A Kind of Peace

by Andy Boot

  She realised that she had considered prisoners to be cowards merely because they had not perished in battle like her father. But now she wondered if her father had perished from chance rather than choice; from stupidity rather than bravery? To question, in such a manner, the things that had driven her life and given her purpose up to this point left her in a whirl of confusion.

  This was not aided by the fact that Simeon's base desire soon transmuted into the gold of a finer feeling. The tall warrior fell in love and made no secret to her of the fact. It was an impossible situation, made the more difficult by the fact that their fledgling relationship had no avenue for progress.

  Perversely, her own feelings - which had started as a complete infatuation - began to cool as his heated. There were things going on in her head that she couldn't even begin to assimilate. Had her feelings for the warrior been stimulated because he represented her dead father? Or were they an insult to that worthy's memory? In a more practical manner, how could she allow this to continue, to put her life at risk for sexual gratification? Gods alone knew she had left it long enough, but did she need this much danger?

  For her, the peace had been more welcome than she would have allowed only a few periods previously. Where it would once have frustrated her need to join a combat squad and prove herself, now it signalled an arbitrary - and thus easier - end to her relationship with Simeon. He was to be repatriated along with the rest of the farm. Sent back to Bethel. Allied nation state personnel were kept on separate farms. Segregation such as this was intended to make the running of the farms a simple matter.

  If only it had been that simple.

  It should have been. The northern farms were to be repatriated first. They were nearest to Bethel, so it made sense to begin there. Simeon was a man torn. He was happy to be going home, but was unhappy about leaving Jenna. She said she would keep in contact as much as possible: she did not know what the terms of the peace were to be. Enlisted as a holoship ensign, she could be sent anywhere, deployed in a number of ways.

  In truth, she had no intention of contacting him. It would be for the best, she was sure. Consequently, she had been appalled at her posting to Bethel. However, it was a vast continent. The chances of running across one man were minute. She had not tried to contact him. She assumed he would forget her once he was home. She thought he would have no idea she had been deployed in his home land. She heard nothing from him.

  Until he turned up in her sleeping quarters one night, begging her help.

  "Jen - are you listening?"

  She snapped out of her reverie, aware that she had been keeping a section of her mind - that which had been trained for such a purpose - focused on the holoship, while her memory had led her astray. Simeon had been talking the while, and she was unaware of a single word.

  "No," she answered honestly. "Whatever it was you were droning on about, I neither know nor care."

  "Fine. You want us to walk into a trap then."

  "Trap? What trap?"

  "There... may be one," he said with emphasis. "I was trying to plan for all eventualities. This is my mess, and I don't want you to get in too deep."

  She turned and looked at him. "Hello? Inan to Planet Simeon - you're in my holoship about to cross a nation state border in peacetime with an intent to break that peace. How deep is that? Or do you consider 'too deep' to be... oh, I dunno... how far exactly?"

  "You said it - this is a holoship. Invisible to scanner tech. You can also make it invisible to the eye. No-one need ever know you're there. You can stay in the ship while I go and get Ramus. But if you do, then you need to have a contingency plan for if some Varnian warrior smacks his head on the side and stumbles onto you."

  She shook her head. "You're a cretin, you know that? You think I would have piloted you all the way across the seas just to leave you and cower here while you do the hard bit? You don't know me at all do you?"

  "I do... I know you'd risk your life. But I don't want you to. It isn't your fight. I wish it was. I wish I hadn't had to find you... for so many reasons. But I did, and it's up to me to keep your risk to a minimum."

  "Stubborn bastard. You also know I couldn't let you do that."

  Beneath every word, there was something else flying between them. Three periods had made no difference: no matter how much she ignored it, it was still there. Obviously, it was too for Simeon: why else would he have sought her out?

  "When this is over," he began hesitantly, "assuming we make it back, then..."

  "It'll have to wait," she said, turning to face the view screen. She didn't need it - her trained magic sense gave her a three dimensional sense of space - but she wanted to show him. "We've got work to do."

  Ahead of them was the coast of Varn.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Year Zero - Period One

  "I don't see why you're being so difficult about this. It's obvious that there will be danger. That's why I'm here! In the name of the Gods, can't you grasp that? I thought you were supposed to be intelligent beyond the bounds of most men?" Simeon shivered. "And why is it that you can't feel the cold? It must be close to freezing in here."

  Ramus-Bey sighed heavily, finished scratching on thick parchment with thin, watery ink and turned to face his bodyguard. He slipped the small half-moon spectacles from the bridge of his nose and gave Simeon his best 'I-hate-being-disturbed' stare.

  "You wanted something?"

  Simeon waited a beat, calmed himself, then said: "You haven't heard a word I've said, have you?"

  Ramus raised an eyebrow. "I think, my dear man, it would be almost impossible for me not to have heard your words," he intoned with a heavy emphasis. "The point, rather, is what point there was to them?"

  Simeon said nothing for a moment. It had been this way since their return. Finally: "There is an ever-present danger. You saw what happened the night of the signing. We've been back here for almost a whole period and in that time it seems to me that you've almost gone out of your way to prevent the implementation of any security measures at the academy. How can I do my job properly when I get no co-operation?"

  "Simeon, you have to understand one thing," Ramus-Bey began, standing and shuffling to the stone mullioned window, staring out over the lush grounds. An artful use of topiary around the boundaries kept the glass and steel erections of the city at bay. In a similar way, Ramus-Bey wished to keep everything else from the outside at a remove. He turned back to face his perplexed guardian before continuing. "The work of the academy - researches into the very fabric of being and the ability to transmute that via the power of the mind and the strength of the will - is something that not even half a millennium of war was able to deflect from its path. Why then, should I be the one to disrupt the lives of the Mages and wizards, and the work of the adepts who wish to further those studies by their own education, in order that I may be able to fend off some mythical attack from the outside?"

  Simeon blinked, took a deep breath. It was the same argument he had heard since their arrival. His retort was so polished he felt as though he could recite it word perfect without even thinking.

  "You saw what happened the night of the treaty signing. An attack was made. Not upon you perhaps, but certainly on at least one Mage. By an unknown enemy. A magical attack. There has to be a contingency for that. But you are physically frail, so we have to ensure that your corporeal body is as protected as is possible. Which cannot be done while the surrounding area is not secured by the measures which I have suggested."

  Ramus-Bey smiled wryly, and with tongue in cheek replied: "Very good. Your timing gets better with each delivery. If the live entertainments still existed, as they did when I was young, you could have made a fair career for yourself. However, mine own memory fades a little with the passing of the anum, and so I cannot be as correct. But the substance of my answer remains as before. That attack was more than likely the result of a rogue element who wished war to resume. They had a window - a moment of 'optimum opportunity', as you military ty
pes may phrase it - and they took it. Now it no longer exists. Long-distance magic of great threat is something only Mages can achieve, and as we were the targets, we're hardly likely to be the ones to launch attacks against ourselves. We're academics for the Gods' sakes, not soldiers. As for the physical: who is going to risk sending a force into the heart of another territory and break all treaty conditions?"

  "Anyone who feels that a nation state without a Mage is a tempting target," Simeon answered. "Once one is down, then don't think that everyone else wouldn't start to talk of alliances and co-opting the weaker territory."

  Ramus-Bey chewed his lip thoughtfully. "It saddens me that the military teach a man to think that way... I will have no more discussion on this, I have work to do."

  With which, he dismissed Simeon 7 with a half-wave of his hand, as though he could not even be bothered to complete the dismissal. However, as a furious Simeon turned to go, he attempted to make amends.

  "I will tell you one thing. The cold. Magic causes spatial disruption, affecting the pressures within localised areas. This has a direct affect on currents of hot or cold air. The kinds of pressures generated by the disruptions of magic differ according to how adept the practitioner may be. For example, a junior may be able only to cause small disruptions, and so the temperature fluctuations may be slight. But someone such as myself, in the course of everyday study, is generating an immense amount of almost permanent disruption. Resultantly, it's almost permanently cold around these centres of the academy. Hence, one would assume, the expression cold as a witch's teat. Although, I should point out, that it is most unfair to blame the female of the species alone."

  Simeon looked at him, baffled. "Thanks for that," he murmured. "But it still doesn't explain why there's no heating."

  Ramus-Bey chuckled and shook his head. "Because any heat produced would be instantly sucked up and dispersed by the pressure fluctuations. They don't teach you science in the military, obviously."

  "Only if it involves killing the enemy," Simeon conceded. "So what do you suggest I do, if you're so smart?"

  "Purchase warmer clothes, dear boy."

  It had been this way since the journey back to Bethel. The Mage had seemed to warm to the man who was to be his bodyguard, and on the ship that took them back he waxed at length about the Bethel Institute - the correct name for the academy, although it was rarely referred to in any other way - and the beauty of it's grounds. A millennium old stone castle construction, complete with keep and moat, it was protected from the rest of the city which had grown around it by a weak magical barrier as well as by a stone wall.

  The magical barrier was not intended to keep out intruders, but rather to keep in the fauna that wandered free in the grounds. Several different breeds of Tallus, small mammalian creatures that lived in the trees and shrubs, and a number of giant reptilian birds - that were the result of a resurrectionist spell involving a clutch of fossilised eggs from Inan pre-history that had gone slightly awry - all roamed free. They were of no danger to the outside city, but were distinctly rural. The thought of a Tallus herd wandering onto the streets, causing chaos in the busy traffic system, was not one to idly contemplate.

  To Simeon, as he listened to the old man happily talk of home, it sounded like a security nightmare. Wandering creatures, some of whom could inflict a lot of damage if angered, could easily trip any warning devices he chose to install. Moreover, the magic was only one-way: anyone could easily scale the wall.

  Also, there was the matter of the castle itself. A vast, ancient stone building that bore more than a little resemblance to the castle in Praal where the treaty had been signed. But, whereas that building had been about spirals and staircases that seemed to go on forever, the interior construction of this building was based around rectangles: the staircases had sharply angled turns, and all ran through the centre of the building, corridors radiating off from this central hub to allow access to the rooms on several levels. Eight storeys in height, the castle had not a single room that was without a window, allowing a view of the brightly coloured fauna where trees and shrubs in greens and yellows clashed with the vibrant turquoise, pink, purple, and magenta of the flowering plants. The wildly varying colours of the fauna's pelts - broken only by the dull black sheen of the reptilian birds - added to the riot of colour.

  It was an oasis of the old ways in the city. Belthan was the ancient capital of Bethel, on the western side of the continent. It lay well inland, away from the port towns and on the edge of the wasteland known as the Deadlands. This extent of barren land formed the centre of the continent. Winds howled across the arid plains, bringing their freezing cargo to the edge of the city, where giant reflectors kept the worst of the gales, snow and sleet at bay during the long winters.

  Belthan was a monolithic city of dark stone buildings from across the ages, with a predominance of glass and steel constructions in the centre. The jumble of styles and ages gave the city a strange, lop-sided feel that was also a trademark of their anums long rival, Varn. As the richest nation states, they had the largest concentrations of population and wealth in their capitals, enabling them to build more. Yet a respect for their history - it had taken them a long, hard slog to amass their wealth - ensured that the old was revered alongside the new. Where other towns, other nation states would clear vast tracts and begin again, the capitals of these great rivals ironically echoed each other in their desire to preserve - and thus flaunt - their history.

  It should be noted, too, that their ability to contain both old and new was because of their ability to repel aerial attack: a luxury in which less privileged towns and nation states could not share.

  The people of Bethel lived on a land-mass that was apt to be severe in weather conditions, suffering from no night-time during the high season, with overcast and dark conditions determining the rest of the year. Colour was either bleached from the landscape or driven deep by snow and wind, and this was reflected in the colouring they chose for their clothing and for their buildings. Greys, whites and blacks predominated, with a preference for the darker end of the scale.

  Simeon 7 was from the east. He was a small-town boy who had grown to adulthood and the military without going outside the immediate area of his town. Air-raids had reduced much of the town to rubble before he was born, and he was familiar only with the newer styles of architecture. On his trips overseas with the military he had seen little save the Bethelians' own encampments, established in the steamy jungles of south-western Varn before his capture. His overwhelming impression of those few weeks attempting to encroach enemy land was of damp, the smell of rotting vegetation and a green that made the skies dance when you looked up. After that, there were the harsh lands of the Kyan prison farm. It was almost like being on the farmlands near his home town.

  The castle and surrounds in Praal had been strange enough to him. But now, to see the whole of Bethelian history laid out in the jumbled design of one city, with the seemingly bizarre contrast of the riot of colour that was the Institute sitting as an island in the centre, was almost overwhelming. He was finding great difficulty in assimilating the presence of the city, while at the same time attempting to work out a strategy for the defence of his charge.

  In the end, he adopted a simple strategy of his own. He elected to ignore anything beyond the gates of the academy, choosing the walls as his own boundaries. By ignoring what was beyond, he was able to focus on the interior of the grounds and the castle itself. The adepts, wizards and Mages within the castle walls acted as though the city beyond was not there; as though the wider world of Inan was not there. They existed only within the world of the Institute. Magic - and the study thereof - may have made their interior world richer, but it was at the expense of acknowledging the material world.

  However, it did amuse Simeon to note that although all within the academy made a big thing of rejecting the outside world, they were not averse to bending their self-imposed rule. Although much of their food was grown in vegetable patches i
n the grounds, and some of the smaller fauna were farmed for slaughter, many of those in the academy had a weakness for confections that were delivered on a weekly basis.

  Step one: monitor delivery vehicles regularly, establish relations with delivery staff, carry out routine security checks on said vehicles.

  Another concession to the modern world was that the kitchens relied on tech-powered ovens and refrigeration (though he bitterly considered this a waste: put the frozen and chilled foods in Ramus' rooms, and you would alleviate this need). Partly practical - fossil fuels would soon run out unless magically replenished in the relatively limited castle grounds - the tech also enabled them to feed themselves faster and with less work.

  Finally, as many of the new adepts had grown up in the outside world of tech before entering the Institute, a concession to the age was made in the shape of an entertainment room with holovid displays and comm-gear.

  Step two: monitor these for bugs, for signals sent or received, and also vet any repair/maintenance personnel who should call. All new and replacement equipment to be vetted on arrival, delivery vehicles checked.

  For his own part, Simeon had his own comm and holovid equipment, as well as surveillance and observation tech supplied by Daliel, who had arrived almost simultaneously with Simeon and Ramus-Bey. This, too, was regularly checked, vetted and maintained.

  With this, and the regular patrols on foot around the academy that he undertook, Simeon found his time more than adequately filled. It would have been easy to fall into a routine within a matter of weeks, but he was determined to stay out of this trap. He varied his routes and times around the grounds, aware all the while that the adepts mocked him. Young believers in the power of magic, they could not understand the use of a military man within the grounds of the castle. It was not difficult for them to see that Simeon was a man whose nerves were on a razors edge: determined to get it right, still familiarising himself with the surroundings. He was seeing danger in every shadow. Although aware that this was the attitude he would need to adopt, he also wondered how long it would be before it burnt him out?