That Way Lies Camelot (27 page)

Jubilant, drunk on his own triumph, Jensen cleared the companionway door. He gave the stunned body of his captive a vengeful, self-satisfied kick, then squeezed past to free Kaplin from the supply cubby. She could damn well reset their course log, since her infernally manicured fingers were probably not mangled to incapacity. As he stumbled on nerve-deadened feet, Jensen acknowledged that he desperately needed to use the head. He considered his ruined uniform, and wondered, between planning, whether his efforts to escape the hanging locker might have bloodstained his best battle jacket.

* * *

Well after the code check at 1700, Ensign Kaplin drifted cross-legged in the dimly lit corridor by the space lock. Unimpressed by Jensen's bubbling elation, and unconcerned that her hair needed fixing, she sullenly chipped enamel off a broken thumbnail. Her thoughts centered darkly around the admiral whose record was impeccable, but whose past was anything but. Her future in the Fleet would become deadlocked as a result of the tape she had witnessed. The lieutenant was a fool if he thought the captive held trussed in the lock bay was going to sweeten an admiral whose private shame had been leaked to the crew of a minor class scout. As Kaplin saw things, MacKenzie James might never see trial; more likely he'd die of an accident, or someone would pull strings to set him free. He hadn't gotten where he was without connections in high places. His record of success was too brilliant.

Kaplin jabbed at her fingernail, plowing up a flake of purple lacquer. Jensen was an idealistic idiot, and Admiral Nortin a desperately cornered man; no need to guess who'd survive when the dirt inevitably hit the fan.

A discreet tap at the lock door disrupted the ensign's brooding. She started and looked up, saw the haggard face of MacKenzie James drifting by the small oval window. His hands were bound; he'd managed the knock by catching the pen from the bulletin alcove between his teeth and rapping the end against the glass.

'Damn,' Kaplin muttered under her breath as her grip slipped and mangled a cuticle. She sucked at the scratch, pushed off from the floor grate, and, still cross-legged, peered through the glass. 'What do you want?'

Other than a leak, she mused inwardly. If the stun drugs had just worn off, that's what most people wanted.

Mac James ejected the pen from his teeth. 'Talk,' he said, his succinctness blurred by echoes. He bunched his shoulders against the webbing Jensen had contrived to confine him. The result would have tethered a bull elephant, Kaplin felt, but hell, she was only the ensign. She unfolded elegant legs, set her shoulder against the lock, and lightly braced on the door frame. 'Should I listen?'

James managed a grin. His forehead had somehow gotten cut during transfer from the bridge to the lock bay, and a bruise darkened the stubble on his jaw. 'You might want to.' He tossed back tangled hair and added, 'I'd hate like hell to be left at the mercy of an admiral whose secrets were compromised.'

Kaplin pursed her lips. 'You're quick.'

James's grin vanished. 'Always.'

The ensign considered her torn thumbnail, then elegantly unfolded her body and tapped the controls to her left. The lock unsealed, and a rush of cold air from the barren metal bay raised chills under her coverall. She shivered. 'Speak fast.
I'm
not sure I should be listening.'

'Be sure,' said James. 'I can get you reassigned. To another division, under another admiral, with a few less demerits on your record.'

Kaplin regarded him carefully. Trussed hand and foot, his massive shoulders twisted back, James did not seem discomforted. His expression was much too confident. He watched, his eyes steely and level; as she noticed the scar over his right carotid artery, and as she lingeringly weighed the rusty stains that remained of a Chalice mechanic that patched his threadbare flightsuit. He was a man who had seen death from many angles. The possibility the next might be his own failed to move him.

'You'd have to free me, get me back to rendezvous at Kestra,' he finished in a voice that was dry with disinterest.

A pirate should have owned more passion, Kaplin felt. The list of criminal charges did not seem to fit with the man. She thought deeper, while those gray eyes followed; her hand tapped involuntary tattoos on the railing. MacKenzie James, skip-runner, should have gunned the other, crew down with Harris. His hold over the admiral was all he truly needed to commandeer
Sail
without questions.

As her oval chin rose obstinately, Mac James seemed to follow her reasoning. 'I didn't kill Jensen because I need him. His obsession is a tool, invaluable because it's genuine. A man's hatred is always more reliable than the best of laid plans.'

Kaplin narrowed her eyes. 'Who are you,' she demanded. 'You'll tell the truth, or we don't talk.'

Now Mac James studied her. He no longer seemed boyish, or hardened, but only unnervingly perceptive. 'I take orders from Special Services,' he said, his face like weather-stripped granite. 'And my criminal record is genuine. I could be tried and convicted on all counts, and no pardon would come through to save me. I am legitimately skip-runner, traitor, and extortionist, and because of that, I have served as the Alliance's contact to disclose the motives of the Khalia and, now, the Syndicate behind them.' A strange thread of weariness crept into the prisoner's voice. He tried, but did not entirely hide a ghost of underlying emotion. 'Sometimes it takes a bad apple to know one. And through
Sail's
surviving officers, the Fleet is free to deal with what Van Mere's is actively covering.
Marity
is not involved, my cover is kept intact, and the Syndicate's best outpost is exposed to counterespionage before anyone inside knows they're compromised.'

He was not pleading, Kaplin decided. He was appealing to her loyalty on a higher level; loyalty to humanity above her oath to serve the Fleet. She considered what he had not said, the threats he had not outlined: that
Marity
was yet at large, that
Sail
was still a long and lonely distance from the nearest battle cruiser or station, and that the Special Services branch of Intelligence often stooped to ugly tactics to free its operations from interference.

Fractionally, James shook his head. 'Gibsen won't pursue. He's under my orders, and he won't break. Not to spare me from arraignment. The Syndicate outpost was always our target, whether I am sacrificed or not.'

Kaplin chewed her lip. 'Damn you,' she whispered into the echoing chill of the lock. 'What about the interface cores? And the outright murder of Chalice station?'

Now James lowered his lashes. His inscrutable expression cracked into a grimace of wounding compassion. 'The cores we traded were genuine. The thirty pieces of silver, as it were, to confirm the presence of the enemy. And Chalice personnel, curse their bravery, defended their post with their lives.'

Kaplin drew a shuddering breath. She bunched her hand and slammed the closure button; and the lock hissed shut, leaving the skip-runner and his haunted bit of conscience to the solitary chill of the space bay.

'Oh, damn you,' Kaplin muttered. 'Damn you to deepest hell.' She needed a coffee, she decided; and every other habit that was ordinary to quiet a vicious inner turmoil. For the favor that MacKenzie James requested for the higher good of the Alliance was nothing short of mutiny. As she left her post and propelled herself through null grav toward the galley, she reflected that Jensen was going to dismember her.

* * *

Lieutenant Jensen snapped awake to the realization that
Sail's
vibrations had changed. She was no longer traveling FTL, but powered by her more obtrusive grav drives. The lieutenant glanced at his chronometer, his worst fear confirmed.
Sail
had deviated from his chosen course and orders. He leapt from his bunk, jammed his legs into the nearest set of coveralls - Harris's by the smell of beer and sweat - and raced full tilt for the bridge.

He found the pilot's chair deserted. The course readout on the autopilot confirmed trouble well enough:
Sail
was currently under gentle acceleration out of the Arinat system. Directly astern, like a thing cursed, lay the cratered lump of rock some forgotten mapper had named Kestra.

Jensen was too enraged to swear.

He spun, plunged through the companionway hatch, and hurried with all speed through the service corridors.

He reached the lock to the space bay. A furious survey showed Kaplin drifting cross-legged in the chamber, twisting and twisting the shock webbing that once had confined MacKenzie James. She had been weeping. The mechanic's deep-space suit was gone, of course, along with the skip
-
running criminal who had killed its owner for hijack.

'My God, Kappie, why did you let him go?' Jensen's voice was a scream of unmitigated anger.

The ensign looked up, startled to fear. 'Sir! He's Special Services, and on our side.'

Jensen heard, and a greater rage crashed through him. His handsome face twisted. 'Damn you, girl. He's the biggest con artist in the universe. You were
had,
and he was lying. You're nothing but his pawn, and a traitor.' There would be an inquiry over Harris's death, Jensen's frantic mind understood. A trial would follow, and under investigation and cross-examination, the flimsy plot arranged at Chalice would surface and ruin his reputation.

The lieutenant ceased thinking. He reacted on the reflex of a cornered animal, and hammered the green, then the yellow, then the orange button on the console. The lock door hissed shut, cutting off Kaplin's panicked scream. Warning lights flashed, but the hooter that signaled a deep
-
space jettison never sounded. Kaplin had disconnected the alarm to release MacKenzie James for his rendezvous.

For that reason, her pleas could be heard very clearly. 'Jensen! Listen to me! You're MacKenzie's best pawn, and he knows it!' She launched away from the wall, hammered her model's hands against the innerlock. 'We could stop James, both of us could stop him! Blow his cover with Special Services, and he's lost his righteous reason to keep skip-running. You didn't see his face, but I
know.
The remorse would put him over the edge.'

Jensen's lips stayed fixed in an icy half smile. Deaf to pity, mindful of nothing beyond the ambition that was his life, he ground his palm hard on the red jettison button. The outerlock doors cycled open. Atmosphere vented outward, along with the corpse of the ensign who had dared to turn triumph into failure.

* * *

Admiral Nortin's office on
New Morning
was sumptuously large, but bare to the point of sterility. On the hard metal bench by the doorway, Jensen sat in his dress uniform. He kept his eyes straight ahead, resisted the urge to search the impeccable white of his jacket for bloodstains the cleaners had soaked out. He waited, rigidly correct, while the admiral's pearl-white fingers paged front to back, through his report.

The words matched the circumstances closely enough:
Sail
had happened across a raid on Chalice station and picked up the trail of a skip-runner who had stolen core intelligence crystals. The lieutenant in command had given chase, followed the space pirate MacKenzie James to Arinat, Van Mere's station. The log spool on the admiral's desk held proof positive of a Syndicate spy post, in the form of a recorded transaction between James and a covert network on Van Mere's.
Sail
had maintained a standard patrol pattern, then pursued as the
Marity
made her getaway. Battle had resulted.
Sail's
bridge had sustained severe damage, her pilot and her ensign dead in the course of duty. Jensen, sole survivor, had nursed his command back to base.

The admiral finished reading. He raised bleak eyes to the impeccably dressed lieutenant before his desk. He did not point out the unmentionable, that the log spool might hold proof of a Syndicate spy post, but events differed drastically from the report. Neither Jensen nor the admiral wished the particulars of that tape examined for documentation. Jensen staked his future on the surety that Nortin held the power to misplace, or alter, or erase, the flight logs and checkpoint records of
Sail's
passage between Chalice and Arinat. Jensen balanced everything on an extortionist's secret imbedded within proof of his own crimes. Only the admiral's guilt could spare him from certain court-martial and a firing squad.

A minute passed like eternity.

The admiral's cragged face showed no expression when at last he drew breath for conclusion. 'Young man,' he said sourly. 'For outstanding service, and for your discovery of a Syndicate spy base, you'll report for commendation, decoration, and promotion. Then you'll be transferred into Admiral Duane's division, and I trust we'll never need to set eyes on each other again.'

Dreambridge

The axe fell and blood ran, not from living flesh but over treebark, to spatter across frosted ground. The unnatural warmth raised steam against the bite of wintry air, each drop a stark splash of scarlet against leaves left curled and frail by the season that prevailed in the earthly lands across the veil.

Far off in the borderlands, in a cottage under forest eaves never blighted by cold or steel, Kirelle awakened shivering in tangled bedclothes.

The dream, she knew, had been no nightmare to be shrugged off and
f
orgotten upon waking. The bleeding tree would be real, though the mortal whose hand had wielded killing steel would bide unaware of his damage. In earthly lands no sign would show that this axe-wounded tree was something more than the mature offshoot of an acorn.

Kirelle sat up, wishing the soft scents of apple blossoms and pressed herbs could ease her gut-deep uneasiness.

A snowy owl sat perched on her windowsill.

The instant it saw her take notice, it flew, ghost-silent on spread wings. Mild air stirred through the space it left vacant, rustling the bundled herbs strung in rows from the rafters. The phials of potions and simples above Meara's work-table loomed in dim ranks on their shelves; useless, all, Kirelle despaired. If the trappings of an herbalist's lore held no remedy for an axe-stung tree, the deeper mysteries of the art could be called on for other than succor; this she feared as she crossed in trepidation to the window. Bird and dream would not have arrived by coincidence. Owls could read the future, and owls alone could cross at will from the borderlands that bridged like a ribbon between the fey realms and mortal earth.

Kirelle reached the sill, touched by wry thought of Meara, who had laughed when first asked why their cottage must lie in the thickest heart of the forest, an inconvenient distance from the village. '
There's a part of our trade, girl, that has naught to do with sick babes and dry cattle. Sure as rain falls, you'll learn wonders.'

Wishing the wise woman was not away to Eastling to attend a birthing, Kirelle saw a rider on a silver-gray horse awaiting below in the dooryard. Old and straight-backed, and elegantly mantled, his skin was dark as turned earth, the beard that bristled from under his hood a glint of pale silver by moonlight. Both hands were gloved in black. The air all around him seemed alive with owls, weaving like silent shuttlecocks through the warp and weft of the breeze.

The Wizard of the Forest, and none other, had come here to ask for some favor.

Oh, trouble had come, of the direst measure, Kirelle understood as she hastened to her wardrobe to dress. Little mysteries that othertimes would have evoked her delight failed to lift her foreboding, not the teasing play of the airsprite that whirled a mild tempest of apple petals through the casement, nor the wakeful mocking bird that sang in the melodic tones of a lark. Kirelle hastily pulled on the patched hose and shirt that briar snags should have sent to the rag bin. Too fast for neatness, she brushed and braided her waist-length dark hair, then threw on her cloak, its thread spun by fey from the fibers of midsummer flowers. Lighter than down, warmer than wool, the fabric shimmered like twilight from palest blue to deep violet.

From her pantry, Kirelle snatched up her satchel and a seed cake sweetened with honey. She was no fey, to go without sustenance until touched by a whim for gay feasting. Neither was she entirely human, since the day she had been snatched as a changeling from parents she could not remember.

The Wizard of the Forest had once been human also, before he had been guardian of the border realm. His knowledge of the mysteries ran so deep only rock itself was any wiser. If he held any name beyond his title, it had been forgotten, or else, like the most ancient trees, through long silence words had lost all power to rule him.

Uneasy for the dream that had drawn his presence to her dooryard, Kirelle pushed closed the cottage door. The latch dropped with a clear chink of brass, and the silver-gray horse raised its head. Bells on its trappings trilled an answering chime as the Wizard reined around to face her.

His study felt distinct as a physical touch. Despite the mild lines that etched his features, the merciless strengths of his powers we
r
e too fierce to mask in serenity.

Overcome by the presence of portents too large for her skills to encompass, Kirelle gave way to impatience. 'Why should you send such a dream?' she burst out. 'Bleeding trees bespeak evil deeds, and no herbal of mine can heal such, nor ease the wrath of the fey when they learn that mortal steel has cut heartwood.'

Motionless, the Wizard regarded her. His horse champed softly at the bit. Harness bells clinked in single notes, and the stars themselves regaled his presence in a thousand points of bright light. 'You are most quick to say what you cannot do.' Like his bells, his voice was rich in overtones, and his searching gaze never wavered.

Unsettled and out of her depth, Kirelle wished the wise woman who taught her might stand here in her stead.
i
f Meara's aid was needed, I should be in Eastling, to fetch her,' the Wizard added gravely. 'And I had no part in any sending. Instead, I followed the dream's path, and that, of itself, led to you. The Eld Tree that holds the last link with mortal earth lies threatened. Can you know this and still refuse help?'

Sorry for her haste, and never more aware of her inexperience, Kirelle could not ignore the implications. When fey magic had knitted the borderlands that divided the otherworld realms from mortal earth, thin places were left in the fabric, some said for hope that mankind might someday outgrow their heedless ways, and that misunderstandings between races might be eased. Others claimed the fey still cherished mortal lands for their plangent and transient beauty. Whichever tale held truth, a chosen few Trees from the Eldforests were left bound to earth's soil as anchorpoints, and on such sites the veil could be crossed in the months of solstice and equinox. While mortal kind grew ever more estranged from the mysteries, such crossings were made less and less, and finally rarely at all.

Few could say when the fey had last ridden the wild hunt at midsummer. Except for the isolated foray to snatch a few changelings for mischief, the borderlands bridge through the veil lay all but forgotten. Only one Tree yet remained tied to earth, sorrowfully aged by the turn of time and seasons. If it died, the last link would be gone; fey mysteries would be lost to earth forever.

'You do see,' the Wizard said gently. 'A mortal with an axe has violated the last Tree, and the fey, when they hear, will cry vengeance. If blood-price is not met, their wrath might leave the worlds forever sundered.'

Kirelle regarded the clearing that held her cottage, then the orchard, bejeweled with dew in the still, brief hour before dawn. She watched the windsprite dance amid shedding blossoms, and relived her irritation at the burrow the gnome had dug in his hope of stealing apples when they ripened. The chance that the powers that quickened these things might come to be unraveled tore at her heart like pain.

'How has this happened?' she asked the Wizard. 'What disarmed the guardspells that should hide the last Tree from the eyes of any blunderer bearing steel?'

'Ah, wise lady, the answers I have are too few. There was not one man, but three, and the owl I sent to turn their footsteps was shot down while in flight.' The Wizard bent his head, grief in his eyes like hot sparks. 'My brave messenger lies dead, murdered with as little thought as the axe-blow that cleft the Eld Tree.'

Kirelle could have wept then, for certainty. 'My task is to go across and turn these mortals from their reaving?'

His hands crossed over his saddlebow, the Wizard regarded the silent flight of the companion owls still left to him. 'The choice must be yours. My birds see
the future, and they led to you
. Since the Tree's cry for help chose you also, the mysteries themselves have their reason. But more than these borderlands lies at risk. If you cross, I intend to pass with you.'

No need to belabor the dangers, that to step through the veil was to risk a cold exile: perhaps aging, surely death, if mishap occurred on the other side. Once the fey learned of the harm to one of their own, their anger would demand retribution. Blood-price would be asked that one of three mortals must pay, or the borderlands themselves could be forfeit.

'We must go. Time is short, and the crossing is most easily made at the site of the Eld Tree itself.' The Wizard wheeled his horse, expectant that Kirelle must follow.

'I haven't said I'd go at all,' she whispered. But reluctance could not unmake dire portents. Kirelle trailed along under the glide of the owls, pierced through with sadness and dread. The avaricious, sneaking little pranks of the gnomes in retrospect seemed joyfully endearing. Nothing she owned would have been too precious to give, to ensure safe return to her orchards.

Dank under shadow and the slow drip of dew, the paths that had led Kirelle to share in the wood's lore and wisdom tonight neither welcomed nor befriended. Breezes muttered through the branches to a tireless sibilance of leaves that whispered of driving men mad. In the past, when the worlds were still joined, to stray uninvited into an Eldforest was death, and sometimes worse. These trees were roused and aware, and although they had known no touch of cold steel since the veil had been raised to protect them, they remembered older times, and thoughtless humans. Outside the borderlands, an Eld Tree had been maimed by an axe. Although Kirelle had never trodden those lands ruled by time, or done aught but rejoice with growing wood, the forest in its anger, in the thick, stately flow of its sap, did not care.

O
pressed by unsainly hostility, Kirelle tightened grip on her satchel. Her voice shook as she crooned soft notes to reassure the trees of her harmless intentions. The Wizard chanted strictures of his own, mightier by far than any song of hers. But melody and litany availed nothing. Black boughs dipped low and laced the way like knotwork. Chill leaves pressed down like a shroud.

The gray horse snorted uneasy alarm and sidled as, gently, the Wizard addressed the trees. 'Your rage is misplaced. Would you hinder ones who go to help?'

The forest paid no heed.

The rustle of boughs held no reply, and a brooding moment passed. Kirelle endured the scratching touch of twigs and the prisoning, chill kiss of leaves.

From somewhere near at hand an owl called; the Wizard's voice answered, steady and soft. To Kirelle, he added. 'The forest has denied us free passage, and further persuasion will not sway it. Without the Tree's bridging powers, I can do nothing but raise raw force and send on one of us alone.' He looked at Kirelle, clear-eyed and awaiting her decision; if she went on, she must brave the earthly world and three reaving mortals by herself.

But to stay behind was to remain here, trapped by the rage of the forest until the threat to the Eld Tree was righted. Fail in that task, Kirelle knew, and no path she could tread would be safe. The clearing that held Meara's orchards would be barred from human use. Without the small daily gifts that bought blessing, the apple trees would be choked out, root and branch, and the cottage torn asunder stone from stone.

In such things, the balance that ruled the borderlands was unforgiving. Gifts of life and sustenance were never to be taken for granted.

'I will have to place trust in the Tree's dream,'
she finally said. 'Let me be th
e one to go.'

The Wizard bent in his saddle and offered three flakes of slate smoothed by the waves on the lake shore. 'These talismans carry a dreamspell that can be tuned by your healer's gift. Set one in the hand of each mortal as he sleeps, and let the beliefs in his heart shape his fate. Once you've crossed, I cannot help. The Eld Tree must show your way back. My white owl will attend as your guide.'

The appointed bird banked in a whispered curve and called, mournfully dusky and wild. Beyond that, the wood's hostile stillness remained unbroken. Not the ratchet of crickets nor wind in the leaves wished her well as the Wizard raised uncanny spells to bridge the veil, that twisting, intricate web of energies that divided earthly lands from the otherworldly realm of the mysteries.