by Alex Sapegin
“Can’t it be any other way?”
“Who knows? I cannot read the prince’s thoughts. What they really want is covered with darkness. Finding contacts with Miur is not the main task of your princess. Why are you surprised? The girl demonstratively meets with traders and smugglers who have access to the cat people. It makes anyone inevitably guess the purpose of the voyage. True, she is wasting her resources on the merchants and the dark dealers. They would never surrender the secrets of their comings and goings. The Great Mother’s ‘night dwellers’ kill all traitors. It is easier to organize a direct envoy. I understand that the cats have not had any business for three thousand years with the dragons in power, and knocked down all the Lords of the Sky who approached their lands. They did not recognize either the emperor or the Prince of Ora, but the current situation could cause them to enter into a dialogue. If the Principality of Ora collapses, the Great Mother will be one on one with the emperor’s nökürs, who have not forgotten the ancient slap in the face—helping Jagirra.”
The elf said nothing, looking at Andy with a pensive gaze. Numerous sparks in her aura testified to the fact that she was thinking hard. She was analyzing his words and setting the impressions from the conversation out in order of importance. There was no doubt that Andy was being “measured” from all sides and the information she received processed in all parameters.
The bites had stopped. Small whirlpools drove the bobber across the backwaters, but there hadn’t been a single bite in the last five minutes.
“Can I try?” Ania broke the silence, shooting her eyes at the bait.
“Go ahead. I’ll change the bait right now.”
“I’ll do it.” The sida took his bag and poked around in it, choosing what was from her point of view the most appetizing fish snack.
Planting a healthy red worm on the hook, she spit on the bait and cast the fishing rod. A half-minute later, the bobber drifted off underwater; the rod arched. Andy jumped to his feet.
“Bring it out, bring it out. Smoothly now, do not jerk the rod, it is not enchanted,” he began to give her advice.
“Don’t interfere,” said the elf. “You’re not gonna get away!”
The large fish stubbornly refused to give in. The rod cracked, but it held. Andy, wringing his hands, jumped along the shore. Ania was knee-deep in the river. The water stirred around her legs. The girl smoothly pulled the rod to the shore. A large, eight-pound striped fish that looked like a pike came up onto the slippery stones. The elf jumped to the shore with one leap, picked up a round cobblestone, and dropped it onto the river predator’s head.
“Beginner’s luck,” Andy growled.
“The chupkeys you were fishing for always hide when an orsh appears,” Ania said, picking up the fish by the gills, “and orshes are caught by red. A red rag, a piece of meat, a red worm—they do not care.”
She’d shown him what for, no two ways about it. In one sentence and with one big fish, she’d disgraced all his fishing experience and his catch. Andy laughed. Looking at him, Ania began to laugh too. The increasing overflow of the two voices rang out over the river.
“Andy, I cannot cook fish,” the sida said, wiping away a small tear from her eye.
“Well, that’s the lesser of two evils. We’ll think of something,” Andy smiled. Ania didn’t miss a trick. How cleverly she pushed his buttons and flattered him, also profiting thereby.
Coal got the chupkeys, and the orsh was gutted, stuffed with marsh onions, sprinkled with salt and rubbed with the equivalent of pepper, then wrapped in a wide river leaf and rolled into a thick layer of clay. Watching Andy’s skills, Ania was surprised. What did he need all that clay for? Who would eat the fish now? He reassured the elf, saying, she will, and she’ll lick her fingers, just trust him. The sida looked skeptically at the hefty clod of clay placed in the fire, but refrained from further questions. The cook knew better.
* * *
“Andy, is there a little piece left?”
“No, we ate it all. How was the fish?”
“Heavenly!”
“Imagine how they are now going to envy you in the detachment. Do you think I failed to notice your hungry looks when I cook?”
“Oh yes. Ugh.” Ania, leaning back and resting her elbows on a specially set saddle, loosened the top lace of her blouse. The light of the fire cast a dark hollow between her breasts.
Andy looked away. He had seen the sida nude. The ladies did not shy away from bathing. If they announced a halt near a river or lake, they were not shy with their own bodies and did not suffer from hypocrisy with excessive modesty, but that was not what was going on now. Bathing was perceived as something natural, ordinary and did not cause any special reactions, and now the hollow was so inviting and erotic that his blood began to run through his veins at triple speed.
“Andy?”
“Yes?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.” Andy waved his hand casually. The large yummy dinner eaten in one sitting caused drowsiness and a content disposition of the spirit which the end of the world could not shake.
“Who are you?”
The good mood fell away instantly. Seemingly innocent, the question turned out to be worse than the end of the world.
“I am me, are there any doubts? Throw a stone at me if I am not me, but someone else!”
“An exhaustive answer, as the pirates of the southern seas say: for someone’s secrets, you pay with your teeth and life. Is that right?”
“As they say in distant countries: ‘the less you know, the better you sleep!’”
The sida straightened her back. The tongues of flame reflected in her green eyes danced an otherworldly, bewitching dance. Andy admired her correct features and sensual, plump lips. Admiration was one thing, but he did not lose his caution.
“You do not look like a shkas. Freaks do not teach sword fighting. You have the habits of a noble, and the dugaria does not deprive a person of memory so selectively.”
“I am me; there will be no other answer.”
“Sorry if I offended you.”
“It’s okay. A healthy curiosity when you come into contact with someone else’s mystery is natural,” Andy smiled to soften the situation.
From the main camp, they heard the sounds of a tair and a natvor, an instrument similar to a harp. To the simple musical accompaniment of Renat, one of Thygar’s supporters, they sang a ballad about the love of a noble knight for a certain beautiful princess. No matter what the unfortunate man did to try to gain her affection, the beauty was deaf and mute to the lover’s heart’s impulses. The singer’s voice was clear and clean, but the tedious way he performed it killed the entertainment value.
Parting the bushes, Delia, performing the role of the princess’ first maid, and Torvir, Delia’s permanent boyfriend, came over to the glade lit by the fire. Andy tensed up, expecting trickery from the guests, but they behaved peacefully and invited the sida to the main camp. The cavaliers were organizing a competition for the best performer of songs and ballads. At that, the peaceful path ended. Ania was now more of a friend than a stranger for them, but the conversation with Andy went differently. Torvir said something to the effect that it would be interesting to listen to Andy (at these words, Delia twisted her lips contemptuously). Perhaps the guy who tormented his tair by day, in addition to the plucking of strings that sounded like a chicken being plucked alive, had something else, something a bit more pleasant? Was he as talented at music as he was in caring for girls? Andy didn’t react to the thinly veiled insult. Torvir, smiling arrogantly, picked up his companion by the elbow and started on his way back. Somewhere in the middle of the road, Andy let out a muffled curse. May your paths be crooked, jerks.
“Are you coming?” Ania asked.
“Why not?”
“They want to shame you.”
“I guessed as much. Certainly by Thygar’s doing and with the tacit approval of our “prin
cess.” The girl wants to finish off her victim, and who is her victim, can you guess?”
“I can. What are you standing there for? Offer a lady your arm!”
Andy picked up the musical instrument and took Ania by the elbow. A brave girl, to appear before the others like this. The sida decided not to waste time on trifles. Spitting at enemies in the face was a beautiful gesture. It was a risky action; Andy hoped she knows what she is doing.
He hadn’t played the guitar for a long time. The last time he held his darling in his hands was on the grievous day of his portal transfer from Earth to Ilanta. The three days that had passed since the purchase of the tair didn’t count.
Andy was honest with himself. He played not bad. The scope of his personal skills went beyond three chords. He recalled that guy at the house, one of his sister’s victims, who had a musical ear and strummed a seven-string while Andy was cooking for them. A couple of songs performed by that guy clearly showed his class. According to his sister, in role-playing games, that guy was always an elf. Music is a great force. How soon under its influence did Irina break, and how soon after did she dump him? The power of music aside, his older sister’s strong temper was stronger.
Andy, carefully bypassing the stumps and warning about the roots and branches, accompanied his companion to the retinue’s camp. The new participant in the music contest was greeted with deliberately friendly exclamations. The ladies batted their eyelashes; the gentlemen wished him victory. A theater of masks concealing baseness. They cast lots to see who would perform in what order. In total, six contestants were nominated to perform as forest bards.
All the performers sat down in front of the “princess,” dedicating the ballads to the “queen of the forest.” It should be noted that the contestants had reached a high level of musical expertise. The voices were all trained and pleasant. One contestant smoked nervously on the sidelines and warmed up, stupidly pretending to be a small music box. Andy did not expect to win; he was cooking up another plan.
When it was his turn, he broke tradition, settling in front of Ania. There was a disgruntled murmur. He didn’t care! He decided to win the elf’s heart; everything else was secondary.
His fingers ran along the strings. It was a little painful; he’d really chaffed them lately, but for the sake of the idea it was worth a little suffering. Memory snatched the first song from its bins, and Andy translated as he went along, performing it in Common. He reworked a few details in accordance with local realities, but the nature of love expressed in song is universal in all worlds.
“And we have a certain girl in the palace,” Andy began, watching the bright lights turn on in the sida’s eyes.
The moment the last chord rang out, he changed the melody and kept going:
“Enchanted, bewitched, with a wind in the field once married….”
Then there was the “Little Blue Handkerchief” and “The Dark Night.”
Tears appeared in the corners of Ania’s eyes; there were languid sighs from the ladies present and hateful looks from the cavaliers who had been robbed of the victory. The shkas’ voice was inferior to their voices on all counts, but his songs were new, unusual, attractive, and they were filled with real feelings. The women sensed this and envied the one to whom he devoted his performance. The men ground their teeth because the attention of the beautiful half of humanity was not on them. Andy wanted to end the concert, but the amicable shouts of protest didn’t let him. The choice of the fifth song was short-lived. “The Beauty Queen” was somewhat ambiguous and a little frivolous: taking into account local specifics, the line about “I’m bringing you flowers” was perceived, well, given the history of the silver bloom, uniquely and literally as a veiled proposal. Who cared what they thought? Andy didn’t alter anything. If someone didn’t like it, he could stick his nose in a rubber hose.
“Another one,” Ania whispered.
Andy closed his eyes. He seemed to have achieved his goal; Ania wasn’t noticing anyone else except him. In the eyes of some of the ladies, he read readiness to warm the simple bed in his lonely tent. Suddenly, an image and a tune emerged from a cartoon he’d seen back in those days when his presence near the TV didn’t cause the screen to go fuzzy. Without opening his eyes, he sang:
“Golden ray of sunshine….”
The last chord sounded in complete silence. Andy opened his eyes. Why was everyone staring behind his back? He turned around cautiously. Almighty Twins! Just look where my singing’s gotten me! The air was melting with an illusion—it was Ania, full size. She was depicted as he’d seen her on the river bank—sad and desperate at the same time, with a slight smile on her lips.
Now they would definitely kick him out of the group for using magic. Who would believe the image was formed involuntarily?
His magic had returned. With each passing day, Andy felt a new reconnecting with the world; his mana storehouses were steadily increasing. There was so much mana in Nelita that you could swim in it, but maniacal caution stopped him from taking such a thoughtless step. It wasn’t the time or place for “bathing.” While the dragons were near, that was absolutely impossible. What’s more, his trial experiments with magical interweaving brought unexpected fruit. None of the entourage could see his creations. Andy was racking his brains trying to find the reason for such blindness. The answer was suggested by a magician from a human settlement when she was charging the detachment’s magical artifacts and amulets. The local mage scooped up many times more mana than was required for border guard spells. The unused energy was simply thrown to the wind, and Andy observed such irrational use of resources everywhere. The world, which was full of Mellorny forests and dragons, pumping mana from the astral, never experienced any shortage of energy. The two planets were strikingly different from one another, and the magical schools developed in different ways over the past three thousand years. Previously, the ratio was equalized by open portals, through which mana freely flowed to Ilanta, balancing the energy of the worlds. Closing the portals led to a sharp decrease in the density of the magic field in the world colonized by dragons, Ilanta. Reducing the magic field has created the need to search for new sources. On Ilanta, the schools of necromancers, who took energy from living creatures, burst into a storm of color. The technology of creating energy storage devices developed, and the mastery of artifactors reached unprecedented heights. Yes, many technologies had been forgotten or lost, but others appeared instead. No mage on Nelita had ever heard of training to increase one’s internal reserve. In any magical school on Ilanta, methods of increasing one’s magical reserve were taught in the first year and were included in compulsory courses. To understand the difference between the planets, imagine two people wanting to drink, but one of them is in the desert, and the other is on the shore of the widest river. The desert resident would try to use water rationally, without wasting a single drop, drinking his portion in small sips, enjoying each of them. The person living on the riverbank would scoop up a full bucket, take three gulps, spill the rest, or take off his clothes and dive into the invigorating water. In the end, both drank no more than one mug of water, but the attitude towards it was different.
The magical schools and approaches to interweaving on Ilanta differed from the local ones in their extremely economical approach to the use of mana. Each spell took exactly as much as was required to get the desired result. Unused energy was carefully, until the last drop, pumped into storage tanks. Waste not, want not. The entourage’s attitude towards energy and magical interweaves corresponded. The simplest border guard spell built by Andy looked a thin web against the backdrop of sea rigging, which the dragons supplied with the help of special artifacts. Accustomed to the luminous ropes, the group of travelers did not notice the faded web. In the university textbooks Andy bought, there were incantations that, on Ilanta, were simply not applicable. There were also some real pearls. On the very first evening, lying by the fire, he came across a description of the aura replacement technique,
which functioned at the junction of settage and classical magic. The technique did not require the mage to spend large amounts of energy and enabled him to disguise his aura to any creature. Something similar, as far as Andy knew, was invented by the Forest Elves on Ilanta and was actively used; they planted the elves, changed in the womb, turned into ideal spies, in human cities and countries.
Once he memorized the instructions, Andy went away from the camp so that his winged tribesmen would not notice his manipulations and conducted a test on himself. The result was impressive: his aura shrank several times, becoming more human, and the tattoo on his shoulder grayed, eventually disappearing under his tan. Covering the altered aura with will and mind shields, he returned to his tent. Wow! It was worth parting with a dozen gold coins just for that. The surrounding mages still took no interest in him. The superimposed multi-layered disguise showed that he had a puny magical gift. He was no mage by their standards. The musical performance and his releasing the reins of control had led to a sad result.
“I think there’s no point in continuing,” said the “princess.” Her voice was flat and expressionless, but Andy could read a death sentence in her eyes. “Andy, I demand that you come to the Circle tomorrow at noon. Since you are not an official escort, the virk is not broken, but even so, we can not leave the violation of the rules of the virk without consequences. The circle will decide your fate.”
