Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves

by Robert N. Charrette

  "You think he would?"

  "You're the one who thinks that if he had wanted you to know your mother's name, he would have told you. If he wants the name kept secret, don't you think he'll do what he can to prevent you from learning it?"

  "I suppose so."

  "You know so." She turned Mm around and kissed him. "Just as you know that this is the best place and the best time to do what you need to do. Why don't you think about it some more while I help Gentiano and Duwynt prepare the circle?"

  He turned to look out over the pure fairy-tale roofs and spires of the keep. The platform on which he stood was so far above the next highest that he might have been flying above it rather than gazing down from crenellated battlements. The sky above was full of stars, glowing in all their glory and whispering promises of magic, love, and hope from their eternal vantage point. They were a million eyes, watching, burning down through a clear sky that somehow defied the mists that shrouded the countryside around the keep. In the otherworld there was never a clear view for any distance, except in the sky. The land around the keep was shrouded in the mists of Faery, leaving the keep's spires an island of reality in a sea of dreams. There were hills and trees and rivers hidden out there, he knew; he'd walked and ridden over that land, smelled the fragrance of the trees, and felt the cold, bracing rush of the waters. Yet it seemed that the towers were the only substance in the midst of mirage. A matter of perception? Maybe. Maybe all of Faery was a matter of perception, a place of desire and dream fulfilled.

  His foremost desire now was to know his mother, and the fulfillment of that desire began with learning her name. He turned toward the ritual circle.

  Duwynt was taking his place in the north. Fraoch stood to the east, Gentiano opposite her. Once John took his place, each of them would occupy a cardinal point, places assigned according to personality, physical characteristics, and correspondences. The better to focus the energies.

  "Time may pass slowly here," Gentiano said, "but we haven't got forever."

  Gentiano was right. His friends were here to help him. There was no point and no courtesy in delaying. All that he hoped to gain would only be gained by completing the ritual.

  John entered the outer boundary of the circle and closed it behind him before moving to the center. The crystal was already there, resting in the bowl of a small brazier wrought of silver rods carved in the shapes of vines. Small piles of dirt lay under each of the brazier's tripod legs. He picked up the crystal and lifted it above his head, offering it to the view of the stars. Laying it down again, he drew the cleansed knife from his belt sheath and pricked his finger with the tip. Blood beaded. He let a drop fall on the crystal. Just one was needed to link him to it. He spoke the words to energize the link and retreated to his station in the south.

  John stood for a moment, gathering his wit and his will. This was to be a complicated sorcery, and he didn't want to make any mistakes. Mistakes were dangerous, and as ritual master, he would bear the brant of any backlash.

  He started slowly, as his tutors had taught him, gathering the energy and channeling it, using it to shift his perspective from the ordinary realm of Faery into the preternatural fields where the magic coursed. Around him the tower seemed to rise, carrying them up into the embrace of the stars, until the bulk of the keep was lost in the mist below, until it seemed that the rest of the universe might not exist at all.

  He looked at the object of their efforts. The crystal looked different, pallid and plain. Gone were the facets that had caught and held the subtleties of the light. Gone too were the intricate traceries of the silver mount, replaced by a dull, unattractive banding. He felt a desire to look elsewhere, to find something else of more interest, but the energy of the ritual was strong and he understood that he was experiencing a glamour. He put aside the urgings, but the crystal's uninteresting image remained. Try as he might, he could find no flaw in that perfect image.

  "It's well protected," he told his friends.

  "If there were no secret here, there would be no need for protection." Fraoch sounded excited. "Try harder, Jack."

  He did, but to no avail. Everywhere he pushed or probed, he was rebuffed. "I need more strength."

  "We're here to help, Jack," Faroch reminded him, reaching out.

  He took her hand, Gentiano's too. They took Duwynt's hands. The four of them linked, channeling their energy together, under John's direction, against the spell surrounding the crystal.

  It was still not enough to perturb the crystal's protections.

  Hell! There had to be some way to penetrate the wall of blankness. The featurelessness of the crystal's arcane image was not true. There was no way the thing could be as simple as that. He had seen it, touched it, felt it to be more textured. He knew what Bennett had given him and that gift was not what he saw lying in the brazier. He knew—

  He saw an answer. There was a way to get around the blankness. He'd found a flaw in the spell, and it lay in the nature of the crystal as it related to John. Bennett had given the crystal to him. Given it to him. That fact was the key to circumventing the spells that protected the crystal's secrets. Not all actions have a magical significance, Bennett had once told him. However many actions, perhaps most, could be made to have such significance. Having been given the object—freely—John had been given whatever secrets the object held. The one was the other. The crystal was his now.

  His!

  The crystal's pallid arcane image morphed into the brilliant, sharp-edged image he remembered. The web of its silver mounting shone with the fire of the stars.

  But no writing appeared. No answers sprang to his mind. No name—no name anywhere.

  It couldn't be a cheat! It couldn't!

  But wait. There was something there—faint, but there. A sense of presence, of person. No one he knew, but someone who was somehow connected to him.

  His mother?

  "Do you have it, Jack?"

  Fraoch's voice shocked John from his feeble grasp on the perception. His gaze slipped from the preternatural to the ordinary. What he saw beyond her was not part of the ritual they intended.

  Shahotain perched on one of the battlements. Cold starlight sparkled from the silver studs and buckles on his garments, and from his opalescent eyes. His pale hair writhed in the wind, looking like pallid flames haloing his head. He might have been the leather-clad biker ghost of vengeance from Interstate 666EM. But he wasn't—he was Shahotain, looking as grim and frightening as the first time John had seen him.

  He leaped down to the wooden floor of the tower and strode into the ritual circle. His presence, unplanned for and unanticipated, ruptured the spell. Energy crackled around the boundaries of the circle and arced, naked and uncontrolled, overhead. John, as master of the ritual, had the responsibility to contain those energies. He tried to hold them to the shape he had built in his mind. Gentiano's hand left his, then he felt Fraoch's slipping away.

  No!

  The backlash roared around him, blinding him to everything but the dazzling incandescence of energies struggling to be free. He wrestled them, fighting to channel them down into the grounding of the circle. Their heat burned on his skin. Fire coursed through his veins, threatening to consume him. At least losing touch with his friends freed his hands to make the gestures that would focus his mental struggle, help him rein in the energies. As he made the passes to shape the power, his hands twitched. Convulsed. He was losing it! His back spasmed. His head snapped back. He couldn't hold it! He—

  Was flying.

  Was—

  Hit the battlement. He screamed as stone rammed into his back, its edge slicing through his clothes and flesh, digging for bone and threatening to bisect him. For a moment he tottered over the brink, buffeted by the backlash's raging force, until his groping hand gripped a crenellation. He hauled himself back onto the tower floor, only to be smashed to his knees. Desperate, his head spinning, he gave up trying to hold the energies and lashed at them, trying to beat them into submissio
n. Somehow he managed to hammer the rampant energies into a shape he could comprehend. Slowly, painfully, he forced them back under control and dumped them into the arcane sumps anchoring the circle.

  Exhausted, he fell forward. His face smashed into the wooden floor, but he barely felt the splinters clawing at his cheek. He wanted to sleep, but he needed to know if his friends were all right. He found that he needed to open his eyes. It was hard. He wanted to ran away from the jack-hammers rattling on his skull. So much easier to sleep. But not yet—he needed to know what had happened. He forced himself up onto his elbows, but it still took all his will to compel his eyelids to rise.

  He saw Shahotain standing in the center of the circle, holding the crystal in his hand.

  "Morgana." Shahotain's tone was at once wistful, surprised, and spiteful. He looked at John. Smiled. "You lose. Little wonder he took pains to hide the truth. Though this lit-tle bit of information has cost you, it will cost him as well, take comfort in that."

  John didn't feel comforted at all. Yet all was not lost. fraoch stood near Shahotain, close enough to snatch away Hie crystal. "Fraoch," John pleaded. "The crystal."

  "Has told us more than we'd hoped," she said. She laughed at him. Laughed, and draped herself over Gentiano.

  "l ime for things to change," Gentiano said.

  John's head was pounding, his vision blurred. It couldn't he. It just couldn't. His friends ... He was concussed, that was it! Imagining things, having hallucinations. He blinked lo drive away the false images and nearly blacked out from l he pain. When he opened his eyes again, he still saw what he had seen before. Fraoch hung on Gentiano's arm, laughing at him. Gentiano laughed too.

  He felt like an idiot.

  "Come," Shahotain said to the elves at his side. "We have things to do."

  John wasn't sure if it was magic or his own flickering consciousness, but Shahotain, Fraoch, and Gentiano seemed to vanish. Duwynt remained, staring down at him.

  "Another twist for the poor, put-upon changeling." He shook his head. "Morgana. I wouldn't have guessed. I really thought you were his heir. You won't inherit now. With her as your mother, there is no place for you at the court, and all of Bennett's smooth talk cannot make it otherwise. Whatever his plans for you were, they are now in a shambles, but then,-so is your future. Was it worth it?"

  Then he was gone too.

  John rolled over and lay looking up at the traitorous, lying stars of Faery. He closed his eyes. He didn't want to see them anymore.

  He felt so stupid!

  He also felt sick. He rolled over just in time to throw up. He lay there for a long time afterward, afraid that he was going to do it again. When he felt reasonably sure that he wasn't, he got shakily to his feet. He looked at the blackened lines of the ritual circle and the twisted, half-slagged remains of the brazier. There's sure as hell no more reason to be up here. He staggered down the stairs.

  Everything was quiet. He met no one on the first landing, saw no one in the hallway. The same on the next landing and the one after that. Where was everyone?

  Not that he wanted to see anyone.

  His back called him a liar, telling him that he did need to see someone: a doctor. One of the bogies could fetch him a physician. If he could find one of the bogies. Even in the great hall there were none to be found. The keep was empty, hollow. As hollow as John felt. It suited him. But the keep wasn't a place for him anymore. He needed to get out, to get away.

  He went to the stables, ready to ride wherever his steed would take him, but his steed was gone too. None of the stalls were occupied. No surprise there.

  He'd been abandoned, deserted by them all.

  You won't inherit now. Bennett's promises were no more than trash. No place for you. John's life had been taken away from him again.

  He needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

  He headed across the courtyard, went out through the open gate. He lurched as he walked. With each step, he felt like he was tearing up his back, but he didn't care. All that was important to him was to be out of there.

  The hill sloped away from the keep. He liked the way it made his progress faster. He wanted to go faster still. The best he could manage was a stumbling quick-step. He didn't care, he was going places. The fog of Faery closed around him, but he could barely tell. His vision was grayed, his thoughts themselves fogged. Faster. Farther. That was what was important. He had to get away.

  Away.

  Far away.

  His foot caught on something. He didn't see what, because he wasn't seeing much of anything. Damn, he was in bad shape. He toppled forward, falling.

  He fell for a long time.

  CHAPTER 16

  Holger set an emulator loose in the system and abandoned the computer. He had what he was looking for, and his online probing had tripped enough alarms to activate the device's homing signal. The emulator would make it look as if lie were still probing for another ten minutes. If the Federal Security Agency lived up to its reputation—and he had no reason to suspect it wouldn't—their response team would soon be here. He had no intention of being present.

  He checked the pulse, breathing, and temperature of the FSA agent they had ambushed. Well within recovery parameters for a man of his size and weight. Holger estimated fifteen to twenty minutes before he started to come out from under the drag. Excellent timing. Linkwater knew his specialty.

  The agent would be facing a lot of questions, but if Holder's team had done their job right—and he had no reason to suspect they hadn't—the agent would have few substantive answers. The agency would know there had been a run against them, but the source and the reason would remain mysteries. Sufficient confusion would be generated to allow I lolger's team enough time to complete their mission. After that, the agency would know the team's target, but by then the matter would be decided.

  Linkwater was with the car, but Pankhurst was waiting outside, keeping watch. He seemed surprised to see Holger.

  "Get locked out?" he asked

  "No." Pankhurst continued to underestimate Holger. If the man's evaluation of enemies was as flawed, Pankhurst was a weak link in the team.

  "You can't be done."

  "As suspected, they had an active file on her." Holger tapped the side of his head where the memory chips were. "Downloaded a copy. It will take some time to crack the encryption, but we have their data." He signaled Linkwater to bring the car up to meet them. "Got something else that Magnus will want to know. Dark Glass is more advanced than intel believes. The Americans have specialists, quite a few. I saw indications that they have sleepers as well. It seems that our monopoly may well be ended."

  "Doesn't change this mission."

  "No, it doesn't."

  They retired to the safe house that they were based in to continue on with that mission. While they worked together to break the FSA encryption and uncover the connections to their target, Holger discovered to his surprise that he was a lot faster than Pankhurst. He knew the man's rating; it was as high as his. He hadn't expected that the encephalo-chip interface would make as big a difference as the doctors claimed, but it had. Holger liked having advantages. They kept you alive.

  It took them days, but they cracked the encryption, and they were able to study the FSA files on their target. The data were minimal—consistent with the FSA's official responses concerning the Department's inquiries—but they did confirm the target's location and associations. Her current domicile was in Providence, and she was working as a contracted researcher for Lowenstein Ryder Priestly & Associates, a relations firm associated with Metadynamics.

  Metadynamics. There were those, Linkwater among them, who said that the megacorporation was, for all practical purposes, the government of this country. Holger didn't believe that, but he was aware that ties between Metadynamics and the government were very strong indeed. And during his recent browse through the FSA database he had not missed the damning links between Metadynamics and Project Dark Glass. What puzzled him was th
at they found no substantive links between the target and Dark Glass. It was curious that the FSA, so eagerly building their own teams of specialists, did not seem to know what their allies harbored. Pankhurst decided that the recovered files must be plants, intended to he found by anyone penetrating FSA security, and that the real files had been buried too deep for Holger to uncover. Holger had been there, and knew better. Strange though it seemed, they were working with the real files. FSA just did not know the value of the target.

  But Holger and his team knew. Now, with the Metadynamics connection exposed, they had confirmed that she posed a security threat. They argued over the extent of that threat, but they were in agreement on one point: she must be removed from Metadynamics's sphere of influence. If the target showed any signs of resistance, they would abandon the recovery effort and shift to sanction. Specialists were too unpredictable, loo dangerous. Elimination was the safest, surest course, but they were bound to at least attempt the recovery.

  Two weeks of surveillance and selected database checks offered them an opportunity. The target had become a regular customer of V. Price, Antiquarian Bookseller. Holger was surprised that any merchant could make a living selling actual physical books and nothing else, but Pankhurst's check revealed no other sources of income. Those checks also showed that the target regularly ordered books and invariably made the pickups in person. She currently had several volumes on order. After checking out the location of V. Price and determining its suitability to their needs, they tapped into V. Price's dataline and set a flag to report the arrival of the target's next order. Holger filed his plan and got approval from Magnus.

  They waited.

  The day came. Their target walked down Westminster Street through the chill late afternoon shadows. She wore a business suit not out of place on the streets at that hour, though it would be soon. She might have been any suit conducting one more errand at the close of play, except for the walking stick she carried. That was an odd touch, reminding Holger of another time.

  Hikes in the hills of England. Cloudy skies, cool breezes.