by Jean Johnson
Aware of his scrutiny, she glanced over at him and smiled for a moment, before returning her attention to her work. “Almost finished. I am negotiating for one of two possible places. Either Darkhana, across the Eastern Ocean from here, or Arbra, which is east of Fortuna, which is east of Darkhana. The latter would be the better option, as it would place them very far from Aian shores.”
“The farther away, the better,” Kerric muttered, accessing his thinkshop and the Arithmancy spells tying many of his chalk – and mesh-boards together. Summoning images of each board, he sorted through the ones he wanted, setting them aside as glowing runes, then opened a scrycasting window to the mirror in question, ready to extract what was needed. From the heart of the Fountain, he could breach any anti-scrying ward in the whole of the Tower at need, though he did not do so casually. No one else could do so, however.
The Netherhell invasion was gone. A placid, untouched, people-strewn plaza met his gaze. “Alright . . . that’s a little odd.”
“What’s odd?” Myal asked him, looking up from her platter-sized tablet.
“The Netherhell invasion. It’s gone. Guardian Dominor, it seems we have another anomaly. The Netherhells image is gone,” Kerric stated, activating the channel again even as he started reversing the scrycast recordings. “I don’t know what happened, but in the time we rested . . . huh. It just changed a few moments ago. I don’t know what happened, but it’s no longer a possibility.”
“Hm. You’re going to disappoint my wife if you keep that up. May she look at your research notes anyway? She’s expecting, and anything I can do to distract her from the nausea would be appreciated.”
Kerric nodded, though the movement couldn’t be seen on the other end of this connection. He didn’t yet have as strong a bond of trust with this Guardian Dominor as he’d need to suggest linking scrying mirrors, but at least with this one, there was hope for it. Guardian Rydan . . . no. “Of course. Sending it through now.”
Bundling the lot of runes into a cube-shaped mass of light and energy, he sent it swirling down into the sphere beneath his feet.
“. . . Got it—nice encapsulation spell! Any chance I can trade a crate of fruit or something for instructions on how to re-create it?” the other mage-Guardian asked. “We’re a little strapped for cash at the moment, locally, but food, we have.”
Myal read the written message sent to her through one of the minor channels, nodded, and tapped her stylus on the crystal. “Kerric? I have an agreement for the five to be shipped out to Darkhana and dumped on their northern coastline. As it’s still very cold up there despite being summer, they’ll be more concerned about finding shelter than in seeking revenge.”
“Price?” he asked.
“Five free hours of scrycasting.”
He wrinkled his nose. “What’s the Arbran offer?”
“They’re asking for a full day’s worth.”
“Go with the Darkhanan,” he directed.
A moment later, he got an exclamation through the Fountainways. “Hey! Guardian Kerric, I thought you said the scrying wasn’t showing a Netherdemon invasion anymore.”
“It isn’t,” Kerric started to assert, checking the mirror. He blinked and stared at the forescryed image: gone was the placid day, shaded toward evening, and in its place was a mass of demon-wrought destruction and carnage. “What the . . . ?”
Quickly backing it up, he counted seconds from the moment of change, then frowned. Peering over to the left, he found Myal scribing notes with the stylus on the tablet in glowing lines.
“Myal . . . I’ve changed my mind. Go with the Arbran exile.”
“Alright,” she agreed. Distracted as she was by her task, she had heard the exchange, and the changes. “Give me a moment to offer apologies . . .”
A minute later, she tapped the rune for sending the message across the Fountainways. A quick glance at the mesh panel showing the scrycast of the Seer’s Mirror . . . showed it switching from the horrible aftermath of a lost battleground to . . . a beautiful, tranquil sunset in the High Temple Plaza in far-distant Fortuna. Myal looked up at Kerric. “That’s interesting. Such a swift change would suggest this Torven group is responsible.”
“Guardian Dominor, I do believe we have found our keystone for the event in question, though you’re welcome to pass on our information to Guardian Serina for review anyway,” Kerric stated, tapping into the Nightfall communication channel once more. He included a timescale of Myal’s actions, though not a visual recording; what happened in the Fountain Hall stayed in the Fountain Hall, after all. “Here’s hoping it distracts her from her nausea. And congratulations to both of you; may your children be born healthy, smart, and wise.”
“Thank you. Guardian Dominor out,” the new Guardian stated.
“Guardian Kerric out.” Sighing, Kerric rested a moment, then looked over at Myal. “When can we send the quintet of idiots through?”
“Finalizing . . . now. All the contract needs is your signature,” she stated, tapping the stylus as gracefully as if she’d been working with one of these Topside Control tablets for months, not a matter of hours.
The glowing packet-run leapt off the crystalline surface and swirled up in front of him. Reaching up into it, Kerric “signed” it with a twist of his personal magics, and a touch of the Tower, stamping it with both sets of power. Contract complete, he watched it fly down into the sphere. A few moments later, an acknowledgment came back from the Guardian of the Vortex in the form of a similar spell-aura signature. With the transaction complete and the Tower bound to give a day’s worth of free scrycastings, he shifted to the controls for the White Rooms.
Sometimes things went wrong in the Tower; rooms broke down, doorway-Gates didn’t function correctly, or just some magical hiccup in the system happened. When that happened, adventurers and maintenance personnel were usually shipped automagically by preset spells into a blank, brightly lit, whitewashed chamber not connected to any other place.
It was completely safe, if completely boring and completely inescapable. No one would die in a White Room; it had a modified stasis spell on it, should they start to grow too thirsty or too hungry. It just wasn’t meant for more than temporary storage for safety reasons, until the adventurer or worker could be reconnected to a safer spot somewhere in the rest of the Tower.
Thankfully, he didn’t have to connect the White Room to one of the alcoves ringing the Fountain Hall. He could connect it directly to the Fountainways, the channels connecting the various singularities. They didn’t always follow logical, land or surfaceroutes, but they did connect, and that was all that mattered.
One moment, the quintet were sitting in the White Room, clearly bored out of their minds. The next, they yelled and fell through the holes that opened beneath their resting bodies, vanishing down into the swirling maw that would lead to the Vortex Fountain, wherever that might be. An expensive exiling . . . but a necessary one.
Kerric smirked a little as they tumbled out of range. Torven and Barric, the archer Kellida, the would-be thief Unsial, even the Healer-mage Crastus, would be flung thousands of miles away, dropped somewhere on a foreign continent where none of them spoke the local tongue, without weapons, without gear, and with only the clothes on their backs. Everything left behind would be confiscated by Tower personnel and used to pay for the replacement of the lost maintenance tablet, as well as any other damages incurred.
It was a fitting punishment, without having to be a lethal one. If the five of them wished to be adventurers for real, they were going to get a real adventure. Satisfied, he closed the Fountainway funnel and restored the White Room to its normal blank state, then connected the attached refreshing room to a corridor set for Base Maintenance personnel to check and clean. He turned to address Myal next, but no sooner did he twist his seat around than Kerric found himself interrupted by an incoming mirror-call from the mayor’s office.
Swiveling back to face it, he sighed and opened the connection.
Burg
her Sylva. Kerric barely managed to catch his wince as it started. He shifted it into a smile. “Sylva, how are you doing?”
“Just fine!” the middle-aged woman replied brightly. She let her smile slide into a smirk, her tone attempting to turn sultry. “I was wondering when we’ll be going on that date you owe me. Obviously not tonight, as you’re still putting things to rights up there, but . . . perhaps tomorrow night? Or the night after?”
Or how about never? an uncomplimentary corner of his mind thought. An incoming message from Jessina provided a grateful distraction. “One moment, Sylva; something’s come up.” Sending the link with the mayoral assistant into a soothing holding spell, all shades of blue and green with slow-pulsing patterns, he opened Jessina’s mirror-connection. “Yes?”
“We’re ready with the simulacrums for the new trap rooms, Master Kerric,” Jessina stated smoothly. She looked a lot better for having gotten a decent amount of sleep in the intervening hours. “Is Milady Myal ready to test them?”
Glancing over at Myal, Kerric found her sitting with squared shoulders and a firm nod. He answered for her “She is. Send the illusion-tests to Myal’s crystal pad. Once they’ve been tested and basic flaws worked out, we’ll run a mock-up. Hopefully the rooms will be fully enchanted and ready for testing within a week. New hazards are always popular.”
Nodding, Jessina ended the connection. Kerric almost forgot the pending call from burgher Sylva, but Myal apparently hadn’t.
“What is this date the assistant mayor mentioned?” she asked, her tone calm, if curious. She tapped the stylus on the broad tablet, activating the incoming information. Back home in Mendhi, there were similar such spells for chalkboards and smaller slates; these strange crystal tablets with their clear bodies and glowing images embedded within the mineral were exotic by comparison.
“Ah . . . it’s just a bit of nonsense,” he said, trying to dismiss it. “A bet about her trying to use a pair of rumors to quell suspicions on why the Tower went into lockdown and why I went inside, in the hopes of preventing anyone from trying to wrest control of the heart for themselves. Apparently it was only somewhat successful.
“The wager itself was that I’d regain control, and if I did, she’d take me on a date . . . and if I didn’t, but survived, I’d take her on a date. For dinner. Or something like that,” he said, not really remembering the details. “To be honest, I didn’t pay it much attention. I just . . . need to figure out how to let her down. Gently. She’s not really my type.”
Myal considered that, since his tone implied that she was his type. She preferred thinking things through when there was time. Finally, she asked, “Did you promise to go on a date with her?”
“I . . . Yes, I suppose I did,” Kerric admitted, not wanting to lie to Myal. “But I don’t really want to . . .”
He trailed off as she gave him a quelling look. “It’s just the two of you sharing a meal together,” Myal stated. “I know you get along with the burgher, because everyone gets along with her. She’s very nice. If you promised a meal with her, you should follow through. This isn’t something which will harm you.”
Kerric knew she was right. Still, the way he felt about Myal, he had to ask, “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Of course, I’d mind,” she scoffed, frowning at him. “A part of me is deeply thrilled we’ve been meshing so well, and that part of me wants to keep you entirely to myself. Most of the rest of me knows I cannot cage or confine you and expect you to still be yourself. Just as you cannot keep me from being myself whenever I go adventuring.”
“I’d hardly compare a date with Sylva to a gauntlet run,” he pointed out. “She’s much too sweet. I may be interested in you, and not her, but that doesn’t mean she deserves any scorn.”
Myal rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant your sense of honor and responsibility. Your sense of duty—not that she’s a duty that has to be endured—I can’t explain it well!” she finally said, catching the way he rolled his eyes. “My words are better when written down. Just . . . go arrange to have dinner with her. As you both promised.”
She couldn’t explain that it was an odd sort of fear that compelled her to push him on the date, even as she hated the idea deep inside. The fear that, despite how well they had gotten along on the gauntlet run, how they were still getting along well, he would somehow prefer someone else. He’d worked with the burgher for years, after all, and it was quite possible Kerric might prefer Sylva’s company now that he wasn’t being forced by circumstances to get along with one gangly, shy, awkward-feeling foreigner.
This wasn’t a gauntlet run, or a sailing ship, or anywhere she felt comfortable, competent, and secure. This was a relationship, an area where she had always failed, thanks to her long-standing desire to become a Painted Warrior. None of the men she had tried courting back home had wanted much to do with her as a woman after finding out she was a woman who had deliberately chosen not to be a mother. As if it somehow made her not a woman anymore.
This relationship thing also felt like a far bigger risk than merely running the Master of the Tower through a lengthy maze of lethal traps. He was brilliant, strong, and skillful with his magic, and could easily have the pick of any woman in the region—or any man, if he were so inclined, though he didn’t seem to be. Outside of her own specialization, Myal still didn’t quite see what he saw in her of all people. So, to be fair, she would give him a chance to look at another woman. Sylva was nice. A real woman.
She bent her head over the tablet, focusing on the information she had been sent regarding new traps and danger scenarios.
Kerric knew something was bothering her, but if Myal couldn’t put it into words, he couldn’t address the problem directly. Re-activating the mirror-link with the mayor’s office, he summoned up a smile for Sylva. “Sorry about that. Tomorrow night will be fine. I’ll take you to the Honey Spear for dinner.”
“Actually, I was thinking of cooking you a meal in my own home,” Sylva countered, giving him a coy smile meant to coax him into changing his mind.
He wasn’t coaxed. A meal in Sylva’s home would be far too intimate, far too suggestive of things he simply wasn’t interested in, with her. “No, that’s alright. You deserve a chance to relax, not dash around cooking everything. I’m told the food is worthwhile at the Honey Spear. It’s not the Tower kitchens, but it will make a nice change, I think. You did help quell rumors in the town while I was occupied, so you’ve earned a meal. How about eighth hour, tomorrow?”
Her face fell a little at his counteroffer, and he could guess why. The invitation sounded businesslike, not romantic, which was how Kerric was determined to keep it. If the mayor of Penambrion ever stepped down, the burgher was the one who would step into the position, and mayor and Master had to get along as business partners for the good of everyone in the region. Jilted lovers did not always get along.
Sylva sighed and nodded. “Alright. Tomorrow night, eighth hour. Would you like to come over to my home early for a drink?”
“I’ll probably still be working. Jessina wants to upgrade several rooms with new dangers, which means a lot of spells have to be integrated in new ways into the system,” he demurred. “Particularly if there are opponents designed to chase adventurers further than their origination-point chambers. But I’ll come to your door at eighth hour sharp. See you then?”
“Yes, I’ll see you then. I’m looking forward to it,” Sylva added flirtatiously.
Kerric nodded politely, ended the spell connecting him to her mirror, and slumped in his chair, wondering what sort of business-related topics he could dredge up to fill a whole meal. The impact of the loss of a full day’s worth of scrycastings, of course, but possibly also the spring plantings and the possibilities of late-season flooding in the valley.
A glance over at Myal showed her frowning down at her tablet. Thankfully, he knew that frown; he had seen it several times during their gauntlet run. She was merely concentrating on a new problem, not worr
ying over his dinner arrangements. The opening of another mirror scrying distracted him from the thought of telling her he’d take Sylva to dinner as prearranged, but that he’d save dessert for her. The call came from Jessina, who smiled wryly at him when he acknowledged the link.
“Sorry to interrupt yet again. I’m about to hand Topside Control over to Grador and the night shift, but I’ve just received a pair of participation requests for Myal the Magnificent. I thought I’d run them past the two of you, since I knew she was still in the Hall with you.”
“Go on,” Kerric said, as Myal glanced up in curiosity.
“The first,” Jessina stated blandly, “is by a consortium of wealthy patrons in Senod-Gra. They have included Myal’s name in a list of participants for a requested Seraglio gauntlet.”
“Absolutely not,” Kerric asserted crisply, without even having to think about it. When he did think, a heartbeat or two later, he glanced guiltily in Myal’s direction. If she wanted to, that was her business, not his . . . No, she does not, he realized, spotting the relief in her eyes at his flat denial, along with the quick shake of her head that confirmed it. Relieved as well, he returned his gaze to the projected scrycasting. “What’s the other request?”
“A scrycasting club down on the southern coast in Amaz wishes to see a series of Scavenger Hunt gauntlet scenarios. They’re willing to pay extra for solo runs of competing adventurers, and want to pay for at least one big name. Myal makes the top of the list because she’s a Painted Warrior, which is like a mage as well as a warrior. The rest are sword-and-spell types of lesser fame, since most of our big names are already booked for making it up to the patrons for the lost scrycasting time. It’s a contract for eight short runs, no more than two hours apiece, once a day; live scrycasting time would start at ninth hour of the morning, local.”