By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 (25 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3
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Everything else remained obstinately unclear. The universe in general, which on more than one occasion had intervened to push her forcefully in one direction or another, said nothing.
By the time she came off duty in the late afternoon, her nerves were thoroughly on edge. She wanted nothing so much as a few hours of peace and quiet before the evening, and she knew that under the current circumstances there was only one place in all of Telabryk where she was likely to get them.
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
was deserted when she went on board, except for a lone Space Force ensign—Tammas Cantrel, one of the survivors of the battle of the Net—at work with a clipboard and stylus in what had apparently been the crew’s mess.
Cantrel glanced up as she entered, and smiled broadly. “Mistress Hyfid! I heard about you and Commander Rosselin-Metadi—it’s sure nice to get some good news for a change.”
“Thanks, Tammas,” said Llannat. She nodded at the clipboard. “It looks like Vinhalyn is keeping you busy out here while we wait for the trouble to start. What’s the job?”
“Inventory,” Cantrel said. “Space by space. Damned if I know why.”
“The advancement of galactic knowledge, I suppose. He did give you a list of all the ‘don’t touch this or it’ll blow up in your face’ symbols, didn’t he?”
Cantrel nodded. “And the ‘don’t swallow this stuff, it’s poison’ labels, too. I found a bunch of those in the galley. Looked like drain cleaner to me, but I took the safe way out and catalogued it as ‘toxic powder, purpose unknown.’”
She laughed in spite of herself. “You’ll make a scholar yet. Listen, Tammas—I’m going off by myself to think for a while, and you didn’t see me come through here. All right?”
“No problem, Mistress Hyfid. You never went by.”
“Thanks,” Llannat said again.
She left and made her way alone to the
Daughter
’s meditation chamber. The cool white tiles set in their circle on the black floor were calm and inviting. She knelt in the circle and let her mind go free, slipping by now almost effortlessly into that state which was neither dream nor memory.
A voice that was like and unlike her own seemed to speak in the interior silence.
I’m still confused about what to do. I need answers.
She knew the voice that replied. The Professor’s antique Court Entiboran accent was unmistakable.
If you look for answers, Mistress, you’ll have to take whatever you find. There’s no picking and choosing here.
I know, she said. I’m ready.
Then come.
She stood, and felt the black cloth of a Magelord’s long robes swirl around her booted ankles as she stepped forward. She held her staff in one gloved hand, and a black mask overlaid her features.
The mask shut out the distractions of everyday sight, the jarring colors and niggling details that kept her from seeing the fabric of the universe whole and unmarred. If she chose, she could look sidelong and see the silver destiny-threads that wove in and out of the grand design. With the power of a Circle behind her, she could seize the threads and reweave the pattern according to her own desire.
She looked downward at a puddle of light where the white tile floor had been earlier. The light shone from somewhere overhead onto a long narrow table of scarred and dented metal, the sort of plain utility furniture that anyone might use. Someone was lying on the table—someone robed and masked, like herself, all in black.
I’ve seen this before, she thought. But the last time I came here I was the one who lay wounded, and there was no help for me …
… and before that, when this was real, I was the one who fought against the Circle-Mage for Ari’s life, and it was Ari who fired the blaster that ended the fight.
Llannat became aware that she no longer held a staff in her right hand, but a silver dagger. She spoke to the one who lay on the table, and her voice was deep and strangely accented.
“Did you succeed?”
“I don’t know,” came the reply, heavy and muffled with pain. “He was poisoned, as you ordered, but he had an Adept with him.”
“An Adept!” came a voice from elsewhere in the meditation chamber. “How much does Ransome know?”
“Enough to make him wary, it seems,” Llannat replied. She glanced over to the fair man who sat cross-legged against the wall of the chamber. Was he the one who had spoken? She couldn’t be sure. “Very well; we can wait. Someone else can do our work for us—you know the ones I mean.”
A harsh laugh sounded from someone else in the chamber. Everyone knew that the Lords of the Resurgency would sooner use the Circles than their own agents, and sooner the Adept-worlders than the native-born. “That’s right,” said the one who had laughed. “Let
them
take some risks for a change.”
The wounded one who lay on the table stirred and tried to rise. “What about me? Can’t you do something?”
Llannat could see the blaster burn, flesh blackened among the black cloth, the cloth further darkened with clotting blood. Ari’s aim had held true; without a healing pod, this was a fatal injury, though not a fast one—and before the end the pain would be profound.
She shook her head.
“You have a point,” she said, with genuine sorrow. “Failure must always draw its reward.”
Lifting the silver knife, she stabbed it down—a clean stroke, sudden and merciful, granting a speedy death.
For a moment she paused, eyes closed and head lowered, before straightening again and looking about. The room was empty, except for the one who still sat cross-legged against the wall. He had a staff balanced across his lap, a long staff of plain wood like the ones the Adepts used. She recognized him now: Owen Rosselin-Metadi. He’d been haunting a lot of her visions lately. And those visions had been coming more frequently, lasting longer, and giving more detail than ever before, halfway between dream and remembrance.
“You’re not dreaming,” he said. “Or remembering. The time has come, just as I told you it would.”
“What do you mean, ‘the time has come’?” she asked. “We’re outside of time here.”
Owen stood, unfolding from his seated position with practiced grace. “Let’s find a way out of here,” he said. “The path is in this direction, I think.”
He led the way and she followed, going out of the
Daughter’s
meditation room and into a long corridor all of stone that stretched off, full of closed doors, into the shadowy distance. He put his hand on one of the doors.
“Are you certain you wish to follow?” he asked.
“I’m certain,” Llannat said, and followed him into the darkness.
The new corridor went on for a long way in the dark; Llannat stuck close behind Owen, keeping up with him by the rustle of his clothing and the tap of his bootheels on the stone floor. Then the stone walls opened out around them, and she was once again in the Summer Palace on Entibor—not as she had seen it in the Professor’s holovid re-creation, but as it had appeared on the morning of the first attack. She had been there with the Professor, in her waking dream aboard
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter.
Soon, if she remained here, the alarms would go off, and the Lords of Eraasi would begin their three-years’-work of reducing the Domina Perada’s planet to poisoned slag.
“Quickly,” she said to Owen. “This way.”
She led him through the arched doorway into the paneled room with the great stone fireplace.
“Here,” she said, pointing to the inset stone with the arms of Rosselin and Entibor. “Behind here.”
With Owen’s help she pulled the stone from the wall. There was an empty space behind it. She pulled away another stone and another, until there was an opening wide enough to crawl through. She entered, and found a dark room.
 
Her staff began to glow with a green and vivid light, revealing that the room held a box of clear crystal and black wood. A stasis box, and within it a human figure: the dead and blasted body of Tarnekep Portree.
“Is this something that was?” Llannat asked Owen. “Or is it something that will be?”
For answer, Owen pointed to the far wall of the room. What should have been cut and fitted stone was nothing but grey mist, swirling and opalescent like the pseudosubstance of hyperspace. Llannat recognized it at once—she’d been there, though not of her own will, when she fought against the Mage-Circle on Darvell.
“All times and all places,” said Owen, “meet in the Void.”
Llannat saw the grey blankness of the Void pressing nearer, crowding in. Then she seemed to fall away, back into her waking reality, and what had been the pale nothingness of the Void was only the white tile circle in the
Daughter’s
meditation room before her eyes as she lay facedown on the deck.
 
“Who the hell do the bastards think I am?” Beka demanded. “The entire Home Fleet?”
She was bringing up the
‘Hammer’s
shields and flipping open the link to the gun bubbles as she spoke. “Nyls, Ignac’—we’ve got Mages dropping out of hyper. Don’t worry about the big guys; just keep the fighters off us while we run to jump. Captain Yevil—pass the rendezvous coordinates to
Claw Hard
. I don’t want Frizzt Osa stuck here explaining this mess to ConSec.”
“Already done, my lady.
Claw Hard
,
Calthrop,
and
Noonday Sun
have RSF emergency coordinates and comm settings.” Yevil went back to speaking over the headphone link. “All units in Suivi Det, change to tactical comms, standby, execute.”
Beka watched the yellow dots on the flatscreen growing closer to the
’Hammer’s
position. A glance at the cockpit viewscreens showed nothing yet on visual—not that it mattered. Sensor eyes saw farther than organic ones, and it was the sensor eyes that aimed to kill.
Over in the copilot’s seat, Yevil had finished punching in the new comm settings. “All units: condition red, weapons free. Offset guide on
Warhammer
. Muster at point Oscar Whiskey, clear the way with fire.”
Beka hit the comm to the gun bubbles again. “Lock in targets as they come in range. Fire for effect.”
“More trouble,” said Yevil, with a sideways nod toward the flatscreen. “The Mages have our jump point figured. They’re moving to block.”
“If that’s the way they want to play it … we’ll save the rendezvous for later. Tell your people to jump when and as they can. I’m taking the first clear run-up that comes along.”
Beka checked the monitor on the position plotting indicator. The yellow dot that was the mothership still moved across the flatscreen on a course that would put it right on top of her projected jump point.
I can’t jump early; the damned mothership’ll be too close by the time I get up enough speed … below, maybe?
She cross-checked the new line with the navicomp. Hurry
up,
she urged the red Working light.
Damn, I wish we had one of those battle tanks the Space Force uses.
The Working light went off.
That line’s clear Good.
“Putting in down vector,” she said aloud. “Yevil, keep your people out of my way!”
She heard Yevil speaking over the link to the other ships, and a moment or so later Jessan’s voice, from the Number One gun bubble: “Don’t try that again. We almost ran into someone.”
“I’ll try not to. And he wasn’t that close.”
“He sure looked that close to me … watch it, fighters coming in.”
“Whose?” That was LeSoit, at Number Two.
Beka glanced out the viewscreen. “I’ve got them on visual. Yevil—do we have an ID?”
“ID’ed as ConSecs,” said the Space Force captain. “Coming out of Suivi.”
“Fair game,” said Beka. “Take them under fire with guns.”
She heard Jessan’s acknowledgment, then LeSoit’s, and
Warhammer’s
energy guns lashed out. The ConSec fighters slowed and fell back toward the Suivan surface.
“No stomach for trouble there,” said Beka. “Yevil—where are the Mages now?”
“Coming within range.” The
’Hammer’s
viewscreens lit up with crisscrossing rays of scarlet flame as the Space Force captain spoke, and a nearby explosion lit up the cockpit with glaring light. “All units: deploy countermeasures. My lady—how much longer to jump?”
Beka checked the PPI flatscreen again. “They’ve got a destroyer maneuvering to cut off the secondary jump point. We’ll have to try another run.”
She stole a quick look at the energy readouts from the gun bubbles. The weapons-system power indicators were flickering, indicating almost continuous fire.
Looks like Nyls and Ignac’ are keeping the bad guys busy. Good.
She went back to looking for a jump path.

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