Of Machines & Magics by Adele Abbot Read Free Book Online Page A

“Much better.”
    His face still looked drawn however and pinched; his hands were thin and corded, the fingers like dead twigs. He put his scabbarded sword to the ground and leaned on it as he eased himself from the travois; he managed to stand and to slowly straighten. “Another hour or two and…” he leaned, began to fall and only Ponderos’ speed and strength saved him from measuring his length upon the ground. The Mage was a great deal weaker than he seemed.
    “I think,” said Ponderos, looking at the various bluffs and rocky outcrops, “I think there’s an inn not far from here. The magic has come back but Calistrope needs food and rest while he mends,” He made Calistrope comfortable once more on the conveyance and signaled to the ant to move off. It clicked its mandibles and the other hummed a double note, they moved off. “A league or so. Not far.”
    Roli groaned. What might be an invigorating ramble to Ponderos the Immovable, the boy saw as a considerable effort.
    There was no further delay; they marched off along the high bank, following a game trail which skirted small clumps of brush and alder and the occasional earthy pillar of an insect domicile.
    Ponderos considered the temperature as brisk—around the freezing point of water, it varied from place to place. Here, puddles were rimed with ice or frozen solid, there, a shallow sheet of water with long snapping larvae crawling over the black mud bottom. Flat rosettes of lime green leaves edged the beaten pathway; where it was warm enough; thin black stems raised pale yellow flowers and even a few clear fruit like oversized drops of water.
    Presently, the path led them to a narrow paved road which wound along what had become a low cliff and not far off the league which Ponderos had forecast, it turned around a sharp bluff and followed the line of a wide bay.
    Across the water, at the far side of the bay, they could see a promontory on which stood a long, low rambling building.
    Its landward end was constructed from stuccoed stone with mullioned windows, lights inside shone through the rich colors of the glass. Further out, the structure had been extended over the lake on a platform supported by a forest of thick stakes driven into the lake bed. Here, the walls were of timber with lath and plaster, the windows fashioned from the bottoms of glass bottles cemented together in the window frames.
    The Raftman’s Ease was an inn which catered not so much for the raft pilots as for the hunters who returned there every few months to trade skins and the exoskeletons of certain insects. These would later be sold on to the artisans in Sachavesku where the raw materials would be processed into garments, into body armor, jewelry and a host of other items.
    They approached the inn. Benches made from old grey driftwood leaned against the walls; an iridescent beetle, harnessed to a sled mounded with skins, waited patiently for its owner to return. One of the double doors stood open and warm air, misted with condensation, swirled white against the outer chill bringing with it a burden of smells—cooked fish, alcoholic beverages, tobaccos and the smoke from a brazier of coals. Roli found the place inviting, even exciting, and failed to notice the dilapidation.
    Ponderos bent and lifted Calistrope from the travois and set him unsteadily upright, he supported the injured Mage to the door and then stopped. “Unhitch Charylla,” he said to Roli, having learned the names of the two ants only shortly before.
    As Roli unclipped the harness, Faramiss, the other insect, helped to push the conveyance off the road and out of the way. The two ants then climbed slowly up the rocky inland side of the road, each of them with a pair of honeydew sacs slung across their narrow waists like ungainly balloons.
    “Will you know when we leave the inn?” Roli asked.
    “Go,” hummed Faramiss. “We shall watch, we shall see you.”
    The place was much as Ponderos remembered it though