The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2), page 36
Spheres, it’s fast! As it dragged her, Dame Miri kicked one leg towards the ground, extending it perpendicular to her hip. The instant her sole connected with the mud, she hopped as hard as the ranine coils in that one boot would let her.
The jump wasn’t nearly strong enough to rip her away from the grisly toad’s grip, as intended. Instead, she went arcing over the toad’s head and pulled the meaty tongue behind her like a great thick leash. Its head jerked upwards as its own tongue flapped across the length of its face. The animal shuddered and snorted as the base of its tongue was pressed against its pointy front teeth. The gluey tonguetip, with Dame Miri attached, ended up behind its own eyes, nearly depositing her amongst the blood-red spines. She jabbed frantically at the tongue with her knife and curled herself up so she landed in a crouch between the parallel rows of spikes. The sharp point of one spine tore a cut in her leg as she pressed against the animal’s wide back and jumped again, with fine amphibian form this time.
The tongue detached from her sleeve, tearing the fabric with a wet, sickly rip. She spun backwards through the air, flipping end over end twice before her boots hit the slippery earth. Instinct sent her into a back handspring to use up the last of her momentum, but when she felt the weight of her body against her still-injured hands she instantly regretted it. Her arms crumpled and her legs sank down around her instead of finishing the long, graceful arc she’d intended.
Dame Miri crouched in the mud, her teeth clenched and her hands throbbing with pain. She fumbled for the knife, which she’d dropped at the landing, and forced her hand to close around it. She pulled herself to her feet as the grisly toad turned around. What I wouldn’t give for a musket right now! She cast around for anything else to help her even the score as the beast blinked its baleful eyes at her.
A tendril of blood was hanging over its lower jaw from the punctured tongue. Rather than try to slurp her up again, the grisly toad trundled forward a few, awkward steps. There were wicked claws on its webbed feet, and it curled them in the mud. “Come on,” Dame Miri growled, her violet eyes narrowing.
She blinked. She’d seen the toad tense for a jump, but now it was gone. If it hadn’t pounced at her, where had it gone? Belatedly, she looked up.
The grisly toad was astonishingly high, higher than most rooftops and coming down fast. She threw herself backwards without a shred of gymnastic grace, crashing into a thicket of cattails that poked against her neck and shoulders. The beast landed exactly where she’d been, shaking the earth and drenching her in muck. Dame Miri swiped the hooked blade left and right among the cattails, the sharp edge clearing her some space and felling a whole cluster of the stiff plants. Glaring down at her, the grisly toad dug its claws into the ground and inflated its throat again with a deafening, sinister rumble. The bright red bulge filled Dame Miri’s vision; a display of dominance and fury just before she became a meal.
Or… Miri thought, raising the knife.
The toad’s rumble turned into a querulous gagging sound as she slashed the black blade across the throat sac. Slimy ichor exploded onto her with a truly astonishing smell. Dame Miri ignored it as best she could and grabbed a fistful of cattail stems with her other hand. Here’s hoping these are poisonous, she thought. She thrust the plants into the open flap in the beast’s throat and gave them a twist.
The grisly toad leapt backwards, turning an ungainly somersault in the air. It scratched at its throat wildly with both front claws, knocking a few of the plants loose but also visibly ripping the torn sac further. The grisly toad gasped through its open mouth, shuffling its back feet and rolling its eyes like mighty marbles. Dame Miri stood slowly, keeping her body low and her knife ready. The big animal was pitiful in its frenzied distress.
“Next time you’re hungry,” she told it, keeping her voice gentle, “why don’t you go for a deer?”
The grisly toad blinked at her, its mouth gaping. Then, with a series of wild hops, it broke for the west and kept going until she couldn’t see it amongst the tall bushes.
Dame Miri clenched and unclenched her fingers, lines in her face deepening with the pain. This woodland stroll had probably set her therapy back another year, if it was even possible now to get her hands back to one hundred percent. The cut in her leg had a strange bubbly sensation to it that made her whole thigh tingle. The toad’s spines probably excreted a defensive poison; it would be fun to chronicle the evolving symptoms for the rest of her walk. Grisly toad ichor was smeared all over her chest and arms, sticky and acrid. On the plus side, it didn’t seem like the gnats had any interest in getting close to her, thanks to her new and exciting scent.
It’s a good thing I’m probably not going to survive this trip, she thought, because no one will believe me afterwards anyway.
Dame Miri flipped the mask down, feeling its smoothness against her cheeks. She breathed through her mouth so she wouldn’t smell herself, and started again on the long walk north towards the face in her head.
Chapter Sixteen
Collaborators
“So you’re saying,” Lundin said, holding the mask at the very edge of his fingertips, “that if I put this on, I’d be able to see them anywhere in the world?”
Elia and Martext looked just as uncomfortable with the masks in their hands. The golden light from the eyes made the center of the room far brighter than its shadowy corners. The wizard Iimar’s arcane playground was lit only by rusty candelabras and poorly dipped tapers that dripped all over the wrought-iron columns they sat on. I just don’t like wizards, Lundin thought, shuffling his feet in the colored sand.
“Indeed, Mister Lundin, indeed,” Iimar the Enchanter said, pointing a dramatic finger at the tech. His enormous sleeve swished around his muscular arm, and the wizard watched the burgundy silk spilling this way and that with obvious pleasure. Ninety percent of the things Iimar did were so he could watch himself doing them. The scattered mirrors on every open space on the wall were a testament to that. “Your companions visible to you, and you to them, wherever you may travel.”
“Within fifteen kilometers,” Willl with three L’s chimed in hesitantly from the sidelines.
Iimar turned to him, bringing his sleeves down to his sides with a dramatic flap. Willl with three L’s shifted in his seat, lowering his stylus to the page in front of him. “Within fifteen kilometers, yes,” Iimar said, clucking his tongue. “Which, as the Petronauts already knew, is the recognized and immutable outer boundary of wizardly effects, from source to subject.”
“Why is that, I wonder?” Elia said, a little over-casual, catching Lundin’s eye.
“Great question, Elia,” Lundin said. He sauntered back to the claw-footed table behind them, and tried to set his mask down, making conversational gestures with the other hand. “I’d love to know more about—”
“Masks in your hands,” Iimar said, his rich voice filling the room. Lundin stood up straight again, and Elia brought her own mask in front of her chest again. The swarthy, handsome wizard smiled at them. “The Mobinoji present us many mysteries,” he whispered. “And how it thrills me to converse with people who, like I, seek to unlock those mysteries.
“But Master Torvald has commanded you to serve me, so those conversations must wait for another time. This is a Petronaut process, now, and Petronaut processes must start at A and go to B. Isn’t that right?”
Depends on what A is… Lundin nodded instead, keeping his mouth shut.
“Three masks,” Iimar intoned, raising his arms. “Three souls. By the grace of the Mobinoji and the power I wield, I will bind the images of the souls into the sight of the masks. The three maskbound shall see each other in their minds’ eyes, far beyond the limits of physical flesh.”
“Is this how he casts spells?” Martext whispered.
“It does seem fast,” Elia agreed. “And I thought he had to be speaking Mabinanto—”
“A statement of intent,” Iimar the Enchanter said, a little testily. “As we are... colleagues, now, I wish to make my actions understandable to you, so you may replicate them. Hold the masks to your faces.”
Iimar the Enchanter pressed his palms against his olive face. The two techs looked at Lundin. He wet his lips and, with a helpless shrug, touched the mask to his nose so they were looking eye to eye. Rather, Lundin closed his eyes as soon as that bright golden light got too close to his face. The beams felt a little warm, this close to his skin. He could feel his heart speeding up as the moments ticked by. How long was Iimar going to make them stand like this?
A hand pressed against his wrist, and he almost jumped out of his drab prison smock. Iimar pulled the mask gently away from his face, standing nearly nose to nose with Lundin himself. “Fetch a tablet and stylus,” the wizard ordered with a smile.
“You two, place the pedestal in the center of the mandala,” he said, turning from Lundin to the other techs. Elia and Martext looked at each other in consternation as Iimar took the masks from them. “There, there,” he said impatiently, flourishing towards a rusted high-top table with a circular surface, resting next to the wall.
They scrambled over to the pedestal and lifted the iron piece with some difficulty. As the Civics crabwalked gingerly across the colored sand (which didn’t seem to bother Iimar at all), Lundin picked up his pad of parchment and stylus from a pile closer to the door. The big man and the sharp-faced woman who’d been assigned to guard them looked down at him from the top of the stairs, leading out to the hallway. Lundin tried to ignore them and their large, large swords.
Elia and Martext backed away from the table as Iimar swept forward, placing all three masks in an artful pile on the circular platform. Martext winced, holding his side, and inclined his head towards the lighter, claw-footed wooden table where the masks had first sat. “We couldn’t have used that one?” he said under his breath to Elia.
“No, we could not,” Iimar the Enchanter said, drawing himself up. “Would I tell you how to arrange your laboratory? Then I’ll ask you not to presume to question my mystical process!”
“I… Pardon our ignorance,” Lundin said, trying out a humble attitude. Things stood to get a whole lot worse if they made Iimar mad at them, and it seemed like they were teetering on the wrong side of that crevasse. “It’s just that we’re not familiar with this type of magic. Me, I don’t even understand how you cast a spell on something, well, dead.” Lundin pointed to the masks with his stylus.
“Get your tablets, and take notes whenever you like,” Iimar the Enchanter said absently to Elia and Martext, who stepped outside the colored mandala and got their own writing utensils. Iimar paced slowly around the pedestal in his bare feet, the shiny sand gleaming between his toes. “A worthy question, Mister Lundin,” he said. “Of course the process is unfamiliar to you, and your subjects. Enchantment is a fading art, of which I may be the greatest living practitioner.”
He took in a deep breath through his nostrils, and let it out in a rush of emotion. “Enchantment is not unlike Wizardry; just as being a chef is not dissimilar from being a cook. You see?”
They nodded, their tablets braced awkwardly in their arms. Willl with three L’s had a chair and a little desk in his silent place by the wall. Lundin held the tablet along the length of his forearm and scrawled ‘Enchantment::Wizardry, Chef::Cook.’ In other words, this guy is arrogant. So glad I’m taking notes, or I might forget tidbits like this, he thought, keeping his face still and receptive.
“This scatterbrained age we live in thinks all magic is the same,” Iimar went on. “A magician, a shaman, a witch, a wizard, an enchanter… We throw these words around as if they are interchangeable. Even the arcane community does this; we, who should know most of all that words are tools of power.
“But to delve into the technical—which should excite you Petronauts to no end—there are in fact three tiers of magic which the Mobinoji have made known to us in the course of this world.”
Three tiers of magic? Lundin actually stopped doodling and gave Iimar his full attention. That seems like something Ronk would have told me about.
“First, a broad base which encompasses all you know as magic.” Iimar unfurled his hands to the group in some kind of signal.
“Spells that change living things?” Elia said, hesitantly.
The Enchanter flashed a smile at her and swirled his cloak around himself with a ruby flourish. “‘Precisely. ‘Wizardry’ is the name for the powerful but impermanent manipulation of living beings.”
Impermanent? Tell that to Viscount LaMontina. But Iimar was continuing, blithely. “Up the pyramid we ascend to the second tier of arcane mastery: Enchantment.”
“Which is imbuing, uh, inanimate things with magic,” Lundin said. “Like Ursulli’s Magic Cloak from the stories?”
“A form of immortality, really,” Iimar said, stepping closer to Lundin. The wizard rested his hand on one of the brown masks. His fingers sparkled with rings as they stroked the smooth surface. “Every enchantment is a moment frozen in time. How long ago did Ursulli don her Cloak—five hundred years, as the legend goes? And yet the object lives on in our imaginations. It endures as a memorial to the Enchanter who created it.
“In the magical arts, a wizard’s spell is like a single dance. It can be beautiful, or awe-inspiring. It can stir great things and change lives. But when the dance is done, nothing remains of it.” He slid his hand off the mask and looked into Lundin’s eyes. “An Enchantment is like a sculpture. The magic lingers across the centuries, as long as the object endures, and a discerning eye can always see the artist behind it.”
Lundin nodded at him, not sure what else to do. Iimar turned his back with a thoughtful sigh, his cape floating behind him.
Martext cleared his throat, coughing into his fist. The Enchanter turned to him. “And, uh, the third tier?” the technician said, with a trace of disdain.
Iimar the Enchanter narrowed his eyes at him. “Sourcery, my skeptical friend,” he said. “The power that made the world and arrayed the Spheres in the sky. And the power that will unmake us all, one day.”
Lundin frowned, and opened his mouth to ask more, but Iimar’s expression as he stared into the center of the colored sand on the floor made him shut it again. A long silence hung over them as the candles flickered, dozens of hungry orange tongues strewn about the chamber.
“As for your question, Mister Lundin,” Iimar said suddenly, shaking himself free from whatever had gripped him, “how do I cast a spell on something with no life? Allow me to show you.”
“Oh Spheres,” Elia squeaked as the wizard raised his arms high. Martext rolled his eyes.
“You shall transcribe all that I say and do,” the Enchanter said sternly, with a pointed look at Martext. His eyes drifted across the others as he went on. “Mister Wythernssen, in the corner there, will also document my process. Once you have seen my work, your task will be to take your notes, and observations, and translate them into your process.”
“You want us to replicate your spells,” Elia said uneasily, shifting her fingers on her tablet.
“If you can,” he said, raising an eyebrow tauntingly. “Master Torvald, our future King, has many followers. Their numbers swell each day. Were I to spend every waking hour enchanting masks for them—to say nothing of swords, guns, or armor— I would drive myself to death before a quarter of his force was so equipped.” He smiled, pointing a ringed finger in the air. “But if a machine can hammer away at that routine night and day, while I serve my Master in more sophisticated ways… I should think the benefits are clear.”
“To you,” Martext said flatly.
The wizard furrowed his brow, trying to decide if he’d heard the Civic correctly. “Sir, uh, Enchanter Iimar,” Lundin jumped in, searching for a new subject, “do you have papers we might refer to as we, uh, observe your process? Books? Scrolls? Any documentation that might help us appreciate further your Enchanting skill?”
“Diagrams, charts, snatches of language,” he said, waving impatiently at a rack of scroll cases in the darkest corner of the room. Lundin craned his neck to look. “But you don’t need them now. Now,” the wizard said, closing his eyes and breathing deeply, “all you need to do is observe… absorb… and prepare to be amazed.”
Martext snorted.
Iimar the Enchanter whirled around in a burgundy rage, balling his hands into fists. “Enough!” he shouted. He kicked his bare feet through the mandala, sending plumes of colored sand flying through the air. Martext shielded his face as the sand flew at him.
“Enough of your muttering! You are the prisoner! You are the pupil here! I know secrets, Petronaut, that would keep you sleepless for the rest of your days!”
“He’s sorry! He’s sorry, Master Iimar,” Lundin said, dropping his tablet and stepping forward into the sand as Iimar stalked forward. He interposed himself between Martext and the wizard, raising his hands placatingly. Iimar’s black eyes were flashing. “This process is so new to us; please, show us what—”
“I don’t think your subjects take me seriously, Mister Lundin.”
“No, Enchanter, they do—”
“I seem to be a joke to them.”
Lundin shook his head hard enough it made him dizzy. “No, no, no. I promise, we’ll do better at showing the proper respect.” He shot a glance back at Martext, who had retreated a step or two with his notes protectively in front of his chest. The tech was clearly startled by Iimar’s outburst, but showed no inclination to put on a contrite face. Help me out here, Lundin thought, exasperated.
