Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

Max dropped down the ladder to the floor and looked for the rope. He’d gone to the trouble to coil it up while he’d waited, but where was - oh, there, under the cushion from the couch, and there next to it was the bulging oilcloth sack, too. He grabbed them both, shook loose the end of the rope, and tied it around the neck of the bag. Pushing the sack ahead of him out of the hatch, which was a lot more difficult than when he’d brought it up empty, he finally popped back up into the air. Around the invisible pylon once with the rope - pause for a quick wobble from the island - then again, with another turn, Max passed the end with the sack twice around his body and cinched it with a quick slipknot in front. Taking a firm one-handed hold on the other end of the rope where it emerged from its double twist around the pylon, he boosted himself up, swung both legs out of the hatchway, snatched his amulet away from the hatch with his free hand, dropped the chain over his neck as the hatch began to ease itself closed, and let himself slide backward along the drop-off curve of the sphere.

The sack dangled below his feet. From the sack, the rope went around Max’s waist, up to the pylon, and back down to his now double-fisted grip as he rapidly paid it out. Fog and smoke still covered the scene; the only evidence of The Hand was a large shouting from all directions. Grass came up with water beneath it, and then he was down. A strong tug on the rope end around his waist sent the loose bit whipping up into the air, around itself, and then back down toward him in free-fall.

Mont had somehow gotten both horses up onto the barge. Everything was wet and covered with mud, the kid perhaps most of all. The water had stopping coming in, though, leaving a table-sized patch of ground above it in the center of the island. Max slogged as fast as he could toward the barge and flopped on himself. “Good work,” he told Mont. “Now hold on.”

“Hold on? But -”

Max had one of the poles in his hands and was heaving at the earth behind them. The barge had grounded itself on the mud when he’d climbed aboard; now, with a lurching slide, it began to move free. A bob, and they were clearly out on the water. Behind them, though, the edge of the water was foaming, pulling away from the small center of ground. Pulling? - no, rushing , and the barge was starting to lift , as the island surged powerfully back to the surface, hurling the water in front of it.

All of a sudden the barge was riding the white-capped crest of a wave. Max had his legs planted wide, one in front of the other, with the pole held out over the bow of the barge. Ahead through the mist and tall grass, the confused shouts of The Hand grew louder, although the creaking of the island and the roar of water in motion were growing louder still. Then, off to the right as they broke through the fog, in front and below, a quick glimpse of standing fighters with open mouths and upturned faces, people leaning away and reeling back, a cascade of water, a jumble of waving arms and tumbling heads. A wooden barrel bounced through the air ahead of the wave. The maze of trees and channels that faced the lagoon was approaching.

“Sloppy to let them sneak up like that; maybe I’m getting old,” Max said, shaking his head, looking behind them at the turbulent lagoon still filled with splashing Hands. “Shaa would never have let this happen. He’s a lot better about these things than I am.”

“… Shaa’s better at this than you are?” Jurtan was hanging frantically onto the horses, an arm around each one’s neck. The horses, though, seemed to be having a surprisingly good time of it.

“He went to school, he’s had formal training. I haven’t. I came up from the streets. A damned urchin, that’s what I was.”

“Then Shaa’s curse ...?” Jurtan gasped.

“Yeah, Arznaak knew exactly where to stick the knife for the best effect.” The barge slid smoothly around a clump of trees and into a channel, still surfing along the rapidly dying wave. Max had his pole ready and fended off from a root-choked bank. “Shaa might have been in line to be Chancellor of the Imperial Institute; that’s how good he was. Don’t let him fool you.”

“So did you at least find anything while you were up in that place that’ll help him?”

“I don’t know,” replied Max. “Maybe. If I can get this stuff deciphered, maybe.” He nudged the sack on the deck with his foot. Paper crunched and rustled inside; he’d been able to fit in most of Iskendarian’s manuscript material while he’d been hanging around in the sphere waiting for The Hand’s move. “There’s a lot of stuff left back in the ball that might be useful, but we’ll have to write that off. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back here.”

“You’re not planning to wait until this settles down and go up again?” Jurtan felt his footing was solid enough to try letting go of the horses; the barge was still jumping and shipping water over the sides, but he could surely handle little things like those, couldn’t he?

“That wait would probably be long enough to make us miss the Knitting; this area’s gonna stay hot for awhile, it looks like. Also, I don’t want to give The Hand any more of a clue to the place than they already might have, which means I sure don’t want them watching while I climb up again. I’d like to try to dump them, this time for good, and that means getting out of here while they’re still pulling themselves back together.”

“Those guys have been after you for a long time, then, haven’t they? Why didn’t you kill them? You had the chance.”

“Shaa doesn’t like it when people get slaughtered.”

“He’s not here.”

Max shrugged. “He rubs off. He’s either a good influence or a bad one, depending on where your own stance started. You could say I may have been spending too much time around him.”

Mont managed to get the last horse tie-down secured and took up the other pole, by his intent expression apparently planning his next rhetorical foray. “You have any more detours in mind you want to tell me about?”

Max gave him a sidelong glance. “No.”

“Do you mean I should rephrase that? Okay, do you have -”

“No! As far as I’m concerned, the next scheduled stop is Peridol.” Max eyed the sack with Iskendarian’s manuscripts. There would be help available in Peridol, perhaps, if he was careful; untangling Iskendarian’s code looked to be a nontrivial task. A nontrivial task, but a worthwhile one. Max very much wanted to know if he’d identified the equations properly, and correctly intuited their meaning. The thought that Iskendarian had figured out how to decode the communications system of the gods was worth the price of admission all by itself, but that was by no means the only topic of interest. It would very tantalizing indeed if Iskendarian had actually been the original creator of the Spell of Namelessness.

“Aren’t you ready yet?” the Great Karlini hissed into the hole in the floor. “They’re coming.” He was answered only by another dull clunk of metal on metal, followed by the careful tapping of a small hammer.

“I must go,” Julio told him from the doorway; he’d been dancing from foot to foot with totally unconcealed impatience for the last five minutes, ever since he’d darted upstairs for the final time to say that the Council Guard had at last arrived to check Groot out of his cell and escort him to the Council chamber for the debate on his case.

“Go, then,” said Karlini, getting up off the floor, “go. Oh, and good -”

“Gone is he,” Haddo said. “Ridiculous this is, think you not?” He had pressed himself up against the side wall in the tiny alcove, little more than the size of a broom closet, really, to keep his cloak from being snagged as the secret door revolved again on its circular base. From the outside, the entrance was no more than another semicircular niche with another heroic statue on another landing off the staircase that curved its way up the outside of the Council room toward to the observation deck at the base of the Hall of the People’s dome. To operate it, you actually had to perch yourself on the statue’s back, contorting past its extended marble elbows as it leaned forward with both hands on the guard of its sword, which was positioned point-downward in the suggested flank of some gigantic and most likely allegorical beast. After navigating the elbow, it was necessary to wedge oneself between the niche wall and the statue’s flowing cloak of battle, and to activate a lever concealed up against the base with one foot, whereupon the springs of the mechanism would twirl wall section, statue, and passenger alike through a half revolution into this dark little cabinet.