Ascendant (24 page)

"Koren!
Koren!" Paedris called out from his laboratory. "Where is that
boy?"

"Here,
sir." Koren gasped, having dashed up two flights of stairs when he heard
the wizard calling. "I was copying your book of healing potions, as you
asked, sir."

"Oh,
yes." Paedris said absentmindedly, having forgotten what he'd instructed
Koren to do earlier. "Having any trouble with it?"

"No, sir.
There are some foreign words, but I'm copying the letters on those."

"Not
foreign, those are Old Lengish. The language you here in Tarador refer to as
the 'Common Speech'  is called Lengish everywhere else, and those words
are from Lengish a long time ago, words that are not used anymore."
Paedris thought the term 'Common Speech' showed how people in Tarador
arrogantly considered their land to be the center of the world, which was not
true. Although, in terms of the long struggle between light and darkness,
between the underworld and the world of the real, Tarador truly was the center.
And that was why Paedris had left his homeland.

"Oh. I
didn't know, sir."

"No
matter. I need you to go to the rooftop garden, and see if there is any basil
left." Paedris had put the delicate plants inside glass boxes as the
weather grew colder, to extend their growing season.

"Basil,
sir?" Koren couldn't remember basil being used in any of the potions he'd
read. But then, there were many, many potion books he hadn't touched yet, in
the tower's library. "For a potion?"

"No,"
Paedris said with a wink, "for my dinner. The royal kitchens are preparing
noodles with tomato sauce and meatballs, and the cooks here never use enough
basil."

"Oh,"
Koren laughed, "yes, sir, I think the basil has not gone by yet."
Koren never had tomato sauce, or noodles, before he came to Linden, now that
dish was one of his favorites. Food in Winterthur province tended toward
potatoes and gravy, which was filling, but rather bland after a while. Thinking
about climbing the stairs all the way to the tower's roof reminded Koren of
something that had been bothering him.  "Uh, sir, I've been meaning
to ask you a question, about the stairs to the rooftop."

"Mmm, I
was wondering when you would ask me about that." Paedris said with a
twinkle in his eye.

"I
figured something was different about it, the second day I was here, sir."
There was one set of stairs from the bottom of the tower to the fourth floor,
then the stairs split, with one going only to the two top floors and the roof.
"There aren't enough stairs, sir. I mean, I went outside and counted, and
the windows aren't spaced evenly, but there aren't enough stairs to go from the
fourth floor all the way up to the roof."

"Most
people take a long time to notice, if they ever do. Come with me." Paedris
led the way down one set of stairs to the fourth floor, where the other stairs
were on the other side of the tower, behind a door. The wizard opened the heavy
door, and walked ahead of Koren into the stairway, lit only by one narrow
window that lay partway around the curve of the tower. Soon, too soon, they
arrived at the landing on the eighth floor of the tower. Koren had been
carefully counting steps.

"Tell me,
what did you notice?" The wizard asked intently.

"The
stairs are only enough to go up one floor, maybe a bit more. And the stairway
curves too tightly into the tower, sir, we should be in the center of the fifth
floor, but we're not, we're still up against the outside of the tower
wall."

"Anything
else?" Paedris said hopefully, with a raised eyebrow.

 There
weren't enough stairs, the passageway curved too tightly...  what else
could the wizard be hinting at? Koren mentally walked back through the lower
doorway, up the stairs, past the window- "The window! Sir, the window
should face west, with the afternoon light shining directly in, but it's
not." The window was too high up the wall for Koren to see out and tell
from the view which way the window was facing.

"Very
good!" The wizard said delightedly as he clapped his hands. "Very
good indeed! You are correct, there are not enough stairs to climb four floors,
and the window faces north, even though it should face west. The answer, Koren,
is
magic
, true magic." Paedris gestured Koren over to the upper
doorway. "You see how the stone around this doorway is thicker than the
tower walls?"

Koren peered
at the dark stone. The doorway was thicker than his arm was long. He reached
out gingerly and touched the stone, his fingertips tingled sharply, and he
jerked his arm back.

"Ha!"
Paedris chuckled. "Watch yourself there. This doorway, and the one below,
are portals, between them the fabric of our world has been, the best way to
explain it is
stretched
. That is how one flight of stairs can climb four
floors in this tower. The truth is, there are no stairs, not in the real world.
And there is no window. One thing you didn't notice is that footsteps don't
echo in there, the sound is muffled, because there is no real stone in
there."

Koren peered
warily down the stairway, the stairway that didn't really exist, according to
the wizard. "How did they build the tower that way?" He asked,
completely astonished.

"The
tower wasn't built like this, I added the staircase when I got here," the
wizard said with obvious pride in his voice. "This tall tower may look
impressive, but living here, with all these stairs, is painful for my old
knees. I had the original stairway blocked up at the top and bottom, it's still
there behind the stones.  The workers installed these thick doorways, and
I created the pathway between them. My original idea was to simply step directly
from one doorway into another-"

"You can
do that?" Koren's head was spinning.

"Yes. But
then I thought that would be disturbing to any guests who are not wizards.
Also, it takes more energy to go directly from one portal to another, and I was
showing off already."

"What do
you mean, sir?"

Paedris, the
powerful wizard who could whisk people from one floor of the tower to another,
looked sheepish. "I created the shortcut soon after I arrived here. All
those stairs wore me out, I couldn't see myself using anything above the fifth
floor, but with all the books, scrolls, and the equipment for my laboratory,
there wasn't much room for me to have any living space. The portal was a way to
make the upper floors practical, but in truth, I was showing off. I'd just
arrived, I was a foreigner, and I was feeling rather full of myself. It was a
way for me to impress the wizards of Tarador, because none of them could create
such a portal." Paedris couldn't help mentioning the last part, with
justifiable pride. "It was a lot more work than I intended, but once I
started, I had to finish it."

Koren looked
at his fingers, which were still tingling. "Sir, this is, it's
amazing
.
Is, is it dangerous? What if you're in there, and the magic, uh, stops
working?"

"Hmm."
The wizard was uncomfortable with the question. It was a good question. He
didn't know the answer. Not for certain. It had taken enormous energy to create
the portals, over many months, and he had to renew the spell from time to time.
Years ago, when he'd grown weary of renewing the spell, he had considered
letting the portals decay, and using only the bottom four or five floors of the
tower, but his pride wouldn't let that happen. Really, he thought the whole
tall, narrow tower to be a silly place to live. It was intimidating to most
people, and living there did add to his mystique as a wizard, and the tower was
built for the first wizard of Tarador, so Paedris didn't have a choice in the
matter. "Well, it doesn't simply stop working, it fades after a while, a
long while, mind you, not overnight. You would notice the stairway getting dim,
and," Paedris struggled to recall what a fading portal was like, as he'd
been mostly very regular about renewing the spell, "it gets to be like
walking through a thick fog, or walking through, sort of, water, I would say.
And it takes longer to go from one end to another, you would notice that. But
it wouldn't simply stop with someone inside, unless a person deliberately
decided to live in there for a long time for some reason. No, what would happen
is that, you would no longer be able walk through the doorways." While he
was speaking, the wizard was wondering what would happen, if, say, an enemy
wizard destroyed the portals, while someone was between them. Where would the person
go? Likely, the person would pop back into the real world inside a wall,
somewhere between the fourth and eighth floors. Releasing that much energy
would destroy the tower.

But, no
matter. Any wizard with the power to destroy the portals could use that energy
much more effectively by doing something else, something even more destructive.
Still, it was a good question, about what happened when a portal collapsed.
Paedris didn't know anything in all the literature of wizardry to answer that
question. He started constructing an experiment in his mind, he loved
experiments. Perhaps he could create very small portals, and send in a bug,
such as a beetle, and then collapse the portals. Of course, such a potentially
destructive experiment could not be conducted in his tower, he would need to be
somewhere out in the countryside-

"Huh?
What?" Paedris suddenly realized Koren had been talking to him.

"The
basil, sir, I'll go get it now?"

"Mmm,
yes. I'll be in my study. I have an idea for an experiment that I want to write
down, before I forget my thoughts."

Koren walked
quickly up the stairs, the regular, normal, real, stone stairs up to the roof,
and opened the glass case to collect basil. If Paedris was thinking up an
experiment, Koren wanted to be far away. He wrapped a small handful of the
fragrant herbs in a clean cloth, then sat for a moment, looking out to the
west, over the rooftops of Linden. The top of the wizard's tower was the
highest point for many miles, and the view was thrilling. That day, Koren
wasn't thinking of the view. He was thinking about how he lived with an
enormously powerful wizard, a man even more powerful that Koren had imagined.
Paedris could stretch the fabric of the world! Koren didn't know what that
meant, exactly, but one thing it meant was that he needed to remind himself,
despite how nice, and jovial, and absent-minded Paedris was, that the man was
the court wizard of Tarador, and Koren was a barely educated, homeless farmboy
who had lucked into a place to live. Koren knew he had, since Paedris returned
with the army, become overly familiar with the wizard, and not being properly
respectful, or fearful, of the man's incredible power and station in life. If
Koren hadn't saved the crown princess, it was likely he would never be able to
look the wizard in the eye, in the extremely unlikely event they ever met.

Koren went
back down the stairs to the upper doorway, that he now knew to be a portal to
another world. He peered into the stairway that didn't exist, but as there
didn't appear to be any fog, he took a deep breath, and ran though the
nonexistent stairway as fast as he could, stopping only when he crashed into
the reassuringly real stone hallway at the bottom. He looked fearfully back up
through the lower portal, grateful that the wizard didn't send him up to the
upper floors often.

Koren knew he
was supposed to be quiet, and keep still, and not be noticed. He couldn
’
t help craning his neck to
gawk around the throne chamber. It was filled with nobles, and their servants.
Of all the servants, he was the only one standing next to the crown princess,
on the floor below the steps that led to the throne where Carlana sat, with
Paedris standing by her side. Ariana leaned toward Koren, close enough that he
could inhale her perfume. Seeing her in her formal gown reminded him that she
was royalty, and he nothing but a common servant, and he felt a bit ashamed.
“
I wish I was wearing your
robes, Koren, the collar of this dress is scratching my neck.
”
She whispered.

“
I don
’
t think a crown princess
is supposed to be wearing servant
’
s
robes.
”
Koren
whispered back.
“
Besides,
that dress wouldn
’
t
fit me.
”

Ariana giggled
at the thought of Koren wearing her frilly dress, and that brought a nasty look
from her mother. Ariana bit her lip to stop laughing.
“
I hate this ceremony
stuff, it
’
s so
boring.
”

The ceremony
was to welcome a new ambassador from the Indus empire, a powerful land far to
the southeast. The tall door at the end of the chamber swung open, and chief of
protocol Charl Fusting thumped his staff on the stone floor. In a loud and
squeaky voice, he announced
“
Your
Highness, Lord Salva, assembled guests, please welcome the representative from
His Most Gracious Majesty, the Raj of Indus.
”

It was like a
small parade. First, two tall warriors, wearing brightly polished armor,
carrying poles with banners with the symbol of Indus; a golden tiger. Next,
four girls, adorned with many layers of silk gowns that trailed on the floor
behind them. The girls had small bells on the fingers, and danced and jingled
the bells as they came into the chamber. The girls were followed by eight
warriors, who carried large curved ceremonial swords, stomping their feet in
rhythm on the stone floor. When the warriors stopped and backed away from each
other, two tall women came through the doorway, put trumpets to their lips, and
blew a loud salute.