by Holly Lisle
And when he had checked that, he tested one of the little ingots of pure gold he'd brought with him, and then one of the ingots of pure silver.
He stood, swearing, the duplicity of ancient wizards bringing every profanity he recalled from a hundred thousand years to his tongue.
Silver. The gold in the Vodi necklace had been mixed with silver. The gold in his own ring had, as well. Gold drew the energy of chaos and fed on the vibrations of death. Silver drew the energy of order, and gained its power from the vibrations of life. Mixing the two in a piece of resurrection jewelry could only create disaster, as energies and forces battled for control of the mind held within.
Baanraak looked warily at the necklace that lay glittering beneath the cool sun. He could not know that she would respond correctly to his training. He could not even count on his own responses anymore.
Copper House
Lauren had to leave Jake and his toys in the suite with the goroths. She wanted him to be with her, but she didn't dare let him play in the safe room again.
"Look, puppy-boy," she said, "Doggie will bring you downstairs to eat with me, and you'll sleep with me at night. We'll still see each other. Okay?"
Jake didn't understand. He had never been without her. He didn't know she was going to walk out of the room and leave him—and he wasn't going to understand, either. Frankly, Lauren wasn't doing too well with the whole idea, either. Jake was everything she had in the world. How could she leave him in this dangerous place, away from her? But how could she take him, knowing that when she slipped into trance, he could be the only one with godlike powers in the room.
He sat on the floor with his cars and said, "Okay, Mama, play with me. You be the truck."
She hugged him. He wouldn't be three forever, and he wouldn't want her to be the truck forever. She felt the impatience of Seolar and the old god, Qawar, but she would not let herself be pushed.
She was going to find Molly; she was going to risk her life to set things right. Everything could go wrong, though, and she would not let the last time she saw her son be the time she told him she didn't have time to play with him.
"I'll be the truck three times," she said. "And then you'll have to play with Doggie. Okay?"
Jake grinned at her. They sat on their knees opposite each other, and for a few minutes they pushed their cars at each other across the floor. Each time they missed, Jake would shout, "Oh. Missed me!" Each time they crashed, he just laughed.
They ran the cars back and forth at each other quite a few more than three times, but when Lauren finally said, "Last time, monkey boy," Jake accepted it. As long as he knew in advance they would have a limit, he was good about it. The last time, Lauren managed a pretty spectacular crash that sent his car flying, and he laughed so hard he shook. She loved to hear him laugh—and since everything had gotten strange in their lives, she rarely did. She kissed him on the forehead and said, "Time to play with Doggie."
Lauren slipped out of the door once Jake and Doggie were involved in their game; trailing Seolar, Birra, Qawar, and a handful of guards in her wake, she headed down to the copper-free safe room. She felt like she was leading a parade, and she had to resist the temptation to turn around and tell the whole lot of them just to go away. The goroths, at least, would be useful. Maybe she could send the rest off for food when she got hungry. She tried not to think about the immensity of the project.
"Why are we doing this?" Qawar asked.
She bit her tongue and refrained from questioning that "we." She said, "I am going to open a series gate and start searching downworld for any markers that Molly has passed that way."
"You're going to search a whole planet? Please."
"If Baanraak has gone farther than one world, I'm going to end up searching several planets. My sister and I share a connection that should simplify the process, but I don't expect locating it to be quick or easy. I'm going to find her—"
"You're not going to find her," Qawar muttered under his breath. "Not an old god born could do what you hope to do. This is just building hope for nothing."
Lauren pretended she didn't hear that, "—but it's going to take all my concentration to do it, and some fairly heavy-duty magic. I'm not searching one world at a time. As I said, I'm going to open a series gate, and put out feelers for her in a handful of worlds at once. I don't need to know which way she went. I just need to know where she is."
Birra and Seolar exchanged glances, and Seolar asked, "What do you mean by a series gate?"
Lauren thought the phrase itself summed it up pretty well, but she shrugged and said, "I'll open a small gate that runs through about seven or eight worlds at the same time—as many as I can comfortably hold open."
A gasp from Qawar, loud enough that the guards, the Imallin, and Birra all turned to look. "You can do that?"
"Yeah." The question surprised her. She didn't think of old gods as having limits, but they did. Most of them weren't gateweavers, and most of them really had only a vague concept of how the magic they used worked. They were, she thought, a lot like the average computer user back on Earth, who knew how to use a couple of programs but couldn't have created a program from scratch to save his life.
And she was, she thought, a programmer. Top-flight, though still learning new tricks. She was about to try one of them.
She turned her attention to the mirror.
She'd given this a lot of thought—it seemed that the trick in opening gates into a series of downworlds and keeping them open at the same time would be to make each gate small enough that nothing could get through it to close it, but large enough to be usable. She figured all she really needed was a thread into each world, connecting all of them to the mirror, which would serve as a hub. But the time frame she needed might be days, and tending multiple linked gates for days would get wearing. More wearing if she had an audience, but she figured they'd get tired and go away after a while. At least she hoped they would.
Lauren did not expect to be able to feel Molly's presence anywhere immediately. She and her sister had a powerful magical bond that linked them—but Lauren didn't know if that bond existed through the Vodi necklace, or through the body it would regenerate for Molly. If she had to wait for Molly to resurrect, she could be in for a long haul.
She knelt in front of the mirror, closed her eyes, rested her fingertips on the glass, and focused on the worlds suspended beneath Oria in the worldchain. She got through to the first one surprisingly fast—it felt sharp and green and vibrant. She thought about the sad, dark feel Earth had to it, and about the poisonous feel of the upworld Kerras, and she wanted to cry. All of the worlds should feel like the one below. Cadwa, one of the old gods had told her. She opened a pinpoint gate into Cadwa—in theory, a gate so small that events around it wouldn't disturb it, and through that gate she set about creating a seeking spell that would ring within the room if any sign of Molly appeared.
Lauren drew into herself, sliding into a place of utter silence where nothing but the fire of the universes touched her. She put everything she knew of Molly, and every bit of the magical pull that existed between them, into her spell, shaping it in her mind as a ray of light curved to the shape of the world it would circle. She put herself into it—her senses, her emotions, and her urgent need to find her sister quickly, and at last she felt the spell take with a satisfying little buzz. She sent it seeking across the surface of the world, hunting with as much speed and thoroughness as she could manage. It raced away from her like a wild thing, and as soon as it was free, she slid back from her focused concentration and opened her eyes. She was incredibly thirsty; she still had plenty of energy left, but her knees were killing her. Going to have to get a chair before she did the next gate and spell. She decided to take a break for a minute or two, just to send someone after a drink for her and for something comfortable to sit on, and turned her attention back to her audience, only to discover that Qawar and most of the guards were gone.
Seolar sat in a corner, his eye
s closed. Birra stood beside him, watchful as ever.
"Birra? What happened?" Lauren asked.
Birra gave her a small smile. "Watching you turned out to be not quite the adventure Qawar was seeking. I believe he gave up after the first hour."
Seolar frowned and studied her thoughtfully. "I had never considered this before, but…I don't think he's a very…talented old god."
Lauren didn't comment on that. She'd reached that conclusion earlier, but it had seemed impolitic to say so. She focused on something else Seolar had said. "Hour?" She was puzzled. "How long was I…?"
"You haven't moved in nearly three hours," Birra said.
She stared at him, unable to comprehend that. "Shit." No wonder her knees hurt.
Seolar asked, "Anything?"
"Not yet. I just finished the first world. I have a long way to go."
He nodded, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. "Forgive me," he said, "but I have had no sleep, and I fear it is catching up with me."
Lauren said, "Sure. You don't need to stay here, you know. If I find anything, I'll send someone for you immediately. But it could be days."
He closed his eyes for a moment, and sighed. "Yes, of course. I had hoped for some quick news, but there can be nothing quick about this, can there?"
"Not unless I get lucky."
"I fear we have far exceeded our quota of luck."
"Yeah," Lauren said. "You're probably right." She crouched a little and stood again, flexing her knees. "Would you mind sending someone down here with some water for me, some sandwiches, a chair—maybe a cot or something that I can sleep on. And…" She realized three hours had worked on her in other ways. "…where's the closest bathroom? I'm not going to be able to leave here for quite some time."
"There are no bathrooms on this level," Seolar said. "Nor on the level above this."
Lauren stared at him, then sighed. "You mind if I remodel in here just a bit?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do you mind if I do some magic to make this place livable while I'm stuck here?"
"Well…no. Of course not. Do whatever you need to do."
What she needed to do was make a bathroom. Magic flush, she thought, so she wouldn't have to worry about plumbing or water lines. And while she was at it, a nice little kitchenette, and a table where she and Jake could eat meals together, and a refrigerator, and a comfy couch and a double bed because Jake sprawled. Someone that small should not take up so much room when he slept, but Jake did. She could also add a bookshelf and some good books—she anticipated a lot of waiting. Some natural light, though not a window or even a skylight—she didn't want to do something that would breach security. A place for Jake to come and play on warm, soft, well-padded carpet. And something other than damned gray-stone dungeon walls.
She closed her eyes and mentally filled the space with a bright, cheery, open room that existed within the space of the current walls, all one space except for a little bathroom with a toilet, a sink and a shower behind a door in one corner. Magic-powered electric lights; a big square of glass that looked like a picture window inset into the wall behind the futon that would open into a bed, but that showed not what was outside—no doubt dirt and rocks and worms—but what lay outside in the forest beyond the village; a shelf for linens, filled with fluffy towels and flannel sheets in bright colors. A carpeted floor everywhere but in the kitchen and the bathroom, and clean white tile there. An armoire full of blue jeans, sweatshirts, and clean underwear. And as an afterthought, bunklike sleeping spaces for the goroths. No one was going to let Jake sneak to a mirror in the middle of the night again—if he managed to squirm loose from her arm around him, the goroths would be keeping watch.
She willed this into existence, and opened her eyes to bright sunshine pouring into a room with creamy yellow walls and thick carpet. Everyone oohed and ahhed except for Lauren, who only heard the call of the bathroom.
When she came back out, she tried the kitchen tap. Cold, clear water came out. Just to be on the safe side, she added a filter.
She knew she needed to consider the repercussions of doing so much magic…but this was, at least, constructive magic. It would have effects back on Earth, but she could hope they would be effects that would do good things for others.
She checked the fridge. Nice and cold, but empty. She considered using magic to fill it, but decided to leave that up to her hosts.
Seolar and Birra were going over the place with interest. "It's very plain," Seolar said at last. "There is no ornamentation anywhere."
"Utilitarian," Birra agreed. "Not ugly, precisely, but…" He shrugged.
Lauren said, "I just wanted something comfortable. I'm not all that comfortable with frills. I wanted clothes that felt right, a place where I didn't have to worry about putting my feet up on the furniture, and…lots of sunlight."
Seolar said, "You created a forest and sky underground just so you could have light in here?"
Lauren said, "No. I just have the window set to send me images of a place a few miles from here. That way I get my sunlight but we don't have any weak spaces in the walls that the bad guys could use." She tapped the glass. "Behind this, there is nothing but stone and dirt."
She took one of the two padded kitchen chairs and set it in front of the mirror. "I'm going to make the next gate and seeker spell," she said. "I imagine it will take as long as the last one—maybe a little longer." She said, "Would you please make sure the fridge is full of food for me by the time I'm done? And someone to get Jake and the goroths as soon as I finish. I want to be able to spend my free time with him."
Seolar said, "It will be done. But you are truly not going to leave this place until you find her?"
"Or until I'm sure she can't be found."
"I'll make sure you have the best of everything."
A guard appeared in the doorway, looked around with evident surprise, then approached Seolar. The two of them whispered, both of them looked apprehensively at Lauren, and Lauren decided she could wait another minute or two before she got too deeply to work.
Seolar made a hand gesture to the guard, who scurried out of the safe room at high speed. When the guard was gone, Seolar turned back to Lauren.
"You have a visitor," he said.
Copper House
Pete had to admit the crossbows and spears aimed at his back as he and his military escort marched through Copper House sort of ruined his chance to sightsee. And when they left the main hallways and started heading down into the bowels of the place, his skin started to crawl. He wondered if the veyâr intended to murder him and bury him in a subbasement, then keep Willard the Wonder Horse for themselves. Willard would be worth committing murder for, he supposed. The ride to Copper House had been both incredibly smooth and impossibly fast.
His arrival left more to be desired though. He debated fleeing. Debated fighting. Finally, though, he just marched and hoped to hell they really were taking him to see Lauren, as they said they were.
The little group finally hit literal rock bottom. They marched over stone floors, through stone foundations, with torches lighting the way—then his guards shoved him through a massive door into a room that looked like something off the cover of House Beautiful.
"Pete!" Lauren said, staring at him over the counter of a little kitchenette. Her face lit up.
That hadn't been the reaction he'd expected at all. She seemed to think better of it immediately afterward and started looking all worried and serious. She asked him, "How the hell did you find me? And what are you doing here?" But he held that first delighted smile tight and thought, No take-backs. And no do-overs. That one counted.
"We have a problem," he told her.
"No shit," she said.
"No. We have a problem. You and me. Old gods are evacuating Earth in droves. Eric wants you back right away—everything could be getting ready to blow up, and the Sentinels are going to need you to help deal with whatever is going wrong. And I covered for you when Eric go
t suspicious about your absence—told him I'd checked out your story and it was true—so now he thinks I'm in Charlotte bringing you back."
"You…lied for me? You knew I'd lied to you?"
He grinned at her. "You're a lousy liar. I knew the second I saw your key ring that something was wrong. But I got your back. I figured if you took off like that to come here, it had to be for a good reason."
She was staring at him—eyes wide and startled, something odd in her expression. She tipped her head to one side and said, "What did you say?"
"I said if you came here, you had a good reason for doing it."
"Before that."
"That I lied for you…that you're a terrible liar…that I got your back…"
Click. Something in her eyes changed, and the weirdest little smile came over her face, and she shook her head. "It's a funny universe," she said. Then, without explaining what the hell that little business had been about, she said, "Can you lie for me a little longer? I know there's a problem, and I'm here working on it. And I'm the only one who can. One of the rrôn killed Molly, and stole the Vodi necklace, and now I'm trying to get her, and it, back. The two of us think we can reverse the problems on Earth."
