IV. Travel
Beside Dane, Somner shifted, tugging on his maroon shirtsleeves and looking altogether uncomfortable. Dane leaned against the station wall and tried to ignore the fidgeting. The passengers were currently disembarking from the train that they would be patronizing, and soon they would be on their way to Nothfeld in the west.
Jem had outdone himself, Dane noted as he watched Somner moving about. The maroon shirt was made of fine lawn, worn with black and gray checked pants and suspenders, and topped off with a black silk mage coat. The outfit was perfect for arriving at Nothfeld. It showed money and class, but casually, and accented Somner’s pale looks. Somner didn’t seem to like all of the layers, but he would really have to get over that if he ever wanted to go out in polite society.
“Mooning over your construct?”
Stoneford’s voice was sly, his breath warm as it ghosted over Dane’s ear. He huffed in pain when Dane jammed an elbow into his stomach; it was a satisfying sound.
“Well met, Stoneford,” he said courteously. “And how are you this morning?”
“As ever, Dane. So you’re off to Nothfeld?” When Dane nodded, he smiled grimly. “Watch for the Prince there—he’s said to have a predilection for simulacrum and similar constructs.”
“Very well. I think the train is boarding.”
“Be careful.”
He sounded worried. Dane shrugged him off. “Somner, the train is boarding. Let’s go.”
Somner nodded, following him as he showed their tickets, ordered someone to take their trunks, and entered the nearest car. The train rumbled a bit as they walked down the aisles to the back. There, the seats were spacious and plush, each sectioned off from the others with sturdy curtains. Dane gestured for Somner to sit down in their seats and followed him, settling himself down opposite the construct.
Somner looked around him with interest, fingering the small bag that they had brought on with them containing reading material. He sat straight-backed, with a peculiar poise that was unnatural, almost animal.
Dane reached deep inside one of his own coat pockets and pulled out his grimoire. He started to read over his various notes and essays until the train lurched and began to move. Then he looked up. Somner was looking out the window delightedly, one finger pressed against the glass. His boots were off and his legs curled up under him, a hand resting against the bag of books. Dane started to read his grimoire again—he would have to check on Somner often. If he didn’t, it was likely the construct wouldn’t tell him the train was blowing up around them for fear that Dane might be disturbed at being interrupted.
When he looked up next, Somner was staring at him nervously, hands wringing the bag’s strap.
“Did you want something, Somner?” Dane asked, closing the grimoire.
Somner sighed heavily. “I was… wondering, why do you have Valerian’s things? It seems like it would have….”
When he trailed off, Dane shrugged. “Valerian wanted me to attempt your experiment, so he willed all of the clothing to me. His actual brother couldn’t stand looking at the rest, so since Valerian and I were as close to brothers as we could be without sharing a mother, I was given the rest of his things as well. Not that I would ever want to share a mother with Valerian.”
Somner looked perplexed at that, but Dane refused to answer the question in his eyes. Talking about Valerian’s mother would require inebriation of the highest degree, which Dane quite frankly didn’t have the time for.
“I have to go to the toilet,” he said abruptly. He hesitated before he pushed the curtain aside and handed Somner the two tickets. “They may come to check the tickets. Just give them these. They’ll tear off a part of them, and then give you back the remainder.”
He left, making his way to the small toiletry room in the back, and when he returned, Somner was holding the two ticket stubs and looking nervous but relieved. His eyes brightened when Dane slid into his seat.
“Dane, how does the toilet not malfunction while on a train?” he asked. “Where does it… go?”
Dane laughed. “Demons live in the pipes.” Somner actually looked skeptical at that, which made Dane laugh all the harder. “Really. When the train is built, a mage etches a small summoning circle into the metal pipes and summons a minor imp that subsists on excrement. It neatly solves the problem of relieving oneself while traveling.”
Somner thought about that for a while. Dane retrieved his grimoire and started to sketch out the latest summoning circle that he wanted to attempt, noting the modifications that he would like to make. When he looked up again, Somner asked hesitantly, “Am I a demon?”
“What— no!” Somner kept still and waited for Dane to calm himself. Dane sighed. “I used a mixture of transmutation and a spell-circle modified from a summoning circle to create you, though my specialization is summoning. Valerian found the proper herbs to help change a summoning circle to a spell-circle, thus enabling me to blend specializations in a way that helped me achieve my mastery and my mage license. You are constructed entirely of magic; your consciousness was not retrieved from any demonic realm whatsoever.”
“All right.”
Somner was quiet, picking at a thread on the seat, and Dane couldn’t get his heart to stop racing. A demon possessing Valerian’s corpse would be… God, it would kill him to see that. A simple mage construct being made from Valerian was palatable in comparison.
“To be a demon would suggest that you existed before the ritual. You would remember. You were made from both the natural and the unnatural so that the conflict would give you energy to sustain your existence—separate from any demonic realm, whole and self-sufficient. You aren’t—”
“I understand,” Somner interrupted. A flush of pale pink spread across his cheeks: the flush wasn’t from blood flow, so was it possible that the magic was mimicking natural human reactions? The energy fluctuation might suggest such; it had shifted strangely when the blush appeared.
Dane nodded and bent down to his reading again.
The light had that peculiar cast that it took past midday, when it came from the wrong angle. Dane urged Somner to hop down and followed after him, eager to stretch his legs after the four hour ride from Farthing to Terra, home of the southernmost train station in the Principality of Nothfeld. The station had little custom, and a bare handful of people milled about the empty building. Farthing station had been far busier, but that was only to be expected, given that Farthing was the second-largest city in the Larken principality.
“Now we just have to buy a horse,” Dane said, standing in front of the station for a moment and rolling back his shoulders, yawning. He eyed their trunks critically. To a normal eye, they would appear to be floating, but two imps were actually holding them up, grunting and sweating and looking altogether displeased with their lot in life. Dane rolled his eyes and started to walk down the street. Imps were a great deal stronger than they liked to pretend, so there was no need for all the fuss, really.
“Horse?” Somner sounded alarmed.
“The city is thirty miles away from here. There’s very little other way to travel. I could summon or conjure some other transportation, but it would be foolish considering how little the distance is.” He paused, stopping mid-stride. “You don’t wish to stay here.”
Somner shook his head vehemently, white hair flying and lips pressed into a thin line. Dane nodded, smiled briefly, and continued walking.
They made their way out of the long stone building and out into the busy street. Dane absentmindedly purchased two sandwiches from a vendor and shoved one into Somner’s hands. He took a bite of his own, thankful that mages were frequent enough travelers in this town that the vendors carried food without meat—the consumption of flesh interfered with the rituals that mages performed.
Catching sight of a horse merchant nearby, Dane swung close to the caravan, searching for the merchant. A small woman was leaning against the fence that surrounded her stock, looking over the passersby cheerfully. When she saw Dane approaching, she slowly drew to her feet.
“Lookin’ fer a couple horses?” she asked. Her accent was heavy with a misplaced northeastern drawl. It sounded odd in Nothfeld, the western-most of the five Summoning Lands.
“Yes, please.” Dane looked at her guardedly and she barked a short laugh.
“There ain’t no way that I’m gonna con a mage, no sir, so stop givin’ me that sorta look,” she said, grinning. “Got two horses here that should suit you fine—a mare and a gelding, well-suited each to each. One hundred fifty quid for the two of ‘em, with trimmings and all. A deal, t’is.”
Dane snorted softly. “Yes, you’re quite right. I assume that they will die as soon as I look upon them?”
She looked offended at that. “No, sir. Not at all.” Then she smiled wide. “I just figger that you’ll be lookin’ to sell ‘em back to someone and that may s’well be me, and then? Well, then mebbe we can deal a bit.”
Dane’s eyebrows rose. “What? You require some sort of mage assistance? Or you hope to purchase them back for less than we paid for them?”
“Both, o’course. Ain’t no worth haggling if you’ve got nothing to haggle down from. Now, Master Mage, what have you?”
He laughed. “All right, then. Thank you, miss.”
He handed her the money and she handed him the horses—quite fine business, all told. The horses, a black mare and a roan gelding, were not unattractive and looked hardy enough. He mounted the mare quickly and turned to watch Somner stare at him, then at the horse, before he tentatively mimicked the motion and mounted.
Valerian had been a fine rider, but Somner was so nervous.
Dane sighed and steered the horse out onto the street. Somner followed him, and Dane matched the horses paces so that they were riding alongside one another. The afternoon was a cloudy one, with low, lazy white clouds stuttering their way across the sky.
“What did you think of the sandwich?” Dane asked abruptly. Somner startled, but fortunately was able to keep from falling off the horse.
“It was fine,” Somner said, shrugging. His inhuman blue eyes were looking away and Dane traced his gaze to a man on the street corner juggling apples. The juggler’s hands nearly blurred in their movements, catching an apple that fell behind him and tossing it into the air again to join the others. “Are…. Do you think those apples are possessed?”
Dane’s brow rose. He looked more closely at the man—his sight-cream was wearing off, so it required a bit of work—and saw that there was indeed a very slight glimmer of dark green clinging to the apples.
“Actually, I think it’s likely a spell-circle,” he said idly. “One on his hands or the apples, or both, to enable a bit of a ‘sticky touch’ while performing. Interesting. How did you see it?”
Somner shrugged, uncomfortably shifting in the saddle until the gelding lay his ears back in annoyance. “It looked odd.”
“Hmm….”
Maybe the energy in Somner allowed him to see like energies. Seeing energies wasn’t exactly a normal behavior—humans couldn’t do it without aids, like Dane’s sight-cream. Dane wanted to experiment, demons take it, but first he needed a job.
“Would you be adverse to me doing some tests, when we have time? So that I know exactly what you are able to see?”
Somner shook his head, fisting a hand around his reins. “No. That is… fine,” he said softly.
“Can you see the imps?” Dane asked curiously, and Somner nodded.
“They seem tired.”
Dane snorted. “They are trying to appeal to our better natures so that they can get out of the work sooner. They can hold several times more than that for several hours longer and still be barely strained at all.”
Somner looked dubious, but merely hunched in on himself.
Dane refused to feel sorry for the imps—he specialized in summoning, and if he was going to feel sorry for imps, he might as well give up his entire profession and go back to live on his parents’ estate.
“Can you see yourself?” he questioned. “The energy?” They were nearing the edge of town, which was fortunately close to the train station.
Somner tilted his head, and then after a moment, smiled beatifically. “I’m blue. Like you, except you have a shimmer of green and silver as well.
Taken aback, Dane asked, “Really?” Green was Valerian’s color, not his own, and he had not the slightest clue where the silver had come from.
Somner nodded slowly. He looked as if he was worried that what he said had been somehow improper, so Dane smiled distractedly at him. “It’s all right. I was simply surprised. I wonder how definite your ability is. It’s been theorized that children that possess inherent magical ability might be able to be detected before any incident occurs if it was possible to see it in them.”
“But… you can see magic,” Somner said, twisting in his saddle to look at Dane with wide eyes. His riding was better than Dane’s now; it appeared that Valerian’s instincts and body knew how to ride still, even if Somner did not.
“Not usually,” Dane mumbled, depressed by yet another reminder of Valerian in Somner. “Valerian invented the sight-cream that I use to track your energy levels, but it cannot be replicated. Valerian hid his notes too well, and no one but him knew all of the plant lore necessary to invent such a concoction. I’m not even able to recall what he named the cream.”
Somner frowned, eyebrows veering inward, but said nothing.
“Come,” Dane ordered, kicking his mare into a trot and then into a gallop as they passed the city limits. This time, Somner matched him, pace for pace.
