“Try these." She handed him a dark eye mask of a lightweight substance. "You wear it on your face. They're polarizing ocular lenses. Wraparound shades. Sunglasses."
Poch tried them on, and his face relaxed. “They're lightweight. What is this strange material they're made from?"
"A wonder indeed." Overy Scarn put on her own pair of wraparound shades. "It's called plastic."
“The charmwrights have outdone themselves," Poch marveled, craning his neck to take in the softer contours of the daylit chamber. "Who are these Charm masters? The wizards of Ux?"
"No, margrave. These shades, these sunglasses, they're from the Dark Shore." Her small lips curved to a smile at Poch's surprise. "Yes—we have access to a world on the far side of the Gulf. That is why I asked you to come here alone. Do you understand the import of this?"
Poch noticed the shrouds in the far corners of the chamber, behind the dragon-hide divans and griffin-bone chairs. "Dig Dog has a trade route to the Dark Shore? How?"
"Not exactly a trade route—and not Dig Dog." Overy Scarn waddled to the shrouds and pulled them aside, exposing a row of wooden crates, each stamped with unfamiliar glyphs. "Gabagalus has been sending airships through a charmway to the Dark Shore. The devil worshipper Duppy Hob established that charmway about eighteen thousand days ago. But he did it secretly from Gabagalus..."
"Much is secret in Gabagalus."
"This is one of the bigger secrets." Overy Scarn leaned on the crates. "These containers were filled with sample goods manufactured on the Dark Shore and brought to Irth by Duppy Hob's people in Gabagalus. The devil worshipper had very big plans. He was going to conquer the entire universe. These samples were gathered simply as curios to amuse his people in Gabagalus. But now Duppy Hob is dead—and the charmway is still open."
"How did Dig Dog get these samples?" Poch stepped closer, curious to see what the crates held.
"With Duppy Hob dead, the people he left in Gabagalus are looking for some way to cut their losses." Overy Scarn smiled smugly and sat on the edge of a crate. "During Dig Dog's inquiries in Gabagalus about Dogbrick, we learned of these goods and made an offer. Now, we are the dominions' sole trading agent with that mysterious continent on the far side of Irth."
"What did you learn of Dogbrick?" Poch asked eagerly. "He is my friend. He helped me after the Conquest. He showed me how to get strong again after the torments of Hu'dre Vra."
"Dogbrick?" Overy Scarn lowered her double chin to her chest. "He's lost on the Dark Shore. I doubt he will ever be found."
"You mean, you doubt you will make any effort to find him." The margrave crossed his arms over his amulet-vest with a look of disdain. "You're far too comfortable as the head of Dig Dog to ever want to return the company to your old master."
"You have what you want, margrave. And I have what I want." She lifted her chin proudly. "But I am not the one who exiled Dogbrick on the Dark Shore. He did that to himself."
"Now that you have trade relations with the Dark Shore, you should be able to find him."
“Trade relations?" Overy Scarn's small mouth opened around a silent laugh. "Hardly. Duppy Hob insisted that the existence of Irth be kept from the denizens of the Dark Shore. To this day, his people in Gabagalus refuse to violate that secrecy. These samples were taken surreptitiously."
"You mean stolen?"
“Thanks to the advantages of Charm, our airships maneuver very quickly on the Dark Shore. We are so rarely seen that the people there have no idea who we are. And those few who have spotted our airships have no concept what they've witnessed. They call our vessels unidentified flying objects. We are anonymous."
"So, we could send a mission to find Dogbrick?"
"We could—but we won't." She stood up and rapped her knuckles against the crate. "Margrave, the contents of these containers will revolutionize life on Irth. Look at what we have." She lifted the top of one box and removed sturdy blue trousers. “Their textiles are durable and lightweight. These are called denims." She pulled out ankle-high boots with rippled soles. “These are sneakers. And not just for sneaking. For walking. You must try on a pair. You'll never wear those clunky sandals again." She tossed out armfuls of denims and sneakers and then hauled up a box with a bubble lens at one end. "This is truly amazing."
She set the box on the dragon-hide divan and attached the dangling wire at its back to a power wand fitted with a conjure-clip. The bubble lens lit up with a blizzard of sparkling motes. Into a slot in the housing below the lens, she inserted a silver disk. A moment later, images appeared: frenzied musicians thrashing loud music from their instruments. "Entertainment! In a box!"
Poch removed his wraparound shades and squinted with amazement at the view screen of music from another world. Then, he shook his head ruefully, remembering the dear ones and the danger that threatened them. "Scarn, you're forgetting something important. We're at war. Trolls could attack us at any time."
"Ah! Yes, trolls, ogres, and goblins." She bent deep into the crate and rummaged around. When she straightened, she held in her hand a firecharm, only smaller than a firecharm, with a borehole no larger than a pencil. "This is our answer to the Goblin Wars. Projectile weapons. Firearms! This one is for you, margrave. A three-eighty caliber auto pistol. Don't look so baffled. Its mechanism is quite simple. Let me show you how it works."
The Terrible Reality
Nette, in assassin black, boosted herself to the top of a wall of chipped bricks and reached down to grab the wrists of her companion and help her up. Together, they leaped to the other side.
When N'drato rushed into the alley, he saw their hands fly above their heads as they fell. He knew better than to charge after his sister. Instead, he climbed atop a dented trash bin, grabbed the wooden roof gutter of the hostel in front of which he had surprised them minutes earlier, and pulled himself onto the roof.
Against a night sky of spun star webs and planet shine, he mounted the steep pitch. Wooden shakes creaked and splintered under his weight. In moments, he attained the crown of the building. From among vapor pipes, chimney pots, and cables of conjure-wire, he stared down at sandy lanes and cobbled alleys that crisscrossed between jumbled buildings in the tree cutters' cantonment. An excellent district in which to hide, it fringed the jungle, offering escape into the night forest. Also, no two streets ran parallel, and so many courtyards, garden enclaves, weedy lots, and shadowy warrens offered sanctuary—but not from a master assassin.
N'drato spotted his quarry scampering along a wooden walkway behind a furniture depot and a carpenters' hall. He hurried down the high roof and used his momentum to launch himself across the lane onto the depot's brick parapet. Stealthily, he crept the length of the building and sidled along a drainage pipe into the alley. As his sister and Jyoti came around the corner, his blade flashed.
Nette caught the weapon in a swift cross-hand maneuver, seizing the cutting edge between the thick leather of her gloves and disarming him—exactly as he had anticipated. While her hands twisted his dagger away, he swept his leg behind hers, throwing her to the cobbles. Completing the fluid turn of his body, he grabbed Jyoti by the back of her buckskin trousers as she turned to flee and yanked her into his lap, close enough to sting her carotid with a poisoned needle.
Before the stinger plunged into her throat, he glimpsed the strange profile—the flat nose and jutting jaw of a different woman. He hesitated, and Nette's gloved hand seized his wrist and twisted the needle from his grip. The strange woman swam to her feet with a desperate cry.
"Where is she?" N'drato yelled, deftly curling free of his sister's grip. The question lingered longer than the assassin. Into alley darkness he fled, suddenly one with the shadows cast by planet light and star fire.
Nette sprang to her feet, smiling, and an array of newt's-eye hex-gems appeared in her fingers as if plucked from the air. "Here, woman. You ran well."
"You didn't say we was running from anyone!" the woman whined and swiped the newt's-eyes from Nette's fingers. "He
tried to kill me!"
"Sorry," Nette called after the stranger as she fled in the opposite direction from N'drato. More softly, she added, "It's Jyoti he's after. And by now, she's far away."
Jyoti had used Nette's ruse to elude N'drato and return to the manor at the crest of New Arwar. Having rebuilt the city with the help of Reece's magic, she knew secret passages into her childhood home. She entered the manor through a corridor that opened onto the stele and obelisk monuments to her lost brood. No sentinels or any of the sentry amulets observed her entry, and she used her eye charms to elude guards and find her way through the corridors to the chamber where she found her brother.
Poch, alone in the capacious room, sat on a griffin-bone chair and stared at a box with a shining screen propped on the upholstered cushions of a divan. The double-paneled doors stood unlocked, and she slipped in and closed the latch behind her, unnoticed by her brother.
Raucous music blaring from the box masked her sounds, and images flickering on the screen fixed his attention. He sprawled in the chair dressed in odd garments—black ocular lenses on his face, amulet-vest worn casually over a shirt stenciled with the image of a bare-chested man standing on a board in the foam of a crashing ocean wave. His baggy blue pants and pattern-designed footwear reminded her of garb she had seen during her brief trespass on the Dark Shore.
"Jyo!" Poch leaped to his feet in surprise. He pointed the thin, rectangular object in his hand at the screen, and the images and boisterous music disappeared. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to talk with you." Her eye charms told her they alone occupied the suite. "Are you expecting anyone?"
"No." He stood immobilized with astonishment to see her dressed in street rags—a gray, tattered frock, rope sandals, her hair shorn. "What's happened to you?"
"What do you think?" She walked around him, frowning quizzically at the inert box that had been emitting loud music and vivid, colorful images. "You booted me into the street. Surprised to find me alive?"
"The street?" Poch threw the remote control onto the divan. “I thought you had fled to Moödrun, to take sanctuary with Earl Jee. What are you doing here—and looking so scruffy?"
She locked her green eyes on his black eye mask. "You didn't send an assassin after me?"
"No!" He removed his shades and squinted at her. "What are you talking about?"
"N'drato from the Brood of Assassins—he nearly killed me." She strolled to the opened crates and regarded the heaps of clothing and scattered silver disks. "If not you, it's Shai Malia. You're margrave now. You look into it. You'll see."
Poch looked hurt. "Shai Malia is my wife now, Jyo."
"So—that makes her too good for murder?" She picked up a pullover with an embossed picture of a blue planet aswirl with feathery clouds. "The Brood of Assassins does not kill Peers for free. The terrible reality is, a lot of funds are going from here to the Assassins, and I'm certain it's Shai Malia who authorized the transfer. Did she also assume the debt that made you margrave?"
"No, Jyoti Odawl—that would be me." Overy Scarn's voice sounded through the paneled doors before they opened and the large woman stepped into the room holding a silver object in her hand—too small for a firecharm yet obviously a weapon, perhaps a dart shooter. She waved it at Jyoti. "Step away from your brother, please."
Jyoti moved toward Overy Scarn. "If Dig Dog put up the money, then you're telling me that the transfer of debt was illegal. I'm still margravine."
"Not anymore." Overy Scarn fired, and an asp tongue of flame spit from the gun muzzle with a sharp, loud bang.
The amulet-belt under Jyoti's frock exploded outward, sending splinters of hex-gems tinkling across the polished wood floor. The impact flung her backward and slammed her hard into the griffin-bone chair, smashing it beneath her.
Building God
Nox sat alone in Octoberland. Naked, his knobby back pressed against a side of the five-sided obsidian altar, his stilt legs stretched out straight on the smooth planks, he appeared still and shriveled as a corpse.
The wrinkled lids deep in his crusty sockets twitched. His eyeballs trembled, seeing the bright smoke that twisted from the smoldering flesh fire inside him: his dwindling life. Solitary in his rib-slatted body, he felt like the shadow of someone else, emaciated, weak, and weary. Nightmare had drawn its circle around him.
The world itself was dying. The science that the devil worshipper Duppy Hob had brought with him from the Bright Worlds had poisoned Earth with its toxins, stifled the sky with poisonous heat, polluted rivers and seas, sickened the land, and torn away the forests. Hob had not cared. He had cherished dreams of returning to the Bright Worlds and ascending beyond to the Greater Reality within the glare of Creation. From there, he would have ruled all worlds, a monstrous immortal. But death had taken him.
Death.
Nox had become the apparition of the very god he feared. Skeletal, draped with mummy skin, his face a no face—nose charred to a dried twist, lips stretched black against discolored, worn-down teeth—he manifested the living personification of the reaper.
He would never die, he had often chanted, though he knew that was not necessarily true. He could dance forever among the living only if magic made him younger—and the planet did not die.
Earth herself had changed, becoming hostile to the human life he had nurtured for seven thousand years. Soon, only sea worms at the volcanic vents on the ocean floor would thrive. Duppy Hob had cursed humanity and blessed the sea worms.
Nox's emaciated body rocked, trying to shrug free of the nightmare, and then fell still again.
Dogbrick, he thought, calming himself with the presence in this world of an entity from a hotter order of being. Dogbrick has the power to change it all.
Dogbrick's ignorance made him different from Duppy Hob. The beastmarked man had no notion how to focus his power. The talismans that Duppy Hob had created over the millennia remained in place: the global pattern of cities with their amulet-skyscrapers gathering tenuous Charm from the void by their very geometries.
Nox knew of them. With this knowledge and Dogbrick's magic, the sorcerer could change the world. Not only could he thwart Death for himself but for all humanity. A new era of global harmony would supplant the rapacious greed of history. He would be young again, forever, and humanity would devote its remarkable energies to building God on Earth instead of destroying itself.
Inspired by this hope, Nox gathered to himself the power of Octoberland. Seven thousand years of accrued magic widened around him. It gave him the strength to stand.
He leaned heavily upon the obsidian altar while dizziness circled through him. When the momentary spell of vertigo passed, he reached for the stained urn that sat atop a dish of hammered brown metal.
His hand came out with the black needle. Something thermal glistened around it, a chrism of body heat stolen from a dying woman.
The ghost of a young woman glimmered briefly in the air above the altar. He faced a thermal shroud with the dolorous expression of the flaxen-haired Virgo, who had died under the needle on the planks of Octoberland.
Nox waved the needle in the wraith smoke, absorbing her heat once more into the dented urn. And he whispered, "Virgo, you are dead, and by your sacrifice a new era becomes more plausible. Summon to Octoberland the Virgo who will take your place—Mary Felix, companion of Dogbrick."
The needle stirred in his grip and writhed with vibrant power.
The feel of it alive in his hands filled him with the same exaltation he had first experienced in the time when kings could read the meaning of stars. Seven thousand years of magic thrived in him. Earth magic, it was not strong enough to make him young, yet it had the power inside him of a shining wind that had crossed miles of grasslands. Earth magic, strong as an underground river, reached up from its darkness into loamy roots and striving stems of brave grass and into the grasping branches of trees. He clutched for the sky and the light of a higher world.
Nox walked slowly about the
altar, following the circuit of the painted circle, stopping at each of the five points touched by the pentagram to whisper to the sticky needle in his hands, "Mary Felix, you are Virgo, come take your place in Octoberland."
The thin wind inside the implement slipped out and left the sliver of metal dull in Nox's bony hands. An astral breeze swirled once around the ritual chamber, and when it streamed past the altar, the wicks of the two fat black candles ignited. The flames wagged in silent jubilation.
Out through the shagbark walls, the magic wind flowed, out into the night sky over Manhattan. The city shone with a fury that dimmed the stars.
The needle's breath rose above the city's brilliance into the upper air about the Moon. And the Moon's red hands took it and carried it across the sky.
On the black surface of the sea, the moon's light looked like thrown-out bones. In the night-held forests, municipalities glowed like splashes of magma. Everything became other than itself. Everything had changed.
The needle magic carried Nox's insistence down the night to where Mary Felix sat with Brick on a bench in the halogen radiance of a fuel depot in the remote woodlands: a tarmac field with a diesel pump, a shed fitted for air and water, an outhouse, and a pay phone.
They had traveled all day through the north woods to reach this humble station on a narrow timber road. From here, she had made a phone call with change given in charity by the driver who had deposited them here. Soon, her friends from the university would send someone for her and Brick.
Nox sensed all this through his magic. Seven thousand years of gathering cold fire to himself from the sky moved like a wind in the red hands of the Moon. It brushed through the long grass in the ditch behind the truck stop, whistled over the open mouth of empty half pints of Wild Rose, rustled Burger King wrappers, and dispelled diesel fumes. An autumnal scent widened, of trampled leaves, pond mist, and flax straw at threshing time.
Octoberland (The Dominions of Irth Book 3) Page 13