[Mageworlds 5] - The Long Hunt

by Debra Doyle

  "I recall the Adepts of Ophel," Mael said. He .pushed himself up into a sitting position. "They were… interesting."

  Klea tightened her lips briefly. "They were that," she said. "Master Owen will be interested indeed, I assure you. That is one planet, and this another. Shall I attempt to see what it is the Adepts of Khesat are doing?"

  "If you feel it will do any good," Mael said. "But tell me: when you Adepts look for such things, do you follow the lines of life and luck?"

  "Luck doesn't exist," Klea said. "Which makes following it difficult."

  "We will not debate the details," Mael said. "Do you see with other eyes, and go to other places, when you meditate?"

  "I go there in fact," Klea said, "and the things that I see are real."

  Mael nodded wearily. "As you say." He stood, swayed, and walked toward the door. "Shall we go?"

  "I'll go," Klea said. "You stay here and rest." She hefted her staff, then slung it across her back on its leather cord. "Wait for me here. If I don't return in a reasonable amount of time… well, perhaps I was detained."

  She opened the door, and stepped through before Mael could say anything more. Outside, she found the morning streets oddly subdued. A thrill was in the air, as of thousands of voices whispering a long way away. What the news was, she had no idea.

  Sooner or later, she knew she would find out. First she had to discover what the Adepts were doing on Khesat, and where—if not in their own Guildhouse—they were doing it.

  She had seen no one who carried the staff so far during her time on-planet. That was not unexpected. By all accounts Adepts were not numerous here on Khesat, or highly placed. And Owen had said he'd not heard much from them in a long time.

  Only Mages changed the course of events by altering the universe. Adepts found the way the universe was going and went with it. Klea opened herself to the universe, trusting that the same forces which had put her on the liner to Ophel would direct her now in the way that she needed to go. She wandered idly, as the fit took her or the flow of pedestrians moved her, until she found herself at the foot of the Golden Tower.

  "Ho, m'lady," said a child—one not out with a nanny or keeper, and therefore of a different order than the tidily dressed tots who rode their cabriolets through the district. "Be here tomorrow?"

  He spoke in Galcenian, she thought; or perhaps he spoke in Khesatan and she understood him, even though she didn't have the language. A tingling sensation spread up her back: This is significant. I must mark it, and learn its meaning.

  "I believe I will be here," she said. "Why?"

  "This is yours," the child replied, reaching into a basket and withdrawing a pale-blue envelope. "Cry 'huzzah' and there's more to come, to them's got the seal."

  An elaborate red-wax seal did indeed grace the envelope, when Klea accepted it. She walked on, and turned the corner before deciding to open the billet. When she did so, her eyes got large. The envelope held a sizable amount of nontraceable hard-asset credit, payable to "bearer," non-rescindable.

  "Lords of Life," Klea said. "I'd be tempted to shout 'huzzah' for that, if I knew what I was applauding for."

  The road she followed was taking her close to the Palace of the Jade Eminence, within the center of downtown Ilsefret. She placed the envelope in an inner pocket of her tunic, then stood briefly against a wall and effaced herself. Now that no one would see her, for when she passed by them they would all choose to look away, Klea felt safer. She would find out what was happening.

  The guards of the Jade Eminence were not lax, but they did not happen to see when she walked between them. Nor were the silent alarms within the palace less than cunningly hidden, but Klea saw their location as if they glowed, and avoided them.

  She walked on until she came to a central courtyard, and found there a casket placed on a heap of aromatic woods, and a man lying in it. She stepped up and laid a hand on his forehead, in order to know him after the Adepts' fashion, and found that the traces of poison tingled on her skin like a dusting of red pepper. It was so subtle that it would be invisible to a toxicological examination—she could sense it only through her extended feelings.

  The palace was empty, only one dead man within all its silver and ivory corridors. That was wrong, Klea knew, except in the logic of vision and dream. She continued on, past crystal and carved plaster, past lapis and carnelian. Nothing. No one.

  Ahead she saw an object out of place, fallen on the polished marble floor like a thing discarded: an Adept's staff. She picked it up. It, too, tingled with the trace of poison.

  "Adepts?" she asked. "No."

  But then came a memory of what Owen had told her about times long ago, when Adepts had garnered to themselves the enmity of many worlds by their love of power, and by the means through which they gained it.

  She dropped the staff. It clattered to the floor, and the sound melded in her ears with the noise of a passing wheel-cart bumping over cobblestones, and the corridor of the palace was instead the sun shining on the white walls of a building she recognized, without surprise, as the Khesatan Guildhouse.

  "If luck existed," she told herself, "I'd surely need some now."

  She stood debating whether she should enter the building immediately or not. My only ally a Mage, she thought, and turned to retrace her path, this time through the real world to where Mael Taleion awaited her return.

  " 'O down by the river I met with my love, a-washing white linen on the rocks where it flowed,' " Gentlelady Bindweed sang softly under her breath, as she and her partner exited the Golden Lily Pleasantry Shop, each of them bearing several large, gift-wrapped boxes. "Blossom, we should have visited Khesat long ago."

  "An oversight we've mended," Blossom said. "Shall we go back to the hotel?"

  "I suppose; then we can find out if there's any news since last night. The whispers this morning were fierce."

  Blossom nodded. "Just like the old days, when Jos would come roaring into town and turn everything topsy-turvy."

  "So it is," agreed Bindweed. She looked about her at the tree-shaded streets of the riverside shopping district. "It really is a lovely day. Shall we walk?"

  "Why not? I didn't pass through fire and the shadow of death to look at the inside of a taxi. I think there's a park on the way. Maybe tiffin from a pushcart?"

  "I don't know if they serve tiffin this early around here," Bindweed said. "But something nice might present itself. They said the weather would continue unseasonably warm, but to my old bones, the sun feels nice today…"

  They crossed the street and passed through the arched gateway of the park, then continued along the waterbank toward their hotel. The gravel path crunched under their feet; the leaves rustled pleasantly on the quilfer trees; all was serene. A few other pedestrians strolled along the paths, also taking their pleasure in the warm autumn day. Through a gap in the trees appeared a glittering bend of the Leeden River that ran through the heart of downtown Ilsefret.

  All at once Bindweed stopped, stuffed her recent purchases into a recycling bin, and said, "Lords of Life."

  "What's wrong?" Blossom demanded.

  "That pair who just passed us. I don't know who the short guy is, but the other one I know. The last time I saw him I had him in my sights back at our shop."

  "And you missed?"

  "He ducked very fast."

  Blossom ditched her purchases as well. "Think they recognized you?"

  "No—their attention was on something else."

  "Not very talented talent, indeed," Blossom said. "They may not recognize me at all. I'll stay on them. You go back to the ship and get our blasters. Meet you at the hotel."

  Chapter XVIII.

  Khesat

  « ^ »

  Chaka had been sitting for three days now in 'the small room in the house of Caridal Fere. When she got tired, which was seldom, she rested, but always there were recordings for her to translate if she could, of what had been said by and around the two boys.

  Faral and Jens s
poke together very little these days—and not much, when they did, in the Trade-talk of Maraghai—but Chaka was nevertheless learning many interesting things. And she kept written logs of the translations.

  Perhaps she was being checked. The servant who had hired her spoke enough Trade-talk to be understood, and to understand in turn if Chaka spoke slowly and simply enough. That one might read the first page, or perhaps the first line, of any translation, and if it matched the recordings well enough, the servant would pass the rest.

  At least Chaka hoped the rest would pass without a full reading. When the boys talked, it wasn't always of food or home or old friends. They also spoke of their secret plans and their private opinions of the people around them. Chaka left those parts out. Time enough later to put them down, once she was convinced that it did her friends no harm.

  The next question was, did she trust Fere? The automatic answer was no—he had never walked under the Big Trees. And no Forest Lord, to make only the obvious comparison, would stoop to eavesdropping on an honored guest.

  The comm link hummed and clicked, and a sound of conversation started up—Jens and Faral, in the house of the Exalted of Tanavral. Chaka reached for her datapad, and began to write:

  J: Where have you been all day?

  F: Out with Miza, looking for something besides pale sandwiches to eat. They've got tiffin carts down by the river, you know.

  J: There was haunch of something-or-other in frillfruit puree at dinner. And the chef made something else that Cousin-once-removed Rhal said were authentic Maraghai-style groundgrubs. But they weren't really.

  Then the tone of Faral's voice changed, as if he'd only then noticed something. He said, *They've come up with a plan for your future, haven't they? That's where you were, all last night,* and Chaka decided not to write that down for right now, since she couldn't tell which way it was going.

  And Jens said, *The Highest is dead. And the Exalted Rhal Kasander has grown disillusioned with the Worthy whom he first intended to see elevated. He's picked out someone else instead. *

  There was a pause. *You?*

  *That's right.*

  *We can get to a ship tonight, and be long gone by dawn, * Faral said at once. *Unless you want to risk getting spattered all over the plaza?*

  *I can't refuse the public Acclamation until I'm sure Mamma and Dadda are safe, * Jens said. *If I refuse, and they're being held prisoner … *

  Now Chaka was glad she wasn't writing things down.

  Caridal Fere's friend Rhal Kasander—Jens's cousin-once-removed, who went by the absurd thin-skin title of the Exalted of Tanavral—entered the room just as the conversation switched back to grilled grubworms. Chaka kept on writing. Kasander came and went almost as often as Candal Fere himself; the two men were close as blood-brothers.

  "Well?" Kasander demanded. The Exalted's slipper-bearer came over to Chaka's desk and retrieved the datapad. Kasander viewed the private conversation, then threw down the datapad onto the floor, cracking the screen beyond hope of repair.

  "Do those two think of nothing but their stomachs?" he demanded. "If they aren't eating, then they're arranging to be eating, or else they're discussing great meals from the past. Groundgrubs! Pfah! The cook couldn't even palm off the leftovers on the underservants!"

  The Exalted strode from the room, gone before Chaka could react to the loss of her datapad. Well, there were still scraps of paper around. She'd use those.

  And what the Exalted didn't know was not Chaka's problem. She had enough problems without that.

  By nightfall in Ilsefret the whole city lay quiet with anticipation of the coming morning. The funeral of a Highest brought down by time and circumstance would keep until a later day; tomorrow's Acclamation, though, would see whether Khesat would be holding the rites for one Highest, or for two. On a few past occasions—or so Faral had learned from the historical-background section of the Intelligencer— the populace of Ilsefret had run through as many as five or six Highests before settling the issue.

  The Intelligencer had not identified the candidate for Acclamation, such premature revelation would go against Khesatan custom and tradition. Faral had no doubt that the people in Ilsefret knew, through gossip and rumor and the same kind of veiled hints in the public newsfiles that had shown Miza how to find her contact with Huool. But nobody off-planet would have a suspicion of the truth until it was too late.

  Faral had tried to make contact with Maraghai anyway— surely there was something that the First of All the Mage-Circles could do about what was going on—but he had discovered that the comm setup in Kasander's guest wing had no access to the hyperspace links. Neither did the public kiosks.

  If I'd known about the problem when I woke this morning, he thought, I could have asked Miza to pass on a message through her contact with Huool. Now it's too late.

  Then a thought came to him. Rhal Kasander was an important man on Khesat, hip-deep in politics and intrigue There was no way that he would not allow himself, at least, the use of the hyperspace links.

  All I have to do is find the Exalted's personal comm setup After that… if I could cheat the console for the force fields back home, I can get through whatever Kasander's got. And I'll bet I know where he keeps it, too.

  Having something concrete to do gave Faral new optimism He didn't wait any longer, but left his room in the guest wing and made his way through the halls to the private study of the Exalted of Tanavral.

  The study was empty. To Faral's chagrin, a quick but efficient search didn't uncover anything like a full comm setup. Kasander had one somewhere, that much was obvious. He had a transfer link resting in plain sight on his desktop—but the link had an ID scanner built into the grip, and the master control console was nowhere that Faral could see.

  I could find it if I had a day or two. But I don't. If only I'd started looking sooner…

  A stack of folded cards lay on the desktop beside the useless transfer link—party invitations, Faral supposed, awaiting formal signature. If the Exalted of Tanavral turned out in the morning to have backed an acclaimed Highest, he would certainly be holding another party tomorrow night. And after the amount of money Jens claimed that the Exalted and his faction had already laid out in bribes, the Acclamation was only a formality.

  I wish I really believed that, thought Faral. He picked up the topmost invitation.

  It was written in Khesatan, of course, but Faral had expected that. He hadn't expected not to see the one scrap of the language that he did recognize in its written form—his foster-brother's name.

  Is Kasander abandoning his own candidate? Or is calling an acclaimed Highest by his old name an insult or something ?

  Jens would know. Faral tucked the invitation into his jacket pocket.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall outside the study. He looked around in a panic—Jens could smooth-talk himself out of being caught snooping, but Jens wasn't here—and saw the heavy velvet curtains that hung across the office window. He ducked behind them just as the door of the study opened.

  As a place of concealment, his position was traditional but effective. An eavesdropper not trained in hunting by the Selvaurs of Maraghai might have ruined everything by fidgeting, or by breathing too loudly, but Faral had lain in wait for a passing fanghorn while the bloodflies crawled across his bare shoulders. Standing motionless behind a curtain was easy.

  With his eye pressed against the hairline opening between the folds of velvet, he could see most of the room. The man who entered was one he recognized from the entertainment of the night before: Gerre Hafelsan, a gentlesir of respectable lineage with a taste for flamboyant tailoring, but not, or so Faral had gathered, one of the Exalted's intimates or a member of his faction. But here he was, unannounced.

  Strange stuff is going on, Faral thought. If the Exalted turns up and Hafelsan wants to hide behind a curtain, I'm in big trouble.

  But Rhal Kasander entered almost in Hafelsan's shadow, carrying a tray of jellied grass-mallow in his own hands
.

  No servants in sight. Even stranger.

  For the next three-quarters of an hour, the two men conversed in light and bantering Khesatan, and tried a flute duet which Faral found pretty but sinister. Then, after bowing to one another, they left.

  Faral wished he knew what the two of them had really been talking about. He still had the invitation in his pocket— Jens would be able to read the Khesatan script, and maybe even explain what the Exalted of Tanavral was up to, playing flute duets in private with a political adversary.

  After counting two hundred heartbeats, Faral left the concealment of the curtains and stepped silently to the door. He waited again, but no sound telling of a watcher came from outside.

  He stepped briskly into the corridor, and headed for the wing in which he and Jens were housed.

  Miza couldn't sleep. She tried more covers and fewer; she piled the pillows into a stack and spread them out again; she tried leaving the light on and turning it off. Nothing worked. She looked at the clock on her bedside table. It didn't help; it was an antique, and told only the local hours.

  No way of telling how many Standard hours we have left until dawn.

  After a while she got up. Jens Metadi-Jessan's cousin-once-removed the Exalted of Tanavral had supplied her with an ample wardrobe, including a white silk sleeping-gown and a night-robe of deep green velvet. She put on the night-robe, tied its sash around her waist, and ventured out cautiously into the upper corridors of Rhal Kasander's town house.

  No servants were in sight, which was good. Miza wasn't used to servants at all—on Artha, people did for themselves what needed to be done, or else programmed robots to do it. Nor had Huool been the kind to hire others for menial tasks. For that he had student interns, who themselves paid good money for the privilege.

  Moving quietly, Miza went on down the hall to the extensive suite of rooms that Kasander had assigned to Jens. The door wasn't locked; locks would be impractical in a house where servants came and went with full hands at all hours.