By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter was deserted when she went on board, except for a lone Space Force ensign—Tammas Cantrel, one of the survivors of the battle of the Net—at work with a clipboard and stylus in what had apparently been the crew’s mess.

  Cantrel glanced up as she entered, and smiled broadly. “Mistress Hyfid! I heard about you and Commander Rosselin-Metadi—it’s sure nice to get some good news for a change.”

  “Thanks, Tammas,” said Llannat. She nodded at the clipboard. “It looks like Vinhalyn is keeping you busy out here while we wait for the trouble to start. What’s the job?”

  “Inventory,” Cantrel said. “Space by space. Damned if I know why.”

  “The advancement of galactic knowledge, I suppose. He did give you a list of all the ‘don’t touch this or it’ll blow up in your face’ symbols, didn’t he?”

  Cantrel nodded. “And the ‘don’t swallow this stuff, it’s poison’ labels, too. I found a bunch of those in the galley. Looked like drain cleaner to me, but I took the safe way out and catalogued it as ‘toxic powder, purpose unknown.’”

  She laughed in spite of herself. “You’ll make a scholar yet. Listen, Tammas—I’m going off by myself to think for a while, and you didn’t see me come through here. All right?”

  “No problem, Mistress Hyfid. You never went by.”

  “Thanks,” Llannat said again.

  She left and made her way alone to the Daughter’s meditation chamber. The cool white tiles set in their circle on the black floor were calm and inviting. She knelt in the circle and let her mind go free, slipping by now almost effortlessly into that state which was neither dream nor memory.

  A voice that was like and unlike her own seemed to speak in the interior silence.

  I’m still confused about what to do. I need answers.

  She knew the voice that replied. The Professor’s antique Court Entiboran accent was unmistakable.

  If you look for answers, Mistress, you’ll have to take whatever you find. There’s no picking and choosing here.

  I know, she said. I’m ready.

  Then come.

  She stood, and felt the black cloth of a Magelord’s long robes swirl around her booted ankles as she stepped forward. She held her staff in one gloved hand, and a black mask overlaid her features.

  The mask shut out the distractions of everyday sight, the jarring colors and niggling details that kept her from seeing the fabric of the universe whole and unmarred. If she chose, she could look sidelong and see the silver destiny-threads that wove in and out of the grand design. With the power of a Circle behind her, she could seize the threads and reweave the pattern according to her own desire.

  She looked downward at a puddle of light where the white tile floor had been earlier. The light shone from somewhere overhead onto a long narrow table of scarred and dented metal, the sort of plain utility furniture that anyone might use. Someone was lying on the table—someone robed and masked, like herself, all in black.

  I’ve seen this before, she thought. But the last time I came here I was the one who lay wounded, and there was no help for me …

  … and before that, when this was real, I was the one who fought against the Circle-Mage for Ari’s life, and it was Ari who fired the blaster that ended the fight.

  Llannat became aware that she no longer held a staff in her right hand, but a silver dagger. She spoke to the one who lay on the table, and her voice was deep and strangely accented.

  “Did you succeed?”

  “I don’t know,” came the reply, heavy and muffled with pain. “He was poisoned, as you ordered, but he had an Adept with him.”

  “An Adept!” came a voice from elsewhere in the meditation chamber. “How much does Ransome know?”

  “Enough to make him wary, it seems,” Llannat replied. She glanced over to the fair man who sat cross-legged against the wall of the chamber. Was he the one who had spoken? She couldn’t be sure. “Very well; we can wait. Someone else can do our work for us—you know the ones I mean.”

  A harsh laugh sounded from someone else in the chamber. Everyone knew that the Lords of the Resurgency would sooner use the Circles than their own agents, and sooner the Adept-worlders than the native-born. “That’s right,” said the one who had laughed. “Let them take some risks for a change.”

  The wounded one who lay on the table stirred and tried to rise. “What about me? Can’t you do something?”

  Llannat could see the blaster burn, flesh blackened among the black cloth, the cloth further darkened with clotting blood. Ari’s aim had held true; without a healing pod, this was a fatal injury, though not a fast one—and before the end the pain would be profound.

  She shook her head.

  “You have a point,” she said, with genuine sorrow. “Failure must always draw its reward.”

  Lifting the silver knife, she stabbed it down—a clean stroke, sudden and merciful, granting a speedy death.

  For a moment she paused, eyes closed and head lowered, before straightening again and looking about. The room was empty, except for the one who still sat cross-legged against the wall. He had a staff balanced across his lap, a long staff of plain wood like the ones the Adepts used. She recognized him now: Owen Rosselin-Metadi. He’d been haunting a lot of her visions lately. And those visions had been coming more frequently, lasting longer, and giving more detail than ever before, halfway between dream and remembrance.

  “You’re not dreaming,” he said. “Or remembering. The time has come, just as I told you it would.”

  “What do you mean, ‘the time has come’?” she asked. “We’re outside of time here.”

  Owen stood, unfolding from his seated position with practiced grace. “Let’s find a way out of here,” he said. “The path is in this direction, I think.”

  He led the way and she followed, going out of the Daughter’s meditation room and into a long corridor all of stone that stretched off, full of closed doors, into the shadowy distance. He put his hand on one of the doors.

  “Are you certain you wish to follow?” he asked.

  “I’m certain,” Llannat said, and followed him into the darkness.

  The new corridor went on for a long way in the dark; Llannat stuck close behind Owen, keeping up with him by the rustle of his clothing and the tap of his bootheels on the stone floor. Then the stone walls opened out around them, and she was once again in the Summer Palace on Entibor—not as she had seen it in the Professor’s holovid re-creation, but as it had appeared on the morning of the first attack. She had been there with the Professor, in her waking dream aboard Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter. Soon, if she remained here, the alarms would go off, and the Lords of Eraasi would begin their three-years’-work of reducing the Domina Perada’s planet to poisoned slag.

  “Quickly,” she said to Owen. “This way.”

  She led him through the arched doorway into the paneled room with the great stone fireplace.

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the inset stone with the arms of Rosselin and Entibor. “Behind here.”

  With Owen’s help she pulled the stone from the wall. There was an empty space behind it. She pulled away another stone and another, until there was an opening wide enough to crawl through. She entered, and found a dark room.

  Her staff began to glow with a green and vivid light, revealing that the room held a box of clear crystal and black wood. A stasis box, and within it a human figure: the dead and blasted body of Tarnekep Portree.

  “Is this something that was?” Llannat asked Owen. “Or is it something that will be?”

  For answer, Owen pointed to the far wall of the room. What should have been cut and fitted stone was nothing but grey mist, swirling and opalescent like the pseudosubstance of hyperspace. Llannat recognized it at once—she’d been there, though not of her own will, when she fought against the Mage-Circle on Darvell.

  “All times and all places,” said Owen, “meet in the Void.”

  Llannat saw the grey blankness
of the Void pressing nearer, crowding in. Then she seemed to fall away, back into her waking reality, and what had been the pale nothingness of the Void was only the white tile circle in the Daughter’s meditation room before her eyes as she lay facedown on the deck.

  “Who the hell do the bastards think I am?” Beka demanded. “The entire Home Fleet?”

  She was bringing up the ‘Hammer’s shields and flipping open the link to the gun bubbles as she spoke. “Nyls, Ignac’—we’ve got Mages dropping out of hyper. Don’t worry about the big guys; just keep the fighters off us while we run to jump. Captain Yevil—pass the rendezvous coordinates to Claw Hard. I don’t want Frizzt Osa stuck here explaining this mess to ConSec.”

  “Already done, my lady. Claw Hard, Calthrop, and Noonday Sun have RSF emergency coordinates and comm settings.” Yevil went back to speaking over the headphone link. “All units in Suivi Det, change to tactical comms, standby, execute.”

  Beka watched the yellow dots on the flatscreen growing closer to the ’Hammer’s position. A glance at the cockpit viewscreens showed nothing yet on visual—not that it mattered. Sensor eyes saw farther than organic ones, and it was the sensor eyes that aimed to kill.

  Over in the copilot’s seat, Yevil had finished punching in the new comm settings. “All units: condition red, weapons free. Offset guide on Warhammer. Muster at point Oscar Whiskey, clear the way with fire.”

  Beka hit the comm to the gun bubbles again. “Lock in targets as they come in range. Fire for effect.”

  “More trouble,” said Yevil, with a sideways nod toward the flatscreen. “The Mages have our jump point figured. They’re moving to block.”

  “If that’s the way they want to play it … we’ll save the rendezvous for later. Tell your people to jump when and as they can. I’m taking the first clear run-up that comes along.”

  Beka checked the monitor on the position plotting indicator. The yellow dot that was the mothership still moved across the flatscreen on a course that would put it right on top of her projected jump point.

  I can’t jump early; the damned mothership’ll be too close by the time I get up enough speed … below, maybe?

  She cross-checked the new line with the navicomp. Hurry up, she urged the red Working light. Damn, I wish we had one of those battle tanks the Space Force uses.

  The Working light went off. That line’s clear Good.

  “Putting in down vector,” she said aloud. “Yevil, keep your people out of my way!”

  She heard Yevil speaking over the link to the other ships, and a moment or so later Jessan’s voice, from the Number One gun bubble: “Don’t try that again. We almost ran into someone.”

  “I’ll try not to. And he wasn’t that close.”

  “He sure looked that close to me … watch it, fighters coming in.”

  “Whose?” That was LeSoit, at Number Two.

  Beka glanced out the viewscreen. “I’ve got them on visual. Yevil—do we have an ID?”

  “ID’ed as ConSecs,” said the Space Force captain. “Coming out of Suivi.”

  “Fair game,” said Beka. “Take them under fire with guns.”

  She heard Jessan’s acknowledgment, then LeSoit’s, and Warhammer’s energy guns lashed out. The ConSec fighters slowed and fell back toward the Suivan surface.

  “No stomach for trouble there,” said Beka. “Yevil—where are the Mages now?”

  “Coming within range.” The ’Hammer’s viewscreens lit up with crisscrossing rays of scarlet flame as the Space Force captain spoke, and a nearby explosion lit up the cockpit with glaring light. “All units: deploy countermeasures. My lady—how much longer to jump?”

  Beka checked the PPI flatscreen again. “They’ve got a destroyer maneuvering to cut off the secondary jump point. We’ll have to try another run.”

  She stole a quick look at the energy readouts from the gun bubbles. The weapons-system power indicators were flickering, indicating almost continuous fire. Looks like Nyls and Ignac’ are keeping the bad guys busy. Good. She went back to looking for a jump path.

  “Ah-hah,” she said. “Got one. Coming high left.” She put in the course correction as she spoke.

  “Maneuver independently,” Yevil was saying over the headphone link. “All units, maneuver independently.”

  The ’Hammer drove onward. Beka watched the navicomp and the PPI screen. The Mages would spot the new jump point—they had sensors and navicomps, or something that worked just as well—but did they have a ship that could move to block it?

  “Not this time,” Beka muttered. “Not this time. Stand by for jump … ready … now!”

  She pushed the realspace engines a fraction farther forward, and lit off the hyperdrives. The stars ahead blazed and vanished, then were replaced by the grey of hyperspace. She counted to ten, slowly, in Mandeynan, before dropping out.

  “Right,” she said, leaning back in the pilot’s seat. “Gunners, stand easy on station.”

  She turned to Yevil. “Let’s find out where we are. Then we can see about getting to your rendezvous.”

  VII. GIFFER: LOCAL DEFENSE BASE, TELABRYK FIELD

  WARHAMMER: HYPERSPACE TRANSIT

  GYFFERAN SECTOR: SWORD-OF-THE-DAWN

  ARI ROSSELIN-METADI had left RSF Fezrisond with only one uniform, and that one a regular shipboard coverall with the working minimum of insignia. Lacking anything better—and being, in any case, well outside the standard size range for programmed tailoring—he’d expected to get married in that uniform as well. He’d reckoned without the goodwill of the Gyfferan Local Defense Force and the fast service available in Telabryk’s garment district: when he returned to his quarters at the end of the day, he found a proper dress uniform, its transparent wrapping still warm from the fabricator, waiting for him on his bunk.

  He changed into the new clothing with some trepidation. This is turning into more of a party than I bargained for, he thought as he sealed the front of the tunic. I thought we could just take care of the paperwork in Vinhalyn’s office and go about our business. But people need something to take their minds off vallant and the Mages, and we’re all that’s available.

  Lieutenant Vinhalyn and Ensign Cantrel were waiting for him outside the building with a hovercar. He was glad; on foot in dress uniform was no way to cross the several miles of Telabryk Field that lay between the Space Force installation and the LDF Base.

  “Where’s Mistress Hyfid?” he asked. Except for Vinhalyn and Cantrel—and himself—the hovercar was empty.

  “Gone on over to the officers’ club,” Cantrel said. “Everything there is all set up. The food and all that, I mean.”

  “I see,” said Ari. “Thanks.”

  He didn’t say anything more. Too much conversation would risk evoking all the traditional heavy-handed witticisms, even from the likes of Cantrel and the scholarly Vinhalyn.

  The dress uniform was already having its usual effect on him, making him feel conspicuous and monumental, and as out of proportion among his more normally-sized surroundings as a menhir in a flower garden. At such times he tended to grow obsessed by the fear that a casual move on his part might have more speed, or more force, than he intended. In a universe filled with small breakable objects, he moved slowly, with all deliberate caution.

  The sun had almost set by the time the hovercar glided into the parking area of the LDF officers’ club, and the sky to the west of Telabryk was a deep orange-red. Nearer to the zenith, where the colors shaded to blue and purple, shone a steady dot of light—the gas giant that was one of the Gyfferan system’s outer planets, and one of the brightest objects in Telabryk’s nighttime sky. The parking area itself was full of hovercars, speederbikes, and other personal vehicles, far too many for an ordinary MidWeek evening.

  Ari closed his eyes briefly. This is absurd. I never …

  “Here we are,” said Vinhalyn.

  They left the hovercar and went into the club. Inside, the crowd was even larger than Ari had feared.

  I don’t
know any of these people, he thought unhappily. Somebody must have decided to open up the bar for free drinks.

  Somebody had also decorated the main dining area of the club with what looked like all the colored paper party streamers available for sale within a day’s trip in a fast shuttle. Fresh flowers in bowls and vases filled every niche and every flat surface, making the club look and smell like a greenhouse on a holiday. At the far end of the room was a table with a white cloth on it, flanked by more, and longer, tables holding a great deal of food—a lot of fruit, for some reason Ari supposed was deeply symbolic, as well as the usual cakes and sandwiches.

  The central table, though, was empty, except for a plain black-lacquered tray holding a ceramic pitcher, two cups, and a loaf of flat bread. Llannat Hyfid stood near the table, looking small and quiet in the midst of the noisy, cheerful crowd. She wore an Adept’s formal black, with her staff at her belt, but it didn’t look like anybody had come down from the local Guildhouse to share the celebration.

  When she saw Ari, she smiled. The change of expression gave her plain, dark features a beauty that transcended mere ordinary good looks. Ari thought he would happily endure almost anything if she would only smile that way at him forever.

  He took her hands in his. “Believe me,” he said, “I didn’t expect any of this … this stuff.”

  “Neither did I,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter. They only want to wish us good luck. And themselves good luck, too, but there’s no way to do that.”

  Behind him, Lieutenant Vinhalyn cleared his throat gently. Ari became aware that the whole room had fallen silent, leaving him standing with Llannat and Vinhalyn in the midst of a circle of watchers. The acting Space Force CO pulled a small bundle of folded printout flimsies out of his tunic pocket and laid them on the stiff white tablecloth.

  “The final copies of the domestic partnership forms,” Vinhalyn said. He smoothed out the wrinkled flimsies and weighted down the stack with a standard-issue stylus. “If you could both sign in all the marked spaces …”