by Paul Collins
Her companions watched, fascinated by the use of magic as always, though once – long ago it seemed now – Daretor had considered it dishonourable.
Jelindel wove more complex signs, interweaving them, joining them, then finally raising both her arms to the ceiling and uttering a manifesting spell. Now she started to change before Daretor’s eyes. She grew several inches and her shoulders broadened. Her face lengthened somewhat and her cheekbones became prominent. Even her lips thickened, her nose flattened and her hair went dark, as did her skin. Then hair sprouted from her cheeks, producing a sparse shadow. At the end of ten minutes a man of about thirty years of age stood before Daretor and Zimak, beaming at them.
Daretor stared back. ‘Jelli?’
‘It’s me,’ she said, in a voice that was deep and masculine. She moved woodenly at first, as though stricken by a stiffening agent. Stretching, Jelindel loosened her limbs. Finally satisfied, she said, ‘How about a goodbye kiss, you handsome brute?’
Zimak stepped back while Daretor gulped.
It was past midday. The sun was high and they were all gathered in the kitchen. Jelindel now called herself Jaelin, a name she had once used in order to save her life from her family’s assassins. Taggar, who was to accompany her back to Argentia, finished packing noodles and other dry condiments and water into his rollpack. Jelindel had offered to change Taggar’s appearance also, but he declined, saying that he had already taken such precautions. Jelindel did not press him. All such magic cost energy to maintain. The less, the better.
‘I still say this is madness,’ said Daretor. ‘We should all go.’
‘And attract even more attention? No. I truly believe this way is safer for us all,’ Jelindel said with finality. ‘Besides, two manifestations are all I can handle comfortably at one time.’
‘I’m afraid I have to agree,’ said Zimak, lounging in an armchair picking his teeth and drinking D’loomian coffee. ‘Whoever said there’s safety in numbers got it wrong.’
Before Daretor could respond, Jelindel said, ‘If Taggar and I fail then you two will still be able to carry on. If necessary, make contact with some of our old comrades.’
Half an hour later, Jelindel and Taggar climbed to the top of the stairs and headed off across the rooftops, careful to stay out of sight of the streets three storeys below. Daretor and Zimak watched them go, knowing they would put as much distance between themselves and the well-known archmage’s house as they could before descending to street level. They would then make their way to the marketplace where they would join a labour crew bound for Argentia. Daretor did not like to think what would become of them.
Chapter 5
The Lure of Argentia
The marketplace was packed and noisy. The long queues filled the great square and families stood along the boundaries, watching their menfolk move sluggishly towards the rows of seated accountors and whatever grim future fate held in store for them. Wives wrung their hands, children stood clutching their mothers’ legs, watching the proceedings with dull, uncomprehending eyes, aware only that father must go away to a far place, else none would eat.
Jelindel and Taggar joined the line for Argentia. Because of the pay rates and bonuses it offered there were many more applicants than for other towns and projects, and also more accountors, which sped things up a little.
Even so, the waiting worried Jelindel. She craned her neck to see over the crowds as though seeking someone.
Taggar seemed to read her thoughts. ‘You’re thinking of Daretor.’
‘He’s stiff-necked and stubborn, and honourable to a fault. And very irritating sometimes. Much like a brother or sister.’
Taggar smiled. ‘You love him then.’ It was not a question, nor was it mocking.
Jelindel shrugged a yes. ‘But there are times when I’d like to throttle him.’
‘Out of his own fear, he stops you from changing.’
Jelindel looked at Taggar, who added, ‘All things change, or else they die.’
Jelindel said nothing. Change or die. Great choice. But wasn’t changing just another kind of dying? The old self replaced by the new?
They neared the head of the queue.
‘Claim a useful skill,’ Taggar whispered. ‘You will have more status and more freedom when we get our assignments in Argentia.’
Jelindel dutifully told the accountor that she had some skill in mage-metallurgy. The accountor eyed her suspiciously. No doubt many claimed skills they did not have. ‘You can shape, punch and bend?’
She nodded, trying to appear nonchalant.
‘Can you also join?’ he asked scornfully, as if he already knew that no lowly labourer in his queue could possibly have such a skill.
‘I can.’
‘You will be tested, you know.’
‘Of course.’ Jelindel pretended surprise. ‘I didn’t expect you to take me at my word.’
The accountor’s eyes widened a trifle – if what the man said was true, the accountor was in for a fat bonus. He actually smiled, something no one had seen him do in a full month.
‘Sign here,’ he said. ‘If you can’t sign make your mark.’
Jelindel signed her new name. Soon she and Taggar, who had also claimed a sought-after skill, were bundled onto a small river trader, and before the hour was up, the sails had unfurled and the inland ship was nosing out of the dock and heading east, a direction it would hold for several days before the river turned north for the Algon Mountains.
Jelindel gazed back at the dock, feeling sick in her stomach. Just before they lost sight of the river port, she saw two figures race onto the wharf, arms waving furiously. She gulped, and thought she might actually be sick.
What was she doing? Why did she have this terrible feeling that every day counted?
Your fate is to save magic, or destroy it. The future lies on a knife’s edge …
Again, she remembered her vision of the future, a chaotic glimpse of things to come. She saw a thousand years of darkness, a tyranny of almost unimaginable barbarism and inhumanity. She also saw that her own actions, here and now, were pivotal: her smallest choices might avoid this darkness altogether, or extend it many times over.
The knowledge was almost paralysing.
Company men, stationed all around the ship, directed them to their berth, one of three large but cramped cabins. Three hundred men and women were crammed in like sardines. If it hadn’t been for the air bellows, the atmosphere would have become unbearable.
‘A week or more of this and we’ll be glad to face whatever is in Argentia,’ said Jelindel.
‘Somehow I doubt it,’ Taggar said. ‘Unless I am much mistaken, we will soon look back on this journey with nostalgia. Besides, this river trader doesn’t go all the way. They drop us at Black Tree Canyon and we walk the rest of the way. Trust me, you’ll wish you were back on board.’
Jelindel sighed. ‘And all I wanted was a holiday.’ There was little to do on board except talk and play card games. The living areas were partitioned into smaller groups by blankets on poles, usually by people who had known each other before. Sometimes entire families, minus the younger children, had embarked, and they stayed together. Jelindel felt it was good policy not to mix, so she caught up on her sleep. She also found herself wondering about Taggar. He was an odd one. A deadly fighter, she had no doubt, and a man of honour, like Daretor, yet his honour was different, as the arcane morality of adults seems different to children. He could be as charming and sociable as any man she had ever met, yet, in the blink of an eye, could withdraw into himself so completely and suddenly that talking to him was like addressing a favourite sword. Jelindel wondered where he went at these times but she never asked.
She could not tell if she found him attractive or not; nor did he ever seem to react to her as a woman, which in a way, she conceded, was good, in view of their predicament. But all men reacted, one way or another, and a woman sensed such things, if her orientation was towards men. But Taggar did not react. He see
med oddly oblivious to her sex, and above her likes and desires. Of course, she was now hiding behind a male’s facade! All of which made him the mystery man, par excellence, and Jelindel passed many enjoyable hours pondering the enigma that was Taggar.
They journeyed thus for a week. Life on board the river trader was dull, though it was punctuated by the usual fights, arguments, and occasional knifing (which resulted in the perpetrator being thrown overboard). In the midst of such tedium, meals were anticipated with excitement, and whatever else one might have said about those who had hired them, they did not stint on the food. Roasted chunks of wild boar and beef on skewers, tureens of hot thick soup, fresh bread, concoctions of vegetables, and wine and beer were available in copious quantities at supper time, while throughout the day lackeys dished out bread and cheese, bowls of fruit and weak ale, to anyone who wanted it. If the abundance of food was intended to quell the anxiety of the workers, then it succeeded.
One way to relieve the boredom, and escape the odour down below, was to hang about the open decks, watching the scenery. When Jelindel wasn’t eating or sleeping this was where she could be found. Her curiosity about the world in which she lived was as undiminished now as on those long ago days, before her family was murdered, when she would lie atop the stable roof and stare at the stars. In those days, she had been entranced both by the beauty of the stars and by the possibility that they harboured intelligences no less complex and curious than her own. Now she studied the lands they passed, only some of which she knew.
They disembarked at Black Tree Canyon, a place as bleak and soulless as its name suggested. Shouldering packs they trudged along an ancient road behind wagons piled with supplies for the remaining journey.
They reached Argentia two days later.
The town had changed since Jelindel’s last visit with Daretor. It had grown larger and there were many more buildings in the centre. A huge factory on the outskirts covered the area of a large village and spouted a dozen chimney stacks, each more than fifty feet high and belching thick, reddish smoke.
As they marched past, Jelindel recognised the Green Skull Tavern and wondered if the huge one-legged innkeeper still owned it.
That first day was taken up in getting their assignments and finding out where they would be billeted. Luckily, Jelindel and Taggar, having valuable skills, were placed together in a small sixman dormitory opposite the factory. Jelindel’s task was to bind metal while Taggar, who could smooth joins, would be helping her.
That evening they were free to do as they pleased, though Taggar quietly told Jelindel that it would be her last. After today, no attempt at maintaining appearances would be made. It would be business as usual.
‘Then we’d better use this time to our advantage,’ Jelindel replied.
‘As you wish.’
On the pretext of looking for a tavern, they casually scouted the town, noting the layout of the streets and where the mercenaries, especially the company ‘enforcers’, were stationed. Jelindel saw few faces she knew from the past, and spoke to none of them; everyone looked downtrodden, even frightened. A greyness had come to Argentia. The once bustling town had lost its spirit, or had it stamped out of existence. It was a bleak, angry Jelindel who wound up, as planned, at the Green Skull. Jelindel uncharacteristically ordered glasses of dragon-whisky for herself and Taggar. She noted that the one-legged tapster was in fact still in charge. When he brought their drinks she hailed him as if they had met before, which they had, when she had been a woman in outward appearance.
The tapster eyed her suspiciously, ignoring Taggar. ‘When did we meet?’
Jelindel realised her mistake and hurriedly said it had been a long time ago.
The man, now belligerent, shook his head. ‘I never forget a face,’ he said. ‘Nor a debt. And I don’t know you from neither.’
He stamped off.
Jelindel, annoyed at herself, scowled. ‘Remind me in future to keep my big mouth shut.’
‘You’d do well to remember that this is not, in fact, a holiday.’
She eyed him for a moment, sipping her whisky, and making a face. ‘So why’d you come back, Taggar? Are you the altruistic type?’
‘Something like that.’
‘It’s twice as dangerous for you.’
‘I have debts to pay. Let us leave it at that.’
The next day, Jelindel, Taggar, and a small group of other artisans were taken to a workshop and introduced to their foreman. It was his job to oversee the work. They were each placed under an ‘old hand’ who instructed them in the job and explained what was expected of them.
Jelindel’s senior was a woman named Cless. She was about fifty years old and had above average ability as a mage. She sensed that Jelindel was her superior in magical ability and quickly told her not to demonstrate more power than she needed for the job, in case the company men and women started to fear her abilities. She had other warnings as well.
‘Don’t look them in the eye and don’t talk back to ’em. Misdemeanours round here aren’t taken lightly. You can find yourself in the mines faster than you can lick your spit. We’re lucky here, we are, but them poor wretches down there have a frightful time, you mark me if they don’t.’
Jelindel’s job was pretty simple, requiring little brain power, just mage-craft, which was much rarer than intelligence. Every day she used her skill to weld sections of metal together. The pieces were brought in on wooden trays by four huge sweating men, their joints creaking under the load. Jelindel and Cless assembled these, then they were taken out again. According to Cless they went to another workshop next door where more pieces were welded on, and so on and so on. No one in the workshop knew what they were constructing; each was a piece of a puzzle but the puzzle itself was never glimpsed. Jelindel thought the secretive process very clever, but it was designed to thwart those without her special abilities.
Each night, while Taggar and the others in her small dorm slept, Jelindel muttered an invisibility spell and crept out to prowl around the factory. She encountered many wards and protection charms, some designed to give alarm, others simply to block entry beyond a certain point. None of them stopped her but, despite her apparent advantage, at the end of a week she was still no wiser.
She suspected that at least half of the ‘puzzle’ was made somewhere else.
Then she made a breakthrough.
On the eighth night after her arrival, she was making her usual rounds after dark when she stopped beneath a shop’s awning to let a body of mercenaries, used to patrol the night-time streets, pass. Despite her invisibility, she hung back in the shadows.
And heard voices. They came from a nearby window, slightly ajar.
‘… gives me the creeps, it do,’ said a thin male voice. It sounded nervous.
The voice that answered was gruff, and clearly didn’t give a damn. ‘I’d keep that thought to yourself, Meecher.’
Meecher sniffed. ‘What if it goes wrong one day, what if I get stuck there? What if they don’t bring me back?’
‘You got more “what ifs” than anybody I know. You’re here now, ain’t you? Why don’t you shut up and turn out the light? I wanna get some sleep.’
‘But it don’t make sense, do it?’ said Meecher. ‘I mean, why don’t they bring all that stuff here and put it together? ’Stead of the other way round? It’s ass-backwards, if you ask me.’
The gruff voice said, ‘For White Quell’s sake, Meecher, get your stuff and go! You keep ’em waitin’, and you’ll be for it, and that I do know. ’Sides, you’re not goin’ through this time, are you?’
‘Easy for you to say,’ grumbled Meecher. ‘Mayhap you’ll never see me again.’
‘I ain’t that lucky. Now shut up and put out the light.’
A moment later, the light went out, and the front door, ten feet away, opened with a creak. A small wiry man emerged. Meecher presumably. He headed off into the streets, muttering to himself.
Jelindel followed.
Meec
her made his way to the enormous workshop where one set of final ‘pieces’ was assembled – Jelindel knew there were many such ‘modules’, as the company people called them. A work team was waiting impatiently for Meecher and although they all loomed over him, he ignored their complaints. Strangely, the formidable looking foreman, who could have twisted a runt like Meecher into a knot, seemed uneasy in Meecher’s presence, as if the man had a contagious disease.
Nearly two score of modules were already loaded onto flat wheeled drays that ran along gleaming metal tracks. Jelindel trailed the work team as it shunted the linked drays out through an enormous sliding door. The tracks went down the street across a wide courtyard, and into a building whose function Jelindel had never determined, though it intrigued her greatly. It was painted black with huge carved dragons on every turret and, in the daytime, had a sinister look.
As the large door on the eastern side slid open, Jelindel caught a glimpse of what lay inside at the end of a long wide passage.
The drays were shunted through a great arched doorway around which strange lights glimmered and flashed, emitting a low humming noise. As she moved directly in front of the doorway, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and she felt her stomach lurch.
Meecher and the others pushed the drays into the long hall and towards the door. Jelindel expected to see the heavy door open but, at the last minute, the sliding door closed suddenly, catching Jelindel by surprise.
‘Damn,’ she muttered under her breath.
Clearly, this was where all the assembled jigsaw pieces were taken but what lay beyond that inner door? Jelindel concentrated for a moment, then scowled. Her magic was strangely ineffectual at probing beyond the door. Indeed, it was as if there wasn’t anything beyond it.
Disgruntled, but also puzzled, Jelindel returned to her dorm, climbed into bed, and muttered the spell that made her visible again. She was just getting comfortable when she realised there was something odd about the breathing patterns of the other sleepers, including Taggar.