Labyrinth, p.6
Labyrinth, page 6
He noticed her as soon as she entered. Perked up and muttered something to Holt. Slipped a hand into his pocket in such a manner than suggested the rumors of firearms were more than rumors.
Khulan kept both hands out of her pockets where they could be seen. She kept the smile on her face as she approached the two men. Ogden had given her the traditional top to bottom stare of a male seeing a beautiful female, and then done it a second time when he recognized a second magic-worker by the telltale signs.
The brooch on her shirt that looked to be simple silver in the form of a beautiful woman but anchored a spell to render her invisible to many Diviners. The necklace that would awaken if a summoned creature approached. The bracelets at her wrists that could expand to cover hands and forearms in battle.
Ogden’s face grew serious, but he nodded to her, a mark of respect given to an elder of great power, although the man would have no idea how much elder she was.
Still, she nodded back, just as deep. Just as respectful.
It would help her cause to have these two men on her side, if not at it.
Not stumbling awkwardly into the middle of a war they had likely never heard of.
Holt looked up at her now, and Khulan could read the exhaustion on the man’s face. The receding pain.
The utter determination that the only way he would be going down was by someone destroying him first.
Khulan couldn’t remember the last time she had run into such stubbornness, outside of a mirror.
Or Koschei the Deathless himself.
That would be helpful, as well.
If she could reach the man.
“May I?” she asked in Cantonese, because that seemed to be the language both men knew the best, according to rumor, spy, and shadow.
“Please do.” Ogden slid sideways enough to pull the second table close and indicated she should sit in the chair next to Holt.
Holt studied her from far closer than he had been earlier. She felt his senses expand and begin to wrap gently around her own barriers.
The man was a Diviner, just as Ogden was an Enchanter. Fully trained in the arts, but everyone had a specialization. A place their own gift was strongest.
Khulan Munkhtsetseg Zima had been chosen by the goddess because she was a powerful Sorcerer, even when young, in an age when great combat might be necessary.
When the War for Eternity might finally know an ending.
Now it only needed to know who would win.
“You had a visitor,” she said simply, speaking to Holt but not excluding Ogden from the conversation. “A conjured creature.”
“We call them shadow servants,” Holt replied. “But I have never seen one so large. Or heard stories in recent generations.”
“Describe it,” she said, watching the man’s mannerisms.
Holt gave her the details that she would have had to penetrate the office to gather. Plus, the man was a Diviner of some power and a great deal of potential, so he had the answers faster and easier.
Both men stared at her now, having finished their tale. Khulan had a smile on her face for the weirdness of the situation, and it was all the worse, talking Cantonese in an American restaurant to a man who was pure-blood northwest European, and the second who was half Cantonese himself, while she traveled under a Russian passport.
The modern age was truly an interesting place, even if her older memories were such much brighter with color.
“I believe the person who sent the shadow servant was Koschei,” Khulan said simply. “Known as the Deathless One.”
Holt perked up at that. Studied her closer, as if looking for something.
She stared back at him politely.
Allies, if she could. Making foes of these two would be stupid.
“I read part of a book this evening,” Holt said to her slowly. “After you, I went to the library. There was a book on Russian folklore that mentioned Koschei the Immortal.”
“Yes,” Khulan agreed.
“He’s not just a fairy tale?” Holt’s eyes got a little bigger.
“If he is, then we all are, aren’t we?” Khulan grinned lightly.
Probably not these two, not yet thirty years old, but she had memories going back five thousand years, to her very first life.
“Who are you?” Holt asked breathlessly. “What are you?”
Ah, that was the better question, wasn’t it?
The former was easier. Khulan Munkhtsetseg Zima. The Eternal Flower of Winter.
But what was she?
“Ancient,” Khulan offered, not wishing to give these two men too much information. That might drive them away, where they would be easy prey for Koschei and his followers.
“Little help here?” Ogden spoke up.
Not much. Just enough to break the spell that had her and Holt staring at each other.
“Russian fables, Stewey,” Holt said. “The man is supposedly immortal, because he hides his soul inside something, then hides that, then hides that. Like putting his soul inside an egg, and the egg is in a goose, and the goose is in a basket. Et cetera. She claims he exists.”
“He’s bound his soul to an item to achieve immortality?” Ogden asked.
Khulan was surprised, but then she remembered that the man was an Enchanter. He already thought of things that way.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to bind it back to your flesh?” the man continued. “Or does that render it vulnerable to a foe who can manage to kill the body and cut it out fast enough.”
Yes, far more perceptive than his relative youth would have suggested.
“It does,” Khulan agreed. “You cannot kill the body while the soul is bound elsewhere. But if you can find his soul, you can command him. Or possibly destroy him.”
“And nobody has in how long?” Holt asked.
“Thousands of years,” Khulan said.
Before anyone else could speak, the waitress approached. She moved carefully, like part of a choreographed dance. A glance back over a shoulder at a large male near the edge of the bar, with a hand out of sight, presumably touching a weapon.
Khulan didn’t reach out with her own spells to confirm. She had studied humanity for enough lifetimes to understand the signs. Ogden and Holt were well-regarded regulars here, and she was a stranger at a time when Holt showed distress and Ogden showed a carefully-contained rage.
Khulan smiled up at the woman. Euro-descent. Possibly Hungarian from the bones in her face.
She switched back to English.
“Do you have green tea available?” she asked politely.
She was on foreign ground here. Better to be nice than cause trouble.
There was enough trouble coming.
“Sort of,” the woman said. “Caf or de-caf?”
“De-caf, if possible,” Khulan decided.
She had her own potions and spells that could keep her active, if she needed, without the addition of industrially-produced tea to disrupt things.
If she was going to spend any amount of time in this city, she would need to locate a proper tea house of the old school. Even if Seattle was known for coffee.
Khulan caught the nod from Ogden, indicating that everything was good. Both the waitress and the bartender relaxed. Khulan did as well. Summoning aid inside this diner would cause irreparable harm to the situation.
“Are you the goddess, or merely an acolyte?” Holt asked after the waitress left, staring at her from close enough that she could have kissed him, had she wanted to completely derail the man.
The mind might be ancient, but the body was still almost the same age as Holt, and she had been known by the other students as something of a goof, despite the power she had shown.
Still, it was a prescient question. Holt was more sensitive than he appeared. Probably smarter, too, although she already understood that both of these men ran deeper than she had initially expected.
The Westerners called themselves Warlocks, after an archaic term that mean Oath-breaker. Presumably the oaths of the Christian churches that had been dominant for so long and killed so many of her kind.
Holt and Ogden were both fully trained, according to the standards the West used. Powerful and competent.
But still human. Well out of their depth dealing with creatures that had not been human in thousands of years.
Khulan studied Holt closer. She cast a small spell and let him see it coming. Pressed against his defensive barriers politely with a Knowing. He resisted instinctively, but then stepped back inside himself.
It was as if he had met her at the front door and opened it for her to enter.
Khulan stepped into the living room of his mind. Into his soul.
She planted an eternal flower of winter in a pot by the window and watched him study it.
“Wow,” he finally whispered after a moment.
Khulan broke the spell and was back in her own body as the waitress returned with a shiny steel pot, a mug, and a selection of commercial teas to pick from. She also brought plates of food, heavy with grease and salt for the two men.
Khulan’s stomach nearly rebelled at the smell, but she understood that Americans had a vastly different understanding of healthy eating than she did. Plus, she didn’t know any all-night dim sum places in town.
“Were you wanting to order food?” the waitress asked.
Khulan had forgotten about the menu, but she also wasn’t hungry.
“No, thank you,” she said, and the woman left them alone.
It was instructive, watching the men eat. Ogden nearly emptied bottle of red pepper sauce over everything, while Holt merely added a few drops.
Both men ate like the event was timed. Or perhaps there was a bomb just outside the door.
Perhaps an assassin, but they would be safe while she was handy.
But then they would need to discuss the future.
If these two men wanted to survive it.
Chapter
Twelve
Stewey studied the woman while he ate, keeping a small spell handy mostly as a tripwire, in case she did anything to his or Dan’s food.
Wouldn’t put it past her, but he didn’t Know her. Hadn’t had the woman reach inside and touch him, like she obviously had Dan.
No way of telling how much trouble she was.
Still, none of his items registered anything out of the ordinary. Not even whoever had sent that shadow, assuming it wasn’t the creature across from him.
She might look human, but Stewey wasn’t fooled. Top notch power. Seriously badass. Made Cole and Iliana look junior varsity by comparison, and him and Dan third graders.
Food was good. Miguel must have pulled a late shift. Usually he had the morning rush, and Walt wasn’t as sharp on gravy. This was almost as good as breakfast rush, had he gotten here in another couple of hours. Maybe Miguel just came in early.
The woman watched him watch her, an enigmatic smile on her face. Probably recognized the charm he’d etched outside the door to keep trouble walking on down the sidewalk instead of stepping inside the café.
Wouldn’t keep out things like her, but the really crazy homeless usually minded their manners better when they came in. Neighborhood was gentrifying hard these days, though. Pretty soon, just pretty boys and girls who worked in software would be able to live around here.
Fewer drug deals on the streets would be an improvement, but the old city was slowly drying up and blowing away. Just ask the old farts who had been coming here to eat since before he was born.
Dan ate slower, but he always did. Would eat less of it, though, like normal, so they’d finish about the same time. Stewey took a drink of coffee and pushed a spell out the front door, just in case someone sent another shadow servant after them. She watched with a tiny smile. Probably had already done the same thing.
His wouldn’t slow something down much, but might give him an extra second to draw the revolver, and he’d loaded the thing with rock salt and silver dust tonight, tiny shotgun shells instead of bullets. Sting a person like a bee. Thump a spirit right upside the head.
This woman might not even notice, whatever the hell she was.
“So how do we know Koschei did it and not you?” Stewey went right ahead and asked.
Dan would be more polite about it. More circular. Stewey didn’t have anything invested in the woman.
She turned serious for a moment. Probably thinking up a pretty good story to spin for them. Like he’d buy anything this woman was selling.
It would all turn out to be rope.
“The disk would have taken you into my backyard,” she said. “At least metaphorically. Why did you destroy it?”
“Someone died and left it lying around where any fool with a touch of power might have accidentally triggered it,” Stewey replied harshly. “Folks buying the place were as mundane as bricks, but that would have just meant that they would have probably hired a team of contractors to rip it out with a backhoe. I can only imagine what would have happened then.”
Stewey did appreciate the shudder that ran through her involuntarily. Made her almost look human.
He still wasn’t fooled though. Oh, total babe, sure. Blonde hair. Green eyes. Teeny but well-built. Dangerous in so many dimensions he didn’t bother classifying them all.
Warlock so powerful Stewey figured he’d have to go back to some of the ancient records to find a match.
He didn’t think there were true immortals, but she claimed to know one, and Stewey suspected she was one herself.
“That’s why we broke it softly,” Stewey continued when she looked at him again. “Sure as hell weren’t about to walk it open. No clue what might have come through. Or where we’d have landed.”
“You’d have met me, quickly,” she said soberly. “But nobody had told us that Faucher was dead.”
“That the guy that lived there?” Stewey asked, noting that Dan was still shoveling and chewing, but listening. “Been dead for a couple of years, according to the agent handling the sale.”
Her eyes got a faraway look to them. Like she was about to ask him what was a decade to a being millennia old. Old farts were always like that.
Long, damned time to a twenty-eight-year-old warlock, lady.
Maybe she read his intent. She smiled.
“We’ll need to do better, next time,” she said simply.
“Next time you do what?” Stewey went ahead and asked.
This didn’t feel like just dropping a new disk somewhere. Worse, maybe she was so damned powerful that it was.
Stewey had done the math out of sheer cussedness. Would probably take him most of a year working at it full tome to purify that much gravel and the stones that held the outer ring if he wanted to do something so stupid. The Kolodny Brothers were going to scrape it all up and sell it off to warlocks needing material components for stuff. Not much magic in the gravel, but damned pure, the way they’d handle it. Would hold another enchantment really easy if someone needed that sort of thing.
No, the power had been lodged in those six coins. The ones that would have taken him about a year apiece to form. And he was faster than anybody he knew at that sort of thing.
She studied him closer. He could feel the spell she sent across the table. Nothing powerful. Mostly poking for information. Wouldn’t get much that way, with the things he had stashed in pockets to block that crap. Maybe she already knew that.
“That disk existed to facilitate communications and travel between the two continents,” she explained.
Duh, lady. Easy way to walk without leaving passport traces. Where else does it go?
“And?”
Stewey was feeling his oats this morning, cute babe warlock or not.
“There are others,” she replied. “Just not as directly, obviously.”
“Know where you can get a really good deal on a bunch of gravel and stone, if yer figuring to build you a new one,” Stewey said, maybe with a touch of sarcastic menace.
If she was that old, she was probably rich enough to afford it. Might teach her to pay closer attention to her toys next time and not leave a loaded firearm where a toddler warlock might get hurt because they didn’t know any better.
“The Kolodny Brothers, yes,” she nodded. “My connections suggested that they had been contacted to remove the load, as soon as the house sale closed.”
“Is there anything else in the house that needs to be removed or closed?” Dan spoke up now.
Stewey hadn’t felt anything when they were there, but he also hadn’t walked every room with an orb that had been enchanted to glow in the presence of bound magic. Why the hell would you, if the place has been stripped to the walls already?
“I don’t know,” the woman replied.
Stewey grunted, mostly in surprise. Most warlocks were never willing to actually admit any sort of shortcoming. Too stubborn and arrogant. Always wanted to sound like a damned Sphinx instead, blathering nonsense and hoping you didn’t notice the hand-waving and fancy footwork when they ran out of knowledge.
“How soon will the new owners take possession?” she asked, turning to look at both of them.
“Usually, thirty days,” Dan replied. He was the one who dealt with Kate and her real estate needs. “I can ask Kate in a few hours and get an exact date. Would your friend, or acolyte, or whatever he was have left things in disarray?”
“Associate,” she corrected Dan.
Stewey heard her emphasis on the word in such a way that suggested fellow traveler who was occasionally as asshole in her tones.
Stewey figured he was close enough to done eating at this point. Everything but about half the potatoes and half the biscuit, if he ended up walking right now.
“Why should we trust you any farther than I could drop-kick you across the square, lady?” Stewey asked bluntly.
Dan could good-cop this one. That was usually his job anyway. Stewey knew he was too lazy to take all that time at boarding school learning manners and put it to use, most of the time.
At least her eyes had a flash of honest anger in them for a moment, before she suppressed it. Like nobody ever sassed the woman.
Good to know.
