Science Is Magic Spelled Backwards and Other Stories

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Glancing about, the Flint retreated toward the corner where Chesra had taken refuge, his sword spinning a grisly wall of protection before him. Kimban hissed, “Distract him. I’ll get behind him,” and as the potter did that, Kimban rushed. But the Flint turned sideways to fight both of them. Still, Kimban was about to drive the nomad over the wall, when a piercing shriek erupted to his right.

  On the wall near Chesra, was her daughter Nina, face red with tears, clothes torn. Her high voice floated over the clashing metal. “Mommy! They’re in the safe house! They’re gonna get Aith!”

  At that moment, the Flint skewered the potter, shoved his body aside, and pushed past Kimban, heading straight for Chesra and Nina.

  Kimban scrambled after him, while Chesra tucked Nina behind her. In mid-gesture, she froze, eyes locked on a point behind Kimban. The Flint followed her gaze, and Kimban knocked his sword aside, and slit the man’s throat.

  Kimban turned and saw the Flints’ magician striding toward them along the wall as if he already owned the village. The magician’s cloak shimmered and sparked in the fire lit darkness. He was broad, heavily jeweled, and his aura glowed like nothing Kimban had ever Seen before.

  Kimban stood rooted to the spot, unable to conceptualize himself doing battle with such a one. Without warning, Nina ran out from behind her mother, and dashed across the open space to meet the magician with fists flying. Her little body hit the outer edges of what appeared to Kimban to be colored veils of flowing light, and slid sideways, momentum sending her up and over a merlon between two embrasures.

  Arms flailing, she rotated in mid-air, horror infusing her features as she screamed. The sound followed her all the way down. It seemed to take forever.

  Something inarticulate rose inside Kimban, and he knew he would kill this man even if he died doing it. Every last vestige of uncertainty was gone. It was more than his Guardian’s duty. It had become the nature of Kimban.

  He flung aside the useless iron sword, drew the barely charged silver sword and crouched. The magician shook his hands free of his robes and held them at the ready, as if they were weapons. Each finger was adorned with a jewel that glowed of its own light, each a different color.

  Kimban knew nothing of the nomad’s magic, but he knew the only way to stop such a one was to sever the silver cable connecting him to his body. Only his sword could do that—maybe—when it was fully charged.

  To Kimban’s surprise, when he advanced, the magician retreated, as if he took Kimban as a genuine threat. Heartened, he advanced down the west wall, hoping defenders could beat through to Chesra along the north wall.

  But even as he stalked his prey, Kimban felt the battle ebbing, eyes turning toward the spectacle atop the wall. It was as if the world had drawn a deep breath.

  The magician spoke, a bass rumble like carriage wheels on cobble stones, “I will take your Speaker, and wipe Epo from the earth. All will learn not to defy the Flintedged!”

  No! Not Epo. Not Chesra. Never.

  As he spoke, the magician struck, blinding cascades of light cracking forth like lightning, seeking to root in Kimban’s body. Dancing back, Kimban flicked the sword, cutting each thread of light, and as the sword sheared through the energies, it soaked them up, glowing brighter.

  His hand starting to burn, Kimban advanced, leery of hitting the barrier that had thrown Nina over the wall. But now his sword resisted every movement, charge growing. It hummed, and he sang the note feeding it back, feinting this way and that, studying the magician’s defense.

  He felt fire ants crawling all over his body. Every pore was alive with pain. Searing brightness engulfed him. He was within the core of the magician’s power and still advancing, still alive. Then the magician struck. Pain sheared through Kimban, driving him to his knees. A palsy gripped him, and the world spun. With both hands, he raised the sword, and though it shimmered and flickered under the onslaught, he whirled it above his head, showering sparks in a protective curtain about himself. Squinting through the layers of brightness, he aimed the sword at the densest part of the man’s defenses, sending a cone of his own power to whittle a hole in that screen.

  The moment the nomad retreated, Kimban rose and pressed on. Raising his forearm to shield his eyes, Kimban finally saw the cable he sought. Before the man could launch another attack, Kimban shifted his grip on his sword so he held it like a dagger. It resisted as if the air had turned solid.

  The magician laughed, low, confident, chilling laughter, and Kimban felt lightning gather, killing lightning. Fighting the shuddering of pain wracked muscles, knowing he’d get no other chance, he flung his sword like a javelin, straight at the root of the life-cable, all his remaining strength in the throw.

  He pitched forward onto his face, wholly off balance, and expected to be dead before he struck the stones.

  But suddenly, the boiling energies vanished, and he was falling through clear air. He fetched up with his chin to the stones, hands splayed before him, barely breaking his fall, and when he looked up, the magician’s empty corpse lay amid it’s dull cloak and duller gems, the silver sword ashen black, standing in his belly.

  Kimban crawled dizzily to his feet, and retrieved his sword. With one foot, he rolled the corpse over the inner edge of the wall. Triumphantly brandishing his sword over his head, he surveyed Epo’s streets. The villagers raised a cheer. Then Kimban noticed his weapon was inexplicably light—lighter than silver could be. As he lowered it out of sight of those below, it crumbled to ash and smoke in his hand. Until it was gone, he hadn’t realized how much a part of him it had become.

  Chesra gasped.

  He turned to her and found her backed up against the corner of the wall, hands fisted before her mouth as if to prevent Speech by force. Her eyes were wide, her face too white, pinched as if with pain. The baby!

  As he went to her, a wash of sound rose from below. The nomads were retreating, and the defenders seeing they had the better of their enemies, were going after them more savagely than ever. Panicked, the nomads streamed out onto the desert.

  Nearer to Chesra, Kimban could now see what she saw, revealed by the leaping flames of roof beams, wood piles and grain stores. The retreating nomads had cracked the defenses of the safe house, and had captured a dozen or so children to use as a shield as they retreated.

  The Flint who had killed Dorset had a small, wriggling bundle across his saddle, a gray and blue shawl trailing to the ground. Aith! As they watched, the nomad made it to the gate and galloped through to freedom with a cry of triumph that could be heard over the battle.

  Chesra thrust free of his protection and ran along the north wall, leaping bodies as she drove toward the gate and the escaping nomad. Kimban, weaponless, nerves burning from his battle, followed at a clumsy trot. When Chesra reached a point where she could view the fleeing nomads, she stopped and cupped her hands around her mouth, shouting to the heavens a Speaking that seemed to echo from the horizon.

  “Hear this Speaking, who call yourselves Flintedged Warriors.” Panting, she drew breath, and in that pause, the nomads slowed, mystified by the voice. “From this day, unto your sixth generation, you will yearn for and treasure children above all else, and be compelled to rut with your own kind under each full moon, but you will be infertile with your own kind. You will learn in frustration and sorrow, in destruction and blight and helplessness to bring forth love from your enemies and kindness from your captors.”

  She gasped, a wheezing, desperate sound, and suddenly Kimban knew her power was controlling her, for she had finally been driven beyond even her remarkable strength. He caught her back against him, whispering in her ear, “Don’t Active Speak. Your baby will die! Chesra—silence!” But he no longer had the sword with which to remove her office.

  She would not or could not listen. Words poured forth from her, and he could feel the substance of her very life gushing out with them as her voice, low and unstrained, almost melodious, boomed out over the desert. “As a sign of this Speaking
, you and all your tribe will be marked with the horns of Nethe. All will know and shun you. Remove the horns, and you will labor six more generations under this Speaking. I, Chesra of Epo, have Spoken!”

  With that, she wilted and Kimban lowered her to the stones. The nomads hesitated briefly, then wheeled and rode for the desert, abandoning their booty and the children.

  Chesra’s pulse became weak and irregular. Her lips and nail beds turned blue as she gasped for air, hands clutching her breast in agonizing pain. “My baby! My baby will die with me!”

  “Chesra, let me try to save him. I will be his father. I will take a wife to raise him....”

  Their eyes met. Before she loosed her last breath, she nodded. Then her eyes closed.

  “Chesra!” No. She’s gone. Quickly!

  Hours ago, they had called for the healer and the midwife, but attack had come and they had never arrived. Now, however, those two had witnessed what had transpired atop Epo’s walls, and made directly for their Speaker, even while others lay bleeding in the streets. Hastily, the midwife bent to the sad task, and long anxious minutes later, Kimban held a weakly mewling infant boy against his chest, sheltering him from the bitter desert wind, wrapping him in a shred of his mother’s cloak. A tiny joy stirred within him, not quite smothered by the weight of shock and loss holding him paralyzed.

  And then, with dawn misting the horizon, on the trail from the northeast, came a double column of men and wagons, heralded by the banners of Cantry. There would be help, and Epo would survive. Somehow.

  Six months later, as Epo’s rebuilding was being completed, word began to drift in from the desert that a strange new band of nomads had invaded the territory. They had black horns growing from their heads.

  For nearly two decades after that, there was peace at the edge of the desert.

  RUELLA AND THE STONE

  A Royal Courier does not fail just because her horse founders.

  Ruella trudged through a snowdrift, eye firmly on the darkening slit of the pass above her so aptly named Smuggler’s Run. The trail was decorated with the remains of wagons that hadn’t made it up the grade.

  There was no King’s Garrison guarding the top of this pass. The fort was on the other side at the bottom where it was possible to live through the winter. The wind howled at her back. The air was noticeably thinner up here. There would be no moon tonight. She had to find shelter, and soon.

  An arrow whizzed by her ear and whacked into a dead tree to her left. She only knew it had happened after trained reflex threw her four body lengths to her right, prone behind a small boulder before her heart started to pound.

  Nor does a Royal Courier fail just because someone shoots at her.

  Her own bow had broken when her horse fell. One end of the bow had spiked into the swampy ground, the other lanced through the horse’s chest as the animal fell. The freak accident had left her pinned under the carcass and she had used her sword as a lever to free her leg. The sword had broken. It shouldn’t have—but it did.

  She had her courier pouch, the Royal seal still intact, a few bars of trail food, flint and steel and a blanket in her backpack with the courier pouch. She had her knife and a blanket in her backpack. She had nothing to defend herself from an archer.

  She plastered some snow on top of her fur-lined hood and edged her head out from behind the boulder to peer into the gathering gloom. Two more arrows plonked into the snow near her—too near.

  Who would be sniping in Smuggler’s Run? King Gorland controlled the lands on both sides. Bandits had been all but eliminated in the region. Could they be shooting at her?

  She wore her Courier riding cloak, salvaged from under her dead horse and still smelling of swamp mud, but after the vigorous scrubbing she’d given it, the King’s colors were clear. From a distance she could be identified as on official business. But as far as she knew she carried nothing worth killing for—a few accounting statements, a couple of personal letters, and a routine land grant transferring title from the Duke of Riverhead to his son that needed only the King’s seal to go into effect.

  Of course that’s only as far as I know. But her duty was simple—to deliver the pouch to the King.

  As the light waned, and the temperature dropped, she knew she had to find shelter or freeze in the night. There were caves that travelers used when trapped in this pass, and she knew most of them. So did the sniper, no doubt.

  As the first stars ignited in the indigo heavens, she dared to peek around her boulder. And as she watched, way up on the steep side of the pass light flared into existence—it was a hemisphere formed by a coruscating rainbow of shimmering color. Gods of the Talisman! A warlock! It would be warm and cozy in that shimmering tent.

  Who would send a warlock to kill a Royal Courier carrying nothing much of importance? Or more likely to stop traffic through this pass.

  Who was not her problem though. Her problem was to get by him. And he—or she—was obviously prepared to spend the night up there keeping her pinned down until she froze.

  In the gathering dusk, she took her bearings, estimated how many steps, spotted landmarks, and memorized a route to one of the caves that might shelter her and provide a way out through the mountain’s old mining tunnels. If she was right, the tunnel emerged just above the Fort where she could get a remount.

  And it wasn’t the nearest cave which would be the first place the warlock would search. It was much farther away, and above the near one.

  The warlock wouldn’t be able to cross the snow-choked pass in the dark. If she could manage to move from boulder to boulder, not step where snow had accumulated, and stay under cover, she might be able to elude him even come morning.

  At full dark she set out climbing the side of the gap along her memorized route, her hands and feet already going numb from the cold. There was only one really tricky spot where she had to leap, blind, from one boulder to another over deep snowdrifts masking who knew what hazards.

  It was an insane chance—and she’d never have taken it if the sniper weren’t a warlock, or at least didn’t have a warlock with him or her.

  She bent to feel for the edge of the boulder she stood on, sited on the rising stars to get her bearings, searched the blackness before her, and closed her eyes.

  Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she reached deep within for the magic she had buried as a child. It was a power she never summoned, and always shunned when it roared to life unbidden.

  Come on, just this once.

  And the image of what lay before her flared to life behind her eyelids.

  Keeping her eyes shut, she retreated three large steps, gathered her legs beneath her, focused everything in her on the flat top of the other boulder, ran and leaped into darkness.

  Her boots clonked hollowly into the wind-scoured top of the boulder, slipped from under her and she sprawled face down, body curved around the rock. She lay trembling as her Vision sputtered away into darkness.

  When she’d caught her breath she slid down the other side of the boulder onto clean gravel and scrambled up to the hidden cave mouth. If anything it was darker within.

  With her right hand on the wall, she shuffled her way down into the cave, wracking her brains for an exact memory of how this cave connected to the mining tunnels. It better be the right cave!

  “Nice night to spend by a cheery fire,” said a deep, masculine voice.

  Shock rattled through her nerves. But her hand suddenly held her knife before her. She backed a step away from the sound, crouching and preparing to die.

  She didn’t answer, and silenced her breathing as best she could.

  The voice continued in a conversational tone, “But if you want a fire, you’ll have to make one yourself.”

  She clamped her lips shut over the answer, sweeping the knife before her in a protective arc. Struggling to keep her bearings, she realized that the shaft that led out of the mountain had to be the one directly before her—blocked now by her enemy.

  “
You can relax. I’m not going to attack you. I’m not here to kill you. If I were, my arrows would have done the job.”

  She didn’t relax. How could the warlock have gotten across the pass? There could be more than one.

  Still crouched and moving the knife before her, she circled left, slowly feeling the way with her boot toe. She found the opposite wall, and felt along it, hearing the other moving after her. She found a shaft opening. She felt the chisel marks of miner’s work. Her opponent was still blocking the way to the shaft she wanted. She couldn’t allow him to trap her.

  Closing her eyes to summon Vision, she bolted down the shaft, flying at a full run down the slope into the heart of the mountain.

  “Ruella!” complained the voice behind her, and she heard his boots ring on the stone as he gave chase. I didn’t tell him my name!

  He had teleported across the pass. He was no mere warlock, an ordinary person who gained command of Power through training,—he had to be a sorcerer born, and one who had earned high rank among the Oathsworn.

  In a flash, her Vision showed him clearly—slightly taller than herself, he was dressed in the indigo and white robes of the Oathsworn, now spread behind him as he raced after her, anger on his face, power glowing around his hands. Alarm rang through her—the Oathsworn had turned against the King? The Kingdom is doomed! I have to warn the King!

  “Ruella stop! There’s a—”

  She pitched headlong off the edge of the path into thin air. Trained reflex took over again and without her conscious will, she tucked into a forward roll, fist clenched tight around the hilt of her knife, blade away from her. Unbidden, her power flared as her fear of landing hard on jagged stone summoned it.

  Her left shoulder struck first, a glancing blow that spun her off into a tumble and the next thing she knew she lay on her back, the courier pouch cushioning her spine, her right buttock screaming pain. Hot blood trickled sideways across her right temple. She willed herself to get up and run—anywhere, just away from her pursuer. But nothing happened.