Among the Powers (27 page)

Bredon wanted to ask what plans Geste had
come up with, but he knew Thaddeus was listening, so he carefully
said nothing. He turned his eyes away from Geste to avoid
temptation.

After roaming aimlessly along the
featureless red dome for a time, his eyes seemed to settle
somewhere of their own volition. He found himself staring at Imp,
and once again felt his body responding involuntarily to the
extravagant sexual advertisement of her clothing. He forced himself
to look away.

Geste’s gaze wandered from the egg to Imp to
Bredon, then around the dome and back to the egg, and Bredon had
the impression that he was thinking hard about something while
trying to look casual.

Imp simply stared blindly into space,
oblivious to the others.

Bredon finally settled on staring at the
egg, trying to guess just what it was capable of. This was
ultimately pointless, since he could not tell, by visual
inspection, whether it had a bent-space extension, and if it
did
have one, then it could be capable of anything. Studying
the floater did, however, keep his eyes and mind off his
companions.

Time passed—perhaps only a minute or two,
possibly as much as an hour. Bredon had lost all sense of time in
the absence of both conversation and the outside world. The only
interruption of the silence came when Geste remarked, apropos of
nothing, “Judging by this floater, Thaddeus is using a better grade
of technology now than he has in the past—no wheels, no wings, no
lenses or levers or dials. This is as modern as most of my own
stuff. Maybe he’s trying to impress us; he never trusted the slick
stuff before.”

Imp glanced at the egg, but no one spoke,
and the silence returned, longer and stronger than before. Geste
shrugged, started to say something more, then thought better of
it.

At last, however, the dome began to fade,
turning from red to pink, then to ever-greater transparency until
it vanished completely, revealing that they had been delivered into
a large chamber of dark stone, presumably somewhere in Fortress
Holding.

When the dome had vanished the disk on which
they stood sank down, merging seamlessly into the gray stone floor,
its red color fading gradually into the gray.

When the disk was gone the egg-shaped
floater retracted the rod that had become their craft. The egg
itself hung in their midst for a moment, then whirred softly and
sped away, leaving the three humans momentarily unattended.

They stood in the center of an octagonal
room, with a door in the center of every second wall. The ceiling
above them was white glass, glowing softly. A faint scent of
dampness and ozone reached them. No music played.

“Where’s the Skyler?” Thaddeus’s voice asked
from somewhere overhead.

The three of them glanced at one another.
“She changed her mind, decided not to come,” Imp explained.

“What’s that savage doing here?”

“You told the transport that you wanted
three humans, so we brought three humans. Bredon wanted to come, so
we brought him,” Geste said.

“If he gets in the way, I’ll kill him.”

“I’m sure Bredon understands that,” Geste
answered.

Bredon nodded.

“Have it your way,” Thaddeus said. “I don’t
suppose it matters, and I don’t really give a damn. Take off your
clothes.”

Bredon glanced at his companions. Imp
glanced at Geste. Geste looked up and demanded, “Why?”

“You know why,” Thaddeus’s voice replied.
“You could have whole arsenals tucked away.”

“What if we refuse?”

“Then you don’t see Aulden and the
rest.”

Geste looked at the others, shrugged, and
began peeling off his tunic.

Imp did something to the waistline of her
dress with her fingertips, and the entire garment slipped free and
fell to the floor. She wore nothing else. Bredon blushed, and
looked to his own clothing.

When they were all naked, the loud voice
overhead said, “Step through the door beneath the red light.”

Bredon turned, and saw a tall doorway with a
small red spot glowing above it. The door that had filled that
doorway was gone, perhaps slid aside, perhaps dissolved, he had no
way of telling. He followed the others through the opening, trying
to be as calm about his nudity as they were. He knew, from
references the others had made and things he had seen back in
Arcade, and even from the childhood tales he remembered, that the
Powers did not worry about sexual propriety much, but his own
upbringing had been fairly traditional, and he was not accustomed
to walking about naked in the company of a woman he was not about
to take to his bed. He had not seen Kittisha the Weaver naked until
his second night with her, and then only by dim firelight, yet here
Imp was parading before him in full view.

The doorway led into a short corridor with
gleaming metal walls, and as Bredon stepped into it he felt an odd
sensation, as if his skin were buzzing silently. A sudden flash, so
brief that he was not sure he had actually seen it, turned the
tingling to an uncomfortable warmth, like the bad sunburn he had
once gotten as a child. He looked, and saw that his skin was
reddening slightly.

That old burn had resulted from a full light
of carelessly lying in bright sunlight, after a long spell of
convalescence from prickle-fever had left him pale and weak; it did
not seem credible that a near-instantaneous flash could have caused
the same thing, but his skin certainly felt burned. He marched on,
ignoring the discomfort.

Then he was through the corridor and in a
small room panelled in white. Three simple white robes hung in the
air.

Geste took one, and Bredon another; Imp
hesitated before donning the third. “Where is Aulden?” she
demanded.

She received no reply. For a long moment the
three of them stood there, waiting for whatever was to happen next.
Bredon took the moment to notice that Imp’s robe reached almost to
her ankles, and Geste’s to mid-calf, while his own came only to his
knee.

Then the wall opposite their entrance slid
aside, revealing a larger room, of gray stone like the octagonal
chamber they had first arrived in. This room, however, was not
empty, as the others had been.

Chained to the far wall were seven people,
four men and three women, all wearing white robes like those
Bredon, Geste, and Imp had just put on. All seven sat slumped
against the stone, their wrists, ankles, and necks bound by massive
bands of metal, linked by tangles of heavy chain to each other and
to ring-bolts in the wall behind them. All seven appeared to be
sunburnt in varying degrees, presumably by Thaddeus’s machines.

Bredon immediately recognized the woman in
the center as Lady Sunlight; even without her shimmering garments,
even with her hair matted and bedraggled and her skin an
uncomfortable shade of red, she was unsurpassably beautiful, and he
felt something twisting and churning inside himself at the sight of
her chained. He fought for control of himself, struggled not to
simply run to her side.

“Aulden!” Imp shrieked. She dashed forward
and flung herself upon the man at the far left of the group, a
sturdy, sandy-haired man with a long nose and only a faint pinkness
to his skin. Bredon remembered his face from the quick glimpse
Thaddeus had given them.

Aulden looked up just before Imp landed on
him. His expression was a compound of surprise and joy at the sight
of her, but Bredon thought he saw an underlying hopelessness.

“I don’t believe this,” Geste muttered,
standing in the doorway. “Chains! Genuine steel chains!”

Distracted for a moment from Lady Sunlight,
Bredon started to ask what else Thaddeus would have used, but
stopped himself. He could have used any number of methods of
confinement, from barrier fields to neural repatterning.

Chains, however, worked quite well
enough.

Imp and Aulden were smothering each other
with kisses, and the other six were looking up with some interest
at the newcomers. Bredon suddenly found himself overcome with
shyness, faced with so much attention from strangers.

“Hello, Geste,” one of the women said, a
brown-haired, round-faced woman.

“Hello, Sheila,” the Trickster replied.

“Who’s that with you?” she asked. “Has
someone got a new body?”

“No, no, nothing like that; this is Bredon
the Hunter, from a village out in the grasslands.”

Bredon bowed in acknowledgement, looking
only at Lady Sunlight, hoping to see some sign in her reaction that
she saw him as something more than an ordinary savage.

Lady Sunlight said nothing, did not react
visibly at all.

“Pleased to meet you,” Sheila replied.
“Forgive me if I don’t stand up.” She rattled her chains with a wry
shrug. “So, what brings you here?”

Geste smiled.

Bredon tore his eyes away from Lady
Sunlight, forcing himself not to stare at her any longer, and
looked at the other captives; they were not impressed with Sheila’s
banter. The dark, intense little man he guessed, from descriptions
in old legends, to be Rawl the Adjuster. The third woman,
sallow-skinned and black-haired, had to be Madame O. Both the other
two men were big, black-haired, and brown-eyed, but one was pale
and heavily bearded, while the other was swarthy and had only a
light, grey-flecked beard; Bredon had no way of guessing which was
Brenner of the Mountains and which was Khalid.

“Are you going to get us out of here?” the
swarthy one demanded.

Geste’s smile vanished. “I wish I knew,” he
said.

“That,” said Thaddeus from behind them, “is
not the answer I wanted, indicating, as it does, a certain
lingering hope that outright surrender can be avoided.”

Geste and Bredon turned around slowly; Imp,
still wrapped in Aulden’s arms, paid no attention.

Thaddeus stood in the doorway from the metal
corridor, a towering black-haired figure in brown leather—or a
synthetic approximation of leather. Bredon was not certain just how
he could tell, but he had the impression that this was a real
person, not a transmitted image. Perhaps it was because this
Thaddeus stood his awesome full height, at least two and a half
meters.

“Hello, Thaddeus,” Geste said.

“Hello, Geste. Are you satisfied now that I
have not tampered with my captives?”

“Well, no, not yet. I just got here.”

“Imp, are
you
satisfied?”

Imp looked up, brushing hair out of her
face. “It’s Aulden—but how could you treat him like this, you
monster?”

Thaddeus shrugged. “I don’t love him as you
do.”

“Thaddeus, we have to talk this over. You
don’t need to do all this,” Geste said.

“Oh, I don’t? What do
you
know about
it?” Thaddeus sneered.

“I know that it’s stupid! What can you get
from ruling an empire that you can’t get peacefully?”

Thaddeus smiled with bitter amusement. “Are
you really asking that?”

“Yes, I am! Look, can we go somewhere and
talk about this?”

“You don’t want these people to hear?”
Thaddeus asked, with a wave at the others.

“No, that’s not it,” Geste said. “All right,
we can talk here.”

“No, no,” Thaddeus said, holding up a hand.
“We’ll find someplace more comfortable. Come along, Imp.”

“No!” she said. “No! I won’t leave
Aulden!”

Thaddeus shrugged again. “Suit yourself.
Monitor, watch her closely. Don’t let her out of this room, or obey
her orders. And don’t disturb me.” All but the first phrase he
addressed to a red light that gleamed above the door. It blinked an
acknowledgement, and he turned back to the Trickster. “All right,
Geste, come along.” He waved, and Geste followed.

Bredon started to follow as well, and
Thaddeus gestured. “Leave that here, though,” he said.

Geste said nothing, but Bredon stepped back,
and waited politely until Thaddeus and Geste were out of sight.

‘“
...so you have found me,’ Aulden the Technician
said. ‘Now, what do you want of me?’

‘“
They say, in my village, that you can do
anything,’ Golrol said. ‘Is it true?’

“
Aulden stared at him for a moment, and then
said, ‘Very nearly, at any rate.’

‘“
You can do anything?’ Golrol persisted.

‘“
Yes,’ Aulden said, ‘I can.’

‘“
Really?’ Golrol asked.

“”
Yes, I said,’ Aulden told him. ‘I can be
anything and do anything.’ He instantly transformed himself into a
giant, a hundred meters tall, and then vanished completely, and
then reappeared as a sunflower with Aulden’s own face, and then
appeared human once more. ‘I can fly to the stars,’ he said, ‘or
make their fire burn here on the ground. I know the secrets of time
and space. I can make birds swim and fish fly. I can build a tower
in a single night that will reach so high you cannot see the top. I
can shake the earth and shatter the sky.’

‘“
So you say that you can do anything,’ Golrol
said.

‘“
Yes, I told you,’ Aulden answered. ‘Try me;
name a task, and I shall perform it.’

‘“
Can you bring me snow from the mountaintops,
even now in midsummer?’ Golrol asked.

‘“
As easily as you can snap your fingers,’ Aulden
replied, and he spun about, and held out a handful of snow.

‘“
Can you lift an entire mountain, then?’

“
Aulden laughed, and said, ‘Easily.’ And he waved
his hand, and with a rumble and a roar, one of the distant
mountains tore itself free of the earth and rose into the sky, like
the Skyland itself.

‘“
And can you create a mountain from
nothing?’

‘“
Of course!’ said Aulden, and behold, with a
great rending crash a mountain rose from the plain where none had
stood a moment before.