I raised my head. “Goddess?”
“Whom were you expecting?” said Verra. “Please be so kind as to sheathe your weapon, my love.”
“Where are Loiosh and Rocza?”
“They didn’t come through whatever strange device brought you to me.”
I got up on my knees, stared at Lady Teldra, then sheathed her.
“Thank you,” said Verra. “So, little Vladimir, what brought you to me today?”
“Yeah,” I said. I stood up slowly. I seemed to be all right. “Yeah, that would be my first question. But don’t worry, there are others. A lot of others.”
“Goodness,” she said. “Well then, be comfortable.”
We were sitting—her in a big chair on a raised dais, me in something padded and comfortable. I’m not even talking about the sudden travel without teleport, just suddenly appearing somewhere else. I was getting bored with it.
“Let’s start,” said my patron goddess, “with how you got here. What happened?”
“I hit a magic mirror with a Great Weapon in a house that travels from the past to the future and contains halls that exist necromantically across worlds, including the Halls of Judgment—you know, like you do.”
“Ah,” said Verra. “I see.”
“Good. Then explain it?”
“You refer to a magic mirror. What is the enchantment?”
“Goddess, what in the world would make you think I’d know that?”
She nodded. “Of course.” She looked thoughtful. “You meant it, when you said past and future?”
“I know about the past, I’m pretty sure about the future.”
“Connected by hallways.”
“And doors, yeah. Mostly doors.”
“So someone did it.”
“Yeah, someone did it. Did what?”
“Something the Vallista have been attempting for thousands of years. Tens of thousands. But someone managed it. Now, of all times. Was it a Vallista?”
“Yeah. What do you mean, now of all times?”
“I’ve suspected, my beautiful young Vladimir, but I didn’t know.” She smiled. “We should celebrate.”
“Celebrate. Right. Yes. Let’s celebrate. What are we celebrating?”
A table popped into existence next to me, then a glass cup formed like a flower. She also had one, and a bottle.
“Come,” she said.
“All right.”
I got up and went over to her, climbed the dais, and let her pour the wine, then I went back and sat down again.
She raised her glass. “The end of an era.”
“What era?”
“A very, very long era.”
“And, it just ended today?”
“No, no. It ended more than two hundred years ago. I just wasn’t sure until today.”
“Well, good then. I guess all of my questions are answered.”
“Vlad, your sarcasm grows wearisome. If you continue, I won’t give you any more wine.”
“Fine, fine.”
I raised my cup and drank some. “Dear Goddess!” I said.
“Yes?”
“Uh, this is, this is really, really good.”
“Yes. I’ve been saving it.”
“I mean, really good.”
“Shut up and drink.”
“Yes, Goddess.”
I drank some more, trying to commit it to memory. It was sweet, very sweet, but without the annoying too-much that usually comes with sweet wine. It was like drinking light, like drinking purity, and all of it was doing a dance on my tongue that defied me to pull the pieces apart.
“That is, well, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“So, ah, just what are we celebrating?”
“Don’t think, Vlad. Concentrate on the wine.”
Yeah, that was a good plan. I did that. I would kill for wine like that. Okay, I guess that’s not saying much, what with all the things I’ve killed for. But you know what I mean.
The wine took up all of my thinking for three cups, at which time, alas, it was gone. But if I die tomorrow, I’ve had that. It was almost enough to make me forgive the goddess for, well, everything else she had ever done.
“All right,” I said, putting my cup down. “What exactly have we just celebrated?”
“The end of an era, as I said. And that, I’m afraid, is as much time as I can spare. This is big, my dear Vlad. There are things I must do, things I must prepare, gods in whose face I must laugh while crying in my best theatrical voice, ‘Told I thee not so?’”
“Uh, what?”
“I should bring you back to where you were. Mmm. That may be difficult. I think I can manage it by—”
“Goddess!”
She tilted her head and looked at me. “Yes, little one?”
“What is going on? How did I get here? What’s Devera doing there? Why—”
“Devera?” she said sharply. She had been half out of her chair, now she sat down and looked at me. “What has Devera to do with this?”
“She’s the one who got me into it.”
“Into what, exactly?”
“Brought me to the house, the place, the”—I coughed—“platform where all of this happened.”
“Why?”
“She’s trapped there.”
“Trapped? Impossible.”
“Uh, if you say so.”
She settled back fully into her chair, the way you do if you plan to be there for a while. “Tell me everything,” she said.
I glared at her. “You first.”
She stood up. “Vladimir—”
I didn’t stand up, but I touched Lady Teldra’s hilt and said evenly, “Do not threaten me, Goddess.”
“You would draw that, on me, in my own home?”
“Only if I have to.”
“You’re a fool.”
“Is that why you picked me? I mean, the first time. When I was Dolivar. You needed some idiot you could wield like a tool, who’d be too stupid to know he was being played? Was that it? All the way back, the first time? I’m stupid, Goddess, but maybe not as stupid as you think I am.”
She slowly sat down again, and I let go of Lady Teldra’s hilt.
“First of all,” she said, “I didn’t pick you, Devera did. Second, it wasn’t because you’re a fool, it was because she thought you’d be willing to stand up to her grandmother when it was needed.”
“So, in other words, a fool.”
She chuckled, and I relaxed a little more. If Loiosh had been here, fool would have been the kindest thing he’d have called me.
“One thing,” I said.
“What?”
“When I was remembering that, that life with Dolivar when you and I first met—at least, I assume it’s the first time.” I paused, but she didn’t choose to comment. “I remember thinking that Devera must have been around nine years old.”
“What of it?”
“Well, Dragaerans grow slowly, right? I mean, by the time they’re grown up, a human would be dead.”
“Yes, that’s true, now.”
“Now?”
She nodded.
“When did it change?”
“Gradually, over an immense length of time. You know how long the Empire has existed.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Yes?”
“That seems an odd thing to happen.”
“A natural side effect.”
“Of what?”
“Of the way the Jenoine tampered with the world.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was a result of their whole effort. No, not effort. Experiment.”
“Experiment?”
“They live a long time, Vlad. Long by Sethra’s standards, long by mine. And they’re observers, and they are absolutely heartless, at least where other species are concerned. This world is an experiment to see if a society can be made to stagnate.”
“I am lost.”
“Societies develop and c
hange, Vlad. There are inventions, and inventions have repercussions throughout society; associations among people grow and become different.”
“If you say so.”
“You’ve never seen it, because, for one thing, you don’t live long enough, and for another, that hasn’t happened here. Or rather, it has, but it has been very, very slow. The formation of the Empire, from scattered tribes, took tens of thousands of years. Without the interference of the Jenoine, it would only have taken hundreds.”
“That’s—I don’t know what to say.”
“I was one of their servants, and I didn’t enjoy it. My sisters and I took offense at the whole idea, not to mention how they treated us, so we took action.”
“The Great Sea of Amorphia.”
She nodded. “It didn’t undo what they’d done, but it introduced a certain amount of slow, gradual progress. Between that and our efforts to keep them from interfering, things have moved. A little. But now…” She smiled.
“Now what?”
“I should have realized it, of course. Adron’s Disaster. That was it. Seventeen Cycles. They built in their stability, and I destabilized it. That was the proof it worked. I should have recognized my own handiwork.”
“Um. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about Devera, my granddaughter, my little seed of catalyst thrown into the swamp of stagnation. Catalyst, yes, the silver tiassa. How did I not recognize it?”
“Goddess, I have no idea—”
“Devera. A product of the Interregnum.”
“That makes no sense. Her mother wasn’t even around during the Interregnum. I know, I rescued her myself.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “From the Halls of Judgment. Where she came in a disembodied form because of the actions of her father. It was, after all, why I introduced that ability into the e’Kieron line so long ago, though I had no idea in what way it would bear fruit.” By now, I was generating questions faster than I could even remember them. She kept talking. “But there it is, time out of time, stretching from the first disaster to the second, and the second brought everything—even you, my oh-so-tough Easterner—together to create little Devera, the perfect catalyst to unlock—everything. This is splendid. I should open another bottle of that wine.”
“Yes, that would be—”
“Tell me everything that happened.”
I was done trying to fight her on it. I gave her a more-or-less complete version of events, leaving out things that were none of her business, or that I’d promised not to mention. She listened, nodding occasionally, her eyes fixed on me like they’d keep me pinned to the chair.
When I finally stopped, she sat back and rubbed her chin with one of her weird fingers. At length she said, “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Stuff,” I said.
“How did she end up trapped there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask her?”
“Our conversations kept being cut short by her vanishing abruptly.”
She nodded. “Of course, yes, that would happen.”
“Why?”
She brushed it aside as if it didn’t matter, which, with my luck, meant it was the key to the whole thing (it wasn’t, but I didn’t find that out for a bit).
“All right, then,” she said. “It makes sense now.”
“I’m glad it makes sense to someone. Can you explain why, when I struck the mirror, it brought me here?”
“I am certain,” she said dryly, “that if you put your whole mind to it, you can work out why it was that when you, in your typical subtle, discreet, and nuanced way, blasted a big hole in the fabric of the universe, you happened to come here.”
“Uh…”
Verra, I hope this doesn’t kill me.
“Right,” I said. “Got it.”
She shrugged. “That’s a relief. Come with me.”
I followed her down a narrow white hallway, trying to organize my questions into something coherent. The hall ended in an arched opening, with a large room on the other side, also white, except that it didn’t. I followed her through the arch, and we were in an entirely different room, circular, not especially big, with windows looking out—
“Hey,” I said. “This is Morrolan’s—”
She unceremoniously pushed me. I fell backward into one of the windows, and ended up—
Of course. In the manor, on my back, just outside the mirror room.
“Boss?”
“Loiosh, you wouldn’t believe—”
“I think you should get up.”
I know that tone. I did so. “How long was I—”
“Not long, just a couple of minutes. But just as you vanished, there was that sound.”
“What sound?”
“You know, like, stones rolling?”
Crap.
“Yeah, I must have set off an alarm.”
“Uh-huh. Should we run?”
“To where?”
I glared at me in the mirror I’d just tried to break, and I glared back.
That’s when I heard a scuffling sound behind me, just as Loiosh said, “Boss!”
I turned around, and there was the big, ugly, misshapen thing making its way toward me from down the hall. As far as I could judge, it wasn’t coming to raise my Imperial county to a duchy.
No messing around this time; I drew Lady Teldra.
“Plan, Boss?”
“Can you distract it?”
“Maybe.”
“Let’s go for that.”
It was coming very fast, and it was very big.
Okay, thing. Let’s do this. I dropped into a crouch, watching how it moved, gauging distance. Loiosh and Rocza were on its back, biting it, filling it with venom that none of us expected to have any effect, at least not soon. It didn’t even seem to notice them, and I could tell that Loiosh was offended. As the thing got up to me, Loiosh left its back and flew into its face; I rolled to the side as it continued right up to where I’d been and stumbled into the mirrors, which caused nothing whatever to happen, unfortunately.
But it did leave the thing’s back exposed.
I struck, and it twisted like it could feel it coming and I missed, and at the same time it lashed out at me and I caught a hand to my head and saw spots in front of my eyes and felt a little sick. I backed up as fast as I could, but it was faster; at the last minute I rolled forward, scampered between its legs without a shred of dignity, and came up behind it, but I didn’t even try to take a shot; I just put some distance between us. Loiosh and Rocza landed on its back again and bit it some more, and it still didn’t seem to even be aware of them.
It was really fast, that thing. Inhumanly fast. I scrambled to the side and ducked, avoiding another great thump—I swear the air of its fist passing almost knocked me down. I looked for an opening, but it stopped and turned too quickly for me to do more than gaze wistfully at its exposed back before its teeth were in my face again.
Rocza flew close enough that I felt the psychic equivalent of an indrawn breath from Loiosh, but the thing stopped long enough to swipe at her, and that gave me a moment to pull a shuriken from my cloak and—here’s hoping—whip it at the damn thing’s eye.
Almost. It hit it where its eyebrow would have been if it had one, which caused it to flinch for a second, at which time the shuriken fell to the ground; it didn’t even stick. Really? I backpedaled, pulled another, tried again, whipping it like a throwing knife, overhand, which sacrificed a little accuracy for force.
The shuriken went flying over its shoulder and I turned and sprinted down the hall. Was the armory near by? Was there anything in the armory that would help? I could see the advantage of having a halberd, I just couldn’t see the possibility of finding it and taking it and positioning it before that thing crushed me.
I tossed a knife over my shoulder and heard it clank. Stupid—the thing wasn’t smart enough to slow down. There were more flapping sounds. Then I had a grea
t idea: there’s a pocket that I had tailored in the back of my cloak to keep various odds and ends, and one of them was a small vial of oil that I’d use to keep doors from squeaking, and I realized that I might be able to spill it on the floor and make the thing slip. Two problems: one, pulling something from the back of my cloak without slowing down enough for it to get me, and two, I no longer carried the oil.
But it was a really good idea, wasn’t it?
When I felt its breath on the back of my neck I stopped and dropped to the ground, fully prone, fists clenched against my head, elbows locked at my sides, then I said something like “Ugh” as its foot hit my left arm enough to numb it and make me wonder if I’d broken it. It went sprawling. I didn’t even wait to stand up, I just sort of got to my knees and leapt on top of it, Lady Teldra first.
It was already rising, but Lady Teldra went into its side nearly to the hilt, and then I was flying through the air, and I swear to you by my hope of rebirth, I hit the Verra-be-damned ceiling. Then, presumably, I fell to the floor, though I don’t exactly remember that part.
Some time later—Loiosh says about ten minutes—I sat up and looked around. I knew I’d been in a fight, and I figured I’d probably won, but I couldn’t make it come together. Eventually I spotted the big, ugly thing with Lady Teldra sticking out of it just above where people have a hip, and I wobbled over there and drew her, and cleaned her off on the thing’s body as my brain reconstructed the events.
I stared at it. At him. Poor bastard. Toddler goes wandering off, gets possessed by a demon, or maybe just warped by one, I don’t know, and then spends I don’t know how long locked in a little room and then ends up like this. I felt bad for him.
Then I ended up needing a minute for introspection. I felt bad for him? Since when did I start feeling bad for people I had to kill? Well, yeah, but this wasn’t the usual thing. Other times, what led me to kill them was a result of their own decisions. This thing, this person, had never made any decisions. It had all happened to him, and then I had happened to him. A lousy way for a life to go. And there wasn’t even, really, anyone to blame for it. I hate it when I don’t have anyone to blame. I usually get out of it by blaming Verra.
Verra. Sheesh.
“Boss? What happened when you vanished?”
“Loiosh, when we get out of this, you and I are going to have a long talk about it, and maybe you can make sense of it.”