Magi'i of Cyador (6 page)

After a moment, Ryalth swallows and begins to walk eastward.

There is no one near the postern gate as Lorn quickly changes into his student whites, leaving the blues and the blue boots in the basket tucked behind the small tree. He readjusts the square of cloth in his belt wallet to ensure the coins are muffled, and then walks briskly through the garden and up the steps.

"You're late, Lorn." His father stands at the top of the steps. "Your mother is worried. It would be kinder if you let us know when you're going out."

"Yes, ser. I'm sorry. I know. I lost track of time. I didn't expect to be so late." Lorn's statements are all true, and he makes sure he doesn't look anywhere close to the billowing smoke that rises to the southwest of them.

His father's nose wrinkles, and he shakes his head. "That's a merchanter scent, isn't it?"

Lorn tries to look bewildered.

"Don't dignify it with a falsehood, Lorn."

"Yes, ser. I mean it is. A merchanter fragrance."

"Do you know what you're doing? What if... ?" His father doesn't finish the question.

"I've been careful about that. There won't be any child," Lorn says absolutely truthfully.

"Lorn..." His father shakes his head again. "I trust you have not attempted a chaos compulsion with the girl."

"No, ser. I wouldn't do such with her."

"Chaos compulsions are odious, and over time, they weaken those who use them, and make them susceptible to the compulsions of others." Kien's voice is stern.

"I have not with her, and I will keep your advice, ser."

"Good. Would that you will be so amenable to showing greater interest in your studies. If not, perhaps a time in the lancers will settle you down... though this is not the best time."

Lorn knows he cannot manifest any greater interest in his studies, although he has come to enjoy learning for its own sake, feeling the sense and the power involved in transferring chaos from the tower outlets to the firelances, and in seeing just how much chaos he can press into each weapon. He also is less than enthused about the thought that he could be posted to the frontiers and use a lance or blade in earnest, even if his skills with the blade are among the best among the students, including those like Dettaur who had been born with a blade in his hand. Using a blade in earnest would definitely increase the odds of an earlier demise than Lorn would wish.

"Vernt was right, then... about the barbarians?" he asks his father.

"There have been more attacks than in any time in memory-or in the records," his father admits. "And they have even used archers in the far northwest." A faint smile appears on Kien'elth's thin lips. "All the attacks have been repulsed, and most of the barbarians killed."

"But they keep attacking?"

"Yes... Enough... we can talk about it at dinner. After you wash off some of that scent. I'll tell your mother that you're here."

"Yes, ser." As he hurries toward the wash chamber, Lorn can sense his father's unease, as though there is far more left unsaid. Yet, Lorn does not wish to push, not when he has apparently misdirected Kien'elth's inquiries about his actions of the afternoon.

VIII

The core of a fully functioning tower maintains an isochronic/isotemporal barrier of approximately nine hundred nanoseconds. This temporal "dislocation" effectively provides the points of energy polarity which generate the raw power fed to the converter system...

The dislocation also provides a barrier against the operating impingement of the physical energy transfer/generation/entropy laws of the spatio-temporal coordinates of the systems hereafter described...

This impingement effect is illustrated by more than ten local years of observation. No tower in which the isochronic/isotemporal barrier has failed [failure being defined as a barrier separation of less than 150 nanoseconds, with an error margin of three percent] has ever functioned again in the spatio-temporal coordinates in which this world is currently situated....

Tower cores have been run continuously without shutdown for the operating life of a Mirror Ship. The longest known continuous operation documented prior to the space-time shift translocating the colonizing/planoforming expedition... was eighty-seven elapsed standard Anglo-Rationalist years.

Given that a standard storage cell [model CD-3A] discharges power at the same amplitude as before the trans-spatio-temporal shift, but for more than quadruple the previous duration, and that power amplitude requirements/discharges from various powered end-use equipment [i.e., electro cell carriers, motor/dynamos, laselectroburst rifles, antipersonnel electrolasers] varies by user, locale, and even spatio-temporal planetary locales, accurate determination of tower core life is unlikely.

Consequently, despite considerable depletion of technical personnel and transport equipment, in the interests of pragmatism and maintaining a viable colonial structure with the infrastructure necessary to adapt to the local parameters and paradigms, as described in Section IV, the remaining tower cores have been located in physical circumstances that would appear as most conducive to their continued and uninterrupted operation...

Maintenance can be accomplished on the secondary systems [see Section V], as well as the energy transfer and conversion systems, since these are located outside the core, and the power transfers are accomplished by field manipulations and impingements. Such maintenance should be held to an absolute minimum, however, since macular cellular degeneration has already been observed among personnel with high exposure within the operating confines of the basic system, in contravention of previously established principles and tolerances...

Overview

Maintenance Manual [Revised]

Cyad, 15 A.F.

IX

Lorn grins as he peers into Myryan's chambers. "How's the studious healer?"

His younger sister looks up from the old and cushioned maroon armchair she had claimed years earlier from the second-floor sitting room when their parents had considered sending it down to the first-floor servants' quarters. She has a black leatherbound book in her lap, and her green-trousered legs are slung over one arm of the chair. She pushes a shock of black and wavy curls back off her high forehead. "Lorn..." She grins back. "You're full of horse dung. Jerial's the studious healer, and we all know it."

"You're the natural one, though." He slips through the door and closes it gently behind him, dropping easily into the straight-backed chair that has been turned out from the writing desk. He ignores the half-written note on the leather desk pad.

"What were you doing yesterday?"

Lorn shrugs, half-embarrassedly. "Everyone knows. I was with a girl."

"She wears a nice scent, even if it is a merchanter fragrance. Who is she?" Myryan offers a knowing smile.

"A merchanter," he responds.

"She's more than that," Myryan says. "Are you-"

"Don't ask... please?" Lorn offers a truly embarrassed smile, hoping his expression displays enough chagrin.

"I won't... since you asked." Her amber eyes smile with her mouth. "But only since you asked. Jerial would have asked anyway. Is that why you're here?"

Lorn ignores the question and asks Myryan, "You're worried about Ciesrt, aren't you? That father will consort you two?"

"How observant." She shakes her head. "I'm not mad at you, Lorn. Father doesn't see it, and consorting is one thing where what mother thinks doesn't matter."

"Consorting is political." Lorn shrugs again. "We know that. It doesn't matter whether you like someone."

"It's unfair." Myryan almost pouts, but reins in the expression. "You can have a merchanter girl, and all anyone cares about is to make sure there's no child, and you're back in time for dinner, and there are a few laughs about wearing too much scent. Can you imagine what would happen if I arranged a tryst with a handsome merchanter-or an outland trader?"

"You wouldn't like the outland traders. They do smell, most of them."

"Is that why... ?" Myryan arches her eyebrows.

Lorn laughs, easily and openly. "I don't think so."

"You saved her from a fate worse than death?"

"Once or twice," Lorn admits.

"How can you say that and be telling the truth?" Myryan shakes her head, trying not to laugh. "You're impossible."

"What about Ciesrt?" Lorn asks again.

"He's dull as a pillar, and he's not even sweet. People think he's nice because he's quiet. He's quiet because he's only half alive. He only talks about being a magus."

Lorn nods.

"Father doesn't want to see." She shakes her head and looks down.

"I won't promise... but maybe I can do something. Talk to father, or Vernt."

"They won't listen. Ciesrt's going to be a full magus, and no one could be a more wonderful consort than that." Her voice, normally full and warm, carries a bitter edge that Lorn hears seldom and likes not at all.

"Talk to me about healing," Lorn suggests.

"Jerial knows more."

"I'm not interested in knowing. I'm interested in seeing and feeling," Lorn replies. "Scroll or book learning aren't enough." His mouth quirks into a self-depreciating smile.

"It'll be hard for you," Myryan says.

"If you say so."

"I mean it. You've been handling chaos."

Lorn raises his eyebrows.

"Don't look at me like I'm daft. There's a white shimmer around you. Father practically glows all the time. So does Vernt. You're not so bad."

Lorn nodded. "And there's a blackish haze around you and Jerial, but it's stronger around you."

"You can see it?"

"More like feel it," he admits.

"Good. Vernt can't, you know. He thinks healing is all imaginary because he's order-blind. Father can't sense it, either, but he knows it works."

"Father is a pragmatist." After a pause, Lorn adds, "About most things, anyway."

"And there are two kinds of chaos," Myryan continues, "the deep white-gold kind-like surrounds the Quarter of the Magi'i-and the ugly reddish white kind, and that's what you feel when a wound goes bad or someone looks like they're going to die. Healing's not what people think it is," Myryan states flatly. "A good healer can combine order-that's the black-with wound chaos, so that someone can heal, and we can bind things together for a time-"

"But their bodies have to heal by themselves," Lorn finishes. Myryan waits.

"How do you bind or wrap the order to someone?" he finally inquires. Myryan laughs. "I asked Kyrysmal the same thing. People have chaos and order within them. You have to work with that."

"Show me."

"Are you sure? They say that the Magi'i shouldn't work with both." Myryan looks intently at her older brother.

"I'm not going to be a magus," Lorn replies. "Before year-end, I'll be a lancer, and healing will help."

"You're going to give up on magery?" Myryan's eyes flick toward the closed door, as if to make sure that Lorn's words do not leave the room. "What will father say?"

"He already knows, but he's hoping that it won't come to that."

"But why? Father says you do well at your studies and that no one learns things better than you do."

"I don't like being confined between walls of granite. That much chaos... presses in on me." Lorn shrugs helplessly. "I can't hide that. Lector Hyrist would have thrown me out a long time ago if father weren't a Lector and if my studies weren't so good. The Magi'i want people who eat, think, breathe, and sleep chaos transfers and manipulation. Like Vernt... or father."

"All right." Myryan sighs as she swings her legs around and stands. "Give me your hand. If you had a slash there that wasn't healing it would be red and maybe puffy... really, you wouldn't need healing. You could-"

"Cut it open and drain it, and wash it with clear winter brandy or something." Lorn smiles. "I know." He stands and extends his hand. As she steps closer, he can smell the clean scent of frysya. "But if I were going to lose it... ?"

"I'd reach out and gather free order... like this."

Lorn's senses follow hers as the unseen but still real darkness forms above his left hand. He tries to replicate her order-gathering. After a moment, a smaller, more diffuse, block of darkness appears beside hers.

"Oh... you should have been a healer."

"Men aren't healers-not in Cyador," he points out.

"Like women aren't Magi'i," she replies.

Near-identical ironic smiles appear on each sibling's face.

"How do you bind it or move it?"

"You take the affinity within your body...."

Lorn's eyes and senses are fully intent, his amber eyes both searching and hard as he concentrates on his sister's demonstration of order healing.

X

Two figures stand on the westernmost balcony of the Palace of Light, enjoying the comfortable breeze that heralds the beginning of the cool but moderate winter in Cyad. Below them, the green and white awnings on the small plaza to the west and north of the harbor piers ripple with a gust of wind coming off the Great Western Ocean, enough of a gust that the rippling is visible nearly a kay away on the Palace balcony.

"Someone used chaos to create the fire in the warehouse district," First Magus Chyenfel says to the Majer-Commander of Lancers.

"Was there any damage beyond the one warehouse?" inquires Rynst.

"No. The damage was confined to the western end. It had been rented to an outland trader by the Jekseng clan."

"Outsiders, again. Everywhere, from the barbarians to the traders, we have difficulties with outsiders." After a pause, Rynst ventures quietly, "Some had mentioned seed-oil burning."

"It was-but you cannot get that heavy oil to burn with a striker-or even a fallen candle or lamp." Chyenfel smiles ironically, his sungold eyes flashing.

"Cammabark?"

"There wasn't any sign of an explosion, and there were bodies and bones there. The dead men didn't try to run."

"The fire was to cover their murder, then. Anyone important?"

The High Lector and First Magus shakes his head. "No. The bodies seem to be those of the man renting the warehouse-a most unsavory Hamorian thought to be a smuggler-and his two bodyguards."