Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Catastrophe

“I walked out onto the landing. Again, it was the same scorched landing I had just crossed while I was awake. The difference was that now, in the dream, it was intact - no soot, no fire, no damage of any kind. A colorful tapestry showing some kind of political conclave hung on one wall where I had seen its burnt outline a moment before. As I walked out the door, though, a bright glint on the floor caught my attention. I bent down to look. The glint was from a clear faceted jewel set in a unfamiliar gold ring. My mind was still distracted by whatever I had been thinking about, so before I quite knew what I was doing, I was reaching for the ring. Suddenly my mind clicked in. I realized I’d never seen that ring before, and it certainly had no business being there, just sitting on the floor, and I had better not touch it, but my hand kept going. The ring was pulling it in.

“I was frozen in position, bent over on the floor, fighting my own hand. My hand slowed, but I was already too late. My forefinger touched the ring.

“Sheets of lightning crashed out of the ring and danced along my body. The jewel was like a pinpoint slashed out of the sun. I felt - how do I describe it? - I felt like my aura was being drained down my forefinger and into the ring. More lightning came out, followed by balls of fire. My perception was strange, distorted, I was stretching out and being compressed and wrapped around, the world was getting vaguer and more distant, and then - snap! -the world was gone. And I woke up.”

Karlini took a drink of water, let his head flop back, and gazed up at the ceiling, which Max thought he must have memorized by now. Max looked away, staring at a spot over Karlini’s head, his lips pursed, and took the final few puffs on his cigar. Roni drummed her fingers on the table.

“Let me give you my analysis,” Max said finally, “and you tell me if it matches what you’ve come up with. Whoever the true master of this castle is, he set up a fairly involved anti-theft system, which you sprung part of. I assume that this - well, call him a person, even though he probably wasn’t - this person figured he might be attacked or kidnapped, even in his own castle. In fact, that’s what happened. Your dream was no dream, it was a replay. This person’s enemy had left that ring as a trap. The ring sucked in the guy’s aura and whatever aura-bound powers he had, and his consciousness too. Sounds like a pretty interesting ring, when you think about it … especially since the ring isn’t around now. You haven’t found it, right? Whoever set the trap transported the ring into the tower from some other place and then pulled it back when it had done its job.”

“Why couldn’t they have physically dropped the ring there?” Roni said. “Why spend the energy for a transport?”

“Even if you could get into a place like this in the first place, would you want to stroll up and plant a booby trap right under your victim’s nose? No,” Max said, “if it was me I’d spend the extra power and be glad of it. I’d rather not be anywhere in the vicinity. Anyway, the ring went off, but somehow the castle master managed to leave a record of his last perceptions in that area of the tower. He meant for this record to be triggered by the next person who showed up. Probably not just any next person, either, I’d bet, but rather the person who had set off the other alarm.

“Both the dream and the monitor and the whole moving castle itself are part of the alarm. If the master really was attacked and subdued, the castle would take off, and would keep going until it had found the right kind of person to get him loose, or to conduct the revenge if it was too late. The castle was also going to make damn sure that the person it had chosen didn’t leave until the rescue had been arranged.”

“Yes, but, Max,” Roni said, “the person who’d been trapped by the alarm couldn’t leave the castle to do the rescue.”

Max took a small bite out of the stub of his cigar and munched reflectively on it. “Well, Roni, that’s the major detail I don’t like. The castle master goes to all this trouble to trap somebody who’s supposed to rescue him, then makes sure that rescuer can’t leave the castle. There’s a couple of possibilities. One, the master figured the rescue could be done without the rescuer having to leave the castle. I assume if that was possible, Karlini would have already thought of something. Right?”

“It can’t be done,” Karlini said. “At least, I can’t figure out how.”

“We can go over it again later. The second possibility is that the person trapped in the castle was supposed to get somebody else to actually do the rescuing.” Max raised an eyebrow, swiveled it around at Roni and Karlini.

Karlini sighed. “Right, Max. That’s the way we figured it. The person in the castle is a hostage. That’s me. I’m supposed to pull in favors, or hock myself, or sell whatever treasure I have to get this guy rescued.”

“Or,” said Max, “you’re supposed to call in your friends.”

“How many magicians do you know of who have those kind of friends?” Roni said, with a touch of sarcasm.

“Aha,” Max said, “now that is exactly the point that concerns me the most. “ He rose and started pacing around the table. “If I were thinking about groups of magic-users, well, there’s the confederations and specialty guilds. Of course, their members aren’t what you’d call cordial to each other, they’re more backbiting societies than anything else. There’s the few teams and partnerships you run across now and then, but - why was your doorstep the first place this castle showed up?”

Karlini nervously adjusted his chair. “Well, it wasn’t really the first place - “

“Other stops aren’t the point if nobody sprung the trap, and you know it. It sounds like a setup. It sounds like a setup to reel in our gang, find out who we really are, and then -”

“Max, ever since I’ve known you you’ve been seeing plots -”

“Yeah, I’m still alive too, and -”

“But there’s never been a plot -”

“What about the -”

“Max, shut up,” Roni said. “You too, dear.” She glared pleasantly at them while she waited. “Thank you. Now, Max, Karlini’s trapped here. You know the only method we can think of to get him out is to rescue the owner of this castle. What Karlini didn’t tell you is that he’s already traced the ring. It’s in Roosing Oolvaya. Somebody has to go get it, and you’ve got the best chance of anyone we could find. Will you do it?”

Max had stopped with his back turned to the table and his hands clasped behind his back. “I’m the best one? Not Haalsen Groot? Krinkly Louise? Boorgonga? For that matter, what about Shaa? I was just on my way to see him, I know where he is.”

“You’re it, Max,” Karlini said, not looking at him either. “Groot’s settled down with his import business. Louise is down south someplace. Boorgonga might be in hibernation for all I could find out. And you can’t honestly tell me you’d wish this on Shaa, especially after what he ran into last time. He’s lucky he can walk again; he probably wouldn’t talk to any of us if we showed up with a cart full of bullion.”

“… You know this guy in the ring is probably a god. You know what that says about whoever trapped him.”

“We know, Max,” Roni said.

“You know what the gods think of me.”

“Max,” Karlini said, “give me another plan, any plan. Tell me who to hire. Let’s cook up some real zapper of a spell, scare up an army, I don’t know, come up with something else, anything.”

Silence fell, lengthened. Then Max turned around.

“One try,” Max said. “That’s all we get, we all know how these things work. And we all know damn well who’s the best choice to try it. I’ll do it. Of course I’ll do it. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.” He took the dead stub of cigar out of his mouth, looked at it, and scowled. The dark butt shimmered and began to glow, turned white, a painful white, and exploded. The stemware rattled. Sparks and tiny flaming embers drifted down. Max jammed his hands into his pockets, still scowling as he watched the sparks go out. “Aargh,” he said disgustedly. “All my life I work to learn more, pick up more tricks, get more competent. All so I can end up in messes like this.”