The Spy They Left Behind
Hal found the offer strange.
"You know the ruins so well. Why don't you know the stairs?"
"I told you, I don't know the ruins. This is my first time through them."
"I don't believe you."
"If you'd rather not trade information, that's fine."
"No. We'll trade. But we take turns with the questions."
"Good. I'll go first. Why aren't you attacking me?"
Hal's eyes narrowed.
"You truly don't know?"
"I said I don't."
"Attack someone on the stairs, and the stairs punish you. That's why I haven't attacked you."
Chris muttered to himself.
"So it's like Mick Magic Tower. No magic on the stairs."
Hal heard the mutter and looked at him as if he had lost his mind.
"What are you talking about? A binding spell lies over these stairs and locks your body in place. If you can't use magic, you can't climb them at all. The only thing forbidden is attacking someone else."
He was still speaking when the realization hit him, and he shouted.
"You're climbing without magic? How is that possible?"
Chris didn't answer. He looked back. They were coming up in a wedge, and Hal, at the point, drove his mana in like an awl and split the binding spell, so the men packed tight behind him had a far easier climb.
Chris muttered inwardly. So magic is allowed. What's forbidden is attack magic turned on another person... If I don't have to worry about being struck, I can climb without a care. All I have to do is break the stairs' resistance.
Hal said, "You owe me an answer. That was the agreement."
"I carry a special magic tool that raises my physical ability."
Hal slapped his thigh, as if it had finally fallen into place.
"So the tool is why you could move that fast."
Randal said, "Tell us about David."
"We agreed to take turns asking and answering."
"Then ask."
He reached for a question and found he had nothing left he wanted to know. At that moment the demon mask perched on his shoulder sent a thread of Thought Language.
I know more about these stairs than those fools do. I can tell you myself. There's no need to trade questions with them.
Chris ignored the demon Tenbo's offer and asked anyway.
"Is there treasure if you climb the stairs?"
Hal said, "The Horace Ruins often give a reward after a trial, but not always. Whoever went up first may already have taken it, and you'd climb for nothing. My turn now, isn't it? Answer Randal's question."
"It's a long story..."
Randal snarled.
"Keep your word!"
"Then I'm the one taking the loss... Fine. Answer one more thing, and I'll explain all of it. You said the stairs punish anyone who attacks someone on them. What form does that punishment take? Do they strike with lightning, the way they do when you try to fly?"
"This is my first time in the ruins as well, and I've never broken a rule, so I don't know what punishment actually falls. I was repeating what the records kept at the tower say."
Hal felt a fierce urge to break the stairs' law and attack the man, but he swallowed it and kept climbing.
Randal pressed him. "Speak. Quickly."
"All right. After the rest of you left, Sheikh meant to send Harvey through next. I hadn't thought much of it until David suddenly stepped forward and asked to go first. Considering the difference in their stations, that wasn't a sensible thing to do. A tower mage with obedience beaten into his bones, acting against all common sense — I wanted to know why. It wasn't the sort of air in which I could ask, though, and I didn't think anyone would answer, so I probed from another side. I demanded the mana stones, as promised."
Even while they talked, they kept climbing. At that point Chris stopped and looked back, and he turned an accusing look on Hal.
"Sheikh said this. Later. He brushed my demand aside with that, and tried to send Harvey first. It left a foul taste."
Then he threw a question at Randal without warning.
"Did you know?"
Randal glared at him.
"This is the time for you to answer. Questions come after the answer is finished."
"From here on, let's set the rules aside and talk freely. Did you know your disciple had been chosen to be abandoned?"
"Abandoned? What are you saying?"
"Someone from Mick Magic Tower had to stay behind and hide the magic circle, the same way I was left to conceal it. Sheikh is Ring Binding. He was never going to stay. He was trying to send Harvey ahead. So who does that leave? Only David. David caught the scent of it and volunteered to go first. He didn't want to be left. He didn't want to be thrown away."
Randal burned a look into Hal's back.
"Is that true?"
Hal answered at once. "Someone had to stay."
"And why, of all people, was it my disciple?"
"I didn't choose him. I said to leave someone. It seems Sheikh made that choice."
Randal ground his teeth and spat the curse out.
"Sheikh, you wretch. Heaven strike you down!"
Hal turned a look every bit as savage as Randal's upon Chris.
"Keep explaining."
"People cold enough to abandon even a mage of their own tower were never going to keep a promise to me. That's what I thought, and in that moment I realized I had made a mistake. The only person who had sworn not to harm me was Tower Master Hal. Sheikh was free to kill me. And from the way things were turning, it looked as if he meant to."
Randal poured abuse over him. "You should have died then."
"I didn't want to die, so I ran. As all of you have experienced, I have a certain talent for running."
Randal couldn't make sense of it.
"If you ran, why didn't my disciple and Sheikh leave through the magic circle? Why did they go missing?"
"While I was fleeing, I gouged the circle to shreds. They couldn't activate it."
Hal said, "You ignored the warning that damaging a magic circle brings punishment from the ruins?"
"If I can screw the people who screwed me, that's a price I'll pay."
"So the circle's warning amounted to nothing."
"No. The warning was real."
"You look perfectly fine."
"I may look fine on the outside... but with my luck being what it is... I think I truly was punished."
"Be specific. What punishment did you receive?"
"A demon latched onto me."
"A demon?"
"A demon appeared and tried to claim me. I nearly had my body stolen. Because of that, I'm a wreck on the inside."
"Is that true?"
"Yes."
"Difficult to believe."
Even as he said it, Chris thought that meeting the demon Tenbo might truly have been the ruins' punishment. He hadn't meant to ruin the circle, but he had ruined it all the same.
"That wasn't the end of it."
"There was more retribution?"
"My luck stayed rotten. At every fork I always took the dangerous road... Look at me now. I found a transport circle, used it thinking my luck had turned, and all of you were waiting at the destination. I nearly died."
Chris let out a sigh.
"There won't be any treasure at the top of these stairs either. Why? Because I'm cursed, and bad luck has clung to me like a rash."
While they talked, the distance closed a great deal. Chris had been standing still, and Hal's party had kept climbing.
He turned and started up the stairs again. A grandmaster's body, with magic laid over it, and he was faster than before.
Randal said, "I still haven't heard what happened to David. Keep your word."
Chris didn't lay the story out all at once. He paused whenever he pleased and dragged the time out, because the front of a lie had to match the back.
"You people are liars who don't keep your promises, but I'm an honest man, so I'll answer. I did run, but I couldn't go far. If I couldn't use the magic circle, I would have had to live out my life in that place. So I crept back and hid near it. Sheikh was repairing the circle, and the mood was foul. They had lost me, the circle was broken, and David had turned on them. There was no way the air could be pleasant."
Not many steps remained above him. Chris slowed, and his words came faster.
"The repairs ended, and the moment Sheikh tried once more to send Harvey first, David resisted again."
Randal shouted.
"My disciple would never do that!"
"Lock a man in a jungle for decades and even a good-tempered one turns to trash."
"You hadn't been in there more than a few days."
"A few days become a year, and a year becomes ten... Time passes in a blink. David's clever. You think he couldn't do that arithmetic?"
"So what happened?"
"Sheikh caught David the way you'd catch a rat. David took a savage beating and limped away from the center of the circle."
Chris laughed all at once.
"Ha ha ha."
Hal's face went hard. "Why are you laughing?"
"David was quite something."
"Quite something?"
"On his way out, he raked the magic circle hard. Just as I had."
Randal objected. "My disciple would never do that."
Chris laughed again.
"Randal, you don't know your disciple very well."
"Are you claiming Sheikh killed David?"
"No. David ran, and Sheikh didn't chase him."
"Why not?"
"What was Sheikh's real aim? To kill me and save the mana stones, and to leave David behind so the rest of you couldn't use the circle. In the end David was left behind, wasn't he? They must have judged that their departure alone was punishment enough."
His last step landed with a solid thud. Chris had climbed every stair. He swung his arms, shook the stiffness out of his limbs, turned, and said,
"If you want to hear my story to the end, then stop coming up."
Hal halted.
"Fine. Tell it to the end."
"Sheikh cursed and repaired the circle again. The moment the repairs were finished and he moved to use it, new people appeared."
Hal's brow creased. "Who...?"
"Claudia, Tower Master of Touleno Magic Tower, and her party."
Randal said, "I don't believe it."
"Why not?"
"They appeared at the exact moment the circle was repaired? You think a coincidence that neat happens in the real world?"
"I think it happens often enough."
Randal moved to argue again, and Chris waved a hand and cut him off.
"Of course they didn't appear by chance that time. It was planned."
Hal asked, "Planned?"
"I told you before. David isn't Thought Formulation. He's a mage who has reached Seed Cultivation."
"What does that—"
"Would a mage sly enough to hide his strength simply take a beating and do nothing? David guided them there."
"David betrayed us!"
"The tower was going to throw him away. Why wouldn't he betray it?"
Randal denied it. "No. That's impossible."
Hal said, "Even if what you say is true, it was Sheikh who abandoned David, not the tower."
"You're the Tower Master. You agreed to it, didn't you?"
"I never singled David out and ordered that he be left. I only pointed out that someone had to stay."
"Six of one, half a dozen of the other. The only ones who could stay were Harvey and David. Was Sheikh going to leave the disciple of Randal, a man he already disliked, or leave his own?"
"How did you know Sheikh dislikes Randal?"
"You could tell from the air between them."
Chris let a beat pass, then went on.
"Or did you decide to leave him because you already suspected David?"
Randal raised his voice. "Suspected? What are you talking about?"
"David was a spy."
Hal cried out.
"A spy!"
"Oh! You didn't know? David was a spy Touleno Magic Tower planted inside Mick Magic Tower. That's why he hid his strength. If he weren't a spy, he'd have no reason to conceal that he was Seed Cultivation. The regard shown to Thought Formulation and to Seed Cultivation is as far apart as heaven and earth."