By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 (41 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3
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“What’s on his path?”
“Gyfferan system space.”
“Match his velocity,” Metadi said. “Break EMCON. Signal to the fleet: when he jumps, we jump. Drop out close over Gyffer.”
 
The Void was cold grey fog—no sky, no land, no horizon. Light came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Llannat could feel the fog drawing the strength out of her as she stood. The silver cords were gone. She pulled off her mask and clipped it onto her belt, but the featureless grey non-place around her remained the same.
Owen was standing beside her. In his plain spacer’s coverall he seemed an unlikely figure to be Errec Ransome’s successor and Master of the Guild. But his strength was unmistakable, and so was the steady, uncompromising thread of his presence in the weave of the universe. She wondered what had persuaded him to give up the apprenticeship he’d always preferred, and claim mastery at last.
There was no time now to ask, however. Not with the Void leaching the power out of them with every breath they took.
“The Domina,” she said to Owen. “If Perada’s here, she’s been here for years. There’ll be nothing left to bring back.”
“Your teacher is guarding her. And for those not in-body, time means nothing. We’re the ones who need to worry.”
Llannat shivered. “How do you find somebody, though, when all places are the same place?”
“If all places are the same place,” Owen said, “then to make a journey is to arrive.” He pointed into the greyness seemingly at random. “There. See?”
She followed the gesture, and saw what looked like a black speck in the distance. “I didn’t see that before.”
“We weren’t going there before.”
They started moving through the mist toward the speck of darkness. As they approached, the speck turned from a dot level with their eyes to a flat black disk, and then to an orb hovering far up above them, like a black sun in a sky that never was. Another dark speck appeared before them: first a line, then a tower, jutting up like a black and broken tooth.
Llannat put out her hand to call a halt. The dark tower rose up from the mist before them, with more dark shapes in the mist hinting at walls to either side and a looming citadel behind. High in the air came a keening sound, as of some massive and hungry animal crying its need.
“I never saw this place,” she said. “And I’m not going in.”
“It’s the only place here,” Owen said. “It must be where we need to go.”
“No,” Llannat said. “It’s wrong; I can see the ugliness of it without needing a mask to make the patterns clearer. Whatever lives in there is dead beyond helping. You showed me doors, the times I saw you in trances and visions. Show us doors now.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Owen said.
“You do know,” Llannat said. “You have to know. Because if you can’t find us a way, we’ll die. And the Domina will never live.”
 
“Dropping out of hyper over the Gyfferan system,” reported the tactical action officer on RSF
Veratina
.
“Launch permission from dock one,” said the small-craft controller. “Shuttle away.”
“Very well,” General Metadi said. “Now where’s the Mage?”
“Getting sensor data,” the TAO said. “We’re in Gyfferan system space, all right. Hi-comms still down.”
“Find the bastard.”
“We’ve been spotted,” said the sensor tech. “Fire-control frequencies.”
“Evasive steering,” Metadi said. “Signal to all units, take loose line of bearing, two-four-zero on me. Fire independently. Target is Mage flagship. Make every shot count.”
“We’ve got EM flares up five,” said the sensor tech. “They evaluate as Space Force units attacking Mages.”
“ID units,” the TAO said.
“This is odd,” said the sensor tech. “Space Force units ID as members of Infabede Sector Fleet.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Metadi said. “All Mage units are hostile. All Infabede units are presumed hostile. Net Patrol, task force, and Gyffer units are friendlies. We have one target: the Mage flagship.”
“Mage flagship aye,” said the TAO. “
Forpin
reports under fire.” A pause. “Lost comms with
Forpin
.”
“Get me some speed,” Metadi said.
“We’re already pushing it, sir.”
“If we aren’t spattering tubes all over system space we aren’t pushing it hard enough.”
“Lost comms with
Darmyn
. Lost comms with
Aleys
.”
“Get an intercept course on that Mage,” Metadi said, leaning forward and pointing at the sphere of probability marking the unit he’d identified as the Mage flagship. “Take us up to jump speed, but do not jump. Run in realspace.”
“We can’t go at jump speed for that long,” the TAO protested. “We’ll start losing the engines.”
“Follow my orders,” Metadi replied. “I want to get this ship over there.”
“Jump speed aye.”
“Very well,” Metadi said. “Signal to Colonel Tyche: Commence boarding action. Execute.”
“Message to Colonel Tyche, aye,” the comms tech on the lightspeed board echoed.
“Now, this is the way to go,” Metadi said, leaning back again. “Just me and him, and all I need is one shot at him.”
“One shot’s all that we’re going to get,” the TAO said. “Mages are inbound Gyffer: tentative count on friendlies and unknowns show Mage numerical superiority.”
“That doesn’t concern me,” Metadi said. “This is what I drew my pay for from the Republic, all those years. I want to give them their money’s worth.”
 
“Show me a door,” repeated Llannat. “Show me a door now.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Owen said.
“You know,” Llannat said. “You have to know, because if you don’t know, we’ll die.” She paused. “You said you’d been in the Void before. Tell me what you saw.”
“I saw the dead, and I killed a Mage, and I went away hurt and bleeding. An Adept’s skills count for nothing in the Void.”
“That’s what they always told us, anyway,” Llannat said. “But even if you were pulled in here against your will, you found your own way out. How?”
“I followed the man I killed.”
“You followed him? Then we’ll follow you.”
Llannat concentrated on the man before her, in his worn grey spacer’s coverall with his staff in his hands. She remembered how the Mage she had fought in the Void had formed an ally out of the swirling mist, and how the dark tower had come when Owen looked for it.
It can be done
, she reassured herself.
I’ve seen it done.
Out of the mist beside them rose an image of Owen Rosselin-Metadi, sculpted of fog-smoke and the chilling vapor that was the substance of the Void. The phantom turned, running away into the mist.
It can be done. I did it.
There was no time left for thought—already the phantom Owen was lost in the swirling greyness. But his staff was blazing with white light, making a beacon for them in the shadows.
“Come on,” Llannat said. “We have to follow him.”
They started off again, running, following the bobbing white light in the mist. For a long, mind-deadening time the pursuit continued, while the cold and the mist burned away Llannat’s strength even further.
How does he do it?
Llannat wondered, casting a glance aside at Owen. He was moving in a steady, ground-eating stride, not even breathing hard. The light ahead grew neither nearer nor farther as they ran along. Llannat felt a pain growing in her side. She wasn’t sure how long she could keep on.
Then the light ahead vanished.
Owen halted. “Where—?”
Before he could finish the question, a shadow appeared in the greyness before them, an opening in the non-substance of this non-place. She hesitated, but Owen didn’t. Without breaking stride he entered the dark place and vanished, and rather than lose him she followed.
They were in a stone corridor, a deep passageway like those beneath the Adepts’ Retreat on Galcen. Doors of rough-finished wood opened from one side or another. The staff in Owen’s hands blazed white, illuminating the way.
“Only one of the doors is the right one,” Llannat said, and was sure that it was true. “Which one … we should know it when we get there.”
“I hope so. I doubt we’ll have a second chance.”
They went on. The corridor seemed to stretch out forever, far beyond the light cast by Owen’s staff. At last they came to a blank wall—a dead end, more of the same grey stone as the rest of the corridor.
“We missed it,” Owen said. “One of the doors we passed.”
“No,” Llannat said. She reached out with her noncorporeal senses, and felt
inside
the substance of the wall. And there they were—the markers to allow someone trained in the use of power to pass through the solid substance, as she had done long ago in the strange maze beneath the Professor’s asteroid.
“Here,” she told Owen. “Pass through here.”
“There’s no Power in the Void,” Owen said. “I can’t.”
“You have to. Do you want to rescue the Domina, or not?”
His face was pale in the light of his staff, and he shook his head in frustration. “I tell you, I can’t.”
“Then grab hold and let me take you,” Llannat said.
Own hesitated for a moment, then took hold of her wrist. She pressed her other hand against the stone and willed herself to sink inward, to become one with the material of the wall. She felt a brief instant of vertigo, oddly reminiscent of the discontinuity of a hyperspace jump. Then she passed through the wall and into the space beyond.
Bright light dazzled her eyes. She stood before the fireplace in the Summer Palace on Entibor, with the arms of Entibor and of House Rosselin carved in the stone behind her. Owen stood beside her in the sunlit room.
“Through this way,” she said, pointing. A note gonged through the air—a sound she recognized from her vision on board
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
. “That’s the alert. We don’t have much time.”
Together they passed from the fireplace room and into another just as luxurious, with high arched windows facing green-forested hills. A red bird flitted from tree to tree … . In the next instant there came a tremendous glare of blue-white light, and the room dissolved into dazzle before her eyes. There was a smell of smoke; the openwork carving of the table was smoldering where the light had struck. A moment later came a roar of sound as the windows blew in, showering glass splinters everywhere. Llannat felt them touch her body and pass harmlessly through, though each left a trail of pain in its wake, like the pain of the mist in the Void.
“Come on!” she screamed at Owen, pulling him by the arm. “This way!”
Out through the broken embrasures of the windows they went, down to the hillside below, where a swirl of red flame mixed with choking smoke. The smoke was grey, the grey mist of the Void. And the flame was the red glare of a staff, a Mage’s staff, held by a slightly-built, grey-haired man in dark trousers and a white, bloodstained shirt.
He bowed, and sketched a salute in the mist with his staff.
“Mistress Hyfid, you’ve arrived.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m here, Professor.”
 
THE VOID
 
I
N THE quiet of his quarters, Theio syn-Ricte sus-Airaalin carefully belted on his robes as arch-Mage. Not for him today the uniform of a Grand Admiral. When he joined his Circle in the meditation room, he would wear the proper garments of his rank, with every piece in place and each tie correctly tied.
Carefully he settled the black mask over his face and tightened the drawstrings of his hood to hold it closely in place. This was no time for the
geaerith
to slip askew. He would need to see the patterns as they developed.
Already they were there, teasing at the sides of his vision, coming unbidden—the pattern was shaping up well. Unless …
There was one tiny discordance far away from the center of the pattern, winking in and out of his peripheral vision, as if it weren’t real at all. If that interference spread—like the rings that followed a dropped stone spreading across a pond—if it spread, it could endanger everything, the careful plans of years and the fragile pattern just beginning to emerge.
The interference wasn’t coming from the strange Mage, nor yet from the young Domina. Those two were threads, powerful threads, in the weaving of the true pattern. The interference came from elsewhere—there seemed to be a flavor of Adeptry in it, but it was shadowed and obscure.
The source of the interference was moving about, somewhere on the ship … . sus-Airaalin extended his senses, but could not pin it down. Something else caught at his attention, absorbed it: a Mageworking, powerful but untutored, drawing the threads of the universe into a pattern of its own—a pattern that was, in fact, the missing part of the design he had struggled from the beginning to create. True peace, the goal so long desired and so long worked for.
But the working was not yet right—the strange Mage was doing everything by instinct, and not all the proper threads were in place. Without the last threads, the pattern could never be completed. Its fabric would fray and destroy the rest.
It
will
be completed
, sus-Airaalin thought.
As I told Lisaiet before, I have desired it, and it will be so.
He left his quarters and went, not to the meditation room after all, but to the cabin of the young Domina.
 
Llannat held out her arms to the Professor. “I’ve missed you,” she said.
“You’ve done all that was needful, and more,” the Professor said in his courtly voice. “But the end and the beginning of your duty is near.”
He clasped her briefly by the shoulders, then released her and stepped aside. The mist parted to reveal a fair woman dressed in white, wrapped in a hooded cloak of thick white wool, like a shroud.
“This is the one you’ve come to find,” the Professor said. “The game was nearly lost—but now there is a chance to win it for good and all.”
Llannat knelt before the woman. “Domina,” she said. “I have to tell you what I’ve seen: the Mages have come with ships of war against the Republic. You are needed.”
“Mother,” Owen said. His voice was low and uncertain—Llannat had never heard him sound that way before. “We’re here to bring you back to the living world, if you will come.”
“I will come,” the woman said.
Llannat turned back to the older man. “Professor, are you coming too?”
“No, Mistress. My work is finished.”
“Will I ever see you again?”
“‘Yes’ and ‘no’ are both such limiting words,” the Professor said. “So I’ll say ’I don’t know,’ and leave it at that.”
He bowed, and stepped away into the mist.
Owen was holding his mother in a tight embrace. He lowered his arms. “Let’s pick a direction and go in it. The way out isn’t going to come to us—at least, it isn’t right now.”
Llannat shook her head, and gestured at a darkening on one part of what would be the horizon, if there were a horizon in this place.
“There,” she said. “That’s the door. I can see the pattern for it now … it’s a matter of adjusting your eyes to look for where things aren’t, instead of where they are. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Owen said. “There’s something moving in the Void that needs our help. Over there.”
He pointed to his right. Now Llannat could see it too—there, not far away, stood a black-robed and black-masked Mage, his staff in one hand, his other hand hanging motionless from a wounded arm. Beside him floated a creature of mist, darker than the greyness of the Void, a nightmare thing with ropy tendrils lashing out at someone half-hidden in the knee-high, swirling fog.
“Come,” Owen said, and the three of them approached the fight—for it was a fight, even if badly one-sided.
A young woman with an Adept’s staff struck out repeatedly at the creature of mist, but her blows were ineffective. The body of the mist-creature thinned a little where she struck it, but it coalesced again after the staff had passed through.
Llannat recognized the girl; she recognized the mist-creature. The girl was her own younger self—the Llannat who had been cast into the Void during the ’
Hammer
’s raid on Darvell, the raid where the Professor had been killed, and his staff had come to Llannat at Beka Rosselin-Metadi’s hands. That time, she had fought a Mage and his creature of mist, and she had nearly died—until a pair of Adepts came and sent her back to the world of reality.
Now Llannat saw that struggle again, from the vantage point of her older self. The younger Llannat was over-matched in her fight against the Void-creature; even now, a pseudopod of grey mist was curling down over the girl’s shoulder. When she dropped and rolled away, two more ropes of living mist whipped out and caught her by the ankle and waist as she came up.
The girl lashed out, but Llannat could tell that she was hurting. Her breath came in gasps; sweat rolled down her dark face. Another rope whipped out from the creature, catching her by the wrist. Her staff fell into the mists of the Void. She staggered and fell to one knee.
“Get back!” Owen shouted to the woman on the ground. His staff blazed up again into blinding white light.
The girl staggered away, and fell again.
But by then Llannat had other things to concern her. She let Owen handle the Mage—she had business of her own with the creature of mist.
All times and places meet in the Void,
she thought
. The last time we fought, this creature had the best of me. But not any longer.
She struck, her Magestaff glowing brightly as she channeled her power through it. When she touched one of the creature’s pseudopods, the limb fell away from the indistinct trunk. Again she struck, and again the wound on the thing did not heal, but instead bled pale steam from within its dark-mist covering. Then, without warning, the creature dissolved entirely.
She turned to see Owen standing at guard. The Mage collapsed slowly before him, clutching his belly where bright blood spurted out between his fingers. The black-robed man fell down into the fog and was gone.
Owen turned back to Perada. “What happened to the Adept?”
“Gone,” the older woman said. “I sent her back to Ari—he needs her.”
“Good,” Llannat said. “She needs him, too. But now we have to go.”
“This way,” Owen said, guiding them both back toward the dark opening in the mist. Away off to the right, the dark tower still stood.
 
Aboard
Karipavo
, Gil leaned forward in his command chair, the better to see the main battle tank.
“They’re flat kicking us to pieces,” the TAO said.
Gil had no choice but to agree. “Whatever they have, it has longer range than anything we’ve got, higher accuracy, and more hitting power. So we deal with that. We have to get in among ’em, where they don’t dare use their big stuff without endangering themselves, and where our weapons have an equal chance against them.”
“Yeah,” said the TAO, “but the run-in is going to be hell.”
“Jump behind ’em, then jump back into the thick,” Gil said. “That’s the way it has to be. Make that up as a signal—all units, jump to beyond system space, then immediately jump back in-system; put your drop point in the center of the sphere of probability for the nearest Mage concentration.”
“Report coming in from Fighter Det 32,” said the lightspeed comms technician. “Odd contact.”
“Report.”
“Small vessel squawking identifiers as Republic shuttle located inbound near Mage main body.”
“Punch it up on the screen,” said Gil.
“Identifier shows it’s from
Veratina
.”
“One of Vallant’s cruisers,” said the TAO. “Evaluate part of mutineer force attached to the Mages.”
“Negate that,” said Gil. “
Veratina
was part of the force reported over Galcen with Metadi.”
“Metadi’s flag?”
“Could be,” Gil said. “Pass to 32: Take
Veratina
shuttle. Transfer all crew to
Karipavo
.”
“Report from 32—
Veratina
shuttle contains one person, Republic officer in uniform, requesting conference with commander, Republic forces.”
“Roger that,” Gil said. “Come aboard
Karipavo
.” He turned to Lieutenant Jhunnei. “What do you think?”
“A message from Metadi that he doesn’t trust to lightspeed comms?”
“Could be,” Gil said. “Stand by to receive them, and bring the officer to me soonest.”
It was some time before the fighter, an Eldan two-seater from Fighter Detachment 32, came into the ’
Pavo
’s docking bay. The pilot brought his passenger up to the CIC: a Space Force commander with a loop of gold braid on her uniform shoulder.
The pilot saluted. “Lieutenant Tirbat reporting, sir, with person removed from
Veratina
’s shuttle.”
Gil looked at the woman whose picture he had last seen tucked in among the pages of Inesi syn-Tavaite’s careful, meticulous notes.
“Rosel Quetaya,” Gil said. “You’re a damned Mage replicant.”
“I’m no such thing, Commodore.” Her cheeks were red and her voice was indignant—indignant enough to be convincing, if Gil hadn’t seen those notebooks, and hadn’t heard Doctor syn-Tavaite talking on Innish-Kyl about Magelords and their works.
“I have information for you,” the woman continued. “I know where General Metadi is located.”
“You do, do you?”
“Yes,” She passed across a datachip. “Over in sector one-five green, we’ve got a major Mage unit. General Metadi intends to do a firing pass and destroy it if possible. He requests you to stand clear, and provide diversion in other sectors.”
“Mark that unit in the tank, and pass to all units, ‘
Enemy flagship located. Target and destroy at all costs.
’”
The woman wasn’t red-faced any longer, but pale with anger. “Damn you, Jervas! General Metadi ordered you to stand clear!”
“You mean the Mage commander did. Lieutenant Jhunnei!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Take this—person—and put her in the brig. We’ll deal with her later when we have more time.”
 
“I don’t like this,” said Beka.
But the protest was mostly pro forma. She didn’t think that resisting the Grand Admiral would do any good—not when he was wearing his full Magelord’s getup, and not when shooting straight at him hadn’t done anything before. And besides, he was taking her back where she wanted to go—to
Warhammer
, and the replicant that waited there.
One way or another, we’ve got ourselves a Mage. I just wish I knew what he was up to.
sus-Airaalin said only, “Please make haste, my lady. The patterns are drawing close.”
They reached the docking bay that held
Warhammer
. The door to the bay lay open, and the dock had been pressurized. Beyond the force field at the end of the bay, the cold stars shone.
Warhammer
’s ramp was still down.
They entered an eerily silent ship. No one was in the common room, or in the cockpit. A hand of cards lay spread out on the common-room table.
“Damnation,” she muttered, and pulled the blaster. sus-Airaalin made no move to stop her.
She walked quickly down the passageway to the crewside berthing compartments. The seal on Tarveet’s quarters was in place. The other compartment was empty.

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