Miners and Empire

by Alma T. C. Boykin

  The mason groaned a little and shook his head. "Don't remind me. I put on three hand-spans in as many eight-days, or so my mother swore. Couldn't set one foot in front of the other without trippin', let alone hit a chisel with a hammer and not get my head and hand as well." He patted Ehric on the shoulder. "But Dunstan didn't have that woe, so likely as not you won't."

  "Thank you, sir," Ehric said.

  Four nights later, Aedelbert found himself standing with the watch on the wall, Caedda with him. "That's what bothered me, sirs," one of the younger watchmen whispered, pointing with his belt-knife to a shape trying too hard to be a lump of brush. "Whoever that is hasn't moved from beside that heap of waste stone."

  "Waste stone?" Caedda whispered back as Aedelbert squinted, trying to see better in the darkness.

  "Some pieces left from making the wall, broken or otherwise no good. Masons haven't moved them yet, sir." The watchman scuffed his feet on the wood of the wall-walk. "Chief of the shift thought you might recognize the person, or what they're doin' since you travel more than town-men do."

  So what was the person doing? They were not the usual traveler making camp because they missed gate closing. Those people had an area already prepared for them. The more he watched, the less Aedelbert liked what he saw, even though the "lump" did nothing. Or did he?

  The lump shifted to the side, unfolding upwards and resolving into a man. He held something in both hands, a staff and what else? Was it rock, or an object with a set-spell on it? Something beneath Aedelbert twisted and he grabbed for the stone of the wall with both hands, trying to steady himself. He felt the wall below him growing warm, as if beside a fire. How could that be? No wood had been piled near the wall, and he smelled no smoke. The heat spread fast, too fast, and Aedelbert gasped. "Fire spell, directed at the wall."

  "He's sensitive to some kinds of heat and light spells," Caedda explained to the guard. "Sees them like a notary mage sees a seal-spell."

  A second figure now stood beside the heap of waste rock. He had a large bucket.

  What—No, oh no, they're not, they are! Aedelbert pointed to the bucket man.

  Caedda swore, then called, "Spell attack against the wall, trying to crack a weak place using fire and water."

  Aedelbert heard the guard calling for archers and slingers, Caedda saying something, but even louder he heard a rushing, roaring hissing in his ears as the bucket man ran forward and hurled the contents onto the hot stones. Aedelbert felt the rocks trying to shatter as cold fought hot, water battled fire. No! Not his work they weren't going to—Without thinking he reached into the stone, drawing heat out and away, soothing the cracks, easing the tensions and spreading them out and away to better places, dampening the stresses and healing the stones of the wall before they could shatter or even truly crack. He heard the whizz of slingers releasing rocks and bits of broken brick into the night, and a yelp from below him, then a shriek.

  "Heh, no one likes a boiling water rinse," one of the women said.

  Aedelbert turned around and sat. He closed his eyes and waited for the waves of nausea and pounding head to pass. Caedda rested one hand on his shoulder and eased some of his misery. "Spell failed," Aedelbert lied. "Felt it fail. Ick. Hope the mage's as sick as I am. Ugh." He rested his head between his knees and concentrated on not throwing up and not falling over, in that order.

  "He a mage?" Aedelbert didn't recognize the voice.

  Caedda scraped his boot on the wooden walkway plank. "No, sir. Mage-blood in the family, but not a mage himself. Just has the bad luck to sense some spells, especially fire spells."

  "They taste like rotten butter," Aedelbert told the person, his head still down. Think quick, ah! "Glow a little but I taste them as rotten butter smells. Stay away from light-mages if I can."

  "I never heard of that."

  The woman with the boiling water said, "I have. My uncle and one lady cousin have enough mage blood to sense spells but not to do anything with them beyond what the rest of us can. Uncle says he hears spells being cast."

  The world stopped heaving and swaying enough for Aedelbert to look up at armored shins and Caedda's shoes. Caedda offered him a hand and heaved him up to his feet. The wall rocked, then steadied. A senior guard peered at Aedelbert, then leaned back. "You're green as spring leaves. Go to your inn and stay there. I may want to question you tomorrow."

  "Yes, sir," Caedda said, putting one arm under Aedelbert's shoulder and helping him along the walk and down the steep steps. Behind them, he heard the watch explaining, "Master Caedda's known to me, and I thought he might know why someone was sitting in the dark by that pile of rocks, sir."

  The ground stopped moving by the time they passed the pump closest to their room. Even so Aedelbert would rather pound his head against the wall of a mine gallery in order break the rock to open a new passage before he did anything like that again.

  Caedda waited until after sunrise, and until Aedelbert had dressed and eaten something without it returning to haunt him. Then he snarled deep in his chest, so no one outside could overhear, "What in all the names of the Dark One's ten thousand rats did you do? I felt a shift and a drain, then the wall sighed and locked even more tightly into itself."

  "I think I healed the stone. The mage heated it, and the other man splashed it with really cold water, water almost ice cold. Like to know what he did for that. I felt the stone trying to shatter and I, um," he looked over at Caedda. "I spread the heat and eased the tensions, soothed the cracks and spread the cold as well so nothing shattered."

  "Scavenger be my witness, you did. There are no block lines on that part of the wall, area so," Caedda spread his hands, "by so."

  Aedelbert felt the world reeling again and he grabbed the door frame. "Daggy schaef tails."

  "No schaef tails. No lines. Stones look like one block. I dearly hope none of the masons has any rock-sense the way we do." Caedda sounded more resigned than angry. "Although with the fuss about letting mages get so close to the walls, and people wanting to know if it was fireballs or something else out of a story, I don't think anyone will notice. And miners from the Gift arrived at dawn."

  Caedda's final sentence didn't penetrate until after one of the Golden Loaf's sausage rolls had entered Aedelbert's stomach as they sat in the bakery's common room. "Miners from the Gift? What about the rock slide?"

  Since Caedda had a mouth full of warm cider and bread, Ehric answered for him. "The message was right, sir, but not exactly. The fall was up from the Gift, the main fall, with a smaller one below the Gift. Master Saxklar was at Blue Cliff but the spell didn't say that. So men from the Gift are here."

  "He's right, all but the maintainers needed to keep things open and safe," Caedda said. He poured more warm cider from the pot on the fire beside their end of the table. "Blue Cliff and the smelter are still cut off by the slide, and some from the Gift are working on that. They cleared the fall below the Gift last night, just after dark."

  A miner Aedelbert vaguely recognized from working in the Gift thumped down onto the bench beside Ehric. "That's right. And now we're here, and we heard about the spell against the walls last night." He bristled, face dark with anger, one hand clenched in a tight fist. Ehric scooted the platter of sausage rolls toward the miner, who took two. "No damn greedy bastard of a noble who can't bother himself to do real work like a man has any right to our money or to tell us if we can have walls or no. 'Specially no noble who skulks around in the dark like a thief." He bit the end off the sausage roll as if he were biting off Lord Heinrik Aldread's head. "Law says no magic used without warnin' and I know the law."

  Aedelbert had never heard that before, but he wasn't about to challenge a furious man with shoulders at least half again as large as his own. The man would probably pound him into the floor with as much effort as sinking a tent-post into mud. "Must be an old law," Aedelbert observed.

  "Likely is. Sounds like something from the time of the Great Cold and what came after," Caedda said. He drank the rest of
his cider. Ehric waved to one of the apprentice bakers and the men made their marks for what they'd eaten and drank, then left. The managed to get as far as the beast market before swirling chaos enveloped them.

  "Did they really?" the woman sounded hopeful and worried both.

  "Saw it with my own eyes," a watchman averred. "The birds were runnin' full out when the gate opened, never slowed, raced flat through so fast they left their own dust tryin' to catch up to 'em. No way any man livin' can stop them afore they reach t' Emperor."

  Thump. The matron stomped the stones of the market with a heavy, clog-shod foot. "Good. Once t' Emperor sees our copper and lead, he'll know we are a free city and prosperous enough to defend ourselves." Thump.

  Aedelbert and Caedda shrugged, then threw themselves out of the way of a furious small mob. "Hang her!"

  A dozen of the City Watch tried to keep the people away from someone hidden behind a wall of armed men. "Easy there! We need a priestess of Korvaal or Donwah's Daughter before anyone does anything."

  "She's a traitor, always was," a thin woman shrieked, then spat toward the guard. Her husband grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back before something bad began. Worse, Aedelbert corrected himself. Something worse.

  A woman's voice shrilled from between the guards, "You deserve it! You allow injustice, won't listen to the truth, no wonder Lord Heinrik's had enough of you." The voice dropped to a hiss, a hiss that carried over the crowd, "I'll get my justice, you'll see. Wassa will hang for cheating me and I'll have my trees at last."

  "Her head's turned," Caedda murmured. "Gods have pity on her."

  A man heard the stone cutter and snapped, "Pity? The bastardess tried to open the water gate, after tryin' to strip the protection spells off'n it. Water's risin' from storms up th' mountain. Tried to drown us all, and you say pity?"

  "If her mind's turned, pity for those around her and for lettin' those trees ruin her life," Caedda growled back. "Not sayin' no justice, but that she was a good herbwife and the town'll miss her skills until a new one takes over."

  Aedelbert started to move, then froze. She stripped the spells off? No, surely... The fire in the beast-market. No, he scolded himself. She couldn't have done it. Just because he didn't care for her was no reason to be making accusations, even in his own mind. He knew where that led.

  A hunch-backed widow waved her stick at both men. "Aye to the last. She came from a hot-blooded family, too much fire in them for their own good. Fire finally burned to her brain. 'Ats why you cool hot people and warm cool ones. Priestess'll know if she's right enough to try or if she's for confinin' out of the way."

  "Likely the second, at least until the emperor sets Lord Heinrik to rights," Aedelbert said, trying to calm the waters.

  Caedda folded his arms, "And all she'd have done is brought the water up to mill-flow level. The gates are set so that the overflow joins the mine water in the moat. A full moat is good, yes?"

  "Yes. She's still a traitor," the angry man snapped.

  "No arguin' that," Caedda retorted, "just stopping anyone else who gets a stupid hair on their head and thinks they can rinse the streets by opening a water-gate."

  The widow tapped the stones with her walking stick. "Because sure as the sun rises and rats scavenge, someone will think it's a good idea. Like when Inam the Fool dug a well in his cellar so he'd not have to go so far for water, then added a privy pit at t' other end of t' cellar."

  Aedelbert thought for two heart beats, then covered his eyes, blinded by such stupidity. Caedda groaned, Ehric flinched, and the other man said, "Woman, did you have to remind me? Our house was two doors from his. Took four lime-washings of the walls and floor before the air sweetened. And Donwah's Daughter like to skinned him for stupidity as well as impiety."

  "Skin was about the only part of him that might have been useful," the widow sniffed. "Although anything in a bag or scabbard covered with his hide would probably fall apart, rotted by his foolishness." She hobbled off, aiming for one of the apprentices with trays of small breads and rolls. "You, boy! Yes, you. I'm not talking to the steps there."

  Aedelbert felt his right ear aching from the memory of just such a widow. She'd owned an apple orchard, and he and his brother had made the mistake of sneaking in through a hole in the hedge. Not only were the apples not ripe, but she'd been an acolyte of Korvaal and had a sharp eye and strong arm. Half deaf, yes, and hunch-backed, but she'd picked up a windfall and thrown it at him. She'd hit him in the head, then grabbed him as he stood there, stunned, and dragged him back to his parents by that same ear, taking the long way through the village.

  Caedda coughed, drawing Aedelbert's attention back to the present. They walked past groups of gossiping men and women, ducking a few gesticulating enthusiasts, then stopped not far from the site of the new shelter in the beast market. No trace remained of the old one, and both damaged buildings sported fresh repairs. The house wall would not be done for a while yet, but at least bricks and wood filled in the ground-floor wall. "Last night," Caedda started.

  Aedelbert waited.

  "First, your headache was contagious, so stop that." Caedda smiled a little, easing his words, even as he folded his arms. "Or at least share the good stuff so I'll have had the pleasure of the night before to go with the morning after. Second, did we see battle magic?" Aedelbert heard Ehric gulping at the thought.

  Aedelbert folded his arms as well and rubbed the lower half of his face with one hand. "I don't know. What exactly was battle magic?" His thoughts tangled, and he spoke them, trying to sort through the mental underbrush. "Was it spells used during a fight, or something else? A light mage could cast a really bright light and blind archers or something, but is that what the messenger meant? Or was battle magic something else that's been lost forever, all but the name?" He glanced down at the cobbles, collecting his thoughts, then up again. "Last night— It felt like regular magic, just aimed in a strange way, as if someone collected a lot of set-spells and triggered them all at once."

  Caedda's shoulders sagged. "That's what I thought I felt, like a light spell or a fire-start spell. Like someone had a dozen or so fire-start spells in a bowl and triggered all of them at once. In which case I hope he enjoyed the headache that followed."

  "If he enjoys that sort of thing, I can recommend some distillers he can talk to, rather than using magic and sharing the headache with the rest of us."

  One of the Scavenger's priests and a priestess of Gember stopped and turned toward the stone cutters. The men bowed, and the clergy came nearer. "You speak of the spells last night," the Scavenger's priest said.

  "Yes, honored Father." Aedelbert said, "I am sensitive to light spells and fire-start spells. What happened last night felt like a group of men all tripping pre-set fire-start spells." Aedelbert had no other way to describe it without sounding like a mage.

  "The same, Father, Sister. I'm also sensitive to some pre-sets, not as sensitive as Master Aedelbert." Caedda tipped his head toward Aedelbert. "We both have mages in our families." Ehric eased back, but was he being prudent or fearful? Standing beside one of the Scavenger's priests, even for a Scavenger Born, could be a little uncomfortable.

  The black hood turned toward Aedelbert. Someone studied him from behind the black mask under the hood, a glimpse of dark, glittering eyes, then the priest nodded. "That is what we," he gestured to the priestess beside him, "sensed as well. Not a true battle-spell, but normal magic misused."

  "As if that were not sufficient to cause problems," the priestess sighed. She lifted her pendant of office—gold wheat-sheaves around the brown and gold-striped central stone—and wagged it back and forth. "Every apprentice mage save for the notaries thinks she can be silly at least once. Usually once is sufficient to cure them, but it appears that at least one man never absorbed that lesson."

  "Or he found gold sufficient temptation to remove proper caution and respect." The hood shook back and forth. "Just as some Scavenger-born look at their patron as an excuse rather than a
guide."

  The stone-cutters knew precisely what the priest referred to, and they both nodded. "Those of us not born for the Dark One are, ah," Aedelbert weighed his words, "often well acquainted with those who misunderstand the Dark One's nature."

  "I suspect you are." A hint of chuckle. "Just as my honored colleague has been forced to disabuse those who believe that the Lady of Grain does not require work."

  "If I hear one more person with a vision of being supported by the Temple for the rest of their lives, I will thump them with a bread paddle, then a flail," the slight woman growled. Aedelbert didn't doubt that she knew how to wield a flail when needed.

  "What you saw last night was magic misused by a man with pre-set spells in hand. Not battle magic, not god magic," the Scavenger's priest repeated, loudly enough for curious ears to hear. "No fireballs flying through the air, no flaming creatures hurling themselves against the wall, no storms of rocks pounding the wall."

  A child shrilled, "I wanna see fire balls!" He bounced up and down, "Wanna see fire balls!"

  "Hush, boy," the matron shushed the child and hurried him away. Aedelbert hid a grin behind his hand. Boys are boys.

  The priest raised one hand, "The Dark One grant you skill and wisdom to use your talents with discernment." The men bowed, and the two clergy continued on their way. Caedda sent Ehric off on an errand while the men continued to the smithy.

  Neither stone cutter spoke until they had almost reached Master Alger's shop. "That was an interesting blessing," Caedda said.

  "Rather more direct than most." Aedelbert did not like it when priests and priestesses were specific.