Harbinger

27: THE TINKER DOMI COMPUTING AND RESEARCH CENTER

So much had happened since the start of summer, Tinker often lost track of all the little details. She couldn’t remember what day exactly she rescued Windwolf except it had been during the June Shutdown. After accidently agreeing to be magically transformed into an elf, she’d been dragged off to Aum Renau by the Wyverns to meet with the queen. Said meeting lasted for days and days to become the most boring three weeks that Tinker had ever endured in her life. Windwolf’s coastal palace was like living in the middle of the forest as some of the “rooms” were just groves of trees with a network of glass roofs suspended between their trunks. There had been no electricity. No computers. No internet. Paper was a rare commodity, treated like it was edged with real gold. Windwolf had a library but it contained mostly books that were over two hundred years old. The most scientifically minded of them was a copy of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Sir Isaac Newton but it was written in Latin or something.

She’d been bored, bored, bored to the point that she had learned to ride a horse and use a bow and arrow. (Granted, the latter skill came in handy for killing Lord Tomtom but at the time she was simply out-of-her-skull bored.)

When Queen Soulful Ember finally—finally—gave her royal permission for Windwolf and Tinker to return to their interrupted life, they arrived during the July Shutdown. Pittsburgh was missing. It had gone to Earth, leaving Tinker behind. All that remained on Elfhome with her were the enclaves built along the northern arch of the Rim.

The enclaves proved to be just as primitive as Aum Renau.

A great many truths dawned on Tinker that day. One of which was that she had been utterly plucked out of the cycle of life as she knew it. Eternity loomed before her — huge and massive and boring as hell if she didn’t have her normal level of technology. The other truth was that nothing in human civilization ever lasted more than a few hundred years. Even the Chinese imperial rule had been a series of various dynasties rising and falling. Sooner or later (and it proved to be sooner rather than later — by her own doing no less) she was going to be stuck on Elfhome with whatever happened to be there when the gate failed.

She’d freaked out.

The next morning she had commandeered a fleet of construction vehicles and began to create infrastructure. Almost as soon as she had started, though, she was kidnapped by the oni, never to return to the hilltop. She had managed to totally forget about it — which seemed inconceivable until one considered what the rest of her summer had been like.

That morning, they had cut down five acres of virgin ironwood forest. She had left the hilltop denuded except for massive stumps. (She had thought that they would need to use dynamite to blast out the rootballs, but the elves had said they had some kind of magic to excise the huge remains.) There had been detailed, ambitious, but often unrealistic plans tacked to a hastily erected bulletin board. (She wasn’t thinking too sanely that day.) She was sure that the shanghaied humans from the EIA and the city would have fled shortly after she had left. Windwolf had told her that the work had continued after she disappeared, but she figured that was just his people. Yes, the landscaping would be beautiful but would there be any electricity?

Tinker doubted it.

Stormsong had promised, though, that the Tinker Domi Computer and Research Center had honest-to-God technology. More importantly, it had a casting circle. Tinker hadn’t included one in her plans, so someone else must have decided to put it in. Windwolf? Tooloo? Being that Tinker couldn’t think of any other place with computers and a casting circle — that she hadn’t blown up or dismantled — she had decided to give it a try.

The construction site seemed like a totally different place. Someone had pushed farther into the virgin forest, clearing a full twenty acres of the snaking ridgeline until it lay windswept. The massive stumps had been removed, the hilltop leveled, and wild flowers sown. White drifts of yarrow covered the ground. Lobelia and phlox created islands of color. Tinker had designed wind turbines made out of Ford 150 trucks. She had barely finished one base tower before Lain pulled her down off it and talked sense into her. Someone had finished her work. A line of sixty-foot-tall wind turbines crowned the ridge, facing west, their long white sails turned against a sky filled with rain clouds. Her bare-bones tower had been modified to something more elven in design with a solid stone base and wood shingle sheathing. (This made her happy as the structures would be able to offer more defense during an attack — which was probably the point of the changes.) To the north and east, the ironwood forest stretched out as far as the eye could see as a sea of green. To the west, the white dome of the Observatory peeked out over the forest roof. To the south, the land dipped down to the river with tips of the skyscrapers barely visible. At one time, the Rim cut its arc clean through the area but time had pushed the forest into the city proper, diffusing the line.

The dirt road had been graveled to make it more passible. There had been a stout gate with royal marines standing guard. The marines had waved the Rolls-Royce through once they saw Pony at the wheel. A ten-foot-tall fence of rough-hewn ironwood lined the edge of the perimeter of the hilltop, protecting the compound from anything that might venture out of the virgin forest.

Tinker expected elves, perhaps some horses and maybe even indi. She hadn’t expected the surprising number of EIA trucks and cars parked just inside the gate. Yes, there were more royal marines within the fence line, but the bulk of the people in sight were men.

“What the hell?” Tinker muttered. “What are all these humans doing here?”

“Wolf asked Maynard to assign someone to oversee the technology side of the project,” Stormsong explained. “Considering the progress made, the person must have been given command of an entire section of the EIA.”

A tall EIA officer spotted the Rolls and crossed the compound to meet it. Tinker recognized him but it took her a minute to remember from where. He’d led the squad of EIA commandos who had helped rescue Oilcan’s kids. Oh, good, he should be willing to cooperate if he’d followed her into the whelping pens. She hadn’t bothered to catch names as she charged into the pens but she’d collected Captain Roger A. Josephson’s name and phone number just in case she couldn’t get hold of Maynard and needed backup.

The captain was a tall human, solid without being thick, with his reddish blond hair shaved on the sides in a military cut. “Domi, we didn’t expect you to…well, I guess we never expect anything you do. How can we help?”

“You’re in charge here?” Tinker said. “I thought you were some kind of combat commander.”

“Yes, I am — and I am. My command are special operations forces. We’re a combat unit that specializes in establishing infrastructure if it’s been compromised by sabotage or nature. I’m actually new to Pittsburgh; we were deployed after the Viceroy was attacked. Maynard assigned me to the tech center in July. My unit was the only one close enough to respond when you needed help in the whelping pens.”

“I was told that you have a casting circle here.” Tinker scanned the compound. There were lots of buildings of all varieties, some still under construction. She was pleased that the idea of being “separate from Pittsburgh’s infrastructure” seemed to continue after she left. There was a water tower and men were installing a large septic system to handle sewage.

“The casting circle is in the last tent on the right.” Captain Josephson pointed at a large white tent of elf canvas. “A strong ley line crosses the area that we cleared, so I had one put in—”

“You did?” Tinker said in surprise.

“The Viceroy made it clear that if I were to discover any gaps in your plans, I should see they were filled. The casting circle is just one of several items that I thought were needed to complete the project. We haven’t gotten around to building the permanent shelter as it needs to be constructed without nails.”

“Good, good, good.” Tinker pointed to the only thing that had an electrical panel on it. It was a small mobile office. “Computers? Printers? The type that can print spells?”

“Yes.” Josephson trailed after Tinker as she started for the computers. “We’re building a permanent building to house the equipment but it’s not finished yet. We focused on finishing the wind turbines and securing the area.”

“Oh! Oh my,” Tinker whispered at the set up inside the mobile office. She wanted it all. The huge monitors. The sleek computers. The printers. The digital whiteboards. The climate control. All of it must have come straight from Earth with the rest of Josephson’s command. “My cousin just sent me something that I need to print out.”

Josephson gave her the password for the network. She connected and sent the spell to the printer.

“Do you need anything else?” Josephson asked.

“We might get company if the oni managed to track me.” Tinker copied the list that she’d been making on her datapad. She emailed it to Josephson’s contact information. “Here’s a list of things and where your people can find them. Items at the top of the list are the most important. Anything you can collect will help.”

His eyebrow rose at the list. “I’ll get right on it.”

Oilcan had given no explanation as to where he’d gotten the spell that he’d sent her. He merely wrote, “Cast this spell as soon as possible, it will shield you from the magic bombs in Dufae’s box.”

Tinker had studied the photographs that Oilcan had sent her. They were disturbing on so many levels. The new spell that suggested a brilliance that matched hers. The crayon notes reminded Tinker that she’d been at her most dangerous when she thought she totally understood the world. The comprehension of what Tinker and Oilcan had accessible to them and what they didn’t, though, suggested that one or both of the twins could match Tooloo in knowing unknowable things. It was as if after making her, the gods twisted the dials to eleven and let loose a flood.

Tinker printed out the spell, cued up other spells that she thought might be useful in the upcoming fight and headed to the casting circle. Shortly after Oilcan signaled her with Morse code, the domana in the east began to fight in earnest. Tinker could feel the call for magic to all three Spell Stones as small pings on her awareness. Tooloo said that the other players in the deadly poker game were about to use the Dufaes’ bombs. Tinker hadn’t completely believed her. Tooloo twisted the truth into pretzels. The twins, however, seemed to be confirming what Tooloo had said. The timing was terrifyingly logical: strike while the domana were preoccupied on the eastern front.

Tooloo said that Tinker had everything she needed, that she didn’t need the unedited Codex, and that time was ticking down quickly. Tooloo must have known that the twins were going to crack the problem of the shield. Looking at the resulting spell, Tooloo had been right that Tinker wouldn’t have been able to quickly come to this answer. She wasn’t even sure how the twins had managed it.

What did Tooloo expect Tinker to do? Or more exactly, what did Tooloo want?

Pure Radiance had come personally to the Westernlands to find Tinker. The queen’s oracle had said that the pivot was the person who had been marked with a Wind Clan dau. They thought at first it would be Sparrow, but Pure Radiance had pointed directly at Tinker as the person on whom the fate of the world would spin. Pure Radiance had gone on and on about open doors and pivots and closing the door tight.

Tinker thought that when she’d stranded Pittsburgh on Elfhome, closing the two gates open between Elfhome, Earth, and Onihida, her work was done. She was wrong.

Tooloo hadn’t wanted Windwolf to mark Tinker. She didn’t want Tinker to become an elf. Tooloo had tried to keep her hidden. Tinker getting kidnapped by the oni hadn’t been in Tooloo’s game plan. Tooloo suggested that was her daughter’s plan all along: use Tinker as a “baited trap.” Tooloo might not even have wanted the gate destroyed. But she’d taught Tinker — and probably her father and grandfather — magic. Tooloo had made sure Tinker had a copy of the Codex. Tooloo wanted her to do something with magic. Something related to the magical bomb that been locked in Dufae’s chest. Tooloo obviously had waylaid the chest, followed Unbounded Brilliance from Elfhome, and then babysat all the little hidden wood sprites since the French Revolution.

Pure Radiance wanted the Skin Clad stopped. But what else? What did she want that required her to have her own mother bound hand and foot? Or perhaps the better question was what did Tooloo want that Pure Radiance was so against? Why were they fighting? Over what?

Tinker kept looping back to one basic fact: Tooloo lies. A lot.

Did it matter what Tooloo wanted? Did Tinker want to blindly buy into Tooloo’s plan? Granted, Nathan had been a horrific lesson showing that Tinker didn’t understand the world as well as Tooloo — but there was a difference between understanding the world and wishing it well.

Tooloo’s own daughter had turned against her. Whatever Tooloo wanted, it had been drastic enough that she had only allied herself with a wood sprite still in his doubles. If “allied” was the right term for their teamwork. Unbounded Brilliance might have been an unwitting tool — just like Tinker was. Or possibly would be — if she didn’t figure this out.

Assuming, of course, that Pure Radiance hadn’t turned the Skin Clan against her mother for selfish reasons. Pure Radiance’s own daughter, Stormsong, believed that the female was capable of infanticide to achieve her goals.

Maynard had told her once elves believed that the end justified the means. Pure Radiance could commit horrific acts and everyone would turn a blind eye because they were assuming that she was acting for the common good.

Who did Tinker help? The female who helped raise her but lied to her almost every day of her life? Or the queen’s most trusted advisor? Or neither?

The only thing Tinker was sure of was she didn’t want the Skin Clan to wipe out everyone that she loved. They had already tried to kill Windwolf. They’d enslaved her. They had kidnapped and threatened Pony. They’d killed a thousand royal marines as if they were nothing. They would kill Tinker’s entire Hand.

Tinker wouldn’t allow that. She had to stop them.

The Skin Clan had eleven nactka. Eleven chances to destroy what the elves had in Pittsburgh. Tinker could set the shield up to protect her and her Hand and whoever else was at the center — but what then? Whatever the spell did, Windwolf, Prince True Flame, Forest Moss, and the Harbingers were all going to fall under its influence, deep in the forest, surrounded by the enemy. Part of her wanted to rush out there and find Windwolf — but her gut was telling her that she didn’t have time. She had very little time.

Even if the twins’ spell protected her this time, the Skin Clan only needed to cast their spell a second time when she was least expecting it. If their plan worked — on their first or second or third try — then they could take the remaining nactka to the Easternlands and use them there.

Tinker was fairly sure that neither Pure Radiance nor Tooloo wanted that. Tooloo had protected the Dufaes for hundreds of years, so the twins’ spell probably was part of her plan. Tooloo hadn’t struggled for generations to create a temporary protection. Her plan required Tinker to do something clever. Something very wood-sprite-like.

Tooloo said that she had given Tinker everything she needed in her copy of the Dufae Codex. If Tinker didn’t need the Codex to create a shield against the Skin Clan’s spell, then what was she supposed to do what?

“Can you guys take over?” She handed the spell to Pony. “I need to figure something out.”

“Certainly, domi,” Pony said.

There was a moment as the warriors conferred as to who would stand guard while the rest worked at laying out the spell. Stormsong took charge of the tracing while Pony followed Tinker back to the mobile office.

Tinker thought better on whiteboards. She ported the spell onto the board and started to tease it apart. She tried not to hear Tooloo’s voice in the back of her brain, saying that she was wasting time. The twins had done the heavy lifting. What could she figure out from their work? If Tooloo hadn’t lied, then everything she did have in her copy of the Codex was all she needed. Her Codex had been heavily edited, supposedly to keep her safe from her own curiosity. While it had all the various shields written out, it didn’t have the initialization spell to link her to the Stone Clan Spell Stones…

Tinker’s breath caught in her chest as the thought connected to all the elements of the new shield spell.

The elves had nothing like computers. Dufae had never dealt with a software virus. He couldn’t grasp what the Skin Clan spell did as a whole, but Tinker recognized an attempt to stop a virus. The spell identified the domana genetic key that allowed them to link with Spell Stones and rewrote it. Of course, none of the shield spells that Dufae knew would block that link. It would make no sense for the elves to create something that interfered with their most powerful weapon. An enclave’s defensive barriers wouldn’t hamper their domana from setting up a connection in the middle of battle. Nor would a sekasha’s shield spell, since they often overlapped with their domana. Dufae had been a double; he might have known a great deal of lore on the Spell Stone construction but he had been born long after the Rebellion and the Clan War ended. It was possible that the creators of the Spell Stones designed the initialization process in the way that they had because it was the one thing that couldn’t be blocked.

Any domana not shielded by the twins’ spell would lose their ability to call the Spell Stones. With one spell, the elves were about to lose their great weapons against the oni horde.

There was a muffled boom from the southwest.

“What was that?” Tinker glanced out the windows of the mobile office.

Fireworks burst across the river, somewhere over the Hill District — a bright bloom of color and then a deep boom.

“What idiot is setting off fireworks in a war zone?” she growled.

Even as a second fireworks display went off over the Hill District, another shot upward from Downtown. A sudden golden flower painted against the dark rain clouds. Then a third set over Mount Washington.

This wasn’t one random jerk setting off fireworks. This was a signal. She had a very bad feeling about this. The first fireworks had been over Oakland.

“Domi!” Stormsong shouted from the casting circle.

Tinker felt it shiver down her back. She was out of time. She ran toward the casting circle. “Oh shit, this is it. Trigger it!”

Out in the northeast where Haven must lie, she felt a massive shield go up. The twins must have created a spell to encompass the entire village. A few moments later, one went up in the heart of McKees Rocks. It could only be Oilcan.

Tinker hit the edge of the casting circle and Stormsong triggered the spell.

Tinker had expected something in Oakland and as various shells of the shield spell rose around her, she felt the enclaves react, starting with Sacred Heart. The newly finished enclave defensive shield rose. The other enclaves triggered their powerful defenses, nearly identical to the one on Sacred Heart. The new shield, however, didn’t go up in Oakland.

“Shit, shit, get the new spell up, Forge!”

Forge or Jewel Tear cast a Stone Clan scry, revealing a massive number of ground troops moving uphill from the river’s edge.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Forge,” she whispered as she realized that Oilcan hadn’t gotten a copy of the spell to their grandfather.

There was a massive flare of power to the southeast near the Rim. The scale of it took her breath away. Almost instantly the outer shell of the shield flashed to a blinding light as it deflected the power of the incoming spell.

Tinker whimpered. What would it do to the people whom she loved? All the people who looked to her for protection? Would anything be left after the oni had crushed all the resistance?

The End