Page 54 of Into the West

Well, that’s comforting. Thank you, old man.

“The scouts are already on the other side. They got through it. Let’s hope we can do the same,” Kordas replied. “I wish that this river didn’t cut right through the place though, curse it. If it wasn’t just as bad on the other side of the river, I’d take the time and energy to make a path for the horses and herds to cross the river, no matter the cost.”

“We’d lose animals,” Ceri said flatly. “Far too many. One or two ridden horses, like with the mages that are ferrying the Gate uprights, that’s not a problem, but daft sheep are likely to spook and go off the path, and swine are just as bad. As cold as it is now, and with their fleeces weighing them down, the sheep wouldn’t survive a minute. Pigs might be able to swim it, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“It’s moot.” He shrugged as the forest drew nearer and nearer, and he saw with his own eyes what he’d scryed in the mirror. “Those damned tree-things and bugs are on both sides of the river, and so is that . . . anger.”

“The anger has a particular subtlety I only just noticed—it doesn’t make me angry at anything in particular. It also doesn’t give me the impression that someone or something is angry with me. It’s just a seething rage without a target in mind. It could well be purely defensive. I’d give a lot if we were just on a leisure trip and I could study this place,” Dole mused. “At a distance, of course. I’ve never seen anything like it. It almost seems . . . Elemental in nature.”

“What Elemental has ever taken on the form of a forest?” asked Ceri, scornfully.

“None that I know of,” Dole replied, ignoring Ceri’s tone. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.” He shrugged. “The cataclysm at the end of the Mage Wars utterly destroyed two of the most powerful mages this world has ever seen, and turned everything we know on its head. The only thing that saved what became the Empire was distance, and the fact that the King put in an extraordinary amount of effort to keep harm from befalling his people. The King knew all about the War—you couldn’t not know about the War, no matter how distant you were from it—and according to everything I’ve read, put all of his time, energy, and every bit of magical talent he had into putting a barrier around his Kingdom intended to deflect what he was certain was going to come. He foresaw the War’s mutual annihilation at a time when no one else did. That’s why he was able to move into the power vacuum left when those two armies destroyed each other, consolidate dozens of little Kingdoms and Principalities that had been left reeling from the Mage Storms, and make himself Emperor. Even so, there were many mages that died, trying to keep those shields up.”

This was the most about that ancient war and the aftermath that Kordas had ever heard before. “Where did you learn all this?” he asked.

“From that library that the Dolls brought with them,” Dole replied, as the trees grew nearer and nearer. “They organized it for us so all I have to do is figure out what sort of book I need to read and they’ll bring it to me. I’ve been reading as much as I can, trying to anticipate what we might run into as we draw nearer to the lands that were the worst affected.”

“Was there anything . . . like this mentioned?” Kordas asked. At this point, they were just passing the outer boundary of the forest, and it actually looked more sinister now than it had in the scrying pool. The horses definitely did not like it here; he didn’t think they were going to bolt, but they all had their ears laid back and heads down—and since they were not going to be allowed to go back, it looked as if they had decided to get through this place as fast as they could. They’d picked up their pace to the fastest he had ever seen them pull, and weren’t even covertly eyeing the undergrowth for things that might be tasty.

“Nothing this big,” Dole replied, not taking his attention off the trees. “But Sai believes that this thing didn’t start out this big. He believes it was spawned from something much smaller and has been growing for five centuries. Under normal circumstances, I would have said that it was wildly unlikely for a forest to spread and grow into something this big, but . . . we don’t know how fast these trees grow. If they even are trees. They could spring up overnight, like mushrooms.”

Kordas began to feel very uncomfortable in his heavy sheepskin coat, and peeled it off. Dole and the others did the same. “Why is it so hot?”

“As Jonaton would say, ‘magical fuckery is afoot,’” Dole said dryly. “As for why it is almost as warm as a spring day, I can speculate that it has something to do with those dragonflies. The forest may need to keep them alive, for some reason. If it’s going to keep them alive during the winter, it will have to keep them warm. The forest may have a life process that generates its own heat. If it used magic for that, it might just ground its magic improperly on purpose.”

“To create heat. Any spell or spell-like process would do. Huh. Makes me wonder what’s under it.”

Kordas peered through the haze that had formed under the trees. Just a thin haze, not enough to impede anything, just enough to keep him from seeing any deeper into the forest than two or three furlongs. “I don’t see anything else out there. Just trees and dragonflies. No tree-hares, no ground animals, not even birds.”

“I would postulate that those things that look like mouths may, in fact, be mouths,” Dole replied. Which did nothing for Kordas’s unease. “There are marsh plants that eat insects. These things might eat insects too, or larger things. Those ‘mouths’ could take in a goose, some of them.”

“What can you tell me about these Mage Wars that applies to this forest?” he asked, figuring that if he couldn’t distract himself, he could at least learn something.

“About the wars themselves—not much,” the old mage admitted. “Except that the mages of that time were insanely powerful—how they managed that, who knows? Creating Gates was second nature to them, and they routinely created living creatures. One of the mages created gryphons, for instance.”

“Wait, they’re real?” He cast a sharp glance at Dole to see if the old man was trying to pull a prank on him, but Dole seemed to be entirely serious about this. “Gryphons are real?”

“Seen in scrying, never seen in any lands of the Empire,” Dole confirmed. “And not seen since the Wars, so they may have all died out by now. But yes, at least five centuries ago, they were very real. But . . . you asked me what, about those mages of old, I have learned that might pertain to this place. Regretfully, not much.” He shrugged. “You have to remember that the Wars themselves are almost incidental to the Empire’s history. The only real interest anyone from the Old Lands had in them was in making sure that when everything went to pieces, the King was able to keep his lands protected—and tightly controlled. Even so, the initial Storms were so bad that about half his mages died keeping that protection up.”

“How could anyone protect against an effect bigger than a country?”

“They created protective squads for what they called ‘savior-mages,’ answerable only to the King. You know. For the people’s protection. Heh.” He mimed spitting on the ground. “If you think that sounds like a way to get powerful mages and their bodyguards into anybody’s domain without opposition, you’d be right. But as shield mages, it is true they were without peer. The plan was simple on the surface. Keep them mobile. Put the strongest shield where it can deflect the most danger, then fall back while the next team positions. That’s why the Empire has its roads and canals, and eventually Gates and fast boats.” Dole shrugged again. “The plan became entangled in political and territorial pursuits to the point that it was unsustainable. Savior-mages extorted mayors and barons alike. They took bribes to selectively drop shields and let political rivals’ estates be overrun. The early Empire was obsessed with expansion, in part because the farther savior-mage teams could reach, the better their ‘protection.’ In theory. To return to the point, there is very little that is predictable about the kind of magic Storms that resulted in the mutual destruction of the two opponents.” He rubbed the skin behind his left ear as he thought. “The reason is not just because two unbelievably powerful annihilation spells went off. It is because—well, you know we can store magical energy in things. Raw energy, usually in crystals. Spells and the energy it takes to make them work can be stored in almost anything.”

Of course Kordas knew all this, and Dole knew that he knew, but he sensed that Dole was using words as a kind of shield between himself and thinking too hard about this forest. Some people took comfort in explaining and teaching. Really, all either of them wanted was to get past it, but that could only happen as fast as the horses could pull them. So Dole was babbling. Kordas didn’t blame him.

By this point they’d both shed not only their coats but their outer knitted tunics. It was as warm as a mild summer day under these trees. If I knew the magic to make that work . . . yes, but there is always a cost to magic. Always a cost. We might not want to pay that cost.

“So,” Dole continued, “these things that store power are always slightly unstable. Normally that’s not a problem; it does take a fairly serious impact, magical or physical, to make one of them—well—spontaneously discharge. The kind of impact that probably would have turned the mage that was carrying these objects into a thin red smear on the ground, so the only ones who would be in jeopardy from these things going completely unstable and discharging would be bystanders, or the one who struck the blow in the first place. However . . . we’re not talking about a simple firebolt, here. We’re talking about a destructive spell intended to level an edifice at least the size of the Imperial Palace.”

“I’m following you so far,” Kordas said when Dole paused.

“Now, both of those mages had an enormous arsenal of magical weapons, but also an even bigger storehouse of things that were not weapons, but were spell-bound nevertheless, and what they say were banks of raw energy storage. So when those two destructive spells went off . . .” Dole’s voice trailed off for a moment. “It wasn’t just destructive. It was messy. Whatever it was, the bonds that made spells cohesive simply disconnected, like wagon wheels disintegrating at high speed. Spell fragments combined and collided in ways no one has ever seen, before or since. That’s why the Change-Circles are completely unpredictable. They contain bits and pieces of everything from a spell on a rock you’re meant to use as a campfire, to something intended to liquefy a mountainside, to cures for diseases. And that’s why I can’t actually tell you enough about the Mage Storms or their effects. It would be like shattering a glass mirror, then reassembling thousands of shards, thinking it would show the last image it reflected.”

But Kordas, as always, was distracted by the one piece of information he actually could use. “You can put a spell on a rock to use as a lasting campfire?” he repeated as a question.

Dole sighed, and his expression was that of a parent gazing at a child they are trying to educate who has fixated on a double entendre they hadn’t intended to make. “Yes, Kordas, we can. And yes, Kordas, among many other things, when we encounter power sources strong enough to give us a surplus, we are storing energy in crystals with the intention of giving each vessel in the convoy at least one of such rocks to use in their barge instead of wood. Just like Sai has been making those marvelous cleansing towels of his, and I have been making mage-lights so we can conserve candles, tallow-dips, and lamp oil. We made a needs list, and the Dolls are keeping track, so you wouldn’t have to.”

Kordas badly wanted to pursue this, but Dole’s expression made him think twice about it. I put people in charge of things so I can deal with the larger picture. This is no time to ask about spells for keeping me warm.