Dealing with Middle Management II
ONE OF THE EASIEST and yet most effective offensive uses of sorcery involves simply grabbing as much energy from the Orb as you can handle without destroying yourself, channeling it through your body, and directing it at whomever or whatever you want to damage. The only defense is to grab as much energy as you can handle without destroying yourself and use it to block or deflect the attack.
It so happens that I’ve acquired a length of gold chain which, used properly, acts to interrupt any sort of spell sent against me, so I’m pretty safe from this kind of thing. But once, in the middle of a battle I should never have been in, I was hit from behind.
It felt like I was burning from the inside, and for what seemed like minutes I could feel veins, arteries, and even my internal organs burning. Every muscle in my body contracted, and I felt the muscles in my thighs attempt to break both of my legs and almost succeed. A Dragon warrior who was standing about fifteen feet in front of me was struck by an arrow at about that same time, and I spent minutes watching him fall over. I smelled smoke, and saw that it was coming from under my shirt, and realized with a horrible sick feeling that the hair on my chest and on the backs of my arms was burning. I knew that my heart had stopped, and my eyeballs felt hot and itchy. All sound vanished from the world, and returned only very slowly, beginning with a horrible buzzing, as if I’d been stuck in a bee’s nest. It amazed me that there was no pain, and amazed me even more when I realized that my heart had started beating again. Even then it wasn’t over, because for a while I couldn’t stand up; efforts to move my legs only made them twitch. When, after several minutes, I was able to stand, I remember trying to pick up my sword and being unable to, because trying to take a step toward it led me off in a different direction, and efforts to extend my hand caused it to reach somewhere I had not intended. It was twenty or thirty minutes, I believe, before the effect wore off, during which time I was in the grip of a terror the like of which I’d never felt.
Since that time, the memory has come back at odd times, and always very strongly. It isn’t like pain, which you don’t really remember—the incident was burned, and I think I mean that literally, into my brain—so sometimes all the sensations wash over me, and I can’t breathe and I wonder if I’m going to die.
This was one of those times.
The incident on Greenaere was the fourth time I’d been imprisoned. The first was the hardest, just because it was first, but none had been easy. By removing someone’s freedom of movement, you remove some measure of his dignity, and the thought of this happening to Cawti, to the woman whose eyes crinkled when she grinned, and who threw her head back when she laughed so her dark, dark hair rippled across her shoulders, to the woman who had guarded my back, to the woman who—
—to the woman who didn’t know if she loved me anymore, to the woman who was throwing away her happiness and mine for a pail full of slogans. It was almost more than I could stand.
“You all right, boss?” said Sticks, and I came back to an awareness of him, staring up at me and looking worried.
“After a fashion,” I said. “Get Kragar.”
I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. Presently I heard Kragar’s voice. “What is it, Vlad?”
“Shut the door.”
The latch, Kragar’s footsteps, his body settling into the chair, the rustle of Loiosh’s wings, my own heartbeat. “Find me detailed plans of the dungeons of the Imperial Palace.”
“What?”
“They’re below the Iorich Wing.”
“What’s going on?”
“Cawti’s been arrested.”
Abreak in the conversation stretching out to the horizon, infinite, timeless.
“You can’t be thinking of—”
“Get them.”
“Vlad—”
“Just do it.”
“No.”
I opened my eyes, sat up, and looked at him. “What?”
“I said no.”
I waited for him to continue. He said, “A few weeks ago you lost control and almost got yourself killed. If you lose control again you’re on your own.”
“I haven’t asked you—”
“But I’m not going to cut wood for your barge.”
I studied him carefully, my thoughts running quickly, although I don’t recall the substance. At last I said, “Get out.”
He left without another word.
I DON’T REMEMBER ANY nausea following the teleport to Castle Black, nor do I remember what Lady Teldra said in greeting when I came through the portals. I found Morrolan and Aliera in the front room of the library, where the chairs are the most comfortable and he most enjoys sitting. It is the largest of the rooms, but has fewer books than the others, with more room for browsing, sitting, or pacing.
Morrolan sat, Aliera stood, I paced.
“What is it, Vlad?” he said after I made a few trips past him.
“Cawti’s been arrested. I want your help in breaking her out.”
He marked his place with a thin strip of gold-inlaid ivory and set his book down. “I’m sorry she’s been arrested,” he said. “With what is she charged?”
“Conspiracy.”
“It isn’t specified.”
“I see. Will you have wine?”
“No, thank you. Will you help?”
“What do you mean by breaking her out?”
“What does it sound like?”
“It sounds like what we did to get you off of Greenaere.”
“Exactly.”
“Why do you wish to do that?”
I stopped pacing long enough to look at his face, to see if this was some form of humor. I decided it wasn’t. “She broke me out,” I told him.
“It was the only way to free you.”
“Well?”
“I would suggest, with the Empire, that we try other methods first. Her former partner is the Heir, after all.”
I stopped. I hadn’t thought of that. I allowed Morrolan to pour me some wine, which I drank and didn’t taste. Then I said, “Well?”
“Well what?” said Morrolan, but Aliera understood and excused herself from the room. I sat down and waited. We didn’t speak until Aliera returned, perhaps ten minutes later.
“Norathar,” she said, “will do what she can.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“I hope enough.”
“Had she known?”
“That Cawti was arrested? No. It seems there has been quite a bit of trouble in the Easterners’ quarter, though, and that group she’s in has been in the middle of it.”
“I know.”
“There are several such groups, actually, all over South Adrilankha, and the Empress is worried about the potential for destruction.”
“Yes.”
“But Norathar has some influence. We shall see.”
“Yes.”
I brooded for a while, staring at the floor between my feet, until Loiosh said, “Careful, boss,” at the same time Aliera said, “Who is ‘she’ and who is ‘he’?”
“Eh?”
“You just said something about why did she want him dead.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize I was speaking aloud.”
“You weren’t exactly, but you were broadcasting your thoughts so strongly you might as well have been.”
“I guess I’m distracted.”
“Well, who is she?”
I shook my head and went back to brooding, being a little more careful this time. Morrolan read, Aliera stroked a grey cat who had set up shop in the library. I finished the wine and refused a second glass.
“Tell me,” I said aloud, “where the gods come from.”
Morrolan and Aliera looked at me, then at each other. Morrolan cleared his throat and said, “It varies. Some are actually Jenoine who survived the creation of the Great Sea of Chaos. Others are servants of theirs who managed to adapt when it occurred and use its energy, either while it was happening or during the millennia that followed.”
“Some,” added Aliera, “are simply wizards who have become immortal, and acquired the power to exist on more than one plane at the same time.”
“Well, then,” I said, “how are they different from demons?”
“A matter of interpretation only,” said Morrolan. “Demons can be summoned and controlled, gods cannot.”
“Even by other gods?”
“Correct.”
“So if a god were to control another god, that god would become a demon?”
“That is correct. If we were to learn of it, we would begin to refer to that god as a demon.”
“It seems pretty arbitrary.”
“It is,” said Aliera. “But it’s still significant. If a god is just a force with a personality, it makes a big difference whether it can be controlled, don’t you think?”
“What about the Lords of Judgment?”
“What about them?”
“War,” said Morrolan, “or bribery, or from friendship with other gods.”
“Why do they want to?”
“I don’t know,” said Morrolan. “Do you, Aliera?”
She shook her head. “Why all the questions?”
“Something to talk about,” I lied.
“Do you wish to become a god?” asked Morrolan.
“Not particularly,” I said. “Do you?”
“No. I don’t care for the responsibility.”
I snorted. “To whom are they responsible?”
“To themselves, to each other.”
“Your Demon Goddess doesn’t seem particularly responsible.”
Aliera jerked upright, almost stood, and her hand almost went for Pathfinder. I drew back. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think you’d take it personally.”
She glowered at me for a moment, then shrugged, Morrolan looked at Aliera, then turned back to me and said, “She is responsible, though. She’s unpredictable, and capricious, but she rewards loyalty, and she won’t cause a servant to act in a way that will harm him.”
“What if she makes a mistake?”
He looked at me closely. “There’s always that danger, of course.”
I said no more, but considered what I’d been told. It still felt just a bit scandalous to be speaking of my patron goddess this way, as if she were a mutual acquaintance whose strengths and weaknesses of character we might bandy about for amusement. But if what they’d told me was true, then either she had some sort of plot going which would, perhaps accidentally, make everything come out all right, or else something had screwed up at, let’s say, a very high level.
Or Morrolan and Aliera were wrong, of course.
Lady Teldra appeared at the door and announced the Princess Norathar: Duchess of Ninerocks, Countess of Haewind, et cetera, et cetera, and Dragon Heir to the Throne. Not as tall as Morrolan, not as strong-looking as Sethra, yet she had a grace about her movements.
Ex-assassin was left out of the list, but as an assassin, she had worked with Cawti as part of one of the most sought-after teams of killers in the Jhereg, hard as that was to believe listening to either one of them now. I knew something about her skills as a fighter; she’d killed me once.
Norathar walked over to the tray of strong liquors, found a brownish one that she liked, and poured herself a tumbler full. She took a good third of it off the top and stood facing us. She said, “The Empress has given leave for the Lady Taltos to be released. The Lady Taltos has refused.” She sat down then and had some more of her drink. Loiosh, on my right shoulder, squeezed with his talons.
“Refused?” I said at last, in what I think was a steady voice.
“Yes,” said Norathar. “She explained that she would wait with her companions until they were all free.” I could now hear the strain of her voice, as she worked to speak clearly and calmly. She was a Dragonlord down to her toes, like Morrolan and Aliera, and in the time since she’d been made the Heir, she had changed, so these days she seemed more tightly controlled than either of them. But now this control was frightening, as if it only barely held in check a rage that could destroy Castle Black.
I noticed all of this with the back of my mind, as I concentrated on keeping my own temper in check, at least until I could decide at whom it should be directed.
Then, suddenly, I realized who that should be, and I said, “Lord Morrolan, you have a room, high up in a tower, with many windows in it. I would like to visit that place.”
He looked at me for a long moment before he said, “Yes. Go, Vlad, with my blessing.”
Left out the door, down the hallway to the wide, black marble stairway leading to the Front Hall. Down the stairs, out of the Hall toward the South Wing, then up, jog past the lower dining room, past the southern guest rooms, up a half-flight, turn around, around, through a heavy door that opens to my command, since I work for Morrolan and helped set up the spells that guard it.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, boss?”
“Of course not. Don’t ask stupid questions.”
“Sorry.”
Aroom all in black, lit by candles made from tallow from fat rendered from the hindquarters of a virgin ram, with wicks made from the roots of the neverlost vine, the whole scented with cradleberry, so the room smelled like the last dregs of a sweet wine just starting to turn to vinegar. Four of them were lit, and they danced to celebrate my arrival.
Artifacts of Morrolan’s experiments in witchcraft littered small and large tables, and his stone altar, black against black, was just barely discernible at the far end. Here I had lain helpless while Morrolan battled a demon that had taken his own sword from him. Here I had parlayed with spirits from my ancestral home for the release of the Necromancer’s soul. Here I had battled with my own likeness, come to take me to that land from which none return.
But never mind, never mind. I stepped onto the narrow, metal stairway, which twisted around and brought me at last into the Tower of Windows, where I had once tortured a sorceress into releasing the spells that prevented Morrolan’s revivification. That was pretty recent, and the taste of the experience was still in my mouth. But never mind that, either.
The surest way to achieve communion with Verra, the Demon Goddess, involves human sacrifice, which my grandfather had made me swear never to do. Yet I believe that if I had had the means at hand, I would have done so then. I looked about the tower, filled with windows which did not look upon the courtyard below, some of which did not look upon the world I knew, some of which did not look upon reality as I understood it. I tried to prepare my mind for what I was about to do.
I arbitrarily picked a window, a low wide one, and sat down before it. It looked out upon dense fog, swirling, through which I saw trees and tall shrubs, as well as quick movements that were probably small animals. I had no way of knowing if I was seeing my own world or some other, nor did it matter.
Loiosh settled onto my shoulder, and his mind merged more fully with my own. I went back to my earliest memories concerning the Demon Goddess, instructions from my grandfather in the proper rituals, tales of battles with other gods, especially Barlen, her enemy and lover. I remembered seeing her in the Paths of the Dead, her strange voice, and her multi-jointed fingers, and her eyes that seemed to see past me and into me at the same time. I remembered her when she had commissioned me to kill the King of Greenaere; was it only days ago?
As I remembered, and let myself be filled by the awe of the Easterner and the respect of the Dragaeren, it occurred to me that blood sacrifice may be carried out in more than one way. I took my dagger and sliced open my left palm, hardly noticing the pain. “Verra!” I cried. “Demon Goddess of my ancestors! I come to you!” I scattered droplets of blood through the window.
They vanished into the fog, which swirled and lightened, until in a few short moments it was a pure featureless white. This, too, seemed to shift, until I saw once more the hallway through which I had walked, following mist and a black cat. There were a few drops of blood on the floor.
I stood and stepped through the window.
Same hallway, same confusion of distance and dimension due to the featureless white. This time there was no black cat to guide me, however. I wondered which way to go, and I wondered, too, if it mattered. There was no window behind me. Loiosh shifted on my shoulder and said, “That way feels right, boss.” On reflection, it felt right to me, too, so I sheathed the dagger and began walking.
The mist never appeared, either, so perhaps that had been arranged for my benefit; the Demon Goddess seemed to me quite capable of theatrics. No mist, no cat, no sound, but the doors appeared much sooner than they had the last time. In a way, it would be oddest if that corridor really was just a corridor, of some fixed length, and it took however long to walk it depending on where one appeared.
This time, standing before the doors, I studied the carvings a bit. At first glance, they seemed to be abstract designs, yet as I looked I began to pick out or imagine shapes: trees, a mountain, a pair of wheels, what might have been a man with a hole in his chin, something else that might have been a fanciful four-legged beast with a tentacle where its nose ought to be and a pair of horns emerging from its mouth, perhaps an ocean below what I’d thought was a mountain but now seemed to be a stick supporting a circular blob.
I shook my head, looked again, and they were all abstract designs again. Who knows how much was there and how much I’d supplied?
For lack of anything else to do, I clapped at the doors and waited for one very, very long minute. I clapped once more and waited again. I still had my link to the Orb, and I thought of seeing if I could force or blow the doors open, but then I thought better of it.
“Good thinking, boss.”
“Shut up, Loiosh. Do you have any great ideas?”
“Yes. Strike it with your fists, like Easterners are supposed to.”
“And if there are defensive spells on it to destroy anyone who touches it?”
“Good point. There’s always Spellbreaker.”
I nodded. That was an idea. I stood there like an idiot a little longer, then sighed and let the gold chain fall into my left hand. I swung it around, then stopped. “Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea.”
“You have to do something, boss. If you’re worried about protections, hit it with Spellbreaker. If not, either strike it or just see if it will push open.”
I considered for a while, then got mad at myself for standing there like an idiot. Before I could come to my senses, I whirled the chain around and lashed out at the door. It hit with a clank of metal against wood which instantly died out. There were no sensations, I felt no sorcery, and, fortunately, Spellbreaker left no mark on the door.
I pushed the right-hand door, and it creaked a bit but barely moved. However, when it swung back, there was a gap between the two doors sufficient for my fingers. I pulled the door, which was as heavy as it seemed, and it slowly opened enough for me to slip inside.
As I walked forward, I saw the shimmer and sparkle in the air that I’d seen before at Verra’s appearance and disappearance. It occurred to me that perhaps that was how it would look to an observer when I stepped through to her realm.
In the time it took to form those thoughts, she had arrived. Her eyes followed me as I approached her throne, and when I got near, the cat, whom I hadn’t noticed against the folds of her white gown, jumped down and inspected me. Loiosh tensed on my shoulder.
“There’s something about that cat, boss . . . .”
“That wouldn’t surprise me a bit, Loiosh.”
I stopped at a convenient distance before her throne and waited to see if she would speak first. Just when I was deciding that she wouldn’t, she said, “You’re getting blood on my floor.”
I looked down. Yes, indeed, my palm was still bleeding, and the blood was running down Spellbreaker, which still hung from my left hand, and was slowly splattering onto the white tiles. I turned my palm over, and Spellbreaker came to life, as it has done every now and then before, to hold itself upright, like a yendi about to strike. There was a tingling in my hand then that ran up my arm, and as I watched, the cut stopped bleeding and closed up, leaving a faint pink scar.
I hadn’t known Spellbreaker could do that.
I carefully wrapped it around my left arm again and said, “Shall I scrub the floor for you?”
“Perhaps later.”
I looked for traces of humor on her long, strange face, but didn’t see any. I did, however, identify what made her face seem so odd: Her eyes were set too high. Not by much, you understand, but the bridge of her nose was ever so slightly lower on her forehead than on a human or a Dragaeran. The more I studied it, the stranger it seemed. I turned away from her.
“Why have you come here?” she said.
Still looking away, I said, “To question you.”
“Some might believe that presumptuous.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just that kind of guy.”
“Apparently. Ask, then.”
I turned back to her. “Goddess, I asked before why you chose me to kill the King of Greenaere. Perhaps you answered me fully, perhaps not. Now I ask this: Why was it necessary that he die?”
Her eyes caught mine and held them, and I trembled in spite of myself. If she was trying to intimidate me, she succeeded. If she was trying to convince me to withdraw the question, she failed. At last she said, “For the good of the people in the Empire, both Dragaerans and Easterners.”
“Bully,” I said. “Can you be more specific about that? So far, the results have been the death of the crew of a Dragaeran freighter and the arrest of several Easterners, including my wife.”
“What?” she said, her eyebrows rising. I don’t think I was really, truly frightened until then, until I realized that I had surprised her. That was when my stomach twisted itself into knots and my mouth went dry.
“The organization of which my wife is a member—”
“What of them? Were they all arrested?”
“The leaders, at least. This Kelly, my wife, several others.”
“Why?”
“How should I know? I suppose because they refused conscription, and—”
“Refused conscription? That fool. The whole point was—” She cut herself off abruptly.
“Was what?”
“It doesn’t matter. I underestimated this man’s arrogance.”
“Well, that’s just great,” I said. “You underestimated—”
“Quiet,” she said, snapping the word out like an arrow past my ear. “I must consider what to do to rectify my error.”
“Just what were you trying to do, anyway?”
She stared at me. “I do not choose to tell you at this time.”
I said, “It was all directed at Kelly’s people in the first place, wasn’t it?”
“Kelly, as I’ve said, is a fool.”
“Maybe, but judging by what happened before, he knows what he’s doing.”
“Certainly he does, in a narrow field. He is a social scientist, if you will, and a very skilled one in certain ways. He studied—it doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me.” I don’t know what got into me that caused me to start interrogating her like a button-man who’d been sloughing off, but I did it.
Her mouth twitched. “Very well. During the Interregnum, when your people—Easterners—roamed over the Empire like jhereg on a dragon’s corpse—”
“Yum.”
“Shut up.”
“—many vaults were unearthed that had lain buried and forgotten for so long that you cannot conceive of the time. Some of these were records preserved by the House of the Lyorn, who have the skill to preserve things that ought to be allowed to crumble away. Or perhaps we should not blame them—it’s been said that one cannot kill ideas.”
“What ideas were unearthed?”
“Many, my dear assassin. It was an amazing time of growth, those four hundred and ninety-seven years of interregnum. Sorcery was all but impossible then, so that only the most skilled could perform even the simplest spells. Conversely, this skill was passed on and retained, and taught to those whose interest ran in that direction. What was the result? Now, when the Orb is back, sorcery has grown so strong from the new skills that what was inconceivable before the Interregnum, and impossible during it, is now commonplace. Teleportation on such a level that some fear it will replace trade by ship and road. War magics so strong that some believe the individual fighter will soon become a thing of the past. Even resurrection of the dead has become possib—”
“What has this to do with Kelly?”
“Eh? My apologies, impatient Easterner. Things were discovered by your people, during that time, things that go all the way back to those who first discovered this world.”
“The Jenoine?”
“Before the Jenoine.”
“Who—?”
“It doesn’t matter. But ideas that have been preserved far too long, and from another place, lay dormant until then. And even when they were unearthed, no one understood them for nearly two hundred years, until this Kelly—”
“Goddess, I don’t understand.”
She sighed. “Kelly has his hands on the truth about the way a society works, about where the power is, and the cause of the injustice he sees. But it is truth for another time and another place. He has built an organization around these ideas, and because of their truth, his organization prospers. But the truth he has based his policies on, the fuel for this fire he is building, has no such strength in the Empire. Perhaps in ten thousand years, or a hundred thousand, but not now. And by proceeding as he has, he is setting up his people to be massacred. Do you understand? He is building a world of ideas with no foundation beneath them. When they collapse . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Why don’t you tell him so?”
“I have. He doesn’t believe me.”
“Why don’t you kill him?”
“You don’t kill ideas like that by killing the one who espouses them. As fertilizer aids the growth of the tree, so does blood—”
“So,” I said, “you decided to start a war, thinking they’d march off and forget their grievances so they could fight for their homeland? That doesn’t—”
“Kelly,” she said, “is smarter than I thought he was, curse him. He’s smart enough to destroy every Easterner, and most of the Teckla, in South Adrilankha.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Consider the matter,” she said.
“And what do you want me to do?”
“I’m sending you home at once. I need to consider this.” She gestured with her right hand, and I found myself, once more, before a window in Morrolan’s tower. The window looked upon the face of the Demon Goddess, who stared at me and said, “Try to stay out of trouble, will you?”
The window faded to black.