Journey into the Void

by Margaret Weis

  “Did the Regent stab him?” she asked Jessan.

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t see her holding a knife.”

  “You say that Shadamehr picked up the boy king and then he made an odd sound and he dropped him. Then he said to flee. No more talk of kidnapping the boy.” She recalled Shadamehr’s words, spoken to the elves as he sent them away.

  There is no one to help Vinnengael. Not even the gods.

  A thrill of horror raised the hair on Alise’s neck and arms.

  “My gods! The young king is the Vrykyl!” Alise said softly. “The Vrykyl murdered the king, then murdered his son, and took the boy’s place. No wonder Shadamehr said there was no help for Vinnengael.

  “I see now what must have happened. Shadamehr grabbed hold of what he thought was the young king, but, instead, he grabbed hold of the Vrykyl.”

  Alise couldn’t help herself. She began to laugh. “What a shock that must have been to the creature. No wonder he stabbed you! Oh, Shadamehr, how very like you. One Vrykyl in the room, and you grab it and try to carry it off!”

  Her laughter gave way to tears. She buried her face in her hands for a moment, long enough to regain control of herself. Resolutely, she drew in a deep breath, wiped her eyes, and began to consider what to do.

  “You mean that the Vrykyl stabbed him?” Jessan asked.

  “Yes, that’s what happened,” Alise said.

  “The knight Gustav was wounded by a Vrykyl’s knife,” Jessan stated. “There was nothing the Grandmother could do to save him. He fought the Void for several days, but, in the end, he died. The spirits of our heroes battled the Void and saved his soul, so said the Grandmother.”

  Alise flinched. Trevinici-like, Jessan was accepting of death. He spoke no lying platitudes, did not try to blunt truth’s sharp dagger. He had no idea that he had pierced her to the heart.

  “Move the bucket closer,” she said, dipping the cloth in the water.

  “I will summon the spirits of the heroes to fight for Shadamehr,” Jessan offered. “When his time comes.”

  “His time isn’t coming,” Alise returned sharply. “Not yet.”

  Jessan glanced at her. When he spoke next, his tone was more gentle. “Perhaps the Grandmother can save him. The knight was old. Shadamehr is young. I will go find the Grandmother and bring her back.”

  Alise managed to work her stiff, chill lips into a smile. “I don’t think there’s anything she could do. But you are right, Jessan. You should go find your friends. The pecwae are lost, wandering about the city. Our people are searching for them, but the pecwae know you and trust you and might come to you when they would shun others. You should be with them. Your duty is to them. I will stay here with my lord.”

  “I will bring back the Grandmother,” Jessan said, rising to his feet.

  Alise saw it would be useless to argue. She was fast running out of time, and she needed to be rid of him.

  “Our people are supposed to meet at a tavern called the Tubby Tabby. It’s not far from here. Go back to the main road. Follow it until you come to a chandler’s shop. You’ll know it by the sign of a candle that hangs in front. Turn left down that street. The Tubby Tabby is at the end of the alleyway. It will be the only building with lights blazing this time of night. If Ulaf is there, send him to me. Tell him to come quickly. No one else, though. Tell no one else about Shadamehr but Ulaf.”

  Jessan gave an abrupt nod. He repeated the directions back to her and departed, without wasting time in useless well-wishes or lengthy farewells.

  When he was gone, Alise blinked back her tears.

  “I have to be strong,” she said to herself. “I’m all he has!”

  She rose to her feet, looked around the room, making her plans. Picking up the lantern, she carried it with her to the door, dropped the latch, and made certain it was locked. Confident now that she would not be disturbed, she went back to Shadamehr and knelt beside him.

  Alise was trained in Earth magic, the magic of healing. But she was also trained in another, deadly magic. Alise was one of the few wizards the Church deemed capable of handling the powerful and destructive magic of the Void. The Inquisitors taught her Void magic, intending that she could become one of their Order, who actively seek out Void practitioners with the intention of bringing them to justice. Alise soon found that line of work distasteful, for it meant spying on friends, family, even on fellow brethren.

  A former tutor, a mage named Rigiswald, had introduced her to Baron Shadamehr. A wealthy noble, independent thinker, and adventurer, Shadamehr was the only person in history, so far as it was known, to have passed the Tests to become one of the powerful and magical Dominion Lords and then refuse to undergo the Holy Transfiguration, earning the ire of the Church, his king, and, most likely, the gods.

  Shadamehr would never tell his age, but Alise guessed him to be in his middle thirties. He had a nose like a hawk’s beak, a chin like an ax blade, eyes blue as the skies above New Vinnengael, and a long, black mustache of which he was inordinately proud.

  Alise smoothed back Shadamehr’s hair with her hand, noted a few silver threads among the curling black, and gray hairs in the mustache.

  I will have to tease him about that, she thought, settling herself beside him.

  Reckless and daring, Baron Shadamehr had peculiar ideas. He held that the various races of the world should stop killing each other and learn to get along. He maintained that men should quit whining to the gods to better their lives and start working toward betterment themselves.

  How like him to come up with such a wild plan to kidnap the young king out from under the nose of a Vrykyl! How like him to convince a wise and sensible elven Dominion Lord to go along with him.

  “Maybe this time, you’ve learned your lesson,” she said to him, although she was not very hopeful. Nor, on second thought, did she want to be.

  She glanced back toward the door. If only Ulaf would come!

  Alise could not use her healing magic on Shadamehr. She had cast a Void spell in order to rescue him and his companions from the palace guards, and now she was tainted by the foul essence of the magic that can only destroy, can never be used to save or create. If she tried to heal him using her Earth magic, the spell would crumble beneath her fingers like a burnt biscuit.

  Ulaf might be able to help Shadamehr, for he was also a skilled Earth mage. She couldn’t count on him, though. He was out searching for the pecwae and, even if Jessan found him in time and sent him to her, she doubted if Ulaf could heal this wound.

  The magic of the gods could not save Shadamehr, but the magic of the Void that had wounded him might.

  Alise brought to mind the loathsome spell.

  Void magic is dangerous and destructive, not only for its victims, but also for the magi who casts it, for the magic of the Void demands a sacrifice—a bit of a magi’s own life essence to power the spell, making the spell-casting painful and debilitating to the user. Even the simplest spell causes lesions and pustules to erupt on the skin, while more powerful spells can inflict such pain that the sorcerer falls unconscious or dies.

  Prohibited from using the healing arts by the terrible nature of their magic, Void sorcerers had developed spells that could transfer a bit of the sorcerer’s own life essence into the body of another in order to save him. The spell was said to have been perfected in ancient Dunkarga, a land where Void magic is widely accepted. The spell was not often used, and then only under the most dire circumstances, for if the spell was badly cast or the sorcerer made a mistake, the result could be fatal for both caster and patient.

  Above all, the textbooks cautioned, “The spell should never be cast by a sorcerer who is by himself, without someone else on hand to assist him. For in order to cast the spell, the sorcerer must place himself in physical contact with the person who is to receive the benefits. When the spell is cast, the Void magic drains the life essence from the sorcerer, sends it flowing into the body of the patient.

  “The caster must know
when to halt the spell and break contact, and this is where an assistant is necessary. As the life drains from him, the caster grows weaker and weaker. If the caster falls unconscious, while still touching the victim, the spell will continue to drain the caster until it steals away his life. Thus, this warning: Never cast this spell alone! Two sorcerers at least should be present—one to cast and the other to break contact should the spellcaster fall unconscious.”

  Alise had never used this spell. She had studied it, of course, but she had not committed such a terrible spell to memory. She loathed the use of Void magic. She did not mind so much the pain of the spell-casting, although that was bad enough, or the disfiguring pustules and lesions. She hated the way the magic felt inside her, as if maggots were feeding on her soul.

  But she didn’t have any choice. Shadamehr’s skin had gone gray. His breathing had altered from rapid, shallow breaths to struggled gasps. He shivered with the cold, his body writhed in pain. His nails were blue, his flesh chill, as if death had already claimed him.

  Alise looked over her shoulder toward the door.

  Never cast this spell alone!

  She saw the words printed large in the books, heard her tutor warn her over and over. If only Ulaf would come!

  But he wasn’t going to. She admitted that to herself. Ulaf was out searching for the pecwae, perhaps facing his own dangers. She could not wait. Shadamehr was very far gone.

  Adjusting the lanternlight, Alise reached into a hidden pocket she had sewn into her dress and removed a small, slim volume bound in nondescript gray leather. The book appeared quite harmless on the outside. Even when it was opened, one would have to be a student of magic in order to recognize that this small book was worth the price of her life. If the Church discovered her with this book of forbidden spells, she could be sentenced to hang.

  Even as she turned the pages, Alise could feel the heinous magic start to crawl under her skin.

  She read over the spell, felt her stomach roil, and was forced to cover her mouth with her hand, so as not to retch. Simply reciting the words in her mind brought on nausea, made her so weak and dizzy she could barely concentrate. She couldn’t imagine what horror and pain would come with speaking them.

  Alise bent down and kissed Shadamehr gently, tenderly on the lips. Clasping his hand, she pressed his hand to her breast and began to speak the horrible, maggot-ridden words aloud.

  THE ORIGINAL TUBBY TABBY HAD BEEN A FAMOUS TAVERN IN THE city of Old Vinnengael. Two hundred years later, stories were still told of the tavern and its fat owner and his fatter orange cat, in whose honor the tavern was named. The stories had passed into popular legend, and almost every minstrel tale of long-ago heroes always began with a fortuitous meeting in the Tubby Tabby.

  When the city of New Vinnengael was in the planning stages, several would-be tavern owners came to blows in the desire to name their businesses after the legendary tavern. Then one stated that he could prove that he was the ancestor of that same fat owner, and he even produced a fat cat that he claimed was the descendant of that same famous cat. His proof was accepted. On the day the king moved into the palace of the newly constructed city of New Vinnengael, the man opened the Tubby Tabby Two. The tavern had remained in the family, and now the owner’s children’s children ran it. A descendant of the same orange tabby snoozed in the sunshine by day and lounged on the bar by night.

  The tavern had always been a favorite of the members of the Shadamehr family, one of whom had, years ago, secretly helped the owner out of his financial difficulties. The tavern had a back door that led into a very dark alley bounded by a wall that was easy to climb and another door that led to the roof, with other roofs within easy jumping distance. Since the Barons Shadamehr—an eccentric and independent bunch—were tireless champions of the weak and downtrodden, they tended to be the targets of the strong and powerful, who weren’t at all pleased with Shadamehr meddling and took action to stop it, with the result that such means of hasty egress had proven most welcome to the various barons down through the years.

  Ulaf was quite familiar with the tavern, for he found it an ideal place to meet with the people who kept him informed of what was going on in the world beyond the walls of New Vinnengael. The tavern was also the place where Shadamehr’s people would gather if there was trouble.

  Having found the pecwae, Ulaf shepherded them to the tavern, moving as fast as he could, all the while keeping a watchful eye out for the patrols. The bells rang curfew just as they turned into the block on which the tavern was located.

  The streets were mostly empty. The patrols were already on the march, looking for violators. The patrols were also looking for Baron Shadamehr, but Ulaf had no way of knowing this. He guessed that something had gone wrong, for he’d heard the blowing of the penny whistles used by Shadamehr’s people to alert each other in times of crisis. Ulaf had been about to go find out what was up, when he’d caught a glimpse of the pecwae, disappearing around a corner, and had instead gone after them.

  He was certain to discover what had happened when he reached the meeting place. In the meantime, he had the two pecwae, and Bashae had the Sovereign Stone in the knapsack. Ulaf meant to keep hold of all three.

  Ulaf would have been glad to rid himself of the Trevinici warrior, who had suddenly arrived on the scene.

  “What a strange coincidence,” Ulaf muttered, “that in a city that never sees a Trevinici or a pecwae, they should both suddenly bump into one another.”

  And then he remembered Shadamehr saying once that, “There are no such things as coincidences, only the gods’ practical jokes.”

  So if this was a joke, who was getting the last laugh? Bashae and the Grandmother came from a land far from New Vinnengael, a land where the sight of a Trevinici—the pecwaes’ ancient protectors—was as common as a sparrow. They could not know that seeing a Trevinici in New Vinnengael was tantamount to seeing a whale floating in one of the city fountains. Ulaf supposed that Jessan was the first Trevinici to have set foot in New Vinnengael in the past twenty years—if not longer. For there now to be two Trevinici in New Vinnengael stretched credibility to the utmost limits.

  And for that Trevinici to have “stumbled” upon the two pecwae…

  Ulaf had been warned that Vrykyl were in pursuit of the pecwae—or rather, the Vrykyl were in pursuit of the Sovereign Stone carried by the one pecwae, Bashae. Ulaf was unfortunately all too familiar with the Vrykyl. He’d encountered them before, much to his regret. They could take the form of any person they had killed, and he guessed that the strange Trevinici, walking down the street alongside him, was one of the powerful and terrifying Vrykyl. Ulaf had no way of knowing for certain, short of forcing the Vrykyl to reveal himself, and he had no intention of doing that. If this Trevinici was a Vrykyl, then they were in extreme danger.

  “On the other hand,” Ulaf argued with himself, “if this Trevinici is a Vrykyl, why didn’t he use his Void magic to turn me into a pile of greasy ash and take the pecwae and run? Why is he coming along tamely?

  “The obvious answer,” Ulaf replied to himself, “is that the Vrykyl is under orders to keep himself and his magic hidden.”

  This surmise was not much comfort, for it opened up another box of terrible suppositions and surmises, the main one being that there were more Vrykyl working on behalf of their master, the Lord of the Void, Dagnarus, whose armies were even now marching down on New Vinnengael from the north.

  Ulaf decided that his wisest course was to take everyone—pecwae, Trevinici, Vrykyl, and all—to the tavern, where he hoped he would find Baron Shadamehr and the rest of the Baron’s people. Together they could figure some way to deal with this deadly situation.

  The Tubby Tabby was located at the end of a block on Chandler’s Street. As they turned into the street, the raucous laughter could be heard a block away. The sign featuring a painting of the famous slumbering orange tabby swayed and creaked in the evening breeze.

  The heat and noise from inside the tavern burst
on Ulaf with the force of a dwarven fire spell as he yanked open the heavy wooden door. On the lower floor was the tavern proper and two large common rooms, where travelers could find a pallet for the night. An enormous fireplace at one end of the tavern provided light and warmth. Seeing a number of his friends and comrades among the crowd, Ulaf breathed a sigh of relief. Ulaf took firm hold of the pecwae, who stood frozen like terrified rabbits on the door stoop, and shoved them inside. The Trevinici hesitated in the doorway, and Ulaf hoped that he might be intimidated by the crowd and decide to depart. The warrior scowled darkly at the sight of so many people, but he followed the two pecwae inside and hung on to them like grim death.

  An unfortunately apt analogy, Ulaf thought to himself.

  He scanned the crowd hastily for Shadamehr. He did not see him, and that was a bad sign. Either the baron was still under arrest, or something worse had happened. None of Shadamehr’s people gave any outward sign that they knew Ulaf, who gave no sign that he knew any of them. The tavern owner, who knew Ulaf well, looked right past him, and the busy serving wenches cast him harassed glances, as if he were just another customer. All knew that Ulaf might be there on some important business, that he might be using any one of his assumed identities, and that if he wanted to be recognized, he’d give them the signal.

  The tavern was crowded. Visitors to New Vinnengael had been caught by surprise by the curfew. They’d be sleeping four to a bed. In addition, some of the locals who lived nearby and who figured they could sneak home before the patrols caught them, were here to talk about the rumors of war. Every table was filled, but Ulaf was not concerned, and, indeed, shortly after his arrival, a table near the door opened up. He steered the pecwae in that direction. The two men who had been sitting there passed by him without a glance, although one did rub his nose in a peculiar manner.

  Ulaf knew the man, knew that his signal meant that something dire had happened and that they had to talk. The man walked up to the bar. Ulaf didn’t dare leave the pecwae, not with the strange Trevinici hanging about, but he needed to know what was going on.