Crecheling (22 page)

“I don’t doubt your skill,” Magister Haika said. “But when you were instructed to Cull Jak, son of Rosyn, a person whose name you knew and whose face you could see—a
person
, not an abstract fact, not a shadow—you balked. So you see, I do doubt your nerve.”

“Don’t expect your face to save you,” Dyan said, finally catching solid footing on the floor of the canyon. “You’re not nearly as good-looking as Jak.”

The Magister smiled gently. “I’m warned.”

“Good. Now it’s time for you to answer some questions.”

***

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Why don’t you come home, instead?”

The question caught Dyan by surprise.

“I …” She hesitated. “I don’t believe you.”

“Would you want to come back to the System?” Magister Haika smiled softly. “If you could?”

“I killed Outrider Lorne,” Dyan said. “I don’t think Buza System will take me back, even if I wanted it to.”

The Magister continued to smile, though her smile looked tighter at the corners. “You’re not listening to me. I asked if you could, would you return?”

Dyan shook her head. “I’m asking the questions!” She forced her mind back into its earlier train of thought. “What happened to Magister Zarah?”

Haika pursed her lips. “I’m afraid that Zarah’s old transgressions have finally caught up with her.”

“What transgressions?”

“I see,” Haika said. “You are worried about Zarah. Understand this, my child. Zarah is doomed, no matter what you do. The question isn’t what you can do to help Zarah. You can’t do anything. The question is what you can do to help yourself.”

Dyan felt sick. “I’m not your child.”

“You could be,” Haika said. “You could be an Urbane, and my fellow Magister.”

Dyan hesitated. What if it was true? What if Zarah had done something that doomed her, and there was nothing Dyan could do to help … but Dyan could accept Zarah’s offer, return to the System, and become a Magister as she had long hoped?

“And Lorne?” she wanted to know.

Haika smile became hooked and biting. “There are only two living witnesses to Outrider Lorne’s death,” she pointed out. “We can’t hide the death, but if there were only one living witness, he … or
she
 … would have to tell the System who had killed the Outrider.”

“You don’t think I’d let you kill Jak,” Dyan blurted out.

“I think you will do the killing yourself.”

“No.” The bola in Dyan’s hand felt hot and slick with sweat.

“My child, my child.” Haika’s voice was gentle. “You cannot be a child any longer. It is time for you to become an adult.”

“I’ve killed,” Dyan said. She felt guilty saying it. She felt like she was trying to get credit for the Cull without participating in it. She felt like she was betraying Eirig. She said it anyway. She’d have said anything to save Jak. “I killed Lorne.”

Haika only shook her head.

“Let Jak go,” Dyan said simply. “I’ll come home.”

“Don’t you see?” Haika spread her arms, a gesture of explanation that made her look very much like a Magister. “The Landsman can’t go. He can’t tell his fellows about the Cull. It’s not my choice, Dyan. I don’t want this Landsman hurt any more than you do. He simply has to die, I have no choice in the matter and neither do you. If you accept that his death is your task, at least you can make sure it’s painless.”

Dyan struggled. Her arm, holding up the bola, felt heavy as lead. “You killed Eirig.”

“The one-armed Landsman had to die for the same reason. I had no choice. You must understand that. I know that when your hand is forced, you, too, do the necessary thing.”

Magister Haika smiled and her voice was soft. Dyan felt tired, her skin crispy and hot, and her head spun a little. Haika’s words made some sense to her. She had killed Lorne when she had to. She would kill others if she had to. It wasn’t her fault or her choice. She was being forced.

And then, wavering in the heat-shimmering air between her and the Magister, she thought she saw Eirig. Eirig looked directly at her and winked.

“He wasn’t one-armed anymore by the time you finished with him,” the phantasm quipped.

Eirig wasn’t a nameless one-armed Landsman. He was her friend, and when he had had no choice, he had chosen anyway, and stood up to Magister Haika and the Outriders. He had done it and taken the consequence, which was to die. He had done it to protect Dyan.

And Jak.

“Tell me where Magister Zarah is.” She shivered, cold despite the heat.

“Zarah isn’t a Magister anymore,” Haika told her. “She’s a prisoner, and will die in the next Hanging.”

Dyan choked.

“Why?” she asked. “What do you mean … you said earlier, she defiled the Cull? What do you mean?”

Haika’s face took on a curious expression. It wiggled slightly, like she was keeping something funny to herself. The look made Dyan want to punch the Magister, but it passed quickly. “Former Magister Zarah let you go,” she said. “She let you choose to flee the Cull with the Landsman youth.”

Dyan was astonished. “How could you know that?” she asked. “Was someone following her? Did she confess?”

Haika laughed. “Every Magister is recorded,” she explained. “All the time. The Magister’s Calling is too important to leave any room for human weakness.” She let her arms fall by her sides. She took a slow step forward.

Dyan felt rivulets of sweat running down her back. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked. “You said I’m still a child.”

Haika nodded, and rubbed her biceps under her cloak. “Very good,” she said. “I’m telling you this because either you will make the right decision, complete the Cull and become an Urbane—in which case you will become a Magister as you have been Called to be, and this knowledge is appropriate for you—or you will make the wrong choice, in which case you will die, and it won’t matter what you know.”

She took another step.

“So … this conversation is being recorded right now,” Dyan said. “By what?”

Haika held the five-armed tree medallion with one hand. “The recording device is in here,” she said.

Dyan heard the words and they felt like a cool breeze coming down the canyon, refreshing her with a sudden realization. She felt strength flood into her trembling limbs.

“But that means,” she said, “that when you told me that no one would ever know that I killed Outrider Lorne … you were
lying
.”

Haika said nothing.

“There is no deal,” Dyan said. “You just want to distract me with this talk. It’s all lies.” She took a step back. “You just want to kill me.”

“Look,” Magister Haika started and moved closer again.

“Stop!” Dyan clenched the bola tight in her fist and raised it over her head.

“Wait!” Haika raised a hand. “Wait … please.” She slowly removed her medallion of office, raising its chain over her head and then dropping it aside to the ground.

“It’s Zarah,” she said. “Don’t you understand?”

“What?” Dyan’s arm sagged in surprise.

Haika attacked.

Dyan had not seen her palm the bola, but there it was, flashing in the Magister’s fingers as she snapped her arm over her head to throw. Dyan had no time to do anything but hurl herself backward. The bola sliced through the air over her head with a
whooshing
sound and she heard the crunch of boots on the sand.

Dyan hit the ground hard and rolled. She flung her body to the side, trying to avoid the attack that she thought must be coming—

only it didn’t.

She tumbled to her knees, bola at the ready, and saw Haika snatching her whip off the ground. The Magister wheeled to face Dyan. She was faster than she should have been, for a woman with so much extra flesh on her frame.

Haika spun her arm around and Dyan snapped off a shot, flinging her bola at the Magister’s upraised arm.

Haika cracked her hand down and Dyan flinched, expecting to be sliced in two. Instead, nothing happened. She hesitated from surprise for a moment, and Haika stared down at the whip in her hand.

The counterweight was gone.

Splash!

A chunk of stone from the lip of the shelf where Dyan had lain to witness Eirig’s murder fell off the front of the cliff and dropped into the spring. The rock broke apart as it fell, some of it throwing up gouts of water and some of it thunking heavily on top of Eirig’s mutilated form.

She had cut the weapon in two, Dyan realized. The line of her bola had crossed the line of the whip in midair, severing them both. It was sheer luck that the detached monofilament line hadn’t sliced through her in its flight.

Haika must have reached the same conclusion at the same moment—she roared in rage and hurled the whip handle at Dyan. The blunted stump banged into Dyan’s shoulder, and Haika dashed for the spring.

Two bolas lay in the cold pool, under the rubble that had once been the cliff face and the gore that had once been Eirig. Dyan couldn’t let Haika get to them. She drew her own whip and snapped it at the Magister.

Out of intuition or calculation, Haika dove to the ground at the last moment. Dyan’s whip snapped through the air over her head, carving a shower of stone chips out of the cliff face. Dyan drew back her arm again as the whip’s counterweight snicked home, aiming to slice right through the large middle of the cloaked woman—

Haika rolled back and threw at her.

Dyan ducked, fearing and yet already resigned to being cut in half. The thrown object thumped into her and she stepped back, stumbling on the lowest end of the rockslide. She lost her footing and crashed to the ground—

losing her grip on the whip handle.

As she sucked in a lungful of air, she saw the object that had struck her. It wasn’t a bola, or even a rock.

It was Eirig’s severed arm.

Dyan screamed. She couldn’t tell whether her scream came from rage or pain, and didn’t know if she would even be able to tell the difference at this point. She grabbed for the whip and couldn’t find it.

She hurled a rock instead, but it wasn’t a big one and it bounced off the Magister’s back. Dyan lurched to her feet, picking up a bigger rock with both hands and charging. She screamed, raising the rock over her head and bringing it down as hard as she could on Haika’s head.

Except that Haika twisted at the last second and Dyan missed. The rock thudded hard into Haika’s shoulder and she fell back, with Dyan on top of her.

For a blind moment, Dyan could make out nothing but flailing arms and legs. She heard a growling sound and didn’t know who was making it. She felt hands at her throat, with fingernails digging into her flesh, and her mind focused.

She knelt over Magister Haika, punching the larger, older woman in the face and shoulders repeatedly. The Magister had her hands around Dyan’s throat and squeezed, and Dyan felt the air in his lungs running out. Her vision began to blur.

Dyan picked up a rock.

Haika squeezed tighter.

Dyan smashed the Magister. Dyan’s arms and hands felt broken from the force of her own blow, which jarred loose Haika’s hands and knocked Dyan off and to the ground. She lay stunned, beside the still Magister, and felt sand and pine needles dig into her skin.

Then Haika groaned.

It wasn’t over. Dyan needed something to end the fight, permanently. She hit the locator switch on her bola holster—one of her bolas was destroyed, but the other should be in the spring. She raised herself to her hands and knees, moaning from pain and effort, and looked into the water. She couldn’t see the light. That could only mean that the bola was buried under the fragments of rock.

“Blast and blazes,” she muttered.

Haika’s hand shot out and grabbed Dyan’s wrist. Her fingers were tense and strong, claw-like, and her nails dug into Dyan’s skin. Dyan looked at the Magister, and saw blood streaming down over her face from a gash in her forehead. Dyan had caused that wound, she realized.

And no amount of blood flow would hide the anger in Haika’s face.

“Vixen,” she snarled.

Dyan punched the older woman again, right in her bloody forehead.

Haika fell back with a yelp.

Dyan hit the locator switch on Haika’s holster.

She immediately saw one of the Magister’s bolas. Its locator light winked red, and Dyan reached for it—

but stopped. The bola sat in a red, bloody mess that had once been Eirig.

He wouldn’t care, she tried to tell herself. He would want her to grab it.

But she couldn’t force herself to do it. Instead, she shambled to her feet and stared at the rockslide.

There, above her head among the red rubble, winked the light of the Magister’s second bola. Her legs screamed with pain. Her skin burned. Her tongue felt like a toad in her own mouth, and she tasted blood. Dyan kicked herself into a lope, and ran for the bola.

Behind her she heard scrabbling sounds. She hit the slide and stumbled forward onto all fours. Like a dog she pushed forward, scraping her hands and breaking fingernails on the rock as she dragged herself up it.

Her hand closed around the bola and she rolled over onto her back.

Haika knelt in the blood and bone mess of Eirig, blood smeared on her forearms as she snatched the other weapon.

Dyan jumped to her feet. At the same moment, the older woman stood.

They both raised their weapons. Dyan snapped her arm in a throwing motion—

Haika threw—

but Dyan didn’t release the bola. Instead she let herself fall down and forward. She hit the ragged rocks hard, pinching her ear and bruising her shoulder, but the cracking sound behind her and the shower of rock dust that rained down on her told her that Haika had thrown and missed.

Dyan somersaulted forward and came up in an unsteady crouch.

Haika charged. She raised her arms like a wild animal’s, talons extended.

Dyan threw the bola. It snapped through the top of Haika’s head, and winged off into the pine trees, scattering severed branches and clouds of yellow-green needles as it went.

Haika ran three more steps. Dyan staggered aside to get out of the way, and when the Magister collapsed onto the stones of the rockslide, she was dead.

***