‘Yes, somehow the Valheru are still involved in all this.’
Magnus was also silent for a while. Then he said, ‘We need more information.’
‘Obviously,’ said Pug with a fatherly smile. ‘So many times I thought we were passed this or that problem, only to have it reassert itself in a different form. There is some hidden entity behind all of this, perhaps going back as far as the creation of the Lifestone by the Valheru.’
‘What?’
Pug laughed. ‘If I knew, it wouldn’t be a mystery.’
‘You’re tired,’ said Magnus. ‘Perhaps we should cease examining the matrix until tomorrow?’
‘The sun just set, we can work another-’
Suddenly they both felt a flash of very familiar energy. Magnus rose from his cushions and his eyes widened in amazement. ‘Mother …?’
Pug was speechless. Seemingly out of the air his dead wife appeared, now fully restored to life. It was impossible. He had seen her die, her neck torn open by a demon’s jaws, her life spilling on the ground before he could react. He had stood silently by, his heart breaking, as Miranda and their son Caleb and his wife Marie, or what had been left of their mortal remains, had been consigned to a funeral pyre. Now she stood before him as he remembered her. He was stunned, unable to move or otherwise react.
As Miranda started to speak, ‘I’m not-’ Magnus drew back his hand and began a spell.
‘That’s not Mother!’ he shouted, and cast a bolt of purple energy that would stun and imprison her.
Except that Miranda held up both hands and the purple energy seemed to wash around her like wine splashing over a bubble of glass. Globules of energy spun off like spray to dissipate into the air. When the blast finished, Miranda flicked her hands as if shaking water off of them and said, ‘I taught you that spell, Magnus! When you were seven, trying to catch that wild kitten you wanted as a pet. Remember what happened? She scratched you until you let her go!’
The voice was his mother’s, the memory was hers, but the scent of her magic was wrong. Magnus had an ability both his parents lacked, to sense the author of magic if he or she was known to him, a lingering ‘scent’ as he thought of it, and while everything else seemed to be his mother returned from death, that scent was not only wrong, it felt inhuman.
‘What are you?’ Magnus asked hoarsely while Pug stood rooted, motionless, unable apparently to speak.
‘I’ll tell you everything,’ Miranda said, tears welling up and running down her face as she stood before the two people she loved more than life itself. ‘Everything,’ she repeated. ‘But first … I have every memory and feeling … I … I have missed you both so terribly.’ Now crying openly, she said, ‘And I miss Caleb so very much.’
Pug could barely restrain himself from crying as well. His eyes glistened as he slowly walked over to the demon-turned-human and stood before her. She whispered his name, barely able to speak, and he reached out and touched her cheek, then he slowly reached out and gathered her into his arms.
Magnus watched, his face a mask as he wrestled with equally powerful feelings. He knew in his mind this was not his mother, yet in his chest he felt powerful feelings rising and threatening to overwhelm him.
The being that appeared to be his mother sobbed uncontrollably, saying ‘I’m so sorry,’ over and over again.
They stood in silent tableau for a full minute, then Miranda stepped back, still holding Pug’s hands. ‘It’s a … difficult story to tell.’ She almost added ‘my love,’ but as much as she longed to express feelings, she knew those feelings were not hers, but those of a dead woman who meant the world to these two men.
She let go of his hands and looked at Magnus, but his expression was unreadable. ‘I am not your mother … but I am,’ she added as she saw his face tighten ever so slightly in a signal that he was growing angry, something few people would notice but a mother did. She held up her hand. ‘Keep your temper, Magnus. You were always slow to anger, but when you did you always reacted too harshly. What did I tell you when you hurt those boys bullying Caleb?’
‘Stop it!’ he shouted, colour rising in his pale cheeks and his eyes narrowing. ‘You didn’t tell me anything. My mother did, and she is dead! I saw her die! I lifted her body onto a funeral pyre and saw my father light it! My mother was ash before my eyes!’
‘Stop. You’re right. I’m not your mother. But I do remember everything as if I lived it.’ She looked around, wiping tears from her face and said, ‘Tea?’
Pug spoke, his voice full of emotion. ‘Yes.’
‘May I have a cup?’
He motioned for her to sit down, then poured a cup of tea and joined her.
‘Where to begin?’ she said after she had taken a sip. She glanced around. ‘Before I start, where are we?’
Pug explained about the Pantathians and after he finished, she said, ‘My story is stranger, but only by a little. Peaceful Pantathians? That’s … unexpected.’
‘As are you,’ Magnus said coldly. ‘How did you come to be this seemingly perfect duplicate for my mother?’
‘A long story. Perhaps you’d care to sit?’
He shook his head and she smiled. ‘Stubborn as always.’ Before he could object, she turned to Pug and said, ‘Remember what you spoke of to me about the seeming resurrection of my father as a Dasati?’
Pug’s eyes widened and he said, ‘Ban-ath?’
She nodded. ‘It is my and Nakor’s best guess.’
‘Nakor!’ said Pug and Magnus simultaneously.
‘He’s here, too?’ asked Pug.
‘He’s back at home with Sandreena and Amirantha, discussing as much of demon lore as he can.’
Suddenly Magnus’s suspicion and anger were replaced by curiosity. ‘How did you both come back from the dead? Nakor died on another world, another plane of reality.’
She took a deep breath, then said, ‘We come from the Fifth Realm, or Circle, the demon realm of the lower hell, as some call it.’
‘You’re a demon?’ asked Magnus, his suspicion and anger returning two-fold.
She nodded. ‘Let me begin by telling you about the Fifth Circle.’
Pug gazed at the perfect image of the woman he had loved and lost, his emotions churning and roiling in ways that confounded and alarmed him. He was torn equally between a desire to take this creature into his arms, to return to the safest place he had ever experienced, the bonding of his own soul’s with another, and the desire to push her away, to drive her from his sight.
‘The old order in the demon realm is shattered,’ Miranda said, glancing at him. ‘The first kingdoms are destroyed, consumed by a void that is slowly expanding to devour that entire reality.’
‘Void?’ asked Pug, shifting his focus to what she was saying instead of who she was.
‘I believe it is the Dread, Pug.’
‘Why?’
‘It bears a strong resemblance to what you two saw with Nakor in the Te-Karana’s sacrificial pit on Omadrabar, that growing monstrosity that devours everything before it.’
Pug sighed. ‘It makes sense. There wouldn’t be only one Dreadlord trying to enter the higher realms.’ He looked at Miranda, but this time his expression was thoughtful rather than wonder-struck. ‘Kalkin once told me there had been many attempts in many places by the Dread to cross the void into our realm. He showed me destruction on an unimaginable scale.’
‘I don’t know what’s become of the demon realm after I left,’ said Miranda.
‘Your story,’ said Magnus quietly.
She took a deep breath, composing herself. ‘My earliest memories are of my mother, cradling me as she fed me bits of bloody flesh while the world she knew was falling apart around her,’ she began.
For nearly an hour Miranda told the story of her evolution as Child and being accompanied on that journey by Belog. When she had finished Pug and Magnus were both silent for a long moment, then Magnus said, ‘In all of this, do you have any sense why?’
Miranda loo
ked honestly helpless. ‘Pug, you’ve had more dealings with Ban-ath than any mortal. His games, his mysteries, his misdirection, and lies — but there was always a purpose behind them. I have no idea specifically why he’s done this thing to Nakor and me.’
‘One can only speculate,’ answered Pug, forcing himself to a calmness he didn’t feel. ‘I suspect that it starts and ends with the survival of our world. That has always been the ultimate goal, apparently. Beyond that I would only be speculating.’
Magnus said, ‘There are only two things I can think of that make sense of any of this. Either you are here to provide Father with some intelligence, some useful data he lacks, or you are here because you possess skills he and I together lack.’
Miranda thought about this. ‘We can quibble over each other’s skills. I think I’m probably still better at locating distant objects and retrieving them, because I doubt you’ve spent any time practising that while I … was away.’
Magnus’s expression remained calm, but she could sense his discomfort at that statement.
‘And I know I can still transport myself and others better than you,’ she said to Pug. ‘But you possess a wider range of abilities than either one of us. So, if it’s not something overt and obvious, what is it?’
‘Perspective,’ said Magnus.
Pug nodded. ‘You … my wife was a remarkable talent. As you observe, she was my superior in several crafts of magic, but you bring all her skills and experiences coupled with a background alien beyond imagining to her.’ He looked down for a moment as if what he was saying was difficult. ‘I have no doubt should somehow the situation be reversed and she found herself with the growing memories of Child within her, she would have-’
‘I’d have walled them off somehow, kept them from asserting control or domination!’
‘Yes,’ said Pug.
‘Kalkin — Ban-ath — picked Child because despite her prodigious strength, she was naive and unformed. Her personality lacked years of experience and a profound sense of self that would have given her the tools to prevent your personality from dominating.’
Miranda smiled slightly at Magnus’s suggestion that ‘she’ was his mother, somehow.
‘Yet,’ said Pug, ‘there is some component within that is unique to Child, or at least to a demon’s view of things, that we need.’
‘What about Nakor?’ asked Miranda. ‘He certainly was no inexperienced babe.’
Magnus let out a slow breath, as if letting go of his anger at this manifestation of his mother as some sort of mockery and now looked on it as something it was critical he understand. ‘But you intimated this Belog was some sort of academic, correct?’
‘An archivist, yes.’
‘A sheltered existence, was my impression of what you described,’ said Magnus, ‘and not very powerful.’
‘Yes, Dahun kept power and knowledge separate.’
‘At some future time, perhaps we can take advantage of your unique experiencee …’ He looked at the perfect reconstruction of his wife and said, ‘What should I call you?’
With a wry expression he had come to know too well, she said, ‘No matter how much it distresses Magnus, I think of myself as Miranda. Besides, the last person to call Miranda “Child” was my mother and you know how I felt about that bitch.’
Magnus laughed. ‘That was unexpected.’ Then he let out a slow breath. ‘Then again, perhaps it wasn’t. I won’t call you “Mother” but I will use Miranda.’
‘Fair enough,’ she replied. ‘And I will refrain from addressing you as “son”.’
Now he tried hard not to laugh. ‘Mother only called me “son” when she was lecturing me on my shortcomings.’ He mimicked her tone and said, ‘“Son, if I have to talk to your father about this …”’
Pug stood up. ‘This is going to be difficult for all of us, for some time, I think, but we can all agree that it was not by mere whim that Kalkin undertook such a transformation. In all this there is a constant: Kalkin breaks rules but he breaks them carefully. He could, I suspect, sit down and just tell us all what we’re doing here, but there is a reason he doesn’t. I suspect he’s constrained in certain ways we can hardly understand, but that being said, he has brought the three of us together at this time to contend with something that endangers our world, and if as we all suspect, it is a coming onslaught by the Dread, then we must seek to understand as much as we can of the risk and endeavour to prepare for it as best we can.’
‘I suggest we fetch Nakor-’ said Magnus and suddenly Miranda was gone.
‘She’s a lot like your mother,’ said Pug quietly.
A moment later Miranda was back with one hand on the arm of Nakor, and Magnus said, ‘She’s exactly like Mother.’
Nakor grinned and said, ‘Pug, Magnus!’ He vigorously shook each man’s hand. ‘It is so wonderful to see you again, for the first time!’
Even Magnus could not help but laugh.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mysteries
Jim shouted.
‘Land ho!’ He had been detailed to the day watch and just happened to be in the forward rigging when the first smudge on the horizon indicated that their destination was in sight. With a sharp wind and a following tide, they would be landing in Roldem within three hours at this rate.
He had been frantically trying to gather as much information as possible before the King’s journey to Roldem to meet with the Emperor of Kesh. The meeting was unprecedented and given recent history, Jim had no doubt that magic was involved in the decision. No monarch of Kesh had ever left the Overn Deep, let alone ventured beyond the borders to visit a foreign ruler. From the Keshian perspective they were all social inferiors.
On the other hand, Sezioti was an unusual emperor by Keshian Trueblood standards, being a scholar rather than a hunter. Hunting was the foundation of Trueblood culture, back to the dawn of time when the lion-hunters and crocodile-hunters of the Overn Deep shore roamed, a dream of empire not even within their minds.
If Jim had been unconvinced before about the prevalent use of magic to destroy the various intelligence services, subvert nobles to treason, and otherwise totally ruin his life, this was the ultimate proof. For even if the Emperor was untouched by magic, his advisors and many within the Gallery of Lords and Masters must have been influenced for this massive change in Keshian foreign policy to take place.
He had undertaken to send a message to Pug, though the gods only knew how long it would take to reach him given the current lack of magical transport.
When news had come that the King was entertaining the Princess of Roldem, Jim began using his contacts at the palace to gather intelligence as best he could. He debated returning in his role of Lord Jamison, but decided against it. His grandfather’s return to health showed that whatever plan Sir William Alcorn had which required the negation of the Duke’s influence, it was tied to this peace negotiation in Roldem.
Anne had proven invaluable in getting what information she could from the palace. Princess Stephane was well, in the company of two young men whom Jim knew would die to protect her. She had said that King Gregory had given Stephane a state welcome, despite the odd circumstances of her arrival, and by some adroit eavesdropping, Anne had pieced together most of what had happened in Roldem which had caused the Princess to flee.
So Jim decided if he couldn’t openly travel as part of the King’s entourage, he would travel on the same ship as a common sailor. His only problem was that the King and his guests travelled on a Royal Navy ship, and passing as one of the crew was nearly impossible. He had almost been caught twice, once sneaking into the palace and again as he left, but when he finally was back at the docks he had in his possession a very convincing transfer order signed by an admiral whose signature Jim had forged more than a dozen times.
So, Able Seaman Tuckford Jones had reported to the Royal Gallant hours before she set sail. Jim knew enough both about common sailors’ duties and military protocol that he managed to fit in, just about.
He had adroitly avoided the rare occasion when he might be recognized by Hal or Ty, and now he was mere hours away from resuming his position as head of the Isles’ intelligence apparatus. And that meant finding Lady Franciezka Sorboz. He found himself surprisingly anxious to find her, and was forced to admit to himself that he was probably in love for the first time in his life. He found it ironic that she was probably the one women he had bedded he couldn’t have if he wished. He had always wondered what it was about women that made him attractive; the more of a bastard he was, the more they wanted him. Franciezka was the exception: she was in her own way as big a ‘bastard’ as he was. Perhaps that was what drew him; she was the only woman who could truly understand him for what he was. Moreover, he was oddly taken by the notion that his most passionate lover was also a woman who could probably murder him with her bare hands should the need arise. With a rueful shake of his head, he considered his life a very odd one, indeed.
He scampered down the ratlines and reached the deck. Moving with purpose always saved him from being put to an unwelcome task by one of the mates. As sailors went, Jim was neither a malingerer nor a volunteer. He stood his watch quietly, competently, and without complaint. He was always affable with the other crew on his watch, but made no close friends or bitter enemies. He worked diligently at being as nondescript as possible and usually succeeded.
Jim made his way to the companionway down to the lower deck and then into the crews quarters. He had little by way of personal belongings, so he threw together his kit quickly. A small bag he could throw over his shoulders, and the only important thing within was a pair of low-cut boots he could don when he reached the shore. Jim’s impersonation of a sailor was perfect in all details, save one: he didn’t spend enough time out of boots to develop the heavy calluses on his feet that made walking barefoot over cobbles tolerable.
He needed to find Franciezka. He had a good idea where to look, but that was no guarantee he would find her. But unlike the Isles, he had few eyes and ears in Roldem. Still, standing around and doing nothing was not his best choice, so he began to plot.
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