The Hidden Masters of Marandur Page 9

  “Dragons are not real,” Alain said. “Nothing is real.”

  “I thought we’d agreed for you not to say that anymore.”

  “You told me not to say it,” Alain pointed out. “Is that how Mechanics define agreement?”

  Mari looked at him, then laughed. “I’m acting like a Senior Mechanic myself. Please, Sir Mage, do not keep reminding me that nothing is real.” The humor went away again, replaced by worry. “Alain, when we parted at Dorcastle I thought we needed to separate partly because I was afraid that the Senior Mechanics who run my Guild would try to kill you if they saw us together.”

  He nodded. “You told me that you had to go away from me to protect me from your Guild, just as I felt the need to leave you for a time in order to prevent my Guild from killing you.”

  “Yeah. You think we would have gotten a little credit for being willing to leave each other.” She took a deep breath, staring into the flames. “Not that I could tell anyone that I’d fallen in love with a Mage. And I do love you. Even though it’s completely crazy and impossible, and even though everyone else in my Guild would totally freak out if they knew. How could you fall in love with a Mage? they’d ask. That’s sick and disgusting and perverted, and Mages are awful.”

  Alain nodded, trying to smile at her once more. The gesture still felt unfamiliar, and his muscles had been trained to avoid showing emotion, so he never knew how well it came off. “It is strange that my own Guild would say similar words about my feeling the same about a Mechanic.”

  Mari perked up, her eyes shining in the firelight. “You really do love me?”

  “Yes. I…I….” Alain fought to say the simple words, but they stuck in his throat, blocked by too many years of unforgiving training as an acolyte, too many years of conditioning to reject any emotions or feelings for others. He swallowed, then tried again. “I…”

  “It’s all right, Alain,” Mari said, her voice gentle. “I can tell how hard you’re fighting to say it. Someday you’ll be able to say it easily, and it will mean a lot to me when you do. But you’ve already shown me how you feel. Months ago, when you risked your life to come rescue me in that dungeon in Ringhmon, and later in Dorcastle when you stood beside me while a dragon charged at us.” Another sigh, then Mari slumped back again. “If only every threat was as easy to dispose of as a dragon.”

  “Easy?” Alain asked, wondering how much incredulity had sounded in his voice.

  “Relatively easy,” Mari corrected herself. “Maybe simpler is a better word. If you see a dragon, you know it’s a threat, you know it wants to kill you just because it saw you, and you know you have to kill it. Simple. Not like having to figure out who is after you and why they want to kill you and what the right thing is to do.”

  Alain nodded. “You seek to see through the illusion.”

  “Pretty much, yeah. Where was I? We separated at Dorcastle, but I didn’t tell you that I was also worried that my own Guild was also a threat to me.” She gave him a guilty glance. “I thought you might insist on staying with me if you knew that. Besides, it still seemed crazy then, to worry that my Guild would try to hurt me. Would a Mage be a danger to me? Sure. Present company excepted. Would a common be a threat? Maybe, if they could nail me without being found out. But a fellow Mechanic? When I had never acted against my Guild? I hadn’t done anything except excel at my work, ruin Ringhmon’s plan to delve into my Guild’s secrets, discover evidence that some Guild secrets had already been compromised, and then uncover a plot by commons who were using Mechanic equipment and skills. Those should have been good things!”

  She shook her head, staring at the flames of the fire. “Yes, I’d also learned about you, and that Mages weren’t frauds as I’d been taught, but my Guild didn’t know that I had learned that. At least, I didn’t think they did. So why the threats and the Interdicts against discussing anything? I needed to have the time to find out more.” Mari shifted position, grimacing. “Blazes, my butt hurts. I think horses were designed as instruments of torture. And my thighs. You can’t imagine how my thighs feel.”

  “I have tried to imagine how they feel,” Alain offered.

  Mari stared back at him blankly for a moment, then broke into laughter. “Alain, you don’t just say something like that to a girl. Everybody knows men are thinking it, but they’re not supposed to say it. We really have to work on your social skills.”

  “What are social skills?”

  “They’re…um…how people avoid saying what they really think. There’s probably a better-sounding explanation than that.”

  “Lies?” Alain asked.

  “No.” Mari twisted her face in thought. “More like lubrication in an engine, to keep things going smoothly.” She must have noticed his puzzlement. “That doesn’t mean a thing to you, does it? We don’t even use the same metaphors. How did we fall in love?”

  “I did not choose to do it. It just happened,” Alain said. “I have wondered myself how this came to be.”

  She studied him closely, then smiled. “I’m assuming you mean that in a good way. Where was I? My plan. I’d keep my head down, do as I was told, and learn more. The Senior Mechanics would stop seeing me as a threat, and all sorts of wonderful things would happen. Only they didn’t. I kept getting sent farther south, and finally ended up in Edinton.”

  Her smiles and laughter were gone once more, replaced by moodiness. She leaned forward, picked up a stick dropped by those building the fire, and began drawing in the dirt before her. From Alain’s angle, she seemed to making a map. “At that point, I figured I was being out-and-out exiled for a while. Very annoying, especially when I only wanted the best for my Guild. No explanation, just ‘Follow orders, Mari.’ I didn’t have much to do—the leadership of that Guild Hall rivals that of the Guild Hall in Ringhmon for sheer idiocy and poor management—and the longer I was stuck there the more worried I got.”

  Mari stopped moving or talking for a long moment, her lowered head bent over the stick in her hands. “Long story short, I got lured into a trap. A Mage using that concealment spell tried to knife me. Then someone else tried to blow my brains out with a bullet.”

  “A Mage attacked you?” Alain asked, feeling a sick sensation inside.

  “She tried. I knew they’d been watching me. I didn’t give them any reason to try to kill me.” Mari looked at him. “Did I?”

  “It is my fault,” Alain admitted. “Even though I have tried to keep them from finding out who you are, they still believe that you are dangerous.”

  She gave him another look, then shook her head. “From the looks of things, I’m mainly dangerous to my friends and myself. Just how much trouble did you actually get in because of spending time with me in Dorcastle?”

  Alain looked into the fire. “My Guild did not believe that I had been with you in Dorcastle. The elders thought that the woman I had been seen with in that city was a common I had sought out because she resembled the Mechanic I had met in Ringhmon.”

  “Why would you want to find a common who looked like me?” Mari asked.

  “For physical satisfaction.” The simple statement would have created no reaction in a Mage, but he saw the outraged look on Mari’s face and hurriedly added more. “I would not have done that. But the elders assumed that I did. I told you that they believed I was attracted to you.”

  “Alain, ‘attracted to’ doesn’t bring to mind the idea of finding another woman who resembles me so you can pretend that you’re—” She choked off the words, glaring into the night.

  “The elders assumed that. I never wanted it. I would never do it. There is no other woman like you.”

  Somehow he must have said the right thing, because she relaxed. “But because of that belief of theirs,” Mari said, “your elders thought you might look for me again.”

  “They actually thought that you would seek me,” Alain explained. “They were very concerned that you would…” His “social skills” might need work, but Alain realized that he probably should not say the rest.

  Too late. Mari bent a sour look his way. “What did they think I would do?”

  “It is not that important.”

  “Alain…”

  He exhaled slowly, realizing that Mari would not give up on this question. “The elders thought that you would seek to ensnare me, using your physical charms, and through me work to strike at the Mage Guild.”

  She stared back in disbelief. “Ensnare? They actually used the word ensnare?”

  “Yes. Many times.”

  “Using my physical charms?” Mari seemed unable to decide whether to laugh or get angry. She looked down at herself. “I’m a little low on ammunition when it comes to physical charms, or hadn’t these elders of yours noticed?”

  “You are beautiful beyond all other women,” Alain objected.

  Mari rolled her eyes. “And you are seriously deluded. I hadn’t realized how badly until this moment. You’re welcome to your illusions on that count, but please don’t assume that anyone else will share your opinion. So if other Mages had seen me near you, they would have assumed I was ensnaring as hard as my physical charms allowed? Do you have any idea how revolting that entire idea sounds to me?”

  Alain nodded. “I think so. I know how I felt when the elders accused you of such a plan. I thought they had insulted you, that if they had known you they would never have suggested that you would do such a thing.”

  He had managed to say the right thing again. Mari relaxed a bit. “Well, apparently your elders decided my ensnaring skills were too powerful to risk leaving me alive. After their knife attack failed, I think it was Dark Mechanics seeking revenge for Dorcastle who took a shot at me. And then my own Guild…” Mari paused, her expression a mix of anger, anguish, and disillusionment. “They gave me orders to go to Minut.”

  “Minut?” It took a moment for Alain to place the name. “That is in Tiae.”

  “Minut is in what used to be Tiae,” Mari said. “My supervisors claimed that a Calculating and Analysis Device had been abandoned there when the Mechanics Guild pulled out of Tiae. Do you know what a Cee A Dee is?” Alain shook his head. “What a Cee A Dee does is think. Sort of. It doesn’t really think like a person does. It calculates. Does math problems, but it does them very, very fast. And that’s all it does, though writing the proper ciphers lets you use math to figure out all kinds of things and track inventories and run simulations and…” Mari gave him a look. “You’re bored.”

  “No,” Alain assured her. “I always look like this.”

  “No, you don’t. Not like that. But that’s all right, because Cee A Dees are rare, and even a lot of Mechanics don’t know much about them. You warned me about the one I was going to Ringhmon to work on, though it turned out what I had to fear wasn’t the device itself but what was stored on it.” Mari grimaced at the memories. “Anyway, my Guild ordered me to go to Minut, claiming that there would be a strong escort waiting for me inside Tiae. Alain, I couldn’t find any sign that an escort had been sent. I had never heard of any CAD abandoned in Minut, either. My Guild wanted to send me into Tiae to get rid of me.”

  Silence fell for a moment, then Mari shrugged. “So, everyone is trying to kill me. Except commons. How about you?”

  He waved toward the remains of the dragon. “My Guild has decided to kill me as well.” Alain told her of his being contracted as the sole Mage with the Alexdrians, of the ambush and retreat, concluding with the dragon. “It is clear I was meant to die. If not for you, and if not for General Flyn, I would be dead. Why my Guild did not simply kill me within the Mage Hall I do not know. But it seems that as with your Guild, they did not wish to do it outright, rather making it seem the byproduct of a normal tasking.”

  “Stars above, Alain,” Mari said, her voice carrying anguish, “how can you sound so detached about that? Doesn’t it bother you that your own Guild tried to kill you?”

  Alain shook his head. “There is no surprise in it at all, merely confirmation of a possibility that I have considered more and more likely. The Mage Guild teaches all acolytes that any threat to the Guild will be dealt with in whatever way is necessary. My Guild has decided that I must die.”

  “But why? I was on the other side of the world, as far as they knew,” Mari said. “Did they somehow track me, to know that I was coming this way? Or did they read my mind?”

  “The first is possible, the second not.” Alain looked into the fire. “Foresight on the part of some other Mage is possible also, seeing me as a potential future threat. But it may be that I betrayed myself. Since Dorcastle, my ability to suppress my emotions has diminished. I know feelings are showing, not in ways which commons might see, but clearly enough for Mages to spot. My elders could well have decided that I am ruined, that my contact with you has corrupted me beyond correction.”

  Mari looked at him, her expression miserable. “I’m used to some people in authority not being thrilled with me, but I’ve never thought of myself as being corrupting before. That’s strange. Some Senior Mechanics said that about me, too, that I was a negative influence on other Mechanics. What does it take to corrupt a Mage, anyway?”

  “I told you. They thought that you had attempted to seduce me. Perhaps they thought that you had already succeeded despite my denials that such a thing had happened.”

  Once again Mari stared at him, her face darkening. “I was under the impression that your elders thought I would try that at some future point. What did you tell them to make them think that I had already put my moves on you? Or that I had already hooked you?”

  “Hooked?” Alain asked.

  “Ensnared.” Mari got the word out between clenched teeth.

  “I told them nothing. That was the illusion they wished to believe, not thinking there could be any other reason for a female Mechanic to seek my company.” Alain paused in thought. “A young and attractive female Mechanic, that is.”

  “Oh, right. The one with all of those physical charms.”

  “Yes,” Alain agreed.

  She gasped a laugh. “I was being sarcastic again, Alain. I hope that isn’t the reason you’ve been attracted to me. Not the only reason, anyway.”

  “You are very pleasant to look upon,” Alain said, and Mari’s face flushed again. Had he angered her? “But my elders were foolish to think physical desire alone could corrupt me. It should not have been possible with all of my training, but I found that a single shadow was by far the most important part of the world illusion. That is what doomed me, so my elders were correct in thinking that you had altered my thinking. Not with your body or other physical temptation, but with who you were and the things you did.” Alain made another effort to bend his lips into a smile. “I will never be able to return to what I was before I met you.”

  Her face as she stared at him now was tragic. “I hope you’re not trying to make me feel better by telling me that, Alain, because if so it’s not working. Because of me, your Guild wants to kill you.”

  “My Guild wants to kill me because my elders doubt my loyalty. They are correct to do so, because I have learned much from you, and remembered much from being with you, and will help you with the task you are fated to perform.” Mari gave him a quizzical look, but waited as Alain continued speaking. “The road my elders dictate is a narrow one, and I no longer believe it to be the road to wisdom. I choose my own road. I choose to do the right thing, as you call it. I would not choose another companion for that road, and should you choose to walk that road with me, it would be…” His voice faltered, unable to put words to Alain’s feelings, but he met her eyes, trying to let his feelings show. Perhaps he succeeded this time, because once again Mari blushed and bent her head.

  “I don’t deserve you,” Mari muttered. “I leave a trail of destruction in my wake. Maybe I belong in Tiae where I can’t do any more damage.”

  “You did not go to Tiae.”

  “No.” Mari waved at the crude map she had drawn in the dirt. “It was pretty obvious I wasn’t supposed to come back alive from Minut.” She pressed lips tightly together and squeezed her eyes shut. “Alain, the Guild has been my only family for a long time. You expect families to have quarrels, disagreements, but it’s not easy to accept the idea that your family wants to kill you.”

  “Our Guilds differ. Mine regards murder as but the fading of a shadow. Where did you go?”

  “I rode out of Edinton but jumped a train north, traveling by various means through Debran and on to Danalee, hiding my jacket like I did in Dorcastle so I could pass as a common. An old friend of mine from Caer Lyn was at the Guild weapons workshops in Danalee. Have I ever talked about Alli? No? Sorry. I guess we’ve always had a lot of other things to worry about. Anyway, Alli was still my friend. She didn’t tell anyone I was there, but told me that there was a Guild alert out for me.” Mari snorted in derision. “The Senior Mechanics were supposedly worried that something might have happened to me, claiming that I had decided to go into Minut on my own. I needed to talk to someone who had a lot more pull than Alli or I, but when Alli checked with the Mechanics Guild Academy in Palandur she found out that Professor S’san had retired suddenly a month earlier. What about Professor S’san? Have I mentioned her to you?”

  “Yes, in Dorcastle. A Mechanic elder you respect for her wisdom.”

  “I couldn’t believe she had retired, Alain. Professor S’san was old, but she hadn’t slowed down at all. I would have sworn she had no intention of retiring. But there was my most reliable and powerful acquaintance in the Guild, abruptly sidelined.” Mari gazed gloomily at nothing. “I really hope Alli didn’t get in more trouble.”

  She poked at the fire with her stick, sending sprays of sparks on brief, brilliant arcs through the darkness. “So, there was nothing else I could do for myself at the moment. I swore Alli to secrecy and headed for Dorcastle, staying hidden as a common and taking ship from Dorcastle for Kelsi.”

  -->