Aethersmith (Book 2)

by J. S. Morin

  “Now, if you will all stand back and prepare yourself for a sight that will shock and amaze you …

  “Huaxti janidu deldore wanetexu elu mulaftu sekedori puc’anzu margek lotok junubi,” Wendell chanted ominously, slowly waving his wand about in the air, tracing supposedly mystical patterns in the air with it. At the end, he tapped the wand twice on the brim of the upturned hat. Tucking the wand inside a coat pocket, he reached one gloved hand into the hat and drew out a dove, displaying it to the crowd in the palm of his hand with a flourish of his hat. The tiny little creature shook its feathers and beat its wings a few times, then flew off.

  The crowd hooted and cheered. Wendell the Wizard smile and bowed a little, turned to a different section of the crowd and bowed again. Then a curious look passed over his face. His hat jerked about in his hand, seemingly of its own accord. The magician stopped his bowing and investigated, looking down into the hat as if it were a good deal deeper than it appeared. Reaching into it again, he drew out another dove, releasing it into the air with a disgusted harrumph. After a brief pause, the hat moved about a bit again, and Wendell withdrew another dove, then another, then another. Soon doves were streaming out of the hat, to the delight of the crowd.

  Several of the doves, not content to fly off, returned to attack their former captor. They flapped about as Wendell dropped his hat and devoted his efforts to swatting them away. The crowd roared with laughter. Soon Wendell switched to snatching the birds out of the air and hurling them away from him. First one bird, then another … but they would just circle back around to attack him again. The crowd soon realized that the hurled and returning birds were making a circular circuit of the air just over their heads, returning at regular intervals and evenly spaced out—Wendell the Wizard was juggling birds!

  As his grand finale, Wendell quickly snatched up his hat from where it had fallen and started catching the birds with it. Once he had recaptured all the juggled birds, he put two gloved fingers to his lips and whistled.

  “All right, boys, get back in. That is all for tonight’s show.”

  And with that, all the birds that had flown away and not stayed to be juggled returned in a storm of feathers, diving headlong straight into the hat. The crowd cheered and applauded.

  “Thank you. Thank you, all.” Wendell handed the hat to someone in the first row of bystanders. “If any of you cares to look for those birds, toss in a coin. If you find one, you can keep all the other coins you find.”

  * * * * * * * *

  The Wendell Dumark who departed the plaza was better financed than the one who had entered it. With men knowing his name, and with a bit of coin in his pocket, he was able to make friendly inquiries about the whereabouts of one Captain Denrik Zayne, noted patron of the mystical arts, if Acardian authorities were to be trusted on the matter.

  Wendell was interested in meeting the infamous pirate, but he was more interested in meeting the Acardian witch he kept company with. There was more to that story than folk were letting on, Wendell was convinced, and he knew that he wanted to be the one to assemble the puzzle and see what it was before anyone else. There was profit to be had in such knowledge—in coin perhaps, but in other, more valuable currency for certain.

  The Fair Trader had sailed for the east by all accounts. It was a chance meeting with an elderly former crewman of Captain Zayne’s who had given the key bit of information, though: Zayne had a particular fondness for a little island known as Denku Appa that lay along that course.

  It took all the money Wendell had earned in the plaza, and most of his savings, but he managed to convince a ship to take him to Denku Appa as a stop well out of their way to Khesh.

  Wendell did not know that the maneuver put him a day’s pursuit ahead of Soria and her companions, looking for the same man.

  Chapter 9 - Staffing Issues

  Jinzan fidgeted in his seat, an endeavor he was little familiar with. He was seated at the hexagonal stone table of the Megrenn High Council, listening as each of his fellow Councilors gave their report on the state of their preparations on the eve of the invasion of Kadrin. He was not looking forward to the prospect of his own. While there was no petitioner to the Council, leaving the sixth side of the table vacant, the five High Councilors were far from alone. Desks and tables ringed the walls of the room, where assorted functionaries listened and recorded. Even casual comments made in the Council chamber were recorded for posterity and more than a few in the room had little purpose there but to write the land’s history as it occurred. Others there ensured that orders were carried out with all practical haste. Troop deployments could be relayed by lieutenants who waited near the chamber’s doors. Requests for information were often returned by the end of longer meetings. Rumors could be spread throughout the city before the Councilors adjourned for their midday meal—whether they intended such rumors to be spread or not.

  Council meetings were thus half rulership, half theater. Had Jinzan been alone among his old friends, he could have borne their censure quietly and deservedly. It was an embarrassment lying in wait for him, though, with the crowded Council chamber. His only hope to avert a public loss of face was that the situation resolved itself before it was his turn to present the readiness of the kingdom’s sorcerers for the war.

  “The blockade will be in place by the morrow. Any ships that wish to reach Kadris are going to have to venture a long way out of their course to bypass our ships,” Varduk Steelraven reported. Twenty years earlier, he had become de facto admiral of the rebellion’s navy. When none of the Megrenn back then knew anything of ships but fishing and trade, Varduk had pieced together a functioning navy out of trade ships and secondhand castoffs from other kingdoms’ fleets. Ever since, he had overseen both Megrenn’s sea trading and their navy, though he left the actual sailing to much younger men.

  “It will not do much, but it is prudent, I suppose. We will need the blockade much closer to Kadris before they feel any real pain from it,” said General Kaynnyn Bal-Tagga, the Megrenn Minister of War. Once the face of the rebellion, she had been a ferocious beauty who commanded the stripe-cat cavalry that had done so much to help free Megrenn. Reckless and wild, she inspired both the men and women of the rebellion and most of the men were willing to die for the chance to bed her. Her close-cropped hair was white now, still teased with ointments into a forest of short spikes like she had worn in her youth, and it stood out starkly against her deep brown skin. Her once muscular body had grown thick and soft, covered in a layer of flab that she attributed to the prosperity that had come following the rebellion. The breasts that once numbed the reason of her troops had grown huge and sagging, having nursed six children of her own and a dozen fosterling orphans in the early years after the war. She adorned herself in gold and silks instead of armor, but her spirit was as fierce as the day she first charged headlong into the Kadrin garrison as they drilled in the practice yard—the first strike of the war. If any were to embody the rebellion in the hearts of Megrenn, it was Kaynnyn “Bloodstorm” Bal-Tagga.

  “In time. The war will not be quick and we must have the long view of it,” Varduk replied. “We start with the periphery, just as you plan for the land war. Ultimately we will have to lay siege to Kadris, but that day is a long way off. Their strength is concentrated there, and we will not dislodge it by direct action. We must whittle away at their borders and draw their strength out to us. They have more troops than us—more sorcerers, too—but they have far more land to defend with them. We just need to track their movements, and wait for the opportune time to pick them apart.”

  “Speaking of troop deployments, Narsey, how are the Kadrin forces looking?” General Kaynnyn asked.

  “They are scrambling to prepare for our attack. It looks as if they are prepared to concede border territory,” Narsicann Tenrok answered. The only other sorcerer besides Jinzan to sit among the High Council, Narsicann oversaw Megrenn’s web of spies and informants. Less gifted in open warfare than was Jinzan, Narsicann concentrated m
ore on defending Megrenn from magic than inflicting his own on others. While Jinzan had been trained among the Kadrins after they decided—foolishly—that Megrenn was integrated sufficiently into the Empire, Narsicann kept his magic secret from their occupiers his whole life. “They have already evacuated many of the less defended towns, leaving token forces that I expect will flee as we approach. I think we shall find the resistance much heavier once we get farther inside their borders. Munne, Garsley, Pevett, Reaver’s Crossing … all seem to be receiving reinforcements.”

  “What news from Kadris?” asked Feron Dar-Jak, Megrenn’s Interior Minister and the only member of the High Council who was not one of the Liberators. He had taken over for the great General Ashton Sweely, who had been an old man when the rebellion started and who had served Megrenn well into early senility before retiring to spend his last few years at leisure with his great-grandchildren. Feron had fought in the rebellion as well, but he had earned his position largely based on his valuable service under Sweely in the Interior Ministry.

  “Not much of import. We have lost three sneaks and four informants trying to gain access to substantive information on their military plans. That demon is too quick to kill anything that smells wrong to him. I would bet good coin he kills three by mistake for every one of ours he gets,” Narsicann said. “We know that they are having a major wedding planned for the first of spring—the demon’s avowed son and some Archon heiress.”

  “As always, pomp and self-congratulation comes before practical matters.” Jinzan could not help chiming in. He had intended to keep quiet until his turn to report on the state of the sorcerers and his cannons. Why can I not just let such matters lie? Stupid. Stupid!

  “To our advantage,” Varduk observed, drawing nods from Narsicann and Kaynnyn.

  “For that day at least, we ought to know the whereabouts of the demon and many of the Inner Circle,” Feron observed. “Would that not be the best day to make our first real strike?”

  “The frosts have not broken yet over much of Kadrin. Their lingering winter is saving them from our stripe-cats for another tenday. I have monohorns ready to assault Temble Hill on the first of springtime—which is tomorrow I must remind you, Feron,” Kaynnyn said curtly. She never respected Feron’s position on the Council, though she knew it was inevitable that the Liberators would someday need successors. She just did not like the fact and resented him meddling in her planning.

  “Perhaps Jinzan can duplicate his little transference trick and take some remote city himself? With the demon preoccupied, it seems almost a shame to let the opportunity pass. After all, what better use to test out the Staff of Gehlen?” Feron suggested.

  “Are you mad?” Narsicann broke in.

  Good. He can save me from having to say much the same and sound like a coward, Jinzan thought.

  “After all that Jinzan went through to secure it?” Narsicann said. “It is the key to our defenses against Kadrin’s sorcerers. Wherever the wielder of that staff is, we will have an advantage against any opponent. We cannot risk losing it with something so chancy as a transference spell.”

  Not what I had in mind, Narsey. Your concern for my safety is touching as well.

  “All right, all right,” Feron said. “No need to flay me in the Council chambers over it. Consider my suggestion withdrawn. Anyway, it is about time we heard from Jinzan about the sorcerers’ readiness. Is everything in order for the invasion to begin?” Feron inquired, giving Jinzan a simpering smile in the hope that he had given him something to brag about and ease the tension he had caused.

  “Well …” Jinzan paused and drew a deep breath. “Not quite …”

  * * * * * * * *

  Elsewhere in Zorren …

  Small hands fumbled with the latch of a stable door. One hand simply was not enough, at least not for a boy of ten springtimes. Anzik tucked the Staff of Gehlen awkwardly under one arm and used both hands to spring the door open. It was a task that could easily have been accomplished with magic, but Anzik had not thought of that. His first instinct was to open the door using his hands and that thought stayed lodged in his mind until he was finished with it.

  They will look for me. I took Father’s staff. My staff now. They will look for me. Hide. Need to hide.

  It was hard to concentrate. Anzik had to keep reminding himself where he was, what he was doing. The voices were badgering him again. He knew that if he concentrated on the task at hand, he could wait them out and they would stop for a while.

  The door creaked only a little as Anzik pushed his way through, not daring to open it wide and draw attention. Be quiet. Horses make noise. Quieter than a horse and they will not hear me. If they do not hear me, they cannot find me. Quieter than a horse. Quieter than a horse …

  Anzik settled himself in an empty stall in the back, paying scant attention to the horses that occupied the half-full stable. He could see in the aether, looking through the walls, that the stable boy was just outside. It was an enclosed stable, well vented but with full walls on all sides. It seemed like a good place to hide.

  Anzik had been hiding for days, moving from one place to another. He knew that he had stolen his father’s staff. He knew that meant he would get in trouble when he was found. I just need to hide long enough to grow up. Everyone says I will be more powerful than Father when I grow up.

  “Stop it! I’m not hungry!” Anzik clutched his ears, trying to block out the voices, but it was in vain. “I just ate. I took pies from the market.” He could not reason with the voices. The voices told him to eat. They told him to open his mouth, to just try a little. Sometimes the voices blathered on about nonsense, which was easy to block out. When they got insistent, sometimes he had to just give in to make them go away.

  Anzik opened his mouth, keeping his eyes clamped shut and hands pressed over his ears. He felt something warm and mushy in his mouth, and then felt a spoon. He closed his mouth and felt the spoon pull out. The mush was not unpleasant, tasting of potato and carrot, and Anzik swallowed it. He opened his mouth again and another spoonful followed the first. He knew from having lost the battle with the voices that once was never enough. When it finally stopped, the voices went quiet.

  Anzik opened his eyes and fell back into a pile of hay. His mind was quiet. He was sweating, breathing quickly, but he felt free. After a few moments to compose himself, he took stock of his surroundings with a clearer head. He had wandered into one of the wealthier parts of Zorren, where someone had money and land enough to have their own stable within the city. Zorren sprawled with bustling markets filled with people and warehouses stacked with trade goods, intermixed with tiny orchards, walled estates, and public parks. There were hardly any people about where Anzik had stashed himself. There was a stable-boy, a groom, and a half dozen horses—though those probably did not count as people.

  Anzik was exhausted. His newfound freedom had made him bold, and he had fought against the voices longer than usual, but had not prevailed. Most often, he would block them out, losing himself in whatever task he could find, then placate them quickly when they became too intrusive.

  I bested Father. I will best the voices, too. Maybe tomorrow.

  Anzik wanted to sleep. It was only midday, but both his mind and body felt used up. Running away was hard work.

  I should disguise myself, in case they look in here while I sleep. I cannot let them see me here. Something innocuous … Maybe just make the hay pile look a bit larger than it had been.

  It was easier to think when the only thoughts in his head were his own. Even at home, it seemed rare to have a truly quiet moment, with so many other people around.

  Anzik needed no gestures or words for his magic. He had been seeing how his father and the other sorcerers did it since he was a babe. He could get the aether to respond much more easily than they. Mimicking what the aether did when they commanded it was, for Anzik, child’s play.

  He began to draw in a bit of aether for a simple illusion. Few in Megrenn were well versed
in the art, but after Anzik had seen it, it had become one of his favorites to practice, causing no end of strife in the Fehr household. He wanted to ensure that the spell would last the length of his nap at least, so he drew in a bit more aether than he normally would have for a simple prank.

  The Staff of Gehlen threw things amiss. Still barely having tested the artifact’s power, Anzik unintentionally called on the staff’s draw to augment his own. Amplified many times over, the aether was sucked toward the staff like the funnel of a cyclone. Anzik’s persistent aether-vision saw a vortex forming around him as his draw sped beyond his control. Horses whinnied in terror, feeling their very life forces being wrenched at and the nearest one to Anzik’s stall fell over dead before he could stop drawing in aether.

  Anzik felt the roiling power thrashing about within his Source. It was the most he had ever held at once, but it was not foremost on his mind.

  I broke the horse. I scared the horses. The horses made noise. They must have heard. They will come to look. They will find me. I need to hide. No. I need to fix the horse. How? Is it really dead? I pulled out its aether; maybe I can just put it back.

  Anzik’s vision was keen enough that he could make out the hollowed remains of the horse’s Source. Carefully, he directed much of the aether back where it had come from, filling the Source like a vintner filled bottles. The Source did not look quite healthy when he finished, but the horse obeyed his silent command to get to its feet.

  Somehow the other horses could sense something wrong with their comrade. The one in the next stall, bearing a placard that identified it as “Snowflake,” began to panic and try to break free of her confinement.

  No! Stop that! They will come look!

  Anzik panicked. It was no good fixing one horse if the rest were going to give him away. He looked around at the contagious fear among the residents of the stable, and then back to the horse he had just “fixed.” Thinking quickly, he pointed the staff at the panicked horse and deliberately drew its Source dry of aether. The creature fell limply to the ground, its muscles flaccid and unresisting.