Magience: second edition

by Cari Silverwood

  “You must lie flat! Put legs back into this basket! Lean body when I lean. Put legs down when I say!” Behind them were twin elongated baskets. Ellinca nodded vigorously, not trusting herself to talk. Besides, they had gone over these instructions three times.

  The facts ran through her mind. They must leave before the mountain winds changed direction. The hot air from the volcano would hold them up in the air much longer than normal. Wait too long and they would never reach the air above the fuming Mount Yusta. They would be flung back toward the cliffs of the Whistling mountain range.

  “Don’t look at volcano! Yus?”

  Again she nodded. An orange hue stippled her vision. The night-sight micropath potion she’d swallowed was kicking in. Already the lava ringing the crater on Mount Yusta was painfully bright.

  As she waited for Dayna to strap herself in she looked across to where Dost suffered the same fate with Krueger. Compared to the bright oranges and reds of a human, Dost’s body showed dark and was nearly the same color as the stone around him, the blue of coldness, of death. A third kite-glider was hurriedly being readied with the apparent aim of transporting Gangar in a sling beneath a single pilot.

  She blinked. A faint yellow outlined around Gangar, as if someone had colored the edges in then rubbed it out.

  “We go first!” Dayna yelled. “Run!” Together they grasped the timber bar that steered the craft.

  Not yet! She opened her mouth to protest but Dayna already moved forward. Faced with no choice, she made her legs go faster. The underside of the airship slid past above them.

  If she did not match Dayna’s speed they would be lopsided on take-off. When she had been asked what this would mean Dayna had gone into a complicated explanation with much screwing up of her face and making of odd noises and flapping of hands. From this she gathered they would cartwheel into space and be turned into something squishy when they hit the rocks.

  They leapt. The wind turned into a roaring beast. She gulped and tried not to throw up. Beneath her the world whirled past. Her legs dangled, the weight of them threatening to pull her from the harness. Aghast, she remembered and hurriedly tucked them into the basket.

  For a while she struggled to make sense of this new swaying world where falling didn’t necessarily mean a painful death – unless one hit something, like the ground. There was little to hear above the howling in her ears and the occasional fluttering of the fabric wing above. Onrushing air dried her eyes. Pained, but unwilling to miss a single second of this experience, Ellinca squinted, looking around at a vast dark world, the moon a crescent of bronze. The landscape below and before her was a patchwork of oranges, reds and blues. The thin winding ribbon of purple was the Pang River raging its way to meet the Juba before threading its lazy way to the sea. A few pinpoints of gold winked like rare jewels – fires, she guessed, amazed at their brilliance. Far-away Carstelan was a simmering speckling of embers on the horizon. It was serene and wondrous. Surely they could never reach that far.

  Pascolli would have loved this. The thought snapped everything into perspective. Why should she enjoy anything when he was dead? She sighed and ducked her head, feeling the tears start again. Yet she knew he would tell her not to be sad, to live life.

  “It’s not so easy,” Ellinca whispered.

  Dayna tapped her on the shoulder, shouting something the wind snatched away. She slapped one hand on the timber steering bar as if to emphasize the point.

  “What? Oh! You mean hang on? You want me to?” And Ellinca smiled and shook the bar a tad. “Okay!”

  An invisible monster laid hands on them. Their craft jerked sideways then up. Then up and up some more. It rattled like the teeth of a terrified skeleton. She could feel the power beneath them take hold. They slipped and slid sideways again, threatening to flip over and, somehow, she knew that would be the end of them. Even birds couldn’t fly upside down. But, with Dayna, she leaned to the other side and their kite-glider stabilized.

  For the next half an hour they continued to rise. Sometimes the kite-glider staggered across the sky. Sometimes it had to be righted by sheer physical force, leaning hard to one side. Sometimes it flew as surely as a hawk – a hawk in a hurricane.

  I am a sky-god, Ellinca told herself, and she smiled, grinning at her audacity.

  “I’ll come back for you,” she whispered. The wind whipped away her words. “Take you away, if you want.” She imagined the words being carried all the way to the hall of ghosts. Why must Pascolli stay there? Perhaps, she would find somewhere else his ghost would be happy, though it was his choice to decide on the Alterworld or here.

  For many long minutes they swept across the sky. They passed high above the very mouth of the volcano. Rank sulfur fumes filled her nostrils, scouring her throat and lungs. Brilliant gobbets of lava dripped over the rim of Mount Fusta and down the slope. Seen this close, the swiftest accidental glance turned her whole world to brightest white for several moments.

  The light of Carstelan grew and gradually resolved into many tiny dots. Taverns and bedhouses, prisons and theaters, the mansions of the rich and noble and, of course, central to it all was the towering edifice of the Imperator’s palace. The shape of it reminded her of a marriage cake she had once seen preserved beneath a glass dome. The groom had died before the marriage was celebrated. The sugary towers, balconies and ramparts of the cake had been a brittle gray and invaded by puffy fingers of mold. The mold had seemed the only live thing in the lady’s house.

  Dayna pointed downward. A vast area of darkest blue was off to the south-east of the city. That would be the district of rice farms. An L-shape of light marked the most eastern corner. Dayna had said this was one of their markers – a way to tell where they were. It was the all-day-all-night factory where rice became rice sticks, puddings and any other rice product the army required.

  As they descended, the blocks of color resolved into paddy fields and thin canals of blue-black water and lines of trees with limbs that waved at the sky. The earth reached up to them, reclaiming them.

  When tapped on the shoulder, Ellinca took her feet from the basket and lowered them. From the ankle down she tingled, vulnerable to the unknown. One mistake and she would lose her feet to whatever obstacle they hit. A stench of wet manure enveloped her.

  The wind tore the air. Her heart thumped. Thin blades of grass lashed her feet. Water sprayed then mud splattered on her skin as they touched the ground.

  Dayna hauled back on the steering bar and she copied her. The wing above them flapped wildly. They ran themselves to a soggy halt in the shallow water. They gasped for air. No wind. The silence felt strange.

  “Come.” Dayna signaled that she was to unbuckle.

  They stripped off the harness and slipped out from beneath the black craft. Off to the left came long soft sounds like a flock of ducks descending onto a lake. The other kite-glider, she guessed from the distant orange blob – too large to be anything but human.

  At ground level the heat signatures of animals smeared streaks of fiery color across her retinas. A huddle of night snakes rolled and swam through the shallow paddy water like bright squiggles drawn on a child’s slate. A lone fox loped along the drier heaped-up edges of the field and, high above it, as if attached by string, an owl glided, perhaps wondering what fox would taste like.

  “Leave this. Our people will find it and hide it. Within the month it will be back at mountains.”

  Ellinca raised her eyebrows, wondering at the organization that could quietly remove both kite-gliders in what was left of the night, wondering about the Grakk’s spy network. She scanned the surroundings again. Out there were watchers who could somehow conceal their giveaway heat. Perhaps they buried themselves in the mud?

  “Why doesn’t the Imperator’s army have patrols out with night-sight?”

  “Why patrol a paddy field? Besides, use the potion too often and you scar your eyes.”

  “Oh. How often is too often?”

  Danya waved depreciat
ingly. “Once a year.”

  Ellinca decided then and there to tattoo today’s date somewhere on her body. It wouldn’t do to forget. For a moment, before she turned her head away, she thought she saw a bluish human shape against the tree line, seemingly observing them then it was gone. She shook her head. No human would show as that cold blue color. No bludvoik would be that calm or quiet.

  They set off at a fast trot across the fields to meet the others. By the time they had met up with Krueger and Dost, walked to a road that skirted the farm, taken a worm-like meandering path through a forest with more stinging bugs per square yard than trees, and sneaked up to the back door of a warehouse, the sky burned on the eastern horizon.

  “What burns?” Ellinca asked. “Do you know?”

  As usual Krueger remained silent.

  “It is sunrise.” Dayna pointed to her own eyes. “Must get inside before full daytime. Problems.”

  She didn’t dare ask what problems meant – scarring of the eyes again, no doubt.

  The timber of the warehouse door was scarred with scratches and gouges – in a random pattern as far as Ellinca could tell. But Dayna studied the door as though reading some coded message.

  “Is okay.” She unsheathed a poniard and insinuated its leaf-thin blade into a crack in the door. Soon there was a thump from inside as something heavy tumbled to the floor. With a firm push the door swung inward.

  Once they were all inside Krueger re-barred the door with a beam that had lain on the floor and locked it in place with a chain.

  “Don’t want others getting in same way.” Dayna grinned. “Now we wait...for more...more to happen.”

  It took only a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the lower light within the warehouse. Here row upon row of canvas sacks had been piled seven or eight high to the web-festooned ceiling. Rice grains spilled from split sides. The morning’s quietness was disturbed by faint scratching and pattering noises as of unseen tiny feet.

  “Rats,” stated Dost, as though reading her mind.

  Someone was missing. “Gangar! Where is he?” She hadn’t seen him since they left the mountains. “The other kite-glider, did it arrive at all?”

  Dost shook his head. “Not that I saw, but Krueger says the other pilot is very good. He may be just off course.” Both the Grakks nodded in agreement.

  “Tuskdogs ver-ry tough. He will come. Not to worry.”

  “Ah.” In the face of their solid confidence she decided not to point out that even Gangar would not survive a fall from a great height.

  A glossy-coated ginger moggy trotted from the deepest shadows with a dangling body in its mouth. It skirted Dost, came to Ellinca and dropped a mangled brown rat at her feet.

  “Oh! Is that for me? Sorry, but I don’t eat rat.” She squatted and slowly advanced her hand. “Puss. Puss. Puss?” The tomcat bumped his broad head at her, purring loudly in satisfaction.

  “Here.”

  She glanced up at the word. Dost offered her a strip of dried meat. She frowned.

  “For the cat.”

  “Ah. Of course!” The cat, as if sensing something wrong about this tall almost-human, backed away a step. With more coaxing it delicately took the meat from her hand then trotted back into the darkness carrying its new prey. “Well,” she muttered, “It prefers dried meat to fresh rat.”

  “Ha-ha!” Krueger chuckled, displaying a wide grin. “So does I!”

  “Hmmm.” She rose and dusted off the knees of her tights. Why did Dost store food in his pockets when as far as she knew he did not eat?

  “We will be here, in this place, maybe...long time,” announced Dayna. “Two, three days.”

  “What about workmen?” asked Dost. The quiet brought the odd, burbling of his throat loud to her ears. “Won’t they notice us?”

  “No. Tomorrow festival to some crazy god of yours. Next two day, worship days for you, Satday and Sonday.”

  “Really?” he said, sounding perplexed. “Unless I have lost track of time, there are no festivals due.”

  “True. True. Yus. This one I think is to make people happy. Carstelan has problems.”

  “Problems? What sort of problems could justify my father calling a whole new holiday?”

  “Uh.” Dayna shifted awkwardly, her face coloring red. “City, they say, having animal problems. Come out in night-time. Kill people. Much worry.”

  Though he questioned Dayna some more she knew little else about it other than the animals, glazed-eyed and unkillable by the usual effective methods of spear, sword or arrow, had been appearing for the past few weeks in random districts about Carstelan. Bludvoiks surely. When had she found this out and was this the work of the same mage who had changed Dost? From the distracted way he strode into the depths of the warehouse, Dost must be thinking the same thing.

  The warehouse, on exploration of its perimeter, proved to be a large square structure, with most of it used for storage and one area where the rice was bagged. Large double doors were situated on all four walls for loading and unloading and there were several trolleys to transport the sacks about inside the building.

  Rice, rice and more rice. They wouldn’t go hungry.

  Heading inward to the center on a whim, half-hoping to find the cat again, Ellinca discovered a window letting in weak morning light through stippled glass. She traced a fingertip through its coating of dust and bugs then walked along the wall in which the window was set, turned three right-hand corners, found a door and opened it.

  On the other side was a courtyard fairly bursting with greenery. Far above between the overlapping fronds of palm trees was a cross-hatched square of dirty brown light that extended to where it met the top of the courtyard walls – a giant skylight of some sort.

  Ellinca closed her eyes and inhaled a delicious scent of moist air laden with a sweet mixture of nectars. Here were large spoon-leafed mosskin plants, lacy tree ferns, ponpons with their purple spear flowers reaching skyward, and more. Ten yards or so across, this tranquil oasis even had a path of cropped grass leading to a central pond. A wooden bench, all comfortable curves, invited her to sit.

  Ellinca shed her boots and walked barefoot across the grass with it squashing cool and soft beneath her feet. The grass flowed like a green quilt down to the edge of the pond. A dragonfly buzzed across the water, dodging from lilypad to lilypad while deftly avoiding an olive green frog squatting on one pad. She curled up on the bench, her head cushioned on the haversack. The frog looked back at her through lidded eyes, undoubtedly of the opinion that the world should wait until it woke properly before anything of importance could happen.

  In agreement with the frog, Ellinca yawned. She was hungry but first she needed to rest. As she drifted into sleep she thought of Pascolli. Wish you were here.

  Chapter 16

  Ingredients of a Human

  The world returned slowly to her. Ellinca sat up and stretched, listening to her joints crackling. The frog was still there, keeping guard perhaps. Surely only the owner ever came here, and a gardener. The place was that well kept.

  A crushing sense of grief smothered her. Here she was, a hop, step and jump away from reaching the glorious city of Carstelan and Sir Alexander Blissman, and Pascolli was not here to share it with her. He’d always loved big bustling places. He’d loved life. She should never have left him, should have stayed and done something. But then if he were here, he would tell her to shut it, that life was for more than feeling sorry, and to carry on without him. Ellinca held her grief in, blowing her nose on a dirty handkerchief found in a pocket. For an instant there was a cool pressure about her shoulders, as if someone was there, holding her safe.

  “Pascolli?” She breathed the word, afraid to scare away whatever, whoever, was there. Ghosts didn’t follow people. Did they?

  A ripple spread across the pond. The lazy frog was innocent, having not moved at all. She looked around, eyes wide, searching. Sitting with his broad back against the bole of a palm tree was Dost, Dost the undead. Nothing mor
e.

  A cat lay across his lap. No doubt another of the warehouse’s rat-catchers.

  Dost threw a red seed into the pond. “Exquisite, immaculate, a jewel in a wasteland of rice. This place is all those things, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Um. Yes. It is.”

  “Dayna sent you some breakfast.” She eyed the package he held up. “Don’t worry. I haven’t touched it.” Without rising he tossed her a cloth-wrapped bundle tied with string.

  Inside were cheese, a hunk of fresh bread and an apricot. The smell awoke her hunger but the thought of eating something he had handled made her stomach twist.

  “Later.” She half wrapped it again. “I’ll eat it later.”

  His blue eyes rested on her. “Ah.”

  She became sharply aware of how much he had helped her, or tried to help her. “It’s not...it’s just – ” No, she couldn’t say the truth, and so she said the first thing that came to her. “What’s to happen now? I mean, you’ve gotten the Grakks to bring me here, and, and I suppose I have you to thank for that. You could have left me back there.” Ellinca detested having to admit that to him.

  “Yes.”

  Her mind threw up another question, the one question she had wondered about since the auratrist’s dreadful interrogation.

  “Why did you do that? Why would you want to help me? The goodness of your heart? Pity? I mean you’re not exactly human...anymore.”

  He blinked and began to absentmindedly and rather firmly pat the cat. “But Ellinca, I find I disagree. If anything I’m too human. I’ve crossed halfway to my grave and I don’t like the icy feel of death about my ankles at all.”

  “Too human?”

  He stared at her until she felt uncomfortable. “What is it to be human? How much of a person do you have to remove before they’re something else? An arm, a leg? Everything from the waist down? Hmmm? Pray tell me?” With each syllable he sounded angrier.

  “I... I don’t know.”

  “Am I more or less human than the person who made me this way?”