Thief (The Key to Magic Book 7)

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  Unperturbed, nhBreen continued rinsing and drying as he counted seconds. When he counted beyond one minute, he began to feel uneasy, as if a vision were about to strike. After another fifty-two seconds, his concern became an ethereally enhanced worry.

  Something was wrong.

  Then Mar reappeared in the exact spot from which he had left.

  But he looked nothing at all as he had looked when he disappeared. With clothes torn, punctured, and blackened by smoke or fire, he was bruised, bloody, and obviously off balance.

  "Come with me," he told nhBreen in an unsteady voice. "We're done here.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Popping in once again from the Waste City, Mar took the time to have a leisurely shower and a nap -- he had lost much of his tolerance for sleeping on the ground -- before he went to the surface to ascertain Truhsg's progress. Mhiskva, Lord Hhrahld, and Wilhm were waiting in the corridor when he emerged from the unused suite of rooms on the barracks level that he had temporarily commandeered.

  "What is it?" he demanded immediately. Dire expressions occupied the faces of all three of the Gaaelfharenii.

  "Wilhm's dreams have returned," Mhiskva said straightaway.

  "His dreams did not lead to disaster the first time. Why do you all look as if that's what's coming this time?"

  "He has foreseen your death, my lord king," Lord Hhrahld rumbled.

  Mar looked at Wilhm. The simple man looked as if he had not slept in days.

  "Warnings from the ether come to allow us to avoid disaster, not to assure it," he told him. "Tell me about your dreams, Wilhm."

  After speaking with the Gaaelfharenii at length, he continued climbing levels to exit the Bunker. For the sake of safety, the rifle works had been set up in a large renovated building on the shores of the ice lake.

  "Have you been able to make much sense of my drawings?" he asked Legate Truhsg as soon as he saw him.

  High-Captain Mhiskva, with Vice-Captain Ulor as his second, had taken charge of the marines and legionnaires, such training as was necessary for the few new recruits, and also the day to day management of the small civilian community that Mar's efforts had created. Legate Truhsg had become Mar's onsite factotum to take care of everything else. Amongst a number of other tasks, Mar had given the legate the rifle design that he had drawn from memory and the authority to conscript any person or resource necessary to produce one hundred copies.

  "We've finished the first batch of parts for the prototype. We have the rail assembly, the trigger mechanism, the support bracket, the magazine, lower receiver, and the outer housing. The carpenters have completed twenty stocks so far and should finish up the balance within the fortnight.

  Truhsg gestured for Mar to follow him across the room. "All of the mechanism parts should have had a final cleaning by now."

  At that moment, there were several others in the works, most engaged in the assembly, according to directions that Llylquaendt had translated, of a magic powered metal lathe from the Bunker's stores. One of those not so occupied was a young woman with a thin frame and lustrous long brown hair that stood by the workbench that was Truhsg's destination. She was in the process of replacing tools -- wire brushes, files, gouges, and the like -- in the rack attached to the spacious bench.

  The legate swept a hand towards the young woman. "My lord king, I believe you know Baelingyi?"

  Mar did not remember the name, just the pertinent facts: orphan, starved, freezing to death.

  Baelingyi curtseyed awkwardly and flashed a big smile. She had gained weight and there was much more color in her sharp cheeks than Mar recalled.

  "Yes. How are you, Baelingyi? Do you have everything you need? Are you eating well?"

  Another of Truhsg's jobs was to keep track of the orphans, both children and adults.

  "Yes, my lord! I am much better, thank you."

  "You're learning to build rifles?"

  "Yes, my lord. It's going to be a good trade in future, don't you think?"

  "At least until we don't need rifles any more."

  "There will always be people like the monks, my lord, who want to use magic to have their way. We'll always need rifles and people to use them."

  Mar sighed. "Perhaps so, Baelingyi. Perhaps so."

  Truhsg picked up one of the shining steel parts from the bench. "This is the rail undercarriage, my lord king."

  Mar studied the nearly armlength long piece in the ether. "It should have a groove from here to here."

  "What dimensions, my lord king? Width? Depth?"

  Mar showed a gap between two of his fingers. "The groove is square in cross-section. This distance."

  "Is that exact?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you hold still for a moment, my lord king, while I fetch calipers to measure it?"

  "Sure."

  The legate hurried away and when he returned he made precise measurements that he dictated to Baelingyi, who noted them on a set of drawings that she had pulled from a drawer.

  Mar examined each of the other parts. Only two required adjustments.

  "How long till the first rifle is ready?" Mar asked when they were done.

  "Tomorrow afternoon, my lord king. We'll make the corrections today and assemble the first one in the morning. As I want all of the smiths to be present when we put it together, the assembly should take a good bit of time. I think that it is import that everyone is as familiar as possible with the process."

  "Good. I'll be back mid-afternoon." Mar turned to step into undertime.

  Truhsg had the rifle waiting on a large table at the center of the building. The assembled trainee smiths, some score altogether, stood all about talking about how the thing had gone together, but these all quieted at Mar's abrupt appearance. High-Captain Mhiskva was also present, though Mar had not expected him.

  In a jovial mood, Mar asked the giant, "Come to see the show?"

  Mhiskva put on a slight smile. "Aye, my lord king."

  "I don't think that I could've gotten it together without him, my lord king," Truhsg admitted. "Everything has to be done in exactly the proper order and a good lot of the ways the pins go isn't at all obvious. The High-Captain knew just how everything should be."

  This was a definite surprise. Mar looked in askance at the big man. "You know how to assemble a rifle?"

  The High-Captain's smile turned into a slight frown. "It seems that I do, my lord king. The how or why of it I cannot explain."

  "More Gaaelfharenii magic?

  "Magic, my lord king?"

  "Never mind." He turned to contemplate the rifle.

  Though it had a raw wood stock and some non-critical external parts of brass, the weapon, nearly an armlength and a third long, appeared functionally identical to the one that he had seen at the long vanished bazaar.

  Without delay, he enchanted it with four spells: a confining spell, two arguing-browns of contrary rotation and a groaning-blue, similar to a ward, that kept the mechanism from exploding when a cartridge discharged; a tapping-turquoise that spun the projectile; a quacking-pastel that provided stability; a shivering-jade that discouraged moisture and dirt. All of these had been on the weapon shown him in the bazaar, but he added his own refinements as he thought necessary.

  After he signaled that he had finished, Truhsg picket it up and bore it out through the big freight doorway, which lacked doors, and entered the dusty yard beyond. The sky was overcast, a genuine oddity in the Great Waste outside of the winter months, and rather than it being blindingly scalding, it was only oppressively hot.

  Mar followed with Mhiskva at his side. The smiths moved to crowd in the opening, but did not exit, no doubt under Truhsg's orders not to venture out into harm's way.

  A crowd of spectators, perhaps equally drawn by the unusually mild day, had assembled in the road at the left end of the yard. As he glanced over the large group, Mar realized that everyone that did not have something more important to do -- which meant Lord Hhrahld, Wilhm, Ulor, Quaestor Eishtren and his rec
onstituted band, Phehlahm, practically all of the other marines, legionnaires, recruits, most of the civilians, and even a grumbling but curious Llylquaendt -- had come to watch.

  Truhsg carried the weapon to the rear of the yard where a low wall fenced off a broad field of sand and crumbled stone. A shoulder-height heavy wooden table had been placed against the wall as a firing stand. As soon as he reached this, Truhsg inserted a magazine (Mar had provided an initial supply of ammunition for the rifle through the simple expedient of stealing it from the past.) into the receiver, extended the legs to prop up the heavy forward end, and took a shooting stance much like that used with a crossbow. After looking down the open sights for a moment, the legate set the rifle down and turned about.

  "All ready, my lord king."

  "Go ahead."

  Truhsg resumed his stance, operated the slide, and pulled the trigger.

  The discharge was immediate, marked only by a short jet of nearly invisible blue fire from the launch rail and the ejection of the expended cartridge. Otherwise, as Mar had expected, there was no reaction from the rifle.

  With a curious look, the legate looked around at Mar and Mhiskva. "Did it work?"

  Mhiskva pointed a huge arm towards the distant spot amongst the partially reconstructed buildings on the other side of the field where the target, a three armlength by three armlength wall made of heavy timbers, had sat. Wordlessly, the legate turned back around to look.

  The timbers had nearly disintegrated. The largest surviving piece looked no larger than a span across.

  Truhsg looked to Mar. He seemed satisfied, but not pleased. "My lord king, should I fire another cartridge?"

  "No, one is enough. How long till all of the rifles are ready?"

  "I think we can get them all done in a fortnight, my lord king."

  "Good. I'll be here then." A stray thought caused him to raise an arm to wave at the spectators as he stepped into undertime. A cheer rose from them at the sign and many of the civilians waved back.

  He went straight forward, intending to step out exactly on the fourteenth day, but consideration of Wilhm's warnings and his own acute consciousness of his growing unease spurred him to wade beyond that. At first, the glimpses that he caught from the shallows were clear, but the closer that he came to the Sand River, the bridge, and the day after the blast, the more clouded and erratic they became. In the days beyond that, the glimpses showed outcomes for the same event that changed, instant by instant, as if the future from that point was unsettled.

  He had never seen this level of uncertainty before. That it could exist at all seemed to contradict all that he thought he had learned of undertime and a wizard's control of events.

  When the glimpses began to make absolutely no sense at all, he pushed out into the current and made his way back to the Bunker.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  On the thirteenth day after the test of the rifle, it was raining upon the bleached stones and parched sands of Pyra.

  Amazed, Mar exited undertime early to marvel at the sight.

  All of the rifles, apparently the full hundred, were lined up side by side on the various benches and the smiths were all occupied with housekeeping, sweeping up or wiping down tools with oiled rags. Gazing out in apparent rapture, Truhsg and Llylquaendt were standing by the freight door and Mar walked up to join them.

  It was not just a light rain like those that swept across the Great Waste in winter, but an out and out downpour that was sending runnels of water jetting off the eaves of the tile roof. Every gust of wind sprayed a sharp mist nearly two paces into the interior and a low dyke of sand had been mounded around the opening to keep the wetness from spreading across the tile floor. Miraculously, puddles were attempting to form in low lying spots in the yard.

  For once, the medic did not seem displeased to see him. "My thanks, Mar. I had thought that I would never again see such rain in Pyra."

  "You're welcome, but if this is my doing, I haven't done it yet. Right now, I don't even have the slightest idea about how to use magic to make it rain."

  "Master Llylquaendt said that the ice mountain is sublimating, my lord king," Truhsg supplied.

  "Yes," the medic confirmed. "It is a magical effect. The extreme heat and the very low humidity are creating a natural flux condition that is causing the ice to vaporize before it can form liquid water. That is what is giving us all this rain. And the rain is spreading over a larger and larger area and becoming more frequent. The temperature differential between the desert and the cooler air near the glacier may generate some severe thunderstorms on the periphery."

  Mar cast out his sense to read the ether. The towering glacier was only five hundred paces from the rifle works. The giant knot of roiling ether that had been at the heart of it, the extremely sophisticated spell that had sustained it against the heat and dry of the Great Waste, was gone. He had made attempts to delve the ancient war weapon on half a dozen occasions, but as he had never completely resolved its complexity and as it had constituted no immediate danger, he had put dealing with it very far down on his list.

  "The spell is gone, or at least I can no longer detect it on the Bunker's instruments," Llylquaendt said. "If you did not disarm it, maybe it simply expired. It has been four thousand six hundred and forty-nine years after all."

  "I didn't understand the spell, but I think that the thing was constantly rebuilding itself. As far as it seemed to me, it should have lasted forever."

  A grimace briefly flashed across Llylquaendt's face. "Yes, the Remnants were truly insane." The medic shook off the melancholy. "But they are not even dust today, so no need to worry over them. By my calculations, the entire glacier will be melted away within the year. Something productive should be done with all that fresh water. It would be nigh criminal neglect to allow it all to drain away into the underground channel. Perhaps a friendly wizard could arrange for a reservoir -- the dry bed of the River Pyr could be easily dammed with the proper spells -- that could be used to irrigate fields where the civilians could grow their own produce. If we could establish pastures, we could have milk cows. Why, if the weather patterns were corrected, this land could be green again! Surely, with the power of wizardry --"

  Mar held up his hands. "If you show me where and figure out all the details, I'll get you the dam, the fields, and the cows, but I don't know anything at all about weather except that it hardly ever suits everyone at the same time. If someone needs it dry, someone else needs it wet. If someone needs it cool, someone else needs it warm."

  "But it does not have to be that way!" Llylquaendt enthused. "There are articles in the Bunker's library that describe how weather management is done." The medic waved both arms in an all encompassing gesture. "Before the last war, the area around Pyra was taken up by large farms, orchards and dairies. We had such a surplus that we could export food in years of peace!"

  "I'll work on it, but it will have to be after."

  Llylquaendt deflated slightly. "I understand. But you have said it, so I know that it will be done."

  Mar kept to himself the fact that he did not share the medic's confidence. He knew that his magic was up to the task, at least over time, of making the northern lands of the Great Waste into a place where men could once again live, but he had to survive the coming battles to accomplish that.

  "The rifles are ready?" he asked Truhsg.

  "Yes, my lord king. All have been tested with one cartridge and all operated as the first."

  "Have you begun training the men to use them?"

  "Not everyone yet. Quaestor Eishtren, Bear, Scahll, Kyamhyn, Taelmhon, and Dhem have helped with the tests."

  Of the band that had followed the quaestor from the fall of Mhajhkaei up to the defeat at the bridge, only the youth, Aelwyrd, had not been named. Mar thought it clear that this exclusion had been by design, most likely Eishtren's.

  "How long till the rest of the men have been trained?"

  "High-Captain Mhiskva has said that an entirely new drill will be
needed for a rifle section, my lord king."

  "So he'll be training the men for the field?"

  "He will when he, Lord Hhrahld, and Wilhm have finished, to use his words, "talking them back into existence," my lord king."

  "More Gaaelfharenii magic."

  "It would seem so."

  "I'll be back in a fortnight."

  "We'll be ready, my lord king."

  When Mar returned, he found all the armsmen, including Sihmal and the other new recruits, sneaking through the partially reconstructed ruins of Pyra under the gaze of Mhiskva, Eishtren, Ulor, and Truhsg who stood on the platform of a wooden tower that had been constructed near the center of the area.

  Mar exited undertime right beside the High-Captain. The Gaaelfharenii did not react -- Mhiskva did not even glance towards him -- to Mar's sudden appearance, but the others gave a slight start.

  "What are they doing there?" he asked, pointing.

  "Ceannaire Kyamhyn and his two quads are providing covering fire as Fugleman Bostuu and his two quads are advancing from sheltered position to sheltered position."

  "They're all carrying sticks."

  "Yes, my lord king. Weapons are not necessary for this exercise."

  Mar watched a bit longer, became convinced that war with rifles would be nothing similar to the war that he had already seen, then asked, "How long till they are ready to return to the bridge?"

  "An adequate level of familiarity with the new drills can be achieved in as little as six months."

  "Half a year is too long."

  "Then we are ready now, my lord king."

  "Tomorrow, at mid-morning, we will leave from the road in front of the rifle works. Legionnaire Sihmal and the recruits will remain at the Bunker under Llylquaendt's command to provide security."

  "Aye, my lord king. We will muster at dawn."

  He made a quick turn into undertime, dodged half a step through the shallows to arrive at the general location, then stepped out.

  Thirty-five men stood lined up in four ranks under a sky once again threatening rain. Near them, a gaggle of civilians stood watching. Legionnaire Sihmal, better fed and standing taller but still slim, and the five recruits waited in formation just to one side.