Better to be closer to the ground when it happened. Another strike shook his shield. He descended into the jumble of columns, ducking and weaving through the maze in the hopes that the stones would take the attacks aimed at him. He caught glimpses of his pursuers from the corners of his eyes. A few followed him from above, tracking him.
The columns did not provide consistent cover. His shield wavered under another attack and he had too little magic left to strengthen it. The realisation came, with a rush of fear, that he was not going to escape his pursuers, and if he did not descend to the ground soon, he would run out of magic in the sky, and fall, perhaps to his death.
That thought gave him one last desperate idea.
Pretend I am done. Pretend to fall. Catch myself at the last moment and disappear into the maze. It will buy me time, if nothing else.
He was doing it even as he thought it. He let his shield go and fell. The crystalline jumble of columns rushed up towards him. He altered his descent slightly to avoid one protruding spire, then dove towards the darkness of a hole. Then, just before he entered, he drew the last of his magic to shield his body.
Darkness surrounded him. He landed on a hard surface, barely softened by his hasty shield. Then he was sliding down a steep slope, unable to catch something to stop himself before he slipped off the edge. He fell. Not far, but with a bone-crunching end and an agony of pain.
He clenched his teeth and looked up, barely able to see the crazy jumble of stone surfaces surrounding him in the thin light, and wondered how long he had before the sorcerers found him.
And if they didn’t, how in all the worlds was Rielle going to?
PART FIVE
RIELLE
CHAPTER 16
Rielle had lost count of the number of shadowed alleys and empty rooms she and Dahli had emerged in to spend long, tense moments searching minds. By a stroke of good luck, the third time they had done so they’d found the mind of a city’s Head Sorcerer briefing messengers on whom to report the invader’s – or invaders’ – disappearance. That told them about the chain of command, as well as that Tyen had already moved on.
Rielle doubted he’d run out of magic already. More likely he had left to draw attention away from them. Even so, she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of anxiety. Be careful, Tyen. Your world needs you. All the worlds need you. And I would miss your friendship.
The Head Sorcerer turned to other pressing tasks once the messengers had left, so she and Dahli set off after the man who would report to Kettin’s assistants. He skimmed across the world, heading for another city. When he paused to catch his breath, Rielle and Dahli stopped nearby. Reading his mind, they saw him ponder the chances that Kettin would be there and he might report to her directly. The thought filled him with fear. He’d seen her kill another messenger, though nobody knew why.
An image appeared in his mind of a rigid, emotionless face, the colour of gold. A glint of reflected light was all he’d been able to make out of Kettin’s eyes.
“She wears a mask,” Rielle noted.
Dahli grunted softly. “Maybe she is scarred, or ugly.”
The messenger sucked in several quick breaths in preparation for the second half of his journey. He could not afford to stop again, as Kettin did not approve of unnecessary delays. I doubt she’ll be there anyway. She spends most of her time with the inventors.
Rielle and Dahli exchanged a glance, then followed as the man continued on his way. The world was a small one, so his path quickly took them around to the night side of the world, to a small city, where the matter of the invader was delegated to sorcerers, not Kettin. Rielle and Dahli arrived in yet another cellar. While it was easier for them to remain undetected at night, the people who might have had useful information were either asleep or thinking about friends and family, not where imprisoned inventors might be located.
Dahli’s frustration grew more obvious the longer their search of minds proved fruitless.
“They’d think about it if we woke them up and asked them,” he muttered, as yet another official’s thoughts lingered on irrelevant domestic matters.
“Yes, and then you’d have to make sure they couldn’t report the conversation,” Rielle replied. “And that will limit our time here to what it takes for their body to be discovered.”
“I can make sure it won’t be discovered.”
She met his gaze levelly. “No.”
“Aren’t you worried how long Tyen will last?”
She sent him a dark look rather than replying, afraid that her voice might betray how much she was. To her surprise his eyes lowered, and he nodded.
“Yes, that was low of me. I just… I don’t know any other way. It’s seems so naïve, what I promised to Zeke.”
The note of desperation was back in his voice. “If there is another way, we’ll find it,” she assured him. “But we won’t if we don’t try.”
He nodded and took her hand. “Let’s try another city.”
They followed a well-used path, only having to evade other travellers twice before they arrived at the second city. Here their luck changed. Though it was early in the morning, they caught the thoughts of a tired guard returning home after his shift. He reflected on how his income might have been different if he’d accepted the offer of a job in one of Kettin’s laboratories. He’d declined because he’d heard the inventors were sorcerers held against their will, and he figured that, as a non-sorcerer, he would be one of the first to die if an escape was attempted. Now a friend claimed the prisoners were only weak sorcerers, held for their cleverness with machines. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so risky. Perhaps if he let them know he was interested in the job after all… Though it did mean a long journey to the Wechen Plains.
He didn’t know the precise location of the prison, but at least Rielle and Dahli now knew the general whereabouts – but also that there was more than one laboratory. She took Dahli out of the world and skimmed in the direction the guard knew the plains lay. Passing a mountain range, they reached a stretch of flat lands etched with a pattern of fields divided by a winding river with many tributaries. They had travelled northward and away from the rising sun, so it was still early morning. A short pause to read minds in a village confirmed they were in the right location, and more stops brought them closer to a particular town where large buildings had been erected recently, from which odd noises and smells sometimes emanated.
“Look for Zeke’s mind,” Dahli asked, when they stopped in the outskirts.
Rielle searched. She found guards watching over storerooms containing both materials for making machines as well as finished and unfinished machines. No prisoners, however. Only the night watch was present, and they expected to be relieved by the day watch soon.
“There’s a void around that house over there,” Dahli said, his voice quiet but intense.
Rielle looked in the direction he indicated. Of all the buildings in the town, this house was the most brightly lit. She stretched out her senses and found a globe of darkness surrounding the house, like a more intense patch of the night. Looking within, she sensed magic inside it.
“There’s magic within the void,” she said, turning to meet his gaze. “I can sense minds within, but they are too vague to understand.”
His grip on her hand tightened. “Shall we investigate?”
She nodded.
He took them further out of the world, so they could barely see their surroundings as they skimmed closer to the building. The bright lights around it had been placed to eliminate shadowed corners. The faint shapes of guards paced around the exterior.
Dahli gave her a questioning look. She nodded again. Then, when the guards’ attention was elsewhere briefly, they plunged through a wall.
On the other side was a uniform greyness. As Dahli brought them closer to the world, the grey darkened and Rielle began to worry that he was going to emerge within something solid. Then shapes materialised. She could make out a bed. A man lay under the covers. Eyes clo
sed. Chest rising and falling slowly
To Rielle’s surprise Dahli brought them fully into the world. She tried to refresh her lungs quietly by slowly sucking in and releasing a deep breath, but the rush of air seemed loud in the space. Dahli didn’t make a sound. His expression was distracted. Following his lead, she searched for minds, but they were in the void still and she found nothing.
Still holding her hand, Dahli led her to the door. He moved out of the world slightly and pushed his head through it, then moved forward and drew Rielle through.
They were in a corridor. Dahli returned to the world again. He crept forward, Rielle following. The corridor ended in a staircase, so they started to descend. At the bottom they reached a door, and simultaneously passed the edge of an inner area of magic. Suddenly Rielle could sense clearly that a guard was standing on the other side of the door. The man was full of anticipation as his shift was about to end and he longed for a meal and sleep.
Dahli’s breath caught. Rielle looked at him.
“He’s here.”
The words were more mouthed than spoken. Rielle searched beyond the nearby guard for other minds and found a few more weary guards, and then the befuddled thoughts of a handful of sleepers.
Were these the inventors? From the guards’ minds she found the answer: yes. They regarded their prisoners with wary respect. Many did not cause trouble because Kettin had blackmailed them. A few had no loved ones to protect but were easily cowed with threats. One had tried to escape once, setting his machines on the guards, but had been found and tortured to dissuade the others from making similar attempts.
Rielle guessed that Dahli had caught Zeke’s name in the mind of a guard slowly pacing a room full of beds, mentally accounting for each prisoner as he passed them. She searched for the captives’ minds. All were asleep. One was dreaming. Rielle had always found watching dreams simultaneously disconcerting and fascinating. Unexpectedly clear thoughts could appear among the strange disjointed imaginings within dreams. Sometimes the dreamer knew they were dreaming. Sometimes they could change the dream.
While she had grown used to spying on the thoughts of others, looking at other people’s dreams always felt like prying. The young man was dreaming about machines, however. A nightmare of sorts. He was trying to disable a dangerous error, but everything he did made it worse.
Then a bell rang out, and suddenly he was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling of a room, hearing groans from the other beds.
I’m awake, he thought. Still living. Another day survived. Another day to get through. It was Zeke, but a different Zeke than the one she had known. Not just older, but changed. Both wounded and scarred. He waited for the guilt and horror to sweep over him, as it did every morning, and pass. Thoughts of ideas he’d had to modify and improve machines, which the stronger sorcerers had seen in his mind and then forced him to develop. But at least I don’t have to do that now. Though what Kettin wants me to do feels wrong, too. He did not want to think about it until he had to, so he concentrated only on the present.
Dahli’s hand pressed on Rielle’s shoulder, bringing her attention back to her surroundings. Noises were coming from all around, and she understood that the bell had indicated the start of the day and change of shift. The house was full of people waking up and starting to move about.
She could feel the tension in Dahli from the pressure of his hand. He did not move or retreat into the place between worlds, however. Then footsteps sounded at the top of the stairs. They had to move or be discovered. The darkened staircase faded slightly and they slipped through a wall as Dahli took them sideways. On the other side was a storeroom, rows of shelving dividing the shadowy space. The air that surrounded them again was laced with a mix of pungent, tangy and metallic smells.
Again, Dahli remained still, only his breathing quickening as he watched and waited. Rielle sent her senses out again. Footsteps and minds told her the person who had descended the stairs was the closest guard’s replacement. Others came down to take their shifts, or leave, but a few remained. Whoever had organised their schedule had sensibly made sure that guard changes didn’t all happen at the same time.
Zeke followed his roommates to the dining table. She looked into the minds of the other inventors. Some were jealous. He had Kettin’s favour, such as it was. His work gained him special privileges. They didn’t know what it was, and assumed it was some even more deadly machine.
The inventors ate. None of them spoke to Zeke, who did not seem to mind. When they were done, they headed to one of three laboratories, the closest one next to the storeroom she and Dahli were hiding in. In each waited a sorcerer – one of Kettin’s followers. They scanned their charges’ minds looking for awareness of new ideas for machines, or plans to escape. Rielle turned her attention to Zeke, who was alone but for the sorcerer in charge of him. Through Zeke’s eyes she watched him scan the room, taking in the parts and tools still in the places he’d left them, his thoughts tracing their purpose. His attention finally landed upon the machine he was developing… and Rielle’s heart stopped.
It was Tyen’s humanoid. The one he’d made in an abandoned attempt to provide Vella with a body.
No, it isn’t, she realised a moment later. It’s different. Though she did not clearly recall the details of the machine she’d smashed, it hadn’t been as sleek and strangely beautiful as this one. Zeke could not help admiring it, even as it filled him with loathing. Kettin wanted it to be magnificent, to enchant as well as terrify.
And Rielle understood that Kettin wanted to be the machine. Tyen had never found a way to create a mind for his humanoid. Kettin wasn’t interested in developing one for hers. She wanted, instead, to replace her body with a mechanical one. Finding a way was Zeke’s task. He felt sick as he thought of the young man who had died the previous day during his tests, and Rielle shuddered in sympathy. How many people had he killed in his experiments now? Even one is too many.
Nausea rose, and he hastily turned towards the door. The sorcerer watching him rolled her eyes.
“Again?”
“Yes,” he choked.
“Go on then.”
She followed him as he hurried towards the bathroom, his stomach’s insistence that it needed to reject his breakfast growing ever more powerful.
Rielle looked at Dahli. His eyes were bright.
“Ready?” he murmured.
“What about the sorcerer?”
“I’ll handle her. You grab Zeke.”
She swallowed. “What about the other inventors?”
He shook his head. “Zeke’s best chance is for you to get him away as quickly as possible. They must have a defence in place for rescue attempts. The best we can do is strike quickly and travel fast. Trying to save the others will only slow us down. Unless you have any better ideas?”
“No,” she admitted. She narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you going to do to his guard?”
He stared back at her. “She is not going to leave his side, and she’ll report his rescue as soon as she is able to. We kill her and we get a head start out of here.”
“Or you could simply knock her unconscious.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but hurried footsteps sounded from outside the room, growing rapidly louder. Dahli moved them into the toilet, then stepped into the space next to the closed door. No walls for privacy hid the seats on which the users perched when relieving themselves, so there was no other place to hide. Rielle slipped behind Dahli just in time.
The door opened. Zeke rushed over to one of the toilets and threw up. A woman followed, her attention on the inventor.
Dahli simply reached out and took hold of her wrist.
And the pair disappeared.
A moment later a different bell rang out. Seeking minds, Rielle found a guard’s and read that it was an alarm warning about an intruder. Searching further, she found the mind of a sorcerer who had just warned the rest that he had found a fresh path into the house on his rounds.
Z
eke turned around, wiping his mouth, and stopped as he saw Rielle standing where he thought the sorcerer had been. He sucked in a breath.
“Ri—” he began.
She dashed forward, grabbed his arm and pushed out of the world before any sorcerers had a chance to read his mind.
The path Dahli had taken out of the world was easy to find and follow. Even as she sped along it, she sensed other minds in the place between worlds. She was only half aware of Zeke’s expression changing from surprise to joy, then to worry. He looked away, searching the whiteness of the place between worlds.
Dahli’s path ended abruptly. Retreating, she found that it simply stopped. He’d hidden his tracks. She could roam around looking for where it started again, but it would take too much time. Even if their pursuers did not manage to catch up before then, she and Zeke could only survive so long between worlds. Perhaps it would be better if she and Dahli stayed apart, splitting the attention of pursuers. She moved on, increasing her speed and heading towards the next world.
An ocean began to emerge from the whiteness. She skimmed to a place high above and created a sphere of stilled air to support them when they arrived.
“You found me!” Zeke exclaimed, throwing his arms tightly around her. “Thank you!”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she told him. “We still have to get you safely away from here.”
“We?” he repeated.
“Dahli. Tyen.”
Zeke pulled away a little. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know. But we agreed on a meeting place.” She adjusted the shape of her shield of air. If she travelled a distance within this world before she left it, it would be harder to follow her. “We will go there, but first I need to hide our tracks. Get a good grip on me. I’m going to move us – fast.”
Zeke nodded and grasped both of her arms. She did the same to him. Altering the sphere of stilled air around them to a lozenge shape, she sent them toward the horizon, accelerating quickly. A trail of white began to form behind them. She wasn’t sure why, and it stopped as she slowed again. She gritted her teeth. They would have to continue at a moderate speed or create a trail as effective as a path between worlds.
Maker's Curse Page 32
