Magebane (20 page)

She couldn't see how. He was only one boy, and it was hardly a surprise that there were people on the other side of the Great Barrier, after all these years. Soon enough, the Barrier would fall and the people of Evrenfels would once more be part of that world. It didn't much matter to her what that world was like, as long as it didn't include MageLords or Mageborn . . . and she intended to make certain of
that
.

In any event, in the morning she'd know as much as the boy about that outside world. If any adjustments to her plan were necessary, she could decide on them then.

She closed her eyes, and within two minutes was fast asleep.

As the winter night wore away, she stirred only once, when Mousebreath returned from his nighttime perambulations, jumped onto the bed, and curled up against her, purring loudly.

WHEN ANTON WOKE AGAIN, in the bright light of a wintry morning, the young woman—Brenna—he had seen in the night was there, this time accompanied by a thin, neat man wearing a dark-blue tunic and trousers. Something indefinable about him made Anton think, “Doctor.”

Brenna confirmed his guess, nodding to the man. “Thank you, Healer Eddigar. You may leave us.” Although her accent was as thick as ever, the fog in his head seemed to have lifted, and he found it easier to follow than when he had first heard it.

Healer Eddigar nodded. “The guards are right outside if you need anything,” he said, his accent as thick as Brenna's. He gave Anton a cool, dispassionate look. “His leg should heal normally now. He may rise with a crutch when he is ready.”

I'm right here!
Anton thought.
Probably thinks I can't understand him
.

Well, then. “Thank you, Healer,” he said.

Eddigar started, but did not reply. He just gave Anton a hard look, then nodded to Brenna and swept out through the inner door. A moment later Anton heard the outer door open and close.

“Good morning,” Brenna said to him then. “Do you remember meeting me last night?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “You introduced yourself then. Brenna, right? And then you said—” And suddenly, so fast and hard that, like a punch to the stomach, it drove a sob from his throat, he remembered what else she had said. “The Professor—”

Brenna pressed her lips together and her eyes turned bright. “I'm afraid it's true.” She reached out and covered his hand, lying on the coverlet, with her own. “I'm so sorry. He was dead when I saw him. There was nothing anyone could do. But you are lucky to be alive yourself.”

He knew that. A crash into the trees was every airshipman's nightmare. Only an in-flight fire was more terrifying. But he didn't feel lucky. He felt . . . lost.
What do I do now? Professor? What am I supposed to do now?

No answer came floating through the ether from beyond the grave. The Professor had believed in no gods, no soul, no hope for life beyond that enjoyed in this world in the physical body. Anton shared, or thought he shared, that same hard-nosed, practical belief . . . or lack of belief. But now he wished the Professor had been wrong, and that, as the god-followers claimed, words of comfort from the newly dead could truly be heard if only he prayed hard enough.

Brenna cleared her throat and said gently, “Your name is Anton?”

He blinked away the tears that had fogged his vision and said, “Yes.”

“That's all? Just Anton?”

He felt his face flush, but she couldn't be expected to know that in Hexton Down his single name was a mark of shame, that with no known father he could not take a family name until he was twenty-one years of age.

But then, he wasn't in Hexton Down anymore, was he? And though he was still three years from his age of majority, he knew already what name he would take. “Anton . . . Carteri.”
That's for you, Professor
, he thought.
I always meant to take your name when I came of age. I just did it a little too early . . .

. . . and a little too late.
His eyes stung with fresh tears.

“Well, Anton Carteri. You are in the manor of Lord Falk, Minister of Public Safety for His Royal Majesty Kravon, King of Evrenfels, Holder of the Keys to the Lesser and Great Barriers.”

Anton blinked. None of those names or titles meant anything to him. “Congratulations,” he said. “You managed all that with one breath.”

She grinned, her nose crinkling and her eyes twinkling and her apparent age suddenly dropping several years. “I practice a lot,” she said. “Well, Anton Carteri. Would you like to join me for breakfast? As you heard, Healer Eddigar said,” she managed a credible impersonation of the Healer's rather pompous tone, “you may get up if you use a crutch.”

As soon as she mentioned breakfast, Anton realized he was starving. “Would I!” He started to fling back the covers, realized something, and hesitated. “Um, Brenna? I'll, uh, need some clothes . . . ?”

Her grin widened just a bit; there was something mischievous about it. “Of course, Anton. Lord Falk . . . my guardian . . . summoned a tailor from the village. He's waiting outside with a selection of clothing. I'll send him in.”

“Thank you,” Anton said.

“Don't mention it,” Brenna said. “You are our guest here. Whatever you need, you have only to ask.” She turned and went out through the door, closing it behind her; a moment later it opened again to reveal an elderly gentleman in a plain black tunic and leggings, arms laden with clothes.

The man offered him underwear, then turned his back while Anton swung his legs out from under the covers. He glanced down at the injured one. It bore an angry red scar, and certainly it was sore . . . very sore, he realized when he tried to put weight on it . . . but how had the wound closed so rapidly? Without a single stitch?

Puzzled, he pulled on the underwear, then let the elderly gentleman measure him.

Half an hour later, dressed in plain black trousers and an open-necked, rather puffy-sleeved white shirt (the tailor having promised to provide him with a wider selection of clothes within a day or two), and also washed, shaved, and combed, Anton found himself sitting down to breakfast in a flower-bedecked breakfast nook filled with rainbows from the sun streaming through the chiseled edges of the many tiny panes of glass above and all around.

Brenna, who had stood as he hobbled in with the help of the crutch he had found leaning against the foot of his bed, sat opposite him, took her napkin, and delicately spread it on her lap, the linen, white as the snow outside, in brilliant contrast to the thick red velvet of her dress.

Anton wondered if he'd hit his head harder than he'd thought when he crashed. That was
not
the sort of the thing he usually noticed.

But then the food arrived, and he forgot everything else. In fact, he was so focused on the fresh bread, butter, honey, scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage piled on his plate, that it took him a moment to realize the servant who had put it before him had only three fingers, made of jointed, polished wood. He started, his first bite of sausage halfway to his mouth, and looked up.

The servant had no face, either: just a round wooden head emblazoned with a symbol in paint that glowed faintly blue. A chill air flowed off of it, as though it were made of ice.

He gaped at it, sausage momentarily forgotten. “What—?”

“Hmm?” Brenna had calmly taken a bite of bread and honey. She followed his gaze. “Oh, the mageservant. We have quite a few; more of those than the human kind, actually. Lord Falk likes them. Now, please try the eggs, they're from our prize-winning—”

“It doesn't have a face!”

“Of course not. What would it do with one?” Brenna cocked her head to one side. “You've never seen a mageservant before?”

“No.” Now that he was over the shock, Anton was fascinated. He put down his fork. “So how is it done? Is it like a . . . a marionette? Does it have a motor inside? Or clockwork? How on Earth can you give it instructions to do something as complicated as serving? Perforated tape, or—?”

“Motor? Perforated tape?” Brenna frowned. “I don't know what those words mean. No, it has nothing inside. Though I suppose you
could
think of it as a marionette, except of course it's moved by magic, not strings. Its duties are written into the spell that motivates it, and can be changed as need. The spell is renewed once a week or so.”

Anton stared at her. “Magic? You . . . the people here . . . you believe in magic?”

From the expression on her face, you'd have thought he'd suddenly sprouted horns and a tail. “Do we ‘believe in magic?' What an odd question. It's like asking, ‘Do you believe in the sun?' There's not much choice, is there? I mean, it just
is
.”

Anton felt like a shipwrecked sailor floundering in a tossing sea. “But . . . magic . . . it doesn't exist. Not where I come from. There are legends from long ago, and some people enjoy reading magical-adventure novels or going to the wonder plays, but those are just stories. You're saying that here magic is real?” The mageservant stood by, impassive. Anton suddenly got up and limped around the mannequin, looking for strings or pulleys. “It's not a trick?” He reached out a finger toward the glowing blue symbol on the mageservant's “face.”

“Don't—” Brenna said sharply, but not before Anton's finger contacted the blue-glowing paint. He jerked it back at once.

“Ow!” For a moment he thought the symbol had been hot, and he'd burned himself; but when he examined his fingertip he saw a dead-white patch and realized it had actually been intensely cold; he'd frozen the skin.

“—touch it,” Brenna finished. She sighed. “Most children learn not to touch symbols when they're toddlers.”

“I can see why.” He shook his hand ruefully. “You can actually use magic!”

“Not me personally,” she said softly. “I am a Commoner, not Mageborn. But Lord Falk, whose house this is . . . and whom you'll meet shortly . . . is a very powerful mage. And this house is built on one of the veins of the Evrenfels magic lode, and above a great source of energy, an eternally burning rock gas flame deep in the cellars. Falk has more mageservants than any other MageLord in the Kingdom, I've been told. More than the Palace, in fact, where they prefer to use Commoners.”

The mageservant, which had stood as still as furniture while Anton examined it, suddenly came to life, making Anton jump back. It turned on its spindly wooden legs and clattered on oversized wooden feet to the sideboard, where it filled a glass with red-purple juice from a moisture-dewed crystal decanter. It brought the glass back and held it out to Anton. As he took it gingerly from the three-fingered hand and stared again at the convoluted glowing symbol on the blank wooden head, he thought,
Magic is real
.

He could almost see the Professor's scowl. “No, it is
not
,” he would have said. “There is a rational explanation. We just have to find it.”

Just as he had been convinced that the Anomaly must also have some natural explanation, Anton thought.
But then, if magic works . . . and it obviously does . . . than I suppose it
is
natural. By definition: anything that exists is natural.
He smiled a little sadly. Though it had been his thought, that had sounded very much like Professor Carteri.

The Professor would have been the first to admit that natural philosophers did not yet know all the secrets of the workings of the universe. Confronted with the undeniable, he would have made room within his beliefs for magic . . . and then he would have set about learning everything he could about it.

Grief, momentarily forgotten, crashed in again. Professor Carteri was dead. Anton was alone, utterly alone, in a place far stranger than either of them had ever dreamed of finding inside the Anomaly. Anton stepped away from the bizarrely animated wooden figure and sat down hard in his chair. Head down, he blinked furiously to clear the embarrassing evidence of weakness from his vision, then raised his eyes to see Brenna looking at him compassionately . . . and curiously . . . from across the table. She smiled, and a bit of the strangeness receded. At least he seemed to be a guest, not a prisoner, in this strange new world . . . and to have found a most pleasant guide to its mysterious ways.

And at least they weren't going to starve him. The delectable smells wafting from his plate drove away his fears and doubts, at least for the moment, and he gave himself over to filling the deep, empty pit his stomach had become while he slept.

When the need to eat had become a little less urgent, Anton began to ask questions. The answers he received sounded like they came straight from one of those cheap magical-adventure novels he'd mentioned to Brenna. He would have dismissed it all as ludicrous fantasy if not for the unmistakable, solid fact of the mageservant, quickly and efficiently clearing away the dishes while Brenna talked.