The Office of Shadow (23 page)

This was no trick of the light; the bars had actually been shifted by Ilian's
fold. When Than swapped with Silverdun, he'd simply rotated the space
around them in a half-circle. But the bars didn't quite line up properly when
reversed.

Silverdun's face and shoulders still burned where Than had pulled him
against the iron. Wincing, Silverdun ran at the off-kilter section of the bars
and kicked out with all his might. The pain was intense, the same crawling
sensation, now running up his leg, twisting his scrotum. The bars bent and
cracked, but didn't break.

He stepped back for another kick. By the queen's tits, he did not want to
do this again. He did it anyway.

Silverdun's second kick sent a huge portion of the cell door flying backward with an ugly metallic clatter. He pulled his leg back too quickly, however, and caught his shin on the sharp edge of one of the bars that had been
cut apart. The cold iron dug into his flesh, creating an entirely new kind of
pain, like barbed ice in the blood. Silverdun staggered backward, falling to
the floor. He screamed.

There was a creaking noise. Silverdun looked up. The lock of the cell's
door was now on the floor, part of the portion that Silverdun had kicked away.
The creaking was the sound of the door swinging open on rusted hinges.

He stood, shaking, eased himself through the opening with extreme care,
and hurried up the stairs, taking the knife from his boot with a shaky hand.

Silverdun hurried up the stairs to the main floor and stopped. Silence. Silverdun replaced the knife in his boot, exchanging it for the petite arbalete on
the wall of the main room. He cocked it as quietly as possible, ensuring that
the quarrel was set properly, just as Jedron had taught him.

Where would Than have gone? Upstairs? Or would he have attempted to
escape in the Splintered Driftwood? Silverdun headed for the stairs, if for no
other reason than the fact that the wound in his calf was still screaming, and
the thought of running all the way to the quay filled him with dread. Each
step toward Jedron's office, however, was like a knife-thrust in his leg. There had never been anywhere near as many steps in this staircase as now, even at
Silverdun's most exhausted.

As he rounded the stairs to the level of his own bedroom, there was a
loud crash from above, and a muffled shout. Silverdun forced himself forward,
his body protesting with every movement.

Just when he thought he couldn't take another step, he reached the top,
and the wooden door to Jedron's office. He pushed it open.

Jedron and Ilian were inside, facing each other. They'd been grappling
with one another. The desk was broken, on its side. Books and maps were
strewn everywhere. Jedron and Ilian circled one another, both unarmed.
Ilian's face was red and he was sweating profusely. Jedron was flushed, but no
sweat appeared on his brow. Neither man turned when Silverdun entered the
room.

"Glad you're here, Silverdun," said Jedron. "Perhaps you'd like to pitch
in? Test some of those skills I've drummed into you?"

Than scowled. "You know that he's mad, Silverdun! If you don't believe
me, ask him what happened on the night you were drugged! Ask him!"

"He's just trying to confuse you, boy. He knows you wouldn't
understand."

"That man you saw," said Ilian, "the one on the table. His name was
indeed Ironfoot. He was the other recruit. Jedron-"

Jedron lunged at Ilian, tackling him and pushing him backward. He was
strong, Silverdun knew. But Than seemed evenly matched with him.

Silverdun held the petite arbalete up, aiming at the two men. This was
clearly a serious situation, but it was also utterly preposterous. Part of him
wanted to shoot both of them and try to sail the boat back to the mainland
himself, where he would find Everess and kill him using one of the nearly
infinite methods that Jedron had taught him. Unfortunately, the tiny
crossbow contained only one bolt, and Silverdun doubted he could take either
Than or Jedron hand to hand even when his entire body wasn't racked with
pain. So he'd have to pick one or the other. But which?

Than got his feet between himself and Jedron and shoved hard; Jedron
was flung backward, into a bookcase, smashing it, sending books and scrolls
flowing onto the floor. Jedron pushed himself up into a standing position.

Jedron glared at Silverdun with the fierce rictus that passed for his smile.
"Just like I told you at the dock, eh boy? Nothing is as it seems!"

"Ah," said Silverdun. He aimed the crossbow at Jedron's head and pulled
the trigger.

The bolt in the crossbow was bound with a healthy dose of Motion, vectored in the direction of the bolt's flight. When the trigger was pulled, the
binding was released and the bolt flew astonishingly fast; then a separate
binding of Elements was released and the bolt's head exploded.

All this happened so quickly that to Silverdun it appeared that him
pulling the crossbow's trigger and Jedron's head erupting in flame were two
separate, unconnected events. It was not flesh and bone, however, that
sprayed outward, but rather bronze and gold and bits of silver.

Jedron was not alive-he was one of his own automata. His headless
body swooned and fell smoothly to the ground, its glamour evaporating,
leaving no doubt as to its true form.

Ilian stood, dusting off his shirt and trousers. "Good shot," he said.
"Though I hope you realize the replacement cost for that thing is coming out
of your wages."

"Your name's not Ilian," said Silverdun.

"No," he said simply.

"You're Jedron."

The other man clapped, smiling. "Very good, Silverdun! Not everyone
figures that part out at first."

The real Jedron righted two chairs and bade Silverdun sit in one of them.
"So tell me," he said, "when did you figure it out?"

Silverdun sat, laying the crossbow on his lap, not quite comfortable letting it go. "I wasn't absolutely certain until he mentioned something that
he'd said at the quay. But it wasn't something he'd said; it was something
you'd said. He wasn't there." Silverdun sighed. "But I suspected it earlier."

"Oh, good. Because that verbal slip was my last-ditch attempt to keep
you from shooting me. When did you first suspect?"

"It was when I knocked you out in the cell, and when I went upstairs,
Jedron was asleep. But he wasn't really asleep; he was only inactive, the way
the automata on the Splintered Driftwood are."

The real Jedron smiled and nodded. "Hm. Well, I hate to admit it, but
you really put me through my paces. You weren't supposed to wake up the
night that I inducted Ironfoot. That required some truly inspired improvisation on my part."

"That wasn't part of the test," said Silverdun. "Or whatever it was."

"No. You were supposed to begin to suspect Jedron over a slightly longer
period of time, ultimately leading to a final confrontation in which you killed
him in order to save yourself. Killing the teacher is a very important part of
the training."

"Why's that?" said Silverdun. The pain in his leg was beginning to subside, finally.

"Like I said-and by 'I,' I mean that fellow on the ground over thereit's important for you to understand that you cannot trust anyone. Not
anyone. Not ever again. It's the sort of thing one hears but must experience
firsthand in order to truly grasp. Better you learn it here where it won't get
you killed."

"But," said Silverdun, "what if I'd shot you instead of him?"

Jedron waved the question away. "It would take a lot more than one of
those little quarrels to stop me. As you'll soon discover for yourself."

"What does that mean?"

"You want to know what happened that night, don't you? The man you
thought you saw killed?"

"It was going to be my next question, yes."

"Let's go see then, shalt we? I think you're ready."

Jedron stood and motioned for Silverdun to follow. Silverdun's head was
spinning. Again he asked himself: What the hell had he gotten himself into?

At the bottom of the steps, the torches were already lit. Jedron led Silverdun
down the stairs and onto the stone expanse. There was a man standing before
the pit, holding a black robe.

Silverdun started to sweat, the pain in his body now replaced with a shivering dread. What was about to happen?

The man in the robe stepped forward, and Silverdun recognized the face
immediately. It was the man he thought he'd seen Than murder.

"Hello," the man said. "My name is Styg Falores. But you can call me
Ironfoot."

"I'm not certain what the proper greeting is for this occasion, so I'll just
say hello back," said Silverdun, attempting to regain his composure.

"Strip down and put this on," said Ironfoot, holding out the robe. Sitverdun looked over at Jedron and Jedron nodded.

Why not? How much stranger could this day possibly get? Whatever
was happening, this Ironfoot fellow had gone through the same thing. Some
kind of initiation ritual, perhaps? Silverdun thought about the bone, and the
ash.

He looked toward the pit, but inside all he could see was darkness.

He stripped off his clothes and pulled on the black robe. It was made of
silk. It made him feel like a part of the night.

"Walk to the edge of the pit," said Jedron. Silverdun did so. He squinted,
still seeing nothing.

"Look down and tell us what you see," said Jedron. He said the words as
though they were part of a ritual, with a musical cadence.

Silverdun looked down. At first he saw nothing, but then he noticed
something moving, something barely distinguishable in the glint of the
torchlight. But it was only black on black. Perhaps it was nothing.

"Perrin Alt," said Jedron, "what do you see?"

"Nothing," said Silverdun.

Jedron and Ironfoot pushed him then, hard, into the pit. There was
something inside, waiting for him. It received him. Enveloped him.

The pain that came next made the touch of cold iron seem like a lover's
caress.

For reitic energy compressed into a contained binding,
the formula is consistent regardless of the specific physical Gift involved, be it Motion, Elements, or even Folding.
There is a practical limit to the amount of energy that
can be compressed in a given container, as the required
binding energy increases exponentially with the volume
of the container. For any given volume v, the required
binding energy is Y2ev2, regardless of the bound form.
Thus it is recommended that when large energy bindings
are required, sufficient space is allotted in the design.

Since it is often impractical to contain energies of
multiple Gifts in a single binding, the problem often arises
when it becomes necessary to mingle the products of
multiple Gifts prior to the full unbinding of a closed
system. Students often attempt to rechannel such products across a binding in order to avoid the difficulties
that arise with nested binds. Unfortunately, this is not
possible.

To understand why it is impossible to channel one
Gift through another, it is necessary to understand the
formulae for channeling Gifts through a medium. The
standard formula for that energy is, in its most basic construction, c = 2/(e - m)r at any point during the transition, where c is the required channeling energy, e is the
energy to be channeled, m is the total energy of the channeling medium, and r is the inductive resistance
factor of the channeling medium.The problem that arises
when both e and m are reitic energies is that during the
channeling, e inevitably increases at the sourcepoint of
the channel, while m inevitably decreases, such that at a
determinable point during the channeling process, (e -
m) = 0. At this point, the equation fails, as the bottom
term becomes undefined.