Wizard (The Key to Magic)

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  Her only reaction was to thrust out an arm. "There!"

  Making the table gain altitude to clear the intervening stalls and running people, he turned to align his course with her arm.

  A pair of monstrosities appeared only a dozen armlengths to the left of their path and with a single thought he enchanted them and drove them so far up into the ceiling that only their churning gargantuan feet showed.

  As he neared the wall, he slowed and Nali twisted out of the crook of his encircling arm and dove off.

  "Come on!" she yelled as she dashed along the curve of the wall.

  Already committed, he slid off the table without bothering to dampen its spells and landed running. The table coasted on and caromed off a metal post holding up a sign and then spun all the way around before sliding into the path of a stream of flux-infused slugs from the opposite side of the cavern. The projectiles ripped the table apart and walked along the wall above his head, blasting free gravel and chunks of not-quite-stone. The falling debris forced him into an awkward dance as he dodged back and forth and one large piece struck his shoulder with the force of a hammer.

  Staggered, he tripped as his left foot came down wrong and fell forward.

  Feet braced, Nali caught him in a fierce hug to keep him upright, then immediately released him. "Come on!"

  She had doubled back, moving faster than he thought a person could.

  Keeping low, he followed as she vaulted scattered merchandise and squeezed by awning poles and shelves, covering another twenty paces or so, and stopped in front of a thick floor grating formed of square bars. Set right up against the wall and rusted and stained, the grating looked fixed in place, but when Nali grabbed one of the bars, it pivoted open as if on greased hinges.

  She was through in a flash and again he had no choice but to follow. The tunnel beneath -- dry but certainly a drain -- was just big enough to crawl through. He had expected Nali to have scuttled ahead, but she had moved along just far enough to allow him to get all the way in.

  "Close it and throw the bolt!"

  Twisting onto his back to reach up, he pulled the grating down without any problem but then could not find the bolt.

  Twitching with impatience, she slithered in beside him, laid an unerring hand on the bolt, and shot it home.

  "Don't make a light or cast any other spell," she ordered in a sharp tone, then disentangled herself and crawled rapidly in the direction that led under the wall and away from the cavern above.

  With a gradually increasing slope, the drain went straight for forty or fifty armlengths, becoming totally dark. Not daring to consult his magical sense, he listened for her breathing to keep track of her, trailing close behind, and when she abruptly dropped away, he stopped and felt ahead to learn that the drain had opened out into a larger space.

  "Let yourself straight down," she whispered from his left. "The ledge is dry, but the center channel is full."

  His nose telling him right away that this new tunnel was an operating cloaca, he obeyed her instructions with great care and was soon alongside her. As before, she apparently had no trouble getting about in the absence of light.

  She took his hand. "Stay right behind me."

  They went upstream at a swift trot, made a number of twists and turns, changed elevations twice, crawled through a dry connecting tube into another large sewer, and finally crawled up through a ragged edged hole to enter a tunnel with a level floor. Here, Nali finally allowed him a lamp, but only a small one. The half-circular brick passage had no stains and only a musty smell, suggesting that it was not part of the sewage drains. His lamp did not reveal much of it, but it continued in a straight line into the gloom in front of them.

  Studying the lower half of the left hand wall, Nali hurried along with a soft tread. After less than a dozen steps, she stopped at a spot that to him looked little different from any other.

  A sharp blow of her fist on one particular brick made a section at the base of the wall pop out slightly. Not a veneer but whole bricks attached to a metal frame that rode on casters, the section slid out about half an armlength when she dug in her fingertips and tugged. His lamp revealed a small hollow behind this door.

  "Get in. I only made it big enough for one, but we'll have to manage."

  He balked. "I'd rather keep going."

  She shook her head. "Don't be stupid. Faction standard procedure is to deploy a movement detection ward at five hundred paces. You go another thirty steps and they'll know exactly where you are. Get in."

  He ground his teeth together, but complied.

  After lodging his lamp against the curving back wall, he tucked arms and legs and wiggled inside the cramped cell. Nali crowded immediately behind him and for a moment a wrestling match ensued as they tried to find an accommodation that would allow the woman to pull the door shut. Quite abruptly the struggle ended and he found himself with a lap full of Nali, who, after she sealed the entrance, let out a long breath and relaxed.

  "We will only have to wait a couple of hours," she told him in a low voice. "The Compliance Officers won't stay in the area any longer than that. Everyone will have gotten away except for the ones they snared."

  It would have been impossible not to note the similarity between his current circumstance and the long ago incident in Khalar when he had hidden with Telriy in his own bolt hole. Memories of her stirred feelings that were not convenient to have while entangled with another woman -- especially one dressed -- or, more accurately, undressed -- as Nali was -- so he firmly steered his mind away from thoughts of soft skin and warm contact.

  "They hit the Bazaar often?"

  "Only a couple of times a year. This one was a couple of months early, but they don't exactly keep a schedule. They don't want to shut down the Bazaar completely. It concentrates the bootleggers and smugglers in one place and makes them easy to watch. These raids are just to remind everyone that the Faction is in charge. They'll kill a few people, make a few more disappear, arrest anyone they can, and fill in the entrances, but most of those caught will be released within a day and within three or four days new entrances will be cut. A month from now, it'll be business as usual."

  "What about your friend Fynd?"

  "She has resources that gave her a five minute warning. She sent me after you and then ported out before the damping ward came down. ."

  "I appreciate the thought, but it wasn't necessary. I'd have gotten out, one way or the other."

  "Maybe, but the Compliance Officers kill unlicensed sorcerers on sight. Fynd wanted to keep you alive in case she needed you again."

  "How do you know that their magic won't find us here?"

  Cocking her head, she indicated a medallion, made of bronze or something similar, which hung from a spike driven into the brick. Raised curlicue letters in a white lacquer circled the exposed face.

  "None of their spells can detect this spot and anyone that walks by will tend not to notice it. That's Kendis work. Cost me a smooth five thousand Khyvhnhe riels, which cost me twenty-five thousand Bazaar tokens. I don't regret the price because it's saved my skin more than once, but it's still a lot of money."

  "Maybe I can cover a part of your investment. I still have most of what Fynd paid me and I need something that I didn't find in the Bazaar. I'm willing to pay all of my tokens for your help."

  She moved about a bit in a very distracting way. "It's a little cramped in here, but I can --"

  "Not that. I need to find a wizard -- or, at least, someone that can teach me about wizardry."

  "Wizardry! Do you have a death wish?"

  "No. Do you know anyone that can help me?"

  "I might. So you want to jump to a different time? Why?"

  "Explanations are not part of the deal."

  "Well, as far as I have heard, there isn't a single wizard left alive in the Commonwealth. The Faction considers wizardry a high crime against the public peace. I do know some people, though, who know some people that might be able to put you in contact w
ith a foreign practitioner."

  "How long would that take?"

  "To connect with the people I know, no more than an hour after we leave here. For them to contact the people they know, I haven't the slightest idea. It could be as little as a few minutes or as long as several days before I get a response."

  "It's a deal." He decided that it would be best not to try to wiggle his hands underneath her to reach his pockets. "I'll pay you just as soon as we get out."

  "My pleasure. My usual fee is a good bit more, but you can owe me the rest."

  He did not comment. After another moment, he rested his head on the wall behind him and closed his eyes.

  "You're going to sleep?"

  "Just a nap."

  "You sure you don't want to --"

  "No."

  A while later -- he had no way to determine whether it was the full appointed two hours -- she used an elbow to wake him from his doze. As soon as she had closed her refuge up tight, he presented her with all of his Bazaar tokens, making himself once again penniless without regret, and they moved on. The lacquer chips had never actually felt like money to him and he did not give them a second thought.

  Once again, she forbade him a light, taking his hand to guide him along. It may simply have been the dark enhancing his hearing, but presently he became acutely conscious of the whispering sounds that her clothing made as she walked.

  To keep his focus firmly where it belonged, he thought of Telriy.

  ELEVEN

  At the end of the brick tunnel, Nali led him up a metal ladder mounted to the side of a narrow, vertical shaft. This brought them to a corridor just wide enough to walk in that had lamps mounted to the sidewall at ten armlength intervals. These lit as they drew near and extinguished when they passed, but generated hardly enough light to see where to put his feet.

  "Can I make a light now?"

  "No. We're just below ground level here and a spell in motion would be easily detected."

  He frowned at her back. "Where is it that we're going?"

  "A place that I know that the yellow jackets never bother to watch. We'll get there in about twenty minutes."

  "Wouldn't it be quicker to use the transporting magic?"

  "Port bracelets might be as common as teeth in Pyra -- or wherever you're actually from -- but here in the Commonwealth the Faction has a stranglehold on all technology, including the mines that produce the rare ethereal metals. It takes a permit which is nearly impossible to get for a civilian to buy a port bracelet legally, which makes the few that get smuggled in really expensive."

  "More than Kendis work?"

  "A lot more. A port bracelet configured with maximum distance protocols costs more than forty-seven thousand Bazaar tokens and the price is on the rise."

  "What about the spell that you use to see in the dark? Was it very expensive?"

  "I don't use a spell for that. I just use my eyes. I thought that as a sorcerer you could tell."

  "Sorry, I don't know what you mean."

  "I'm a freak."

  This word, not included in his magically acquired vocabulary, had no meaning. "What's a freak?"

  "You don't really speak Common, do you?"

  "No, it's a spell."

  "How much do you know about the Commonwealth?"

  "Practically nothing."

  She harrumphed. "A freak is a human and animal cross. What do they call them where you're from?"

  "They don't. We don't have people like that."

  "Is that so? Huh. Well, I can see in the dark because my genes have been messed with."

  As she had said this, her voice had become flat and hard.

  "You don't see as well in the light?"

  "No, my vision is better than normal, night and day. The problem is that the Faction -- to be honest, I should say a lot of people in general -- won't tolerate freaks. Faction regulations don't recognize us as human and it's impossible to live in the open as a freak. All the ones that look normal, like me, try to pass as normal. The rest hide. There aren't very many of us here in the Commonwealth. Except for chance, I wouldn't be here myself."

  "How's that?"

  "My mother was a research assistant in a Kendis lab that was hidden in the mountains around Llorton. When the Faction took over the Duchy, they found the lab and burned it to the ground with everything inside, both experiments and people. My mother was in town doing an errand when the sorcerers attacked. After I was born, she raised me on a farm out in the boondocks and managed to keep my extra abilities a secret until I was fifteen. One day I was chasing a pig that had gotten out along the highway and I laid my foot open on a piece of glass. It was bad enough that I had to have stitches in the parish clinic. A routine diagnostics spell gave me away and one of the nurses was a Faction snitch. My mother died in prison and I spent two years under observation in a cage."

  "How did you get out?"

  "The sorcerer in charge of observing me got a new plaything. I'd pleased him well enough that he released me rather than have me put down."

  He knew that there had to be much more to the story, but he also knew that he had no desire to hear it, so he fell silent.

  Her hand still locked in his, Nali led him through the tunnel, then along a short passage filled with piping and magical devices, and finally to the foot of a circular stair illuminated by light spilling down from above. Here she released his hand in order to grasp both rails as she climbed the narrow steel treads.

  For a moment, he paused. His old Khalarii'n instincts told him that it was foolhardy to take anything that Nali had said, including her professed motive for helping him get out of the Bazaar, at face value. If the Compliance Officers had posted a bounty on his head, which seemed to him very likely, then she might simply be luring him to the nearest guard post in order to collect the reward.

  Without much further thought, he decided that the possibility that she would put him in contact with a wizard that could teach him how to navigate through undertime was worth the risk that she would betray him and then followed her up into the open.

  It took him a couple of seconds to realize that he was not outside but actually within a gargantuan chamber. The roof was so far above that he wondered why there were no clouds. Filled with all manner and size of crates and boxes, unsupported floors like giant shelving rose up all around.

  An automaton the size of horse with long tailing arms whizzed by near to his left and he flinched so hard that he stopped.

  "The drones are harmless," Nali chided from a few paces away. "They're just stevedores and are programmed with unbreakable failsafe routines. They can't do harm, even by accident."

  He took a look around. Hundreds if not thousands of the automatons were in sight, scurrying about, both on the floor and in the air, lifting, shifting, and moving cargo.

  A larcenous impulse prompted him to ask, "What's in the crates?"

  "Anything. Everything. Household goods mostly, I suppose. I've never bothered to look."

  "No curiosity?"

  "Not about things that would just be a distraction."

  Ignoring the trajectories of the automatons, she darted across the gray, not-quite-stone floor. The devices changed course to avoid her, creating a looping flow in their otherwise direct paths, but showed no other reaction to her presence.

  It took twenty minutes to walk to the side of the building. Here a number of frames built of metal beams and trusses gave shelter to a multitude of dormant automatons. A passage clearly meant for people, its floor painted with blue and green stripes, pierced the framework. Nali entered this, but instead of continuing to the doorway in the outer wall that was directly ahead, she turned right to descend an open stairway. In the corridor below, she took a left, a right, and then another left to stop at a closed metal door.

  His suspicions again aroused, Mar asked, "What's this place?"

  "It's my place."

  She touched a particular spot on the upper left corner of the door and it opened. As she walked thr
ough, lamps came on within.

  "Or one of them anyway. I can't get permits for an apartment so I've appropriated rooms around the city."

  Watchful, he followed.

  The room was six paces square and its furnishings were denominated in one: one cot, one chair, one table, one wardrobe, and one ceramic and copper bathtub. While the first four were mundane wood and metal, the last had an ethereal presence that indicated a number of complex spells.

  As she opened the double doors of the wardrobe, Nali saw him look at the tub. "You're welcome to get a quick bath while I change."

  "No, thanks. You're changing your hair?"

  "And my clothes. I can't move around the city looking like this. The yellow jackets would be on us the first time we passed a surveillance ward."

  Using one hand to sort through the clothing hanging in the wardrobe, she used the other to thumb open a catch at her shoulder. If he had had any doubts about the firmness and sleekness of her form before, they were entirely dispelled when her not-quite-there garment slithered to the floor.

  She took out a short gown of bright blue brocade and cream lace, turned about to face him, and draped it across the smooth skin of her breast and hip. "What do you think?"

  "I don't really know, but my guess would be no. Don't you have anything plain?"

  She looked at him for a long moment, showed a flash of exasperation, then re-hung the dress and took out gray trousers and a matching jacket. After dressing with marked speed, she gleaned combs and pins from her crown of purple hair, took a brush from a drawer, and began to pull it through the tangled tresses. As she did so, the purple faded to a mousy brown. Quick, efficient, and perhaps slightly angry strokes removed all trace of tangle and purple. Clasps to hold her hair off her ears and a pair of soft leather shoes completed her ensemble.

  "Well?" she demanded, almost glaring.

  The cut and style of her clothing still looked odd to Mar, but he thought that it probably would not to people of this time and place. As a matter of fact, with the distraction of her garish former clothing and hair style removed, she looked quite fetching.