by Danny Macks
Their destination was a camp outside of the yellow area, not far from Silva's iron markers. Kate joined Silva as he took a turn driving the horse-drawn wagon which contained his unconscious father, near the tail end of the train. “You've been very thoughtful.”
“Sorry,” Silva replied, making an effort to appear relaxed. “I’ve been thinking about the ramifications of my mother’s sigil. If it is what rumor believes it to be, it can change a lot of things in my world.”
Kate frowned, sticking her lower lip out in the cutest way, before Silva yanked his attention elsewhere. “What kind of things?”
“The substance most people around here call ‘the yellow’ alters people’s ability to power magic, a bit like filling a jug with water and getting rocks mixed in. The more rocks settle to the bottom of the jug, the less water it can hold. People have been trying to find a way to ‘filter out the rocks’ but they haven’t succeeded largely because we haven't had a sigil to identify what we were trying to remove in magical terms. Now that we have Mother's identifier sigil, almost every rote we know which affects living creatures can now be used on the yellow.”
“So discovering this sigil is a good thing…”
Silva shrugged. “Good and bad. Being able to manipulate a creature which eats magic also means it could be weaponized. Remove magic from a battlefield and people are reduced to fighting with swords and bows.”
“That doesn't sound so bad. In my world, we had a power source made into an explosive which could wipe out cities. If everyone had to use swords, maybe they would fight fewer wars.”
“If one side of a battle had stun bolts and the other side didn't …” Silva let the thought trail off as he struggled to keep his face neutral, then he shrugged again. “Slavery is still legal in some countries.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Kill the yellow. All of it. Restore magic to Winterhaven and make the sigil meaningless at the same time.”
“A wizard can do that?”
“Most can't, but I think I can…” With the spell on his master scroll. Silva shivered again.
“Because of what your father did to you?”
Silva clenched his jaw and blinked to clear blurry vision. “No.”
Kate laid a hand on his forearm. Again, his gaze was pulled down to where she touched him. Long ago, he'd dreamed of being touched like that.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
“You don’t really understand magic, and your vocabulary isn't great, so I’m not sure I can. In your world, if a man lays with a woman who is not his wife and has a child with her, is that a crime?”
Kate smiled. “That’s not a crime here either. Despite his … ‘condition’, your father was still asked to officiate more than one marriage. And more than a few had …” She made a gesture over her belly. “Let’s say you could tell the goods had been sampled.”
Silva blushed despite himself and grinned. “No, I’m not talking about that.” He regained control of his features and started again. “I mean if a man holds down a woman who is not willing and –”
“You mean rape.” Kate’s grip on Silva's arm tightened. “I know that word.”
“Father put something in me — in my mind. The rule is different in other countries, but here, rape of the mind is an executable offense. Worse than rape of the body. If anyone finds out, he'll be killed.”
Kate drew back her hand and hugged herself. Silva wanted to hold her, comfort her, but she probably wouldn't understand. Drudge certainly wouldn't.
“I’m sorry I worried you, but you can’t tell anybody.” Silva forced himself to look up and pay attention to the horses. “He’s my father. He didn't know what he was doing.”
Kate moved to hug him, but he shook his head sharply and she stopped herself.
“Let’s talk about something else,” he interrupted when she started to speak. “The sigil. Did my mother really carve it in the wall before she died?”
Kate wiped her eyes, then smiled faintly. It was beautiful and seemed to be her default expression. “I don’t know for certain. I was pretty banged up when my house exploded and I woke in another world. I found the sigil carved into the wall a few days later, but she was already dead. Were you serious about all the things that sigil could do? Change wars?”
Silva nodded. “If I don't destroy the stuff first.”
“What if the sigil had been altered? Extra lines added?”
Silva looked sharply at Kate but couldn't read her expression. Was that guilt? Had she vandalized the sigil during her imprisonment? “Best case, the spell would simply fail. Worst case … well, that would depend on how much power was poured into the spell.”
Kate took Silva's hand and wrote a sigil with her finger on his palm. Her nails were short and ragged where she chewed them. “Could you examine the other sigil with the extra lines — the one Drudge wrote down — and figure out what would happen? I don’t want to hurt anybody.”
In Silva's imagination, Kate’s sigil burned bright. Everything he knew about the yellow in his years of study — this simpler sigil felt right. He wove it together with the detection, light and other sigils he had used with the probers, and breathed his tiny sliver of remaining power into it. A yellow shimmer spread out from the wagon into the air all around him and winked out almost as soon as it formed. Kate gasped and — asleep in the back of the wagon — his father stirred.
Drudge rode up to the wagon. “Did you see that?”
“I’m sorry, see what?” Silva asked. Kate grinned and Father stirred again.
“Kate,” Drudge said, “I’d prefer if you rode in the lead wagon up by me, where it’s safer.”
Kate glanced toward Silva, but he nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll be fine.”
Drudge helped Kate behind his saddle, then yelled, “Somebody get more of that tranquilizer back here!”
“Sorry, Father,” Silva muttered after the two rode away. “But you brought this on yourself.”
All these years, he thought his father's affliction was something done to him, not something he'd done to himself. He'd transformed his prison into a palace, if a palace only he could see. And Mother. Father said he spoke to her and the rest of his friends every night. Instead of grieving his dead wife, he'd made another one.
Aren't you being a little harsh with him? a familiar feminine voice whispered in his ear. He fell into addiction because of his grief over me.
Silva shook his head to try and clear away his mother's voice. He concentrated on the horses, who were following the wagon in front of them, without help.
It was dark by the time the wagon train reached Silva's iron markers. Several tents were set up well away from the border of the yellow and Drudge took Kate ahead to make introductions. While the ley benders fawned over Kate and congratulated Drudge, Silva joined the workmen unhitching and feeding the horses.
He was drained. Too drained to even alter his vision. Past the camp, he blindly tried to find the ley line which should have been in the center of the road, but somebody had moved it. He eventually gave up and lay down in the back of the wagon, next to his father.
When he woke the next morning, Father was upright with his face toward the sun. Naked, apart from the purple robe wrapped around his waist. To Silva's illusion-addled vision, he was strong and healthy. An antique sun-collection rote glowed on his chest.
“He looks like he’s meditating, but there isn't a ley line anywhere near him,” said a young female voice from nearby. Silva sat up and pulled down the hem of his own robe, which had hiked itself up during the night. The owner of the voice was a muscled woman with flaming red hair tied up in a bun, almost the same color as the red bands on her belted black robe. Several pouches and a small chalkboard hung from her belt.
"I'm not meditating," Father said without opening his eyes. "I'm dreaming about the future, but my son's still mucked it up."
Silva smiled wearily and shook his head.
She handed Silva a ley stone. “Don’t recharge too quickl
y. I’d like to keep that.”
Silva handed the stone back. “Thank you, but I’d rather not.” He nodded his head east, toward his iron markers. “We’re a little too close for comfort.”
She nodded. “When you are feeling presentable, Dr. Neran would like to talk to you. You both scan as remarkably wemyd free, considering where you’ve been.”
“Wem - id?”
She wrote on her chalkboard, ‘WMYD’, and said, “Winterhaven Muliplanar Yellow Diatoms.” She added a small ‘e’ between the W and M. “Wemyd. What do you call them?”
Silva shrugged, “Most people around here call it ‘the yellow’.”
“Quaint.” She pointed to a rectangular tent set well away from the others. “We set up showers over there. I’ll keep your father out of trouble. We reduced his dosage to the proper level and I’m here to keep an eye on him." She pointed to several other tents. "When you are ready, Dr. Neran should be somewhere over there. Search for a white-haired man with a lot of other people shamelessly kowtowing to him.”
Still stinging from the offhand insult, Silva grabbed his towel, soap and grooming items and headed toward the shower. If the ley bender couldn't recognize a solar collection spell when she saw one, well, she deserved what she got. She didn’t even introduce herself. Quaint — ha. She had no idea.
The shower tent contained wooden planks to stand on, a row of spigots and a circular disk with three rotes on each pipe. Silva stared at the three symbols with growing despair. He was still totally drained. He hadn't recharged, hadn't had any caffeine, and had slept in a wooden wagon next to a man which kicked in his sleep. He might as well have been a drudge.
I’m not ready for this.
One of farmer Caleb Henshaw’s boys — Silva thought it was Eman Henshaw, but he couldn’t be sure, they appeared so alike — walked into the shower room and stripped off his clothes. Eman touched the central rote, turned on the water, then used the right-side rote to raise the temperature.
He saw Silva, still fully dressed, and stepped away a few pipes to turn on a second spigot while the first one continued to run. Silva mutely stripped, stepped under the offered spray, and washed the sleep out of his eyes.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. I help my brother, too. He can’t seem to get the hang of it," Eman said. "There’s a spell below the slats that gathers the dirty water, filters it, and pumps it back up the pipe.”
“You don’t say.”
“They say it’s okay to pee in here, but I don’t believe it. That just sounds gross.”
Silva smiled gently. “You are kind to use your abilities to help people. A lot of people look down on drudges.”
Eman grinned. “You're not a drudge. My brother’s not either. Dad says he’s ‘yellowed’ and Doc Neran’s trying to fix him.”
Silva grabbed his robe and emptied the pockets before washing it in the shower with his body soap. “How’s that working out?”
“I’m not sure. Nobody explains anything to me, or when they do, they use big words I don't understand. Are you here to help my brother too?”
Silva paused, considered a moment, then said slowly, “Yes. Yes, I guess I am.”
“That’s good.” Eman touched the central rote again and the water on his spigot shut off. “Would you like me to leave yours on?”
Silva wrung the water out of his robe. “No, I think I’m done. And thank you again.”
Silva put on his wet robe, reconsidered the hair grease he brought along, tied his hair back instead and found a quiet place to meditate with his own solar collection spell.
His robe was dry and he was starting to feel human again when he heard a polite cough and opened his eyes. The sun was still in the sky, but had progressed well toward evening.
The wizard before him wore purple robes with white and red bands on the sleeves. His build was deflated by age, but still showed hints of muscle in his stance and the breadth of his shoulders. He had once been physically powerful. He still bore a full head of hair and thick beard, but both were snowy white. He hadn’t been among the advance team Silva saw at the Twenty Mile Inn. “Good evening, Mage Vatic. I must admit I’m unaccustomed to waiting for someone when I send for them, but I see you put the time to good use. I’m Emmett Neran.”
Silva rose and stretched his legs. “Good evening, Dr. Neran. My condolences on your loss.”
“You knew my daughter?” Dr. Neran’s face grew as still as a pond on a windless day. Silva found himself imitating the doctor’s facial control.
“Only in passing. She mentioned you were a surgeon, but not a ley bender.” Was he embarrassed or simply grieving? Did he even know the circumstances of his daughter’s suicide?
“She didn't mention you at all.”
“I’m not surprised. We only met briefly and I’m not terribly noteworthy.”
Dr. Neran's eyes scanned Silva up and down from curly hair to the blue band on his sleeve to well-worn shoes. “Somehow, I doubt that.”
“You wanted to see me. How may I help you?”
“First, I wanted to thank you for your self-study of the wemyd progression in the last few years. Your markers are precisely the proof we need to create some much needed urgency within the government. The flood program we are instituting in the next few weeks should have taken place years ago.”
Silva nodded. He imagined it would feel good to the people of Winterhaven to see someone doing something, even if that something wouldn't work.
Dr. Neran turned to walk back to the main camp and Silva followed. “Second, I hoped I could get you to speak to Caleb Henshaw. His son, Farley, has a rather severe wemyd infection, but he’s refusing to let us treat it.”
“What’s the current treatment?” Silva actively sought out every single rare scrap of news about his hometown and the problem there, for years, and he hadn't heard about a treatment. Maybe the necromancy spell on his master scroll wasn't the only option.
“The treatment is highly experimental, of course, but we take the subject’s inherent ley energy, and concentrate all of it into a single portion of the body, like a hand or foot. The wemyds follow their food source and the remainder of the body regains higher functional abilities over time. The procedure is highly painful, of course, but I’m confident in the eventual prognosis.”
Silva wasn't a doctor, but that sounded more than a little extreme. It would take hours — hours of excruciating pain — to do what the doctor described. And all it would accomplish is to shove the yellow around. “What do you do with the infected body part?"
“Why, excise it, of course.”
Silva's facial control broke. Hack it off? What kind of barbarism were surgeons practicing nowadays? Conducting torture? Maiming and calling it treatment?
Dr. Neran frowned. “I know this sounds a bit extreme, but we take every precaution and make every effort to perform the treatment with minimal risk to the patient’s life. We are currently showing restored mystic function in seventy-six percent of test subjects.”
“What happens to the other twenty-four percent?”
Dr. Neran’s scowl deepened. The man could keep a dispassionate face over the death of his daughter, but not when defending his work. “Thirteen percent do not have increased mystical function and eleven percent have other complications, either due to the ley bending, or infection as a result of the surgery. We are working right now to reduce that number, which is why we need Mr. Henshaw’s cooperation.”
“I need to talk to my father.”
Dr. Neran blinked. “You didn't know? He was taken away hours ago. I assumed you had been informed.”
Silva stopped. His father wasn't his responsibility any more. He expected to feel guilt. Or relief. He scanned the camp for Kate, but she was probably with Drudge doing whatever new couples did together. He was alone.
“So will you talk to Mr. Henshaw?”
Silva resumed walking so quickly Dr. Neran struggled to keep up. He was alone. If he cast the necromancy spell, it
would be ironic and a little fitting if Dr. Neran was the one providing the rope for his execution. But no family would mourn Silva. Nobody would even notice.
He imagined the rote, gestured, and little lights appeared in the air all around him like microscopic fireflies.
“What am I seeing?” Dr. Neran asked as he caught up.
“Your wemyds,” Silva growled, making no effort to disguise the disdain in his voice. “You've been bending local ley lines, stirring them up like an oar stirs up sediment in a shallow pond. They’re all over you and everyone here.” In truth, there weren't that many. The greater concentration was still east, on the other side of Silva's border marker. But as he strode, he grew more certain he was about to sacrifice himself. He wasn't in the mood to also be gentle with a bunch of asshats.
The detection spell was set up in a twenty foot radius and moved when he did, unlike a traditional illusion. It easily permeated tent walls. Heads poked out of tents in Silva's wake when people saw the air around them sparkle then grow dim as he passed.
He found Farley Henshaw eating dinner with Farley's father and the other drudges. Because the spell only converted detection to visible light, he couldn't see the wemyds inside the boy, but he didn't need to. He picked out a wemyd resting on the boy’s skin and killed it with a minor variation of the necromancy spell Dr. Delan had given him. Father had been right: Mother's sigil was the key.
The power draw was so small and the creature so tiny that when the tiny light winked out, Silva wasn't sure if he had actually done anything. Then a second nearby wemyd disappeared, and a few more. The necromancy spell appeared to stall for a time, then Farley Henshaw gave a little shudder.
Silva adjusted his vision. The boy glowed a bright clear blue without a trace of yellow or green.
As one, every mage in the area ran toward Silva's border markers, trying to keep in sight the spell which was slowly gaining momentum. Technicians and drudges ran to follow. Silva detection-to-light spell was still running as he outran the slow moving spell, so a solid pool of densely packed wemyds burst into light as he reached the border, visible to everyone.
