by Pam Uphoff
"Two days ago. What a horse! The master said he saw him pass by two weeks ago, heading for town."
Sightings got more scarce after that, the last one was six hundred miles out of Karista, at the small town of Bridgeton.
"He just rode by, this time, and just as well, after nearly killing Onray. Old Gods! He was fast with that sword. Onray's all right, but it'll be a good long while before he's foolish enough to push a stranger into a duel."
Consulting their satellite maps, the man had, from here, either turned more directly north or continued on the Old Road and crossed the mountains. After three days of finding no trace of the man, they turned back to the City.
"Right. I think you can track him down." Usse assured them. "Most likely he lives north of the Old Road. Search for him, and for this diamond mine, as it may be the financial support for the magical society."
Ajha took a day to check the results of the local genetic sampling they'd been doing, before the God of War diverted their attention.
They had found, on average, higher percentages here, both of the insertions packages and of the native power genes.
None with as many as Pax or the boy who'd been with Cuffi, both of whom had two power genes, one on the X chromosome and one on the Y. And Pax had twelve of the artificial insertions, a double set of the six types. But with a few dropped genes, so Pax, by Oner standards, was a Clostuone. Like me, but with total numbers even higher. He stared down at the analysis uneasily. It was getting harder to think of these people as some lower sort of being. Mere natives. They are lacking some tech, but have all the magic that we have. Sure, some of them are raw and uncivilized. . . but. . . here I am, looking for a man so a bunch of gang rapists can murder him.
Idre and Egto bought a wagon and loaded it with a hasty selection of trade goods. Ajha put aside his fretting and tried to concentrate on remembering how to steer a team of horses.
Chapter Sixty-three
1 June 3482/ Spring 1365
Karista, Kingdom of the West, Comet Fall
". . . tracing the money flow in the northern parts of Foothill Province . . . for concentrations of magic . . . Ash . . . potions from Wallenton . . . "
It wasn't a very clear transmission, but they'd gotten enough to decrypt the bits. It was one of the few recent intercepts at all. Damien pulled out the atlas they were slowly assembling.
"Isn't Ash that first village we stopped in, when we came? That would make sense to check as a possible locale for the magicians. It's the closest village to the battle site."
Max looked over his shoulder as he tapped the spot. "Do you want to check it out? The river's low and business is off. No one will think anything if you're gone for a few weeks."
"Sure. Bit of field work will feel like a vacation." He grinned at the glares he collected, and caught the stage to Wallenton. So fast and convenient. Wallenton was fast approaching a size that would get it a seat on the Council, much to the dismay of the nobility. From there it was a three day walk. He had a backpack with more than enough food, a bedroll, some oiled canvas for a tent if it rained. What more could a man need? Thinking sweet innocent thoughts in case of Oner, or for that matter native mind readers, he stopped to admire a pasture full of really nice horses. Mares and foals. A lot of chestnuts, and even a few pintos. He glanced toward the horseman coming in from the north. A dandy in a plumbed hat, but you couldn't fault the horse. A big chestnut stallion. He felt a pang at the thought of loosing Solstice. He'd been built a lot like this fellow, just a bit heavier.
"Is that by any chance the sire of those nice foals?"
The dandy grinned. "Indeed he is. Sun Gold. You've lost a horse?"
"Oh, two recently. One, well, I have three of his fillies. When they're old enough I just might bring them this direction."
"Sun Gold will be delighted." The man touched the rim of the hat and rode on.
Around the curve a squat tower with a skirt of attached rooms was apparently the horse farm's headquarters. On the far side there were several barns, and sheds for cattle and sheep. The next ten miles alternated fenced horse pastures, open fields, some with sheep, and mixed hardwood and pine forests. He cleared a rise to see the village. It was a colorful little place, warm and welcoming as the sun dropped lower. The Fire Mountain Inn had two superb cooks, as he recalled, and the smells certainly seemed to confirm. He shucked his pack as he walked in. A young boy eyed it. "You need a room?"
"Yep." The boy ducked behind the polished bar and handed over a key. And pointed up the stairs. "First hallway, second room on the right."
Damien hauled the pack up the stairs, and found the second room on the right was not only nice and clean, the water in the ewer was hot. He eyed it uncertainly. Someone must have spotted him walking up the road. That was it. No magically always hot ewers, thank you. He cleaned up and walked out to find out what smelled so good. From the end of the hall he spotted a familiar face and eased back into the shadows. Dydit Twicecutt. The blonde with him was Never Ash, one of the women who'd infiltrated the Labor School, who had escaped from the Gate Authority. The woman who'd escaped from a room full of Gate cops by apparently oozing through the interior wall and cutting through the steel reinforced outer concrete wall.
And I stood there, my back against the door, while it happened. A Oner spy on Earth. We thought.
She looked entirely innocent, and native, flanked by children. A boy and a girl he'd guess at eleven or twelve, on her right. And wiggling in-between Never and Dydit, a younger girl, maybe three or four years old. A baby carried with casual competence on her hip. A nice little family outing. Well, well. Maybe the Oner's were right about this place being the home of the magicians. And a secondary confirmation that the infiltrators who had reached Earth had been natives from here, not Oners, nor apparently in league with Oners.
He stretched out on the comfortable bed and tried to not fall asleep. Jerked awake. He slipped back down the hallway. The common room was noisy, everyone singing an amazingly rude birthday song. "Never Ash" was laughing as a cake was brought out with a lot of candles. "Oh, not that many! Surely I'm twenty-one? Someone has miscounted."
Funny, how an old custom like that could hang on. Damien watched, picked up names. Never was apparently the blonde's real name. The other lady spy was there as well, Question by name. Conversations centered around something about the upcoming Solstice, mapping and exploration, potions, and horses. Half an hour later he checked again. They were just leaving, Dydit scooping up the little girl, who was sound asleep.
The front door slammed open and an irate man stomped in. "All right, which one of you silly women made a purple rabbit? It was in my garden!" He shook the evidence, angrily.
Dydit's oldest daughter yipped. "My bunny! How did it get here?"
It was indeed a purple bunny. Lifeless and limp.
"Last thing we need is a bunch of rabbits with no fear of man eating all our gardens." The man dropped the carcass and stomped back out.
"Purple? You made your rabbits purple?" An old lady looked appalled. "And you let them out? Rustle, you need to pay attention to ecological concerns. A purple rabbit is completely unviable, the hawks would get them easily. But beyond that, you need to be more responsible with your experiments. You should not release a changed animal to the wild, as you have no idea of the long term consequences to the wild population of introducing artificial genes like this one."
Rustle took her dressing down with stiff shoulders and silence. Then she picked up the dead rabbit and walked out.
Damien waited until the common room was nearly empty then walked down the stairs. The lamb in ginger sauce was wonderful. At breakfast the next morning he packed away twice as much as he ought to have, lingering and listening to people laughing or irritated over what had apparently been a mass purple bunny escape. As he reluctantly heaved his pack back over his shoulder he spotted a hawk swooping down into the meadow, and lifting off with something dark. From this distance he wasn't sure if it was purple or not
. He headed north, then circled east around through the forest. He didn't spot any purple animals, but followed trails around the hills behind the village and worked his way south to a small river, chilly with snow melt, and followed it downstream. It was nice in the heat, and he took his time, enjoying sleeping out in the piney forest. Once he broke out of the woods he could look over the rolling plains to the west. He spotted the road that ran north-south in front of the foothills, and took that back to Wallenton.
The river was still low, the barges weren't running yet. He headed for the stage office. A coach was just in from somewhere, the big six horse hitch being led off, hot and blowing. Six fresh beasts were prancing as they were backed into position.
Three men drove by in a wagon pulled by a pair of bays, one with very familiar pinto spots. Damien turned into a handy barbershop, and studied them. Two were the Oners he and Joe had discovered two years before. The Oners had gotten out of Karista sooner than he expected. Trimmed and shaved, he penned a hasty note and posted it for the first stage heading for Karista. He wasn't sure he could tell what they were doing, but perhaps he could at least tell if they had a friendly relationship with Dydit or Never.
Chapter Sixty-four
24 Rajab, 1367 / 1365 Early Summer
Ash, Kingdom of the West, Target Forty-two
Ajha savored the delicate fish, the delicious sauce . . . "I would object to being sent back here on a native's imaginary evidence, except for the cook they have here."
Egto nodded, his mouth full of lamb.
Idre snorted and poked at his.
"I think we should stay an extra day and be sure." Egto smiled over at the young girl walking around with a pitcher of water filling glasses. "Do you know what they're going to serve tomorrow?"
"Oh, everything. There's always a bit of a party when, umm, about a week after the Solstice. They're going to start roasting the pigs at midnight. You should stay, it'll be great." She looked wistful, one of three identical triplets, as far as Ajha could tell, who worked here. Maybe thirteen, and mouthwateringly good looking, with her long black hair. If she'd been just a few years older Ajha would have been seriously tempted to spread some of the One genes around.
As it was he confined his ravishing to the big juicy slice of apple pie and vanilla ice cream. He'd heard so many complaints from older agents about the horrors of eating unpasturized, unsprayed, uninspected, poorly preserved foods he'd expected to die horribly on his first brief field assignment. Instead he'd had to lengthen his exercise periods to avoid gaining weight. And this world was even better. He was going to hate returning to over processed half-chemical glop. This stuff had texture, color, flavor . . . he refrained from licking his plate and they adjourned to the porch to watch the sunset. This World had enough active volcanoes to keep it solidly in an ice age, and also provide colorful sunsets.
One different thing about this village, the whole country actually, but especially evident here, was the mixing and near equality of the classes. Auralia was as segregated as The One World, but this place, despite having a nobility, was mind bogglingly egalitarian. Take that Lord Kell Rivolte, as an extreme example. He herded sheep. Not hired people to herd his sheep. He did it himself. He'd been quite apologetic about the sheep that invaded their campground last night.
The mayor of the village was a woman, not unheard of at this level of civilization, but it was fairly common on this World. She operated some sort of orphanage out of her house—she had charge of a pack of unruly teenagers. All of the local teachers were unwed mothers, two of them possibly lesbian. No one seemed the least bothered by it.
He settled down again, and as lights came on here and there, he again noticed the dark houses. Six of the oldest in the village, they hadn't shown any lights all week, and they were dark again tonight, no one coming or going. Well the owners weren't off on a tropical cruise, but perhaps they had gone to one of the larger towns or even Karista, the capital city. He didn't want to appear nosy, so he kept his questions to himself, and just blended into the woodwork and watched and listened while some men dug a huge pit and started a bonfire in it. When he'd first heard of eating meat from entire dead animals, that looked like dead animals he'd been repulsed. Now he watched two whole pigs being stuffed and seasoned and swallowed saliva and vowed to remain for at least tomorrow's feast. I'm turning into a savage. Is appreciation of good food a sign that one has gone native? He slept late, and with the pig roast in mind stuck to pastries for breakfast.
"You know we're out of money to buy more goods." Egto walked in the front door and frowned at him. "We should range wider, check out any other villages."
"Don't worry, I won't drink any of that excellent wine, well, not the crates we've bought, and the semi-precious stones will show a tidy profit for the trip. But. I stayed up late last night and saw what they put in the roasting pit and I'm not budging."
He looked around at a dry chuckle. The old man who owned the Inn had overheard him and nodded. "Now there's a sensible attitude. How'd you ever wind up where you are?"
Ajha looked at his last bite of hot buttery pastry. "Just lucky, I guess."
Egto rolled his eyes. "Tomorrow morning. Early."
Ajha nodded. "Certainly. Now though, I think I'll waddle down to that harness maker's shop. Everyone says he's got really fine leather."
Egto looked to make sure everyone was out of sight. "Animal skin! By the One, you've gone native. You're a disgrace."
Ajha ignored him and walked down to admire the workmanship but restrained himself and only bought a belt with an interlocking geometric pattern and a brass buckle shaped like a leaping deer. And a couple of nice wallets, a little purse. After all he'd be getting home again, sooner or later. Presents for his mother and father, and the uncle that practically raised him, as his father had dumped both him and his mother after he was tested a mere Clostuone at birth. He put one of the wallets back.
"The witches make the buckles. Crescent Moon learning exercises." Mr. Leaman was a jolly-looking heavyset man.
Ajha laughed uncertainly, and the harness maker laughed with him.
"Well, you're not from here, so you probably don't believe in magic. No matter, they're nice buckles, with the best leather around."
Walking back toward the tavern, Ajha noticed a group of children up on the hill, laughing and running down toward the village. Some more children, girls, crested the hill and started down.
He slowed his steps. This World had so many children . . . he'd thought the village full of them . . . but these were new children, children he didn't recognize. Eleven, all girls, then fifteen teenagers, all girls again. A group of women, he counted eighteen from a distance and six were carrying babies.
He closed his eyes and opened his shields. They glowed. The whole cluster of women glowed so brightly he closed all of his shields and walked hastily back to the Tavern.
"Egto, Idre?" He looked around hastily, so shaken he almost didn't care if anyone had heard those very foreign names. "Keep your privacy shields up and take a look at the women coming down from the east hills. Passive detection only, don't call attention to yourselves."
They looked at him curiously, but folded their cards and followed him outside. A trio of girls ran by, giggling. Twelve years old, at a guess. Idre staggered back and looked at Ajha.
"By the One! I think. . . " He broke off as more women came around the corner, crossing the street or turning aside, they started opening up the empty houses he'd noted earlier.
Ajha elbowed his comrades back to the chairs that lined the patio. "Stop gawping. Sit back and pretend to be wall paper."
Somehow they had completely missed all these magically powerful women. What had the waitress said? Something about always a party a week or so after the Solstice? Three years ago they'd arrived a day before the Solstice and left immediately. It appeared to have been a massive miscalculation on their part. They'd assumed that any power users here would have a big celebration on the solstice. And apparently they d
id – somewhere so far away they hadn't felt anything here in town.
"We should leave, right now." Egto breathed.
"No, we'll need a good head count." Idre pulled out a note book.
Ajha gave him the count he'd gotten of women coming down the hill, and they combined to come up with an estimate of the farmers, the school children that had stayed in town, the miscellaneous adults, the teenagers working in the Tavern. It was still under two hundred, with roughly fifty powerful women.
"Easy to contain and destroy." Egto looked relieved.
Ajha shook his head. "We ought to recruit. Gain allies that really do understand us, instead of those blanks in Fascia and Discordia."
Idre blinked at him in disbelief. "Leave these powerful competitors alive!"
Ajha scowled. "We are not genocidal tyrants like Earth. We may be collecting a multidimensional Empire, but mass murder of civilians has been conspicuously absent from our tool kit. You're both carrying on like little old ladies who've seen a mouse."
They glowered at him, then they sat back and watched the women washing and hanging laundry to dry.
"The Action Teams don't treat natives delicately, like allies. Toughen up."
Ajha scowled at Egto.
Idre gave them both a silencing glare. "The One desires to spread the Prophets' genes widely at first, so that there is a selection of Halfers available for the transitional government." Right out of the text books. It sounded a lot cleaner than what the Action Teams had been doing in Fascia.
The teenagers finished their chores quickly. They all gathered in the tavern to chatter with their friends about who had advanced and who hadn't. Of course they never explained what advancing was, but two young women with the odd names of Xanthic and Zenith were being feted for doing so. Two girls who looked the same age were in a competition with each other to roast them, with eleven more looking on enviously. The three black haired girls and five with hair from reddish blonde to deepest red looked on, friends but not part of the magical society of the others.
