Read The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds (37 page)

BOOK: The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds
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“I am Master Lenset, aide to Councillor Demazze,” the man said in the same language. “I ask that you follow me.”
 
Year 1128 E. R.
 
ENTIBORAN SPACE, STANDARD ORBIT GG-12:
OCTAGON DIAMOND
ENTIBOR: SECURE LANDING ZONE
ERAASI: DEMAIZEN OLD HALL
 
I
ulan Vai sat cross-legged on her bunk aboard
Octagon Diamond
, writing a message. The
Diamond
was a luxurious ship by Eraasian standards—maybe by the standards of this side of the galaxy as well; Vai didn’t know—and for the first time since leaving Hanilat she wasn’t sharing quarters with anyone but herself.
It made some things a great deal easier.
SUS-PELEDAEN SHIP
RAIN-ON-DARK-WATER
LOST, she tapped out on the tiny keys of her message pad. CREW AND CIRCLE RETURNING IN SHIP OF LOCAL MAKE. RECOMMEND PREPARING SHIPYARDS FOR EXTENSIVE CHANGES IN ENGINE CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES. SEE ATTACHED COPY OF SUS-PELEDAEN ENGINEER’S PRELIMINARY REPORT AND DIAGRAMS.
Vai was proud of that attached copy. Acquiring it—in the midst of the worry about disposing of the
Rain
, and then about
Forty-two’
s auto-controlled transit to Entibor—had taken all of her old skills and some of her new ones, and she had enjoyed herself a great deal. It was good to know that taking up Magery hadn’t ruined her touch.
Getting the report back to Theledau sus-Radal was going to be easy by comparison. Captain sus-Mevyan had brought all of the
Rain
’s message-drones across to the
Diamond
, which meant that Vai could hide her report in the general clutter of information.
A drone was mostly data storage with a Void-capable engine, and it would backtrack along the
Rain
’s trail of navigational beacons at speeds a manned vessel couldn’t match. News of the
Rain
’s adventures would reach the sus-Peledaen shipyards well before the
Diamond
appeared in Eraasian space.
And thanks to her efforts, the news would reach the sus-Radal yards as well. She wondered if Natelth sus-Khalgath talked family business with his younger brother any more, and what Arekhon would say if he found out that she had told Theledau sus-Radal about
Forty-two’
s engines.
Worry about that when you get home, she told herself. Meanwhile … a private cabin makes a lot of things easier.
 
 
The guide led Arekhon, Garrod, and Elaeli across the rain-swept landing area to an armored metal doorway let into the side of a hill. The doorway swung outward, admitting them to the anteroom of what was clearly an extensive underground complex.
The room was paneled in wood, with non-structural but still impressive rib-groined vaults overhead, and dim but pleasant lighting. Soft carpets covered the floor beneath their feet, though from its coldness and lack of give Arekhon thought that the surface under the carpet might be stone rather than wood. The guide led them through the antechamber and down a long corridor, without bothering to turn aside for any of the closed doors along the paneled walls.
They came at last to an open doorway, and passed through it into what Arekhon guessed was a reception hall of some sort, a long narrow room furnished with a number of alcoves and conversational nooks. Its high ceiling was painted with heroic scenes in bright colors, showing foreshortened figures ascending into a mass of clouds and bright light.
Something to honor the ancestors,
Arekhon thought, then shook his head.
For all you know, it could be favorite pictures from a children’s bedtime storybook. These people are not like us.
“Wait here for my lord Demazze,” their guide said, and, bowing, departed through one of the room’s side-arches.
They waited. Arekhon felt uncomfortably conscious of his wet surcoat shedding rainwater onto the carpet. Elaeli was craning her neck to look at the ceiling. Garrod, meanwhile, stood in the center of the room with his arms folded across his chest, seemingly unintimidated by their reception and the elegant decor.
Maybe he saw more impressive stuff than this all the time when he was here before
, Arekhon thought.
Or else he’s a better actor than I’ll ever be.
A fanfare sounded over an unseen speaker—the notes had the tinny, remote quality of a synthesized recording—and a man entered the room through a sliding doorway that had been concealed in the paneling. He was tall and solidly broad-shouldered, with a heavy shock of grey hair and a close-trimmed, iron-grey beard.
Arekhon recognized him at once. The letter aboard
Forty-two
had not lied; this was Garrod syn-Aigal sus-Demaizen, as Arekhon and Narin had pulled him out of the Void at the end of the great working.
Arekhon looked at him closely.
Is he already mad, I wonder? His letter was certainly strange enough.
But the Councillor’s eyes, while brighter and holding more suppressed excitement than Arekhon found comforting, were at the moment sane.
“I’m Councillor Demazze,” the newcomer said. “No need for introductions—I know all three of you very well. I’ve been waiting for you to show up for years now; I’d begun to think I might have made an error when I did the initial calculations, but it was all so long ago I couldn’t remember.”
“You
know
us?” Elaeli asked. “How?”
Garrod was regarding the Councillor with suspicion. Demazze’s lined and weathered face was not the one that he was accustomed to seeing in the mirror, but Arekhon didn’t expect the difference to puzzle him much longer. And yet the Councillor himself had set up this meeting … Arekhon wished he knew what was going on.
“You came through the Void?” Garrod asked.
“Of course,” said the Councillor. “But we don’t have time to compare notes. The political situation is terribly tense right now—Hegemony troops all around, and the Meteunese—but everything will work out, I’m certain of it, if we can just get all the papers signed in time …”
Elaeli said, “Papers?”
Demazze waved a hand. “Diplomatic credentials. For you especially; the nation-state that I judge to be most receptive to the idea of open trade has a matrilineal succession, and I’ve had enormous trouble getting the current ruler to regard me as anything more than an impractical scholar. Perhaps you may have better luck.”
“I don’t want to be an ambassador,” said Elaeli. “I’m a shiphandler who wants to be Fleet-Captain someday.”
“A laudable ambition—but if you would do an old man a favor and go through the portfolio over there on the side table …”
“Humor him, Pilot-Principal,” Garrod said curtly.
Elaeli glanced from Garrod to Arekhon, who nodded. She moved off in the direction of the alcove the Councillor had indicated. Garrod, eyebrows bristling, turned back to Demazze.
“What in the world are you up to, Councillor?” he demanded. “‘Diplomatic credentials,’ indeed!”
Demazze smiled. “What in the world, exactly. You and I, Lord sus-Demaizen, we know how to organize and run a planetary government based on recognized family structures. It seems natural to us. But these poor benighted heathens don’t have a clue. They’re stuck in the political thinking of a millennium ago. We’re going to have to change all that, if you want your dream of a single galaxy to have a chance.”
“You
are
mad,” said Garrod.
“No,” said Demazze. “Not yet.”
As he spoke, red lights began to blink above all the doorways. A moment later, all the lights in the room went out.
“The Hegemony,” said Demazze quietly in the darkness. “Or perhaps the Meteunese. I never knew which.”
Arekhon felt the tug of
eiran
coming into place and drawing a pattern tight. Loss and separation, striving and exile …
“Elaeli!” he shouted, but his cry was lost in a deep, rumbling crash of falling stone and metal as the ceiling collapsed.
 
 
At Demaizen, the wind began to rise. Kief went to the kitchen window and looked out at the night.
Something about the way the rain dashed against the windows—fitful bursts, fast and hard, followed by a few minutes or seconds of quiet, then the hard dashing rain again—made him edgy and restless. Delath and Serazao didn’t seem to be affected by it; Del was absorbed in skimming the fat off the soup, and ’Zao was half-asleep at the kitchen table, nodding over her mug of
uffa.
“Listen,” said Kief. “Did you hear something?”
Del laid aside the spoon. “You check in back. I’ll go around to the front and see if anything’s wrong out there.”
Kief started for the back door—the old servants’ entrance, from the days when the Hall had servants—and stopped again when ’Zao blinked, tilted her head to catch the sound, and said, “No. It came from upstairs.”
She was right. Kief could hear the sound distinctly now: Footsteps—slow, shuffling footsteps—moving along the hallway outside the kitchen. ’Zao, pale and trembling, half-rose from her chair, her eyes lit with sudden hope.
Garrod—thin, haggard, but moving of his own volition, walking—stood in the kitchen door and reached out his hand to support himself on the frame. A bolt of lightning struck nearby, the flash intense, the noise instantaneous. It limned Garrod with an intense blue-white light.
“Where is my staff?” he asked, his voice husky and low. “Did I leave it on Entibor?”
“Lord Garrod,” Delath began, starting toward him. “You’ve been unwell for a long time, and we—”
Garrod opened his mouth to speak again—but nothing came out of his mouth, nothing but blood and bone fragments, and he pitched forward, thrown by the force of the projectiles hitting him from behind. He fell into Delath’s arms, and his weight bore them both down to the floor.
The doorway behind him was full of men carrying automatic weapons. Their leader pointed a handgun down and emptied the magazine into Del and Garrod, then calmly reloaded while the others flowed around him into the kitchen. The pot of soup fell over on the stove and sent up a cloud of foul-smelling steam. Serazao raised her staff, the fire of her wrath blazing, and lunged with a scream of fury at the nearest soldier. He shot her down before she could close half the distance. She collapsed to the floor and did not move.
Kief—still unseen in the shadows of the rear entryway—stood motionless with shock. But not for long. Serazao had died with the fire of the universe running through her; he took her energy into himself before it could escape, and turned it outward again in a burst of crimson, killing wrath.
The man who had shot Serazao died where he stood, his weapon clattering from his hand and blood spurting from his eyes. Kief stepped out into the center of the kitchen. His staff was in his hand, and blazing with a pure red fire.
The men who had brought death into the room were all dead themselves, blood mixed with clear fluid pouring from their ears and noses. But far off, he heard more voices shouting orders: “Spread out! Search the buildings and the grounds! No survivors!”
Kief walked out of the kitchen and into the main part of the Hall. His mind raced along the pathways of power. He saw the betrayal—the illusions and lies that lay beneath the carnage—and none of the men who saw him that night lived to speak of what they saw.
Outside in the rain, a dark line of vehicles waited on the circular gravel drive. Kief recognized them from their pictures: Armored groundcars, designed to fight for one faction against another—brother against brother—in the growing unpleasantness. They were an abomination. He laid his hand on the first one as he passed. The fuel and ammunition inside it exploded, drowning the screams of the men trapped in the blazing hulk.
“City against city,” Kief repeated aloud, as one vehicle after another exploded and lit up the night with fire. “Brother against brother.”
And all at once he knew. He left the Hall behind him and started walking toward Hanilat. His way was lit by the flames that rose from the burning Hall, but he did not turn to see, not even when the roof collapsed and the rain fell inside the blackened walls.
 
Year 1128 E. R.
 
ENTIBOR: SECURE LANDING ZONE
 
E
laeli was riffling through the contents of the portfolio—it was all paperwork in Entiboran, and she was most certainly not going to sign anything she hadn’t read, regardless of who Lord Garrod thought she should be humoring—when the lights went out and the ceiling crashed down.
I’m alive,
was her first coherent thought after the noises stopped. She felt like she ought to be panicking, but other things were claiming her attention first. She’d have to panic later, when she had more time.
She still had the Councillor’s portfolio clasped against her chest with her left hand—a//
that paperwork probably saved my life; if I hadn’t come over here to look at it, I’d be lying under a pile of rubble right now, instead of standing on my own two feet
—so she reached out with her right hand toward where she thought the wall ought to be. Her fingers met the coolness of polished wood; she maintained the contact and shuffled forward toward the room where her companions had been waiting.
The wall ended with the carved molding of the doorway. The air around her was thick with plaster dust and a faint smell of smoke.
Fire?
she thought, and strained her eyes apprehensively for a glimpse of flame in the darkness. Instead, she saw a faint glow coming from somewhere ahead and above. Not the ruddy color of firelight, but a cool, steady green. She felt a wash of relief so strong it made her dizzy. One of the Mages, at least, was still alive.
She felt her way forward. The light was coming through a tiny gap, somewhere in the room ahead. Rubble slid and shifted under her feet. She stumbled, caught her balance, and went on, until she came to what had been the center of the room and could go no farther. The way was blocked by two metal beams angling downward, half-buried in blocks and slabs of stone. The green light shone through the gap.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
“Elaeli?” Arekhon’s voice, shaken but clear.
“’Rekhe! What happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I think there’s fighting going on, and we’re in it.”
Elaeli tried to imagine fighting on a scale that could destroy mountains. “No wonder that ship shot at us. They thought we were enemies.”
The light grew brighter. Arekhon was coming closer, his feet crunching on the broken stone.
“Elaeli, listen,” he said. He spoke in an undertone, as if he were afraid that someone might overhear. “Councillor Demazze has some kind of plan involving you. He wants to use you in a political scheme of his own.”
She could hear rocks clicking and scraping as Arekhon spoke, and the green light bobbed and wavered. He was pulling at the rubble on his side—trying to dig through to her. She wondered if he had to dig one-handed, and keep the other hand on his staff as long as he wanted light.
Inconvenient
, she thought—she was effectively one-handed herself, as long as she was clutching the Councillor’s portfolio, but she couldn’t bring herself to discard the papers that might have saved her life.
But better than the dark
.
Thinking about the papers reminded her that Arekhon had not been standing in the room alone. “’Rekhe, where
is
Councillor Demazze? Where’s Garrod?”
“I don’t know,” he said breathlessly. “I can’t find either of them. Maybe they’re buried under all this junk.”
More scrambling sounds came from the other side of the pile of rubble, and a rock clattered down the pile of debris with a noise like breaking porcelain. Elaeli heard heavy breathing, followed by a faint curse and more clattering. Finally Arekhon gave a heavy sigh.
“It’s no use,” he said. “There’s too much rock, and it’s too heavy for me to move. I’m sorry.”
She heard the scuffle of boots on stone as he moved closer to the gap in the rubble. She put her hand into the gap as far as she could, until she felt his fingers brush against hers.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “Just don’t go away.”
A shaft of light, yellow-white and artificial, cut through the darkness of the buried reception hall. Elaeli heard voices shouting back and forth in Entiboran, and the sound of clattering feet.
“Arekhon!” she called out through the gap in the rubble. “Someone’s coming on this side. If they have tools for digging, we can both get free.”
She felt Arekhon’s hand straining again to touch her own. “Be careful,” he said. “This was a deliberate attack, not an accident. Not all the people here will be our friends—if any of them ever were.”
The noises were coming closer. Another minute, and liveried men with hand-lights and drawn weapons burst into the room. The beams from their lights danced about the room, picking out bits of broken wood and jagged concrete, and here and there a gaudy slab of painted ceiling.
“Here she is!” one of the men called out. A light stopped its random motion and shone directly in Elaeli’s face. “It looks like her, all right.”
Another one of the men stepped forward. He wore different livery and insignia than the others, and she supposed that he was their leader. “Come, my lady,” he said. “Councillor Demazze ordered us to keep you safe.”
“Wait,” she said in her best Entiboran, and pointed at the rubble. “My friend is there on the other side. All that is blocking the way.”
“Come with us now,” the leader said. “We cannot delay.”
“What about my friend?”
“We will do what we can for him once you are safe,” the leader said. “Meteunese troops are already in the building. Come, now.”
He gestured two of the others forward. They took Elaeli by the arms on both sides, pulling her respectfully but firmly away from the gap in the wall, until she couldn’t touch Arekhon’s hand any longer.
“Let me go!” she shouted. She tried to wrench free of her rescuers, but their grip, while courteous, was determined. “’Rekhe! Do something!”
“Go with them, Ela,” he called through the gap in the rubble as the men bore her away. “Demazze knows what this is about. Let him keep you safe.”
“What about you, ’Rekhe? What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me.” The glow from his staff was gone, driven away by the blaze of hand-lights, and the touch of his hand was just a memory. He was only a voice, rapidly fading behind her into the dark. “I’ll find you again, I promise. No matter how long it takes.”
 
 
Garrod had never quite trusted the Councillor, and his mind was primed to recognize a trap. When the lights died, he threw himself to the floor and rolled toward the wall where another of the side tables stood. He was under the table before he could quite recall how he got there. A second later, the ceiling collapsed.
Not a trap
, he thought. Memories of his first weeks on Entibor came back to him, bringing images of war machines and cities in flame.
An attack.
But thanks to his suspicions, he remained alive; the next problem would be getting to the open air. He inched to his right along the wall in the silence and dark until he bumped into a doorway. He pushed the door open with his extended hand, waited to see if someone lurked outside, then belly-crawled on through. The air on the other side was moving, which was good.
A passage stretched out before him. He cautiously made his way along it, keeping close to the perfumed carpet. Up and out, those were his goals. After he was away from the scene of the action, he could collect his thoughts and try to determine what had happened and how best to act.
Far away, he heard the muffled sound of small arms. Ground troops were in the building, and they were engaging other ground troops. Not a good sign.
He moved as quickly and as quietly as he could. Two turnings and a flight of stairs later he found a lighted passageway. At last he dared to stand and run. The passage turned and branched again. Each time he chose the path that led away from the sounds of fighting.
He heard a shout from behind, and running feet. Garrod sprinted, rounded a corner, and came to a dead end and another door. He yanked it open and plunged on through, then slammed the door shut and locked it behind him.
His new refuge was square and empty—and devoid of doors and windows. Shelves and boxes on three of its four sides suggested that its primary function was as a storage locker for cleaning supplies. There would only be one way out of here, and he didn’t know if he was prepared to take it. Alone, without a Circle to back him …
He had scarcely controlled his breathing before running feet arrived outside. The door rattled, and a voice shouted “Open up!” with a Meteunese growl to the accent.
Garrod said nothing, and did not move to unlock the flimsy barrier. A projectile weapon stuttered outside, throwing slugs through the door to spatter against the far wall. Garrod threw himself face down to the floor.
The door couldn’t take much more. In a moment they’d be through. If these combat troops were anything like those he’d encountered before, the first thing into the room would be a grenade. He drew a breath, caught at the
eiran,
and twisted himself to leave the material world and enter the Void.
Cold grey mist billowed around him as he rose to his feet. Now he was in a place where his enemies could not follow, but where could he go? He reached out for his Second—no. His Second was gone, and he had no Circle. No anchor. He closed his eyes and began walking in the direction that his inner feeling said was best. When at last the chill of the Void was replaced by a warmth that spoke of friends and home, he stepped back into the world and opened his eyes.
He stood in his glass-domed observatory in the villa of Mestra Adina, and the red, fur-tipped robe lay over the chair where he had placed it only a moment before.
A soft knock sounded on the door. Garrod walked over to it, opened it. Hujerie stood outside.
“Ah, Garrod, my friend,” the old scholar said. “Mestra Adina has guests tonight, and begs you to join her and them for supper.”
“With great pleasure,” Garrod said. “Allow me a moment to freshen myself. I shall attend the Mestra presently.”
 
 
Elaeli was gone, carried off against her will into the darkness.
Garrod
—
Councillor Demazze
—
had plans for her
, Arekhon told himself.
He had a reason for telling his people to keep her safe. Once I’m out of here, if I can find his reason I can find her
.
First, though, he had to get out himself. He rekindled the light of his staff and entered the maze of passageways that opened off of the reception hall. For some time he wandered, following the
eiran
of the place—pale and untended though they were—until they took him from the inhabited areas into the rough-walled spaces beyond the shell of the underground complex.
The air here smelled of wet stone, but its faint motion, almost too slight for notice, gave him reassurance. The
eiran
led him further out into the natural cavern that housed the complex, drawing him on a path that—though it grew rougher and narrower as it went—tended steadily upward. Higher and higher he went, until he reached a place where the air smelled of damp earth rather than stone, and the warm water dripping down came not from broken pipes or from hidden underground watercourses, but from natural rain.
He let the glow from his staff illuminate the tunnel overhead, and soon found the source of the fresh rainfall. The
eiran
had guided him well: The gap was low enough for him to reach, and wide enough to take his body. He boosted himself into the opening and scrambled upward.
A last tight squeeze, and he squirmed out of the crack in the hillside into the night air. The slope onto which he had emerged was soaked by the driving rain and cratered by—he assumed—the same kind of powerful blows that had brought down the ceiling of the reception hall. From the noise the attack was still going on; he took shelter in the lee of a boulder that had been uprooted and shattered by the impact.
He crouched there for a while, watching streams of colored fire tracing across the sky and listening to the sound of explosions. Then, still keeping himself low, he began working away from the sounds and lights, over the crest line, until he put the bulk of the hillside between him and the fighting.
On the flat ground at the base of the hill, he saw the field where he had landed with Garrod and Elaeli only a short time before. The entrance—or at least,
one
entrance—to the underground complex had lain on that side of the hill. Perhaps that was where Elaeli had been taken. Carefully, using all of the skill he possessed in being unnoticed by others, exerting his force of will to overcome their own suspicions, he passed down the slope.
BOOK: The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds
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