I ought to delay the next step, Tyen thought. That would mean keeping Pieh’s double asleep and working out a way to feed him, however. He could not think of a good enough excuse to go to that trouble. “The sooner the better.”
“Then we should go now. Worlds with enough magic to transfer memories are growing fewer every day as more sorcerers attempt to become ageless. If we wait, we might arrive in the one I have found, only to discover it weakened.”
Tyen hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “Let’s go then.”
Dahli turned and nodded to Zeke. “It was a pleasure talking to you.” With one hand he grasped the ankle of Pieh’s duplicate, with the other he took hold of Tyen’s arm. Pocketing the finger, Tyen grabbed the corner of the table in case it didn’t move into the place between worlds with the body, then nodded to show he was ready.
At once, the basement faded into white.
CHAPTER 15
The route Dahli took was convoluted, with many loops and reverses. Two sorcerers travelling with a table occupied by an unconscious man was a memorable sight, so he kept mainly to rarely used paths and unpopulated arrival places. Tyen concentrated most of his attention on Pieh’s duplicate, since it could not draw a deep breath between worlds to avoid running out of air, alerting Dahli when the body began to suffocate.
Now and then, Dahli travelled quickly through several worlds, not trying to hide his tracks and taking well-used paths. At the end of the first of these dashes, when they stopped to allow Pieh’s duplicate to breathe, Tyen sought the man’s mind to learn the reason.
They were clusters of worlds embroiled in conflict. The chances were, if a sorcerer saw Tyen and Dahli, they’d be too busy with the local strife to investigate, so the worlds provided a useful, if grim, shortcut. At the end of the third cluster, Tyen read that it was the last such crossing they had to make. They were still far from their destination though, so they did not pause for long.
The lips and fingers of Pieh’s duplicate began to gain a bluish tinge despite them stopping to allow it to breathe. Though its chest heaved whenever they reached a world, instinctively attempting to gain more air, it could not draw in a deep breath in preparation before they left a world so it was slowly being robbed of air. Dahli had noticed as well, and his brow was creased by a deepening line. Yet he did not slow his pace.
He had begun peering into the whiteness between worlds, so Tyen looked closer and immediately he sensed what Dahli had glimpsed: there was another sorcerer in the place between. When Tyen detected that person again three worlds later, he caught Dahli’s gaze and nodded in the direction of the shadow.
“What do you want to do?” Tyen asked when they stopped in the next world.
Dahli let go of the body and Tyen’s hand. “Split up and meet again. Read the route and location from my mind.”
Tyen concentrated, memorising what he saw as Dahli quickly visualised the path in his thoughts.
“Got it?” Dahli asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you there.”
“Good luck.”
The sorcerer did not reply, as he’d already started to fade. Taking hold of the body with his free hand, Tyen pushed out of the world and travelled rapidly away. He searched the place between as he travelled but sensed no other sorcerers, apart from a single instance: a fleeting, distant presence moving in the opposite direction.
At last he reached the world Dahli had selected for their experiment. The arrival place was a smooth white bowl, the sides pierced by tunnel entrances. Hot sunlight radiated from the ground and the air tasted salty. He found no minds of people nearby, so he lifted the table with magic and moved it into one of the tunnels. The walls were a dirty white. A closer look revealed they were carved from salt.
Turning to the body, he examined it closely. More time to breathe meant it was recovering well. Once he was satisfied that Pieh’s duplicate was healthy again, he pushed out of the world a little and skimmed up through the earth above him to the surface, then arrived again. Instead of skimming on to look for the tower, he sat on the table and lifted it upwards.
The white bowl shrank below him. Many more came into view, each dotted with tunnel entrances. In some areas, they were smaller and flatter; in others, the sides were so high they sat proud of the earth and began to curve inward, the outer edge shadowing the interior. It was as if many, many air bubbles had risen up through the salt, freezing at different moments of reaching the air.
Following the instructions, Tyen sped in a widening spiral. Dahli had pictured a temple with a white tower, a gaping hole in one side. Sure enough, a spire appeared at the horizon. He propelled the table towards it.
Looking down again, Tyen caught a movement below. He slowed and looked closer. People were walking across the surface of some of the bowls, entering and leaving tunnels. A search for minds revealed hundreds of minds, and perhaps thousands further afield.
This world is populated! Dahli lied!
But he couldn’t have. Tyen would have seen it. Either he has wiped his memory of them from his mind, or they’ve arrived here since he checked this world, or he doesn’t believe the people here count as occupants.
Annoyed and worried, he continued to the tower. The area around it was empty of people, the houses surrounding it a shambles of burned ruins. He moved through a gaping hole in the side of the tower and descended into a great hall. It was clear it had been filled with entwined columns once, but whatever power had blasted the side of the tower open had shattered half of them. The rubble glittered white: everything here was also made of salt.
Once he had satisfied himself that Pieh’s duplicate was unharmed, he looked for the minds of the locals. Flitting from one to the other, he learned that they had a history which went back thousands of their years, so they couldn’t be recent arrivals. They were not a technically sophisticated people, however. Their knowledge of metal working was basic, learned from another race that had dominated this world and forced the religion of the nearby temple upon them. The dominant race had been killed or driven away recently, by people who claimed to come from other worlds.
The light from the entrance flickered. He sensed Dahli’s mind. Looking up, Tyen scowled as Dahli strode into the hall.
“This is not an empty world,” he growled as the man arrived.
Dahli nodded. “The locals didn’t know other worlds existed until recently, and have no interest in exploring them. Their sorcerers are weak and untrained. They will barely notice when the magic of their worlds lessens.”
“They will, if we take it all. What give us the right to rob them of the chance to use it?”
Dahli crossed his arms, his mouth tightening with amusement. “Do we have the time to argue over this?”
Tyen looked at Pieh’s vessel. The body’s chest was rising and falling slowly. He straightened his shoulders.
“We must find another world. An unoccupied one.”
Dahli let out a short, sharp breath. “Unoccupied worlds rich in magic have always been rare. All the ones I knew of have been drained.” If we have to search for the perfect world every time we attempt a resurrection, it will take us hundreds of cycles to bring the Raen back, Dahli thought. I may as well break my deal with Tyen and search for someone else as powerful as he but less scrupulous. It might actually take less time, in the long run.
Tyen looked at Pieh’s duplicate. He was not going to win this argument. But I can make sure a little magic remains here for the local sorcerers.
“Very well,” he said. “Are you holding enough magic to get us both out of this world again?”
“Of course.”
“Then make yourself comfortable. I have no idea how long this will take.”
Dahli nodded. “I will keep watch.”
The table from the basement looked out of place in the temple. He moved it next to a large chunk of fallen masonry and sat down. Taking Pieh’s fingertip out of his pocket, he set it next to the body.
Staring at it,
he sought the state of mind needed to access the information imprinted within it. He took a little magic from the world to enhance his mind and senses. Glimpses of a pattern began to form, but it was the wrong one—the pattern of Pieh’s body repeated over and over countless times in his flesh.
No, I need the other pattern now, he thought. The memories. His concentration deepened and his awareness shifted. Markings of a different kind emerged, and as his mind sought understanding, their meaning slowly grew clear. Tyen saw the image of a young woman, dressed in finery, smiling politely at him. Not him, but Pieh, who was pleased that the wife his family had chosen was good-looking, and that she was intimidated by him. The wife who bore him four daughters and one spoilt, foolish son who got himself killed on his first trading mission. Pieh had been more relieved than regretful, though it had left him with an awkward issue of inheritance.
Not a particularly nice man, Tyen thought. But I didn’t need to see his memories to know that.
Tyen resigned himself to seeing every one of Pieh’s memories—to live the old man’s life—in order to copy them into the body. To do that, he had to first translate them into magic. Taking a deep breath, he began to draw and shape magic. There being no obvious place to start, he began at the memory of the wedding and let the connections from there take him in whatever direction they led. It was slow work, but as he grew used to it he realised he didn’t need to see every memory in order to translate it to magic. His mind adapted to the process and it became a reflex, and soon he was channelling memories too fast to comprehend them.
Free of that distraction, he grew aware of how much magic he was using. He now sat within a void that already extended far beyond the house—the lack of magic as dark to his senses as the charred beams of the houses around the tower. Though magic rushed in to fill the space, he was using so much that the void was steadily growing.
How long before it reached populated areas? What would the local sorcerers do? Dahli had better be right about their limited abilities, he thought. Or we’ll have irate visitors very soon. If the locals did not know how to travel between worlds, they would never reach the house before Tyen was finished. They were simply too far away.
He wouldn’t easily forgive himself for what he was doing to this world. It was another wrong added to the long list of lies and deceptions. He worried, too, if Dahli would run out of sparsely populated worlds to drain, and insist Tyen started ruining ones where the people relied on magic.
The area around him was now intensely rich with magic shaped to record the memories. When at last all the memories stored in Pieh’s fingertip had been translated to magic, Tyen turned his attention to the duplicate’s mind. He wasn’t sure where to start, or how to go about imprinting it on the new mind, so he spent some time concentrating on the brain, seeking information. Slowly, a sense of where and how to imprint the memories began to grow. No corresponding memories in the duplicate told him where the new ones would fit, so he let memories imprint where they seemed to want to be. He did not rush. This was his first attempt. He needed to be careful—and learn from observation.
Gradually the magic shaped into memory dwindled to nothing, and the brain of the vessel filled. When the last of Pieh’s recollections had been transferred, Tyen drew his attention back to his surroundings. Dahli sat on another old chair by the door, his gaze fixed on a place far away. His mind, Tyen was amused to see, was on Zeke. Dahli had decided he liked the inventor, and he was worried what the Zeke would think of him, once he learned who Dahli was. He already knows too much for me to let him go free. I’m going to have to set a guard to make sure he doesn’t wander off while Tyen is attempting resurrections, and someone reads his mind and finds out what Tyen and I are doing.
“Dahli,” Tyen murmured.
The man’s head snapped around; then he leapt to his feet and hurried over to the bed.
“It’s done?”
“Yes.”
“Has it worked?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Wake him.”
Tyen focused his attention on Pieh’s heir again. What should they call him? Pieh Two? He gave the man a mental nudge. Wake up!
The man’s eyes opened. He stared at the roof of the temple, blinked and frowned. Confusion filled his eyes. Tyen read a wordless fear blossom and grow in his mind.
Dahli reached out towards the man’s shoulder.
“You are safe,” he began, but as his hand met flesh, the man flinched, raising arms in an instinctive gesture of defence. He stared at Dahli without comprehension; then a memory stirred. Information came: this was someone powerful. And dangerous.
Pieh Two scrambled off the table. When his legs met the floor they wobbled and he collapsed. Tyen moved around the table to help him, while Dahli approached from the other side. The man looked from Tyen to Dahli, his mouth opened and he began to wail in terror.
They both backed away.
“What’s wrong with him?” Dahli asked.
“I don’t now,” Tyen replied. “He’s scared of you. Stay back and let me approach him.”
Dahli moved away. Watching Pieh Two’s mind, Tyen dropped into a squat, hoping this looked less threatening, and crept forward.
“Pieh,” he said. “Do you remember me?”
The man’s screams diminished to a whimper. His gaze fixed on Tyen, but he did not recognise this stranger. Perhaps memories of the sorcerer who had copied his finger had been too new to linger.
Was that the problem? Had only the oldest, most often accessed of Pieh’s memories been those that had successfully transferred? Tyen began speaking, asking questions that should rouse memories both recent and old, but they might as well have been gibberish for all that Pieh Two comprehended of them. Then one made the squirming man pause. His mind ran down the path of memory, but it confused him. It felt wrong. He knew things, but they were wrong. They did not belong. Or he did not belong.
Pieh Two pressed his hands to his head and groaned.
“Tyen …” Dahli began.
Tyen lifted a hand to stall him. He inched a little closer.
“Pieh,” he said. “We’ve put your mind in a new body. It will probably take time for it to feel right. Relax. Give yourself time to adjust.”
“You did this to me?” Pieh Two said, the words slurred, his eyes bulging as he stared at Tyen.
“Yes. At your request.”
Suddenly the man was on his feet. He threw himself across the room, grabbing Tyen’s shoulders and dragged them both to the ground. Tyen resisted the urge to push the man away.
“Who am I?!” Pieh Two shrieked. “What am I? What was I? No! This isn’t me!” He rolled off Tyen and his head knocked into a wall. He stared at the salt bricks. Rising to his knees, he began to slam his forehead against them. “Get it out! Get it out!”
Tyen rose and reached out to stop him, but the man suddenly twisted to one side. A crack echoed in the room and Pieh Two fell to the floor. Bending over him, Tyen sought the cause of the collapse and was shocked to see his neck was broken. Pieh Two’s crazed mind slowly faded to silence.
Tyen looked up at Dahli in surprise and horror. “What did …? You killed him!”
“Yes.” Dahli crossed his arms. “He was mad. It clearly hadn’t worked.”
“You don’t know that! He might only have needed time.”
“You don’t know that either,” Dahli pointed out. “We don’t have time to waste nursing an invalid.” He spread his hands. “Surely you didn’t expect to get it right the first time?”
Tyen looked at the corpse. “Maybe. Valhan did. He expected Rielle to, that is.”
“Which makes it likely that the fault with this one was in the earlier stages, and waiting would gain us nothing.”
That did make sense, Tyen had to admit. Though he still could not dismiss the possibility that the transfer had worked and the disorientation Pieh Two had experienced was to be expected. As Dahli regarded the corpse with disgust, another possibility occurred to Tye
n.
Dahli won’t want Valhan coming back as a madman, even if it was for a short time. Not only would it be unpleasant, it would be dangerous. Tyen wasn’t going to give in so easily though. He was appalled at how casually Dahli had killed. “How am I meant to work out what part went wrong now he’s dead?”
“You have the body and the fingertip. We’ll take them back with us.” Dahli walked over and placed a hand on Tyen’s shoulder. “I know it’s shocking to you. I would not have done it if I didn’t think it was necessary.” He walked over to the body. “I had misgivings when I selected the beggar. There was no way to know what he was like alive. Maybe he was already mad.”
That was a possibility too. Tyen sought magic, finding a little still lingered in the world, but then remembered his intention to leave some for the local sorcerers.
“You’ll have to transport us back,” he told Dahli.
Dahli nodded. Tyen lifted the corpse with magic and placed it on the table. They linked as they had before, this time with Tyen’s hand gripping the corpse and Dahli’s holding the table. The room faded to white.
The journey home was as convoluted as the one that had brought them there, though this time with no pursuers to shake off. All the while, Tyen retraced every step of the experiment in his mind, seeking clues as to what had gone wrong. His guesses were vague and he was thoroughly dispirited when the basement finally began to take shape. As air surrounded him, he staggered forward and let go of the corpse’s arm.
“What happened here?” Dahli asked, his voice low with anger.
Surprised, Tyen looked up. The sorcerer’s gaze wasn’t on him or the body, however. It was fixed on Zeke, who was limping towards them.
“A woman came here,” the young man said, his voice shaking. “She was angry. Really angry. She kept asking where Tyen was … and … for the Raen’s hand.”
Zeke paused to step over something. Looking down, Tyen saw that mechanical parts were strewn across the room. Familiar parts. He drew in a sharp breath and turned to the humanoid.
It was gone. The parts were what it had become. Among them were other fragments. The contents of the shelving and cabinets. Turning full circle, he took in the destruction he had been too preoccupied to notice as they’d arrived. The only things not smashed in the room were the insectoids Zeke had been studying. Among them, he saw with relief, was Beetle—missing a leg but otherwise whole. Zeke picked it up.