Aethersmith (Book 2)

by J. S. Morin

  The major problems Brannis saw were twofold. First, they were not going to be allowed the years needed to properly remilitarize the population and increase the standing army to the size they would need to repel such a force as the Megrenn were arraying against them. Were it not for the extreme aversion stripe-cats and monohorns had to the cold of Kadrin winter, Megrenn likely would have already attacked—so Brannis hoped for a long, cold winter to persist past the equinox.

  The second problem was Jinzan Fehr; he knew too much. Like Brannis, Jinzan was aware of the other world, Tellurak, where technology was more developed and magic all but unheard of. Jinzan had already used that connection to barter the knowledge of cannon-making to the goblins in return for working units and an invasion of Raynesdark that also gained him the Staff of Gehlen. Surely at some point in the war, the Kadrin forces would once again be faced with cannons of Acardian design. Brannis also had no way of predicting what further aid the Megrenn sorcerer might import from Acardia or other lands of Tellurak (which Brannis had begun whimsically to think of as KyrusWorld).

  The staff Brannis could do little about, but he could at least try to match cannon to cannon with Jinzan—figuratively at least. Brannis suspected that black-powder alchemy was probably too tricky to teach to the chemists and apothecaries in Kadris, atop the fact that Kyrus would have to reach mainland somewhere civilized to learn the exact recipes he would need. Sorcery might fabricate working cannons if Kyrus could find one to take measurements from, but that had the same problem of too little knowledge, too far from where it could be learned.

  Instead Brannis had taken a different approach. The maps and clay soldiers were a small thing compared with cannons; let the pirate who was Jinzan’s counterpart in KyrusWorld worry about those. Brannis had thought of a better source of ideas to import: fairy tales.

  Tales of magic, monsters, and heroes existed in Brannis’s own world, but he had begun to realize, once he thought of it, that they lacked the whimsy and imagination of those in KyrusWorld. It made sense, after a fashion. If a sorcerer heard a story of magic that sounded implausible, he would tell you six different ways that it was wrong, and could not happen as written. It stifled creativity and limited the boundaries that could be tested by imagination.

  Brannis had dug through Kyrus’s memories for inspiration and was drawing up plans of his own …

  * * * * * * * *

  “I understand the decorum and omens involved in a winter wedding, but with the threat of Megrenn hanging poised at our throats, should we not perhaps move the date forward?” Shador Archon asked Rashan.

  A tall, dignified Second Circle sorcerer, Shador sat next to his wife in one of the Imperial Palace’s more private sitting rooms, sharing tea with their daughter’s future oathfather.

  “I hear your concern, but I feel better about waiting for springtime. Besides, every day we wait gives us more time to muster our strength. We will not strike first in this war; we may not even strike second. We must ensure only that we strike last,” Rashan said, taking a sip of his tea mostly for appearance’s sake. As an immortal (demon, in less flattering parlance), he had no need of food or drink, but then he supposed that no creature, mortal or not, truly required tea for any purpose but to sip it politely among company. It had a weak, bitter taste that he did his best to ignore.

  “Would it not make sense to have our new warlock prepared for the inevitable war, with his marriage pact sealed and consummated?” Shador argued.

  Aha, thought Rashan, there is the heart of his argument. He wants a grandson in case Iridan gets himself killed in battle.

  “Rest assured, Iridan’s preparations for the wedding will run in parallel with his training as a warlock. Every additional day of training makes him stronger for when I finally loose him upon the Megrenn,” Rashan replied.

  The warlock genuinely liked Shador. Had he known the man prior to his realignment of the Inner Circle, he would have promoted him in place of Brannis’s sister Aloisha, who was rather sadly underprepared for her elevation.

  The conversation shifted to more tedious matters of decoration, attendees, and other logistical arrangements. Rashan let his mind wander a bit, and allowed Ophelia Archon—a slightly older-looking version of her daughter, down to the aether-tinted reddish-gold hair—to dominate the discussion. Rashan wanted the event to carry all the pageantry and glamour of a royal wedding, but cared little for how that was managed. He objected only once, when the idea of Brannis acting as Iridan’s oathkeeper was suggested.

  “He may be Iridan’s best friend,” Rashan said, “and it would normally be expected, but I think in this circumstance, it may be better to bend tradition and find another friend of Iridan’s to fill that role.”

  Rashan tiptoed around the subject that Juliana’s parents would rather not have brought up: Brannis’s former betrothal to their daughter. Rashan had never been able to extract from either of them just what had passed between them, but he expected that, around the age of thirteen, Brannis and Juliana had taken news of their arranged marriage rather well. Kadrin’s new grand marshal still carried the girl in his heart, more so than Rashan would have preferred, given that the feeling seemed mutual. Brannis was rational in all other things, so it was readily forgivable, but Rashan feared to let the lad stand as oathkeeper all the same.

  It was a seldom exercised post, harkening back to more tumultuous days of the Empire, when bloodshed rode on the success of marriage alliances between noble houses. The oathkeeper’s duty was to see that the groom kept to his promise to wed his bride. In olden times, this meant dogging the groom’s steps for a tenday or longer prior to the ceremony, but in present-day Kadrin, the duty amounted to just a day’s shepherding and good-natured carousing. The houses of the major sorcerous bloodlines styled themselves after noble houses in this way, as in many others, and kept the tradition in their own weddings as well. Brannis, for all his apparent blunt and straightforward honesty, kept a merchant’s tongue in his mouth. Leave him for a day with Iridan and Brannis might end up wedded to Juliana in his son’s stead—such was the duty of an oathkeeper, to seal the pact between houses if he failed to ensure the groom fulfilled his oath.

  “Perhaps that sorcerer who saved his life at Raynesdark—Faolen Sarmon,” Shador suggested, seeming glad that someone else had put Brannis out of the discussion for oathkeeper.

  Rashan knew that Shador and Ophelia both adored Brannis and had looked forward to having him for an oathson, but the complications between him and Juliana were awkward enough that they both were happy to have them clear of each other on her wedding day.

  “Faolen is … otherwise occupied. Perhaps we can find someone he knew at the Academy,” Rashan said. He had found the gifted illusionist Faolen to be surprisingly resourceful, and had already developed other plans for him that did not involve oathkeeper duties.

  “I shall ask around a bit. Surely there must be someone else he was rather close with,” Ophelia said. “Um, and I do not know quite how to bring this up, but there is one other matter I had wished to discuss with you.”

  “Yes?” Rashan leaned closer, intrigued by whatever matter seemed to be disconcerting Ophelia Archon, Third Circle sorceress and part of one of the most influential families in the Empire.

  “Well, what of Iridan’s mother? Will she … be attending?” Ophelia asked. “We are both quite curious to meet her.”

  Rashan Solaran stared wide-eyed, mouth parted slightly, struck dumb for lack of words for the first time in longer than he could remember.

  “I had forgotten,” he finally admitted at length. After a long pause, he added, “I will contact her shortly and inquire.”

  Have I really been enjoying my time here so much—political snake-handling and all—that I forgot all about her? Everyone except Brannis has probably been too frightened of me even to ask about her, and that was a season ago. Even Iridan seems to avoid the subject for some reason.

  * * * * * * * *

  Iridan shuffled across his bedc
hamber in the palace, where he had relocated after Rashan appointed him as the next Kadrin warlock. He was stiff and bruised despite the protection his shielding spell had granted him. If not for his father’s intervention, the boys might have done him real harm. Dazed as he was from the blow to the temple, he would not have properly reinforced his protective magics before they struck again.

  “Blasted urchins,” he cursed under his breath, aware that no one was around to either hear him or be bothered by his mutterings. He had begun talking to himself more than he preferred, which was an easy habit to get into when few others would take up a share of the conversation on your behalf. Since Rashan had formally acknowledged Iridan as his son, and began training him as a warlock, people had looked at him differently.

  Casual acquaintances no longer met his gaze when he passed them in the halls or out in the streets. Servants and guards snapped to his every implied order, even when he was merely making helpful suggestions. The sorcerers of the Imperial Circle at large treated him coolly and seemed offended by his rapid promotion. No less offended were the Inner Circle, who now were forced to call Iridan a colleague rather than an underling. None of them disputed his talent or potential, but the favoritism shown by Warlock Rashan for his newly acknowledged son rubbed them ill.

  Among the many ways the latter had manifested itself was the very room he now occupied. With the charade of the false emperor exposed, there was no one to tell the warlock how best to allocate the palace’s accommodations. Spending so much time there himself, the warlock had arranged for his son and the commander of his armies to move into vacant rooms. Despite being only several doors away from one another, Iridan hardly saw Brannis anymore.

  “I wish Brannis were not so busy. I know he has an army to look after now, but at least he doesn't seem bothered by me being a warlock. He probably has the same feeling: being thrown off a cliff and told to fly, offending the birds as he plummets past them.” Iridan shook his head.

  He poured himself a glass of sweetened wine from a decanter left for him by his ever-attentive servants. He had dismissed them after arriving back from his morning practice session. It was only mid afternoon, but it was his fourth glass. It sped the passing of a long day, and dulled the aches in his body.

  * * * * * * * *

  That evening, in a different palace bedchamber, Brannis set aside his pen and ink, and took up a book entitled To Anywhere. After Kyrus’s test against the Katamic Sea, Brannis felt he might finally be ready to try learning the transference spell contained within its age-yellowed pages. Like many of the books from the Circle’s libraries, it had aged well due to magical means of preservation. Similarly protected, steel would last for entire eras, and stone was nearly eternal. Paper could be kept for hundreds of summers, but eventually would need to be rewritten and replaced. Annotations inside the front cover of the book indicated that it was the third copy of the book, and the inscription put this copy at over three hundred summers old itself.

  Transference was one of the more difficult and dangerous spells of which sorcerers were widely aware. It literally took two identically sized chunks of the world, and exchanged them in space. Without special modifications (and why anyone would wish to further complicate such a spell was beyond Brannis’s understanding), the chunks of space would both be spherical in shape, with one centered about the caster, and as large as the sorcerer had aether to make it.

  The latter was one of the most obvious pitfalls of the spell. The book was nothing if not explicit in its warnings of the perils of the spell. Should the spell be cast without enough aether to fully surround the sorcerer, a rather grisly package might end up delivered to some far-flung destination: whatever chunk of sorcerer was on the inside of the sphere when it formed.

  Another was the matter of where one ended up. As a part of the spell, the mind would be cast into the aether to find a place for the companion sphere to form. Traveling the world mentally could be dizzying and the landscape—rendered all in shades of blue-white aether—would look nothing like it would in the realm of light. A keen observer would be able to discern terrain and structures from the way the flow of aether was impeded by them, but they would not be obvious. Sources would be easy to spot, but without foreknowledge of to whom a Source belonged , many sorcerers would find it difficult to distinguish between a man or a woman, let alone identify one uniquely.

  Brannis sighed. If Kyrus ended up missing his mark and burying himself below a mountain or deep underwater, he would be sorely pressed to save himself. Too high seemed the safer error, since Kyrus could at least levitate himself, but Brannis would prefer being no party to that, either.

  “Doxlo intuvae menep gahalixviu …” Brannis began, reading the chant from the book aloud as he pantomimed the gestures of the spell as it described them—intricate weavings of the fingers, with little motion of the rest of the body. The chant was long and tedious, exacting in pronunciation by the book’s own admission and, above all, dangerous.

  Kyrus would have to be very careful in practicing the spell, lest he injure himself horribly. Brannis, of course, had nothing to worry about from practice and Kyrus learned nearly as well from Brannis’s work as from his own.

  This is for you, Kyrus. You have earned it many times over. This is thanks for discovering Jinzan Fehr’s plot and for forcing him to barter my life for his counterpart’s own in your world. Thank you for letting me feel what it is like to use magic. And thank you for paying attention when your grandfather read you Captain Erasmus and His Flying Ship.

  Brannis paused at the end of his third run-through of the transference spell chant, and looked at the papers he had set neatly aside prior to resuming his magical studies. Below a fanciful sketch of a sailing ship with feathered wings were pages of diagrams and annotations showing how and where wards ought to be carved to turn one of Kadrin’s warships into an airship.

  Chapter 4 - Traderous Intent

  “As you see, sirs, this device is unlike any catapult or trebuchet,” Jinzan said, gesturing to the gleaming brass cannon that sat in the grand foyer of his palatial home.

  Gathered around him were a large number of men and women in various cultural dress. Dignitaries from all the far-flung lands that had shores upon the Aliani Sea had come to see Jinzan Fehr’s great siege engine. They crowded around, jostling with unbecoming familiarity to get close enough to touch the strange weapon.

  The cannon was of Acardian design, though Jinzan took full credit himself; none of those present were aware of the other world, as best he knew, and he enjoyed being thought a genius of destruction.

  “It does all your missive said? It looks puny. I had hoped to see more,” one guest said, a dark-skinned elder with thinning white hair who was a general in Narrack’s army. He regarded the cannon with a skeptical eye.

  “I assure you,” Jinzan began, reaching over to a small table that held the remaining three cannonballs he had salvaged during his escape from Raynesdark and picking one up in his hand. The iron ball was engraved with simple runes to help it penetrate wards and to keep its shape after impact. It filled Jinzan’s hand and weighed a bit more than two gallons. “This is going to fly from the open end with a speed twice that of a loosed arrow. I do not ask you to take this claim on faith. The demonstration this afternoon will prove its capabilities.”

  Jinzan allowed the group to gawk and paw at the cannon for a time, and he answered their questions and smiled more than he was accustomed to, acting like the merchant he supposed he had become. Megrenn was wealthy, in a peculiar sort of way. Despite few resources of their own, goods came into their ports at one price and left at another, with the difference ending up in Megrenn coffers. So many ships and caravans passed through that there was enough to keep the Megrenn citizenry fed, clothed, and supplied with luxuries that made life better …

  … like steel swords, mercenaries, and ferocious beasts, to finally repay the Kadrin Empire for their long winters of occupation. The Freedom War had put Megrenn far into debt, but
those debts had been repaid. If the war to overthrow Kadrin dominance of Koriah was to succeed, they needed the coin to buy all those things they needed.

  Jinzan was a sorcerer of great standing among his people, and his counterpart in the other world was a pirate. He was no merchant to haggle, barter and wheedle, eking each copper coin out of a deal. He was accustomed to taking what he wished, or having it given to him. But his people needed him, and he had reluctantly agreed to act the part, since no one else knew how the cannons worked as well as he did. He had scant gunpowder left and only the three cannonballs, durable though they might be. There had been only one other demonstration since his return from Raynesdark, for the rest of the Megrenn High Council. That demonstration had led to the missive that had been sent to all Megrenn’s allies and trading partners.

  They needed craftsmen, materials, and buyers for the finished weapons.

  Jinzan hated seeing the things proliferate in his own world, but it seemed necessary to gain the cooperation of so many nations. In times of war, profiteering was a tradition, if not a noble or revered one. Soon Megrenn would find that fewer ships were willing to brave their ports, and the price of bringing goods to their wharves would increase. Some would blame the increased risk they faced, others the increase in demand for their goods. Some would go so far as to admit the real reason: “because you need it so badly that you will pay whatever we ask.”

  They were not so far gone yet. With only preparations underway for the main offensive, Zorren was not deemed to be a war zone by their merchant friends. That would change with the season. As the weather warmed to the south, in Kadrin’s less forgiving climate, Megrenn would be free to bring their heavy cavalry to bear. The warm-weather beasts they had imported were ill suited to Kadrin in winter, but with the spring thaw, the balance of power would shift heavily to their favor. However, with the advancing of their war plans, the cost of doing business with the outside world would rise. Kadrin was a paltry naval power, but they had warships, and trading with Megrenn would put ships at risk of predation by them. Despite how little risk they actually took, merchants would still use the excuse to drive up their prices.