by Pam Uphoff
Dagger stepped back out of the room and burned the papers in the cooking fire. Took a deep breath, relieved and relaxed, the built-up power used and gone.
***
Arrow was in labor by the time the rest got back to the village. Smokey and Sunset fussed over her, and by nightfall were looking worried. By midnight, Arrow's screams were down to whimpers.
She's going to die. Unless . . .
Dagger thought of all the power she could gather now, spread her hands and gathered an armful. "Please! We need a Midwife, desperately." She put all the power she could into it.
"Dagger! What are you doing!" Smokey gawped at her. "You've grasped power! That's wonderful."
The older witch grabbed her and swung her around and thumped her down suddenly, staring beyond her.
"Who are you?"
Dagger followed her gaze. The woman was young, with long red hair, wearing a plain linen shift and overcoat, and had a basket full of bottles and instruments.
"I'm the Midwife. You called me." Her gaze left them and she walked toward the whimpering.
Dagger was surprised to see Jade draw back, away from the woman, pulling the kids away too. "She's a goddess, very dangerous. Watch her, but don't get her angry."
Sunset inched closer and watched as the weary Arrow drank something the strange woman urged on her, and then curled up with another contraction.
"You need to sit up." The woman pulled an odd stool out of nowhere. The seat was a horse shoe shape that gave the baby a place to go. "And that baby is all sideways. She needs to turn around." The witches all twitched as she swirled her left hand at Arrow's belly. "Better. Now you can make some progress."
She propped Arrow on the stool, speaking softly to her, as she had more contractions.
Dagger watched in horror as Arrow labored on for another two hours before the baby was finally out. The Midwife turned the baby upside down and wiped out her mouth and then swatted her before she gasped a bit and started breathing. Once she got started, she got louder, and the Midwife had Smokey hold the baby while she tied off the cord and cut it.
The placenta came out after a couple of more contractions, and then Arrow was tucked into bed with the baby beside her.
"Now," The Midwife looked around. "She needs to be watched, and the baby needs to nurse within a few hours. Oh, she's much too young for this! Give her a spoonful of this every morning and every evening." She pulled a bottle out of her basket and looked around puzzled. "Where in the World am I?" and then she was gone.
They all started talking about it, and migrated out of Arrow's room. Dagger bit her lip, and slipped back in to watch Arrow and the baby. It was a tiny little thing. "Halberd." She whispered. She had no idea what sort of weapon that was, but it was the next name on the list. Pretty serious weapon, she'd almost killed her own mother.
Out around the cook fire, Falchion, Gauntlet and Epee were looking down at their fat bellies in dismay.
"This is it. First and last time." Epee said.
Betelgeuse hunched her shoulders. "We all have to, once. For power."
Dagger shivered. "I'm not going to have a baby for a long, long time."
Halberd thrived, and Arrow recovered slowly.
Two days later Teri started drilling Dagger, training, she called it, but it was more like a battle, or maneuvering before a battle. Looking for advantage over the new threat.
On the fifth day, Teri showed Dagger how corridors worked, and made the mistake of letting Dagger see the mental twist needed to unlock them. "We lock them to keep ordinary people from using them. They could just walk through, accidentally, otherwise."
On the twelfth day she started talking about long sessions in the sleeping room, so Dagger could advance this year.
On the thirteenth day Dagger spotted the corridor in Jade's room and used it.
She gawped a bit at the city. It was as angular and rocky as the mountain, but it was all regular. There was some grass and some trees, but obviously the grass and trees were required to stay in their proper place, generally squares and rectangles, occasionally circles, and sometimes even in big pots. She walked and looked and stared and ogled everything.
Several times people approached her and she skittered away. She'd heard all about how awful people could be, even though some of the people had looked nice. The horses were quite a bit bigger than the mean little ponies on the island and they moved too much for her to want to be anywhere near. And they smelled all sweaty and hairy, and they pooped in the stone streets. The smaller animals she finally decided must be dogs. The books had said they came in all varieties, but the reality exceeded anything she'd expected.
They used corridors a lot. There was a whole street full of them, and she gleefully dived in and out and got thoroughly lost. Which was the whole point. She didn't want her pyramid to ever find her again.
The main problem she was going to have appeared to be food. On the island there were trees full of food. Out here, she spotted some fruit trees, but they were behind fences, and people frowned at her when she got close.
Finally she went through the wrong Corridor, and wound up back in the City.
She tried one called Bridgeton that no-one else was using, and found herself in a small version of the city. Just five streets and only the 'Inn at the Bridge' was very large. The bridge was stone and arched over a huge river. Beyond it, she could see a few large plowed fields, then a forest. It was the wildest looking place she'd seen all day, and she trudged across the bridge toward it. It was further than she'd thought, and she was really tired, getting thirsty again and really hungry.
But she wasn't going back. She wasn't going to just live in the jungle and have babies. She drank from a stream, ate a few odd berries and curled up under a bush to sleep. It was better than the House. Really.
She didn't recognize any of the trees, and they didn't seem to be producing fruit right now. She got better at spotting the berry bushes and walked on up the road. It seemed like the right thing to do. But she was awfully hungry. It wasn't fair that the trees had nothing edible about them. But she was tired enough to sleep anyway, under whatever bush or leafy pile was available when the sun went down. One day there was a big wooden walled fort, and she thought about asking for food, but it was full of horses and men. And even the witches had been wary of men, kept them under control. These were armed. And up on huge horses. She walked past quickly hoping they were too busy to notice her. The trees were falling back from the road, and the slight roll to the land was turning into actual hills, covered with dry golden grass except around the creek beds, and those were looking pretty dry too. She looked to the right at the hills, and beyond them the mountains. Maybe she should leave the road, berries were better than nothing. There was a small village ahead, and she wondered if she could just ask someone for food. A woman. She imagined someone like Nanny Mason or Becca, who would just hand her food. She eyed the big building, the horses tied in front, and men hanging around talking and decided she'd be better off going up the lane. One of those houses would have a woman in it . . .
A tall man walked out of the barn and across the brick courtyard to the back door of the 'Fire Mountain Inn.' He glanced her way, narrowed his eyes a bit, studying her. Her edging toward the lane ground to a halt and she got ready to run.
"You hungry, kid?" He stuck his head in the back door and emerged with bread in his hand. "Here." He tossed it to her, and she snatched it out of the air, and retreated. But he wasn't trying to catch her. He just walked into the building and left her alone.
She wolfed the bread, then drank at the trough. Go or stay? There were wonderful smells coming from the open door. She edged up and peeked in the kitchen. There was a really pretty lady cooking, and a couple of girls coming and going with trays full of food.
"C'mon in and have something to eat." The cook smiled over at her, and she walked in, just like it was home.
Chapter Eight
Summer 1398
Embassy World
>
Quicksilver looked around the sloping plain and shook her head despairingly.
Oh, as a place to put a collection of embassies it would be hard to beat. But how were they going to build with bedrock almost thirty feet down? And rather soft limestone. Humph. She looked north, and then west. Clouds or mountains? Only one way to find out.
Stripy was happy to move out. The old mare had double smart horse genes, so she was aging well. Her daughter Galena stopped to snatch some grass, then followed. Her odd saddle was the frame for a bunch of dimensional containers. She was carrying a ridiculous amount of water and grain, people type food, and a small shelter that they could all fit into at need.
Two days travel got them into rolling foothills and exposed granite. This variety had lots of plagioclase in it, giving it a pinkish color. She took samples, large ones, and stashed them in bubbles, and kept going, taking the occasional bearing and drawing a sketch map as she went. A bit of wandering located some upthrust limestone, and then in the contact layer between it and the granite she found all sorts of interesting stones for building. Marble, with odd coloring closer to the invasive chemicals of the granite, shading to pure and white further away. She collected as she moved south, her goal a sharp cone poking into the sky.
The volcano was long dead, but there was black basalt to add to her collection. The beauty of dimensional bubbles was that one could lug absurd amounts of things around in them. She wouldn't want to corridor with this much mass, and was quite sure that traveling would be impossible. But riding along enjoying the good weather? No problem at all.
It was a pity people couldn't be as easily dealt with. Especially one's own self.
She'd known damn good and well Garit was acting under the influence of a pack of spells. She knew he was cautiously courting a shy young lady. The poor man had been paranoid, aggressive, ambitious. Sigh. Horny. Sigh. With enough power to ignore the collective subconscious' designation of herself as the archetype of the smart girl with zero sex appeal. No. Be honest. In the grip of that paranoia spell, he'd seduced her in a cold blooded ploy to get her on his side. And she'd enjoyed every minute of it. She'd indulged herself, repeatedly, gotten her emotions all tangled up, and now slapped down as the spells' effects faded and his hormones and adrenals and whatever all drifted back to normal.
He was horrified he'd seduced her. Oh, she could logic it around to horrified he'd done something dishonorable with his best friend's sister, when he was openly courting a different young lady. But it really didn't help a bit.
She was just so dumped. Hence this solitary trip. Hard work to keep her busy, and solitude for tears. She could bawl into Stripy's mane over heartbreak, shame, fury, self-loathing and whatever else she needed to do.
She probably collected a lot more gloomy black basalt than they'd ever need.
And then get to work. They needed a big central plaza with a fancy fountain. Lots of rock arches for the gates. An embassy building for Comet Fall. A meeting hall, courts, offices and even a jail for the Dimensional Police. Living quarters, stables and garages. She grinned slightly, and wondered what kind of vehicle, from which World she'd buy as a surprise gift for her brother.
"Wait a minute. What am I thinking? Sheesh. If I buy a sports car, I'm damn well keeping it." She nodded decisively and turned to study the ground. A fountain right there. Yes.
And as for Garit . . . If she did a little bit of showing off and overawing him, well, he deserved it for drinking that garbage pail concoction of spells in the first place.
It was a very productive month.
Best of all, she came away from it with a huge list of things to do, buy and make. Much of which would take research, so even better.
Solar panels for electricity. They could buy them on Earth, but she'd rather make them herself, if it was possible. She'd need to go to Earth to get an example, a starter set. No problem.
***
"She's not here." Xen frowned. "Or if she is she's awfully far away."
Garit dismounted and walked over the rock mosaic to the fountain. He scuffed his boots as if needing tactile confirmation of the rock's unitary nature. "She's obviously been here. This is a model of the solar system, isn't it? I'm almost afraid to ask if there is any significance to the patterns she put in empty space."
Xen dismounted and stripped Pyrite's saddle off before walking around and studying the model. Inasmuch as it took up about thirty acres it wasn't quick.
Garit, with considerable forethought, rode over and took a look at the random pile of huge stone blocks northeast of the fountain. A slab sitting on two others formed a cavernous shelter that already contained two saddles. He stripped Clowney's tack and brushed her down. "I suspect there's two other horses out there somewhere, if you want more company."
She nodded, calm and unbothered, and wandered off a bit to graze. Pyrite came halfway, then stopped and stared. Neighed. Two mares, a line back dun and a dark, almost black dun galloped over a hill and much huffing and squealing established that everyone already knew everyone, the mares were all pregnant and Pyrite had better behave or they'd kick his teeth in. They all galloped off for the sheer joy of speed, and Xen walked up to the stone pile with his saddle and saddle bags over his shoulder.
"So, she can't have gone far, without the horses." Garit glanced at the gate. "Unless she's gone very far indeed."
"Don't look so relieved. She'll be back." Xen set his saddle at the end of the line of tack and grabbed Q's saddle bags. "Ouch!" He waved his left hand hastily at them.
Garit could see little half invisible things, like swirls of air whipping out, but had no basis to analyze them.
Xen blew on his fingers. "Spells to keep varmints and the horses from raiding it. Now, let's see if she left any clues." The first thing he pulled out was a leather folder.
Garit looked over his shoulder. "Oh, you mean like instructions with your name on it, orders, architectural sketches, that sort of thing? Old Gods! How large of a building is she planning?"
"Large. Guess she doesn't want it to be outgrown too soon. Hmm, are we going to need an actual council hall sort of thing yet?"
"Well, she's made it the center of the building, not an add on, so I think you're likely to get one, like it or not. What's . . . jail cells? Well, I guess so. Lots of offices, small courtrooms. Bigger conference rooms—unless she thinks you've got a swelled head and need a big office." Garit grinned. "Not that anyone who knows you expects you to spend much time indoors.
"Note the offices upstairs. The big ones are in the corners. That's a major office dominance indicator on most worlds."
"Including ours. And she recommends light colored stone inside for the lighting, but what do you want on the outside?" Garit looked at the small mountain of samples piled around, and snorted. "I think Q is subtly making a point about how powerful she is by casually plunking down hundred-ton blocks as samples. I really hope she's not permanently pissed at me. I like your sister. She's got a whole different sort of class."
Xen grinned. "I didn't ask how your visit to Tashi went."
Garit sighed. "I didn't dig myself in any deeper, but she's wary of me. With cause."
Xen eyed his friend and distant cousin. "The mother has such a history with violence and wizards. Even just an ordinary soldier is going to bother her, and it seemed like Tashi and her mother were very close."
Garit nodded. "Put me in a suit, at a sophisticated party, peaceful civil surroundings, and I pass. Put me in a uniform and they get wary. In a uniform, being aggressive, ambitious, and pushy sexually . . . I understand her mother being scared. I hadn't realized how I'd affected Tashi. I mean, after three years of courtship, surely one hungry kiss and grope isn't completely out of line?"
Xen smiled a bit at Garit's plaintive tone, but sobered. "Garit, when I've been out in the field, hunting bandits, Veronians, Auralians and Black Mages . . . especially after fighting for my life several times . . . when I return home, I'm still on alert. It takes time to stop reacting t
o every rustle as if it's someone sneaking up to kill me. To relax and mellow out. To stop being primed to fight at a second's notice."
Garit frowned and then nodded.
"Write her and tell her that. Tell her that you'll avoid her until you've had time in civilized surroundings for a few weeks, whenever you come in from the field. Tell her . . . well, I don't know. You are a damned good commander. A tactician. Eventually you'll either be running whole armies, or you'll be in politics, and that can be pretty damn dangerous territory, too."
Garit got up and walked out to kick some pink granite. "I need to ask her if I may continue to court her, or whether she is so uncomfortable with the very idea that she prefers me to go away. I dread the answer, though."
"Yeah."
"So, what about you and Deena?"
"Deena has always been very clear that she was never going to have anything but a professional relationship with me. I haven't even managed to kiss her, yet."
"Never?" Garit shook his head. "And us with no booze to console ourselves. Guess we'd better build something. Is there anything I can do yet?"
"Ah. You're getting good at push and shield aren't you?" Xen grinned evilly. "Let's see if you can do both at once, a combination my father refers to as 'bulldozer' from a machine used on Earth to build roads. I think a quarter mile grid will be about right for the town, otherwise it'll take forever to walk anywhere."
***
Quicksilver let her temporary gate collapse behind her, marching confidently down the street. While technically speaking all the Worlds were Earth, she tended to restrict the term to the branch Worlds that were close to the one her ancestors had been exiled from. This one.
She'd first opened a gate to this World three years ago, and destroyed their powered gate. And two years ago she'd helped Xen and Jeff get a foothold here. Xen, of course, had left early, not too many bodies and explosions behind him, not too badly injured for a change. Jeff Lovett was still here, and Janic's other people had made steady progress, infiltrating the society. They were about acclimated enough to try for government positions. She'd decided to not have anything to do with the official mission, not wanting to increase their risk. She was in the unique position of being able to come and go at will, and so she did. And enjoyed herself while she did it. Paris was a beautiful city. She strolled, using illusions to alter her appearance incrementally until she blended in, and studying the styles the locals were wearing, with shopping in mind.