The Ordinary

by Jim Grimsley

  “Pardon, but the word you used?” Jedda found herself watching not Karsa but Malin.

  “Eseveren,” Malin answered. “You understand it?”

  Jedda nodded, turning to Himmer and Vitter, switching to Alenke. “Spiral gate. Circular gate. The name of the Twil Gate in their speech. It’s a form of adjective we don’t have.”

  “The speculative form,” Opit said, also in Alenke, “used a good deal in their humor, their poetry, and in the names of places. The ending you’re hearing is specifically used to assign a quality to an object that is somewhat inappropriate to the object.”

  The thought had made Jedda smile, in fact, a gate that was a circle at the same time that it wasn’t, as if the name were quavering between the two possibilities, and she felt the thought opening a new layer of her understanding. When she looked up, Malin was watching, quietly, pleased at something. A prickle ran across Jedda’s scalp. I’ve been there when this woman read minds before, in Montajhena, Jedda thought. Or at least when she appeared to.

  After that, with her own attraction to Malin becoming stronger, she was completely flustered and missed Karsa’s introductions of Himmer and Vitter. She was conscious of Malin watching. Karsa said something to Jedda, who had to ask her to repeat.

  “She said that I’m happy to meet you all,” Malin said, and paused a moment. “Karsa, thank you, I’ll speak now.”

  Karsa bowed her head but held her ground. Thickset, short legged, and long in the torso, she had a less graceful body than was the norm.

  Malin composed herself in the tall chair. A light fell on her like a gauze, a softness, and she watched Jedda calmly. “It’s not customary for me to address a guest directly, not at first. For several reasons. But with you, I think, that’s unnecessary.” Something in her gaze held Jedda, pricked her, like the touch of a pin, but warm and pleasant afterward. “Your friends are the friends of old allies of ours, whom we have never met until now, so therefore this is an occasion that pleases me very much.”

  “Allies?” This word in Alenke, addressed to Vitter, and then Jedda blushed and gave him the whole statement.

  “We have worked together for many years. My contacts with people in your ministry,” and her nod here was for Vitter, “go back at least to your father’s day.”

  Vitter laughed politely. “Perhaps not so long, madam. I’m quite old.”

  “Your ages are difficult to guess,” Malin said, “but I am not guessing.”

  Vitter sobered a bit. Himmer sat up straighter, a sharpening of his expression. Opit was watching both, a smile on his face, and watching Jedda, too. She hid her surprise, listening to Malin’s lilting accent as she spoke the Alenke, not fluently, but easily enough that she could be well understood.

  “We’re very grateful for your hospitality,” Vitter said, with a polite hand gesture Jedda had seen used only occasionally; Himmer mimicked the gesture and bowed his head.

  “I wish I were more pleased with the outcome of our efforts.” Malin had risen restlessly out of her seat and stood near the window gazing outward over the bay. “Your people were not prepared for the rescue, when I sent your ships across the gate again.”

  “Our people were as prepared as we could allow them to be,” Vitter answered. “We couldn’t risk that the Orminy learn of our involvement with you or of our conversations with you. And none of us had any idea that this would be the time.”

  “I would have preferred the risk,” Malin spoke, dryly, into the rolling waves and clouded sky beyond the glass, “to the blood on my hands.”

  For the first time Himmer spoke, and his tone was somber. “It’s hard for me to believe. Do you have the numbers?”

  “About thirty thousand drowned, within sight of your research platform, after I returned them through the gate. Your people are inflating the numbers in your news broadcasts.” She looked at Vitter scornfully. “Would you have believed it possible?”

  “This won’t hurt the public view of the incident, from our point of view,” Vitter said.

  “You are from the Planetary Ministry?” Malin asked.

  He nodded.

  “Your view is pragmatic, of course. But I’ve never killed before,” she said, a flicking of that somberness that Jedda remembered from the morning. Turning to the sky again, “As you say, it was a most effective display.”

  Himmer was simply watching Malin, as if trying to read her thoughts. He had a gravity that was surprising, given his florid features. “The question remaining, madam, is for you to answer. What is your will? Will you help us or not?”

  For a moment Malin appeared to savor the moment, almost in satisfaction. But there was a bitterness in her eyes that slowly strengthened. “I have no will in this matter.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The decision isn’t mine and never was mine,” she said. “As for the one who will decide, he has asked that I bring you to meet him.” She spoke these words very quietly and in the gentlest way, but their impact was immediate. Opit looked stunned. Karsa, who apparently understood Alenke, appeared shocked. She murmured something to Opit and he translated for the rest of the Erejhen, their astonishment visible, a wash of turbulence through the room.

  Himmer said, “We’re to meet Irion?”

  Even those who understood no Alenke whatsoever caught the question, the name of Irion, and stopped.

  “It’s his request. As you can see from the reaction of my people here, it is extraordinary. But I’m to take you to his house.”

  “In Arthen?” Vitter asked, gripping his bony knees with his bony hands, excited. “Are you taking us to Arthen?”

  “You’ve heard of that place? We meant to keep it secret.”

  “It’s in your books,” Vitter said. “Your history.”

  “Then you believe our books are history. You give us that much credit. Good.” But she was looking distant, hardly pleased at all. “But I’m afraid to disappoint you. Irion has many houses, and for this meeting he has decided to invite us to his southern home. To a place we call Cunevadrim.”

  The name meant nothing to any of the Hormling, even Opit, but caused a noticeable agitation among the Erejhen; Karsa distressed, Kethen pleased, the others speaking excitedly from some emotion within that range. This went on until Malin moved from the window and the room fell silent. She spoke in Erejhen, the high mode of the language, some frequencies out of range of Jedda’s hearing. The room quieted. Malin turned to Himmer and Vitter again. “This is news that surprises us as much as you. The whole country will feel it. My uncle hasn’t left his northern territories in a very long time.” She bowed her head. “We’ll be leaving Evess to meet him as soon as we can be prepared, and I expect the journey to take twenty days or so, maybe more if the weather is bad after we leave the putter roads. Karsa has assigned householders to help you with your packing, and I’ve made my purse available for whatever you may need. Cunevadrim sits in the mountains and is cold this time of year. Opit has traveled in our mountains, at least, and can help you with what to buy. We’ll move to Evess in the morning, to make preparations. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve spared all the time I can for this and must be elsewhere.”

  In a rush of air and cloth and scent she departed, her spirit clearly agitated. Why is she afraid? Jedda wondered. What has she to fear?

  When Jedda returned to her room in the Chanii house, after navigating the labyrinth of stonework behind Opit, she found the householder, Arvith, packing her belongings into a sturdy trunk. In her room he looked taller, burlier than she remembered, thick muscle standing out along his back as he moved among her blouses, leggings, cardigans, scarves, underclothing, most of it bought here. He glanced at her entry but went on with his work. “So we are to take a journey,” he said.

  “That’s what we’re told.”

  When she moved to help him, he looked at her in a way that froze her in place. “I have been assigned to you, good woman. I’m your seneschal for the journey. You’ll please allow me to attend to this.”


  His accent was northern, though he was of the Anin people, the southern race. He had a careful way of moving, orderly and deliberate, hands moving from one task to the next. The trunk was a work of cabinetry such as she’d never seen before.

  “Is there something the good woman needs?” Arvith asked.

  “I’m just not used to having someone wait on me like this.”

  “Having someone serve you, you mean.” He straightened and faced her, holding her wool tunic, an overgarment worn for warmth. His face was impossible to read, like one of the Erejhen. “I’m pleased to travel where my lady Malin wishes and to serve as she chooses.”

  “You know where we’re going?”

  A change in his eyes. As if he had drawn back to a certain distance within himself. “Yes, I know it, from books. I’ve never been there.”

  “Can you say the name for me, again?”

  “Cunevadrim.” He shifted effortlessly into the Erejhen pronunciation. “A very old fortress, and palace, and tower. West, in a country called Turis.”

  “Leave that,” she indicated the blouse he was folding. “I want to change into it, I’m having dinner with my friends.”

  He lay the blouse on the bed. “Do you require any help?”

  “No.” She had checked the bathroom, saw he had not packed her toiletries. “I want a bath but I can manage it.”

  “I’ll see no one disturbs you.”

  “Would you answer a question for me? At the meeting, when Malin announced where we were going, the news upset people. Pleased a couple, but mostly upset them. Why?”

  She expected an evasion, but he drew himself straight again. His homely face composed itself. “I can understand the upset. The place was the seat of our king’s great enemy. From a war that happened a long time ago.”

  “Your people here have very long memories.”

  “That we do.”

  “So people still associate the place with this war?”

  He shook his head. “Not with the war but with the enemy.” The sound of Jedda’s bath water filled his moment’s hesitation. “People were happier when the place was completely closed. Do you know what enemy I mean?”

  She met his gaze. “No.”

  “A person like Malin, or like one of the very powerful Prin, but a malevolent person.” He had stopped working, looking at her somberly. “Can you imagine what those times must have been like? The Prin are dangerous enough when they’re trying to do good.” He glanced at Jedda, who had laughed softly. “You think that’s funny?”

  “I think it’s funny how easy it is for best of intentions to turn out to be wrong.”

  “There’s another reason, too,” Arvith said, and stopped and watched her for a moment. His eyes looked almost gray, softened in the lamplight. “The Drune are taught at Cunevadrim. Kethen’s people. The Prin don’t trust them.”

  “What’s a Drune?”

  “A person who does the same thing as a Prin, but in another language. That’s the short answer. The long answer would make you miss your bath.”

  Later, at dinner, she repeated what she’d heard about Cunevadrim, and Brun agreed, adding, “No place Malin could have named would have surprised people more.”

  “Is there some danger?” Vitter asked, nibbling at a piece of bread with the edges of his lips.

  “Places like Cunevadrim are always dangerous.”

  “Why?”

  Brun lay down her eating sticks, poured herself wine, and added to Vitter’s glass as well. “Because of the thing we call magic, that your world lacks. The presence of people like Malin, or like Irion, who have the kind of power required to sink your ships and humiliate your army. Magic lingers in a place, especially foul magic, like the radiation from one of your bombs. Cunevadrim has that kind of reputation.”

  “Who was Irion’s enemy?”

  “A wizard called Drudaen. He and Irion fought a war that lasted nearly a century. Cunevadrim was his principal residence.”

  “Where does this power come from?” Jedda asked. “What do you know about it?”

  Brun and Opit glanced at each other, and one could see this was an old topic between them, a topic that had become, judging from the set of Opit’s jaw, uncomfortable. Brun answered, “This is where we will see the differences among us once again.” For the sake of Himmer, everyone was speaking Alenke; Brun had to pause a bit, fuddled by the dinner wine, seeking words. “For me, for most people here, there’s no need to explain it. Some would say it comes from God. But the ability to shape magic comes from languages.”

  “Meaning that the shaping of what they call magic is a function of consciousness in some way,” Opit added.

  Brun agreed to that, though something about the phrase “what they call magic” appeared to disturb her. “The magician masters one of the known languages, usually Malei, which is what most of the Prin speak. Some of the Prin study another language, Eldrune, which is what Irion’s enemy spoke. Irion taught it to himself and then to others, and now Cunevadrim is a school for teaching Eldrune.”

  “Are you a student of history?” Vitter asked.

  “I’m daughter of a mother with a big family library, to which she and my father added. Irion himself wrote a book, you know.”

  “Did he?”

  “He completed it in the centuries after the King left the world. Its subject is his own training as a magician and the war with Drudaen.”

  “I’ve puzzled at it,” Opit said. “The language has changed a bit since then.”

  “It’s called Kirith Kirin, after the King,” Brun added.

  “Can you remember what he says about his training?” Jedda asked.

  “Yes, some. A magician studies to produce a type of consciousness called a kei, a state in which thought is compressed into smaller and smaller time frames. In fact, other writers describe this as learning to think closer and closer to the present moment. From this state of consciousness he or she uses one or another of these languages to make things happen.”

  “Events.”

  “Yes.”

  “What sort?” Jedda asked.

  Brun shrugged, looking as if she wished someone would change the subject. “What you’ve already seen, for one thing. In our history, no army ever stood up to a magician and lived to tell about it, unless the mage was feeling merciful.”

  “But are there limits?”

  “Certainly. Most of the magicians before Irion were somewhat limited, in that they could only kill two or three thousand people at a swipe. If the history books are true, of course; you have to pretend I’m saying that over and over again, because even here we haven’t seen such conflicts in a very long time.”

  “But Irion has fewer limits? I don’t understand.”

  “If you read about the Prin or study their writings, which I can get for you, you’ll see that the levels of magic are quite systematically defined, increasingly so as modern magicians study the subject. Opit tells me you would say that magic is a quantum process, that a magician advances in rank not gradually but in sudden leaps, from one state of energy to the next. Irion has gone beyond all his predecessors, and since he defeated Drudaen there has been no one to challenge him. This has meant a great stability, no more conflict between magicians, no more war.” She took a breath. She had the look of someone reciting history, slightly dulled by it. Like a Hormling, talking about our own war, Jedda thought, that perfectly comfortable war with machines that had been pushed so far away by Hanson.

  “But what does this language do?” Vitter asked.

  “The words bring events into being. They focus consciousness. According to the texts, all around us are infinite numbers of possible events. You would call them probability waves, perhaps, according to my dear husband. The magician replaces the present moment with a moment more to his liking by causing these waves to collapse. Apparently this is not at all difficult to do; the trick is to learn to call for the event that you want. The magician continues to collapse these waves until she reache
s a present moment that does what she wants.”

  “You’ve studied this,” Himmer said, touching the lip of his wineglass. His face was flushed.

  “That’s nearly all we’ve done for the past ten years.” She reached for Opit’s hand. Her skin was fairer than his coffee color. “I often wish I’d joined the Prin myself. My uncle was one of them.”

  Himmer leaned close to the glass lamp at the center of the table, the flame floating on oil, light colored amber by the flue. He touched his palm to the heat. “So you’re convinced that this is real, Opit?”

  “Completely.”

  “And? More?”

  Opit blew out breath, assembled his thoughts. The dim light softened his wrinkles so that he looked younger again, almost like Jedda remembered. “You’ve seen the results. We have to admit there’s something there, even if we can’t explain it. There’s no hidden technology, no trick. I’ve seen Prin magic work countless times, consistently. I’ve seen people enter Prin college knowing nothing and begin to learn. It is a mental discipline. Until we’re allowed to study the mind of one of these practitioners with all the facilities we have on the other side of the gate, I don’t think we’re going to know what this force is.” Admitting ignorance brought a new crease to his brow. “To a degree, this kind of visualization comes to the Erejhen very naturally; they sing their mathematics, you know.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Mathematical problems are music problems, they’re identical, as far as the Erejhen are concerned. Math is a mode of music here. It’s their only way of handling numbers.”

  “This is all very surprising,” Vitter said, shaking his head. “To sit here in a land like this, discussing the nature of magic.” He looked from one face to the other, paused on Brun. “You have no notion how alien this seems to us. What’s called magic in our world is no more than superstition. So will this be, unless we can define it in some way we can understand.”

  Brun assented with a bow of the head. “Actually, you’re all doing quite well, I think, in taking us in. As well as can be expected, from a people as limited as you are.” Smiling across the table at Jedda, she drew a general laugh from the Hormling guests.