Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Prophecy, page 6
Cymric rolled over onto his stomach. Yawning to suppress the slight effort of the spell, he snapped his fingers and pointed at a log. A jet of green flame the length of his forearm hovered, then struck the log, igniting it instantly.
Leandra’s shoulders dropped an inch or two. Cymric sat up. He repeated the spell with each of the other logs until the pit was ablaze with strong orange flame.
Leandra pursed her lips, wiggled them a bit, then returned the flint and steel to her backpack. She pulled out a cloth bundle, which turned out to contain bread and cheese. Drawing a knife from a concealed boot-sheath, Leandra then proceeded to carve the bread and cheese into manageable chunks. With a sigh as she looked over at Cymric, she reached into her pack to withdraw a smaller bundle. She tossed it to the him. The cheesecloth was sticky, making it difficult to undo. Leandra pointed at it with her knife.
“It’s one of those damn cinnamon things. Probably a bit smashed from a day in my pack. Smelled good this morning, so I saved you one.”
Cymric carefully peeled off the last layer of cheesecloth, licking his fingers when he was done. He broke off a piece of the roil, drawing in a full, deep breath of cinnamon before taking a bite. The first taste actually made his mouth sting a bit from the anticipation and hunger forcing tongue and glands to work a bit faster than normal. Then came a low “ummm” from deep in his throat. He had to wipe his mouth with the cheesecloth to stop himself from drooling. The second bite was all gummy texture and hints of cinnamon. The third was the sweetness of the glaze. Delicious. So you finally got one thing out of Twin Chin.
Too bad the swordmaster had to get it for him. Too bad she had to give it to him after he was done being a cad. Too bad that now you feel too much of an idiot to thank her for it.
“It’s good. Really good.”
Leandra smiled, a full smile rather than one of her little tic-smiles. She tossed him a hunk of bread, then a piece of cheese. “Chew on some of this. The trail is easier if you eat food that sticks with you.”
Cymric reluctantly dropped what was left of the cinnamon roll. The cheese was a little hard for his taste, but it went well with the bread. Leandra pulled a waterskin from her pack, popped the plug. Remembering his own ale skin, Cymric scrambled for his pack as well. He offered some to Leandra, who shook her head. Cymric unscrewed the cap, took a sip, then felt his face freeze face as his stomach let him know the last batch of ale was not yet forgotten. When Leandra laughed, Cymric felt the heat rising in his cheeks. He returned the ale to his pack, thinking how he must look. His laugh was quieter than Leandra’s.
“Nice face,” she said.
“We wizards pride ourselves on communicating volumes through subtle nuances of expression. For example, that was my ‘thank you, but I don’t think ale is an appropriate companion for this meal’ expression.”
“I thought it was ‘try it and it’s going to come back up’.”
“You are obviously not well-versed in the facial ciphers of wizards. Fortunately, you have a master expressioner at your disposal.”
“Along with a wizard, at no extra cost?”
“Indeed, milady swordmaster. Plus so much more.” Leandra laughed again. Cymric smiled. This was certainly better than this afternoon. He had an idea. Taking a piece of bread in one hand, he topped it with a piece of cheese in a flourish of the other. Then he raised and lowered his eyebrows over eyes narrowed into his “crafty” expression. Speaking in a whisper, Cymric named every type of cheese he could think of, his voice gradually rising through the list. Then he cast the spell he had used on the logs, and the cheese burst into flames. He put out the flames with considerable huffing, along with a lot of unnecessary pantomime. The cheese melted more or less evenly along the length of bread.
Cymric broke the bread into two pieces and offered one to Leandra, a thin strand of cheese trailing back to his own piece. Leandra waved him off, then accepted the piece when Cymric gave her his puppy-dog expression. The two sat silently for a moment, enjoying how the melted cheese had softened and warmed the bread. Leandra raised the bread over her head, cheese side up.
“A toast to the things wizards can do.”
Cymric laughed, then hoped the pun was intentional. Her expression was back to its usual inscrutability.
“My thanks. A toast to the swordmaster who rescued me from Twin Chin and introduced me to whitewater.” Her eyes flickered at that. Cymric put forward his piece of bread, and Leandra brushed hers against it. Then both bit into their breads simultaneously. Dinner ended cordially, the small talk made cozier by the fire and the dark that surrounded the camp. As Leandra was spreading out her bedroll, Cymric went to get the axe, grunting as he pulled it from the ground. Seeing her quizzical expression, he stopped and gestured clumsily toward the trees.
“I thought I’d replace the logs I used for the fire ... so you wouldn’t have to do it.”
“Ever chopped wood before?”
Cymric shook his head.
“Then you’ve never chopped wood in the dark. It’s a bad idea.”
“Ah, I defer to your swordmaster’s wisdom.”
“No, you defer to my common sense. I am a swordmaster who has actually lived in the world. Plus so much more.”
Cymric cleared his throat, then gently set the axe back in place. Leandra was climbing into her bedroll, turning her back to the fire. Cymric was puzzled.
“You sleep in your chain mail?”
“Sometimes.”
“I’ve heard that sleeping in armor is really uncomfortable.”
“It is.”
“Oh,” he said. “But one more thing. I was wondering if I could look at the necklace. This time I’d like to examine it while I’m sober.”
Leandra rolled over to face Cymric, her scrutiny making him blink. “The necklace is all I have of my past. It’s important to me.”
“But you’ve offered it to me as payment,” Cymric insisted softly. “Am I not entitled to examine it to know more of the nature of its magic?”
Leandra’s face darkened. She delayed a moment before the torrent of words began. “I don’t know who my parents were. I don’t know my birthday. I have only a rough idea of where I was bom. But I do know that necklace has been with me ever since—” Leandra caught herself. Cymric suddenly wanted to apologize even though he had no idea what he’d done wrong. He kept his mouth shut as he watched Leandra struggle for control of her face. Then her expression softened. She watched the fire for a few moments before reaching a hand under the neck of her armor to extract the necklace. She tossed it to Cymric, who leaned off-balance to catch it.
“Take good care of it.”
Cymric nodded. Leandra looked him over once more, then rolled over again. Her breathing slowed almost instantly. Cymric stared at the fire, letting his thoughts dance in time with the flames.
Leandra seemed agreeable enough, if prone to the occasional outburst. Dinner had certainly been more pleasant than the trip to camp. But she asked for reason to trust him—and she wanted it before they left Corthy. Was this job worth kowtowing to someone who demanded that Cymric demonstrate his trustworthiness? Besides, how could he do it? She’d saved him a cinnamon roll. That could mean she was either a basically decent person or else needed him enough to maintain a front of decency. The outburst confirmed that there was a lot Leandra wasn’t telling him. Her ritual looked sophisticated, her blade mastery most impressive; she was probably more accomplished in sword magic than he was with spells. Why did she hire an only partially successful wizard passing through a nowhere river village? She offered the necklace as payment. The necklace was intriguing, a deep magic, a valuable magic. Cymric didn’t think it was something he could ever bring himself to sell. The magic within the necklace could prove more valuable than any coin he could earn hawking it.
Then there was the whole aspect of adventure— traveling with a swordmaster to unravel a deep mystery. When younger, Cymric used to spend hours huddled in the kitchen waiting for the ovens to be fired, keeping himself warm listening to tales of the heroes of legend. He had wanted to be a hero. The idea still tugged at him, but he now knew that heroing didn’t pay as well as the legends suggested. Nor did the legends usually mention all the would-be heroes who failed before the saga’s hero came onto the scene, their lives and efforts written off in a line such as, “He entered the kaer alone, passing through the gates as had hundreds before him; no one had yet returned.”
Cymric examined the necklace, dazzled by the reflections of the silver chain in the firelight. The chain gleamed with a colder, more distant light; a crescent moon on hard-packed mountain snow. The hand seemed unremarkable, for all its gold and silver sheen. The crystal sphere was cool to the touch of Cymric’s probing finger, and remained so even when the fire’s heat warmed the chain. The rune inside continued its cycle of change, the rhythm and speed seeming to respond to the heat.
Cymric looked over at the sleeping Leandra, Experimenting with someone else’s enchanted property without permission was always a breach of etiquette. Cymric knew that it was also a crime in parts of the Kingdom of Throal, places such as the city of Tuakan, for one. Knowledge of the link between the pattern of an item and the pattern of the wielder could yield an advantage for an unscrupulous investigator. Cymric was feeling somewhat scrupulous today, enough so that he wouldn’t try to harm Leandra should he stumble across any key knowledge. One more glance at her told him she was sound asleep. She would never have to know.
He looped the necklace around the end of his staff, then carefully lowered his staff into the flame, leaving it there for as long as he could hold his breath. He took a clean breath, spit on his finger, touched the crystal. His finger sizzled against the hand and he winced reflexively, but the sphere itself was cool.
Someone had bothered to enchant the sphere to resist fire. Or else the sphere was so fortified by its basic enchantment as to remain unscathed by natural flames. Either way, a good sign of value.
What did the necklace do? Cymric studied the rune inside the sphere. It changed on a regular basis. Taking his pulse at his neck, Cymric timed the rune’s changes to every twelve to fifteen heartbeats, though he couldn’t determine any sequence to the change. He licked his lips, glanced once more at Leandra, then cast a spell.
His astral sense could crudely see the rune’s changes. Each time it changed, Cymric saw a rough sphere, as if someone had wound glowing blue threads of wildly varying widths into a ball. The exact moment the rune changed, dozens of strands pulled away from the spheres as if yanked by invisible hooks. By the next heartbeat, the sphere would snap back into shape.
Those must be threads similar to my spell threads; perhaps my wizardry can pry a thread or two apart just long enough for me to see inside the sphere. Cymric formed tendrils of thought, slowly insinuating them across the astral space between him and the sphere. He tried to move his thoughts in time with the pulling-strands on the sphere. Four times he tried, four times the sphere closed tight again before Cymric could prop it open. The fifth time he succeeded, but again the sphere snapped back into shape, cleanly severing his tendrils of will. The shock popped Cymric’s vision back into the external world. He was sweating.
The rune changed, this time tinged by a red glow. Cymric blinked in disbelief as it changed once more, the red glow becoming even stronger. His hand trembled as he watched. A change, another, then another, the red glow appearing every time. It did seem to be getting stronger. Cymric forced himself to calm, then back into astral sensing. He watched the glowing yarn pull and re-form a sphere. Spectacular work, wizard. You ’ye broken the necklace; now Leandra is going to have your guts for breakfast.
Maybe he could undo the damage he’d done. Cymric tried to weave a thread. He failed. Then failed again. He had to calm down, but that seemed an impossibility. Cymric pushed his thoughts away, concentrated on seeing the thread. Wispy, shaky, but of one piece; Cymric finally wove a thread through the pattern of his spell. He cast to dispel the magic now working on the necklace. Maybe he could undo his mistake.
When the red glow finally vanished, Cymric grinned widely, suppressing a laugh. Now Leandra would never have to know how deeply he had pried into the necklace. He was just congratulating himself on wizardry triumphing again when the red glow suddenly returned brighter than ever with the rune change. Cymric froze. Did he wait, hoping the effect would diminish on its own? Did he wake Leandra? Did he let her sleep and deprive her of a chance to save the necklace? Did he let her sleep, hoping to get a decent head start before she could hunt him down? The necklace pulsed red, bathing his face and chest in its light.
Cymric shook Leandra. She opened her eyes groggily, giving him a dour look. The necklace pulsed red. Snapping upright like a trap snaring prey, she grabbed it from an unprotesting Cymric.
“Damn it, how long has this been glowing red?”
Cymric gargled something inarticulate, then shrugged his shoulders to indicate he hadn’t the faintest idea. He was working on a feeble protest of his innocence when Leandra spun her bedroll into a tight bundle.
“Run, wizard! They’re almost on top of us.”
7
While Cymric was sliding his backpack over his shoulders, Leandra began to kick dirt on the fire, then seemed to think better of it. She swung the necklace to her left. Pulse. Ahead of her, up the rise. A brighter pulse. Cymric saw her fiddle with the back of the chainmail near her neck, then she jerked her head downward from the rise, indicating the direction opposite the brighter pulse.
Scurrying down into the darkness, Cymric stumbled in the tall grass at the bottom of the rise, then caught himself with his staff and kept running. There was only enough moonlight to see dark outlines, not enough to pick up small variations such as fist-sized rocks or small indentations in the ground. Cymric banged his knee against a rock when his left boot stock in one of the latter, but he managed to keep his oath to a medium-loud grunt. He heard footsteps from ahead. It was Leandra come to pick him up off the ground.
“Walk now. Keep off the hills. Keep quiet. I’ll walk just behind you.”
Cymric took several deep breaths, exhaling as evenly as he could. When Leandra tapped his shoulder, he started to walk. Behind, he heard an indistinct babble of voices, then one rising above the rest. The voices spoke a language he didn’t recognize. Cymric kept moving, trying to pick spots where the grass was lower, hoping for less rustling noises and better footing. When his robes occasionally snagged on the grass with a scratchy sound, he cursed silently.
He never heard Leandra at all. When he turned to be sure she was still behind him, his eyes widened to see that she followed less than an arm’s length away. Leandra nod-(led, perhaps affirming that Cymric was going in the right direction. He resumed his progress.
Fire jetted upward from the campsite, the flame providing a dull light that bleached the world of color. Individual blades of grass turned a dull gray, and Cymric’s robe seemed a lighter shade of gray, with occasional shimmers. Leandra tapped his shoulder.
“Stop. Get down.”
Cymric dove to the dirt, but Leandra remained standing with the necklace cupped against her chest. A pulse of red diffused through the rings of her armor. She began to recite the words of a dwarven poem, interspersed with nonsense words that had the right guttural dwarven sound. She was asking the grass what it was like to be grass, how the rock felt in the earth, wondering why the river ran as it did, how the sjomich knew when winter came. Perhaps it was an elemental spell that would conceal Cymric and Leandra by blending them with the earth. Perhaps she was asking the elements for help.
Cymric sat up. The fire in the campsite rose to become a column half again as high as the trees. Dozens of fluttering specks swarmed around the flames. Bats? Cymric decided he needed a different selection of spell patterns than he currently held in astral space. He released his ignite spell. More reluctantly he also let astral sense slide back into his mind. That part was easy.
Assuming that Leandra was trying to avoid a fight rather than preparing for one, he thought that enhancing his ability to get out of the way of an attack would be a good idea. He selected a spell pattern to increase his ability to dodge a blow, then moved it from his mind to one of the spell matrices tucked into astral space. As Cymric concentrated, the pattern slid down the thread like a bead on a string, neatly folding into the matrix.
If there was a fight, he would also want offensive magic. Something fast with short range, or perhaps a slower spell with greater range? The group at the campsite were no doubt using spell magic on the fire, probably the same to summon the bats. Leandra seemed to have an idea of who or what was chasing them; it was reasonable that their pursuers had some idea of who they were hunting. If I were engaging Leandra, I’d want to hit her from as far away as possible. So the longer-range spell made sense.
The spell was more difficult to move into the matrix. The pattern stuck on the thread, requiring several attempts to loosen it. Then it resisted folding into the matrix. Cymric didn’t want to force the spell pattern, fearing he might damage it and then have to start with a fresh pattern from his mind. As he continued to twist the pattern delicately, it finally snapped into place.
Bats beat their wings overhead, hundreds of them flooding the field. They joined together into fluttering clouds, then broke out to sweep individually over areas of the field. One swooped low, flying between Cymric’s staff and his face, then turned back, passing within a wingspan of his nose. Other bats wheeled close, then darted up into the night. It seemed to Cymric that they didn’t react at all to his and Leandra’s presence; her magic must be working.
The bats clustered nearby, luminescent points bobbing among a swirl of wings like night lanterns on fishing boats in the Aras Sea. The points hovered together for a moment, then split apart. The bats soon followed. One of the glowing spots darted toward Leandra. Her chanting continued, even-voiced, clear.
Cymric saw that the spots were small glowing sacs on the back of each bat. Trailing underneath the bat were dimly luminescent tentacles, making the whole thing look like a cross between a jellyfish and a bat. The tentacles moved independentiy of the bat’s movements, following a different, invisible force. When the tentacles lashed one of the bat’s wings, the bat lurched, falling a good man-height before recovering. Then the bat altered course, away from the direction of the sting. Cymric rubbed his chest in sympathy with the bat. Those glowjellies had to be astral creatures, attached to the bats as the spiritcatcher had been attached to Cymric.
