Trapped

by James Alan Gardner

  But that didn’t satisfy Impervia: she would have stayed on deck all night if Oberon hadn’t insisted he’d be the one to watch Zunctweed. Our holy sister gave the big red lobster an appraising look, and apparently liked what she saw. After a moment, she patted Oberon’s shell and headed below.

  So we bedded down in the hammocks. I shan’t describe the inadequacies of such sleeping contraptions—more eloquent writers than I have expounded at length on the sensation of being webbed in, the saggy discomfort of no back support, the disturbing sway as the ship rolls—nor shall I grouse about occupying such cramped quarters with so many other sleepers. Pelinor didn’t snore, but one of the women did...and in the darkness, I couldn’t tell which it was. I crossed my fingers it wasn’t Annah.

  Or perhaps Myoko.

  Even without the snoring, I wouldn’t have fallen asleep easily—too many thoughts churned in my head. Especially about Niagara Falls.

  I’d seen the Falls once while chaperoning a field trip from the academy. Despite its reputation as a wonder of the world, I wouldn’t have gone to Niagara on my own free time; I didn’t expect to be impressed by water obeying the law of gravity. But when I got there, the Falls were truly impressive, with their roar, their mist, and their fury...not to mention the spectacular gorge they’ve cut over the eons, kilometers long, slowly eaten backward by the plummeting water. One look at that gorge and I knew the world was ancient. That in itself justified the trip.

  I was also grudgingly impressed by the area immediately surrounding the Falls. Several city blocks were remarkably preserved from OldTech times. Twenty-story buildings (hotels and casinos) still scraped their fingernails against the sky, their decor hardly changed since the twenty-first century...including the electricity running the lights and elevators.

  Yes, electricity. For five centuries, a portion of the Falls’ plunging water had been diverted through sluices, hurtling down millraces and directed over turbines to generate hydro power. Niagara was a major energy center in the OldTech era, and tourist guides claimed the facilities had remained in operation ever since, tended by a monastic order called the Keepers of Holy Lightning. The Keepers were typical crackpots, believing that OldTech days represented the peak of spiritual enlightenment. By contrast, the world of the present was a cesspool of Vanity and Sin, an affront to everything sacred, blah, blah, blah. Therefore, the Keepers disdained modern ways (sorcery, psionics, associating with aliens) and applied themselves to Living In The Past. They kept Niagara’s turbines turning, repaired any breakdowns in the power grid within three kilometers of their generating station, and even hand-crafted lightbulbs so their electricity would have some useful function to perform.

  You can find similar orders in other parts of the world. In Sheba, a group of ultra-conservative Sufis still operated the facilities at Aswan...sponsored (said my grandmother) by the Sparks, who had no interest in Sufism or electricity but wanted technologically competent people to care for the whole facility. Spark Royal didn’t want a dam break that sent a wall of water careening down the Nile valley. That was the sort of thing Sparks were sworn to prevent—disasters on the grand scale.

  Such thoughts made me wonder if the Sparks also supported the Holy Lightning in Niagara Falls. Possibly. Probably. It doesn’t take sophisticated equipment to produce electricity from falling water, but it’s hard to make everything you need with just a small cadre of true believers. Even simple copper wire requires ore, a refining furnace, and wire-pulling equipment...all of which added up to a hefty wad of cash. Did the electricity business really produce that much income when the power was being used only to dazzle tourists?

  The more I thought about it, the more I was certain the Niagara hydro station survived through Spark backing: money, materials, and more. (If some tooled-tungsten chunk of OldTech machinery broke down, where could the Keepers get a replacement except Spark Royal?) So why did the Sparks do it? Unlike Aswan, Niagara had no dam; if the generators broke and the power went out, it would put a damper on tourist business but wouldn’t endanger lives.

  Why would the Sparks care about the Falls?

  Unless they were using the electricity for something themselves.

  Unless there was some life-or-death need to keep the turbines running.

  Unless there was some secret something, a deadly threat known only to the Sparks; and all hell would break loose if the machines ever fell silent.

  In which case...in which case...

  I couldn’t finish the thought. I couldn’t even imagine what the threat might be.

  But Jode was taking Sebastian to Niagara. A Lucifer had gained influence over a powerful psychic who could do almost anything.

  I could see why Dreamsinger flew into a tizzy when she realized what Jode planned. The possibilities tizzied me too.

  Dawn came and went. In the bunkroom, the morning was scarcely noticeable—the Dinghy was a nice tight ship with few chinks the sunshine could penetrate. Still, light oozed in photon by photon. The night’s pitch blackness yielded to something less Stygian, enough that my dark-adjusted eyes could make out the hammocks around me.

  Waves rocked the boat like a cradle. I dozed off and on, drifting into dreams and back again. At some point, I must have slipped into a deeper sleep; when I finally awoke (with a clear head and no hangover, praise God), the bunkroom was empty. Heaven knows how the others got out of their hammocks without waking me—I had a hell of a time fighting my way free, nearly dropping facefirst to the floor. Good thing my friends weren’t around to laugh. I pulled myself together, straightened my clothes as much as a wrinkling night’s sleep would allow, and headed up to the deck.

  Bright sun, wispy clouds, brisk breeze. The first person I saw was the Caryatid, her cheeks as red as her clothing. She huddled with her back to the wind, baking a withered apple in a flame that sprouted from her fingertips. (Trust the Caryatid to heat her apples rather than eating them raw—she leapt at any excuse to light a fire and nuzzle it like a pet mouse.) When she saw me, she smiled in her motherly way. “Good afternoon, sleepy-head. You missed breakfast. And lunch.”

  “Zunctweed lied about the ship being out of provisions?”

  “Of course.” She reached into a small basket beside her feet and tossed me a hunk of cheese. “Eat fast. We’re almost there.”

  As I munched, I looked over the railing. The Dinghy was too far out for me to see the shore clearly...but beyond the narrow sand beach, I could discern open areas (fields), low trees (orchards), and thick forests (wood-lots and windbreaks). Local farmers must be out today, checking which fences needed mending, or gazing at morasses of mud and judging how soon the soil would be dry enough to plow. Perhaps the cattle had been let out to pasture, hoof-deep in muck but glad in their bovine way to be munching on sere yellow grass rather than stale fodder.

  Even as I watched, the ship angled toward land. Up ahead, a small harbor housed fishing boats—far fewer than the fleet in Dover-on-Sea, but enough to show the presence of an active port. The Caryatid said, “That’s Crystal Bay. We’ll put in there. Zunctweed says there’s no point going as far as the Niagara River, because it isn’t navigable for a ship our size.”

  “What about the canal?” The Welland Canal had been dug in OldTech times to circumvent the Falls. Back then, the canal’s lift-locks were controlled electronically; but locks can function perfectly well without fancy automation, and they’d continued on pure gravity feed long after the electric pumps had become useless. As far as I knew, the canal was still a working part of the Great Lakes seaway.

  “The canal isn’t open,” the Caryatid told me. “They close it every winter once ice shuts down shipping.”

  “But the ice has melted.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Zunctweed says the schedule was cast in stone years ago by government fiat. The canal won’t reopen until it’s supposed to.”

  “But if the ice is gone, we could just sail through.”

  The Caryatid shook her head. “Every lock is completely shut down.
No way past. Zunctweed says Crystal Bay is the closest the Dinghy can get to the Falls.”

  “And we believe Zunctweed?”

  “We believe Zunctweed when Impervia has a firm grip on his throat.”

  Impervia wasn’t actively engaged in strangling the captain, but she stood within arm’s reach as Zunctweed chittered orders to prepare for landfall. Pelinor was also close to the action, not to help Impervia, but because the old knight had developed a sudden enthusiasm for seamanship. In the same way that he badgered stablehands about horses, he hung at Zunctweed’s side in pursuit of nautical lore. “What does ‘belay’ mean?” “How do you do something ‘handsomely’?” “Which is ‘abaft’ and ‘abeam’?”

  Not far away, Oberon clung to the rail looking miserable. He wasn’t actually seasick—Lake Erie’s waves were minuscule compared to an ocean’s, especially on such a pleasant day—but the big lobster clearly had acquired a loathing of surfaces that moved beneath him. Each time the boat dipped down a wave crest, Oberon fought not to slide in the same direction...and after hours of constant exertion, grappling the rail with his pincers, he must have been counting the seconds before we put into port.

  The rest of our group was nowhere in sight. The Caryatid told me our missing companions were all in the captain’s cabin. “Looking at maps. Arguing about the fastest way to the Falls.” She rolled her eyes. “As far as I’m concerned, we should just talk to people in Crystal Bay. They’ll know what’s best. If we let Gretchen choose our route, we’ll gallop ten kilometers up some road, discover a bridge has collapsed during the winter, and have to come all the way back again.”

  The Caryatid was right: no sense relying on maps when we could get more up-to-date information with a few simple questions. And from what I could see of the town, Crystal Bay looked big enough to justify a stagecoach stop...maybe even a dispatching depot. Better to hop a stage than rent horses and strike off on our own.

  Still, I felt a niggling urge to peek at a map, just to get the lay of the land—I’d feel better if I had a picture of where we were going. Accordingly, I headed to the captain’s quarters with a blithe and jaunty step, nothing in my brain except cartographic curiosity...but that evaporated instantly when I bounced into the cabin and realized who was there.

  Three heads turned my way when I entered. Three pretty faces. Gretchen, Annah, and Myoko: all my complications in one cramped little room.

  Gretchen was mostly naked: wearing nothing but a crimson bra like the one I’d seen on the floor of her bedroom, and a pair of matching panties that were surprisingly demure by Gretchen’s standards—no lace or frills or cut-outs. She looked up at me as I came through the door, but gave only a distracted smile. If I’d been some other man, she would have felt obliged to do something flirtatious (flash her cleavage, wiggle her hips, pretend she had to cover up to protect her “modesty”), but with me, she didn’t bother. I considered that a compliment.

  As soon as Gretchen had deigned to recognize my existence, she turned back to Myoko and said, “Well?”

  Myoko took longer to collect herself—she looked flustered and even blushed slightly at my arrival. My rough-and-ready “Platonic” friend was betraying a hitherto unsuspected bashfulness...as if I were her husband and had caught her in flagrante delicto with a nearly nude woman. Not that anything salacious was going on; Myoko herself was fully clothed, and from what I could see, she was simply trying to unknot the lacings on the back of a red knit gown. No doubt the gown was Gretchen’s, taken from that traveling case she’d packed the night before. Perhaps Myoko was merely embarrassed to be seen playing Gretchen’s dressmaid. But it was a small cabin, and Myoko had no room to keep her distance from Gretchen’s bare skin. As I watched, she surreptitiously tried to squeeze a little farther away, dropping her gaze to the knots she was trying to untie. “Don’t rush me,” she mumbled to Gretchen.

  The blush burned more brightly in Myoko’s cheeks.

  Annah was behind the other two, higher than both because she was standing on the captain’s bed. Like Gretchen she gave me only a distracted smile; then she went back to arranging Gretchen’s hair. In the dim confined quarters, I couldn’t see much of what Annah was doing, but I assumed she was making a braid. Annah had a reputation for braids: at the academy, girls sometimes tried to transfer to Annah’s floor solely so she’d do their hair. Personally, I’ve never understood the female fascination with braids—braids always remind me of the ugly leather bumps on a crocodile’s back— but I learned long ago to keep quiet on the subject.

  Gretchen soon grew bored watching Myoko worry at the gown’s knots, so she turned back to me. (Behind her, Annah made an exasperated sigh and tried to hold Gretchen’s head still.) “So, Phil, darling,” Gretchen said, “aren’t you just amazedV

  I almost said, “By what?” The part of my brain devoted to self-preservation vetoed that initial response and frantically searched for some source of amazement I’d overlooked. Gretchen’s body? Always delicious, but I couldn’t see anything different from last night (except the absence of goose-pimples). The fact that Myoko and Gretchen weren’t sniping at each other? Yes, that was amazing, but probably not what Gretchen meant. I looked around the room, knowing I was taking too long to answer, but unable to see anything but the three women...Gretchen in her underwear...the crimson gown...

  Crimson? Sorcerer’s crimson?

  Gretchen’s lingerie was the same color. And I’d seen a crimson bra in her bedroom the night before.

  I blurted, “You’re pretending to be a sorceress?”

  Gretchen’s eyes flashed. “No, silly billy—I am a sorceress. Do you think I buy all those shine-stones?”

  My mouth hung open for an undignified length of time...but meanwhile facts were sorting themselves out in my brain.

  Gretchen had grown up with sorcerers: her father employed quite a few to cast obedience spells on demons. Most children of wealthy families also received training in sorcerous fundamentals, partly to prepare them for managing spell-caster underlings, and partly to see if they themselves had any aptitude for enchantments. It wasn’t necessarily good news to find you had a knack for magic—considering the nature of most arcane rituals, sorcery wasn’t a respectable profession—but just as the well-to-do are allowed to draw and paint as long as they don’t become artists, they’re allowed to cast spells as long as they don’t get too mystical. All of which argued it was possible that Gretchen had received substantial arcane tutoring from mages on her father’s staff.

  Then I remembered how Gretchen had suddenly been so interested when she heard I’d encountered a Sorcery-Lord. She’d immediately announced she’d accompany us to Niagara, where Dreamsinger was going to be. And now Gretchen was putting on crimson, the first time I’d seen her wear the color. Why? So Dreamsinger would recognize her as another dear sister on the Burdensome Path?

  “Gretchen,” I said, “seriously, seriously, Gretchen: this is a bad idea.”

  “What do you mean? A sorceress can wear crimson whenever she wants.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You don’t think I’m real, is that it? I’m just some deluded brat? Oh that Gretchen, she might know a few tricks, but she’s nothing special. Is that what you think?”

  “What I think is that Dreamsinger is an unpredictable lunatic. Anyone who wants to meet her is suicidal.”

  “Well, maybe I am suicidal.” Gretchen stormed forward the three steps it took to cross the room. The partly woven braid was yanked out of Annah’s hands and flopped forward along the side of Gretchen’s head. Gretchen ignored it; she gave me a fierce push, her hands hitting my shoulders, her eyes glaring into mine. “Have you looked at me lately, Phil?”

  I was looking at her now. The braid hanging down by her ear had begun to unravel. “You aren’t suicidal, Gretchen. It’s not in your nature.”

  “Maybe not. But desperation is.” She dropped her gaze; she glanced quickly back at Myoko and Annah as if trying to decide whether to talk in front of them. Th
en she took a deep breath and returned to me. “I’m good, Phil. I’m good at sorcery. I think.” She gave a twittering laugh. “But I don’t know for real, do I, darling? I’ve just...I’ve done nothing with it. Instead, I lived off my father’s money. Slept with a lot of pretty men. Kept my sorcery to myself because I didn’t want someone saying, Gretchen, the spells you’re so proud of are really quite trivial...”

  Her hands were still on my shoulders. She let her head slump against my chest. “Whenever I wanted to convince myself I was good, I’d whip up another shine-stone. The spell’s actually quite complicated...at least I think it is. Then again, what the hell do I know?”

  I thought about all the shine-stones in her room the previous night. Dozens of them. Made to reassure herself she was somebody.

  “And Dreamsinger?” I asked. “What do you want with her?”

  Gretchen sighed. She kissed the front of my shirt, then straightened up and gave her head a little shake. The last of her braid unwound. “I can’t put it into words, Phil. It’s just...she’s a Sorcery-Lord. If there’s anyone who could look at me and say, You’ve got potential...”

  She gave another twittering laugh—a choked sad sound. “Here’s where you tell me it’s ridiculous to talk about my potential when I’ve never made an effort to use it. If I had an ounce of real potential, I’d get off my dumdum and do something. Go to school...buy an apprenticeship...or just start incanting on my own. Something. Instead, I’m squandering my existence. On parties and fine food and umty-tiddly, as Zunctweed says. Doing nothing, day by day.”