I set off, Loiosh guiding me with instructions like “I think it might be more that way,” and “that kind of looks familiar,” and other confidence-boosting remarks. I still wasn’t sure we were even going generally the right way when I saw a figure looming up in front of me. I stopped, waited; whoever it was, was also waiting. I tried to make out details, but it was too dark. I took a wild guess.
“Hello, Discaru. I was wondering if I’d see you again.”
“I was hoping you’d find your way here.”
“Right. If I die in the past, I just vanish, right? I mean, no body to worry about.”
“You’re very clever.”
“Why haven’t you transformed?”
“It seems we can’t communicate when I’m in my natural shape. And I wanted to make you an offer.”
“An offer? Why not just kill me? Not sure you can pull it off?”
“Exactly. I think I can, but I’m not certain, so why take the chance?”
“How very rational of you.”
“Do you want to hear my offer, or am I wasting my time expecting sense from you?”
“Oh, this is bound to be good. All right, I’m listening.”
“First, let me explain your position.”
I looked around elaborately. “You mean, lost in the past, unsure if I can find my way home, and with a batch of angry Dragonlords chasing me? I’m kinda used to that.”
I took a step closer. The issue wasn’t killing him; I was pretty sure I could do that. The issue was how to get information out of him.
“No,” he said. “I mean the shield that’s gone up around us, so your friends can’t help you.”
I gotta give the bastard credit for good timing. As he finished saying that, there was a scream in my mind.
“Loiosh?”
Nothing.
“Loiosh!”
“What did you do to him?”
“Easy, little man. I doubt he’s harmed. He just flew headfirst into the shield. I’m sure he’s only stunned. And he won’t come to any further harm, as long as you behave yourself.”
“As long as I—Discaru, or whatever your true name is, you are really stupid.”
“Your pet is surrounded by magical energies, and I can pour as much energy into it as I wish, or collapse it. So, if you care about its life at all, you’ll be very polite to me, and do precisely as I say.”
Even in the dimness, I could see Rocza, about ten feet away, trying to get closer to Discaru, unable to, as if there were a sort of invisible bubble around him.
“This demonic plane you’re from,” I said. “Is everyone there a complete idiot, or is it only you?”
“Curb your tongue. You can’t harm me.”
“Oh?”
“I exist here, in the past, in another form. Do you know what would happen if you were to kill me here?”
“No, but I’m really close to finding out.”
“Two of me cannot exist at the same time. My existence here is already causing necromantic disruptions. Sooner or later, probably sooner, the platform that permits this access will collapse on itself. At best, you will be trapped here in this time. More likely, you will be caught in the collapse and destroyed.”
“Sounds grim,” I said, and took another step forward. “Is that what happened when you brought Her Ladyship to the Halls of Judgment?”
“One more step, and I destroy your pet.”
I stopped.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you? Destroy me, and you destroy yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. But you haven’t answered my question. I know you brought her to the Halls, and she gave birth there. But was she already pregnant at the time? Did you know it? Did you bring her daughter back out? How did that all work?”
“If I were you, I’d forget about—”
“You are so very, very much not me. You are nowhere near being me. I can’t even begin. Now, are you going to answer my questions?”
“Of course not. If you care to get out of here alive, you have one chance.”
“Oh, good. I was getting worried.”
“Here is what you’re going to do. I suggest you listen, and quickly, because I can already feel the pressures building, and I honestly do not know how much time there is.”
“All right, tell me,” I said. “This is bound to be good.”
There were two long steps between us.
“I’ll create an opening to your own time, to the road outside of Precipice Manor. You’ll go through it, after giving me your word that you won’t try to come back or interfere in any way. Then I’ll let your pet go through.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Can I make a counter-proposal?”
“You’re in no position to—”
I drew and moved, as fast as I ever have. From fully relaxed, to draw and move and strike; to be honest, I wasn’t sure I could pull it off until I felt the contact. Lady Teldra came up under his chin and into his head.
Yeah. Feed, Lady Teldra. Take it. Take whatever grotesque ugliness he uses for a soul and chew it up and digest it and make him gone gone gone—
His scream was a thing of agony and despair and I relished every lingering note, and it continued in my ears after that and I didn’t mind a bit. At one point, his eyes met mine, and past the hate I felt a jarring contact that formed into the words I will remember this, and you will regret it. I have to admit, as dying words go, they aren’t bad. I was not, however, excessively impressed. The last thing he did was start transforming, but he didn’t get very far, so he was a sort of strange misshapen mostly-human partly-demon object. Students of sorcery may draw whatever conclusions they wish from the fact that, on death, he didn’t return to his native form.
Rocza settled on the ground. I jumped over what remained of Discaru and found Loiosh. I picked him up; he didn’t seem colder than usual. Rocza fluttered and flapped and half flew and settled again, and eventually landed on my shoulder.
I felt for a connection to Loiosh. “Hey? You there? Hello? Loiosh?”
There was something; not a conscious thought, but something, and my knees almost gave out with relief. Now all I had to worry about was the minor issue of, what if the demon had been telling the truth? I looked around. Everything seemed normal. Not that I had any idea what to look for.
I tucked Loiosh carefully into my cloak, then grabbed hold of Discaru’s legs and began pulling in what I hoped was the right direction. That was my clever plan, you see: if I could get his body back to the other time before everything collapsed or he met himself, then, even if the bastard had been telling the truth, it wouldn’t matter because they’d never meet.
Pretty smart, huh?
The question is, how can a guy make a living as an assassin for the better part of a decade without ever learning how bloody heavy a Dragaeran is? I managed about a foot, then stopped, panting.
Well, I could always hope he’d been lying—that’s what I’d sort of counted on in the first place. I mean, he was a demon, right? Being a demon meant being able to manifest in two places at once, which ought to mean that two of him could exist at the same time without everything collapsing. Maybe. And for the hundredth time, I wished I could consult with the Necromancer. I wondered if I could bury him, or maybe sink him in the river, when the air sort of shimmered in front of me—getting wavy, like how on a hot day you see waves go up from the water, only it wasn’t hot, it wasn’t day, and there was no water. My stomach dropped, and my first thought was Oh, crap, it’s happening. But no: a figure came through the shimmering, and for the second time in as many minutes, my knees got weak with relief. Or maybe I’m just getting old.
“Hello, Devera,” I managed.
“Hello, Uncle Vlad. We shouldn’t be here.”
“I know. Can you get us out?”
She nodded and held her hand out. “Come with me.”
“What about him?” I said.
She looked at the remains of the demon, her expression, from as much of it as I c
ould see, mostly one of curiosity.
“He doesn’t belong here either,” she announced.
“Yeah. What do we—”
She reached out, and he began to dissolve. I don’t mean, like, melted, or turned into something; it was more like the whole area he was in turned two-dimensional and wavered, became indistinct, and faded. Or it might be that my mind filled in a lot of that. It seemed like I saw, at the last moment, a vaguely human shape kneeling over him, holding a sword or a wand, but it was just for an instant, and may not have been real, and then that, too, was gone.
“Can you teach me that?”
She gave me a look I can’t possibly describe.
“Never mind,” I said. “I suppose we should get out of here. Tell me though, the Halls of Judgment, that’s where you were born, right?”
She nodded.
“And would someone else who was born there be able to do what you do?”
She frowned. “You mean make spinnysticks?”
“Um, no. I mean walking around in different times.”
“Oh! Maybe. Is this about why I’m stuck here?”
“I think so. A demon seems to have arranged for someone named Tethia to be born there, and Tethia did something, made something, that permitted that kind of travel.”
“Where is the demon, Uncle Vlad?”
“He’s gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Um. I killed him, and you just made him vanish.”
“Oh!” Devera nodded, the expression on her face incongruously mature. “She’d have had to raise it up above the normal plane of existence, so it could reach other places.”
“I don’t understand.”
Her face twisted up, and it reminded me of Loiosh once when I’d asked him to explain how he flew. “The world is a place, and there’s another place next to it, okay? But you can’t get from one to the other unless there’s a way to get to somewhere else that you can get there from.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said as if I understood that. And then suddenly I did. “Yes, she made something above the normal world. A platform.”
Devera nodded. “So that—” She stopped and looked around and above her. “It’s collapsing,” she said. “We need to go.”
“All right.”
“Boss?”
“It’s okay, Loiosh.”
“I ran into something.”
“I know.”
“That guy—”
“He’s dead now.”
“Oh. Good.”
Some distance away, I heard a shout of “What’s that? Over there?”
“Come on, Uncle Vlad,” said Devera.
How could I refuse? Still holding Loiosh, I followed her through the shimmering area, and found myself, once more, back by the fountain—not the one in the Halls, the one that looked like it.
“Thank you, Devera. Now maybe you can explain—”
I was talking to the air. I should have seen that coming.
Part Two
SYNTHESIS
15
THIS SMOOTH MAGIC
Since I’d left the castle, it had gone from afternoon to dusk and now it was back to evening. All of this random messing around from night to day and back was going to do serious damage to my sleep cycle. The drugs they’d given me probably wouldn’t help much either. I was probably going to have a long, long, nap after this was all over; maybe a couple of days’ worth. For now, though, I didn’t feel tired. I did feel warm, however; I shrugged my cloak back off my shoulders, only now realizing that it’d been colder at the other place. Temperature is one of those things I notice when I’m not busy with anything else.
Loiosh stirred in my cloak, then, without saying a word, made his way up to my shoulder. I felt him grip and flap as he nearly lost his balance.
“You sure you’re all right there?”
“I feel better here.”
“All right.”
“What now?”
“I think we backtrack, and keep an eye out for Discaru.”
“I thought you killed him.”
“In a different time. He’s a demon, remember? I only banished him from that place.”
“But it’s connected, and—”
“Yeah, I know. And maybe he’s gone from here. I just don’t want to count on it and be surprised.”
“Yeah. Good thinking, Boss.”
To be clear, I thought he was probably right—I was pretty sure Discaru was gone from this world; but if I was wrong, things could get ugly. One reason I’m still around to tell you these stories is because when I’m doing big things that are crazy, I try to play it safe with as much of the little stuff as I can. It’s worked so far, right? Of course, “It’s worked so far, right?” do pretty well as last words, so let’s not get cocky about it.
I took a look around the courtyard area in case there was anything I’d missed, but if so I missed it again. And then it was back into the passage, and back around, making tedious but necessary stops to pick the locks on the other doors just to make sure that, yes, they really did lead back into the same courtyard, just like they appeared to.
Eventually I came back to where I’d first entered the passage. What now? Retrace my steps the whole long, bloody way? To where? To do what? I had my answers now, at least some of them, but I didn’t know what to do with them. I know what I wanted to do: go find Zhayin and smack him around a little just on general principle. But that probably wasn’t the best way to get my answers and solve Devera’s problems. What was?
Okay, I’d start by retracing my steps, just for lack of a better idea.
Once more, then, into the bedroom. I frowned at the strange window-doors; I wasn’t sure that was the way I’d come in, but how else?
I tested the doors, they opened, and I stepped through.
And I was back on the cliff. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to this.
I took a few steps down, and I was outside the cave again. There was an extinguished torch at my feet. I picked it up, tried to light it, failed, then stepped into the cave out of the wind and managed to get it going. The stairway was where it was supposed to be; I followed it up and was back in the cellar beneath the manor. I deliberately avoided looking around too much as I went through it; I didn’t want any more distractions. It was a long walk, all in all, up and down, and through scary rooms of sorcery and boring hallways, but then I was back to—
There. That was the room where Discaru had brought me to the Halls of Judgment. Would it work without him there? Or was he still there, waiting for me, really annoyed at me for having shoved a Great Weapon up under his chin? There was also the question of did I want to visit the Halls of Judgment again. That was easy: no, I didn’t. I like it when there are questions I know the answer to.
I went farther down the hall until I stood in the room with the fake wall, with the thing on the other side. It didn’t come bursting out while I stood there, which I thought was kind of it. I stared at the wall. One way or another, I don’t think you and I are done with each other, my friend. I turned and went back through the door and continued down the spiral stairway that emerged—I’m tempted to say as usual—on the wrong side of the hall.
I walked down the hall, remembering where things were, or should be, or might be but probably weren’t. Like, directly above me should have been the room where I’d reached the Halls of Judgment, the little room where I’d seen Discaru, then the hidden cell that contained the beast. Like I said, that should have been above me, but where was it, really, relative to where I was? It was slightly crazy-making. I kept trying, pointless as it was, to fit it all into my head. What was past the beast room? The balcony above the ballroom? No, that should be farther back. The armory, then. No, the mirror room.
The mirror room.
A workshop cabin full of glass sheets, silver, an oven, and a bunch of things whose use I didn’t understand. Put them together, and what do you get? Mirrors. Lots of mirrors.
Use of mirrors is one of the few thin
gs Eastern witchcraft and sorcery have in common. Glass with a silver backing reflecting light is used in all manner of things. For necromancy? Well, form a connection with the Halls in order to create a link with a higher plane, then bounce it off mirrors to symbolically reflect it through the manor; the odd backwardness in places, where things were on the wrong side of the hall, or up when they should be down, was just a side effect of the spell.
Well, so what? I mean, I’d already tried to hit one of the damn things, and all I’d gotten was a numb hand.
“Lady Teldra, Boss,” said the brains of the outfit.
Damn.
“That could be interesting. When did you think of it?”
“First time you hit the mirror.”
“Why didn’t you mention it then?”
“Because it could be interesting.”
Straight ahead to the ballroom, then up—a stairway up that actually went up. Around the edge of the balcony, and there was the mirror room. I pulled the door open.
Was I really going to do this?
“Ready, Loiosh?”
“Not really, Boss.”
Of course I was going to do this. I drew Lady Teldra. She had her most usual form, the thin, very long knife or very short sword. Without giving myself time to consider consequences, I picked out the nearest mirror, thought, Verra, I hope this doesn’t kill me, and gave it a good, hard, backhand cut right across the middle.
This time, the transition was not smooth. It wasn’t subtle, either. I felt like my teeth were about to rattle themselves out of my head, the room spun, there was a roaring in my ears, and then I was facedown, still holding Lady Teldra.
I opened my eyes. The floor was a hard, manufactured substance of pure white. I turned my head, and there was a wall next to me that seemed to be made of the same thing.
“Hello, my dear. Would you mind terribly putting that away?”
I knew that odd, weird, echoey voice.