041 – Explanations And Interludes

Steven stood watching from across the street and part of the block down. As soon as Caspian grabbed the man, he gaped a bit. “And he didn’t want me to cause a scene.”

Steven watched as the man’s wife came around the end of the wagon from whatever she had been doing, and Caspian’s staff turned to point at her all but automatically. Then Cyrril leapt from the board, where he had dropped to from Caspian’s shoulder, and came flying over to him. Steven put his arm out, as you would to catch a bird, and Cyrril swooped up to it, and crawled around to Steven’s shoulders. He had the rings in his teeth, and dropped these into Steven’s proffered hand.

“Thank you,” Steven replied, with a bit of a lump in his throat. He then took some of the cord he had, and tied it into a loop, through the rings. This was put around his neck, and under his shirt.

Caspian walked up as he finished. “Well, that confirms things.” Cyrril moved to Caspian’s shoulders.

“And you were afraid I was going to cause a scene.” Steven fell into step as they continued to the town gate.

“Thumping someone for information will get noticed. With a proper bit of applied magic, only those looking for you will notice.”

“Well, either you are stronger than I think, or you were using magic on him as well.”

“Two spells. One to reduce his effective mass, making him light as a feather and just as strong. The other to prevent him from lying, so long as I was touching him.” Caspian said these with some strong distaste.

“You don’t like using them.”

“They are white magic. But not very glowing, if you take my meaning.”

Steven remembered some things from his military past. “I think I do.”

“‘You think you do’ what?” Abey chimed in unexpectedly.

They turned as Abey approached, leading a laden mule. She had partially reoutfitted herself, as well as getting provisions for their trip.

“Oh, just talking about distasteful jobs,” Steven dismissed the conversation.

“Ah. Well, unless you need something else from here, I vote we leave.” Abey led her mule forward.

The men smiled at her, and Steven motioned with his hand. “Lead on.”

Cyrril glided over to the mule’s pack, and spent the next hour picking through it, and crawling around on the beast’s mane and withers. It tossed its head a bit, and shook itself good once to shake Cyrril off. After which, they more or less ignored each other.

As they walked out of the gate, Caspian asked Steven a question.

“Why did you walk away so easily? I half expected you to round on me, over this.”

Steven smiled. “Well, in the last few weeks, I have figured out how to reliably read you.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that Cyrril echo’s and amplifies your mood. You’ve stood to bargain with some that you appeared to want to kill in the first two places we stopped, but Cyrril was as quiet as if asleep. When we picked her up,” Steven motioned ahead of them, “though you sent Cyrril to go find her parents, he also seemed to be bored with utter lack of concern. You, knowing the culture, knew that all was well, and not your problem.”

Caspian had been told this before, about his and other’s links to familiars. He was amused that Steven had picked up on it, not knowing any other magic users.

“And this time?” Caspian was curious.

“Cyrril was very agitated. He doesn’t usually fan like that unless he is ready to kill something in a fight. So you must have been very upset.”

“I don’t like slavers.”

Caspian, Steven and Abey stopped in the woods, and sat around by a small fire, talking.

“Steven, you have told me who you believe you are, and what you perceive needs to be done. So, what are you willing to do?” Caspian leaned against a tree.

“What do you mean?”

“”What are you willing to do? Are you willing to try new things, to think in different ways? To behave in ways you have never tried to before? To do things that if you took time to think about you would dismiss as stupid, or out of character?”

Steven took this all in. His first impulse was that of every man, to blurt out with his pride and say that of course he would. Then to shrink from the new in favor of the comfortable. But he might as well shrink from himself. Instead he examined and carried forth these ideas.

Try new things. New approaches. New behaviors. At behaviors he found an impassable line. He would not behave immorally.

Things that appeared ridiculous. There was a definite advantage in that. Most people tended to discount the ridiculous, the childish.

The more Steven turned these ideas over and compared them to his situation, and growing perception of himself, the more he found then to be acceptable. He looked from the fire to the pile of sticks. He scooped up a few, and put them on the coals. They quickly lit.

Steven looked at Caspian. “Yes. I am willing to do whatever it takes; to try the new, to do the ridiculous. But not the suicidal or the immoral.”

Caspian gave Steven the look that men give to equals. He was finished helping Steven adapt. Now to retrieve Roxanne, and help her.

Up to this point Caspian had mostly been traveling as straight line as he could, following established roads as necessary, game trails when possible. With Steven he had started on the west slope of one mountain range, crossed through two more small mountain ranges and the lands between them, and now came onto the upper costal plain, that had some mountains and hills between them and the coast. The small city they had just left was part of a network of such cities that divided and ruled The Kingdom.

As near as Caspian could recall, in this kingdom the road systems were laid out with the capitol at the hub, there were two levels of rings of cities, each with their local ruling nobility that owed fealty to The King. However thanks to geography this only worked as a diagram. The Kingdom went from the coast to this range behind them, from a bay on the north to a river on the south. It was several days travel across, in any direction, and longer from north to south.

As they left this city, Caspian took them onto the main trade road that would take them most directly into the Capitol city. This actually led south initially.

That stopped for the night in a place that Steven would have called a truck stop.

There were organized camp grounds large enough to turn a wagon team around in. A large fenced field nearby contained several heads of various stock, and a train of six wagons were parked on one side of the camp.

Abey led them into one of the campgrounds, unloaded her mule and then turned it loose in the stock yard. It had been a long day spending the morning in the markets of the city, and then walking to here. To Caspian’s surprise, Abey had a small tent that she set up for herself from her stores.

Steven helped set up a small dutch oven for dinner, using some vegetables and fresh killed meat. In a second dutch oven Abey prepared some bread. Caspian prepared the fire in the pit for this camp.

Steven cut up some vegetables, and started talking. “How much of this did you get?”

Abey mixed the dough by hand, having first cleaned her hands as best she could. “I asked how long the road was to the capitol, and went from there. I figure I have enough to get us there, so long as we don’t splurge. Besides, I have been missing bread with my dinner.”

As they sat around and waited for the bread and roast to cook, Steven started on a line of questioning he had been wanting to ask, and not yet been getting around to.

“Caspian. We’ve been together for about six weeks, but I know almost nothing about you. So who are you and where are you from?”

Caspian sat on a log watching nothing, his staff between his knees and over his shoulder. Cyrril was off somewhere.

“Well, I am the only child of my parents, born in the seventh year of the reign of Sharius of Silvona. My mother is a Mage, born to a merchant’s family, so I have several cousins on that side. My father is a Wizard, born to a family of magic users and vagabonds, so there is no real idea who all is related in that direction; he currently sits as a second to the head of his School in the School of the Orders.”

Steven interrupted. “What is The School of the Orders?”

Caspian thought a moment. “It is the governing body that loosely sets the rules of behavior for human magic users on this planet. The school divides magic into eight general schools of application: dealing with oaths, and summoning or releasing things; conjuring things, and putting them together or taking them apart; information gathering or diffusing it; empowering or disempowering things; energy manipulation and mass-energy exchanges; physical transformations of mass; creating and dispelling images; and dealing with the dead, and giving the illusion of life. There are several sub-schools to these general categories. My talents run across the board, so I am a general practitioner, and use the title of Mage, when I bother to use one.”

Caspian continued. “I went to boarding school as a teen and got my training then. I have been to several different worlds; on one I acquired Cyrril by accident. He is a juvenile of his species, and not expected to reach full growth for another twenty or more local years. As part of the conclusion of my schooling, I spent two of your years on Steven’s home world, mostly learning about chemistry and physics.”

Caspian stopped and let go of the dissertation, evidently not interested in telling stories about himself.

Abey was curious about one thing, asking as she checked the dinner. “Are there any women you have ever been interested in?”

Caspian glanced at Abey and Steven in turn. “Not really. There were a few in school, but they were more interested in other guys. I spent near ten years after school wandering the length and breadth of this planet. Never met anybody who was interested in coming with. A few years back I purchased the farm and some adjoining land in Silvona, and settled down to learning to work it. Now that I think about it, I think I was happier working that farm and interacting with my neighbors and their kids, than I was wandering the sixty plus kingdoms of this land. As far as getting married, I suppose I am hoping for the Great Atoner to send the right woman to me, since I have not been able to find and recognize her.”

Caspian closed this line of questioning, looking up at the meat and vegetables in the dutch oven Abey was tending. “That smells like it is done.”