What Happened at Totanbin II

Reur woke to the sounds of slaughter.

He was the last to wake. To his left, Tread and Mucker stood, ready for whatever the day may bring. As ready as they usually were, in any case. Mucker's furrowed brow and bloodshot eyes were a normal way of life, these days. Reur couldn't remember when he had last seen the man smile. Tread stared fixedly ahead, to the edge of the slab that was Totanbin.

Hornbeak conferred with Raven in low tones to one side. Reur could guess what they were talking about: escape. But in this heart of Totanbeni imperialism, there was no way out for these two enemies. They kept glancing at the magical stone, as well, wincing with each new bloody squelch. The raptor, in particular, paid sharp attention, no doubt because of the strong smell.

Reur considered the word imperialism as it pertained to the Totanbeni. He couldn't believe they were a true empire, not in the sense of conquering their people and land. There were too many divisions here. These people hardly seemed a country. The only things they had in common were their magic and a desire to slaughter almost everyone they came across. He was certain of that.

Just watch the two men on the edge of Totanbin, not twenty yards from them.

One of them was Gert, the runner from yesterday. He held the hatchet in one hand, and his other hand pressed a waterfowl firmly to the ground. The bird still had all its feathers. Reur doubted it was being dismembered to be eaten.

Gert paused and met Reur's eyes. His were red and angry, and Reur wondered what had happened. The runner scooped out the entrails with the bloody hatchet and handed them to the other man, who flung them in the mud near Tread and Mucker. Tread stepped forward hotly, but Mucker held him back.

"What is this about?" Reur asked finally.

The other man, older, wearing a lot of bones and smelling like them, shook one of the totems at Reur. He could hear the bones rattling inside.

"These two have brought you here to redeem themselves for their murder of Hoth, a shadelshif guider," he said. "And so may they have been, if they had not committed a worse crime."

"What crime is worse than murder?" Reur took out his tablet and wound it up. The surface glowed faintly as he pressed the stylus to it, taking notes.

Gert gasped. The guider jumped from Totanbin and marched through the mud to Reur, his staff reaching out to knock the tablet away.

"No magic," the man said. "Not at Totanbin. It is forbidden."

"Is it?" Reur said, not moving to retrieve the tablet, which lay face down in the mud several feet away. "Whose magic? Yours or mine?"

"All magic," the guider said. "Though you are not expected to follow our rules."

"Good." Reur bent over to pick up the tablet.

"Because you are a stranger and must die."

Reur carefully wiped the mud off his tablet with his sleeve, suddenly sweating fiercely. "Are you here for me or them?" He gestured to Tread and Mucker. As the man's head turned, he gently separated the cranking mechanism from the writing part of the tablet. They were made to come apart. He slipped the winch into his pocket.

"Hevagn and Cragh will see to you. I will see to these two."

"I staked my claim to them yesterday. You cannot have them until I am dead."

"You are already dead!" His voice rose in anger.

"What crime did they commit?" Reur pressed, his voice rising with the guider's.

"They abandoned the clan! Their magic is no longer tied to ours!" The man gasped as soon as he said it. Gert ran away.

Reur looked at Tread and Mucker. "What do you know about this?"

"Nothing," Tread said, grinning nervously. "I didn't know that could happen." Mucker just shook his head.

"We cannot find their contribution," the guider said.

Tread shook his head, but Raven retorted, "That's a false accusation. You cannot gauge who is contributing to the magic pool."

The man sneered. "What little you know, Vagal! Were you guider in your tribe?" He pointed at Tread and Mucker. "They are no longer Totanbeni. They have declared you as their master, stranger. Their magic is no longer tied to the Totanbeni."

Reur scratched his nose. "What a fascinating note!" he announced after a few seconds. "I am learning more about your culture every day!" He stepped forward and clapped the astonished man on the back, steering him toward the slab. "We have to meet Hevagn and Cragh up on the rock there. Why don't you join us?" He jerked his head to the rest.

"We will tidy up here," Raven said.

Reur snapped his head around and looked at her. She smiled thinly at him, her head tilted toward Hornbeak, who looked about ready to tackle Reur.

"I think it would be best if you were at our side, so you don't get hurt," Reur said carefully.

"In the middle of this great, big camp full of our worst enemies?" She laughed tensely. "I don't think so! We'll catch up to you." Her head shook furiously.

"Us, too," Tread said. He fidgeted as Reur turned his stare on the apprentice. "This place is a mess," he added lamely.

The guider squirmed in Reur's grip. Despite his lack of physical prowess, the man still was bigger than Reur, and Reur knew his little charm was fading.

"All right," he said. "Come with me ... er, what was your name?"

"Jaund."

"Jaund. Let's go see your masters."

"They aren't my masters," Jaund said as they stepped up onto the slab. "I am chief of the guiders."

"Really? How interesting." Reur's mind wandered off as his mouth directed Jaund along a non-perilous course while they walked. What, he wondered, are Raven and Hornbeak up to? Dozens of Totanbeni all around them, and they want to get away from me! He wasn't blind; he could tell they wanted to separate. But why? Did they know what was going to happen today? Were they going to try to escape? Reur hoped not. He didn't think they would make it.

The strangest thing, though, was that Tread and Mucker seemed to pick up on it, and Reur hadn't. Too many things to do, he sighed. Too many things.

Hevagn and Cragh and their underlings met him on the stone.

"Well?" Reur mugged fiercely. "Have you considered my demands?"

They stared at him. He could see the wheels turning in their heads. What demands? they were thinking. Reur stepped in. He didn't like playing the advocate for these people, but among the things he had learned since he came to this land was that these people had about as much political savvy as a clod of mud on the underside of the shoe. Back home, where there were cities, settling a dispute with a fight was a last resort. He reflected briefly that there still were a lot of confrontations back home.

He had thought long and hard the previous evening about how he would get them out of this mess. Reur felt his reasons for coming here had been justified. He felt he had learned a whole lot about this strange culture. He hesitated to use the word barbaric, but he felt he could, mostly because their most permanent structure generally vanished within thirty days. His foot scraped at Totanbin.

"You guys could have a wonder of the world here," he heard himself say out loud, in his own tongue, "but you built this pyramid upside-down."

In their tongue, he said, "I demanded that you send me, an honor guard and my four companions south, to meet with my people. I will be your translator and ..." They had no word for diplomat, and he couldn't use guider with all these people watching. "Eldest." It seemed to be the closest word. He remembered Raven saying something about how the eldests negotiated when two tribes met.

Cragh stared at him, and Hevagn laughed.

"You made no such demand," the stocky man said. "That one I would certainly have remembered!"

Reur kept his face innocent. "If you say so." He made a show of giving in. It doesn't sound like a bad idea though, does it?"

"It is a horrendous idea!" Cragh said. "The Totanbeni trust no one who is not Totanbeni! We go to your people not to talk, but to turn the swamps red with their blood."

"Ah," Reur said hastily. "I misjudged you."

"We never gave you any reason to think differently!" the shifer chief snapped.

"We have no need to negotiate," Hevagn said. "You crossed your ocean on large ships, maybe, but there certainly are not enough of you to compete with us."

"It only takes one."

It was Tread. Reur couldn't believe it. The giant Mucker shadowed his fellow apprentice.

"We are doing fine without you, traitors," Jaund said haughtily, earning looks from Cragh and Hevagn that made him back down. Reur remembered that no guider had spoken in their meeting the previous day, and he made another mental note about status in the Totanbeni culture. His hand worked the crank in his pocket. He worried it might get stuck on something, but he needed a good charge.

"I have watched his magic," Tread said, visibly sweating. He was never good at lying, Reur thought, beginning to sweat himself. "He survived the explosion on the shadelshif; that is why Mucker exploded it. He ate peat. He was frequently covered in infested mud." Tread gestured strongly. "And he is not dead. His magic kept him alive."

But I don't have my belt now, Reur thought. I have this jury-rigged device from my precious tablet.

"Inconceivable!" Jaund said. "Magic does not work this way! He is too far from his people for him to have any power!"

"You slapped my tablet away from me earlier," Reur reminded the guider. "What were you afraid of?"

This drew a murmur.

"You have magic?" Cragh was skeptical. "And your magic is more powerful than ours?"

"One man," Tread repeated. "It only takes one. Would you like a demonstration?"

He and Mucker had reached Reur by this time. Mucker pulled Reur back, behind Tread, while Tread stutteringly orated again about the powers of Kalkorae magic. Reur knew he was making stuff up now. He could tell by the color of Tread's ears.

"Raven and Hornbeak will make a diversion after you win," Mucker whispered to him. "Tread and I will get you out of here."

"You will get me out of here?" Reur was incredulous. "I can't do what he's saying!"

"Shhh," Mucker said, panting heavily in Reur's ear. "Raven said you would think of something. She said to remind you how fragile Totanbin is." He said it as though he could not believe this magical slab was anything other than the combined efforts of thousands of magic-wielding people, and therefore impervious to any single man's attack on it.

It is the combined effort of all their magic, Reur thought suddenly. Yet it doesn't last. His mind sought for a foothold on this subject.

Tread was running out of words. Reur stepped in awkwardly.

"Tell me," he interrupted. "What must I do to prove to you that a single Kalkoraen's magic is more powerful than your entire army?"

Hevagn frowned. Cragh's eyes narrowed. They were thinking about it, Reur realized with a shock.

But Jaund laughed. "Destroy Totanbin," he challenged. "There is no more powerful Totanbeni magic."

"Jaund," Cragh warned, but Reur spoke over them.

"All right," he said, and marched toward what he guessed was the dead center of the rock.

He was certain this giant slab, 120 paces to a side, was an upside-down pyramid. It needed quite a bit of surface area to volume ratio to perform its task. A flat slab wouldn't have enough surface area, while a cube would have too much volume. Triangles were always wonderfully better for the task, unless of course you were talking about containing a liquid or a gas. But solids and pressures were something else. Reur sighed at the beauty of math.

"Reur?" Tread said, close to him. "You can't destroy this. It's our culture."

In any case, he had to assume the pyramid was a certain height. Depth, he corrected himself with a short laugh. Depth. Oh, that's too good. It cannot be too thick across its center of gravity, or it would sink. The balance would be carefully kept. Reur wondered how much the guiders knew of what they created. He considered, briefly, a pyramid with a base of two square units in area. Then one side would have to be about one point four one units in area. This one was smaller than that. Hmmm ...

"Reur?" Mucker said. "We have to find something else. This is impossible."

"What?" Reur knelt on the ground, touched one hand to a contact on the crank and one hand to a spot on the ground he felt was directly above the center. "Hold on to me," he told Tread and Mucker. "And don't lose your heads."

In a puff of smoke and a loud bang, Totanbin vanished.

Screams filled the air around them as people fell. Reur had noted about three hundred people on the rock, most of them chiefs. Not everyone was there yet. But Reur had not wanted anyone to get hurt. After all, this was just a demonstration. He was not too worried about falling himself. He knew how far he was going to fall, and knew he would do it into water. He could protect himself. He looked down.

Sheer rock walls shot up toward him. No water was in sight. Reur panicked and started screaming.

Then two sets of hands grabbed him, and his downward motion stopped. Suddenly the ground got farther away. He looked up.

Tread and Mucker held him by the shoulders and were floating upward.

"What?" he asked, unable to voice the whole question.

"It's Raven and Hornbeak," Tread said. "Their magic. We were lucky so many guiders were on the rock."

"How?"

"Hands of the Titan?" Mucker ventured.

"I would think so," Tread agreed.

Raven and Hornbeak were a hundred yards off the edge of the hole where Totanbin used to be. People rushed past them to see what the screams were. Some of them, Reur saw, didn't stop in time to fall down the hole.

"It was deeper than I thought," Reur said, when he was safely on the ground.

"I don't know how you did that," Tread said, in awe, "but can you teach me?"

"It was simple math," Reur said. "You see, the center of gravity of a pyramid ..."

"Not now," Raven said sternly. "We have to go."

"Where are we going?"

"I have to warn my people," Reur said. "We must warn the Kalkorae of the Totanbeni."

"Then we head this way," Hornbeak said, handing them each a pack. "Hurry."

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
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