Stuck in Magic CH7

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Chapter Seven

I couldn’t say I was surprised.

Not really, not after I’d killed the three knights.  Clearly, there was something going on I didn’t understand.  It was a grim reminder that I was a stranger in a strange land.  Jasmine could have stopped them and yet … I didn’t understand.  I promised myself I’d think about it later, when I had time.  The bodies were cooling, and the Diddakoi were burying them by the roadside, yet it was only a matter of time until their master realised they were missing.  They hadn’t looked to be part of a decent outfit, with superiors who looked out for them, but I couldn’t take it for granted.  In my experience, most warlords tended to be very aware of the foundations of their power.  The ones who lost sight of what put them on top tended to lose everything else very quickly.

A chill ran down my spine as the wind shifted, bringing with it a reminder of the encroaching desert.  The Diddakoi were ignoring me – although some of the young men were shooting admiring glances at me – and I felt alone, even though I had yet to start walking.  I didn’t even know where I’d do.  Heading further into the warlord’s territory struck me as foolish, perhaps even dangerous.  Small communities and suchlike tended to be worried about strangers.  The odds were good I couldn’t pass for a local.  Everything from skin colour to posture shouted that I was a traveller from distant lands.  I feared the worst if they decided I was a potential threat.  For all they knew, I was the vanguard of an invading army.

If my entire unit had arrived here, I thought sourly, we could have carved out an empire before we ran out of bullets.

I put the thought aside as wishful thinking and checked my pistol.  I had four rounds left in the clip and another clip on my belt.  It was a relief to know the bullets could go through armour – and whatever magical protections the knights might have had – but my military superiority wouldn’t last.  Once the bullets were gone, they were gone.  Hell, just having superior weapons was no guarantee of victory.  In theory, I could reload the gun with local powder.  In practice, I feared that trying would end with the pistol exploding in my hand.

Jasmine caught my arm and pulled me behind the caravan.  She looked … flushed, although I wasn’t sure why.  Embarrassment I’d saved her?  Or … I gritted my teeth, unwilling to entertain the thought of her family blaming her for being groped.  I’d seen that before, in too many countries to mention.  And … I still wasn’t sure why she hadn’t saved herself.  The knights hadn’t posed any kind of threat to her.  She could have blasted them all before they could react, let alone lash out or run.

“Thanks.”  Jasmine’s hands twisted for a long moment.  “I …”

I took the plunge.  “Why didn’t you save yourself?”

“There are agreements,” Jasmine said.  “I could … I could have handled it.  I could have dealt with them.  I could have … I could have handled them in ways that wouldn’t bring a world of trouble down on our heads.  But … I couldn’t do anything overt.”

I reminded myself, sharply, that this was a very different world.  The Diddakoi paid a price for their freedom to roam where they willed.  And yet … it was hard to accept I might have done the wrong thing.

“There are hexes of permanent impotence,” Jasmine was saying.  I barely heard her.  “Or other spells, all of which …”

“I’m sorry,” I said, although it wasn’t really true.  There was no point in begging to be allowed to stay.  My presence was a liability now.  The Diddakoi would have to swear blind the knights had allowed them to pass, then met their fate later on.  I supposed it would be easy enough.  The local warlord might not even realise just what had killed his men.  Even if he knew about gunpowder and muskets, my gun was from a whole other world.  “I …”

I wanted to ask her to come with me, but I had the feeling it would be pointless.  Jasmine was going to go back to school, leaving her people alone.  Unprotected.  I supposed there might be a reason she had so much freedom … I shook my head, trying to put the amateur speculation aside.  This society had magic.  There was no reason to assume it had evolved along similar lines to my own and plenty of reasons to suspect otherwise.  How did society cope with some of its people were effectively weapons of mass destruction?

Jasmine held up a hand, then scrambled into the caravan and started to rattle through her drawers.  I waited, silently cataloguing what I’d kept with me.  Perhaps I could sell some of it for ready cash … I had a bunch of concepts I could sell for money, even if there was someone else who’d snapped up the low-hanging fruit, but getting them into production wasn’t going to be easy.  I didn’t even know enough to determine where best to start.  God knew there’d been plenty of busybodies, from the temperance and porridge women to civil affairs officers and social justice warriors, who hadn’t even bothered to ask why things were the way they were before trying to change them.  I’d hated that sort of arrogance when I was a kid.  And here, trying to meddle too much might end with my death.

“Here.”  Jasmine returned, carrying a small glass vial.  “Regeneration potion.  It’s tricky to make and pretty expensive, particularly as it isn’t tuned to a single person.  Drink it in a single swallow and it’ll repair anything that doesn’t kill you outright.  Once.  Don’t try to dilute it.  You might be able to sell it, if you’re desperate, but make sure you drive a hard bargain.  You’ll only be able to sell it once.”

I swallowed.  I’d done a little buying in the marketplace, back in Damansara, but it hadn’t been easy to work out how much things cost.  Prices had been very variable, certainly outside the basics like food, drink and clothing.  “How much should I charge?”

“As much as the market will bear.”  Jasmine’s voice was serious.  Very serious.  “I could never have paid for the ingredients myself.  I had to brew the cauldron at Whitehall and I was lucky to be allowed to keep a couple of vials.  I was …”

She shook her head.  “If someone is seriously ill, the potion might save their life.  But if they’re desperate, they might try to take it.”

“I understand.”  I had the sudden feeling she’d given me something everyone would want to steal.  She might as well have given me a gold ingot to put in my pocket.  The ingot might have been safer.  “Do you … do you not need it for yourself?”

Jasmine smiled.  “I can handle most things without it,” she said, with a hint of pride.  “I was going to be a healer.  If it wasn’t for …”

Her voice trailed off.  I found it hard to look at her.  Jasmine’s smile was so bright it was otherworldly, as if I was unworthy to so much as glance at her.  It was suddenly very hard to even stand so close to her.  Jasmine dropped down from the caravan and stood next to me.  She barely came up to my shoulder, yet she seemed taller.  A crude joke ran through my head, only to be instantly dismissed.  She was something … different.

Jasmine touched my chest with a single extended finger.  I felt a faint tingle, which vanished so quickly I thought I’d imagined it.  My heart seemed to skip a beat, just for a second.  She leaned forward, reality itself seeming to twist around us.  I felt another tingle, a stronger one, as her lips kissed my forehead.  It was hard, so hard, to keep my mind focused.  She couldn’t kiss my forehead without my cooperation and yet … my head span.  It was all I could do to remain standing.  My mouth was so dry I couldn’t speak.

She stepped back.  Reality shifted, one final time, and snapped back into place.  My head ached in confusion.  What had just happened?  I couldn’t quite remember …

“I replenished the translation spell,” Jasmine said.  She sounded more … normal now, less of an untouchable goddess.  “And I gave you a little protection.”

My forehead tingled.  “What did you do to me?”

“I gave you a little protection,” Jasmine repeated, patiently.  “It won’t last forever, as you don’t have magic yourself, but it’ll give you a chance.  I think you’ll be able to withstand one hex, perhaps two, before the protection is rendered useless.”

“And then someone will be able to turn me into a toad,” I guessed.  “Is that likely to happen?”

Jasmine frowned.  “It depends where you go,” she said.  “And what you wind up doing.”

“Ouch.”  I tried not to shudder.  I’d seen books listing curses and hexes … how many of them were actually real?  “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”  Jasmine gave me an odd little smile.  “And thank you for riding with me.”

I took the rucksack and a proffered gift of water and food, the latter little more than hardtack and salt beef.  I’d never thought I’d miss MREs, but … I wished, not for the first time, that I’d known I was going to fall into another world.  I could have assembled a platoon of army buddies – I knew a bunch of people who’d be up for an adventure – or simply crammed a van with trade goods before driving down that road.  Hell, there were people who’d been raised in more traditional communities who had far more useful skills.  I wished – suddenly – that I’d spent some time on the farm.  I’d had a friend who’d invited me.  It felt like a lifetime ago.

The remainder of the Diddakoi ignored us as we walked to the edge of the convoy.  They’d finished burying the bodies, leaving the graves covered with sand and soil.  It was hard to tell the ground had been disturbed, let alone turned into makeshift graves.  A few hours – or days – would see the wind sweeping away what few clues remained.  By the time the bodies were discovered, if they ever were, the Diddakoi would be long gone.

“Don’t wear your pouch too openly,” Jasmine advised.  “And be careful what you say or do.”

I have no friends here, I thought.  I’d never been so alone in my life.  No one to come to my aid, no one to …

Jasmine kept talking.  “Make sure you keep practicing the language,” she warned.  “That spell won’t last forever.  Once it goes …”

“I understand,” I said.  I’d practiced already – and I had a great deal of experience with foreign languages – but I was going to have to do more.  It would be tricky to explain to a sorcerer what I needed if I couldn’t speak his tongue … if, of course, I could find a sorcerer I could trust.  I’d heard so many horror stories that I wanted to keep a safe distance from magic users … it didn’t help, I supposed, that I had no idea what a safe distance actually was.  “I …”

Jasmine gave me a tight hug.  “Take care of yourself,” she said.  “And may the gods go with you.”

I shivered as I returned the hug, then took one last look at the convoy.  The Diddakoi had been friendly, but distant.  I’d known I would have to decide, sooner or later, if I wanted to become one of them or leave … I hadn’t thought it would come so quickly.  The thought churned in my mind as I turned away, readying myself for the walk.  It wasn’t going to be easy returning to the city, but I knew I had to be there before dark.  The city gates would be closed and locked as soon as night began to fall, leaving me in the open.  I had the feeling it would prove hazardous to my health.

“Thank you, for everything,” I said.  “And goodbye.”

I raised a hand in salute, then turned away and started to walk.  Behind me, I heard the sounds of the Diddakoi mounting up and driving further into the warlord’s lands.  I hoped they’d be safe, I hoped they’d have the sense to keep their mouths shut if anything happened and they got caught.  Or they’d blame everything on me.  I didn’t want to be hunted by a man who probably had a small army under his command, but it would be better than him harassing the travellers.  Besides, he’d find it harder to track me than the convoy.

Unless he uses magic, I thought.  It was a hot day, the sun high in the sky, but I shivered anyway.  Who knows what he can do?

I tried not to think about it as I kept walking, maintaining a steady pace.  I’d done route marches and forced marches and – of course – I’d had to keep moving in Iraq and Afghanistan and a handful of other countries.  It was preferable, I told myself, to be here.  The locals might be suspicious of strangers – I was careful to circumvent the hamlets and villages, rather than walking through them – but at least they weren’t shooting at me.  The handful of people I saw looked too downtrodden to shoot at anyone, even if they’d had the guns.  I saw no weapons.  I was fairly sure the local warlord wouldn’t want his people to have guns.  They might start shooting at the knights instead of passing strangers.

The fields looked strange, an odd mixture of fertile and dried-out land.  I had the impression, although I couldn’t be sure, that the farms were undermanned.  It wasn’t easy to tell where one farm ended and the next began.  The road led me past dried ditches that might have marked the edges of a farm, or might have been nothing more than irrigation channels running dry through disuse.  I wondered, idly, why the farmers weren’t trying to produce more food.  The city wasn’t that far away.  I could easily imagine it consuming more and more food every year, particularly if the population continued to swell.

Which it might not, I thought.  There had to be limits to how much a city could grow, certainly in the absence of modern technology.  There’d been millions of people in New York and feeding them all had to be difficult.  I’d read a handful of books where the supply chains broke down and the results were looting and rioting, followed by mass starvation.  The larger the city, the greater the risk of total collapse if the food runs out.

It wasn’t a pleasant thought, I decided, as I started to encounter more and more people heading to and from the city.  They looked like merchants and farmers.  A handful of them shot wary glances at me, but the majority seemed content to ignore the stranger.  They were all men, at least on the surface, yet I was sure a handful were actually women.  It wouldn’t have been apparent – not even remotely apparent – if I hadn’t grown up in a world where women regularly wore male clothes.  I didn’t blame them.  It wasn’t the first time I’d seen women pretend to be men in patriarchal societies.  It gave them more freedom, as well as security.  I guessed they were the wives, sisters and daughters of farmers, come to sell the farm’s wares.

My stomach growled as the city walls came into view.  I ate a piece of hardtack, then joined the line of people advancing towards the gates.  The wind shifted, blowing the stench of the city into my face.  I grimaced, telling myself I’d get used to it.  I had no choice.  There was nowhere else to go.  If the guards on the gates told me to get lost … I wondered, idly, what I’d do if that happened.  Try to sneak into the city?  Or set out into the unknown?  My heart started to race as I passed through the gates …

The guards ignored me.  They almost made a show of ignoring me.  I tensed, half-expecting to be jumped the moment I crossed the line into the city.  There were guards on the far side, all paying more attention to the farmers than to me.  They didn’t seem to be waiting for me … it took several moments to realise they were deliberately ignoring me because they didn’t want to take official notice of my presence, because they thought I was a runaway.  I was torn between relief and fear.  If I was taken for a runaway serf, I might be dragged back to a farm I’d never left …

I kept walking, allowing the city to envelop me.  I wasn’t sure where I was going.  People shouted back and forth, their words echoing in my ears as they pushed their way through the crowded streets.  I had the vague idea I could find a place to stay somewhere near the market, perhaps a job or two.  There was always work for someone willing to do the dirty stuff, I knew, although I wasn’t sure anyone was doing the dirty stuff here.  The streets were filthy.  I doubted there were any volunteers to clean the sewers … hell, I wasn’t even sure there were sewers.  My stomach churned at the thought.  Damansara was a breeding ground for flies and disease.  I wondered if they’d even made the connection between flies and disease.  Perhaps I could tell them.

And perhaps they wouldn’t listen, I thought, numbly.  I was starting to feel hunger pangs again.  Why should they listen to you?