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VII. darvell: darplex; the citadel
the void

Llannat screamed as the currents of power, around her warped and twisted. Dark sorcery pulled at her, dragging her someplace she couldn’t see, couldn’t understand. She fought back in the only way she could, struggling to ride the flow of the currents even as the sorcerer kinked and knotted them.

The wrenching and pulling came to a peak and stopped. Llannat opened her eyes and looked around.

The alley, and everything in it, had vanished. She and the Mage stood in a place of grey mist; no zenith, no horizon, no ground underfoot. The creature that ranged itself alongside her adversary seemed to be made out of mist as well—darker and more solid than the rest of this place, but just as featureless and shifting.

The thing lashed out at her with a whiplike extension of its body. Llannat blocked. The shadowy flail dissipated as her staff hit it, but already another pseudopod was coiling out to strike her on the side of the head.

The scalding, unexpected pain almost blinded her. She counterattacked by reflex, her staff passing through the arm as if through mist. The agony receded, leaving her light-headed and slow. She took a long step backward and away from the hovering creature.

The Mage swung his short ebony staff up into a whirling strike against her ribs. She knocked the weapon aside, but her counterattack dissolved in searing pain when another of the shadow-creature’s misty arms looped out and curled around her torso. She cried out and twisted away.

“The creature follows you,” said the Mage. “I willed it so—and here in the Void, what I will becomes what is real.”

Llannat took one more step backward, and came to guard. She had to fight now; she had no choice. Already she could feel the emptiness of the Void sapping her energy, as the place would ultimately drain the energy from any living thing that traveled through it, but the Mage’s creature made matters even worse. Her body ached wherever the pseudopods had touched, and energy flowed out from those touches like blood from a wound.

She gripped her staff tighter, and ran in toward the Mage. He met her with his own staff upraised. She beat on it with all the strength of both arms, and his guard came down.

She started the blow that would smash his skull, and aborted it as the Mage’s creature flung out another pseudopod. She ducked under the whip of grey-black fog, but even the near-miss left her stinging all over.

I can’t afford to take hits from that thing, Llannat thought. She blocked against another flailing extrusion and dissolved it into grey rags, blocked a blow from the other staff, and dodged the stroke of a third pseudopod almost as an afterthought. But I can’t touch its master unless I do.

She steeled herself to make another assault. But something new touched her awareness, and she held back.

More Magelords? she wondered, dodging and parrying by reflex. But the auras she’d caught didn’t feel like Mages at all, and she felt a surge of renewed hope. If I can just get to them . . . in a place like this, even neutrals count as friendly.

Llannat broke away and ran.

Ahead of her, emerging from the mist, she could make out three figures: a man and a woman, guiding a third person between them. The man paused, with the distinctive stillness of one who reads the patterns and currents of power, and halted his two companions with a gesture.

A glance over her shoulder showed Llannat that the Mage had started running also, narrowing the gap between them. His creature drifted with him, a pace or so ahead.

Llannat ran faster, expending energy at a reckless rate. She could feel the Void drawing more life-force out of her with every breath, but if she didn’t reach the strangers and find help, none of that would matter anyhow.

Something grey and snaky curled down over her shoulder in a lazy looping motion. She dropped and rolled away from the pseudopod’s caress, but two more ropes of living mist whipped out and caught her by waist and ankle as she came up.

Pain-blinded, she struck out at the shadow-creature’s body. The misty substance thinned a little, but not enough. Before she could strike again, a third pseudopod lashed out and caught her right arm by the wrist.

Her staff fell from her hands. Then, suddenly, two of the strangers stood over her.

One, the woman, carried a Magelord’s short ebony staff, but wore an Adept’s formal black. The man with her was dressed like a mechanic or a spacehand in a worn grey coverall—but he bore the staff of an Adept, and his aura shone with the blinding white of a captured star.

They’re Adepts! she thought, exultant, even as the man called to her, “Get back!”

She staggered away, and felt herself falling. Somebody caught and supported her—the third stranger, unarmed and holding away from the melee. Llannat got a fleeting impression of someone unknown but somehow not unknown, muffled to the eyes in a hooded cloak of heavy white wool.

A friend, at least, she thought. But I know the others. I know them both.

The male Adept faced the Mage, their fight swirling before her as if they were partners in a deadly dance. Owen Rosselin-Metadi had still been an apprentice the last time she’d seen him, but there was no mistaking that aura, or the fluid economy of his technique. And the woman—shorter than Owen, and darker—whose staff kept the shadow-creature and its pseudopods at bay . . . Llannat had seen her before, too.

Every time I pass a mirror, she thought. But she’s older than I am . . . and Owen’s different too, somehow . . . .

“Don’t worry, child,” the stranger said. “Leave the Mage and his pet to them. It’s time you went back. Ari needs you.”

The stranger’s voice was comforting, and oddly familiar. Llannat relaxed against the rough fabric of the woolen cloak, and her eyes closed. She thought that she felt a hand stroking her hair . . . and then there was sunlight beating down on her face and hard ground under her back.

“Llannat,” a voice was calling in her ear. “Llannat, we have to go now, Wake up, Llannat. Please wake up.”


Ari drew his breath in through his teeth. He felt another jab of pain from his cracked rib, and ignored it. He’d taken worse from the sigrikka he’d killed on his Long Hunt, and the sigrikka hadn’t smiled and called him “brother,” either.

He growled in his throat, a wordless sound of disgust. He’d been fighting like a thin-skin all along, when this smooth-voiced betrayer didn’t deserve that much consideration.

*That does it,* Ari said in the Forest Speech, and took a step forward. *I’m through with play-fighting. Now I’m going to kill you.*

He took another step, and Estisk drove in a punch at him. This time, Ari didn’t waste time blocking it. He let it smash into him, ignoring the pain, and kept on moving forward.

Estisk punched him a second time, and a third. Then Ari was inside the Darvelline’s reach and grabbing the false Quincunx man by the collar with his left hand. The Darvelline struggled, fighting to slip the hold. Ari twisted the handful of fabric tighter and slammed his right fist into the other man’s stomach with all the strength of his back and shoulders.

Then, like a sigrikka in a killing fury, he shook Estisk twice with neck-snapping force and flung the Darvelline away from him into the front door of the tool-issue point. The wooden panel burst outward under the impact.

Ari went out between the hanging splinters. Estisk lay on his back in the street, dazed and blinking.

Ari reached down and pulled the Darvelline upright. “On your feet, you bastard.”

Estisk swayed, but stayed up. Ari’s cracked lips curved into a grin.

“Good,” he said, knotting his hands together like a club. “I’m not done with you yet.”

On the last word, he brought his locked fists up from his hips, smashing them against the side of the other man’s head with an impact that split the skin over his knuckles and lifted the Darvelline clear off the ground. Estisk staggered, going down on one knee for a second, and hauled himself back upright.

Ari swung his clenched fists up from the other side. This time he heard bone crack as they connected. Again the Darvelline stumbled backward, but still he refused to go down.

Again and again, Ari pounded the other man, driving him step by step across the street. Not until Estisk reached the far side of the road, and his heels met the curb, did the big Darvelline fall at last and lie staring upward with eyes that did not blink.


I don’t think I like this, thought Beka.

The Professor held the short ebony staff in front of him. A glowing red aura surrounded him and reflected off the polished walls of the echoing reception chamber. Beka followed, blaster in hand, feeling superfluous—as she had felt ever since those last moments in the entry bay, when the Professor had run past the wreckage of the hovercar to a door she’d never even spotted, and opened it with one touch of his staff.

He’d taken the stairway beyond at a run, and she had followed him through a maze of corridors—all of them empty and lightless through what Beka uncomfortably thought might be the Professor’s sorcery.

This is the man who saved your neck back on Mandeyn, she reminded herself. The one who broke his arm for you in Flatlands Portcity. He’s on your side.

They kept on, always moving upward: up stairs, up ladders, up ramps, through rooms and along corridors. Nothing and nobody came out to stop them, but she still felt watched and followed by eyes she couldn’t see. From time to time the Professor would pause, point without explanation to a particular tile in the floor, then leap over it. Or he would throw an object through a door before entering it himself. She followed his lead—jumping where he jumped, pausing where he paused—and still her feeling of wrongness grew.

They made it as far as a large reception chamber somewhere in the Citadel’s upper reaches. There they stopped. Now the Professor stood in the center of the hall, turning first one way and then another. The scarlet glow that surrounded him made shadows move in the corners like living things.

He’s looking for something, Beka thought. And I think he’s found it.

The grey-haired Entiboran—or whatever he really was—raised his left hand. A circle of greenish flame sprang up from the floor in front of him. He said something, too low for Beka to catch the words, and a black shape appeared inside the fiery circle, shifting and elongating to become a black-robed figure. A mask hid its features, but it carried a short, silver-bound staff like the Professor’s own.

More sorcery, she thought. Now I know I don’t like this.

The Professor lowered his upraised hand. The circle of witchfire died, but the figure in black remained. Beka’s copilot walked forward into the shadowy form. It solidified, taking on outline and detail as the Professor’s white shirt and black trousers lost resolution, until the two were one.

“So you’ve come back at last.”

Beka whirled toward the unfamiliar voice, her blaster coming up in her hand, but the black-robed man standing at the far end of the hall never even gave her a look. She recognized the second man from the Rolny’s hovercar as he continued, “I told them that if I waited long enough, you would return.”

“Half a thousand years,” the Professor said, “is a long time to wait.”

“Not to avenge treason.”

“I suppose not,” the Professor said. Beka couldn’t see his face behind the immobile features of the molded plastic mask, but the familiar voice sounded weary, and a little sad. “Well, now I am here.”

“True,” said the stranger. He lifted his staff. A pale red-orange glow surrounded him, in contrast with the Professor’s deeper scarlet aura. “Guard yourself, traitor.”

The Professor brought his staff up into what Beka supposed was a guard of some sort. “And you do the same, my friend.”

“No friend of yours,” the stranger said. “Keep that word for the ones you serve.”

“As you will,” the Professor said. His staff whipped out at the stranger in a fiery blur.

The other’s staff caught and stopped it only inches from his neck. Then Beka, watching, saw a passage-at-arms such as she had never seen before—a fast-moving fight of advances and retreats, stamping feet and swirling black robes. The glowing auras wove a colored tapestry in the air about the two men as they fought, and arcing streamers of colored fire crackled like small lightning bolts, making the high-ceilinged reception room resound with their echoes. But the Professor was smaller than his adversary, and more slightly built; little by little the stranger seemed to gain the upper hand.

Beka gripped the Mark VI blaster so hard her fingers ached, watching her copilot’s blows come slower and slower while his blocks and counters made it with less and less time to spare.

I wish Owen could see this. Or Llannat. Maybe they’d be able to make sense of what’s going on. I certainly can’t.

She bit her lip, and concentrated on keeping the Mark VI trained on the stranger.

An opening came that she couldn’t see, and the stranger lunged. His staff struck the Professor full in the torso. The crimson aura died, and her copilot slumped to the floor in a puddle of black robes.

Beka raised her blaster and took aim.

A hand fell on her wrist, pressing the weapon downward. “Gently, Tarnekep,” murmured a familiar voice beside her. “Watch.”

Out in the center of the floor, the stranger bent over the fallen form. He removed the mask that covered the dead man’s face, and recoiled upward with a cry.

Beka felt the weight leave her arm. The Professor stepped forward and away from her, still dressed in the shirt and trousers he’d been wearing when all this started, his staff ready in his hand. The stranger saw the movement and turned.

“Surprised?” asked the Professor. “You shouldn’t be. You spent all your strength and passion in fighting yourself.”

The stranger gave a harsh laugh. “You always were good at illusions; that much hasn’t changed. But don’t worry. I still have enough strength left for you.”

The Professor raised his staff. His aura flared up in a blaze of red, far deeper and brighter than the stranger’s.

“We worked in the same Circle once,” her copilot said to the stranger. “You can still yield.”

“You betrayed our Circle!” shouted the other. “With you as First, we could have had the galaxy . . . and now look at us. Bodyguards for the likes of Nivome the Rolny!”

“An honorable profession,” said the Professor, “if you choose to make it so. Once more—do you yield?”

“No!” cried the stranger, and struck out.

The Professor beat the other’s staff aside, and lunged for his head. The other blocked, and the two men sprang apart.

If the fighting Beka had seen before had been deadly and beautiful, what she watched now had a vicious elegance that made the previous exchange look like a back-street brawl. She let her blaster fall to her side—the combat was moving too fast for her to keep the weapon trained.

Attack built upon attack, counterattack followed parry at a pace that never slackened. Both men were moving easily, and neither had been hurt; it seemed to Beka that the two of them might well keep up their duel forever, while the Citadel waited in some kind of suspended animation for them to finish.

Suddenly the fighting stopped. The two men froze, facing each other in guard. At last, the stranger lowered his staff. “You have won,” he said. “I admit defeat.”

The Professor lowered his own weapon as well. “Stay, then, and fight beside me again for old times’ sake.”

He tucked the staff back under his belt while he spoke. And as he did, the stranger raised his weapon and swung on the older man.

Beka cried out. Her blaster was down at her side, and the Professor, damn him, was right in the line of fire. But her copilot ducked under the staff as in came in, and caught the stranger by the shoulder with his left hand. With the other, he embraced his foe.

She finished her sidestep and took aim, then lowered the blaster without firing. The Professor pulled away his right hand to reveal a bloody knife.

The black-robed body sagged forward. The Professor caught the stranger as he fell, and the two men sank together to their knees. Tongues of pale green witchfire flickered about them both as the Professor cradled the other in his arms.

At length Beka walked forward. “Professor, we have to go. We have things to do.”

The Professor looked up. “What? Oh, yes.”

“We have to go,” she said. “Now. We have to find Nivome.”

“Nivome.”

“You remember,” she said urgently. “He killed my mother.”

“I remember,” said the Professor. His face was older than she had ever seen it—old, and tired. “Nivome has little enough time left, child; give him a moment more. This man was my friend, once.”

“I heard,” she said. “Do whatever you have to.”

She stood by, watching, as the Professor laid out the other man on the floor, folding the black-gloved hands around the ebony staff. The dying witchfire clung to the body, outlining it in eerie light, even after the Professor rose to his feet.

“That way,” he said. He pulled his own staff free of his belt, and pointed to an archway at the other end of the hall. “It’s not much farther.”

The aura surrounding her copilot was deep purple now; it gave only the faintest of illumination, and the air all about them was chill. Beka shivered inside her black velvet long-coat as she and her copilot walked together through the archway into yet another corridor.

Once outside the reception hall, the Professor shook off whatever emotion had been holding him in its grip. He strode along at a rapid pace, looking to right and left as if searching for something. He began to speak aloud as he walked, a thing he hadn’t done earlier.

“Along this way. Third turning, then up. Down the hall. Door on the left. Two rooms . . . ”

He stopped.

Beka looked at her copilot. His foot was touching a floor tile that had somehow sunk a quarter-inch below the level of the rest. Above that tile, a mechanical spear had thrust out of the wall on his right, and the bloodied metal tip protruded from his side. He looked back at her over one shoulder.

“My lady, I am sorry. I had hoped to be with you until the finish.” He glanced down at the spear, and a look of confusion passed across his features. “Oh, dear. I seem to have ruined my shirt.”

The staff dropped from his hand. The violet aura died, and the hallway was left in total darkness.

She couldn’t see anything. “Professor?”

Nobody answered.

“Professor!”

She grabbed blindly for his arm. It was limp and unresponding—no life there. She was alone in the heart of the Citadel, and the pitch-black darkness pressed around her.

Then the black ziggurat came to life like a giant waking. She heard the hum of electronics, loud after the long silence, as the light panels returned; then a whirring started, and the automatic cameras mounted at intervals along the ceiling switched on and began to track.

But she didn’t care; she didn’t care about any of it. She grabbed up the Professor’s fallen staff even though Tarnekep Portree had no use for such things, then raised her blaster and shot out the nearest spy-eye before it could come to bear.

“Third turning, then left,” she muttered.

Gently, Tarnekep, the voice of memory whispered in her mind.

“Gently, hell!” she snarled, and blasted another spy-eye as she ran forward. “If I see them, they die.”



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