by Andrew Smith
“Yes, but again, theoretically.”
“Do you know anyone who can do it?”
“Other than the wand merchants? Only myself and Mary, and possibly someone at the Temple of Vesta. There are others, of course.”
“You can?” Leila asked
“Please try to sound a little less surprised, pet,” Mme. Rumella said with a sly smile
“And Mary made her own... What can yours do, other than the usual?”
“It does one transformation, which is rather silly and I rarely use it, and it also constantly replenishes the shop’s safeguards when I’m not using it.”
“Wait, wait, wait just a minute.”
“Are those the opening bars of a song?”
“No. I have been told, many times, like by everyone I met for the first three months that I lived here, that you have to be in contact with your Focus for it to work. Like touching it, not through cloth or anything. So how does that work?”
“I have a lot of practice,” Mme. Rumella replied
Leila glared
“That was slightly cheeky, wasn’t it?” Mme. Rumella apologized. “What I mean is that rule is less absolute than most would believe. I certainly couldn’t cast a spell with my Focus miles away, or even in my pocket. But, as we can, under a great many conditions, cast spells without a Focus, we can also cast them without touching our Focus.”
“You are making so not much sense,” Leila declared, crossing her arms.
“Of course I am. This world is not the world you come from, only with sorcery. The very existence, or perhaps I should say activity, of sorcery means a great deal of fundamental differences. Rules apply to most people, but the very determined and the very lucky can virtually always find ways around them.”
“Like you?”
“I have lived in this place for many hundreds of years. As I’ve said, I have a lot of practice.”
“I am so very tired,” Leila sighed.
“I understand. It’s been rather a long day already, hasn’t it?”
Leila didn’t respond. “I just hope the Crusader finds what he’s looking for and leaves town before we get in any more fights,” she wished
“I’m afraid this city doesn’t usually work that way, pet,” Mme. Rumella delivered the news
Leila grimaced.
Spirits
“Back out to the edges,” Mary replied as Mme. Rumella handed over her drink. She took a long drink of the spiced tea and milk. “This is fantastic.”
“Of course, dear. Vijay is the best.”
“I hear you’re not untalented yourself. I heard about your little adventure out in the fifteenth,” Mary smiled over her cup. She took another sip
“I don’t think I’ve been in quite as many scrapes as you, dear.”
“Not many have,” said an ambivalent Mary. She shrugged. “I’d best be on my way.”
“Good luck!” Mme. Rumella called after her.
Mary had spent yesterday in the Fourth Quarter, especially around the Temple of Vesta, just in case of any incidents. Today she thought she would go to the opposite way, the Second.
A half-mile track of heather appeared in the city from the seventh century A.D. Mary walked through it slowly, though there was a path. A few sheep grazed nearby. The weather was colder in this part of the city. Mary was wearing a patterned scarf. She wrapped it around her throat again and drew her loam-colored coat closer around her body. In the distance, a barn, with a run connected to nothing. Theoretically, there had once been a farmhouse there. It hadn’t made it to the city. That was the city for you.
She breathed in the air. It still felt...old. It didn’t feel like modern air. Mary could tell. And it was better. Much better. It was why she hardly ever went farther center than Mme. Rumella’s.
And today it was back out to the fringes of sedentary society. She passed out of Scotland, into what was either southeast Asia or a flawless impersonation. A few yards off the path, a panda munched on some freshly-plucked bamboo. She waved to it and it waved back
The world changed again. It moved beyond her as she moved through it. She was getting out to the B.C./A.D. line. Mary, obviously, had been raised Catholic. She had always expected there to be something out here. Some sort of big line, perhaps, or a marker. There was nothing. Mary shrugged.
She continued outwise. More and more of the city was desert out here. Jericho, famous for its tower and wall, appeared in the distance. Or to be more accurate, the wall appeared. The rest of the city was not behind it. Bits of it had been slowly pushed to somewhere along the same ring, but out to the Third Quarter of the city.
She looked over to some low mudbrick huts when a motion caught her eye. She stopped and blinked. Fireworks in a dozen shades of red were erupting over the small Neolithic dwelling. Beneath the crack of the light show, Mary could hear the accompanying low moans. She shrugged and continued on. A lot of strange things happened on the fringes.
She supposed she might come here herself if she needed that sort of privacy. To her left, there was a small spring which pooled into a clear, glinting pond. Next to the pond, a bald man with olive skin wore a simple tunic and hovered in a sitting position above the ground. Below him, a patch of what Mary surmised to be leeks. They grew upward. The man ascended. This continued
When the leeks were about a dozen feet tall, Mary called out, “Is four paces high a good leek crop?”
The man, who had apparently not noticed her, looked down and shouted back, “I’ll stop when they’re seven!”
“Farming,” Mary said to herself and continued on her way
Soon after, she had climbed the steps of the Jericho tower. She surveyed the piecemeal landscape before her. She closed her and inhaled the air of an ancient desert. And coughed. Bit dry, she thought
There was a conversation somewhere. She could hear it. Mary swept her gaze over the ground again. No-one nearby. But the sounds of speaking continued.
“Idiot,” Mary admonished herself. If she was able to hear them but not see them from her high vantage point, they could only be in the shadow of the wall. She slipped off along the structure, looking over the edge.
And saw a man. A man playing supplicant to a spectral cow. “And why not,” she murmured. There were plenty of gods and spirits here. Vesta, Asiago, and now, cows. She stifled the urge to make a bad joke connecting the latter pair, and listened in.
The usual supplicant talk. Some of it was a bit crude. The cattle from Jericho were, after all, symbols of fertility, and apparently the man wasn’t having the best of luck with his crops, and other endeavors as well.
“Jericho...” Mary whispered to herself. She removed her Focus from where she had it hidden up her sleeve and cast a spell without speaking a word. She was good.
Then she waited until the apparition disappeared back into the small object the man held in his hands. From this height, Mary couldn’t make out the details, but apparently the spirit took its cue from the last word the man spoke. She leapt off the wall
About half way down, something, the wind perhaps, began to gradually slow her descent and she touched down, barely disturbing the scattering of scree at the base of the wall
“Good morrow, sir,” she said, a bit cheekily. “I have rather a favor to ask of you.”
The man, dressed similarly to the man with the leek patch, regarded her with suspicion. Not fear, Mary noted, which meant he probably, somehow, did not know of her reputation.
“Honestly, it’s a very small thing,” Mary smiled. The man seemed to soften a little. Mary had a rather reserved exterior in her former life, but had liberated herself of it long ago. Her vivacious smile made everyone think the sun was shining just a little brighter. It was usually right afterwards that she started hurting people. “It’s that, in fact,” she pointed at the small object in his hand, which she now perceived as a miniature carved cattle head.
The man, still not speaking, covered the object in his fist and turned away, shielding it with his body
.
“Don’t be that way, I’ll give it back. I do, however, need to borrow it, and if you don’t give it to me, I’ll take it.”
The man narrowed his eyes and sent his answer in the form of a low growl.
“Are you a timber wolf now? Just give me that. Now.” The man did not comply. Perhaps her tone wasn’t threatening enough? Whatever it was, talking was getting her nowhere. She made a pulling motion over her shoulder with her cartridge-Focus, and it transformed into her claymore. Taller than she was, Mary was only able to wield the weapon after making it ultra-light. It could still cut through an awful lot of anything, though.
The man realized that this was not a good situation for him, and handed over the cattle head.
Mary nodded politely. “Thank you. two days, right here,” she said, indicating the ground beneath her. She rolled the sword over her wrist and it became cartridge-size again. “Good morning,” she called as she walked away
The rest of Mary’s day was fairly uneventful. Less fights than usual. That was almost never a good thing. Generally speaking, when the lesser thugs and brawlers weren’t out fighting each other, it was because one of the major thugs or schemers were paying them to cool their heels while they worked on something big.
Mary thought uncomfortably of her talk with Fernando last week. She thought he was talking about the Crusader, but now wondered whether or not there was more to it than that. And she was especially uncomfortable that he couldn’t tell her anything about Candidate Suerte.
She went back to the old Scottish barn. She smiled at it. She had been living in an apartment from the seventeenth century ever since it appeared. She never really liked it much. It was small, and the landlord, while offering quality protection at reasonable rates, was rude, and slovenly, and smelled like a midden heap. Not to mention that if anyone could protect herself, it was Mary, former Queen of Scots.
She had just never found a place she liked enough to overcome the inertia of having lived in one place for so long. She took in the field. Roughly squarish, about a half mile on a side. A quarter mile square of old Scottish splendor. Complete with sheep.
Mary bent down on one knee and ran one hand through the wispy heather. “I have to have it,” she announced to no-one as she stood. She decided to check the barn for signs of habitation.
She straightened her glove absently as she strode over. Beside the large doors was a smaller, more human-scaled one. She pulled it open. There was no handle. The inside was unlit. A few weak strands of light from the overcast sky wove themselves between the cracks in the walls. Mary flicked her wrist and her torch-Focus appeared. She blew on it and it came alight.
Cobwebs hung from every available surface. What may once have been hay laid decomposing in a slowly collapsing heap in the loft the covered the far half of the building. A rickety ladder led up to it. It was off to one side, and the top half had slid so it was now leaning against the near wall.
Mary straightened it and began to climb up to survey the space up close. Half way up, the ancient ropes lashing the rungs gave way and she fell ten feet to the ground. A stream of curses in both Gaelic and French escaped Mary’s mouth as she dusted herself off. Her leg hurt. It didn’t feel broken. She removed a vial of smoke from an interior pocket of her coat (she always carried several) and inhaled its healing power.
She picked up the still burning torch-Focus and aimed it at the ladder. She spoke a Latin word, the infinitive verb ‘to repair’ and the fallen rung replaced itself. The wood itself turned from an ancient gray to a more healthy brown color. Mary again ascended to the top, actually getting there this time.
The barn was quite large, and the loft overhung a good half of it. There would be ample living space, after ample cleaning and repair work. She nodded conservatively.
“Oh, why not,” she told herself. She flung her arms wide to the air and cried, at the top of her voice, “I love this barn!”
She did not, however, have a great command of cleaning spells, nor did she possess any particular volition to do this all by hand. She cast a spell silently, and leapt to the ground, bypassing the ladder completely. As she touched down, she indulged in another triumphant cry. Now this, she thought, is a home!
She returned to her apartment and gave her corpulent landlord notice, and proceeded to have the worst night’s sleep ever because of the anticipation.
She went into Mme. Rumella’s Tea Shop the following morning and examined the menu. They were hand written in a variety of colored chalks. She examined the list of coffee drinks and hit upon the perfect solution
“A double red-eye, please, Mme.”
“Oh my, Mary dear! Do you understand what you’re getting yourself into? Coffee with a double shot of espresso added in?”
“That’s what it says.”
“That’s very unusual for you, isn’t it?” Mme. Rumella asked
“I hardly slept last night, and I need a bit of a jolt to start the morning off,” Mary explained.
“Oh my, is something wrong?” Mme. Rumella asked, concerned, as she tied back some graying curls that had gotten loose
“Not at all. Actually I was too excited to sleep.”
“Oh? New love interest?” Mme. Rumella teased
“Sadly no. I found a fabulous new place!”
“Really? When is it?”
“Seventh,” Mary replied
“Hardly new, then, eh?”
Marry shrugged.
“What’s it like, then?” Mme. Rumella urged.
“It’s,” Mary began, suddenly self-conscious, “well, it’s rather a run down barn.”
“Sounds... Lovely?”
“It will be. It’s on a gorgeous half-mile of heather, and I can convert the barn. With some help, anyway. I’ve never been great with cleaning-type things.”
“I’d be glad to help, just as soon as things die down here,” Mme. Rumella smiled
“That’d be wonderful,” said Mary. “By the way, I found something yesterday, it might be able to help you out.” She produced the cattle head carving from her pocket. “It’s a Jericho cattle spirit... Er, thing. I’m not quite sure how you activate it, but if you can get it work, I thought maybe they would chance to know something about your Standard of Uruk problem.”
“Lovely!” Mme. Rumella exclaimed. “We’ll get to it after lunch.”
* * * *
Delilah Runestone hovered outside the front of the shop, occasionally leaning forward to peek in through the window, otherwise pretending to examine a newspaper. While in the shop, she had enchanted one of the mugs to act as a listening device. It was rather short-ranged though, as the long range version required more obvious sorcery. Someone would have noticed. She took in the comments about the Jericho spirits, and decided she had some other, more urgent, eavesdropping to get to.
Delilah walked off down the curving street as Dr. Leila Lanstrom crossed the cobblestones and entered Mme. Rumella’s. Leila spotted the woman walking away and frowned. She wasn’t absolutely sure, but she would mention the other woman’s presence to Mme. Rumella even so
Delilah, meanwhile, decided she needed a better view. She touched a hand to her Focus, concealed up her sleeve. A draft of chill air lifted her to the roof tops. As she drifted from rooftop to rooftop, she made her way centerwise. A prism of darkness rose up into the endless sky. The Nightlight. She leapt up towards the club’s roof, the chill air lifting her twenty stories.
Most of the city was clearly in daylight, and though it could be seen from here, it failed to illuminate the Nightlight and surrounding patch of land. Delilah could hear subdued music and the shuffling of a few ‘daytime’ patrons within. She looked around. She could see a few people walking the streets, one or two others walking the rooftops as she had done. No sign of what she was looking for.
A breeze blew. Delilah froze. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up at attention. If she was sensing what she thought she was sensing, there could be trouble. Great heaping lots of trou
ble.
She turned. Behind her was a man, six-foot-three if he was anything, wide across the shoulders, and possessing of a chin like a slab of granite. He had fine blond hair and cold, cold blue eyes with pupils that were, perhaps, a touch too wide
“Ruin,” she breathed. She had only run into the man once, when she was a child and he had last been active in the community. For a necromancer, being active in the community usually involved screaming and pain and occasionally fire. She was understandably nervous
“Delilah Runestone,” the man called Ruin uttered in a predator’s voice. “How...nice to meet you.”
Delilah just looked at him for a moment.
“Ah, Ruin. Still spouting the tritest, most vapid lines you can think of.” She crossed her arms smugly, keeping a finger on her wand. “It’s the necromancer’s curse, I suppose: keep trying to breathe life into dead things, People, dialogue, whatever.”
“And your tongue is sharp as I’ve heard.”
“I keep a whetstone on me at all times, to keep it nice and pointy,” She said rolling her eyes.
“Please come to your point quickly. Listening to youis giving me a headach.”
The necromancer let the dark sorceress’s comment pass. “I know what you’re up to, Delilah.”
“Do you? Then perhaps you’d care to fill me in on it, because I’m a little behind on current events.”
“Delilah, Delilah, Delilah...”
“I’m familiar with the name.” Delilah sighed as he continued. Apparently he had rehearsed this conversation earlier and was not about to allow her presence to disrupt it for him.
“I’m trying to be friendly here. Keep your nose out of this Standard of Uruk business. It’s better that you do.”
“Oh not you too!” Delilah lamented. “Listen, I’ll do what I please and-” She broke off as she saw him reaching for his Focus. She pulled her own out of her sleeve as she dodged to the side. A gray something shot by her.
Delilah lost her balance and fell hard on her right side. She shouted something in the language of the ancient civilization at Harappa, and a stroke of blackness left the tip of her wand and started for the necromancer. It struck him on the left shoulder. It was a relatively minor hit, but Ruin had to pause and inhale from a healing vial before the darkness invaded him, giving Delilah enough time to get to her feet.