by Danny Macks
“I'll wash up, then head over there immediately.”
Father blinked watery eyes, as if Silva had said something important, then nodded. “Thank you.”
Silva was almost to the staircase when his father called out, “Silva?” He turned. “What do you see when you look at me?”
“My father. What should I see?”
“I'm serious. What do you see? After you came back, your mother’s been haranguing me. She says … It doesn't matter what she says. What do you see when you look at me?”
Mother said…
Silva considered simply walking away, as he had tried to do the day before, when his father grabbed his sleeve. No.
He clenched his jaw and answered. “I see a man who should be forty-four years old but appears double that because, when the world fell to shit, he wouldn't admit the people who died standing next to him had passed. A man who, instead of being a father to a thirteen-year-old boy who lost his mother, retreated inside his own head to a fantasy world where the house is filled with music instead of silence, Mother is alive and we aren't living in squalor. Too consumed with his own wounds to admit other people are suffering too. A man who spends every day writing on a three acre prison he helped construct — with his finger — rather than admit he’s no longer a doctorate wizard or even a mage.”
Father drew himself up straight, his eyes glistening. “Not very tactful, but you answered me honestly.” Silva was certain he was about to add a ‘thank you’, but had choked on the words.
“How would you like me to sugarcoat it?”
The two men locked eyes for a long moment, then Father's gaze fell away and he slumped a bit. “I thought you were a mage, but you don't see me.”
“I see just fine.” Silva turned back toward the stair. “I'm needed in town.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The Town of Winterhaven had been built to last forever. Most of the buildings were stone instead of wood, with high quality glass windows instead of — or in most cases in addition to — wooden shutters. Those windows were boarded up now, or shattered with pieces of glass jutting up into open holes like fanged mouths locked in an eternal scream of agony.
Greased up and presentable as possible — his robes still damp from their washing in the lake — Silva walked down an empty street. More than half of the businesses had closed immediately after the disaster robbed people's ability to use magic, but quite a few had remained when Silva left five years earlier.
Nonmagical drudgework was drudge work no matter where it occurred. The butcher’s shop was unable to make use of the latest in refrigeration, but people still needed butchers and farriers and greengrocers. A dressmaker’s shop had stood on the corner, importing fabrics from outside the area. The owner sewed with needle and thread long after she lost the ability to power her sewing machine. All had been here five years ago. All were gone, now.
Sunlight glinted off intact glass. The post office had permanent iron bars over the windows, but the glass beneath appeared whole. A bell tinkled when he opened the door, a little surprised to find the bolt unlocked, and a man glanced up from a book, wearing a blue and white shirt with rolled up sleeves and a faded blue cap.
The man slid the book under the counter, buttoned up his blue vest and rolled down the sleeves of his shirt. “Good morning! How can I help you today?”
“I wasn't sure I’d find you open. The place looks like a ghost town.”
The postmaster smiled. “There’s still a few of us left. The mayor’s up at the capital arguing with the bureaucrats about the proposed changes to the county lines and the county clerk’s doing double duty while he’s away. The library closed last week and Miss Enthus left the doors unlocked when she left, if you want something to read. The wagons were overloaded to bursting, but she still had to leave a few things behind. Penny dreadfuls mostly, but a few real books too.”
“Anyone else?” This didn't sound like people fleeing an urgent disaster, but something was certainly going on.
“The usual holdouts, of course. I expect some folks will wait until water’s lapping at their door sills before they pack up and leave. Plus the scrappers, of course, but metal scrappers and rag men aren’t usually interested in books. I’m only awaiting word from the postmaster general on my new assignment before I pack up this place.”
“What’s happening to the water?”
“Where you been hiding?” He gestured to Silva's robes. “I figured you knew all about it. They're tearing down the dams. This time next year, this building will be under fifty feet of water.”
*****
The library had been mostly cleaned out. Somebody had even ripped up the copper fountain in the front lawn and removed the brass plate off the front door. Vandals had toppled several empty bookshelves but a few books still littered the floor. Digging through the debris, Silva found a mostly intact laymen’s edition of Signs and Sigils in the reference section. He grabbed the book, even though the printing was twenty years out of date, along with several trashy romance novels as a peace offering for his father. It would require everything he had to get the old man to move.
If he could get the old man to move. An old memory trickled to the surface. Stubbornness aside, there might be a legal problem. He headed toward the courthouse.
Mr. Abernathy was enjoying lunch with his wife when Silva arrived at the Clerk's Office. A white linen tablecloth covered a counter, along with blue and white delftware plates, red linen napkins and silver dinnerware. A bottle of wine sat next to two thick square tumblers and a picnic basket. The thin man rose as Silva entered the room, wiped his bushy mustache, and buttoned the top button of his jacket over his waistcoat, his only concession to comfort despite the heat.
Mrs. Abernathy remained seated, corseted and buxom in yards of fluffy pink, a matching pink parasol folded on her ample lap.
The Clerk of Court smiled with close-lipped professionalism. “Good day. How may I help you?”
As Mrs. Abernathy’s gaze roamed over Silva's robes and well-groomed hair, her smile was both more natural and more predatory.
“I’m Silva Vatic. I have some questions about the details of my father’s incarceration.” Both smiles fled. “Would you have the details of his conviction on file?”
“I’m sorry. Most of our records have already been moved. If you would like to inquire at–”
“I only need to know what will happen to him when he leaves due to the flood.”
“As I just said, those files–”
“Posh, Vinton. Tell the boy.” Mrs. Abernathy laid a hand on Silva's arm and gave him a saccharine smile, full of venomed honey. “When your father crosses the county line, he will find trained enforcers and maybe even inquisitors waiting for him, ready to escort him to prison for the rest of his natural life. He only escaped that punishment eight years ago due to his infirmity. Nobody expected him to live this long.”
“These are special circumstances,” Silva thought out loud. “Perhaps a letter to the magistrate explaining …”
“I suggest you hurry and compose your letter, then,” Mr. Abernathy said. “Before the post office closes.”
The barest sliver of moonlight reflected off the water as Silva sculled over the stern on his way back home. He had discovered the rowboat with a missing oar at an abandoned beach house. He pulled the craft well uphill from the water, stubbed his toe on something in the dark, then chastised himself for a fool and lit a mage light. There were no lights in the tower, his father likely already asleep.
“I've been waiting for you,” Kate called out from the dome. “Your father told me you'd gone to town. How was the trip?”
“A flood is coming. Most people have left town.” He leaned a hand against the glassy dome and stared toward the top, invisible in the dark far above. “You should be fine, but father and I may have to leave.”
“When will you be back?”
Silva turned and leaned his back against the surface. “We won't. I know what they're trying. Ley
energy erodes under flowing water, but opening the dams won't work. The water won't rise fast enough to scrub away the damage here. At best they'll simply bury the problem. At worst they'll spread it.” Silva slid down the wall until he sat on the cool dirt.
“That symbol you showed me. It burned its way into my brain. I dreamed about it.”
“Sigils can do that. Don’t worry. A foundation sigil like that can’t do anything alone. The afterimage will fade in a few days.”
“For eight years I thought magic was a superstition. Like predicting the future from the stars. I asked your father to explain magic to me, today. But I think his explanation was too advanced. I didn't understand. He gestured a lot, but I didn't see what he was trying to show me.”
“Father’s a … special case. He used to be an exceptional wizard. Elite. But the experiment which brought you to this world damaged him. In the head. He isn't what he thinks he is anymore.” A twinge in his power reminded Silva to douse the mage light before he felt the drain. The light was starting to attract probers. The little parasites had long ago learned to associate light at night with human blood.
Kate didn't seem to mind the darkness. “So you explain. The books in the old library are advanced. They assume people understand the basics. How does magic work?”
Silva considered a while, glad to be discussing something other than disasters. “Can you read in your world?”
“Multiple languages. At home I’m considered … elite, too. I can also read your language.”
Silva nodded, even though he doubted Kate could see him. “In our written language, we use symbols to represent sounds. One symbol makes a ‘buh’ sound while another symbol makes a ‘ruh’ sound. With me so far?”
“I already told you I can read. You're talking down to me.”
“Humor me. Okay, so with written words, the order of symbols matters. ‘Rub’ and ‘burr’ use the same letters. Now, with magic, foundation sigils represent a concept."
"Like kanji."
"I don't know that word," Silva admitted. "Is that a word from your world?" As soon as he asked, he realized the answer didn't matter and continued. "If sigils are words, then spells are sentences: overlapping sigils which form a greater meaning than the individual words. Common sentences, the kind found in most reference books, are called rotes. Because of the way sigils overlap, without a mage scroll for a guide, you can't study a rote and figure out the foundation sigils which compose it."
"So the telepathy rote," Kate said, "should contain the sigils for 'Enhance. My. Natural empathy.' … to something about understanding expressions."
Silva smiled. "You have been reading my parents' reference books. Anyway, Father guessed the sigil I showed you was an identification sigil for a bug. If that’s right, then — in theory — I could weave together the sigils for the bug and, say, detection, light and a specified radius and produce a spell which caused all bugs of that type to glow. But, like your telepathy example, when I combined the sigils the resulting rote could do nothing or produce a totally different effect if I put them together incorrectly.”
“If that’s true, why doesn't a sigil for fire set a book on fire?”
“That’s the second requirement. Sigils are powerless outside the human mind. We envision the completed rote — not as individual sigils but as a completed whole — and perhaps trace the symbol we imagine with a finger. Our bodies become the conduit to empower the rote and create an effect. We've tried making machines to draw on ley energy but they always require an operator to activate and power them.” He tapped his temple. “The magic happens inside the technician’s mind, not on the page. We can even store the energy, but ley stones — again — can't do anything without a technician.”
“Any other requirements?”
“Lots of them, but the most important one is power. The energy has to come from somewhere. People can hold varying amounts of power and — anywhere but here — draw more from streams of energy called ley lines. But ley power is not infinite. That’s why we can’t simply summon a rainstorm. The power requirements are too huge for even an army of mages working together.”
Silva swatted at a prober which had landed on his hand while Kate considered all this. He was comfortable with Kate like he had been with nobody else. He had been since he was eleven. “Kate?”
A cloud passed in front of the thin crescent of the moon, turning them both from shadows to invisible voices in the darkness.
“Yes?”
“If we get out of this, would you marry me?”
More silence. Silva sat up and turned around. There was barely enough light to see a humanoid shape sitting inside the dome, cross-legged. He couldn't see her face. “I’m serious.”
Kate stood up. “Ask me again after we both get out of here.”
Silva stood, suddenly self-conscious. He shoved his hands in his sleeves so she wouldn't see him fidget.
“Good night, Mr. Vatic.”
“Good night, Miss Janos.”
As Silva turned away, the cloud moved and a tiny beetle, its back shiny in the slim moonlight, pushed a ball of dirt across the courtyard. Feeling suddenly daring, Silva wove together the sigils he had described, in his mind, and they seemed to fit. Visualizing the combined sigils, he traced the result with a finger and breathed power into it. Nothing happened to the beetle, but every single prober within fifty feet glowed like a candle.
Kate gasped behind him and Silva hurriedly dispelled the effect. Shivers overcame his body, and he clenched his fists to try to force them to stop.
“What’s wrong?”
“That was reckless. Horribly reckless.” That wasn't it. Not really. Probers were an invasive bug, found mainly near the creeks and canals which fed into, and out of, Winterhaven Lake. A minor side effect of the portal disaster, they were rare anywhere else. The prober sigil had come from Silva's master scroll. The completed spell had been written specifically to be used near Winterhaven.
Dr. Delan had warned the scroll contained a subtle danger. Could that subtle danger have been specifically designed to harm him or his father? What would the completed spell make the insects of Winterhaven do?
“Silva, does your world have … I don’t know the word. Do you have people who can't power magic themselves, but understand well enough to teach?”
“You mean like educated drudges?" Silva scoffed. "Commoners tend to be poor, and uneducated. Why bother to educate somebody incapable of using what they are taught?”
“To figure out how things work. For example, in my world people can make guesses, using math, about planets around other stars and what the planets would do to the light of that star. Other people have used those equations to examine starlight and estimate what is actually out there. A magical version of that.”
“A theoretical wizard. That field is highly regulated and requires a doctorate in another field first. Theoretical mages wear purple robes with yellow bands on the sleeves.”
“Like your father.”
“No. Bright yellow, not a muddy mustard color. He used to wear bright yellow, but they stripped his certifications from him when …” Silva gestured toward the dome in the dark. “… this happened.”
Kate leaned against the inside of the dome with her hands, gave it an experimental shove, then stepped back and brushed the moisture off her hands. “When I get out of here, if I can’t get home, I think I’ll become a theoretical wizard.”
Silva grinned toward Kate. “Really?”
“What? I didn't believe, but I've had nothing else to read besides reference books for eight years. I think I might surprise you. Does your world have female wizards?”
“My mother had multiple doctorates and also wore sunshine yellow on her robes.” Silva scratched his chin, then drew another three-foot wide flaming sigil. “You want to help? Fine. See if you can find this sigil in your books.”
“Ooh, I know that one! It’s a duration sigil. The literal interpretation is ‘until death’. The entry had a lot of
big red warnings attached. The standard configuration causes the spell to continue past unconsciousness and is a standard element in spells designed to continue working while the caster is asleep. Inverted like you have it means the spell is supposed to continue until the target is dead.”
Probers were blood suckers. More a nuisance than anything. But there were thousands of them in the miles around Winterhaven. With a large enough effect radius drawing them in, how much damage could they do to a person? Enough to kill? No, that couldn’t be right. The power output for such a spell would be huge.
“Am I right?” Kate asked.
Silva faked a smile. “I have no way of knowing. Identifying that sigil is one of the preliminary steps to understanding my master level examination.”
A soft feminine chuckle. “So all this was so you could cheat on studying for a test? Your father was right, you are a scandrel.”
“Scoundrel,” Silva corrected. “And looking up something in a book — which I could easily have found myself if I stayed at the university — is not cheating.”
“Good night, Silva.” She still sounded like she was smiling.
“Good night, Kate.”
CHAPTER SIX
Silva was dreaming he was in class again when something pushed his shoulder. He turned and saw no one there or even glancing his direction. Some prankster was about to get in trouble. Dr. Eston had no tolerance for jokes. His shoulder was shaken, harder.
“Is there a problem, Mr. Janos?” Dr. Eston asked, his jowly frown reminiscent of a chubby hound dog.
Before Silva could answer, he was violently flipped sideways and landed on the hard wooden floor, blinking up blearily at his father as he struggled awake. His cot was upside-down beside him.
“Where did you get this?” Father yelled, shoving Silva’s master level scroll under his nose. “Who gave it to you?”
“Huh?” Silva pushed his hair out of his face and caught his breath. “Dr. Delan. It’s my master exam scroll.”