“We’ll lay the barrow on the catwalk,” Bob suggested. “The grader doesn’t bounce much and I think that it’ll ride.”
The operator climbed the ladder-like claws of the wheel and Everett hoisted the barrow up to him. Bob turned it upside down and then lodged it against the handrail.
“I might as well stoke the firebox while I’m stopped,” Bob told Everett. “Care to give me a hand?”
“Sure. What do you need me to do?”
“Take an armload of wood from the bin there and bring it around to the rear platform. One armload should build up the fire, but it might take two.”
“I’ll be right there,” Everett assured the driver.
Bob followed the catwalk back behind the boiler and skipped down an angled ladder to the rear platform as Everett pulled two-foot sticks of split oak from the bin. The driver had the corner-hinged double doors of the firebox open when Everett arrived with his first armload and a jet of hot air shot outward well beyond the end of the platform. Standing to one side, Bob took the fuel a piece at a time and slung it adroitly into the maw of the furnace, soliciting a burst of fire from the coal bed with each toss. He sent Everett back for five sticks, added them, and, announcing his satisfaction, jerked on the coil-handled linked rod that let the heavy doors slam closed.
Just making conversation, Everett inquired, “This is fairly new, isn’t it?”
“That’s right! One of only two north of New Zindersberg. The Baron imported it all the way from the Republic just two years ago to use for his Our New Highways program.”
“The complexity of the mechanisms that they have nowadays is amazing.”
“You’re dead right about that, Everett,” Bob agreed as he headed forward. “Never saw anything like this when I was a kid. I just about believe that there’s nothing that technology can’t do.”
Everett gave an unseen half-nod to the driver’s back. He had long ago come to the same conclusion.
There was only the single seat in the cab of the mechanism, but Everett assured Bob that he would be just fine sitting atop his pack and leaning against a stanchion on the narrow starboard catwalk.
Just as soon as he had spun valves and shifted levers to set the grader in motion once more, Bob turned to Everett and said, raising his voice to a near shout to be heard above the noise, “I’ve always wondered, is there much money in doing magic for a living?”
Everett wanted to say, “Magic is inefficient, inconvenient, undependable, and frequently quite useless. Only an idiot would try to make a living at it.”
But, rather than confess his own spite-filled dissatisfaction, he simply shrugged and said, “For some there is. I know most of the Wizards do well and I’ve seen where some Journeymen have set up shops in the bigger towns, but it all depends on the utility of their spells.”
“I know what you mean. My two Insignificants are Unclassifieds – Roasted Peanut Creation, and Boiled Egg Summoning. They get me a few laughs on occasion, and boiled eggs and roasted peanuts of course, but aren't really what you'd call marketable. You know, I’ve only met one Journeyman Magicker before. He came through my hometown about ten years ago. He could mend pots and all sorts of metal items, brew a decent beer from hog slops, and, if I remember right, repair teeth. I don’t recall what his other four spells were, but it seems like they were just party tricks like mine. What kind of spells do you do?”
Everett sighed. He generally avoided talking about his trade, because the conversation inevitably arrived at this final embarrassing question.
“Nothing quite so useful, I’m afraid. My Major spell is an Item Translocation Variant. I have two related Liquid Transubstantiation Minors, and four Insignificants that produce nothing of any utility whatsoever.”
Bob looked interested and grinned. “You said Liquid Transubstantiation? Can you make beer? I’ve got a barrel of drinking water hanging off the port aft. Wouldn’t mind a mug or two with my lunch.”
Everett hesitated, dreading the admission, but then sighed again and told the operator frankly, “No, I can do wine, but it’s undrinkable.”
“Wine? Not that fond of it, but I suppose it would do. You know, ‘undrinkable’ is sort of a relative term. To tell the truth, I’ve downed a lot of swill in my time. Why don’t we magic up a batch and try it?”
“I’m sorry, Bob, but I know it’s undrinkable. My wine smells like pig urine and tastes about the same.”
The man burst out laughing. “Yes, I’d guess you’d be right, then. Pity. What does your other Minor do? Any chance of a tea or fruit juice?”
Everett felt his mouth press into a tight line. “No, sorry. The other is wine into olive oil.”
“Olives don’t grow this far north, do they? Only ones that I’ve seen have been brought up from the coast, pickled, and are fairly pricey. It’s the same with the oil. Seems like that spell would generate a good bit of income for you.”
“It would, if my oil didn’t taste and look like axel grease.”
“Haw! That’s a tough break, Everett. There must be something wrong in the world when a man gets two Minor spells and both turn out crap.”
Everett said nothing. There was nothing to say. He had earned the rank of Journeyman Magicker by manifesting the minimum seven spells, a feat achieved by only one in ten magicians, but all of his spells, including the required Major, were, to be brutally honest, utter and total crap.
“I guess that’s one way where technology clearly comes out on top,” Bob mentioned offhandedly as he shifted gears to climb a slight grade. “The W-W-W.”
“Www?”
“Oh, sorry, just a short hand we use in the road service. Job assignments come down to three things, the What, the When, and the Where, and it seems to me that those three apply to just about anything. In magic, though, the three W's are generally locked up out of reach like fine spirits in a chintzy joint. First, a magician never gets to choose what a spell does. The effect is what it is and that's that. Since we actually have to say a spell out loud the when is always restricted to the minute we cast. Sure, you could say we get to pick the where because every spell needs a locus and a focus, but I'd imagine that more than half the time those are already set too. Why, my Aunt Matilda had only one spell and it only worked on a Tuesday by a red barn!"
Bob gave the whistle chain a quick jerk to scare a rabbit from the path of the grader. "On the other hand, a technician can do just about whatever he wants. He can pick and choose elements from schematics to make his mechanisms and can pretty much decide exactly what he wants his mechanism to do, when he wants it to operate, and where he wants it to operate.”
Everett made a noncommittal noise. Though he had never considered the three W's, in his estimation everything that Bob had said was accurate.
Having exhausted his interest in discussing magic, Bob launched into a detailed commentary on the best taverns along his route.
The remainder of the ride to the crossroads took better than two hours, as Bob occasionally had to back up the grader laboriously to go over particularly rough stretches more than once. The operator of the big mechanism was a gregarious fellow but seemed content with Everett’s natural reticence. Everett laughed politely in the appropriate places and made simple encouraging comments as required while Bob regaled him with his admittedly tired repertoire of jokes, aphorisms, and grader anecdotes.
Still, all in all, Everett rather enjoyed the ride. Bob’s stories and jests, as formulaic as they were, were a welcome relief from the usual solitude of his itinerant trade. In addition, as self-mobile steam mechanisms were a relatively recent innovation, he was moderately fascinated by the grader’s workings. He had only seen his first steam tractor a year previously, when its technician creator had demonstrated its ability to pull a ten-foot disc harrow at twice the speed of a mule team. Of the three mystical trades, technology was by far the most utilitarian.
When they arrived at the stone paved Baronial Highway, the loss of both the ride and the company left Everett a
bit morose. Bob helped unload the barrow, refill it with the potatoes, and then stuck out his hand.
“Good luck with your magic, Journeyman. I’m sure that one day you’ll find some place where you can get full time work.”
Everett shook hands firmly, knowing that the man meant only kindness, but still the words stung.
As Bob guided the grader across the highway and to the farm track beyond, Everett settled his pack firmly on his shoulders, picked up the handles of the barrow, and pointed it determinedly south. He had balanced the weight of the potatoes as far forward as he could over the single wooden wheel and he was comfortable with the moderate strain. Having labored strenuously most of his life, both in his father’s orchards during his youth and in the monastery boarding schools where the proctors had believed that a Magicker should train his body as well as his mind, he was well accustomed to physical work. He also had inherited his father’s height, thick shoulders, and endurance. As long as he could maintain a decent pace, he was confident that he could get his burden to Pylton in a reasonable length of time.
The highway was one of the recent civil works of the current Baron, who Everett had heard had populist leanings. Although a hereditary aristocrat and granted his rule by his title, he apparently wanted to be liked by his subjects and had begun investing heavily in projects designed to win the favor of the average commoner. Running almost forty miles from the river ferry at Ingleside to the agricultural hub of Pylton, it was a single granite paved lane with sloping gravel shoulders and shallow drainage ditches. The joints in the interlocked pavers made a constant clattering sound against the wooden wheel of the barrow, but the hard surface was considerably easier going than the dirt and gravel farm road had been. It was no doubt much appreciated by any that might have need of traveling regularly between Pylton and Ingleside, but from the lack of visible traffic, it appeared that there was not an abundance of such persons.
After about four miles, he was trudging along at a determined, steady pace, easing the boredom of the march by mentally calculating whether he could walk straight through the night and reach the town by dawn, when, without warning, the wooden axe of the barrow snapped clean in two. With a rending crash, the barrow snagged and dumped the load of potatoes over sideways.
Shocked and unbelieving, he stood for a long moment shivering in inarticulate fury.
Eventually, after taking a deep breath and blowing it out, he declared in disgusted exasperation to the world at large. “That’s the trouble with Technology. It’s all crap too!”
Then, having no other option, he gathered his frayed nerves, took another deep breath and forced his anger to cool further. To tell the truth, he did not actually believe that technology was crap. Technology was unarguably the more robust and utilitarian trade. As Bob had more or less said, where magickers and wizards were forever constrained to a single set of static and unchangeable spells, mechanics and technologists could combine and adapt their schematics and even share them among themselves. Useful purpose could be found for many Insignificant technology schematics through inclusion or modification, but nearly all Insignificant spells were doomed to be, in Bob’s words, no more than party tricks.
No, his anger was directed solely and completely at magic. He was just plain mad at magic. Mad because it promised fantastic success but delivered humiliating failure. Mad because it had condemned him to a life of want and embarrassment. Mad because of every scathing moment of disappointment that he had endured because of his worthless spells.
If, by some chance swing of fortune, he had manifested as a mechanic rather than a magicker, then he might have been able to earn money instead of potatoes! At the very least, he probably would not be here wondering how he was going to lug more than his own weight in farm produce twenty miles.
“Why,” he complained again to the open fields and distant farmsteads, an attentive if unresponsive audience, “couldn’t I have had a real spell? Why couldn’t I have Gold, come forth! Or even, Cornbread, come forth! I thoroughly like cornbread and I’m beyond tired of potatoes!”
Grumbling, he began to sling the bags into a pile to one side to see if he might repair the barrow. As he grabbed hold of it, the stitches of the third bag burst, scattering its contents across the pavement. Outraged once more, he stood there in renewed rigid indignation and glared witheringly at the utter calamity that his life had become.
“Besides that,” he griped to the uncaring soybeans, “I’m lonely. Why couldn’t I have Beautiful Woman, come forth!”
The abrupt vibrating nerve sensation of the actuation of a spell frightened away his anger. Before he could complete a curious thought, a wisp of air fluttered his clothes and hair.
Then, not three yards in front of him, a young woman, wearing not a stitch, appeared.
THREE
She was indeed beautiful, with the perfect face and lithe figure of a goddess. Her eyes were the color of a warm summer sky after a rain, her lips the color of clover honey, and her long hair the color of sun-splashed white oak bark. Not a single feature was out of place or body segment out of proportion. She was not a fantasy; she was an ideal.
She was also, oddly, dripping wet.
And quite surprised.
But not more so than Everett. He was literally stunned. This was impossible.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Who are you?” she snapped back at him, planting her fists firmly on her hips. Her expression declaring that she would brook no nonsense whatsoever, she swung her head about to survey the scene. “And where am I?”
“Uhm, this is the Barony of Heimgelberg and I'm, uhm, well, Everett de Schael.”
“That’s one of the small eastern demesnes, isn’t it? That’s more than twelve hundred miles from …from … from my bathroom.” She eyed him suspiciously, taking in the mean cut and rough stitching (he had made it himself) of his once blue shirt and the threadbare state of his brown trousers. “You’re a wizard?”
“What? No, of course not.”
She tilted her head to the side and with casual grace began squeezing the water out of her hair. Her every movement fascinated Everett.
“Only magic could transport me out of my bath to this filthy road,” she accused. “Are you saying you didn’t do it?”
“Well, uhm, I’m not sure.”
“Stop saying ‘uhm.’ It makes you sound like a dolt.”
“U..right.”
“Well? Answer my question.”
Remembering the magical actuation, he felt a moment of heart constricting panic. The last words that he had uttered before her appearance had had the semblance of a spell. Had it been a First Enunciation? But why had there been no Epiphany? “I…suppose I could have.”
“So you are a wizard!”
“No, I’m a Journeyman Magicker.”
“Nothing but a Potent spell could transport a living mass my size across this distance. Only the Wizardly ranks have Potent spells.”
Everett grasped at this solid, commonly known fact to steady himself. “That’s correct.”
Eyes widening slightly, she whipped her head about, aborting in mid-flinch a reflexive reaction to cross her arms across her breasts. “Is there someone else here?”
Not quite following, he looked around at the vacant road and fields, then ventured, “No?”
She relaxed slightly. “Then you must have brought me here.”
“No, that’s absolutely impossible. I don’t have a Transport an extremely beautiful and unclothed woman into my presence spell.” Though it definitely would be welcome, he added silently to himself.
The woman examined him with a jaundiced eye. “Your gaze is beginning to wander. Give me something to wear.”
Everett spread his arms apologetically. “I don’t have anything but the clothes I’m wearing.”
“Then give me your shirt. Quick! Before anyone comes along!”
Trying to find a reason to refuse that would not make him appear unchivalrous, he did not comply i
mmediately. When nothing remotely plausible occurred to him, he sighed, shrugged off the straps of his pack, and set it to the side. Then, fingers fumbling slightly, he loosened the upper buttons of the baggy shirt, pulled it over his head with care so as to not poke any extra holes in it, and handed it to her. He started to cross his arms, felt awkward and self-conscious, and dropped them to his sides. It was an odd thing for him to be standing in front of a woman with his shirt off.
Acting for all the world as if she were dressing in her own boudoir, the woman poked her head through the shirt and then slid her arms into the sleeves. She did not bother with the upper buttons as she tugged it down to suit her, leaving an entrancing triangle of collarbones and skin exposed. Finally, she combed her still damp hair back over her shoulders out of the way. As she was about a foot shorter than he, the tails of the shirt extended only to her mid-thigh. Her legs were athletic and, of course, also dazzlingly beautiful. And utterly fascinating.
Rolling up the sleeves at the wrists, she wrinkled her nose and gave a loud sniff.
“Sorry,” he explained with a wince. “I’ve been on the road for a few days.”
She rolled her eyes in exaggerated comment, then seemed to recollect the problem of her current situation and her mood quickly darkened. “Why did you bring me here?”
“I’m still not sure that I did, but if I did, it was entirely by accident, I assure you.”
“What do you mean ‘by accident’? Either you did or you didn’t. There’s no such thing as ‘accidental’ magic.”
“I know that! The First Fundamental Precept of Magic states clearly: Magic cannot be adapted, improvised, or modified.”
“So you did bring me here?”
Everett stopped short. He could not deny that magic had been done. “It is potentially possible that I may have facetiously and inadvertently cast a spell,” he admitted.
“Fine,” the woman responded, her tone indicating that it was anything but fine. “Joke’s over now. Send me back.”
Inconvenient Magic 01 - Potatoes, Come Forth! Page 2