Reality's Plaything 5: The Infinity Annihilator

by Will Greenway

  “But we don’t have to go there to look around.”

  “Explain.”

  “Mother, Father, and Sen were able to set up a scrying mirror in Malbraion hall, and we were able to search pretty effectively even though we didn’t know what we were looking for.”

  “Uh hmmm,” the Queen said with an arch expression.

  “If we mix in Starholme power and a few more elders, I think we can make a divining crystal to whip all divining crystals. I’ve already asked Gaea and she’s willing to help, but I think we’ll need all our best mages to make it work… I’ve heard that you’re very good with divination magic.”

  King Jhaan tilted his head. “It’s not like there’d be many magical shields on Homeworld.”

  “No,” Kalindinai agreed. “But we need something to go by. Somebody or something that has been in contact with this mastermind—if he (or she) even exists.”

  Wren leaned close and looked down the table toward Bannor. “That’s where he comes in…”

  Return to Contents

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jhaan and I have always had only a very

  few friends, there are so few a leader can

  really trust. For more than a century Euriel

  and Vanidaar have been those friends. It is

  great honor and blessing that we found

  more whom we trust and admire, who we

  can also call friends and allies…

  —Kalindinai T’Evagduran,

  Queen of Malan

  Wren’s way with people always impressed Bannor, and her new idea with the scrying crystal proved no exception. In a matter of a few bells she had a dozen people not only willing to help, but enthusiastically involved. Even the ultra-reserved lady Elsbeth, and the frosty cool Gabriella were energetically discussing the possibilities.

  With Beia’s help, Wren had used the power of the ‘paradise space’ to set up a replica of an area she called Bronze Hall. A huge shaft of red crystal sat in the middle of the sizeable space that was filled with books, tables, crafting equipment, and all manner of alchemical supplies. Huge black slates hung on every surface, and boxes of chalk sticks were never more than a step away.

  Though he had never had much more than a passing contact with magic-users, he soon learned that, to a mage, a stick of chalk and a felt cloth could be rather like a sword and shield were to a fighter. This became evident as the brilliant minds Wren had gathered together began to debate the best way to accomplish their goal.

  Incomprehensible scribbles were fiercely scratched on the boards, argued, erased and rewritten as each participant sought to find flaw and improve whatever it was they were doing.

  He had no idea what Wren had told them, but it sure had gotten the participants fired up.

  Gaea acted as an arbitrator. While her knowledge of magic was vast, her ability to innovate with it was apparently limited. However, when asked a question of whether a given technique would work, she was invariably able to cite the strengths, weaknesses, and other aspects of that particular construction.

  Though youngsters, Cassin and Annawen also participated. They, like Gaea, acted as arbiters only in a slightly different role. The elders would call out some incomprehensible magic nonsense and either Cassin or Annawen would rapidly scribble down something in some new language that even the shaladen couldn’t translate. Whatever it was, it allowed the young Kriar to make determinations; whether an incantation was viable, or what the results of combining certain enchantments would be.

  Bannor was lost, but the mages were enthralled and obviously enjoying the purely intellectual challenge. By the time three bells had passed, Idun, Aarlen, Sindra, Drucilla, Loric, Elsbeth, Senalloy, Gabriella, Kalindinai, Dominique, Euriel, Vanidaar, Ziedra, Cassandra, and Dorian were all involved in the discussion.

  He still wondered what Wren had offered to get them so intrigued. Whatever enticement she used had made personalities work together who it was tough to make stay in the same room, much less collaborate. He knew this to be the case with Elsbeth and Aarlen. Those two could barely tolerate one another. Whatever suasion Wren used had their complete focus. While they sniped at one another, deriding mistakes, and belittling inelegant solutions, their love and fascination for magic seemed a far stronger force than their personal disagreements.

  While the whole display was little more than babbling to Bannor, he still found the enthusiasm of the researchers to be uplifting.

  A smile on his face, he watched his mother-to-be as she contributed to the efforts. Kalindinai looked happier than he had seen her in the past few score-days. Being able to work with other mages of her skill level was obviously a rare thing for her and she reveled in it. Still sitting in her floating chair, cheeks pink with energy, she engaged the others in the debate, making points and offering suggestions.

  Safely back from the intellectual fray but close enough to bring food, drinks, and other requirements, he, Wren, the T’Evagduran sisters and several of researcher’s mates sat on the sidelines observing.

  Wren had her feet up, arms folded, half drowsing, half listening. Next to her, white-haired Desiray was similarly arranged. The two of them conversed quietly, trading glib quips about the habits of magic-users and what got them excited.

  Gold-skinned Radian sat at a table, elbows propped up watching his wife, raptly admiring her every word and movement. Corim sat by Radian, a collection of books in front of him, frantically scribbling notes on parchment sheets. Occasionally, the burly warrior would stop and leaf rapidly through one of the texts, find something, nod and go back to his scribbling.

  Sarai and her sisters seemed to find Corim’s behavior amusing. Bannor thought it curious, but not funny. For himself, it was satisfying simply to be able to relax in Sarai’s company. His wife leaned her head against his shoulder and hugged his arm more tightly. After that close call on Fabrista Homeworld, he doubted he would be getting far from her unless she were sleeping or unconscious.

  Daena was kicked back with a large bowl of fat green wine-berries, munching contentedly even though they had eaten a huge meal only three bells previous. Janai reclined against her with some kind of small book in her hand.

  King T’Evagduran sat at a table next to theirs with Ryelle. The two elves had a huge stack of papers on the table between them and they seemed to be busily catching up on missed administration paperwork as they observed the Queen ‘at play’ with her new mage friends.

  As they relaxed, a thought occurred to Bannor. “Wren?”

  The blonde ascendant didn’t open her eyes. “Yes, Bannor.”

  “What happened to Vera?” he asked. “I haven’t seen her around.”

  Desiray who was also reclining with her feet up on the table, rocked back on the rear legs of the chair. “She’s hiding,” Desiray mumbled. “That whole thing with Vulcindra…” She made a growling sound.

  He frowned. “The last thing lady Vera should be feeling is shame.”

  “Mother will attend to it,” Janai said.

  “Good luck to her,” the white-haired woman said. “That girl can be so stubborn.”

  “Stubborn doesn’t even begin to capture it…” Wren murmured. “I love her like my own sister, but she can be so frustrating.”

  “Well, I’d like to see Vera get her honor,” he said. “I was in her mind. It means everything to her.”

  Sarai gave his arm a squeeze. “Mother will pay what she promised,” Sarai said.

  “Oh, I know that,” he responded. “It never even occurred to me that Kalindinai would renege.” He sighed. “The problem is she won’t accept.” Bannor shook his head. “She believes she failed the mission because Vulcindra helped.”

  “That’s silly,” Daena declared. “Even with that little token interference, she did something that was practically impossible.”

  “That might be,” Bannor returned. “She doesn’t see it that way. It’s an absolute thing to her.”

  “Mother Gaea will str
aighten it out,” Radian remarked.

  “I hope it’s soon-n-n…” Bannor’s voice trailed off as he got a chilly sensation. He realized that several of the mage researchers were staring at him.

  Kalindinai extended a hand and made a coming gesture with her finger.

  Bannor swallowed. “Wren, what did you promise them? It didn’t have anything to do with me did it?”

  Wren pursed her lips. “Well, I might have mentioned that you would be available to—ahhh—study. They are trying to do a new kind of scrying, something like what you can do.”

  Kalindinai was making a more insistent ‘come-here’ gesture.

  Bannor gritted his teeth. “Wren, I don’t want to be studied.”

  “Oh, hush, you big baby. They won’t hurt you.”

  He groaned. He did not want to be the center of attention for all those mages. He looked to Sarai for defense. “Do I have to?”

  “Go on,” she said. “It’s for a good cause.”

  “Argh,” he grumbled. He gently disentangled Sarai, pushed back and stood. He gave Wren’s chair a kick, forcing her to wobble and catch her balance. “Next time warn me before you offer me up as bloody research topic.”

  Wren just stared at him.

  He trudged over to Kalindinai who smiled at him.

  It was going to be a long day…

  ***

  Bannor’s experience being the center of attention with all the magic users of the Baronian war wasn’t as bad as he expected. Mostly they asked him questions. They showed him different kinds of magic and asked him what he saw. They also requested some simple demonstrations of the Garmtur which he did for them.

  What he finally came to understand was what Wren had motivated these powerful arcanists with. The main carrot that she promised was a tour of Starholme, some of them had already been there but they hadn’t been allowed to look around or really examine anything. The second thing was more of a pride enticement, the challenge of beating Marna and Eladrazelle to the actual motivator behind the conflict. The chance to study him as a source of inspiration was actually something she tacked on at the last instant.

  Loric finished scribbling something on a parchment and thunked the quill back into the well. He looked back to Elsbeth, Aarlen and Senalloy who were looking over his shoulder. “I think it’s time to go from theory to application. With Wren, Damay, Ziedra and Bannor to act as our anchors I think we can create a scrying tool that has the range, versatility, and power we need.”

  “What about a control mechanism?” Kalindinai said. “We haven’t had time to work that out.”

  “We use an existing item,” Loric said. “We can use one of my krillglobes. It should be more than adequate for this purpose.”

  “A krillglobe?” Idun growled. The goddess’ displeasure made the room tremble, and Bannor felt his skin prickle. “I thought the pantheon council destroyed all of them.”

  Loric shrugged. “So, if you did, I couldn’t make another?”

  “Such powers should be reserved to the firsts…” Idun said with frown.

  Loric glanced to Ziedra. “Isn’t she a first?” He glanced at Gaea. “And what about Mother—”

  “Never mind I said anything…” The pantheon lady grumbled with a roll of her eyes. “At any rate, I am interested to see what we can do with this binding we came up with, with the help of your daughters.”

  “I’m a little unclear on how this is going to work,” Bannor said. “I mean I’m willing to help, but what is this thing going to do?”

  “Well,” Ziedra said. “Wren’s original idea was to make something like what was done in Malbraion hall with the mirror. The problem is something like that isn’t strong enough. Its range isn’t enough, and it can only look where it’s directed. As some of us can tell you,” she indicated Senalloy, Dorian and a few others. “The Kriar have a power in their gates that allows the portal to search for a particular image or creature. The trouble is, we don’t know yet who or what we’re looking for. So we want to be able to do something Aarlen calls an ‘associative search’, we start with a root anchor and scry all the things related to that. That first layer of searching is your ‘floor search’ then the search branches through all the relationships those relations have, any common elements are considered leads or possibilities.”

  “That could be millions of things—millions of people.”

  “Exactly,” Elsbeth said in her cool voice, brushing back her red hair. “You see millions of threads in your sight, how do you know which ones you want?”

  He shrugged. “It’s instinct I guess.”

  She nodded. “That’s what we’ve been doing, creating a sort of instinct that will allow the magic to search through the possibilities and find promising leads the same way you pinpoint the threads you need to manipulate.”

  “Whoa,” he breathed. “It’s smart magic.”

  “Indeed,” Gaea said. “Living magic. Magic that can make autonomous decisions.”

  “Elsbeth,” Loric said. “You and Aarlen can do all the creation we need, right?”

  “Aye,” she answered. “How thick did you want the crossbar to link the coven stations?”

  Loric held up his fist. “At least as thick as my arm.” He nodded to Wren. “You would be amazed at how much she and May can generate. Make sure the grounding is really solid.” He looked around. “If the rest of you will excuse me, I will get our core component.” The gray-haired elder vanished.

  The all-mother studied area where Loric had been standing. “This should be an interesting experiment. I think I would rather like to defeat Marna’s artifices.”

  “I second that,” Elsbeth growled.

  ***

  The group followed Elsbeth out of their created study area and down a connecting corridor that opened out into a lightless void. The smells and sensations of the place they had been in faded, and the only real sensation detectable was a pulsation like that of a tremendous heart.

  After perhaps a dozen steps in the lightlessness a ray of illumination speared down onto Elsbeth’s position, casting the group in a of circle bright white light. The glow stayed with them as they continued out into the emptiness.

  “This feels familiar,” Gaea remarked, walking with her hands behind her back. She stared up to the ceiling. “I had a sense of it earlier, but all the impositions on the local reality were shrouding it. Now…” Her voice trailed off.

  “What is it, Mother?” Wren asked.

  Gaea pursed her lips. “I know this is Eternity’s Heart, and I have, in spirit, been here many times. However, my natural body is so vast that one place has always been much like another…” She touched above her breast. “Odd that I should think of it literally as my heart…”

  They walked for another few breaths. He, Sarai, and the others in their family all looked confused apparently wondering what was supposed to happen. He noticed others like Gabriella and Dorian followed with patient expressions as though nothing were out of the ordinary. What would they find out in this dark emptiness?

  “This should be far enough,” Elsbeth said. “What kind of scenery would we like as our backdrop to work in?”

  “A nice glassy lake ringed by some rolling hills, maybe a nice tall waterfall at one end,” Senalloy recommended.

  Aarlen glanced at Senalloy. She sniffed and brushed at her white hair. “A lake is good, we may all want to take a dip later. This is going to be hard work.”

  “If we’re putting in orders for features,” Dorian said, raising a hand. “Don’t forget the hot-spring!”

  Elsbeth rolled her green eyes. “How could we ever forget the hot-spring?” She tilted her head. “Although, now that you mention it… it does sound appealing.”

  Bannor wondered what all this talk was about. Scenery? Koass had mentioned that anything could be created in the paradise space. He had seen Beia make bronze hall, but what Senalloy was describing was something huge…

  Elsbeth closed her eyes and slowly swung her hand in front of her
. As the red-haired mage’s fingers panned across the darkness, color and texture faded into a view. A panorama of rolling hills backed by jagged white-topped mountains shimmered and came into focus. Trees sprung up in a green carpet of grass and low lying foliage and became a stand of old-growth scalebark. Lonely sentinel trees crowned with moss and streamers of mistletoe stood scattered through the area. A flower-scented breeze sighed in their faces making ripples on the reflective surface a large lake fringed in boulders that sparkled into being. With a distant hiss and a flare of swirling mists a tall waterfall spilled out of nothingness as a bowl appeared in the high spot of the hills, and a rock face and basin etched themselves into their view.

  Bannor turned and looked behind them. The landscape seemed to go on forever. It seemed like one of those giant world spaces they had seen on Homeworld only here Elsbeth created the space from nothing—simply by wanting it!

  “Amazing,” Sarai breathed next to him, giving voice to his thought.

  “One of the few benefits the Shael Dal get is the use of this space,” Aarlen said. “There are limits of course and safety precautions but the novelty is not something that wears off quickly.”

  “I should think not!” Kalindinai breathed. She turned around, scanning the environment. No doubt noting as he did, the feel of the warmth of the golden sun burning overhead, the smell of the grass, and the sounds of the birds.

  “This is just a pleasant backdrop to do our work in,” Elsbeth said. “We will need a nice flat solid area…” She made a scooping motion with her fingers.

  By the lakeside, a massive stone barricade grumbled into view, seeming to press up out of the soil and grass until it stood a few paces tall. Elsbeth had formed arched gate openings on each of the four sides of the enclosure that was at least two hundred paces on a side. An afterthought created a quay that led from the lakeside gate to a point about a third of the way into the water.