On the next day Kalam Dean and I finished our negotiations. He didn’t bring his ruby to the discussion but promised it as Miana’s dowry. And on that very same evening I found out how to squeeze an unwanted memory from my mind and set it into Luntar’s copper box. All I kept of Miana was her name, the fact I was to marry her, and that half a thousand cavalry would one day come in answer to my call.
The remaining time I spent at Castle Morrow, and my journey back to the Highlands, are tales best kept for another day. Before I left though, in fact on the day after my engagement, I took myself back to the room beneath the wine-cellar, this time with permission.
My uncle called it the “grouch chamber.” The machine appeared to have only three tasks. Firstly, to keep alive a number of glow-bulbs dotted around the oldest parts of the castle. Secondly, to suck seawater from beneath the cliffs and turn it into pure drinking water for the fountains around the courtyards. And finally, to allow the grouch, Fexler Brews, to enjoy a kind of half-life in which he generally poured scorn on the ignorance of the living, pitied our existence, and moaned about the things he left unfinished in his own.
“Go away.”
Fexler appeared the moment I entered the chamber and repeated his previous greeting.
“Make me,” I said again.
“Ah, the young man with the questions,” Fexler said. “I was a young man with questions once upon a time, you know.”
“No, you weren’t. You’re the echo of a man who was. You were never young-only new.”
“And what is your question?” he asked, scowling.
“Can you end your existence?” I asked.
“Not everyone seeks an end, boy.”
“You think I seek my end?”
“All young men are a little in love with death.”
“I would be more than in love with it if I’d spent a thousand years in a cellar.”
“It has been trying,” Fexler admitted.
“Are you even allowed to want to end yourself?” I asked.
“You’re obsessed with death, child.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” I said.
“I’m not allowed to answer the question.”
“Complicated!” I stepped back and sat on the bottom stairs. “So. What can you do for me?”
“I can give you three questions.”
“Like a genie,” I said.
“Yes, but they give wishes. Two left.”
“That was an observation, not a question!” I cried.
I chewed my lip. “Do you swear to give full and honest answers?”
“No. Two left.”
Dammit. “Tell me about guns,” I said.
“No. One left.”
“Point me at the single most useful and portable piece of Builder-magic in this chamber,” I said.
Fexler shrugged and then pointed to what looked to be one of the valves on the blackened machine. I moved to examine it. Not a valve, something else. A ring set in a depression.
“It’s hardly portable.”
“Twist it,” he said.
I cleaned the area with my sleeve. A silver ring about three inches across topped a stubby cylindrical projection. Shallow grooves around the edge offered some traction. I twisted it. It proved extremely stiff but with the bones in my hand creaking I managed to turn the ring.
Nothing happened.
I twisted again. Easier this time. Again. I spun it several times and the ring came loose in my hand.
“Pretty,” I said.
“Look through it,” Fexler suggested.
I held it to my eye. Nothing for a second, then an image over-wrote my vision, a blue circle swirled with white patterns, intricate, infinitely detailed. For some reason it put me in mind of Alaric’s snow-globe. “It’s wonderful,” I said. “What is it?”
“Your whole world. Seen from a little over twenty thousand miles above the ground.”
“That’s a ways to fall. What are all the white swirls?”
“Weather formations.”
“Weather?” It seemed incredible that I might be seeing clouds from above rather than below, and over such reaches that their whole cycle and design lay revealed. “Weather from when? From your day?”
“From today. From now.”
“This isn’t just a painting?”
“You’re seeing the world as it happens. Your world,” Fexler said.
I shifted my grip on the ring and I plunged, or felt that I did, racing down and to the left, like an eagle diving. A small curl at the end of one vast cloud swirl now filled my vision and I could see land far below, a sparkling thread wove across the greens and browns. I stumbled but managed to keep my feet.
“I can see a river!” An old instinct bit in. Suspicion drew the ring and its visions from my eye. “Why?”
“Why?” he asked.
I spun the ring between finger and thumb. “Beware of ghosts bearing gifts, they say.”
“You’ll find that’s Greeks, but the principle is sound.” Fexler frowned. “You’re carrying something that interests me. And as it turns out you’re more than you seem. It’s not every day a battleground walks down my stairs.”
“Battleground?”
“You’re a nexus for two opposing forms of energy, young man-one dark, one light. I have technical terms for them, but dark and light serve well enough. Given a little more time they’ll tear you apart. Quite literally. It’s an exponential process, the end will be sudden and ‘violent.’”
“And you know this because?” My gaze returned to the ring.
“A lesson in life, Jorg. Whatever you look into can look back into you. The ring has scanned your brain in quite minute detail.”
My jaw clenched at that. The idea of being measured, being classified, did not appeal. “But that’s something unexpected you discovered, not what you were looking for?”
“You know what I was looking for.” Fexler smiled. “Perhaps you’d be good enough to set the ring to it for me?”
I pulled out my little box of memories. Today it seemed to tremble in my hand. The view-ring clunked against it as if both were lodestones drawn by mutual attraction. For a moment Fexler’s image pulsed more brightly.
“Interesting,” he said. “Crude but clever. Remarkable even.”
Box and ring fell apart-done with each other. Fexler fixed me with an intense stare.
“I can help you, boy. Fire and death have their hooks deep in you. Call it magic. It isn’t but this will go easier if we say it is. Your wounds anchor the enchantments, both of them trying to pull you into the domains from which they spring. Alone either one would draw you down in time, make something different of you, something no longer human. You understand me?”
I nodded. Ferrakind and the Dead King waited for me in separate hells.
Fexler’s gaze settled on the box, clenched tight in my hand. “All that saves you is that these forces are in opposition. Soon enough, though, that opposition will rip you open.”
He waited for me to speak, to beg or entreat his aid. I held my tongue and watched him.
“I can help,” he said.
“How?”
He flashed a nervous grin. “It’s done. I’ve bound both forces through that interesting little box of yours. It’s far stronger than you are. It may hold indefinitely. And while it holds the process should be halted; neither power should be able to get a better grip on you or able to pull you any further into their domain.”
“And what is it you want for this…gift?” I asked.
