by Jean Johnson
“I wonder when this Disaster will be over with, so I can carry you back up to our room,” Saber muttered. “Curse or no Curse, no man should have to be so constantly interrupted on his honeymoon.”
His wife flashed him a smile as she stood and stretched. “Poor baby.”
Only the more sophisticated illusions appeared to notice the consort hauling the queen onto his lap and giving her a heated kiss. The rest continued chatting superficially with each other, as they were enspelled to do.
TWENTY-ONE
Is it true that the woman who claims to lead you has no magic?” Sir Eduor asked Dominor.
Dominor slanted his blue eyes toward the younger man, nineteen at most and too young to sport any serious facial hair; his brother looked to be about twenty-two, five years younger than Dominor, with a mustache and the beginnings of sideburns and beard, and the father was clearly in his mid-forties, currently the last to use the refreshing room. Dominor wasn’t very impressed with them. “She leads us in truth; she does not claim to lead us. Be careful how you phrase things, young one. Her Majesty might take offense, and you would not like the consequences of her displeasure.”
His brother, Sir Kennal, snorted. “If she has no magic, then there is nothing to fear from her.”
Smiling to himself, Dominor wished he could convince his sister-in-law to teach him that “dirt-eating” move of hers; here was an arrogant young cuss in need of a little soil-tasting. “Then you are a fool. Magic and gender have nothing to do with power. But tell me,” he continued smoothly, “in the interest of getting to know each other more, why did you assume our queen has magical power?”
“Because magic flows through the veins of women,” the elder son pointed out, as if it were an obvious fact.
Dominor arched a brow. “Only through the veins of women?”
“Of course!” Eduor asserted. “Except for the rare, blessed man born with a drop of it in his blood, but that is less than one in a hundred thousand men.”
Kennal eyed Dominor, as the door to the refreshing room opened and his father came out. “You seem surprised by this fact, Lord Chancellor.”
“Of course I do. All of the inhabitants of Nightfall use magic, regardless of gender; even those who do not possess the gift use the magics of others in their everyday lives,” Dominor stated truthfully. Since Kelly could use a scrying mirror that was activated for her, and had been given a dagger that was enspelled to come when she called it, it was the absolute truth. “It is the same in the empire of Katan.
“I myself am the third most powerful mage on the whole of Nightfall Island, and rank well among the highest on the mainland of Katan, which has tens of thousands of mages among its one-million-plus inhabitants. But then both my mother and my father had magery in their veins.”
“You are a mage?” Lord Aragol asked, hazel eyes sharpening with interest as he studied the Lord Chancellor standing before him. “A very powerful one, compared to the rest of your people? How strong is your magic, exactly?”
“Why do you ask?” Dominor inquired, arching his brow again.
The earl lifted his goatee-covered chin. “The Independence of Mandare could always use strongly gifted men in its fight against the tyranny of Natallian women and their immoral witchery. If you or any of the other magically gifted men of Nightfall come back with us, we can not only finish securing our borders through our war machines, but expand them greatly with the aid of your magical powers, and claim what is rightfully ours: dominion over Natallia. Any magically gifted man who came with us and aided us would automatically become a great lord and gain equally great land and wealth for his service.”
“I serve Nightfall Isle,” Dominor reminded the man, carefully hiding his offense at the suggestion; he was arrogant, not misogynistic. Still, leaving an opening for gaining more knowledge about these people later on, he amended diplomatically, “But I will keep your words in mind. Come, let me show you the southwestern gardens; they contain a number of rare plants that are quite interesting to behold.”
Strolling with Saber and nodding cordially to their “subjects”—a handful of illusory courtiers and a pair of gardeners—Kelly spotted the quartet of real bodies standing near one of the more elaborate fountains in the southwest gardens, close to the outer wall. When she had first arrived here, the water had been stagnant with scum and weeds, moss and vines clinging to the carved figures. Faucet corks had bottled up most of the pipe openings, reducing the water flow to an algae-slimed trickle here and there.
Now everything was pristine, sparkling, polished, and gleaming. She could see the marble and granite tiles laid in pastel patterns lining the pools, where pipes splashed and poured free. From granite carvings of sea horses spouting water in intricate, overlapping, liquid arches, to oversized marble flower petals arranged in bouquet-tiers, from urn-carrying statues of women and men, to friezes artfully depicting scenes of courtly love among the splashing, gleaming pools, the view of these particular gardens formed a sensual delight. Now that they were clean, that was.
Lord Aragol spied them as they came near and pasted on a gracious smile. “Your Highness…Your Majesty. These gardens are indeed quite intricate, and worth the time to see them. Were these fountains carved by magic, or carved by hand?”
Kelly raised her brows. “I think I would have to look in the castle records, Lord Aragol,” she apologized lightly. “But I would think by both; magic often speeds the labor in our lives, and the skills of hand and eye ensures the artistry that inspired the work is still retained.”
He smiled a smug smile between his mustache and goatee. “But labor that can be done by the hand alone is more impressive…especially when it is done with the aid of machinery designed by the mind, and not by mere magic alone. How would you raise that stone bench over there, Your Majesty? To lift it completely off the ground?”
She eyed the bench in question, a long, curved, solid granite one that could probably seat six or seven people; it probably weighed four hundred pounds, easily. “I could ask the Lord Chancellor, or my husband, to move it by magic,” she pointed out, playing along with his game. “Or many others who are so gifted here on Nightfall; that would be the swiftest way to ensure its movement.”
“But what if you could not use magic?” the earl asked slyly. “What if you had to do it without any magic at all?”
“There are plenty of strong backs and hands who would be willing to help me lift it in concert,” she returned mildly, “and they would help me to do so even if I were not queen. We of Nightfall tend to help one another; it is the civilized thing to do.”
“But what if you were alone? I could lift this stone bench using the intelligence of my mind, Your Majesty,” he claimed. “Using machinery that I could design and create with just a few simple tools, I could lift it clear off the ground, without any magic.”
“We are not unfamiliar with the applications of nonmagical machinery, Lord Earl. If I were alone,” Kelly added dryly, “and for some reason needed to lift that bench, I would simply construct a tripod-mounted block-and-pulley system, probably with a ratio of ten-to-one, so that I only have to lift, what, forty pounds instead of four hundred at each pull? Albeit at ten times the length of rope pulled for the distance required to be lifted, but then that is the mechanics of simple machinery.”
The technical terms rattling out of Kelly’s mouth made the nobleman’s smug look fade a little.
“Or I could lift it with a wedge-style, gear-assisted jack-lift, simply by turning the gears with a handle to achieve sufficient torque through the sprocket shaft to lift that much granite with a minimum of physical effort,” Kelly continued, quelling the urge to give him a superior smirk. You’re not going to win this one, Lord Arrogant, she thought, giving him an eloquent shrug. My homeworld is vastly superior in its technology to yours. “And by using two jacks, one at each end, I could lift the entire bench off the ground, as your hypothetical task requires.”
The earl and his two sons blinked. Saber
and Dominor got that slightly glazed look in their eyes that told her she was talking like a computer-geek to them.
Suppressing the urge to smile, she continued. “Or I could use an air-compression-based wedge of some kind to use the pounds-per-square-inch natural law of air pressure, by simply pumping the handle of the appropriate device to force the bench up into the air on an inflatable bladder of some kind, much as placing an airtight sack under a book and inflating the bag with a strongly blown breath will subsequently lift the book. There are many ways to complete the task proposed without using magic, Lord Earl,” she added with a shrug. “We are not unfamiliar with them. Technology has many merits. And many drawbacks, just as magic has. Magic in many ways is just simpler to use, here on Nightfall.”
“But magic requires a magician able to wield it,” Lord Aragol pointed out. “We have very few male magicians in Mandare. We have therefore explored many nonmagical means to do all that we need to do.” He looked at his sons, then smiled and stroked his goatee. “Your Majesty…could I trouble one of your servants to bring out a melon, or some other large-sized fruit, and have them set it on that pedestal over there, by the outer wall?”
“For what purpose?” Saber asked him.
“I would prove that Mandarite machinery is superior to magic.”
And here it comes; I’ll bet this is a demonstration of their flintlock guns to frighten us into acknowledging their superiority… She and Morganen had already prepared for this moment, however. “Lord Chancellor, would you see to it?” Kelly asked Dominor. “Bring back several melons, please. They would be pleasant to eat on such a warm summer’s day, if nothing else.”
“Certainly, Your Majesty.” With a bow to her, he headed for the nearest wing of the castle. The Nightfallers and the Mandarites eyed each other and spoke of how pleasant the weather was, the delights of the garden, the hope that the weather would continue good for a few more days, until the well of small talk dried up between the two groups.
Saber switched from Mandarite to Katani and murmured in Kelly’s ear, tucking her against his side as they waited. “Do you know what the man is up to? I do not like this Earl’s smugness…though I loved your quick replies. What little I could understand of them.”
“I think he’s going to demonstrate the power of the flintlock guns each one of them is wearing,” she murmured back with a little smile. Switching between the languages sounded to her ear simply like switching between accents. From the puzzled look of their guests, it was a successful, obfuscating switch. “I figured he might, at some point. Guns are very impressive—and very loud, just to warn you—when wielded in front of those unfamiliar with their effects.”
“Is that your native tongue?” Edour spoke up with a touch of curiosity. “I thought you said you would speak solely in ours while we were here.”
“We speak in endearments meant to be exchanged by husband and wife alone,” Saber returned smoothly. “We value our privacy, if you have not figured it out by now.”
Kelly smiled up at him through the half foot difference in their height as he said it, then returned her gaze to the trio of men before them. “With respect comes admiration, gentlemen; it is a natural progression. My husband knows well that I respond well to sweet words, and poorly to sour. As he prefers me to be a gentlewoman more often than a termagant whenever I am around him, he speaks sweetly to me. And I prefer him to be a gentleman, rather than a bully, so I speak sweetly to him in return.
“We of Nightfall understand this give-and-take,” she continued smoothly. “It takes great strength of character to respond to an uncivility with politeness. But then, if one person is polite, it is easier for the other person to be polite as well. Just as, when one person acts in violence, the other is often more inclined out of hurt or spite to act the same. It is simply a matter of overcoming one’s base immaturity and responding with wisdom.
“Ah, Lord Chancellor, you have returned.”
Dominor, carrying a basket of melons, nodded and moved to place the first one on the stone shelf indicated, one in a set of eight decorative pillars that normally had urns of flowers growing on top; two had lost their urns to weather damage, so the brothers had just cleared away the remains and shifted the other pots so that the bare ones flanked the other six. Now they looked intentionally left bare. He set the basket of fruit at the base, adjusted the melon on top so that it would not roll, then returned to the others.
“Why do you do this work yourself?” Sir Kennal asked him, frowning at the Lord Chancellor in confusion. “You are a lord of your realm; that is a servant’s task, something fit for a woman to do.”
“I find myself intrigued to know what your father intends to do, young lord,” Dominor stated smoothly, as Kelly’s brows drew down at the blatant insult to her gender. “And too impatient to have a servant summoned away from some other, more important task when I could do this all the more quickly myself. We are not lazy, here on Nightfall, Sir Kennal. Each citizen of the isle is more than capable of doing many things for themselves—our queen, for example, is a warrior in her own right.”
I just knew he’d work that in, somehow, Kelly thought, doing her best to not smile as she shook her head ruefully. “You flatter me, Lord Chancellor, but I have my husband to champion and protect me these days; I need nothing more.”
At her sincere praise, Saber felt his chest swell, expanding a little with masculine pride. Considering that she had made him “eat dirt” more times than she had tossed Dominor to the floor—twice to just once—he felt pleasure at her confidence in his own abilities. Saber marshaled his attention back to their surroundings; he wasn’t really the Lord Protector of the isle, nor was she the Queen, nor his brother the Lord Chancellor…and yet they still had to flawlessly maintain the illusion that they were. “Lord Aragol, I believe you were going to make some sort of point, by having us fetch these fruit?”
“Quite,” the earl stated. He shifted over, placed the pillar and its fiber-hulled melon between him and the slightly curved outer wall, then stepped back several paces, putting half a dozen yards between him and the pillars by the outer wall, flanking this side of the many-streamed fountain they had been standing in front of for their conversation. “You may wish to stand behind me, so that you are safe.”
His sons quickly moved back behind him, so the other three did as well. Kelly flipped her hand discreetly at the courtiers in the garden, and Dominor and Saber muttered under the splashing cover of the fountains, redirecting the “strolling” illusions to make certain none strolled near them.
“Observe the power of a man’s intellect, Majesty, and the might that is our machinery.” Drawing the flintlock pistol from the embossed leather holster slung on his hip across from his sword, he aimed the barrel across his forearm and flicked the flintlock lever hard.
BANG!
While Saber and Dominor jumped from the too-loud explosion, Kelly merely winced. The melon jumped and half-exploded in the same instant as the noise, scattering small chunks of itself from the back end. All of them coughed a second or two later as grayish, acrid gunpowder residue wafted around them, dispersing and dissipating slowly in the soft breeze meandering through the garden.
Eyes gleaming at both the sting of the acrid smoke and the triumph of his demonstration, Lord Aragol faced them, the still-smoking barrel pointed toward the sky. “This is a piece of machinery that hurls a ball of iron at speeds far greater than any magical shield can protect against. Lord Chancellor, you are a mage, you said? Please, replace the melon with a fresh one and cast a protective shield around it. Your strongest one if you please…then come back here and stand behind me again, for your safety.”
Dominor paced to the pedestal, examined the roughly pierced fruit, then shifted and dropped it onto the ground and put a fresh one in its place. He murmured, flexing his fingers, until the air around the melon and pedestal began to glow. Then stepped back from the fuzzy-white ball, reminiscent of a blurry moon, and joined the others as it solidified. R
esembling a lightglobe, only on a larger scale, it completely enveloped the melon and the top of the pedestal.
“Kennal, if you would be so kind?” the father asked his eldest son, gesturing toward the spot he had used as he stepped back out of the way. The young man stepped into place, drew his own weapon, aimed on his forearm, and struck the flint with the trigger.
BANG!
Nothing appeared to have happened this time, aside from the very loud, abrupt sound and a second, equally acrid cloud.
“I believe, Lord Chancellor,” Kennal asserted as he lowered his weapon, “that when you remove your magic, you will find that the pellet has successfully penetrated your shield. Our flintlock guns fling the pellets so fast and hard, not even magic can stand in their way. These are the weapons that give Mandare its independence, so named as our men dared to resume our rightful place in the universe.”
Striding to the pedestal, Dominor snapped his fingers, canceling the shield-globe. He stared at the melon, his blue-clad back blocking the view for everyone else. Finally, he picked it up after a moment and carried it back, displaying the hole that came in one side, but did not go out the other. Digging his fingers into the opening, he cracked the melon in half with a display of the physical strength all of the brothers shared, and showed Kelly and Saber how the bullet had lodged almost to the far side of the orange pink flesh.
Kelly plucked the ball from the fruit and examined it. The iron sphere, no bigger than a fingernail, was still quite hot, though not quite enough to scorch her fingertips.
Saber took it from her, examining the pellet. “Interesting.”
“Isn’t it? And we have more of these. Machines that can hurl iron balls the size of a man’s fist,” Lord Aragol added.
“Yes. I must admit this has been an interesting demonstration,” Kelly added mildly. “Lord Dominor, would you be a dear and put one more melon on the pedestal, for me this time?”
