"But then why did Zoller try to sell it himself?" Val asked.
"He set up the auction," Silverblade said, "but he did not actually try to sell the artifact. Zoller must have known that the artifact had some value to Lofwyr, that it would draw his personal attention. He must have also known that Lofwyr would not allow it to go missing, that he would arrange for agents—such as yourselves—to recover it. You did say that recovering Goronay and the crystal didn't seem as difficult as you originally thought."
"That's true," Talon mused, "but do you really think Zoller would go to such lengths, take those kind of risks, just to get at Lofwyr?"
"To overcome a dragon, you must think like a dragon, in mazes and plots." Silverblade returned.
"Maybe," Boom broke in, "but that doesn't explain everything. How the frag did Zoller know to co-opt Goronay in the first place? How did he know that the crystal would even be there? And, more importantly, how could he have put a spell on it capable of taking down Lofwyr?"
"That's a good point." Talon said. "I've never seen anything like the magic that attacked Lofwyr. It seemed to go right through his defenses. There's no way Zoller, or even his whole circle of magicians, could have cooked up a spell that powerful."
"Unless they have access to magical secrets unknown to you, alley runner." Silverblade said with a trace of smugness.
"If you want to compare wand-size, long ears, we can do it some other time." Talon retorted. "I know what I'm talking about, and I'm saying that I don't think the crystal's magic, whatever it is, came from Zoller. Still, I agree that Zoller and his group are our best possible lead. I think we should follow up on that. Trouble, why don't you and Val put Zoller under surveillance again. Find out whatever you can. If this really is some plan of his, then he should be following up on it, one way or another. Silverblade and I can take some time to look over the crystal and see if there's anything to be learned from it. Boom, you and Hammer . . ."
"I know, I know." the troll said. "We'll hold down the fort and check into the supplies for dinner."
Talon grinned. "Good man. Let's get to work, people."
* * *
The silvery sprite glided through the electron world of the Matrix like quicksilver, skating along datalines toward her destination at the speed of light. The computer system Heinrich Zoller used for his personal affairs wasn't anywhere near the league of the high-tech corporate machines Trouble was used to dealing with, but it was still the cutting edge in personal computer systems, which included defensive programs. If Talon was right, and Zoller was tied in with the whole mess in some way, then the fairly light security programs she encountered the first time in could have been camouflage for more sophisticated intrusion countermeasures.
She approached the Matrix icon representing Zoller's personal system. It looked like a dolmen, a standing stone, the sort you might see in dozens of places all over Europe. This particular "stone" stood roughly head-height and was carved with intricate patterns of Nordic runes. Trouble didn't know very much about runes, but she knew plenty about computer encryption systems. The runes represented an encryption lock-out on Zoller's system. She needed a password to get by it.
Fortunately, Trouble had a piece of software for just such a situation. She pulled a magnifying lens out of thin air and used it to examine the runes on the dolmen. As she peered through the glass, her program began invisibly searching for possible password combinations. In the dark ages of computing tech—back in the late twentieth century—such a search could have taken hours, but Trouble's cyberdeck was as far ahead of those clumsy machines as they were ahead of the abacus. Light pulsed in the optical circuitry of the deck, the program executed, and the runes began to resolve themselves into a recognizable pattern. Trouble input the password, and the "stone" split open to reveal a doorway inside.
She passed through into the system itself. The dolmen was far larger inside than it appeared, containing an entire large room that represented Zoller's computer system. The room was decorated in the
same relentless Nordic motif as the dolmen, looking
like an ancient meadhall. Dull, duller, dullest, Trouble thought as she looked around. She'd been inside Zoller's system once before, when she'd put her spybot frame in place, but this time the system was much more active, and much better protected. A large, black-furred wolf slept curled up near the fireplace in the hall. It wore a spiked iron collar and looked large enough to tear Trouble in half. Definitely some kind of protective ice. She'd have to be careful.
Trouble called up the system's activity log. She wanted to see what Zoller had been up to. He didn't use the system much. No surprise there. Members of der Runenthing—and Winternight, she recalled— didn't overly trust the Matrix or computer technology in general. They believed such things weakened those who used them, that the illusions created by the Matrix were a trick to lure honest folk into lives as sickly couch potatoes. In some ways, Trouble supposed they were right. Plenty of people went into the Matrix and preferred never to come out, living virtual lives in a place "better" than the harsh and dirty reality they'd left behind. She knew plenty of deckers like that, chummers who hadn't seen sunlight literally in years.
Still, as a modern businessman, Zoller couldn't entirely avoid the "evils" of the Matrix. All telecommunications went through the world computer grid and, as a magical consultant, Zoller needed to be available for his clients. His home system contained some very nice personal-assistant software that managed Zoller's calls and provided potential clients with information about his various services. It was the program that most interested Trouble. Its logs and databanks were represented by the collection of books and scrolls stacked up on one table in the virtual meadhall. Trouble headed toward them, tiptoeing past the sleeping wolf. There she drew a slim silver wand and waved it over the table, sprinkling the papers with glittering electron fairy dust. Almost immediately, one of the scrolls began to glow faintly.
It was the most recent file. Trouble tapped it gently with her wand and it floated up into the air, where it unfurled for her to view it: a record of an email Zoller had received not long after Talon and Boom paid their fateful visit to Saeder-Krupp. It read: "Stage Two accomplished. Meet at the train yard for Stage Three. J."
Trouble downloaded the information to her cyberdeck, paying particularly close attention to the email address of the sender. She would try and track it down next. It looked like a temporary address, probably long gone by now, but there was always a chance someone had been sloppy, like Zoller not deleting his email files. Speaking of which . . . she thought, and made her way over to the waste bin at one end of the table. She might be able to recover some interesting things from Zoller's deleted files, with a little reconstruction work.
She had just begun sorting through the trash bin when there was a snort from the wolfhound by the fire.
Frag!
Trouble thought. She'd been in the system too long. The intrusion countermeasure had detected her. With startling suddenness, the black wolf sprang to life. It suddenly split in two, and there were two
wolves where there was only one before. One howled
and rushed off, nose to the ground. It was backtracking Trouble's data trail, trying to figure out the location from which she was decking. Once found, it would report that information to the system, and possibly trigger other IC. The other wolf snarled and leapt at the intruder, clearly trying to keep Trouble busy until the trace program could complete its work.
Fortunately, Trouble came into the system prepared. Her spritely form was clad in intricate silver armor that deflected the attack of the second wolf. She produced a satchel out of thin air and opened it to reveal a white rabbit, its pink nose twitching, eyes bright (Trouble was particularly proud of that little bit of programming).
"Okay, Bugs," she said, "go get 'im boy!" She tossed the rabbit onto the floor and it took off in a white blur, past the wolf tracking her trail. The rabbit stopped, practically in front of the wolf, and wiggled its cottony tail, as if taunting the wolf to catch it. The wolf left off following Trouble's trail and raced after the rabbit, which led it off into the depths of the Matrix. By the time the trace program's diagnostics figured out it was chasing after shadows, Trouble would be long gone.
She turned and met the attacking wolf with a shining silver sword in one hand. The time for subtlety was over. She slashed at the wolf as it charged, her blade cutting off one of its paws, revealing it to be solid silver and pixels inside. The wolf snarled and snapped at her, but it could not get through her armor, and her fairy wings carried her away before it could bring her down. She danced around the wolf, slashing and stabbing it with her blade, until finally the program came apart in silvery ribbons of code and crashed altogether.
Now, then, where was I? Trouble thought as she resumed rummaging through Zoller's trash.
* * *
Talon sat cross-legged on the floor of the basement room, opposite Silverblade. Between them on the floor sat the crystal. It remained dull and gray, with none of its former luster or the faint inner glow Talon had noticed before. Around them was drawn a warding circle, to protect the building against any magical energies they might accidently unleash, though Talon doubted any ward could contain the kind of magical power he'd seen the crystal display.
"Are you ready?" asked Silverblade.
Talon nodded. "As I'm likely to be. Let's see what there is to see."
He took a deep breath and focused on his heartbeat, as he'd learned to do from his mentor so many years ago. He slipped easily into a light trance state, allowing his awareness to expand beyond the physical world into the realms of the astral plane. From the astral he could sense the forces of magic and the life force of living beings. To his magical sight, the warding circle appeared as an opalescent shimmering dome of light enclosing himself and Silverblade. The elf's own aura showed brightly around him; filled with magical power, bright with confidence, touched in places with hints of other emotions kept tightly controlled by the constraints of his duty. Talon could
also see Aracos, in his wolf-form, standing nearby.
His familiar would remain in astral form to better help study the magical crystal.
Talon turned his attention toward the crystal itself. Most non-living objects had no aura to speak of, only the emotional and magical imprints they picked up from being handled by living beings. As an enchanted item, the crystal should have had a strong aura of its own, but it was weak and barely visible. Whatever power resided in the crystal, most of it had fled.
"The aura is weak." Silverblade said quietly. "It looks like the crystal expended whatever enchantment it held all at once."
"Yes." Talon replied. "Not unlike a spell anchor of some kind." The spell anchor was a magical technique for "attaching" a spell to an item and setting it to activate when certain conditions were fulfilled, like a magical "time bomb" of sorts.
"Hmmm, perhaps. But an extraordinarily powerful spell anchor to be sure. No mere focus could have done what you described."
Talon peered more intently at the smoky-colored crystal, looking past its surface, trying to plumb its depths, to learn what secrets it held.
What are you?
he asked silently.
Where did you come from? And why did someone use you to get at Lofwyr?
The smoky color of the crystal seemed to expand to fill his field of vision. It was as though he dove into the very substance of the crystal itself until he was immersed in it, surrounded by it. He was drawn down, down into the depths of it, until he felt he could almost drown in it.
Suddenly, Talon found himself soaring. He was flying, high above the ground, which stretched out below like a multicolored patchwork. His vision was amazingly sharp; he could still make out the details of small creatures moving far below. He could see some of them look up in awe, could feel the fear that radiated off them, like smoke rising from a flame. The wind was strong at his back and flowed over his wings and his body as he soared. The heat of the sun beat down on his back and his outstretched wings, and he luxuriated in the sensation for a while. It felt good to fly, stretching his muscles and feeling the air around him.
Then he spotted them, a small herd of creatures moving along the ground far below. They were what he was looking for: prey. Instantly, his eyes focused on them and he could see that they were some sort of cattle, a fine meal, indeed. His wings furled in and he dove toward the earth like an arrow from a bow. The animals sensed his approach, but far too late to do them any good. Some of them tried to run, beginning to stampede in their panic.
As the ground rushed up to meet him, Talon felt his mighty wings unfurl again, snapping out to catch the wind, his mighty tail acting as a rudder to keep him moving straight and upright as he pulled up out of his dive to fly close to the ground, so near the prey he could smell the strong scent of their hides. He opened his mouth and a geyser of flame erupted from it, washing over part of the herd. They screamed in pain and terror, then suddenly fell silent as they were seared by the flames.
Talon banked around and landed on the ground,
mighty wing beats blowing away the last of the
smoke from the half dozen or so charred cattle that lay on the ground. He leaned down and took a large bite out of one, biting off nearly half of the beast with his massive jaws. He chewed on it, still warm, felt the bones crunch under his teeth. He swallowed, savoring the taste, eager for the rest of his feast. Then a voice called out to him.