[Mageworlds 5] - The Long Hunt

by Debra Doyle

  Jens didn't have time to stand up. He scrambled backward like an upside-down mudspider, pushing himself along with his hands and feet, shoving away from the blow as it descended.

  Then another light appeared, white against the white light from the stranger's staff, shining from somewhere above and behind Jens's vantage point on the ground. He twisted his head back to look for the source.

  Guislen stood at the top of the ship's ramp with a ball of dazzling light in his upraised hand.

  "This is not the place," Guislen called to the intruder. "This is not the time. But if you want to fight me… do it here, and do it now!"

  Jens looked back at the stranger. The brilliant light that Guislen had summoned illuminated what Jens had glimpsed briefly within the man's hood a few seconds before: a skeletal face with glittering deep-set eyes. What features that remained to it were contorted by loathing, and the stranger raised an arm to shield himself from Guislen's light.

  At that moment, Jens kicked out and upward with both feet, supporting himself on his arms and shoulders. His heels smashed into the stranger's midsection.

  But instead of the solid thud of boot leather on flesh, Jens felt his legs passing all the way through the other's body. A numbing cold spread through him at the contact, his legs went limp, and he collapsed onto his back in the leafmould of the forest floor. In the same instant, the stranger vanished.

  A few seconds later, Faral arrived at the run, and Miza with him. "What the hell was that thing?" Miza asked, and Faral said, "I hit him; I know I hit him."

  "I don't know what it was," said Jens. "Help me up, coz; when I touched it I went cold all over."

  "Are you all right?" Faral asked as he reached down to give Jens a hand.

  Jens's teeth were chattering. "I hope so."

  His rescuer came up to them at a steadier pace. The glow in Guislen's hand was dimmer now, not the blazing white it had been, and by the time he reached them it had died away entirely.

  "The ship was named Inner Light," he said, as if nothing untoward had happened. "She was a freetrader from Mandeyn. I believe the interior is livable, or can be made so.

  "But we have much to do if we are to lift tonight."

  Mael Taleion's Arrow-through-the-Doorway was a smaller ship than any of those to which Klea was accustomed. Mael had shown a rather old-fashioned courtesy, insisting that she take the single cabin for her own use while he slept on the bridge. They took their meals together, though, in the Arrow's galley, which had a table and benches large enough for two, and which doubled perforce as the common room. As the days of the transit to Khesat passed, she found herself often in conversation with Mael over cha'a or uffa and the plates of small fried breads that he made to supplement the usual space rations.

  "Have you felt anything odd lately?" he asked her one ship's-morning.

  Klea looked at him uneasily. "What do you mean, 'odd'?"

  "What I said. Feelings, dreams, premonitions, ripples in the currents of time and space, unusual shadowings to the lines of life." He frowned. "Perhaps 'odd' is not the word. Do you Adepts even have a word for it—for the sense that something is amiss with the weaving of the universe?"

  She thought about the question for a while. Mael did not press her for the answer. Like most of the Adepts she'd known in her life, the Magelord also had the ability to wait quietly, without impatience.

  "Not all have the same gifts," she said. "But those Adepts who have an awareness of such things can feel it when the natural flow of the currents of Power has been disturbed." She picked up a scrap of fried bread and turned it over in her fingers. Mael had dusted the fritters with powdered sugar this morning, making her think for the first time in years of the sweet lacebreads her grandmother had made, back when Klea was very young. "The only problem is, to most of us Magework feels exactly the same way."

  Mael's dark brows rose. "Can your people, then, not recognize intent?"

  "How?"

  "You, at least, were present at the end of the great working that closed the rift between the two sides of the Gap Between. You should be able to tell from that alone the difference between good Magery and ill."

  "Hardly," said Klea. She gave a nervous half-laugh. "Most of what I remember about that day is tied up with what happened to Errec Ransome. And that—to the shame of the Guild, that wasn't Magework at all."

  "Ransome was a powerful disturber of the true weaving," Mael agreed. "And strong in ill will. My First tells me he died that day, in the Void—which is bad, it leaves the eiran loose and confused."

  Klea stood up from the galley table. The plate of fritters was empty now, she took it and slid it into an empty slot in the cleaning unit. Some uffa remained in the hotpot; she brought the pot over to the table and refilled both mugs. Then she carried the hotpot back to its niche and stood there looking at it.

  "Your First doesn't know the half of it," she said without turning back around. "She wasn't there at the time. But I was."

  Jens led the way back up the ramp into the ship. To him, the air inside smelled clean by comparison with what it had been like when the hatch first opened, but Miza made a face as they stepped inside, and Faral said, "Pfaugh!"

  "You should have been in here before," Jens said. "This is nothing."

  No one mentioned the thing that had attacked them. It was clear—to Jens, anyhow—that without Guislen's intervention they would have been dead, or something even worse than dead; and if Guislen said that they needed to lift before morning, he'd bought the right to have his words listened to. Faral seemed to have come grudgingly to the same conclusion, though his expression remained dark, and Miza was regarding both Guislen and Jens himself with frank mistrust.

  "You're the one who's going to lift the ship," Jens said to her. "If you don't think you can do it, we'll have to go back to the Dusty."

  She shook her head hard enough that her tail of red hair whipped against her shoulders. "With that—that thing loose out there in the forest? I'll take my chances on board here with a Class B pleasure craft license, thank you."

  *That was a dirty move, foster-brother,* growled Faral in Trade-talk.

  *I know that. Now shut up.* Jens turned back to address Guislen. "Where are the switches for the light panels?"

  "Let's get the power systems fully operational first," Guislen said. "Come."

  Together the four of them made their way up the ladders to the engineering spaces. The blank monitor screens now glowed faintly, and the gauges and meters were in their low-powered standby mode. One by one, under Guislen's direction, Jens and Faral and Miza brought the systems all back on line. At the last, with a blaze that made Jens flinch and cover his eyes, the overhead light panels came on at full intensity.

  "That's done," he said, taking his hand down again after a few seconds. "Let's finish checking out the ship."

  They continued on up to the top of the craft, where the bulkheads were noticeably slanted as the hull tapered to an airframe point. A sliding airtight door opened at a touch of the actuator switch. The cockpit lay directly ahead. Small and cramped, its forward viewscreen a narrow slit, the compartment held only two seats with no room for a third. Guislen stepped inside and glanced back at Miza.

  She hesitated in the doorway, looking from Faral to Jens as if expecting some kind of guidance.

  *This was all your idea,* Faral said to Jens under his breath. *You set her up for it—you talk to her.*

  Jens ignored him. "Miza," he said. "Now that you've seen what we've got, do you think you can handle it?"

  "I don't know," she said. "Some of the instruments look familiar, but a lot more of them don't. I don't know if I can even lift without full instrumentation, and I sure don't see any of that here—at least not the kind I learned on. I can't even read the labels."

  "I can," Guislen said. "Don't worry about the lift-off; I'll talk you through it."

  "You're a pilot?" Faral asked.

  "No, I'm a navigator," Guislen said. "But I cross-trained in pilot
ing and engineering both, back when I worked the spacelanes. In dangerous times everyone in the crew has to be able to handle any position at a moment's notice."

  Miza looked at him uneasily. "When was that?"

  "A long time ago… but the Light's navicomp was old even then. It's going to take us at least ten hours, Standard, to set up a valid course."

  "You sound like we've got an alternative," said Jens.

  "We do. There should be coursebooks on board for the common runs like Sapne-to-Khesat. Look in the drawer under the main console on the navigator's side."

  "There should be what?" Jens said, but Miza had already crossed over to the drawer and pulled it open. Inside was a stack of thin, slablike objects—like text readers, but bulkier, with cords and plugs dangling from the ends.

  "Coursebooks," Miza said. "We learned about them in class. But the only one I ever saw was an antique that Huool was selling to a museum." She lifted out first one slab and then another. " 'Suivi In-System'… 'Ilarna to Galcen South Polar'… I can't even recognize the alphabet on this one… here we go. 'Sapne and Khesatan Farspace.' "

  Guislen looked pleased. "That should be good enough to get us within close visual range of Khesat's star," he said. "From there, even the Light's navicomps will be capable of doing the rest."

  Klea replaced the hotpot in its niche and came back to the table. She sat down opposite Mael and drew a long breath before she spoke.

  "There were four of us," she said. "Owen Rosselin-Metadi, his brother, his sister, and me. We brought back the Domina Perada from the Void. We ended a war. And we killed Errec Ran some."

  Mael looked grave. "My old teacher," he said, "spoke of Ransome as one who should not be killed without breaking him first, lest he fail to notice that he was dead."

  "I don't know how we could have broken him. Killing him was hard enough."

  "Tell me how it happened," said Mael. "I begin to think that it may be more important than you know."

  "We were all there," she began slowly. "In the Void. I was the odd one of the lot; Ransome wanted a hostage for his escape, or he wouldn't have bothered with me in the first place. As far as he was concerned, I was nothing—a Nammerinish tart with no training and a dubious past—and once he had me, he barely remembered I was there.

  "But I was the one who struck him first."

  Klea gazed into the crimson depths of her mug of uffa for a time, remembering. The blow had driven Errec Ransome down to his knees, there in the room his mind had constructed for a refuge in the trackless Void. Maybe combat in the Void was only symbol and metaphor, as the instructors at the Retreat would have it, but her staff had vibrated against the palms of her hands like a live thing when the wood smashed against Ransome's skull.

  "He should have died when I hit him," she said finally. "And Owen's sister shot him twice before he hit the ground. All that happened, though, was that everything turned into fog. And Ransome was still there.

  "So in the end Owen had to fight him. Master against student—'after the way of the Mages,' Ransome said."

  "He spoke from ignorance," said Mael. "Such things are not done in anger, and never in the Void."

  "I wouldn't know. But it doesn't matter, because Owen wasn't the one who killed him. It was the older brother, Ari— the one who married Mistress Hyfid. He was a big man—"

  "I've met him," said Mael. "I know."

  "—and he walked into the middle of the duel and picked up Errec Ransome in both hands and snapped him across his knee like a stick."

  Klea stopped talking. Mael sat waiting, patiently as always, until she drew another deep breath and went on.

  "Ransome was dead then; I'm sure of it. What we saw next was an illusion, a memory given shape by the Void… Errec Ransome, as the Domina Perada knew him when they both were young."

  "Did it speak?" Mael's eyes were dark with worry. "And did you answer it?"

  "Oh, yes." Klea shivered, remembering how the phantom had stretched out a hand to the Domina—"Have I wronged you, Perada? What can I do to make things right?"—and then had let it fall. "It spoke. And the Domina answered. She called him a wanderer, and gave him leave to go."

  Mael made an impatient noise. "Does no one in the Adept-worlds understand the Void at all? Not even an unranked Circle-Mage would think of saying a thing like that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "A wanderer she called him," said Mael. "And a wanderer he has become. He goes now to Khesat, and I… I am summoned to meet him there."

  " 'Patience is all very well,' " said the young man in a servant's free-day livery. From the tone of his voice, he was quoting the words of another. " 'You have counseled patience. We have been more than patient. But time grows short, and the Worthy you promised us has not appeared.' "

  "Whoa—they were getting into it," said the woman who sat beside him on the riverbank. "What did my lord of Redonti say to that?"

  The young man shrugged. "What could he say? 'The Worthy will appear, I promise you'—but personally, I doubt it.' "

  "That entire cabal is cutting things too fine," said the woman. "The Manches already have their worthy, and so do the Barbicans. And let's not forget the Roundels. They don't have just one Worthy—their public one—or even two Worthies—counting their secret candidate that they intend everyone to know about. They have three Worthies, if we include that pitiful creature living in their pockets whom they actually hope to see ascend to the Jade Eminence."

  "The upshot of the whole argument," said the young man, "was that they're going to go find some other poor fool to carry their banner. I was out of the room fetching a bottle of the Erilani vintage when they named the man, but figuring out who they lighted on shouldn't be a problem."

  The woman narrowed her eyes. "There's something else that you aren't telling me."

  "I was saving the best for last. The Exalted of Tanavral still backs his missing man. Which meant that the meeting grew rancorous—as far as such dignified gentlemen lower themselves to rancor."

  The woman tore a small piece of bread from the roll she held in her hand and tossed it to the wildlife which teemed on the waterbank. On the river itself, winding through downtown Ilsefret, colorful pleasure boats with scarlet and blue sails flitted before the light autumn breeze.

  "With your position in the household of Caridal Fere," the young man went on after the silence had stretched out too long, "you'll be in a poor position if someone decides to cry 'treachery.' "

  "We have to tell Master Pariken," she said.

  "Important as this is, maybe we should bypass the Guildmaster and send a notice all the way up to Master Rosselin-Metadi."

  The woman frowned. "Pariken says that he sent one messenger already."

  "Maybe Master Pariken is playing his own game."

  "If we're unable to trust one another at our level, we are lost. Unlike the Guildmaster, you and I have seen enough of the future to know that a crisis is drawing near, and one without favorable result. Unless some kind of action—"

  "—is taken," finished the man. "Actions of the kind that some people contemplate would make us worse than our enemies."

  "Which is why"—the woman smiled sweetly—"we will not take that action, but rather watch in outward horror while others perform tasks which are not far removed from our needs.

  "Don't fret," she added. "You won't be called on to do anything more than your conscience can stand."

  "Sometimes just carrying Kasander's slippers is more than my conscience can stand. What an immoral—"

  "Don't even think it," the woman said. She stood up and brushed off her skirt. "I'll meet you again next LastDay at the usual place."

  They parted beneath the bright spires of central Ilsefret, and the man went back to the servants' quarters beneath the house of the Exalted of Tanavral.

  A ringing bell greeted him almost as soon as he had entered. He let his free-day livery fall to the floor, and pulled on his servitor's robe as he dashed for the stairs. One tread before the top
he paused, took a breath, and stepped forward and out, standing like a carven thing until he saw where his master waited. There was Kasander, over by the balcony. The young man walked slowly over.

  When he got to the customary distance of three paces, he paused and bowed his head.

  "Fetch my slippers," the Exalted said. "We must go visiting."

  "May one be so bold?" the man asked of the air beside the Exalted's head.

  "To the residence of the Republic's negotiator," the Exalted said. "Bring two bottles of claret. Good, but not great, vintages. You may choose which ones."

  A gift chosen by a servant, the young man thought. The insult direct. Maybe the timetable had moved up.

  Faral didn't much care for the idea of leaving Miza alone in the Light's cockpit with the enigmatic Guislen, but as long as his cousin was determined to leave Sapne in this ship and no other, he didn't seem to have a choice. Something strange was going on—something that went beyond even oracular old ladies and hooded Adepts with murderous intentions.

  If Jens knew what the problem was, however, he wasn't telling. He accompanied Faral on his inspection of the rest of the starship, and never once mentioned either Guislen or the strange Adept. He and Faral worked their way through all the Light's compartments one at a time—most of the spaces they found had obvious uses, but one or two proved utterly baffling. Faral supposed it took being brought up on shipboard to recognize them.

  "What I'm worried about," he said, "is food and water. If the engines go we're dead in a second. But thirst—that's a nasty way to die."

  "You're certainly cheerful tonight," said Jens. "Look over here. I think I've found the galley."

  A closer inspection proved that he was right. The closet-sized nook held a washer and a cook-set, and dinnerware stacked for lift-off in secured trays. Not surprisingly, the fresh-provisions locker had failed to remain cold under standby power, and the meat and vegetables inside had first rotted and then dried into a foul-smelling powder. Jens wrinkled his nose.