by Sharon Lee
Priscilla moved silently over the stone floor, her cloak pulled tight against the chill. At the end of the hall, she paused, frowning down at a blood-bright spot against the worn rock bench. Bending, she picked up a round wooden counter like those used in gaming houses, bright red in the center, but losing its paint along the rim. She smiled slightly and curled her fingers over the token, feeling it warm against her skin, and moved forward once more, to the long, weapon-hung wall.
The tale is that, for every art of healing, for every spell of joy a Witch masters, there is a weapon hung in the Hall, which is its dire opposite.
The tale is true.
Priscilla walked the long, weapon-thick wall. Three times, she put out her hand and when she lowered it, a portion of the wall stood bare. At the end of the Hall, weapons chosen, she closed her eyes and raised her arms and was gone from that place that was nowhere and nowhen.
***
In the bed she shared with Shan, Priscilla’s body stirred. Breath and heartbeat quickened. Black eyes opened. Blinked.
She stretched, then, fully back in the body, and noticed that her right hand was clenched tight. Raising it, she carefully opened her fingers and looked in wonder at the round wooden counter, brave crimson enamel worn away around the rim.
To her newly wakened, battle-honed senses, the little token vibrated with power, with . . . presence. Carefully, she opened her thought to the artifact—and nearly cried aloud with wonder.
The wood was alive with Shan’s presence.
She held it in her hand while she dressed, loath to surrender even so tenuous and strange a link with him. When she had wriggled, one-handed, into her shirt, she slid the token into her sleeve-pocket, taking care with the seal.
It wasn’t until she had stamped into her boots and gone into the ‘fresher to splash water on her face that it occurred to her to wonder what Shan might have found awaiting his hand, in the Witches’ Hall of Weapons.
NIMBLEDRAKE:
Ending Jump
Liz punched the third button from the top in the fourth column from the right, which probably said “tea” as plain as the nose on your face, if your nose happened to be Liaden. Since hers wasn’t, she’d memorized which buttons Nova pressed to draw what kind of rations.
She fished the cup out of the dispenser and punched the button again, then walked both cups carefully down the narrow hallway to the piloting chamber. They were due to fall out of Jump pretty soon—a way stop, not Lytaxin itself.
Nova was at the board, which was where Nova mostly was, except for an odd hour of sleep, or a short stroll down to the canteen to draw tea or food—that she ate and drank while sitting watch over her board.
“Here you go, Goldie.” Liz slid one cup into the holder of the arm of the pilot’s chair, and, juggling the other cup, got herself into the cramped co-pilot’s seat.
“My thanks,” Nova said absently, busy with some figuring on a tiny work screen set off to the side of the main board.
“No problem,” Liz said, anchoring her cup and pulling the webbing across. Not that Nova was likely to give them a thrill breaking Jump—she’d shown herself far too able a pilot for that. But, in Liz’s experience, accidents did happen, and the ones who were prepared were the ones least likely to get hurt.
“Planning on making a long stop?” she asked. “Or just using the revolving door?”
Nova looked up, golden brows pulled tight. “Revolving?” The frown cleared in the next instant. “Ah. I see. We shall pause long enough to hear the news, then move on. If the luck smiles, we will be dining with Erob twenty hours hence.”
“Terrific,” Liz said, without emphasis. She had a careful sip of her tea. “You got a pretty good handle on Terran,” she said. “Haven’t managed to really stump you yet.”
“Were you trying?” Astonishingly, Nova looked amused. “But you might consider my handle to be not quite what it should be, when you learn that my mother was Terran.”
Liz managed not to choke on her tea. “She was?”
“Indeed, and a scholar of linguistics besides.” There was a muted chime in the cabin and Nova turned back to the screens.
“You will excuse me. We approach Jump end.”
Liz settled her cup in the slot and eased back as well as she could in the chair, so of course they phased into normal space with no more happenstance than the usual snap of transition.
Nova was busy with the board. Liz picked up the plug she’d been given, as she thought, to keep her quiet during just such periods of pilot concentration, she slipped it in her ear, doodling with the one dial of the dozens decorating the board that she was allowed, even encouraged, to touch.
For a while there was nothing much. The usual traffic talk and between-ship chatter you’d get any time you broke system. Then there was something else. Liz froze, holding the setting steady, and pulled the plug out of her ear.
“Nova.”
A flash of violet eyes none too pleased. Liz held out the earplug.
“Gotta hear this. Priority One. I picked it up on the shipping channel.”
One slim hand moved, sideways to what it had been doing, slapped a toggle and the speaker came live.
“Repeat. All vessels shipping to or through Lytaxin space are warned that Clan Danut is invoking the war-impaired shipping clause of all contracts and will not carry, deliver, or receive goods bound for Lytaxin, based on reliable information. This by order of Delm Danut.”
In the pilot’s chair, Nova took a deep quiet breath. Liz looked at her.
“You know them?”
“Clan Danut,” Nova said, still staring at the board. “They are a small clan; their principal warehouse is on planet here. If they were not certain, they would not speak.” She moved then, hands dancing along the controls.
***
“We shall check another source, Commander Lizardi, for if one trader announces such news, another has information a little fresher!”
Liz watched as Nova’s hands touched this comm-panel and that, heard what might have been a Liaden cuss word as a loud monotone note sounded, then saw hands busy again.
“It would be good of you to fetch more tea for me, and some of the board-biscuits—sixth key on the right side of the warmer.”
Liz noted the half-cup of tea still locked to Nova’s chair, but figured she could tell when she should be elsewhere for a moment.
As fast as Liz rushed for the vittles, whatever secrets the Liaden woman wanted hidden were still her own when she got back.
“Strap in this time, Commander,” said Nova, hands busy on the board yet again. “We Jump as soon as our orientation and speed are correct.”
“Whoa!” Liz started to reach out and get hold of a wrist, then thought better of it. “Where you putting out for?”
No answer.
“Answer me, Goldie, I got a right to know.”
“Indeed you do,” Nova said, her voice a calm and shocking counterpoint to her busy fingers. “We are going to Fendor, Angela Lizardi.”
“Merc Headquarters?” She blinked. “What’re you gonna do? Hire yourself an army?”
“If necessary. Jump phase in 20 seconds. Erob is Korval’s ally. We owe assistance in peril. And I have evidence from a pinbeam bounce that my brother and his lifemate are on Lytaxin as we speak.”
Nova turned her violet eyes to Liz. “The mercenaries will have ways of determining if this rumor is true. Am I correct?”
Girl was too damn bright, Liz thought, and sighed.
“Yeah,” she said, “they probably do.”
“I thought so,” said Nova, and the ship snapped into Jump.
LUFKIT:
Merc Hall
There was a wonderful bustle of busyness, a splendid to and fro, not unlike to art. Not unlike at all, Edger considered, watching the hasty humans dart up and down the wide hallway. The art of which his youngest of brothers, Val Con yos’Phelium Scout, was a master.
He tarried by the door some noticeable time, by human cou
nting, his brother Sheather at his side, absorbed in the spectacle.
Not all was hastiness within the hall. Here and there, at appropriate and artful intervals, were arranged islands of stillness: a counter, a computer, and a human sitting behind a table. It was these still islands which, in a soaring of art, inspired the most of the hastiness, Edger saw, noting with a connoisseur’s eye the flow of tensions, light and human plain song between and among the stillnesses.
He could have tarried in contemplation yet some while, save that the introduction of himself and his brother into the fringes of the work did subtly alter the flow, and exerted compulsion upon one of the centers of stillness, requiring the human seated behind the table to rise and throw himself into the hasty human river. In a very short time, indeed, by Clutch standards, he emerged and engaged in that activity known as “salute.”
“Sirs. I’m Sergeant Ystro Ban. Is there some assistance I can offer you?”
“I thank you, Sergeant Ystro Ban, and honor your inquiry. We come seeking a soldier and were told she might have left word of her whereabouts with kin at this hall.”
The Sergeant’s face knotted up most wonderfully and his eyebrows went up and down rapidly.
“Well, sir, we don’t normally just give out the whereabouts of one soldier. If you like, you can leave a message for her here and I will personally make sure she gets it, when she reports in.”
“I regret that our need is more pressing than that, Sergeant Ystro Ban,” Edger said, and with no real astonishment then heard his brother Sheather’s voice, questioning most mildly.
“I wonder, Sergeant Ystro Ban, is it always so bustling in your hall?”
“Huh?” He looked over his shoulder as if he had forgotten the bright, busy clatter in the course of their discourse together, then shook his head.
“Naw, this is something special. Got a blood war on our hands and everybody who can carry a gun is signing into the rescue team.”
“Forgive me,” Sheather said. “A blood war? What has gone forth?”
Sergeant Ystro Ban shrugged. “What it looks like is a Yxtrang invasion force came into Lytaxin system and set up housekeeping. Trouble is, there’s mercs trapped on the planet, and we don’t aim to let ’em fight this one without backup.”
Edger exchanged a glance with his brother Sheather, who blinked solemnly and asked yet again.
“Which mercs are these, Ystro Ban, who are trapped upon Lytaxin?”
“’Bout half of the Gyrfalks, is what we heard here.” He moved his head from side to side. “Word is Suzuki’s on Fendor, which is fine by me. Wouldn’t want to be on the same planet with Suzuki right now.”
“It is these Gyrfalcons who are kin to our sister, Younger Brother?” Edger asked slowly.
“Brother, I believe they are.”
“Ah.” Edger turned his saucer eyes to Sergeant Ystro Ban. “Can you tell me if this hastiness we observe here will be replicated upon Fendor Mercenary Headquarters? And perhaps in other like halls?”
“Damn straight,” said Ystro Ban.
“I understand you,” said Edger and again sought the eyes of his brother, which were bright with the same thought, he would swear, that illuminated his own mind.
“I detect the hand of a great artist, Oh, my Brother,” Edger said.
“I also,” Sheather returned.
“And what more like our sister, that she should aid her kin in peril?”
“Nothing more,” said Sheather.
“So.” Edger turned back to the still and patient human and lifted a large three-fingered hand.
“I thank you for the gift of your time, and the jubilation of your news, Sergeant Ystro Ban. Do you go yourself to Lytaxin?”
“Couldn’t keep me away with a battalion.”
“I am gratified to hear it. Perhaps we may see you there. Come, Younger Brother, and reflect upon the depth of our brother’s art, who inspires us to ever hastier action!”
LYTAXIN WARZONE:
Altitude: 12 kilometers
Habit almost killed him.
Shan flicked on the lifeboat’s homer and directed its attention to Lytaxin Spaceport, his own attention more than half-occupied with keeping the clumsy little craft airborne and relatively upright while nursing the sadly-depleted fuel supply.
So far, he’d managed to avoid meeting anyone with a general grudge against Liadens and his goal was to come to ground before he did. The lifeboat’s pitiful guns were all but exhausted and the thought of trying anything resembling evasive action against atmospheric fighter craft was enough to make his stomach knot.
Anxiously, he ran his eyes over the displays. Skies showed clear on screens one, two, three, and four. Good.
Screens five and six were something else again.
He had been at Lytaxin Spaceport no more than four Standards past. Then, it had been a bustling, mid-sized port, with half-a-dozen public yards and a sprinkling of private. There had been traffic, lights, and people—ships. Ships on hot-pads. Ships on cold-pads. Ships under repair and ships being hauled from one pad to another.
What remained was wreckage. Glass-edged pits marked the places where ships had been caught unaware, murdered while they slept. The Port Tower was a cowed, half-melted framework of naked girders. The blastcrete streets had been bombed into gravel pathways, separated now and then by segments of fencing. Twisted metal was strewn haphazard and the blasted pathways gleamed where glass had run in rivers, and frozen again where it lay.
Destruction burned his eyes and his hands were moving across the board, ripping the lifecraft into another course entirely before his thinking mind fully realized his error.
The lifeboat bucked, responsive as a rock. Shan swore, briefly and with sincerity, flicked a glance at the falling fuel gauge and thence to the screens, which showed plain, placid sky all about.
More than a touch of the luck in that, he owned, and no more than he had traded for, should the screens suddenly show him the very Yxtrang fighter craft he wished so ardently to avoid.
But, if not the Port, where might he go on a planet riddled in war?
“To Erob, of course,” he muttered, fighting the lifeboat’s tendency to go upside down relative to planetary surface. “Do try not to be a slowtop, Shan.”
If Erob were overrun by Yxtrang, scattered, murdered and no more? Shan sighed and glanced again at the fuel gauge.
“Why to Val Con, naturally enough. And pray the gods he’s close by.”
It was not wise, what he did next, and he was certain his teachers in Healer Hall would have counseled strongly against it. But there really was no choice, given the fuel gauge—riding in the red zone, now—the planetary maps the lifeboat did not carry and his own rather strong disinclination to die.
The little ship was steady for the moment. Shan gripped the edge of the console, closed his eyes and dropped his inner shield.
There was no time for finesse, no time to prepare himself properly. He brought Val Con’s emotive template before his Inner Eyes and flung himself open, spinning out in a search that was far too wide, concentration centered on that unique pattern.
He found instead a vast and welcoming greenness, familiar from childhood, comforting as the touch of kin.
Shan took a breath and abandoned Val Con’s template, listening for what the Tree might tell him.
It was not, of course, his own Elder Tree, but Erob did keep a seedling. Nor did Jelaza Kazone necessarily speak to those who served it, but it had ways of making itself and its desires known.
The Tree was not read as a Healer might read a fellow human. Rather, the Tree borrowed referents from one’s own pattern, displaying them in sequence at once familiar and vegetative.
Thus, the message arranged itself within Shan’s senses: Joy—Welcome. Joy—Welcome. Joy—Welcome. Spice—whiff and stem—snap, from a memory of breaking off a leaf. The taste of Tree-nut along his tongue. A second impression of leaf, and a sense of pushing, gently, away.
He was aware that hi
s hands moved across the board and was helpless to stop them. After a short struggle, he did open his eyes and found the dials a blur, the fuel gauge half-gone in red. Within, the Tree touched one last memory—warm lips laid soft against his cheek—and withdrew. Shan slammed his Inner Wall into place, shook himself and looked to the screens.
Number three showed an Yxtrang fighter, growing rapidly larger.
***
The Tree’s influence upon his body had produced a set of coordinates, residing now in the console’s readout. Shan flicked a toggle and locked them, sparing a moment to hope the Tree possessed an adequate understanding of the limits of fuel and the action of gravity on an unpowered object.
The fighter loomed larger. Shan turned his attention to the guns.
Pop guns they were, though Seth had put his to good account, and badly drained besides. Shan’s hands flashed over the board, shutting down auxiliary and non-essential systems, shunting the extra power to the guns. The energy level crawled upward, stabilized well below the ready line.
Shan chewed his lip, checked the board, checked the fighter—gods, close—checked the screens—and stopped breathing.
The Tree’s coordinates were bringing him in on an encampment. He could discern tents, machinery, soldiers mistily in screen six. There was a standard, snapping bold in the wind below: an enormous white falcon stooping to its kill down a field of starless black.
Terrans. And no doubt close enough to the place the Tree had intended him to go. But not with an Yxtrang on his tail.
His hands moved again, dancing over the board, shutting down everything but air and the computers, sending every erg of energy to the guns and still they held below the line.
Shan flicked a glance at his pursuer, another at the camp and the surrounding terrain. He reached up and pulled the worksuit helmet over his head, hit the toggle with his chin and tasted canned air. His hands moved across the board, shutting down ship’s life support, feeding the energy to the guns.
