Point of Hopes (66 page)

“
We’ve lost our chance to influence
the queen’s choice, can’t you see that?” she demanded. “We’re
discovered, and we’ve no hope of further gain—of any gain at all.
Unless we flee, and now, we’ll take Belvis down with
us.”

Timenard ignored her, lifted his hand, fingers
crooked; and the air thickened again, the light coalescing into a
swarm. Rathe swore under his breath, glanced wildly at the magists
behind him.

“
Isn’t there something you can
do?”

Denizard shook her head, and b’Estorr said, “I’m a
necromancer, I don’t even know what he’s calling—”

“
Timenard!” de Mailhac demanded.
“We have to protect Belvis.”

“
Belvis is expendable,” Timenard
said, impatiently, as though to an importunate child. “Leave me
alone, woman.”

With an inarticulate cry of anger, de Mailhac drew
her sword. Timenard flung his hand back, not even bothering to
turn, and the swarming light shot from his fingers, struck the
landame with a soundless snap. Her arm hung in the air, her whole
figure tensed frozen in mid-motion. Only her eyes still moved,
burning with fury and fear. Not dead, then, Rathe thought, trying
to make sense of what he’d seen, not a mortal blow after all,
though who knows what it would have done to the kids—

Timenard sighed then, the motion of his shoulders
obvious beneath his heavy robe, and swung himself down from his
horse. As his feet touched the ground, the horse shimmered as
though the air around it was warped by a furnace’s heat.

The strands of its mane and tail seemed to fuse,
become a solid sheet, and then its neck curled down and its hind
legs buckled. For a confused instant, Rathe thought it was reaching
for nonexistent grass or trying to sit, but its head curled
further, its neck bending impossibly until its nose was tucked
under its belly. The strong outlines of its muscles were blurring,
too, fading, its forelegs curling under, and its color ran like
water, shifting from sorrel to true gold and then to something
beyond gold, an unearthly, shadowless luster. The last ghost of the
horse-shape fused and vanished, and in its place stood a set of
nested spheres, impaled on a yard-long axis. Rathe shook his head,
trying to deny what stood before him. He had seen the great orrery
at the university, both as a boy and at the ceremony that had
confirmed the true time, and he recognized the form of the thing.
But where the university’s orrery had been brass, solid and secure
in its mechanical connections, this was delicate as filigree, the
shapes of the rings and the planets outlined with a peculiar
iridescence. It had to be made of aurichalcum—of pure aurichalcum,
he corrected himself. Even the coin aurichalcum b’Estorr had shown
him had lacked that unearthly color.

“
Sweet Sofia,” Denizard murmured,
and made a warding gesture. b’Estorr took a step forward, towards
the entrance, towards the orrery, then stopped, shaking his head.
Denizard closed a hand around his arm, her fingers white-knuckled,
but the necromancer didn’t seem to feel her grip.

Rathe looked at them. “What is it? An orrery like
that—what can it do?”

“
Entirely too much,” Denizard said,
grimly.

b’Estorr nodded. “Something that size, with that
much aurichalcum—made purely of aurichalcum….” He took a breath.
“Instead of drawing its influence from the stars, it could,
conceivably, reverse the process. Affect the stars themselves.”

“
It can’t do that,” Eslingen said,
but the protest was automatic. “That’s impossible.”

“
Not anymore,” Denizard
answered.

“
I think we’ve seen it,” b’Estorr
said.

“
The clocks?” Rathe asked, and the
necromancer nodded.

“
To forge something like that,
something that powerful—we’re lucky all it did was throw off all
the clocks in Astreiant.”

Timenard stooped, lifted the orrery in his gloved
hands. It was huge, the largest sphere as large as his torso, but
he carried it easily. The iridescence played briefly over his
fingers, and faded. “You, in the mine. I hold here the power to
reorder the world, to compel the stars themselves to change and to
change the world with them, to bring down the powers that are now
and set up new powers in their place. You yourselves are commoners
all—surely you can see this can only be to your good. Who has been
blamed for the disappearances of these children? Leaguers and
commoners. Unfair, but the way of the world. I give you a new
chance, a new choice. Come out of there and join me. I can give you
a better world than the one you live in.”

The words were like a spell, an almost palpable
temptation. Rathe shook himself, made himself look past the magist
toward the mine road and de Mailhac’s people huddled in confusion.
Coindarel was on his way, but even if he arrived in time, what
could he do against the power of the orrery? The mage-light was
fading again, replaced by the dimmer light of dawn, and against it
the orrery glowed even brighter than before. Pure aurichalcum,
Rathe thought, the words running through his mind like a tune he
could not forget. Unpolluted by anything else, the purest form of
gold.

“
Come now,” Timenard called again,
“come out and join me.”

Rathe could feel the words tugging at him, a subtle
pressure against his knees, as though he stood in an invisible
stream. Eslingen took a step forward, then shook himself, scowling,
and took two steps back, deeper into the shadows.

“
You see what I can offer you,”
Timenard crooned. “What I can make you. A better, more just
world.”

Rathe shook his head, took a step sideways and
stumbled, almost tripped by the invisible current. “More just?” he
called, hoping to create some delay until he, any of them, could
think of something that might stop the magist. “Whose justice?
Yours? And what about the law?”

“
The law was set up by nobles to
keep commoners like yourself in their places. Don’t be a
fool.”

“
I won’t,” Rathe said, but in spite
of himself the current drew him forward. “I won’t see a world that
sets one man up over all others.”

“
You will have no choice ” Timenard
answered, and touched the orrery’s outermost sphere. The air rang,
as though with the aftereffects of music, though there had been no
sound. Rathe took another step, and was suddenly aware of the
pistol in his hand. It was loaded, and the ball was lead, he
thought, lead which was the antithesis of gold to begin with, and
which had been sitting in contact with the impure compound of
gunpowder. He lifted it, bracing himself against the invisible
current of Timenard’s will, and took careful aim, not at the magist
but at the orrery itself. He held his breath, and pulled the
trigger. The priming powder caught, and then, half a heartbeat
later, the pistol fired, the sound shockingly loud, shockingly
profane, in the close air. The orrery seemed to sob aloud, a
weirdly soundless groan that shook the ground under their feet.
Rathe stumbled forward, going to his knees in the muddy ground.
Behind him Eslingen cursed and leveled his own pistol, bracing
himself against the nearest timber.

“
Timenard—”

Behind him, b’Estorr cried, “No, don’t, the gold’s
unstable.”

Eslingen hesitated, and in the same moment they saw
de Mailhac shake herself, as though the noise, the attack on the
orrery, had freed her from her trance. She lunged blindly forward,
continuing the move she had begun minutes before. Timenard tried to
turn away, his eyes suddenly wide, mouth opening in the beginning
of a horrified shout. Her sword pierced the orrery’s spheres,
dissolving as it thrust, and the orrery screamed again, a wail of
tortured metal. And then de Mailhac’s bare hand touched the axis.
Timenard cried out then, his voice lost in the sudden yelling, and
fire flashed beneath de Mailhac’s hand. Light surged with it, so
that for a moment the two stood locked, their shadows and the
orrery’s black at the heart of a ball of fire hotter than any
furnace. The smoke came then, crashing back over the ball of light
like an ocean wave, and then it, too, was gone. Where it had been,
where Timenard and de Mailhac had been, there was nothing except
pale ash and a handful of dull, twisted wires.

There was a moment of utter silence, even the
children too stunned to cry out. Rathe’s ears were ringing, and he
could see the same shock on Eslingen’s face, pale beneath the dark
hair. The mage-light was fading fast now, overtaken by the paler
light of dawn, and Rathe shook himself hard.

“
Give me your pistol,” he said to
Eslingen, but it was b’Estorr who handed him a weapon. Rathe cocked
it quickly and stepped out into the yard, leveling the pistol at
the nearest guard. Eslingen moved up to join him, his own pistol
drawn, and the magists followed.

“
Stand away from the children,”
Rathe ordered, and was glad to hear that his own voice was
relatively calm. De Mailhac’s people were still in shock, he saw,
some already looking behind them toward the road; the guard leader
glanced at them, and then at the spot where Timenard had stood.
Rathe could see the indecision on his face, and pointed the pistol
directly at him.

“
Stand away,” he said again. “Put
down your arms, all of you, or I will fire.”

Before the man could respond, hoofbeats sounded
again on the track from Mailhac. Rathe heard Eslingen laugh softly,
and one of de Mailhac’s servants tugged injudiciously at her
horse’s reins, making the animal snort and sidle. Almost in the
same instant, the first of Coindarel’s regiment swept into view,
the prince-marshal himself narrowly in the lead. Timenard’s guard
leader looked over his shoulder, his expression unchanging, but
slowly lowered his musket. His men copied him, stepping away from
the children they had been holding. Coindarel gestured to his men,
who fanned out, surrounding both the mine guards and de Mailhac’s
party, and a white-haired sergeant swung down off his horse,
holding out his hands to the children. There was another small
figure at Coindarel’s saddle-bow, Rathe saw, and an instant later
realized it was Asheri. He allowed himself a long breath of relief,
and Coindarel edged his horse up to the mine, half bowing in the
saddle.

“
My Philip, I never expected to see
you under these circumstances,” he said.

He had to be curious about the explosion, Rathe
thought, but wasn’t about to ask any commoner directly. He stilled
a laugh, recognizing the hysteria in it.

“
Nor are these circumstances I ever
expected to see,” Eslingen answered, and carefully uncocked his
pistol before jamming it into his belt. “You made good time,
sir.”

“
How could I resist your appeal?”
Coindarel asked. He was as handsome as a prince-marshal should be,
Rathe thought, if somewhat older. He realized that the other was
looking at him then, and shook himself back to reality.

“
You’re the pointsman, I assume?”
Coindarel went on. “Which makes you—unofficially, to be
sure—responsible for these brats.”

Rathe nodded, too relieved to be offended. They were
going to be all right, he thought, the children were found, and
they were going to come safe home at last.

“
These can’t be all of them,
surely?” Coindarel stood in his stirrups, turning to survey the
half dozen or so in the mine yard. A few more children were
creeping out from among the trees, Rathe saw, and braced himself to
the task of finding the rest. At least Asheri was safe, he thought,
and was instantly ashamed.

“
No. We—I sent the rest into the
forest, down towards Mailhac. They’ve probably scattered. I told
them to follow the stream, but we’re going to have to find them,
get them back to Astreiant….”

“
You don’t have to do anything,
pointsman,” Coindarel said. “That’s what we’re here for.” He looked
around the yard again, and touched heels to his horse, sending it
dancing sideways toward the pile of ash where the magist had stood.
“But we seem to be missing someone, by all accounts. Where’s
Maseigne de Mailhac—or her pet magist, for that matter?”

Before Rathe could answer. Coindarel’s horse shied,
bounced sideways on bunched feet, away from the ashes. Coindarel
swore, one arm instantly steadying Asheri, and brought the animal
back under control with an effort. Rathe pointed to the pile of
ash, the wires that had been the orrery just visible beneath it.
“That’s what’s left of them,” he said and Coindarel lifted his head
eyes wide, looking suddenly like one of his own horses.

“
I’m not at all sure I really want
to know,” he said at last. “At least, not yet. Not until we’ve
found the children, maybe not until we’re back in
Astreiant.”

Rathe shook his head. “No, Prince-marshal,” he said.
“You don’t want to know.”

Coindarel lifted an eyebrow, but visibly thought
better of it. He wheeled his horse again and trotted back toward
the rest of his troop, just coming into sight at the head of the
path. There were more children with them, a good dozen, and Rathe
allowed himself a long sigh. Coindarel’s men would find them, the
children would come to them, and everything would be all right. The
sun was rising at last, a breeze rising with it, and the ashes
stirred, releasing an odd, acrid smell, hot metal and something
more. Rathe winced then, thinking of untimely deaths, and turned to
b’Estorr.

“
I know this was just. But I also
know what Timenard was.” He looked back at the pile of ash, the
dull wires half buried in it. “And I don’t want anyone troubled by
his ghost.”