The Paladin Caper (50 page)

He headed back toward the room where Tern was working.

When he was about halfway there, he heard a crunch from behind him. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Westteich stomping down on the ground, over and over again, fury written on his face.

“Perhaps you should have tried harder,” Icy murmured.

In the room in the back, Tern stood at a great array of crystals that seemed to grow from the wall in a pattern that made Icy’s head swim. She plucked crystals from one location and inserted them elsewhere, treating others with tools that changed their color.

“The overseer has learned of the potential negative consequences of slavery,” Icy said. “How are you?”

Tern looked over at him, eyes wild. “Not good. I’ve done my part, but remember how we were having Kail disrupt the energy pattern at the font? He did it. I can see the readings, and that
would have been good
, only now that I’m in here, we actually kind of need the font to work again if it’s going to do what we want. I can confirm the ambient magical energy isn’t floating around in the tunnels like it was last time we were here, which is good, but the reason it’s not floating around is because the ancients have got it all tied up right
here
, and in order for that energy to be directed properly, we need the font that channels the energy to Heaven’s Spire to have a prismatic setting of one-third diffusion. Anything else, and we either blow up this whole mining complex or Heaven’s Spire.” Tern took a breath. “Maybe both.”

Icy pursed his lips. “Do we have any means of getting a message to Kail or the others?”

“Is there any chance Ululenia is back?” Tern asked hopefully.

Kail shook his head. “I am afraid I have not seen her.”

“Well,” said Tern, “then unless you’ve got a way to ride the fire of that giant stupid flaming fountain up to the surface where Kail is and tell him to reset the font to one-third diffusion on the outgoing energy, we should probably hug or something, because everything is going to blow up.”

“I see.” Icy nodded. “Can you get me into the room from which the flame fountains to the surface?”

“Oh, sure, it’s the gate room. No more ambient magic, easy to get to.” Tern nodded. “Incredibly hot fire, though, so . . .”

“I will need directions,” Icy said, “and later, some juice.”

Dairy hung in the great empty golden expanse, looking at violet clouds and sparkling things in the sky that were almost stars but not.

He hurt. The blows that had rained down upon him had struck with a force that he had never felt before, not so much because of the physical power but in how it seemed to slide past whatever it was that made him
him
. He had felt the blows as if he were any other young man, and his body throbbed with the aching pain even as he tumbled gently in the sky, trying to make sense of it.

The wrongness pulled at him. Something in the core of his being told him that whatever this place was, it was not a place he was meant to be. Steam rose from his body as tiny bits of whatever made this place struck him and hissed away.

When he saw the great hill made of rainbows uncurl into a formless mass of tentacles that stretched out above and below and beyond him in directions that his mind did not know how to process, glowing with glittery brightness as amazing as it was false, Dairy knew.

“You are the Glimmering Folk,” he said.

“You are the Champion of Dawn,” came the voice, as the violet clouds curled into angled shapes and the green stars turned in the sky with hungry interest. “You hurt us. I wonder if you will hurt us here.”

“Let’s find out,” Dairy said, and raised his fist.

Then something took hold of his shoulder, and the world exploded in blazing light.

Twenty-Two

K
AIL WAS SITTING
with his back against the wall of the safely disabled-per-Tern’s-instructions font, trying to find a position that did not make his broken arm hurt and looking at the podium off in the distance where Archvoyant Cevirt and a bunch of nobles wearing paladin bands stood watching as Loch was brought before them. Daemon Jyelle had her hand clamped down on Loch’s shoulder, and the paladins had Mister Dragon lashed to the ground by whips made from the crackling red energy they shot from their bands.

It was a farce, since they had been controlling Mister Dragon the entire time, probably because of the chains around his throat, but as a connoisseur of cons, Kail had to admit that it was a pretty good one.

He had just concluded that he should probably get up and help Loch, inasmuch as someone with no magical abilities and a broken arm
could
help, when the font made a strange clanking sound behind him.

Kail turned and slid himself to his feet, wondering if Tern’s plan was underway, but realized instead that something was clanking its way up from the gate below, through the fire.

It fountained up into the air a moment later, a great block of some kind of crystal a little larger than Kail himself, and crashed down to the ground not far away, steaming in the grassy turf.

Not crystal, Kail realized. Ice.

The great ball of ice groaned, cracked, and then split apart. As the two halves fell to either side, a shirtless man walked toward Kail.

“Icy
mother-loving
Fist,” Kail said. “You said it was short for Indomitable Courteous.”

Icy rolled out his shoulders and shook a bit of frost from his hands. “It is
also
short for Indomitable Courteous.”

“And you said, you
specifically
said, that you possessed no elemental magical ability.”

“I said that I did not engage in physical combat,” Icy said, “and while that was true, I did not in fact . . .” He trailed off as Kail shook his head slowly and disappointedly, then rallied. “Tern says that disabling the font mechanism entirely was a mistake. The prismatic setting must be tuned to one-third diffusion.”

“Oh, for . . .” Kail looked back at the font and let out a long groan. “There are three puppeteers down there wearing bands, I’ve got one functional arm, and I sort of blew up a crystal that was necessary to make the diffusion matrix work.”

“If I disabled the puppeteers, could you fix the diffusion matrix?”

Kail blinked. “Sure.”

“Excellent.” Icy angled his head to one side and cracked his neck. “Let us proceed.”

They brought Loch before the podium where the important people stood. The remaining people in the stands, shaken by Mister Dragon’s attack, had gone quiet, except for the screams of the dying or those who loved them. The exit was still packed with people trying to leave, and the seats that had burned had guards lined up around them, throwing buckets of water onto the smoldering ruins.

The ridiculous shobes the competitors had worn had been lashed to poles and throwing javelins as makeshift litters to carry the injured to healers down on the field. Up on the glamour-screen, the manticore and the griffon were urging everyone to be calm.

Archvoyant Cevirt was there, and Princess Veiled Lightning, and a host of nobles, and all of them wore paladin bands and stared down at Loch with smug contempt. Naria was there as well, cool and impassive in her pretty dress and her expensive crystal lenses. Mister Skinner, the paladin controlling Mister Dragon, had followed Loch and Jyelle, and he stood a little off to the side, looking around with evident interest.

Lesaguris was there as well, and although Cevirt was the one standing at the highest point of the podium, it was Lesaguris around whom everyone else orbited.

“Isafesira de Lochenville,” said Archvoyant Cevirt, shaking his head sadly. Looking past him, Loch saw his face, magnified to a huge size, on the glamour-screens, and while his voice didn’t seem any louder right there at the podium, it was clear that the people still milling around in the stands heard what he said. “You were my goddaughter, born into privilege as a child of nobles and given a chance to make something worthwhile of your life with opportunities few have available to them. Instead, in bitterness and hatred, you have attacked the very people who treated you with such kindness. You have dishonored everything that the Republic believes in, and you have made life harder for the Urujar, who will unfairly be discriminated against for the crimes you committed.” He sighed. “Your mother and father would be heartbroken.”

“You are not Archvoyant Cevirt!” Loch shouted. “You are a parasitic creature living in the band on his arm! All of them are! The paladin bands are controlling—”

A rocky hand clamped down on her throat, and the other hand, still on her shoulder, drove her to her knees.

“NOW?” Jyelle asked.

“That won’t be necessary, dear,” Lesaguris said, and Archvoyant Cevirt stepped back a tiny bit. “Mister Slant had the puppeteers under orders to cut away as soon as she started shouting.” He smiled. “This is a private conversation, and I’d appreciate it if Captain Loch had the chance to speak.”

Jyelle’s hand came off Loch’s throat.

Loch coughed, spat again, and glared at Lesaguris. “This isn’t over.”

Lesaguris gave his thoughtful polite nod. “You’re right, Loch. It isn’t. And, honestly, it really won’t be that bad.” He smiled sadly. “The problem is that you had to deal with the Glimmering Folk. They’re monsters. They would have destroyed this world had young Rybindaris not finished what we started. It’s no wonder that you see us as no different.”

“My mistake,” Loch said, still on her knees. “You’re so much kinder.”

“This is a
good
world, Loch,” Lesaguris said. “These are good, simple people. Arikayurichi wanted to destroy it, and he was wrong. It was lucky for him, and for you as well, that you had an ancient in your midst who could see a gentler course.”

He looked over and nodded, and a golem stepped up onto the podium. In its hands, it held Ghylspwr.

“Kun-kabynalti osu fuir’is,”
Ghylspwr said.

Loch shook her head. “Screw you, Ghyl.”

“He saved you,” Lesaguris went on, still polite, “and thanks to him, we have this Republic. We have no intention of destroying it, Loch. There will be no rivers of blood, no cities on fire.” He smiled. “We’re just going to change who’s in charge.”