“Oh, I heard Bridger a minute ago.”
“He sort of squealed when Dukmee told him.”
Anticipation grew in his chest, along with excitement that wasn’t entirely his. He eyed the tiny woman. He’d been a close friend to Bixby two years ago. Renewed proximity must have reawakened the bond they had developed then. That relationship had felt like a sibling rapport. He was well aware that he didn’t feel brotherly toward the girl waiting for him now. One more reason to keep the emotions under wraps.
Pushing away the thought, he stood. “Well?” he prodded her. “What news?”
“Dukmee has calculated the date the rogue planes will interpass with our planes.”
“How long do we have?”
“Sixty-four days.”
Sixty-four days. His heart jumped to his throat. Carefully, he tamped down the desire to cheer. Finally! A problem out in the open, one that could be planned for with exact dates, locations, and participants. And not four months away but just over two. No more mindless wandering and endless waiting.
Maintaining an outer calm, he unhooked his hammock and stuck it in the hamper and shoved the hamper into a pocket. “Then I guess we’d better get moving.”
WHAT’S NEEDED
Cantor and Bixby found Dukmee in the Orrery Chamber. The mage had placed extra shining orbs around the walls and in between the devices. In the bright light, the machines seemed more alive than before. The orreries hummed, clicked, and glimmered with activity.
Bridger sat on a bench against the wall with Jesha in his arms. He whispered as they came into the room. “We’re staying out of the way.” The dragon nodded his head toward Dukmee. “This is the third time he’s put his theory to the test. It has to do with disproportionate displacement as opposed to formulaic cubic diatrams.”
“What does that mean?” asked Cantor.
“I have no idea. I don’t know if I even got the words in the right order, or the words that belong together in the same phrase. And there were three other words I can’t remember. One of them had six syllables. Saying ‘orreries’ is easy compared to the one that started with alogor —” Bridger ended his statement with a shrug.
Dukmee mumbled as he worked. Numbers and letters tripped off his tongue in rapid succession. He stood back for a moment, lunged forward, and adjusted a globe that had jerked a bit. Then the scholar paced back and forth with his thumb and forefinger framing his chin.
A grin grew above Dukmee’s scruffy jaw. He must have worked all night, with no sleep and no morning shave. Cantor lifted his fingers to his own cheeks. Yes, he was unkempt as well.
The orrery under Dukmee’s watchful eye clicked twice and stopped. Lyme Minor and Lyme Major hung on their rods inches away from the nine-stack planeary system. In the gesture of a stage magician, the mage extended his arms wide.
He turned and bowed to his small audience and made his announcement with theatrical flair. “We have the date . . . and the hour . . . and the location of the interpass.”
Bixby clapped and bounced. Cantor gave a cheer, and Bridger whooped. Jesha jumped from Bridger’s arms and flounced over to Dukmee. The cat did an intricate circling of his legs, weaving in and out from under the hem of his long, elaborate robe.
Dukmee first looked down with pleasure. His pleasure turned to annoyance as Jesha persisted.
Cantor sympathized. The dragon’s cat could wear out her welcome in any number of ways. He had been tripped when he’d been her favored person of the moment. She also kneaded with sharp claws. And on occasion, Jesha arbitrarily decided Cantor could be her designated giver of food. Then he received a scratch and shrill meow to announce an empty stomach. In Cantor’s opinion, the cat Jesha was a lot like the dragon Bridger.
Jesha’s adoration ended abruptly when the mage scooped the multicolored fur ball away from his legs and into his arms.
Turning his attention to Dukmee’s experiment, Cantor studied the location of each plane. “How is it that you suddenly have the answer?”
Bridger stood. “I did it.”
Cantor couldn’t help but raise a skeptical brow.
“No, really.” Bridger looked to the mage for confirmation, and Dukmee nodded his affirmation. “I cleared the table for our dinner last night, and after we washed the dishes and put them away, I returned the papers to the table. Only they weren’t in the same order.”
“And?” Cantor looked from Bridger’s smug face to Dukmee’s self-satisfied grin.
The mage stepped to a table and picked up an insignificant looking paper. “He took this paper that had been at the bottom of a pile and put it on the top of the pile next to the one I was working on. They go together, you see. And at one glance, I saw the smaller page held the key to the formulas on the larger.”
“And this combined formula tells us —?”
“Lyme Major will pass between Richra and Derson while Lyme Minor passes between Derson and Zonvaner. So we can now see where to put our defenses and when.”
With his fingers templed in front of his chin, Cantor let out a huge breath of air, then turned to face Dukmee. “But do we know anything about the Lymen themselves? How are we to plan our strategy?”
Bridger nodded his huge head. “It’s fit and laudable to know when and where we fight. This information enables us to meet them as they invade our planes. However, there is the unaddressed problem. What do we do to repel them? We need an offense as well as a defense.”
The dragon stood and paced to the archway, swiveled and returned. His arms lengthened to stretch under his wings. With his hands clasped behind him, his claw-tipped fingers interlaced, he looked like an odd professor brooding over a weighty question.
Cantor leaned his tall frame against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest, and watched Bridger with a reluctant twinge of amusement.
Bixby perched herself on a stool to watch. “Do be careful of your tail when you pivot, Bridger.”
The dragon turned neatly at the opposite wall and started back. He didn’t answer Bixby.
“Do they fight with spears?” asked Bridger. “Swords? Poison sprays? Bows and arrows? Ball bats? Fleas? Are they afraid of water? Do they lose focus if you sing to them? Do shellfish make them break out in spots?”
Cantor’s mouth had drooped open during this recitation. Dukmee looked equally lost. Bridger’s musing lacked logic even beyond the dragon’s usual standard. Cantor pressed his lips together and tried to make Bridger’s rambling nonsense connect to the matter at hand. He couldn’t. “Spots?”
Again Bridger’s head bobbed up and down. “My cousin gets red welts when he eats crabs or shrimp. All over. Even behind his ears and between his toes. It’s a sight to see. He itches and burns and complains.”
Bridger ran his hands across his skin, demonstrating how his cousin reacted. “I’ve thought before that he must be careful not to eat shellfish before a competition.”
He looked around at his three friends. They didn’t respond.
“He’s a competitive fisherman.”
His audience still stood dumbfounded.
“He’s won several tourneys.”
“I know!” Bixby’s blurted declaration brought Dukmee and Cantor out of their befuddlement.
Cantor examined her excited face. “You know about Bridger’s cousin?”
“No. I know about the Lymen warriors.”
Various light materials exquisitely sewn into elaborate clothing quivered over her eager frame. Sparkly pieces flashed an array of colors. She didn’t wait for the men to respond. “I’ve been reading the stories.”
Cantor wondered if he’d left all sense and logic in the sleeping alcove. He certainly was not surrounded by pillars of rationality. His companions had lost touch with the importance of this mission. Fishing tourneys and bedtime tales? “Stories?”
Dukmee stepped closer to Bixby and put a hand on her shoulder. “Histories.” He gestured to the wall lined with bookcases. “Diaries, journals, reports, letters. A thousand different a
ccounts of the Lymen.”
Bridger spun around to face Bixby. His tail knocked over a small wooden orrery. “And you can tell us all about them?”
“Absolutely. I have excellent retention.”
“What do they like to eat?”
“Cattle and corn.”
“Weaknesses?”
“Our sun hurts their eyes.”
“Weapon of choice?”
“Anything pointy. Swords, arrows, knives, and spears.”
Bridger grinned at Cantor. “This is great.”
Cantor agreed, but his mind was already looking ahead. “We’ll have to organize the information first, plan our strategy accordingly, and then secure one more thing before we can even hope to slow them down.”
“What?” asked Bixby. “What else do we need?”
“An army.”
Determined to get numerous projects done before they left, the realm walkers took up different chores. Later in the afternoon, Bixby sat inside a cupboard she had emptied of its store of scrolls. One of the scrolls had caught her eye.
Colors.
Most of the materials she had investigated were black on white or faded brown on darkening yellow. She’d found the latter hard to read.
When she glimpsed a design of yellow, green, and purple, she snatched the scroll out of the tidy pile. With new enthusiasm, she sat on the only uncluttered spot available, the cabinet she had just emptied.
The musty smell tickled her nose. She dug out a lace handkerchief saturated with a light lemon freshening gel and waved it around her head. Tucking it away with a smile, she concentrated on her find. She pulled one end of the neat bow, untying the ribbon. The parchment crackled as she cautiously unrolled the scroll.
Pictures!
Whimsical pictures. The artist conveyed his delight over the subjects depicted on the page, drawing with a light touch of outlining and muted colors giving substance. Bixby wondered if originally these colors had been bold. Now the yellow was murky, the green subdued, and the purple almost black.
As she unrolled the scroll, the pictures became brighter. She bit her lip in anticipation as she ventured on. The last section had only the line drawings, which petered out to nothing. A great deal of room was left, but no more entries.
She frowned.
She didn’t have a clear idea of what the maker of this scroll wanted to portray. In order to grasp that concept, she needed to be more systematic in her study. Carefully rerolling the last of the parchment, she began again, this time applying years of studying technique to follow the sequence in more depth.
The depiction of a pod from some plant repeated throughout the manuscript, though only once did the artist actually picture this pod in the branches of a bush. As Bixby explored the scenes, she realized the graceful, willowy limbs and foliage surrounding the pods were actually creatures, more animal than plant. They seemed to crawl in and out of the pods, which begged the question: Were the people tiny or the pods humongous?
Scribbles beside the images began to make sense to her puzzling mind.
Words, but not in a language she recognized and not in a script she had ever seen before. She secured the scroll with its original ribbon and scrambled out of her cubbyhole. Dukmee must see this.
She found him packing up maps on the far side of the library. Dukmee used ornate map weights to spread the scroll from one end of a long table to the other, planting the palm-sized metal statues at regular intervals along the half-blank length of parchment.
The scholar tapped his chin as he slowly perused the document, then grabbed a long-legged metal animal by its middle and shifted it in order to expose an image quite near the edge.
Bridger walked close behind him, peering from his great height over the mage’s shoulder.
Cantor stood on the other side of the table, which meant he looked at the whole piece upside down. He pointed to a square of random-looking black marks. “What’s this language?”
“The old tongue,” Dukmee said.
Cantor’s thoughts wisped through Bixby’s mind. “What does he mean?”
Bixby allowed her cheer to brighten her eyes and face, even in this solemn occasion. “I believe the next history round we would have taken in training would have covered the theory of the nine planes and only one language. And of course, the old tongue.”
“Ahma and Odem never mentioned these theories.”
“Not theories, plural, but theory, singular.”
Dukmee bent over the scroll, taking a closer look at some of the writing. Bixby held her breath, waiting for some pronouncement. Dukmee straightened and moved on.
She sighed.
“Why just one theory?” asked Cantor.
“It shouldn’t be called a theory, should it?”
Exasperation nipped at Cantor’s words. “No comment. Not enough information.”
Bixby giggled. “Sorry.”
“It is fortunate,” said Dukmee to both of their minds, “that my coworkers are so considerate. They’d not hinder my thinking by chatting superfluously while I weigh the evidence of this startling discovery.”
Bridger’s voice pushed into the cluttered conversation. “Not using a hedge, are they?”
Bixby covered her mouth. A ridiculous gesture since the words hadn’t been spoken. A bubble of laughter tried to surface. She tamped it down. Her eyes caught Cantor’s. His twinkled. The bubble rose again and escaped.
The laugh burst from her lips, followed by Bridger’s slow chuckle, then Cantor’s rumbling laughter.
Dukmee’s eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. He grinned. “Let’s have tea and biscuits, and I’ll tell you what I think.”
The busyness of preparing a snack gave them time to put aside their humor. With hot tea in their mugs, the three turned eager eyes to the mage.
With his free hand, Dukmee indicated the new find displayed on the table. “These are pictures of the devices used to travel from one plane to another. The pods are part of a plant, of course, and therefore prone to lose integrity quickly.” He pointed to a picture of a pile of vegetation. On closer inspection, Bixby realized it was not a garbage heap, but old rotting pods.
Dukmee continued. “I tend to think they can make one trip, to and back. They seem to carry only one occupant. So far, I see more problems in using them than advantages.”
Cantor ran his finger along the rim of his mug. “Unless you have no portals and no realm walkers.”
“Exactly so, Cantor. I doubt they would be useful for our forces, but I can see the guild using them for illegal transport. The evidence of their crime could be buried in a mulch pile.”
Jesha jumped into Bridger’s lap, eyeing the cheese in his sandwich. Bridger squinted as he thought. Offhandedly, he offered his cat a pinched-off treat while he pondered the new information. “Shall we need an army to repulse the Lymen?”
“I believe so.” Dukmee pointed to mid-scroll. “See one of the last pictures — the one that looks like scribble and dots?”
They all directed their attention to where Dukmee pointed.
“That,” said the mage in a tone of a grandiose announcement, “is a field. In the field are plants. On the plants are pods.”
Realization poured through Bixby’s mind and flooded her system with a surge of energy. “Those are pods, thousands of pods.”
Bridger shook his head slowly. “Enough pods to deliver an army.”
Cantor grimaced. “We need an army.”
UNEXPECTED COMPANY
Bridger used both arms to gesture at the table laden with books, scrolls, and loose sheets of parchment. “Shouldn’t we ask somebody for permission to take all this from the library?”
Cantor shrugged, amused by his constant’s desire to follow rules, even when no rules were evident. “Who shall we ask?”
He glanced up from the scrolls he was tying together as the female member of their mission waltzed into the room.
With her garments flowing around her, Bixby came to the work table, ca
rrying several hampers. “Bridger, I’m just glad Dukmee didn’t ask us to stuff orreries into these bags.”
Cantor straightened and used two fisted hands to rub the small of his back. None of the work tables were the right height for his long torso. He watched Bixby’s graceful hands pluck up the smaller tomes and place them in the bag. Bridger’s movements resembled those of a shovel digging and tossing garden dirt around. Cantor strode to his side, hoping that with his help they might store the materials with less damage to their frail pages.
While he piled books into small stacks for Bridger to shift into the hamper, he stole glances at Bixby, with her clothes fluttering to the slightest movement and her face in a constant shine of pleasure. She didn’t look like someone who would stick to an assignment as dry as plowing through hundreds of old works of literature.
He smiled at her. “Bixby, you constantly surprise me. You’ve done an admirable job of reading and recording Lymen facts in your journal.”
She tossed a frown at him. “I thought you were smart enough to figure out that I’m more than a pretty face. I’m disappointed to find out you didn’t think I could study. After all, Cantor, I had my first tutor when I was three.”
He laughed and saw her relax. He stretched out his arms and turned in a complete circle. “I know, Bix, but look at this.”
Shaking his head, Cantor surveyed the multiple bookcases around the room. He studied the disheveled shelves, noting the empty spaces and the stacks of tomes on various tabletops. “No wonder they called this the Lymen Library. How many books do you suppose are here?”
Bridger answered. “Five hundred sixty-seven.”
Bixby’s head came up, and she stared at the dragon. “You counted them?”
He smiled sheepishly. “I couldn’t sleep the first night we were here.”
Cantor grunted. “I’m surprised you didn’t put back the ones that Dukmee and Bixby had out.”
“Dukmee threatened to lock me in a bottle if I messed up his piles. I didn’t know which were his and which were Bixby’s.”
Despite the annoyance Cantor sometimes felt at the mage’s high-handed decrees, he could not deny the man’s good judgment. Especially this last decree to pack up most of the library and take it with them. “Dukmee’s right, I know. By taking the unread volumes with us, we can continue to read and learn as much as we can before the enemy lands. There just hasn’t been enough time for Bixby to read and summarize all the information.”