A History of Magic

by Scott J Robinson

  Thok glanced at his own spoon, resting in his empty bowl, as if he had never given it any thought.

  “Anyway, how are you?” Rawk asked, glad he had gotten the other man thinking.

  “I’m living. Though it would be much easier to do if it wasn’t for all the exots.”

  “I’m doing my best.”

  “You and every other Hero, old and young alike.”

  “Katamood’s the center of the world again, apparently.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  Rawk shrugged. “How are the wharves going these days?”

  “The wharves are going like a bunch of toddlers; noisy, smelly, messy and I can’t keep up. Katamood is the center of the world, remember.”

  “I imagine it will get worse when the canal opens.”

  Thok shrugged. “Some things change, some things stay the same, even when they change.”

  Didn’t Rawk know that? He ate silently for a while. “What are you reading?”

  “Conversations with Gerrum.”

  “That sounds exciting.”

  “Have you heard of Hacad Gerrum?”

  Rawk might have heard the name somewhere but it meant nothing to him. He shook his head.

  “He was a philosopher up in Habon during the time of Makas Kent. He dabbled a bit in politics and ended up a part of the group that had Kent kicked out.”

  “Kicked out? I think that’s the euphemism that the word euphemism was invented for.”

  Thok laughed. “Yes. I imagine Kent would have gone for a bit of a kicking if he’d had the choice.”

  “You read that kind of thing a lot.”

  Now Thok laughed. “No.” He pulled another book from his pocket and tossed it over to Rawk’s side of the table.

  Rawk picked up the book and blinked for a moment until he could read the title. “The Early Sonnets of Jufie.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure which is worse, to be honest.”

  “Have you read Jufie?”

  “Path, no.”

  “Borrow it. Read a few, especially Fardin Law and Green Nights, then tell me what you think.”

  Rawk flipped through a few of the pages. He looked at Thok then back at the book, though the words were a blur. He ate a few mouthfuls of stew. “All right. I’ll try at least one, but I won’t promise any more than that.” He ate some more stew, wondering what he had gotten himself in to. “I’m going down to watch Celeste and Grint after this. You want to come?”

  “I can’t. I’ve got things to do tonight.”

  The big man left a short while later, wandering out into the hall with a distracted air and turning towards the entrance. Rawk finished his stew and went the other way.

  -O-

  Rawk was still in the Armory when the music ended. And he was still there, sitting in the heavy half-light when the rest of the crowd had left.

  Before he had even gotten up from his table, Grint nodded in his direction from atop the small stage. “Maris isn’t with you tonight?”

  Rawk cleared his throat. He looked at the bar tender, but she wasn’t looking in his direction. As if that meant she couldn’t hear him, the last of the great Heroes, talking to a dwarf. “No. She doesn’t like music all that much.”

  “She doesn’t like music?” Celeste said as she packed away her mandolin. “Or she doesn’t like our music?”

  “She doesn’t like any music, I think.”

  The fermi sat silently for a moment. “She doesn’t like any music?”

  Apparently the statement had to be repeated before she would believe it. “That’s right.” Rawk found it difficult to believe himself.

  “She does like sword fighting though.” As if he thought that was a good thing. There was a moment of awkward silence. “So, how’s the drum?”

  Grint suddenly looked happy for the first time that Rawk had seen. “It isn’t a drum.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Well, it is a drum. But, more specifically, it’s a bodhran. They originate over in...” He saw the look on Rawk’s face and cleared his throat. “I said last night that it was probably five hundred years old, but I was wrong.” He took the instrument back out of the bag he had just finished packing it into and held it out. “You can have it back if you want.” He was still a long way from Rawk, so it wasn’t obvious if he actually wanted to give the instrument up.

  “It’s no good?”

  Grint brought the drum down from the stage. “See this symbol here?”

  There was a small mark carved into the finely grained timber. It was barely visible. “I think so.”

  “That’s the bodhran’s name.”

  “They have names?”

  “Not all of them. Some of them. The important ones. The special ones.”

  Rawk raised an eyebrow.

  “This is Baganoo. Kimbalak made it, and it’s quite a bit older than I thought. About a thousand years older. “

  “And I assume all of that is a good thing.”

  “Kimbalak is a line of dwarves. The good bodhran makers train just one apprentice in their lives. And the apprentice takes on his name. There were about twelve Kimbalak’s until he was killed. So one of them made this bodhran for Prince Medwa of Falangoon in the year 5435. The prince died in the Battle of Two Lakes and the drum was thought to be lost for about four hundred years. Then it turned up in Habon. A collector bought it from a minstrel and gave it to the king of Kenkona as part of a dowry. The king hung it on the wall but one of his ancestors eventually gave it as a gift to some queen who, as far as I can work out, he was boinking in secret. The trouble is, when the queen took it home, her ship was lost during a storm. At least, that’s what was assumed.”

  “Queen Jasmine II of Tharpin?”

  “That’s her. And that was about two hundred years ago. Baganoo hasn’t been seen since.”

  Rawk scratched his head. “Maybe the ship was attacked by pirates. Katamood was a pirate haven for centuries so this would be a good place for it to turn up.”

  “I suppose. But, the point is, it’s worth more than the five hundred ithel I said last night. It’s got to be worth closer to five thousand ithel. Maybe more.”

  Rawk wondered if his mouth had just dropped open. It felt like it should have. “That much?”

  Grint looked at the drum and ran his fingers over the taunt skin. “At least.” He held it out to Rawk.

  “So, you can’t accept it because I wouldn’t have given it to you if I knew how much it was worth?” Rawk looked at the dwarf. Quite possibly the first honorable dwarf he had known. But no, that wasn’t true. Another dwarf had given his life to save him just a couple of weeks earlier. But he didn’t know that dwarf, and he didn’t really know any other dwarves either.

  “Something like that. Here, take it.” Grint seemed almost desperate now, as if he couldn’t be responsible for what happened if he held the drum for another minute. “

  “What am I going to do with it?”

  “Sell it?”

  Rawk glanced at Celeste and saw she was watching him, head cocked to the side, dark eyes large and round. He cleared his throat as he tried to gather his thoughts. “Then I’d have money but I wouldn’t get any enjoyment out of it, would I?”

  “I’d get enjoyment out of five thousand ithel.”

  “So you’d sell it?”

  Grint ran his fingers over the dark timber. He looked over at the bar tender and sneered. “I don’t need money that bad.”

  Rawk changed the subject before the conversation spiraled off into another round of Keep it—No, I can’t. “So you’ve been paid?”

  Grint was staring at the drum, running his fingers over the grain. Celeste answered. “No, we haven’t. I’ve convinced Grint to stop fighting it for a while. We still have our other jobs, so we can afford to wait a little bit longer.”

  “Other jobs?”

  Celeste gave a small laugh. “Even if these people gave us our money, do you think they would pay a dwarf and a fermi enough to live on?”
<
br />   “Go and play back south of the river,” Rawk suggested, though he hoped they didn’t.

  Grint laughed this time as he pack the drum back away. “Have you ever visited a tavern south of the river?”

  Rawk nodded. Though he didn’t do it often.

  “Expensive?” the dwarf asked.

  “Very.”

  “That isn’t because the inn keepers are greedy, Rawk. It’s because the suppliers charge taverns more down there. About twenty percent more if the buyers are human and about fifty percent more if they are a dwarf.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. So they can’t afford to pay a lot for the entertainment. Not even Harker’s Hall comes close to matching what we are getting paid here.” He looked at the bartender again. “What we’re supposed to be getting paid.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It isn’t something that’s generally talked about.”

  “I guess.”

  “Anyway, speaking of other jobs, I’ve got to be on the tools at six in the morning so I need to get home to bed.” He tapped the drum through the bag and smiled. “Thank you for this, Rawk. Nobody has ever done anything like that for me before.” He held out his hand to be shaken.

  Rawk didn’t know if he’d ever shaken the hand of a dwarf before. He glanced at Celeste and back at Grint. After a moment, Rawk held out his hand too and felt it engulfed by the dwarf’s big, rough hand. The grip was strong, but there was no competition there, no attempt to dominate or assert control.

  “Well, you’re welcome, Grint. Now, all I have to do is see if I can find a thousand year old mandolin.”

  “This one was my mother’s” Celeste said, gently touching the neck of her instrument. “I want no other. Thank you, though.” She smiled at him.

  Rawk cleared his throat and looked around. “I should go too, really. I don’t have to work, obviously, but... Well, there might be exots. There usually are, these days.” He nodded and hurried up the stairs as much as he could. It wasn’t much.

  It was late and the streets were quiet apart from a team of dwarves were working on the sewers; Rawk had seen so many of them over the last few months he thought he would be able to do the job himself. He stopped to watch them work for a minute and changed his mind. He would know how to do the work, which was not the same as being able to do it. The men in the trench never seemed to stop swinging their picks. And the machines lifted dirt up into the trailing wagon in a whirr of dust. And all the while, they wove a song around their work, harmonizing like they practiced every day. A lot of times there were no words, just a strange collection of sounds that held all the meaning they needed. Coming from the other direction, another team was cleaning the street, piling litter and manure into their own wagon. This second group was also singing, and the two songs shifted slightly, merging together. They didn’t match perfectly, but twined their threads together like a rug slowly taking shape on a loom, or like a drum and mandolin in the Armory.

  It was a quiet melody that wouldn’t have carried very far, but filled Rawk’s head with distant lands and battles lost.

  “Good evening, Rawk.” One of the dwarves pulling the cleaning wagon nodded as he approached. He didn’t slow his steady pace and was back to singing a moment later.

  Rawk nodded eventually, but the reply went unnoticed. He turned and walked up the hill, listening as the cleaners moved on and the sewer team’s song drifted away towards a different story.

  He was so caught up in the song, listening to the last fragments that could reach him, that he almost didn’t see the exot. It was about the size of a large dog, with a scaled hide and long tail. It didn’t look all that threatening so, after he recovered from his surprise, Rawk thought of leaving it alone. But then it opened its mouth to hiss at him and in the process displayed a set of long, sharp teeth. Even then, he may have let it go, but it stalked towards him. It didn’t look particularly intelligent, but the eyes were as dark and cold as a long northern night.

  Dabaneera whispered from the sheath, catching the light. The creature paused, but only for a moment. Either it didn’t know what a sword was, or it didn’t fear them. Rawk crouched and waited, shifting his grip on the hilt.

  “Come on then.”

  The exot took one more step, then two, and leaped up into the air. Rawk ducked instinctively, spun and slashed. He felt slow, as if he was moving in treacle but his blade met something solid and jarred from his still-numb hand. He turned and the creature was watching him. There was blood on its flank, but not much. Rawk glanced at his sword lying on the cobbles not far away. He couldn’t...

  The creature snarled once, turned and walked away. It didn’t seem to be in a hurry. Rawk was in no hurry to follow. He glanced around again, this time looking for witnesses, then scooped up his sword and left.

  When he entered the ostler’s yard behind the Hero’s Rest, Rawk stopped. He leaned against the wall and looked up at the Swarm. The long line of stars was the same as ever. When he was younger, that endlessness of the stars, both of time and space, had been a comfort to him. They had almost been a promise that he could go on forever. Now, the unchanging night sky just reminded him how much other things had changed.

  There was a clatter and a crash. He half drew Dabaneera then paused. Heart racing, he scanned the yard for danger, but all he saw was the tail end of a cat disappearing over a wall.

  “Path, damn it.” He slammed his sword back into the sheath and made his painful way inside.

  Satyrday

  Rawk took his feet down from the desk. It wasn’t as comfortable as everyone seemed to suggest. Maybe there was something wrong with his chair. He grunted. He knew he was procrastinating, though he didn’t know exactly what he was supposed to be doing. The books were on his desk, beside the remains of his breakfast, but he’d been through those and they didn’t really help at all. Or maybe they did and he just didn’t know what he was looking for. Now that he thought about it, that was the more likely possibility. He was pleased to distract himself from his procrastination when Travis arrived a few minutes later.

  “Only two books?”

  Travis put the two new books down beside the others.

  “Juskin had both of them. I think he went out this morning and bought them just because he knew I’d be out there looking too.”

  “Probably. He isn’t stupid.”

  “He probably doubled the price.”

  “Like I said, he isn’t stupid.” Rawk waved his hand dismissively. “Apparently the book trade isn’t going so well lately, so let him have the money.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. In fact, tomorrow, ask him outright and if that’s what he’s doing. If he is, don’t bother searching yourself, just go straight to him.”

  “Very well, then. Did you get bacon?” He examined the plate on the table and grabbed a last tiny piece of rind.

  “Yes.”

  “Kalesie gave you bacon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Not for years. How did you go with the Heroes?”

  “I found ten who agreed to the terms. They should be out there, sitting around right now.”

  “Good, though in other news, Sylvia isn’t going to help me find the sorcerers, so I’ve got to do it myself.”

  “Sylvia? The healer? Why would she help you? Why would she be any help?”

  “So, I would like you to go to the Tapalar mansion this afternoon. You’ll need a barrow or something similar because she had a whole collection of books about magic.”

  “You want me to break in and steal books from the dearly departed Lady Tapalar?”

  “There will be workers there.”

  “So, I don’t break in, I just steal?”

  “We have permission. But you have to go in disguise.”

  Travis raised an eyebrow.

  “We have permission, but that doesn’t mean I want everyone to know. So, you are just one more worker clearing stuff out, all right
.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Do you have your key ring?”

  “It’s up stairs.”

  “Well, you know the mystery key you keep asking about?”

  “Obviously.”

  “You’ll need it to get into the library. Upstairs, in the second floor study, you’ll find a secret door beside the fireplace. One of the bricks in the fireplace, right near the wall, has a cross carved into it. If you pull the brick out you’ll find the lock. There’s a whole room behind there.”

  “Wait. That key has been on that key ring for as long as I can remember.”

  “Yes.”

  “So... You’ve had a key to a secret room in the Tapalar mansion for... How long?”

  Rawk shrugged, though he knew very well how long he’d had the key.

  “You own the Tapalar mansion, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Travis shook his head. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you? When did you buy it?”

  “I didn’t. Bree left to me, via a series of complicated ghost companies and fake identities.”

  “You said you were friends with her but...”

  Rawk saw the knowledge dawning in Travis’ eyes. He held up a hand. “Don’t go there, Travis.”

  Travis looked like he was going to say something anyway.

  “Really,” Rawk said. “Not now. Some other time, perhaps.” It felt strange to even hint at the subject. For so long, Yardi had been the only person who knew about his true relationship with Bree. She knew a lot of things.

  “Of course. I’ll... ummm... I’ve got to...”

  It was almost worth it just to see Travis flustered. Rawk smiled.

  “You’ll need to find a barrow or something. It may take more than one trip anyway.”

  “Yes. Of course. Yes.”

  “Travis?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll be having lunch with Maris today. And I’ve got some other stuff to do. I probably won’t be around.”

  “I’ll just leave the books around here somewhere.”

  Travis could handle the books perfectly well, but he couldn’t do much else to help in this situation. Rawk needed someone who could hear the magic, and if it wasn’t going to be someone he could trust, it would have to be someone who was too useless to actually do him any harm. Before that, he picked up a book and procrastinated a bit more. But nothing meant anything much to him at all. He also needed someone who could decipher the books for him.