Sword and Sorceress XXVII (10 page)

She felt no surface above her
corresponding to the floor. That was good. She eased slowly forward, and bumped
her nose against a solid wall.
Box!
she thought, fighting to hold her
breathing steady.
Maybe not. Turn. Do
not
panic. Turning around;
good, good. Now step forward, slowly. Small steps. That thing took sight and
hearing, but I can still feel.

To her great relief she encountered, not
the opposite vertical side of a box, but empty space. It was a room, then, at
least thirty feet in one direction, or so she decided when she finally
encountered the room’s far wall.

That still left the question of her
senses. What had—

WHOOMP!

Off to her right a flame burst into
being underneath a boiler. She was in a basement, and someone on a floor above
had decided the cold was getting to him or her and had recited the incantation
that fired up this auxiliary system. Surely that was what this was, since it
had lain unused until this moment. Mika blessed whoever was feeling so delicate
right now.

The light from the slits in the firebox
beneath the boiler shone dimly, but it was all she needed. The outlines of the
basement room came into view, including a heavy wooden door off to her left.

The thing had
put
her here. It
hadn’t killed her.
Maybe it doesn’t kill! Maybe it takes and moves.
She
immediately considered what that meant for Dorothea. The thing had not come to
kill her but to take her. Words like
ransom
and
changeling
crawled through Mika’s mind, bringing chills in their wake.

But what would it do then? If it was
alive, then there was no way to know where it would put her once it had her.
That line of thought wouldn’t help.

If it
wasn’t
alive, however...
Mika had heard long ago about spells that existed independently of the mages
who cast them, like curses but with more specific orders. If this were one such
spell, a
makt,
then it was mostly a simple transvection spell, with a
single place to deposit its prey—here, where no one was likely to come or hear
a shouting prisoner.

That gave Mika two options. On the one
foot, she could stay here and wait for Mellie and the baby to be taken and then
stand guard against those who would retrieve them from this place. But not only
did she not know what sort of enemy or enemies she would face, she didn’t know
exactly what the makt would do to Mellie and the child in the process of taking
them, or how soon. She had no idea what a “hamlet’s father’s ghost” did, and if
the makt had taken that form its actions would follow suit. She surely didn’t
want to find out after the fact when she could have prevented it.

That left the other foot. Mika didn’t
know the distance between this room and the ground outside...but the thickness
of the door was a trivial matter. She gathered herself, pictured the distance
in her mind, and
leapt
.

A stairway took her up one level,
exiting beside the stage in what must be a theater. That made no sense, but it
wasn’t important. Mika had to find out where she was and get back to work.

#

Orientation was far easier once she was
back outside. The makt’s odor was unmistakable. Mika was dismayed to find that
while she was in the boiler room the skeleton had covered fully half the
distance to Mellie’s house. No more pouncing attacks, then. She could not
afford the time.

Something else drew her attention. The
slow, shambling gait of the skeleton had become even more clumsy, if no less
determined—as if the thing were somehow looser than before. A few seconds’
study revealed that the thing was more poorly framed than before. It had, in
fact, decreased in size by about a third. Whether the makeup of the spell had
changed or it had consumed power in sending her away, it was less than it had
been.

Let it transport her twice and use
itself up? No, no time. The skeleton would be at Mellie’s door before—

The skeleton. Mellie had recognized it
as “hamlet’s father’s ghost.”
She had seen it before.
Therefore it had
been here already, and the makt simply used the skeleton so that it could stay
together and move about. A framework. That meant—

Mika took off at a run. Speed was the
critical factor here. If she could get in and out before it noticed her...

She jumped. Not directly at its back,
but alongside it. As she passed it, her jaws closed on a rib and she wrenched
it loose. She hit the ground and darted off to the side.

If you can’t turn it around, take it
apart.

She spat out the rib.
Not bone at
all—wood!
What she would give right now for a bit of fire from that boiler
room... Alas, leaping that far would exhaust her, let alone leaping back, and
she dared not expend the energy. Nor did she know any fire-from-heaven spells.
Eh,
well. Keep doing what works.
The ribs came off most easily, although she
knew that sooner or later she—
wait. Try it now.
She circled around, came
back zigging and zagging toward its left rear, chose her target, jumped,
pulled,
and
...there. Let’s see it throw me without a hand.
The other followed
soon after.

She pulled another rib off and flung it
away, laughing to herself.
Normally
they
throw the sticks and
I
chase them. Something turns around after all.

Her jaws closed on the thing’s right
ankle and she twisted. The foot didn’t come off, but with a now-useless ankle
it folded under the leg, and the skeleton crashed to the ground.

And disappeared.

That
she didn’t
expect. Its task was to take and send away, and Mika expected it to continue
working toward that end even if it had to pull itself along with what was left
of its arms and legs. Like the Furies of old, a makt didn’t give up.

Mika gathered her wits, did some serious
if momentary reflecting, and leapt.

#

She found it in a garden. More
specifically, in a maze.

Six-foot-high hedges outlined the paths
of a labyrinth. Mika had no idea how large it was but presumed that one would
not construct such a place without a suitably intricate puzzle to be solved.
All she could see was a path that continued straight for some distance before
and behind, turning behind the wall at each end, with other paths branching off
at intervals.

At the end of the straight path before
her was the makt, lying face down on the grass. It had taken her several leaps
to find it, but find it she did.
So the wards around the College would have
kept you out but not in. That suits me well. You just didn’t think I could
follow.

Mika lay on the grassy path for a
moment. Those leaps had nearly exhausted her, but she was undeterred. If a makt
could pursue its prey like a Fury, so could she—and better. It had failed to
secure its prey. She had not.

The makt was half its former size. For
all she knew, it might disappear again. Let it. She would follow, after she
recovered some of her strength. Slowly she got to her feet and began walking
toward it.

The skeleton-thing took note of her
arrival. As she approached, the skull lifted from the path, and the eyes that
were not eyes regarded her. The ends of the arms moved in a peculiar dance, and
something about them made Mika stop and back away.

The skull sank back upon the earth, and
the makt’s dim purple glow suddenly turned a bright red-orange. Mika heard a
hum like an angry hornet, then two, then four, then eight, growing to fill the
air around her. The brilliant glow swelled outward from the makt in all
directions, a dome that burned like an expanding sun.

Mika backed away, but not far enough.
With a clap of thunder the fiery dome exploded.

#

Nothing moved in the labyrinth for about
a half-hour. Then, with agonizing slowness, Mika—singed but alive—again
struggled to her feet. She glanced toward where the makt had been, nothing
remaining but a scattering of ashes and two great charred gaps in the hedge
walls. Not that they would be of much help to Mika as she trotted down the path
in the other direction, seeking the exit the old-fashioned way.

She remembered that strange movement
that preceded the blast. The power remaining in the makt was clearly
considerable, explaining both the event and its effects; but it seemed doubtful
that spell-casting would be needed to trigger it, especially since the skeleton
lacked fingers to weave the spell.

No, she decided, sometimes a gesture was
just a gesture. Mika suspected that had the makt still possessed hand- and
finger-bones, the gesture would not have been polite.

#

 “...and the ashes we recovered in the
labyrinth match the wood pieces littering your courtyard. I think it likely,
therefore, that Melisande’s story is true, and this opinion will be reflected
in my report.” Corporal Juliana of the City Guard stood at something resembling
parade rest before Magistrix Judith’s desk. The hearing was only semi-formal,
but one would not catch Juliana neglecting the forms. The Chancellor of the
University turned her gaze to Officer Conrad of Campus Security, who echoed the
City Guardsman’s conclusions.

“Very well, then,” she said. “Lord
Llewellyn will have to submit the bill for his landscaping to someone else. In
cases of of enemy action, which evidently this is, we are not liable.” She
turned to Melisande, seated in one of several chairs that lined the wall.
Beside Melisande sat Mika, somewhat the worse for wear but upright, clear-eyed,
and tail wagging. Behind Mika stood Stephen, his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
On her other side stood Edward.

On the wall above them someone had
painted, in skillful calligraphy, a fragment of a psalm: “
My soul waits for
the Lord, more than they that watch look for the morning
.” It was a
favorite passage of the Chancellor’s, particularly when she found herself
hip-deep in the proverbial alligators and needed a reminder of the objective to
drain the swamp. Today’s investigation, with alligators aplenty, had taken
until well past midnight; doubtless everyone, not just the Campus Security
sentries, was looking eagerly for the morning.

“I thank you for your patience,
Melisande and Stephen...yes, and Mika,” said Magistrix Judith. “We’re almost at
the end here, and I believe we can get you home to bed well before the morning
arrives.” To Stephen she said, “Finally, Professor, please tell Lord Logas and
the officers here about your seminar at midday.”

“Yes, my Lady,” said Stephen. “Nothing
negative occurred for most of the period—indeed, we were all conducting a
delightfully energetic discussion on the question “
Quis custodiet ipsos
custodies?
”—until shortly before noon, when, with no apparent precursor
events, one of the students suffered a violent death.”

The Chancellor nodded. “The nature of
that death?”

“Clearly magic-based, my Lady. The
student was ignited from within, seemingly spontaneously, and almost before we
knew it the combustion was complete. All that remained was the charred
skeleton. And a blackened chair.”

Again Magistrix Judith nodded. “Your
opinion, my Lord High Wizard?”

Logas pursed his lips. “The report
Senior Thaumaturge Melisande has given us, based on the rapport she enjoyed
with Mika”—at whom he glanced; she looked him square in the eye—”is that Mika
believes the event at Lord Llewellyn’s estate to be the self-termination of a
makt, a motile spell-construct existing apart from, but not utterly independent
of, the wizard who casts it. Since it existed as an extension of the wizard’s
will, its destruction rebounded on its maker. Hence the event during the
seminar, which we may term a ‘magical backlash.’”

“And yet you say this was not entirely
consistent with the run-of-the-mill makt, if such a thing could be said to be.”

“Correct, my Lady Chancellor. It would
seem that the wizard invested this makt with some degree of intellect, so that
it could secure a suitable framework for its existence without supervision.
This would follow if the wizard were a student with a stringent schedule. As an
unforeseen result, the makt abandoned its task when faced with the
improbability of success rather than, as we would put it, ‘die trying.’ I am
considering the hypothesis that with any degree of intellect comes an instinct
for self-preservation.”

Magistrix Judith frowned. “Yet followed
in this case by suicide. Why? And what about its behavior before destruction?”

Logas’s expression didn’t change, but
Melisande saw his eye twinkle. “Spite.”

The Chancellor harrumphed, then
addressed the group as a whole. “You see the problem before us, ladies and
gentlemen. This wizard was an exchange student from beyond the Colonies, which
to us is
terra incognita
. And yet she held not only knowledge of our own
people, procedures, and lore, but an agenda that included kidnapping—initially
Lord Edward, or more likely the Sceptre of which he is Guardian, but redirected
at the child of Melisande and Stephen, who will be a Guardian when she is of
age. I consider the trans-Mississippi region a very credible threat, and
recommend that we each give its study the benefit of our particular talents. I
do not doubt that much remains to be discovered, and we will benefit from the
forewarning.