By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 (36 page)

Read By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3
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“Can you follow them?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll open the door. Ready … with me … now.”
She didn’t have time to argue; she could sense him moving away, along the path marked out by the bright places in the rock, and knew that he expected her to follow.
It’s just like going from one light to another on a dark street,
she told herself, and took a step forward.
The first step was the hardest—like forcing herself to leave a safe place for the long walk home, and not daring to look back over her shoulder. After that the lights came closer and closer together, until she passed the final marker and knew that she was through.
Klea opened her eyes.
Walls of rough stone pressed in close on either side, and she could feel cold rock against her back. A faint white light shone nearby, pale at first but growing brighter, illuminating the long, tunnel-like passage that stretched out ahead of her into the dark.
She looked over to her right. Owen was there—the white light was coming from his staff.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Still inside the base somewhere, I hope.”
“You mean you don’t know for sure?”
He sighed. “Omniscience was never part of the job description. This base is full of doors and passages, and not all of them lead to places that I want to think about right now.”
“Oh.” Klea thought about the solid wall at her back. She couldn’t feel the lights anymore—maybe they only worked in one direction. “What do we do?”
“We go on,” said Owen. “And look for more doors.”
They followed the narrow passage for some time. Klea couldn’t tell if they were rising, descending, or keeping to a level path somewhere far beneath the surface of the asteroid. Doors—some of dull metal, some of wood—led away from the sides of the tunnel from time to time, but none of them opened to a physical touch, and none had the interior markers that would allow passage.
She lost track of time long before they reached the final door. This one, unlike all the others, stood ajar. Whatever lay beyond it was hidden in darkness.
“It looks like this is it,” Klea said. “If we end up right where we started—”
“I don’t think so.”
The door opened onto another passageway at right angles to the first. They followed the new passage for some time before coming to an open archway with a pale light beyond it. When they passed through the archway, they were once again in the long room with arched windows where they had begun their search.
“I told you,” said Klea. “Right where we started.”
“No,” Owen said. He glanced about the shadowy room with an abstracted expression. “Not really. It’s a mirror image of the room above.”
He crossed the room to the far door, the one that should have opened into the base’s sickbay, and touched the lockplate. The door slid open—but instead of medical equipment and storage cabinets, Klea saw a paneled room with a great fireplace of rough stone. A polished slab of the same pale grey rock had been set into the back of the hearth, and there were pictures carved into the stone.
Owen was already kneeling by the empty hearth, his hands tracing the carvings, by the time Klea got up the courage to enter. She hurried to join him.
“What is it?” she asked.
He glanced up at her, then turned his attention back to the hearth. “The carvings are the royal arms of Entibor and the personal arms of House Rosselin. And this is another door.”
Klea hesitated for a moment, then bent and touched the carved slab. Owen was right; she could feel the way-markers glowing inside the rock.
“Do we go through?” she asked.
“I think we have to,” he said. “This is the other side of reality here. If we don’t go through, we can’t get back.”
She closed her eyes, the way she had before, and stepped forward. When she opened them again, she and Owen were standing in the memory-room, with the first rays of moonlight coming in through the row of tall windows, and tall candles in twisted silver holders burning on the long table. There was a white cloth on the table as well; and porcelain plates flanked by silver cutlery; and Beka Rosselin-Metadi sitting at the head of the table and Ignaceu LeSoit at its foot.
“Just in time for dinner,” Owen’s sister said.
 
Llannat stared at the Mage kneeling on the deck before her, and fought against a rising sense of panic. Of all the things she’d expected to happen, this was perhaps the last.
Now what am I supposed to do?
she thought.
Kill him while he’s kneeling there, and try to escape?
To where?
answered the voice of reason inside her head. And another, colder voice said,
What use would it be to run? They already know what you really are—and you do, too.
What I really am. I should have known a long time ago: if the student of an Adept is an Adept, the student of a Magelord is surely a Mage.
Revulsion came over her like a dark wave, blurring her vision and threatening to beat her down onto the deck. So strong was the feeling that she contemplated asking the kneeling Mage to kill her now and put an end to everything—but the moment passed. The dark tide went out again, and she knew that, Mage or Adept, she was still Llannat Hyfid of Maraghai, and she was not alone. She would have known it, if she were alone.
She said aloud, “What has become of the others who were in this ship with me?”
“They have been taken away, Mistress,” the Mage replied. “Those who were hurt are being tended.”
“Were any killed?”
“No, Mistress. The First of my Circle forbade it.”
“I want to speak with them. Come, take me to them.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
The Mage retrieved his staff, stood, and began to walk away. Llannat followed.
“Whose ship is this, Mistress?” the Mage asked as they walked through the passageways of
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter.
“Mine,” Llannat said, without thinking. Then she paused. She’d given a false answer this time—at least, false as the Gyfferan Local Defense Force would have understood the matter—but only because in her own mind she knew the answer to be true. The
Daughter
was hers by right of inheritance. She would have to be more careful what she said from now on.
But the Mage asked no more questions. He merely said, “Ah,” and continued to lead the way to the
Daughter
’s main hatch. The Deathwing hung suspended above the brightly lit deck of a landing bay, gripped in metal claws extending from the overhead. They climbed down a temporary stairway to the deck, then went via white-painted passageways to a cabin much like the one she had left behind on the Deathwing.
The Mage ushered her in, bowing, and said, “If it pleases you, Mistress, wait here. My First shall attend you shortly.”
“And if it doesn’t please me?”
Her host looked startled, or at least as startled as anyone who wore a full-face mask of black plastic could manage to look. “You are free to come and go as you will, Mistress. If you require anything, it shall be provided.”
“I want to see the others from my ship,” Llannat said. “Now.”
“Yes, Mistress,” the Mage said. “Pray accompany me.”
He led the way again, this time to another level, and from there to a series of rooms. He slid open the first door and stepped back. A force field shimmered across the opening. Llannat looked in—there were Lieutenant Vinhalyn, Chief Yance, and all the rest of the
Daughter
’s crew, but not Ari.
“Is this everyone?” Llannat asked.
“There was another,” the Mage responded. “A big man. He was hurt in the fighting. But he will be well.”
“What will you do with these?”
“What you command, Mistress.”
“Llannat Hyfid!” Lieutenant Vinhalyn called out through the force field. “Whose side are you on?”
“The right one, I hope,” Llannat called back. “I’m playing all this by ear.” To the Mage she said, “Show these the honor you show me.”
“As you wish,” the Mage responded.
He flipped a panel control and the force field vanished.
“Now,” Llannat said, “take me to the other man. I wish to see him. Then I will speak with your First.”
The Mage bowed his head. “So it shall be. Do you wish your
geaerith
for the interview?”
“
Geaerith
?” Llannat asked.
“Your … ah, your mask,” the Mage replied, and tapped his plastic face covering.
“Yes,” Llannat said. “I suppose so. Yes, fetch me one.”
 
Klea had taken a seat at the long table, as had Owen, but nobody, so far, had done so much as lift the covers off the serving dishes. There was red wine in crystal goblets, which nobody was drinking. Klea had taken a sip of hers, enough to determine that it was a long way from purple aqua vitae or Tree Frog beer, and had let the goblet stand untouched thereafter.
Jessan and Doctor syn-Tavaite were still missing and the Domina was getting restless. Finally Beka shoved back her chair and stood up.
“I could have sworn Nyls was too practical to miss dinner,” she said. “I’ll have to send the robots—”
Before she could finish, the far wall of the dining room shimmered as the holoprojection rearranged itself into a carved wooden doorway. The door opened, and Jessan and syn-Tavaite entered the room.
“I thought you were lost,” Beka said.
“Not exactly.” The Khesatan moved to stand by the table at the Domina’s left hand, but he didn’t sit down. Instead, he picked up a glass of wine and drank off almost half of it without stopping. “We found another way into the base—that false door is a real one if you’ve got the Summer Palace landing field illusion up and running in the docking bay. And after
that
, Doctor syn-Tavaite showed me her laboratory.”
“For making replicants?”
The Domina’s voice sounded brittle, almost uncertain—Klea wondered if she was, after all, afraid of what she hoped to do.
Funny—the way Owen talks, his sister isn’t afraid of anything.
Jessan drained the rest of his wine. “Yes.”
“Was there—”
“A replicant in a stasis box? No.”
“You’re sure you looked everywhere?”
Klea thought she saw Jessan shudder. “Oh, yes.”
All this time, Owen had been looking at the new doorway with a curious expression. “Which room is on the other side of that wall?” he asked. “Is it the laboratory?”
Jessan shook his head. “No—it’s another room from the Summer Palace. The Great Hall, if I remember my art history correctly. Allegorical frescoes on the ceiling, armorial carvings on the hearth … .”
“The hearth.” Owen stood up. “I wonder—”
The door opened for him when he touched it. Through the gap, Klea saw the paneled room with the great fireplace, brightly lit by glow-globes in wrought-metal sconces along the walls.
“Well, well, well,” said the Domina. “Today has been just
full
of pleasant surprises.”
Owen was already standing by the hearth when Klea and the others joined him. “Here,” he said, pointing to the carved patterns that he had called the arms of Entibor and House Rosselin. “Look behind here.”
“I don’t think so,” Jessan replied. “It’s all illusion, remember?”
The Khesatan extended both hands into the projection that made up the wooden overmantel. “There’s nothing back here but smooth wall.” He moved his hands over to the right, and they sank into the embroidered tapestry that overlaid the rich wooden panels. “Nothing here either. No cloth, no wood, just metal.”
“We’ll see,” said Beka. She raised her voice. “Base: switch off the holoprojections.”
The illusion vanished. Klea saw that the entire room was a featureless cube of polished steel. The only relief from the stark blankness was provided by sliding doors at either end and recessed light panels in the ceiling. The steel walls were all of one piece, unmarked and unmarred.
“All right, Owen,” Beka said. “Do you still say this is it?”
“It has to be.”
The Domina frowned at the steel walls for a moment, then reached inside her jacket and pulled out a marking stylus. “Base: turn the projections back on.”
The fireplace, the hangings, the leaded-glass windows all reappeared. “Here we go,” Beka said. “Let’s see what happens.”
With the stylus, she outlined the carved slab. The top of the scribing tool appeared to sink into the stone and vanish without leaving a mark, but she kept on working. When she’d finished, she took a step backward.

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