The Archimage's Fourth Daughter Page 3

  Finally, five mitematches bound in string, their tips coated in alchemical preparation that caused the shafts of ironwood to burst into flame when rubbed against a coarse surface. The imps from the demon realm on the other side of the fire were almost the smallest of all. Although they had surprising strength, they were as tiny as baby moths and their wills feeble and easy to dominate. Briana remembered how her sister had swatted helplessly as one whined around her head as it had been commanded.

  Briana brushed the direction of her thoughts away. Yes, these were juvenile things, most likely cheap diversions to keep children occupied while parents bargained for items of true craft at the bazaar. That did not matter. The important thing would be the reaction of the natives to them if the situation arose.

  She reassembled her pack, attached the bedroll, and shouldered its straps. The sky outside was growing lighter. Soon, someone would come to the chamber. There was still the workings of the portal to be mastered. She started to drop a note saying she was going, but then thought better of it and slid the parchment into her pack. She toyed with a loose strand of hair for a second and then slowly walked over to the waiting door. Its handle tingled to the touch — yes, true magic.

  Planetfall

  THE DOOR closed silently behind her as Briana entered the portal. A soft light illuminated a narrow white corridor perhaps ten paces long and ending in another door like the one now behind her. The wall on her left was featureless as a perfectly calm sea. On the right, near each door was an array of controls arranged in rows. Each row looked the same — a selection button, some illuminated text, and a long sequence of counting wheels. Halfway between the two entrances, an array of small, ornate drawer pulls, no two alike, budded forth from the wall. There were no loose artifacts to be seen: no papers, quills, charts, or discarded swathing. There was none of the elaborate scrollwork and decorations like those in vogue with the magicians of her own world. The whole effect was one of sterile efficiency.

  Briana retrieved from her backpack the instructions left by the shrouded stranger. Inside were translations into her own tongue what the writing and symbols meant. The top-most inscription in the panel at her side said ‘location’ and immediately below, two more, ‘Murdina’ and ‘Nowhere.’ All the counting wheels showed zeros.

  She hesitated a moment. This portal is magic, she thought. Nothing can go wrong. Nothing can fail. Get on with it. With a last bit of reluctance, she pressed the button next to ‘Nowhere.’ Almost instantly, a sharp click of a bolt sliding into place came from the door. The entire structure began to shimmer. A wave of nausea washed over her, sending her to her knees. Her eyes watered, and she could not keep them in focus.

  After a short while, the vibrations stopped. The nausea went away. A warning disk of angry red shown in the middle of the door. She rose and tried the handle, but it did not budge. Evidently, the portal had moved the gateway from Murdina, from the council room to Nowhere, and it was not safe to see what lay outside.

  Next, she dialed the right most counting wheels adjacent to ‘Murdina’ to one hundred and then again pressed the selection. As she expected, the vibrations did not start immediately. Instead, the numbers in the wheels began to decrease — ninety-nine, ninety-eight…

  When the count returned to zero, she braced herself, and the shimmering began again. Better prepared, the upset stomach did not feel quite so bad, and when the vibrations finished, the latch clicked a second time. Now, the handle turned easily. She opened the door and glanced out into the dimly lit council chamber. A pleasing comfort like that from sliding into familiar slippers washed over her. She was back to where she had started.

  With gathering confidence, Briana shut the door and selected ‘Nowhere’ from the list of locations a second time. After the vibrations had ceased again, she smiled. Things were working as she had expected. Each listed location was a place the door could be positioned to open upon. And the corresponding countdown determined when the translation would start to take place.

  She decided to leave the door through which she had entered parked at Nowhere. It would do no good to use the portal and then have some minion of her father immediately follow.

  And the second door. It must open to the shrouded stranger’s world. How else could he have gotten home? A peek there before she returned would be an added bonus to report about to her father. When she did, he would maintain a gruff exterior of course, but inside, he would be proud. Thinking about it gave her a warm glow.

  She moved to the other end of the portal. The only choices on the wall there were ‘Nowhere’ and ‘The Vanquished’ — nothing that would indicate Randor’s home. He must have wanted to keep his location secret, but, if so, how did he manage to get there after he had visited Murdina?

  Briana pushed the thought away. Something to figure out later. There was no time for that now. She shouldered her pack, selected ‘The Vanquished,’ waited for the vibration and nausea to go away and opened the door.

  It was dark, not as dark as a moonless sky, but dim enough that she could make out nothing. She snapped one of her glow sticks and cautiously looked outside. The air was tainted with a strange odor she could not identify, something stale and heavy like that of a room unopened in years, but evidently not toxic. She felt no ill effects from what she had inhaled.

  Reassured, she studied what she saw more carefully. In the near distance in front of her were what looked like the bars of a cage! She whirled about. The bars gently curved off into the gloom on both sides, hinting at a giant circle of confinement.

  Randor had said the natives did not practice any of the crafts. So she had naturally assumed they were primitive as well — living in simple huts, perhaps with plowed fields and tethered animals nearby. But metal bars…

  Maybe when Randor’s people last visited here, there was no cage. It would make sense to put the portal in an uninhabited location. But the circular barrier now changed things. The first thing she would have to do was… escape.

  Holding the glow stick in front of her, Briana stepped out of the portal, paced to the line of vertical bars, and started walking the perimeter of the confining wall. After a few dozen steps, she gasped aloud at what she saw — a narrow opening through which she easily could walk!

  She started to step through the opening and then stopped. The reality of what she was getting into started to rumble in her head. Her confidence began to falter. Things were not going to be simple; already there was a complication. The enclosing cage was here for a reason. Come the dawn, perhaps natives would arrive to inspect its contents. Even if she were not here, they would see the portal door. She would not be able to leave it unguarded and wander about.

  For a few moments, she thought about what to do. The setter, she finally remembered from the instructions. Yes, that was what was needed! She returned into the portal, found the correct drawer in the wall now on the left, and extracted a small, slender device that she could hold easily.

  She ran her free hand over the bottom of the container but felt only smooth metal. There should have been a tracker in addition to a setter, she remembered from the instructions. But there was none. On the controller she held, the selection choices near the two doors were reproduced along with their nearby selection buttons and counters. She exited the portal, and back outside, carefully read the instructions for the setter’s use. She studied them a second time to be sure. Even the smallest mistake here could maroon her forever.

  When Briana was satisfied that she understood thoroughly, she began pressing tiny button-like objects protruding from the setter. She set the counter for the ‘Nowhere’ location near the door she had exited to one hundred, then set the counter for ‘The Vanquished’ to an additional hundred more.

  Next, she started the countdown for the ‘Nowhere’ location to begin —  to move the portal door to Nowhere when the count reached zero. Before it completed, however, she started ‘The Vanquished’ countdown as well. The counters for both choices be
gan spinning down.

  Just as Briana was beginning to fear something had gone wrong, the portal vanished. Briana twisted her loose curl into a tight spiral. Waiting for another fifty was agonizing, but finally, the magic transport again reappeared. It had gone to Nowhere and then returned.

  The instructions said a day on this, the exile’s planet, was forty-three thousand three hundred and twenty heartbeats. Using that number for the length of time before retrieving the portal from Nowhere meant she could hide it for an entire day. And she could set things so that she was present when it appeared and none of the natives was about.

  Briana quickly browsed through more of the instructions. How to add and delete location choices was complicated. More complex still were explanations of how the portal worked. It was not a simple matter to have a door stay in one place. A planet spun on its axis and also hurtled through the cosmos. While on the outside, it might look that a door was standing still, it was in fact continually in motion.

  Briana made the necessary portal control setting and felt her confidence return, although not quite as high as it had been at first. But no matter. Now for the adventure to begin.

  She scrambled through the opening. On the other side, she looked up at a wooden placard attached to the wall written in the script of the natives. With the help of the language guide, she spoke aloud what she read.

  “Wattles Mansion and Garden. City of Los Angeles.”

  A Typical Street

  BRIANA WAITED until dawn started to break rather than explore any further in the dark. She was near a gently sloping path paved with large flat and smooth stones. Next to it and a bit lower was a wider surface, dark, and laced with black repairs that looked like giant wandering worms.

  Lined up on both sides of the dark surface were rows of what must be carriages for the wealthy. Through glass windows, one could see plush interiors, elegant enough even for a queen. The surrounding shells were smooth steel and painted in bright colors, although some appeared much fresher than did others. For all of them, there was neither purchase for a driver on top nor any means of connecting horses or oxen in the front. And so many! It could not be possible there were so much affluence in one place.

  Briana looked downslope, southward if this orb rotated the same way on its axis as did Murdina, in the direction of strange whishing noises that sounded as if a hundred scullery maids were sweeping in unison. In the distance, one of the coaches sped by from left to right, faster than any team of horses could possibly pull. Shortly thereafter came another from the other direction, and then two more from the left.

  On top of posts near where they raced were circular lamps gleaming an angry dragon-breath red. After a few moments, they blinked out, and green ones below them began to shine. A screech filled the air, and two more carriages came to a stop on the cross path below. A short time later, a third light beamed yellow and then the red one shown again. When they did, the wagons roared away.

  Magic coaches, not one but several. And controlled by imp lamps. Magic and wizardry in blatant display. The exiles had escaped their prison! Not here more than moments, and already she was done. This first adventure was going to be easy!

  For confirmation, Briana reached out and touched one of the carriages directly in front of her, but no tingle of magic caressed her fingertips. She shook her head. No, they were not magic after all, and besides, there were too many of them. Better not to conclude in haste. She needed to find out more before she returned home, and she had a day before she could anyway.

  Briana started walking southward next to the broader path that she concluded should more properly be called a street or road — for carriages rather than travelers on foot. She touched each vehicle along the way to be sure, but none held any trace of magic.

  When she reached the intersection, she noticed there were lamps above the larger avenue cycling on and off also. Although no coaches traveled north or south, the lamps shining there synchronized with those for the east and west. Looking at the signage on shorter poles near the glowing orbs, she mouthed out what must be the name of the larger street.

  “Hollywood,” she said, and then the much harder to pronounce, “Blvd.”

  The yellow lamp came on and then the red. One of the carriages pulled to the side near where she stood. A door into the interior swung open. A gaunt man who had not shaved in what must have been several days and wearing shabby clothes like those of a beggar leaned across from where he sat and pushed the opening wider.

  “I will give you twenty bucks for a quicky,” he said. “How about it?”

  A man, Briana thought. Not shrouded like the visitor to the council chamber. Dressed properly, he could pass without notice back on Murdina. And he was speaking in the native tongue. A man. Not an exile.

  She felt a moment’s hesitation, even though she had told herself when preparing for the adventure that at some point she would have to speak to the natives. This barter probably was a good a test as any for a first try.

  “I… do not have a quicky,” she said as she struggled for the meaning of the words. “But I am wondering — ”

  “Bitch!” The man slammed the door. A loud growl escaped from the front of the carriage as the lamps changed, and it bolted away.

  The possibilities expanded. The growl could be that of a demon hiding in the front compartment of the carriage. Maybe the native had been enchanted by the exiles’ sorcery. Maybe the thought about imps in the lamps was still valid.

  AS THE sun began its climb into the sky, the road traffic increased in both directions. Briana remained at the street corner, trying to understand what she was seeing. Although still early morning, the number of carriages was far greater than what would be seen in Ambrosia, the capital of Procolon, at midday. She looked both ways down the street. There was no royal palace in either direction that would explain why there was so much rushing about with no apparent purpose.

  Her stomach began to growl. The initial excitement of adventure waned, and her energy began to sag. After all, she had been up the entire night.

  It was all so kinetic, the scene so… so enormous, she thought. Yes, that was the word for it, enormous. She began to feel small, insignificant as a gnat on the back of a djinn. Like a small pebble in a boot that could not be moved out of the way, the thought began to ferment and trouble.

  To shake off the feeling, she decided to walk east, hoping a different venue might be more understandable, more representative of the native culture, something she would be able to comprehend.

  AFTER BRIANA had travelled for some while along Hollywood Blvd., she began encountering natives coming from side streets and passing her by — more and more, the farther east she went. She felt some apprehension as the first had drawn near, but he did not pay her any heed, nor did any other as they approached.

  None of the men were threatening; they displayed neither sword nor dagger. Their clothing was much more colorful and varied than back at home, and thinner rather than practical, the sort of thing young lordlings would strut in order to show off their wealth in the safety of a noble’s court.

  The women were the amazing ones. She studied them more intently as they passed. They walked in twos and threes and sometimes alone, all unescorted. And some showed the swell of their breasts for anyone to see. Ladies of the court also did this, Briana knew, but only after the blush of youth had faded as it had for the queen. The younger women on Murdina had no such need.

  And their legs! They were bare, some brazenly to above their knees. More astonishing was that they were clean-shaven, as smooth as the face of a man! Those lords who maintained such appearances paid skilled barbers to keep their skins fresh, but certainly, no woman would permit such intimacy by a stranger. That was impossible to understand.

  As Briana continued, the structures on either side of the street became taller, some of three stories or more. Not all were simple boxes, but instead looked as if built by drunken masons with tilted and uneven walls. Subdued browns were r
eplaced by a rainbow of colors, sunburst yellows, scarlet-reds, and deep-ocean blues. Large panels of imp lamps danced in intricate repeating patterns, drawing attention to themselves almost as if they were the result of a sorcerer’s charm. Signs were bounded by what looked like alchemists’ glowsticks, but longer and brighter, able to shine fiercely in the daylight. The lamps pulsed on and off in deliriums conveying a mania even more manic than that of the rushing carriages.

  Storefronts? Briana puzzled. But far grander than any she had ever seen before. And for none could she recognize what wares were sold. There were signs enough but most with words she did not recognize from her dictionary. And those that she did made little sense. ‘Hard rock’? Of course, they were hard. Why would anyone have to pay for one?

  The path on which she walked became grander — wider, darker, and containing an embedded series of white stars blazing the path even though such an aid was not needed. Like a line of marching warriors, tall trees with long naked trunks and plumed with branches at the top sprung out of the smooth stone.

  She continued to marvel why no one spoke to her. With her thick tunic, leggings, and pack, she was the one who stood out from the others. But still no one gave her any notice, edging around her, or even jostling her, without a word.