Thief (The Key to Magic Book 7)

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  With Truhsg and the armsmen returned to the Bunker, only an hour after they had left it, and Horse grazing in a walled pasture hidden in illusion and time, Mar began enchanting.

  He cast spells to keep out the cold and the wet, spells patterned after those of the Bunker to provide light and clean water, spells to banish dust and insects, and spells to dampen the annoying echoes that tended to propagate through the stone chambers. The only place that he cast no magic was in the cellar.

  Afterwards, standing in the entranceway to take a moment of rest, he felt pleased at what had been accomplished.

  But then he frowned.

  He had done all of this to make a prison not seem a prison.

  With a final shake of his head to the empty palace, he went to fetch the archer and his cursed bow.

  SEVENTEEN

  "And all who perished at the bridge have been resurrected in Master Llylquaendt's autodoc?" the quaestor asked him, his expression revealing nothing.

  "Aelwyrd is hale and well at the Bunker," Mar replied.

  "But not all who fell in the battle?"

  Mar pressed his lips into a tight line. "Those who were there with us at the bridge and many from Number One live again, but some things are beyond the power of even the greatest of magics."

  Eishtren examined the face of the mountain, gazing with no discernable reaction at the splendid windows, exquisite door, and spacious terrace. "My lord king, may I ask, are there truly forty-nine gods?"

  "Magic does not give all the answers, Quaestor."

  "Some of them do appear absurd."

  Mar shrugged.

  "If men can be brought back from death, then there is something after death?"

  "I believe that there is more to life than this," Mar told him as he gestured at the world about with both hands. "Let me show you the inside."

  The quaestor followed, his unstrung bow still clutched in his right hand just as he had held it when they had escaped the bridge through undertime.

  Mar led him through all of the rooms, following more or less the same path that Architect Eaowaelhd had taken on Mar's inspection visits. Like those tours, this one ended up in the far back end of the cellar where Mar had had the table placed. He stopped half a dozen paces short of the table, quickly cast the non-reactive preservative spell that had taken three fortnights to perfect on the bow, and then indicated with a nod that Eishtren must continue alone.

  "I should just place it upon the table?" the archer asked him as he walked forward.

  There was no cradle or stand. Mar had wanted to eliminate every extraneous ethereal influence possible. "Yes, just there on the top."

  Without solemnity, ceremony, or reluctance, the quaestor walked to the table and put the bow at the center, then turned his back on it and rejoined Mar.

  "You cannot draw your bow or even string it," Mar commanded. "You absolutely cannot fire a shaft from it. Don't clean it. In fact, just to be safe, don't touch it at all."

  "Yes, my lord king. I shall not go near it nor cast my eyes upon it from this day forth until my penance is ended."

  Mar drew a deep breath and let it out. "I'll come to check on you from time to time. If you need anything that is within my power to provide, let me know and I'll get it."

  "I have seen that this palace is supplied with all that a man could want, my lord king. I'm sure that I will lack for nothing that could be provided for me under the restrictions of my present circumstances."

  With a last nod, Mar stepped into undertime.

  For the first two years, Mar visited every month or so. The larder and pantry needed restocking only every six months, but he inventoried both each time he came. He always found Eishtren in good spirits and looking well. Generally, he had a book in his hand or laid open on a table by his chair.

  After the first year, the quaestor began to present him with lists of the subjects that he would like to add to his library. Some of these were purely academic -- particular studies in mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy that proceeded from those that he had already read -- but many were on practical subjects that Mar had not thought to originally include -- shoemaking, carpentry, masonry, sewing, and other similarly mundane crafts. Invariably, these latter requests would also be accompanied by requisitions for the items needed to enable those skills: needles and thread, scissors, bolts of cloth, shoemaker's awls, leather sections, rawhide, and so forth.

  Mar gladly and happily supplied all that was asked.

  He never stayed overlong on these visits and Eishtren evidenced no great longing for conversation or company, giving every indication of having adapted completely to the isolation without apparent distress or discomfiture.

  In the spring of the second year, Eishtren asked Mar for seeds, harrows, rakes, and hoes for a vegetable garden. On the next visit, he admitted that he had been unable to tease a seed to sprout in the rocky soil that he had found about the mountain and asked for a good quantity of fertile loam. Mar managed the task in less than five minutes of his own time and less than a minute of Eishtren's, encapsulating a great mound of rich, black earth from the floodplain of the Ice River in a tweeting-gold flux sphere and transporting it whole through undertime. Thereafter, the archer maintained a large garden just off the terrace, year after year with only the introduction of manures and composts from time to time. This provided, in season, all the fresh vegetables that he could eat. As time went on, the garden became more productive and the surplus went into pickling jars -- another art that Eishtren learned and mastered in only a few months after requesting instructions. These instructions wound up being handwritten by a matron living at the Bunker..

  Reassured that all was going as well as could be expected, Mar visited only twice a year after the beginning of the third year.

  For Mar, the years passed as minutes, as he went directly from one visit to the next. He had decided to focus only on the archer until his millennium was done.

  For Eishtren, the years passed as years, as he lived each and every second.

  In a weird, rapid compression of normal life, Mar watched Eishtren's dark hair go grey and then white, saw his straight back become bent and then stooped, and his muscular frame become spare and then frail. The archer became less mobile, took to staying in bed longer in the mornings and turning in earlier. He let his garden go fallow, began forgetting to wash his dishes and clothes, and began to lose books in plain sight.

  In a few hours of Mar's time, the quaestor became a very old man.

  In the forty-third year of Eishtren's exile, Mar started taking quick peeks at each day. On a Fourthday in Third Springmoon, he found the archer dying upon his bed.

  He rode Horse directly from undertime into the archer's bedroom.

  Light barely stirred in Eishtren's eyes when Mar enchanted the bed and had it hover. He did not stir at all and his breath was so shallow that it was almost imperceptible.

  "Alright, Horse. Let's go. To the Bunker." He did not bother with the reins. Horse knew the way. The bed followed like a faithful hound.

  Expecting reproach, Mar had not taken the time to inform Llylquaendt of his plans, but when they appeared in the Bunker's lowermost chamber, between the rows of stasis coffins and the glass-walled autodoc, the ancient Pyraii made no demonstration or complaint, though he did give Horse a curious look. Dutiful as always to his calling, he mutely waited until Mar had dismounted and tied Horse out of the way to a protruding stanchion, then helped the thief transfer Eishtren from his bed to the autodoc pedestal. As soon as the device had closed, the medic studied the lights scattering through the glass for several moments, then turned a stern, not quite disapproving, expression upon Mar.

  "This is the archer, is it not? I am sure that I can see Eishtren's strong features behind the years. What sort of wizardry has done this to him?"

  "It wasn't wizardry. Not directly, anyway. He's lived most of a half century since you last saw him."

  "Wizardry all the same," Llylquaendt said with a grimace. "The equi
pment will bring him back from death, but it cannot reverse the aging. A tailored sprite infusion could help with that to some extent, but I don't have the facilities or components here to accomplish that. I can give him a standard temporary sprite load, but he must be in a clear enough mental state to give informed consent."

  "That won't be necessary. At the beginning of this, I memorized the exact state of the flux modulations present in his younger body. When you make him strong enough, I'm going to reformulate the modulations as they exist now to conform to that template."

  A flash of shock raced across Llylquaendt's face. "In other words, you are going to tear him down to nothing and then put him back together. Will he survive that?"

  "If he doesn't, I'll bring him back to be revived and then I'll try again."

  "The autodoc is just technology, Mar! It cannot perform miracles!"

  Unflinching, Mar told him, "This is necessary."

  Llylquaendt shook his head. "It is always found necessary for empires to grind men down into dust."

  "Your father said that?"

  "No, Emperor Plhedhes of the Glorious Empire of the North said it in 711 AFE. He barely earned a footnote in later histories."

  Mar looked Plhedhes up later. Historians had dubbed him the Temporary Emperor. His own guards hanged him from a chandelier in his palace, ostensibly for his failure to make war upon the Brigands of the Brass Coast. His reign only lasted three months and he had been considered a coward by contemporary commentators.

  Llylquaendt was silent for a moment. Then, he asked, "When will you be done with the archer? I have met his wife and children here. They've talked to the other wives and children and expect you to bring him back to them just as you have all the other fathers and husbands."

  "He must serve for nine more centuries."

  The medic's eyes went wide. "I often wonder if you have too much power, Mar."

  "I often wonder if I have enough."

  Tones from the autodoc drew Llylquaendt away and thereafter the ancient Pyraii puttered about without speaking. The ether suggested that the medic had decided that he did not wish to learn any more concerning Mar's work.

  Eishtren came out of the autodoc still a frail old man, but he was alert and Mar could tell that the failing heart that had nearly ended his life had been repaired. When the archer stood, he once again displayed his usual aplomb.

  "Master Llylquaendt, I thank you for your aid."

  "You are very welcome, Quaestor." Llylquaendt did not smile.

  Eishtren turned to Mar. "I am ready, my lord king."

  Mar had told the archer everything, including the fact that he had not yet mastered the spells that were intended to make him young again.

  "My experiments have not shown me a way to remove all the pain."

  "My lord king, that is irrelevant, is it not?"

  "I am concerned that you may ... thrash about. It might disrupt the adjustment of the modulations."

  "Perhaps I should drink myself into a stupor?"

  Llylquaendt made a rude noise. "There is no need for anything so clumsy! Give me a moment." The medic took a tan and jade mottled bag from a cabinet, opened it, and began to rifle through it. After another moment, he withdrew a folded lace square and handed it to Eishtren.

  "This is a sedation mask," the medic explained. "Lie down and place the cloth over your mouth and nose. Under normal circumstances, you would activate the sedative yourself by counting backwards from six. However, since you would have to count in Common and possess a minimum basic magical aptitude, it will be necessary for me to use the override phrase."

  The quaestor looked to Mar for approval.

  "It would be better if you were not aware of the process, I think."

  "Shall we do it here?" Eishtren asked, gesturing at the autodoc platform.

  "By all means do it here," Llylquaendt proclaimed, waving his hands for emphasis. "It will save time if the magic kills you."

  Mar nodded, and Eishtren climbed back onto the slab and draped the lace as Llylquaendt had indicated. The latter walked briskly up to him and said in the ancient tongue, "Sedation commence, authorization raven candle seven."

  At once, the quaestor's eyes drooped, then within seconds slid closed. His breathing slowed and became that of a man in a deep sleep.

  "He won't awaken in the middle, will he?" he asked Llylquaendt.

  "You could cut off all of his limbs and he would not wake."

  Mar began.

  The flux manipulations required for the transformation were extensions and expansions of the methods that he had developed to regrow his own limbs, but these required a deeper focus and more precise divination of the ethereal components. He had learned that each major component of the body flux system must be transformed as a complete unit. His experiments with smaller divisions had not had viable results.

  He dealt with the bones first.

  Eishtren's entire body trembled for the instant it took to rebuild his skeleton into its former more dense and stronger version. Once the corrections had stabilized, he waited a moment, then continued.

  The blood was easier.

  The muscles were harder.

  Heart, lungs, and entrails took longer.

  The skin took the longest.

  The hair and fingernails were a minor afterthought.

  Throughout the process, parts of Eishtren's body would shift or spasm or become ephemeral. Muscles would fire of their own accord, twitching limbs briefly, and occasionally blood would ooze through his skin.

  Then it was done.

  "You can wake him now," Mar told Llylquaendt.

  "You're done? That was hardly thirty minutes." The medic went to the archer's side and pronounced, "Sedation end, authorization raven candle seven bear eleven."

  Eishtren sat up and moved a few steps away from it. His tread was light and his movements sure.

  To Mar's eyes and magical sense, the process had succeeded. The wrinkles and the grey were gone and the muscle mass and vigor were back. The archer looked identical to his younger self, even down to the scrapes, scratches, and incidental minor wounds that he had received during the defense of the bridge.

  "How do you feel?" Mar asked him.

  The quaestor looked thoughtful, then smiled. "Like myself."

  "How is your memory?" Llylquaendt asked. "Any gaps or missing time periods?"

  "I think not. I remember the lace mask and the autodoc. My travel here is foggy, but then so was I. I remember being old and growing old. I remember the bridge and the fall of Mhajhkaei. I remember the faces of my wife and children."

  "Stand still a moment," the medic commanded. He placed a large stone that Mar could see was the Vessel for a very complex spell in his palm and circled about Eishtren, tapping the stone with a fingernail in a slow, regular cadence.

  When he finished the circuit, he judged, "You are well and everything appears in order."

  "Once again, my thanks, Master Llylquaendt.

  "It's time to go," Mar told the quaestor, then turned to Llylquaendt. "Unless there's a problem, we'll be back in ten minutes and then every ten minutes after that until it's done."

  Llylquaendt sighed. While he clearly disliked the thought of healing the archer only to see him be cast again between the millstones of Mar's purpose, he was not the sort of man that would deny anyone for any reason the full extent of his training and skill.

  "I will stand ready."

  EIGHTEEN

  In the one hundred and eighth year of his exile, the archer requested a forge, charcoal, and steel.

  "I have read through all of the books twice over and I wish to turn my time to a more active occupation. I fancied the blacksmithing trade when I was a little boy, and with your permission I would like to give it a go."

  "There can be no one to teach you and I know nothing about it."

  "Yes, my lord king. My intention is to rediscover all of the techniques and skills of the trade by trial and error."

  "That will take yea
rs."

  Eishtren smiled. "Of those I have a more than adequate supply."

  This effort consumed Eishtren for nearly a century.

  After nine years of labor interrupted only by sleep and meals, Eishtren informed Mar that he has mastered the hammer. He had learned to reliably turn out excellent horse shoes (he had re-shoed Horse), gears, pawls, hinges, iron fencing, spear heads, brackets, braces, nails, spikes, square plate, wagon wheels and other parts, the skyship fittings that he had been able to remember, bulky steel locks, chains, rods, bars, stirrups, and so on and so forth. Aside from a few items that had found practical use about the palace, most of the hundreds upon hundreds or forgings that he produced went right back into the crucible to be cast into pig iron for the next project.

  Then, the archer decided to advance his skills in a new area.

  "I am of a mind to turn to weaponsmithing, my lord king. The best swords are made of folded steel and the standard technique for producing that requires three or four apprentices wielding sledges in exact rhythm. As I may not have apprentices to assist me, I would like to construct as a substitute an apparatus such as I saw at a mill once. It had six trip hammers driven by the waterwheel and was used to forge large flat plates. I am confident that I can devise and construct the apparatus, but will need your aid to power it."

  "You want a stream and a millwheel? It's doable. I've had an idea for a sort of aqueduct made of flux that would pass through undertime. I think I could channel as much water as a large stream on a continuous basis."