The Living Shield
Tears slid down Grain's cheeks, and a raw plea threaded his voice.
"I truly cherish you."
Sincerity seemed to pour off every inch of him.
"Why?"
"Because you are the precious disciple I waited hundreds of years to meet."
"And why did you wait so long?"
"There wasn't a mage alive who had trained the body arts properly."
"I see."
"You are precious to me. Where would I ever find another mage who has forged his flesh the way you have?"
If this was a performance, the man was the finest actor alive.
"Understood. The journey took a great deal out of me. Would it be all right if I rested today?"
"And why wouldn't it be?"
Chris bowed and turned for the mouth of the cave, but Grain called after him.
"The three Motaro Shay stole?"
"We turned his body and his quarters inside out. Nothing. He must have hidden them with real care."
"Or whoever found them swallowed them down."
"Ah. That could be. Shall I look into it?"
"Leave it. We'll write the three off as a loss. Go and rest."
"Yes."
Snow had piled so thick on the man's head and shoulders that, from a distance, he looked like a snowman following the road. He went to Wilbur's house and knocked.
The door banged open, and Wilbur's face crumpled into a scowl.
"What is it now?"
"You hate the sight of me so much, I thought I'd drop by after a good long while. Unclench your face."
Chris shook the snow from his head and shoulders, scrubbed his shoes clean on the mat, and walked in without being asked.
"You have a bad habit of making people uncomfortable."
Wilbur sighed, and then he brought tea. It wasn't the black tea from last time. Chris tasted it and found it sweet, and good.
"Hot tea hits the spot. I can feel my body loosening."
He settled his weight back in the chair.
"Cozy place you've got."
"Did you come to tour the house?"
"No."
"Then what is it?"
His eyes delivered the rest: say your piece and get out.
"As if I'd have a favor to ask of you. Get word to Vilpua and Randal. See if they're back."
"You could simply ask at Mikklonia Tower. Why do you keep coming to me?"
"I'm terribly shy. Asking a favor of someone I've only just met is difficult for me."
Wilbur grumbled, drew out his identity token, worked it for a moment while he murmured an incantation, and looked up.
"They are."
"Are they?"
Chris rubbed his hands together.
"Tell them to come here—"
Wilbur cut him off at once.
"I don't want them meeting here. Make your arrangements somewhere else, or go and see them yourself."
"Then I'll go to them. Ask where they live."
"If I ask after their residences, won't they find it strange?"
"Ask in my name."
Wilbur sent a message slip explaining the matter and requesting their whereabouts. Replies came back from both a short while later, a sour reluctance clinging to the slips. Even so, they gave their locations.
Chris couldn't make sense of the coordinates.
"Where is that?"
Wilbur fetched a map and marked it for him.
Chris went to Vilpua's house first. It was a cave dwelling, but unlike Grain's it was no natural cavern. It had been cut by hand.
Vilpua's question came out guarded.
"May I ask why you've sought me out...?"
"From what I can see, the Sky Gate will open before the year is out."
"I see."
"Will you come with me?"
"I was told that ascenders are restricted to Ring Binding."
"Qualifications are simple. Eat Motaro and raise your rank."
"I've heard the side effects are severe, if one becomes a Ring Binder on Motaro."
"They say the Middle Realm has more than one way to overcome the side effects. If that still sits poorly with you, you can ascend at Seed Cultivation. I'm told a high-rank Ring Binder can bring one person along."
"It won't be free, I assume."
"Of course it won't. My master will demand a considerable quantity of mana stones."
"I wonder whether my master would be willing to bear that."
"Why? You don't want to go up? Planning to stay here and play at being chief?"
"Who can say."
"Come up with me. The way above this place is shut. A ceiling of steel is holding your growth down."
"Why do you want me to go with you?"
"Old men are irritating, aren't they."
Chris caught his hand.
"Let's the young ones stick together and make something happen. Let's raise a little hell."
Vilpua drew his hand free.
"I'll decline."
Even if I do ascend, I won't be keeping company with you. He buried the thought and smiled.
Chris didn't cling. He stepped back cleanly.
"No? All right. If you change your mind, say so."
He took his leave and set out for Randal's residence. Randal was the real target. The visit to Vilpua had been camouflage.
Randal's house was a two-story building that might have graced a picture postcard, bright and tidy, and nothing like the cold nature of the man who lived in it.
Bastard.
Chris cursed him. The man was dead, and still the thought of him turned Chris's stomach.
I should have killed him with my own hands.
Chris kept a list titled People I Want to Kill.
Randal, William, Perez, Richard, Alex.
Of those names, only Randal was dead.
As he drew near the house, the door opened of its own accord. He stepped inside, and Randal's voice reached him.
"Please come up to the second floor."
Chris entered the study. Randal sat in a rocking chair before the fireplace, and the logs popped and settled as they burned.
"A hard face to look at. Tenbo, you evil spirit."
Tenbo answered in Thought Language.
"Someone else might hear. Call me Randal."
Then he laid the courtesy on thick.
"My master sent me to gather mana stones, so I wandered the continent."
Chris took the chair opposite.
"Must have been hard."
"Yes. I suffered a great deal. When I saw you at the Horace Ruins, I never imagined you would become such a figure. The world is a curious place."
"A figure? You flatter me."
Chris switched over as well.
"Talented, aren't you."
"At what?"
"Richard is no easy mark, and you fooled him without a seam showing. How was that possible? Did you read Randal's memories?"
Tenbo shrugged.
"Who can say."
The way he brushed it aside suggested the subject didn't agree with him.
"Randal's dead, I take it."
"I erased him."
Without warning, Chris dropped to his knees. He looked up at the man and pleaded as if everything depended on it.
"Please instruct me, Archmage Horace."
Randal's eyes flooded with astonishment and shock.
"Uh..."
He broke off and tilted his head.
"What are you talking about?"
Chris pressed his palms together in an attitude of prayer.
"Denying it won't help you."
"Are you ill? You're saying strange things."
"You were about to ask how I knew. Weren't you?"
"...!"
"Every piece of information I have insists that you are Horace."
"Damn it. How did you know?"
"The truth is, I didn't."
"What? You were testing me?"
Chris grinned.
"Yes. I floated it on the chance it might be true. And it was."
"You must have had some basis, or you wouldn't have tried."
"I heard old stories from Grain. Among the Generation Zero mages, the one who survived to the very end left the strongest impression."
"And why would that stay with you?"
"Most of the other Generation Zero mages were finished while they were still frozen. Horace fought after he had thawed. A mage come down from the heavens wouldn't have fallen so pointlessly..."
He was still sending the thought when admiration broke through it.
"You! You're over ten thousand years old!"
"I spent most of that frozen, or sealed inside a mirror."
"Even so, you lived through ten thousand years."
"Grant that, then. Why suspect me?"
"I guessed a Generation Zero mage would have at least one unusual art. Hiding a soul in a mirror and then taking another person's body — that's the sort of magic only a Generation Zero mage would work."
"Is that your only reason?"
"No. There's one more. You knew a great deal about the mask, and Grain didn't. He thought of it as nothing more than a special tool for changing a face. The only mages with more knowledge than Grain are from a far older generation."
"I don't know the mask all that well either."
"You still know more than Grain does."
Horace's eyes took on a dangerous gleam.
"I'll have to kill you."
"Your old realm is Absorber, but the body you're in now is only Seed Cultivation. Even if you've raised it in secret, it can't be more than the lower end of Ring Binding. Do you really think you can kill me?"
"The knowledge is Absorber. It won't be difficult."
"I visited Vilpua before I came here. At least three mages know that I went to see you. And Grain holds me very dear. If I go missing, he'll come looking for you in short order."
"Why is Grain keeping you so close?"
"Why do you think? To use me. Obviously."
"Use you for what?"
"That's one of the reasons I came. What do you think he's after?"
Horace let the silence stretch before he asked.
"What is he demanding of you?"
"He said we should ascend together."
"You don't look willing."
"I've a great deal of life left in me. Stay in the Lower Realm and I can live in high style. Go up to the Middle Realm and I'll spend my days running errands for monsters, wearing myself thin. Do I seem like a man who wants that?"
Horace pressed his upper lip up toward his nose and sank into thought.
"What has Grain taught you?"
"Iron Skin."
A breath of understanding escaped Horace.
"Ah."
Chris brightened.
"You've worked it out."
"I have."
"What is it?"
Horace's eyes moved, keen and alive.
"And why should I tell you?"
Chris sighed.
"Mages never do make it simple. Answer my question, and I won't reveal what you are to Grain."
"Swear it on your mana."
Chris had never intended to inform on him, so he agreed at once and swore.
"He told you that if he opens the Sky Gate, you can ascend."
"A lie, then."
"No. That part is true. What he didn't tell you concerns the passage we'll open..."
"We?"
"The mages who came down from the Middle Realm designed it, cleared the ground, and raised the foundation. All of that amounts to interior work. So the passage is ours."
"You could see it that way. And what is the passage like?"
"The one we'll open isn't wide and safe, the way a passage opened by a dragon is. Dimensional Wind blows through it without end."
"Dimensional Wind! Is it dangerous?"
"Of course it is. Imagine a wind with the force of a Seed Cultivation wind-blade."
"So that's why they said Seed Cultivation can't go. But for Ring Binding, that shouldn't be much."
"If it blew for a moment and stopped, you'd be right. It doesn't. It blows and keeps blowing, without rest. You'd have to take thousands of wind-blades."
"Ah. That is a problem."
Light rain soaks a man through, if it never lets up. Take that kind of punishment without pause, and even a Ring Binder would be hard-pressed to come through whole.
"So the reason only Ring Binding can enter is the Dimensional Wind."
The brow of Horace, wearing Randal's face, drew tight.
"No. The real problem is something else."
"What's the real problem?"
"Rifts open inside the passage at any time. Catch one, and even Ring Binding will have trouble surviving. You'd need luck..."
"Luck?"
"There are times when the rifts come on hard. Then most of those at Ring Binding..."
"Most of them what?"
"You're going up anyway, aren't you? Hearing more won't help you."
Chris wanted the rest.
"When a rift opens, do the quality and quantity of mana, and how well you use your magic, decide who lives?"
"Don't bother weighing that. Just pray your luck holds. Catch a rift, and even an Ultimate Mage will have trouble staying alive."
"Ah, shit."
"So you've seen through Grain's intent as well."
"Yes. This body of mine is the sturdy one, isn't it. That bastard means to use me as a shield. A living shield against the dimensional rifts."
Even as he said it, Chris thrust out his forearm, absurdly.
"What are you doing?"
"Iron Body and Iron Skin have made me as hard as real steel. Could this withstand a rift?"
Horace formed a wind-blade and brought it down across Chris's forearm.
Clang.
He had struck flesh, and it rang like struck iron.
"If the Dimensional Wind doesn't turn into a dimensional storm, the wind itself won't be a problem. But you can't endure a rift. Rifts are dangerous even in the Absorption Realm."