The Spark

by David Drake

  May shivered. “Which Gismonde did,” she said. “And the port was poisoned. And Gismonde died. So Baran’s saying Jolene poisoned his friend and demands trial by combat. And Ziga hanged herself, so we all know what happened but we can’t say anything without everybody knowing why she was trying to kill Jolene. And nobody else will stand up for Jolene because they all think she did it. And she didn’t.”

  “Well, Lord Clain will be her champion,” I said. What a bloody awful mess. “That may look bad, but he’ll do it anyway.”

  I didn’t bother saying that Clain would be a much better champion than I would. I certainly remembered the rap he’d given me in the Aspirants’ Tournament, and that was just at twenty percent power.

  “There must be a dozen people gone off trying to find Clain,” May said. “Jolene sent some, Jon sent some; I know that some of the other girls sent messengers too. But this boat arrived in Dun Add with a delegation from Roughpuff and I hired it to find you.”

  She took a deep breath and added. “The boatman, Stefan, knows you. I told him I was your friend and I think that’s why he was willing to leave Dun Add right away. I apologize for the lie.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. I was feeling a dizzy spell coming over me. “Look, why me? Even if you can’t find Clain, there’s better people than me out there.”

  “I could tell you the truth,” May said. “I could trust you to be fair. Jolene’s a slut, if you want, but she didn’t poison Gismonde. Or try to poison Baran!”

  “I didn’t call anybody a slut,” I said. I was shivering so bad that I was slurring words. “I was going back to Dun Add anyway, I’ve finished here.”

  And I’d finished at Farandol, which was the task the Leader had set me. A lifetime ago, I thought. It was a lifetime: Lord Palin’s life.

  I lurched to my feet. The sun had gone down, and the sudden chill went straight to my bones.

  “I need to get warm,” I said, trotting toward my own boat. So long as I took short steps and didn’t change speed, I thought I could make it.

  I was running down a tunnel with gray walls, the edges of my vision. All the color washed out, and the walls narrowed. I stepped through the hatch and the tunnel went black. For a moment I could feel hands supporting me.

  Then there was nothing.

  * * *

  I woke up with all the bedding and spare clothes on top of me in my compartment, and a warm body huddled against mine. May was in the bed with me.

  I slid out. Buck came out of his compartment and nuzzled me gratefully, whining.

  “Pal, I was afraid,” May called. “You were so cold even with the blankets over you.”

  “I meant to raise the temperature in my compartment,” I said. “But I guess I fell asleep too soon.”

  “You passed out, you mean,” May said, joining me in the hall. Except that she was barefoot, she was wearing the same clothes as she had when we’d been talking outside Castle Ariel. “Pal, what happened to you? Baga isn’t sure.”

  “I’m not sure either,” I said. “Something attacked me. It’s dead now but it seems to have screwed me up worse’n I thought.”

  Baga was leaning against the bow console; we were under way. I frowned.

  “I told Baga to take us all to Dun Add,” May said, following my eyes. “You’d said you were finished where we were—Catermole?”

  “Castle Ariel,” I said. I realized I might never have told Baga my name for the place we’d captured.

  “There are doctors as good as anywhere on Dun Add,” May said. “And your friend Guntram is there, he knows a lot of things. Maybe about what happened to you.”

  “That’s possible,” I said. Not about what happened to me—I was pretty sure that I was the only living person who’d been in the place Palin had taken me. But I trusted Guntram to fix me better than I trusted any of the doctors I’d seen in Dun Add. Anyway, it’d be good to see him again.

  “Just a moment,” I said. I dropped into a brief trance to enter the boat’s controls, then returned to Here and closed the door of my compartment.

  May was watching me doubtfully. “I raised the temperature in that room to ninety degrees,” I explained. “In case I have another of these attacks.”

  May’s face went hard and she turned her head. She didn’t speak.

  “What you did was very smart,” I said. “Without your body heat, I don’t know if the covers would’ve been enough. But now that I’m awake again, I’m doing what I meant from the beginning.”

  “I just didn’t want you to think…” she said. She didn’t finish that, and I didn’t want her to.

  We had plenty of room for three people and Buck—and May’s cat, if she didn’t sleep with May. The boat wasn’t designed for people to socialize, though.

  I opened another compartment and sat on the bed with my knees out in the corridor, then patted the end of the bunk closer to where May stood.

  “I’ll sleep in another of the compartments if I’m all right,” I said as she carefully lowered herself onto the bunk. “The warm one’s just if I get the chills again.”

  “Pal, how did you make the compartment warm?” May said. “Are you a boatman? Baga said that wasn’t possible.”

  “I’m a Maker,” I said. “I think all the Ancients must’ve been Makers and boatmen and maybe warriors too, given how much we find from them even after thousands of years.”

  I felt old ideas running through my head again. These were things I’d thought about ever since I was a kid, as soon as I learned about Makers and that I was one.

  “I don’t know what happened to them, to the Ancients,” I said. “I wonder if it’s going to happen to us. We don’t even know enough to know what to be afraid of, May!”

  May looked at me cautiously. She thinks I’m crazy, but she doesn’t want to say that. I smiled with my lips and said, “Well, there’s probably nothing at all. But if there is, I think it’d be best if we were all united in a Commonwealth. The Leader is doing that.”

  “I used to have dreams,” May said, turning her face away from mine. “I laugh at them now, but I’ve got a very nice estate on Danalaw.”

  Then she said, “I wonder if I’d be happier if I went back to dreaming.”

  I don’t think she was talking to me.

  * * *

  I had another attack of the chills on the next day and ducked into the warmed compartment. In the times I was conscious, I wondered how long this was going to go on. I knew the answer might be, “As long as you live,” and the wash of despair made me feel even worse.

  I was weak as a kitten when the spell passed. “I’m not going to be much use to you in Dun Add if this goes on,” I said to May as we sat on the edge of the other compartment. She was petting her cat, I was rubbing Buck behind the ears.

  “I hope it stops,” May said, and it wasn’t just words. She really sounded worried.

  “Chances are, somebody will’ve come back with Lord Clain by the time we reach Dun Add,” I said. “He can handle Baran.”

  What I was really thinking, though, was what it’d be like to have these spells for the rest of my life. If the creature in that other place had bitten my leg off, I wouldn’t expect it to regrow. I’d been there in spirit, so my body wasn’t harmed, but the harm to that spirit might be just as permanent.

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said. She wasn’t looking at me. “I’m sorry you’ve been hurt.”

  “That comes with being a Champion,” I said. “I hope I’ll get over it.”

  “My uncle was a Champion,” May said to the closed door of the compartment I was keeping warm. “He’s retired from a hurt shoulder but his son’s an Aspirant now. Do you know him? Lord Parry?”

  “I met him, I guess,” I said, trying to place the name. “I don’t know him well.”

  “Parry was eliminated in the first round of the Aspirant’s Tournament,” May said. “He’s a nice boy, but he’s not in your class, Pal.”

  She looked at me and said, “You’r
e really very good, Pal.”

  I started to say, “I’ve got good gear,” which is true; but it’d also be a lie if I meant it for an answer to what May’d said. I could beat Parry any time, every time, and the difference wasn’t the hardware.

  “Thank you,” I said. And that was all I said.

  “My father is the Count of Baygen,” May said, to the other compartment again. “We do all right, but Baygen isn’t big and I’m the third daughter. My uncle introduced me to Jolene. She liked me and took me into her suite.”

  She swallowed but didn’t look around. “It was very exciting,” she said. “A lot better than marriage to the sort of man my pittance of a dowry would attract. I’ve never seen the attraction in slopping hogs. I met interesting, powerful men, and some of them were rich. Very rich.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Nothing was what I wanted to say, but she’d take that as well, bad.

  I said, “I’ve never much liked hogs myself.”

  May nodded sharply. “I think I’ll lie down for a bit,” she said as she rose. “Since you’re all right.”

  * * *

  Baga brought us onto the landingplace at Dun Add a few hours later.

  CHAPTER 32

  Getting Ready

  The figure of light standing in front of Guntram’s door looked nearly human, but the ears and eye-sockets were almost perfectly round and the hands each had three slender fingers and thumbs that stuck out at right angles while at his sides.

  “Good morning, Lord Pal,” the figure said in a soprano voice. “Master Guntram asked me to send you in directly that you arrived.”

  Guntram had been friendly as you could ask to everyone I’d seen him talk to; I hadn’t been able to understand why people at Dun Add seemed frightened as well as respecting him. I wasn’t afraid of the new doorman, but it startled me. I suddenly had a notion of why Guntram did frighten people who weren’t Makers.

  “Thank you, ah, servant,” I said as I opened the door. It was silly to speak, I guess, because I knew that the figure wasn’t even material—let alone able to be pleased by my politeness. Mom had driven into me that it was always right to be courteous, though, and I didn’t see any reason to make exception for people who weren’t really people.

  I closed the door and took a moment to look for the projector. It stood on the end of the shelf to the right of the door, a set of three spindles of different-colored crystal, joined at the top. I recognized the chartreuse one as a scrap from my own collection, though it’d been extended on both ends. I hadn’t had the faintest notion of what it could be used for.

  I came out of my trance and searched for Guntram. His head rose above the top of the workbench in a corner across the room. “Pal!” he said. “I’m glad to see you. Are things going well.”

  “Well, yes and no, sir,” I said, weaving toward him through the stacks and tables. “I was able to straighten things out on Farandol, but I seem to have gotten hurt. I hope you can maybe help me.”

  As I spoke, I realized that I hadn’t really fixed Farandol, just gotten rid of Lang. It still needed a proper government and, if Jon really wanted, a garrison. I hadn’t seen any sign of the Road there in the Marches being dangerous, but I hadn’t done any patrolling because I’d travelled by boat.

  Except for going to slaughter the people in Rowley’s Roost. I winced, but I’d paid off Lang for what I’d done there.

  Guntram was looking at me closely. “Yes,” he said. “There certainly is something wrong with you, Pal. Come over to the couch.”

  “I’m not sure that it’ll work for this, sir,” I said, following as he bustled to the corner. “My spirit was in another place, and a thing there fought me. I came off best, but it was a fight and no mistake.”

  “I’ve been playing with the couch since you provided me with a series of subjects to test it on,” Guntram said. He sounded brightly cheerful, but I don’t know how the injured warriors who’d come to him would’ve taken being called “subjects.” “I’ve been entering the mechanism while it’s working, and I think we can work on your current trouble. Enter it along with me, as when we were working on the boat together.”

  Guntram had moved a chair with arms near the couch since I was here before. He sat in it.

  “Can I—” I started. And stopped, because Guntram wouldn’t have suggested that if I couldn’t do it. I lay down carefully on the couch and dropped into a trance. Guntram was waiting for me in a bundle—a basket, maybe—of strands of light, completely different from the artifacts I was used to. There were no angles in this—in me.

  I hadn’t learned about this capacity of the couch when you were last here, Guntram said. I learned by observing as the couch healed physical wounds.

  Guntram was a presence with me, but I didn’t see a little figure. I wasn’t a present figure either.

  Fortunately, Guntram continued, sounding to me just like he always did, the couch had created an image of you when you used it before, so all we have to do is to return the new image to the form and color of what you were previously.

  I spent a moment looking at amazing curving knots. The colors were toward the blues and purples to start out, but as my viewpoint travelled along the pattern we slipped into bands of green and almost immediately reds and oranges. The fibers in the brighter colors were thinner and often ragged.

  Here is the damage, Guntram said. A web in fine gray formed over a section of the bright portion, enclosing and sometimes tucking in the broken ends. Now, if we fill it back according to the previous pattern, matching the hue to that of the threads to which it’s attached…

  One of the strands turned yellow, then green and on into darkening blues. I chose another strand and concentrated on it. Normally I would have been encouraging material from trays nearby to move and resettle itself onto the workpiece—down at the crystalline level.

  There was no material damage here to repair. I was transferring energy into the pattern from—somewhere. I suppose from the couch itself, because there was nothing else around. It reminded me of guiding water into irrigation channels, row by row, as farmers in the south of Beune did in dry months.

  The strand I was working on darkened slowly. I found it worked better for me to start with a considerable length and build it back gradually. Guntram worked on shorter sections at a time, bringing them down to indigo at the edge of violet in a smooth process. He worked so quickly that the intermediate stages were barely visible.

  Technique apart, Guntram was simply better than I was. That didn’t bother me. There were things I was better at than Guntram was, but none of them involved skill as a Maker.

  I later figured that we’d worked eighteen hours solid, both of us. I didn’t have any notion while it was going on. I’d never have been able to work that long in a single run on normal stuff, but because of what we were doing I didn’t feel tired the way I’d have done if it’d have been a shield I was rebuilding.

  As for Guntram, well…there was nobody like Guntram. I don’t doubt that Louis could turn out weapons that were more powerful than the originals of the bits he started with—Guntram said he could, anyway—but Louis would never have figured out the structure of what we were doing now.

  I wouldn’t have either. But I could learn, and I had a good teacher.

  I think we’ve repaired the damage, don’t you? Guntram said.

  I drew back my focus and looked at the pattern rather that the series of little bits. Everything I could see was a uniform dark indigo, more consistent—particularly the strands Guntram had worked on—than the portion that hadn’t been damaged to begin with.

  “Thank you, Guntram,” I said. “Thank you, sir.”

  Then let’s get something to eat, said Guntram. Together we withdrew.

  * * *

  We ate in Guntram’s quarters, stew that quiet servants brought in more quickly than I’d have expected them to be able to bring it up from the refectory on the ground floor. I wondered if there was a little kitchen nearby on this floor�
��just for Guntram. He made folks in Dun Add nervous—no question. But they honored him anyhow, and they all seemed to like him.

  It made me think about me and my neighbors in Beune. It’s not really a bad way to live, if you weren’t the sort who needed a lot of people around all the time. I didn’t know enough Makers to be able to guess if they all—we all—were like that.

  I emptied my beer—they had beer for me—and poured myself another mug. “Guntram?” I said. “Do you think they’ll find Lord Clain before the Consort’s champion has to fight Lord Baran?”

  “If Clain hasn’t been found thus far,” Guntram said, “it’s because he’s deliberately put himself out of the way. Clain is as committed to the Commonwealth as Jon himself is, or Louis. This…difficulty must embarrass him greatly. I think he’s gone somewhere that people from Dun Add wouldn’t be able to call him back easily.”

  He looked at me. “Clain would come back to save Jolene if he knew the situation,” Guntram said. “I don’t doubt that in the least. Even if he believed in his heart that it would be better for the Commonwealth if she died.”

  “That’s an awful thought!” I said. “Do you believe that, Guntram?”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, Pal,” he said with a lopsided smile. “I don’t really believe in anything, I’m afraid. Certainly not enough to sacrifice the life of a gracious lady to support that belief.”

  “Sorry,” I said, embarrassed at flying hot because a friend had told the truth. I had another sip of beer—just a sip; the speed I’d gulped the first one might have had something to do with being snappish. “Guntram, what do you think about trial by combat?”

  He shrugged. “I think the practice has been very good for the Commonwealth,” he said. “It has repeatedly replaced a probable war with a fight in which one or at worst two men die. Whether it’s been good for the individuals involved depends on circumstances, of course.”