Key to Magic 02 Magician

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  Brother Zsii, seated with his back to the wall, spoke quietly into the handset of his far talking disk. Zsii, dressed identically to Whorlyr but possessing the lighter skin of a lowlander, was of the College of Archivists and had been attached to Whorlyr’s cloister to ensure proper coordination with the dismounted weapon from the Holy Ship.

  “Brother Aehph reports that the impulse engine crew is ready, Specialist Brother,” Zsii supplied. “He wishes to know if you desire him to fire a continuous stream or bursts."

  “The difference being?”

  “In continuous stream, he will expend all of his rounds in four minutes and thirteen seconds. Using bursts, he should be able to supply supporting fire for upwards of fifteen minutes.”

  “I thought he brought a full wagon load of the steel slugs?”

  “Indeed he did, brother. Twenty thousand rounds plus a full compliment in the feeding mechanism. The impulse engine’s rate of fire is slightly more than five thousand rounds per minute.”

  Whorlyr was impressed. The loads for his own weapon would produce only ten bolts each and then required replacement. At best – and he was certified as the best marksman in his cloister – he could launch only slightly more than fifty bolts in a single minute.

  “Instruct him to use bursts, resorting to continuous fire only if I so direct or if it appears necessary in his opinion.”

  “As you say, brother,” Zsii acknowledged and immediately began repeating Whorlyr’s orders into his handset.

  When Zsii was done, Whorlyr asked, “Are the legions in position?”

  “Indeed, brother. All are in readiness and awaiting your command.”

  A low, warbling whistle brought Whorlyr’s head around. It was a fair imitation of a carnivorous Poengt’’h lizard, flagrantly out of place here in the urbanity of Mhajhkaei, but a signal that Bh’sh wanted his attention. Whorlyr craned his neck to seek out the second floor window of the less than proficient Ehlereone. His trained eyes detected Bh’sh in the interior shadow, hidden safely out of line of sight from the fortress held by the Mhajhkaeirii. The Veteran Brother’s hands danced repeatedly in the K’hilbaeii’n hunter sign Prey in the trees!

  Whorlyr dropped to his belly and crawled rapidly to the partly open wall gate. Peering through the gap, he looked across the street and the adjacent wide defensive ditch to the fortress. Above it, turning slowly into a close cluster, were the linked flying boats of the apostate.

  Whorlyr jerked his head to hiss at Zsii, “Tell Brother Aehph to fire immediately upon the flying boats! We must destroy the Mhajhkaeirii sorcerer!”

  FORTY-NINE

  The steel slugs, flying up from an alley south of the barbican, tore into the last hay wain in line, ripping through the light frame and cutting it practically in half. One large wheel sprang from its axle and vaulted upwards, almost as if it were trying to escape, before being dragged back down by the merciless pull of the earth to disintegrate in a burst of black fire. A bare moment later, several individual components of the lifting spell in the forward section ruptured, demolishing the remains and casting smoking fragments in all directions. The tracing black that marked the path of the slugs shifted quickly to the next wagon and began chewing it into splinters.

  Ulor and Phehlahm dove for cover as slugs and flame sprayed through the air above their heads.

  Mar grabbed a bucket handle and took a running dive into the rowboat. He sent the boat soaring before he landed. The antics of the boat jostled him about as he smashed into the rough wood of the interior. His head smacked painfully against a bench and he skidded into an irregular heap against the starboard gunnel. The bucket landed on a corner and tipped, spilling the sand cylinders into the bilge.

  The line fastened to the bow snapped taught, spinning the rowboat and nearly flipping it. The sudden stop wretched him violently around again and forced him to throw out his arms to catch himself. Cursing Cyhalis’ts’psqo, he struggled to sit up and yelled at the two marines, “Cut the rope!”

  Ulor ran across the deck and swung his sword. The rowboat sprang free with a lurch, and Mar rolled into the bottom again as it transcribed a looping arc away from the train and the Phaelle’n magic.

  Grabbing the edge of a seat to steady himself, he arched upward to look. Hardly before he had raised his head, the second hay wain disintegrated, the wreckage, much of it still attached by the heavy rope, dragging down on the next wagon in line.

  He knew he had to do something immediately. The Phaelle’n weapon would destroy the remainder of the train in seconds. He drove the rowboat back toward his skyships and began leaching chirping lime from the air while flapping his arms madly to generate a flood of tinkling rose. He wove a huge yodeling chartreuse curtain in front of the skyship train as wide as the Old Keep. He heard-saw the curtain take shape, his expansion of Telriy’s charm stymieing the image of the skyships and hopefully showing the Phaelle’n only empty sky.

  Within seconds the stream of steel slugs ceased, but almost as quickly began again, depressing to rake the outer bailey gatehouse and then attack the main gate.

  Bringing the rowboat to a halt, he snatched up two spheres, one in each hand, and stood up. The steel slugs continued to spew from the mouth of the alley, no longer in a constant stream but in regulated blasts. The weapon itself remained hidden, not visible in the deep shadows cast by the adjacent buildings. Aiming for the alley, he hurled the cylinders, the second immediately after the first. He quickly enchanted the missiles as they left his hands with a driving spell, adjusting their path until they passed beyond his range, so that they slammed together at speed into the pavement of the alley mouth. The explosion was satisfyingly dramatic, with the thunderclap echoing flatly from the walls of the Old Keep and the outrush of air fluttering his clothes and hair. A three-storey brick villa on the eastern side of the alley slumped into a double manheight mound feathered with timbers and planks, and roiled a large cloud of dust upward to obscure the scene.

  Mar waited long enough to make sure that the black fire and steel would not erupt again, and then swung the rowboat back to Number One. Ulor and Phehlahm rushed to the rail as he hovered alongside. Telriy scrambled up through the lower deck hatch and joined them.

  “What’s happening?” the girl demanded.

  “We’re under attack,” Mar told her shortly. He swung quickly to face Phehlahm. “Can you make it back to the hay wagons? I need you to cut the smashed one loose.”

  “Aye, sir!” Phehlahm immediately took off astern.

  “Sir!” Ulor urged. “We must evacuate the rest of the women and children immediately!”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do,” Mar assured the man. “The inner bailey isn’t big enough to bring all the skyships down at once and we’re not going to have time to load them one at a time. I’m going bring the train around in a sloping circle like stairs. I’ll need you to get the passengers into the skyships. Could you bridge the ships with some kind of gang plank?”

  The fugleman nodded quickly. “We can rig something, even if we just pass them across hand to hand.”

  “As soon as we are down, get to it,” Mar told him, swinging the rowboat away from Number One.

  “Wait!” Telriy cried, motioning him back.

  “What is it?” he demanded sharply, drifting nearer.

  The girl extended her hand toward him, hesitantly opening it to display an object no larger than a hen’s egg.

  As he realized what it was, Mar felt a broad grin spring to his face. In Telriy’s hand lay a sand sphere, its magic weak and threatening to fade, but a clear success nonetheless.

  “Great!” he congratulated her eagerly. “We’ll talk when we have time!”

  Telriy smiled back, her eyes following him as he dashed away. In moments, he had the train arranged, with Number One floating alongside the curiously empty walk of the eastern wall, its hatch level with the platform. The bow of Number Two was slightly above the stern of the first vessel, with its length pointed off at an angle. The remainde
r of the skyships followed the pattern, locked in position by his lifting and driving spells. The huge glamour remained in place, hopefully continuing to conceal the train from view.

  Mar landed the rowboat back on Number One, gave Phehlahm a quick order to secure it, stopped briefly to share another congratulatory grin with Telriy, and then he and Ulor bounded down the ladder to the lower deck and jumped to the parapet walkway. They both ran north to the corner where the wall met the central tower.

  Hurtling down the stairs there two at a time, with Ulor close behind, Mar discovered that the marines and legionnaires working on the last three skyships had thrown down tools to snatch up weapons. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the vast majority of the men began to run toward the gate. Ulor did not pause, but made immediately for the central tower and the noncombatants.

  Thinking instantly that the outer gate had fallen and worrying about the consequence of that disaster, Mar sprinted across the cluttered courtyard, dodging piles of lumber and vaulting the abandoned stones of the cradle of Number one, and plunged into the gatehouse tunnel. Ahead of him, the Mhajhkaeirii were flooding through to the outer bailey.

  With a curse, he skidded to a halt in sudden remembrance. He had forgotten to enchant the remaining skyships! Dashing back into the inner bailey, he rapidly spelled the craft by turn, carefully directing them upward to hover alongside the last surviving hay wagon. Without a wasted second, he aligned his ships in a formation that would allow Ulor, hopefully, to quickly get the passengers aboard. That done, he bolted back into the tunnel and finally reached the outer courtyard. Breathing heavily, he slowed for a moment.

  The outer gate was indeed gone, destroyed by the Monk’s steel slugs. Its remains and that of the iron-reinforced portcullis lay scattered in splinters and shards in the shadow of the barbican. Beyond, the rapidly advancing Phaelle’n legionnaires had already reached the midpoint of the drawbridge, their interlocked shields forming a protective shell to the front, sides, and above.

  The Mhajhkaeirii’n defenders had established a shield line facing the destroyed gate, fuglemen, both marine and legionnaire, shouted hoarse orders and curses as they pushed and shoved men into their places. The tall forms of Captain Mhiskva and Lord Hhrahld held prominent places in the center of the line and both men had their weapons at the ready. Lord Ghorn, sword drawn, stood just behind the marine officer, directing pikemen into a supportive square. Commander Aerlon, now evidently fully converted to the Mhajhkaeirii’n cause, supervised a block of legionnaire crossbowmen as they settled into staggered ranks. Other crossbowmen and armsmen lined the machicolations to either side of the gatehouse, already firing, with apparent little effect, out at the approaching Phaelle’n. The workers from the inner bailey, many of them without armor, were urgently forming a second line behind Lord Ghorn’s shield line.

  Mar made to rush toward the Prince.

  Without warning, pinpoints of light winked brightly in the fading light from beyond the ranks of the attacking legion. Green magical lances passed over the Phaelle’n legionnaires and blazed through the outer gatehouse tunnel in a concentrated mass, chewing into the Mhajhkaeirii. Like wheat before a scythe, the marines and legionnaires began to fall in blistered, bleeding rows. Mhiskva, Lord Hhrahld, and Lord Ghorn died almost instantly. Aerlon collapsed in a heap without a sound, decapitated. Within seconds, the ethereal bolts scythed a huge gap in the shield wall and the unprepared men behind began to join their comrades in death. The bolts continued unabated and, as the ranks of the defenders thinned, many flew on unobstructed toward the inner gatehouse.

  Without conscious decision, Mar threw up his ethereal defense, deflecting the flux lances that struck towards him.

  For a moment, he could not think, overcome with horror.

  Then, with a sudden chilled clarity, he realized that he must hum. The interaction of the sound sent a wave through the ether that bounced off itself, reflecting in cyclic variation and generating a globe of vibrating silver that shielded him from the outwelling fountain of whistling teal that was the passage of time. Around him all motion ceased, the world frozen in comic pause, and the carnage of the outer bailey vanished as his sight dimmed. Only the shadowy sound-images formed by the drift of the background flux remained in his awareness.

  He had been only a minute late. Just a single Gods cursed minute! If he had gotten to the outer bailey only sixty seconds earlier, he could have saved his friends.

  He had to admit that. Lord Ghorn, a man to whom duty was life, and Mhiskva, whose loyalty knew no bounds – and Berhl, Ulor, and the rest as well -- were indeed his friends. Or, at least, they were as close to friends as he had ever had. And they had died because he had not arrived in time.

  But what was time?

  There were numerous names for the varieties of it -- now, then, soon, early, late, today, tomorrow, yesterday. Innumerable variations of words existed to describe a changing of time, a progression from past, to present, and on into the future. On some level, there was an awareness, at least in the language, that time moved.

  He could hear-see it almost clearly now. Time was ethereal, there was no question. He could shield himself from it, could stop it in its tracks. He had done so to save Ulor and had perhaps also accomplished the magic, unawares, many times previously in his life when danger threatened. The high-pitched teal was both behind and under the background ether, but an integral part of it in some way that he could not precisely decipher. But it also had a direction, a flow, an intent, blossoming outward from everything and to everything.

  His unreliable warning sense – which had once again failed him – must operate by allowing the future state of the world to be known in the present, passed backwards on modulations of flux. The clear visions of the Moon Pool were sights of the future conveyed back to the present and had to have moved in reverse against the normal progress of time.

  If warnings and visions could move backward in time, why couldn’t he?

  He only needed a minute.

  He did not know how long he worked against the whistling teal, as that concept had no meaning in his current state. He was separate from time altogether and measurements of the passage of time were no longer relevant. Subjectively, the interlude seemed lengthy, but he was not sure. Eventually, he did find a way to manipulate the flux of time by bombarding it with a black basal avalanche of pure flux, forcing a gap between it and the ether. With a great surge of effort, he expanded the gap to a hole wide enough to admit him and then recklessly cast himself through the hole into some strange place in between.

  Instantly, his body became transfixed, immobile in this under-time place, and he did not breathe. It appeared that the process of his life was now suspended.

  The flow of time, now fully realized, immediately assaulted him, as if he once again swam in a mighty river, but the current in this river of time moved in all directions at once. It clashed with his warbling silver barrier, flaring in bursts of multi-tonal light that gave off heat, pressure, erratic forces, and stunning bolts of flux. The direction of the past was only a subjective mental concept, a sense of greatest resistance. Using only his awareness of flux, he began to move against the resistance, forcing the sound-colors of time to part -- literally swimming upstream. His shield collapsed against his body under the increasingly violent clash of the natural flux against the artificial. The random products of the interaction began to batter him and he sensed pain, though it seemed not directly through his nerves, but as minute triggers of screeching cerulean flux. He was being hurt, but did not truly know how badly.

  He pressed on, trying to guess how far he must move to erase the last disastrous minute. He began to feel the drain of his effort and knew that whatever strength supplied his control of magic was fading. Finally, realizing that he could go no further and feeling as if he had already traveled leagues, he allowed the current to spit him out. In a different present, he dropped his barrier and was again subject to normal time.

  Stumbling on leaden feet,
he almost fell, his entire body a single mass of pain and ache, as if he had been beaten to within an inch of his life. He felt wetness on his lips and raised his hand to find blood dripping from his nose.

  “Boy, what manner of witchery was that?”

  Mar looked up to find Lord Hhrahld, standing alone near the center of the outer courtyard, staring at him. The Lord Protector leaned unperturbed on his great sword. Beyond him, at the closed main gate, several marines idled.

  Mar took a step and sagged in agony, his knees buckling. He must have made it farther than his single minute. The Phaelle’n had not yet attacked. But how far had he come?

  “I have never seen a man step out of the heart of the air,” the old pirate mused, not really talking to the young magician at all. His eyes danced about as if following uncooperative, dodging thoughts. “And how can you be here and up there at the same time?” Lord Hhrahld pointed over Mar’s head toward the inner bailey.

  Mar felt panic. He must have moved at least a dozen minutes, to a point in the past just after he had arrived! Could he warn himself somehow? He tried to turn, tripped over his own uncooperative legs and fell heavily, landing bruisingly on his arms.

  Running steps sounded across the yard and Mhiskva knelt to steady him as he tried to sit up. Other marines crowded around. “My lord, are you hurt? Have you fallen from a skyship?”

  The distinct flat thrapping sound of the Phaelle’n slugs cutting through the air sounded high above. The captain’s eyes flared in surprise and he craned his head upwards.

  “Get everyone from in front of the gate,” Mar croaked, trying to stand.

  Mhiskva twisted his head back around, deep concern on his face. “You are injured, my lord magician. You have blood coming from your ears and nose and you must be broken inside. You must be still. I have seen men take high falls before. It would be dangerous for you to move. I will send for a surgeon.”