The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Part 65

The smith didn't say anything. He lifted his hand and pointed up the street. Framea followed the line, and saw a larger than average building at the end, white, with a sun-in-glory painted over the door. Which he could have found perfectly well for himself, had he bothered to look, and then the whole village wouldn't have known he was here.

Fortunately, the Brother was at home when he knocked on the door. A short man, with a round face, quite young but thin on top, tiny hands like a girl. According to the report, this little fat man had walked out of his house into the street after the perpetrator had killed sixteen people, and had tried to arrest arrest him-And the perpetrator had turned and walked away. him-And the perpetrator had turned and walked away.

"My name is Framea," he said. "I'm from the Studium."

The Brother stared at him for a moment, then stood aside to let him in through the door. He had to duck to keep from banging his head.

"I told the other man-"

"Yes, I've read the report," Framea cut him off. "But I need to confirm a few details. May I sit down?"

The Brother nodded weakly, as though Death had stopped by to borrow a cup of flour. "I told him everything I saw," he said. "I don't think there was anything-"

Framea got a smile from somewhere. "I'm sure that's right," he said. "But you know how it is. Important facts can get mangled in transmission. And the man who interviewed you was a general field officer, not a Fellow. He may have misunderstood, or failed to grasp the full significance of a vital detail. I'm sure you understand."

He went over it all again. Thrasea the miller had shot the perpetrator in the back with a crossbow, at close range, ten paces, but the arrow-No, he hadn't simply missed, you couldn't miss at that range. Well, you could, but not Thrasea, he'd won the spoon at shoot-the-popinjay the year before last, he was a good shot. And besides, the arrow had just stopped stopped- Technical details? For the report. Well, it was a hunting bow, you needed a windla.s.s to draw it, you couldn't just span it with your hands. Well, it's possible, the man could have been wearing something under his coat, a mailshirt or a brigandine; but at that range the arrow would most likely have gone straight through, one of those things'll shoot clean through an oak door at point-blank range. Besides, if the man had been hot, even if he was wearing armor and it turned the arrow, he'd have moved; jerked like he'd been kicked by a horse, at that distance. And the arrowshaft would've splintered, or at the very least the tip would've snapped off or gotten bent. No; he'd picked up the arrow himself later that day, and it was good as new.

"And then he turned round and-"

"Yes, thank you," Framea said quickly. "That part of the account isn't in is-sue." He swallowed discreetly and went on; "Did you see anymarks onthe man? Scratches, bruises, anything like that?"

No, there wasn't a mark on him anywhere that the Brother could see, not that he'd expected to, since n.o.body had gotten closer to him than Thraso did. Cuts and scratches from flying debris, from when he made the houses fall down; no, nothing like that. There was stuff flying in the air, bits of tile and rafter, great slabs of brick and mortar, but none of them hit the man. Yes, he was right up close. No, he didn't make any warding-off gestures or anything like that. Too busy killing people. Didn't really seem interested in the effects of what he was doing, if Framea got his drift.

"And you're absolutely sure you'd never seen this man before."

"Quite sure. And the same goes for everybody else in the village. A complete stranger."

Framea nodded. "Don't suppose you get many of those."

"Carters," the Brother said, "pedlars occasionally, though they never come back. People here aren't very well off, you see. We don't tend to buy anything from outside."

"Can you think of anybody who'd have a grudge against the people here?" Framea asked. "Any feuds, or anything like that?"

The Brother looked blank, like he hadn't heard the word before.

"Inheritance disputes? Scandals? Anybody run off with someone else's wife lately?"

The Brother a.s.sured him that things like that simply didn't happen there. Framea thought of the girl, the previous night. She was probably a part-timer, like the smith and the wheelwright and the man who made coffins. Simply not enough business to justify going full time.

"There was one thing," the Brother said, as Framea stooped under the lintel on his way out. "But I'm sure it was just me imagining things."

"Well?"

"I don't know." The Brother pulled a sad, indecisive face. "When I was looking at him, in the street, it's like he was sort of hard to see; you know, when you're looking at someone with the sun behind them? And at the time, I guess I must've thought that's what it was, only it didn't register, if you know what I mean."

"You noticed it without realizing."

The Brother nodded. "But then later, thinking about it, I realized it couldn't have been that, because it was mid-morning, and I was looking down down the street at him, I mean looking from my end, which is due east. So the sun was behind me, not him." the street at him, I mean looking from my end, which is due east. So the sun was behind me, not him."

Framea blinked. Yes, he thought, it was just you imagining things. Or, just possibly, a really powerful Ignis in favellum; except why would anybody enchant himself to glow bright blue in broad daylight?

"Thank you," he said to the Brother. "You've been most helpful."

Your only viable approach will be to provoke him into attacking you.

Framea stopped at the crack in the wall where the fresh-waterspring trickled through. He'd seen women standing here, filling their jugs and bowls painfully slowly. It was the only clean water in the village. He knelt down and cupped his hands, then drank. It tasted of iron, and something nasty he couldn't quite place.

If it was such a poor village, how come Thrasea the miller could afford a good hunting bow? He shook his head. Urban thinking. He'd probably built it himself; carved the stock, traded flour with the smith for the steel bow. He could almost picture him in his mind-patiently, an hour each evening in the barn, by the light of a bulrush taper soaked in mutton-fat. People in the villages often used sharp flints for planing wood, because steel tools were luxuries. Or you might borrow a plane from the wheelwright, if he owed you a favor- Motive. What motive would an untrained need? He tried to imagine what it must be like, to carry the gift inside you and not know what it was. You'd probably believe you were mad, because you knew the things you were able to do were impossible (but you'd seen them happen, but they were impossible, but you'd seen them). You wouldn't dare tell anyone else. But there'd be the times when you got angry (you'd have a shorter temper than most people, because of the stress you'd be under all the time) and you found you'd done something without realizing. Something bad, inevitably. Your victim would tell people, in whispers; they wouldn't quite believe it, but they wouldn't quite disbelieve it either. You'd get a reputation. People would be nervous around you. Not much chance of a job, if you needed one, not much chance of help from your neighbors if something went wrong. It'd be a miracle if an untrained reached adulthood without being a complete mess.

He filled another handful and drank it. The taste was stronger, if anything. Iron and- He stood up. Provoke a fight, the Precentor had said. Well, indeed. Easy peasy.

(But an untrained would know know, wouldn't he? He'd feel the presence of another gift, he'd be drawn here. Would he dare come back to the village, where he'd be instantly recognised? It would all depend on exactly what he could do. Besides Lorica, of course. But untrained were always an unknown quant.i.ty. There were cases on record of untrained who could do seventh-degree translocations, but not a simple light or heat form. There was no way of knowing. d.a.m.n.)

He spent the rest of the day slouching round the village, trying to be conspicuous, something he'd spent his life avoiding. The idea was that news spreads like wildfire in small, remote rural communities, and he wanted everybody for miles around to know that there was a man from the Studium in the village, asking questions about the ma.s.sacre. But the village chose that day to be empty, practically deserted; if anybody saw him, he didn't see them. It did cross his mind that it was deserted precisely because he was there.As darkness closed in, he began to feel rather desperate; he really didn't want to have to stay here any longer than was absolutely necessary. He went back to the spring-mouth, scrambled up onto a cart that someone and left there for some reason, and looked all around. n.o.body in sight. Then he took a deep breath and shouted; "I AM FRAMEA OF THE STUDIUM! SURRENDER OR FIGHT ME TO THE DEATH!" Then he got down, feeling more ridiculous than he'd ever felt in his whole life.

He hadn't actually said anything about that night, but she was there waiting for him when he got back to the inn; standing alone, in the corner of the room. The five or six men sitting drinking acted as though she was invisible. Strictly speaking, it wasn't necessary; once was usually reckoned to be sufficient to form the connection. She looked up at him. Presumably, it was just about the money.

He nodded, and she left the room; as she did so, the men stopped talking, and there was dead silence for a while, as though they were at a religious service, or remembering the war dead on Victory Day. He'd thought about sitting down for a while and drinking a mug of the disgusting beer, but he decided against it. A man could catch his death of cold from a silence like that.

The subtleties of the hayloft, he thought, as he crossed the yard. The ground was still wet from yesterday's rain, and his muddy foot slipped on the bottom rung of the ladder. She was waiting for him, lying on her back, fully clothed. She looked as though she was waiting for the attentions of a surgeon, not a lover. Never again, he promised himself.

This time, he cast a number of specific Laet.i.tias as well as a general one. It was easier now that he knew what a woman's reproductive organs actually looked like (he'd seen drawings in a book, of course, but you couldn't get a real idea from a drawing. Besides, the ill.u.s.trations in Coelius's Anatomy Anatomy looked more like a sketch-map of a battlefield than anything to do with the human body.). The results were quite embarra.s.singly effective, and he was worried the people in the inn might hear, and a.s.sume the poor woman was being murdered. looked more like a sketch-map of a battlefield than anything to do with the human body.). The results were quite embarra.s.singly effective, and he was worried the people in the inn might hear, and a.s.sume the poor woman was being murdered.

She fell asleep quite quickly afterwards. He lay on his back with his eyes closed, wishing more than anything that he was back in his warm chambers at the Studium, where he could wash properly and be alone. She snored. He realized he didn't know her name; though, to be fair, there was no compelling evidence to suggest she even had one.

Also, he wanted to wake her up and apologise. But of course she was better off not knowing.

If he'd been asleep, he was woken up by a soft white light filling the hayloft. He opened his eyes. It was as bright as day, lighter than lamplight, even the glare of a thousand candles in the Great Hall of the Studium at the Commemoration feast.

The light came from a man. He was standing at the entrance to the hayloft, where a beam ran across, separating the loft from the rest of the barn; he guessed it was used as the fulcrum for a rope, for hoisting up heavy weights. The man was leaning on his folded arms against the bar. It was impossible to make out his face, blindingly backlit. He was tall and slightly built.

"h.e.l.lo," he said.

Framea sat up. "h.e.l.lo."

"You wanted to see me."

Him. Framea felt terrified, for a moment or so. Then the fear stabilised; it didn't go away, but it settled down. It was something he could draw on. Maybe that's what courage is, he speculated later.

"You're Framea, right? The wizard."

Framea was pleased he'd said that. It triggered an automatic, well-practiced response. "We aren't wizards," he heard himself say. "There's no such thing. I'm a student of natural philosophy. A scientist."

"What's the difference?"

The man, he noticed, spoke with no accent; none at all. Also, his voice was strangely familiar. That's because it's inside my head, Framea realized. And the man isn't really there, this is a third-level translocation. But he wasn't sure about that. The light, for one thing.

"Are you here in this room?" he asked.

The man laughed. "You know," he said, "that's a b.l.o.o.d.y good question. I'm not sure, to be honest with you. Like, I can feel this wooden beam I'm resting on. But I definitely didn't leave the-where I'm staying. So I must still be there, mustn't I? Or can I be in two places at once?"

A ninth ninth-level translocation. Under other circ.u.mstances, Framea would be on his knees, begging to be let in on the secret of how you did that. "Technically, no," he replied, his lecturer's voice, because it made him feel in control. Like h.e.l.l he was; but the man didn't need to know that. "But there's a form we call Stans in duobus partibus which-theoretically-allows a person to be in two different places simultaneously. That's to say, his physical body. His mind-"

"Yes?" Eager.

"Opinions differ," Framea said. "Some maintain that the mind is present in both bodies. Others hold that it exists in another House entirely, and is therefore present in neither body."

"House," the man repeated. "You've lost me."

Framea shivered. "No doubt," he replied. "You would have to have studied for two years at the Studium to be in a position to understand the concept."

"That's whatI wanted to see you about," the man said. "No, stay exactly where you are, or I'll kill her."

Her, Framea noted. "I'm sorry," he said. "A touch of cramp. Let me sit up so we can talk in a civilized manner."

"No." Maybe just a touch of apprehension in the voice, leading to a feather of hostility? "You can stay right there, or I'll burst her head. You know I can do it."

"I can, of course, protect her," Framea lied. "And I don't think we have anything to discuss. I have to inform you that you are under arrest."

The man laughed, just as if Framea had told the funniest joke ever. "Sure," he said. "I'll try and bear that in mind. Now, tell me about this Studium place of yours."

She was still fast asleep, breathing slow and deep. He could smell her spit where it had dried around his mouth. "I don't see that it's anything to do with you," he said.

"Come off it. You know I'm one of you lot. I want to come and be educated properly. That's what you're there for, isn't it?"

Framea winced. "Out of the question," he said. "For one thing, you're much too old. More to the point, you've committed a number of brutal murders. You should be aware that I'm authorised to use-"

"No, that's not right." A statement, not a question, or even an objection. "I've never done your lot any harm. Our lot," he amended. "I'm just like you. I'm not like them at all."

"They were human beings," Framea said. "You killed them. That is not acceptable."

"But we're not human, are we?" The man was explaining to him, as if to a small child. "We're better. I mean, wizards, we can do anything we like. That's the whole point, isn't it?"

Framea didn't answer. Far too much conversation already; he knew it was discouraged, since any interaction with a malignant could only serve to weaken one's position. The trouble was, he was on the defensive. Lorica...

"Well?"

"You will surrender now," Framea said, "or I shall have no option but to use force."

"Screw you, then," the man said, and he lashed out. It was Mundus Vergens in a raw, inelegant variant, but backed up with enormous power. Framea barely held it with Scutum and a third-level translocation. Fortunately the man had forgotten about his threat to kill the girl, or else he'd never meant it. Framea replied tentatively with Hasta maiestatis, more as a test of the man's defenses than anything else. The form stopped dead and washed back at him; he got out of the way of the backlash just in time with a fourth-level dissociation into the third House.

Lorica, he thought, and then: Why me? me?

"Are you still there?" he heard the man ask. "h.e.l.lo?"

Framea paused to consider the tactical options. If, as he suspected, the man was present only by way of a ninth-level translocation, the safest course would be to break the form and force him back into his other body, wherever the h.e.l.l that was. He could manage that, he was fairly sure; but it would mean draining the source, because of the backlash, and how would he ever find him again? He wasn't here to protect himself, he was here to bring the malignant in, or kill him. In which case- Oh well, he thought.

He concentrated all his mind on the sleeping girl. He imagined shoving his hand down her throat, grabbing her heart and ripping it out. On the count of three, he told himself; one, two, three.

He pulled, felt all of her strength flow into him, and immediately struck out with Fulmine. He put everything into it, all of her and all of him. It soaked into Lorica like water into sand, not even any backlash.

"Did you just do something?" the man asked curiously.

Framea felt empty. He had no strength left. By any normal standards he'd completely overdone the Fulmine-if he'd missed the target and overshot, they'd have to send to the City for cartographers to redraw all the maps-and the man was asking, did you just do something? It wasn't possible. It couldn't be happening. Lorica; which didn't exist.

The girl grunted in her sleep and turned over.

"This is pointless,"the man said. "You can't hurt me, I can't hurt you, the h.e.l.l with it. Don't come after me any more, or I'll kill the village."

The light suddenly went out.

He spent the rest of the night crouched over the girl's body, watching her breathe.

She woke up just after dawn. As soon as she opened her eyes, he asked her, "Are you all right?"

She nodded. "Why? What's the matter?"

"Nothing." He hesitated. "Did you have nightmares?"

She frowned. "I think so. But I always forget my dreams. Why?"

He wanted to say, because I very nearly killed you, and I want to know if you remember any of it, because if you do, I'll have to erase your mind. He wanted to explain, at the very least. Dear G.o.d, he wanted to apologise apologise. But he knew that would be to make him feel better. It would be self-indulgence,and they'd warned him about that on his second day as a student.

"Here," he said, and gave her two of the gold coins. She stared at them, and then at him. She was terrified.