DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction Part 31

. . then the dog barked as it came into the house, and Amy turned around . . . and her face broke into a broad grin of welcome as she saw Marian standing there. "Mom!"

"Hi, honey." She came up to the girl and tousled her curls. "I'm home now." Amy threw herarms around her with melodramatic glee, clearly delighted to have her home again. See?

Things are going to be all right. You were worried over nothing. "I brought you a gift from Grandma." She knelt down so her eyes were on a level with the girl's, and held out the rose.

"She used to make these when she was very young, before she got arthritis. See? It's all made out of tissues." Amy looked at the flower inquisitively, prodded it a few time, but didn't take it from her. "What are you doing, a puzzle?" Marian pulled up a chair to sit down. "That looks like a hard one."

"Diane said it was too hard for me. I told her I could do it if I wanted."

Marian laughed. "And so you can." G.o.d, the laughter felt good. She saw her husband standing in the doorway and nodded to him. Fine, everything's fine. "You can do anything you want to." She scanned the pieces and saw one that had been sorted into the wrong pile. "Here, honey, try this one. See if you can tell me where it goes."

She didn't reach for the piece Marian offered, but picked up a blue one instead. "It's okay, Mom." The girl didn't look up at her. "I can do it myself."

Was there a note in her voice that seemed different, somehow? You're just being paranoid, Marian told herself. Everything's fine. She watched her daughter for a few minutes more, studying her face as she concentrated on the puzzle. Trying to see if there was some outward sign of ... of whatever was wrong. Finally she picked up one of the pieces again, turning it thoughtfully in her fingers, and made her voice as calm as she could as she offered it to the girl.

"Look, here's a corner piece. Where do you suppose that goes?"

For a moment there was silence. The girl didn't reach for the piece that Marian held.

She didn't do anything, for a moment.

Then: "It's okay, Mom." Her voice was so quiet, so steady. "* don't need you to help me.

Really."

Marian tried to speak, but her voice caught in her throat. The words of the counselor echoed in her head, no gentle words this time, but every sound a thorn. Were your parents there for you, Ms. Stiller? Don't you owe them something for that?

"I'm okay," Amy repeated, and she looked down again to work on the puzzle.

Marian watched her for a moment longer. Then she rose and left the room. The dog yapped about her ankles, but she ignored him. Steve started to ask what was wrong, but she waved him to silence. How do you explain the loss of something which never even had a name? How do you address the fears in a child, when you couldn't make your own go away?

It wasn't until she got to her room and shut the door behind her that she realized she had crushed the tissue flower.

Charles Ingrid.

Charles Ingrid is an incredibly versatile writer who worked with me under a different name while I was still editing the Signet science fiction line. When I came to DAW Charles and I discussed projects we could work on even as the author's commitments at Signet continued to be fulfilled. And that was when the Charles Ingrid name was born. It was actually created by combining the first names of a couple who are extremely good friends of the author. And while I'm not going to tell you all ofCharles' other ident.i.ties-or even Charles' actual ident.i.ty-I will say that this is an author who has written everything from military science fiction to romance to supernatural suspense to young adult novels.

Solar Kill, the first novel in the six-volume Sand Wars series was published by DAW in July, 1987. And at the beginning of 2001, we combined this excellent series into two omnibus volumes to make it easily available for readers. At the beginning of 2002, we combined the four novels of Charles' Patterns of Chaos series into two omnibus editions as well. And at the end of 2002 we will make the Marked Man novels available in the same way.

Those of you who are familiar with Charles Ingrid's science fiction will find yourself eager to reread the novels after enjoying "Burning Bridges." And for those who have not yet had the pleasure of discovering this fine writer, "Burning Bridges" will provide that introduction.

-SG.

BURNING BRIDGES.

Charles Ingrid.

ACT II.

TO stand in the throne city of Sshen was to stand in the midst of a province walled as a city, filled with cacophony and culture, to be overcome by a vast, dark tide of peoples. It had its quarters . . . city-states, in actuality ... of peoples and cla.s.ses, threaded throughout by the military presence of the Sshen and emperor. To go within the inner walls of the city, into the palace complex itself, was to stand in the wash of the radiance of the greatest civilization of the world that called itself Lunavar. It was to want to be inside the palace, to study, to become one with its greatness and mystery. To be admitted meant submitting oneself to the mage staff of the emperor, to be examined and memorized before being allowed into the museum and library of knowledge, antiquities, and beauties. And, while studying, being studied.

To go inside meant days of kneeling in silent pet.i.tion. No one was quite sure what effort would see the pet.i.tion granted but scholars were allowed within by the handful. He wanted inside. He had to get inside. He had a blood debt that could only be paid by getting inside.

So Brennan wrapped himself in black and knelt on the steps of the palace by the museum wing and fasted and meditated and keenly observed the doors, windows, floors, upper balconies, and guards through the veil gauze masking his face. He left at night, as the others did, and broke his fast, but unlike the others, Brennan made sketches of what he had observed, dictated and copied what he had to his mainframe server, and when he returned in the morning, he knelt in a different place to expand his observations. He would not be denied.

But midway through the third morning, the eldest of the elders a pproached him quietly. "We have been watching you, scholar. Come with me."

He rose to his feet silently, knees barely aching, his stomach complaining more than anything, and unwrapped his face and followed the emperor's mage. They went through a sideportcullis that Brennan had marked and into the spice-scented shadowy interior of a small chamber. He looked up, sensing that the antechamber leaned against what was a high tower, and he scanned the interior, looking for evidence of that. There, before he could antic.i.p.ate or protest, the elder took his wrist, slashing it with a sharp stinging knife and allowing blood to splash into an earthenware basin. Brennan moved away without a word despite his surprise, applying pressure, and the mage nodded as he wrapped the wound carefully, rendering it near invisible within his sleeves. The mage of the Emperor of Sshen returned his ritual knife to a forearm sheath that Brennan had not marked before, hidden within faded crimson robes.

"Follow me," the elder said, without apology or explanation. As he stepped from the antechamber, he put the bowl onto a rack, the coppery aroma of Brennan's blood mingling with that of clove and sandalwood, the pungent scents a.s.sailing his heightened senses. They could not mask the animal odor that began to seep through the chamber and Brennan thought he heard a heavy, impatient body moving behind the walls with a dull thud. A shuttered enclosure behind the rack of bowls rattled heavily as the walls were hit again. He smelled . . . not animal . . . but reptile before the elder moved him through an arched doorway.

They moved into an inner courtyard where lesser mages sat on cushions, reading, with books and parchments, pots of dipping ink and styli at their sides. Almost as one they looked up at his entry, and the elder turned to him.

"Remove your head scarf."

Brennan did so, unwrapping the black gauze that had concealed him. His dark, glossy locks tumbled free to his shoulders, his thin fine goatee revealed on his chin, and his dark eyes watching all of them as they sketched and noted his presence. "Barbarian," one of them muttered to himself, stylus quickly skritching across the paper. He did not try to hide the scorn in his eyes as he looked at the monk-mage. They would render what he intended, the facial hair, the foreign look of him. If it were he, he'd be using a universal recognition graph, vectoring the face and neck into quadrants noting features that would be recognizable no matter what the apparent disguise. And he was a barbarian.

After long moments of sketching at a furious pace, the pens were lowered. Heads nodded.

"You will be allowed three days' pa.s.sage," the elder said. He gave Brennan a fired porcelain pa.s.s, hanging on a tightly braided crimson cord. It was but a sample of the delicate china work of the province, colors glazed skillfully, the porcelain so fine it could be seen through. Fine and fragile. "Show this and you will be admitted. We trust you will not abuse the emperor's hospitality."

He bowed low. "I thank you."

Behind him as he left, he heard the sanding and blotting of sheets, his image memorialized.

They would make a detailed Wanted poster.

Screeches and Sailings of something winged being fed beyond the inner walls followed after his footfalls.

He had every intention of exploiting that hospitality as far as he could.

Outside the palace and back on the streets, mingled into the crowds, he turned and looked back at the vast palatial complex, its turrets and wings and walls. A shadowy thing crouched on one of the high turrets, before letting out a screech and launching itself into the air. A raptor's silhouette was highlighted by the late afternoon sun, with formidable tearing beak and claws. It winged in slow, lazy circles before returning to its perch on the tower. It had to beone of the famed bloodseeker nyrll, and he understood then the ritual bowls and the bloodletting.

Back at the inn he'd chosen, he unwrapped his outsider garb, discarded the expended squib from the one wrist and unbound the unmarked one from the left, the thin intestine bulging with fresh blood. The unfortunate donor was no doubt still asleep in a tavern gutter. His single earring, a crystal drop held by a silver claw stud, whispered softly in his ear. "DNA marker.

They'll think they have you."

"But they do not," he murmured back to his mainframe server. He had noted others leaving, wrists bound, one or two nearly swooning at the sight of their own blood, and he had had squibs ready on either wrist. "Luckily for me they chose the wrist instead of the jugular, eh?"

"That is perceived as a joke and is not found humorous." He did not expect her to find it that way. Her existence H pended upon him, and his existence depended upon his surviv I on this world.

He sat down with his ceramic pa.s.s and sketches and contemplated the evening's work ahead, absently peeling off the wax nose and then the itchy goatee. He need not worry about the nyrll; the bloodseeker would have another prey once loosed, but still he would avoid what trouble he could. He needed to get inside the interior vaults and then out, to meet with Mannoc's man make the exchange, and be gone. A treasure of the emperor for a treasure of the forgotten wastes deep in Jaahtcaran territory ... a fair exchange, even if it did mark him, and the blood debt would follow him all his days, regardless. The Jaahtcar had made him an offer he could not refuse.

"Do you ever think about it?" his earring spoke again. "Think about what?" He was distracted by her, staring at his sketches, planning the vectors of a.s.sault. He could not take a lot of gear with him. He needed to be free-moving, undetectable, and had to be able to shed whatever he must. "Being abandoned here."

"Missions are aborted out of necessity. Your problem is that you don't know what the necessity was, and it confounds you. It affects your computing, your decision making. That is why they still send human teams out, as well as your kind. Flexibility." "You are the only one of your kind on this world." "As are you, Rose," he reminded the mainframe. He had intended to breach the depths of the Sshen palace vaults sooner or later, if only to ease his own curiosity. Physical laws misunderstood or undiscovered became the foundation for magic and he did not hesitate to exploit that in any way he could. The stylus moved easily over the papers as he sketched out a breach and no fewer than four exits. He needed an adrenaline boost, nightsight, and his overall sensory perceptions raised, grappling hooks, and a few other implements. He could do it with a minimum of supplies, he thought. A fiber-optic lock pick would be the most essential item. That and climbing equipment.

Brennan lay down on the thin, hard cot that the inn called a bed, and he reviewed his night's plan, the potions and tinctures I would need, the ropes and pulleys, the phosph.o.r.escent light-bar and sundry other items he had at hand to break into the Sacred inner vaults. Although he should fear the Emperor of Sshen, he did not, for the emperor was steeped in mysticism and would not know Brennan for what he truly was. It was the Jaahtcar he feared.She whispered in his ear. "Brennan. This is a world where all cultures have the same word for war, and for warrior. Think about that anomaly. Your father is gone, and we're abandoned."

"We are not abandoned! Sleep mode." He sent her into oblivion, which was perhaps kinder to the mainframe than staying awake through the brief night while he rested. She had no concept of pain but she had an implanted fear of being nonoperative. He practiced his breathing, and let the stress go. Sleep claimed him for a short while.

In the deepest part of the night, he arose, wrapped himself in three layers of clothing, replaced his goatee and overlying wax nose, loaded his pockets with his tools, coiled his ropes about his shoulders, fastened his harness snugly in place, pulled his cloak over and about him, and laid out his tinctures, potions, and powders. He woke Rose but told her not to transmit unless he asked her a specific question. She grudgingly acknowledged.

The nightsight tincture would improve his night vision tremendously, the allquick pump his adrenaline reactions, and the powders would affect the neural lingual reactions of anything inhaling them. The lightbar, when its interior was broken so that the chemicals might mix, would give him more than enough illumination without heat so that whatever the mages had that might sense heat in the inner vaults would not give him away.

He shrugged out of the fiber-optic net he'd worn as a baldric and placed it in a washbasin, along with other incriminating evidence, and set a trip for a contained fire with a bit of string, a candle stub, and other odds and ends. Losing the net would be a waste, but he had more, and it was better than leaving it behind. No one in Sshen would be able to decipher it, but he was not sure about a Jaahtcar. No, he was not at all sure about the enigmatic Jaahtcar. His father, wherever his body and soul had gone, had left him with a warning about Lunavar. "Be wary,"

he'd said, "of a world where the word for war is universal, and appears to have come from one nation."

They were a team: man, son, sentient computer system. They had journeyed to Lunavar when he was only ten years old. The crown city of Sshen was the biggest city he could remember seeing, although he'd known others before. He no longer remembered them as entire ent.i.ties. He'd been brought to train, and to work alongside his father as he'd grown into Lunavar, its people, its languages, its ways, and mores. His father would be the anchor, and he the a.s.similated. Unfortunately, the mission had been aborted after only a few years, and his father had gone out to retrieve their homing equipment, and never returned. Rose watched him as he grew and she slept for long periods, as he aged slowly into maturity as well as knowledge. He stepped out of his crystal caverns when necessity demanded, and when he had to learn what he could, so they could return home. What his father had meant, and Rose still warned, Brennan didn't fully understand.

When dark had got as deep as it would, and most tortured souls were either asleep or drugged beyond sensing anything, he stepped out to do what he'd come for.

Inside the inner walls, he tucked the ceramic pa.s.s into his sleeve, firmly against the inside of his wrist, in case he might have to return. Then he stepped past the public rooms and vaults open to all the scholars and headed for the Forbidden. Lightbar in hand, he uncoiled a length of rope and gauged the walls as he moved into the velvet black interior of the famous maze of the inner chambers. Up and over, catlike, pausing now and then to look in cases or on pedestals, before traversing the next chamber walls, Brennan made his way inexorably through Sshen's legacy. The allquick set in as he increased his breathing, and he moved rapidly past theobstacles, glimpses of treasure catching his attention here and there.

He lingered, despite misgivings. The vaults were too captivating to pa.s.s through without looking at what the emperor and previous dynasties had hidden away. There was a plain stone that sat in a spiked box to prevent its theft. He did not have to read the sign to feel the powerful electromagnetic aura it cast. Then there was the anklet of the slave empress Mahrdin who united the walls of the early Sshen empire. There was the baton of the ArchMage, its gnarled wood etched and inscribed. There was no logical reason for the hairs on the back of his neck to p.r.i.c.kle as he pa.s.sed that one, yet they did.

He paused for more than a moment at a simple wooden bowl large enough to curl a cow in.

Resting inside was an opalescent shard of an eggsh.e.l.l. A dragon's sh.e.l.l, the sign said. It needed no further explanation. He pondered the plausibility of it, then moved on, running now. The maze brought him back to the baton, and Brennan smothered a curse, wondering how he had missed a turning.

His skin crawled again. But not in aversion. No. He craved to hold the short staff. It drew him. He broke his cardinal rule. This was not what he had come for, but he took it anyway, sliding it up the left sleeve on the inner side of his arm. It fit neatly along the span from his wrist to his elbow, and immediately warmed his skin though it was made of wood. Continuing on, he swung his hook and rope coil, and went up and over the tall walls, rather than risk misnumbering the maze yet again. His lightbar fluttered slightly as the chemicals began to burn away. Brennan moved as swiftly as he could for he needed enough light to get out.

He did not pause again until he stood at the great case wherein rested three amber jewels known as the Eyes of the Dragon. Like the egg shard outside, they were rumored to be the actual item. He did not know. All his intelligence on Lunavar had not indicated Dragons. Fey peoples of high intuitive ability, perhaps even telepathic abilities, but never Dragons. Quickly, he gathered up the fist-sized shapes and arranged them in a lined, black velvet pouch he had made to carry such things.

He would be out much quicker than he came in, the allquick fiery in his veins like a berserker fury. He needed speed now, not finesse. "I've got everything," he informed Rose. She did not affirm. A faint crackle sounded in his ear. Something in the air interfered with transmission. Of no import. His task was done.

Brennan turned around slowly to spot his position in the maze and reconcile it with the maps he'd drawn earlier and memorized. Something tall, dark, carapace-hard in the shadows, stirred. The Sentinel moved out, into the cold spill of light from Brennan's hand, and it looked like nothing he had ever encountered. The lightbar shivered in his hold, illumination spraying over the thing erratically, making it difficult to know what he was looking at.

Not mortal or mechanical. His heart did a quick jump in his chest. Brennan circled, quickly, fleetly, faster than mere flesh, on an adrenaline high. He would pay for it later, but he had no choice now.

The thing moved with him. Heat seeking? No. Perhaps.

His hand flashed, powder motes drifted on the air with the gesture. If it inhaled, it would be affected by the hallucinatories. He had an immunity to them, but the creature facing him surely did not. Brennan circled again.

It moved on inexorably.

Not breathing. Not animal. Not flesh.Brennan leaped to pa.s.s it. The Sentinel reached out and caught his arm, pulling him down to earth with a crushing grip. Only the ArchMage's staff prevented harm to his flesh, tendon, bones. But he was caught, well and truly, and by something he did not think existed. Something that stank of magic.

It was at this moment that he wondered how he had got there.

ACT I.

Brennan took advantage of the slowness of the carriage approach to check himself over carefully one last time. Ear transmitter, in place. Chest camera, good. Clothing . . . just slightly out of style and season as befit the impoverished scion of a scion of a poor holding and without wife ... of questionable quality as well as faddishness. Good. There would be polite looks, a few jabbing remarks, but all in all, his clothing would be far more remembered than his face.

He checked his cuffs again, and made sure his pants were tucked neatly into his boot tops, then ran a hand over his face. The salve, a pleasantly scented unguent, kept his body as hairless as it could, with the only side effect being a tendency to sunburn a little too quickly if he did not take care. His outfit also included a pardskin hat, with the appropriate feather and beaded headband.

His carriage b.u.mped to a halt and the doorman quickly opened the cabin door and let the step down. Brennan got out leisurely, surveying the grounds as he did. He disliked the transmitter as it interfered somewhat with his own preternatural hearing, but it couldn't be helped; he needed recording beyond what he could catch. Something was stirring here, and he needed to know everything he could.

He moved down the carriage step, kicking the edge of his cloak out of the way, and headed toward the front gardens where music and the inevitable milling of people indicated he had arrived fashionably late. The strains of a few strings, a percussion or two and a handful of woodwinds reached him, all more or less in tune and imparting a merry song. These late spring parties always seemed to be aimed at matchmaking and merriment, although a serious amount of diplomacy and negotiation, as well as gambling, took place in the back rooms. That was where he would head after being ingratiatingly social.

He stood in the small line, awaiting his announced arrival, picking up the murmurs about him.

A low-pitched, vibrant voice caught his attention. "Mannoc is back again. I don't like that Jaahtcar one bit. He's too swift in his negotiations."

"He has better information than we do, I suspect."

"Aye. That, and more." A slight cough then, as if noticing that others were a little too quiet, listening. Boots shuffled restlessly as the murmurs trailed off.

Brennan spent a bit of time correcting the epaulets and his cloak, fussing with the line and hang of it, as though quite unaware anyone about him could be saying anything of any interest at all. He stopped only when the herald put a palm across his chest, halting Brennan on the doorway threshold, and called out, "Brennan anj'anj'Risalavan."

Brennan straightened, smiling and bowing slightly as a room full of faces glanced briefly his way, eyed him, dismissed him, and went back to their springtime gossip. He stepped through to let the next pair in and went straight to the sidebar for a libation. The spread ofbottles and decanters and jugs was impressive, and he took a moment or two deciding what would please his palate and quench his thirst and interfere least with the potions he had taken this morning. Although already ingested, they were designed to stay relatively inert until he began pumping extra oxygen into his system. Brennan smiled around the room as he poured himself a snifter of S'shen imperial brandy and carried it to a patio corner.

The breeze held the raw edge of winter not quite gone, with the dampness of an impending rain, perhaps shortly after nightfall, although he could not see clouds on the horizon. Clouds built up quickly on the eastern ridge, though, and Brennan was fairly certain most of the afternoon would be under a leaden sky. So he took in a ray of sun now, and enjoyed it, though his newly un-guented skin was a bit tender and would soon burn if he wasn't careful. With a subtle gesture, he pulled the brim of his hat down a little to shade his face, and took a sip of the excellent-smelling brandy.

It rolled off his tongue and sent a warming fire down his throat before pooling nicely in his stomach. Brennan smiled at the flavor of it. An excellent vintage, even for the Throne City, pricey and very far from home, where vintages of this kind were usually reserved for weddings or naming days for sons of substantial holdings.

Such a naming day as an anj' of an anj' of Risalavan would not have, Risalavan being impoverished and backwater. Not that the anj' of Risalavan had had an heir; he had not. The sire of Risalavan had had hopes for his son, regardless of the stable accident, an ill-placed kick, which had left his heir with one shriveled testes and the other of dubious abilities, and sent him off to the southern provinces of his holdings in hopes of expanding both his wealth and his issue. After years of waiting, instead, he had received home a box containing the preserved, severed head of his anj' after a fatal hunting accident. In bitter tears, the fortress had been shut up and the sire had retired to meditate and pray for his son's soul.

Brennan had disliked disturbing the vigil of the sire of Risala-van's mourning, hidden in the shadows as the box was set on the altar, and the candles and incense lit, and a veil put over the box's contents. The older man stayed, head down and shoulders bowed, muttering to himself at the altar as everyone else left, not seeing Brennan in the corner shadows. It was of necessity that he waited, then drew his breath in slowly, and stepped out of the shadows.

"Turn if you wish but do not shout. Listen to my offer. Your son had a son, for our purposes. You will receive a handsome stipend from his estates, as long as you accept this. If you do not, I understand, but I will bring no disgrace upon your name." Or at least, he hoped he would not, for it was certainly not his intent. Brennan waited quietly for the man to turn around and look at him, and either deny or confirm him.

Silence reigned for a very long moment. Then the sire of Risalavan said, "You have a young voice."

"I would have to be young, to be an anj' of your anj', would I not?"

"You would have to be a miracle."

"Perhaps. Your son was a whole man once. It is not beyond speculation that he dallied with a village maid or the daughter of a pa.s.sing merchant, or that there was issue neither he nor you knew about, till recently. You can look at me if you want, if that will help you to make up your mind."

The older man shook his head. "No," he said. His voice was choked. "No." He put his hands on the altar, on either side of the veiled box, and gripped it tightly. The muscles acrossthe back of his shoulders tensed greatly. "Why?"

"Because I must. More than that, I cannot tell you, and it is best if you do not wonder."

"Yet I will wonder."

"I won't blame you for that. A yearly stipend is nothing compared to your grief or your loss, but it will help. We both know it will. All I ask is that you announce when appropriate, in a few weeks, that you have been presented with evidence of your son's anj'. Will you do that?"