Phoenix in Shadow

by Ryk E. Spoor

  “Just don’t forget who you are.”

  “Never,” he said, but his voice shook. Then it firmed, and Tobimar set his jaw. “Never,” he repeated, with more certainty.

  “All right. Everyone ready?” Kyri stood before the sealed doors. “Very well.”

  She drew Flamewing and held it up, and white-gold fire shone from the mighty blade. “Now the way shall be opened!”

  But even as the blade came down, the doors swung silently open; Kyri stumbled slightly before she could recover from the complete lack of resistance. “What . . . ?”

  “Do not damage my doors, Phoenix of Myrionar,” came the precise, level tones of Master Wieran. “There is no need for such violence. Enter, then, since you have all gathered to see my ultimate triumph!”

  Oh, great. He knows we beat Kalshae, and he’s still so confident that he’s just letting us walk in.

  WHOA!

  “Hold it! Hold it!”

  Kyri froze, foot almost ready to cross the threshold.

  Poplock bounced down, studying the floor. Then he looked up, but the words he was going to speak died away.

  Before the party lay the Great Array. Rank upon rank of gleaming tubes of crystal and metal, worked about and around with intricate symbols, descending in concentric seven-sided levels. Seven. Another of the commonly revered numbers. He hadn’t counted, but he was sure that if he did, he’d find there were forty-nine levels to the Great Array; Miri had mentioned there were three hundred forty-three steps on the staircase they’d just descended. Seven times seven, and seven times seven times seven. So he gets seven and three, two of the big numbers.

  In the ceiling, hundreds of feet above, the black stone contrasted with the complex brilliance of the inlaid and worked runes visible against the darkness. Directly below the peak of that great dome was a central space, and within that space stood Master Wieran.

  He was surrounded by mechanisms of incomprehensible complexity; gold, steel, brass, thyrium, krellin, silver, copper, tubes and gears and crystalline retorts, wire in intricate coils, spiraling glass and vibrating springs, with seven consoles laid out around him, covered in levers and buttons and verniers, slots and sockets and racks of other unknown devices. He was hundreds of yards away, but with Poplock’s now-enhanced senses there was no mistaking the brilliant white hair or the absolute confidence of his pose, the arrogant look in his eyes. No, not arrogant; fanatic. Master Wieran had the look of a prophet on the verge of apocalypse.

  His doorstep sure echoed that. “Thanks for the invitation, but I don’t know if I want to step across those symbols. Clever, the way you hid them in the cracks of the natural stone here. People coming through would be focused on you anyway, and even if they looked down, it’d look just like ordinary stone unless they knew what to look for.”

  Wieran’s head tilted the slightest bit. “Perceptive, Poplock Duckweed. Good, you do not disappoint me. Then enter . . . if you can.” He turned and bent over a complex device. Distantly, Poplock heard movement above them.

  “Oh, drought. The Unity Guard is on its way.”

  “Precisely,” Wieran said absently. “You can enter my laboratory—and, if you succeed, close my doors to bar them passage—or you can close the doors and face them directly, and then still have my own defenses to deal with afterwards. I benefit either way.”

  Poplock glanced around. Hiriista caught his eye, then bent over the symbols. “A complex ward. Three elements?”

  The little Toad squinted. “No, four . . . five! See that? Looks like just a flaw in the stonework.”

  The noise of boots was beginning to grow louder. Kyri and Tobimar took up positions behind the two, while Miri stood over them, watching in case anything came from in front.

  “Hssss! Clever. Brilliant. But that means that only all five can neutralize it. Or spirit magic.”

  Poplock suddenly stiffened. “Or one other thing.” He turned. “Hey, Tobimar, switch places!”

  Miri moved next to Kyri as the Skysand Prince stepped back. “What?”

  “I think if you can concentrate your gods-power there, it’ll shatter the ward without detonating it.”

  “You’d better be right,” Tobimar said, casting a glance up the stairs where a flicker of light was becoming visible.

  He drew back his twin-swords, as Poplock and Hiriista moved quickly out of the way, and paused a split second; the blue-white purity of Terian’s power shimmered along his weapons. Then they came down, a double cut of deific energy.

  The floor shuddered, but there was no great detonation, just a shattering of stone. “It worked! Inside, inside everyone!”

  Figures were already visible, charging down the stairs as fast as they could now that they saw their quarry ahead of them. But Miri gestured and stone spikes grew from the walls and floor, barricading the steps for a few precious seconds. By the time the might of the Unity Guard began to break through the stone wall, Tobimar and Kyri had shoved the door to Wieran’s laboratory shut and dropped the bar. “That should hold them for a little while,” Kyri said.

  “It will hold them for a very long time,” Master Wieran said, his tone holding not a trace of concern. “Or, at the least, until I permit them entry. It was designed to withstand any force I envisioned attempting to assail me. Naturally,” he continued, looking at Miri with contempt, “that included any attempt by you or your now-fallen accomplice to turn my own weapons against me. I have taken every contingency into account. I have visualized every scenario.”

  He glanced at Poplock and Hiriista. “A properly scholarly approach. You studied, you deduced, you acted, and were proven correct. I congratulate you. Few could analyze so complex a ward so swiftly. I welcome you, then, to my laboratory. Watch, then, as my ultimate experiment is finally concluded!”

  Now Poplock could see the entirety of the Great Array, and he shuddered. This is monstrous. It makes that sacrificial circle they were using to summon up Voorith look like something a kid scratched in the dust. I can’t just go cut it; if I don’t know what he’s doing with it I could kill us all, or worse. He saw Hiriista with a similarly shocked posture, his crest and scales down, body tight.

  “So that’s what you meant by benefiting either way; if we shut the door and died on the doorstep, you had no interruptions. If we passed the test to enter, you gained an audience.”

  “And once more you do not disappoint. Yes, there should be witnesses to such a momentous occasion, but not ones incapable of understanding what they witness. You and Hiriista are truly worthy, even if your companions are not.”

  Kyri was not hesitating; she strode down the steps towards Wieran. “You will release your prisoners now.”

  Wieran cast an irritated glance in her direction, then placed a crystal in a slot before him.

  Instantly a ring of lightning sprang from floor to ceiling, encircling the entire hall—straight through the point where the Phoenix stood. Kyri screamed, head flung back, hair standing on end, in a spasmodic dance that only ended when the lightning ceased. Tobimar cursed and yanked the girl backwards, bending over her.

  “Do not presume to give me orders here!” Wieran snapped, eyes cold. “This is my realm. For centuries I have endured the constant interruptions, the demands on my time for trivial matters, so that I could reach my goal! Now that it is within my reach, none shall interfere!” The devices around him began to move and an aura of such power radiated from them that Poplock could feel it. “You shall stand and watch as I unravel the ultimate secrets of existence!”

  CHAPTER 49

  Poplock saw that high up in the air—between the inlaid portion of the Great Array on the ceiling and the levels of the floor—a seething mass of rainbow power boiled, rings of light and dark shimmering around it. Streams of power—seven streams—were flowing from that mass, shimmering with blue-white and light-devouring black, and touching the points of a seven-pointed star inlaid into the hundred-yard-wide circle in the middle of the laboratory. That star was itself beginning to flicker
, and the complex mechanism at the very center—the mechanism at which Wieran was working—was humming. The air was filled with the tingling scent of lightning, the earthy smell of fermentation, the odors of a thousand chemicals mingled in a skin-crawling way.

  Even as Kyri was steadying herself on her feet, Wieran touched two more crystal objects, then muttered something and activated what appeared to be a Calling Matrix. The air between them and Wieran acquired a pearlescent shimmer, and Miri, lunging towards the white-haired alchemist, rebounded from the shimmer as though from a wall of steel.

  “Strike the Barrier as much as you like, Ermirinovas,” he said. “I am quite beyond your reach.”

  Poplock saw Hiriista’s posture shift. It was subtle—a human almost certainly wouldn’t notice. But then the mazakh glanced sideways at him, and—without any words—Poplock knew what Hiriista was trying to say.

  Stall him. Keep his attention.

  Poplock gave a barely perceptible wink of one eye. I don’t know what he’s seen, but I’ve got to have faith. He’s analyzing this whole array, and—truth? I don’t know enough to figure it out. Hiriista, though, was a magewright, a master of magic made solid, of runes and symbols and gemcalling and summoning, one of the best in Kaizatenzei. If anyone could figure out that hideous array and find some weak spot, some key location, it would be Hiriista.

  Poplock whirled and threw a vial of flame-essence from his neverfull pack. It burst and burned uselessly against the nacreous nothing that lay between him and his target, but succeeded in getting Wieran to look at him. He hopped up on Tobimar’s head. “Ooooohh, I get it. You did steal most of the Sun’s power. That’s it, up there. Got to hand it to you—that was one-hundred-percent brilliant, getting them to do all the work so you could take the Sun’s power for yourself.”

  Wieran snorted, but something about his posture encouraged Poplock. He likes people recognizing how brilliant he is.

  “But these tubes . . . they’ve got all the people you’ve taken in them.”

  “Not all. Most, yes. A few have not survived all of the years, for various reasons, and there is, currently, one exception other than that.”

  Precision in everything. He can’t abide inaccuracy. Can I use that? “Exception . . . Zogen Josan!”

  “Of course. Can you tell me why?”

  Desperate for intellectual conversation. He’s hidden all this for centuries, he wants to talk about it now. And at the same time, he’s focused on his work. If I keep him talking, he won’t notice Hiriista. I hope.

  “Umm . . . oh, with the hint here? Sure! He decided to retire, instead of dying in the line of duty the way all, or maybe most, of the others have.” He paused. “Oh, and you had to have ways of covering up when they died . . .” He saw a faint smile on Wieran’s face. “Oooohhh. Of course. Because they were so much more powerful than ordinary warrior types, they’d never ‘die’ unless overwhelming force wiped out any nearby witnesses. Zogen must’ve just been incredibly lucky that he never got into that situation, so you couldn’t pull that trick off.”

  Wieran’s tiny nod made him go on. “You couldn’t afford a chance that Zogen’s nature would be discovered, so you swapped the real body back in when he came for his retirement party. Still, I’m missing something.” He gestured at the ranks of tube and rune-covered caskets. “So you . . . what? Use their minds to run the Eternal Servants? So you can cut out the original mind and run them your way, whenever you want? But what’s your purpose? That was useful for Miri and Shae when they were running the country, but what’s in it for you? I don’t get it.”

  “Bah!” Wieran slid two levers partway along a track, and the light around the seven-pointed star flickered more brightly, began to pulse in the runes and symbols that surrounded the star, spread a little farther up the Great Array. “You disappoint me, Toad. The Eternal Servants? Toys, a waste of time, a distraction which I tolerated because it cost me relatively little and kept my dull-witted but useful patrons satisfied until the time I no longer required their services.”

  Miri hissed something under her breath that Poplock didn’t understand, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t a compliment to the silver-haired alchemist-sage.

  Keep focused. “But the Unity Guard—they had to be more complex than that. Most of the time they act just like their originals.” Poplock thought for a second, then bounced his understanding. “I get it. They think they are the real people.”

  “What is ‘real’? They have the same perceptions, sensations, knowledge, and capabilities—indeed, more so—than their flesh bodies. They are unaware of any difference, or of any loss.”

  Hiriista had wandered back, was moving in the shadows along the perimeter. Looking. Reading. Pondering. Have to keep Wieran’s attention . . . and I think I’ve got it! “Hey, don’t think that I am an idiot. You know perfectly well that ‘real’ means something in this context. The mystical connections between truth and falsehood aren’t produced from nothing.”

  “Oh, excellent. You do think on occasion.”

  “Besides, you’re wrong. They are aware of the difference and loss.”

  Now Wieran’s attention was entirely focused on him. “What? What is this nonsense? I have perfected the process—”

  “Maybe not quite as perfect as you think.” Poplock deliberately introduced a hint of derision into his voice. I know something you don’t! “That’s one of the reasons Zogen Josan retired. He was having vague dreams of being in something that—having seen your lab—was one of your little storage tubes.”

  Wieran stared at him narrowly, but Tobimar said, “That’s right. He mentioned those dreams a couple of times, and noticed people not being themselves.”

  “But that’s not surprising,” Poplock went on, “because the Unity Guards were just another of those stopgaps, something you made to keep Miri and Shae off your back. They weren’t part of your real work, so you might not have put your absolute best into them. Am I right?”

  Wieran leaned back, nodding slowly, as he wound some mechanism at his right up with a crank. A chiming began to sound out rhythmically, and the light chased the sound around the room. “You are correct, Poplock Duckweed. And I concede that if what you say is true, then I must not have applied myself entirely to the perfection of the Unity Guards. My regular research demanded most of my attention.”

  “So what is your goal?” Poplock said, returning curiosity and awe to his tone. “I can make out pieces of it, but this is all way, way beyond me. You’ve taken hundreds of people and you’re maintaining their bodies, I’d guess, or most of ’em would’ve died years ago, but you’re using their spiritual power to run those Eternal Servants and the Unity Guard. You’ve got the power of the Sun, and I can figure some of this array of yours is to channel that, but I don’t get how it all fits together.”

  Hiriista, Poplock could see out of the corner of his eye, had made his way to the western side of the room. Is the array a little . . . different there? No . . . looks like there’s a secondary array there. Is that what he’s . . .

  He caught himself before he let the distraction go too far. Can’t let Wieran realize what’s up. Only his ego and his profession give me a chance here.

  Kyri and Miri had tried a few more attacks on the pearly barrier, but it was clear no simple approach would work. Maybe wrecking parts of the array would, but even they didn’t need to be told how bad that could get, not with parts of the array connected to each and every one of the hundreds of tubes circling the room. And any assault of sufficient power to possibly break that barrier would certainly destroy ten, twenty, even fifty of the precious capsules holding the half-dead, half-dreaming hostages.

  Now they were still, and he could tell that they’d realized he was stalling for some reason. Tobimar, of course, had figured it out earlier.

  “I think you give yourself too little credit,” Master Wieran was saying. “You managed to conceal your existence throughout your journey here, and are obviously an accomplished magician. But this is
the result of centuries of labor; there is no surprise in not comprehending it at a glance. So let me ask you this: what is the distinguishing characteristic of true godspower?”

  Poplock blinked and tried to think about what little he’d heard. “Um . . . well, it responds instinctively to the gods’ commands . . .”

  “Pfui! Inherently magical beings could say the same about their magic, or for that matter, you could say the same about your hands. Again!”

  “Mmmm . . . it’s drawn from the worship of others? The power of belief made manifest?”

  “Closer, but still not there.” Wieran adjusted something else and nodded. Poplock noted that the shimmering polychromatic cloud was smaller than it had been, and runes on the floor were now glowing much farther inside and outside the septagram’s edge. “Again!”

  Poplock scratched his head, which gave him an excuse to swivel one eye towards Hiriista. The mazakh magewright was crouched down, studying part of the secondary array intently. Hope you’re getting close, because I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. “Er . . . I don’t know. It’s more powerful than other forces?”

  Wieran snorted in contempt. “There are magicians who can shatter mountains, and gods who make hard work of just battering one down. No. Consider the characteristics of power. The power of magic depends on the belief both of caster and target to some extent. It can perform nearly any feat, as long as sufficient power exists. The mental powers, rannon or psionics, depend on the belief of the user alone—he or she must be confident in their use. They are more reliable, but more limited; one born without them cannot use them, those born with them can only use them in certain ways. The power of the physical—the simple warrior, the technology of those occasionally marooned on this world—depends on no belief, but simply works, is dependent on precise construction and not easily duplicated, though once duplicated it can be exchanged and used by others freely.”