by Karen Myers
There was excited chatter from everyone except Rhys, who leaned casually against a bookcase already wearing the customary uniform and preening just a bit over it.
“Out there in the back corridor you will discover packages with your name. I thought you all might like to try on some of the clothes, so we’ll give Rhian here this office for privacy, and the rest of you will just have to use the corridor.”
With that, Isolda held the door open ceremoniously and Angharad shooed all the men into the back corridor and closed it again. Alun stepped up with a smile and showed them the array of goods, still wrapped, and sorted into piles by name.
After exchanging a few words with Alun, Rhys stepped forward. “I am to be a model of good taste, Alun says, and stand here as a comparison.” He spun about theatrically and struck outlandish poses, while Brynach struggled to keep his dignity and not giggle. Benitoe was under no such constraint and snorted loudly.
There was a general unwrapping. Alun pointed out the chairs he had brought to keep their clothing, new or old, from the floor. He came over to George and said privately, “This is all Angharad’s doing. I thought to put your evening finery away already, but she said she wanted to see that, too.”
George was struck by Angharad taking the trouble to arrange this. He chewed on that thought, and what it might mean, while he removed his coat and breeches, sitting to pull off his boots, with Alun’s help.
Benitoe and Brynach were ahead of him, with Rhys helping Brynach explore all the pockets in his new hunt coat. George saw that each of them had two coats, as he did, and a kennel coat for dirty work.
“What’s that?” Brynach said, pointing at the revolver in its holster at the small of George’s back, exposed now that his vest was off.
Alun had seen it before, during Mostyn’s measurements, but George hadn’t intended for this to become widespread knowledge. He decided to make the best of it and go into details.
He took the gun out of its holster and held it up for them to see. It was a small stainless steel revolver, with a two-inch barrel. “Where I come from, this gun’s a deadly weapon. For hunting, it’s just another tool. Sometimes we find an injured animal that must be finished off, or a horse breaks a leg and must be put down.”
“Why not use a hunting sword?” Brynach asked.
“We hunt fox, mounted, not deer. Usually the fox gets away. If he doesn’t, there’s nothing left to worry about. Nothing to butcher, no meat to bring back. So we don’t wear hunting swords.”
“But gunpowder doesn’t work here,” Rhys said.
“Yes, so everyone keeps saying. It’s just a habit, part of my hunting gear. Here, take a look. It’s quite safe if I take out the cartridges, just like a bow without arrows.”
He emptied the five cartridges into his hand and passed the S&W Model 60 .38 Special around for them to handle. Benitoe wanted to see how it opened and closed, and to look at a cartridge in detail, so George took a moment to show him everything and explain the parts—casing, primer, bullet, and gunpowder. Benitoe inspected the fit and finish of the revolver components, as if he wanted to see how difficult it would be to make.
“You use this for defense, then?”
“Yes, like a small crossbow, but more powerful and much faster and easier to use. We have long versions,” he held out his hands to indicate the length of a rifle and mimed holding one to shoot, “which can cover great distances. Then there are large ones, with wheels, for military uses against fortifications. I use this particular gun for dispatching animals at need, but I also use it when not hunting, with a much more practical holster, for self-defense, and I’ve got several other guns, too. This one’s rather small for my hand, but easy to wear.”
Rhys said, “Like a knife, this can be carried hidden or not, yes?”
“That’s right. Our soldiers and guards carry them visibly, as you would a sword, but many ordinary people, and villains, too, carry them concealed.”
George reloaded the gun and returned it to its holster. He finished dressing and looked down the corridor at the others. “Let’s go take a look in daylight.”
Out in the kennel yard they discovered that Rhodri had joined them, wearing his own ancient coat from his service days which still fit him, more or less. He grinned at the peacocks emerging blinking into the sunlight. “Alun slipped me a note this morning with Angharad’s suggestion that I join the fun. I must say, you’re all looking rather splendid.”
It was true. Rhian wore breeches like her companions, with a long hunt coat. The bright new coats contrasted with the two older ones on Rhys and Rhodri, but all were double-breasted, similar in cut, and the color and material of the new ones were clearly a match for the old, just fresher. The boots, being new, gleamed.
“Let’s see those hats, now,” Rhodri said, and they settled tricorns on their heads, to everyone’s amusement.
They milled about in the yard inspecting each other, with Isolda laughing at Rhian’s clothes and the kennel-men popping out to take a look. The hounds contributed their own commentary. George found himself wishing for a camera for a group shot. Hearing a scritching noise behind him, he turned to find Angharad standing well back of him, sketching with charcoal on a pad of paper.
He complimented Rhian, Brynach, and Benitoe each on their choices and teased Rhodri about the fit of his old coat, then made his way back to Angharad as the group began to disperse.
“It was very thoughtful of you to arrange this,” he said.
“It was no bother at all. I had other business to attend to at the manor.” She put away her charcoal sticks and closed the pad.
“Alun said something about wanting to see the evening wear?”
“Yes, I’d like that.”
“Why don’t you come back into the office and I’ll put on the coat, at least.”
They walked in together, and he left her there to change coats. The material had a lovely hand to it, not too heavy nor too soft in its drape. Like the hunt coats, it was double breasted, but elaborate detailing was worked over the lapels and altogether it was much finer.
He wore it into the office to Angharad’s admiration. “Yes, that does suit you well. It shows your size to its best advantage, with nothing clumsy or over-large. I do approve.”
It was clear—the next move was up to him. “I wonder if you’d come to the huntsman’s home for a quiet dinner Monday night, before my first public hunt? I’d be glad to provide an escort home, or to arrange a guest room for you.”
She looked down a moment with a small smile, then glanced up again. “Only if you promise to wear your new coat.”
George had asked Ceridwen to meet with him this afternoon for an extended catch-up session on his newly discovered powers, to find out what he could actually do and what the rules were. He was a man who liked to understand his tools completely, someone who actually read the manuals. This incomplete knowledge made him deeply uneasy.
Sitting comfortably in her study, he leaned forward to explain what he was after. “I’d like to understand more about the way things work here, the way they’re different from my world.” He was reluctant to use a word like “magic.”
“For example,” he continued, “why is it that so much, um, power seems to be associated with wood? There are spell-sticks, and way-tokens, and what’s with those icons on wood in the stables?”
Ceridwen happily took on the role of teacher, George just another in a long line of students.
“That’s because wood’s an in-between material: dead but once living, hard but easily shaped, part of something large but small enough to hold, and so forth. Such ambivalent materials are valuable as storage devices or holders of power.”
George automatically looked for apparent exceptions, to test this reasoning. “What about limestone or chalk? The shells that make those up were once living, too. Even marble, which is limestone transformed. Or coral.”
“You make an excellent point.” She walked over to a bookcase, searched for a moment, then
pulled out a large thin leather-bound volume. “Edneved ap Gwilt, in his work on ‘The Sources and Uses of Bindable Materials,’ talks about this.”
She laid the book on a table in front of the book case and leafed through it. “It’s right about here, somewhere… Ah, found it. See?” She beckoned him over. “He claims that the accumulations of shells in limestone, which he could see clearly with enhanced vision, occur after death, and so don’t share the large-small part-of-a whole set of properties.”
George enjoyed this sort of game and countered with relish. “Alright, what about large individual shells, such as conch, which make nice carved cameos?”
“Edneved spoke to that as well. He held that shell and pearl in any case were an extruded but non-living artifact of a living organism while the cells of wood were the organism itself. That’s why bone and skin are also useful, when shell is not.”
She reached for another book, this one small and thick. “There’s still ongoing debate about horn, antler, and tusk. I don’t agree with Iorwerth Goch who claims that they are essentially as living as bone and just contain some additional scaffolding, making them less pure but still useful for power purposes. Other vegetal materials like straw or paper, or other animal residues such as hair or wool, fail as either non-living or aggregations of individuals or parts.”
George threw up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll concede defeat and accept that wood’s an especially appropriate material for the purpose. That doesn’t explain what’s happening in the stables.”
“Icons are used to mark ownership and help with finding and sorting lots of items, some of them mobile, like horses, for lots of owners. It’s to reduce mistakes. Your sign…” She looked at him quizzically.
“A lion rampant, from my grandfather’s Talbot arms.”
“Your lion is on the stalls of your horses and on your stable chests. When tack has been cleaned, if there’s any confusion about who owns it a blank piece of wood is laid upon it, and your lion will appear. It’s a simple household spell; storage in a marked container, like your stable chests, imbues the object with a sort of mark that can be made visible. It wears off over time, so that ordinary purchases aren’t confused with, say, recent theft. A horse in a stall is residually marked in the same way.”
“Like a brand that can wear off and be replaced. Or a linen mark for laundry.”
“That’s right.”
Alright, that was at least consistent, even if its underlying basis was unknown. He could just think of it as highly developed technology and call it magic for now, as long as he could understand how it worked and how to use it.
“Here’s another one. People keep telling me to ‘just ask Ceridwen’ so I’ll follow their advice.”
She nodded expectantly.
“Let me start with guns. No one can explain to me why gunpowder doesn’t work. And is it only gunpowder, or also the newer smokeless powders?”
“You have a gun, then?”
For the second time that day, George reached under his coat and pulled out his revolver. He unloaded it and handed her the empty weapon.
She held it in both hands and examined it from all directions. “The last time I saw one of these it looked very different. It was in one piece, made partly of wood, and had an ignition mechanism that used a piece of flint.”
“That’s, um, a bit out of date. Flintlocks went out of fashion almost two hundred years ago.”
He quickly outlined for her the development of percussion caps, primers, cartridges, and smokeless powder.
“I haven’t dared fire this, since I only have a few rounds with me, but everyone assures me it won’t work.” He looked at her quizzically.
Like any good instructor, she composed her response carefully before speaking, laying a foundation for her explanation.
“As you’ve noticed by now, we do trade with the human world. We don’t maintain an industrialized society, and thus make do without many of the products of your world, but there are some items that we simply don’t want to do without and so we make exceptions. We buy lamps and lamp oil, lighters, cotton, and so forth, because they’re too useful to forgo and too laborious to make on a non-industrial basis. We reach for those few things from your world that allow us to keep our lives comfortable without risking exposure or pulling our culture in undesirable directions.”
She continued, “Some of us make visits—Gwyn, most notably, but others, too. The travelers bring back many things. Some have been interested in gunpowder and its military uses, and several have studied how it’s made as well as brought samples. We have books and treatises.” She waved her hand at a shelf on one of the bookcases.
“But it doesn’t work for us. In the open air, on a dish, it burns feebly, even when fresh, while we read that it should flare up and burn brightly or with sparks. Enclosed in a firearm, it burns no better. We’ve tried making it here from raw ingredients according to the instructions, but it makes no difference.”
“It may be,” she said, “that none have tried your new smokeless powders in the last hundred years and perhaps those will work, but I doubt it. I imagine that my colleagues have looked into it, perhaps secretly, and failed, or else we’d have seen the results by now. The utility of firearms for war and hunting is obvious, and the rest of the metal technology is sufficiently within our reach, or our ability to trade, as to make it feasible.”
“I’d be happy to sacrifice a cartridge, to take it apart for an experiment,” George said.
“Perhaps later. I confess I’m curious.”
“I must warn you, I’m no chemist,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, I’m not going to be able to do much about it. I’m sure there are books in my world that would help.”
He stopped, struck by an idea. There’s no reason air guns wouldn’t work, the ones that allow you to pump them manually instead of using compressed air. I wonder if that’s more practical than small crossbows, though. Might be a lot of technology dependency for not much better results, with concomitant support difficulties in the field.
Ceridwen looked at him quizzically. He laughed. “I just thought of an experiment for another day, that’s all.”
She interrupted their session to order some fresh tea.
Armed with a fresh cup, George steeled himself for a more uncomfortable discussion, not about external objects but about powers within himself.
“Part of what I really came for today was to set a formal course of study with you, as I am trying to do with Hadyn for physical defense.”
“What is it you want to learn?”
“Everything, like an ordinary student, but for right now, I need to understand the ways and glamoury and discover at least what’s possible in general, and what I can do. I’d also like to know more about communication with animals. There seem to be several different methods.”
“I can give you books to read about that, but it’s Gwyn you want as a practical instructor for speaking with the beasts, because much of it’s in the blood. For glamoury, there are also books but it’s really all direct guided practice and observation— I can help with that. For the ways, I can guide you but I already know you can do things I can’t. There are many books to study, there.”
“Where would you like to begin?” she said.
“Can we start with a reading list?” He spread his hands hopefully.
“I’ll do better than that. Let me think for a moment.”
She walked over to one of the cases about midway down the wall opposite the fireplace. “I’ll empty this shelf here and refill it for you. The books will be in four sections: general knowledge, bespeaking others, glamours, and the ways. You’ll read the books in order within each section, but you may skip among the sections as seems most urgent to you.”
George could see her pedagogical instincts take over.
“For each book you will make notes in a journal—this journal,” she said, walking over to a shelf behind her desk and taking out a new journal, like the one Alun gave him
from Iolo’s desk. “You will record the book’s author and title, a brief summary of its contents, any important facts you’ll wish to recall later, and any questions you may have. I’ll set aside time to discuss those questions with you.”
She handed him the blank journal. He took it with his weak left hand and it dropped into his lap. He picked it up again with his right hand and put it on the table. He wiggled the fingers of his left hand and massaged it with his right unconsciously.
Ceridwen continued without noticing. “This is for your own benefit, you understand, to lay a foundation. When you’ve digested each book, I’ll show you where it lives on the shelves normally and explain to you a bit about its neighbors.”
George appreciated the thoroughness and orderliness of her proposed program. “It’s most kind of you,” he said, “to take all this time for one student. I’m grateful.”
“Nonsense. It’ll be refreshing to discuss these things with an interested adult instead of a reluctant young captive.
“Mind you, these books mustn’t leave the room. You may come here at all hours and not disturb me, whether I’m at work at my desk or asleep in my bed. I’ll let my staff know to admit you and, if they’re not awake to do so, please let yourself in quietly.
“As a practical exercise in what’s left of our time today, let’s work on some elementary glamoury. Basic rules: a glamour once achieved can be maintained indefinitely by an expert, as the story of Pwyll tells us. A glamour affects any who can see the wearer, and the glamour caster knows his own glamour while he casts it.”
George said, “I raised the question with Rhian about Scilti, is it a mental effect on the beholder, or a physical change? Either way, what about other senses—hearing, smell—and physical remnants, especially for smell? Can it fool a hound, for example? If the glamour’s released, does the scent while glamoured still fool the hounds?”
Ceridwen looked at him sharply, but with approval. “A well-cast glamoury affects both sight and hearing, but not touch. It reflects properly in a mirror. For the caster, it’s like operating within a shell, and a bit oppressive for long uses which is how many glamour casters are revealed, when they take a little ease. Not many have written about smell or taste, and the ones that did say those senses are not glamoured, which is why we warn girls away from wearing scent during a glamour. I doubt a glamour would fool a hound, who relies on his nose before his eyes or ears.”