The Far West (Frontier Magic #3)

by Patricia C. Wrede

  It turned out the master adept wanted to get right in the pen with the lizards, which the marshals didn’t think was safe. They ended up with a very polite three-way argument, and finally compromised on taking one of the lizards out of the pen for her to handle.

  Professor Jeffries and I went in to get it. All three lizards ran to him and began jumping like overexcited childings on Christmas morning. I managed to distract Stheno and Euryale with a bucket of kitchen scraps, just long enough for the professor to grab Fred and get out of the pen. I followed a minute later, in time to watch him hand the baby lizard to the master adept.

  Either Master Adept Farawase knew a lot about animals, or else even a medusa lizard knew better than to make a fuss in front of a Cathayan master adept. Fred didn’t kick or wiggle or try to get away while she looked him over — and she looked him over very thoroughly. Every so often, as she inspected his claws and legs and tail, she made an observation in Cathayan. Adept Alikaket wrote down everything she said, the silver dragon scale glittering as he nodded, while Miss Bizen translated for me and the professors.

  Finally, the adept set Fred on the floor and stepped back. She looked at her aides and nodded. All five of them bowed. The translator looked over at Professor Jeffries and said, “Master Adept Farawase wishes to perform some magical tests, if that is acceptable.”

  Professor Jeffries nodded. “We would like to observe, of course.”

  Miss Bizen checked with Master Adept Farawase. “You may observe. Please step back to be out of the field.”

  The professors and I moved back as near to the wall as we could get. The five aides lined up a few feet behind the adept, whose attention had been fixed on the medusa lizard the whole time. The creature hadn’t moved, not even when Professor Jeffries moved away.

  Master Adept Farawase raised her left hand, and all five of the aides began to move.

  I leaned forward, fascinated. It was the first time I’d ever seen a Cathayan spell working, and it wasn’t at all what I’d expected. The Cathayans, all except the master adept, looked like they were doing a slow, precise dance. At first, all five of them made the same flowing movements — side step, turn, bend, reach forward, turn, straighten up, step to the other side, and repeat, over and over. As they did, I saw a pale haze form around each of them. To my Aphrikan world-sensing, it felt like a warm halo around each of the Cathayans.

  The haze got warmer and brighter and thicker as the five of them repeated the moves, and as it brightened, it changed color until each person was hidden in a colored bubble of fog. The color was different for each of them — one was a pale red, one was a deep green, one an equally deep blue, and one a light yellow-orange. Only the haze around Adept Alikaket stayed the same foggy gray.

  I glanced at Professor Torgeson and asked in a low voice, “What is that foggy stuff?”

  Professor Torgeson frowned. “Foggy stuff?”

  I looked at the puzzled expressions she and Professor Jeffries were wearing, and realized that they weren’t seeing anything unusual. I shook my head and went back to watching the Cathayans. The haze was so thick that I could barely make out what each of them looked like or what they were doing any longer. The only one who looked normal was the adept herself.

  On impulse, I stopped doing the world-sensing. I’d gotten so used to doing it all the time that I had to think about letting it drop. It was like snuffing a candle; as soon as I stopped world-sensing, the haze around the Cathayans vanished.

  I stared, bewildered. I’d been doing Aphrikan world-sensing for years, and I’d used it on a lot of different spells, but I’d always felt what they were like — cold or hot or sharp or wet, or some other sensation. I’d never seen anything before. Miss Ochiba and Wash had never even hinted that seeing magic was possible.

  Master Adept Farawase stretched out her hand and the Cathayans flowed into a new set of movements. Hastily, I started the world-sensing again. I’d have time later to think about what was going on, but if I missed seeing any of this spell, I didn’t think I’d get another chance. The haze sprang up around them, and I saw that it had changed. Each blob of colored fog had stretched out a long wiggly piece like the body of a snake, right to the adept’s raised hand. The adept’s fingers were working, stretching and twisting and weaving the five individual magics into a bright white beam; apart from that, Master Adept Farawase didn’t move.

  The white beam reached out from the adept’s hand and surrounded the medusa lizard. I saw it hesitate as it touched Fred’s skin, but Master Adept Farawase twitched her fingers and the magic sank into the lizard like water sinking into garden soil.

  After a few minutes, the adept called out a single word. Smoothly, the five aides changed their movements again. They were still slow and deliberate, moving smoothly and continuously from one direction to another, but each person was doing something different instead of everyone making the same movements. It still looked like a dance, but like one with different parts that fit together instead of like one where everyone did the same thing.

  The colors of some of the fog bubbles changed. The red got darker and the green and blue got paler; the gray-white one lightened and the yellow-orange one brightened. The adept’s fingers worked again, and another white beam poured from her upraised hand to the medusa lizard.

  It went on like that for a long, long time. Master Adept Farawase would call out something, the pattern of her aides’ movements would change, and she would weave the strands into a new spell. After the first two changes, I noticed that the adept seemed to be getting hazy, even though she wasn’t moving. To begin with, the haze was mostly green, but every time the dance changed, a new color or two showed up, until the adept was completely hidden by a bubble of swirling colors.

  Finally, she said a long string of syllables, and a moment later lowered her hand. The foggy bubbles around each of the Cathayans shrank as their movements became slower and slower. When they stopped at last, the fog was gone, except around Master Adept Farawase herself and around the medusa lizard.

  I blinked in surprise. I’d been so busy watching the Cathayans that I hadn’t paid much attention to the lizard, but it was glowing nearly as bright as the adept. It twitched, then skittered away from the Cathayans. Professor Jeffries jumped forward to catch it before it disappeared into the crates of supplies that were stacked around the edges of the room.

  “Professor Jeffries?” I said. “Fred sucked up an awful lot of magic. Do you think that draining spell Professor Ochiba came up with would work on a live lizard? Because this might be a good time to test it.” I didn’t add that most of the magicians who’d studied the dead lizard thought that absorbing magic from outside was one of the things that let the lizards petrify animals, and we only thought the baby lizards were still too young to do that. Professor Jeffries knew as well as I did how dangerous the medusa lizards could be.

  Miss Bizen turned to look at me, and so did Adept Alikaket. Professor Jeffries raised his eyebrows, but all he said was, “Hijero-Cathayan magic has a reputation for being powerful. Perhaps it would be best. Professor?”

  He and Professor Torgeson and I stood around Fred and cast the draining spell, one after another. Slowly, the glow around the medusa lizard dimmed and went out. Professor Jeffries’s eyebrows rose even higher when he felt the amount of magic coming off the lizard. “I believe you were right about that, Eff,” he said. “All done now?”

  “I think so,” I said. “It looks like it’s back to normal, anyway.”

  “Excuse me, please.”

  We turned to find Miss Bizen, the translator, straightening up from a bow. Her face had a sheen of perspiration, and she looked tired from the long dance. “If you would not mind, Master Adept Farawase is wondering what the spell is that you have been doing.”

  Professor Jeffries nodded and started explaining about the dead medusa lizard absorbing magic and needing to be drained after every magical examination, and that I’d suggested doing the same thing to the live one. The adept and
her aides listened intently, and it took a while to answer all their questions. A couple of times, Professor Jeffries and Professor Torgeson had to go over things two or three times before they figured out a way to say something that would translate right. I listened as hard as the Cathayans did. Since the college built the classroom building and Papa moved his classes out of our front parlor, I hadn’t had much chance to hear any discussions of advanced spells.

  I thought they were just about finished talking, when Master Adept Farawase looked straight at me and said something. “You were the one to suggest working this spell?” Miss Bizen asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said after a second of being too startled to speak. “Because of how much magic Fred soaked up while you were all working.”

  Miss Bizen’s eyes widened. “You can sense our spells?”

  “Not exactly. I, um, have a little training in Aphrikan magic, and I could tell with the world-sensing.”

  Miss Bizen turned to the adept and they had a brief, rapid discussion. Then Master Adept Farawase gave me a small smile and spoke a few words. “Aphrikan magic requires much patience, and it has more heart than head,” Miss Bizen translated. “It is an interesting choice for one of Avrupan descent. May you do well with it.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and gave a little bow to the adept because that was what all her aides seemed to do when they talked to her. The adept’s smile widened, and she nodded to me, then went back to talking with the professors.

  Master Adept Farawase didn’t do any more magic that day. Over lunch, she finished up her discussion with the professors, then she and her aides went to one of the labs to look at the stone birds and animals that we’d brought back from Daybat Creek. They spent the whole afternoon there, though they didn’t cast any more spells.

  The next day, the adept and her aides asked to see the lizards again. When we got to the supply shed, Professor Jeffries took one look at the lizards and forgot everything else. Fred had grown, just enough to notice. As soon as I saw the look on the professor’s face, I went for the observation notebook; by the time I got back, he was on his knees in the middle of the lizard pen with the measuring tape in one hand and the medusa lizard in the other.

  The Cathayans talked excitedly among themselves while Professor Jeffries called out measurements and observations and I wrote them down. While we worked, Master Adept Farawase and Professor Torgeson talked, and when we finished, Professor Torgeson pointed at Stheno. “Grab that one, Samuel; that will leave us one as a control.”

  Professor Jeffries picked up the smaller lizard, which butted his arm like a cat and then opened and shut its beak a few times. “Yes, yes, I’ll feed you,” the professor told it. He looked back at Professor Torgeson. “Has Master Adept Farawase indicated what spells she’ll be using today?”

  “We would like to repeat the first sequence only, with minor changes,” Miss Bizen said. She turned to me. “Miss Rothmer, we would be most grateful if you would note for us how much magic this lizard has absorbed after each spell.”

  I stared at her. “I’d be pleased to help, Miss Bizen, but I’m not sure … that is, I don’t exactly have a way to measure.”

  The Cathayans started talking rapidly among themselves. The short man with the mustache waved his arms to emphasize something, and the round-faced man bowed, while the tall one gave them both a disapproving look. We stood there awkwardly, not wanting to interrupt, until Master Adept Farawase said something sharply and everyone else fell silent. The adept turned to Miss Bizen, who nodded and asked, “We would like to know if this lizard is the only one that is …” She paused, hunting for a word. “That can ‘soak up magic,’ as you said it.”

  Professor Torgeson’s eyebrows drew together. “It appears to be an ability of the species. Over a dozen have been shot, and all of them have been able to do it. And as you can see, even the young ones have the capacity.”

  “I am sorry; I was not clear,” Miss Bizen said. “Are there other creatures, not lizards, that do this?”

  “Other animals that soak up magic?” Professor Torgeson said. “Not that we know of.”

  “There are the mirror bugs,” Professor Jeffries said. “Though they are insects, of course, and not animals, and the ability manifests in a different way.”

  Miss Bizen bowed and turned to translate that into Cathayan. As soon as she finished speaking, there was another burst of discussion in Cathayan. Then the adept asked about the mirror bugs, what they were and when they’d been found and what we knew about how they worked. It took quite a while to answer her questions, because we’d been studying the mirror bugs for a good three years, ever since they first showed up, and the professors had learned a lot about their life cycle. The adept was especially interested in the fact that if there wasn’t much magic around, the grubs developed into ordinary beetles and stopped there, but if there was a lot of magic, even the grubs could pop right straight into mirror bugs without becoming pupae or ordinary beetles first.

  Eventually, we got back to the medusa lizards. The Cathayans cast their spells, though not nearly as many as they had the day before. After each one, I tried to figure how much brighter the medusa lizard looked, and wrote down what I thought. Everything went smoothly until they finished and Professor Torgeson stepped forward to cast the spell and drain off the magic that the medusa lizard had absorbed.

  “Please do not,” Miss Bizen said as the professor raised her hand.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Miss Bizen looked at me. “This lizard has not absorbed so much magic as the other, has it?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, though I thought that should be pretty obvious. They hadn’t cast as many spells as they had on the first day.

  Professor Torgeson’s eyes narrowed, then she frowned uncertainly. “It’s a good thought, but we don’t know much about how these creatures develop, or how fast. If absorbing magic triggers their petrification ability, we could be in trouble.”

  Master Adept Farawase said something. “To take no chances is to die in spirit,” Miss Bizen translated, and frowned as if that wasn’t quite the right way to put what she wanted to say.

  “We’ll have to try it sometime, Aldis,” Professor Jeffries said. “Best to do it now, when we have so much help available if things go wrong.”

  “Very well,” Professor Torgeson said. “But with precautions.”

  “Of course with precautions,” Professor Jeffries said cheerfully. “What did you have in mind?”

  What Professor Torgeson had in mind, apparently, was a lot more than we could manage. She had very firm ideas about how to treat dangerous wildlife, most of which involved killing it as fast as you possibly could and then studying it after it was dead. I think it came from being a Vinlander.

  We finally settled on arranging a lot of the supply crates to make a barrier right in front of the medusa lizard pen, so that they couldn’t turn anyone into stone at a distance. Then Professor Torgeson put a rabbit cage at the end of the barricade, where the medusa lizards could see it from one side and anyone coming in the door could see it from the other. The idea was to check whether the rabbit had been turned to stone before you walked around the barrier. If it hadn’t, then it was probably safe to go into the pen.

  While Professor Torgeson and I moved boxes to set up the barrier, Professor Jeffries took the Cathayans off to look at mirror bugs. Fortunately, we had plenty of specimens at all of the stages of mirror bug development, from the eggs to the grubs to the striped beetles to the mirror bugs themselves, even though none of them were alive.

  The mirror bugs kept the Cathayans busy for the rest of the day. Professor Jeffries and I checked on the medusa lizards that evening, and both of the ones the Cathayans had used spells on were bigger. We made more measurements, and the next day we did all of it again.

  The Cathayans stayed for four days, which was a day and a half longer than they’d planned. When they left, they took some mirror bug specimens and some samples of the stone animals
we’d collected. Professor Jeffries almost gave them one of the medusa lizard eggs we still had under preservation spells, but Professor Torgeson pointed out that taking it through the Great Barrier Spell a third time would likely disrupt the preservation spell permanently, and hatching a medusa lizard on the east bank would cause all sorts of problems.

  By the time they left, I was positive that Miss Bizen wasn’t the only one in the group who spoke English, but it wouldn’t have been polite to say anything about it. Once they had gone, I was so busy setting things back in order that I forgot about it.

  We had a busy couple of weeks at the study center before fall classes started. The two medusa lizards that the Cathayans had cast spells at continued to grow much faster than the third lizard, which meant lots of measuring and taking notes to document exactly how fast they grew and whether there were any other differences between them. Professor Jeffries talked about designing a series of experiments to see how much magic a baby medusa lizard could absorb at once and how much difference the draining spell made, but nobody wanted to try anything like that without a whole lot more protection first.

  On the last day of August, right before the professors and I were supposed to head back to Mill City, I was hauling a bag of feed from the supply shed to the mammoth pen when I saw a lone rider heading in from the northwest. Not too many folks travel alone through settlement country, even that close to the Great Barrier, so I stopped and shaded my eyes to get a better look.

  At first, all I could see was a dark, man-shaped blob, no matter how I squinted. Just when I was getting irritated, I realized that it wasn’t the sun in my eyes that was the cause. The face under the broad-brimmed hat was a dark brown-black. I grinned and waved, because I was pretty sure I knew who it was.

  The rider saw and waved back, then angled his horse to come toward the mammoth pen instead of straight in to the main compound. Once he got a little closer, I saw that I’d been right: It was Washington Morris, the circuit magician who’d taken Professor Torgeson and the rest of us out to hunt the first medusa lizard, and the man who’d given me the Aphrikan pendant I’d worn for the last three years.