I DELIBERATELY chose Ways where the traffic would be anywhere between light and nonexistent—preferably nonexistent. So when I crossed paths with a traveler, and a familiar traveler at that, I felt some measure of surprise and concern. I kept my distance. I didn’t want the driller worms to awaken prematurely, hungry for any gadgets Vayne might have concealed.
He had stopped in the Road to wait for me. He did not smile. “Zethus. I am pleased to see that reports of your death were premature.”
“Knight Commander Vayne. What brings you out this way?”
“I had thought to have a conversation with a bounty hunter. Jack Duncan. I heard that he might have been involved in your death.”
I smiled. “He was. He made some bad decisions. He won’t have the opportunity to make them again.”
Anthony Vayne cocked his head. “Ruthless of you, Zethus. You’re changing.”
“Not really. I’m just adapting. Being hunted tends to purify a man’s goals nicely.”
“You’re still hunting for Corvinus’s killer.”
It hadn’t been a question, but I nodded anyway.
“Be careful.”
I lost my smile. “I’m particularly careful these days.” I stepped nearer. “Don’t worry about me. I’m close now. I know why Corvinus was killed. Pale had that much right. He was killed because of what he was working on. I just need a little more time, and a little more information, and I’ll have the proof I’m looking for. Enough proof for me, at any rate.”
Vayne’s eyes narrowed. His face hardened. “Are you pursuing the Raven’s research?”
“A bit further,” I admitted. “But I don’t plan on going all the way with it. It sounds too dangerous.”
“It’s proved to be fatal to him already. You could drop it all, you know. Leave CrossTown behind.” He studied my face as he spoke.
“No I can’t.” My face had become a mask.
He sighed. “I know.”
I laughed suddenly. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve made it this far. I’ll see this thing through to the end.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He softened the words with a melancholy smile. “Do you want company?”
“No.” I said it slowly. “You’re a well-known associate of mine. And you’d be missed if you were gone too long. You must have had one hell of a time losing all of the surveillance that had to be on you as it is. No reason to take any unnecessary risks.”
“Suit yourself.”
I gave him a lopsided smile. “I usually do.”
“You always have.” He walked past me and faded into a haze of directed possibility.
I continued along the Way I had chosen, thinking about how long I had known Vayne. When I had first crossed over on the back of an errant WanderWay in pursuit of a fleeing spirit, I had been reduced to surviving on the fringes of CrossTown, eking out a living as a sorcerer, but without the knowledge of the Ways needed to earn a true place in CrossTown society—and without the knowledge to return home. I met Vayne then, pulling him out of a particularly nasty situation involving a ghost, a bell, and something that looked like a black dog but wasn’t.
When Vayne found that I had no desire to return home without the ability to find my way back to CrossTown, he introduced me to the Raven, who happened to be a Master of the Ways, among other things, and who also happened to be in need of an apprentice. Vayne had known me almost as long as I had lived this new life, over fifty years in subjective time, according to the numbers of rejuvenation treatments I had taken since then. I had no idea how long it had been for him, but he hadn’t changed much in all that time.
I had though. I’d seized the opportunities open to me. I’d cleaved unto CrossTown’s myriad offerings. I’d embraced immortality, at least in the small pieces I had been able to grasp thus far. I had held on to my skills and training as well as I had been able, though even I had begun to wonder about that. My habits were well known. My Legion had been used at least once to attack me.
I had been a sorcerer since I’d left my home and my brother and took to the Road, herding spirits instead of beasts, making my way by my will and my wits rather than my back. I had never thought of my captive Legion as anything but a set of tools to be used. But I had been perhaps more badly shaken at Bane and Shadow’s defections than I wanted to admit to myself. I had come to know them. What had seemed only right, in all the time before the Legion had split, now raised a taint of foulness in my mouth.
Sapienta had said nothing good about her late master. Why did that surprise me? Why did I care?
What would I be without them? If I continued to embrace change, what would I become? When would I lose myself in the changing? Even then, I could not help but wince as I thought of the longing I had heard in Bright Angel’s voice when she spoke of freedom. Could I continue to hold them? Particularly if I held them only out of the fear that letting them go would mean losing my grip on my own past, and on myself?
Deep in thought, I hadn’t traveled far when I felt the Way twisting, reverberating with sudden movement. I paused, extending my senses, for a moment wondering if Anthony Vayne was returning to tell me something, when I parsed out at least four different sources closing in on my location. I seized the reins of possibility and fled through the most devious routes I could find, toward more populated Ways where I could lose myself among myriad travelers. I didn’t move quickly enough, however, or they were more prepared than I had expected, for wherever I went, it seemed that more pursuers appeared.
As I fled I cursed the luck of it. Obviously Vayne had not been as free of surveillance as he had thought. I only hoped that he had not traveled so far that he had no inkling of my situation. I had a feeling that I would need all the help I could get. I sought out my store of driller worms, just in case, and eased a handful into my closed fist.
Probes came crawling down the lengths of the Ways, isolating and tracking me. The probability waves of my hunters converged toward me. The probes increased. As I felt them crawl closer, long and sinuous and decidedly reptilian in aspect, the hairs on the back of my neck stirred in atavistic reaction. I had a good idea who my hunters were, and that didn’t make me terribly happy. They would be motivated.
Then one of my adversaries managed to intersect my path and I understood for the first time how devoted the Whitesnakes had become to taking me down. As I had suspected, they had sent their own out after me. From the lightly striated robes, this boy appeared to be a high acolyte or a wandering priest. He raised clawed hands and gestured, but the White Wolf broke his forking lightning strike into sputtering fragments. I felt every hair on my body stand upright as I caught the Whitesnake’s gaze and cut his will off from his body.
He swayed, the vertically slit pupils of his inhuman eyes wide and unseeing. Two more came into view then. I sent Blade after the first. The second raised a pistol. I threw my handful of driller worms at him. They exploded in midair, long, thin shapes elongating to coil down over the pistol with hungry eagerness. Two more snaked inside his robe. Evidently he’d been carrying more gadgets. He forgot all about me. He dropped the pistol and started dancing around, shucking the robe.
I grinned. Then I heard a soft report and felt a sensation akin to a swarm of ants biting me all over the surface of my back.
I yelped and turned to look behind me, but my legs had acquired the consistency and firmness of whipped cream. I fell, my clouding vision filled with the sight of another Whitesnake in a dark robe holding a long-barreled pistol in his hands and smiling. I recognized the weapon as a tranquilizer gun. I had a moment of despair. They had decided to take me alive.
Then I fell away into darkness, even the voices of my Legion lost in the silence.