As the Captain turned back to the tangled line, it abruptly slipped free, whipped over the rail, and trailed down into the water. The barge rocked slightly with the release.
The bargeman glared at the cleat for a moment, shrugged, and spoke to the mate, who barked orders down the line of rowers. The bondsmen on the starboard side rose to pole the barge into open water and then reseated themselves, oars poised. The mate barked again. With a synchronous splash, the oars bit the water, rose, and bit again. The rowers began a bawdy tavern song to keep time, and the barge eased away from the dock. Once it reached the channel, the Captain swung the wheel hard over to point the bow downstream. As the rowers broke into a steady pace and a particularly popular verse, the barge began its long journey.
Waleck reached the foredeck, breathless and grinning.
"A fine day for a trip, eh, Mar?" he offered, clapping the younger man on the shoulder.
Mar rolled his shoulders nonchalantly, hiding his relief.
"And our fellow passenger?" the old man continued in a more business like tone, looking to the girl.
Telriy's expression closed. The light of the smiles she had shown Mar earlier vanished as if they had never been. She gazed defiantly back at Waleck without speaking.
Waleck glanced about their small accommodation. "A little sparse, but that can be mended, I believe. I must see the Captain once more. Wait for me, here, Mar."
The Captain remained at the wheel until the barge had passed the confluence of the Blue and the Red before passing the helm to the mate. Waleck waited patiently as the Captain rattled off a standard set of instructions for the mate, and then engaged the bargeman in a conversation marked by extended discussions and intervening handshakes.
Mar stood by the rail as the barge gained its speed, looking back as Khalar, where he had spent the entirety of his life save for an unwanted half year in the Waste, disappeared from sight around the first great bend of the river.
NINETEEN
3213 Before the Founding of the Empire
Orethe had taken her last step and she knew it. She did not bother herself trying to rise. She did not remember sitting in the dry summer dust of the road. Perhaps she had fallen.
"nMahr??"
She called her husband's name again, but he did not answer.
And he would not, for he was dead. nMahr and all his brothers, his cousins and uncles, were dead. Her own brothers as well, one by one in the last days of the siege. Even little Freghth, the joy of her father’s old age, by nMahr’s side on that terrible last day. He had cried out her name when the bolt smote him.
All the yeomen of Kharae Holding were slain; put to the sword or incinerated in the ashes of the buildings, blasted into bloody rag dolls by the contemptuous sorcerers. All the women and children as well, though quickly and with what passed for mercy among the Oaurlervy Faction -- an example to forestall the defiance of others. Some of the children had screamed, though none of the women.
She realized that the stars were out, a dark night, both the moon and the Orbitals down. When had she lain down? She dully noticed a spasm of pain and felt a rush of wetness between her legs. Her water had broken finally. The labor she recalled from the last league of her trudging walk would come to a conclusion. nMahr’s son would be born soon.
Why she had fled the Holding even as the entire substance of her life was annihilated she did not know. It had seemed important, somehow, to preserve something, anything. The stench of the sewer tunnel still clung to her, though faintly.
The baby's first wail woke her. She vaguely remembered the gasping and contractions as she fought with what remained of her being to birth the child. She must have swooned afterwards. She tried to rise, could not, lay back panting. Her breath was fading; she had no strength left. Again, the baby wailed, louder. But she was dying and the baby would die with her, here in this dusty road. She stirred, tried to raise her arm, wanting to touch him, comfort him. Her arm did not respond. She was cold, colder than she had ever been.
There was a rustling noise near her. Wolves?
A small face peered down at her from a modest height, lit by its own soft glow. Not a human face, though almost. A magical creature then.
Orethe spent what life remained in her to speak. "Save ... nMahr’s ... son ...."
*************
As Lkai watched, helpless, the woman perished. Alone and travel worn, squalling newborn fouled with its own bloody afterbirth between her sprawled legs. Such was the way of human kind.
What to do now?
The babe would perish as well; there seemed little doubt. With none to care for it and no milk, it would cry till its voice gave out, then succumb, perhaps tomorrow or the next day. That is, if the buzzards or foxes did not get it first, perhaps before morning. Lkai rubbed his chin in a very human gesture. Yes, more likely the foxes and buzzards.
Lkai looked closely at the babe. His eyes were oblivious to the night -- the eyes of a forest cat, his sorcerous Master had once assured him. The pudgy infant with its tiny clenched fists and insistent noise was as plain to him as if it had been noon instead of midnight well set.
Perhaps he should end its suffering now, mercifully, with his knife?
No, he could not bring himself to that. But neither could he care for the babe. Lkai was alone, the first and last of his kind. His mate Lkoi was dead these decades passed -- an error in her coding, his Master had apologetically explained. Lkai himself was old, his lifespan at an end. Only fortnights remained. His coding had been exact and he knew the tally almost to the minute. He had fled to this forest to expire in peace, away from the raging conflict, released by his sorcerous Master in a belated gesture of compassion, as he himself departed to reluctantly join the fray.
Something must be done with the child, but what? No answer came to that question, but the immediate needs of the moment were obvious. Lkai dropped his pack, set aside his doubts, and busied himself with the task at hand. He attended the baby first, detaching the cord, and cleaning it with water from his canteen. Then he wrapped it in his spare shirt, which was barely large enough for the deed. The child quieted then.
He could do little for the woman. She was just too large for him to move. For dignity's sake, he settled her limbs in a normal posture and covered her with her own blood stained clothing. She had no possessions.
He carried the infant some distance away and laid it carefully in a hasty cradle of grass beside the road. He thought for a moment then took the box of blazes from his pack. There were four left, a parting gift from his Master. A small corner of one would make a nice warming fire that would last most of the night. Three set to expend themselves instantly would no doubt incinerate the woman's body, leaving nothing for the forest beasts. Lkai nodded to himself; that was the right of it.
Lkai held the infant in his arms so that it could view its mother’s pyre. The blazes flared quickly, blindingly, but the child uttered no further sound. When nothing remained but smoldering ash, Lkai shouldered his pack, gathered the human man-child in his fur-covered arms, and steadfastly continued his journey.
The magical being let his mind wander once again around the problem of the human babe.
Lkai, himself, could endure the forest well. He was a broad-spectrum omnivore, much of his magically woven life coding derived from beasts, and could sustain himself with no more than nuts, berries, and the occasional grub -- even grasses and leaves, if necessary. Such was his plan, to expend his remaining days in quiet and peaceful contemplation, hidden from all humankind.
The infant, though, was another story altogether. There was not the slightest chance that it could survive here untended.
Sighing away his reluctance, Lkai dropped his gaze to the face of the babe and studied it.
This was more than a simple human look. Lkai was an instrument, a magically engineered form of life designed, constructed, and utilized to measure certain esoteric flux potentials that were extremely difficult for humans to sense or manipulate. His soul
was the very substance of magic, compounded of elements both natural and artificial. His mind was a machine of calculation and extrapolation, a painstaking combination of human intelligence and bestial cunning. His being was the refined essence of vigor, a hybrid taking all the strengths and none of the weakness of his components.
He had been invented on paper, proved through experimentation, and conceived in a laboratory. His Master had considered him and his equally sterile mate to be one of the crowning achievements of his lifelong study of the magical disciplines.
Lkai had been born to read the destinies of men.
What he saw in the babe’s face chilled him.
But he now knew what he must do.
Lkai found a stone cottage he had not known existed in the depths of the forest, following directions written in the soul of the infant. The dwelling had been abandoned for some time, perhaps decades. The gravel path was overgrown, and the small garden lost again to the forest. The whitewash had long since peeled away from the tight set stone, but the cottage had been well made and it seemed otherwise intact, guarded both by stout doors and shutters and subtle, yet deceptively powerful magic wards.
The builder had not sealed the cottage against all entry, either with locks or magic, only dissuaded the interest of animals and casual wanderers. Perhaps that lover of solitude had known that he would not again return to his cottage, and that others would have need of it.
Lkai pushed open the front door, noting that the well-crafted hinges emitted no sound. He expected dust and disarray, but was pleasantly surprised.
The single room of the cottage was neat and clean, as if its owner had only just stepped out for a stroll. Lkai could sense the powerful and artistically simple enchantments that endured here, banishing dust and insects, preserving each item in its prescribed place.
There was a small bed, handcrafted of forest oak, with a firm and inviting down mattress, where Lkai gratefully and immediately deposited his charge. The inventory was of the possessions that a vanished man had found essential was short: One square table, one padded chair, one fieldstone fireplace, one storage rack with cookery, one stout but empty cabinet, one large bookcase.
Short, but not simple. Lkai had much experience divining the products of intricately patterned magic (over the shoulder of his sorcerous Master). The table would summon prepared food when desired, and likely vanish the remains, platter, silverware and all. The chair intimated that it could assume any shape needed and might do wonders for an aching back. The cookery was just cookery; no doubt the preparing of food was sometimes more interesting than the consumption of it. The cabinet was indeed a marvel, with an almost frightening store of power, and laid claims to being able to produce any article desired. The bookcase displayed many less than a hundred small volumes, but held upwards of ten thousand, ingeniously folded into space along magical axes that Lkai had previously been ignorant of.
Indeed the former occupant of the cottage seemed to have been a more powerful and skillful wizard than any Lkai in his long life had ever encountered.
Perhaps, though there was no hint of it in the child’s destiny, that masterful being had also discovered the peculiar side effect of his bookcase that had called Lkai to this place. Perchance it had been the portal for the owner’s own final departure.
Lkai had doubts. He could not see where or when the babe would arrive and only a haze for most of its future, but he did know that it would survive and perhaps prosper. He also knew that in this time and place it would only find a simple, unmarked grave thirty short paces from the rear of the cottage.
Even so, Lkai’s course was set. He accepted destiny, embracing it with a pure joy that human kind could never experience. Fate did not frighten him. He knew that there were choices inherent in any destiny, choices to which most men were blind.
He gathered the babe one last time in his arms.
Its eyes remained shut and its breath even, as if somehow it accepted its uncertain future.
Or perhaps it was only exhausted.
Lkai moved to the bookcase and touched a shelf, pushing carefully. Rows of dustless books appeared on the first alternate set of shelves. He pushed again, and as the next alternate began to rotate into view, reached out quickly and exactly to halt the transposition, precisely in the manner his visions ordained, so that the opening between the shelves became visible.
Magics flared in the whiteness of this hole into space, an eye twisting confusion that could not be perceived with mundane senses alone. Colors to which human eyes were blind and sounds to which human ears were deaf washed over Lkai. It was not the deadly flood of undertime, a peril not even his great Master had ever dared attempt. This new and frightening place was a zone outside of time altogether, a conduit to everywhen and everywhere.
Lkai looked at the infant’s untroubled face once more. One last thing -- the child deserved a remembrance. He made a small gesture with two fingers of his right hand, a weak bit of magic that would nevertheless endure.
“Your name is the same as your father’s – nMahr. Farewell.”
With that, he covered the infant tightly in his spare shirt and cast it into the opening. A scarce moment later, the enchantments of the bookshelf, detecting an incongruence, defaulted to the first shelf.
His task completed, Lkai turned and settled experimentally into the chair, complacently awaiting his own destiny.
TWENTY
“Do you know what you are doing?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to do that?”
“No.” Mar glared at Telriy as he stirred the pot, but she refused to budge from his side.
“You used too much salt.”
“This is the way I like beans.”
Mar did not attempt to hide his annoyance. Telriy had shadowed him since the barge had departed Khalar. Neither hints, nor suggestions, nor outright demands had convinced her to leave him to his work.
“Mar,” Waleck called, “Come help me here.”
With some relief, Mar tossed the spoon at Telriy and strode across the deck. The girl made as if to rise from her stool, looked warily at the old man, and then sank back.
Waleck had propped the peak pole and corner poles beneath the heavy oilcloth of the awning, setting the butt ends in sockets nailed to the deck, but had not managed to take the slack from the fabric.
“Take that corner,” the old man told him.
Mar loosened a cord tied about a cleat mounted on the gunnels at the point of the bow. Waleck pulled in the opposite direction to remove a sag.
“Good. Now the other side.”
Mar walked down the side of the awning to a freestanding corner. Here they had tied the anchoring cord to a hook driven into the deck timbers. After a few moments of effort, Waleck seemed satisfied. He then had the younger man hang the hammocks.
“Only two?” Mar questioned.
“All the captain had to spare. The girl – what is her name?”
“Telriy.”
Waleck paused as if considering the name. “Telriy will have to sleep upon the deck.”
Mar lowered his voice, hoping that the girl, only paces away, would not hear. “I’ll have to watch her through the night. She’ll run off if she gets a chance.”
Waleck shook his head, not bothering to whisper. “By full dark we will be ten leagues from the city.” The old man pointed at the overgrown banks of the river, near on the starboard side, distant to port. “Only a fool would try to walk through that.”
The young man shrugged, glancing at Telriy, who obviously had overheard the old man’s comment.
“Irregardless, we do not need her, only the information that she carries.” Abruptly, Waleck turned and walked from beneath the awning.
Telriy rose as the wasteminer approached, circling to place the iron brazier, its glowing charcoal, and the hanging cooking pot between them. She gripped the wooden spoon defensively. She swung her head about quickly, as if for aid.
The rowers faced the s
tern as they sculled and seemed solely intent upon maintaining the pace called by the mate. The captain and the two remaining members of his small crew were all out of sight aft of the tarped stacks of cargo.
“Now, Telriy,” Waleck announced. “You have caused us some trouble. You destroyed Khavurst’s Travels – and likely a good portion of the Viceroy’s Library along with it. I could speculate upon your reasons for this act but those reasons are of no consequence to me.”
Warned by a subtle shift in tone, Mar looked sideways at the old man. Waleck seemed to have taken one of his moods again. Coldness shadowed his eyes.
“I intend our ways to part at the first opportunity. I also intend to have whatever knowledge you gained from Khavurst.” Waleck paused and his face hardened even more. “Once again, The Mother of the Seas?”
Telriy’s face grew equally hard. “What you intend is also of no consequence to me.”
“I will have the information,” Waleck warned.
Alarmed, Mar laid a restraining hand on the wasteminer’s shoulder.
Waleck whipped his head at the touch, then twisted savagely, fist flying up to strike the young man’s hand away. Utter surprise held Mar in place.
Again, the old man wore the face that was not Waleck. It had the same eyes, the same nose, the same lines, but it was not Waleck. It was someone bitter with hatred. It was someone powerful. It was someone who would kill without thought.
The old man’s eyes flared as his other fist swung.
Mar did not retreat, though he knew the blow would stagger him.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the alien visage crumbled. Falling back a shocked step, Waleck looked out from his own dark eyes once more. A sudden sweat beaded his brow and his arms fell to his sides as if all strength had drained from them. Confusion seized him.
“I – I am sorry, Mar. I do not know – understand –“
Key to Magic 01 Orphan Page 19