The third challenge he faced was to transfer the information stored in the object into the vessel. That created another dilemma. What would they do with this new person? Even if they succeeded, they would have to find a home for them. And if they didn’t? Tyen shuddered. I guess that depends on how we fail.
For now, he should concentrate on the first challenge. That meant finding a dying man or woman who wanted the change to replicate themself. Which means leaving the safety of this room. Maybe that’s why I’m hesitating—
A movement at the end of the long room drew his attention. Looking up, his heart froze as he made out the shadow of a man growing clearer, but as he recognised the figure his pulse returned to a normal rhythm.
“Tyen,” the man said as he arrived.
“Dahli,” Tyen replied, returning Vella to her pouch.
The Raen’s most loyal had changed his appearance again, removing his beard. His hair had grown a little longer and was now a pale shade of blond.
“I had something to investigate,” Dahli said, weaving his way through the furniture. Looking closer, Tyen read that the man had been checking on the people he’d set watching Baluka’s family. “Have you made any progress?”
Tyen ignored him. “I won’t help you if you harm them.”
Dahli’s eyes narrowed. “If all goes well, I will never need to.” Moving to a chair, he nodded at the Raen’s notes. “Well?”
Tyen suppressed a sigh. “I’ve read them three times. For a man who lived a thousand cycles, he doesn’t write very clear instructions.”
Dahli’s eyebrows rose. “For a man who insists Valhan went about resurrections the wrong way, you are surprisingly reliant on him for information.”
Tyen shrugged. “If I knew exactly what he did, I could avoid making the same mistakes.”
“If they were mistakes.” Dahli waved a hand dismissively. “We must work with what we have. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Tyen began to shake his head, then paused. “Do you know someone who doesn’t mind having copies made of them?”
Dahli’s eyebrows rose. “Sorcerer or not?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Should I bring our volunteer here?”
“No. It may take a great deal of magic, which would weaken this world.”
“Would you use them as the vessel as well?”
Tyen shook his head. “How would we tell if it worked?”
“Good point. You’ll need a vessel, too.”
“Yes. Someone not long dead. I’ll heal their body, then change it to the volunteer’s pattern. I won’t need as much magic for that part, so we can do it here. I’ll need a strong, unpopulated world for the resurrection though.”
Dahli nodded, but his attention had strayed to the far end of the room. “Is that what I think it is?”
Tyen traced the man’s gaze to the insectoids. Much larger than Beetle, their hulking bodies looked menacing in the shadows.
“Yes.”
Standing up, Dahli wandered over to the machines. Tyen followed.
“Why do you have these?”
“I’m looking for a way to destroy them. Something that will work with all kinds.”
“Is that possible?” Dahli asked, reaching out and poking one as if to check if it were only sleeping.
“Probably not,” Tyen admitted. “But I have to try.”
Dahli turned away, nodding in approval. “It would be a great benefit to the worlds if you succeeded.” He frowned. “Is this the reason your work on the resurrection has been so slow?”
Tyen shook his head. “So far I am only disassembling them to look for common weaknesses. It’s easy work—any of my students at Liftre could have done it—and it gives my hands something to do while I’m thinking about the resurrection.”
“Why don’t you find a student to do it for you?” Dahli suggested.
“I would need to supervise, and if they’re here they’ll see what I’m working on.”
“They only need to know that you’re looking for a way to replace someone’s body with a younger or different one. Your experiments won’t involve Valhan. When we create a body for Valhan we will send them elsewhere. Look for someone young, who doesn’t understand pattern shifting or they’ll wonder why we’re bothering putting people’s minds in new bodies when we could just heal them. If you don’t find anyone suitable at Liftre I can direct you to other schools of magic, though I don’t think their instruction in mechanical magic is as advanced.”
Tyen nodded reluctantly. He would rather not draw anyone else into his situation, but Dahli’s suggestion had become an order.
“Make sure he or she is a weaker sorcerer than me,” Dahli added, “or I will have to kill them when their work is done.”
“Could you, if they were stronger?”
“Of course.” Dahli shrugged. “With experience, knowledge and loyal friends, you can overcome most adversaries.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Dahli’s gaze slid to the distance as he drew in magic from far above them. “I’ll find you a volunteer while you fetch your assistant.”
Tyen nodded. “What sort of wage should I offer them?”
“Whatever they want—I will arrange it. Is there anything else you need?”
“No.”
“Then I will collect you when I have our volunteer.” Dahli faded out of sight.
Walking past the place Dahli had vacated, Tyen picked up the Raen’s notes and approached a row of cupboards that ran along one wall of the room. He’d seen the original, tiny notebook in Dahli’s memory. Had the Raen hidden it, or carried it around with him? Had he kept it in a pouch beneath his shirt, like Tyen did with Vella?
Tyen smiled at that thought, but his amusement quickly faded. The day he had first encountered the Raen had been a revelation to both of them. In Vella, the Raen had seen the glimmer of a solution to his problems with the allies. She had revealed a way to store all his memories in an object, from which he could extract them later.
Tyen unlocked a cupboard door and pulled out several bundles of bandages from the lowest shelf. Once clear, he used magic to work a mechanism that lifted the shelf upwards, revealing a cavity in the base of the cabinet. As it opened, he spoke a word.
“Beetle.”
From within the dark space antennae emerged, twitching eagerly.
“Come out.”
The insectoid scurried up onto the underside of the shelf. Tyen slipped the notes inside. He would rather have destroyed them, now that Vella had absorbed their contents, but Dahli wanted them intact.
“Guard these, Beetle,” Tyen ordered. “If anyone but me or Dahli tries to take them, burn them.”
A whistle of affirmation came from the compartment. Closing it, Tyen began moving the bandages back into place. Perhaps he would find a way to destroy all of the weaponised insectoids in the worlds. Perhaps he could do so without harming the benign ones as well. But if he had to destroy them all, he would. Even Beetle.
Dahli’s suggestion that he find an assistant surprised him. The man did care about the worlds, so it made sense that solving the insectoid problem appealed to him—as long as it didn’t take up all of Tyen’s attention. What surprised Tyen was that Dahli was willing to allow another person to be close by as Tyen undertook his experiments.
Tyen locked the cabinet door and stood. Drawing magic, he pushed out of the world and started a cautious, indirect journey to Liftre.
As he drew closer to the school, he began to worry. Tarran had said that those at the school who had known Tyen as a student and teacher had attributed the invention of insectoids to him. Unfortunately, this had led to people believing that he’d created the weaponised ones as well. While Tarran had asked his students to correct this whenever they visited Liftre, Tyen did not know how successful they’d been.
That was not his only source of anxiety, however. The rumour that Tyen had been a spy among the rebels might cause him problems. If it was believed
by enough teachers and students there, they might unite to expel him. At the very least, news that the Spy was visiting Liftre would immediately go straight out into the worlds and he’d have to flee, no doubt with angry sorcerers in pursuit. So he had better find a hidden place to arrive and then search minds until he knew whether anyone there was qualified enough to be his assistant, and then make sure only they saw him.
He entered Liftre’s world away from commonly used paths to avoid the risk someone would pass him in the place between. Forging a new path, he concealed its beginning and end. Keeping to the far side of the narrow ravine the school was located within, he skimmed close to one rock wall and chose a shadowed crevasse to arrive in.
He’d never seen Liftre from this vantage point before. The view was impressive. The ancient building, added to over many hundreds of cycles, grew up out of a rocky outcrop in the middle of the ravine. A steep road had been carved out of the base, winding down to the village below.
It was morning. Classes were about to begin. Searching for minds, he soon heard the buzz and clamour of many, many thoughts. It was like watching a cloud of kites, some colourful, some subdued, some dark, some bright, the closest overlaying the furthest. He jumped from one mind to the next, hoping that among the random snippets he would catch something related to mechanical magic.
One cluster of minds was focused on calculating cycles against a world’s own seasons. Tyen smiled at the new students’ boredom and confusion. The next group was creating sculptures by lifting water and freezing it—an exercise in control—and most were enjoying it. Another was bracing itself for a long history lecture, with more than one student lamenting that recent events were far more interesting than these old stories.
Then Tyen caught a familiar sight—cogs and other parts from insectoids. He concentrated on that one mind, finding a student building a small machine. It was not an insectoid, but a kind of lathe for carving chair legs. The girl making it looked across at another student’s basket-making machine.
It’s looking too much like an insect. A memory of their teacher came, speaking her oft-repeated words: “Machines should look like machines, not creatures!” The girl frowned. It’d be easier if the parts we have weren’t originally designed to make insectoids.
Tyen moved to the boy’s mind.
Zeke doesn’t care if a machine looks like an insect, he was thinking. He says machines should look however they need to, to do what they’re meant to do. After that, they should be beautiful. What is more beautiful than a mudweaver? An image of a multi-legged sea creature appeared in his mind, its shell an opalescent dome. Mud clutched to its belly with scoop-like arms was carefully deposited on the ground by four others as it turned in circles, creating a delicate, twisting column in which it would lay its eggs. Like my basket-weaver, the boy thought.
Zeke, Tyen thought. Where have I heard that name before? He searched the minds of the other students, then the teacher. When he heard the name again, it was in the teacher’s mind when she examined the boy’s invention.
Well, it’s clear who has been influencing this one, she thought disapprovingly. Tyen saw that Zeke was not a teacher, though he had been until recently. When this woman had been promoted over Zeke, he’d quit teaching and now designed machines for clients who came to the school. He was perpetually broke, like all of Liftre’s inventors who refused to make weapons, but he made his situation worse by taking longer than he quoted on commissions as he added features the client didn’t ask for, or thought of another way of making them and started again. His sister, Dalle, has a better grasp of how to run a business, the teacher thought.
Dalle? Zeke and Dalle! Tyen let out a soft “ah!.” He remembered the pair now. They’d been his best students in his last cycle at Liftre. They must have returned to Liftre to finish their education. And it looks like they both specialised in mechanical magic. An odd feeling of happiness stole over him, and he realised it was pride.
It faded quickly. What sort of a future had he given them, when all people wanted of mechanical magic was to make weapons? What future would they have if he succeeded in destroying all magical machines?
Suddenly reluctant to continue his search for an assistant, he forced himself to look for Zeke and the rest of the inventors the teacher had thought about. If Zeke was a slow worker, perhaps it was best to not approach him, but try one of the others.
He found them all in the lower floors of the school sharing a late breakfast. In the basement, ironically. Perhaps dark underground rooms are where we creators of magical machines all wind up, he mused.
Scanning their minds, he saw a different view of his former student. Many of them believed Zeke was one of the best inventors there. Some disliked him, jealous of his talent or simply sure they were better—if not at invention then certainly at making money from it. A few made weapons exclusively, and were proud of it. Zeke did not like them. Tyen took note of their names.
None were especially powerful sorcerers—which was partly why they had been attracted to mechanical magic. He also noted that some had links to the Restorers. He wished he could prompt them all into thinking about him so he would know who believed he was a spy and traitor.
As the group finished their meal and chatter and separated to return to their rooms, Tyen chose who he would approach. Zeke first. The task needed genius more than speed of work or economy of design. Of course, the young man might not want to leave Liftre and assist his former teacher, even if it came with an income as high as he wished for, so Tyen had a short list of potential recruits among the others.
When Zeke had returned to his room, Tyen pushed out of the world until the school was a faint shadow in the whiteness, then skimmed down to the base of the building. Once within the walls, he could barely make out his surroundings, but that meant that he’d be difficult to see as well. He headed in the direction of Zeke’s room, and when he thought he was near, drew close to the world until he could see enough to find an empty corridor to arrive in unseen. Once air surrounded him, he quickly scanned the minds around him, locating Zeke in a room reached by a corridor running parallel to this. Tyen pushed out of the world and skimmed into the room.
The young man was sitting at his desk, bent over an elaborately decorated brass box. He didn’t notice Tyen’s arrival, his mind wrapped up in the work. None of the boyishness of the student Tyen had taught remained. The young man was still lean, however, his straight, chin-length black hair not quite concealing high cheekbones. His skin was a paler brown than Tyen remembered, but then, he probably spent most of his time in this underground room.
Moving closer, Tyen saw that the interior of the box was filled with elaborate machinery. It was to be a rhyming machine, designed to hear the last word in a sentence and respond with another word ending in the same sound—if Zeke could work out a way to store thousands of words. He drew in a breath to speak.
Suddenly Zeke yelped and spun around. He stared at Tyen, who immediately began apologising.
“Ever heard of knocking?” the young man said in a strained voice when Tyen finally fell silent.
“Er. Yes. Sorry …”
Zeke frowned and narrowed his eyes. “Tyen? It really is you?”
Tyen glanced down at himself, seeing nothing odd. “Yes. Why?”
The young man shook his head. “You look different.”
Remembering Rielle’s warning that his appearance might change to meet others’ expectations, a flash of alarm went through Tyen. “How?”
“I … don’t know. You look the same but … not.”
“That’s helpful.”
Zeke shrugged. “It isn’t. It’s not a bad change,” he added. “You still have those pale, careless-about-grooming good looks.”
“Er … thanks.”
“So what brings you to my humble abode?”
Tyen drew a deep breath, let it out, then decided to get directly to the point.
“Want a job?”
Zeke’s eyebrows rose. “You’re
kidding?”
“No. I need an assistant. I’m looking for a way to disable, if not destroy, the insectoids made for use in battle. I—”
“Yes,” Zeke interrupted.
Tyen paused. “Yes?”
“I’ll take the job.”
“But … we haven’t discussed a wage.”
Zeke stood up. “We’ll work something out. If I get to shove smashed war insectoids up those smug inventors’ butt-holes, I’ll work for free!” His grin was fierce, but quickly faded. “Not that I’m saying I won’t take a wage. I have no other income, and I work better when not dying of starvation. I’m nicer to be around when I don’t stink from lack of washing too.”
Amused and surprised by Zeke’s eagerness, Tyen considered what else he ought to tell the young man. “We must work in secret,” he warned. “No, er, shoving of machines anywhere until they’re smashed.”
“Of course.” Zeke shrugged. “The warmongers will get no chance to counter-attack.”
“They may seek revenge.”
“I’ll tell them it was your idea. You tell them it was mine. Either way, as many people will be pleased and impressed with us as won’t.” He lifted his palms towards the ceiling. “Commissions and money will rain down on us from the sky.”
“Well … then consider yourself hired, Zeke. Of course, if you find you’re not happy working for me, I will bring you back here. You have my promise on that.”
Zeke’s eyebrows rose. “You’re taking me away?” He looked around the room, then laughed like a madman. “You’re taking me away!” His gaze snapped to Tyen’s. “What’s it like where you live?”
“Um …” Tyen looked around and shrugged. “Not much different to this, but quite a bit larger.”
“But the company is better. I’d better pack a bag then.”
“I can wait until you’re done. I figured you’d want to finish your current job and say goodbye to—”
“No. One of the others can have this.” Zeke gestured to the box. “But I will write a quick letter to the heads and my sister …” He moved to the desk and dug out some paper and a pen.