Klea’s heart sank.
Oh, hell. I should have remembered. That damned card is back at the apartment with my working clothes, and it hasn’t been updated for a month anyway.
She drew a deep breath preparatory to embarking on a string of excuses that were bound to be futile—Freling was a real bastard when it came to anything that could get him in trouble with the law.
Show him your card.
The voice in her head was clear and recognizable.
Owen?
Show him the card!
Right.
She made a pretense of reaching into the pocket of her shift for a square of plastic that wasn’t there, and then held out the nonexistent card to Freling for inspection.
“There you go. All fresh and clean.”
Freling squinted at the card. By now she could almost see it herself, the official seal and her flatpic only slightly obscured by the dim blue light.
“Looks fine to me,” he said. “What’ll it be, then?”
She slipped the not-there card back into her pocket. “My hot lover here wants an all-night special.”
Freling turned to Owen. “That’ll be two hundred room rent, plus fifty for special fees. Cash up front.”
Klea held her breath, unsure of how Owen was going to react to the demand. She needn’t have worried; he looked at Freling for a moment with no expression whatsoever, then reached into a pocket of his coverall and pulled out a wad of cash. He dropped the money on the bar without bothering to count it.
Freling picked it up and counted it instead, his lips moving as he thumbed through the stack of chits. When he was done, the money vanished somewhere under his apron, and he nodded.
“Room five,” he told Klea. “You still remember the way?”
“I haven’t forgotten. Come on, lover.”
She stood up and took Owen by the hand, leading him to a darker corner of the room, where a wide stairway led upward into the dimly glowing dark. Little lights along the side of the stairway showed the treads and risers, or else the stairs would have been invisible.
“All right,” she said to Owen as soon as they were out of earshot of the room below. “You’ve got your locked door.”
Llannat couldn’t move. The compulsion that had brought her to the dark room at the heart of the ship was upon her again, this time forcing her to stay. She wanted nothing, at this moment, so much as she wanted to be out of this place, with its overwhelming stink and feel of Magework and sorcery. But her feet would not let her go.
This is where I’m supposed to be. Where the Magework is thickest. If there’s another message for me, it’s in here.
Once again she was surprised by her own thought, and even more surprised to realize that it was true. The first message left for her on the Deathwing had been upsetting enough—she had no doubt but that she was the Adept the message had addressed, in spite of the gap of centuries. Now she understood that the ship itself was a message.
Magelords live a long time, and they make long plans. And they’re particular about who’s going to have something after them; Vinhalyn told me about that. Made it sound like they hand down projects and power, and—and things the way my family used to hand down shoes.
And this ship was left out here for me.
Only one thing remained for her to do. If messages were waiting for her in the very air and steel of the ship, then she would have to go and find them. Reluctantly, she sank down to her knees in the circle. Laying the short ebony staff on the white deckplates in front of her, she closed her eyes and tried to relax enough to enter the meditative state.
It was hard, much harder than usual. The smell and feel of Magish sorcery permeated the room; with every slow, even breath she seemed to be drawing the stench deeper into her lungs. Trying to work through it was like trying to breathe water—she kept breaking through again to the surface, her heart pounding and her lungs heaving in panic.
“Fighting it never works.”
The old piece of advice came back to her—one of the first things the teachers said to a new apprentice at the Retreat. Owen Rosselin-Metadi had been the one to say it to Llannat, back when she was still a green ensign who thought that the only way to deal with what her sudden talent was doing to her was to suppress it all as much as she could.
And now she was doing the same thing again, trying to fight against the way the room really was, and to make it as if what had happened there had never been. No wonder it wasn’t working.
She quit trying to ignore the Magework that pressed in so closely about her. Instead she allowed her mind to drift, unforced, and let the room enfold her however it would, as a part of the necessary shape of this portion of the universe. Gradually, as her tension ebbed, she felt her pulse slow and her breathing become more regular—and then, as easily as slipping into warm water, she slipped away from regular thought and into the meditative trance.
She had no idea how long she knelt there before she knew that it was time to open her eyes, pick up her staff, and rise to her feet. But when she did so, she was in another place—a vast, dark-but-not-dark expanse, like a great, echoless hall. All about her were hanging curtains and tapestries, massive heavy walls of patterned cloth. The bottoms of them brushed the dusty floor beneath her feet; and she couldn’t see the tops of them because they seemed to reach up forever and blend into the darkness far overhead.
The tapestries made walls and rooms in the dark, dividing the great, unbounded hall up into a maze of curtains, moving gently in faint drafts of air that she couldn’t feel. She gripped her staff tightly in one hand and began walking—not sure whether she was standing at the maze’s edge, or trapped inside its heart.
A few minutes later, she took a wrong turning and found herself in a dead end. She looked over her shoulder, ready to reverse her steps and go back to where she started, and saw that the way had closed up again behind her. Another dark, heavy curtain hung where there had been a path only seconds before.
Is this some kind of test?
she wondered.
Am I supposed to find the path, even when it’s hidden?
Or is the question not about following the path at all? What is a path, except for a way where somebody else thinks that you should go?
She raised her staff, ebony bound in silver, and red fire ran down its length. She brought it forward in a sweeping overhand blow, rending the curtain from top to bottom. Light, pale yellow, showed through the gap.
With her staff she pushed the curtain aside—tendrils of smoke curled up from the edges of the fabric—and saw, through the opening, the corridor of a spaceship. She eased her way through, and was aware, with the movement, of the long black robes that whispered about her high, polished boots. The feel of a mask was cold upon her face, and the slight loss of peripheral vision brought on by the eyeholes allowed her to see the things that the worlds of men found invisible: the silver cords that traced between all times and places through the darkness under the stars.
She walked forward, her boot heels clicking on the metal deckplates, and followed the two silver cords, strong and bright, that she had to knot together. Knot them and twist them, and make a cable tough enough to pull yet another of the cords—thick and heavy, but
cut
—out of the darkness where it was drifting.
“A handhold,” she murmured, and was surprised to hear her voice, deeper than she remembered it, but familiar still.
She paused and leaned back against one of the bulkheads, suddenly aware of the enormity of what she was contemplating. Betrayal of all she had fought for, all she believed, for what? For a chance, and no more than a chance, of a greater good. She pushed off from the bulkhead and started forward again.
The door to the bridge whooshed open at her approach, then closed again behind her. Two men sat in the pilot’s and copilot’s seats.
“Drop out of hyper,” she said. “Do it now.”
“With respect, my lord,” said the pilot, “it’s a long time before we’re scheduled to drop out.”
Llannat could see the silver cords drifting out of reach. She walked forward, between the two seats, and clipped her staff to her belt.
It is not right, she told it, that you should see what I do next.
THE OUTER NET:
NIGHT’S-BEAUTIFUL-DAUGHTER
NAMMERIN: NAMPORT
L
ANNAT DREW the long knife out of the hidden sheath on her left forearm—
and I know someone else who wears a blade there
, she thought as she watched the events unfolding,
but who?
She couldn’t quite catch the name, or more than a vague, tickling memory of the person. She saw her hand lash out and cut the throats of the pilot and copilot strapped into their seats before her.
The men surged against the restraining webbing, then fell back as blood spurted from their severed arteries. Before the two she had just murdered were quite still, she turned back to the control panel and began the process of taking
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
out of hyperspace.
The dropout sequence ran and the glory of the stars reappeared. She closed her eyes briefly. The two silver cords that had brought her to this moment were drifting closer, but still they did not touch. And now a third cord had appeared, one that she hadn’t seen before. Good—the new cord would help her bring together the two that she needed; but the cords were not yet bound, and until they were, nothing would come of her treason.
“Not done,” Llannat whispered. “Still not done.”
She looked again. The third cord was far off, at the extreme range of her vision, hard to see in the distance. It brought her an impression of a person, as if it were an acquaintance whose name had slipped her mind, met in the marketplace. She tried, but no names came. Still, something had to be done.
Do the best that you can,
she thought,
and hope to luck for the rest.
She dipped her finger in the red blood that flowed from the neck of one of her friends and wrote upon the viewscreen in large letters, trying to describe the persons she had seen: “Adept from the forest world: Bring this message to She-who-leads. Tell her what thou didst learn.”
And there, in the darkness, two of the cords knotted—one of those that she had seen earlier, and the newcomer. Odd, unexpected, but enough to pull in the cut cord. It was enough. For good or ill the future had been changed, and the long plans she herself had helped to form had been disrupted.
She sat back upon the deck, overcome by fatigue. Looking at the future always brought her near to collapse when the effort ended, and she knew that it would be the death of her someday.
Owen Rosselin-Metadi stood in the windowless room at the top of the stairs. The room smelled of disinfectant, in spite of the climate-control system wheezing and rattling through the floor-mounted vents. The dim light from a
faux
-opal glow-globe showed him a bed, a sink in one corner, and a long mirror along the far wall. In the mirror’s peeling surface he could see Klea Santreny reflected behind him, locking a heavy soundproof door.
Number Five
, he thought.
Then there are four more like this, at least.
The thought depressed him.
He forced the dark mood away. He would think about the room later, when he thought about Galcen and the Magelords and all the other things he couldn’t afford to think about now. Silently, he watched in the mirror as Klea propped her staff against the door and let her day pack slide off her shoulders to fall beside it.
“Well, here you are,” she said. “Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better get on with it.”
He didn’t understand why she trusted him; he’d told her almost nothing, not even his full name, and he’d asked her for more than any apprentice should have to give.
Like teacher, like student,
he thought.
I’ve learned some things too well.
“Don’t let anybody come in the door,” he said aloud.
“Stop them however you have to.”
She gave him a quick, slightly crooked smile. “Don’t worry. You could skin a swamp-devil in here and nobody would pay any attention.”
He nodded, not liking the memories that stirred in the back of her mind as she spoke.
I can’t deal with that now. But I
will
do something about this place before I’m finished with Nammerin.
“You might as well make yourself comfortable,” he told her. “From your point of view, it’s going to be a long, dull night.”
“Dull is fine,” she said. “I
like
dull. I could use a little more dull in my life, if you want to know the truth.”
Owen smiled in spite of himself. “Save it up while you can, then,” he advised her. “Adepts don’t get very much of it.”
He went over to the bed—hoping that the management here at least changed the sheets between rounds, and telling himself that he couldn’t afford to be fastidious—and stretched himself out on the nubbly green coverlet. Over in one corner of the room, Klea was sitting down on the floor, using her day pack for a backrest. He closed his eyes.
The climate-control system sighed and gurgled. His pulse beat softly in his ears, his breath whispered in and out. He allowed the sound of his pulse to turn to a rush and a roar, and let his inner vision expand. When he was ready, he stood up and left himself behind.
He saw himself, lying on the bed, and he saw Klea, sitting beside the door, eyes closed but holding her staff upright—she was still awake. Then he wiped all external sensory input and allowed the darkness to enter his mind.
From the darkness, he plucked a single bright spot of light, while concentrating on home: Galcen, and the small room in the Retreat where he had lived and studied for years, the place to which he felt most strongly bound. He took the dot of light, and added another to it, and then another, as he had learned the theory, until a picture emerged—a picture, then a scene, then a full world.
Home.
He stood on a flat surface open to the stars, with the shadowy leaves and pale waxy petals of night-blooming flowers pressing close about him, and his first thought was that he had missed his goal completely. Recognition came a moment later: this was the rooftop terrace of his family’s house in Galcen’s Northern Uplands.
I underestimated,
he said to himself.
This place has more power to draw me than I thought.
A moment later he understood that he had gone astray in time as well. A woman came up onto the terrace from the steps below, with the starlight bleaching her pale braided hair. He thought at first that it was his sister Beka come home, but then he looked more closely—this was the Domina Perada Rosselin, walking in her night garden as she had done in life.
This is the past
, Owen realized.
I should go; I need to trace the path up to the present and find Master Ransome. I shouldn’t stay here in a time where I don’t belong.
Nevertheless, he found himself unwilling to move. He was still watching when the shadows at the far end of the terrace seemed to darken, and a man stepped out from what had been empty air only a moment before. Owen tensed, knowing the peculiar frustration of one who travels out of body and witnesses disasters in which he cannot intervene.
But his mother seemed unfrightened. In fact, she came forward to greet the stranger as if she had expected him—a formal greeting, not the true cordiality she would have given an old friend of the family like Master Ransome, but more kindly by far than the cool, practiced smiles she gave to Tarveet of Pleyver and others of his kind.
The stranger bowed. He was not a tall man, but his body was compact and muscular. His loosely curling black hair was going prematurely to grey.
“My lady,” he said. He spoke Galcenian with a strong accent, one that Owen didn’t recognize. “It is good of you to meet with me.”
The Domina smiled. “I gave up hoping for goodness long ago. I thought that justice would serve me well enough instead. But since it hasn’t—my lord sus-Airaalin, let us talk.”
Llannat felt a hand shaking her shoulder. “Mistress, it’s time to drop out of hyper. You left orders to tell you first. It’s time, Mistress.”
Llannat shook her head and looked up. It was Vinhalyn, the acting captain.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll be on the bridge presently. Don’t drop out until I arrive.”
She was in a berthing compartment. The lights were dim, and she was naked beneath the sheets. Her staff lay ready to hand on the deckplates beside the bunk—the same silver-bound ebony staff that she had carried in her walking dream, and that the Professor had carried before her.
This ship was his
, she thought, and the back of her neck felt cold.
His, and he left it here for me.
The stranger on the terrace paused, about to speak, then looked sharply in Owen’s direction. “We’re being watched.”
“No,” the Domina said, “this place is secure.”
“I think not.” And the stranger began to walk toward Owen.
That’s impossible,
Owen thought.
He can’t see me.
But the man’s gaze was fixed on the place where Owen stood, and he was still coming forward. Forcing down his panic, Owen shut his eyes and wiped the scene from his mind. Once again, he began the process of pulling himself to a place, dot of light by painful dot, as he had done before.
Master Ransome
, he thought.
Not in the past. Now.
Again the shining dots coalesced around him into a place and a time—a dark place, this one, full of the rumble of engines and the sigh of recirculating air, with close, tight walls that pressed in on him from every side. Something about the rhythm of the sound made him think of the ships on which he had traveled and worked his way between the worlds.
But what is Master Ransome doing here? He was a pilot once; he’d never be down near the ship’s engines if there was some way that he could see the stars.
Owen frowned. This place, whatever it was, had no light, and in his noncorporeal state he couldn’t touch the physical switch even if he could find it. But there were other ways to achieve clear sight, and he used them now, concentrating on his extended senses until the cell—it
was
a cell, without a doubt—became suffused with a greyish, sourceless illumination.
And Ransome was there. The Master of the Adepts’ Guild lay huddled in a black cloak on the narrow bunk that was the cell’s only furnishing. His features were pale and haggard; there were marks like bruises on his temples and forehead, and dried blood around his mouth.
Despair washed over Owen like a heavy, sluggish wave. Not until now had he truly believed that all the worst had happened. If Galcen Prime had fallen—if the Space Force had been defeated—even if the Retreat itself had broken under the assault—all of these together wouldn’t have been enough to give the Magelords the victory. But if the Master of the Guild was a prisoner in their hands, then all was lost.
No,
he told himself urgently.
Remember what you used to say to the apprentices—‘Despair is a liar; nothing is ever certain.’ You came all this way because there was something you had to do. What you see here doesn’t change any of that.
He stepped forward and went down on one knee beside the bunk, then reached out a hand and touched Ransome lightly on the shoulder. Except for the fleeting sensation of pressing against an intangible boundary, Owen felt nothing from the contact; and few beside the Master of the Adepts’ Guild would have felt anything in return.
But Errec Ransome was who he was, and he came awake at the touch. The Adept Master made no sound, but his eyes widened in recognition. Owen wondered how his disembodied presence appeared to Ransome—as a cloudy phantom, perhaps, or as something even more vague and nebulous, a sigh of wind or a coldness in the air.
Master Ransome.
Owen strove to project his subvocal words across the immense gap between his physical body and this place where the essence of him had come. He groped for the half-forgotten words of the traditional apprentice’s challenge—now so seldom used, and never before under such circumstances.
Master Ransome, I have been apprentice to you long enough; I would claim my staff and call myself my own master.
Improbably, Ransome’s bruised mouth curved into a faint smile.
Owen
, came the answering thought.
I did not think you would come this far.
But now I am here. And I require
… The dark cell and the manacles on Errec Ransome’s wrists made a mockery of the formal wording; Owen’s thought stumbled, and he forced himself to go on … .
I require that you test me as you see fit.