very messy.”

  The hall was full of noise and movement—screams and sobs, the clangor and hooting of alarms, the sound of running feet as emergency crews poured into the room through every available entrance. One team, clad in the bright orange jumpsuits of Fire and Rescue, was shooting a cloud of white powder at smoldering curtains around a blown-out window. Others worked over the injured. And Perada was on her feet again, her face set and angry.

  “You,” she said, and Tillijen saw that she had fixed the armsmaster, Ser Hafrey, with a sharp blue gaze. “And you.” This time she spoke to the Minister of Internal Security, and Tillijen had the pleasure of seeing Nivome do’Evaan look like a man who—if it were not for the dignity of his office—would have winced under that penetrating regard.

  And he damned well should, Tillijen thought. He’s the one who’s supposed to keep stuff like this from happening.

  “Come with me, gentles,” the Domina said to Hafrey and Nivome. Her voice was icy. “Now.”

  She turned away in the direction of a side-chamber—not much more than a large alcove—that opened off the reception hall. The curtains that had screened it from the main room had been blown to tatters by the explosion, but it was, at least symbolically, private. The armsmaster and the Minister of Internal Security followed Perada; so, without waiting for an invitation, did Jos Metadi, his blaster still in his hand.

  The captain isn’t trusting anybody right now, Tillijen thought. Then he glanced over at her and Nannla, and jerked his head in a “come-along” gesture. Nobody he hasn’t shipped with, at least.

  Tillijen and Nannla joined the group in the side-chamber—a sheltered nook that had apparently been devoted more to politics than to flirtation, since it held a table and a desk comp and what looked like the ruins of a shielded comm setup. To Tillijen’s expert eye, it looked like comp and comms were a dead loss; part of the blast from the hovercar had ripped through the curtained entrance and out through the high arched window, leaving the electronics slagged and smoking.

  Perada already stood with Jos Metadi at her back, facing down the two men—armsmaster and Interior Minister—who should have seen that her accession went smoothly and stayed free of deeds of ill omen. Nothing remained, as far as Tillijen could see, of the mischievous schoolgirl who’d sung “Bindweed and Blossom” at a shipboard party, then gotten tipsy on aqua vitae and dragged the captain off to bed.

  “Very well, gentles.” The Domina’s voice was clear and unwavering. “What, exactly, is the meaning of this debacle?”

  What Nivome or Ser Hafrey might have said, in excuse or self-justification, Tillijen never knew. Errec Ransome stepped forward—she hadn’t seen him join the group in the private alcove, but that wasn’t surprising; Errec came and went almost invisibly even under normal circumstances, which these definitely weren’t. She suspected that he’d been with them the whole time, choosing his own moment to fade back into view.

  He met the Domina’s gaze directly.

  “Mages,” Errec Ransome said. “You have Mages on Entibor. And this means that they will break you, or die in the attempt.”

  ERREC RANSOME: ILARNA

  (GALCENIAN DATING 970 A.F.; ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 34 VERATINA)

  A COLD blue light filled the sky over Amalind Grange: the glow of heavy-duty nullgravs running at max power. One by one, the wing-shaped raiding ships lowered themselves noiselessly to the ground. Errec Ransome watched, as frozen as the snow-covered fields outside the window, while the lead ship in the first wave settled itself on the spot where a spreading bitterwood tree had stood a moment before. The massive tree—as tall as the uppermost windows of the Grange itself, and almost as ancient—crumpled and vanished underneath the raider’s unrelenting mass.

  The silence of it terrified him. He’d been a spacer once; he knew how nullgravs worked, and how much sound they made doing it. He knew how closely Ilarna patrolled its planetary space, as well. This many ships should not have come through the defenses unopposed, without raising a single·alarm. And now the bay doors of the black ships swung open, spilling out blue-white light, and the ships began disgorging soldiers—dark, anonymous figures in light blast-armor, carrying energy weapons both large and small.

  Magecraft.

  The Adepts on Galcen had spoken of such things, of alien, unnatural twistings of the universal Power, brought into the civilized galaxy by the raiders from beyond the interstellar gap. Errec Ransome had not quite believed them. But only Magecraft could silence nullgravs, and hide an invasion fleet, and keep all the Adepts in the Ilarnan Guildhouse fast asleep while their doom came at them through the falling snow.

  All of them but me.

  With the thought, the sorcery that held him motionless seemed to break. He stumbled backward through the curtains into the darkened hallway and began shouting and pounding on the closed doors.

  “Wake up! Raiders! Wake up!”

  No one responded. He pulled the next door open and ran into the room, crossing in two strides to the bed and grabbing Mistress Sandevan by her shoulder.

  “Raiders! Wake up!”

  He jerked Allorie onto her back. She flopped over limply, her breathing slowed and her body relaxed in a slumber too deep to be natural. He shook her, but she only yawned and mumbled in her sleep. Cursing, he let her drop back onto the pillow.

  A quick stride took him to the window of the bedchamber. He yanked the curtain aside and looked out. The Guildhouse was surrounded by the dark, wing-shaped spacecraft, wave on wave of them landing after the first. Another instant, and the entire perimeter of the Grange came alive with multicolored light—the armored raiders were charging forward through the snow.

  One of the outbuildings exploded in a flash of lurid red. Errec choked back a cry.

  The apprentices’ dormitory—gone.

  Another flash of red washed across the night. The old stable, now a home for the Guildhouse’s collection of hovercars and speederbikes, broke up in a sheet of orange flame mixed with thick black smoke. Secondary explosions rocked the Guildhouse as the vehicles themselves perished.

  No chance of escape there—anyone trying to get away would have to go on foot, or not at all.

  Nothing is coincidence, Errec thought. Nothing is chance. The ancient scrap of accepted wisdom had always comforted him before; now he felt as if a good knife had turned and cut his hand. The raiders came tonight on purpose—they’re counting on the cold and snow to take care of anybody who tries to run.

  He let the curtain fall and made for the stairs. At least he had his boots on, and a warm night-robe over his shirt and trousers. His wakefulness earlier had served him there. And he wasn’t unarmed, not while he had his staff and his training in the disciplines. If he could make it out of the Guildhouse and slip through the raiders’ lines, he had a chance.

  Efface myself until morning, then see if anyone else got out alive.

  The sounds from outside came through clearly. He heard them as he ran down the carpeted staircase: the staccato popping of projectile weapons, the whine of blasters and the heavier crump of large-scale energy guns, the crackling of flames.

  What are they shooting at? Errec wondered. No one’s awake and moving but me.

  But that wasn’t quite true. Coming up the stairs, his staff ablaze with blue-white fire, strode Master Guislen.

  “Errec!” he called. “Where’s everyone else?”

  “The whole upper dormitory is asleep like the dead,” Errec replied. “Sorcery … M
agecraft … I don’t know why it didn’t get me as well.”

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” Guislen said. “Come on—we need you. Hurry!”

  The senior Master turned and hurried back down the stairs, turning to the right and through a small passage leading to a side door near the kitchens. Errec followed, his staff at the ready. Guislen reached the door first and pulled it open.

  Errec ducked through the gap and out into the snow-covered yard. The flames from the burning outbuildings lit up a semicircle of troopers in blast armor.

  Not so many—we can break through if we hit them hard.

  He brought up his staff to strike down the nearest one, calling in Power to make his weapon into a bar of flame.

  “Raiders!” he shouted at Guislen. “Take them!”

  But no fellow-Adept ran forward, staff ablaze, to stand beside Errec Ransome in the fight. Betrayed! he had time to think, in the fearful instant before Guislen’s blow crashed into his head from behind.

  A white light burst in front of his eyes, and he fell.

  XII. GALCENIAN DATING 976 A.F.

  ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 3 PERADA

  THE SUMMER Palace of House Rosselin looked out over the Nechelan Mountain Intervals, half a continent away from the noise and press of An-Jemayne. Perada wished that the intrigues and rivalries of An-Jemayne could be left behind as easily.

  If that were so, she thought with weary humor, I’d move the court here for good.

  She knew that such a maneuver wouldn’t work, though, no matter how tempting it felt. She’d come to the Summer Palace for the childbirth, done in the old-fashioned manner according to House tradition, and had stayed on because the palace’s isolated luxury made it a good place in which to recover. She’d stretched that recovery as long as she could, buying time with another old custom that deferred formal court life until the baby was weaned—I can’t stretch it out much longer, she thought regretfully; not with the teeth he’s growing—but her efforts had proved useless just the same. She was the Domina, and where she went, the intrigue and rivalry followed.

  Informal court life, and the day-to-day decisions that only the Domina could make, continued. Today she was trying, as gracefully and inconspicuously as she could, to avoid the Minister of Internal Security. She couldn’t refuse him admittance, not without also dismissing him from his post, and his connections to the merchant houses and the banking interests were too strong for that. Veratina hadn’t made him her Consort—even in her declining years she hadn’t been that stupid—but she’d given him almost everything else.

  He caught up with Perada in the High Walk, in the room where ruby windows caught the light and reflected it over the suspended pathways above a stony gorge.

  “Good morning, my lady,” he said, with a full bow of respect. “How are you feeling?”

  She made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. “Well enough. Tired, sometimes.”

  The statement wasn’t entirely a lie, she reflected, though her fatigue was mental, not physical, and it was the thought of going back to the Palace Major that brought it on. Eleven years under Zeri Delaven’s tutelage hadn’t prepared her for life in a museum display of architecture and etiquette. Nivome do’Evaan of Rolny, though, wasn’t one of the people to whom she was prepared to admit the problem.

  Let him think I’m still recovering. House Rosselin’s traditional insistence on the old low-tech birthing customs would make the idea believable. My physicians won’t talk—unless he’s suborned them. Has he suborned them?

  She looked more closely at the Minister of Internal Security. His face and bearing told her nothing beyond what she already knew, that he was an ambitious man and an aggressive one. I’ll have to ask Hafrey about the physicians, she thought with resignation. More and more often, of late, there were times when she felt like nothing more than the prize—or sometimes the battlefield—in an ongoing struggle between Nivome and the armsmaster.

  “I’m sorry to hear that Your Dignity remains unwell,” the Rolnian said. “Your people are understandably concerned.”

  “Without reason,” she said sharply. “As I trust you’ll make clear to anyone who asks.”

  “I do my best,” he said. “But as the minister in charge of internal security on this world, I have to report honestly on what people say and what they believe.”

  “And what are they saying?”

  Nivome’s features arranged themselves into an expression of solemn concern. “They remember Veratina, Your Dignity—who birthed a placeholder child the year after her coming-of-age, and gave them nothing else for the next five decades.”

  Perada smiled sweetly at the Minister of Internal Security. “Tell your informants that they don’t need to worry. Veratina’s placeholder was early-born and never strong afterward—ask them if they remember that as well!—but young Ari, thank fortune, is full of absolutely appalling good health.”

  “But a placeholder, not an heir.”

  “All in time, Gentlesir Nivome,” she said, laughing. “The good people of Entibor won’t have to wait five decades, I promise you—but give me a while to work on other things!”

  “As you wish.” Nivome bowed slightly, as one who concedes a single point out of a match still being played. “I’d hoped that you would remember the service I gave you before.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.” She looked out through the ruby-tinted windows at the precipitous walls of the gorge below. The sun was going down, and her body—an efficient clock in such matters—was beginning to insist that she cut the conversation short in favor of finding Ari and giving the young placeholder his next meal. Her breasts felt heavy with milk; if she waited much longer they would begin to ache. “If that’s all …”

  “More or less,” he said. “I merely wanted to let you know that the offer remains open.”

  “I’m honored. But I’m served well enough, thank you.”

  “That’s another matter I wanted to discuss,” Nivome said. Perada’s head began to ache. She wished she could afford to insult Nivome by closing her eyes and massaging away the tension. Go away, she thought. Go back to An-Jemayne and leave me alone! But thinking it didn’t do any good; he was still there. She suppressed a sigh and said aloud, “What is it?”

  “I do not think,” he said, “that your General is suitable.”

  “And why not?”

  “What do you know of him?”

  Perada smiled, more because she knew it would annoy Nivome than because she felt amused. “Sufficient,” she said.

  “Tell me then,” Nivome said, “how do you think he obtained that fancy ship of his—Warhammer, is it?”

  She didn’t need to look at Nivome’s face to know that the question had been aimed, like a dart, straight at a vulnerable spot. Ser Hafrey’s reports on Captain Jos Metadi hadn’t contained that information, either, and nobody on board the ’Hammer had ever spoken of it. There were some things, as Nannla the gunner had said, that polite people didn’t ask.

  “In the usual way men of his profession acquire starships, I suppose,” she said. “I never bothered to inquire.”

  “Perhaps you should have, Your Dignity.”

  This time Perada did sigh aloud. “Tell me, then, since you seem determined to make me ask the question: how did my General of the Armies obtain his ship?”

  “Your Dignity, I’m sorry, but I do not know.”

  “Lords of Life!” she exclaimed. It was one of Jos Metadi’s milder oaths, and she hoped that Nivome appreciated the fact. “Then what is the point of all this—this digression? It’s late, and I have pressing business to take care of; say what you have to say and get done with it.”

  “Very well, Your Dignity,” Nivome said. “In brief: no one can—or no one will—say for certain how Jos Metadi first obtained his ship. But certain facts are known: when the ship left port, its crew was complete, experienced, and competent. When it appeared again—and not at its expected destination, my lady—there was only one crew member aboard. That
one was your Gyfferan. He took the ship by survivor’s right, changed its name, collected a crew of disreputable individuals, and turned at once to piracy.”

  “Privateering,” Perada corrected absently. “What, exactly, do you expect me to do with all this information—if you want to dignify a collection of unsubstantiated rumors with such an honorable name?”

  “Nothing, Domina.” He smiled. “It is only a rumor, after all.”

  Errec Ransome stood near the mess table in Warhammer ’s common room, watching Tillijen and Nannla playing at cards and following the back-and-forth of the game.

  “You know,” said Nannla, pulling a card from her hand and laying it faceup on the common-room table, “this planetary royalty business isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I’m surprised our little ’Rada hasn’t gone mad with boredom.”

  Tillijen looked at the card, then at her own hand, and shook her head. “What about poor Jos?”

  “Jos has the whole Entiboran Fleet to keep him occupied,” Errec said. “He may complain some, but don’t let that fool you. He’s having the time of his life.”

  “Good for him,” said Nannla. “But Ferrda’s already taken his cut of the loot and gone back home to Maraghai—how much longer are the rest of us going to wait before we retire from the trade and open up a dirtside cha’a shop?”

  “Not on Entibor, thank you,” Tillijen said. “I think I’ll stick with the ’Hammer for a while longer. Unless you’re serious about quitting space for good.”

  Nannla laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m not that desperate for entertainment.” She tilted her head to look up sidelong at Errec. “What about you?”

  “What Jos is doing right now is important,” Errec said. “And sooner or later, he’ll need somebody to find Mages for him. I can wait.”