Worldweavers: Cybermage

by Alma Alexander

  He stood beside Thea, his feet a little apart, his arms at his sides, his back straight. In this moment he was a towering ally, a presence of strength and power. He stood for the Human Polity in a battle of wits with the Alphiri; Thea wondered if he was even aware that he was doing exactly what he had accused her of doing—standing up to save one man, the man who stood grave and silent beside a cage full of fluttering birds, waiting for the verdict of this confrontation.

  Thea lowered her eyes and turned her head just far enough to give Terry a small nod.

  He punched a key sequence on his laptop.

  At first, nothing happened. But when the Alphiri Queen opened her mouth to speak again, the three pigeons in the cage somehow became two-dimensional and glossy, as though they had turned into photographs of themselves. Then those disintegrated into a pigeon-shaped patch of air, glowing pale blue, watery pale green, and milky ivory, only barely constrained by the bars of the birdcage.

  The Queen took a step back, betraying surprise.

  Humphrey’s head had whipped around to where Terry crouched over his computer.

  Tesla’s shoulders went rigid under the elegant lines of his dark suit.

  Terry stood up, balancing the computer in the palm of his left hand.

  “They’re digitized,” he said. “To what they really were. Are. The pigeon shapes were merely a disguise, a form that permitted them to exist in our own world—but that is what they are. Energy.”

  “Pure Elemental magic,” Humphrey breathed, unable to hide his own astonishment.

  “Water, Air, Earth,” Tesla said in a low voice. He reached out one hand and the three shapes in the birdcage streamed toward him, almost losing cohesion.

  “Sir…” Terry said warningly, and Tesla, with a small sigh, withdrew his hand—but not his hot, yearning gaze, looking at what he had lost and lived without for so many years.

  Thea seized the moment, her heart thumping painfully, and turned to the Alphiri Queen once more. “Your bargain is twice void,” she said. “You said you bought a pigeon, but you couldn’t even pick it out from among three of its kind, and now you see that you never had a bird at all. You never bought or paid for that.” She indicated the three coruscating Elemental clouds with a sweeping gesture of one hand. “One keystroke, and we will restore these things to the man to whom they have always belonged. And once it is done and all these parts that make up one whole have been reunited in a single entity, you can make no further demands—because it will be part of a living entity.”

  The Queen turned with a triumphant air. “But that is not true.”

  “There is no living entity.”

  “Not as you define it.”

  Thea pointed at Tesla. “There he stands.”

  “Not alive,” the Queen said. “Not as you have defined life.”

  “An automaton.”

  “A dream.”

  “An incomplete entity, at that,” the Queen added.

  “There should be four.”

  “Four Elements, not three.”

  “But the fourth one is gone,” Cat said in a small voice, clutching her black silk bundle convulsively.

  “That may not be completely true,” said a new voice, rich and warm.

  Thea closed her eyes for a moment. She felt a surge of warmth pass her as Tawaha rounded her side to stand between her and the Alphiri Queen, and remembered his words: Where you are, and where light is, I will be with you.

  “Who is that?” Humphrey said, staring.

  “Tawaha,” Thea said. “The Sun God.”

  Grandmother Spider, now a golden-haired woman, had stepped up to Tawaha’s side.

  “Bring the bird, child,” Tawaha said, beckoning to Cat with one golden hand.

  Cat stepped forward, carrying the silk-wrapped body of the Fire Element pigeon in both her hands, and laid it at Tawaha’s feet with reverence, like an offering. Tawaha glanced at Grandmother Spider, who went down on one knee, gently folding the silk back until the small body was revealed, its wings neatly tucked against its sides. Tawaha gazed at it thoughtfully.

  “It is a Fire bird,” he said. “One of my own Element. It is quenched, but as with every fire, there is still an ember, even when it looks like there is nothing left except a dead piece of coal. There is, however, a price.”

  He looked up, beckoned Tesla forward, and then turned to Thea as Grandmother Spider rose to her feet.

  “This fire can be brought back,” Tawaha said, his eyes resting on Thea, enveloping her in light and warmth. “But it needs a spark. If one who carries the Fire Element offers that spark freely, a spark that only another keeper of the Fire can provide, then this Elemental may take new life from it. Another keeper…like yourself, child.”

  “We can reboot it,” Grandmother Spider said with a smile. “But there is a danger. As with all things of value, this too has a price.” She threw a glance at the Alphiri as she said this.

  Thea felt the sting of tears in her eyes. “The danger is that the operation might be a success, but the patient might die,” she said. “What you are saying is that if I offer this, then I give my own fire away.”

  “That is the way of it,” Tawaha said. “If you give it, you give it as a gift. You give all. You may not hold back any. If you are very lucky, some might remain—perhaps enough. Or it might burn you in the backwash—there is peril here. Only you can make that choice.”

  Thea’s eyes lingered on the dead Fire Element pigeon at her feet. Then she looked up at Tawaha, at Grandmother Spider, and finally at Tesla himself. All she could think of was that sad, sweet lullaby he had sung over the body of something he had loved. I will pay the price of my folly—he had said that, but she could see how much of a chasm it had left within him.

  He was not asking. Would never ask. But he met her eyes as she stared at him, squarely, without looking away.

  “Yes,” Thea said faintly, letting Tesla see her answer in her eyes, saying the word out loud for the benefit of the others. “Yes.”

  “Thea,” Tesla said gently, stepping up to her and taking both her hands in his own, “are you certain? Your future still lies before you. Three of my gifts have returned to me—three I may have back. Is there need for this sacrifice?”

  “Fire was your strongest, your most treasured. Your most beloved.” Thea said. “You are its master; I have barely learned how to raise my eyes to look at it. You named me a new thing, not so long ago—perhaps I can cling to that, and you can have back the thing that made you who you are.”

  “It is Elemental magic,” said Grandmother Spider. “You don’t know what you might lose should you give up any of it. It may be that you could lose it all. Are you sure you wish to take this risk?”

  “Thea, no.” It was a whisper from the back. Thea thought it might have been Terry, or perhaps Cat, her reaction to this much the same as Thea’s had been when Cat had been in this position, giving up the essence of herself.

  Thea closed her mind to the whispered plea. “I am sure,” she said.

  “And I too must ask—because you have to answer three times,” Tawaha said. “What you give can never be returned in the shape in which it was given. You give to fill a hole in another, but you may never be able to fill the hole you might leave in yourself. Are you certain you wish to proceed?”

  Thea thought of the years in which she could find nothing in her father’s face except disappointment and frustration, the first time she had woven two strands of light together, the destination that the powers that first woke in Cheveyo’s country had led her to, the desperate act that had sealed one who was more like her than any other in her world into a living tomb.

  The chance to set another Elemental free from a prison of his own making.

  We all pay the price of our folly.

  “Yes,” Thea said.

  Tesla, who had not let go of her hands, now lifted both to his lips, and then dropped them, stepping away. Thea was surprised to see that his eyes were filled with tears; she swallowed
hard and turned to face Tawaha.

  “What is it that I must do?” she said, and was surprised, under the circumstances, to see both him and Grandmother Spider smiling.

  “You have given freely, and therefore it is in my power to do so also,” Tawaha said. “Because you were willing to give the ember of your own gift, I do not have to take it from you. Do you remember, child, the day we first met?”

  “In the First World,” Thea said. “Beside the portal I had made.”

  Tawaha was nodding. “And do you recall what the last thing that you did in that world was, just before you stepped away through that portal back to this world, Cheveyo’s world?”

  Thea found herself smiling, too, as the memory returned. “I grabbed a ribbon of fire to weave,” she said. “Your fire.”

  Tawaha nodded. “You did not know it yet, not then, but it is only because you have it in you to hold the Fire Element—because you are a Fire Elemental yourself—that you were able to hold that flame at all. You have carried it within yourself ever since you first touched it, and it is not your fire; it is mine. I loaned it, and now I can take it back without harming your own gift, the part of your power that is yours alone. The sun fire can serve as the spark to bring the other fire back to life.”

  “She does not carry it,” Cheveyo said. He had not moved from his position by his hearth since this gathering had begun, but now he strode forward, leaning on his staff. “The morning she returned from the First World to my own hearth was the first and only time I have eaten breakfast cooked over a holy fire. She thrust your flame into my embers, Great One. It has long since burned away into ashes.”

  “Not all,” Tawaha said tranquilly. “Enough remains. Hold out your hand to me, child.”

  Thea obeyed, offering her hand, flat and palm up, to Tawaha. The Sun God raised his own burnished hand and held it a span away from her own, close enough that she felt the heat blister her fingertips.

  A spark crackled between her index finger and his, and then from every finger each to the other, until a fiery arc of white and gold light spanned their two hands, leaving a bright cradle of light into which Grandmother Spider gently laid the body of the Fire pigeon.

  Electricity snapped and sparked in the air around Thea and Tawaha, and the bird was suspended in air and fire between them. It hung there for an instant, still motionless, and then it exploded in a flash of red-gold wings like a phoenix, its wingtips showering sparks as the wings beat powerfully to allow the bird to hover in place.

  Tawaha broke the contact, clenching his hand into a fist. Thea staggered and nearly fell, glancing down at what she thought had to be blisters on her fingertips. She found none, even though she had literally held her hand in the sun’s own corona. But she didn’t have time to think about that, not just then. She looked up again, in time to notice the Fire pigeon fly like an arrow toward Tesla and land with grace and precision on his outstretched arm. Tesla was openly weeping, his face streaked with tears.

  “Terry,” Thea said in a low voice, without taking her eyes off Tesla and his pigeon, “finish it.”

  There was the sound of rapid typing, and the pigeon on Tesla’s arm brightened into a shape of light almost impossible to look at without hurting one’s eyes, and then it, too, was just a form of air and shadow like its fellows in the cage, glowing with an orange-yellow radiance. A final tap of a computer key, and the birdcage was open, the other three Elements free and clustering around Tesla in a cloud of multicolored light, bathing his face in a luminous brightness.

  “We do not understand,” the Alphiri Queen said into the rapt silence that followed.

  Thea turned to look at her, and found the Queen staring straight back at her. Thea suddenly realized that the Queen’s two escorts had not spoken in her wake, as was the Alphiri custom. They were standing beside the portal through which they had arrived, one on either side like an honor guard.

  “This is not the kind of bargain we can make,” the Queen said. “We sought…a legacy, something that might remain in memory of us when we pass away—as it is written that all must, in their time. We have done all that may be done within the rule of our law; we have bought all that could have been bought, and have offered payment for things that may not have been for sale—that is what we know how to do. We give fair price for what we consider to be fair service or fair trade. But we do not understand what you have just done. What was the bargain that you made? What did you choose? What was offered to you in return?”

  “The things that cannot be measured or owned,” Thea said. “A sense of losing a small part of self to become part of a bigger whole. None of us is alone, in the end; we are one, and it is not a loss to give when someone else receives.”

  The Queen narrowed her eyes and looked as though she was about to speak again, but Terry’s computer was not yet done. Thea heard more keys tapping, and then something brightened to a fiery glow that rivaled Tawaha’s before settling into a luminous aura that now surrounded Tesla. There was a light in his eyes that had not been there before, and he was actually smiling.

  Kristin and Tess both had their hands half-covering their faces, and their eyes gleamed with astonished joy. Cat was crying openly. Ben was standing quite still, his eyes flickering from Thea to Tesla as though he was trying to commit it all to memory.

  As for Humphrey May, he was gazing on Tesla with an air of resignation, and his thoughts were as plain as the expression on his face. Whatever his plans had originally been, what had happened here had derailed everything. He was now looking at an Elemental mage—now once again the only quad-Elemental in human history—and coming to terms with the fact that whatever his ideas had been on this score, they were now confetti in the wind.

  Terry had been crouching with his laptop balanced on his knees; he laid it on the ground, got up, and took a few uncertain steps toward Thea.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered.

  In reply she lifted a hand; her fingers trembled. “I think I might fall down in a heap if I move an inch from where I’m standing.”

  He reached out and took her hand, squeezing it.

  “What did you mean when you said that Tesla had named you a new thing?” he asked quietly.

  “He named a new Element,” Thea said. “One you’re very familiar with. He called me a Cybermage.”

  They were given no further chance to talk, as the Alphiri Queen suddenly lifted her long skirts and walked toward Tesla, pausing briefly to rake Corey up and down with a cool glance.

  “Er,” Corey said. “Under the circumstances…I guess you won’t be needing me any longer, for the time being, anyway. Give me a call if there’s anything I can do for you in the future.”

  He flashed a look of frustration Thea’s way, but was distracted by another feather popping into place just above his ear. He reached to pluck it with a growl.

  “And I’m sure we will cross paths again,” he said to Thea. His face darkening into a scowl, Corey blurred his shape and dropped onto all fours, turning his sharp coyote snout in what looked like a final defiant grin at Thea and at the other Elder Spirits, and trotted off across the broken scree that spilled at the foot of the mesa.

  In the meantime, the Alphiri Queen moved to stand before Nikola Tesla.

  Tesla offered her a small formal bow, meeting her gaze unflinchingly.

  “We needed you,” she said simply.

  Her two companions said nothing to qualify that statement any further.

  “Madam,” Tesla said with old-world courtesy, “without the powers that I now hold, one of which you tried to withhold from me, I would have been of little use to you. In full possession of those powers, you could never have held me against my will—because I can mold the world to my wishes. The prison does not exist that could keep me where I do not wish to stay.”

  “That may be true,” she said, “though we might have proved otherwise. But we have lost here. No matter, though.”

  Her head swiveled very slowly until her gaze, suddenly th
oughtful and calculating, came to rest on Ben, Cat, Kristin, and Tess, who instinctively drew closer to one another, as though there was safety in that proximity. The Queen turned away from Tesla. Her two companions had left the portal, and once again fell into step beside her.

  “We have found out,” the Queen said, “many important things this day.”

  “We have lost a chance.”

  “But we have gained knowledge.”

  “We have learned that everyone has a price,” the Queen said softly, looking at Cat.

  “We just have to know what you treasure, and what you want.”

  The Queen let her hand brush over Kristin’s face as the third Alphiri spoke.

  “And we can find out.”

  The Queen paused, staring at each face as though committing them to memory, and then turned with slow and deliberate menace to where Thea stood a little way apart from the others. Terry, still holding Thea’s hand, tightened his fingers.

  “We know who has what we want,” the Queen said.

  “We know where it is.”

  “We know how to get it.”

  “We go now. We may have to start again, but we have done that many times before.”

  “We have time,” said the first minion. “We have patience. We have resources we have yet to tap.”

  “We will return.”

  The Queen gazed at Thea’s face, then glanced, with a small enigmatic smile, at Terry, and at the still clasped hands that linked the two.

  A sudden black terror bloomed in Thea’s mind.

  We know what you treasure, and what you want.

  The Queen had looked at every one of Thea’s friends individually, as though each of them was prey, gazelles to a prowling lioness, to be stalked and slaughtered at a mere whim. But the look she had given Terry had been more that that, it had been a look that Thea herself had been meant to see, and understand.

  She, Thea, was the new quarry. And the Alphiri, although they would obey the letter of the law and their Trade Codex, had shown how willing they were to ignore the spirit of that law. They would bend the law into a pretzel to make sure they were covered if challenged, but they would eventually find a way around every barrier that could be raised against them.