Henry Neff - The Maelstrom

Max said nothing for some time. Cooper killed Xiùmĕi? She had been the oldest member of the Red Branch, a wizened woman who had survived countless battles and world wars only to fall at the hands of her own captain. Max would miss her toothless grin and irreverent humor. Sorrow aside, there were practical matters to consider: The Red Branch was growing thin. Only seven of the twelve were now in commission and war was coming. Poor Miss Boon. He grieved for his old Mystics teacher. Hazel Boon was not the sort who loved quickly or easily, but she had loved William Cooper.

Sitting up, Max gazed about the infirmary at the many beds and patients. Some he recognized, Agents wounded on other missions. Others were hidden behind curtains. Max watched a moomenhoven pull a curtain aside and glimpsed a man whose skin had been burned away. He was suspended by a system of silken nets and pulleys, blinking stoically while the healer applied some salve.

Despite such grisly sights, the ward was peaceful. It was clean and quiet, sunlight streaming through the high windows as the moomenhovens made their rounds and tended the wounded with herbs and draughts and shy little smiles.

“Patching us up for the war,” Max reflected.

Sipping his coffee, David smiled. “Cynical already. You are getting better.”

“What about the pinlegs?” Max wondered, turning around. “Where is it?”

“Down in the Archives. The scholars are studying it, as is Peter Varga. We’re hoping he might be able to use his prescience to foresee its full capabilities. I’m giving it some attention, too.” He patted the documents on his lap.

“What have you figured out?”

“Let’s see, let’s see,” David muttered, lowering his voice and glancing at the topmost papers where Max glimpsed diagrams of the creature and the various runes and markings that were found on its case. “Strange little creature. It’s some sort of genetically engineered centipede, but it has mechanical elements fused to the organic—sensors, transmitters, cloaking devices. On its own, it’d be a neat little spy or assassin, but that’s not what’s got everyone worried. It’s these.…”

David held up one of the sheets of paper on which several intricate diagrams had been drawn. Max saw that each was purposefully left incomplete, lest it inadvertently trigger some sort of unintended consequence.

“These inscriptions were almost invisible,” said David, scooting his chair closer. “They’ve been etched onto the pinlegs’ segments in lines so fine we almost missed them entirely.”

“Summoning circles,” Max breathed, squinting at the diagrams.

“That’s right,” David confirmed. “But we don’t know for what kind of spirit. I’ve never seen anything like these diagrams before. They don’t make any sense.”

“What’s so weird about them?”

“In some ways, a proper summoning is like a math equation; you’re specifying particular terms and operations according to established principles. One of those principles is that the thing you’re summoning is … a thing. It is whole. It is a complete being—with a truename and a spirit or soul. But these diagrams imply a different sort of operation. They’re designed to call half a being.”

“Half of what?”

“I don’t know,” remarked David, frowning and staring at the diagram. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. But I don’t like the idea that the pinlegs could be tethered to something else—something it can summon at a moment’s notice. We don’t yet know what it is, but we know the Workshop and Prusias believe it will tip the balance in their favor.”

Max remembered back to the vyes he’d overheard by the lake. He told David of their dread of “scuttlers” and what might happen when they’re set loose.

“Do you remember those strange lights in the skies above Raikos?” said Max. “And that sound … like air-raid horns followed by earthquakes and tremors. We didn’t see or hear anything like that when we floated over Prusias’s army. I’ll bet Prusias unleashed the pinlegs when we were holed up in that palace. I’ll bet those lights and tremors were made by whatever they summoned.”

David nodded and jotted several notes in the paper’s margins. “I was too out of it,” he lamented. “Did you actually see anything?”

“No,” replied Max. “The horizon was filled with fire and smoke and lights flashing across the sky. The entire palace shook. Whatever made those sounds and tremors must have been huge.”

“And arrived instantaneously ,” added David. “That’s the real worry. If Prusias can have these pinlegs instantly call in some sort of monstrous cavalry, his army’s nigh invincible. He must have found a way around the energy requirements.”

“What do you mean?” asked Max.

“Teleportation requires an ungodly amount of energy,” said David. “Even I can’t teleport on my own. I can only do it if I find a wormhole or construct a tunnel from our room, and those take me months to craft. But summoning achieves much the same effect as teleportation—it instantly transports a being vast distances to a specified place. It just uses a different, more efficient means.”

“Am I going to get a headache?” Max moaned. “Why do I always get a headache when I talk to you and Mina about these things?”

“No headaches,” David promised. “This is a simpler concept. In teleportation, the caster has to do all the work himself. He has to metaphysically transport a large mass over a vast distance in a tiny period of time. That requires colossal sums of energy.

But in summoning, you’re simply teleporting the being’s soul. A soul by itself has almost zero mass and thus the process requires only a tiny fraction of the energy.”

“But then how does a summoner also transport the body if that’s so hard?” asked Max.

“He doesn’t,” replied David. “The soul does. You see, the bond between a soul and its body is very strong—atomically strong. They do not like being separated. During a summoning, the connection between the two has not been fundamentally broken, but it has been stretched almost infinitely thin—like the thinnest, strongest rubber band you can imagine. While the soul is anchored in place by the summoning circle, the body is free to move. And move it does! They reunite almost instantly. But in this scenario, the energy was provided by the bond between soul and body—not the summoner.”

“But why would the pinlegs want to summon half of something’s body?” Max asked.

“Why indeed …,” mused David, gazing out the window. He reposed in silence for several minutes, staring off into space with a blank, abstracted expression. At last the sorcerer blinked and clucked his tongue. Glancing at Max, he rose from his chair and bowed. “ ‘Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.’ ”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“Forgive me,” said David, smiling. “A quip from Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The truth is that you’ve just given me a very good idea—one I need to investigate right away. I’ll look in on you later. Ms. Richter’s posted guards to the ward entrance, the gae bolga ’s beneath your pillow, and you have your ring. Pay attention to it, Max. I don’t want to frighten you, but the Atropos may be close. Until I return, here are some letters that have been piling up. They’ve already been screened for anything insidious.

You might have your enemies, but it also seems that a few people care about you. Shocking, I know. I promised Mina she could look in after supper, so steel yourself for some highly intelligent and periodically trying company.”

“You’re good practice,” Max retorted, accepting a stack of letters and bidding David farewell. Taking up a slim wooden cane, David hobbled out of the ward with his mug and papers stuffed into the crook of his free arm. He resembled an absent-minded professor late for a lecture.