Successor's Promise

by Trudi Canavan

  Now that he had a way of comprehending Pieh’s memories as a physical structure, he could replicate them. When Rielle had accessed Valhan’s memories for the resurrection, she had shaped magic into a complex pattern. He guessed that he would have to do this now before impressing that pattern into the flesh of Pieh’s finger. However, doing so for an entire person would take a great deal of magic. It would weaken this world considerably. Tyen opened his eyes and looked at Dahli.

  “I can do it, but we should move to a strong, uninhabited world.”

  Dahli shook his head, but it was Pieh who answered. “This one will recover.”

  Tyen looked at the old man, reading his mind. Dahli had already explained that it might drain much of the magic of Pieh’s world. The old man didn’t care. The workers in the Lower Rings would eventually replace what was lost, he reasoned.

  “It is his decision,” Dahli said.

  Tyen looked from one to the other, then shrugged and closed his eyes again. Drawing magic from as far from the city as possible, he started to work.

  He focused on a memory and replicated its pattern in the nearby magic of the world, then moved on to the next. He did not try reading and writing memories at the same time. Dahli’s instructions to Rielle from the failed resurrection of the Raen had been to copy the memories to magic first, then imprint them on the boy afterwards. Valhan must have had a reason to do it that way.

  Tyen became immersed in the task, losing all sense of time. When he finally had all of Pieh’s memories written into magic, he could not tell if hours or minutes had passed. He did not pause or rest. Holding the pattern took concentration and he feared if he was distracted he’d lose part or all of it. Turning his mind to the man’s finger, he began altering its composition and pattern, bit by bit, to record the great mass of complex pathways written into the magic.

  It took as long as it had to write the pattern into magic. When all was done, he checked that the finger was now devoid of water and nothing else would endanger its state of preservation, then severed the finger from Pieh’s hand and quickly healed the living end.

  The old man yelped in surprise and yanked back his hand.

  “What have you done?!”

  Tyen looked at Dahli. “You didn’t tell him?”

  “No …” Dahli turned to face Pieh. “Do you want him to put it back?”

  The old man looked down at the withered finger in Tyen’s palm, then shook his head. “It’s done now.”

  “I could grow—” Tyen began.

  No, Dahli thought, turning to hold his gaze. If he sees that you can grow a new finger, he will realise you can heal him young again, and he will be of no use to us at all.

  Tyen looked down at the finger. He suppressed a shudder, closed his hand over it and stood up.

  “Thank you,” he said to Pieh. “I will take very good care of this.”

  The old man’s expression softened a fraction. His eyes never left Tyen as Dahli thanked him and bade him farewell, reminding him that this was the first attempt they’d made to copy a mind into another body, and they could make no guarantees of success. As a servant escorted them out of the house, Tyen slipped the finger into a pocket.

  He had achieved the first part of a resurrection. But he suspected it would prove to be the easiest.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Tyen.”

  Looking up, Tyen found Zeke standing beside him, holding a tray. The smell of fresh bread and spicy sauces hit him like a gust of wind, and his stomach growled.

  “You were out of the present,” Zeke said, smiling as he sought a clear space on a table.

  “I was,” Tyen agreed. He lifted a box of parts and set it down on the floor, then drew his chair over as Zeke placed the tray in the empty space. He hadn’t been so lost in a creation since the last time he’d worked on an insectoid. Which had been back in his house in Doum. That felt like a lifetime ago now. He wondered if anyone had taken the unfinished toy before the house was destroyed.

  Taking a disc of bread, he broke off a piece and dipped it in one of the sauces. As he ate, he examined his work so far. He’d made most of the humanoid machine body but it had no brain or mechanical version of most internal organs yet. He’d started by acquiring a human skeleton to copy, and begun shaping metal bones and joints. From there, he’d examined his own body to work out where muscles and ligaments attached, finding mechanical equivalents for each. Now he was making a system of control out of tubes and wires, all linking back to the humanoid’s polished but empty skull.

  “You’re making good progress,” Zeke commented.

  Tyen shook his head. “I’ve barely begun.”

  Eventually he’d have to work out what to use for skin, but the brain would be the greatest challenge—to create memory storage and a feedback system many times larger than an insectoid’s to fit into such a small space.

  Magical storage wasn’t as great a challenge, as he had most of the chest to store it in. Certain metals, when prepared correctly, drew magic to them. How that happened was not entirely understood by the scientists at his world’s famous Academy of Belton. Magic heated and vibrated the specially prepared metal, which was shaped into wires to deliver the energy, or coiled to form an isolated loop that could store a small amount of heat and vibration for a short time.

  In the great engines of his home world, magically created heat was used to boil water to make steam, which moved the pistons in machines. In insectoids, heat and vibrations flipped switches or turned cogs. A simple command like “Beetle, fly in a circle” involved a multitude of such mechanisms—first the sensors that heard and recognised sounds, which released energy to the wings, as well as a chain of systems that recognised obstacles and steered to avoid them. It was so complicated that it had taken centuries for inventors in his world to develop mechanical magic to this level of refinement—and more than a few years for him to work out how to adapt it to make insectoids.

  In comparison to Beetle, the humanoid was a thousand times more complicated. He would have to find a way to reduce the size of the parts, or Vella’s memory store would be as large as a house. It might take him many cycles, maybe tens of cycles, to work it all out. Fortunately, he could now take hundreds of cycles if he needed to.

  The task was not urgent, however, and he ought to be helping Zeke.

  He turned to the young man. “How is your work going? Is there anything you need?”

  Zeke finished chewing, then swallowed. “I could do with more war machines to study.”

  Tyen nodded. “I’ll see if my source has caught any more. Any ideas on how to destroy them?”

  “Plenty, but it depends on what we target—all machines, or all war machines.”

  “All war machines would be better. It would be a shame to destroy machines which benefit and help people.”

  “And it would put me out of a job,” Zeke added.

  “There are always other ways to earn a living,” Tyen told him. “Magical or not. I never thought I’d be anything but a machine operator, which in my world was low-paid drudge work.”

  Are the machines of my world still working? Tyen wondered. Eleven cycles ago, his world had been running out of magic because machines used more magic than they generated. The idea that creativity generated magic was considered superstition, and with machines making many objects that were once created by hand fewer people were generating magic.

  “Wiping out all machines would be easier, but if we leave anything behind, including the neutralisers, people will work out how to make war machines again,” Zeke pointed out.

  “We’d have to destroy all knowledge of mechanical magic too. Even the idea of it.”

  “Can we do that?”

  “No.” Tyen frowned. “Unless we found a way to make the neutralisers wipe people’s memories … and the neutralisers could travel between worlds as quickly as sorcerers can.”

  Zeke’s eyes had widened. “Wipe …? It’s possible to wipe memories?” His eyes narrowed. “You have
n’t wiped my memory have you?”

  “No,” Tyen assured him. But had Dahli? “Do you have any suspicious gaps in your memory?”

  “No.” The young man let out an inheld breath. “Promise me you’ll try not to let me learn anything you’d have to remove later. The idea of having someone messing with my memories gives me chills.”

  Tyen couldn’t help smiling at the request. “I promise.”

  “Good.” Zeke finished his meal with a last few rapid bites. “I be’er g’ ba’ to w’rk,” he said with his mouth still full. Pouring a glass of the local mildly alcoholic herbal concoction, he carried it back to his desk.

  Tyen filled his own glass and drank slowly, eyeing his humanoid. If destroying all magic-fuelled machines as well as all knowledge of mechanical magic was possible, and the only way to deal with the war machines, would he do it? The humanoid would be destroyed too. His only alternative body for Vella would be lost. So would Beetle.

  They hadn’t explored any alternatives. He looked over to Zeke.

  “So if we can’t destroy all knowledge of mechanical magic, how do we get rid of the war machines?”

  “Spread the knowledge of how to neutralise them?” Zeke suggested, from the other side of the room. “Once we work out what that is. Of course, warmongers will use that knowledge to defeat their enemy’s war machines. Perhaps they’ll get rid of all the war machines for us.”

  “They’ll give their own machines a defence against it. It could become a war of adaptation.” Tyen drummed his fingers on the table. “Perhaps it’s better to keep the knowledge of how to neutralise war machines a secret, and make the neutralisers destroy themselves once their task is complete, or if someone meddles with them.”

  “That’s achievable.” Zeke rose and started back towards Tyen. “Our patron is back.”

  Tyen followed Zeke’s gaze. A shadow of a familiar stature was rapidly darkening into full focus, but it was an odd shape. As it grew more distinct, Tyen could see that Dahli was carrying a person. A man, limp and pale. His heart skipped a beat.

  Time to return to my true purpose for being here, he mused.

  As Dahli arrived he took the few steps to the nearest table and lay the unconscious man down. He straightened and looked at Tyen. “Your vessel.”

  Not unconscious, Tyen corrected as he saw the man’s glazed eyes. Dead. And not for very long, judging by the colour still in the lips and fingertips. Patches of the man’s face were red, and the hair of one temple was matted with blood.

  “He’s damaged.”

  Dahli shrugged. “If you want someone young who hasn’t died of disease, the chances are they’ll have expired thanks to violence.”

  He had a point. Tyen moved closer and examined the body. He would have to act quickly if this corpse was to be a viable vessel for Pieh’s memories. Fetching the box holding Pieh’s fingertip from a cupboard, he set it down next to the dead man.

  “Who’s this?” Zeke asked, a note of wariness in his tone as he regarded the corpse.

  “A beggar,” Dahli answered. “Beaten up and left to die.” He turned to Tyen. “Let me know if you need more magic than this world offers.”

  Tyen nodded. As Dahli moved away, saying something to Zeke, Tyen ignored the pair and settled into a chair beside the table. While healing the beggar was well within Dahli’s abilities, and he could even tackle changing the body to Pieh’s pattern, Tyen had told the man he wanted to perform all the stages of resurrection, to be sure he knew exactly what had been done. If he was going to delay the return of the Raen as long as possible to give Rielle the chance to find a safe place to live, having control of all parts of the process would help him do that.

  He closed his eyes and sought the state of mind he needed in order to perform pattern shifting. It came easily—faster each time he used the skill—and soon he was correcting the errors in the corpse where it had sustained damage. The man’s injuries were worse than they appeared. Ribs were broken. One had punctured a lung. A strike to the back of the head had been the killing blow. This meant damage to the brain. Tyen had hoped to not have to work on a brain until he was ready to imprint memories.

  Restoring circulation to the brain was the most urgent task, but it would do no good if all the man’s blood pumped out of his wounds. Tyen concentrated on the punctured lung first, removing the rib and sealing the hole. When it was healed, he persuaded the heart to resume pumping and the lungs to work. At once he had his hands full, fixing the head wounds and repairing ribs. Restoring the skull was easy enough, but once he started healing the brain it began to wake, fragments of thoughts and memories stirring.

  Valhan had made notes of the kinds of memories he had removed or blocked in his test subjects, but not the final combination he’d used on Qall. Having no experience in removing or blocking memories, only Vella and Dahli’s description of how it was done, Tyen paused to consider how to proceed.

  He decided to quell everything that wasn’t vital to the body functioning. Concentrating, he was both worried and relieved by the many blank patches he encountered. Worried because he did not know if this would cause the resurrection to fail. Relieved because if his healing had restored the man completely, he would have had to stop and tell Dahli to return the man to his world. The state the beggar was in meant he was essentially a broken and unviable version of what he’d been before he’d died. Tyen could still consider him irretrievably “dead.”

  Removing memories, it turned out, was like smoothing patterns in sand or concealing his pathway between worlds. He worked slowly and carefully, and when he eventually decided that he was done, the memories left were merely the simple ones—feelings and knowledge of the physical body.

  When he finally opened his eyes, he could not guess how much time had passed. Nothing in the room indicated the time of day. Zeke and Dahli were standing before the humanoid. Reading their minds, he saw that not much time had passed at all.

  “… even so, it’s quite ugly,” Dahli was saying.

  A little pang of disappointment rose in Tyen. He sought Dahli’s mind. The man was contemplating the possibility of placing Valhan’s mind within the machine. He found the idea distasteful. I’m surprised he’s pursuing this idea for Vella, Dahli thought. Wouldn’t it be better for his great love to have a proper, warm body?

  “Great love?” Tyen hadn’t realised that Dahli assumed love was his reason for wanting to restore Vella’s body. But then, maybe it is. It’s not a romantic love—not like I was hoping would grow between Rielle and me … As regret and disappointment rose, he shook his head. Forget about Rielle. Rielle is gone. She had promises to keep. Qall to protect.

  He picked up the box containing Pieh’s fingertip. Time to see if he could alter the corpse’s pattern to the old man’s. He drew in more magic.

  This task was simpler than wiping memories, once he got the hang of it. It was like healing, but instead of using the beggar’s pattern to correct a damaged part of the body, he imposed Pieh’s pattern onto all of it. Yet because he was changing every part of the body except the mind, it took more magic and—to his perception—time. He began at the feet and worked his way slowly up to the head, noting how the old parts of the body rebelled against the parts that had changed until they were also altered.

  When he reached the brain, he paused, remembering how Valhan had described in his notes how he’d changed a vessel’s mind to the pattern of the subject’s brain, thinking that it would imprint all of the subject’s memories as well, but the experiment failed. He’d concluded that the subject’s memories must be added after the brain’s pattern was changed and the vessel’s memories removed.

  Tyen saw that if he didn’t alter the vessel’s brain quickly, it would reject the body. Working fast, he altered it to match Pieh’s pattern, then examined the result. An echo of Pieh’s memories had been laid down, but what remained of the beggar’s remained, too. The two were muddled together. Tyen carefully quelled all memories until there was no sign of either man’s. U
ncertain, but hopeful, he left the body in a deep sleep and brought his awareness back to the room.

  The beggar was gone, and in his place lay an old man—Pieh, but with a blankness of expression even more vacant than that of sleep.

  His heart sank. This would not satisfy the old man. He wanted an heir, not an exact copy of himself. Drawing in a little more magic, Tyen set to work again, repairing the damage of old age. Slowly the bones grew stronger, the skin smoothed and muscles firmed. When he stopped, the body before him looked not much older than Tyen’s, if he ignored the grey hair.

  At last the work was done. He looked around. Zeke and Dahli were still sitting where they had been, but had swapped places. Empty dishes and glasses lingered on a table nearby. Signs that more time had passed than before.

  A laugh from Dahli brought his attention back to the pair. He realised he’d never heard the man laugh before. At least, not without a good lacing of dark humour or bitterness. Zeke glanced at Dahli, then quickly looked away. Amused, Tyen wished he could see Dahli’s expression for himself, not through Zeke’s besotted eyes. The young inventor was trying to decide if Dahli’s smile showed interest, or he just wished for it so much that he was only seeing what he wanted.

  If he knew where Dahli’s heart truly lay, he’d save himself a lot of disappointment, Tyen mused. I can’t tell him the man is still in love with the Raen, but maybe there’s a way to let him know Dahli is never going to be interested in him that way.

  “I’m done,” Tyen said, rising and stretching.

  Dahli turned, his eyes moving from Tyen to the body before he stood and strode over to examine it. Zeke followed slowly, his eyes widening as he drew near.

  “You changed him!”

  “In all but mind.”

  “And that’s the next step? Will you do that next?”

  Tyen nodded.

  “Not here,” Dahli explained. “It takes a great deal of magic to copy a person’s memories. Enough to strip a world.” He turned to Tyen. “When do you want to tackle it?”