by Doyle, Debra
He had no illusions about his future. He might have been saved from a collision at high speed with the plaza’s historic bloodstained marble, but his time was limited none the less. His captors had made no attempt to hide their faces, or to conceal their names—they knew, then, that he would not be living long enough to identify them. Whatever fate awaited him on Ophel would not be pleasant.
They were dragging him to a parked hovercar. One of them—Kolpag, the blaster man—slid into the driver’s position and switched the machine on. It rose, humming, on its nullgravs, and hung there vibrating gently.
The other man shoved Jens into onto the front seat beside the driver. Jens fell heavily backward onto his bound wrists, and the man who had dumped him—Ruhn, if the driver was Kolpag—started to walk back to the rear passenger compartment, where he would sit behind Jens.
Time to go out with style, Jens thought; now or never—and smashed his left foot sideways into the driver’s ribs.
Kolpag lost his breath in an explosive whuff and fell partway out of his still-open door—twisting the hovercar’s control yoke to the left and dragging it all the way out to reverse as he went down. The car spun backward and to the right with startling speed, increasing its angular velocity as it pivoted. The side of the hovercar took Ruhn in mid-body, crushing him between the vehicle’s mass and the unyielding granite of the wall. An explosion of blood flew from the man’s mouth and spattered the window above Jens’s head.
Jens drew back his legs and kicked again. This time he knocked Kolpag entirely out of the vehicle. Jens kicked the control yoke with the right side of his foot to put the hovercar back into forward motion.
His hands were bound behind him, which wasn’t going to make controlling the vehicle any easier. At least the car was powered up and hovering, or he’d never be able to make it.
He squirmed and twisted to get himself up and sitting in the driver’s position. He raised his knees. By hitting the bottom edge of the control yoke he could steer the hovercar to right and left.
A blaster shot took out the rear windscreen, and a second shot plowed up a furrow along the roof.
So his captor was up and moving—and, more important, shooting. Jens snapped his left knee up to hit the bottom left side of the control yoke. The vehicle twisted right, but with plenty of forward momentum still on it. A pillar loomed up—the hovercar slipped by, but the pillar clipped the open door, ripping it off with a loud bang. The car shuddered but continued on.
Wind whipped through Jen’s unbound hair. He’d lost the ribbon that held it somewhere on the stairway going down, at about the same time as he’d acquired a cut on his face that stung and dripped salty fluid past his mouth. He wanted to slow the hovercar—or at least to have that option—but without the use of his hands he lacked the leverage needed to pull back the yoke and decrease speed. He could lean forward, perhaps, and increase his velocity, but other than that his choices were limited.
He was coming out of the underground parking area now. Daylight showed ahead and to the left. He smashed his right knee up to put the car into a screaming left turn. It broadsided a parked duo-van before it came straight again.
I think I’m starting to get the knack of this.
The exit from the garage was just ahead. He steered smaller, lining up his departure. It was up a ramp—Jens could see buildings beyond the sunny gap. A right turn, he figured, on the way out.
The hovercar scraped pavement all along its bottom when it hit the foot of the ramp, and went completely airborne at the top. Jens lost sight of the ground—he couldn’t see anything but the onrushing building ahead. He pushed up on the yoke with his left knee, and leaned his right shoulder down against the other of the yoke to press it down farther.
When the car hit the ground again the impact jolted through him—from the seat, from the yoke, from every point of his body that was in contact with a solid part of the car. Then the side vector took effect and he felt the car slew to the right. He was almost thrown out through the missing door by the centrifugal force of his turn.
He braced himself and rode it out, allowing his head to come up at the finish to see where he was and where he was going. He saw a broad boulevard—not much traffic, not many pedestrians. Everybody must still be over in the plaza, he thought, trying to soak the hems of their garments in the spattered Highest.
Then he glanced behind him. Another hovercar was exiting the garage, coming up behind him fast. Capture or worse had been delayed—but not, perhaps, for long.
Chaka was again on duty in the listening room, though it was barely dawn and none of her employers had seen fit to order her attention. On this day, at least, she had reasons of her own for listening.
So far, she had heard nothing of interest. It seemed that no one had been able to, or had thought it necessary to, put a listening device in Jens’s new clothing—when he changed garments in preparation for his Acclamation, the ambient noise became that of a clothes hamper, and his voice was heard no more.
Faral, however, was in one of the front rooms here in the house of Caridal Fere, speaking in Galcenian to the redheaded female. They had quarreled, it seemed, and now were restoring their friendship. Without Jens present a word in Trade-talk would be unlikely.
Chaka let herself relax a little, thinking of Jens and his current situation. He had certainly found fame, though of a kind which was unlikely to let him return to the high ridges and the Big Trees. Or maybe not. Both his mother and his grandmother had renounced a crown, and had gained considerable fame thereby. Jens could do something equally unlikely.
A change in air pressure told Chaka that the door at the end of the hall had opened. A smell of perfume mixed with anxiety floated in. The Selvaur remained seated. Someone was approaching, and that someone was trying to be stealthy. It occurred to her, not for the first time since the start of her employment, that persons who hired an unlicensed translator from a transient ship might well have reason for disposing of that translator afterward.
Faral’s voice came through the speaker of the listening device. “Huzzah! Huzzah!”
At the same time, a woman stepped into the doorway. She wore plain livery—somebody’s servant, then. Chaka observed her without turning, following her reflection in the sheet of glass fronting an ornate arrangement of pressed dried flowers.
The woman in the glass raised a blaster, aiming it at Chaka.
The Selvaur rose, sidestepped, and as part of the same motion picked up her chair and hurled it across the room. The item of furniture struck the woman just as she shot, knocking the blaster aside. She fell, and the bolt went wide.
Chaka leapt across the room and, with one taloned hand, grasped the woman’s right hand, the one that held the blaster, and pulled. The arm came off.
*Find another translator,* Chaka said, straightening as she extracted the blaster from the limp fingers. *Your old one just quit.*
Holding the weapon awkwardly—it had not been designed for a Selvaur’s grasp at all—the young saurian loped down the hallway, dodged through the door, and made her way toward the front windows of the house of Caridal Fere.
Klea and Mael walked the through silent, polished halls of the Adepts’ Guildhouse in Ilsefret. Nothing but echoes responded to their voices, and their feet made the only other sounds within the walls.
“Mistress,” Mael said, “I fear that this place has been long deserted.”
“Never inhabited, you mean,” Klea said. “Come here and look at this.” She was standing in the doorway of a library. “Books, scrolls, readers, and pads. What do you see?”
“Records, I suppose. The secrets of the order?”
“Nothing,” Klea said. “Look!” She pulled one of the books at random from the shelf at her left hand. She opened it and riffled the pages. “Blank. Empty.”
“All of them?”
“Every single one I looked at. From the oldest to the newest. This is a stage set. A sham.”
“Where, then, are the Adepts of K
hesat?”
“Hidden. I’m sure that hundreds of witnesses see Adepts entering and leaving this building every day. They don’t stay here. So where do they go?”
“Are you proposing that we tap on the walls, Mistress, to seek the hidden door?”
“Something like that,” Klea said. “It won’t be a path that many can find. But in here, somewhere, is an answer to all our questions.”
“If you can find it.”
“I think that I can.” Klea shut her eyes and relaxed. Such mental wandering had been her gift ever since Owen had found her years ago—untrained, and afraid she was going mad. The past and the future were locked to her. But the present she could see. And this time, when she looked, she found a trail, and the signs that marked out a pathway between the smallest particles of matter that made up the measurable world.
“There are markers,” Klea said. “Like the pebbles beneath the surface of a pool. Like stones that can be grasped. They will lead us through.”
This part of the hall was dead. The passages that continued had none of the vibrancy that went with passing life. Klea turned back down the passage in the direction they had come.
“Under the stones of the rock garden?” Mael asked, hastening to catch up.
“No, no,” Klea said. “That one’s a trap. The right place is somewhere else … .”
She came to the passage leading to the foyer and the street. With the coming day, the sky was growing light beyond the high stained-glass windows above the door. Deep red splashes fell onto the floor of the lobby, making it look more like an abattoir than like the reception room of a powerful and respected Guild.
The gems set in the entry wall twinkled at her.
“Those aren’t stones,” Klea said. “They’re the marks. They tell those trained in power the way to go.”
“Mistress, what are you talking about?”
“Those,” she said, and pointed at the glowing patterns.
Mael shook his head. “That’s the sunlight coming in through the window.”
“Don’t you see? Here!”
Klea pushed her hands forward against the cold strength of the wall, the painted plaster over stone of which the building was made. She stretched more, and her hands sank into the solid material.
“Klea!” Mael shouted. “Mistress Santreny! This way you are going—I cannot go that way!”
“Yes you can,” Klea said. “Just as a Mage can take an Adept into the Void. Take hold of me, and let me take you where you cannot pass.”
“Meaning no disrespect,” Mael said, and stepped behind her, putting his arms gently around her, trying not to touch her more than necessary.
“You’ll have to hold me tighter than that,” Klea said. “You won’t be the first, or the rudest.”
His arms tightened around her waist, and she stepped through.
Jens looked back. His lead would never be greater than it was right now. If he could just find a soft place on the left-hand side near a cross street, he might be able to make a clean getaway. Then find a ship, and get off planet. Faral could help with that, if he could just get to Faral.
I’ve done what I was supposed to do—been presented as the Highest of Khesat. What I do next is my problem.
He nudged the control yoke with his right knee in order to drift left and stay in the street. No good crashing, not unstrapped as he was. Having avoided an official sudden impact already this morning, he had no desire to try an impromptu one against a building.
A little park was coming up on his left. The wind through the opening where the door had been torn off howled and whipped at his hair. Jens spotted a connecting road leading off to the right. Opposite that point, in the park, he didn’t see any trees, just some shrubs and a grassy slope. He counted to himself, checking his speed, trying to figure out where he’d have to turn, and where he was most likely to land.
The gap between where he was and where he wanted to be decreased. He knocked the vehicle a little to the left, so that it was halfway out of the roadway and skimming by the springy bushes.
Here. This is the place.
He smashed up with his left knee and down with his right shoulder, whipping the hovercar over to the right.
It started to go, skidding sideways on its frictionless nullgravs while the side and rear thrusters labored to straighten and start the vehicle on its new path. This time, when centrifugal force hit him, Jens went limp and allowed himself to be thrown clear.
The thin stalks of the bushes caught and slowed him—though they hurt, hitting at this speed. Then he was through them and rolling down the hill, burning off more of his momentum as he went. He slowed, then stopped. His arms and wrists, caught in the binders, pained him exquisitely. He hadn’t had time to think about them until now.
He lurched and scrambled to his feet, and found he was standing before a little group of schoolchildren, together with their teacher, sitting around a cloth spread with delicacies. They all had telescopes and binoculars—it seemed that he’d stumbled into a breakfast picnic to observe the events at the Golden Tower from afar. The children were all gazing at him with large eyes.
Jens smiled at them and bowed.
One little girl began to applaud, then all the others joined in.
“Thank you, thank you,” Jens said. “Performance art is my life. You’re too kind. Now, alas, I must go.”
With another bow, he set out across the springy turf, the applause of his little audience following him.
“I’d hate to have to do that every day, twice a day, and three times on matinee days,” Jens muttered as soon as he was out of earshot.
“No,” said a voice to his right. “But the time comes when I need your help.”
Jens looked toward the voice. His new companion was the man in black with whom he’d been conversing all his life, and who had manifested himself so thoroughly on Sapne … and who had left without farewell when Miza named him.
“Guislen,” Jens said. “Or do I call you Master Ransome?”
“Either, I suppose,” Guislen said. “But I prefer the former. There is another who bears the name of Ransome—I must meet him today and carry out my last commission.”
“And what is that?”
Guislen looked sorrowful. “To put to right the evil that I have done. Most of that I have accomplished, but part still remains unfinished. And that requires … but I have no right to ask.”
“You have that right,” Jens said. “You’ve earned it, as far as I’m concerned. Where shall we go?”
“To the Khesatan Guildhouse,” Guislen said. “For I am already there, and I fear that I am up to no good.”
XX. KHESAT
You!” FARAL said to Gerre Hafelsan. “You arranged all this.”
Before Hafelsan could reply, the door of the room sprang open, kicked wide by a green-scaled, shoeless foot.
Faral stared. *Chaka! What are you doing on Khesat?*
*Saving your life, I think,* Chaka said. *These people are all double-crossers, every one of them.*
“What did the absurd creature say?” asked Caridal Fere.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Hafelsan. “When the next Highest is proclaimed, I will be here to rejoice in his elevation—and you will not. Caridal Fere, I challenge you for this house and all that it contains.”
Faral expected the Master of Nalensey to laugh aloud at the unexpected and tasteless witticism—but he did not. He held up his hands, and something appeared between them that had not been visible a moment before.
An Adept’s staff.
“This is the Guildhouse of the Adepts of Khesat, as it has been since time immemorial,” Fere said. “And I am their Master.”
“No,” Hafelsan said. A glowing rod of light appeared in his hand as the sky outside the window darkened. “You were.”
Mael experienced a feeling of motion without moving, then the sound and sensation of rain striking against the hard plastic of his mask.
He opened his eyes and looked a
round. He stood with Mistress Klea Santreny on a wide plain, the ground made of jumbled rock, tossed and broken. It was night, and pale moonlight glowed past the edges of hurrying clouds. A wind, sharp and chill, swept past, whipping his robes about him.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“The other side of the wall,” Klea said. “Where that is, I don’t know.”
“Is it a vision?”
“Oh, no,” Klea said. “The ways of Adepts are not yours. What you see is real.”
“Perhaps,” Mael said, “some of my reality is here, too.” He looked about him with his inner sight, trying to find the cords of life. No wonder Adepts speak of riding the winds and currents of power, he thought. Is this how they see everything, as nothing but chaos?
The cords of life were there, dim in the darkness. More than the night obscured them—they were all tarnished and black.
“I think we’re close to the source of the evil,” he said.
“The source, or the cause?” Klea asked. “It’s cold here. Let’s get walking, and see where we come to.”
“If we come to anywhere.”
“We must,” Klea said. “The universe won’t allow it to happen otherwise.”
“I’d like to summon a light,” Mael said, “but I’m worried about what might notice us.”
“Don’t concern yourself about that,” Klea said. “I see a city’s glow up ahead. If the Adepts of Khesat are here at all, that’s where we’ll find them.”
“I don’t like the looks of this place,” Mael said. “The lines of life and luck are the worst I’ve ever seen. There is no pattern … .”
As he spoke, a mighty rumbling sounded from under the ground, and a tremblor moved the rock beneath their feet.
Klea cried out and fell against Mael as the ground shifted. She tried to straighten, using her staff for balance, but the ground shifted again and she went down, striking her head against the jagged rock as she fell.
