Truth - Hidden Truth Part 24

"Then I give you the first truth. You decide what it means. Energy," it lectured, "can be transformed from state to state, but in the doing, nothing can be allowed to be lost or added.

Ma.s.s is much the same in its own fas.h.i.+on, changing Junction, but not its most basic form. And time? Well, time is relative. It's what you make of it. Control that, and you can s.h.i.+ft between the two brothers of energy and ma.s.s."

"You mean by using my tracings?" Alissa thought in disbelief.

"Yes," the book responded, somehow sounding devious. "Use your tracings to manipulate the constraints of time, and you can turn your ma.s.s to energy and back again."

"But what good is it?" she asked, seeing clearly the how, just not the why.

"Try it." The book seemed to chuckle in her thoughts.

"Try it?" Alissa repeated, becoming even more confused.

"Try it..." came its taunting whisper.

"Try it," she said aloud as her world slipped into existence in a rush of color and sound. She felt out of breath, and taking a gasp of air, Alissa snapped completely out of her dreamlike state. The book's thoughts were lost, returned to the pages of her now quiescent book. Its work was done and it called no more, but she remembered.

The ebony glow surrounding her book faded to gray, then silver, then flickered out of existence.

Staring at the book, she wondered why Useless was so concerned. This knowledge wasn't enough to harm anyone. Most of it she had known already.

Bailic lunged across the table, pulling her book from her slack fingers. Clutching it to himself, he backed to his desk, his eyes wild. "What does it mean?" he shouted, all but incoherent.

Oddly unconcerned, Alissa gazed up at him, calm and centered for what she thought was the first time in her life. She didn't need the book anymore. Its lessons had been engraved into her very essence. The heavy sense of peace it had instilled in her was difficult to shake off.

In the expectant hush, there was a small ping of something hitting the floor. What looked like a small, gray coin had fallen from the binding of her book. It bounced twice and rolled to her feet, circling in noisy, ever-narrowing rings until it fell onto its side with a clatter.

Alissa's hand automatically went out to pick it up. Barely bigger than her thumbnail, it sat lightly in her palm. It glistened a soft gray that, even as she watched, turned a luminescent gold from her warmth.

Examining it in the profound stillness, Alissa frowned. It looked familiar, teasing from her the memory of the scent of birch seeds and mud-and her papa.

"What is it?" Bailic said, huddled in the corner with her open book pressed against him.

Squinting, Alissa held it up between her finger and thumb. The sun glowed brilliantly through it, and she smiled at the pretty little thing. Then she remembered. Her papa had tucked it there, just before he left to return the book to the Hold. He hadn't known what it was, either.

"Take it," her book taunted, "in an impervious field as you did your source. Bind it to your being. Quickly! Before you lose your chance!"

"Alissa. No!" Useless shouted in her thoughts, and from outside she heard the pa.s.sage of his wings.

Like a child caught with her hand in the cookie tin, Alissa grabbed her treasure and made it hers, loath to, as her book had said, lose her chance. Her impervious field cracked into existence around it, and shestiffened and gasped. "No!" she shrieked as her entire network awoke. Every channel hummed with the energy explosively released from her source. She hadn't done it. It was out of her control, and it burned like ice but didn't destroy. Destruction would have been a blessing compared to this.

"It hurts! Please, make it stop!" she silently screamed, and then collapsed. Her last sight was of Bailic, clutching her open book to himself, his face a mask of utter astonishment.

Chapter 29.

Bailic froze as the slight frame of Alissa stiffened. Her eyes grew wide as if in shock, and her mouth opened in a silent scream. Then, with a soft sigh, she collapsed onto the table. He hesitated, not trusting this at all. Drumming his fingers upon the back of the book, he moved a cautious step closer, wondering what, by the Wolves at the Navigator's heel, had just happened.

Her explanation of the book's contents had confounded him. Though the pages were full of the raku's script, she had lingered on only the first ornately written word of each section, skipping the pages between. He hadn't even seen the final page, obscured as it was in the eerie blackness that enveloped both the book and her fingers resting upon it. It was as if his eyes refused to acknowledge anything was there, sliding away with a greasy feel. And then she turned to him with that contented, self-a.s.sured look he recognized from his younger days as a student. Her att.i.tude was reminiscent of a Master of the Hold, and it had shaken him.

"What a Keeper you would have made," he said, edging to where she sat crumpled as if she had fallen asleep at her studies. Placing the open book on the table, he leaned over it. "It's a shame you didn't take me up on my offer." He tilted her head, looking for any likeness to her mother, finding it in the shape of her cheekbone and the length of her lashes. "But I can't suffer you to live now. Someday your experience will give you the upper hand." Gently, regretfully even, he turned her face to the table again.

So intent was he on his thoughts, he almost missed the sudden absence of sunlight spilling over the floor. The shadow was accompanied by the smallest sound of sc.r.a.ping stone from the broken balcony.

But it was only when Talo-Toecan s.h.i.+fted that Bailic fully realized he wasn't alone. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the open book to him and scrambled back until he slammed into the wall. "It's mine!" he shouted, unable to keep his voice from cracking in fear.

"Drop it, and you're ash," Talo-Toecan said tersely. All but ignoring him, The Master strode to the girl. A fleeting look of distress pa.s.sed over him, appearing out of place on the stoic, sedate bearing Bailic's old instructor always showed the world.

Bailic hesitated. This wasn't what he had expected. To be dismissed as if he was no threat was infuriating but also disconcerting. His confusion was multiplied threefold as a smartly attired man in Keeper garb appeared in the doorway to his room. There was the scent of mirth wood, and Bailic ground his teeth. He was rapidly losing control of the situation.

"It's time then?" the stranger said, giving Bailic a secret, sideways grin.

The Master looked up. "She was completely unprepared. I've served her badly."

"Ah," the man replied cheerfully. "It may yet work out."

"Who," Bailic snapped, "are you?"

Talo-Toecan stooped and picked up the girl, cradling her easily with her head slumped upon hischest. "We must get her from behind these walls," he said, ignoring Bailic.

"Stop!" Bailic shouted. "You broke your word, Talo-Toecan. No one," he threatened, "is going anywhere."

The man whistled in surprise and spun round on his heel. There was something akin to astonishment in his eyes. Talo-Toecan looked up as if aware of Bailic for the first time. "The book is open," he intoned.

"The agreement is ended."

Ended! Bailic thought wildly, struggling to push his fear aside. He had forgotten, but he still had the book. Talo-Toecan would have killed him already if he felt confident there was nothing to lose by doing so. The game wasn't over yet, and Bailic tightened his grip on the ancient tome, knowing it was the only thing that kept him breathing. "If you kill me, I take your precious book and the piper with me."

"Don't count yourself safe, Bailic," Talo-Toecan said coldly. "I simply don't have the time to rip your throat out at present. I'm here for the child. You have never been of any consequence." Talo-Toecan dismissed him with a contemptuous look and stepped to the door.

It had to be a ruse! Bailic thought frantically. He was alive and untouched. The beast had to be bluffing. "Stop!" he demanded. "She's mine."

Talo-Toecan whipped about. Hatred glinted behind his eyes, and recognizing it, Bailic blanched, feeling a sweat come over him. "Lodesh," the Master said, his eyes never s.h.i.+fting from Bailic's. "Take Alissa out."

The elegant figure received Alissa's limp form with an almost imperceptible bow. There was a last grin at Bailic, and the man stepped over the doorframe. The whispered sound of his feet faded. Outside, the courting birds broke into glorious song. It went all but unnoticed as Talo-Toecan, now empty-handed, focused his entire being on Bailic.

"The ward on my sill," Bailic stammered, "it's broken?"

"Aye, not merely dismantled as when you found it." The Master's eyes flicked to the book in Bailic's grip. "I'll deal with you later. I'm busy now, but know Alissa is not yours."

"She is!"

The Master's eyes narrowed. "You misunderstand. I'm not bargaining with you. I'm telling you.

She-isn't- yours. Nor the piper," he continued, "nor even her bird, whom I have secured lest she sully her nails trying to tear your eyes out. I'm through with you-student. Go sc.r.a.pe the front steps free of moss as penance for your transgressions." Talo-Toecan turned his back upon him, gazing past the shattered balcony into the spring morning.

Dismissed like an errant schoolboy, Bailic stood, trembling with rage. Student, indeed, he seethed.

Sc.r.a.pe the front steps. Talo-Toecan ranked his ambitions as a student's prank. "You may be through with me, winged demon," he said with a snarl, gripping his book with a white-knuckled strength, "but I'm not done. Hear me, beast? I'm not done!"

"Get out," Talo-Toecan growled, not turning around.

Bailic left. Stumbling through the muck of spring, he went east to Ese Nawoer, cursing the mud that weighted his feet, cursing the sun that burnt his skin, cursing the fact he had no horse, but most of all, cursing that wh.o.r.e child of a foothills girl. The book was an awkward load, heavy to begin with, but matters were made worse because he carried it open. He knew that to shut it meant his death; its protective influence would end. But his anger gave him strength, and it wasn't until he was amongst the chill, shadowed streets of Ese' Nawoer that he slowed, his footsteps hissing to shocked stillness with what he found skirting the edge of his awareness.

They were here, he thought with a thrill striking deep within him. The souls of Ese' Nawoer. And theywaited for direction; he could feel it. Like the scent of sand-scoured lightning after a desert storm, he could feel them, and their guilt and despair filled the c.h.i.n.ks in his hate until it was strong again.

Bailic's laugh echoed from the buildings until it sounded as if the city laughed with him, mocking and triumphant, full of ironic failure and last-moment treachery. Let Talo-Toecan mourn over his last Keeper like a woman over spoilt soup. He had a city of dead to raise.

"Come, then!" he cried into the faultless sky. "I'll be ready for you, Talo-Toecan!"

Chapter 30.

"Talo-Toecan?" Lodesh called. "I've found the piper!" Jiggling impatiently, he waited as his longtime friend descended on wing from his rooms to the garden below. Lodesh glanced worriedly at Strell. The gangly man was under a ward of sleep, sitting with his head cradled in his hands. If the afternoon went as Lodesh thought, the piper would be sorely tested today-as would they all.

In a swirl of gray, Talo-Toecan s.h.i.+fted to his human shape and stepped to the firepit where Lodesh had arranged Alissa on the bench in the spa.r.s.e shade of an overgrown, leafless shrub. "I will have to fumigate," Talo-Toecan said around a sigh.

Lodesh straightened in astonishment. "Beg your pardon?"

"My room." The Master slumped onto the bench, showing all his 855 years. "You saw it. Ink stains on my desk. The furniture has been replaced with that horrid, stiff wood. All my unwarded papers and books have been rifled through." Disgust twisted his face. "He stacked wood in my bedchamber to the ceiling. I'll never get the slivers out." Talo-Toecan gestured weakly. "His writings, though... It's a shame.

Astounding ideas. But he wanted to implement them dangerously fast-and for all the wrong reasons."

Quite sure he wasn't comfortable with the direction the conversation had taken, Lodesh cleared his throat, and when Talo-Toecan looked up, he nodded questioningly at the piper.

"Let him sleep," Talo-Toecan said. "He will gain nothing by watching Alissa go insane."

Lodesh smiled faintly. "She may yet best the beast. Don't lose her until she's truly lost." s.n.a.t.c.hing her hat from the weeds, he tucked it under Alissa's head as protection from the damp. It looked new, cut to the traditional Keeper style, and his eyebrows rose. If it was Alissa's-as it must be with that sprig of mint tucked in the band-this might have been what gave them away.

Shrugging, he seated himself at the fire, stretched in the sun's warmth, and closed his eyes. A shutter banged in the wind to shatter the peaceful quiet, and he cracked an eyelid at it. "We still need a third," he reminded the despondent Master. "As you say, two have no chance, but with three, we might hold her until a way can be found to return her awareness."

"It's a very thin maybe," Talo-Toecan grumbled.

Lodesh sat up, interested again. "Can you remove Bailic's ward?"

"I taught it to him," the Master said. There was a small resonance across Lodesh's tracings as the raku broke Bailic's hold on the piper. Strell stirred, rubbed his chin, and looked up, blinking profusely.

"My," Lodesh quipped, running his eyes over Stall's rumpled clothes and stubbled cheeks. "Rather a scruffy looking fellow, isn't he?"

"Talo-Toecan?" Strell said, his voice cracking. "By the Wolves. What are you doing here? Where'sAlissa?"

With tired-looking eyes, Talo-Toecan pointed out her small figure on the cold bench. Strell rushed to her side, skidding to a halt, his hands outstretched, seeming not to dare touch her. "Is she all right?" he asked frantically.

Talo-Toecan sighed. "No."

"Bailic! Where's Bailic?"

"On the road to my city," Lodesh said, not pleased at how much the piper cared for her. Strell wasn't the only one who liked the young woman, but Lodesh wouldn't push his own claim until she remembered him.

Strell ran his gaze over Lodesh, clearly confused. "Who are you?"

Lodesh concealed his feelings with a hard-won expertise. "Talo-Toecan, how much time do we have?"

The Master glanced at Alissa and frowned. "A bit. Knowing her, it won't be long."

Smiling, Lodesh approached Strell. "Then allow me to introduce myself. I am Lodesh Stryska," he gave Strell one of his extravagant, citadel bows, "Keeper of the Hold and Warden of Ese' Nawoer."

Taking a half step back, he regarded the dazed piper with an amused expression.

"You're Alissa's Lodesh," Strell breathed, his eyes darting from Lodesh's ring to the city's seal around his neck, and finally to the silver flower embroidered on his s.h.i.+rt.

"Aye, most a.s.suredly Alissa's."

Strell flushed as if having forgotten his manners. Clearing his throat, he inclined his head slightly. "I'm Strell Hirdune, the last of the family once carrying that name, Keeper of nothing, Warden of even less."

Grimacing, he met Lodesh's proffered palm with his.

"Hirdune!" Talo-Toecan rose from his seat. "That's the erratic line Keribdis has been trying to erad-"

"Hirdune, Hirdune," Lodesh interrupted, looking at the sky. "I've heard that name before. Ah, yes,"

he exclaimed, brightening. "My youngest sister, the headstrong snippet, ran off with a man from the coast by that name. A craftsman of some sort, away to make his fortune."

Talo-Toecan stopped short, clearly unaware that Lodesh was trying to distract the piper. "Lodesh,"

the Master said. "You're jesting. There's no Hirdune in your ancestry."

"I'm sorry," Strell apologized. "It must be someone else. I'm from the plains, and my family has been gone these seven years."

"No." Lodesh rubbed his temple, lost in thought. "It was, oh, three hundred eighty-eight years past-I believe."

Strell blinked.

"Warden," Talo-Toecan warned. "Has he not suffered enough?"

Grinning, Lodesh clapped Strell on the back. "Sit down. I'll explain." He took Strell by an elbow and led him to the bench. The piper dragged his feet, seemingly loath to leave Alissa. "We have time,"

Lodesh a.s.sured him. "And we can sit so as you can see her."