Red Queen

by Jolie Jaquinta

  Chapter 10

  The Gardener

  The sun beat down on the arid landscape of the Outer Waste. It's cracked and barren terrain contained rocks, sand, gravel, and grit without a single trace of life of any sort. No birds flew overhead, no stubs of grass peeked between rocks, no insects crawled under the stones, and no lichen crept over the rocks. Nothing moved except the heat shimmer over the stones and the slow spinning of a magical vortex just over the horizon.

  In the midst of all of this desolation, in the shadow of a rock overhang, squatted a figure. He had brown hair, greying at the temples, a dark tunic and leggings, well-worn boots, and, incongruous with the weather, a simple grey cloak. He stared fixedly at the sand held in the palm of his hand. Gingerly he picked up a pinch between his fingers and slowly rubbed it, letting it cascade back into his palm. It did not fall as fast as one would expect and was not blown by the wind.

  Suddenly there was a quick scuffle and blurred motion. From a shadowed crevice in the overhang a pale figure leaped out, brandishing a short blade. But her target was not there when she landed. He had ducked and rolled one way. She ducked and rolled in another way. In moments they stood, facing each other; she was wary and ready, he was relaxed, with a wry smile.

  “Better” he said. She tossed her blade to her other hand, and quietly sheathed it. He dusted off his cloak.

  “I didn't use magic this time” Bianca said, shaking her head. “I moved, as the sun moved, keeping to shadows and hard rocks.” It had been a perfect set up. Perfectly surveyed, perfectly stalked, perfectly executed. Even if he reacted the instant she struck, he could not have evaded her. And somehow he had.

  “But”, Moss said, holding up his hand and leaning against the rock, “you didn't walk here. You used magic to come in, right?”

  Her expression soured, “Yes.” Magical teleportation caused a ripple in the surrounding world. Very sensitive people could feel it if it was close. But a simple spell, easily maintained, could pinpoint it. Almost everyone had one ensorcelled onto a common item. Standard gear. She had expected that. “I came in far away and hours ago.”

  He cocked his head and smiled. “I've been waiting for hours.”

  She tapped her fingers on her belt. She thought back to the final moments. She focused, got ready, and just as she committed herself... “You moved before I did. How did you know?”

  “What do you hear?” he asked, looking around. She followed his gaze.

  “Wind. Occasionally sun cracking stones. Even more occasionally scree slipping.” These were the sounds as she had stalked the terrain towards where he was. Each one noted, as she made sure her own progress was silent. She looked back at him.

  He nodded. “The sounds out here are either regular, or infrequent.”

  “And I was quieter than all of them”, she said. She knew that. And not from her own ears. She had a feedback spell keyed to the pattern of her footfall to give her an objective measure. “Your hearing is good, but I've trained for that.”

  He laughed. “My hearing is not that good. Unenhanced.” She inclined her head. So magic. Not some innate sense or skill. She felt a little better that it wasn't just that he was more skilled than her, but had just found some way to outsmart her.

  Moss continued, “If all I did was enhance my hearing, the slightest breeze would probably deafen me. But, it is not hard to create a pattern that encompasses the sounds of the waste with high accuracy.” He traced something out on his palm and held it up. “If you then subtract this from what you do hear, you can amplify to quite some extent and only hear the slightest of noises that are different from the ambient quite clearly.” Bianca scowled. But not at him this time, but herself. It was not different in essence from the spell she had crafted to monitor just her own footfalls. Just in reverse. She should have thought of it. Moss shrugged. “I've been listening to your heartbeat.”

  “Next time I will stop my heart”, Bianca said.

  He laughed. “I guess it would not be hard to form a pattern based on your blood, then impart an impetus to it to keep it flowing without assistance from your heart.” He pondered for a bit. “It would take guts to stop your own heart. But you've got that in spades.” He smiled proudly at her. “Good luck with that. Let me know how it works out if you survive and I'm not the target.”

  She looked at the distant vortex and dusted her hands. She pondered what he had said. The patterns linked up in her mind and she saw how it could be done. Not that hard, really. Very little was in the New Magic. You just had to think of it first.

  He held out a wineskin to her. She took it, drank sparingly, and handed it back.

  “Want to see something?” he asked with animation. She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. He took a few steps away from the rocky overhang. With a gesture he summoned up a small pinprick of energetic light. It floated over the palm of one hand for a while as he made vague gestures with his other hand, and sub-vocalized abbreviated incantations. He stopped and looked at the pinprick, which now held a slightly different color of light. “You should probably not be touching the ground for this. I'm still refining.” He took a step in place with each foot, like he was climbing invisible stairs, and stood a few inches above the ground. After she had followed suit, he tipped his hand and let the mote float to the ground.

  Where it touched the ground there was an eruption of green. Like a wave, a ripple of something lush and spongy raced outwards from the epicenter. It covered the sand and rocks, the gravel and scree. They each took a few steps higher as it thickened a few inches, and flowed outwards rapidly. But its expansion diminished after a few hundred feet, and then slowed to the point of being imperceptible.

  Moss ceased hovering and fell lightly to the springy surface. Bianca followed, bending her knees as the uneven rocks slipped under the green cover. She bent and examined it closely. “What is it?”

  He shrugged. “Kind of lichen, kind of a moss. With a bit of clover thrown in. I've been studying the patterns of these small things. And even smaller. There are animals so tiny you can't see them without enhancement. It's a complicated matrix of all of these things that have to come together to form something verdant and self-sustaining.”

  “So you've made the deserts bloom. That's not hard.”

  He shook his head. “That's not the hard part. The hard part is making it cost effective. Did you note that I used hardly any mana?” He smiled. “It's about taking all of these patterns of flora and fauna and not just weaving them into a matrix that makes the deserts bloom, as you say. But also to, itself, form a pattern that self-replicates and advances.” He gestured around him. “The energy of the initial spell creates the matrix, which replicates the spell, recovers the energy, and perpetuates it.”

  “How far?” she asked, looking to the edge. “I see it has slowed. But has it stopped?”

  “Not yet. But soon. I don't think it is, technically, possible to keep it going forever. I'm just trying to get the most out of the least.” He shrugged. “The strategic mana reserve is never going to be large enough to green the entire Outer Waste. Not using classical methods. But if I can optimize this another factor of ten, or maybe a hundred... we should get there.”

  They talked for a bit about recursive patterns, and magic that invoked magic and perpetuated itself. Once she understood the essentials and had a few examples, the talk wound down. “I will present this to the Academy. It may have potential elsewhere.”

  “Still working on the Ævatars?” asked Moss.

  She looked at him sidelong. He did not entirely approve of the Ævatar project. He had been one of those that discovered the cyst containing the Book of Creation. He knew the dangers contained within those pages. But he also did not entirely disagree with devoting some resources to it. As Lilly had said, he most often took the wide view. Wide enough to include this nonsense about greening the waste. “Amongst other things”, Bianca answered. “I do not think it has application to that project.”

  Moss nodded. “Ind
eed. It's kind of the opposite. Maximum expenditure for a specific pointed aim.”

  Bianca nodded. She understood he was right. She also understood that he did not mean it as a criticism. Both were useful tools to have in your arsenal. Some situations called for one, some for another. The silence lengthened. “I need to speak to my Mother”, she said finally.

  “Of course you do”, said Moss. “You certainly didn't come all the way out here to check up on how I'm doing.” She stared stoically at the vortex on the horizon. He cast about a bit. “It's relatively flat over here.”

  Between the two of them they quickly leveled the ground to an even surface. Four loopholes were magically extruded from the rocks and Moss pulled a few ropes from his sleeve and tossed them to Bianca. He then lay down and she bound his wrists and ankles to the stone loops. As she bent to tie a gag around him he said “Give Goatha my love, will you?” She nodded distractedly and finished the job.

  She then stood over him and started into her sorcery. As she did he began to thrash in his bonds. His screams grew louder and louder.