The Rift War (25 page)

"Ah, you are the man from the future, are you not?" She stepped closer, tipping her head
back to look up at him.

"Ma'am, I'm one of them. Yes." He bowed, coloring a little. "Something tells me you're
looking for Grego, though."

"I have heard some chatter in the Threads--it's amazing how a few hundred years of no
access makes people lose all sense of control and privacy--so it's nearly impossible not to hear
what people are saying. Edrout wants the man from the future caught, to use him to find the
Zygradon."

"Definitely Grego." Emrillian glanced over her shoulder at the bluff, where the others
waited. She thought fast. "We can't communicate through the Threads, if Edrout is able to use
them. He could overhear us, just as easily. Lady Scholar--"

"My name is Asandra, child. And from the look of you, I would wager you are of
Ceera's blood, yes? Athrar's daughter?"

"Emrillian, yes, Lady Asandra. Please, my friend grasped the main trunk of the Thread
that feeds into the Zygradon. He still carries its resonance. To protect him, would you take him
onto Wynystrys?"

"To protect him, find the Zygradon instead." Asandra beckoned, and those from
Wynystrys who hadn't yet crossed the makeshift bridge started over. "The Queen of Snows is
almost here. I think it would be wise to call a council meeting." Eyes twinkling, she held out her
hand. "Would you help an old lady climb up?"

"I would...but I think you don't really need help." Emrillian took off her gauntlet and
held out her bare hand. "Lady?"

Asandra stood still, staring down at her arm. Looking around, Emrillian realized all the
scholars of Wynystrys stared at her.

"What did I do?"

"How do you hide so much star-metal?" the scholar woman whispered. Her hand
trembled a little when she reached out to stroke the cuff of the chain mail sleeve. Shimmers in
rose and lavender spilled off the star-metal from her touch.

"I made the armor. It is part of me, Grandfather says. I also wove in a command to keep
it quiet, otherwise I would go deaf from the music of all the parts working together."

"She is definitely Mrillis' granddaughter." A big, dusky-skinned, white-haired man
stomped as he stepped off the end of the bridge and reached the shore. "Your bloodline enjoys
doing the impossible."

"If it was impossible, how could she have done it?" Baedrix asked, his tone sour.

Asandra laughed, sounding like a flute. The big man roared, bending halfway over and
slapping his thigh. Emrillian fought not to laugh, for Baedrix's sake, because she was sure he
hadn't meant to be witty. She relaxed when she stole a sideways glance at him, and found him
smiling crookedly.

"You resonate of the shield around Quenlaque. You have the look of Ilianora, in the
eyes and nose," he said. "I am Nentor, and you are?" The big man bowed, an abrupt
movement.

"Baedrix, descendent of Lord Lycen and Lady Ilianora." He returned the bow.

Nentor straightened up, jammed his meaty fists into his hips, and took a deep breath. He
tipped his head back to look up at the bluff, where Pellen, Taran and Grego now stood, looking
down at them. "Well, are we going to stand around like a bunch of useless courtiers, talking
about nothing, or are we going to get to work?"

Karstis growled out a long stream of curses, strung together so Emrillian couldn't make
out half the words. Stomping down to the water's edge, he pointed at the horizon.

"What are those?" Baedrix said, as Emrillian made out the two sleek, white and gray
shapes, almost hidden by the sparkle of the water.

"Ships. Science vessels, if I miss my guess." She turned back to the bluff and cupped her
hands around her mouth. "Grego, get down here! Kayn has arrived!"

She had just finished explaining to the scholars what those ships had come for and what
kind of weaponry they might have, when the others reached the shore. They weren't alone,
however. Meghianna and her new Queen's Ladies had emerged from the tunnel just before
Karstis saw the Science Directorate ships.

Meghianna walked down arm-in-arm with Grego and Pellen. Emrillian could see her
aunt's magic at work, finishing the healing of both injured men. Shalara and Eleanora walked at
the head of a column of a dozen women who were dressed alike in dark green tunics and
trousers, chain mail shirts and crested helmets worked with the scroll and lamp emblem of the
Stronghold. They gleamed with their awakened
imbrose.
They were all armed with
star-metal knives, and wore belts of star-metal. The archers among them had arrows with star-metal
points. Brysta walked at the end of the column. She didn't wear armor, but native garb, and she
clutched several wax tablets to her chest. An open satchel full of scrolls bounced at her hip. She
nodded to Emrillian when their gazes met, and she smiled somewhat crookedly.

"Kayn, huh?" Shalara said, coming down to the water's edge to shield her eyes and study
the horizon. The Directorate's ships didn't glide into the harbor at full speed like Emrillian
expected. She hoped the shattering of the dome had done some damage to the ships. It was too
much to hope their power siphons were totally disabled.

"Asandra?" Meghianna opened her arms wide and ran the last few steps, to embrace the
leader of the scholars. "So they finally talked you into being responsible for everyone, after all
these years." The two women laughed as they separated.

"It's worse than that," Asandra said. She blushed and held out her hand. Nentor strode
over to grasp it. "He finally talked me into marrying him."

"This moon our story is that
you
begged
me
, remember?" Nentor said.
He caught hold of Meghianna's hand and kissed it. "Well, your niece here is causing just as much
trouble as you did when you were her age."

"I didn't bring them here!" Emrillian declared, deciding it was easier to join in the
foolery that lightened the moment, rather than let it frustrate her.

"No, you didn't." Meghianna's smile flattened and she turned with the others to gaze out
at the horizon. "Grego, what can we expect from these people?"

"They're here for star-metal, and the energy they can siphon away. If we're lucky and the
Estall is blessing us... With that explosion we had last night, half the meters and other equipment
are burned out and they're going to be busy making repairs for several days," Grego said.

"And if not?" Nentor wrapped a massive arm around dainty Asandra's shoulders and
drew her against his side.

"They'll start draining energy from the Threads as soon as they feel secure," Emrillian
guessed.

Watching Nentor and Asandra made something clutch inside her chest, and she turned
for a moment to find Baedrix, despite scolding herself a dozen times not to let silly fantasies
interfere with her duties. She sighed and laughed at herself, when she saw he was too busy
studying the incoming ships to notice and react to the affection between the married couple.

"I'd want to set up the equipment on dry land before I start the process, just in case,"
Grego said. "Kayn and I argued about it for three moons while everything was still theory. He
thinks the ships are steady enough, but I know he'll want to get as close to shore as possible, just
in case something goes wrong and they have to abandon ship."

"So we can expect them to keep moving for a while yet?" Baedrix said. "Is it enough
time to prepare? What can we do against ships like that?"

"I don't suppose there are any motorized watercraft around here?" Shalara said. She and
Karstis traded glances.

"Get them before they get us," Karstis said, with a nod. "It might work."

"It has to work."

"What are you talking about?" Emrillian demanded.

"Get on the ship, attack using magic, disable the equipment before they realize what's
going on and try to drain the Threads." Shalara gestured at the island. "Do you have any
rowboats, at least?"

"We need motors," Karstis said, over Nentor's affirmative response.

"You haven't been getting soaked in lessons about using your
imbrose
, like we
have. One of our exercises involved wrapping objects in Threads and pulling them towards us."
Shalara turned to Meghianna. "Is it possible to push objects instead? Even when we're standing
on them?"

"Very possible." Meghianna clapped her hands three times. "You, my dear, are a pupil
every teacher dreams of."

Wynystrys had fifteen small boats--the scholars enjoyed fishing, Asandra explained with
a sigh of mock exasperation--and twice as many volunteers from among the scholars to help with
the effort. Emrillian imagined the Science Directorate seeing a fleet of small boats come racing
toward them. They probably wouldn't worry, until they realized the boats had no sails and no
visible engines.

They might be merely curious for a while after that. The fact that these motor-less boats
came from a green continent that had appeared overnight where a haze of radiation and storms
and wasteland had been the day before had to alarm them. If she were half as paranoid as Grego
described Kayn, she would break out every weapon she had and start firing. She trusted the
Archaics' control over the propulsion of the little fishing boats, but she didn't trust them to
maintain shields against energy weapons and projectiles while they moved forward.

"We need a distraction of some kind, so they're too busy to notice until they're being
boarded," she said.

Grego thought of Wynystrys itself as the greatest distraction of all. "If I saw an island
heading toward me, with no visible means of propulsion, I'd be so busy with scanners and getting
my computers online, I wouldn't notice if a bird built a nest in my hair."

"I have an idea to distract even more," Baedrix said, when the exclamations of approval
and laughter had faded. He bowed to Emrillian. "Lady Warhawk, you did declare Lord Grego
your official ambassador, did you not?"

"I did." She caught her breath when she guessed a little of what he intended.

"Then let the Warhawk's ambassador stand at the tip of the island, calling out his name
and demanding they surrender. No matter how greedy they are to steal the power of the Threads,
they'll be curious enough to listen."

"Or at least get close enough for Kayn to shoot me through the heart as a traitor." Grego
seemed more amused by the idea than worried, but Emrillian shuddered at the image. From what
she had heard about Kayn from her three friends, she suspected the man might just try to do
that.

But before he got close enough for a sure shot, her warriors would have boarded his
ships and taken him and his scientists prisoner. She hoped.

It encouraged her a little that Brysta seemed just as un-amused by the image. The
woman scientist was allowed to accompany them on the island, but she had to stay far back from
the shore, among the trees, so she wouldn't be seen by the people on the ships. The last Emrillian
saw of her, she had settled down with one of the wax tablets and took a stylus from the knot she
had made in her hair to keep it out of her face, ready to take notes on the coming encounter.

If there had been some word from Athrar or Mrillis, Emrillian would have felt much
more confidence in the plan. She hoped that the same overflow of power through the Threads
that impeded communication with some parts of the continent, and made it easy to eavesdrop on
communication elsewhere, was causing just as much havoc with the Directorate's ships and
equipment.

She and Meghianna and Asandra joined their power to weave an illusion around the
attacking teams. Each little boat held a Queen's Lady and two scholars, teamed together to push
the boat toward one of Kayn's two ships. Pellen, Taran and Karstis rode in the larger boats. Since
Shalara and Karstis were part of the Science Directorate and had been on both ships, they were
the team leaders, each one taking a ship as a target.

"I don't suppose you have a spell for a megaphone?" Grego said, as the island headed
back across the bay to the two limping ships. "Just to make sure they really can hear me."

"You're having entirely too much fun with this," Emrillian scolded. She wanted to hug
him, in pure gratitude for his sense of humor, but she didn't dare touch him. It wasn't that the
resonance from the Zygradon that clung to him was unpleasant--the exact opposite. She was
afraid she would simply stand there, clinging to Grego, letting the multiple chords pull her down
into bliss. She had been relaxed last night, and look what had resulted from that
carelessness.

Besides, Brysta wouldn't like seeing that happen, and Emrillian wanted Grego's
sweetheart to be her friend. She would be helpful in the education effort to come.

"Sevron Kayn!" Grego called, when Wynystrys had moved out into the water and was
close enough to the two ships that Emrillian could make out details like the color of hair of the
people who crowded the sides of both sloops. It was comforting that there was no sound of
engines, and the sloops had raised their sails for propulsion. "Kayn, come forward."

"Who are you?" Kayn boomed, his voice amplified by the ship's speakers.

That was discouraging. It meant the ships did have some energy, even if the engines
didn't work.

"I am ambassador for her majesty, Queen Emrillian Warhawk." He paused and winked
at Emrillian. "My name is Lord Grego Cavvon, formerly--"

"Cavvon, you are under arrest."

"Fool," Meghianna said under her breath.

"You have no authority here, Kayn," Grego shouted back. "We are here to demand your
surrender. You are trespassing on sovereign territory."

"In the name of the government of Goarlotte-Welcairn, I claim this land and all the
star-metal it contains." Kayn's voice sounded positively smug.

"You can't claim land that belongs to another government." He looked around the loose
circle of Asandra, Meghianna and Emrillian, who stood at the forward point of the island's shore
with him, and shrugged. "You have entered the waters belonging to Quenlaque, under the
sovereign rule of the Warhawk. You are trespassing."