The Mask And The Master (Mechanized Wizardry Book 2) (30 page)

“—are they magical before or after the wizard snips them up?”  Dame Miri walked to the closest one.  She gingerly raised a finger to the light circle.  He had a rush of irrational nervousness as she touched it, rubbing its edge between her thumb and forefingers.  “Doesn’t feel any different now than it does right out of the pouch,” she said, inspecting her fingers.  There was no white on them, which suggested that whatever the color change was, it was internal, structural, not some kind of secretion. 

“We could ask Ronk,” Elia said.

Miri pointed at Elia in affirmation.  “Write our man back home!  What do you say, Horace?  I mean, when we blow Colonel Yough out of the water with this demo tomorrow night, and the Army decides to move spell boxes into production?  We’re going to need way more than these two
ojing
.”

“And requisitioning them from the wizards wouldn’t go too well,” Lundin said, scratching his cheek.

“Maybe they don’t have to be made from anything fancy,” Elia said, shifting a disk one centimeter to the right.  “Maybe you just take any old leather and, you know, enchant it.  Cast a spell of
ojing-ing
!”

“Well, here’s the thing.  As far as I know, magic only works on something that’s alive.  A human.  A dog (sometimes).  You know, something with a mind.  I haven’t read anything about spells on objects.”

“Right.  What would the Enunciation look like?”  Miri agreed.  “Does one ladle have a different name from another?”

“I don’t know about ladles,” Martext said, “but you hear myths about magic things all the time.  Archest’s magic axe.  Ursulli’s magic cloak.”

“
Sing ye lassies, dance ye folk / for ‘Sulli and her magic cloak
,” Dame Miri sang, grinning.  “Great story.  But don’t try to tell me it’s, you know, historical.”

Martext raised an eyebrow.

“She goes to the swamp of the land squids!  She wrestles a four-eyed cat-bear with a tongue for a tail!  Come on!  If you’re going to say enchanting is a real thing because it’s in the myths, where are all those monsters?”

“Hiding?”

“It, um, seems to me,” Elia put in, “that the fact that we still have a
concept
of enchanting means that lots of people used to do it, or try to. So maybe someone still is!”

“I just want it established that, if we get molested by land squids because we go down this road, we all know who to blame.”  Elia giggled and Martext grinned as Miri pointed a quavering, dramatic finger at each of them. 

“Spheres, if the land squids get us, the last thing I’ll be worrying about is who to blame,” Lundin said.  “Enchanting’s a good thought, guys.  I’ll ask Ronk if it’s as simple as writing a spell of
ojing-ing
and cranking the circles out.  And if it’s not that, I’ll find out what it
does
take to get new
ojing
.”

“—OrtinIthBerandisJunnEmSh’MaiDoptari—”

And, again, the only voice in the room was the high-pitched spell box, like a child mumbling her prayers as fast as she could to get back outside to play.  Elia looked over at the hourglass on the worktable, its volume of sand calibrated to the current length of a pair of disks.  “Another minute to the next switch,” she said.

And another hour until this is done
.  Lundin rubbed his face.  His fear was still there, scraping at the walls of his stomach, but pure impatience was crowding out nearly everything else at this point.  If the spell was going to give him eagle eyes, he wanted it done so they could document every Sphere-sainted moment of that blissful success.  And if it was going to melt his eyeballs, he just wanted them melted so they could get on with the next trial.  (And take him to the master of physic.)

But waiting was the only thing there was to do.  And even when the spell took effect, amid all the observation, the waiting would start again.  There were trying a new formulation in the Illustration this time around.  Ronk had drawn their attention to a series of rarely-used durational constructions that had fallen out of favor since the heyday of Old Harue.  Most wizards didn’t care exactly how long a spell lasted, since magic was, after all, subject to the whims of the Mobinoji, and trying to exercise too much control was pointless.  And most people who paid for spells wanted those spells to last as long as possible.  So the demand for spells with a specified duration—especially a short duration—simply wasn’t there in the magical marketplace.

But for their purposes, being able to establish a clear ending point was going to be mighty helpful.  Lundin wasn’t about to go testing the Greatsight spell blindly, so to speak, in front of Colonel Yough; they absolutely needed to do a trial beforehand.  But if they stuck to the self-imposed schedule, the time between this test and their demonstration was going to be less than twenty-four hours.  He thought back to the friendly Sir Kelley, who had been beaming, slapping backs, and unhinging his jaw for about eight days before the spell of friendship had worn off completely.  Hard to say anything conclusively from one data point, of course, but it sure seemed likely that if they didn’t try to put a time limit on Greatsight number one, he’d still be under its effects when they fired up the spell box in front of the Colonel for round two.

So, they’d worked up some language to have the test spell cut off about an hour after it kicked in.  At least, he hoped it would be an hour.  From the archaic texts Ronk had given them as source material, it seemed like time in Mabinanto was measured in
barendoons
; a
barendoon
, helpfully, being the amount of time it took an adult to make one circuit of the
barendoon
.
 
“I have no idea,” Ronk had replied to the obvious question, his face crinkled in a smile, “but from context, walking it took about eighteen minutes.”  Ronk had had some success at putting durations on his spells, but he cautioned Lundin: “A
barendoon
is also a measure of distance—”

“Let me guess; the length of one trip ‘round the
barendoon
?”

“—so just watch your inflections and you’ll be fine.”

Watch my inflections
, Lundin thought sourly, resting his elbows on his knees. 
I’ll tell that to the wooden mouth with the leather tongue over there
.  If the duration language worked at all, he wouldn’t be surprised one bit if the spell cut out not after one hour but after he walked three laps around the fort. 
The Army would just love that.  Real practical.

Time passed.  He made some coffee on the pot-bellied stove and poured mugs all around for the team.  The beans were old, but they’d been roasted so dark that nothing about them much mattered anymore.  Mugs poured from a brewed-up pot of charcoal would have had put the same bitter, charred taste; the kind of coffee that keeps you awake less from its herbal properties and more because you don’t dare go to sleep with a mouth that still tastes like that.

“Good coffee,” Willl with three L’s said, stirring his sugar in the mug with a celery stick.  Lundin smiled tightly at him and went back to the chair.

“—LundinDeliaBohockHoraceArthurLundinDeliaBohock.”

The room was suddenly quiet.  Lundin frowned.  The jerky rhythms of the Enunciation still seemed to be hovering in the air; he must have heard his name and his birthplace—a personal detail they were trying out to make the Enunciation more individualized— repeated hundreds of times.  There was his coffee cup, empty, on the floor next to his chair.  But hadn’t he just sat down to sip it?  Time was blurry in his head.  Maybe the team had let him doze off in the chair.  He blinked, rubbing his eyes—

—and then he looked around for the first time.

“All done,” Elia said with a yawn, flicking off the spell box.  The background thrum of the motors finally died down.

“Well, Mister Lundin?”  Martext asked, raising his stylus.  “What do you see?”

“Horace?”  Dame Miri said, taking a quick step forward.  Her pupils grew a little wider and a breathing minutely faster as she looked at his face.  “What’s wrong?”

“Are you okay?”  Willl with three L’s said, standing up from his stool at the wall.

“Just a minute,” Lundin said through the tears.  There was a huge smile on his face.

*****

It was nearly one o’clock in the midsummer night as the soldier walked the inside patrol.  Her sword was a comfortable weight on her hip, and the musket in her hands was packed and ready.  She glanced up to the walls, and caught sight of the lazy guardsman half asleep on top of the northwest bastion.  She whistled sharply through her teeth, and he straightened, looking down over his shoulder into the courtyard.  She shook her head at him disapprovingly, and he pantomimed falling asleep even more deeply, with his head lolling on his shoulder.  The soldier smirked and turned away.

“Halt,” she said automatically as she saw the figures coming towards her.  But she caught herself before raising her musket.

“You’re still out here?” she said to the knot of Petronauts scampering through the night, jotting down notes and muttering intently to each other.

Lundin was walking in the middle of the group, eyes wide, standing up very straight.  “Just out for a walk,” he said, smiling broadly.

“I already passed you once,” she said, suspiciously.  “That’s a long walk you’re taking.”

“It’s a nice night,” Lundin said dreamily, looking up past the walls.

“Besides, we’re making good progress.  Less than two
barendoons
to go!”  Elia whispered, excited. 

“So you think.”

“Well, look, our closest calculations say—”

Frowning, the soldier opened her mouth.  Then she thought better of it.  She simply nodded at them as they walked past, Dame Miri apologizing smoothly and sincerely for any disturbance they were causing.  Off the Petronauts went, beside themselves with delight over something as mundane as a moonlit walk. 
Must be nice to have such simple lives
, the soldier sighed, walking her beat through the night.

Chapter Five

Yough’s Verdict

Colonel Yough leaned forward with her forearms resting on her knees.  Lieutenant Colonel Farmingham was sitting dutifully on her right side, his shiny black boot crossed over his knee and a mostly blank slate resting in his lap.  The half-a-dozen other chairs lined up on the far wall of the briefing room were empty.  The officers who had been occupying them were all in low conversation by the refreshment table.  The clank of a fork on a dish was audible above the keening spell box as a tall, rail-thin Lieutenant dug in to his third slice of fruitcake.

Lundin felt a little cramped after spending so many work-hours in Haberstorm Hall, with its vaulted ceilings and uncluttered expanses of flagstone.  The briefing room on the second floor of Fort Campos was spacious enough, especially with the long oaken table normally in the center of the room shunted out to the hallway for the time being, and the chairs pushed all the way back to the walls.  The light gray tiles on the floor weren’t entirely cheerless, interspersed with a few silver-and-black ones to break up the pattern, and a few oil paintings of dogs at hunt or chickens being slaughtered livened up the walls.  But the mood was still on the oppressive side.  It had much more to do with the bald skepticism on the faces of the snacking officers, huddled by the table, than the space itself.  Lundin adjusted himself on his wooden chair and sent an appealing glance to Dame Miri.

“Colonel Yough,” Miri said, taking the hint, “Please feel free to grab something to eat or drink.  We’re just about to hit the Enunciation, so it’ll still be a few minutes before the spell finishes up.”

“About nine minutes and twenty seconds,” Elia said, counting disks and looking up from the hourglass.

“I’d like to focus,” Colonel Yough mumbled, her eyes still fixed on Lundin.  Dame Miri caught his eye and shrugged.  Yough had been staring at him intently for the entire spell, occasionally peppering him with questions about why he shifted this way or that, or what that expression on his face meant.  Clearly, she wasn’t planning on relaxing now. 
At least she’s taking this seriously,
Lundin thought, mustering up a smile for her.

“How you feeling there, Mister Lundin?” Farmingham said, putting on a hearty voice through his boredom.

“Just fine, sir,” Lundin said.  “Like I said, there’s no pain; no anxiety; no, you know, tingling.  Having a spell cast on you doesn’t feel like anything’s happening at all.”

“I wonder why?” one of the officers said, just loud enough to be heard.  Another one snorted into her punch.

“That said,” Lundin went on, trying not to let his voice get testy, “something is definitely happening.  The
ojing
prove it.”

“We designed the spell box to be big on results, not big on theatrics,” Dame Miri said.  “A wizard can give you a better floor show, if you like that sort of thing.  We just want our machine to get to the goal with as little fuss as possible; kind of like the Army,” she said, as if the idea had just occurred to her.

“I’d say so,” Farmingham said, nodding.  Yough nodded too, still watching Lundin.  The amused chatter from the officers faded away, their mood growing downright sullen in the silence that followed.

“Next disks!”  Elia piped up, leaping into action.  She and Willl with three L’s opened the case and removed the last disks of the Illustration, setting them gingerly on the tablecloth behind them.  Then Elia picked up the voice disk for the Enunciation, with all the linguistic information coded on it in patterns of holes and bent metal. Each flick of the musical tines against the holes would create the appropriately pitched sound to approximate the rise-and-fall of Mabinanto speech.  This spell box was the updated model, with a stiffer comb and more expensive alloyed disks that could withstand high-speed casting without warping or snapping.  Anytime a piece of metal chipped off one of the disks, it invariably caused a disastrous jam in the gearworks below. 
Spheres be praised, we haven’t had a mess like that with this model yet
, Lundin thought, watching them work.