Pawn’s Gambit (25 page)

Marja looked over her shoulder, frowning. “How
did
they get it in here? The doorway—look, it's not nearly big enough.”

“I know. They must have assembled the pentagram in here and then said the trapping spell.” He studied the pentagram. “That coating looks like tight windings of silver threads, probably wrapped around fresh oak branches.”

“Silver?”

“Heartstone magic can't touch silver directly,” he explained. “Whoever set this up certainly didn't believe in making things easy.”

She looked at the Fury. “Is there anything you can do?”

“Oh, certainly.” Saladar hesitated. “Basically, all I need to do to release the Fury is to break the pentagram.”

“So what's the problem?”

“The problem is that a released spirit doesn't go back immediately,” he said heavily. “It'll stay here for several seconds … and it'll use those seconds trying its best to kill us.”

“It'll
what
?
But we're trying to
help
it.”

“Doesn't matter. As I said, Furies aren't very intelligent. They're driven by rage and hatred, and they don't much care who or what they attack.”

Marja looked back at the doorway again. “Could we move it safely? I mean, just away from the windows, where it can't see the pass?”

“Won't do any good,” Saladar shook his head. “Spirits don't see things the same way we do. If it was ordered to scream at passersby, it'll do that whether it's by the windows or not.”

Marja hissed between her teeth. “So we can't leave the Fury here, and we can't release it. What
can
we do?”

“Move it outside, of course, where we've got more room. And for that”—he took a deep breath—“we're going to have to widen the doorway.”

She stared at him. “How? The Lighttower is part of Wizardell, and I already told you how strong the walls are.”

He nodded. “I remember. It just means I'll have to try to break that part of the spell.”

“Wait a minute. You said that without the spell-strengthening the walls would collapse.”

“Yes.” Saladar pursed his lips. “But it should be possible to break the spell just around the doorway without harming the rest of Wizardell.”

“Can
you
do it?”

“I think so, yes.”

“You
think
so?” Her tongue darted across her lips. “That's not very reassuring. Maybe you ought to wait until you know for sure.”

Saladar shook his head. “There's no point in waiting, Marja. I know as much as any other wizard—”

“Except you've never used that knowledge—”

“And anyway, now that we're here we might as well try,” he cut her off sharply.

She stared at him, eyes hot with anger. “And besides which, if we take too much time thinking about it, some other wizard may come by and steal your thunder?”

“That's not fair.”

“Isn't it?” she retorted. “Then why are you so eager to risk my town? Because you
are
risking it, you know. If Wizardell collapses, the trade routes will start up somewhere else and Abron Mysti will die.”

“Abron Mysti is already dead!”

For a long moment they just glared at each other. Saladar squeezed his heartstone, willing it to calm him. Eventually, it did. “Marja, look,” he sighed. “It's been two months since the Fury was trapped here. The trade routes are already changing—you know that. If you don't get them back this year, before winter closes the mountains, they'll never return. There isn't any choice; we
have
to take the risk.”

“‘We'?” she asked, voice dripping with irony.

“Yes, we,” he told her. “Because I'll be in here when I speak the spell. If Wizardell collapses, I'll go with it.”

He made her wait outside, as far away as she was willing to go, while he spoke the necessary spells.

It was straightforward enough, but that didn't make it any less nerve-racking. First he traced a large circle of shimmering red fire around the doorway with the tip of his heartstone. A long and convoluted spell, and the thin red line changed to blue and then to green and then to white. A second, equally long spell, and the section of rock within the circle began to look faintly hazy.

Saladar licked his lips, watching tensely for just the right moment. The haze began to coalesce, forming itself into a thousand thin lines across the stone. Almost … The lines drew in more and more of the haze, grew brighter and clearer—

Now!
He shouted the last part of the spell, squeezing the heartstone between palm and thumb and pointing it at the circle. The heartstone flared in response—

And with a tremendous roar, the rock within the circle shattered.

Saladar staggered back, head throbbing with the echo of that thunderclap. Dimly, he was aware of the sound of running footsteps—

“Saladar!” Marja called, appearing in the freshly enlarged doorway and stepping hurriedly across the rubble with little heed for the treacherous footing.

“I'm all right,” Saladar assured her. “Just … a little dizzy.”

She caught his arms, an anxious expression on her face. “The Wizard's Curse?” she whispered.

“Will you forget the Wizard's Curse?” he growled. “Come on—I'll need your help to get that pentagram out of here.”

She looked over at the Fury. “Will it … ?”

“It can't do anything to us while it's trapped there,” he assured her. A strange tiredness seemed to be creeping over him.
The Wizard's Curse?
Angrily, he shook away the thought.

He looked over to find Marja's eyes on him. “But you said it would try to kill us when the pentagram was broken?” she asked carefully.

He nodded. “Yes, but don't worry. If I do this properly, neither of us will be anywhere near the Fury when it gets loose.” Looking at the spirit, he braced himself. “Come on.”

It was a long climb to the top of Mount Mysti, a climb made longer still by the need to drag his heartstone along the ground the entire distance. But at last they made it. Turning around, bracing himself against the icy wind, Saladar looked down.

They were indeed high up. Below, the top of the Lighttower was a foreshortened knob at the edge of Wizardell's straight-walled gap. To the Lighttower's right, at the very base of the mountain, was a toy star with a pebble beneath each corner, the pebbles being the boulders he and Marja had moved under each of the pentagram's five points. Even from this distance the setup looked strange, reminding Saladar of an oddly shaped table … or an oddly shaped altar.

“Is this going to be far enough away?” Marja asked into his thoughts, her teeth chattering in the cold.

“I hope so,” Saladar said, breathing deeply of air that seemed somehow too thin. “There doesn't seem to be anywhere higher to go.”

“Gods above and demons below,” she muttered. “I wish this was over.”

“It will be soon.” Turning away from the edge of the mountain, Saladar studied the ground around them. A large jagged outcropping caught his eye, and he stepped over to it. Tapping it with his heartstone, he spoke a spell.

Imperceptibly at first, then with ever increasing amplitude, the boulder began to rock in place. Back and forth, back and forth, until, all at once, it broke free, thudding to the ground at Saladar's feet. Walking around to its far side, Saladar held his heartstone to it and pushed, rolling it over to the edge where Marja waited. “Right there,” she told him, unfolding one of her arms and pointing to the ground.

“I see it,” Saladar nodded, his eyes picking out the end of the thin red line his heartstone had left glowing on the ground. Shifting direction slightly, he maneuvered the boulder onto the line.

And all was ready. “Here we go,” he muttered to Marja. Gripping the heartstone, he put his hand against the boulder and threw a last look below. Taking a deep breath, he called out one final spell and pushed the stone over the edge.

It rolled slowly at first … then faster, and faster, picking up speed as it tumbled down the mountainside. Once, it hit a hidden bump and bounced high in the air, eliciting a gasp from Marja. But it didn't matter; the boulder's path, traced so laboriously by the heartstone, wouldn't let it escape that easily. The stone hit the ground again, caught back onto the red line and continued down. Saladar squeezed the heartstone and held his breath—

And with a final bounce, the boulder smashed directly into the center of the pentagram.

The silver coating could protect the star from the power of a heartstone; against a falling rock, it was of no value whatsoever. Even from so far above, Saladar could imagine he heard the wrenching smash of wood and metal—

And with a shriek that seemed to freeze his blood in his veins the Fury rose from the wreckage.

Beside him, Marja screamed; but it was already all over. Even as the pale form arrowed upward toward them, red eyes flaming with mindless hatred, it was beginning to fade, its shriek taking on a strange, faraway quality. By the time it reached the mountaintop, it was nothing but pale red eyes and a blast of bitterly cold wind.

For a long moment they just stood there, listening to the shriek fade into the breeze. Then, slowly, as if in a dream, Marja turned to look at him. “You did it,” she breathed. “You really did it.”

“
We
did it,” he corrected her. “I couldn't have done it without your help.”

Carefully, almost shyly, Marja took his hand in hers. “Saladar—” She laughed suddenly, a short barking sound; and as he gazed at her, he saw two tears trickle down her cheeks. “Do you know that, for the first time since Nunisjan left … I think I understand why?”

Saladar put his arm around her shoulders, sympathetic tears blurring his own vision. Her eyes—there was a flicker of life again in those eyes, a flicker he'd not seen there before now. After three long years, he could sense that the healing of her soul had finally begun … and for that alone he would gladly have risked—

“What is it?” Marja asked, sensing the sudden tightness in his body.

“Nothing,” he said, as casually as possible. “But we probably ought to get back.”

Her face was suddenly stricken. “Gods and demons!” she whispered. “You mean … before … ?”

He nodded, a tight knot settling into his stomach. Now came the waiting … the waiting for the unknown. “I'd like to be back in Abron Mysti before the Wizard's Curse takes effect.”

The night was full of strange dreams, but it was the faint noises outside that woke him the next morning. He was in bed, in Marja's cottage, and for a moment he just lay there, feeling oddly disoriented. Outside, the faint noises continued; easing out of bed, he went to the window to look.

Down in the center of town, the citizens of Abron Mysti had taken to the streets in obvious celebration. Beyond them, between the foothills leading into the mountains, he could see a line of travelers and their beasts heading into Wizardell.

Into Wizardell … and into Gyran Pass beyond.

For a long minute, he stood there, the bitterly familiar taste of defeat on his tongue. Then, closing his eyes against the sight, he turned back and began to dress.

Marja was still asleep by the time he was ready to go. For a moment he paused at the door to her room, gazing down at her face as shame warred against the requirements of courtesy. The shame won. Quietly, he turned away, crossing to the outer door and slipping outside. He had enough contempt for himself; he didn't need to feel hers as well.

The bridge was still in place and still untended, though the bridge keeper would undoubtedly be returning to his post very soon now. Crossing the river, Saladar headed away from the mountains. There was no need to look back, but as he topped the first rise in the road, he couldn't help doing so anyway.

Beyond the celebration, the line of travelers into Wizardell could still be seen, and Saladar felt his lip twist with impotent fury. So Gyran Pass had been reopened, and Abron Mysti saved … and once again, history had repeated itself. While he'd hesitated—while he'd wasted time with a woman not his own—someone else had beaten him to the goal.

Once again, he'd missed out on a chance to use his wizard's Power.

Tears welled up in his eyes, but even as he turned away from Abron Mysti, he knew it wasn't over yet. Not until he was dead would it be over. He'd spent years of his life becoming a wizard … and somehow, somewhere, he would find a way to use his hard-won Power to serve.

And when he did, he would gladly pay the price the Wizard's Curse demanded of him … because no matter what horror that price turned out to be, he would go to face it having finally achieved his life's goal.

And neither sickness nor frailty nor even death itself would ever be able to take that away from him.

Hitmen—See Murderers

It had been a long, slow, frustrating day, full of cranky machines, crankier creditors, and not nearly enough customers. In other words, a depressingly typical day. But even as Radley Grussing slogged up the last flight of stairs to his apartment he found himself whistling a little tune to himself. From the moment he'd passed the first landing—had looked down the first-floor hallway and seen the yellow plastic bag leaning up against each door—he'd known there was hope. Hope for his struggling little print shop; hope for his life, his future, and—with any luck at all—for his chances with Alison. Hope in double-ream lots, wrapped up in a fat yellow bag and delivered to his door.

The new phone books were out.

“Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages.” He sang the old Bell Telephone jingle to himself as he scooped up the bag propped up against his own door and worked the key into the lock. Or, rather, that was what he
tried
to sing. After four flights of stairs, it came out more like, “Let your … fingers do the … walking through … the Yellow … Pages.”

From off to the side came the sound of a door closing, and with a flush of embarrassment Radley realized that whoever it was had probably overheard his little song. “Shoot,” he muttered to himself, his face feeling warm. Though maybe the heat was just from the exertion of climbing four flights of stairs. Alison had been bugging him lately about getting more exercise; maybe she was right.

He got the door open, and for a moment stood on the threshold carefully surveying his apartment. TV and VCR sitting on their woodgrain stand right where they were supposed to be. Check. The doors to kitchen and bedroom standing half-open at exactly the angles he'd put them before he'd left for work that morning. Check.

Through his panting Radley heaved a cautious sigh of relief. The existence of the TV showed no burglars had come and gone; the carefully positioned doors showed no one had come and was still there.

At least, no one
probably
was still there. …

As quietly as he could, he stepped into the apartment and closed the door, turning the doorknob lock but leaving the three deadbolts open in case he had to make a quick run for it. On a table beside the door stood an empty pewter vase. He picked it up by its slender neck, left the yellow plastic bag on the floor by the table and tiptoed to the bedroom door. Steeling himself, panting as quietly as was humanly possible, he nudged the door open and peered in. No one. Still on tiptoe, he repeated the check with the kitchen, with the same result.

He gave another sigh of relief. Alison thought he was a little on the paranoid side, and wasn't particularly hesitant about saying so. But he read the papers and he watched the news, and he knew that the quiet evil of the city was nothing to be ignored or scoffed at.

But once more, he'd braved the evil—braved it, and won, and had made it back to his own room and safety. Heading back to the door, he locked the deadbolts, returned the vase to its place on the table, and retrieved the yellow bag.

It was only as he was walking to the kitchen with it, his mind now freed from the preoccupations of survival in a hostile world, that his brain finally registered what his fingers had been trying to tell him all along.

The yellow bag was not, in fact, made of plastic.

“Huh,” he said aloud, raising it up in front of his eyes for a closer look. It
looked
like plastic, certainly, like the same plastic they'd been delivering phone books in for he couldn't remember how many years. But the feel of the thing was totally wrong for plastic.

In fact, it was totally wrong for
any
thing.

“Well, that's funny,” he said, continuing on into the kitchen. Laying­ the bag on the table, he pulled up one of the four more-or-less-matching­ chairs and sat down.

For a minute he just looked at the thing, rubbing his fingers slowly across its surface and digging back into his memory for how these bags had felt in the past. He couldn't remember, exactly; but it was for sure they hadn't felt like
this.
This wasn't like any plastic he'd ever felt before. Or like any cloth, or like any paper.

“It's something new, then,” he told himself. “Maybe one of those new plastics they're making out of corn oil or something.”

The words weren't much comfort. In his mind's eye, he saw the thriller that had been on cable last week, the one where the spy had been blown to bits by a shopping bag made out of plastic explosive. …

He gritted his teeth. “That's stupid,” he said firmly. “Who in the world would go to that kind of trouble to kill
me
?
Period; end of discussion,” he added to forestall an argument. Alison had more or less accepted his habit of talking to himself, especially when he hadn't seen her for a couple of days. But even she drew the line at arguing aloud with himself. “End of discussion,” he repeated. “So. Let's quit this nonsense and check out the ad.”

He took a deep breath, exhaled it explosively like a shotputter about to go into his little loop-de-spin. Taking another deep breath, he reached into the bag and, carefully, pulled the phone book out.

Nothing happened.

“There—you see?” he chided himself, pushing the bag across the table and pulling the directory in front of him. “Alison's right; there's paranoia, and then there's para-
noi-
a
.
Gotta stop watching those late cable shows. Now, let's see here …”

He checked his white-pages listings first, both his apartment's and the print shop's. Both were correct. “Great,” he muttered. “And now”—he hummed himself a little trumpet flourish as he turned to the Yellow Pages—“the pièce de résistance. Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages, dum dum de dum …” He reached the L's, turned past to the P's …

And there it was. Blazing out at him, in full three-color glory, the display ad for Grussing A-One-Excellent Printing And Copying.

“Now
that
,”
he told himself proudly, “is an
ad.
You just wait, Radley old boy—an ad like that'll get you more business than you know what to do with. You'll see—there's nowhere to go but
up
from now on.”

He leafed through the pages, studying all the other print-shop ads and trying hard not to notice that six of his competitors had three-color displays fully as impressive as his own. That didn't matter. His ad—and the business it was going to bring in—would lift him up out of the hungry pack, bring him to the notice of important people with important printing needs. “You'll see,” he told himself confidently. The
Printers
heading gave way to
Printers—Business Forms,
and then to
Printing Equipment
and
Printing Supplies.
“Huh; Steven's has moved,” he noted with some surprise. He hadn't bought anything from Steven's for over a year—probably about time he checked out their prices again. Idly, he turned another page—

And stopped. Right after the short listing of
Prosthetic Devices
was a heading he'd never seen before.

Prostitutes.

“Well, I'll be D-double-darned,” he muttered in amazement. “I didn't know they could advertise.”

He let his eyes drift down the listings, turned the page. There were a
lot
of names there—almost as many, he thought, as the attorney listings at the other end of the Yellow Pages, except that unlike the lawyers, the prostitutes had no display ads. “Wonder when the phone company decided to let this go in.” He shook his head. “Hoo, boy—the egg's gonna hit the fan for sure when the Baptists see
this
.”

He scanned down the listing. Names—both women's and a few men's—addresses, phone numbers—it was all there. Everything anyone so inclined would need to get themselves some late-night companionship.

He frowned. Addresses. Not just post office boxes. Real street addresses.

Home
addresses.

“Wait just a minute, here,” he muttered. “Just a D-double-darned minute.” Nevada, he'd heard once, had legal prostitution; but
here—
“This is nuts,” he decided. “The cops could just go right there and arrest them. Couldn't they? I mean, even those escort and massage places usually just have phone numbers. Don't they?”

With the phone book sitting right in front of him, there was an obvious way to answer that question. Sticking a corner of the yellow bag in to mark his place, he turned backwards toward the E's.
Excavating Contractors, Elevators—
oops; too far—

He froze, finger and thumb suddenly stiff where they gripped a corner of the page. A couple of headings down from
Elevators
was another list of names, shorter than the prostitutes listing but likewise distinguished by the absence of display ads. And the heading here …

Embezzlers.

His lips, he suddenly noticed, were dry. He licked them, without noticeable effect. “This,” he said, his words sounding eerie in his ears, “is nuts. Embezzlers don't advertise. I mean, come
on
now.”

He willed the listing to vanish, to change to something more reasonable, like
Embalmers.
But that heading was there, too … and the
Embezzlers
heading didn't go away.

He took a deep breath and, resolutely, turned the page. “I've been working too hard,” he informed himself loudly. “Way too hard. Now. Let's see, where was I going … right—escort services.”

He found the heading and its page after page of garish and seductive display ads. Sure enough, none of them listed any addresses. Just for completeness, he flipped back to the M's, checking out the massage places. Some had addresses; others—the ones advertising out-calls only—had just phone numbers.

“Makes sense,” he decided. “Otherwise the cops and self-appointed guardians of public morals could just sit there and scare all their business away. So what gives with
this
?”
He started to turn back to the prostitute listing, his fingers losing their grip on the slippery pages and dropping the book open at the end of the M's—

And again he froze. There was another listing of names and addresses there, just in front of
Museums.
Shorter than either the prostitute or embezzler lists; but the heading more than made up for it.

Murderers.

He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. “This is crazy,” he breathed. “I mean,
really crazy
.”
Carefully, he opened his eyes again. The
Murderers
listing was still there. Almost unwillingly, he reached out a finger and rubbed it across the ink. It didn't rub off, like cheap ink would, or fade away, like a hallucination ought to.

It was real.

He was still staring at the book, the sea of yellow dazzling his eyes, when the knock came at his front door.

He fairly jumped out of the chair, jamming his thigh against the underside of the table as he did so. “It's the FBI,” he gasped under his breath. It was their book—their book of the city's criminals. It had been delivered here by mistake, and they were here to get it back.

Or else it was the
mob's
book—

“Radley?” A familiar voice came through the steel-cored wood panel. “You home?”

He felt a little surge of relief, knees going a little shaky. “There's paranoia,” he chided himself, “and then there's para-
noi
-a.” He raised his voice. “Coming, Alison,” he called.

“Hi,” she said with a smile as he opened the door, her face just visible over the large white bag in her arms. “Got the table all set?”

“Oh—right,” he said, taking the bag from her. The warm scent of fried chicken rose from it; belatedly, he remembered he was supposed to have made a salad, too. “Uh—no, not yet. Hey, look, come in here—you've got to
see
this.”

He led her to the kitchen, dropping the bag on the counter beside the sink and sitting her down in front of the phone book. The yellow bag still marked the page with the
Prostitutes
heading; turning there, he pointed. “Do you see what I see?” he asked, his mouth going dry. If she
didn't
see anything, it had suddenly occurred to him, it would mean his brain was in serious trouble. …

“Huh,” she said. “Well,
that's
new. I thought prostitution was still illegal.”

“Far as I know, it still is,” he agreed, feeling another little surge of relief. So he wasn't going nuts. Or at least he wasn't going nuts alone. “Hang on, though—it gets worse.”

She sat there silently as he flipped back to the
Embezzlers
section, and then forward again to point out the
Murderers
heading. “I don't know what else is here,” he told her. “This is as far as I got.”

She looked up, an odd expression on her face. “You
do
realize, I hope, that this is nothing but an overly elaborate practical joke. This stuff can't really be in a real phone book.”

“Well … sure,” he floundered. “I mean, I know that the phone company wouldn't—”

She was still giving him that look. “Radley,” she said warningly. “Come on, now, let's not slide off reality into the cable end of the channel selector. No one makes lists of prostitutes and embezzlers and murderers. And even if someone did, they
certainly
wouldn't try to hide them inside a city directory.”

“Yes, I know, Alison. But—well, look here.” He pulled the yellow bag over and slid it into her hand. “Feel it. Does it feel like plastic to you? Or like anything else you've ever touched?”