by C H Duryea
“Doesn’t everything?”
“Where are the others?” Zeke asked.
“I will take you to them,” the alien said, turning towards an arched entryway. He ducked to avoid hitting the keystone as he went inside, and Zeke followed.
A series of stone passageways led to a narrow battlement along one edge of yet another of the castle’s network of courtyards. In the yard below, he saw Harbinger, in leather and plate armor, sword in hand, sparring against one of the Regent’s soldiers as a circle of soldiers watched. He attacked and feinted, lunged and parried with an apparent skill that surprised Zeke. The programmer’s weekend SCA getaways had clearly paid off. Harbinger stepped back between phrases, catching his breath. Zeke caught his eye, and he recognized an exhilaration in his colleague he had very rarely seen. They exchanged nods of greeting before Harbinger turned back to his sparring partner.
As they continued along the battlement to the next building, Zeke noticed what appeared to be another long walkway leading across the river near the base of the falls, to the sharp slope of the mountain beyond the palace. It ended at a long stairway embedded into the hillside, leading to the temple that Harbinger had talked about. It hugged the hill just outside the reach of the waterfall’s mist columns. The swirling pylons of vapor dropped from an enormous halo of mist that danced over the precipice at the top of the fall in a way that seemed to openly defy fluid physics. His hand instinctively reached across to touch the metal band around his left wrist, and Zeke reminded himself that they were in a completely different continuum—he couldn’t even begin to guess how many variations on the rules were in play.
Qaant Yke ducked again as they passed into the next building. Another series of short passages brought them out onto a balcony running the inner circumference of a large circular chamber. Overhead, the high windows circumventing the domed ceiling allowed the sunlight to slash across the walls in wide, sweeping arcs like the rings of a planet. The walls both at Zeke’s level and below were lined all around with bookshelves, floor to ceiling.
“Zeke!” He looked down to see Augie calling up to him. He stood with one of the mages at a long table filled with what looked to Zeke like the Inverkethi equivalent of lab equipment. “Your timing is impeccable. Get down here—you’ve got to see this.”
He circled around to a spiral staircase leading down to the floor. As he came down, he spotted Narissa with one of the scholars at another table by the books. She had also been given an Inverkethi wardrobe change and now looked like one of Mica’s ladies-in-waiting. She was deep in conversation with the scholar as they poured over a pile of papers and open books.
Augie was dressed like the locals as well, looking like one of the palace nobles. The mage with him was a middle-aged woman with a gaze like a mass spectrometer. The table they stood at had been set up with a row of ring stands with different objects clamped to them, among them some natural objects like stones, plant cuttings and what looked like some common metals. And along with a piece of their moolite tiles and a twisted lump of cyex, Zeke also recognized his haptic blaster and vambraces lying on the table. Augie handed the blaster over to him.
“Completely inert,” he said. “I can’t figure how it discharged yesterday.”
Zeke strapped the blaster to his forearm and hooked up the leads. “Nonetheless, it did,” he said, picking up the vambraces. “How do we know it won’t spontaneously arm itself again?”
“We don’t. But the vambraces are a different story. You may want to hold off before putting them back on.”
Zeke hesitated, but then he slid them onto his wrists anyway. They had come in handy defending against the gnoll. Besides that, they felt comfortable—strangely familiar.
“I’ll take my chances,” he said. “So what is all this?”
“Magistrix Breccia here,” Augie said, “has been kind enough to help me learn about the workings of the local electromagnetic spectrum.” He picked up a small box with a crank of bent metal like a jack-in-the-box. A pair of copper wires extended to a ring stand on which he had clamped a coil of copper wiring around a nail—a basic homemade magnet. A small hunk of what looked like iron ore hung from a thin string a few centimeters from the coil.
“What’d you find out?”
“First, to establish what we already suspected. Watch the hunk of ore.” Augie gave the hand crank a series of rapid turns. The ore sample did not move. Augie set the box down. “In our universe, the hand generator should have magnetized the coil. But here—nothing. Electrical conduction doesn’t behave the way we’re used to.”
“Which is why the Friendly Card fizzled out,” Zeke said. “But how do you know the properties of the ore sample? It may not even be magnetic.”
“I don’t. But Breccia here tells me that it’s used the same way iron is used at home. I had to start somewhere.”
Zeke turned to Breccia. “Do you have magnetism here?”
“This force you call magnetism,” the mage said, “does not exist here as you describe. But the attraction of certain elements to others—we call it ‘inclination.’ Part of our theurgy springs from the principle that all things in nature have power within. Some substances—but not all—have inclination towards others. At times the inclination is one-sided. One substance may, through inclination, draw energy from another without reciprocation.”
Augie picked up a piece of black filament and held it out to Zeke. “Take this. As far as I can tell this is carbon fiber, and it should be inert, and nonconductive, at this temperature.” Zeke took it in his fingers. Augie pointed to the plant cutting. “Touch that to the leaf.”
Zeke did—and the resulting zap caused him to jump back, dropping the filament.
“Holy moly!” Zeke exclaimed, rubbing his tingling fingers. “What’s next, an exploding cigar?”
“I’ll show you what’s next,” Augie said excitedly. He donned a pair of heavy and what Zeke figured were nonconductive gloves and used longer strands of the carbon to string together all of the items except for the two substances they had brought with them from the other universe, which he set aside. He replaced them with a ring stand at the end of the chain that suspended a length of the carbon fiber with hundreds of tiny filaments sprouting off it, like the legs of a millipede. He set it within about ten centimeters from the last item, a hunk of common rock, and the filaments started to move in an undulating pattern, bending towards the rock as if reaching out to it.
“Nice party trick,” Zeke said. “What am I looking at?”
“Each of the items in this chain has a one-sided inclination over the subsequent object. The carbon is responding to the concentrated draw of the last item.” He picked up the stand with the carbon millipede and walked around to the first item in the chain, the plant cutting. When he held it up close to the leaves, the filaments stopped moving. “The inclination in this branch has been drawn out. The other objects downstream are taking it. But if I disconnect the fiber—” He pulled off the carbon fiber connecting it to the next object. Within a few seconds, the filaments on the millipede began to wiggle in the branch’s direction. “Remove the inclined element and the intrinsic energy level returns.”
“This is fascinating, Augie,” Zeke said. “And if this were a purely research mission, I would get behind this and a whole battery of additional experiments—”
Augie returned the millipede stand to the end of the chain, where it started undulating again towards the piece of rock hanging next to it. He picked up the hunk of cyex and held it out to Zeke.
“Your left vambrace is made of this,” Augie said. “Touch it to the rock.”
“Nothing’s going to explode this time?”
“Just try it.”
Zeke reached out, hesitated a bit, and then touched the rock with the metal. When he did, he felt something shift, as if the cyex had gotten heavier in his hand. And the carbon millipede on the adjacent stand went limp again.
“So our lichen scat has inclination over substances here,” Zeke
noted, pulling the cyex away.
“It’s more than that,” Augie said. He pointed at the carbon millipede. “Watch. Within five or ten seconds, the filaments should start responding again.”
Zeke watched—and waited. “Nothing,” he said after twenty or so seconds.
“This is the third time I’ve tried this,” Augie said. “The cyex doesn’t just draw—it drains.”
“Okay,” Zeke said, “what does that tell us?”
“For one, it’s another example of material we brought with us having unexpected properties in this space. I, for one, find it encouraging that while our conventional electromagnetics don’t apply here, other less conventional forces are becoming emergent.”
“Does it have any implications for my right vambrace?”
“I don’t know,” Augie said with a shrug. “Not yet, at least.”
Zeke looked across the room. “What’s Narissa up to?”
“That’s one of the mathematicians she’s with. She’s trying to get some confirmation on her hypothesis about the hyperstack. Since that first night in Feldspar’s camp, she hasn’t been able to let it go.”
“That’s our Dr. Brand,” Zeke said. “It’s her tenacious calculations that got us here.”
“And that, I believe, is part of the reason for her obsessiveness about this problem.”
“Well, I’ll leave you two to it. Where’s Vee?”
“She’s out on the ramparts,” Augie said, pointing with his thumb to a passageway near the bottom of the steps. “That way.”
This time, Qaant Yke didn’t go with him.
Zeke followed the passageway, letting the diffused light from the other side guide him through the turns. His fingers twitched in nervousness, and he felt an impulse to turn around, to put off talking to Vibeke. Going out there now felt as if he were about to board a structurally unstable amusement park ride. It would have been easier to let things between them lie for a while longer, but he wanted—he needed—to know how she was holding up. And besides, the moment for hesitation had long passed. He was already on that ride. They all were.
When he came out into the light, he thought at first that he was interrupting someone else as they were standing at the ramparts and looking at the hills above the city. He was about to apologize when she turned and fixed her ice-blue eyes on him. She was dressed almost just like him. Linen chemise, wool trousers and leather boots. Her new sword rested sheathed off her belt, and a waist-length riding cloak made her look like she would have been right at home in Sherwood Forest.
“What were you expecting?” Vibeke asked. “I wasn’t gonna doll myself up like some beer-stein-sloshing serving wench.”
“I’m pretty sure,” he said, stepping up to the rampart wall next to her, “that we’re stuck inside an analogue of a slightly different European period.”
“Oh yeah? Well, history was never my gig.” She quickly reached out and took a handful of his doublet and bunched it into a fist. She leaned into him and buried her face in his chest. “I’m glad you’re still alive.”
Then, just as quickly, as he was about to wrap his arms around her, she pushed back and pounded him hard in the pectoral.
“But I’m still mad at you,” she said. “And if you think I’d be caught dead hanging off you like some damsel in distress, you got another thing coming.”
“Trust me, Vee,” Zeke said. “When I think of you, two of the last words that come into my mind are ‘damsel’ and ‘distress.’ Unless the distress is mine, of course.”
Her eyes narrowed at him. “You better stop right there, mister, before you step in it again.”
Zeke shrugged, throwing his arms wide. “So what would you have me do?”
“Oh no,” she said, backing away and jabbing her index finger at him. “You’re not going to make me say it. No way.”
“Say what?”
She growled. “You really do need to get out of the lab more often. I wish I had another Florence flask.”
“There are plenty inside!”
“Yeah? Well, maybe I’ll get one!”
“You do that!”
“I will!”
Zeke then stepped forward, grabbed Vibeke by the shoulders and planted his mouth on hers. It wasn’t his usual approach, but since his usual approaches had been dismal failures, he was out of options. She kissed him hard back, and they stood lip-locked for several stress-relieving seconds before Vibeke broke it off and stepped back. She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve.
“See,” she said, catching her breath, “if I had to tell you to do that—I’da been really disappointed.”
When Zeke and Vibeke returned to the mage’s rotunda, Harbinger was entering through another door. He was still in his armor and covered with dirt and sweat.
“I’m a fifth-level sword fighter already,” he crowed. “In a single morning! Who would’ve thought it would be so easy?”
“Gee, Chuck,” Narissa said, her arms crossed and one hip parked against the central worktable, where she stood with Augie and the mage, Breccia. “I’m glad it’s working out so nicely for you here.”
“Can’t say I’m hating it,” he said, striding up to the table. He turned as Zeke and Vibeke approached. “Good to see you up and around.”
“It’s good to be seen up and around,” Zeke answered. He noticed again the glint of exhilaration in Harbinger’s eye. But looking at him up close, he could see it went deeper than the simple excitement of winning a sword bout his opponent clearly threw. It was a matter of frequency. It was as if Harbinger’s biologics had been suddenly upregulated. He remembered what Harbinger had told him on the ride into the city, and he wondered whether the Heisenberg effect went both ways.
“What have I missed?” Harbinger asked.
“We think we’ve had an additional insight,” Augie said. He had rearranged the ring stands and had the cyex sample and a moolite tile clipped to each pole and set apart from each other. At the end of the table, the carbon millipede did its usual dance, the multiple feelers undulating towards the hunk of cyex.
“Whaddaya got?” Zeke asked as he and Vibeke stepped up to the table.
“We may have an explanation for Narissa’s pyrotechnics the other day.”
“That’s all well and good,” Narissa said. “But don’t solve that mystery on my account. I’m not sure I want to know.”
“I, for one,” Augie said, his gaze shifting to the end of the table, “will not rest until I’ve found an answer. But satisfying my own curiosity is a secondary concern.”
“You found something else,” Zeke guessed.
“If we can isolate it, it may hold the key to—” Augie’s words trailed off as he continued to stare down the length of the table. “Hello.”
“What?” Zeke asked. Augie didn’t answer but continued to stare at the end of the table. Zeke looked but there was nothing unusual, nothing except—
“The carbon,” Augie said quietly. The delicate filaments still wavered, but they had changed direction, like a flag in a shifting wind. The mage let out a slight gasp when he saw it.
“What about it?” Vibeke asked.
“Vibeke,” Augie answered, not taking his eye off the millipede, “would you please come around to this side of the table?”
“Why?”
“Indulge me.”
She stepped back and walked slowly around the table. As everyone watched, the undulating filaments followed Vibeke as if she were some kind of gravity well. The mage uttered what sounded like an ancient oath, in what sounded like an ancient tongue.
“What?” she asked.
Augie picked up the ring stand and walked in a slow circle around Vibeke. The millipede kept its flickering compass needles directed at her.
“So your wiggly friend likes me,” she said. “I’ve dated worse.”
The mage guided her to a nearby stool. “Sit, child,” she said. “You have a powerful inclination.” She took up her hands and examined her fingers and the inside of her
wrist and her neck. Then she picked up a small crystalline stone and held it near her eye. “Do you feel that, young one?”
“Ow,” Vibeke said, “what the heck?” She flinched away from the stone although Zeke could clearly see it did not touch her.
“Magistrix,” Zeke said. “What are you looking for?”
“It has been written,” she said, “but only in the most ancient texts.”
Harbinger’s eyes narrowed. “What texts?”
“The most ancient. The ones that tell of how the magic came to Inverketh.”
“I wasn’t around for that,” Vibeke said. “Start talking sense.”
“What do your texts say?” Narissa asked.
“Our mages,” Breccia explained, “find their power in the native inclinations of certain elementals.” She held up the rock he had just waved. “I happen to divine my power from the stone of the land. Others from plants or wood or water. But what we all have in common is that we derive our theurgy from without. But in our oldest grimoires, there are references to ones who needed no external elemental. They had the ability to impose their inclination upon anything.”
“How common is it?” Zeke asked.
“Not common,” the mage answered. “Mythic.”
“Are you saying,” Harbinger asked, “that Dr. Hel— that Lady Hell Storm here, is herself a source of elemental power?”
“How do you account for that, Magistrix?” Zeke pressed.
“It is not for me to offer an explanation for something that up until this moment has existed only in legend.”
“But you were able to detect it just now,” Augie said. “What is it about our friend that facilitates this phenomenon?”
“Of those in the legends,” the mage said, “it was said that their power was written in the ley lines of their own viscera.”
“What,” Vibeke said, “are ley lines? And what do I have to do to keep my viscera out of this?”
“Webs of planetary energy within the ground,” Harbinger explained. “Connecting nodes of force—power spots—in specific places, intersections of energy.”
“Just as the ley lines within the very land that connect what you call power spots,” the mage said, “so the viscera of the body has its own conduits for the transmission of power.”