Curious Eka was indifferent to any other arrival. Ethrian stood close by, shaking till Eka slipped her left hand into his right. He came alert immediately. The change was remarkable. His mind had turned on. He began assessing the situation.
Nepanthe suppressed an urge to charge over and start mothering. Ekaterina’s warn-off look was unnecessary.
It made her ache but the evidence was in. Ethrian improved when she refrained from fussing. She did not understand but would take the pain if that meant her baby might come back.
Speaking of babies.
Smyrena charged through the crowd, fearless, hands shoulder high as she toddled at best speed toward the Winterstorm for the hundred and eleventeenth time since she figured out how to get up on her hind legs. Thank heaven Varthlokkur had adjusted the magical construct to be indifferent to her intrusions.
Nepanthe pursued her anyway. As she passed Ekaterina, she asked, “What is it?”
“Nothing. I never met a girl my own age before.”
“Oh.” But it was not like Eka knew nothing about Depar. She showed a limited interest in what was going on elsewhere but she had seen enough. You could be surprised how much Eka knew if you made her hold still and quizzed her. She probably knew exactly what went on between Depar and her keeper, though understanding it might elude her.
One more thing to worry about.
Worry was Nepanthe’s ground state.
Smyrena wiggled and babbled, then twisted and extended her arms toward her brother, whom she had begun to manipulate already.
Ethrian noticed, focused, grinned, said something in his own dialect of baby, and reached back. Nepanthe surrendered her daughter. Smyrena was good for Ethrian. He would stay connected and focused for as long as Smyrena remained interested. He might have trouble concentrating on much else if she was in a demanding mood, though.
His mind-wrangler was there in a moment, ready to take advantage. Nepanthe was amazed by the gentle, tolerant skill the man showed. Right now he wanted to reinforce Ethrian’s connection to this world.
He knew patience and put that ahead of any desire to root out useful information, even after Scalza squeaked, “He’s back! I’ve got him again! He’s on the move again!”
Too many people crowded the boy immediately. The nervous surge his way even got Ethrian leaning. Ekaterina took his arm, held him in place. She melted some when he smiled down at her.
Scalza’s announcement struck deep into the Old Man, too. He joined Ethrian, positioning himself at the youth’s right hand, across from Eka, with both mental specialists behind, making calming remarks despite not being calm themselves.
Varthlokkur chivvied the crowd back. “Come on, people. All you can do is make this harder for those of us who have to...” He stopped talking, not because his remarks were not fair but because he had caught something over Scalza’s shoulder. “All right. He’s back out where we can see him. But where the hell is he going?”
Scalza said, “The horse is headed east. You should try your own resources on this, Uncle, just to see if this isn’t a diversion.”
“Clever boy. Yes. Get back farther, people. I need room to swing my elbows.” He climbed inside the Winterstorm and started manipulating symbols. Old Meddler was near the limit of its reach already.
It took only two minutes. “Gor! It’s him for sure and he’s headed east. And he isn’t alone. He has four black winged demons with him.” He did not add that each demon carried a metal statue.
“Why is he headed east? Because he knows I’m watching and wants to be out of range before he lines up his attack?”
The Old Man had a one-word explanation. “Ehelebe.”
Ethrian nodded. “Still secrets there.”
Varthlokkur stepped out of the Winterstorm. “Lord Kuo. Can you tell us anything?”
“Nothing useful. I was there for months but only saw part of one fortress on one island. I know that Magden Norath had labs there at one time.”
Ethrian said, “Nawami,” as the Old Man repeated, “Ehelebe.”
Varthlokkur looked from one to the other, forehead creasing. Both, with Sahmaman and the Great One, belonged to what they had to say about the deep past, so old that the names, which they never explained, were lost.
Mist stepped up close. “Lord Yuan. Lord Kuo. Can you set traps that he might trip once he gets there?”
Tin Yuan replied first. “That could be arranged, Illustrious. But please understand that the efficacy of any hasty booby trap will be problematic—and he might think that he was expected.”
Wen-chin did not fully agree. “Only if the snare is clearly targeted. A generic trap, set to take anyone…”
“That’s what I want. Obvious one place, subtle another, with a hope for nailing him if he’s too sure of himself or just doesn’t pay attention. Magden Norath proved that anybody can stumble.”
“Worth the investment,” Varthlokkur opined. He stepped back inside the Winterstorm, hoping to find out how fast the devil was moving so he would know how long they had to build traps.
Old Meddler had passed beyond the Winterstorm’s range.
Paranoia embraced him. There was no way, now, to know what that devil was really doing.
He tried being amused by the fact that the Star Rider did this to everyone. He was fear incarnate, pure and simple. Millennia had gone into establishing that perception in the foundation assumptions of the world.
There was a hint of panic in the air.
Lord Yuan said, “We cannot manage what you want from here, Illustrious. The resources aren’t available.”
Lord Kuo nodded.
Varthlokkur thought Mist was surprised that the elderly Tervola had not deferred to Wen-chin. Would Lord Yuan become directly involved?
...
The winged horse settled to a battlement walkway on the mainland-facing side of the island fortress. Its muzzle drooped. It released an unambitious, exhausted whicker. Its rider lapsed into a moment of drowsiness that could have become sleep if nothing had happened.
Equally exhausted demons settled nearby but stayed only long enough to shed their burdens. Then they made a concerted attempt to escape, despite a staggering weariness.
The Star Rider dismounted as they soared. “We will rest here.” He did not want to waste time on rest but his companions were almost used up. He was on his last reserves himself. He swung the Windmjirnerhorn round, began tapping its valves.
A demon screamed in angry despair. The Horn’s power dragged it back down. The other demons found new energy and flapped harder.
The captive demon lacked any sense of sacrifice. It gave up right away rather than mount an agonized rearguard struggle that would give its fellows a chance to get away.
Old Meddler was too tired to work fast. He was able to recapture only one more demon.
The others were not beyond recall, however, whether they wanted to respond or not. But he would need several days’ rest before he tried, then would need an additional two more days to complete the recall.
He refused to invest the time.
His enemies would not be resting. They never slept.
One instant of relaxed incaution had cost so much already.
Less haste, more rest, before commencing the journey east, and he would not be in this predicament.
He eyed the horse, bitterly inclined to blame it. Somehow. Would it flee, too? Its behavior had been strange lately. Its desertion would be a disaster of the first water.
No. It would not forsake him after all their ages together.
That just could not happen. Its recent behavior had to be just time catching up.
The animal was getting old despite being immortal.
He stared across the strait. There lay a long trek back to civilization along a harsh route. That boy, the Deliverer, had managed it but the devastation he had left behind guaranteed that no one would again until the complexion of the earth changed and a new climate embraced this part.
Star Rider’s sc
heme was springing leaks. Only two demons remained. Success could require all four iron statues. Two might not be enough to dilute Varthlokkur’s strange sorcery. And the wizard would not be alone.
Improvisation had become imperative.
He was not good at making it up on the fly, despite so much experience. He was a master of the long, slow, complex machination, shogi with a thousand pieces.
He no longer knew real fear. Nothing had threatened him mortally in so long that he had lost the emotions surrounding the event. Last time of maximum risk had been during the Nawami Crusades.
He was uneasy, though. Definitely uneasy.
Little had gone well this past year, up to and including the last five minutes. There was no reason to expect his luck to turn around.
The new year was close, though, and the changing of the years always brought new hope. That was what new years were for. Not so?
He made sure he had the remaining demons under absolute control, then herded his companions down a long stair to a weathered court. A stiff-stepping iron statue missed its footing and tumbled, grinding and clanking, taking the fall alone. A human in the same straits would have grabbed at anyone and anything to save itself. It rose from the flagging wearing only a few new scratches. It waited on Old Meddler and the rest, then followed, creaking worse than before.
Old Meddler surveyed his surroundings. Curious. These fortifications had existed when first he had come to Ehelebe. Time had inflicted few changes. The dust was thicker. The sandy decomposition surfacing the building stone was just a little crustier.
Nowhere had so much as one plant taken root. Other abandoned places suffered the assault of vegetation beginning the moment its caretakers went away. In a few generations a mighty city could subside into jungle entirely, vanishing before its legends could fade.
Plants did not strive to reclaim this place, nor did any animal. Birds refused to nest, yet swarmed the cliffs across the strait. Every species of mammal but Man shunned the place. Bugs and spiders were rare. The few were warped compared to their mainland cousins. Only scorpions and some things with a thousand legs appeared to prosper.
Once inside, Old Meddler caught a scent that did not belong, body odor from someone who ate mostly rice and smoked fish. An ascetic, perhaps, who had visited recently.
His nose had saved him before. He trusted it completely.
The odor was unremarkable. He associated it with older Tervola. It had been there last visit, not as fresh, dissimilar enough to have been left by a different individual.
Tervola must be frequent visitors. But which? And why? Was the place being scouted as a possible secret base? It had served that purpose before. Some middle-level Tervola conspirator? The only access was by transfer portal. Only the Dread Empire owned those.
Yes. The woman ruling there would be a red flag to half the Tervola. Where better to plot an end to that abomination?
Too bad he was locked into this, which demanded swift resolution. Otherwise, he could sit here like a trapdoor spider, snapping up conspirators, adding them to his inventory of fools. Tools.
He heard a humming that could only be a live portal.
He headed for the kitchen area. It was there that he had seen workable portals last time. Could someone be there? Those portals had been too small to pass an adult. The man-size ones, in theory, could only be activated from the other end.
The racket his crowd made would have to have been heard. The hum might be somebody making a getaway.
He sent a demon ahead, backed by an iron statue. The demon, shrunken down to a beetle of human size, entered the kitchen walking upright on unnaturally robust rear legs, feeling the air ahead with antennae half as long as it was tall. Its wings lay on its back like fitted plate, polished purple-black. The statue, the one that had fallen earlier, clanked behind clumsily, right leg squealing as it dragged through the first few inches of each step. It had not been maintained. Old Meddler wished there had been time for an overhaul. There had been no time for years. Not a minute to invest in routine upkeep. Too often, not a minute for desperately needed sleep.
This task had become impossible once he lost his ancient associate.
A bad choice made, that time.
Old Meddler seldom acknowledged mistakes, even to himself. He did not make mistakes. He was who he was. He was what he was. He could not make mistakes.
Even so, that sloppy choice had cost him like none other since the cluster that got him sentenced to this hell. It had, worse, cost him the closest thing he had to a friend.
So now the Old Man was dead. All that he had done to help, when he had been awake, had piled itself onto Old Meddler’s weary shoulders.
So. There was no time for maintenance. No time for anything but handling the crisis of the moment.
Retina-blistering emerald light flared. A green shaft ripped through the demonic beetle, hit the iron statue in the right abdomen. Chunks of demon chitin flew, revealing the inside of the thing’s wing case to be orange and the body beneath as red and orange. Stuff flew off the iron statue, too. It staggered back a long step, leaning slightly, like a man kicked in the gut.
That flying stuff might have been globules of molten metal. They splattered, then hardened quickly.
This was not possible.
Blindness came.
He did not panic. He knew flash blindness was not permanent. He had lost vision this way before. He would recover, not as quickly as he might like. But…
That bolt, however generated, had immense power behind it, of a level not seen since… No, even the Nawami Crusades had produced no blast savage enough to pierce the frontal armor of an iron statue. Had it? This world had seen nothing like this. Someone had tapped directly into…
He could not concentrate. His eyes hurt. The pain threatened to become the focus of his existence. Despite past experience he had trouble managing his fear of blindness—though he must remain calm and controlled. He was deeply vulnerable at this moment, even with demons and iron statues to shield him.
The event had not been an attack. He understood that when no follow-up came. The demon had triggered some trap. Maybe there was competition for this place. Underground movement often wasted energy on internecine murder rather than battle the object of rebellion.
Or maybe he had been expected. That would explain the magnitude of the blast.
Unlikely, though. There was no way anyone could have predicted his visit. Some overly bright Tervola was determined to make a convincing statement to any fellow Tervola who stumbled onto his handiwork.
One of those master sorcerers had found the golden key, a way to suck power off the transfer streams. Must have. The dream had been out there for ages. No lesser source could have delivered that emerald violence.
Had he truly seen molten metal fly? He did now recall a similar instance in one rare moment where the Great One had chosen to inject himself directly into the Nawami conflict.
The Great One had used power stolen from the transfer streams. He had made himself a god by finding the way, and later became a denizen of the transfer streams, existing in all eras simultaneously while also constituting a parallel, prior entity in the world outside. The Great One inside had been the Great One the Dread Empire defeated in the eastern waste. Shinsan had gone on to root his fetch out and engineer its annihilation—though not before it reached back and fathered itself in an age long gone.
Those absurdities should have claimed devoted examination ever since. How could that happen? It had despite the logical implausibility. Could there be an even stronger ascendant coming now? Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, whose ingenuity brought the Deliverer down? No! Not some ridiculous farmer grown too big for his trousers! But who else? There was no other significant name associated with those events. Not amongst the living.
Clearly, he had not looked where he should. But that was too hard when you were alone. Tactics devoured your time, leaving none to linger over the meaning of what might be happening behind what was distracting
you at the moment.
His vision began to clear. He discerned frozen shapes. Disinclined to trigger another trap, his companions awaited his instructions.
The stricken demon had settled to the floor. Its birdlike skinny legs projected into the kitchen. Its through and through wound still produced wisps of black mist. Greenish ichors streaked the color where a wing and wing case had been ripped away. It was trying to reinstall something that had fallen out of its chest.
It was a demon. Its wound should not be mortal, in this world, but to survive it dared not flee to its own realm even though here it could survive only as a cripple.
The stricken iron statue remained fixed, almost unbalanced, in the process of taking an awkward step. The green shaft had not driven through but there was a six-inch circle of bluish purple shine on the statue’s back, bulging, where the light would have emerged had it not spent so much energy skewering the demon first.
Old Meddler’s vision continued to improve. He eyed that bulge. How could anyone set random traps that powerful? Where had they gotten the know-how?
Better question. More important question, right now. Were there more such traps? It was not reasonable that his evil luck should be so foul that he would trigger the worst trap first stumble. Far more likely that it was one of a battery.
“The perfect response to an improbable event,” he said, softly, punctuating with a tired sigh. “Stay put.” He readied the Windmjirnerhorn.
So. Yes. There were more traps, impressive in number, but with disposition and trigger choices that seemed naïve. Once you knew they were there you could deal with them easily. People as sophisticated as the Tervola ought to have built a network so cunning that the triggering of one instantly rendered the rest more sensitive.
Suppose they had been set in haste, to deal with an anticipated intrusion by mundane burglars? The traps could polish off a battalion of regular bandits. Unless that notion was what the trap builders wanted put into the head of a more sophisticated intruder.
Unless…
The curse of being Old Meddler was overthinking and seeing everything through the murky lens of his own twisted character. Of assuming that everyone was as warped of mind and motive as he.