The Paladin Caper (10 page)

And somewhere amid all that death, there was the body of the former mine supervisor, never recovered from when he foolishly tried to bargain with the chimera, with hopefully enough of his wrecked corpse intact to have some trace elements of his aura, along with the imprint of the aura-coded key upon it, still present.

“This is a
terrible
idea,” Desidora said very quietly.

“If we wish to save Dairy—”

“I know.”

As they passed the bleeding trees, they came to a smaller clearing near the canyon wall. The ground was strewn with bones, lit bloody red this close to the wall, along with skin and clothes and fur and, above all that, pain. In the aura that permeated the clearing, Desidora felt not just the deaths but the rage that had caused them, the choking madness that blotted out everything except the need to kill.

Most people would blanch at such a feeling, but most people were not death priestesses capable of wrenching the life from a living creature with a wave of their hands. Desidora had felt that power, had nearly lost herself to it before the others pulled her back from the brink of madness. Then she had shut it away, trapping it where it could not help her even when she desperately needed it.

Now she turned her aura inward, drawing the pain and death from around her until it covered her like a shroud. It did not leave her invisible, precisely, but instead left her
ignorable
to most creatures. Ululenia glanced over and nodded. Her hand slipped from Desidora’s, and she closed her eyes. A moment later, her horn flickered and went dark.

They crept into the clearing.

Desidora swept the bones on the ground. Beneath the pain, there was the natural aura, the core of the being who had died. And above
that
, a tiny, thin layer below the final immediate pain of death, would be the imprint of magic upon them.

She could sense the miners almost easily. Working all day amid the ambient magic of the crystals, their auras all but glowed to the naked eye, catching the angry red of the walls. It was powerful but raw, uncontrolled. She kept moving.

Then the bones near the canyon wall stirred, and Desidora looked again at the carrion carnage, and saw the chimera.

It was death and pain and madness, tattered wings fused to skin split by spurs of bone. The pictures made the chimera look like a lion with some extra heads sewn on, but there was nothing neat or simple about this creature. There was wolf and eagle and jaguar, and no clean line between them. It shifted again, growling in its sleep, and little rainbow sparks spat from its joints.

Desidora could almost feel sorry for it. She also pulled the shroud of ignorability around her even tighter.

Then, scanning the ground near the chimera, Desidora saw the faint flicker of crystal magic, cleaner and simpler than that of the fairy creature. She squinted and saw crystals scattered by the wall, still shining faintly. She tapped Ululenia’s arm and pointed, and Ululenia nodded ever so slightly.

Desidora crept closer, looking hard at the floor for anything, anything at all, that might make a sound if she stepped on it or even just near it, even as her gaze kept trying to climb back to the chimera, twitching as it—as
they
—slept. A few steps closer, and she could feel a corpse nearby with an aura touched by magic, but differently from the miners. It was softer, less raw, and it was more complex as well, its aura echoing the patterns of attuned crystals like the afterimages of a bonfire playing over and over again against closed eyelids. Complex crystal-work, and spells, and . . .
there
.

She pointed again. The movement made her gown—its pale green now death-priestess black from the effort of holding the shroud around her—rustle in the night.

The chimera went still. So did Desidora and Ululenia, but for Ululenia giving Desidora the angry mother of all accusing glares.

A head, mostly wolf except where part of its jaw slid uncomfortably into beak, lifted up, its eyes glowing with embers of rainbow light.

Ululenia was
very quickly
a mouse on the ground by Desidora’s foot.

The wolf head rolled over. Something in the chimera’s body cracked like a popped knuckle as it did, and rainbow sparks hissed out. An eagle talon by the head twitched, and Desidora saw that the talon ended in a snake’s head, the tongue flicking and testing the air, before it, too, seemed to relax.

Desidora counted to one hundred and then looked down at Ululenia. Then she pointed
very slowly
at the bones near the raw crystals.

Ululenia, still a mouse, scuttled over toward where the chimera lay. Desidora held still.

The mouse reached the bones, only a few feet from where the chimera slept. Ululenia sniffed them, then shifted into a squirrel. She gripped what had to have been a hand bone between her paws and scampered back to Desidora.

Desidora took the bone. With the shroud around her and unnatural cold all through her own person, human remains gave her no discomfort. She held it close and felt the aura. A man, simple and small and greedy and vain, in love with his wife and too tired after years of work to do enough to show it. No, useless. Above that, the pain, the hot flash of agony and slow sickening realization that it was too much, it was not an injury to recover from, that parts of his body were
over there now
and the only release would be when his heart stopped working so that what was happening to him would just be happening to his body. Not that either. Between them . . . flickering shapes of artificial energy, magic shaped into a puzzling array . . .
there
.

She found that energy aura, embraced it, lived it. For a moment, she
was
the aura. She nodded to Ululenia and stepped quietly back out of the clearing and into the woods. Not until they were past the bleeding trees did she let herself do more than creep.

Then she reached with her free hand into a pocket and drew out a simple blank crystal.

In her own aura, she created the energy of the key-aura, and then she poured it through her fingertips into the crystal, shapes upon shapes, layers upon layers. Where the aura was imperfect, she adjusted, filling in gaps with what her own knowledge of auras told her must be the right pattern. She cut away the man and his death and put into the crystal only the perfect pattern of the key that would open the inner processing wing.

When it was done, she slid the aura around the crystal closed, like shutting a book to keep the words inside. Sometime while she had worked, Ululenia had become a woman again, and Desidora handed her the crystal.

“It is done. Good luck.”

Ululenia nodded, took a few steps away, and said, “Travel safely.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Desidora smiled. “Go get your virgin.”

Ululenia snorted, and then magic shimmered around her and she was a snowy-white eagle. With a few hard flaps she was into the air, winging her way through the red-lit sky toward the mining facility.

Desidora watched her go. With luck, Loch and the others would have bought themselves enough time. Regardless, they had gone as quickly as they could, the unicorn and the death priestess. She let out a long breath.

“Thank goodness,” said the chimera from behind her, in a voice like rusted metal dragging across gravel. “We thought she’d
never
leave.”

The Sunrise Canyon was a blood-red scar across the landscape, and Loch stood beside Irrethelathlialann, the elf who had tried to kill her more than once, while Kail took their sad broken airship into the valley.

“This is a mistake, Isafesira,” Irrethelathlialann said.

“You know, I wasn’t convinced the first three times,” Loch said, not looking over at him, “but you’re starting to wear me down.”

“This desperation of this plan would be charming—”

“Your
mother
is charming, Ethel,” Kail said from the control console.

Loch shot him a look, then turned to Irrethelathlialann. “If the people trying to bring back the ancients need to sacrifice Dairy, then we need to rescue him.”

The elf sighed. “You’re going to get yourselves killed, and then the boy dies anyway, and the ancients return, and my people are enslaved because you two are
idiots
.”

“Hey, Ethel,” Kail said, adjusting the controls slightly as the airship edged closer to the great glowing red wall of the canyon, “remember when the Empire and the Republic were going to blow up, and that was okay with you, because it was just humans? You sort of lost us-listening-to-your-opinion right there.”

“If this mining complex includes the gateway to the ancients’ return,” Irrethelathlialann said, ignoring Kail, “then we need to bury it. If the boy must be sacrificed to bring open that gateway, then we must take him out of play. You attempt a complex solution when the time allowed permits only direct action.”

Loch looked back at the blood-red walls as they slowly slid by. The mining dock was a sliver of wood ahead of them, lit by giant glowlamps from the maw of the mine itself. “Would you like to explain what
take him out of play
means, so that I can tell Mister Dragon what you just suggested?”

“Ethel,” Kail said into the sudden and cold silence, “you don’t have a team of killers. You have a team of thieves. So we steal Dairy, and we’re good, and the ancients don’t get to come back, and nobody walks around enslaved to ancient magic swords or anything.”

“That’s hardly a . . . what?” Irrethelathlialann looked over at Kail. “Magic swords?”

“Yeah, that’s how they come back, right?” Kail blinked. “Ghylspwr is a hammer, and Arikayurichi is an ax. They’re all big impressive magic weapons that take over people’s minds, right?”

Irrethelathlialann laughed longer than was absolutely necessary.

“No,” Loch said, “the ancients are . . . as far as we know, they’re people. Ghylspwr and Arikayurichi are ancient souls bound to weapons, but nothing in the old lore says the ancients are like that.”

“But . . .” Kail looked a little hurt. “They’re
both
weapons.”

“I was so worried!” Irrethelathlialann said, still laughing. “I feel so much better knowing that the greatest minds in your Republic are responsible for creating this plan!”

The airship edged closer to the dock, and workers with glowing wands waved them in.

“You can see how I
assumed
it, though, right?” Kail asked plaintively.

“It’s fine, Kail,” Loch said, while Irrethelathlialann chuckled to himself. “We all clear on the plan?”

“We delay and disrupt while your unicorn and your death priestess copy the key,” the elf said, and lowered his voice as the airship came in to land. “I hope it works.”

“Glad to know you’re on our side, Ethel,” Kail said, and touched the airship down.

Loch lowered the gangplank and came down briskly, waving at the dock workers with her walking stick. “Republic Diplomatic Committee. Which one of you is the supervisor?”

The two dock workers who had drawn night-shift duty, neither of whom were the supervisor, went blank.

“Ma’am,” Kail called from behind her, “the ambassador has some concerns about the . . . I don’t even know what they are, but magical somethings? Does the supervisor have a recent measurement of . . . whatever those are?”

“Thaumaturgic emanations consistent with pollution of personal aura,” Irrethelathlialann said, swishing down the gangplank. “Lacking reassurance of temporary nature of personality degeneration due to radiant effects, diplomatic expedience is impossible.”

“Right,” Loch said, and looked back to the workers, nodding as she did. “So, the supervisor?”

“The mine isn’t open at night,” one of the workers said, trying the words out as though he knew it was going to go badly.

“What?” Kail called from the top of the gangplank.

“The mine
must
be open for inspection,” Loch added. “The elven ambassador has been planning this meeting for months.” She looked around in exasperation, casing the area as she did. The main docking bay had a huge entrance where primary cargo would be loaded onto airships for delivery. Beyond the massive crates and lifting golems, she saw the huge double doors that led down into the mine itself. A smaller door, still reinforced but built only to accommodate a person, was off to the left. According to Tern, that led to the meeting rooms for visiting guests.

More security workers were coming their way, and Kail raised his voice. “Are you telling me the mine doesn’t have anyone ready for the ambassador of the damned Elflands? Did they just
forget
about this?”

“Mendacity regarding diplomatic interests consistent with inadequate safety precautions,” Irrethelathlialann said, nervously clasping his hands.

“No, no, everything is fine,” Loch said quickly, “I’m sure there are no safety problems in the mine.” She glared at the workers.

“Our mine is completely safe!” one of them said, bless him.

“We’ve gone more than one hundred days without a worker being injured!” another added.

“Yes, and the supervisor will be more than happy to show us the processing center,” Loch said, her voice carrying across the dock, “and
prove
that the Elflands doesn’t need to demand reparations for damaging the river water with magical pollution.”