Key to Magic 01 Orphan Read online

  Orphan

  The Key to Magic: Book One

  H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  © Copyright 2010 H. Jonas Rhynedahll. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, scenes, dialogue, and descriptions are purely the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, real events, or actual places is entirely coincidental.

  Other Works:

  The Key to Magic: An epic fantasy series

  Orphan

  Magician

  ..King (2012)

  ..Emperor (2013)

  ..Thief (2014)

  To End a War (science fiction novella)

  Not Your Typical, Scantily-clad Virgin Sacrifice (short story collection)

  Potatoes, Come Forth!

  Forthcoming:

  Tunnels (science fiction novel)

  Time Traveler's Currency Exchange and Pawn

  FOR MY CHILDREN:

  Amanda, James, Michael, and David

  There is, of course, the corollary: A sufficiently advanced system of Magic is indistinguishable from science.

  A note regarding the Imperial Calendar:

  The Imperial year consists of thirteen lunar months of twenty-eight days each: First through Third Springmoon, First through Third Summermoon, Harvestmoon, First through Third Autumnmoon, and First through Third Wintermoon. Each month is divided into two fortnights, Waxing and Waning and each fortnight is divided into fourteen named days: Firstday through Fourteenthday.

  The length of years does not vary; all years are exactly three hundred and sixty-four days.

  The accounting of years is entirely arbitrary, varying with location and political and social circumstances, and although the Imperial system is generally accepted, there is no single universal standard.

  However, the following are in common use throughout the world:

  Thirdday of every fortnight is the holy day of all Gods.

  No day in the month of Harvestmoon is a holy day.

  Eighthday is the end of the merchant fiscal cycle.

  PROLOGUE

  Thirteenthday, Waxing, Third Wintermoon, the year 1643 After the Founding of the Empire

  Mar lurched forward with another desperate stroke, then gasped as his knee struck something beneath the water. The force and the pain of the collision broke the rhythm of his strokes and he flailed exhaustedly and began to sink. Frigid water filled his mouth, but a desperate kick brought his head back above the surface. Choking, he sucked air hoarsely as the current pushed him along. His arms were leaden, his legs and feet numb. Blearily, he searched through the dark ahead. He could not tell where the bank was, could not guess how much farther he had to go.

  Only the great bridge downstream, lit with the torches of the searchers, was certain. He was nearer it by half since his last look. Too weary for an overhand stroke, he sculled his arms in a steady crawl. He had no strength left but the cold river offered no rest.

  Within but a few armlengths, he began to fight the water, splashing more than swimming and swallowing more water than air. He lost forward momentum again, realized his legs were unresponsive, and felt the water closing over him.

  It came as something of a shock when his feet settled into the sandy mud of the river bottom. He fell forward into a crouch and struggled further into the shallows. He began to shake, gasped as exhaustion tremors seized his body, and buried his hands in the mud to hold himself upright. The spasms continued for an unknown length of time but finally subsided to an occasional vagrant shake.

  When he could raise his head, he looked downriver. The Red Ice Bridge was only a little more than a hundred armlengths distant. Too close for his liking but not close enough to reveal him to the Imperials guarding it.

  The water of the perennially cool Ice River was flush with snowmelt from the uplands and its numbing effect was almost seductive, a balm that vanquished pain in unfeeling. The swirls and spirals of the current pushed and tugged at his limbs as it coursed around him, threatening to pull him back into its deadly embrace, and that danger goaded him to action. He gasped once more, a ragged, rasping breath, and then stood, weaving to find his footing on the fluid mud as streams of water cascaded from his body.

  He stood there for a single relieved moment, swaying weakly, and then waded forward through the thigh‑deep water. Instantly, the wind passing with the current bit at his flesh, sending shivers racing across his naked skin, and he clenched his teeth to silence a spastic chatter. Though only the night and the river saw it, this forced grin was hideous, stretching the weary lines of his face to reveal all the panic that ate at his heart.

  Pausing once more, he stared intently at the black, irregular bank rising before him. The light scattering from the bridge was more of a hindrance than an aid, but fortunately the bank on this side of the Ice was much lower than that from which he had come. Nothing moved in the deep shadows up and down the rubble scattered clay bank, nor above it on the top of the low brick‑faced levee. Beyond the Lower City was only a gray silhouette against the night sky.

  With what stealth he could muster from his wracked muscles, he waded the last few steps to the bank and started to climb up through the riprap and reeds. The broken masonry and building stone scraped his knees and hands, but he managed to avoid most of the sharp-edged rushes. When he was beyond the raw bank, he lowered himself to his belly and slithered up the sloping brick. Hiding his torso below the crown of the embankment, he raised his head to peer along the street beyond.

  Underneath the few sputtering oil lamps left alight by the Imperials, the bleached wooden stalls of Khalar's infamous fish market were empty and quiet. Likewise, the faded brick fronts of the shop buildings across the way. Shouts carrying faintly from across the river lent unexpected strength to his wavering legs, and he rose to his feet, wincing as cramps began to attack his legs and shoulders. Crossing over the levee and down to the street, he began a steady trot north. He had no plan; his choice was by default. North led away from his pursuers.

  *************

  The alley smelled of rotting fish, butcher’s offal, and things much worse. It was also as dark as a moonless, overcast night could make it, which well suited Waleck’s purpose. He stood still, perhaps unnaturally so. The horses and mules behind him were equally still, not an ear flicking or a tail swishing. They were well trained, but they were only this still when Waleck needed them to be. A mere feeling had brought him here to wait. It had been hours; he had not bothered to count them.

  With interest, he watched the young man – hardly grown, really, and still just a youth by some measures -- slink from the river. The greater part of an hour had passed since Waleck had heard the first alarm. He considered the fugitive’s appearance here somewhat noteworthy.

  His best guess was that the alarm had gone up from near the Viceroy’s New Palace, considering the route that the franticly screeching drill pipes had taken as they relayed “Alert All Stations” across the city. That meant that the youth had needed to cross half a league of treacherous rooftops, leap from a ten-manheight bluff, and swim more than a thousand armlengths through bitterly cold water. Truth to be told, the deed was, on the face of it, nigh impossible.

  Or, at least, the boy's pursuers were of such a mind. The Imperials appeared to be concentrating their search in the Old City. Their torches and lanterns danced in crazy profusion even now above the bluffs of the distant shore. As yet, the Imperials had not extended their patrols to the Lower City, but it could not be long before the Viceroy’s Personal Guard would suspect that this quarry had escaped them.

  One of the ponies behind him shifted its hooves, its iron shoes making a startling clacking sound on the cobbles of the alley, and raised its
head to tug on the lead rope resting loosely in Waleck's hand.

  "So you think so, too, hmmm, Rhovma?” Waleck murmured to his mount without turning. "Time to be going?"

  In sudden decision, Waleck strode forward. A firm tug on the lead rope brought Rhovma and the other pony, and then the mules in succession, plodding noisily after him. The line emerged so abruptly from the utter blackness of the alley that the boy, moving silently along the center of the street, almost collided with Waleck.

  As both took a wary step back, a thin‑bladed knife gleamed suddenly between them. From whence it had come was an utter mystery, as the boy was naked but for a simple wrapping about his midsection. Even though shivers vibrated the skin of his forearm, the boy gripped the hilt unwaveringly.

  "You want a job?" Waleck asked without preamble or explanation. The first was inefficient and the second would come if necessary.

  *************

  Mar showed no surprise at this development. If asked, and if moved by some vagrant whim to answer, he would have said that, at that moment, nothing could surprise him. A man with no expectations whatsoever cannot be surprised. He gave the horse line a calculating glance. The ponies and mules were Waste crosses, small but tough. There were a brace of large water casks on one of the mules and the handles of shovels poking from the packs on the others.

  "You the scrapper?" he inquired with a studied casualness, though the shiver in his breath tended to spoil the performance. “I’d heard that there was one left.”

  Only one, a Gods cursed madman or a Gods blessed fanatic, depending on the teller of the tale.

  Waleck nodded slightly. “I am Waleck of Gh’emhoa.”

  “Never heard of the place.”

  “Few have.”

  "How much do you pay?'

  "A tenth share."

  Mar laughed. Even to his own ears, the sound was full of harsh and strained tones. He chopped the laugh off cleanly and made a sharp, negative gesture with his knife.

  "A tenth of nothing is nothing!" he derided caustically. "I prefer wages."

  The scrapper straightened himself with a half-shrug, and made as if to continue on his way.

  Mar laughed again, genuine amusement in his voice this time. He had no options. "A deal, Master Scrapper! A deal!"

  Waleck pivoted on the ball of one booted foot, seemed to consider Mar for a long moment, and then grunted as if it made no difference. He faced the younger man formally and stuck out his hand. Business had always been done that way in the Lower City. Scribes and factors cost money that could siphon all profit from a bargain. For most, just a single handshake had to do.

  Mar hesitated suspiciously for a moment – it was an ingrained habit -- and then tucked his knife back into his smallclothes before gripping the hard-skinned palm with his own. The scrapper’s grip was solid and strong and his dark eyes locked with Mar’s for a brief instant.

  The scrapper had turned away and raised his boot to the stirrup of the lead pony before he spoke again. "What are you called?"

  Mar considered the question at length before replying. What name should he give? He had several aliases that he could play without lapse, at least two with complex and well-developed backgrounds that would withstand even the closest scrutiny. But did it truly matter, in the midst of this current debacle, what the scrapper called him? Eventually, not sure why he did, he gave his own true name.

  "Mar," Waleck echoed thoughtfully, the name sounding somehow more significant than its single mean syllable, oddly impressive in the quiet darkness. “No family name? No patrimony? No Guild?”

  Mar grunted negatively.

  The scrapper shrugged. "Then mount, Mar of no kin, no father, and no trade. I would like to be to the foothills by morning."

  Mar threw a quick glance down the street to the south. Some blocks away the glow of torchlight and the tramp of cheap Guard issue boots signaled the approach of the Imperials.

  "I couldn't agree more," he said, half under his breath, as he leapt to the saddle of the second horse.

  When his buttocks slapped the hard leather, the animal trotted complacently after the scrapper's without urging, which could have been nothing less than a blessing from the Forty-Nine Gods, as Mar had never been on a horse before in his life.

  ONE

  The sun, a blinding flare centered in a cloudless azure sky, poured blistering heat down into the ruins. It scorched the already white-baked earth and heated the stone rubble of the shattered buildings to a temperature that would burn an ill-placed hand. What little wind there had been to moderate the heat had died with the fullness of dawn, and the air hung heavy and stifling.

  Once more, Mar slid his shovel into the achingly dry sand with a practiced stomp of his boot. In one movement, he wrestled it free and then catapulted its burden over his shoulder with a quick jerk. Early on, he had learned that he had to be quick ‑‑ else the fine‑grained material would dribble away before he finished his toss, or, worse, rain down upon him in a noxious, eye‑watering shower.

  His gaze – and his thoughts – wandered as his body took over the repetitious motions of digging.

  The fallen temple of a forgotten god formed one side of the small canyon in which he worked. Or, at least, that was what the old man had said it was. For his part, Mar thought it looked like a scrub covered hillock of broken stone and windblown sand identical to a thousand others that squatted here on this arid, God's cursed plain. West of the temple and its vanished glories, across what had once been a broad avenue ‑‑ but was now only a dusty track at the bottom of a rain‑carved gully ‑‑ lay another tumbled building complex of great size, its purpose or purposes vanished in centuries of decay and collapse. Here he labored, twenty slogging steps up the rock-strewn slope. He was ‑‑ of all things ‑‑ digging a hole.

  He had submitted himself to many tasks to earn his meals, not the least among them occupations most would consider undignified or abhorrent, but nothing as yet that he thought as totally without merit as what he did now.

  Not, in all honestly, that his opinion of this work would lead him to malinger. Foolhardy he was not. Digging earned him the food he ate each day, his share of the precious water, and the blankets he slept in at night. For as long as he could remember, he alone had been responsible for his own wellbeing. That independence had taught him some hard lessons. Foremost among those was that, if food was to be had, only the proud or stupid starve, and he was neither of those.

  Regardless, he was somewhat accustomed to it all now ‑‑ to the oppressive heat, the constant thirst, the blinding glare of the bleached landscape, the little varying routine of long days of backbreaking labor and short nights of restless sleep ‑‑ and was, if not satisfied, then at least content with his lot. He knew the fate that would have been his had he not taken Waleck’s service. He had witnessed Khalarii justice often enough.

  If fortune had smiled and the magistrate had been feeling particularly merciful, Mar would have died on the Viceroy's gallows, strangling at the end of a rope. The Patriarchs considered this a humane execution. If fortune had turned her face away from him, the Guard would have gutted him like a fish and left him to bleed his life away in the gutter. If both fortune and mercy had been lacking, he would have been condemned to a Fete and tortured slowly in a public festival. Though at the time he had been utterly ignorant of the hardships he would encounter in the Waste, no thoughts of regret for his choice had ever crossed his mind.

  But beyond the utter necessity of his situation, he had come to realize that he was, though he would not have admitted it aloud, pleased with his current circumstance. Some nights ago, as he lay awake watching the constellations pinwheel slowly above his pallet, he had finally recognized the cause of this unfamiliar sentiment.

  The Waste City fascinated him.

  For some odd reason, he had become enthralled by its desolation. He had always known, in an offhand way, of the fabled metropolis of the Great Waste, having heard people speak of the vast ruin for all of hi
s life. Like the weather, the blasted city was a common option of casual conversation in Khalar. But not until he had seen it with his own eyes had he ever wondered.

  The Waste City was an enigma, one that had perplexed the scholars and seekers of untold generations. The much-belabored questions were legion. Why was it sited in the middle of a dry and broken wasteland that had always been there, too many leagues from the nearest water? Why had it died as it had in a cataclysmic doom that had blasted every structure to the ground, leaving not one line of columns or length of wall whole? How had this destruction, whose mechanics and forces appeared so far superior to those of any natural upheaval known to modern philosophy that they could not be guessed at, come upon it? Perhaps the most demanding question: Who had been the people who had played, bargained, loved, argued, striven, and finally ‑‑ there seemed little doubt ‑‑ died there? No hint of this people, no statues or paintings, no writings or other recordings, nothing that could provide clues as to their manner of living, had ever been found. Even the name that the city's inhabitants had known it by had been lost with them. That which it had now had been bestowed upon it not through any conscious decision by the scrappers who had crossed the dunes to strip of its metal wealth, but through the gradual acceptance of a simple descriptive term.

  Sometimes Mar would find himself frozen in place, halted in the middle of some mind-numbing chore, his eyes fixed upon the skeletal remains of an archway, its supports smashed and broken, the building it had long ago given entrance to gone but for a few insignificant traces. Gripped by a burst of speculation, he would try to picture what it had looked like when old men had settled within its shade to discuss the matters old men discuss. His imagination would then shake free of its rigid confines to roam dream‑reborn streets, viewing in awe the one‑time splendor of the city, greeting its resurrected people, and speculating about the fabulous stories they would tell if only they could. Frequently, when he thought Waleck's attention elsewhere, he would stare for a few stolen moments at some bit of metal he had just unearthed, thinking of the hands that had held it before him.