A Succession of Bad Days (3 page)

Chloris tries to pull Dove into supporting that. It doesn’t work; Dove apparently held a quarter-thorpe once, what would be more than one farm where I’m from. Dove makes a best try to point out to the other three that while it’s usual for Independents to do things like develop new varieties of food crops, that’s probably not what any of us are going to be doing.

“Why not?” Kynefrid clearly likes
the idea of being able to make better apple trees.

I think it’s going to be a long time before we’re allowed to make anything alive.

“Strength. If it’s a five-demon problem, they send the Line. If it’s a lots-of-work-over-a-long-time problem, like making weeding work better, that’s an Independent from the right tail of the main distribution; something that depends on skill and specific knowledge
more than strength. We’re going to get either three-demon problems, or the stuff no one has ever seen before; if we can figure it out, great. If we can’t figure it out, that’s when someone on the battalion list gets to deal with it.”

Ok, that’s twice. “What do Line battalions have to do with being an Independent?”

Dove looks at Wake.

“The Line’s standing orders, should an Independent ever escape
the constraints of the Peace, include a minimum level of force.” Wake’s tones are completely dry.

“There are people, individual people even if they are wizard people, who could fight a battalion?” Zora, sounding almost personally offended.

I’ve only seen it once, but a single battalion can march somewhere and leave a permanent road behind them, fused rock a metre thick and ten metres wide, and
everything under it rearranged into roadbed. Ditches, too.

Wake looks at Zora, makes a
gently
gesture. “It has never been tried within the Commonweal, and the Line is cautious.”

I’ll believe
cautious
. I don’t believe
timorous
. Are the Independents that strong, or that skilled?

“If we are to be cautious, we should specify which of the changes in the terrain are most desirable.” You can tell from
Wake’s voice that we’re getting back to the actual lesson.

“Bedrock, nearby sand and clay, limestone top cover, cellar bubble?” Dove tries to make this sound like a question, it’s an honest try.

“Isn’t that too specific?” Zora, sounding both doubtful and determined. “We want good clean soil, compatible with the Creeks; we don’t really care what produced it, do we?”

“Good clean soil arising from
natural processes,” Wake says, quite gently.

Everybody nods.

No one else is going to ask, so I’d better. “What about water? We’re on top of a hill, and lugging buckets up from Westcreek doesn’t sound fun.”

“The West Wetcreek,” Zora and Chloris and Dove all say at me, quietly, but definitely out loud.

Dove says it while miming a forehead smack, only just within the gentleness of ritual. Wake looks
pleased at me. Everybody else’s face does some variation of ‘Establishment Of Laws, uphill with buckets
every day
’.

By the time we get it written down, it’s ‘near-surface competent bedrock’, ‘ready access to plentiful potable water’, ‘good clean soil, arisen from natural processes and compatible with its surrounds’, ‘many tonnes of readily dug sand and clay near to hand’, and ‘obvious optimum
cellar location’, set down carefully in that specific order.

Set down in angular letters pressed into a thin sheet of copper; according to Wake there’s no reason for the copper beyond the greater difficulty of smudging the writing. It starts to feel serious, like something real rather than a classroom exercise, watching the goal written down.

“How do we do this?” Kynefrid asks.

“Standing in a
circle.” Wake’s general good cheer doesn’t seem to have a problem with five people who don’t know what they are doing altering the landscape.

We get put in a rough shape, to match the curved trapezoid we hammered into the landscape, rather than precisely a circle; ‘standing in a circle’ turns out to be a standard answer for ‘how do we perform ritual magic?’ as a question, one of the jokes common
to sorcerers.

The survey stakes have individual numbers punched into them. That’s apparently enough for ritual purposes, and Wake adds the numbers to the copper sheet, along with our names, our regular names and something we get told we’ll learn in a couple of years that references use-name to true-name held by the Shape of Peace.

Wake explains that this isn’t an enchantment, it’s nothing more
complicated than a request for a different history, “Which your present skill might plausibly obtain.” The only difficult part is being in balance together, Wake says. To do that, we get to hold one big ball of Power together, all of us facing in and arms outstretched. Wake does something and is somehow outside, under, and above the space we’re defining. I don’t want to think about that; listening,
stretching out my senses on purpose, instead of flinching away from yet another weird taste that something sounds like, is more than enough like work.

There’s a lot of room to put effort, to put energy, into the big ball; it wobbles a little, until everybody gets roughly even on how hard they’re pushing into it, and then it steadies and grows and does something so it sinks or rises.

Chloris is
green and white and shining, Kynefrid a mist of blue, a waft of hot glass and springtime, Zora extremely purple and happy and spinning. Dove is gold and red, the gold built harsh and glittering out of the sound of trumpets.

The ball gets larger, spins a little, comes back still, stops growing, and starts to gain weight. The whole time, I don’t do anything but hold my arms out and breathe, as slow
as I can. I’m surrounded by fit people with larger lungs; they want to breathe more slowly than I do, and it’s a long time, it feels like forever, until we’re all in balance, all breathing together, all breathing in and breathing out the great mass of Power we’ve woken.

First thing,
says Wake, voice come silent and inescapable.

Near surface competent bedrock,
we all say, once voice together, just
as silent and just as inescapable.

Breath in, breath out, breath in, the next thing. The next, and the next, and the next.

Wake’s inescapable silence, saying “Is it done?”

All of us, saying
it is done as we will it.

I’m least five metres higher than I was standing, and the dirt is different, very different, the whole smell of autumn has changed.

There are trees.

Huge trees, the kind of trees you
look at and think ‘forest primeval’ before you think ‘no, before that’. No underbrush, no understory, it’s bare and still and silent in there. When we walk under those trees, I know, with a vast implacable certainty, that we’re going to be the first thinking footsteps the fallen leaves of thousands upon thousands of years have ever known.

I count on my fingers. My hands are shaking nearly too
much to make that possible. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired.

Nine days ago, I thought I had no talent at all.

I wasn’t awake for most of those days.

I sit down, and do my best not to gibber.

“Up, students!” Wake’s cheerful, still, though now with the kind of cheer you’d have to be three heroes to want to argue with.

I’m not the only one sitting.

“Briskly, now; no sense in letting the weeds in here.” Wake makes a couple of strange broad gestures, both arms going wide. There’s a corner-of-the-eye coiling shape, like a rope that’s woken up. It has the colour of the feel of
deep cold dust.

I lurch up, and take three steps forward, and grab. Change the number of steps, and in one case skip the lurch, and everyone does.

“The trick is to push on the rope.” Wake says this the same way as everything else. I’m willing to try, Kynefrid, who is wobbling a little, looks like an opinion will arrive in just a second, and Zora says “You can’t push on a rope,” like you’d say
‘the sun is a star’.

Chloris is nodding vigorously, and Dove nods just once, but it’s got more certainty behind it than Zora and Chloris put together.

“Barge towing,” Dove says.

Wake nods, grimaces, says “Imagine winding on one ply, each of you, to make a larger rope,” and starts walking.

I haven’t wound rope, but I think I’m the only one who hasn’t. It doesn’t take much watching before I figure
it out. All the individual colour-sensations blend into the deep cold dust of what must be Wake’s warding.

We walk, not very fast, all the way around; it’s bigger than the space we staked out, maybe a bit bigger than the thirty hectares Wake seemed to think was our reasonable limit.

It’s strange; the trees go right up to the edge of the new space, and stop. There isn’t an understory, there isn’t
an edge where there’s a bunch of bushes because the trees can’t shade them from the side, it’s straight in all the way around. The trees have all the good dirt, and thousands of years of fallen leaves, and outside that it’s the broken crumbly rock that can’t grow much.

So it doesn’t, and there are trees seven or eight metres thick and eighty metres tall over the back of a hill that’s changed shape,
it’s higher and steeper and there’s full-on meadow right up on top of it now.

I remember the meadow rustling against my legs. Don’t remember what’s in it, don’t really remember starting to walk. It’s all breathe, step, breathe. The effort of using the Power has no thought itself, but makes it hard to think.

Adding to the ward, it has to be a ward, while walking is a good reason to go pretty slow.
I can do it, everyone can do it, but it’s like trying to walk in a straight line when you’re really tired. You have to think about it, and not stop thinking about it, or you stagger. Staggering makes the rope wiggle, strangely, as though it was both heavy and wet.

No water, not that I can see. The bottom of the little wood, the southern, lowest edge, isn’t all the same trees; they’re not as tall
and the bark looks like it spirals.

Back up the hill is hard; Wake’s fine, no change of pace, it’s the same deliberate stride it was all the way around, but it’s hard work to keep up on the uphill, and to keep winding Power into this rope-thing, the wind against me getting stronger.

Up toward the crest of the hill, there’s what’s almost a small cliff, three metres of nearly vertical hillside;
we go around it to the east, going up, as we went around it to the west coming down, though I didn’t notice it then.

Breathe. Step. Breathe. Bind, to the texture of dust.

The top of the hill is meadow, low meadow, not much past knee-high, but it’s thick turf, you can feel the cushion underfoot.

Wake stops, turns, looks at us one by one, and we all follow along with the gesture when Wake raises
both hands and grabs across, hands on forearms, hands at face height.

There’s a snap, somewhere back of my eyes, and I sit down again. The world feels like it’s spinning, but I think that’s just my head.

I hear Wake say “Well done,” quiet with satisfaction.

The next thing I notice is a clank sound, as Steam sets down a couple of buckets and the yoke-chains rattle off the lids.

Steam doesn’t look
the least bit put out at having carried two twenty-litre buckets up the hill, yoke or no yoke.

Full ones, one of them is stacked ten-litre cans, one water and one…I don’t know what it is. It tastes of citrus and happiness, in a terrible clear way, the way you probably feel if your enemies are dragged before you in chains. Dove makes some implausible faces drinking it. So does Kynefrid.

The other
bucket is food.

It’s mostly potato salad, along with some mutton sausage and a couple apples each. I keep having to make a conscious effort to chew.

Right around when I start the second apple, I realize there’s sounds that weren’t there before. It’s quiet, you have to stop and listen.

Dove stops dead, stops chewing, when I go still and listening.

Zora leans over and taps Chloris. Chloris produces
an affronted look back, but they both go quiet. Wake is nearly always quiet. Certainly doesn’t look worried. Kynefrid is lying down flat, no snoring, but I doubt Kynefrid’s awake.

Steam gets up and takes two steps towards the trees. Steam’s been an amiable sort, smiles a lot, if not as utterly cheerful as Wake. This looks different, it feels like cold glass.

I’m not supposed to get the feel of
cold glass through my eyes.

The sound comes again, faint and high. Three clear notes and a trill.

“Bird?” says Steam.

“Bird,” Wake says.

Dove starts chewing again. Zora’s looking intent, back and forth, Chloris is looking at Steam and looking worried.

Steam, it’s not like straightening up, but it’s something. No cold glass, no unnatural smoothness of motion. Steam shrugs with one shoulder.

“Shifting
the past around like that brings live things through.” Steam sort of waves at the forest. “Some ways, that’s always been there now. Other ways, it just happened. It’s too big to be sure there’s nothing hungry in there. So we’re cautious.”

Chloris nods, slowly.

“You deal with hungry things?”

Steam smiles, gently. “Big ones.”

“We have to deal with the small ones?” Chloris doesn’t sound like the
prospect appeals. I certainly don’t want to, though I would be pleased to get a better look at the bird. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that song before.

Steam’s head shakes, stops, so chin pointing will work. “Wake does.

“Whatever that other history uses for sheep could have sneezed a disease all over this meadow, and we’re all dead without knowing it, from sitting in it to eat lunch.” Steam
doesn’t sound like someone who particularly cares, one way or another.

Wake’s eyes narrow. “Not the most likely outcome, even without the warding. With the warding, I should describe it as surpassingly unlikely.”

Steam nods.

“So that’s why no one uses it for farms.” Zora, sounding subdued.

“One of the reasons, yes,” Wake says. “One of the others is that sometimes there are big things in there.
Crunchers may well have come into our present world by that means.”

“Is the ward active?” Dove sounds like someone asking a technical question, maybe not their skill but something they’ve done. My brain doesn’t want to work, it’s making ‘digesting, go away’ noises at me, but I figure I should know, too, and try to pay attention.

Wake nods. “Any disease-causing organism able to significantly infect
the inhabitants of the Commonweal, their commensals or cattle, will be dead in a few hours. Similarly anything able to produce widespread ecological change in the wild portions of the Creeks, even the tiny wild places under the hedges. Certainly before it is time to leave for dinner.”

I’m pretty sure I’m staring at Wake, too. Everybody else is, well, not Steam.

“The ward will persist; weed species
will not be able to get in, while the wholesome natives of the new area will be able to pass in and out.” Wake goes right on sounding cheerful.

“Rough on birds full of seeds.” Dove doesn’t sound especially worried.

“Rough on the seeds.” Wake stands up, gestures broadly with both arms. “This is a remarkable result. I should be remiss to permit it to come to harm.”

“Couldn’t you do something
like that for weeding?” Zora, but Chloris is nodding. Dove is prodding Kynefrid in the bottom of one foot with their toes.

Wake smiles at Zora. “There are just more than two hundred Independents in this Second Commonweal; there’s precisely one of me, and of those two hundred Independents, less than thirty are as strong or stronger than any of you five.”

“If we six did nothing else, you could,
with two years’ practice, ward perhaps a hundred hectares like this in a day, every day. You could not maintain each ward, once made, as you shall maintain this one; they would fade, fade to uncertainty in a season and to nothing in two seasons. So perhaps ten thousand hectares, doing nothing else; no increase in skill, no general service, no responses to crisis or alarm.”

“You, you couldn’t do
that yourself?” Chloris, sounding shocked.

“Not every day.” Wake makes a gesture I cannot interpret. “The five of you are untrained, but you are strong. More of the strength of the ward is yours than mine.”

“Not more than fifty thousand,” Dove says, quietly. People who that much land could feed, I’m pretty sure Dove means.

Wake nods. “Though there are things that might be done, if weeds were
no concern, still certainly not warded land sufficient to feed a fifth of the Creeks no matter what skill might be applied. Which is a tenth the Second Commonweal.”

There’s that little catch in everybody, even Steam, thinking about it. Half a million Creeks, half a million displaced, everybody really worried about food next year. We moved all the stored food when we displaced, away from the unceasing
tide of horrible things from across the Dread River, let loose when the Iron Bridge dropped and a ward the Commonweal didn’t know anything about collapsed with it. This year isn’t the problem. It’s getting farms and houses and roads and I’m told canals into the Folded Hills, and it’s figuring out how to do that really fast, without getting too many people who know how to farm killed doing
it.

Being able to make the weeds, all the weeds, just die would be extremely useful.

“Could you teach people the ward?” Chloris, tentative and thoughtful.

“There were,” Wake sounds very dry, “in the Commonweal as was, eight Independents who could cast that ward, five of whom could do it reliably. The Second Commonweal has one of the five and three of the eight.”

Wake stands up, looks a good deal
more cheerful. “I shall be delighted if I am able to teach it to one of you.

“In the meanwhile, shall we see what there is to learn of this new land?”