by Jean Johnson
“Yes. Penambrion Village, to any of its mirrors. It’s an emergency,” Kerric stated brusquely.
“City Hall, then; I have the mirror for the burgher’s office already connected to this one,” the woman stated after only a hesitation, and cast the powders. The merchant and his stevedores flinched from the harsh shout of her spellwords. She sounded like an upset raven instead of a roll of thunder or a battle cry, but the spell worked. The image shifted to a familiar view.
“Now see here!” the merchant spluttered while his hirelings frowned and Kerric strode forward. “I paid good money to be mirror-Gated today!”
“I’ll open the Gate to your destination in a moment, milord,” the lady mage soothed.
Hopping through, Kerric ignored the icy, prickling sensation of transversing hundreds of miles. Some days it burned, some days it felt like swimming through mud, and most people unaccustomed to the inner-ear lurching felt at least a touch of nausea. Kerric was immune to that latter effect, thankfully. Behind him, sounds from the mirror cut off. In front of him—off to the side, actually—a frantic-looking bureaucrat quickly set down her mug on her desk and hurriedly stood so she could move to meet him, her blonde braid frazzled, her tunic freshly damp from where she had spilled a drink on it.
Like his, it was cut in the local style, fastening down the front in a row of decorative knots, with high-cut slits on the sides to help vent the summer heat. The matching trousers were short enough to bare half her calves, much like his, but where he wore plain browns, she wore brocaded shades of blue. “Master Kerric! Oh, thank the Gods,” she breathed, touching his arm and tugging him away from the arrivals mirror. “I don’t care which ones—I have Jessina on my mirror right now, and things are really bad in the Tower.”
“So I surmised,” he muttered, gratefully taking Sylva’s seat at her gesture. The burgher gestured toward a pot of tea sitting on an enchanted brazier stand off to one side, but Kerric waved her off. He wanted answers from the Tower, not tea from the mayor’s office.
The dark-skinned manager of Topside Control spotted his face in the connected surfaces and sighed in relief. She didn’t look quite as flustered as the blonde, but she did look worried. That was not a good sign.
“Praise Amaz, you’re back,” Jessina muttered, before launching into her report. “Five hours ago, we started having difficulties with power fluctuations. It took us almost two hours to confirm the problem lay at the power source itself, not from anything external or internal. Apprentice Fisly was still inside on watch, but by that point, the warding shields had snapped up around the middle sector.”
“Fisly’s not strong enough to fix whatever’s been happening,” Kerric stated. “And if she’s trapped in there, she’ll have no food or water until we arrive.”
Jessina shook her head. “She managed to get herself out when we realized no one else could get in to her. She’s holed up in a refreshing room a few chambers away.” Biting her lip, the normally unflappable woman hesitated, then added, “I cut the audio spells to all outgoing scryings, and broadcast a warning to everyone to get to a refreshing room. There’s fresh water, food dispensers, and furniture in the outer lounging rooms. I figured that would be the safest place for everyone not Topside.
“Shortly after I did that, all the rooms started to realign, and the lesser traps started turning deadly again. Just a few here and there, but . . . I’m sorry, Master Kerric, but over fifty percent of the Tower is now live. Probably closer to seventy by now. It started from both the heart and the base. We noticed it in the base sector first, but Fisly was able to report her observations on the source of the problem once she reached safety,” Jessina added. “She says it looked like the tampering was coming from one of the other Fountain communication lines. It sounds from her description like an external takeover through those channels.”
“Which one?” Kerric asked, narrowing his eyes.
“Menomon.” Jessina gave him a sober look. “From the echoes she heard, she said the voice tones were right, but it didn’t sound like Guardian Sheren . . . and that it sounded like one of the Fountains farther down the line was having difficulties of its own.”
“Fisly has a good ear for both tone and nuance,” Kerric murmured, half to himself. “I’d be inclined to trust her observations. So, either Menomon or one of the ones farther down the line was being taken over, and our Fountain got caught in the backlash.”
“I’m not so sure, Kerric,” Jessina countered slowly. “It’s not just the shields on the Fountain Hall locking things out. Corridors and rooms have been realigning. Specifically, in the patterns you left on my desk in the ‘just in case’ folder. I think it may not have been Guardian Sheren at all, but rather someone pretending to . . .”
Her image turned fuzzy and her words garbled for a moment.
“. . . attacking our Fountain as well, like a spider at the heart of a web,” she finished . . . then frowned. “Did your end just turn fuzzy?”
“Yes. I think you’re right,” Kerric said quickly. “That means the Tower is going to block all communications in a moment. Broadcast a reminder to stay in the refreshing rooms wherever possible, and have everyone just sit tight. I know what to do on my end, but it’s going to take many hours, if not days outright. I . . .”
The mirror fuzzed, streaked, and wobbled several times . . . and resolved into a reflection of his own face. His fist thumped on the desk surface, then stroked the frame for a moment. He smacked the desktop again when the mirror remained a mere reflection.
“Dammit,” he muttered, dropping his head into his other palm. “My one day off in a year, and this has to happen.”
“What do we do now?” Sylva asked him, brow furrowed in worry. “If someone is trying to invade the Tower remotely, how can we stop that if there’s no one left in the Fountain Hall?”
Straightening up, Kerric shook his head. “We don’t. The Tower just did it for us. Its defenses are designed to cut off all communications from magical sources if it’s ever put under a Guardianship attack, in order to force a ground-based assault. That way our patrons cannot try to wrest away our control of the flow of the scrycastings in any way. You have to be at the Tower itself, physically there, to get into the chamber to take it over and form a new Guardianship bond.
“But don’t tell anyone that,” he ordered, rising from her desk. “We have far too many mages among the various adventurers who throng the Tower day after day, year after year. Your job is to get the village organized to contain and quell any panic. You can start by helping the Adventuring Hall contact everyone who has a scrying contract with us.”
Sylva blinked, and quickly sat down at her desk. “Oh, you’re right! They’re going to be furious at the loss of the adventuring shows—oh Gods, how do I contact Senod-Gra?” she asked him, blinking up at the half-disposed Guardian. “They’re literally on the far side of the world from us, and they’re our biggest subscriber! Three whole Fountainways dedicated just to bringing them round-the-clock images . . . and with the Fountainways now cut off—!”
Kerric clasped her shoulder. “Contact who you can, burgher Sylva,” he directed her, reminding her of her position as second in command to the village mayor. The mayor himself was currently off visiting relatives somewhere, taking advantage of the fine summer weather to travel, leaving Sylva in charge. She was competent, but she did have a little crush on Kerric. “Senod-Gra and other points out of mirror-range will just have to suffer until I can regain control of everything. Oh—order a replacement full-length mirror for the Mage Guild in Sendale. The Tower defenses broke the one I tried to connect to Topside Control.”
She nodded, calming down a little, then shot him a worried look. “Right, I’ll do that. But, can you get in there? You took over the Tower at Guardian Felesten’s express invitation. You were let into the innermost chamber. You may have been the Master of the Tower for the last decade, but . . . forgive me, Kerric, you’re no adventurer.”
“No, I am not,” he agreed,
squeezing her shoulder before letting go, “but I am still a powerful mage, and I have ten years’ worth of experience in watching and managing the Tower. Your job is to reassure everyone that everything is under control, and that our scrycasts will resume schedule ‘soon’ . . . but be vague on exactly when that ‘soon’ will be.”
She nibbled her lower lip, wincing a little. “I think I’d be more convincing if I had an actual cover story, milord. They’ll want to know what we have ‘under control,’ and some of the Tower’s clients will be very persistent about it.”
Mind blank, Kerric tried to think of something. All he could think of was the need to remember the progression of traps and tricks pre-aligned into the Tower’s defenses. Most of them he could navigate more or less on his own, save for one repeating trap. It would render any mage unconscious within just a few seconds, which meant he would need to take one non-mage along with him, to literally drag him free of the trouble-spot.
No, he realized, wincing, that should be “save for two traps” . . . I forgot about the other one. Which means I’ll need a female to come along. One who doesn’t find me repulsive.
Under any other circumstance, most adventuring teams consisted of three to seven people, depending upon factors such as difficulty of the adventuring route, lethality of the traps, objective of the adventure segment . . . but this was a trek meant to penetrate the very heart of the Tower. Anyone who came with him would see the actual tricks needed to get inside, and that meant the more who saw it, the more chances there were for word to get out of how to navigate those tricks. That could lure unscrupulous mages into attempting to get into the innermost sanctum, and not just from among those who came here to make a name for themselves as adventurers.
Such a slip would waste too much of his time in trying to thwart and keep them out. Right now, he had plenty of time to conduct research in his favorite areas of interest, interspersed among the day-to-day needs of managing the Tower. He would either have to close the Tower to all adventurers—a very difficult prospect, considering the prosperity of the whole region depended upon the Tower’s scrying clients, including all the people who helped maintain the place and staffed the Adventuring Hall—or give up his writing time and probably his writing career, with the attendant risk of innocent staff members getting caught in all the cross fire.
No, the smaller the party, the safer they’d all be in the long-term.
“I have it! Two rumors,” Sylva stated, startling him with her exclamation. “The first one is the official reason, that there is an emergency maintenance issue cutting a whole swath of rooms off from the rest of the Tower, not just one or two. So you’re going in personally as Master of the Tower to perform maintenance yourself. The second rumor is that you’ve been privately bet by an unnamed, wealthy outsider to run the Tower yourself . . . but as the Master, either you’re running it without scrying because you don’t want anyone to see you fail, or because the bet requires total anonymity, at the request of your sponsor. A private scrying, as it were.”
“Not bad,” Kerric praised. “But both are a lie. What if someone demands a truth-scrying?”
She gave him a smug look, and pulled open one of the drawers of her desk. Fishing out a white disc from the interior, she held it up in her right hand, and extended the left to him. “I will bet you—very, very privately—that you cannot make it all the way to a very specific, very private goal, without any outsiders scrying on you.”
He stared at her for a moment, then chuckled. Patting her shoulder, Kerric clasped her hand. “I’ll take that bet, O Wealthy Anonymous Patron.” Shaking her hand, he gave her a mock bow. “Be prepared to lose, for I intend to get into the heart of the Tower . . . and with it on lockdown, no one can scry anything inside its walls.”
“Oh, I’d better lose. Because if I win, it’ll mean you’re probably dead,” she shot back tartly, “and I don’t want that.”
“So what will the wager be?” he asked her as she returned the Truth Stone to the drawer.
Sylva blushed and smiled shyly, fussing a little with the papers on her desk. Finally, she offered diffidently, “. . . A dinner date?”
“If I lose, which includes not making it to the heart because I die, I cannot go on a date with you,” he quickly pointed out. She’d tried asking him out before, but Kerric knew Sylva wanted not just a prospective husband, but children somewhere down the line. He did not. Still, she tried now and then.
“I know. Which is why I’m counting on you not to lose.” She snuck a shy look at him up through her lashes.
She was pretty, smart, competent, neither too young nor too old, and quite good at managing the needs of the little town of Penambrion, which everyone else called the Tower Village. But he just wasn’t attracted to her. He wasn’t going to tell her that, though. A simple date was a small price to pay for quelling rampant rumor and speculation.
“. . . Right. Good luck with the clients,” Kerric muttered, heading for the door.
“Good luck with the Tower, Kerric,” she called out after him.
TWO
Lifting a hand in farewell, he headed out of the building. It was a modest-sized structure, built of solidly mortared stone and pretty red roof tiles. It was also dwarfed by the Adventuring Hall next door, an imposing structure crafted out of patterned colors of granite and white-glazed roof tiles, a structure easily six or seven times the size of City Hall. Administering the needs of the village was a simple task, compared to organizing the constant flux of would-be adventurers, men and women who wanted to try their luck against the traps, tricks, and puzzles of the outer layers of the Tower.
He didn’t go into the Adventuring Hall just yet, however. Instead, he detoured to the nearby fountain for a drink and a rest. For a think, as well. Planning, as his tutors and teachers had always instructed him, was the most important first step in any task. Planning involved gathering information, assembling supplies and assistance, and organizing each stage of a task.
Kerric knew every trick and trap in the tower, and remembered the pattern which would lead to the innermost heart, but he would need help. Preferably a woman as skilled and knowledgeable in combat and trap-navigating as he could get ahold of, and hopefully one who was also trustworthy. And one who was not a mage, of course.
Thankfully, there were a large number of women willing to dare the dangers of the Tower time and again. The staff would have made notes on each adventurer’s conduct—mostly to try to determine who would make a good candidate for recruiting into the Tower staff once they were ready to retire, or into the Adventuring Hall staff. Kerric could use those notes to winnow the lot down to a trustworthy list of females to approach. Thankfully, copies were kept in both the Tower and the Hall, since the staff in both locations needed ready access to the information.
These adventuring parties were merely a profitable side effect of the Tower’s existence. At some point in the distant past, a Fountain singularity, a spark-sized hole between Life and the Dark, the place where souls passed through on their way to judgment and the Afterlife, had been released into the world. And somehow, it had wound up high in the sky over the broad valley and the village of Penambrion a couple hundred miles from the eastern coast of the Aian continent.
Fountains literally poured magical energies into the world like a fountain poured and splashed water. All living animals cast off magical energies into the aether; normally, they soaked into the plants that fed the animals, including his fellow humans. This was the circle and the cycle of magic, just as the circle and cycle of the weather included evaporation, clouds, and rainfall. But sometimes a bit of that magic got dragged into the Dark when a soul was released from its body, and that energy in the Dark had to go somewhere. Such things could be vented by tears in the Veil, the barrier between life and death and even other planes of existence, or could be pinpricks.
Such things could be caged in special crystals, but they had to be constantly moved or they would eventually slow, stop, and anchor themselv
es permanently in place. Which was why it was so puzzling to have one stuck high up in the sky. Not a few feet, not a dozen yards, but hundreds and hundreds of feet straight up. Normally, the extremely strong mages who mastered their energies moved them into caves, or castles, or other defensive structures that already existed. In this case, the Tower had been built after the singularity had come to rest so puzzlingly high, spilling its excess of magical energy all over the broad local valley.
The Tower had been erected fairly quickly, too, to contain and control those energies so they wouldn’t warp the people living down below; magic in excess could be crudely shaped by a non-mage’s will, but those wills were usually untrained, and so the end results often ended up mangled, making everything worse. Fountains had to be controlled by a Guardian for the safety and benefit of all.
True, the land had grown lush and ripe with overgrown, magic-fed plants, and the vegetables and fruits of the local gardens had become legendary for a while for their size, but the animals had started to mutate. The energies needed to be controlled. And because no one had been able to hide the Fountain’s existence, the Tower had been filled with numerous defensive and offensive layers of protection to ensure it would be too difficult to capture by outsiders. That, however, had been a good seven hundred years ago.
At some point in time roughly four hundred years ago, the Guardian of the day had been putting up with would-be Guardians constantly trying to surmount the difficulties . . . and had started broadcasting scryings of their unsuccessful attempts to his fellow mages. The popularity of the scrying broadcasts had grown rather quickly, and the Guardian had seen the potential for profit. Rather than trying to discourage such attempts, he had turned it into a formal business, enlarging the Tower and stocking certain rooms with valuable things, such as coins, weapons, armor, and enchanted objects, paid for by the mages and their non-mage patrons, who wanted steady access to such entertaining scrycastings.
