The Infinity Concerto (27 page)

"How long was I gone?"

"Days, I suspect. Do you know?"

He shook his head. Her smell was dust and roses and acrid, sweating flesh.

"Your little rebel friends decided to defy Alyons. The Wickmaster has never been even-tempered." Again the deep-buried humor. "There's nothing I can do. Not now. They could have picked a better time. Now Alyons has what he's always wanted - a chance at the humans. To level them, make them pay for intruding."

"What's he doing?" Michael asked, his throat almost closing off the question.

Lamia peered down at her shed skin. "The guardian. She's my sister, boy. We were Clarkham's wives. Lovers, actually. He brought us here. There were fine times then. Dances, all the people rallying around the new mage. The Isomage, he called himself then - equal to the Serpent Mage. Come to bring everybody out of the shadow of the Realm, into the light of his rule. Oh, he didn't hate the Sidhe. He didn't hurt them, not really. He could work magic with music, with what the Sidhe taught us long ago. He was very proud. Soon, he claimed he was the mage reincarnate - born again to avenge what the Sidhe had done to the original human race. His arrogance became too great for the Sidhe to bear. The Black Order sent their armies against us. That was the war. the war that made the Blasted Plain." For a long moment she was silent, the folds of her face working. "He was not the mage. He could do magic, but he couldn't win with it. He could only lose a little and call it a draw. He fled. He gave us up, my sister and me. The Sidhe made their Pact with him but he gave us up. He claimed he had buried powerful magic here, fatal to any Sidhe who transgressed the Pact. He'd fought well enough that the Sidhe had to believe him. So he bargained. He set aside the Pact Lands and put all his people - he thought of them as his own - right here. The Sidhe shrunk the boundaries by half, to let the Blasted Plain act as a barrier. Keep their females from human temptation. Keep themselves pure."

"Are they fighting in Euterpe?" Michael asked.

"What would you do if you knew? Go and save them all? They're fools. They only get what they deserve. Though I'd fight the Sidhe myself if I could. In a week, I'd be able to. If your rebels had waited a week for their foolishness - - But now I'm in my curse. I eat nothing and grow huge. I shed my skin like a snake and my flesh is fragile as unbaked clay. You, you could grab my arm and tear it off, if you wanted. Here's your chance." She held out her arm. Michael backed away. "But I'll toughen, as I always have before, and the power he left me, that'll come back. Then Alyons will pay, if he hasn't already."

"Please. What are they doing?"

"They made my sister into the guardian, to keep humans from using the Isomage's pathway. She still has a touch of humanity, maybe? She doesn't catch all who would cross. Not you. maybe she held back a bit, seeing what you are."

"Tell me!" he demanded, neck muscles cording, lower lip contorted.

"Scourging," she said. "Scarbita. Alyons is the Scarbita Antros, and there's nothing you can do."

Michael ran from the room, down the hall and stairs. The sky was on the thread's edge of night as he ran down the road, trying not to focus on the smudge of orange light against the night.

He was hardly breathing hard when he came within sight of Euterpe. Invoking hyloka had restored energy to his tissues and given his senses hallucinatory precision. The brick houses lay in heaps around a central bonfire. He saw mounted Sidhe driving people in lines and clusters ahead of them. Wicks flashed in the firelight. Overhead, the stars seemed to have turned away in fear. The ground glittered with excited pinprick lights.

He left the road and crossed a hill. Most of Euterpe was in ruins, some glowing as if electrified. For a long minute he stared at what seemed the ghost of the hotel, limned in glowing outline against the fountains of fire, everything else translucent.

As he watched, the outline evaporated and the hotel was gone.

Piano music drifted from across town. The courser's mounts reared back and they broke away from their captives to ride back through the flames. Not all of the resistance was broken.

Michael ran around the outskirts, stopping to listen for the music. It came from the last remaining stand of buildings - from the school. Sidhe on horseback darted up and over the flames as if maddened by the music.

The Wickmaster stood on a mound about a hundred yards outside the town, lost in thought. His golden horse waited patiently behind him. Michael tried to keep well back from the firelight, but the Sidhe turned and saw him. For a long moment their eyes held; then Alyons smiled, baring ghost-white teeth, and glided onto his horse.

Michael reversed his run and fled from Euterpe. He wasn't afraid; if fear was a chemical, it had long since been used up in his body. He acted purely as he had been trained. Now it was obvious that his education had been accompanied by a good many subliminal instructions. The Crane Women had tinkered with his aura of memory. He could visualize tactics, methods of escape he never would have thought of on his own.

There was one instruction which he couldn't quite bring to the fore; nevertheless, he acted on it. The Wickmaster's golden horse glided up behind at a leisurely pace, its master exulting. Here was his chance at the troublesome antros, with no one to hold him back.

Ahead, Michael saw the outline of giant teeth - a ring of stones, slightly darker than the night. He ran in that direction - into the jaws and to one side, backing up against a smooth round stone carved with spiral grooves. Alyons slowed just outside the ring. "Hoy ac!" he cried.

"Hello yourself, you cruel son of a bitch," Michael whispered.

"Antros! You need the Wickmaster's mercy. Come out and join your own kind. They aren't mistreated, only punished."

"Come in," Michael invited loudly enough for Alyons to hear if he strained; no louder..Alyons lifted his wick to the sky. The tip glowed dull red. His horse paced between the stones, weaving in and out. The Wickmaster chanted softly in Cascar.

He's worried, Michael thought.

"He enters the circle, he must come closer," said a voice behind Michael. He recognized Spart but he couldn't see her.

"Wickmaster!" he cried out. "What was your disgrace? Did you make your masters angry? Were you the lowest thing in the Maln, a traitor, or just something they could do without?"

"The Maln," Alyons replied coldly, just loudly enough for him to hear, "Still accepts me. I do my duty in the Pact Lands. I keep the human filth bottled up."

"They won't take you back," Michael taunted. "How did you insult Tarax?"

"Shy of the mark," Alyons said. Michael could feel his aura of memory being feather-touched. He blocked the probe.

"Antros!" Alyons' horse passed into the inner circle, but the Wickmaster was not astride. Michael backed up hard against the cold stone.

The point of the wick thrust up before his face and glowed bright. Alyons flowed into visibility in front of him and lowered the point to Michael's chest. The Sidhe's armor flashed and rippled like living skin. The maple-leaf insignia on his chest seemed to stand apart from the armor, floating with a vitality of its own and changing from moment to moment to oak, then laurel, then back to maple. Alyons pulled the wick back, preparatory to thrusting, singing in that weird way Michael had heard the Crane Women sing, as if searching for a tune and not finding it, only the tune was present all along.

The dried grass behind the Sidhe flew straight up, swirling into the night. Around the inner circle of the stones, a spiral of dirt fountained upward, the wind of its passage lifting Alyon's hair. For an instant, the Sidhe poised with his wick and Michael again felt the nearness of death.

Then the Wickmaster vanished. Out of the ground, with the roar of a dozen freight-trains, rose a monstrous steel snake. It had been coiled beneath the grass, and like a spring it lashed out and gripped the Wickmaster in gleaming steel teeth. Clods of dirt struck Michael all over.

The snake lifted the Sidhe high into the air. Then, with the sound of strained metal snapping, it broke into sections. The sinuosities straightened and plunged into the dirt like stakes, forming a tripod. The snake's head shuddered at the top of the tripod, in the exact center of the circle of stones.

Alyons, held like a mouse, reached down to Michael with a trembling arm. Michael walked slowly around the tripod until he could see the Wickmaster clearly, then let up his memory block.

"The wood, the wood!" Alyons whispered. "Quickly! Call the arborals." His body twisted violently, jamming the teeth even deeper through his flesh. His bones ground against the metal loudly enough for Michael to hear and die tripod swayed.

Alyons died.

Michael had never seen anything like it. Muscles twitching, he looked up at the corpse, fascinated and sick at the pit of his stomach. Alyons had been trapped and executed and he had been part of it. He turned away from the tripod and the limp, bloody Wickmaster.

Spart faced him. Her hair blew back in the night breeze. "The coursers haven't finished," she said. "We must go."

"Who made this?" Michael asked, pointing at the trap.

"Clarkham, who calls himself Isomage."

"Why?"

"I do not know," Spart said. Her voice was harsh and scratchy and the wind made her shiver. "Perhaps it was his revenge for the imposition of the Pact."

"Did Alyons know it was here?"

"Obviously not," Spart said. She closed her eyes halfway. "No more questions." He followed her as she plodded through the grass. Euterpe's flames were dying. Snow fell again, and he noticed with curiousity that when it alighted on Spart, it did not melt, as if she no longer maintained her hyloka.

"I saw Lamia."

"So?" She continued walking without looking back.

"She can't do anything. She shed her skin."

Spart shivered. "Quiet," she said. Overhead was a rushing, wind-whining sound - one Michael had heard before. He looked up but saw nothing in the smoke-palled sky. Snow fell through the smoke as if conjured out of nothing.

Michael had no trouble keeping up with Spart this time; her pace was deliberate, less than brisk. "Use your training now," she told him. "The coursers are still out."

"Don't they know about Alyons?"

Spart didn't answer. He frowned at her back and shook his head. Even now, she had the ability to exasperate him.

They dodged between the smoldering ruins and piles of brick and within minutes approached the Yard. It, too, had been demolished. Michael peered over the remains of a thick wall. The pits were open to the night air.

In the least damaged section of town, they passed humans running, or standing in a daze; townsfolk with shackles around their ankles, staked to the ground; men and women huddled in corners, the smoke and diminishing flames adding to the glazed light of panic in their eyes. He didn't see anybody dead, or even seriously injured. Perhaps the Isomage's threat had restrained the Sidhe enough to spare the town from general massacre.

Spart clambered down stairs leading to a basement beneath a relatively intact two-story warehouse. She walked ahead of Michael in the dark, and he followed her by the sound of her footfalls, using his hands to guide him along one wall.

At the end of the corridor was a room lit by glass-chimneyed oil lamps. The floor was scattered with smashed wicker boxes and furniture. The brick walls seemed to have been sprayed with silvery glitter that sparkled in a way painful to the eyes.

In the middle of the room, shoulders slumped, Savarin sat amidst the litter. He barely glanced up as he heard them. His clothes and face were covered with the sparkling dust. He looked down at the floor, then, as if reminded of something, looked up again and fastened his dull gaze on Michael. 'Traitor," he said. "You told them." His voice was flat and lifeless.

"I didn't tell anybody," Michael said but Savarin was obviously beyond argument. The teacher smiled in a sickly way, shook his head and resumed his examination of the floor. Spart pointed to the far comer of the basement room at a figure seated away from the glow of the oil lamps. It was Helena, her skin and clothes aglimmer. She sat with knees drawn up on a makeshift wicker piano bench. Before her, smashed into the comer, was the piano.

It had been gutted. Its painstakingly assembled inner works lay warped and twisted a few yards away.

He walked to her and reached out to touch her shoulder, but she pulled away on the bench, making it shake. "I know you didn't tell," she said hoarsely, turning her face away. She tightened her arms around her knees and pressed her chin against her wrists, rocking gently. "We didn't use the dust. They were here a little while ago. I was playing. It was my only chance to play. We used the piano, we played it. But we didn't use the. what you brought. Here it is." She handed him the bag. It was empty but for a few grains, the tie loose.

Spart grabbed the bag and pinched it angrily. She took Helena's hair in one hand and shook loose malevolent glitter. "They turned it, they wasted it." She chuffed in disgust and pulled him away from Helena. "They are not worth your time," she said.

Michael looked back at Helena, uncertain what he felt - sadness, perverse satisfaction at his betrayers laid low, horror and anger that people he cared for could be treated thus.

"Isn't there any more dust?" he asked.

"Not for us, not for them. If they try to cross now, the sani is turned. It will attract every monster on the plain." She shook her hand and wiped it vigorously, then pulled him up the stairs out of the basement. When he protested that he had to stay and help, her look asked plain as words, What can you do?

Nothing. He followed her.

On the streets, they ran for a short distance, then hid behind the intact corner of a collapsed building as coursers thundered by. "Where are we going?" Michael whispered.

"You are leaving," Spart said. "With or without the powder. It is your time. You go back with me to the mound, men you go on alone."

Only now did he remember the book left in the rafters of the hut. He had forgotten it in his haste to leave the Realm.