Maker's Curse Read online

  At every city she found, she stopped to read minds and look for currents in the magic. It would have been an easy way to find the place magic had been taken from if there had been no people in this world generating it. The outflow of magic from cities and towns overwhelmed all but the strongest currents.

  But it was unlikely she’d find evidence of someone learning pattern-shifting in cities anyway. Sorcerers attempting to become ageless in a populated world tended to do so away from people. While the Restorers did not disallow sorcerers learning to pattern-shift, they had outlawed doing so in worlds where people lived. Few empty worlds contained enough magic to achieve it, however, so the punishment for breaking that law hadn’t deterred sorcerers, only made them more careful about concealing their attempts.

  The sun seemed to reverse as she travelled, rising before her and illuminating the land. The plant grew taller, becoming a tangle of branches piled upon branches. She stopped to catch her breath regularly, searching for minds each time, but finding only small tribal villages. When she found a group of hunters deep under the mass of vegetation, she paused to read their minds more closely.

  A group of seven men, from fit elders to adolescents, walked through the natural labyrinth of tunnels formed by the branches. They were returning home from a long journey made every cycle to teach the youngest where to find rare minerals and gemstones. She was about to draw her attention away when she saw something bright through one of the young men’s eyes and felt his envy. It was a pendant hanging against an older man’s chest. Circular and metallic, its outer edge was notched more neatly than any tribesman could achieve with such a hard substance.

  A cog, she thought. A machine part. A chill pricked her skin. If someone had brought war machines to this world, a far greater disaster might befall both it and Telemna-vo than magical depletion. The young man looked at other shiny articles the older men wore: a cylinder with six-sided holes at each end, a delicate bunch of springs and what looked like an eye fashioned of metal and glass. One of the elders noticed the young man staring and assured him he would have a talisman when he had come of age.

  She shifted to the old man’s mind and saw a flash of memory, of a burned patch of forest littered with strange and precious objects. It was a long trek from their home, through other tribes’ territory, and as he traced the path in his mind, Rielle murmured a curse. The landmarks he recalled were only visible under the vegetation. Then one caught her attention, and she searched the landscape for it: a plateau. In the direction she had been travelling, she found a shadow that might be the place. The site was on top. The area had been burned, so it would be easy to find from above.

  She pushed back into the place between worlds and propelled herself towards the shadow. As she neared, her admiration for the hunters grew. They’d travelled a long way to the plateau base, then climbed the steep walls to its top. The upper area was not large, so it was no surprise that the men had found the site. The blackened patch marring the otherwise green covering was obvious from above. She descended towards it.

  From her vantage point, the outlines of a human-created structure were obvious. A building of moderate size had been destroyed, and not just by the fire. It looked as though it had exploded from within, scattering stones from the walls in all directions. Large broken slabs of rock lay in the middle, their position suggesting they had fallen into place when the walls were blown outwards from beneath them.

  One smaller piece was not stained with soot and lay further from the centre of the ruin. Perhaps the hunters had flipped it over to see what lay beneath. Rielle brought herself down to hover above the clearing. As she moved to the stone, she sensed something between worlds and stopped.

  It was a path, leading deeper into the place between worlds. A sorcerer had left the world from this place. The path felt recent, but not fresh. She guessed it had been made many days before, but not as much as a quarter-cycle.

  Rielle emerged into the world, heated a speck of air to create a floating light and began examining the site closely. Had the occupant destroyed it, or had it been destroyed by an enemy? She closed her eyes and sought magic. It was much weaker here. She felt no sense of its drift, except…

  Some deep instinct stirred, setting her nerves vibrating. It took a moment before she realised why. Magic was moving towards her, slowly and steadily. From all directions.

  This was the place from which it had been taken.

  Her insides grew cold as suspicions grew and bloomed. Moving to the stone that had been flipped over since the fire, she examined the ground. Soil and ash covered all and a few seedlings had sprouted, but in one area this covering looked disturbed. She pushed it aside with magic and found what the hunters had discovered and hidden.

  Broken pieces of machinery glinted in the light. As she uncovered more, her heart sank. Parts of war machines and the squashed walls of their outer hulls appeared. She squatted and picked up a few items, examining them. Other than some distortion from being flattened, they looked new. None of them were fully formed machines, however.

  Was this a workshop? If it was, then it had been abandoned too quickly for the machine maker to take these parts with them. Were they a war-machine maker? Or was this Zeke and Dahli’s hideaway?

  Her mood lifted a little at that last thought. While she had many reasons to hate Dahli, she found she could not. The advantage – or disadvantage – of being able to read minds was that it was all too easy to see what drove a person, and sympathise. While she was still angry with Dahli for what he’d done, she also understood he’d done it out of grief and love, and the belief that without the Raen the worlds would descend into chaos and war.

  She’d met too many people motivated by greed and a lust for power over others to truly damn Dahli for his actions. But it was hard to forgive what he’d done: attempting to destroy an innocent young man in order to give the Raen a new body, luring the Restorers into a battle with his followers to force Qall into absorbing Valhan’s memories, killing those Restorers in the most cruel and painful way she could imagine.

  The memory of that last battle started to replay again. Knowing that a sorcerer would, as he or she materialised in a world, merge with any object in the way, Dahli had sprung a trap that caused rods to fall into the space the Restorer army had arrived in. Hundreds of sorcerers had died as their bodies fused with the metal, including the only ageless Traveller, Rielle’s friend, Ulma.

  If Rielle had known that Ulma had died in this way before she and Qall had lured Dahli away from the battle to confront him on his own, she might not have been so willing to set him free. It was fortunate for him that she only discovered it later, when she had returned to the site of the battle.

  Pushing the memories away, Rielle considered what to do next. If this had, indeed, been Dahli’s lair, should she follow the path? What if she found him? Would her anger overwhelm her sympathy towards him, and make her do something she’d regret later? Fear of that regret tempted her to ignore the path, but if war-machine makers were targeting these two worlds, Baluka needed to know. And once she had informed him of the true reason for these worlds’ magical depletion, she would be free to travel to her own world and check on Qall.

  Swallowing her reluctance, she slipped a few machine parts into her pack, drew in a deep breath and pushed out of the world. The ruins and charred forest faded to white as she started along the faint path, then new shadows formed, gained a hint of colour and coalesced into shapes. Soon she could see a bleached scene very different to the one she had left. She would arrive in a rocky gully, the only vegetation a scattering of dark tussock grass. As more details became clear, she realised the grass wasn’t dark by nature but blackened, and the rocks around her were piled and scattered in a way that suggested they’d been blown outwards. Finally, as she drew even closer to the world, streaks of ash became discernible.

  Air surrounded her, and she drew in a deep breath, the warmth of it filling her lungs. At the same time, she created a shield around he
rself in case the machine makers were close by and spooked by her arrival. To her relief, a search for minds found none. A scan for magic told her this place was weak, but the further she stretched the stronger it was. As in the ruins of the last world, magic was flowing towards her from all directions.

  The landscape and building materials might be different, but the site was otherwise the same as the ruin she had just left. Scuffing the ground with the toe of her shoe, she wasn’t surprised when she uncovered a metallic shine. She crouched to examine the ground, digging up more machine parts. These were partly melted. She slipped some into a different pocket of her pack. Examining a nearby rock, she discovered that the side facing the house glistened as if lightly polished. The blast that had destroyed this place had been very hot indeed.

  She could not discern whether it had been loosed by the occupants or an attacker. The leftover machine parts suggested a hasty exit, but then they might have been of such low value that they weren’t worth the hassle of transporting them. Whatever the reason for their exit, the magic flowing towards her suggested the depletion of these two worlds had occurred at the ruins.

  The amount of magic used was far more than would be needed to destroy the buildings or make and run machines. Tyen had told her that mechanical magic was very efficient, requiring little power. This was why war machines were so appealing to non-sorcerers. It gave them a way to use magic despite having no or little magical ability. Unfortunately, since most sorcerers could easily defend against them, war machines were more often used on defenceless humans than on sorcerers.

  Had these two buildings been factories for making war machines? They seemed too small for that. Perhaps instead they had been the workshops of inventers. Had their operations been discovered, forcing their hasty abandonment? Or had they been levelled when the occupants left, to hide signs of their presence? Were the machines made here now attacking innocent people somewhere else in the worlds? Rielle pushed out of the world, disturbed by the thought. Another path led away, leaving Telemna-vo. Should she follow it?

  No, she decided. I’ve spent too long here already. This is for Baluka to investigate. I will send him another message informing him of the sites.

  She skimmed upwards, searching for familiar landmarks. The Telemnan sorcerers had provided her with maps of their world when she’d first arrived, and soon enough she recognised the shape of a coastline. Navigating by the direction of the sun’s light, she shot off in the direction of their city.

  Fortunately for the peoples of Woperi and Telemna-vo, the machine makers were gone. Whatever they’d been doing to weaken the worlds had stopped. Hopefully that news wouldn’t bring an end to the two worlds’ negotiations for peace. After stopping three times to breathe, she reached the forest and soon afterwards found the city of Ka.

  Descending to the guild building, she materialised in Oier’s room, causing him to jump.

  “Maker Rielle,” he said. “Welcome back.”

  “Thank you. I have found the source of the weakening. Call a meeting of the Masters and invite the Perian representatives – they are still here?”

  “Yes.” He called out for messengers, and two young apprentices hurried into the room, listening intently to his instructions to find the council members and prepare the meeting hall.

  As the pair hurried away, Rielle considered what she would tell the sorcerers. She drew one of the machine parts out of her pack. It was flat and circular, with a hole in the centre. One side had melted into a nubbly straight edge. Perhaps the chance they might face a machine army in future would persuade the people of both worlds to continue cooperating. A common threat could unite neighbouring worlds, too.

  A single set of footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Rielle turned to see the messenger she had sent to Baluka enter the room. The woman pressed her palms together.

  “Maker Rielle,” she said. “I have delivered your message and I bear a reply.”

  Rielle’s heart skipped. “Please relay it now, unless it is for my ears only.”

  “It is not,” the young woman said. “Baluka, Leader of the Restorers, says his instructions have not changed. You are to strengthen Telemna-vo.”

  Looking into the woman’s mind, Rielle saw no further clue to Baluka’s intentions in her memories of their meeting. He had merely listened to her message and stated the reply she’d just delivered. Suppressing the urge to sigh, Rielle nodded, and gave the young woman the melted cog, together with instructions to find a nearby Restorer base and leave a new message, which would be passed on to Baluka through the usual channels.

  His decision annoyed her, but she would deal with that later. For now, it was more important to consider the repercussions of strengthening Telemna-vo and not Woperi. Would the Telemnans take advantage of their stronger position against Peri? Rielle rubbed a finger against the molten edge of the metal disc. Probably, but it won’t mean warfare. They have no battle experience or training and they don’t like direct confrontation. The Peri are the same. Still, people can change their minds and ways. Doum had taught her that.

  She nodded to herself as she decided what she would do: restore Telemna-vo and Woperi. Encouraging both worlds to form an alliance in case of attack by machines, too. Baluka might not like her strengthening the Peri’s world without consulting him, but she had told him when she had begun working for him that she would, occasionally, restore a world if she judged it beneficial. If he objected, she’d remind him of that, and perhaps he’d be a bit more considerate of the situations he put her in.

  Within a few hours she’d be free to go. What was supposed to have been a simple visit to restore a world had delayed her by a couple of days. She could only hope Qall wasn’t relying on her to arrive exactly a cycle since her last visit.

  CHAPTER 6

  The heat of the sand seeped up through the soles of Rielle’s shoes. Warm, dry air filled her lungs. It held a scent that was familiar, unique to this place and stirring both longing and a near forgotten fear. Breathing in deeply, she looked down on the city of her birth.

  Five cycles ago it hadn’t occurred to her to wonder how Qall had known exactly where to enter her world to arrive so near Fyre. Other matters had crowded her thoughts, like whether he had become Valhan and was going to kill her, if Baluka and the Restorers were being slaughtered back at the site of the battle, and wondering whose side Tyen was really on. A cycle later, at their first reunion, Qall had explained that it was the place where Valhan had entered her world. The Raen had arrived very near her home, before she’d even existed.

  It was a strange coincidence, but when she considered that Valhan had visited many places within countless worlds in his thousand-year-long life, she realised it wasn’t. He may have known of her world before the war that stripped it of magic many centuries ago. He might even have visited Tyen’s world before it became magically depleted.

  She had noted that, while the sorcerers in Telemna-vo and the Peri knew of the Raen, neither people had worshipped him as a god. He was the ruler of all worlds and the few times he had visited he’d been obeyed without question, but they neither grieved nor were relieved that he was dead. They had accepted the Restorers’ rule in his place with the same passivity. When a world was used to a powerful but distant otherworld ruler being in charge of matters that didn’t concern them most of the time, they didn’t see anything strange in new otherworlders replacing them.

  It was now Baluka’s job to encourage the two worlds to come to a peace agreement. She’d sent him a report outlining all she had done and learned, and the locations of the two ruined buildings containing evidence of machine construction. It was up to him to investigate the reason for the weakening of both worlds. Finding the source had delayed her too much already.

  She could not help speculating, however. Tyen had told her that his home was weak thanks to the overuse of machines. The sheer number of them was the problem rather than the amount of magic each used, along with the fact that they now did many of the creative jobs t
hat people used to do, so less magic was generated. There could not have been many machines at the two ruined buildings, so they couldn’t be the source of the worlds’ weakening. More likely it was the work of one powerful sorcerer, or several moderately strong ones.

  As Rielle turned her mind to her destination, she mused that machines were never going to be a threat to her home world. What point was there in invading with very little magic?

  I guess someone might, if there were natural resources to take, she thought. Visitors would have to carry enough magic to be able to enter and then leave her world again, but that wasn’t hard for a strong sorcerer. It was running out of his store of magic that had stranded Valhan here, not just that very little magic existed to replace it.

  Only one sorcerer was needed to take an entire army into a world. And in a near-dead world the locals had almost no magic to fight back with. If a powerful sorcerer learned of her world’s existence and had reason to invade, nothing would stop them.

  She shuddered. Over the cycles since Valhan’s death she had witnessed countless ways that humans could be cruel to humans. Conquest, slavery, brutal rulers, exploitation. The more she understood how and why these things could happen the more she worried that just knowing about such evils could change her for the worse. Was that how Valhan had became so callous? Did he simply grow used to it? Yet she feared ignorance. You can’t avoid a disaster if you can’t recognise the signs it’s coming.