“He’s going to hurt a lot of people if I don’t stop him!” declared Chad angrily.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” insisted the bowyer. “Whatever that man does is on his head, but whatever you do with a bow I make rests on my shoulders as well. I won’t do it.” A knock from the front door distracted both of them, and the crafter held up a hand as he went to check the door. Cautious, he called out before opening it, “Who is it?”
“George Prathion. Open up,” came the answer.
Mattley pulled the latch and let the baron in immediately, bowing at the waist. “Milord!”
“That’s enough, Master Mattley,” said George. “Raise your head. I came to give you an explanation for what happened here while you were gone.” As the young nobleman came in, his eyes went to the other man. His magesight had already informed him that someone else was with the bowyer, but he hadn’t paid too much attention since it wasn’t a mage, now his eyes recognized the face before him. “Master Grayson! How are you here?”
The hunter didn’t rise, much less bow, but he did lift one hand to his brow as though tipping a hat, even though he had already removed it. “I’m here for a bow,” he answered neutrally.
George jumped straight into his news. “Tyrion was here.”
“That’s what I was just telling this crotchety old man,” replied Chad, before asking, “Did you see him?”
“Worse,” admitted George, who then began to relay his story, keeping mainly to the facts. He glossed over the amount of sheer terror his encounter had caused him, and he tried to make his own capture seem a little less foolish, with limited success. “I sent a message to the Queen, but I thought I should come and explain what happened to Master Mattley, since he wasn’t here.”
“What about Matthew, or your sister, Elaine?” asked the hunter. “Do they know?”
George shook his head. “I don’t have a way to contact them. Castle Cameron is empty and they’ve been gone for months.”
“I think they’ve gathered at Mordecai’s home in the mountains,” Chad informed him, going on to briefly share his own recent experience bringing Rose and Carissa back. At the end he added, “Tyrion is looking for them. He stole my bow and some of the enchanted arrows I had.”
The young Baron of Arundel’s eyes dipped toward the floor. “I know. He forced me to help him.”
“What did he need from you?” asked the hunter. “And who was the woman you said was with him?”
“He called her Brigid,” answered George. “I think she was his daughter. They wanted my help with an enchantment for some arrowheads.” He pointed at the table. “The scorch marks are from when he heated the metal to fuse the points with his own additions.”
Chad frowned. “His daughter? You said she had dark hair. Lynaralla and the other She’Har have silver.”
George shrugged. “She looked human.” Then he added, “What’s even more strange—she vanished midway through the ordeal. I never saw her leave or use any magic. One minute she was with us, watching everything, and the next she was gone.”
“What sort of enchantment was it, that he needed your help?” asked Chad.
George grimaced before answering, “It was a combination of things. The arrowheads can pierce mage shields, even enchanted ones, and Tyrion added an explosive. There won’t be much left of anyone he hits with one of them. The part he needed me for was something new, an enchantment to prevent another wizard from touching the arrows with magic.”
The hunter rubbed his chin. “Which means…”
“…any mage he fires one at won’t be able to defend himself easily,” finished George.
In a reverent voice, Old Mattley spoke up, “My Lord, Master Grayson here was asking me to make him a bow. From what I’m hearing, is that something you want me to do?”
George straightened, reassuming his authority. “The man we’ve been talking about is an outlaw, Master Mattley. He threatened the Queen and escaped from custody in Albamarl. If Master Grayson needs a bow, then I think we had best get him one.”
Mattley dipped his head. “As you wish, milord.” Then he looked to Chad. “Tell me what you need.”
Chad smiled. “I want the strongest bow you can make, two hundred pounds if you have a stave capable of it.”
The old bowyer seemed confused. “I doubt you could draw it, and even if you could you wouldn’t be able to hold it long enough to aim.”
Rising from his chair, Chad walked over to the hearth, which was still cold, and lifted the iron poker from its stand nearby. Putting both hands on the iron, he bent it between them, eliciting a long whistle from George and a scowl from Mattley. “Trust me,” said Chad. “I can draw whatever you can make.”
“You didn’t have to ruin a perfectly good andiron to prove it,” complained the bowyer. “I’m adding that to the price.”
George chuckled, while Chad drew out a small purse and began counting out gold crowns. He placed ten on the table. “That ought to cover it.” Then he looked at George. “Can you enchant more of those arrowheads?”
“It would take days if you want them to explode,” answered George. “It takes a while to store up enough power for that. But I can do the other enchantments.”
Chad addressed the bowyer, “How long will it take you?”
Mattley scratched his beard. “I’ve got several pieces that are ready for shaping, but the finish work will take a week.”
“It doesn’t have to look pretty,” said the hunter. “You can skip the polishing and whatnot. It just needs to be functional.”
“Two days,” replied the bowyer.
The hunter nodded, then reached for a bag at his feet, from which he withdrew a long oilskin. After unwrapping it, he revealed a bundle of heavy shafts, already fletched and tipped with bodkin points—war arrows. “Tyrion took the enchanted arrows I had. Can you work with these?” he asked.
The young baron nodded as he counted the arrows. There were at least sixty on the table. “I can probably do most of these in two days.”
Chad grinned, his eyes full of malice. “One should be enough, but I’ll take as many as you can make. I’m heading to Albamarl. If I take the World Road, I should be able to get back before you finish.”
George looked at him strangely. “I’ve already warned the Queen. Do you think Tyrion is heading back there?”
“I need to find my dragon.”
Chapter 39
Matthew and Gary were standing in the large meadow, downhill from the main house, when Myra found them. Stretched out on the ground between them was a square grid roughly eight-feet-wide. It was made of copper wires, which were arranged in a mesh that created squares roughly an eighth of an inch on each side. The entire structure glowed with aythar, and Myra’s magesight could make out tiny runes etched along the thin wires.
“Is this what you’ve been working on for the past two days?” she asked.
Her brother nodded. “It’s still too small. Each side will need to be at least this big after it is shrunk down. I’m just preparing to get rid of the copper so I can test the size-change enchantment.”
Myra was confused. “Copper? Didn’t Irene say she used wax?”
“Yes,” agreed Matt. “But it wasn’t strong enough for such a fine structure. It kept bending and breaking. The copper was strong enough, although it will take a lot more heat to melt it out.”
“Then what will you do?” she asked.
Matthew lifted his hands, folding them and turning them to mime the shape of a cube. “If I can create one side that is sound and responds properly, I can create others. Six together will create a cube that can have its size adjusted however we like. If that works—well, then we just have to make a lot more of them.”
“How many?”
Her brother stared off into the distance for a minute while doing numbers in his head. He answered, “Two-hundred and twenty-eight altogether. That will make the cube roughly a hundred yards on each side, before we shrink it down.” He point
ed at the copper mesh. “That will make the individual squares about three-thousandths of an inch on a side after it has been reduced.”
She arched one brow. “Are you sure that’s small enough?” she asked wryly.
If Matthew noticed her sarcasm, he didn’t show it, for he replied seriously, “I’m not sure. I’d like them to be smaller—much smaller—but this size is the best I think we can manage. Even making this much of an allowance, I still don’t know how we can possibly finish it in time.”
Myra nodded along, although she was still unclear about much of what he was saying. “So, you need a faster way to create the sections…”
“Not just that,” said Matt. “We don’t have enough copper either. Not to do it this way. I’ve already figured out a solution for that problem, though. If four mages operate in unison, they can create tiny, stable subsections of the enchantment without using a physical substrate. Unfortunately, that will almost certainly take much longer than using the copper and etching the runes onto it.” He let out a long sigh. “It feels like no matter what I come up with, the problem just gets larger and larger.”
Gary spoke up then, “If we had ANSIS helping us, we could do it easily, but it’s already gone. Nor would it likely wish to listen to us.”
“How could it help with an enchantment?” wondered Myra.
Happy to explain, Gary launched into the topic. “Well, as you know, ANSIS is as close to programmable matter as the people of my world were able to make. Consequently, it could construct a structure like this from whatever material was nearby. It transforms the material into nanomachines that can then make more of themselves, and as they grow they can create whatever structure is desired. In this case—”
Matthew interrupted, “Myra, did you come out here for a reason? I’m sure you didn’t come to listen to us drone on about this.”
Her eyes went back to him. “Actually, yes. It occurred to me that there was something important I left out when I explained what happened to Moira.” A cloud passed over Matthew’s features, but he said nothing, so she continued, “I was in contact with her when she fought Tyrion, and she learned something interesting before she died.”
“What was it?” asked Matt, his eyes drilling into her with intense interest now.
“He isn’t the real Tyrion,” she answered. “We all thought he had transformed back into human form, but he hasn’t. The original Tyrion is still on Wester Isle with Lyralliantha. The one we’ve been talking to here in Lothion is a copy. In fact, he’s the second copy.”
“Second? How many are there?” probed Matthew.
“There’s only one that I know of,” said Myra. “The first one was a krytek that Tyrion created, but Mordecai nearly killed that one when he escaped. Apparently, it returned to the isle and reported its memories before dying. The one here now is actually a She’Har created by Lyralliantha and given all of his memories.”
Her brother scratched his head, thinking for a moment. “Wait, this doesn’t make sense. I thought only the Centyr could create spell-minds, or spell-twins. That’s what this is, isn’t it?”
Myra shook her head. “Not exactly. The method they’ve used isn’t nearly as perfect. The first one was essentially just a short-term human body given a copy of his memories. Imagine if you were born as an adult, with no memories of your own, and then you were given a loshti that contained all the memories of who you were supposed to be. You’d have the same body and memories as the original, but your personality could diverge significantly.”
“Hmmm.”
“What’s worse is that the newest version of him is a copy of a copy, and it’s been imprinted on yet another living body,” added Myra.
Matthew frowned. “I’m not sure I see the problem.”
“Remember what we told you about Centyr spell-twins?” asked Myra. “One of the reasons they’re dangerous, aside from the ethical problems, is that no copy is absolutely perfect. Errors accumulate with every generation of copying, making the resulting personality unstable. The Centyr method is vastly superior to what Tyrion has done, so there’s no telling how it has affected this second-generation twin.”
“What about She’Har children, like Lynn?” asked Matthew. “Aren’t they essentially the same thing? They’re born as adults and implanted with a basic set of knowledge to allow them to function.”
“I don’t think so,” replied Myra. “For one, the She’Har children are all identical, physically speaking. They use a template for the flesh that doesn’t have any of the unique differences that ordinary humans have. Their template is designed for a calm, stable personality, and the knowledge they implant is very neutral, without any emotional intensity. What Tyrion has done is create a copy of his original physical body. His intent was to reproduce his personality that way, but that means his twin could be very emotionally unstable. Add to that the fact that he’s implanted it with intense memories that contain every sort of emotion and an awful lot of violence, and it’s a recipe for madness. That’s without even considering the errors created by their relatively crude method of copying those memories.”
After a moment, Matthew asked, “Something just occurred to me. Is this new Tyrion an archmage?”
Myra smiled faintly. “That’s the only good news. They weren’t able to recreate that ability. The current Tyrion we’ve been dealing with is essentially just an Illeniel She’Har with the knowledge and battle experience of the original man. He’s got Tyrion’s strength and skill, but not his power as an archmage. The only thing he gained is the ability to spellweave.”
“And the Illeniel gift,” said Matthew darkly. “That could be worse for us than all the rest combined.”
Gary spoke up, “Why is that?”
“Because it means I can’t predict what he’ll do,” answered Matt. “I didn’t realize it until recently, but my ability to judge future events is severely limited whenever it pertains to someone else with the same ability. I found that out when Irene and I had our little quarrel.”
“Which means we have a potential madman on the loose, and your ability to foretell his actions is practically useless,” noted Myra. Then her eyes widened. “That applies to Lyralliantha too, doesn’t it?”
Matthew nodded. “She probably has no more idea what he may do than we do.” They all fell silent after that, and eventually Matthew turned back to his work, but as Myra started to leave he stood up straight, as though an idea had struck him. He called to her, “Myra.”
“Yes?” she said, turning back.
“You’re essentially a normal Centyr mage now, right? Now that you’ve taken Moira’s aystrylin you can do anything she could do. Is that correct?” he asked.
She nodded sadly.
“Then you can create spellbeasts,” he added.
She nodded once more.
“Is there any limit on how many you can create?”
Myra gave it a moment’s thought. “It depends on their complexity and the amount of aythar required.”
“Can a spellbeast create another spellbeast, or does it have to be a spell-twin to be able to do that?”
She frowned. “Ordinarily they cannot, but if I included the ability in their creation they could do so. Again, they would be limited by the amount of aythar available to me, and successive generations could never be more complex than the ones that created them.”
Her brother jumped into the air, startling her and Gary. He wasn’t ordinarily prone to such gestures. “Yes!”
Myra glanced at the copper lattice, then back at him. “Are you thinking…?”
“Yes!” he answered loudly. “Stay right there! I have something I want you to try.”
***
After leaving the World Road, Chad didn’t enter the capital. Instead he headed east, into the forest. The last time he had been there was months past, when he, Cyhan, and Elaine had been fleeing from Gareth Gaelyn’s wrath. At the time he had avoided calling Prissy to him, for the archmage could have detected her from a considerable d
istance. His last words to her before leaving her had been to make herself at home within the forest.
He should have come back for her long before now, but he had been busy, and to be honest, he’d always considered the dragon to be more of a nuisance. He was a hunter, not a wizard or a knight. The last thing he wanted was some giant lizard following him around. He hadn’t been particularly fond of their mental bond either. The archer valued his privacy, and the last thing he wanted was for anyone to see his private thoughts.
“It didn’t help that she had the personality of a piece of starched linen either,” he groused aloud. “Only thing worse than being married was having her around listening to me think.”
He felt a faint presence in the back of his mind. Then why don’t you go back and leave me alone? It was Priscilla’s mental touch.
Making the effort to broadcast his thoughts, he replied, Where are you?
Why do you care? she returned, a sullen feeling attached to her thoughts.
I need your help, he sent.
She was definitely sulking, and her next words confirmed it. That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? A piece of livestock, or worse, a tool. Go away. I was quite happy here without you.
Chad found himself grinding his teeth. “Women,” he muttered, then added, “Worse, dragons who are also women.” Mustering his patience, he sent an apology, Look, Prissy, I’m sorry. I’ve been busy.
He felt her mental shrug. I heard what you said. You still haven’t learned to separate your thoughts and words.
“Easier said than done,” he whispered.
Because you never talk to me, she replied. We’re supposed to be partners, but to you I’m just a nuisance. I only wanted to be your friend.
The last part of her reply caused his heart to clench, sending an almost physical jolt of pain through him. I don’t deserve friends, he responded. It’s better for both of us if you keep your feelings out of this.
You’re in pain. Are you wounded? she asked. Chad heard a loud cracking sound as her wings unfurled and whipped down to catch the air, lifting her from the ground. She was somewhere to the north of him.
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