Magic Engineer

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “The mountain wall now runs complete from south of Pass-era all the way to the Westhorns, and the great road is protected on all sides.” Jeslek steps into the room and bows, but the inclination is minimal.

  “I understand that a section near the central ridge of Analeria was somewhat disturbed,” Sterol murmurs mildly.

  “I recall that the only stipulation was that I stand upon the road and complete the work. If the mountains were to remain stable, some minor redirections were necessary.” Jeslek smiles.

  “Was It necessary to incinerate all those Analerian herders?”

  “I warned them. Most of them left, and those that didn’t- well, accidents do happen, Sterol.”

  “You realize that the price of mutton will rise considerably, just as you’re placing another surtax on Recluce goods?”

  “I doubt there were that many sheep involved.”

  “Not that many, but what will the rest eat? You did turn several thousand square kays of high grassland into rather warm rock that won’t support much vegetation for several years, to say the least.”

  “We’ll pay for the extra through the surtax.”

  “As you wish.” Sterol removes the amulet and offers it to Jeslek, who bends his head to allow Sterol to put the golden chain around his neck. “If you don’t mind,” Sterol continues, “I will be removing my works to the lower room. Derka will retire to Hydolar. He came from there, you may recall.”

  “How convenient.”

  “Yes. It was.” Sterol smiles blandly.

  L

  AFTER DORRIN FINISHES currying Meriwhen, he saddles the mare, patting her neck. “Hard to believe you and I have been around Diev this long.”

  When he leads Meriwhen out of the barn, Petra waves from the porch. “Will you be late for supper?”

  A hail of red-golden leaves flies from the oaks behind Dorrin like a momentary veil flung by the fall winds between them. “I hope not.”

  While he needs to meet Quiller, the toymaker, he scarcely looks forward to the encounter. He touches the staff, then nudges Meriwhen with his heels. With a soft whinny, the mare sidesteps, then carries Dorrin toward the road. They turn right, toward the Northern Ocean, which lies beyond the single line of rolling hills, and down the hard-packed clay.

  The small cottage with the one-room shed off the sagging porch stands less than a hundred rods down a muddy side road from the kaystone where the stone paving begins on the north military road as it makes its last wide arc to head west into upper Diev.

  Dorrin guides Meriwhen onto the brown-grassed shoulder of the side road to avoid the water and cold mud. The sign outside the shed displays a spinning top in flaking red and black paint.

  Dorrin wipes his boots on the fraying rush mat before stepping into the shed. The man on the stool looks up, dull brown eyes focusing on Dorrin from under a mop of brown and gray hair. “Don’t have much today.” His face screws up before he continues. “Who are you? I don’t know you, do I?”

  “I don’t think so. My name is Dorrin. I’m a smith apprentice to Yard.”

  “You’re the nasty one with the fancy toys! I heard about you!” Quiller slams his knife on the workbench top, then grasps the bench to keep himself, and the stool, from toppling.

  “No. I’m not a toymaker.” How has Quiller heard about the models? Dorrin has only sold two.

  “Why do you make those wonderful toys?” Quiller wipes his forehead, squinting. The single half-shuttered window admits little enough light, and the oil lamp on the wall is dark. “Willum just laughed at my wagon, and he showed me yours. Why did you do it?” The man’s voice almost breaks.

  “To solve problems, mostly,” admits Dorrin. “I came to talk to you about toy-making…”

  “I knew it! You want to steal my secrets! You want my customers!”

  Dorrin takes a deep breath. “No. That’s why I came.”

  ‘ To take my customers? You admit it?“

  “No!” protests the healer. “I don’t want your customers.”

  “But they’re good customers. Why wouldn’t you want them?” Quiller reaches down and massages his ankle. Quiller’s right foot is twisted, splayed somehow, larger than the left, and encased in a type of soft leather moccasin. A heavy-handled cane stands in the corner behind the toymaker.

  “Because,” Dorrin explains patiently, “I am not a toy-maker.”

  “Then why do you make toys?” Quiller straightens, exhaling loudly.

  “I make models of things I want to build. But I came to explain that I’m not a toymaker, and I don’t want to sell anything like what you make.”

  Quiller rests his game leg on the rung of the stool. “Why should I care, exactly, young master Dorrin? This here’s a pretty free city, and who would I be to tell you that you couldn’t be a toymaker?”

  “I’m not a toymaker. I do make toys, but that’s just to learn how things work. But it costs me time, and I have to buy the materials.” Dorrin pauses. “I know you have a family to support.”

  “Not a family-just a widowed sister and her boy.”

  “That’s family.” Dorrin shrugs. “I don’t know how things work here.” He pauses with the distractions of the older man’s eyebrows and the pain from the twisted ankle. Once again, Dorrin has started trying to smooth the way for his machine-building, and he has to worry about healing again. He wipes his forehead. Quiller twitches again.

  “Your foot? Has it always been like that?”

  “Don’t know about always. Got crushed under a wagon when I was working for Honsard, younger ‘n you. Started carving, ’cause I couldn’t do much else.”

  “Would you mind if I looked at it?”

  “Looked at it? Thought we were talking toys. You’re still a toymaker.”

  “Please…” Dorrin is almost pleading, so clear is the man’s pain.

  “Rylla couldn’t help, you know.” Quiller’s left hand squeezes his work table. “Pain still comes and goes.” His face clears for a moment, although his forehead is damp. “You Yard’s apprentice?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one who’s a healer? Why are you here? You’re a smith.”

  “Could I look at your foot, first?”

  “Don’t see as why not. One quack’s like to another.”

  Dorrin touches the ankle, frowning at the near-permanent reddish-white. As he senses the foot, he touches and somehow changes a few small patterns. ,

  “What did you do?” asks the toymaker, squinting.

  Dorrin shakes his head. “The bone’s healed all wrong. I can’t fix that, but most of the time, from now on, it won’t hurt so much.” He slumps against the table, taking a deep wracking breath, then another.

  “Can’t pay you,” snaps Quiller.

  “I didn’t ask you to,” Dorrin snaps back. “I didn’t fix the bone, and I can’t. I’m not a master healer.”

  Quiller rubs his forehead. “Hard to remember what it’s like without the ache. But I get along.”

  Dorrin rubs his forehead and then the back of his neck.

  “Suppose your making a few toys makes no mind…” muses Quiller.

  “Not the kind you make,” ventures Dorrin.

  “There be one thing, healer.”

  Dorrin shifts his weight from one foot to the other and looks at the miniature wagon in front of Quiller.

  “You might be thinking about joining the guild.”

  “The guild? Is there a healers’ guild?”

  “Don’t know of such a thing for healers. I mean the guild. That’s what they call it. The people who make the odd things- like my toys, or Thresak’s coats, or Vildek the cooper. Don’t know as it helps much, but it’s only a few coppers a year, and the Spidlarian Council does investigate their grievances.”

  “Do you belong?”

  “Sometimes, when I can pay the coppers. Now, times are hard, and the winter was cold. Have to pay for wood with this foot.”

  “I appreciate the information.”

  “Talk to H
asten, if you can get in a word.” Quiller looks down at the block of wood that will be an ox or a horse to go with the cart. “You might as well be on your way, young master. Not much as I have to offer you.”

  “Good day,” Dorrin says quietly, inclining his head.

  “A better day than in a time. Aye, a better day.” Quiller picks up the knife, and Dorrin steps out into the breezy twilight.

  Meriwhen whinnies as he swings into the saddle.

  LI

  USING THE TONGS, Dorrin slips the first iron band into place one-third of the way down the staff, using his order skills to bleed the heat away from the lorkin. The clamps slide into place, and the iron fasteners. Sweat oozes from his forehead as he repeats the operation with the second band, and as he struggles with iron, and heat, and order.

  After releasing the clamps, he eases the staff into the slack tank, bathing wood and iron in liquid and in order. With the two middle bands in place, he takes a deep draft from the mug of cold water. Then he takes the first end cap in the tongs and sets it in the forge. Once it is nearly straw-yellow, he slips it over the end of the staff and repeats the quenching.

  He drinks the last of the water before setting the other end cap. When all the black iron is on the staff, he lays it at the edge of the hearth and wipes his forehead with the back of his bare forearm. The almost-completed staff radiates blackness and order. He must wait for the staff to cool before filing the black iron, and ruining a file in the process, then smoothing the wood. At least, he can make his own files, if laboriously.

  In the dimness beyond the forge, he senses someone, and he turns.

  Petra steps into the dim circle of light. She still wears trousers and a heavy jacket. “What are you doing?”

  He gestures at the staff. “Making a better staff.”

  She looks at the staff on the forge bricks, then shivers. “It’s cold, like the stars on a winter night.”

  Dorrin racks his tongs and the hammer. The forge is still too hot to clean out the old ash, and that means he will have to be up early.

  “In a way, so are you, you know. People think you’re pleasant enough, but your outside is as cold as winter compared to the forge fire deep inside. I hope your little trader is tough enough to handle it.”

  “Little? Her shoulders are broader than mine, and she’s taller.” Petra studies the staff, not touching it, nor looking at Dorrin. “You’re still learning. Mother told me that, and I didn’t believe it. Not then.” The jacket swings half-open, revealing a thin shift.

  Dorrin can see erect nipples under the thin material. “Why did you come down?”

  “Father told me to watch you work. I used to help him sometimes-before you came. I had trouble sensing what he needed. He kept telling me to try to feel the iron. I didn’t know what he meant. Now I do.”

  “But why…”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Someone was forging the world-that’s what it felt like. Every blow of your hammer echoed through me.” She tosses the frizzy hair off her forehead with a quick flip of her head.

  Dorrin follows her eyes and looks at the staff, sees the blackness beneath the dark wood and black iron.

  “Good night, Dorrin.” Petra clinches the jacket around her and turns, walking back into the darkness on her way to the house and to sleep.

  Dorrin begins to sweep up. Forging the world? Absurd.

  LII

  “HOW ARE WE to deal with Spidlar?”

  “Repeal the surtax,” suggests an anonymous voice from the mid-benches of the Council chamber.

  Jeslek swivels toward the voice. “Who suggested that?”

  There is no answer.

  “If you don’t want the Spidlarians or the Blacks making golds, then you’ll be making the Hamorians and the Nordlans rich,” suggests the heavy bald man in the first row. “Or the Suthyans and the Sarronnese. Trade is like water. It has to go somewhere.”

  “Why can’t it flow here?” demands Jeslek.

  “That is easier said than done.”

  “Why not increase the tax on Recluce goods?” asks another White Wizard.

  “Think again, Myral. The surtax is a hundred percent already.”

  “So? Those are spices, wines, luxury goods. Besides, who can wear their wool anyway? People will pay still more, and the Treasury will benefit, but not the Hamorians and Nordlans.”

  “Couldn’t we use the tax to build a larger fleet?”

  “We could build the ships, but why do we need any more?” asks Cerryl.

  “To cut off outside trade to Recluce, of course,” snorts Jeslek, young-looking despite the white hair and golden eyes.

  “That would have worked three centuries ago, but after Creslin we had neither ships nor money. It won’t work now. All Recluce is doing now is buying our grain from the Nordlans. The Nordlans pick it up in Hydolar and ship it to Recluce. Then the Blacks sell their stuff to the Nordlans in return. It costs them more, but we lose all that trade.”

  “That’s Jeslek’s point,” offers Anya in the silence that follows. “Unless we cut off trade to Recluce, we lose.”

  “That’s fine in theory,” snorts the bald wizard. “But I have yet to see something that will work. Nor did any of our predecessors. Do you honestly think, Jeslek, that previous councils have approved of the growing power of Recluce? Did they lose scores of ships and thousands of troops on purpose?”

  “Of course not.” Jeslek frowns, then smiles. “But, remember, the Blacks cannot use the winds now-even if they had a Creslin. What if we put more wizards on our ships?”

  “How many would that take?”

  “Not that many. That way, we could blockade Recluce. The Nordlans won’t make enough off the island to want to lose ships.” Jeslek’s face bears a smug look, the look of a man who has discovered a solution.

  Another wizard shrugs. “That may be. Bring the council a plan.”

  Jeslek still smiles as the others turn their attention to the next item of discussion. So does Anya.

  LIII

  “WELL… ASK HIM…”

  Dorrin senses the whisper, rather than hears it, even as his hammer continues to weld the upset ends of the broken wagon brace. He thrusts the brace back into the fire, noting the coolness of the iron almost as automatically as he checks the grain and the crystal sizes. As the metal reheats, he looks up to see Petra outlined in the smithy door.

  “Gerrol’s dying…” protests another feminine voice, a deeper hoarser one.

  “Dorrin’s a smith,” Yarrl says.

  “He’s also a healer.”

  “Who will pay for his time?”

  Dorrin’s head throbs. Money or not, he cannot refuse what he knows will be asked. He pulls the brace from the forge and turns it on the anvil. Another series of sequenced hammer blows and the brace goes on the forge bricks to cool slowly. Then he sets the hammer in its place on his rack, followed by the cross peen hammer and the punch.

  “I will, if it comes to that.”

  “Oh… daughter. You ask him.”

  Petra walks to the forge, followed by a young woman with straight brown hair and bloodshot eyes. Both wear loose gray trousers and gray jackets.

  “Dorrin?” Petra’s frizzy hair flares away from the heat of the forge, and she blinks from the heat and the tiny particles in the air.

  “Yes, mistress Petra?”

  “Will you help us?”

  “I can but try.” He continues to rack his tools, in contrast to the ordered disorder of Yarrl’s hammers and punches and swages.

  “You didn’t ask who or what.” Petra coughs. “Sheena’s little brother Gerrol is fevered and dying.”

  “It doesn’t really matter. I am, like it or not, still a healer.”

  “Oh…” Petra’s sharp face softens. “How awful. I didn’t know.”

  “Do I have enough time to wash off quickly?”

  Petra looks at his smudged and sweating figure. “It might be best. Honsard would not believe a sweating smith to be a healer.”

&
nbsp; “Fine. I’ll bring my staff.” Dorrin grins briefly, as he grabs a pail from the hook on the wall and heads for the well.

  “Do bring that staff,” Petra says quietly.

  A chill northern breeze reminds him that it is near winter, despite the clear skies and a bright midafternoon sun. Dorrin quickly lifts a full bucket of water. As he straightens, his trousers are jerked.

  “Oh, it’s you, little demon.” He scratches Zilda between the ears and ruffles the kid’s neck. With a last scratch for the little goat, he carries the bucket to his quarters, where he pours some into the wash basin. Then he strips to his drawers and washes as quickly as he can, using the water in the basin for his face. After drying off with a gray towel, he pulls on one of his two brown traveling outfits and takes the staff from the corner.

  Petra has already saddled Meriwhen by the time he reaches the barn. He checks the cinches and mounts, following the two women, Petra on the bay, and Sheena on a gray, as they start down the north road toward Diev.

  Honsard’s wagonry is less than three kays downhill from the smithy. Two barns flank a two-storied yellow house with a wide covered porch. A matched team of Rumoag draft horses pulls an empty flatbed wagon from the hauling yard. Their hoofs clop easily on the stones of the main road.

  Petra reins up at the rail before the house. Dorrin dismounts, leaving his staff in the lanceholder, and follows them onto the porch.

  “This your famed healer, daughter?” Honsard is square-built, with a paunch below heavy shoulders and chest. His small green eyes are set deeply under thin eyebrows. His faded blue tunic and trousers are mud-spattered.

  Sheena nods.

  “ You’re paying for him.”

  “No, I’m paying for him,” announces Petra.

  “Could I see the child, ser?” asks Dorrin.

  “Help yourself, esteemed healer. Or my daughter will show you the way.”