"Quit worrying and hold still."
"They're very busy out there, Ash." Chaiel kept twisting his head around as if he could see. Maybe he could. It wasn't helping, though.
"And I would be very busy in here, if you would hold still. And control your hair, would you? Tie it in a knot or something."
With a wordless grumble, Chaiel tried to obey. In the process, he threw them both off balance. Ash curled up as he fell, to avoid a repeat of the incident that had given him a bloody nose a few hours back. As a result, it was Chaiel who got an elbow in the eye. Chaiel reacted by howling and thrashing for a while. Ash was getting really tired of this. He believed he'd punch the kid out if he didn't need him for a stepstool. He considered that maybe it was time to voice this thought.
"I'm not really a violent person," he said quietly into a lull in Chaiel's tantrum. The lull didn't last, but he kept talking. "Normally, I'd try to calm you down in a much nicer way. But Kieran is on his way here. From what you said, Thelyan is more than ready for him. Which means he's going to need my help. Is this making sense to you? There are things going on that are a lot more important than your stupid eye. So if you don't pull it together here, I'm going to give you a matching shiner, and then I'm going to hurt you some more after that. Are you getting this at all?"
Chaiel's complaining turned into laughing. "You know we don't have a chance. Nothing can get out of this thing, don't you understand? Nothing can get in or out. Thelyan had a long time to design this -- this torture device -- and you think you're going to break it in a matter of hours."
"Yes, actually, I do."
Chaiel laughed harder.
"Look, it's just math. You've heard of math, right? It's that stuff you do with numbers?"
"It's not math, it's magic!"
"Same thing. You don't have to understand it, okay? Just trust me."
"Trust. Trust? Trust you!" The kid's laughter was increasingly hysterical. "Why should I trust you?"
Ash felt his face harden. Though it took some doing, he collected Chaiel's wrists in one hand and a fistful of hair in the other, and brought the thrashing creature to a halt.
"Because," he said carefully, "it costs you nothing to do so. If hope hurts that much, be bored. Stand there smiling your superior little smile and telling yourself how funny it's going to be when I give up. Now do something with your goddamn hair and give me a lift again."
Calmer now, Chaiel sniffled and met his eyes. "You don't get it. I do think you can do it. I just don't think you can do it in time. And when Ka'an dies --"
"Kieran won. I felt it."
"Then when Kieran loses to Thelyan, you're going to give up. Then I'll be stuck here knowing you could get us out but you won't try."
"That's the kind of person you think I am? Let me explain how you're wrong. Thing one, Kieran's going to win. Thing two, I am going to get it in time, if you cooperate. Thing three, if Kieran loses and I don't get it in time, I'm going to bust out anyway so I can take it out of Thelyan's hide. And finally, you could do this yourself if you'd just pay attention to what I'm telling you. This magic is math. It all is, if you look at it right. I just have to figure out what kind."
"And then you'll, what, subtract it?"
Ash sighed. "If you like. Here, let me do that for you, you're just getting yourself tangled." He spun Chaiel around and collected the ridiculous length of his hair. It was too matted to braid, and too long; he couldn't separate the strands with his arms at their full stretch, there was that much of it. So he settled for twisting it into a rope so he could tie knots in it. As he worked at that, he sensed Chaiel calming; apparently more visions were coming, and these weren't incoherent enough to set him off. "What are you seeing?" Ash asked, more to keep him present than because the answer mattered.
"Oh, he's figured out how to go invisible. That's sort of clever."
"Who has?"
"Who do you think? The Dreamer, whatever you want to call him now."
"Invisible? I didn't think that was possible."
"Not invisible. You can still see him. But they can't sense him. They don't know he's coming."
"Who can't sense him?"
"Watchmen. It looks as if Thelyan sent them out to the end of the line to get near the Burn, but I guess he's recalled them now because they're getting back on the train."
"There's a rail line that goes there?"
"Didn't I just say there was? Within a dozen miles anyway. Oh bugger." Chaiel bit the base of his thumb as a stutter of confusion ran through him. The visions had switched.
Much as Ash would have liked to keep hearing what Kieran was up to, it sounded as if things were well in hand on that end, and there was the little matter of the null sphere to deal with. He tied one more knot and let go of the now more localized mess of hair. "Okay, let's get to work."
Chaiel sighed unhappily, but he cooperated. They put the soles of their feet together and slowly, carefully stood up. It was a very strange feeling, the way the sphere pulled them together. It made them topheavy, and every movement swung and spun them around their common axis. Reaching their hands above their heads, they stretched out until they could press their palms against the sphere's surface. That stabilized them a little.
It was slippery as a repelling magnet, though. Ash couldn't give it his whole attention, because he had to keep adjusting his posture to keep in contact with it. This would be a long piece of work even if he'd been able to concentrate fully. Seeing it as a cipher had been a simplification. The math used to break code was fairly elementary, once one knew the methods. This was a deeper kind of equation. It balanced inside and outside so perfectly that from within it seemed there was no outside. Almost as if it declared that the whole of the universe was inside the bubble. Presumably, from outside, the inside was the part that didn't exist. But from its own point of view, the skin of the bubble didn't exist, which was why it couldn't be affected, at least not directly.
What gave him a hope of breaking it was the fact that it had intermediate states. Thelyan had left it in one of these, so that light could pass. Currently, the defining equation was ignoring light. From what Chaiel had said, it had variables for sound as well, and for objects to pass through. It also had a repelling effect, which accounted for the way they were pushed toward the center.
Ash had read a theory once, in a book about fluid dynamics, that sound propagated through air by means of vibration. Following that thought, he supposed that in order to pass sound, the sphere wouldn't have to allow air through, provided it acted as a resonating membrane.
Which meant that the sphere itself was an object. It didn't have mass or thickness, but because it could be made to transmit vibrations, it could be treated as a solid object in some cases. Because it didn't have a thickness, it was a two-dimensional object, despite being spherical. Ash wished desperately for something to write on. He was starting to think that resonant effects were going to be the key, though. That and the fact that in order to do its job, the sphere had to balance its input and output exactly.
"Well?" Chaiel sounded impatient.
"Can you analyze a deterministic system?"
"A what?"
"Then I suggest you shut up and let me work."
Chaiel gave a haughty sniff, but didn't reply. Narrowing his eyes, and his field of mental vision as well, Ash dived back into his task.
--==*==--
Crouched behind a pile of broken ore carts, Kieran examined his options.
There were Watchmen swarming all over the place. He'd crunched his pattern down small to keep them from sensing him, but they'd certainly see him if he came out. Which was a problem, because he'd have to come out if he wanted to get on the train.
A number of methods of transport had occurred to him. He could do the really fast running thing again, but he didn't like it. The sun was high now and the air shimmering hot. He wasn't sure he could keep from overheating. It had crossed his mind to summon another storm, let the rain cool him, but he wasn't sure he could get one together in under a day. Whatever he'd done before seemed to have undone itself.
Stealing a horse would be worse than useless; it would mean confronting these Watchmen, for one thing. Powerful as he felt, he hadn't lost sight of the fact that every fight was a gamble. Then he could ride the horse to death within a dozen miles if he was unlucky, which would leave him right back at square one.
So he'd hit on the idea of hopping a train. A train would be ideal. Faster than the other options, with the added benefit that rail interference would hide his approach. The Splitwood mine's spur was the nearest track to the Burn -- or the place where the Burn had been -- and he guessed that there must be a regular run from there to either Burn River or Trestre. The right direction, anyway. Once aboard, it wouldn't be hard to stick a gun in the engineer's face and make him go take the Churchrock loop instead.
But there were these Watchmen. They'd corralled the mine workers and shunted all the mining company's engines off on a siding. They had an engine of their own, a handsome sleek thing with nothing behind it but three passenger cars, but even if Kieran could manage to steal the thing he'd have to pick up its crew as well. He had no idea how to drive a train.
He ruefully examined his gun. Removing the jammed round was easy enough, but poor thing was just a mess, what with mud and water and dust, and he didn't have anything to clean it with. Not to mention how he didn't trust his ammunition. And while he'd managed not to lose his spare magazines, his pockets had been full of mud.
Crouching down, he peered through a space between two of the rusty carts. After a moment he cautiously poked his head up for a moment to confirm what he'd seen. Most of the Watchmen, a couple dozen of them, were getting back on the train. A few still stood outside, conferring. Under the direction of one of the officers, a mining company engineer was throwing switches. Apparently they were going to turn the train around and go home.
It would take them a while, though. Meantime, he wanted to do something about his poor neglected Hart. Could magic substitute for gun oil? More to the point, could he do anything without alerting the Watch? He chewed his lip for a moment, thinking, and concluded that it was worth the risk. He really didn't want to try to do this unarmed.
Stripping the Hart gingerly, wincing every time he heard a gritty sound, he ran his fingers over the pieces. He could distinguish the textures in his mind, the difference between dirt and oil and -- he grimaced -- rust. If he let the power trickle out of his hands, if he didn't project it at all...
There was a crackling noise, and a puff of vapor blew out from between his fingers.
He looked through his peephole, but no one seemed to have noticed. The ones who'd been getting on the train were now aboard; four of them stood aside, making no move to board. None of them were looking in his direction.
Going a bit more gently this time, he divested his gun of everything that didn't belong in it, and reassembled it. He did the same to the magazines. Then he turned his attention to the bullets. He guessed that duds ought to look different to his magical senses than viable rounds, and he could indeed distinguish two different types of bullet, but he couldn't tell which was which. There were a lot more of one kind than the other. Hoping that the more numerous type were the ones that would fire, he loaded up with those, and rearranged the clips so that he had a full magazine of the rarer kind and two full of the other, with two spaces free and two bullets left out since he didn't want to mix them.
A grinding, groaning noise had been swelling up while he finished this task. He ignored it until he was done. Then he looked out, to find that the White Watch engine was being turned around. Through the windows of the passenger cars he could see the Watchmen who were leaving. That meant, of course, that they'd see him, if he tried to get aboard. And there were still those four fellows standing clear.
Half an idea occurred to him. He chewed over it while he watched the engine grumbling around the switching loop. Risky. But all his options were risky. He really hoped he'd loaded with good rounds.
The short train emitted a series of clatters as it switched onto the main track facing east. A ball of black smoke jumped from the smokestack, and the engine roared as it began to pick up speed. Kieran forced his eyes away from it, watching the four men left behind instead of the departing train. Two were watching the train go. The other two were talking to each other. As the engine's noise diminished, they all turned toward where they'd left their horses.
Time. Kieran stood up, aiming with a two-handed grip at the nearest of the Watchmen. He pulled the trigger as their heads began to turn. There was a small clack sound.
"Shit," he muttered, ducking back. There wasn't time to care where they were or what they were doing; he cleared the jammed round, dropped the clip of duds, and shoved in his solitary clip of what he hoped were good bullets. As he worked the slide, he suddenly flashed on a parallel. Shooting from behind cover, low on ammunition... he just knew that if he stood up now he'd die the same way Shan had.
Well, fine. He wasn't hiding anymore. And he had all this power, just itching to rearrange the world.
The Watchmen yelled in surprise when the pile of broken ore carts suddenly erupted, half-ton square buckets on wheels whirling across the ground like dry leaves in a wind. The noise this made almost covered the sound of their wildly fired shots, their desperately blurted shielding spells. Two men missed their spells and were smashed; Kieran felt their deaths the way Ash must have felt the deaths of the ones he'd shot on the Canyon road. He had to admit it was unpleasant. Like a splash of cold kerosene in the face. One of the men had got his shield up in time but been shoved across the yard. The last had held his ground, and was readying his rifle and gathering power at the same time. Kieran aimed at him, then hesitated.
He could taste the type of spell the man was beginning. A fire pattern. The man wasn't a natural pyrokinetic, he was using thaumaturgy. It was easy to see, now, easy to counter.
Kieran reached out and tripped the fire spell just before the man would have released it. The soft bang of expanding hot air -- a moment's glimpse of the heat-shimmer that was all the visible evidence of the colorless flame -- was followed by a sharper explosion as the pattern exciting materials to heat was sucked into the rifle. A rippling clatter as the whole magazine went off at once, and chunks of wood and metal flew spinning through the air.
For a moment, the Watchman stared at the ruined remains of his hands. Then he gave a short grunt and folded up.
All that had happened so fast that the man who'd been shoved over the tracks was just now getting up. He'd made it as far as his knees. He didn't bother standing all the way up before sending a blast of dust flying in Kieran's face. No spell; kinetic. Coughing and squinting, Kieran dodged sideways as he threw down a bit of a pattern to settle the dust. He heard a shot, and another. Then the dust dropped as if every particle were a fist-sized stone, clearing the air, and he saw his quarry.
He fired twice. The man crumpled and lay still.
Kieran took the time to load his two spares. Now he had precisely ten bullets. There had been upwards of thirty men on that train. He suspected that if he came aboard, they wouldn't give up their seats for him. But he thought he had a way to do it that would keep them from even knowing he was there.
Calling a wind was easy enough. Because of the recent rain, there wasn't as much dust as he'd wanted, but he didn't need a sandstorm, just a smokescreen. Yellow-gray wisps rose around him, became billows, rolling off east down the tracks. He tied his kerchief over his nose and mouth, then set off after the dust cloud.
When he moved up onto the railbed, he felt the rails snatch his power away. That was all right; once started, the wind should keep up for a while. And it was only power outside himself that was disrupted. The power that remained within him, speeding him as he began to run, worked just as smoothly as it had when Ka'an had done it in the Burn. The heat was going to be a problem, though. Could he do something with it? He felt like he was juggling eggs, but just as his heart began to labor he grasped the pattern. Twisted it around and fed it back into himself in a different form. Chill washed over him. He accelerated.
There was dust everywhere now; the wind he'd begun had spread, lifting opaque veils across his path. His eyes watered. Some dust got into his lungs despite the kerchief. It didn't slow him down. Magic was substituting for breath and nourishment now. He wasn't even panting.
How long could he keep this up? It had been three days since he'd last eaten. Several hours since he'd had any water. One hour of sleep in the last thirty-six. Maybe he was using himself up. Killing himself. There'd be more exertions, too, maybe much harder ones, before he was done. Maybe it would be better to sleep and eat before he tried Churchrock? It would be terrible if he reached it and then lacked the strength to free Ash.
But the thought of leaving Ash in the Watch's hands for another day choked him. No. He'd do it now. If it broke him, then it broke him. No holding back. There's only one person in the world brave enough and forgiving enough to care for me. If I saved myself at his expense, what the hell would I be saving myself for?
He smelled coal smoke, then heard the sound of the engine ahead. The dust was still thick. The back of the hindmost car loomed ahead before he was ready for it; he nearly collided with it. There was a white uniform standing watch on the little balcony-thing there, eyes widening as Kieran vaulted the rail. The Watchman opened his mouth to give warning, but Kieran's hand smothered his shout. A twist, a crunch; the man sagged, neck broken. Kieran tossed the body overboard.
With magic running along his muscles, it was easy to climb up on top of the car. Easy to stand firm against the wind, though the train must have been going forty miles an hour. Stepping carefully, so as not to alert the men below with the sound of his feet on their roof, he walked forward. Checked carefully at each linkage to make sure there was no one who could see him go over, then leapt across the gap between cars.
Kieran crouched atop the engine, just ahead of the smokestack. He watched the desert rush past, and wondered how much of himself he'd used up to get here. It was hard to judge; unfamiliar as it was, this new magic looked infinite, but he knew it wasn't. He saw ways to increase it, though, even when the patterns around him were distorted by engine and rails. He couldn't send any energy out without it being snatched away, but he could take energy in. There were plenty of sources. The sun's heat, the wind's motion, the vibration shaking through the soles of his boots. Even the noise.
Coat and hair thrashing behind him, eyes streaming, he collected power and waited to arrive.
--==*==--
Chaiel was trying very hard to be still. Ash had said he needed quiet to think; it was implied that if he didn't get this quiet, he would become violent again. They were back to back, something between sitting and sprawled. Ash had said he was on to something. And also that if he ended up with Chaiel's hair in his face one more time he'd pull it out by the roots. So Chaiel held his bundled hair in his arms and worked on silence.
The visions made it so hard, though. Something had broken loose in the world. Everything was disordered. Sights and sounds and thoughts were coming in stutters, too fast to make sense. Vertigo made his stomach roll. He wondered, if he vomited, what would come out? No, don't think of that, or you will. Think about something else -- But not about what it might be like to get out of the bubble, because if Ash's idea didn't work -- if he'd been hoping and those hopes were dashed -- he wasn't sure what would happen, but he was sure it would be the worst thing possible.
But what else was there to occupy him? He had tired of his own body long, long ago. Picking at his hair, chewing his nails, even hurting himself no longer afforded any distraction. The only interesting thing was Ash, and Ash was too busy to be entertaining. The warmth against his back was pleasant, though. Unfamiliar skin, dry from too much time outdoors, a bit gritty. And the new smell. Not what would normally be considered a nice smell, kind of muddy and sweaty with just a hint of gunpowder and blood. But it was good to smell something, after being locked up with himself so long that he'd thought his nose was numb.
He wondered, if this plan failed and they were stuck here forever, whether he'd learn to want to have sex with a boy, just for something to do. He wouldn't get any satisfaction from it, because of the way the null sphere paused his body's functions, but it might pass the time. Sordid thought, that.
Chaiel surprised himself by giggling. When did I last care for the propriety of my thoughts, or my actions for that matter? Then he froze, fearing retaliation for having made noise.
Ash didn't react. A sense of involved concentration was trickling out of him. He'd got his mental fingers into some complex knot, and was picking it apart. Chaiel envied him.
"Right," Ash muttered. "Size and distance. They'd be proportional. Then it wouldn't matter, if it's parabolic. Okay. Hey, Shy."
"Chaiel," Chaiel corrected.
"Yeah. Which one of those doodads out there is the one that he turned off to let me in?"
Chaiel twisted around to point over Ash's shoulder. "There, with the glyph tacheth."
"The one that looks like a three-legged elephant in a big hat?"
"Uh... yes." Chaiel snickered. "It does, rather, doesn't it?"
"Someday you'll have to tell me what the hell it really is. Right now, though, I'd like to know whether you can muster enough power to break the switch."
"It's outside the sphere, stupid."
"That's not what I asked you," Ash said patiently.
Chaiel's heart began to beat faster. He swallowed, mouth dryer than usual, and his answer came out hoarse. "Just barely. If you could get the spell through the sphere." He swallowed again, no longer quite able to keep from hoping. "Can you?"
"Yes. Whether I can do it on the first try, though..."
"Oh." The sound jumped out of Chaiel's throat without his intention. He found he was curled small on Ash's back, fingers digging into the redhead's freckled shoulders. "Oh. Are you sure. Are you. How could. How did."
"Breathe, Shy," Ash said in an exasperated tone. "You're not going to be much use if you're hyperventilating. I know this is a big deal for you, but can you put off thinking about it for a minute? Take a deep breath. Count to ten or something."
Obeying, Chaiel gradually calmed himself. Another burst of visions helped, oddly enough, by putting something between the moment he was in and the moment in which he'd realized he'd be free soon. When he trusted himself to speak in complete sentences, he said, "I assume I wouldn't understand if you explained how you're going to manage it."
"Maybe you would. It's not a hard concept. See, the sphere is set to pass sound and light right now. But sound and light aren't going straight through. They're gathered and then emitted by the sphere. The skin of the bubble actually absorbs and then generates them." Ash's tone was admiring. "It's really a very robust design. But I think I've figured out the way it transmits energy, and it's something we can use. I'm going to make a pattern like a sort of lens, and then have you throw your spell through it. The energy will focus wherever I aim the lens -- that is, in the middle of that chunk of stone that acts as a switch. Did that make any sense?"
"I have one question."
"Shoot."
"What if he's designed it so that, if a seal is broken, it's simply stuck on forever? You'd be trapping us inside."
"No, the switches -- seals -- they hold the pattern in place. They're foci. Break one, and its particular variable is removed from the equation."
"How do you know?"
Ash chuckled. "Well, now I have to say you wouldn't understand the explanation. I'll show it to you sometime when I have lots of paper."
"Ah." Chaiel took a deep breath. "Is there anything else I need to know?"
"Wait until I have the lens made. I'll tell you when I'm ready. Then you work up a gob of raw power and fling it into the lens. Your aim isn't important; if it hits the lens at all, it'll go where I want it to go. Pure energy, mind you -- anything else will be stripped off as it goes through the bubble, and it might wreck our focus. Can you do that?"
"Yes."
"Okay, hold still for a minute, the placement has to be just right."
Chaiel watched tensely as his new ally began to construct a small, tight pattern in the air between himself and the seal. It's as tidy as one of Medur's, Chaiel thought at first, but as the pattern continued to form he realized Medur wouldn't have thought of this. She would certainly have thought of something, she'd always been the creative one, but what Ash was doing... Chaiel had never seen magic used quite like that before. Spell patterns were complex, sprawling things, in his experience. Unless the mind that built them was supremely disciplined, they tended to skew and fade, fur themselves with sub-patterns, so that no spell was ever exactly the same twice. The thing Ash was building, though, was simply a stepped series of concentric rings of force. As smooth and solid to Chaiel's magical senses as if it were built of glass. It seemed to have no urge to change itself. It held itself in perfect tension, perfectly in place.
Ash studied it for a time after he'd made it, apparently not needing any effort to keep it there. Stretching out a hand, he gathered a pebble of energy and flicked it into the lens. Chaiel couldn't see what happened to it, but Ash turned the pattern a fraction of a degree and sent out another tiny spark. He repeated this procedure five times before he was satisfied.
"All right," he murmured. "I'm spent. I hope you have enough steam to get the job done."
"Now?"
"Now."
Chaiel's hands were trembling. He rolled them into fists, bit blood from his lip, telling himself firmly: There is no future. There is no next minute. If you think of the next minute, you're sunk. Just do this one thing, and then you can think again.
Slowly, he uncurled his hands. Steadying himself against Ash's body, he put a kernel of pattern between his stretched fingers and wound power around it. He didn't know quite how much it would take to break the seal, so he supposed he'd better give it everything he had -- which wasn't much. His mind hadn't been clear enough to gather and store as much as he could have from the visions. But he had what had been on Ash in the form of Thelyan's binding, and a little from his own body.
Goosebumps crawled across his skin as he stole from himself. His toes and fingertips began to go numb. Still he kept spooling it out. Only when lethargy began to creep over him and threaten his concentration did he stop.
Please, please let me not have any visions in the next two seconds...
He detached the ball of energy from himself and shot it into the lens.
A sharp crack rang through the room. Flying chips of stone stung him.
The seal was gone. There was only a charred spot on the beam where it had been fastened, and bits of it pattering and bouncing across the floor. Chaiel let out a wild screech of triumph.
Ash's simultaneous victory cry turned into an indignant yelp, and he twisted away. "Right in my ear, Shy. Ouch." He held Chaiel at arm's length. "Okay, boost me up."
Eagerly, Chaiel obeyed. Rather than standing with their feet together as before, Chaiel grasped Ash's ankles. With his arms at full stretch, Ash could just barely get his hands around one of the struts. The sphere's repelling effect was still in place; cords of muscle stood out under Ash's skin as he strained to pull them free of it. Bit by bit, he climbed out onto the floor, curled around a strut to keep from being hauled back in. Bit by bit, Chaiel was pulled out after him. At last Chaiel popped free and tumbled onto dusty stone.
Ash gave a breathless laugh. "Well, it worked."
Chaiel drew breath to reply, but was stilled by how difficult it was. He lay sprawled where he had fallen. His limbs felt like lead. He wasn't sure he could move at all. And the aches -- all the aches, hunger and thirst and torn nails and torn skin -- he whimpered in alarm. Had he been freed only to die?
"What's wrong?" Ash bent over him, concerned.
"I can. Hardly. Breathe."
"Oh. I guess you've been floating for a long time, haven't you? It's just muscle memory, Shy. Your muscles can't have really atrophied, if your body was shut down."
"Stop. Calling me. Shy."
"I just realized something. We weren't really breathing in there, were we? I mean, we were breathing, but we weren't using up the air. And now we are." Ash glanced around the small ovoid room. "And there can't be all that much in here. We need to go."
"Wait. Just. A little while."
"Can't. If the air thing isn't enough to get you moving, I bet you anything Thelyan's going to know we're out. Aw, hell, I weigh a ton." Groaning, Ash labored upright. He went to the corner where he'd left his clothes when Thelyan had made him disrobe. Chaiel numbly watched him put his glasses and trousers on.
Any second now I'm going to realize I'm out of the sphere. Any second. It's going to hit me, I'll understand it, and then -- feel something, I suppose. Happy? I might be happy.
"You can tie my shirt around your waist, like a kilt. You want the coat? I think you need to be warm more than I do. I bet your feet are pretty tender. I can go barefoot." A pile of filthy clothing hit the floor in front of Chaiel's face.
With great effort, Chaiel rolled onto his side, then curled up to sitting. He picked up one of the socks, but immediately dropped it with a cry of disgust. It practically bounced. "How did you get your stockings so dirty?"
"A mudslide was involved. Also a broken ankle and a jammed rifle and Kieran leaving, so mud in my boots wasn't exactly foremost in my mind." Ash was over by the door now, running his hands around the edge.
Gingerly brushing the worst of the dirt off, Chaiel clothed himself. He still felt too heavy, but at least he could move now, albeit slowly. The boots were much too big, and the shirt-as-kilt idea didn't work as well in practice as in theory. Nevertheless it was wonderful to be covered. On hands and knees, he put a little distance between himself and the sphere. He was afraid it would somehow grab him, pull him back in.
"Can we smash it?"
"What?"
"The sphere. Let's smash it, so he can't use it again."
Ash spoke without turning. "Sure, hand me the sledgehammer. Or you could use that keg of gunpowder, if you brought your earplugs."
"There's no need to be sarcastic," Chaiel sulked.
"Sure there is." Palms flat against the door's metal, Ash bowed his head and sighed. "Well, we're not getting out this way. He's got the door rigged somehow, might just be a weird lock but for all I can tell it'll blow up in our faces. Help me feel the walls for thin spots."
"What, you're going to tunnel through stone?"
"Yep."
"With that keg of gunpowder you mentioned?"
"Oh, so you can dish it but you can't take it?" Ash shot him a grin. "There's all sorts of power floating around loose here, can't you feel it? I mean, not enough for anything flashy, but if we're smart we don't have to be flashy."
Chaiel crawled to the wall and hauled himself upright against it. Now that he was looking, he could sense the power Ash mentioned. With skills rusty from disuse, he started gathering it in. First he strengthened himself. Then he sent his senses exploring into the rock under his hands, trying to feel its dimensions.
Then he took a step and tripped over his hair.
Ash's hoot of laughter angered him at first. He'd landed hard on his hands and knees, skinning them, and it hurt. But as he opened his mouth to say something sharp, it suddenly struck him: he was on solid ground, he had the option of skinning his knees, he was free.
Little giggles welled up in him, then turned to real laughter. Sobs of relief and gratitude mixed into it. Tears rolling down his face, he laughed until his stomach ached.
When he finally wound down, he looked up to find Ash watching him with a small, sweet smile. "You're welcome," Ash said. He offered a hand to pull Chaiel to his feet, and they went back to work.
Inching along the curved wall, they gathered power as they searched. Nearly opposite where they'd started, Chaiel found what they were looking for. "I'd say it's about ten feet thick here. There's a tunnel on the other side. I don't understand how you mean to get to it, though."
"Think small." Ash came to run his hands over the place Chaiel indicated. "Really, really small. We're lucky this isn't marble or granite or something, we'd be screwed." Without further explanation, he spread his hands across the rock and closed his eyes.
With a faint crackling noise, a few chips of stone broke off and pattered on the floor. Then a hand-sized chunk, followed by a pouring of sand. Just as Chaiel was about to comment that they'd run out of air before they got through at this rate, the whole room boomed like a drum. Chaiel's ears popped. Sand and pebbles poured out of a fresh crack in the wall, wide enough to wedge a hand into. The sound of crumbling stone was a constant sizzling now, the hole deepening until Ash was in it to the elbows, then to the shoulders.
Belatedly, Chaiel realized that all this rubble would have to go somewhere. Falling to his knees, too excited to feel the sting of the skinned places, he began scooping aside sand with both hands.
Pretty much the first thing I said to him was that he wasn't very bright. When he remembers that, I'll be sure to let him laugh for a good long time.
From atop the mesa, Thelyan combed the world for a sign of his enemy. He had sensed Ka'an for a time, but then the trace had vanished. It was possible that the evil one had discovered some way to cloak himself, but Thelyan doubted it. Such spells had not yet been discovered the last time Ka'an had been active. So that implied that the enemy was moving along the blind zone created by the train tracks.
Since the interference of the rails would prevent Ka'an from repelling from the ground to ride the wind, he must be running. It would probably be full night before he arrived. That would suit him; he reveled in darkness, after all.
A puff of black smoke in the west caught Thelyan's attention. That would be the troop train, with Strindner's reinforcements. They would arrive in plenty of time. Going to the edge, he looked down to see that Liss had his men formed up near the platform, ready to merge in Strindner's unit and brief them. The neat ranks of white uniforms pleased Thelyan. The White Watch were the most disciplined men in the world, thanks to the harsh training he had designed for them. Even when Ka'an began killing them, they would hold their formations and return fire. Thelyan doubted that Ka'an would be harmed in any serious way by the hail of lead and spells the Watch would throw at him, but he would have to use much of his power to prevent his body's destruction.
Then it would only remain for Thelyan to break and devour him.
The Director's thoughts were interrupted by a sparking alarm in the back of his mind. He sought its source, and frowned. The null sphere had been damaged. Perhaps breached. He hadn't thought that was possible.
Perhaps putting Medur in with Chaiel had been a mistake. The Green Lady was weak, but might have sacrificed herself to give Chaiel the power to break free.
Well, he had time to deal with the problem before the joining of battle. Thelyan turned toward the entrance to his hidden stairway, away from the ant-small ranks of his troops below; but something in that direction nagged at him. He paused, trying to puzzle out what it was. He could sense the lives of his mages, he could sense that the prison ward was intact, he could hear the troop train approaching --
Whirling, he gasped -- the first involuntary sound he'd made in centuries -- as he realized what was wrong. The sound of the train. It should have been slowing. It was accelerating.
Despite the distance, his eyes picked out the dark shape crouched atop the engine just before the train derailed. Throttle jammed open, the train hit the switch just before the platform at its maximum speed of sixty miles per hour, jumped the track, and crashed tumbling and screeching into the massed men there. Some tried to run; some threw useless spells at the grounded mass of iron; all to no avail. Thelyan watched helplessly as his men died for nothing.
His mouth opened without his command a second time, and a cry of rage leapt out. How? How could the evil one, that vestige of a barbaric prehistory, have managed to use Thelyan's own machinery against him? How?
"Where are you?" Thelyan growled. "Where are you, you snake, you sneaking spider?" There -- he found the dark shape again, leaping and dodging among the few survivors beyond the still-skidding train. As the burning engine tore through the outer fence and dug itself to a halt half-buried in sand, Ka'an in Trevarde's skin neatly turned the spells thrown at him by the last few Watchmen. Then the dark one produced a pistol and fired off three shots, leaving no one to oppose him.
Again, he should not have been able to do that. What did that ancient serpent know of modern weapons? He shouldn't even have known what a gun could do, let alone use one so neatly.
Scowling, Thelyan stretched out a hand. Sent a thread of force down into the carnage below to snare a discarded rifle.
Ka'an glanced up, following the motion of power. Thelyan could see the glint of his eyes, and of his teeth -- the mad creature was grinning eagerly. It was not an expression he had expected to see on Ka'an's face. Fury, arrogance, megalomaniacal posing at grandeur, yes; but not this wild-dog smile. Something had changed. Ka'an was no longer what Thelyan remembered. It began to seem possible that the outcome of the fight was not predetermined.
Men held in reserve were pouring out of the compound. Ka'an looked between them and Thelyan. He threw out his own thread of power, catching at the rifle before Thelyan could receive it. Thelyan retaliated by following that thread back, snagging at Ka'an's body. Ka'an copied the action.
With a simultaneous, counterbalanced pull -- ironically cooperative -- they jerked Ka'an's body from the ground and flung it high into the air, toward Thelyan.
Ka'an landed lightly on the mesa's top, long hair and coat settling around him like dusty black wings. His power was spun tightly closed, defensive; another thing out of character. He studied Thelyan with eyes that held more curiosity and wariness than malice. The pistol in his hand -- a new model, of the kind that Thelyan didn't yet trust enough to issue to his troops -- covered Thelyan before the Director could bring his own rifle to bear.
"You seem like a smart guy," the dark one said. "Has it crossed your mind that we don't have to do this?"
Thelyan's eyes narrowed. What did he mean, spouting such nonsense? "If you're trying to negotiate a truce, Ka'an, you're a fool. I will not let you return the world to chaos."
"Whoa." The enemy's eyebrows climbed. "Wait a second. This is starting to make sense. You're one of these immortals too. That's why Ka'an wanted to kill you. How many of you fuckers are there?"
"This is a ruse," Thelyan frowned, but as he said it a scenario presented itself that might explain this. Could a mortal vessel possibly have bested Ka'an and taken his tainted power? No, that was impossible. "This is a trick."
The dark one shook his head. "We're not understanding each other. Look, here's the deal. I owe you a kicking for messing with my head a while back, and I guess I wouldn't mind seeing you dead on account of your job title. But I just took out about fifty of your guys, and I figure we can call that even. Let Ashleigh Trine go, and I'll leave."
"Unbelievable," Thelyan snarled. "No. I don't believe it. You end here, Ka'an."
The enemy's lips quirked. "Oh, I see. So I guess we fight, huh?"
Thelyan answered with a slash of power in lieu of words. The enemy twisted aside and replied with a blast of his own, and the battle was joined.
--==*==--
The last thin shell of sandstone crumbled away under Ash's hands. He sagged to his knees, smiling despite his fatigue. A fresh-smelling draft stirred his hair. He was rather proud of himself. Breaking through the wall by main force would have been impossible, with the tiny trickle of energy he'd been able to pull, but he'd used the principles of steam power to do the job. Finding tiny pockets of moisture in flaws among the rock, he'd jolted them to heat, cracking the stone. Far more efficient. Even so, he was tired.
Chaiel climbed past him, hair dragging in the dust. The little light Thelyan had left in the room bobbed along obediently behind him. The kid looked ridiculous, bare-legged in Ash's overlarge boots, drowned in Ash's mud-crusted coat, with the matted rope of his hair snaggling behind him. But for all his weirdness, he'd turned out to be a solid ally. He looked up and down the hallway they'd broken into, then glanced back at Ash, gray eyes round as a kitten's.
"I smell outside. Which way? I can't tell which way."
"Pick one, I guess." Ash took a steadying breath, made himself get up. He chose a direction at random, and set out toward the left. That one seemed to be slanting down a little, so it was more likely to let them out, since he sensed they were high up in the mountain.
He could feel that Kieran was near, and the sense of him made Ash's head spin with an anxiety of need. Every moment, he had to fight the urge to act with frantic haste. He wouldn't help Kieran by panicking. Calm persistence was what he needed.
Are you fighting now, Kai? Are you in danger? I'm so tired of being afraid for you. Be smart, defend yourself, hold on, and I'll find a way to join you.
He thought he sensed a flicker of emotion in response. Just a confirmation, thrown out of a state of concentration. It conveyed something along the lines of: Busy. Doing fine. Patience.
It was reassuring. But then, it took a lot to scare Kieran. He might not even begin to fear until he was already too deep in trouble to dig himself out. Ash's help -- and possibly Chaiel's -- might be necessary. And the sooner the better. Ash forced his weary body to pick up the pace, and heard a groan behind him as Chaiel followed suit.
The hallway made a gradual curve left and down, then ended in a metal door. This one, unlike the one that had sealed the sphere room, had a handle and lock, and was painted white. Ash put his hand to it, then his ear.
"What --" Chaiel began.
"Ssh." It was almost silent beyond the door, but there was one puzzling little noise. A dull thumping in irregular rhythm.
No voices, though, or sounds of feet. Ash put his hand to the lock plate, but discovered that his senses slipped and skewed within the metal. He moved to the wall, contemplating the feasibility of tunneling around.
Chaiel went past him, grasped the door handle, and turned it. The door swung open.
Ash slapped himself on the forehead. "I'm an idiot."
"You're a genius," Chaiel countered. "I expect you frequently miss the obvious."
"Let me go first." Ash peered cautiously into the dimness beyond the door, then stepped forward, allowing Chaiel to follow with the light.
This was a large, ominously laboratory-like room, with a series of doors along the far wall. It smelled rank, like a hospital and a kennel combined. The doors opposite were like jail doors, each with a small barred window at head height. The thumping sound came from behind one of these. Ash crept toward it, into a growing miasma of pain and despair as thick as the smell.
"What is this place?" Chaiel breathed.
"Light." Ash beckoned. He followed the thumping to look through one of the barred windows, from which came a strong stench both physical and emotional.
The faint gleam of the light revealed a cell occupied by a single, deformed figure. The figure was crouched in a far corner, banging its overlarge head against the wall. Its upper limbs were useless paddles, its legs short and fat as an infant's. It was a little larger than an ordinary man, squat enough to weigh three or four times as much, and its skewed face was blank. It did not react to the light.
Ash reeled back, choking. As he struggled not to throw up, he sensed Chaiel's echoing shock as he, too, looked into the cell.
The thumping didn't pause.
"What are they doing?" Ash gasped, when he could speak at all. "Oh god, what do they think they're doing here? And --" He straightened. "Are there more of those things?"
Chaiel shook his head in dismay. "What should we do about it?"
"Do?"
"Should we put it out of its misery?"
Ash spread his hands. "How? We're unarmed."
Then they both jumped as a sharp clang sounded from one of the other cells. Spinning to face it, Ash saw a pair of eyes glittering behind another barred window. The clanging noise came again, and he realized the cell's occupant was tapping something against the metal door.
The face retreated as Ash came forward. It backed off just enough that he could see that it appeared human, small, a child. White face, dark eyes, dark stubble on its scabbed scalp.
He swallowed sour spit before speaking. "Um. Hello. Can you talk?"
The figure shook its head. It made a small whimpering sound.
"Hold on, I'm going to try to get you out."
Whimpering again, the figure nodded frantically.
As Ash fumbled with the mechanism that barred the door, Chaiel grabbed his arm. "Is that a good idea, Ash? What if the creature's dangerous?"
"What if it is?" Ash returned. "It's aware of its situation, not like that giant fetus in there. I can't just walk away." Setting his teeth, he finally got the wheel to turn, and the bar cranked back. He hauled the door open.
The prisoner wobbled out, smiling gratitude, and Ash's heart squeezed small with pity. It was a young girl, no more than twelve or thirteen years old, naked, emaciated and bruised. Attached to her shoulderblades, surrounded by swollen and suppurating flesh, was a pair of enormous, greasy black wings.
"Oh." The meaningless syllable was all Ash could get out. He reached to steady her, wincing at the way she flinched.
Chaiel's face twisted. He spit on the floor. "This place is sick. I want to leave."
"Wait. Are there... are there others?"
The girl shook her head. She pointed at the cell that held the head-banging creature, then made loops by her head with her finger: crazy. She gestured at the other cells and drew her finger across her throat: dead.
Ash nodded. He took the child's arm to help her walk, avoiding the hideous taxidermy on her back.
Moving more slowly now, they followed the hall the other direction. This time what they found was more encouraging: a stair leading down. No discussion was necessary.
--==*==--
Kieran wasn't afraid, but he sensed it wouldn't be long until he began to be. Fighting Ka'an had been a bar brawl compared with this. He was in over his head.
Thelyan was powerful, and he was fast. Far too fast. And he knew what he was doing. He had a repertoire of spells that he could just rip off in an instant. He'd bark out a phrase, trace a shape with flickering fingers, and suddenly something nasty would be flying at Kieran's face -- a hissing gout of invisible heat, or tendrils of pain groping for his nerves, or a clap of eardrum-rupturing concussion. No matter how tight his defenses, some of it always got through. Kieran had learned the hard way that by the time he saw what the spell was, it was too late to avoid it. The air reeked of singed hair and burnt leather, and the palms of his hands were blistered.
But he'd learned. He had a sort of strategy. He'd decided that since it was impossible to tailor his defense to the attack, the best he could do was to throw something out at the same time, it didn't matter exactly what. He didn't try to make these blasts into spells; just did his best to get them into the right place to disrupt whatever Thelyan was making. It mostly worked. So far.
And it just went on and on. They stood facing each other, hands slashing the air. Thelyan spitting spell words; Kieran muttering fragments of obscenities. To an unmagical eye, they must have looked like a couple of railyard bums having a lunatic argument. Kieran was getting tired. He couldn't tell if Thelyan was wearing out; it was possible that the Director could go on all day.
When he'd felt Ash calling for him from within the mountain, he'd hoped that it meant this fight was only a distraction. Keep the Director busy long enough for Ash to get out, then run for it. But when he'd been able to spare the attention to check his surroundings, he found that there was a lot more of the Watch left alive than he'd thought. Even though Ash was moving within the mountain, which meant he wasn't stuck in a cell, he still wouldn't be able to walk out the front door. Kieran would not only have to beat Thelyan, he'd have to do it with enough juice to spare so he could take down whoever was guarding the compound.
As things stood, that just wasn't going to happen.
He'd wasted a couple bullets finding out that Thelyan's shield against projectiles was a lot better than Ka'an's had been. Thelyan had again moved to snatch up a rifle from below, and this time had succeeded, but Kieran had seen how the shield thing was built and so the gun hadn't done Thelyan any good. It was down to this flicker-fast chess-game staring contest, which Kieran knew he wouldn't win. He had to find a way to move the fight onto better ground. Make it physical, somehow.
This realization came without words, gradually building in the moments between attacks and deflections. He had to be realistic; plain determination wasn't going to beat skill. And I'm thinking too much. I've been thinking way, way too much today.
I'm a thug, damn it. What the fuck am I doing playing brain games with this bastard?
Managing the shape of his power was taking up too much of his attention. Thelyan seemed not to have to consider it at all. He had it trained to his hands and voice. He spoke and gestured, and it leapt from him already formed into some lethal shape. Kieran tossed out random bursts, tangling Thelyan's spells as they emerged, scattering them. Sometimes he was too slow. As his resolve to shift the ground firmed, he missed one, and knives of air tore across his chest, ripping clothes, welting his skin.
A button, sliced from his coat, fell to the ground and bounced. It seemed to take a long time.
"Don't cut the tattoos, asshole," Kieran said. His cheerful tone surprised him a little, and pleased him. He knew what that meant.
This was starting to feel like a fight. Whatever Thelyan was doing, he didn't know what to call that, but a fight he understood. If there was going to be blood flying around, then the thing made sense. And if someone's going to spit teeth, it won't be me.
Hauling his power in tight around him, letting it develop a bit of a spin, Kieran stepped forward. Another set of invisible blades met him halfway; only partially deflected by the whirl of his pattern, it struck him in the side. Now his left sleeve was hanging in shreds. But he'd decided to take the pain. It could have been a lot worse. The coat was a loss, but his skin was barely scratched. Relishing the wary way Thelyan stepped back at his approach, Kieran closed the distance between them until their patterns overlapped. Tangled, clashing, like kite strings fouled together.
The Director's eyes widened in outrage in the instant before Kieran's fist caught him across the cheekbone.
Kieran followed this with a hard hail of fast blows to any target he could see, trying to keep the man off balance so he couldn't form a spell. There was a bitter joy in him now. Where's your fancy magic? Where are your pain spells and your headgames? He battered aside Thelyan's arms, followed the Watchman's attempts to back away. The pale-haired man was far shorter than Kieran, and weaker. Thelyan cringed, he cried out; things broke, things bled, fingers, an ear, and now he was the one off guard, unable to summon a defense.
When Thelyan was staggering, slack-faced, punch-drunk, Kieran hopped back half a step to finish him off with a nice solid kick to the temple.
Mistake. In that split second, Thelyan threw out a wall of solid force -- half-formed, no attempt at subtlety this time, just pure kinesis. It caught Kieran right in the face and lifted him off his feet. The world flashed white as he flew headfirst backwards in a long arc, then flashed again as the back of his skull hit the ground with all his weight behind it.
He lay stunned, looking at the sparkles. There wasn't even pain. And then there was; all at once, fat and dull from behind, small and sharp in front. Something tickled inside his throat and he tasted metal.
Bloody nose. Concussion? Don't have time to puke. As soon as thought re-formed, he was moving. His head throbbed in big slow waves as he stood up. Hot blood rolled out of his nose in a sheet, down his lips and chin, threaded itching down his neck. His eyes wouldn't focus, but his mind's sight was working just fine. When he saw what Thelyan was doing, he laughed.
The dumbshit was taking time to heal himself. "Can't you take a few bruises, buddy?" Kieran's voice sounded thick, but he was only amusing himself anyway. "Tell me, you ever been smacked in the kidney with the back end of a rifle?" As he talked, he was gathering up his pattern, shaping it more carefully this time. Blood spattered from his lips with his words. "If you're not pissing pink, you can't really say you got beat up. You should have those guards of yours give you a demonstration. You know -- for science."
Thelyan wasn't listening. He was watching Kieran warily, but his attention was turned inward. The injuries Kieran had caused him were righting themselves, and all the power he wasn't using for that was shaped into a shield that looked as solid as a brick wall. He clearly thought they'd reached a stalemate, declared a momentary cease-fire to lick their wounds.
Kieran finished his preparations as he finished talking. He wasn't going to try to get through that brick wall. Instead, he took the hungry, gnawing pattern he'd fashioned and shoved it into the ground at Thelyan's feet.
The Director stumbled as the stone beneath him began to crack and crumble. He scrambled aside, but the crumbling followed him. Leaving off his healing, he sent a spell of his own to block Kieran's, then spread a wide net of force above Kieran's head, which immediately started to radiate a blistering heat.
Spells again, Kieran thought disgustedly as he countered. But they weren't quite back where they'd started. It was a little different now. And he thought maybe he was starting to get the hang of it.
--==*==--
"What's that?" Chaiel balked, pointing. "I'm not touching that."
Ash studied the strange pattern before them. It cut through the hallway at an angle, a slanted plane of regular, interlocked shapes. While he examined it, he stated the obvious: "There isn't any other way to go." At the foot of the stairway, they'd found this hall, and there had been no doors or branches from it in all the long way they'd followed it.
The child with wings grafted to her back sank to her knees. Ash reached out to her, concerned, but she shook her head. Just resting. Her pale face was sheened with sweat; he didn't think he'd ever seen a little kid sweat that much. She was really sick.
He pushed pity from his mind. Once they were out, then he could try to get her some medical help. Right now, he had to figure out whether the thing that crossed the corridor was dangerous, or maybe something they could use. Its pattern was geometric, and its workings were less complex than the null sphere had been. But he'd spent hours on the sphere, and he wasn't sure if he had even minutes now. Brushing off a protest from Chaiel, he went to put his hand to it.
There was no sense of resistance. His hand went right through. The pattern didn't react to him at all. "I think it's safe," he said, and stepped forward.
Blindness snapped down around him, patterns vanished, the walls of his mind closed in. With a short cry of dismay, he scrambled back. To his great relief, nothing prevented him, and his magical sense returned as soon as he was back on the right side of the pattern. Understanding dawned.
"It's the ward."
Chaiel frowned. "What ward, what do you mean?"
"The ward that -- we must be near the prison section. Go through for a second. Go on, it's harmless, you can walk right out again."
"You'd better be right." Chaiel did as Ash asked, and came back out even more quickly than Ash had, and even more shaken. "That was awful," he said with an accusing glare. "Why did you make me do that?"
"So when I tell you that's where they keep the Talents, you'll know what I'm talking about."
"Why do I care?"
"Well, I'm just thinking, if that ward came down, a few locks and bars wouldn't do much to hold those guys. I'm thinking that might do Kieran some good, if the Watch were distracted by escaping prisoners."
"It might do us good as well," Chaiel said thoughtfully. "Can you do it?"
Ash shrugged. "Let me think a minute."
Sighing resignation, Chaiel turned to the child and explained to her. "That means we have to be very quiet for a long time, until we're thoroughly bored, and then he'll suddenly come up with some genius idea he can't explain."
The girl nodded solemnly and folded her hands in her lap.
Ash hid a smile and turned to study the ward. After a moment he forgot his amusement. There was something familiar about the way this thing was put together. It had some design elements in common with the null sphere, but that wasn't what nagged at him. Something about it made him think of Dawyer's experiments with electricity; he could see the page in his mind, last spring's issue of the North Bank Technical Quarterly. There'd been diagrams, he'd been frustrated because they weren't labeled right, the experiment couldn't be reproduced without further information...
Batteries. The ward was a battery. That was how it kept anyone inside it from doing magic -- it snatched away any free power within its boundaries, and used it to strengthen itself.
And that meant... yes, it was a simple hexagonal matrix... must be spherical, or at least domelike... so if any of the nexus points were removed... "But how do you get at it? If it just eats anything that comes near it -- from outside, but -- no, that trick's not going to work here. Just make it stronger."
Behind him, Chaiel sighed again. Only then did Ash realize he'd been talking out loud. He turned, catching the gray-eyed boy in a theatrical yawn.
"Hey Shy, if you want to do something to something but the something just grabs whatever touches it --"
"Something something?" Chaiel's tone was mocking, but Ash had already answered his own question, smacking himself on the forehead.
"Another battery. Duh."
"You're making no sense at all. And I wish you'd stop calling me Shy."
"Hm? Sorry." Ash's reply was an absent mumble. He was already building his own battery. It didn't need to have a structure like the ward's; a simple layered pattern would suffice, transparent one way and opaque the other. He constructed it in the palm of his hand. Just as a precaution, he took the time to arrange his own pattern as receptively as possible, in case his one-way membrane drew out more than one nexus point.
When he was finished, he stretched out his hand... hesitated.
"You might want to step back," he said. "There's a remote chance that my head will explode."
"You're joking."
"Mostly." Nevertheless he waited until he heard Chaiel and the child moving away before he plunged his hand into the ward.
He heard the beginning of his own scream before he went deaf. Energy leapt into him with terrible force and speed -- agonizing -- distantly, he was aware he must pull his hand out of the flow, but couldn't find it. Couldn't find his body. Couldn't find himself at all.
--==*==--
Kieran heard Ash cry out in his mind. In the moment of distraction this afforded, Thelyan got a direct attack through, knocking Kieran tumbling across the rough stone of the mesa's top. Kieran didn't care. Something had happened to Ash, something bad, and now Ash was in pain.
What is it? -- the thought was incoherent, just a burst of fear sent nowhere. Huddled crouching with his head behind his arms, pattern meshed tight around him, Kieran didn't care what Thelyan might do to him in the next second. If Ash was being killed right now, then it didn't matter who won this fight. The sense of pain and fear from Ash was mounting. Kieran took a hitching breath, tasting stale blood and dust, and sent out to him again. Will my power help? Take it!
When he touched the bullet charm at his throat to send his power out, though, he sensed immediately that the problem was something opposite. Energy flooded along their link, coming from Ash's direction. It was jetting through, like steam from a pinhole punched in a boiler. Ash had encountered a surge of some kind.
It didn't matter why. All Kieran needed to know was that Ash was being burned out by it, drowned in it.
Give it to me, he thought desperately. Knowing that words wouldn't make it through, not sure whether the sense of his intention would carry. Send it here!
"Exhausted already?" Thelyan's smug voice was an irritating distraction. "Get up, Ka'an. We've barely started."
"Shut up," Kieran said through his teeth, not looking up. He couldn't spare the attention for his adversary just now. He needed to reach out, couldn't find a direction in which to reach -- was suddenly sick to death of all this magic, all this vagueness and sideways thinking. Groping with his mind at the leaking energy, he bullied his way into the part of his pattern that was joined to Ash's, wrenched it wide, flung more strands into it. He robbed his shield to do it, and was buffeted by fragments of an attack from Thelyan, but he didn't care. He could sense the pressure on the other side of that divide, the agony and fear, Ash screaming, he couldn't stand it --
With a soundless sound and a prickling across his scalp, the dam burst. Power shoved into him. It hurt, even more than taking in the Burn had hurt; it was not his own power, not fitted to his pattern. It was something icy and sawtoothed and regular, and he couldn't find a place to put it. No wonder it had pained Ash so much. He heard himself panting, blood from his broken nose gurgling in his throat as he gasped for breath. It seemed, for a time, that he might have sacrificed himself.
That wouldn't be so bad. But it would be better if he lived, better still if he could find a way to keep this power and use it... and with this thought, an instinct rose in him, some vestige of the dead god.
The process was violent. Stone cracked beneath his knees. Dust blew away from him in a widening circle. Thelyan intensified his attack, but Kieran ignored the cuts and blows. He tore apart the power as it came, smashed it out of alignment, forced it to follow the rules of his own mind. Sweat beaded and ran, stinging broken skin. His eyes were useless, his limbs frozen, his whole attention focused on this one task.
There was too much -- a river turned to an ocean, a bullet between the eyes, a firehose jammed down his throat -- he couldn't keep up, his brain was going to melt, it was all over --
And then it stopped. There was no more.
He opened his eyes, realized he was lying facedown on the ground. Shoving himself up to kneeling, he scraped his hands across his face, examined the mud of sweat and blood that came off. Looked around for his enemy, to see why Thelyan hadn't finished him off.
The Director was staring at him with an expression of angry awe. "How?" The one syllable was nearly a whine.
Kieran coughed his throat clear, spit, grinned. "Pure sex appeal."
Thelan made a jerky gesture dismissing this flippant answer. "It's not possible. It simply can't be done."
Laughing a bit, Kieran climbed to his feet. His pattern still wove its wall around him, but it was now thick and thorny with the new energy he'd pulled in. He could feel that Ash was alive, and no longer hurting. Weakened, maybe unconscious. But alive.
"Okay," Kieran said gamely. "It can't be done. So I didn't just do it. Damn you're dim."
"How?" Thelyan stepped forward with clenched fists, angrier by the moment. "I've studied power for centuries, and you -- but you're a primitive, a savage! Our last battle -- you couldn't adapt, you weren't smart enough, you were nothing like this, nobody should be able to do what you just did!" He pointed at Kieran, and the pointing finger shook. "You are the soul of darkness, Ka'an. You have no place in the light. How... how dare you change!"
Kieran shook his head. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, pressing hard, dragged down, felt the broken place snap right with a sharp pain behind his eyes. It was easy to trickle in just enough power to heal it. Now his voice came out right when he answered. "I'm not Ka'an, all right? I swallowed him. We fought and I won. I got some of the story from him, but not the part about you. I don't know what you guys were fighting about -- though I bet it had something to do with the fact that Ka'an was a self-involved jackass who pissed off everyone who had to deal with him. Anyway, he's dead now. Can you get that through your head? Or do we have to go around again? Because I'm game, if you wanna. But it's getting stale."
For a long moment, Thelyan just stared at him. The Director looked young, just then, with his white skin pink-blotched and his pale hair darkened with sweat and dust, straggling out of its queue and into his face. It occurred to Kieran that the body Thelyan was using couldn't be much older than Kieran was. And Thelyan must have pushed out the soul that was born in it, killed whatever towheaded boy that face would have belonged to. At this point, one more death probably mattered less than pocket change to him.
He deserved to die. He deserved to be beaten in the most humiliating way and then squashed like a bug. Kieran didn't feel like doing that, though, which didn't make a whole lot of sense.
Thelyan was apparently having the same thought. With narrowed eyes, he said, "Even if that were true, why would you want peace with me?" After a moment's pause, Thelyan's face relaxed, conflict gone. "If you're Trevarde and not Ka'an, then the beast's power is in the hands of a sexual-deviant multiple-murderer from a race of brawling, squabbling savages."
"Well." Kieran snorted, wiped clotted blood on his knuckles. His pattern spiked out all over in a forest of thorns. He heard his voice from a distance, slow and drawling. "That was kinda the wrong thing to say."
The Director moved his hands, had time for the first syllable of an attack, and then Kieran sent spikes of power shooting deep into Thelyan's shield. He aimed not for the forming spell but for the pattern itself, tearing its fabric, grasping and breaking.
Thelyan cried out and lost his spell. He wrenched at the attacking thorns, formed slicing shapes in reply. Locked together, wrestling power against power, they bent all their attention to destroying each other.
When Ash screamed and fell, Chaiel's only thought was that he should have expected something like this. Things had been going too well.
He was able to get his hands under Ash's head before it hit the stone, but snatched them back immediately as a cold burn of power snapped at him. The little girl was whimpering, hiding her eyes. Ash lay slack-mouthed, twitching, while the structure of the ward dissolved and reeled into him in pale, roping strands. This went on for a handful of long seconds, and then the ward was gone and Ash lay quiet. Chaiel made one more attempt to reach out to him, to see if he lived; what he sensed when he came near, though, made it impossible for him to offer any help. All of Ash's natural aura was replaced with a high, tight vibration of foreign energy.
Chaiel bowed his head. The blue-eyed boy was not yet dead, but it seemed his mind had been burned away. Such a shame. It had been a beautiful mind.
"There's nothing more we can do for him," he said softly. He reached for the child's hand. "He sacrificed himself so we could escape. Let's not waste it."
She obediently put her clammy little hand in his and let herself be pulled to her feet. Walking slowly, as much from his own fatigue as from consideration for the child's weakness, Chaiel led her away past the place where the ward had been. His thoughts turned ahead: there was chaos all around, above and outside, and it would be difficult to get through it, unarmed and with a sick child in tow. It would have been better if Ash hadn't let his ambition outrun his abilities. Still...
I won't forget what you did for me, Chaiel thought reverently. Or what Medur said through you. All people are mine; mine to care for, mine to watch and learn from. I'll begin with this child.
--==*==--
It began as a headache. Everything was just a little too loud. Moving a little too fast. Duyam Sona thought it might be just the onset of one of his spells of despair, at first. They had been more frequent since he'd been recaptured. He sat listening to the distant sounds of running and barked orders, not really trying to imagine what might be going on out there, ignoring the muttering of his cellmate. Gibner was acting a bit odd. The bald, bearded man who was his only remaining friend generally responded to every stimulus with the same surly silence. Muttering wasn't his style. But then, they'd all been a bit more insane than usual since that bastard Trevarde had got some of them out and then left them to their own devices.
The problem with his head was getting worse. His brain itched. He felt the walls pressing in, felt Gibner in the cell with him, agitated. Like a jittering flame, like the spitting spark on the end of a fuse. Sona could almost smell the smoke.
"God's balls!" Gibner leapt to his feet, looking more like a monkey than ever. "Motherfucker! Fuck!"
Sona turned, scowling, and then his jaw dropped. Gibner's bed was on fire.
"Holy shit," Sona breathed, awestruck. His head-problem jumped into focus, and he suddenly understood that it was not a problem at all.
Gibner raised his head slowly to meet Sona's eyes. The understanding was mutual. "You're a kinetic," the bald man said. "Ain't you."
As an answer, Sona spread his fingers across the lock plate in the cell door. There was a faint creaking, as of metal under stress, and then a heavy clank. The door swung open.
The next few minutes were a smear of noise and movement. Others had realized it at about the same time -- the ward was down. Their magic would work again. Kinetics, pyros, breakers, all the destructive Talents came swarming out of the cells, to find only a quartet of fearful guards between themselves and freedom. There were some shots fired, but Sona didn't see who fell; the guards lasted only a breath's time beyond that. Torn apart, burned up, and melted down, all at the same moment.
Those who had been present for Trevarde's stunt after the storm, which was most of them, would rather have died than be recaptured again. No one said it out loud, but all had the same idea: make certain that this prison could never enclose them again. Deafening noise rose up as debris showered down. Some kinetics, Sona among them, had the presence of mind to steer the falling rubble toward areas where no one was standing, but they couldn't catch every boulder or glass shard. There were screams, and sobbing whimpers afterward.
Desperate men ignored wounded ones. The roof came down. The walls crumbled. A slope of crushed stone formed at one end, the one with the door that led to the mess hall and exercise yard, the direction most of them associated with 'out.' Men began swarming up it before others were finished making it, and more injuries resulted. Sona was one of these, though he didn't remember deciding to climb up. One moment he was realizing that escape was possible -- then there was a mess, and catching falling things, and then he found himself twisted beneath a slab of stone, and howling.
He bent everything he had to lifting the stone off him, but it wouldn't budge. It had crushed one of his legs. He could see, in the flickers of lucidity between swarms of pain, that his left leg was utterly gone, not just broken but smashed to paste. He wanted to separate himself from it, certain that the pain would go with it. Tugging at it made him scream, but he couldn't stop doing it.
Somewhere above, guns were barking. Shouting and flickers of power. He rolled his head, but it was aiming in the wrong direction. Back toward where his cell had been. Please all the gods, don't let that be my last sight. Urotu help me -- haven't I always been true? Haven't I always resisted the Dalanists and their heresy? Is this my reward?
Something moved, something pale, in a hollow of broken rock. Up above the shells of the cell tiers, up where the gun post had been. A soldier? Watchman? Left alive to shoot me dead? The figure went to the edge where the floor had broken off, stepped out onto thin air, and drifted gently down. I used to be able to do that... Sona wanted to play dead, but couldn't keep his sobs behind his teeth. The pain was unbelievable.
Bounding lightly over the strewn floor, the figure came nearer, and Sona began to doubt his senses. Not a soldier. The paleness was not a white uniform, but white flesh, crowned with something that in Sona's blurred eyes glowed like a streak of fire. Flickered, as the figure moved through bands of falling sunlight.
"Can you speak?" The voice was gentle. A young man's voice, and oddly familiar. "Can you hear me? Do you remember me, Sona?"
Sona clenched his teeth, blinked fast to clear his eyes. The bright figure's face jumped into focus. It was Trevarde's redheaded bumboy. It was Ash Trine.
"I'll have to make a tourniquet, or you'll bleed to death when I take that rock off you. It's going to hurt, but you have to try to hold still. Do you understand?"
"You came back." Sona's voice came out in a thin whine. "You came back for us. Is he here too? Trevarde?"
"Yes. I'm going to use some of your shirt, I don't have a lot of clothes left." Trine barely touched Sona's arm, but the sleeve of his sweat-soaked prison shirt flew away in neat strips. A brush of power trailed it along his skin, and that tiny touch was enough to clear his mind and ease the pain.
With full consciousness came a different kind of confusion. Trine's face was unmistakable, nobody else had a beaky freckled mug like that, and for all the dirt in it his hair was still a dead giveaway. But somehow, Sona was certain that if he thought of this as the same person he'd brawled with before, he'd be wrong. Power breathed from Trine like the cool of evening. His pale blue eyes, no longer frightened, held a kind of wry serenity that Sona had seen in the eyes of very old men. The pain in Sona's leg as Trine knotted twisted fabric around it wasn't nearly as bad as it should have been.
He would have been afraid, remembering how nasty he'd been to the kid, except that he had a feeling that this version of Trine would never harm him. Was too powerful to have to do harm.
"This is going to hurt a lot," Trine cautioned. "Are you ready?"
"Thank you," Sona said. Just in case something kept him from saying it later. There was no use in wondering how Trine could be so different, or even whether it was enough to help. "You don't owe me this and I know it. I'm ready."
With no sign of effort except a slight frown, Trine pressed his palms to the slab of stone that pinned Sona, and it shattered to gravel.
Pain fizzed up Sona's spine and burst in his head in a galaxy of spinning sparks.
When he woke, he was alone. He was dizzy, nauseous from loss of blood, but nothing hurt. By inches, he raised himself on his elbows to look at what was left of his leg. Ready for anything, not sure what he expected. Gagged at the sight of the mess of bloody meat and splintered bone that stretched out before him -- but it wasn't attached to him. Beyond where his trouser leg had been neatly sheared, the brown skin of his thigh gave way to pink, shiny scar. The stump looked as if it had been healed for years.
Beside him, placed neatly to his hand, was a length of steel bar from one of the skylights, one end melted and fused into a shape like the handle of a cane.
--==*==--
Colonel Warren had gone past the point of having his hands full about fifteen minutes ago. Five minutes ago, he'd stopped trying to contain the breakout. Now all he could hope to do was save as many of his men as possible.
Rifles were a little use against the escaping prisoners, but not much. For the most part the weapon of choice in this fighting retreat was magic. Warren had only a handful of men left -- he'd counted twenty-one, but a few had gone down since then. They were backing toward the only intact building he could see, firing and casting as they went; he could feel that they were exhausted.
"That's it, boys," he kept saying. "Just a few more yards." He hoped they couldn't hear his fear in his voice.
The prisoners flinging themselves against his line were a snarling mass, all filthy skin and stringy hair and blue-gray rags. Rabid. Not like last time, when they'd all bolted as far from the compound as possible. This time they were determined to tear the place apart. Warren didn't have time to wonder how the wards had come down. He didn't have time to wonder what he'd do when the few men he'd managed to chivvy out of the shaking mountain had reached the guardhouse that was their goal. They'd be boxed in, there. But at least they'd have cover... cover which would come down on their heads if they didn't spend energy keeping it up...
A breath of wind ran across his sunburned skin, and with it came clarity, and the smell of cold brine. At its passing, a change fell over the sound of the battle; not a hush, not at first, but a faltering of fury. Then, one by one, the prisoners straightened their backs, took deep breaths. Their magics went from attack to defense, then ceased completely. His own men began by crouching to reload and check their ammunition, but lost interest in the process partway through, and they too were still.
Warren felt his own spine straighten, his own lungs and eyes clear. Peace grew through him. It was a spell, of sorts, but not a heavy hand of passivity like the spells he knew. He still had the option of fighting, if he wanted to. It was just obvious to him, suddenly, that fighting was the least logical of his options, provided this cease-fire lasted into the next few seconds.
Waves of murmuring went through the prisoners. They parted; someone came through. Someone tall, bird-boned, pale as new ivory, with eyes like sea ice.
"My God," Warren breathed. "How -- of all the -- what --"
"Empathy, Colonel. Just empathy." Ashleigh Trine's tone was conversational, but his voice penetrated the mind without seeming to pass the ears. His expression wasn't that of a man possessing this kind of power; he looked a little worried, a little angry.
So why were some of the prisoners sinking to their knees? Warren felt his own exhaustion keenly, and the urge to bow his head in respect was part of that.
"I think," Trine said kindly, with a graceful gesture of his hands, "that you should go that way, and these men should go that way. And none of you should look back."
"What did -- what --"
"And I think now would be a good time for that to happen."
Some of the men were already taking this apparition's advice. Prisoners in one direction, Watchmen in another. Warren remembered his duty clearly enough, but it didn't seem as important as his life at the moment. He spoke to convince himself as much as to answer Trine. "I'm a soldier of God. I don't desert my post."
Trine tilted his head like a bird. "What's God need an army for? No, don't answer, I'm sure you've got an argument but I don't have time. But..." He sighed. "It's strange, but I'm glad you don't know what it's like to have your mind gang-raped. If you did, you'd want to undo it, and you can't. Go away now, Colonel Warren."
Against his intention, Warren took a step back. The terrible thing was that he knew Trine wasn't influencing his mind with anything but words. Everything was too clear. "I --" He meant to say something else, but what came out was: "I do know. It's part of our training."
"Go away," Trine repeated gently. The curve of his mouth was kind, but his eyes were like diamond drills.
Warren turned on his heel and ran.
--==*==--
Cut, twist, block, break, dodge, cut. There was no more thought. There was no time to have an opinion. No time to wonder whether he could win, or what would happen if he lost.
He barely knew that he was kneeling, hands fisted in the sand. Blood and sweat running into his eyes had no effect on the senses that mattered. He couldn't be bothered to wipe away all the things that ran out of his nose and eyes and mouth, tears and snot and blood and spit. The sounds he was making had nothing to do with anything. His enemy's body was just the nucleus of the shape he was trying to wreck, and the fact that this nucleus still stood upright and did not fall was of no importance.
He could barely remember his name anymore, but knew his pattern better with every moment.
What had once been a shifting shape in his mind's eye now stood out more clearly than earth or sky. Its colors gave light. Dark light, most of it; his enemy's was all pale and glittering, but his own was full of a thousand shades of black, the darkest greens, streaks of crimson and deep blue. No doubt it looked like the soul of an evil man. He was aware that his tactics were also those of an evil man; he caused as much pain as he could, using the distraction it afforded to press home the most damaging attacks he could devise. As he began to understand the structure of his enemy's soul-shape, he chose his targets with more care: self-image, sight, thought, hope. He knew that he was confirming Thelyan's certainty that he had to be defeated for the good of the world, but he couldn't care about that.
Only one thing mattered: Ash was moving again, out among the chaos, and any moment some stupid accident could take him away.
The act of sharing that power surge had connected them even more strongly. There was now a constant circuit of energy and emotion running between them. Kieran knew Ash's intentions despite the distance between them, and knew that he was sending his own struggle in return. He was afraid that if he was killed in this fight, his death would wash back along that connection and harm Ash -- and he couldn't pretend that a power backlash was the only hurt his death would do. He was the reason for everything Ash was doing, just as Ash was his own reason for fighting.
Still fighting, though beaten to his knees. Though his skin was a mess of cuts, though his muscles ached, though he'd been thrown tumbling across the stone a dozen times. He thought some bones might be broken, knew for certain that things inside him were bleeding. Unless he could keep enough energy for healing, he'd die even if he won.
There is no if, he snarled at himself. I will win. A world in which I don't doesn't matter. And the world got smaller every second.
Smash, slice. Bite and scratch. Shoulders hunched and creaking with repeated blows. We're killing each other by inches. Whenever he managed to steal some power away from Thelyan, he had to use it to repair himself. No time to heal properly, just barely enough to stop the worst bleeding so that he could keep going.
Ash was nearer. Nearer than he should have been -- nearer than Kieran wanted him. Coming up, somehow coming up the side of the mountain, faster than climbing, had now figured out the kinetic's ability to lift himself.
Don't! It's dangerous up here, everything is knives --
Kieran's incoherent message met the sweet calm of Ash and brought back a reply strong enough to contain words:
It's time to trust me. Do as I say, now, and we'll win. Love, will you trust me?
Yes. No other answer was possible.
Pull in. Shield yourself.
Kieran obeyed without wondering why. He yanked back all his thorns and blades, walled himself in tight. Suddenly his body mattered again, and it hurt all over. He wiped his eyes clear, took a creaking breath.
Thelyan was standing, but in a staggering posture, white uniform red-speckled. Some of Kieran's needles had gotten through. The Director was frowning, turning, as Ash rose over the mesa's edge and alighted weightlessly.
The scene was too familiar.
Something seemed to burst open in Kieran's heart. He had seen this before. He'd seen Ash shining like that, glowing like precious metals, his eyes brighter than the sky, walking as if touching the ground was optional.
No. Not this. Not this dream.
But he knew what came next. As Ash went to stand between Kieran and Thelyan, the message he sent was no surprise.
Pick up your gun now. Don't hesitate. Don't argue. This will work.
A thin, high sound rose up in Kieran's throat, but his hand closed around his gun. It seemed to take forever, but Thelyan had just begun to open his mouth to speak, and the dust raised by Ash's footsteps was still floating.
Ash spread his arms, meeting Kieran's stare. His pattern blossomed around him, for a split-second unfurled as a golden chrysanthemum with ten thousand petals, so bright Kieran could almost see it with eyes alone. Then it contracted, spinning itself glittering around the thread that linked them.
And the path it made went through Ash's chest, and speared toward Thelyan's throat.
Ashes, no! You're the one thing I can't spare!
Ash smiled, and it looked like a goodbye. He had never been so beautiful as in that moment. His voice had never been so sweet as in the one word he spoke:
"Now."
No. No. But it would only work in this moment. One second and the chance would be gone, Ash had his unprotected back turned to Thelyan, Thelyan was readying something big and full of whirling knives of air --
Kieran brought the gun into the path Ash had made, and fired.
Thunder echoed forever and ever. It took years for Ash's loving smile to turn to slack, stunned nothing. The hole in his white skin stood empty for ages before blood began to roll from it, so brightly terrible, so slowly that Kieran could see it bead before it ran.
Ash's knees bent, balance lost, somehow still graceful as he fell, reaching one hand to catch himself, the other coming to cover the wound, its movement like a bird's flight.
Beyond him, Thelyan was still standing, staring, and everything below his chin was wet red chaos.
Then time snapped right and Kieran was on his feet, flinging himself to Ash's side. In the corner of his eye he saw his enemy wavering, about to fall, but didn't care. Dropping his gun, he grabbed Ash's shoulders, trying to lift him from his kneeling slump. Babbling, words discarded half-formed, eyes blurring -- so irritating, he needed to see Ash's face -- and when Ash lifted his head it was such a relief to see him still alive that the blur turned to pouring tears.
"Got him?" Ash's mouth was too red. Crimson drooled out with his words.
"Yes. Yes. Oh god Ashes, why --"
"'Splain later." Frowning in an effort to focus, Ash groped across the ground until he found Kieran's gun. Fitted his fingers around it; used the wrist of that hand on Kieran's shoulder to push himself up. Kieran, belatedly understanding, helped him stand, though they were both reeling. Ash nearly fell over when he turned to Thelyan.
The Director was still standing, though the whole front of his white uniform was now sheeted wetly red. His pattern was beginning to fragment. Some of it still moved with purpose, though. Moved toward his torn throat, healing. His eyes, impossibly, were still full of terrible intelligence, though the white of his spine was showing.
Ash brought the pistol up. Kieran took his wrist, steadied his hand.
Five shots thumped out. Thelyan jerked with the first shot, fell with the third, but Ash went on pulling the trigger after the bullets were gone. Kept clicking on the empty chamber after Thelyan lay sprawled on the ground. Crumpled like discarded clothing, eyes rolling, then empty. Flecks of dust stuck to their clouding surface.
The shards of his pattern swirled for a moment, settled, turned to flimsy veils. Fluttered in an intangible wind. Then began to grow, to reel out like silk from a spool, creeping across the ground.
Eyes narrow with intense concentration, Ash took his hand from the bullet hole in his chest and spread the bloody palm toward the pattern billowing from Thelyan's corpse. Kieran's arms were wrapped around him from behind, holding him upright. He took a gurgling breath, and as he let it out a shape spread from his hand. A sphere, a glittering honeycomb of force scribbled with intricate equations interlocked. It closed around the corpse, and where the growing power touched it, it glowed brighter.
"There," Ash said. A sigh of deep satisfaction. Then his eyes rolled up, and he slumped.
With a wordless cry, Kieran caught him, scooped him up. Ash still lived -- blood bubbled around the wound, streamed from his nose and mouth. But when Kieran tried to spin the wound closed, his power wouldn't adhere. He wasted precious seconds pouring out his energy to no effect, before an idea occurred to him: the Watch. There were healers among them. They'd help, he'd make them help.
Gathering up what little power he had left, he took a running leap from the mountain's edge, pushing himself away from the ground just enough to break his fall. His ankles jarred as he came down; he went to his knees to avoid jolting Ash. Then he was up and running.
He could sense where they were, the people with magic clinging to them. The desert was a blur. He leapt wreckage and bodies. Blasted a fence out of his way, saw figures in the distance. Closed at the best speed he could manage, ready to turn away whatever spells or bullets they sent at him.
Ash coughed a little, shuddering in his arms. One pale hand still clutched Kieran's empty gun, holding to it as if terrified to let go. Beneath the streaked blood, his lips were going purple.
Kieran plowed right into the midst of the knot of startled men, shield thorn-spiked and attacks prepared, before he realized that these were not Watchmen. These men wore prison-gray, and some of their faces were familiar. Those familiar faces looked amazed, some a bit alarmed, some muttering his name in confused tones.
He knelt to lay Ash on the sun-hot ground, propped up against his knees, to have a free hand to press over the bubbling wound. He looked up at the circle of faces, pleading.
"Tell me one of you is a healer. Please."
They talked, but he didn't hear the answer he was looking for, and none of the rest of it made sense. Questions, recriminations, distrust, demands.
"Please." He could feel Ash's life draining away under his hand. He set his power's hooks in Ash's soul to keep it from fleeing, but the blood kept pouring out, filling lungs, and he knew he couldn't hold Ash to life forever. "Please." He couldn't stop saying it, and they were all just making noise. "Please!"
One of the faces loomed closer, and a slap stung Kieran's face.
"Listen, boy." It was Duyam Sona; Kieran recognized him when the slap cut through his panic. The man was leaning on a crutch now, one leg missing. With his free hand he was pointing emphatically at Ash. "He's a healer. He'll heal himself, that's what I'm trying to tell you. But he's worn out." Sona gestured to the stump of his leg. "From doing stuff like this. If you can share your power with him --"
Kieran saw the truth of it before Sona was finished speaking. He didn't waste time acknowledging. Through his hands slicked with Ash's blood, through the cord spun between their souls, he let the power run. A trickle at first, until he was sure Ash was taking it. Then he opened the stops. But there was too little of it left. There was no time to comb it out of the air.
Dimly, he sensed a hand come to rest on his shoulder. Then another. From these hands, more power came. The energy spread, linked from source to source. A chain of hands and minds; exhausted men, newly returned to their Talents, poured their life into him, and through him, into Ash.
At first it seemed to disappear, as if the wound was an endless void that couldn't be filled. But little by little, Ash's failing pattern began to brighten. Things torn and broken began to right themselves. Warmth grew and spread from him. A sense of well-being, as strong as a lungful of opium but bringing clarity instead of dreams, threaded into Kieran and spread from him to the men around him.
Pain faded. The pain of his body and the hurt in his heart. He could feel his own injuries healing, and saw the bruised and battered faces of the prisoners returning to health. All the world glowed gold, and just a little green.
At last the glow settled to the normal light of afternoon, and Ash smiled up into Kieran's eyes. "Kai," he murmured. "You trusted me."
Swallowing a sob of gratitude, Kieran crushed Ash close and kissed him. His mouth was still full of blood, and in it Kieran tasted the truth more clearly than words could have conveyed: We will never be lost again. This is permanent. Ash's arms came up to encircle him, strength returning. He buried his face in Kieran's shoulder.
"It's over." Kieran stroked his dirty hair, his bare back streaked with blood and dust. "It's over now. Let's not ever do that again, all right?"
"Okay." Ash's laugh sounded a bit choked. Then he pulled back, and an unpleasant realization showed in his eyes. "Wait. Where are we? Which side of the tracks?"
"What?"
Struggling out of Kieran's embrace, Ash stared back at Churchrock. Kieran followed his stare, as did those of the prisoners who weren't already looking that way. On top of the mountain was a flaring light, as if some huge mirror was catching the sun. But he knew there was nothing reflective up there. Whatever it was, it was glowing on its own.
"The ward I made," Ash said. "All Thelyan's power is inside it. It's overloading. It's not going to hold."
Sudden understanding made Kieran jump to his feet, hauling Ash up after him. "Across the tracks," he ordered. "Everyone. Now!"
The prisoners didn't ask questions this time; they obeyed. Kieran turned to run, but Ash's hand hauled him back. Pointed him at Sona, who was grimly struggling along with his cane. Kieran met Sona's eyes. Sona grimaced and nodded. Kieran set his shoulder to Sona's gut, hefted him, and in this undignified posture jogged away with him. Ash staggered along beside, carrying the cane.
"It's about to go!" Ash yelled. "I can feel it!"
Kieran had thought he had no power left, but he found just enough to speed himself for the last hundred yards to the rails. Men were struggling up the embankment, some helping each other and some leaving the rest behind. Ash seemed to have found power of his own, because he was grabbing the worst stragglers and throwing them up the slope. Kieran was only halfway up with his burden when he felt the soundless explosion behind him.
"Go!" He was shouting himself hoarse, not paying much attention to what he was saying. "Go, go!" He dragged a final burst of speed out of his worn-out nerves, and tumbled down on the other side of the tracks. Dropped Sona sprawling, scrambled to see whether Ash had made it, charging back until he saw the redhead with a straggler's arm clutched in each hand skidding heels-first down the gravel slope.
Then the sky flashed white, and a cold prickle scraped across his skin.
"Keep moving!" Ash was yelling, shoving men along. Groaning, Kieran picked Sona up again.
"I don't like this any more than you do," Sona grunted as he bounced over Kieran's shoulder.
"Let's not talk about it," Kieran returned.
With Ash herding them, the men dragged themselves about a quarter mile from the tracks before they refused to move any more. Kieran managed to set his burden down a bit more gently this time. He straightened, wincing, to look back at the mountain. He half expected to see a chunk bitten out of it as if mining charges had exploded it.
There was no such physical damage. What he saw with his eyes was nothing but a bit of smoke streaming from the train he'd wrecked.
With his mind's sense, though, he saw what they'd been running from. A new Burn, boiling out from where Thelyan had died, the sphere of it centered on the mountaintop, angry jags of thought-lightning roiling in chaos. Where they neared the railroad tracks, the streaks of energy smeared and bent. A secondary Burn, linear, rushed in either direction along the bands of steel.
Ash came up next to him, and with an arm around his waist watched with him until it was certain that the new Burn wouldn't overflow the rails. Once they were sure the danger was past, they leaned into each other and stood embracing. There was nothing that had to be said out loud. They just held each other for a long time.
It was Sona's bald friend with the beard who finally got their attention. He stood around clearing his throat until they turned to him.
"Hate to bust up your romantic moment," he said, "but we're all kinda wondering -- what now?"
Kieran raised an eyebrow. "You're asking me?"
"Well, yeah. I mean, it's true not everybody likes you much. And to be honest, looking at you boys grabbing on each other is making me sorta sick. But you came back for us. We ain't gonna forget that. So if you got us out to do something for you, like fight or something, looks like we're up for it."
Kieran opened his mouth to protest that he hadn't freed them, but Ash touched his lips to silence him, and answered for him. "If you want to fight, that's up to you. We all have reason to be rebels. But be smart about it. Don't waste yourselves. As for us, we're used up."
"Fair enough." The bearded man glanced around at the other men who were watching this conversation. "We got no food or water, though."
"Food's a problem," said Kieran. "You white boys better ask the Iavaians to help you with that. As for water..." He rolled his eyes up to the sky, sent a brush of thought out to see whether anything was coming. Smiled. "You got about five hours to find something to catch it in."
"Wait!" That was Sona, calling out as Kieran turned away. "What are you going to do?"
He glanced at Ash, who grinned back at him.
"I don't think you really want to know."
"Funny how things work out." Ash gave a weary laugh to hear that cliche come out of his mouth. "What I mean is, I can't get my head around it."
"Don't have to, I guess." Kieran glanced up at the clouds that had been creeping out of the west for the past hour or so. The sun had gone behind them, and the shade eased the heat a little. Ash was still not sure he could keep walking. He hadn't asked where they were going. Kieran seemed to know, and that was good enough.
Since leaving Churchrock and the former prisoners behind, they hadn't talked much. There would be time to talk later. For now they needed their breath for walking. Ash had very little power left. Kieran seemed to be worn out as well. What little they could gather as they went was just enough to keep them upright and moving in the face of their thirst and hunger.
There was a time, Ash thought bemusedly, when being this hungry, this filthy, this tired, would have been the peak of misery for me. But I have my Kai, I have his hand in my hand, and so the rest of it isn't important.
Though he hadn't sent his thoughts out, Kieran turned to smile at him. "I'm sorry it's such a long walk. It'll be like when we busted out before, I'm afraid. Eating snakes and sleeping in caves. At least until we get there."
"Is there food where we're going?"
"Um." Kieran's smile turned wry. "I thought we could steal something from the miners. But it just occurred to me that the rail spur that went there -- well, it would be part of the new Burn, now."
"Maybe it spread out enough..."
"Hope so. There were people there. They had nothing to do with this." Kieran bit his lip, bowing his head. After a few minutes, he went on, "I'm sick of death, Ash. I must've killed more than fifty men today. More in one day than I did in my whole life before. I'm so tired of being the bad guy."
Ash raised their joined hands to his lips, kissed the tattooed dots on Kieran's skin. "I don't want you to start beating yourself up over this. They were Watchmen. Soldiers. And I -- I killed someone too, you saw -- even if the first shot was yours, I set it up, and then I finished him."
"It had to be done."
"Did it?"
Kieran nodded. "I have a lot to tell you before it'll make sense. You were sending me strength when I fought with Ka'an, but I don't know how much you understand of what he was, what Thelyan was..."
"And what you are now? And what I am now?"
Questioning, Kieran turned to him, step faltering. "You? Is that how you did those things?"
"It's confusing as hell. The thing you saw curled up in me, that was a sort of goddess, a thing like Ka'an but not cruel like he was -- an old woman, not so powerful, and there was Chaiel in the bubble -- he woke her, and she told me things -- gave me her power, what there was of it, and I think I have a new way of doing magic, I'll have to show you later -- so we got out, and there was this little girl with wings, and then we ran into the ward -- that's when you helped -- and I guess Shy thought I was dead, but I woke up with so much energy and it all seemed so obvious --" He broke off, finally realizing he was babbling. He gave Kieran a lopsided smile. "What I mean is, I don't think I've become a god or anything. But I'm not just an empath anymore."
"Yeah." Kieran chuckled. "I gathered that."
"It's a little scary. I don't know what I can do. I have a new theory, though. About how magic works, I mean. It's how I got out of the bubble."
"You realize none of this is making a damn bit of sense to me."
"Sorry."
"Start at the beginning. When I left you -- god, I hated doing that."
"I know. I didn't think you'd be able to come back for me. I just wanted you to get away. I figured I could handle whatever happened, as long as I knew you were free somewhere."
"Ashes..."
"Anyway, when they found me, I started shooting. I got one of them in the hip and clipped one across the scalp. Then my rifle jammed. I'm surprised it worked at all, it was so full of mud. I got shot in the arm, right here." He showed a scar just above his elbow. "It didn't hurt, though. I was too worked up. They dropped some kind of spell on me. Next thing I know, I'm floating in the middle of a little stone room, with a naked kid sitting on my chest. That Chaiel person I mentioned."
"What? Why was he naked?"
"We both were. I guess Thelyan took our clothes so we couldn't use them to make a rope or something."
Kieran's face darkened. "How old was this 'kid'? Was he attractive?"
"Are you jealous?" Ash laughed, but the laugh faded as he realized how he'd have to answer Kieran's questions. "Um, he looked about fifteen. And yeah, I guess he was cute. And -- just to get all the unfortunate implications out of the way, the bubble that imprisoned us shoved everything in it toward the center, so we were sort of stuck together. You don't seriously think that was anything but an inconvenience to me, do you?"
Kieran gave him a wry smile. "I get a little irrational about you, you know that. Go on. You were stuck together."
Ash told the story carefully, relating conversations as close to verbatim as he could manage. Kieran listened quietly until near the end, when Ash explained how he'd tried to break the ward and swallowed it instead.
"I got some use out of what you sent me," Kieran interrupted. "Just about killed me, though, before I got it broken down into something I could work with. How did you do it?"
"Math," Ash answered simply. "It's all mathematical. I'd explain, but I think I'd have to teach you calculus first."
Kieran shook his head. "Never mind. You're a genius. Let's just leave it at that."
"For now. I bet you could learn, though. You're smarter than you think you are, love. It's just that nobody bothered to teach you."
"You think so?"
"I'm sure of it."
"And you'd teach me?"
"If that's what you want."
Kieran gave a crooked smile. He seemed surprised by his own joy. "We have time, don't we? There's... there's a future. I have a future, and you're in it. Sorry, I'm getting sappy."
"You think I mind?"
"Go on with your story."
"There's not much more. I walked around, found myself in the cell block. The place was wrecked. There were some... I found some dead men. Falling rock killed them. I found Sona alive, with a rock on his leg. I helped him. I just meant to stop the bleeding, but I found I had so much power, it was easy to fix it all the way. If there'd been anything left of his leg I could've saved it, but the flesh was dead. I went out looking for other people to help -- I wanted to come to you right away, but you seemed to be winning, and there were injured people everywhere. Then I found where they were fighting, and I stopped them."
"Just like that."
"Well, yes." He shrugged. "It was just projective empathy. I thought it was pointless for them to be fighting, when all any of them wanted was to get away. So I showed them what they really felt, and they stopped. I sent them in opposite directions."
"And at the end there -- I'm afraid to ask. Did you know what you were doing? Did you know what it would do to you?"
"I saw the shape of his shield. It blocked solid matter. If I'd had a bucket of water or an apple or something, you could have shot through that. I considered using my hand or some other part farther from vital organs, but I was afraid you'd cripple me. I tried to put the path through the same place where you were shot, because you survived that -- or would have, if we hadn't been on the run -- but I guess my aim was a little off." He hung his head. "Sorry about that. I didn't plan to sacrifice myself, I swear."
"You're saying your blood breached his shield?"
"Just long enough to let the bullet through."
"You are really something, Ashes."
"We used it all up, though. All that power. If we have to deal with anything else, we're in deep trouble."
"Only if it happens tonight. We'll build up our strength again. You are taking in power, right?"
"Just enough to keep walking."
"Maybe I'm better at it, because I'm getting more than that. Want to try taking some?"
When Ash nodded, Kieran closed his eyes for a moment. A trickle of strength flowed through their joined hands. Ash's fatigue abated. They shared a smile, and went on at a better pace.
"So where exactly are we going?" Ash was only curious. He was getting to enjoy the walking a bit, now that being tired wasn't a problem.
"You remember how you told me once, if we got out of prison, we should find a lake and swim around until we get all pruney?"
"Yeah. We swam in the river, but only for a few minutes. If we're going back to that temple, it'll be all mud still..."
"Nope. This place is better. It's got this lake in it that's just -- you'll see."
Nodding, Ash didn't have to reply. This was all right. Walking. Talking or not talking. Night beginning to come down as the clouds rose up.
They trudged on into darkness.
Sometime after full night had fallen, rain came. Spatters at first, then a downpour. They tilted their heads back to drink it, caught it in their hands. It washed them clean, washed out their tracks. Chilled them, then tapered away to a gentle spattering that didn't keep them from drawing enough power to warm themselves. Kieran wrapped his shredded coat around Ash's bare shoulders, and they went on.
They reached a stream as clouds cleared and released the moon. "This is Burn River," Kieran told him in an amused tone, before hopping across.
"Is it safe to drink?"
"It should be now."
So Ash waded into the water, warmer than the air, tendrils of mist curling around his legs. He scooped up handfuls to finish off his thirst. It only came up to his knees at its deepest point. When they had both drunk enough, they moved on, upstream.
--==*==--
It took Ash several minutes to figure out what he was seeing: a lake, an endless sheet of still water running out to the horizon. He breathed his amazement, and Kieran's smile was proprietary, proud to show off his discovery. And there were further wonders; circling the lake's barren shore, they encountered tumbled walls, ruined buildings that hinted at a forgotten grandeur. Toppled pillars, slumped jetties and seawalls, stairs that led down toward the water and ended ten feet above its surface.
"This wasn't always a desert," Ash guessed.
Kieran just nodded.
They threaded their way through the traces of narrow streets, heading for an area where the buildings looked a little more intact. They were moving west, toward the mountains that were just now tipped with gold, toward some flat-topped ruins from which a thread of smoke climbed...
Kieran stopped, hauling back on Ash's hand. He gave a faint groan. "Oh hell. I don't want to fight anyone right now."
"There's not supposed to be anyone here, is there?"
"No."
"I'll go look."
"No!" Kieran's hands clutched his arms, unwilling to let him move any closer to the mysterious smoke. "We are not going through that again!"
Warmed to his soul by those words, despite their impractical implications in this situation, Ash took a moment to lean against Kieran's shoulder before answering. "With my mind, I mean. I should be able to tell what kind of person it is. At least, whether they have magic."
"I'll do it."
"We need you alert if it comes to a fight."
Kieran nodded, but he didn't look happy. "Be careful. Be so goddamn careful, Ash."
"I will." Ash closed his eyes, and sent his senses creeping out. Gently, tentatively, ready to sink away at the first sign of recognition.
A moment later, he opened his eyes laughing.
"What?" Kieran demanded.
"It's Chaiel. And he has that little kid with him."
"The one who was in the bubble, right? What the hell is he doing here? Can we trust him?"
"He's a friend."
"A friend?" Kieran frowned at him for a moment longer, then relaxed, sighing resignation. "I should've figured. You could make friends in Hell. You could make friends on the moon." He let Ash tow him toward the rising smoke.
When the smell of cooking food reached them, the last of Kieran's resistance crumbled. Soon he was the one leading.
They got a bit turned around when they got close enough that the mostly intact walls around them blocked the sight of the smoke. Ash was about to cast out again with his mind, weary though he was, when a tiny figure bobbed around a corner and waved to him. A tiny figure with wings.
"Whoa." Kieran faltered. "That's not normal."
"Hello again," Ash said as brightly as he could manage. "You're here to take us to Chaiel?"
The child nodded. Solemn-faced, she grabbed their clasped hands and tugged. When she turned away, he saw that the infected swelling around the grafted wings was gone. The scars of stitches were clearly visible, but other than that it looked as if the wings had grown there. She took them through a maze of dust-choked alleys, brought them into a courtyard strewn with piles and bundles.
Beside a small cookfire in the center of the courtyard, Chaiel was just in the act of standing up. Ash smiled to see how different he looked. He'd cut his hair neatly at his shoulders, and was wrapped in layers of mismatched, ill-fitting clothing. He nodded welcome, gesturing to the objects piled around him, and the pot full of what smelled like stewed chicken.
"You'll want to eat first, no doubt, but I've clothes for you when you've finished. Medur, please set out blankets for these gentlemen."
The child nodded. She went to scramble among the baggage.
"You named her Medur?" Ash sank gratefully down beside the fire, reaching for the bowl Chaiel offered.
"It's the best name I know."
Ash passed a bowl to Kieran, whose questioning frown was threatening a tirade. "Kieran, this is Chaiel. He's an immortal, Thelyan was keeping him prisoner. Try to remember not to shorten his name. For some reason that's hard for me. Chaiel, this is Kieran, who is absolutely not Ka'an."
Chaiel nodded. "That's obvious. It's in the eyes."
The corner of Kieran's mouth quirked up. "Thelyan didn't think it was obvious."
"He needed you to be Ka'an, I suppose. It justified him. You do realize, don't you, that you haven't destroyed him? You've only bought a few years of peace."
Kieran chuckled, spoke around a mouthful of food. "Years. Hell, I can't think past sleep, just now. I just might be able to wrap my brain around the concept of tomorrow."
"Besides," Ash put in, "he won't know who he is, will he? If he's reborn at all; I gathered that they aren't, always."
"You can count on that, if you like," said Chaiel. "I won't."
Ash gave half a shrug. "Anything can happen in a few years. Hell, anything can happen in a few months."
"Yep." Kieran grinned. "But I never saw a kid grow wings before, what's up with her? And not to be ungrateful for the food and all, but how the hell did you -- what was your name again?"
Chaiel rolled his eyes. "Oh, for the love of mercy. Why can't you people manage to remember my name?"
Kieran dismissed this with a wave of his spoon. "How'd you get ahead of us, and with all this junk? Ash can't have told you to meet us here, he didn't know about this place." He turned to Ash, frowning. "Did you?"
"No."
"Well, I call that suspicious."
Ash leaned to scoop more stew out of the pot, and to hide his smile. "Kieran's tired, and it's making him a little snarky. But I'm pretty curious about that myself."
"I know spells you don't. Spells I don't intend to teach," Chaiel added quickly as Ash opened his mouth to ask.
"I'd teach you how to use math for magic," Ash said in a hurt tone.
"That's up to you. I won't strike a bargain. All this --" again he gestured to the piled baggage -- "is my way of repaying you for freeing me. No doubt we'll meet again someday, and perhaps that debt can't be repaid, and perhaps you'll have a favor to ask of me then. But I can't make extravagant gestures of gratitude today. I have Medur to think of. I have..." Chaiel's eyes went distant, a little bit frightened. "I have the future to think of. That will take some getting used to."
Kieran grumbled, "You're saying you don't trust us with this stuff you know."
"Not at the moment, no."
After a long moment, Kieran shook his head and went back to eating, not interested in arguing. Ash finished his second bowl of stewed whatever, and offered the bowl and spoon to Chaiel. That one gestured refusal and stood up, reaching for the child's hand. Little Medur came to him instantly. Ash could sense the trust in her malformed mind; she'd imprinted like a baby bird.
"Good luck to you both," Chaiel said.
"Wait." Ash stood as well. "Before you go... I'm not sure how to explain this so it won't sound condescending or stupid. But I just want you to know, I don't think we should owe each other anything. If there's anything you need, or even if you just feel like talking to someone who has half a clue what your world is like... you see?"
A smile spread slowly across Chaiel's face. "Medur was more eloquent, but I see her in you nonetheless. As you wish; we part as friends, with no debt between us." He offered his hand, and Ash clasped it.
Then, draping a frail arm around the child's frailer neck, he turned away and began walking, and the two of them grew distant much more quickly than the ground they covered allowed. Within moments, they were wavering in haze, and then gone. He hadn't spoken a spell, or made any gestures, and Ash had felt no spill of power. Kieran made an appreciative sound.
"Not bad. Your buddy there is quite a mage."
"He's been around a while." Ash reached for Kieran's hand. "Oh Kai. I'm so tired. Are we done now?"
"Yeah. We're done."
They helped each other to the blankets that little Medur had spread for them in the shade of an intact corner of roof. Too weary even to undress, they flung themselves down, curled together, and closed their eyes.
Several minutes later, Ash admitted with a sigh what they were both thinking: "I'm too tired to sleep."
"So just lie here. We can lie around all day."
"For how many days? How long until something else comes along to mess with us? I can't believe we're safe now. I can't believe the world will just let me spend my life with you. Things that good don't happen. Do they?"
Kieran whispered a laugh. "So that's where my cynicism went."
"I'm not being cynical. I don't think I am. I'm just trying to reassure myself. Where are you going to live, Kai? Because that's where I'm going to live too, if you'll let me. Burn River? What about those gangsters? And there are still warrants out for us, even if Churchrock's wrecked, and --"
Kieran silenced him with a kiss. Drew back to catch his eyes, brushed away a curl of his hair, smiling. "You worry too much about stuff that doesn't matter. Between us, we have just about all the magic there is. There's nobody in the world who can beat us now, except maybe that Chaiel kid, and he seems decent enough. And don't start with that 'if you'll let me' crap. You want me to promise? You want a ring? I'm not giving you up. Not for anything. I'll swear on anything you want."
"I thought you didn't like to make promises."
"I changed my mind."
Sighing happily, Ash settled into his favorite place on Kieran's shoulder. "Even with this new magic, though, we can be hurt if we're not paying attention. Wherever we go, things will get dangerous. We can't be on our guard every moment."
Kieran was quiet for a while, toying with Ash's hair, turning something over in his mind. Something that filled him with hope, but which he thought Ash might not like. Ash didn't mean to eavesdrop on his feelings, but when they lay together like this the bond was too strong for anything to stay hidden.
"Whatever you're going to ask for," Ash said, "the answer is yes."
"Well, I was just thinking -- how would you like to stay here?"
"Here?"
"Yeah."
"If you want to. Yes. But... there's nothing here."
There was a smile in Kieran's voice when he answered. "There will be."