How? Again, he did not know. He just made the waves or bands or vortices -- whatever they were -- do what he wanted. The text had said that it was like walking. You could walk without thinking about how you did it -- you did not have to willfully control each individual muscle or manage each motion or adjust your balance -- you just walked. That dictum applied ten-fold to magic. He wanted to make a sphere, so he simply did so.
Experimentally, Mar closed his hands upon the spheres, working at the unheard kaleidoscopic refrains to strengthen the bond that wove the grains together. He found that he could not crush the spheres, and when he threw them down, they behaved most unnaturally, lodging instantly in place where they struck, denying the steep slope of the bar. He toyed with the spheres for some time, creating and destroying them, making one absorb the other, sticking them together, tossing them in the air, and, finally, dropping them into the river. When he did this, he discovered a most unusual and very welcome property of his magic spheres -- they floated.
He occupied himself for the better part of the afternoon in the construction of his first raft. What had seemed a simple idea in conception had proved complex in application. The spheres did not actually float as a length of wood did, but rolled across the surface of the water as if beads on glass, bobbing up and down complacently with every ripple. They had no draft and no amount of force that he was able to bring to bear would cause any measurable portion of them to submerge. This characteristic struck him as harmless, so he disregarded it and rushed to complete the one manheight by two platform. While the joints he fashioned between the spheres were unbreakable aside from a literal act of his will, his original efforts proved universally fluid, so that the raft, when launched, flapped like a gossamer bed sheet, mirroring every rill and wave. It required a dozen blind experiments to discover a method of forming rigid bonds, but at last he managed to produce a raft as flat and inflexible as a paving stone.
Pushing the raft ahead of him, he waded into the shallows at the southern end of the bar. Quite pleased at the ease with which it slid across the water, he hopped aboard to attempt his first trial voyage.
And was immediately disconcerted. His sand raft did not budge from the spot at which his last push had placed it; the current had no affect upon it whatsoever, passing underneath without producing any sound. Unsure of the balance of his craft, he scooted to the edge on his buttocks and tried paddling with his hand. In quick succession, he vainly recited the names of six of the Khalarii pantheon, as his efforts did no more than make his raft spin slowly about its central axis. He profaned a dozen more when the raft continued to rotate in place without any sign of slowing after he stopped paddling. In a peevish fit of compounded frustration, he rammed his arms to the elbows through the spheres of the deck. The raft promptly dissolved with a slosh and dunked him in half a manheight of cold, swirling water.
The bath chilled his mood as well as his flesh, and when he crawled out onto the bar, his mind was already churning in search of an answer to this new dilemma. It seemed his dreams were the key to his newfound skill with magic. At rest, his mind seemed released from the conscious bonds that clouded his awareness of the -- what had Waleck called it? The ether? In his dreams, he could literally see, touch and hear the forces he was dealing with, and his mind possessed a keen understanding that eluded him awake. If only he could somehow tap into that understanding. But he was much too agitated to attempt another nap, and doubted, even if he did manage to fall asleep, that he could predetermine the course of his dreams. He could not, with his eyes, see the streamers of sound-color that had so possessed his dream of the sand; numerous ridiculous contortions of his vision had already proven that. How did one see without seeing?
Mar composed himself on the sand, sitting upright comfortably. Daydreams were visions that only his mind saw. Perhaps the forces of magic could be seen through his mind's eyes/ears?
He closed his eyes to the distractions of the river and the forest beyond it and set his mind adrift. His visions began with the familiar, a populated Waste City; these coasted through his mind with barely an effort. He sought no direction, but simply let vision lead into associated vision -- places in Khalar, sunsets he recalled, nights he had rather forget, sometimes glorious mornings, being full and warm, silver in his pockets, persons he had knowledge of, a drunk, small children, Waleck, a girl with long hair and dark eyes lit with a crystal blue fire and a ready smile and loose clothing and a willingness...
Mar blinked his eyes open. That was definitely not the path to greater enlightenment. Leastwise, not of magic. And that sort of daydream was of the utterly fantastic variety; that Telriy should smile like that for him was simply too incredible even to imagine.
He sighed, pushed the image of her face from his thoughts, and began again. He daydreamed of similar things, different things, following paths as he was minded to -- the river, rolling in its millennia old bed, pulled by the strength of the world, a sheer reddish bass haze that bound everything together, constant and harmonic; the trees, snatching at the twinkles flooding from the sun, throwing some off, swallowing others to bring some order to the harsh static; the air, broken by myriad swirls of color and tone, changed and transformed as they passed into and out of his lungs; the sand, tied eternally to the world by loops of the red haze, loops that could be weakened here, untied there, formed into new and unnatural knots, lines, and constructions.
Mar smiled with satisfaction as he rose to work upon his new raft.
TWENTY-THREE
The ruin huddled miserably on the plateau, forlorn and empty.
Mar circled the crumbling complex warily, scanning the sprawling collection of stone buildings for nooks where men might hide. He maneuvered carefully, banking his raft against the sideways force of his turns. He rode seated, feet braced forward and hands locked on improvised cleats built from sand bubbles. As yet, he had not managed to fashion the magically bound sand into any other shape; a knife had been his first thought, then boots, but neither attempt had succeeded and the products of the efforts had been rather comical. A natural limitation of some kind seemed to be at work. He would have to study the problem.
He saw no one, but did flush pigeons from a high tower that had lost much of its domed roof. He remained aloft for some time longer, his eyes full of a spectacular sunset, and then, more or less assured that the site was indeed deserted, cautiously directed the raft to coast downward toward a large courtyard.
A geological freak, the plateau rose triumphant from an otherwise unbroken expanse of level flood plain forest. The sides of it were sheer and, to his eye anyway, unscaleable cliffs. He had sighted the anomaly as evening approached, and its oddness had drawn him from his course above the river to investigate. While flying was the most efficient and speediest means of travel that he had ever undertaken, it was also, after the initial awe-inspiring thrill of the experience had waned, undeniably dull.
Landscape was landscape, whether afoot, afloat, or aflight.
He dumped the last of his speed in careful stages as he dropped lower, calming the yellow tympani that drove it and the quiet turquoise that pushed down against the earth, and brought his raft to a coasting stop. He accomplished this with less finesse than he would have liked, but did manage to avoid a sudden wrenching jerk. His first attempt at halting the raft had almost pitched him over its side, arse over pate. Somewhat pleased with himself, he rose to stretch, looking about.
He had seen more than enough piles of rubble in the Waste City to consider himself a fair judge of the age of quarried stones. These, he did not doubt, had seen centuries of weathering. Their surfaces were gray and splintered, cracked from hundreds of seasons of freeze and thaw. At a guess, it seemed that this ruin was contemporary with that fallen city of the Waste. No great spasm of destruction had struck here, however. Most of the structures and walls were reasonably intact, though a few had settled into moss-blanketed heaps. There seemed to be no main edifice, but rather numerous towers of different shapes and rambling
chambers interconnected by arcades and balconies. He considered investigating the interiors, but decided with darkness approaching that he should restrict himself to the open.
He wondered briefly how the builders had reached the apex of the plateau. The distance from the peak of the mount to the forest floor was better than thirty manheight. While it may not have been impossible to build scaffolds up the face of the cliffs, it seemed a tremendous feat of engineering. Perhaps, like he, they had simply flown up?
On the western end of the court, a thorny thicket covered a large patch of ground -- possibly the countless seasons-wild offspring of an orchard or garden plot. The remainder of the court was paved with flinty, mahogany-colored stones, and was clear, though moss and thin grass grew sparsely between the cracks. A building on the east was without a doubt a stable, with horse-sized doors and interior partitions in the nature of stalls. A great part of its slate roof was miraculously intact. While wondering at that, he marked it for the coming night's shelter. The weathered stub of a fountain and its large reflecting pool commanded the center of the court. Thirsty, Mar stretched his legs and started toward the pool.
Expecting perhaps stagnant rainwater, and pondering what benefit magic might avail to the cleansing of such, he was pleasantly surprised to discover that clear, untainted water bubbled slowly from a crack in the base of the fountain. The water rolled down a deep worn channel into the pool, also free of scum and corruption, and then overflowed into a drain set in the pavement. He tasted the water, found it refreshing, and drank his fill.
A knee-high curb of small milk-glazed tiles, some missing or shattered, confined the pool. The curb formed not a circle as he would have expected, but rather, he realized as he stood drinking from his cupped palms, a horned crescent -- the three-quarter moon.
No domestic fruit or vegetable had survived the ages of neglect, but Mar did scrounge some late berries in the thicket before the light completely failed. The meal was not as satisfying as he would have liked, but was sufficient to send him to a hasty bed in the old stable building with a half-full stomach. He found the roof supported with age-blackened iron joists, not wood. Wondering anew, and with only a pile of the previous years dusty leaves to soften his repose, he slept.
Sometime after moonrise, he woke with a dry mouth and a full bladder. Sitting up, stiff and chilled, he listened for a moment at the dark beyond the wide door of the stable. The courtyard was quiet; the sounds of the forest bellow the massif did not gain its height, and whatever fauna might exist within the complex quiescent. Rising, he made water in the gutter of the courtyard wall and then moved quickly across the cold stone toward the fountain, regretting yet again his missing boots as the pinpricks of unseen pebbles made him dance.
The night was bright, Father Moon nearly full, though the Cousins were out of cycle. The priests would explain that Knorthrha the Night God, sated with nearly a month of feasting, had been able to take but a single bite from his monthly prey. This obese crescent moon, shinning in a clear sky, swept the courtyard with a wash of soft grays. The tiles bounding the pool, through some mystery of a long dead potter's art, blazed with an astounding white brilliance. Dazzled and curious -- the glow neither growing nor diminishing as his perspective changed -- he knelt to drink.
His reflection gazed back at him, curious, perhaps amused, deep in its eyes a certainty of knowledge.
He paused, taken aback, and stopped to rub the sleep from his eyes.
Surely this was not he: hair graying, shoulders thick from years of bearing the sword, lines that bit deep and bore the cares of a thousand concerns, a thin scar that marked his right cheek from eye to jaw.
Only luck that the dagger had missed the eye. But his surgeon had had a good hand with a needle. He could have knit the flesh without seam by magic, could in truth erase it with but a pass of his hand at any time he wished, but he kept the scar for the memory, a reminder afresh as oft he gazed into a mirror...
Startled, he sprang back from the pool and stood ready. For what, he did not know. As he moved, the image slid from view, hidden behind the curb of the pool.
The pool had given not a reflection, but a vision. Akin that of Marihe, but more complete, stronger, as clear as his own sight. But more than just sight, for he had known the thoughts of the image as his own. With a sinking feeling, he realized it could be nothing but another apparition of his own future, another equally unwelcome look at what ... would? ... could? ... might? ... be?
His first thought was to leave the place immediately, fearful of what might be revealed, but the temptation of a glimpse of his own future was simply too great. Surely, whatever the magic pool might show him could only lend advantage, if no more than the advantage of knowledge over ignorance?
Steeling himself, he stepped back to the pool's edge.
His image awaited, looking back keenly as if aware of its earlier self. Mar looked closer, repressing his uncertainty.
The man who looked back was indeed much older. More so than the lines and the gray might speak of.
He had killed a score less one men with his own strength, all men who had threatened harm to his and his own -- many assassins, some villains, a few rivals in magic. No quarter asked or given. He knew all their names, even the ones who had crept anonymous from the night, and tallied them each and every day without fail as a memorial.
This was his favorite place, this balcony. He had had it built especially so, a place of peace and security, but foremost privacy. It was a place where none need be on guard, shielded with the most powerful magical wards he could devise. Men of unquestioned loyalty, one a giant of a man, gone white-haired and near blind, but still deadly and unstoppable, held the one doorway. A small bit of magic insured that. Careful magic, that few if any could detect, but necessary. Mar could not be everywhere at once, and so could not always be in the right place to defend those he loved.
Peace and privacy yes; Telriy could nurse the new baby openly here, as she did now...
Mar looked over the shoulder of his future self. Yes, there was the girl, seated in a wooden rocking chair, dressed simply in a nursing gown, suckling a tiny infant no more than days old.
...but no more a girl. No gray, few lines, and ten births all live; magic made an excellent physician. Six sons and this one made four daughters. Telriy had accused him often enough of using magic to influence the sex of their offspring, but he had left it all to chance. Not that he had not considered how the feat might be accomplished. Great finesse was required...
Mar scanned the balcony revealed in his vision. This was a family gathering: eight stair-step children lounged or scampered about, reading, playing, mock sword fighting...
...Rhe, the oldest son at seventeen, the heir, who made magic with sometimes frightening ease, so much Mar's son that rumors abounded that Mar had simply forged him from his own blood. He stood just to the left of his father, more serious than any young man need be. He watched all, spoke little, knew the demanding course of his life and embraced it unblinkingly. He would be a king whose deeds were praised for a thousand years.
Eiriyh and Eiriih, the twins with their mother's hair and eyes, sixteen months younger and frankly lethal with any edged weapon; they styled themselves the King's Bodyguards and had already killed an assassin at their mother's feet. They would know struggle and danger all of their very long lives. Lauryh, brassy and bold, perhaps her mother's favorite, and quite proficient at magic, though she disdained it. Sadness awaited her. Then the little ones, the oldest five hard years of the Great War younger than Lauryh. Khorli, Meghiy, little Mar, barely toddling Telrhie, and the baby whose name day was still fortnights away. The little ones were all still only children; Mar had vowed never to divine the character of their lives...
...and of course, Gherihy, she of the contrary spirit, off somewhere with her betrothed. An odd pair, inseparable since the final stand of thesiege of Whendispool, of an age, forever arguing but working in tandem like no others, bearing similar scars. Gherihy the
Contrary; the daughter who was to be a son, an outrage that Telriy had yet to forgive Mar of; the eldest who declared herself youngest and so renounced a kingdom; a magician with a gift unfathomed, who refused instruction; her future could not be seen...
Again Mar leapt back from the pool, overwhelmed, his heart racing. This was simply too much detail, too much knowledge. He stood there for a moment, frozen with doubt and confusion.
How could he be a king? That was simply ridiculous. There were no kings -- no kingdoms – in the modern world. Nor could one be raised. Klendhor the Great had killed the last of the despot kings and thereby shattered the final surviving sea-spanning kingdom of the ancient world half a century before the founding of the Empire. The First Charter of the Empire had outlawed life bound allegiance, as had every law code since. Without those unbreakable blood oaths, no king could be crowned. Even mighty Mhajhkaei ruled only a loose confederation of bickering city-states.
And how was he to become such a powerful magician when he barely knew anything about magic at all?
Telriy was to be his wife? All those children . . .
How in the worthless names of forty-nine idiotic gods could such incredible events come to pass?
His mind spun. Were all of these things set, beyond his ability to change? Or could he somehow alter what he had seen? If it were possible to avoid this future, should he dare attempt to do so? What horrible consequence might befall him if he tried to rebel against fate?
Did he have options?
Moments passed but no answers came.
He left the pool then without a backward glance, climbed aboard his raft and flung it and himself into the night sky.
TWENTY-FOUR
3197 Before the Founding of the Empire
Key to Magic 01 Orphan Page 22
