The Spark

by David Drake

  The thing is, there’s always going to be a bully who wants to chivvy the new guy, and I was new in Dun Add. This was a better reason to be fighting than because some oik turned my bowl of stew over in my lap. That might even have been Easton.…

  He was coming toward me now. I decided to walk well out into the field so that none of the spectators would get hurt. I glanced at the sidelines again to make sure of that. To my surprise, the old Maker, Guntram showed up just as sharply as the men with weapons did; he was on the same plane. If I got a chance, I’d like to chat with him.

  Easton was feinting with his weapon, the bright line of it quivering above his right hand. I cocked mine to slant across his stroke if he made one.

  He sidled right. I turned with him, but my shield was cranked full on: it was like lifting an anvil with my left hand and pivoting. I moved my thumb to reduce power on the vernier control, but Easton came in fast and slashed at my left elbow through the edge of the shield.

  It was like running full-tilt in the dark and hitting the edge of an open door. My left forearm went numb, which was the last thing I needed right then. I was wondering if I ought to throw the shield down so I could move, but he got behind me and slammed my left knee from the back. It buckled and I went down.

  I had no real choice but to drop my shield then: the way I’d fallen, it didn’t protect me against anything but the earthworms. I tried to roll over, but Easton cut at my right forearm and my weapon dropped also.

  He jabbed me in the ribs. Twenty percent power wasn’t enough to penetrate, but chances were he’d broken one or two ribs. It was like a really hard kick.

  I reached for my weapon with my left hand. I could at least close the fingers on that side into a grip. Easton whacked me across the temple and things went gray. You’d think I’d have hurt less, but instead it felt like my whole skin was wrapped in buzzing white fire.

  I could hear people shouting, but I was far away from everything. I suppose they were calling on Easton to stop the fight. If he heard the cries, he ignored them: another blow caught me in the middle of the back.

  Everything went black. That was no surprise, but I didn’t seem to be unconscious. The great God knows I felt every one of the strokes that had hit me, but the darkness fell on me like a blanket and there were no more blows.

  I just lay there, feeling the grass tickle my nose and wondering if I was going to throw up. That lasted what seemed a long time.

  CHAPTER 4

  Making Everything Official

  I was hearing blurred voices; I’d been hearing them since it went dark. I was pretty sure that I could understand the words if I concentrated on them, but I didn’t have the energy to do that. I just wanted to lie where I was.

  I wondered if Easton had destroyed my eyes. I didn’t remember being hit again after the one that got me in the back, but maybe I wouldn’t.

  The blackness vanished. I was lying same as I had been when Easton first knocked me down. Boots were standing around me.

  “Don’t move, kid,” Morseth said. He gripped my forehead with his left hand to keep me from jerking away when he probed my scalp with his right thumb and forefinger.

  “If you want to know if it hurts,” I said, “I can tell you: it hurts.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t break the bone,” Morseth said, straightening. “You’ll be okay. At twenty percent there’s no burns.”

  My hearing was coming back. My ears rang a bit, but I figured that’d go away. I hoped so, anyhow.

  I put both palms on the ground and raised my torso very slowly. I was going to have bad bruises on both arms, but nothing was broken. I wasn’t as sure about my ribs after the jab they’d taken, but at least I wasn’t coughing blood.

  “What happened?” I said, staring at the ground as I got myself ready to put my knees under me. “I mean, it seemed to me that everything went black.”

  I didn’t want anybody to think I didn’t know what’d happened in the fight. Easton had well and truly whipped me.

  “The fight was over,” said Guntram. The two Champions and their attendants were standing close around me, but the old Maker was a little farther back. “I called on Easton to stop, but he continued beating you. I therefore caused the light at the place you were fighting to be refracted. When Easton stumbled out of the zone, your seconds directed him away.”

  “By all the saints,” muttered Rikard and turned his head. Morseth and Reaves had stiffened also. They were used to shields and weapons, but an Ancient device of unusual kind disturbed them.

  There were people back home who thought that anything unfamiliar came from Not-Here and was made by the Adversary. I didn’t understand that, but I’d learned that it was a waste of time to argue with them.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you all.”

  I eased myself back to where I was kneeling with my body upright. Easton and his crew were walking up the broad path toward the castle. I hadn’t touched him, hadn’t even had a chance to try. Other than bruises front and back, my torso seemed to have come through pretty well.

  “I left you concealed until Easton had gone well away,” Guntram said apologetically. “I was afraid that if he saw you within reach, he would have hit you again.”

  “He’d have wished he hadn’t,” Morseth growled.

  Which was likely true, but I’d seen how Easton behaved when he was angry. Another whack on the wrong place might’ve been all she wrote for me.

  Aloud I said, “I was glad just to lie there a little longer. Now, I’m going to try to stand up.”

  I said that last thing because somebody might have to grab me suddenly if I’d misjudged how ready my left leg was to hold me. I felt sick to my stomach for a moment, but I didn’t bring up my pork and collards. After that first wash of dizzy sickness, I was all right.

  “You going to be all right now?” Morseth said. “I can leave Rikard to help you get to your room if you think you might need a hand.”

  I bent over and picked up first my weapon, then my shield. By holding my torso stiff I was able to do that without screaming, but I stood with my eyes shut for a moment after hooking them onto my belt.

  “I’ll be all right,” I said, working at a smile. “I could use a guide to wherever I go to apply to join the Company of Champions, though.”

  Morseth and Reaves went blank-faced. Rikard smiled, then got a horrified look and turned away again.

  Very carefully, Morseth said, “You sure you want to do that right now, fellow?”

  “I’m sure,” I said, a bit too loud. I heard what wasn’t in his words too. I probably wouldn’t have felt so angry if I didn’t pretty much agree with Morseth. “That’s what I came to Dun Add to do, the only reason I came here, and I’m going to do it.”

  “He knows his own mind,” Reaves said. He was repeating the comment he’d made when he saw the equipment I was taking against Easton.

  “Sure, Rikard’ll guide you,” Morseth said with a shrug.

  “If you don’t mind, Morseth?” Guntram said. “My quarters are directly above the Aspirants’ Hall, so I can take Pal there on my way back.”

  “Well, if you’re willing to do that, sir,” the Champion said. “Though I’m happy to loan Rikard out for an hour, too.”

  “I have some things I’d like to discuss with Master Guntram,” I said. “I’d be pleased to have his company.”

  “Well, the two of you have a good time, then,” said Reaves. The Champions with their servants set off briskly toward the castle.

  “Everyone is very respectful to me,” Guntram said quietly as he watched their backs. “They don’t like to be reminded that I’m a Maker, though, and using the Sphere of Darkness did that.”

  “I get along fine with my neighbors on Beune,” I said. “But they don’t like to walk in on me when I’m trying to fix something. I’ve seen them standing at the end of my lane, waiting till I come out of the house, rather than take the risk that I’ll be in a trance.”

  Guntram laughed. “I
tell them that it’s no different from fighting,” he said. “Both involve merging your mind with the structure of Ancient equipment. What we Makers do is more subtle, perhaps, but it isn’t different.”

  He met my eyes. “Speaking of equipment,” he added, “would you mind if I carried yours?”

  “Your help would be a godsend,” I said, unbuckling the belt and handing it over. My pack didn’t weigh anything by now, but the hardware did. Besides, the stroke I’d taken across the back was already burning from the strain of the belt pulling down on my torso.

  We started up the paved path. Guntram let me set the pace, but I found that if I gritted my teeth I could do pretty well. It was probably good for me, not to let the bruised muscles stiffen up.

  I didn’t talk much on the way up, though. Breathing was hard, and I kept feeling where Easton had jabbed me in the ribs. Maybe I’d been wrong about nothing being broken.

  When we reached another of the doors on this side of the building, Guntram took off the belt and returned it to me. “Here’s where you go in,” he said, “I’ll hold your pack. And if you don’t mind, I’ll come in also.”

  “I’d be honored, sir,” I said. I took a deep breath. I didn’t expect this was going to be a pleasant interview, given the rest of what had happened since I reached Dun Add, but it had to be done. I opened the door and entered a large room.

  The light came through panels about six feet in each direction on the wall facing me. Windows, I thought, but they showed a sparse woodland instead of the courtyard and the part of the castle across from it. The light came from the panels, not through them.

  A woman wearing a turban of bright magenta stood behind the counter to the right. The rest of the room was a narrow lobby reaching to the outside door in the far wall. There were sturdy wooden benches and doors in both sidewalls.

  The half-dozen loungers didn’t notice us, but the woman got a look of amazement and dipped into a curtsey. “Yes, Master?” she said.

  She was talking to Guntram, behind me. “I’m just passing through, thank you,” he said. “This gentleman has business with you, however.”

  I walked carefully to the counter. My left leg was going to throw me if I didn’t concentrate on what I was doing.

  The woman had brought everybody’s attention to me. One lounger got up and walked out through the door to the courtyard, and the pairs that had been chattering now watched silently.

  “I want to apply to the Company of Champions,” I said. My voice was firm and clear; I’d been afraid that I was going to squeak.

  She looked at me. She was probably about fifty, but she could’ve been anywhere from thirty to sixty; not pretty, never pretty, but with a calm assurance that I found comforting. It reminded me of my mother’s.

  “Master Guntram?” she called past me. “Are you his sponsor?”

  “No he’s not!” I said. “My name’s Pal, I’m from Beune and I’m here on my own.”

  “All right,” said the woman. “Lay your equipment on the counter.”

  I put my shield before her, then found I had to use both hands with the weapon: my right hand alone didn’t quite lift it off the belt hook. That was good, because otherwise it would’ve fallen to the floor. I hoped my right arm would be all right in the morning, but it sure wasn’t now.

  “Are you sick?” the woman said, her hands on the shield.

  “Just banged up a little,” I said. “Nothing a night’s sleep won’t cure.”

  It’d take more than a night, but nothing was broken. The woman reminded me of Mom again; she’d have asked with just that tone. I put the weapon beside the shield and said, “I built them myself. I’m going to work more on them before the next time I go out in the field, I hope.”

  The woman turned to the blank wall to her left—and switched on the weapon, moving it from minimum to its sparkling, spitting maximum. She shut down and laid it on the counter where the discharge point burned another scar on the wood.

  She picked up the shield, again using her right hand. I was amazed. I’d heard there were women who could operate weapons, but I’d never seen it done before. Well, most people hadn’t seen a Maker who could handle weapons either.

  She switched on the shield and brought it up gradually to full power. Her face, impassive when she tried the weapon, lost its stern lines for a moment.

  Then she tried to swing the shield around to face me. For an instant she looked incredulous; then she shut down and put the shield back on the counter.

  “That’s the problem I have to work on,” I said to her stony silence. “The inertia. Well, the main problem.”

  “Be that as it may…” the woman said, “your application is rejected.”

  “Ma’am!” I said. I didn’t know how I was going to go on, so I stopped.

  “There’s no appeal from my decisions,” the woman said. “If you want to go two doors west—” she pointed to her right “—there’s an enlistment office for the army, though the barracks aren’t here in the castle. I don’t give you much chance there either, to be honest, but that’s none of my business.”

  “I don’t want the bloody army!” I said, hanging my equipment back on my belt. The weapon wasn’t hot enough to really burn me, though the point against my thigh reminded me that it’d been run at maximum recently.

  “Since you’re a Maker…” she said, not quite so harshly this time, “the Commonwealth has much work for your skills. I can direct you, or perhaps Master Guntram would introduce you to Louis himself?”

  I felt my lips work and wished that I’d turned away. “Ma’am,” I said, “I came to Dun Add to be a Champion. If I can’t be a Champion, then I’ll go back to Beune. I can be a Maker there, just like I have been these twenty years—”

  More like ten that I’d really been a Maker.

  “—and I can live with folks I like and who like me. But thank you for your time.”

  I turned and started out. At least the gush of anger had swathed my aches and pains. They’d be back with a vengeance after I cooled down, but at least it’d get me out of the building and heading with Buck down to the landingplace.

  “Pal?” said a voice beside me, and I remembered that Guntram was holding my pack. I’d been blind with my thoughts and the hint of tears behind them.

  “Sorry, sir,” I said, standing straight and meeting the old man’s eyes. I reached for the pack.

  He swung it aside. “I told you my quarters are above this hall,” he said. “I’d be pleased to have your company overnight. I have a device which might help your bruises as well.”

  I was going to refuse and go on out the door, but another wave of dizziness hit me. I closed my eyes, then opened them fast. I was going to topple onto the stone floor if I wasn’t careful. My sense of balance was fouled up; just for a day or two, I hoped.

  “That’s very good of you,” I said. I wondered if it was the old man’s kindness that had brought on the dizzy spell. I hadn’t earned it, that I knew. “I guess it’d be best if I didn’t go back on the Road today like I’d figured to do. And if you can do something about the bruises, that would be really good.”

  “This way,” Guntram said and led me through a side door that turned out to be a staircase.

  I worried a bit about Buck, but he wasn’t a pampered lapdog. He’d been hard places before—if that thing from Not-Here had come for me instead of flowing back into the Waste, Buck would’ve joined me and the sixty square yards of Jimsey’s brush in the creature’s gut.

  Right now, my biggest problem was climbing three flights of stairs. Which I managed, thank God.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry it’s such a climb,” Guntram said, “but I wanted to be out of the way. Sometimes I make noises or lights that would disturb people.”

  “Nobody lives very close on Beune,” I said, trying not to gasp as I spoke. “Except family, you know. I didn’t start really working with things till after Dad had died. As a Maker, I mean. Mom and I never talked about it. I think sh
e was sort of proud, but she walked away whenever she found me in a trance.”

  Once I’d come out of working with a piece I never did get to do anything and found a pasty and a mug of ale on the floor beside where I was lying. From the slant of the sunlight, I’d been three or four hours at it. Mom must’ve tiptoed in and left the food for whenever I was ready to eat it.

  I smiled at the memory. Guntram was looking back at me from the top of the stairs. He’d stopped at a door.

  “You’re feeling better?” he said as he pulled the latch and pushed the door open.

  “I am,” I said. Just chatting with somebody about being a Maker was a wonderful thing, the first time in my life that I’d done it. “But what I was thinking about was a piece that I’m sure is something but I could never get it to do anything. I added every element I could think of—it took a lot of carbon and some silica, but not even a whiff of iron. It never even hinted at coming live. If it had, I could maybe have figured out what was missing.”

  “Do you still have it?” Guntram said, leading me in. He moved his left hand; panels of light bloomed in the walls, just like downstairs in the lobby. Here I was looking out over a huge forest with the top of a stone building rising through the green like an upturned thumb. Our viewpoint might be from a building like that one or just a very high tree.

  “It’s somewhere back at the house in Beune,” I said. “In the barn, I guess. Unless Gervaise’s done something with it, but I don’t figure he would.”

  I’d be living there again shortly, working for Gervaise, I guess. He’d let me live there anyhow—he didn’t need the house, it just came with the land. Besides, he and his family were friends.

  “Ah, sir?” I said. “I wonder…?”

  “Call me Guntram,” he said firmly. “Yes, what do you wonder about?”

  I laughed. I half wished I hadn’t, then, because of the jab in my ribs, but talking to Guntram was relaxing me.

  “Well, really a lot of things,” I said, gesturing with my left hand in a broad arc. “But what I was going to say was the windows.”

  I pointed. “I thought they might be paintings, but then I saw a bird fly across.”