Shadowtrap: A Black Foxes Adventure Read online

  The young lady smiled her brilliant smile and continued braiding her long auburn tresses. “But how did you become a King’s Thief?”

  “It was during the trouble with Aldusia, when the High King’s realm was threatened. He was desperate for spies, and sent word that he would pardon me completely if I would come to his aid. Now I ask you, how could I refuse, there being a Wanted Dead price on my head, and several King’s Assassins after my beating heart?”

  “But then, when did you come into contact with the Black Foxes?”

  “Well, Avery, that’s up to you.”

  Her brown hair hanging down ’round her face, Lyssa knelt at the side of the cairn where now lay her father, tears welling in her eyes. “Ah, Da, why did you have to go and die on me, eh? We were almost there.” In the distant vale below she could see smoke rising up from the forest; the far-off camp itself remained unseen, hidden among the trees. Standing and shouldering her pack, Lyssa took one last look at the plain mound of stones. “Some day, Da, someday . . . I’ll come back with a proper marker so that the world will know. Good-bye, Da, I love you.”

  Taking up her bow, Lyssa started down the slope, her feet finding the way in spite of the flood of her tears.

  And in the distance bugles sounded.

  Sweat poured down Arik’s face, salt stinging his eyes. Yet he did not wipe it away, for to do so would cost him his life. Chng! Shng! Steel skirled on steel as again Kaldar attacked, his brute strength and great blade bearing Arik back and back across the woodland glen as the bigger man battered at Arik’s guard. Finesse, Arik, finesse! came the old man’s voice, though he was long since dead. You want me to finesse this mad bull? came Arik’s reply. Exactly so, you flaxen-haired ass! cried the old man. And so Arik stood still, and when came the killing thrust, Arik was not there, or barely, for Kaldar’s sword grazed his ribs, but Arik’s falchion missed not. And as Arik looked down at the slain foe, “Thank you, Armsmaster Orlan,” he murmured and saluted the memory of the old man . . .

  . . . then he set about binding the scrape along his ribs, while in the distance there came the muffled sound of pipes and drums.

  Rith walked into the camp, there in the deep woods. Men stared at her as she made her way toward the center. Perhaps they had never seen a black woman before. Perhaps they wondered if she were there to entertain them—with the lute over her shoulder, or in other interesting ways. Yet they made no advances—catcalls or otherwise—for she fairly bristled with daggers sheathed in bandoliers crisscrossing her chest.

  At the headquarters tent guards stepped to bar the way . . . but she used the Voice on them and they yielded back. Angar looked up as she entered, his eye appraising her bearing, her lute, her weaponry. “Ahn may be a bard, but ahn are na here to play and sing. Ahn are here to fight, na?”

  Rith nodded.

  “Ka ahn use ta blades?”

  Rith’s backhand whipped across and forward. A dagger thnked into the tent pole behind Angar’s head. He felt the wind of its passage. “Chok, feman!” he cried, starting back. “Ahn could hae slew mha!”

  Tall Rith strode forward and with one hand leaned on the table while with the other she reached for the still-quivering knife. Her face inches from his, she smiled a slow wicked smile, her teeth snow-white against the dark brown of her skin. “If I had meant to kill ahn, then ahn would now be dead.”

  She was assigned to the mercenary company.

  Whistling, his spear over his shoulder, copper-haired Kane came striding down from the hills as if he was lord of the woods. A massive pack was on his back, yet he seemed to take no note of its weight. He followed a faint pathway leading down the slope . . . a path heading in the general direction of the clansmen camp, or so he surmised. Overhead the sun stood on high, its golden light shining down, dappling the forest floor. In the distance to the fore a man bearing a crossbow stepped from behind a tree, barring Kane’s way.

  “Hae be ahn kest?” the man called out. He was dressed in browns and greens, but on his head he wore a bright-feathered, tartan cap. He seemed not at all intimidated by Kane’s considerable height.

  “I be on my way to join your clansmen,” called Kane. “But as to my kest, well, at the moment it is to have a meal. Will you join me? I’ve some good meat that’ll go to waste if it’s not eaten today.”

  “Ahn be na a cyning’s lacky, ai?”

  “Me?” Kane bellowed a laugh. “Not likely. He doesn’t pay enough. —Now what about that meal?”

  The man grinned and lowered his bow and waved Kane forward. “Ahn hae ta mete,” he declared, then reached down and hefted up a cloth-wrapped slab of bread, “et ay hae ane lof.”

  Kane shucked his pack and untied a large grizzled brown fur bundle atop. It was a huge bear skin, freshly flensed, wrapped ’round a great roasted haunch of bear meat.

  The clansman’s eyes flew wide and he glanced first at the immense fur and then at the spear and last of all at Kane towering beside him. “Ahn sleagh ane klaa bher!”

  “Arda’s balls, man,” replied Kane, “he didn’t give me a choice.”

  Dressed in mottled grey leathers, tiny Ky stood at the top of the bluff, a sheer drop of two hundred feet or more. She scanned for a way down, but found no path. In the near distance she could see the smoke rising from the clansmen’s camp, her goal. “Damn, damn, damn,” she muttered. Along with her other goods, all her climbing gear had been lost when the boat had sunk. And for as far as her syldari-sharp gaze could see the bluff extended north and south, and no slope offered itself as a way down. She ran her pale saffron hand through her black hair, revealing a pointed ear, and once again looked at the smoke of the clansmen’s cook fires, and this time her stomach rumbled. Oh well, skelga or no, I’m not going to walk twenty hungry miles when the clansmen’s camp lies but a bare league over there.

  Ky scanned the forest floor below, her almond eyes seeking a suitable shadow. There, by the boulder. Next, she turned and looked at the dappled woodland behind. This won’t do, but maybe by that leaning giant. . . . She stepped to the tree. Damn! The shadow here is not deep enough. But then she spied a hollow in the land, and within . . . Ah, nice and dark.

  Ky went back to the rim of the bluff and took a bearing on the boulder shadow and another one on the dark hollow. From its black scabbard she drew her ebon-bladed main gauche, this one especially forged to fit in either hand. “Skelga beware,” she muttered and trod to the cavity and paused in concentration, then stepped into the hollow darkness . . .

  . . . and stepped out from the shadow at the boulder, her black blade dripping a dark ichor.

  “Arton, why don’t you ride north up to the Gallion Tors and see how my plan goes?” Torlon’s words were shaped as a question but Arton knew it was a command.

  Go to the tors and see how the insane plan goes? Ha! I already know the answer to that.

  “Aye, sire,” replied the High King’s Thief, rising from his chair.

  “And oh by the bye, Arton, see can you get me some of those delightful honeyed sweets the clansmen make.”

  Gods! I am nought but an errand boy! “Aye, sire,” replied Arton, bowing and withdrawing from the chamber.

  Gritting his teeth, Arton strode toward his quarters. Here I am, some forty-five summers old and already my life has fallen into a dullness duller than dust. By Arda, but what I wouldn’t give to have some excitement in my life.

  His spear at the ready, Kane quietly slipped forward, making as little sound as his bulk would allow. To his left and slightly to the fore trod Arik. Behind on the flanks came Ky and Rith. Ahead somewhere was Lyssa, scouting. Clutched in Ky’s shadows and in Rith’s silence, stealthily Kane moved across to Arik. “Dretch!” whispered Kane. “In spite of Phemis above, it’s still as black as the seven hells in these deep woods. How will we fathom what be what?”

  “Fear not, m’lad,” breathed Arik. “Soon Orbis will rise and add his light to hers, then we shall see what we’ve come to see. Besides, the darkness makes Ky’s work the easie
r, as long as you don’t stomp on something with those big dogs of yours . . . even Rith couldn’t cover that up.”

  “My dogs? You just watch your own clod hoppers, bucko.”

  Onward they crept, eyeing the shadowed woodland, seeking sentries, and as the major moon rose, they spotted the two just where Lyssa had said they would be. Past these sentinels they stole, making not a sound. Time passed, but finally they were clear of the warders, and onward they inched, until at last they came near the edge of a large clearing. Ky and Rith pulled in from the flanks to join them. Rith made a small sound which to anyone else would seem to be but a cricket chirp, yet to Lyssa ’twas clearly a calling of her name. In return she breathed “Rith” under her breath; it was not even a whisper, yet Rith tapped the others on the shoulder and pointed to the place whence it had come. Moving stealthily, they edged forward to where Lyssa waited at the marge, the ranger so perfectly blended within the forest that she had to reach out and touch one of the slow-moving shadows for them to even find her. Beyond the tree line in the light of the twin moons they could make out a large, fireless camp.

  “Lyssa?” whispered Arik.

  “’Tis a High King’s Company,” she replied. “Two hundred men, I ween.”

  “What now?” hissed Rith. “Report to Angar?”

  Ky looked up at them, her canted eyes sparkling in the light of the Phemis and Orbis. “Better yet, let’s take the entire company back to Angar.”

  “Oh, great!” sissed Kane, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Ky has got a plan. Let’s just hope it’s better than the last great plan of hers.”

  Among the prisoners was a silver-templed wiry man—an envoy of High King Torlon. When the envoy discovered how they had been captured by five folk commanding an army of sounds and shadows, he fell to the ground in helpless laughter. The King’s Kommandant eyed him bitterly and briefly considered challenging him to a duel, but then reconsidered when he remembered it was Arton who was doing the laughing.

  As for Arton, along with a keg of honeyed sweets he sent a letter to the High King, a letter noting that he had discovered the faint threads of what was probably a dark plot against the kingdom, and that he, Arton, was going incognito to ferret out the details and reveal the miscreants involved.

  Arton never returned to the service of Torlon, but joined the Black Foxes instead . . .

  . . . and seven years passed.

  9

  Mind, Body, and Soul

  (Coburn Facility)

  “God, it was marvelous!” said Alice. “We actually lived the capture of the High King’s Company.”

  Toni Adkins smiled. “Yes, but that was a story you told to Avery. He merely let you act it out. The conclusion was foregone. You followed your own script. . . .”

  “Except for the injection of Arton,” said Arthur Coburn. “Avery worked out a means for me to become one of the Black Foxes.”

  Doctor Adkins nodded. “Yes, that was a departure from the previous history. But that departure smoothly inserted you into the game.”

  “Hmm,” mused Eric. “If we followed a script, an altered script at that, did we have free will?”

  Toni Adkins raised her eyebrows, then fell into reflection. At last she said, “Perhaps Avery nudged you along certain high-probability paths.”

  Caine scowled. “You mean he controlled our thoughts, don’t you?”

  For the second time in as many days a pensive frown fell across Toni’s features. At last she shrugged. “That I cannot say, Doctor Easley. If he did, then it was merely to get Arthur into the Black Foxes.”

  Eric looked at Caine and nodded. “Yeah. That’s what’s bothering me, too—thought control. Oh, not that I mind so much being pulled through a script we wrote, but Avery also implanted fragmentary memories of seven years of Black Fox experiences. And that’s what scares me—direct memory implantation. If this falls in the wrong hands . . .”

  “That’s one of the reasons I want to retain complete control of Avery and others like him,” said Arthur, “so that they won’t fall into the wrong hands—to the ill of mankind. Like any tool, it’s the person in control who determines what use it will be put to, and I want to make certain, in Avery’s case and the ones who will follow, those uses are beneficial.”

  Hiroko grinned at Arthur. “Well said, Uncle Lightfingers.” Then she blushed and put her fingers to her mouth in embarrassment. “Oops! That was Ky speaking.”

  Arthur leaned forward across the table and patter her hand. “That’s all right, my dear; I have the same memories.”

  Once again they sat at dinner—the alpha team and the staff managers. It was the end of the third day of mapping. Tomorrow would begin Avery’s test.

  Alice turned to Doctor Adkins. “It was so absolutely real. I mean, the death of my— of Lyssa’s father, well, it was devastating. Even now— even though I know it was not real, still, if I burst out in tears . . .”

  Doctor Greyson lowered his chin and cast an askance look at Toni Adkins. “The ethics of manipulating people’s emotions—”

  “Faugh!” snorted Doctor Stein. “It’s no different from a well-cast, well-acted vidplay.”

  Toni scowled at Doctor Stein. “Perhaps you are right, Henry. Perhaps a deeply moving play or book or vid has the same effect. But then again . . .”

  Alice shook her head. “It’s different to me, Doctor Adkins. In a play or a book or anything else, the viewer, the reader, the whatever, is not embedded in the scene but is separated from it instead—by space, by the medium, by the environment surrounding the experience. But in Avery’s virtual reality . . . well, at the time, you are living it. It is real. It is happening at that very moment. There are no environmental or mental clues to tell you that what is happening is not a true event. And that’s why Lyssa’s father’s death was so. . . so devastating.” Tears ran down Alice’s cheeks, and Eric put his arm around her as she fished about for a tissue.

  “Bah!” sneered Doctor Stein. “This blubbering over a virtual reality—”

  With a sharp pam! the glass in Caine’s hand shattered. The huge man, his rage barely held in check, leaned forward and transfixed Stein with a savage glare, the blood in Caine’s eye more violent than the blood dripping from his palm. “Shut. The fuck. Up.” he gritted.

  Doctor Stein was astonished by Caine’s wrath, and he looked around for support, but only stony silence greeted him. His chair clattering backward, Stein leapt to his feet and hurled his napkin to the table and stormed from the room.

  Toni’s gaze followed his retreating form. “If he wasn’t so goddamned brilliant—”

  “Brilliance does not excuse an ill-mannered asshole,” growled Caine, as Hiroko wrapped a cloth ’round his hand.

  “He’s a jerk,” hissed Hiroko.

  “From a long line, I’m afraid,” said Toni, slowly shaking her head in resignation. “His father—his whole family—they’re Veritites.”

  “Oh bloody hell,” groaned Eric. “Goddamned plain-talkers.”

  “Meredith struck a pose, finger upraised in admonition. “Reject the shifting veils of diplomacy. Say what you mean; mean what you say—the truth shall set you free.”

  “And be damned the social consequences,” added Alice.

  “Exactly so,” said Toni. “Only in Henry’s case it’s extreme: he was raised as an Elite Veritite.”

  “Oh my,” said Meredith. “No wonder he sneers down his nose at everyone.”

  “Why do you put up with him?” asked Hiroko, directing her gaze at Toni.

  Toni sighed. Because he is a genius. Without him Avery would never have been. —And I do mean never.”

  Kane clenched his now bandaged fist. “That may be, Toni, but one of these days someone is gonna smear that so-called plain-talking mouth all over his face.”

  Long, silent moments passed. Finally Doctor Adkins spoke: “Doctor Maxon, that Avery had such a profound effect on you—on Lyssa—does however demonstrate the vast potential he has in treating the mentally disturbed. Too,
his effect on the criminal mind cannot be overlooked. In fact, in all areas of the abnormal psyches, AIs like Avery will provide us with the means to permanently remedy unacceptable behavior.”

  Greyson sighed. “Yes, but who will define unacceptable behavior, and where will it stop?”

  Again a pall of silence descended on the group. At last Alice said, “Well, all I know is that Avery touched my very soul.”

  With Timothy Rendell in tow, Meredith followed Doctor Greyson to the lounge, the others drifting after. Greyson took his customary seat—a high-backed leather chair facing one of the wide windows overlooking the Catalina Mountains. Up in the peaks lightning shattered the darkness in drawn-out coruscating bursts, and stuttering flashes illuminated the low-hanging clouds from within. Greyson seemed mesmerized by the display.

  “May we join you?” asked Meredith, tilting her head toward a leather sofa at hand.

  Greyson looked up and smiled. “Please do.”

  Meredith pulled Timothy down beside her. “Doctor Greyson, Alice’s comment made me realize that there’s one more question that I’d like to ask.”

  Greyson’s eyebrows shot up. “Just one? Oh, my dear, surely that’s not all.”

  Meredith grinned. “Ah, you see beyond my subterfuge, dear doctor. But one will do for now.”

  Greyson spread his hands wide, palms up, and canted his head. “I am at your service.”

  Meredith gestured at Timothy. “Tim here tells me that the mind is nothing but an artifact of biological functions”—she tapped her temple—”functions of the wetware in our brains. But I’ve always thought of my spirit, of my soul, as being the true me. When I challenged Tim’s view, he referred me to you.”

  Greyson heaved a great sigh and took off his glasses and twiddled with them. “Miss Rodgers, you speak of dualism—the view that the world consists of mind and matter . . . or the belief that the human being consists of body and soul. Or that the body is merely a temporary biological house for the consciousness.”