The other man, Trennus Matrugena, was not at all what Adam had expected from his dossier. For one thing, the man was huge. At least six and a half feet in height, he was broad in proportion, like a wrestler or a boxer. The Pict had dark blond hair, dressed back in a half dozen braids, with a neatly trimmed beard, and swirling, geometric knot-work tattoos in blue ink over about sixty percent of his body. Certainly, every square inch of his arms and legs, and a stag’s head occupied his back. In spite of general prohibitions against jewelry in the baths, he wore two amulets on long chains around his neck, as well.
Half the people in the baths turned to look at the ‘barbarian,’ who was, for his part, doing his best not to make eye-contact with anyone at all. He didn’t slip gracefully through the crowd . . . mainly because he was looking up at the ceiling . . . and periodically bumped into people, with hurried, profuse apologies and a quick, sheepish smile . . . and then actually slipped at the edge of the pool, stumbling down into the water, recovering his balance at the last second. Adam could see the man shake his head and look back up at the ceiling again, the line of his shoulders clearly stating that he was not relaxing in the hot water.
This is our summoner? Adam wanted to ask. This? He . . . can’t possibly be. The labels on the folders were switched. The Carthaginian’s the summoner. Except . . . it said ley-mage and summoner. Not too many ley-mages from Carthage or Tyre.
He could see both of them, periodically, looking around. Trying to spot him, probably, though when he’d left messages at both of their hotels, he’d only left his name, affiliation, and the meeting location. Adam chuckled to himself. This was really . . . sort of fun, he had to admit it.
Though next time? He’d pick a different location.
He shook his head, stood, and padded over. “Eshmunazar? Matrugena?”
Both heads snapped up, as the two men tried to turn around, caught completely off-guard, with mildly comical glances at each other as they recognized each other’s names. “Yes?” Eshmunazar said, cautiously. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m Adam ben Maor. No, no, don’t get up. I’ll meet you outside the frigidarium, and we can go get a drink and something to eat. Our fourth, Caetia, will be joining us later.” Adam was being scrupulously fair about his bet with Sigrun. He wasn’t going to use her first name, and he was fairly certain that the men hadn’t been informed about the nature of the protective detail for which they were ‘interviewing.’ That was mostly the purpose of this meeting.
Back out into the tepidarium, chuckling under his breath; both of them had scrambled up out of the water and splashed after his wake. Adam found that a quick plunge into the cool water of the frigidarium’s pool at least slowed down the sweating that the heat of the caldarium tended to provoke, and thus, was mandatory before he pulled his clothing back on.
He tended to dress in a way that attracted little attention to himself, wherever he happened to be traveling at the moment; in Nova Germania and Novo Gaul, that had meant jeans and a laced shirt, with a travel cloak against the cold. Here in Rome, the same clothing applied, but he didn’t need the cloak. To his mild surprise, on exiting the baths, Eshmunazar wore a white caftan with tan pants below, with a white skullcap, and Matrugena couldn’t have stood out more if he’d tried. He wore a blue-green plaid, wrapped around his waist and flung over one shoulder, with a white shirt and knee-high boots . . . and a pair of scholarly glasses perched on his nose. “I know,” Matrugena told him, before Adam could say a word. “I didn’t know how long I’d be staying in Rome, so I didn’t see much purpose in buying clothes for here.” The man’s Latin had a light and lilting accent, a tribute to the Celto-Gallic languages spoken in Britannia. “I was so surprised that the Praetorians asked me to join them . . . it’s taken a while to sink in as real.” He laughed, shaking his head.
Adam’s eyebrows had risen at the colorful, checked garment. “I’ve rarely seen one of those outside of books and magazines.” They hadn’t been common in Nimes-on-the-Pacifica, for example; that city hadn’t been colonized by Picts. But he’d seen one or two in Ponca, now that he thought about it. All on travelers.
The summoner shrugged. “The kilt developed out of the move towards keeping sheep in the lowlands about six hundred years ago. They’re warm, can be used as a bedroll when you’re out in the wilderness, and the patterns were easy enough for the women in every family to weave inside the home.”
“And the fact that you stand out in your forest?” Eshmunazar asked, raising his eyebrows.
“That’s actually a good thing when you have a lot of men out hunting deer. I don’t particularly want a stray arrow or bullet catching me.” Matrugena’s grin suddenly split his face. “I’m surprised you didn’t point out that I’m wearing a dress.”
Eshmunazar glanced down at his own caftan, and bared his teeth. “My hypocrisy only goes so far. Besides, Romans have told the rest of the world for millennia that anyone who wears trousers is a barbarian.”
Matrugena shouted with laughter. “It’s true, though, isn’t it?”
Eshmunazar turned back towards Adam, shrugging now, himself. “As for me, I don’t have Matrugena’s excuse. I’ve spent the last few years in Egypt and Byzantium, though, and being redirected to Rome before re-assignment? I didn’t think I’d be staying here long. If I am in for a long stay, I’d like to know for certain, so I can start the process of getting an apartment here for my wife and family.” The Carthaginian snorted as Adam led them back out into the now-darkened streets, lit by ley-powered lamps, and to a crowded taverna with a glowing, florescent sign over the door that depicted a bunch of grapes falling into a glass, and a flock of sheep, alongside the taverna’s actual name: Agnellus.
They could only find seats at the bar in the jam-packed interior, and Adam tossed his unused cloak over a fourth bar-stool to save the seat for Sigrun. “Whether or not you stay in Rome . . . ” Adam called through the crowd noise, and then admitted, “. . . well, you won’t, much, if Caetia and I decide you’re the ones we want working with us.”
The Carthaginian grimaced. “Another heavy-travel job? Can you tell us anything about it? Personnel won’t tell me a damned thing about the position.”
Adam waited till the harried server at the bar got to them, and took their drink orders. Matrugena asked for uisce beatha; Eshmunazar asked for arak, and Adam, since he was actually on-duty tonight, asked for coffee. “And menus, including one for our fourth,” he added, jerking a thumb at the empty seat beside him.
Once they had the vellum menus in hand, and Adam was sure that the server wasn’t paying attention to them, he told them, just over the hum of crowd noise, “It’s lictor work. Bodyguard to a propraetor.”
Matrugena’s head snapped up from his menu, his blue eyes widening behind his glasses. “May the Morrigan have mercy,” he said, staring at Adam. “You’re jesting with us, yes?”
Adam shook his head, still studying the man cautiously.
“What in the phantom queen’s name do you need someone like me for that, now?”
I’ve been asking that for about five or six hours, Adam thought, but without force. There was something oddly gentle about the big man. For all that he looked like a bear, the prototypical northern barbarian, his big hands were careful as he lifted his glass, as if he were afraid he might break it. “Caetia liked what your dossier said about you. Me, I need a little more information. Hence the meeting.”
There was a pause, as they ordered their food. Adam sighed over the exceedingly limited options, as usual, but Eshmunazar had no problem ordering a bowl full of fish stew, something that had mussels and eels and . . . god really only knew what else. Matrugena ordered venison, and Adam finally opted for lamb, looking at the seat beside him. Completely avoiding the meeting isn’t going to win the bet, Sigrun, he told her, mentally. He looked up and around the crowded restaurant, not seeing her at all.
At about this point, a couple of unattached women had spotted the empty seat at the bar, and made their way over
. Lovely in a thoroughly Roman way, with curly hair, liquid dark eyes, and low-cut blouses. One of them smiled and asked Adam, “Mind if I take that seat?”
“Ah . . . saving it, actually. For a friend.”
“Will he really mind?” She leaned in closer over his shoulder, and Adam stifled a chuckle.
“I’m pretty sure that if my friend doesn’t get dinner, I might not live to see the morning,” he told her, cheerfully.
The other two women were, for lack of anything better to do as they waited for a table to clear out, chatting up Kanmi and Trennus. Kanmi looked completely relaxed and at ease, turning around from the bar to talk with them, responding with a smile to their light, meaningless flirtation. Trennus, on the other hand, shifted uncomfortably as one of the women put a hand on one massive shoulder. “So, what do you do for a living?” Adam heard one of the women ask Trennus.
Good enough place to start, he thought. Trennus, for his part, had flushed at the attention, but, on being asked what he did, sat up a little straighter, and in his lightly-accented Latin, began to explain, with some enthusiasm, “Actually, I’m a ley-mage and an intercessor. Which is to say, a ley-engineer, but with more background than that.” He smiled at the woman, a little uncertainly.
“What does that even mean?” She laughed, throwing her head back. Adam watched it all in the mirrors over the bar, keeping an eye on the crowd behind him the whole time. He thought, from the flush in her face, visible even in the dim light around the bar, that she’d already had a couple of drinks. The woman currently behind him, who was crowding in so close it was actually triggering some of his threat responses, making him uneasy, leaned in again, asking, “So, I haven’t been here before. What are you having? Is it any good?”
He turned a little, responding politely, being far more interested in what one of the men he was here to evaluate had to say as Trennus replied, “Well, ley-power is what keeps the lights on in here, yes?”
“Oh, I know that. Everyone knows that!” A titter. “It comes out of the ground, doesn’t it?”
“Well, yes and no. The ground is just where the most accessible ley-lines are. They can actually be anywhere that there’s matter. There are probably ley-lines on the sun. Probably really powerful ones, in fact. But standing there to use them is somewhat problematic, don’t you think?”
“On the sun?” A blank look of total astonishment. “You’re joking.”
Trennus started to gesture with his hands, enthusiastically. “Look, it’s very simple. You know how the solar system works, right? There’s the sun at the center, and the planets are each in their orbit around it. All spaced out around it. And, on an even bigger scale, there’s our galaxy. A super-massive black hole at the center, and all the stars, rotating around it, like spokes around the hub of a wheel.”
Adam blinked a little at the astrophysics lesson in the middle of a conversation about magic, and then caught the slightly uneasy look on the woman’s face as he turned further. Kanmi had an expression of cynical amusement on his face as he, himself, divided his attention between the third woman, and Trennus’ reply. “Here we go with the ‘so as above, so as below’ dogma,” he said, with a certain resignation.
“I’m not much inclined towards Hermeticism,” Trennus informed him, smiling.
Plutarch had made Hermes Trismegistus famous. He’d been one of the god-born, it was clear, who’d lived somewhere around 1270 or so before the common era. He’d descended from a god-born of Thoth who’d fled Egypt after the excesses of Akhenaten and settled in Mycenae, and had claimed to descend from Hermes, as well. He’d been an influential thinker, but most of his writings had been in Linear B, a script which hadn’t been translated until this century. A few of the theurge’s writings had been passed on in other languages by his students, and his thoughts on alchemy, astrology, and magic had been stored in the Great Library of Alexandria, where they were still available for all to read. Many thinkers since the man had lived had been influenced by his ideas on divine and demonic spirits—everything he’d written was the basis for Western summoning traditions, at any rate—and he’d also postulated that everything on earth was reflected in the spirit realm. Plato had echoed and extended upon the idea with his notion of the Ideal. That in the mortal realm, there might be dogs, but each of those dogs was just a shadow of the perfect Dog that was, somewhere, in the realm of the Ideal.
Adam didn’t know if he bought into any of Trismegistus’ teachings, but it was still an influential mode of thought. Now, however, Trennus went on, “It’s just a matter of natural philosophy, Kanmi. A matter of what can be proven, and modeled mathematically.” Again, the language of science entered the realm of magic, and left Adam staring. “We know what our solar system looks like. We know what the galaxy looks like. And that model is repeated, almost precisely, at the atomic level. There’s the nucleus of the atom—not unlike a small star—surrounded by electrons, which orbit it. It’s too small to see, naturally, but just because we can’t perceive something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” He’d been gesturing the whole time, illustrating the center of the solar system or atom, sweeping his fingers in circles to show the orbits. “Now, there’s the whole issue of quantum strings.”
The woman Trennus had been talking to looked a little glassy-eyed. Adam covered his mouth to conceal the smile that insisted on tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Tanit’s tits,” Eshmunazar swore, crudely, looking up at the ceiling. “We’re not really going to get into this, are we?”
“I . . . ah . . . what does any of this have to do with why the lights turn on?” one of the women ventured. Behind her, Adam noticed another woman working her way through the crowd towards the bar. He blinked; he’d never seen hair that long before, at least not unbound. It fell in ripples past her hips, pale gold in the dim taverna light, and it caught his attention. Drew his eyes down to her hips and legs; she wore a long skirt of some black, lustrous material, slit up to the thigh, showing knee-high boots. His eyes flicked back up again, catching an impression of a black leather bodice, commonly worn by Gothic and Gallic women, leaving long, slender arms exposed, along with parts of her shoulders and the upper swells of her breasts. He made unexpected eye-contact from across the crowded room, and the woman smiled at him, her face lighting up. Reflexively, Adam smiled back. Do I know her? No . . . I’d remember someone who looks like that . . . damn.
He dragged his attention back to the conversation at hand, still trying to keep his eyes on the crowd. Trennus and Kanmi were lightly arguing now, Trennus still trying to explain the very basics of ley-magic to their audience. “Look, the math isn’t simple, but in ten dimensions, it works out perfectly. There are strings that connect one point in reality to another point. They always exist in pairs. Pairs resonate with each other. Admittedly, they’re not really strings. That’s just a word. And they can be open or closed when they intersect with each other, but that’s beside the point.”
“What is the point?” Kanmi asked, tiredly. “That these tiny, invisible strings can affect each other, and we can affect those strings. If you pull on one, you pull on the other. If you pull energy from one, it will, eventually, cycle back to the other. Now, this is why it’s important that I mentioned that everything in the universe happens both on microscopic and macroscopic levels.” Trennus gestured, his face lighting up once more. “If the solar system is a perfect emulation of an atom, just on a larger scale, then what’s to say that there isn’t a microscopic version of these energy strings that tie the universe together . . . and a macroscopic version?”
“The fact that we can see the solar system, and we can’t see your ley-lines?” Kanmi said, dryly. “They don’t exist.”
“Then how are the lights burning in this room then, eh? Tell me that, and I’ll buy you another glass of that poisonous-smelling white drink.”
“All magic derives from the will of the person using it, and the redirection of existing natural forces, such as gravity, or energy, expressed as sunlight, chemi
cal reactions, or exothermic energy, like fire.” The Carthaginian looked at Trennus, clearly needling him. “When you use your powers, you’re just using your will, and you’re visualizing the power coming up out of the earth or the sky or the water as the method by which your mind has been trained to exert your will, nothing more.”
“And the lights?” Trennus said, patiently, pointing at the closest one.
“A manifestation of the collective will of a given population. We know that energy can be stored. I can store my will, and the energies I’ve redirected from my environment can be stored in batteries as electricity, among other things. And I can use that electrical charge to fuel my own sorcery.”
“A normal person doesn’t have enough ‘will’ to lift a feather—”
“But you put enough normal people together, and collectively, they have the will of a god—”
“All right, I’ll grant you that. But how is it that a ley-center can output more power than a thousand people put together, when the closest people to it might be a handful of shepherds in the Cotswolds, eh? Explain that to me.” Trennus wasn’t offended, it was clear; rather, he was grinning widely, clearly enjoying the academic debate.
“Ah . . . I think a table’s clearing,” one of the women offered, and headed away. Her friend, who’d been the one asking Trennus what he did for a living, followed at her heels.
“See, you scared them off with all this quantum mechanics and math in ten dimensions bullshit,” Kanmi told the younger man from Britannia without charity. “I do the math for a living, and I know better.”
Adam’s newfound friend looked after her companions, and then back at him. “You sure you’re saving that spot?” she said, lowering her eyelashes. “It doesn’t look like your friend’s coming.”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 18