Back home, we have machines that can carry you faster than any horse or even fly you from place to place. We even had machines that could think for you.’
Aneshti laughed. ‘What’s the point in letting a machine think for you?’
‘It makes life easier. I don’t think they were supposed to replace people’s brains, but they sort of did for a lot of people. Not sure where you are or where to go? Ask a machine that fits in your pocket. Need to calculate something? Why do it in your head when you can get a machine to do it faster? And that’s often the same machine as the navigation one. You never have to remember anything ever again when you’ve got a sumātofon.’
Unsurprisingly, Alabethi did not have a word for ‘smartphone.’
Whenever something like that came up, Kana reverted to Japanese.
Bras were now known as ‘burajā’ around the White Castle because of this.
‘You came from a really weird world.’
‘Says the woman from a world where there are elves, dragons, and magic.’
‘Why’s that weird?’
~~~
‘Maybe I should’ve learned the seasoning spell they use in the kitchen,’ Kana said after swallowing her first mouthful of nutritious, if rather tasteless, stew made from roadside grass.
‘I bet you could cast it anyway,’ Aneshti replied. ‘You know enough food magic to work it out.’
‘Probably. On the other hand, I’m not sure seasoning would help this. I suppose we’ll get used to it.’
‘Probably. Think how good a real meal will taste when we get to Dvartim.’
‘It’s a point.’
They had camped at the side of the track for the night. That had involved laying out their bedrolls for something to sit on, finding some dry wood to make a fire from, and getting out the cooking pot to make the food in. Aneshti had lit the fire with a spell. Kana had made the food with a spell. When you had two mages camping for the night, magic was a key component to comfort. Neither of them knew spells to detect incoming threats, but that, it seemed, would not be a problem.
‘Arachine don’t hunt at night here,’ Aneshti had explained. ‘They can see well in fairly dim light, but they don’t have very good eyes at all when it comes down to it. In the dark, they’re practically blind and they won’t go near a fire.’
‘What about those goblins you mentioned?’
‘They’re not common and they won’t hunt at night. There’s too much risk of them coming across a sleeping arachine. Goblins are cowards. They won’t attack humans or elves unless they have superior numbers, and then it’s only if they have a hobgoblin pushing them to do it.’
‘They’re cannibals, right?’
‘Depends who you ask. Cannibalism involves eating your own species and there’s not much evidence that they’ll eat each other. They will eat humans and elves. Happily. Rumour has it that they think elves are a delicacy.’
So, they were not worrying too much about posting a proper watch.
They were going to stagger their sleeping periods some, mostly so that someone could keep the fire going. The fire was as likely to keep any arachine with insomnia away as much as a watchful human or elf.
‘Hey, what’s the difference between a goblin and a hobgoblin?’
Kana asked between mouthfuls.
‘Size,’ Aneshti replied. ‘Hobgoblins are about the size of an elf. Bigger and stronger than a typical goblin. That said, there isn’t any technical difference because all hobgoblins start out as goblins. The hobs are the leaders and when one of them dies, the strongest living goblin in the tribe turns into a hobgoblin.
No one’s ever seen the process, so we don’t know how they do it.’
‘It doesn’t conjure up any nice images.’
‘Probably not. The only time that doesn’t happen is when the hob is killed by an ogre.’ Aneshti gave a little shudder. ‘Ogres sometimes take over goblin tribes, which makes both the goblins and the ogre worse to deal with.’
‘You don’t like ogres, I take it?’
‘No elf likes ogres. They’re Serpens’ revenge for the death of the true dragons.’
‘Huh?’
Aneshti frowned, kind of like she did not want to tell the story.
On the other hand, she did like showing her knowledge when Kana lacked it. ‘The legend says that the dracs kidnapped a group of elves and turned them into ogres somehow. Ogres are all male.
They’re big, like nine feet tall, and strong, and pretty
fearless. They breed by kidnapping elf women and… Well, you get the picture.’
‘I can see why you don’t like them.’
‘I’d kill myself if an ogre ever got its hands on me.’
Kana frowned. ‘Give me a chance to rescue you before you do that, okay? I can see your point, sure, but try to leave it as the last resort.’
Aneshti’s blue eyes looked far darker in the firelight, but they went wide at that. ‘You’d come to rescue me from an ogre?’
‘Sure. I’d prefer to cook the thing before it took you, but I wouldn’t let you become a baby machine for a monster.’
Now Aneshti grinned. ‘I think I might be just a little bit in love.’
‘Down, girl. I’m pretty sure we’re both into guys.’
‘I could make an exception…’
15 th Sokarte.
The first time Kana saw what could be described as a ‘monster’
came four days later, just after lunch. An arachine rushed out of the undergrowth on the left side of the road maybe a dozen metres away and began scuttling across the track. Kana and Aneshti came to a halt and Kana raised her staff in case the thing spotted them.
Apparently, it spotted something because it stopped in the middle of the track and turned toward the two travellers. Kana remained still, but a magic circle appeared at the end of her staff as she prepared a spell. The arachine did not seem to be really sure what it was seeing; it swayed slightly on its eight long limbs and seemed to be staring at the women as intently as Kana was staring at it.
The more she looked, the more she realised that it was spider like , but it was also not really much like a spider at all. Its body consisted of an almost snakelike, multi-segment cylinder that tapered at the tail. The ‘skin’ of the thing was more like an insect’s carapace, smooth and hard. Eight legs branched off from the body and were, like with spiders, more concentrated at the front, and there was also a pair of mandibles mounted at the front of the body which looked sharp. There was no evidence of dripping venom, but you got the impression that there should have been. The front of the body was rounded, but the lower portion, under the mandibles, protruded a bit like a snout and the creature had a distinct jaw; clearly arachine ate meat rather than sucking out your innards or whatever it was that spiders did. It also had multiple eyes, but they all looked pretty
simple. An array of black dots formed a triangular pattern over the top of its ‘skull,’ each darker and shinier than the carapace. Maybe taking the entire mass of inputs as a whole, the thing could make an image, but Kana got the impression that all each ‘eye’ could do was detect light.
Apparently, whatever the thing thought it saw through those simple eyes, it concluded that it was not edible. Turning again, the arachine scuttled quickly off the path and vanished into the undergrowth. Kana watched the spot it had disappeared into for a few seconds and then dissipated her spell. ‘Well, that was uneventful,’ she said.
‘They’re not stupid,’ Aneshti replied. ‘Well, they’re animals, but they’re not stupid animals. It could probably work out it was two against one and you prepping that spell might have persuaded it not to try.’
‘My first monster.’
‘I guess it probably is. Not that I’ve seen many. That was my first arachine. They don’t get much further north than this.
They’re coldblooded. Around here, they tend to hibernate in winter. In the Great Forest, they’re a year-round pest.’
‘Huh.’ Kana start
ed walking again, checking the right side of the track as she went just in case the big bug had concluded it could try again when it had surprise on its side. ‘If it had decided to try snacking on us, I’d have turned it into a smoking husk pretty easily. They can’t be that much of a pest.’
‘You’re forgetting they get bigger down there too. Try thinking about that little monster about the same size and weight as a man.’
Kana grinned. ‘You underestimate my ability to make smoking husks.’
‘I’m not totally sure that’s the kind of thing you should be bragging about.’
‘Sure it is. I can make bigger explosions than anyone else in the castle.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’ Kana paused a second and then added, ‘Of course, without a really big powerstone to draw on, I might kill myself casting something that big, but what’s a little death or incapacity between friends?’
19 th Sokarte.
They were camped on the side of the road again, but tonight there were no trees. They had made it out of the forest an hour or so
before sunset and had kept walking a little way before making camp. Figuring that firewood would be harder to come by on the plains, Kana had collected a supply on the edge of the forest, so they were set for a while at least. With food made and consumed, Kana sat down to report their progress back to the White Castle.
Settling on her knees on her bedroll, she focused on the spell she wanted to cast: Telepathy. After a couple of seconds, a blueish magic circle appeared under her, rotating slowly. After another couple of seconds, Kana heard Sharassa’s voice inside her head as though the elf was standing just behind her.
‘Kana, I assume you’ve reached the outskirts of the forest?’
‘We have, and without incident. We saw one arachine the entire time and it decided there were easier things to eat.’
‘That’s good, though I’m sure you could have handled the situation if it had decided to attack. How many times did you have to try before you got a connection?’
‘Got you on the first try.’ Kana was aware that that had been a matter of luck as much as skill, but it was kind of impressive.
‘It will get harder as you move south. Dvartim should not be too much harder, but Alabeth will be. We may need to pick specific times for me to be waiting for a call. We’ll see how it goes.’
‘Okay. Well, aside from our arrival here, there’s nothing much to report. Anything happening at the castle?’
‘Nothing of particular interest. It’s too early for Aneshti’s family to have noticed she’s not happy about the marriage.’
‘The Master’s not going to be pleased, is he?’
‘No,’ Sharassa admitted, ‘but I can handle the situation. You and Aneshti should concentrate on your mission. We need information on Cadorian’s movements.’
‘Well, we’ll see what we can find out when we get to Dvartim. He may have stopped off there. Or not.’
‘Not from the reports we got but see what you can uncover. If you don’t mind, I’ll get back to my dinner now.’
Kana grinned. ‘Enjoy your meal.’ She let the spell lapse and Sharassa’s thoughts vanished from her mind just as the circle vanished from beneath her. ‘Well, nothing new to report about the castle,’ Kana said aloud.
‘I wasn’t really expecting anything,’ Aneshti replied. ‘I figure it’s going to be Deokarte before my parents can get someone there to complain about me not going home.’
Kana shook her head. ‘I can’t get used to how slow travel is here. I’m used to the Shinkansen and air travel. We would be able to get to Dvartim from the castle in… two or three hours by train. Maybe. And no chance of running into arachine or goblins along the way.’
‘Well, there are ways of travelling faster than horses.
Teleportation is not an easy thing to learn, but it can be done.
And there are still a couple of gates around.’
‘Gates?’
‘Like, um, portals that connect two places together. It’s lost magic. We don’t know how to make them now, but there are still a few around from the Age of Elves. There’s one between Alabeth and the Heart of the South. That’s like the capital city of the vertagi. It’s a massive, ancient tree in the middle of the Great Forest.’
‘Okay. Was there a Heart of the North?’
‘Yes, but it’s dead.’
‘The Founding War?’ Aneshti gave a nod in response. ‘That war really cost the elves, didn’t it?’
‘Yeah, it really did. A lot of us couldn’t work out why Soansha let it happen. But that was six thousand years ago. We’ve pretty much come to terms. Mostly.’
20 th Sokarte.
‘What’s going on there?’ Aneshti asked, frowning at something Kana had yet to notice. They had run out of track to follow and had been travelling very roughly parallel to the edge of the forest for about an hour. Aneshti had been quite certain that they would eventually spot the walls of Dvartim this way and, from what Kana remembered of the maps she had seen, that seemed reasonable.
Kana looked in the direction Aneshti was indicating, closer to the trees, and fairly quickly spotted a group of three people and a pony. They looked as though they were waiting for something.
One of the group looked like he or she was holding a sword at the ready, but it was not too easy to tell at this distance.
‘That… looks like they could be in trouble,’ Kana said. ‘Think we should help?’
‘Um… Probably not, but equally, maybe we should. They look like adventurers. Maybe they know the way to Dvartim and wouldn’t mind the company.’
‘I can accept the motive. Let’s go see.’ Kana set off toward the group and the closer she got, the more she could work out about
them. The one she had thought was holding a sword was holding a sword and was also decked out in leather armour. A fighter of some sort then. Gender remained a mystery at this point but the other two were female. The tallest of them was wearing what could loosely be described as a dress and holding a staff. The dress was black and seemed to consist of a lot of strips of cloth tied on in strategic locations. Probably a mage. The second definite woman was possibly an elf. She had purple hair and was dressed in some sort of corseted leather outfit with a long, split skirt.
The upper half of the ‘dress,’ the blouse, was a deep red. She also carried a staff, but she did not quite give off a mage vibe.
Maybe a cleric; elves had a fair number of clerics of Soansha among them. Two casters and a fighter, and a pony which looked nervous. Something was not right.
The reason for the nervous pony appeared from the treeline when Kana and Aneshti were maybe ten metres from the party. Goblins.
Maybe twenty, including one which was much larger than the others and was presumably the hobgoblin. Goblins, it turned out, were about what Kana had expected. They were short humanoids with sharp features and green skin. None of them wore armour and only some of them wore anything at all. They were armed with spears and clubs which looked as though they had been made by cavemen.
They did not really look like much of a threat, except that there were a lot of them and they looked really angry.
‘Here they come!’ the fighter said, stating the obvious. ‘Get ready.’
The cleric stretched out her staff and a circle appeared at the end of it. She was probably readying a missile spell. The mage also seemed to be getting ready to cast, but she was obviously waiting for the goblins to close the distance more. Kana quickened her pace a little, marching through the line of combatants and raising her own staff toward the onrushing horde.
A circle appeared more or less immediately, larger and a lot redder than the one the cleric had created.
‘What?’ the mage said, blinking at Kana in surprise. ‘Who are–’
The goblins passed the ten-metre mark and Kana said ‘Fire Swarm!’
A storm of small balls of fire flew from the end of her staff in a fan of destruction. Eleven of the gobli
ns, plus their leader, dropped as they were hit with one or more of the flaming spheres.
There were screams of pain and the remaining goblins stumbled to a halt. Then, without stopping to even pick up their dead comrades, they turned tail and ran as fast as their legs could carry them back into the trees.
‘Wow,’ Aneshti said, ‘remind me not to get you too annoyed with me.’
‘Same,’ the mage said, stepping in front of Kana. ‘So please take this as a polite inquiry. Who in Soansha’s name are you?’
‘I’m Kana,’ Kana said, ‘and this is Aneshti.’
‘Okay, but why–’
‘Elves!’ This was the cleric, the purple-haired one. Now that Kana got a look at her face, it was unlikely that she was actually an elf. Her eyes lacked the distinctive angularity that Aneshti’s and Sharassa’s had. But there was still that purple bob of hair. It was not a normal colour for a human. And she had used the plural of elf?
‘I’m not an elf,’ Kana said.
‘You do look a little like an elf,’ Aneshti said, ‘but you don’t cover your ears, so it should be obvious that you aren’t.’ The ice elf turned to look at the cleric. ‘And you’re from Trefall, right?’
Kana’s education on the world had included Trefall because it was the town on the edge of the Great Forest where the peace treaty between the humans and the elves had been signed. It continued to be the main location used for trade between the two cultures. It was on the opposite side of the Heartland Sea from the wetlands inhabited by the dracs and so a far safer place to do business.
But how did Aneshti know the woman came from there?
The woman in question reached up and stroked a hand across the side of her hair. ‘It’s the hair, right?’ She let out a little gasp. ‘You’re a shitagi! I’ve never met a shitagi.’
‘You’ll have to forgive Mimi,’ the fighter said. Her sword was now back in its scabbard at her hip, and she was definitely a woman. At least, Kana thought she was. She definitely looked feminine, even if the lack of shaping in her heavy leather breastplate suggested a really flat chest. She also had something of a broad chin, but there was a cute aspect to her face. She could have been a man, but Kana was leaning toward female. Short coppery hair could have belonged to either gender, but the hazel, almost amber, eyes had a definite feminine quality and the voice was higher than you might expect from a male. ‘She really loves elves.’ She frowned at Kana. ‘You do kind of look like one.’
The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World Page 12