The Storm - eARC

by David Drake

  Mostly I was looking for a way to keep busy in a situation where I couldn’t work as a Maker. I didn’t have the specialty materials I’d need to work seriously, and it would disturb Addis and his neighbors.

  Prospecting was all right. Many communities, even quite small ones, had a few people who prospected in the Waste to earn a hardscrabble living. It wasn’t much different from fishing, though prospectors usually had to trek their finds some distance rather than selling to their neighbors.

  I moved out about a pace from the Road and walked parallel for maybe fifty yards. Then I stepped back onto the Road with my finds. As a general rule you don’t get much close to the Road because when the currents move something visibly onto the Road, passers-by search the immediate area—often keeping one hand back on the Road.

  Maybe because there was so little traffic in the region, I found half a dozen artifacts on my first trawl of the area. They were all well worn, and the biggest were the size of husked walnuts; still, it was nice—exciting, even—to find anything when I was really just spending time.

  At that point I thought of going straight back to Skiria and making a careful examination of what I had, maybe with Guntram if he was up to it. Instead I decided to make a second pass, a little farther out. I was pretty sure that the scraps I’d found were of no more real interest than the tips of pipe-stems tossed onto the midden at the back of a village inn.

  Sam was glad to keep going. I felt bad about the length of time he had to spend in the stables in Dun Add. Though in truth, the sort of work that kept me in Dun Add didn’t appeal to me either.

  I went out farther from the Road on the second pass, maybe a little farther than I’d intended. There’s no science to prospecting in the Waste. You shuffle along, bending to pick up anything your feet find. At home I’d probably have been using a collecting sack, but here I just cinched my belt tight and dropped the bits I found down the front of my tunic.

  To my surprise, I stumbled—literally—onto a node which wasn’t connected to the Road. Sam and I scrambled onto it. It was small, not more than ten feet in either direction.

  I knew from experience that a detached node like this could be extremely dangerous. The first thing I did was draw an arrow on the loose surface pointing toward the Road. Not the way we’d come on the node, but at right angles to that.

  There was nothing on the slightly humped surface to give a sense of direction, and to go off at the wrong angle meant to go on until you died. Sam might’ve had a better sense of direction than I could claim, but the only way to test his skills would be unpleasantly fatal if those skills were lacking.

  This node was sandy, and along the edge where I’d arrived was a scree of broken and worn seashells. On the opposite side, barely within the boundaries of the node, was an artifact. It was flat and about half the size of my palm. I dropped into a light trance to probe it.

  It was the most wonderful thing I’d ever found. Well, that I’d been aware that I’d found: Guntram had gone over the scraps I’d picked up during a decade of searching at Beune. Among them he’d located half the weapon I was now wearing, one of the finest pieces in Dun Add. But if Guntram hadn’t visited me at home, it’d still be an odd scrap on a shelf in my barn.

  This was a fragment of a window onto another place or time. I recognized it because there were seven of them in the palace in Dun Add, each rebuilt over a period of months by Guntram himself. He had promised me that if I found the scrap of one to use as a core, we would rebuild it together.

  I laughed with a rush of joy. Now my friend Guntram was back! As soon as we returned to Dun Add, we’d carry out what had been only an idle dream a year ago.

  I rumpled Sam behind the ears; then I aligned myself carefully with the arrow—no point in getting careless because I was feeling good. We strode straight to the Road and returned to Skiria with our finds.

  Guntram was alert and even sitting out on the wall when I returned. The three children were watching him. They may have been waiting to fetch something if Guntram asked them to, but I suspected they were just fascinated by their visitor from Dun Add.

  I wasn’t nearly as exotic to them as Guntram. Champion of Mankind was just a title: they knew in their hearts that I was a peasant from the sticks, like them and their neighbors. Guntram was unique.

  And indeed he was, but that was as true in Dun Add as it was here.

  I sat beside him and we went over my finds. One was more interesting than I’d thought: a fragment of a communications device, Guntram thought. It would be a lot of work to complete and even then would be useless without another identical one.

  But the window…My, Guntram was almost as excited as I was.

  “Sir?” I said. “When we get back to Dun Add, will you let me help you rebuild this?”

  “Of course,” Guntram said, snapping back to the present after a brief trance. He smiled at me.

  “And as for timing…” he added. “When you see our friend from Not-Here tonight, tell him that I’ll be ready to leave tomorrow morning. Does that suit you, Pal?”

  “It suits me very well!” I said.

 

  After dinner, we gathered up what we needed for the Road. Guntram had a new tunic and trousers, which Inna had remade from a set of her husband’s. The garments Guntram had worn in the cyst were usable, but they had an odor which disturbed me. Neither Guntram or Inna could smell it.

  I’d asked Inna if she could replace them anyway, which she happily did. She wouldn’t even allow me to pay for them, saying that the fine fabric of the originals was more than enough exchange.

  We weren’t carrying food. Guntram had left his small converter with Addis and Inna before he went to the cyst. We retrieved it from a place of honor, on a shelf with a porcelain dish which Addis’s parents had given the couple on their wedding, and a locket with paintings on ivory of Inna’s grandparents.

  I took Addis aside and gave him my two remaining silver pieces, though he protested. They hadn’t lodged us for the money, but the money would be of use to them at some point. Their daughters would want dowries, if nothing else.

  The last thing Guntram got ready was a birch-bark container of sand, small enough to carry in my travelling wallet where I’d normally have had a slab of hard cheese. I took the box without comment when Guntram handed it to me, but I looked at him.

  “I expect to need it later,” was all he said. “If things work out as I hope.”

 

  The kids lined up to see us off in the morning. Belle held Arthur up so that he could watch Guntram walk through the curtain and onto the Road. Guntram waved, and I waved.

  They were good people. The Commonwealth and the Champions exist so that families on Skiria and Beune and a thousand scattered communities like them could live in peace.

  The reality doesn’t always work out like the dream; I know that. But without the dream, it doesn’t work out for anybody except for whoever’s the strongest in the district. And not even for him when something stronger and even worse wanders out of the Waste.

  We met a party of travellers going in the other direction. Three were men-at-arms. Guntram and I stood to the side as they passed. My shield and weapon were in my hands and I met the eyes of each stranger in turn: not glowering, not threatening, but not lowering my gaze. I figured I could take all three men-at-arms if I had to, and I was pretty sure they knew it.

  “When I’ve travelled in the past,” Guntram said, “I’ve worn a Cap of Darkness and gone unnoticed.”

  “That’s a good way,” I said. “But this way works too.”

  The other travellers hadn’t been out of the way as much as a minute before the Beast’s voice said, Greetings, friends. Guntram, you must guide us.

  “Yes,” Guntram said. “And I apologize that I can’t proceed very quickly. On the other hand, our goal isn’t trying to get away so we don’t require haste.”

  “Sir?” I said. “If you don’t mind my asking. Where is it that we�
�re going?”

  “We are going to a cyst which is just beginning to form,” Guntram said. “It’s on a very small node which was barely connected to the Road. The cyst when grown would wall it off completely, of course.”

  What I seek will be there, friend Guntram?

  “I hope and expect that it will,” Guntram said with satisfaction.

  We walked steadily. The Beast was with us except when he sensed other travellers approaching. Guntram wasn’t in great condition—quite apart from his age—but he moved along steadily. I’d been afraid that I was going to have to support him the whole distance.

  I’d have done that if I’d had to. I was just glad that I didn’t have to.

  Our friend Pal gave me a damaged artifact which he believes is too dangerous to repair, the Beast’s voice said unexpectedly. It is in two portions, one of which I will give you when we part.

  Guntram glanced at me. He said, “If Pal believes it shouldn’t be repaired, he’s probably correct. His judgment is quite good. But I will be interested to see it, regardless.”

  “It’s a tool that heals injuries,” I said, feeling embarrassed. “Probably old age among them. Only it distorts things a little each time, and the result goes in really bad ways. I figure if the Ancients couldn’t get it right, none of us were going to do better.”

  “As I noted,” Guntram said. “Good judgment.”

  “Sir?” I said. “Both of you, I guess. The fellow who’d been using the device, the monster as he was when me and Osbourn got a look at his body? He wasn’t human, he hadn’t ever been human. And sir?” I nodded to the Beast to make clear who I meant. “I’ve seen your people dead too, at Severin in the cyst there. The monster wasn’t one of your folk either.”

  “At one time…” Guntram said. I wasn’t sure which of us he was speaking to, or whether it was either of us. “I was afraid that I would run out of new things to learn as I get older. I no longer worry about that.”

  We met several parties going in the other direction, and twice we were overtaken by couriers travelling faster than we were. We kept out of one another’s way.

  At night we sheltered on a small node. It was uninhabited but covered with sumac. The wood allowed us a fire, and it provided raw hydrocarbons which we fed into Guntram’s converter.

  I wouldn’t starve to death so long as we had the converter, but I missed Inna’s cooking. For a moment I felt, well, nostalgic, I guess. I thought of having a normal life, a wife like Inna, a couple kids, and a smallholding.

  It could never have been, though. I’d have had to put my whole heart into it to make a farm like ours on Beune go. The twenty years I’d spent there was plenty long enough to prove that I’d never be a successful farmer.

  And I wasn’t about to trade Lady May for Inna or any number of Innas. Life with May wasn’t usually calm, but sometimes it was wonderful beyond words. More times than not it was wonderful.

  Guntram wasn’t hiding the distance from us; he really couldn’t tell. The third day after we left Skiria, the Beast vanished after warning us that a single traveller was coming toward us. Guntram and I got off to the right side of the Road.

  The stranger was a courier, trotting along behind a long-haired whippet. He stayed on his side of the Road and I was on the verge of forgetting him when he suddenly stopped and said, “Master Guntram? Master Guntram, that is you! They’re looking for you in Dun Add!”

  I took a more careful look and recognized the courier. “Good eye, Master Efrem!” I said. “But we’re headed back to Dun Add now, as soon as we take care of a little business on the way.”

  “Lord Pal!” Efrem said, bowing to me. “Sorry, your lordship, I didn’t recognize you. I’ve just come from your vicar at Severin, Master Hedring. Everything’s fine; it’s just a normal report back to the Leader.”

  There was a clerk named Hedring in the Chancellor’s Office. I suspect Jon—or Lord Clain—had put him in Severin to maintain order until Garrett and Welsh could arrange for their own choice. They were in Castle Ariel, on the marches with Not-Here. They might not even have heard about their new dependency, yet…

  “Well, carry on,” I said. “Tell them that we’re on our way, but it’s likely to be a while.”

  “Shall do, your lordship!” Efrem said. “Walk on, Zircon!”

  They swiftly vanished in the other direction. The Beast reappeared beside us on the Road. “Well,” I said. “Now we know that we’re near Severin. I could find my way back to Dun Add pretty easily, I guess.”

  “We don’t have far to go,” Guntram said. “Less than an hour, I judge—even as slowly as I move.”

  “Like you said, we’re not in a race,” I said. But I think Guntram moved out a little quicker than he’d been doing before.

 

  It was less than an hour before we stopped. The discontinuity in the wall of the Waste was more a color change than a break. It was easy to see, but it wouldn’t attract the interest of most travellers—and apparently hadn’t for a decade or more. Branchings of the Road eventually grew shut if they weren’t used.

  Sam looked at me and whined. I rubbed him and said, “Yeah, I think this is it, boy.”

  I took out my weapon and shield, then clucked to Sam and stepped forward. We rubbed through the Waste, but without ever losing regular vision. In a few yards we came out on a node covered with trilliums, some of them blooming with small pink flowers.

  A man lay half-covered by the foliage. I stepped forward and switched from Sam’s eyes back to my own. The man was Andreas. His face was shrunken as though the bones of his skull had been removed. A red wand the length of my forearm reached from the top of Andreas’s head. At the other end of the wand was a diamond as big as my clenched fist.

  I turned my head and shouted, “We’ve found Andreas!” I wasn’t sure that people on the Road could hear me, but Guntram immediately appeared from the track and the Beast came out of the Waste beside me. I jumped, I don’t mind admitting.

  Guntram strode past me and stood between the Beast and Andreas’s body. “Friend!” he said. “You must not touch this now. Go back to the Road if you think you’re going to have trouble controlling yourself. I promise you it will be all right, but you must let me deal with it first!”

  I trust you, friend Guntram, the Beast said. I will wait for you on the Road. He stepped back into the Waste.

  I looked at Guntram. I still held my shield and weapon. I didn’t see any present use for them, but I sure didn’t intend to put them up.

  “Sir,” I said. “What should I do now?”

  “Well, first, give me the box of sand you’re carrying,” Guntram said as he seated himself carefully among the trilliums. “And then—”

  He paused, considering choices. After a moment he went on, “I’d like you to guard me while I create a container for the seed. You could help as a Maker, but I think I can get it myself in a reasonable time. I’m much more concerned about being disturbed, and I’m particularly concerned about what the Beast will do. If he returns, please stop him if it’s possible to do that without injuring him.”

  “Sir,” I said. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m pretty sure I can’t get a grip on his skin with it not being in Here all the time.”

  My weapon would cut just fine. I wouldn’t have been willing to do that even if Guntram hadn’t told me not to.

  He smiled sadly at me. “I understand the problem,” Guntram said. “Our friend will feel a powerful compulsion to grasp the seed, however. That will destroy it for his purposes.”

  Guntram’s smile quirked into an even sadder expression. “Also,” he said, “touching the seed directly would kill him. I would regret that more than the fact that the seed was defiled for religious purposes.”

  There was a lump in my throat. I handed him the birch-bark container. “Guntram?” I said. “I touched the diamond we found at Severin.”

  “Yes,” Guntram said. “But you rejected it before it had time to take root and replace your ne
rvous system. I’m sure we’re both thankful for your decision.”

  Guntram stretched out beside Andreas’s body and fell into a trance. The box of sand was open between the two of them.

  I put my equipment away since I wasn’t going to use it. If the Beast returned I was going to punch him at the top of his body, where a human’s face would be. Beasts had natural weapons—the remains of people killed on the Road suggested claws rather than teeth. The corpses may not have been the result of human-Beast encounters, though, because there were no living—human—witnesses.

  I grinned, and that lightened my mood. Maybe if this ended with all of us alive, I’d ask the Beast what he thought the truth was.

  I walked around the perimeter of the node since if the Beast returned it might be from any direction. Besides, it gave me something to do.

  Only occasionally did I look at Guntram. He was building the silica into a shimmering net of crystal around the jewel. Guntram worked very quickly. The atoms were fitting into his lattice so fast that I could see the growth.

  When a Maker is really on his game, repetitive actions begin to occur without him thinking about it. That’d been what happened to me when I opened the wall of the cyst holding Guntram.

  I wondered why Andreas had come to this spot. It had nothing to recommend it except the trilliums and they wouldn’t last but a day. Mom would’ve loved to be here—she’d never seen a trillium in the wild. She’d never been off Beune, and I wouldn’t bet that she’d even gotten to the south end of our modest node.

  Andreas would’ve been afraid that I’d come hunting him. I’m not sure I’d have done that even if I’d known where he was—which I hadn’t and couldn’t have done. Still, he would have gotten off the Road and slept rough for a few nights rather than stopping in an inn where somebody might remember him to me if I passed by. As a result he’d died alone, and the wildflowers were springing up around him.

  I glanced at Guntram. He’d completed the upper portion of his case for the jewel. Three short legs rested on the stone but hadn’t been fused into it. Now the silica shroud was wrapping itself in a tight collar around the fleshy wand connecting the jewel with Andreas’s shrunken head.