December

Issue 51

The preceptor of the Order of the Impassioned Blades pursed his thin lips, tipped the monocles back into place, and touched his chin. His eyes shot right through me. I turned back to the business at hand, wiping a little sweat away. I could feel his gaze ripping at my spine, flaying my skin, scrabbling around my stomach. I knew what Jaruman was thinking, heard it even, but it came anyway, in that parsed and honeyed inflection of the language that soothed you with its sweet poison as it wounded. That language of the storied South. Latin.

"Seven labors have I set you, Malo, seven and not five. You've two to go, and you are not Hercules. Do not wax prideful."

How many times will I hear the "don't stumble at the last step" speech?

"Very well, Father Jaruman, 'tis a pressulator," I began.

How I hate that stubborn Germanic tongue of mine! One day, I shall be Father Abbot, and travel to Rome. Then shall I bespeak the tongue of imperium. When the wars were over. When Rome stood forever. When, like Attila, Theodoric, and Totila, Widdu had been slain and drug by the feet along the Appian Way, to be lain by the emperor at the feet of the little father.

Brother Ingjald and brother Guthrum hoisted it onto the hewn-planked table. They knocked over the candle.

"Brother Ulla, open this scroll a moment while I take a better look," I continued.

Father Jaruman had silently left the room. I knew without seeing. How was that?

I glanced over the schemata quickly, and nodded to Ulla. He had tousled, yellow-straw hair and cornflower blue eyes. A farmer's son, he didn't belong here. The discipline kept him out of the meadows. It turned his unwary brain.

"That is that, all right. So, the problem is in the current it is sure, else the pressulator would not have survived the Inquisition with these runes or without the other ones. Or, also, would it have been bothered at all? I wonder—"

I reached down and unsnapped a small compressor on the right recess. It had no other purpose. And then it shocked me, quivering, and I wrenched it loose before it burned me.

"Clever!" I laughed. "Bethought of not twice was this one, not with the daemonry gone haywire and the Inquisitors pawing at it!"

I held it up high for them to wonder at. It was a packet of bundled wires and some jelly-like substance, and it flickered like a bruised firefly.

"Supercapacitator."

Ulla mumbled.

"No, no, it's harmless now. Looping effects. It's all theoretical, and I have known one but by hearing. Clever of Jaruman to throw this one in. Still, all in day. Replug it in, and—"

The machine hummed, lurched, and then vibrated softly, shining gently.

Guthrum gasped.

"Sons of thunder!"

"It's just the bleeding of the fifth force out of the loop that turns the trick. Another fundamental success of the prime equation," I explained.

"I'll go tell the preceptor," smiled Ingjald.

"Sure, sure. I'll do the seventh test right away," I rushed.

"Nothing for you after the six arts," remarked Ingjald.

"It's all in how you hold the lip," I laughed, nervously.

We all laughed, and Guthrum held his paunch, and he shook like an old splintered oak in a storm.

"Not your girth, Guthrum, your lip!" I laughed more.

"After a pressulator with a non-daemonic event, an animal with a symbiote, a child speaking a tongue, the two conjoined alloids, the riddle from the East, and a challenge from legend, stand I ready!" I shouted to my friends.

I was far from sure. But it felt good.

"What'll it be, sir?" said Ulla quietly, after we were done being merry.

I looked at him hard.

"Let's go see Jaruman," I said.