I wondered when it had all started. When we had met for the very first time? He had been the one to approach us, after all, when Karish and I were bickering at the Star Festival. He’d had a shot to make at Karish for being a Source and then he’d tried to separate us. And he’d been so understanding about my crippling him—I bet he hadn’t planned on that. What an excellent actor. And since then he’d been lecturing me about the abusiveness of Sources. I’d ignored it all as ignorant ranting.

  I was such a fool.

  “Well, aye, as a matter of fact, you did,” said Creol.

  Aiden’s face assumed a most unattractive shade of red. “You said,” he ground out between his teeth, “that the music would drive her to kill Karish, and then she would be free. You promised me that.”

  I felt a certain shallow sympathy for Aiden. It was hard to find in all the anger and pain and sense of betrayal, but there was a small sliver of it that I could catch and hold up. He had believed all the wrong people. So had I, but I hadn’t willfully endangered anyone’s life. And he hadn’t gotten the results he’d hoped for. Well, that and an empty sack was worth an empty sack, but it had to hurt.

  “And you promised to have her ready to kill Karish and to Shield me,” Creol said to Aiden.

  I couldn’t believe that was really the plan. I was supposed to Shield Creol while he deconstructed High Scape? Why?

  “I was supposed to have more time,” Aiden protested. “She wasn’t supposed to find out so soon. I would have had her ready if I’d had just a few more days.”

  The hell you would! Arrogant little prat.

  “Then it’s your fault that I have to kill her, because if you had kept her away from the center tonight, as you were supposed to, we wouldn’t have had to rush things like this. It’s your carelessness that’s causing this. Really, one would almost think you wanted me to kill her.”

  Aiden’s response to this was to try to smash Creol’s face in with his lyre. He was obvious about his intention, and Creol had plenty of warning. He ducked. The lyre met the bars of the cage with almost explosive results. Keys and strings twanged and splinters flew.

  Two new thugs came running to restrain Aiden.

  “Bad form, Aiden,” Creol chided him. “Obviously you can’t be trusted to do your part for the cause. You’re far too emotional, not to mention incompetent. But for all that, I’m going to give you a great reward. I’m going to let you die with your . . . friend. Terribly poetic, don’t you think? Something someone like you can appreciate.” Aiden struggled against his captors to no effect. “Who knows? You might even convince her to forgive you for trying to sell her to me. I hear starvation can addle the wits.” A dismissive wave of the hand. “Take the fool away.”

  The two thugs grabbed Aiden by his hands and his feet, swinging him between them to carry him away. “Dunleavy!” he called as they carted him off. “I did it for you! You can see that, can’t you? You were supposed to kill Karish. You would have been free!”

  I grit my teeth. Someone shut the man up, please. He was carried out of the civic center; the door closed behind him. I could still hear him shouting, but the noise was easier to ignore.

  Lynch had been freed during this little melodrama. She wandered over to the cage to stand beside Creol. She looked at me with a sad smile. “I’m sorry it had to happen this way, Dunleavy,” she said, offering her hand for shaking. “I think we could have been good friends.”

  I, of course, didn’t move from my comfortable seat on the dirt floor. I stared at her and wondered if she was insane. Not that it mattered. I looked at Creol. “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  He smirked. “Alison, dear,” he said to Lynch. “You’ve heard all this before. People are starting to drift. Could you gather everyone back together and tell them the meeting will resume once we’ve dealt with our prisoners? Gary, Mark, why don’t you give her a hand?”

  Prisoners. Well, at least he was finally being honest about it. No more “our poor Dunleavy.”

  “Yes, Stevan,” Lynch said dutifully, and she was echoed by the two thugs. The three of them wandered away.

  Creol leaned against the bars of the cage and gave me a condescending grin. “A delay tactic, Dunleavy?” he asked. “Are you hoping to lure me into bragging about myself to give time to the Runners who are desperately searching for you?” He snickered. “I’ve probably seen all the same plays you have, Dunleavy. Only no one who knows you’re in Middle Reach has had time to get worried. And there are no Runners here. So I can brag all I want, and no one will show up in time to rescue you.”

  I hadn’t been thinking along the terms of rescue. I knew that if we were going to get out of this we’d have to do it ourselves. I was just curious. “Why is Middle Reach so important to you?”

  “It’s not. It’s a mud hole. It’s not important to anyone. But half the population is crazy and the other half certain the entire world is using them as a dumping ground. It’s an excellent place to start. A bunch of malcontents stuck together, feeding off and feeding into each other’s bitterness. Give them a target, and they can develop into the most useful army.”

  “To do what?” I asked. “You can’t really hope to become Emperor.”

  He laughed. “No. Someone with brains will figure out who I am and have me killed long before that’s a possibility.”

  And the getting killed part disturbed him not at all. “So why are you doing this?”

  He shrugged. “What else am I going to do?”

  Uh, how about not leveling High Scape? “What’s this about, Creol?” I said, hardening my voice. Perhaps he would respond to the simulation of authority. “There has to be a reason for this.”

  “Aye, and the reason is that I can do it. And I’m bored. I have nothing to do, Dunleavy. Sometimes I’m so bored I think I’ll go out of my head with it.”

  He was out of his head. Or maybe it was all just an act, and he didn’t feel like telling me why he was doing all this stuff. So my curiosity would go unsatisfied. How terribly important.

  “I can tell her the rest if you’ve got something else to do,” Karish offered, sounding friendly and helpful. I wondered what was wrong with him.

  “Ah, but that would be rude, would it not, to neglect to tell Dunleavy myself that it was I who arranged to have you killed.”

  That hardly came as a surprise. So Karish’s title had had nothing to do with anything. “You didn’t manage to pull that off, either,” I sneered.

  “Hey,” Karish protested softly.

  I looked at him. “Sorry,” I said. “That didn’t come out quite right.”

  “She has a point, though,” Creol admitted. “Simon was dreadfully incompetent.”

  “Why am I here?” That was the thing that was really confusing me. What was the point of my being here?

  “Well, you see,” he gestured at the door through which Aiden had been exited, “I got this touching letter from the lovestruck Aiden, begging me not to have you killed. You’re a talented Shield, he claimed, and I could use you. I had heard of you, of course, and I knew you were partially responsible for stopping my attack on High Scape. If I had you for my Shield, my plans for High Scape would be all that much easier to carry out. And using the Stallion’s Shield offered me a sort of satisfaction. I thought it was at least worth looking into. So I told Aiden to bring you here so I could look you over. But to enable him to convince you to come here, because who volunteers to go to Middle Reach, I had to have Karish brought here.” He shook his head with an expression of regret. “Unfortunately, you won’t do at all. Far too stubborn and headstrong.”

  I was not a horse. “So sorry to disappoint,” I muttered.

  “No need to apologize,” Creol assured me. “I’ve been enjoying myself. I’ve had messengers running between High Scape and Middle Reach almost daily. Aiden has kept me apprised of every move you’ve made. Watching your efforts has been most entertaining.”

  “So I guess I’m not sorry after all.” Zaire, girl, shut up. You sound like an idiot.

  He grinned. “But tomorrow the real fun begins.” And he rubbed his hands together in anticipation. I didn’t know people actually did that. “Stacius, Jacob, over here, please. We’re going to have to put these two with the others.”

  “Others?” I said to Karish.

  “The other Sources.”

  “I’d been wondering where they all were.”

  “You really don’t want to know.”

  “Now, Taro,” Creol chided him, wagging a finger at him. “Don’t ruin the surprise for Dunleavy.”

  “She won’t believe it until she sees it, anyway.”

  “No, that’s true,” Creol agreed.

  He was so damn smug. He really thought he had everything under control. And hey, maybe he did, but did he have to be so blatant about it?

  Creol called Lynch back over again. “I’m afraid I need your help again, Alison.”

  “It’s my pleasure, Stevan,” she said. He crooked his arm, and she took it.

  “Shall we get started, then?” he said, and he escorted her out of the building, like a lord and his lady sweeping out of a ball.

  I turned to Karish to ask where we were being taken. I was shocked to find his lips curved in a triumphant smile of his own. It surprised me into silence for a moment, as I worried whether the insanity was contagious. “What could you possibly have to smile about?”

  “Shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings,” he said.

  Mallorough, you missed your chance to smack him. You can’t do it now.

  I was once more picked right off my feet and carried out of the civic center. I thought again about how I wished I had more inches. And a different color of hair. And really chiseled cheekbones.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Karish and I were taken past the crowds, who watched us but did nothing to stop the proceedings. We were taken out of the center to a small collection of people standing a short distance away. Aiden was among them, still struggling to free himself and still failing at it. “Dunleavy!” he shouted as soon as he saw me. “You have to believe me! It wasn’t supposed to happen like this! It was supposed to—”

  “Shut him up,” Creol ordered, the first harsh words I’d heard from his mouth.

  One of the thugs applied a fist to Aiden’s jaw. Aiden was stunned into silence.

  Thank you.

  “Alison, are you ready?” Creol asked.

  “Aye, Stevan.”

  “Then let’s get to it.” He released Lynch and stood a bit apart from her. And then, all of a sudden, his eyes went kind of blank, and his posture tensed.

  I was a little confused. Had the program suddenly changed? Was Creol feeling something the rest of us were missing? No one seemed alarmed, but the thugs were watching Creol expectantly. They appeared calm, though. And Karish wasn’t preparing to channel. So there was no disaster coming, right?

  Then the earth started trembling beneath my feet. “Karish!” I hissed at my Source. Do something! Or had his incarceration affected his mind? He’d certainly been acting strangely.

  His gaze met mine, and his eyes seemed sane enough. He shook his head once, just slightly. He was making an effort to mute the triumph he was obviously still feeling. Unbelievable. He was a physical wreck, I was an emotional one, something terrible was about to happen to us, there was a disaster coming that he was apparently unable to do anything about, but he was thrilled to bits. It had to be a nightmare.

  The trembling grew stronger, and still no one seemed worried. My teeth were rattling, but that didn’t stop me from wondering if it was all in my head. I would not scream, I promised myself. I would not screech and clutch at anyone else as if expecting them to save me. I would die like an adult.

  The ground opened up. I bit my lip, hard. I would not make a sound.

  And still, no one else looked nervous.

  Only it looked odd. It wasn’t a crack running from horizon to horizon, or a great jutting lip rising high while its fellow dropped to the center of the earth. It was more like a door sliding open right before us. A horrible smell curled out.

  Back in the civic center the music started up again. Another martial air. Without thinking I strained against the hands that held me. The thugs weren’t worried.

  As the topsoil rolled away, there was revealed an underground room or cavern. The floor and walls had been constructed of stone brick. Not a natural formation. A handful of men and women, pale, emaciated, filthy, looking far worse than Karish, lounged on the floor. They looked up at us without surprise or even much interest.

  Creol and Lynch relaxed, job done. I stared at the errant Source. He could do it. He could move earth. And call floods? Was he responsible for the flooding the day before? Why would he do that? A test of my abilities, perhaps.

  He could really do what he’d claimed he could. We were all going to die.

  “Dunleavy, my dear,” said Creol. “Let me present to you the Sources of Middle Reach.” I looked down at them more carefully, trying to put the names I’d heard to the wretches I saw. “The incompetent, the criminal”—he paused, as though waiting for something, and in the interim the targets of his insults didn’t even bother to toss any back—“and the lazy. Look at them, Dunleavy, just lying there. When I first put them in there a few months ago, every time I visited them they’d charge at the walls, scrambling to get out and screaming blue murder. Of course, I don’t feed them much. And I don’t know how much air gets in there. Do you think that has anything to do with it?”

  “There is no way you’ve had them down there for months,” I objected. “Someone would have missed them.”

  “Everyone in Middle Reach knows where they are.”

  This was unbelievable. “The Triple S, at least, would notice they weren’t fulfilling their duties.”

  He laughed derisively. “What duties? I do all the channeling here. And Shields write the reports. Sources don’t have to. And who knows if the Triple S actually reads any of them.” He leaned a little over the hole and waved at the occupants. Some of them glared back, but that was all the reaction he got. “I’m bringing you two new playmates,” he said cheerfully. “Aren’t you grateful?” He looked at one of his henchmen and jerked his head toward the cavern.

  With one hard shove Aiden was over the hole, then crashing into it. He, illustrating Creol’s earlier description, started swearing and clawing at the nearest wall. He couldn’t get a grip on anything. A couple of the thugs watched him, ready to push him back down should he show any sign of success.

  “No need for pushing, dear fellow,” I heard Karish say to one of his escorts in the ponciest tone I’d heard from him yet. “I know the way.” Of his own accord he leapt lightly into the hole. Then he looked up at me, his eyes gleaming with unholy humor. “Care to join me, my love?”

  Have you lost your mind?

  Creol sighed. “It’s too bad, Dunleavy,” he said; and he almost sounded like he meant it. “You could have helped me destroy the world.”

  Never been one of my ambitions. Sorry.

  Should I try to escape? Was there a chance in hell that I could get away from all these men? No. And it would be cowardly for me to leave Karish and the others in there while I ran for freedom. But I couldn’t just meekly jump into that pit.

  The music was urging me to kill everyone. It was getting hard to think at all.

  “Lee,” said Karish. “Come join us.”

  That sense of triumph was still with him, and he was looking at me rather intently. He was trying to tell me something. The third man that night to think mind reading was a feasible method of communication.

  I had trusted all the wrong people. Aiden. Ryan. Lynch. I’d even trusted Creol, after a fashion. But I’d never really trusted Karish. That didn’t necessarily mean I should start, but what the hell. Might as well shoot the whole quiver. And it was always better to jump in than to be pushed.

  So I jumped. It wasn’t a long drop. The cavern wasn’t that deep, just half again the height of an average man. But it felt cold and damp. Perhaps that was just the result of expectation. The reek was not.

  I was expecting a bit of a speech from Creol, a poetic farewell, but he didn’t seem prepared to give one. Perhaps he lacked inspiration. Or perhaps he didn’t feel up to speaking over Aiden, who was screaming threats and demanding to be let out. I stood very still, fighting the urge to charge at the walls myself. The music was prodding me to do something brave and stupid.

  Creol and Lynch backed out of sight. I knew they were preparing to move the earth back over us, to seal us in. We would be buried alive. Panic fluttered around the edges of my resolve.

  Karish stood behind me. “It’s frightening the first time,” he said in a low voice. “But it’ll be all right. I promise you.”

  Aye, he promised. He was going to be buried in the ground with the rest of us, and he looked like he wouldn’t be able to keep his footing in a stiff breeze, but he was making promises. It was a nice thought.

  The trembling started again. Aiden’s scrambling and screams became more desperate. Any of the other Sources who might have raised their heads during our exchanges lowered them. This was an old show to them. Karish put his hands on my shoulders. A nice tight grip. And I felt my tension easing.

  The earth moved over us, sliding like a plate. My throat tightened with the need to scream, to join Aiden in his futile struggles. Stay calm. “How is he able to do this?”

  “He is able to control the forces to the point that he can hold the earth in place and move it around,” Karish explained quietly. “He’s incredibly strong.”

  “Stronger than you?” I asked, expecting a nice hearty denial.

  “I think so.”

  That was just damn wonderful.

  Earth met earth. It was black. But I could still hear the music.

  “For Zaire’s sake, man!” one of the Sources snapped at Aiden, “shut up!”