He nodded. “I have an idea.” After his silence so far this morning, the lack of any feeling in his voice sounded particularly jarring again.
But Mari gave him a brief smile anyway. “Good. That’s one more idea than I have.”
The Mage looked at her for a moment as if once again trying to understand her words. “I suggest we stay here through the day, resting as best we can. When night falls again we make our way down to the road and walk it toward Ringhmon. In the darkness, we should be as safe as possible if we remain alert.”
“Yesterday you thought the road wouldn’t be safe,” Mari said. “What if those bandits are lying in wait for us along it?”
“We will be better able to escape or fight if it is dark. You have your Mechanic weapon and I have my spells, so we are not helpless. There will be some chance, anyway. The road will have its dangers, but I do not think we have any chance of survival at all if we try to go overland through these heights.”
She rolled onto her back and gazed up at the sun-blasted rocks around them, remembering their painfully slow progress of the day before. “I hate to admit it, but you’re right. That road is our only chance. Unless your Guild comes looking for you. Do you think they will?”
“No.”
She should have guessed that. Mages didn’t seem to waste much time on things like optimism, and any Guild that went to so much trouble to convince its members that nothing mattered wouldn’t be highly motivated to care about one Mage whose caravan was overdue.
“What of your Guild?” Mage Alain asked.
“The Mechanics Guild Hall in Ringhmon will eventually send someone to find out what happened to me, but by the time they decided we’d be dead,” Mari said. Wait the mandated period before marking someone overdue, fill out the proper paperwork, get it approved, get authorization to spend Guild funds on a search effort, and so on. The old joke claimed that you could die of old age while waiting for the Guild to officially approve your birth.
Mari looked up at the sky, nerving herself for what she knew she had to do. “All right, Mage Alain. These bandits are after me. Maybe we should split up, so you’ll have a chance.” He said nothing for a long moment. Mari looked over and saw the Mage gazing outward, his eyes unfocused. “Hello?”
The Mage drew a long breath, then shook his head. “I choose not to do that.”
That had been the last thing she had expected. Why would a Mage choose to remain with a Mechanic when his chances would be much better without her? “Why not?”
“If all is an illusion,” Mage Alain said in the slow manner of someone thinking through each word, “it would not matter what path I took. Therefore, I will stay with you.”
“Gee, thanks, you sound so enthusiastic.” Mari glared at him, trying not to show how scared she was at the idea of being alone out here with the bandits searching for her. “Listen, this is real.”
“Nothing is real.”
“Stars above! I’m trying to give you a better chance to survive. Take it, you blasted fool Mage. Yesterday, you came with me to survive. Today, you need to leave me to live. So do it.”
Mage Alain looked back at her without expression. “You are giving me orders, Master Mechanic Mari?”
“That would really be effective, wouldn’t it?”
“No. It would not. Was that your sarcasm again?”
Mari gave an exasperated sigh. “You’re as stubborn as I am. How old are you anyway?”
She saw him tense. “I am a Mage.”
“No question. Not a doubt in my mind. So, how old are you, Mage Alain?”
She thought he wouldn’t answer, but then Mage Alain met her eyes. “Seventeen.”
“Really? Is it unusual for a Mage to be that young?”
His eyes searched hers for a moment, as if trying to determine her reason for asking, then the Mage nodded. “I must prove myself,” he added.
“Oh.” Mari sighed again, her anger at his stubbornness fading into guilty relief that he hadn’t accepted her offer. “I know that feeling. I’m eighteen. Youngest Master Mechanic ever. I made Mechanic at sixteen. Unprecedented.” She hated bragging, but her inability to mention what she had accomplished without seeming to boast had worn on her. At least when speaking to a Mage she could talk about it without anyone thinking she was trying to impress. “I passed every test. I know my job. But every Senior Mechanic I meet thinks I’ve been promoted way too fast.”
“Many of my elders think that of me,” Mage Alain said. “Perhaps they are right.” He gestured toward the caravan’s remains. “I did not succeed here, in my first test.”
“Do you think any Mage, any person, could have saved that caravan?” Mari asked. “The people who attacked us had overwhelming force. The caravan never had a chance.”
“But it was my responsibility to protect it. That was the contract.”
She looked at him. “I thought you told me that Mages believe nothing matters. You just said that you would stay with me instead of going off alone and maybe living through this because it didn’t matter.”
“That is so.”
“Then why does what happened to the caravan matter?”
Once again Mage Alain almost frowned, the merest creasing of his brow, but said nothing.
“Actually,” Mari continued, “I agree that it does matter. But I also think you did the best anyone could’ve done. I mean that. You were willing to stand and die. What more can anyone ask?”
The Mage considered that, then met Mari’s eyes again. “It matters because the commons must remain in fear of Mages, and failure by a Mage might cause the commons to feel less fear. As for asking, more can always be asked of someone.”
Mari felt herself smiling at the irony of that last statement. “It sounds like whoever runs the Mage Guild has some things in common with the people running the Mechanics Guild.” The Guilds were enemies. Hate wasn’t too strong a word for the way Mechanics were taught to think of Mages. Yet she kept hearing things from this Mage that she could identify with.
Before she could say anything else, Mari heard the sound of a voice shouting below and felt a surge of fear.
The Mage peered over the rocks. “They are preparing to leave, I think. We were not overheard.”
“It would probably be better if we kept quiet from now on, anyway.”
He nodded, settling back and closing his eyes, seeming so calm that she couldn’t doubt his earlier declarations of belief that nothing mattered. Mari watched him for a minute, wondering why she had felt an impulse to confide in a Mage of all people. It had been a long time since she had any friends she could talk to freely. Maybe the sun was making her tongue too loose. After all, what did it take to qualify as a Mage? She had been told it merely involved learning enough tricks to fool the commons. But that was wrong. Mage Alain had clearly been put through physical challenges far worse than those which Mari had faced, and there was that superheat thing he had done.
They can’t really do anything, more than one Senior Mechanic had told her dismissively. No one had ever contradicted them.
Mari stared up at the sky, thinking. I’ve been in Mechanics Guild Halls or the Academy at Palandur since I was barely eight years old. I haven’t actually seen any Mages during that time except at long distance when I was out in Palandur with groups of other Apprentices or Mechanics. But if Mage Alain can do something like that heat thing, someone else must have seen other Mages do it. Some older Mechanics, who’ve been out in the world.
Why does every Mechanic say Mages are only fakes?
Regardless of the answer to that, Mage Alain wasn’t exactly a trusted co-worker. Whatever he had been through had obviously been brutal, but she couldn’t give him back his humanity or his childhood. She would have to keep her thoughts to herself from now on, unless they were about reaching somewhere they could find help.
By the time the sun had hit its highest, turning their hiding place into a veritable oven, the last group of the bandits had departed, heading west toward
The climb down wasn’t easy, even in full daylight. Mari examined the remains of the caravan and its former guards and drivers as best she could stomach, looking for anything else that might help them. But in the time since the Mage’s search last night the bandits had done a thorough job of destroying and despoiling everything that was left.
She met Mage Alain again at the edge of the crater which marked where the first explosion had shattered the front of the caravan. Somebody had used a lot of explosives to produce a blast that powerful, and the Mechanics Guild charged plenty for explosives. This “bandit gang” had a great deal of money behind it.
If Mage Alain was right about what the bandits had said—and the lack of bullet holes in the ruin of her own wagon would seem to confirm his guess—they had spent all of that money and killed all of these people in order to get their hands on her.
Why?
Mage Alain shook his head as he looked down into the crater. “The caravan master did not escape. I believe a few guards may have made it out of the pass, fleeing east, but they could not have outrun the bandits.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Just common folk, her Mechanic training told her. Inferiors meant to serve Mechanics. They didn’t matter.
Except that they did.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Mage Alain squinted into the distance. “It should not matter…they do not matter,” he said, as if trying to convince himself, unknowingly using the same phrase which had come to Mari as she thought of her training.
Mari grimaced. “Can you think of any reason we shouldn’t start walking west right now instead of waiting for nightfall?”
“No. We will not overtake mounted bandits unless they stop to watch for us, and if they do lie in wait, perhaps I can avenge those who died here.” The lack of emotion in his voice matched that in his face.
But Mari thought she could see the anger smoldering deep in the Mage’s eyes. She could have pointed out to Mage Alain that his desire for vengeance meant he did care about what had happened here, but she simply nodded and said nothing, feeling reassured that this Mage, at least, did think the fates of others mattered.
* * * *
They walked westward until close to sunset, taking full advantage of any shade cast by the heights around the pass. Just before sunset they cleared the pass, coming to a point where the road zigzagged down a fairly steep slope before continuing in a long curve toward the northwest across desert flatlands which ran all the way to the horizon. Mari, wishing she had brought a far seer, gazed out over the panorama for any sign of the bandits, but except for a tiny cloud of dust far down the road saw nothing.
After eating a small amount of the trail rations and drinking as little water as they dared, they started down the slope, cutting across the back-and-forth twists of the road designed to accommodate wagons. That sped them up enough that they reached the bottomland before moonrise.
The road proved easy enough to follow in the moonlight. Mari tried to maintain a steady pace as they strode through the desert waste, the only sounds the soft crunch of their feet on the sand drifted across the road, their breathing, and the occasional faint sigh of a breeze that seemed as exhausted as the two humans trudging along the apparently endless road. She saw nothing moving, no living thing except her companion, but did hear the occasional rustle of some small creature nearby.
The stars were more brilliant than she had ever seen them, but Mari didn’t dare look upward as she walked for fear of tripping and falling. Mechanics didn’t look at the stars much, anyway, any such study being strongly discouraged even though officially the Mechanics were a separate and superior group who had come from those stars. No matter their origin—and most of the Mechanics Mari knew considered the story to be just a grandiose myth—Mechanics were taught to keep their eyes on the ground and their minds firmly focused on the only world there was: - Dematr.
Mari was staggering with weariness by the time she noticed the sky to the east beginning to pale.
Mage Alain spoke with a voice deadened even more by fatigue. “We should rest during the day,” he said. “We will not be able to keep moving like this in the sun’s heat.”
“I can’t keep moving even if I wanted to,” Mari said. “Do you see anything that might offer us any shade or protection?”
The Mage shook his head. They went on a bit longer, until the sun poked its head above the horizon. As their shadows stretched far off to the side, Mari spotted a slight depression a little ways off the road that offered the only trace of cover and waved Mage Alain toward it. “I will take the first watch,” the Mage offered after they had drunk a little more of the water.
Mari nodded glumly. She shrugged off her pack, letting it fall with a sense of immense relief, then rolled onto her side to lie exhausted.
“You should remove your jacket,” the Mage said. “Use it to shade your head.”
She didn’t want to remove her one sign of authority, her one piece of armor, though in both respects the jacket offered little right now. “I’m a Mechanic.”
“I know that. Is there anyone around that you need to impress?”
Blasted Mage. Was she teaching him sarcasm? Rather than answer, she rolled to face the other way. The jacket felt like an already-warm burden, making it difficult to breathe. Mari counted to ten slowly, then without saying a word to the Mage awkwardly pulled off her jacket and tented it over her head, sighing involuntarily with relief.
Mage Alain wisely refrained from making any comment, and she fell asleep quickly, overcome with fatigue.
Mari awoke feeling dizzy and disoriented from the heat. Pushing the jacket off her head, she managed to sit up, blinking against the glare of the sun. The Mage had collapsed on the other side of the depression, his face hidden by the cowl of his robes. Mari plucked at her shirt, which was once again plastered to her skin by sweat. I’ll have to put my jacket back on when Mage Alain wakes up. I don’t want him seeing as much of me as he could with my shirt this wet. A Mage leering at me…that’s just too disgusting to think about.
That’s not fair. This Mage has been perfectly decent with me.
But sorry, Mage Alain. Even you don’t get to check me out with my shirt stuck to me like this.
She took a small drink, then lay down again, her back to the Mage and her jacket spread over her head and upper body.
* * * *
Mage Alain roused her again at sunset. She stared up at him, thinking that she ought to be panicking at having a Mage looming over her like that while she was lying down, but she couldn’t hold to any thought except for wondering why his face kept swimming in and out of focus.
“Drink,” Mage Alain ordered. She drank one mouthful. “More. The whole bottle.”
The small amount of water she had drunk had revived her enough to think again. “We need that water.”
“We will not survive the night unless we drink more.”
She wanted to argue that but felt the truth of the statement in her body’s weakness. Reluctantly, Mari drank the bottle down. The Mage discarded it, then examined their remaining supply and shook his head. “Can you walk now?”
“Give me a little while.” Mari wondered if he would wait, or head off to take his own chances alone.
But Mage Alain sat down a lance-length from her. “You waited for me to rest when we escaped the ambush,” he said, as if knowing her thoughts.
“I’d never been told that Mages believe in paying back debts.”
“Mages do not believe in that. Mages believe in—”
“Nothing. I know. Thanks anyway.” After resting some more, Mari stood carefully. “All right. I can move.”
“We have three bottles of water left.”
Mari felt fear as a far-off thing now, dulled by pain and tiredness and a thirst that the bottle she had drunk had done too little to satisfy. “How long can we make it last?”
“I think we should each drink another bottle tonight, then split the remaining one tomorrow.”
At least Mage Alain had stopped asking why she wanted his opinion. “And if we don’t reach a well or some help by tomorrow night?”
The Mage stared stoically at the ground. “I do not think we have any choice but to risk it.”
Mari rubbed her eyes, wishing they didn’t feel so dry and gritty. “I never expected to agree with a Mage on anything, but it’s been happening a lot lately. Let’s do what you suggested.” She struggled to her feet, then barely managed to get her pack up and onto her back, the Mage watching impassively until she was done.
They started walking, saying nothing more. Mari wondered if their mutual silence was just to conserve energy or if the half-companionship of their ordeal was finally coming to its inevitable end. Mages and Mechanics didn’t mix any more than oil and water did. Everybody said that. And yet she knew so little about Mages. Where did they come from? “Mage Alain.”
“Yes, Master Mechanic Mari.”
“Were you always a Mage?”
His reply took a moment. “I served as an acolyte before becoming a Mage.”
“What I mean is, were you born in a Mage Guild Hall? Were your parents Mages?”
“No.”
The single word came out like a slamming door, carrying more emotional force than anything Mari had heard from the Mage before this. “Sorry.” He obviously didn’t want to talk about his parents, and she certainly didn’t want to talk about hers. But something else had been bothering her. “You know what people say about Mages, right? That Mages will do or say anything they want and not care who they hurt?”
His reply was as impassive as ever. “There is no truth, there are no others to hurt, and pain itself is an illusion.”
“And you really do believe that?”
“Yes.”
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