by Steven Brust
I also became aware that Morrolan had said something. “Excuse me,” I said. “I was distracted. What was that?”
“I said that is a good idea, Vlad. You may need it.”
I almost said “Need what?” before I realized that I had allowed Spellbreaker to fall into my hand. It was dangling, inert, about a foot long, with tiny little links. For a second I stared at it; then I recovered and grunted something at him, and fingered it.
Aliera held Pathfifider out in front of her, the blade at about a forty-five-degree angle toward the ceiling. Her eyes were almost but not quite closed—reminding me, crazily, of how Aibynn looked when playing his drum. I waited, sort of expecting Pathfinder to start glowing or something, but nothing of the kind happened.
After a while, Morrolan said, “You need to find—”
“Shut up, cousin,” said Aliera pleasantly.
Morrolan clamped his mouth shut, and Aliera returned to doing whatever it was she was doing. As I waited, I felt a stirring in my left hand, as if Spellbreaker were trembling a little.
“Something is happening with that thing, Boss.”
“Noticed that, did you?”
“I’m not sure I like it.”
“I just wish I understood what it meant. Any Serioli around to ask?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. We’ve got everything else.”
“Okay,” said Aliera suddenly. “I’m getting something.”
Her eyes were a little more open now, and she was focusing in front of her, in the middle distance—I followed her glance, but there was nothing there, so she was probably seeing things not apparent to a regular pair of unenchanted human eyes. I happened to look at Verra, then, and she had an expression on her face of the sort you’d associate with any mother seeing her daughter pulling off a difficult task. If I’d let myself, I could have gotten very distracted thinking about just how bizarre that was. Then I noticed that the tip of Pathfinder was trembling, very lightly. I don’t know how much you know about the science of defense, or about Aliera’s skill as a swordsman, but, believe me, that hint of movement at the tip of her blade bespoke more intensity of magic and power than a roomful of pyrotechnics. “Here we go,” said Loiosh.
I wanted to be holding my rapier, or a dagger, or something, but I didn’t know what, so I just waited.
“They aren’t far away,” said Aliera. “This world, within a few thousand feet, in fact. But ... barriers. There are barriers of some kind. I don’t yet know of what kind, or how strong. Stand closer to me.”
We did so. I made sure Teldra was between me and the Goddess, not for any particular reason except that I didn’t feel like standing next to her.
I said, “Does anyone know what we’re going to do when we get there?”
“We’re going to attack them,” said Morrolan.
“Oh.”
“We should have surprise working for us,” he added.
“Do you really think so?”
He didn’t answer. Verra said, “The theory, my little Easterner, is that they don’t actually want to kill us, or they’d have done so already.”
“What if what they wanted is to kill you, Goddess?”
“They may find that difficult.”
Aliera was murmuring under her breath—the sort of murmuring one might expect of a rider urging his horse over a difficult jump.
“Can you get through them?” asked Morrolan.
“Of course,” snapped Aliera. “Now let me concentrate. Be ready.”
Be ready.
They were always saying stuff like that. Just exactly what does that mean, anyway? Be ready. Like, have your eyes open? Be certain you’ve had a good meal and used the chamber pot? Now is the wrong time for a nap? Make sure you aren’t sneezing when it happens? What, exactly? It means nothing, that’s what it means. An empty noise. “I’m ready,” I said.
“As am I,” said Morrolan.
“Yes,” said Teldra.
Verra did not deign to speak, and no one expected her to, I suppose because being a goddess means never needing to sneeze.
I was watching the trembling at the end of Pathfinder, so I saw it when it happened: A tiny spark appeared on the very tip of the blade. The trembling caused it to jump around, leaving diminutive golden trails in the air; I couldn’t tell if they were really there or were just products of my vision. Not, I suppose, that it mattered. There began to be a sensation of motion—the kind of motion that happens in dreams, where nothing changed, and my feet didn’t move, but there was the feeling as if my stomach had suddenly been left behind and needed to catch up—not the wrenching nausea of a teleport, fortunately, but still unsettling.
The sense of motion increased.
“Shallow breaths, Boss.”
“Right.”
Sometime in there, Morrolan had drawn Blackwand—it tells you how messed up my senses were that I hadn’t noticed, still didn’t feel it; all I was really aware of was the sensation of motion, as if something had pulled me from the bottom of a hill and I start up up up rolling and spinning and being everywhere at once and no place at all happening at the same time and time again you’ve been through this before you realize that you’ll never forget everything you thought you knew about moving from one place to another flash of light flickering and still moving past and present and future filled with unknown dangers appearing from everywhere nowhere somewhere somehow what when where was I and how did I get here from there we are slowing down down down stop.
There were four of them; maybe two of them were the same ones we’d seen before, but I couldn’t tell them apart well enough to say. Two were standing, two sitting on what appeared to be an uncomfortable-looking couch. I’d been among humans, Dragaerans, Serioli, cat-centaurs, and gods. One way or another, they were people—but these were things. They looked like things, and I thought of them as things, and I really wanted to put them away like things.
The first bit of bad news was, the things didn’t seem startled by our presence. If we were counting on surprise, we could be in real trouble.
One of the sitting ones was holding something that appeared to be some sort of tube, with projections that fit nicely into its hand. If it was a weapon, we could be in real trouble.
It was clear that two of them, including the one with the tube, were looking at Verra. It was possible that their idea all along was to kill her, and now that we had brought her, the rest of us could simply be disposed of. If that was their thinking, we could be in real trouble.
I had no time, just then, to pay attention to surroundings—I think I noted that we were indoors, and that was about it. Things happened so quickly that I just had no time to note the sort of details that can save your life; we might be in the Jenoine equivalent of someone’s parlor, or of a sorcerer’s laboratory, or the weapon room of their Imperial Guard for all I knew. We might be surrounded by Jenoine food and drink, Jenoine books, or Jenoine death traps. If the latter, we might be in real trouble.
“I think we might be in real trouble, Boss.”
“It’s possible.”
“Let’s do it,” said Morrolan.
There was no time for any other remarks, so we all got to work.
12
Exercising Due Care for
the Comfort and Safety of Others
It’s funny, but it didn’t occur to me until much later to think of it in terms of four of them and five of us. None of the ways things could have gone had much to do with numbers. Morrolan and Aliera were the first to move, Great Weapons flashing. The Goddess strode forward, right behind them, leaving Teldra and me standing there for just an instant before I cursed, put my hand on the Morganti dagger, started Spellbreaker swinging in slow circle, and tried to figure out something useful to do. Nothing came instantly to mind.
The two who were sitting remained sitting. One of the others turned its hands over as if asking why we might want to disturb it—Morrolan and Aliera began moving at this one. That left the other one for the De
mon Goddess, while Teldra and I were, I guess, just along as witnesses.
It seemed like the opening of some sort of dance—Morrolan and Aliera moved toward either side of the one, who stepped forward as if to place itself between them—in the worst possible position except for letting them both stand behind it. There was a strange grace to its movements. Was it an especially athletic one of its kind? Were they all like that? How can you tell when you’re seeing something typical of a species, and when you’re seeing an interesting individual of that species? Why does my mind always wander like that when I’m frightened and don’t know what to do?
Verra, in the meantime, began to circle to her left with the other Jenoine, who obligingly circled to its left, as if it had no qualms about turning its back to me.
“Careful, Boss. The two sitting ones are watching you.”
I acknowledged the warning. But, still, I had a Morganti dagger; if the thing were willing to actually show me its back how could I resist? Offering a Jhereg your back is like offering a Dzur an insult or an Orca a free piece of merchandise: he’ll find it hard not to take it even if he has no use for it. I kept my hand on the hilt of my dagger, watched, and waited.
Two things happened, then, so close together they were almost simultaneous—one was the sudden realization on my part that the room was shrinking in all directions; in other words, the walls were collapsing inward, very quickly. The other was that Verra laughed. I know that I flinched, I don’t know if any of the others did, and then, just as quickly, the walls stopped collapsing.
“Illusion,” said Loiosh. “Never fooled me for an instant.”
“Yeah. Me, either.” I told him.
Spellbreaker was about a foot and a half long, with rather thick, heavy links; I kept it spinning slowly. Verra and the Jenoine facing her had both stopped. It was, unfortunately, just short of giving me the nice shot at its back I wanted. While both of their eyes faced forward, they were also wide-set—they had, then, better peripheral vision than humans or Dragaerans, and I needed to be aware of that when trying for a back shot.
We trained professionals notice stuff like that.
The Goddess and the Jenoine appeared to have locked gazes, I couldn’t tell if they were engaged in some sort of massive, mystical, magical struggle happening on a level beyond my comprehension, or if they were just having a good old-fashioned stare-down.
Teldra came up to my side; perhaps to share in whatever protection Spellbreaker might give, perhaps just to back me up if I was attacked.
I said “Any ideas, Teldra?” and out of the corner of my eye I saw her shake her head.
“Shallow breaths, Boss.”
“Check, Loiosh.”
My thoughts were still on the Morganti dagger at my side, but I didn’t draw it; wouldn’t know quite what to do with it. My instincts told me to wait and see what happened, that this was not yet my moment.
Then Aliera lunged suddenly with Pathfinder, and Morrolan struck with Blackwand in a downward slanting arc at the same time. Their timing was precise, their coordination perfect. It ought to have been a deadly combination, the more so as the Jenoine made no effort to avoid either attack. It worked perfectly, except for the part where the Great Weapons were supposed to stab or cut the Jenoine; that didn’t happen. Both weapons stopped what appeared to be a fraction of an inch away from their respective targets. Offhand, I didn’t know anything tough enough to withstand the direct attack of a Great Weapon. Nor, in fact, did I want to know any such thing, or even think about it too hard.
Then I realized that whatever had neatly stopped Pathfinder and Blackwand had stopped Aliera and Morrolan as well—they were standing utterly motionless, as if frozen by their weapons’ contact, or near contact, with the Jenoine. That was no good at all.
I get the shakes when I think back on that moment—Aliera e’Kieron and Morrolan e’Drien and Pathfinder and Blackwand held motionless by these things, while Verra, whether she was doing something or not, at least wasn’t casually destroying them the way she ought to be, and, on top of it all, there were those two just sitting there, not even getting involved, as if it weren’t worth their effort. That’s how I feel now. But at the time, all I felt was irritation, especially directed at those two sons of bitches who were sitting on their superhuman godlike asses.
I really wanted to do something to get their attention.
Okay, I know how stupid that is, I should have been giving thanks to Verra—who was, after all, only a couple of feet away—that I didn’t have their attention; but maybe I was temporarily nuts or something. No, I won’t say that. I won’t plead the excuse of being off my head. I remember clearly and coldly making the decision, and putting it into action.
My right hand left the vicinity of the Morganti weapon—which, powerful as it no doubt was, was certainly not going to do anything Pathfinder and Blackwand couldn’t do—and reached into my pouch. I made my motions small and smooth to avoid attracting premature attention and, almost immediately, my fingers found what I’d sent them after.
“Boss, do you know what you’re doing?”
“More or less,” I told him.
“Oh, good.”
It was, in fact, something that, years before, I had been warned in the strongest possible terms never to do again. But the first time I hadn’t had any choice. This time was different: this time I was irritated.
What I was about to do wasn’t like witchcraft: a focusing of the will, a concentration on desire; nor was it at all like sorcery: an almost mechanical application of known laws to achieve a precise result. When I’d done it before, years ago, it had been born out of anger, frustration, and desperation, and on top of it I had had my link to the Orb to provide the power to get it started. This time I had none of that—just the idea, which had been in the back of my head since my walk with Teldra, and the vague notion that I ought to do something.
But I did have a few things working for me: For one, the simple knowledge that I’d done it once before, which was by itself of incalculable value. For another, my memory, confused and imprecise, but there, of how that had felt, and where I had reached into myself, and how I had found those innate abilities inherited through the connection of my spirit to ancestors stretching back to when Sethra was young. And, for still another, I had the device in my fingers—a small, purple-blue stone, smooth as a pearl, which would act like the rendered goose fat that provides the basis of a good red pepper sauce.
I held it up.
Verra said, “Vlad!”
I remember her saying it, and maybe I was just concentrating too hard to permit myself to be distracted, or maybe I decided that this was a good time to ignore her. In any case, I reached into the stone, and into myself, and cut loose the moorings that held reality anchored to time that passes and the space that uses time, tried my best to give it some focus, and let it go.
I suddenly had the attention of all four Jenoine.
I smiled at them. “Hi there,” I said.
The two who were sitting rose to their feet far quicker than I’d have thought they could. I moved Spellbreaker, which was still spinning, a little to the side so it would be out of the way of whatever I was about to do, if I could do it. Something seized hold of the unreality between my fingers, and I felt it start to dissolve.
The two Jenoine moved toward me. I concentrated on them, imagined them dissolving into the raw, eternal, basic matter—or non-matter—of the universe, all coherence vanishing in light and shadow and formlessness.
“Vlad!” said Verra. “Don’t!”
So far, so good.
Suddenly, Aliera and Morrolan were free again—and I don’t know what had been done to them, but they didn’t like it much, because they both jerked back suddenly, as if simultaneously kicked in the chest. Morrolan sprawled on his back; Aliera managed to stay on her feet, but, to the extent that I could spare any attention for them, they didn’t seem happy.
Verra had stepped back from the one she faced, and was look
ing at me; Teldra emitted some sounds that I knew to be in the language of the Jenoine—her voice was even and level as it chirped and croaked and squeaked. Verra’s hands were up, and she was making gestures in my direction and Aliera and Morrolan were charging in again, and things got even more confused, as one of the Jenoine who had just risen said something in its own language, though it was hard to hear over the roaring sound that I realized had been steadily growing, and was coming from between my fingers, which was also the source of the reddish-golden light that was streaming out toward three of the Jenoine, who held their ground, their hands clasped together in front of them in a gesture of supplication, though no doubt it meant something else to them, and in the confusion, now that my little purple stone was entirely gone, and the light and the sound were fading, I drew the Morganti dagger to give them something else to worry about, but two of them were worrying about Verra, who seemed to have taken all the light into herself or at least she was glowing, and she seemed taller as one of them lifted its hands toward her, and another, who was still holding that odd tube, lifted it until it was pointed directly at the Demon Goddess, who said, “That was stupid, little Easterner; she couldn’t have hurt me with that thing.”
“What was stupid?”
“You okay, Boss?”
“What the-?”
“Welcome back, Vlad,” said Aliera.
“Back,” I repeated, at which point things came into focus, and I said, “Sethra! What are you—?” Then, “How did I get back to Dzur Mountain?”
