Inconvenient Magic 01 - Potatoes, Come Forth! Page 10

  Sarah, however, had quite a different idea entirely. “Forgive me for contradicting you, Baronet Rorche, but there is another option. Everett and I can save the air carriage.”

  ELEVEN

  When the hubbub died down, Sarah explained. “I am also a magicker and have an Insignificant Liquid Materialization spell. I can create almost a quart at a time.”

  “You can magic water?” asked Bennett with a hopeful look.

  “No.” She seemed reluctant to go further.

  “What then?”

  “Everyone must promise not to laugh.” Sarah’s expression was deadly serious.

  There were some odd looks, but all nodded or otherwise indicated their agreement.

  Sarah sighed. “Urine.”

  Into the awkward silence that followed, Josline Coldridge said, “That would work, wouldn’t it? Urine would have about the same weight as water, yes?”

  “Logically, it would be denser and therefore heavier,” Millicent said, “but I don’t think the difference would be much.”

  “It'll work,” Bennett declared, convinced. “But you'd need to cast your spell one thousand times. We had two thousand pounds of ballast, or approximately two hundred and fifty gallons of water.”

  Sarah nodded. “Then we had better get started.”

  There followed a rapid discussion of how best to refill the ballast tanks, as the tanks themselves were beneath the deck and their fill tubes only accessible from the exterior. Finally, Aldo and Bennett used wrenches to break a union on the valve manifold to access a pipe leading down into the tanks. Then, after a bit more discussion, Eylis ran to find a large, chambered funnel that she had used when filling the fuel tank. Aldo slid the spout into the open end of the pipe and stood back.

  Then, as everyone watched expectantly, Sarah walked up to the funnel and cast, “Pee pee, I see.”

  There was no perceptible delay between the enunciation and the expression of the magic. Everett felt the tingle of the actuation immediately and a quantity of yellow fluid filled the funnel and drained quickly away, washing down the pipe with an echoing sloshing sound and a faint aroma of outhouse.

  Sarah looked around, ignored everyone else, and focused on the smirk on Everett’s face. She awarded him a severe glare. “I manifested this spell when I was only two.” Her justification for the simplistic terms of the spell was almost a challenge.

  Picturing a retributive quart of urine materializing above his head, he quickly blanked his expression.

  Thereafter, the mood of the passengers of the air carriage considerably lightened and smiles began to appear on previously gloomy faces. The Coldridges went aft to investigate the trouble with the starboard engine while Rorche dispatched his men to inspect the rest of the mechanism for damage from the gendarme’s gunfire. Then he, Aldo, Bennett, and Millicent busied themselves with checking the functions of the instruments and controls.

  Everett, somewhat at a loss as to what was expected of him, simply tarried with Sarah while she chanted her spell repeatedly. After ten minutes, Bennett announced, “We are starting to descend slowly.”

  With occasional pauses for rest or a sip of water, Sarah completed her task in only thirty minutes, by which time the air carriage had dropped below the cloud layer and continued to lose altitude at a more or less steady rate.

  “Using an estimation for the current weight of the air carriage, my rough calculations indicate that we will stop descending somewhere between five and six hundred feet,” Millicent told those in the compartment. “Because we lack our full compliment of passengers and some cargo, we won’t achieve ground level equilibrium. We must have more ballast.”

  “The tanks won’t hold much more pis… uh … liquid,” Bennett cautioned.

  The mathematician and the three technicians, Rorche, Aldo, and Bennett, all looked expectantly at Sarah and Everett.

  Everett did not have any ideas, so he kept his mouth shut.

  “Once we are within sight of the ground,” the woman from Kleinsvench said with serene confidence, “Everett and I will procure ballast of some sort. It will in all likelihood not be liquid, however.”

  “That will not be a problem,” Rorche assured. “But it will be better if the ballast comes in smaller amounts, so that it can be distributed about the air carriage to maintain trim.”

  “How much will you need?”

  Millicent thought a moment. “Twelve hundred pounds should be sufficient.”

  Everett made a noise by blowing air out of the side of his mouth. “That’s quite a lot.”

  Millicent looked apologetic. “Aside from the missing load, we also originally added additional capacity to the vapor cells as a reserve, believing we could exhaust the extra gas as needed during the journey to Eyrchelle.”

  Sarah shot Everett a warning look. “We’ll manage it. We’ll need help shifting the ballast about the air carriage, though.”

  “My esnes are at your disposal,” Rorche agreed instantly.

  Two hours later, Everett, Sarah, Sergeant Tekle, and four of his men stood looking out the port door, which faced in the direction of their travel. The landscape that passed beneath was prototypically rural: croplands, pastures, hayfields, a few snaking cart paths, and an occasional bayou or pond. Five hundred feet struck Everett as still dizzyingly high.

  “It looks to me as if the wind is still pushing us quite fast,” he said.

  Sarah grinned. “That means that we’ll need to transport as far ahead of the air carriage as possible. How far out can you get us?”

  Everett raised his gaze toward the horizon. “Several miles, I think.”

  She clasped him comfortably about the waist. “There’s nothing to be gained by waiting longer.”

  He nodded, put his arms around her for no other reason than that it felt good, chose a locus on a distant swatch of green, and cast his Potent spell.

  A herd of small goats turned interested gazes their way as they appeared on a gently sloping hillside. Munching disinterestedly on clover, one black and white doe glanced in their direction and then trotted toward them, stirring other animals to follow, until the pair found themselves the focus of attention of the entire herd. The goats nipped at their clothes and nuzzled their hands.

  Sarah, clearly not accustomed to such behavior from livestock, flinched slightly as one nibbled at a finger. “They’re friendly, aren’t they?”

  “Not really. They just think we might have feed grain. In my experience, goats have two overriding ambitions in life. One is to eat.”

  ‘What’s the other?”

  “To make more goats.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, we’re here. What are we going to use for ballast?” He was still slightly annoyed that she had promised his aide to preserve the air carriage without consulting him.

  Sarah rubbed her chin with an index finger as she surveyed the pasture. High hedges bordered it and not much else was in view.

  “I had thought that we might find rocks,” she mused. “But there’s no sign of those or anything else heavy enough to use.”

  Everett absently scratched a blue-eyed weather behind the horns. “Dirt?”

  “How would we dig it? And we'd need buckets or boxes to hold it, which I doubt we can find. Besides, I don’t think there’s enough time.” She pointed back toward the approaching air carriage. “It looks like it will pass over us in only a few minutes.”

  As he shooed away a persistent buckling that was trying to munch his trousers, he had an idea derived from the obvious. He suggested it to her.

  She started to frown and then rotated her hands palms upward. “Why not?”

  When they transported the first of the extra ballast back to the air carriage, Sergeant Tekle and his men just laughed.

  “Just make sure you don’t separate the dams from their kids,” Everett cautioned as he handed off a bleating animal. “Otherwise they’ll never shut up.”

  With twenty-five or so assorted goats corralled in the two outer cor
ridors, the air carriage ponderously sank nearer the ground. Two hours later, Everett found himself standing with Sergeant Tekle beside the cargo doors at the stern, which the esnes had opened inward and lashed in place. Already, twelve lines hung out the opening, cinched tight to vertical struts in the back wall.

  The esne tossed another line outward, shook it to make sure that it dangled properly, then took a steel snap ring attached to a rope about Everett’s waist and hooked it to the new line.

  “Remember, sir,” Tekle warned. “Don’t let go of the line when you hit the ground. The knot at the end of the line will keep the snap ring from sliding off, but your weight must remain on the line.”

  “Got it,” Everett assured the man.

  Millicent had emphasized that any significant loss of load would cause the air carriage to rise. He wrapped his leather gloves around the line, backed to the edge of the deck, took a deep breath, and pushed himself off. His hands constricted automatically, arresting his fall with a sudden jerk. He eased the pressure of his hands as he began to swing, feet hanging, and allowed the friction of the gloves to slow his fall. It was only fifteen feet to the ground, but he still landed heavily and plopped on his rear. One of Tekle’s men stuck out a hand to help him up before the moving air carriage, which scudded before the wind at a good clip, could drag him along. Careful to keep a heavy tension in his line, he started running with the others.

  Because it came down to a matter of strength and weight, it had been decided that all of the men aboard, except for the injured Wrelton, would attempt to moor the air carriage while the five women monitored the goats and stood by aboard to provide any assistance that might be required. According to the plan, once all of the men were on the ground, they would gradually bring the air carriage to a halt and then secure it in place with corkscrew steel anchors that were stored aboard for that very purpose.

  After observing the ground in the path of the air carriage for some time, Rorche and the other technicians had chosen an open, fairly level meadow of about a hundred acres in size. A large space would be required for the landing to prevent the air carriage from colliding with trees, hedges, barns, or anything else that might permanently damage it.

  Everett had been the next to the last and as soon as Tekle saw that he had made it without doing something foolish like breaking his neck, the sergeant belayed down on his own line, slowed almost to a stop a couple of feet above the tall fescue seed heads, and then alighted gracefully.

  Rorche, on the far side of the line of running men, checked to see that all were ready, then called out, “Begin!”

  As he settled his weight back against the line, the speed of the air carriage began to drag Everett along, the waist-high hay battering his legs. Ignoring his determination, the seemingly inexorable pull of the air carriage skidded his feet when he tried to set them, made him stumble, then jerked him forward so that he nearly flipped on his face. Hurriedly, he started running again to gain his balance, then bore down on the rope once more. This time he did flip all the way over and landed with a jarring crash. The rope dragged him for thirty feet on his arms, stems and rough edged blades of grass lashing his face, before he could get his boots underneath him.

  Sheepishly, he peered around quickly to discover if the others had noticed his clumsiness, but was surprised to find that none of them was doing any better. Several of the young esnes had also fallen and were being dragged through the grass, twisting, rolling, and complaining.

  “Franz, this isn’t working! We don’t have enough men to slow her down!” Algis shouted.

  Aldo fell, cursing, and somehow lost his line. The man bounded up to chase after it, took a step, and collapsed with a yelp of pain.

  The grove of long leaf pine at the far end of the field had been a comfortable three-quarters of a mile away when they began. Now, it was less than a half of a mile distant.

  “It’s going to hit the trees!” Bennett, to Everett’s right, warned.

  Reluctant to reveal his new spell, Everett tried to think of any other way to stop the air carriage. When Baronet Rorche tumbled and nearly lost his line, Everett knew he had no other choice and whispered the words.

  As the magic flowed through him, he dug in his heels, pushing up deep furrows in the thick sod. The one-inch rope in his hands went taunt and began to sing as it neared its breaking point. He took a step to relieve the strain, cast his ninth spell again as the initial flood of strength faded, and then, holding his own line in one hand, reached across to take Bennett’s.

  As he continued to cast, plowing ruts through the earth with both feet, his cheap boots disintegrated, but he felt the air carriage begin to loose headway. Abruptly, the line in his left hand snapped with a sharp crack of tortured hemp. Sergeant Tekle rushed to press his own line into Everett’s hand. Other lines were tucked into his grasp as he focused his concentration entirely on the ropes, spitting out the words of his spell over and over again.

  Finally, after what seemed moments but could only have been seconds, the lines were no longer dragging forward, and he stood buried to his knees in a jam of earth and grass, holding in check the great mass floating above.

  “Set the anchors, now!” Tekle barked at his men.

  As Bennett, Rorche, and Algis gathered around to congratulate him, Everett saw in their eyes something he had very seldom before encountered – honest admiration for his magic.

  TWELVE

  Even with the aid of Everett’s magical strength, it took better than three hours to secure the air carriage to Rorche’s satisfaction. Just as Sergeant Tekle tied the final line to the final corkscrew stake, a large, curious delegation of gawking locals appeared, including families with children and the manager of the cooperative that owned the hay meadow. This worthy, politely explaining her reasoning that the new flying mechanism should be subject to the same mooring fees as river boats, agreed to accept a payment of forty-two silver seventy copper (all that could be scrounged from the crew’s pockets) for the night. Afterwards, Bennett and Algis, with varied assistance from others, took the time to cook a hot supper over a campfire built a safe hundred yards from the air carriage. Though just the simple staple of pinto beans cooked with onion, peppers, and salted pork and served over browned rice, the meal took on the trappings of a celebration as the entire company, including most of the esnes, packed into the air carriage's three pace square galley.

  Everett, finding himself unanimously appointed the de facto guest of honor, sat at the head of the long, bolted-down table, surrounded by cheerful faces and eager words of approbation. As he dug hungrily into his own bowl of beans, he absorbed with gratified contentment the attention and appreciation that his magical feat had brought him. All too often, his nearly useless magic had left him derided and ignored; he intended to enjoy thoroughly his moment in the sun.

  “Newly manifested, you say?” Aldo, finished with his own meal and standing wedged into a corner between two of the esnes, repeated. “That's quite a fortunate occurrence for us, then. We'd have never stopped the ship without you.” A fleeting, indecipherable look passed across the mechanic’s face.

  “Personal Enhancement spells are a modern rarity. I’ve only read about them in historical works,” Josline Coldridge, seated on the bench to Everett’s left, declared. “Yours is obviously a Potent and, I must say, quite surprisingly utilitarian.”

  “Magic may not have the versatility of technology,” Eylis, alongside her aunt, argued, defending her own trade, “but it’s fully capable of magnificent accomplishments!” The young woman beamed at Everett, clearly charmed by his revealed magical prowess.

  “Wizards have a high social standing in the Kingdom,” Algis mused. “Franz, perhaps we should prevail upon Everett to accompany our team when we meet with the Alarsarian financiers. The association of a powerful magicker could only lend added weight to our proposal.”

  “Excellent idea!” The Baronet agreed. “Millicent, what do you think?”

  “It could help, as long as w
e are subtle in our approach. We will need investors with deep pockets and those sorts tend not to be moved by extravagant displays.”

  “Exactly!” Bennett, across the room, declared triumphantly as if picking up an old disagreement. Then the mechanic launched into an enthusiastic diatribe concerning the inherent duplicity of bankers.

  The remainder of the evening passed in unhurried and occasionally facetious discussions. Everett took it all in, saying little; he found the lively and intelligent company invigorating, especially since none of the conversations involved agricultural produce. Sarah likewise smiled and nodded more than she spoke, apparently thoroughly enjoying herself. Everett found his gaze repeatedly shifting to the young Kleinsvenchan, and she always seemed to know when he watched her, responding each time with a playful half-wink.

  As the group dissipated in search of their bunks and much needed rest, the festivities slowly faded away. Eventually, Everett found himself alone, still basking in the satisfying afterglow of his success, but made no move toward the closet-sized cabin off the starboard corridor that Bennett had assigned to him. A vagrant thought passed through his mind that it would have been pleasant to have had the continued company of Sarah -- or even Eylis – but both young women had departed for the bunkroom they were to share, chatting animatedly about magic.

  Nevertheless content, he interlaced his hands behind his head and leaned back against his chair, working through the revenue potentials of his newest spell.

  After some time, Sergeant Tekle stuck his head into the galley, noticed Everett, and brought the rest of his body in from the port corridor, assuming a stiff, respectful stance that was not quite attention. “Sorry, sir. Might I ask if you’ll be long? Monsieur Eyrwaeld has asked me to make sure all the lights are out to preserve the batteries.”

  “Monsieur Eyrwaeld?”

  “That would be Bennett, sir.”

  “Right. No need to call me sir, sergeant. I’m just a tradesman.”