Issola (Vlad Taltos)

by Steven Brust

  “I propose,” I said, “that we head straight up the Tower and do this, or at least attempt it, because I don’t want to give myself time to think about it.”

  “Very well,” said Teldra.

  The familiar doors opened to us as we approached them. I said, “Are you not frightened at all?”

  “Would you rather I were, Vlad?”

  “Good question. I’m not sure.”

  In and up and around and about; and add a few more prepositions to the mix, and eventually we were climbing the narrow metal staircase up to Morrolan’s Tower. I’d been there before. It was not one of the places I missed.

  “There ought to be a guardian here,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  “We shouldn’t be able to just walk up and do this. We ought to have to fight our way past some sort of legendary half-man half-monster that has guarded this place since the beginning of time, and cannot be harmed by any weapon, nor moved by any words, nor evaded by any motion.”

  “I see,” said Teldra. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. A warm-up for the rough stuff.”

  “Do irony and grey laughter help ease your fears?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “Was that a rude question on my part?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you on that.”

  I pushed open the door over my head. It fell over with a boom and I caught the faint odor of formaldehyde, which I hadn’t remembered from before. I climbed up and looked around. From my previous experience, I knew better than to count the number of windows; besides, all of them except one were covered up. The view out the open one was of a deep purple with pinpoints of light dotting it here and there; it reminded me a bit of the sky in the East. It actually took me a moment to realize that the Necromancer was already there, standing very still against the curtain between two of the windows. Teldra came up behind me and carefully shut the trapdoor.

  “Vlad,” said the Necromancer. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to her; I have never known how to respond to her. In some ways, she was more enigmatic even than Sethra Lavode. She looked creepy; I imagine on purpose. She was thin, even for a Dragaeran, and dressed entirely in dull black, without even silver buttons, and she was very, very pale, and she was an expert in what I think of as death, but, from what I’ve picked up of her conversation, she sees as something entirely different; to her “place” doesn’t mean the same thing as it means to me, nor does “life” or “the soul.” What to the Athyra are issues of epistemology and ontology are to her matters of engineering. I made a fervent wish that I would never arrive in a circumstance where “place” and “life” and “the soul” became matters of engineering.

  It is wishes like that that get you in trouble.

  How in blazes had I gotten myself mixed up with weirdos like this in the first place?

  “Your natural charm, Boss.”

  “Shut up, Loiosh.”

  Once again, I removed the cord from around my neck, and put away the Phoenix Stones. This time, I remember feeling nothing in particular as I did so. I allowed Spellbreaker, a gold chain of small links, just less than two feet in length, to fall into my left hand from where it was coiled around my wrist. I looked at it. It was made of the same substance as the gold Phoenix Stone I had just put away, but it was different. Things had been done to it. Someone, some Serioli smith, I believe, had worked it, shaped it, and made it into something very special—exactly what, I had only gotten hints of over the years, like the Serioli who, when I asked if it was a Great Weapon, said, “Not yet.” Heh.

  This time, the links of the chain were very small; perhaps a quarter of an inch long, which meant that there were more of them than on other occasions, when the chain had been, say, fourteen inches long and each link had measured an inch and a half. For some reason, I found the idea that the number of links changed to be more disconcerting than that the overall length of the chain would vary.

  I turned my eyes to the window, then back to the chain. In my mind, I drew a picture of Blackwand, Morrolan’s weapon. Or, rather, I tried to draw a picture of Blackwand; but it kept sliding away from me.

  “Help, Loiosh.”

  “I’m there, Boss.”

  I pictured it in its sheath, though I had seen the damned thing naked. About five feet in length, it was: a longsword, as some called it, the hilt smooth and black, the guard a simple crosspiece, gleaming like silver; on top of the hilt a piece of smooth, glistening black stone, that stone called Verra’s Tears, which was obsidian that had been smoothed away by Black Water. The scabbard I had seen Morrolan use most recently—he had several—was very plain, and seemed to be leather, although there had to be more to it than that. It was an old sheath, and there were a few threads coming loose at the seams, and a slight tear in the leather near the very top.

  With Loiosh’s help, the picture became clear, then very clear, then clear enough that I became frightened, then Lady Teldra was next to me in response to something I said, then there was a motion from around my shoulder, then I sent Spellbreaker out into the window in front of me.

  And it all worked, just like Sethra Lavode had said it would.

  Shame about that.

  The window blurred and shifted, filled with lights, and darkness, and indistinct shapes. Herds of animals I didn’t recognize grazed upon green fields beneath a sky that was a peculiar grey; strange appendages like fingers worked upon a small metallic object, striking it with a tool; a mountain peak appeared below me, stark against a sky that was black, black, black; there was an ocean of green, waves that seemed huge and that crashed against the window but didn’t pass through; a young girl who may have been human or Dragaeran and who I might or might not have recognized made impossible eye contact with me; an athyra-like bird screeched horribly and fell along a wooded path, then vanished into nothing as it landed; violet sparks came from a wheel that spun at incredible speeds, though to no purpose I could imagine; a man with a pen made odd scratches on a long roll of parchment; deep under water, a strange creature with scales all of green and yellow worked upon a piece of red fabric, embroidering it with a thin silver needle and blue thread. And all of this with no trace of sound—that, perhaps, the most peculiar thing of all.

  Now the window shows darkness pierced by flickerings of light as of a storm, the source of the light beyond the scope of my vision, but in those flickerings I see Blackwand, itself, only barely more real than in my vision, until suddenly I realize that, though it is concealed in its sheath, and that sheath attached to a familiar figure, I feel Blackwand; and that tiny portion of my brain which remains free to have opinions and feelings regrets that we have been successful.

  Teldra and I, in perfect unison, following Spellbreaker, took one step forward through the window. There was no sense of disorientation, the way there is when teleporting, nor was there the delay. In a way, I think this made it worse—the changes were sharper than any I had known before, and it was lucky that I didn’t have to defend myself at once. The first thing I noticed was that I felt heavier—perhaps the result of a general protection spell against anyone who doesn’t belong, or it might also be some natural property of the place. The air smelled funny, sort of sweet, with a queer kind of tang in it. There were no sounds; what had seemed to be a flickering light was some sort of dim lamp, forty or fifty feet away, that was hanging from the ceiling and swaying back and forth, and it was in this light that I saw Morrolan and Aliera, which was the second thing that struck me; but the first demanded my immediate attention.

  “Loiosh, where is Rocza?” I was, to be honest, surprised at the sinking fear I felt in the pit of my stomach.

  “I had her stay behind. I didn’t want to worry about her.”

  I was equally surprised by the relief that flooded through me. “You could have told me.”

  “It was a last-minute decision.”

  I turned my attention to the Dragonlords we had come to
rescue. They were both sitting on the floor against a stone wall, with what seemed to be iron manacles on their wrists, and they were both awake. Both had their weapons with them.

  Morrolan cleared his throat and said, “Welcome. I find myself filled with the desire to say something like, ‘What took you so long, Vlad,’ but I fear that you, Lady Teldra, might take it wrong, so I will refrain.”

  “Damned decent of you,” I said.

  “Hello, Vlad,” said Aliera. “I wondered who she would send into this trap.”

  “It’s a trap?” I said. “Why, now, that’s hard to believe.”

  Morrolan snorted.

  I said, “How did they come to leave you your weapons?”

  “Do you imagine,” said Aliera, “that they would be willing to touch them, or even come near them?”

  “I see. So you have your weapons, but are unable to move.”

  “Well, you probably noticed that you have no link to the Orb.”

  “Uh,” I said, because, in fact, in all the disorientation, that little fact had escaped me. “Let’s see if we can get you out of those things.”

  “Good luck,” said Aliera.

  “Oh?”

  I inspected them. There was a fair bit of stack—enough to reach the plain, white ceramic chamber pots a few paces from the wall (the contents of which I didn’t bother to inspect), but not much more. The chain was thick, and seemingly of some material a lot like iron, but smoother, and—

  “There’s no lock. They don’t open.”

  “Noticed that right away, did you?” said Aliera.

  “Bugger,” I suggested. “How did they get them on you in the first place?”

  “I don’t know,” said Morrolan.

  I looked at them. “Well, so here you are, unable to move, to escape, or to act in any way. Good. There are a number of things I’ve wanted to say to you both over the years.”

  “Funny, Vlad,” said Morrolan.

  “I thought it was funny, Boss.”

  Teldra said, “Do you think our arrival here has been detected?”

  “I have no way of knowing,” said Morrolan.

  “I’d have to assume so,” said Aliera.

  “Well,” I said. “That ought to make things more interesting. Does anyone have a suggestion for getting you two out of those manacles?”

  “You should have brought Kiera,” said Aliera.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Right. What could I have been thinking of to have forgotten to have a Kiera in my pocket?”

  I knelt down next to Morrolan and studied the manacles. They were completely smooth, as if they had been created, fully formed, around his wrists out of some material I had never encountered before; something very hard, dull grey, and at least as strong as iron.

  “How did you get here?” said Aliera.

  “The windows in my tower,” said Morrolan. “He used Spellbreaker to find Pathfinder.”

  “Blackwand, actually, but yes.”

  “So is the window still open?”

  I said, “No,” at the same time Morrolan said, “Yes.”

  I said, “Uh, I defer to your expertise.”

  “Yes it is,” said Morrolan, “but I know of no way to reach it without using powers to which I have no access from here, so it may as well not be.”

  Aliera said, “Have the Jenoine access to such powers?”

  “Excuse me?” said Morrolan.

  “Can they use your window to reach our world?”

  Very softly, under his breath, Morrolan cursed. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.

  “I should imagine,” I said, “that Sethra didn’t, either.”

  Morrolan and Aliera were cousins, both of the House of the Dragon. Morrolan was the sort of fellow who would restyle his hair every week or so, and take great care of his nails; and in his youth, had put entire villages to the sword when the mood took him. Aliera was short for a Dragaeran (still taller than me, of course), compact, brilliant, and more fond of a good duel than of any other entertainment you cared to name. They were both better sorcerers than I’ll ever live to be, though a bit overshadowed by their association with Sethra Lavode; but that only meant they were often underestimated.

  They both carried Great Weapons; these were rarely underestimated.

  Morrolan didn’t hate Easterners as much as you’d expect; Aliera didn’t hate me as much as you’d expect. Exactly how I got mixed up with these two is a long story, and probably not worth repeating, but, over the years, it is possible my association with them had done me more good than harm—at least up until now.

  I studied where the chains from Morrolan’s manacles joined the wall, and there was nothing there to work on—it was as if the chains were built in when the wall was first constructed. The wall itself seemed to be made of stone, except there were no stones in it, just one solid piece, as if someone had carved it out of a mountain. Well, why not? Sethra did something like that. Of course, her walls weren’t so smooth as this.

  “They don’t seem to be in a hurry,” I said.

  “We can assume,” said Aliera, “until proven otherwise, that they are watching and listening, and, since they know they have us all trapped, they have no need to be in a hurry, and by listening might get useful information from us.”

  “Such as the fact that they can use the window to reach our world,” said Morrolan, “which we were just kind enough to tell them.”

  “And you are even now repeating, in case they missed it before.”

  “As if—”

  “Oh, cut it out,” I said.

  I flipped two fingers to the world in general, just in case they were watching and the gesture was universal, then noticed for the first time that there didn’t seem to be any doors in the room.

  I took some time to look around the room a little more, feeling all eyes on me, but seeing no need to explain myself. The room was about two hundred feet by a hundred and fifty feet, and empty save for several tall metal objects that looked a bit like bookshelves, but were devoid of books. Most likely, this was some sort of storage room. And, as far as I could see, there was no way into or out of it. A good way to keep your property from being stolen. I’d have to remember that, in case I ever again had property to protect and the opportunity to protect it.

  “There aren’t any doors,” I remarked.

  Aliera and Morrolan gave me a look as if I’d just announced that knives were sometimes sharp. Teldra nodded solemnly, but I think she’d already noticed.

  I thought about communicating with them psychically, but without the Orb it’s damned difficult, not to mention exhausting.

  Morrolan closed his eyes for a moment, then touched the hilt of Blackwand. “No one is listening to us,” he said aloud.

  Aliera’s head whipped around, and she stared at him. “How can you know that?”

  “Blackwand is not without power, cousin. Nor, for that matter, am I.”

  Aliera looked dubious, but didn’t say anything more.

  “Hey, Boss, do you think the Necromancer has been able to maintain contact?”

  “I’d give whole worlds to know, Loiosh.”

  Aloud I said, “Why don’t you guys tell me what happened?”

  They both started speaking at once, which I ought to have predicted; then they glared at each other. Finally, Aliera nodded toward Morrolan, who shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I was in the library, and then I was here, being used to ornament this wall.”

  “I,” said Aliera, “was in my bedchamber.” She said this as if being snatched from the library ought to give Morrolan no cause for complaint.

  “You have no idea how it happened?”

  “None,” said Aliera. “I was there, then I was here, manacled. I had no sensation of time passing, or that I had lost consciousness, although that proves nothing. On the other hand, Pathfinder has no sensation of time passing, and that, I believe, does prove something.”

  “Blackwand and I had the same experience,” he said. “Which I hope me
ans that they have the ability to transport us, instantly, off our world and into manacles chained to a wall; because if not, it means they have the ability to interfere with a Great Weapon, and then I should be worried.”

  I chewed that over, then asked Morrolan, “You had no indication that, I don’t know, your security system had been breached?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Is this something they’ve been able to do any time, and just decided to now? Or do they have something new?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing,” said Morrolan.

  “This doesn’t give us much to work with,” I suggested. “And I don’t suppose either of you have any suggestions about getting out of here?”

  They didn’t.

  I studied the chains that held them, and was wondering what it would take to break them, and what to do once they were broken, when Aliera said, “If we could reach Sethra—” which is as far as she got before our hosts finally decided to grace us with their presence.

  4

  MAKING ACQUAINTANCES

  I was looking at Morrolan and Aliera, and saw their eyes suddenly focus on something over my shoulder, so I turned just as Loiosh gave a sort of agitated, undefined psychic squeal. I don’t actually know that they appeared through the floor, but it seemed like it at the time; as if they sort of formed from the floor up. There were two of them.

  I said, “Are those—?”

  “Yes,” said Morrolan. “That’s what they look like.”

  “Heh. They’re ugly enough, anyway.”

  It is hard to say what my first impression of them was. I saw them emerge, and my memory supplies their image; I don’t know exactly what I noticed first. They were big—bigger than Dragaerans, I’d say more than nine feet tall, which I ought to have guessed from the size of the ceilings, but that’s the sort of thing I always figure out after the fact. But whereas Dragaerans are thin, at least compared to humans, the Jenoine were broad, heavy, strong-looking, with thick arms, ending in hands with some reasonable number of fingers and one thumb per hand, but from where I stood they didn’t seem to have any wrists. Nor hair of any kind. It was hard to see their faces, either, but there seemed to be two large, round eyes, both facing forward, and a mouth of some sort. They were naked, and, as far I could tell, sexless.