Inconvenient Magic 01 - Potatoes, Come Forth!

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  Carrying the sturdy cart and its eight windswept, often tense, and occasionally anxious passengers above his head, Everett bounded from the city in a series of gargantuan leaps, arriving at the center of a bean field ten miles north of Kleinsvench. He chose a landing spot immediately in the path of the Republican advance, which was no more than three miles distant.

  Alec, Von Gylg, and the Reservists hopped to the ground, crushing bean bushes without concern. Kyle and the others checked the loads of their weapons, tightened cartridge belts and satchels, and waited with grim but resolved expressions.

  Everett scanned the area and selected a stand of good-sized pines that had grown up in an untrimmed corner of the field. A low fieldstone wall separated the rowed field from the pasture to its north and might provide some protection from Republican bullets.

  “That might give you some cover there. I can fly forward to fire and then return for a reload.”

  “Yes, sir.” Alec acknowledged. “Kyle, get them going, double time.”

  As the Reservists ran off, the gunsmith handed the launcher to Everett without comment.

  He shouldered the weapon, cradling the forward end with his free hand, and found it less awkward than he had expected. His magic had only produced two visions that had shown the mechanism. One had revealed him finding the schematic and its accompanying formulas in an earthenware pot buried in forgotten ruins situated on a barren island off the western coast. The second had shown him test firing the weapon in a deserted field, a scenario invalidated by actual events. Neither had explained how the lances should be used against steam-mobile artillery. His intention was to figure out the proper procedure as he went along.

  Weighing little more than a comfortable twenty pounds, it had no sights; aiming seemed to be simply a matter of pointing the business end at the target. A pistol grip backed the trigger but the weapon had no trigger guard or stock.

  While setting his satchel and the lengths of pipe on the ground, Von Gylg advised, “Careful you don’t jar the trigger once it is loaded. I made it with a light spring and it’ll operate with very little pressure.” He rapidly assembled a lance, proficiently screwing one of the heads onto a shaft, then inserting and locking a small red painted cone at the tip of the shell.

  “Take care not to bump this. Any sharp blow will set it off. It should explode on contact with the target.” Von Gylg handed the lance to Alec, who walked to Everett’s front and, shifting to the side to be out of its path, slid the pipe stem into the launch tube. The mechanism cocked when a spring loaded pin locked the stem in place.

  “It’s ready?” Everett questioned.

  “As ready as any untested piece of ordinance can be,” Von Gylg confirmed with a crooked smile.

  Everett gave a short nod to both men, cast his strength, and bounded toward the Republican smas.

  Finessing his spells, he landed just sixty yards to the right of the lead vehicle, held the launcher steady, pointed the nose at its center wheel, and pulled the trigger. With the propellant exhaust thrusting from the open butt of the launcher, there was very little recoil as the lance flashed away.

  Unfortunately, Everett had failed to lead his target, and he spat out an angry curse as the slightly wobbly lance and its long twisting tail of white smoke shot across the stern of the sma, missing it entirely.

  Within a few seconds, the propellant burned out and the lance coasted on in a flat arc for an instant, finally diving into the grass and exploding five yards short of the next sma in line. The blast dug a large crater, showering the vehicle with dirt, but otherwise did not affect it. All of the score or so smas in the squadron began to turn into zigzagging courses, and some in the rear ranks stopped and began to disgorge infantry, who took stances and fired at Everett. Some were far enough away to be unaffected by his passive spell and at the first zing of a bullet, he bounded back toward the Kleinsvenchans.

  Kyle and the other Reservists, crouching behind the wall or next to tree trunks, had taken watchful positions in a semi-circle around Alec and Von Gylg, who hunkered down next to the already assembled seven remaining lances in a small, pine straw covered depression. Each of the squad looked determined, but Everett had to believe that they would fare poorly against the trained Zherian soldiers.

  “Did it work?” the gunsmith asked.

  “I don’t know,” he informed the man unapologetically as Alec rammed the next lance home. “I missed.”

  Without another word, he flexed his knees and arrowed into the sky.

  This time, he recast his flight spell on the downward slope of his arc, so that he hung hovering a hundred feet above the sma formation. As one of the mechanisms cut into a turn that would bring it directly beneath him, he took a bead on its twin smokestacks, followed it with the end of the lance, and fired.

  The explosion ripped the roof of the sma open, and a huge outburst of steam and smoke expanded rapidly up toward him. He cringed slightly as the scalding cloud enveloped him, but the Invulnerability Component of his strength preserved him once more from harm. When the ejecta cleared, he saw that the mechanism had slewed sideways and was burning.

  When his flight expired, he hit the ground and bounced back for another lance. In rapid succession, he destroyed or disabled six more smas in the same manner. He had attacked vehicles in the forward rank, hoping that the wrecks would block the advance of the surviving fifteen mechanisms, but without slowing these detoured slightly east on a line that would take them within yards of his loading team and the Reservists.

  Hovering at half a thousand feet, Everett realized he had only two choices: he could return at once and carry the Kleinsvenchans to safety, or he could figure out a way to disrupt the advance using his magic.

  His experience had shown that the two most powerful spells of those he retained were ineffective against the steam-mobile artillery using obvious methods and he was blank of any other ideas that he thought might work.

  The terms of his eighth and seventh spells defined their targets in incontrovertible terms; neither Sarah nor potatoes were available to him at the moment.

  Likewise, neither bad wine nor putrid olive oil could possibly help in this situation.

  Unlike the fires in Kleinsvench, a wall of manure would not halt the leviathan smas.

  Nor would sprouting beans or blooming flowers.

  Which left only his first spell.

  Desperate for a solution, he considered the question of what the spell actually did. The terms did not define a target of any sort or describe an action. They were simply a child’s interpretation of a sound produced by the clang of two wind chimes, two nonsense words that had specific magical meaning only in his mind.

  He also now knew that the spell could be used to ring bells.

  Could it be used to ring something else?

  He chose the lead sma, concentrated a focus upon it, and cast, “Ding Dong!

  He felt the spell actuate and then within a breath, the armored hull of the mechanism rang as if an invisible, colossal sledge had struck it. The hull continued to ring, generating ear-piercing, monstrous CLANKS on a two beat cycle. After another hundred yards, the sma skidded to a halt and its hatches popped open. The crew and infantry within staggered out, debilitated and holding their heads. Some had trickles of blood leaking from their ears and some were carried out unconscious.

  For an hour, he rang smas, compelling their crews to abandon them and discouraging any that attempted to return to their vehicles. Finally, the dismounted Zherians collected their wounded, formed up, and retreated north on foot, leaving their magically cursed self-mobile artillery behind.

  When the Republican soldiers were at least four miles distant, Everett respelled each sma so that it would ring for at least another hour and returned to the pine grove.

  Von Gylg and Alec grinned when he landed.

  “What is that great racket?” the gunsmith asked. “It sounds like you're smashing the mechanisms with boulders.”

  “Something like that. Al
ec, can you get the squad and Monsieur Von Gylg back to the castle on your own?”

  The older man nodded. “You’re off to find our Sarah?”

  “Yes, and to kill the man who caused all of this.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  As he flew north, reflection on his victory over the Zherian squadron convinced Everett to further examine his magic absent all of his preconceptions.

  Sarah had told him that the magic was in the magician, not in the words. His own recent experience had made it clear that this had to be true, that a spell was only a trigger for a magical actuation. As alien as the concept was, the words must define the magic, rather than the magic defining the words.

  In Eriis, Sarah had caused him to utilize his second spell to expire the Alarsarian magician’s spell, interpreting the phrase, “Fulfill thy destiny!” for her own purposes. By extension, it seemed logical that he, at that moment, had had to share her interpretation in order for the magic to actuate as it had. Her confidence had planted doubt and that had allowed her suggestion of an alternate definition to wiggle its way into his mind, and thus the spell had produced an effect altered from its previous one but still consistent with its terms.

  Why could he not, therefore, establish his own definition according to his own needs?

  “Destiny” was, after all, such an expansive word.

  When he reached the no-man’s-land of the frontier, he found pirouetting cavalry groups exchanging long-range fire as the Republican forces made an insincere attempt to exploit the breach carved through the defense lines of the Grand Alliance by the sma column that had attacked toward Kleinsvench. With the bulk of their mechanized forces delegated to the two encircling thrusts, Everett suspected that they did not retain sufficient strength along the center to mount a determined offensive.

  But he also did not doubt that the Zherians had kept a force of infantry and cavalry regiments in place that was strong enough to make it impossible for the Alarsarians and their allies to pull back. The army of the Grand Alliance would be unable to wheel to face the threat of the steam mobile artillery that had severed its supply lines without exposing its flanks. An attempt to break out of the encirclement to the south seemed unworkable and the static disposition of the Alliance forces gave sufficient evidence that the Alarsarian generals had already come to that conclusion. While Everett was no expert on military theory, he did know that any army that could not be fed and supplied with bullets was doomed. In effect, at least to his mind, the shrewd gambit of the Republic had already succeeded -- the Grand Alliance was beaten

  He pondered the situation for a few moments longer and then bounded back to the Alliance rear and to an extensive compound, readily identifiable from the air as a headquarters. He descended into the center of the heavily defended redoubt alongside a pole flying the battle flag of the Kingdom of Alarsaria, a blue field depicting white stars in the shape of the Royal Constellation, Alar.

  Squads of soldiers bearing bayoneted rifles surrounded him immediately and just to be on the safe side, he refreshed his strength.

  An underofficer who could have been no more than twenty ran up, pointed a cocked pistol at his head, and screamed for him to drop to his knees.

  Everett raised his hands passively. “Hold on just a --”

  The underofficer’s finger twitched, manifestly the movement inadvertent, and the hammer of his pistol snapped without effect. The underofficer’s eyes went wide, but he did not attempt to reload, keeping the pistol aimed squarely at Everett’s forehead.

  Everett frowned. “My name is Everett de Schael and I'm a Master Wizard. I wish to speak to your commanding general.”

  Flummoxed either by his accidental but unsuccessful assassination of Everett or by Everett’s request, the underofficer seemed at a loss for words.

  A colonel insinuated himself between the scintillating bayonets of the surrounding infantrymen and gave Everett a once over. Like Lieutenant Smythe in Eriis, he had a gold and turquoise mobius insignia on his left sleeve. Tall and broad, with black hair peppered with gray and an open, expressive face, he had the air of someone well accustomed to authority.

  “Stand easy, Sergeant Jones,” the newcomer commanded. “I will deal with this.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jones holstered his pistol and backed away. He seemed to some extent leery of the magician colonel.

  The colonel turned to Everett. “Monsieur de Schael, you are in a war zone and hence are irrevocably subject to military law. As you have invaded this post without proper leave, I call upon you to surrender immediately or face lethal force.”

  “Listen, I don’t have time for this. If you’ll just fetch a ranking officer, I’ll tell him what I need done and I can get back to my own pressing business.”

  “Monsieur de Schael, I overheard you describe yourself as a Master Wizard, though I personally have never heard of you and I have previously believed that I had met everyone of that rank alive today. Nevertheless, I will take you at your word, but I must also inform you that, first, I am Grand Master Wizard Thomas Haddrack, currently ranked as the most powerful magician in the entire Kingdom, and second, that I can immolate you were you stand.”

  This last came across not as a boast but as a simple statement of fact.

  Everett had had enough idiocy. Every second he tarried here trying to help these thickheaded Alarsarians kept him from Sarah. He curled his lip in blatant contempt. “Go ahead, try it.”

  Haddrack’s response was almost instantaneous. “Jet of Fire, consume this foe!”

  From a focal point a foot from the colonel’s eyes, a stream of blue fire two feet in diameter erupted toward Everett, forcing the soldiers to scramble away from the heat. When it reached Everett, however, the stream simply evaporated.

  Haddrack’s jaw dropped. “That’s impossible!”

  Everett laughed humorlessly. “Magic is on my side. Ding Dong!”

  Every metal object within a hundred yards rang and the cacophony shook the ground like an earth tremor. While the crashes of falling objects descended from every direction, soldiers staggered and fell and the flagpole weaved like a drunkard.

  “NOW,” Everett shouted into Haddrack shocked countenance when the tonal assault quieted, “BRING ME SOMEONE IN CHARGE BEFORE I LEVEL THIS ENTIRE PLACE!”

  Within five minutes, five generals and a Field Marshal named Reginald Kantenoy, the latter the titular supreme commander of all Allied forces, were staring at Everett in dumbfounded disbelief.

  “You can’t be serious,” the Field Marshall argued. “Beans?”

  Trying to rush things along, Everett offered, “Have some brought and I will demonstrate.”

  Five minutes later, the officers were convinced and made effusive promises to send out the orders by dispatch riders immediately. Not willing to expend another second with the Alarsarians, he immediately bounded away.

  Knowing that the messages would not reach the majority of the Alliance forces for at least two hours, he spent the interval soaring above the Zherian lines and rather gleefully transforming their water supplies into nearly putrid olive oil. Finally, as a general mood of consternation and mild panic settled over the camps of the Alliance’s foe, Everett jumped to a height of over three thousand feet. At that altitude, he could see at least fifty miles to both the east and west and cast, “Sprout ye beans!”

  After a moment, he felt the actuation, a shimmer that rattled his bones.

  If the Alarsarians had done as he had requested, then thousands of beans that had been scattered in front of the forwardmost Alarsarian positions had just sprouted.

  “Fulfill thy destiny!”

  This magic took almost a full two minutes to actuate and when it did, very little could be seen for another ten minutes, but eventually the lively green of the preternaturally growing vines became apparent, as if an emerald line had been drawn across the frontier by a titanic brush. The spiraling vines grew and intertwined, spreading, thickening, and hardening so that at their bases they became wider and
more dense than the largest known trees. As clawing roots plunged deeply into the earth, the vines spread leaves larger than a house and glorious, verdant blossoms more than ten feet across. They climbed over and across themselves, sprouting new tendrils that eagerly sought to reach the sun above and within moments the spell was complete. Separating the Alliance and Republican Armies now stood a great, gapless, nigh impenetrable barrier one hundred yards thick and one hundred feet high.

  The “destiny” that Everett had chosen to interpret for the bean vines had been magnificent: that they would grow unfettered and unlimited by the mundane boundaries of their common existence to become the most – of course -- magnificent examples of legumes in human history.

  Content that he had done what he could to stave off the immediate defeat of the Alliance and thereby shielded Kleinsvench and its remaining citizens from further attacks, Everett resumed his flight north.

  During the uncounted relative days that he had languished in self-imposed exile in interrupted time seeking solutions to the conundrums that he faced, Everett had discovered that the nature of the visions presented by the prescience spell could be adjusted simply by alterations in the locations of objects and people. Even the slightest change in the existing situation seemed to generate a change in the visions. By a tedious and time-consuming process of tweaking, he had been able to ferret out some extremely helpful pieces of information. One of those was a fleeting image of the probable current location of Technology’s corporeal biologic, Donald de Grosivna. Recognizing the usefulness of such information, he had used the limitless convenience of interrupted time to quarter the Republic seeking to discover the spot detailed in the vision: an estate overlooking a valley covered in dense forest.

  After what he had thought might be a week, or perhaps a month, of interrupted time, he had found the estate in a modest clump of granite hills fifty miles to the west of Mrysberg. It was to this innocuous, at least to outward appearance, though grand residence that he flew now. He was determined to avenge the kidnap of Sarah and bring an end, even if only temporarily, to the nightmare that Magic and Technology had imposed upon his world.