Mobius

by Garon Whited

  At least I know where their month comes from. Now, why are weeks eleven days? Because there isn’t much else thirty-three divides by evenly? Or because that’s the number of gods they have? Or do they have eleven gods because they have eleven days? Chicken or egg? Add it to the list of questions I may never answer.

  The village might properly be called a village, now. There are enough people to easily outnumber the warriors, whole families of them. There are enough buildings to have individual houses, and even some industries. It’s mostly farmers, of course, but we have a cooper, a candle-maker, and a smith in the village proper, along with a weaver, cobbler, and tailor.

  We also have more magic lanterns hanging on the corners of buildings, courtesy of the resident creature of darkness. Sometimes, I like the irony.

  Most of the warriors are now acting as a police force rather than a military unit. We continue to get occasional warriors who want to sign up, but none of the heavy-plated First. From what Leisel tells me, these are all what I would think of as mercenaries, free warriors looking for work between wars. They each get an interview with the Mazhani of the valley and the manzhani of the House they’ll work for—me. Firebrand and I give them a thorough scrutiny. I learned my lesson with Osric. Plus, I think Naskarl will try to send men out here to infiltrate and betray us. Most of the new people are all right, so Leisel assigns them duties. A few are not all right, so they’re in my dungeon and half-embedded in the wall. They’ll send no reports back from there.

  Leisel went through several of the warriors before finding enough to handle the care and feeding of the prisoners. Apparently, being semi-engulfed in stone isn’t a pretty thing. Or maybe they don’t much care for the feed-and-clean problems of a concrete restraint system. Maybe this method of imprisonment makes them nervous. I haven’t asked. Nobody wants to have anything to do with the prisoners, but, reluctantly, they accept their turn at it as part of the job.

  Maybe we should find a civilian contractor. I’ll suggest it to Leisel.

  One of the new warriors was an older man, possibly in his mid-fifties. He arrived on horseback and wore scale armor. He had the usual round shield and a medium-weight blade, along with a long spear. People passed him up the chain of command to Leisel, who introduced him to me. With his helmet in the crook of one arm, he made the usual salute—palm down, in front of his heart, rotating toward himself and up, as though presenting something to me.

  “Sir,” she began—as formal as usual when we were outside the tower—“may I present Huron of Lonoseer?”

  “Always pleased to meet an experienced warrior.”

  “And a pleasure to meet you, manzhani. I was told you might have a final employment opportunity for me?”

  “Ah! Yes! I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon.”

  “It’s not too bad a journey, traveling alone,” he pointed out. “No wagon, small camp, no one to complain…”

  “I agree. Come, walk with me around the village and we’ll discuss it. Leisel? I think I can handle this.”

  “As you will, sir.” She left us alone and we walked.

  “So, here’s the thing,” I began. “I have a couple of options, here, on which job to offer you.”

  “I am all attention, sir.”

  “The first one—and probably the most traditional—is to come with me into the mountains to hunt dragons.”

  Excuse me, Boss?

  Dinosaurs, Firebrand. Dinosaurs. I don’t even know if they have dragons here.

  They have “demon-lizards.”

  Everything they’re afraid of is a demon-something, I pointed out. I still plan to use a dinosaur.

  Oh. Well. That’s all right, then.

  “A worthy and heroic endeavor,” Huron agreed, eyes bright. “And the other?”

  “Somewhat less heroic, but perhaps more important. I need an experienced eye and hand to supervise the training of my troops. Not this formal crap the First teach. I mean teach them how to fight separately, fight together, and not fight fair. I want them to go into a battle and come out alive. You strike me as a man who’s seen many battles and survived many unofficial fights. Am I right?”

  “I admit to nothing,” he said, cautiously, “but I may have seen some combat outside the formal wars.”

  “Say no more. My question to you is this: Which job would you prefer? Let me add the job of Master of Arms comes with a…” I struggled for a word, but couldn’t find it. I should have left my translation spell running, but I didn’t think I’d need it anymore. “A pension.”

  “What is this ‘pension’ of which you speak?”

  “It’s a guarantee of house and home. If you can no longer do your job, you may still stay as a guest of my House—not charity, but part of your pay for the service you have done.”

  We continued walking while he looked around the village. He was thinking and I let him think.

  “If I help you train your guards, I will die in my bed?”

  “Probably.”

  He shook his head.

  “I must decline the offer.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “I am a warrior, sir. I have been fortunate to live so long, but now I feel the aches in my joints, the heaviness of my limbs. I am not as once I was. My speed, my strength—I can no longer deny it. They are on the wane. I will not endure the shame of being a warrior who cannot bear the weight of his shield. While I still have the strength to use my skill, I would rather find some challenge, some deed of renown that needs doing, and give my life in the doing of it. I would die as I have lived—a warrior! Not an invalid!”

  I didn’t say anything for a bit. I mean, he had a point. I know I’m going to die, someday, but it will probably involve a lot of screaming and kicking to stay alive, not some face-first dive into an heroic end. I’m not hero material. Huron, on the other hand, seemed very much hero material. If he wanted the glory of a final great deed, I could respect that.

  “All right. It’ll take a few days to find the nearest beast. May I ask you to help evaluate and train the troops in the meantime?”

  “Of course.”

  “Wonderful! You have a word with Leisel and I’ll have a word with my wizard.”

  He bowed and departed. I headed for the tower. What would be easier, taking him to the tyrannosaur, or bringing the tyrannosaur here?

  I handled some housekeeping around the tower while I mulled it over. The mine tailings are becoming quite a nice courtyard. It’s time to start seriously thinking about a perimeter wall. It’s also time to start thinking about a bigger power intake on the tower’s reshaping spell. The bigger the tower gets, the more thinly the spell gets spread. I either need to divide up the tower, courtyard, and outer wall as separate spells, or I need to provide the existing spell with a good deal more energy.

  Part of the reason it’s become such an energy hog is the foundation. It’s finally extended itself down far enough to hit the valley bedrock. It’s growing into the stone, reshaping everything into lower levels. Side chambers are forming and there’s a sub-basement, now. The sub-basement is only large enough to crawl through, but it’s all growing.

  To make matters worse, I’ve started an outer wall around the future grounds of my castle. It hasn’t had a lot of priority, what with the dungeon and all, but I want it to be a good, solid wall, mostly ten feet high. It’s a lot of stone to move and it’ll take considerable time. I guess we can stack another course of stones on top every day to expedite it. Maybe we should. Of course, we can do the same to add crenellations, and to build firing steps inside. Then we can start on towers along it and more defensive buildings inside the wall… all of which require more and more power.

  I’m giving serious consideration to roofing the valley with a layer of solar conversion panels. Even if they let visible and ultraviolet through unhindered, the rest of the spectrum will provide a fair amount of power. I could wire it directly to the tower. It would also make the valley slightly cooler, which, I suspect, no one would mind.r />
  Note for later. We’ll see how the new power flow works. It’s not like we have a dozen wizards, all vying for the local power sources.

  As for the dinosaur, I mulled it over for a while. Taking someone to the Cretaceous world would involve trekking through a gate—either openly or covertly. Both of us would have to wear a spell to filter our air. I’d have to put the target gate near a known tyrannosaur or we might spend a while tracking one down, and I don’t want to spend a sunset there if I can help it—we’d be going to the original Cretaceous timeline, not the one with my pet pyramid! I want to draw as little attention to mine as possible!

  On the other hand, I can go to the Cretaceous, tendril-drain a tyrannosaur, and, between Firebrand and myself, we can dominate its tiny, exhausted brain into going wherever we want. True, shifting it back here will be a trick, but if I can define a space adequately, I can use the shift-booth version and castle the two spaces, dropping the dino off in Tauta. Here, it’ll be easy to track and I don’t have to deceive Huron about where we’re going.

  Of trying to fool someone or kidnapping a tyrannosaur, I’ll kidnap the tyrannosaur.

  Things I never thought I’d say.

  I went down to the dungeon and started working with my Ring of Spying and what was now my primary scrying mirror. The prisoners, however, proved to be distracting. Until I have more rooms down there, they’re going to continue to be annoying.

  Sighing, I started bundling up my things and relocating them to the upstairs bedroom. Come to that, though, with the new floor added… Normal people don’t have the problem of new rooms spontaneously appearing. If we make a new top floor for our bedroom, the next floor down can be my workroom, then the people on scrywatch duty can have the floor under that. Renata can stay in the bedroom below the scrying room—she’s pregnant, and trekking up a lot of stairs isn’t going to be easy. It’s only one floor up from the ground. We don’t really use the ground floor for much, aside from a guard station, but I’m sure it’ll develop a use as the tower evolves.

  I went into my headspace and did a lot of architectural planning. It wasn’t long outside my head, but it was enough time for some detailed plans. Once I came out again, I divided the spell on the tower, splitting it into two spells—one for the top floors, one for the foundations. I manually powered up the top and set it for high speed.

  I found some people to help and we moved a lot of stone blocks and furniture around.

  I still need to arrange for bathroom facilities in the tower. Right now, it’s chamber pots and washbasins. True, I cheat with cleaning spells, but I do need to work out a shower arrangement.

  All right. Slight revision to the tower floors. Ground floor, Renata’s room, then the scrywatch chamber, Leisel’s bedroom, and then my workroom at the top. I can cause hollow places to form inside the walls of the top floor—maybe even hollow places up through the high arch of the dome. These I can fill with water and have them drain down into Leisel’s bedroom one floor down. Wall off a section of it as an indoor shower and I’m in business.

  I’ll need to extend an underground pipe to the stream. I’d like to use an hydraulic ram to pump water up, but I’ll probably have to resort to more spells.

  I wonder. Is it reasonable to carve out a hidden chamber in the rock wall, behind the waterfall? Maybe something connected by underwater passage? Dive into the pool at the foot of the falls, go under, and surface inside the hidden chamber? In the ceiling of the chamber, I could have a curved hole leading up through the rock to the underside of the pool above, making a smaller waterfall inside for a shower, as well as constantly refreshing the water in the interior pool. Ventilation would obviously be necessary, but a couple of jagged cracks in out-of-the-way places could assure a constant flow of air…

  Not today, obviously. I still need to arrange for bathroom facilities in the tower.

  Leisel was not entirely pleased with my constantly rearranging the tower, but she forgave me. Mostly, I think, because she was too tired to stay upset. I was as nice as I knew how to be, though. She lives here, too, and I should have consulted her—or, at least warned her. She didn’t appreciate the low ceiling in the bedroom, but it should be better by morning.

  Once she got to sleep, I crept downstairs again, trying not to disturb anyone. Trapdoors and stairs aren’t ideal for this arrangement. An inner and outer wall would be better. Think of it as a narrow hallway in between for the stairs. It’s on my list of architectural improvements, but my recent efforts have been devoted to adding another floor. The stairs are going to take more time.

  Someday, I’ll have the tower grow outward from its outer wall, forming more rooms around itself. Grow your own castle? Yes. It only takes bedrock, tons of magic, and a lot of time.

  Bronze and I made a couple of trips to the copper and silver mines to collect stone blocks. I started stacking them appropriately, inside the tower, walling off the existing stairs. Putting the stone in place by hand meant the tower’s spells didn’t have to do it by reflowing it all. All it had to do was incorporate the already-existing new walls and gradually expand everything outward. The stairs are still accessible at the foot, but they have walls on both sides, now, instead of a wall on one side and an open room on the other.

  Naturally, I didn’t get done. Tromping through people’s bedrooms in the middle of the night to do rough masonry work isn’t a kindness. I’ll finish tomorrow, though, or have someone finish for me.

  My hidden pool project will not be finished tomorrow. It’s purely a magical reshaping, moving stone out of the way to form an open space. I went out to the waterfall to do some surveying, then went into my headspace to draw out the spaces and shapes it would need. The spell is now running, but it’s going to be days before the chamber is large enough to be useful.

  On the plus side, the stone has to flow away somewhere, so it’s going up, raising the lip of the falls and deepening the… is it a pond? A lake? It’s a small pool at the top of a waterfall, fed by the river. It’s not really a pool, either, just a wide spot where the water slows down before flowing over. A reservoir? With my changes, it’s now a sort of a lake formed by a dam, with the waterfall as the overflow. I’m not sure what the word is for it, or if there is one. I’ll call it a reservoir, I guess. The reservoir will get deeper as the spillover level rises. I can’t have it rise too quickly or the flow won’t fill it fast enough—the river through the valley would go dry until it caught up. So it’s also moving “waste” stone into the front of the waterfall, moving the face of the cliff forward slightly.

  I really do need to give some consideration to irrigation. Then again, it rains fairly regularly around here, even if only briefly. It’s not like there’s going to be a harsh summer. I’m not sure the locals even have a word of “drought.” Still, it would be better to be prepared. Even if it’s only a wagon with a tank and a pump on it, like an old-fashioned fire engine, there ought to be something. I recall one lady with a hand-pump and a watering can trying to water a whole field. I’d rather not have to resort to that.

  Margaret! Margaret Ross. That was her name. Patricia’s mother. Why am I so bad with names?

  I climbed up next to the waterfall and went farther upriver. In my scrying flyover, scouting around the valley, I found a number of pleasant little nooks and dells, one of which wasn’t too far away. Up the falls, alongside the reservoir, follow the river northeast, then around the curve to the north, ignore the first two little tributaries and take the third one, still veering left, and follow it through a narrow, twisty passage. Voila! A pocket of earth and jungle among the rocky slopes!

  I walked around for a while, searching the perimeter. It seemed well-suited as a place to put something big. Anything man-sized would find places to get out without much trouble, but a horse couldn’t get in without a winch. I doubted a tyrannosaur could climb out anywhere. The perimeter was all rocky cliff and barren faces. Even better, the soil was shallow enough to support only moderate-sized trees, widely spaced. Much
of the rest of the dell was grassy, with a few odd bushes here and there.

  Firebrand and I cleared a space, cutting and burning a bare circle of earth. With a stick and some string, I marked out a circle—a big circle—and started work on preparing it for shifting. Rather than have it function as a gate, I wanted to define a hemisphere above it, marking out a volume of space to exchange with the one I planned to draw in a Cretaceous world. I drew the power points for crystals, as well, but I didn’t plug any in. I didn’t see anyone scrying in the vicinity, but the last time I left something out in the open, unguarded, someone stole my divinity dynamos. I’m not leaving any large power crystals lying around.

  With the hemisphere defined and the spell laid out, I went back to my tower. As long as I was thinking about it, I might as well see if I could get a hit on either of my dynamos.

  Nope. Still shielded, somewhere. Someday, I’ll set up a dedicated constant-search device and see if they are ever taken out of a secure location. I’m not sure it will be practical, though. If an entire house can be warded against detection magic, they may never be a valid target. But, like going to the fridge for the third time in an hour and still finding nothing appealing, I’m going to occasionally look.

  Tauta, 19th Day of Milaskir

  When I came home last night, everything seemed in good order. I was mistaken, however. The guards outside the front door snapped to when Bronze and I arrived. Even when I went inside, it all seemed okay. I went up to the bedroom, quietly, and waited out the morning. Leisel woke during the process, of course. The smell wouldn’t wake the dead, but it annoys them. I should know.

  After a thorough cleaning and a brisk morning workout, we dressed and headed downstairs. I was intending to hit the morning drills, but the guard in charge of feeding and watering the prisoners came up the stairs to meet us.

  “They’re gone!”

  “Gone?” I parroted.