Read The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5 Online
Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald
The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5 (11 page)
Mael drew his hand through the threads like a comb, trying to break them apart by force. He failed. The silver cords were strong, and sharp as the edges of knives. When he took his hand away, the blood from his cut fingers ran down in red streaks across his palm.
Ignoring the pain, he wrapped the cords around his hand to gain leverage and tugged more sharply. His efforts brought a hint of order to the tangle—not so much that a casual observer could have found it, but enough that someone who knew what to look for could see the beginnings of the true design.
His hand was still bleeding when the stinging in his cut fingers was matched by a sudden, sharper pain in his left shoulder. He tried to grasp the dark cord that ran through the tangle and pull it out, but the
eiran
were fading before him, and the solid lines that wrapped his hands were turning into mist.
eiran
were fading before him, and the solid lines that wrapped his hands were turning into mist.
The pain in his shoulder stayed with him, matched by a pain in his knees that had not been there a few moments before. Mael opened his eyes to the world of physical reality. The sky had grown dark in the time since he had commenced his meditations, and he was no longer in the Guildhouse garden. He was in a narrow, trash-filled alley, with stone walls rising to either side and a dead end facing him. Close at hand lay the chunk of stone—half of a red clay brick—that had taken him on the shoulder and driven him to his knees.
“Look at what we’ve got,” said a voice behind him—a young man’s voice, speaking Standard Galcenian strongly flavored with the local dialect. They wouldn’t speak their own patois, Mael thought, not when there was a chance their victim wouldn’t understand them.
“What do you think he’s doing here?” Another voice.
“Doesn’t belong. Think he’s got money?” A third.
Mael rose to his feet, and turned slowly, His staff had been in his hands when the meditation began. Where was it now? His hands were empty, and so was the clip on his belt. He was alone and unarmed, and a hot trickle under his robes told him that the half-brick had drawn blood—even as his fingers, cut on the
eiran,
also still bled.
eiran,
also still bled.
When Faral Hyfid-Metadi left home to seek his fortune, he’d cherished—privately, of course—certain daydreams about the wild nightlife available to galactic travelers in exotic ports of call. His fantasies, though weak on specific detail, had glittered brightly in his imagination during the transit from Maraghai. Not a single one of them had involved watching zero-g cageball on the holovid sports channel in a family hotel.
He and his cousin and Gentlesir Huool’s courier had made a skimpy dinner out of the canned drinks and highly salted snacks in the room’s cold-unit. Given the chance that somebody’s blaster-packing goons were on their trail, they hadn’t dared leave the hotel to buy proper food. An economy-minded establishment like this one didn’t provide room service; and even if it had, Faral wouldn’t have felt safe opening the door to strangers.
Miza lay napping, stretched out fully clothed on one of the room’s two beds. Faral and Jens sat on the other bed and the lounge chair, respectively, watching the cagers from Nanáli and Irique chase each other around the nullgrav playing cube. According to the running score at the bottom of the holovid tank, Nanáli was ahead twenty-three points to seventeen. Faral couldn’t remember whether the local team wore the black jerseys or the yellow ones, and didn’t particularly care.
Jens looked even less interested, if possible. Catching Faral’s eye, he gestured in the direction of the tank. “Is there a reason we’re watching this?”
“News clips,” Faral said. “I want to see if our fight this morning made it into the evening edition. The announcers might give us some idea who it is we’re up against.”
“I certainly hope so,” Jens said. “Once we know that, we can make plans. You have no idea, coz, how much I dislike sitting here and doing nothing.”
“Considering that we almost weren’t here to do anything, I feel lucky.”
“I suppose.” Jens finished his can of Varney’s Pre-Sweetened
Uffa
and tossed the empty container into the waste recycler before nodding toward the other bed. Miza was snoring faintly. “What are we going to do about her when we leave here?”
Uffa
and tossed the empty container into the waste recycler before nodding toward the other bed. Miza was snoring faintly. “What are we going to do about her when we leave here?”
“She’s got the local knowledge,” Faral pointed out. “And we don’t.”
“That’s going to change as soon as we reach high orbit.”
Faral considered the problem. “She’s also pretty.”
“Now we see what comes of being brought up on the South Continent a day’s hard walking from anywhere,” Jens said. “You’ve gone and fallen in love with the first human female you’ve ever met who wasn’t also a blood relation.”
“Only the fact that we’re stranded together on a hostile world, surrounded by dozens, maybe hundreds, of possible foes, prevents me from pounding you into the carpet for that remark. I am
not
in love with her.”
not
in love with her.”
Jens gave him a skeptical glance. “If you say so.”
“I say so. But we don’t know how long we may need to keep her around—and we can’t leave her behind for the rockhogs to pull down afterward.”
“I suppose you’re right. It would be ungracious.”
“And we don’t want that,” Faral said. “What would the Worthies on Khesat say if they ever found out?”
“An octet in rhyming couplets,” Jens said, “to the effect of ‘Stuff a sock in your mouth, coz.’”
“You, too, foster-brother.”
The conversation lapsed into silence. In the holovid tank, a cager in a black jersey slammed the ball against the target. The announcer interviewed somebody else in the arena who seemed excited by the feat—since neither the sports enthusiast nor the announcer spoke Galcenian, Faral never did learn why.
Eventually regular play commenced again in the cube. As it did so Faral said to his cousin, “So tell me. What
are
you planning to do once we get off-planet?”
are
you planning to do once we get off-planet?”
“Go to Khesat,” Jens said. “And continue my plan to become wealthy and famous by means of influence peddling.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Frightfully.” Jens’s blue eyes had the bright, sharp-edged expression that usually meant he was looking for trouble. “But it should be amusing.”
“In that case, I’m going with you.”
He had been running, running, most of the night. His side hurt, and his breath came in racking sobs. He wore the orange and grey of a Cracanthan peace enforcer, and knew when he looked at himself that such was what he was, but it all seemed so unimportant now. What was important was to find …
He didn’t know what he wanted to find. He pushed his legs on, moving them through sheer force of will.
Just keep going, and I’ll know what it is when I find it.
A light above the corner ahead threw a pool of blinding white down beneath it, making the rest of the night darker by contrast. His breath steamed a bit in the cool night air. In the light was a kiosk, which announced that this was a place of transportation. That one of the places served was a spaceport.
He was certain that he didn’t know the language in which the writings were made, but equally certain that he understood them. His foot splashed in a puddle. He had run once before, and it was important to get to the spaceport: another hint of his task.
Yes, get to the spaceport, and then …
He would know what it was he had to do when the time came.
In the brick alley, Mael turned to face his attackers. He knew the type—city-bred troublemakers, all of them, resentful of outsiders and willing to commit assault to make their opinion clear. The streets of Ruisi Spaceport had been full of such people, back in the days of the Republic’s occupation. Fear and poverty bred them, and helplessness nourished them. Mael remembered the feelings well.
He almost felt sorry for the bullies who confronted him. The street fighters of his youth had known that they could blame the Republic and its Adepts for their troubles. Some of them had been lucky enough to find the Resurgency—or the fellowship of the Circles—before their bitterness turned inward and they died in pointless battle over a fancied insult or a bit of illegal trade.
These three would not be so fortunate. His staff was gone, but those who had been trained in the Circles had other resources to aid them.
The street thugs had not spoken since he turned around. They had attacked him from behind, seeing only a cloaked and unfamiliar figure. Perhaps they had not expected to find a Mage. Still, they had not retreated.
“You wish me to fight you because I am in your territory?” Mael asked. “That is easily remedied. Come to mine.”
He stepped … sideways … and drew the three along with him into the Void.
It was at once the simplest thing that the Mage-trained could do, and the hardest to learn. Not everyone who came to the Circles could attain the level of true sight that showed the path away from reality, into that place where Power was not, but where fact and illusion became one. But once seen, the road was an easy one—
garaeth sus-etazein
, the Circles called it, the Great Lords’ Way.
garaeth sus-etazein
, the Circles called it, the Great Lords’ Way.
The Void was as he remembered it. No sky, no horizon, only a grey mist-that-was-not-mist all around him, and a ground under his feet that had no reality but what his own mind gave to it. The three bullies huddled together and stared about wide-eyed with fear. They had grown up, perhaps, on grannies’ tales of Mages and Adepts, and on what those who worked with Power could do to people who were reckless enough to anger them.
“Here, what I will becomes real,” Mael said.
He gestured—an unnecessary flourish, but something the three would remember later—and called forth a night-whip from the mist of the Void.
The creature was a thing out of legend on the homeworlds, all floating fog and long, ropy tentacles that sucked away a bit of a man’s life every time they touched flesh. This was a young one, and not especially hungry. Mael had no desire to kill his assailants, only. to escape from them and—if their minds were receptive—to educate them somewhat in the folly of throwing bricks at off-worlders.
“If what you will here becomes real,” a voice whispered behind him, “does that mean you have willed me to exist?”
Mael turned. It was the
ekkannikh,
cloaked in black as he had seen it before on Maraghai. This time its pale skeleton hand gripped an Adept’s staff.
ekkannikh,
cloaked in black as he had seen it before on Maraghai. This time its pale skeleton hand gripped an Adept’s staff.
It has remembered that much more of what it was,
Mael thought.
If it remembers everything, we are lost.
Mael thought.
If it remembers everything, we are lost.
“I grow stronger,” the revenant said, “and closer. The final victory has always been mine.”
“If that is so, then I will delay it while I can.”
“While you can.” The
ekkannikh
laughed, a sound like seeds rattling inside a dry gourd. “Let me show you the future.”
ekkannikh
laughed, a sound like seeds rattling inside a dry gourd. “Let me show you the future.”
It lifted its free hand, and Mael saw that the bony fingers held a square piece of polished silver. His own face looked back at him from the mirror’s surface: his own face, and the flesh rotting from off the bones, and the bare skull beneath.
“You see,” said the
ekkannikh.
“We come to the same place in the end, you and I.”
ekkannikh.
“We come to the same place in the end, you and I.”
“Not while I have strength to will it otherwise,” Mael said, and called up the shadow of his Mage-staff out of the all-enveloping mist.
He raised the staff in his right hand, guarding his chest and head, and stepped back with his left foot to take the proper stance. As he had expected, the
ekkannikh
let the silver mirror drop into the swirling fog, the better to lift up its longer staff in an Adept’s two-handed grip.
ekkannikh
let the silver mirror drop into the swirling fog, the better to lift up its longer staff in an Adept’s two-handed grip.
A quick motion of the revenant’s bony hands, and the staff—almost two meters of polished wood—spun and flashed downward. Mael brought his staff up in a block against it. The Void deadened the sound of the impact to a dull
thock.
He twisted away as the staves met and the blow slid off harmlessly to one side.
thock.
He twisted away as the staves met and the blow slid off harmlessly to one side.
The revenant hissed in frustration.
Mael had learned long ago that the tall staves of the Adepts were best suited for distance work. Get inside of their length and they became a liability to the wielder. The difficulty lay in passing through the deadly arc of their strike. But now he
was
inside, and smashing his staff against his enemy’s ribs in a move that should have broken bone.
was
inside, and smashing his staff against his enemy’s ribs in a move that should have broken bone.
The blow passed through the body of the
ekkannikh
with no more resistance than through the mist of the Void. Mael himself was out of position now. The
ekkannikh’s
long staff shot forward, end on, and Mael—unable to block, unable to sidestep—could do nothing but watch it come.
ekkannikh
with no more resistance than through the mist of the Void. Mael himself was out of position now. The
ekkannikh’s
long staff shot forward, end on, and Mael—unable to block, unable to sidestep—could do nothing but watch it come.
The staff took him in the midsection like a spear, and passed through him as his own staff had passed through the body of the revenant. It left a trail of ice in his guts, not painful, but cripplingly cold.
He tried to raise his staff, and failed.
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