robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain (47 page)

What had drawn Quetzal here lay beneath those wrappings and bindings. The seal had masked the object well enough to hide it from the followers, but not so well that Quetzal had missed it. He could feel the power in it.

He took it up. It was weighty, doubtless of stone. Eagerly, he smashed the seal. The latent power of the piece bloomed. Breathless, he clawed at the rawhide bindings until the last strand released its grip and fell to the floor. He pried back the wrappings.

He knew that the object was what he sought even before he uncovered it, but even so he felt a thrill upon first seeing it. It was a
telesmon
of vermetid form. It had been made from a dark but translucent stone, each coil shaped in sinuous curves and cut with cunning facets that made strange angles where hidden surfaces were visible through the smoky stone. Had there been light, it would have flashed reflections around the room more wildly than a hundred prisms. Its beauty took his breath away.

Faint, so faint that touch could not discern their presence, he saw marks on the surfaces of the
telesmon.
He recognized some of the sigils at once. This was not just a thing of power, but a thing dedicated to the power he followed.

The key to the Key.

Had they not fallen farther than the followers, the opposition would have mobilized all their forces to bar Quetzal from this treasure. They had not. They had failed their self-avowed duty.

He was elated.

He placed the unwrapped
telesmon
back on the shelf and, heedless of the dust, sat in the chair to admire it. The key to the Key! This was what he had sought, what he had wanted— the heart to the web of resonators. With this
telesmon
he could open the Glittering Path.

Had they known, they would have destroyed it.

Or had they, in their pride, thought they need not destroy it, that they could hide it away forever?

He took down the linen-wrapped book; it would be the professor's diary. He did not have to read much to ascertain that the young man and his cronies had not understood what they had found. They had known that the
telesmon
was powerful, hence the masking, but they had not had the slightest clue to its true importance.

But Quetzal understood.

He tucked the diary away in his coat and fell to staring at the
telesmon,
dreaming of the new age he would begin.

CHAPTER

28

John woke from a dream in which the world was shaking itself to pieces, to find himself still being shaken. Dr. Spae had a grip on his shoulder and was making like a terrier.

"Come on, John. Wake up!"

He felt as if he'd hardly gotten to sleep. It was still dark; he couldn't have been asleep long. His head still hurt from the exercises Dr. Spae had made him practice over and over. The doctor had said she'd let him sleep till morning. So why was she here yelling at him to get up? He mumbled a protest.

"We've run out of time. He's here."

John's head was still out of focus. "Who's here?"

"Quetzal."

His sleepiness left him, his mind hitting racing speed from a dead stop. "What?" Had he heard right? Quetzal was here? "How?" Had he tracked them through astral space or something? Shouldn't they be doing something? "Where?" If Quetzal was here, what was the doctor doing standing around? "We've got to do something!"

"Exactly."

"Why are you standing around? What's he doing? Where is he? You said he was here." "Calm down, John. I meant here in the city," Dr. Spae said. "Which is bad enough. Faye and I discovered him on the East Side. He's found something terrible."

John barely heard her last statement. "Faye? Where is she? Is she all right?"

"As far as I know. I left her to watch—"

"You didn't leave her to face Quetzal alone?"

"She's not a child, John. She'll stay out of his way." Dr. Spae bent down, picked up John's pants, and tossed them to him. "But we can't leave her holding the fort alone. Get dressed."

"What are we going to do?" John asked as he dragged the pants under his blanket.

"What we have to do. We'll talk about it on the way."

"But you haven't shown me any combat spells." He struggled to pull his pants on underneath the covers. "How can we fight him?"

"I've shown you how to link. It'll have to be enough."

"Car's out front," Beryle said breathlessly as he appeared in the doorway. He gave John a disgusted look. "Jesus, kid, aren't you ready?"

"Let's go!" John tossed off the blanket and leaped up. His flashy move was undermined by his unfastened zipper; his pants started to slip.

Beryle shook his head. "You sure we need this kid, Elizabeth?"

"Leave him alone, David. He'll be fine."

Embarrassed, John snatched up his shirt. His boots. His jacket, too; it was going to be cold out.

Beryle led the way down the stairs. He started past the landing on Bear's floor. John stopped.

"What about Bear?"

"Gorshin will watch him," said Dr. Spae.

"You haven't told him?"

"He's in no shape to fight." Beryle was staring up at John. He looked annoyed. "He'll be a liability if we have to watch out for his ass as well as our own. Better he stay here."

"He won't like being left out," John said. "We may need his help."

"Not tonight, John," the doctor said. "The world may have a greater need of him if we fail tonight."

She started down the stairs. John looked down the hall to Bear's room. They were right about Bear not being in any shape for a fight. Besides, what could he do against a mage? So why didn't John feel good about leaving Bear behind?

John caught up to Beryle and the doctor as they reached the ground floor.

Dr. Spae explained her plan as Beryle careened through the streets toward the East Side. They were going to wait outside the building where Quetzal was. She was confident that he wouldn't be staying there, because she thought that he'd want to get back to wherever he made his lair before dawn. If so, he'd have to leave soon; there was less than two hours till sunrise.

They would ambush him when he came out. For the ambush Dr. Spae, John, and Faye would link, sharing their thau-maturgic power. The doctor would anchor the ritual chain, directing their combined power in an effort to draw out and envelop Quetzal. The doctor showed John a cord woven of her own hair.

"You will hold one end and I'll hold the other," she told him. "We will use this instead of holding hands as our physical link; it'll be less obvious that we're linking. We'll have a better chance if he thinks we're operating separately, since he's already beaten us that way before."

It was an awfully slim thread to hang a victory on.

"Almost there," Beryle announced.

The Hernando labored up College Street with such difficulty that John wasn't sure that the junker would make it to the top. Apparently Beryle wasn't sure either; he cut down Benefit Street and tried the less steep slope up George Street. He turned onto Magee and pulled over.

"I don't think we ought to take the car closer," he said.

"Where are we going?" John asked.

Dr. Spae pointed out the back window toward the first building inside the university's fence. It wasn't big, just two stories, and it wasn't fancy. What did it have that would attract an ancient wizard?

Beryle was already out of the car. "Don't close the doors all the way. Just in case we're in a hurry when we get back."

The three of them walked quickly back to George Street and crossed it. The tall fence stood between them and the building. The nearest gate was shut.

"How do we get past the fence?" John asked. "I'll bet all the gates are locked at this hour."

"Faculty card," Beryle said, holding up a thin rectangle of plastic. How had he gotten that? Beryle slipped the card into the slot by the gate. The lock released and he waved them through. He came through and closed the gate behind him.

"Why not leave that open, too?" John asked.

"Security timer."

Though insufficient, it was all the answer John got. Beryle headed toward the building that Dr. Spae had pointed out. The doctor took John's arm and directed him toward the open lawn in front of the building. About forty feet from the door, she pulled him down. The grass was wet and cold, but because of the slope of the ground, they were mostly concealed from the door.

Not that anyone seemed to be looking for them. The building was dark, apparently deserted for the night.

"Why isn't Beryle out here with us?" John asked.

"He needs to stay out of the line of fire."

Not a comforting answer.

Dr. Spae spoke to the air. "Faye?"

"Here," Faye answered. "It has been very quiet. Someone left, but it wasn't he."

"Are you sure?"

"Very."

"Then he's still in there," John said.

"Probably," the doctor agreed. She didn't sound convinced. "Faye, would you check?"

"You can't ask her to go in there alone," John said.

"It's all right, John," Faye said. "I'll be careful."

And she was gone. Dr. Spae began to build preliminary astral constructs for her spell. Faye was back in less than a minute.

"I'm afraid that he knew I was there."

"He saw you?" John didn't think that was possible.

"Not exactly. It doesn't really matter. He's coming."

"Let's get ready," Dr. Spae said. She handed John his end of the cord. "Let Faye do whatever she can do that's the equivalent of holding your hand. I'll need both of you."

John felt Faye's presence settle beside him. He held his hand out. She couldn't actually hold his hand, but the gesture seemed important. He tried to calm himself, to leave himself open to the link. He became more aware of Faye, to the point of knowing that she stood beside him, her slender, intangible hand in his. He could tell that she was nervous, but whether that certainty came from the link or from his long experience with her, he didn't know.

He got a little dizzy when Dr. Spae asserted herself over the link. He spent a moment awhirl in disorienting sensations, trying to sort them out, but he had to shut his eyes to cut down on some of the confusion. Even with his eyes closed, he retained an impression of vision, kind of like a bad copy of a video from the last century. He knew that the view was what Dr. Spae saw; as the controller of the linkage, hers were the dominant senses and emotions.

The doctor was watching the building in tense anticipation. She was more confident than John had expected. In fact, he felt something that he interpreted as satisfaction as the door began to open. Annoyance rose when Quetzal appeared in the doorway, but did not leave the building.

"Stay down," Dr. Spae whispered.

Quetzal looked in her direction when she spoke. Already discovered, she stood.

"Come out of there," she ordered Quetzal.

"Spae?" Quetzal gave a good-humored chuckle. "I should have expected that you'd sense the
telesmon
and come running. I was right to consider you a threat."

"And wrong not to finish me when you had the chance."

The mage shrugged. "Unwise greed for a good servant on my part. I've had so little luck with them of late. Perhaps tonight my luck will change."

"Tonight
your luck ends."

Dr. Spae began to feed power into her spell constructs. John let her draw on him to energize the spell. Almost at once, he felt as if he'd been running hard for half an hour.

Quetzal knew that the doctor was working. John could feel the darkling mage's touch as he examined the structures of Spae's spell. Unfortunately for the doctor's plan, Quetzal remained inside the building; the spell construct wasn't designed to deal with the building's disruptive influence.

"Come on, you bastard," Spae shouted. "Come out and fight!"

"I thought it prudent to wait until the odds were a little more even."

What did he mean by that? John didn't have time to ponder. In three quick strides, Quetzal left the building. Calling out in a loud voice, he raised his hands. At once, John felt immense pressure squeezing him.

Quetzal was resisting the spell. Spae poured their strength into her construct. John gasped from the strain.

"Now," Dr. Spae said under her breath. "Do it now."

Do what? John felt her anxiety through their link; the emotion threatened to upset her control of the magic.

Quetzal upped the pressure.

John cried out in pain as Dr. Spae drew on him. At his side Faye swooned.

"David?" This time Dr. Spae spoke loudly.

Despite their combined strength, the doctor's spell structure shrilled under the load Quetzal was bringing to bear. Faye's departure from the linkage hadn't helped.

"David!"

There was no response to the doctor's desperate call. John felt her attention waver from the spell.