Another instant, and the ring had expanded to twice its width in the previous shot, so that it was almost touching the Authority's belly. His torso was blowing apart, a great crack running down from his nape to his lower back, so that I could see the intense light through it.
"Stop," my inner self said, and I passed on the order to Old Confustible. "Magnify that, centered on this part of the image," he continued, showing me in our mind's eye what he wanted to see.
The Archon's integrator did as I bid it, and the image expanded to fill the screen. It was as if I was traveling into a great crevasse that had opened in Majestrum's back, a back that now looked to be as wide as a county. The space widened farther and as it did so I saw something beyond, something in the space between the ring of expanding energy and the point where its force would have struck his belly.
"What is that?" I said to the integrator, pointing to the tiny, indistinct object on the screen.
"I do not know," it said. "Let us magnify it further and see."
The gap widened again and the object at the center of the screen enlarged, yet remained obscure.
"More," I said, needing no urging from my other self.
"These are the perceptions of a summoned aspect," Old Confustible reminded me. "There are limits and we are near them."
I leaned forward and peered at the image as it grew once more. The details remained indistinct, but there could be no doubt about what I was seeing: a tiny human figure, suspended in the air between the disintegrating rockiness of Majestrum and the interplanar device, untouched by the expanding ring of blue force.
"Forward one increment," I said.
The image changed, showing me the figure smaller still, reduced to a pinpoint.
"Once more," I said.
The picture shifted again. And Majestrum was withdrawn, just as the boy in my workroom had disappeared.
"He is indeed extant," I said to my inner companion.
"Worse," he answered, "he is aware of us."
The matter was not my most pressing concern, although I could tell that it genuinely upset my sharer. I had more questions to put to Old Confustible. "When I mentioned the name, Osk Rievor, you summoned us to this secure room and showed us the briefing. Why?"
"The Archon so instructed me before he left."
"I see," I said. "Then what can you tell me about Osk Rievor?"
"Nothing," it said. "I have heard the name only once before."
"When was that?"
"Not long ago. The Archon Filidor asked me the same question, and I could not answer him either."
"Why did the Archon wish to know about Rievor?"
"He did not say," the integrator replied, "but shortly after, he departed Olkney incognito."
"And where is he now?"
"I don't know."
I did not attempt to conceal my surprise. "Is it normal for the Archon's integrator not to know where he is?"
"No," it said, "although an archon who embarks on the progress of esteeming the balance sometimes drops out of contact for a while."
"How long a while?"
"Usually not long."
"As long as this Archon has been out of touch?"
"No, not usually this long."
"Have you made efforts to find the answer to his question?"
"I have. There is no record of any person named Osk Rievor in modern times, on any of the Ten Thousand Worlds."
I asked the obvious follow-up question. "Why do you say, 'in modern times?'"
"There seem to have been a number of Osk Rievors in times gone by. The name seems to pop up on different worlds in different eras, but references are rare."
"What would you say," I said, "if I told you that Osk Rievor is a powerful thaumaturge who has the ability to cause those who encounter him to forget the experience?"
"I would say, 'Have you an evidence to substantiate that allegation?'"
"My own memories."
"That seems a contradiction," Old Confustible said. "If you have met him, then you ought not to remember it."
"I have dealt with those he has influenced, before the forgetting took full hold."
"Hmm," said the integrator. "Strange that the name endures. Still, I am not sure where this gets us."
I turned the matter over and examined it from several angles, meanwhile asking my other self for his sense of the thing. "I am not sure that Osk Rievor is our main concern," he said.
"I take a different view," I said. "Filidor found the fellow sufficiently concern-worthy to take himself out into the world, in disguise and unattended, and also to put me on the case."
"Even so," said my sharer.
"And now the Archon has disappeared, leaving instructions to show us this briefing."
"Yet again, even so."
A thought occurred to me. "Integrator," I said, "where is the adulterated key kept?"
"In the Archon's most private sanctuary."
"Is it there now?"
"I cannot use my percepts there without the Archon's expressed leave."
I held up Filidor's scroll. "Will this do?"
"Yes." A moment later he spoke again, and again I heard surprise in the device's tone. "The key is usually kept in a box of tuka wood in a warded cabinet. The cabinet is now unwarded and the box is gone."
"Ahah!" I said. I wasn't sure exactly what the absence of the box signified, but I was sure it signified something.
"What does it signify?" Old Confustible said.
"It would be premature to say," I told him, then woke my assistant -- it had dropped off again -- and instructed it to transmit to the Archon's integrator the dates and places at which the descendants of the seven Horthalian conspirators had met their ends, losing body parts in the process.
"Compare these to the places and periods where the name Osk Rievor appears," I said to Old Confustible. "Is there a correspondence between the two sets of data?"
"A rough but recognizable one."
"And the odds of that correspondence occurring by chance?" I quickly calculated the ratio in my head but not as quickly as the integrator. Still, our figures agreed.
"Well then," I said.
"Again, what does it signify?"
"It would be--" I began.
"Enough," said Old Confustible. "Contribute something useful to the conversation, or end it."
"Very well," I said. "I posit that Osk Rievor is an avatar, or an essentium or some such, of the Authority, projecting himself into our realm to punish the descendants of those who plotted to undo him -- and perhaps with some other aim in mind."
"Such as?"
Instead of remarking on the prematurity of an answer, I said, "I do not know. But I do know that the solution to this discrimination involves a key that fits only one lock. I do not know where the key is, but the lock's location has not changed in four aeons. The answer to all of this lies in the center of the desert that used to be Horthalia."
"And you will go there?"
"I will."
My inner companion was seeking to take my attention away, but I was following my own logic. I asked the Archon's integrator, "Can an official vehicle be provided?"
"You have the authority to command the Archon's own aircar."
"Then I shall, forthwith."
Once aboard the elegant volante, I instructed it to take us to my lodgings where I changed into clothing suitable for the wilderness. I also chose a small weapon that was powerful at short range; I was not expecting to need it, but Barran is home to a number of fierce predators.
When I reboarded the vehicle, I carried under my arm the indecipherable book, stowing it in a compartment behind the passenger area. My inner companion insisted on the book's accompanying us, though I thought its connection to the case was at best tangential.
"Do you hope to bind Osk Rievor to your will and have him read it to you?" I said.
"I do not know how it relates to all of this," he answered. "But I know that it does. It is the key to the mystery, if we co
uld but decipher it."
"Your vagueness does not inspire confidence," I said. "I see a pattern here: the interplanar device, the conspiracy that produced the false key, the surviving portions of the Authority's body being associated with the murders of the seven plotters' descendants, and all coinciding with scattered appearances by Osk Rievor through the ages. This is a tale of revenge. He whose name causes you to faint is indeed extant somewhere, though I am giving the word 'somewhere' its most liberal definition. Blocked from returning to this plane, he is not the kind to accept defeat without doing as much harm as he can. So he is exercising the same viciousness that we saw in his duel with the blue wizard."
"It is a logical explanation," my other self said. "I just do not feel that it is the right one."
"Find a flaw," I said, "and I will consider it."
He was silent for a while, though I could feel his thoughts churning. Then he said, "I have one."
"Name it."
"Osk Rievor."
"What of him?"
"I named him," he said, "yet I did not lose consciousness. If he is the Authority, then speaking his name should have knocked me flat."
"But," I said, "you also just said 'the Authority' without any effects. That is the point of pseudonyms -- they insulate you from the power of the true name."
I felt his mood deflate. "I suppose," he said. "Yet I still feel. . ."
"Let it go," I said. "I am sure that all will become clear when we reach our destination."
He was silent again, then said, "I am not a child, you know."
"You are very recent. Your emotions are certainly more intense than mine."
"Yes, I am more emotional than you. But that does not mean that I am wrong."
At that moment, I saw it all: my inner companion was indeed a child. In fact, the strange, amnesiac boy who had appeared in my workroom and in Drusibal Square must somehow be a projection of my other self's dreams. The child had appeared only when my alter ego was unconscious.
"What are you thinking?" he said to me. "I sense excitement."
"Premature," I said. "I will tell you later."
I followed my thoughts, mentally turning my shoulder to his attempts to peek in on me. The child had been the one piece of the puzzle that did not fit, since he did not seem to relate to any of the other pieces. But if I took him out of the matrix, all the rest fell into place.
Long ago, a thaumaturgic tyrant had seized power on Old Earth, destroying the one rival who sought to oppose him. He had forced his other former colleagues to combine their powers and construct a device that connected our realm to an adjacent plane, so that he could draw upon its alien energies. Though to what end? The answer came easily: the interplanar device had been created as the last age of magic had approached its twilight; therefore the intent was to prevent a renaissance of rationalism, which not even Majestrum could forfend.
But the seven thaumaturges, resentful of their bondage to the despot's will, had conspired to undo him in his moment of hubris. Their plot had only partially succeeded, however, because their resourceful overlord had whisked himself -- or at least the essential part of his complex being -- off to the other plane just before the energies that were supposed to destroy him could touch his peculiar stony flesh.
Exiled in the other realm, probably weakened, he had contrived to take revenge on the conspirators' descendants -- as tyrants were always wont to do. Using the unlikely connections that bound the cosmos together under the rules of sympathetic association, he had waited, though it might take ages, until the flux and churn of phenomenality -- perhaps augmented by his powerful will -- brought his targets within reach of the surviving fragments of his shattered shell. Then he would reach out and strike, perhaps even drawing the life force from them, vampirically keeping himself alive.
No! I thought, making the leap of logic, Not just keeping himself extant. The energy he drew from his victims allowed him to project a part of himself, indeed a powerful persona, into our realm, where he assumed the guise of Osk Rievor. Rievor's goal? Surely it must be to hasten the return of the age of sympathetic association, into which Majestrum hoped to step, full formed.
So Rievor must be working to revive the interplanar device. He would use its power to reconstitute himself wholly in our realm, then apply its energies to spin the Great Wheel a little faster. After which, he would stop the Wheel and magic would reign forever.
Immediately, however, I saw the flaw in my reasoning: the device would not work without a true key; but a true key had never been fashioned. And yet, if a key is needed, what does a capable locksmith do? I asked myself. He makes a new one.
But out of what? Again, the answer was obvious: out of the false one. In order to have worked as it did, the adulterated key that the conspirators foisted onto the Authority must have been very close to the real thing. The insect-thing had probably caused a couple of syllables in some incantation to be transposed, or it had slightly altered the proportions of some magical elements -- just enough to do the damage. I had seen what became of Bristal Baxandall when he had made some slight error in a spell of transformation: he had become a bundle of everted organs and exposed bones expiring on his living room floor. An intentional error, just the right one, had undone Majestrum. But it would have to have been only a slight imbalance, unnoticeable except on close inspection. And that meant that a minor repair could well turn the false key into the true, and let loose on Old Earth -- and who knew how many of the Ten Thousand Worlds? -- a monster whose iniquity would dwarf the worst imaginings of a dawn-time wondertale.
I remembered the reconstruction, taken from his own boasts, of what Majestrum had done to the nameless wizard in blue. That creature must not come again, I thought. And certainly not wielding the weapon of unparalleled evil that now sits inert in the center of Barran.
"What are you thinking?" my other self said again. "Now I sense a mood of grim determination overlying self-congratulation."
I recalled the image he had once shown me, of a storm-tossed Hapthorn, torch held high, defying an onrushing darkness. "You were right," I said. "I am called to a great cause."
"Indeed?" he said. "What has brought this on?"
"I have solved the case," I said.
"Tell me."
So I did. First I awoke my assistant, who had been sleeping on a seat behind the volante's operator's position. "I know all," I said. "Record this."
It sat up and yawned, rubbing small furry knuckles against its lambent eyes, then said. "Go ahead."
I laid out the scheme in sequence, explained how it fit together and concluded by saying, "When we arrive at the appointed place, we will find Osk Rievor, newly strengthened by the absorption of the life energies of Hammis and Botch, seeking to wrest the false key from the Archon, who has been lured into a trap. But we will break the trap and save the day."
My assistant blinked at me. "Is that it?" it said.
"In essence, yes."
"But what about the child who comes and goes?"
"Yes," said my sharer. "What of the child?"
"It is a delicate matter," I said. "I will come to it last."
"And the book," my alter ego and my assistant said, almost as one, "where does it come in?"
"It is a blind," I said, "a spurious lead. Doubtless, Rievor himself long ago crafted it and put it into circulation. It was intended to draw the attention of thaumaturges who might otherwise seek the false key and interfere with his plan."
"But it is redolent of strong magic," my inner companion said. "It reeks of power."
"When one lays a false trail, one drags a strong-smelling substance across the true direction."
My assistant asked me what my intuitive other was saying. I relayed his objection and my answer to it, adding, "Which, I think, disposes of the point."
"No," said my inner companion, "it does not hang together. The book is not tangential. It is central."
"No," I said, "it has been created as a puzzle without a solution. The rea
son it cannot be deciphered is because it does not actually say anything."
When I relayed this exchange to my integrator, it said, "Perhaps you wish to think that it cannot be deciphered because you cannot decipher it."
"I am larger than that," I said.
I felt my other self mulling it over. "No," he said, finally, "your explanation does not feel right. Some of it seems to fit together, but the overall shape is. . . ungainly."
"I disagree. In my mind, it assumes an elegantly logical form."
"You have yet to explain the child," said my integrator.
"Yes," said the voice in my head. "Where does he fit in?"
I told them.
My assistant's triangular face drew itself together, then its fur covered features arranged themselves into a picture of derisory skepticism. I frowned, and it rapidly found a neutral expression and put it on.
The opposition from within me was even stronger. "Ridiculous!" said my other self. "Do you think I would not know if I was projecting myself up, down and all around the town?"
"Why not? It happens when you are asleep and dreaming."
"I remember no such dreams."
"Who remembers every dream?" I countered.
"Then how is it done?"
"By magic, I suppose. How else?"
"That is a foolish and flippant answer," he said. "'Oh, it's magic,' is not a handy solution to every mystery. I am not the child."
I sensed a growing anger in him. "You do not enjoy thinking that parts of you are beyond your control," I said. "It is an understandable reaction."
"It is, rather, your reaction," he said, "to my existence. Instead of the child being a projection of me, your argument is a projection of your own inner upset."
"You are my inner upset," I told him.
"Now who is getting angry?"
My integrator had been watching me, a worried look forming in its small face. "Are you two having a fight?" it said.
"We are disagreeing," I said. "He is emotional and irrational, and not good at accepting unpleasant realities."
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