by Ben Rovik
Across the room, the wizard screamed, and kicked his bare feet through each line of his diamond design. Sand went flying in showers of black, crimson and purple. He grabbed the sticks of burning incense and snapped them in two, and then in two again, seemingly unconscious of the smoldering fire pressing against his hands. He flung the wooden shards to the ground and stripped off his vest. Nearly naked now, he lay down on his back atop the splinters of incense and screeched, “Stay strong, Graceful One!”
Lundin glanced down at the dial as he cranked. Ten more seconds. He raised his head, and caught sight of Viscount LaMontina looking back at him. Standing still with his hand raised awkwardly to his chest in the Sign of Warding, and his ornate black-and-crimson armor undented by battle, he looked like a statue. His youthful face, though, was alive with emotion; confusion, regret, concern, and at this point, a trace of fear. But then that sheepish smile Lundin had only seen once or twice before crept onto his face, almost as if to say he couldn’t believe himself to be the center of so much fuss.
“Mister Lundin,” the Viscount said, his voice quiet and calm. Lundin swallowed and nodded. “Have you called the Petronauts?”
The dial was glowing dully; a passably full charge, at last. He flicked the switch, snatched the telescoping stalk of the thinner trumpet and drew it upwards to his lips. “Transmitting now, Your Grace,” he said. Samanthi stabbed the base of the antenna into its socket on the side of the Communicator, and handed the conical, corded earpiece to Lundin. He raised it to his ear, hearing only the grey, fuzzy sound of an incomplete connection. Who knew how much time would pass before Sir Kelley would respond to the signal.
He took a deep breath, and looked back into LaMontina’s eyes. Time stretched out. “Don’t worry, Your Grace. Help is on the way,” Lundin said in a quavering voice, his emotions surprising him.
The young nobleman shifted his shoulders and stood to his full, proud height, his eyes clear. “I’m not worried,” he said in a soft voice that filled the entire pavilion.
And then, as four black disks came fluttering down from the ceiling, Viscount LaMontina burst into flames.
Chapter Two
The Motto
“It didn’t have to happen,” Lundin said again.
The workshop was dim, with the clear white of a single frosted gaslight by the door shedding the only illumination. The crowded shelves loomed over the two workbenches, their shadows casting long black blades onto the far wall. A single carriage clopped by on the street below, outside the shuttered windows. Lundin hadn’t touched his beer.
“And what’s that supposed to mean, Horace?” Samanthi said. She leaned back in her stool, pulling a loose thread out of her overalls with an impatient snap. “How does saying that help anything now?”
“There was something else we could have done.”
“You could have called us earlier, there’s a thought,” Sir Mathias Mascarpone said, sipping his beer. The hulking Petronaut drummed his fingers in sequence along his stein, making a sound like a galloping metal pony. “Maybe we could have thrust over to the island alone, like you wanted, and gotten ourselves killed too. That would have helped.”
“Maybe you would have found the wizard in time,” Lundin said.
Samanthi and Sir Mathias exchanged a look. “Not possible, Horace,” he said, more kindly. “All those fighters, and all that ground to cover? Even if you’d called us the instant you got to LaMontina’s pavilion, there’s no way we could have stopped the spell in time.”
“There was no way around this one,” Samanthi said. “Now will you just get drunk already so we can stop talking about this?”
“No way around it, huh? Is that what Abby says?”
“Punch a few cards, Horace, by all means,” Samanthi said, her color rising. “Play with the variables. Design a hundred scenarios where the Viscount survives. And then get over yourself, because this may have been your first time working a combat zone, but it won’t be your last. And you need to get used to the idea that sometimes people die.”
“But how often do they die through magic?” Lundin rose to his feet, unable to stay still. “Sir Mathias, you’ve seen plenty of fights. How often does a commander burn to death in his pavilion that far from the battlefield?”
“It’s a first for me,” Mathias admitted, sipping his beer.
“Why doesn’t it happen in every battle? There are plenty of people out there calling themselves wizards. If magic is real—“
“You still don’t think magic is real?” Samanthi said. “Ask clan LaMontina right now if magic is real.”
“—which it is, obviously,” Lundin continued, “but then why does the battlefield need soldiers? Horses? Cannons? Petronauts? If a peasant witch can kill a guarded, Warded nobleman, why is war ever face-to-face?”
“Because magic fails,” Sir Kelley said from the doorway.
Sir Mathias hastily set down his beer as they turned to look at the senior Petronaut, just inside the doorway. T. Kelley Malcolm, Esq., wasn’t much of a drinker; nor had he gotten familiar enough with his team in three years to let them know what his first initial stood for. After the dressing down he had given Lundin for presuming to make tactical decisions in yesterday’s Verrure campaign, none of them expected Kelley to make an appearance at an informal gathering like this. But there he was, austere as ever in his high-collared black jacket, its polished silver buttons shining like filaments. The white gaslight was harsh on his pockmarked face.
“You could add and subtract a million externals from what happened yesterday,” Kelley said, “and you’d get new results. But you could also keep everything the same—have the same military strategy, Lundin’s same homicidal plan to send Petronauts to their deaths, his same inaction. You could have the same two wizards attempt to cast the same spell and counterspell, and you know what would happen? In almost every case, nothing.” His green eyes were hard. “Because that’s what magic does. It fails.”
“Point of order, boss?” Samanthi said in the brief silence that followed. “Magic sort of succeeded yesterday.”
“One in a thousand odds.”
“But why?” Lundin said. “Sir Kelley, look, I’m with you that magic is usually only good for a laugh, but it’s a fact that yesterday magic killed a good man in a terrible way.”
“Yesterday was a fluke.”
“I don’t buy it,” Lundin said without thinking, thumping his palm against the workbench. He caught sight of Kelley’s face tightening and hastily added, “Not to contradict you, Sir Kelley; and can I reiterate again how sincerely sorry I am for yesterday?”
“Yes,” Kelley said, narrowing his eyes.
“But do you know what I mean? Any of you?” Lundin gestured helplessly. “Sir Mathias. What’s the least reliable piece of gear on your suit?”
Mathias tilted his head, oily brown curls of hair spilling towards his shoulder. “I’d say the fire douser,” he decided. “Thank the Spheres we set more fires than we fight, ‘cause that thing never works right in testing.”
“Great! Exactly! Let me think, what was wrong with it last time? The nozzle kept getting clogged…”
“The spread was uneven, one of the hoses leaked, on and on and on.”
“But did we stop there? Petronauts like us? Did we say ‘well, fire dousers just fail, so keep using it just as it is and maybe there’s a one-in-a-thousand chance you’ll be able to put out a fire someday?’”
“Do you like to hear yourself talk, Mr. Lundin?” Sir Kelley said.
“Oh, the opposite,” Lundin said, his hands fluttering with nervous energy. “But, so? Is that what we say, when the douser or anything else acts up?”
“Spheres no,” Samanthi said, setting her empty beer down. “When something’s misbehaving, we find the problem and we fix it.”
“Ulraexi Pillok Mentatum Est,” Sir Mathias said, reciting a Petronaut motto. “The Mind is the Key to All Things.”
“Yes!” Lundin’s eyes lit up with gratitude. “So what if
we could fix… magic?”
There was silence. The sound of a drunk throwing up in the alley across the street wafted through the shutters like an embarrassing smell.
“Get some rest, Mr. Lundin,” Kelley said, turning for the door.
“It must have rules, Sir Kelley! Everything has rules. If we could apply the Petronaut spirit of inquiry, of reason, of perseverance, to the study of magic, maybe—” Lundin’s voice caught in his throat. “Maybe no more good men would have to die from flukes.”
The evening air was warm and heavy in the workshop, and beads of sweat were visible on Lundin’s forehead. Mathias laid a gentle hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. Sir Kelley’s voice lashed out from across the room.
“You want to learn the rules of magic, Mr. Lundin? You want to fix it? You want to apply a spirit of order to the most atavistic, chaotic nonsense humanity has ever indulged in?” Kelley’s green eyes were lit up with a cruel private joke.
Lundin swallowed. “By your leave, Sir,” he said, bobbing up and down in what looked more like a curtsey than a bow.
Kelley was on the verge of laughter, but instead nodded once and turned smartly towards the door. “Well then. Mister Lundin, we shall meet outside your shameful hovel at first light. Be prepared to travel. We are going to meet my grandfather.”
“He has a family?” Samanthi murmured to the others.
Lundin blinked. “I’m honored, Sir; but can I ask why we’re going to meet your grandfather?”
The Petronaut grinned tightly before slipping out the door and into the warm night.
“Because he’s a wizard.”
Chapter Three
A Mind Like An Ocean
“It’s just that I’ve never seen so many eyeballs,” Lundin said, gulping for air. He had his hands on his knees, and tried to beat down the queasy lump in his throat with a series of shallow breaths. “All in one place, I mean.”
“Sometimes you need eyeballs,” the old woman said evenly, her knitting needles clicking faintly against each other. Archimedia’s face was lined with age, and her hair was white, but her hands looked unsettlingly smooth and youthful, flicking with agility back and forth as she fastened the strands of scarlet wool together. Lundin gulped again at the unwelcome thought that, in addition to the glass jar of eyeballs, this married couple might have a crate of lovely female hands down in the cellar, ready to be swapped in as spares should the need arise.
Lundin tried not to look too hard at the shelves looming on all sides of the small room, laden with racks of incense, candles, jars of multicolored sand, and earthenware pots of who knew what. But since the wizards had brought it out, he forced himself to crouch and look at the jar of eyeballs centered on the low octagonal table in the center of the floor. There were the square-pupilled eyes of goats, the huge black eyes of cows, and the villainous slitted eyes of cats, suspended in heavy golden syrup. His stomach was churning like a turbine, and he breathed through his mouth. The air made him cough. Between the lingering aromas of burnt offerings in the hut, and the fishy, briny air from the Harborfront outside, each breath was like a ladleful of rancid soup.
“So… what do you do with the eyeballs?” he said, concentrating very hard on the blank pages of his scrollbook.
Tymon sighed, visibly impatient with the interview already. Kelley’s grandfather—though the two men hadn’t exchanged more than a dozen words in the half hour Kelley and Lundin had been here, let alone displayed any outward familial feeling— was sitting on a pile of cushions with his legs crossed over each in an impossible manner. Tymon was deeply tanned, with a shaved head and the thinnest eyebrows Lundin had ever seen on a man, plucked into high, sweeping curves. Braids of coarse, colorful fabric hung around his neck and sank all the way down his bare chest (visible through the tight, dirty vest) to his navel. The old man might have looked laughable, had it not been for his air of bottomless confidence and the piercing eyes his grandson had clearly inherited.
“The eyeballs are not always necessary,” Tymon said slowly and clearly, as if to a foreign child. “And when a spell calls for them, one never knows beforehand how they will be used.”
“But… if a spell calls for them, how can you not know how they’ll be used?” Lundin’s stomach was settling down, but his head was pounding from too much breathing. And from too much crazy, he thought uncharitably. He tried to keep his demeanor reasonable. “I mean, when a recipe calls for flour, you’re not going to use the flour to— to light the stove. Right?”
“Don’t be closed to possibilities,” Archimedia said without looking up.
Lundin’s laugh trailed off, and he glanced over his shoulder at Sir Kelley, standing by the door with arms crossed over his chest. The senior ‘naut was grinning like a coyote, loving every minute of this in his completely unhelpful way.
“A recipe is a wrong-headed analogy. When I say a spell ‘calls’ for something, I mean exactly what I say,” Tymon said. “The wizard is speaking to the Mobinoji throughout the spell—”
“Mobinoji; the spirits,” Lundin clarified, scuttling back through his notes.
“—and the Mobinoji call to him, offering suggestions in the moment as to best command the streams of power and keep hold of the spell.”
“So. I’m sorry, where do the eyeballs come in?”
"Sometimes you need eyeballs!" Tymon snapped. He looked directly at Kelley for the first time since they’d arrived. “This is pointless. Your servant’s mind is a pebble; small and inflexible. Understanding magic takes a mind like an ocean; expansive, and mutable.”
“What did I tell you, Mr. Lundin?” Kelley said, his eyes dancing with pleasure. “Magic takes a mind like an ocean; sloppy and full of weeds. Ready to go?”
“A Petronaut cannot learn anything new. The best his clockwork mind can hope to do is spin in circles until it rusts. Good day.” Tymon was standing now, and dismissed them over his shoulder in a flat voice. Kelley lost no time heading for the door, his boots muffled against the dirt floor.
“Mr. Tymon!”
Lundin was standing too, his fingers clenched along the edge of his notes. Slowly, the wizard turned his head to meet the technician’s eyes, cocking his head with just a trace of interest. Now that he had the old man’s attention, Lundin didn’t know what to say, but he was sure if he let his emotions keep boiling something would come out through his mouth soon enough.
“I want to understand,” was what finally escaped the stew of wounded pride, frustration, and curiosity in his belly. “I want to learn,” Lundin said, discovering the words a few seconds after they emerged.
Tymon gazed at Lundin for a long moment. Then either a breeze blew through the drafty hut, or the old wizard nodded gently. “So I see.” Tymon cradled his hands in front of his tanned, flat belly. “If my grandson can stand the sight of me a few minutes more, then, I shall explain it again. With fewer details, perhaps, this time.”
“Whatever works,” Lundin said, stylus at the ready.
“The crucial point you must understand is that magic happens only by the grace of the Mobinoji. We are vessels of their power.”
“Okay.”
“A wizard must do them due honor at the beginning of any spell; preparing the colored pentacles and designs that attract their attention; burning the sweet incense; making sure his or her own body is pure, unsullied by soaps and other modern travesties…”
“Soap and magic don’t mix?”
The question was so impossibly foolish that Tymon, a trace of hauteur creeping back into his face, refused to respond directly. “Once these preparations are complete, the wizard commences the Invocation, the first portion of any spell.”
“‘The Invocation.’ So how do you do that?”
“A thousand and one ways,” Tymon said, a tapping finger betraying his impatience. “Sometimes through chant. Sometimes through dance. Sometimes the Mobinoji may call for a totem. A statuette. A stick. A hand of earth. Even, yes, an eyeball. Each Invocation is utterly unique, and t
he wizard must be open to follow what the spell requires in the moment.”
Each Invocation is utterly unique, Lundin wrote, his heart sinking. The more he talked to the wizard, the more he knew Kelley was right. Magic was pure chaos.
“Although…”
Tymon looked over to Archimedia as she lowered her work. Something in her tone made Lundin flip to a new page. She spoke to her husband as if reminding him to empty the chamber pots: “The pingdu calabra is always spoken.”
“What’s that?”
Tymon waved a hand dismissively. “Words of connection. A prayer for access. The, uh… details, details. Archimedia, do not confuse him, his mind is skittish.”
“The words of the pingdu calabra are always spoken precisely in the Invocation, or the wizard will not bridge to the world of the Mobinoji.” Archimedia said, swinging her clouded eyes over to Lundin. “She can channel no power and the spell will never begin. If that confuses you, I hope your mother is ashamed of herself.”
“No, no, that—I think that makes sense,” Lundin said. He tossed a glance back to Sir Kelley, who was frowning with old-fashioned sourness now. Lundin took that as a sign that he was finally hearing something worthwhile. “Ma’am, do you mean to say there’s something about casting a spell that’s constant every time?”
“Several things,” Archimedia nodded.
“But they are the least interesting part of the ritual.”
“These are Petronauts, husband. They delight in the uninteresting.”
Tymon grimaced at his calm-faced wife. He raised his hands to the ceiling, thoroughly roused now. “To focus on what is constant, spell to spell, is to misunderstand the very nature of magic. Magic is about freedom; becoming one with the chaotic now; interpreting the wishes of the Mobinoji with passionate abandon in the moment.”
“And the constants keep you grounded in the middle of all that,” Lundin said, taking notes in earnest now.
