Steel and Stone: A Novel in the Alastair Stone Chronicles

by R. L. King

  He could hardly believe his next thought—who are you, and what have you done with Stone?—but it occurred to him that perhaps if he couldn’t go running, a workout could help calm some of his restless thoughts. Over the past month, as much as he rebelled against the grueling pace Harrison’s associates had put him through, he had to admit it had done good things for his body—he felt better than he had in a long time; with a bit of vanity he knew he looked better, too. It might even be worthwhile to find the time to keep up some sane version of the regimen once he got back home. If nothing else right now, physical exertion might tire him out enough so he could get two or three hours of rest before facing Harrison in the morning.

  He donned workout clothes and called Anzo. As always, the helpful construct responded instantly, taking him to the teleport pad and calibrating it for the floor containing the gym. He wondered if, once Harrison had taught him more, he’d be able to manage the network himself without having to rely on his ever-present magi-mechanical valet.

  As he expected, the gym was empty—who else would be daft enough to want to work out at this time of night? He dropped his towel on one of the benches and began a few warmup stretches. As he did, his thoughts turned to Jason Thayer. He hadn’t thought about his friend for a while—most of his thoughts about Earth had centered on Verity, Raider, and his work at the University—but he wondered what Jason would think if he were here right now. For as long as Stone had known him, he’d always been a fitness buff, even to the point of buying a secondhand weight set and bench for his apartment back when he barely had enough money to afford his rent. Stone had always given him good-natured teasing about it, but now that he’d tried it, he couldn’t deny the benefits. He glanced at himself in the mirrored wall, pleased with what he saw. He’d never have Jason’s beefy, muscular physique—but he didn’t want it. He’d always be thin, but now he could actually make out real muscle definition in his arms and chest. If he turned a little and the light hit him just right, he even thought he could see an ab or two.

  He chuckled self-consciously and turned away from the mirror. This isn’t about vanity, you prat. It’s about magic. Just get on with it and stop admiring yourself.

  He spent the next hour going through one of the circuits Karol had designed for him, but by the time he finished, all he felt was tired. A good kind of tired, true, but not at all sleepy. If anything, he felt more awake.

  Frustrated, he swiped his towel across his brow and let his breath out. It was going to be a long rest of the night, he could see. Might as well settle in and accept it.

  Before he headed out for a quick shower, just because he could no more stop doing it than a child could stop worrying at a loose tooth with his tongue, he tried shifting to magical sight again. Now that his magic had returned, he still experienced the fleeting terror that it would depart again just as suddenly.

  To his relief, though, his aura sprang instantly around his upraised hand. Once again he thought it might be wishful thinking, but it did seem stronger than before. Perhaps he should try something a bit more strenuous—lifting one of the lighter dumbbells stacked neatly in racks against one wall, perhaps—to see how hard that might be.

  As he turned toward them, magical sight still active, he thought he glimpsed movement off to his left.

  He tensed, whipping his head around. Was someone else here? Had Karol come in for a late-night workout when he wasn’t paying attention, or had Anzo rolled in to deliver some message?

  But no—the place seemed as deserted as it had before, silent and shadowy with only a few of the lights turned on.

  “Hello?” Stone called. “Is someone there?”

  No answer. The only sound was his own breathing.

  “Karol? Harrison?”

  Nothing.

  He’d dropped magical sight when he’d turned his head. Now, he held his breath and shifted over again, feeling a bit stupid. He doubted Harrison’s high-tech gym was haunted, or that anyone was lurking around invisibly watching him exercise. He wasn’t that vain.

  There it was again.

  This time he saw it more clearly: the shadowy, indistinct form of a figure moving across the floor.

  He tensed, trying to focus in more closely on it, afraid to take his gaze off it for fear it would disappear again.

  The figure flickered and faded. What the hell—?

  Stone took a few deep breaths and forced himself to relax. Nobody’s in here. You’re tired, you’ve had too much to drink—you’re seeing things. Just go back to your room and try to get some sleep.

  It was good advice. He probably should have listened to it.

  Instead, he sat down on a nearby bench facing back into the gym instead of toward the mirror, took a few more centering breaths to calm himself, and shifted his sight once more.

  This time he saw more of them. They were all around him—flickering, shadowy, barely there, but definitely moving. One of them appeared to be running on one of the treadmills, while another stood only a few feet away from Stone, flexing its spectral biceps in the mirror.

  This time, Stone didn’t drop the sight, and he kept his breathing steady and his nerves calm. Instead of focusing on a single one of the figures, he tried to take them in as a group. A favorite phrase of his old university physics professor popped into his head suddenly: the act of observing disturbs the observed. Perhaps by devoting too much attention to an individual figure, he’d somehow frighten it off.

  But what were the observed? What were these odd figures flitting around in what should be a deserted gym on another dimension? Were there ghosts, or echoes, or something similar, on Calanar? He realized he had no idea—until earlier this evening, he hadn’t had access to magic here. For all he knew, there could have been ghostly entities all over the place, moving on their unseen errands while he remained oblivious to their presence.

  He made a mental note to ask Harrison about it tomorrow. If nothing else, he’d want to know about potential intruders if he wasn’t aware of them. Picking up his towel again he rose, about to switch magical sight off again, when something else caught his eye.

  Wait.

  No, that was just too absurd.

  Was one of the ghostly figures wearing a—Mickey Mouse T-shirt?

  He spotted it for only a second before the figure turned away, but he was sure he’d seen the character’s familiar round, black ears and red shorts.

  At least he thought he was sure.

  His head made a warning throb; he recognized the feeling instantly as the leading edge of magical fatigue. His wisest decision would be to stop trying to use magical sight, go take a hot shower, and go back to bed.

  He couldn’t resist one more look, though. He got up and followed the figure in the Mickey shirt, glancing at it out of the corner of his eye so he didn’t startle it into disappearing.

  It crossed the gym and stopped at one of the bikes, paused for a long drink from its ghostly water bottle, then climbed on and began spinning. So far, it seemed not to have noticed Stone.

  He edged around, still avoiding a direct gaze until he was in position. His head throbbed again; he couldn’t keep this up much longer or he’d risk sabotaging his real lesson tomorrow.

  Just one quick look…

  Moving casually, he sidled to the front of the bike, which faced the window looking out over the moonlit land behind the tower. Then, before the thing could become aware of his presence, he jerked his head sideways and focused on it head-on.

  In the couple of seconds before it flickered and faded, he saw it with unmistakable clarity.

  The person—it looked like a young woman—wore a gray T-shirt. Mickey, in the classic pose familiar to anyone older than a toddler, regarded him with an ever-present cheery grin. Stone even thought he could make out the word Disneyland below it before the figure juddered and faded.

  The bike itself hadn’t moved, of course, though he was sure he’d seen the woman pedaling.

  “Bloody hell…” he murmured.


  That was it. Time for bed, whether he could sleep or not. Suddenly, he had no desire to be watched by a fleet of ghosts, no matter where they’d come from—even if they were only in his mind.

  31

  The next morning, Anzo showed up early. “I’ve come to take you to Mr. Harrison,” he announced when Stone opened the door.

  He was ready, though he still felt like something soft and heavy was perched atop his head. He’d managed to sleep for a couple hours, but moved like a zombie when he dragged himself out of bed and into the shower shortly after sunrise. One thing he missed most about Earth was the weapons-grade coffee he preferred—the stuff he didn’t consider potent enough unless it stripped the coating off its container. He added asking about getting some proper coffee to his collection of mental notes, but right now it occupied a low point on his priority list. “Coming, coming,” he grumbled, but already the prospect of finally getting his magic sorted out had begun to perk him up.

  This time, the teleportation pad deposited them in a different part of the tower—Stone was getting a bit more adept at noticing subtle variations in the hallways, and he hadn’t seen this one before.

  Anzo stopped in front of another set of featureless double doors. “Mr. Harrison is waiting for you inside.”

  This time, Stone did knock. After only a few seconds, the doors swung open to reveal a large, nearly empty room with no windows. It wasn’t nearly as big as the hangar last night had been, but its ceiling did rise higher than a standard room. The only furniture consisted of a long table with no chairs at the other end, and a large board, shiny black but with the smooth surface of a whiteboard, behind it. Several objects Stone couldn’t identify were spread out along the table, covered with a cloth.

  Harrison stood in front of it, dressed once again in more characteristic tailored black trousers and crisp slate-gray shirt. “Good morning, Dr. Stone. I trust you slept well.”

  “Slept like rubbish, if you want the truth. But that’s all right.” He took a quick glance at Harrison’s aura; it looked as normal as it ever did, with no sign of the disturbance from last night. “If you’re ready, I’m ready. Let’s get started. But I’ve got a question for you first, if you don’t mind.”

  “What is that?”

  Stone began to pace, heading generally toward Harrison. “Last night when I couldn’t sleep, I popped down to the gym for a workout, thinking it might help tire me out. It didn’t—at least not the way I hoped—but I saw something while I was there. I’m hoping you can explain it, because I’m still not convinced I wasn’t going mad.”

  Harrison’s eyebrow rose. “What did you see?”

  “Ghosts. Echoes. At least that’s what they looked like. Nearly transparent figures wandering around the gym—in fact, the oddest part was that it seemed they belonged there. One of them was on an exercise bike, and another jogging on a treadmill. And as if that wasn’t strange enough, one of them was wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Unless you’re importing fashions from Disneyland, I doubt that’s something that evolved around here. So I was hoping you—what?”

  Stone stopped when he noticed Harrison was regarding him with far more intensity than he had been a moment ago. “Is something wrong?”

  “How did you see these figures?” Harrison asked. “Were you attempting magical sight again?”

  “I was. No point in denying it. Sorry if that goes against some rule, but you can hardly blame me.”

  It didn’t appear that Harrison was blaming him for anything, though. He looked thoughtful, though the focus of his gaze didn’t waver. “Attempt magical sight now, Dr. Stone,” he said.

  “Er—right. But if you could—”

  “Please. Tell me what you see.”

  Stone narrowed his eyes, but decided not to protest. Instead, he shifted to his magical senses and looked around the room.

  At first, he saw nothing except his own aura and Harrison’s. The room appeared as empty as it did to normal sight, save for the table and board at the front. But as he looked around, other faint shapes shimmered into being. They weren’t moving, and didn’t appear alive; after a few more moments, he realized they were rows of chairs, set up facing the front table with a wide aisle between them. They were even less substantial than the figures he’d seen in the gym, to the point that they faded as soon as he wasn’t looking directly at them.

  He shifted back, blinking in confusion.

  “What did you see?” Harrison asked calmly.

  “I—didn’t see any of the echoes this time. But I did see something. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looked like the room was full of chairs.”

  “Chairs.”

  “All lined up in rows, facing the front table there. Sort of like…a seminar room. Come on, Mr. Harrison—tell me I’m not seeing things.”

  “You are not seeing things, Dr. Stone. Although it surprises me that you were able to see anything at all.”

  “Why?” Stone narrowed his eyes. “You can see them too, can’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can anyone else? Other mages?”

  “I have never encountered anyone else who can—or at least if they have, they haven’t spoken of it. But that too doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Why not? What’s different about us?”

  Harrison gave him a challenging look.

  “Wait,” Stone said, catching on. “This has something to do with the fact that you and I both have ties to Earth?”

  “Precisely.”

  “But…why should that matter?”

  “It matters a great deal. Come here, please. Stand behind this table, and I will demonstrate.” Harrison moved around the table as well, facing out toward the empty hall.

  Suspicious, Stone joined him. “What are you—”

  Harrison fixed his gaze out over the room, appearing to scan it from one side to the other. Then he concentrated for a moment, and the area beyond the table shifted.

  “Bloody…hell…” Stone whispered.

  All across the hall in front of him, rows of gray-padded chairs shimmered into existence. They looked exactly as Stone had seen them with magical sight, except that now they were as solid and substantial as he himself was.

  “What…the hell—?” He wheeled on Harrison. “Invisibility?” But even as he said it, he didn’t think it was true. He’d walked around the room only a few moments ago. Invisibility could fool the senses, but it couldn’t make something insubstantial. It was also one of the hardest spells to maintain—most mages found rendering even themselves invisible to be taxing, let alone a whole room full of furniture.

  “No. Nor is it illusion. The chairs are there. If you don’t believe me, check for yourself.”

  Stone walked back around the table and approached the first row of chairs. He gripped one, and when it felt solid, he picked it up. If this was some kind of trick, it was a masterful one. Magical sight revealed nothing unusual—it looked like a normal, mundane conference-room chair. He didn’t see any sign of the echoes he’d spotted before; by everything he could see, the physical chairs had taken their place.

  He set it back down and stared at Harrison. “All right—I’ll bite. You’ve got me stumped. How are you doing this?”

  The chairs faded, leaving the room empty again except for the table and the covered objects upon it. Harrison paced behind the table as he spoke. “Calanar is a small dimension, Dr. Stone. You might even call it a ‘pocket dimension,’ though by that standard it is quite expansive. However, compared to Earth, as I’m sure you have surmised, it is orders of magnitude more highly magical.”

  “Yes, I’d worked that bit out.”

  Harrison picked up a marker and sketched an irregular shape on the board. It showed up bright yellow against the board’s black. “This is a rough map of Calanar.” Around the shape, near the coastlines, he made five Xs—one each on the east and west edges, one at the top, and two at the bottom. “These are the floating cities.”

  Stone moved forward, watchin
g with interest. “Which one is Temolan?”

  Harrison pointed at the lower right-side X, then drew another irregular shape around it, stretching out for some distance on either side of it. “This is Drendell, below Temolan.”

  Next, he drew several lines between all of the cities. When he finished, they formed a bordered star shape, with lines connecting each city to its four counterparts. “You will be familiar with this part,” he said.

  Stone frowned. “Ley lines?”

  “Yes. A network of ley lines connects each of the cities to the others—that is how the residents can travel between them using the teleportation network. The ley lines here are far more potent than they are on Earth, and the mages in the cities have spent a great deal of effort augmenting and learning how to manipulate them.”

  “That’s fascinating,” Stone said, and he wasn’t lying. He would like very much to have the time to study all of this—but not now. “But what’s this got to do with the chairs?”

  Once again, Harrison shot him a challenging look. “You are not asking the correct questions, Dr. Stone.”

  Stone almost protested, but then he got it. “Where are you in all this? Where’s this tower?”

  Harrison offered him the marker. “It should not be difficult for you to answer that yourself, if you’ve been paying attention.”

  Damn, this man must have been taking lessons from William Desmond, his old master. Stone took the marker and studied the map a moment, then remembered Errin’s words on the walk they’d taken his first day here. “Ah. Of course.” He stepped forward and drew another X, this one in the center of the map in the space bounded by the crisscrossed ley lines.

  “Very good.” Harrison took another marker from the tray and outlined the space enclosed between the intersecting lines at the center of the star in glowing green. “This location was not chosen at random. Errin mentioned that she told you about the war, and about Argana.”

  “Yes—the sixth mage city that was destroyed in the war.”

  Harrison’s hand tightened on the marker, just a bit. “Yes. Prior to the war there were other cities, many of them, all interconnected by ley lines. But the levels of magical energy used by the various combatants during the war warped many of them, resulting in the vast, nearly unlivable areas in the continent’s center and leading to the creation of the floating cities.” He put the marker back in the tray.