A Working of Stars (29 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: A Working of Stars
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“There’s one thing we can do, though,” said Arekhon. “We’ll need an off-world rendezvous point in case things go bad on Eraasi and we get separated on the way out. We might as well make it Sombrelír.”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” Karil said. “We only have a canned course from the Entiboran side. And setting up a course by hand coming from the other direction isn’t something most of us can do—I could, maybe, with a big enough comp system on board; and ’Rekhe, you might be able to—”
“Once, maybe. Not now.”
“That leaves us with one person who can set a course by hand, and that’s me. Anybody who isn’t riding with me when it all falls apart is going to be flat out of luck.”
Maraganha shook her head. “Don’t borrow trouble, my grandmother always said. The trick is to somehow make the planet visible to Mageworlders—that’s your lot—looking around the Void for emergence points.”
“Void-marks,” Arekhon said. “The fleet-Circles set them, for the families’ star charts. But Garrod was the Void-walker in the Demaizen Circle, not me.”
“Don’t worry,” said Maraganha. “We’ll do it together.”
 
 
Kief sat on the uncomfortable plastic chair in Ayil syn-Arvedan’s tiny kitchen, waiting in silence while she brewed up a pot of
uffa.
He heard the kettle singing as the water inside came to a boil, and then the kitchen filled with the sharp blossoming scent of
uffa
as she poured the water over the leaves. She steeped it meticulously by the kitchen timer, and poured it out into two cups when it was done. She kept one cup, and handed the other across the table to him.
He tasted the
uffa
cautiously. But his new body seemed to be growing reconciled to ingesting food and drink in this manner; its rebellion this time was only a fleeting uneasiness, and soon passed.
Finally Ayil spoke. “So. Kief. Am I looking at some kind of illusion here, or is what I’m seeing actually flesh-and-blood real?”
“It’s real.”
“I’m not even going to ask how you did it,” she said. “Just—did you
mean
for this to happen?”
“It’s a long story. But yes.”
Her eyes widened a bit, but otherwise her expression remained calm. “That’s playing the game at a higher level than I can even imagine,” she said. “And I suppose now it’s gotten you into some kind of trouble … why else would you turn up on my doorstep at this hour, wearing another man’s face?”
Kief finished his
uffa
in a long gulp. The hot liquid had brought with it an unexpected rush of new energy—this body, unlike his old one, was not yet habituated to the drink’s stimulant qualities.
“You’re right,” he said, setting down the empty cup. “The people I’m working with may possibly have decided that they’d sooner keep me locked away someplace than have me wandering around loose.”
“Why?”
“I’m not certain. But I decided not to wait for them and ask.”
“Good idea.” Ayil stood and put the cups into the sink. “I’ll go get some sheets and a pillow.”
“Thanks.” A thought struck him. “Do you mind if I check the news channels? There may be—there almost certainly is—stuff going on that I don’t know about, and I’d like to see if it’s common knowledge yet.”
“Go right ahead. The display switch is on the desk.”
She disappeared, presumably into the bedroom or the necessarium or wherever the sheets-and-towels closet was. Kief went into the apartment’s main room, which held a couch, a guest chair, a low table—piled high with stacks of paper—and a fully equipped desk. A scholar living in the Institute Towers wouldn’t have anything less than state-of-the-art
He found the switch and flipped it on, and watched the display take form above the desktop. He kept the sound low; so far there wasn’t anything that looked like it might be of interest. Weather reports, mainly … “mild and temperate in Hanilat, chilly in the northern and central districts.” Ayil returned with her arms full of bedclothes; he heard her making up the couch behind him, thumps and rustles and the whisper of cloth on cloth.
The news channel changed over to doing sports scores, long strings of names and numbers that he wasn’t interested in; he never had been interested, either, though Ty and Delath in the old days had argued the merits of city versus country teams for almost half of every year. He wished he could remember now what sport it was that they had so enjoyed.
Somewhere in the room a voice comm buzzed. Ayil reached past him and picked up the handset. Kief listened to her voice with half his concentration and tracked the changing news display with the other.
“‘Adal? … What are you doing, calling me this time of night? … I see … I see … frankly, ’Adal, I think you’ve gone crazy … no, I haven’t seen him anywhere … I’ll let you know if he turns up, all right? … Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back to sleep.”
He heard the click of the handset settling back in its cradle, and said, “’Adal?”
“Inadal,” she said. “My brother. You were right; they’re looking for you.”
“Thanks for keeping quiet about—”
He broke off. The news channel wasn’t doing weather and sports any longer, and there were new pictures in the display: a small blond woman; a masked woman dressed all in black and glitter; and a man. A man with his face. With his body’s face.
“ … from security cameras at the port,” the voice-over was saying. “If you see any of these people, please notify …”
The image came from the port. Which meant that the man-with-his-face had been seen leaving Hanilat, possibly leaving Eraasi, in the company of a pretty blonde who almost had to be the kidnapped sus-Dariv bride—though she hadn’t been looking particularly kidnapped at the time.
And then there was the third person, the woman in black. Her face was masked, but something about the way she moved stirred up memories at the back of his mind … “Ayil. Make it go back and play that last bit again.”
Ayil fiddled with the desktop controls, backtracking the news stream to the sequence showing the man-with-Kief’s-face and his two companions. This time Kief concentrated on the unknown woman.
He knew somebody … had once known somebody … who moved like that, and who always wore black. But it was hard to be sure, with the glitter in her dark hair and her facial features hidden by the mask.
“Could you do it again, please?” Kief said. “Just the dark woman? And larger?”
“Trying my best.”
Ayil tinkered with the controls some more, blocking out the man-with-his-face and the sus-Dariv heiress completely. Kief watched the larger image of the dark woman alone—she had a compact, well-collected body, and he had known somebody once who moved with that same economical grace. Then she turned slightly, and he saw what was in her hand, and had been hidden all this time against the dark fabric of her garment. A Mage’s staff. And recognition came.
Iulan Vai.
 
 
Arekhon and Maraganha set the Void-marks in the hotel room in Sombrelír. It wasn’t the sort of place Arekhon would have picked for a working, even a small one: high ceilings, a polished wooden floor, tall window-doors opening out onto a balcony with a view of sunset and the bay. A lazy ceiling fan turned slowly overhead. The hotel provided luxury, it was true, but faded luxury—a glossy establishment nearer to the spaceport would have had environmental controls and imported entertainment gear. Arekhon liked the seaside hotel better; it reminded him of the summer cottage he was increasingly sure he would never see again.
It wasn’t a proper meditation room, though. He said as much, fretfully, and Maraganha replied, “We have to do it on-planet, not on-ship.”
The Void-walker, for the first time since he’d met her, was looking a bit tense herself. He found this disturbing; the more so when he remembered her claim that he himself had once been—and someday would be—her teacher.
But this, at least, she is teaching me. Does this mean that the working binds time together, as well as the galaxy? And if I looked at the eiran properly, could I see it?
“What about marking out the circle?” he asked her. “I don’t think the management will be happy if we mess up their nice hardwood floor.”
“Draw it in your mind, Arekhon
etaze
.” It wasn’t quite a reprimand, he thought, but it was close. “You of all people should know that the circle is an aid to meditation, and nothing more.”
The rebuke was a just one, and he bowed his head in acceptance. “You’re right,
etaze.
When do we begin?”
“Whenever you want to.”
“Then let it be now.” He knelt on the cool, matte-polished floorboards and laid out his staff in front of him, a cubit and a half of ebony and silver wire. Handmade on Ninglin, it had been, made at the request of the First of the sus-Peledaen fleet-Circle, as the Circle’s parting gift to a young Mage and fleet-apprentice who was leaving the family’s service. Arekhon had taken the staff with him to Demaizen, and in all the years since, he had never seen its like.
Until now, when Maraganha knelt opposite him and put down her staff only inches away from his—and he saw what he had been willfully not seeing, before.
Yes,
he thought.
The great working does bind time as well as space, and the proof of it lies here before me.
He shivered at the magnitude of it all.
If Garrod had known the scope of what we were undertaking, would we even have dared—?
Such questions, he knew, could not be answered. He put speculation aside and said to Maraganha, “I’m ready.”
She nodded. “Then let’s begin.”
Arekhon closed his eyes and tried to slip into the usual mental landscape of his workings. The attempt failed—Maraganha was leading them this time, and they were standing in the grey mist of the Void. He wondered if they were completely there, or if they were there in spirit only; with difficulty he resisted the temptation to drop into double-vision and see.
Maraganha pointed out into the Void with her staff. The direction seemed random; there was nothing to distinguish any quarter of the Void from another.
“We go there,” she said.
The mist parted in response to a wind he couldn’t feel, and he saw the façade of their seaport hotel emerge from the fog only a little distance off. The front door of the hotel stood open, and save for themselves, nobody was in sight.
They traversed an expanse of chilly fog, and entered. The hotel lobby was dim and empty. No clerks stood at the front desk behind the long wooden counter; no guests relaxed in the high-backed, deep-cushioned wicker chairs; and beyond the swagged-back window curtains he saw no view of the sunlit bay, only grey nothingness pressing against the glass.
“We set the Void-marks here?” Arekhon’s voice echoed strangely in the silent room.
Maraganha shrugged. “Apparently so. I didn’t go into the Void looking for a good hotel—but when I pointed toward where the marks would be, this is what we got.”
“Sometimes it occurs to me that the universe has a sense of humor,” Arekhon said. “But I’m not certain I understand all of its jokes.”
“I’m fairly certain I don’t understand any of them,” Maraganha said. She went down on one knee and struck the wood of the lobby floor with her staff. “What I will, becomes so.
Here.”
A bright glowing spot sprung into being on the polished floor, sparkling like an inset gem. Maraganha stood up and looked at Arekhon expectantly. “Now you.”
Copying her actions, he knelt and struck the mark. “What I will, becomes so.
Here.”
In response he saw a sudden flash of white light, as much inside him as all around him, and then he felt it—the presence of a new beacon shining out across the Void.
The satisfaction of accomplishment faded in an instant, pushed away by fear. This world was too pleasant a place to be threatened by danger from the homeworlds—dangers like the heavy-armed warships of the sus-Peledaen, the ones his brother had started building a decade or more ago.
Arekhon scrambled ungracefully to his feet. “We have to hide the marks somehow,” he insisted. “Not all the charts should read them—only ours. Can it be done?”
“This is the Void,” said Maraganha. “If that’s what we want, then it’s already done. But everything here comes with terms and conditions, and this means we’ll have to take the back way home.”
“The back way—I don’t understand.”
Maraganha pointed. “There.”
He followed the gesture. And at the back of the lobby, where there should have been stairs and elevator, he saw a door—a heavy thing of rough stone, two posts and a lintel, nothing like the rest of the room at all. Except that the rest of the room was gone now, and there was only the door, opening onto black.
Arekhon looked at it. “The back way. Right.”

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