School Days - Play With the Dog, She Said

Mikail history story

School Days - Play With the Dog, She Said

Stormy <godbossman@gmail.com>

"Paolo," came a strangely edged voice out of the darkness on the other side of the fitfully burning pyre, and Paolo almost thought he'd imagined it. After a moment though, it continued, "I'm going to need your help."

Paolo made his way past his sleeping teammates, both wounded and whole, and leaned tiredly on a pole of the tent to stare in vain past the smoky fire, where the ones not lucky enough to be sleeping were burning, after the voice's source. "Mikail? Your voice sounds… strange. Did it beat you, too?"

A rasp. A cough. After a brief pause, hysterical laughter with that strange edge filled the air, and even in his exhaustion Paolo had to quell the instinct that tried to shift his ears away. "No. The dog has been destroyed, which neutralized the Qwellnyr. The Shrine is open… but after we drop the scroll off down there, I'll need your help." He strode jerkily out into the firelight suddenly, and Paolo stared in shock.

It was his older half-brother Mikail, but a bloody, patched Mikail - and some of the patching had been done with other materials. A tentacle coiled from his right eye socket, as blue as his eye had been. Something that looked like spines protruded from the left side of his neck, waving languidly in some unseen breeze. A rent in his chainmail shirt revealed a swath of grey scales like an invasion on Mikail's pale skin.

He planted a staff with the long, metallic head of the Qwellnyr impaled on it in the soft ground. Letting it go to stand free, he reached up with a hand from which two fingers had been shorn, showing Paolo the large, evilly clawed bird talon which had replaced them as he brushed back his hair on one side. The eye-tentacle brushed the other side back, and Mikail struck a pose that showed off the back bent angle of his left leg. "I am intact and breathing. It worked…"

—

It certainly was a beautiful morning, the lemon sun shining in the tea sky, clouds drifting by like ice cubes. Paolo looked around in the glow. He stood atop a rim of broad cliffs that surrounded a valley, their inner purplish slopes draped in yellow flowering vines that trailed all the way down to the valley floor far below. Seizing one, he tried to tear it loose. After some strain it reluctantly tugged free of its rooting, although it seemed to be anchored lightly along the walls as well.

He waved the vine over his head and called back to the ones awaiting word. "This looks like it! Come on up!" He dropped the one in his hands and wrapped them around a handful of the vines. Straining, he tried to tear them loose, but the combined strands were stronger, their grip on the cliff more secure.

Mikail had topped the ridge while he pulled. "Are they strong enough to climb down?"

Paolo pushed his hair back away from his eyes. "Not singly, but a handful of them should hold any of you."

Mikail nodded absently, his eyes scanning the thickly forested valley below. "No sign that this `Shrine of the Unworkable' really exists, though. This is probably just another time waster, and we don't have much time left."

"We had to pick one or the other to start with, and this looks a lot easier than the `hole in the water'," said Paolo, defending his choice.

"You neglect to mention all the time we've spent in the last two weeks combing these islands. Sand, rocks and some trees, set in water. Boring."

Paolo sighed. "The old man said `high, sheer walls'. This fits… he said there were hundreds of islands all in one cluster. How was I to know they'd all look the same?"Mikail shrugged. "Mom sure screwed us on this one. Six weeks to finish a problem with rather questionable parameters, and then we find out she dropped us half the length of Garwan away with only sailboats to get between there and here."

"But the sea voyage was fun," objected Paolo. "Besides, this place looks as deserted as all the rest of the islands we've checked out. Maybe we needed to be half a world away to find anyone who knew where it was, and the sea voyage to give us all some time to rest up. She did say this one was going to be tough."

"They all are," countered Mikail. "Go ahead and take a look for whatever this place is supposed to be. I'll get the rest up and over, here."

"If I don't find anything in an hour, I'll be back."

"And if we haven't seen you in an hour and a half, we'll come looking. Head north, circle 'round, and we'll expect you from the south. Don't get in any trouble you can avoid, yet."

"I won't. See you soon." Paolo took off, his arms becoming wings. He circled once, a huge albatross watching as Mikail began to help the others up onto the cliff rim from the beaches to the east. They'd drawn the sailboat in which they'd been searching these nameless islands up pretty far, to avoid having to chase it when one of the freak tides Garwan was prone to came along and washed it away. It had almost gotten away the first time.

As he soared away to the north he swept out a bit to the west, over the forest. The Shrine of the Unworkable had been part of the story of the end of the world told by the people they had spoken to, a cataclysmic tale that was whispered at night by the eldest present near a fire, lest the moon hear them.

Unlike many tales of the end of the world, this one had already happened.

Paolo thought back over the story as the sun continued its rise. Apparently the last age of Garwan had been one of incredible technomancers riding metallic horses across the plains, soaring in artificial birds through the skies, and swimming as mechanical fish in the seas. They called the lightning down from the heavens and harnessed it to their machines. Those machines delved out enormous pits and built sky-scraping towers that dominated the moonless heavens.

The pits bred genetically enhanced horrors, which the tower residents used as their soldiers in the petty wars which they waged to pass the time as they studied, learned and built.

Gwen, an angelically-winged female body housing the most powerful of the Technomancers, owned a palace she had suspended in mid-air to be closer to the skies she flew in. She had reached farther into the heavens than anyone else ever had and looked even further. She was ecstatic to learn that Garwan was not alone in the universe. Other places, other fertile lands gleamed like jewels in the light of alien stars… and she coveted them. All of them.

Finally given a reason to engage in warfare to accomplish something other than the passing of time, Gwen took over Garwan. She whispered, she cajoled, she convinced, and she persuaded those she desired to her cause. She politically assassinated, drove insane, murdered, and stole the souls of those who opposed her. She turned her enemies' brains into the helpless computers of her first wave of drones, exploratory craft she launched into the great universe to survey her new lands.

While she waited for them to return, she built her fleets. When Gwen's military might was launched the skies were filled for three days - one could not see the sun, it is said, for all the ships that departed, fleet after fleet after fleet. Her forces arrayed impressively throughout her solar system, she readied her assault on an entire universe.

The universe struck first.

The scouts she'd so contemptuously cast out to the intergalactic winds had been detected quite imperceptibly by something she hadn't anticipated, a member of an alliance of those who had made it out among the stars first.

The alliance was comprised of eight different races, each of which had settled vast areas of stellar territory. Two races were conquerors, the Urhdahl and the Humans. Two were traders, the Drostar and the Orarc. Two were mystics, the Grynish and the Cinruss. The last two could best be described as builders, the Argan and the Ssarntor. They had all arrived at a balance that allowed them to get along with life called the Grand Huit.

The Cinruss, insectoid masters of magic, encountered Gwen's intruders and queried the Drostar and the Humans (whose brains the probes' computers resembled the most). When both denied any knowledge of them and suggested an inquiry, the Grand Huit took the probes simultaneously, snatching them out of the interstellar voids in a concerted effort led by the Cinruss.

They found human brains within, from a world they'd never found. Set free of their slavery, the naked brains of those Gwen had so poorly used eagerly told the Grand Huit everything they needed to know, though not much they wanted to hear.

When the exiles of Garwan, as they came to be known among the Grand Huit, were offered blessed destruction as a surcease from pain (for none of them could be saved, as Gwen had indeed wrought well - apart from the scout ships, they could only wither away), they led the Urhdahl in their first assault on Garwan already screaming, "Vengeance!"

The war destroyed the entire solar system around Garwan, although Gwen's technomantic arts recreated Solus, her star. The last of the exiles eventually broke through her defenses and brought her sky palace crashing into the sea.

Gwen apparently died in that crash, and the Grand Huit told the few survivors of the cataclysm that followed that they would never again be allowed to engage in the technomantic arts. The Grynish changed the world somehow, and the forces of technology grew confused, faltered, and stopped. The Argan built a moon for Garwan, and the Urhdahl occupied it and called it Dirhtekha, or protectorate in their tongue.

No technology utilizing other than natural forces had been attempted since the Grand Huit resumed their other interests and left Garwan, as things got tense when the first water-mill was created. The Urhdahl came down to inspect the mill, four arms crossed over two legs in the darkness as their serpentine lower bodies slithered over each other.

It was permitted to exist, however, as were the sailboats we traveled here in, reflected Paolo. Some technology works here, but the people were afraid because any new unveiling brought the Urhdahl's attention to bear.

There were two theories as to why the Urhdahl, and thus the Grand Huit, still had an interest in Garwan after all this time. The first was that they never wanted to face another Gwen, and were merely keeping an eye out for world conquerors and magical technology, any sign of which they would stamp out ruthlessly.

The second reason was why the team had been out here searching for golden hair. The way the old man had put it in his quiet whisper, Paolo had thought he was searching for some blonde princess, but the only woman they'd seen out this way was dark-haired, and dead as well. Mikail had cautioned him to keep an open mind. The vines fit the image perfectly.

In the valley was supposed to be the Shrine of the Unworkable, but the man had been as vague on the details about the Shrine as he had been over where it was. Some sort of treasure trove of Gwen's darkest knowledge and deepest secrets, guarding itself with something called the Qwellnyr - an odd name even for here, and the way the old man said it made it sound as if it might be plural.

Presumably, it was hiding from the Grand Huit, who had gone over the place pretty thoroughly and (if you believed they still remained) traversed the skies nightly. The old man believed they weren't so much watching the survivors as for the Shrine, to eradicate the last traces of Gwen's works.

An age of the world was usually a long enough time to wipe away such traces… but you could see the Grand Huit's work in the obviously artificial moon, and the team had sailed past a vast roaring whirlpool that was purported to be the place where Gwen's palace had crashed down out of the sky, hitting so hard that it tore a hole in the floor of the ocean.

A hole in the water was one of Mom's landmarks, so some of the things she had mentioned had clicked together. The Shrine of the Unworkable had to be the `place where Gwen did her best work' where Clarissa wanted the scroll dropped off.

Mikail had argued otherwise, saying that it was instead the site of the crashed sky palace, and the Shrine was merely a myth to confuse travelers. As the one who would have to go for a look first if Mikail's guess was right, Paolo had eventually gotten him to agree to check out the story of the Shrine first in exchange for a promise to help him out with a new project of his.

Mikail needed his help to finish an enchanted protective amulet that would incorporate a facet of Paolo's own ability to change shape, allowing it to become a cloak and cover several at once with its protective aura. Mikail had broken the silence he'd kept over his last project to ask for Paolo's help on this one. He was almost as cryptic sometimes, reflected Paolo, as their mother Clarissa.

Two more of their mother's cryptic remarks, play with the dog and knock on the door, still hadn't been explained but might be further hints as to what Paolo might be looking for. He was looking hard - he didn't want to dive headfirst into a maelstrom which was reputed to be a route to this place's underworld. That part of the legend might turn out to be true.

Instead, he found himself roaming low in the sky above an extremely tall, misty tropical forest in what might have been an ancient meteor crater, or more likely the cone of some huge volcano, extinct before sentience walked Garwan. There was pale greenery above, but the predominance was darkly mottled purple tree trunks hung around with the same vines the rest of the team were now climbing down. They climbed the trunks without flowers, saving those up to adorn the canopy above, dotting it here and there with yellow.

It could have been pretty, if the ambiance hadn't dictated otherwise. The mist did not hang in the air above the trees. It clawed its way up from the miasma beneath, dripping upward into the air like the slow scream of the forest. The canopy looked like jaundiced leprosy. Something old, something strong-willed was here, and its strain against the rules the Grynish had imposed on Garwan had ruined the lifeforce here - or at least, that's what it looked like. The miasma itself might be why the Urhdahl had never detected it - this place didn't just discourage visitors, it actively tried to convince you not to look at it directly. Just his luck he had to study it.

It got thicker toward the center of the crater, and he angled that way, feeling fairly confident that more cloudiness meant more that needed to be hidden.

He dipped down toward the cloud cover to get a closer look at the tree canopy near the center, preparatory to a dive beneath it. He'd shifted himself a set of filters, quite ready for the miasma to be something horrific.

It got a bit darker as the near-noon sun was occluded by the mist itself, but that was it. He checked the filters and found air, water, and the tiny bits of forest junk that get suspended in mist. Nothing evil, nothing poisonous, nothing unusual… quite suspiciously boring, actually. Maybe all of this is an illusion, thought Paolo.

The tree cover looked pretty complete, but the branches beneath looked sparse enough to be flown through. Paolo braked his speed until he almost fell downwards, and slid beneath the mottled canopy. Expecting from the visuals something like a wet corpse shroud to part around him, he instead felt the light slaps of a few leaves and the sting, quickly disappearing, of a resilient branch as he finally cleared the underside of the canopy. The trees felt normal, healthy - more evidence his guess was right. Final proof was provided by the absence of the miasma at this level, though it could be seen clearly from above.

That was when he saw the entrance, or as he put it later to Mikail and the rest of the team, "The DOORS." The upper section of a huge outcropping of stone in the center of the forest was sheared off flat on most of its southern side.

Those of Shadow Earth who got to see it might refer to the architecture as ancient Egyptian, fooled by all the huge stonework and mistaking the eight massive guardian beasts for sphinxes. There was even a statue that had to be Gwen, her wings suggesting the Egyptian animal-aspected humans, but there the similarities ended. For one thing, ancient Egyptian statues are not normally depicted holding pairs of sunglasses.

A massive pair of doors thirty yards high and fifteen wide, big enough to pass a battle-mech or a mobile suit, had been carved right out of the mountainside. They dominated the relatively short plateau, a plaza defined and guarded by the outermost statues. As Paolo swept in a bit closer to one of them, he could see that it most resembled a hippogriff, albeit with what looked like a vulture's beak.

After another circle to verify that nothing dog-like was depicted he gained more altitude, climbed back above the tree canopy and the rising mists to verify his position at the center once again, and then allowed himself to dip once again.

He started a painstaking survey of the ground as he headed toward the others. They relied on him for good recon, and he'd become very good at it under Iolishi's tutelage. If only it counted for more with his half-brother…

He shook his head to get his mind back on the job and reached the others in short order, the place not being much more than a few miles across all told.

The others listened to him under the noon-time sun and headed off westward into the trees, Paolo walking with the others while Nik and Tally scouted on ahead and Iolishi covered their back trail.

After draining about half its contents, Paolo slung the water sack someone had tossed him and wiped his mouth. "There's only one thing on the plain that doesn't look like one piece with the rest. Most of the statue's base is stone, but the front is metal. Fits perfectly, but it's not really a part of the statue."

"Which has to be of Gwen. The sunglasses are just stone, like the rest?"

"Yup."

"Maybe the metal thing's the Qwellnyr, which may also be Mom's `dog'. It's at her feet, right?"

Paolo nodded. "Well, if it's some technomantic toy, it's long dead. The Grynish did a number on this place."

Mikail laughed. "I know, I can smell it. If it were dead, though, the Urhdahl would have found it by now."

"If they're still up there," said Paolo. "The old man said they hadn't been seen in generations."

"These people are sheep. They weren't the powers here - those all died when the Grand Huit came after Gwen. They haven't tried anything new in generations. Why would the Urhdahl have been seen?"

Paolo chuckled. "Well, if nothing else, it's made them excellent sailors. They learn the same things, generation after generation."

Mikail nodded, his eyes distant again. "It's a fair bet, though," he said after a moment, "that the Shrine's keeping itself hidden. I'm only just learning some of the ways that that can be done, and this Gwen was a master by all accounts. If she were strong enough, she could have guarded an area against the Grynish."

"She didn't know they existed. If she had any inkling they were out there, she would have played it very differently."

"Paranoid people sometimes build vaults to hide things from imaginary enemies, and Gwen could have built quite a fortress out here. Besides," suggested Mikail, "what if she intended to clean house here on Garwan? The Grand Huit did an excellent job for her. Maybe she's just inside the door. Maybe Mom's scroll is an invitation to an old friend of hers to a party, or something?"

Paolo laughed, but then stopped, and stroked his chin. "There's something to that. Gwen sounds like Mom's type."

"Maybe even Mom's shadow," interrupted Mikail.

Paolo thought it more likely that Gwen was Mikail's shadow, a comparison he didn't think Mikail would appreciate properly, so he changed the subject. "I was thinking the scroll might be something Mom knew about the technomantic arts that she wanted to put away for a long time."

Mikail looked thoughtful. "Interesting theory. I guess I can see Mom doing something like that."

"You don't think Gwen died?"

Mikail shook his head. "When you're that good, you have too many failsafes. Stored brain patterns, clones, artificial bodies, shadows of yourself you can possess for all I know. I think that even if she died, she's alive now."

"Then why hasn't she done anything? Anyone with the ego to build that statue, to say nothing of an attempt to take over a whole universe at one stroke, would never have just gone underground and given up."

They started up a slight incline, and the trees grew thicker around them. The ambiance was different down here. It smelled clean and bright, but there didn't appear to be any birds. No insects, no buzzing or humming of warbling. One odd squeak had proven to be two branches rubbing against one another. An eerie absence of most sound followed them, as the wind didn't dip much into the crater.

Mikail smiled. "If I'm right and all she was doing was getting the Grand Huit to do her housecleaning for her, she may have done it solely for the sake of peace and quiet. Maybe we're about to invade her personal retreat."

"Well, at least Mom told us to knock. Supports your theory, too."

"She also told us to play with the dog. Maybe she wants us to wake it up, make it functional again." Mikail grinned. He was going to remember that grin later on. "Anyway, you were right. The Shrine exists, and those doors have to be the ones Mom was talking about."

Eventually, Tally came back to report that they were nearing the outcropping, and could make out those doors.

Mikail called a rest halt, and the team settled to the forest floor while they broke out and consumed a small lunch. He started assigning people to various details as he began creating a high canvas canopy above them that would become the roof of their communal tent.

Beritha, Gaston and Zulwig were assigned to Iolishi, who was told to circle the outcropping and see if there were any other openings, up close down at ground level - if not, she was to bring her team into the courtyard by coming right over the outcropping from due north, scaling down the doors.

Paolo was assigned Nik, Tally and Walter to make the frontal attempt, which meant that Mikail remembered their agreement and was giving him a shot at first-in, which Mikail usually reserved for himself.

The last three unassigned people, Sha'neth, Veltayn, and the grumbling old mage Jantor, stayed with Mikail as his reserves. They'd set up camp here while the first two teams set out. Jantor was nearly useless here, due to what the Grynish had done to the local laws. He had verified that something about their effects had changed here, but not enough to let him use his not-inconsiderable powers. The team's access to high-tech gear and their own varied scholarly and practical technical expertise were likewise near useless - the Grynish had done a thorough job.

Paolo led his team straight to the outcropping, and considered his first problem. Gwen had been a flyer, and the stone was rough and unworked for about twenty yards up. They could climb, or he could ferry them up to the top.

He reminded himself to ask Mikail if he could make flying boots, and told them to climb. They tossed ropes up, hooking grapnels over the raised forelegs of the hippogriffs at three corners of the plaza far above them, and started up the rockface toward the plateau.

He flew up a bit and rode back and forth in a wide but slow updraft, dividing his attention in three directions to watch his folks climb, the summit for signs of Iolishi's team… and the section of metal pedestal they had tentatively tagged as what the old man had called the Qwellnyr, which might also be the dog Mom had referred to. He wondered uneasily for a moment whether it liked to chase birds. This afternoon was a perfect day for it.

His folk were almost at the top when it happened. The metal thing… rustled, was the best way to put it. It was not a solid piece, but an incredibly worked technomantic creation. Paolo laid hands on a gun back where he'd slung the useless thing, on the theory that if that thing could move the gun might work here, when he shifted gears and dove.

Just as or after the thing rustled, two of his folk had fallen. Walter slumped unmoving on the edge of the plateau and was ignored for the moment by Paolo, who was diving to catch Nik, Tally being more likely to survive the fall.

He caught him, and found out he'd wasted his time. Nik was dead, his throat and neck pierced as if someone had run a sword through it… but no one had gotten near him.

He didn't have enough time to catch Tally, but she yelled as she hit some of the shrubbery shrouding the base of the outcropping, the sound choking off to a whimper. Paolo raced to her side, setting Nik's body down nearby. "Tally?"

She was already getting to her feet, her right arm hanging by her side staining her clothing with bright blood. "What was that? My arm's ripped to shreds! How's Nik?"

"I don't know what happened. The metal thing, the Qwellnyr, rustled when it happened." Paolo sighed as he started to bind up the long slash that had been cut deep into Tally's arm. "As for Nik, he's dead. I'm going to go check on Walter. Did you see anything that might be a clue as to what did this? Did swords come out of the stone?"

"Swords, my ass. Something like a bug came at me, I tried to brush it away and now my arm's near useless!"

"Something like a bug? We haven't seen anything alive other than us and the trees. Did you get a good look at it?"

"I didn't get any look at it! I just heard this buzzing like an insect's wings." Tally had never liked bugs. "So I tried to swat it and got swatted instead. I wouldn't have lost my grip on the rope if it hadn't startled me."

"Not to mention losing the use of an arm."

"I didn't lose all of it, and it didn't even hurt until after I hit. Sharp cut."

Paolo tied off his work and inspected it before stepping back. "Well, it's sealed as cleanly as I can manage. Take Nik's body back to Mikail, tell him what happened, and tell him to get his ass up here."

"And you?" She didn't comment on Nik, or her arm. Tally coped pretty well with most things.

"I'm going after Walter, and then I'll find Iolishi and let her know what happened… if it hasn't happened to her team already."

Tally nodded, and started picking Nik up. "Okay, go on and get Walter down. I'll take care of this lump." She turned to the lifeless body of the man who up until a minute ago had been her partner. "Time to check out, Nikki," she murmured softly to him as Paolo took off, thinking he couldn't hear her.

He could hear her quite well, but wasn't about to intrude on the little sentimentality Tally allowed herself. Mikail would have Paolo roasted over a slow fire if he caught him invading another team member's privacy.

He sailed up near Walter, trying not to get too close in case whatever controlled the sharp things was set off by proximity. The pedestal section up there had rustled as it happened, so Paolo tried to keep an eye on it as he inspected Walter from about twelve feet away… and couldn't see a thing wrong with him.

Walter looked for all the world as if he'd dozed off, draped precariously on the edge of the drop. If the hippogriff had been alive, it would have set its hoof down on his head, but the other statues hadn't moved at all. Walter couldn't have just gone to sleep, but it was possible he wasn't dead yet. Paolo cursed himself - if he were better at all this, he'd be able to tell if Walter was alive. But that was why Mom was training them, and they didn't have much time left to complete this particular exercise.

He flew sideways, and took a look at the area where Nik had fallen, but couldn't see anyplace from which such a blade might have come. A short recon of the area of Tally's climb also came up blank. Chewing his lip, he finally edged slowly closer to Walter, eventually coming close enough to touch him.

Paolo turned Walter over and found out why Walter wasn't moving. Something had apparently hit him in the back of his head, the entry wound disguised by his thick hair. The exit wound, however, was a messy grey slot where Walter's eyes had been. No sword had done this

• the swordsman would have had to stand in mid-air behind Walter,

where Paolo would have seen him.

The Qwellnyr rustled again and Paolo threw himself away from the cliff without hesitation. He listened for the buzz Tally had mentioned as he flew upward and back, but the sound that stood out was Walter's clothing clawing at the stone like his last handhold as his body slid off the edge and fell.

Something tugged at his sight, but it was gone as he refocussed to seek after it. He drew his own blade as he hovered, letting Walter's corpse look out for itself as it landed below. The Qwellnyr hadn't settled down again this time, and as he watched it changed.

Much faster than any of the other technological constructs Paolo had yet come in contact with, one third of the base of Gwen's statue turned from a rectangular prismatic shape to an elongated, canine form perched on four metal legs as graceful as those of a greyhound. Throwing back its head it howled, and three buzzings raced through the air at Paolo from widely differing angles.

Paolo threw himself downward this time, parrying one of the things which chinged off his sword so fast he still didn't know what it looked like, and dodging another.

The third struck him in the left shoulder, although perhaps struck is the wrong word. It sliced through muscles, tendon and bone almost as fast as it had through the air, and exited his back. Paolo screamed and dropped his sword as he hurtled groundward, the thing having severed a nerve cluster that helped control his left arm and wing in the configuration he'd assumed.

He crashed into the lower branches of a nearby tree, and they snapped after absorbing most of his momentum. They dropped him almost gently eight more feet to the turf below, where he lay semi-conscious as his mind tried to fight past his pain to seal the bleeding of his almost severed arm. The only sound was a hissing as the rope fell from the hippogriff statue's foreleg to coil on the ground nearby, the end neatly severed.

He finally managed to cope with the pain that interfered with his concentration, and after that progress was rapid as usual. He was just sitting up when Mikail, Veltayn and Sha'neth showed up. "Jantor's staying with Tally. She's building a pyre for Nik. What happened?" asked Mikail, in a voice someone might use when asking if the bus had been by yet.

"The metal thing is Mom's dog, and it apparently has something to do with what might be the Qwellnyr - tiny spinning razor disks, as far as I could judge from the ones that hit me and Tally," said Paolo, his voice a bit rusty as his body uncramped from the awful pain, now subsiding as he slumped, drained. "It cut right through me, Mikail. If it had hit my head I'd have died, powers or no."

Mikail nodded as he brought over a waterskin. "Are you up to a brief flight?"

Paolo gulped half the skin, and then shook his head. "I've been flying all day, and now almost had my wing severed. If I try and bring the wings back, I'm likely to bring the slice back with them. I'm also more than a little dehydrated." He drank the other half of the skin, almost flattening it.

Sha'neth tossed him another as Mikail said, "Head back to the tent." He turned to the other two and sent them to find out what had happened to Iolishi's team, as she hadn't been seen or heard from yet.

Paolo headed back, his head aching from the recent effort. Trying to take care of the headache would only make it worse, so he carried it with him like a haze as he headed back to where they'd set up the tent.

Tally came out to meet him, and they joked good-naturedly about the team guideline that suggested letting the wounded cover each other. She told him Jantor was taking a nap, and then took him out to see Nik on his pyre, which she'd built perhaps thirty feet away. They paused briefly for a moment of silence, the way the team said most of their goodbyes, and then started construction on Walter's pyre, connecting it to Nik's on the side away from the tent. They'd light them both later, at sunset.

A closer look at Tally's wound as Paolo took the dressing off, washed it out, and rebandaged it revealed a ripple to the cut. It was straight along her arm, but varied in depth more than it should have. He relayed his knowledge of the hit he'd taken, and the two concluded that while the things did rotate, which caused the buzzing sound, they weren't quite as regular as disks.

A little while later, Iolishi came back in with Veltayn and Sha'neth, helping her carry the bodies of her team. Her left thumb was missing and there was a gash in her cheek, but she was alive. Gaston, Zulwig and Beritha hadn't been as lucky. Their assault had gone worse than his own, with no fliers to back them up.

Walter's body had been brought back as well, and the team labored to provide the other three with pyres as well, building an elaborate platform to array them properly. Nobody bothered waking Jantor - there was no way the old man would help in pure physical labor.

Clarissa was probably going to be mad - she'd said it was tough, not that it was deadly. Five down was almost half the team, the worst they'd ever been hit.

Dusk was upon them as they finished up. Tally went inside the tent to go wake Jantor as Veltayn sat Iolishi down on a big rock and began cleaning the slash on her cheek.

Paolo looked over at Sha'neth. "Where's Mikail?"

"I don't know," came the woman's pleasant alto. "I think he told Veltayn what he was about." She struck fire to two torches and lofted them up in an opposed circling throw, fiery pinwheels rising and falling. Catching both, she began to whirl them above her head, showering sparks prettily as she showed off.

Veltayn nodded to Paolo. "He said he was going to `think' about the problem. He said not to wait up."

Paolo sighed. Mikail might have had some idea about a conjuring trick that could get them past this and just needed some private time to set it up, but the way Veltayn had said `think' meant he was pretty sure Mikail was more likely to be taking his own shot at the dog.

Mikail liked confronting physical problems head on, and the team had grown used to it. Mom had chewed him out more than once for gloryhaunting, but Paolo thought she secretly approved of Mikail's initiative. The team just called it enthusiasm, and let it go at that.

"Who's got the scroll?" he asked, suddenly worried that Mikail still had it with him, but Veltayn patted his pocket and Paolo relaxed.

Sha'neth passed him a torch and they fired the pyre when Jantor and Tally got back. The lot of them stood there for a while and watched the flames, thinking of all sorts of things.

Paolo reflected on some of the personal things he knew about Nik, Zulwig and the rest, but his attention kept returning to Mikail, wondering what he was up to, how he was doing. The only thing that kept him from going after his half-brother was the surety of Mikail's temper being turned on him if he interrupted something important. He considered the possibility of Mikail's death, but dismissed it. Mikail wasn't about to get himself killed in some backwater Shadow. Paolo was sure he'd pick a much higher class place to get killed, and only after having substituted a double.

Dinner was a noisy affair, as the team told stories of the deceased, memorializing them. Tally cried about Nik a little, and Iolishi did the same about Beritha. No one mentioned Mikail.

One by one they turned in as the elaborate pyre continued to burn slowly beneath the light of the artificial moon. Jantor took the first watch, and assured Paolo he'd wake him for his shift or his brother, whichever came first. Deep, dreamless sleep claimed him quickly as his body went to work restoring its reserves.

—

"What happened to you? We faced blades…" but no blade could do that, Paolo finished silently to himself.

Mikail started around the pyre, and his voice had an eerie echo to it. "As did I. I just had an edge." He chuckled, that hysteria-edged sound.

"Here, take a look." A small object came tumbling toward him, and Paolo caught it in his extended palm while stifling a groan, still aching dully. Turning it over in the light of the fire, it was a ring he'd seen Mikail wearing for some time. A square of snowflake obsidian set in a wide band of the black silver called Saerai, which Mikail valued for some reason Paolo had never fathomed, it felt heavy but not unusually so.

"That was my last project," explained Mikail as he drew jerkily closer. "When I found out what we were facing here, I was tempted to believe Mom might have set us up like this just so I could test it."

"What is it?" Other than lovely, meant Paolo, knowing his half-brother was already a master jewelry craftsman. The ring, while fairly simple in design, was exquisitely fashioned.

"It was suPPOSed to be a ring of regeneration. I'd tested it, and it worked fine. That thing can regrow limbs, Paolo." He flexed his left leg, calling attention to the strange bend in the knee as he walked up.

"Testing to destruction isn't really my aim when I'm the laboratory, but I still managed to go pretty far. I can handle most sword strokes with that thing on." Paolo recalled a duel he'd watched during their last mission, and suddenly understood why he'd seen Mikail run through, and then thought he'd been seeing things when Mikail recovered his footing and finished off the Comte d'Ulianess. Mikail had been stabbed, he'd just regenerated.

Mikail himself was going on in that same, raspy voice. "A stab wound, even a big one, doesn't destroy or remove very much tissue at all, just pushes it around a lot. I figured I could handle the Qwellnyr by taking all the damage they did to me while I got close enough to the dog to `play' with it. I lost track of how many times I got hit somewhere around seventeen, but they stopped slicing at me when I reached the dog."

"So what happened to you? Are the Qwellnyr radioactive, or cursed?" Paolo considered the wounds the Qwellnyr had already delivered, and looked at an ugly future.

Mikail shook his head and the quills at his neck grew more agitated for a moment. They went back to their almost hypnotic waving as he said, "I built that ring you're now holding to fix any problem I could have physically, without going overboard and taking care of every possible change. I tuned it well enough that I could get drunk without taking it off."

Paolo handed the ring back to him and Mikail just held it, turning it to catch the firelight in the slightly ridged metal of the band. "I didn't prepare it well enough to withstand the strain of having to heal me so often, so close in succession. A couple of times it was trying to deal with near-simultaneous wounds. I lost track around seventeen because that's when the ring went crazy.

"The Qwellnyr were just laser guided ovals of sharp metal. Some of 'em," he croaked, "were somewhat rusted. They may actually just lie around in the forest until the dog calls them."

"Then they sail in from outside and accelerate to attack speed when it activates them. You took a hit from one of those things, so you know what it's like. I got slowed down once when two of them spun me around as they took my left leg off, but by then I was halfway across the plaza to the dog."

"It just stood there, and kept howling. I turned around and set the new foot down… and this leg was attached to my hip, with my knee out of line over a yard to the rear." He gestured back and down at it. Black insect chitin covered the leg, a fragile-looking limb that looked like it belonged on a huge grasshopper.

"After that, it just got worse." The eye tentacle waved. "This was the last," he said, "and the dog did it with its claws."

"The dog was the guidance system. It apparently couldn't aim the Qwellnyr at itself, and it wasn't a third as effective as they had been."

Paolo winced, looking at him now. "How did you know to go for the dog?" he asked, trying to change the subject.

Mikail slid the ring into his pocket. "I didn't. I was hoping Mom's clue in this case had been a hint, and when I cut the dog in half the blades dropped out of the sky. I collected the ones I could find. I was tempted to keep some souvenirs but I melted them down instead, in case there's another spotter for them around here someplace."

"I tested the doors before I came back. They weren't locked and for all their weight, they swing fairly easily in both directions. If Iolishi had actually reached them she could have gotten in."

"Inside, there's a short hallway, leading to the top of a really big deosil spiral staircase going down. Everything is absolutely perfect craftsmanship, and all of it may have been done by hand. Other than the dog and the Qwellnyr, both accounted for, there's no sign of functioning technomancy up there. What's down below," he finished up, swaying a bit, "is for the morning. I've got to get some sleep."

He started to stumble forward toward his sleeping pallet, and Paolo followed him. "You're just going to sleep? Like that?"

"Keep your voice down. What choice do I have?"

Paolo began to protest, but Mikail cut him off. "How are the others?" Paolo told him briefly as Mikail disrobed, showing a few more new physical abberations off as he sat on the bed.

"They're handling their conditions, and I'm handling mine. We can't fix it here, anyway. We'll need technology the Grynish didn't permit, equipment we didn't bring with us, and time we don't have. The time Mom gave us is up tomorrow night, in case you've forgotten." He shrugged, and lay down, pulling a sheet over him. "We go tomorrow morning. Wake Sha'neth and tell her she's on watch, and then go get some sleep. I'll need you in top shape when we go in there. Who knows what else Gwen set up to protect her private workshop?"

Paolo gave up. "Good night, Mikail."

Mikail mumbled something, but Paolo didn't catch it.

—

Paolo woke up with an immense yawn, and looked about sleepily as his thoughts focused. I must really have needed sleep, he thought. Then he remembered what Mikail had come back looking like, or rather not looking like, and looked around a bit more purposefully.

Of the twelve teammates that had been deposited on Garwan, five were dead. Scattered around the tent were four of the other survivors, and Paolo himself made five.

Sha'neth was arguing with Jantor that the mission should be aborted, that Clarissa would have to see that five deaths so fast meant that this lesson was in ruins. Jantor replied mildly that the danger that had killed them had been defeated, and suggested she wait the last day out.

Jantor was famous for his waiting ability, reflected Paolo sourly, but in this case he's right - this is no time to leave, not when we're so close, and have paid so much. He rather suspected that Sha'neth wanted to get Mikail seen to as soon as possible - the two of them had been sleeping together recently.

Mikail and Iolishi had put their heads together near the tent entrance and were speaking in low tones, gesturing occasionally toward the Shrine. Iolishi seemed to have no problems with Mikail's deformities, although even the loss of her thumb yesterday hadn't fazed her - she knew she would get it back, and that was that. She probably thought the same thing about Mikail's form - whatever else happened, he'd be taken care of, set right.

Past the entrance, Paolo could see that the pyre had finally burned itself out during the long night. No sign of Veltayn or Tally meant they were probably out on patrol. No reason to let security lapse - the Qwellnyr might turn out to be the least of their worries, although if that were true, Paolo wanted out now.

Mikail turned his head toward Paolo and that absurd blue tentacle, perhaps fifteen inches long, brushed his hair back again. He's used to it already, Paolo thought, and he wondered briefly if Mikail would want to keep it, but dismissed the thought pretty quickly. Mikail liked his looks, and was rather fond of binocular vision as well.

"Paolo, are you awake at last? Before she left, Tally said we should poke you with something to see if you were still alive, but I think she just wants to see you impaled on something sharp. Why is that, do you think?"

"You know very well why it is, and yes, I'm awake." Damn Mikail anyway. Tally's animosity toward him sprang from an incredibly botched attempt he'd made at a pass at her. Paolo got out of bed, shaking his head as he mentally replayed the scene. He wasn't normally unlucky or a klutz, but that one time he'd been almost tempted to turn spheroidal to avoid knocking something else over.

He'd broken something that she valued very highly - she'd never bothered to inform exactly what the small glittering pile of shards had been originally, saying that if he hadn't noticed he didn't deserve to know. Paolo began to get dressed, consoling himself with the relationship that had grown up between Tally and Nik afterwards.

He remembered Tally watching Nik on the pyre yesterday evening, and swore softly as he walked to the entrance of the tent. "I'm ready to move, although I'm going to want some food to take with me."

Mikail smiled at him. "We're not so rushed as all that. You may as well eat. We've got some time to pass in any case, until Veltayn and Tally get back. They're off seeing if they can find any of the Qwellnyr left around, and to see if there's been any change in the plaza."

Paolo sat on a bench outside the tent, consuming a good meal provided by Mikail as he contemplated the staff his half-brother had planted last night.

Actually, he was more interested in what was impaled on it, although he could see that last night's impression had been incorrect. The head was in two halves, and was bound around the staff with two strips of what had likely been Mikail's left pants leg. The staff fit fairly neatly into the socket built for the thing's neck, and their vanquished adversary stared at the camp with empty, dull grey eyes.

Mikail sat down across from him, and Paolo looked at him in the light. Really, if you disregarded what he normally looked like, Mikail was a lot easier to take this way than a lot of demons they'd met. At least he could walk, if lop-sidedly, and seemed to be feeling all right. It was just so startling.

Paolo grinned, and indicated the thing on the pole. "When you said last night that you cut it in half, you weren't kidding."

Mikail sighed. "Actually, I settled for pulling the head off at first. I'd actually thrown the damn thing's body half-way across the plaza and was about to spit in its eye when the iris rotated and focused on me. I almost got nailed by incoming Qwellnyr before I cut the head clean in half. I'd have loved to study the whole set-up…"

He shook his head. "I destroyed the body, and… well, you can see what shape the head's in. I only hope she put all her eggs in one basket again."

Paolo nodded, swallowed, and laid his fork aside. "She does seem like the type." He indicated the others around with a head gesture. "In case she didn't, what are your plans? Are you going to let anyone else come in with us?"

Mikail nodded. "Sha'neth said she'd skin me if she didn't get a look at the place, and Veltayn's game. I think they're both just disappointed they didn't get killed yesterday and want to get their own try in today. Iolishi, Tally and Jantor will stay here, and be our back-up in case we end up needing one."

Tally and Veltayn chose that moment to come walking back into the camp, informing the team that they'd found no sign of other Qwellnyr or any activity up on the plateau, although they qualified that by saying they had followed Mikail's orders and stayed off the plateau itself.

Mikail nodded and sent Tally, who'd had the early morning watch after Sha'neth, off to get some sleep. Paolo took that cue to go gather his gear, and saw Veltayn doing the same.

They joined Sha'neth and converged on Mikail. He pulled the staff surmounted by the dog's head out of the ground, turned on his human heel and started into the undergrowth, using the staff to counterbalance himself, as his new leg was the correct height when folded but not while moving. Veltayn dropped back to cover the rear and Sha'neth followed Mikail pretty closely, so Paolo fell in line between them and began cautiously forming another set of wings. He took his time, mindful of his previous injury, and picked an alternative that offered different advantages than those of a single pair of feathered wings.

The team made its way fairly quietly through the forest to the base of the plateau. Paolo saw the others start up the rope Mikail had left tied to a leg of one of the hippogriff statues as he took to the skies once more, this time on the eight-fold wings of a Delian waspic. If the Qwellnyr went after his wings again, he could lose up to four of these (if the strikes evened out by side - three on one side would take him down) without losing too much flight capability, and they didn't have nerve endings. He'd been especially careful about that last bit, setting them barely above the level of a fingernail or claw in terms of sensitivity. He didn't think the Qwellnyr were still active, though. They'd probably have cut the rope Mikail had left if they were still operational.

Aerially surveying the plaza below him, he compared it to what he'd seen at first. One massive flat wall to the north with the doors set in it, and a guardian hippogriff statue at rest to either side of them that would prevent their opening anymore than halfway outward. Six more guardian beasts assumed poses of readiness in pairs, one hoof lifted and wings spread, vulture beaks poised proudly level with the southern horizon, if they could have seen it through the trees. They each perched at a slight angle in the faceted plaza perimeter: the northernmost pair level with the door but eighty yards apart, the southernmost merely twenty, which left the middle pair somewhat wider than a split of the difference. Gwen's statue occupied the exact center of the plaza, also facing south. Her height, with wings spread and arched above her, vied with that of the doors.

Mikail had been quite an influence on the massive, stately arrangements. The basics hadn't changed much, but the prospect had altered quite a bit all the same. Three of the eight guardian beast statues had been marred in some way, one of the outer six utterly blown off the plateau. Gwen's statue had not only lost the front third of its base, it had lost most of one wing.

Between the outward edge and Gwen's statue, a massive burn scar was etched into the stone where Mikail had burned the dog and the Qwellnyr blades. Nothing much remained of either, now.

The Qwellnyr had been almost as much of an influence on Mikail. His blood marked a turning, sinuous trail accented by sprays here and there, marking the walls of the cliff that rose to enclose the doors or one of the statues. It was actually quite artistic if you liked snake trails on sand dunes or the Pattern of Amber, but the medium here was more of his half-brother's precious bodily fluids than one body held. Paolo, who knew how hard it was to reconstitute blood when that fluid was draining and not being replenished, was no longer surprised that Mikail's ring had malfunctioned. He was surprised it had still functioned at all.

The trail grew thicker and thinner in some spots, but it never quite faded out. Mikail had already been bleeding when he'd come over the edge into the plaza, and he hadn't stopped while he'd been up there. From an almost circular small pool near the burn that marked the site of the fire, a much more slender ribbon led to the doors, and then over the edge at the statue the team was approaching from below.

Both Mikail and the dog had left their bloody footprints everywhere. It was actually rather easy to tell where his half-brother had lost his leg - in addition to the splash of blood, Mikail's footprints were mismatched from then on as they plodded, charged, dodged, lunged, and side-stepped all over the plaza.

Between the footprints and the trail, Mikail's blood now covered almost one tenth of the plaza's entire area including the statues and doors, with who knew how much more spilled over the edge down below. There was no sign of the various pieces Mikail had lost besides blood, and Paolo surmised that they too had ended up in the cleansing pyre Mikail had lit for the dog.

Sha'neth crested the edge of the plateau and gasped when she got her first look at the carnage in the plaza. Veltayn, just behind her but a much longer term member of the team, just nodded his head silently to Mikail, acknowledging the obvious. Whatever the cost, Mikail had beaten it. Their next concern lay behind the doors.

Paolo landed. "Well, your theory that Gwen is still alive just dropped in probability. She hasn't come up to see who killed her dog and broke her plaza statues."

Mikail countered, "Maybe she's just really busy," but his heart wasn't in it. Nobody got that busy. This couldn't have escaped the notice of whoever had set it up unless they just weren't there any longer.

"Maybe she's not home," offered Paolo.

"Then let's get this over with before she comes home," said Mikail. "Veltayn, you still have the scroll, right?"

Veltayn nodded, and the team walked the way along the ribbon of blood to the doors to the north. Mikail hand-signaled and moved to the left door while Paolo set himself at the other.

At a second signal they pushed the doors open, Sha'neth and Veltayn rushing in past them, and then covering their own move forward with crossbows. The two pairs alternated, leap-frogging as they made their way north up the short hallway and down the spiral staircase without hesitating.

They met no resistance. No guards, no servants, no more automatons or technomantic horrors, no weapons emplaced along the hallways, or even scanners that they could detect. The staircase just went down and down, around and around.

It ended, after more than two hours of descent, in another short hallway leading to an identical set of doors. The only change was a golden sun disc seal on this set of doors. At closer range, the disc's wavy arms turned out to be wickedly curved blades held by eight closely knit arms surrounding a rounded, grinning face with three eyes and far too many teeth, as far as Paolo was concerned.

When they got within five yards, all three eyes snapped open and it snarled. The sound was surprisingly loud as it bounced off the close stone walls. It looked closely at each of them, and then spoke. "You're not Clarissa. What are you doing here?"

"What would Clarissa be doing here?" countered Mikail.

It looked at Mikail and spat. The spittle sizzled where it hit the floor near his feet, but didn't scar it. "She played a nasty trick some five thousand years ago, give or take, on my master Gwen. Every thousand years my master gets a chance to try circumventing it, but Clarissa keeps interfering. You know her name, so you're involved somehow."

It grinned even wider, several rows of those teeth clicking together. "You're too late, though. My master is almost finished dispelling your master's vile containment circle, and you can't beat me to get in and interrupt her. How'd you survive the Qwellnyr, demon?"

"I'm no demon. Why, should I have had trouble?" asked Mikail. They'd just learned a lot more about what was going on here and if the seal was verbose enough, it might give something else away. Paolo just hoped time didn't run out while they jousted verbally. He'd seen Mikail do this for days at a time.

"The Qwellnyr are spiritually poisoned against demons, and the dog was enchanted by my master as a Clarissa-bane." It seemed quite proud of that.

Mikail shook his head, smiling knowingly. "She'd have needed something on which to base such a complex working. You need a piece of someone to build a bane weapon intended for them."

It went on smugly. "Clarissa left a hand here the last time she interrupted. My master recovered it, a fact Clarissa is well aware of." It eyed Mikail. "Maybe that's why you're here, and she isn't."

It rolled its eyes, an interesting effect as all three of them rotated. "The corridors attached to either end of the staircase are designed to weaken sorcerors, and the spiral staircase confuses demon servants contained in items that the Qwellnyr might not have been able to affect."

It spat at Mikail, who'd taken another step forward with his sword raised. "Nice sword," it said. The spittle clung to the blade, and began to burn hotter and fiercer. Mikail dropped it as it flared and burned through into two pieces, both of which went on burning on the stone. "But not anymore. I can only be beaten with magic, and you four don't count a real mage among you. Go home," it sneered.

"Magic doesn't work here anyway," said Paolo.

The seal guffawed. "What do you think is going on inside, infant? Technomantic magic of the highest order. This place, down this deep, is the only place on Garwan where the fullest flower of technomancy, that art comprised of technology and magic in a perfect blend, has never faded. Gwen built the upper defenses to defend against magic, and built me so I couldn't be beaten without it. A pretty puzzle. Got a solution? You've got maybe two minutes before she's done." It spat again but missed Paolo, who got the feeling that it wasn't really trying, because it didn't appear to consider them a threat.

The laughter was spontaneous, among all four of them at once. "What?!?" it cried and spat again, this time narrowly missing a dodging Veltayn.

They'd started laughing because it had just told them the solution - the creature was vulnerable to magic. The team raised serpent-graven stone rings in just barely staggered progression, having practiced this particular maneuver before.

Paolo's strike, a stripping of magical defenses from the target, landed first and the thing howled in anger.

While it was howling, Mikail's cold bolt lanced from his ring and struck the left side of it at the same time that Sha'neth's fire bolt engulfed the right. The howl changed to a scream of pain.

Veltayn's force bolt slammed it fully in the face. The seal exploded into a cloud of tiny fragments and the doors flew open inward. Jantor had proven his worth once again. The spells used had been his work, contained in rings that he'd built in concert with Mikail to hold a few spells toward various ends. The flow they'd hit it with was a product of long practice, each knowing their place in any number of configurations.

Before the doors could rebound the team dashed inward, the sounds of a second scream echoing between metal and stone in the vast chamber beyond. The place was the size of the entire island upstairs and then some, one big room. Three things caught at the eye immediately and the team slowed to a walk, taking in the collective vision before them.

The first was a black silhouette perhaps twenty yards ahead, and thus not an easy subject of scrutiny. The light throwing it in silhouette was streaming from the third thing which was floating in mid-air, enclosed by the second thing on the floor.

The silhouette was an oddly shaped, double-humped figure hunched over in front of them, like a black hole in the bright light. It was the source of the slowly fading, falling scream, which sounded to Paolo to be comprised of pain, shading to rage.

A ring actually engraved in the floor was the second. Easily three yards wide, the ring curved off into the unseen depths of the room. It crawled with magical symbols that only dimensional travelers would recognize, as they were drawn from literally millions of traditions. Most of them looked oriented around power negating travel, but Paolo knew his education in these matters was lacking. Jantor would know, if they could get him down here to have a look at them, but no one needed his confirmation. It was obviously Clarissa's `vile containment circle'.

The third was a…

Paolo struggled with the words creature, ship, vehicle and vessel before settling on craft. Not more than a square foot of the surface was made of the same material, and not even one oar blade was the same shape as the one beside, though all were of the same length and none so wide as would strike a neighbor.

It had banks of row upon row of oars, several pairs of wings, twenty or so masts heavily laden with sails, dozens of powerful legs, two wide bladed rudders, some sort of retractable (indeed, retracted) keel, and two heads. The heads, perched at either end of the keel, were magnificent cat-dragons with luxurious fur and gleaming scales of all colours. The sails bore no device - their diversity would need nothing else to identify it. The width of it, likely mostly decking, was shielded from sight from the ground by a lowered fan of nested leaves, an open area designed to be roofed when necessary.

The thing was a cloud of fantasy made solid, a confection of marvels designed to go anywhere, land in any venue. Paolo had no doubt that it was enchanted in incredibly subtle ways, but any sense other than sight was blocked by that ring of magic carved in the stone floor. Sight had enough to say, though, what with that gorgeous rainbow light, brilliant but not harsh, shining from it as it floated there, maybe twenty yards off the floor.

"Damn you!!!" screamed the silhouette, the voice marking it as female, and likely Gwen given the circumstances. Paolo dodged upwards instinctively. Everyone else had scattered at ground level, but Sha'neth hadn't move fast enough. She wailed as a black wind poured from Gwen and engulfed her. Her outline froze, and the wind erased itself and Sha'neth in gusts from sight.

Paolo heard another scream of rage and the silhouette below him unfolded. Gwen's black wings snapped upward and outward, and she launched upward after Paolo faster than he was climbing.

He took pains to start remedying that by bringing his own wings together and fusing them, heading to his previous configuration, only distantly hearing Mikail say something, presumably to Veltayn. He dodged a bit but no blasts assailed him. A chancy roll for a look brought him perilously close to getting skewered on the black glass sword she held.

"You interrupt me and condemn me to a SIXTH thousand years stuck in this damnable dimension, and then you have the sheer gall to FLY here? No one but me flies on Garwan! NO ONE!!!" She slashed out with the sword again wildly as her voice screamed out of Paolo's present range of hearing, clearly enraged beyond reason enough that her magic was no longer an option. Gwen wanted blood.

Paolo back-filled as she lunged, maintaining the distance between then as he got his first good look at her. White hair caught in a fancy green and silver band lashed the air a few feet behind her head as she darted forward, and her hands and forearms were encased in white leather gloves, the right index finger red.

Paolo parried her blade with his own and feinted in turn as his wings finished their transformation. Large feathery pinions, though not as large as Gwen's and with white feathers gleaming in contrast to Gwen's black. He whipped around and lunged in turn, aiming a thrust at her face.

Her head slid aside, Paolo's silvery blade mirrored in the sunglasses she wore. One leg, her mid-riff and upper chest were bare, the rest covered by green armor that gleamed magically over the kind of precise, clean workmanship that technology affords. A second strike to her belly (she'd exposed it as she turned and curved to come about in the three-dimensional aerial battle) slid past her barely recovered blade, but rang off as if it had struck the armor. Visible armor, he saw then, as a gleam let him see that the `bare' area was actually transparently covered. It might even be stronger than the other stuff, as she could count on it to draw attention as a target.

She needed that gimmick. Paolo had already realized that she was no great shakes at personal aerial combat. Presumably from a lack of opponents, given her attitude, but Paolo could also tell that something else was wrong with her - then, he caught it.

As she lunged again with the blade in her left hand, her right raised to her sunglasses on that side and the index finger dipped under the lens. She shot her hand out to the side immediately, and flipped the sword from her left hand toward her right. The index finger on her right hand was coated in fresh, red blood.

Her sword went spinning away as Paolo lashed at it before it could complete the fancy, distracting arc she'd planned. His point was swiftly leveled at her, and it was her turn to back-fill. She finally screamed, "Who ARE you?!?"

Not much harm in that one. "Paolo. Are you Gwen?"

"Of course I am," she snapped.

A thin trail of blood finally ran down her right cheek. She lifted a hesitant hand toward it, and Paolo allowed it. "What happened to your eye?"

She snarled and tried to dive, but Paolo's sword-tip dipped beneath her chin, forcing her head up. "One of the lock's teeth hit me in the eye when you bastards blew my second set of doors open," she grated out. "I took the woman down because I thought she was Clarissa, but she probably wasn't. The black wind would have only hurt that bitch."

"So you didn't want to kill her?"

Gwen laughed ferally. "I'd love to kill Clarissa. I just don't know any stronger destructive spells, and all my main defenses are topside in the Qwellnyr system. The bane dog was the spotter. I'll need it to go after Clarissa, if I ever DO get out of here. I don't suppose it's still intact?"

"You don't know?"

"I've been totally absorbed down here for the past eight weeks, you imbecile," she snarled. "That bitch's circle is around Dalkantyr, the best Shiftship ever built, and it took me over a thousand years to build it in the first place. Clarissa's thrice-cursed circle can only be broken under very specific conditions that arise slightly less than once every thousand years. Dalkantyr is my only way out of this damned Shadow, which doesn't support enough technological paradigms anymore to let me build another one! I've tried for over five thousand years to break that circle, and you've just cost me my latest chance." She grabbed at his sword hand and yowled as she pulled back a broken wrist.

"That bitch you keep referring to is my mother," Paolo informed her dryly. "I can see why she might not want you out running around loose in that thing." He feinted toward her right eye and slammed his blade into the left side of her head when she flinched. Her wings folded and she dropped toward the distant floor, unconscious.

Paolo caught her and landed near Mikail and Veltayn, both of whom congratulated him heartily.

"I'm glad you decided to talk to her." Mikail took Gwen from Paolo and placed a headband set with a glowing pink stone on her before laying her out on the ground. "What'd she have to say?"

"She was practically frothing. The ship's her work, the circle's mom's doing for reasons she didn't go into," Paolo began.

"So she built it here?"

Paolo nodded. "And it's too big to fit through the doors, much less down that staircase."

Mikail nodded to Veltayn, who took out the scroll and tossed it to him. "That would make this the place she did her best work. You were right. Good guess, and a good job."

Paolo was so busy basking in the unfamiliar tones of respect, satisfaction and possibly even friendliness in Mikail's tone that he almost missed the overhand toss that sent the scroll spinning end over end upward, toward the ship. When it crossed the boundary of the circle, Clarissa's work effaced itself from the stone floor. The parchment unrolled as it flew higher, and the ship began to shimmer.

"Should we try to get on board?" asked Paolo.

Mikail grinned at him. "I'd love to see where it's going."

"Have either of you considered the fact that it might be disintegrating?" asked Veltayn with a laugh. "Besides, how will we get up there?"

"Paolo, can you carry Veltayn up?" Mikail asked as he laid Gwen down on the stone floor surprisingly gently.

"Sure, but where does that leave you?"

Mikail leapt upward and started running up an invisible staircase in mid-air toward the suspended, fantastic craft. His feet caught hold wherever he stepped, his insectile leg no longer hindering his progress.

Paolo caught Veltayn who'd practically leapt into his arms, and flew after Mikail. "You know, I'd meant to talk to you about flying boots."

Mikail grinned at him as they neared the ship, which was beginning to pulsate, each time with light of a different colour. "I built a pair that work here the other night, and rescued the one I lost in the fight. I'm going to improve them later, but I figured now would be a good time to start."

"What about Gwen?" asked Veltayn.

"I don't think Mom wanted her let out. Besides, I want this ship and I don't think she'd sell it." They came over the nested shells and landed on what was indeed a wide deck, the same patchwork of materials as the rest of the ship and just as ornamented with ladders, ropes, sub-decks, hatches, and hoists as one might expect, having seen the rest of the ship already. Paolo set Veltayn back on his feet on the forecastle, near the edge that overlooked the vast deck.

"I think Mom's gonna claim the ship," commented Paolo warily, but Mikail only sighed.

"If she hasn't already," he said gloomily. "Did you see where the scroll went? Maybe it's a title or deed or something." Veltayn tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed. The scroll had attached itself to the surface of the biggest sail, covering a small square of sickly orange quite well.

"What about Jantor, Iolishi, and Tally?" asked Paolo.

"Good question. Maybe when we figure out how to steer this thing we can go get them. Did Gwen have a name for it?"

"She called it Dalkantyr, and said it was a Shiftship."

"Well, there's probably a bridge somewhere, or at the least a wheel." They went looking as the Shiftship's colours kept pulsing, slowly growing faster and brighter as their shades got lighter, paling toward white.

At the end of a door-studded hallway just below the main deck was an archway that opened onto a bridge, and it was a technomancer's dream. The same patchwork was evident here as elsewhere, and its beauty was more intense. A broad vista of clear window looked forward and down under the vessel, and Veltayn and Paolo looked out it while Mikail examined the controls set in the one chair.

"Ah," he said as he sat down, and touched a certain stud. The chair closed partially about him, and his fingers flew on a newly exposed keypad.

Consulting the resultant figures on a pale blue holographic screen that sprang up in mid-air to accomodate them, he grinned. "That pulsing light has to be power building. Whatever it's using, it's almost back up to full pow-"

He got no further, cut off by the booming voice that suddenly filled the room with the question, "WHO ARE YOU?"

Veltayn and Paolo were thrown to the floor, but the chair held Mikail upright. He opened his mouth to speak, but the voice drowned out whatever attempt he may have made with the words, "WHERE'S GWEN?!?"

Veltayn was apparently unconscious, and Paolo was busy repairing a burst ear-drum when he heard (if somewhat lopsidedly) Mikail snap, "Quiet down! Have you no manners, or can it be that you have spoken to no one in so long that you have lost sense as well as tact?"

The voice returned at perhaps a quarter of its previous volume, much more tolerably, and sounding apologetic. "I'm sorry, but it's just been so long and I've been so lonely, and now you're strangers instead of Gwen!" Its volume increased again toward the end, but not to the damaging levels it had been set to before. A definitely male baritone, the voice sounded like something that might fit those feline dragon figureheads quite well.

"I can understand possible worry, but you didn't even allow us to answer your first question. You're Dalkantyr, aren't you?"

"YES!" he boomed proudly. He followed that rather quickly with a contrite, "Sorry," as Mikail winced again. Paolo had been more careful about his ears this time, and merely damped the input a bit. "Who are you?" he asked again, in his quiet tones.

Mikail now ignored the question and looked at Paolo instead. "Is Veltayn all right?"

Veltayn groaned and sat up as Paolo got near him. "I'll be all right, as long as Dalkantyr stays a bit quieter for a moment. My head's ringing." Paolo helped him up, and he wobbled a little. "I think I'm going to go for a walk and let my head clear. I'll have a look around."

Mikail nodded, looked at Paolo as if about to ask him to accompany Veltayn, but reconsidered. "Dalkantyr, this is my brother Paolo," he said instead, just after Veltayn got out of the room. "Paolo, this is Dalkantyr."

"Please accept my most abject apologies for having harmed you inadvertently, along with my pleasure in meeting you. It has been a very long time since I have been introduced to anyone, and you're now the third person!"

Paolo smiled in the wake of all the formality and answered quite competently. "Your apologies are accepted, the harm having been slight and easily set aright. It is my pleasure to meet you, as I have never met a Shiftship before at all. Pray tell, if the first was Gwen, who introduced her?"

"Why, she introduced herself," replied Dalkantyr. "She built me, you know."

"We had heard that," said Mikail. "Was the second Clarissa?"

"Why, yes," he replied, sounding surprised. "How did you know that? All of this was so long ago… or has it only been a little while?" He was starting to sound more confused.

"No, it's been quite a long while. As to how I know, let me introduce myself by way of answer. I am Mikail, son of Clarissa." He added, a bit belatedly, "Oh, and Oberon."

"And Paolo is your brother? I am quite pleased to meet two children of Clarissa. Why, I have now met four people and three of them are part of one family! Surely I am quite fortunate." Paolo had to remind himself to keep a straight face. "Is… Veltayn a member of your family as well?"

"No," replied Mikail. "He is an old friend of mine, and a long-time member of our team."

"Then I shall not harm him," said Dalkantyr. "Might I hope," he requested, "to be introduced to him when he comes back, that I may apologize for my earlier error in volume?"

"I will arrange it as soon as he returns from his walk. Did Clarissa introduce herself, or was she introduced to you by Gwen?"

"She too introduced herself," said Dalkantyr thoughtfully. "Was my maker wrong, then? She said that she would introduce me to others, but Clarissa introduced herself as did you, Mikail, though you introduced Paolo. Gwen has never introduced me to anyone else," he said, with the faintest touch of petulance.

Mikail smiled. "Would you like to be introduced to three more people, Dalkantyr?"

"That would be splendid!"

"Do you have a way of rescuing others, perhaps a crew you might be intended to carry, from an unsafe situation? That you need not send a shuttle for them?"

"What is a shuttle?"

"A smaller craft-"

Dalkantyr snorted loudly, but not injuriously. "I carry no lesser craft. Do you wish me to access the spatial translators? I can use them on crew, passengers, cargo, or enemies."

Mikail nodded. "That will do."

"Spatial translators on-line. Who am I looking for, where am I looking, and where shall I put them?"

"Three people in the crater which also contains the entry to this place. Can you put them, the tent, its contents, and their nearby belongings accepting only the campfire and the pyre, safely up on the main deck?"

"Are the contents of the tent also their belongings?"

Mikail nodded. "As well as those of Paolo, myself, and some others no longer with us."

"I am saddened by your loss. Will the rest of you be staying aboard, for at least a little while?" Dalkantyr asked hopefully.

Mikail raised one eyebrow. "Yes, but likely only a little while."

"Then might I choose quarters for you all, and distribute your things there? I would very much like to," Dalkantyr added.

Paolo's eyes rounded, but again Mikail only nodded, fingers flashing on a nearby keyboard as he said, "How will you know whose things are whose?"

"I can differentiate by the traces each of you will have left on your equipment, your items, and your clothing, as well as what things are located near other things in what arrangements, and fashion compatibility patterns. Would you like to see the algorithms I will be using?"

Mikail nodded, and the air between he and half the window became occluded by another holographic display. This one was immense, and filled densely with treelike decision paths laid out mathematically. He got into a discussion with Dalkantyr of how certain sections, high-lighted helpfully, would search for things as diverse as gifts given in one fashion style that were nevertheless now part of another's equipment. They went over whose personal things should be separated out for later consideration, and arranged a place for the team's mutual equipment, all while Paolo marveled at what a technomantic intelligence matched with demat/mat technology could do, and wondered what else a Shiftship did.

"All right," said Mikail, as another screen formed nearby him with slowly scrolling information on it in response to a casual query as to Dalkantyr's other pilot-accessible functions. Apparently Mikail had been thinking along the same lines. "Please do so, Dalkantyr."

"Acting… I am prevented." Dalkantyr's voice had filled with uncertainty at that last.

"What is it?"

"There is something rendering my remote sensory capacities almost inert. The field varies in strength."

"Can you identify the source of the field, or anything feeding it power?"

"Trace and compare started… completed. The field appears at first to be ambient, but the local moon appears both artificial and the source of some sort of power to the planet, broadcast over a wide area. It is the most likely source of the interference."

Mikail nodded. "The moon is artificial, and is called Dirhtekha. Is the area centered around this island cluster?"

"Negative. The area is not fixed, as if it is slowly reinforcing the areas it focuses on."

"Is there any sign of life on Dirhtekha, or any sign of deviation from its orbit?"

"Negative, although its orbit does carry the area of reinforcement over the entire surface of Garwan."

"Do you have any weaponry that can target the moon and will function in the field?"

A hologram shaped like a cut-away of a spined ball appeared with a flourish where Mikail and Paolo could both see it. "This might," said Dalkantyr. "This is a Helioplast, a well-shielded planet-killer class remotely piloted bomb. Although its remote piloting ability will be negated by the field, it can be pre-programmed with a course and set free on a chemically powered drive that should operate within the field, and its targets are not usually capable of dodging." Dalkantyr's voice glowed with eagerness as it added, "It will also fit up the stairway."

"How many of those are aboard?"

"Four, although I can grow more if needed."

"Program a course for Dirhtekha's position, adjusted for its movement during the Helioplast's flight time, and let it go. Start growing a replacement, but I don't think we'll be needing any more than four right now."

"Programmed, locked, and launched. Growing another Helioplast commenced." A schematic of the stairway showed the Helioplast already a third of the way up it, and it whirled outward quite quickly. As it accelerated upward from the plaza, the scale pulled back to show the surface of Garwan, Dirhtekha, and the Helioplast's position, the trail it had covered in red and the trail left to travel in blue.

"Once again, I must apologize. Due to the field's interference, this is not a live feed but a projection of the optimal results," explained Dalkantyr. "It does appear that Dirhtekha has taken no action, neither diverting course nor firing on the Helioplast, although whether this is due to the bomb's shielding or an inability to respond is impossible to interpret."

Paolo asked, "Will the explosion still happen in the field?"

Dalkantyr sounded reluctant to confirm that. "It should," it finally came out with.

Mikail asked, "How long will it take for the field to decay without the moon's support before you can use the spatial translators?"

"Not very long, perhaps a few minutes. I am presently employing the reduced scanning capacities I have to study the area of the crater. I have located your camp, so it merely becomes a matter of waiting for the spatial translators to have enough of a grasp on the field to let them surpass it."

Paolo said, "And that will only take a few minutes?"

Dalkantyr sounded smug, and an echo of his old volume rumbled out as he said, "I am quite strong, Paolo."

He went on to say, "Helioplast has reached Dirhtekha. Neutralizing Helioplast shielding… Dirhtekha destroyed." So simple, so fast, so efficient.

Paolo was a little bit shaken, but a look at Mikail's face just showed pleasure as he asked, "Is the field failing?"

"Measurably," said Dalkantyr, in a satisfied tone.

Veltayn walked back into the room. "My hearing must be damaged. Did I hear Dalkantyr say Dirhtekha was destroyed?"

"You did," replied Mikail. "Dalkantyr, this is Veltayn. Veltayn, may I present the Shiftship, Dalkantyr."

Dalkantyr apologized abjectly, and after asking Mikail's permission went on to explain Dirhtekha's destruction.

As he finished, Mikail looked at one of the holographic readouts hanging in mid-air nearby him. "Field strength no longer sufficient to interfere with spatial translators. Locating the rest of the team… got 'em. Veltayn, want to head upstairs to meet our other trio? They may be a bit disoriented."

"Are we leaving from here?"

Mikail nodded. "Dalkantyr, would you deploy the shells over the deck before we leave, and show Veltayn where the crew will be resting?"

He added, "Veltayn, would you please introduce Dalkantyr to the other team members?" Veltayn nodded and headed off down a well-lit hallway that had begun pulsing blue.

Paolo moved to Mikail's side, watching his fingers (and one claw) speed over the keys. "Like it?"

"If half these systems are on-line, Dalkantyr's incredible."

"He is indeed," said a familiar voice, and Paolo looked over Mikail's head toward the corridor behind them.

Dalkantyr exclaimed, "Hello, Clarissa!"

Clarissa walked in, smiling brightly. "Hello, Dalkantyr. Would you mind if I spoke to my boys privately for a moment?"

"Not at all. I will devote more attention to the disposition of the others recently brought aboard."

Clarissa looked at Mikail and Paolo as the sense of Dalkantyr's presence in the control room went out like a snuffed candle. "You boys have outdone yourselves. Gwen down but not dead, and Dalkantyr intact and on your side. Well done."

She moved behind her seated son and said softly, "May I have my chair, Mikail?"

Mikail sighed softly and touched the stud he had earlier. He stood as the chair released him.

His mother gasped to see him, knowing him no shapeshifter. "What happened to you?"

Mikail laughed sardonically, the spines at the side of his neck at rigid attention. "Your bane," he spat venomously, but shook his head and got control of himself, unwilling to explain further at just that moment.

She waited quite patiently, though, until he came out with, "I want time off."

Clarissa nodded, apparently having already decided that. "You'll both have two months off, to do as you please. Each of you may also ask a favor of me for the excellent job you did here on Garwan. I am sorry you lost so many." And that was all the apology they would ever get.

Mikail merely shrugged, aloof and far away now. "I'll ask for my favor after that time is up."

"All right." She turned to her other son. "And you, Paolo?"

He looked at Mikail, and then back at her. "I'll wait, too. I want to think about this one. Mom?"

"Yes, Paolo?"

"With Dirhtekha destroyed, won't Gwen escape now?"

"She could have left Garwan a long time ago. She wasn't willing to, because leaving would mean losing track of the proper time to try releasing Dalkantyr. Dalkantyr's the best thing she's ever built, and she drained several of the axioms of this Shadow just to power it. That's why she couldn't replicate it here, either."

"But you're glad she's alive?"

"If she ever gets off Garwan, she might go back to creating. Gwen's a marvelous artist, and one whose work I collect. It's a pity she and I have never managed to get along very well, but sometimes one can't help that." She finished that in tones that made it very clear the subject was dropped, and looked back and forth between them. "Where can I drop you off?"

Paolo looked to Mikail, planning on following wherever he went to help fix the awful changes wrought by the malfunctioning ring.

"Owexir Station," said Mikail, naming a high-tech paradise in which they'd had what amounted to a treasure hunt, about eight years ago. They'd be able to get any equipment they needed for the work on Mikail, and the station had been built in a primal shadow so repairs done properly would stick. The fact that they were heroes renowned for saving the lives of almost everyone on the station wouldn't hurt, either.

Clarissa smiled at him. "We should be there late tonight. I assume you'll want the team with you?"

He just nodded. "At first."

She nodded curtly and went on, "Tell them I'll pick them up from the station in two months. You two can make whatever travel arrangements outward you want from there. I'll pick the team up first, and then come get you when it's time for your next lesson. Fair enough?"

Paolo smiled and nodded, while Mikail merely nodded.

"Class dismissed," said Clarissa, and the boys headed upstairs to talk to the team.