"Everything burned up when they left," Fa said. "It's all gone. I've looked."
"He left you that ring."
Fa jerked her hand away. "It's mine."
"I wouldn't dream of taking it from you. I'm just wondering, did he leave anything else? This is very important to Gale. Please think carefully."
Fa looked into the ring.
"I don't think so."
He could send no message to Razeel to bargain, plead, or threaten; that channel was blocked to him. All he had was the probe. And the ring. Made by Galen's mother, given to Galen's father on his birthday, his death day.
It would copy any data crystal with which it came into contact. That would do him no good. But perhaps the ring held other powers – the power to generate an illusion, or a shield, or something to help Fa. After his initiation, he had made a halfhearted, unsuccessful attempt to access the ring's systems. It would respond only to his father and to those who knew his key. Failing to gain control of it, Galen had added a probe that would respond to his own key.
Now he must discover his father's key. He visualized the equation requested his authorization. He tried to think what the key might be. It had been so long since his parents had died, and he had buried the memories of them so deeply – all that came to mind was the image of their shrouded remains floating supine behind Elric as he emerged from the fire of the spaceship crash. They hardly seemed real.
He didn't remember. But he must remember. His parents had been powerful mages, highly respected, working at the right and left hand of a corporate president who had risen to great influence. What key would his father have used? It could be anything.
Numbers, significant or random; letters, of any alphabet; a name or quote or phrase, in any language; an image – or any combination. He tried whatever came to mind: the name of the corporation, the name of the corporate president, the words of the Code, and on, in different languages, different encryptions. The ring did not respond. His father, he now recalled, had always argued against the use of significant numbers or phrases, asserting that keys should be completely random. Otherwise, with sufficient effort, an intruder could discover them.
Galen continued desperately, pointlessly. Fa and Razeel reached the moss-covered plain of rock where Galen and Elric had once lived. Out of the dusky mist, like a nightmare, emerged Elizar, with his long, masterful stride, his head tilted slightly back. For two years Galen had struggled to block out all thought of him. The tech's energy welled up with a rush. Behind Elizar came Bunny, in a short green dress.
Galen had hoped he'd killed her on Thenothk. He wondered what she had to do with this. Could she have seen something when she invaded his thoughts, something he'd forgotten here? His mind raced to discover what it could be. Fa stopped short at the sight of Elizar. She would remember him, Galen knew, from the convocation. She'd seen Galen attack him with the spell of destruction, and she'd been terrified. Razeel seized Fa's hand, held it up.
"Say hello to Galen, brother." Elizar approached.
He wore a long coat of black velvet, a gold and black vest beneath. The dark goatee scoured into the shape of the rune for magic stood out against his pale skin. At the sight of the ring, he gave a truncated laugh. The planes of his angular face carried a cold arrogance.
"It's too perfect, isn't it. Hello, Galen."
"Will you take me to Gale?"
Fa's question sounded more like a demand.
"She can't remember anything they might have left behind," Razeel said.
Elizar nodded, crouched before Fa.
"Gale didn't like you," Fa said.
"You mean that fight we had?"
Razeel was still clutching Fa, and Elizar pulled his sister's hand away, released it. He continued.
"Galen apologized for that. He felt very bad for hurting me. It was all a misunderstanding. I forgave him long ago. I was glad to offer to come here in his place. Galen would like us to bring you to him. There's just one problem. You know he went away with all the rest of us, all the techno-mages."
Fa nodded.
"You can't come with us unless you can do magic like we do."
"But I can," Fa said. "A little. I've been practicing."
She took a small stone from the pocket of her jumper, and from the movements of the ring he could tell she was going through a rapid sleight of hand.
"Where is it?" she said, spreading her palms.
She tilted her head to one side.
"Oh. But what's that behind your ear?"
She reached out to Elizar, produced the stone with a flourish. She'd gotten much better. She must have worked long hours since he'd been gone.
"Very good!"
Elizar said with a smile.
"Galen taught you that? You're a good student. Did he teach you anything else?"
"Lots of things," Fa said. "He showed me his spells."
"And do you remember them?" Elizar asked. Galen closed his eyes, though it made no difference. Here, he realized, was the purpose of Elizar's visit. He had left something behind. He had left Fa. She had seen his spells. He desperately tried to remember how much she had seen, whether she had seen the spell of destruction. Then he remembered.
The night he had discovered it, the first night of the convocation. She had come in through his window raving about the pretty light show outside, had annoyed him while he tried to work. And to show her the difficulty of what the mages did, to teach her more respect, he had shown her his spells, explained the progression from which he had derived his first basic postulate.
Bunny must have glimpsed the memory when she scanned him. Now they were going to rip the spell out of Fa's mind.
"We're going to test your memory," Elizar said. "Then we'll know whether you can become a techno-mage, like us."
Fa glanced into the ring, her face tight. Trying random keys was pointless. He could continue for years without stumbling upon the one his father had chosen. He would never find it in time. But what if his mother had set up the system? He remembered watching as she made the ring, building microscopic circuitry into the silver band, creating the natural-looking black stone with layer after layer of crystals deposited in precise patterns.
Although his father had been his teacher, she had taught him that day. Perhaps she had even chosen the key while he had watched.
Elizar extended two fingers toward Bunny, and the telepath came forward. She appeared much the same, tall, with long, curly blond hair. She would have conveyed a rather bland attractiveness except for thinness to her face that gave her an unhealthy, voracious look. The tip of her tongue pushed through her lips. Elizar turned to Fa.
"This is Bunny. She can read your thoughts. You must think of those spells Galen showed you. She will see how well you remember. If you remember well enough, we can take you to Galen."
"Will it hurt?"
"Only if you resist her."
He rubbed Fa's arm.
"I know you're frightened. Something horrible has happened here today. We didn't arrive in time to stop it, and we feel very badly about that. If you're afraid to take the test, we can leave you here. But I would hate to do that. I know that Galen was really hoping to have you come live with him. It's your decision."
He pulled back his hand.
Fa looked down at the ring, looked up at Elizar, at Bunny. She was suspicious; Galen could tell by her hesitance. But he hadn't come at her call, and they had, and if there was even the slightest chance that she could be taken away from all this death and brought to him, he knew she would want to take it. She nodded.
"Good."
Elizar stood, moved away. As Bunny's eyes narrowed on Fa, Galen remembered the horrible sensation of her invading his mind, of the black tentacles burrowing into him, searching for his deepest secrets.
Fa gasped, and the ring jerked as her body went rigid.
Galen crossed his arms over his chest, and his mother's voice came to him then, hard and powerful.
It's a ring. It will have a stone here which will copy any data crystal it touches.
How can it do that?
he asked.
She pointed to the small, ragged black stone clamped to the worktable.
The inner layers store information, just as a normal data crystal. The outer layer will look the same, but function differently.
As she continued her explanation, her spidery fingers worked over the stone.
Finally she was finished, and she slipped the large ring on his finger. The ragged stone fell to one side. There.
How do you like that?
The ring should be very useful,
he said.
She fixed him with her dark gaze.
A Trojan horse,
she said, switching to an obscure dialect of ancient Greek, as she sometimes did when they were alone, to convey that she shared some secret.
She continued in English.
No one would guess what it can do. We wizards are subtle.
She was paraphrasing the old saying: Do not try the patience of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
The ring showed him only Bunny's hungry face, yet he could hear Fa's breath, harsh and ragged. Galen sent the phrase a Trojan horse to the ring.
No response.
Sent it in the Greek.
No response.
Do not try the patience of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
He sent those words to the ring. No response. Again, in ancient Greek. The ring accepted the key, and a menu of options appeared in his mind's eye.
"I've got everything she remembers," Bunny said, and at last she looked toward Elizar, breaking off her scan. Fa collapsed.
"It's incomplete," Bunny continued, "but it may be enough for you."
"Thank you, Bunny," Elizar said.
Galen raced through the options. The ring had the usual observing and recording functions of a probe – in fact, he noted, it was recording now, continuing some order issued long ago; it could copy data crystals, erase data crystals, even add information to data crystals – he skipped down the list-and at the very bottom, something called ELECTRIC STORM. Fa's head wavered in and out of view as she tried to regain her balance, sit up.
"That hurt. It hurt! You take me to Gale now."
Razeel knelt beside her, wrapped an arm around her.
"I'm sorry. You didn't remember everything, so you can't come with us."
Fa hit her in the shoulder.
"You're not nice. Gale didn't like you. And neither do I," Fa struggled against her, but her movements were weak, uncoordinated.
Galen requested information on the electric storm, but there was none. Rings intended to generate electricity were usually constructed differently from this one. A ring might be designed to deliver an electric shock if the stone touched an enemy. Or it might be devised to shock the wearer, an enemy who would receive the ring as a gift.
Another possibility was a ring that generated a localized field. If the ring was hidden where the enemy would approach, it could be a lethal weapon. Any of those contingencies could have potentially been included in the ring, though he didn't know why they would have been.
His mother had said nothing of it.
"Would you like to see some of my magic?" Razeel asked.
"I have to go now," Fa said, but she could not get free.
Razeel pulled Fa next to her, took Fa's hand, and turned it, pointing the ring into the mist. She wasn't touching the ring, so far as he could tell. She was too smart for that.
"Gale would really like to see this. I want you to meet two of my friends."
There, just beyond Fa's bare feet, darkness began to coalesce out of the mist. Galen remembered the vague, dark shapes she had conjured at the convocation, screeching figures that had consumed themselves. The object taking shape before Fa was neither vague nor amorphous.
The darkness formed a supple, rippling surface, and it grew upward, forming a perfect cylinder. When it reached four feet tall, its growth stopped, and it began to draw inward in a line down its middle. The shimmering darkness split down the center, breaking into two cylinders.
"I have to go," Fa said, and the image from the ring shook as she fought with Razeel.
"I can call Bunny back if you want," Razeel said, and the movement stopped.
"No one ever thought I was very good at magic either," Razeel continued.
"But I know secrets they will never know."
She moved the ring back and forth.
"You see the beautiful, hungry blackness. It speaks to me. It has spoken to me since the day I received my chrysalis. It chants of vast machines towering dark in the vault of the universe. It whispers mysteries of chaos ascendant, transcendent, of a universe reborn in fire and blood. The shadow of death stretches out its hand. And upon its palm I sit. For I am the queen of shadows."
Elizar stepped into view beside the cylinders.
"This is your own fault, Galen. If you had joined me, if you had shared your secret, none of this would be necessary. But you wouldn't. You refused to help the mages. Instead, you sent all of them to their deaths. We are forced to do what we must to rebuild all you have destroyed."
He paused, his gaze flicking briefly to Fa's face.
"We have a long way to go before we equal your body count."
He turned and walked away. The tops of the cylinders bent toward Fa, as if regarding her, then bloomed open, revealing mouths of complete blackness. With rapid, fluid movement they curled downward, swallowing her feet and sliding up to her knee joints. The bottom half of her legs disappeared completely within the blackness. Fa screamed, struggling frantically. The cylinders held her legs in place.
"If they pass over you quickly," Razeel said, "you can survive. They absorb only a little energy. The more slowly they proceed, the more damage they cause. If they move slowly enough, there's nothing left of you when they're done. They absorb it all. They prefer that. Of course, that way causes a lot of pain. But Gale has never seen this before, and I think he'd like to. So they're going to move very, very slowly."