CHAPTER FIVE
SHOP TALK
Max slept poorly. Karlini had neglected to mention that even when the castle wasn’t executing a major move from place to place, it wasn’t exactly quiet. The castle spent the night like a person with indigestion from a meal involving onions and too many beans, shifting restlessly and rumbling under an occasional burp. At half-past six Max gave up and headed for the kitchen. Ronibet and Karlini were already present, looking equally haggard.
“Nice neighborhood you’ve got here,” Max said, squinting down at the table and trying to butter a roll.
“Some nights are worse than others,” Ronibet said. She had her nose balanced on the edge of a mug of coffee, breathing in the fumes.
A crackling and snapping sound came from one wall, up near the roof. They looked up as a green tracer of ball lightning burst through the wall, leaving it singed, and swooped through the air like a dying comet. It dove into a cauldron in a splash of green sparking water and disappeared. The water in the cauldron glowed a fluorescent forest green that slowly faded. They returned their attention to the table.
“All night,” said Max, “all night with the green glowing balls and the spectral voices in the ears and the cold spots in the bed.” Wroclaw brought over his eggs, scrambled. “This place could drive you batty. I can see why you want to get out.”
“I don’t know where it’s all coming from,” Karlini mumbled. He was already on his second cup of coffee but was only beginning to look sentient. “All these manifestations just reek of energy, but I’ve been looking for weeks and damned if I can find the source.”
“This place was set up by a god,” Max said with his mouth full, “and gods operate on the second quantum energy state, that’s why they’re gods. It’s easier to set up stable power reservoirs on the second quantum level. One reason gods usually have so much power to burn.”
Karlini had stopped eating and was staring at Max with his mouth hanging open and his eyes all of a sudden fully alert. “Max,” he said carefully, “how did you find that out? That’s more new knowledge than anybody’s been able to learn about the gods in fifty years.”
“Good eggs,” Max said. “Thanks, Wroclaw. Can I have another roll?” Roni passed him the basket.
“My compliments to the oven master, too.” Haddo leaned in from the kitchen, the top of his dark hood dusted with flour, then vanished again. Max carefully selected a fluffy butter twist with a flaky crust.
Karlini was still staring. “Max,” Roni said, “I’m afraid my husband is having some sort of attack.”
“Shaa’s never around when you need him, is he?” Max commented. “These are good rolls.”
“At least Shaa usually answers a straight question.”
“You do get an answer out of him,” Max said, “but the answer usually goes with a different question.”
Karlini pointed a finger. “You’ve had run-ins with the gods before, we all know you have,” he said. “They don’t like you, and you’re still alive - I’ve never figured out how you manage that, either.”
Max looked up, gazed at Karlini with a very thoughtful expression. “Not all of the gods don’t like me,” he said eventually. “Most of them don’t like each other very much, that’s probably the key point.” He was silent for another moment. “Not that it’s much use in any given situation.”
“But how -”
“I think maybe you’re better off not knowing too much about it,” Max said, “don’t you think?” He took a bite from his roll.
“You made that remark about quantum energy states, not me,” said Karlini. “If you didn’t think we should know about it, why did you bring it up in the first place? It couldn’t be that you were just showing off, now could it?”
Max opened his mouth, then closed it and chewed his roll with a meditative expression. “Your point is well taken,” he said. “I do have certain tendencies, as you know, and as you also know, I try to resist them, not always with success.”
He swallowed the roll and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “As it happens, I have been doing some fresh research, and some of it has turned out to involve the gods. I will show you some of it later, as long as you’re so eager to know. That way, at least somebody may be able to use it, in case this damn-fool errand of yours turns out to be as nasty as it probably will. Are you satisfied?”
Karlini looked across at an étagère holding a dazzling array of dried goods and condiments, somewhat if uncharacteristically embarrassed. A tremor ran through the room, rattling the table and breaking the silence. Max sighed and shook his head, looking around for the possibility of a pastry. “What a place you’ve got here,” he said. “The crowning touch last night was the seagull. I could swear there was a seagull flying around outside my room, screeching like crazy. Now, really - you know how far this place is from the coast? No seagull could survive the trip. Any seagull that tried to fly here would be on its grandchildren by now.”
Karlini held out his arm. A seagull flapped down from the ceiling and perched. It screeched once. “It was sitting on the bed this morning,” Roni said. “I don’t think it’s anyone we know.”
Max sighed again and climbed to his feet. “I’m going to have to stop trying to guess what’s coming next. Well, we might as well get started.”
* * * *
Max flopped back on the rug and panted. “Every time - I forget - how exhausting - this nonsense is,” he gasped. Symbols faded from the air around him.
“Well?” Karlini said. “What happened?”
“Didn’t you - see it?”
“I saw something,” Karlini said, “but I don’t exactly know what it really was. It looked like …”
Max lifted himself on an elbow and accepted a mug from Ronibet. He appeared to have lost about three pounds since breakfast. “You saw a sort of matrix outline of the castle, right? Like you were looking at it from three directions at the same time, only the views were superimposed?”
“Yes, right. What was it?”
“That was the field spell on the walls of the castle. That’s what you triggered, and that’s what holds the place together when it shifts.”
“But why was the geometry so distorted?” Ronibet asked.
“Well,” Max said, swallowing a chunk of hard candy from a large bowl seated next to him on the floor, “that’s the second quantum level for you. Things are pretty strange there. Did you see that big glowing mass at the base of the castle matrix?”
“The thing that looked like a jewel with tendrils coming out of the facets?” Roni said.
“Yeah. That’s the power reservoir. It permeates the rock foundation at the base of the castle.”
“I probed the rock,” Karlini said, “and I didn’t find a thing.”
“You need different techniques.” Max selected another candy, a blue one, popped it in his mouth, and started to suck on it. “There’s a lot going on in the reservoir, but I couldn’t disentangle it all. One thing I did see was that the thing’s on a deadman trigger. The rock is unstable and the field holds it together. If the reservoir runs down enough the rock falls apart.”
“And if the rock falls apart -”
“Right,” Max said. “The castle falls in.” The seagull strolled over to Max, dipped its head into the candy bowl, selected a green piece of crystal, tossed it into the air, and caught it neatly on the downswing. Its beak made crunching noises.
“Uh, Max,” Karlini said, “then how close is this reservoir to the danger point?”
“I can barely even tell the thing is there. But it’s anybody’s guess how many more jumps this place can take without coming apart. Did you see that little pulsing dot about three-quarters of the way up?”
“I wondered about that. What was it?”
“You.”
Karlini buried his head in his hands and mumbled something unpleasant.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Roni said quickly. “If operating on this second quantum level is so hard, how do the gods do it? Some of them don’t sound too smart.”
Max watched patterns form and dissolve in his mug. “I think it’s something in their auras. Somehow the aura gives them a leg up, maybe filters their perception for all I know, probably pumps their energy up too. There could be an aural stabilizing factor that gives a god easy access to the second level, but damned if I know how it works.”
“Does it have something to do with the coupling problem?”
“Maybe,” Max said. “I don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell. There’s more than one way to deal with coupling.”
Karlini snorted. “Of course there’s more than one way, that’s what -”
Roni looked at him. “That’s not what Max is saying. I know Max. Max is saying that he’s thought of a new approach to coupling, something that’s pretty hot. Isn’t that right, Max?”
“… I wish I didn’t like you, Roni, otherwise I could just be jealous you’re so sharp, it’d be simpler. Yeah, I thought of something new, but it isn’t all worked out yet.” He climbed to his feet and glared at Karlini. “Why don’t you tell me about this setup in Roosing Oolvaya?”
The seagull screeched. “… All right, Max,” Karlini said. “This is the way things look.” He rose and went over to a bookcase. The shelves had books stuffed in at every angle, each book leaning on the others around it for mutual support. Karlini ran his finger along the spines of several volumes of bound notepaper. “Maybe this is it,” he said, wrenched out a folio from the bottom of a stack of ten, and watched the stack collapse down into the space. The rows the stack had been supporting folded in from both sides.
“No, I guess it isn’t this one,” Karlini said, paging through it.
“Do you remember the time he left his hat right in front of him on the table in a restaurant?” Max said to Roni. “That big sombrero thing with the tasseled fringes, and bright pink to boot? It was right under his chin, and he still forgot it.”
“That was our first anniversary,” Roni said, smiling at Karlini. “I think he’s gotten worse, if that’s possible. Try the book on the lectern, dear.”
“Huh?” Karlini said. “Oh, okay … yes, that’s certainly it. How do you do it, Roni?”
“It’s a concept known as ‘order’,” Max said.
“Yes, you’ve always liked that sort of thing, haven’t you, Max,” Karlini said with an air of distraction, ruffling vellum. He stopped, leafed back two pages, set the book back on the lectern, and started sketching in the air. A series of symbolic equations took shape, winding around each other.
Max squinted. “Have I seen that one before?”
Karlini paused and made a small twirly gesture. The equations halted. He reached carefully around them and pointed to one term. “You see that statement, Max? That’s the root. It’s a corollary to your lousy Discontinuity Proposition.”
With lips pursed, Max tilted his head to one side. “Hmm.” Then he grabbed a tablet and began scribbling.
“You know, Max,” Roni said, “Karlini’s never forgiven you for proving the Discontinuity Proposition. He’d finally gotten comfortable with the Doctrines of Conservation, and then you came back and said it was fine to dig holes through them.”
Karlini’s equations had resumed their winding and were beginning to flow into a structure. “The two aren’t inconsistent,” Max said, his attention still on his scribbling. “Conservation works whether you’re there or not. Establishment of a discontinuity requires the input of energy and imposition of a high degree of control. If you -”
A snapping sound came from Karlini’s workspace. The floating figure was now a rough meshwork sphere, indentations and holes drifting across the surface. The mesh lines glowed orange-yellow, brighter sparks flaring where the lines intersected. The construct rotated slowly, wobbling in two axes, making a low whirr in the air. A prominent hump on the globe’s northern hemisphere jumped in and out, the snapping sound coordinated with the oscillations. Max looked down at his tablet, nodding to himself, quickly scribbled another line at the bottom, closed his eyes, and drew his finger in a curlicue pattern along the writing. His final line of equations glowed blue, rose off the paper into the air, and shot over into the floating globe, weaving itself into the surface.
The hump evened out.
“I never thought of that,” Karlini said, surprised.
“Go ahead, try it.”
Karlini concentrated and gestured. The ball’s equator waffled wildly and started to spike. “No,” Max said, “it’s a modulator.” He sketched in the air, leaving hanging figures. “This is the command string, this is the modifier. The modifier has nine matrix terms and … “ The equator settled down. “There, you’ve got it now.”
Karlini smoothed the other transients. “Thanks, Max, I’ve been wondering what to do about that. Now, we aim it.” Six depressions appeared at equidistant spots, top, bottom, and four compass corners, holding position as the surface swept over them. “Coordinate axes.”
“Right.”
The hollows tilted as a unit, forward, to one side, spun slowly, reached inward. The structure shuddered, collapsed into itself, and faded from sight, leaving the air slightly curdled. Max clasped his hands behind his back and paced slowly around the space, examining it closely. He gestured again. The spot of turgid air churned and then smoothed. There was no sign of the construct. “Nice,” Max said. “No visual manifestation at all. Good for a spy probe.”
“That’s the idea.” A yellow point glowed suddenly in the center of the empty space. Karlini made twirling passes. The point stretched itself into a line, rotated out of the void, and became a flat ring. The cabinet of alembics and other glassware on the wall behind it faded from sight. Within the ring, an aerial view of a walled city appeared. Karlini sank into a chair and stretched out his legs. “I logged the coordinates from before. This is Roosing Oolvaya from about ten thousand feet. We’re looking primarily at the older section, inside the walls.”
The walls themselves were not visible, but sharp straight edges divided the overgrown and tangled confusion of the original city from the fields and the more open confusion of the suburbs. “So what exactly are we looking at here?” Max said.
“Roosing Oolvaya sits on the west bank of the River Oolvaan,” Roni said. “The river takes a long curve out to the east in this area and then loops back to the west; the city’s right at the eastern-most edge of this bulge. About fifteen miles downstream to the south the Oolvaan splits into its three primary distributaries: the Greater, Lesser, and Equivocal Oolvaans.”
“Wait – what are you talking about, distributaries? You mean tributaries, right?”
“No, Max,” Roni said patiently, if with an air of some superiority. “The tributaries feed into the river, not out of the river. Distributaries flow away from the main stream.”
“Well, you learn something every day, sometimes,” Max grumbled. “Who makes these things up, the Imperial Archivist? But the Equivocal Oolvaan’s the one that floods, right?”
“Right. The east bank of the Oolvaan is the start of the mountains,” she went on, “the Rondingian Uplift and the Rondingian Steeps. This castle’s on the other side of the Steeps now, in the middle of the desert. But the Oolvaan attracts runoff from a considerable distance on both banks - mountain runoff from the east side and plains and farms from the west. As you go north the terrain on the west bank gradually becomes steeper and more mountainous until it’s pretty much the same as the east; that whole range is the Rondingian Heights. The Oolvaan starts somewhere up in there.
“Back to Roosing Oolvaya itself. As I said, the city is on the west bank of the Oolvaan at the eastern end of one of its turns, where the river widens and slows down. The city uses this natural harbor shielded from the current by a small cape at the north end and a chain of islands in the middle of the river, basically a perfect location for the domination of river traffic. Of the five major islands, one has the port and warehousing facilities, one’s being developed for fancy residential use, two are private estates, and the last has an old imperial garrison fort that’s being used as the palace of the Venerance.”
“Venerance, eh?” Max said.
“It’s some kind of traditional title newly revived. He’s addressed as ‘Your Venerance’ or ‘Venerable Sir’.”
“Wonderful. I’ll try not to meet him. Will I have to?”
Karlini and Roni exchanged another one of their glances. “The situation’s fairly confused,” said Roni. “It’s not impossible. Dear, give Max a closer look at the view.”
The scene expanded as the field zoomed in. Irregular blocks and streets became visible, then individual buildings within the blocks. Then - the picture shimmered, a rash of mottled blotches appeared scattered across the surface, and the edge of the flat viewing disc began to smoke.
“What -” said Max.
“I don’t know!” Karlini said. The blotches bulged out into the room, the images around them stretching like paintings on taffy. A horrendous high-pitched whine built. One by one in a rapid-fire barrage the bubbling spots abruptly popped like pricked balloons, the view around each one fracturing into kaleidoscope shards, and an intense silver light burst in pulsing rays through the holes. Streamers of lightning spread out and reached for Karlini. Karlini’s fingers were a blur, smoke and sparks coming from them as well as from the ruptured disc. “Max!” he yelled, “I can’t hold it!”
The image in the ring was gone and the plate of silver light shone through like a sun. Max, who had been gesturing too, reeled off a string of figures. The figures spun into formation and darted into the ring. The surface of the silver plate heaved, the center swelled up, and then Karlini’s original meshwork ball pushed itself through, the orange mesh framework trailing interwoven threads of burning silver. Karlini’s construct was no longer a ball but rather a writhing amoeboid blob, its neat grid lines shooting off in wild hyperbolic sprays, irregular fragments curling back to pierce the structure and coil through its walls. A shudder ran through the blob as Max’s second barrage danced along its surface. The roaring whine intensified. Max’s amulet, which had been quivering on his chest, jumped out of his shirt, lights playing in the tiny sapphires and larger stones. A tendril of lightning grazed the seagull and one of its tail feathers burst into flame. Roni, who had been deflecting the lightning, was sheeting sweat, her hands quivering in violent tremors, fasciculations twitching over her brow. The center of the silver disc opened and drew back. Behind it was a giant eye.
“Enough of this nonsense,” Max growled. He thrust his left hand into the bowl of hard candies, closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and concentrated. A small concave plate, the concave surface covered with fuzz and the back side festooned with multicolored lumps and tubes and strange waving appendages, appeared in the air over the bowl. Almost faster than vision could discriminate, the plate split into four much smaller but otherwise identical versions of itself, each of the four split into four, those split and split again, how many times an observer could not possibly tell, and then this cloud of spinning motes dove down Max’s arm and into his hand.
The bowl heaved and blew apart, fragments of bowl and pulverized candy spraying around the room like tiny, brightly colored missiles. Max’s fist, though, had clenched around a handful of the candies, and a swirling haze had appeared around his hand. Strong red light leaked from between his fingers, streaming directly into the haze, as the haze seemed to be vacuuming the light up into itself. Bands of light ran up his arm like small animals through a boa constrictor. Max raised his arm, the hand still clenched, raised it over his head, turned it behind his body - and then, with one convulsive hurling swing, whipped his arm around. A ball of sizzling plasma hurtled out of Max’s hand at the head of a solid beam that started at his shoulder and ran rippling down his arm like a tubular stiletto. The plasma ball went through the center of the ring into the questing eye and the beam hit the silver disc. The disc flew into shreds. The silver congealed like clotting blood as the disc dropped to the floor, wobbled on one edge, toppled over, and exploded. Globs of sizzling silver goo rained down. Low sizzles and plops from the molten silver echoed in the sudden silence.
Karlini and Roni pulled themselves to their feet. The seagull peeped tentatively out from under an overturned armchair. Max raised himself to a sitting position, propping himself up against the far wall, where the recoil had thrown him. “You wanted to know about coupling?” Max said, still gritting his teeth. “That was coupling.”
“It’s not very neat, is it,” Karlini said. He surveyed the room. The air was thick with smoke and plumes rose from the evaporating puddles of silver. All the furniture was scattered back around the walls.
Max’s left sleeve had been shredded completely off and his arm was bright red and oozing fluid. He gingerly raised his arm, rotated it slowly around his shoulder, clenched and unclenched his fist. With his other hand he eased his amulet back inside his shirt. The amulet had a disconcerting habit of popping out at unexpected times; Max didn’t know what all its powers might be, but since it had certainly taken plenty of trouble to steal the thing had to do something useful. “I told you I don’t have the new coupling method quite worked out yet,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve tried to use it. Always seems to work out that way, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t happen to have anything like a medicine kit handy, would you?”
Karlini dug under the bookcase and came up with a small singed satchel. He withdrew a coil of linen and began wrapping it around Max’s arm. “Yeow!” Max said. “Feels like that arm’s been out sunbathing in your desert there for about a week.”
“Just what kind of stunt was that, exactly?” Roni said, still panting. She was mopping her face with a piece of one of the tablecloths.
“Nothing too fancy. I liberated a pile of energy from those candy things and threw it at that eye. Instead of just liberating energy, it’d be better to incorporate it into other stuff, but, well.” He shrugged. “Thanks, Karlini, that’s a lot better.”
“You want to lie down for awhile?” Karlini said.
“Be better to just get on with it. Do you want to lie down? You took a beating from those lightning bolts.”
Karlini squatted back on his haunches and crossed his arms. “If you can go on, I can go on. You know, this didn’t happen the last time I looked at Roosing Oolvaya.”
“I figured as much; I’m sure it didn’t.”
Roni was frowning over at Karlini. “Oskin Yahlei evidently decided he doesn’t want anybody checking up on him.”
“Oskin Yahlei?” Max said.
“That’s who has the ring,” Roni said. “That’s who you’re going after. I think that’s whose eye was in that disc.”
“Never heard of him. How are you so sure he’s the one?”
“That dream I told you about?” Karlini said. “The one I had upstairs in the tower? It left me with a sense. That’s how I found him in the first place.”
“H’m. Well, that’s consistent, anyway. I hope he didn’t get a good look at me.”
“You threw him quite a punch,” Roni said. “He may not be in any condition to fight with anyone for a while.”
Max looked at her and grimaced. “I don’t know. That anti-spy field had a hell of a lot of power in it, plus it was shielded against backlash. I don’t know how much of my bolt really got through. Too bad I had to try a big dumb power-blast in the first place, but it was the handiest thing I could think of at the moment.”
“So what you’re saying,” Karlini said, “you think that blast may have only put him more on his guard?”
Max sighed. “If it was me, I’d take it as a warning. Well, maybe he’ll think it was another god, and he’ll at least have the tact to be surprised when I show up instead.” He stretched his neck, trying to work out some of the kinks from skidding into the wall. “There’s nothing to do for it now. You might as well give me the rest of the story. I’d like to know what else I’m letting myself in for.”
“You don’t want to try another probe?” Karlini said. “Maybe a fine-beam needle probe?”
Max stared at him, then ostentatiously crossed his bandaged arm over the good one.
“Ahem,” Karlini said. “Well, perhaps the story might be best, at that.” He absent-mindedly righted his chair and plopped into it. The left armrest creaked over and fell off. “Frankly, Max, it’s not the best time to be visiting Roosing Oolvaya. You’ll see troops in the streets. The former Venerance died a week or so ago under suspicious circumstances. His son took over the office and turned out the local militia, that is, the Guard, plus a horde of mercenaries who conveniently happened to be around.”
Max had been testing his arm. He’d have to keep exercising it, he decided, or it would stiffen up. “What do we know about this son?”
“From what I was able to pick up before, he was a classic fop-around-town, with a vicious streak. Perfect puppet material.”
“Whose puppet?”
“You tell me. Big powerful magician, wants to be a new force in the city …”
“I had a feeling you were going to say that. So this mess has politics in it too.” Max sighed again. “What about old cabinet members, people loyal to the old Venerance?”
“Dungeons are under the palace. A lot of people seem to have been winding up there.”
“Curfew?”
“Sunset to sunrise.”
“Yeah, right,” said Max. “Bound to be more people creeping around at night than during the day. Camouflage, maybe, if I can keep from running into traffic jams on the rooftops. What about this Oskin Yahlei?”
“He has a place near the north wall, I’ll show you on the map. He’s passing himself off as a necromancer.”
Max groaned. “You’re going out of your way to keep this from being any fun at all, aren’t you?”
“I already warned you. I mentioned there might be undead when you brought it up before.”
“I hoped you were joking.”
“He may not be a real necromancer, it could be just a disguise,” Karlini said. “You shouldn’t get so -”
Max levered himself back to his feet, leaning his back against the wall, and glowered off at nothing in particular. “Disguise or not, you know as well as I do that playing around with the dead is filthy stuff. After something’s been in the ground you don’t want to see it in the air again. You ever been chased by a gang of zombies? No?” Max ground his teeth. “Well, by the time they’ve managed to claw their way out of the earth they’re not much more than a heap of glowing mold and squirming maggots, scum, basically, with clods of stuff falling off whenever they move. They’ve also got an uncanny habit of showing up upwind.” He paused in front of Karlini and switched the glower to him. “You think that’s disgusting? - we’re not even talking about the real undead yet. As magical esthetics go, necromancy is pretty close to the bottom of the pits. Disguise, hah! Anybody who would deliberately disguise themselves as a necromancer is stranger than I want to hear about. He probably really is a necromancer, worse luck.”
“You’re not backing out, are you?” Roni said.
Karlini had turned pink. “Of course he’s pulling out, he’s afraid he’s going to blow it.”
“Dear,” Roni said.
“… All right, all right, Max, I apologize,” said Karlini. “I know you don’t like zombies, I should have put it a different way. You haven’t blown anything significant in years, I know that, that’s why you’ve got to take care of this one.”
“Max?” Roni said.
“Of course I’ll do it,” Max said, “I said I would, now let’s stop beating the point to death. You know me, sometimes I just need to complain. Just answer one thing for me, and then we can start on the real preparations. Who is he, really?”
“Who is who?” Karlini said.
“‘Whom’,” said Max, “and stop playing around. You’ve been sitting around in this castle for weeks, all you’ve been doing is thinking about this mess, you’ve got to have come up with at least a good guess. Who owns this place? Who is it I’m going out to rescue? And while we’re at it, who is this Oskin Yahlei?”
“Uh,” Karlini said, “well, I really don’t know. I wish I did, but -”
“It’s the one major point you’ve been avoiding ever since I got here. Now, talk, or the deal’s off, really.”
“I, uh, I’m not sure.”
“I’m sure you’re not. Just give me your guess.”
“You must have your own guess by now, Max,” Roni said. She wouldn’t quite meet Max’s eyes.
“Yeah,” Max said, “I do. I sure do. That’s why I want to hear Karlini’s.” He fixed Karlini with his sharpest gaze. “Well? Who is it? Is it somebody I know?”
Karlini slowly let out his breath. “… Death. It’s one of the Deaths.”
Max’s glower had brought most of his face into shadow, his eye sockets casting gloom down past his nose and chin. Something glittered on his chest - the filigreed amulet. “Which one is the Death?” he said, “Oskin Yahlei or the castle master?”
“… Both of them. I think they’re both Deaths.”