Wizard (The Key to Magic) (19 page)

An open-ended promise might contain considerable risk, but this one would be to a phantom who would soon vanish from his life forever. He gave a constrained shrug.

"I agree. You'll excuse yourself from your friends, leave this area with me, and then use your comm."

"My name is Prim. Remember it. You'll look like the old woman?"

"Yes."

"You just became my aunt Halyle. Behave accordingly. How do we withdraw from this situation?"

"The choke hold? Easy. I just let go." And he did.

TWENTY-ONE

When Prim waggled her hand to cast the spell that transformed her voice into the rough baritone of a man, Mar paid close attention to the modulation.

"Orange, here. I have information."

The voice that responded was grating and unnatural.
"Nature of information?"

"Priority 4."

"Fee is contingent on acceptance of information."

"I have located the individual."

"Fee sent. Location of individual?"

"He's sitting right beside me. He wants a meeting."

The other voice said nothing for a few seconds, then,
"Stand by. We will contact you."

The terrace upon which they sat was a hundred manheight above the west end of the Plaza of Eternal Justice. The place was a tavern of some sort. The scattered round tables were mostly empty, but the few patrons present had been provided with bowls of victuals and glasses of what he took to be ales or wines, though no staff was in evidence.

Prim had efficiently taken leave of her friends, offering quick apologies laced with whispered references to senility, accepted the retrieved flimsies, and then firmly ushered "Auntie Halyle" away.

Prim rubbed her thumb across the face of the comm that she had bought from a street vendor and tucked it in what passed for the bodice of her dress.

"What sort of spell makes the comm work?" he asked, moved by a stray thought. He had not been able to delve the complete modulations of the devices and thought that they must use a combination of several sorts of magic.

Prim gave him a curious look. "I just buy them. I don't worry about how they're manufactured."

"The spell that changes your voice?"

She shrugged. "I bought it as well. You're not from here, are you?" She clearly did not mean just Dhiloeckmyur.

"No." He felt no need to elaborate.

"Well, I was taught the basics in school like everyone else, but I'm not a hobbyist and I don't have the aptitude or desire to become a sorcerer. They're the only ones that research new spells. Everything that I need has already been invented and it is easier and cheaper just to pay for technology."

Not quite scowling, the
medic
leaned back in her chair and rubbed the side of her neck with one hand. "I think you left a bruise."

Mar cast a spell.

The medic continued to rub her neck for a few seconds, then her eyes widened slightly and she took her hand away.

"So you give bruises and you take them away. That must be very convenient."

"Sometimes."

She waved a hand across the tabletop and a list in glowing green Common script wrote itself on the air in front of her. Her eyes slid down the list, then she drew her index finger through one of the items and its letters began to flash.

"Want anything? I'm buying." She waved "Aunt Halye's" flimsies.

"No thanks."

Prim snapped her fingers, causing the list to fade, then dropped an orange flimsy on the table. This sank down into the apparently still solid surface and a frosted glass filled with red liquid rose up in its place.

The beverage emitted no reek of spirits as she brought it to her lips and took a long swallow, and he took it to be juice of one sort or another.

"How long will we have to wait?" he asked.

Prim took another drink. "They may not respond at all. I don't really know, but it seems to me that the Proctors -- at least the ones that I have dealings with -- behave like they operate under a committee whose members usually don't get along."

Her bodice gave out a single, sharp tone, causing her to lift her shoulders. "Fancy that."

She brought out the comm and cast her voice spell. "Orange."

"Drop site six. Ten minutes."

She dropped the comm on the table alongside her abandoned drink and stood up. "Let's go."

They did not go far. Rushing, the
medic
led him by a confusing path along promenades that passed in and out of the shadows cast by the great buildings, and stopped on another terrace with a large granite statue at its center. The misshapen lump seemed representative of something, but he could not figure out what that something might be.

Prim went to the pedestal, reached between the statue's seven spindly legs, pulled out a port stone, and handed it to him.

She gave him a stern look. "Don't forget my favor."

"I won't," he lied.

"Use that."

He did.

As the lozenge crumbled into dust, he appeared in a forest glade.

Or, at least, the semblance of one.

Mature pines an armlength thick at the base soared upward at least twenty manheight all around, but above them was not sky but a softly glowing white dome. Off a good distance through the trees, he could see that the dome extended down on every side. The ground beneath his feet had the resilient feel of normal earth and supported a thick carpet of trimmed grass in the clearing he stood upon and a fluffy mulch of browned needles under the trees, but he could sense a heavy concentration of magic not far down. Spells kept the trees and grass alive, not the natural fecundity of soil, air and water.

Rotating slowly to take in the entire place, it came to him why he had come to dislike the magical wonder that was this forgotten city of Dhiloeckmyur -- there was too much magic.

Like an inveterate sot with his ale, these ancient magicians could not be separated from their spells and insisted upon weaving magic into every endeavor they undertook -- even when no magic was required.

He spread his magical sense and found not-quite-stone and flux reinforced steel beyond the dome. As he had suspected given the limited range of the port spells, this artificial glade was inside one of the towers.

As he finished his turn, he caught sight of a man waiting at the other end of the glade. Sitting in a very relaxed manner on a small bolder, the dark haired fellow was short and thin, with no sign of stubble on his smooth jaw, and might have passed for a stripling, save for the contrary proof that the deep lines of his face gave. When he raised a hand in greeting but made no move to rise, Mar advanced toward him.

"You look like them," the man said as soon as Mar was near.

Rather than be drawn in, Mar just waited for the man to speak again.

"My name is Mortyn. As you must expect, I am a Proctor. What may I call you?"

Mar thought of giving a false name, but expected that this Mortyn would be no more fooled than had Nali. "Mar."

"Ah, that is indeed remarkable! Would you mind if I asked how you came by that name?"

Mar did not really know. He had always been Mar. "An old woman named me."

"Your name is very similar to your father's. He was called nMahr and your mother was Orethe."

Mar did not react.

"We logged a report of their deaths two years ago along with the entirety of your lineage. We had known that your mother was with child, but were not aware of your birth and had assumed that you died along with her. Frankly, we were very much pleased when you turned up."

"If you haven't noticed," Mar told Mortyn flatly, "I'm not two years old."

The Proctor shrugged. "Such is the way of those who travel through undertime."

"What is it that you want of me?"

"A direct question deserves a direct answer: The Project desires your progeny."

"How's that?"

"Children, offspring, descendants --"

"I understood the word. I don't understand what possible interest you could have in my get."

"You know nothing of the Project?"

"No."

"I see. Shall I explain?"

Mar grimaced. Everyone in Dhiloeckmyur had something to explain or something to convince him of. "I'd just as soon skip the explanation."

Mortyn looked nonplussed, as if his carefully crafted script had gone awry. "It will be difficult to proceed without an explanation."

Relenting, Mar turned out his hands in a careless gesture.

Mortyn's smile returned. "The Project is in its four hundred and eighty-third year and is a long term, ongoing effort to perfect the magical nature of mankind through selective pairings that reinforce, enhance, and strengthen the natural abilities that are used to manipulate and sense the ether."

"You're breeding sorcerers?" Mar asked, not bothering to keep the contempt from his voice. The Brotherhood had the same insane idea.

"Nothing so crass as that. Our goal is not to improve any particular magical discipline but rather to encourage the creation of lineages whose members have a more evolved affinity for magic than the average magic user of today."

"You create
freaks
."

"Again, no. We do not manipulate and have not directly manipulated the expression of favored
gene
sets and do not engage in interspecies comingling
.
We find such practices distasteful and unethical. Our practices and techniques are entirely benign and our input non-intrusive. The Project employs only natural social bonding mechanisms to achieve its aims. Our primary efforts involve the maintenance of comprehensive
genealogical
records, the monitoring of the progress of familial lines, the facilitation of introductions to encourage promising pairings, and the provision of financial and other support to Participants."

"And I am important to your Project in what way?"

"You are the last surviving descendent of one of our control lineages."

"So you're saying that your Project is responsible for my birth?"

"Not at all. Your parents were Holders and if you are not aware, the Holder philosophy summarily rejected outside intervention of any kind. Their fundamental tenants included self-sufficiency, self-reliance, individual responsibility, and independence of action. External authority of any sort was anathema. While they had no prohibition against marriage outside of their clans, they tended toward endogamy. This proclivity made their pedigree fairly homogenous and thus a perfect choice as a base line of normal magical evolution to which the Project could compare and contrast the results of our experimental pairings. We simply left them to their own devices and documented the observed results."

"You said
were.
What happened to them?"

"They met an unfortunate, but, I fear, predictable fate. As the Oaurlervy Faction gained military power and expanded its territory, it came into constant conflict with the yeomanry of the Holder Movement. The Holders were never very numerous and though they managed on a number of occasions to deal serious setbacks to the Faction, the yeomen were heavily outmatched. The Holdings were defeated and destroyed one by one over a span of some fifteen years. The smallest, Kharae, held out longer than the others, but it too finally fell two years ago, apparently very near to the time of your birth."

Old Mar had said as much, though stripped of detail. Mar had not given it any consideration then, but with this confirmation, it would be no more than bull-headed obstinacy to reject it now.

He let the revelation roll around in his head for a moment and then realized that it did not matter. None of what this Proctor had said made any change in the person Mar was or the life that he had lived. For all of his days, his parentage had been a disregarded unknown. Even with names put to the people that had brought him into the world, he had no less reason to disregard them now.

Mar took the cylinder from his pocket.

"The reason that I came here was to find out how you came by this."

Mortyn smiled. "I am happy to see that you did receive it. We were not certain of the reliability of the channel into which we released it. It was supplied by an external consultant and the cost was very nearly prohibitive."

"Oyraebos gave it to you?"

"Our consultant is a wizard whom we know by the name of Zso, but it is entirely possible that he may have other names."

"I'd like to meet this wizard."

Mortyn made an apologetic gesture. "Zso is not a supporter of the Project and we are unable to communicate with him at will. As wizards are wont to do -- at least in our experience -- he will appear unannounced at a critical juncture, offer a solution to a current problem for an always exorbitant fee, and fade back into undertime."

Mar drew in a long breath, held it for a moment, and then let it out slowly. It was no surprise that the Proctors had been only another wasted detour, but that did not lessen his irritation.

For nearly three days, he had scampered hither and yon in this phantom world, chasing mirages and daydreams. It was time to cut his losses.

He began to gather flux to pry open undertime.

Apparently having detected the characteristic disturbance in the background ether, Mortyn leapt to his feet. "Wait! Zso left something else!"

The man snapped his fingers and a familiar-looking, tightly packed roll of paper tied up with string appeared in his hand

His eyes locked on the roll, Mar snatched it from Mortyn's hand, snapped the string with an impatient yank, and then opened it far enough to read the top page.

This was another scribbled note, written in the same sloppy hand and the same bastardized Old Formal as Oyraebos' first riddle.

"Three you have found,

"Of Thirteen that were once bound,

"The fourth awaits,

"One who will not hesitate,

"Find the cottage where it all began

"Deep in the bowels of undertime."

OYRAEBOS

With clumsy haste, Mar shifted this aside to read the next page.