“It’s not like Sig to be this late,” Adam admitted, tossing the latter half of the statement towards Kanmi and Trennus, frowning a little, noticing that the woman with the long golden hair had just moved in beside them, off to his right, and was trying to flag down the bartender. He scarcely noticed, as a wave of concern suddenly hit him. In fact . . . harah. She could’ve gotten in an accident on her way here. She hates driving, and wouldn’t fly around all these people in the city, so she could have been walking, and people drive like maniacs around here. And getting hit by a car . . . that doesn’t count as a ‘battle-wound,’ does it? I should call her apartment and see if the doorman saw her leave . . . Adam cleared his throat and started to stand up. “Let me go make a phone call . . . .”
Kanmi continued to heckle Trennus, their conversations overlapping, “What woman is ever going to be interested in things like that? You might as well put up a sign that says ‘in bonded servitude to books, in perpetuity.’”
“I don’t know,” the Gothic woman said, lightly, accepting her drink from the bartender, and walking back around to the other side, her elbow brushing Adam’s arm as she took the empty seat beside him, moving his cloak out of the way. “I thought it was the closest thing to an understandable explanation of ley-energy that I’ve ever heard. Far better than my instructors at the Odinhall managed, and you kept me interested in the subject.” Her eyes were gray behind the smoky bands of Egyptian kohl that outlined them.
Adam’s head snapped towards her, two entirely separate trains of thought colliding in his head, resulting in one singular reality, as Sigrun smiled at him over the edge of a glass of mead. He hadn’t recognized her. And it took a moment or two to shake off the cognitive dissonance. He was used to thinking of Sigrun as a person, of course—a partner, naturally. Beautiful, without question, but it was the beauty of a sword. If aesthetics were best expressed when form followed function, then a sword was beautiful in its singularity of purpose . . . clean lines that were intended to kill. Ptah-ases and Ehecatl had chuckled about how the people they often dealt with tended to see her as a woman first, and then were rapidly forced to reassess her as a living weapon in the hands of her gods. He had . . . no idea what to do with the fact that he had just gone from seeing her as a weapon, then a woman, and now, suddenly, as both at the same time.
Fortunately, there were other distractions. The woman who’d been flirting with him the whole time suddenly looked embarrassed, flustered, even, and withdrew, muttering apologies, following in her friends’ wakes. The other two males had both turned to look at Sigrun, and, recovering his composure, Adam said, “Nice of you to join us, Sig.”
“I have been here for a while. I believe you owe me half a solidus, ben Maor,” Sigrun told him, cheerfully. “I told you they wouldn’t notice me. In fact, I do not even believe that you noticed me. That should make for another half solidus.”
“Oh, I noticed you.” Adam’s tone was rueful. “I just didn’t recognize you. I didn’t even know you owned a skirt.”
“I’m in disguise,” she returned, with aplomb.
“Is wearing the hair down retaliation for my having shaved today?” He paused. “If it is, I’ll risk it more often.”
“Oh, nonsense. I can’t wear it like this in the field. Just makes for another handle for someone to grab me by.” Sigrun raised her glass to the two newcomers. “I think introductions are in order.”
Adam looked back at the other two. Trennus stood, immediately, and came over to bow very slightly over Sigrun’s hand as he told them, “Gentlemen? Senior lictor, Sigrun Caetia.”
“Waes hael, æðelinga,” Matrugena told Sigrun, in some dialect of Gothic, and rattled at her for a moment in her own language—as far as Adam could tell, without accent.
Sigrun smiled in delight, and returned the greeting. Adam only picked up about one word in ten from the exchange, and stared at them rather blankly until Kanmi cleared his throat. “And for the rest of us who only speak civilized languages?” the Carthaginian said, quirking his dark eyebrows.
“Sorry,” Trennus said, lowering his head sheepishly. “I can’t believe you actually liked the explanation. I tend to go on, like a lecturer, once you get me going.”
“It was very clear,” Sigrun told him, and looked at Adam. “I don’t suppose you ordered for me?”
“Didn’t know when you were going to get here, and didn’t know what you’d want, other than half a cow, still bloody.” Adam shook his head. He wasn’t sure why he was nettled, but he was, at the moment.
“What a thing to say,” Sigrun told him, and flagged down the bartender again.
Kanmi, for his part, leaned past Adam to speak to her directly, “From the way ben Maor kept calling you Caetia, I thought we were going to be meeting a man of Rome, not a Goth.”
“I’m Cimbric.” Sigrun’s tone was crisp. The tribal distinctions tended to be lost on anyone who wasn’t actually a Goth, themselves.
“Much the same thing.” That got the Carthaginian a look. He pushed on, anyway. “Are you married to a Roman, then? Or is your father Roman?”
“Neither. My family’s name was once ‘Spaar,’ or spear. Some Roman bureaucrat, when my tribe moved to Caesaria Aquilonis to colonize, decided that our names were too barbaric and unpronounceable to be recorded in the tax annals, and wrote it down as the Latin word for spear, instead.” She shrugged. “It’s been that way for five hundred years. Not going to change now.” She turned and looked at Adam. “We’re going to need to find a quieter place to talk after this,” she added. “I don’t like having to shout to be heard.”
Quieter places were actually rather difficult to find; almost every restaurant and taverna in Rome was jammed to the seams with people. After they’d eaten, they finally found a public park, illuminated by ley-lights and the moon, and settled on the edge of a splashing fountain, as lovers wandered by, hand-in-hand, through the darkness. “So,” Kanmi said, dryly, propping his elbows on his knees and folding his hands together, dark against his white outer robe in the dim light, “what was the purpose of the exercise tonight?”
“To see how the two of you react to different pressures, different unexpected things. It’s on a small scale, compared to actual battle. Also, to give us a chance to assess you in a social setting.” Sigrun shrugged, and, as she sat at the edge of the fountain, started to braid her hair, catching it all at the back of her neck and bringing it around to her left shoulder to work it. “You wind up spending a lot of time together on a normal lictor detail. Hours spent scouting a venue for your protectee. Hours spent in a car or a small apartment, doing surveillance. It helps to get along fairly well with one another.
“And ours isn’t really a normal lictor detail,” Adam added, quietly. “Propraetor Livorus doesn’t just stay in Rome. He goes . . . everywhere.”
That made both of their eyes widen. “The Imperator’s own troubleshooter,” Kanmi muttered. “Damn.” He exhaled. “All right. What more do you two want to know about me . . . or us, for that matter?”
“Most of my questions are for Matrugena,” Adam admitted, tilting his head back to look up at the stars, tracing constellations with his eyes, ruing, more than a little, the fact that the city lights obscured the Milky Way. He didn’t have to be on perfect alert here, and looking up into the heavens always tended to calm him. “For instance, your file says you’re a summoner, in addition to a ley-mage.” Adam’s head tipped back down, and he stared at the taller man for a moment, feeling as if his own face were suddenly a mask he wore.
Matrugena dipped a hand in the water of the fountain, looked into the pool in his hand, and then tossed it back in. “Yes. What of it?”
Eshmunazar snorted under his breath. “I suspect ben Maor spent enough time on the Persian border to be as wary of summoners as I am.” A quick flash of a grin, all edges. “And for me, that’s after having gone to the University of Athens and worked with a few. And spent some time at conferences with a few more.”
“True e
nough,” Adam admitted, tautly. “I can’t say I’m thrilled with the idea of working with a summoner. It’s an inevitable and slippery slope into desiring more and more power, Trennus; dealing with spirits is inherently evil.” He paused; the man was regarding him steadily. “Isn’t it?”
"Knowledge is neither inherently good nor inherently bad,” Trennus told him, with a certain sober intensity. “Knowledge is neutral. It's what we do with what we know that matters." He shook his head. “Look, I’m very careful about the spirits I summon. I bargain with them cautiously, and for very limited purposes . . . by and large. I mostly learned how to do this so I could banish them.”
“You bargain with them?” Adam asked, incredulously.
Sigrun glanced between the two of them, and to Adam’s surprise, intervened, with a smile. “While we’re on the topic, why are you even a mage, Trennus? You don’t honestly seem the type.”
Trennus gave her a grin in response. “What, I don’t look like one? Don’t the glasses give it away?” He took them off for a moment. “Near-sighted. Can’t see a damned thing outside of ten feet without them. If medicine or magic ever comes up with a pill or a spell that fixes vision? Point me to the front of the line.” He paused. “Or is it the tribal markings?” He held up his arms, displaying the patterns there.
“Could be the fact that you look like a great hairy bear,” Kanmi told him, not changing expressions.
Trennus looked down at himself. “Well, yes. There’s that, too. Useful when it comes to wrestling with spirits.”
Sigrun snorted. “Our last sorcerer was Egyptian, about five foot six, and bald as an egg. The man he replaced, two years ago? A Nubian close to seven feet tall, and black as coal. He runs marathons as a hobby. There’s nothing that says a mage must be small and wheeze heavily when he or she walks up a flight of stairs.”
Adam held up a finger. “Back up. What do you mean, wrestle with spirits?” He wanted to get back on topic, as quickly as possible. This was his single biggest concern at the moment. Trennus genuinely didn’t seem like a bad person. But . . . . summoners had temptations.
Trennus grimaced. “At the risk of sending everyone into a deep slumber, I’ll explain as quickly as I can.” He paused. “Actually, how much do you actually know about summoning and spirits?”
“Spirits are insubstantial. They come from another realm. Summoners can stick them in the bodies of the dead, or unleash them on the living. There are different types, and some are a good deal more powerful than others.” Adam was pretty definite about all of that.
Trennus weighed the empty air on his palms. “Correct in essentials. They do inhabit another dimension. Possibly more than one. They generally don’t talk about that, or at least, the good ones and more . . . indifferent ones . . . don’t. And you can’t take the word of any of the malicious ones for anything. They lie.” He shrugged. “They also perceive reality much differently than we do. I take them as . . .” he smiled, a little sheepishly, “Don’t laugh . . . I take them as if they’re aliens from a distant planet.”
Adam’s head snapped back slightly, and he stared at Matrugena. This was not at all what he’d expected to hear. And against his will, he found himself liking the man, damn it. His own interest in the stars and galaxies and physics, his own love of science fiction tales of aliens and other world . . . all somehow tied together with Matrugena’s view of magic. “Go on,” he invited, after a moment. “What was this about wrestling, and banishing?”
Trennus shrugged and spread his hands. “You take my alien analogy? Each spirit comes from a different planet, or . . . tribe. What have you. You can make some generalizations . . . elemental spirits will adhere to certain principles. Earth spirits are generally slower and more stable than air spirits. Air spirits tend to be easily distracted. But you also have to understand that each of them is an individual, with a history, and many of them have recollections of previous interactions with humanity. Some of those experiences have been good, some not so good. They have motivations and desires, too.” He frowned. “Most of which are fairly difficult for us to understand. But, to simplify, in order to deal with a spirit, you have to make a bargain with them. You never get something for nothing.”
“Ex nihilo nihil fit,” Sigrun muttered. Nothing comes from nothing. Adam threw her a sharp glance; it was what she’d said when he asked her why her god required her to feel the pain of another’s wounds in order to heal them.
“Precisely!” Trennus exclaimed, his face lighting up. “It’s wonderful being able to speak with someone who understands what I’m talking about. And it also ties in rather neatly with the principle of conservation of mass, wouldn’t you agree?”
Sigrun stared at him, clearly groping at the back of her mind for a memory. “It has been quite some time since my studies in the theory of magic,” she admitted.
Kanmi snorted. “I think you had her right up until you brought thermodynamics into it.”
Trennus grimaced, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Well, you understand, don’t you?” he appealed to Kanmi, who just chuckled.
“He means that matter cannot be created or destroyed,” Adam supplied, dryly, and watched as Kanmi looked at him, clearly surprised. Sorry to disappoint you, mage, but I did want to be an astronaut when I was younger. “And neither can energy. Except that if these spirits come from . . . another dimension . . . you’re technically adding mass or energy to this dimension, and subtracting it from theirs. I think.”
Sigrun shook her head, and tied off the end of her braid. “That is similar to how it was explained to me in my education. But somehow, it sounds more technical when you say it.”
Trennus, however, was beaming as if he’d found an apt pupil. “Precisely so. That’s why when you bargain with a spirit, you have . . . well, let me start from the beginning. You need to know a spirit’s Name. Sometimes, they’ll just arrive and offer services. Those you tend to want to be wary of, because they’ll eventually want more than you’re willing to give, but you’re already in energy debt, and you don’t even realize it. But, because we’re all standing on the shoulders of those who went before us, most summoners have a book of Names. Minor names, minor spirits, don’t require a lot to bargain with, but they’re weak. The stronger the spirit, the more closely they tend to guard their Name, the more they’ll ask in return for services, and the more they can do for you.” He held out both hands like the balances of a scale, and lifted one, then the other, as if weighing his own words. “Right. So, first option in dealing with spirits. You summon one with its Name. You agree to give them something that they value. Ideally, it’s something you don’t value. What they value varies.” He paused, and went on more quietly, his low voice barely audible over the babble of the fountain beside them. “I have a, er, permanent agreement with a spirit that’s dwelled for centuries in the woods around my home in Britannia. I know her Name because she approached me and offered it to me. She wanted to help me deal with the summoner who’d brought all of his . . . very bad spirits . . . to our home.”
“This is the Sangua Foederis member that was first cited in your file?” Sigrun asked, quickly.
Matrugena nodded rapidly. “I’ve been helping to hunt down the rest of the organization in Europa for the past few years. He was the first one flushed out in decades.” He grimaced, and scratched at his light beard for a moment. “They practice and preserve forbidden rituals.”
“I thought you said that there’s no such thing as evil knowledge,” Adam said, sharply.
“There isn’t. But there’s no good reason to use someone’s Name to wrack them with pain,” Trennus returned. “To distort who they are, tear at their spirit. Just as an example.”
Adam shrugged a little. “Sounds as if that’s mostly a concern of the spirits.”
Sigrun coughed into her hand. “Actually . . . humans have Names, too. True ones.”
Matrugena’s smile lit his face. “Yes, precisely. Not everyone knows their own Name. I don’t know my own yet. It take
s introspection. Or sometimes, a spirit might read it in your soul, and tell you.”
“I find it a little hard to believe that a name has that kind of power,” Adam said, skeptically.
“What makes you turn and look faster than the sound of your own name?” Trennus returned. “And a true Name defines you for who you are. It can grow and change with you. But it’s a part of you. And knowing it will give someone power over you.” He shook his head. “Where was I, anyway?”
“Your wood-spirit,” Eshmunazar told him, turning his head to stare off into the shadows.
“Right, yes, thank you. The spirit gave me her Name, and we formed an alliance.” Trennus pushed his glasses up. “Now, I’m bound to her, and she’s bound to me. Specifically, I carry a token that she can find anywhere in the world, and will come when I call her. She’s not a vastly powerful spirit, but she can grow. All spirits can grow and change. Just like humans can. They’re just . . . much slower about it. Usually.”
Adam was fascinated despite himself. He’d loathed and feared summoners since he could remember, and having been targeted by them innumerable times on the Wall, that loathing and fear had been compounded. But knowledge was the enemy of fear. Still, he remained uneasy. “All right,” he said. “So what exactly are you giving . . . her? A tour of the world?”
Trennus chuckled. “Well, yes, that. She’s curious. She wants to see more of the world than just the forests near my home. But I also agreed to do two services a year for her. I have to go home and plant oak trees in her forest, and I have to kill her a deer. Not with a gun or magic, but with a bow, my own hand, my own strength.” He shrugged. “Giving life, giving a sacrifice, if you really want to put it in those terms. But comparatively minor, because she’s a minor Name, for the moment.” He exhaled. “Now, some spirits don’t want anything, but they respect strength. They’ll work with you out of a sense of honor if you can beat them at a contest. That’s why I said being physically strong comes in handy.”
The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) Page 19
