Imager's challenge ip-2

by L. E. Modesitt

  From what I could see, everyone was inside, and only two guards stood on the terrace.

  Had Ryel called off his festival? How could he have, when I’d seen two coaches, obviously belonging to High Holders, headed toward his estates, and seen one of them actually pass through the gates?

  Had I been set up as a target? By Iryela? By Veblynt? Or was everyone inside because it was too cold to celebrate in the chill wind? Would that make my plan totally useless?

  Slowly, I used the spyglass to survey the deciduous trees that looked to have leaves and were visible from the tower. The tightness in my chest eased slightly when I saw a placard on the third tree I checked, an oak. Then I saw another placard on a maple.

  I took a deep breath. Surely, Ryel would at least have to come out on the terrace.

  He might have to, but the faint bells of fourth glass chimed from somewhere, and no one had yet appeared outside.

  Even in my heavy woolens, and shielded from the wind, I had a hard time keeping from shivering as I waited . . . and waited. Every so often, a low howl issued from the kennels, and the two guards I could see on the edge of the terrace changed their positions.

  In time, the five bells from that distant anomen chimed the glass.

  Then, without warning, there were four guards on the terrace, and ten appeared on the wide stone staircase, walking down toward the gardens in which I waited. At the base of the stone stairs, they spread out into five pairs, all with drawn pistols, although they also had what appeared to be sabers at their belts. All wore black jackets and trousers with silver piping. One pair looked to be walking directly toward me. As I stepped back closer to the evergreen, a fir of a type unfamiliar to me, I could only hope that my concealment shields would indeed keep me from being discovered.

  The two guards passed within several yards, but barely looked in my direction.

  “. . .never had to check the grounds this much . . . third time today . . .”

  “. . .you want to question Armsmaster Gwillam?”

  “. . . nonsense . . . who’d want to get in here? Besides, what could they do down here?”

  I scarcely dared to breathe as they passed because while they might not see me, they certainly could hear any sound I might make.

  After close to a quint, the guards patrolling the gardens returned to the staircase, but four remained at the base, while four stationed themselves at the landing midway up toward the terrace, and the remaining two joined the four guards who had stayed at the top.

  Because I was still a good fifty yards from the base of the tower, I moved slowly across the grass until I reached another vantage point behind a low and bushy fir, only about thirty yards from the southwest corner of the tower and directly below the stone staircase leading down to the gardens.

  Finally, I could hear voices. They all sounded as if they were male. Several heads bobbed up and down, moving toward the tower. One figure stopped at the top of the staircase to gaze down in my general direction. I used the spyglass to look at him closely. Although he was resplendent in a green and gold jacket and black trousers, I did not recognize him, except as a likely High Holder and guest of Ryel’s.

  The voices diminished, and I trusted that was because they were ascending the tower through an internal staircase. Through the spyglass, I began to study the top of the tower. For a time, I saw no one at all.

  Finally, Ryel appeared, standing against the crenellated southern wall of the tower. He gestured expansively, pointing toward one of the placarded trees. I eased the telescope farther left, catching sight of a face I did not know, then another.

  Where was Dulyk? I kept scanning the tower, but I still could not see the younger Ryel as the other four High Holders clustered around Ryel and gestured in slightly varying directions, presumably toward different trees.

  Abruptly Dulyk appeared beside his sire, holding what looked to be a small golden tree of some sort. That meant there were at least six people on the top of the tower, all High Holders.

  Did I dare go ahead?

  I lowered the telescope. Did I really have any choice? My opportunities were few, my resources fewer, especially if I did not want overt signs pointing back to me and my family. As Master Dichartyn had pointed out, unless there was proof, people could surmise, but they could not act against or through the Collegium, Council, or Civic Patrol.

  Based on my experiments with the walls of the old mill, I’d decided against even trying to image out the mortar. That wouldn’t collapse the tower, and it would warn people. I needed to do what was necessary quickly-and all at once. Unfortunately, I hadn’t practiced my technique extensively, not the way Maitre Dyana would have wished, but how did one really practice destroying entire buildings in a city where one’s duty was to protect the people and their dwellings?

  As I concentrated on imaging out whole sections of the base of the tower, I focused on drawing energy from everywhere around me, but especially from the gardens and the stream. My mouth was dry, and I was all too conscious of a strange stillness that had descended upon the estate as if time had slowed to a stop, even every sound frozen as if part of a portrait that held not only colors and shapes, but sounds, energies, textures-everything that comprised the world.

  Rising into the pale blue sky to the north, seemingly all too close, was the tower. While the tower seemed to shudder, it did not move. I forged more links, some to the stream, some to the trees, others to whatever might take those thin unseen image-wires.

  The base of the tower exploded, with huge chunks of stone spinning outward. The sound was so great that there was no sound at all, only a tremendous sense of pressure that enfolded me and my shields. Fragments of stone crashed into my shields.

  I could feel myself being hurled backward, then rolling downhill.

  Blackness surrounded me . . . but not for all that long. Then I was looking upward, if at an angle from the base of a oak, toward where the tower had been. Dust had settled out of the sky onto a pile of rubble. Absently, I noted that all the damage to the tower and terrace appeared to have been to the south. There were a few gashes on the stonework of the south wing of the chateau, but little more. The terrace walls and the lower section of the staircase had partly collapsed as well.

  My back and legs felt numb, but they seemed to work as I worked my way into a sitting, and then a standing position. As I half expected, my entire skull throbbed, and my vision blurred, with whitish stars flashing before my eyes intermittently.

  Suddenly I was chilled to the bone, and my entire body began to shiver. I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other as I started back toward the wall and the western part of the stream where I’d entered the estate.

  One step, then another, and a third.

  Abruptly hard rain began to fall, except that it wasn’t rain, but tiny droplets of frozen water, an ice rain, and I realized that I was still holding the telescope. I fumbled it inside my cloak and inside my waistcoat, not wanting to leave it behind. At that thought I almost laughed.

  I’d just imaged a disaster, a certain indication of an imager, and I was worried about leaving a telescope behind?

  As I tried to move faster, I began to hear again, and the loudest sound was that of the guard dogs howling, but it wasn’t the baying of dogs seeking a quarry. It was a different howl, one almost of fear. I could but hope that they remained in their kennel and fearful for a time longer.

  By now the sun had dropped behind the hill to the south, and I could hear cries and voices from the terrace, women’s cries mostly. I hurried onward, my boots crunching on what seemed to be icy sand, and I realized that I was fully exposed to anyone who looked my way, because I had no shields, and there were no trees and no bushes near me, just a form of icy dust that did not quite swirl under my unsteady boots. From what I could tell, no one had looked my way, or if they had, they hadn’t raised an alarm.

  As I neared the gap in the walls where the stream left the grounds, I knew I could not re image the bridge I’d us
ed to enter. I’d just have to take my chances with the stream. I was having enough difficulty walking and could not even raise minimal shields as I staggered down toward the pair of walls flanking the stream. When I got there, I realized I didn’t have to worry about a bridge. The stream was frozen solid.

  I did have to worry about the ice, though. I slipped and fell twice-hard-before I struggled to my feet outside the wall. Walking uphill toward the mare was hard, but the ground underfoot outside the wall was not icy or slippery.

  Even so, it took much of my remaining strength to clamber up into the saddle, and my entire body continued to shake as the mare began to walk back uphill, southward through the twilight toward L’Excelsis. The ride back to NordEste Design was precarious, not because the mare was fractious, but because I could barely manage to stay in the saddle.

  How long it took, I didn’t know, only that it was late twilight when I turned the mare into the open courtyard gate of NordEste Design. I must have taken half a quint to cover the last fifty yards to the stable. That was the way it felt.

  Seliora had appeared from somewhere and was standing beside the mare. She helped me down. Her face seemed to move nearer and then away.

  “Done . . .” I managed.

  Then darkness, not that of twilight or night, but another kind, dropped over me like instant sunset.

  I woke up stretched out in a bed in an unfamiliar chamber. Seliora was sitting beside me, her face pinched in worry. That I could see even though she appeared blurred.

  Seliora bent forward. She held a tall glass of amber liquid. “It’s lager. I know you like wine better, but Mother says the lager will help you regain your strength sooner.”

  Weak as I was, I wasn’t about to argue as she helped me sit up and I began to drink. Some of the fuzziness in my sight diminished by the time I’d finished the lager, and I didn’t feel as though I’d topple over if pushed by the slightest of breezes. I also recognized the chamber. It was the room where I’d changed into exercise clothes when I’d first gone in the wagon to study the Ryel estate.

  Seliora tendered something like a sweet cake. “Eat this.”

  Whatever it was, it also helped within moments, and I began to think I might actually recover.

  “I was so worried,” she finally said. “It got later and later, and darker and darker.”

  “It’s over.” I didn’t have anything that Master Dichartyn would have called proof, only a solid inner certainty.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” she finally asked.

  “I can, and I will, but would you mind if we included your mother and grandmother? I’d rather not go through it twice, and they should know.”

  Seliora smiled, then leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Thank you for asking.” She studied me. “You have some color. You were shivering and shuddering. You were as pale as ice.”

  “I felt like ice.”

  “Can you walk? Grandmama is waiting in the plaques room across the hall. I’ll get Mama.”

  “I’m tired, but I’ll be all right.”

  Still, Seliora stood right beside me as I got up, but I wasn’t nearly as unsteady as I’d been on the endless walk from beneath the fallen tower to the mare. She didn’t have to summon her mother. Betara was already in the plaques room, quietly talking to Diestra. Both stopped and watched as we entered.

  “You’re feeling better?” asked Betara.

  “He couldn’t have felt much worse,” Seliora said dryly. “The lager helped a great deal.”

  The four of us sat around the plaques table. I waited.

  “We have been worried,” Grandmama Diestra said, absently shuffling the plaques with a dexterity I envied, and that bespoke long familiarity with plaques. “Seliora and Betara should have told you that we . . . arranged for friends to watch your family and Seliora at all times. What they have not told you is that there were three assassins waiting outside the anomen after the services for your brother. They disposed of two, but did not know about the third because he was concealed atop a water tower on a nearby building. They saw him fire, then topple over. When they reached his body, his face was swollen and disfigured. He had a look of horror frozen there.” She looked to me. “That was your doing?”

  “Yes. I had shields around Seliora, and my father, mother, sister, and brother. When the bullets struck, I tried to image caustic back at the shooter. The shots stopped, but I didn’t know whether the shooter had run off or whether I’d been successful.”

  “Now . . . you know,” Diestra said. “Our friends took care of the bodies. That makes some nine in all this week. Since all were bravos for hire, that is likely to make your duties with the Patrol somewhat less risky. Or the duties of some patrollers less dangerous, and the innocents of L’Excelsis subject to less killing.”

  “How much longer will this go on?” asked Betara.

  “It should be over, although there might be a bravo or two who doesn’t get the word for a day or so. Ryel, his son, and his nephew are all dead. I brought down his tower around him. Several other High Holders perished as well. I hope none were your clients.”

  “Even if they were, we’ll survive.” Betara’s voice was sardonic.

  “Those who celebrate with the Namer fall with him,” added Diestra.

  I had to admit that I had little sympathy or remorse for any High Holders who had fawned over Ryel, especially when all knew just how cruel and ruthless he was. Claiming innocence while courting evil was false righteousness.

  “The only possible heir is Ryel’s daughter,” I concluded, “and since there are no males left, that means that we have prevailed, at least, according to tradition.”

  “ ‘We’?” asked Diestra.

  “I’m an imager, ladies, but I have limits, and without your help, I would not have prevailed. Without Seliora, I would have died the first time I was shot. Without you and your friends, I would have no family at all left.” I paused. “We. Not me.”

  Both Betara and Diestra nodded.

  In the silence, I turned to Seliora. “By the way, how did you know I’d need a spyglass?”

  “She didn’t,” replied Grandmama Diestra. “I did. I saw you in the middle of a swirl of ice with a spyglass.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder what else she had seen.

  “Did you plan all this?” I asked her. “Did you know from the beginning?”

  “Only that you would be the king of stags, so to speak, and meant for the daughter of the moon. Beyond that?” She shook her head. “No. Even the best plaques player does not control how the plaques fall, only how to play them.” She paused. “And there is always the chance that others may play better or unpredictably.”

  King of stags? If I’d thought of myself in terms of plaques, I’d have imagined myself more as the knight of crowns, because knights always served others. That triggered another thought. “It is amusing,” I found myself saying quietly, “that both the heirs out of this are women.”

  No one said anything.

  “I’m an imager, and the only thing I can pass on is whatever I’ve made as an imager. I cannot inherit anything from my parents. Once Seliora and I are married, if she and you will still have me, she can pass anything to our children.” I smiled. “But then, isn’t the Pharsi tradition to pass everything through the daughters?”

  Betara and Diestra exchanged glances, then laughed.

  In the end, I didn’t remain long, much as I would have preferred to, but my eyes kept closing, and Seliora sent me off in a hack that Bhenyt had hailed for me.

  Getting out of my clothes in my own quarters was a chore, and I collapsed into bed.

  58

  Exhausted as I was, I didn’t dream on Samedi night, but on Solayi morning I still had to get up early as duty master. The numbness in my back and legs had passed, replaced by bruises and soreness. I could raise shields, but before long my head began to ache. So I went shieldless to the shower, so to speak, then returned to don another set of warm grays.

  A
fter breakfast, eaten early and alone, I made my way to the administrative building where, after telling the duty prime where I’d be, I settled into the conference room off the receiving hall, trying to gather a greater sense of how I should handle the repercussions from Samedi and hoping for a quiet day, while knowing that it was not likely to be so.

  The one chilling thing that struck me as I sat there was that I felt no remorse or sadness for the deaths of Ryel, Dulyk, and Alynat. Had I become just like Master Dichartyn? Or was it that they had caused so many-not just me and my family, but countless others-so much loss and pain that any remorse would have been hypocritical? Or was any remorse I might have felt outweighed by my anger at having been forced into a situation where I had been left no choice at all if I and my family wanted to survive? Or was I still numb from all that had happened?

  I wasn’t certain that I knew. Maybe I never would.

  Sometime just after ninth glass, Master Dichartyn peered in. His face was stern. “You’ll be here for the next glass?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Then he was gone, striding down the corridor.

  Less than a quint later, he returned, striding into the conference room, closing the door, and dropping into the chair nearest me.

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “I prefer not to guess, if you don’t mind.”

  “Let me begin another way.” He sighed. “Chassendri mentioned to me that you looked absolutely shocked when she suggested that you were unpredictable. Why were you so surprised? It cannot have escaped your attention that we have often had to deal with unforeseen situations involving you.”

  “I don’t see why any of them should have been unforeseen. I don’t believe in avoiding problems when they can be resolved. You instructed me that resolution was desirable in ways not calling public attention to the Collegium. That is what I have attempted to do.”

  Dichartyn shook his head. “Maitre Poincaryt and I, as well as Maitre Schorzat, all understand that facet of your character. What was most unpredictable was not your desire to resolve matters, but the way in which you have repeatedly done so. High Councilor Suyrien sent an urgent messenger requesting that Maitre Poincaryt join him for dinner on Lundi night . . . I imagine you can guess the subject.”