Echoes

by Honor Raconteur

  “Right,” he agreed seriously.

  “Well, where do you think they get the stone to build a fortress from?”

  Blinking at me, Dag pondered that for a moment before staring up at the mountain. “Here? Really?”

  “Sure. They quarry stone from the mountains all the time, it’s standard practice.” Good, hooked him. I tamped down an evil smile. “So how are you going to know what to destroy in your spells if you don’t learn the rocks’ names now?”

  This seriously worried him, I could tell from that look on his face. Finally, he gave Rena a game nod. “I better learn them now.”

  Rena’s face twitched as if she desperately subdued a smile. Sagely, she nodded back. “Wise of you. Besides, it might not be a fortress. Bannen, remember that time we were fighting assassins and they sent us through that portal?”

  “Man, do I ever,” I groaned. That was not one of my fondest memories. We’d almost died that day, several times.

  Leaning forward, Dag’s eyes darted between us. “Assassins?” he breathed, eyes lighting up. “What happened?”

  Of course he wanted the story. Well, it would keep him entertained and give him even more motivation to pay attention to Rena later, so what was the harm? I obligingly weaved out the tale, not blind to the fact that Mack also avidly listened in. Then again, while the story was entertaining enough, it also gave him some rather crucial information that Rena had done this before and an indication of what her limits were.

  “Will assassins come after me too?” Dag asked. Because of course that was what he took away from the story.

  “Highly unlikely,” Rena assured him, eyes twinkling with suppressed laughter.

  Dag slumped for a moment, disappointed, then rebounded two seconds later. “But if they do, or if an evil bad guy sends me through a portal into a mountain, I can get back out?”

  “Absolutely,” she assured him.

  Pleased by this, he beamed before launching into the next question. “What kind of rocks were there?”

  As those two fell into a geology discussion, I leaned over the back so I could talk to Mack one-on-one. “Rena’s magic has improved over the past three years, but do understand she has limits still. If she goes into a Mind Down, it will take weeks for her to recover. So when she calls a stop for the day, please respect it.”

  “I will, sir, don’t you worry about that.” Mack listened in on the conversation before asking cautiously, “Your son, he’s a Void Mage as well?”

  Did I seriously look old enough to have an eight-year-old son? I mean, come on, I would have had to conceive him at fourteen. “Not our son. He’s from Seagrove, actually. We picked him up on the way here so that he can go study under Rena’s master. And no, he’s not a Void Mage, but his eyes work similarly to one’s. He can see the world the same way they see it, which makes it rather impossible for a regular magician to train him.”

  “Ah. Makes sense.” Lowering his voice, Mack said with a wink, “That one’s going to be a right handful. I pity his master.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I agreed cheerfully because he would soon cease to be my problem.

  “Bannen.”

  Turning at my wife’s hail, I responded, “Yes, darling?”

  She scrunched her nose up at me because she hated it when I called her that. Which was, of course, why I did it. “I think we shouldn’t overload Dag’s poor head just yet. So let’s split this up a little. I’ll take him in the morning and work, you come get him for lunch and then do training. Sound good?”

  In other words, she didn’t think she could keep him focused for more than three hours before he went squirmy on her. She likely pushed three hours, honestly. Dag hadn’t been raised in an environment where children sat and studied. He’d been active and working since he could walk. It was a kindness on her part that she started that pattern now, of learning instead of constantly working. “Sure. Actually, Dag, training up here will be great fun. I can show you how to best fight in a forest.”

  He actually rubbed his hands together, excited at the idea. “With knives?”

  “Of course with knives, what do you think we bought them for?”

  Dag giggled. A high pitch, girly giggle, not that I was about to point that out.

  This kid seriously reminded me of me at that age. My siblings hadn’t been much better. I was just trying to keep one alive and I struggled. How had my parents raised five of us without losing either their hair or their sanity?

  We swapped information and stories throughout the three hour ride up. I say up, but it was a very gradual climb, and it more or less plateaued at one point. The trip was actually quite pleasant, as the weather wasn’t too hot or cold, but perfectly pleasant under the shade of the trees. I liked weather like this. Made me feel at home.

  Abruptly we entered an area that had obviously been cleared, with several logs stacked off to the side, a neat row of tents two deep, with a makeshift kitchen tent on the opposite side. Someone had dinner going, I could tell from the smell of it, but it didn’t seem all that appetizing. Mack had given us good advice earlier on buying our own food. To the right, coming up the gradual ridge, was a proper dirt road two wagons wide. This must be the area the new railroad tracks would occupy.

  A few men had been gathered around a central fire, and at our entrance, they stood up and came closer with hopeful looks on their faces. Mack pulled the wagon up to them and stopped it there, introducing us with a wave of his hand. “Fellas, this is Renata Hach, Void Mage, her husband Bannen, and the little boy’s an apprentice mage by the name of Dag.”

  With pleased smiles and ducks of the head, they came forward to greet us, hands outstretched.

  I hopped out of the wagon for a round of handshakes.

  “Westley,” a thin blond with freckles and a ready smile introduced himself, handshake firm. “Demolitions expert, not that I’ve gotten to blow anything up on this job.”

  “Jeffries.” Gruff man, thick afternoon beard, with a glint in his dark eyes that looked like he wrestled bears for the fun of it. “Structural engineer.”

  “Lloyd.” Obviously the cook, with that stained apron tied around his waist, and I’d bet that nose had been broken at least three times. “Medic.”

  “Pleased to meet all of you,” I offered, turning to give Rena a hand. Or at least I intended to, but my wife chose to put a hand on my shoulder instead and use me like a balancing post as she hopped down. Dag just jumped because of course he didn’t need help with something silly like getting off a wagon.

  Pointing to the tent at the far end, Mack instructed, “That one’s yours. We have a roped off section behind all of the tents for privy and bathing. There’s signs on both so people don’t get them confused.”

  From the chortling and the eye-rolling on Lloyd’s face, there was a whopper of a story on why they now had signs. I would get it later. I found it very strange that we had multiple tents up but only these few men. Where was the rest of the crew? Even if they’d planned to hire a lot of laborers here, this wasn’t enough specialists to do the job. Were some of them let go when Rena was brought on? It didn’t make much sense to me.

  Rena stared at the mountain surface, still covered with vines and stubborn greenery, her head cocked in that particular way that said she was seeing far below the surface. In pure habit I came to stand directly at her side, blocking her from interference, smiling and explaining to the men gathered around us, “Give her a minute. She’s analyzing what the mountain is composed of.”

  Pushing the hat back on his head, Mack scratched at his forehead, studying her for a moment before asking me, “She do that often, just stare off into space?”

  “All the time. It’s why she needs a human familiar.” That and for other reasons I was not about to explain to relative strangers. I kept my manner easy going, smile deflecting deeper questions. “She always means to just take a glance, get a gauge of things, and then gets sucked into studying the details.”

  “This is going to be mo
re complex than I thought,” she abruptly announced, eyes still facing straight forward. “You’ve got metamorphic rock, argillite, limestone, dolomite, and sedimentary rock all mixed in. Well, some of it’s in layers, but you get my drift.”

  I translated this with no effort. “In other words, your spell is going to be more complex because of the mix of different rocks and it will take you a little longer to cast each time.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she agreed absently, frowning now.

  The foreman didn’t seem happy to hear this, so I rephrased it for his benefit. “Not difficult, just more tedious.”

  “Ah.” Mack gave her another uncertain look. “Well, if she wants to study it a while, she can. We’ll get the mules put away and dinner out, if dinner’s edible.”

  “I tried,” Lloyd maintained, affronted. “And I don’t think it’s inedible.”

  I pegged Lloyd as being pressganged into being the cook. Likely they’d planned to hire a local cook along with the rest of the crew and had been soundly thwarted in their efforts. I might have to take this duty on so we all didn’t starve up here.

  In a sing-song rhythm, Rena weaved her spell aloud in words I couldn’t understand, although after so many years they were familiar to me. As she spoke, the magic around her came more alive to my eyes, stronger, although I doubted anyone else aside from me could see it. Still, the men all paused to watch her, curious after hearing bizarre rumors about the Void Mage.

  With a click of the tongue, she released the spell and every vine and plant poofed out of existence at once in a perfect arc, exactly as if she had just created a template for the railway tunnel. Turning to Mack, she asked seriously, “Is that the right shape and size?”

  Mack stared at her for a long moment before visibly jerking himself back to reality and turning to see. I knew that reaction all too well. He’d just taken what she had done to the next level and realized that if she wanted, she could destroy everything here down to dust and no one could stop her. To his credit, he only had that five second loss of composure. “Well,” Mack stopped, cleared his throat to remove that hint of squeak, and tried again. “I’d have to measure it, but that certainly looks right.”

  “If you could do that either tonight or early in the morning?” she requested with a smile. “That way I know if I can just continue or if we need to make adjustments. And you’ll need to tell me the exact placement of course.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  Acting as if nothing at all was wrong, my wife offered to me, “If you’ll cook dinner, I’ll get us set up in the tent.”

  Since I did not want to eat what I could smell coming from that kitchen tent, I agreed with a shrug. “Sure.”

  “Can I help?” Dag asked hopefully.

  I gave him an odd look. “Since when do you like to help prepare dinner?”

  “Since I like knives.”

  Fair enough.

  Dinner was met with many a happy exclamation, which didn’t surprise me much. My husband cooked well and apparently no one else in the crew could do more than the basics. We cleaned up and retired to our tent with cheery good nights to everyone. I had Dag set up in his own sleeping bag on one side, Bannen and I on the other. The tent was big enough to accommodate six people, which meant three with their luggage had room to wiggle around in.

  We shucked off coats and boots, changed into something more comfortable to sleep in, and settled in. I snuggled close to Bannen, partially because he was a portable heater and partially so I could speak to him in whispers. He slung an arm around my waist, drawing me in closer, so we pressed in chest to chest.

  “I’d love to, wifey,” he informed me drolly, “but it’s a little hard to get in the mood with the squirt over there watching.”

  I smacked him on the chest. “Will you be serious?”

  With nothing but the camp fire casting light into the tent, it was hard to see his features, but I could feel the tension riding high in his body easily enough. “Seriously, though, you sensed it too?”

  “Something’s off up here.” I kept my voice very soft to avoid it carrying further than our tent. “Mack has been perfectly upfront about the problems they’ve had on this job but, at the same time, I feel like he’s hiding something. It’s like he’s deliberately being blunt and truthful to prevent us from asking questions or thinking too deeply about things. I tried asking more questions about the legend, but he skirted around the topic completely. Why is talking about this unnerving to him? It ties into the thefts, right? It’s like the natural questions are the ones he doesn’t want me asking.”

  “That’s it exactly,” he agreed, his thumb tracing idle circles at the base of my spine. “Rena. Are you sure we should do this job without backup?”

  “Not at all,” I confessed frankly. “I have a distinctly bad feeling about this whole thing and I don’t like it. I kind of want to contact Vee, ask if she and Chi can come up and keep us company throughout the job. I can contact her via TMC tomorrow.”

  “If they’re still in Foxboro,” Bannen said slowly. “It would take them five days to get here, though.”

  True, we had to think of that possibility as well. “Doesn’t hurt to ask, though, right?”

  “No, it doesn’t. Still, it’s a little strange to just call her up and say ‘we have a bad feeling, can you come up?’”

  He did rather have a point. “Does sound rather unprofessional, doesn’t it? And how would we explain it to Mack?”

  “That’s my second concern. Do this. Get some work done in the morning, at least start, and then tell him that there’s something you’re seeing that’s a little weird. You want to consult with another mage, yadda yadda. Call Vee privately and ask for a favor. Chi’s likely bored down there anyway, dodging therapists. He can come up and help me train the squirt while you’re working.”

  Dag abruptly appeared on my waist, elbows digging into pressure points I’d rather not have elbows in, his whisper a little too loud. “Chi’s the archer, right? Can I get a bow?”

  “Only if you go back to bed,” I ordered firmly.

  Sulking—I didn’t have to see it to know he was—he crawled back to his sleeping bag.

  Bannen’s plan didn’t sound all that bad, and I could honestly tell Mack that something up here bothered me. I just didn’t have to go into details about what. “Okay. I’ll work in the morning and then call her when I break for lunch.”

  He put a chaste kiss to my forehead. “It’ll be fine, wifey. My senses are tingling and telling me there’s something dangerous up here, but it’s not imminent. I think we have time to call in for reinforcements. And we have to consider that maybe we’re just being paranoid. Toh’sellor might have warped our brains a little.”

  I understood what he meant, but instinctively didn’t agree with it. “But you don’t really think that’s it.”

  “More like I really hope that’s all it is,” he sighed, sending warm air brushing against my face. “For now, sleep. We can’t do anything else tonight.”

  Sound advice. I wasn’t sure if I could take it, but I was game to try. Settling in a little more into the pillow, I closed my eyes, trying to relax and failing miserably at it.

  Please, please let this just be paranoia talking.

  I rolled out of bed the next morning, did a quick wash up, and ate a delightful omelet that Bannen cooked for me. Feeling a little better about things in the morning light, I went to the rock face with Mack and Jeffries. It wasn’t a clean drop, of course, the mountain edge wasn’t a cliff but a gradual slope and I took a minute to really examine the area. “Gentleman, how much of this dirt slope do you want gone?”

  “All of it,” Jeffries informed me, his hands rising to illustrate his point. “From here to there, it all needs to be perfectly flat. As flat as our campsite area.”

  “Alright.” I focused, drawing out the template of what needed to be done in the spell, with the appropriate designations for which types of soil and quantity. It disappeared in an instant, leavin
g a freshly turned path of flat ground in its wake. I could tell from their faces that this display of magic both fascinated and unnerved them. People typically responded like this to my magic, and while it still bothered me a little, I didn’t react to it anymore. “Is that correct?”

  Jeffries cleared his throat, carefully avoiding my eyes by studying the ground intently. “That certainly looks right but I’d have to measure it to be sure.”

  I tapped the side of my eyes and gave him a cheerful smirk. “Trust me, it’s correct down to a millimeter. Part of a Void Mage’s eyes is that we can measure everything very accurately.”

  “You mentioned this before on the way up,” Mack ventured, his eyes studying mine. “You said that Dag had your type of eyes, which was why a Void Mage had to train him, even though his magic is different from yours.”

  “Correct. Dag sees the world the same way that I do, and because of that, his approach to magic is completely different from magical norms. It’s better for a Void Mage to train him, at least initially.” Mack seemed curious about all of this but Jeffries shifted from foot to foot, clearly uncomfortable. It might be better to just move on, satisfy Mack’s curiosity later. “But we’re getting off-topic. Slope and grade correct here?”

  “Yes, Magus,” Jeffries assured me. “Now, I drew out the markings for the tunnel entrance this morning. See those two red chalk lines? Tunnel side walls should match those. Bottom of the tunnel should match this grade, and the top of the tunnel should arch at its highest point at fourteen feet.”

  Sounded simple enough. I centered myself more squarely with what would be the new opening, following Jeffries’ instructions precisely, and created a template for the tunnel only six inches deep. I figured that would show the men what I’d done but give me room to correct something if I needed to.

  Jeffries actually jumped a little when the rock disappeared into nothing more than wind and dust. He stared at it, skin going a little paler, eyes too wide in his face. People were normally uncomfortable with my magic, but this seemed a little too extreme. His reaction worried me. Was there something that this man knew that I didn’t?