Key to Magic 01 Orphan

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  Another moment of sightlessness.

  Telriy, pinned by strong arms, her lips tight in the silence of desperation, threw Mar a pleading look before the night hid her once more.

  Then blasts of hissing, varicolored light cut the dark between the thunders, reaping destruction, splinters and flesh flying.

  Blackness.

  Answering fire flew, and then Waleck was down, the monks swarming over him.

  With a brittle clank like that of glass falling on metal, a white doorway grew from the deck, light streaming from it to transform rain shrouded men into black shadow figures devoid of detail. The shadow monks began to retreat to this doorway, carrying their captives. By ones and twos, they leapt into the white doorway and vanished. One group reached the doorway and Telriy's last cry was cut off as abruptly as if the sound had been chopped in two with a cleaver.

  The girl's aborted plea reached out with almost palpable force and snared Mar, dragging him forward. He staggered on uncooperating legs and collided with the group rushing Waleck's limp form toward the doorway. He grabbed at hands and arms and cloth, trying to impede. Fists pounded and shoved at him, but he ignored them and fought savagely to reach the old man. This, though, was all to no avail, for his body had suffered too much. The will was there, but the strength had fled. He was thrust away with blows and slung to the deck with a jar that stole his breath.

  A monk stood over Mar. A pale blue light pulsed for just an instant in the darkness.

  A cold voice pronounced, “No, not this one. There is nothing but the merest background residue. He is just a servant. Get rid of him.”

  Half in a daze, Mar felt himself being lifted by many hands, carried a few jarring steps, and thrown with a quick swing far, high, and out. He fell a long time and crashed into water.

  He struck the river tumbling slowly, first his head, then chest, and then legs. Water erupted away from him with a sound not unlike that of fish guts hitting pavement. He plunged beneath the choppy surface, gasped involuntarily, and choked on the shockingly cold fluid. Convulsively, he thrust downward with his arms and shot his upper body back into the air, spewing. He had barely time to cough once more, choke-near vomit, and feel the acid burn of water in his nostrils, before he sank back beneath the river. He might have drowned then, save that his arms and legs seemed determined to survive no matter what the rest of him wanted.

  Treading water, he forced a cough to clear his lungs and then sucked air greedily. After a moment of drifting with the weak current, he regained enough presence of mind to strike out with careful strokes toward the black slash against the background gray that he vaguely perceived as the shore. He had thought it a goodly distance, but scarcely a full moment passed before his right hand dug into the sandy bottom. Standing with difficulty, the surprisingly persistent clutch of the river off-balancing him, he waded up onto the sharply inclined beach, such as it was, and collapsed in a heap. His awareness faded for an unknown length of time, and he came back to himself shuddering with a bone-leaching chill. He wrapped his arms tightly around his knees and hugged them close to his chest. Hoarding his own warmth, he pressed his face down against his forearms. He would have been content to sleep just so had it not been for the insistent sting of the rain upon his neck. Just then, this slight irritation was more annoyance than he could bear.

  All that developed from his first attempt to stand was an overwhelming desire not to do so. His total exhaustion surprised and confused him. Beatings he had taken before, though by no means recently and none as severe, but never had these left him in such a state. And his ordeal was certainly not over. Only the Forty-Nine Gods knew how long it would take to find shelter from the storm -- if any shelter was to be found.

  Stubbornly, not quite knowing how he managed it, he got to his feet. Begrudging himself one small grin of triumph, he rested a moment. The bar -- it could be nothing else -- sloped upward sharply before him, and if there was a refuge, some hopefully dry nook or cranny, it seemed reasonable to assume that it would lie on the most elevated part of the islet. His set his jaw against the ache in his muscles, staggered a cautious step or two, and then, encouraged, assayed more ambitious strides.

  And promptly hooked his foot on a protruding piece of driftwood and fell on his face in the course sand.

  He would have cursed then, but he could not for the life of him remember the name of the deity empowered with the oversight of sand.

  Simply because he had to, he got up again. Always, there were no choices. He had to climb to his feet and try again. And again, if necessary. And still again. Surrender had no meaning for him; he could not quit, no matter the pain, no matter the cost. Had he been able to do so, he would have given up better than a decade ago when he was a scrawny, starving boy in the back streets of Khalar with nothing and nobody and nowhere to go. But not now. Never now.

  He plodded on and did not bother to count the times he fell. He made it to the top of the rise, a plateau of sorts -- the uneven stretch of grass-hummocked sand measured barely ten paces long by half that wide.

  He turned about, unsure of which direction to look, peering into the dark and rain. He knew the barge was out there, but he could find no hint of it. The strange lights of the Phaelle’n – and Waleck and Telriy – were gone. He turned back again.

  A dark, ragged mass perched before him, deflecting some of the wind. He moved toward it, straining to see. He had to close within an armlength before he could discern the nature of the mass. It was a raft of driftwood, uprooted trees, and other such flotsam woven in an incredible tangle. It was high and free of the sand and must have been left by the receding of some seasons past flood. Somehow, he found a relatively dry cubby formed by the over-reaching roots of a massive stump. With what he knew to be the very last of his strength, he burrowed into the sand to await the dawn.

  He did not concern himself with what he would do when that dawn came. He already knew. That had been decided before he had been thrown overboard. Telriy's last cry had been just one simple word.

  With her final hope, Telriy had called his name.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mar had no boots.

  Not that this might be deemed unusual in any sense. He had not worn shoes on a regular basis until he was nearly grown. In Khalar, shoes were made on demand to fit the customer; no cobbler bothered to keep unmarketable stock on hand for the convenience of persons minded to squeeze through unshuttered windows on moonless nights.

  Though he did not relish the prospect of walking any distance in his bare feet, this problem, in all likelihood, would not have been an insurmountable one. As it was, the other major difficulty confronting him threatened to expand the first to nearly heartbreaking proportions. He faced the shore, looking out across the eddy pool, his view unobstructed. A tentative mist hovered over the slack water, waiting for the sun to banish it back into the depths. It shifted back and forth in a hesitant dance as if also seeking that which Mar had sought in vain.

  The barge was gone.

  He was very well and without a doubt stranded, for there was no sign of it as far up and down the Ice as he could see. Nor of any other barge, ship, boat, bucket, timber, or any other contraption that might be coerced to float.

  He had awakened from his fitful sleep at dawn, still drained and weary, when the first sunbeams had loopholed through the mass of the raft to his burrow. Even then, by all appearances, the barge had been long gone. The captain must have pressed on sometime in the early morning, driven by the opportunity presented by the end of the storm, by some esoteric boatman's sense which appointed times and schedules, or simply by fear of the magic which had exploded on his foredeck. It mattered little which of these, or even if some other motivation Mar would never know and could not guess at, had spurred the captain's departure. The barge had vanished and with it any hope of reaching Mhajhkaei anytime in the near future.

  As if his situation was not sufficiently dire, the Brotherhood's magical assault had left him almost completely destitute
. He had the clothes he wore, but nothing else -- no weapons, no gear, no food, and no boots!

  He laughed hollowly and winced as a flare of pain from his nose cut the laugh short. He could not honestly claim to be destitute. Reaching under his shirt, he pulled the money belt from about his waist and threw it onto the sand. He still had twenty gold. But one could not wear gold, eat it, or fight with it.

  Mar did not bother to indulge in self-recrimination and felt no confusion or alarm springing from his sudden, painful, and absolute conversion to an inescapable belief in the horrible truth of magic. He had never denied any fact of reality simply because it did not suit him, had never railed about the unfairness of any circumstance that could not be altered. There was no longer any doubt that magic was all too terribly real. This force, or power, or only the Gods knew what, was more dread than strength or wealth or steel. It was all that Telriy had claimed it was and more.

  But neither would he simply submit to that power. It was simply one more bodiless adversary, one more thorny barrier to his intents and desires, like hunger or exhaustion or fear, to be overcome and thrust aside.

  And even at that, it was of no immediate concern; it was but one of many obstacles he could foresee in his future, all of them rearing up in his mind's eye like fractured cliffs to bar the path he had set for himself.

  That path was a simple one. He would find the monks. He would free Waleck. He would free Telriy. And then he would destroy all who swore by the name of Phaelle!

  Gingerly, Mar probed at his nose, feeling the stretch of the swollen flesh and tracing the jag of the splintered bone. It hurt abominably. He had considered trying to set it aright, but his courage had wavered at the thought of the self-inflicted pain, and it was not at all certain that he would improve his condition with his amateurish efforts. Curious, he descended to the water's edge to examine his reflection. Even in this backwater the river was too disturbed to offer him much of a view, just a blurry shadow against blue and gray surges and swirls. He had never considered his face handsome, but the damage made the rippling image grotesque even to his own eyes.

  He raised his gaze again to the glaring, sun-washed greens of the bank. His nose would heal in time, which was one commodity there would be no lack of during the long trek to Mhajhkaei. He rubbed his nose gently, trying to relieve some of the aching soreness. The injury would surely sap his strength as he walked. It was no doubt a cruel conspiracy of the Forty-Nine Gods that Marihe and her shop lay in the wrong direction. He would cheerfully chance another of her strange visions, if she would but heal him once more.

  He smiled wryly, but the river paid no heed. More deplorable than the reputed capriciousness of Khalar's non-existent Gods was his own ignorance. There was no doubt that the battles that lay ahead of him would be fought on fields ruled by magic. He faced foes who could kill him in ways and by means that he had never bothered to imagine. If only he had paid more attention to Waleck's text...

  Seized by a thought, which blossomed almost instantly into a burning compulsion, he slowly reached down, scooped up a palm full of the damp, reddish brown sand, and stared at it.

  And stared at it.

  And stared at it.

  Disgusted, he flung the sand into the river. At best, the idea was ludicrous -- that he, of all things, could use magic! Even supposing that his unknown heritage had bequeathed to him whatever skill was required, he had no real notion of how to begin. He had no inkling of what it was, exactly, that he was supposed to do. Sense the ethereal flux? Oyraebos had made it no clearer. How in the name of the Forty-Nine Gods did one do that?

  In a black mood, he squatted and idly traced his finger in the water.

  He knew he must head south toward Mhajhkaei. This was his only option, for Khalar was clearly no longer safe for him and he did not believe that the Phaelle’n would have returned to the Imperial City. Unashamedly, he knew practically nothing of the geography of the lands south of the Khalar. His journey with Waleck to the Waste City had been the first time in his life that he had traveled farther than a few leagues from the environs of his birthplace. He had been told often enough that the Ice flowed almost due south to the port of Mhajhkaei on the Great Silver Sea, but the rest of the world remained an utter mystery. It had never occurred to him that he might have need of such knowledge, as he had always thought himself perfectly content to have remained in Khalar for however many more years he could continue to elude the headsman's ax. He had had a place in Khalar. And a trade, such as it was. Now he had neither.

  Equally innocent of things nautical, he had no way of determining how far they had come from Khalar, though surely it must be dozens of leagues. How much farther it was to the barge's destination, he could hardly guess. Fifty leagues, possibly, though more probably half again that.

  Yes, Mhajhkaei was his only logical goal. The monks must have passed through the seaport to reach Khalar, and surely somewhere in The Greatest City in All the World he would be able to beg, buy, or steal information that would lead him to them.

  A rush of dizziness made Mar unpleasantly conscious of the fact that he had recovered little of his vigor. He rolled backwards to lie on the sand, the sky spiraling in his eyes.

  Mercifully, there were no clouds above to swim in his vision, just the sharp blue dome of the world. The storm had scrubbed the sky clean of even the highest clouds and had left the morning cool. Now that the sun had topped the trees towering above the riverbank, it was pleasantly warm and the golden light bathing his face eased some of the dull pain that burned inside his head. The dizziness passed quickly, but he made no move to rise, his body leaden. He let his eyes close against the glare, the soothing sun cradling his aching flesh. In just a few moments, he was asleep.

  Mar dreamed of a vast ebony universe, empty and pure. With no warning, the ebony split, invaded by an infinite blaze of ivory, so that he now stood on an incredibly immense white plain with a great black sky arching over him. He found his eyes drawn down to the ivory on which he stood. After eons, it became clear that the ivory was in actuality no more than sand, a pristine, powder-dry beach that stretched from limitless horizon to limitless horizon. As he continued to peer at the sand, the ebony receded until nothing remained within his vision but the motionless, coarse surface.

  He had an incredible clarity of sight as he studied the sand; he could see the individual grains and the spaces between them. As he looked closer, the grains swelled to the size of gravel, then again so that they appeared large jagged stones heaped together, and yet again till the face of one grain obscured his sight of the others, spreading beneath him like a rocky plateau. This particular grain continued to grow, crevices and fissures opening from hairline cracks and vague lines to become crags and gorges. The splintered and broken walls of one rift widened and rushed up around him, swallowing him, and for a moment he had the frightening sensation of falling.

  He saw inside the grain of sand. There was a riotous thicket of bright light hiding here in the heart: ribbons, and bands, and lines of all colors wrapped and tied together. There were points and knots, weaves and tangles, complexity and simplicity; in every direction and to the limits of his vision lay glowing, pulsating light.

  And every light had a tone. They blanketed the scale from bass to soprano, every pitch he had every heard played or sung and thousands more that no voice or instrument could produce. Some cycled, some warbled, some shrieked. Some droned, some bounced, some thundered. But, amazingly, all of them could be distinguished from the background of all the others, separated from the cacophonous symphony that seemingly should overwhelm the ears. An intricate arpeggio caught his attention. Without knowing how he knew, he knew that it sprang from that convoluted mass over there. He reached out and grabbed it. It was soft in some places, sharp in others, and hot in the middle ... though those words really did not describe the sensations he experienced as he stroked the complicated construction with his hands. The various lights fixed in the mass had streamers flowing off in all directions
, and they began to pulse brighter as he held it. He felt tension, compression, attraction -- his mind would not settle on one concept, but whirled from one to another, uncertain.

  Suddenly weary of the escapade, he buried his hands in the mass and pulled. The world of lights exploded.

  Mar woke with a start and groaned as he sat up, his head throbbing. He despised dreams that lingered into wakefulness; the transitional moment of utter confusion disgusted him. Blearily, he looked around. Nothing had changed: the pool was still vacant, his feet were still bare, and his stomach was still empty. He started to rise and stopped, as he became aware of smooth objects gripped in both hands. Wonderingly, he brought the objects up before his awestruck eyes.

  He held two matching spheres, both perfectly round and as smooth as glass to the touch. Their weights were negligible, but as he moved them he felt resistance, as if he pushed them through water. Their mottled surfaces reflected the same bits of color as the shingle on which he sat. Disbelieving, he closed his hands and the spheres promptly slumped into handfuls of tinder-dry sand that quickly dribbled between his fingers.

  Mar reached with trembling hands to fill his cupped palms once more. With his breath caught in his throat and his heart thudding madly in his chest, he formed the sand into a sphere.

  How he did it, he could not quite explain. He could sense something there sighing through the tiny bits of earth bone, some force with fluctuating energy, varying volume, but it was like nothing he knew in the physical realm. None of the words of measure he knew could be applied to it, but still he thought that he could judge its strength it in a strange, uncertain fashion. At least, he could tell that this portion was larger than that one, that this certain part here had greater force than one there. And he could discern certain patterns and cycles, that, for lack of better terms, seemed like songs of colors and melodies of shades. Some were quiet, bleached and mournful, others boisterous, brilliant and raging. He could not see them or hear them or touch them, but he knew they were there, and he could manipulate them.