The pilot, p.6
The Pilot, page 6
Most of the trees were gone, replaced by buildings that, from my perspective, were scaled for giants. But, of course, the giants needed somewhere to live too.
Over the hum of the fabricators came the refined but guttural voices of Karoshans, speaking both their native planetary language and Trade, shouting to be heard past the sounds of construction.
Thousands of them bustled through the city-in-progress, and only a few seconds after I arrived, I saw another troop carrier land and deposit another hundred before flying away.
A ghost materialized next to me, blowing together from grayish conjurations of the Aether. “Magnificent, their efficiency,” Melerius said, speaking through magical vibrations. “I’ve always admired Karoshan society.”
I felt a little depressed as I saw the effort they were putting into a temporary residence. “They place great value on the history of the place they live, and this planet has none. We’ll get them home as soon as we can.”
“Quite a few have already begun referring to this place as New Karosha. The Queen is…vexed.”
I looked at him in surprise and he chuckled at my expression. “To some, no history means a chance to write their own.”
“Maybe they’re wiser than I am.” I sighed. “This might end up being the only safe place in the galaxy.”
“I admit, I was surprised to hear you had time to teach a lesson, considering the urgency of your…hunt.”
“Mell’s breaking into a console we stole from Solstice, which is outside my expertise.” She was also working on a secret project of hers, which I didn’t mention. I wasn’t supposed to know about it anyway.
“While I wait, why not invest in the next generation?”
Quick footsteps came to a halt behind me. “We’re here for our lesson, Captain Vallenar!” Prince Rellask called.
I turned to face them with a smile. Prince Rellask and Princess Nasharia were escorted by both Melerius and a relatively young Karoshan mage in a purple mantle. She had hair-cables of glowing lavender, her skin was dark purple bordering on red, and she bowed respectfully to me when I turned around.
Nasharia imitated her guardian, but Rellask didn’t notice for a second. “I’ve been practicing!” he said. “Watch this!”
The Prince drew a wand made of gold-plated bone and held it in both hands, slowly tracing golden light into the air as he muttered incantations under his breath at the same time. It took all his concentration to form the spell, and the result was shaky. Uncertain. The Aether was barely moved.
Still, a nearby leaf caught fire and blackened, curling until it burned away to ash.
Rellask jabbed his wand at the pile of ashes where the leaf had once been, demonstrating his handiwork.
“How does it feel to use magic?” I asked him, instead of critiquing his performance.
“I want to learn more! Melerius says you can teach me fire magic!”
Melerius gave an ostentatious sigh, looking over his pupil as though silently urging him to tell the rest of the story.
Rellask’s shoulders slumped. “…He said you could teach me anything I wanted to learn. But I want to be an elementalist.”
“What did your mother have to say about that?”
Princess Nasharia answered first. “She said we should do what you told us.”
“So if you said we could learn fire spells, she would let us!”
Fire elementalism was still on the table. Shyrax’s own spells came from a variant of draconic magic, so her children should have some level of connection to fire. But I wasn’t going to promise that.
It would be best for him to follow his own talents and inclination rather than to decide what he would practice based on what sounded most exciting.
“When beginning to learn magic, it is best to try some simple tests first.” I conjured a flame in the palm of my hand. “Don’t you want to know how the Aether sees you?”
Rellask nodded eagerly, but Nasharia looked afraid.
“What does the Aether think about us?” she asked.
“We don’t know until we check, but it’s nothing to be afraid of. The Aether sees you based on what you’ve done and why. The good news is, that means you can change it.”
I held up the flame, showing it to them. “As you know, I have water elemental magic. My grasp on fire is…Well, this is pretty much the best I can do. Might as well use a lighter, right? You know why?”
Nasharia shook her head, but Rellask guessed. “Because the Aether said you were connected to water.”
I dismissed the flame, replacing it with a ball of water. With only a minor gesture, I set it to frothing like a sea in storm. “In my previous life, the one where I learned water magic, I almost drowned as a child. I leaned too far off the back of a boat and I fell in, and no one heard me call for help. I hadn’t learned much magic by then, only a little more than you, but I used my magic to keep me afloat.”
My conjured waves became a ring of water, which I set to twisting around their heads. Nasharia looked impressed, and her brother put his hand through it.
“I was supposed to be learning my father’s magic, but after that incident, I was most concerned with magic’s ability to save my life. I was afraid of drowning again, you see. So my father gave up and sent me to a water elementalist for training.”
After that, I came far closer to drowning far more often than I ever would have otherwise, to the point that I became used to it. Kyri, my mentor in water magic, had attempted to overcome my fear by showing me that drowning wasn’t so bad.
It did eventually work, but I don’t recommend the process.
And, for the record, drowning is so bad.
I banished the water. “There are a number of tests that can be used to determine your reflections in the Aether, and some are more fun than others. But first, I’d like to take a few guesses.”
I stood up straight, and the two Karoshan children imitated me; they were a little taller than I was, their hair-cables bright.
“Rellask, you’ve seen your mother’s magic, haven’t you? If you had to describe it in one word, what would you use?”
“Royal!” Rellask shouted. That hadn’t been the word I’d expected, but maybe I had seen too much Raion in him. I’d expected him to say “strong.”
“I bet you’ve tried it yourself, even though you weren’t supposed to,” I said. “And instead of a dragon appearing, it came out like a ball of fire.”
The Prince’s eyes were wide, but instead of addressing me, he turned to the ghost. “Melerius, you were right! He can read minds!”
Melerius cleared his throat and gave a hasty laugh. “I certainly didn’t say he could read minds, but rather that his insight into the Aether—”
“No, you said he could read minds! Right? You said he could see into my very soul, and that I should hold my secrets close if I wanted to hide them from him.”
Melerius covered his face in a hand, but before he could respond, I took over. “That’s an example of a secret you should have held close, Rellask.”
The Prince nodded eagerly.
“I can’t read minds,” I said, “but I can read the Aether. Have you ever had that feeling where you know what someone’s thinking even when they don’t say anything? Or when you’re sure something is about to go wrong right before it does?”
Both children nodded.
“That’s your mind putting together unconscious clues. Reading the Aether is like that, but linked to your magic. As a water elementalist, I could tell you when there was a dangerous monster in a sea, even when it was hidden deep in the ocean. As a navigational mage, I have an improved sense of direction and an affinity for finding hidden paths. How would you describe it, Melerius?”
“My own discipline is especially useful in this regard. I gain more insight from the Aether than most regarding the true nature of people. When I see Captain Vallenar here, for instance, it is as though there are many people crammed into one skin. It’s quite a striking impression, like seven people sharing the same space, but never quite in step.”
It was disturbing to hear my condition laid out so clearly, but also oddly fascinating. Especially given how Horizon had perceived me as seven people on our first meeting.
“The more experienced you become as a wizard, the more the Aether shows you,” I continued. “I don’t have anything as good for reading people as Melerius does, but I have another advantage: I can see things from seven perspectives. It’s a bit like having seven eyes. There’s nothing you can hide from me.”
As I spoke, I manifested five floating blue eyes around my head and stared with an exaggerated wide-eyed expression. Rellask laughed, but Nasharia looked ready to vomit.
Her brother grabbed her by the shoulders and moved her into my line of sight. “Her turn next!”
Nasharia looked up at me as though afraid I was about to hurl her into the chasm, but she was no harder to read than Rellask had been.
“You like to plan things out, don’t you?” I asked.
“She does!” Rellask cried, though that hadn’t been much of a guess. It was no surprise when Nasharia just nodded; she didn’t seem impressed, as indeed she shouldn’t have been.
I sketched a floating rune in midair. One of the fundamental pieces of a divination circle, such as the ones my pathfinding magic was based on. “Would you mind drawing this for me?”
She held a wand, this one silver and delicate, with a tip like an amethyst scalpel. “Can I draw it on the console?”
“You can do it with the wand,” I said. I’d seen her behavior when I tossed her a pathfinding circle earlier, and I saw how she held the wand now. She’d practiced, and she’d done so in a much more methodical way than her brother.
She hesitated, but then began to draw a symbol in honey-colored light. It hung there for a moment, resonating with the Aether, before it fizzled out.
“Well done!” Melerius said. He sounded astonished, though she’d only demonstrated one of the most fundamental building blocks of any mage.
“It didn’t do anything, though,” Nasharia said doubtfully.
“It would have, had you put it in the right context,” I explained. “Watch.”
I started with the same symbol she’d drawn, then waved my wand a few more times to complete the circle. The kids’ eyes bulged as I did that. The first rune, I’d drawn like a beginner, tracing every line of the rune in the air like I was drawing on a holographic screen.
The rest of the circle, I cast like a master. The Aether and I were familiar enough that I could signal my intentions with a couple of swishes. For an amateur watching, it would have been like seeing me draw a quick line down a sheet of paper and having that line unfold into a detailed portrait.
But a second later, the magic circle flashed and a gold light burned a few miles deeper into the endless caverns of the planet. “You’ve never felt the need to try your mother’s magic, have you?”
“We’re not supposed to copy her spells,” Nasharia said, glancing at Rellask.
“But they never appealed to you in the first place. I bet you planned out your day today. How much time did you allow for my lessons?”
“You told my mother it would be two hours.”
I dismissed my pathfinding spell and started casting another spell with my wand. “It’s good for mages to be methodical planners. On some planets, they say that’s one of the signs of a future wizard. But you’ll find that you should steer toward magics that are prepared in advance. Some of those include…”
A complex sealing spell floated in midair. I grabbed it and gave it a spin. “My own sealing and binding magic, or any sort of protection magic. It’s always better to lay protective effects in advance. Once you start to master a few spells, you’ll probably gravitate to enchantment, which is the investment of magic into objects.”
I showed off the silver designs around the hem of my mantle, and she leaned over for a closer look. “Enchantment isn’t a discipline in itself, it’s an application method of your other magic, but it’s always in demand as a skill. Experienced enchanters are some of the wealthiest and most valued mages.”
“What about alchemists?” Nasharia asked, and I had somewhat expected the question. Alchemy was well-respected on Karosha, serving many of the purposes that enchantment did on other worlds.
Nonetheless, my expression soured. “Don’t worry about alchemy. Any prudent, careful person will do well as an enchanter.”
She wouldn’t let it go, though. “What quality makes you a good alchemist?”
“Delusion,” I said immediately.
She frowned at me, confused, and I knew I owed her a real explanation. At the same time, I wondered who the alchemist was that had captured her imagination so much, and I pictured punching them in the nose.
Not just for making me answer an inconvenient question, but on general principle.
“You’ve seen me summoning before,” I said. “Spirits are manifestations of certain concepts in the Aether, and spells are us invoking the Aether to produce specific actions or events. Alchemy is manifesting those properties, mixing them together, and just…” I spread my hands. “…seeing what happens.”
Melerius eyed me, still stroking his beard. “That’s a bit reductive, don’t you think?”
“If anything, I think it’s generous. Alchemy is unpredictable, unreliable, and the last resort of desperate fools. A real wizard knows what’s going to happen when they cast a spell. When something goes wrong in alchemy, they blame it on the whims of the Aether. I’ve never met an alchemist that didn’t deserve to be locked away in a maximum-security prison. At best.”
Memories from every one of my lives, including the current one, blended together. I drummed the fingers of my left hand rapidly as my grip on my wand in the other hand grew tighter and tighter.
“Every time I deal with alchemists, I regret it. I know better, but I still give them a chance, and I end up wishing I’d—”
I cut myself off with a cough when I remembered I had a young, wide-eyed audience.
“I was never fond of alchemists myself,” Melerius said, “but I’ve never considered what that distaste would become if it were multiplied seven times over.”
I reached out to the kids and placed a hand on each of their shoulders. “Sorry about that, Prince, Princess. We got a little far afield there.”
They exchanged glances, then Rellask said, “We have a court alchemist back on Karosha, and I don’t think she’s so bad.”
I patted his shoulder. “No, I’m sure she’s—” I cut off again as I realized who he was probably talking about. “Is her name Fyrellis?”
“Yeah!”
“I meant every word I said about alchemists. Every word.”
Fyrellis was responsible for one of the breaches into the royal palace, back in my life as Shyrax’s bodyguard. She’d coated the entrances in an alchemical protection that she was certain would counteract the negative energies of any invaders. On another occasion, she’d released a mist into the royal guard barracks that had backfired, setting us into a berserker rage for days.
By all the worlds, I hate alchemists.
“Anyway, let’s get back to practice, shall we? I’ll be running you both through some basic Aetheric manipulation exercises to get you used to different spells and seeing which expressions of magic might suit you best.”
“But not alchemy,” Melerius said with a twinkle in his eye.
“That’s right,” I responded, dead serious. “Not alchemy.”
SEVEN
Mell slapped the Vice Chief’s console onto the workbench in front of me, scattering gemstones. “I did it! You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get in there. It was magic, that’s what it was.”
I pointed to the stones that she’d knocked askew. “Magic is what I was trying to do.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She gently picked the console back up. “Really, I’m sorry, they didn’t look like they were in any sort of order, and I thought it would have more impact if I just kind of…” She mimed slamming it down again.
She’d found me in the workshop, where I was sitting in my usual booth next to the frame holding Sola’s armor. I’d been looking into upgrading my protection amulet.
“I was deep into the first stage of my enchanting project,” I said.
She looked at me suspiciously, but she still took the bait. “First stage?”
“Visual inspection.”
Each of the gemstones was distinct, either collected by Horizon from nearby planets or synthesized based on instructions from the Subline. Several of them weren’t technically gemstones, either, but that’s what they looked like.
It was hard to do better than the orange fortress crystal that formed the basis of my protection amulet, but fortress crystals were relatively common. I was certain I could find an upgrade, but I had to have a thorough understanding of my options.
Mell settled the console down more gently the second time. “Well, stop looking at your rock collection and look at this instead.” She tapped on the console screen for a moment before data began streaming into my processor and then across my vision.
“Remember that this is not my specialty,” Mell said. “We should have had an expert look at it, but I did have a couple of Nova-Bots sitting around that specialize in cracking network encryption, so I had them take a look. Once they were in, they found…”
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
All the information she’d shown me was normal for a personal console. Schedule, notes, even games. Nothing sinister, nothing obviously in code, and no programs that shouldn’t be there.
Mell mimed an explosion. “Exactly! And that’s why what I did was so magical. That, and because it’s outside of my expertise and we really should have hired someone else for it.”
She expanded the Vice Chief’s schedule, where a note read ‘Dornoth IV – Security consultation.’
“It says Dornoth Four,” Mell explained excitedly, “but the attached coordinates are actually closer to a moon of Dornoth Three, which is uninhabited! The only thing there is an automated spaceport for small starships, so why would there be a security consultation?”
