Vincalis the Agitator (57 page)

Patr started guiding them rightward, and shoved them into a very narrow, unlit corridor that ran at a right angle to the passageway
they’d just been in.

“We’re leaving the lights off because I don’t want to call attention to us,” Patr said. In the narrow space, his voice seemed
suddenly close and loud. “Watch your step. We’re going to reach the stairs in just a second.”

Even warned, Jess stepped off into air and only the hand around her arm kept her from taking a bad fall. “Careful,” Patr said.

On the other side of him, she heard Wraith swearing.

“Quiet,” Patr said.

“Nearly killed myself on the stairs,” Wraith whispered. “No balance at all with my hands bound like this.”

“I’ll fix that when we get where we’re going.”

In the dark, the stairs seemed to descend interminably—Jess could almost imagine herself hurrying to the heart of the world.
The air began to stink of rot and mold and the sickening sweetness of death; her skin prickled from increasing cold and damp
and a crawling, clawing air of malice. She started hearing the faint drip of water, and she got a sense of space opening up
in front of her.

“Almost to the last step,” Patr said. “The ground is slick once you get past the stairs—but we’re almost where we’re going.”

Jess felt bad magic erupt at a distance. “If you think it will provide some protection, we need to get there fast,” she said.

“You felt the
rewhah
break free?” Wraith asked.

“Yes.”

“Hell’s-all!” Patr swore. He muttered, “
Vey-takchaes!
” and dim lights flickered on all around them. They’d arrived in a natural cavern, huge and arching, with stalactites hanging
from the vault like the fangs of demons, and stalagmites stabbing up from the slick floor to meet them, so that Jess felt
herself trapped in the massive jaws of death itself. The eerie blue-green lights cast long and twisting shadows that did not
successfully hide bloated bodies in all stages of decay, stacked one atop the next and crumbling in on each other. Dead eyes
stared at her, dead jaws gaped open in frozen shock. Some faces were human, some might once have been human, some were barely
recognizable as faces. Jess thought some of them still twitched.

Jess felt her heart contract, and Patr said, “Don’t look. Just run.”

They fled, Patr dragging the two of them to a doorway carved into a massive pillar of stone, opened the door, hauled both
of them through the narrow opening so fast Jess crashed shoulder, chest, hip, and face into the doorway while getting through,
and then shoved the door shut behind them.

He dropped a bar into place, pushed a bright red button just above the door …

… and all sensation of evil, of malice, of the horror that had been unleashed in the amphitheater of the Gold Building vanished.

“Safe room,” Patr said. He leaned against the wall, panting, bathed in pale light for which Jess could find no source. “There
are a lot of them scattered around this cavern. Things go … wrong … quite a bit down here. This room burns power like a floating
mansion, but we should live through whatever is going on above.”

“Out there,” Wraith said. “Those bodies … what were they there for?”

“Very specialized … research.” Patr looked grim when he said it.

Jess rubbed her hip. It hurt bad enough she expected an impressive bruise—but if she didn’t melt into ash, she’d take a hundred
bruises. “What sort of research?”

Patr had taken Wraith’s wrists and was trying various small wands above the opening mechanisms. He didn’t look up to answer.
“The Silent Inquest considers the Dragon Empire its mortal enemy. Masters of the Inquest will take Dragon money and do Dragon
dirty work if that work also suits their needs, but the Inquest antedates the first of the Dragon dynasties by nearly four
hundred years, and in eras when the Dragons lost their grip on power, the Inquest has been here to resume its control of the
lands and peoples of the Hars.”

Jess frowned. “Most people don’t even know the Silent Inquest exists. And we’ve never had an Inquest government.”

“Ah, but we have,” Patr said. “The Dragons prefer to rule by deception—by making people believe that the Dragons have the
best interests of the people at heart. They make a show of all their good works, but they want power just like any other government,
and they’ll use any methods to get and keep it. They spend a lot of time and money painting their work in pretty colors, though.

“The Inquest has always ruled from the background, and by fear. Most people don’t know it exists because that’s how the Inquest
wants it. Outside of the Gold Building, Inquestors wear no special clothing, no insignias, no distinguishing marks. We know
each other by reputation, but never identify ourselves as Inquestors to others to whom we have not been introduced by those
we know are Inquestors. And we never introduce another of our own as an Inquestor to one to whom we have not been formally
introduced.”

The first lock clicked open at Wraith’s wrist.

“But I’d heard rumors of the Inquest before they took an interest in me,” Wraith said. “I didn’t know the rumors were true,
but I heard things.”

Patr nodded. “We are a secret society and a silent government, but some of our members—those in higher positions—took a liking
to the fruits of fame and became … visible. When they became too obvious, the highest of the Masters had them killed, and
when even our Grand Master once made a spectacle of himself, lower Masters convened and agreed to his death.”

He sighed. “And that is what
this
place is all about. When the Masters command a death, we are required to provide that death—and sometimes the death they
want is of a powerful wizard, or someone with access to the protection of powerful wizards. Here is where we learn how to
reach powerful people and kill them.”

Wraith rubbed his wrists. “And this is what you did? You killed people.”

“I mostly provided information. I’m good at blending into places, making myself seem to belong. But … sometimes, yes.”

Wraith studied Patr without expression. “But you risked your life to save mine.”

“Only because Jess asked me to.
I
would have let you die.”

The faintest of smiles crossed Wraith’s lips. “Thanks for being honest, anyway.”

Patr smiled grimly and said, “Anything for a friend.”

“So what happens now?” Jess asked.

“We let the
rewhah
run its course. We arm ourselves.” He nodded upward, and Jess saw what looked like standard stun-sticks, but with more settings
on the handle. “Those will kill almost any nightmare that even a heavy
rewhah
backlash can create,” he said. “Take one. I hope we won’t need them, but I’m betting otherwise.”

“I couldn’t kill anyone,” Jess said.

Patr looked to Wraith. Wraith reached up without a word and took down a weapon from one of the hooks. His face told Jess more
than she wanted to know: not only that he could kill something if he had to, but that he thought he was going to have to.
She stood there for a moment, considering. She and Wraith could fight the Empire if they could get out of this place. If they
didn’t live to escape, though, this desperate rescue became nothing but a waste of Patr’s sacrifice of himself to save her.

She looked from Wraith to Patr, and back to Wraith. Then she stood up on her toes and reached for the weapon. She was too
short by far. “Give me one,” she said. “I’ll do what I have to do.”

The light inside the room flickered and then went out. The sense of being protected vanished. Jess gripped her weapon with
shaking hands. What came in the wake of a magical blast so fierce that it could blow the spells of a wizard’s safe room?

“I wish Solander were here,” Wraith whispered.

Outside the safe room, something big growled and clawed at the door.

L
uercas lay in the corridor, alive and untouched, but surrounded by masses of the freshly dead. He raised his head carefully,
fractionally, ready to drop it and pretend to be a corpse again should anything in the corridor move. But this time nothing
did.

So he got to his feet slowly, watching in both directions in case one of the scarred monstrosities that had survived the
rewhah
came back. Those things were known to go mad and turn on people; when the
rewhah
had scarred him, he hadn’t—but he’d known what had happened to him, and had felt certain that sooner or later magic would
be able to set it right. Most of those in the corridor knew nothing of
rewhah
: thought that the magic the Empire used was a clean source of energy; believed that they would be protected and that their
lives mattered to someone other than themselves; thought the world they inhabited was a safe place.

With their beliefs shattered, they could turn dangerous quickly— and some of them came out of the hell of
rewhah
with the equipment to make them doubly dangerous. Three fast beasts with talons and fangs had risen out of the ruined bodies
near him—he’d caught a glimpse of them through slitted eyes, and it was enough to make him fear for his life. They all matched—something
unexpected when dealing with back-wash damage. Not only were their body parts consistent within themselves, but they were
consistent from monster to monster. The damage had the look of intent about it, as if …

Luercas had lain on the whitestone floor and held his breath and tried to be logical. To the best of his considerable knowledge,
no one had ever managed to control the effects of
rewhah
to create anything useful. No one. Many had tried, but
rewhah
resisted the best efforts of talented Masters—and those who dared push their luck a bit too far found themselves fighting
for their survival. Yet here in front of him were three matching monsters—almost birdlike in their movements, featherless,
with dark copper hides and teeth as long as his hand set solidly in gaping jaws. They each moved on two huge, powerful hind
legs, and had tails as long as their bodies, and long, supple necks, and eyes that glowed like the setting sun. Most times,
guards would bring down anything that looked too dangerous—but those three had the air of survivors about them. And the air
of the intervention of gods—and of that sort of thing Luercas had seen entirely too much already for one day. He’d been more
comfortable in a world where gods were dusty myths, trotted out at holidays to provide a reason for merriment. He did not
care to be confronted with proof of active, interested gods; he did not care to have his rules changed.

But at least all the living, viable monsters seemed to be gone.

Nothing like them in the corridor anymore. Nothing but bodies dead, and wreckage that had once been human but was dying. He
had drawn from many of them to save his own life—pulled from their living energy to create a shield around himself, and fed
the
rewhah
back on them. More might have lived had he not done so, but he’d already borne the scars of
rewhah
once in his life, and had no intention of doing it again.

He hurried through the corridors of the Gold Building, aware that somehow the rules had changed, that in these corridors neither
he nor any other Dragon would be an accepted visitor. The Dragons, who had been providing the shielding and the
rewhah
for the day’s executions, had lost face badly. Those Masters in the Council who could get to the City Center would have put
a curfew into effect, and would have found someone to blame the disaster on, but while they could claim the intervention of
some anti-Harsian faction, people had seen what had happened, and without careful handling, they were going to sympathize
with the people who had been … what? Saved by a god? Or simply removed from the world in a less painful manner?

Luercas had never even believed in the gods; his theology put him near the top of a pyramid of wizards and conceded the existence
of nothing higher.

The presence of gods changed things. He wasn’t sure how yet, but if the enemy could call on gods for assistance, and actually
get the assistance requested, then the Dragons should find a way to do the same thing. Or perhaps they could harness the power
of the gods, in the same way that they had harnessed the power of souls. Wouldn’t that be inter-esting—using gods as fuel?
What wonders could the Dragons do with fuel like that?

He got out of the Gold Building and took his aircar home high above the streets and out of the usual flight patterns to avoid
any trouble. He had a lot to think about. A lot of research to do.

In spite of the day’s disaster, he was almost excited. He sensed massive potential, and an opportunity for himself, one he
doubted anyone else sensed.

Besides, for him, at least, the day hadn’t been a total disaster. He was unscathed, many of the Masters of the Dragon Council
were surely lying right there in the Gold Building, twisted beyond all humanity—which made him happy—and Velyn was dead, and
he hadn’t needed to do a thing to make that happen.

With those cheering thoughts, he went into his workroom, buoyed by visions of future greatness.