Key to Magic 01 Orphan

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

“There!” Waleck hissed.

  Shifting his gaze, Mar looked to Hwraldek’s companions. They were a matched pair, dressed identically in sturdy trousers cut from heavy, dull gray cloth, raw linen shirts, and pocketed leather vests like clock tinkers wore. The men had armsmen’s shoulders but wore no badges of rank or armor. Their boots were of an uncommon style, cut like a seaman’s deck boots with their trousers bloused into the tops. No article of their clothing had any luster or polish, including the leather of their boots and the brass of their belt buckles, as if they had been purposefully dulled.

  Mar could see little of their faces, which were hidden in the shadows of short cowls of brown wool. A separate garment, the cowls ended in a simple fold on the shoulder, not at all like the standard hooded robes of some of the religious sects of Khalar. These must be the monks of which Waleck had spoken.

  Hwraldek spoke to the one on his left, but the noise made by the Imperials as they dashed about smashing things in their search of the main temple building prevented Mar from catching his words. This first monk exchanged words with his twin at length, not so much an argument as a consultation, and then the latter, with evident reluctance, produced a small wooden box. Even at this distance, Mar, his eye ever mindful of the value of objects, could discern that the box was expensively made, richly outfitted in hammered silver and glinting gems.

  Waleck sucked a sharp breath and grated in a harsh whisper, “Run!”

  Heedless of the noise he made, the old man then jumped to his feet and fled across the rooftop.

  TEN

  Mar drank his fill from the unglazed pottery cup and returned it to the boy, who scurried off, the thief’s tupence clasped tightly in his fist.

  “We were lucky not to be caught, old man.”

  Waleck did not take his eyes from the crowd filling in the plaza. “Then let us hope that our luck holds. We are by no means safe as yet.”

  Mar leaned back against the comforting solidity of the stone pillar behind him, shifting his shoulders to find a spot that did not put painful pressure on his concealed arm. He and the old man had loitered in the shade of the large ceramic pipe that the pillar supported for more than an hour. Almost two manheight above his head, the pipe was a branch of the main municipal aqueduct and emptied in a spraying cascade into a broad, knee-deep pool that monopolized the center of the plaza. The majority of the crowd was women wading in the pool to wash clothes or hanging wet clothes on quasi-permanent lines strung between the aqueduct and the buildings that ringed the plaza. Several dozen children were bathing, being bathed, or simply playing in the overflow channel that ringed the pool. A few men -- husbands, fathers, uncles, brothers, or grown sons -- sat at tables beneath the red and blue stripped awning of a tavern. These wardens alternated between watching the women, motivation determined by relation, and scrutinizing the few idlers, like Mar and Waleck, who tarried at the perimeter of the plaza.

  Happily, Mar and the old man had retreated from the Seichu temple without pursuit. The men in the courtyard had evidently been too engrossed in their search to notice their escape. Mar knew he and the scrapper could have been visible to the Imperials for only seconds while they scrambled over the peak of the roof. Startling a matronly woman determinedly herding a band of young children, they had dropped down to the pavement on the other side of the house and then raced south along what turned out to be Cockle Street. Hearing no Guard pipes, they had slowed to a trot when Cockle became Fishwife, then to a casual saunter when they turned east onto the New Avenue of the Urban Prefecture. The aqueduct paralleled the avenue and halting in the busy plaza to consider their situation had seemed safe enough.

  They drew some stares from children, but most of the adults ignored them, though Mar did notice that a couple of the male guardians had been assigned the task of surreptitiously keeping track of the two of them. It was not uncommon to see Gheddessii just about anywhere in the lower city, and Washerwoman’s Plaza (no one remembered the official name) was no exception. For now, Waleck’s stated strategy was to “hide in plain sight” with the provision that they would abandon the plaza immediately should any genuine tribesmen appear.

  “Perhaps we should leave the city?” Mar ventured. “Where’s your horse? The countryside...”.

  Waleck swiveled on the overturned washtub he used as a seat, eyes flaring over his jhuhngt. “No. We must find the remaining texts, Mar. We cannot do that in some rustic’s barn. We must reach the Library and decipher the clue that Oyraebos has left us.”

  “Do you still have the cylinder?”

  “Yes, of course” the wasteminer snapped. His hand went to his waist protectively. “It is here under my robe. I have not dared set it aside. The device that the monk was about to utilize, you saw it? I am sure that they are using that to track us. It must point to the text.”

  “What, like a compass?”

  “Yes, though not as a natural mechanism. It is no doubt driven by some magical property of which we are unaware. It led them to the temple and will lead them to us again.”

  Mar bit back a scathing reply. Despite all that had occurred, the old man insisted upon maintaining his subterfuge. Mar had yet to detect any glaring inconsistencies in the scrapper’s matter-of-fact references to magic that would allow him to openly challenge the fraud. The old man’s sincerity appeared without flaw. If Mar had not known otherwise, he might have been tempted to accept that Waleck truly believed in this awesomely powerful, yet so far mostly undefined, mystical energy.

  Still, Waleck had actually said almost nothing concerning the text since they had departed the Waste City. One sure method for supporting a lie was to keep it small. Waleck seemed in a talkative mood at the moment. Perhaps it was time to probe the scrapper’s defenses.

  “If this magic is as powerful as you say, why haven’t they already caught us?”

  “I do not believe that the device gives an exact position, but rather a direction in which to search,” the old man suggested. “It would be necessary to guess our location from multiple points and that would take time.”

  “So sitting still is a bad idea?”

  “Indeed,” the old man readily agreed. “We must go.” Waleck rose and started away from the plaza along a street that most people called Wagon Rut.

  Mar straightened and moved quickly to join him. “Where are we bound?”

  “To Marihe’s shop. It sits in an alley off the west end of Bookbinder Street down from the Plaza of Merchants.”

  “After that?”

  “We must still visit the Viceroy’s Library to search for information on the Mother of the Seas. I am convinced that we will be directed south, to the Silver Sea.”

  “Do you have the gold for such a trip?” Mar asked, thinking suspiciously with his own weighty purse.

  “The money from the scrap will see us to Mhajhkaei. The balance of my gold went to Marihe, for the remedies and the treatment of your arm. But I have other moneys deposited with a usurer at the port.”

  That was not uncommon. Many small merchants and independent craftsmen spirited portions of their profits down river to avoid the Viceroy’s Levy.

  “We will find money when we need it.” Waleck continued dismissively, lengthening his stride.

  Wagon Rut angled slightly to the east and became Emperor Hejhanoate IV Avenue, which angled back to run due south. Emperor Hejhanoate IV Avenue intersected several minor streets and then crossed the Promenade of the Blue Fortress, circling the round colossus of the Empress Venhtrenerex Memorial and its ridiculous duck ponds. Here they encountered increased traffic, but most of the people gave them, or, at least, the Gheddessii they evidenced to be, a wide berth. They crossed the broad pedestrian way without incident, hardly drawing a glance from the detail of Guardsmen posted at the Memorial.

  Three blocks south, Bookbinder Street paralleled the Promenade, bisecting a comparatively affluent section of the Lower City where craftsmen and independent merchants kept their shops and dwellings. A few of the buildings followed th
e old style with rooms surrounding a central private court, but most were more modern simple blockish constructions of unadorned brick. The majority of these rose two or three storeys above the street, with overhanging balconies. Many of the later were crowded with small fruit trees growing in pots, playing toddlers, and lines of laundry. Generally, a shop of some sort – a baker, butcher, cobbler, or the like -- fronted the street on the ground floor and the family lived above.

  The alley Waleck found was an alley only in the broadest sense of the word. It was a dank, dark alcove created through mere chance by the builders of the adjacent structures, a cooperage and a hostelry. The deeply shadowed space was sixteen armlengths deep by three wide and looked as if the occupants of the hostelry had confused it with a garbage heap

  Waleck took Mar’s arm and stopped him from entering the alley.

  “Take care, Mar,” the old man cautioned quietly. “Do not underestimate this hag. It is said that she has performed some miraculous healings, but her magic may possess thorns as well.”

  “What exactly” Mar asked with some irritation, “is she going to do to me?”

  Waleck shook his head. “I do not know. I was told to ask for, and I bargained for, a ‘special service.’ She would not discuss what that entailed. She is very secretive and either says nothing or talks in riddles.”

  “I don’t like this, old man.”

  “Nor I, but we have no choice.”

  Mar did not fully accept this declaration and he had thoroughly discounted Waleck’s insistence that this Marihe would be able to use magic, or anything else for that matter, to heal his arm. Some of her potions might hide the pain, and he had seen salves for bruises and aching joints, but he had never heard of any healer accomplishing more than that. Still, he was unlikely to come to actual harm by submitting to her ministrations, and she might put on a diverting show, if nothing else.

  The entrance to the shop, a solid plank door set in the featureless brick wall of the hostelry, was at the far end of the cul-de-sac. A small, shakily painted and crudely made sign hung above the door, proclaiming, “ERBLE CHIRUGONRY & DEVININ MARIHE, OHNR.”

  Waleck placed his hand to the latch and pushed the door open without knocking. Without hesitation, the wasteminer stepped into the darkness beyond.

  Mar did hesitate, suspicious, but after a moment made his way forward, trying to peer around Waleck, who had stopped just inside.

  The shop was tiny, but not entirely dark. A single, flickering stub of a candle in one corner cast a feeble illumination upon the clutter. To the right of the entrance, a clump of drying onions hung down from a beam in the ceiling and Mar had to duck under them to reach Waleck’s side. Crude shelves and cabinets crowded the walls, jumbled with pottery jars, wooden bins, and canisters of all shapes and sizes. Herbs and unidentifiable powders overflowed throughout and dust and cobwebs clung everywhere.

  An old, much bent woman sat at a table opposite the door. Wisps of stringy white hair straggled from under the cloth tied about her head. Her face was gaunt and thin, an ugly mask of pale, age-spotted flesh stretched tautly over a splintered skull. Though it was quite warm in the room, she wore a varied collection of rags and castoffs that enveloped her in layers like heavy winter clothing. Mar was tempted to take her for a part of the shop’s stock -- a mummified corpse -- until the ancient jaw creaked open and she spoke.

  “Ah, yes, Gheddessii. Or not,” she croaked in a harsh whisper. “Former one, you’ve returned, have you?”

  Waleck stepped forward, displaying no concern that their disguises had been so easily penetrated. “Yes, Marihe.” He gestured to Mar. “I have brought the one who is in need of the special service.”

  The glazed eyes swiveled to pin Mar. “Yes. I know him. But you, who should not be, but is, you lay another charge upon me?”

  Waleck paused, his face unreadable, then spoke. “I have need of information.”

  A skeletal hand emerged with palsied slowness from the rags, extending a crumpled scrap of yellowed paper.

  Waleck reached for the note.

  The hag withdrew her hand slightly. “There is the matter of payment, one who came before.”

  “What would you have? My gold has become scarce.”

  The old hag cackled then, just as one would expect a mad old woman to cackle. The laughter dissolved into a spasm of hacking coughs and it was a long moment before Marihe became quiet once more.

  “I have divined you,” she charged after a sucking a breath between rotted teeth. “I have seen you tarry. I dream of the burden of minutes. I have foreseen the compulsion of your money and I will have no more of it.”

  “What then?” Waleck’s voice was cold.

  “Blood,” Marihe pronounced fiercely, eyes gleaming and lips drawing back into what may have been a smile. “One full drop of your blood.”

  Mar followed this exchange with a mixture of incredulity and incomprehension. To his utter surprise, Waleck made a fist, thumb extended, and offered it to Marihe.

  “I agree.”

  Marihe grinned victoriously, dropped the note on the table, and then reached beneath it to produce a small, white porcelain bowl and a tiny, needle pointed stiletto. Waleck accepted the stiletto and applied it to the meaty part of his thumb. He squeezed his fist over the bowl, and a large, dark drop formed. The drop grew until the weight of it dragged it from the old man’s flesh and it fell, glistening in the candlelight, into the bowl. The drop did not splatter, but clung to itself, forming a globe that rolled about the shinny inner surface of the bowl. Marihe’s hands cupped the bowl almost tenderly as she drew it to her, eyes fixed upon the droplet.

  Waleck retrieved the note and unfolded it. His gaze crossed it briefly, then he turned and passed it to Mar.

  The script was unaccountably neat; it named a somewhat famous plaza near the southern end of the Lower City.

  “Meet me there when you are done,” the scrapper ordered, turning toward the door.

  “What?” Mar demanded. “Where are you going?”

  “To learn of a refuge,” the old man cast over his shoulder, without stopping. “A place where our discovery cannot be skryed by our enemies.”

  Before Mar could protest further, Waleck exited the shop and vanished toward the street.

  Mar stifled a curse, and pivoted back to Marihe. “Quickly, woman, the service you have been paid for!”

  Marihe’s gaze did not move from the bowl. “Patience, youth. Your time comes.” One of her hands stole from the bowl to snare a lid that matched it. With the lid in place, she slid the bowl and its contents into a drawer nearby.

  “A time and another,” Marihe mumbled distractedly, her words not directed to Mar. “And again, but a time.”

  She hunched her shoulders suddenly, gaping at him with her head cocked half sideways. “Stand upon the stone,” she barked, her stare lingering on the drawer, and gestured to his right.

  Mar looked. The floor was a mosaic, the tile long since worn innocent of color and pattern. A thin block of flinty stone squatted atop the tile at the base of a shuttered cabinet.

  Mar moved cautiously to the stone and placed one boot upon it. When nothing untoward happened, he raised the other beside it.

  “Remove the mask,” she ordered then, “I shall look into your face.”

  Mar’s answer was reflexive. “No.”

  Marihe flicked a hand. “Then depart and your gold be forfeit.”

  Mar grimaced. He raised his free arm and awkwardly loosened the ties of his jhuhngt, letting it fall to his shoulder.

  In spite of her insistence, Marihe gave his face only a cursory examination, as if it were a mere formality. After a moment, she made as if to look away, but something like interest flickered deep within the old crone’s dark eyes and her scowl deepened. She gave him her full attention then, and he felt pinned by her stare.

  Mar locked his gaze with Marihe’s, refusing to be intimidated.

  Marihe’s focus changed, moving beyond him, through him. Mar w
ondered what she saw behind him and would have turned but found he could not look away. Her eyes sank into him, delving deep. The total blackness of her eyes struck him abruptly. He had not noticed how truly black these orbs were, not just common mahogany, but tremendously deep, hard ebony. These inky circles widened, drawing him in and shrinking the surrounding room, fading it, till he could see only blackness. Peripherally, he became aware that he could not move or speak. And, curiously, did not care.

  Lights, tiny brilliantly white stars, sped from out of the far dark and halted just before him to hang dancing in space. The lights multiplied and coalesced, forming a swirling cloud. When the mass thickened, more light than dark, it began to pulse, bight and dim, bright and dim, a beat that mirrored that of Mar’s own heart.

  Then the cloud elongated, the dance of the dazzling pinpoints slowing, and an image started to take form. There was only a suggestion at first, of gray highlights and shadows, but eventually Mar recognized it as the figure of a man. More detail emerged as additional lights found their places. The man was dressed in full battle regalia, of a like not seen since the fall of the Empire, and held something long and thin aloft. The image steadied, and a hand was shown clutched tightly about the haft of a sword of flame -- a conquering sword, something inside Mar said -- hurling it high in a gesture of triumph. Though the face remained an indecipherable black oval, a conviction seized Mar that this figure was himself, a future self, half a world away, battles and decades older.

  Without warning, the figure exploded in an eruption of luminescence, shattering the shadow world, and Mar found himself thrust back into the room. He swayed for a moment with a rush of lightheadedness, half-staggered from atop the stone, and then found his balance.

  An anguished moan drew his eyes to the old woman. Marihe lay crouched behind her table, her short stool overturned. Her gnarled arthritic hands fastened upon the edge of the table as if it were her only shield against the forces of Mhokh, God of Death. Her eyes, now only the blood shot eyes of an old woman, were wide with fear.