The Witches of Ne'arth (The Star Wizards Trilogy Book 2) (44 page)

“Yes, Matt.”

It occurred to Matt that by stating the obvious, Ivan was manifesting the AI-equivalent of nervousness.  Then it occurred to him that he was the one who had asked about standby status in the first place, despite the prominence of the hypermode timer in his field of vision. 

In the world outside Matt's skull, the guide was providing another canned answer:  “– And such creation accounts are meant to be taken metaphorically, as allegorical tales for spiritual uplift.  Anyone else with questions?  All right.  Thank you for visiting.  The gift shop is ahead and down the steps.”

The group shuffled into the shop.  Matt examined the trinkets, especially a glass globe containing a tiny model of the cathedral.  When a tourist picked up the globe and shook it, the tiny cathedral disappeared in a flurry of white flakes, much like the real building would do in a full-scale blizzard. 

“Huh,” Matt subvocaled.  “What do you think that thing is for?”

“Given the meticulous detail,” Ivan replied, “it is likely to have a practical scientific purpose.  Perhaps it is an educational tool for meteorological forecasting of snowfall patterns.” 

“I'm guessing it has religious significance.  You pray to it or something.”

“Matt.  My sensory indications are that the men, weapons, and dogs have taken position outside the gift shop exit at this time.”

“I'm still hoping it's just a routine patrol.  But I'm in disguise and you changed my scent, so we should be okay.”

“Yes, Matt.  In anticipation of the need for rapid escape from the Abbey grounds, I have mapped a potential escape route from the gift shop exit, over the wall and into the forest.  Given the foliage density, I believe it will be possible to easily evade our pursuers.”

“We'll be be all right if we just act natural.”

Matt was impressed with how confident he felt.  It was too bad, he thought in the back of his mind, that confidence doesn't alter reality. 

He browsed the titles on the book tables: 
The Holy Chronicles of the Wizard from Aereoth.  History of the Holy Church.  The Five Spiritual Laws. 
He paged through, letting Ivan scan while he made sidelong glances at the other members of the group as they drifted outside.  When half the group had gone, he followed. 

The egress from the gift shop funneled into a stairway that led to a side exit, which led to a garden with high hedges.  As Ivan had detected, armed security guards with leashed dogs were waiting outside the door.  Matt strode toward the dogs. 

Nothing to worry –

The dogs looked at him with alarm and Matt instantly knew he was in trouble.  The dogs barked and strained at their leashes and the guards glared and trained their weapons. 

Matt shouted, “Hypermode!” 

Light and sound and gravity altered.  Ivan's IR scan became an augmented-reality overlay and showed warm bodies hiding behind the hedges – more guards, Matt realized.  He retreated from the garden, up the steps to the gift shop.  He wove among the slow-motion customers, back toward the main chamber.

There his time-distorted vision caused the windows to glow psychedelically upon the empty pews.  Security guards blocked the main entrance, with a clear shot at him if he tried to break past.  Reacting to his anomalous speed, they were already drawing guns.

“Ivan, how do I get out?”

“The windows appear fragile enough to crash through.” 

“No, the crash will alert the guards outside.  Maybe there's a maintenance tunnel, or sewers.”

Worked last time
, he thought. 

He spotted a door near the altar.  In flying hops across the length of the aisle he reached it, yanked at the knob.  Locked.  He looked about frantically.  He saw no other doors.  Then he again noticed the cleaning girl kneeling in the center of the aisle.  She was staring dumbfounded at what would be a blur to her time-sense. 

Matt faced her directly.  “Ivan, scan for a key.”

“There is a key ring in the left pocket of her apron.”

Matt flew over and started to crouch.  He heard a thunderous rumble.  Something tiny and black whizzed past his arm.  It struck a pew, chipping a cloud of splinters.  Matt pushed the girl to cover behind the pews, reached into her apron pocket, extracted the key ring. 

He bounded back to the door and twisted the key in the lock, mindful that he was in hypermode and could break the key if he twisted too fast.

The lock throatily clicked.  Matt flung open the door.  The steps went up, not down.  An angry black bee dug a crater in the masonry near his chest.  Hesitation vanished, he bounded upward.

“Hypermode reserve at twenty percent,” Ivan announced.

Have to conserve.
  “Terminate now
.”

The world shuddered back to normal light, sound, and gravity.  Huffing under normal strength, Matt reached the top of the steps.  Another lock, another key on the ring. 

The upper door opened to sky and a narrow walkway between the slanting roof and the facade of gargoyle statuary.  Fifty meters below, the Abbey sprawled as a maze of buildings, gardens, orchards, and hedges.  Above loomed the spire, a needle of white fire pricking the sky. 

Keeping his head low, Matt stole along the gallery.  He turned the corner, heading rearward along the perimeter of the roof.  Midway along the side of the building, he stopped and pulled off his jacket.  Surveying the landscaping below, he dropped the jacket over the side.  It fluttered into the bushes.  He continued rearward.

“Matt,” Ivan said.  “I don't understand.  Why did you throw away your jacket?”

“You'll see.”

Barking came from where he had dropped the jacket.  The dogs clustered around the bushes, yapping furiously.  Security guards formed a semi-circle, guns extended in shaking hands. 

“You have diverted their attention,” Ivan said.  “But how are they attracted to the scent, when I altered your scent?”

“Savora didn't give them a sample of my scent.  She gave them a swatch of the clothing she made for us.”

“I cannot alter the scent of your clothing.”

“Yeah, and she knew that.  Now, to stop the dogs from tracking me, I've got to change out of the rest of my clothing as soon as possible.”

Matt reached the rear of the cathedral.  As he had hoped, at the corner was a drainpipe from gutter to ground.  Gripping the pipe, he slithered ground-ward with his remaining reserve of hypermode.  The world shuddered back to normal when his shoes touched the lawn, but a few steps later he was past a hedge and onto a narrow pathway, out of sight of the guards and regaining his breath. 

“Which way . . . to your . . . escape route?”

“Turn right at the next corner.  However, I anticipated utilizing hypermode to jump from a rooftop to the top of the wall.  As hypermode has been depleted for this day, that will no longer be possible.”

“We'll manage.  Try to find a rope, a ladder, something.  Damn, we've got to warn Prin and Andra too!”

They passed a teenage girl with a pail.  Then another teenage girl bearing a basket.  Then several more.  A lot of teenage girls, Matt thought, for an Abbey operated by men. 

“Left at the next corner.”  Then:  “Matt.  I am detecting the scent of your archival clone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, the genome is identical, but there is sufficient epigenomic variation.”

At first he feared that his clone was in pursuit.  Matt looked about frantically.  The path was deserted. 

“Where?”

“The building ahead.”

The one-story building was squat and ugly, with thick stone walls and tiny windows.  It didn't strike Matt as the place that the leader of a major religion would sequester himself.  Then he saw the bars on the windows, and at once his anger toward his clone was thrown into confusion.

“It's a jail,” he said.  “He's not running this place.  He's a prisoner.”

Matt stole toward the building, approaching the door.

“I sense that you intend to free him,” Ivan said.  “What is your plan?”

“To act drunk and obnoxious.”

Matt knocked on the door.  The peephole slot opened and eyes squinted. 

“
Gawd
,” Matt slurred as he swaggered.  “You're so ugly!”

With a loud sigh, the slot snapped closed.

Matt pounded on the door.  Slurring even more:  “Hey, ugly boy!  I bet I could take you in a fight!”

“Go away, sir!” came the muffled voice.

Matt pounded repeatedly as he shouted:  “Coward!  Coward! 
Ugly
coward!  Stupid ugly COWWWWW-AAAAARD!  No wonder you're stuck in this stupid dead-end job – “

The door swung open with the fury of a spring-loaded mouse trap and the guard glared down and snapped, “Now, look, sir, either go back to your tour group or I'll have to arrest – “

Matt touched the guard's neck.  The guard rolled his eyes and slumped.  Matt caught him, dragged him inside, rested him against the wall, kicked the door shut. 

“Where to?”

“The steps.” 

At the bottom, Ivan ARed an arrow to indicate the cell door.  Matt peered through the tiny inset. 

A man whose face was all but buried in bushy hair was sitting against the wall, staring straight ahead.  The insipid expression was a duplicate of what had been portrayed in the stained glass windows.  Or rather, Matt thought, it was their inspiration.

Matt said, “Hello?” 

No reaction.

“He appears to be in a trance,” Ivan said.

“Sounds familiar.  Let's see if that guard has a key for this cell.”

“Matt.  A person has entered the building.  It is Savora.”

Matt turned from the cell.  Savora descended the steps.  At the bottom, she stopped and smiled.   

“Hello, Matt.  I'm glad you could make it.  I like the facial hair.  You look distinguished.” 

Matt attempted to dodge, but Savora streaked with hypermode velocity.  He raised his arm to block, but her hand was already at his neck.

“Matt,” Ivan said.  “I sense a high voltage poten – “

Matt didn't hear the rest. 

17.

Nilla was in the kitchen when she heard the bell ringing from the upstairs rooms.  Gwinol gave her the look that said,
It's your turn, dear sister
.  Sighing, Nilla scurried up the steps to the Matriarch's bedroom.  The Matriarch was still in bed, as it wasn't yet noon.  She shot Nilla a scowl and said, “Where is my tea?  I want some tea!”

Nilla bowed and said in the most submissive tones she could muster, “I will bring your tea immediately, Matriarch.”

The Matriarch slammed the bell on the side table, folded her arms, and set her jaw.  “I don't see why I have to tell you to do things.  My old servants knew when to bring me tea without having to be told.”

“As you wish, Matriarch.”  Nilla refrained from mentioning that the previous servants had quit at the first opportunity, and that only a few days before, the Matriarch had been ranting,
Why are you bringing me tea when I didn't ask for it?

Nilla hurried downstairs and made a cup of tea, but then stopped and stared at it.

“What's wrong?” Gwinol asked.

Nilla slumped.  “I can never do it right.  It's either too concentrated or too dilute, too hot or too cold.  Yesterday she took one sip and berated me so much I thought she was going to throw the cup at me!”

Mola patted her shoulder.  “I'll take it up.  I know how to smooth over these situations.”

They listened to the old woman climb the steps, then they quietly went about the business of preparing for lunch.  A moment later, they heard the smash of ceramic against stucco, and the hurried retreat of Mola back to the kitchen. 

“It's all right, it's all right,” Mola muttered, dabbing her stained dress with a washrag.    

After the lunchtime clean-up, Nilla did the laundry and was finally able to take a break in mid-afternoon.  She stole out onto the deck overlooking the city.  It was a beautiful day, but even in the worst weather, no one would ever mistake Kresidala for Rome.  There was too much color and gaiety, with wide tree-lined boulevards filled with brightly-dressed men, women, and children strolling without the accompaniment of bodyguards.  Where Roman windows looking upon the streets were small and unadorned, on every freshly-scrubbed house in Kresidala were window planters filled with explosions of colorful flowers. 

While the emperor's palace was the highest residence in Rome, the palace of the king of Kresidala, no less impressive with its golden domes and ivory pillars glistening, was situated centrally within the city, as if symbolizing the relative equality of its people and ruler. 

“I see you looking longingly at the theater district,” Gwinol said, joining her on the deck.  “I hope you're not again thinking of running away to become an actress.  We're very fortunate to be where we are.  We shouldn't jeopardize what we have.”

“You sound like Mola,” Nilla said.

“Well, she's right.  We're from Rome, the mortal enemy of Kresidala.  We did well merely to gain entry to the city.  To find positions in a house of status is a double-topping of ice cream.”

Nilla crossed her arms in mimic of the Matriarch.  “What I have isn't a position.  It's a purgatory.”

“That's a word Carrot would use.”  Gwinol laughed.  “But yes, we had it soft in the house of Archimedes.  Mola has always been like a mother to us, but he was like an indulgent grandfather.” 

“Here, we're screamed at if we don't dust twice a day.  Archimedes wouldn't have noticed if we had stopped dusting entirely.”

Gwinol laughed again.  “Jaros would have.” 

“Jaros,” Nilla said quietly.

They both reflected in silence, until Gwinol said, “If we hadn't been rescued by Archimedes, Rome would have put us all to death.  He risked his life to enable us to live here.  Don't ever forget that.” 

The insistent ringing of the bell abruptly ended their break.  By mid-afternoon, however, Gwinol tapped Nilla on the shoulder and handed her a shopping bag.  They headed to market, and Nilla basked in what was a typical day of public life in Kresidala, with its street musicians, its elegant cafes where philosophers held court, its statues to scholars and artists rather than generals and emperors. 

The grocer's market was what to Nilla provided the starkest contrast with Rome.  It covered twice as much area as the equivalent market of Rome, though Kresidala was only half the size.  The variety went far beyond mere apples and potatoes, to exotic items such as bananas and watermelons.  Almost everything was cheaper and fresher and always in abundant supply. 
No one starves in Kresidala
, went the proud saying, and as far as Nilla had seen, it was very nearly true.

Their ambling brought them to a bin with a certain type of orange vegetable, and Nilla said, “I wonder where she is now.”

“I would hope that she has returned to Britan,” Gwinol said.  “She loved city life, but often spoke longingly of her homeland.”

“It's all forests and fields.  I never understood the attraction.”

“She said Britan was superior because there were no slaves.”

“There are no slaves here.” 
Just badly mistreated servants.
 

“I miss her too.  You wish she would come live with us, don't you?”

“And bring Matt and Archimedes.  If they're still alive.”

A silence ensued, which Gwinol broke by saying with forced cheerfulness, “Remember how Archimedes would speak of life as 'infinite possibilities and limitless horizons.'  He'd say that to us – to servant girls!”

“Now we have the Matriarch and Mola telling us to keep to our station,” Nilla replied gloomily.  “After you're told that enough, you begin to think maybe this is all there is to life.  At least, it is all there is for the likes of us.”

“Oh, Little Sister.”  Gwinol smiled and stroked Nilla's hair.  “Don't surrender hope so easily!”

The blueness of the sky and the fleece of the clouds belied Nilla's somber mood, but then she noticed that the market itself seemed to have suddenly changed, as if the atmosphere had become thicker and tinged.  At first she thought it was merely a subjective impression.  Then she noticed the worried looks, the low voices, the emphatic gestures.  She and Gwinol simultaneously glanced at one another.   

Gwinol pointed to a park on a hillock.  People were gathering beneath a cherry blossom tree.  They were all facing the same direction, peering to the west.  Their kites were coming down, and their expressions were of dread. 

Gwinol tapped her sister's arm, a little too sharply.  “We have what we need.  We'd best return.”

The house was on higher ground, and from the street they turned to look upon the western vista beyond the high defensive walls.  Kresidala was like Rome in that it was situated on the west end of its island, yet instead of a volcano it had only hills to the east.  The seemingly mandatory municipal volcano was instead located a few kilometers to the west of the harbor, on the island of Kret. 

The volcano, rising to over a thousand meters from the beaches of Kret, was called Emerald Head because its slopes were swathed in rich vegetation.  Unlike the now-and-then-rumbling Enta of Rome, Emerald Head was unequivocally extinct, its spirit revered by the people of Kresidala as 'Kreta,' a goddess of tranquility rather than anger. 

Normally one's westward-roving eye was captured by the prominence of the volcano, but that day, like everyone on the street, Nilla's attention was drawn to the triremes that flocked about the shores of Kret and covered the surrounding waters with a prickly blanket of oars and masts.

Many of the ships had beached, and streams of men were disembarking onto the island.  The polish of their armor glinted in the sun, but as with their ships, the distance of kilometers prevented Nilla from determining the most important question of all.

“Are they Kresidalan?” she asked.  “Or Roman?”

Gwinol stared for a moment, then abruptly replied, “Let's go inside.”

Neither of them spoke of the matter.  Nilla was surprised that she didn't feel anything in particular about it, either.  It was too cosmic an event to viscerally accept that it had any bearing on their lives, though in the back of her mind, a conviction born of rationality told her that this was the sort of thing that didn't go away, and only got worse with apathy.  

At any rate, the Matriarch was napping and the Patriarch was at his shop, and the three young-adult children were elsewhere and Mola ruled in the family's absence and had a mental list of chores that she demanded be processed immediately.  The dictates of empires and kingdoms seemed trivial next to Mola's clapped admonitions, “Come on, girls!  Let's scrub the floor quickly so that it will be dry before they can notice!”

The arrival of a navy and the disembarkation of an army is no instantaneous event.  The girls went about their chores for the rest of the afternoon, sneaking peeks through the windows at the progress of the invaders. 

For by then, it was clear that the newcomers were not friendly, nor were they welcome.  They grappled the great cable that stretched a meter above the water across the width of the entry canal, and severed it.  Admission no longer restricted, the ships advanced in file.  The defenders responded by sliding shut the series of towering doors that isolated the canal from the harbor.

Simultaneously, other ships of the invaders made landing on the westmost beaches of the island of Kresidala proper, disgorging streams of soldiers that merged into a flood.  The defending soldiers responded with a token resistance on the flats, soon retreating to entrenchments.  The invaders amassed as hundreds more ships arrived. 

Catapults, battering rams, and siege towers were erected until there was no question as to the identity of the invaders.  Only Rome was as accomplished in the mechanical arts of warfare. 

The defenders, badly outnumbered and outclassed in weaponry, fled within the city walls.  And there the invaders halted, confounded by the legendary defenses.

The walls of Kresidala were sheer and fifty meters high, constructed of hodgepodge layers of brick, stone, sand, and ironworks.  Nilla had heard that every king of the city-state had expanded upon the fortifications, dating back to the age when Rome was a cluster of fishermen's shacks.  Of late, the citizens boasted that the passive defenses had been complemented by a rail system on top that allowed heavy catapults to be glided from one end of the walls to the other wherever attackers might concentrate. 

Starting in late-afternoon, for every hundred meters atop the length of the walls, fumes rose from the chimneys of shacks where oil was being boiled to be fed into a valve-controlled pipeline that would drench the invaders should an attack became particularly intense.  Romans or not, Nilla shuddered at the thought of what would happen to the soldiers should they attempt to scale the walls under such a  scalding deluge. 

Of course, with such a deterrence, they wouldn't even try.  So why worry?  But still she did.

Nilla concentrated on scrubbing and sweeping after that, but an hour or so later looked up to see that Gwinol was nowhere in the kitchen.  Intuition brought her feet up the stairs and onto the deck.  Gwinol was gazing at the impasse to the west.

“Do you think they can break through?” Nilla asked.

“I don't know.”  Gwinol replied.  Nervously she muttered,“Why would they come if they couldn't?”

Mola, towel in hand, all but instantly materialized behind them and scolded, “Dinner needs preparing, and I find you two lolling about in the sunshine.  To the kitchen!”

“Mola,” Gwinol replied, gesturing toward the west.  “Don't you see this?”

Mola took a deep breath.  “Of course I see it.  And what I also see is that the people here know that we came from Rome, and we must work all the harder, or they will think the worst of us because of this.”

They followed her into the kitchen and began meal preparations.  Mola basted the chicken, Gwinol chopped the vegetables, Nilla set the table.  Mola casually instructed her not to set the son's place, as he had been summoned that afternoon to duty in the Militia.

“The household is taking this seriously even if Mola isn't,” Nilla whispered when Mola was rummaging in the pantry.  “Gwin, what will happen to the city?  What will happen to us?  Do you think the Romans can break through?”

“You've already asked me and I still don't know,” Gwinol snapped.  Upon reflection, she added, “But if I were Mola, I'd have what remains of the silver that Archimedes gave us ready at hand.  We may need it very soon to bribe our way through the city gates.”

“The silver.  Do you know where she keeps it?”

“No, and she won't tell.  She still regards of us as children who would spend it all on treats.”

Nilla nodded slowly, with a pang of guilt.  Until last summer, she had been exactly that kind of person.  Jaros had given all the servants a haddie a week as an allowance, and she had spent every one of hers before the week was through.  Thoughts of future needs simply hadn't occurred to her.  Jaros and Mola took care of things like that.  But now Jaros was gone and Mola was there in the kitchen, calmly humming, obsessed with a simmering soup and oblivious to a war coming to boil. 

Nilla recollected the horror stories she'd heard of war and thought, 
If I am raped, I will kill myself.

The family arrived for dinner.  The Patriarch took his place at one end of the table, the Matriarch at the other.  The two daughters sat together on the same side.  The son's side was empty.  Nilla noticed how everyone glanced at the unoccupied chair but pretended to ignore it.