by Garon Whited
Is it a sense of responsibility or only blind stubbornness? One is a good thing, the other is not.
At dinner, people don’t usually talk to me much. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s my appetite. They don’t want to disturb me while I’m eating lest I take a bite out of them. Or maybe it has something to do with being the head of my House and the ruler of the valley. Or maybe Leisel passed the word not to bother me. I suppose I should know these things, but there’s a lot about administrating a budding Great House I don’t know and don’t care about. As long as it gets done, do I need to stick my nose in?
After dinner, Leisel took me upstairs. The early evening rapidly took on all the expected features, hardly worth mentioning to the sophisticated. The timing worked out well. She recovered in the bed while I underwent my sunset transformation to one side. After a bit of cleanup, I sat on the bed while she curled around me like a cat. A cat that likes me, I mean.
“I envy you,” she pointed out.
“Oh?”
“You don’t have to sleep.”
“It’s not as much fun as you’d think.”
“But you can get so much more done.”
“True, but sometimes I want a break. My life seems pretty close to non-stop.”
“Can you sleep?”
“I can, but it’s a bad idea.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like my dreams.”
“Ah.”
“You go ahead and sleep. I need to go check on the ghost of a wizard.”
“Will do.”
With the sun down and my eyes adjusted, seeing the spirit in the wand was straightforward. I’m fairly sure it wasn’t there when I first examined it.
I reactivated the lesser circle, stepped inside, and called up the spirit again. Since there was no smoke, it appeared as a translucent form, visible only to my vampire eyes.
“Good evening,” I greeted it.
“How do you do this?”
“Do what?”
“You detect our presence in the wand. You call us up without the brazier. You see us.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to explain. Where were you taking the prisoners?”
“Sarashda.”
“Specifically.”
“My instructions were to take whatever I found to the estate of Sarcana.”
“Good. What enchantments does the house have to control the temperature?”
“The—? The temperature?”
“Yes. Answer!”
“The house itself is of old construction. Each chamber has within it some stone of the wall bearing an enchantment.”
“Tell me how they are operated.”
“They have words one may speak while touching the stone, commanding it to make the room warmer or cooler. Repeating the word makes the change more significant.”
“And of what significance is the observation on the age of the construction?”
“Newer buildings bear such an enchantment within their structure.”
“Ah. Central air, instead of window units.”
“I do not understand.”
“I don’t care. You said you’d never seen where Sarcana keeps its money stockpile. Have you seen the whole of the ground floor?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen the whole of higher floors?”
“No.”
“Fair enough. Now, why did you try to hide in the wand?”
“I did not try to hide in the wand.”
“Why did you, as a spirit, enter the wand when I dismissed you?”
“I am part of the chain of Nykos. It is my duty to pass into my apprentice.”
“I thought you were supposed to vanish into the afterlife and be reborn.”
The spirit of Jidrash did not answer. I didn’t ask a question or give it a command.
“Ah. Aren’t you supposed to pass into the afterlife and be reborn?”
“According to the temples, yes.”
“Why don’t you?”
“It would be a waste for the accumulated knowledge of a lifetime—or several lifetimes—to be lost in such a manner.”
“How common is this practice among wizards?”
“Every wizard who has children is likely a link in a chain.”
“Of course they are,” I realized. “Your kids are your apprentices, learning—and inheriting—your craft. So you take the eldest?”
“The greatest of one’s offspring is what my chain has always chosen.”
“But do you take apprentices from other wizards?”
“I have not.”
“Do others?”
“Perhaps.”
“Speculate.”
“A wizard with a chain and no children might seek out someone to pass it on to. A young wizard who has lost his parent may seek out an older wizard and serve him.”
“And this is acceptable?”
“To wizards, yes. A wizard’s chain consists of lifetimes of experience and power.”
“Interesting. And if you die—truly die—your chain ends?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like your tone. You sound hesitant or uncertain.”
The spirit made no reply. It didn’t have to because I didn’t ask a direct question.
“What else might happen to your chain if the body you inhabit perishes?”
“I do not know.”
“Speculate,” I commanded.
“There is a legend—perhaps a myth—that the first wizard began a chain with his greatest apprentice. His spirit is said to have passed on through many incarnations before a mischance freed it from its mortal shell. He was worshiped as the god of wizards, of magic, and it is said by some his spirit has ascended, becoming a god in fact.”
“That would give him a considerable leg up on the other gods,” I mused. “I’ll have to remember that.”
“Are you content with the information you have? Will you release me, now?”
“Hang on. As I understand this chain business, if you move on into your son—or chief apprentice—he becomes the chain-bearer, with all your accumulated knowledge and skill?”
“Yes.”
“What’s that worth to you?”
“I do not understand.”
“Right now, I intend to burn your wand, destroy your corpse, and forcibly banish you into the afterlife. You’re going to go poof! On the other hand, I could be persuaded to take your highly-charged wand to your apprentice and let him become a vessel of greatness. But I would have to be persuaded.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you have to offer?”
“I can do nothing of consequence in this state.”
“Can you make a bargain on your apprentice’s behalf?”
“I cannot control once I have passed on. What I know will be his to know. He will know I made such a bargain, but it will be up to him to honor it.”
“Too bad. I could have used a wizard to help out around here. One I could trust, I mean.”
And with that, I broke the lesser circle, broke the major circle, and surrounded the quasi-living spirit of a whole meddle of mages with hungry tendrils. The scream was audible in the psychic range, but it was also brief.
Yes, the locals used what I called “messy bits” for their big spells. Those took time and work. Often, they worked in concert to build truly big spells. Lesser spells—what I would call tricks—they performed more readily, much the same way a Rethvan magician might, but without the body of theory. They remembered what worked and did it again. Spell development was guesswork, trial, and lots of error. By comparison, Rethvan magicians were astronomers. Tautan wizards were still astrologers. An astronomer can still calculate a horoscope, but an astrologer can’t explain orbital mechanics.
It was good to know for certain they didn’t only enchant things. They were quite capable of performing spells, but they usually don’t do it where there’s an audience. The locals don’t like spells. It’s the aversion to the unknown, I think, in much the same way doctors
can make people nervous. What’s in the pill? What’s in the needle? Why are you doing this? Is it supposed to hurt? Most spells involve rituals the subject doesn’t understand, performed by a person being paid. An enchanted item, on the other hand, does something. Sure, it’s magic, but it’s magic the user controls, not some hireling. You can shave yourself with a straight razor or allow someone else to wave it around near your face. Anyone familiar with the barbershop on Fleet Street will be more comfortable with the first option.
But they knew a lot of spells. Hundreds of them, all flickering through my awareness like birds on the wing. None staying long enough to make an impression, but all of them leaving the ghost of an impression. I might not cast any of their spells, but I might recognize one being cast. The pouch of reddish herb? It’s for a healing spell, but don’t ask me how to use it. The small bones? They’re for finding water, but I don’t know how it works. This type of feather is for a personal flying spell, but this type is the sort to use when enchanting an object to fly. Why? I don’t know and neither do they. They only know it works.
It was an improvement, at least, and the elimination of one problem.
I also realized something. In this culture, everything is about the inheritance. With a caste-driven society, it’s hard to advance. So keeping everything your parents had becomes a priority. It’s not about making money or gaining land or learning something new. It’s about preserving what you have. I’m sure there are some outlaw types who have a different view, sure, because there always are, but the culture is based on preserving, on keeping, on avoiding losses, not on risking what you have to gain more.
I’m not sure how this changes anything, but it’s still a good insight into the people I’m dealing with.
I studied the wand some more, getting a better feel for its function and its design. I understood it more thoroughly after my snack. I recognized it as a tool I’d thought of before—a power-gathering one—rather than the specialized wands I had in my toolkit. It was more complex than a simple sponge for magical power, though. It included some safety features. It gathered power from around the wielder, but it started several feet from the wielder, presumably to avoid interfering with any spells he was wearing or actively casting. It also tended to avoid other spells. Spells have a high power density compared to the ambient magic of the environment, but getting it out usually involves breaking them. Rather than offend everyone in the vicinity every time the wand came out, its functions went to the lowest-density power. In a highly-magical world, this was still useful, of course.
I wanted to play with it a bit more and do some analyses of it, but I had to hurry off to a secluded dell and kidnap a dinosaur.
Step one, find a tyrannosaur. Not a problem.
Step two, go there. More of a problem. It’s nighttime here, daytime there, and I’m allergic to sudden changes of state. I flicked the gate in my Ring of Spying on and off a few times, hoping for a time skip. It took over an hour to hit a tyrannosaur at night. That’s the trouble with random—or what appears to be random—temporal slippage. I really need to get on the ball and start gathering data from an objective perspective.
Anyway, with a suitable dinosaur in my sights, I prepared for a dinosaur hunt. First on my list of things to do was set up a portable wire gate near my prepared shift-circle. I might have to lure the thing into a circle on the far side and send it through without me. I wanted something local to the arrival point rather than, potentially, have to go back to the tower and hurry out to find my dinosaur.
With my return point set up, I also used it to go through. I let my Ring of Spying’s micro-gate maintain a connection. Now would not be an ideal moment to come back after a year-long absence. Of course, that meant having a tiny gate on the Tauta side, but those are usually pretty simple. Poke a hole in something. It’s only the size of a pinprick, after all. Even a simple hole will do to avoid the costs incurred with a brute-force gate. I put a gate spell on the tiny hole I left behind to further save on maintenance costs.
The full-size gate was the tricky part. There wasn’t anything appropriate anywhere near my target, so I brute-forced it and stepped through quickly.
Once on the Cretaceous side—a fresh Cretaceous, one I hadn’t been to before—I regarded the dinosaur. It lifted its head as I came through and it looked at me across the corpse of another dinosaur. Its head was bigger than me and covered in smears of blood. Some of the blood in the partially-eaten body was lively enough to crawl away from the tyrannosaur, toward me. No doubt the tyrannosaur was full, otherwise it might have already charged. Then again, anything my size was, at most, a scavenger. Not worth challenging, but worth frightening off. It made a hissing rumble, a warning sound.
I ignored it. It was just an angry lizard. Besides, the tyrannosaur’s entire head would fit in the nostril of the last dragon I looked at. As long as it was busy hissing, it wasn’t a problem. I looked around for other scavengers. Anything small enough to be scared off might not run far, lured back by the smell of blood and meat. Those might be insignificant to a tyrannosaur, but they might be troublesome to me.
Yes, there were quite a lot of small to mid-sized creatures around. They all kept a respectful distance from the kill, though. A few were interested in me, but a lot of tendrils convinced them it was too late at night to concern themselves with anything but sleep.
The tyrannosaur, on the other hand, didn’t like me. When I didn’t run, it raised itself from where it lay and extended its neck, tail lashing behind as a counterbalance. It roared at me, a cross between a trumpet and a chainsaw. Scavengers scattered.
Looking around, there was a clearer area off to my left and slightly to my rear. It was easily large enough, so I insinuated tendrils into the tyrannosaur and got a good grip on its vitality. I backed off slowly, moving toward the clearing.
Weren’t we going to draw a circle and lure it in? Firebrand queried.
I’ve reconsidered, I shot back. There’s a lot of vitality in there and it’ll take time to drain it. While I’m sure I can drag it—
You mean Bronze can drag it.
—I think it’ll be easier to let it fall wherever it wants and then draw the circle!
It trumpeted its roar again and pursued me. I hauled vitality out of it in a hurry. There was a lot to be had, but I’m good at this. The tricky part was timing it so it didn’t lose interest in chasing me before the clearing, but still collapsed before it could eat me. I didn’t quite get it right. I reached the far side of the clearing while it was still thumping after me.
Do I stand still while it charges and focus on hauling out its vital force? It’ll drain much more quickly if I can concentrate. On the other hand, if I don’t concentrate, it will still fall over eventually, and I’ll be able to move out of the way.
I cut right, circling the clearing, still draining vitality from the thing. It turned, sluggishly, to pursue, but at night I’m faster than the eye can follow. I stayed on its right side while it kept turning and it very nearly spun in place. Eventually, it fell over, shaking the ground. It kicked at me, feebly, once, and its eyes closed.
I grabbed the tail and dragged the dinosaur into a slightly better position if only to prove to Firebrand I was right. I repeated the process with the head. With it curled up somewhat, I was certain it would fit.
Now, step three: Draw a new shift-circle and get the thing back to Tauta and my hidden dell.
I expected more trouble from the local scavengers. Maybe they were more interested in the pile of meat the tyrannosaur wasn’t guarding. Whatever the reason, they didn’t bother me. I was left to clear the ground, mark it off, and draw my symbols without interference. It didn’t hurt to have the vital force from a tyrannosaur to help.
The circle flared and light arched upward, forming a bright, shining hemisphere and I sent it on its way. When the glare cleared, the circle was empty.
Interesting. Did I do something not quite right, or do unshielded spaces usually have a bit of leakage in the v
isible range? Or was it even visible to mortal eyes? The main trouble with an extended sensory range is remembering what other people can see.
I drew another circle on the ground for a return gate. I didn’t go with the dinosaur because I wasn’t entirely sure the transfer would work. I connected the micro-gate from my ring to the circle, waited until it stabilized, and allowed myself to topple forward into it. I emerged, therefore, from the portable gate on the other side and did a forward roll on the ground.
Now I’m thinking with portals. I’m getting the hang of this.
My dinosaur was present and seemed none the worse for its interuniversal shift. It was still snoozing peacefully. I did a quick check, looking over the interior structures, paying close attention to the circulatory and nervous systems. It was big enough to regard a sword-thrust as a needle-stick, a slashing attack as a paper cut. It’s important to know where to stick or slash if you’re going to kill something this big.
It seemed to be having trouble breathing, so I wrapped its head in a nitrogen filter, increasing the relative concentration of oxygen. It breathed more easily after that.
I wonder if Huron’s any good with that spear of his?
While I worked on the dinosaur’s breathing spell, I noticed something disturbing. The ground around the tyrannosaur wasn’t the ground of the little dell. It was the ground from the Cretaceous. The plants alone should have clued me in quicker.
I dug down at the perimeter to check. Yes, my shift-spell formed a sphere, not a hemisphere. Somewhere in the Cretaceous, there was a transposed divot of Tauta.
I wished Bronze were present, but I didn’t say so. I dragged the dinosaur out of the circle, slowly, accompanied by many snide remarks from Firebrand. I ignored these and continued to slog along, sinking shin-deep in the ground with every step. Eventually, with my dinosaur clear, I filled in the hole and set up my circle again. It took some doing, but I fired the circle a second time, shifting everything back. I don’t know what sort of prehistoric ecological or evolutionary disaster might ensue from introducing grass, vines, and whatever organisms live in the dirt of Tauta, and I don’t really want to find out. Shifting everything back at least minimized the effects. Hopefully, any contamination will get stomped out by the local organisms.