Wizard (The Key to Magic) Read online

  A compact formation of four skyships the size of hay wagons blazed by, diving toward the city below. With slick, air piercing shapes, sparse spikes, and odd-shaped protrusions, these skyships were strikingly similar to those of the Brotherhood and moved with equally frightening agility and speed. When the skyships swung about and began to gain altitude for another dive, he scattered the enchantment on his brigandine and let himself fall toward the mass of light below, using only the spell on his trousers to maintain a modicum of control. He would never be able to outfly these skyships. His only chance was to go to ground.

  As the buildings, many-shaped multi-colored metal wonders whose soaring heights seemed impossible, rose up like the boles of a forest around him, the near silent skyships dove again. Spastic green and blue radiance flared all about as he began to deflect the darts a second time.

  Casting his eyes about, he saw two towering buildings standing close together a few hundred armlengths off to his left. The space between the paired colossus looked to be no more than three or four armlengths and he revived the enchantment on his brigandine and made immediately for this possible shelter. Too small for the skyships, the space would at least give him some cover while he dropped to the hoped-for warrens below.

  The skyships continued to close as he passed into the gap, but banked sharply away at a distance of no more than twenty armlengths. The gusts thrown off by their passage slammed the faces of the buildings, smashing against the numerous dusky windows and cracking and bursting many. Battered by the winds, he sped deep into the gap and then dove straight down, plummeting by windows and balconies, many lighted but some not, and began to peer into the gloomy depths for a place to hide. He did not try at all to slow his descent as the bottom of the gap neared. He could not dally to select a bolt hole. He would have to try the first nook that presented itself.

  Something slammed into his abdomen with enough stunning force to spin him around, and as he rotated, he saw a red spray sling out.

  Unbidden, The Knife Fighter's Dirge sprang to his aid as he recognized the red spray for his own blood.

  The swarm of automatons bursting at that moment from blown out windows to either side of the gap froze in place, small black ports spewing near invisible masses of congealed flux that stopped within fingerlengths of him.

  Spells that he had devised in undertime staunched the blood flow, sealed the matching punctures in his abdomen and lower back, and regenerated pierced muscles, entrails, and liver. Another topped off the fount of his blood to forestall an impending faint and a final one stilled the surge of fear that had begun to race through his veins.

  A spell that he did not have was one that would sweep the panic from his thoughts and it took a number of subjective moments of harshly imposed mental discipline to gain enough clarity to delve the automatons. Without surprise, he discovered them and their missiles immune to flux manipulation. Each the size of a hogshead, at least four dozen automatons had emerged from the buildings and he could sense the better part of a hundred more following behind. Their deployment spread them in a broad net and the distance that he could move in slowed time would not be sufficient to bring him clear of their interrupted fire, which left only undertime ... or the Compliance Officer's bracelet.

  Would it return him to the large room?

  He dug out the bracelet, decided that he would know soon enough, and touched a finger to the travelling segment.

  He arrived in the open, again above the city, but did not have any time to get his bearings. A thick mass of automatons appeared around him, roiling the background ether with a humming-teal wake as they emerged from the fringe of undertime, and he had no doubt that it was the very same group that he had just escaped.

  Again, The Knife Fighter's Dirge bought him a reprieve.

  Somehow, the automatons had tracked him. He could not have left any physical spoor, for he had not traversed the intervening space. It had to have been magic that had betrayed him.

  Neither the spells that he had established as a shield nor the lifting and driving spells on his garments left any residue in the background ether. They had a distinct presence when active, as now, but made no stir when not. He dispersed all three and touched the bracelet again.

  On arrival, he dropped uncontrolled through a dark sky that had begun to brighten to the left.

  The swarm enveloped him within seconds and he stole time again to interrupt their attack.

  He fixed his eyes on the bracelet in his hand.

  It made sense. His unschooled ethereal methods were as alien to this time as he was. Save for naturally occurring modulations, his simple spells were like nothing that he had seen here. The Oaurlervy sorcerers would logically attune their devices to detect similarly advanced modulations. It was even possible -- if not likely -- that the bracelets themselves could speak to the automatons in some hidden way.

  The bracelets would have to go.

  He brought the second from his pocket and briefly tried to infuse the metal with an overload of flux. When the devices showed resistance, he thought of the key, produced it and allowed a half grin when it accepted an infusion without complaint.

  Forcing the driving spell in his brigandine to its maximum, he drifted to the nearest automaton, a distance of a little more than two armlengths. Then, against mud-like resistance, he reached his arm between twin frozen streams of ethereal fire to nestle the bracelets and the key against the hull of the device. Having a quick additional thought, he extended he index finger, pressed the transporting segment, and immediately withdrew the digit. As he had hoped, the initial spark of the spell paused mid-flare when he broke contact. Finally, he infused the key with a hundred times the flux that it could safely contain.

  Using a tortuous, snaking process, he moved as far from the sabotaged decoy as he could get, wiggling through the inner rank of automatons and wedging himself between a pair in the next outer rank. After confirming that he was completely out of the line of fire of any of the devices, he created a bubble of compressed flux that he warped tight to his body, and after a brief pause to ready himself, doused The Knife Fighter's Dirge.

  The blast knocked him out and down with an accompanying shower of shredded, smoking, and melted automatons. In defiance of his plan, the key had detonated before the bracelet could whisk it away. Happily though, from the amount of debris blazing around him, it appeared that few, if any, of the automatons had survived and he relaxed slightly as he allowed the pull of the earth to accelerate his fall.

  He remained unmolested as the city rushed up to meet him, the brightening day revealing the fine details of boulevards, green spaces, promenades carried on spindly bridges, and all manner of buildings. As he reached an altitude of no more than ten manheight above the sprawling rooftop of an extensive structure, he started to slow his fall. With his attention fixed on searching the roof for a stairway or skylight, he did not detect the invisible ethereal wall below him until only seconds before he crashed into it. His own ethereal armor protected him from the flux burst released by the collision, but he was blasted upward by the concussion.

  His brigandine brought his arcing flight to a halt, leaving him bobbing unsteadily in a bright beam of sunlight that peeked over the top of an imposing spiraling edifice composed entirely of rose hued glass. As the wash of warm light made him cover his eyes with his hand, he felt a moment of intense frustration. He had to be in plain sight of hundreds if not thousands of people behind the darkened windows of the nearby buildings.

  He bolted into the shadow of another colossus, loosing altitude as he aimed for a sprawl of lesser buildings that flared away from it toward the west. As he descended, he scanned the ether in his path for any sign of another defensive flux wall.

  Sensitized to the peculiar shock of the transporting magic, he felt the arrival of half a dozen automatons in front of him in time to swerve sharply. The devices immediately gave pursuit and he tweaked his enchantments to drag him into a sharp climb, struggling with the intensity of the
flux that he was forced to pump into his brigandine in order to stay ahead of them. The damaged leather could not withstand even a dram more and threatened failure if he could not reduce the lifting flux soon.

  Skyships zoomed overhead, spewing darts that struck his ethereal armor with bruising force. More automatons appeared in groups of ten or a dozen and began to close to surround him.

  He fought back with ethereal fire and geysers of air, blasting holes in some and smashing others, but the new swarm continued to grow, relentlessly blazing away.

  He had to get out of the open.

  Desperate, he wished for the lightning.

  The bolt fried a score that clustered close together, the flash leaving a white gash across his vision and the thunderclap causing his ears to ring, and when the devices shattered and fell away, he dove through the breach and accelerated back toward the city below, increasing the driving sound-color in his brigandine to a reckless intensity.

  The automatons followed, swooping in a twisting column very much like a whirlwind.

  Another lightning bolt blasted straight up through the center of the column.

  Eyes jammed shut against the glare, he felt the devices die by the hundreds, many incinerated into bits two small to identify, but many more having their spells stripped away so that their ethereal presences simply went out.

  When he opened his eyes and looked down, his view was full of a black roof.

  Not slacking his speed, he reinforced his ethereal armor, built a ram of flux-compressed air below his feet, and smashed through the tar and fabric of the roof, the wood, metal, and plaster of seven unlit floors that went by too fast to identify any of their contents, an area that must have been a deep cellar, and finally several manheight of earth and a span of not-quite-stone to punch into an unlighted space.

  By reflex, he spun flux to decelerate as he passed into this, shedding all of his speed and energy in less than two manheight, but nevertheless landing with a force that was strong enough to send a stinging jolt up through his feet and legs as he sank to a crouch. Debris tumbled down from the hole that his passage had made and he automatically shrugged off this annoyance with a wash of peeping-lavender. While the shards of rock, clods of clay, and bits of wood impacted around him with sounds that echoed, he put out his hands to steady himself and found that he had come to rest on a stony, seamless surface. He could see nothing; the hole above had already been sealed by collapsing rubble.

  Extending his hands to feel, he began to read the background ether to try to gather some conception of his location. The not-quite-stone that he could feel on the floor wrapped around apparently unbroken to form an arch overhead and this extended before and behind as far as he could sense. The exact nature of the space was unclear, but it seemed that he had penetrated into a tunnel of some sort. As it was dry, he did not think it likely a sewer. He drew a deep breath and let it out, then stood.

  A voice hissed from behind him. "Don't move, sorcerer!"

  SIX

  2170 by the Common Reckoning

  (3211 Before the Founding of the Empire)

  Oaurlervy Faction Investigative Section Headquarters

  Secured City of Dhiloeckmyur

  The conference room was at the end of a disused side corridor on the twenty-ninth floor and was empty save for the Committee for Oversight and Review's table and chairs. COFOAR never met in the same place twice and, like all truly powerful entities, had no need for the trappings of officialdom. There were also no guards; lesser men would simply have been a hindrance in the business of sorcerers.

  Beltr marched with parade ground precision up to the long table, came to ramrod attention, and saluted.

  Commandant Lyreo returned the salute sharply. "Report."

  The stocky president of the Committee gave the order in a curt, emotionless tone. The equally gray haired officers that flanked him, Commandant Drough, a thin man with a fussy demeanor, and Commandant Watl, a knife-jawed woman, were motionless except for their eyes, which examined Beltr in what he thought must surely be undisguised condemnation.

  Thus far in his career, Beltr had seldom had opportunity to have contact with the Committee and on all of those previous occasions he had been called in to present testimony in matters concerning the shortcomings of others. This current summons had arrived within moments of the comm signal that had informed him that the wizard had eluded pursuit. That promptness could only indicate that the Committee suspected culpability on his part and unless he could convince them otherwise, he would face immediate censure for misfeasance. According to the degree to which he was found responsible for the debacle, he could face anything from a reprimand to flogging, imprisonment, or execution. At the very least, a negative finding would destroy his career in the Investigative Section.

  Beltr knew that the Committee did not want to hear a recounting of the details. All of the pertinent information, no doubt from both official and covert sources, would have already been considered by the panel. And he dare not attempt to present his own exculpatory version of what had taken place. Any attempted justification of his actions would be interpreted automatically as an admission of failure.

  He took a slow breath to hold his nerves steady, then said, "The appearance of the insurgent wizard and his subsequent escape from custody are indisputable proof that, as I had come to suspect, a pervasive conspiracy of unsuppressed magical subversives has taken root in Dhiloeckmyur."

  He had to show neither hesitancy nor uncertainty and give them an explanation for the fiasco that would play to their preconceptions and at the same time hold him entirely blameless.

  "Further, the evidence indicates that only through the complicity of persons within the ranks of the Compliance Directorate itself could his escape have been accomplished."

  This last brought an instant reaction from the stony-faced group -- scowls.

  "Impossible," Drough contradicted.

  "The wizard used a Master Key to disable the port interdiction ward on the interrogation chamber," Beltr announced. "As per regulations, no one within the field ranks of the Investigative Section has access to that Key."

  This was a fact. Only members of the supervisory ranks -- including the sorcerers of this panel -- were privy to Master Keys. From the suddenly guarded expressions of the three, he knew that he had indeed succeeded in deflecting the focus of suspicion away from himself. The rivalries within the senior echelon of the Compliance Directorate were common knowledge.

  "All conspirators within the Directorate must be eliminated." Watl said in a grinding voice. "Who are these traitors?"

  "For such a conspiracy to exist, it must be well hidden. I do not believe that it will be possible to root it out without placing the wizard in custody once more. He is the only exposed link."

  Commandant Drough looked disgusted. "Resistance to the Faction is an abomination."

  Lyreo glanced in a significant manner at his two companions, received firm nods, then ordered Beltr, "Pursue the investigation at all speed. You are authorized to requisition any and all resources, both personnel and material, necessary to the intense prosecution of the search. Spare no effort to arrest the wizard and extract the identities of the traitors."

  Beltr saluted again, turned about, and marched from the room. At no point did he permit himself a smile.

  SEVEN

  2170 by the Common Reckoning

  (3211 Before the Founding of the Empire)

  Secured City of Dhiloeckmyur

  The bootleggers frequented the plazas and parks of the Central Green. As a result of regular crackdowns by Faction civil constables, the trade had a significant amount of attrition and a consequent influx of new entrepreneurs, which was very convenient for Prim.

  She wandered along Skyline Walk until she saw one that she had never done business with and approached him with open interest. Sitting on the knee-high curb of a large fountain that featured stylized birds vomiting streams of water into a large caldron, the wiry, bearded man was ostensiv
ely eating a sandwich.

  When the bootlegger's roving eyes spotted her, he popped up off the curb with a happy grin.

  "Nice day. Looking for a duty free device?"

  Before answering, the average person would have glanced around to make sure that no Faction agents were present, so she did so while feigning a slight nervousness, then gave a quick nod.

  The man flicked his long coat open.

  Prim scanned the merchandise. "Uhm, how much for the one-shot comm?"

  "Thirty and that's my best price."

  Haggling was expected. Failure to do so would leave an impression and she did not want the bootlegger to have a special reason to recall her. She spent ten minutes bargaining him down to twenty-three riels, which was still a price inflated threefold, even for a clean comm. As soon as she had the device, she activated it to make sure that it functioned, then abandoned the bootlegger on his curb without a farewell. After following a random path that took her out of sight of the plaza and the fountain, she ported to an aerial promenade on the opposite side of the city.

  She had chosen this specific location because she had not visited it before and she knew that the pedestrian traffic was always sparse. She strolled for five minutes, pretending to admire but actually ignoring the splendid view of the lagoon. Having confirmed that she was not being followed, she then meandered to an isolated ornamental grape arbor and took a seat on a vacant pouredstone bench.

  The memorized comm code that she tapped in was, like the comm, good only for a single use. As soon as it had connected, the reference would delete itself from both sending and receiving devices.

  The connection completed immediately, but no response came forth.

  She made a quick gesture that keyed a charm to make her voice sound both masculine and older, then spoke. "Orange, here. I have information."