Shadowtrap: A Black Foxes Adventure Read online

  Greyson peered at the distant dark glass surrounding the AI. “Perhaps what we have is a child reading by flashlight beneath a blanket.”

  Timothy grinned, then frowned. “Even if that is the case, John, his programs should compel him to answer our calls.”

  Greyson shrugged.

  Billy Clay stepped to Timothy’s side. “Sorry, Doctor Rendell, but there’s no sign of damage to the optics going in.”

  “Damn,” muttered Timothy. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Finally he said, “Help Sheila run diagnostics.”

  Sheila Baxter turned in her chair. “From what I can see, Doctor Rendell, Avery has a complete memory backup to the moment the lightning struck, but nothing after.”

  “Hmm, quite good,” mused Timothy. “Can you read his current state? What are we going to lose when we reboot?”

  Sheila turned back to the console, her fingers flying over the compad. Beside her, Billy, too, keyed in console commands on a separate pad.

  “What th—?” Billy frowned. “Doctor Rendell, I don’t know what I am looking at here.”

  Timothy stepped forward. A line of perplexity formed between his eyes. Suddenly he straightened up. “Henry, come here quick.”

  Stein, sitting at a distant console, glanced over at Timothy. “I’m busy,” he barked and turned back toward the charts crawling across his screen.

  “Dammit, Henry, get your ass over here now! Stat!”

  Stein glared at Timothy, then stood. “This had better be damned important,” he growled, walking to come to Timothy’s side.

  On the holoscreen a complex spheroidal glitter flashed and sparkled. It was about the size of a cantaloupe. Regions fell dark and others lit up as gleaming fire shivered and shimmered across the surface, flashing from here to there like miniature lightning stroking across a glimmering net. Stein leaned forward and keyed the pad. A name appeared below the glitter: Caine Easley.

  Now Timothy leaned forward and keyed the pad. A different spheroidal glitter appeared: Alice Maxon.

  “Is it a neural map?” asked Timothy.

  Stein shook his head.

  “Then what is it?”

  Stein took a deep breath. “It would seem to be a functioning mental pattern.”

  “Jesus,” breathed Billy.

  Toni thumbed her comband. “Adkins here.”

  “This is Tim. You’d better get down here right away.”

  “What is it, Timothy?”

  “I’d rather not say. Just get here, and now.”

  Toni clicked off her comband and turned to Doctor Ramanni. “Take over here, Alya. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “I’m coming with you,” said Mark Perry.

  Wearily, Toni nodded, and together they started for the AIC.

  “There they are,” said Timothy. In the holo six sparkling spheroids seemed to float and glitter and flash. Under each was a name: Meredith Rodgers, Caine Easley, Alice Maxon, Eric Flannery, Hiroko Kikiro, and Arthur Coburn.

  “There what are?” asked Mark Perry.

  “The mental patterns of the alpha team,” replied Stein, for once the habitual sneer missing from his voice.

  Mark turned up his hands. “So . . . what does it mean?”

  “It means,” said Greyson, “that somehow Avery has subsumed their minds.”

  “What?”

  “He has stolen their mentalities, Mark. Somehow, Avery has sucked their very souls right out of their bodies and has taken them into himself. I believe Hiroko Kikiro said that they would be in a shadow play, but instead it seems they are in a shadow trap.”

  Mark jerked back in startlement then whipped about and faced Toni. “Look, you’ve got to get Arthur out of there. Reboot or something.”

  “We can’t reboot,” said Timothy. “These—these mentalities are in volatile memory, and if we initialize then we quench the minds of the alpha team. No, we’ve got to find a way to get Avery to release them.”

  Toni glanced at the doomsday clock on the wall in the AIC, the numbers inexorably ticking down. “And we’ve got just over three hours to do so.”

  Timothy looked at her. “Three hours?”

  Toni nodded. “The turbine and generator are totally ruined and we are running entirely on battery reserve.” She turned to Mark Perry. “Where’s your vidcom?”

  “Why, I left it upstairs with Ramanni.”

  Toni took off running for the door.

  In a small villa on twenty acres in the foothills east and north of Tucson, Kat Lawrence was awakened from a sound sleep by the ringing of her private line. She rolled onto her side and reached for the instrument. “This better be good,” she growled into the blanked vidcom.

  “Kat? This is Toni Adkins.”

  Kat sat up and clicked on the light then shielded her eyes from the glare. Distant thunder rumbled.

  “What is it, Toni?”

  “Kat, I don’t have time to explain it all, but lightning took out our power and fried the backup turbine generator. We’re running on battery reserves and three hours is all we’ve got. I need you to get your bum to humping and get me a backup system here”—Kat could hear as Toni turned away and asked someone named Drew the make and model of the blown turbogen—”an Allen-Breech 100KW, H2 driven.” Again she heard as Toni turned away and asked Drew how much power was needed. “The Allen-Breech is rated at one hundred kilowatts, and we’ve got to have fifty, sixty thousand watts minimum, more if you can get it. Look, Kat, I don’t give a dump whether you have to beg, borrow, or steal a turbogen, just get it here. We’ve got the H2 to run it if that’s the kind you get, but we’ve neither diesel nor petrol nor natural gas, so if you bring one of those, bring the fuel as well.” As Kat swung her feet over the edge of the bed, she heard Toni take a deep breath then say, “And, Kat, this is critical; we’ve got six people who will be brain-dead in just over three hours unless we restore power.”

  27

  Ordeal

  (Itheria)

  “I’m going to need your help,” Kane called, the big man kneeling next to Arton, the thief barely conscious and groaning.

  Lyssa and Arik limped through the stench of the burnt skelga, a pall of smoke layering overhead in the curve of the hemispherical chamber. Kane stood and began stripping off his garments. “Bandages—we’re going to need a lot this time,” he said.

  Lyssa opened the kit and began hauling out white cloth, while Arik gently started stripping Arton of his leathers so that Kane could see where the bandages were needed. As Arik raised the thief up to pull off his jacket, Arton fainted. In moments Kane was naked, and he turned to Lyssa. “Bind the worst of the wounds on my arms, Lyssa; I’ll take care of the ones on my body and legs.”

  Swiftly the ranger obeyed while Kane peered down at the flesh-torn thief as Arik stripped away the rent leathers. “Arda, ripped from elbow to ankle,” said Kane when Arton lay naked.

  Arik stepped to unconscious Rith and began disrobing her.

  Tying the last knot on a forearm bandage, “All done,” said Lyssa, and moved back from Kane.

  “Then strip her,” ordered Kane, nodding toward Rith, as he began quickly binding the more grievous of his remaining wounds.

  Then Kane knelt and examined Arton closely. “The thigh wound is the worst,” he muttered, and he tightly wrapped a cloth about his own left leg in a place identical to where the hole was ripped in Arton’s thigh.

  After another glance at Arton, Kane wrapped a bandage about his own right calf.

  Kane wrapped cloth around his waist next, muttering, “That’s the worst of them. The rest will have to wait.”

  By this time, Rith was naked, and as Kane stepped next to her, Arik stripped out of his own leathers and then helped Lyssa to move Arton next to Rith. Now Kane bound his own body in places identical to Rith’s gaping wounds—right hip, left forearm, left knee, left breast.

  Then Kane turned to Lyssa.

  “Hm,” said the warrior-healer, “looks as if I’ve already covered the a
reas of your legs where the damage is most grave, but your right buttock is torn.” Kane swathed cloth high about his own right leg and waist, wrapping it such that the right buttock was tightly bandaged.

  Finally he turned to Arik. Incredibly, the flaxen-haired warrior suffered nothing but superficial wounds, all of which could wait.

  As Kane sat down between Arton and Rith, he said to Arik and Lyssa, “Bandage whatever’s left when I am done . . . and brew me some lyia tea. I’ll need it.”

  Lyssa knelt next to Kane, and he laid hands on her and said, “Hold perfectly still.” He paused an instant and frowned in concentration, then muttered something under his breath. His hands trembled slightly and a twinge of pain crossed his features, yet for long moments he neither flinched nor moved. At last he released her and allowed a groan to escape his lips as he shifted so that he wasn’t sitting on his right buttock. And lo! Lyssa stood, the worst of her wounds utterly gone. Then Kane took a deep breath and laid one hand on Rith and the other on Arton, and again he concentrated . . . and muttered . . . and trembled . . . but held still . . . then swooned, falling back against the stone pillar as Rith and Arton opened their eyes. And slowly, slowly, the white bandages swathing Kane turned pink, then red, as new welling blood seeped through.

  Kane sipped the lyia brew. “Where did you get the fire?” he whispered, then nodded weakly in understanding as Arik held up a lantern. Kane lay on a blanket from a bedroll, covered by another blanket. The remaining Black Foxes sat about in their torn leathers—all but Arton, who prowled the walls, his fingers brushing along the stone.

  “How long was I out?” Kane whispered.

  “A short while,” replied Arik. “Just long enough for us to bandage the rest of our wounds and get dressed.”

  Kane sighed. “We took a lot of damage. It’ll be a day or so before I recover from this.”

  “Arda, but I am not certain that I can take a full day of this stench,” growled Lyssa, looking up at the haze overhead.

  “It’s diminishing,” said Arton, pacing along the wall, running his fingers over the white granite. “I’m trying to find where the smoke is going. Perhaps there is a secret door. . . .”

  Rith glanced at Arton, then turned to Lyssa. “I think if we smell it long enough we’ll become accustomed to it.”

  Lyssa made a face. “Is that something to aspire to? Familiarity with the smell of burning skelga?”

  Rith laughed and shook her head. “Better that, my dear, than the smell of them alive.”

  “Huah!” exclaimed Arton. “There is a faint sputtering here.” He stood guardedly at the witchfire-warded archway, managing for the moment to control his fear of lightning and all things similar.

  “Careful, Arton,” warned Arik. The warrior glanced over at the corpse of the slain wizard. “Remember what Pon Barius said. That ward is deadly.”

  “And we are trapped within,” muttered Arton. He wetted a finger and held it high, then down at floor level. “Hm, air currents. The smoke is drifting out into the corridor up high, and fresh air is coming in along the floor.” He stepped back from the eerie glow.

  Rith joined the thief and stood listening and observing, then she gestured at the drifting fumes overhead. “I think the sputtering is when some of this pall tries to flow through the ward.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Let us see just how deadly this guardian is.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Rith stepped to her pack and took up Ky’s black main gauche, the weapon recovered from where it had skidded when the syldari had fallen unconscious. Rith squatted by a skelga corpse and used the ebony blade to hack off a finger. “Move over here,” she bade Arton. When he was beside her, Rith cast the severed finger at the witchfire.

  Zzzzt! In a flare of light, the finger vanished.

  Wide-eyed, Arton looked at Rith. “Wah! Deadly is the defender of this chamber.”

  Rith nodded and looked about the hemispherical cell and then back at the witchfire ward. “And it has us trapped within.”

  Slowly Arton moved ’round the pillar, running his hands up and down every inch. Then he ran his fingers across the surface of the crystal coffer. Sighing and shaking his head, Arton stepped back. He stood in thought a moment, then moved forward and tried to heft the vault. “Oof! Blood and bones, but this thing must be made of solid silver! Arik, come help me with this. I need to set the chest aside so I can examine all of the top of the pillar to see if it holds the secret to our escape, though I doubt it does.”

  Together, grunting and straining, Arton and Arik just barely managed to lower the crystal vault to the white marble floor without dropping it. “Devils,” grunted Arton, straightening and pressing his hands to the small of his back, “this was a job for you and Kane and not for this measly soul.”

  Arik looked down at the silver within crystal. “Lord, it must mass three forty, three fifty pounds. How can such a small thing weigh so much?”

  “Crystal itself has considerable heft,” said Arton, “but silver is weightier still—cube for cube it masses four times as much. I would say most of the weight comes from the silver; it must be nearly solid through and through.”

  “Hm,” mused Arik. “We only have Pon Barius’s word that either of these things are actually chests. I mean, perhaps the crystal is a chest in that it contains the silver, but the silver itself, well, it just looks like a seamless block to me. Be that as it may, if it is a chest perhaps there’s something inside that will help us . . . if you can get it open, that is.”

  Arton, now running his hands over the surface of the pillar, cast a sideways glance at Arik and muttered, “Ha! No need to worry about that. Slide it out of my way. When I’m finished here I’ll take a look.”

  Grunting, struggling, Arik managed to slide the coffer a few feet outward as Arton moved ’round the column.

  At last the thief said, “Nothing here,” and then stepped to the crystal vault and knelt beside it.

  “There are no handles, no hinges, no seams, no locks,” said Arik, hunkering down, his gaze attempting to pierce the secret of the coffer. “How does it open?”

  Arton glanced at the warrior and said, “I sense this is the way of it,” and he carefully seized two of the diagonal corners at the top of the cube and with effort twisted and lifted. Off came the top, a large, thick pane of pure crystal. Setting the slab down, Arton then pressed his hands against one of the sides and pushed upward. Slowly it slid up, and when he could, Arton grasped the pane and pulled it entirely free and stacked it atop the first slab.

  “Lord,” breathed Arik, “it’s like one of those puzzle boxes.”

  Arton grinned at him. “Not quite, my friend.” The thief then removed the remaining sides, stacking them neatly onto the pile. He then carefully eyed the ornate silver block, itself a cube some three-quarters of a foot along each side, the silver sitting on crystal—the bottom of the coffer. Moving fully ’round, Arton examined the block without touching it, paying particular attention to the carvings and runes. Arik also looked, but as with the crystal vault, here, too, he could see no handles, hinges, seams, or locks.

  Finally Arton said, “I see no traps.” Then he ran his hands over the ornamented surface, feeling each carving, each rune. After a long while he muttered, “Seven of these need to be pressed in a particular sequence—some five thousand combinations altogether.”

  “Dretch, but that’ll take forever!” declared Arik.

  Arton smiled at the warrior. “Really?” He then turned to the chest and, straining a bit, opened its heavy lid along a seam that was heretofore absent.

  Inside was a small, velvet-lined, empty silver box of a size to contain the red gem.

  “Cruk!” sissed Arton. “This is utterly useless.”

  Scowling, Arton held up the recovered crossbow quarrel. “If I had only put this bolt through Horax instead of the skelga, we wouldn’t be in this fix.”

  “Do not berate yourself,” said Arik, speaking low so as not to waken Kane. “You w
ere saving Pon Barius and could not have known then what hindsight now makes clear.”

  “But he’s got Ky,” growled Arton.

  “And the silver dagger,” added Lyssa.

  “And he’s left us trapped,” muttered Rith, the bard nodding toward the witchfire.

  “Even so,” said Arik, “Arton is not at fault. Instead lay the blame where it belongs—at the feet of Horax.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, then Arik added, “Even if the ward were somehow negated, still there’s the deadly maze beyond.”

  “Oh no, Arik, it’s more than just the maze beyond,” murmured Rith, gesturing at the blanket-wrapped remains of Pon Barius. “Remember, he said that all the wards would be reactivated when we left.”

  Arik cocked an eyebrow at the bard.

  She gestured at the doorway. “Don’t you see, Arik, this ward was reactivated when Horax took Ky hostage and escaped. If he went onward, then all the wards are now reactivated. And even if we do, by some miracle, break loose from this circular prison, we still must pass every one of the remaining deadly wards in order to win our freedom.”

  “Ah me, but you’re right,” said Arik with a sigh. He turned to Arton. “And there’s no other way out?”

  Arton turned up his hands. “If there is, I can’t find it. I’ve examined everything—walls, floor, pedestal—and there’s no hidden door, lever, or whatever. If there were, I’m certain I would have found it.”

  Lyssa looked about. “You haven’t examined the high dome ceiling overhead, Arton.”

  “I can’t reach that,” growled Arton. “Besides, there just isn’t the—the feel of a secret something or other that would let us out.”