The Dragons of Dorcastle (20 page)

The far-listener couldn’t exist. But it did.

Mari stuffed the broken far-listener into a pocket and sat down on the cot, staring at the stones of the wall. First she’d seen a Mage do things which Mages weren’t supposed to be able to really do, then commons attacked her and imprisoned her, and now she had evidence that unauthorized Mechanic work was being done. Three “impossible” things.
My education wasn’t nearly as thorough as I thought it was. I can’t be the first Mechanic to experience this stuff. What the blazes is going on? If Professor S’san suspected enough to insist on giving me a pistol as a graduation gift, why didn’t she tell me more?

What else haven’t I been told?

The light changed slightly. Mari looked up and over at one wall. There was now a narrow, roughly door-shaped hole in it. Standing in that hole was Mage Alain.

Mari stood up, realizing that her mouth was hanging open.
That wall was solid. I felt it. There wasn’t any opening
. She watched as the Mage took two shaky steps into the cell, then paused, some of the strain leaving his face. She blinked, wondering what she had just seen, as the hole in the wall vanished as if it had never been. One moment it was there, the next it was gone.

Mari walked rapidly past the Mage and slammed her hand against the wall where the hole had been. The stone stung her palm, as hard and unyielding as it had been when she had checked it earlier.

Mari whirled back to face the Mage, the sudden motion making her still- throbbing head dizzy. “How did you do that?” she demanded, pointing at the wall, shocked by how ragged and hoarse her voice sounded.

The Mage looked at her with that unrevealing face. “I have come to…help,” he said in an impassive voice tinged with weariness.

“Help? You’ve come to help me?” Mari felt a wave of weakness and leaned back against the solid stone for support. “A Mage has walked through a wall into my cell to help a Mechanic.” She couldn’t suppress a shudder. “My head. They hit me and now I’m seeing and hearing things.”

The Mage came closer, peering at her. “You are hurt, Mechanic Mari?”

“Master Mechanic Mari,” she muttered automatically, then reached out and grabbed his arm. “I’m not imagining this. You’re real.”

“Nothing is real. All is illusion. But I stand here,” the Mage agreed.

“Don’t confuse me. I can’t handle it right now.” Mari worked to control her breathing and to calm her nerves. Realizing she was still holding Mage Alain’s arm in a tight grip, she let go.
“Never touch a Mage.” “Why would I want to?”
“How did you get in here?”

“I learned that something ill had befallen you,” he explained without apparent feeling. “I felt your pain.”

“You felt my pain? You’re not talking empathy, are you?”

“Empathy?” Mage Alain shook his head. “I do not know that word. No. It hurt. In this place.” He reached up to touch the back of his head.

Mari staggered back to the cot and sat down.
All right. Stop and think. A Mage felt
me
get hit on the head. Then he walked through a
wall
to find me.
But either I’m crazy, or it happened. If it happened, then I can analyze it, figure it out.
“Let’s take this one step at a time. How did you know where I was?”

“I could sense your location,” the Mage said dispassionately. “A thread connects us.”

She looked down at herself. “A thread?”

“That is…a metaphor. I sense it as a thread. It is not real, but it is. I do not know why it exists, or its purpose.” Something about the way the Mage said that made it sound…accusing? She must be imagining that.

I don’t think I’m ready to examine the question of why there’s a metaphorical thread connecting me to this Mage. Or why he
thinks
there’s some thread.
“I’m sorry, but I know nothing about Mage stuff.”

“The thread is not the work of a Mage,” Alain said.

“Then who—?” Her head pounded again. “Never mind. Next topic. Where are we? Still in the city hall?”

“Yes,” Alain confirmed. “A city hall with a dungeon. It is what would be expected in Ringhmon.”

“You’ve noticed that about them, too, huh?” Mari swallowed and pointed to the wall. “How did you do that?”

“I cannot tell you.”

“Mage secret?”

“Yes.”

Mari took a long, slow breath.
“They use smoke and mirrors and other ‘magic’ to make commons think they can create temporary holes in walls and things like that. It’s all nonsense.”
“Mages actually can make real holes in walls.”

“No.”

Her head hurting with increased intensity, Mari glowered at the Mage. “You
didn’t
make a hole in the wall?”

“I made the illusion of a hole in the illusion of the wall.”

Mari looked at Mage Alain for what felt like a long time, trying to detect any sign of mockery or lying. But he seemed perfectly sincere. And unless she had completely lost her mind, he had just walked through that solid wall. “If the wall is an illusion, why can’t anybody walk through it?”

“It is a very powerful illusion,” Alain explained.

“But you made it go away, so you must be more powerful than that illusion.”

“No,” Mage Alain said, shaking his head. “Even a Mage cannot negate the illusions we see. What a Mage does is overlay another illusion on top of the illusion everyone sees.”

In a very strange way, what he was saying seemed to make sense, or at least seemed to sustain a consistent logic, if logic was the right term for something that involved walking through walls. “We can get out the same way that you got in?” Mari asked. “Through imaginary holes in the imaginary wall?” She wondered how her Guild would feel about seeing that in her report. Actually, she didn’t have to wonder, but she also wasn’t about to turn down a chance to escape.

The Mage took a deep breath and swayed on his feet. “No.”

“No?”

“Unfortunately—” Alain collapsed into a seated position on the cot next to her—“the effort of finding you has exhausted me. There were several walls to get through. I can do no more for some time. I am probably incapable of any major effort until morning.” He shook his head. “I did not plan this well. Maybe the elders are right and seventeen is simply too young to be a Mage.”

Mari stared at him. “Are you telling me that you came to rescue me, following a metaphorical thread through imaginary holes, but now that you’re in the same cell with me you can’t get us out?”

“Yes, that is correct. This one erred.”

“That one sure did. Now instead of one of us being stuck in here, we’re both stuck in here.”

The Mage gave her a look which actually betrayed a trace of irritation. He must have really been exhausted for such a feeling to show. “I do not have much experience with rescues. Are you always so difficult?”

Mari felt a sudden urge to laugh, but cut it off when the laughter made her head throb painfully. “To be perfectly honest, yes. You’re not the first guy to ask me that, by the way. Thank you for coming. Thank you for getting this far. At least I have company. Unless I’m insane or drugged and imagining all of this, of course. Maybe you’re not real.”

“I am real,” Mage Alain said. “You are not.”

“You know, that’s really not helping.” Mari spread her hands. “I have no way of getting out of here. You don’t have any more tricks?”

“Tricks?”

“Sorry. What do you call…?”

“Spells.” Alain shook his head, his weariness again obvious to Mari. “Small ones. I cannot open a hole large enough for either of us to pass through. Not for some time. The effort required grows rapidly as the size of the opening increases.”

“Well, sure, that makes sense. Does it increase by the square like an area measurement or a cube for volume or is it some exponential progression?”

It was his turn to look at her, saying nothing, for a long moment. “I do not know,” Alain finally answered. “Do those words have meaning?”

“Yeah. I guess Mages don’t spend much time on math, huh?”

“Math?”

“Never mind.” It was as if she and Mage Alain occupied two entirely different worlds even though they were sitting side by side on the cot in this cell.

“Do you have any Mechanic…tricks?” Alain asked her.

“I haven’t come up with any yet that can get us out of here.” Mari looked glumly toward the door of the cell, then her eyes fixed on the lock. “You can’t make another big imaginary hole for a while, you said. Can you make a little imaginary hole right now?”

He followed her gaze. “Yes. It will be very tiring, but I feel certain I can do that. Where do you need it?”

She stood up carefully to prevent another bout of dizziness, then walked over to the door and pointed at the armor plate protecting the lock. “Right here. About this big,” Mari added, outlining an area with her cupped fingers. She didn’t stop to think about how much sense any of this made. As long as it worked, it could be pure crazy. If she could get at the back of the lock, maybe she would be able to jimmy it open before the Mage’s imaginary hole disappeared.

“If you believe this to be important, I shall do so.” Mari watched nervously as the Mage narrowed his eyes and seemed to concentrate, then opened his eyes wide. “Hurry with what you wish to do. I cannot hold it long.”

She turned back to the door, and stopped, aghast. There was a hole there, a little bigger than she had asked for. But there wasn’t simply a hole in the armor plate. There was a hole right through the plate and the back of the lock and the lock itself and out the other side of the door. She could look through into the passageway.

Mari just gazed blankly for a second, unable to accept what she was seeing, then abruptly remembered that she needed to do something. Reaching into the hole with a fear that it would vanish and leave her hand embedded in steel, Mari fumbled for the lock bolt, which now hung in the door jamb unsupported by anything where the lock mechanism had been. She pulled out the heavy bolt, hastily looked for anything else protruding into the frame from the door, then yanked her hand free and dropped the bolt as if it were on fire. “Done.”

The Mage sighed and relaxed. The hole vanished at the same moment the sheared off bolt hit the floor inside the cell with a muffled thud. Mari studied the door, which once again looked and felt completely solid. But the end of the bolt still lay on the floor where Mari had dropped it. She pushed against the door and felt it begin to swing open.
I am insane. I have to be. This can’t be happening.
She pushed at the door again and it scraped open a little more.
But if I’m going to imagine I’m escaping, I might as well go through with it.

She pushed open the door far enough to be able to stick her head out, searching quickly to confirm no guards were in sight, then looked back at the Mage, who was still sitting slumped on the cot. “Don’t you want to come along?”

The Mage eyed her. “You want me to accompany you.”

“Yes, I want you to accompany me! Do you think that I’d leave you in this cell? Blazes, Mage, I’m not
that
difficult! Come on!” He rose and walked after her as Mari slid out through the partially opened door. She paused, looking and listening for any sign of guards, but could detect nothing. “Shouldn’t they have someone watching the cells?”

Mage Alain stopped beside her. “Perhaps they do not want underlings in a position to hear things their prisoners may say. This is not a large dungeon, and seems to have had only you as a prisoner, so perhaps it is reserved for certain special needs.”

“That makes sense.” Mari took a couple of cautious steps, glancing through the grate in the door of the cell next to hers. She froze. No other prisoners were there, but carefully placed in the center of the cell floor was her tool kit. She pulled at the door, finding it locked securely, then looked around for a key. “I don’t believe it. We found my tools and we can’t get to them.”

“Your tools?” Mage Alain asked.

“They’re important! I need that tool kit.” She turned to the Mage, her hands upraised in a pleading position. “Those tools are…they’re my spells. And my…elders will give me a very hard time if I lose them. Please, Mage Alain, can you make a hole in that door’s lock as well? Just for a few seconds? Please?”

Mage Alain eyed her. “You need these things to cast your spells?”

“Yes!”

“And to undo spells?”

“Undo spells?” What did that mean? “Um, yes. I mean, unscrewing stuff and disassembly and disconnecting—”

“Disconnecting?” Mage Alain faced the door. “Then I must do this.” He stared at the lock, sweat appearing on his brow. “Quickly,” he whispered.

Mari tore her eyes from the Mage and saw a hole in the lock, though smaller than the one he had created before. Reaching in, she found enough of the lock mechanism remained to hold the bolt, but could turn the mechanism by hand to withdraw the bolt. Shoving the door to make sure it was unlocked, she pulled her hand free. “Done.”

The Mage nodded, the hole vanished without a trace, then he fell against the nearby wall, his body limp with exhaustion.

Mari grabbed him to keep him from falling to the floor, guilt surging within her. She had touched him before, but this was the first time she had held him, and his slimness made it all the more clear that the Mage was but a boy close to her in age. That was fortunate, because she might have had trouble holding up a bigger man, but it also drove home to her that she had been pushing him hard and somewhat selfishly. “Forgive me,” she said formally, “and thank you.”

Settling the Mage into a resting position, Mari darted into the cell, hoisting her tool kit with a feeling of joy. Most of what it held were just simple tools like screwdrivers, pliers, and wrenches, but with those tools she felt more confident and complete. She ripped open the compartment on the side, finding her pistol still there. Holding the weapon, she chambered a round and released the safety, then keeping the pistol in one hand and carrying her tool kit with the other she left the cell, shoving the door shut again with her hip.

Mage Alain struggled to his feet, fending off her offered help. “I should be stronger,” he mumbled. “I can walk.”