by Carl Sargent
“His Grace instructed us to call him as soon as these arrived,” one of the footmen said hesitantly.
“Take them to the east wing. I shall unpack them and call him. I will take responsibility,” Martin said. He had no idea whether Luther would want to be disturbed right now, but didn’t want to take the chance. It would require a couple of hours to unpack everything, and the more time he gave Luther to calm down the better. Besides, he knew that Luther wouldn’t want to sit fretting for two hours while this stuff got unpacked.
The footman hesitated still. Someone else taking responsibility was only acceptable if he could be certain that Luther approved. It did not do to disobey orders.
“Just do it. And use the trolleys. If you drop any of them, you’ll wish you were dead,” Martin snarled. Delaying no longer, the men scurried off to find trolleys for the trunks.
Martin left them to it and returned to his subterranean haunt to issue the last order to the Azanians. Hopefully, it wouldn't be too messy. It would cause a furor, for a while, but it could all be disguised as an accident easily enough and no one would investigate that closely, not immediately. He had run the simulation enough times, and he knew exactly where a cigarette butt dropped beside the right leaking pipe would do the job. It was time to cover their tracks.
* * *
Kristen was able to make two coffees last an hour, learning everything about him that she could. Serrin, however, could barely keep his eyes open anymore. Ten o’clock here was three in the morning back home, and jet lag was as unfriendly as ever. But she was unwilling to let him go, her questions a torrent, and he was too tired to be careful in his replies.
Finally, he held up one hand, as if defending himself from yet another onslaught.
“I’ve got to get some sleep,” he pleaded. “I’m bagged.” He called for the bill. She looked guilty, but was unable to control her great excitement. Completely on impulse, she suddenly leaned forward and attempted to straighten the fraying knot in his tie. Almost reflexively, he raised one hand to stop her. Fingers touched.
His hand registered something like a static shock while his heart seemed to tighten like the feeling he got from too much coffee and one cigarette too many late at night. Startled, he found himself looking into her deep brown eyes, so full of concern for him. It didn’t feel like a warning of falling in love, though Serrin’s memories of such things were foggy. It felt more important than that; something better, more durable.
She didn’t say anything and he didn’t ask. He wanted to sleep on it and think it over. When they got back to Indra’s, he determinedly resisted Kristen’s attempts to fuss over him.
“I’m going to shower,” he said tiredly. “If you want, you can use Michael’s room. He won’t be back for a while. Um, if you want to stay, you’re welcome.” He realized that he’d barely asked anything about her, so intently had she interrogated him.
“I got time,” she said simply and went off to find him some towels. Serrin sat down on the bed, shaking his head and wondering what on earth he was getting himself into.
* * *
“You took a risk by coming here. Even with Mathanas along,” the young elf reproached Niall. Seated on one of the largest stones among the castle ruins, the morning just risen around them, he watched idly as a small group of leshy played in the ivy-covered trees at the foot of the slope.
“That’s why I need your help,” Niall explained. “I am bound to my own place. I cannot move without the Families knowing it. But there are things I will have to do, places I must go. Events are moving rapidly now. They have brought the seed from Azania, I think. It will not be long before Lutair takes the final steps. Once it is released ...”
The flaxen-haired young elf sat quietly, rocking to and fro almost imperceptibly. “Are you so sure this is your task?” he asked.
“I cannot sit idly by and allow it to happen,” Niall replied.
“Is it more important than your life?”
“Certainly,” Niall said without hesitation.
“Is it more important than the calling of your Path?”
“It is more important than all of my lives,” Niall said softly. He had thought long and hard about how to say that. When it came time, speaking the words was much simpler and easier than he’d expected. How easy it was to nullify his own being.
“Indeed that is so,” said the youth imperturbably. “But I have other visitors who say this is the Ascension.” He didn’t tell Niall what he thought of that.
“It is wrong," Niall said passionately.
“Are you so much wiser?” the youth said, idly picking at a blade of long grass.
“Lutair is a poisoned spirit,” Niall argued. “The Ascension will not spring from one such. He extinguishes the very lives he intends to exalt. That alone is proof that he is a false spirit. If Liam were still among us, acceptance of this evil would be inconceivable.”
“Ah, so you know Liam’s mind,” the youth said cheerily. “Then everything must be so clear to you. Others of us, of course, are not so presumptuous.”
“That is not what I meant,” Niall pleaded. “Can you help me?” He didn’t want to play cat-and-mouse with the Fool any longer. Time was growing too short for his elaborate games.
“There will be a storm tonight,” the Fool said with a complete lack of concern. Niall knew what he meant. In the physical world, there would be torrential rain, thunder, lightning, to be sure; but the Fool meant the doineann draoidheil, the terrifying surge of uncontrollable magic that broke into the world at the sacred places, unpredictably and violently. His heart sank as he understood what help the Fool was prepared to offer; only the deliverance of the storm itself. It would be left to Niall and whatever spirits he could find to help him to draw down the power itself.
“Rathcroghan,” the Fool said. “At the Palace of the Medb. There will be few of your Family there, I think. Enough to object to your presence, however. On the other hand, they might wisely choose to take refuge from the storm.”
Niall knew better than to beg for anything more direct in the way of assistance. Few ever found the Fool in such a generous mood. In his own way, he was a renegade from the same hermetic order Niall had long left behind him, but it didn’t do to push too hard. He had pointed Niall to the solution, drawing on the awesome forces of the storm, and now it was left to the mage to take that counsel into himself and use it.
Realizing that his chances of surviving the night were a lot poorer than fifty-fifty, the dispirited mage returned to his spirit and began to plan how to evade the housemages of his Family. Once the storm had begun, they would not dare to approach him. Providing, of course, that none of them was insane enough to be channeling it for his own purposes.
Niall began to tell his ally spirit what to do if he died that night. It wasn’t morbid. It was just playing the probabilities.
14
The Xhosa shaman stared at Tom; he almost had to crick his neck to look up at the troll, but he kept right on staring. Tom didn’t know whether it was a challenge or a ritual, whether it was hostile, friendly, or neutral. But he kept his mouth shut and stayed where he was.
The Xhosa man took something green-yellow and gleaming from a pouch at his belt. Continuing to stare up at the troll, he slipped the impossibly thin snakeskin gloves over his stubby fingers and then touched the troll just below the sternum. As if feeling for some flow of energy, some rhythm of life, his hands were drawn to Tom’s ribs and down to his right hand. The shaman hissed, sensing the smartgun link and the muscle replacement, but he did not retreat as he looked down at the huge hand, as big as his own skull. Then the shaman lifted his eyes again, boring into the troll, who stared back.
Tom still didn’t say anything. He didn’t feel anxious, despite the shaman’s disapproving sound. The shaman waved his arm to another Xhosa, who sashayed over to also examine the troll.
The shamans spoke in the Xhosa tongue, then one of them took Tom’s arm and led him toward the rope, toward the wildnes
s beyond the paths. They might have been leading him to his death, but the troll wanted to trust them. He could feel the power they carried within themselves. Mutely, he followed.
The brittle, crumbling rock felt like fire beneath his feet. The air seemed to grow hazy and oppressive, humid and hard to breathe. He felt his gait growing unsteady as they took him to the edge of the mountain, rising high over the Atlantic and Indian oceans meeting in the endless azure, infinitely far below. His head swam, and he could feel himself falling.
* * *
Loud banging at the door woke Serrin with a start. He jumped up and managed to get his pants on before the banging threatened to turn into a full-scale break-in. It was only Michael.
“Wake up, lazy bones,” the Englishman said. “You’ve had five hours. Any more and you won’t sleep tonight, and then you’ll feel even worse tomorrow.”
“Where’s Kristen? Where's Tom?” Serrin yawned.
“Isn’t he here?” Michael asked, worried. “Damn it. The mountain can’t be that interesting. Kristen’s around and about downstairs.”
“Get anything from the names?” the mage asked, tugging on a clean shirt.
“Only more consternation, old boy,” Michael said. He briefed the elf as he finished dressing. “Three more people. European. One mage, very much unkidnapped. One worker in the Squeeze, of all places, and one doctor somewhere in Saxony. Not one of them has been touched. I’m running some framework on them, but I can’t see anything obvious linking them together.”
“Hmmm," Serrin grunted.
“I’ve tried age, race, sex, criminality, social status, occupation, all the obvious things. There’s something I'm missing,” Michael fretted in a tone that said he wanted to get back to it. Serrin said as much.
“Yes, well, that was the idea,” Michael replied. “I think I might stop off at the cable terminus and see if I can find Tom first. There’s something you ought to do, too.”
“Like what?” the elf asked.
“Take Kristen shopping. Buy her some new clothes. She doesn’t have much, and half of it’s bloodstained, which’ll only get her stopped by the police. Who would probably add a few new stains in the process.
“Tell her it’s by way of thank you for helping us. She’s got some pride for a street kid. She’ll be angry if she thinks it’s a hand-out. And whatever you do, don’t offer her any money. She’ll never forgive you.”
“Do you think it’s safe to go out?” Serrin asked anxiously.
“I don’t think you’re going to get kidnapped in broad daylight in the main shopping plazas. From what I’ve learned, the kidnappings have almost always taken place at night and/or in some secluded spot. These people aren’t taking stupid risks.”
In the cab over to the mountain, Michael pored over the lists. The single coding separating some of the names on the list from the others had him baffled. It had to mean something, but he’d yet to discover what it was. The problem was that all the obvious things were getting him nowhere. It was puzzling that only one of the names was a woman’s, but that didn’t seem to mean too much. Nothing distinguished her from a handful of other ordinary people on the list. And who the hell would want to kidnap someone from the Squeeze, London’s most deprived and desperate district? Hell, just trying to get information about such people was almost impossible. Half of them weren’t even in the British government’s databases. Some of these names ruled out ransom as a motive, but the fact that none of the kidnapped persons had ever been returned already told him that. Not to mention no police records of ransom demands, though that might be due to no one informing the police because of fear. But, no one?
He gave up on it. To his great relief, he saw Tom clambering out of a cable car just as the cab drew up to the terminus. Giving the driver some notes and shouting for him to wait a few minutes, Michael leapt out and approached the ambling troll.
“Hey, you had us worried. Serrin’s going to feel better if he gets his bodyguard back,” Michael began and then stopped.
The troll continued walking on past as if the Englishman wasn’t there. Michael grabbed at his sleeve and, slowly, Tom’s head turned. He looked at Michael as if seeing him for the first time, then nodded his head slightly and followed him to the cab.
“Are you all right?” Michael asked anxiously.
“Never better,” Tom said imperiously and pulled at the cab door to open it, nearly wrenching it right off its hinges. He looked down at his hands stupidly, as if not believing that they worked like that.
“If you weren’t dried out I'd suggest you get a skinful,” Michael said. He was feeling a little nervous. Sharing the back of a cab with a very powerful and apparently disorientated troll might be a little dangerous.
“I don’t think so,” Tom said quietly. Testing the door with the gentleness he would have given a babe in arms, he opened it very slowly and climbed inside, ignoring the driver’s oaths about having to pay for the door if Tom wrecked it.
Michael followed him in and looked at the troll intently. Tom just sat their placidly, hands folded into his spacious lap.
“Home, I think,” the Englishman said to the driver, “Don’t worry. He’s harmless. Really.”
The cab pulled away from the curb and sped them back to the sprawl of the city.
* * *
Kristen was delighted by the suggestion that she get some new clothes with the money Serrin gave her. Shopping was a pleasure she’d never been able to indulge much. Taking care of the practical things first, she bought strong boots and a weatherproof reversible jacket and pants that looked like they’d last more than one winter. Then they ended up among racks and racks of lingerie, which was the only place she could buy any underwear, and Kristen was glad Serrin couldn’t see her blush. It was one good thing about not being white.
She touched the silks, with their fabulous softness and sheen, the sheer luxury of them. Useless to her, of course; if she wanted such things, she could always go to work for Indra. Of course that probably wouldn’t get her more than some fake-satin substitute; Indra’s girls weren’t that high-priced.
Glancing up at Serrin, Kristen had a moment of pure panic to find him no longer at her side. Alone in this store, she’d be stopped and searched as a shoplifter simply because of the color of her skin, and she couldn’t remember whether she had the receipts for everything in the bag he’d gotten for her. If not, and if he didn’t turn up soon, she could look forward to one hell of a beating for it.
Then Serrin was at her shoulder, bearing a handful of silk squares and scarves.
“They’re pretty. I saw you liked silk, and I wanted to get something for you myself,” he mumbled. “I know they’re not very useful, but they’re pretty.” He drew out the length of one scarf and held it up against her head to see how it went with her coloring.
She beamed at him. Unable to restrain herself, she hugged him tightly round the waist, not caring that people in the shop were looking at them with angry hatefulness.
What Serrin felt perplexed him. It wasn’t the usual fear of losing something he cared about. What really confused him was the feeling that this was safe. If he’d stopped to think about it, he’d have realized the absurdity of the idea, but for once he wasn’t thinking. He just put his hand on her head as she tucked it into his chest, feeling the tight wire of her hair through the silk.
Then she backed away and looked around, frightened. “We’d better get out,” she said urgently. “People will be upset.”
Not understanding, he followed her to the register, where he paid for the silks, attended by a vinegary-faced man who handled the elf’s money like it had some disease or other.
When they got outside, she floored him with her words.
“You’re going to go. You’re leaving,” she said sadly. “These things are to say good-bye.”
“No, they’re not,” he said emphatically. “I don’t know what comes next, but we’re not going anywhere.”
He should have said, not yet. But i
t didn't even enter the picture at the moment. He hailed one of the familiar yellow cabs and headed for the Hilton.
The scene when they arrived there was startling. Tom was sprawled out on the long chaise lounge, staring quietly up at the ceiling. Michael was jacked into his Fuchi, twitching almost maniacally. His hands were screwed so tightly into fists that they were virtually white.
“Yes! YES!!!” He jacked out, his pupils dilated with the thrill of it all, lips drawn back into a smile any dentist could have used for an advert. He stood up on his chair and sprang into the air, turning a perfect somersault and landing square on his feet. He raised his arms into the air and let out a window-threatening whoop.
Serrin and Kristen looked at each other and broke into uncontrollable laughter.
* * *
It was the increasingly familiar mix of despair and exultation that had him in its grip. For one so long used to unfeeling, mastering it had come slowly, learning to hold and focus the energies so that they poured into his mind and brain. He had two, three days of sleeplessness coming, a brilliant flash of utter self-absorption, when he released that energy. Luther also knew he had to hold it for longer than usual, and that irked him.
He had approached disposing of the elf with the same regret and determination as always. Knowing the bad karma this would earn him, he saw it as his own sacrifice when he fastened himself to the screaming body and leeched the life out of it, the hot blood pouring over his face and hands, the last agonies of his victim reverberating around the mausoleum in an echo that would be detectable forever. Luther knew the masking wouldn’t last very much longer.
There had simply been too much blood and death here, too many pairs of eyes widening in the realization of a fate worse than death, too much sheer terror and horror for the magical background count not to be building and building beyond even his ability to mask it. Time grew short now. But when the Ascension comes, he thought, I will be a hero to my people. My sacrifice will not have been in vain.