The Dreaming Void (11 page)

It would take a miracle granted by the Lady, he acknowledged grudgingly. The village families were reluctant to allow their children to train at the Eggshaper Guild. They appreciated how dependent they were on genistars, but they couldn't afford to lose able hands. The guild was just like the rest of Ashwell, struggling to keep going.

Edeard hurried across the courtyard to the tanks where his new reshaped cats were kept, silently asking the Lady why he bothered to stay in this backward place on the edge of the wilds. To his right were the largest stables, where the defaults shuffled around their stalls. They were simple beasts, unshaped egg-laying genistars the same size as terrestrial ponies, with six legs supporting a bulbous body. The six upper limbs were vestigial, producing bumps along the creature's back; in the female over thirty percent of the internal organs were ovaries, producing an egg every fifteen days. The males, of which there were three, lumbered around in a big pen at one end, and the females were kept in a row of fifteen separate stalls. For the first time since Akeem had taken him in, the stalls were all occupied; that was a source of considerable satisfaction to Edeard. Not even a master as accomplished as Akeem—and despite his age he was a singular talent—could manage fifteen defaults by himself. Shaping an egg took a long time, and Edeard had had as many grotesque failures as he'd had successes. First of all, the timing had to be right. An egg needed to be shaped no earlier than ten hours after fertilization and no later than twenty-five. How long it took depended on the nature of the genus required.

Edeard often had spent half the night sitting in a stall's deep-cushioned shaper chair with his mind focused on the egg. Eggshaping, as Akeem so often had described it, was like sculpting intangible clay with invisible hands. The ability was a gentle combination of farsight and telekinesis. His mind could see inside the egg, and only those who could do that with perfect clarity could become shapers. Not that he liked to boast, but Edeard's mental vision was the most acute in the village. What he saw within the shell was like a small exemplar of a default genistar made of gray shadow substance. His telekinesis would reach out and begin to shape it into the form he wanted, but slowly, so frustratingly slowly. There were limits; he could not give a genistar anything extra: seven arms, two heads … What the process did was activate the nascent structures inherent within the default physiology. He also could define size, though that was determined partially by what type of genus he was shaping. Then there were subfamilies within each standard genus, chimps as well as monkeys, a multitude of horse types—big, small, powerful, fast, slow. A long list that had to be memorized perfectly.

Shaping was inordinately difficult, requiring immense concentration. Shapers had to have a lot more than eldritch vision and manipulation; they had to have the
feel
of what they were doing, know instinctively if what they were doing was right, see potential in the embryonic genistar. In the smaller creatures there would be no room for reproductive organs, so they had to be disengaged; other organs, too, had to be selected where appropriate. But which ones? Small wonder even a Grand Master produced a large percentage of invalid eggs.

Edeard walked past the default stables, his farsight flashing through the building, checking that the ge-monkeys were getting on with their jobs of mucking out and feeding. Several were becoming negligent and disorderly, so he refreshed their instructions with a quick longtalk message. A slightly deeper scan with his farsight showed him the state of the gestating eggs inside the defaults. Of the eleven that had been shaped, three were showing signs that indicated that problems were developing. He gave a resigned sigh; two of them were his.

After the defaults came the horse stables. There were nine foals currently accommodated, seven of which were growing up into large sturdy brutes that would pull plows and carts on the surrounding farms. Most of the commissions given to Ashwell's Eggshaper Guild were for genistars that could be used in agriculture. The custom of using domestic ge-monkeys and chimps was in decline; Edeard knew that had happened because people didn't take the time to learn how to instruct them properly. Not that they were going to come here and take lessons from a fourteen-year-old boy. It annoyed him immensely; he was certain the village economy could be improved fourfold at least if they just listened to him.

“Patience,” Akeem always counseled when he raged against the shortsighted fools who were their neighbors. “Often to do what's right you first have to do what's wrong. There will come a time when your words will be heeded.”

Edeard didn't know when that would be. Even if today was successful, he did not expect a rush of people to congratulate him and seek his advice. He was sure he was destined to remain forever the freaky boy who lived alone with batty old Akeem. A well-matched pair, they all said when they thought he couldn't farsight them.

The monkey and chimp pen was on the other side of the horses. It had only a couple of infant monkeys inside, curled up in their nest. The rest were all out and about, performing their duties around the guild compound. They didn't have any commissions for ge-monkeys on their books; even the smithy who worked five did not want any extras.
Perhaps I should bring people to the guild buildings,
Edeard thought,
show them what the ge-monkeys can do if they're ordered correctly. Or Akeem could show them, at least. Just something that would break the cycle, make people more adventurous.
The freaky boy's daydream.

After the monkey pen came the kennels. Ge-dogs remained in high demand, especially the kind used for herding cattle and sheep. Eight pups were nursing from the two milk-bitches he'd shaped himself. They allowed the defaults to go straight back to egg production without an extended nursing period. It had taken twelve invalid eggs before he had succeeded in shaping the first. The innovation was one he had introduced after reading about the milk-bitch in an ancient guild text. Now he was keen to try to extend it across all the genistar types. Akeem had been supportive when the first one had hatched, impressed as much by Edeard's tenacity as by his shaping skill.

The compound's main gateway was wedged between the dog kennels and the wolf kennels. There were six of the fierce creatures maturing. Always useful outside the village walls, the wolves were deployed as guards for Ashwell and all its outlying farmhouses; they also were taken on hunts through the forests, helping to clear out Querencia's native predators as well as the occasional bandit group. Edeard stopped and looked in. The ge-wolves were lean creatures with dark gray fur that blended in with most landscapes; their long snouts were equipped with sharp fangs that could bite clean through a medium-size branch, let alone a limb of meat and bone. The large pups mewled excitedly as he hung over the door and patted them. His hand was licked by hot serpentine tongues. Two of them had a pair of arms. It was another of his innovations; he wanted to see if they could carry knives or clubs. That was something else he had found in an old text, another idea the villagers had shaken their heads in despair at.

Out of the whole courtyard, he liked the aviary best. It was a squat circular cote with arched openings twenty feet above the ground, just below the eaves. There was a single doorway at the base. Inside, the open space was crisscrossed by broad martoz beams. Over the years the wood had been heavily scarred by talons, so much so that the original square cut was now rounded out on top. There was only a single ge-eagle left, as big as Edeard's torso. The bird had a double-wing arrangement, with two limbs supporting the large front wing and giving it remarkable flexibility; the rear wing was a simple triangle for stability. Its gold and emerald feathers cloaked a streamlined body with a long slender jaw where the teeth had merged into a single serrated edge very similar to a beak.

Trisegment eyes blinked down at Edeard as he smiled up. He so envied the ge-eagle, how it could soar free and clear of the village and all its earthbound drudgery and irrelevance. It had an unusually strong telepathic ability, allowing Edeard to experience wings spread wide and the wind slipping past. Often, whole afternoons would pass with an enthralled Edeard twinned with the ge-eagle's mind as it swooped and glided over the forests and valleys outside, providing an intoxicating taste of the freedom that existed beyond the village.

It rustled its wings, enthused by Edeard's appearance and the prospect of flight.
Not yet,
Edeard had to tell it reluctantly. Its snout was shaken in disgust, and the eyes shut, returning it to an aloof posture.

The hatchery came between the aviary and the cattery. It was a low circular building, like a half-size aviary. Its broad iron-bound wooden door was closed and bolted. It was the one place in the compound where ge-monkeys were not permitted to go. Edeard had the task of keeping it clean and tidy. A sheltered stone shelf to the right of the door had nine thick candles alight, traditionally one for each egg inside. He swept his farsight across them all, happy to confirm that the embryos were growing satisfactorily. After they had been laid, the eggs took about ten days to hatch, cosseted in cradles that in winter months were warmed by slowly smoldering charcoal in a massive iron stove. He would have to rake out the ashes and add some more lumps before midday. One of the eggs was due to hatch tomorrow, he judged, another horse.

Finally, he went into the cattery, the smallest of the buildings walling the courtyard. Standard genistar cats were small semiaquatic creatures with dark oily fur and broad webbed feet, devoid of upper limbs. Guild convention had them as one of the seven standard genera, though nobody outside the capital, Makkathran, ever found much use for them. It was the gondoliers who kept a couple on each boat, using them to keep the city's canals clean of weeds and rodents.

The cattery was a rectangular room taken up by big knee-high stone tables. Light came in through windows set into the roof. As a testament to how prolifically the kimoss had spread, Edeard now always supplemented his ordinary sight with farsight as he shuffled along the narrow aisles between the tables. From inside, the windows had been reduced to narrow slits that provided a meager amethyst radiance.

Glass tanks sat along the tables. They were ancient basins the size of bulky coffins, dating back to when the whole compound had been built. Half of them had cracked sides, with dried and dead algae staining the glass; the bottoms were filled with gravel and desiccated flakes of mud. Edeard had refurbished five to hold his reshaped cats, with another three modified to act as crude reservoirs. The pipes he used to test their ability were strewn across the floor in a tangled mess. All five reshaped cats lay on the gravel bed of the tanks, with just a few inches of water rippling sluggishly around them. They resembled fat lozenges of glistening ebony flesh, half the size of a human. There were no limbs of any kind, just a row of six circular gills along their flanks dangling loose tubes of thick skin. The head was so small, it looked undeveloped to the point of being misshapen; there were no eyes or ears. It was all Edeard's farsight could do to detect any sparkle of thought within the tiny brain.

He grinned down cheerily at the unmoving lumps, searching through them for any sign of malady. When he was satisfied that their health was as good as possible, he stood perfectly still, taking calm measured breaths they way Akeem had taught him. He focused his telekinesis—the “third hand,” as most villagers called it—on the first cat. He could feel the black flesh within his incorporeal grip and lifted it off the bed of mucky gravel.

Half an hour later, when Barakka the village cartwright drove his wagon into the courtyard, he found Edeard and Akeem standing beside five tarpaulins with the reshaped cats lying on them. He wrinkled his face in disgust at the bizarre creatures and shot the old Guild Master a questioning look.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked as he swung himself off the bench. The cartwright was a squat man, made even broader by eight decades of hard physical labor. He had a thick, unruly ginger beard that made his gray eyes seem even more sunken. His hand scratched at his buried chin as he surveyed the ge-cats, doubt swirling openly in his mind for Edeard to see. Barakka didn't care much about the feelings of young apprentices.

“If they work, they will bring a large benefit to Ashwell,” Akeem said smoothly. “Surely it's worth a try.”

“Whatever you say,” Barakka conceded. He gave Edeard a sly grin. “Are you aiming to be our Mayor, boy? If this works, you'll get my blessing. I've been washing in horse muck these last three months. 'Course, old Geepalt will have his nose right out of joint.”

Geepalt, the village carpenter, was in charge of the existing well's pump and by rights should have built a new pump for the freshly dug well. He was the chief naysayer on allowing Edeard to try his innovation; it didn't help that Obron was his apprentice.

“There are worse things in life than an annoyed Geepalt,” Akeem said. “Besides, when this works, he'll have more time for profitable commissions.”

Barakka laughed. “You old rogue; it is your tongue, not your mind, which shapes words against their true meaning.”

Akeem gave a small, pleased bow. “Thank you. Shall we begin loading?”

“If Melzar's team is ready,” Barakka said.

Edeard's farsight flashed out, surveying the new well and the crowd gathering around it. “They are. Wedard has called the ge-monkey digging team out.”

Barakka gave him a calculating stare. The new well was being dug on the other side of the village from the Eggshaper Guild compound. His own farsight could not reach that far. “Very well, we'll put them on the wagon. Can you manage a third of the weight, boy?”

Edeard was very pleased that he managed to stop any irony from showing amid his surface thoughts. “I think so, sir.” He caught Akeem's small private smile; the master's mind remained calm and demure.