The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds (19 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
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She started across the open ground toward the open door of the downed craft. The stink of evil welled up around her, almost choking her, but she couldn’t stop. There was something important that she had to do here, something that she’d been sent to accomplish. She saw a movement against the blackness of the aircar’s cargo bay, and spoke to the moving shape. ,
“Adept,” she said. “Give me Ari Rosselin-Metadi.”
“Lieutenant Rosselin-Metadi isn’t mine to give anybody,” came the reply. The words were brave, but Llannat read another message in the currents of power she sensed interweaving in the darkened forest.
This little one is afraid. She stands between me and what I have to do—and she expects to die.
Llannat shook her head at such foolishness. But she was ready to be merciful, within the limits of her business here.
“Let us abandon playing with words,” she said. “What matters is that nobody is here to guard a dying man but you—and who can say, afterward, whether help that comes too late might have arrived in time? Stand aside.”
“No.”
“Then on your own head be it, Adept.”
Llannat called forth power, drawing on the strength of the night, and the air about her shone a deep crimson. The small figure facing her called up power in turn. Against the aura’s vivid green the other showed up clearly, and a sudden realization made anger rise up in Llannat like a burning tide.
She’s taken my staff!
thought Llannat. How the little stranger had done it, and left her with a shortened rod fit only for one-handed use, Llannat didn’t know—
but I’m going to make the bitch sorry she ever dared to call herself an Adept.
Llannat tried a few elementary moves with her shorter staff to test the other’s quality. Even working with an unfamiliar weapon, she found the little Adept sadly lacking, clumsy in her attacks and slow with her blocks.
What are they turning loose from the Retreat these days?
she raged inwardly as they fought.
This one shouldn’t be allowed out without a keeper.
She turned an ill-timed combination of blows with ease, and pressed forward with a simple attack of her own—beginner’s moves, fit for playing with such a novice. The strange Adept’s training sufficed to let her stop most of the blows and evade the rest, but not even Master Ransome’s expert teaching had brought her far enough to last much longer.
Llannat laughed aloud. “You’re overmatched, Mistress.” On the last word, she launched a series of feints at the stranger.
“I’m still alive,” came the breathless reply. “You have to win this fight. I only need to keep from losing it too soon.”
In spite of the bold words, the Adept was gasping for air. Llannat herself felt strong and fresh, and still able to draw on the power that surrounded them both.
I’ve given this little one chance after chance
, she thought
. Now it’s time to end the game.
She stepped forward, whipping her staff into a series of blows. Power shone around her, making a haze of blurry red against the night. The other Adept blocked, and blocked again. But now Llannat fought in earnest, forcing her weaker opponent back step by step—and then a quick move sent the other stumbling backward. The young stranger, already overbalanced, lost her footing on the slippery ground and went down on her back. The impact knocked her staff from her hand.
Llannat took a step forward. On the ground in front of the aircar’s open cargo door, the stranger was already clambering, weaponless, to her feet.
Poor fool. She still hopes to delay me, even if it’s only for the moment it takes to smash her down.
Llannat put aside the temptation to give the little stranger a few seconds more of life, and lifted her staff for the killing blow.
There was a smell like lightning, and a hot flower of light blossomed from the dark interior of the aircar. The bolt of energy caught her in the chest, hard and burning, and she was flying backward, with the world tilting up behind her.
She fell back to the ground, through it, and came to rest in a bright chamber, surrounded by figures wearing black robes and masks like her own.
“Did you succeed?”
The voice was deep and slow, with an unfamiliar accent.
“I don’t … know … .” The pain of the blaster wound in her chest was blurring her vision. The black-robed figures towered over her. “He was poisoned … as you ordered … but he had an Adept with him … .”
“An Adept!” came a voice from the circle. “How much does Ransome know?”
“Enough to make him wary, it seems,” said the first man. “Very well; we can wait. Someone else can do our work for us—you know the ones I mean.”
Llannat heard a harsh laugh of agreement from somewhere in the circle, and a third voice said, “That’s right—let them take some risks for a change.”
The room was going black before her eyes, and the pain of the blaster burn in her chest was taking over the universe. She could feel her blood running out of her, and her life with it, as she struggled to draw in enough air to speak.
“But … what about me? Can’t you do something … ?”
“You have a point.” It was the voice of the first speaker, the stranger in the circle. “Failure must always draw its reward.”
He lifted a silver knife in the blackness above her. She saw the glittering blade growing larger, slashing down—the pain when it hit swallowed up the little hurt of the blaster burn like a sinkhole swallowing a pebble, and she couldn’t hold on to life any longer, but sighed out her breath and let it go.
Llannat woke.
Or was I ever asleep?
she wondered.
The air smelled clean around her—still and dusty, yes, but free of the rotting stench of evil. She was sitting cross-legged on a stone floor, with her staff lying across her lap.
One thing that hadn’t changed was the darkness. She called forth power, and was satisfied when the air lit up with its familiar green glow.
I’m still myself. What happened wasn’t real. True, I think, but not real.
She looked about her. She wasn’t alone. Owen Rosselin-Metadi sat cross-legged on the floor across from her. He still wore his plain apprentice’s coverall, a drab garment that could belong equally to a farmhand or to a spaceport mechanic. A staff lay across his lap, and his eyes were closed.
Llannat blinked. She recognized the room—its rough stone walls could only belong to one of the oldest chambers in the Galcenian Retreat. But she’d never been alone with Owen Rosselin-Metadi in any of those rooms.
Another dream?
she wondered, and stood, as quietly as only an Adept can.
Silent as she had been, Owen must have heard her rising to go—without opening his eyes, he lifted his hand and gestured at her to stop. Then his hand fell back to his lap and he sat motionless once more.
“You’re not dreaming,” he said, his eyes still closed. “Or remembering. When the time comes, look for me here.”
She stared at him, confused. “What do you mean, ‘when the time comes?’” she asked. “And where
is
here? The asteroid? The Retreat? Somewhere else?”
Owen’s face didn’t change. With his hands motionless on the staff in his lap, and his eyes shut, he might have been a holovid frozen in midframe, except that he spoke.
“When you know why your second question has no answer,” he said, “then you’ll know that the time has come.”
Llannat was still puzzling over his meaning when he opened his eyes. His pupils widened when he saw her waiting, almost as if he’d been unaware of speaking to her a moment before.
He stood up. “Let’s find a way out of here,” he said, and gestured toward the door of the chamber. “The path I need to take is in this direction, I think.”
She followed him out into the hallway, and closed the door behind her. The power she had summoned earlier cast a flickering green light on the stone walls, and she saw more doors opening off the corridor to her left and right. She couldn’t tell where they might lead to—all of them looked alike in the leaping, twisted shadows.
“What did you mean,” she asked again, “to look for you here when the time comes?”
He shook his head. “Did I say that? I don’t know yet what I meant, either … but I
will
know when the time comes, and so will you.” He paused, and put his hand on one of the doors. “I have somewhere to go now. Don’t follow me until you’re certain that you should.”
He pushed the door open as he spoke, and was through into an unlighted space before Llannat could say anything more.
The door swung closed and vanished, and the stone corridor vanished along with it. The faint green light remained, but it illuminated only a cramped space, no wider than she was tall and perhaps twice as long, enclosed on all sides by smooth walls, with no hint of a door or other opening.
She let her instinct turn her toward one end of the room. Then she walked forward, not breaking stride as she came to the wall. Her physical being blended with the apparent obstacle—she passed through—and Llannat found herself once again in the corridor above the hidden stairway.
She reached out with her feelings. The marks hidden in the concrete beneath her were still there.
Doors
, she thought.
Hidden from anyone who lacks the strength and insight to use them. This is a strange place, and no mistake.
She walked forward and out, toward the upper reaches of the Professor’s asteroid.
 
“A put-up job,” Ari repeated. He glanced across the breakfast table at his sister.
Bee must have thought more about this than she lets on. She’s actually starting to make
sense.
“Care to get specific?” he asked.
“Well,” said Beka, “whoever the bad guys are, Dadda shot their main plan right out of the air. Not long after that, I got the
‘Hammer
and started asking questions. So then our mysterious somebodies got nasty—maybe they wanted to send a warning to Dadda, so that he’d keep out of things.”
Ari grimaced. “They don’t know him very well, do they?”
“Not everybody has had the privilege,” said the Professor quietly. “Pray continue, my lady.”
“I was knocking around the outplanets by then,” Beka went on, “so they decided to kill me and lay a false trail pointing back to Dahl&Dahl. They fed fake information to a gambler on Mandeyn who was making book on my odds of getting off-planet in one piece, and he would have spilled his guts to anybody who leaned on him a little. But somebody killed him over a crooked card game before he could talk to anyone who mattered.”
“Somebody,” said Ari. “Any idea who?”
“Me,” said his sister.
She paused a moment, as if waiting for him to challenge her, and then continued. “So our friends decided to try again with you as the target, and some humorous soul in their organization had a really bright idea: give the Rosselin-Metadi contract to Captain Tarnekep Portree. That way you’d get yours for stopping whatever they were up to on Nammerin with that Rogan’s epidemic—oh, yes, Jessan told me about that—and getting wrung out and hung up to dry by Space Force. Intelligence would be just about what Portree deserved for wrecking things back on Mandeyn.”
Ari thought about it for a while. “If you’re right,” he said slowly, “then somebody’s been playing all of us—even Mother—like so many game pieces. Nobody does that to my family if I can help it. Whatever it takes, Bee, I’m with you.”
“Thanks,” said Beka. “We won’t be working blind, either; Owen slipped me a hot datachip before we split up on Pleyver, and the comps here have been making it dance and sing. We’ve got a line on two or three different groups who might want Dahl&Dahl out of the picture—so now we go out hunting.”
She looked over at Jessan. “This isn’t your quarrel, Commander. You don’t have to consider yourself held here at blaster-point any longer.”
Jessan ran a forefinger around the rim of his empty cup. “Am I being invited to leave, Captain?”
Beka shook her head, but didn’t meet his eyes. “No.”
“Then by all means count me in,” said Jessan. The Khesatan’s words were light as usual, but his expression, for once, was not. “If the Space Force isn’t happy with . me afterward—well, I can always resign my commission and go back home to Khesat.”
“I don’t think you’ll need to do anything quite that drastic,” said a familiar voice from the stairway.
Llannat Hyfid came down the last few steps to the balcony. With an emotion that he couldn’t put a name to, Ari saw that she was wearing an Adept’s formal blacks, something she’d never done on Nammerin.
“Where have you been?” he asked as she slipped into the empty seat. “You damn near missed breakfast.”
“That’s all right, as long as there’s cha’a,” she said, and added, “I’ve been exploring. Professor, you have an unusual setup here. Did you know it was Magebuilt?”

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