Key to Magic 04 Emperor

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  Shocked and uncomprehending, he tried again, but again nothing happened. When he tried to delve his brigandine, he found that he could not sense it at all. Likewise, the background ether about him seemed to have completely vanished.

  Quite suddenly, as many as a score of tall figures surrounded the platform, all dressed in the dull, monochromatic robes and jhuhngt'n of the Gheddessii. Most had numerous weapons visible, most commonly a large belt knife and a sheathed saber on the opposite hip, but several spaced evenly around the circle had spears whose blue steel tips were pointed firmly at Mar.

  He made a show of relaxing, pushed himself upright slowly, then raising his hand to show that it was empty.

  One of the Gheddessii to his left, a woman by the timbre of her voice, said, "N'ghe ch'eesg ka' si'ghe, bhen?"

  All the rest laughed uproariously. As far as Mar could tell, about an equal number of men and women (the voluminous robes and headgear made it impossible to tell otherwise) confronted him. None, however, sounded particularly friendly.

  "No move, empire man. No can get away."

  Mar rotated his head around toward the source of this newer, scratchily male, voice. The Gheddessii's Imperial Standard pronunciation was imperfect and his vocabulary rudimentary, but Mar could make it out well enough. The speaker moved closer, stopping just short of the edge of the platform, then raised a hand tanned the color of old bronze to release his jhuhngt'n. The gesture revealed the craggy, lined visage of a very old man. Around his eyes, the sun had burned his skin the same color as his hands, but his sparsely whiskered face below was just dark, with his wrinkled neck even lighter still.

  "All place here no magic for you. Bring ancestor stones from other place. Make trap here. No magic. Understand?"

  "I think so. You've built a trap for magicians, is that it?"

  "Trap for one. Only one. You. See in dream for forty year. Wait. Plan. Make trap. Learn Empire talk."

  "You set this trap for me?"

  "T’egh e’."

  "T'egh e' means yes?"

  "T'egh e' is yes. Make trap. Wait forty year for now."

  Mar felt no surprise. That some aged Gheddessii seer had planned to capture him more than two decades before his birth did not seem at all absurd. Or, more accurately, no more absurd than all the rest of his life.

  "What do you intend to do with me?"

  The tribesman shook his head in incomprehension.

  Mar tried again. "Why did you trap me?"

  "Make promise."

  "I don't understand."

  The old man thrust out a hand to point four fingers squarely at Mar. "Make promise. Let go."

  "You want me to promise something?"

  T’egh e’."

  "What do you want me to promise?"

  "Promise bring magic maker. Let go."

  "I don't know what that is or where to get it."

  "Promise."

  "I can't promise something I don't understand."

  "Go mountain from which all water comes. Magic maker there."

  "You'll let me go if I promise to bring you a magic maker from the mountain?"

  There could be no doubt but that the seer's mountain was the same that Wilhm saw in his dreams, Khavurst's mountain of ice, The Mother of the Seas.

  "T’egh e’”

  "Alright, I promise."

  "No. Touch stone. Make promise." The Gheddessii extended his right hand, open palm up. In it lay an oblong, milky white stone.

  "Magic?"

  T’egh e’."

  "The trap doesn't affect it?"

  "Trap for you. Other magic work. This magic work. Touch. Promise. Stone make keep promise."

  Mar did not immediately respond and the old man did not press him further, though he did not withdraw the stone. Mar tried to delve the talisman, but failed. It was as if he had been blinded to the ether. The thought occurred to him that he could not be sure that the condition was not permanent, but he could not decide whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing.

  For a minute or two, he considered just refusing, but had no way to judge whether the old magician's desire to have a "magic maker" would preclude him from ordering Mar's throat cut.

  Still, extending a promise to produce an unidentified object seemed not only unwise but potentially impossible, especially since failure might trigger some magical repercussion.

  "Describe the magic maker," he told the Gheddessii.

  "No understand."

  "Tell me about the magic maker."

  "Magic maker make people magic."

  "I don't understand."

  The old man shrugged.

  "How big is it?"

  "Big."

  "How much does it weigh?"

  "No understand."

  "What color is it?"

  "No understand."

  Mar blew out a disgusted puff of air, and after a moment stretched out his hand. The Gheddessii had to extend himself out over the platform so that Mar could reach the stone. It felt smooth and cool to his fingertips.

  "I promise to do my best to find the magic maker and bring it here."

  The seer looked down at the stone, frowned, then shook his head stiffly in rebuke. "Make promise right."

  Sighing, Mar said, "I promise to bring the magic maker here."

  In a wink, the color of the stone changed to orange.

  "Yhi's'tassh'sho," the old seer commanded.

  Without any delay whatsoever, four of the others bounded onto the platform, grabbed an unresisting Mar up, carried him ten paces from it, and then tossed him unceremoniously down.

  Buoyed by the suddenly functioning magic in his brigandine, he bobbled for a moment and then, with a thought, soared upwards, spinning about to see the band of Gheddessii loping away into the night with nary a backward glance.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Ten leagues beyond the mountains, the river emerged from a tree-studded sawgrass marsh that was not nearly large enough to be the source of all the water coming out of it. West of the marsh, beyond a hogback ridge, an uninterrupted dune field ran to the horizon, and no tributary was visible either to the north or south.

  "The marsh is a product of the river, not the other way around," Quaestor Eishtren, standing at the rail with nearly everyone else, opined.

  "Clearly," Telriy agreed. "But where does the water come from?"

  "Below," Wilhm answered with his customary absolute certainty.

  Ulor nodded. "He's right. The water can't come from anywhere but under the sand."

  "It cannot seep through leagues of sand and rock at a rate that would keep the river flowing as fast as it does," Lord Hhrahld ventured. "It must have a hollowed out tunnel."

  "Or one that was cut for it," Mar said. He rose from the deck. "I'll have a look."

  Telriy gave him a hard look. "You should take one of the rowboats and some of the crew."

  Without considering the consequences, he had told her about his encounter with the Gheddessii seer. That, in retrospect, had probably been a mistake. "Alright. Quaestor Eishtren, I'll need a couple of men. Good swimmers."

  "Yes, my lord king. Fugleman Truhsg, Legionnaire Kyamhyn, make ready the starboard rowboat."

  Near the center of the marsh, Mar and the two legionnaires found an open stretch of roiling dark water about a hundred armlengths across. An occasional energetic surge from below produced a wave that made the floating vegetation and cat tails at the pools edge dance slightly. Having no idea if the four armlength rowboat's shiplapped seams would still be water tight after all this time in the dry, Mar lowered it down to the surface but did not let it settle into the water, hovering a span above it.

  "Shall I dive in and take a look, my lord king?" Truhsg asked.

  Both men, native Mhajhkaeirii, had professed to being born within two hundred paces of the ocean and having learned to swim before they could walk. Kyamhyn looked a few years older than Mar and Truhsg perhaps a decade older, but both were trim and fit and Mar had no apprehension that a deep di
ve would trouble them. As soon as the rowboat had flown a sufficient distance from the skyship to maintain propriety, both legionnaires had stripped down to their smallclothes.

  "How deep can you dive?" Without legs and only one arm, Mar could no longer swim, or, at least, only poorly, but he thought that he could make his brigandine propel him through the water if need be. Not having tried it, though, he could not be sure how well the technique would work. If he managed to drown himself, Telriy would never let him hear the end of it.

  "I can do thirty armlengths with no problem."

  "Kyamhyn?"

  "Never been quite that deep, my lord king."

  Mar waved his stump at the marsh. "The rest of this is shallow, but there must be a good sized hole straight down with a current coming up. The tunnel must be more or less horizontal. All we need is an idea about which direction it runs. Both of you go together and stay together. Go down as far as you're comfortable with and then back up as quick as you can. Understand?"

  Both men chorused an affirmative, stood, and dove smoothly into the water with very little splash.

  Mar started counting seconds and at seventy-five, both men's heads bobbed back up and they sculled casually to tread water.

  Truhsg took a full breath, cleared his nose, and then reported, "We made it down to about twenty. The current is not bad strong, but the water turns real cold about there and visibility drops to nothing. The outlet looks big. I couldn't see the walls."

  "It felt like it goes down a lot farther," Kyamhyn added.

  Mar thought a moment. "Climb aboard. I'll try something else."

  As soon as the two had hoisted themselves up at the stern and moved dripping back to their seats, he told them, "This may not work. If something goes wrong, just swim to the surface. Don't worry about me."

  Both men's eyes tightened, but they just nodded.

  Whenever he had a spare moment, Mar continued to experiment with attempts to reproduce naturally occurring modulations. One of the most interesting ones that he had succeeded in copying was that which existed at the boundary between water and air. When in contact, both substances resisted intermixing, exhibiting a strong desire to cleave each to its own, and the modulation, a triple, coiled weave of peeping-gold, groaning-oxblood, and thumping-mud, had shown itself to be adaptable, have no resistance to mobility, and be inherently stable. Although he had only done what he was about to try on a small scale in a wine glass, he saw no reason why it should not work at a usable size.

  Concentrating carefully, he wrapped the rowboat in as strong a reproduction of the unique weave as he could generate, with the keel beneath his seat as its fixed center. The spell had no direct visual effect and passed air freely.

  "Here we go," He warned the legionnaires, and then made the rowboat begin to descend at a slow, steady rate.

  As the rowboat sank, the bubble that he had created began to force the swirling water aside, first making a divot and then gradually a slick walled bowl. Finding strong resistance and realizing that he would have to physically push the water aside with his bubble, he increased the magnitude of the rowboat's downward driving flux. He saw Kyamhyn grip his seat tightly as they slipped beneath the surface, the water sloshing back overhead to seal them in a perfect sphere five armlengths in diameter, but Fugleman Truhsg assumed a thoroughly nonchalant air.

  Mar paused at a depth of three armlengths and studied the integrity of his water repulsive flux. With the water coming up from below being very clear, sunlight penetrated easily, and he could see out for a good distance. A small perch swam near and ogled the bubble and its occupants with fishy curiosity.

  As if tasting the air, Truhsg took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "With the three of us, the air in here might go stale in an hour, my lord king."

  "It shouldn't take that long to check out the tunnel. We'll come right back out as soon as we determine which way it goes. Ready?"

  "We serve at your convenience, my lord king," the fugleman replied.

  "Right. Keep a look over the side, the both of you, to make sure we don't hit anything."

  The shaft went down through solid bedrock for about sixty armlengths. As Truhsg had said, after twenty the light reflected through the water began to grow wane and inconsistent and by the time the bubble reached the bottom, the interior was as dark as a night without Father Moon. With the weight of the water putting a huge pressure on the bubble, Mar had to strengthen it considerably and constantly monitor the spell. Likewise, the force of the upwelling water increased the deeper they went and he had to use a greatly amplified modulation to make the rowboat hold position.

  "I think the opening is there to the left, my lord king," Kyamhyn said, peering in that direction.

  "You've got better eyes than mine," Mar allowed. "I can't see anything at all. What's that? West?"

  "More like north-west, I'd think," Truhsg said.

  "We've got time left," Mar judged. "Want to head that way a bit? Have a look?"

  Truhsg plastered a fatalistic grin on his face. "You're in command, my lord king."

  Kyamhyn shrugged expansively. "At least the current will push our bodies back out where they can be found."

  Mar laughed. "We won't go far. I just want to see if I can learn anything about how this was made. Kyamhyn, since you can see in the dark, you take the bow."

  "Yes, my lord king." The legionnaire stood and walked carefully around Mar, gripped the stubby bowsprit, and leaned out slightly with eyes fixed forward.

  Mar turned the rowboat until Kyamhyn told him that they were aligned with the tunnel mouth and then eased toward it.

  "We're entering the tunnel now," Kyamhyn said. "It's not exactly round, I don't think. More like an egg on its side."

  After a moment or so, the legionnaire continued, "The space has opened out. I can't see the walls any more." Then, after another moment, "I think there's light up above."

  Mar stopped. "I'm going to take us up slowly. Sing out if the roof comes in view."

  Neither man gave a warning, and Mar continued to raise the rowboat. After only ten armlengths or so, the water at the apex of the bubble swirled and began to part. As soon as the bubble made contact with the open space, the air inside, warmed by their bodies, whooshed outward in a blast of spray, with chilled air from the tunnel replacing it instantly.

  Truhsg took a deep breath. "Air's fresh enough."

  There was indeed a dim light here in the space -- a good twenty to thirty armlengths -- between the surface of the underground river and the overarching rock roof. About two hundred armlengths along it, a shaft of sunlight punched down from a circular hole in the roof. Beyond that in a near perfect straight line were other shafts, equidistantly spaced as far as Mar could see.

  "Those lights must be vents," Mar said. "We should be able to find the shafts on the surface and use them to follow the river."

  Truhsg pointed up at the roof. "That rock looks like it's been melted. Something like lava. Ever seen lava, my lord king?"

  "I've read about it."

  "There's an island southwest of East Pentabyu that's just a big volcano. I saw it erupting once when I was a lad sailing with my uncle in a ketch to trade for lavender. The molten rock ran right down to the sea and boiled the water like a kettle the size of a house. When the rock cooled, it looked just like that. All smooth and glassy."

  Mar nodded. "The same people that made the cut through the mountains made the tunnel. And they didn't dig it; they used magic. It's beginning to look as if the entire river from the cataract west is manmade."

  "What was it for?" Kyamhyn wondered aloud.

  Mar shrugged. "We might find that out when we get to the source, but it's clear that they wanted to move a lot of water away from somewhere and not to somewhere. The Ice River Valley has no need of it and if they were trying to irrigate the Waste, they would have just stopped at the mountains."

  Kyamhyn swung his head about in an arc from one side of the tunnel to the other. "They're still moving a l
ot of water. There are several different high water marks. It looks about half full now, but at times the water goes all the way to the roof."

  Truhsg nodded. "Good thing it's low season."

  "Let's go down the tunnel a bit," Mar suggested. "See if there's another way out."

  There was not. The tunnel continued on without break, apparently as solid and intact as when it had been created. After half an hour, Mar gave up and turned around. Spelling another bubble and exiting through the marsh proved no more difficult than had their entrance. Back on the surface, it took them a good while to find one of the vents, since the exposed, one armlength wide opening of the shaft was only visible from directly above and the exterior looked no different from any of a thousand other naked, wind scoured rock outcroppings that sprinkled the erg. If the vents had ever had an identifiable artificial contour, it had long since eroded away. Knowing where to look, though, they quickly identified another and established a heading.

  As the rowboat flew back toward Number One, Mar mentioned, "Oh, by the way, I don't think there's any need to concern Telriy with our little trip into the tunnel."

  Both men grinned sagely.

  THIRTY-SIX

  An intense feeling of wrongness woke Mar from a dead sleep.

  Sitting straight up in bed with her knees drawn against her arms, which she had circled protectively about her abdomen, Telriy said, "We've stopped."

  "Are you and the baby all right?"

  "Yes, we're fine. Something is wrong with the ether here."

  Mar expanded he senses. As she had said, the background flux seemed out of kilter. "Help me get into my clothes and brigandine."

  With Father Moon nearly full and the Cousins in cycle to give sufficient light to navigate by, Ulor had proposed and Mar had readily approved running the skyship straight through the night. Anxious to finish the journey, Mar had again taken the helm the previous day, driving Number One to a speed as high as twenty leagues per hour, and they had flown nearly two hundred leagues from the marsh. Following the line of vents, he had expected to catch sight of Wilhm's mountain at any moment, but at dusk the Waste still stretched unbroken to the horizon.