He had done the same for both Moira and me, which brought me to another question. “You obviously shaped Moira’s body into what it is now, rather than a replica of your own. Why didn’t you do the same for me?”
He smiled. “A good question, only a Gaelyn archmage could create a living body and shape it into that of another person or creature. In your case, I didn’t need to bother. As an archmage I knew you could restore yourself to what you had been before.”
Listening, I had come to accept that I would need his help. It wouldn’t be possible to do what I wanted alone. I would have to persuade him. “Do you still like dragons?”
My change of subject startled him, “What?!”
“You lived as one for over a thousand years. You loved the idea of them before, but are you still drawn to it?” I said, elaborating on my query.
“Yes,” he admitted, “though I doubt I will ever attempt something so foolish again.”
“I have an idea,” I said, easing into my topic, “and I think you will be interested in helping me.” I gave him the rough outline, although I glossed over a few parts.
His face remained impassive as I spoke, but at the end he had a clear cut opinion, “You’re mad. Not only are you mad, but it’s impossible.”
“No it isn’t.”
“They would die immediately. There’s no way to keep them alive without an animus,” he pointed out.
“I’ll have anima for all of them,” I insisted.
“Only a Centyr could produce…,” he began, but then he stopped, eyes widening, “…oh.”
I nodded sagely.
“But you still couldn’t do it before they died, the time it would require is excessive,” he insisted.
“I have an idea to circumvent that problem as well,” I answered.
“Even if you do, have you thought about the moral implications?”
“You mean since my own experiences?” I suggested.
“Yes. It’s immoral. I just freed three of your ancestor’s tormented creations, yet you want to create more?” He paused and then continued, “My wife would be livid with you, and me by extension.”
He was referring to the unmaking of Doron, Karenth, and Millicenth, something he had taken care of in my stead. “Your wife is an immortal construct, yet she seems happy enough,” I noted.
“For now,” said Gareth, “but she has the means to end her existence someday when it becomes too much of a burden. Will you do the same in this case?”
“No,” I said, “I have a different plan.” I was less sure about this part, but I felt it could be accomplished in theory. I just had to figure out how to make it happen. I gave him a quick description.
“That is definitely impossible,” he declared.
“I can do it,” I asserted. “Give me a month and come visit me. Say nothing to Moira, I’ll explain it to her myself.”
“She isn’t going to go along with it,” he reiterated.
“She will,” I said, “and what’s more she won’t blame you for any of it.”
“If it were anyone else…” said Gareth, looking at me from the corner of his eye.
“You don’t have any plans for all the aythar you’ve got locked up in her do you?” I said, referring to the forty plus Celiors worth of aythar that Moira Centyr was storing.
“No,” he admitted. “Frankly it scares the shit out of me, but I haven’t thought of a better place yet.”
“Then this will work out perfectly,” I said, staring at the spot of blood on the handkerchief I held.
Chapter 55
After we returned home I threw myself into my new project with an energy I hadn’t felt since I first began working on the World Road. That had been a project that would change the world and reshape the future of Lothion, if not the entire world. This one would be just as grand, and while possibly not as important it would likely be what history would remember me for.
No one gets excited talking about who built a road, even a magical one, but this, this would light a fire in the imagination of generations to come!
If I could figure out how to do the impossible. I knew what I wanted, but the enchantment to accomplish it didn’t exist. There were several that did parts of what I needed, but none that came remotely close to the entire thing. Worse, some of the functions were things that had never been done with an enchantment at all.
At first Penny was pleased to see me throw myself into my work, but as days ran into weeks and the weeks ran into a month she began to worry. I rarely showed myself outside of my workshop except to eat and sleep; and I did precious little of those. My only trips beyond Cameron in all that time were short jaunts to our house in Albamarl to raid the Illeniel library of books on runes and mathematics.
What really frustrated her was my refusal to discuss my plans. A year living as an undead monster hadn’t cured me of my flaws. I told no one my entire plan, not even Gareth.
My children however, refused to be completely shut out. They were almost as stubborn as their mother and far too clever for their own good. Eventually I let them join me for short periods, partly to satisfy their curiosity and partly so I could question my daughter about her special ability.
“How exactly do you mold the personality?” I asked again. Her previous answer had been too vague.
She gave me a look that told me I was too slow to properly understand, but she tried to explain again. “I don’t do anything in particular. I just imagine them, as a bard imagines a story, whole and complete. Their traits are just a part of that.”
“How long does it take?”
“The first ones, like little Grace, sprang from my dreams, while I was sleeping,” she told me. “That’s why she’s so smart.”
Again, she didn’t seem to be able to answer my question directly. ‘Grace’ was the name of her first and favorite animated toy, a cute teddy bear with a red bow. The two of them were almost inseparable, and the toy was uncannily sharp. Talking to it was much like talking to my daughter—except I felt silly talking to a stuffed animal.
“You’re saying she’s smart because she came from a dream?”
“Not exactly,” said Moira. “It’s because I took my time, and my conscious mind didn’t get in the way. Doing it while awake is harder, because I have to learn how to keep my waking thoughts from interfering with the process. At least that’s what my other mother told me.”
‘Other mother’ was the shorthand she used to refer to the other Moira. It helped us to avoid confusion, both with her name and with Penny. “So are you able to make one like her while awake now?”
“Yes,” she said, “but I can’t be sure how long it will take. Sometimes it’s quick and other times it takes hours. The simple ones are always fast, though.”
Eventually my questions grew too specific, and I began to share the larger details of what I intended with her, as well as with Matthew. I knew the idea would excite them, I only hoped they could keep quiet about it until it was finished. The last thing I wanted was for word to get out, especially when I wasn’t entirely sure I could succeed.
Once I had included them, Moira began working on her portion of my project in earnest and soon she was bringing new ‘toys’ to talk to me daily. In each case, we would discuss their strengths and weaknesses, along with their quirks. Most of them I rejected, but gradually she began to create more of the intensely complex and intelligent ones, like her original toy, Grace.
After several weeks, her room had become a veritable zoo of talking toys. Luckily she let most of the ones that were too flawed fade out, so while she kept creating new ones, our home was never quite overrun with them.
I suspected there was a limit to how many of them she could sustain at one time without me using the immortality enchantment on them, and of course that was something I would never do. That was how the Shining Gods had been created, and I wanted no part in recreating that mistake.
As it was, Celior was still loose somewhere in the world. He had been freed when
the shield around Castle Cameron had been shattered by Mal’goroth. The feedback had destroyed the God-Stone, and he had wasted no time escaping. I had the keys needed to bind him, but I had to locate him before I could do that.
Another big surprise that came to me while I worked was my son’s insight into enchanting. Not being a Centyr like his sister, he couldn’t help her with her ‘pet’ project, so he spent more time watching me struggle to figure out a method to make my potential new enchantment do all the things I required of it.
He had never studied the subject before, and while he would also have access to the knowledge of the loshti someday, he couldn’t reach it yet. Even so, he proved to be a natural when it came to understanding the mathematics that underlay the rune structures.
His eyes were always watching me, and though his questions often seemed to stray into areas that seemed off topic, they often led me to a far better knowledge of what I was trying to do than I had possessed previously.
If you want to learn something really well, teach it to someone else, I said to myself.
Matthew’s lack of preconceptions proved to be a valuable asset in sorting out how to do the impossible.
“Why do you want it to repeat anyway?” he asked me after I had explained what the portion of the enchantment I was working on was supposed to do.
“I have to have a way for this thing to restart itself at particular times, otherwise…” I let the words trail off. How do I explain to my son that eternity brings its own particular kind of suffering? “Let’s focus on the how,” I said instead.
“Can’t you link it to a timer?” he asked.
I sighed, if only it were that simple. “No, the stasis field will render that meaningless. It would just stop and never begin again.”
“You already have it linked to something else that’s external,” he observed. “That’s what this is, right?” He pointed to a different portion of the rune structure I had drawn out. I hadn’t told him what that part was for, but his observant eyes had picked it out anyway.
“That specifies the person who will control it,” I explained.
“Couldn’t you let them use a command, instead of having it restart itself?”
“They won’t want to reset it while they’re alive,” I told him.
“If the person dies won’t that create an open fault?” he asked.
He was referring to the fact that, because the enchantment was linked to a person, once they were gone it would create a break in the chain, invalidating the entire thing. It was a basic part of the nature of enchanting, but I hadn’t taught it to him yet. Once again, I was amazed at his quick insight. “No,” I replied slowly. “That would be a problem, but if you look here, you’ll see that when that happens, it shifts this part. That will close the circle again and activate this portion, which allows it to link to a new person.”
“Oh,” he said. “So can’t you have your repeat function tie into that? It sounds like it’s something you want to happen at about that same time anyway, right?”
“Well, you can’t do that because…,” I stopped for a moment, thinking, “…because it would work perfectly. Sonofabitch!”
He grinned at me.
“You’ve earned your supper today,” I told him.
“Does that mean you’ll let me see that part over there?” he asked.
The part ‘over there’ was covered by a heavy piece of parchment to hide it from casual observation. It was the essential part of what I thought of as the ‘god-enchantment’, the same one I had used to bind Moira Centyr. Eventually he would be able to remember it, since the information was stored in the loshti, like so many other things, but for now I didn’t want him to know something so potentially dangerous.
“I’m afraid not,” I answered, “but I have something else you can help me with.”
His eyes lit up. His enthusiasm was endearing, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many more years I would have before working with me was no longer something he would look forward to.
I took him aside and showed him the boxes I had been working on. So far I had completed only one, and I demonstrated its use to him.
“That’s neat!” he exclaimed. “What would you use it for, though?”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said waving my hands. “Do you think you can copy what I’ve done here?” I showed him the rune design I had sketched out on a long sheet of parchment.
“Sure,” he agreed immediately.
“Good,” I told him. “I need twenty-two more just like it then.”
“Twenty-two?!”
“Practice makes perfect.”
He sighed loudly, “Dad, they won’t work if they aren’t perfect.”
I laughed, “So you only have to get it perfect twenty-two times. The real question is, how many practice tries will it take you to get it right twenty-two times.”
His jaw clenched in what might have been determination in an older man. In my young son it was simply adorable. “We’ll just have to see won’t we?” he replied.
***
Gareth Gaelyn came to see me almost exactly a month after our conversation. I had thought he would visit with his new wife, but she was conspicuously absent.
Penny greeted him initially, and after a brief interrogation regarding his first month of married life, I was able to intercede and whisk him away to my workshop. That earned me a frown, since I had been pretty anti-social myself over the past month, and now I was monopolizing our guest.
“Does she know what you’re working on?” asked Gareth once we were alone.
I shrugged, “Not really. I’m sure she’s picked up some of the details from the children, since they’ve been helping me with parts of it, but I doubt she knows the heart of it.”
“Doubt? She either knows or she doesn’t,” stated Gareth.
I laughed, “I say ‘doubt’ because, while I assume she doesn’t, she nevertheless surprises me sometimes. It’s best not to underestimate her intuition.”
“Would she approve?”
“Probably?” I said uncertainly. “She wouldn’t be upset by it—I don’t think. One never knows with Penny when it comes to magic. Did you discuss my plan with your wife?”
“I know she would not approve,” Gareth said confidently. “You claim you can convince her, so I leave that matter to you. She visits here enough that you’ve surely had the opportunity already.”
“I’ll broach the topic when I’m ready for her part. Would you like to see what we’ve done thus far?”
The answer to that question was obvious, and we spent the next hour discussing the enchantment I had been working on. I also showed him the boxes that Matthew and I had been making.
“That’s clever,” he noted. “That should get around the time problem. I’m surprised I didn’t think of that myself after watching you use that enchantment not too long ago.”
“Well, this is a much safer, more traditional use,” I stated quickly.
The other archmage coughed, “Well, that much is plain to see. The real question is whether this new enchantment of yours will work properly. You still haven’t worked out all the wrinkles in it yet, have you?”
“That’s true,” I admitted, “but I feel close to the solution. A week or two more and I’m confident I’ll have it reasoned out. I have a few questions for you, though.”
“Ask away,” he replied.
“You told me you’d be able to make them living and breathing, but will they be able to grow? Can they reproduce? If my regression structure works, what will the initial state be?” I said, asking all my questions at once.
His face took on a pensive expression for a long minute before he answered, “Yes to the first, an egg to the last, and as far as reproduction goes—I am uncertain.”
“Because of the lack of a wellspring?” I suggested.
“Exactly,” agreed Gareth. “That question may apply to Moira and me as well.”
Since Moira Centyr was an artificial life, a mag
ical sentience housed in a living body, it was unclear whether she could have children. The necessary equipment was there, but since she didn’t possess a true wellspring of aythar, a ‘soul’, it was uncertain whether her union with Gareth could create children who would have them. Without one, any offspring would be stillborn.
“While I wish you the best of luck, I think I’d prefer it if these were unable to breed, to eliminate unanticipated possibilities,” I said honestly.
Gareth grunted, “I haven’t decided if I could handle children anyway. I’m a little old for that sort of chaos.” Gesturing at the empty boxes he added, “When do you want me to start?”
“We should have the last of them ready by next week. How long will it take you to do each one?”
“A full day for the first one maybe, after that it will be quicker, possibly as little as a few hours each,” he responded after a moment.
I nodded. “So you’ll need at least a week then. You should plan a long visit here with Moira,” I told him.
“That wouldn’t be wise.”
“You really are worried about her opinion aren’t you? Frankly, I’m surprised you’re willing to participate. When I first brought it up, I anticipated a long lecture before you would agree, but you gave only a token resistance to the idea.”
“I still think you’re mad. This will probably fail outright, and you’ll have a nasty mess to clean up. If it doesn’t, then things may just go wrong, which means an even bigger cleanup,” he said truthfully.
“Then why go along with me?”
“I can’t help it. This idea plays to my most coveted inner dream. If you succeed, it will change the world. The risks are worth it to be a part of that,” he explained with a hint of passion in his voice. Gareth rarely got excited, he was famously taciturn, but I could tell that this project had his full attention.