IGMS Issue 11 (16 page)

"We cannot ask you to make such a sacrifice," Ouryu bellowed from high above.

Tekkai walked amongst the spirits. He had seen creatures of myth before, constructs like his
ki-rin
or Gama's
baku
, but these AI spirits gave him the chills. There was a quality to them that no mere numbers could define.

And therein lies the answer
, Tekkai realized.

"Gama, we need to build a virus, fast." Tekkai held the gourd before him and tapped quickly at the symbols, dragging them into new patterns. "Think of how the rosettes contribute to the consolidation of the mimicstreams into the Mirrorstream. They collect the five senses we have to build their reality, but what of our sixth sense? The shiver you get when the darkness spooks you. The certainty that something lurks beyond our understanding. The touch of the supernatural. All these are so ingrained into human existence that even a virtual world that patterns its physical laws closely to our own cannot escape that hidden sense."

Gama snapped his fingers. "Then the same instinct to seek the supernatural may save these spirits!"

The roof of the Shrine creaked.

"Right. The sixth sense is where magic may hide, even in a world that denies its existence. Help me, Gama. Some of this code is beyond my comprehension."

"Gladly." Gama looked over Tekkai's shoulder, explaining new algorithms to him. "What if our program fails and they are all destroyed?"

"Then, Gama, we must rely on the love, hate, fear and awe of magic to once again give us AIs. No matter what the Priority does, they cannot erase human instinct." Tekkai finished his alterations and held the gourd high to Ouryu. "It's done. Drink of this viral elixir, great spirits, and you should find those hidden places. Good luck, my friends."

Ouryu descended and plucked the gourd from Tekkai with two titanic claws. "We are in your debt, Immortals. When we return, trust that we will risk all to protect you and your kin. Go quickly, before the Shrine falls."

"Farewell." Tekkai and his fellow Immortals bowed.

Flurries swirled around Chokaro, Kume, and Kinko, taking them away.

Tekkai embraced Gama. "Be a father to my son, Gama-
san
."

"I will. Until we meet again, Tekkai-
san
."

Conjured snow caught Tekkai's avatar and returned him to his flesh and blood, seconds before the silver deluge brought the Shrine crashing down.

Tekkai opened his eyes and sighed. Maeda remained in trance across the table, still half-trapped by her own blade of slow-time. Even if she survived the upgrade, she would never be herself again.

He plucked the rosette from his brow and palmed it. Two decades until his release, unless they add more years onto his sentence for what he had done to Maeda. At least he knew now that Gama watched over his son in his stead. Tekkai also prayed his crowning achievements, his children of virus and cipher, would survive, for he knew in his heart that they would protect Ichiro as they would a brother. He took comfort in those thoughts.

I will survive twenty simple years
, Tekkai reminded himself.
After all, I am Immortal.

"The captain wants to see you."

I did not bother to look up from the plug I was whittling. I doubted that the bo'sun was speaking to me. As a carpenter's apprentice, I wasn't the lowest crewman on the
Fox
, but I certainly wasn't the sort of person the captain would call to his cabin to share his rum ration.  We'd been tied up at Kulhran Harbor for a good three days taking on cargo and making repairs and this was the first chance I'd had to just sit in the sunshine. And it wouldn't last. Kulhran was well named -- port of rain. Already I could see thunderheads massing to the west. 

"Aeduin, lad, he wants to see you
now
."

I scrambled to my feet.  Geberich, a good-natured man whose face had wrinkles running in seams deeper than the mines of Bel, looked unusually dour. 

"What's it about?"  I couldn't remember any infraction or error I'd made of late.  It had been a rough sea, but I was finally settling into this life that had been thrust upon me.

"Two mages in the captain's cabin." Geberich stomped off towards the rigging, but not before I saw the fear in his eyes.

Mages.  Five hundred miles and two years gone, and still I couldn't escape my past.  With deliberation, as an act of faith that I would return to finish what I had started, I set aside my knife and the almost-finished plug, brushed the wood debris from my trousers and tried, best as I could without mirror or water, to tame my wiry hair, to wipe the smudges from my face. I had spoken with Captain Teilos just once before, when I was brought on board.  Our paths did not cross, and I was content to have it so.  There is a certain peace that comes from being nobody. Unnoticed. Anonymous.

That peace, I felt certain, was about to be shattered.

I made my way aft.  The ship was largely deserted, with most of the crew either taking liberty or replenishing the last of the supplies.  Or hiding from the Watch.  Whether the
Fox
was a privateer or a pirate ship depended largely on your point of view.  Not exactly pirates, not exactly traders, not exactly smugglers.  Captain Teilos took whatever jobs he could manage to get, and in these times, that sometimes meant looking down the wrong side of Justice's sword.

I tapped lightly on the captain's door.

"Come," he said. I swung the door open. Captain Teilos, a slender man with pockmarked skin and sleek hair the color of a bull seal's, sat at his battered mahogany desk staring out the open porthole.  It was early spring, and the northern breezes were strong and bracing and carried a hint of the steel scent of rain. The mages were nowhere in sight, but I could feel their presence, like a distant itch in my mind. 

"Aeduin. Yes. Thank you for coming so promptly. You were once a mage, I understand?"

"A journeyman only, Captain, and not a very good one, I'm afraid."

"But you can work magic?"

You don't work magic. If anything, magic works you. But I'd never be able to make him see that. "Of a sort.  I have the Talent, certainly, or I'd never been taken into the magery, but my training and experience are minimal at best. May I ask what prompted this question, sir?"

He scowled, looking down at a stack of papers tacked to the surface of his desk with pins and weights made of sand in cloth. Nothing on a ship stays still unless it's forced to it.  "An educated man shouldn't be wasted carving plugs and patching holes."

I said nothing.  I was quite content with my plugs and holes.

"And you know how to keep quiet too.  Good." Captain Teilos ran his hand through his hair and gave a half-smile, then looked back down at the papers. "So here's the thing, Aeduin.  Two mages, and I don't trust mages any further than I can heave them, no offense."  He glanced up at me.

"None taken."  In truth, I agreed with him.  When the press-gang had dragged me out of the coracle, after my initial panic at being in the hands of pirates, I had felt relief.  I had been forced into the life of a mage, as was every boy whose Talent bloomed, but it had never been for me. Every moment of that life had been like walking a tightrope over a pit of tigers.

"Well, these two mages have offered me five hundred royals to secure passage for themselves and their cargo to Konodaro.  I asked to see said cargo. They got belligerent, so I pressed the matter. They've brought it to be inspected and I want you here.  They say mages can't lie. Not sure I believe that, but even if it's true, sometimes the truth is bad enough.  With you here, I've got an advantage. Will they know you?"

"My magery was in Marfras. It's unlikely."

"Yes, not many travel so far."  Teilos gestured for me to take a position beside him. He crossed the tiny cabin in three steps and called up to the quarterdeck. "Gentlemen, I'm ready."

Footsteps, slow and measured, and two men in dark crimson robes suddenly filled the tiny cabin. They kept their hoods up, which was a mark of subtle disrespect.  One hides one's true face from the unworthy and inferior. The leader was so tall that his head brushed the ceiling. His companion was small, about my height, but round and squat, making him appear much shorter. He clutched a wooden crate about the size of a large lapdog to his chest. At a nod from the taller man, he set it down upon the captain's desk with great deliberation, as a mother relinquishing her only babe. The crate was covered with the faded remnants of painted sigils, closed with a slender silver lock.

"Captain." The taller man pushed back his hood revealing hawk-like features and smiled so that his teeth gleamed in the lantern light. "Here is the cargo in question.  As you can see, it is nothing. A trifle. One of hundreds of similar boxes from the treasure room of Beladon, utterly harmless."

Now that troubled me.  It was said that the great treasure room of ancient Beladon had contained a thousand thousand magical objects, carefully collected by twenty generations of emperors.  Half of them were undoubtedly frauds.  Half of the rest were harmless trinkets -- spells to change the color of hair or eyes, spyglasses that would show the viewer a loved one or an enemy.  Child's toys.  Of the rest, some were malignant, but of limited scope.  A bow that would send an arrow through the soul of an enemy, enslaving his essence to the bow's master.  Scrolls that would, when read aloud, cause the reader to wander forever in a fog of confusion.  Weapons to be used against one opponent only, no more than the magical equivalent of sword or pistol.

A few, an infinitesimal few, were something else entirely.

I bent down so the mages could not hear me without use of their Talents.  "Ask him to open it." Even if I couldn't identify the contents, their reaction to his request would tell me what I needed to know.

Captain Teilos gave the two shrouded mages a measured look.  "Nothing rides on this ship that I don't see. Open it."

"For what we are paying, we are entitled to privacy." The taller man loomed across the desk casting shadows over Teilos's papers and pins.

"For what you're paying, you're entitled to precisely what I give you," Teilos said calmly.  "If you don't care for my terms, then I suggest you take a walk down the docks. There should be two or three merchant ships under Kolhrani flag and at least one galley of the line.  I'm sure one of them would be delighted to assist you in your . . . errand."

Any ship under a flag would ask questions, keep records. The two men looked at each other, and I could see their gloved fingers flying in the secret speech of mages, but at the angle, could not make out their words.  Silence extended like a long rope letting out an anchor.  Outside the captain's window, a gull called and the ship danced lightly against the anchor as the seconds passed by with excruciating slowness. 

At last, the taller man, who I decided to call Hawk as it was unlikely he'd ever give me his true name anyway, clenched his fists. Their silent conversation was done. The shorter, Dwarf, I named him, worked the lock, lifted the box's latch and reached inside. He took out a simple gold-painted ceramic urn, gently rounded in an arc as graceful as the wings of a swan in flight. The lid was carved with an ancient and achingly familiar keyhole pattern and sealed on two sides with hoary wax. I did not need to look further.  If the urn were turned upside down, the maker's mark on the base would be three triangles.  I knew this urn. Knew it well.