Harry Turtledove (Editor) - The Enchanter Completed

The lady leaned over the table. "From what I gather?that story in our own world, as we told you, plus the scrolls and codices I see you've collected, you're a good mathematician. What you've got here is partly an engineering problem. For that, Sprague can help you, none better. And the rest of it is logistics: getting your people where you need them and making sure they have what they need to do what they have to do."

"What we haven't got is time!" Emrys protested.

" We have all the time in the worlds," said Sprague. "But you're grieving, you're way out on a limb, and naturally, at your age, you're in a hurry. You won't believe me now, no one your age ever does, but you'd be wise to plan now so you won't have to play catch-up later. And listen to my wife: she studied economics at Columbia along with languages."

"Emrys, you may as well accept that moving these stones is going to take time. The more people, the less time. That's only logical. But, if you have too many people, you'll run into a whole other set of logistical problems: they'll get in each other's way, and if you've pick the wrong people, from warring clans or people who aren't honest, they'll probably start a war."

A chill ran down Emrys' spine. He had not lived among ill-wishers, either in his grandfather's house, Vortigern's household, or now without being able to sense?no magic about it, just sharp eyes and ears?when he was being spied on. " They're watching ," he mouthed at his guests.

Sprague raised an eyebrow, then dropped a hand to the pouch at his finely tooled belt. He rose and went to the fire, began to chant, and extended his hands. The fire erupted with a roar loud enough to drive the eavesdroppers away.

" Not the catalogue of ships again," his wife complained. "We may get a spy who's read Homer, and then what will you do? To say nothing of what happens when you run out of filings. No, don't tell me you've brought along iron or magnesium filings, too."

"The thing about clich?s, my dear," said the man, "is that they work."

Emrys went to the door, where one guard, more valiant than the rest, lingered by the wall.

"Young Gildas almost pissed himself when that fire went off," the guard said, grinning. Did Emrys really have allies among the guards? That was useful to know. "It's worth being that close to… what you do to have seen the expression on his face."

"It is forbidden to interfere when I and my guests speak together. They are great teachers."

Emrys could practically hear the guard's jaw clench as he snapped to attention and closed the door.

"Nice going, son," said Catherine. "But I wouldn't get any ambitions about being a boy actor, if I were you, though. They're a dime a dozen in Hollywood."

"What shrine is the Holly Wood?" asked Emrys. He should have known the lady was a priestess. Since the monks had swarmed all over Britain, he had known few Druids who dared to speak this openly.

"Never mind," she said, a little sharply. "Let's talk about logistics."

As Sprague watched with an expression of pleased?no, he wasn't surprised?he expected her to take charge, Emrys blinked. He supposed he should have been able to puzzle out «logistics» word from the Greek he'd learned.

"Robert?he's a… a wise man of our acquaintance, Emrys?says that dilettantes talk strategy, amateurs talk tactics, and real professionals talk logistics. Let's evaluate the situation."

"How could I have been so stupid as to say I'd adorn Aurelius' grave with the Giants' Dance?" Emrys lamented again. "The stones are enormous, and there's no one alive strong enough to move them."

"Man makes engines," said Sprague. "Pity you couldn't think of stones closer to home."

"It had to be these stones. It couldn't be stones from Little Britain; besides, they're allies. These stones belong to Gillomanus, a king in Ireland. They're big enough and important enough to be a proper monument for my… my father. Besides, if you pour water over them and bathe in it, they'll heal you. Or the water can be mixed with herbs and used to cure wounds. There isn't a single stone in the whole Giants' Dance that doesn't have some medicinal property." He paused to draw a breath.

"And besides," he said, "I promised. I've been doing some calculating…" He reached for wax tablets and stylus, rough parchment and pen, and pulled them forward, the wax half-smoothed from the last time he'd used it, the parchment already smudged and scraped. "Uther says he's damned if he's going to give me the fifteen thousand men he says it'll take to do the job right."

"The job being what? War with Gillomanus' Ireland or bringing home the memorial stones?"

"Probably both," Emrys said. "Gillomanus will never surrender the stones, I know that. We'll have to take them by force."

"You're a noncombatant," said Lady Catherine. "After they have their war, your work starts. Now, I don't need to be an engineer like Sprague here to know that brute strength won't work on those stones. You're going to need cranes and levers and ropes. Probably sledges or logs to get the stones to the ships once you take them down. But you men can talk," she said, rising and stretching, lithe as a cat. "I'm going to bed."

The Lion of Mithras who called himself Sprague paced in front of the dying fire, discoursing of siege engines and the Bible. At least, that's what the talk of the megalithic yards, fathoms, and cubits as opposed to what he called the "Stonehenge cubit" sounded like. "As my… my magister for these arts, Aubrey Burl, a learned man who went up and down the Isles seeking out these stones, taught… " Lord Sprague went on. "Oh never mind! It's in Pythagoras. I'm assuming you've studied geometry. The square of the hypotenuse…"

Emrys scrambled down from his chair, snatched a charred stick from the fire, and sketched the right triangle that had been one of his earliest lessons.

"Good boy!" the man approved. "Now," he said, "what do you know about counting and arithmetic in different bases…"

Emrys settled his chin on his hand, smearing ash over his face, he had no doubt, and listened as if his soul depended on it. As his life assuredly did.

Sprague continued to pace before the flames, occasionally dropping down beside Emrys to correct his triangles. The light waxed and waned, waxed and waned. Emrys' charred stick fell from his hand, and he stared into the fire. No white dragon. No red dragon. Not even a salamander. He'd been prophet to two kings, and he couldn't even summon up a damn lizard.

Back and forth.

"It's a formula," came the man's voice from a distance that sounded far greater than his height. Perhaps the old curates' theory that you can attribute everything to solar myths actually means something. Hmmm. If I remember right, the meaning of the thirty posts of the inner circle is plain. Last time I let Catherine tease me about The WhiteGoddess . Let's see if I can remember what Graves said."

Sprague's voice took on the cadence of a Druid, summoning wisdom from his trained memory. " 'The thirty arches of the outer circle and the thirty posts of the inner circle stood for the days of the ordinary Egyptian month; but the secret enclosed by these circles was that the solar year was divided into five seasons, each in turn divided into three twenty-four day periods, represented by the three stones of the dolmens'… hmmm, hmmm, and what's the point? 'For the circle was so sited that at dawn of the summer solstice the sun rose exactly at the end of the avenue in dead line with the altar and the Hell Stone; while of the surviving pair of the four undressed stones, one marks the sun's rising at the winter solstice, the other its setting at the summer solstice. ' "

Emrys could see it now: the massive arches, darker for the brilliance of the dawn, with the great fire of the sun blazing through the entryway and glorifying his father's tomb with long beams of light.