“Particularly if it is something they can use,” Elyria said. The Interventionists intervened on a grand scale, but there were plenty of case studies of smaller interventions that hadn’t worked out properly. One of them had been a rogue citizen introducing new technology into a primitive society. The results had been disastrous for the locals. “But if we don’t understand the limits of their abilities...”
She shook her head. “It will be weeks before we can move down to the planet’s surface,” she added, firmly. Half the team wanted to go at once – and she had to admit that she shared their feelings – but they had to make sure that they were capable of passing for locals. There would be plenty of time to practise speaking the local language, including making sure that their accents were perfect. The locals didn’t even seem to have different accents! “We will have to prepare very carefully first.”
“There’s another possibility,” Gigot said, carefully. “Why don’t we just ask them how their powers work?”
Her voice tightened. “They know something we don’t,” she added. “We could show them what we can do and offer to trade.”
“Too dangerous,” the XO said, finally. “We don’t know what they could do to us.”
CHAPTER
NINE
The lighting spell was both simple and hideously complex. Simple, because Joshua had been able to perform it within a week of taking up his apprenticeship; complex, because it required constant care and attention to prevent it from destabilising and collapsing back into nothingness. The first time he’d done the spell, it had shattered two minutes later and Master Faye had laughed at him. Later, he’d learned how to hold it stable for nearly an hour, with the right level of discipline. It hadn’t been until much later that he’d realised the spell exercises had helped prepare him for tougher spells.
He smiled as the spell structure grew more and more complex, casting flickering pulses of light all over the training room. Balancing it all was difficult work, but it was rewarding – and besides, it was something he could use to impress people. Once the spell was up and running, it drained very little of his personal power to keep it going. He reached out carefully and twisted it with his mind. The light took on the shape of a massive snake and started to glide around the room.
Joshua, his master said, in his mental voice, come to my study. Now.
Yes, master, Joshua sent back. I’m on my way.
He banished the lighting spell and stood up, unable to suppress a twinge of unease. His master’s study was normally closed to him, protected by spells that glittered with lethal energy every time he moved close to the wards. He’d only been into the study twice, both times for a thrashing after overstepping the limits Master Faye had set for him. It was impossible to resist the feeling that he was in trouble... but for what? He hadn’t done anything he shouldn’t have done and he’d even remembered all of his chores.
Master Faye’s study was a big room, large enough to hold a desk, two chairs and two massive bookcases crammed with books. Joshua had learned to read at an early age – his father had insisted – and he’d worked his way through many of the standard magical textbooks, but he’d been warned never to try to read books from his master’s private collection without permission. They could be very dangerous if read by the unwary. Part of Joshua wondered if his master intended to keep a few secrets from his apprentice, but there were legends about magicians who read the wrong book without proper precautions. Some of them ended up dead, or wishing they were.
His master was bent over a bowl of water, peering down into it with an intent expression that allowed Joshua to relax, slightly. He wasn’t in trouble for anything. Master Faye pointed to one of the chairs and Joshua sat down, knowing better than to interrupt his master in the middle of a spell. A moment later, Master Faye muttered a rude word loudly enough for Joshua to hear and straightened up. The bowl of water, steaming slightly, was left to cool down.
“We were being watched,” Master Faye said, flatly.
Joshua stared at him. “By who?”
“By whom,” Master Faye corrected, with a hint of impatience. Precision was important in magic, so he enforced it in everything. “And I do not know.”
“Oh,” Joshua said. He stared at his master. “A Scion?”
“I do not know,” Master Faye said. “The warning spells activated, but I have been unable to trace the spying spells back to their caster. I have been unable to even sense their presence.”
Joshua hesitated, thinking hard. Warning spells were very generalised, because one designed to deal with a specific threat might miss other threats. The downside of a spell intended to alert Master Faye to someone watching him was that it couldn’t tell him how someone was watching him. Spying spells were subtle magic, but a magician with nearly fifty years of experience should have been able to detect them, and then locate the caster. A spell that Master Faye couldn’t sense...
He frowned as a question occurred to him. “Are they peering inside the house?”
“I do not believe so,” Master Faye admitted, “but it is difficult to be certain.”
“Oh,” Joshua said, again. “If the house isn’t safe...”
Magicians spied upon each other frequently, in the hopes of discovering a weakness that could be used against their enemies – or their friends, as magicians rarely had true friends. Scions spied on Pillars, looking for opportunities to take their bailiwick for themselves; Pillars watched nearby Scions, fearing what might happen if the Scions became ambitious. There was no shortage of blocking spells, and of magicians trying to find ways to defeat the blocking spells... if someone had cracked Master Faye’s defences, it boded ill for the future.
“I have reinforced the defences,” Master Faye assured him, “as well as casting other warning spells around the city. My conclusion is that someone is spying on all of Warlock’s Bane, rather than just us. It is really rather curious.”
Joshua could see his point. Everyone knew that the local Pillar was the master of the city, the unquestioned ruler of his bailiwick. There was little point in spying on the city; if the spy wanted the city, he would have to overcome the Pillar. The only reason he could think of for spying on the city itself was to decide if the city was worth taking... unless the spy had grubbier motives in mind. Joshua’s first transgression against Master Faye’s rules had been something very grubby indeed.
“That is a possibility,” Master Faye agreed, when Joshua had outlined his thoughts. “There isn’t supposed to be a Scion near the city, at least not inside the borderline, but if he is advanced enough to master spying spells, he may be advanced enough to avoid detection.”
“Perhaps we should go hunting,” Joshua said. It had been a long time since he’d walked out of the city and through the farmland that provided most of the city’s food supplies. “See what we find...”
Master Faye lifted his eyebrows. “Are you that eager to die?”
Joshua flushed. He was an apprentice – and anyone capable of worrying Master Faye was, at the very least, a qualified magician. If he happened to find the mystery magician, he’d be lucky if he were merely killed. There were stories about what happened to people who picked a fight with more powerful magicians, none of which ended well.
“I feel that our opponent will spend more time spying on us before making his move, if he does make his move,” Master Faye said, when Joshua said nothing. “That gives us some time to prepare. Are you willing to stay with me?”
“Yes,” Joshua said, quickly. In truth, the whole prospect of being involved in a duel scared him, but he wasn’t going to abandon his master. Besides, where could he go? The newcomer would kill him, if he managed to kill Master Faye. “What do you want me to do?”
Master Faye nodded to the bowl of water. “For a start, I need your energy,” he said, flatly. “There’s a ritual I want to try.”
At his command, Joshua knelt on one side of the bowl, holding his hand out over the water. Master Faye produced a small knife,
make a quick cut in Joshua’s hand and allowed the blood to drip into the water, before making a cut in his own hand. Their blood mingled together as they linked hands, Joshua trying hard to clear his mind. Linking magic together was difficult enough without stray thoughts contaminating the spell.
“Brace yourself,” Master Faye said. Joshua felt his master’s magic surging out to clash with his, and then meld them together. “Here we go...”
Master Faye started to chant the spell, focusing his mind on the water. Joshua could feel the magic boiling around them, growing stronger and stronger as the chant grew louder. There was a sudden wave of heat from the water, a series of images flashing across its surface, and then the entire bowl flashed into steam. Joshua yelped in pain as their hands separated, sending him tumbling backwards. The bowl cracked and shattered with terrifying force, scattering fragments everywhere. Master Faye grunted and picked himself up, blood dripping from his temple.
“Master!” Joshua said. “You’re bleeding!”
“I’ve had worse,” Master Faye assured him. He didn’t sound shaken, thankfully. A quick spell closed the cut and cleaned up the blood. “I’ve never seen anything like that happen before.”
Joshua nodded. Using water to spy was easy; it was already partly reflective, so all the magician had to do was cast a simple spell. The water grew warmer, but he’d never seen the bowl actually explode, even when he’d been trying to test his defences. Whoever had cast the protective spells had done a remarkable job.
“Yes,” Master Faye said. Joshua flushed. He hadn’t realised that he’d been broadcasting until his master had pointed it out. “We are facing a very unusual opponent.”
“Yes, Master,” Joshua agreed. “What do we do now?”
“We start adding other wards to the gates,” Master Faye said. “And then we start preparing our ground.”
***
Like almost every city on Darius, Warlock’s Bane was protected by a massive wall intended to keep out unwanted visitors. Joshua had questioned the point of it when he’d learned what magic could do, pointing out that a Scion could simply knock down the wall with a powerful blasting spell. Master Faye had countered by explaining that any Scion who wasted power blasting his way through the wall could be handled easily, if caught before he had time to recover. The walls were charmed to make it difficult for magic to knock them down, forcing any intruders to come through the gates, where they would be easily detected.
Joshua strode up towards the gate, remembering playing nearby as a child. The guardsmen had often shouted at the children to go away, either because they thought that the kids were distractions or because they were simply nasty bastards. Joshua’s father had certainly never had any good things to say about the City Guard. Now, he was Master Faye’s apprentice and the guardsmen deferred to him. It was a heady feeling, or it would have been if he wasn’t worrying about a mystery magician. Their unknown enemy could be lurking outside the city, watching him.
It was a chilling thought. Master Faye had spells running through the city to inform him if anyone – like Joshua – developed magic, but outside the city such spells were often unreliable. Joshua’s own magic sense was undeveloped, yet he was sure he was being watched... or was it simply his paranoia, after Master Faye had told him of their predicament? Shaking his head, he walked into the gate and stopped under the archway, looking for the perfect place to hide Master Faye’s charmed marble. Any magician who entered the archway would be detected at once.
Carefully, he pressed it into the stone and applied a simple sticking charm to ensure that it would stay there. It wouldn’t be undetectable, but Master Faye had claimed that that wouldn’t matter, not when the magician would expect them to set up traps for him. Joshua stepped back, admired his handiwork and then looked outside, towards the hills in the distance. They were just outside Master Faye’s jurisdiction, popularly believed to be inhabited by monsters and foreigners. It was quite possible that a Scion was hiding in the hills, watching their every move.
“There’s a merchant convoy coming,” one of the guards called. “Do you want to be there when we inspect it?”
Joshua hesitated. Like everyone else his own age, he loved seeing the merchants – and Master Faye hadn’t told him to head straight back home. He could stay; his master would summon him mentally if he were needed. Smiling, Joshua nodded and walked out of the arch, heading over to the guardhouse. A line of dusty wagons was approaching the city from the north. One by one, the carts passed through the arch and into the city, without triggering the sensor. Joshua let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. The strange magician could easily have been hiding in the wagons.
The guardsmen invited the drivers to disembark and wait in a nearby building while they searched the wagons. None of the drivers, or their families, seemed very happy about it, but Master Faye forbade the guards to steal from the city’s visitors. If he had allowed it, he’d told Joshua once, the city would soon have had no visitors at all. Joshua caught sight of a red-haired girl being helped out of a wagon by her father and felt a sudden surge of heat, before pushing the feeling aside. Maybe he could ask her for a drink later, but his main priority was the mystery magician.
He watched the brief and efficient search of the wagons, before walking off back to Master Faye’s house. The Pillar had been working on the wards; Joshua felt their expansion a long time before he actually crossed them. Master Faye had explained that making some of the wards obvious allowed them to serve as a warning, while concealing the full nature of the hidden wards from a casual visitor. But anyone who managed to survive and prosper as a magician would be smart enough to check for other surprises before they tried to break into the house.
Inside, Master Faye was eating a large meal provided by one of the servants, clearly famished after his hard work. Joshua took a seat facing his master, who looked deeply worried. He’d seen more of the strange images in the water before it exploded into steam and, whatever they were, they had puzzled him. The spell should have worked perfectly – it had felt like it was working perfectly – and yet the images they’d seen had made no sense.
“Take some meat,” Master Faye said, between bites. He’d ordered Joshua to eat plenty every day, reminding him that he would need energy for magic. Joshua had never eaten so well at his father’s house. “And make sure you eat your vegetables.”
Joshua scowled, but obeyed. “I saw a new merchant convoy,” he said, as he piled the stew into a bowl and took a slice of bread to go with it. “There was no sign of a magician.”
“He would probably not deign to travel with his inferiors,” Master Faye said. “Unless he’s one of the few Scions who can tolerate the company of Minors as anything other than slaves. But that is very rare...”
“I won’t turn out like that,” Joshua said. “I was born to a Minor family...”
“And don’t you ever forget it,” Master Faye said, flatly. “You’d be astonished at how many other magicians pretend that they were born to magical parents. If we accepted all of the claims, we’d have far more magicians than we actually do.”
Joshua had to smile. Magicians passed down magic to their children, who tended to manifest it in infancy. Their children often became warped by the power, if they didn’t accidentally kill themselves through sheer ignorance. It was one of the reasons magicians were not supposed to indulge themselves too much with women. Or get pregnant, if they were females. Magic did odd things to children.
Master Faye had told him a story about a female Scion who had known she would never be powerful enough to seize a bailiwick for herself. She’d found the most powerful magician she could and convinced him to give her a child. Master Faye had added at that point that one version of the story claimed that she’d actually mated with a demon, but that should have been impossible. The child had been born, yet as he matured he turned into a spoiled brat with far too much power to be safe. Eventually, several Pillars had been forced to work together to kill him be
fore it was too late. He’d never learned the maturity that came with age and experience.
And the stories of what he’d done, first out of curiosity and then out of malice, had been truly terrifying.
“We will be practising defence drills this afternoon,” Master Faye said, as he finished his stew and started peeling himself an orange. “I will be expecting you to master all kinds of charms very quickly. It might prove a distraction at the right moment.”
Joshua shuddered. Master Faye had pushed him hard, but he knew that he was no match for a Scion. The last time he’d invited his master to a duel, when he’d learned a few spells and wanted to show off, he’d been simply turned into a frog for an hour. His defensive spells had been very basic, as Master Faye had pointed out later. Any half-trained magician would know their weaknesses and how to get around them. Joshua hadn’t even lasted a minute and he’d been left with an uncomfortable impulse to snap flies out of the air for several days afterwards. The mystery magician might be far less merciful to an arrogant young brat who thought he knew magic.
“Yes, Master,” he said, reluctantly. “I’ll do my best.”
“See that you do,” Master Faye said, but he was smiling as he said it. “And afterwards, you might want to go and visit your family.”
“My siblings are scared of me,” Joshua said. His father hadn’t been much better. He had wanted Joshua to use his influence – as if he had any – to help his business. “But my mother would like to see me.”
He felt cold. Master Faye seemed to be expecting the worst. He could die – and his killer wouldn’t leave his apprentice alive. There were enough stories about apprentices avenging their masters to convince him that it would be a bad idea. Joshua might only have a few days to live. He swallowed at the thought and looked over at his master.
Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows) Page 9
