by Lyndon Hardy
“Melizar’s apprentice.” Jemilor waved away the words. “I want you to promise me now. He is most eager to take on all who will follow his direction without question. Do as he says and you may yet serve my memory with pride.”
“But who is he and where is he from?” Jemidon asked. “I want his secrets, yes, but what is his ultimate intent?”
“He fights to overthrow Kenton and his barony,” Jemilor replied. “That is enough recommendation for me. Promise me, Jemidon. Without that, I will not rest in peace.”
“You will feel much better in the morning,” Jemidon said. “And I do not think that the strange one will accept kindly one who sent magic swords swinging through his plans in the grotto.”
“Promise me,” Jemilor insisted. “After all that has passed, do not deny me one last kernel of hope.”
Jemidon looked again into his father’s pale face. He sighed and placed his hand on the older man’s shoulder. “It is not that I have not tried, Father. Believe me, I want the robe as much as you.”
“We could have served him both together today,” Jemilor said. “Setting up the lantern and stretching the sheets you would have found easy enough to do. And your arms are yet strong and your reactions quick. Who could say what the difference might have been as we raced for the protection of the tent?”
“I am a man, full-grown,” Jemidon said. “The quest I pursue is now my own.”
“Your own?” Jemilor turned his head away. “Was it for that that your sister gave you the coin?”
Jemidon rose and stretched. His father had long since fallen into a fitful sleep. And he had made up his mind. Whatever caution his instincts threw in the way could not stand against the logic of everyone else’s counsel. Slowly he climbed the distance to the crestline. Puffs of air skittered around his ankles as he approached the tent. The flicker of candlelight escaped from the hem of the canvas as it danced over the uneven ground.
At the tentflap, Jemidon reviewed what he planned to say. Perhaps stressing what he already knew would be best. He believed in the Postulate of Invariance, even if no one else seemed to give it great weight. Besides, ferreting out the secrets was no longer to be his intent. Despite his reservations, he would ask to be taught. He would find out by direct explanation, rather than by deduction, what he needed to know. He would learn the means to become a master and to cast off at last the burdens that pushed him on.
Nervously, Jemidon fingered the brandel about his neck. He felt the uneasiness in his stomach begin to grow. He could sense how the discomfort would increase as he drew closer to the cold one inside the tent. He did not want to enter, or to offer assistance, when deep inside he felt a distrust that no argument would chip away. Somehow in the end, their objectives could never be the same. But he thought of his father sleeping restlessly down the slope and of Canthor’s advice given with no hidden bias. Against their words, he had only vague feelings to argue himself away. Cautiously he pushed aside the flap.
Melizar slowly turned as Jemidon looked inside. “Yes, what more does Ocanar want? I have given him the explanation. It must have been a great attempt at sorcery on the island. Probably far more powerful than this world has ever seen. So great that even here, the intensity was strong enough to force the animation to be the least contradiction. The effect varies as the cube of the distance. It is not my concern if he refuses to understand.”
Jemidon tightened his arms around his stomach to quiet the rising discomfort. He saw that the interior of the tent looked much as it had on Morgana. Two small candles provided most of the light. The flap leading to the rear chamber was closed. The now-familiar lattice leaned against one of the supporting poles. Delia’s counter was gone. On the bare ground, Melizar had been studying his drums and weights. Except for the buzz of the imps about the cold one’s head, there was no other motion.
“You have worked with others before,” Jemidon said. “Drandor the trader and Holgon the magician. Do you have available the position for yet another apprentice?”
Melizar glided forward until he stood directly facing Jemidon. A slender hand jutted from the flowing robe and poked Jemidon in the shoulder. A wave of intense cold that numbed his arm sent a shiver down his back. He looked from the darkly painted nails, up the draped arm, to the cowl that hid everything but reflections of the candlelight in deep-set eyes.
“But more important than that,” Jemidon blurted, “who are you? From where do you come?”
“Inquisitiveness is not the mark of a good follower,” Melizar replied as the cowl moved closer in the dimness. “Obedience is the virtue that will garner the greater reward.”
“Even if the reward is knowledge?” Jemidon asked.
“Even if the reward—” Melizar stopped and studied Jemidon’s face. “I have seen you before,” he said at last. “You were the one who tried to imitate the magician in the grotto.”
“That is in the past and does not matter,” Jemidon said quickly. “We now work for a common cause. Teach me more of the Postulate of Invariance. I wish to learn.”
“The Postulate of Invariance! Who told you of that?” Melizar asked softly. “The demon swore on his eggclutch that it was only me and my manipulants. None of the rest were able to follow.”
“I deduced it from what I have seen,” Jemidon answered. “Sorcery deactivated and another craft in its place.” He paused and wrinkled his forehead. “Only now it seems the pendulum has swung back the other way. The Rule of Three possesses vigor. Even Canthor was able to use it to delude the royal troops. No doubt that was why they were able to march through the animations on your side of the pass. They saw only a clever lantern show with no power to enchant.”
“Of course,” Melizar said slowly. He grabbed the cube at his waist and fondled it with his fingertips. “The sorcerer with the deceit that his powers were still whole. I had dismissed him entirely. He must have tried a glamour in the battle, just before the animation was to begin. Not many leagues, but only yards away. I was close enough for the shift to take place.”
Melizar paused, head bowed for a moment, and then turned his attention back to Jemidon. “But the words would not be enough. Merely mouthing the charm without producing the effect does not give any contradiction.”
Jemidon frowned, trying to follow the train of Melizar’s thoughts. “It was the Song of the Shifting Sands,” he said, “and Canthor threw a handful of dirt into the face of an assailant as he spoke.”
“As simple as that.” Melizar’s voice took on a soft tinkle, like that of a delighted child. “I need not embellish my original plan. There is not some great sorcerer against whom I must pit the excuses for masters that I have. A simple animation will be more than enough to make the charms down the slope the smaller contradiction.”
Melizar waved his arms at the drums. “The surface is merely dimpled. Two weak glamours, at most three or four. I will awaken Drandor to perform the animation and another to witness the effect. It will be enough within the confines of the tent.”
“My apprenticeship,” Jemidon said as Melizar started for the rear chamber. “You have not yet answered to the reason why I have come.”
“The Postulate of Invariance is not the concern of any manipulant,” Melizar said. “To him, such information is utterly of no use. And the fact that a metalaw holds interest for you harms, rather than abets, your suit. Wait patiently. I will decide your fate when the more important task is done.”
Jemidon frowned as Melizar disappeared behind the flap. For a moment, he debated whether or not he should follow. But before he could decide, the strange one returned, stroking the cube at his side.
“They will be fully awakened in a moment,” Melizar said. “Time enough for the part that I must perform.” He unlatched the cube from his waist and began to twist it as he had done the day before.
Jemidon started to reply, but suddenly he felt the queasiness in his stomach grow and he sagged to the ground. Once again, his thoughts began to take off on their own, running through
chains of discordant logic that he could not control. Events and random facts danced in his head. Pieces of the puzzle, all perceived at once, somehow fitted into a coherent whole. Morgana, the center of sorcery, on the night of celebration before the awarding of the prize… Pluton and the vault in the grotto—taking away tokens and then adding to them with more… Stopping the pumps before Holgon worked his transformation with the dove… The rebellion in the wheatlands—Melizar’s being delighted that thaumaturgy was so strong, after he had told Ocanar that his goal was for it to stop…
The mental brew frothed and bubbled, growing in intensity and carrying Jemidon farther and farther away from where he willed. He imagined a box of secrets with the lid cracking open and the scent of its delights swirling out, to mix with the other experiences he had witnessed along the way.
Through glazed eyes, he watched Melizar finish his ritual with the cube. Dimly and uncertainly, he perceived someone—Drandor, perhaps—manipulating what might have been animated projections. But as before, the scenes blurred in streaks of light and dark. He felt as if he were on some great beast, charging across a featureless plain, or like the shot of a catapult arcing across the sky, a monolith of energy that crushed whatever was in its way. He cried out, trying by sheer will to force the plummet to stop. The last of his senses whirled into incohesion.
Then, after an indefinite time, and with a lurch that shook his body in a giant convulsion, Jemidon darted his eyes open. The feeling that had built so intensely was just as suddenly gone. Everything was clear and in focus. All senses were restored. From outside the tent, he heard a cry of pain and, following that, another louder than the first. Instantly he knew what had happened. “Sorcery again is gone,” he mumbled. “Canthor’s soothing charms are no more.”
He looked quickly around the tent, hoping to see what he wanted. “Delia!” he exclaimed as her slender form caught his eye. He felt his heart race with a surge of pleasure. “You are here, as I suspected. And Drandor—”
Jemidon stopped short as he looked more closely at the trader, now standing beside a small lantern and a scatter of transparent images on the floor. One arm dangled at his side, flat and shapeless, like an empty glove. His face sagged to the side, lips curving down to where the firm line of the jaw should have been; the cheek was only a loose bag of flesh.
Jemidon’s eyes darted back to Delia and scanned her body from head to toe, searching for additional disfigurements. But except for the vacant stare produced by the animation, she was apparently whole. She wore the same gown in which he had seen her last. A band of iron still circled her left wrist. He let out his breath and finally looked back at Melizar as the strange one put away his cube.
“What has happened to him?” he asked, pointing at Drandor. “Was he exposed to the fighting as well?”
“My helpers, my manipulants,” Melizar responded, accenting the last word. “No, they are too precious to waste in such a manner. But negligence cannot go unpunished.” He swept his arm in Delia’s direction. “This second one should never have been allowed to get away. Nor did the pets I gave him thrive under his care.”
“By all the laws,” Drandor slurred, “stop him before he does more. The cave beneath the tent, the sleepers, the sucking! I can feel the dissolving inside. Stop him before there are more.”
“Silence,” Melizar commanded. “Silence, or the manipulants shall have fresh marrow before it is needed.” He turned and faced Jemidon. “You spoke of apprenticeship. There is more than one way that you can serve.”
Jemidon rose groggily to his feet. Something significant had just happened. It was another fact to add to the other thoughts that his insides insisted were important. “Your sorcery with the animations,” he said. “Now it has the basis of law, and not the other.”
“This woman was the first to experience it,” Melizar said. “The enactment was simple, but it was sufficient to tip the scales.”
Another moan pierced the canvas walls of the tent. Jemidon thought of what it must be like to have pain suddenly return. The first crisis must have been in surprise as much as in anguish. As Melizar said, a simple performance of the animation and then sorcery was no more.
Jemidon sucked in his breath at the thought. First must have come Drandor’s performance, and then afterward there was no more sorcery. Just as Canthor had flung the rocks before there was any effect. Animation preceding the Rule of the Threshold. Blinding with pebbles because the words did not yet work. The action and then the law.
Suddenly everything fell into place. The whirling events of the past marshaled in step and left him with no doubt.
“Contradictions,” he said. “You speak of contradictions and which ones are the least. When things are drifting, when somehow the laws are cut loose, the seven that will be chosen will be those that best explain what is happening—the seven which leave the least contradictions outside their scope. The node of the lattice will be the one which best fits the happenings around it. Enactments of others become exceptions and wither away.
“And you performed the unlocking with the cube,” Jemidon rushed on. He had to articulate it all before the thread faded from his grasp. “Yes, an unlocking, a release of the grip which holds the laws as they are. With the cube, you control when the change has an opportunity to take place. Only when you set the conditions can the various laws compete for dominance.
“The unlocking is easier when you are near the power of the crafts, but once it is done, you want it the other way. Otherwise things will remain exactly as they are. On Morgana, you must have decoupled during the performance for the prince; and then at the celebration afterward, when all the masters were filling themselves with ale, Drandor enacted his animations on the beach. It was what I saw from the cliff top—a single glamour that would have power according to the new law, but far closer to you than any sorceries is Procolon across the sea. It was the least contradiction; the law that explained more then was the Rule of the Threshold, not the Rule of Three.
“And in the grotto, you had Trocolar add the additional tokens to the vault holdings so that the strength of magic would be stronger and the disconnection easier to make. Many magic tokens; that is why you had Drandor seek the sorcerer’s prize. But before Holgon walked through his ritual, the pumps were stopped and all the tokens safely secured in chests out of sight, so that no one could see. Again the new magic was the one that held sway.
“Later, when I returned with the sword, you were sure to have three instances of the Maxim of Perturbations to two for that of Perseverance.”
“You are not speaking like a manipulant,” Melizar said. “You have thought about things too much.”
“And these first attempts have no real power at all.” Jemidon ignored the interruption. “Drandor’s initial screening used some natural property of the eye to simulate motion; Holgon’s sleight of hand in the vault moved the dove. They were contrived to be as close to the new laws as possible, even if they were shadows of what would come to pass. They were boosts to shove things from one node in the lattice in the direction you wanted, rather than in a random drift you could not control.
“And even Canthor in the pass! You unlocked the laws when Ocanar and Pelinad met. That was responsible for the drifting feeling I felt—the feeling I experienced each time the laws could be shifted from one node in the lattice to another. Only this time you planned to wait until after the insurrection had spread before nudging the transition on its way—until the practice of thaumaturgy had fallen to a low enough level that the shift could be easily made. But by chance, Canthor’s attempted glamour came first. His words and the tossing of the sand were an example of a traditional charm. Without the planned animation, of the Rule of the Threshold there was none. The Rule of Three dominated, and sorcery was restored.
“It fits, it fits, all of it. There is a second metalaw. The, the—the Axiom of Least Contradiction, you probably call it. Yes, the rule follows from the example. That is how you have manipulated all the transformat
ions that have swept sorcery and magic away.”
Jemidon paused for breath. His skin tingled with excitement. Coming to Melizar directly had not been such a bad idea after all. The closeness of the cold one and the swing back to the Rule of the Threshold together had catalyzed the synthesis that had been building in his mind all along.
“You asked to be an apprentice,” Melizar said in a whisper that Jemidon could barely hear. “Perhaps it is indeed better that you serve.” He waved his arm over his head, and imp light twinkled into tiny points of brilliance. The air in the tent grew chillingly cold. “I demand complete obedience. When lithons soar close to one another, there is no margin for less. The three metalaws are for my concern. You must forget the two you have learned.”
“Your plan is to change them all, isn’t it?” Jemidon asked. “One by one, until only your minions can perform any of the crafts. The thaumaturges, the alchemists, the magicians, the sorcerers, the wizards, even the archmage, all will be powerless against you. Despite what Canthor says, it is not men-at-arms who hold the balance in their hands. One who has exclusive command of unknown crafts would rule the world against the sharpest blades.”
“This world, the stars, your whole universe,” Melizar said. “Ocanar sulks in defeat; but for me, the battle has accomplished almost as much as I planned. I now know why the animations did not work and have no great sorcerer with whom to contend. Tomorrow, with the help of some simple animations, the villagers will believe in a setback of the royal troops, despite whatever else this Kenton may say. The timing is right; the passions will be inflamed. In a fortnight’s time, the plains will vibrate to the stomp of thousands of scythes and flails. More than four companies from Searoyal will have to come. And with the harvest stopped, thaumaturgy will be easy to push aside.
“I will have gone from a single greedy trader, from a dozen men-at-arms, to a whole kingdom at my command. Alchemy will be next and wizardry after that. In the end, everything will be mine.”
