Well, maybe we had—but there were a lot of ifs in this proposition. If all the attacks were coordinated. If Morah could be drawn off. If there were no more Synod members in residence than we could handle ourselves. If the shuttle kept its schedule. If Aeolia Matuze was home. And if we could think, fight, and ensorcel our way through that huge building in only one full day.
I looked at Darva in the gloom and knew she was thinking the same things I was. “I really wish you wouldn’t come,” I told her. “You’re not strong enough for the sores and you’re a knife at my throat They kill you, they get me.”
“I have other skills,” she reminded me, “not the least of which is the weapons practice I’ve been through here. And I’m no more a knife at your throat than you are at mine. If you’re going to take me with you I don’t want to get it sitting out the action someplace.”
I smiled and squeezed her hand. “All right, then. It’s a team we are.”
Her smile in return was weak. I knew she really thought we were going to die in this, and I understood that she was willing to go, particularly if it was in the pursuit of something important.
And, I think, she understood me as well. Hell, up to the last I’d never expected to be in on the end of this thing, not directly. As it was, I was going to have more fun than I’d had in the past ten years.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Walk in the Dark
We could have used four months to train for the mission; Koril gave us four days. Once he’d decided to move, he decided to move, and that was that. He said he’d picked each of us for a reason, but some reasons were easier than others to figure out.
I seemed to have been included because Koril, like many of the Brethren I’d hunted for most of my Me, had a very high opinion of Confederacy assassins, an opinion I’d tried to reinforce in my conversations with him. I was surprised he agreed to let Darva come, but as she had pointed out, what she lacked in sorcerous powers she more than compensated for with close-quarters weaponry. She’d worked hard developing those skills, and I wouldn’t want to be in the way if she wanted to go somewhere. If her opponent were equal or weaker than she in control of the wa force, or was prevented by one of us from using it, that opponent was dead. Zala—or, rather, Kira—was a more interesting choice, since I knew Koril trusted her no more than I did. If she was on the level, of course, she’d be invaluable—but she could also easily be our Trojan Horse, ready to betray us once we were trapped inside the Castle.
The rest were his best sores, as illustrated by the “K” sound that preceded then* names, which they took when admitted to that fraternity of the very best. It was like a title or badge of rank—and when I finally realized that it explained a lot. Of them all, only Morah had never taken a sore name.
Our party wasn’t without interesting abilities. In addition to Darva and myself, Ku, a small, dark man with a rodent-like face, was also a changeling, although very human in appearance. He was naturally nocturnal and, additionally, had some sort of built-in sonar system which would be very useful to us—along with his unnerving ability to stick to walls and ceilings like a fly. It was obvious that, if in fact someone else had made him a changeling or not, he’d adapted for himself some most useful attributes.
Kaigh was a large, hairy bear like man who looked naturally mean, and perhaps was. I understood he was a former Confederacy frontier officer who’d found the possibilities for graft and extortion out there irresistible. Kimil was a typical civilized worlder, younger than Koril but otherwise undistinguished. Kindel was a small, wiry woman with wickedly long nails and a shaved head. Her cold, black eyes seemed too large for her head, and were constantly in nervous motion. Rrugar was a woman of the civilized worlds, in early middle age and otherwise not very distinguished from any other civilized worlder. Of us all, I realized, only Darva was native to Charon.
Darva and I were the largest and most obvious targets, I realized that from the beginning. Over the months we had managed to scale ourselves down slowly to a more moderately tall 204 centimeters, still enough to tower over the others. Of course, our appearance, although very human, was still changeling enough to mark us. We were both damned strong and surprisingly agile, and we worked at it.
We left Koril’s redoubt by air, in much the same manner as we’d arrived—but this time, inside the cabin of the great flying creature and not in its claws. Zala hadn’t been too excited by the idea of the trip, but apparently had been calmed or sedated in some way by Kira. I found the trip as bumpy and uncomfortable as the first tune, but took it in stride. We had a schedule to keep.
We did not, of course, dare land anywhere near the Castle. Since there were no legitimate landing areas for the big creatures we could use, we made do with an area more than forty kilometers southwest of the seat of Charon’s government and managed to get the big thing back off the ground ourselves.
Our equipment was surprisingly spare. Koril had risked laser pistols, with the understanding that we might have to get rid of them for any number of reasons. We also carried a small store of projectile weapons and ammunition, on which we’d practiced and been checked out at the redoubt’s firing ranges long before. Darva never did quite get the art of laser pistol down well, but she was a whiz at the projectile pistols—just the reverse of me. In addition several of us, including Darva, carried that most ancient of weapons, the sword; others carried small but deadly daggers. The burly Kaigh, to my awe and fascination, carried what seemed to be a crossbow, a kind of early weapon I’d only read about but had never seen before.
We carried no papers or documents of any kind. All information had been hypnoed into our minds to save weight and problems. We all wore tough clothing of jungle green, a sort of forest version of the trooper uniforms, Darva’s and mine having been specially cut and tailored for our peculiar requirements. Beyond some pre-packaged food cakes and canteens, we had nothing else.
On the road we ate mostly by transmutation, a rather fascinating process. Just as Garal had changed fruit punch into acid and Korman had changed it back, so our own sores could take almost any vegetable matter in the jungle and make almost anything of it we desired. To this day I’m still not sure if we really were eating transmuted stuff or just leaves and the like we were fooled into believing was the good food it seemed to be. In the end, it probably made no difference. At least our bodies not only accepted the stuff but seemed to make good use of it.
We had two and a half days to reach the Castle, which was easy enough considering the distance involved. Still, the trek was through the rough of the jungle, and not even Darva and I were any longer prepared to feel completely at home there. As we approached the mountains, though, the jungle gave way first to thick forest and then to intermittent groves with bare glades and rocky outcrops. The going was steep, since we could hardly use the known roads, and tough. Much of the open spaces had to be negotiated at night We had our first practice with Koril’s little nocturnal vision spells, but still needed the more natural and nearly perfect night eyes of Ku to keep us from breaking our fool necks.