wreck of heaven

by Holly Lisle

  "Of course, Vodi. Shall I take her by the long route so that you have enough time to change?"

  Molly smiled at him. "If you would, give her the complete tour of Copper House on her way here. I could use a bath, too. Something about that library has made me feel all dusty and grimy." She held up her hands, which actually did have a bit of book dust on them, and managed to look like she thought this was something awful.

  "She will be here sometime later; I will make sure she sees all the best parts of Copper House."

  "Thank you," Molly said. "You've been a wonderful help to me."

  When Birra left, she wrapped the books into a couple of her traveling cloaks, bound them with leather belts, and called two of Seolar's guards to deliver the packages to Lauren's room, and told them if Lauren wasn't there to just to put them on her bed.

  With that finished, she bathed and changed into comfortable day wear.

  CHAPTER 5

  Copper House

  LAUREN, WITH JAKE clutching her hand, gave Birra a hard look. "How much farther is it to her room?"

  "Just down this corridor."

  "This corridor looks suspiciously like the one that connects to the one on which our suite is located."

  "It is," Birra said, and gave her a smile that she guessed was supposed to be ingratiating.

  Lauren bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying what she was thinking and took a deep breath.

  "You did not enjoy seeing Copper House?" Birra asked. He seemed genuinely surprised.

  "It's lovely. But I thought my sister wanted to talk with me—and she and I have a great deal of business to discuss. I'm afraid that house tours rank very low on my list of priorities right now."

  "She had to change and bathe, but did not want you to have to sit in your room unattended while she did that; for that reason she asked me to entertain you with a tour of Copper House."

  "It was lovely," Lauren said, wondering as she did what sort of frivolous creature her half sister might be if her priorities lay with changing her clothes when the two of them needed to discuss the monsters outside the house and the fate of the world.

  Birra showed her into Molly's room, and before she even said hello to Lauren, Molly said, "Birra—I have an immense favor to ask of you; I hate to trouble you with it, but I'm afraid it's terribly important. I need a list of all the peoples of Oria, with physical descriptions and what we might know of their philosophies and religions and beliefs, and a list of all the known old gods and dark gods, along with whatever we might know of them. I was thinking in the bath, and this is information both Lauren and I will need as soon as you can get it."

  Lauren glanced sideways at Birra, and saw his face fall. "More research, Vodi?"

  "I'm afraid so. But this is—essential. We cannot do what we have to do without it."

  Birra straightened a little then. "I'll gather some scholars. We'll have it for you within the week."

  "Actually," Molly said, "I'll need it today. In as much detail as can be offered."

  Lauren heard Birra mutter something that sounded suspiciously like, "Oh, balls!" under his breath. "You shall have it today," he said, and turned without noticing the salutes of the room guards.

  "In," Molly said when he was out of earshot. Her entire demeanor had changed.

  "What's going on? That errand you just sent him on sounded completely bogus."

  "It was," Molly said. "As was me having him drag you all around this damned pile. I had to get some books into your room without his knowing about them, and I had to finagle one of the room guards into getting some alternate books to stash in here. I have a problem."

  "I was sort of guessing that," Lauren said. She put Jake in a chair, gave him Mr. Puddleduck and two of the Crashable Cars, and said, "Play for a few minutes."

  "Can you play with me?"

  "Soon," Lauren said. She kissed the top of his head and said, "For now, you and Mr. Puddleduck can have fun driving the cars, okay?"

  Jake nodded. Since deciding that Mr. Puddleduck was also Robin to his Batman, Jake could play for a very long time with his stuffed animal without getting bored. He got down on the floor with the cars and the duck and started driving, carrying on a conversation with his duck at the same time and answering in his duck voice.

  Molly stood watching him for a moment, eyes wide. "That's…wow. That's really strange."

  "Sometimes he'll have two or three invisible friends over, too. He does all the voices, sometimes with accents. Taking him to see the Harry Potter movie might have been the worst mistake I ever made—watching it, he figured out that not everyone talks the same way."

  "Eeee." Molly grimaced. "I'll bet that can drive you nuts."

  "It does." Lauren looked down at her son, who was now crashing cars into each other with an intensity that made her wish she'd thought to bring other toys for him, while he and the duck said things like, "Oh, that's not good," and "I'll bet that hurt."

  Lauren watched him, trying not to think about the revelations of that morning, and stuck her hands in her blue jeans pockets. She felt badly underdressed next to Molly in her complicated-looking silk-and-velvet thing. "What's the problem you wanted to talk to me about?"

  "They're hiding something important from me," Molly said.

  "Who?"

  "Seolar. Birra. All of the veyâr."

  Lauren said, "Any idea what? Or why?"

  "It's something that relates to the rrôn. And to Vodian in general, and I suspect me in particular. And maybe to the weird…connection…that I feel to these rrôn out there."

  "Being able to hear what some of them think?"

  "Yes. I tried this morning to find out more about it, but I had to have Birra read the books to me because I can't read any of the Orian languages—and he skipped parts. And I think he might have changed parts. As soon as I realized he was doing that, I had him help me carry the books in here. So Seolar could read them to me later, I said, but I want you to figure out how I can get the truth out of them."

  "Make yourself a reader," Lauren said.

  Molly frowned at her. "You didn't have to think about that for long. What do you mean? Change myself into someone who can read?"

  "I mean go someplace where you can do magic without all the copper getting in the way, and create some sort of magnifying glass or page cover or something that, when you put it on the page of a book written in any language you don't know, translates the thing to comprehensible English."

  "Do you think that would work?"

  "Sure. I don't get the chance to do much with magic, but I've done things as complicated as that. If you're careful, you should be able to make something with a really low energy drain—and because it'll be you making it, the thing won't have any magical rebound." Lauren frowned. "That's such a good idea, in fact, that while you're at it, you can make me one, too. I have the feeling that being able to read anything wherever we'll have to go would be awfully useful."

  Molly was frowning. Obviously she still hadn't reached any real accommodation with the fact that she could do magic other than healing, or that her focused intent could create just about anything she could clearly envision. "Just…make it. How?"

  Lauren said, "Is there any place inside Copper House where you can do magic, but where you're still protected from, say, rrôn attacks?"

  Molly nodded.

  "Fine. Take me there and I'll show you what I mean."

  Molly glanced at Jake, being a very good boy, and having a great deal of fun playing with his cars on the complicated tile patterns on the floor of Molly's suite's sitting room.

  "We'll take him," Lauren said. "He'll be fine."

  "Let's go."

  Out the door, Molly told the two guards, "Come with us, please. We need to go to the Healing Chambers."

  The guards nodded and flanked Lauren, Jake, and Molly. As they came even with an intersection, one of the two guards nodded at others who stood in the hallway, and these stepped quickly forward, taking up the point. Lauren heard
footsteps behind her, and glanced back. Two other guards now brought up the rear. They'd done it very smoothly, with no fuss—but she realized how tight Seolar had made security. At most of the hallway intersections, she passed more guards. She smiled to them, they nodded to her. But their attention was on the hall traffic, on people moving.

  Lauren realized that they were not running into anyone—not servants, not guests—and until she saw guards far down one long hall moving people out of the hallway, she thought perhaps Seolar had sent almost everyone away the night before. Instead, she realized, the guards were moving people out of her and Molly's way so that no one could come close to them. She couldn't fault Seolar's determination to keep her and Molly safe. She didn't regret inconveniencing anyone, either; those monsters were still circling in the air over Copper House, and Lauren felt her gut flip every time she thought of them.

  They reached a pair of elaborately arched, copper-banded doors, and the guards moved ahead, opened them, and then fanned out into the huge hallway beyond.

  "Wow," Lauren said, looking in. A magnificent throne stood at the near end, elevated on a dais. The other end terminated in two huge doors, now barred from the inside, that also bore copper banding.

  "Do you have any way to shield us from their view?" Molly asked suddenly. Neither of them had yet stepped into the great hall.

  "I think so. I know how to create a shield, anyway. I can't guarantee that it will work on anything as old or powerful as they are, but we can give it a try."

  "Be ready to run for the doors, then," Molly said. "Because if they do know we're there, they're likely to go straight through the roof to get us. The only copper in there is for show—on the doors at either end. The center is clear so that I can heal the people who come asking for my help."

  Lauren nodded. She focused her will and summoned energy from the rich field that permeated this part of Oria, and in her mind created a powerful sphere around her and Molly—something that no rrôn could see through, something that would not even alert the rrôn to its presence. The shield wouldn't actually exist until Lauren, Jake, and Molly moved out from under the copper—but the need for it wouldn't exist until then, either. As long as she held the thing in her mind, Lauren felt certain it would be there when she needed it.

  For her own reassurance, however, she visualized it glowing with a pale blue light. It should shimmer into existence and fold itself around them the instant they were out of range of the copper, and thus in danger.

  "I'm ready," she said after a minute. "Stay close."

  She picked up Jake and stepped across the threshold, and Molly stayed right with her. About eight steps into the room, a tiny glowing blue circle appeared at around knee height and right in front of them. With the next step, it had turned into a glowing blue contact lens about four feet tall. One more step and it was half a ball, with about a third of it disappearing under their feet, a full curve over their heads. In two more steps, they stood inside a big, glowing blue bubble.

  "That's really neat," Molly said. She reached out to touch it, but it bulged away from her hand. "Oh. Cool. So we can't accidentally step outside of it."

  "Right. It will cover you, me, and Jake, either together or separately, as long as we're in here. The rrôn won't be able to hear us or feel us."

  Molly stepped away from Lauren. To Lauren, what happened with the shield looked like those high-school biology slides she'd seen of cells dividing. It worked perfectly.

  Another guard came into the room, and Lauren noted him only because, unlike the other guards, he came toward them instead of taking a place on the periphery. Probably just as well to have one close, she thought.

  "All you have to do now," she told Molly, "is focus on a device that's thin and flexible, lightweight and transparent, and about the size of an average book page. Imagine laying it across the page, and having the words beneath transform themselves into English—"

  Molly had an expression of horror on her face. "Run," she said.

  Lauren grabbed Jake, but didn't have time to run. The guard—the one who'd been walking toward them, suddenly charged her, sword in hand. She shoved Jake away from her and saw the guards converging. She turned, summoning magic to hold back the guard, and felt the sword burn into her flesh—more pressure than pain, which shocked her—and she cast the spell that turned her attacker into a smoking cinder that crumbled into dust.

  The sword went into her belly. She could feel the point of the blade protruding from her back. She stared at it stupidly, realizing that she couldn't feel her legs, and she heard Jake's piercing scream and the shouts of the veyâr guard, and the sounds of running feet, and then the pressure became a pain that ripped her open and turned the world red and black. She fell, and all she could think of as she fell was Jake—who was going to keep Jake safe?

  Darkness.

  Darkness and voices, and horrible pain.

  Above Copper House

  Trrtrag swore. The agent was dead—and not just dead, but dust, with nothing recoverable. Trrtrag thought he could tell Rr'garn, that pompous bastard, that one of the two problems was gone. But so long as he did not know for certain, he dared say nothing.

  Trrtrag wondered if he dared activate another of Rr'garn's sleepers, so soon after the annihilation of the last one. Perhaps he could just tell Rr'garn when he returned that the attempt had been made and the agent lost, and let Rr'garn send Baanraak in to see how everything had turned out—assuming, of course, that Baanraak hadn't made everyone's lives easier by just eating Rr'garn.

  Trrtrag almost hoped that was the case. Then he came to his senses—he'd rather deal with a hundred Rr'garns than one Baanraak.

  Copper House

  And then light.

  Lauren opened her eyes, and saw Seolar standing over her, and Birra, and Molly, and found Jake clinging to her like he'd been glued there, his eyes wide with terror. He said, "Mama?"

  She sat up. She felt okay. They weren't in the great hall—instead, everyone gathered around her in a tiny room heavy with copper ornamentation. She no longer wore her jeans and sweatshirt; instead, she had on a pair of silk-lined wool pants and a silk shirt of creamy texture and elegant cut. She wiggled her feet. They worked. "It's okay, Jake," she said, and wrapped her arms tight around him and kissed him; he cuddled against her and the grip of his arms around her waist tightened. "What the hell happened?"

  "Traitor, we have to guess," Molly said. Lauren noticed that Molly wore a long dagger on her hip—something Lauren had never seen her do before. "You didn't exactly leave anything for them to question."

  "I'm sorry," Lauren said. "But what happened?"

  "The sword did a lot of damage. I had to do a quick spell just to protect you from blood loss while we moved you out of there and into a secret and very well protected copper-free chamber Seolar has deep in the heart of the house."

  "It's been here since the times of previous Vodian," Seolar said. "I simply knew of its existence."

  "We got you down there, I did a complete healing, and the guards moved you in here to recuperate."

  "You're going to be fine," Seolar said. "And after what you did to your attacker, the rest of them will think twice before they come after the two of you again."

  "No they won't," Lauren said softly. "They won't hesitate for an instant. They'll just keep coming and coming until they kill us." She ran her fingers through Jake's silky hair and felt the dampness on his cheeks. He'd been crying. He'd seen what had happened to her. He knew. This ordeal was going to destroy him.

  Seolar pointed to a belt and a plain dagger in an unornamented sheath that hung on a hook on the wall, well out of Jake's reach. "I brought that for you. It's a fine weapon. When you're up and about, wear it at all times. We will do everything we can to keep you safe—but if you are in any part of the house warded by copper, you will need a final resort—a way to protect yourself if we have…fallen."

  Lauren looked to Molly and saw the bleakness in her eyes.

  "I'll wear
it," she said.

  Jake touched her face and said, "You wented with Daddy. But you comed back."

  She looked up at the faces staring down at her, and asked, "Is that true? Did I die?"

  "Almost," Molly said. "Almost, but we got you back fast." Molly winced. "I didn't realize how much Jake saw. Or how much he…understood."

  "He doesn't miss much," Lauren said. She lay back and pulled Jake close. How was she going to do what she had to do? How could she chance leaving him alone in the world? And what options did she have?

  Cat Creek

  "I hear you got lucky last night," Eric said as Pete walked in the door at the station. He gave Pete a sad smile.