Page 81 of Elvenbred

A small concern wormed its way up from the recesses of his mind, and he sat up. He scanned each line in the document carefully. Can humans do magic? Nora hadn’t asked, and Triana hadn’t suggested anything in their answer that said that they could. This could be important. Looks like she might yet be of some small use. He made a note for the Overseer. Troniar Vaylan would enjoy the opportunity to interrogate her again. She had badly hurt his interests with her little tantrum, and would enjoy some payback via the collar and control rod.

He scratched a comment in his journal, then went back to framing his proposal to king Alliard. I will share the credit, of course, and consider how to bind Lord Variman to me, body and soul. “Lord Researcher Variman is nothing if not diligent about tracing and tracking disease outbreaks. Given the people of the city live cheek by jowl, one person’s cough can spread like wildfire. It was Lord Variman who first identified the breakbone outbreak, and he who has tracked its progress. Its source is all but unknowable. Perhaps a refugee to the city, who came in when the last of the hinterland farms fell?” He made more notes … this time concentrating on how this outbreak had given birth to the idea he had for infecting the elven lords of the new world. And for Variman to stress the unknown trajectory of the outbreak that they’d start, how there was no way of knowing how fast and far it would spread, and the misfortunes it would visit on the sick. Variman would also fill this part with the estimates of the sick … big enough to meet King Alliard’s expectations, but not so big as to overpromise success or raise the fears of their own people getting ill.

Once Variman had firmly established the random and unknown nature of the current outbreak in the city source, then Haldeen could step in with the conclusion of just how that could be used to their advantage. A communicable disease would most assuredly undercut the locals’ ability to cast magic … possibly not the strength and quality, but certainly the quantity of magic used against their forces. With any luck, they depended on magical healers, and an outbreak would infect and decimate or eliminate those as well, further crippling their ability to fight back.

He went back to the transcripts, and read Triana’s description of the area around the cave. There it is …. The land roundabouts the cave mouth lies in wasted lands, a forest of little cultivable value. It’s hard-by, but not in, Kyrtian’s [untranslated word–demesne?]. He is a worthless squib, inbred, sadly, as most of the lords there are, and unable to secure a decent wife. Haldeen didn’t know how much of Triana to take at face value, but the land would be ideal to use for a foothold. Close to the Cave, where they could build their forces, identify established estates nearby that could be conquered, then immediately place workers into food production. The first set of people to be sent through would be farmers, who would set to work planting and harvesting as many fields of that edible leaf as they could, moving the bales back here and feeding the populace. Allegedly the leaf would grow anywhere, so felling the forest to clear the land around the cave wouldn’t alert anyone until they had sufficient combatants in place. That would buy them time here, and time there. Time to move people from the cities most imperiled through the Gate. Time to establish their beachhead. Time to release a disease or diseases and let them go to work.

He made several pages of notes on his plague proposal, then moved onto the next item that kept him from a clean desk. A disordered desk reflected a disordered mind.

King Alliard had been as good as his word, and had gotten verbal and written commitments to share wealth and resources. Haldeen knew each king was holding back, including Alliard … they were elves after all … and everyone kept a little to one side for number one. Still, the level of … cooperation wasn’t quite the right word … but something close by … where the cities competed with each other and cooperated at the same time. The level was much more on the “cooperation” side of the ledger than the “competitive” side, and that was unprecedented. He wondered if there was a word that conveyed both ideas at once.

Still, the road to the World Gate had begun well. Instead of fighting their way through leagues upon leagues of hostile terrain, they had instead begun to develop a single span elevated road that stood above the trees, and which they could heavily defend and patrol. Turrets had been placed at intervals along the edges for upgraded firelances. Huge expenditures of treasure and the profligate use of magic had moved things forward, but the costs continued to mount. Even with the progress so far, they still had a long way to go, and the weapons to defend the road had to come from somewhere. Haldeen had already seen two proclamations drawing firelances from the city’s defenses. With production diverted to connecting the city to the World Gate, there would be nothing left to manufacture more.

Unless … we start mandating that people replace personal metal objects with wood and pottery. But that can only go so far. Still, better implement that now. He made a note. And another to start searching empty homes and even trash piles for metals. He let a malicious smile rise … personal metals, the sorts that birth lords’ wives adorned themselves with, those would have to go, as well. He knew that class well … lots of talk about shared sacrifice, but when it came to their turn? He could already hear the wailing.

At least he had ideas. Ideas the king could use. Haldeen shook his head. Firelances to defend the raised road to the World Gate. Firelances to protect the cities. Not nearly enough for both.

They would soon be balanced on a precipice … competing demands for resources for the protected road, to defend the cities, and to establish a foothold on Triana’s world. The Monsters would get a vote as well. An attack on a city stripped of its protections in order to armor and protect the road might mean its fall. Still, as long as it isn’t all of the cities, and the rest get out ….

Getting out required having a place to go to and a way to get there. The plan Alliard had convinced the other Kings to back required the restart of the World Gate. His World Gate … had been taken from him and passed over to the other cities. Haldeen felt the humiliation of losing that work, and the prestige it carried. Gatekeeping had been the highest and finest science of the Jeweled cities, and a task that only the best and brightest could accomplish. He kept the title, and remained the Lord Gatekeeper, but had been stripped of his identity, his core function. Reduced to paper plans for plagues!

Lord Kaeltwyn had done exactly as the king had bid him, taking every scrap and note regarding the Gates, and making it clear that if Kaeltwyn had been in charge, then Haldeen would have been stripped of his title and sent to farm algae. Had they gone into the lab and confiscated the test Gate, I would have been. One look at the Probe, and Alliard would know what lines I crossed, and what laws I broke to accomplish the miracle of our escape.

He smiled a malicious little smile. They wanted to take him down, show him his place. Let’s see what good it’s done for them. He picked up the daily progress report, and sifted through the pages to the to the Gate portion of the king’s daily progress report. As expected, the worthies that had stripped him of his Gate had yet to even get the greater Gate to respond to simple instructions to power itself. He let out a silent, mirthless laugh.

He scanned the report, looking for the short sentences with their broad generalities that hid a multitude of sins. The words shifted a bit each day, but the sense remained the same.

He read the update out loud, loading up the banal words with heavy doses of sarcasm.

“The preliminary assault proceeded as successfully planned, descending from Skydancers and Carryalls, and driving back the Creatures with spells and brave use of handlances, until a safe perimeter had been established. Once the soldiers (yesterday it had been valiant guards) had accomplished their primary purpose, our stalwart (who even uses that word?) spell researchers and investigators proceeded across the secured ground to continue their progress on establishing the corridor that animates their purpose.”

He flipped to the supporting details. Only there did it become apparent that the fight to secure a small working area around the Gate had been long and vicious, with several dozen killed or wounded. One precious and irreplaceable Skydancer had flown too low and been taken out by some kind of jumping thing from the ground.

Even the relentlessly optimistic first page couldn’t completely suppress the bad news. He looked for the shift in tone, stalwartly marked by the switch to passive voice …. Ah, there it is … put off the bad news as long as you possibly can. He read the last sentence, the same last sentence he had read for something more than the last fortnight … two eight-days of optimistic ledes that dashed upon the rocks of reality. In today’s report, reality had been reshaped into …

“… losses were taken, progress was made, mistakes were learned from, and directives were issued that will build upon the success of today.”

Balderdash. This means they failed. No progress on the Gate, and more dead elves to show for … absolutely nothing. Driving the Monsters back for a few marks isn’t victory, it’s the price of admission!

He estimated the amount of daylight they would have to actually study the Gate and to try and get it operable. He used the proven principles of informed guesswork and counting on his fingers to tick off the marks. Let’s see. Can’t leave before dawn. Not after that Skydancer from Opal got eaten. So, nothing flies before first light. Two marks to fly first thing in the morning. An operation that big … something goes wrong every day, so two marks flying time becomes three. So, not arriving until after breakfast. More marks to fight their way in, then one mark to get set up. It’s lunchtime before someone has even taken a hand-glass to that old stone. A couple of marks of hasty work, while looking over your shoulder for the boo-jums. Midafternoon, you’re starting to pack up and head for the barn. A couple hours in the evening to go over notes, and try and figure out what to do next. Then, trying to decide how to spin today’s dung into diamonds for the day’s report. More “Progress was made.”

Assuming that the team studying the Gate proved competent enough to pour piss from a boot without reading instructions on the sole, they probably only had a mark or two each day to try and solve a problem that bedeviled Haldeen for months. He might have been under stress from King Alliard barking at him, but he did not have to worry about the security cordon suddenly collapsing and the researchers being torn apart by enraged local wildlife.

Or having the researchers’ Skydancers depart without them as they crowded too close to dusk. The worries about being eaten and abandoned had to generate a certain level of distraction and lost mental focus. Hate to be the fellow studying obscure power symbols on a pillar and miss the recall beacon.

Haldeen suspected he should be less happy about the Kings’ failure to make progress, but his very public demotion still stung. Then again … given the utter lack of progress the others were showing in getting the World Gate to function, he might still recover that prestige.

He would kiss and make up with them, but only after they came crawling back to him. Any of those idiots can tune a city gate, but I’m the only one in a century who has gotten the World Gate to work, and gone to another world!

He laughed out loud then. He’d worried they’d upstage him, but while they paid in blood to fail, he still had his small Gate, and his small Gate still worked. They fought their way in, and he went to his lab, cast the incantation, and had a cup of tea while it powered up. He simply walked through once it appeared stable. He couldn’t stay very long these days, but long enough to ensure nothing had gotten into the cave, then to run a few tests, and to show he had succeeded where they failed.

And, now that I think of it, it could be long enough to get the occasional, much-overdue and badly-needed nap.

He cleared the daily reports from his desk and took them to the small fireplace and fed them in. They probably did more good here, providing a bit of heat and light, than they did in their native state, where they utterly failed to illuminate. He laughed then. It wasn’t much of a joke, but better than his usual.

Next piece of paper in the diminishing pile. A one sentence order directly from King Alliard to him …. Provide an update on our ability to use the magic native to the target world.

He thought about this one for some time, making notes before composing his response. Efforts continue. Kaeltwyn’s plunder of my Gate-notes broke my experiments and caused setbacks. He liked the wording. No direct criticism of the king, with High Lord Kaeltwyn to take the blame. Still, Alliard would know. Let him stew on that! Oh! He just thought of something else! Experiments with the deceased subject from Gateworld suggested that the …. Hmm. He set his pen down. He needed a good word for them. Not “escapees.” Not “rebels,” that would suggest there had been a successful rebellion. Ah! … the fugitives … that was it! The descendants of the fugitives … that word makes them still under our authority, but not our responsibility. He picked his nib back up and continued.