By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  They were in a stone corridor, a deep passageway like those beneath the Adepts’ Retreat on Galcen. Doors of rough-finished wood opened from one side or another. The staff in Owen’s hands blazed white, illuminating the way.

  “Only one of the doors is the right one,” Llannat said, and was sure that it was true. “Which one … we should know it when we get there.”

  “I hope so. I doubt we’ll have a second chance.”

  They went on. The corridor seemed to stretch out forever, far beyond the light cast by Owen’s staff. At last they came to a blank wall—a dead end, more of the same grey stone as the rest of the corridor.

  “We missed it,” Owen said. “One of the doors we passed.”

  “No,” Llannat said. She reached out with her noncorporeal senses, and felt inside the substance of the wall. And there they were—the markers to allow someone trained in the use of power to pass through the solid substance, as she had done long ago in the strange maze beneath the Professor’s asteroid.

  “Here,” she told Owen. “Pass through here.”

  “There’s no Power in the Void,” Owen said. “I can’t.”

  “You have to. Do you want to rescue the Domina, or not?”

  His face was pale in the light of his staff, and he shook his head in frustration. “I tell you, I can’t.”

  “Then grab hold and let me take you,” Llannat said.

  Own hesitated for a moment, then took hold of her wrist. She pressed her other hand against the stone and willed herself to sink inward, to become one with the material of the wall. She felt a brief instant of vertigo, oddly reminiscent of the discontinuity of a hyperspace jump. Then she passed through the wall and into the space beyond.

  Bright light dazzled her eyes. She stood before the fireplace in the Summer Palace on Entibor, with the arms of Entibor and of House Rosselin carved in the stone behind her. Owen stood beside her in the sunlit room.

  “Through this way,” she said, pointing. A note gonged through the air—a sound she recognized from her vision on board Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter. “That’s the alert. We don’t have much time.”

  Together they passed from the fireplace room and into another just as luxurious, with high arched windows facing green-forested hills. A red bird flitted from tree to tree … . In the next instant there came a tremendous glare of blue-white light, and the room dissolved into dazzle before her eyes. There was a smell of smoke; the openwork carving of the table was smoldering where the light had struck. A moment later came a roar of sound as the windows blew in, showering glass splinters everywhere. Llannat felt them touch her body and pass harmlessly through, though each left a trail of pain in its wake, like the pain of the mist in the Void.

  “Come on!” she screamed at Owen, pulling him by the arm. “This way!”

  Out through the broken embrasures of the windows they went, down to the hillside below, where a swirl of red flame mixed with choking smoke. The smoke was grey, the grey mist of the Void. And the flame was the red glare of a staff, a Mage’s staff, held by a slightly-built, grey-haired man in dark trousers and a white, bloodstained shirt.

  He bowed, and sketched a salute in the mist with his staff.

  “Mistress Hyfid, you’ve arrived.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m here, Professor.”

  V. GYFFERAN SPACE: SWORD-OF-THE-DAWN; RSF KARIPAVO

  THE VOID

  IN THE quiet of his quarters, Theio syn-Ricte sus-Airaalin carefully belted on his robes as arch-Mage. Not for him today the uniform of a Grand Admiral. When he joined his Circle in the meditation room, he would wear the proper garments of his rank, with every piece in place and each tie correctly tied.

  Carefully he settled the black mask over his face and tightened the drawstrings of his hood to hold it closely in place. This was no time for the geaerith to slip askew. He would need to see the patterns as they developed.

  Already they were there, teasing at the sides of his vision, coming unbidden—the pattern was shaping up well. Unless …

  There was one tiny discordance far away from the center of the pattern, winking in and out of his peripheral vision, as if it weren’t real at all. If that interference spread—like the rings that followed a dropped stone spreading across a pond—if it spread, it could endanger everything, the careful plans of years and the fragile pattern just beginning to emerge.

  The interference wasn’t coming from the strange Mage, nor yet from the young Domina. Those two were threads, powerful threads, in the weaving of the true pattern. The interference came from elsewhere—there seemed to be a flavor of Adeptry in it, but it was shadowed and obscure.

  The source of the interference was moving about, somewhere on the ship … . sus-Airaalin extended his senses, but could not pin it down. Something else caught at his attention, absorbed it: a Mageworking, powerful but untutored, drawing the threads of the universe into a pattern of its own—a pattern that was, in fact, the missing part of the design he had struggled from the beginning to create. True peace, the goal so long desired and so long worked for.

  But the working was not yet right—the strange Mage was doing everything by instinct, and not all the proper threads were in place. Without the last threads, the pattern could never be completed. Its fabric would fray and destroy the rest.

  It will be completed, sus-Airaalin thought. As I told Lisaiet before, I have desired it, and it will be so.

  He left his quarters and went, not to the meditation room after all, but to the cabin of the young Domina.

  Llannat held out her arms to the Professor. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  “You’ve done all that was needful, and more,” the Professor said in his courtly voice. “But the end and the beginning of your duty is near.”

  He clasped her briefly by the shoulders, then released her and stepped aside. The mist parted to reveal a fair woman dressed in white, wrapped in a hooded cloak of thick white wool, like a shroud.

  “This is the one you’ve come to find,” the Professor said. “The game was nearly lost—but now there is a chance to win it for good and all.”

  Llannat knelt before the woman. “Domina,” she said. “I have to tell you what I’ve seen: the Mages have come with ships of war against the Republic. You are needed.”

  “Mother,” Owen said. His voice was low and uncertain—Llannat had never heard him sound that way before. “We’re here to bring you back to the living world, if you will come.”

  “I will come,” the woman said.

  Llannat turned back to the older man. “Professor, are you coming too?”

  “No, Mistress. My work is finished.”

  “Will I ever see you again?”

  “‘Yes’ and ‘no’ are both such limiting words,” the Professor said. “So I’ll say ’I don’t know,’ and leave it at that.”

  He bowed, and stepped away into the mist.

  Owen was holding his mother in a tight embrace. He lowered his arms. “Let’s pick a direction and go in it. The way out isn’t going to come to us—at least, it isn’t right now.”

  Llannat shook her head, and gestured at a darkening on one part of what would be the horizon, if there were a horizon in this place.

  “There,” she said. “That’s the door. I can see the pattern for it now … it’s a matter of adjusting your eyes to look for where things aren’t, instead of where they are. Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Owen said. “There’s something moving in the Void that needs our help. Over there.”

  He pointed to his right. Now Llannat could see it too—there, not far away, stood a black-robed and black-masked Mage, his staff in one hand, his other hand hanging motionless from a wounded arm. Beside him floated a creature of mist, darker than the greyness of the Void, a nightmare thing with ropy tendrils lashing out at someone half-hidden in the knee-high, swirling fog.

  “Come,” Owen said, and the three of them approached the fight—for it was a fight, even if badly one-sided.

  A y
oung woman with an Adept’s staff struck out repeatedly at the creature of mist, but her blows were ineffective. The body of the mist-creature thinned a little where she struck it, but it coalesced again after the staff had passed through.

  Llannat recognized the girl; she recognized the mist-creature. The girl was her own younger self—the Llannat who had been cast into the Void during the ’Hammer’s raid on Darvell, the raid where the Professor had been killed, and his staff had come to Llannat at Beka Rosselin-Metadi’s hands. That time, she had fought a Mage and his creature of mist, and she had nearly died—until a pair of Adepts came and sent her back to the world of reality.

  Now Llannat saw that struggle again, from the vantage point of her older self. The younger Llannat was over-matched in her fight against the Void-creature; even now, a pseudopod of grey mist was curling down over the girl’s shoulder. When she dropped and rolled away, two more ropes of living mist whipped out and caught her by the ankle and waist as she came up.

  The girl lashed out, but Llannat could tell that she was hurting. Her breath came in gasps; sweat rolled down her dark face. Another rope whipped out from the creature, catching her by the wrist. Her staff fell into the mists of the Void. She staggered and fell to one knee.

  “Get back!” Owen shouted to the woman on the ground. His staff blazed up again into blinding white light.

  The girl staggered away, and fell again.

  But by then Llannat had other things to concern her. She let Owen handle the Mage—she had business of her own with the creature of mist. All times and places meet in the Void, she thought. The last time we fought, this creature had the best of me. But not any longer.

  She struck, her Magestaff glowing brightly as she channeled her power through it. When she touched one of the creature’s pseudopods, the limb fell away from the indistinct trunk. Again she struck, and again the wound on the thing did not heal, but instead bled pale steam from within its dark-mist covering. Then, without warning, the creature dissolved entirely.

  She turned to see Owen standing at guard. The Mage collapsed slowly before him, clutching his belly where bright blood spurted out between his fingers. The black-robed man fell down into the fog and was gone.

  Owen turned back to Perada. “What happened to the Adept?”

  “Gone,” the older woman said. “I sent her back to Ari—he needs her.”

  “Good,” Llannat said. “She needs him, too. But now we have to go.”

  “This way,” Owen said, guiding them both back toward the dark opening in the mist. Away off to the right, the dark tower still stood.

  Aboard Karipavo, Gil leaned forward in his command chair, the better to see the main battle tank.

  “They’re flat kicking us to pieces,” the TAO said.

  Gil had no choice but to agree. “Whatever they have, it has longer range than anything we’ve got, higher accuracy, and more hitting power. So we deal with that. We have to get in among ’em, where they don’t dare use their big stuff without endangering themselves, and where our weapons have an equal chance against them.”

  “Yeah,” said the TAO, “but the run-in is going to be hell.”

  “Jump behind ’em, then jump back into the thick,” Gil said. “That’s the way it has to be. Make that up as a signal—all units, jump to beyond system space, then immediately jump back in-system; put your drop point in the center of the sphere of probability for the nearest Mage concentration.”

  “Report coming in from Fighter Det 32,” said the lightspeed comms technician. “Odd contact.”

  “Report.”

  “Small vessel squawking identifiers as Republic shuttle located inbound near Mage main body.”

  “Punch it up on the screen,” said Gil.

  “Identifier shows it’s from Veratina.”

  “One of Vallant’s cruisers,” said the TAO. “Evaluate part of mutineer force attached to the Mages.”

  “Negate that,” said Gil. “Veratina was part of the force reported over Galcen with Metadi.”

  “Metadi’s flag?”

  “Could be,” Gil said. “Pass to 32: Take Veratina shuttle. Transfer all crew to Karipavo.”

  “Report from 32—Veratina shuttle contains one person, Republic officer in uniform, requesting conference with commander, Republic forces.”

  “Roger that,” Gil said. “Come aboard Karipavo.” He turned to Lieutenant Jhunnei. “What do you think?”

  “A message from Metadi that he doesn’t trust to lightspeed comms?”

  “Could be,” Gil said. “Stand by to receive them, and bring the officer to me soonest.”

  It was some time before the fighter, an Eldan two-seater from Fighter Detachment 32, came into the ’Pavo’s docking bay. The pilot brought his passenger up to the CIC: a Space Force commander with a loop of gold braid on her uniform shoulder.

  The pilot saluted. “Lieutenant Tirbat reporting, sir, with person removed from Veratina’s shuttle.”

  Gil looked at the woman whose picture he had last seen tucked in among the pages of Inesi syn-Tavaite’s careful, meticulous notes.

  “Rosel Quetaya,” Gil said. “You’re a damned Mage replicant.”

  “I’m no such thing, Commodore.” Her cheeks were red and her voice was indignant—indignant enough to be convincing, if Gil hadn’t seen those notebooks, and hadn’t heard Doctor syn-Tavaite talking on Innish-Kyl about Magelords and their works.

  “I have information for you,” the woman continued. “I know where General Metadi is located.”

  “You do, do you?”

  “Yes,” She passed across a datachip. “Over in sector one-five green, we’ve got a major Mage unit. General Metadi intends to do a firing pass and destroy it if possible. He requests you to stand clear, and provide diversion in other sectors.”

  “Mark that unit in the tank, and pass to all units, ‘Enemy flagship located. Target and destroy at all costs.’”

  The woman wasn’t red-faced any longer, but pale with anger. “Damn you, Jervas! General Metadi ordered you to stand clear!”

  “You mean the Mage commander did. Lieutenant Jhunnei!”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Take this—person—and put her in the brig. We’ll deal with her later when we have more time.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Beka.

  But the protest was mostly pro forma. She didn’t think that resisting the Grand Admiral would do any good—not when he was wearing his full Magelord’s getup, and not when shooting straight at him hadn’t done anything before. And besides, he was taking her back where she wanted to go—to Warhammer, and the replicant that waited there.

  One way or another, we’ve got ourselves a Mage. I just wish I knew what he was up to.

  sus-Airaalin said only, “Please make haste, my lady. The patterns are drawing close.”

  They reached the docking bay that held Warhammer. The door to the bay lay open, and the dock had been pressurized. Beyond the force field at the end of the bay, the cold stars shone. Warhammer’s ramp was still down.

  They entered an eerily silent ship. No one was in the common room, or in the cockpit. A hand of cards lay spread out on the common-room table.

  “Damnation,” she muttered, and pulled the blaster. sus-Airaalin made no move to stop her.

  She walked quickly down the passageway to the crewside berthing compartments. The seal on Tarveet’s quarters was in place. The other compartment was empty.

  “Below,” she said to the Grand Admiral. “You want anybody, they’re likely in the hold.”

  They went down the starboard passage to bay one. Down the ladder to the large and echoing cargo space they went, and there, against an incongruous backdrop of holographic Khesatan stage scenery, Beka found the rest of her crew—Llannat Hyfid (Where the hell, Beka wondered, did she come from?) standing with Owen by the head of the stasis box, with Nyls Jessan kneeling beside it monitoring the readouts on the power levels. Doctor syn-Tavaite was hovering over the box and speaking rapidly to Ignac
’ in her own language while the two of them worked with quick hand motions on the figure inside. After recognizing Mistress Hyfid, Beka wasn’t surprised to see Ari standing there as well—a massive, calm figure, with his arms crossed over his chest and an emergency medical kit lying by his feet.

  “What the hell are they doing?” she whispered—half to herself, and half to the dark and silent figure beside her.

  “Something at which they will fail, if they are not assisted,” the Grand Admiral said quietly. “This is the working I saw in my quarters … and I see now what I must do.”

  Beka watched, mesmerized, as sus-Airaalin moved forward, unnoticed by those who labored over the crystal coffin. He halted behind Mistress Hyfid, overshadowing her, and placed his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t seem to notice his presence; her concentration was too intense.

  After a moment, Beka too stepped into the cluster of people around the stasis box. She looked down. The lid was off, and she could see the—body?—resting inside. As Beka watched the face grew firmer, changing from a youthful oval to a more sharply planed and defined state.

  Then, with a gasp and a jerk, the figure started to breathe.

  Llannat Hyfid opened her eyes. “It’s happened.”

  syn-Tavaite said something sharp in Eraasian, and Ignac’ twisted a dial attached to a meter with a tube running beneath the covering sheets.

  “We made it,” Owen said softly. He seemed to notice Beka for the first time. “Bee, you were right. We made it.”

  Then, suddenly, syn-Tavaite picked up a pair of shears, a common set of shears, and began rapidly cutting away the sheets of foil.

  “Up, up, get her up,” syn-Tavaite said in Galcenian. “She needs to walk around. Get the blood flowing. Help her remember the body.”

  Ari stepped forward and raised the Domina from the stasis box.

  “Here, Mother,” he said, lifting her and helping her step out onto the metal deckplates. “We’re all here.”