by Holly Lisle
The Master nodded, and looked over the specifications the asssociate provided. Or rather, he appeared to look over the specifications. His finger trailed along the lines of equations and the outmargined errata notes and working fixes, and for all the world he looked like a man intent on his work.
But he’d discovered only that morning that his young mistress, in whom he had taken a great deal of pleasure, had been keeping a young man of her own on the side, and using the allotment money he gave her for her entertainment to keep him available. He had discovered this, unfortunately, in the most humiliating and expensive of ways: His vowmate and her overpriced investigative team had presented him with the evidence of his infidelities in graphic detail, and to rub salt deep into wounds they would be prodding and freshening for quite some time, they had spread before him vivid evidence of his mistress’s free-time activities. Then they had laughed, and his vowmate—vile old harridan— placed before him the thirty-year-old contract, in which he and she had most clearly decreed any side-mates would be chosen with the approval of the vowmate, and all financing of consorts and mistresses be done from joint funds, with spending subject to the approval of the vowmate, who held veto.
That damned contract clause had seemed a good idea at the time, when his vowmate had been young and beautiful and willing as a ferret in heat. As time wore on—and as she wore out and became one of the busy society matrons focused on her own stature and lost in her own busy-work activities—he began chafing under her more frequently used veto. She’d agree to mistresses her own age. Plain-faced, dull, charmless … those satisfied her.
And now his contract was going to cost him his family’s ancestral home in the Aboves, and a massive portion of his investment income, and he was going to be shamed as a contract breaker.
His finger trailed over the specifications, but his mind ran to associates of his who claimed to know people of a certain sort. People who might be approached with money and offers of special treatment, special privileges, and who for considerations might make his vowmate and her investigators and their information simply …
… disappear.
He signed off on the specifications for both spell-sets, having failed to actually read a single word of either of them.
Such are the events that shape fate and change the world.
Chapter 25
Luercas sat at one of the little tables outside the restaurant HaFerlingetta, sipping cool, herbal jabemeya from a broad, shallow bowl. He’d been waiting already for nearly an hour, growing increasingly annoyed. The oblivious crowds moved past him in two directions, jabbering, stupid, a herd in search of a shepherd. They could not see the disaster that waited to befall them; they did not know that they would, one day soon, bow in gratitude when he rose up from among commoners and saved them from the complacent monsters who owned them.
He noted a flash of bright red off to his right. And there came Dafril, late as usual, running, looking flushed and flustered and wearing something both new and gaudy—he spent far too much money on fashion. But Luercas noted that along with everything else, Dafril looked pleased. Even triumphant.
Dafril grabbed a chair, plopped into it with all the grace of a sack of rocks thrown to the ground, waved for a servant, and, as if he were speaking to everyone beneath the awning and even all the passersby, said, “Give me a casklet of the best ferrouce in the house, and a plate of whitling, rare and spiced, and whatever my friend will have. We have much—much—to celebrate!”
The servant nodded, face tight, then smiled politely and said, “My congratulations, Master, and the congratulations of Ha-Ferlingetta.” And scurried off like the insignificant bug that he was. Luercas turned to Dafril as soon as the man was out of earshot and said, “Keep your voice down, man. I’m suspended, you’re currently far out of main favor, and the last thing we want anyone to think is that we’ve had some personal triumph.”
“My vowmate’s test confirmed her pregnancy!” Dafril blurted, and all around him, those who had been watching out of the corners of their eyes, curious and wary at once, smiled knowing smiles and went back to their meals and drinks.
Luercas frowned and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Your vowmate? When in all the little hells did you acquire one of those?”
“Pregnant,” Dafril crowed. And sotto voce he said, “And we’re going to name the baby Mirror of Souls.”
All the tension and anxiety and frustration drained out of Luercas in an instant, and he smiled so broadly that he thought he might swallow his own ears. “The test … worked, then?”
Dafril grinned. “Like magic. We have one in the, ah, you know, right now. Went off perfectly—most beautiful bit of work I’ve ever seen. Even if I do say so myself.”
“You’ve earned the right to gloat.” Luercas thought for a moment. “You’ve … ah … talked with the …” He fell silent, unable to think of any clever way to say disembodied soul held in the Mirror.
But no matter. Dafril knew what he meant. “Had a good conversation with her. She’s delighted. Asked only that when she … er … comes back, we make sure she’s prettier than she was.” He chuckled. “We could put her into the body of a hell-blevy fisherman just freed from the gill net and she’d be happy, frankly.”
Luercas considered that for a moment, then smiled. “Ah. Our volunteer was Mellayne, eh?”
“Guessed it in one. I thought she’d go for it—opportunity to be beautiful, to get rid of that dreadful lump of flesh she’s been lugging around her whole life while she waited for someone who could do a spell that could repair everything wrong with her.”
“She jumped at the chance.”
“She did indeed. And we’ll let her be someone pretty; I’m sure we can locate a ‘traitor’ for her and manage to lose the girl on the way to the Warrens.”
“When are we scheduling the reversal, then?”
Dafril smiled but didn’t answer. Instead, he greeted the servants who brought his food, dug into his drink and meal with every appearance of delight, and was as gracious as a man could be when the last servant to the table presented him with a tiny baby-cake, so delicate and perfect it seemed a shame to eat it.
Had he and his nonexistent vowmate actually been expecting a child, tradition would have required him to break the thing in two and then devour the entire cake-and-spun-sugar mass to ensure his vowmate’s good health and fortune. The tradition had been born in the days when men hoped to fool gods by destroying false infants, praying meanwhile that doing so would draw those gods’ attention away from the real infants they desperately wanted to live. The gods were long forgotten— or at least those with any sense of decency were, Luercas thought with some bitterness—but the tradition remained.
Dafril played along, though. He broke the cake, stuffed the pieces in his mouth with no regard for his dignity, and washed it down with his dreadfully expensive ferrouce. Then he raised his hand and said, “To the child.”
And all around him, people raised their hands and repeated, “To the child.” And they, for just a moment, pounded on the table as if they were their primitive, superstitious ancestors. Luercas went through the charade with them, amused that he was in fact wishing luck to his and Dafril’s baby—the Mirror of Souls—and to his own ascent to the post of god of the Empire of the Hars.
When people went back to their meals and conversations, Dafril said, “We’re looking for a good body for her. We want to wait a few days, too—the thing used an amount of energy not to be believed. We had the spell-sets run through the main energy grid; it’s going to look like the Long Wall District and part of Five Corners experienced a brief power drain. But I want us to link in through a different district when we pull her out, just to make sure that they don’t trace the theft to us.”
“Reasonable.” Luercas took a bite of his salad and chewed thoughtfully. “Make sure it stays connected to power at all times, though, just in case.”
Dafril, pin-sticks halfway to his mouth loaded with whitling, froze and f
rowned. “Whatever for? My sources tell me the Dragons are a minimum of two weeks away from their first strike. They’re working hard, but these things tend to get waylaid by bureaucratic red tape, safety worries … a million things. Best guess is their attack on the Warrens, and their follow-up against the rebels, won’t be for a full month yet.”
Luercas said, “I know all of that. I have sources, too. But I’m … nervous. They haven’t found any sign of the rebels yet. Nothing. Not which way they went, no sightings from people loyal to the Empire. If the rebels strike first, we’re going to have to move fast.”
“You want to know what I think?” Dafril asked, mouth full of food.
Luercas didn’t, actually. But, polite for the moment with this necessary associate, he said, “Of course.”
“I think the rebels have vanished because their god Vodor Imrish took them home to the next world. They aren’t anywhere to be found because they aren’t anywhere.”
Luercas shrugged. “You might be correct. But we have to assume that they are around somewhere, that they could hurt us, and that they’ll at least try.”
Dafril shrugged. “No problem for me. I’ll make sure everything stays in a ready state. But I doubt the necessity. With everything moved and in place, I figure we could have everyone on site and transported in two hours, maximum, from the moment of notification, even if we weren’t connected to a source.”
Two hours sounded like entirely too long to Luercas. “I didn’t realize you’d located a permanent home for it already,” he said. He didn’t appreciate this independent streak of Dafril’s. “Where is it?”
“We’ve moved it to the mainland. There’s no wilderness left on Glavia. I have it housed in a protected temple inland from Freyirs City. The acolytes of the temple have sworn their souls to guarding it, and I’ve bound them by magic. I figure we need to have it someplace where no one will bother it for the few weeks that we’re waiting for things to fall to pieces.”
Luercas smiled. “How clever of you. I would never have thought of giving the Mirror its own order of priests. How did you convince them to take it in, though?”
“Simple. Mellayne in her current form can make herself look like anyone or anything when she’s summoned to speak. So she made herself look like their god. They’re dead certain they’re housing the person of their deity—that they’ve been honored beyond words. Good-looking bunch of kids, too, most of them. I figure we can use them as replacement bodies when we come back.”
Luercas leaned on an elbow and shook his head, momentarily silenced by genuine admiration. “Gods-all, Dafril,” he said at last. “You stun me. What a brilliant stroke.”
Dafril looked delighted by the praise. “As long as we talk to them from the Mirror from time to time while we’re waiting, we should be able to keep their converts coming—no worrying about the priesthood turning into a few wizened old decrepits in case we end up stuck in there a bit longer.”
“None whatsoever.” Luercas chuckled. “So everything is in place. I believe I’ll fly out and take a look at the …ah… god today. Make sure I know the route well enough to get there in a hurry.” He savored the last bite of his salad. “Meanwhile … lovely work, Dafril. Just lovely. You should have been a Master long ago. You have the deviousness and the innocent face for it—and a streak of brilliance far deeper than anyone would believe.”
A chill that passed over his body woke Wraith from deep sleep into darkness, and in that moment he knew. The time had come. Time to get everyone who was going into the aircar shells, time to say good-bye to the rest, maybe forever, time to find the words that he would say when the wizards took over the nightlies in time for him to tell everyone what they had done, and why, and how they must leave their homes and their worlds in order to preserve their lives.
Time to find the words that would make them understand that he was doing the right thing, the good thing—when he could not find even the words to convince himself. He would be destroying something three thousand years old, something beautiful beyond imagining, something that offered comfort to the lives of so many, and security for most, and peace, and safety—and in its place he would be offering … what? Lives and the preservation of their own souls to some, yes. But to the rest?
He could lie here in the bed and pretend that he did not know the time had come. And if he did, the time would pass, and he would be able to apologize to everyone—tell them the Secret Texts had been written by a sick, delusional man, and that he was now better. And sorry. The opportunity to free the Warreners would never be offered to him again. He would be free of it. Someday, perhaps someone else would pick up the burden and carry on. He need never tell anyone that he now remembered what he had written in the Secret Texts—every word of it, as if it had been engraved on his brain—that he knew for certain that Solander had used all the energy he could muster to reach Wraith from beyond death, to tell him everything he had been able to guess and understand about the future from his position in the place beyond the worlds. If he so chose, Wraith could simply permit the moment to drain away like rain falling on sand. Someday, someone else would save the Warreners.
Maybe.
But they wouldn’t save these Warreners. They might save their children, or their grandchildren—but these people, trapped in a hell not of their own making, would die, not just for the time, but for eternity. They would die so that something beautiful might live, but the price they paid was disproportionate. No one should be forced to give up immortality so that others might have beauty and convenience.
Wraith rose from the cot, shivering as if he’d been dunked in a lake and left on an ice field. He bore the weight of an empire on his shoulders, and the lives of uncounted hundreds of millions, and he knew in that moment that he carried too much for one man. He wished that Solander had lived and that he, Wraith, had died, for surely Solander would have been able to divine through his magic the right course, or else he wished that this twin-headed horror that he must choose between would pass from his care to the hands of someone stronger, someone purer, someone who could see more clearly. He wished Vodor Imrish would come to him and tell him what he must choose, so that he would at least be absolved of responsibility … and guilt.
But Vodor Imrish remained silent, and the future—the future of the Empire of the Hars Ticlarim on one side, and the future of an unending stream of nameless, dreamless, hopeless Warreners on the other side— lay for that one moment within the grasp of his two hands. He had lived in both worlds, and he had known the hell of one and the heaven of the other, and as much as he had hated the one, he had loved the other. But he could not change one without irrevocably changing both.
Tears rolled down his cheeks. He clenched his hands into fists and wept silently—wept for people he could never know, and for people he did know and would not be able to help. And then he stepped out of the tiny one-room cottage where he had written the Secret Texts, and with full understanding of the consequences others would have to pay for his choice, he roused the Falcons and their support team, and told them that they had to get to the aircars quickly—that the time had come to fight.
He was grateful for the darkness that hid his tear-stained face. He did not wish to share his doubts with anyone else. Ever. If they had their own, he sympathized—but he would not try to escape the weight of his own burden. He’d earned his guilt, and for the rest of his life, he knew he would live with the consequences of this choice, whatever those consequences might be.
Jess sat beside him, and Patr across from him. None of them said anything. The three of them would not assist the Falcons in the placing of spells; their job would come when they reached Oel Artis and the Falcons breached the security that guarded transmission of the nightlies. Until then, they would follow, or simply wait, at the whim of the god.
In the dark, Wraith felt a small, strong, callused hand slide into his. Jess scooted closer. Wraith held her hand with gratitude and waited. Finally, when the last of the aircars held all its pass
engers, a faint gold-tinged spiral of wind swept around all of them, glowing only enough that they could tell it had arrived. Soundlessly, smoothly, the aircars lifted into the air, and then moved through something that felt to Wraith like chilled silk, like a spider’s web hung with cold, cold, bone-chillingly cold dew. True silence descended; not the silence of the world, but the silence of a place beyond the world. All light fell away. All sensation ceased. Wraith knew that he had been sitting, but he could not tell if he sat any longer; his body was gone. He had no arms, no legs, no eyes, no ears. He tried to speak, but no mouth moved, no words formed, no sounds came out. He tried to feel Jess’s hand, or even to sense her presence, but for all that his senses told him, he could have been the lone sentient thought in the center of an infinite expanse of nothing.
He should be afraid, but he was not. Blind, deaf, mute, bodiless, lost, he found in the emptiness the presence of Vodor Imrish. He received no words of comfort, no reassurances, no promises that everything would be all right. But he knew Vodor Imrish traveled with him through this place, and with that knowledge, he found contentment.
The state of bodilessness lasted only an instant, and then he and Jess and Patr and the aircar fell through the brush of colder-than-death cobwebs again, and he looked out to see Oel Artis below. And all the other aircars full of Falcons and their assistants flew with him.
“Something has gone wrong,” he whispered. “We shouldn’t be here yet. Or, even if we were supposed to be here, everyone else should still be at the Warrens.”
Jess gripped his hand tighter, her fingers interlocked with his so fiercely that he doubted he could free himself if he chose to. She said nothing, and he realized that she was scared. He hadn’t sensed any fear in her the whole time they’d been preparing for this moment, and as she’d been helping organize the teams that went into each aircar, she’d sounded as calm as if she had been giving people instructions on finding the playhouse where one of her groups was playing. He looked at her, wishing that he could see better in darkness. From her profile, sharply outlined against the sea of stars that was Oel Artis below, he could tell that her lips were pressed tightly together, and that she’d squeezed her eyes closed.