Of Machines & Magics (6 page)

Roli groaned. What might be an invigorating ramble to Ponderos the Immovable, the boy saw as a considerable effort.

There was no further delay; they marched off along the high bank, following a game trail which skirted small clumps of brush and alder and the occasional earthy pillar of an insect domicile.

Ponderos considered the temperature as brisk—around the freezing point of water, it varied from place to place. Here, puddles were rimed with ice or frozen solid, there, a shallow sheet of water with long snapping larvae crawling over the black mud bottom. Flat rosettes of lime green leaves edged the beaten pathway; where it was warm enough; thin black stems raised pale yellow flowers and even a few clear fruit like oversized drops of water.

Presently, the path led them to a narrow paved road which wound along what had become a low cliff and not far off the league which Ponderos had forecast, it turned around a sharp bluff and followed the line of a wide bay.

Across the water, at the far side of the bay, they could see a promontory on which stood a long, low rambling building.

Its landward end was constructed from stuccoed stone with mullioned windows, lights inside shone through the rich colors of the glass. Further out, the structure had been extended over the lake on a platform supported by a forest of thick stakes driven into the lake bed. Here, the walls were of timber with lath and plaster, the windows fashioned from the bottoms of glass bottles cemented together in the window frames.

The
Raftman’s Ease
was an inn which catered not so much for the raft pilots as for the hunters who returned there every few months to trade skins and the exoskeletons of certain insects. These would later be sold on to the artisans in Sachavesku where the raw materials would be processed into garments, into body armor, jewelry and a host of other items.

They approached the inn. Benches made from old grey driftwood leaned against the walls; an iridescent beetle, harnessed to a sled mounded with skins, waited patiently for its owner to return. One of the double doors stood open and warm air, misted with condensation, swirled white against the outer chill bringing with it a burden of smells—cooked fish, alcoholic beverages, tobaccos and the smoke from a brazier of coals. Roli found the place inviting, even exciting, and failed to notice the dilapidation.

Ponderos bent and lifted Calistrope from the travois and set him unsteadily upright, he supported the injured Mage to the door and then stopped. “Unhitch Charylla,” he said to Roli, having learned the names of the two ants only shortly before.

As Roli unclipped the harness, Faramiss, the other insect, helped to push the conveyance off the road and out of the way. The two ants then climbed slowly up the rocky inland side of the road, each of them with a pair of honeydew sacs slung across their narrow waists like ungainly balloons.

“Will you know when we leave the inn?” Roli asked.

“Go,” hummed Faramiss. “We shall watch, we shall see you.”

The place was much as Ponderos remembered it though perhaps another layer of dust had been added to the ledges and shelves along the walls. The main lounge had a low vaulted roof of stone supported upon slate pillars. Tapestries and carpets—dark with age—hung between the side walls and the two outermost rows of pillars to form a number of semi-private booths, each lit by an oil lamp and holding a round table with stools and benches. Untrimmed furs and woven mats littered the flagstone floor, they soaked up spilt beer and absorbed the trodden-in scraps of food and other detritus.

A score or so patrons quaffed beer and ate from bowls of bouillabaisse—a specialty of the Raftman’s Ease.

Ponderos stood for a moment just inside the door, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the dimness. His bright clothing and huge physique set him apart from the gathering of hunter-traders who preferred to dress in dull greens and browns, the better to avoid becoming prey to those creatures they hunted. Almost without exception, they were tall and thin with lean and hungry looking features.

A quickly-spreading silence overtook the conversation as everyone looked up to examine the newcomer and watch as he guided Calistrope to a corner seat in a booth as close to the fire as possible. He went to the bar where mine host was pouring drinks and serving plates of fish stew, and apart from one or two women who were obviously somewhat struck by the big man’s physique, the patrons returned to their drinking and discussion.

“Landlord Perspic?” Ponderos enquired.

“Dead these five months,” grunted his replacement filling another bowl with soup, deftly catching a drip with his thumb and licking it lest it go to waste. “Old Perspic—we gave his body to the Lake last Lamagan’s Day.” The new landlord was a dark and saturnine individual with a complexion like lake-bottom mud and a paunch which hung over the front of his trousers. “I bought this dilapidated place from his heirs for an inflated price and will doubtless live to rue the day.”

Ponderos chewed at his bottom lip. “The Raftman’s Ease is a tavern with a long and honorable history.”

“And history does not pay the fishermen who sell me their catch at far too a high a price. I shall end up a pauper and catch all manner of diseases and die with no one to mark my grave.”

“That will be an end to your miseries then,” replied Ponderos with finality. “Now, I require a room, a room with three beds, one bath and the usual conveniences.”

The Landlord stopped in the middle of ladling out the stew. “A room is it?” he finished filling the bowl and passed it the serving girl. “Well Sir, require whatever you like. What you may have, at the cost of a copper flake—which is nowhere near its true worth, is a mattress in this common room after the lights are doused, the use of a bar of soap, a basin of cold water and the privy over the lake. As you see,” he waved a greasy hand at the many hunters of both genders who filled the tavern, “the inn is near full. The traders are late and there are many who have been waiting here a week or more.”

“You must be making a fair fortune then, if they have nothing to do but to drink you dry,” Ponderos shrugged. “I shall have two flagons—no, make it three, of Merrion White and three no, make that four bowls of bouillabaisse,” Ponderos took two thin discs of beaten copper from his purse and put them on the counter. “My friend is still very ill, he was stung by a dragonfly and his life has been hanging in the balance ever since. He needs warmth and rest.”

He pressed his lips together, in an expression of unhappiness and went back to the booth to find Roli had arrived and was tucking Calistrope’s cloak around his shivering form.

A minute later, the girl arrived with a tray bearing three flagons and as many leather cups. There was also a dish of salt and mixed herbs to flavor the fish stew.

“Sir,” she said to Ponderos. “I heard what you said about your friend, my room is small but it is quite snug and warm. Let him rest there and I will sleep in the scullery for a night or two.”

“You will do no such thing, daughter,” said the Landlord who had come up behind her with the four bowls of stew.

The girl turned and scowled at her father. “What harm is there?” She asked “The poor man is in pain.”

“Where would it end if people knew your room was for hire? Perhaps they would think that you were also available. Word would get around that Fashlig rents his daughter out by the night, by the hour. My trade would dwindle, my borrowings would not be repaid, I would be destitute.”

“Or people would throng here, I would become a famous courtesan and your takings would multiply, you would buy a new and fashionable alehouse in Sachavescu and retire with a belly twice the size of this one,” she poked him in the region of his navel. “One outcome is as likely as the other.”

“You have your mother’s tongue.”

“I have my mother’s sense and I have made up my mind. The poor man sleeps in my room and that’s an end to it.”

“Thank you,” said Ponderos, grinning at the exchange.

Calistrope nodded his gratitude.

“I thank you for my Master, who is too ill to speak,” said Roli expansively, assuming the status of squire rather than apprentice.

“This is less than the truth,” Calistrope’s voice was little more than a husky whisper. No one heard him.

“My name is Roli,” Roli continued, “perhaps you will tell me, tell us, yours?”

“Perhaps I will,” she replied, an impish spark in her eye. “Then again, perhaps I won’t.

When the lamps were extinguished leaving red sunbeams stabbing through the dusty atmosphere of the common room, Fashlig’s daughter came to them and took all three to her room, Ponderos supporting Calistrope up the narrow staircase. It was indeed a small space, tucked into the eaves above the main doorway with a small window overlooking the road outside.

Calistrope lay back on the bed. “Thank you, all of you,” he croaked, looking at his companions then, to the girl, “and thank you to … er…” he said to the girl.

“You had better say what your name is,” Roli suggested. “It will be very awkward to discuss you behind your back if we don’t know what you are called.”

“Hmm,” she said, folding her arms. “I think you and your huge friend here had better leave. The room is not large enough to hold you all.”

“Oh no,” said Roli. “I should stay, at least until my Master is asleep.”

“Well then. I will leave you to it; I still have work to do before
I
can sleep.”

“When my master is resting properly, I will come and help you.”

“Now there would be a wonder. A man helping in the scullery.” And she pulled the drapes across the window and left them.

Ponderos followed her down soon afterwards. In the common room, he found himself a straw filled mattress in a corner and within a handful of heartbeats he was snoring as relentlessly as any of the others.

Upstairs, Roli sat by Calistrope and wiped his brow with a sponge and cold water. It was the first time that he had paused long enough to consider their situation and realized how near they had come to being overwhelmed by the dragonflies. He held one of Calistrope’s hands. “Don’t die now, Master, will you?”

Calistrope, who had been ‘twixt sleep and waking smiled, his teeth agleam in the gloom. “I’d not plan my wake just yet, Roli. I am getting better. It’s just that with such weak magic, it takes a lot longer.”

“No such thing as magic. You told me that. Made me believe it.”

“A figure of speech, boy. Inside me,” Calistrope tapped his chest and spoke on hoarsely, “there are millions of tiny machines which repair the damage that my body suffers every day.”

“I know this,” Roli sounded disgusted. “You have expounded on germs and diseases and how our bodies defend us.”

“I’m pleased that you remember but this is different. What I speak of now is what makes the difference between you and me. You have to learn to make these tiny machines and to fill your veins with them, only then will you live long enough to be a magician. But they work exceeding slow when the ether is as devoid of strength as it is hereabouts.”

Later, when Calistrope was sleeping properly Roli went down to the kitchen and guided by the noise, found the Landlord’s daughter washing up crockery and cutlery. He helped a little, carrying piles of soiled dishes to the sink and piles of clean ones away but mostly, he lolled against the counter top and watched the girl at work.

“Do you like it here?” he asked after awhile.

“No. Would you?”

He shook his head and another long silence ensued.

“I wanted to be a hunter but Father wouldn’t let me go. Mag Jorris was happy enough to take me and teach me the skills but father wanted someone to fetch and carry and wash up.”

“Why not go anyway?”

“With Mag? Mag has to come here to trade. Father could easily put in a bad word for her and then what? No more trade. Couldn’t do that to Mag or anyone else, could I?”

“No. No, I can see that.”

Dishes went in to the soapy water, dishes came out. Roli carried them to a long trestle table and stacked them, then there was another barrel of Ordinary to broach and fish to be taken out of the salt boxes and left to steep in rain water.

“You want a drink?”

“Um. Yes please,” Roli smiled. “What shall we have, a tot of your Dad’s best kelp brandy?”

“Tea is what I had in mind. Good strong tea with a dash of pepper on top.” And she made tea—tea with a dash of pepper for her and without a dash for Roli.

“Where are you three going?”

Roli took a long swallow from his glass before answering. “We’re on an adventure,” he told her solemnly. “Ponderos and Calistrope are two powerful magicians and I’m Calistrope’s assistant and we have two ants with us to help defend us from attack. What’s your name?”

Roli ducked as the big leather jug swung but not quickly enough. The dregs caught him in the face.

“You think I’m a child to believe such nonsense?”

Roli found a towel and wiped his face.

“What’s your name?”

“Jiss.”

Upstairs, in Jiss’s bed, Calistrope dreamed and slowly mended.

Chapter 5

With three good meals inside him and a jug or two of the best wine the Raftman’s Ease could provide, Calistrope was almost back to his usual self. Ponderos had scouted the way meanwhile and had discovered the steep and narrow lateral valley they must take.

“Unfortunately,” he told his companions, “there has been a rock slide not far from the entrance. We shall have to climb it. It is not high but blocks the way completely. Do you feel able?” he asked, looking closely at Calistrope.

“Oh yes. I have no doubts,” he leaned back in his chair. “Give me another old day…”

And so, a final meal of thick fish stew and black bread, a final flagon of Merrion White, a second of Merrion Green and they set out once again.

“Roli. Where’s he got to now?” Calistrope looked back from the base of the rock fall. “He’s been lagging behind ever since we started.”

Ponderos shrugged. “He went late to his own bed. No doubt he’ll be feeling a little sad now, since he’s leaving the landlord’s daughter behind. He’ll be along—probably before those ants are back from reconnoitering, there’s fog at the top of that rock climb.”

“Oh they’ll not lose their way. If we start now they’ll find us as we climb,” Calistrope turned once more and looked for Roli. “Is that the boy back there?”

Ponderos looked back at Roli’s distant figure, he had just come into the light of a candlethorn tree, a second figure joined the first. “Oh, I see. All is clear. We had better wait,” he replied with a sigh.

Calistrope frowned and looked again, seeing the two figures. “Hmm, well. We’ll just sit down here, behind this rock and wait. Were you never young, Ponderos? Did you never feel the need to satisfy a little lust?”

Calistrope felt a certain sadness. Lovemaking was a pleasure that had faded long ago. While he remembered certain occasions when his passions had been aroused in the recent past, they came now all too seldom and to remember when love had been flavored by the freshness of youth was no longer even a possibility.

Ten minutes passed, five more. Roli turned the corner where they sat. “Well well, Roli,” Calistrope smiled up at his erstwhile apprentice. “Where’s your friend?”

“Friend?”

“She is just here,” Jiss said, coming round the rock to stand beside Roli. Jiss wore a suit of hunting clothes like those of the hunters who patronized the inn, dull green jacket and trousers sewn from amphibian leather with thick soled boots protected by an outer layer of chitinous plates. A large knapsack on the girl’s back was stuffed with kit and provisions.

It had become obvious that Jiss had been lured from her Father’s employ.

The two Mages looked her up and down and climbed to their feet. “Hmm, well,” said Calistrope, somewhat vexed at the situation. “The ants have gone ahead, to find the easiest route over the rock fall.”

They walked along the stream which ran down the centre of the valley to where it percolated out of the tumbled stone blocking their way. Jiss and Roli followed them. All looked upward. The mist covering upper levels made it impossible to guess the height of the barrier.

“So, we’ll start,” said Calistrope. He and Ponderos started to climb, Roli and Jiss stood at the side of the stream.

“Well? Are you two coming or not?” Calistrope looked down and realized that a tender farewell was in progress. “Oh!”

“Us two?” asked Jiss. “Up there? Me? Oh no, I’ve had enough of the tavern, I’m off to find Mag and I don’t think that Mag is foolish enough to hunt up there.”

Calistrope did indeed feel foolish at his misunderstanding. “I see. So, goodbye then.”

“Goodbye.”

And Calistrope and Ponderos resumed their climb, leaving the youngsters to finish their good-byes in their own way.

The fallen rocks were mostly squares and stable enough to make the early part of the climb easy. As they ascended, however, the stone became wetter, fog condensed and ran in small trickles to join and form streamlets banked by brilliant green mosses.

They crawled across landscapes in miniature; swift rivulets and dashing waterfalls, soft green hills and rugged rock outcroppings. Odors of damp and decay filled their nostrils; rushing water was a constant clamor in their ears. As the mist closed around them, the gloom hid the diminutive realms and left each of them alone at the center of a pale sphere.

The mosses which covered the rocks were smooth and slippery. Footing was treacherous and handholds lay beneath the cushiony covering and had to be sought for.

The ants returned and conferred, Faramiss indicating that they should angle their climb to the right since a lake on the far side was easier to pass on its southern edge.

Descending on the farther and sunless side was, if anything, more difficult than the ascent. The ants could merely point themselves downhill and crawl; the humans had to climb down, feeling their way—a laborious business.

Roli suddenly found his foothold crumbling away and he was left swinging from two slick handholds from which his fingers were gradually slipping. “Calis…” he husked from a suddenly dry throat. “Calistrope, Ponderos… I’m going to fall…”

“Hold on,” one of them called back.

Seconds ticked by, Roli’s left hand came loose and frantically, he sought for another support. His efforts only loosened the grasp of his other hand. His grip failed and he fell… fell into the strong arms of Ponderos who had managed to climb to a point just below him.

Below Ponderos, the two ants stood, their front legs extended to catch the boy.

Calistrope came third, rummaging in his bag to find a small bottle. “Drink this,” he advised. Roli, severely shaken and ashen faced, took a swallow and coughed as the strong spirit hit the back of his throat. When the coughing subsided, Roli was red in the face and whooping for breath. Ponderos massaged the boy’s numb fingers. Eventually he regained his composure and they continued the descent.

Beneath the cap of mist, the valley with the still and silent pool against the rock-fall dam, was a somber and silent world, the air was dank and laced heavily with methane from the stagnant waters. Guided by the ants as they descended, they veered to the south where the valley side was less steep and the black water easier to pass. Finally, they reached the floor where a stream brawled down the center of the narrow valley—little more than a crack driving into the landmass which reared up from the old sea bottom trench occupied by Lake Mal-a-Merrion.

Crossing and re-crossing the stream whenever it swung against one vertiginous side or the other, the band followed the valley. As they left the edge behind, the rock walls towered higher and higher so they walked on into deeper and deeper gloom. Ponderos brought out Voss’ radiant globe to light their steps. Even when the mist no longer shrouded them, the sunlight was confined to a narrow bar of orange reflecting from the upper reaches of the northern walls. Where the light penetrated the obscurity, it tinged the white water to the color of old gold and where it was refracted through the churning surface, the stream waters boiled with underwater life scurrying for the comforting shadows of crannies and rocky shelves.

They rested every so often, sometimes stopping as long as seven or eight hours when Roli felt the pressures of sleep. At such times the ants also relaxed into a watchful somnolence which was their nearest equivalent of sleep. Calistrope and Ponderos conversed in low tones or went hunting in the stream for soft shelled crustaceans or juicy insect larvae which they lured from crevices and cracks.

“Did you hear that?” asked Calistrope as they paused, waiting for a creature to crawl out of its hidey-hole.

Ponderos put his head to one side, cupped an ear. Finally, he shook his head. “Snow or ice falling from the heights? Was that it?”

Calistrope shook his head. “Something following us. Two or three somethings. Listen,” he stopped and followed his own council. “Back there, I’m certain of it. Waiting for an opportunity.”

“An opportunity to do what? Hmm? There aren’t that many insects big enough to hunt us.” But in the silence which followed, Ponderos too heard the click of a hard claw on the rocky surface, the scrape of chitin against an outcrop. “Yes. You’re right. Let’s go back.”

Faramiss and Charylla were already standing, stiff with concentration, staring past them into the gloom.

“If only there was magic in these parts,” Calistrope complained and then bent towards Roli. “Roli,” he said, tapping the boy’s shoulder. “Up and get your sword out.”

Roli shook his head to clear the drowsiness and made ready, standing between the two Mages. Ponderos lifted the globe of light high and rested it atop an angular jut of rock. Three pairs of eyes reflected the light back at them, white from each leftward eye and the red of the fire from each right hand side.

“What are they?” asked Roli, his voice low, tense.

“I don’t know. They have the look of pack insects, hunters. Probably not sure how to deal with us—mixed species like this.”

Hunters and hunted stared at one another for several minutes, the pack of three moving in an intricate pattern which would have made it difficult to fire a bow or use a sling. The stand-off continued and just when the humans thought the insects were going to slope off, they darted in.

The lead creature swerved around Faramiss and underneath Charylla while the other two engaged the ants. Ponderos was ready for the leap and wielding his blade in a blur of blue glass, he cleaved one of the front legs away and half of the mandible. Roli took it on as another dashed away from the ants towards the softer looking targets.

Calistrope’s and Ponderos’ swords almost met in the insect’s thorax while to the side, Roli decapitated the injured one. Meanwhile one or other of the ants had bitten through the third’s waist and the two halves—dead but still deadly—twitched on the ground with a stinger emerging from one half and its jaws snapping from the other.

The engagement had lasted no more than four or five minutes but all three humans were breathing heavily as though exhausted. The affray with the dragonflies out on the lake had in no way prepared them for hand to hand combat, it was not yet an activity which they could react to with equanimity. Calistrope hoped sincerely that they might never become so accustomed.

Leaving the carnage behind them and with a heightened awareness of possible predators, they trudged onward, comparing landmarks with those marked upon their chart.

Ponderos pointed to a rough pillar of rock which must have been half a league high yet no more than thirty paces across at its base. “God’s Finger. Do you think it’s natural or artificial?”

“Natural,” said Calistrope, not greatly interested in its provenance. “Though which God? Hmm? According to the notes in the margin, it stands close to the high point. How far do you think?” he thrust the map out towards Ponderos.

Ponderos squinted in the gloom. “Three leagues?” he shrugged. “About three leagues.”

The chart showed the massif as a long narrow peninsular of highland trailing southward from a great continent more than a thousand leagues in width. On the western side it was bounded by Lake Mal-a-Merrion, on the east—the farther side—the Long River emptied through its vast delta into the Last Ocean.

Another three leagues and they did, indeed, reach the watershed. The ground underfoot had become soft and marshy, the stream they had followed became a series of stagnant pools where pale insect nymphs wriggled away from the light and other—more developed—larvae snapped wicked claws and mandibles as their shadows fell across the scummy surface.

The humans trod carefully through or around the noxious ponds and came at last to where the valley floor tilted imperceptibly towards the east and water drained sullenly from the bogs and sloughs. Bubbles rose sluggishly and burst on the surface tainting the air with the smell of things long dead.

Gradually, their footing became less spongy; the water collected into a sizeable river which coursed downhill carrying with it a murky burden of silt and mud. In past epochs, this side of the landmass had undergone greater erosion; ahead, the valley widened considerably and the sides sloped away from the vertical.

In the final narrow throat of the ravine, the ants insisted upon a halt. This, Faramiss told them in its buzzing tones was as far as they would go.

“But your instructions,” Calistrope frowned, “you are to go with us to Schune.” This arbitrary decision quite bewildered Calistrope, it was a truism that the lower orders of ants—the workers and the soldiers—obeyed the Nest to the letter, acquiescence to Nest orders was cemented into their genes.

“Our food is almost exhausted,” Faramiss explained. “Only so much was salvaged from the raft after the attack. We will stay here for as long as we live and protect you from the pursuers.”

“Pursuers?” asked Ponderos. “What pursuers?”

Faramiss waved her antennae expressively. “Creatures of the marsh. Eight have followed us. A fire will halt them for a time, after that we will kill them until we die.

The humans looked back the way they had come. Was there a suggestion of shapes and stick-like limbs lurking in the shadows? Perhaps.

“Surely you can forage for food?” Roli asked, outraged at what he had heard.

Calistrope shook his head. “Their mouth parts can cope only with the honeydew in those bladders,” he explained. “Even broth, their gut cannot digest it,” Calistrope bit his lip. “This is something that had not occurred to me, I must admit.”

While Charylla and Faramiss watched the prowlers, the humans collected great piles of brush and dead wood. They heaped it up in mounds across the open ground, effectively sealing off the way they had come. Ponderos set it alight at several places and as it began to burn, slowly at first and then more furiously, they backed away from the heat.

How are good-byes made in such circumstances? The two ants continued to stare into the gloom beyond the flames and ignored them. Eventually, Calistrope just said a simple emotionless goodbye and when there was still no response, they turned about and glumly resumed their journey.

Calistrope and both his companions had come to regard the two insects as friends simply because they had shared so many leagues of their trek with each other and had fought first the dragonflies and more recently the pack insects together. The comradeship they had felt was a false relationship, Calistrope saw that now. The ants were so far removed from humans that there was not the merest chance of social understanding.