Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Fate

Although it was difficult to tell exactly how thick the crystal actually was, it was incontrovertibly not thin. The depth of her forearm, at least. That it did have a far side, though, was also evident, since Leen could see something beyond it - a circular spot of green, coin-sized. A light. Not a flame, or a sorcerous torch, or a rune like the ones on Robin’s tunic, but a light of some different type entirely, a light that glowed its perfect, unceasing, monochromatic glow in the darkness where no eye had seen it for-

The light turned orange, flashed once. Then it winked off.

Leen’s head snapped back as though the light had leapt forward through the crystal and slapped her instead. She shook her head once, trying to still through sympathetic magic, she supposed, her whirling thoughts. She looked down at Robin; he was happily pounding away at the metal door, making not the slightest dent or sound, except for the very mild thump of his small hands against the material. Leen discovered she was rather proud of him, even in the midst of her quite un-Archivist-like mental turmoil. Even as the young child he was, he was revealing the appropriate inclinations of a first-class Archivist himself. One of them, unfortunately, was dredging up things better left hidden. Still, he had most likely finished his part; now it was her turn. Leen told herself to remember to get him something special for bringing her such an interesting puzzle. Interesting? Well, this was interesting. Indeed, it was more than interesting. Something ancient was still alive in there.

It seemed like the first decent sleep he’d had in ages. Of course, his standards had grown significantly more lax since being on the road, but even so you could scarcely deny -

Again, a boot tried to separate his ribs. Again? Jurtan Mont tried to think back into the immediate past. Something must have roused him far enough out of sleep to kick his mind into gear. Could it have been the same foot? And if so, whose foot was it?

“Come on, get up already.”

The voice was unfamiliar. Jurtan cracked an eye and craned his neck around. The shaggy figure with its unkempt beard that loomed over him in the predawn murk was not one he recognized either. But his warning sense hadn’t given him an alarm, and he hadn’t been robbed and strung up in his sleep. “Who are you?” Jurtan said.

“Who do you think I am?” the unfamiliar figure said irritably. “Shoulda slipped a knife through your belly instead of just a friendly boot. That might sharpen one thing about you once and for all, since I’ve just about given up on your mind.”

The figure might be new, but Jurtan was well and fully intimate with the irritation. “Max?”

Maximillian the Vaguely Disreputable, looking more than ever like his sobriquet, grunted down at him. “Five minutes, then we exercise.”

Jurtan piled out of his bedroll. It was chilly out in the air, but at least the dew hadn’t frosted over on his face. “How long do we have to keep doing this for? How long until we get somewhere?”

“Never fails, does it,” Max muttered. “Awake for ten seconds and the first thing he does is start to complain.”

“But we aren’t just going to keep traveling forever, are we? When do we get to someplace we want to be?”

“We are someplace.”

“No, I mean -”

“So do I.” Max raised an eyebrow and directed his gaze meaningfully over Jurtan’s shoulder. When they’d stopped after dark the previous evening they’d gone just beyond the line of trees that marked the margin of the road before settling themselves down. During the night, Jurtan had rolled up against what he’d thought, in the gloom of sleep, was a hard tree. It wasn’t a tree. It was a low cairn of stones, with a small signpost on top. He went around to the front and squinted at it. The arrow-end of the sign pointed ahead down the road in the direction they had been traveling. The legend on the sign read “PERIDOL.”

Jurtan grunted. “It doesn’t say how far.” It did seem like they’d been traveling forever. “How long has it been since we slept in a bed?”

“Day before yesterday.”

“Really?” Well, okay, maybe. Still, it had to be more than two weeks since they’d made it out of the swamp; maybe as much as a month. If Jurtan had had anything to say about it, they’d never have gone into the swamp in the first place, especially since all they had to show for it was a sack of moldy papers neither one of them could read. Of course, if Jurtan had anything to say about anything, he’d be anywhere at the moment but out at five-thirty in the morning on some nameless road in some useless countryside on the way to somewhere he had not the slightest interest in arriving at. With a maniacal self-improvement freak. Jurtan was still surprised Max didn’t make the horses do calisthenics right along with the two of them.

To his credit, if you were in a positive frame of mind, you could note that Max never sat on the sidelines just calling instructions to Jurtan. Jurtan scowled at his own thought as he laced his fingers together behind his back and began his first ten-count of creaking his way over backward. That wasn’t a positive at all; all it meant was that Max pushed both of them as hard as he pushed himself. “What do you think you’re glaring at?” Max said, finishing his own back-bend, holding it, and then moving his upper body up and over in a slow lithe curl that culminated with his nose touching his thighs and his arms pointing straight ahead of him behind his inverted back.

“Why do we have to do this every day?” Jurtan grunted a moment later, coming back upright and pausing before doing the whole thing over again. “We’re already in shape. Okay, maybe I wasn’t when we left Roosing Oolvaya but I am now, so -”

“You’re in shape now? Good, then we can go on to the next level. There’s no standing still in this outfit.” Max tilted backward again and Jurtan reluctantly followed.

Max had already told him that standing still meant going back; that was aphorism number ten-thousand thirty-three. Thirty-four? If Max tossed him another Rule to Live By today Jurtan thought he’d ... well, it wouldn’t be pretty.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Jurtan’s music sense didn’t seem to agree with Max. Well, it might be as bad physically, but at least he wouldn’t have to accept the fact that his own body was in league against him too. He didn’t care at this stage if something was good for him or not. So what if he actually did feel better than before he’d met up with Max and Shaa? Great, he was in touch with his body, he had muscles and supple joints, his coordination had improved and he had a new repertoire of skills. All this had done was give him a new appreciation of the under-recognized appeal of sloth as a lifestyle.

A flugelhorn honked querulously at him from the back of his head. That was another thing - what was the good of an extra sense that spent most of its time editorializing? Anybody who had a conscience had to be used to having it tell its owner what it thought of them, but Shaa (who was supposed to know about things like that) had never heard of one that orchestrated its critical commentary with multi-part harmony and a comprehensive palette of tonal colors.

Of course, the standard wisdom on consciences was that they concentrated on reactions to issues of right and wrong, weighing in with a compulsion to do right and feelings of guilt if you violated a previously recognized ethical principle. What a conscience wasn’t supposed to do was step out proactively, jumping in with helpful hints and suggestions of its own when it hadn’t been asked to do anything more than shut up. In fact, shutting up was the one thing Jurtan’s sense had thus far refused to do.