A Prince Among Men Part 30

"There's a catch, isn't there? There's always a catch."

The knight laughed lightly. "You have been listening to too many stories told by humans. They harbor a most unkind prejudice. Would you like to try another spell?"

John nodded.

"There is very little that an untrained mind can initiate, but by the strength you have shown, I judge that you might be able to hold a spell that another casts. Would you like to try that?"

"What kind of spell?"

"An imaging."

"Okay."

"Good. Close your eyes again, and think of someone you would like to see. Think of someone you know well. Someone for whom you have strong feelings. Your best friend, perhaps. I will draw the image from your mind."

John thought of several people, but his thoughts kept flitting back to Faye. Whom else did he know so well?

"Ah, there. I have it."

The knight took John's right hand in both of his and turned it palm up. The elf s hands felt as though they were studded with a billion tiny needles.

"Do you feel the energy?"

How could he not? "Yeah," he whispered.

"Let emotion guide you as I release the spell to you; the strength of your feelings will aid what we do."

The knight took his hands away, but the p.r.i.c.kly feeling remained.

"Open your eyes and see what we have conjured," he said.

John looked. Without a doubt it was Faye's image, but unlike the knight's earlier image of Bennett, this one was full figure. A tiny Faye stood stark naked on John's palm. John gaped at what his imagination had supplied. The image rippled and was gone as the magic fled his shattered concentration.

But for all the embarra.s.sment the image caused him, it had brought wonder and joy as well. He had done magic. It was like a dream come true, and he wanted to shout with delight.

He was an elf, and he could do magic! The knight seemed pleased by John's foolish grin.

"This is but the faintest shadow of what is yours by birthright. You have but to claim it."

"How do I do that?"

"First, you must put away all that you have known. Now is the time for you to think of your future. You must come to your life in this realm with open arms, forgetting your life in the earthly realm."

Suddenly the dream seemed a little tarnished. "What about my friends?"

"They must go on without you. You came here without them; you have shown that you do not need them anymore. Soon you will understand that you never needed them. Ephemeral humans can lay no claim to an elf."

"Ephemeral?"

"You will see them wither and die while you enjoy the eternal moment of your own nature. Forget them . Ultimately they can mean nothing to an elf. Put your hands between mine and swear."

John looked at the narrow hands, the long tapering fingers. They were hands like his, fingers like his. Like the knight, he was an elf. Who better to teach Mm than another elf? But- "What about my mother?"

"She is dead."

"That's what he said. But I meant my earthy mother."

"She is nothing."

Something in John couldn't accept that. Sure, John was an elf; but he was John Reddy, too. He wasn't ready to abandon his past. "I don't think I ought to sign on with you just now."

"You reject me?" the knight asked with a chill of winter in his voice.

"I just don't think the time's right. Maybe we could work something out later."

"You are a fool! Unworthy of my teaching." The knight sneered at him. "If you leave this place, you will never know true magic."

John felt his own anger rise. "How do you kno-"

Something flashed behind John's eyes, and for a moment he was blind. He panicked, flinging his arms up as though to ward off a blow. To his surprise, nothing came at him. Then he realized that he should have struck his goblet from the chair in his flailing. His sight cleared and he saw that he was no longer in the knight's hall. He sat alone on a rock in an empty field.

Of the knight and his tower there was no sign.

CHAPTER.

22.

Don't panic! Panic gets you dead.

Holger listened again.

Nothing. Try as he might, he could hear nothing and no one moving in the fog. The only noise, the soft rustle of cloth, came from Spae fidgeting annoyingly by his side. She was only willing to put up for so long with his demand for silence.

"Well?" she demanded.

"I don't hear any of them."

"We already knew that."

"Doctor, I think it would be wise to use a tether."

"I know you don't like being a watchdog; I would have thought you'd have even less liking for a leash."

"I am concerned for your safety, Doctor."

"We should have waited for Bennett."

"A moot point now. We should try to find some shelter before this chill saps our strength too far. Are you ready to start walking again?"

"All right," she agreed grumpily. "But no tether."

They set out again. Thie fog-bound world remained eerily quiet, the silence broken only by the sounds they made themselves. It was unnatural, disquieting, but strangely appropriate; the impenetrable fog made a fine metaphor for this magical place of nightmare. Fog was something you couldn't fight.

Holger desperately wanted to be somewhere else.

After an indeterminate period of time-he'd stopped relying on his chronometer when it told him it was noon while he could still see the moon in the star-filled night sky-they found a wall of stone. In the wall was a dark doorway offering access to some respite from the clammy mist. Holger flashed in a light and saw nothing extraordinary or dangerous, just a bare chamber where the fog was less dense. Another door across the room offered pa.s.sage deeper into the structure. The curling tendrils of vapor that wafted in from the archway in which they stood did not seem to reach so far in. The room beyond might actually be free of the clinging mist.

He crossed the chamber to check it out. The s.p.a.ce through the second doorway was a corridor rather than a room, its length sufficient to swallow Holger's light without revealing anything of note, including its other end. Not wise to stop here without knowing what was at the other end.

"We'd better give a look about before we rest, Doctor."

"Expecting an ambush?"

"I'm not expecting anything. I'm just being cautious."

The corridor went on for some distance, far enough that the doorway through which they'd come disappeared into the gloom. It was quiet here too, but at least there were proper echoes.

Still, there was something about this place.

He craned his head around, looking for some clue as to why this place should feel familiar. He got his answer as he turned and saw Spae reaching for a meter-long, greenish crystal cylinder that sat on a half-meter plinth of bloodstone. He knew this place now. He'd seen that cylinder before, seen the dark shape embedded in it, seen hands reaching for it.

Panic swelled in his throat, binding his limbs. It was almost too late. He fought it down, trying to warn her.

"Freeze, Doctor. Don't-"

It was too late.

Spae's fingers touched the crystal and virulent green light bloomed around her, encompa.s.sing her as the crystal surrounded its dark heart. Like that heart, she was still as stone.

Holger felt panic gnawing at his spine. Spae was frozen, as O'Connor had been. It was just like before, except it wasn't. He knew it couldn't be like before because Mannheim was dead, had been dead for three years now. And the d.a.m.ned crystal was smashed. Thoroughly, utterly destroyed. He'd made sure of that. "Destruction of a unique treasure," the specialists had said. And they meant unique, not simply rare, of that they had a.s.sured him. "Deplorable," they'd said.

But they hadn't been here-no! there-and the d.a.m.ned crystal shouldn't be here. But it was here. And Spae was trapped as thoroughly as O'Connor had been.

His nerves felt jagged, rubbed raw with broken gla.s.s. Everything around him stood in stark relief, like video effects without adequate dimensional compensation. The light from the faceted crystal threw Spae's lean shadow against walls and floor in sharp-edged, multiple images of his inadequacy.

But: one of those shadows was neither acute nor thin. Nor was it rigid. Hoiger's eyes tracked the motion as he calculated angles. Locating the apparent position of whatever cast the shadow, Holger turned toward it, machine pistol ready.

There was something there. A presence of some sort.

He almost tightened his finger on the trigger, but stopped himself. Whatever this was, it hadn't been there before. Maybe it could help Spae.

"You are unusually perceptive, for a creature of the dirt," said a disembodied voice.

No, not disembodied, for as his eyes adapted to the gloom away from Spae's glowing prison, Holger began to perceive a form. It was transparent as gla.s.s, its outline easier to see than any details; it was roughly man-sized and man-shaped, but it was no man, transparent or otherwise. Its shoulders were humped and its lupine head thrust forward from the ma.s.s where the hulking shoulders met the ma.s.s of its neck. It was furred, and he could not tell if it wore any clothes. Despite its speech, he could think of it only as a beast.

Beast or not, the tint of green he perceived in the translucent creature matched that in the crystal, suggesting that it was somehow connected to Spae's entrapment.

"Release her," Holger demanded.

"You a.s.sume me capable of things beyond my power," the beast said. "For this moment, she must remain as she is."

Holger raised the Viper to his shoulder and snapped on the laser sight. The red targeting dot appeared on the wall behind the beast, but he put that from his mind and aimed as best he could. "I said, let her go."

"Threatening me will change nothing. Besides, if I were the key to her release, as you seem to believe, hurting me would not help her." Sharp teeth glinted in the gloom. "Time is the issue here, and time holds us all prisoner. An individual may only contrive escape for himself. You would do well to consider your own situation, for this locus is far more yours than hers." The beast s.h.i.+fted, but its motion was not threatening, so Holger didn't fire. "Time flows strangely here in the otherworld; and with time fluid, s.p.a.ce must perforce follow. Moving in one is moving in the other. All is connected, though the paths may not be obvious. Do you remember this place?"

"Gibraltar." Hearing the truth in his own voice, he lowered the weapon from his shoulder. Sweat forming on his brow, he switched off the targeter. "The tunnel the workers found beneath the old armory."

"You remember it very clearly," the beast said.

Holger heard the soft pad of footfalls approaching from the darkened end of the corridor. His hands itched where flesh touched the warm plastic grips of the Viper. He knew what he would see if he turned around. He didn't want to look, but knew that he had to. Pivoting slightly, he kept his weapon pointed toward the beast while he turned his head to get a view of the corridor behind him. He saw what he had feared he would see: himself, moving cautiously along the corridor. O'Connor was right behind, gawking around like a tourist. Though Holger's image was as insubstantial as the beast's, O'Connor looked real and solid.

Had Holger come back to that time?

O'Connor and the ghostly Kun stopped next to where Holger stood. For the first time they saw the plinth and its deadly, deceptive burden. Apparently they couldn't see Spae pinned in the lambent light. The transparent Kun kept watch while O'Connor circled the waiting trap, examining it.

O'Connor was a specialist like Spae; he was the one supposed to deal with the weird stuff. Knowing about things like the crystal was his business. Holger's job was the physical security; and true to his training, the ghostly Kun steadfastly stood guard. Finally, inevitably, O'Connor stepped to where Spae stood and his hand reached out.

"No!" Holger wanted to shout, but the warning stuck in his throat. How could you change what was?

Hand overlaying Spae's hand, O'Connor's fingers contacted the crystal. Light flared, as it had. As it had. The floor shook, and deep rumblings growled through the surrounding stone. The floor around the plinth dropped away, making a moat of dust-filled darkness around the double-imaged, trapped mages.

"You know what's happening now, don't you?" the beast asked.

The words shocked into Holger's brain. He knew. He knew all too well.

Mannheim.

Mannheim always said you couldn't change anything you didn't tsy to change.

He hadn't been standing here watching himself stand in shocked paralysis before. That, at least, was difference. Maybe more could be different. Since Holger was here, maybe he could change it. How could he not try? Holger turned and ran down the corridor. Behind him, he knew his image would still be staring in shock at the changes in the chamber.

Too slow, Kun. Too stupid.

Ahead of him the stone barriers were closing to block the archway; one falling from above, one rising from below. The s.h.i.+fting f.l.a.n.g.es ground to a halt as he reached them. Last time they had already been jammed when he reached them. The granite teeth of the upper and lower panels, fangs in a closing mouth, gaped open less than half a meter from full closure. He skidded to a bruising halt against them.

He stuck his head through to look down the corridor that had been there the first time, not the room through which he and Spae had pa.s.sed. Mannheim lay where he and O'Connor had left him, wrapped in the thermal sheet, shocky but still alive. Mannheim's blood spattered the stone redly where the trap had caught him. The thing hadn't arrived yet. There was still time. Holger tossed his Viper through and started to squirm between the teeth. The pouches of his vest snagged, but he shoved harder until something gave with a rip, allowing him to force his way through.