Black Mould - Thirty-Five - True Magic Awakening Fears and Possibilities

The mage was a stately man, and also very clearly a member of one of the delver crews. He wore a breastplate with a circlet atop his head, with metal cups over his ears and probably more armour above, but I couldn’t see that under the tophat he wore. He had a heavy-looking leather coat on too, with large lapels and a few pins decorating the front.

A knife hung by his side, but that didn’t seem to be part of his mage’s gear. Instead, he was pointing a long black wand at the protestors.

“Cease and desist, rabble-rousers,” he said. His voice carried across the entire ground, as though he was using a very clear megaphone.

“We should leave,” Eight-Three-Eleven said.

“Why? Who is he?” I asked.

“A magus,” she said.

I stared. “What’s a magus?” I asked.

“Trouble,” she said.

I think some of the protestors agreed with her. I saw a couple of them peel off the back and slip away from the group. The others in the courtyard had stopped to watch. I saw a few foremen shouting for them to get back to work, but even they kept glancing back, and I think their demands were more performative than anything.

Eight-Three-Eleven grabbed one side of my table. I wanted to protest; I hadn’t sold even a quarter of my stock yet.

Then some of the protestors started to scream and shout. They got a beat going, and soon enough they were chanting in something approaching harmony. “Justice for Eight-Five Gee! Justice for Eight-Five Gee!”

The magus was joined by others. I could only barely make out the bands across their arms. All blue, with the local equivalent of the letter A. The group formed up around the magus, most of them with hands on hilts, though no one was baring steel yet.

Then I saw something that had me pausing. A line from that same group formed up next to the rest of their pals. They all had the same uniform. Breastplates and britches, with black leather coats that stopped at the small of their ribs and helmets with a few plumes sticking out the top.

They also had guns.

I wasn’t a gun nut. I couldn’t identify a gun on sight as anything specific. These were clearly muskets of some fashion, though. Big, bulky things which the men clutched as if they weighed quite a bit.

“I said cease,” the magus barked. I winced at the sound. Magic or not, the man had lungs on him and the voice of an irate drill instructor.

I picked up my side of the table and helped Eight-Three-Eleven. We started towards one of the main roads out of the area, not hurrying, but not loitering around either.

Every Bully in the courtyard was jogging over to stand next to the delvers, and one of them, with a larger hat and a gilded uniform, ran up to the magus. They spoke, but whatever the magus had done to make his voice so clear didn’t carry over to the police officer’s.

“Very well,” he said. “As I said. You are ordered to disperse. Leniency will be brought to those who respect and obey. The same cannot be said for those who continue to interrupt honest work.”

A few more backed away from the protestors, but I think that whatever the protestors were here for resonated with some of the others in the gathering crowd. There were a few cheers and some yells from the many groups still keeping their distance.

Eight-Three-Eleven and I paused, both of us staring as the tension in the air grew thicker.

Then someone ran out of the crowd of protestors. A kid. Maybe twelve, thirteen years old.

His arm shifted back, then whipped forwards, and I just caught a blur zipping ahead of him. A rock?

The magus didn’t even flinch as the rock smacked against the helmet of the Bully next to him.

The row of men with guns lowered their rifles as one. The men snapped their fingers, and flames started to dance over their thumbs.

“Hold!” the magus said. “I won’t have the misguided die under my watch.”

The Bully pointed to the protestors, face apoplectic. I could make out some of what he said, it was so loud. “—officer of the law!”

The magus nodded, then he stepped forwards. For such a big and bulky man—though some of that had to be his coat making him look so much grander—he moved with surprising grace. His wand flicked out before him. It twisted and twirled and the protestors started to back away in a panic. “Mens Dolores Morsus!”

Pale white wisps of light zipped out of the magus’ wand tip and plunged into the heads of each and every protestor.

I gasped as five dozen voices raised as one. Every protestor screamed as if their lungs were on fire. Some fell, others clutched at their heads. A few started to twist and wriggle on the spot as if caught in the throes of a seizure.

The spell snapped, and the magus retreated back a step. Those wielding rifles raised them at a barked command from their superior.

“Come on,” Eight-Three-Eleven said. “We should keep going. We can come back another day, alright?”

“Yeah, okay,” I agreed.

The screams ceased, but I could still hear them.

We retreated away from the dungeon and its surroundings, going a good ways down the street before we stopped to restock and reorganise my things. We weren’t the only ones leaving the area; the traffic was heavy enough that when a Bullymobile came rumbling down the road pulled by a pair of stallions, they had to crack a whip and spin a siren to get the traffic to move.

“What happened back there?” I asked.

“Nothing good,” Eight-Three-Eleven said.

“I saw that. I mean the protest, why? What started that?”

I jumped when someone who wasn’t Eight-Three-Eleven replied. An older fellow, who was stuffing a pipe as he walked, spoke instead. “Bad news, kid. Bad news. Team 85 got raked over the coals down on level six. Deep and dangerous. Lost a few good men and more besides. But they didn’t lose enough to get danger pay. Then the company shorted them for not harvesting enough. Insult on insult gets the blood boiling, doesn’t it? Heh!” he kept on going, not staying long enough for me to ask any questions.

“Maybe we should come back in a week or two?” Eight-Three-Eleven offered. “When things have settled down?”

I nodded along. “Yeah, I guess that sounds like a good idea.”

We packed everything up. The table was a lot easier to handle once its legs were folded up and everything was packed away in a satchel. I could carry it all on my own if I distributed the weight right, but it was hard to go far that way, and this wasn’t a trip from the farm to the market. The dungeon was a lot further off.

“That magic,” I said. “Uh… Mens Dolores Morsus… what’s that mean?”

Eight-Three-Eleven scowled. “Don’t repeat magical words. That magus is going to get an earful when people learn that he spoke an incantation with some sort of volume-amplification spell active.”

“Are the words dangerous?” I asked as I memorised them very carefully. I tried to recall the exact intonation and timing the man had used.

“The words can be, but without the right motions, they’re just words. Magic takes years to learn. Decades, even. If you get the right skills it becomes easier, I think, but it still takes a lot of effort and study.”

“So otherwise, the words are safe?” I asked.

“No. The words are copyrighted. They’re owned by whichever school created them. I don’t know exactly how it all works, but you need to pay for a license to speak the words. Their alarms won’t trigger on you just saying them, not unless you will any magic into it, but… don’t tempt it?”

“Oh, okay,” I said.

That sounded like it was flirting with trouble.

I immediately started planning on ways to get around that. How did that alarm work? Was it a sort of detection thing? Did it pinpoint a location, or was it like a… magic radar? Was it even more complex than that? It was magic, after all.

What could I do to prevent the alarm from catching me? Lead walls were my first thought. If they could block most radiation, then maybe… or a faraday cage? Electricity was a thing here, though maybe not quite as widespread as back on Earth. I just had to glance up to see the lazy tangle of wires strung on poles to verify that.

“Let’s just get home,” I said. Then I reached into my pocket and drew out the coin that I’d gotten earlier. “By the way, what’s this worth?”

Eight-Three-Eleven stared, then she started to laugh. “You must be blessed by one of the better gods, I swear. That’s a silver-pounder. It’s worth ten pounds.”

One pound was… about 240 pence. I sold my magical skewers at 10 pence each. So 24 skewers to the pound. This was the equivalent of selling 240 skewers?

I stuffed the coin away in a hurry. Maybe the day was profitable after all!

***