by R. L. King
“Indeed,” Lanytha agreed. “Welcome.”
The two moved on, and Stone and Errin did likewise. “Lanytha and Balen,” Stone mused. “If you have the same naming styles here, then—”
Errin smiled. “—then Balen is non-magical, and Lanytha is a mage. That’s exactly right. And yes, they are a couple. They’ve been bonded for several years. That’s why they’re here, as it happens.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They’d kept their relationship secret for a long time. She was a wealthy member of the Talented in Sholandre, with him posing as her ‘Dim’ servant. She was exiled, and she managed to pull enough strings to get him exiled with her. Normally the Dim are killed, or sent to things like the Arena.”
Stone didn’t miss the disgust that seeped into her tone each time she used the term “Dim.” “Wait,” he said, remembering the talk of exile he’d heard back in Drendell. “Exile to where?” He let his breath out in a loud, frustrated sigh. “There’s so damned much I don’t know, I don’t even know where to start!” He wondered if any of it would even matter—if things went the way he hoped, he’d convince Harrison to teach him magic and then he’d be on his way home before he’d need to learn anything about this world’s bizarre history.
But still…his curiosity, as always, reared its head. Staying or not, this was fascinating stuff.
“It’s all right,” Errin assured him. “It’s a lot to take in. Tell me what you know, and I’ll try to fill in the rest. You’ll have plenty of time to learn it all if you’re joining us here.”
“I—” Stone began, uncomfortably. “I don’t know that I am. That’s what I need to discuss with Mr. Harrison tonight. But—I don’t know much. I know the mages live in floating cities and don’t like the mun—the non-magical people very much. I know there are a lot more non-magical people than mages, and they live on the surface in towns that look like they used to be a lot larger. And something about a war. Can you tell me about that?”
“Hold on, hold on.” Errin said, holding up her hands to stop him. “I’ll give you the short version, and you can fill in the details later.”
“Fair enough. Anything will be more than I have now.” He tilted his head. “What do you do here, by the way? You seem to know Mr. Harrison fairly well. You two aren’t—?”
“Bonded? A couple?” She laughed. “Hardly. No, I’m kind of his—right-hand woman and chief mechanic around here.”
“Mechanic?” That seemed an odd combination of roles.
“Sure. I build things.” She nodded down the street ahead of them, where some kind of vehicle was approaching. As it drove by, Stone noticed it had little in common with the rusting, broken-down things he’d seen in Drendell. Instead, it looked like someone had started out with a modern Earth car but gone in a completely foreign direction—more mechanical, less electronic, but it moved silently and without any sign of exhaust.
“You built that?”
“Not that one specifically, but I helped with the design. We use a combination of magic and mechanical design to make them work. You’ll see later.”
Stone realized he’d gotten sidetracked again, and had to grin. “Okay, you’re right. No more new questions until you’ve answered the old ones.”
“You want to know about the war.”
“Yes. Who fought it? How long ago was it? What happened to the cities?”
Errin walked on for a few more moments before answering. “The war was the reason the mages live in the floating cities.”
“There are five of them, right?”
“Five, yes—one for each of the five major factions. Used to be six, but the sixth is gone. Anyway, as you might have figured out, many of the mages are a contentious, arrogant bunch.”
“Hadn’t noticed,” Stone said wryly.
“They used to live on the surface, with the non-magical people. They still treated us like dirt, mind you, but they had their own towns, and their own districts in the major cities that were a lot nicer than the rest. And they used to be all over Calanar.” She pulled a notebook and pen from her shoulder bag and paused to make a sketch.
Stone studied it; it looked like an irregular mass, but without any reference points, he couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be. “Calanar?”
“That’s the continent,” she said, tapping the drawing with her pen-tip. “Close enough, anyway. And there used to be cities all over it. But as often happens when you get people with too much power who were all raised to believe they were the center of the universe, they started to divide up into factions. And each faction started having its best magical minds switch focus from working on things to make their lives better to things that would make the others’ lives worse.”
“Magical weapons,” Stone said.
“Yes, that’s putting it mildly. Magical war machines. Horrible spells designed to kill by the thousands—all of them tried to outdo the others, and of course they spied on each other to try to steal the best of them for their own faction.”
“And they used these weapons?”
“It started out as an accident—one house got scared after they heard rumors another one was going to attack first, so they struck pre-emptively. And then of course all the other ones responded in kind.” She shuddered.
“You…don’t remember this, do you? Was this in your lifetime?”
She shook her head. “No, no. It was many years ago, long before any of us were born. But the result of it was, most of the cities were destroyed, and most of the population—magical and non-magical—died. And,” she added with a look of disgust, “most of the land mass became unlivable.”
“Unlivable? Are you talking something like—magical radiation? Fallout?” Even on Earth, large concentrations of powerful magic could have that effect; he remembered the location of Burning Man out in the middle of the Nevada desert, where ten ley lines converged to form an area of immense power, but one where mages couldn’t remain for more than a few weeks without ill effects.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The physical damage was bad enough—it destroyed large sections of most of the cities—but the magical damage was worse. The coastal cities were the least affected and recovered fastest—nobody’s sure why—but the interior of the continent is full of…well, not many people know for sure, except the Travelers, and they’re not telling.”
“Travelers?”
“They live in the Wastes—they’re nomads, and they’re…odd. The magic changed them. They keep to themselves. Anyway,” she continued, “before I get sidetracked, let me finish this. So after the war, which only lasted a short time as you might have guessed, the surviving mages realized they’d have to do something. So they got together and hammered out some agreements. That’s when the mage houses were created. They agreed to make the war magic—the big spells, the war machines, all of that—illegal. And since they didn’t want to live on the ground anymore and deal with the consequences of what they did, they all got together and figured out how to build cities they could raise up above the land.”
“How did they do it?”
“Nobody remembers anymore. The records were lost years ago, and the new generations have gotten lazy. Something to do with ley lines, is all I know. You can ask Trevor when you talk to him—I’m sure he knows more about it, if you want details.”
He most certainly did want the details. He made a mental note to ask Harrison about it later. “So…they’ve all been living in peace and harmony ever since?” He remembered what Tanissa had said, back in Drendell, about how the Talented presented Harrison as a bogeyman so they’d have someone to unite against since they “couldn’t fight each other anymore.”
Errin snorted. “Not even close. They’re still as arrogant and power-hungry as they ever were, and they’re always looking for ways to increase their own house’s power and prestige. But the Grand Council—that’s where each city sends representatives from their own Councils so they can hash things out—has mostly kept ever
ything civil. The truth is everybody’s scared witless of another war, so that keeps them under control.”
“I see.” Stone walked along next to her in silence, hands in his pockets, and studied the rolling landscape. All around, the area looked peaceful, well-tended, and untroubled. “You said this place was in the middle of the Wastes. But didn’t you say that was the area the magic made unlivable?”
“Yes. That’s why nobody comes out here—because they can’t. They’d be killed before they made it more than a few miles in.”
“By magic?”
“By…any number of things. Things don’t work in the Wastes the way they do in the rest of the world. Magic often doesn’t work right, or at all—or else it drives people mad. There are pockets where the magic is more powerful and twisted than it should be, and parts where it doesn’t function at all. And to make things even worse, some of those pockets move around, so you can never be sure exactly where they are. There are still remnants of some of the old weapons out there—some of them possibly still functional—and a lot of the wildlife has been…changed.” She shuddered. “That’s why exile is almost worse than execution. It’s not like you have a chance, if they mark you and send you out with nothing but the clothes on your back. Nobody ever comes back.”
Stone thought about the two-headed wolf things in the Barrens outside Drendell. “Then—how are you lot here? How do you survive?”
“Because of the Nexus.” She pointed back toward the black tower. “Remember I told you there used to be six major factions?”
“Yes…”
“Argana was the sixth. It was the most powerful and prestigious of all of them—which meant when the attacks came, they hit Argana the hardest. When they tried to raise their own city after the war, there weren’t enough of their people left to do it, or else something went wrong. Nobody knows for sure anymore. It crashed back to the ground, killing more of them. The rest got absorbed into the other houses—the ones who didn’t disappear, anyway. This settlement is built on the ruins of the original Argana.”
“But wait—I thought you said this was Argana.”
“That’s Trevor’s doing. He calls this place New Argana. Nobody asks him why.” She shrugged. “He can call it whatever he likes, since he’s in charge of the settlement here. And if you know him at all, you know he isn’t the type to answer too many questions.”
Interesting, and even more confusing. If Harrison was a dimension-hopping mage from Earth, why was he leading a settlement on another plane? Did he have more connection with this place than Stone initially thought? Perhaps even some connection with the original Argana? He made yet another mental note; if this kept up, he’d need to start writing them down. “So how does the Nexus keep you from the harmful effects?”
“Like I told you before, it has to do with ley lines. It stabilizes the area, and keeps the harmful magic out. I can’t explain it—that kind of knowledge is something we can only superficially understand, since we’re not mages.”
Stone didn’t correct her. Right now, he wasn’t a mage, and if Harrison couldn’t help him, that wouldn’t change here. He added another mental note to ask about it later.
“All I know is that the area is naturally a lot more resistant to harmful magic because of where it is—that’s probably why they picked it in the first place, even before the Nexus was built. But the tower concentrates the ley line energy and provides a lot of power that we can use for all sorts of things: defense, building, making the place livable. And so far, we don’t even think anybody who isn’t one of us knows about this place’s existence, let alone has any way to get here.”
This was all a lot to take in, and Stone was sure he hadn’t even scratched the surface of everything to learn here. He decided to change gears to something more personal. “This is all fascinating. I guess I’ll have plenty of time to ask about it, and I plan to. But right now, I’d like to know how the hell you people got me out of the Arena, under the noses of all those Talented bigwigs. Obviously Karol was in on it. So he’s one of you?”
“He is, yes.” They’d reached the edge of a meandering river; Errin changed direction to a path alongside it. “He’s been undercover inside the Temolan prison for a while now. When Trevor got word you were here and had been captured, we worked out a plan to get both of you out. You’re dead, by the way.”
Stone blinked. “I am? I’m feeling better than I have in quite some time.”
She chuckled. “You aren’t as far as the people in Temolan are concerned. Karol strangled you to death inside the Arena. Your body was taken out like so much trash and tossed in the incinerator.”
“I…see.” That seemed odd, but then he caught on. “Ah. So no one will be looking for me anymore.”
“And no one else will be killed on suspicion of helping you.”
Stone thought of Faran and Runa, and hoped the baker and his family hadn’t suffered a similar fate. He bowed his head. “Are they all like that?”
“Are who all like what?”
“The Talented. Almost without exception, every one of them I encountered was some kind of sadistic monster. Are they raised like that, to treat the non-magical people so dreadfully?”
She looked troubled as she walked along. “That’s a hard question to answer. The short version is that no, they’re not. You saw some of the worst of them—the leaders, the aristocrats, the ones who go down to the towns on purpose because they know there aren’t any consequences for what they do. And the ones who are lowest in the mage hierarchy, so they look for situations where they can feel superior to somebody. They can be the worst of all, honestly. But…a lot of them, the ones who stay in the cities, just want to live their lives. Even most of those regard the ‘Dim’ as inferiors—they can’t help it, that’s the way they’re raised from the time they’re born—but they don’t wish us specific harm.”
“And what about the other ones? The ones like Lanytha?”
“There are more of those than anyone suspects, I think, quietly doing what they do behind closed doors, terrified of being discovered. We try to find them when we can, but it’s difficult. The consequences of defying the Talented leadership are too high—most of them are afraid to take the chance.”
Stone, remembering the way it was in Drendell when he was trying to find Harrison, nodded. “Karol told me to play along in the Arena, to grab his armband. Was there some kind of contact chemical on it to knock me out?”
“Exactly. It’s something one of our alchemists whipped up—it simulates death and conceals itself from magical scans once it’s applied. It put you into a state of suspended animation for a while, long enough for our people to get you out. We had to make it look completely believable.”
An ingenious idea, but it raised more questions. “How did he get it, though? How did he find out what he was supposed to do? Do you have other spies in the prison? Spies among the Talented?”
She flashed a wicked grin. “We have a lot of spies—including some in very high places. I’m safe in saying that we know a lot more about them than they do about us.”
Stone felt suddenly overwhelmed by all this new information. Even though he felt better than he had since he’d arrived here, his several days of hard labor and inadequate food inside the prison were catching up with him. “This is all…amazing,” he said, stopping to look out over the sparkling river. “Every time you answer one of my questions, it raises more.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “Like I told you before, you’re safe here. Take your time.” She eyed him critically. “You look tired. Did I push you too hard?”
“No, no. It feels good to be outside. I thought I’d never see the sun again. I want to keep asking you more questions—I want to find out everything about this place—but I think it might have to wait a bit. Can you just—show me around for a while?”
“Of course. Come on—if you can walk long enough to get back to my place, you can sit down for the rest of the tour.”
By the time t
hey reached Errin’s large, neat home, Stone was glad he didn’t have to walk anymore. She opened a garage to reveal one of the sleek vehicles he’d seen cruising around Argana’s streets. This one, painted a shining silver, had the swoopy, streamlined look reminiscent of cars from the middle part of Earth’s twentieth century.
“Very nice,” he said, looking it over before climbing in. “And it runs on magic?”
“Well, magic powers it. But like I said, most of it is mechanical. Now, sit back and relax.”
For the next couple hours, Errin drove Stone around Argana. It was a small settlement—he estimated perhaps a few hundred people, assuming Harrison wasn’t hiding a lot more in the Nexus tower. Except for the tower, most of the buildings were low-slung, rising only one or two stories, and spread out. It was nothing like the packed Drendell or even what he’d seen of Temolan, where he supposed they had to build up rather than out by necessity. She drove him past farmland dotted with crops, and grassy, rolling pastures with herds of animals—he recognized some of the fat cow-things pictured in Faran’s butcher-shop window. The business district was small but well stocked: Stone spotted what looked like several different kinds of food shops, restaurants, clothing stores, a bar, and even a library. “People read here?” he asked, surprised.
“Of course.” She seemed surprised by the question. “The mages arrive well educated, naturally. The non-magical people back in the cities aren’t educated past basic levels they need to do their jobs, but most of them learn fast once they get here.”
Ah, so that was it. He should have guessed: of course the ruling Talented would want to keep the mundanes ignorant and fearful. He wondered if a concentrated uprising among the larger mundane population would have any chance of overwhelming the mages. “Do you produce everything you need here? That seems like it would be difficult, with such a small population.”
“Not even close. We grow and raise most of our own basic food, but we import a lot of what we need, mostly from the cities down here. We even get some goods from the Talented’s cities.” She grinned. “I told you we have friends in high places. The mages produce some of what we use, and we have quite a number of craftspeople, both magical and non-magical. Oh, and Trevor has sources for some amazing things—I have no idea where he gets them and I don’t ask, but so far he’s never failed to come up with anything I need for my work. And some of what he’s got in the Tower is—” She shook her head in wonder. “—I couldn’t even begin to explain how it works, but he seems to understand it.”
