by Mark Anthony
“You misunderstand me. I haven’t lost my belief in other worlds. I know they exist, just as you do. It’s my belief in the Seekers I’ve lost. And from everything you’re telling me, you have as well.”
She struggled for words but could find none.
“To Watch, To Wait, To Believe—that was our motto. We thought all we had to do was keep our eyes open, be patient, and one day it would happen, one day the Philosophers would reveal everything, and the door would open for us. Well, the door did open, only it wasn’t the Philosophers who did it.” He laughed, and the cold sound of it made her shiver.
“Stop it, Hadrian.”
“I used to believe the Philosophers knew everything, that they were infallible. But it turns out they’re not. They make mistakes just like the rest of us. Do you think our mission in Denver went even remotely as they had planned?”
“I said stop it.”
“We don’t have to be their playthings, Deirdre. And as we learned in Denver, we don’t need them or the magic of their little plastic cards in order to find other—”
She hit the table with a hand. Beer sloshed, and patrons turned their heads.
Farr was watching her, one eyebrow raised. She drew a breath, steadying her will.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said, her voice low and dangerous. “I mean it, Hadrian. Leaving the Seekers is one thing. You’re mad to do it, but that’s your prerogative. If you want to start a nice quiet life as a shopkeeper or an accountant, that’s fine. But leaving the Seekers and continuing your...work is something else altogether.”
He started to speak, but she held up a hand.
“No—shut up for once in your life and listen to me. The Seekers have eyes everywhere, you know that better than anybody. And you also know how the Philosophers feel about renegades. If they can’t be sure of your allegiance, they’ll make sure no one else can either.”
She locked her eyes on his and listened to the thudding of her heart. For a moment she thought she had him, that he had finally seen reason. Then a smile touched his lips—it was a fond expression, sad—and he stood up.
So it was over; the words escaped her anyway. “Please, Hadrian. Don’t go like this.”
He held out a hand. “Come with me, Deirdre. You’re too good for them.”
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Farr was wrong. It wasn’t just their belief they had lost. He had lost Grace Beckett to another world. And Deirdre had lost Glinda to the fire in the Brixton nightclub. To Duratek.
Yet Deirdre hadn’t lost her faith. There was still so much to learn, and with the new card the Seekers had given her—with Echelon 7—there was no telling what she might discover. Maybe there was something in the Seeker’s files about Surrender Dorothy and its not-quite-human patrons. Maybe there was something that would help her decipher the language on Glinda’s ring. The pieces of the puzzle could all be there, waiting to be matched together in the Seekers’ database, just like the Graystone and Beckett cases.
Deirdre gripped the silver ring on her right hand. “I can’t go with you, Hadrian. I have to stay here. It’s the only chance I have to learn what I need to.”
“And that’s the reason I have to go.”
Farr’s smile was gone now, but despite his grim expression, there was something about him—a fey light in his eyes—that made him seem eager. He had always taken risks—that was how he had risen so high so quickly in the Seekers—but he had never been one to recklessly thrust himself into danger. Now Deirdre wasn’t so sure. In the past, she had been angry with Farr, had been awed by him, and even envious of him. Now, for the first time, she was afraid for him.
“What are you going to do?” she said.
He shrugged on his rumpled coat. “You’re a smart girl, Deirdre, and you’ve got good instincts. That’s why I requested you for my partner. But you’re wrong about something.”
“About what?”
“Before, you said that we’ve done the one thing the Seekers have always wanted to do. Except that’s not quite true.” Farr put on his hat, casting his face into shadow. “You see, there’s still one class of encounter we haven’t had yet. Good-bye, Deirdre.”
He bent to kiss her cheek, then turned and made for the door of the pub. There was a flash of gray light and a puff of rain-scented air.
Then he was gone.
There was a package from the Seekers waiting for her when she stepped through the door of her flat. Deirdre set her keys next to the cardboard box on the Formica dinette table. The landlady must have let them in.
Or maybe the Seekers have a skeleton key that works for all of London.
She wouldn’t put it past them.
The Seekers’ box took up almost the entire table. There was no mark on it, not even a mailing label—only a small symbol stamped in one corner: a hand with three flames. What was contained within, waiting to be revealed?
Deliberately, she pulled her gaze from the box and picked up instead the wooden case that held her mandolin. It was too quiet in this place; every thought was like a shout in her head. Maybe a little music would help.
She strummed the mandolin and winced. The thing could never seem to hold a tune in this damp London air. She tightened the strings, then strummed again. This time she smiled at the warm tone that rose from the instrument, a sound as welcome and familiar as the greeting of an old friend.
Without thought or direction, her fingers began to pluck out a lilting Irish air. It was the first tune she had learned to play as a girl at her grandmother’s house, after finding the mandolin on a high shelf. She supposed she had been no more than eight or nine, and small for her age, so that she barely had been able to finger chords and strum at the same time. Now the mandolin nestled perfectly against the curve of her body, as if it had been fashioned just for her.
More songs came to her fingertips, bright and thrumming, or slow and deep as a dreaming ocean, filling the flat with music. Her mind drifted as she played, back to the days when she had been a bard and nothing more, wandering to a new place, earning a little money with her music, then moving on. That was before she had ever heard of Jack Graystone or Grace Beckett. Before Travis Wilder was anything other than a gentle saloon keeper in a small Colorado town with whom she had almost had an affair. Before she met Hadrian Farr in that smoky pub in Edinburgh, fell like countless other foolish women for the danger and mystery in his dark eyes, and found her way into the Seekers.
It was only as she thought how strange and unexpected were the journeys on which life could lead one that she realized it was a song about journeys she was playing. In a low voice, she sang along with the final notes.
We live our lives a circle,
And wander where we can.
Then after fire and wonder,
We end where we began.
It was a simple tune, yet with a sadness to it that made her heart ache. The words almost reminded her of something. Something that had happened in Castle City, something she had forgotten...
She set down the mandolin and moved over to the trunk where she had stowed her few belongings. After a bit of rummaging, she pulled out a leather-bound book—one of her journals. One lesson Farr had taught her early in her career as a Seeker was to take notes. Lots of them. She checked the label on the spine to make sure it was the right volume, then headed back to the sofa. she flipped through the pages, trying to remember.
Three words caught her eye, and her heart fluttered in her chest.
Fire and wonder....
Quickly, she read the entire entry. Yes, she remembered now. It was the day she had ridden alone into the canyon above Castle City to make a satellite phone call to Farr. There, by the side of a deserted road, she had encountered a pale girl in an archaic black dress. Only later did she learn that both Grace Beckett and Travis Wilder had encountered this same girl, that her name was Child Samanda, and that there were two others she seemed to travel with: a preacher named Brother Cy, and a red-haired woman named S
ister Mirrim.
The Seekers had never been able to locate any trace of these three individuals, but that didn’t surprise Deirdre. Because Deirdre had known in an instant this was no normal child.
Cradling the journal, Deirdre ran her finger over the conversation she had transcribed over a year ago. Again she read the girl’s final words, spoken just before she vanished like a shadow in the sun.
Seek them as you journey, the child had said.
What do you mean? Deirdre had asked. Seek what?
Fire and wonder.
She set down the journal and found herself staring once more at the box on the table. Maybe it was a hunch. But she went to the box, broke the tape with a key, opened it, dug through layers of biodegradable packing peanuts, and pulled out something cool and hard. It was a notebook computer. The machine was sleek and light, encased in brushed metal; no doubt it was the latest-greatest money could buy. Was this another gift from the Seekers meant to bribe her?
She put the computer on the dinette table, opened it, and pressed the power button. A chime sounded as it whirred to life; the battery was charged. A login screen appeared, but there was no place to type her agent name or password.
Maybe you don’t need to, Deirdre.
She turned the computer, studying it. There—inserted into the side was a silvery expansion module. The module bore a thin slit, about the width and thickness of a crdit card. Deirdre reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out her new ID card. It slid into place with a soft snick.
The login screen vanished, replaced by a spinning wheel. Just as Deirdre was thinking she should have plugged the computer into a phone jack, another chime sounded. The screen went black. Then words scrolled into being, as if typed by invisible hands:
DNA authentication scan accepted. Seeker Agent
Deirdre Falling Hawk—identity confirmed.
Working...
Deirdre let out a low whistle. So this thing was wireless; she could take it anywhere. More glowing words scrolled across the screen, and her breath caught on her lips.
Welcome, to Echelon 7.
What do you want to do?
The cursor blinked on and off, expectant. Deirdre sat back in the chair and ran a hand through her red-black hair.
What was she supposed to do? There were no menus on the screen, no windows to explore, no buttons to click. Just the glowing words.
It asked you a question, Deirdre. So why not answer it?
She swallowed a nervous laugh, then leaned forward and tapped out words on the keyboard.
I want to find something.
She pressed Enter. A moment later, new words appeared on the screen.
What do you want to find?
Deirdre hesitated, fingers hovering over the keys. Then, quickly, she typed three words.
Fire and wonder.
Again she pressed Enter. The words flashed, then vanished, and the screen exploded into a riot of motion and color. Dozens of session windows popped into being, each overlapping the next. Text poured through some of the windows like green rain, while in others images flashed by so quickly they were superimposed into a single blurred montage of stones covered with runes, medieval swords, pages of illuminated manuscripts, and ancient coins—each gone in less than the blink of an eye.
Deirdre leaned closer to the screen. Some of the data windows contained menus and commands she recognized; they belonged to various database systems in the Seeker network she had accessed in the past. But most of the windows bore interfaces like nothing she had ever seen before, their indecipherable menus composed in glowing alien symbols. Atop everything was a single flashing crimson word: Seeking... Trembling, she reached out to touch the computer.
The screen went black.
Deirdre jerked her hand back. What had she done? Had she damaged it somehow? Then her heart began to beat once more as glowing emerald words scrolled across the screen.
Search completed.
1 match(es) located:
/albion/archive/case999-1/mla1684a.arch
>
So it had found something. But where? Deirdre didn’t recognize the server name; wherever this file was located, it wasn’t in a database she had ever searched before.
What did the file contain? Text? Images? And concerning what subject? Deirdre had no idea, but she intended to find out. Display search file. [Enter]
The cursor flashed for several seconds, then the computer let out a beep.
Error. Unable to access file mla1684a.arch.
File does not exist.
>
Deirdre swore, then typed another command. What hap pened to search file? [Enter]
File mla1684a.arch has been deleted from the system.
>
Deirdre typed with furious intensity. When was file mla1684a.arch deleted? [Enter]
The computer whirred, chirped.
File mla1684a.arch was deleted from the system at timestamp:
Today, 22:10:13
>
A coldness stole over her. It was hard to move, but she craned her head up and forced her eyes to focus on the art deco clock on the mantle. 10:12 P.M.
Two minutes ago. The file had been deleted from the system two minutes ago. But that had to be...
“Just seconds after your search query located it,” Deirdre whispered to no one.
She pushed back from the table and reached for the phone on the wall. Fumbling, she punched the number of the flat where Farr had been staying. One ring, two.
She had to talk to Farr; he would know what to do. He knew everything, didn’t he? Three rings, four.
“Come on, Hadrian, answer. Bloody hell, come on.”
A click. The ringing ended, and a voice spoke in her ear. But it wasn’t Farr’s low, compelling tones. Instead it was a robotic drone.
“The number you have reached has been disconnected. If you feel you have reached this recording in error—”
Deirdre slammed the phone back onto the wall. No, it was no error. Farr had left. But where was he going? There had been something about him earlier—a power, a peril—she had never seen before. Then, with a shiver, she remembered his last words to her.
You see, there’s still one class of encounter we haven’t had yet....
Deirdre sank back into the chair, staring at the computer screen. It was the first thing every Seeker learned upon joining the order: the classification of otherworldly encounters. Class Three Encounters were common—rumors and stories of otherworldly nature. Class Two Encounters were rarer, but well represented in the history of the Seekers—encounters with objects and locations that bore residual traces of otherwordly forces. And Class One Encounters were the rarest—direct interaction with otherwordly beings and travelers.
But Farr was right. There was one more class of encounter, one that had never been recorded in all the five centuries of the Seekers’ existence. A Class Zero Encounter. Translocation to another world oneself.
Deirdre clenched her hands into fists. “What are you doing, Hadrian? By all the gods, what are you doing?”
But the only answer was the soft, ceaseless hum of the computer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARK ANTHONY learned to love both books and mountains during childhood summers spent in a Colorado ghost town. Later he was trained as a paleoanthropologist but along the way grew interested in a different sort of human evolution—the symbolic progress reflected in myth and the literature of the fantastic. He undertook this project to explore the idea that reason and wonder need not exist in conflict. Mark Anthony lives and writes in Colorado, where he is currently at work on the next book of The Last Rune. Fans of The Last Rune can visit the website at http://www.thelastrune.com.
ALSO BY MARK ANTHONY
Beyond the Pale
The Keep of Fire
The Dark Remains
BLOOD OF MYSTERY
PUBLISHING HISTORY
A Bantam Spectra Book / April 2002
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All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2002 by Mark Anthony.
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