Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (41 page)

"She certainly seems real," said Duaal. He leaned on Panna's worktable. "I know my Arcadian pretty well, but I've never heard…
il'atasia
, you said?"

"I'm not at all surprised. Based on what Xia told us on the flight here, Gavriel taught you Arcadian, right?"

"Right."

"Well, you were learning spells. Words for making very real changes. I doubt you ever had any reason to learn that kind of vocabulary. Gavriel had to teach you the basics because that was the language of the charms he was learning from his own Arcadian teacher," said Panna.

Duaal stood up suddenly straight, eyes wide. "That's where I know the name Titania! She was the one who taught Gavriel magic!" Xia touched his shoulder, but Duaal shook his head. "I'm fine, sweetness. I should have recognized her back on Stray. I must have been blind!"

"You were only a child," Xia pointed out. "It's a wonder you remember anything at all."

"I remember… I remember her singing. Hours and hours of singing," Duaal said. "And then… headaches. Like I keep having now. Do you think it's connected?"

"Maybe it's the magic. Have you been using any?" asked Xia.

"Not really," he answered with a wink. "Except the magic between the sheets."

"Magic shouldn't cause any side effects like that, anyway," Panna said dismissively. "I've studied magic, though I can't do it, myself. Actually, I've been working on a theory about Arcadian magic. What do you know about quantum uncertainty theory?"

No one said anything. Logan wondered what she was getting at. It seemed like an overlong explanation of Duaal's familiarity with the Arcadian language.

Some of his impatience might have been a little… unfair. In the year he spent hunting Maeve, Logan had learned a little bit of Arcadian. Enough to understand the names she called him. It was strangely intimate, somehow, a secret between hunter and prey. A secret that, it now seemed, Duaal knew much more about.

Panna scribbled something on the datadex and then turned it face-down on the table. "Quantum uncertainty goes something like this: observation influences the outcome. Particles moving without an observer act differently than those being watched."

"So?" Tiberius asked bluntly.

"So, it's been theorized that directed observation can influence physical matter. Did anyone see what I drew on that datadex?"

"Kind of," Gripper said. "It looked like a duck, I think."

Panna winked and turned the datadex over and showed them a scribble on the screen. When Logan tilted his head a little, it did look like a very ugly, long-legged duck.

"You all see a duck, don't you?" Panna asked. Everyone nodded. "It was just a scribble. But because Gripper said that he saw a duck, you all did. Now, imagine if this were a little more literal, if your observation could
actually
turn it into a duck. That's how magic works."

"Wow," Gripper breathed. "Really?"

"Yeah. Now, it only works at a very small scale. It's
quantum
uncertainty, after all."

"That's true," Duaal said. "Lightning and fire and that painkiller charm Maeve likes so much all work on a tiny scale. Molecules and cells. The effects build, but at their heart, they're all very small."

"Wait, we have to use microscopes to see anything that small and finely calibrated lasers to make molecular changes. As far as I know, the Arcadians don't have anything like that sort of technology," Xia argued. "How can they observe anything so small?"

"That's where the Arcadian charm-songs come in," Panna said, snapping her fingers. "Those songs they sing are descriptions of what they want to happen, like they're telling a story. When you listen to a story, you can visualize what's going on. That's what the Arcadian songs are for and that's why Duaal had to learn the language. So he could understand the stories."

"That's why Maeve uses the songs, even after telling me how pointless the other symbols are," Duaal said. "Those are just focal points, but the song actually directs the spell."

Something occurred to Logan. "The spells are memorized and used to imagine a specific effect, like lightning or an anesthetic," he repeated Panna's explanation as best he could. She nodded. "That seems simple. Strange, but simple. Why couldn't Gavriel do it alone? Why did he need Duaal?"

"I haven't been working on that theory as long," Panna said. "But I do have a guess. It's important that the mage truly believes that just singing a song will change anything. It's easy for Arcadians of the old world. They grew up surrounded by magic. But not in the core worlds. Here, only a child has that kind of faith and imagination."

"I felt his… his thoughts inside me," Duaal said with a shudder. This time, he accepted Xia's reassuring touch. "He didn't have to tell me what to do. It was like I was just a part of him."

Across the cavern, Xen and Phillip were deep in discussion about the Waygate's impact on the stability of the inner mountain. Ava and Phillip sprayed canned foam into cracks in the granite walls, filling the fissure with a sharp chemical smell.

How long could they wait? How long could Maeve survive? They were just wasting time, trying to fill the hours until something changed. But nothing was going to change, Logan knew. The only thing that would find Maeve now was perseverance, unceasing vigilance and chance.

Logan turned away, intent on climbing back up to the surface, to his Raptor. Maybe he could see something from the air. It was the same fighter as those flown by the police. Maybe the sight of the Raptor in a search pattern would spur the Nihilists to some sort of visible action… It would probably rouse the interest of the Pylos police, as well, but Logan didn't care anymore.

"Where are you going, Freezer?" Gripper asked.

"Back to Pylos."

He trotted a few steps after Logan as the others stared. Duaal and Xia shared a glance and then the medic raised her hand to Logan.

"Wait, Coldhand. Do you actually have somewhere to go? No one seemed to have any ideas a few minutes ago," she said in a carefully neutral tone.

Logan offered no answer. His plan sounded thin, even to him. But the helpless frustration was eating him alive and left the hunter a bundle of raw, twitching nerves. The archeologists watched him, too, curious in spite of themselves.

"Coldhand!" Tiberius called to him now, full of authority accustomed to obedience. "If you know something, you damned better well tell us!"

Logan turned back, fists clenched. "No," he said too loudly. His voice echoed through the ravine. "No, I don't know anything else! I don't have any plan. But I'm going back out there! I can't do this anymore. I want this done, Tiberius. I don't care how, but I need to find Maeve."

Logan felt hot and cold at the same time, flashes of fever and chill. He had to end this, somehow, even if it meant roaming the Pylos streets, screaming for the Nihilists until they came for him.

"Can I help?" Gripper asked. "Please? I… I don't want to just sit here and wait, either."

"You won't fit in the Raptor," Logan answered curtly.

"The Raptor?" Tiberius asked, narrowing his eyes. "What are you thinking, Coldhand?"

"I'm going to look for her."

"In your ship?" Duaal pulled himself away from Xia. "No, you can't do that!"

"Why not?"

"That's a police Raptor, right? You can't go flying that after Gavriel. He'll see you. He's afraid of the Prian police. He had a lot of trouble with them when we were here before."

"I know." Logan clenched his metal hand.

"You lost that to an Emberguard," Tiberius said. "Captain Cerro showed me the file. He thought you might have gone over to Gavriel."

Logan swallowed hard. "Is that what they think?"

"Is what you actually did any better? The police closing in was what chased Gavriel off Prianus last time. You go in now, without thinking, and you'll send him running. He'll kill our dove or take her off the planet. Either way, we'll never see her again. You stay here until we have something to move on."

Logan closed his eyes. Tiberius was right.

________

The Vanora White oozed through Maeve's veins, cool and smooth and heavy as quicksilver. She floated to the top on a cloud of bright light. There were shadows, she remembered faintly. Something that was looking for her. Or something that belonged to her…

But that was so far away, so easy to forget. Maeve lazily stretched her wings, but they were tangled in the clouds. She giggled – it tickled. The sparkling white wrapped around her. It clutched at her heart, slowing it beat by beat. And it was whispering to her.

Remember the Devourers, Maeve. Remember them.

She did not want to think about that. It hurt and she was tired of hurting. It was so much more peaceful here in the White. And warm. It was nice not to be cold. She could not remember why she had ever stopped taking the chem.

Show me the Tamlin Waygate,
said the light.
Show me the spell. Show me the Devourers.

"No," she whimpered.

Even through the haze of drugs, Maeve shied away from the painful memory. She just wanted to sleep, but the white sky would not leave her alone. It clung close and sweet and light as cloud-candy.

Show me, Maeve.

"There is a coward inside even the bravest man. This is no insult. All men know in their hearts that life is an endeavor of pain, ever to be feared."

- Gavriel Euvo, founder of the Cult of Nihil (229 PA)

"What's wrong with him?" Duaal asked under his breath, cocking his head toward Coldhand. The bounty hunter stood with his back to the rest of the camp, Gripper waiting wordlessly at his side.

Xia frowned and shrugged her narrow shoulders. "I don't know. Something's happened to Coldhand. He's usually so collected. But now he's losing it. And those bruises…"

It had only been a day since Xia had given Duaal very good, very sweet reasons to stop paying attention to the bounty hunter, but he had forgotten all about the marks of violence. Now, Duaal remembered the dark yellow bruise along Coldhand's jaw.

"He hasn't been much help," Panna said, even more quietly. "After all I've read about him, I guess I expected… I don't know."

"It's not his fault. We haven't done any better."

This was from Tiberius. Xia, Duaal and Panna looked at him in surprise. The old Prian seemed to realize his own words too late and set his lined, scruffy face in a deep scowl. It was good that Coldhand probably could not hear them. He would be just as flustered as Tiberius.

Prians were so proud. Duaal leaned against the edge of Panna's table. That was a little hypocritical, he supposed. He was at least as proud as either Tiberius or Logan, Duaal could admit to himself.

Pain flared behind his eyes, white-hot needles of agony that sent him crashing to the ground and grabbing fistfuls of his hair. He was dimly aware of voices calling his name, but he could not answer. It was as though a giant's hand had clamped itself around his mind, around his entire being and shook him. Hard. The world spun wildly, and then the alien force flung him out into a blinding-bright void.

Duaal struggled to call out to Xia and Tiberius, but could not make his mouth work. Where was his mouth? His whole body was gone.

But he was not without form. He felt arms and legs, lungs that could not quite draw breath deep enough. Duaal's back ached. His fingers were stiff and brittle as twigs, yet he burned. Fire raged unchecked through him, filling him with a poisonous but vital flame.

He was sitting, leaning forward eagerly in a chair that creaked every time he shifted his weight. He sang the old, dark Arcadian songs, the blasphemous spells that Xartasia had taught him with a sad smile on her pretty lips.

Him, not me,
Duaal remembered with an effort that would have ground his teeth, if he only knew where they were.
This isn't me!

…Then what is this? Another hallucination?

Duaal's eyes opened, but not by any effort or will of his own. Maeve was sprawled in the rubble at his feet again, but this time, the expression on her dirty face was not agony. She slumped in her bonds against a metal beam that was dark and scaly with rust. Maeve sang softly to herself as she rocked her head from side to side. Her voice was thick, as though on the verge of turning into another laugh… or a scream.

Duaal's other voice rose, drowning Maeve's. As he sang, Duaal found that he could see into the fairy's misty daydreams. There were ice and clouds, all running like wet paint as she pulled her thoughts away. The song spiraled away across Maeve's erratically fluttering thoughts.

"That is a secret. An opal in a stone crown," she murmured, almost inaudibly. "The gate must sleep. Sleep. I just want to sleep… Please…"

Maeve sobbed quietly and there was a hazy, smoky image of a Waygate in her thoughts, surrounded by shapes that flickered between tall, sharp mountains and soaring, sparkling glass towers. Indistinct winged shapes soared between the diamond spires like dandelion puffs. That had to be Tamlin, the Arcadian city. Duaal felt himself leaning close again, weaving his charm urgently as he searched through Maeve's memory. His spell opened the princess' mind like files on a datadex. Duaal's heart caught in his chest.