Invoking Darkness (12 page)

"You will join the Shadows?" he asked.

He sent message after message to Blaylock, hoping to rouse him. If any could fight off the physiological effects of Circe's sleeping potion, it would be Blaylock.

"Give me the key."

Elric found that the simple message spell was exhausting him. He had to stop. He must save what strength remained to him and use it wisely. Although he did not have the energy to defeat Circe in a fight, he might defeat her through other means. The machines were protected with a special reflective screen that the Circle had designed. Any energy that attacked the screen was reflected back against the attacker tenfold. Even a single fireball, then, could take on much greater power in the reflection. If Circe remained unshielded, the blast could potentially kill her.

An attack would also send an alarm to the others who had access to the system: Blaylock, Herazade, and Galen. Perhaps the alarm would be strong enough to wake them. If the blast failed to kill Circe, though, he feared what would happen.

"You have been a good mage," Elric said. "Why do you betray us?"

"A good mage. Where is my reward? I have revolutionized the design of the probes we use. I have provided those probes, out of my own goodwill, to all the mages. I have given up my place of power, my health, have supported the Circle in all its decisions. I have done everything you have asked and more.

"When you declare there will be no elections this year, it is clear you feel no one is fit. It is clear you feel I am not fit. But I no longer accept your arrogant pronouncements. If you held elections as you should, I would win. I would take my rightful place in the Circle.

"I wait obediently no longer. You are not the only ones with power. Now give me the key."

Elric realized he did have a means of discovering whether the explosive device was real: He could call her bluff. He should have thought of it immediately. If her threat was true, and if he angered her sufficiently, she would attempt to kill him. If the explosive was only a pretense, she would not want to kill him, since the key offered her only chance of escape. Elric fixed her with his gaze, carefully modulated his voice.

"Morden promised you something, of course. Your health? Your old power?" Circe smiled.

"That you would lead a fleet of Shadow ships in conquest?"

The smile faded.

"Oh," Elric said, "perhaps he offered that only to members of the Circle."

She stood silent.

"Does it not bother you that Morden approached nearly everyone at the convocation? He did not select you, Circe, as especially deserving of his favor."

"I will be the one who was able to escape this place to join him."

"Elizar and Razeel joined him long ago. And they, just lowly initiates."

"They will take their orders from me."

"Or perhaps they will order you. They have done much to prove their worth to the Shadows."

She took a step closer, standing now directly before him. From the darkness beneath her hat, her eyes glistened.

"Give me the key, Elric."

"Your actions prove that you are not fit to be one of the Circle, and that you never have been."

Her mouth twisted, and she raised her withered hand. With a precise motion, she extended her index finger, pressed the fingertip into his cheek. After a moment of resistance, the skin parted and her finger slipped through, transfixing him like an arrow of pure fire. He clenched the arms of the platform, his breath coming hard and fast. She pulled the finger downward, ripping a gouge through his face. He'd thought himself filled with pain, but this...

Circe's image faded into the gray of the room. He tightened his grip on the platform, determined not to lose consciousness. Circe pulled her finger free, and he fell forward, breathless. Blood droplets pattered onto his robe. She shoved him upright.

"Do you want them all to die? The order to which you have devoted your life? And your dear Galen?"

She raised her index finger, now coated in blood.

"Tell me the key. I will not ask again."

He told himself that his true body lay within the heart of Soom, not in this place. She pressed the fingertip to his other cheek, impaled him, ripped down through skin and muscle. He collapsed to one side, his face on fire. He forced his mouth to move, the words to emerge.

"I will not give you the key under any circumstance. You should know me better than that. But then, your manipulations were never terribly skillful."

Here was the moment for her to strike, to kill him. Her bloody hand was poised.

She need only reach out, drive her finger into his heart. Instead she held back, her body rigid, trembling with rage. There was no explosive.

Elric visualized a fireball coalescing in the air behind her, visualized it shooting at the protected machines. The tech echoed his commands, and fire streaked out from behind Circe. The fireball splashed against the translucent screen, then with a strange reversal of movement drew itself back together and struck out, now not just a fireball, though, but a great gout of flame.

Elric wrapped a shield around himself as the fire blasted past. Though the attack centered on Circe, it encompassed them both. The blaze roared around him.

A faint echo came from the tech, an echo of his shield visualization, as if the tech was struggling to maintain the spell. The echo came again, again, growing fainter. Finally it died; the shield slipped away. But it had lasted long enough. The fire had expended itself. Circe dropped to the floor. The platform beneath him dissolved, and he fell beside her. They lay facing each other on the charred tiles, wrapped in hazy smoke and the sharp smell of burned pork.

Circe's head was bare, the hat ripped away by the fire. She barely looked Human. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were burned off, her skin scorched a bright red, except for the side that lay against the floor, the side that had taken the brunt of the attack. There, along her temple, cheek, neck, shoulder, she'd been charred black.

She braced her good hand against the tiles. A fissure split the brittle skin between thumb and index finger, and clear plasma leaked out. She pushed herself to her knees, coughed. Parts of her robe seemed stuck to her skin; other pieces had burned away. She touched a trembling finger to her chest, and the blue tinge of a shield flowed out over her skin. She shot him a slight, victorious smile, a wet blister on her lower lip. Then she faced the machines, sensing the attack had originated with them.

Elric said nothing to enlighten her. She extended her index finger, and from its tip grew a brilliant purple ball, coruscating with energy. When it was a foot across, its growth ceased. With a tap of her finger, it streaked toward the curved devices.

Elric visualized the blue cocoon of a shield surrounding him, the tech's echo a faint whisper. The shield slipped down over him as Circe's globe struck. The wall of machines flared purple, reflecting and magnifying the attacking energy. The purple rushed to concentrate itself in the spot the globe had struck, erupted to fill the room in a blinding, crackling blaze.

His shield would not last much longer. Circe's blockade of the door, he believed, would have failed when her platform did. If he could reach the door, he could escape. But his body had no strength, and he dared not conjure his own platform, for then he would surely lose his shield.

He huddled against the floor, reducing the area the shield need protect. Above him, the blue outline of Circe's figure became visible through the declining flames of purple. Now both of Circe's index fingers extended, and purple spheres formed before them. She propelled the spheres toward the machines. She was determined to destroy them, or die trying.

Brilliant purple raged over his shield, filled with sound and fury, the fury the mages fought so hard to deny. She would kill them both, in her desire for power. He held to the image of the shield, to this tiny sanctuary. In denying Circe, he realized, he had completed his final duty for his order. The mages would be safe – from everyone but themselves. He could do no more. As heat built within his shield, he found himself thinking of the quiet, nameless boy who had come to be his student so many years ago, and had brought such unexpected happiness into his life.

He wished he had been more help to Galen. But his time was over. Galen would have to go on without him. Now he would rest. He was lying again on Soom, sinking into the mak, descending through rock and water, floating gently down channels of magma to the great, dark currents of its core. And as at last his shield failed, Soom's warm heart welcomed him home.

* * *

Sound blared through Galen's head. He pushed himself up with heavy arms. He was on his bed, fully clothed. His mind took a few moments to process the information.

He must have fallen asleep, though he didn't remember it.

The sound.

It was deafening. He realized his mind's eye was flashing an alarm. The observation room had been breached. It took him a couple tries to get to his feet.

He stumbled toward the door, struggling to wake up. Who would have violated the Circle's protections? He slammed his hand down on the door control, ran unsteadily down the hall. Finally he remembered how to stop the alarm. When he did, he found that he had a message, several minutes old.

It was from Elric.

Circe has sealed me with her in the observation room. She desires the key so she can leave this place. She claims other mages are in league with her.

Galen sent a response.

I'm coming.

He turned down the corridor leading to the observation room, saw two silhouettes at the end, obscured in the black smoke that billowed from the room.

Elric.

Elric.

One of the figures turned toward him, and he received a message. It was from Blaylock, though, not Elric.

Fetch Gowen at once. Do not delay.

Galen's mind felt frozen. Gowen was needed. Galen should know what that meant, but his mind would not make the connection. A terrible sense of urgency filled him.

He conjured a platform, and with an equation of motion sent himself racing back down the hall toward Gowen's room. As he approached, he visualized equation after equation in his mind's eye, conjuring a cluster of intense balls of energy within the metal of Gowen's door. The gray surface churned with frantic bubbling, vaporized in a great rush of steam. In a crouch he sped through the hole.

Gowen lay asleep in bed. Galen yanked him up, and when Gowen did not awaken, Galen rolled him onto the platform. On the dresser lay the crystal that Gowen used in healing. Galen grabbed it and took off with him. As they skimmed back down the hallway, Galen shook him.

"Wake up! Wake up!"

Galen conjured a fireball in his hand, waved it over Gowen's face. Gowen's eyes snapped open.

"Galen! What is it?"

Galen quenched the fireball in his fist and found he could not speak. He could not say the words. He held out the crystal to Gowen. Gowen took it and pushed himself up, somehow retaining a measure of dignity in his short white sleeping gown. Galen stood beside him. Ahead was the corridor to the observation room.

Black smoke spread through the intersection. Gowen glanced at him, and with the whisper of silk, a shield slipped over him. Gowen had conjured a containment shield around them both, to hold a quantity of clean air within. They raced into the smoke, down the corridor. Outside the observation room, Galen dissolved the platform. They were alone; Blaylock and the other mage must have gone inside.

The room was dark with smoke. Along the wall to his right, what he could see of the machines seemed undamaged, their curved surfaces still shimmering blue.

At the same time, the floor tiles were charred, and in places had shattered from the heat, revealing burned supports beneath.

"Watch your step," Gowen said.

Galen glanced back at the wall behind him. It was scorched almost entirely black, and in places hardened rivulets revealed where the metal had gone molten. Recognition flashed through his mind he had seen such a thing before. In a moment, he remembered where: on the burned remnants of the spaceship in which his parents had died.

From the fire of the crash Elric had brought their bodies, floating on platforms, illusions shrouding them in sheets. He began a mind-focusing exercise, visualizing a blank screen, a neat letter in glowing blue in the upper left corner. A.

Then he visualized B appearing beside A, and he held the image of them both in his mind. Then it was A B C, all in his mind at once, each individual letter clear while the whole also remained clear. But his thoughts refused to continue.

He could not lose Elric. He could not.

Ahead, through the smoke, hints of blue glimmered from shielded figures. He moved toward them.

Beside him, Gowen stumbled, released a yelp. A figure lay facedown on the floor, robe burned to tatters, cherry-red skin covered with blisters. It looked as if it must be dead, yet through the shield came the faint sound of short, rasping breaths. With an awkward motion the head lifted toward them; an irregular strip down the side of the face shone a swollen black. Dark eyes fixed on him. Circe.

Galen grabbed Gowen, dragged him around Circe toward the two shielded figures. Blaylock and Herazade knelt on either side of a large black lump. Galen couldn't make sense of it. With stiff hands, Blaylock rolled the object carefully over, and Galen realized it was a person. The figure had been curled up on its left side. The robe was burned away in large patches along the right side of the body, revealing the leg, side, and arm charred so black they blended in with the remaining fabric. The most intense burns, though, concentrated about the head and shoulders, which had turned a leathery black. Pieces of the ears and nose had burned away entirely, and glistened with leaking plasma. With eyes closed, it looked like a majestic, ancient statue, a monument to one long dead.

Blaylock looked up.

"Gowen, come quickly."

His voice was muffled behind his containment shield.

"Do all that you can."