robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain (44 page)

"David, no!"

The doctor's exclamation brought John around in a crouch. He didn't know what he was expecting, but it wasn't seeing Beryle pointing a boxy pistol at Gorshin's corner. Gorshin had come out of its corner and was hunched in an aggressive stance, wings half-unfurled. Dr. Spae was quietly pleading with Beryle to put up the weapon, but he wasn't listening. He kept his weapon pointed at the lizard-ape. Gorshin started to growl.

"What is it?" Beryle asked. His voice was unsteady, but his weapon hand remained unwavering.

"One of Bennett's pets," John told him.

"Gorshin," Faye said.

"Where'd you get the gun?" John asked Beryle.

"Is it dangerous?" Beryle asked no one in particular.

"Are you a gargoyle?" Dr. Spae asked Gorshin.

All the babble brought a response from Bear.

"Hold it down, compadres, or I'll do some booting," he said, chastising them as he had the noisy Dons at MaxMix Manor.

Beryle spared a second from his staring contest with Gorshin to look at Bear. "Arthur?"

"Artos," Bear said.

"How are you, Artos?" Dr. Spae asked.

"Been better, Doctor."

"So you remember me?"

"I know we've met. Or at least I think we have."

"I was hoping Dr. Spae might be able to help you," John said.

"No leeches," Bear said firmly.

John was afraid Bear had slipped his frame of reference again until he saw the twinkle in the man's eye. "Maybe you don't need a doctor."

"Maybe," Bear agreed. His shakiness when he tried to sit up belied that. He was naked under the blanket, but that didn't seem to bother him until he noticed the doctor's sudden stiffness. Without reference to the situation or apology, he pulled the blanket around himself. "I seem to recall that Dr. Spae is not that kind of a doctor anyway. Is that right?"

"I do have some medical training," the doctor said. "But I'm not leech qualified, unless you count having worked for some."

The ease with which the bitter irony came to Dr. Spae's lips made John think, for the first time, that she really had left the

ECSS behind. That thought raised other questions, but he already had too many questions. Not the least of which was: where was Spillway Sue? She should have come down by now to see what was going on.

Dr. Spae started doing her "catching up" routine again, this time with Bear as the target of her questions. Beryle kept eyeing Gorshin, but the gargoyle subsided and returned to squat in his corner once again. John wasn't exactly needed here; he already knew more than he wanted to about Quetzal. He took the opportunity to head upstairs.

Sue wasn't there.

There wasn't a note. Nothing left behind. But then, she hadn't had anything to leave behind. He stared at the mattress that was his bed.

She'd felt something, hadn't she? He'd thought she had. Certainly he had.

The rumpled bedclothes on the empty mattress made him feel a little disarrayed himself. He went to the window and stared out. She was out there somewhere. Doing what? Every few minutes he'd turn around and stare at the empty bed.

Had it just been payment, after all?

He didn't want to believe that. He couldn't believe it. Their closeness, as sudden as it was, hadn't felt like that.

So why wasn't she here?

The room was suddenly too empty. He went back down to where there were people, but instead of entering the room he hung back in the hall. Faye came to him.

"She's gone, John," she told him.

He didn't need to be told that. Faye wasn't the one to ask, but who else did he have? "Did she say anything before she left?"

"She doesn't hear me, and she's afraid of Gorshin."

Was that all there was to it? Sue could have left a message, at least; she could have written a note, there was paper and a pen in John's room. Then again, maybe she couldn't. John didn't know whether she could read or write. Just one more thing among many that John didn't know about Spillway Sue.

John felt like an idiot, standing in the doorway of Bear's room. He should either go in or leave. But where would he go?

After Sue?

He knew in general where she hung out, but he didn't know where she slumped. She'd grown up around here, and he was a newcomer; if she didn't want to be found, he doubted he could find her.

If Bennett hadn't hauled him off to save Dr. Spae, she-would still be here. But Dr. Spae might not. Was that a fair trade? Fair or not, it was another thing to add to the list of what Bennett had cost him.

"Where's Bennett?"

Faye hesitated. "He's not here either."

"But he's coming back, isn't he? He must be, he left his pet behind."

"Gorshin's not a pet, John."

"Yeah? Then maybe he knows." John stalked over to the gargoyle. "So where's Bennett?"

"Gaawn."

"If he's gone, what are you still doing here?" he demanded.

"Lii'k theez playzz," Gorshin croaked. "Staaay."

Wonderful.

"Jack!" It was Bear. "Get me some clothes. Bennett's gifts have the staying power of his promises."

"You're in no shape to do anything," Dr. Spae told Bear.

"Somebody has to do something. Jack, the doctor believes that the wizard is still on the loose."

The idea gave John chills, but he tried to sound unconcerned. "So?"

"He's a wyrm lover," Bear said. "Something's got to be done about him."

"We can tell the police," John said. He'd had more than enough to do with Quetzal. Dr. Spae had been saved from him. Wasn't that enough?

"The police won't be able to handle him," Dr. Spae said.

If they couldn't, what was Bear—especially a weakened Hear—supposed to do? "You're in no shape to fight anyone, Bear."

"But Artos is right," the doctor said. "Something's got to be done."

Why don't you do it, Doctor?
"You chased him away before."

"With your help, John."

"You're the one who blasted him."

Dr. Spae shrugged away her efforts. "There was a tremendous sense of tentativeness about Quetzal. I'm fairly sure that he was holding back. At the very least, he was dividing his attention between us."

"We could use Caliburn now," Bear said. "It has a certain efficacy against such as he."

"Well, we don't have it," Dr. Spae said firmly. "We've been over this, Artos. You're in no shape to fight anything."

"You probably couldn't shoot straight, let alone use a sword," John added, thankful that the doctor was being reasonable about at least one aspect of the situation. "You're still confused, Bear, and your coordination's shot."

Bear looked to be on the verge of rebellion. "The serpent lover must be stopped. The doctor needs help."

"So she'll find help somewhere else," John said. "She's got connections."

"You will help, Jack."

Who was Bear to decide for John?

"I don't think I'm strong enough to defeat Quetzal by myself," the doctor said. "We'll need your help."

"Quetzal's a mage," John pointed out. "You need magical help, and I don't do magic."

"You may not be trained, but you have talent," Beryle said.

What did he know about it?

"You do have a strong natural talent," Spae agreed.

Faye joined in. "It's in your blood, John."

Oh, thank you, Faye. Why are you siding with them?

"I've had some experience in teaching," Dr. Spae continued. "I believe that you'd be a quick learner."

Why was he resisting a chance to learn magic? His shoulder twinged in memory of Quetzal's burning hand. Because whoever went along with Dr. Spae was going to be facing Quetzal, that was why.

Was he afraid?

What kind of a question was that? Of course he was afraid. But of what?

Quetzal was the easy answer. And an honest one.

But John suspected there was more to his reluctance. What if he wasn't very good at magic? What if he didn't live up to his blood? He wouldn't be an elven prince if he turned out to be incapable of more than the simplest magics. His heritage was all he had to hold on to since he had rejected Bennett's version of an idyllic life in the otherworld. What if John's dreams turned out to be as much smoke and air as Bennett's promises?

He needed a more concrete—and less personally damning—excuse to use in front of Bear. He grabbed at the first one to come to mind. "How long did it take you to use magic effectively, Doctor?"

"We're not talking about me; we're talking about you. You have certain natural advantages."

"You mean because I'm—" John stopped himself before he said "an elf." So far, Bear had apparently not remembered that John was an elf. John recalled how Bear had reacted; he didn't want to deal with that rejection all over again. He'd had enough rejection today, already. Lamely, he finished, "because I've already had some experience?"

"Experience helps," Dr. Spae said. "But there are some things I think you can handle right away."

She sounded confident enough for both of them. Could she really teach him to harness the magic?

"Listen to her, Jack," Bear urged.

Could she teach him? Could he learn?

Even if he did learn—"What good will it do? We don't even know where Quetzal hangs out. Are you going to scry him out?"

"That'll be one of the first things we work on," Dr. Spae said.

We? John hadn't agreed yet, but the doctor was assuming he had. "I don't know."

"Come on, Reddy. You can't let Elizabeth go up against this wizard by herself."

"That wouldn't be chivalrous, John," Faye said. She knew him better than all of them. "I suppose we have to try," he said. "Good lad, Jack," Bear said. "Cei will be proud when he hears."

John tried to ignore Bear's slip.

Dr. Spae gave him a slap on his shoulder. "There may not be a lot of time. We'll have to get started at once."

CHAPTER

26

For the second night in a row, Spae didn't sleep after she'd sent John Reddy off to bed. It wasn't that she wasn't tired; she was. To the bone. She'd forgotten how tiring it was to work someone through basic exercises. But she couldn't afford sleep just yet. She took out the packet of Wake-EZ™ pills she'd had David get when he'd gone out for food and stared at it. There was a lot to be done and no time to do it in. Drugs were chancy things for a magician, even mild ones like these. If only she felt she had time to get some rest; she would be considerably fresher, able to think more clearly, after she got some sleep.

And
he
might find her again while she slept.

She popped the pill. With luck the side effects would be minor. She lay on the inflatable mattress, which David had also brought, until she felt the buzz start to kick in.

She slipped off the mattress without disturbing David, and rummaged in his case until she found her computer. It was one of the few things she'd taken with her from Chardonneville, and it contained her research files and her library. Tucking it under her arm, she left the room and sought out another, where she could work without waking David, or being disturbed by his occasional bouts of restless tossing.

Her machine, an old Sonymac Romer™, had a virtual keyboard setup; she'd never gotten used to optical boards. She slipped on the gloves and started it up. The first thing she did was disable the vocal circuits; she didn't want to disturb anyone. Voices in the night would draw in anyone who was awake in this dump—she'd seen that the gargoyle was still prowling—and she wanted to be left alone while she worked.

The portable didn't have the power of the perscomp back at the hotel, but it let her use the mobile phone circuits to tap into that computer. Tapping in via airwaves didn't make for the cleanest data flows: some of the files she recovered had been turned to garbage. But she got more than enough to keep her busy for hours—the programs she had left running had been doing their work.

She had remembered the
Callis Luxorum Dubiaria
as being the only known work by Luciferius, and it looked as though she was right; the search hadn't uncovered any others. Failing to find any other works, the programs had defaulted to her alternate search parameters, and had been slogging through occult databanks, of general and limited access, trying to assemble as much of the
Callis
as possible. In college, she had learned that very little of the grimoire was digitized. If anything, the situation had gotten worse than she remembered; the file she'd set up to collect the results of the search held only a dozen entries. She could tell from their sizes that none of them could cover more than ten pages.

As she had told Quetzal, she had read the
Callis
once, but that had been years ago. She had found it on a shelf in Joseph Wyngarde's study during a visit. She'd been surprised to find that the volume was a hand-copied version; the professor's own translation from the Latin, of course. It had been a new book to her, clearly a major arcane work, and she'd been excited. When she'd asked to read it, Joseph had surprised her by refusing, the first time he refused any of her requests for access to occult knowledge. Naturally, she had immediately started searching for the
Callis
on the library net, where she had only been able to collect fragments. When she'd started to discuss them with Joseph, he'd relented, insisting that she read his copy—but imposing the condition that she do all her reading in his study. After all the fuss and bother she'd been disappointed, finding the book obtuse and frustrating. She had put the denial-work-reward routine down to a training gimmick on Joseph's part.