Debra Doyle & James MacDonald - Mageworlds 05 - The Long Hunt

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Prologue

Maraghai

The last part of the journey he had to make on foot.

He'd come a long way, beginning in the Eraasi Sector and finishing with a suborbital hop to the

long-range hoverbus that ran upcountry from Ernalghan-or South Landing, as the speakers of Galcenian

Standard would have it. Not even the locals bothered to call the loose collection of warehouses and

transport terminals a city, even though it was the second-largest built-up area on Maraghai. As far as

Mael could determine, nobody actually lived in Ernalghan. They lived outside of it, strung out along the

dozens of obscure roads and narrow footpaths that led away from the hoverbus route into the deep

wilderness that covered so much of this planet. The house he was looking for was a half-day of steady

walking beyond the last stop on the route.

He could have hired an aircar at South Landing-most people did-but he lacked the skill to fly

one. The Eraasi of his childhood had lost the means of making such vehicles in the aftermath of the First

Magewar. Mael could drive a ground-hugging flivver, and he could take a combat-equipped scoutship

into hyperspace and out again, but he'd never picked up the knack of handling the nullgrav-assisted

atmospheric craft that were commonplace on this side of the Gap Between.

He'd come to the opportunity too late, he supposed. He'd been a man full-grown when the

Second War ended and the barriers between the homeworlds and the rest of the galaxy came down at

last. He was more than happy to let the young people-the ones who remembered neither war nor

deprivation-enjoy the new technologies without him.

The walk was long, but not difficult for anyone who had grown up on Eraasi in the days of the

Republic's occupation. Mael wasn't young-his straight black hair had long since gone mostly to iron

grey-but he came of hardy stock, and kept a steady pace on the uphill path. This wasn't the first time he'd

made the journey from Eraasi to the house in the high reaches of Maraghai's southern continent, but it

was the first time in almost twenty years.

The passage had given him less trouble in those earlier days. Twenty years ago-the recent war

notwithstanding- most people on the Republic's side of the Gap Between had never met a genuine

Eraasian. More and more, however, prosperity and ease of travel were giving people the chance, and not

all of them had forgotten the war. Life spans were long on the Adept-worlds; some of the men and

women Mael encountered had memories that went back farther than his own, to the Sack of Ilarna and

the destruction of Entibor.

He might have experienced less trouble, he thought, if he had left behind the short ebony staff that

marked him out as not merely a Mageworlder, but a Mage in truth. But that would have felt disloyal, to

abandon the training of a lifetime-and the legacy of a friend and teacher-just to avoid hostile stares and

bureaucratic entanglements.

And Mael Taleion was, above all things, a loyal man.

Chapter I.

Maraghai; Galcen

« ^ »

Up on Graksha's Bluff the air was cool, but by late afternoon the sun had warmed the bare rock

to basking temperature. The wind that sighed and rustled through the trees on the slope below brought

with it a smell of conifers, sharp and resinous, underlaid with the dry granite smell of the mountain itself.

Jens Metadi-Jessan lay on his back half-dozing, his eyes closed against the brightness of the sky

overhead, and heard the faint scrape of boot leather on stone as his cousin Faral shifted position a few

feet away.

"Noisy, coz," he said without opening his eyes. "Too noisy by half."

"Be grateful I decided to wake you up gently, thin-skin."

"Your skin's no thicker than mine… what's up?"

"Company at dinner, I think," said Faral. "I spotted somebody down on the valley trail."

"Let's have a look."

Jens sat up and joined Faral near the edge of the bluff. The cousins were much of an age, but

otherwise resembled each other very little. Faral Hyfid-Metadi was dark-skinned, stocky, and heavily

muscled, with sleek, close-trimmed black hair. A polished animal claw almost a handspan long hung from

a leather cord around his neck. Jens, by contrast, was lean and fair-skinned, gone a pale biscuit golden

from the sun. His yellow hair, tied back with a scrap of rough twine, hung in a loose tail between his

shoulder blades. Like Faral, he wore boots and trousers, but-on this day in midsummer-no shirt.

From up on Graksha's Bluff, the valley trail looked like a darker line drawn against a background

of green. Now and again, a flash of sunlight reflecting off clear water marked where the stream at the

bottom of the valley ran parallel to the trail for a short distance before diverging again into the trees. A

group of black specks swirled upward from the tree-tops far away.

"Let me have a look," Jens said, and Faral passed him a pair of binoculars.

He watched the trail below for some time. "You're right," he said finally. "Something sure

disturbed all the rattlewings along that stretch."

"Something on the ground," Faral said, "and coming this way at a walking pace. Offworlder,

maybe.""Maybe," agreed Jens. The local fauna wouldn't disturb the noisy fliers, and none of the

neighbors-in the generous High Ridges sense of the word-would bother walking the valley trail. Most of

them lived far enough away to make taking an aircar more practical; the few who lived closer came and

went by hidden deep-woods tracks. Even somebody from elsewhere on planet would have known to

rent a tree-skimmer in Ernalghan. "I wonder who it is."

"Somebody who didn't send word ahead, that's who." Faral sounded disapproving.

"That lets out most of the people we know." Jens considered the possibilities for a moment.

"Maybe it's somebody who doesn't like talking on the public links."

"What kind of person is that?"

"A private one, at a guess. One of Father's relatives, maybe, if they wanted to be rude."

"What for?" Faral asked. "Mamma never notices-and Aunt Bee would give them hell if she ever

found out. Not even a Khesatan would go through all that trouble for nothing."

"You don't know 'em, coz. There's one or two in the crowd who'd slit their own noses if they

thought they could get at Father that way." Jens looked down again at the solitary figure on the trail

below. "But you've got a point. I can't imagine any of them going so far as to hoof it all the way uphill

from Ernalghan."

*If it's a blood feud,* cut in a third voice, *do I get to help out?*

The speaker was a young Selvauran female whose scaly hide was decorated in whorls of red and

blue body enamel. She scrambled up onto the bluff and unslung a bulging backpack from her shoulders.

Chakallakak ngha-Chakallakak- known as Chaka for short-stood over a head taller than Jens, which

put her at medium height for one of the Forest Lords, and her scales under the body paint were a mottled

bluish green. She set down the backpack and joined the two young men at the edge of the bluff.

"If I ever get in a blood feud," Jens promised her, "you'll be the first to know."

Faral, meanwhile, was eyeing the patterns in Chaka's body paint. *You get thrown out?*

Chaka grinned-courteously, with no teeth showing-and said, *Finally. I thought they'd never get

around to it.*

"We know how you feel," said Jens. "The elders haven't decided what they're going to do with

Faral yet, and it's been almost a year."

*Do like I did,* Chaka advised. *Pack your bag yourself and leave it sitting in the middle of the

floor until they get tired of walking around it and take the hint.*

Faral scowled. *I might… I've tried everything else. Any idea where you're going to go?*

*Away somewhere. There's no good fighting anyplace, worse luck.*

"Don't let Aunt Llann hear you talking like that," said Jens. "She already thinks you're a bad

influence."

Chaka laughed, a breathy hoo-hoo noise. *No, she doesn't. She just thinks that I make your

cousin act more like a Forest Lord than he already is.*

"Comes to the same thing."

"Not really," said Faral. "If Mamma didn't like Chaka, she'd have fixed it so that the wrinkleskins

threw her off-planet as soon as she was blooded."

Privately, Jens doubted that his aunt would ever make a tactical error of that magnitude-but Faral

and Chaka weren't likely to be convinced by his arguments. Older, wiser people than the two of them

had made the mistake of thinking that just because Llannat Hyfid was quiet and kindhearted, she didn't

have a firmness of purpose that the rocks themselves would envy.

When Aunt Llann decides that she wants Faral to go off-planet, he thought, the

wrinkleskins will trip over themselves to send him there. But not before.

Mael Taleion reached the top of the valley trail shortly before sunset. The path that led away

from it into the deeper forest was little more than a narrow track marked by white blazes cut into the

trees on either side.

He quickened his pace-the woods of Maraghai were no place for an off-worlder to linger at

night. The predators on this planet came in sizes to match the towering vegetation that covered the

mountain slopes all around him, and local custom held that none of them should be slain with any weapon

besides the hunter's own strength. Humans, being weak and thin-skinned compared to the dominant

Selvauran population, were allowed the use of knives and clubs in cases of dire emergency.

Mael didn't want to find out the hard way how dire the emergency had to be before a Magelord's

staff counted as a permissible weapon. Simpler by far, he thought, to avoid catching anything's

attention, and let the question go unanswered.

The sinking sun brought a rapid darkness under the great trees. The gloom made the trail harder

and harder to pick out, and the ground was by turns rocky and boggy underfoot. It would not do, Mael

reflected, for him to get lost. He took his staff from his belt and called the pale green witchfire to cling

around it. The blazes on the tree trunks glimmered with its reflected light, but the shadows it cast between

the stones and roots below were inky black, so dark that he couldn't tell whether they were truly

shadows or ankle-twisting potholes. The going got slower.

Then, off to the left, Mael saw another light flickering among the trees.

Is that the place? he wondered. Have I been going in the wrong direction all this time?

It was possible, he knew. He'd never followed this trail by night before. If he'd mistaken the way

in the dark, or missed a branching side path, then he might keep on walking far into the high country until

weariness or disaster overcame him. At the best, he'd have to backtrack, shamefaced, in the morning;

and at the worst…

The temptation to leave the path and strike out across country was almost stronger than he could

resist. He told himself that it was folly. He was no countryman, though his first teacher had been, but he

knew that anywhere off the trail he risked becoming stuck in a bog, or walking across the lip of a cliff. He

wished now that he'd waited overnight at the transit hub before starting, or that his legs had been younger

to carry him faster over the ground.

He walked onward. The night was deep; the wind made little whispering noises under the trees,

and Mael fancied he heard footsteps behind him that matched his own, and far-off voices calling out his

name. Anywhere else, he would have rejected such fantasies out of hand-but not here, and not when the

night had grown so thick with Power that a man need no more than half-close his eyes to see the threads

and colors of it like a tapestry against the dark.

The light off to the left was bobbing like a lantern or a hand torch. Mael halted and turned toward

it. "Hello!" he called out.

The light stopped moving for a few seconds, then changed its course to intercept him. Mael

wished that he had dared to walk abroad in the Adept-worlds in his proper garments, and not with his

staff alone. He would have felt safer wearing the enveloping robe that blurred all question of rank or

person outside the Circle, and the mask that narrowed the outside vision and made the threads of the

universe easier to find and grasp. He could see them now, the eiran-the silver cords of life and

luck-tangled and leading off in all directions.

And tarnished, some of them, which is a thing that should not be.

Which is a thing that the First must know.

The light drew closer. Mael saw now that it was coming from a man, a cloaked and hooded

man-but not from any light or lantern. Instead, the entire figure was glowing, and the tarnished cords

seemed to draw closer to the apparition and knot themselves around it. The man halted an arm's length

away at the edge of the trail, his face a shadow underneath the hood. Only his eyes glittered in the pale

green light.

The man spoke in the language of Eraasi. "What you seek to do, I will prevent."

He raised his hands and cast back his hood, and Mael saw that the face within was nothing but

an empty skull. Rotting shreds of flesh and patches of matted hair stretched across the bony cranium, and

the hands were skeletal and thin. But the eye sockets burned with their own lurid light.

Mael brought his staff to the guard before him. "Homeless one," he said. "Nightwalker. Go away

from here and trouble me no longer."

The ghost-man laughed and brought up his right hand to strike at Mael's face. Mael swept his

staff up and inward, blocking the attack. The polished ironwood of the staff passed through the man's

arm as if through fog, and the blow kept on coming.

At that moment, a scream sounded from the woods behind Mael. He half-turned, distracted from

the specter by the urgency of the cry-and saw, by the flickering light of his staff, a tall, fur-covered beast

rearing up, its gaping mouth lined with fangs, and in front of the beast a young, fair-haired man with one

hand buried deep in the creature's belly.

Man and beast stood together for an instant like a tableau. Then the youth pulled back his hand,

all black with blood in the pale green witchlight, and Mael saw that he had a heavy-bladed knife a double

hands-breadth long gripped in his fist.

The furry creature, man-tall, crumpled to the ground. "Rufstaffa," the young man said, wiping his

blade on the animal's fur before sheathing it. "They aren't all that dangerous, but the only way to kill one is

to go in through the diaphragm up to the heart, and the only time you can get there is when it's attacking."

He stuck out his blood-covered hand to Mael.

"I'm Jens, by the way," he said. "Aunt Llann asked me to come see if you'd gotten lost."

Mael returned the handclasp, feeling somewhat bemused. "You didn't happen to see another

man, standing over about there…?" He gestured. As he had expected, the apparition was gone.

Jens shook his head. "Just you. And we'd better get moving-that rufstaffa was trailing you for the

last three miles. Rufstaffas travel alone, but there's usually a slam of rockhogs following after."

"Rockhogs?"

"Scavengers. They aren't really dangerous either, but you don't want to be around them when

they get into a feeding frenzy."

He pulled a hand torch from his belt and flicked it on. In the clear white light, the path seemed

more open, and Mael could see his footing. The two set off together at an easy pace.

Mael followed his guide along the uphill path, sorting out the young man's names and lineage in

his mind as he did so: Jens Metadi-Jessan in the short form common among the Adept-worlders; by

Eraasian reckoning, syn-Metadi and sus-Rosselin both in his mother's line. He carried the weight of all

that lineage lightly enough. In his plain trousers and his leather soft-boots, he could have been a

backcountry youth from Mael's own homeworld-if somewhat taller and fairer than most.

"Mistress Hyfid knew I was coming?" Mael asked after a bit.

"So did everyone in the valley," Jens said. "The trail is easy to spot from up on the bluffs. Watch

it now, the path gets a little tricky here."

"Thank you," said Mael gravely. "It's discourteous enough of me to arrive on your doorstep

unannounced. To show up injured and in need of tending would be even worse."

In the mountain peaks of Galcen's northern continent, the air smelled of snowmelt and the first

hints of new growth.

Mistress Klea Santreny drew a deep breath, relishing the change in the atmosphere. Even after

more than two decades away from the warmth of equatorial Nammerin, she still wasn't wholly reconciled

to the winters here at the Retreat. Let others think that her preference for the high collar and the

close-buttoned sleeves of an Adept's formal blacks signaled an ingrained commitment to distance and

rigidity. Klea knew better. If she had an ingrained commitment to anything, it was to keeping warm during

the two-thirds of the year when the centuries-old stone-built citadel was-for everyone but the natives of

this windy and isolated district-damned near uninhabitable.

The Master of the Guild, she supposed, counted as a native. He'd come to the Retreat for

apprenticeship when he was still a boy, and had grown to manhood inside its walls. Klea knew before

she opened the door to his private office that he would have celebrated today's foretaste of spring by

abandoning formal garb for a lightweight coverall in dusty black… and never mind that it's going to be

snowing again by the end of the week, he's not going to switch back until next autumn.

She palmed the lockplate.

"You're right," she said as the door slid open, before he could make the remark she knew he

would; "it's a beautiful morning, and positively balmy outside as long as the wind isn't blowing. Of course,

the wind hasn't stopped blowing since the day I first came here, and that was back in '05, but what's a

minor detail like that among friends?"

Owen Rosselin-Metadi laughed under his breath. "What, indeed?"

The Master was working at his desk, a massive, domineering piece of furniture that only

grudgingly shared office space with three chairs and a Standard calendar. An overhead light panel, its

crude metal brackets dating back to the first time the citadel had undergone a conversion to more recent

technology, supplied the room with most of its illumination. The single window was a narrow vertical

opening that might at one point have been an arrow slit. These days, treble-thickness armor-glass

covered the gap.

Owen gestured at the more comfortable of the room's two empty chairs-the other was reserved

for unwelcome guests and errant apprentices-and went back to contemplating whichever piece of

business was currently occupying his desktop. Klea sat.

"So what's today's headache?" she asked.

There was always a headache, of one kind or another. Directing-however gently-the affairs of the

galaxy's Adepts took more comm time and comp time and paperwork than any one job ought, especially

for a man who would have been happy to spend his days teaching the apprentices and the junior masters.

In Klea's opinion, it was all Errec Ransome's fault, for selling out the Guild and betraying the Republic

and then handing everything over to Owen without bothering to clean up what he had done.

Dead over twenty years, she thought, and still screwing up everybody's lives for them.

Bastard.

If Klea Santreny hated anybody these days, it was the former Master of the Guild. But she was

careful to keep those thoughts well below the surface of her mind. Owen had loved his teacher-had

willingly done whatever tasks the Guild Master had set for him-and the knowledge of Ransome's

treachery had been hard for him to bear.

"The galaxy is behaving itself at the moment," he said in reply to her question. "It does that,

sometimes. Mostly so I can worry about my family, I think."

Klea pressed her lips together. The members of Owen's far-distant family were more than

capable, in her opinion, of handling their own problems without looking to the Master of the Guild for

assistance. But she'd made that argument, and lost it, too many times already. These days, she tried to

cultivate patience instead.

"What about your family?" she asked.

"That's a good question." Owen touched a spot on the surface of his desktop. "All I know so far

is that this showed up in the morning message traffic."

A display panel lit up the desktop where Owen had touched it: letters and numbers, routing

codes of some kind or another. Klea didn't recognize them. They weren't for the Retreat, she could tell

that much, or for any other place on Galcen that she knew of.

"Transmission glitch?" she asked.

"That's what I thought. But this was riding the wave along with it-don't ask me how, I don't do

that sort of work anymore."

He pressed another spot on the desktop. The routing codes vanished, and a voice-tense and

hurried; it could have belonged to either a man or a woman from the pitch-came on over the desk's

onboard speaker.

"I'm going to keep this short. I think this is a safe line, but you never know. Listen, Owen-

there's something nasty going. on with the Khesatan succession, and I want you to keep Jens the

hell out of it. I can handle everything else, no problem, as long as the kid stays clear."

The audio clicked off and the desktop went dim. Klea let out her breath. "Your sister, right?"

"Who else? Jens is her boy."

"I thought he was on Maraghai with your brother's family."

"He is," Owen said. "But that doesn't mean he's going to stay there. The law on Maraghai says

that once you're grown, you leave the homeworld-and Jens has been grown for a year now, by

Maraghite reckoning."

"Your sister thinks he'll head for Khesat when they kick him out?"

"She's afraid he will, anyway." Owen looked thoughtful. "I don't know what's happening on

Khesat… we haven't heard any rumblings from the local Guildhouses, so whatever's going on there hasn't

spread outside the nobility… but I expect we'll be getting word on the situation before long, if it's so bad

that Bee wants to steer Jens away from it."

Klea didn't need to ask whether Owen would fall in with the mysterious request. Beka was his

sister, and he had been schooled since earliest boyhood to follow her whimsies and keep her out of

trouble. Whatever she wanted, he would bend the universe itself, if necessary, to deliver.

"So what are we supposed to do?" Klea asked. "Fend him off from Khesat ourselves?"

"Fend him off or lure him elsewhere. As appropriate."

"Mmh." Klea gazed out the narrow window at a vertical strip of scenic vista: a shoulder of

mountain, a scrap of sky, a ragged wisp of cloud. Troublesome and high-spirited young men were a

problem she no longer had to deal with, thank fortune; the ones who came to the Retreat for training or

apprenticeship had invariably been through a few chastening experiences along the way. "So what are

you going to do with him?"

"Them," said Owen. "Jens has a cousin. Several, actually… but Faral is his agemate and

foster-sib. If one of them leaves the planet, so will the other."

Klea suppressed a grimace of distaste. At that age, they were even worse when they traveled in

pairs… "All right-so what are you going to do with them?"

"I can't do anything." He gestured at the desktop, and the dark surface lit up with an

eyestrain-inducing display of glyphs and icons and blinking response-requested message buttons. "And

that's just the ordinary stuff. It doesn't count whatever's brewing on Khesat-we're going to have to watch

that situation, in case the local Guildhouses are keeping quiet out of something besides ignorance or sheer

Khesatan perversity…"

He was sounding tired again. And she knew that more than anything else he feared the possibility

of local Adepts involving themselves in political conspiracies. In the old days before the Republic, the

Guild had earned a bad name for that sort of thing in some places-and the temptation hadn't gone away in

the decades since. Klea sighed.

"All right," she said. "You watch Khesat. I'll watch the boys."

Some twenty minutes after meeting with Jens, Mael saw the lights of the house shining out in

welcome through the trees. The house hadn't changed much over the years. The pillars that held up the

long veranda were as tall as ordinary trees back on Eraasi. Other parts of the house were trees, more of

the immense sky-tickling giants that made up the local forests. Warm yellow lantern-glow made the

veranda pleasant and welcoming, although the faint haze-effect of a force field let Mael know that casual

intruders-rockhogs and rufstaffas, perhaps-would not find an easy entrance.

Llannat Hyfid was waiting for them on the steps outside the force field. She hadn't changed much

either, as far as Mael could tell. She was still a small, dark-skinned woman, with features closer at first

look to plain than to pretty, although they had worn better over the years than some. Her black hair had

the streaks of early grey that came to so many of those who worked with Power, but her face was

almost as unlined as when Mael had first met her.

"Mistress," he began.

"Dinner first," she said. "Talk afterward. Jens, you go help Faral feed his sibs and send them off

to bed; I'll be in to say goodnight to 'Rada later."

The young man nodded amiably and vanished through the force field into the depths of the great

house. Mistress Hyfid called out, "And wash that blood off your hand before you go anywhere! I don't

want Kei or Dortan getting any ideas about going out hunting with the table knives!"

Mael suppressed a smile, and followed her up the steps. She led the way to a dining table set up

on an open porch illuminated by more of the lanterns. Her husband was waiting there for her, looming

almost as tall among the shadows as one of the Selvaurs themselves.

"Flybynights are running," Ari Rosselin-Metadi said as they approached. He gestured at the steep

slope out beyond the veranda, where shadows dipped and flitted in the clear air above the treetops.

"Shall I send the boys out to get some for dessert?"

"No," Mistress Hyfid said. "There's no need. Let's pour a drink to absent friends, then have our

dinner and get to business."

Ari nodded, and moved to a side table that held three tiny crystal glasses and a cut-glass

decanter of something purple. Ceremoniously, he filled the glasses and passed them round. Mael took

one, and breathed in a cautious sniff of the liquid's fumes. The scent was sharp and medicinal, and he

wondered what the Adept-worlders made it from.

"Absent friends," Mistress Hyfid said. She tossed back her drink, and Ari and Mael did the

same. The purple liquid had a sour, almost electric feel in the mouth. It was an acquired taste, Mael

supposed, though he didn't plan on working to acquire it.

The meal itself was plain but satisfying: a great deal of roast meat and steamed grain,

accompanied by thick slices of sweet, yellow-fleshed fruit. Mael found that his long walk upcountry from

the last pubtrans stop had left him famished. He ate heartily, finding the textures and flavors sufficiently

alien to be interesting but not-he felt certain the choice was deliberate-so strange as to be disquieting.

When they were all finished, Mistress Hyfid wiped the fruit juice off of her fingers with her napkin

and. laid the crumpled white fabric aside.

"I'm glad you could make it this far," she said. "I'm sorry I couldn't give you much of a reason in

my invitation, but it wasn't something I-"

"Mistress-" Mael experienced a sudden sting of anxiety.

"-you didn't call me here. I came on my own to ask for your advice."

She looked distressed. Her husband rumbled something in the Selvauran language; Mael

supposed he meant it for comfort and reassurance, but if so the effect was lost on a neutral observer.

"I sent messages," she said. "I even called in some old favors for the last one, and it went out by

personal post on a Space Force courier."

Mael shook his head. "No messages from you came to Eraasi while I was there."

"And when did you leave?"

"A month ago, planetary reckoning."

"Then at least one of the messages should have reached you," said Mistress Hyfid. "But if it

wasn't my summoning that brought you, why did you come?"

Mael paused a moment to gather his thoughts before presenting them. Llannat Hyfid was the First

of all the Mage-Circles, but she had been born on Maraghai and schooled in Power with the Adepts on

Galcen… much about the homeworlds would always be alien to her.

"Let me tell you," he said, "about what happened to me on the way this evening."

"The rufstaffa?"

"In part. I should have sensed it following me… a hunting-beast is a powerful disturber of

patterns… but I was caught up in watching the eiran. The cords are tarnished my lady, and decaying."

Mistress Hyfid's eyes were dark and sober. "I know. I've seen them more and more often of late.

That's why I wanted to talk to you."

"The eiran aren't the worst of it." Mael looked from the First to her husband. "Back in the

homeworlds, an ekkannikh has risen up to disrupt the Circles."

"Ekkan-?" Mistress Hyfid stumbled on the unfamiliar word.

"In the old stories," said Mael, "a hungry ghost. But among those who work with Power, it is the

word for someone among us who has too much strength and too much will-or too much anger-to let

himself die completely."

"I don't like the sound of that," said Ari Rosselin-Metadi. He stood up and fetched the decanter

of purple liquor from the side table, then refilled all their glasses to within a hair of the brim. "Because the

only dead man I can think of with that much of that kind of power is Errec Ransome."

Errec Ransome. Master, once, of the Adepts' Guild, and teacher of Mistress Hyfid when she

first came to learn the ways of Power. The Breaker of Circles, they had called him in the homeworlds,

for what he had done at the end of the First War. Traitor, they called him now, on both sides of the old

border zone, and schoolchildren from one side of the civilized galaxy to the other made an insult of his

name. Mael tipped a splash of the purple liquor onto the smooth-planed boards of the veranda-a ritual

gesture, of little worth against a determined adversary, but the habit of a lifetime could not be shed that

easily. "You said the words, not I."

"I'm right, then."

"Yes," said Mael. "So far, the creature has not killed-it hasn't yet recovered enough identity to be

that powerful. But the Circles on Cracanth have felt its touch these five months and more, and someday

soon it-he-will cross the threshold."

Mistress Hyfid frowned. "Why Cracanth, of all places?"

Mael fell silent for a moment, the better to choose his words before he spoke. Not all the history

of the First War was common knowledge in the Adept-worlds-especially history from the Eraasian point

of view-but some matters were more ticklish to deal with than others.

"The story is obscure," he said finally, "and all those with direct knowledge of it are long since

dead… but it was told to me when I was young that Errec Ransome had once been a prisoner among us,

and that Cracanth was the world on which they held him."

"Now that," said Rosselin-Metadi, after another silence, "is something nobody mentioned when I

was growing up." He took a long drink of the purple liquid in his glass. "I wonder if they even knew."

"It makes sense, though," Mistress Hyfid said. "The way he hated the Magelords…"

Mael said, "Yes. The stronger the ekkannikh grows, the more he will remember. When he

remembers enough, he will know that it was not the Circles who defeated him in the end. And Errec

Ransome was a man who devoted his whole life to crushing the ones who had injured him."

Chapter II.

Galcen; Maraghai, Hesat

« ^ »

Klea spent the rest of the day worrying about how to handle her latest commission from Owen

Rosselin-Metadi.

She thought about it while she talked in the practice yard with Mistress Yarro, deciding on the

quarterly schedule of instruction for the senior apprentices. She thought about it while she was closeted in

the lesser pantry with Master Enolt, planning the Retreat's long-term food purchases. And she thought

about it in half a dozen other corners of the ancient citadel, in between dealing with a host of smaller

matters that would otherwise have claimed too much of the Guild Master's attention.

The basic problem remained intractable. She was somehow supposed to shadow and

protect-and at all costs to keep away from Khesat-a pair of young men well past the age when they

would tolerate such protection.

How to begin? She rubbed her forehead, where the beginnings of a headache had begun to

gather. I can't see calling up Maraghai and asking Owen's brother if his boys are still

at home… what am I supposed to tell him if they are? "Don't let them go to Khesat"? As

soon as the kids get wind of that-and they will, they always do!-Khesat's going to be the first

place they'll want to go.

And that's if they're home. If they've left…

Definitely, a headache. The only person she'd ever heard of who'd successfully tracked a lost

object outside of local planetary space was Llannat Hyfid, the First of all the Mage-Circles. Rumor had it

that Errec Ransome had done something similar in his youth-but the subsequent careers of both those

individuals gave her pause.

One of them a turncoat, she thought, and the other a traitor and a madman. And both of

them more powerful by a long way than Klea Santreny.

She went to bed early that night, nursing her headache. Sleep eluded her in spite of all her efforts.

She was still awake when a messenger found her several hours later, with the news that the Second of

the Mage-Circles had crossed the old border zone, and appeared to be headed for Maraghai. In theory,

the border was now open, and Mageworlders could come and go as they pleased. Klea didn't care

much for the idea. She'd killed Mages with her own hands, back during the Second War, while other

Mages had tried to kill her, and she didn't have a forgiving nature about such things.

She pushed herself to her feet and addressed the messenger. "Tell Master Rosselin-Metadi that

I've departed on business."

"Will you need a car down to the field?"

"No," she said. "I'll walk. I need to think."

She pulled down her heavy black cloak from its peg beside the door and started out for the

landing field.

The walk, a long half-day of hard going in mountainous terrain, took her even longer in the dark.

She opened herself to the universe on the way down the mountain, letting the currents of Power guide her

feet while her mind chewed over the problem. Two problems, now-keep the boys safe, and keep an eye

on the Mages.

As if we didn't have more trouble than we needed already.

She reached the landing field at dawn, and found an aircar ready for her. Apparently Owen had

approved of her action enough to call ahead and facilitate it. She realized then that her decision to walk

had come from a hope that the Guild Master would forbid her to go.

A flight over the glistening fields of morning took her to the spaceport complex at Galcen Prime,

where she scanned the listings for a link to Maraghai. The next ship heading out toward Selvauran space

wasn't scheduled to depart for some days yet. Rather than going back to the Retreat, she decided, she

would take up lodging in the city's Guildhouse and wait-but as she was turning away from the

reservations kiosk, a flash of light on the message board caught her eye. Something had changed in the

display. She looked again at the listings, but found no updates on ships for Maraghai-nothing but a last

call for the Tikún Linkship Atli's Darling, making transit to Ophel.

She walked to the Tikún Packet Line's reservation point and presented her papers. Before she

had a chance to think why, she had tickets and a visa for Ophel in her possession and was on her way,

with hardly time to inform the local Guildhouse that she wouldn't be needing a bed there after all.

Not until the pressure of the shuttle's lift to orbit eased did self-doubt assail her. Was this, then,

the way such tracking and finding was done-following half-understood promptings and faint glimpses out

of the corner of the mind's eye, with no reason to do so that she could in honesty give?

Propelled forward as much by the fact that she'd already paid for her tickets as by any deep

conviction that what she did was likely to bear fruit, she went on through with the transfer. Once on

board the packet ship, she checked into her small cabin, strapped in, and went to sleep.

We'll see what happens, she thought as the dreams claimed her. If Ophel isn't where the

universe wants me to be, I can always try again for Maraghai from there.

Jens Metadi-Jessan D'Rosselin hummed the Fifth Mixolydian Etude under his breath as he left the

unroofed summer porch behind the house in the woods. Getting his younger cousins-Kei, Dortan, and

'Rada-the-brat-to finish their dinner and clean up after the meal hadn't been particularly difficult.

"If you don't eat what's put out here for you and let Aunt Llann have her talk with Gentlesir

Taleion without being interrupted," he'd told them, "then I won't show you the right way to kill a rufstaffa

with a table knife."

That had calmed them in a heartbeat, and Faral had obligingly played the role of the rufstaffa

when the time came for Jens to fulfill his part of the bargain. After that, with the dishes and the leftovers

cleared away, the back-porch dinner had ended with wrestling and horseplay until all the parties

concerned were exhausted enough to retire quietly to bed- even 'Rada-the-brat, whom Jens suspected

on occasion of not sleeping at all, but merely withdrawing to plot mischief in private.

"And now," Faral said after his younger sibs had departed, "you can tell me what's going on with

our visitor."

"I can? Why me?"

"You're the one who met him down on the trail." Faral leaned against the porch railing. "And

whatever he's here for, I'll bet we're mixed up in it somehow… Mamma wouldn't have sent us off to have

our dinner with the sibs if she wasn't worried."

"She isn't worried," Jens said. "She wants us out of the way so that she and this Taleion person

can talk about Circle business at the dinner table without warping our young and impressionable minds in

the process."

His cousin laughed. "Too late for that. You've been warped ever since Aunt Bee took you to

Khesat to meet the relatives and the relatives sent you back here in disgrace."

"That," said Jens, "was because I wasn't warped enough."

"Sure, it was… I wish I'd been there to see it."

Faral sounded a bit wistful. He'd never been off Maraghai, since Jens's Khesatan relatives had

made it plain that the extended family didn't extend to foster-siblings.

Jens had thought at first that the Jessani were trying to cast a slur on Llannat Hyfid and Ari

Rosselin-Metadi-as if anybody could!-but then he'd figured out that his own parents were the actual

target of their spite. It was his reaction to that insight, as much as anything else, that had finally disgraced

him enough to succeed in making them send him home.

"Someday," said Jens, "I'll have to see if anyone on Khesat took pictures. As for Gentlesir

Taleion-if his errand has anything to do with us, we'll hear about it in the morning." He yawned. "In the

meantime, I'm for bed. Your sibs are an exhausting lot."

"Night, then."

"Night."

Jens yawned again and padded off to his room-and, he hoped, a good night's sleep. The back

hallways of the house were dimly lit by low-power glows, and untroubled by any but the usual nighttime

noises. Elsewhere, he knew, his aunt and uncle were still conferring with their visitor from the other side

of the Gap Between.

Mael Taleion. A Mage, surely-he carried the short staff, just as Llannat Hyfid did. And Aunt

Llann was a Mage; she admitted as much to anyone who asked, and that included the Master of the

Adepts' Guild, whose one long-ago visit to Maraghai had left a strong impression on the younger Jens.

Uncle Ari had saved him that time, telling Master Rosselin-Metadi that he could hold off on

trolling for Adepts as long as he was visiting family. Mael Taleion wasn't, as far as Jens could tell, hunting

for future Mages on this visit. He looked like a man with other problems on his mind.

Jens pushed open the door to his room. Like all the other doors in the house, it had

old-fashioned mechanical hinges, made out of iron to support a slab of native wood. Any number of

Jens's Khesatan acquaintances would have heaped extravagant praise upon its quaint rusticity. The room

inside had a bed and a desk and several closets, and a freestanding heat-bar for use in the wintertime. It

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PrologueMaraghaiThelastpartofthejourneyhehadtomakeonfoot.He'dcomealongway,beginningintheEraasiSectorandfinishingwithasuborbitalhoptothelong-rangehoverbusthatranupcountryfromErnalghan-orSouthLanding,asthespeakersofGalcenianStandardwouldhaveit.Noteventhelocalsbotheredtocalltheloosecollectionofwarehous...

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Debra Doyle & James MacDonald - Mageworlds 05 - The Long Hunt

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