Chartomancy ви-2, page 11
part #2 of Век исследований Series
The sphere collapsed to reveal a man standing on an oblong wooden platform rimmed with gold. Around its circumference a railing ran about three feet high, and gold disks attached to the sides of the base, one at each of the eight cardinal points. Most remarkably, in front of the man sat a large globe on a gimbaled stand. While I could not see the six-foot globe clearly, I knew it had a map of the world spread over its surface. This told me I’d seen it before and, as if in confirmation, the man on the platform looked at me and smiled.
I bowed to him, respectfully, and he returned it. “I am Moraven Tolo, and though we have met, I do not know your name.”
“When we met, you were much worse for the wear. I’m glad to see you’ve recovered from your injuries.”
“Yes, the scar on my chest and back.” My left hand brushed over it. “Then the last time we met was over two hundred and fifty years ago?”
“It depends upon how it is measured.” He stepped toward me, then kicked one of the disks down parallel to the wooden base. “This time, I think you can hang on to ride.”
“Ride?” I questioned his comment, but still scooped up the coins and the traveling rations. “Obviously you got in. Presumably you can get out. Where will you be going to?”
“Where doesn’t matter quite as much as when.” He kicked another disk down on the other side and nodded to Urardsa. “You’re coming, too.”
The Gloon eyed him with a bit more consternation than he’d looked at me. “Who has told you this?”
“You did, or you will.” The man took my bundled goods and set them on the platform at his feet. “I’m Ryn Anturasi, by the way. Just hang on tight. This won’t take long.”
I grabbed the rail with my right hand.
“Try holding on with the other one. When we get to where we’re going, you’ll want your sword free.”
I nodded and shifted the blade to my right hip.
Urardsa got on the other side of the thing. He held on with both hands and winced.
Ryn fiddled with the globe. I recognized some features on it, though the map of the Empire had been split into many different nations. I knew of that from Moraven’s memories, but I still found it disconcerting. The regions themselves were represented by inlays of stone and wood, each bit of which, I assumed, was native to the location from which it came.
Ryn removed two carved bits of stone that appeared to be the front and back end of a dolphin. They must have been made of lodestone, for they stuck together and, as he put them down, they adhered to the globe itself. The front half he placed in Ixyll, roughly where we were now. The other piece he planted in the Empire. He slipped a lever to the right of the globe and slowly began to spin it. The rotation he imparted would have had the sun rising in the west instead of the east.
“Brace yourself.” He spun the globe so quickly the landmasses became blurred splashes of color, then he drew back on the lever and locked it into place.
From Moraven’s mind, I pulled the memory of the ball of wild magic exploding, and this felt much the same. Instead of a thunderous detonation, however, a wave of magic pulsed off the globe and took my breath away for a heartbeat, then two. A shifting sphere of red and blue surrounded us. All of a sudden the sphere evaporated and the wild magic moved back through me, canceling the vibrations it had started.
And even before I was certain our journey had begun, it had ended, and the familiar sound of battle again rang in my ears. I leaped away from the disk, bringing my sword to hand. Turning toward the sounds of battle, I found myself on a modest landing halfway up a small hill strewn with dead. The Soth Gloon crouched on a pile of bodies, and a new, diminishing glow heralded Ryn’s departure.
I did not wonder at his haste to be away. A quarter turn around the hill a steady stream of hulking beasts with long arms and scaled flesh scrambled upward. They clawed their own dead and wounded down in limp piles that slithered to the hill’s base. At the hill’s zenith fought a trio of people, two of whom I recognized.
Without a second thought I entered the battle. I did so without screaming out my history or any challenge, nor did I inform those above of what I would be doing. I merely flowed into it, became one with it, and began to change the nature of the fight.
There are those who will say that to be a Mystic is to use magic to make yourself better than others. It is true that this is the effect, but the means is almost unknowable. It is not so much that I move faster than others, but I perceive them as moving slower. I see the flows of energy in the battle. I know which way they will move, which ways they can move, and by which means I can most easily stop them.
And, for me, that means killing them.
The hulking creatures stood on powerful but short legs. Their knees, a fine creation of bone and sinew, parted easily as I swept a blade through them. Because they had no necks, I could not decapitate them, but a swift stroke across the throat slashed arteries. Blood geysered and bodies collapsed. Their heads, while massive, had little in the way of bone structure to protect their large flat eyes, and their braincases proved as brittle as sun-dried mud chips.
My first pass through their line harvested a full rank of seven and brought me an unexpected prize. A man, his face clawed to ribbons, had fallen and his sword impaled one of the beasts. I kicked the corpse off him, then tugged the sword free of its belly, before turning to face the things pursuing me.
Coming about, I realized none did pursue me, so intent were they on overwhelming those above. I knew I should have felt some relief at that. Moraven would have, but I was not Moraven. I did not feel what he felt.
And what I felt was insulted.
On my return I did not sweep through their line, I strode into it, boldly, head high, defiantly. One blade flicked out, then the other, plucking eyes, opening throats. Double slashes had sufficient force to spin a disemboweled beast so its entrails could snare others. I inflicted cuts here and there, not fatal, but painful-and it took some learning to find something those beasts considered painful-so their wails would inspire fear in their companions.
It seemed, however, they knew no fear, and in that their creator had doomed them. Someone unschooled in the art of war would think the perfect warrior should know no fear, but that is wrong. A fearless warrior continues forward even though death is inescapable. The perfect warrior is not one with no fear, but one who does not allow fear to overwhelm his judgment.
I slashed and cut at them, at once happy that Moraven had taught my body so many new things, but annoyed that he had abandoned the fighting styles I so much enjoyed. Because the creatures kept coming, each so like the last, I was able to practice and regain my skills. I learned to thrust just deep enough to explode hearts and shred lungs, or to open arteries or hole their stomachs. I fought as I had not fought for ages.
The trio from the hilltop descended and joined me, stealing my prey, but I did not mind. They’d already slain many, and so had the knack for it; but they had been running and relished a chance to regain ground they had lost. The woman I knew from Moraven’s mind and the scar on her cheek. She wore no crest, just simple robes long since scavenged, and had the look of having been on the run for weeks. She used her blade well and killed without remorse.
The second swordsman I had not seen. He wore the crest of a leopard hunting, but his robe and overshirt had been a long time without laundering. Neither he nor the woman would have been thought older than their thirties, save for the age that fatigue, blood, and grime put on them.
The boy, however, there was no mistaking. A mail sleeve had been tied onto his withered left arm, and a spike thrust out where his fingers should have been. In his other hand he carried a sword that had been snapped in half, then resharpened. The hardness of his eyes bespoke much of what he’d seen despite his youth. He was just entering his second decade of life, that I remembered from Moraven.
And his name. Dunos.
The beasts-which Dunos had named vhangxi-came until there were no more and out of deference for my companions, I did not go hunting. With Urardsa joining us, we moved into the night and toward the west. They slept for several hours, and then at dawn we pushed on. When we reached a road we joined a flood of refugees. Thus began the long journey to Kelewan and what they hoped would be a stronghold that would not fall.
Chapter Fifteen
29th day, Month of the Wolf, Year of the Rat
9th Year of Imperial Prince Cyron’s Court
163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty
737th year since the Cataclysm
Ixyll
It surprised Ciras Dejote to realize he didn’t hate Borosan’s gyanrigot anymore. He respected the gyanridin’s skill at fabricating the machines. During the one day they’d remained in a cavern while a torrential rain fell-which had the added effect of melting a mountain in the distance-Borosan was able to modify one of the skull-sized mousers, create another duplicate of it, and to get the larger Nesrearck working. It resembled the smaller ones in that it had a spherical body atop four spider legs, but boasted more substantial weaponry. Whereas the smaller ones could shoot darts sufficient for impaling vermin, the larger thanaton carried a crossbow and a small sheaf of bolts.
Originally, the magic machines had been nonfunctional in Ixyll, which Ciras didn’t mind at all. The excess of wild magic rendered them unreliable, so Borosan continued to tinker with the devices as they traveled. He eventually figured out that if he sheathed what he called their “difference engines” in the protective cloth men wore in Ixyll, they would be insulated from the wild magic. Another modification let the thaumston recharge overnight, so the gyanrigot functioned better than ever.
With three gyanrigot conducting the survey, they were able to move more quickly. Even Borosan had become anxious to push on, and Ciras found no reason to complain. While he respected Borosan’s decision to collect data for Keles Anturasi, the new mission they’d been given was to find the Empress and bring her home. Both men realized it took precedence over the survey, so they picked up speed.
As much as he came to appreciate the utility of gyanrigot, he still was not comfortable with one aspect of gyanri. The discipline of mechanical magic could impart skills to people. A gyanrigot sword would make a warrior formidable-at least while the thaumston held a charge. Once that wore off, the soldier would likely die.
Ciras had trained daily for years to gain his mastery with a sword. If men were able to get results with no work, then the very discipline of swordsmanship would wither. If success required no work, no one would work and the very means of accessing magic could be lost.
Ciras was fairly certain Borosan couldn’t see any of that. His machines went about their tasks faithfully, pacing off distances to landmarks, scaling cliffs, measuring depth. They did so many things that men could do, but could only do at great risk to themselves, that the benefit of their utility couldn’t be denied. Keles would be overjoyed to have the data they had collected.
But there would come a point where someone who did not have the Anturasi skill at cartography would be able to use gyanrigot to gather data for his own charts. The need for exploration would evaporate because men could soon just dispatch machines. Even if a few of them were eaten by things like the goldwort, losing a machine was better than losing a man.
As long as the machines cannot make judgments, men will always have to explore.
Yet even with his reservations, he became quite glad the gyanrigot existed. As they traveled northwest, they cut across the trail of another party. Ciras recognized the tracks. The men had been part of a bandit group they’d trailed through much of Dolosan. They’d lost track of them when they entered Ixyll, but before that had seen evidence of the men having defiled graves and slaughtering thaumston prospectors.
The tracks revealed that the men were three days ahead. Moving swiftly, they shortened the lead significantly and found them sooner than expected. Had it not been for the bandits lighting a fire, Ciras and Borosan might have ridden into the small valley where they had made camp. Forewarned, they dismounted, approached on foot, and dispatched the gyanrigot to reconnoiter the bandit camp.
While he waited for the devices to return, Ciras crept up to the valley ridge and peered down. He saw only three of the bandits, but a round hole had been pounded into a stone stab, so he assumed Dragright was somewhere in there. Bigfoot, an unkempt giant of a man, rested beside the heavy steel sledge he’d used to make the hole. Tightboots sat on the other side of the hole, a couple of yards from where a bow and quiver lay. Closer to Ciras, with his back to the swordsman and the fire between him and the hole, Slopeheel squatted and held his hands out to the fire. He wore a sword in his sash, but squatted as a peasant would, so Ciras dismissed him as any real threat.
Something crashed from within the hole, jetting out a dusty gust. None of the bandits reacted with anything more than idle curiosity. Then a long, narrow cylinder sailed out. Its lower half split on impact, revealing an aged sword with a stained hilt. The blade rang when it hit the ground, but none of them moved to retrieve it from the dust.
Dragright emerged from the hole, dirty enough for him to have lain there since the Cataclysm. He coughed, pounding on his chest with a fist while hoisting a prize into the air with his left hand. Bits of flesh fell from the skull he lifted, but much of the shrunken scalp remained in place. Ciras even saw a white ribbon woven into one brittle lock.
Dragright hurled it to the ground. It shattered on impact. He stomped on it, reducing the skull to dust. He laughed, the others joined him, then he squatted and sifted the dust with dirty fingers.
He took a pinch of the dust and brought it toward a nostril.
Tightboots tossed a pebble at him. “Don’t. Save it. It’s worth more than you are.”
Dragright shrugged. “Just seeing how good it is. We’ve enough. There’s a dozen more in there. Swords, too, maybe even a bow for you.”
He snorted the corpse dust.
His head snapped back and his eyes widened. His body shook violently and he should have toppled onto his back, but somehow he came upright, as if being lifted by his throat. Dragright sneezed once, hard, and thick green ropes of mucus dripped from his nostrils like wax. He coughed again, then shook his head spasmodically, four times.
He smiled, all gap-toothed and happy. “This is the best we’ve found.”
Tightboots lofted another stone at him. “You say that with every tomb.”
The man’s hand swept up fluidly and snatched the pebble from the air. “And this time I’m right.”
Ciras rose and began a casual stroll down into their camp. He angled to keep Slopeheel on his right and the fire between him and the other three. He forced himself to walk loosely, never betraying the revulsion he felt at finding breathers of the dead.
Nor did he let his fear show. If thaumston could animate machines, so corpse dust could power others. A Mystic weaver’s dust could impart her skill to someone who breathed it. Likewise the dust of a warrior. Just how much skill no one knew. The practice was proscribed and the only source of knowledge about it came from stories whispered around campfires.
Slopeheel turned to look at Ciras. “Who in the Nine Hells are you?”
Ciras’ blade cleared its scabbard in a draw-cut that caressed the man’s throat front to back. It parted his spine and only left a small flap of skin and muscle beneath the man’s right ear intact. Slopeheel’s head flopped onto his shoulder as blood geysered from his neck, then he collapsed thrashing.
Tightboots cursed as he dove for his bow. “Damn the xidantzu!” He rolled and came up with the bow, but by the time he nocked an arrow and started to draw it, Ciras had reached him. The archer began to turn toward him, but the swordsman’s blade descended. It swept through his right elbow. The forearm whipped away, propelled by the bow. The archer stared at the stump in horror, then a second slash blinded him.
As Ciras turned to the right, the giant ran into the darkness and Dragright kicked the antique sword into the air. He caught it deftly. He dropped into a fighting stance, with his left hand wide, his right jabbing with the sword, and his body open. He stood the way an unskilled brawler might, a casual cut away from death. In fact, tired, dirty, and snot-stained, he looked more dead than alive anyway.
Ciras did not attack. He took a step away from the dying archer, then bowed toward his opponent. He held it for a respectful time, then straightened up again.
Dragright frowned. “You’re a strange xidantzu. You slaughter two, then do me honor?”
“Not you. The warrior whose skull you crushed, whose sword you bear.”
“Heh.” The man half smiled, then convulsed again. He spun the sword up and around, easily, as if he had been trained to it all his life. “He was one of the best, you know. Out here. Better than you could have ever hoped.”
“Of this, I have no doubt.” Ciras waved him forward with his left hand. “But you are not he.”
The bandit attacked and the twin effects of the corpse dust and the sword made themselves readily apparent. Ciras had tracked the man and named him because he dragged his right foot a bit. In his attack, he moved more fluidly and with more precision. He flowed down into Dragon, whipping the sword down and around, then up in a cut meant to slash Ciras’ right flank.
Ciras slipped to the left, then pivoted back on his right foot and backhanded a slash aimed at the bandit’s spine. Steel rang on steel as Dragright spun back faster than possible and parried the slash high. Snapping his wrist around, he attacked back.
Pain scored a fiery line through Ciras’ armpit. He leaped away, feeling blood already dripping. He’d never seen an attack like that, and he knew the Dragon form well. Moreover, he felt a tingle in the air, much akin to what he’d felt when the magic storms played in Ixyll.
Magic! It wasn’t possible, but the bandit had accessed magic.
