The Wrath of the Great Guilds (The Pillars of Reality Book 6)

by Jack Campbell

  Alain felt an odd trance overlay his vision, as if he could see inside Mari’s body, see it soaking up the power and using it to greatly speed up its own processes of healing. He saw breaks closing in a flash in the large vessels that carried her blood, flesh filling in gaps, shattered bone reforming, more blood surging through her.

  His head spun with weakness and disorientation. How long had he been doing this? Alain had lost all sense of anything outside of himself and Mari, and his feel for his own condition was fading quickly as he focused only on her. Drained of almost everything, he kept offering all he could to Mari.

  But his strength failed at last and with it went the link through which he had poured the spell to save Mari. A grayness filled Alain’s mind and an emptiness dwelt inside him.

  He no longer felt or knew anything, except for a vague sense of falling.

  He fell.

  And fell.

  Into something dark and bottomless that had opened beneath him.

  * * * *

  Alain had no idea how long he fell. He gradually became aware of bright arcs of light swinging through the darkness above him. The arcs slowed, grew shorter, and after an eternity settled into the brilliance of stars he had never seen, arrayed in strange constellations.

  He realized that he had stopped falling, but was still moving. Not walking, but gliding along as if he were a puff of smoke on a breeze. Alain drifted down long paths shadowed by huge, ancient trees that watched him with unseen eyes. He found himself in an endless corridor lined with closed doors, occasional windows revealing an outside world with impossibly bright colors. Somehow, he was in a ballroom of immense size filled with innumerable faces. Most seemed unaware of him, though a few glanced his way with eyes that held secrets beyond his grasp. He saw a man and a woman smiling at him, and fought to stop his movement. Could they be—?

  But they waved him on. He could not turn or stop, only continue his slow drift. He became aware of voices whispering to him, but the words meant nothing. What is all this? Alain cried wordlessly into the dark. What does it mean?

  And just for a moment he understood the whispers. Only two words, seemingly an answer to the questions he could not speak.

  Not yet.

  He fell again. Alain felt no fear, no worries for when he might strike whatever lay beneath him. Falling was all there was. But after a time he could not measure, Alain felt his headlong plummet slowing. It was as if he were sinking slowly into a deep pile of the softest down.

  He was lying down.

  All he could see were reddish patches that swam and shifted constantly before him.

  Alain became aware that he was awake. His eyelids were closed. That was the source of the shifting reddish patches. There must be light wherever he was.

  A slow beat in his ears became his pulse, then he felt air going in and out as he breathed. He could hear a distant murmuring, or perhaps it was a breeze blowing somewhere.

  He thought about moving, and realized that he felt incredibly weary. Even the effort of breathing shallowly was taking every bit of strength he had.

  It was a bed, Alain decided. He was lying in a bed. On his back. What an odd end to his visions. Why would one enter a new dream, the one beyond death, by waking up in a bed?

  He could open his eyes and find out.

  But that would take a lot of effort. Alain had to wait and gather his strength. Finally he managed to open his eyes, wondering what he would see.

  If this was a new dream, another world to which the dead passed, it seemed very much like the old. The ceiling overhead was white plaster, light dancing on it from the reflection of sunlight on water somewhere nearby. Alain watched the light for a long time, too exhausted by the effort of opening his eyes to do more, fascinated by the ever-changing patterns of the reflection.

  “Alain?”

  It was a whisper. Saying his name.

  He knew the voice, and felt sudden hope that bought him enough strength to move his head. The simple gesture required immense effort, but Alain managed to roll his head toward where the voice had come from, to his right, seeing the top of a window, then a view through that window of a blue sky flecked with clouds, then the top of a bedstead next to his own bed and a water pitcher that must be the source of the reflection on the ceiling.

  Then, as his head flopped sideways onto his pillow, he saw Mari on the other bed. She lay on her back, her head resting on a pillow, her face thin and drawn. She was watching him with eyes that were open and aware and desperately worried.

  She was alive.

  Alain managed to get one whispered word out of his throat. “Mari.”

  “What…did you…do?”

  He had to think about that, trying to remember, his mind fuzzy with fatigue and a strange sense of dislocation. “Gave…you…all…I…had.”

  “How?”

  That took some more thought. “Made…myself…the spell.”

  “Mage Alain.” Asha walked to a spot where he could see. She leaned over to study him intently. “You made yourself the spell? All know that you must have saved Mari, but no one knew how. It nearly killed you, Mage Alain. I must tell the healers that you have awoken.”

  He heard a door open and close, but kept his eyes on Mari, feeling physically awful but emotionally wonderful. “You…are…all right.”

  “Sort of.” She managed a smile for him. “Thanks. Don’t ever…again.”

  Before he could try to tell her that was still a promise he would never make, Alain heard the door open and people crowding quickly into the room. Several came beside his bed, looking at him and touching his forehead and wrist.

  “Sir Mage Alain?” a woman healer asked, her eyes on his. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  A ripple of noise went through those who had entered. “What happened to you?” the healer asked. “We couldn’t find anything wrong with you. No injuries to your body at all. It was if you suddenly became so exhausted that for a little while your body had no strength to keep even the heart and mind going.”

  Alain couldn’t move his head, but he did move his eyes slightly to indicate Mari. “Gave her…mine.”

  The healer shook her head, exchanging glances with her comrades. “Sir Mage,” she told Alain, “the most critical injuries suffered by Lady Mari seemed to heal almost instantaneously, leaving scar tissue that looks like it’s from an old injury. But whatever caused that had some other impact on her body, some major stress that was like a combination of shock and exposure, that she barely managed to overcome. Can you tell us anything about that?”

  Alain, to his own surprise, managed to shake his head a tiny bit. “I…gave…strength…her…body…used it.”

  “Mage work,” one of the healers commented. “I’ve never actually seen it before.”

  “It has never been seen before,” Asha said, startling the healers. “No Mage has ever done such a thing. Will Mage Alain be well?”

  “Yes, Lady Mage,” the woman healer said. “His body is suffering from the results of severe stress which…I think…is a side-effect of what he did. There is no reason to think he will not recover quickly now.”

  “And Master Mechanic Mari? She is still weak.”

  “She, uh, went through a lot, Lady Mage. Even though the wound healed so remarkably quickly, or maybe because it did, her body seems to have a memory of the injury that is taking time to, well, heal.”

  “Thank you,” Asha said, further shocking the healers.

  As they left, Alain heard the healers conversing excitedly. One of them used the phrase “a new day” just before the door closed.

  Asha leaned down to Alain again. “Sleep, Mage Alain, wisest of the wise. Either Mechanic Calu or I will always be here watching you and Mari.” She turned. “You as well, Mari. Your fire burns again, but must grow stronger.”

  “Asha,” Mari whispered. “Dav. How is…Dav?”

  “My uncle Mage Dav is well,” Asha said. “He who will soon be my promised husband, Mecha
nic Dav, can yet only walk with great difficulty, and so stayed at Pacta, but gains strength by the day.”

  “I’m…sorry,” Mari said.

  “It is only his hip,” Asha said. “You saved the rest of him. Now sleep.”

  Alain, worn out, closed his eyes, too, somehow knowing that he would have no more dreams for a while.

  * * * *

  The next time that Mari awoke she saw a familiar face in the room and felt a rush of happiness. “Calu?” Her voice, still weak, broke on the name.

  “That’s right.” Calu stood up from the chair by the door, his old grin fading as he looked at Mari. “You look like you got pressed through a hydraulic ram.”

  “Thanks. I feel like that, too.”

  “Do you remember me calling you? On the last day of the battle?”

  “Yeah.” Mari tried to smile reassuringly. “Not much after that, though. Why didn’t you call sooner…instead of waiting until you were flying over me?”

  Calu waved upward. “Because the river valley surrounding Dorcastle has pressure layers in the air above it that you can almost bounce rocks off. You can talk to someone else inside the city all right, but far-talker signals can’t get in or out most of the time. I discovered that the long-distance far-talker at the Mechanics Guild Hall runs underground wires out to antennas on top of the cliffs to get around the problem.”

  “You’d think somebody would talk about that,” Mari said. “I guess it was a Guild secret, as far as the Senior Mechanics were concerned.” She tried to pace her words, feeling a curious mix of being stronger along with a sense that her endurance was still very weak.

  “Yeah. They probably didn’t have a clue about it so they said it had to be kept secret. Stars above, Mari, don’t try to sit up!” Calu sat down again in a chair next to her bed, shaking his head. “I’ll never forget how it felt, sitting outside the healers’ room with Alain and Asha, then breaking in there once we realized he needed to be beside you, and—"

  “You broke in?” Mari had wondered if she would ever feel like laughing again, but she heard herself and it sounded breathless but good. “Why didn’t I expect that? What’s going on? Outside?”

  “How much have they told you? Nothing? Typical.” Calu squinted in thought. “Uh, in order of importance, the Imperials and the Great Guilds ran all the way to the harbor and kept going. The entire city is safe, though it’s pretty beat up. Pacta also held. Alli couldn’t join your army when we went past because they were worried about the Syndaris trying again, but from what she told me Syndar got a major butt-kicking. Queen Sien went through them like a sword through butter. And it looks a whole lot like the Mechanics Guild is collapsing.”

  “What?” Mari stared at Calu, unable to believe that she had heard right.

  “When the Imperials ran,” Calu said, “the Senior Mechanics at the Guild Hall here in Dorcastle joined them, along with maybe a quarter of the other Mechanics there. The rest sort of surrendered. That is, they claimed the peace of the daughter, which is what everybody is calling your demand that any Mechanics willing to accept the New Day be protected from any retaliation or attacks by commons. Hey, two of the Mechanics at the Guild Hall are Tyron and Inira. Do you remember them from Caer Lyn? Anyway, the Mechanics who stayed used the long-distance far-talker at the Guild Hall to spread the word about what happened here. The Senior Mechanics and the Guild Master in Palandur weren’t too happy with that and told them to shut up, of course. Too late, and the local Mechanics have stopped listening to them anyway. The Mechanics here have heard from other Guild Halls now, and a lot are breaking free of the Guild. Not in the Empire, but everywhere else.”

  “I didn’t think it could happen this quickly,” Mari said.

  “It wasn’t all that quick,” he corrected. “You called it right. The Guild has been developing stress cracks for a long time, patching them when they got too big. For the last couple of years you’ve brought major pressure to bear on the Guild by introducing new technology and giving the commons hope and Mechanics an alternative to the Guild and, well, just by surviving. The Guild might have fallen apart eventually anyway without you, but without you it would have been awful when everything broke. The way you’ve done it offers hope for a soft crack-up that won’t hurt too many people.”

  Calu scratched his head, looking at Mari. “A big reason we’re hearing from the rebelling Guild Halls is that they can see change happening. They want to be part of it and not run over by it. But they all want you to promise that they and their families will be protected if they go along with the New Day thing.”

  She gasped another weak laugh. “Calu, my word has force in Tiae, but not anywhere else. The leaders of the Confederation and the Alliance and the Free Cities need to give that promise.”

  He eyed her skeptically. “Are you all right? Um…I mean…I know you’re not all right. You got shot and died and all, but if you don’t think what the daughter says matters—"

  “What did you say?” Mari ran the words past her memory. He hadn’t really said that, had he? “I got shot and almost died.”

  Calu didn’t answer for a long moment, looking steadily at Mari. “Here’s what I heard and saw, Mari. Alain burst in the room while Asha and I got the guards out of the way, he ran over to where you were lying, pushing healers aside right and left, grabbed your hand, and maybe a couple of seconds later, collapsed. And while he was doing that, some of the healers told me it’s too late, we lost her, the daughter has died, and some of them were already crying, and then as the nearest people grabbed Alain to keep him from hitting the ground you coughed and started breathing hard and the healers looked at you like they were seeing a ghost. Somebody said she was dead, and they all raced back to you and started doing their healer things again.”

  Mari stared back at him, unable to speak for a while. “I…I didn’t die. That’s ridiculous.”

  He spread his hands, uncomfortable but unyielding. “That’s what they said.”

  “They were wrong. I’d know if I had died.” She paused, uncertain. “Wouldn’t I?”

  Calu shook his head. “How does it feel to die? Nobody’s ever been able to came back and explain it.” He gave her a quick look, then shifted his eyes away.

  “Calu, I didn’t…I don’t remember…I saw Alain’s face after I got shot…it got dark, and I was cold, but then it got warm and…bright…and…” She tried to smile in self-mockery. “I thought I saw a locomotive. Can you believe that? The engineer and some apprentices were waving at me to join them in the cab, and I started to walk that way, but then—" She swallowed, finding it difficult. “I…I realized that Alain wasn’t there. I couldn’t find him, but I could feel him. I shook my head…and turned away to go look for him…and sometime later I woke up.”

  Calu smiled at her. “A locomotive? Seriously?”

  “Yes.” Mari felt herself smiling genuinely this time despite her inner turmoil. “How else should an engineer go somewhere?”

  “You saw what your mind could understand,” Alain said.

  She looked that way too quickly, making herself a little dizzy. Alain had woken again and was watching them, his head still flat on the pillow. He looked a lot better, but then according to the healers he hadn’t had much physically wrong with him and just needed to regain strength. “What do you mean?”

  “The next dream is, we think, very different,” Alain said. “When we see it with our minds that know this dream, this illusion, we see the next dream in ways that are familiar to us.”

  “What did you see, Alain?” Calu asked.

  “Many things. But I was not welcomed. I was not allowed to stay.”

  “You wanted to stay?” Mari asked, knowing that she sounded sad.

  He managed a small smile at her. “No. I wanted to be where you were. I had to find you, just as you sought me.”

  Mari smiled back. “So you know I didn’t die before you…did that.”

  Alain shook his head slightly. “I do not know. I know you were still wit
hin my reach. If you had left, you still retained a grasp on this life, a grasp on your body.”

  “Oh.” Mari looked up at the ceiling, feeling weird inside. “So I wasn’t really dead. Not completely dead. Maybe my body needed help getting started again, but I must have still been there. Right? At least…Calu, how many people have heard about that? What the healers said? It’s a secret, right?”

  “Uh, no, it’s been heard by a lot of people,” Calu said with obvious reluctance. “Just about everybody. By the time I got outside again everyone was talking about it. The daughter died and her Mage brought her back. I’m sure the Emperor has heard that by now.”

  “No! Stars above, how can I ever…” Mari screwed her eyes shut, imagining how people would look at her. She opened them again, staring at Calu, trying to see something different in his own gaze on her.

  “Ummm…” Calu looked around as if physically searching for some way to change the subject. “There’s a Mage outside who’s been waiting to see you or Alain. She’s pretty old and not one of yours, Mari, but Asha says she’s all right.”

  “An elder?” Alain asked. “From the Guild Hall in Dorcastle?”

  “Yeah. Do you know her?”

  “Yes. I sense her presence. I lacked the strength to notice earlier. I would like to speak with her.”

  Calu jumped up, relieved, and hastened out, returning in a short time with a Mage elder that Mari recognized. “Greetings, elder,” Mari said, feeling weak again.

  The elder, once more leaning on a cane, walked to the foot of Alain’s bed, watching him, then turning her head to study Mari while Calu waited. “So. You have done this thing, Master of Mages.”