The Magic Engineer

by Jr. L. E. Modesitt

  “Not much different. Sometimes, she seems awake, but mostly she sleeps.”

  “For now, that’s probably better.” Dorrin eases Meriwhen up beside Liedral as the road widens.

  “For now…” Liedral says quietly. She looks behind her and lowers her voice. “What do you think about Brede?”

  Dorrin shakes his head, hoping Liedral is looking at him.

  “That’s what I think, too.”

  Neither wants to confirm in words what both know must be true. The Whites will not allow anyone to survive, particularly a man from Recluce who has cost them so many troops. They continue silently until they near the turnoff from the main road that leads to Dorrin’s cottage.

  “…there yet…?” asks Kadara.

  “We’re almost home.” Liedral turns slightly and bends toward the rear of the cart where the injured woman lies. “Oh…”

  “What is it?” Dorrin asks.

  “Darkness…” mutters Liedral.

  “What did you see?” asks Dorrin.

  “Rylla’s cottage—it’s burned down. But your barn and the cottage are all right. There’s a barricade of sorts around the yard…and some people. It looks like Pergun and another older man, and Reisa. She’s wearing a blade.” Liedral turns the cart off the main road and up the ridge drive.

  Dorrin wishes he could see, but follows the cart until they are past the barricade and in the yard.

  “It’s master Dorrin! And Liedral! They’re back!” Frisa’s voice echoes across the yard and past the barricade.

  “Master Dorrin…” Pergun begins.

  Dorrin turns in the direction of his voice. “Yes?”

  “What’s wrong with you? You’re not exactly looking square at me.”

  “He’s blind,” Liedral says quietly. “And Kadara’s in the wagon here. She’s badly wounded. We need to carry her inside.”

  “Put her in the bed I was using,” Dorrin suggests.

  “Blind? Blind…? Was it the Whites? The evil bastards!”

  “No. I did it myself.” Dorrin dismounts and leads Meriwhen toward the barn, letting his senses guide him.

  “Is he daft?” Pergun turns to Liedral.

  “Can I help?” Reisa’s voice carries to Dorrin.

  “He’s not daft.” Liedral descends from the cart. “He’s an order-smith who forced himself to create devices to kill more than a thousand people.”

  “A thousand?”

  “More or less. It wasn’t enough. Between Brede and Dorrin, I suspect that the Whites lost more than half their army. That would have left more than five thousand under arms.”

  Dorrin ignores the conversation as he opens the barn door. The scent of horses is strong, and Dorrin stops when he is just inside, trying to sense how many there are. Five, he thinks, two tied in the far corner in what seems to be makeshift stalls. He leads Meriwhen to her stall, slowly unsaddling her, racking the saddle, setting the staff aside, and beginning to curry the mare in slow and even strokes.

  “You can’t stay here.” Reisa stands by the stall. “They’ll burn the whole countryside to get you.”

  “Me? A humble smith?”

  “You and Yarrl.” Reisa snorts. “Do you ever think you can escape what you are? What about your ship? It’s still floating. Yarrl saw it from the hill on the way here.”

  “Yarrl’s here?”

  “Of course. It made sense. Your place is easier to defend. We loaded most of his smithy into the big wagon, except the anvil. No one can get that quickly anyway. Pergun wanted to be here, because of Merga, and when the troopers took Liedral, we decided…”

  “You didn’t have to…I’m grateful, and thankful…”

  “Dorrin, there’s a lot you never had to do. You didn’t have to heal Honsard’s son. Shameful—that man. You didn’t have to take Merga in. Or heal all those people who couldn’t pay. Or refuse to take any of Yarrl’s customers. Or expand Rylla’s herb garden and share what you got with her.” Reisa coughs. “So…for once, let someone help you. Darkness knows, you need it right now, you stiff-necked and proud…”

  Dorrin puts aside the brush and fumbles with the barrel to dig out some grain for Meriwhen. Reisa holds the top and hands him the iron scoop, one of the miscellaneous items he has forged along the way and almost forgotten. The iron is cool to his fingers, almost healing.

  “You need to rest.”

  After Dorrin dumps two scoops of grain into the manger box and closes the stall on Meriwhen, he slumps onto a bale of hay and leans back against the stall wall. “Where are you all sleeping?”

  “Pergun…”

  “I can figure that out. I meant…”

  “We took the liberty of using the front room. There’s space there, and we did bring mattresses.”

  “That’s fine.” Dorrin takes a deep breath, realizing that he is more tired than he thought as his eyes close.

  CLII

  Dorrin wanders through the cold smithy, his fingers brushing the forge, his tool rack, wondering when, or if, he will regain his sight. He has not realized, truly understood, how much of his smithing required vision. Why is he being punished? Or why is he punishing himself? For not having the ability to stop chaos without destruction? For trying to help good people?

  “Darkness!” His eyes burn in frustration. Within days, the Whites will be back on the road to Diev, unless, miraculously, Spidlaria holds out. He snorts. With what? Less than a few hundred soldiers and mounted horse escaped the carnage at Kleth.

  He walks to the smithy door and out into the sunlight, listening to the sounds of the wooden wands that Yarrl has produced for blade practice. Even Rek, with his foot twisted beyond Dorrin’s poor ability to heal, has insisted on learning.

  “Keep your guard up!”

  Dorrin grins, imagining how intimidating Reisa once must have been. The grin fades. He is helpless with chaos about to pour out of the south. He supposes he should go to see the Black Diamond, but what good will seeing his ship do? Pergun and Yarrl have both assured him that it is fine, and that Tyrel is working on the rigging. Dorrin still needs to forge the replacement sections of the clutch and build the recirculating collector for the condenser, and he can forge neither while blind.

  He pauses. Yarrl could forge the collector and tubing, but the additional slip plates need to be forged from black iron, and Yarrl has never forged in black iron. Still…once Dorrin worked with Hegl…and there isn’t much time left.

  “Are ye still moping, still feeling sorry for yourself?” Rylla’s rasping voice intrudes.

  “Not too sorry. More like planning…how to fix the ship.”

  “How about planning to fix you?” The healer sits on a stool on the porch.

  “And just how would I do that?”

  “Well…I’m no great master Black healer…but were I one, I just might wander over to the herb garden and meditate…” Rylla laughs.

  “Meditate?”

  “What ails ye isn’t in your body. It’s in your soul.”

  Dorrin shrugs. Order has a basis in growing things. Why not? He turns his steps toward the ridge and the garden that lies outside the barricade of hastily felled trees and brush.

  “Vaos! You can’t handle that heavy a blade with just your wrist.” The voice is Yarrl’s, not Reisa’s.

  “You can,” adds Reisa, “but no one here besides you could.”

  “Hush, woman.”

  Dorrin can sense both Vaos and Rek, Pergun, Liedral and even Merga, all with wands in their hands. Will it do any good? What can they learn in an eight-day or so? Enough to hold off conscripted levies?

  He trudges up the gentle incline toward the garden. The early summer day is cool, with a northern breeze, and bright sun falling on his face. Dorrin sits carefully on the ground between the rows of astra and the brinn. His fingers brush across the brinn, drinking in the coolness that flows within the stalks and leaves.

  Meditate? Upon what? The nature of order. What is order? Why can those who follow order be punished—even if t
hey seek a good end? Is it just because their actions increase chaos? Does that mean that order represents merely a set of laws? Or that no goal, no matter how good, can justify use of order to create great chaos?

  He takes a deep breath, and a second, trying to relax.

  Chaos breaks things apart—people, armies, cities…

  The once-and-still healer frowns. Is it order when two people are bound together, be it through friendship or love? Then love cannot exist in true chaos. In a way, that follows. Men who truly love women normally do not hurt them. True friends do not knowingly hurt each other. Pain is usually a result of chaos of some sort—a disruption of bodily order for some reason or another.

  Dorrin tries to drink in the herbs around him, but the nibbling whitish-red of root-rot in the brinn gnaws at him, disrupting his concentration. He turns to trying to strengthen the plants against the rot, projecting what little sense of order he can find within himself into the brinn.

  “Master Dorrin? Why are you sitting in the garden? Can I sit here?”

  Dorrin has to smile. “Yes, Frisa. Try to sit between the plants, not on them.”

  Frisa plumps herself down by Dorrin’s right knee. “I like your garden.”

  “So do I.”

  “Why don’t plants go places?”

  “They don’t have legs,” Dorrin answers slowly. “And it’s very hard to move without legs.”

  “Fish move. They don’t have legs.”

  “They live in the water, and their tails and fins are like legs. Even water plants don’t have fins or tails that move.”

  “I’m glad I’m not a plant. I like to go places,” Frisa announces. “Can we go on your ship some time?”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “Some place where people are happy. I want Mommy and Pergun to be happy. Then I’ll be happy all the time.”

  Dorrin represses a sigh. “It’s not always like that.”

  “I know that. You want Mommy to be happy, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll take her and Pergun on your ship, won’t you?”

  Dorrin laughs softly. “If I can make the ship go, they can come.”

  “Good! You always make things work.” Frisa skips to her feet. “Can I tell Mommy?”

  “Only if you tell her that I’ll try to take everyone.”

  “Mommy will be happy. So will Pergun.” Frisa skips down the ridge toward the brush barricade and the house and barn…and the weapons practice.

  Dorrin rubs his chin. Reisa had been a blade, but why has he never considered Yarrl as one? Because the smith never mentioned weapons?

  His fingers touch the brinn again, as he lifts his head toward the house and the slope leading to the pond, his ears picking up Frisa’s announcement.

  “Master Dorrin says he’ll take everyone on his ship. If he can make it work. But he’ll make it work. He always does.”

  Dorrin laughs softly, and just as softly, the blackness melts, and he looks out on the morning, drinking in the short grass waving in the breeze, the puffy clouds over the foothills to the Westhorns, just holding a vision he knows may depart at any instant.

  Finally, he stands and begins to walk downslope to the house, still taking in the brightness of the day. Not until he sees the strain on Yarrl’s face, and the newly-forged shortsword at the smith’s hip, does the blackness return.

  CLIII

  Dorrin steps across the yard toward the barricade where Liedral and Pergun stand. Pergun wears the blade Yarrl made for him, and Liedral’s bow lies on a makeshift stand.

  Both watch the road below, where, at the moment, despite the growing twilight, another handful of herders, or farmers, trudges not toward Diev, but uphill toward the road leading to a narrow trail into the Westhorns. They have found no ships in Diev—except for the occasional smuggler.

  Even the Black Diamond is not at Tyrel’s pier, but anchored three or four rods offshore, at Tyrel’s insistence. Few boats of any size remain in Diev.

  Liedral points eastward toward a pillar of smoke. “That’s a day away for us, probably three the way the Whites are moving.”

  Dorrin fingers his chin. “We need to finish loading the Black Diamond.”

  “Is it ready?”

  “No. But we’re close.”

  “Begging your pardon, master Dorrin,” Pergun says respectfully, “but could you tell me why we’ve waited so long?” His hand strays to the scab on his forearm, the result of an encounter with a desperate farmer who climbed the barricade.

  Dorrin looks to the three mounds on the hill before he answers.

  “Because the White ships are off the coast, and unless I can get the engine working right, we don’t have much chance of escaping them.”

  “With all their fireballs, do we have any chance? Why can’t you make fireballs?”

  “The engine should make it possible for us to go where they can’t. A White Wizard has to get close to use a fireball. But you’re right. We’ll load up everything that’s left tonight and leave at dawn for the shipwright’s. Yarrl and Reisa and Vaos took some things down yesterday when no one was around.”

  “Why are the Whites taking so long? It’s been more than an eight-day since they took Kleth.”

  “They’re taking control of every town and hamlet. That’s why it’s been so slow, thank darkness. Their leader is very methodical.” Dorrin shivers. His senses have shown him exactly how methodical. The route of the White horde is etched across Spidlar in fire and written on the land in ashes. “You’ll tether the geese, later?”

  “Aye, and we will,” affirms Pergun as Dorrin walks back down to the house.

  Merga is fussing in the kitchen, slicing cold mutton and checking something in the oven. By the table are two rough boxes, into which she has been packing the contents of the cupboards. “I stopped to fix a bite for Kadara. The rest of you will just have to slice off what you want.”

  “That’s fine. I need to check her arm. Then I’ll be going back to the smithy.”

  Merga does not answer, but looks to her daughter. “Frisa, see if you can find those two little pots in the bottom cupboard and set them on the table.”

  “Yes, mommy. Do you want the tops?”

  “Child, what would I do with pots without tops? Without tops, indeed!”

  Dorrin slips into the storeroom, now mostly empty, since Liedral has packed the contents into the cart, and digs out another dressing from his pack, carrying it back to the room where Kadara lies. “I need to check that arm.”

  Kadara does not speak, instead turning her head toward the wall as Dorrin changes the dressing. The stitches are rough, but stitching is not something he has practiced much, and, in time, he can use his healing skills to remove any scarring.

  He checks the edges of the slash, but they are firm, with none of the signs of infection, and no red-white of chaos within the wound. Then he checks the bruise-cut above her ear. Through his ministrations, Kadara clamps her lips, uttering not a sound.

  Finally, he steps back.

  “Why did you save me? Why didn’t you just leave me?”

  “For what? For the Whites to burn you into charred meat?” Dorrin’s patience is wearing thin.

  “Brede would still be alive if you’d stayed with us. You could have stopped more of them if you’d only tried. And he could have used a healer.” Kadara’s voice is colder than the water that flows into the holding tank in the kitchen. She tries to reach for the mug by the bed, the narrow bed that Dorrin had been using, but her right arm just trembles. “And maybe I’d still be able to use my arm.”

  “In time, you will,” Dorrin adds quietly.

  “What good is a one-armed blade? Or a one-armed mother?” She shakes her head, and the short ragged hair lifts away from the still-scabbed scar above her left ear.

  Scccffff…Dorrin glances up as Merga eases through the open doorway from the hallway, a plate in her hand. “You need be getting back to work, Dorrin. I’ve some dinner her
e for her.”

  “Yes, Dorrin. You need to be getting back to work. After all, your work was more important than stopping the White bastards…”

  Dorrin refuses to argue, even though he knows that he personally has doubtless killed more souls than anyone on the Spidlarian side. “Had I stayed, the only thing I would have done is get killed, or get someone else killed.” His head still aches intermittently. At times he cannot see, for the blindness still comes and goes.

  “Then what good are you? Where were you when Brede needed you?”

  “I did what I could,” Dorrin answers. “I’m not a fighting man. Call me a coward, if you will.”

  “You aren’t a coward, Dorrin. You just never found anything worth fighting for. Not me, not Liedral, not Recluce…”

  “What do you call the mess I created at Kleth?”

  “That was engineered destruction, not fighting—”

  “Here’s your supper,” interrupts Merga gently.

  “Why should I eat?”

  “Because of your son.” Merga says.

  “Who won’t have a father…”

  Dorrin does not answer as he steps into the hall. He glances at the back bedroom. A faint smile creases his lips. Under the press of people, at least he and Liedral are sharing the same bed—in a way. Although there is a definite wall down the middle, the arrangement is an improvement. Sometimes, at least, he can reach out and touch her gently.

  He walks back to the kitchen, where he stops, glancing at the steam rising from the kettle. The steam, again, reminds him of the painfully built engine that he can only hope will work.

  But what good is he, Kadara has asked. Brede is dead, the victim of the concentrated forces of the wizards; and Dorrin is alive, alive because he was so pain-scarred and blinded that he could barely ride.

  Slowly, he walks from the kitchen out onto the porch and down into the yard and around the cottage to the smithy. Overhead, the heavy gray clouds mass. He rubs his forehead. What can he do to stop the oncoming Whites? Certainly, killing large numbers of relatively innocent troopers and levies will not stop the horde. In the few eight-days remaining, can he devise a way to stop the White Wizards—or some of them?