The Gathering Flame

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  The armsmaster held up a hand to stop him. “Timing is everything, General. If you were to wait here alone for, let us say, fifteen minutes, and then pay a visit to the nursery, you might very well find that no one is there except your son.”

  “My son … fifteen minutes, you said?”

  “That should be long enough. Further I cannot go, and still maintain my oaths to the Domina and to House Rosselin.” The armsmaster bowed to him—the full bow of profound respect. “Good day to you, General. And good luck.”

  Jos waited for fifteen minutes by his chrono, then left the morning room and set out at an unhurried pace for the palace nursery. The lockplate answered to his ID at the first touch, and the door slid open.

  Inside, everything was silent and empty. Jos wondered what Hafrey had done to achieve this sudden depopulation, then thought better of wondering. The armsmaster’s reputation wasn’t a sinister one, exactly, but people sometimes got an uneasy look on their faces when they spoke of him. Even ‘Rada, back on Pleyver—“He’s always been loyal to the House. Veratina trusted him”—better not to think about ’Rada, either.

  Jos moved through the deserted nursery until he reached the dayroom. Ari was there, awake and warmly dressed, sitting in a pool of sunshine from a low window, playing with bright-colored blocks. As Hafrey had promised, the child was alone, although a packed and sealed carrybag waiting conspicuously on the table nearby hinted that he hadn’t been left that way for long.

  When Jos walked into the room, the boy looked at him and threw his arms in the air. “’adda! Uppie!”

  “All right, kid, here’s an uppie for you,” Jos said.

  He slung the carrybag over his shoulder, then picked up Ari and left the day room by the door that led to the outside. Nobody was in sight there, either. He didn’t meet anyone on the walk to the hovercar, or on the long drive to the landing field on the grassy meadow below the palace.

  He’d expected to find the landing field empty as well, except for the small aircar he’d flown up from Central HQ—but the armsmaster was as thorough as he was resourceful. As Jos drew near the perimeter he heard the deep rumbling noise of a Fleet suborbital courier coming down on jets.

  The vessel had hardly settled on its landing legs before a hatch opened in the passenger section and a ramp swung out.

  “Looks like our ride,” Jos said. In the infant-seat beside him, Ari sat wide-eyed and silent. Not even the hasty transfer to the courier, or the noise and pressure of the takeoff, caused him to do more than fret briefly.

  Another fifteen minutes—a few more than thirty, all told, since Jos had left Hafrey in the morning room—and the courier was landing at the field in An-Jemayne, where Warhammer was berthed. A quick walk across the hardpack, and Jos stood beneath the battered, familiar hull of his own ship. A Fleet officer wearing the lace and braid of somebody’s flag lieutenant stood by the ‘Hammer’s main ramp.

  It took Jos a moment to recall where he knew this one from—she’d been in the reception area the day he’d taken command at Central HQ. She gave him a snappy salute as he came up.

  “Ready to lift, Captain.”

  “This ship takes three to lift, minimum,” Jos said. “And five is better. I’ll need to call in my crew.”

  “Ship,” said Ari, quite distinctly. “Uppie!”

  “I have navigator, engineer, and gunners qualified with antique spacecraft standing by,” the lieutenant said. “Your duty officer gave them permission to enter.”

  “Antique,” said Jos, bemused. Hafrey must have connections all over the planet, to pull something like this together on short notice. “I like that.”

  Another young officer—one of the Fleet-happy pups from House Kiel—came dashing up before he had finished speaking. The pilot from the courier, Jos supposed.

  “Here’s the last,” the lieutenant said. “He’ll need to leave the planet as well.”

  Jos looked hard at them both. “Does the fleet admiral know what you’re doing?”

  The lieutenant and the courier pilot glanced at each other, and the lieutenant said, “She didn’t ask any questions, sir.”

  “I see,” said Jos. I guess Lachiel meant it when she said that she’d back me. “Just as well. Come aboard, both of you. Let’s go.”

  ERREC RANSOME: CAPTIVITY

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

  ERREC RANSOME awoke feeling lethargic and oddly detached from reality. The light of morning shone in through the translucent walls of the snug prison house where the Mages kept him in such unwanted comfort. He sat up and stretched, wondering why he felt so fuzzy, and tried to pull the events of the night before out of the fog of memory.

  Then he recalled. He had tried to hang himself, using strips torn from the tunic the Mages had given him.

  Looking down, he saw that the clothing he wore was whole and unaltered. If he had ever torn up any garment at all, it wasn’t this one. He raised a hand to the side of his neck. No rope bums marred the flesh underneath his fingers.

  But I remember. I remember it now.

  He stood and walked outside. The tree he had climbed to make his attempt was there, but nothing about it spoke of what he had tried to do. The stout branch overhung the gravel path as it had always done, but his makeshift rope, if it had ever existed, was gone. He wondered again if he had dreamed the attempt, or hallucinated it.

  I am insane, he thought.

  Then he shook his head violently, though the movement brought on a brief whirl of vertigo. No. What I know I did is what really happened.

  He remembered it all—the pain in his throat as the noose drew tight, the burning as his lungs fought for air, the black tide rising behind his eyes as he lost consciousness.

  Why am I still alive?

  His knees felt weak underneath him. He let himself sink down onto a sun-warmed stone bench at the edge of the path, and dropped his head into his hands. He hadn’t understood, before, how closely his captors were watching him.

  He had been intercepted. He had made a mistake. He had worried that a longer drop would break the improvised rope rather than breaking his neck. And the Mages had come. They had come, and they had saved him.

  Anywhere else, that would be an admirable act. Not here. He could not accept it here.

  He could no longer climb the tree. Even from where he sat, he could detect the force field around its upper trunk and branches. He stood and walked back to the little house where he lived. Lived. They were intent that he should live.

  Well, then, he would live. For the moment. He went inside, lay down on the bed—as always, anonymous hands had made it up, silently and invisibly, while he was out of sight in the garden—and allowed his mind to wander. The Mages had not learned how to imprison that, had they?

  Alone with the currents of Power in the universe, he stretched forth his senses along those pathways that the Adepts of Galcen had shown to their students, looking for the guards that kept and tended him.

  New minds were there, not the simple uncomplicated ones he had corrupted to his will before. These guards were stronger; they understood Power in their own terms. Ransome waited in the shadows of their thoughts, touching first one, then the other—gently, gently, fleeing farther into the dark at the slightest hint that the watchers might be aware of his presence.

  Much that he found in their minds he did not understand. Some things, such as their willingness to use the currents of Power as tools, like physical objects, he found disgusting. That the Mages could even contemplate doing so … it was hideous, to disturb the natural order and make the universe respond to small, imperfect creatures like them. Like him.

  He recoiled. Then he drew nearer again. If he was to escape, it must be through these men. He would test them. He would trap them.

  He took a shard of rock he had found on the gravel path, a sliver of flint with a point to it. After dark, when the air had cooled, he lay on his pallet with the stone tooth in his right hand, watching the vague
shadows cast by the trees outside against the translucent walls. With a sudden movement he flung his right arm across, jabbing the shard of flint into his left wrist, reaching for the artery.

  Pain blossomed along his arm. Blood came, making the flint slippery in his grip—but not enough blood, not yet. He sawed the flint back and forth, making the wound deeper. His breath came in ragged, sobbing gasps. At last the blood spurted up around his fingers, lukewarm to the touch and smelling sickly-sweet, and he let the flint slide out of his grip.

  The blood kept on flowing, soaking the sheets beneath and above him. Errec felt his body sink into a deadly lassitude. He made no effort to fight it, but lay back against the pillow and let his mind go free. His breathing slowed, his heart slowed, his body cooled. But his masters on Ilarna—and on Galcen—had taught him well. This time he would not lose consciousness. He would watch.

  Before long, the translucent wall panel that masked the door into the garden slid open. Two Mages entered, black-robed and black-masked like those who had destroyed the Guildhouse at Amalind Grange. One of them began at once to work on Errec’s mangled wrist, applying a glob of reddish jelly and smoothing it into the wound.

  The second Mage stripped off one of his black gloves and placed a hand on Errec’s forehead. The technique was a familiar one, even allowing for the twisted nature of the Mages’ beliefs. The man was touching a dying body, searching for the spirit within and striving to hold it in place while a physician did the necessary work—a dangerous technique, even among friends, and a mark of how important Errec Ransome was to his enemies, that they should risk it to keep him alive.

  No hint of triumph colored Errec’s apparent passivity. His mind was far away, and very quiet, waiting … . The Mage opened himself and reached out farther, touching the fleeting spirit and bringing it home.

  Now, Errec thought. He let his mind follow the path of their physical contact, arcing across the infinitesimal gap between skin and skin, racing along the pathways of the Mage’s arm and body to inhabit him utterly.

  If the Mage working over Errec’s lacerated wrist noticed that his companion had stiffened briefly, he gave no indication of it. Without looking up, he said only, “I think I’ve got him patched up again. Want me to change his clothes?”

  The one touching Ransome’s forehead didn’t respond. Behind the man’s plastic mask, his face was beaded with sweat.

  “Hey,” said his partner after a moment. “Are you all right?”

  The Mage took his hand away. “Everything’s fine here. Let’s get moving; he’ll come around before too long.”

  The two men did the rest of their work in silence: cleaning up the blood that had soaked their prisoner’s sheets and mattress, putting fresh clothing on him, and departing as quietly as they had come. In the morning, Errec woke up between new, unwrinkled sheets. He looked at his wrist. Once again, the flesh had healed without a scar.

  He smiled. This time it didn’t matter. He’d made the necessary beginning, and everything else would follow.

  He only had to wait.

  XX. GALCENIAN DATING 977 A.F.

  ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 3 PERADA

  GAREN TARVEET’s quarters at the Summer Palace were considerably better than those he’d occupied in An-Jemayne—the result, he supposed, of his newly enhanced status. As the disinherited son of an offworld mercantile family, he might have been tucked away somewhere among the upper servants, but as Lord Meteun, who’d been with Perada when she escaped the abortive coup, he rated as a personal friend of the Ruling House.

  The suite of rooms he occupied had excellent comp and communications links, and the quiet elegance of the furnishings made his family’s estate on Pleyver look overdone. Just the same, bedrooms positioned to catch morning and evening breezes in the summertime proved clammy and hard to heat in the autumn. Today, as on most days, Garen awakened early, as soon as the morning chill penetrated into his bedchamber.

  He lay for a while beneath the down comforter, taking stock of his surroundings and going over his plans. This was going to be a day for keeping alert. Last night, neither the Domina nor the Consort had come to dinner, and he and Gentlesir Festen Aringher—whose presence Garen had yet to account for—had been reduced to making stilted conversation about Galcenian folk music for the benefit of the hushed and edgy servants.

  Something is changing, Garen thought. A balance is shifting … but which way?

  He got out of bed and put on a loose purple dressing gown. The lacquered wood secretary in the opposite corner of the room concealed a desk comp. He sent the comp’s morning routines out to grab fresh news and the latest agricultural reports, then sat down to run the sims. His own personalized simulations, these were—he’d been the best, at the Delaven Academy, at making and running them.

  The desk comp spat out a sheet of flimsy. Garen looked it over and adjusted the sim parameters slightly: assume crop failures are first move in Mage biochem attack, then replay.

  The sim took longer to run this time. Somewhere in the distance he heard the rumbling of jets, and frowned at the disturbance. Another sheet of flimsy curled out onto the desk. He checked the results and nodded. As he’d expected, the predictions came out much worse under the new conditions.

  It was possible, perhaps, to import from off-world the food required to support Entibor, on a short-term basis at least—but the money would have to come from House Rosselin’s private fortune if it came from anywhere at all. The public treasury was already pledged to more ships for the Fleet, and the cash that he and Perada had “diverted” from Tarveet Holdings was currently bankrolling half the privateers in Innish-Kyl.

  Turning a nice profit, too … but the hidden account on Suivi Point was sacred, a key part of his long-term plan. If anything could induce his family to reinstate him, it would be coming home from the war with more money than he’d left with.

  He drew a line or two on the printout and considered the result. An alliance with Galcen or Artha might keep Entibor going long enough for the Fleet’s new ships to make a difference. Then to return to Pleyver, and take it, with a fleet at his back to enforce his claim …

  A sudden clamor outside his room—shouts, running feet, a babble of voices—broke into his concentration. The noise sounded like it was coming from the end of the corridor, where the nursery wing connected to the rest of the private apartments. Garen abandoned his sims and stepped into the hallway far enough to grab the arm of a hurrying maidservant in palace livery.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  “Oh, my lord Meteun!” The maidservant looked grateful for his appearance. “You’ll tell the Domina, won’t you, please?”

  “Tell her what?”

  “That the Consort has gone—and he’s taken the baby with him!”

  Now that it was too late to change her mind, Tillijen wondered if she’d done the right thing. She’d spent the night in a furnished room on the outskirts of An-Jemayne, watching news reports on the holoset—nothing so far about Warhammer’s return, which probably meant that Internal Security was sitting oh the story, and not much about the presence of Mage warships in-system, either. Crop failures in the grain-producing provinces of Cazdel and Elicond did make the news, although the reports blamed the problem on unseasonable weather rather than on what Tillijen suspected was a Mageworlds attack.

  Not that I blame them, she thought. The last thing we need is for somebody to mention Sapne in public.

  She hadn’t found anyone to share her opinions with, unfortunately. The redheaded man who had escorted her out of the Silver Slipper had gone off again on his own business after taking her to the furnished room. He had also locked the door behind him from the outside, which irritated Tillijen but didn’t surprise her very much. She’d strayed into the shadowy world of spies and security agents, that much was clear. Whether she would get out again, and how, was anybody’s guess.

  Shortly after dawn the redheaded man came back, looking worried. Tillijen stood up from the couch w
here she’d dozed off during the late-night financial commentary.

  “My lady,” he said. “Please excuse my earlier informality. My name is Meinuxet. I serve a servant of the Domina, with what faith and honor I am able to give.”

  “And this servant of the Domina is—?”

  “You’ll meet him shortly,” Meinuxet said. “In the meantime, because the Rolny has taken an interest in you, my master has sent me to look to your safety.”

  “Just what I needed,” Tillijen said; “to come to the attention of people in high places.”

  “Inevitable when you travel in the company of Her Dignity,” Meinuxet said. “But we have to go. Now.”

  “Go where?”

  The man didn’t answer, except to say “Please hurry” and turn off the holoset. She shrugged and followed him out of the room. A hovercar waited outside—the same one that Meinuxet had driven last night—and Tillijen once more found herself gestured toward the passenger seat.

  She obeyed, feeling more curiosity than apprehension. There’d been ample time during the night for Meinuxet or his associates to dispose of her, if such was their intent, but she had remained undisturbed. Moreover, she still had both her blaster and the knife inside her boot. Whatever was going on, she didn’t think that murder was part of it.

  The streets of An-Jemayne were crowded with workday-morning traffic. Meinuxet navigated the crush at a speed just slow enough to avoid the attention of Domestic Security—though still faster than Tillijen would have liked—and took the hovercar out through the suburbs to a small airfield.

  “If you’re taking me back to the ’Hammer,” she said, “I have to tell you that this is the long way around.”

  “I’m sorry, my lady,” the man said. “But it isn’t possible at present for me to return you to your ship.”

  “Ah. Where are we going, then?”

  The man didn’t answer. He led the way to one of the aircars, and a few minutes later they were flying north and west of the capital, into the highland forests. Tillijen gave up her attempts at conversation—the man was obviously too worried and abstracted to appreciate idle banter—and waited until the aircar settled to earth again a couple of hours later.