Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (18 page)

She was a delightful woman. She had been with the Guild since she was a child and had accomplished much. A botanist by specialty, she had made a career of studying plants, natural or Aetherial. Before taking Aberland’s charter, she had been doing work on Mandrake, a project that would create a whole new market for the plant. The Guild was going nuts over it, though I had to read between the lines on that, she didn’t seem one to boast.

Beyond that she had established three charters with major corporations for the export of certain materials, mostly plants but also including minerals and other goods. This charter was the last thing she needed before presenting herself for an associate partnership in her Charterhouse’s London chapter.

It was a big deal. The Guild was made up of thousands of houses but the biggest houses, the ones that produced the most revenue and held the most sway, made up the council that governed policy. The Gabanna House, the house her chapter belonged to, was one such house. Each chapter had a Chartermaster like a normal house but the whole of it was led by Salvestro Gabanna, a full-fledged Guildmaster and one of the most powerful Wizards in the world.

We chatted for a couple hours, enjoying the drive through the woods, when suddenly the jeep swerved. Bob let out a long string of curses and I held on, letting out a few myself.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“McDane, you better look at this,” Alfred said once the jeep rolled to a stop.

I hopped out and sighed. They were making a big deal out of nothing. The ground went on for another twenty feet or so before ending in a cliff. Beyond that there was only fine, white mist as far as the eye could see.

“It’s just the edge,” I said. “Nothing special.”

“This is normal?” Bob asked.

Tiffany hopped out of the jeep, stretching. “Every cloud has its boundaries; they aren’t infinite.”

“This world is oval in shape,” I said. “It’s a big forest for miles around, ending in cliffs that go into that.” I pointed toward the emptiness. “I thought this was the long side, but it must be the east. It’s easy to get turned around here. The sun rises in the north and sets in the south.”

“Well, what’s out there?” Alfred asked.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“What do you mean nothing?” he asked. “It can’t just be nothing.”

“Sure it can,” Tiffany said.

“First thing you need to know, Alfred,” I said. “We’re in a whole other world. In this reality it’s just a big old forest surrounded by white mist. If you think that’s odd, I’ve seen worlds with cliffs, with voids, where matter transfuses into light, where it drifts into fog or water or whole new substances altogether. Some end in Aether, some are all round and you could walk the whole thing in a day.”

She frowned. “It does feel a bit weird out here though. I’ve never really sensed this.”

I wasn’t feeling anything. “What?”

“It just feels off,” she said. “I know I’ve never been here, so maybe it’s just me, but it feels empty.” She picked up a rock and threw it into the void. It sailed about ten feet, then slowed until it was floating in midair. There, before all our eyes, it dissolved into Aether and blew away with the wind.

I blinked. I
’d never seen that.

“What was that?” I asked, watching the mist drift away.

“I have no idea,” she said. “It just dissolved!”

“This must be what Arne was talking about,” I said.
Al! Get out here!

He must have been paying at least a little bit of attention. It took only moments for the vision to fade from my left eye.

“What’s up?” I heard him say with my voice.

“What?” Tiffany asked.

“You see what I’m seeing?” I asked, waving for her to hush.

“What?” Tiffany repeated. I ignored her.

“I see the edge of the Walter Cloud,” he replied. “Bid deal.”

I picked up a rock and threw it toward the void. It repeated its trick, dissolving before our eyes.

He whistled. “Now that is something isn’t it? What was it?”

“No idea,” I said. “But I want you
to record it.”

“What are you talking about?
” Tiffany asked again. I waved her off.

After a short delay, a buzzing started in my left ear. Very deliberately, I watched the void. I asked Tiffany to pitch in a few more rocks and she begrudgingly did so while Al and I watched.

“You got it?” I asked.

“Got what?” she asked, growing impatient.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Good,” I said. “Play with that recording, see if you can tell what’s going on here. That isn’t normal.”

I blinked my eye and my vision was restored. The three of them were staring at me. “I’ve got a pretty good recording of this. We should head back, get with Arne and see what we can make of it.”

“Let me put something up first,” Tiffany said.

She settled down on the edge of the void and began working a spell. She scooped a handful of dirt out of the ground, swirling her other over the hole. A green, misty concoction of Aether poured form her fingertips, pooling in the hole until it spilled out. She drew her hand up and the Aether solidified, forming first roots, then a stem. The mist crawled up from the roots, taking on a brownish color, like dirt or bark, infusing the air with the smell of wood and pine. As the mist went, it hardened, forming a tall, ugly plant not unlike a cactus.

Both the men were staring wide eyed.

“Nothing to fear, gentleman,” I said as she completed the spell. “Your first lesson on magic. What you just saw was a Wizard take something straight out of her head and make it real.”

She looked up at me, frowning. “What are you doing?” she whispered. “You shouldn’t tell…” her eyes darted at the men. “You shouldn’t tell them what we do.”

I knelt down in front of her. “You seem intelligent,” I said. “I won’t patronize you. That’s a Guild attitude. A hell of a lot of people already know what you do, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to find out again. Besides, these people need to know what they’re up against.”

She frowned, but nodded. Between that and those eyes, she was really starting to grow on me.

“Why don’t you tell us a little about what this does,” I said, pointing at the plant.

She sighed, but said in a voice loud enough for the men to hear, “I’ve used this a few times.” She pulled out a pair of shears and cut away one of the cactus’s flowers, tucking it behind her ear. “The main root system transmits sight, sound, temperature, just about anything I need it to, back to me through the link I have created in its flower.” She pointed at the thorns, which were actually rounded, more like antennae. “These take in whatever measurements I need from the air.”

I had hoped that we could just kind of run a couple of guys through a simple spell, show them Wizards didn’t just sit back and take the biggest cut while the normal folk worked. Instead, I was, well, blown away.

“That’s amazing.” And it was. It was one of the most simply constructed and yet most useful spells I had ever seen.

“It’s a favorite,” she said, preening away things for reasons all her own. “I have them set up all over the world. I can get feedback from one of these if I’m within fifty miles.”

Is there anything more beautiful than a woman who is better at your own job? I didn’t think so.

We didn’t make it back before dark and had to camp in the woods. The Walter Cloud was a relatively safe place but it wasn’t any place to be dri
ving around in at night either.

We helped Alfred and Bob build a fire, ate a few cans of lukewarm beans, then took turns on watch. I told them there was nothing to watch against but they insisted. Bob said James had been very clea
r that they were to stay alert.

Tiffany and I took turns telling stories over the campfire, some from the Guild, some from other times. I didn’t like talking about those days, had even more trouble remembering them, but around Tiffany it was easier to relax, easier to discuss some of the good things about the Guild, about my work with them.

I found myself watching her, enjoying her story while enjoying the view.

She was a breath of fresh air and I found myself opening up to her. Here was a woman unlike any of the Wizards I had worked with before. She loved her work, enough to remind me of what it was like to love the Aether. She was an explorer, a scientist, an artist; fiercely intelligent, with more talent than she was even aware of.

It had been a lonely few years since Nidia. Thinking back, it had never been that full of people to begin with. My parents had passed while I was in the war, and I’d only seen Ben a few times since Nidia. The closest had been Madison, but I hadn’t even really known her that well, let alone been able to do anything about it.

The woman before me was vital, intelligent, and lively. And feminine. It was, well, it was intoxicating being around a woman who spoke the way she spoke, looked the way she looked. She smiled often and her eyes shone in the campfire.

“So why are you here?” she asked.

“Because the check made a thud when it hit the table,” I replied.

She giggled. “I don’t believe you. There are other ways to make money.”

“Okay,” I said. “It made a legal thud when it hit the table.”

Now she frowned at me. “Come on.”

“You first,” I said. “You really do have easier ways to make money. How many spell patents do you have?”

She smiled. “Six, but who’s counting.”

I rolled my eyes. I’d seen her work, there was no way there were Wizards not memorizing her work right now, paying her a small fortune so they could save time on the breakthroughs she’d discovered.

“Really,” I said. “Why are you here?”

Then she sighed. “Fine.” She fiddled with her braid, and I think she actually blushed. “I’ve always been more the book type. I wanted adventure.”

“Adventure?”

She shrugged. “I know that sounds silly, but I’ve not had the chance to do something like this. I’ve been plenty of places, done plenty of things, but my best work has been in a lab or a library. I wanted something more.”

Then she leaned forward, resting her chin on her knee. “Your turn. Spill.”

I took a drink from my canteen, trying to give me time think about how to answer that. In the end I went for the truth. “Well, the money is a big part of it. It’s not easy competing with one of these.” I waved my hand at my face, indicating the faint scar around my eye
.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

I waved it away. “To be honest, I just want a chance at a new beginning.”

“If you could come back
, would you?”

“To the Guild?” I didn’t have to think about it, hadn’t since Nidia. “No.”

“Even if it meant having that removed?”

That was harder. “I don’t know,” I replied. “After the war, I spent two years kicking around the world for the Guild. It wasn’t the same. The war was terrible, sure. They did unimaginable things.”

I had once fought away a Sorcerer that’d had his mind fractured into twenty pieces. On purpose. Each piece was focused on a different type of magic. He had thrown necromancy, fire, telekinesis, and light at me, all before transforming into a giant lizard. It wasn’t unusual for a mage to know multiple fields, but the proficiency in each field was incredible. Of course, he was also insane. Half the personalities didn’t even know what was going on. They were twenty different people trapped in the same body, reacting to a danger they didn’t understand.

I shuddered, continuing. “But that work, it meant something.”

“My work means something,” she said with a frown.

“It probably does,” I agreed. “But mine didn’t. We were just making money as fast as possible, recouping what we had lost. My last charter cost me
my friends, my career, and pieces of my mind. For silk. I lost everything so that a textile firm could make thousand dollar negligee. We weren’t discovering cures for diseases, finding new elements, we weren’t discovering anything. Just paying the bills.”

She gave me a sympathetic look, which was both bad and nice in conflicting ways. “The
bills have to be paid.”

“I know
.” And I did. Ben had explained that time after time. Eighty percent of a Chaterhouse’s work was to pay for that twenty percent that was a drain. So we pimped ourselves out to corporations, worked with other Charterhouses to farm horror shows like Nidia, so we could put that money into something important. Exploration, research, discovery.

Suddenly, gunfire erupted from behind us, causing us both to jump up. Alfred was suddenly standing, rifle in hand.

Bob came out of the darkness, rifle nestled against his shoulder, smoke rising from the barrel. “There’s something out there!” He fired another shot, making us all jump again.

“Damn it, Bob!” Alfred said. “Who knows what’s out there? This whole place is swarming with people coming to the Arcus and you shoot at the first sign of movement? Did you even call out?”

“It wasn’t a person, Al!” Bob said, pointing his rifle into the darkness. “Not any person I ever seen.”