Hespira

by Matthew Hughes

  “I do not do magic,” I said. “It distresses me.” Indeed, the only time I had ever essayed a spell, under sheer necessity of survival, it caused a sensation compared to which being lightning-struck must feel like an itch between the shoulder blades.

  One more sigh, then the grinnet read a line from the book, clapped its little palms twice with a precise interval between. Osk Rievor snorted, then turned slowly on his heel and walked like a somnambulant to a divan across the room. There, like an old man taking to his bed, he sat, then lay, then snored.

  The grinnet favored me with a look that said its work was done and no more requests would be honored. It turned and walked with dignified steps to its lair. Its little door slammed a little slam and it was gone from view. I picked up the abandoned book and closed it, then carried it back to my other self’s study, where I left it amid the welter of texts and arcane objects strewn across his worktable. Prominent amongst them were several loose pages of old parchment covered in an archaic script and showing signs of once having been bound as a book. Next to them, on fresh pages in Osk Rievor’s hand, was a translation; the old text’s subject was the training and refining of the grinnet. I wished that my former intuition could have devoted more time to that work, instead of being distracted by the salamander’s demands.

  Back in the main room, I returned to the problem of Hespira’s ribbon. “We have a problem,” I said. “The spell could not have been hidden in your dress for any honest purpose. Clearly, it was intended to let the recipient know when you entered a place where there was sufficient magical ambience to bring it to life.”

  While I was speaking I took her arm and moved her toward the door. “We must get out of this ambience,” I said. “Whoever put that beacon on you is a practitioner of magic, and the only adept we have has just rendered himself inert. Not that I would trust his judgment at the moment.”

  “What do you mean to do?” she said.

  “Remove that ribbon and—” An idea occurred. I told my assistant to keep a watch on Osk Rievor and advise me if he regained consciousness. Then Hespira and I exited the cottage and turned toward where the salamander groused in its pen. As we walked, I drew a small multiple-use tool from my pocket and deployed its lesser blade. Near the avatar’s pen I stopped our progress and pulled on the end of the ribbon so that it stood out from Hespira’s shoulder. Carefully, I separated the length of cloth from the seam at her shoulder.

  “There,” I said, and wadding it into a small bundle I threw it to the salamander. The beast caught the object as it had caught the jewels, but almost immediately discarded it. Then it reared up and fixed me with a gaze so unfriendly that I was suddenly certain that, in its heyday, the god’s devotees had sacrificed more than jewels and coins on its altar. Its reptilian eyes narrowed and a hiss like escaping steam came from its gaping jaws, then it subsided to the floor of its pen. I heard more grumbling.

  “Let us get away from it,” I said. I led Hespira back toward the front of the cottage, where I had left the carry-all.

  My assistant commented. “The signal has been sent again. And now again. And again. The avatar’s ambience must be weighty. Now the beeps have become a virtually continuous shriek.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now the recipient of the signal will come, not knowing that we are expecting his arrival.”

  I opened the carry-all and drew out a fully charged disorganizer. I activated its self-aiming process and had it recognize Hespira, Osk Rievor, the grinnet, my assistant, and me. Then I began pulling on an elision suit.

  “Who is coming?” Hespira said.

  “I do not know,” I said, “but I suspect—”

  My assistant interrupted. “Something is descending rapidly from the upper atmosphere.”

  “Can you specify?”

  “No, it is thoroughly clouded. I can deduce it only from the effects of its passage.”

  “I am frightened,” said Hespira.

  I handed her a shocker from the carry-all. “You know how to use this,” I said. “Keep it concealed until you need it.” My voice sounded odd in my own ears; my throat was constricted by an upwelling of anxiety for her. To my assistant, I said, “Cloud our weapons.”

  “Done. The rate of descent is slowing.”

  I looked up, saw nothing, the sky empty but for a few clouds. “Where will it touch down? Is it homing on the beacon?”

  “Not sure. Wait. Wait. Yes. Behind the cottage.”

  I crept along the side wall, knelt, and pointed the disorganizer at the vicinity of the salamander’s pen. I could hear Hespira’s breathing close to my ear.

  “It is here,” said the integrator. “A compact spaceship. The clouding is magnificent. I have not seen anything like it.” A moment later, it said, “Someone is scanning the area. A very powerful probe, as subtle as it is penetrative.”

  “Can it intrude on our connection?”

  “It will. I can dissuade it for a while, but ultimately, it must succeed.”

  “Go inert.”

  The descending craft remained invisible. I heard no thrum of gravity obviators. But a waft of displaced air cooled my cheeks even through the elision suit’s mask. It settled gently; no thump of contact came through the ground.

  In its enclosure the divine beast was aware of the arrival. It reared up on its hind legs and stared in the direction from which the breeze of the ship’s descent had come. From its throat came a new noise, a kind of articulated growl, deeper than the grumbles, more portentous than the hiss.

  I looked where the salamander looked, saw a faint shimmer in the air, as if the trees behind were shifting slightly in and out of focus. Then, at about twice my height above the ground, a man’s head and shoulders appeared from the seemingly empty air. He looked about cautiously then put an instrument to his eye. Immediately, his augmented gaze swung toward the salamander.

  His head and shoulders retreated, leaving no trace of him. Then a descender appeared not far below where his head had been and a moment later the man stepped out onto it, wearing a singlesuit with many pockets. The disk lowered him to the ground. He drew an energy pistol, activated its awareness, and moved cautiously toward the pen. The descender meanwhile rose back to the level at which it had first appeared and remained there, while the man looked in several directions and consulted his weapon’s display. Finally he nodded and called out softly, “Clear.”

  Another figure appeared out of the upper air, similarly clad, but the singlesuit’s lines were tailored to a different body conformation. She stepped onto the descender and came down to join the man. I noticed that the disk remained on the ground.

  I touched a stud that controlled the percepts of my elision suit’s mask. Instantly, the magnified faces of the two arrivals were rendered as impulses to my optic nerves. I studied both. I did not know the woman, but the man’s face I had seen before.

  The two of them were peering into the salamander’s pen. I saw the man point at something, the woman nod in agreement. Then she turned and looked directly at me and said, “You might as well stand up and come out in the open, Henghis Hapthorn. Let us get this over with.”

  “Stay here,” I whispered to Hespira. Then I stood. The disorganizer had already informed me that it had acquired both the targets. I threw back the hood of my elision suit and bade my assistant uncloud the weapon. A disembodied head hovering over a threat of complete destruction would, I thought, make a memorable impression. I stepped out from the corner of the cottage and said, “So, Madame Oole—or is it Ololo? Whichever, we meet at last.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Well done,” she said. “Tesko Tabanooch always said your reputation was well earned.” She gestured to her companion who was pointedly ignoring me and making faces at the salamander. “And this is—”

  “The man who killed Carthew Chumblot,” I said, “and a Wathers docklands skullthump named Big Tooth. And probably poor Tabanooch.”

  “Now you are showing off,” she said.

  At that the man looked at m
e, offering me the kind of loon’s leer he had been showing the avatar, then returned to teasing the beast.

  “He was not as good as he thought he was,” I said. “I noted him when we visited Candyk’s Spire on Ikkibal. I assume it was he who planted the peeper in my client’s room—again, we found it easily—and his vehicle contained the receptor. But he was so clumsy an operative that a mere taxi driver noticed him and was able to follow him to where…”

  But I realized, even as I was saying it, and as I would have realized even if I had not seen the derisive look on the man’s face—he was mockingly, silently mouthing my own words to the avatar—that the slippage had been deliberate.

  “There you have it,” said Madame Oole, or whatever her name was. “Now you are catching up.” She took a step or two toward me, moving with a sinuous grace born of arrogance that not even the utilitarian singlesuit could conceal. “Come along, now,” she said, “assemble the pieces. Make a shape of it. You’re doing so much better than the others.”

  “The others?”

  “The other thaumaturges. Those who thought they would enter the new age full of pomp and power. Including the ones that you yourself undid. For which I ought to be grateful.” She purred—there was no other word for it—and added, “Since I will be inheriting everything you took from them.”

  Now I saw the picture. How stupid of me, I thought. Just because the likes of Baxandall and Therobar and their associates had been relative plodders, just because they had barely left the starting line in their quests to comprehend the arcane powers of sympathetic association, was no reason to assume that the race did not also have its swift speedsters who were already far down the track when Osk Rievor and I first joined the runners. Swift and ruthless, I thought, and I am laps behind.

  “I may keep you,” Madame Oole said. “It’s rare to find so fine a rational intellect coupled with such a deep-ranging intuition. I am sure I could find things for you to do.”

  I returned her direct stare. She had a face many would have called beautiful, though hard. But behind the evident intelligence and power of will lay the same unbridled self-regard that I had seen in the five wizards of Bambles, in Turgut Therobar and his helpers Gevallion and Gharst, and would probably have seen in the eyes of Bristal Baxandall, if he had not already been turned inside-out when I found him. For all the faults I could have found in Osk Rievor at this moment, at least he did show this overweening pride, this hubristic bellowing of one’s own name into the face of the cosmos.

  “You overlook one powerful argument in my favor,” I said. I hefted the disorganizer. “This has already acquired you. I doubt you command a spell powerful enough, even in this dimple, to withstand it.”

  “And you, too, have overlooked the obvious,” the woman said. She raised her voice. “Servant, disable him!”

  I swung the disorganizer to cover the man beside the pen, but he held up his hands in mock terror. At that moment, as I heard motion behind me, heard it too late to turn and prevent what was to come, the rest of the picture came into focus. Still, I made an effort.

  “Hespira,” I said, “resist—”

  But nothing more could I say. The shocker’s emitter was almost touching my spine when it sent its burst spitting through me, convulsing muscle and rattling bones and filling my skull with coruscating fountains of brilliant sparks.

  The spasm lasted an eternity. Then the disorganizer fell from my nerveless grip, my knees folded, and I sank to the ground. Above me, seemingly far off, appeared three faces: Madame Oole’s, wearing the kind of smile cats would give captive mice if only they could; her henchman’s, showing the glee that a psychopath can feel in another’s pain; and Hespira’s, full of helpless horror.

  Of course, I thought, she did more than just edit Irmyrlene Broon-Paskett’s glandular secretions and wipe her memory. It wouldn’t have been enough merely to insinuate the living bait into my closest counsels. Oole would also have implanted a means of controlling Hespira’s actions, for the crucial moment when…

  Then the sorceress said, “Servant, give him another dose.”

  My client’s distress grew only stronger, which in turn threw me into an even more wrenching paroxysm of anxiety. My suffering was short-lived, however, as Hespira helplessly pointed the shocker at me. The emitter glowed blue again and I thrashed and convulsed the short way to unconsciousness.

  #

  I awoke in the grand hall that used to be the small sitting room of the cottage. I was slumped in an overstuffed armchair and they had stripped off my elision suit. My muscles felt as if they had all been taken out of me, boiled until their tensile strength was reduced to that of overcooked vegetables, then loosely slipped back into their original settings. I was conscious of a string of drool down my chin, but lacked the coordination to do away with it.

  I lifted my head, felt it go too far backward and strike the top of the chair, then I managed to get enough control to bring it to a useful position. To my left, I saw Hespira, pale and terrified, seated in a sturdy chair, her wrists and ankles bound to its arms and legs. The Oole woman and her helper were not in view, but I could hear her voice from nearby. From the sounds she was making, she was in my alter ego’s study, rummaging through his collection of books and paraphernalia and expressing surprise and delight at what she was finding.

  I swung my swimming eyes toward the divan. No unconscious Osk Rievor lay there. Nor was there a grinnet in sight, nor for that matter, the traveling armature that contained my assistant. I looked toward the little door through which the familiar had first entered, but saw that a nearby tapestry had been tugged farther along on the rail from which it hung. Only the edge of Grishant’s portal was now visible.

  My wits were resettling themselves. “Are you all right?” I whispered to Hespira. Her only response was a look of anguish and a sob.

  “Please,” I said, “I need you now. Pointless remorse will not serve.” I saw her gather herself together and gestured to the tiles where my other self would have lain. “He was not there?” I whispered.

  She signaled a negative.

  “The grinnet and my assistant?”

  “Gone.” It came out as a gulp.

  “Good,” I said. “Now do not worry.”

  But, of course, she did worry, quite terribly. And her distress caused me an equal upset. But I understood now why I felt such a strong response to her anxiety—at least I knew the reason for the effect if not the exact mechanism by which it was achieved. And I knew that it had been no chance encounter that had thrust Irmyrlene Broon-Paskett into my path two days running. Nor had I taken her case out of some deep-seated need to offer a gesture in the face of the imminent end of all I held dear.

  No, Irmyrlene had somehow been tailored to catch my sympathies. From studying me and from questioning my operative, Tabanooch, Oole would have known that a helpless woman was more likely to engage my compassion than a helpless man. But she had also known that if she had plied me with a sexual lure, I would have been on my guard. So they had looked for a woman who was the precise opposite of the face, figure, and coloring to which I best responded.

  Yet I had not been caught the first time I crashed into her, on my way across The Old Circular to meet Massim Shar’s cut-out. I thought back to that moment, remembered that I had just consumed a full portion of Mast Jho-su’s Nine Dragons Sauce. My nose and sinuses had been streaming.

  Pheromones, I thought. But my assistant had examined her and found her output to be within normal range. But then I saw the brilliance of the tactic. Not strength, but focus. Somehow Irmyrlene Broon-Paskett’s unconscious and altered chemical emanations were such as to have an overwhelming effect on my own deepest-seated reactions. My powerful intellect was my chief weapon and my best defense; she had managed to bypass both, burrowing into my psyche from its basest, most ancient stratum.

  But how was it done? Had they searched the Ten Thousand Worlds for that rare woman who combined a lack of erotic appeal—for me, at least—with a pher
omonic pass key to my unconscious responses? Unlikely, I thought. They picked someone who would not be missed, then turned her into an irresistible lure. But how did they know my own most intimate chemistry? I could speculate as to an answer, and the image that came was horrific.

  I heard them coming back. Oole entered the sitting room with an armload of books and grimoires, while the henchman carried several pieces of apparatus. They laid them down on the floor before me and the woman knelt and picked through them with the eagerness of an overindulged child encountering a slew of naming-day presents.

  “So many,” she said, looking up at me, “so many that I have not only never seen but never heard of. You have done much better than I imagined.” She held up a hand-sized prism that had been the sorceress Chay-Chevre’s. “This is something to do with color, isn’t it? This book”—she indicated a small volume bound in tan leather marked with a stylized face—“speaks of using colors to bind the will of dragons.”

  She paused to peer into the prism. then leafed through the book. “But there have been no dragons since before the last great change, yet the book is surely no more than a few decades old. How did you come by them? Are there more like this?”

  I ignored the question and put one of my own. I was gratified to hear that my voice was not suffering any lingering debility from the shocker. “How did you arrange for my client’s pheromones to have such a devastating effect on my judgment?”

  Oole put down the prism and book to free her hands so she could clap them in delight. “Did I not tell you, Devers, that this one was worth keeping?”

  The man’s face offered me a silent disparagement. I suspected I saw jealousy there. But Oole ignored him. “Well,” she said, “since you ask. I had Tesko Tabanooch acquire a few hairs from your collar. Do you remember a time when he helped you don your coat?”