Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

CHAPTER FIFTEEN A Walk in the Dark

We could have used four months to train for the mission; Koril gave us four days. Once he’d decided to move, he decided to move, and that was that. He said he’d picked each of us for a reason, but some reasons were easier than others to figure out.

I seemed to have been included because Koril, like many of the Brethren I’d hunted for most of my Me, had a very high opinion of Confederacy assassins, an opinion I’d tried to reinforce in my conversations with him. I was surprised he agreed to let Darva come, but as she had pointed out, what she lacked in sorcerous powers she more than compensated for with close-quarters weaponry. She’d worked hard developing those skills, and I wouldn’t want to be in the way if she wanted to go somewhere. If her opponent were equal or weaker than she in control of the wa force, or was prevented by one of us from using it, that opponent was dead. Zala—or, rather, Kira—was a more interesting choice, since I knew Koril trusted her no more than I did. If she was on the level, of course, she’d be invaluable—but she could also easily be our Trojan Horse, ready to betray us once we were trapped inside the Castle.

The rest were his best sores, as illustrated by the “K” sound that preceded then* names, which they took when admitted to that fraternity of the very best. It was like a title or badge of rank—and when I finally realized that it explained a lot. Of them all, only Morah had never taken a sore name.

Our party wasn’t without interesting abilities. In addition to Darva and myself, Ku, a small, dark man with a rodent-like face, was also a changeling, although very human in appearance. He was naturally nocturnal and, additionally, had some sort of built-in sonar system which would be very useful to us—along with his unnerving ability to stick to walls and ceilings like a fly. It was obvious that, if in fact someone else had made him a changeling or not, he’d adapted for himself some most useful attributes.

Kaigh was a large, hairy bear like man who looked naturally mean, and perhaps was. I understood he was a former Confederacy frontier officer who’d found the possibilities for graft and extortion out there irresistible. Kimil was a typical civilized worlder, younger than Koril but otherwise undistinguished. Kindel was a small, wiry woman with wickedly long nails and a shaved head. Her cold, black eyes seemed too large for her head, and were constantly in nervous motion. Rrugar was a woman of the civilized worlds, in early middle age and otherwise not very distinguished from any other civilized worlder. Of us all, I realized, only Darva was native to Charon.

Darva and I were the largest and most obvious targets, I realized that from the beginning. Over the months we had managed to scale ourselves down slowly to a more moderately tall 204 centimeters, still enough to tower over the others. Of course, our appearance, although very human, was still changeling enough to mark us. We were both damned strong and surprisingly agile, and we worked at it.

We left Koril’s redoubt by air, in much the same manner as we’d arrived—but this time, inside the cabin of the great flying creature and not in its claws. Zala hadn’t been too excited by the idea of the trip, but apparently had been calmed or sedated in some way by Kira. I found the trip as bumpy and uncomfortable as the first tune, but took it in stride. We had a schedule to keep.

We did not, of course, dare land anywhere near the Castle. Since there were no legitimate landing areas for the big creatures we could use, we made do with an area more than forty kilometers southwest of the seat of Charon’s government and managed to get the big thing back off the ground ourselves.

Our equipment was surprisingly spare. Koril had risked laser pistols, with the understanding that we might have to get rid of them for any number of reasons. We also carried a small store of projectile weapons and ammunition, on which we’d practiced and been checked out at the redoubt’s firing ranges long before. Darva never did quite get the art of laser pistol down well, but she was a whiz at the projectile pistols—just the reverse of me. In addition several of us, including Darva, carried that most ancient of weapons, the sword; others carried small but deadly daggers. The burly Kaigh, to my awe and fascination, carried what seemed to be a crossbow, a kind of early weapon I’d only read about but had never seen before.

We carried no papers or documents of any kind. All information had been hypnoed into our minds to save weight and problems. We all wore tough clothing of jungle green, a sort of forest version of the trooper uniforms, Darva’s and mine having been specially cut and tailored for our peculiar requirements. Beyond some pre-packaged food cakes and canteens, we had nothing else.

On the road we ate mostly by transmutation, a rather fascinating process. Just as Garal had changed fruit punch into acid and Korman had changed it back, so our own sores could take almost any vegetable matter in the jungle and make almost anything of it we desired. To this day I’m still not sure if we really were eating transmuted stuff or just leaves and the like we were fooled into believing was the good food it seemed to be. In the end, it probably made no difference. At least our bodies not only accepted the stuff but seemed to make good use of it.

We had two and a half days to reach the Castle, which was easy enough considering the distance involved. Still, the trek was through the rough of the jungle, and not even Darva and I were any longer prepared to feel completely at home there. As we approached the mountains, though, the jungle gave way first to thick forest and then to intermittent groves with bare glades and rocky outcrops. The going was steep, since we could hardly use the known roads, and tough. Much of the open spaces had to be negotiated at night We had our first practice with Koril’s little nocturnal vision spells, but still needed the more natural and nearly perfect night eyes of Ku to keep us from breaking our fool necks.

By the morning of the appointed day, we had made it to the place where we knew we’d be entering the caves. It was a good spot, really. Nearby, through a small grove of trees, was a sheer cliff and we were able to look out on the valley below. From any point we could see the top of the Castle, which looked even more fearsome in person than it did in any pictures.

We settled down to wait for the late afternoon, when the real work would begin. Standing short watches, we tried to get as much sleep as we could. With some interest I noticed that, somehow, Zala hadn’t been included in the watch schedule.

I slept in short stretches, but couldn’t really relax. I was simply too keyed up, although I knew that was an amateur’s problem and wasn’t supposed to happen to me. Early in the afternoon, before the start of one of Charon’s interminable rains, I wandered down through the grove of trees to the cliffside and looked out, perhaps for the last tune, on the landscape below.

And, finally, I saw a tabarwind.

The view across the valley was fifteen, maybe twenty kilometers at worst, although it was obscured by ram. The cloud cover remained above the line of hills on both sides, though, allowing fair visibility with no real resolution of fine detail on the ground. Still, there was no mistaking what I was seeing—I watched it form.

First a small area far off to the east seemed to Sash on and off with upper-level lightning. But instead of the intermittent and irregular illumination within the clouds it grew quite regular and very strong, so strong that it was almost as if a bright light was shining in the center of the cloud mass. Still nothing had emerged from the cloud. Then, suddenly, the immediate area began to swirl around. I had seen something of the pattern before, although not with the central globe of increasingly steady light Tornado, it was called, or sometimes cyclone.

From that bright center in the clouds long fingers of electricity shot down to the ground, and seconds later, reported their arrival to me with a series of loud booms that echoed back and forth across the valley. I couldn’t make out much of what was under those bolts, but I felt relieved that it wasn’t me.

Now, out of that bright, shining center a funnel shape seemed to emerge, not like a tornado but almost mathematically regular. A conical shape of charged—what?—moving down, surrounded by a maniacal dance of lightning all around. The yellowish cone began to change, darken, take on colors as it reached for and then touched the ground. Reds and oranges and purples swirled within but did not mix.

I could see where the ignorant might ascribe a supernatural power to such a thing. It was a swirl of color and forces, and as I watched, it flattened into an almost cylindrical shape and began to move.

Others, bearing the thunder, came and joined me at my watching place. The storm, although far off, was awesome, and everyone seemed magnetically attracted to its grim, erratic march across the valley. Everyone but Koril.

“I think it’s time we went in,” he said calmly.

A couple of us turned and looked in surprise at him. “But it’s not nearly five yet,” I noted.

He nodded. “They won’t risk a shuttle landing with tabarwind conditions in the area. The automatic systems will close down completely for the duration so as not to attract the storm. That means no electricity or automatic watchdogs, no landings, nothing. And right now any laser charges are being hauled down the long tunnel away from the Castle. That means we’ll be between the charges and the people who can use them, and that’s fine with me. The storm’s a godsend! Let’s move!”

The tabarwind’s almost hypnotic effect was hard to leave, but we all understood his urgency. We slipped on our packs and headed for ah undistinguished grove of trees some sixty meters from our camp.

The watch has retreated,” Koril said, almost gloating.

“That’ll make it easy. If we can get past the ulterior guard-post without being seen we’ll be in without a trace.”

The roar of the tabarwind sounded very close, and the wind picked up to almost gale force. “Hadn’t we better ditch out laser pistols?” Kimil asked nervously.

“I think not,” the chief sorcerer replied. “I’m willing to take the risk. With the luck we’re having, it just might mean we have ’em and nobody else will”

The spell in the grove was a good one, tightly woven and nearly impossible to detect Few knew that the Castle had any back entrances and exits in the first place, although nobody builds a fortress without both an escape system and a hidden route of supply. This was one of four such, and the second closest to the Castle itself—but the most direct. The closest in, and most used, of these back doors actually led away from the Castle to the underground storerooms in natural caverns in the mountain Though it would be the easiest to uncover and enter, an enemy force might never find the Castle from there.

Koril and two of our other sorcerers worked quickly on the spell, with a skill and ease I found fascinating and enviable. I might have their potential, but I was a long way from having their skill.

Two of the trees seemed to shrivel, wither before our eyes, then they bent backward to reveal a solid metal door. Medusan metal, I knew—and totally inert to us. Both door and lock were beyond our powers, but not the rock in which the lock was imbedded. I watched as our advance team of sores sent then* combined energies into and around the rock, and saw the wa of the rock respond as if it was some living thing, compressing back from die locking mechanism. In a matter of minutes a hole appeared on one side of the door large enough for an arm to go through. Koril nodded to himself, walked forward, reached in almost to his elbow, and slid the door back. We could all see that the locking mechanism also slid back, still in place. No alarms had been tripped because the lock had not been tampered with.

Quickly we were inside the tunnel entrance, then waited there as the door returned to its original position and our wizards replicated the spells they had broken on the way in, moving the trees and the rock back into place. A Class 1 sore could detect the tampering if he was in any way suspicious, but I sure couldn’t.

With the door shut, we were suddenly encased in total darkness, but we were neither blind nor helpless. Ku scampered up the wall and stuck firmly to the top of the cave. He would travel with us that way and be our surprise insurance policy. As for us, we could see each other’s distinctive wa—Zala’s twin mind was particularly visible—thus providing us with our own outlines as well as the wa in the rock of the cave itself. The sight, uncomplicated by anything visual, was eerie, and useful—but not only to us. Anyone else could see us, too.

Ku in the lead proceeded slowly about five meters ahead of us. As silently as possible, in this configuration, we began our walk down that long, dark tunnel, most attention focused on Ku. Koril took the lead in our group, Darva remained the last, her attention less on Ku than on Zala, as agreed. This was, in fact, one of Koril’s little master strokes. The weakest in power, Darva’s wa was linked immutably to mine. If she saw anything unusual, she could signal me with a prearranged pinch code. If anybody tried anything on her, I’d know it immediately, too. Koril, I now understood, had good reasons for everything he did, including bringing both Darva and me along.

We rounded a turn in the runnel and suddenly had some sight—a flickering torch not in the cave itself but coming from a small room just off it Ku was a nervy bastard, I had to give him that much. He scampered on the cave roof right up to that door, which didn’t reach his position, and peered cautiously in from his upside-down angle. Then, cautiously, he made his way back to Koril.

“Two troopers,” he hissed to Koril in a voice barely audible to me in the middle of the group. “Repeaters with exploding bullets. Power’s still off.”

Koril nodded to him and appeared to be satisfied. Then, as Ku went on ahead once again, the man who used to own both cave and troopers stepped forward, almost to the open door itself, and raised his hands in what I knew was a power gesture. He seemed immobile, frozen but majestic, and yet the index finger of his outstretched right hand wriggled, telling us to proceed.

One at a time, as silently as we could, we approached Koril, then the door, then passed it, walking right under Ku. We could see the two men in the room, looking bored and occasionally glancing up at some device beyond our gaze. Neither seemed to notice us.

Once Darva was past, Koril himself finally moved, retaining his outstretched form and moving first sideways, then back to the far cave wall, past the door, under Ku, and to the rest of us waiting on the other side. Only then did he relax, move forward, and allowing Ku to go ahead once again, he led us down the tunnel and around another curve, back into the darkness once again. There was no need to explain what he had done. We all knew he had maintained the illusion of peace, quiet, and no intruders for the two men while we all passed.

We continued another forty or fifty meters when the cave opened up into a large, circular area—an obvious junction point. The trouble was, once you stepped into it the wa glowed brightly all around, indicating solid rock. We couldn’t even tell where we’d entered. This, then, was the first of the maze traps, and a very good one it was.

The tunnel system had the intricate workings of a circuit diagram, as I knew from my earlier sessions with the diagrams and floor plans. It would be obvious to anyone getting this far that the solidness of the chamber was a blind, but you had no real clue as to which opening to take, even if you found it. Of the five tunnels that actually fed into the place, only one led towards the Castle. Another, of course, led back the way we had come. The other three were laced with very nasty traps and ultimately led to storage areas away from the Castle itself.

I slipped back to Darva. “How’re you holding up?” I whispered.

“Fine, except I feel like I have to pee,” she responded just as quietly. I patted her comfortingly and retook my position.

Koril looked around, then urged us back and again stretched out his arms. He began to turn, slowly, for more than a minute, making three complete circles before he stopped. Finally he said, in a very low voice, “Somebody very good’s done a nice job. They’re all badly booby-trapped, and they’ve added a new cross-tunnel about ten meters out Okay—follow me closely and don’t get ahead of me. Ku, no more than a couple meters at a time.”

With that he made his decision, pointed his finger, and some of the if a to his left dissolved a bit He walked cautiously through it allowed Ku to go on, then waited for the rest of us. The wa curtain, made of some thin strands of something or other that simulated rock but were easily penetrable, slid back into place.

Slowly, cautiously, we reformed and started down the new path. After only two or three meters, though, Koril gestured for us to stop.

“Dumb shits,” Koril mumbled. “They ought to know better than to use offworlder traps.” He pointed to the floor, and we all could sense what he meant. All around us was wa—in us, in the walls, floor, and roof. Everything shone with its distinctive wa pattern—except an area four meters long that ran the width of the cave on the floor right in front of Koril. Inert matter meant Medusan metal, and its very lack of any sight, including wa, outlined it perfectly.

Ku needed no prompting; he was already on the roof of the cave and working. I saw a small laser drill snap into place, and, soon after, he was affixing a ring to the roof with an instant-bonding cement. Darva and I, being the largest, carried the miscellaneous packs, and she was already ahead of me. The rope, made from some really nasty jungle vines in Koril’s shops, tested out at over 500 kilos. For our sake I hoped it still did.

Kindel was nearest me, and I whispered to her, “What would we do without Ku?”

“Why, we’d turn another of us into something like him,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“Oh,” was all I could manage, and turned back to watch the work. The system was simple enough—grab the rope and swing across the pressure-sensitive floor plate to the other side. It wasn’t quite as easy as all that though—the roof of the cave was less than three meters high, while the plate was four across. Since the rope couldn’t touch the plate, that meant you needed good speed and a slight jump at the end. It would be tricky indeed.

It was a nervous eternity as each of us made our crossing, but we were all trained professionals. We had only one close call, and no other problems. I made it very easily, almost to my surprise, and the thought struck me that, if Kara were a double agent, primed to betray us, she could do so very convincingly now. She didn’t, though, demonstrating that nice timing and power she tried so hard to hide.

In fact, only the tiny Kindel needed several swings until she felt confident enough to let go, and, even then, only fast action by the Ku overhead pushed her the last few precious centimeters.

We all waited while Ku used Ms little laser tool to cut the knot and retrieve the rope, then return, cut off and bring back the ring also. Again, anyone who passed by would have to be looking for something to find any sign that we had been here.

Much of the rest of the tunnel was arranged with other traps, some easier to spot than others. A few were actually powered and thus not active, but most were basic, mechanical types that were bad enough. Each caused a little heart trouble but each had its answer in our packs, and none deterred us.

We found countless blind junctions too, and in each we had to rely on Koril’s old experience and the probing sense of the top sores. Approaching one, though, we were held up by Koril from entering. We had reached areas close to the Castle—and now we were going to face the real problems.

For one thing, this junction had traffic; a fair amount by the sound of it. Troopers and maintenance personnel pushing dollies of various things to and fro, or so it seemed. There was never a lag of more than a minute or so between such sounds, hardly enough time to enter, determine the right path, and move on through.

Koril was still deeply in thought when the power returned. A band of light came alive all up and down the corridors, illuminating us dimly but completely—and illuminating the junction as well. We moved quickly back into the tunnel, just in time to miss four red-clad people emerging from another tunnel mouth on the run, pushing a large yellow cart filled with cases of something or other across the open space, and into another opening. They never glanced in our direction.

“Well, we made it a lot farther than I thought, thanks to the tabarwind,” Koril sighed. “Now the real fun begins. We’re less than fifty meters from the bottom floor of the Castle right now. These tunnels lead to the art storage rooms, the precious metals rooms, and the like. That one to the right, there, at two o’clock, leads to the Castle.” He stopped, and we all froze as yet another team came through, this time with what sounded like a powered vehicle of some kind. As the last sounds were receding, he continued.

“The booby traps have got to be down by now. I’m not sure anybody ever expected anyone to get this far undetected. I’m not sure I ever did, I’ve had an education in security myself these past hours. Now, I know you’re all tired but we have to push on. I’m sure all this fuss is over the attack that has surely been launched by now, and all hell is breaking loose. That means they’ll be coming up or down here any moment now. We can’t stay here and we can’t go on. I think—”

Just as he said that last a small powered tractor towing a trailer entered the Junction point, paused a moment, then turned our way and started right toward us.

Pistols were out in a moment, and Koril hardly had time to hiss “Don’t miss!” as the thing chugged into view. There were only two people in the cab, both dressed in maintenance red. We shot them so fast I can’t even describe what they looked like. In another moment Ku dropped from the roof into the open cab, kicked the corpses out of the way, and brought the tractor to a stop.

“Quickly!” Koril said. “Park. Darva. Kaigh. You’re the biggest and strongest Get those crates off this thing!”

We hustled to do as instructed. The damned tilings were heavy, but not beyond any two of us, and we had them off the trailer and to the side of the little chugging train in a couple of minutes. During that time we nervously ignored other traffic sounds behind us. We were just far enough around the bend, we hoped, not to be noticed—unless somebody else wanted to come up our way.

Koril wasted no time on sorcery. He opened his laser pistol to wide scan and disintegrated the crates to white powder, taking the risk that the electronic spring like sound would be unheard or obscured by traffic noise. Quickly we climbed into the back trailer. Ku then stuck the small service cab into reverse, backed out carefully into the junction point, made the turn, then moved into the tunnel that headed for the Castle. We never knew what was in those crates.

Ku drove like a madman and hardly hesitated when we approached some troopers and maintenance personnel on foot. To my surprise they just stepped against the wall and let us by without a glance. A little further on, we passed a similar tractor going the other way. Ku waved, so did the red-clad driver of the other vehicle, and we passed with a few centimeters to spare.

Koril laughed out loud. “The fools! They figure we’re troopers. Well, we are! Weapons at the ready! This is gonna get hairy in a minute!”

With that, we entered the bottom floor of the Castle, a huge open area supported by rock pillars. Hundreds of men and women clad in red or black were there, and a number of vehicles and trailers were about.

We pulled in between some painted lines on the floor and Ku brought us to a stop. Koril, brimming with confidence, winked. “Now I’ll show you why bureaucracy is so evil.” He jumped down, bolstered his pistol, and walked briskly towards a gold-braided black-clad trooper, an officer of some kind and by his wa a powerful man.

The former Lord of the Diamond walked right up to him, started talking to him, and the trooper nodded, then pointed and said something back. Koril saluted and returned to us, hardly suppressing a grin. “Okay—out! We don’t have to walk up. We’re going to take Lift 4.”

A little numbly we complied, and followed him across the busy floor to the doors of a huge open lift. I wasn’t used to such a primitive device, but remembered that Koril had said these were moved by counterweight, not by any electrical power. They had to be—otherwise in a power outage they would be useless.

We stood there, looking about nervously, not quite believing what we were doing and feeling we stuck out like a sore thumb in our green uniforms. I couldn’t stand it any more than the rest, and eased up to Koril. “All right—how the hell did you manage this?”

He smiled and winked. “I just walked up to the chief operations officer there, told him we were a special security patrol ordered to defensive positions, and asked him for the quickest way to our station.” “And he told your “Sure. Why not?”

I wasn’t the only one shaking my head in wonder as the big lift descended, stopped, and form-fitted itself neatly into the indentation for it in the floor. There were a number of hand carts on it, mostly empty, with security troopers and maintenance personnel on them, all of whom paid us no mind whatsoever. I admit, though, that at least I, and almost certainly most of us, were close to being nervous wrecks at this point. Still, this was just the sort of stunt I might improvise if this were my old stamping grounds. I knew that our greatest danger until we got off wasn’t from these faceless men and women but from somebody’s nerve springing in our group and giving us away.

When the lift was cleared we stepped uneasily on, only to find that several troopers also came up, pushing carts with cases of what looked like ammunition for the projectile weapons and, possibly, laser pistol power packs. No sooner were they on than a loud gong sounded overhead, and we started up, one floor at a time. The system was obviously designed for slow ascent and descent. It would stop on every floor no matter what.

The next floor, and most of the others, were not open spaces like the warehouse level but instead opened on access corridors that went down a few meters, then branched off to the right and left. Security guards were visible on each level, wearing special color-coded passes which, I was acutely and suddenly aware, we did not have.

The troopers with us didn’t seem to notice, hut when one cart got off at the fifth level the security men did check badges. At the seventh level when the rest exited, badges were given an even greater scrutiny. Alone and rising, I shouted to Koril, “Badges!”

He nodded and patted his pistol in its holster. It was pretty dear that we’d have to take his lead and use brute force—and, once we did, all hell would break loose. As we cleared Level 9 he whispered, “Draw weapons and shoot as soon as you’re able!”

At Level 10, the topmost point you could go on these lifts without full security clearance, eight armed security guards waited for us with very ugly-looking projectile weapons. Even if they didn’t suspect us, and they probably did, they would be ready to shoot anyone on the lift at the slightest provocation.

As our heads came up over the floor and into the clear, I shouted, “Wait! Don’t shoot!” The guards naturally hesitated at that, and that was all we needed. As our shoulders cleared we opened wide rapid fire with the laser pistols. None of them had a chance against such concentrated fire.

“Everybody off—fast!” Koril shouted. “When they don’t give the go-ahead signal this thing!! drop like a stone!” We needed no other urging; the last of us was off before the lift levelled with the floor—and just in time, too. Apparently the guards above had the locking mechanism, and with no guard to throw it the big platform rumbled and dropped immediately from view.

Kaigh looked back at the gaping hole and shook his head. “Close.” We all turned our attention back to Koril, who was looking around critically.

Finally he said, “This is the primary guard floor for the upper levels. There’ll be some fifty, sixty people here even if the rest were drawn off by the outside attack. I doubt, though, if we could walk through to the main stair without getting slaughtered. Park, Darva, Kira—stay in the middle of our circle. No firing even if fired upon. Bluff, bravado, and conventional weapons will no longer get us anywhere.”

We knew what he meant and quickly formed up, allowing the sores to surround us. But neither Darva nor I put down our weapons. In the last analysis, something was better than nothing. Still, we’d gone through this procedure, and for now, I was certainly willing to let the pros do what they did best What bothered me most was that what they were going to do was form an actual circle as we moved. Should anyone in the circle fall, breaking contact, one of us would have to complete the connection and quickly. Otherwise, instead of the pooled power of the highly trained Class 1 sores assembled by KorQ, there would be only individuals—possibly capable of protecting themselves, but hardly me.

The circle was formed quickly, but we didn’t start right away. The concentration required to Tint the wa of so many powerful minds was enormous. Darva, Kira, and I looked around nervously, and I know they were wondering why our unseen enemy hadn’t charged. I could see why with no difficulty. The entry corridor dead-ended about twenty meters in, and you had to turn either right or left. From the diagrams I knew we had to go left to get to where we had to go—and so would any defenders. With the lift behind us, troopers on all lower floors, and safety seals in place above, we couldn’t retreat, not even climb up or down, nor could we remain for long or that lift would return with really nasty goodies just for us. Any defender would naturally prefer to stake out a route of inevitable march by an invader than attack in this confined space, where we had good shots ourselves.

“The wa is one,” Koril chanted. “The wa is one.” The others repeated the chant, again and again, until they were all in sync. It was eerie. Still, we’d all seen Tully Kokul, a mere 4 or 5, shrug off laser pistol shots aimed directly at him. This was an infinitely more powerful group—the combined wills and power of the best Charon had to offer outside of the Synod. In fact, I realized, this was exactly what the Synod itself was, and why these sores were here.

They would be the new Synod—if we survived a wall of bullets and who knew what else and then reached the Synod itself, one floor above and almost certainly waiting.

Even I could sense the enormous power of the circle Koril and the others had created. All around us was a wall of wa, acting magnetically. We would see how well it repelled—for we started to move.

Troopers were waiting for us down both halls, of course. As soon as we turned left, then right again to walk together in very tight quarters, the troops from the wing on the right moved in behind us. They were cool and quite professional, I had to give them that. They let us get ten meters or more down that long, seventy-meter straight path, before they opened up. Both Darva and I froze for a moment when they did, and almost killed us all—for the circle kept moving, steadily, as it had to.

Enough of those primitive but deadly missiles were fired from remote positions and from gun stations along the hallway that paint flew, hundreds of holes seemed to appear all around in the walls, and the air seemed to grow almost solid. Yet, as we continued to move, not a single one seemed able to strike us, either directly or by ricochet.

The circle, acting as one, stopped about halfway; the others were in a trancelike state, seemingly oblivious to the horror that was being unleashed on us. No matter what, none of the three of us in the middle could keep from flinching and ducking, and it took a mighty amount of will power to just stand there, and try and match the motions or lack of them that the sorcerers’ circle made.

The reason they stopped was soon clear. A massive wall of wa-force emerged from the circle and reached out in all directions from us. It was an almost blinding, overwhelming sense of force and power, more power than I had ever felt before in anything or anybody. It was almost a living thing, like that tabarwind, but totally invisible to any who could not sense the wa. It struck out at those with the weapons in an ever-widening circle, touched those weapons and controlled them.

Sometime I will work out the physics of what they did, but basically they did to the weapons what would have happened to Darva and me had we immediately tried to significantly reduce our mass after my final transformation. The reaction was similar, with much heat being generated—and in projectile weapons the ammunition always has an explosive charge.

One by one, as the force met them and took hold, those weapons started blowing up. Troopers screamed in pain, and several came charging right at us in blind fury, hoping to break the circle by sheer physical force. Our own weapons had not been affected. Picking our shots carefully and going between the shoulders of the sore circle, we calmly shot the hell out of those attackers. There weren’t very many after the first batch from front and rear. To make sure we wouldn’t have any spell problems, we all used laser weapons. At this range, even Darva couldn’t miss, and she seemed particularly proud of herself as she gave me a wink and a big grin. I glanced over at Kira, who was all grim and businesslike. Well, to hell with her. What good was it to be good at something if you couldn’t enjoy your work?

We started moving once again, but we were all ready for it now. We inside the circle kept a clear line of fire, though, not only because of the threat of more hall attacks but also because we’d have to pass some of the gun stations and offices. From that close, a man could physically hurl himself into the circle.

Nobody did, though. We reached an abandoned gun platform at the base of a wide set of stairs. Wide—but not wide enough to accommodate a circle our size, and steep enough so that we couldn’t really see much of anything on the next floor. Whoever designed this place had put a lot of thought into it.

I reached into my pack and brought out four small silvery globes, each with a thin metal band around its middle. Almost as if on an unspoken command, the circle broke and the sores took up the defensive positions at the end of the hall which, until a few moments ago, had been occupied by troopers—in some cases they had to push still smoldering bodies out of the way. At almost the same moment a trooper came down the stairs, opening fire. I heard some yells, but Kira acted with blinding speed and sliced the man almost in two. He collapsed in a bloody heap and fell to the base of the stairs.

Without looking back at casualties, I rushed to the bottom of the stairs, twisted the ring on the first globe, and threw it underhanded to the top. Without waiting, I did the same for the second. The first went off before I could manage the third. It produced such a bang and shock wave I was almost knocked over. I took no chances, throwing number three before the second went off, and number four immediately after I’d regained my balance. Only then did I look around.

Class 1 sores or not, they were human beings and they had been startled and surprised by the gunman. Kaigh was certainly dead, and Krugar was clutching her bloody side near her right hip. Now we were seven—down to four good sores, but what the hell else could we do?

We had already delayed too long for the concussion grenades to be one hundred percent effective, and we had to press on. It was Kira, who started the run up the stairs, and we had no choice but to abandon Krugar and charge up behind her, all weapons drawn. The only optimistic thing I could think about at this point was, well, at least the place wasn’t sealed enough to permit a gas trap.

I half expected Kira to be gone by the time I made the next floor, but there she was, two more dead troopers at her feet. We were still theoretically three floors from Aeo-lia Mature—if she was there at all—but we were now beyond the security cordon and into the offices, living quarters, and labs of the Synod and top bureaucrats.

The eleventh floor resembled a hotel complex with all the doors shut tight. Nice, modern, comfortable—and because these were offices and quarters, it wasn’t really possible to tell what was what. They changed a lot, as would be expected.

Koril paused to take a breather. “Krugar is in good enough shape to try some self-repair and maybe hold off anybody coming at us from below,” he said between puffs. “Whew! I’m not as young as I used to be, that’s for sure.” He sighed. “Well, I’m not worried about troopers anymore. I think we can probably walk straight down this hall with no problems—but shoot anything that moves anyway.”

“You don’t think they’ll make any more attempts?” I asked him worriedly.

He shook his head. “They know that anybody who can get this far is no slouch. No. Any members of the Synod here will have retreated to the thirteenth floor reception area. They’ll be waiting for us there.”

I looked at the others. “Are you and the other three enough?”

He shrugged. “Depends on how many are there and who they are. We’ve been damned lucky so far. Let’s hope our luck holds out.”

It was preparedness, the training of the sores, and a lot of inside information as well as skill and brass that had brought us this far, but in the end Koril was right. We had been lucky, too. He was certainly right, also, about the rest of the way. None of those doors opened, and we were unobstructed in our walk to the eleventh and twelfth floors. We could all hear, though, the floors below being occupied as soon as we left They had the lift system, after all. They just didn’t, want to shoot up the official quarters. The troopers had already failed—now it was up to their bosses. In one sense, I suspected that the troopers, particularly the officers, were now very much on our side. If we failed, their own failures would have to be accounted for to those very same bosses. No, I decided, for that reason more than any other, they’d stay out of the rest of this fight.

Koril paused at the bottom of the stairway to the thirteenth level. “All right—Ku, Kuril, Kindel, stick close to me.You know what you must do. The rest of you follow us up, but stay out of it. None of your weapons will mean much now.”

We understood what he meant. Our part was at least theoretically finished. All we could do was needlessly guard the back door.

Koril took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, then turned and started slowly up the stairs. One by one the sores followed him, then Kira, Darva, and myself. I don’t know what I was expecting to see at the top, but it wasn’t a sumptuously furnished empty room.

The large chamber was entirely crimson. The ancient-looking chairs upholstered in some silken material were ornamented with metal studs of a bright golden color that were inlaid in the dark native woods; the tables were equally antique and polished to a mirror like sheen. The carpet, too, was crimson, although of some thick, plush hair that the wa said was not native to Charon. In the center was a golden path, marked by two golden stripes of colored cloth woven into the rest and leading up to a raised platform. The platform itself was almost like a stage, with a huge wooden throne in the center of the same polished material and upholstered in the same deep red, but this time encrusted with what looked like—and turned out to be—enormous precious stones from all over the known galaxy. Two slightly smaller and more recessed but similar chairs flanked the big one. Behind the whole thing, eleven similar chairs were arranged in a permanent semi-circle. The entire stage area was decorated with gold-embroidered crimson drapes, hanging loosely around the back and tied back at the front.

We all stood there gazing about the room. I couldn’t suppress a low whistle. “Like something out of an ancient fairy tale,” I remarked.

Koril looked around, his eyes ablaze. “More power than those ancient Icings had is represented here,” he responded seriously. “This is the seat of Charon’s government I used to sit on that throne, remember. I know.” That wistful, almost dreamlike quality left his voice. “She’s redecorated since I left, though. In a way it’s too bad. I had some great works of art looted from the Confederacy’s top museums on those draped walls. Still, all in all, it’s a nice touch.”

“Skip the ulterior decoration comments,” Kira broke in. “Where the hell’s the enemy?”

At that moment I detected slight movement behind the thrones, and I saw Kira’s laser pistol come up. Koril quickly forced her hand down. “No use in burning the place down—unless you have to,” he told her. “You can’t harm these with that toy.”

From behind the chairs five shapes emerged. All wore gold-embroidered robes of that same crimson as the room, and all wore scarlet hoods as well. They looked eerie and impressive, as they were supposed to.

Koril smiled a bit and with a flick of the wrist beckoned his three associate sores together in line, hands linked.

The figures walked out to the front of the stage and stood there, also in a line but not touching one another. Three of the five were women. One was Korman I saw—the only familiar face. None looked particularly worried.

“Just the five of you?” Koril said pleasantly. “I’m shocked.”

“More than enough for the lot of you,” Korman responded for the group. “We don’t spend quite as much time here as we did in your day, Tulio. We don’t have to.” With that, all five levitated a meter or so above the stage and moved out just beyond it. All of us gasped at this, for we all realized it was no Warden trick. They were really doing it.

“Parlor tricks, Dieter?” Koril scoffed. “I thought we were beyond that.”

“No parlor trick,” one of the women answered him. “We are not as you knew us, Tulio. We are immortal, as powerful in body as in wa, with minds clearer than your merely human minds could ever be.”

“So that’s how she kept your allegiance,” Koril responded. “With the new model alien robot bodies. You serve her now because you are programmed to serve! No longer humans—but mere machines.”

“We are not ‘mere machines,’ Tulio,” Korman replied. “I’ll admit I have never heard ‘programmed’ used as a curse word before, but you are wrong. We were among those who freely chose to. throw you out, Tulio. Freely. And none of us has ever regretted it. Should we choose, we could leave this place. Really leave, Tulio. The wa within us dies as it would in you, but leaves us alive and whole—and more than human.”

“May we—examine those fancy new clothes of yours?” Koril asked, and all of us understood that he didn’t mean literally.

“Go ahead. We can fool any scanner, rig any test—but look at us as we really are. Be our guest, Tulio—and the rest of you. You are powerful ones indeed to have come this far. But no tricks.”

Koril had a pained expression. “Would I insult your intelligence?” With that, all four of them reached out their Warden senses to the five who still floated, impossibly, in the air.

“You see our superiority,” Korman continued, not so much bragging as being rather matter of fact about it all. “You are a good man, Tulio. You served Charon well and the Brethren before that. Don’t you see that the revolution is now? Are you so old and blind and prejudiced that you can’t realize that your ideals can become reality now—out there? With your¹

They were very, very confident, I thought. Almost unsettlingly so, yet I also understood that this sort of overconfidence can kill you. I had no idea what Koril had up his sleeve at this point, but I motioned to Darva and we edged away toward a far wall, well away from the area between the two group of sores. Suddenly I had a thought, and leaned over and whispered to her, “See that alcove to the left of the stage? I bet that goes up to You-Know-Who.”

She nodded. “Seems likely. When do you want to try for it?”

“Good girl. But not until they’ve started doing whatever they’re doing. They’ll probably ignore us—I hope. We’re certainly no threat to them.”

“I’ll follow your lead,” she whispered, and we turned back to watch whatever was going to happen.

“Well, Tulio?” Korman was saying. “It’s yours. It’s for all four of you, in fact. Immortal, superior bodies—free to escape this prison. Free to run an empire.”

Koril smiled. “So it’s an empire now, is it? And who would I be in this? Lord—or pre-programmed servant?”

Korman shrugged. “Your old position is, of course, already taken. But you would lead the Synod, as a matter of course. You never really liked being Lord anyway.”

Koril sighed. “That’s true enough. And yet I feel I cannot take your offer for two reasons. I do not trust those alien friends of yours as much as you do—though I’m sure I would once I got my new, unproved body. Without a guarantee you cannot give, that of an unmolested mind, I can hardly accept. And, as for the second reason—do you remember Jatik?”

Korman looked puzzled, then brightened for a moment “Of course. Little weasel of a man. Sore for Diamond Rock. As bizarre a psychopath as we’ve ever had here on Charon. Killed in the desert, if I remember.”

Koril nodded. “Killed coming to me. But he made his report, Dieter, before he died. He saw those friends of yours, those aliens. Tell me, Dieter—what would a man like that find so terrifying that he would brand it pure evil? It is a question that has troubled me, and driven me on, these past several years. More than anything, it’s why I’m here.”

Korman laughed. “Evil? The Lord of Satan, Agent of the Destroyer asks me about evil? What would that little psycho know about evil, anyway? Different, yes—incredibly so. Alien in many senses of that word. But evil! The former Lord of the Diamond, Lord of the Most Sacred Order of Brethren talks of evil!” And again he laughed.

“Now!” Koril yelled. At that moment all laughing stopped as a wall of Warden force at least the equal of what I had seen below lashed out with blinding speed right at Korman. Taken aback, he had only a simple shield himself and so he burst into flame before our very eyes, flame so intense I could not bear to look at it.

The others, less intent on Koril’s speech and less confident than their leader of their own powers—after all, all of them hadn’t been able to kill Koril alone the last time, or even keep him prisoner—struck back. Ignoring the flaming Korman, who toppled to the floor and continued melting into an acrid puddle, each of our sores took on the four remaining head to head.

I wasn’t sure how they had managed to melt a robot of the type that had penetrated Military Systems Command and outsmarted all the Confederacy’s best security devices, but I wasn’t about to stay around and ask questions. I moved slowly and cautiously towards that alcove, and Darva followed. We were, as we had hoped, totally ignored.

Still, I stopped when we reached the alcove and looked back. It was no longer just wa being traded, willpower against willpower. The Synod sores were coming straight on, but the four, under Koril’s direction, began twisting, turning, forming a careful mathematical pattern. Such was its nature and intricacy that it actually began disturbing the air between the two sets of antagonists. Incredibly I saw ripples there, then crackles of real, visible energy—electrical bolts forming and shooting, at first randomly and then laterally.

“Oh, by the gods! They’re creating their own tabarwind!” Darva exclaimed.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” I responded, and we ducked into the alcove.

Frankly, the place didn’t match the exterior. It was dark and dank and smelly. There were all sorts of pieces of furniture and stuff as well as controls for the curtains and whatever else was in the room. Still, far in back was indeed a service corridor which ran in one direction to a lift, clearly visible. Obviously the service entrance. We picked the other direction, as roars and howls of thunder and the crackle of raw energy sounded behind us. What was happening in that room back there would have been the sight of a lifetime—but it would almost certainly have ended ours.

Sure enough, at the end of the corridor a wooden stair led upward. We both hesitated at the bottom, then Darva looked at me. “Where’s Kira or Zala or whatever the hell she is?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I didn’t really notice. Back there, I suppose. Hell, forget her—now.” I took the lead and walked slowly and carefully up the stairs, laser pistol drawn.

I reached the top, stopped, and waited for Darva. I don’t know quite who or what I expected up there, but it sure as hell wasn’t Yatek Morah.