Artemis Invaded (26 page)

“Ring! What are you doing? Is that thing fully charged? Didn't I tell you we were going to run some safety checks? It's too soon to go hanging it off your body. In any case, some parts are still missing!”

“If we wait too long, we wait too late,” Ring said, which was practically clear, especially for him. He stepped back and up, inserting his feet into the armored boot, his legs behind the knee guards. Next, he fit one arm beneath the shoulder guard, through the elbow brace, then moved his fingers down into the hardened gloves. He stood for a moment, flexing his fingers. Griffin watched in fascination as the gauntlets moved as smoothly as if this was not the first time in five hundred years that anyone had worn them.

Next, Ring methodically closed the chest panel, then carefully fit the helmet into place, leaving the faceplate open. At the final click, a hum arose, soft in itself, but loud because it was so unexpected. In the wake of the hum, a glow began to rise from the suit, coalescing into a sparkling field the same color blue as the armor.

Momentarily, Griffin thought about telling Leto to cut the power, but he remembered what Terrell had reported. Certainly something splashing into Spirit Bay could be dismissed as unimportant, but what about that convocation of loremasters? What if they decided to send scouts to the prohibited areas to assure they hadn't been violated? Even if Griffin's own group had enough warning to move everyone inside Leto's complex, there would be no hiding that people had been camping in the area for weeks. He knew what he'd do in that situation, if he were a loremaster.

I'd settle myself in and wait for someone to show themselves. I'd also alert my boss. Terrell isn't a loremaster, but as a factotum he studied with them. I should ask him if the senior loremasters might have records that tell them how to get into these complexes. Maybe there's even another set of those crystal keys on file in some vault somewhere, waiting for the appropriate moment.

Time might indeed be running out.

The sparkling blue field flowed, filling in the armorless parts of the suit, creating a glorious whole that lacked the clunkiness of even the best modern power armor. Ring reached up and shut the visor. The faceplate showed a heart-shaped face, genderless, with large, slightly slanting oval eyes that now shone a brilliant metallic silver.

Griffin whooped aloud. They'd done it! For the first time since the fall of the Old Empire, a piece of intact seegnur technology was working—well, except for Leto, and possibly Artemis, but functioning intelligences and their peripherals were just not the same thing.

Terrell arrived just in time to see Ring step down from the squire. He put his hand on Griffin's arm but, other than how tightly he gripped, he gave no reaction. Eventually, Ring's voice, oddly sharpened, spoke: “Let us find out what this does or does not do. Poke the beehive with a stick. Trust me. I will not sting.”

“Shall we?” Griffin asked.

“I think we have to, don't we?” came Terrell's hesitant reply. “Let's poke the beehive.”

They quickly found that while they could touch the actual armor portions, when they tried to touch the connective field, hands and tools slid away as if they'd encountered greased glass. Griffin pitched a few stones at the spavek, softly at first, then with increasing force. They bounced off, more a hazard to him than to Ring. He contemplated tossing a spear or having Bruin shoot an arrow, but decided to wait until they had calculated whether the rebound would be a hazard to bystanders.

Terrell shook his head in wonder. “Someone wearing one of those suits would be unstoppable.”

“Only until he was fighting someone with similar defenses,” Griffin said. “That's the problem with armor. You're only invulnerable until you're not—and then, for a short while, you're probably even more vulnerable, because you've gotten used to thinking of yourself as immune to damage.”

The war games his siblings had played sprang to mind. Falkner was forever designing more and more elaborate weapons or vehicles. Thalestris and Siegfried were very good at turning these to their own use. Gaius and Boudicca preferred to assist, not command, though they made brilliant field tacticians. And Jada … Calm, quiet, domestic Jada … After a while, no one wanted her to play. Things turned nasty when she did.

When Ring started tramping around, every awkward step a threat to the terminals and devices in the lab, Leto reluctantly revealed that there was an arena designed for testing the spaveks. Ring stomped through the door Leto slid open, his gait more and more steady with every stride. Griffin wondered if some of his awkwardness had been faked, meant to prompt Leto into her offer. The testing arena was vast, opening out like a funnel so that the upper areas were wider than those below.

“Since this chamber was designed for testing,” Leto said, a note of pride in her little girl voice, “the walls are very strong and the ceiling can be raised to permit limited flight testing.”

“Today,” Griffin said, “we stay on the ground. No flying, Ring. Understand?”

“I would not challenge the sun,” came the calm reply. “For today it is enough to walk and run.”

He did this and more. Terrell suggested that they see how much manual dexterity Ring possessed. At first, Ring was incredibly clumsy, dropping items. Then, between one attempt and the next, his touch became very precise. When he picked up and wrote with a stylus that Griffin would have found difficult to manipulate if he had been wearing gloves, Terrell shouted in astonished pleasure.

“How did you do that, Ring?”

“I put my mind to it,” Ring said, his voice rich with satisfaction. “Always I have been told ‘Put your mind to it.' I have never found it possible before this.”

“You seem more…” Terrell hesitated, clearly not wishing to give offense. “More focused. I haven't seen you cover your eyes once.”

Ring shook his head, the armored helmet with its silvery eyes moving with a grace that he had never shown in his own body. “I am where I am, doing what I am doing. For now, this is enough. Tomorrow, I would like to try the weapons. Leto, I perceive there is a safe place for such tests, yes?”

Leto responded, her child's voice holding a peculiar politeness Griffin had never heard before, not even when she had first accepted him as the closest thing to a seegnur she could find. She sounded stunned, as if Ring's actions were causing her to reevaluate not only him, but the entire situation.

“The firing range is designed both for real and simulated combat scenarios. It opens off this arena. I will apply myself to discovering how many applications can be activated within my current limitations.”

Griffin felt excitement rising, his earlier reluctance completely banished. “Why wait? Let's try it now! Even if the range isn't fully activated, we can learn a few things.”

“Not now,” Ring said, doing something that caused the force field to fade, then reaching up to take off the helmet. “It's suppertime.”

Griffin was about to protest when the sound of Kipper's bare feet running down the tunnel reached his ears and he realized that his own stomach was growling in response.

“Wow!” the boy gasped, looking up at Ring. “That's amazing! You can really wear that stuff, make it move?” Then he collected himself. “Bruin sent me to remind you three that it is nearly dinnertime. We have lamb, roasted cattail tubers, and wild carrots.”

“Good,” Ring said softly. “My favorites. And I am very, very hungry. Very, very hungry indeed.”

*   *   *

Adara and Sand Shadow didn't leave for Ridgewood immediately, since Adara wanted to make sure Bruin had extra game and firewood to hold him until her return. The supplies Terrell had brought with him from Crystalaire should do the rest.

After all, it was my idea to come here, not his. He should be at home in Shepherd's Call, dispensing wisdom to his students and enjoying the fruits of summer
.

She spent some hours of darkness foraging, then catnapped until breakfast. After breakfast, she and Sand Shadow went out once more. Midday, they curled up and got some solid sleep, awakening as Kipper went to bring out the group in Leto's complex. Over dinner, huntress and puma listened as the men babbled about the breakthrough with the blue spavek, then prepared to depart.

“Unless the weather slows us down,” Adara said, shouldering her pack, “look for us in six to eight days. Kipper, Honeychild, I'm counting on you to keep my old bear and these young bucks out of trouble.”

“I promise!” Kipper said, the expression on his face so intense that Adara found herself regretting her words. Honeychild took Adara far less seriously. The bear made grumbly noises and scratched at her belly with long claws polished from grubbing about in these new meadows.

Adara gave Bruin a kiss on one bristly cheek, saw the look on Terrell's face and gave each of the other men a quick hug. “Don't make a fuss. I'll be back before you have time to miss me.”

“Don't count on it,” she heard Terrell mutter, but he was smiling as he said it.

Adara and Sand Shadow made good time that first night. They'd hunted throughout this area and knew the game trails. Whenever possible, Adara avoided places where she'd leave footprints. She didn't know if anyone would be looking for them, but she hadn't forgotten Julyan's attack on Griffin back at the Trainers. Neither Julyan nor the Old One struck her as the types to give up.

The next several days' travel were rather less swift. The storm seemed hooked on the mountain peaks and stubbornly refused to move on. As she hiked, water dripping on her nose from the peak of the hood of the rain cloak she was now very grateful Bruin had insisted she take, Adara found herself wondering if the rain was Artemis's way of showing her displeasure that Adara and Sand Shadow continued to resist her hints that they inhale some of her spores.

But that's ridiculous,
Adara thought.
She's still working on getting herself reoriented on ground level. She can't control storms.

Nonetheless, the idea persisted.
Being in a demiurge relationship with Sand Shadow was—is—enough of a challenge, but at least neither of us can dominate the other. Each of us is better at some things; each of us has a lot to contribute. How could the relationship be the same with Artemis, especially when she finishes recovering? I don't want to be arms, legs, and mouthpiece for a powerful force. Would I even be me anymore? That's what keeps bothering me.

Despite the rain, the pair still arrived in the Ridgewood area more quickly than they would have following the roads. Not wanting to be seen—if the Old One was looking for them, he would have learned of their earlier visit here—they waited until dark to make their final descent. There were lights on in several of the buildings, but Adara headed directly to the main house.

The house I might have called home,
she thought with a trace of her old resentment. She pushed it away.
And where I now know I will be welcome.

The rain had left the summer evening pleasant and refreshingly cool, though the day's heat still vibrated from the buildings. The sound of her mother's spinning wheel and the rise and fall of her father's voice as he read poetry aloud were familiar, not just from her recent visit but now, Adara realized, from her own childhood. She followed the sounds to one of the porches that wrapped around the house and found her parents, Hektor, and Elektra doing handwork.

Adara spoke softly, so as not to startle them. “May I come to the fire?” The greeting of travelers met in the wilderness.

Everyone jumped just a little. Akilles set his book in his lap and slid off his reading glasses, better to peer into the darkness beyond the firelight.

“Adara, Sand Shadow,” said Neenay, slowing her spinning, rising to give her daughter a kiss on the cheek. “Come to the fire. Have you eaten?”

“I have. I even brought some snowberries to sweeten my welcome.”

“Those grow higher up,” Hektor said, accepting the bag at his father's direction. “You must be soaked. The rain was heavier there.”

“Not too bad,” Adara replied. “My rain cloak did a fair job.”

“Are you alone?” asked Elektra, looking into the darkness. “I mean, except for Sand Shadow?”

“If you're hoping to find your swains,” Adara said, “I left them far behind. It was faster for me to travel alone.”

“Make yourself comfortable,” Akilles suggested, “and tell us why speed mattered. Hektor, Elektra, why don't you find a bowl for those berries and a towel for your sister. She looks damper than she'll admit.”

“We want to hear her story, too,” Elektra said with a trace of stubbornness.

“If Adara wants you to hear, you will,” Neenay replied, her voice holding steel to shear any stubbornness. “Go!”

“I don't mind them hearing at all,” Adara said, making sure her words would carry, “though I would ask that news of our visit won't go outside of the family. We have enemies and I would rather you not be drawn into our quarrel.”

“Reasonable,” Akilles said. “What brings you here again? I hope none of your group is hurt.”

“Everyone is well,” Adara assured him, “even thriving. However, we've been wondering about events back in Spirit Bay. We left the place while it was very unsettled and…”

Hektor, coming out bearing a tray holding the bowl of snowberries, a pitcher of something that smelled wonderfully of peaches, a wedge of cheese, and half a loaf of bread, said, “And you want to know how things are before you go back that way? Makes sense to me.”

Elektra hurried after not only with a towel but with a loose housedress that probably belonged to Nikole. As she handed these to Adara, she produced a heavy brush, used for grooming the dogs, and a battered towel.

“Can I brush Sand Shadow?”

The puma responded with thrumming purr.