The Far West (4 page)

I didn’t see much of Roger until the middle of the next week. Roger was helping in the menagerie until he graduated in the spring, and I was in the laboratory with Professor Torgeson when he and Professor Jeffries came in on a blast of freezing-cold air. They were both so crusted in snow that you couldn’t tell what color their mufflers were until they started unwinding them and some of the clumps fell off to melt on the floor.

“I see it’s started snowing out,” Professor Torgeson commented.

“Since noon, and it’s still coming down hard enough to make an ice dragon happy,” Professor Jeffries replied, carefully shaking out his coat. “You might want to head home early. There’s two inches on the ground already, and if the wind picks up …” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Anyone who’d spent a winter in Mill City knew better than to go out in a blizzard unless there was a dire need. Even in the heart of town it was easy to get disoriented and wander in circles until you froze. Mr. Gallington had lost two toes to frostbite that way a few years back, and everyone said he was lucky to have stumbled against the edge of Mr. Stolz’s store when he did, or he’d have frozen to death.

“I don’t think it will get that bad,” Roger said, hanging his coat on the hook next to mine. “It doesn’t have the right feel.”

“You’re a weather magician now, Mr. Boden?” Professor Torgeson raised an eyebrow at him.

“Not exactly, but I picked up a few things in Albion from Dr. Wencell,” Roger told her. “Weather patterns are closely related to esoteric geomancy, so practically all my projects involved weather in some way. Of course, the weather they get in Albion isn’t anything like ours, since we’re smack in the middle of the continent, but that’s the point — you can tell a great deal from the differences.” He broke off, looking chagrined. “Sorry, Professors. I did my geomancy comprehensives on these cross-connections with the weather, and I tend to get carried away sometimes.”

Professor Torgeson looked suddenly thoughtful. “Just how much did your geomancy studies encompass, Mr. Boden? Was it all theory, or did you venture into practical applications?”

“It was supposed to be mostly theory,” Roger said after a minute, “but on an island like that, you can’t help but see plenty of practical examples. The weather changes a lot faster than they think, but they’re so used to it being that way that they take it for granted.”

“The advantage of an outside perspective,” Professor Jeffries murmured.

“Just so,” Professor Torgeson said. “Mr. Boden, I wonder if you would be willing to put your skills to use on our medusa lizard?”

“Me?” Roger’s eyes widened.

“Oh!” I said at the same time. Roger looked at the professors and then at me. “Professor Torgeson has been wanting to get a geomancer to come and look at the medusa lizard for months,” I explained.

Geomancy is a really difficult specialization that mixes geology with several kinds of magic, including divination, which means you have to have a talent for it on top of being really intelligent. There are only four or five geomancers in the whole country, and they were all too busy to come running out to Mill City to do a few checks on a medusa lizard, so Professor Torgeson hadn’t even asked for one.

Professor Torgeson nodded. “Mr. Boden?”

“Certainly, Professor,” Roger said. “What would you like me to look for?”

“Point of origin, natural habitat, and history,” Professor Torgeson said. “Beyond that, I’d prefer not to prejudice your findings. What would you like to begin with? Will you need any special supplies?”

“The claws and feet, please. Or whatever it uses to stand and balance. And if the small rock samples that Professor Olivera uses in the introductory geology class are available, I’d like those, please. A map would make it a lot easier, too, if you have one you don’t mind me marking up.”

Professor Torgeson nodded to me to get the sample cases that held the parts of the medusa lizard that she’d finished dissecting, and Professor Jeffries went for the rocks. I was only in the storage room for a minute, but when I came out, Professor Torgeson had a medium-sized map of the North Columbian continent lying open at the end of the table, and Roger was
sketching an off-center diagram on the tabletop just below it in pale red and green chalk. I watched him for a minute and then said, “Oh! It’s a compass rose.”

Roger nodded without looking up. “Don’t jiggle the table, or I’ll have to redo it,” he said.

“Would it be better to align the map to true north, also?” Professor Torgeson asked.

“No,” Roger said. “This is better, because it gives me two lines to work with. Like having two eyes.”

“Where do you want the medusa lizard feet?” I asked.

That got Roger and Professor Torgeson started on a whole long discussion about the medusa lizard and the way it resisted magic and the effect of taking the preservation spell off the bits they were using. By the time Professor Jeffries got back with the rocks, they’d decided that the spells would have to be canceled while Roger cast his own spells. Professor Torgeson did that while Roger laid out the rocks along the edge of the table, so that they made a big circle around the map and the diagram.

“Ready when you are,” Roger said. Professor Torgeson nodded and handed him the sample jar that held the medusa lizard’s left rear foot. Roger dumped the foot out into the middle of the compass rose and cast the spell.

A dark brown rock flew from the edge of the table, right over to the lizard’s foot. It hit so hard that it knocked the foot to the edge of the compass rose. Two other rocks wobbled and moved out of line, but only by about an inch. Roger nodded and cast another spell. This time, one of the smallest points of the compass rose, the one that pointed west-west-southwest,
turned from pale red to black. The two points on either side of it turned dark gray, and the southernmost one after that went pale gray.

“There’s the general area of origin,” Roger said. “Mostly west, and a little south, in an area with a lot of igneous rock, and maybe a bit of metamorphic rock, too. Mountains, probably. Looks as if it has a pretty wide range. I’m going to try for habitat next, though it won’t be as accurate as it could be. I don’t have the right samples.”

Roger brushed the compass rose away and chalked a new diagram in its place. This one looked like two triangles, drawn on top of each other to make a six-pointed star. Roger set the medusa lizard’s foot in the center, then pulled a small case out of his pocket, made of heavy quilted cotton. It was a little larger than the magician’s cases that Papa and Lan used, and when he opened it, I saw that it had an extra section.

Carefully, Roger took six vials from the extra section of his case and tipped a tiny pinch from each of them into one of the six points of the star. One looked like gray dust, one like grains of sand, three like dried leaves, and one like black powder. Then he backed away and began muttering under his breath.

For a minute, nothing happened. Then there was a popping sound and flames shot up six inches from four of the star points. I jumped, and so did Professor Jeffries. The flares died back as fast as they’d come, and Roger stepped forward to peer at the star.

“I was right about the mountains, or maybe foothills,” he announced. “Somewhere with a lot of granite, anyway, and
with bedrock very close to the surface. It’s definitely not a plains creature. I can’t tell for sure whether it likes to be above the tree line or not, though, and I certainly can’t tell what sort of forest it prefers. If it prefers forest to open hills.” He sounded a mite disgruntled. “I said I didn’t have the right samples.”

“That’s quite all right,” Professor Jeffries said. “Just knowing that it’s not native to the plains is very reassuring.”

“In one way,” Professor Torgeson said dryly. “In another, it’s very unsettling. Just what would make something like this travel all the way out of the Far West to settlement territory, if it prefers mountains to plains?”

“Perhaps its history will tell us more,” Professor Jeffries said. He looked at Roger and frowned. “If you aren’t too tired?”

“I’m fine,” Roger said. He picked up the brown rock that had knocked into the lizard foot and set it in the middle of the map. He set the two rocks that had wobbled farther out toward the western part of the map, and scooped up the pinches of powder from the unburned points of the star and sprinkled them across the rocks and the map. Then he stretched his left hand out over the table and cast again.

At first, it didn’t seem that much was happening. Then I saw a small, bright red spot appear on the map, a bit east of the Red River. It looked like right about where we’d shot the two medusa lizards.

An instant later, Roger collapsed.

We all hurried forward, but Roger was already sitting up. As he struggled to his feet, Professor Torgeson made an exasperated noise, dragged a chair over, and pushed him into it. I
fetched a glass of water and handed it to him. “Thanks,” he told me, and gulped it down like he’d been in the desert for a week.

When he finished, Professor Torgeson and Professor Jeffries were both glaring at him. “I didn’t mean for you to exhaust yourself!” Professor Torgeson said. “What do you think you were doing? Mapping the whole of the Far West?”

Roger stared at her for a minute, then dropped his head into his hands. “I forgot,” he said in a muffled voice.

“Forgot what?” Professor Jeffries asked, straightening up from studying the map.

“I forgot I was using an undelimited symbol set,” Roger said.

“It wasn’t the lizard’s magic resistance?”

“No — well, maybe a little.” Roger lifted his head, looking sheepish. “But the resonance doesn’t pass through the primary focus object; the geologic samples are the real conduits, so the blockage was really inconsequential. The real problem was that I kept waiting for it to finish.”

Professor Torgeson looked like the only thing keeping her from rolling her eyes was politeness. “You
were
trying to map the whole of the Far West.”

“Of course not,” Roger said. “I know better than to try anything that stupid; it’d take more power than you could get even with a team of Hijero-Cathayans. All I was trying to do was trace the creature back to its point of origin, which of course is out in the unexplored territory somewhere.”

“What went wrong?” I asked.

“I forgot it was —”

“— an undelimited thingamabob,” I said. “I know, but what does that mean?”

“The map he was using doesn’t have a proper end,” Professor Torgeson said. “It just fades out into the unknown.”

Roger shook his head. “No, it doesn’t.” He pointed at the line of mountains drawn along the western edge of the map. “And that’s the problem. We know there are mountains out there, but not how far away, or even whether there’s more than one range. So the map isn’t accurate. When you track something back into unknown territory or off the edge of an accurate map, the trace just stops. Using a map that’s not accurate … well, you saw what happened. I’m sorry, professors.”

“Nonsense,” Professor Jeffries said. “You’ve provided a good deal of useful information, more than you realize. No, no, you sit there. We’ll take care of cleaning up.”

Roger looked doubtful, but he sat in silence while the rest of us put the rocks and the lizard’s foot back where they belonged and cleaned off the table. He didn’t speak up again until Professor Torgeson reached for the map. Then he said, “Er, Professor? There was one thing …”

Both professors turned to him, and he flushed. “The point of using maps and symbols in geomancy is to control and confirm the divinatory aspects. Because divination is unreliable.” Roger sounded as if he were reciting something.

“And?” Professor Torgeson said a little impatiently.

“And because of that, geomancers aren’t supposed to talk about anything that … happens during the spells, unless there’s a physical reaction to confirm it. Like the flares, or the
symbols on the map. Because divination is unreliable without confirmation. Only —”

“Only there’s something else you think we ought to know,” Professor Jeffries said gently.

Roger nodded. He looked down, then took a deep breath and said rapidly, “I think there are more of those lizards coming east. Quite a lot of them. I … felt them, right before the spell turned on me.”

“That’s not exactly a surprise,” Professor Torgeson said after a minute. “Nobody really thinks there were only two of them in the whole of the Far West.”

“Nevertheless, I think I’ll have a word with Mr. Parsons at the Settlement Office,” Professor Jeffries said. Roger straightened up in alarm, and Professor Jeffries made a reassuring motion. “Never fear, I won’t bring your name into it. Though if we do indeed have additional medusa lizards moving toward the settlements, we have a good deal more to worry about than your professional ethics.”

We finished cleaning up and went off into the snow. I didn’t expect much of anything to come of Roger’s information; after all, it was pretty vague, and in my experience, both the Settlement Office and the Frontier Management Department hated to take action until they absolutely had to.

This time, I was wrong, but I didn’t find out about it for a while.