"What's that?"
"Skipping the between bits."
"Not so much. Without the between bits, life never slows."
As per his contract with the Most Honorable Architects, Mar had arranged to return exactly one half fortnight after his first visit. On arrival, also as per that contract, he found the Architect Captain's own chief deputy, Master Architect Eaowaelhd, waiting with the forty-seven masons, carpenters, and apprentices who had been seduced by the generous hiring bounty that his contract had offered. Assembled in the guildhall's rear courtyard with their tools and belongings, the varied group of generally stout men stood in a gregarious clutch conversing in low tones as the ten wagons formed into a line in the alley beyond the gate. Truhsg accompanied Mar as he walked briskly up to the group.
"Is everyone ready?" Mar asked the architect straightaway.
Eaowaelhd, a thin man with large hands, thick wrists, and a shock of greying black hair, nodded. "We are, Master Alrin. Is it permitted to ask the length of the journey?"
Mar's contract with the guild had specified that the masons, carpenters, joiners, and helpers would not be told the location of the building site in advance due to "political considerations." He knew from cursory undertime spying that the current prevailing theory amongst the guild members was that "Master Alrin" represented an exiled prince or potentate from some minor island kingdom in the Bronze Archipelago.
The length of the trip alone would not reveal the location of the entrance corridor. "The wagons should take a fortnight to reach the site."
"On good roads, a wagon could make ten or more leagues a day."
Mar produced half a smile at the architect's undisguised attempt to fish for more information. "Some of the roads are not good."
"We should get started then, unless you wish to wait and start fresh in the morning?"
Mar glanced up at the sun. It was mid-afternoon. He had gotten out of the habit of judging the time of day, unless he needed a particular moment.
"No, there's no need to wait. My steward Llyorf will accompany you while I ride ahead. Unfortunately, he speaks only a few words in C'men and his accent is even worse than mine."
"No fear, Master Alrin," Eaowaelhd promised. "We will manage."
Mar nodded in farewell, then quickly strode to and mounted Horse as the architect and the legionnaire exchanged greetings, eloquent on Eaowaelhd's part and halting on Truhsg's. Horse broke into a trot as soon as Mar locked his boots in the stirrups and followed the now familiar route out of the city without urging. Mar again let him have his head in another fortnight dash through undertime and at the pass, Horse pranced with pride as Mar drew up his reins. With a start, he realized that streamers of flux were trailing from the animal's hooves.
Frowning, he dispatched the spell that hid the access corridor entrance, then cantered up the illusory road, checking the ethereal deception one last time, and dismounted.
Having at least an hour before the train arrived, he unsaddled Horse and began to brush him down.
"You've become tainted by the magic, you know," he idly told Horse.
Thankfully, the animal did not respond.
When the wagons pulled up, Architect Eaowaelhd jumped down immediately but then stopped to brush the road dust from his clothing. As he waited, Mar became aware that he felt a sense of utter exhaustion, though he had done nothing remotely strenuous in many days.
"How was your journey?" Mar asked as soon as Eaowaelhd approached.
"Pleasant enough, Master Alrin. Pleasant enough." The architect shifted his shoulders one way and then the other, as if straightening his spine.
"How many days will you and your men need to get ready to begin?"
"If it is all the same to you, Master Alrin, we would like to begin straightaway. A fortnight of idleness has made us all anxious to get to work."
"Excellent." Mar gestured towards the darkened openings in the sloping rock of the mountain. "There are thirteen rooms. Be creative."
Eaowaelhd's eyes roved. "How many of the rooms are for storage or for the use of servants?"
"None."
"How many occupants? That is to say, how many of the rooms will be bedchambers?"
"Just one."
The architect gave Mar a curious look. "A solitary place of peace and contemplation?"
"Something like that."
"And I take it that there will be no need of social facilities?"
"There's a below ground room that should be a wine cellar."
"No dining hall?"
"No."
"A sun room? Salon?"
Mar thought a moment. "Yes, both, but only for the use of a single individual."
"Ah, I think I have the gist of it. I will have the rough sketches ready for your approval by morning."
"That won't be necessary. I'm leaving just as soon as you are settled in. My steward will be staying here to manage the logistics. Anything that he approves will be fine with me."
"You are indeed a man of many travels, Master Alrin."
Mar sighed. "Yes, that I am."
SIXTEEN
Mar dismounted Horse and tied him up on the tail of one of the parked wagons. Once again, he frowned at the unmistakable ethereal sheen on the animal's coat. None of the secondary effects of the imposed flux modulations were visible to ordinary eyes, but he feared that they might become so.
Was it stronger than before he and Horse had entered undertime at Khalar?
If it was, it was not so much so that he could detect the increase by a marked rise in the intensity in the sound-colors. These were a jumble, but he thought that many of the modulations had much in common with the indecipherable patterns of undertime.
Horse did not need the blinder glamour any longer. The unreality of raw undertime apparently no longer concerned him.
These changes did concern Mar. Magic, he was convinced, contaminated everything that it touched and these effects were only compounding evidence to support his conviction.
There was nothing for it, though. Horse made his manner of coming and going from the site plausibly normal, and also had proved of a certain utility in many of his other than undertime travels. Besides, he had come to enjoy the company on his journeys. Once he had mastered the skills necessary to experience it with impunity, passage through undertime was, like walking the same stretch of road every day, repetitive and boring.
He turned to examine the face of the mountain. Much progress had been made. All of the openings that he had sliced in the rock had been filled. He had expected simple, functional casements, but the Aehrfhaen craftsmen had created elaborate, highly decorative canted bay windows trimmed in flutes and swirls. The entrance door was a work of art, its twelve panels having intricate, flaring designs. None of the exposed wood had yet been painted or stained, but he expected oils and pigments to be on the final list of requisitions that he would pick up from Truhsg today.
In front of the door, a large terrace had been constructed out of rough stone cut from the mountain. This had not been included in Eaowaelhd's completed design, but it made sense to have added it. It would have been natural and reasonable for Eaowaelhd to presume that the occupant of the palace would not spend all of his time inside.
Two of Truhsg's armsmen stood watch alongside the door, but none of the Aehrfhaenii were outside. On Mar's last visit, the interior had been far enough along so that the craftsmen could strike the tents and move their bunks inside.
Mar's arrival must have been noted through one of the windows, for the door swung open before he was half way across the terrace and Eaowaelhd hurried out.
"Good morning and welcome back, Master Alrin!" the architect called.
It was a month and a half of the architect's time since Mar's last visit. It was much more of his.
Mar shook Eaowaelhd's extended hand. "Good morning. Glad to be back."
"Please, come in and see our progress!" Eaowaelhd enthused. "The project should be complete in under a fortnight."
As he did on all of Mar's visits, the architect made the full tour. The entrance hall was ninety percent done: floor mosaic, grand staircase, raised paneling, wainscoting, crown molding, and cased openings to the left and right were all in place. Like the entrance door and exterior trim, all that lacked was stain and varnish.
Upstairs, from the stair outward to the left were sitting room, bed room, and bathing room. To the right were reading lounge, library, and sun room. To the left on the ground floor were salon, an undesignated space that could serve as a workroom or whatever else Eishtren desired, and toilet. To the right were kitchen, pantry, and larder. Accessed from the back stair in the kitchen, the cellar was as large as any three of the other rooms combined. When Mar and Eaowaelhd walked through, the Aehrfhaenii were working on the racks that would hold the bottles, but only half of them were completed. All of these spaces were in a similar state of near completion save for a few final touches here and there, all of which were begin actively attended.
Back in the entrance hall, the architect all but beamed.
"Excellent work," Mar told him. "I am well pleased."
"I am glad to hear that, Master Alrin. I must admit that I had some doubts in the beginning about this unusual project, but I must say that we have achieved all that I envisioned and more."
Mar smiled. "It has both the esthetics and the livability that I wanted."
"Again, I am happy to hear of your satisfaction. One other thing that I did want to mention was my appreciation of the skill of your miners. The chisel work that we saw on the base excavation was amazingly precise. As a matter of fact, I can say with all honesty that I've never seen its equal. Why, not one tool mark is visible!"
"I always try to choose the best."
The architect's smile broadened at the indirect compliment. "If you have the time, Master Alrin, I have one final suggestion to make, if you would deign consider it. It would require a minor revision, the wrecking out of two of the windows, but I believe that the cost in time and material would be thoroughly worthwhile. Please, come. I have the drawings at my table."
Eaowaelhd had inked both a floor plan of the addition and several extremely lifelike limnings of how the space would look from different perspectives.
"As you can see," the architect explained, pointing with a stylus, "a balcony extending here from the bedroom would provide an excellent place for the occupant to access fresh air and sunshine without having to use the main exit. With half the crew put on the task, I am sure that it could be completed in as little as eight days."
Mar found himself nodding as he tried to figure out why the drawings seemed familiar. Then he realized why that was so.
He had seen the balcony before.
In the Moon Pool. This was ...
... his favorite place, this balcony. He had had it built especially so, a place of peace and security, but foremost privacy. It was a place where none need be on guard, shielded with the most powerful magical wards he could devise...
The manner by which it had come into being was different, he thought, but its appearance was near identical to that vision.
Once again, it seemed that the future that the magical waters had shown him had not yet been undone, only altered.
"Yes, Architect Eaowaelhd, by all means, build this balcony."
"Excellent! We will begin immediately."
Mar returned once more before the palace was completed.
In the dead of night while all of the Aehrfhaenii slept, he recruited four of Truhsg's armsmen to go with him onto the real mountainside beyond the layered illusions. Using trimming axes and crosscut saw borrowed without bothering to ask permission from the Aehrfhaenii'n tool storage, he had the men fell an armlength thick pine, healthy and straight, and then cut out a four armlength section of the trunk that had no limbs or spurs. This he dragged with ropes and Horse up beside the terrace. Though it had passed through the illusions, no other spells had touched it. After thanking the armsmen and sending them back to their bunks, he galloped to the morning.
"You have a carpenter named Maeorghym," he told the Eaowaelhd. "I'd like to borrow his services for a few days."
"All our services are yours, Master Alrin," Eaowaelhd assured him, then smiled. "At least until the end of this contract. I'll ask Journeyman Maeorghym to report to you right away."
Maeorghym was a tall, thick fellow with thinning hair and a quick smile. He came up to Mar and the log barely five minutes later.
"Good morning, Master Alrin. Eaowaelhd said that you had a special job for me?"
"Yes, I need a table an armlength high, two armlengths long, and half an armlength wide made from this wood."
"I can make one, right enough, sir," Maeorghym allowed. "But I'm not embarrassed to admit that I'm not the best at detail work. Master Plig, our carpenter foreman, could make you one that you'd have a hard time saying wasn't made by the furniture crafters in Lhorvhavhen."
All of the Aehrfhaenii were more than competent in their crafts, but Mar had chosen Maeorghym of all the carpenters working on the palace not because of his skill but because the young man created the least disruptive flux vibrations as he moved about.
"I'm not concerned about appearance. It doesn't need to be dressed, sanded, or varnished. I also want you to only use dowels from the same stock to join it. No nails or glues. And don't rework any piece. Now, as this project is over and above your regular wages, I believe an extra remuneration is in order."
Mar handed the young man a small purse containing thirteen of the fat Aehrfhaenii'n gold coins. That was more than three months of the man's usual wages
Maeorghym readily took the purse, unobtrusively weighed it in his hand, then tucked it with care in the pocket of his trousers. With a cheerful shrug, he began to walk about to examine the log from every side. As he did so, he developed a slight frown.
"This is fresh cut, Master Alrin. Why, it's still oozing sap and must've been felled within the day. This needs to be barked and set up in the dry for at least eight months and better a year. Not trying to gainsay your choice, sir, but pine -- and especially fresh cut pine -- isn't the proper choice for furniture. We've plenty of clear lengths of wood, seasoned oak and maple, left over and you'd be better served to use those."
"I'm not concerned about shrinkage or warping. The table must be made from this log."
With another shrug and a smile, Maeorghym patted the pocket containing the gold. "It'll be as you say, Master Alrin. How much help will I have splitting and cutting the log?"
"I'd prefer that you do it alone. If you must have help with the sawing, I'll ask Architect Eaowaelhd to allow Urhym to help you."
"Urhym's a mason's apprentice, Master Alrin."
Mar nodded. "Yes, but he has a strong back."
And a similar ethereal neutrality.
The young carpenter smiled again. "Just the two of us?"
"Just for the sawing."
"Well, you're the man paying the bill. I feel obligated to tell you that it'll take me a least half a fortnight to get usable lumber out of the log."
"How long to fashion the table after that?"
"Part of a day to knock it together. It won't look like much, just four legs, the braces, and a top, but it'll be sturdy enough."
"That's fine. I'd like you to get started on it immediately, if you can."
"I'll get going just as soon as I can fetch my tools, sir."
Mar shook Maeorghym's hand, went to Horse, trotted along the access corridor until he was sure he was out of sight, and then turned out into the following fortnight.
The table was waiting off to the side in the entrance hall and was exactly as the young carpenter had predicted, raw and unsightly, but solid and strong.
It was also, as Mar confirmed with a brief glance at the ether, in as natural a flux state as it could be and still be an artifact crafted by a man. He did not once touch it. He rounded up Maeorghym and Urhym and had the two place the table a third of an armlength from the far back wall of the
cellar.
"This should not be disturbed," he cautioned the two men as soon as they had taken their hands from it.
Both glanced at the table then looked away.
"No one will have anything to do with it, sir," Maeorghym promised without smiling.
Mar had no doubts but that they and their fellows would rigidly comply with his restrictions. From undertime spying, he knew that the full crew of Aehrfhaenii craftsmen had already concluded, in whispers shared only with themselves, that the odd creation's true purpose was to receive the blood sacrifices of some unconsecrated avatar of one of the unpopular Gods. Of course, this determination had been made only after two of the armsmen, at Mar's instigation and arrangement, had been overheard discussing just such a possibility.
Mar gave both craftsmen another purse of thirteen gold and both, edgy and uncomfortable, hurried away. Neither looked back at the table.
The day finally came when the Aehrfhaenii packed up their tools and gear, loaded aboard the wagons, and waved goodbye as Truhsg and his armsmen drove them down the guise shrouded access corridor for the last time. Most had broad smiles on their faces. Mar had thanked each and every one with an additional purse of twenty gold.
When the last wagon had passed out of sight of the entrance to the access corridor, Mar dismissed the spells that had created it. With that link destroyed, time and space would forever bar any of the Aehrfhaenii from reaching the palace again. Then, he urged Horse back into undertime and returned to the mountain to eradicate the illusions and every other scrap of flux modulation that he could discover, and finally galloped ahead to the copse outside Lhorvhavhen to retrieve the Mhajhkaeirii. After delivering the Aehrfhaenii back to their guildhall, Truhsg and his men had sold the wagons and horses then hiked back to the meeting spot.
Of the Aehrfhaenii craftsmen's time, completion of the palace had taken more than four months, but that was a month less than the original estimation.
It took another month of Mar's time, even with Truhsg and his men assisting, to outfit it.
They bought exquisite furniture and wall hangings from Szillarn craftsmen or stole expensive items from the manor houses of eighth century Khalarii grandees. They adorned the bed with the finest Szillarn cotton linens. They filled every shelf in the library with books and scrolls from the Empire's middle centuries, the era most widely considered its intellectual peak. They stocked the larder with cured and pickled meats of the finest cuts and the pantry with the best quality flours, grains, beans, seasonings, and dried, pickled, and fermented vegetables. And, most assuredly, they filled the cellar shelves with hundreds of bottles of the best vintages of the Empire, the Archipelago, and Szillarn.
Thief (The Key to Magic Book 7) Page 8