by Hambly
WHISPER
by
Barbara Hambly
Copyright 2014 Barbara Hambly
Cover art by Eric Baldwin
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Table of Contents
Whisper
About The Author
The Further Adventures
WHISPER
by
Barbara Hambly
“So what should we do?” Rudy Solis bent over the pale-blue shard of crystal that he held cupped in his palms, to shut out the wan light of glowstones, the ochre gleam of the hearth, in the main Guard-room beyond the open door.
Gil Patterson, sitting on the end of the bed, watched his face intently, as if in his dark-blue eyes she could read what he saw. As if – if she listened hard – she could hear what he heard.
Which of course she couldn’t.
She sometimes wondered if Rudy only thought he saw Ingold Inglorion’s face in the scrying-crystal, while he heard the old man’s deep voice – and the howling of the blizzard winds outside the cave where Ingold had been snowed in for three days – in his mind.
But Ilae and Wend, the Keep’s two other novice mages, crowded to peer over Rudy’s shoulders, and by their faces in the flickering light she could see that they, too, saw and heard.
Rudy said, “Every frakkin’ night, man!” in a tone that led Gil to deduce that Ingold – the master wizard of the Keep and for all anyone knew the master wizard of the entire winter-bound world – had asked the obvious question, Have you tried scrying through the Transporter? He went on, “If the thing’s gonna open when the moon hits zenith tomorrow night – which should be about two hours after midnight – and could close up as early as sunrise, that’s about four hours. We can go in, at least check out what’s on the other side—”
He broke off. Gil might not be mageborn, but she knew her elderly beloved well enough to almost hear him saying, —And get yourselves killed for your trouble!
She had to admit Ingold Inglorion had a point.
Ingold – and the other senior mage he’d communicated with via scrying-crystal, Thoth the Serpentmage in the old Keep of Black Rock in the deeps of the Gettlesand desert – had for nearly a year been trying to work out how to target the Transporter that had been discovered last summer, hidden deep in the heart of Dare’s Keep.
That it communicated with similar chambers in other Keeps they knew. That its destination could be changed they also knew: Ingold had done so to the transporter in the now-demolished Keep of Shadow, Tiyomis under the Ice in the North.* But the spells that had worked in Tiyomis Keep did nothing in Dare’s, and the transporter vestibule in Dare’s Keep bore little resemblance to the one in the Keep of Shadow. No book Ingold had ever seen – and those in the library of the City of Wizards had been copied and re-copied back for nearly two thousand years – had even mentioned that the Keeps had had transporters, so the technology for them must have been lost fairly soon after the first rising of the Dark, three millennia ago.
Yet one more piece of knowledge, Gil reflected drily, to add to a category that would easily fill the UCLA library with enough left over to pack that institution’s gym to the ceiling. How many other Keeps there had been, where they had stood, how they had survived the centuries when the Dark Ones had roamed the nights at large – all this information had been lost in the centuries of panic and ignorance, as well as any information about what had happened to the inhabitants of any of those other Keeps. The second rising of the Dark, six years ago, had been accompanied by the almost-wholesale destruction of trained wizards in the west of the world, and their departure had been followed hard by glacial cold, über-hurricane ice-storms, and the coming of a new Age of Ice.
Whatever was going to be at the other end of that transporter when that particular setting locked on – which by Ingold’s calculation it did automatically every twelve years – Gil would have felt a whole lot better if there were somebody other than a half-taught novice in charge of opening the door.
“I hear you,” said Rudy to the two-inch shard of grayish-white quartz. His dark-blue eyes, under sharply back-slanting black brows, were deeply troubled; with one hand he raked back his long and rather unruly dark hair from them. “I understand. Believe me, I’m not happy about stepping through that gate into Christ-knows-where – not after what you told me about what was in that Keep under the glacier. But this is the first time those crystals in the Gate chamber have lit up. And if you’re right – it it’s not gonna happen again ‘til we get Mars rising at the same time as the full moon at the Spring equinox—”
He hesitated, and glanced across the hearth at Gil. Gil who had come with him from California to this world, six years ago. Gil who, for all her cold-blooded scholarliness, loved Ingold with a ferocious passion: her lover, her mentor, her sword-master and the father of her child.
He made a despairing gesture. “Let’s face it, man, none of us is getting any younger. I don’t know how long wizards live, but in twelve years you might not be in any shape to go through that transporter chamber. In twelve years you may be dead. I may be dead. Everybody in the damn Keep may be dead. I think we gotta go through and at least see if there’s anything there that we’d better know about, whether you’re here or not.”
Long silence then, Rudy and the other two mages listening intently. In the chamber beyond, the day shift of the Guards were coming in, to the usual Keep ration of hydroponic potatoes and hydroponic corn, and not very much of either. The storms which had scoured what had once been the Realm of Darwath in quick succession for nearly two months had – in addition to dangerously delaying spring planting, and trapping Ingold in a gorge about fifty miles north of the Keep three days previously – prevented the Keep’s hunters from going out for weeks. Rationing was in force, for the third time that season, with its concomitant problems of keeping order: petty theft, increased quarrels, black marketeering. Listening to Commander Janus’ tired voice briefing the night shift (and Gil knew she’d have to suit up and grab her sword in a minute), Gil tried to tell herself, This, too, shall pass…
Only what if it doesn’t?
Rudy said, “Okay. I’ll make sure everyone knows. Gil—”
She leaned close.
“He says he’s fallen in love with an exotic dancer and wants a—OW!” Rudy grinned at her even as he rubbed his arm. “He says all the usual mushy stuff, and gives his love to the Owl.” The Owl was Mithrys, Ingold’s son.
Gil’s son.
Fifteen months old, trotting across the Guard-room with open arms to greet Hethya, the big, cheerful woman who’d look after him while Gil was out on duty: How could he have got so big, so quickly?
And what did I let that poor kid in for, bringing him forth into this harsh and terrible world?
Gil said, “Tell him a lot of mushy stuff back. And ask him what he wants me to do.”
Rudy relayed the question, and she could see he was slightly disconcerted by the answer.
He turned back to her. “He says he wants you to be part of the detail that goes through the transporter.”
Gil was silent, but her heart raced and every atom of ingrained caution in her bristled up like a porcupine’s quills.
Is this just because I’ve watched IT, TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE too many times? Or just common sense?
“Tell him,” she replied, “that th
ere’s no way anybody’s keeping me out.”
She belted on her sword as Rudy relayed this information to the old man trapped in his snow-bound cave, in darkness, she thought, and freezing cold. The wizard had long experience of Summoning heat-spells and various other magics of self-preservation – and was tough as old boots besides – but still her heart seemed to turn over in her body at the thought.
“So we’re going to do it,” she said, as Rudy’s hand closed around the crystal.
“I don’t see any way we can’t.” The weariness of one who has made the argument a dozen times already dragged the edges of his voice. “You said yourself only last week we’re fighting for our lives. Every chance we can find has to be taken.”
Gil folded her arms, skinny with iron-hard muscle under the black wool of a tunic marked with the white quatrefoil of the Keep Guards. Past the Guard-room door she could see Hethya with Mithrys up on one hip, flirting with Commander Janus – Hethya would flirt with anyone. “Last week it looked like Ingold would be here when those crystal lined up. As long as we don’t open the transporter, we know what we have. We know where we are. Once it’s opened…”
“And yet you want to go through.”
“I don’t,” returned Gil simply. “I don’t think anybody should go. But if anybody does go, I want to be one of them. If something’s going to go wrong, I want to see for myself what it is.”
*
“We’re going to feel awfully stupid,” said Rudy, “if after all this, we step through that transporter and we’re just down in Penambra Keep in the Valley. Or clear the hell out in Black Rock and have to walk home.”
Gil tucked her hands into her sword belt. “Sounds like a good outcome to me.”
She looked around her at the Investigation Team, gathered in what had been the laundry on the third level of the immense fortress that loomed, a solid black block of masonry and magic, in the mountain vale of Renweth. Given all the possibilities, thinkable and unthinkable, of what might lie beyond that curious series of narrowing chambers, those who would go had been chosen carefully and even more care had gone into the selection of those who would remain behind.
Rudy Solis, her fellow Californian, would have –six years ago when he was painting motorcycles at Wild David Wilde’s body-shop in Fontana – laughed out loud at the idea that he would one day become a wizard, much less the senior wizard of the Keep of Dare in Ingold’s absence. Though he trained regularly with the Guards, he still looked totally ill-at-ease with a sword belted over garments he’d decorated with painted skulls and roses. In the outer doorway of the transporter’s circular antechamber, he exchanged a few quiet words – and surreptitious kisses – with Minalde, the Lady of the Keep: twenty-four years old and regent for its eight-year-old king.
The Lords of the great families – Lord Ankres like a cold-eyed gray wolf, the stout and hen-pecked Lord Sketh – occupied themselves a few feet away with briefing the guards they’d contributed to the exploring party and pretended they didn’t see. Lady Sketh, taller and more commanding than her Lord, regarded the soft-voiced conversation of wizard and regent with a chill disapproving glare.
House Sketh, and House Ankres, had each donated two of their private guards to the expedition. This was partly because Minalde had wanted to conserve as many of the black-clothed Keep Guards as possible in case of disaster, and partly, Gil suspected, because these two semi-royal Great Houses sought to maintain their visibility as defenders in the eyes of the people of the Keep. Both the Sketh and the Ankres (and, to a lesser degree, Pnak, Canthorion, and the half-dozen other smaller noble houses represented among the population) were related to the ruling House of Dare. If anything should happen to Prince Tir, rulership would pass to one – or the other – of them.
That was the theory, anyway. In reality what would happen, Gil was fairly sure, was that there would be a power-struggle in which Minalde and possibly some of the wizards would almost certainly be killed, and the survival capabilities of the Keep as a whole would be fatally compromised.
Few of the Guards had much use for the House Troops of the white-clothed Sketh, the green-tunicked Ankres.
Four Keep Guards were going: Gil, Caldern, Bors, and the Icefalcon, who like Gil thought it was idiocy to open a way into some unknown place when Ingold wasn’t around but who like Gil wanted to see first-hand whatever it was that was going to go wrong. Of the three wizards who’d remained in the Keep when Ingold had gone on one of his book-searching expeditions – despite the late arrival of the uncertain spring weather, and the weeks of devastating storms – only Rudy would go through the transporter. For six years now, Ingold had been training him, along with quiet, red-haired Ilae and the round-faced ex-priest Brother Wend, in the arts of wizardry that once had been taught in the City of Wizards on the Western Ocean, trying to make up in that short time the neglected education of decades. Ilae – the stronger mage of the two – stood close to the curious arrangement of crystals embedded in the black stone of the vestibule wall, studying them as all the Keep wizards and half the rest of the population had at one time or another studied them, as six of them in alignment slowly brightened with an inner bluish light.
Ilae’s scrying-crystal was in her hand. Her jewel-blue glance kept moving from the wall-crystals to the doorway near-by, between its two pillars of what looked like frosted glass. If, when the Portal came to life in a very few minutes, anything untoward came out of it – or anything whatsoever, in Gil’s opinion – it was Ilae’s task to deal with it, and to immediately contact Brother Wend, who was out in the great central Aisle of the Keep, close enough to make it out the Doors.
Half the population of the Keep, Gil knew, had found some reason for loitering in the Aisle that night – those that weren’t crowding and muttering in the maze-like corridors all around the transporter chambers. The wan luminescence of glowstones flickered over the black stone of the wall beyond the vestibule door. The murmur of voices was like the grumbling of small waves on a beach.
As Gil watched, the six aligned crystals of the display reached uniform brightness. Rudy said, “Time to rock ‘n’ roll.”
Lord Ankres, and Lord and Lady Sketh, retreated at once. Less precipitously, Minalde stepped back into the doorway. But her eyes were on the little party, and she raised her hand in blessing as Rudy led them between the crystal pillars into the long chamber beyond. Through another set of crystal pillars into a smaller room beyond that. The third doorway, likewise flanked with crystal pillars, was narrow, barely wider than a man’s shoulders, and it made the hair prickle on Gil’s nape to see her friend pass through it alone into the fourth chamber. The Icefalcon’s sword was already in his hand as he stepped through, swiftly, on Rudy’s heels. Gil, sword drawn, went immediately behind.
Anything that came through that door had to come one at a time.
Anything that went out through it, went singly, to meet whatever was on the other side.
The head of Rudy’s staff – a gold crescent sharpened to knife-edge keenness – had begun to burn with a brilliant light, showing Gil the room beyond. She’d been in it half a dozen times since its discovery at the start of the winter just past, and had measured it: barely five feet from the threshold of the door to its rear wall.
But the room had changed. The rear wall was no longer there. The glow of Rudy’s staff showed her a second pair of crystal pillars where the wall had been, and glimmered on a pair beyond them. The darkness here seemed thicker, like a fog, yielding only grudgingly to the magelight glare. But she could see move pillars beyond them, a double line, their cores suffused with a faint green light. Gil found herself holding her breath, and made herself breathe. Don’t lock up. She could almost hear Gnift the Swordmaster yelling the words at her in drill. Relax and be ready to move. Shoulders down…
The light slid over shelves on either side of her. A tiny room, beyond the last two pillars: broken pottery jars, scraps and shreds of wood, empty barrels shrunken and desiccated by time. Gil’s soft bo
ots crunched on something on the floor and looking down she saw that it was carpeted half an inch thick in hard black pellets. Rat-shit, mingled with the rodents’ bones.
They stepped through the narrow door of two crystal pillars, and Rudy said quietly, “All right, here’s the Prime Directive. Don’t touch ANYTHING. Don’t pick up anything. And for Chrissake, stay together! We’ve got til dawn.”
He dug immediately in the pouch that hung from his belt, drew out his scrying-crystal. By the glow of his staff-head, and the faint green glimmer of the transporter’s pillars, Gil saw around them ancient furniture, jammed and crowded together with rough-made cots and bunks, crude chests and boxes piled on top of cupboards and caskets whose glass-smooth wood and silver mountings were familiar to her from the record-crystals she’d seen. Times Before. And the room was abandoned after they’d lived here long enough to make furniture of their own…
Bones lay everywhere. Mostly rat-bones, whole skeletons, but there were human skeletons as well. Everywhere there was desiccated rat-shit.
“You there, man?” Rudy whispered. And then, his face transformed with relief, “Christ, I’ve never been so glad to see anybody in my life!”
Ingold…
“Yeah, we’re here. Hang on…”
Gil saw him close his eyes. Beside her, the big Guard Caldern was staring around him, aghast, and made the sign against Evil with the hand that wasn’t holding his drawn sword.
“Ilae?” Rudy’s voice was hushed as if he feared to be overheard, which wasn’t, in the circumstances, an unreasonable precaution… “Yeah, we’re good so far. It’s dead here, at least in this area. Looks like something killed them in their beds.”
Slowly, keeping close together, they edged through the room, to the long chamber beyond the next pair of crystal pillars. The pillars had been drilled for hinges, and a door of desiccated wood hung there, that crumbled under its own weight when Rudy pushed it gently open with the end of his staff. Tarpaeis, the younger of the two warriors of House Sketh, gazed around him with huge dark eyes and whispered, “What the hell happened here?” The room had been converted to a kitchen – brick ranges, baskets of wood, long tables. The greenish glow within the pillars was barely a flicker, down near the base – Gil hoped to God the Guards who’d remained in the transporter room back at the Keep were on their toes, since no spell of closing had been wrought.
