Aethersmith (Book 2) (12 page)

Brannis hailed the sorcerer as he drew to a more polite
distance that did not require shouting such that the whole Kadris seaport could
hear him. “Fair evening, Sorcerer Dolvaen.”

“Fair evening, yourself,” Dolvaen replied brusquely, a note
of annoyance in his tone. “What is the meaning of this? You asked for sorcerers,
and I assigned four to help you in your mysterious project. I find that you
have eleven working for you now.”

“In practical terms yes, but technically, no. You assigned
me four, and indeed they have been helping me admirably. But you see … those
four had subordinates, so technically seven of those eleven are merely working
for the other four,” Brannis reasoned. He had suspected that some of that logic
might fail to make a pressing case, but he had been using the subordinate
sorcerers for days and had gotten plenty of use from them in the meantime.

“You cannot cut eggs in half with
me
to double them,
Sir Brannis. I have fielded complaints of wards in need of repair or aether
having gone unanswered for days. You are crippling the wardkeepers, and have
one of my best rune-carvers unavailable for lucrative jobs that I cannot just
pass off to lesser artisans. This was not meant to be a permanent assignment,
nor had I intended that you press more than the four assigned to you into
service,” Dolvaen spoke quickly, likely having organized the diatribe into a
neat little speech on his journey from the tower. He had managed to give
Brannis no opening to interject until he was finished.

“You do have a point. My apologies. Perhaps I can send my
cousin Danilaesis to help shore up your numbers. I have found him to be quite
adept,” Brannis told Dolvaen. Then he turned back to the ship, and called up to
one of the sorcerers on board: “Krogen, is she ready to test?”

“Aye aye, captain!” the sorcerer responded, making an
attempt to sound nautical.

“What have you done to that vessel?” Dolvaen asked. “The
rigging is a mess, you have cargo netting everywhere, and I do not even see
what you have done with most of the sails. What sort of seafaring monstrosity
have you got my wardkeepers working on?”

“Why … none at all,” Brannis replied simply, and waited.

There was a rumbling sound and a creaking of protesting
wood. Slowly, the ship rose. Seawater ran off her sides to make a small sloppy
rain into Kadris Harbor until even the keel was free of its aquatic medium. All
the workers on board rushed to the sides of the ship, looking down at the docks
as they ascended. There were hoots and cheers as even sorcerers past fifty
summers found childlike glee in the sensation of flying.

“Take it around the harbor once, and set her back down,”
Brannis ordered Krogen, shouting up at the vessel now well above them, grinning
as broadly and as proudly as any aboard.

Brannis and Dolvaen watched as the vessel made a circuit of
the airspace around Kadris Harbor, using just one small sail and a magically
created wind to power them. Another sail was set fore to aft to act as a
rudder. Dolvaen stared in silence.

As the ship settled back down in the water, Brannis leaned
close to Dolvaen. “This is how I intend to deal with the Megrenn cavalry and
siege weapons.”

“I will find as many sorcerers as I can spare and put them
at your disposal.”

Chapter 7 - Testing Phase

Kyrus watched Gahalu stare down at the chessboard. The dark
and light squares were fashioned from the woods of the acacia and ebony trees
that grew on Denku Appa. Kyrus had made it with his magic, along with two
armies of pieces that had once been tide stones and seashells. Gahalu claimed
to have seen chess pieces and heard of the game during his travels, but the
sort of folk he had sailed with were not the sort to play the game themselves.

“I take your knight with my knight,” Gahalu said, removing
one of the stone figures from the board and replacing it with his own knight.

Kyrus made a show of studying the board. He had been
teaching Gahalu to play, but mostly it was the conversation, and a bit of a
feeling of home that he appreciated. So much of Denku Appa was strange to him
that his favorite game was a welcome reminder of the place to which he longed
to return. He had been teaching many of the Denku how to play, mostly elders
and older children. The hunters respected the spirit man, but found his game
too slow, its concepts too abstract. None of the Denku posed any challenge for
Kyrus, but he enjoyed the leisurely pace and the chance to see his pupils
improve and face off against one another. Kyrus had seen five moves he thought
Gahalu might make, and knew what he would do against any of them; he was merely
giving Gahalu a break from the task of considering his own moves, and to allow
the two of them to talk as he awaited the spirit man’s play.

“Toktu seems worried these days. More cares than an elder
should have in good times, I think,” Kyrus commented. As scattered as his Denku
was, Kyrus could tell by the elder’s body language that there was something
bothering him.

“The tide. He says he wonders now if you are a spirit man or
just a spirit. No man can hold back the tide. Maybe a spirit could,” Gahalu
answered Kyrus’s unspoken question.

They both knew it was Kyrus’s magic that was the cause of
concern. Tricks of fire and levitation were fun for the villagers. Being able
to turn wood and stone into trinkets and toys seemed harmless. Stopping a sea
storm that should have at least washed into the low-lying parts of the village
was different. As benign and benevolent it may have been, it bespoke a power
that they had not realized their spirit man possessed. Hadku, the last spirit
man, had blessed newborns and painted protective spells on the hunters who went
into the jungles; it was nothing that could be seen working. It worked quietly,
subtly. It was not the frightening power that Spirit Man Kyrus had shown.

“He has just never heard of a man who could do it before.
Now he has. Everything is impossible until someone has done it,” Kyrus
answered. It was a play on a Kadrin saying:
“Everything is possible, and
someone has done it.”
It was an easier position to hold in a world with a
vast history of magic that spanned back longer than anyone could remember.

“Why did you do it?” Gahalu asked. “To break the saying? To
see if you could manage it? The storm was not so bad. No one was in danger if
we had just waited inland until it passed. We could have rebuilt anything that
was damaged or swept to sea. We have done it before. More were in danger from
this storm because they wanted to be close and watch.”

“Your hunters hunt the little boars that run around all over
the island,” Kyrus said by way of reply. “Are they difficult to kill?”

“Young hunters kill them all the time. They are only
dangerous if you do not have a spear or do not know how to use it properly.
They weigh half what even the youngest hunters do. You could probably kill one
with no magic, Spirit Man.”

“They taste wonderful, too. There are enough of them that
you would hardly need to hunt anything else to feed the village, even if the
fishermen’s nets came back empty,” Kyrus added, and Gahalu nodded his agreement
with the sentiment. “So why does Gaktu wear a necklace of panther teeth around
his neck? Why does he tell anyone who will listen about the scars on his arm,
and how he got them?”

“To prove he is a good hunter. He wants to be first hunter
when Fannu becomes an elder,” Gahalu said.

“And is he a good hunter? Should he be first hunter after
Fannu?” Kyrus pressed.

“I think so,” Gahalu said, then nodded after considering for
a moment.

“I doubt he learned to be a good hunter by killing little
boars,” Kyrus said. “He fought panthers and crocodiles and whatever else he
could find in the deep jungle. Well I am no hunter, but I will not become a
better spirit man by playing with cooking fires and lifting children in the air
for their amusement.”

Kyrus took his queen and captured the knight Gahalu had just
moved. The board was thinning of pieces, since when Gahalu was pressed to make
a move, he tried to capture anything he could.

“So … now you can stop the sea itself. What more do you need
to prove?” Gahalu asked. He moved one of his bishops to point at Kyrus’s queen.

“No. Try again.” Kyrus pushed Gahalu’s bishop back where it
had come from. “I could have taken it with my queen and you did not have it
protected. And it is not a matter of proving. It is a matter of practice and
control. I have more I need to learn before I am ready.”

Gahalu glared at his reprimanded bishop. “Why are queens so
strong in this game? I never heard any stories where a king is so weak and his
queen is stronger than all his soldiers.”

Kyrus could not help but think about Iridan and Juliana.
“Not all kings are mighty warriors, and not all queens are delicate flowers. I
admit, though, it is probably less common that way.”

Kyrus managed to draw the game out a while longer. Gahalu
needed practice more than a thrashing and Kyrus did not want to demoralize his
friend. He really wanted to find someone who was a worthwhile opponent, rather
than merely a student, but he knew that he would have to be on the island a
long time before that would ever come to pass.

* * * * * * * *

Kyrus managed to find some time to himself that afternoon.
He had learned to keep his clothing from being left behind when he turned
himself incorporeal and had slipped through the wall of his house and into the
jungle when no one was watching. Eventually they would grow curious and come
looking for their spirit man, but for a while Kyrus had bought himself privacy
and a bit of safety for any who might have been curious enough to spy on him.
What he was dealing with were forces he understood poorly and was still
struggling to control.

There was a small stretch of beach well outside the normal
Denku wanderings that Kyrus had taken for his practice with the transference
spell. It was on a small inlet, too rocky to make a good spot for putting
fishing boats into the water. There were little tidal pools all along the
water’s edge, teeming with tiny sea animals, from barnacles to crabs. The tidal
pools had been threatened by the storm’s fury as well as the Denku village, but
Kyrus’s protection had not extended so far from where his hosts made their homes.
The aquatic inhabitants had been violently displaced by the strong tides and
massive waves, and even days later, things were only beginning to show signs of
recovery.

Kyrus had spent part of the previous afternoon practicing a
slight variant of the transference spell. He had used it to create tiny spheres
only a handspan in width that he could create in one spot and make appear a few
feet away. The variant was a bit more complex than the version he intended to
use to travel home to Acardia, but far safer to practice, since he was not
actually moving his own body when he did it.

Kyrus’s next step was one that he considered crucial in his
quest.
“Doxlo intuvae menep gahalixviu junumar tequalix ferendak uzganmanni
dekdardon vesvata luo.”
Kyrus weaved his hands through an intricate set of
gestures, envisioning it as a rune he was painting in the air with his fingers.
He kept track of each line of the rune as he created it, each finger leaving
its own trail of fire in its wake in Kyrus’s imagination as he challenged his
mind to keep the memory of the rune’s path in proper order.

A short way from where Kyrus stood barefoot in the sand, a
small scavenger crab walked by, oblivious to the adventure upon which it was
about to embark. A shimmering sphere of opaque aether enveloped it without
warning, along with a few good handfuls of the sand around it. Kyrus felt the
flow of aether quicken as he envisioned a spot a few paces down the beach as
the sphere’s destination, and then let the spell go. The sphere disappeared,
leaving a perfectly smooth scoop taken out of the beach. At the intended
destination, nothing.

Kyrus looked about and saw a shadow that did not belong.
Ducking and glancing hurriedly upward, he saw the crab and a loose collection
of sand plummeting down at him. Fortune smiled on the little scavenger crab as
Kyrus managed to quickly catch it with levitation, and set it gently down on
the beach near where it had begun its magical journey.

Well, that could have gone worse. Still needs work,
though.
Kyrus could easily forgive a bit of missed aim on his own journey,
especially with his ward to protect him in the event of a fall, but he knew
that he needed more practice.

Never did he harass the same creature twice, but Kyrus tried
a dozen more times before finally being satisfied that he could reliably send a
crab, sand piper, or seagull to whatever location he wanted.

“That was wondrous!” Tippu exclaimed, breaking Kyrus free
from his introspection as he considered the results of his final sand piper
relocation. “Send me!” The Denku girl was squealing with excitement. Kyrus’s
lesser magics had become accepted among the island’s inhabitants, and even if
it was still strange to them, the awe and wonder had lost their edge. This
making of things disappear in one place and appear in another was enough to
renew the sense that their spirit man was still beyond their understanding.

“What are you doing here? And no, it is too dangerous to
send you.” Kyrus tried to sound stern, but it was a tone he still thought
sounded hollow coming from him.

“The bird is fine. I want to go,” Tippu insisted. “Now,
before Kahli finds us. I want to go first.” Kyrus assumed that the two of them
had split up to search for him, but did not want to sidetrack the conversation
by asking for details on why the near-inseparable pair had separated.

“You are too big. I need to try more times.” Kyrus wished he
had a better vocabulary in Denku to better argue his point, but was consigned
to battle with the armaments he had and not those he wished for. “I maybe hurt
you. No.”

“You try again. Make it bigger this time and I watch,” Tippu
countered, undeterred.

Kyrus was glad that through days of complaining and pleas to
have them repeat themselves, both Tippu and Kahli had simplified their choices
of words to the selection of Denku that Kyrus had learned. It helped that the
two of them had been in no small part responsible for his learning the
language.

“Fine. Stay back and do not speak.” Kyrus hoped that maybe
seeing it a few more times (along with his likely setbacks) might assuage her
interest in becoming an experimental passenger on the ill-fated magical ship,
Guess
and Try
, that Kyrus was currently captaining.

“Doxlo intuvae menep gahalixviu junumar tequalix ferendak
uzganmanni dekdardon vesvata luo.”
Kyrus sought no passenger, but instead
ripped a man-sized scoop of earth from the ground not far from them. Hoping to
put a bit of a scare into the girl, Kyrus gave a rather larger share of aether,
even beyond what increasing the size of the sphere required. He pictured in his
mind not a spot a few paces distant along the beach, but a spot well out over
the water, in front of him such that Tippu’s eyes would spot it easily as she
watched him and the opaque sphere he created.

Sploosh!

A great mass of sand and the packed earth well beneath it
splashed noisily into the Katamic. Kyrus turned to Tippu. “Do you still want to
try?”

Tippu frowned at Kyrus. “Try again,” she insisted.

Kyrus repeated the spell, but this time there was a great
crash in the foliage behind them as Kyrus dumped the sand in the sparse jungle
not far from the water’s edge.

“Try again,” Tippu said, unwilling to give up on her hope of
trying the spell voyage herself.

Kyrus began to grow annoyed.
Who does she think she is,
anyway? Ordering me around like I am hers to command. She is not my wife,
though she wishes she was. She is not an elder. Even Gahalu I would not allow
to tell me what is right and wrong to do here on his island.
Kyrus decided
to rid himself of Tippu for a while.

It was a small change. There was a part of the gesture for
the spell that directed the location of the originating sphere; that was all
that was needed.
“Doxlo intuvae menep gahalixviu junumar tequalix ferendak
uzganmanni dekdardon vesvata eho.”

Kyrus vanished.

Tippu at first though he was playing a joke on her, but she
did not find him and then returned to the village greatly worried. In his
place, there had briefly been a giant sphere of seawater, which immediately
crashed to the ground, leaving a flooded pit with a handful of colorful (and
confused) fish.

* * * * * * * *

The world of light disappeared in an instant. Kyrus had seen
the world of aether before, but it looked different, cut off not only from his
coexistent vision of the light, but also from the shackles of his physical
body. His view shifted with the faintest whim, disorienting him without a solid
frame of reference to ground his vantage point.

He could make out a rough mass of Sources that he figured
were the jungle trees and one human one that was probably Tippu. His own form
stood immobile within a cage of aether, a hollowed husk with no Source in it at
all. He was cut adrift, Source from body, and was venturing forth without the
fleshy home his Source had inhabited since long before he had been aware of it.