Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Fate

The top of the broad staircase formed an even broader plaza which merged on the side with the road where it flowed off the bridge. As he came off the last stair and tried to get a fix on whatever the music was trying to tell him, a carriage tore past heading from the bridge into the city. A strange sense of disorientation gripped Jurtan - but, no, that had to have been yesterday that he’d chased after that carriage the first time. He took a step after the coach and then paused.

It was the same carriage. The theme he’d heard yesterday that had attracted his attention to the vehicle, though, the one belonging to that guy Tildy had been spending time with at the club, was absent. The man wasn’t in the carriage.

He was hearing that person’s motif, however. He was hearing a whole bunch of them. Max’s was coming from his right, and Shaa’s from the left, and -

What did the music want him to do? It had to -

But no, it didn’t. The music didn’t know. There was too much happening; Jurtan’s internal senses couldn’t figure out what was most important. They were leaving it up to him.

Tildy’s theme floated in from the left too, and weaving through it the sinister slidehorn snarl of the man from the carriage. Jurtan swung in that direction and headed after them.

Favored swooped low over the twisted grandstand. Sections were still collapsing onto the lower deck, and through the lower deck toward the river, but here and there small knots of people were extricating themselves from the wreckage, and a detachment of rescuers was working its way in from the west end of the bridge. At least two sorcerers were at work as well trying to damp down the fires and stabilize the structure before the whole center span of the bridge gave way. No one had taken the time to squash the terrorists’ message, however, and the flaming letters and sigils were still casting a flickering red wash over the rising clouds and the smoky pall below.

Smoke should not be a major concern to him, though, or more precisely to Flotarobolis. Favored brought the vehicle to a hover at about twice head-height for a tall human and went into a slow tracking spin. Fortunately he’d brought the flyer along in the wagon; it never hurt to be prepared. But prepared for what? Who’d sent out that call? It had to be a god, no one else could have -

“You - Favored-of-the-Gods -” came a shouting voice. There he was, waving at Flotarobolis, standing erect atop what might have started the festivities as a table of refreshments, covered in soot and grime, a dark stain that might be blood dripping down his side. Favored floated toward him. “Hurry up!” the god snapped. “I am requisitioning your vehicle.”

“You couldn’t fit inside it,” Favored yelled back through the speaking-tube, “and you couldn’t fly it if you could!”

“Of course,” the god said impatiently. “I am requisitioning you too.”

I had no idea how long I’d been swimming in mist. For all I knew it had been days. I didn’t know either when - if ever - I’d decide to come back out. It didn’t bother me much one way or the other. It felt like a lot of thinking of some sort was going on, but it was happening somewhere in the neighborhood, not right in my own head where I could get at it. It was more like someone across the room was having a conversation that I couldn’t quite hear than a discussion I was involved in myself.

All of which sounded to me like a pretty solid picture of somebody going firmly and quite unequivocally out of his mind.

But like I said, I didn’t much care. Maybe the sensation of crossing the divide from moderate inebriation to total anesthetization of the brain was -

“It is time to get up,” someone was saying.

Someone? Well, yes, I guess so, except the “someone” happened to be me. At least it was my voice, although I didn’t remember asking it to speak up just then. “Just a second,” I said. “What -”

All of a sudden the mist was gone. Around me was still the wreckage of my room at the Adventurers’ Club. From the fact that the dust had largely settled and everything that had been on the verge of falling over or apart had made its decision and was now resting in fragments further littering the floor, it could have been hours or days since the last time I’d been conscious. I’d not only gotten cleaned up from the battle and my encounter with the pit, I found myself dressed in a different outfit, too, obviously ready to go out.

This was clearly a new slant on ways to be productive while you were asleep. Except I hadn’t been sleeping, had I? Or was it that part of me had been up and active while another part of me -

“There is only so much of this entertainment I have time for,” I said, with a decided sneer. “It is too bad to hurry things after this long, but -”

“Who are you?” I interrupted.

I chuckled again, that same nasty cackle I’d heard before. I chuckled? No, he chuckled. But how could there be “me” and “him?” There was only one of us. Wasn’t there? “Who are you?” he said, and then broke into another cackling roll.

“Why don’t you tell me that?” I thought at him.

“Who I am or who you are? No matter, you don’t want to know either one.”

Well, he was right in a way; I didn’t but I did.

But in the same way I didn’t know who he was, but I did. Or at least I almost did. The knowledge was down there, bubbling slowly up toward full comprehension. Then -

“You’re Iskendarian,” I said. “Right?” Which meant I was Iskendarian, sort of, which meant - which meant I’d have to sort it all out later. “But you invented the Spell of Namelessness, or something like that, didn’t you? So how could you let yourself be - unless you -”

“Of course, you dolt. I used it on myself.”

Of course. He’d wanted to disappear, totally and completely. What better way than to be dead? He’d spread around the story he was dead, and to keep anyone from finding him by probe he’d cast his own custom spell on himself before going into hibernation; cast his spell and shifted his physical appearance too no doubt. Then when he’d woken up he’d used me as a false front to disguise himself from the world and as a hiding place to put his capabilities back together. He’d been peeking out every so often to check up on events and he’d stepped in when magic had needed to be employed. He’d -

“I made you,” he said, in a tone that clearly stated that our conversation was coming to a close. “Now your usefulness is done. And there is at present a window of opportunity I do not choose to miss.”

“Wait a -” I said, but he didn’t. The headache exploded out through my mind. I hung on to the fragments of my consciousness - I would have shouted, except he had control of our mouth; I would have fallen to the floor, except I’d lost control of our body; hopefully I at least managed to vomit, although I wouldn’t have known it if I had; I would have...

There was still no giant bird, the Great Karlini observed. He had half-expected that the bird, given as it was to melodramatic gestures, would have chosen just this moment to make its entrance, triumphant from its stay at the ancestral breeding grounds. But apparently not. Now Favored had walked out on him too, and there was no one else in sight between his plummeting body and the surface of the water coming up at him now quite rapidly, no one except of course for one of the namesake guests of honor of the festival now cruising through his probable point of touchdown. It was probably too much to expect for a flailing tentacle to pluck him from the air... wasn’t it?

If only he hadn’t always been so quick to lump levitation with transmutation of metals and perpetual motion in the “useless” bin reserved for the old wives’ tales of sorcery, perhaps he might have been able to come up with something. Unfortunately it seemed a little late at the moment to be -