by E. M. Foner
“Here,” she said, sliding it across the table. “At the rate this is going, you’re going to be twice my size by the time we catch up with the players.”
“How much does a horse outweigh a person?” he asked playfully during a pause between heaping spoonfuls. “If I’m ever going to carry you, I have to bulk up.”
Meghan rose to question the woman about the location of their water well, and Bryan powered through the remains of her second breakfast. On finding that the well was on the opposite side of the hamlet from the communal outhouse, she asked for and was granted permission to fill their water skins. Bryan had polished off two more bowls by the time she returned. After paying the woman eight coppers for the oatmeal and receiving one back as a quantity discount, she purchased provisions for the road, and they left the hamlet.
Chapter 14
“So were all those people back in the settlement magicless?” Bryan asked as soon as they reached a discreet distance from the stockade.
“No. What makes you say that?”
“She said it’s a communal marriage, and I just assumed…”
“Oh. I guess I’ve heard it’s the way that people in some rural communities manage things, to keep one person from dominating a group. They all end up sharing what magic they have as equals. Nobody in the castles follows the old ways.”
“They’d fit right in where I came from,” Bryan commented. “Everything here is different than I would have expected, you know?”
“No, actually. What would you have expected?”
“Like, everybody living up to their ankles in manure, and guys riding through on horses and cutting people down with swords. A lot of crying and wailing, people with horrible diseases. You know, a lot darker.”
“Darker than Dark Earth? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, we have modern medicine and everybody goes to school, not to mention indoor plumbing. You guys are living in the Dark Ages, after all.”
“Not in your Dark Ages, we aren’t. Do you think we’re some crippled version of your world that’s stuck in the past because we don’t have your fancy toys?”
“But you already said that the barons are at war all the time and the whole place is ruled by some king who everybody hates. What happens when the soldiers steal the crops, burn down the houses and take the women?”
“Do soldiers do those things on Dark Earth? Here they fight each other. The barons buy food from the farmers to feed the armies and the soldiers wouldn’t fight otherwise. Who burns houses and takes women? If any soldier tried that, the other soldiers would kill him. There are rules about those things, just like there were rules in the kitchen.”
“But if they have the swords and the spears, who can stop them from doing what they want?”
“Why should they want to do those things? They’re soldiers, their job is fighting other soldiers. And if they tried, there are a lot more farmers than there are soldiers, and plenty of them have fighting experience from their own time in the army. Would you want to get in a fight with a farmer who’s sharpened his strengthening magic pulling up tree stumps?”
Bryan though it over for a minute. “Maybe not.”
Chapter 15
By the time the sun was directly overhead, Bryan was hungry again. It didn’t help that he was playing with fire almost continuously now, putting it out only when other travelers came into view. There was just something about producing flames that felt so right to him, but the girl kept pushing him to try something else.
“Look,” Meghan said. “It’s great you can do something magical now because it means I’ll be able to use magic without putting to lie that we’re man and wife. But everybody I’ve ever met can do fire, and unless you’re training to be a war mage, bigger isn’t better. If you’d just put in the effort I’m sure I could teach you something more useful.”
“Like what?” Bryan asked grudgingly. He flicked a ball of flames into the sky, and then cast another one up to intercept the first before it dispersed. “Can you show me how to make food?”
“You can’t just make food out of thin air,” she told him. “You can only encourage things that might have happened anyway.”
“You keep saying that, but what about the farmers giving themselves strength, or Hadrixia’s healings?”
“Those are things that already exist,” Meghan replied patiently. “Farmers and laborers use the memory of strength to add to their ability. There’s a magical cost, of course, and even the strongest mages have a limit to their capacity. Hadrixia uses her magic to help people heal themselves. It’s as if she serves as their—what did you call it? Magical battery.”
“But how?”
“It’s—I can’t explain everything I’ve spent years studying in one sentence.”
“Then start with the ‘Happy truths’ thing. What did Hadrixia learn from nature that would let her do that?”
“You’ve never seen a happy person?” Meghan asked incredulously. “No wonder we call it Dark Earth. And can’t you tell whether somebody is lying to you or being sincere? If you start paying attention you’ll see how things are actually put together, including emotions, and before you know it you’ll be able to reproduce them. But to affect a person directly, like healing, you need physical contact.”
“So you could teach me to make myself stronger?”
“If you have the capacity, yes. But I’d rather you started with some more practical things which you can show off when we’re around other people because that will free me to use more magic myself. Remember, we’re supposed to be in perfect balance.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Bryan offered. “I’ll try to learn whatever you want to teach me until we get to the next place selling food if you pay for lunch.”
“But I gave you all of the money Hadrixia gifted us,” Meghan replied in surprise.
“Well, somebody has to be a saver or we could find ourselves broke.”
“I’m beginning to think I summoned the only dragon in the world whose only talents are eating and hoarding,” Meghan muttered.
“And flames,” Bryan said cheerfully, tossing another fireball into the sky.
“Alright, alright. If you’re so focused on dragon talents, how about we work on levitating?”
“You mean flying?” he asked, obviously intrigued by the idea.
“No. Flying will have to wait until you learn to take on a dragon’s form. Levitating comes in handy for all sorts of things, like my slowing you down when you fell from the tower.”
“But how can you show something like that for me to see it?” Bryan demanded. He immediately felt bad about being so strident when he knew the girl was trying to help him, but something at back of his brain kept telling him he should assert control over his surroundings.
Meghan stopped and reached down to pick up a pebble. Next she displayed it to him between her thumb and forefinger to show there was nothing special about it.
“Now watch closely,” she instructed him. Then the girl tossed it in the air in the direction they were traveling and walked forward to catch it, mouthing commands under her breath. The pebble seemed to take forever to fall, almost coming to a halt before she got her hand under it. Meghan turned to her companion with a small smile of pride, but his eyes were following a little ball of fire he’d quietly flung off.
“Hey! If you don’t pay attention I’m not buying lunch.”
“I tried, but all I could think was, ‘Oh, a flying pebble.’ Who cares?”
“I have an idea,” she said. “Give me your ring.”
“What?” he growled, sticking his ring hand in his pocket to hide it. “Use your own ring.”
“I can’t believe you,” she said in frustration, working her fictitious wedding ring off over her knuckle. “Now watch.”
Meghan tossed the ring in the air, higher than the light pebble had gone, and muttered to slow its descent. Bryan watched with a look of intensity that was almost frightening. If somebody had stuck a log in the road,
he would have tripped over it.
“Do it again,” he ordered when the ring came to rest in Meghan’s hand.
She tossed the ring forward again, and this time she got the arc just right, so that with a little magical levitation, it came down in her hand as they walked forward at their usual pace.
“I think I’m getting it,” Bryan said. “Again.”
This time she flipped the ring upwards by flicking her thumb off of her index finger, like children throw marbles. It rotated rapidly, glittering like a small golden ball in the sun. Then a crow came flashing down, caught the ring in its beak, and began flapping away.
“Don’t!” Meghan cried, but a blast of fire from Bryan’s hand had already caught the crow, and it crashed down in a ball of flame. “I could have called it back or followed it to its nest,” the girl said sorrowfully.
“My way works better,” Bryan retorted, striding into the tall meadow grass and making sure the crow was dead with a stomp of his boot. “How are you going to survive out here if you cry over killing a crow?”
She swallowed dryly when he returned with the ring and placed it in her hand. It was barely warm.
“Again,” he demanded.
This time, Meghan was careful to check the sky for birds before throwing the ring.
Chapter 16
After polishing off a whole chicken by himself, along with three baked potatoes, a family-sized plate of green beans, and a pitcher of hard apple cider, Bryan felt satiated for the first time since he discovered the joys of fire making. Even though he had made good progress with levitation before they reached the inn, the fact that his magic instructor was paying for the lunch made the meal even tastier.
Meghan barely made it through a serving of hearty soup, despite the fact that she thought she had never been so hungry when they sat down. Bryan’s progress at magic in less than a day was truly astounding, and she suspected he might have equaled her own ability in levitation if she hadn’t broken off the lessons every time other people appeared on the road. Her fear was that a stranger might make a playful grab for the gold ring, triggering a deadly reaction from her student.
During the years she had spent searching for a dragon, Meghan had always imagined a loyal companion who could transform into a creature with a mouth full of frightening teeth and stand between her and danger. She was starting to realize that the legends and popular woodblock prints of girls riding dragons in flight may not have told the whole story. Bryan clearly had a mind of his own and would act according to his own wishes, and that was beginning to scare her. Meghan wondered if her time would have been better spent training a large dog.
“Are you not talking to me because of the bird thing?” Bryan demanded. He sensed a change in Meghan, a drawing away, and he decided that he didn’t like it.
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I don’t know.” Meghan exhaled sharply and mentally berated herself for sounding like a child. “Crows eat crops, though they eat the insects that damage crops as well, so the farmers around the castle mainly leave them alone. It was how you killed it without a thought, like brushing away a fly.”
“Sorry,” Bryan said, but the simultaneous shrug made it clear that he was only sorry she was unhappy, not that he had roasted the crow. “I’ve been listening in for a while on those guys at the table in the corner and they talked about taking a shortcut to Castle Foregone. One of them said it cuts a day off of the trip, plus there aren’t many people.”
Meghan put a finger to her lips and shushed him, looking towards the corner at the same time to see if the well-armed trio had overheard Bryan’s recitation of their private conversation.
“You can hear what those guys are saying?” she whispered.
“Sure. The one they call Dagger is telling the other two about the time—uh, I don’t think you want to know,” Bryan concluded awkwardly.
“They’re bandits,” she hissed at him. “No, don’t look over there. I’m not interested in a shortcut that has men like them traveling it, and you realize that leaving the road means no inns or settlements to buy food.”
“Forget that!” Bryan exclaimed. “Hey, since you’re buying lunch, how about asking if they’ll sell us a couple of chickens to go?”
“You’re impossible,” Meghan retorted, though his obsession with food was sort of endearing. “Uh, oh. I think those bandits are looking at us now. It was a mistake getting your clothes fixed for you. We should have just bought you something new.”
“What’s wrong with blue jeans and a white T-shirt?”
“Nobody else wears anything similar if you haven’t noticed. It may lead some people to assume you’re from a rich family, since they’re the only ones who can afford to spend money on clothes for the sake of looking different. Oh, crumbs. They’re heading over here, so let me do the talking.”
Three tough-looking men with iron spurs strapped to their boots approached the young couple’s table. Two of them rested axes on their shoulders, and the third carried a short sword by the scabbard in his left hand.
“My friends and I noticed that the two of you kept looking our way,” drawled the bandit with the sword. An ugly scar ran from corner of his mouth up to his left eye, as if he had tried eating something on the tip of a knife while drunk and missed badly. “The only explanation we could come up with for your interest is that you wanted to treat us to lunch.”
“Dream on,” Bryan growled, ignoring Meghan’s frantic gestures and rising to his feet. He was a fist taller than the scarred leader, and somehow he seemed to loom over all three of the older men, even with the table between them. He lazily stretched his hands above his head, causing his vertebrae to crack loudly, and a subtle red glow danced around his fingertips.
“Watch it, Dagger. That one’s packing heavy magic,” said the man to the leader’s right. He spat ostentatiously on the floor.
“They’re kids,” Dagger snorted, moving his free hand deliberately to the hilt of his sword.
“He’ll burn you before you draw,” the sideman stated flatly, backing towards the door to be out of the line of fire. “You know my talent is measuring what people have inside, but even you should be able to see it in his eyes.”
Meghan risked a glance away from the bandits and saw immediately what the man was talking about. Little flames sparked in her companion’s green eyes, as if they were just waiting for an excuse to get free and burn something. She shuddered involuntarily, and then forced herself to speak.
“Please, just leave,” she said, reaching for the talisman hanging around her neck. Meghan wasn’t sure what she would do if the highwayman drew his sword, but she knew if she didn’t come up with something, Bryan might accidentally send the whole place up in flames.
Dagger didn’t like what he saw in the younger man’s eyes any more than Meghan did, and he turned suddenly and strode out the door. Bryan waited until the three men were outside before he sat down with a lazy grin.
“I told you to let me handle it,” Meghan reproached him, though she found herself strangely drawn to his aggressive attitude at the same time.
“How many fights have you been in?” he asked her offhandedly.
“What?”
“You heard me. How many fights have you been in?”
“None,” she said. “And I want to keep it that way.”
“I took my share of bullying,” Bryan told her, ignoring the latter part of her response. “Every couple of years in school I’d have to fight some guy to keep from getting picked on. I’m not saying that I ever intimidated anybody, but I know how to stand up. And whatever you think, I had those guys beat.”
“You would have killed them and burned down the inn!”
“Yes to the first, maybe to the second.” Bryan reached across the table and took one of Meghan’s hands in his, and she noticed for the first time that she was trembling. “Are you sure you’re up for this adventure? I’ll admit I don’t have a clue where we’re going or what’s going to happen to us, but I’ve played enoug
h fantasy games to imagine I have a better grip on what we’re headed into than you do. Your friend Phinneas didn’t get his scars eating prickly fruits, and he wasn’t training those guys with wooden swords to be chefs.”
“Aren’t you afraid of anything?” Meghan asked softly.
“I used to be afraid of almost everything. Then I died and you brought me here. Now I’m, I don’t know, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anybody push me around or take my treasure.”
He released her hand and sat back, looking rather pleased with himself.
“I’ll talk to the cook and see if I can get a chicken to go,” Meghan said.
Chapter 17
By the time they stopped for supper, Bryan could bring the falling gold ring to a dead stop in the air. He could also make it come to him, though he found himself more and more reluctant to hand it back to Meghan each time he touched it. There was just something about gold.
“We’re making good time, and it would be nice to sleep in a bed tonight,” Meghan hinted after their picnic meal was finished. “It will be dark in a couple of hours, so maybe we should stop at the next inn or settlement to ask.”
“Bad strategy,” Bryan replied, wiping his hands on his T-shirt. He couldn’t get over the fact that the grease came off of his fingers, but rather than staining the cloth, it balled up and fell to the ground like tiny beads of water rolling off a waterproofed poncho. He wondered if there was a magical landfill somewhere overflowing with the stuff people wiped off on their shirts and pants.
“How is sleeping in a bed a bad strategy?”
“If somebody from your castle is trying to chase us down on horseback, they’re sure to stop at every place we could take shelter. You already have us diving in the bushes every time I hear horses coming.”
“But nobody will ride at night.”