Inconvenient Magic 01 - Potatoes, Come Forth!

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  “That can’t work,” he argued stridently. “You can’t change the terms of a spell.” To his utter confusion, he felt her spell actuate.

  Sarah refocused her eyes and nodded. “I think that did it.”

  “That’s absolutely impossible! All competent authorities agree that the terms of a spell are a precise conception generated by the interaction between a magicker’s conscious mind and the initial infusion of the magic. From the Treatise on Enunciation by Grand Master Wizard Thorgingra, ‘A magical effect will only actuate and evince when triggered by the original unaltered enunciation.’”

  “Don’t be silly, Everett. Spells aren’t mathematical equations! As my grandmother liked to say, ‘The magic isn’t in the words. It’s in the magician.”

  “But –“

  “Well, I’m going to go see.” Without waiting for Everett to follow, she walked to the door, stepping daintily over the recumbent forms of the slumbering Alarsarians, and went into the hall.

  “I don’t see anyone,” she encouraged. “Let’s find the others.”

  Edwin, Harold, and Mitchell hurried after her.

  Everett stood his ground, refusing to believe that such an absurd notion could work. He had never heard of a non-specific spell that could be altered for a specific use. And the concept of adapting the terms of a spell was a clear violation of all the known precepts of spell casting. This was simply preposterous! Sarah and his erstwhile cellmates would unquestionably come scampering back at the first hint of alert soldiery!

  When they did not reappear after two minutes, his nervousness got the best of him and he threw up his hands and followed. There was no one in the hallway, but he did hear incautious steps clattering in the stairway leading up. He caught up with Sarah and his erstwhile cellmates just as they reached the floor above. The guards here, one at each end of the hall, were also laid out fast asleep.

  “I don’t believe it!” The exclamation escaped his lips almost of its own volition.

  “Believe it, Everett,” Sarah rejoined. “I told you: we have Magic on our side.”

  “You know, this could be further empirical evidence to support my theory of the Grand Mystical Spirit!” Edwin exulted. “Just suppose that there were prime individuals whose contribution to human advancement was favored or supplemented by this eternal, all-encompassing Spirit. These individuals--”

  “I’ve heard a lot of hooey in my day, Edwin,” Harold scoffed. “But this is just a little too much, even for you. Next you’ll be trying to claim that all of human history is some grand scheme, monitored and coddled by this silly spirit!”

  “Why, I hadn’t quite gotten that far, but you must be right! Excellent, Harold, I shall be sure to footnote you in my dissertation.”

  “Pah!”

  The chemist and the fitter stopped in the center of the hall, blithely forgetting the matter at hand as they became consumed with their argument. Mitchell continued along behind Sarah, somewhat starry-eyed, as she counted doors on the right. She tried the knob on the fourth. It was locked.

  “I think this is the door. Everett, open it please.”

  He blinked at her. “How?”

  “Rip it off its hinges, of course.”

  “Oh. Well, all right. Give me strength.”

  The brass knob crumpled in his hand and wrenched free of the solid oak panel, which rattled, but did not open.

  Mitchell went wide-eyed at the display. “Wow! I’ve never before seen a Strength Enhancement Variant. Could you just punch a hole in it?”

  Everett rejected that notion immediately. “That would probably break every bone in my hand.”

  “The brass didn’t damage your hand,” Sarah pointed out. “Your strength spell must have some sort of Invulnerability Component.”

  “Well, I’m not interested in taking the risk of being one-handed the rest of my life, if you don’t mind.”

  “Then kick it open.”

  “And break my foot instead?”

  “Fine. I’ll just set fire to it then.”

  “That’ll probably put the entire building to blaze!”

  Sarah crossed her arms and glared.

  “Oh, for Magic’s sake!” Everett cast his ninth spell and pushed with his palms on the door until it splintered with a great racket and collapsed inward in a mangled pile, revealing two anxious but silent women. The younger one, blonde-haired and slim to the point of being gawky, caught sight of Mitchell and flung herself toward him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and proceeded to do her best to smother him with demonstrations of affection.

  Margaret, a rosy-cheeked grandmotherly sort, simply shook her head and smiled.

  “I see that you have met?” Sarah teased the two sweethearts. Then, dismissing the reunited couple with a single exaggerated lift of her eyebrows, she turned to Everett, “Give them back their voices so that we can find out what spells they have. And then we need to find Tekle.”

  None of the five spells that the two female magickers possessed between them, all Insignificants or Minors, proved obviously useful in the current situation, but Margaret did know that the other prisoners were confined on the same floor.

  All of the rest of the doors were locked, but Everett simply and cheerfully smashed them in. He took some pleasure in doing so, reveling in the wanton but otherwise harmless destruction, and was slightly disappointed when the spree came to an end. Tekle and the other men, Roger, middle-aged with the shoulders of a lumberjack, Stephan, about the same age but less solid, and Will, a white haired man well up in age, were discovered in the last room on the left. Beatrice, a sturdy, older sheet metal worker with a very pragmatic attitude, called out from the room immediately across the hall when she heard the noise and was quickly released.

  As the group gathered around Sarah and Everett, arguments and reunions, romantic, philosophical and otherwise, temporarily in abeyance, it was clear that all of them had accepted that Sarah was in charge and all of them were simply waiting for her to tell them what to do. She speedily obliged, asking the synthesists to stand by and dispatching Tekle to scout the lower floors. Tekle returned within moments to report that all the guards, including two exterior sentries, were indeed under the effects of Sarah’s spell. For good measure, he had bolted the front doors and found and likewise secured a rear exit.

  “Very good,” she approved. “Now, Everett and I will transport you two at a time back to the air carriage. We’ll need everyone to get up on the roof.”

  Sergeant Tekle clicked his heels. “Pardon me, mademoiselle, may I make a suggestion?”

  “Of course.”

  “If possible, we should locate the lockbox. I would also suggest that we should gather some of the rifles and pistols and as much ammunition as we can carry plus anything else that might be useful.”

  Margaret looked startled. “Why would we need guns?”

  Tekle grinned patiently. “One: we are now fugitives from Baron’s Heimgelberg’s justice. Two: It is clear that we are now also at odds with the Alarsarians. Three: As a consequence of Number One and Two, if we want to keep the air carriage, we must be ready to defend it.”

  Frowning, Margaret opened her mouth to reply, but Sarah cut her off.

  “Sergeant Tekle is right. We’ll face immediate arrest if we return to Eriis for any reason, and there can be no doubt that Baron Heimgelberg will publish warrants, so we won't be able to stop at any other towns in his demesne or any place where he has constabulary agreements. We need to take with us any item that might remotely be of use. Everyone scatter and gather up everything you can find. Particularly, take any money you come across.”

  “Are the soldiers dead asleep or can they be awakened?” Harold questioned.

  “They can be roused with a good shaking or a sharp pain, but should remain asleep if you’re careful.”

  In short order, the group divided into pairs and trios and began scavenging through the building, sifting through the pockets of the Alarsarians with the care of pickpockets, and searchi
ng every room. Happily, Tekle did discover the unopened lockbox in a room on the ground floor. While they began to haul their finds, mostly the weapons and some odd pocket change, up to the roof, Sarah pulled Everett aside.

  “I think we should question that captain before we leave,” she told him. “We need to learn exactly why the Kingdom has taken such a great interest in the air carriage.”

  Everett quickly agreed. The involvement of the Alarsarians had been a shock. First, the Zherians had tried to snatch Sarah, and now their enemies had been revealed to be actively working here in Heimgelberg. Evidently, the coming war to the west was not as distant as he had believed and now he and Sarah seemed inescapably embroiled in the clash of the two great demesnes.

  To avoid any chance of waking the other soldiers, Everett carried the captain like a babe in his magically strengthened arms down to the very room to which he had first been taken. Once securely bound to the chair with ropes found in a hall closet, Sarah roused the officer by the simple expedient of slapping him repeatedly in the face.

  Everett winced in sympathy. “Is that necessary?”

  “Probably not, but it does make me feel better.”

  He shrugged. “Right.”

  Captain Van Ghest twisted his shoulders and threw back his head to avoid another slap, blinked, and focused on first Everett and finally Sarah. “Ah, I see the situation has changed somewhat.”

  Sarah was not interested in polite preliminaries. “Only the truth, cretin.”

  “A veracity spell? It appears that an attempt to claim my rights under the Treaty of Ghoot would be a futile gesture. However, before the interrogation begins, may I ask how your companion eluded detection by Lieutenant Smythe’s spell?”

  “No, you may not,” Sarah denied. “What is the Kingdom of Alarsaria’s interest in the air carriage?”

  “We wish to control this new technology.”

  Van Ghest, while incapable of resisting the effects of the magic, clearly did not intend to provide any information that was not extracted by a specific question.

  “Who informed you of its existence?” Everett asked. “The Baron?”

  “No. Baronet Rorche and his group came to the attention of our operatives as a result of normal intelligence gathering activities.”

  Sarah evinced surprise. “Operatives? You have spies in Heimgelberg?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where else?”

  “In all the major capitals with roving teams in the larger rural regions.”

  “In Kleinsvench?”

  “Yes.”

  Sarah’s eyes narrowed, but she did not continue, biting her lip in thought.

  Everett considered her reaction, grasped that she did not want her Kleinsvenchan connection mentioned, and detoured to another line of questioning. “So you had people watching the warehouse?”

  “No.”

  “You used magic?”

  “No.”

  Everett sighed and took time to devise a more precise and informative question. “How, in exact detail, did you keep track of Baron Rorche and the construction of the air carriage?”

  “We insinuated an operative into the group and he has relayed regular reports of progress on the mechanism by means of notes that Lieutenant Smythe is capable of reading using his Distant Observation variant.”

  “You have a spy in Rorche’s group?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is it?” Sarah wanted to know.

  “His name is Jonnan Kreig, a technologist and Major in the RIC.”

  “There’s no one by that name aboard the air carriage,” Everett contradicted. “Is he using an alias?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “Aldo Serap.”

  SIXTEEN

  At the time, Everett had thought that Sarah’s assertion that they would transport two of the released prisoners at a time had been a simple misstatement, but the young woman actually had devised a scheme to accomplish this.

  “Ready.” she breathed into his ear.

  “Beautiful Woman, come forth!”

  By the simple expedient of riding piggyback on his back, with her legs wrapped around his waist, she could keep both hands free to hold onto her passengers, in this case the last two, Tekle and the mechanic Roger Binsyen.

  They appeared alongside the previous transportees and their spoils on the roof of a large barn that stood a safe two miles from Eriis. Just as soon as the burgeoning day had permitted Everett to see his target from the roof of the prison building, he and Sarah had begun transporting the group on the first leg of the journey to the air carriage, which waited fifteen miles from the city.

  “We’ll take the sergeant and Binsyen on,” Sarah announced to the group on arrival. “And return right away for the next two. Everyone get ready.”

  Everett cast.

  The next locus was a clump of trees that projected above a ridge three miles across a swale. Without great delay, they transported the group there and then on to the next, the half-ruin tower of an old hilltop outpost, and then from there to half a dozen other prominent elevated landmarks, until finally they landed in a logged clearing below a set of low hills. With her engines idling against the wind, the air carriage was in sight, floating serenely above a small lake that was yet hidden beyond the rising ground. Rorche had chosen the sparsely wooded area to avoid the curious and thus perhaps keep word of the whereabouts of the air carriage from the Baronial authorities.

  As the Baronet’s rescued compatriots, sitting on stumps or standing casually in a rough circle, settled in to wait for the final transport, Sarah stretched ostentatiously and then gestured for Everett to follow her. “Everyone, take a few minutes to rest. Everett and I are going to fix our landing point from that hill.”

  Everett, who had been carrying her not inconsiderable weight for an hour and welcomed a walk to work the kinks out of his back, gratefully trailed after her through the cutover. Dodging stumps warded with the thorns of blackberry canes, honeysuckle encumbered piles of discarded limbs, and intervening sprouts of new oaks, sweet gum, and hickory, they walked for better than ten minutes. The top of the tree-shaded hill overlooked the lake and gave a direct view of the open rear cargo doors of the air carriage. Not coincidently, in addition to leaving Everett slightly winded, the upslope stroll also took the pair far beyond the earshot of the others.

  Giving the appearance of fixedly studying the air carriage and without looking back toward the group, Sarah told him, “We can’t tell them about Aldo.”

  Everett leaned sideways against the solid trunk of a sweet gum and did not try to conceal his surprise. “What? Why not? If we don’t reveal the spy, the Alarsarians are certain to try to capture the air carriage again.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kleinsvench and the Kingdom are allies, or will be soon. I can’t betray an Alarsarian spy and not expect negative repercussions. ”

  Indignant, Everett glared. “But you can betray Rorche and the others?”

  “It’s not a matter of betrayal. The two of us are simply bystanders caught up in someone else’s problem. We bought passage on the air carriage with our magic, nothing more.”

  “Then why did you insist on rescuing everyone?”

  “Because I knew that it wouldn't be difficult and it was necessary. If we returned without the others, Rorche would have resisted the idea of continuing the journey across the continent. Now, we return as heroes, and he and the rest will trust us implicitly. That will make it far easier to convince them to divert to Kleinsvench.”

  “That sounds cold-bloodedly mercenary and callous.”

  Sarah’s eyes flared. “I've never claimed to be anything else. I've agreed to marry to cement an alliance and could very well likely spend the entire remainder of my natural life as a political bargaining chip. Why would I have any qualms whatsoever about using anyone and everyone to insure the safety and security of my family?”

  “Right.�
��

  “No, Everett … I didn’t mean--”

  “Forget it.”

  If he had ever thought that her interest in him might be anything more than a dispassionate utilization of an available resource, then there was absolutely no question about the nature of their association now.

  The corners of her mouth turned down as she watched his face. “Will you do as I ask and not tell them about Aldo?”

  He looked at her without saying anything for a moment. Then, “My price is now ten thousand silver.”

  With no visible reaction, she said nothing for an equally long beat. “Eight.”

  “Ten.”

  “Nine.”

  “Ten.”

  She pressed her lips into a thin line. “Very well. Ten thousand silver to return me to Kleinsvench.”

  Consciously choosing to drive deeper the wedge of anger that now lay between them, he commanded her, “Fetch the others. I’d like this journey to be done.”

  A considerable outpouring of relief and excitement erupted when they began transporting to the cargo compartment of the air carriage. The esne keeping watch there immediately ran to the corridor to summon the Baronet. Rorche and the others crowded around in greeting, questions and explanations flying. The full transport took less than ten minutes; by now the rescued band had learned to wait in paired lines, weapons and other items held in off hands, ready to step up to take Sarah’s grasp as soon as the magician duo reappeared.

  Rorche called for an impromptu conference when the last two, Tekle and Binsyen, were transported.

  “This is the only space aboard that is large enough for all of us to gather together and I believe that we must decide this very moment what we should do next,” he said, once the noise of reunion had quieted.

  “What do you mean, Franz?” Edwin asked with a mildly worried tone.

  “Our original plan to travel to Eyrchelle is now clearly unwise. I do not doubt that we will again face arrest if we appear there.”

  “Are you proposing that we stay here?” Margaret asked.

  “No, we still require the financial, technical, magical, and physical resources of the west in order to construct our fleet of air carriages and commence our commercial enterprise, which I am convinced is still the best opportunity that we will have to recoup our investments. We must determine which country, aside from the Kingdom of Alarsaria, is best equipped to enable us to do so.”