gone_byebye | Entries tagged with stone angels

Ray only had the crudest and most basic of maps in his pack when he left Sthiss Tor, largely because he'd expected the Nyissans to get him out of the city and turn him over to the first Tolnedrans or Alorns they saw. He had a basic lodestone, at least, so even in the jungles he'd been able to find his way north. The problem had been that north didn't always work out the way he'd hoped, what with the trees being too big and the plants being too thick and the occasional stream or sinkhole or OH MY GOD IT'S A LION GET IN THE TREE incident. He'd been forced to alter course more times than he really liked, with the end result being a pronounced drift to the northeast. When the jungles finally gave way (and none too soon- his supply of anti-toxins, denaturers, and alchemical chelators had run out the day before), he found himself looking over a pleasant rolling green country, bounded in the far distance by mountains. Ahead there lay a river, although it looked as if he ought to be able to ford it.

If he remembered right, the Vale was bounded on three sides by mountains. He could discount the eastern ones, but to get there from here he was going to have to come up through the mountains to the south. That meant either passing through Tolnedra proper, or passing through Maragor. If he followed the river west, he could probably come to the vicinity of Tol Borune or Tol Rane or something- but he'd have to pass through the Wood of the Dryads to get there.

Maragor was full of ghosts dedicated to the proposition of driving would-be gold hunters mad. The Wood of the Dryads was full of attractive short women with homicidal impulses and short attention spans. Tol Borune would at least be civilization as he knew it, but it would be Tolnedran civilization, which was nearly as involuted in its politics as Salmissra's palace. Maragor, well- ghosts. Lots of ghosts. Either way he was going to have to go into the mountains sooner or later, and the Tolnedrans didn't have roads into the Vale, so either way it would all be on foot by whatever resources he could muster.

Ray adjusted the straps of the far-too-heavy pack and looked downstream, then upstream.

If he wound up in Tol Borune or the Wood he might screw up Ce'Nedra's ancestry. The Prophecy was still active here, and he really didn't want to upset the Destiny of the Universe. Maragor, on the other hand, was essentially the biggest DMZ in the world, and chock full of spirits with no reason to like him.

On the other hand, they didn't have any reason to dislike him, since he wasn't interested in gold. And they probably had better manners than Slimer, all things considered.

It's just like Central Park, he told himself as he made his way down to look for a spot where he could ford the river. The size of a country- but it's still basically Central Park. I can deal with that.

Royal Palace of Queen Salmissra
Sthiss Tor, Nyissa
Year 5189 of the Fourth Age

Dear Romana,

Apparently I’m about to find out whether I’m really not aging any more or it was just Senji’s alchemical weirdness. I’m kind of hoping it’s the former, because I seriously don’t want to spend enough time in Nyissa to start going grey. It’s hot and humid and buggy and there are leeches the size of very obscene things in the river- oh, God, and speaking of obscene, I have to find out if there are rubber trees growing in the jungle around here somewhere, because it looks like the only way I’m going to get the queen to let me go is to ruthlessly abuse my knowledge of small engine technology. . .

Year 5190

Saess the eunuch was not normally the sort of person to check up on the targets of his attempted poisonings until someone else had already spoken of them in the past tense, but the alchemist from Mallorea was proving annoyingly persistent. After four attempts at doping his food with all manner of concoctions (none of which seemed to do more to him than produce an intense odor of cinnamon, of all things), he’d gone straight to the top of his list and left his snake in the man’s rooms. Given the reptile’s propensity for slithering off after mice at inopportune moments, Saess felt it important that he at least make a show of concern for her welfare. The man’s rooms were near at hand; he leaned over to hear what were bound to be cries of distress-

“Eeeee! Whoosa cutest widduw neurotoxic hyper-venomous elapid anybody’s ever seen in this palace, hmm? Is it you? Is it you? Yes it is. . .”

Saess kept on walking. He was going to need the good drugs after this.

Year 5191

“Chersus,” said Ray patiently to the cheerfully smiling, eminently helpful servant, “I asked you to go down to the harbor and pick up my delivery for me.”

“I did,” Chersus said, swaying a little on the balls of his feet.

“Yes. You did. I have to give you that. This is very definitely a delivery,” said Ray. “But the thing is, I was expecting several packets of dye, half a pound of chicle, and a bottle of that acid that Didas recommended for etching stone. Unless I’m very much mistaken, and I have no reason to believe that I am, this box contains two rather interestingly shaped green sticks and a stunned mouse.”

“Oops,” said Chersus.

Year 5192

Dear Romana,

I WANT TO GO HOME NOW. I could’ve been out of here in less than two months if this were ANY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD OTHER THAN NYISSA, and that’s INCLUDING Cthol Murgos, the land whose clergy would make the Taliban go ‘oo, what nasty people’. Heck, that includes Mishrak ac Thull, Land of Stupid. It’s absolutely impossible to get anything detailed or specific delivered on time or located without trouble. When your best sources of conversation are the Queen’s pet snakes- who’re really pretty smart creatures, considering that their mistress seldom takes the time to actually talk with them except when she’s in between rounds with her latest boy toy- you know you’re not in a good position. On the bright side, I’ve been making more accidental discoveries and progress in the field of biochemistry than I ever would’ve thought possible, given the technological and environmental conditions here. The herbal medicine’s astonishing, and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this many different kinds of fungus, all of which are active on the human body in one way or another. Remember how I always said that biology wasn’t my strong suit because it was too sticky? Well, I’m learning. . .

Year 5193

There were fourteen snakes of various colors and sizes curled up on Ray’s bed when he arrived at his quarters that night. He blinked, counting them over twice to be certain, and finally turned to the one on the end. Kneth, he said, I’ve been keeping watch on an alembic for the past twenty-three hours straight. This may not be the best time for this.

Please? begged the snake, a whip-slender black species with two white rings around its neck just behind the head. I promise we’ll go away once you’re done. We all wanted to hear, and you tell the best stories. . .

Oh, all right. Ray pulled up a stool, and the snakes, almost as one, drew themselves up to varying attentive postures to listen. When the Gods were making the world, they all had ideas, and they all wanted to put all of their ideas into the world they were making. But they couldn’t do that, because there wouldn’t have been room for them all. Lord Issa especially had more ideas than there was room for, so when nobody was looking, he went and found himself another place to work.

One of the bigger snakes nudged its nearest companion appreciatively.

He found somewhere very far away, where none of his brothers were, and he said, “I think I’ll work here. And I think I’ll put all my favorite creatures in one place, some of them in the ground, some of them in the trees, and some of them in the water. There won’t be anywhere that won’t have some of my extra ideas in it. Some of them will be snakes, and some of them will be other creatures, but they’ll all have all kinds of venom just like my serpent creations. And the humans will call this place ‘Australia’. . .”

Year 5194

“Saess,” said Ray, tapping the newly-minted Chief Eunuch on the shoulder, “I need to talk to you.”

Saess grimaced. He’d all but given up on poisonings by now and had moved on to trying to get rid of the man by means of ugly people with knives. “If this is about last month, Stantz-“

“It’s not.” Ray shook his head rapidly. “It totally isn’t. I know how it goes around here and frankly, I almost have to admire your persistence.”

“What is it, then? I have business to attend to.”

“I want you to help me,” said Ray bluntly. “You’re the Chief Eunuch. You can do nearly anything in this country, which is more than I can say for myself.”

Saess stared at the man, momentarily struck speechless by his gall.

Ray drew a deep breath. “More specifically, I want you to help me finish the project I have on the bench in my lab, because I’ve finally managed to get the basic design elements to work- and as soon as I can get my hands on the last three components necessary to run the thing, I can present it to the Queen and get out of your country. You’ll never see me again, you’ll never hear from me again- I’ll leave Nyissa forever and you can write off my presence here for the last seven years as a very bad dream. Call the thing a holy artifact of Issa once I’m gone, if you want. Just help me finish it, and I’ll never bother you or your people again.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you,” the eunuch said slowly. Behind the light fog of his usual daily mood evener, his thoughts were running especially rapid.

“As serious as the grave, Saess. I don’t want to be here and you don’t want me to be here. The thing in the lab is your ticket to getting rid of me. If you can make it possible for me to finish it-“

“If it gets you out of here and pleases Her Majesty enough to let me get some real work done, it’ll be worth it,” said Saess. “What do you need from me?”

Year 5195

The boat was small but serviceable, designed for river travel, and Ray was only too happy to head belowdecks and verify that all of his notes from Melcene and the Palace alike were in good condition. He’d waterproofed and moldproofed everything within a few days of his arrival at the Palace. It was all that a man could do in the face of a mess like that. His original clothes, a Melcene tailor’s copy of his Jedi outfit, were at the top of his pack. He changed into them gratefully- the iridescent robes he’d worn for six years to avoid sticking out too much in Salmissra’s palace were all right, but he never really felt comfortable in them. It could’ve been worse, he supposed. At least they didn’t try to make him wear a loincloth.

He clambered into the hammock and promptly fell asleep. It wasn’t until many hours later that he awoke and discovered Saess had taken out one more form of insurance that the foreigner would never bother him again- namely, bribing the boat’s captain to go up the River of the Serpent and drop the foreigner and all his things off on the northern bank.

Well, it could have been worse, Ray thought as he watched the boat recede in the distance. He could’ve been thrown in the river for the leeches, or he could’ve been put ashore with nothing at all. At least he still had all fourteen varieties of insect repellent that he’d invented during his time in the Palace. At least he had a general knowledge of the geography from here, thanks to the moldy documents he’d found in the royal astrologers’ archives. And at least he had something just a bit better than the common run of machete.

There was a snap-hiss, and the green of a lightsaber blade lit up the Nyissan night.

Splut.

It was a woefully inadequate word for the noise the oozy, muddy, tenaciously sticky substance of the riverbank made as an overloaded parapsychologist-turned-alchemist suddenly smacked into it, but splut would have to serve. There wasn’t a lot of call for fancy vocabulary in this part of the swamp.

Ray pushed himself up with two shaking arms, blinking the mud out of his eyes as hard as he could. A moment later he’d shucked off his backpack, but only so that he could clamber out of the river’s way and start wiping the mud away with both hands. “Okay,” he said to himself, more out of a desire to confirm that his voice still worked than anything else, “this isn’t Milliways. And it sure isn’t Riva.” He glanced up at the dangling vines on the trees. “I suppose Dagobah would be too much to ask for. . . ow!”

Mosquitoes, it seemed, didn’t much care about mud. Ray swatted the first one away.

And the second.

And the third.

And then he had to stop swatting, because he’d just spotted what looked like a leech trying to make its way up the boot he’d bought a few years ago- oop, no, two leeches-

In the trees overhead, something screeched. A flurry of wings went up, and the drone of some insect he’d never heard before filled the air.

And the mosquitoes came back.

Nature at its finest.

Yes, splut! was an inadequate word. Perhaps “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGH!”would be more suitable. At least Ray seemed to think so. He certainly repeated it enough.

Fortunately, so did someone else; a few minutes after Ray’s last scream of indignant, nature-hates-me-and-frankly-the-feeling-is-mutual pure rage died away, a flat-bottomed boat crept its way down the river. “Who’s there?” called a recognizably human voice. “Identify yourself.”

“I’m- wait, what?” said Ray, turning back towards the river. Sure enough, there it was: a small, flat-bottomed boat, its sides painted with serpents in colors Ray couldn’t even put a name to, and several unenthusiastic-looking soldiers in it.

The one at the prow of the boat pointed a spear in Ray’s general direction. “You. The screamer. Identify yourself, in the name of Queen Salmissra. And don’t try anything funny. I’ve had quite enough berry-eating would-be swimmers for one day.”

Ray put his hands on top of his head and whimpered.

“All right,” Ray said, locking up and sealing the last box. “I think that’s it.”

Senji shook his head. “I still think this is a mistake,” he warned. “I haven’t translocated anybody in centuries. And certainly not to somewhere I”ve never seen, on another continent entirely.”

“I’m willing to take that chance,” Ray said. “The tavern’s extremely congenial to people using magic. Sorcery ought to be even simpler. You concentrate on that description I gave you, I concentrate on my memory of the place while I hold onto the napkin that was in my pocket when I left, and between the two of us we ought to be able to get one fully functional act of sorcery out of it.” True, Ray had no sorcerous ability whatsoever- aside from the apparent ability to get forty years older and neither die nor wrinkle nor go grey- and true, it was at the end of the universe rather than Riva, but this was a point-to-point teleportation, not one that relied on passing through the standard three dimensions. Hopefully Senji’s Will and Ray’s philotic connections would be enough to do the trick.

The backpack was killing him. He’d winnowed down forty years of alchemical, mathematical, and esoteric notes to only the most vital and unusual ones, plus everything he’d ever written to Romana, and tamped it all down with a box of some of the more interesting things he’d been able to synthesize in the alchemical labs. The total mess weighed twice as much as a proton pack, but what could you do? With any luck it’d be off his back in a few seconds.

He shook his head and tried not to think any more conditional sentences. “Okay,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”

“I have no idea what that means,” Senji complained- but he closed his eyes and concentrated. Ray could almost feel the drawing-in of the little alchemist’s will. He could definitely hear him draw breath to speak-

There was a knock at the door. “WHAT?” Senji bellowed.

And Ray disappeared.

University of Melcene
College of Applied Alchemy
Year 5149 of the Fourth Age

“Not bad,” said Senji as the smoke cleared. “Not bad at all. Exactly what did you add to the mixture that time? By all rights, that should’ve fizzled out.”

As the students in the room directly above Senji’s lab began to cautiously gather around the newly burned hole in their floor, poking at the heat-fused edges, Ray said, “Iron sulfide, I think. Nicely pyrophoric, isn’t it?”

“I’ll say. All right, you’re hired.”

“Thank you.”

Year 5152

Dear Romana,

Senji’s put the lead-to-gold experiments aside. He’s been swearing up and down that he’s never going to touch that line of inquiry again as long as he lives, but I get the feeling he’ll be back to working on it inside of six weeks. For now we’re working on an improved method of reagent purification for general use throughout the labs. Honestly, I don’t know what his suppliers are thinking. This place needs a Pure Food, Drug, and Insecticide Act if ever anywhere did- oh! Speaking of insecticides, I’ve worked out how to synthesize caffeine from tea leaves. On paper, anyway. Getting some of this stuff together’s going to take a while. . .

Year 5155

“Ray, what did we agree about you and ale?”

“That if I intended to drink enough of it at the winter solstice celebrations to get drunk, I should lock up all the writing implements and stay away from anything that could be construed as scaffolding.”

“Thank you. Now what in Torak’s name have you written all over my ceiling?”

Year 5158

“Just for the record,” said Ray as he crouched down to help Senji extract himself from the wreckage, “I did tell you not to expose that stuff to air or water. Next time, keep it submerged in mineral oil.”

“WHAT?”

“. . . never mind.”

Year 5160

Dear Romana,

Once again, despite everything, the road to the West is no more open than it was when I got here. It’s kind of depressing. You’ve got this huge empire full of fascinating people from all kinds of backgrounds and cultures, and they just happen to be ethnically and religiously tied to a bunch of morons who would either cut my throat or attempt to co-opt me for a spy if they had even the slightest inkling that I was trying to leave their territory to get to the lands of people who’d be able to help me. I’m still working on figuring out how to get out of here, around the southern side of the continent, across the Sea of the East, through Murgo waters, etc., since the alternative is crossing the continent by horse or on foot, then crossing the sea of the East and going through Nadrak territory. Land passage isn’t just slow, it’s chock full of Grolims, and as far as Grolims are concerned I’m sort of carrying this huge ‘come and get it, big tasty bait’ sign. I’d kind of like to get back to you in, you know, one piece.

In the meantime I’m working through the maths behind the philotic portal that Egon and I built in the animated continuum. Who knows? I might be able to build something to get me home without ever having to bother getting a ship. Here’s what I’ve got so far. . .

Year 5162

Mid-experiment, Senji looked up and sniffed. “I didn’t think they had the new kitchens baking anything yet,” he said. “Was that you?”

“Um. . . yeah. Sorry.”

“You should be. Now I’m all hungry.”

Year 5165

Dear Romana,

Still no luck with the boats, the Grolims, the empire, or the philotic portal. Garion can’t be born soon enough for my liking, frankly. On the other hand, I have got some new equations to show you- here, have a look. They’re an expansion of my work on the magnetically-based distortion of six-dimensional local spacetime to produce the dimensionally displaced space inside my boxes. The implications of some of the later equations are fascinating. . .

Year 5171
“Ray, if you’re going to spend that much time practicing sword work with the instructors from the athletics facility, you’d better learn to bleed with a little more good grace. Now stop squirming. It’s not my fault this stuff stings.”

Year 5178

“Fascinating,” said Viscount Kadian, running the oddly colored cloth through his hands for the fourth or fifth time. “And you said your assistant developed this dye?”

“While he was trying to come up with a preventative for some of the nastier Gandaharian jungle fevers,” Senji answered. “So, do you think there’s a market for it?”

“Possibly. Possibly.”

Year 5180

Dear Romana:

There was a girl at the Center for the Study of Witchcraft today who looked exactly like you from behind. I swear, for a second I couldn’t even move, I was just that stunned to see you again. She turned around a second later and didn’t look like you at all any more, but. . .

Year 5183

“Oh, him,” said Senji, peering at the half-scorched notebook Ray had found buried in the back of one of the closets on the fifth floor. “I remember him. He burned all his notes and went into a monastery.”

“Where I come from, that kind of thing usually means someone’s made a fundamentally disturbing discovery about the nature of reality and man’s place therein.”

“Nothing as fancy as that.” Senji wrinkled his nose. “He just lost it because he turned glass into steel.”

“. . . he what?”

“Oh, don’t you start.”

“Actually, I think I might.”

Year 5185

Dear Romana,

I showed some of the equations from yesterday’s letter to a scholar in the College of Comparative Theology today. He got this incredible twitch under his right eye and had to go lie down for a while. Now if I could just figure out how to force Grolims to read them. . .

Year 5188

“Well, he seems very proud of himself,” said Senji as the Darshivan mathematician made his way back towards the rest of the University campus.

“He should be. That proof was a very big accomplishment,” Ray answered.

“You came to the same conclusions on your own in that first notebook of yours, didn’t you?”

“Yep.”

“And proved the conclusions to be completely fallacious two months later?”

“Yep.”

“Should we tell him?”

“What do you think?”

“He’s a pompous ass,” the alchemist said, after pretending to think for nearly half a minute. “But I think we should tell him.”

“Oh?”

“On an unsigned slip of paper shoved under his door at midnight.”

“They’ll be able to hear the screams clear in the harbor,” Ray said.

Senji grinned. “That’s the general plan.”

Year 5189

Dear Romana-

“Ray,” came Senji’s voice from the next room, “the couch just gave way.”

“Oop.” Ray put down his pen and hurried into the next room. Senji was staring mournfully at the wreckage of said couch, his thumbs hooked into his belt. “Oh. Oh man. I’m sorry.”

“What for? You didn’t do it,” said Senji. “And you’re the one who sleeps on it anyway.”

“I know, but I’ve been putting strain on it more than you have. I’ve been using it all this time for-“ Ray stopped, frowning. “Say, how long have I been using it?”

Senji pulled at what was left of his beard, thinking. “About. . . huh. Let me check my notes.” He stumped into the part of the lab where they kept their books and papers and started rummaging. Ray followed. “Huh. Looks like a good forty years now.”

“Okay, that makes- wait, what?”

“Forty years,” Senji repeated. “That couch had a good long run.” He cocked an eye at Ray as he set the book aside. “You’re looking awfully pale all of a sudden.”

“Forty years?” Ray managed. “I should be dead!”

“So should I,” said Senji. “You only just realized this now?”

“I didn’t- I wasn’t-“ Ray stammered helplessly, looking around for a chair. “You’d think I’d’ve noticed!”

Senji snorted. “Ray, I’ve been working with you all this time. You wouldn’t notice if all seven Gods walked into the lab and started questioning your methodology, except to tell them to keep their hands out of that lodestone collection you’ve got going.”

Ray ran one hand over his face, then peered closely at it. It was stained in places from the stuff he’d been working with in the lab, and there were callouses from the daily sword work he did with the more athletic members of the faculty (no sense getting out of practice, and it wasn’t like he had the training drone with him, after all). . . but it wasn’t spotted, or faded, or wrinkled. It wasn’t the hand of a seventy-four-year-old man.

Except where it TOTALLY WAS, because it was HIS hand and he’d just spent FORTY YEARS here.

“Congratulations,” Senji said. “You found out the easy way. I nearly got defenestrated when people realized I’d forgotten to die.”

“Oy.”

The mud of the River of the Serpent is persistent, nasty, sticky stuff that gets into places Ray doesn't want to talk about. He's managed to rid himself of the stuff, but his clothes are going to smell like the river for a while. Thank heaven his papers and boxes made it out of the muck unharmed.

Now if he can just survive Sthiss Tor...

Senji’s office was on the third floor, a fact that surprised Ray a little, given the man’s clubfoot. The alchemist didn’t seem to mind, though, spending more time pointing out dents in the walls and particularly bright or dim students as they made their way up the stairs. Once they reached his office, Senji indicated a dark, patchy leather chair that wouldn’t’ve been out of place at the Firehouse. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said. “You do realize I’m going to have to question you first.”

“Senji, if the stuff you’ve got makes my head stop throbbing, I’d answer questioning by the ghost of Torak himself to get it,” said Ray as he sat down.

“Torak’s a myth,” said the alchemist, his voice a little muffled as he dug through an array of pots and bottles on a nearby table. “Something the Angaraks dreamed up to keep the rest of Mallorea in line. Where are you from, anyway?”

Ray blinked a few times at that, but decided it wasn’t worth it to argue just yet. “I don’t know that you’d believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.” Senji turned around with a tankard in one hand and a scoop of grayish powder in the other. “That is, unless you like having your head feel like the day after three nights of drinking.”

“Ugh. No, thank you,” Ray said. His thoughts were racing, insofar as they could race in between random interjections of ow! from the back of his skull. It probably wasn’t the best idea in the world to start talking about other worlds just yet, was it? Maybe later, but right now- “Would you believe Riva? I’ve been working at the Citadel, trying to come up with something better than charcoal and wood in the way of fuel.”

One of Senji’s eyebrows rose. “Riva?” he said skeptically. “And you’re here?”

“I don’t know how it happened, Senji, and that’s the truth,” Ray said. “I was demonstrating my defensive sword forms in front of one of the local masters, and I slipped and fell on my ass, and I hit my head on the ground. When I opened my eyes, I was here.”

Senji’s eyes narrowed at that. As he dumped the powder into the tankard he said, “Sorceror, huh?”

“Garion says I am.” Ray winced. “Not that I can actually use the Will and the Word, but he seems to think my ability to get things done when I’m up to my eyeballs in scientific study counts.”

“Hmph.” Senji stumped over to a cask in a corner of the office. “Well, I’ve heard stranger- I’ve done stranger. On the other hand, you’re a little bit short in the sword department for a man who was supposedly practicing with one when you got here. Did you leave it on the other side of the world?”

“No, it’s right here.” Ray held up the lightsaber handle. He only hesitated a moment before thumbing the switch. The look on the alchemist’s face at the snap-hiss and the green light filling that part of the room was gratifying. “I’ve just rigged it up so that the blade vanishes if I let go or drop it. I’d rather not cut off my own legs.”

“That alone gives you more good sense than ninety per cent of my students,” Senji muttered. “How do you do that? Make that-“ He waved a hand at the glowing blade. “Make that happen, I mean?”

“Can I have the headache stuff first?”

“Oh- all right.” Senji tapped off some of the water in the cask and mixed it into the powder, then handed the tankard over. “You know, I’ve heard about Alorns before. From the way the Angaraks talk, you’d think you all had less brains than a Murgo and an unquenchable thirst for blood.”

“Some of us have better things to do with our time.” Ray drained the tankard in two gulps. “Oh, that’s much better. Wow.”

“You’re welcome,” said Senji. “Now, about that sword of yours-“

“Chemical reaction to produce a great deal of energy that’s channeled into a number of different types of metal and crystals,” Ray said. “The crystals focus the light tightly enough to produce the blade effect. It can cut through nearly anything except certain types of ore. This is the first one I managed to make that didn’t explode when I activated it.”

Senji laughed, a coarse but appreciative sound. “You’ll have to show me how that works sometime.”

“Sorry. I don’t have the notes on me.”

“Really? Ah, well.” Senji shook his head. “That’s a shame. When you get back to Riva, I’d almost ask for you to send me a copy- but I don’t think Kondat would be too pleased to see anything in the post from an Alorn kingdom.”

“Kondat?” Ray asked, sitting up a little straighter (and switching the saber off).

“Emperor Kondat. I don’t expect you keep track of these things in Riva.”

Ray blinked. “I thought the emperor’s name was Zakath.”

Senji looked thoughtful. “I don’t remember hearing that name,” he said, “but I don’t usually pay that much attention to politics. Kondat was crowned three years ago. The Emperor before him might’ve been named Zakath, for all I know.”

Somehow, that was not the most reassuring thing in the world to hear. Ray reached up to feel at the spot on the back of his head again. “Senji?” he asked, a suspicion starting to gnaw at him. “What year was Kondat crowned?”

“5146. Why?”

Because Garion was born in 5355, Ray thought. Aloud he only said, “Sounds like my information’s pretty darn out of date, then.”

“Probably,” Senji said, finally pulling up a chair for himself. “If I can’t keep up with who’s on the throne after a few centuries living in this country, I can’t imagine anybody in Riva bothering to try.”

“Centuries?” said Ray, shifting a little in his seat. The burrito he’d had for lunch was starting to make its presence felt. “Alchemical longevity potions, or-“

“Not that I know of,” said Senji. “Although if you know how to make anything like that, it’d probably get you a lot of financing while you’re here. Maybe even enough to bribe your way back to the West.”

“I’ve never made a longevity potion, but I can do a lot of other things with the right chemicals,” Ray said. “Do you need an assistant?”

Senji looked Ray over, tapping one finger thoughtfully against his chin. Then he shrugged. “Why not?” he said. “I’ll have to see how you do in the lab, of course. If you blow yourself to pieces, it’s your own fault, you understand.”

“Of course,” Ray said. “I’ll do my best not to explode anything vital.”

“Good. I don’t think the Alorns would take it well if I sent you back there in a box.”

“No, probably not,” Ray agreed. “All right, then. I’ll show you what I can do. If it meets with your approval, I’d like to work here until I can come up with a plan and enough money to get me as far as Algaria. I can get the rest of the way on my own.”

Senji nodded. “It’s a deal,” he said, and held out a hand.

Ray grinned, and shook it. “Thank you,” he said. “You won’t regret it.”

“We’ll see,” said Senji, and then frowned. Sniffing the air, he said, “What’s that smell?”

“Uh. . .”

“. . . is that cinnamon?”

Sometimes the fact that the other Jedi (other than Atton Rand) kept mostly to themselves rubbed Ray a little bit the wrong way, but this wasn’t one of those times. Having your feet go out from under you during a training drone exercise, so that your tuchus hits the ground hard and the back of your head hits the ground even harder? Not a good impression to make on your erstwhile colleagues. Ray didn’t trust himself to sit up just yet. He’d seen stars. That was never good. He wasn’t even sure he trusted himself to open his eyes. “Okay,” he muttered, reaching up to feel for blood or fractures. “I think I need to work on my footwork. Remind me not to use that pattern again.”

“All right,” a stranger’s voice said amiably enough. Ray opened his eyes-

That was not the Milliways sky. For one thing, there were no clouds in it. For another, the temperature was far too warm, reminiscent of early summer. And the noises he was hearing were those of a park and distant people, not the territory behind the Bar.

“I’m a reasonable man,” Ray said after several moments’ silence, “so I know I’m not in Oz. I’m too old to get there without an invitation, for one thing. I think I’d like to know where I am, though. This isn’t Milliways, is it?”

“Never heard of Milliways,” said the same stranger’s voice, “but if those clothes of yours’re anything to go by, you’re a long way from Dal Zerba, friend.”

Ray rolled his head sideways as far as he dared. The speaker was a man of largely Asiatic features, a little paler-skinned than you might expect in someone Korean or Han Chinese. The texture of his hair was wavier than anything Ray usually saw with that set of facial features, which suggested a possibility of some Ainu in him. At least, it did until Ray saw what he was wearing: robes cut in a fashion that wouldn’t be far out of place in European courts of law a few centuries ago.

Huh boy.

“Dal Zerba,” Ray repeated carefully.

“Last place I saw anybody wearing robes like that,” the man said, “was down at the Exchange, and he was here from Dal Zerba.”

Ray was almost sure he ought to know that name, or that accent, but he couldn’t quite pin it down. Carefully, he tried to sit up-

“Ho there, friend, that can’t end well,” said the man, moving forward to ease Ray’s sudden bobbling. “Looks like you’ve got a real beauty of a lump there. Just how hard did you hit your head, anyway?”

“Harder than you can possibly imagine,” Ray muttered. He didn’t think hard enough to knock myself out of the end of the Universe would go over well.

“I can imagine a fair amount,” the man returned. “The College of Applied Alchemy’s across the way from my office. Not a day goes by that somebody doesn’t get thrown into the wall by an explosion.”

Alchemy? College? Well, that gave an idea of the local technological and scientific level , at least. “Sorry,” Ray said, a little louder. “I blew myself up this morning. This is something else.”

“Oh,” said the man. “Well, then, you ought to get yourself back to the College. Someone there should have something for that head of yours.”

“Right,” Ray said. “Can you point me in the direction of the College, please?”

“Over there,” said the man, waving one hand towards a cluster of buildings. “Follow the smell of chemicals. You can’t miss it.”

Before Ray could ask him to be a little more specific, the man gathered up his robes and went on his way. Ray blinked a few times, rubbed his head once more, and silently thanked the Force that he’d had enough sense to attach his ‘saber to his wrist with a long braided lanyard- and installed a dead-man’s switch in it for occasions like this. His head was throbbing enough. He didn’t really need a freshly cauterized thigh slice to go with it.

Wincing, he pushed himself to his feet and set out for the College of Applied Alchemy.

‘The smell of chemicals’ didn’t even begin to cover it. Whatever they were working on in there reeked to high heaven- and this was coming from a man who regularly had jobs in industrial New Jersey. He might not have minded quite so much if the people he asked for more specific directions didn’t all look his clothing over first with a vague air of amusement. Wherever Dal Zerba was, it was starting to sound like a serious hick town. By the time Ray reached the College proper, his head wasn’t just throbbing, it was starting to tighten up with a major tension headache as well.

That was probably why he almost ran into the little bearded fellow in a somewhat singed outfit- that, and the man was moving oddly, which Ray didn’t quite take into account. “Hey! Watch where you’re going,” said the man.

“Oop- I’m sorry, sir, I-“ Ray winced and touched the back of his head again. “I’m looking for someone to help me with a head injury.”

“Hmph. Well, you’ve come to the right place. I wouldn’t trust the medical faculty with the well-being of a chicken.” The man glanced at Ray’s clothes. “You know-“

“I am aware,” said Ray grimly, “that I’m a long way from Dal Zerba. Six different people have informed me of this fact today so far.”

“I was going to say that I’ve got a brew upstairs that usually takes the swelling down on my own impact injuries,” said the man mildly. “But since you bring it up, you really don’t look like you should even be wearing those clothes. You’re no more a Dal than I am an Angarak.”

. . . oh. Oh. This was Gara, then. Ray only knew of two universities on Gara, and this wasn’t the one in Tol Honeth, so it had to be the one in Melcene. All right, he could work with that.

“You’re the first person who’s had enough sense to spot that all day, sir,” Ray said with a rueful smile. He gave the man a closer look. Unlike most of the other scholars so far, he was dressed in sturdy, plain-looking fabric, the sort of thing that you’d expect was at least fire-resistant if not outright fireproof. He had a pointed, somewhat scraggly beard, and the slightly squinty look of someone who could probably do with eyeglasses if they’d only been invented yet. His stance was off-kilter, leaning a little to one side, but Ray figured that was probably due to the clubbed foot. “I’m not even supposed to be on this continent, frankly.”

“That sounds like a story I wouldn’t mind hearing,” the man said, “but you shouldn’t be standing around like this with your head in that condition. Come on, I’ll get you fixed up. What’s your name?”

“Raymond, but everybody calls me Ray. What’s yours?”

“Senji.”