Wizard (The Key to Magic) (9 page)

The woman laughed. "I might scrape up a few hundred to pay you after the job is done." She looked him up and down once more. "Frankly, save for Nali's introduction, I'd have trouble believing that you are a sorcerer."

Mar shrugged and turned about to leave.

Fynd laughed again. "Wait! I'll go three thousand but no more."

Mar turned back around. "Show me the item."

"Wait here."

She stood up, laid a hand on the bracelet on her wrist, which was much more decorative in style than those of the Faction, and disappeared.

Glancing over at Nali, he found her napping and aborted an impulse to ask her how long Fynd might be gone. Wondering how common the transportation magic might be, he looked about at the wrists of Fynd's patrons that he could see without having to move. Only one, an older woman, had a bracelet.

Given that Nali had walked to the Bazaar, did this mean that the magic was indeed rare, or perhaps expensive?

Fynd stayed gone a good quarter of an hour, and when she reappeared, she held a small wooden chest. With brass reinforced corners, railed edges, and silver inlay, the highly decorative style of the box did not match anything that he had yet seen here.

She made no move to hand him the box and her demeanor indicated that surrendering control of it was not an option.

"Well?" she prompted.

Using his ethereal sense, he studied the box. It served as the Vessel for only two modulations, one moderately weak and one very, very strong. Taking the weaker and much more convoluted spell to be the seal that she had spoken of, he began to devise a Key. It proved not difficult and the complete sequence took no more than a minute to create. Once applied, the stronger spell changed state and he had the impression that it was now dormant.

"Try it."

Brows raised, she complied, using a thumb to push up on the front of the lid. When it rose without resistance, she lifted it upright so that it not coincidentally blocked Mar's view of the interior and draped her gaze over the contents. After just a second, she closed the lid again

"Three other sorcerers tried to open the box before you," she said, watching for a reaction from him.

He did not provide her with one. "My fee?"

After securely tucking the box under one arm, she dug into a pocket of her trousers and extracted a bulging handful of lacquer rectangles of various colors and sizes and gestured for him to take them. She made no attempt to count it.

He either had to reveal that he had no idea about the value of the offered payment or to pocket it without comment. By default, he chose to do the later. He would not long have reason to use the money and it therefore did not really matter if Fynd short-changed him.

"I like the idea of having someone of your abilities handy," she told him. "I could pay a retainer if you could remain available?"

"Sorry, just passing through."

"Would you like a refreshment while you wait for Nali?"

"I won't be waiting for her. We only met on the way here."

Fynd glanced at Nali, but the young woman was still napping. "I see."

He offered a brief nod in farewell, immediately turned about and wove his way through the couches and their slumbering occupants, and then departed the establishment without a backward glance.

His first objective was a meal. He had seen several stalls selling food on the way to Fynd's, but rather than backtrack, he made his way further into the labyrinth. This would also assist in accomplishing his second objective of finding another way out of the Bazaar. Standard black marketeer logic dictated that there would be several exits and that all of them would be widely scattered. Beyond getting out of the underground market, he had no clear plan, but he did know that he definitely did not want to come up near the spot where he had crashed through into the tunnel.

As he worked his way from cavern to cavern, following ill-defined paths, he ignored, for the most part, the merchandise laid out for sale. To his way of thinking, all of it was useless: outlandish clothing, impractical footwear, flashy baubles, and cosmetic trinkets. A number of items that he could not identify caught his eye, but he did not let his gaze linger long enough to incite his curiosity. Magic suffused the Bazaar and hundreds of magical devices were on display, but most appeared to be concerned with the incomprehensible chores of this time and place and suggested no practical use in his own.

After perhaps half an hour, drawn by the unmistakable odors of cooking, he entered a grotto with an area at its center filled with chairs and tables and nearly all of those with diners. All of the stalls ringing this subterranean plaza dispensed food and drink and he made the circuit through a thinning crowd as he looked for something half-familiar and thus potentially palatable. A few offered fresh fruits, including some that looked like purple apples, but most sold handy portions of cooked concoctions of meats, vegetables, and breads. He finally settled on a place whose three cooks produced what looked like sausages fried in batter from bright and clean metal devices.

Most of the stalls were ramshackle, improvised affairs, with no more than crates and lumber for counters, but this one had sleek furnishings of burnished metal and blue ceramic. Rather than a menu chalked upon a dark board, it also had well-crafted signage featuring a glowing ensign with several emphasized intertwining letters. Finally, unlike many of the establishments, there was a queue, which seemed a clear indication of quality, or at least of taste. Happily for his empty stomach, the line moved briskly and he only had to wait for a few moments to reach the counter.

"Welcome to Bebe's Savories. What'll you have?"

The well-fed young woman, wearing a many pocketed white apron over reassuringly unstained blue blouse and trousers, had repeated the exact same phrase to all of the customers ahead of Mar.

He was good and hungry by now. "Give me two."

"With everything?"

"Sure."

Turning about with practiced efficiency, she plucked a pair of the crinkled-brown breaded sausages from the drying rack with a pair of tongs and placed them on a stiff paper tray. Atop this she piled grilled onions and peppers and then added a generous ladle of a yellow sauce whose main component was -- he hoped -- cheese. After impaling the mass with a black fork that was too flimsy to be made of metal, she whisked it to the counter in front of him.

"That'll be ten and a half."

Mar reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the rectangles. It happened to be blue-green.

The woman looked pained. "I can't make change for that. Got anything smaller?"

He pulled out five or six and showed them on his open palm.

She nimbly plucked out one that was dark blue and the width of a Khalarii'n silver thal and another that was the same size but violet. These went into one pocket and from another she withdrew three white chips. From a third pocket, she added a gray chip.

As she passed these over, she glanced behind Mar. There were no other customers waiting.

"This your first time at the Bazaar?" she asked in a friendly fashion.

"Yes." A denial in the face of the obvious contrary evidence would have been absurd.

"I've seen it a hundred times. You sold something and got paid in Bazaar tokens and don't know how they work. You're from up north? They use Faction flimsies there or the old Royal money? No matter. Bazaar tokens aren't complicated. Token denominations follow the color spectrum. Lots of people issue them, but everyone has to follow the same pattern. Gray is a half. White is one. Then it's violet, blue, blue-green, green, yellow, orange, red, and black. Those are five, ten, one hundred, five hundred, one thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, and one hundred thousand. Got it?"

"Yes, thank you very much."

"You're welcome." She looked passed him at an approaching couple. "Welcome to Bebe's Savories. What'll you have?"

Since he did not know the ingredients of the available variously colored, bubbling, steaming, or glowing beverages, he found a place that would sell him a paper flask of water for half a token and then took a seat at a tiny round table on the edge of the plaza. A tentative bite revealed the Savory different but flavorful and edible, so he consumed every bit of both, then surreptitiously counted his Bazaar tokens.

Fynd had paid him five thousand seven hundred and forty tokens, including the cost of his meal. Pleased but not really sure how much benefit he would derive from the generous bonus, he separated the funds into four unequal parts and stored each in a different pocket, then got up. Having learned from observations of other diners that refuse left upon the table would disintegrate into a quickly dissipated mist, he abandoned his leavings and went on his way.

Stomach full and feeling somewhat more at ease, he assumed a casual pace as he began his search for another exit.

In a smaller cavern that contained fewer than a dozen stalls, he came upon a bookseller who had her merchandise stacked in neat, shoulder high piles on a number of long tables. He started to pass on by, but stopped for a moment to find out if the
medic's
spell had also made him literate in the script of these people.

Not very busy, the tall, gratifyingly bookish proprietress bustled up as he randomly selected a thick volume.

"My books are sorted, more or less, by subject matter." The woman gestured left, right, and center. "History, Philosophy, and fiction. Is there anything in particular that you're looking for?"

"Any magic?"

"The technical manuals are with the banned books in the back. I'll warn you in advance -- everything that I have that's on the banned list is expensive."

"Do you have any books by Oyraebos?"

"I'm sorry, I don't believe I know that author, but I do have a full set of
Hemley's Magical Fundamentals
, a first edition of
Practical Wizardry
by Lloustr,
Specifications of Alchemy
by Do, and so forth. Would you like me to locate any of those for you?"

"I'd just like to browse, thanks."

She produced a warm smile. "Just call me if you need me."

He opened the book. There was magic in it, images that rose from the page in full color and detail, sound and music, and text that came into perfect focus as his eyes slid across it.

Unfortunately, he found no meaning there. The script looked like nothing more than intertwined worm tracks.

He put the book back on the pile and continued on his way.

NINE

2170 by the Common Reckoning

(3211 Before the Founding of the Empire)

A monastery that has never had a name

Mlemos transferred his eyes from the skry stone to his section of the scroll, and succinctly annotated the events that he had seen in his vision.

Every page section recorded but a single day. Each of the other twelve scribes seated along the long table was also responsible for a day and a section. The massive scroll, spliced with blank lengths once a month every month for almost six hundred years and supported on a steel frame and axle, was so cumbersome that it required its own custom built trolley.

Only ten minutes over schedule, Zso appeared from undertime on the round platform at the center of the gallery. The aged and infirm wizard staggered and nearly fell before his attendants could surround and steady him. Being as the wizard was an unrepentant and unrelenting libertine, the attendants were all lab bred simulacra designed to have the appearance of women.

"It is done," Zso announced to the other monks as the fawning concubines led him to a chair and placed a full cup in his shaking hands. "The babe was cast into the portal and arrived in the prescribed time."

"Was there any interference this time?" Abbot Pyor asked.

"No, but I did sense another wizard. I could not identify him, but I believe that he is inconsequential."

"Excellent. When you are recovered, the scribes have discovered another potential difficulty that requires your attention."

Zso pulled one of the simulacra into his lap and slid an arthritic hand inside a convenient gap in her bodice. "I will be rested in an hour or less."

High on the wall at the end of the gallery, the big clock continued to count down.

As they frequently did, Mlemos' eyes flicked to it before he returned to his work.

It was thirteen years, eight months, six days, nine hours, thirty-two minutes, and fourteen seconds until the end of the world.

TEN

"Have you any strong catapults?"

Mar had readily identified the metal and ceramic devices displayed under the watchful eyes of four guards as weapons; a number of them had long knives or spikes mounted at one end. The booth's counters and display cases all had a flimsy, knocked-together-in-a-few-minutes look, but the guards and the proprietor had the muscular build of swordsmen and the weapons were sleek, well-oiled, and unmarred.

The weaponsmith gave him an odd look. "Any what?"

"Something that will destroy armored carriages."

"GAV's?"

Mar made his incomprehension plain in his expression.

"Ground Assault Vehicles?"

Mar had a mental flash of a hulking metal behemoth that flew just fingerlengths above the ground. "Yes."

"Absolutely!"

Smiling, the merchant took a bulky, canvas bag about an armlength and a half long from an upper shelf. After placing it on the counter, he released catches and straps, then tapped a smooth, bronze badge fastened to one long side. This spell caused the canvas to relax flat and reveal the black device within. With expert movements, he extended forward metal legs, set the device upright, and finally operated a sliding mechanism to open a large port in one side.

"Shoulder-fired hyper-velocity rifle. Fires an ethereally hardened, precision-ground, ninety-caliber alloy slug. Each round has a self-contained solid fuel propellant that is virtually impervious to counter magic. Any decent alchemist can whip up the rounds in minutes even under battlefield conditions. The speed alone will allow it to blow through any kind of physical armor or passive ward. If ethereally neutral blanks are used to fashion the slugs, no active ward can stop them. Now, you won't get an explosion as you would with an imbued projectile, but put a slug from this baby through any vital part -- the driver or the spell console, for instance -- and the GAV will stop dead."