Worldwielder, page 18
Another second brought the answer, as the walls beside her ended, opening into the vast circular center of the place. The stone above the opening had the word SCHEDIO carved into it. An unfamiliar corridor.
She skidded to a stop. Luud was nowhere to be seen. In fact, nothing was anywhere to be seen but fog, endless and uncertain. He could have gone in any direction. She was near panicking when she picked up his mental scent, faint but recognizable, flashing in and out of her perception. The fog, it seemed, obscured more than her vision.
She wheeled right and sprinted after him, skirting close to the Gallery wall so as not to lose herself in the abyss of emptiness that made up the space around Prota's painting. She sensed other nearby minds, a pack of them, closing in on her location. The Gs.
Still she felt no fear.
As she ran, Luud's presence grew weaker, flickering more out than in. Those long legs carried him twice as far with each stride as hers did.
She ran faster, pushing her body to its limit. Her chest burned. Her breaths wheezed. Her legs were turning into leaden lumps she dragged ahead of her, again and again. Six months sitting in a canoe hadn't helped matters. But she couldn't slow down. She couldn't let Luud escape. He was her only way to Kyle.
At the next corridor, she sensed him turn, and then… nothing. She copied his motion seconds later, entering an archway whose moniker read ORGE and stumbling to a halt just within. She considered running on, knowing that perhaps he'd gotten too far ahead for her to sense. But it was just as likely he'd entered a painting.
The question was, which painting? There were a hundred visible to her left, a hundred visible to her right, and a thousand more within spitting distance through the fog.
Now the fear came.
Had Luud known she was the one chasing him? He must have, which meant he'd also known there was no point in fleeing from an adversary who presented no threat in a fight. At best, he wouldn't have been stupid enough to lead her in the direction of Kyle. At worst, he'd led her into a trap and was about to emerge from a painting and—
She couldn't bear to think the word, not with the fate of Pugh so fresh in her thoughts. Nor could she bear to think of the harrowing image of a mind shattering. Even less could she bear the thought of her mind doing the shattering.
She'd never feared death as she did now, knowing for the first time what the end of a life looked like. She stumbled back, castigating herself for so thoughtlessly abandoning the only people who could help her, Ringo and Fink. On top of the Luud situation, a pack of Gs would arrive in a minute. If she retreated, she'd run straight into them.
Kyle's words from so long ago echoed in her mind. Sometimes that's a good thing… At last she understood what he meant. Fear would have saved her this foolishness.
She pulled at her hair and paced in jagged circles, unable to think straight. The fog, so cold and clammy, so dense and dismal, seemed to seep into her head, brewing a raging headache.
Then the worst happened. Luud dropped out of the darkness above her, a wraith in the night. When he landed, the loudest sound was the splattering of dislodged flecks of blood from his knife.
She receded. He advanced. By the slowness of his approach, she could tell he was one to savor a kill. Like a seven-course meal, he would take his time. Sate his appetite one flavor at a time. One finger at a time. One limb at a time. Given the extent to which he'd relished Pugh's death, she couldn't imagine what a slow kill would do for this fetish of his.
She was too scared to run. Just like old times.
Think about chess.
That's not going to help.
What will help?
Your vim?
Even as the hope flared in her, it died. She knew, somehow, that her latent power wouldn't show itself now. It wouldn’t come when called to, hoped for, or pleaded with. It might come if she forgot about it completely, but there was no chance of that in her present imbroglio.
Luud twirled his knife. Raised it. Flashed a diseased grin.
Then a G burst from the fog behind Melissa. The bald man jumped, his grin vanishing and his eyes going cold with the vexation of a thrill interrupted. Hissing and seething, he turned and bolted.
Melissa didn't have time for relief, because she was still in trouble. The G, rather than give chase to Luud, snatched up her arm and kept a tight hold on it. Before he could do more, another figure appeared behind him. A giant fist whacked him in the back of the head, and his unconscious body hit the floor with a thud.
The new arrival dragged Melissa towards a nearby painting. Everything was moving too quickly for her to see who it was, but just as the Gallery vanished, she heard his voice.
“I got you, kid.”
They alighted in a seaside field of flowers, its hues a rainbow of reds and yellows. Just the sort of flowers Kyle loved. It was midday here. Everything was bright, immaculate, peaceful. It felt wrong to be in such a place after everything that had just happened. Somewhere dark and cold would have been better, Melissa thought. The contrast was disconcerting.
Dizzy as ever, she tumbled forward the moment Ringo released her arm, crushing a swath of plants in the process. Her survival alighting in pursuit of Luud had been nothing but a fluke, it seemed.
Shakily, she stood, feeling like the biggest idiot since the girl who'd thought rescuing Kyle might be a day trip. She prepared herself for the inevitable rebuke from her companions, sure her stupidity had dealt a fatal blow to their confidence in her. She'd disregarded Ringo's direct command to wait, placing the lot of them in peril. They could all have been captured by Gs, or worse.
“I'm sorry. That was stupid of me,” she said, staring at the ground and the scar of destruction she'd left in this otherwise pristine place. It was a fitting metaphor for all her efforts so far, she thought. A man was dead now because of her meddling, which meant that, at best, Kyle's rescue would be a wash. A life for a life. Hardly an auspicious outcome.
She half expected Ringo to resign his aid then and there, but he just shrugged. “I don't figure it that way,” he said. “Took me by surprise is all.”
Fink, who sat perched atop Ringo's shoulder, was a different matter. He was downright smiling. “Actually, it was rather brilliant. If you'd waited another second, Luud would have closed the connection between the Mizoarts, and we would have been stuck in Pugh's lyconium chamber with no way out. Your giving chase ensured the portal remained open.”
She was sure she'd heard him wrong. “Brilliant? Are you—Did you see—?”
“A touch brash, perhaps, but you'll get the hang of it.”
“It?”
“Fighting back.”
Melissa's spine tingled. Her instinct was to shake her head and tell Fink he was wrong—that fighting back and Melissa Mabrey weren't words that could coexist in the same sentence—but maybe her instinct was the wrong one. Maybe it was nothing more than a lie she'd told herself over and over again until she believed it. Maybe her actions hadn't been insane. Maybe. But she had more important things to consider.
Ringo withdrew something from his coat and held it out to her. “Pugh was carrying this when he died. Almost didn't see it.”
She looked at the object in question: a fat book trimmed in gold, complete with a gold latch to hold it shut. The Gallery Conspectus, its cover read. She took it from him, staggering under its weight.
Releasing the latch and parting its jacket, she saw its pages were stuffed with still more pages—scraps of older documents, faded yellow and brown, bestrewn with ancient writing. Looking closer at a few of these, her heart leapt. These were the very documents Pugh had spoken of, his stash of secret information on wielders. He must have changed his mind about helping her and grabbed it right before the Gs found him.
Tears came to her eyes. Pugh's death, already so dreadful, was made worse by this revelation. It's all my fault, she thought. If I hadn't forced him to talk, he'd still be alive.
But whatever she'd done, it was Luud who'd wielded the knife that killed Pugh, and it was the bald man's mysterious feminine employer who'd ordered the execution. They were the ones responsible. The only thing she had to feel bad about was almost giving up.
Fink ambled up to her and hopped onto the conspectus. “I know what you're thinking, Melissa, but I'm sure Kyle is quite all right. They wouldn't do any serious harm to him. He's a wielder. He's far too valuable for that.”
She nodded to him, drying her eyes. He'd mistaken the cause of her tears, but not by much. Given another minute of her anguished contemplation, he would have been right.
The stoat looked to Ringo. “We'll find him eventually, won't we, Ringo old chap?”
Ringo's nod unsettled the cloud of blue smoke forming around his head. “Guess we will,” he said, and by guess, Melissa knew he meant definitely, without a doubt, no question. For Ringo, it was tantamount to a brazen assurance.
“It's too bad we've no idea where to go,” Fink lamented.
At that, Melissa remembered something and gasped. “No! I know where Kyle is.”
The others looked at her expectantly. “Do tell,” Fink said.
“His message was cut off. He was trying to tell me to go to another world that started with a C. Well, I know which world that is. Crumholtz. The world the book is from. Pugh said it.”
By their reactions, she would have thought they'd just been told the date and time of their own deaths. Fink went rigid. Ringo paused mid-puff, the abandoned cigarette slipping from his fingers. The sun passed behind a cloud. A cool wind swept across the field. Waves beat against the nearby shore, their sound reticent. Even the world seemed to know something unsettling had been said.
“What is it?” Melissa asked, fearing once again an answer she'd wish to forget.
“Dangerous world,” Ringo muttered. “No good.”
Dez had said the same thing, Melissa remembered, though at the time she'd assumed it to be a tactic to scare Pugh more than anything else. But perhaps not.
“Why?” she asked. “What's it like?”
Fink spoke up. “The people on Crumholtz are insane, you see. The pull makes them closed-minded, and what minds they have to be closed. They're religious zealots of the worst kind. They've a rule book a mile thick, any infraction against which will result in gruesome punishments ranging from burns to amputation to death. Most rezeurs are of the opinion that you'd have to be just as insane to go there.”
“But we aren't most rezeurs, are we?” she asked, breathing a sigh of relief. She'd expected a worse answer.
Fink hesitated. “You know, just because it's a C world doesn't mean it's the C from Kyle's message. There are scores of C worlds. He could just as well have been referring to Como, whose pull makes people benevolent and charitable.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “Does that sound like a place where world-ending psychos would hang out? Crumholtz is where the book is from! It makes sense!”
The others didn't agree straightaway as she'd hoped. Nor did they disagree. They just stood there looking uncertain. And the longer the silence dragged on, the more their unease rubbed off on Melissa. What if Fink was right? Her case in favor of Crumholtz was a bit spotty. The trouble was, if she was wrong, they really did have nowhere to go.
“Guess we're going,” Ringo finally said.
Melissa could have hugged him. Fink, seeing the look of relief on her face, said, “Of course we're going! Where else would we go? It's just a bit of a… prospect, is all.”
“Listen, kid,” Ringo said. “When we're there, you gotta do exactly as I say. Might save your life.”
Melissa nodded, wondering, or perhaps dreading, what breed of life-altering misadventure she was in for this time.
Part Four
Capture
TWENTY-TWO
Melissa spent the rest of the day, and most of the night, reading over Pugh's notes and The Gallery Conspectus. She read them until the already yellow papers were a shade yellower and sported a fresh layer of wrinkles, until her head was so full of words she felt them bursting out her ears. But she found nothing that told her how to use her vim.
The only thing remotely useful was a scrap of paper detailing the life of a wielder named Arthit Klahan, who had defended the people of a world called Erini from foreign invaders. Just before the battle, it was said that Arthit retired to his tent for a time, knowing he must lose his mind to use it. Other than that, the meaning of which Melissa couldn't fathom, the papers were simply records of things wielders had done, with no mention as to how they had come to be able to wield. Use of their vim was treated as a given. If someone was a wielder, they used their vim.
Except me, she thought, dead-headed and discouraged. The worst part was the uncertainty. If she'd known that Kyle had learned to use his vim from some clue in these documents, she wouldn't have ceased studying them until her eyes bled. But he might have figured it out on his own. So she was left to stumble on in the dark, vimless as ever.
However, she did learn many interesting things reading The Gallery Conspectus. She learned that there were worlds so dangerous their paintings were kept boarded over to prevent things from getting out. She learned that the Gallery had its own pull, known as blanking, which stopped minds from working—permanently—if you stayed there longer than a few hours. And unlike the pulls of the worlds, neither an aegis nor a wielder's mental defenses could protect against it. She learned of an explorer named Zigloft the Great, whose aim in life had been to find the edge of the Gallery. He'd traveled down a single corridor for years, searching for the end. He may have found it, but no one ever discovered what happened to him. She learned of the extensive and horrifying campaigns to round up and torture wielders. But without the information she needed, it was all just useless trivia.
***
They set out for Crumholtz the next morning, Melissa having suffered a few fitful hours of sleep. Once again, they had nothing to guide them beyond the name of an entire world, though Melissa hoped Crumholtz would be faster to search than Melton.
Its painting, a half-hour's dizzying climb above the Gallery floor, depicted a person whose head was enclosed in a solid metal box. Covering the front of the box was a gaping keyhole.
They alighted in a highland valley dominated by low shrubs and a dirt path snaking up a nearby hill. Atop it, a castle loomed like a giant set of knives, all spires and turrets and ill-bodings. It looked made to keep things in as much as out. Ringo explained that it was the largest settlement on the world, and thus, the best place to begin looking.
Far down the path in the opposite direction of the castle, a triad of figures approached. Ringo thought it best to hide behind a clump of bushes until the travelers were past, so they did. Within minutes, the figures were revealed to be two men and a teenage boy. The boy, along with one of the men, carried a sizeable wooden chest, panting under its weight. The second man led a horse by its bridle. The horse, in turn, pulled a cart, one large enough to hold the chest, its bearers, and then some. But it held nothing save a thick layer of dust.
The scene was beyond bizarre. Inspecting the people closer, Melissa was alarmed to discover that all were bald, gaunt, clothed in oversized gray robes, missing a finger or two, and armed. With knives. Reminiscent of the knife worn by another gaunt bald man she knew. She shivered. So this is the world Luud's from.
A second later, the boy grunted and murmured, “Zoo are valking too fast.” Then, while the words were still fresh in the air, his comrades began to move, their minds flashing an excited orange. The one at the front of the chest dropped the side he was holding. The one leading the horse let go. Both ran to the boy, who'd been forced to drop his side of the chest as well. They were upon him and pinning him to the ground before he could do anything more than blink. With a zing, one unsheathed his knife.
“Vait! It vas an accident! An accident!” the boy wailed, to no avail.
Even from the bushes, Melissa could see the spurt of blood where the knife struck flesh. She could hear the crunch of bone as it bore through the boy's finger, severing it at the knuckle. Following a short bout of screams, he was released by the men and stood, blood trickling from his wound. No further words were spoken as the chest was shouldered again and the three walked on, less a finger.
Melissa, taking a thin gulp of air, realized that she hadn't taken Fink's words yesterday as seriously as she should have. The people here were downright insane. A boy no older than her had just lost a finger for no reason whatsoever, and not for the first time.
As soon as the travelers were past, Ringo exited the bushes. “Wait here,” he said, then walked off in their direction.
Melissa didn't need to be told to stay. At present, she thought the bushes an excellent place to spend the rest of the day.
When Ringo returned a minute later, he carried two objects. The first was a fat book he set before Fink. “The codex. Latest edition. Start reading.” The second was a formless gray robe he handed to Melissa. “Put this on.”
She took it with feeble fingers. “So… what rule did he break?”
Fink, paging through the codex, answered. “Let's see… here we are. Criticizing another's behavior, unless said behavior is in opposition to written law, is prohibited, and will result in the removal of a finger, to be administered by the nearest witness of the offense. If the offender has no fingers, a toe will be taken instead. If the offender has no toes—”
“We get it,” Ringo mumbled, silencing the stoat.
Melissa took a long, hard look at her fingers then, all ten of them, and never had she been more appreciative of them. All of a sudden, the miseries of her childhood didn't seem so bad. For all the abuse she'd suffered at the hands of her parents, she hadn't lost a finger.
“Ringo,” she asked, “if we broke a rule, couldn't we locute away before anything happened?”
He squinted at her. “You could try.”
He didn't sound confident, and a moment's thought told her why. The Crumholtzians were fast. Damn fast. The boy hadn't even had time to recognize his slip-up before he was being pinned to the ground and forced to undergo an impromptu amputation. It would take reflexes of lightning to pull off an escape in such a situation.
