Nineteenth Beginning 22: Worldshore

Morganzer sat curled in the corner of her sleep ledge, wrapped in the robe and two towels and drinking rose hip tea.  Daisy and Kholack were each sitting on their ledges, doing hand work.  Their sounds were small enough to let in other, muffled sounds from down the hall.  Morganzer heard steps and voices and the occasional scraping of a chair on the floor or box on a table.  Mackah was back in the library.

The scrying had been frightening at first, which wasn’t surprising.  It had ended on a contented note, which she hadn’t expected.  She had seen herself lose skin after skin, like an onion.  The skins were thicker than she knew human skin would be.  In keeping with her beginning thoughts about onions, the skins were thick layers as full of thoughts and ideas as an onion layer was of tears. 

She was loosing her thoughts and ideas, her way of seeing the world, and yet she was not diminished.  She got no smaller.  No sadder, either.  She was going to go out into the world and would have to change her mind about a lot of things.  But she would be all right.

She would not be comfortable, she knew that.  Not while it was happening.  The onion meant that, too.  The first images after looking into the bowl and thinking of an onion had been disjointed and disturbing.  There were many faces frowning and screaming at her.  Her brother screamed and tore off a chunk of meat from her shoulder.  Only long experience with this sort of clearing let her keep her concentration and relax further into the images.

So she would argue with her brother and he would win and she would agree with him and hate it and that would feel like he had torn a piece off of her.  That was the way she was.  She didn’t like to be wrong.  And she was young and there were things that she hadn’t seen or hadn’t noticed and she could be wrong about many things. 

Lillibell smiled and carefully removed bits from her stomach and the backs of her arms.  Other aunts pulled less carefully but their grabbing came away with less.  Daffak’s stupid cub got a piece of her foot lacings.  And then she was flying.  Agemates grabbed bits as she slid by.  The end of the valley flashed past and there was nothing but snow, snow and the flash of hands.

It hadn’t happened smoothly.  At each new image, she had to relax and accept the import of the image and ask it if it had anything else to teach before it left.  Some images played over and over.  Some paused and then lurched past.  Lillibell was almost gone before she was recognized.

“I guess I don’t mind the thought of listening to Lillibell,” she thought.  “But the rest is not going to go smoothly.  It’s going to be my fault that it doesn’t.  My fault that I don’t change my mind easily.  I have to accept that about myself.  If I don’t, my scrying is going to twist off into the vague and untruthful.”

She sipped the tea, which had a pleasant dollop of honey in it and thought.  Or rather, she let her thoughts wander without pushing them. 

“Tomorrow I’ll look at what I need to say and do to get out of the valley alive.  I’ll talk to the aunts and tell them what I see.  I’ll listen to them and let them pack for me.  Then I’ll do what I need to do, no matter what they say.  I’ll argue with Daffak, because we always argue.  I’ll win and we’ll leave.  Then on the trail we’ll argue again and I’ll hate it.  He’ll be right and I won’t admit it.  But I’ll deal with that then, not now.”

She smiled at the thought of Daffak not knowing that he’d won the argument, because she’d never let him know it.  It seemed amusing that she might not even let herself know, when it happened.  She chuckled inwardly, feeling fond of the stubborn, unreasonable child that she was. 

She’d wait until she was out of the valley to scry about the prophecy.  First things first.  The first thing was keeping people alive. 

Nineteenth Beginning 21: Worldshore

Narnemvar looked absently at the warmish tea in his hand.  It took him awhile to take a sip, but once he did, he paused for a considering moment then downed it in one draught.  He held his cup out like a small child.  Satbada smoothly moved to fill it.

“Take care, sir.  This cup is a bit warmer.”

The second cup disappeared more slowly.  He held the empty vessel against his chest. 

“Is that stew I smell?”

“Yes, sir.  Would you like some.”

Narnemvar held the cup out.  Satbada ignored it and went to fill a bowl, which he presented with a spoon.

“Take care with the stewed, dried peaches, sir.  They tend to retain heat.”

“Thank you, Shortbread.”  The phrase was said absently.  Narnemvar sat holding the bowl and spoon, not quite focusing on his surroundings.  “I think there’s something wrong with that curse.”

“So it’s a bad curse, rather than a good one.”  Postlavanderon was amused.

“It’s not just ill health, there’s something else.  Something vague and disquieting.  Or maybe disquieted.  Perhaps the caster imprinted it with his fears.  I’ve heard of fear driven spells, but never encountered one.  Good casters never do it.  They work hard at not doing it.  And they don’t need . . . don’t need to do it.  But they say that fear can put a weak caster over the top.  Drive a spell that he can’t ride any other way.”  He blinked.

“I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

“Just a bid.  May I ask if you’re saying that the spell was cast by a weak magic user who could only cast a spell as strong as a curse by using his fear as a spell component?”

“Spell component?”  The words were said gently.  “Spell component?”  He tasted the word, rolling it around the edges of his tongue like a prince’s butler trying a new vintage.

“I’ve never heard it stated in that way.   .     .      . Spell component.”  Slowly his eyes focused and he turned to look directly at his friend.

“Lavvi.  You’re a genius.  That may describe it exactly.  There should be tomes written.  . . .”  His head turned and his eyes unfocused again.  The stew was cooling in the bowl.  Narnemvar was keeping the bowl level but taking no other note of it.

“That’s the last of the mutton, sir, I’m afraid.  And the last of the dried fruit.  It will be fish and onions from here on in.  The flour, however, should last for a few more days.”

“I think he’s hinting that you shouldn’t let good meat get cold.  I’m more interested in why using fear as a component makes the spell bad, myself.”

“Hmmm?”

“The spell.  The curse.  You were unraveling it.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve learned . . . ?”

“Oh.  Give me a moment.”  Narnemvar settled himself, shifting every part of his body as if resettling the whole thing in his mind by reminding himself of his various parts.  He inspected the stew and took a hesitant bite, then nodded manically, affirming the rediscovery of the goodness of eating. 

“Well, we knew that we had to walk ‘away’.”  he said and then slurped noisily.  “Now I know that there’s no point of turn-off.  There’s never going to be a point at which the spell decides that we’ve moved far enough away, that it can turn off, at least for awhile.”

“So what happens when we’ve gone as ‘away’ as we can?”

“Well, if we could reach the exact opposite of the globe from the go-away-from place, we could travel in any direction (since all directions would be toward the go-away) then turn around and re-trace our steps.  We would be gathering ill-health in the first direction and releasing it in the second.

Providing the spell releases faster than it gathers, which is most likely, barring some oddness provided by the fear, we will be fine.  We will be traveling back and forth and slowly going mad, but we will be otherwise fine.  Except for perhaps starving to death.

And the difficulty, of course, is that our antipodes is most likely to be some uncharted plot of ocean.”

“The difficulty.  Singular.  Things are improving.”

“Well, when I say ‘the difficulty’, I really mean the difficulty that I’m thinking about right now because my mind is all wobbly and can only think of one thing at a time.”

“Ah.  I see.  I may regret asking, but if you can only think of one thing at a time, perhaps we need to decide what thing you will think of.  As in, what one thing would be most profitable to think about at this time?”

“Not the antipodes.  I don’t intend to let this go on nearly that long.  Perhaps just on unraveling the curse.  I’m sure there’s a way to pick it apart.  The difficulty is that when the components and intents are distanced even slightly from each other, the fear seeps out and suffuses the atmosphere.  I’m breathing it in to the point that it feels like it’s rubbing against the lower arch of my brain.”

“That doesn’t sound good.  What kind of fear is it?”

“Fear of death, definitely, perhaps.  Fear of loss of control.  Fear of contagion. 

“Will we be able to sleep tonight, sir?”

“Not more than four hours, I’m afraid.  Unless you want to wake up hurt and get healing.  But I warn you, I’ll have to stop thinking of this entirely to think of healing.”

“Four hours it shall be, then.”

“Good.  That’s four hours and a one to two hour walk after, then we can sleep for another four hours.”

“Just so.  We will plan on it.”

“And Lavvi?”

“Yes?”

“The thing they’re afraid of.  They think we did it.”

“Did we?”

“No.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.  I’d remember if we did anything like it.  These people.  They have a lot of quaint ideas.  We probably transgressed some local taboo.”

Postlavanderon’s face heated.  He had a good idea what might have caused the locals to quaintly fear a contagious loss of control leading to death.  He caught a wisp of himself thinking: “I should have seen their faces.”  Narnemvar didn’t seem to be thinking along that track, though.  Should he be warned?  Perhaps drinking in the fear would contaminate him.

No.  Fear of contamination was not contamination.  It was certainly not the contamination of a death wish.  Narnemvar was safe from that, unless he had his own difficulties in that regard.  And that was unlikely.

“Is there any way to make it easier for you to tease the thing apart?  Are you going to be able to unmake it when you have it fully teased?”

“Not sure.”  The words trailed off.  He was thinking again.  He was elsewhere.

“Not sure you’ll be able to unmake it or unsure that we can do anything to help?”

“Yes.  Definitely.”

Postlavanderon finished his tea and handed over his cup.  “Do you know, Satbada, that there was a time in my life when I would have, as they say, ‘heaved a sigh’ at a time like this.”

“I hear that her ladyship holds firm views about the aesthetics of respiratory emissions.”

“She does indeed.  If I do not sigh under this depth of provocation, we can congratulate the lady on the success of her views.”

“Shall I pack up, sir?”

“Yes.  We’ll lead him along.  He may walk on his own to follow you.”

“Very good, sir.  We’ll be ready to depart shortly.”

“Yes,” said Postlavanderon.  He sat watching his friend watch nothing that he could see.  He’d never seen Narnemvar concentrate like this.  He supposed that if another wizard did it, it would look impressive.  But that would be because the other wizard would have taken precautions that Narnemvar wasn’t bothering with.  Because the other wizard would care too much for his own safety to make himself vulnerable to the care of two less than trail worthy companions on a strange trail.  Another wizard would look much more impressive, but he wouldn’t work fast enough to keep Satbada alive.  Postlavanderon was sure of that. 

“I’m going to end up personally indebted to you, my friend.” he muttered.

Hearing it, Satbada shivered.  A personal debt to someone that his family was using was a dangerous thing for a princeling.  That it might be incurred in relation to his personal health disturbed and frightened the servant.  He did not consider being embarrassed about it and most certainly would not consider suggesting that the master not consider aiding him to be a debt.  It was not a servant’s place to have opinions about their masters’ feelings, especially their sense of indebtedness. 

“Shall I begin, sir?”

“Yes.  I’ll see that he follows.”

Nineteenth Beginning 20: Worldshore

“So is there anything I should know about how this works?”  Morganzer asked.  “I’ve been a bucket girl in the baths above, but I can’t imagine it’s done like that down here.”

Kholach smirked.  “It certainly isn’t.  There’s no ceremony here and no big display of service.  I’ll help you with the pipes and maybe sluice you a bit.  But mostly I’ll sit on a stool in case you want to chat.  It’ll keep other people from coming up to chat.  Well, it will keep most people from it.  Some might have to be glared at.

Here, this is a bath robe.  The nemen drape themselves in large towels, but we tend to use a robe for cover and two towels for drying.  If you hood one over your head and keep your eyes down, no one will talk to you on your way there.  That’s tradition.  It’s enforced.  Ready?”

“Sure.  How hot will it be?”

“Do the nemen still brag about how hot they can take it?”  Another smirk.  Morganzer noticed that Kholach’s face fell into creases when she smirked.  Otherwise her face didn’t look very lined at all. 

Morganzer wondered if that was a sign that the smirk was a standard expression.  She thought about how often she frowned and wondered if she eventually become one of those aunts whose face lines scared small children.

“Thinking deep thoughts already?  Good.  That’s what a bath’s for.  Let’s go.”

There were four hallways to walk between Kholach’s rooms and the bath room.  Morganzer was just familiar enough with the turnings to take a good look around as they walked.

The hallways were bare stone, not rough, but not polished either.  If you looked carefully, you’d see that they bowed out slightly in the middle.  They were a darkish grey with none of the flecking or pebbling that you saw in some rocks.  It was all one solid shade. 

Lanterns of some sort were placed just barely above head height.  The were staggered, one on one side, the next on the other.  The didn’t give off as much light as you saw in most rooms, but you could see all of the floor with no shadows.  The floor was the same rock as the walls, but there was a waffle pattern etched on it.  To prevent slipping, Morganzer thought.

There were no decorations or anything else hanging on the walls.  That hadn’t been true in any of the rooms that Morganzer had seen.  She wondered if that was tradition, too, or if there was a purpose in keeping them clear.

Two left turns, two right turns and they were there.  No talking on the way.  Inside the bath room, Kholach turned to the right and walked slowly along until they came to the first empty tub.  They passes four old women being tended by four other old women.

Morganzer looked around and counted.  Twelve tubs altogether.  Seven of them in use.  She hadn’t thought to count up how many aunts she’d seen, but there were more than a few. The aunts in here were mostly murmuring and chatting.  A wash cloth or two were in use, slowly and gently, as if washing a toddler.  Different from the scrubbings the nemen got.

“I usually like to get the water settled before I get in.  Others sit in the tub and pour the water around them.”

“Doing the water first sounds fine.”

There was a disturbance two tubs over.  A very old woman had started slapping the water and making incoherent unhappy noises.  Morganzer was shocked to see that the sounds were mumbly only partly because the woman had lost track of forming words.  The woman had no teeth!

“She must be scrying again,”  Kholach sighed.  “It’s a pity she’s still so good at it.

She scries on her husband, over in Farside.  She’s probably seeing his granddaughter tucking his blanket around him and giving him a hug or something.  Her mind wanders enough that she forgets the girls are his relatives.  She thinks he’s taking other wives.  It upsets her.”

The slapping continued, becoming softer and more rhythmic.  There were soothing words coming from the woman tending her, but Morganzer couldn’t make them out.

Morganzer frowned, then thought about wrinkles and worked at letting the frown go. 

“Why would that upset her?”

“You’ll pick up the idea if you travel much.  Men and women get attached to each other.  Some call it love.  Some call it possession.  Whatever you call it, it happens.  It happens between friends, too.  Isn’t there someone you’ll be unhappy about leaving behind?  We don’t see you coming back, you know.  Although we haven’t looked more that a year or so ahead. “

Morganzer hadn’t thought of leaving, really.  Not really leaving.  Going, yes, but not leaving.  Her stomach bubbled uncomfortably. She leaned to run the wash cloth over the top of her toes.  Old skin was beginning to roll off as she rubbed.  It happened some with sluicing, but happened more after a soak.  She had heard that and never thought to be testing it for herself.

Why not?  She was obviously going to be an aunt at some point.  Everyone grew up.  Maybe she wasn’t going to grow up.  Maybe that was it. 

No.  She was here, now, and doing it, so not growing up couldn’t have been the reason.  The warm water was soothing, coaxing her muscles to relax.  Unfortunately, the muscles were resisting.  She didn’t know why, she was just tense.

“Close your eyes and I’ll sluice your head.”

Morganzer did, tipping her head so that her nose would stay clear.

“How does that feel.”

“Good.”

Kholack slowly tipped bowl after bowl of warm water over her head.  For some reason, the warm water on her face called tears out of her eyes.  She wasn’t crying, really.  At least, she wasn’t sobbing, but the tears came and came.  She snuffled.

“Do you need a towel?”

“No.  Can you keep doing that for a bit?”

“Yes.  Are you having a hard time relaxing?  We could give you a massage.”

“I don’t think that would help.”

Kholach didn’t ask why.  She just poured bowl after bowl slowly over her head.

“I think there’s something else I need to do.”

“And what would that be?”

“Well, I think of it as loose scrying.  It brings things up.”

“What kind of things?”

“Things I should be thinking about.  Plans I’ve made without knowing that I’ve made them.   Ideas I have that are wrong.  Stuff.”

“Ah.  Meditation.”

“I’ve heard that word.  Aren’t you supposed to be looking at the ocean or something when you do it?”

The aunts Topside meditated.  Children weren’t supposed to bother an aunt who was meditating.  It was an aunt thing.

Morganzer frowned.  She was an aunt now and she knew very little about aunt things.  She had been around aunts all her life, she could have been watching them and figuring things out, but had just ignored it all.  It wasn’t her concern.  It wasn’t of interest.  There was something wrong about that.  Or something important.

“That’s one way.  Most people don’t scry and meditate at the same time.  You can scare yourself good that way.  You can also get lost.”

“I know.  But it’s easier to See afterward.  It’s like clearing rocks off of a path.  It’s easier to walk it after.”

“Would you mind if I watched?  Just to reassure myself that you were all right?”

“As long as you’re not looking into the bowl.”

“All right.  Across the room.  Knitting, maybe.”

“That would be fine.  And not too much noise, at least not in the room.”

“We can arrange that.  I can wash your hair, if you lean back.”

The feel of firm fingers kneading her scalp and nape was very relaxing.  Morganzer could feel muscles all over her body surrender and relax.  The tears came again, but only as a little leak.

“I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“Maybe you’ll find out when you meditate.  Or maybe not.  Sometimes its just the stress.”

“Stress?  As in emphasis?”

“As in tension.  The tightening that your body does when you’re dreading something, or just preparing to do something.  You have a lot on your mind.  A lot of responsibility.  You can’t just forget it, drop it from your mind.  You have to hold it in your thoughts.  That causes stress.”

“I almost feel like I have a headache.  Or a stomach ache.”

“That’s probably stress, too.  The body reacts to your thoughts.”

“Another aunt thing.  Will it be like this all the time?”

“No.  You’ll learn to relax.  You’ll learn to trust yourself to handle what’s coming.  But it will take a little practice.  And there will always be times when it comes back.  That’s just part of life.”

Morganzer sniffed.

“I think I’m going to see myself saying bad things about mean aunts.”

“You can hear things when you scry?”

That hadn’t been one of the responses that Morganzer was expecting.

“No.  Almost never.  Sometimes it feels like I almost can, but never, really.

You people aren’t doing anything the way I expected you would.”

There was a plaintive tone to Morganzer’s voice, which she didn’t like hearing.  Kholack chuckled.

“Tip your head back and I’ll rinse you.  You don’t want soap in your eyes.”

Much sluicing later, Kholach said:  “Onions.”

“Onions?”

“I hated raw onions when I was a child.  I could never understand why the grown women would slice them and dice them and put them on top of perfectly good food.  At one point I thought they did it to keep some of the food child-free. 

Now my tongue has aged and regular food sometimes tastes like pap.  A good bit of onion can perk it right up.”

“Mmmm,” said Morganzer.  It wasn’t exactly what she had been thinking of, but it got close to it.  She could start the scry by thinking about onions.  She didn’t like onions either.

“How long should I stay in the tub.”

“An hour isn’t too long for a start.  Maybe not much more than that, though.”

Nineteenth Beginning 19: Worldshore

“Is the lunch adequate, sir?”

“Yes, Satbada, it is entirely adequate.  It’s just that it looks like he’s going to be at it for awhile.”

“Of course, sir.”  He could have added that it was, of course, proper for him to retard his own lunch so that his companion would not be left eating alone later, but that would have been wasteful of words.  Postlavanderon of course understood that, unsaid.

Narnemvar was once again raveling at the curse.  He was seated across the clearing.  The others spoke, not in whispers, but in low tones.

“It’s odd.  The harder he concentrates, the slacker his face goes.  I wonder if it’s protective.”

“Protective, sir?”

“He hasn’t told me much about his life, but he’s sort of a family legacy.  He doesn’t want riches or fame.  He wants friends to ‘fool around’ with.  My brothers befriended him before me.  They’ve passed on bits and pieces.”

“I see, sir.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do.  Regarding that, it amazes me that he hasn’t noticed.  Or perhaps he does, in a way, but chooses not to acknowledge it.

I was speaking, though of the fact that for most of his life, while he was young and dependent, he was working under the gaze of masters who were much less talented than he was.  Perhaps he learned to keep his face blank when he was going off to places that his master couldn’t follow.”

“I hadn’t thought of that sir.  If I may ask, is there anything about him that I should know?”

“Know first that he is not just a powerful magician.  Many are powerful.  Narnemvar is able to craft new spells – spells that have never been crafted before.  Other mages tread carefully with spells.  I’ve been told that one wrong pronunciation can be deadly.”

“I have heard that as well.”

“He thinks they’re being fussy.  That they’ve gotten too used to playing the part of the dour, careful handler of dangerous power, for monetary purposes, and are tricking themselves into being too careful.

My father believes that he has a talent that hasn’t been described before.  He has enough of a feel for how the magic will go that he just doesn’t make a mistake that will damage him.  He makes changes in the places where it’s safe to do so.  Relatively safe, anyway.

He was joking with my oldest brother when he developed the Shipwrack spell.”

“I thought that was an ancient spell, sir.”

“No.  It was an ancient story.  Our family, and several other noble island families put out the story deliberatly.  We staged wrecks and sabotaged vessels.  In the very old days we could use seers to fine tune our plans.  After the seers were banned, we relied mostly on the belief we had engendered and on bribes and courtesans.

Then this magician with a charming, foolish apprentice arrived.  Everyone thought the man was overprotective, the way he would monitor every move his apprentice made.  Then came the blessing of the ships for the windy season. 

The apprentice was allowed to go out among the people as he chose and he had made many friends.  When the friends learned that the two of them had no experience of boats, they taught the apprentice all the things about boats that they could.  Names of parts of boats, names of methods of moving boats, names of types of boats, and names of winds.

They also taught him many of the local names for things not boat related, especially those things that might interest a young man.  My brother could see magic.  Many in my family can.  He could see the gestures that magicians made and hear their words. 

So when the magician was hired to bless the boats, and when he said that the apprentice would do it because he could name all of the different parts of all of the different boats, weaving them into the spell and making it more effective, and when the apprentice began to add some words that sounded like boat parts but really referred to rude things, my brother could hear him.  He was delighted.  It was a great jest.  No one could hear but my brother and the master and the master might not know, because he didn’t know the names of boating things.

We didn’t know it at the time, but the apprentice enjoyed watching my brother trying not to laugh and failing.  He wanted to increase the jape.  He added, after the blessing, a little untying spell intended to untie all the lacings in my brother’s clothing.  But the last little spell came too close on the heels of the larger, modified spell.  The two spells together didn’t bless the ships and then drop my bother’s pants, they combined into one spell.  It detached every part that had been named from every other part that had been named.  Cargos and men fell between boards that disassembled under them.

Most of our people rightfully wanted to kill the magician and his apprentice.  The magician saw this and disappeared without even a puff of smoke.  He never returned.  The apprentice had been ducked into the water, though, and couldn’t swim.  My brother saved him and helped him hide.

My father saw the opportunity to train island mages to cast the newly discovered ancient spell.  There have been many stories.  Stories we tell to our neighbors.  Stories we tell to our friend, here.  Stories we tell to other mages.  I’m not sure how we’ve managed to keep them straight.

Many mages can now protect our shores if one of the shifting countries or guilds from the continent decides to sail around the finger and start eating islands.  The foreigners know very well that we have the magic and can use it in many ways.  They’ve become very polite in the last thirty years.”

“Quite a legacy.  So you believe that he’s an eighth level magician?”

“Oh, yes.  At least eighth.  Possibly the only eighth level magician alive.  Possibly the only one that’s ever been alive.”

“A lucky thing for your family,” Satbada said, in a voice that acknowledged that it was a dangerous thing, indeed, but that he was prepared to help deal with whatever difficulty arose because of it.

Postlavanderon was both a little relieved that someone else knew, and a little embarrassed that he had burdened a servant with such knowledge.  Still, Satbada was from a family that had been in his family for ages.  He could handle a great many things.  He probably preferred knowing.

“Yes.  Our family has a history of luck.”

“He seems to be rousing.”

Narnemvar didn’t seem to be rousing, particularly.  He stopped moving his hands, though, holding them out in an odd position.  His voice slowly dropped into a monotone hum.  His eyes were definitely still elsewhere, though.

“Perhaps you can warm his stew a bit.”

“Yes, sir.  And hot water for tea.”

Satbada pulled the hot stew off of the fire, so that it could cool a bit before serving.  He placed the tea bucket in its place.  No mention was made of any discrepancy between what his master had suggested and what he did.  If the master noticed, he wouldn’t comment, but would work out the need for the difference himself.  And if the master didn’t notice, well, there was no need for him to bother himself with cooking details.

Satbada’s respect for the master had risen.  This was a heavy burden for a young man.  He almost caught himself hoping that the Great Master would soon assign a grandson to the task of traveling with the mage.  But it was not his place to form opinions about such things. 

Narnemvar twitched a bit and sniffed.  “Something smells good,” he mumbled, and blinked.  It was a minute or so before he noticed that his hands were still up and began to lower them.  Satbada began to brew tea with water that wasn’t really hot enough.  The mage would not notice and it was probably safer to hand him cooler tea. 

Nineteenth Beginning 18: Worldshore

“Maybe I shouldn’t have done it in the meal room,” thought Morganzer.  She was now facing a ring of expectant old faces.  She could probably refuse to say anything.  Especially right away.  Everyone knew that scrying took it out of you.

No.  They were all dying to know.  She couldn’t stand not knowing, herself, and couldn’t torment anyone else by withholding.

“We could see some of the things, but they moved so fast it was hard to keep up with them.”

“Could you all see?”  Morganzer’s voice showed her resentment more than a little.  Did aunts keep everything from the children they raised?

“Yes.  People don’t keep well down here if they’re not good at scrying.  They tend to move on to other places.”

“Farside?”

“Farside is one place.  There are others, beyond it.”

“I’m sure I’ll find out more later.”

“I’m sure you will.”

There was a pause.  It felt respectful.  Morganzer gathered her thoughts.

“The aunts topside are going to have to lie to the Skend.”

No comment or change in the faces.  This was familiar ground.

“The lie is that Daffak had a dream that said that his grandfather is dying and he has to go on a quest to find him before he dies.  He has to sacrifice a wolf cub at his grandfather’s feet.”

Frowns.  “Why?”  “What would that accomplish?” “They’d believe it?”

“They will believe it and will not question why or what the benefit is.  It’s a dream and it’s a fatherline thing.  They’ll just accept that the boy has to go.  And I’ll have to go with my only male protector.”

There were titters at that.  She frowned.

“It’s not that we don’t believe you, child, it’s just that it’s hard for us to think of an underage younger brother as a protector.”

A rueful half-smile.

“Yeah.  I have trouble with it, too.  It’s going to irritate me the whole way.  But it’s fits their ideas.  It will work.  Someone else is going to come, too.  We’re going to say that she’s going along to die.  That part doesn’t make sense to me.”

“We can understand that part,” said Kholack.  “If you’re looking for a wolf cub, you might need someone for the wolves to eat, to let you get away with the cub.”

“We won’t need to get a cub.  Daffak already has it.  And the Skend need to know he has it.”

The faces showed polite interest.  Morganzer explained.

“One of the reasons we kept dying in the scenes that everyone called up is that Daffak is getting difficult and is likely to start a fight over something stupid.  If we say he’s my protector, he’ll try to be sensible, but he doesn’t really believe that I need all that much help.  He knows the cub is going to die if he can’t get it out of the valley.  He’s really protecting it.  He’ll be more sensible.  (And, besides, he likes the cub more than he likes me – she thought.)

Also the older men will respect the dream and the quest.  He’ll be impressed with their respect.  The young Skend will be impressed with the respect, too, and won’t push as much as they would have otherwise.”

There was another pause.  It felt like thinking.

“We know who’s going to go.  We know why she’ll go.  I’m not sure how we’ll fit it into the story, but if you’ve seen it work, there’s a way.  We’ll pass the word to Topside.  They know the nemen better than we do.”

“Thanks.  I think that should do it.  Now we need to pack.  That journey I saw started tomorrow afternoon.  We only go as far as the end of the valley the first day.  Maybe we get more food at the last house.”

Nods and murmurs of assent.  Morganzer let the suggestions of what to take wash over her.  She was tired and starting to feel grumpy again.  She’d be traveling with Daffak soon and he always set her off. 

“Would you like to have a bath, child?”

Morganzer didn’t hear which aunt said the words, but she sure heard the import.  Did they really mean it?  Children never got real, soaking baths.  They got to soap up with warm water and sluice off with cold.  Baths were for nemen, when they were there, and for aunts when they weren’t.  Maybe she should ask what kind of bath they really meant.

No.  She was Downside.  She was adult. 

“Yes I would.”

Nineteenth Beginning 17: Worldshore

“Far from combobulated, the placable maiden batted an eye and turned a hair before lifting a finger to brush the clothing of the heveled, but otherwise gainly youth.  That’s (a brief counting on the fingers) seven!  A personal high!” Postlavanderon had been pulled into the game and was obviously enjoying himself.

“I have to protest batting eyes and other bodily movements.  Those are phrases.  This is a game of words.”

“Were we that distinct when we wrote the rules?”

“Alas we encrypted no enchiridion.  The rules are mere air, and are therefore iron clad.  Words only.  If I allow phrases, I will be forced to suffer the presence of significant bagatelles and harmless swoops.

I will retaliate by asking, apropos of nothing, if, perhaps the word prevent implies the magical ability to fart before eating the beans.  If prefer is a scattering of sparse down, and if a prelate is religiously tardy.  I doubt you could gurgitate that.”

“Gurgitate!  That’s only one!  My turn again and you will fall behind.”

“I protest!  I turn to Shortbread for a ruling!  Gurgitate is from re-gurgitate, not de-gurgitate.  It is not a dis-negative and so could not have been my turn but was obviously one in a list of disallowed words that I was listing to you in hopes of educating you in the fine points of the game.”

“He does have a point, sir.  Regurgitate is a repetitive, not a negative, so gurgitate cannot be a dis-negative.  If it were to be put forward as your companion’s turn, he would be scored a zero.”

“You see. . What!  Zero!  I could not possibly score a zero in my own game.  I am far to erudite and charming.  Obviously Shortbread, here, agrees  that it was not my turn.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, you may have a turn, but only if you agree that I scored a seven.”

“I will lump them together as an amusing diversion and give you one for the three.  A five is a respectful score.”

“Call it a six and I will forbear to enter into arbitration upon the point.”

“Arbitration!?”

“Yes, and remember who the only person available for arbitration likes me better than he likes you.”

“Ah, piracy.  Six it shall be and a pox on three out of eight of your houses.”

‘Is that literature?”

“I hope not.  I didn’t mean it to be.”

“If I may interject, sirs.  It is time for lunch and there is a suitable patch of sand ahead.  Perhaps if you reclined while I prepared, you could reach an accord.”

“Let me scatter the vermin first, SB.”

“From sand, sir?”

“Never sit anywhere outdoors trustfully, my fine muffin, and few places indoors.”

Narnemvar made the familiar sounds and gestures and a series of small crabs disinterred themselves from the sand and departed.  A small haze joined them.

“What was that wavering?”  Lavvi asked.

“Fleas.”

“Fleas?”  Satbada was too well trained to shudder bodily, but apparently his voice was allowed.  He made no other comment, but vowed to never sit hereafter without asking that perhaps understandably odd person to sweep ahead of him.

For a moment Satbada considered that he was considering asking a sixth level mage to do housework at his order, and was considering it in a patronizing way at that.  Then he decided that it was as proper as anything else about the man.  If he had been speaking, perhaps his voice would have shrugged.  His body certainly didn’t.

Nineteenth Beginning 16: Worldshore

The scrying bowl was two hands across and a palm high.  It wasn’t shaped like any bowl that Morganzer had ever seen.  It was flat for two palms at the bottom and then it belled up and out, something like a trumpet flower.  It wasn’t built for containing as much as possible for the amount of material it had been built with, that was sure.

But it was a satisfying shape.  It felt good in the hands.  It was dark brass, mostly unpolished.  Only a decorative ring, about halfway up the outside, had been rubbed to anything like a shine.

Morganzer touched the inside.  It was dark and slightly tacky, darkest and tackiest on the bottom.

“That’s from burning incense in it,” said an old woman whose name Morganzer couldn’t remember.  “I do that when I’m not using it.  My grandmother discovered it.  Her husband had asthma and was forever trying things to ease it.  He found an incense that worked for him and she found that it helped the scrying. 

She experimented a bit.  So did a few other people.  It’s not the incense itself that matters.  It’s the dark and whether you like the smell or not.  Give it a whiff.”

Morganzer sniffed.  The bowl didn’t have a strong scent.  There was just a hint of grasses and scorch.  Then, underneath, came a sea-spray smell.  It was a smell that tugged at memories, but didn’t call them completely forward.  She couldn’t say it was a pretty smell, but she liked it.

“Are you sure you don’t mind me using it.”

“No, child.  As important as this is, you can even take it with you if it works for you.”

“But it must have taken you a long time to get it coated like this.  And its metal!”

“And giving it up is better than watching everyone I know die.  So just take what’s offered and do your best.”

Morganzer sat the bowl down.  Kholack filled it from a bright crockery pitcher.  Filled, it looked like a hole in the world.  Morganzer looked into it and felt the difference that the different depths of water made.  Toward the rim, the water was very shallow, but still black.  Whispers of things were already bleeding and swirling into those shallow shadows.  Morganzer let them come, let them move however they meant to go.  She always let the first reading be a base reading.  It was hard to keep plans out of her head, But she had learned the hard way that if she didn’t do a base reading, she could waste days trying to get the visions to go a direction that they’d never consent to go.

Tiny figures crept along the rim.  Tiny scryers with tinier bowls.  They were scrying at each other, interfering with each other.  Soon their intents made a network, a latticework of lines woven around the shallows of the rim.  They locked together and let no movement through.

Alright.  What does that mean.  Think.  Do they need to work together.  No.  Nothing moves when I think of that.  Do I need to try something that no one has thought of yet?  Maybe.  I can feel movement in the center when I think that.

What haven’t they tried?  Is it from one of the books?  A flutter.  Books fluttered in the depths like moths.  Difficult to tell which would help, but books in general were a good thing.

Feel the movement in the center.  Coax it towards to surface.  Come on.  You know you’re there. You know I’m going to see you eventually.  I can be patient with this.  I can be patient here.  I can be patient when this is what I am.

This is about my brother.  Show me my brother.  Let me hear a sound.  Let me feel a touch.  Let me smell a scent.

There was a growl and a burrowing and a smell of animal fur.  But the bowl was dark.  This was the heart of it, though.  She could tell.  This was the core. 

Flow backward from it.  Let it recede.  Get a view from farther back.  That’s a coat.  That’s Daffak wearing it.  He’s trotting along and behind him. . . what’s behind him? 

“The shapes are moving so fast,” a voice said behind her.  She barely heard it.  It wasn’t part of the visions.  It was only real and therefore of no real consequence.  “I can see how she could make them move that fast, but how can she See them.”

“They can’t possibly make sense to her,” another voice said.

“Shush!”  That was Kholack.  Good.  With her there, no one would ask her any questions no matter what they didn’t understand.

Her brother was trotting along in front of a moving object.  It was a pallet being pulled by . . . were those wolves?  Another boy trotted beside her brother, talking and gasping.  She was running along beside whoever was on the pallet.  Pull back further.  Snow.  Snow and more snow.  Snow back to the edges of what she could See.

Well, there were ways around that.  She pulled in and ran the image backward.  Footprints and a set of two lines trailing behind the pallet were erased by their passing.  She ran the image faster.  Still just snow.  Faster, she ran it.  The group stopped for food and passing breaks.  The breaks were frantic little pauses that led into a pile of blankets and darkness.

She skipped the night.  She didn’t hear the gasps behind her.  She was too far into the vision.

The group continued through nothing but snow.  A furry head could sometimes be seen poking out of her brother’s coat.  Up and up the group went.  Another night was deleted and then they reached a peak.  Looking down, Morganzer knew where they had to be, how they had to have gotten there.

Most of the group left the boy and the pallet of wolves.  That group was much slower, now.  But the purpose of it was known.  She looked down the mountain that they were climbing backwards down.  She looked at the base of the mountain, at the valley there, with the huts and houses dotted along it.  She looked at the large bath house in the distance and the spiky islands and sea beyond it.  She knew who they were and how they had come there.

She snapped the scene back to its beginning.  She saw them start out from the girl’s house.  Saw how they went.  Saw who watched.  Felt the aunts talking.  Making excuses.  The boy had had a dream.  It had said that his grandfather was dying.  He had to go.  He had to take the wolf cub to sacrifice.  It was something the nemen. . . no, not the nemen.  The Skend.  It was something that the Skend could understand.

She didn’t like the vision.  But she trusted it.  They would leave and the boy with the wolves would be waiting for them.  He would get them to somewhere safe without any major mishap.  They could decide where else to go from there.

Now it was time to decide what to pack.  She’d let the aunts help with that.  It was the sort of thing that she suspected aunts would be good at.