03- A Sip of Magic

by Guy Antibes

  ~

  Karo and Nater didn’t mix with Pol very much on their ride, but that was fine with Pol as he spent most of the time listening to Ankus, the steward, fill his mind with the intricacies of running just part of the large estate. Pol had to remember details in order to pass as Nater at Tesna.

  “We have just started rotating our crops. An Imperial representative has been meeting with large farmers throughout the Empire share the Emperor’s great success in keeping yields up. He passed through Boxall last fall. It already looks like it has helped in the sections where we’ve experimented rotating in our fields.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing. The Emperor gives agricultural advice?” Pol said.

  “You’re not a farmer.” Ankus smiled and looked out at the crops. “Hazett pays us for innovative ideas and then spreads them to other farmers through a corps of agricultural specialists from Baccusol University in Yastan. The cost to the Emperor more than pays back the increased taxes from higher farm production in the Empire.”

  That surprised Pol. He had lived too sheltered a life. One exciting mission retrieving Searl for the monastery didn’t give him a very complete worldview. His lessons from Farthia Wissingbel at Borstall Castle hadn’t given him common details like this.

  The thought dawned on him that information was more important to the running of the empire than magic would ever be. He knew about spies and observation, but now he realized the benefit of information flowing both ways, and that benefited the stability of the Baccusol Empire.

  Pol had to shake his head to retain his focus. He looked as Nater joked with Karo and realized that his impersonation target wasn’t very interested in what Ankus had to say.

  They returned to the house just after mid-day and sat down to eat. The housekeeper had brought a young woman along to serve. Perhaps she felt uncomfortable letting Pol help her.

  “Did you learn anything new?” Pol asked.

  Nater’s face had a blank look. “New? What would I learn that was new?”

  “What do you know about crop rotation?”

  Ankus smiled indulgently, an indication that he didn’t think Nater had listened.

  “I don’t bother about any of that. Father, Ankus, and the other stewards do; that’s good enough.”

  Karo narrowed his eyes. He seemed to do that a lot around Pol, even though the man had definitely been impressed by Pol’s abilities. The man displayed his suspicion rather openly, Pol thought.

  “Did you pick up anything from your tour?” Ankus said.

  Nater nearly giggled. “A bit of a sunburn.” He laughed, and Karo’s expression reinforced Nater’s little joke.

  After their meal, Pol walked with Ankus out to the yard. The housekeeper joined them. “Is he always so inattentive?” Pol asked.

  “Nater?” Ankus looked back at the house. “Yes. He picks up a bit more than you might think, but not enough.” He kicked at a little rock. “Not enough.” He looked at Pol. “My wife says you helped her with the meals.” He took the housekeeper’s hand.

  Pol felt a bit of a blush. “I did, and she helped me.” He couldn’t repress a smile. “Is this your house when a Grainell isn’t around?”

  Ankus nodded. “There is a little guest house over that rise.”

  Pol followed Ankus’s gaze and saw the tops of a copse of trees.

  “Generally, Lord Grainell takes the guest house when he visits, but Nater insists on living here when he visits. It is his privilege.”

  Pol had to agree. It wasn’t particularly fair, but King Colvin, his stepfather, might just do the same thing. He was certain that Grostin could very well displace people on a whim. Perhaps that had been the source of the housekeeper’s chilly reception when he first arrived at the farm.

  “I, for one, appreciate your hospitality. I will be leaving tomorrow morning, even if I’m not accompanied by Nater.”

  “You’re a good Lord. I can tell,” the housekeeper said. “Good luck to you in whatever you’ll be doing.” She gave her husband’s hand a two-handed squeeze and left them.

  “Is there anything about Nater that I should know? I’ll be impersonating him on my mission to the East.”

  “I hope this won’t go any further than this conversation, but he is much as he appears. I would say he’s a bit brighter, and left to his own devices, shows a bit of a better character. In my opinion, his Shinkyan minder has not been a good influence. Nater is not the strongest of personalities and is apt to purposely show off bad behavior to sycophants. The Shinkyan fills that kind of role. I’ll say no more.”

  Pol bowed to Ankus. “I won’t either. I’ll leave you here.”

  A stableboy brought the steward’s horse. “I’m impressed by your mount. Demeron, you said?”

  Pol nodded.

  “I’d keep a close eye on Demeron, then. There are those who desire such a horse, and that includes Karo. I saw him look your way on our tour. His eyes always drifted to your horse.” Ankus waved to Pol as the steward turned his mount and left the front yard.

  Dinner was a non-affair. Karo and Nater played some Shinkyan game for two in the evening. Pol sat with a notebook in his hands, while he observed Nater. He picked up some unique phrases Nater used and made some notes on his talking cadence. His laughter generally started with a giggle.

  Finally he sketched Nater’s face and spent a full page documenting his expressions and what made his features unique. After getting what he needed, he slapped the notebook shut, causing Nater and Karo to look at him.

  “I don’t know what you two have planned for the rest of your week here, but I’m leaving tomorrow morning after breakfast. I wish you both a good night.” He bowed and left them to their game.

  Pol wasn’t very surprised to see his traveling companions sitting at the breakfast table, ready to leave along with him. It was easy to see that Nater grasped Pol’s departure as an excuse to leave. Pol shrugged to himself. It didn’t matter to him either way. Nater’s returning early was a matter between father and son.

  ~~~

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ~

  VAL LOOKED OVER POL’S NOTES ON NATER. “These should be sufficient. Do you have a good image of Nater in your mind?”

  Pol nodded. “More than enough.”

  “Then this will be the first time you will assume a disguise. Set a name for the pattern of Nater’s face and hair. His name should work well enough. You’ll need to sit down since the transformation takes a lot of energy. It always helps to eat something before or after.”

  Pol lifted an apple from a bowl on the table and took a large bite. “A little apple upfront won’t matter, then.”

  Val grimaced his version of a smile. “Food needs to be digested first, its energy is not instantaneous.”

  Pol knew that, but remained silent.

  “Make sure the image is locked in and then tweak the pattern. You’ll be affecting your features, which is why there is some pain involved. Sometimes it’s a lot of pain.”

  Pol closed his eyes and called up Nater’s face and then ran through his notes adding every variation of the youth’s face to his mental image. He took a deep breath and then tweaked.

  His face felt like someone had bludgeoned every inch of his skin and bones. Pol couldn’t help but moan. He opened his watering eyes and looked at Val.

  The Seeker nodded and put his hand to his chin. “Not bad for a first attempt.” He lifted up a mirror. Pol’s spirits sunk when he didn’t recognize the face that looked back at him.

  “That’s not Nater.”

  Val shook his head. “It’s closer to Nater than it is to you.” He held up the drawing Pol had made. “This is who you look like.”

  Pol narrowed his eyes to focus on his sketch and then he looked at the mirror. “Oh.” He hoped the dejection he felt didn’t come through.

  “Let’s go through the sketch,” Val said.

  They both pointed out improvements to the sketch. Val evidently had a better memory for faces than Pol did
. Perhaps years of practice made the practice more accurate, Pol rationalized to himself.

  He made up a new name for the Nater image, Tesna, and tweaked again. The pain wasn’t as bad as the first try, but then his face was closer to Nater’s image this time.

  “Better. In fact, I’d say passable,” Val said as he lifted up the mirror. “Good job with the hair color.”

  Pol had to agree. “Can I tweak blemishes and things without redoing the whole face?”

  “You can,” Val said.

  Pol referred to his notes as he added a few skin anomalies that he had left off of his first two transformations.

  “Not bad. Let’s bring in Lord Grainell,” Val said. “Nater would be useless evaluating his own face. People generally are. They subconsciously make themselves look better in their minds.”

  Pol examined his features and used a brush to change his hairstyle to match Nater’s while he waited for Val and Nater’s father to return.

  Lord Grainell walked into the room. “What are you doing here?” he asked when he first saw Pol. He squinted and looked more closely at Pol. “You’re not my son.”

  “Of course I’m not.” Pol said in his regular voice. He tried to imitate Nater’s laugh at the end of his statement.

  “You have his ridiculous tittering down,” Grainell said. He leaned over with his hands on his thighs. “That is a good job. Not perfect, but good enough to fool me when I first walked into the room. You need to put on more weight. You are thinner than Nater, and that was the first thing that made me suspect you weren’t my son.”

  Val asked Grainell a number of questions about his encounter with the Tesnan monk who had recruited Nater. He verified that Nater knew no one at Tesna.

  “Then if Pol puts on a bit of weight in the next few weeks, he will pass?”

  Grainell shrugged. “He might pass anyway. Stand and walk around.”

  Pol did as Grainell said. They spent the next hour going over Nater’s mannerisms. Val wrote in Pol’s notebook while they worked on honing the transformation.

  The effort drained Pol. He sat down and finished his second apple. “How did you expect a Second Level to transform?”

  Val lifted a corner of his mouth. “I didn’t. It would all be hair color and mannerisms. I must say I feel better with you on the job.”

  Was that a compliment? “Could Nater run into someone he knows?”

  That brought a shrug from Val. “One can never tell, but you can’t over-prepare for a mission.”

  “Do you do that?”

  “I don’t get a chance to over-prepare very often. We did for this mission. I imagine your notes on agriculture exceed Nater’s total understanding.”

  “They do, but he’s brighter than he lets on,” Pol said.

  “Sixteen-year-old boys generally are, except for you.”

  “I’m not sixteen.”

  Val grunted out a laugh. “You will be soon enough and you’d better be thinking of being sixteen when someone asks you.”

  Pol took his notebook and flipped to the front where he reviewed the information that Val had gone over with him in Deftnis. “It’s all here.”

  “Notes don’t make the mission,” Val said. “Never make the mistake to rely solely on a plan. If you can carry it out, that is good, but things change, and you must improvise.”

  “I think I’ve proven that I can do that,” Pol said.

  “You have, haven’t you?”

  Pol took a bite out of a third apple. “I’ll change back.” He thought of himself and let the pattern change on his face. His face exploded with pain.

  “What have you done?” Val asked, the astonishment plain on his face.

  Pol lifted the mirror to his face. His hair and eyebrows were silvery white, lighter than his normal color. Even his eyes, nose, and mouth were different, yet he could still see traces of himself.

  “You don’t look quite human,” Val said. “Where did you get that pattern?”

  The features looking back at Pol were harsh and in some ways more like Karo, the Shinkyan. He couldn’t imagine what had happened, but then he grasped the pendant that his mother had given him. He had non-human ancestry, and this must be what his ancestors looked like. He memorized the face and labeled it ‘ancestor’ before he thought of the face he always imagined himself to look like.

  Agony filled him, but his face had returned to normal when he looked back into the mirror, totally out of breath. He didn’t know if it was from the shock of the alien face or from all of the transformations.

  Val sat back in his chair. “Where did you ever see that face?”

  “I never have. Maybe it was from a novel I read once. It was me, but it wasn’t me.”

  “Not you.” Val said exhaling. Pol had never seen him so shocked. “I’m glad you look like yourself again.”

  ~

  “I don’t want to return to West Fields. Ankus Fallhead was so boring.” Nater made an ugly face and glared at Pol, who wore Nater’s face. “Send him. He looks enough like me.”

  Lord Grainell turned red, making Pol feel uncomfortable during his last dinner at Grainell’s manor house. “That’s not the point, son.”

  Pol looked at Darrol and Val. Darrol looked as uncomfortable as he did, but Val continued to eat as if Nater hadn’t said a word.

  “He won’t be needing my services, then?” Karo said. “If he’ll be learning how to prepare for the harvest, then I will be taking my leave. Nater will no longer require my services while he is at Deftnis.” The tutor-magician bowed his head towards Grainell.

  Nater groaned. “Please come with me to the West Fields.”

  “As you wish, Nater. I can leave for Shinkya when you depart for Deftnis.”

  Karo’s words seemed to calm Nater down. Pol didn’t have the confidence that he could act being so easily overwrought as the person he’d be replacing.

  The Shinkyan took Pol aside after they were finished for the night. “I wish you well. I am still astonished that you can assume a disguise. I thought you were just going to mimic Nater’s mannerisms, but…” He paused for a moment, shaking his head. “Only women have the power of disguise in Shinkya.” He smiled at Pol. “I would like to warn you about visiting my country. Especially with your horse. It can be a very dangerous place, especially for foreigners.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” Pol said, although he had no desire to take Demeron to a place that he didn’t like, and Demeron never had anything good to say about his life in Shinkya.

  “Do,” Karo said. “May you find what you seek. We have always been leery of the South Salvans.”

  ~~~

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ~

  VAL HAD TAKEN DARROL AND POL DOWN through Finster and cross-country towards a pass in the mountain range that made up the border with Shinkya from the very south of Eastril, and then halfway up into North Salvan.

  “North Salvan. It’s been a year,” Pol said as they looked from the top of the narrow pass into his former home country. He shivered as the cold wind sheared through his light cloak. He had to admit he still felt an affinity to the land that spread out beneath him, but the treatment his siblings had given him seemed to cover North Salvan in a fouled fog.

  He realized that he had forgiven Landon and now knew that Amonna had been innocent of the intent to kill his mother. The weakness that Landon showed when Lord Tomio was about to kill him, actually brought out sympathetic feelings. Still, he had a hard time thinking of Grostin, Honna, and his stepfather in the same terms. He would rather forget all about them, but here he was about to trespass through North Salvan, even if it was just a means to get into South Salvan.

  The Seeker pulled out maps of the mountains that made up the borders after they had dismounted to give the horses a rest just before they turned east into North Salvan.

  “Southern Finster is very arid, as you can tell,” Val said.

  Pol looked around at the countryside. The grass was brown, and there hadn’t been woods of any s
ize for the last day’s worth of travel. He leaned over and patted Demeron.

  “Is Shinkya this dry?”

  Demeron nodded his head. Dry, but we know how to find water. It’s not a hospitable place because other animals eat up all the grass, which only grows in the spring. I like Deftnis much better, even the south side of the island.

  “In fact, the dry climate extends all the way south through Shinkya.” Val looked ahead, and then pointed to a place on the map. “We head to this village in North Salvan. A small road branches south from there to the border. The local guards should pass us through easily enough,” Val said. “It will soon be time to get you disguised.”

  Pol instinctively put his hand to his face. He felt a hollowness that he recognized as fear in his stomach. He didn’t have to do this, he told himself.

  Yes, you do, Demeron said. You are paying back what the Emperor has given you.

  Pol laughed. “You?”

  Demeron nodded. Among other great and noble things…

  “Me?” Darrol asked.

  “Demeron and I were talking.”

  Darrol shook his head. “You and your horse.”

  Val lifted his head from the map. “Don’t antagonize Demeron, Darrol. You’ll be the one taking care of him while Pol is in the monastery. It might be for a season or more, so you two will have to be friends.”

  Don’t worry. I like Darrol.

  “Don’t worry, he likes you.” Pol shook Darrol’s shoulder.

  His friend gave Pol a playful stare. “Actually, I like him, too.” Darrol looked at Demeron close by.

  Val grumbled and glared as he rolled the map back into its leather case. “We won’t get to Tesna talking about who likes whom.” He mounted and left Pol and Darrol looking at the dust thrown up by Val’s horse, dwindling as it headed down the trail.

  ~

  They rode into a little South Salvan village twenty or so miles south of the border. The road had skirted the foothills of the mountain range that went north to south. Val put them up at one of the three inns. It held four or five rooms, but the stable had attracted Val.

  “You’ll need another mount,” the Seeker said. “When we cross into South Salvan, I’ll be riding Demeron, if he’ll let me, and we’ll put camping supplies on my horse. Is that all right with you, Demeron?”