by Debra Doyle
The gap between where he was and where he wanted to be decreased. He knocked the vehicle a little to the left, so that it was halfway out of the roadway and skimming by the springy bushes.
Here. This is the place.
He smashed up with his left knee and down with his right shoulder, whipping the hovercar over to the right.
It started to go, skidding sideways on its frictionless nullgravs while the side and rear thrusters labored to straighten and start the vehicle on its new path. This time, when centrifugal force hit him, Jens went limp and allowed himself to be thrown clear.
The thin stalks of the bushes caught and slowed him— though they hurt, hitting at this speed. Then he was through them and rolling down the hill, burning off more of his momentum as he went. He slowed, then stopped. His arms and wrists, caught in the binders, pained him exquisitely. He hadn't had time to think about them until now.
He lurched and scrambled to his feet, and found he was standing before a little group of schoolchildren, together with their teacher, sitting around a cloth spread with delicacies. They all had telescopes and binoculars—it seemed that he'd stumbled into a breakfast picnic to observe the events at the Golden Tower from afar. The children were all gazing at him with large eyes.
Jens smiled at them and bowed.
One little girl began to applaud, then all the others joined in.
"Thank you, thank you," Jens said. "Performance art is my life. You're too kind. Now, alas, I must go."
With another bow, he set out across the springy turf, the applause of his little audience following him.
"I'd hate to have to do that every day, twice a day, and three times on matinee days," Jens muttered as soon as he was out of earshot.
"No," said a voice to his right. "But the time comes when I need your help."
Jens looked toward the voice. His new companion was the man in black with whom he'd been conversing all his life, and who had manifested himself so thoroughly on Sapne… and who had left without farewell when Miza named him.
"Guislen," Jens said. "Or do I call you Master Ransome?"
"Either, I suppose," Guislen said. "But I prefer the former. There is another who bears the name of Ransome—I must meet him today and carry out my last commission."
"And what is that?"
Guislen looked sorrowful. "To put to right the evil that I have done. Most of that I have accomplished, but part still remains unfinished. And that requires… but I have no right to ask."
"You have that right," Jens said. "You've earned it, as far as I'm concerned. Where shall we go?"
"To the Khesatan Guildhouse," Guislen said. "For I am already there, and I fear that I am up to no good."
Chapter XX.
Khesat
« ^ »
"You!" Faral said to Gerre Hafelsan. "You arranged all this."
Before Hafelsan could reply, the door of the room sprang open, kicked wide by a green-scaled, shoeless foot.
Faral stared. *Chaka! What are you doing on Khesat?*
*Saving your life, I think,* Chaka said. *These people are all double-crossers, every one of them.*
"What did the absurd creature say?" asked Caridal Fere.
"It doesn't matter," said Hafelsan. "When the next Highest is proclaimed, I will be here to rejoice in his elevation—and you will not. Caridal Fere, I challenge you for this house and all that it contains."
Faral expected the Master of Nalensey to laugh aloud at the unexpected and tasteless witticism—but he did not. He held up his hands, and something appeared between them that had not been visible a moment before.
An Adept's staff.
"This is the Guildhouse of the Adepts of Khesat, as it has been since time immemorial," Fere said. "And I am their Master."
"No," Hafelsan said. A glowing rod of light appeared in his hand as the sky outside the window darkened. "You were."
Mael experienced a feeling of motion without moving, then the sound and sensation of rain striking against the hard plastic of his mask.
He opened his eyes and looked around. He stood with Mistress Klea Santreny on a wide plain, the ground made of jumbled rock, tossed and broken. It was night, and pale moonlight glowed past the edges of hurrying clouds. A wind, sharp and chill, swept past, whipping his robes about him.
"What is this place?" he asked.
"The other side of the wall," Klea said. "Where that is, I don't know."
"Is it a vision?"
"Oh, no," Klea said. "The ways of Adepts are not yours. What you see is real."
"Perhaps," Mael said, "some of my reality is here, too." He looked about him with his inner sight, trying to find the cords of life. No wonder Adepts speak of riding the winds and currents of power, he thought. Is this how they see everything, as nothing but chaos?
The cords of life were there, dim in the darkness. More than the night obscured them—they were all tarnished and black.
"I think we're close to the source of the evil," he said.
"The source, or the cause?" Klea asked. "It's cold here. Let's get walking, and see where we come to."
"If we come to anywhere."
"We must," Klea said. "The universe won't allow it to happen otherwise."
"I'd like to summon a light," Mael said, "but I'm worried about what might notice us."
"Don't concern yourself about that," Klea said. "I see a city's glow up ahead. If the Adepts of Khesat are here at all, that's where we'll find them."
"I don't like the looks of this place," Mael said. "The lines of life and luck are the worst I've ever seen. There is no pattern…"
As he spoke, a mighty rumbling sounded from under the ground, and a tremblor moved the rock beneath their feet.
Klea cried out and fell against Mael as the ground shifted. She tried to straighten, using her staff for balance, but the ground shifted again and she went down, striking her head against the jagged rock as she fell.
Mael bent over her. Dark against her pale face, blood trickled across her forehead, and she did not move.
The earth shifted again, and there, at last, Mael saw the pattern he had sought: the cable of eiran rising out of the earth, a few strands still showing bright amid the tarnish.
Klea moaned and tried to move.
"Lie still" Mael said. "I think we have found what we came to find."
Kolpag kept the speeding hovercar in view ahead of him. He'd have to be careful of this one. The young man had proved to be far more capable than Kolpag had given him credit for.
Now that his first flash of anger was over, Kolpag felt only a grim determination. He drove, pushing the hovercar as fast as he considered safe, while at the same time thumbing his blaster down from kill to stun. The boy was coming along to Ophel whether he wanted to or not, and Kolpag would worry about Ruhn later. The silly bastard hadn't been worth much anyway.
The hovercar up ahead was steering erratically, and starting to veer off the road. That wasn't surprising; given that the boy had his hands locked in binders behind his back, it was a wonder he'd been driving at all. Kolpag dropped back a bit to stay clear of the inevitable crash. Then the car ahead swung rapidly to the right, and flashed up out of sight between a pair of buildings.
Side street, thought Kolpag. He'd been swinging wide left so he could make a high-speed turn to the right. Damn. Well, I know a few tricks too.
He pushed the yoke in for speed, then twisted it hard right, and at the same time pulled back on the yoke for braking. The vehicle slewed around until it was sliding with its left side forward. When the nose of the hovercar was pointed straight up the side street, Kolpag shoved the yoke all the way in, and scooted forward. It was as close to a square turn at speed as anyone could do and maintain even tenuous control.
He'd gained on the boy, too. The lead hovercar was up ahead, going down the street but tending to the right. Kolpag saw it drift over until it hit a tree growing from a cutout in the sidewalk. Then it spun to its left and skidded all the way across the street
to smash into a building.
The careering hovercar spun again and went forward the way it had been going, but even more erratically. Finally it came to rest half on, half off the pedestrian walkway as its nullgravs cut out in response to the impacts. The thrusters were still going, making the vehicle tremble and try to inch along the pavement.
Kolpag got from his car and walked over to the wreck. He looked in. No one was inside.
"The bastard," he said. "The bastard!" He pounded both fists on the front of the hovercar, still holding his blaster in one hand.
Then he straightened. Where could the boy have gone?
Kolpag turned and walked back down the street. At the moment the boy's car had made the turn he'd still been aboard, controlling. By the time the car came to rest, he was gone. So somewhere between the one point and the other, he had to be located.
Kolpag came to a thicket of bushes. The bruised leaves from where the car had sideswiped showed white from their exposed undersides. And there—a broken gap. Big enough for a body to have gone past. Kolpag pushed his way through the broken foliage. A steep hill on the other side, covered with wiry grass, led to a valley. The package wasn't there.
This snatch was botched. Kolpag returned to his hovercar, pushing through the crowd of onlookers at the scene of the wreck, got into his vehicle, and drove away.
Mael Taleion made Klea as comfortable as he could, wrapping his outer robe about her and settling her staff into her hands.
"Wait here," he said. "I'll be back."
Then he stood, the black mask on his face, the silver-bound staff in his hand, and opened himself to the universe.
The eiran came to him, glowing silver against the dark sky. Wind whipped his hair, but Mael did not notice. Skyglow from the city lit the bottoms of the clouds. The rain fell harder.
Mael grasped the lines and pulled them, trying to reach the center of the great cable. A cord there would be corroded, decayed to nothingness, its shape defined only by the other cords which lay so tight about it. A negative space, the lack of something rather than its presence, like the hollow where a clinging vine had choked the tree it climbed. He pulled harder.
The light grew along the horizon, splitting the sky from the ground. Mael knew that he had to find the rotted cord. It tarnished everything that touched it, and it passed the corruption on. Already the tarnish had spread farther than he had imagined it could, out to the limits of his sight.
"I've found you! I know you're somewhere close!" Mael cried aloud as he dragged on first one cord then another. But instead of loosening the knot his actions only drew it tighter.
The frustration was grinding on his soul. He searched back and forth along the great looping cable of lines, trying to find a more open place. Everywhere the tarnished silver cords opposed him. Still he pulled and prodded, seeking a weak place among the cords that guarded the decayed center.
Then he became aware of another figure approaching him through the dark and the rain.
"Klea?" he called.
"No," came back a mocking voice. "The wench was mine, and I have made her mine."
"No!"
"Then see!" The newcomer held aloft a staff such as Klea had carried. "Do you recognize this?"
The staff glowed at once in blue-green, Klea's color. The light washed down from the staff across the face of the newcomer. In its lurid glare, Mael saw that this was his ekkannikh, not robed and hooded as before, but in plain shirt and trousers like an ordinary man. Ordinary—but the face was a sink of corruption, ruined cartilage and quivering jellies of rotten flesh hanging in tatters from the skull.
"When does an Adept part with her staff?" the ekkannikh asked. "When she is dead!"
And with that word he broke the staff between his hands. The fire of the universe glowed brighter in its center, then flowed away in rags and tatters, while some of it ran down the ekkannikh's arms to pool around its feet.
"Who speaks of death? The dead?" Mael raised his staff and let light pour into it. "Speak to me of death, you who are already gone?"
The solidified mass of tarnished cords beside Mael began to sway, as if the wind had taken them and made them vibrate.
"I died unbroken, my will prevailing," the ekkannikh said. "Such a fate will escape you; you will break before you die."
Beside the ekkannikh a rod sprang from the ground. When the rod had grown as high as a man's head, the creature seized it, and it became a staff, blazing up white and dazzling. Mael had to turn his face aside to protect his eyes from the glare. The tarnished silver of the eiran glowed in reflected light as if they were once more pure.
At that moment the ekkannikh attacked.
Mael sensed the blow aimed for him more than he saw it. He punched the side of his staff up and to the left, diverting the lashing blow and making it slide harmlessly past him. The staves shivered under the impact—this was no insubstantial illusion that he faced, nor a mere phantom of ill-will. This was a physical presence bent on his destruction.
"I have gained strength in my travels," the ekkannikh said. "And allies."
From out of the dark came a large man, dressed as a Khesatan noble. He walked up to the ekkannikh and grasped hold of it. The two bodies merged, flowing into one another, the form of one and the substance of the other, until they became a man of middle years, a slight, dark-haired man dressed in dusty black. The decay was gone from his face.
"I grow, I am one," the spirit said. "I am the greater."
"You fight like an Adept," Mael said. "Come with me to the Void."
He turned the peculiar corner which always before had brought him to the land of no-space and no-time, where he might be able to take the ekkannikh to the time and place of its first death. If he could kill it properly there…
"That way is blocked to you," the ekkannikh said, and Mael found that he was unable to move, that the road was truly closed.
The staff of the ekkannikh crashed onto his back across his shoulder blades, lacing him with a burning agony. He stumbled and fell forward against the tarnished silver lines.
Jens and Guislen had almost reached the edge of the park. Up a rise, across the roofs of some buildings, they could see the Golden Tower sparkling in the sun.
"I hadn't thought to meet you again," Jens said. "I thought that once named, you were gone forever."
"Not yet," Guislen said. "There is still work for me to do. Shall I take those binders off of you?"
"I'd been under the impression that you couldn't do… well… physical things."
"Nor can I," said Guislen with a smile. "But you can. Are you aware of the binders?"
Jens grimaced. Now that he was free to think about the restraints that clipped his wrists tightly behind him, he seemed to feel every molecule as a separate source of pain. "Only too aware."
"Good. Try to touch their nature. Know how they hold you. Find the mechanism. Follow the circuits, watch the electrons flow within them. When you understand them, you will be free of them."
Jens concentrated for a moment as they walked, but nothing out of the ordinary occurred.
"Let me help," Guislen said. "Concentrate again. Or, if concentration doesn't bring results, relax and let your mind be empty of all preconceptions about the nature of locks."
Then, as with the hatch of the Inner Light on Sapne, Jens became aware of the inner nature of the lock's materials. He knew the bolt, the catch, the magnet that held them in place, and the lines of flux that wrapped around them.
He touched the lock with that awareness, and the binders clicked open and fell away. Jens brought his hands in front of him and looked down. Angry red lines circled his wrists. He massaged them while he spoke to Guislen.
"Did you do that, or did I?"
"You did it. With some help."
"Am I an Adept, then?"
"You have the talent. But I told you a long while ago that you were meant to be neither Adept nor Mage. Come—we are almost at the Guildhouse, and time grows short."
T
hey came out of the park and crossed a street. Around the corner and under a pointed arch, an alley led up to a set of wide stone steps between two buildings.
"I recall this," Jens said. "It's not the Guildhouse. It's the way to the house of Caridal Fere, the Master of Nalensey."
"The Guildhouse and the house of Caridal Fere are the same place," Guislen told him. "Master Fere has decided to seek temporal power for the Adepts of this world, and to rule its rulers. From here our ways part for the last time. Your task is great, but mine is urgent. Farewell."
"Farewell," Jens said, but he was speaking to no one. Guislen was gone.
Jens turned, and walked up the stairs toward the upper entrance of the house of Caridal Fere.
"Freeze right there," came a man's voice behind him. Jens recognized the Ophelan slur to the words. "Don't turn around. Very slowly, walk back this way."
"Why, that sounds like my good friend Kolpag," Jens said. "What brings you here?"
"Shut up. You've cost me too much time and trouble. Keep walking back."
From the sound, Jens could tell that Kolpag was keeping well out of range of a kick. And if Jens turned, he'd only buy himself a stun, or worse.
He reached up to touch the amulet he had worn since Sapne. In spite of the morning's adventures, it still lay against his chest. Perhaps it worked, perhaps not, but he'd had a great deal of luck lately. He grasped the amulet.
Luck, he thought. She gave me luck for a reason.
If he could get some of that luck now… the amulet broke from its cord and fell to the pavement in a tinkle of tiny shards. Without thinking, Jens bent forward to pick it up. A blaster bolt sizzled above his back, inches above his spine.
He really is shooting at me, Jens thought. So why am I still alive?
On the heels of the thought came the sound of a body falling to the pavement behind him. Jens straightened and looked around. Kolpag lay on his back partway up the marble stairway. Then Jens turned again and looked forward.