Authors: Garon Whited
I also found myself a stick, trimmed it into a wand, and stuck it in my belt. That would be the mundane tool for guiding and directing the upcoming weather. If I did it right.
The details are of no real interest. Feeling up into the sky and into the ground for the patterns of the weather. Moving heat into and out of masses of air. Chanting, skewering unconscious sheep with a fiery sword, that sort of thing. I did it, pumped the power through my will and the wand, and aimed it at the heavens. Then I waited and watched the sky.
It wasn’t a long wait. Within minutes, a haze started, high up. It started to visibly thicken into clouds, tinged orange and gold by the low rays of the sun. A greenish-yellow cast started to creep into the air.
I got out canvas and blankets from the saddlebags. I wish I had body bags left. Pity they’d all been on Bronze when she broke me out of a magic circle. I got into the shade of some bushes on the hillside. I rolled up tightly in several layers and Bronze started kicking dirt over me. It was the best we could do.
SATURDAY, MARCH 18
TH
I
unrolled from my undead fajita and shook off the dirt from my coverings. I packed them back in the saddlebags with difficulty; the wind snatched at them and held them out like flags. Once I had them put away, I went back to the bodies of the sheep. Waste not, want not. I drained what blood was left in them like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube.
The temperature had dropped sharply enough for me to notice. It began to rain, hard and sideways with the wind. The clouds were thick and black and churning like boiling mud. Flashes of inner lightning were almost constant, making the clouds both beautiful and ghastly.
Good.
We went through the hills until we had a good vantage point. The Hand compound was also on high ground, mostly above the rest of Telen.
Which made it a target. Now, where was that room with the door?
I drew the wand from my belt and pointed at the room, or where I believed the room to be. In response, hidden cloud-lightning flickered above. I slashed upward from the fortress I’d jumped out of, so long ago.
A thick line of blue-white light twisted up, exploding from the structure. It blasted part of the roof into oblivion. Flaming debris whipped away on the storm-wind and rain poured into the hole.
That must have been a surprise. While I wondered what they would do about it—and they would, if Melloch was in there; anyone who worries constantly about growing old is very concerned about keeping a whole skin
—
I aimed the wand at the hole, letting a charge build up. I couldn’t sense the level of power involved, not now, not at night, but I let it build for a slow ten-count. By then, the fine hairs on my body were standing up; the way the hair on my head was crackling was making me nervous. When sparks started to dance along my scaled shirt, I slashed toward the clouds again, drawing lightning up from the earth to meet the clouds.
This blast was more impressive. It looked like a blue-white highway from earth to heaven. The thunderclap was
deafening
, even this far outside the city walls. The bolt had launched roughly from where I’d intended, up from the same hole opened by the first. Fires gouted out along with the lightning. I could see the blocks of the wall shift unsteadily and several cracks ran through the structure.
The second bolt was worse than I’d expected. I gritted my teeth, ignoring the idea of innocent bystanders. It’s a military structure, not a hotel. But, if I was lucky, people had started running after the first bolt of lightning—I hoped so; I couldn’t see the base of the keep.
I took aim at the cathedral next to the keep. I had one bolt of lightning hit the rear peak of the roof, right over the altar area. I waited perhaps half a minute for people to get away from the falling debris while I kept the wand pointed at the clouds—building another heavy charge.
Heaven’s artillery, indeed. Another massive bolt lanced through the demolished temple roof and made all the windows glare bright as noon for an instant, then explode outward in glassy shards, whipped away by the storm-winds.
The heavens are pissed at the Hand. Take that, Linnaeus, and see what you can do with it!
I tucked the wand in my belt and kicked Bronze. We headed downhill at full tilt with Bronze trying to go faster with every step.
There were two main obstacles we wanted to get through. The inner city’s wall was sizable, but if I could hurdle it, I was confident that Bronze could do so. I was right, and she did. Nobody got to see it but me. There were no sentries in this weather; they wouldn’t have been able to see the ground, much less anything approaching.
The second obstacle was the curtain wall around the Hand compound itself. This proved to be even less trouble. All three gates were open and people were streaming out. The sound of the main keep was a steady grinding of stone on stone as the wind battered at the structure. In the dark and the rain, nobody paid much attention to me—they were much more interested in getting somewhere far away from a building that was going to come down. And maybe in getting away from the wrath of god. I shudder to think what it must have looked and felt like up close!
The rain cut down on my vision a little, but the darkness, of course, was no handicap. We did a turn around the whole compound, searching. I didn’t see any sign of Melloch. I’d have to go in and look for him.
“I don’t want to bring the building down yet,” I shouted into Bronze’s ear. “I’m sorry, but you’re heavy. You’ll have to stay out here.”
She twitched that ear and stopped beside a door. She kicked it with one forefoot and sent it into the keep in a shower of splinters. I got the impression she wasn’t happy at the idea of staying outside. I dismounted and went in.
The interior was dark as the inside of a rock. This didn’t bother me, but the few people still groping their way out were having a tough time. The wind somehow found a way inside and made it devilishly hard to strike a light. Obviously, none of these people were magicians.
I found a wooden part of the wall and poked it with Firebrand. It caught. The flames were whipped wildly and struggled to keep alive, but it was a good fight; I thought the wood would keep burning for a while.
“This way!” I shouted. “Door over here!”
I kept going in, occasionally poking a fallen bit of timber to make a new light. The building cleared out quickly. There were some strange looks sent my way, but the majority were just too happy to be getting out of the ominously-creaking structure to care who I was.
I didn’t see Melloch until I reached the room with the door.
My lightning had broken through the roof and upper floors. Rain poured in; the whole ceiling was open to the sky. The floor was mostly covered in broken timber and shattered stone. What books had been present were gone—probably burned by lightning and scattered by wind.
But what I noticed first was someone lying facedown, halfway between where the operations circle would be and the doorway. Whoever it was had taken a good hit from the lightning. Even with all the rain and wind, I could smell burned hair and meat.
What I noticed second was the doorway was open. Through it, I saw an open courtyard, filled with tilted and irregular paving blocks. All around were crumbling, ancient buildings.
There was a man in Hand vestments hurrying away, a naked woman draped over one shoulder like a sack of flour. Hurrying fast, faster even than an unburdened man should run.
I shouted,
“TOBIAS!”
Walls that merely creaked in the storm rattled with that shout. I took a step forward, meaning to hurtle through the Door and across the tumbled stones of the courtyard to put Firebrand’s edge through his skull—starting from his balls.
He heard me. He spun around at a speed I found starkly incredible—I’ve never seen anyone move that fast. Not me, not Sasha, not even Davad. As he spun, he drew a black-glass knife, slashed the air with it in my direction…
The doorway closed.
Vision through the doorway seemed to be
cut
. A rent opened in the image and the whole thing rippled, almost
peeled
back from the rent, leaving only blackness behind.
The blackness had eyes and laughter.
Then there was only the stone of the wall behind the doorway.
With a curse, I turned to the body on the floor. I looked and saw there was some life left in him, but not much. His energies were like a guttering candle.
I sheathed Firebrand. I crouched next to him in the rubble and rolled him over.
I wish I hadn’t. He was
charred.
I had a vivid memory of Sasha leap to the forefront of my mind and I shuddered. He was also
old
. I’ve never seen anyone so withered and ancient. It was a wonder he was alive at all.
Over the rain and wind I shouted, “Tell me! Tell me where that doorway went!”
He smiled, horribly. His skin crackled and bled as it stretched. There were no teeth left in his mouth.
“Tell me!” I shrieked, lifting him half-off the floor by my grip on his robes. “Tell me!”
My unnaturally acute hearing distinctly heard him whisper, “Life.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“Life,” he wheezed. “Give… life.”
I stared at him in confusion for all of three seconds. Then I realized what he was saying. He wanted me to make him a nightlord.
“You’ll be dead before the change can take place!” I shouted. “It takes three days! You won’t live long enough for it! So just tell me where they’ve gone!”
His smile widened and his lower lip split like it had been cut. “Life,” he whispered again, and he died right there in my hands.
I screamed at him and jerked him up to my mouth. If there was anything left of him in that husk, I meant to have it. Blood, yes; magician’s blood. Faint traces of a complicated and unusual spirit. Nothing more than that. No hint of where the Door had gone.
I dropped the husk and thought furiously. Tobias, thirty feet away—if the Door were open!
I tossed the body up and out of the room, giving it to the storm. Then I started clearing away debris from the floor, pitching it casually up over my shoulders to be whipped away by the wind. The floor cleared rapidly as my hands flew back and forth, faster than the raindrops around them. I found the diagrams in the floor, cleared them, and looked them over. They looked intact, which was simply amazing. I can only conclude that Melloch must have had a powerful shielding spell running when I hit the keep with that second stroke. Just not quite powerful enough.
One of the locks had a key in it.
I had no idea if I needed to be able to work magic for the keys to operate. But what would I lose by trying? I got the keys out and fit them into the next six locks—I left the original key alone on the theory it ought to keep the last setting it had, wherever it went.
In my heart, I knew where it would go. There were two other Doors in this world. One was in the Academy—and that ruined place I’d seen didn’t look like a working school. The other Door…
I turned the keys, one after the other. The locks clicked smoothly; I felt them, rather than heard them over the howling of the wind.
Yes. The doorway opened. The courtyard was there, the stones askew as before, but there was no Tobias. Only a trail of water from rain-soaked robes.
Fine. I’d find him.
I drew the wand out of my belt and pointed it straight up. I started turning it, as though I were stirring, faster and faster. The clouds above me began to turn, slowly at first, but they gained speed rapidly. In less than a minute, a funnel started to form directly above, whirling lower, screaming like a freight train. It twisted and writhed, reaching down for the main keep of the Hand. As the leading edge of the funnel cloud touched the top of the keep, the floor beneath my feet shuddered. I could feel the floor start to
slide.
I stepped through the Door.
If I’d done it right, my tornado would waver around all through the inner courtyard, battering at the keep and the cathedral until the weather spell wore out. With luck, there wouldn’t be anything left but foundations. If that.
Behind me, through an ornate, metallic arch, I could still hear the screaming of the wind, feel the driven rain and spray. The occasional flash of lightning glared as through a window, throwing light and shadow beyond me onto the ground. Yet for all the raging of the storm at my back, I was standing on stable ground with not even a vibration in the stone.
Through the open door, I heard a shrieking and cracking. I watched the far wall of the room tilt away, cracking apart and crumbling as it did so. The floor followed it. A moment later, the viewpoint started to shudder and sway before the opening winked out, leaving behind only a metal arch.
Silence, broken only by my dripping on the stones. I stood in the pool of rainwater driven through the door.
I looked around for footprints. Yes, there they were, leading away, surrounded by the drippings of a man soaked to the skin. Tobias had been caught in the rain, as well; I had blasted the roof away, after all. His robes held water at least as well as my cloak.
I drew Firebrand and stalked after him.
The trail of water led me through a ruined city, past collapsed buildings and crumbling monuments. The city, even ruined, was magnificent; the crumbling buildings near at hand were huge. Between them, there were open spaces of barren earth, perhaps parks. In my mind’s eye, I could picture a place of white stone and climbing gardens; now there was no trace of any sort of life whatsoever. There was only cracking rock, weathered stone, scattered sand, and dust.
I hurried, because the water was evaporating quickly in the dry air. The trail turned a corner and headed straight down a major boulevard. Once, there had been monuments, giant statues, lining the roadway. Now, most of them were weathered down to unidentifiability; a few others had fallen from their massive pedestals, like toppled kings from ancient thrones, cast down into ruin. Men or women or both, perhaps, represented for eternity in these stones. No more. Now they were as faceless as the fallen pillars.