by D. J. Butler
“You might could a jest carved me a bird,” she had teased him. “Then I’d a flew.”
“I would a done so, child,” his eyes had twinkled at her, “only I worried the short-legged priest wouldn’t e’er a kept up.”
Cal was burdened with the bulk of their camp gear: canvas sheets that could be made easily into a tent, Calvin’s bedroll, a pot, some rope, flint and steel, a little dry tinder. They each had a waterskin, but they carried very little food: a bag of bonny clabber, a wrapped parcel of griddle cakes, and some strips of air-dried beef. And now two bottles of moonshine liquor.
Cal also carried his tomahawk and lariat, strapped to his belt with thin rawhide ties, his boot knife, and a gift from the Elector that Sarah knew he had found extravagant: the Elector’s own Kentucky rifle, shiny and worn but perfect in its fringed buckskin sheath slung over Calvin’s shoulder. Iron Andy had taken it down from over the fireplace himself and pressed it into Calvin’s hands, whispering something to Cal that Sarah hadn’t heard, but that had resulted in him blushing. Along with the rifle, the Elector had given his grandson the related tools, powder and bullets, and a bag that clinked mysteriously before disappearing into Calvin’s pack.
Other than the borrowed coat, the monk had left as he had arrived, carrying nothing but a worn old satchel, of the contents of which Sarah was completely ignorant.
She was also ignorant of their destination. This left her at the mercy of the meddling little priest, but this morning the Elector had insisted, and she had given in, feeling she was doing her duty to the man who had raised her. The night before last Calvin had fended off the clay-men, but not without some injury, and she no longer felt safe on Calhoun Mountain. Also, she doubted her own ability to escape the forces that pursued her without assistance, or with Cal’s help alone. The little monk was a clever wizard, and she resolved to get him to teach her how he did it. She could always slip away later, if she found an opportunity.
As long as Thalanes was holding out on her, though, she felt no obligation to be forthcoming with him. She hadn’t told him, and, at her urging, Cal had also kept silent, about the claylike faceless men that had attacked them. She couldn’t put her finger on a good reason why she should withhold this information, only that it pleased her to do so. Pride, maybe—she didn’t want it known that she had put herself and Calvin in as much danger as she had. Sheer mule-headed stubbornness. And a will to pay the monk back, tit for tat, for his close mouth. They had told him about Obadiah Dogsbody and his men, and the hectoring that afforded him seemed to satisfy his yearning to indulge in I-told-you-so, at least for the present.
The best thing about being on the road was that, as long as they were walking, the monk couldn’t crowd too close.
They pushed over the top of a low ridge, feet plowing furrows in the drifts of fallen leaves, and Sarah realized where they were headed. “You’re takin’ us to the Trace, ain’t you?” When Thalanes continued his introspective humming, she tried again. “You’re taking us to the Natchez Trace, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said brightly. “The Imperial Highways are quicker, and so are the rivers, but on the old roads you attract less attention.”
“You attract bandits,” Cal observed doubtfully, “and bears.”
“I’ll be counting on your help against both,” Thalanes said. “The Elector spoke very highly of your shooting.”
“I most gen’rally hit what I aim at,” Cal allowed.
“He’s even better with the tomahawk,” Sarah boasted for him. Cal had been subdued since his failed effort to abduct her and she worried about his morale. “And he’s hell on wheels with the lasso.”
“No wonder the Elector insisted that he accompany us,” the monk said. “Though I suspect it may also have to do with Calvin’s own repeatedly expressed preference.”
Cal just blushed. “It ain’t jest my druthers. The Elector wanted me to keep Sarah safe.”
“Calvin is an interesting name,” Thalanes continued. “You’re named for the French lawyer, I guess? The man who defended John Dee and Giordano Bruno against blasphemy charges?”
“He didn’t reckon a man ought to be killed for disagreein’ with his priest,” Cal muttered. “It’s a common enough name in Appalachee.”
“It’s a fine name,” Thalanes concurred.
“It ain’t…it isn’t just the attention, though, is it?” Sarah pressed. “I mean, in the one day I’ve known you, you’ve changed my face, stared down Shadrach Calhoun, and turned me invisible, so I don’t think you’re worried you might run into that Martinite again on the highway.” She had an idea as to what drove the little man’s thinking, but she wanted him to admit it. “I mean, you’re a wizard.”
“There are darker things on the road than Ezekiel Angleton,” Thalanes replied, and Sarah felt a momentary twitch of guilt wondering whether he already knew, somehow, about their clay attackers, “though you shouldn’t underestimate the Right Reverend Father, either. But you’re right, there are other reasons to be on the old paths.”
Sarah waited, but the monk was silent.
“I’m not a child, you know,” she told him.
He looked startled. “Do you feel that I’m treating you like a child?”
“Like a stupid child.” Her face was hot. “You want me to follow you around, but you won’t tell me why or where, and you hide even the little answers, like why you want to travel on the Natchez Trace, even though it’s lousy with outlaws and we only have the one rifle among the three of us! You can say let no will be coerced until the cows come home, Father, but dragging me around in ignorance and fear is the same thing as telling me what to do.”
The monk stopped mid-stride and they all came to a halt in the leaves; his face looked as if he had been slapped. Sarah had a momentary impulse to apologize, but bit her tongue and defied him with her eyebrows instead.
“You don’t need to fear nothin’, long as I’m here,” Calvin offered. “I got the tomahawk as well as the gun.”
Thalanes shook his head as if he was emerging from under water. “I forget how smart you are. And how well Andrew Calhoun has taught you.” He laughed and shook his head again. “You’re just like your mother.”
“A crazy woman,” Sarah said pointedly. “I see you’ve been attending the Calvin Calhoun school of compliments and gallantry.”
“Hey!” Cal objected.
“The Empress Hannah was never mad.” Thalanes sobered suddenly, and was silent for a moment. “You’re right, of course. Demanding that you act without information and in fear for your lives is no better than coercion. My only defense is that I, too, act out of great fear. Tonight... when I am comfortable that we are well away from prying eyes and curious ears…I’ll tell you where I would like you to go with me.” He sighed wistfully and his eyes twinkled. “I fear Palindres would be disappointed with me. The free will of others is such a fragile thing.”
Sarah felt slightly mollified. “I reckon…I think he’d be proud of you for trying so hard.”
The little monk smiled. “I hope so.” He resumed walking. “As to why I wish to travel on the Trace, I assume you must be baiting me for some reason, since you are an accomplished hexer yourself. Nevertheless, as a sign of good faith, I’ll stick my foot in the trap.
“The Imperial Highways are fast, efficient roads. They’re fast and efficient because they’re made by surveyors, geographers, and engineers, men who take square and compass to a map and plot the shortest distance between two points. The pikes are geometric, abstract and rational, and if you wish to walk from Nashville to Philadelphia taking the smallest possible number of steps, it would be hard to do better than the Imperial Highways.
“The old roads are different. Most of them were old before man saw them.”
“By ‘man,’ do you mean just the sons and daughters of Eve, or are you including the Firstborn?” Sarah asked, mostly to show him that she was paying attention, and that she knew very well what he was talking about.
Thalanes nodded. “I mean the Eldritch, too. All of the children of Adam. The old roads were made by animals, by spirits, by the lines of the land itself, and those movements and those shapes had power in them, and they imbued power into the roads. Adam’s children, coming later, marked the old ways with cairns and standing stones, and celebrated their intersections with henges and temples…and they found that there was power in the roads.”
“Ley lines,” Cal jumped to the point. “They’s a ley line runnin’ down the Trace?”
“Yes,” the monk said. “Sarah, have you ever had occasion to use a ley line? Are you able?”
“I’ve done my fair share of hexing,” she admitted, “but all little things. I’ve never tried to do anything you’d call wizardry, or gramarye, nothing so big that I didn’t have enough power to do it myself. I don’t know if I’m able or not. Besides, you’ve got to be careful. Too much hexing’ll dry your fluids right up.”
“That why all the good hexers are shriveled old women?” Cal asked. “I mean, other’n you, Sarah? Not that they’s so many good hexers, ’cause they ain’t.”
“Magic doesn’t dry up your fluids,” Thalanes said.
“Sure, it does,” Sarah disagreed. “Cal’s right, I ain’t the only hexer on Calhoun Mountain, but the others’re broken old women. Granny Clay used to hex, when she was a girl. I heard she used to turn heads from Louisville to Chattanooga.”
“Then she got old,” Cal said. “And not in a good way.”
The monk nodded. “I don’t disagree that magic is hard on your body, it definitely is. I’m just saying that it doesn’t ‘dry up’ your ‘fluids.’ You see, any magical act takes energy. Really, it’s more basic than that—any act at all, physical, magical, mental, or spiritual, requires some kind of energy. Every person—every animal too, every living thing—has its own supply of magical energy. Call it power, or mana, or chi, or orenda. Ordinary, everyday sorts of spells, like cantrips to mend a pot, or soothe the pain of a burn, or find your way home, can be cast using your own personal reserve. For a lot of magicians, of course, that’s all the magic they can do.”
“And most folks can’t do any magic at all,” Cal observed. “Not for lack of puttin’ pins into dolls or drops of blood into beer, it jest don’t work for lots of people.”
Thalanes nodded agreement. “A wizard’s reserve of energy then recovers with rest and food, just like physical energy. Not just like physical energy, it is physical energy, and casting spells can make you tired and sick. I’m sure you’ve noticed that, haven’t you, Sarah?”
It was Sarah’s turn to nod.
“Pushing yourself too hard magically can age you, too,” the monk said. “And if you wanted to cast a more powerful spell than your own body can power, you would need to use another energy source.”
“Like a ley line,” Cal said. “Seems easy enough.”
“Many things in the natural world generate energy. The tides, the motions of heavenly bodies, births, even some deaths. Some of this energy dissipates, or is consumed, and some of it gets trapped in the ley lines. They are reservoirs of magical power, shaped by the face of the land and the patterns of life upon it. Not just anyone can use them, though. It takes training, and a natural gift, to be able to sense and draw energy from the lines.”
“Not even wizards?” Cal asked. “Not even all wizards can use a ley line?”
“Not even all wizards,” Thalanes agreed. “And those who can, use them with caution. Too much energy running through a wizard is like too much water in a riverbed—it will do damage.”
“Make you tired and sick and old,” Cal inferred.
“And dead,” Thalanes added. “Magical power can kill you as easily as a bolt of lightning. It’s not much different from a bolt of lightning, in fact.”
“So you want to travel on the Natchez Trace because, being a wizard, you’ll have access to magical power,” Sarah concluded.
“And therefore I’m not so very worried about bandits,” Thalanes agreed. “Which is a little foolish of me, because a gang of bandits in any reasonable size would be a serious threat to us. And even a single bandit could take us by surprise and kill one of us before we could stop him, if he wanted. But still.”
“And you’re forgettin’ the bears,” Cal reminded him cheerfully. “And what if they was magical bears, as could use ley lines to find their way home, and mend their bear pots? I still reckon they’s reason to be afeared.”
“There always is,” said the monk. “There always is.”
“The regalia of Cahokia,” Sarah said, drawing her thought out as it occurred to her. “You said they were things of power. What kind of power? The same kind of power as ley lines? Magical power?”
Thalanes looked thoughtful. “I don’t really know,” he eventually told her, and Sarah thought his answer was at least half an evasion.
“I reckon I should beg your pardon…Father, for somethin’ I’m fixin’ to do,” Cal said, and then his eyes widened. “I reckon I should beg both your pardons.”
It was night, and Calvin had settled them into a sheltered glade far enough from the road to be hidden. He’d lit a fire, laid out bedrolls (no tent necessary, because rain was a stark improbability) and then built the fire while he and Sarah nibbled on griddle cakes (Thalanes had declined) until it had a solid bed of coals.
Sarah lay back on her bedroll, looking at the bright stars of Orion through the leafless branches of the maples, ashes, and dogwoods surrounding them. Her feet hurt. She was accustomed to walking everywhere she went, but she wasn’t accustomed to walking nearly as much as she had this day. The stars gave her some comfort—she’d lost her home and changed her identity, but the stars stayed the same.
What did Calvin have in mind?
“You can call me Thalanes,” the priest said, “though I appreciate the gesture. What is it you intend to do?”
Cal held up a little bag—the pouch the Elector had so discreetly given him—and unknotted its strings, showing his companions that its contents were dully gleaming silver, in the shape of a few rings and coins. “The Elector said he wished he had some silver bullets to give me, but he didn’t, so he made me promise I’d make a few, first fire we laid. Does this…? I don’t wanna hurt you.”
“Then don’t shoot me.” Thalanes smiled. “I’m Firstborn, Calvin Calhoun, not a hobgoblin. Silver irritates my skin, and it may undo my magic, but it won’t burn me at the touch or poison me.”
Cal looked at Sarah expectantly; he wanted her permission, too. “Cal, I’ve been around silver all my life. You think all of the sudden it’s going to kill me from ten feet away?”
Calvin shook his head sheepishly and set to work, filling a small long-handled iron cup with the odd bits of silver and resting it in the coals.
“Well, then, Thalanes,” Sarah called out, “Calvin’s shown us what’s in his secret magical bag. Is it your turn now?” She began her question lightheartedly, but found she really wanted to know. The monk knew all her secrets and she didn’t know his, and she found that hard to bear.
“I wondered why you were lighting such a large fire,” Thalanes said, settling down with his back against a tree trunk. He had no bedroll, and showed no sign at all that he thought he needed one. “You’re a good man, Calvin. Dependable and capable.”
“Hear, hear,” Sarah added, teasing absently. “Calvin for king!”
Calvin blushed furiously. “What’s it like? I mean, to be…?”
“Eldritch? Ophidian? One of Wisdom’s Children? Firstborn? Of the Elder Folk? Serpentspawn? Serpentborn? Snakes? Wigglies? Fey? Elves? Fairies?” Thalanes smiled. “We’re all children of Adam, Cal, and I suspect being me is much like being you, except perhaps for the fact that there are some people in this world who really, really don’t like me just because I’m Firstborn.”
“I been to Raleigh sellin’ cattle and I seen the lights of Atlanta,” Calvin responded. “Turns out they’s folks in this world as really, really don’t like me jest for bein�
� Appalachee.”
“Touché,” Thalanes said. “Adam’s children are all hewn rough from the mountain stone. We must crash against each other until we become smooth.”
“I reckon so,” Cal agreed.
“It’s too bad you’re New Light, Cal,” Thalanes said. “Your strong common sense and feel for the reality of people would have made you a good priest. Have you thought about being a lay preacher, at least?”
“A tent and cookies man?” Cal chuckled. “I reckon not.” He poured molten silver into the grip-mold he had and set the cup back in the heat. A few moments later he plunked out a hot silver bullet onto the leather of his pack, and then carefully clipped away the sprue, dropping it gently back in the cup to melt again.
“Cal’s already had a ministry of sorts,” Sarah said.
“No I ain’t.”
“Now you’re jest bein’ modest.” Sarah turned to the monk to explain. “Calvin here was a corn reader.”
“Was,” Cal said immediately. “Was a corn reader. I got the New Light now.”
Thalanes furrowed his brow, then smiled. “You mean…you read to people’s crops?”
“No harm in it, I reckon. I ain’t sayin’ I drove away evil spirits or nothing’. Jest readin’ a little Gospel of John o’er a planted field, and if the farmer wanted to give me a little something for it, who’s the worse?”
“No one’s the worse,” Thalanes agreed. “But you have the New Light now.”
“I reckon I might could make eight bullets, all told,” Cal said, veering back to the subject of the silver, “so let’s be careful about what kind of critter we challenge to a firefight. Also, I’ll keep the rifle loaded with lead, for now, jest in case we see somethin’ worth eatin’.”
“Eight silver musket balls is a lot,” Thalanes said.
“The Elector ain’t a poor man,” Cal answered. “Lord hates a feller as don’t know when to spend his money.”
“As to my bag,” the monk turned to Sarah’s question, “like any wizard worth his salt, I carry a potion when I travel. Or at least, as you might say in Appalachee, I carry the fixin’s.”