by Karen Myers
“Did you have any difficulty getting what you needed?” he asked her as they walked through the traffic toward the Armorers’ Guild.
“Chains from Gen Jongto, my own power-stones, and a few tools. Plus something to take notes with,” she said. The Zannib wax tablets have their uses.
“Where are you taking us?” he asked.
“Remember the deserted buildings the gewengep escaped to, the ones Munraz described? Just around the corner of Tegong Him, on the east side, past the Armorers’ compounds. I wanted privacy.”
She cleared her throat. “What else can you tell me about that book’s author?”
Vylkar had sent a note to the Zannib embassy that morning the contents of which had sat uneasily with her ever since.
“I’d puzzled over where you got the notion that power-stones weren’t the only way to feed a device, and then I remembered Gialfinnur’s book was once in the Collegium library, and wondered if you’d read it.”
He eyed her as they walked, and she nodded. “I read everything I could find about devices. That one, too.”
“So I expected. He’s a crank, you know—no one followed up on his assertions. Part of the yrmkenrolek school, the crooked learning.”
“Yes… He had no evidence, but the theories were interesting. They stuck in my head. All this was before I ever tried seriously experimenting with my chain, you understand. No one really wanted to work with me on that.” Easier to just ignore my inconvenient uniqueness, not a fit for the standard categories. They had more important work to spend time on. That’s how the redenrolek school works, the orthodox learning—it’s a wonder they ever discover something new.
“So I took my experiments in other directions,” she said.
They walked a moment in silence, the Armorers’ Guild off to their left as they passed the first of its compounds.
“I was surprised to hear you knew the man,” Penrys said. “And that you knew the book, to be honest.”
Vylkar hesitated. “I never met him—he was gone before I got there. His older daughter Elkif shared some of my classes at the Collegium.”
“Really?” Penrys smiled.
Vylkar lowered his eyebrows. “Nothing like that. She kept to herself.”
He glanced at his feet as he walked. “There were three of them—the two daughters and a son. I only studied with the oldest one.”
“Perhaps you don’t know…” he said. “They followed in their father’s footsteps after he was barred as a raegar, a master, and tried to develop his theories. Eventually they, too, were expelled for yrmkenrolek, before they finished their studies. Frankly I’m surprised you found the book—it shouldn’t have been there. I saw it before it was banned.”
“It wasn’t in the catalogue,” she said. “Someone had shoved it back behind the books on the shelves. I only saw it because I wanted to see what else was there that I might have missed, and pulled all the books out, one by one.”
“You think it was hidden deliberately?” She monitored Vylkar lightly and was surprised by a brief whiff of fear.
He didn’t answer directly. “Do you remember the details of what he suggested as alternatives to power-stones?”
Penrys dodged to avoid an overburdened man carrying something heavy on one shoulder and took her time about answering. “He’d looked at a lot of broken power-stones with magnifying devices and strong lights. His sketches showed complex crystal structures, more elaborate than the ones of other common materials, like salt and some of the gemstones. His theory was that power-stone internal structures were what made them work, and that a good one had more regular structures than a poor one.”
She glanced briefly at Vylkar. He was walking with his head down, indifferent to the noise of the busy streets around them.
“It began with him proposing better ways of judging intact power-stones, and the best ways to cut them, and how to use them uncut, if necessary. Then he started to experiment with how crystals are formed, with various solution mixtures, as I recall. I skipped over that part—it didn’t really go anywhere. I mean, the techniques were useful to know, but they all seemed to be dead ends.”
Ahead of them the traffic was thinning out and, to their left, the looming Tegong Him withdrew to the north. She veered left looking for the best surface roads to approach the eastern side of it—Munraz had gotten there underground and hadn’t been able to help with that when she’d asked him this morning.
“What I remember, other than his basic argument, was what he said about crystalline structures in some metals. It was entirely descriptive, rather than experimental. I hadn’t realized before that metal had such structures, that they were a part of how edge sharpness was created in weapons. That’s why I remembered it so well—it was my first exposure to the notion. He wrote at some length about the processes that smiths used to control their work.
“Then he stopped—it was frustrating. I slammed the book closed hard enough to raise dust, as I recall. He would have done experiments, I thought—why didn’t he write about them? I didn’t have access to the resources he did. I couldn’t do them myself. I looked for other books by him and didn’t find them.”
Vylkar’s face took on an uncomfortable expression. “That’s because he did do the experiments. They were before my time, but I heard about them from my teachers. He claimed successes, and wanted to show them off. Probably write another book. There was some sort of presentation for the raegrar, the senior teachers, and they threw him out. No one would speak of the details, and when I worked up my nerve to ask Elkif—this was years later, he was long gone—she refused to discuss it.”
Around them the streets were almost deserted. “I’d been surprised that his children were allowed to study at the Collegium,” he said. “It was explained to me that there’d been an argument behind closed doors about it, whether the children should be punished for the yrmkenrolek of their father.”
“But I don’t understand,” Penrys said, her focus divided between finding the spot she was looking for and this glimpse into Collegium history. “Why suppress new knowledge like that? If he succeeded, if he was right, then that would open an entirely new avenue of investigation. Surely useful discoveries would come from it?”
“Such as exactly how to store power in metal, under the same sort of fine control as a power-stone?” Vylkar inquired, dryly.
Once his words penetrated, Penrys stopped in her tracks. Her fingers crept up of their own accord to her chain. “You think…” She swallowed and tried again. “You think he went on to create something like this?”
“He had followers. When he left, some of them did, too. I never heard much about them as a student, but then when I thought to ask, Elkif was gone, too.”
He took a deep breath. “Some of those who govern the Collegium think that by denying someone the library and the workshops, they can prevent them from traveling unsanctioned paths. I don’t agree. It’s not that hard to get information—why you can even send your children looking for it if you’re willing to wait.”
A shiver passed down her spine at the tone of his voice.
“And it’s not hard to set up your own workshops,” he said. “Ellech is a big place. No, what I disagree with is banning certain avenues of study—better to learn them, too. The knowledge isn’t good or bad of itself, though its uses might be. Better we build more ethical students than worry about what they’re studying.”
He eyed her. “Didn’t you ever wonder why no one stopped you from your research and your experiments? Not everyone has that experience at the Collegium.”
“I thought it was just that not everyone’s interested.” She could hear the chagrin in her voice at her own obliviousness. She’d gotten used to working alone, those three years, and stopped wondering at it.
“There’d been second thoughts about the case of Gialfinnur. I wasn’t the only one who wondered about your chain and put the two notions together in unsubstantiated speculation. We didn’t know what the chain could do—neit
her did you, after all—so we weren’t sure it was a device. But if it was, then what connection might you have to Gialfinnur? Did he send his children in the previous generation, and now you?”
They stood unmoving in the street, and the rare passer-by gave them scarcely a glance.
“And then I disappeared,” she said, slowly.
“Yes. And didn’t that create a stir. I heard all the theories—you were a spy who staged a mysterious exit, you were a victim, you’d been dissolved into your constituent parts in a failed experiment, and good riddance to a thorny problem.”
Penrys snorted at that last one.
Vylkar let a smile flicker on his face in response. “But we just didn’t know. And then your letter came, and that was in some ways worse. Unknown wizardry, another chained wizard who was a threat. More late night arguments in the Collegium’s governing council. When the invitation came from Tun Jeju, I was eager to find out more. And now it’s raised more questions than it’s answered.”
“I feel like a sheltered child,” Penrys muttered. “I wasn’t aware of any of this, back in the Collegium. It’s an accident that I’ve even heard of Gialfinnur, via that book.”
She rounded on him, in the public street. “You all would be better off dropping all the pointless secrecy and just asking. Maybe we could have found out more that way, working together.”
Vylkar spread his hands. “We still can.”
She reared back her head. “What, in Ellech?”
“That’s where Gialfinnur is still rumored to be, if he’s alive, with whatever resources he gathered around him.”
“But I can’t just leave… it’s thousands of miles.” And Naj-sha’s caravan has to get launched.
“Let’s just do today’s experiments and worry about that after.” He gestured down the street, in an invitation for her to continue her guidance to the private spot she had in mind.
“Is this far enough away?”
Vylkar’s voice betrayed his uneasiness as he watched with Penrys, almost fifty feet distant from the small patch of weed-covered ground where one of the chains had been laid. Penrys had shoved a stick in the ground through the middle, so she could mark the spot from a distance.
They stood on each side of the glassless window opening of one of the decrepit buildings that she thought was probably one of the ones Munraz had described. Only their heads were exposed.
“When Veneshjug did this, with the chain from the body of the Voice, it exploded on him.”
Vylkar glanced at her across the gap of the windows. “And yet, you tell me these chains don’t trigger the proximity alert that the chains on a living wizards do. What about the Voice’s, after you killed him?”
“I’m afraid I was distracted by my injuries. Don’t know when it stopped hurting, exactly.”
She swallowed and put that behind her. “Can you feel the chain?” She waved her hand out the window gap.
“Not that one, not the ones in your bag, and not your own,” he told her.
“Want to see what it looks like to me?”
He nodded, expressionlessly, and she let him in through her shield. Her own chain felt as much a part of her as her heart or liver, and like an organ she could feel how full it was.
The external masterless chains were different. Each had a… flavor. Not exactly a personality—she wasn’t sure if she could have recognized their original wearers if she’d met them while they lived—but they were easy to tell apart. The chains had no intelligence, but she almost felt like apologizing to the one she might end up destroying.
*You know how it feels when someone else manipulates a power-stone.*
She felt his assent.
*This is similar. I’ll try to move the stick with it.*
Her first attempt did nothing, and then it occurred to her that perhaps it had no power left—drained by its wearer’s struggles?
She poured some power into it from her own chain while Vylkar watched, and tried again. The stick moved.
“So, a chain in isolation can hold power, and can move an object as a raw power-stone might,” Vylkar said.
“We already knew this—I used the Jut Sejo’s chain after he was dead to move the so-called judge away from the emperor.”
“Then how did that Rasesni mage manage to destroy the chain and himself, the way you described it?”
Penrys said, tentatively, “Think you could try to do what I just did?”
He blinked, then looked toward the distant stick. He made no offer to share his mind with Penrys while he worked.
They saw the light before they heard the crack, and ducked behind the wooden walls, just before a few thuds announced the arrival of fragments.
“Yes, it was a lot like that,” Penrys said, dryly. “So, I don’t think unchained wizards should try this.”
“Better warn Tun Jeju,” Vylkar said.
Penrys had a vivid image of the entire Imperial Security building collapsing lopsidedly into a pit after that collection of chains in its lower level was set off. “Um, yes. Good advice.”
She opened one of Najud’s wax tablets and used the stylus to make a couple of notes before closing it again.
“That was the first experiment,” she said. “The next one will be expensive.”
She ushered her mentor out of the ruin of a building and spent a few minutes examining the wall. With her knife, she pried several single links out and gave two of them to Vylkar. “Something to remember me by, bilappa.”
“Are they equally explosive?” he asked.
“Now that’s a good question. Let’s find out.”
She carried a single link to the area where the first chain had been placed and hunted up another stick. Then she rejoined Vylkar at the window gap inside the building.
*Still can’t feel it?*
Vylkar shook his head.
*Neither can I.* She tried to invoke it like a power-stone, but there was nothing to grasp with her mind.
“Looks like destroying the chain breaks some key part of its functional integrity. I guess the single links are safe enough.”
She trotted back to the spot with her carry bag. She picked up the link and placed another intact chain on the ground. This time she took a small handful of power-stones and covered the long sides of a single link with them. Then she picked everything else up and took it with her, stooping to scoop up another single link and one double that caught her eye from the ground on her way back.
“I know that you can use loose power-stones to melt metal,” she told Vylkar. “I used that to cut through shackles in Neshilik.”
“That destroys the power-stones,” Vylkar said, disapprovingly.
“Yes, yes, I know. But I want to find out what happens.” She grinned. “I already know I can’t cut the metal with a chisel, or even make a mark, so something unusual is holding them together. These chains were forged somehow, though, so heat must have been used to shape them. Mundane heat? Couldn’t test my own neck that way, and haven’t had time to do the experiment with the fragment I had.”
“You’re just going to use the power-stones, not the chain itself?”
Penrys nodded. “Here goes.”
She invoked the power-stones, and felt it the moment they broke the integrity of the chain. This time, instead of an explosion, there was a flare of white-hot light, and they felt the heat even at the distance as if a torch were inches from their faces.
Do I smell smoke? She dashed outside as it subsided and examined the building. There were scorch marks, but nothing seemed to have caught. The grass surrounding the fire burned, but between them they were able to stamp it out.
When they approached, they found the power-stones destroyed, but not the chain. The one link was melted into two half-links, and the chain itself exhibited no blackening, shining up from the charred ground.
When Penrys checked, the chain was no longer active, in her mind.
“We killed this one,” she told Vylkar. “But I don’t think I’ll be using this
method to remove my own. It wasn’t this hot when I melted conventional chains—the chain must have fed its own power into it.”
“And would you want to rid yourself of the chain, now, given what you’ve learned?” he asked her.
I don’t know anymore. She left the question unanswered.
CHAPTER 32
“Good news,” Najud told Penrys as he sauntered into their quarters at the embassy just in time to clean up for dinner with Talqatin and his family. His arms were filled with bundles.
“Hmm?” Penrys was sitting crosslegged on their bed, playing with what was left of the chains from her afternoon’s experiment.
“Yes. Most of the merchants I talked to have heard of kassa, but few have tasted it. I brewed samples at seven businesses—may I never see it again. Well, at least for several hours. They want it, more to the point.”
“But your caravan won’t be trading with them,” she said.
“Not directly, but we can supply the Biziz Rahr which does. That’s a good thing. And if they like it, here in Yenit Ping, they’ll like it all the more in Neshilik.”
She laid the intact chain out on the bed clothes, and the long length of the one that she’d managed to cut apart, and then the little heap of single and double links, and the two halves of the melted link. She ran the chains and fragments through her hands, absently, and then looked up when she noticed he’d stopped talking.
“What’ve you got there?” he asked.
After a deep breath, she told him about her afternoon with Vylkar, about Gialfinnur and his book, and about the experiments they’d performed.
He dropped his parcels on the floor near the chair and sat down. “What’re you thinking?”
Penrys bestirred herself to concentrate on him. “I’m thinking it’s good news that your planned caravan goods look like they’ll be successful.”
He waved his hand in the air dismissively. “No, what are you really thinking?”
She held her tongue. She couldn’t ask it of him.
With a snort under his breath, he leaned back. “You want to go to Ellech, don’t you? See if there’s any truth to Vylkar’s suggestion.”
