by David Hair
He sighed and tried again. ‘Well, Elgus and I are making up the law as we go. Why can’t you make up Church laws too? New lands, new rules. Abolish the stupid stuff like shaving heads and chastity.’ Then he went red, afraid he’d said too much.
But Varahana just laughed. ‘It doesn’t work that way, darling. The Church is all about tradition and ritual and shared beliefs. I can’t just change something that doesn’t suit me. My flock have placed their souls in my care.’ She looked away sadly, towards where Vidar was sawing timber for the gate. ‘So even if I wanted to “go mad”, I can’t.’
As they fell silent, Raythe felt a sense of shared burdens, and shared sorrow.
She’s right, they did all put themselves in our care, even Elgus and his men.
He’d been resisting feeling any real responsibility by telling himself that everyone was here out of greed. But each day of shared perils added an extra weight to his shoulders, reminding him of Colfar’s rebellion and the men he’d commanded, most of whom were dead now. He still felt a lingering guilt that he’d not died with them. Perhaps one day, he’d think back on the people of this caravan in the same way.
Varahana squeezed his hand. ‘Bear up, Raythe. You can’t make everyone’s decisions for them.’
‘True.’ He gave her a fond look and changed the subject. ‘By the way, Vara, I’m hoping I can draw on your scholarship. I need someone else to work with me on the praxis-gate to get us across the bay. Will you help?’
Varahana looked astounded. ‘I’m not a sorcerer, Raythe, much though I wish I was.’
‘But you have mathematical training and I’m guessing you know how a sextant works? Your knowledge and skills are exactly what I need for the calculations.’
The lure of using her education won out over priestly duties in seconds. ‘I would be delighted to help,’ she exclaimed. ‘So long as I can fulfil my ritual duties, every other moment I can spare will be at your disposal.’ She battered her long eyelashes at him. ‘What a pleasure to give my brain something to do.’
‘You’re welcome. Glad to provide a modicum of pleasure in your dry and dusty life.’
‘Raythe, darling, I have a stash of communal wine and my own fair hands, so my life isn’t as dry as you might imagine,’ she said, with a wicked chuckle.
‘You just destroyed my faith in Deo,’ he exclaimed, his cheeks suddenly burning.
‘You didn’t have any, dear,’ Varahana tittered, completely unashamed. ‘When do I start?’
‘How about tomorrow morning? Bring paper, if you have any.’
‘I’ll rip some blank pages out of a hymn book,’ Varahana replied, sashaying away.
He realised he was still blushing and hastily turned his mind to the task he faced.
A Westgate: Deo on high, do I even remember how?
*
Kemara woke lying amidst saturated grass and staring at the underside of her cart, shivering at the cold air whistling through her dew-sodden blanket. She shuddered, thinking how bleak this coast would be in winter, once ice and snow covered the rocks and coated the stark pines.
Her eyes flicked to the nearest fire, where Raythe Vyre was poking the embers to life as his comrades woke. Seeing the Otravian sorcerer took her mind straight back to her rejection of praxis training.
He doesn’t know what he’s asking of me.
But it was a relief to have finally got him to agree to cauterise her, though deferring the moment until after they crossed the bay felt cruel, as if he were stringing her along, hoping she’d change her mind. ‘But I won’t,’ she muttered.
She stared at the bottom of the cart again, where a concealed compartment housed the stolen artefact. Koni’ka, Kemara, the Aldar mask whispered in its cold reptilian voice. She blanked the insidious sound with a shiver. There was an illicit dealer back in Pelaria who’d give her ten thousand argents for it. It’s insurance, in case this trail of istariol runs cold, that’s all. So she refused to respond or to elevate it further into her consciousness.
Abruptly she scrambled out, hung her sodden blanket over a guy rope to shelter her as she undressed and put on a dry smock, then laced her bodice and pulled her tangled hair into a loose knot. She felt horribly grimy, her eyes gritty and sore, as she trudged into the trees and peed, then stumbled back to camp.
‘Mistress Kemara,’ Raythe called, ‘would you like some coffee?’
Her whole being groaned with want. ‘You have coffee still?’
‘We’ve been padding it out with chicory, but it’s just about palatable.’
‘Sold.’ She accepted a mug and sipped slowly, letting the warmth and flavour seep into her as she admired Jesco Duretto, cooking hotcakes in a small pan. The handsome Shadran was, as always, freshly shaved and groomed and pleasing to the eye. Priests might decry vanity, but he lived by it.
Vidar’s horse was gone and Raythe was sitting on a log, glowering across the bay at where his daughter was encamped with all those young men. Just the sort of reckless thing I did at her age, she thought. It amused her to watch Vyre’s discomfort.
‘When I was young, I defied my parents and ran away to join the Nyostian sisters,’ she commented and when he looked at her, she added, ‘You didn’t think I came from a family that actually wanted a scholar daughter, did you? My folk wanted me pulling pints in a tavern. Sometimes children see more clearly than their parents.’
‘But most times they don’t. Banno’s a mercenary’s get.’
‘He’s the son of a Pelarian knight. And from what I’ve seen, Zar wants to be a sorcerer more than anything else. She won’t throw that away.’
‘But in the heat of the moment—’
‘Oh, stop torturing yourself. She’s a sensible girl and he’s a surprisingly decent boy. And what’s the worst that can happen? She’s not fertile for another two weeks.’
‘Argh!’
Torturing Vyre is quite fun, she decided. ‘Really, what does it matter? I tried it when I was her age and it was quite off-putting. I didn’t do it again for years.’ She winked at the amused Jesco, who grinned back.
Raythe counter-attacked. ‘I don’t understand you. Who in the world rejects sorcery?’
That killed her mood. ‘I was treated like shit by the Church when I failed my tests. They dragged me through the Pit and I won’t go through that again.’
‘You wouldn’t – I’m not the Church, and I desperately need a fellow practitioner. I’m exhausted and I really need help. You mightn’t believe it, but I’m a good teacher. The Church sorcerers deal in absolutes, but I don’t.’
He actually sounded like he meant it, but it was too late.
‘You’re right, I don’t believe you,’ Kemara lied. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it.’
The Otravian fell silent, to her relief. They munched on Jesco’s hotcakes and watched the women making their way down to the river mouth with pails for drinking water. On the beach, Mater Varahana was leading matins and Kemara realised that yet again she’d forgotten to attend. Her vows didn’t feel relevant out here. People came to her for healing anyway, regardless of the Church’s blessing.
But Varahana’s protection matters, especially while Osvard still holds a grudge.
She put that aside and distracted herself watching Cognatus leap after birds that flapped aside when they saw him coming; they never went far as he couldn’t hurt them anyway.
‘So, Raythe,’ Jesco said, breaking the silence, ‘what’s a Westgate?’
Raythe’s expression shifted from morose to attentive. ‘Well, you know – I hope? – that our world, Shamaya, is a sphere floating in space?’
‘That’s what my Nyostian tutors taught us,’ Kemara put in, interested despite herself. ‘They said Shamaya spins around the sun, but the planetary rings spin around us.’
Jesco blinked. ‘Bullshit! I’ve heard some crap in my time, but that’s just plain silly.’
‘Why?’ Kemara asked, surprised at his ignorance.
‘Because clearly everythi
ng has to revolve around the centre of the universe, and that’s me.’ Jesco slapped his thighs cheerily as she burst out laughing. ‘We all had an education, Raythe, so just get on with the lecture.’
Raythe snorted, then went on, ‘Okay, so Shamaya spins eastwards, towards the sunrise, on an axis that runs from the poles through the centre of our world.’ He picked up an egg and slowly spun it. ‘Like this. We calculate that it spins at more or less a thousand miles an hour, but we don’t feel a thing, because the whole planet is moving, including the air – and we don’t fly off because of gravity. But imagine if you could momentarily not spin with the rest of the world, so that instead of moving one thousand miles an hour east, you just hung in place. Effectively, you’d be travelling one thousand miles an hour westwards.’
‘And getting flattened by every hill and tree and passing thing,’ Jesco snorted.
‘Of course – but what if you were insubstantial, so that nothing harmed you? Sorcerers discovered that spirits, the beings we use to make magic, exist in a field of energy called aether or nebulum. By infusing something with nebulum, we make it insubstantial for a time.’
Kemara leaned forward. ‘So that it travels west at a thousand miles an hour, safely? That’s impressive,’ she conceded. ‘Is that what a “Westgate” does?’
‘Exactly,’ Raythe said. ‘You set up an archway that will infuse anything passing through it with nebulum, holding it in stasis in the spirit realm. If I set up another gate across the bay, exactly westward of the first gate at exactly the same elevation, and infuse it with the counter-spell, the infused object or person will effectively be propelled through that second gate across the bay, be stripped of the nebulum and step onto that far shore, inside’ – he raised his eyes, silently calculating – ‘roughly three and a half seconds.’
Jesco whistled. ‘Why don’t we do that all the time?’
‘Because it’s very costly in time and energy, and every sorcerer for miles can sense it,’ Raythe replied. ‘The Bolgravians tried it once, to move a force of men into Pelarian territory – they had concealed sorcerers set up the gate to exact calculations and they managed to move about a thousand men through before the Pelarians realised and destroyed the host gate. But the Bolgravs didn’t realise they’d been found out for another two hours, by which time not only had those men they’d sent ahead been surrounded and massacred, but everyone else they passed through the opening gate in those two hours was trapped in the nebulum, which made them a meal for the hungry spirits. It was an utter disaster, so it’s almost never done, and very seldom with more than a handful of people. The only reason it’ll work for us is that we’re hundreds of miles from civilisation, and our destination is only a mile away and exactly west of us.’
‘It sounds horribly dangerous,’ Kemara said.
‘It’s probably our only choice right here and now.’
She considered that, then reluctantly admitted, ‘I suppose. Do you have everything you need?’
‘I do, but it’ll take all my remaining istariol. I have just a couple of pinches left.’
‘And you’ll need to get those calculations absolutely right,’ Jesco commented.
‘Aye: longitude, latitude, axis tilt, time of year, velocity, timing,’ Raythe agreed. ‘I’ve got Varahana working on it. I’ll set up this gate while Varahana’s working on the positioning of both mine and the gate Zar’s working on.’
‘You’re entrusting our safety to an untrained novice?’ Kemara exclaimed. Gerda’s Blade, he’s reckless.
‘I’ll double- and triple-check everything Zar does, but I needed her to make a start. The receiving gate is very simple to charge, but it takes a long time. It’s the positioning that’s crucial, and Varahana and I will be calculating that. I could use help to infuse the first gate, though.’ He looked at Kemara. ‘You could do that, if you were willing. It would save us days of effort.’
She bit her lip, then conceded. Raw energy was increasingly spilling from her – this might even release the pressure. ‘I’ll do it,’ she agreed.
*
It was dusk, a grey day slumping into night, and in the camp below, Zarelda ignored the men watching her in bemusement as she manipulated a six-foot-long wooden rod with a circular disc of metal affixed to the top. Across the bay, her father had conjured a bead of orange light. It was just an inch in diameter, but the minute alterations he was making at his end sent his light dancing thirty or forty feet away every time. She’d been chasing that light for the past twenty minutes and was growing increasingly ratty about it.
‘Keep the kragging thing still,’ she swore, enjoying the freedom to curse to her heart’s content. Her father couldn’t hear her, of course, but she liked to imagine his ears crisping at her increasingly colourful collection of obscenities.
The button of glowing orange settled on a rock above her and she bounded up the slope, caught it on the disc, then, keeping the orange light centred, pushed the rod into the turf. It jerked around a little and she had to adjust, but then it steadied and a light flashed across the bay.
Adefar, in sparrow form, flashed down and danced gleefully in fox-cub shape, then leaped onto her shoulder and nuzzled her.
‘Yes!’ she crowed.
‘What just happened?’ Banno asked, oblivious to Adefar and much else that she was doing.
‘We have the position of the gate,’ she said, peering across the bay and waving wildly. Father was lost in the gloom, but she knew he’d have his spyglass trained on her. ‘This is where we need to build the frame, to the exact dimensions I tell you.’ She piled stones around the pole to make sure it stayed on the exact spot.
‘Why?’
‘Because, magic, duh.’ She was feeling very pleased with herself: here she was, just sixteen and already helping perform praxis-sorcery, and with a handsome, admiring young man watching her every move. With that in mind, she stuck out her chest and peered mystically into the distance, going for ‘soulful yet alluring’, the sort of person she pictured her mother as, only less of a treacherous bitch, of course.
‘This going to be amazing,’ she boasted. ‘We’re going to move everyone from there to here in an eye-blink.’
He certainly looked impressed – until Rolfus Bohrne ruined the moment.
‘Oi,’ he called from below, ‘are you going to take a turn cooking tonight?’
She relaxed into a slouch: posing like a preening hollyhock was too uncomfortable to keep up for long. ‘Sorry, I’m too busy.’
‘You too good for the rest of us, Ladyship?’
‘I’ve always been too good for you,’ she retorted.
His eyes narrowed, but all he said was, ‘Fine. Banno: your turn.’
‘He’s busy too.’
‘Is he just?’ Rolfus growled. He turned to Ando Borger in exasperation. ‘Ando, I thought you were in charge—’
‘I am,’ the smith’s son said, ‘I’m in charge of supporting Mistress Zarelda. You’re cooking tonight.’ He turned back to Zar and asked, ‘Okay, so what do you need?’
Basically, I’m in charge, Zar thought, glowing a little. She smiled at Ando in gratitude. ‘I need men who don’t need their fingers and toes to count, and timber, cut to the specific lengths I’ll give you. That’s tomorrow’s job.’
She worked her charges hard after that: getting the timber lengths cut right and fitted precisely together, then erecting their gate exactly facing the one her father was constructing across the bay. She knew she was annoying the shit out of Rolfus in particular, but she didn’t care. Three days passed in a cascade of small victories and aggravating miscalculations, but Adefar was attentive and obedient and so were her coterie of young men. Life wasn’t comfortable on this windswept, frigid shore, but it was very satisfying.
But all too soon came the moment she’d dreaded. She was standing at the wooden erection, trying to work out if it framed the middle point to the exact inch, when a new voice spoke behind her.
‘It needs to be taller by at least a f
oot,’ her father remarked.
She froze, her mouth suddenly dry. Her adventure had ended. She was no longer the boss, no longer free – and she’d got it wrong. Behind him she could see Jesco, stroking his sword hilt as he eyed up the half-dressed young men in the camp.
‘Uh, good morning,’ she mumbled.
Rolfus and the others were all eyes and ears, waiting for her to be taken down a few pegs.
‘The shape’s wrong, too,’ her father added. ‘It’s supposed to be an equilateral triangle.’
‘It is equilateral,’ she started, ‘but the bottom ends are buried.’
‘You were supposed to allow for that.’
‘I did, but we needed to go deeper for stability.’
‘Then you should have recut the timbers.’ Raythe glanced at the young men, who were watching with a certain vindictive amusement. ‘You . . . Ando Borger, yes? I put you in charge here – where are the food stockpiles? Where are the spare timbers?’
The young men, after a careful look at the smiling Jesco, mumbled, ‘We’ll get right on it.’
‘Excellent. I see no reason for more than four of you to be here.’ Raythe eyed them, then chose Banno, Rolfus and Norrin. ‘Right, let’s get this sorted out.’
They worked all morning until the tilt was exactly right, a matter not of inches but fractions of an inch. Finally, Raythe placed his sighting gem inside the frame. Hovering in mid-air, it flared to life; a moment later it was speared by a beam from the other side.
‘They’re aligned,’ he announced, smiling finally. ‘We can begin empowering it today.’ He waved the others away. ‘Daughter, a word, please.’
She exchanged an anxious look with Banno, then followed her father down to the shore, where waves hissed between the driftwood piled up on the smooth grey pebbles. She waited until the silence became awkward then blurted out, ‘Dad, nothing happened.’ She stared at the spume and mumbled, ‘We’ve kissed, that’s all. I’m not Mother.’
‘Good, but that’s not what I was going to ask.’ He ruffled her hair. ‘How’s Adefar? Are you fully bonded?’
‘It’s wonderful,’ she beamed. ‘He’s like a part of me.’