by Greg Curtis
“They did?” Manx hadn't expected that. But it made sense given that they had magic. Who else could lock up people with magic? And it also matched what Whitey had told him about them stealing magic. “Maybe. But even if that's true I don't think they'll just let you take over and arrest them.” He stopped and took a quick look around just in case Lady Marshendale was somewhere nearby, waiting to drag him back off to court.
“And I don't think they will have a choice. Four hundred years ago there were thousands of members of the Silver Order. Now it seems to be just a handful and most of them have taken to their heels. Those we've been fighting here, are mostly mercenaries who took their coin and a number of conscripts. And their grip on our magic is failing. That's why we were able to escape. And a great many more are being freed as we speak.”
“We are weak at the moment. Our magic falters. Our bodies fail us. But we will return to health and when we are all free we will number in the tens or hundreds of thousands. We will prevail.”
“I see.” But what he saw probably wasn't what the druid wanted him to. Manx saw trouble ahead. This was some sort of revolution. A coup, no matter what it was dressed up as. And of course there would be resistance. Maybe a war.
“You know that the people have been happy in this world without magic?” Manx thought he should point that out. “Technology and science have been a boon to the world. Redmond is the most powerful land in the world thanks to it. The most advanced. And what's happened thus far has been nothing short of a disaster.”
“Change is difficult,” Peth answered him. “And there is a lot of anger among our people for what was done. But it will all work out. Life was good before this foul smelling science of yours was invented. Better than you can imagine. We could do a great many things you cannot. We could send messages across the world through the shamans, far faster than this copper wire electricity thing you have.”
“You mean the telegraph?”
“Possibly.” The druid looked dubious, as if he was thinking about the word. Sounding it out in his head. “We flew down the roads on gliders instead of using these horrid steel wagons. And our farms were larger and grew more food, whether it be animal or plant. We did not need this chemical fertiliser your people use.”
“Best of all, the sky was clean. The air didn't stink of brimstone. It will be a better world with our return.”
“I hope you're right,” Manx answered him. But really he doubted it. This might or might not be a revolution, and even those from what he knew of history, were never good. But this was at least a coup, which was something else entirely. And coups were never about the people no matter what those seeking the throne claimed. They were always about the power.
“Call me a muck spout if you wish.” The druid saw through to Manx's scepticism. “For the moment though I want to learn about you. Why are you injured? Larissa saw darkness there. Anger and pain. It worried her. Even though you are a Smythe, we would not see you suffer.”
“It has nothing to do with your fight,” Manx answered him.
“Never-the-less I would hear it.”
Manx let out a heavy breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. “My father fed me to the lions when I was five. It's not something I like to talk about.” Especially not now when there was no offer of healing on the table. Maybe that was selfish, but it was the way it was.
“He fed you to the lions?!” The druid sounded shocked.
“Dangled me by my ankles from a rope like bait on a fish hook while the cats leapt at me. I'd rather not talk about it.”
“That's …” the druid hunted for a word and couldn't find one.
“A long time ago,” Manx finished for him. “And best forgotten. It has nothing to do with whatever's happening here and now.” Another conveniently timed roar of anger from the crowd behind them just then, made his point for him quite well he thought. And it also reminded him that since he had one of these spell-casters listening to him, he should do something to help things. Because the last thing anyone needed was more trouble.
“Peth, I don't really know what happened to you and the others. But I understand that you're angry. Truly I understand anger better than you could guess. But it won't help. If you and the others have any wit left to you, you'll end this chaos now. Return life to normal, and let people go back to work. Deal with your anger on your own time.” That was after all the lesson he had learned from his own life. The anger, the fear and the endless feeling of betrayal, didn't help. Neither did giving in to the pain and crying about things that couldn't be changed. You just had to carry on.
“Like you do?”
“Fairly much,” Manx agreed even though he knew the man was making a point about his life. That it wasn't so great. But that wasn't the point. The point was that he had a life.
“People have to be able to walk the streets in safety. They have to be able to return to work. Shops have to open again. Factories start running once more. The people don't care about the Silver Order. And they don't know anything about what happened to you. All they know is that they can't go to work and earn the coin they need to, to feed their families. And that it's you that's caused all this. If you don't get that fixed the cities will burn and all the magic in the world won't save you from the people's knives and clubs.”
“You're plain spoken for a nobleman.”
“Not a noble,” Manx told him again. “And not a thief either. Just a librarian.” He paused for a moment, realising something. That none of what had been said mattered to the man. He had come to bother him for some other reason.
“Now what do you really want?” He knew it had nothing to do with this darkness that the shaman had seen. That was just an excuse. Nor was the man here to heal him much as Manx might have wished. And he was tired and wanted to go home before things turned bad as he feared they soon would.
“There's only been one family that has escaped the Silver Order's purge of magic from the land for these past few centuries,” Peth began.
“Ah, wrong person.” Manx cut him off as he realised what the man was saying. He should have guessed. They'd been locked away, asleep or whatever, for four hundred years. They wanted to know what had happened in the world of magic while they'd been away. Something he knew nothing about. It was always about his family, never about him.
“I haven't seen any of my family since I was five. Since this.” He gestured at his face. “Haven't spoken to them or written. I was raised by servants and then by a boarding academy. They didn't tell me anything about what you want to hear. I don't know anything about magic and didn't have any idea that it might be passed through blood. I just knew I could talk to cats. I don't even know if any of my family have magic or did over the past centuries. If you want to find out any of that you're going to have to go to Clairmont Hall and talk to them.”
“Ah ha.” The druid looked at him strangely. “And I don't suppose you would want to come with us?”
“Gods no! Are you mad?! Why would I want that?” He didn't tell the man with the antlers that many nights he actually dreamed of killing them. Of wrapping his hands around his father's neck and squeezing until the life left his eyes. But he was sure the druid guessed a little of that. Anyone would. But it seemed he was wrong.
“Is it a matter of coin?” Peth asked.
“Coin?” Manx was shocked. Actually he was outraged. “What need would I have for coin?” First he was a thief and now he was a mercenary! He wasn't sure which was worse. Manx took a deep breath to calm his growing annoyance before he said anything foolish.
“Now is there anything else I can help you with?”
Peth shook his head, but stared at him strangely.
“Then I'll take my leave and get home to feed my cat before she starts eating the furniture.” Actually she was secretly chewing on it when she thought he wouldn't notice. And sharpening her claws on the backs of the easy chairs, possibly in preparation for an attack on his eyes as she kept promising to carry out.
�
�There's no need for that. We could talk. You do know, we aren't your enemies?” The druid told him with a look of pain in his eyes.
“No,” Manx agreed. “But you've made it perfectly clear that you aren't my friends either.”
With that he left the man with the antlers and the sad eyes and headed for his home. Behind him the crowd of shoppers was still listening to the other spell-casters with varying degrees of unhappiness. And every so often he could hear them crying out in anger. But at least they hadn't started fighting. Unfortunately he doubted that that would be far away.
Chapter Eleven
It was tiresome breaking down the tangle of dimensional knots that was the heart of the trap in which the spell-casters had been thrown. But more than that it was impossibly complicated. So complicated that she couldn't actually untangle it. Every time Sorsha tried she just seemed to make it worse. So instead she was just pulling dimensional threads a bit, teasing them apart where she could, loosening them so that she could reach between them to find and fish out those locked away. It was difficult and tedious work, and some days she wondered if she'd ever finish.
As she sat at her bench in front of the interwoven mess, Sorsha found herself more than once wondering who could have fashioned such a construction. Certainly it was beyond anything she knew how to build. And even after many days of simply teasing out the various threads of twisted dimensions that had been tangled together, she was nowhere near done. In fact, she feared, she might have actually made the tangle worse.
But she was making progress, she told herself on her happier days. She had unwoven dozens of twisted strands of dimensions and freed a dozen and a half groups of spell-casters from them. Druids and shamans mostly. Quite a few sorcerers too. But she had pulled out three other walkers, and now that they were recovering, they were heading off to other towns and cities where it appeared other such dimensional traps had been built.
Unfortunately from what she'd heard, everywhere her fellow walkers had gone similar disasters were now unfolding. It wasn't just wild animals being loosed on the world by the druids and the shamans. It was otherworldly beasts. But her people had to protect themselves as best they could. And they wanted to go home. She understood that. She wanted to go back to Fort Bane herself. But she had work here to deal with first.
It would take time, maybe years, but she had hope that eventually all the prisoners would be freed.
Meanwhile the world was falling apart around her. The prisoners she was freeing, were busy destroying it. Not intentionally. And not just the walkers either. The druids and the shamans were bringing in wild creatures to overrun the cities. The drakes were burning everything in sight. The crakes were bringing their storms wherever they flew.
She couldn't blame them for it. She had done the same thing after all. Between the confusion that filled them, their weakness and the strangeness of this new world they found themselves in, they felt vulnerable. And wherever they went the Silver Order were attacking them. Striking without warning – usually with armies of mercenaries at their side. And using weapons of great and terrible power.
But the Silver Order weren't the only threat they faced. Town and city guards attacked them on sight, simply because they looked different. The people mostly ran screaming when they appeared, but sometimes they came back with pitchforks and guns. Her people had to protect themselves. And that was always bad.
If only they would stay here for a time. Long enough to regain their health. To grow in numbers. But of course they wouldn't do that. All of them wanted to go home. To find their families. And so they left. And they walked straight into trouble.
There was a war raging out there. One that was slowly spreading throughout Redmond as more and more of her people arrived in new towns and cities. And the spell-casters were defending themselves the only way they could. Summoning allies. Bringing fire and lightning. Unfortunately, like her, they were finding themselves unable to control their magic once the battles were over. The crakes' storms kept raging. The beasts of the druids and the walkers ran wild. The spells of the sorcerers broke free of their restraints.
They should have remained here in Winstone with her for a while. Until they were stronger. She kept telling the others that. But that in itself was a problem. The weakness she felt, that they all felt, wasn't going away in a hurry. The clarity of thought was slow to return too. There was something wrong with them. She knew it. She felt it in her bones. But there was nothing she could do about it, save to hope that time would heal them.
For the moment there were creatures loose everywhere. Running wild and creating havoc across half the realm. Because most of them didn't want to remain in the cities. So they were spreading out, annoying farmers and woodsmen and so many others. And the cities were falling apart. It wasn't just Winstone so she understood. The newspapers were talking about three or four other cities in the same shape. But more would be in trouble shortly she feared.
Unfortunately she couldn't concern herself with that. The only thing that mattered to her was that somewhere in that impossible twisted inter-dimensional trap, was her family – she hoped. She had to free them.
“Tea?”
Sorsha looked up to see Larissa standing there with a cup and saucer in her hand. Since she'd revealed herself to the others the shamans seemed to have taken charge of her welfare while she worked on unravelling the trap day after day. So Larissa turned up at regular intervals with cups of tea and snacks, and had even arranged accommodation for the night in an inn. Gold it seemed, stopped the locals worrying about people with funny ears and extra eyes. Now however, the Nightshade Inn was full beyond bursting with spell-casters and they were looking for a second.
She also made sure that the locals stayed away from her as she worked, which was useful as it meant that she could take her hat off. All the pointing and staring at her, had been a distraction as she'd worked.
“Thank you.” Sorsha accepted the cup willingly, and the company as the shaman sat down beside her.
It was good tea. One thing about this new, modern world they'd found themselves in, it had good tea. She didn't like these steam powered contraptions they travelled in. Not even the ones that sailed among the clouds. But she liked the fact that they could travel the entire world to get the best tea. A good cup of tea made up for a lot.
“So you heard Peth's tale last night?” Larissa began. She'd obviously come to do more than just drink tea. She'd come to talk.
“You're worried that the people will not accept the changes we have to make? That they won't accept us as we retake our place in this world?” And she was worried about that too. But more worried that they wouldn't be able to. Not just because they were weak and few in number at the moment. But because this world was not the one they had left. There was no magic in this world, or at least very little. That meant that the King did not have any spell-casters in his Court. Plenty of advisers but no spell-casters. Nor were the laws governing the lives and trade of their people around any longer. And while they had to be reinstated, in this new world she wasn't sure how they would go about doing that. Now the King was apparently a figurehead and the Court ran everything – inefficiently!
But it was more than that. Spell-casters had been the most powerful of groups in the world. They had had wealth and status. They had had the respect of the people. And they had had property. Her own family had lived in a mansion in Fort Bane – and they had been nothing more than merchants, selling exotic animals to the people. Now she suspected, if their home even still stood, someone else owned it. And after four hundred years, even though it was only days for her, she couldn't just move in and take the home back.
So what were they supposed to do? Start again as paupers? In a world where the people didn't even know what they could do? And where they would be given no respect?
“That too,” the shaman replied. “But I meant the other part of his tale.”
“Oh! You mean the part about the librarian?” Even though it wasn't important
compared to all the rest of the problems they faced, Sorsha knew she did. For some reason the shaman's thoughts were often fixed on the Smythe. She suspected the woman felt insulted by what the man had said to her when they'd first met. And besides, she was a shaman. Her life was given completely to her Goddess. As long as the temples to Ao still stood, she had a home to go to. And she'd never had any coin to begin with. So she hadn't actually lost anything. So Sorsha wasn't surprised when the woman nodded.
“It's a strange tale. A sad one. But I don't think he can help us.” And truthfully she wasn't sure if he would want to even if he could. The man sounded like a broken creature. Too lost in his own wounds to worry about others. But in any case if he hadn't seen his family since he was five, then he surely didn't know the magic of his family. He couldn't help them.
