Poor World (6 page)

Which makes it surprising they have anybody, I thought.

“My lead magician is Dejain, and you will meet her presently. Do not give our names to the fools who choose the darkness. They have no right to sully our names. Any questions?”

“No,” I said.

“It will be fascinating, working with Dejain. She is the most accomplished magician I know. I'm afraid her duties now keep her busy enough that your real training, in magic, cannot begin until after the first stage of the plan is complete, but I wish you to visit her, get acquainted, and perhaps begin a course of study that you can pursue on your own. You will also need to train in other areas, but there is time for that.”

Another quick movement, then he was at the window again. “Your former friends in the prison. You may tell them, if you like, that you have bought them an extension of their lives. I expect, if you visit them, you will exert yourself to convince them to widen their views. There is no other reason to visit them.”

Even I could hear the threat there.

I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry.

“I have much to do; Alsaes is just returned. He can take you to Dejain's work area. I'll see you later, Cherene.”

“Okay.”

He gave me that look of enthusiasm again, the odd smile. “You can use my name. No titles, no false courtesies appended. You are one of us.”

“All right, uh, so long. Kessler.”

I went out, my knees wobbling like water had replaced my kneecaps while I wasn't looking.

Outside, the air was warm and slightly dusty. Alsaes, he of the jaunty green feather, leaned against one of the wooden awning supports over the next building down from Kessler's. He was talking into a flat little square thing. It looked like an Earth communication device.

When I appeared, he gave me a mean smirk. “Will your highness deign to accompany your humble servant?” he drawled as he pocketed the square thing. His sarcasm was especially jarring after Kessler's words about no titles and whatnot.

“My,” I said, blinking up at that cap. I don't know why I hated it so much. “Aren't we pretty!”

He extended a hand toward the street, and started walking. The day was already warm, and the dirt road beneath my bare feet even warmer. Reluctantly I fell in step beside Alsaes, and sneaked a peek upward. Alsaes was busy eyeballing the other people with that chin-up swagger you see in bullies, and I
longed
to puncture that gasbag conceit. Yet he had to have some kind of power because everyone whose paths might have intersected ours — even two brawny young men pulling a cartload of hay in the direction of the stable — veered aside, or else waited for us to pass.

Alsaes, of course, walked directly down the middle of the road.

Presently the street became less crowded, and Alsaes said abruptly, “Watch it, o perfect princess.” His drawl was as sneering as you can get. “One of these days I might forget you're Kessler's pet and cut that tongue out like you deserve.”

“Bloodthirsty, aren't we?” I trilled, knowing how to talk to bullies from way back. I snorted so loud my nose hurt. “You're a poopdeck and a fatwit, and you don't scare me.”

He gave me a nasty little smile, squinting down against the bright sun. Another street away, a squad of tough-looking young men and women trotted by, fully armed, their faces sweaty but their shouted chants loud and in unison.

“By the way,” Alsaes said, “your friends in the prison. If you don't get them to cooperate very soon, it's up to me to say when on their execution. Do you like executions, o bloodthirsty princess?”

All the fun went out of bully-baiting, just like that.

I said nothing.

“We're going to have one very soon,” Alsaes went on, giving me a smug grin. “As Kessler's pet project, you'll be right there with Kessler and me, with the best view. I hope you won't feel faint, little pet. Kessler doesn't like weakness. It's stupid. Let us hope you won't be weak, Cherene Jennet Sherwood, famed enemy of Shnit of the Chwahir.”

I fumed, trying not to hop from foot to foot.

“Right there is Dejain's place,” he said, pointing to a building set a little away from the others; it was at the other end of the compound from Kessler's office. “Perhaps — if you adopt a more cooperative spirit — I might warn you about something important. Have fun.”

He sauntered off, his boots crunching the tiny rocks in the road.

I stuck my tongue out until the roots hurt, which only made me feel slightly better.

Except for being set apart from the other buildings along that street, from the outside Dejain's building looked like the others.

The inside was as different from Kessler's as you could imagine.

The air was cool, the furnishings pretty, and comfortable. There were fine pictures on the walls between tall shelves of books. Solid gold candleholders gleamed with rich beauty on carved side tables.

Dejain was even prettier than her surroundings.

“Come in, Cherene Jennet,” she said. Her voice was pretty, too.

I entered to find a young, slightly built blond woman. I'd guessed Kessler and Alsaes were maybe half-a-dozen years older than Puddlenose or even Rel, no more than ten. This lady seemed closer to Rel's age, though she was an adult and he wasn't. Quite.

“My workroom is back here,” she said, and I followed her trailing pale blue skirts to a magic chamber with the same weird smells and chemical stains that marked Shnit's and Kwenz'.

Dejain was an adept at dark magic.

And I was expected to learn it.

“Have you any questions, child?” she asked, moving behind a worktable. “You won't mind if I continue with the project at hand?”

“No,” I said quickly. And then — because I was curious, and it seemed safer than discussing magic — I said, “That Alsaes called me Kessler's pet. I don't get it — I just met Kessler yesterday.”

“Alsaes,” Dejain said, and she laughed softly, a pleasant sound. “He's Kessler's oldest friend. Not very smart, so he'll never see that he's as high as he is only out of Kessler's absurd sense of loyalty. But since that Sherwood boy failed him — just as well, for he knows nothing of magic — it seems that Kessler has selected you as a possible heir.”

“A what?”

“Surely you understood that?” Dejain looked at me with a kind of amused surprise. “Kessler is not known for convoluted speaking.”

“Um, everything is so new, I am having trouble understanding it all,” I mumbled. “And I didn't sleep well last night.”

“Ah.” One of her brows lifted slightly, and I knew that she added meaning to my comment about sleeping. But she didn't say anything.

So I went back to the subject that interested me most. “Why me? Because Shnit hates me?”

“That was certainly a priority, and it would explain Kessler's sense of betrayal, and his anger, when the Sherwood boy turned him down, especially after the refusal of the tall one. What's his name? Rel. Coming from a humble background, working hard to become so skilled. Everything Kessler wants in his leaders, yet Rel refused adamantly. You can see how that would infuriate Kessler. He does not like his gifts turned down.”

Puddlenose hadn't told me that. So he held things back out of embarrassment, too. And of course Rel had just sat there and Relled at me.

“Then there is the fact that you appeared out of nowhere and rose, in an admirably short time, to the right hand of your queen — learning magic along the way, even if it's the weak version of magic called ‘white'. All this indicates brains, hard work, dedication. Qualities that Kessler values. Then of course is Shnit's tremendous loathing for you and the rest of your Mearsiean friends. And added to that is the fact that you look alike — ”

“What?” I almost yelled
WE DO NOT!
and managed to keep it back.

But it probably showed in my face because Dejain gave me another of those amused glances, then said, “Black hair, blue eyes, pale skin, small build, but tough. Quick.”

“Tough?” I repeated faintly. “I'm not tough.”

“You've courage,” she said. “As for the rest, it'll come with time, and growth. Kessler will expect you to meet his own high standards — you should probably prepare for that now.”

“High standards? You mean, he doesn't just sit around and direct the fumbl — the final plans?”

If she noticed the slip, she gave no sign, but continued to mix powders slowly into some kind of concoction.

“Oh yes.” She laughed. “He hates showing off, so you might not see him at practice, but the fact is, it took him quite a while to find the best swordmasters, for that meant those who could best him.”

“But he's so short, for a grownup!”

“But quick. And strong. Very. The result of years of single-minded focus on mastery.”

I thought of Shnit, and said sourly, “It must run in the family.”

She smiled. “It does indeed.”

“You know — ?”

She laughed. “Yes. I'm not as young as I appear, for I've been around more than a century. Mastering my own arts.”

Horror wrung through me — for one of the most telling differences between light magic and dark was in the anti-aging spell.

Mindful of the possibility of someone on another world getting my records (I got
here
, after all), here's a quick explanation. The light magic anti-aging spell works only if you perform it before the change called puberty (disgusting word), which hits people on Sartorias-deles when they reach their full growth. If you try it after, it simply won't work. But if you do it as a kid and then change your mind and dissolve it, you finish growing. Dark magic will stop you at any age, but if you dissolve the spell, your body catches up with time all of a sudden, and also, it does weird things to you over time.

Light magic cooperates with the magic of the world, which is why the spells are longer and they are hard to hold — and they sometimes fail. Dark magic forces magic from the world; it, too, is hard to hold, but that's because there's so much power built that the spell can consume the magician who isn't strong enough to hold it. And the magic is spent, it doesn't go back into the world when the spell ends. That's where the names come from — dark meaning absence of light, or magic used up. This is why so many dark magic sorcerer-rulers ruin their kingdoms. Clair says they don't care about the future, they want power now, at any price.

I almost told Dejain that I'd stopped growing, but held that back. She seemed friendly enough, but little things tweaked at me: Kessler's ‘absurd sense of loyalty'; her dark magic concoction, which was setting up a vapor that made my head buzz in a weird way; her attitude about Kessler's goals. Like it was all no more important than a game.

She'd been talking while I was thinking. Her quiet, sweet voice was almost lost in the eerie, distant buzzings that the vapors in her potion caused in my head.

“... goal is to reach the point at which there is nothing I do not know how to control, or do not have access to controlling if I so will. My present project here relates to minds and mental access. We used to have these abilities inborn, did you know that? And will again.”

“I didn't know,” I said. My voice sounded distant as well.

“I learned slowly, on my own, mostly. It will not be so difficult for you. Think of the knowledge. The power you'll have in ten years!”

I did, and for a brief time, was tempted to join in wholeheartedly. What could be so wrong with promotion by merit?

But not by force, I thought hazily. People have to want change, and then wouldn't they choose it for themselves?

No answer — of course. My thoughts were also slowly growing distant, though strangely, a portion of my attention remained curiously clear. It was as if, for a moment, I heard all the voices of the world, or an echo of them. Happy, sad, busy, sleepy, angry, dull, making music, making food ... everyone and everything. I knew then, I
knew
I had no right to choose for them all.

And so I let go the dizzying prospect of all that knowledge. The surge of regret and longing and sorrow and fear snapped my wits back to the here-and-now.

I looked through my own eyes again, instead of inside, and discovered I had been watching her move from object to object as she briefly explained its purpose.

“You'll need to study my books, of course, and I will presently begin you on an appropriate sequence of preliminary studies. First, though, I suspect Kessler will require you to learn the world's map, so that he can instruct you in the rudiments of strategy. Temporal strategy.” She smiled sweetly, and laid her hand on the table. “I have my own strategy. For example here, and elsewhere, I can assemble all the basic components of a person. To create life, a mind, now that is an intriguing goal!” She turned back to her concoction. “My goals for now are contiguous with Kessler's. I provide magical services, and he supplies me with subjects for experimentation from among his prisoners.”

My blood turned into ice.

“Have you any questions, child?” she asked. “I have been talking for a long time, and I hope to some purpose.”

She wanted a response. Pure fright cleared my head enough to enable me to say, “No, ma'am. As you say, I've lots to learn from Kessler first.”

Right then, he seemed the saner, safer choice between the two!

Dejain smiled again, and dipped her pretty chin in a nod. “As well. His expectations are high. You'd do well to put your energies into his work for a time. You'll have more leisure to begin our work soon enough.”

“All right,” I said, about as subdued as I'd ever spoken to any adult I didn't trust. I was thoroughly spooked.

“Come back if questions do occur, child. In the meantime, do not dismiss Alsaes so lightly. He has none of Kessler's brilliance, but he's adept with petty cruelties. He already sees you supplanting him in the place he deemed his, and if you overtly make of him an enemy he will do his best to make trouble for you. And Kessler does have a temper.”