Chains of Mist (20 page)

“Of course I can. Rokan Sellas has begun to unlock the seals of power on this world, and the resulting energy is creating a disrupter field capable of disabling all large-scale electronic devices within its radius. As long as Rokan Sellas controls the mountain, you will not be able to leave…which may perhaps give you a little extra incentive to succeed.”
He paused.
“I suspected that this might happen.”

“Really? You
suspected
?” Drogni didn’t bother to keep the anger from his voice. If the Vizier were one of Drogni’s soldiers, he’d find himself cashiered in a second for something like this—if not worse. “And you didn’t think to give me a head’s-up, maybe let me know
beforehand
that we might crash? You just let it happen—?”

“Do not be a fool, Ortega. Do you imagine that it is an easy task, forging a telepathic link from half a galaxy away and speaking directly into a mind devoid of even the slightest spark of magical ability? You may think that that sword across your back has imbued you with some sort of arcane aura, but that is not the case—it has taken me until now to lock onto your mental signature. There was no time for me to alert you, and in any case the field is too strong for me to shield you from it from such a distance. Besides—”
and here Drogni could practically feel him wave his hand dismissively “—
you all survived, relatively unscathed, so the matter is irrelevant.”

An angry reply leapt to Drogni’s lips but faded away as the Vizier’s last sentence registered fully in his brain. “Austin’s alive? Where is he?”

“He is safe, and that is all you should worry about for now. Concern yourself with your mission, and your mission only—I will worry about Forgera.”

Drogni didn’t exactly feel a sweeping wave of relief. “When I agreed to let Austin come with me to Leva, he became my responsibility, and that hasn’t changed. Which means I
will
worry about him, and that’s just the way it is.”

The Vizier was silent for a moment.
“Very well,”
he said at last
. “As I said, he is safe. He landed about five kilometers from one of the native villages, a tribe called the Belayas. I entered the mind of one of the village children and compelled her to go to find him. She has taken him to her village, and he will be safe there for the time being. Now, may we return to the much more pressing matter of your
own
survival?”

Drogni ignored the Vizier’s scathing arrogance, something that was much harder to do when the man’s voice was being projected directly into his brain. “Why can’t he just go straight to the mountain? Why bother with the village at all?”

Again, the Vizier paused, and when he finally spoke his voice lacked its usual casual superiority.
“There is a very large and powerful tribe called the Traika that controls the land around Nembane Mountain. They will not allow Forgera, or you for that matter, to cross through their lands.”

“And you can’t protect him? As far as I know, the natives here don’t have much in the way of technology. Hell, we should be able to get past them with or without your help.”

“The people here are uncivilized—but that does not mean that they are not dangerous. I miscalculated the effect of the planet’s innate power on its inhabitants. Certain of this world’s individuals have the spark of magic about them, and the concentration is greatest and strongest among those who dwell near Nembane Mountain. Now that the seals are being opened, that effect is compounded…and stained, because of the nature of the one who is opening them. The result is a shroud of evil which will further corrupt those inside it with each passing day, and against which I can do little.”

Drogni let this news wash over him and realized that he wasn’t really surprised. “Sounds like we should join up with Austin before we try to take on this tribe. Can you relay a message to him from me?”

The reply was immediate.
“No.”

Drogni waited, expecting the Vizier to continue, to offer an explanation, but there was only silence. “No? Why the hell not? Not strong enough, maybe—”

“That is precisely the reason, and there is no shame in admitting it. If you had any comprehension of the forces at play here, you would understand. The amount of power required to forge even
one
stable
trans-galactic telepathic link is immense. To create a second such bridge would be impossible, and I will not waste my time and energy in the attempt. I will keep my eye on Austin, and protect him as I can—let that be enough for you.”

Drogni admitted that the Vizier was correct on one point. Drogni don’t know a single thing about magic—at least not the sort the Vizier was talking about—and he was plenty happy to keep it that way.
Still, he had no intention of relinquishing sole responsibility for Austin to the Vizier.
“Seems to me you
can
hold two links at once. What about the village girl who you sent to go find Austin?”

“The cases are hardly parallel—skimming the surface of a mind and implanting an impulse to do something is not the same as linking to its unique psychic signature. The second requires control, precision, and concentration; the first is a momentary exertion of blunt force and no more. Do not test my patience, Ortega—I can do to you the same thing I did to her, and just as easily. Forget about Forgera—he has passed beyond your power.”

There was something in the Vizier’s voice that still gave Drogni pause, but without being able to see the man’s face he was having difficulty pinpointing exactly what it was.
I hate to say it, but the Vizier’s won this one. Sorry, Austin—I tried. Luck be with you.
“Fine. He’s your responsibility now, Vizier. But keep me updated on his progress—if anything happens to him,
anything
, I want to know about it right away. Got it?”

“I will do what I can, Ortega. But know that my help will be limited. Maintaining this link is exhausting; I doubt I can hold the line of communication open for more than a few more minutes. And once I release this connection I am not sure if I will be able to open it again. Time is of the extreme essence, Ortega.”

“Fine.” Drogni glanced around. It was still light outside, but for all he knew night could fall quickly on this world. “We should get moving anyways.”

“Indeed. As I told you, the tribe that lives near Nembane Mountain will not allow you to pass through their lands, and my aid alone is insufficient. You will need to enlist the help of one of the other tribes. As it happens, there is one nearby which should suffice—they are called the Kastria. However, they will not readily accept you; you will need to do something to prove yourselves to them before they will consider helping you.”

Drogni almost shot back that this was the kind of thing the Vizier ought to be able to handle but thought better of it. That would just start that same old argument again, and right now he just wanted to get the Vizier out of his head as soon as possible
.
Instead, he merely said, “Any suggestions?”

“No doubt there are many barbaric rituals that these people employ to test strangers, but we have no time for such things. Fortunately, we do not need them—there is something else that should do nicely. Very close to you, there is about to be a skirmish between two groups of warriors, one from the Traika and one from the Kastria. The Traika warriors are stronger and more numerous than the Kastria; they will win this engagement. You will save the Kastria warriors from death; if you do, they will accept you into their tribe. You will assist them in their war against the Traika—your weaponry should turn the tide of the war in their favor. Once the Traika are dealt with, you should have little trouble reaching the mountain.”

The Vizier sounded very confident, but Drogni was much less so.
Put that way, it sounds very easy…but it also assumes that these Kastria are simple-minded and naïve, to so quickly welcome two foreigners into their midst on the simple basis of one good deed. An arrogant—and often incorrect—assumption.
“They’ll be suspicious—and rightly so—about who we are, where we come from, and why we just happened to stop by at exactly the right time. You can’t
know
that they’ll accept us as allies, just like that.”

“Again, you have no faith in anything that you cannot see or touch or swing crudely like a club. Leave that to me. They may well feel suspicion after you save them—I am not such a poor judge of behavior as you seem to think. But they will also feel gratitude, and I will magnify that emotion so that it is the
only
thing that is influencing their actions. I will do the same with the tribe’s ruling body after you reach their village. They will accept you, Ortega—do not worry about that.”

Drogni flinched at the Vizier’s words. Since they were coming from inside his head, it seemed as if they were his own thoughts, and he felt unclean.
Good judge of behavior—what a load of spacedust. How many other cultures has he experienced—not just
read
about but actually lived in firsthand? Not as many as me—I’ll bet everything I have on that.
“Still sounds easy, but I still don’t like it. It’s not that I don’t believe you, but…never mind, that’s exactly what it is. I need a plan that’s a little more
real
and a little less
mystical
. Besides, if you can just
make
them like us, why bother with this charade at all?”

“Once again you ask questions as though I have not already considered every objection that you might make. I cannot manufacture emotion from nothing—I cannot simply force them to accept you unless the desire is already within them. As for your hesitancy to trust your life to magic, this is not the time or place for it. By now, you should have seen enough to convince you that what you call
mystical
is just as real as that gun in your hand. If you would like to propose an alternate plan to see you safely to Nembane Mountain, feel free to do so; however, bear in mind that the Traika have mystics of their own who will certainly be able to sense your presence on their lands. You will not be able to sneak past them on your own; you will not be able to fight past them on your own. Your choice is this: either accept my plan or fail. There is no other way.”

“There’s always another way!” Drogni shouted. The anger in his voice surprised him, and he wondered why the Vizier’s plan was affecting him so strongly. He’d been a soldier for decades, and he knew there were often times when a soldier just had to accept that the higher-ups had information that he didn’t and proceed towards an objective on faith.
Hell, I’ve
been
the higher-up, I know exactly what it’s like…so I know how frustrating it is when a soldier refuses to do something until everything’s been explained to him. There’s a word for that soldier—sacked. Sure, the Vizier isn’t military, and this isn’t a military operation, but
I’m
military, and that’s all that should matter.
Yet he still found himself resisting. It was the idea of trusting something that he couldn’t see and didn’t understand—and which could affect him without his even knowing it. He remembered Hilthak, when Rokan Sellas’s magic had turned him into a mindless monster who reveled in destruction. All of Drogni’s training, all of his discipline, might as well have not even existed for all the good they had done him. And it was hard to trust his life to the same force.
Yeah, it’s irrational—like not using a prosthetic limb with a metal frame because a metal gun can kill people—but there you have it.
“I refuse to accept that choice, Vizier. There
is
another way—and I will find it.”

“No, Ortega.”
The Vizier did not sound particularly angry, merely irritated and impatient.
“You
will
accept that choice. Perhaps there is another way, some means to transport you to Nembane Mountain without the use of magic, but time is not on your side. Need I remind you of the oath you swore before you left? Did you not swear, on the souls of five dead soldiers, to kill Rokan Sellas? What of that oath, Ortega? Will you disregard it so easily?”

And as the Vizier’s voice was replaced by utter silence, Drogni remembered the words that he himself had uttered.
‘I swear, for Daniel Lester, Tina Galdro, Palis Denar, Sara Westan, and Gregory Daalis. No matter what it takes, I will kill him.’
Words spoken in anger, but he had meant them. He could not unsay them. Such an oath was not uttered lightly—he was bound by it. Lester, Galdro, Denar, Westan, and Daalis might never know if he broke his promise…but
he
would. And he would never be able to forget it.

I swore to avenge them, yet here I am hesitating already. And for what? Fear? For shame, Ortega—for shame. Remember their deaths—remember how they died. And let them not have died for nothing.

“My word is my life,” he said, no trace of indecision in his words, nor a hint of fear. Only anger—at Rokan Sellas, for all that he had done, and at himself, for his moment of weakness. “And I will not break it.”