Princeps: A Novel in the Imager Portfolio

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

“He’s a scholar, and he knows what it’s like to worry. He told me about all the scholars that have been killed…”

  “If something happens to him … just happens,” offered Akoryt, “what can they do to us?”

  “He’s Bhayar’s friend, and he’s married to his sister,” replied Voltyr. “How long would any of us last?”

  “Frig…”

  “You would do well not to cross him and to do as he asks,” suggested Shaelyt, almost deferentially.

  “Oh … and how would you know?” asked Threkhyl.

  “He is a lost one. Lost ones make good leaders and terrible enemies. If you do not believe me, ask those who know him how many of those who have opposed him are still alive and well.”

  “Lost one…?” murmured someone.

  Surprisingly, Desyrk spoke. “Seems to me that most of you are against the subcommander just because he’s in charge and you don’t want to be here. Looks to me that he’s been successful. Do we know that anyone else would be better?”

  “Couldn’t be worse,” snapped Threkhyl.

  “You, my friend,” replied Desyrk, “have not seen enough of the world to know how much worse it could be. Until you do, don’t say things like that. We’ve been made officers and given uniforms and food. There are much worse places to be.”

  “It won’t last,” declared Threkhyl.

  “Nothing lasts,” returned Desyrk, “except maybe the Nameless, and I’m not even sure of that.”

  “What is a ‘lost one’?” asked Baelthm, looking to Shaelyt.

  The young man flushed slightly, then replied, “The ‘lost ones’ are from the ancient times. They are like the subcommander. They have white-blond hair and black eyes. Sometimes, they are missing a hand, or they limp. Other times, they have strange powers.”

  “He is an obdurate,” Baelthm said. “That might be a strange power.”

  “Do your legends say what those powers are?” asked Desyrk.

  “No, save that they can sometimes call upon the powers of Erion.”

  “So he’s a god, now?” sneered Threkhyl. “A limping god?”

  “No,” replied Baelthm. “He’s no god. You’re still alive.”

  “What do you—” Threkhyl pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet.

  At that moment, a silver pin planted itself in the ginger-haired imager’s forehead. Threkhyl grabbed it one-handed and started to frown, as if concentrating.

  “Don’t,” snapped the older man. “I could have put that through your eye, dipped in pitricin.”

  “Stop being fools.” Akoryt’s voice dripped condescension. “I understand what Baelthm meant. You should too, Threkhyl. You don’t attack gods and live. The subcommander’s right about one thing. If we don’t work together, we’ll all end up dead. Afterward … that’s another story.”

  Threkhyl tossed the pin on the table, then brushed away the tiny drop of blood on his forehead. “For now … for now.”

  “What does he want us to do?” asked Shaelyt.

  “Things to win battles…”

  “… make life hard on the Bovarians…”

  Quaeryt listened for a time longer before slipping away under his concealment shield. He definitely had his work cut out.

  65

  One of the imagers’ comments stuck with Quaeryt, so much so that he brought it up before he and Skarpa entered the mess that evening. He did speak in a low enough voice that it was unlikely anyone else would hear. “Did Myskyl give you any idea what I’m supposed to accomplish with the imagers?”

  Skarpa’s words were simple, and not terribly helpful. “They don’t know. They’re counting on you to find a way to make the imagers more useful than they’ve been in the past. All imagers have done is assassination.”

  Quaeryt understood. Assassination was a waste of an imager’s talent, at least in most cases, but Bhayar’s—or Myskyl’s—view left everything up to Quaeryt, which bothered him more than a little, since when everything had been left up to him in Extela, the results, so far as he and Vaelora were concerned, had been less than optimal. But then, here you don’t have to satisfy everyone immediately. You just have to get the job done and satisfy Bhayar … and Skarpa.

  Quaeryt moved quickly to the smaller table that held the imagers and a few other undercaptains, while Skarpa, as senior officer, took his position at the head of the main table.

  Most of the conversation at the table dealt with speculation about the intent of the Bovarians and the possible venues for their likely attack. Quaeryt ventured almost nothing and listened intently.

  When he left the mess that evening, more than a few questions swirled through his thoughts.

  Can you even make these imagers into any sort of force? How? You don’t even know what any of them can really do. In thinking about various imaging possibilities, another question came to mind, one so natural that he was amazed that he hadn’t thought about it before. If you can image things into being … why not out of being? Or from place to place?

  Why hadn’t he considered it? Because all he’d ever seen or heard was about what imagers did in the way of creating things? Even when he’d killed people, it had been by creating something, whether water in someone’s chest, bread in their windpipe, pitricin in their brains or guts … Is it because we don’t naturally think of the absence of something?

  He frowned. But he had done that. Once, anyway, and that was when he’d imaged a hole in a chunk of rock and imaged away ice to break the jam that had backed up the river. He’d just done it, but it hadn’t thought about it in just that way. Nor had he considered the implications of doing that on a wider scale.

  Could he train the imagers to do that? Imaging holes in barges might make it difficult for the Bovarians to cross the river.

  That sounded simple enough, but Quaeryt knew that all too many things that sounded simple enough were anything but simple. He’d been practically standing on top of the place where he’d imaged a hole in the stone, and he’d barely been able to walk away without collapsing. While imaging a hole in wood should be easier than in stone, doing so from a distance was another question entirely. He also had the feeling that some of the imagers were not all that accomplished.

  That’s not surprising. Too many are killed before they become skilled. He also suspected that at least some of the more skilled imagers were more like him, in that they had largely managed to keep their abilities unnoticed … and were the least likely to have been discovered by Bhayar’s men.

  He decided to walk to the north end of the post, where he’d seen several trees beyond the wall, tall enough to be seen over the stone ramparts, although the walls at North Post were only about two and a half yards high, not designed to withstand a siege or even bombards, but then since the Ferrean River lay between where the Bovarians could place bombards and the walls they would be aimed at, it wasn’t as though the Bovarians could batter holes in the walls and then easily charge through.

  He had to walk between two stable buildings to get to the wall, but he could see the pair of trees, although he couldn’t tell what kind they were, except they weren’t oaks or poplars, possibly ash or elms. Both were leafed out, but with the brighter green of recent foliage. On his side of the wall, he was some ten yards from the nearest of the two. His eyes lighted on a small dead branch, hanging at an angle a yard or so higher than the top of the wall. He concentrated on a spot a yard from the end of the branch, trying to image away the wood there.

  Abruptly the yard-long branch tip fluttered down and caught in the leafy branch below.

  Quaeryt didn’t even feel any strain. So he turned and walked back another ten yards and tried again, this time trying to lop off a section of perhaps half a yard. Again, he had no difficulty.

  Rock is much harder than wood, remember?

  Even at fifty yards, he didn’t feel anything. At a hundred, where he could barely make out what was left of the dead branch, he did feel a momentary light-headedness. He decided against trying more for the moment
, and turned and walked back southward.

  When he finally entered his quarters and sat down on the end of the bed, he thought about writing Vaelora, but he decided that he needed to spend some time trying to work out how he would test the other imagers. That turned out to be harder than he’d thought, and by the time he had a plan with which he was satisfied, with notes on several sheets of paper, he was having trouble focusing his eyes on anything. That might also have been because the lamp over the desk didn’t afford the best illumination, and it had been a very long day. The letter will have to wait until tomorrow.

  He realized that, again, when he found his eyes closing as soon as he stretched out in the bed.

  When he woke on Jeudi, the sky was barely turning gray, and he had a slight headache. Still, he wondered if he’d spent the night dreaming about everything he had yet to do. Could he image away wood in fine slivers?

  After a moment, he looked at the corner of the table desk and concentrated.

  A line of light flashed through his eyes, but the corner edge of the desk had vanished, and he could see the lighter wood that lay behind the severed section—no more than a finger’s width of missing wood.

  He massaged his forehead with his left hand and concentrated again. The corner was back in place.

  Is it? He stepped forward to touch the wood, then noticed that a faint mist had appeared around the corner of the desk. Gingerly, he reached forward. The air around the corner was chill, but the piece he had imaged back into place was warm to the touch.

  Why would that be?

  He didn’t have an answer, but he needed to get washed and dressed, because he had things to do before breakfast.

  In less than a quint, Quaeryt was dressed and walking the post … until he found a narrow walled space, more than fifty yards long, that would serve his purposes. It might have once served as anything from an outside wagon storage area to who knew what. Then he located the carpentry shop, but no one was there. So he went to the kitchen and persuaded the head cook to lend him two empty flour barrels, a plank he found outside the kitchen, and a pair of rankers to carry them to one end of the courtyard, where he set the plank with each end resting on the butt of an upended barrel.

  After breakfast, he gathered the imager undercaptains at one end of the mess, even while the servers were cleaning up.

  “We are charged with finding ways to disrupt the Bovarian forces. Today, you—and I—are going to learn something about what your abilities truly are and how they might best be used.”

  “Why don’t we just kill them?” asked Threkhyl.

  “Sir,” added Quaeryt quietly, fixing his eyes on the imager.

  “Sir,” added Threkhyl.

  “How far away from you can you image, Undercaptain? Do you know? How large and how heavy an object can you create?”

  Threkhyl looked puzzled, while, beside him, Baelthm nodded.

  “If they bring archers against us, some shafts can be lofted two hundred yards, if not farther. We won’t be doing much good if all we can do is slay a few hapless troopers trying to storm a wall we’re standing behind. Lord Bhayar would prefer that the Bovarians never get that close. It would be even better if you could image across the river, but we might not have that choice. That’s also why we have a full company of troopers assigned to us. Their task is to get us close enough to create damage. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer not to get any closer than we have to, and that means I have to know exactly what each of you can and cannot do … and what you may be able to do with practice. Now … we’ll be heading out to the north end of the post.” Quaeryt rose. “Follow me.”

  He did not look back, but he did listen intently to the words murmured behind him.

  “… don’t see the purpose…”

  “… know what he’s doing?”

  Quaeryt certainly hoped so.

  Once they reached the long courtyard, he walked up to where the barrels and plank were set, then took ten long paces back and half turned. “Line up even with me.” He waited until they complied. “Each of you is to image a metal disk onto the plank between the barrels. You first, Shaelyt.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Pharsi looked at the plank, and a copper disk appeared.

  “Desyrk?”

  The blond nodded, and a gray disk appeared beside the copper one.

  “Akoryt.”

  A disk of a lighter gray appeared.

  All six of the undercaptains managed the first trial, as well as the second—from roughly thirty yards—but Quaeryt could see a slight sheen on Baelthm’s forehead as he told them to move to the end of the long and narrow courtyard.

  Baelthm glanced to Quaeryt, a worried look on his face. Quaeryt stepped over closer to the older imager. “Image a very small piece of copper in the shape of a square on the left end of the plank.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Try it. It can be small.”

  Something did indeed appear, but Baelthm looked drawn when he finished.

  After all the imagers had created a piece of metal, Quaeryt walked back down to the plank, gathering up the small disks and squares of metal and setting them on one barrel butt. He turned the plank on its side, so that its widest side faced the imagers. Then he propped it in that position with small stones from the courtyard and stepped back roughly ten yards, to about where the undercaptains had begun the first exercise.

  “Undercaptains, here!”

  He waited until they were again lined up before speaking. “I want each of you to image a hole in the plank, one at a time. I’ll tell each of you when to start.”

  “How are we supposed to do that?” demanded Threkhyl.

  Quaeryt kept his smile to himself. He was glad he’d thought of the answer to just that question. “I could tell you many things, Undercaptain. I won’t. For now. In the meantime, I would suggest you try imaging a hole full of air into the plank. Or, you could try imaging a circle out of the plank.” He gestured to Baelthm. “You, first.”

  The older imager concentrated, but nothing happened. Finally, he said, “I can’t do that.”

  “Shaelyt?”

  A square hole two digits on a side immediately appeared.

  “Good,” said Quaeryt. “Desyrk?”

  The blond imager managed a small circle, as did Akoryt and Voltyr. Threkhyl created a circle about the size of Shaelyt’s square.

  “Now we’ll walk to the end of the courtyard. Those of you who managed it from the shorter distance will try again from there.”

  All five managed to create holes from the end of the courtyard, but when Quaeryt took them another fifty yards, only Voltyr, Threkhyl, and Shaelyt could.

  “You can have a few moments to rest, and then we’ll return to the courtyard, and we’ll see how many disks you can create quickly, and then how many holes.”

  From a short distance, all six could create small disks fairly quickly, although Baelthm and Desyrk were sweating before they finished. Again, only Voltyr, Threkhyl, and Shaelyt could create more than a few holes without getting so tired they had to stop immediately.

  During another short break, Quaeryt went to the carpentry shop, persuaded the chief carpenter to let him have two more planks, and carried them back to the courtyard, where he replaced the first plank with one of the two he had obtained. Then he lined up the undercaptains some twenty yards from the plank.

  “This time, I want you to image a metal arrowhead into the plank, with as much force as you can muster.”

  “Why arrowheads?” asked Threkhyl. “Archers can do that better.”

  “The exercise isn’t about arrowheads. It’s about gauging your strength, and seeing what can be done to strengthen your abilities.” Quaeryt turned to Baelthm. “You first.”

  As Quaeryt expected, Baelthm’s near-miniature arrowhead barely stuck in the board.

  “Threkhyl?” As he spoke, Quaeryt attempted to create a shield across the front of the board.

  Threkhyl’s heavy iron arrowhead bounced off the
unseen shield, leaving the board unmarked.

  “What the frig?” muttered Threkhyl.

  “Try again,” said Quaeryt, removing the shield.

  The ginger-haired imager’s second arrowhead went through the board, pulling the plank right off the top of the barrels. It dropped between the barrels and the stone wall.

  “Much better!” Quaeryt’s voice reflected appreciation for the effort, but also a certain pleasure in his knowing that there were ways he could continue to test his own skills without the others realizing that he was doing so. “Wait a moment. I need to reposition the plank.”

  After that exercise, he then had the imagers go on to other exercises and tests that he had devised.

  By the time Quaeryt dismissed the six for a midday break, he was sweating himself. Trying to train them is more work than doing it yourself. He shook his head. The problem was that he couldn’t be in seven places at once. You just have to figure out how to use and improve what they can do, preferably before the Bovarians decide to attack.

  66

  By the time he walked toward the mess for the evening meal on Jeudi, Quaeryt had a solid idea of which undercaptain could do what … and what each could not do. What he didn’t know, and wouldn’t for a time, was how much they would improve with training. Just from what he had observed from Shaelyt’s actions, he had no doubt that he’d see more improvement from the young Pharsi. He also thought that Voltyr and Threkhyl would improve. Baelthm seemed limited in his abilities, as well as either reluctant or unable to try to learn more. As for Akoryt and Desyrk … he had no idea.

  Is it easier for Voltyr and Shaelyt because they’re younger? That might be, but he’d learned and developed skills as an adult, and he was older than both of them, considerably older than Shaelyt.

  Skarpa was waiting outside the mess, well away from the door, and Quaeryt walked over to join him.

  “Pain in the ass to be regimental commander, sometimes.”

  “Oh?” asked Quaeryt.

  “I can’t walk into the mess any more and talk to anyone before we eat. Not for the evening meal. I can’t even be early, because…” He shook his head.