"Sorry, but a lot of my memories of that time are missing. Just thinking about it makes me upset. I've always thought she may have somehow cursed me, but that was easy for me to believe because she was always making my life miserable."
Don't push her. Let her tell Loreana the story and allow the Healer to ease the missing pieces out of her. “How sad for you, all those years of unhappiness. How did you escape Ulana?"
"She died and I was brought back into training. I graduated a year later and was forced into the army. The rest you know."
So close, Aetria thought, and so much more she would like to know about this fiercely independent sister of hers. They still had weeks to talk, but for now they had work to do.
* * * *
The journey to Inhestia would have been idyllic except for the ordeal of waiting. With no real duties to perform, other than attendance at formal dinners and parties, Aetria concentrated on her source, literally. After they left the encampment, with Coleni disguised as a new female aide-de-camp to the general, the two of them spent their free time absorbed in a study of Crusher's source. With less than two weeks now remaining before arrival for her hearing, Aetria's nervousness was growing daily, accented even more by their nearness to the Logathian Mountains.
"I don't know how long your Adepts take in their wilderness sabbatical, Aetria, but ours take several years after their training. You may have had that training, but you are trying to accomplish two years’ work in a month. You are driving yourself too hard."
Coleni was used to Aetria's pacing by now, as Aetria was in constant motion when not staring into the source. She watched as Aetria marched from one corner of their tent to the other. Aetria stopped for a moment, rubbing her face, and groaned. “I feel like there is an answer, just out of my grasp. It's like a name you know and can't remember, right on the tip of your tongue ... Tongue ... Wait a minute, maybe that is it."
"I don't think you can taste the discord, Aetria."
"No, not that sense. I remember telling the general the discordance was like two people singing the same note, only one was slightly off key. Tongue, talking, singing—sound. Sound is one of those physical things the engineers talk about."
Coleni made a moue. “Your people don't like those people any more than ours do. They think they can explain the world with logic. If we hadn't burned their butts a couple of time with fireballs, they would have convinced our king we did things with smoke and mirrors."
Aetria laughed hysterically, as much from the image in her mind of engineers running around holding their pants as from the tension that it released within her.
"You're right there, Coleni,” she said, gasping. “Perhaps we are more subtle in our relationships with them. But—” She stifled more giggles at the use of the word. “—they do have some useful knowledge. Let me see if I can get our Chief Engineer to come talk with us.” Aetria disappeared out the door, all but running in her eagerness to pursue her sound theory.
Coleni returned her attention to the source and its odd but now very familiar discordance. She lost track of time but caught the heavy footfalls of a man approaching the tent entrance and quickly backed away from the source. Aetria entered with a heavy-set, short man following in her path.
"Colonel Strathos, Lieutenant Coleni, the general's new aide-de-camp. Lieutenant Coleni, Master Engineer Strathos, the general's Chief Engineer."
"Very pleased to meet you, Lieutenant. I have heard of your presence on the staff, but haven't seen you with the general except on the road. Of course, I haven't seen our Captain of Cavalry much either. You are both missing a number of very nice dining affairs."
Coleni could not help but glance down at the Chief's ample waist, but stopped the comment about his not missing them from passing her lips. “The general has asked that I use my legal training in preparation of Sorceress Aetria's defense. We have been very busy on it."
Aetria was impressed with her sister's ability to think on her feet, albeit with a lie. “Yes, Sir, she has been very helpful, but we are in need of your professional advice, as neither a lawyer nor a sorcerer can properly address the physical laws you understand so well."
"Sorceress Aetria, your sugar tongue and false flattery are not needed on me. Engineers don't like lawyers or sorcerers, but we do need each other. What are your questions?"
"This may be far reaching, but sound is one of your physical phenomena. Could it be that magical Power sources are also?"
"They exist in the world, Sorceress, so they must be. How you derive energy from them remains a mystery to us, but we think it must be somewhat like the healing power of sunlight or the warming effect of a good fire."
"Curious, both of those involve light. Light is a physical phenomenon then?"
Strathos smiled broadly at her. “You are a very quick learner, Sorceress. Light is indeed, and it has some very interesting properties.” He pulled a triangular crystal attached to a slim gold chain out of his uniform shirt and laid it on the table. He moved a candle close to the crystal, and both women gasped in wonder at the tiny rainbow that appeared. He put his hand in front of the candle, and the rainbow disappeared. When he moved his hand, it came back.
"We believe the light we see is made up of many other colors that combine somehow into white light. Black is the absence of light, at least to our eyes. How we see things is the way they reflect light back to our eyes. Red things seem to absorb all the other colors but the red part of the white light. So we see just the red part. As for the...” Strathos stopped, staring at wonder at Aetria dancing around, clapping her hands excitedly.
She stopped suddenly, realizing her behavior, and walked over to the colonel.
"Oh, Sir, you have answered my question wonderfully."
"But I haven't yet begun to explain—"
Aetria ushered him toward the door of the tent, profusely thanking him for his wisdom. She kept up such a patter of conversation that he could not get a word in between and was packed off to the mess tent before he knew it. She returned to Coleni and explained her idea.
"If two different musical notes are sung close enough you get a discordance. Light is made up of many different colors of light. What if the energy we get from a source is also made up of many different kinds of energy? Could not two of them interact and produce this discordance? We need to try to sense not the discordance, but that other energy."
Coleni frowned in concentration. “It makes sense, but why haven't sorcerers been able to find these other energies in the past?"
"Why are we the only ones that sense a discordance?” Aetria countered.
Her eyes growing large, Coleni spoke excitedly. “Our grid burnouts have changed our spell casting abilities; somehow they may have changed the way we absorb and use the energies. Oh, Aetria, you must be right. Hurry, let's test your theory."
* * * *
"Well, we found it, but what good does it do us?” Aetria said in anger.
She and Coleni had spent the early evening staring into the source. Discovering the new energy coming from the source had been an exhilarating experience, and done relatively quickly, like seeing a long-familiar scene in a whole new light. But trying to capture it in their mental grids had become a futile, frustrating exercise. It would not supply Power for their spells.
Coleni sat discouraged, her hands covering her face, rubbing her aching physical eyes, as she mentally rubbed her sorcerer's Power sensing “eyes.” “Let's call it a night, Aetria. I'm exhausted."
Aetria sighed in agreement. “Well, we have made progress. We should feel better about this than we do."
Coleni reached out to close the lid of the source and stopped in mid-reach, her fingers touching the open lid. Her surprised look was mirrored in her twin sister's face. “What in the name of the Power—,” Coleni began.
"That's how he did it, Coleni. The box does not hold in the new energy. I was carrying around an exposed source the whole time.” Aetria gasped in sudden wonder. “Pleates must have been able to se
nse it, like we can. Since our ability seems to have come from having suffered grid burnouts, then Pleates must have also had a grid burnout!"
Coleni shook her head. “Not possible, it is fatal for Aggressors."
Again the image of Recanlin's shattered forehead entered Aetria's mind. She covered her eyes with her hand as the tears started to flow again. She wondered if that image would ever go away. Would she constantly have to feel the pain of his death?
Coleni put a hand on her arm. “Your young Novice Aggressor that died on the hill?"
Aetria nodded. After a few moments, she regained her composure and wiped the tears away with her fingers. “We have not yet solved the mystery of Adept Pleates. He was quite an extraordinary sorcerer; perhaps he was an exception to the rule. He must have been. The general will be very pleased to know how he found us."
"I am happy that the Conqueror of Hermania will be pleased."
Aetria was brought up short by Coleni's remark, forgetting that her sister, until recently, had been the enemy. She put her hand on Coleni's arm and squeezed it gently.
"Just how is this knowledge going to keep you,” Coleni continued, “or for that matter, me, from being banished for life?"
Aetria stood up and went to her weapons rack, picked up her armor breastplate, and brought it over to the source. She piled the armor on top. “I can't think with that energy distracting me. What now? I can still sense it!"
Coleni contributed her armor to it which led to the two women moving practically everything in the tent onto a growing pile atop the source. Its energy was only slightly diminished.
"We have a problem, Aetria."
Her sister stared blankly at the pile in the middle of her tent, “Well, at least it only bothers us. Adepts Loreana and Cemaron can't sense it. Look, we can't block off the new energy with physical material, so we will have to try to shift our focus away from it."
"Return to the way we sensed it before, you mean."
"Yes, adjust our sight off the new energy and onto the old. Concentrate on that discordance. We'd better learn to switch our focus or we'll never get powered up again. Then we really won't have a future as sorcerers to worry about."
* * * *
Aetria rode briskly past the sentries at the camp's southern entrance. They gave her a cursory glance, then a respectful salute. They thought they had seen the general's new aide-de-camp leave since Aetria had taken the glamor used by Coleni in public. She had deliberately made her exit at dawn, in the early hours of the morning watch, knowing that much of the camp was still abed, and the sentries would be tired from having been awake for half the night.
She had complete faith in her disguise spell, but she did not want to risk a close inspection by anyone who might take an interest in getting to know the new aide-de-camp. Aetria's mannerisms were still her own, and someone might see past a wine-blurred vision and catch a movement familiar to them. She spurred her horse into a gallop as soon as she was clear of the sentries, as befitted one on the business of the general.
Aetria had convinced the general to make a show of sending her new aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Maetria, as she was now known, off on an errand to Inhestia. This would provide Aetria an excuse for her trek to the mountains. Coleni would assume the role of Aetria and sequester herself more than she had to make discovery of the switch even more difficult. Coleni had reluctantly cropped her hair to Aetria's length and assumed Aetria's role without the use of illusionary magic. To all appearances, the general was still escorting Aetria to her hearing. Thus Aetria found herself headed off on a journey to Hermania looking for something, somewhere in the Logathians.
She knew this road fairly well. It was the one her recruit company had traveled from Inhestia to the army's encampment a few months earlier. The general had ordered a halt the night before near the western turn-off that would take Aetria into Hermania. She rode past the turn, seemingly headed for Inhestia.
Once well out of sight of the camp, she rode into the trees until she could not see the road behind her and dismounted. From her saddlebags she removed the set of Tierian merchant clothes she had brought from home and quickly changed into them, stowing her aide-de-camp uniform in the saddlebags. She did not expect to be received with open arms by the Hermanians in her guise as the conquering general's aide-de-camp, and she doubted seriously they would approve of any other Delmathian guise she could select.
She felt reasonably confident in her choice of disguise, knowing enough of the Tierian way to act the part. Aetria would use her Power to enhance any observer's belief that she was what she looked like. This included a glamor to change her facial features to more closely approximate the sunken eyes and hooked noses characteristic of her father's people. If the Hermanians were going to be suspicious of her, it would be because she was a known source of suspicion, not because she was a stranger in their land. They would leave her alone—or so she hoped.
Checking her disguise once more, Aetria remounted and rode west for another half-hour, hopefully parallel to the road heading towards Hermania. She then turned north to find the road. As she neared the tree line bordering the weed-overgrown road, she took a few minutes to ensure no traffic was moving on it before exiting the trees and continuing her journey west into Hermania. Coleni had told her that the road she was presently on would intersect a road running north and south. Turning south at that point, a two-hour horseback ride would put her at the site of that ill-fated battle where Lornes had died. Continuing south from there, Aetria would enter the Logathians. Aetria's plan was to reach the Logathian mountain range by evening, find an out-of-the-way inn to spend the night, and begin her search in the morning.
She reached the Hermanian encampment within the time specified by Coleni. She stopped her horse on the road and looked across the creek to the dilapidated farmhouse and the field beyond. A new growth of weeds and flowers grew atop a mount next to the house where the Hermanian troops killed by Pleates’ fireballs were buried. She wondered if her Novices were there also. And Lieutenant Nemos? Aetria spurred her horse on, the desire to visit replaced with the unease of knowing Pleates had wanted her dead at this battle.
A chill was creeping into the air as the road she followed climbed higher and higher away from the little valley where the two sisters had lost people near to them. She pulled the brightly colored Tierian woolen shawl she wore more closely around her. The clopping of the horse's hooves seemed to punctuate the thoughts circulating in her mind.
A new energy. How was Crusher able to destroy sources? Long distance tracking of new energy. Why the Logathians?
Awakening from her semi-drowsy state, she wondered for a moment what had startled her, then realized she was sensing sorcerers ahead. Coleni had told her about the small town of Logatha that lay across the road to the Logathians, and that the Hermanian Order maintained a small lodge there. A glance at the sun overhead told Aetria she had several more hours left in the day, so at her current speed of travel, she would arrive at the town by dusk. That suited her well. The less she was seen in direct light, the better her disguise would hold. She returned to her mental puzzle as the horse followed the road on her own.
* * * *
Logatha was smaller than Aetria had expected. The buildings were of stone and wood, a resource plentiful in this area. No building stood more than two stories, and all were box-shaped. Practical homes, big enough to house a family, but not pretentious to advertise wealth or status. The road ahead forked left and right; both branches had merchants’ shops lining the sides of the road. Behind the shops were residences, large stables, and storage buildings or warehouses. This bespoke of transport industry or bulk item merchandise, dependent on the road for movement. She had seen similar building layouts on navigable rivers where canal boats did heavy hauling. Here, in this mountain pass, horse and wagon played that role.
The Hermanian Lodge sat near the center of town on the left branch, surrounded by a high wall, with neighbor houses standing a respectful dozen feet away.
The intensity of the energy she sensed coming from the building disturbed her because it meant there was a sorcerer of Adept level or higher in residence. There were a number of sorcerers present, just how many she couldn't tell. This worried her even more. She had expected a simple healer community, maybe led by a sorcerer of Sorcerer level. She took the right branch to avoid the Lodge as much as possible.
At the outer edge of town, roughly a half mile from its center, she spotted an inn set back from the road, called the “Freighter's Rest.” She turned in to the inn and rode toward the stable doors in the back of it. A man, presumably a groom, stepped out of the stables and watched her approach. She dismounted. The groom walked over to her, his hand out to take the horse's reins.
Removing the saddlebags and draping them over her left arm, Aetria turned over the reins of her horse to the groom and watched as he led the animal into the stable. He had not said a word to her since she had ridden up to the inn. Not that it mattered to her, since she could not speak Hermanian, but she wondered at what kind of greeting she would receive inside if the one she had gotten outside was so cold. As the groom disappeared through the wide doors of the stable, he glanced briefly at her and made a warding sign. She thought about following him to ensure her horse was well cared for, but decided not to cause trouble over what she knew to be a normal reaction to Tierians.
Her entrance into the main room was met with a soft Hermanian greeting from a tavern girl, who hurried off to get her mistress. Aetria dumped her saddlebags onto a table near the fireplace and sat down wearily. Staring into the fire, she heard the heavy footsteps of the inn's mistress approaching. Aetria looked up when the footsteps stopped, and asked for a room in Tierian. The woman shook her head and asked a question in Hermanian. Aetria in turn shook her head no, and asked in Delmathian. “Do you have a room available?"
The mistress nodded and replied in heavily accented Delmathian. “For you, a private room, but full price! No one share a room with Tieri."
Wild Sorceress Page 23
