Chapter 32

A Possible Solution to an Impossible Problem

The next morning, Connie woke up early before the others. The sky above the jagged eastern horizon had scarcely begun to turn a hazy blue-green with the coming of sunrise. Tristana and Jalban were still on watch. Connie lay for a while in her blanket while she ruminated over the loss of her earthly identity and the possibilities that lie ahead if she were to choose an alternative path. She concluded that if she was going to play the part of a sorceress, she’d might as well become the real thing—with her own style, of course. She decided she was going to do something different this morning as a sort of baptism into her new identity on Cerinya. On rising, she approached Jalban and Tristana, who, nearing the end of their watch, huddled close to the fire.

“You have risen early,” Jalban said on seeing her.

Connie cut directly to her request. “Do you know how to cut hair?”

“Just a little,” he replied, unsure. “Why do you ask?”

“I would like my hair cut.”

He frowned at the sound of this. “But why would you want to do such a thing? You have such a lovely river of hair.”

Connie brought her hair around to the front, twisted it into a tight bundle, and then she let it fall over her shoulder. “I just want to take off a little here and there.”

“Can it wait until it is light out? The others have yet to rise,” he said in an blatant attempt to forestall something he found distasteful.

Without wasting time on him, Connie rested her gaze on Tristana, who had obviously been listening. She gazed back at Connie with her usual composed, enigmatic expression.

“Do you know how to cut hair?” Connie asked her.

Tristana responded by pulling out her long, jet black hair around her shoulder. She gave Connie a single nod.

“Might I talk you into cutting mine?”

Tristana nodded once again.

“Yes? That is good.” Connie reached into the Threshibian bag. She pulled out someone’s heavily ornamented spare dagger with a Keenness enchantment on it and a small metal mirror.

On seeing the dagger, Jalban stood up. “You are going to have Tristana cut your hair? Are you insane?”

“Lower your voice, Jalban. Do you want to wake everyone up?”

“Maybe we should tell Rahl first.”

“Don’t be absurd. Why should we tell Rahl? Whose hair is it, anyway?”

Jalban brought forth no immediate response.

“I thought you would see it my way,” Connie said. She turned to Tristana and said, “Come. Let’s go for a walk.”

The party had awoken and breakfast was being prepared when Connie, followed by Tristana, reentered the small, roofless cottage where the party had set up camp. She stood in the doorway and waited for someone to notice her. Yalden was the first. He was dutifully rolling up his blanket. He stopped what he was doing, got to his feet, and stared at her. Snow noticed next. Her jaw fell open.

“Connie! What did you do?” Maltokken said when he laid eyes on her.

Now the eyes of the entire party rested on her.

“What did you do to your hair?” Snow asked.

“What’s wrong?” Connie asked all comers. “Don’t you all like shoulder-length hair? Tell me, do I not look like a woman who is ready for business? Oh, yes—from this day forward, you will address me as Connie the Elemental Sorceress.” She paused so that she could gauge the facial expressions of her fellow party members. She received a variety of looks. “So what do you think of the haircut? Comments, anyone?”

“You are insane,” Jalban said.

“Thank you, Jalban,” Connie said, smiling at him. “Any other comments?”

“It’s different, but I like it,” Yalden offered.

Maltokken nodded in agreement. “I can get used to it.”

“I’m glad you like it, boys.” Connie gave them a warm smile. “Any others?”

No one else responded. Snow shook her head and turned away. Jalban went back to cooking breakfast. Connie caught Rahl stealing glances at her, a slight smile on his lips. Connie winked at him.

“Where’s Tristana?” Theo asked.

Connie moved aside. Tristana stood shyly at the doorway next to Connie. To the party’s shock, her sheen black hair had been bobbed just as Connie’s.

“By the gods! Look what Connie’s done to Tristana!” Jalban cried out.

Theo was speechless at the sight of her, his face drained of all color. Connie thought he was going to faint.

“Tristana! What has she done to you?”

Connie answered for Tristana. “Tristana did such a good job on my hair, I decided to return the favor.”

“You have disgraced her!” Theo shouted. Now his gaunt face was visibly turning from white to a deep purple.

Connie leaned to the side to have another look at Tristana. “I think she looks cute. As a matter of fact, the haircut looks better on her than it does on me.”

Theo pointed a bony finger at Connie. “You’ve ruined her!”

“You should be grateful to me, Theo. The Barbie I once owned never had a haircut this nice. But don’t fret over it. Unlike my Barbie, the hair on yours will grow back eventually.”

Theo wrinkled his brow in confusion, momentarily forgetting his anger. “What are you talking about? What is a ‘Barbie’?”

After breakfast, the party broke camp and headed back up the slope to the ridge. Once at the tip, they traveled east along the edge of the chasm. The going was slow and treacherous during the day. The nights were freezing, and only the copious use of fire nodes for warmth preserved the party on nights when they slept on little more than ledges at the edge of a precipice that seemed to drop into a hazy green eternity. As Connie requested, each party member was tethered to another with a line of thick rope. Just the same, there were many close calls as they made their way slowly along the unforgiving, jagged mountain topography.

After four days, the chasm remained more or less the same distance across. The haze below remained just as hidden by the fog as when they first laid eyes on it. Many in the party speculated on what horrors the fog obscured within its depths. By the evening of the sixth day, the party consensus was to turn back to the west to try their luck in the opposite direction.

They broke for camp another abandoned village they had found, this one bigger than the first they'd encountered, its buildings in somewhat better condition. Some even had partially intact roofs. At the break of dawn, they started west. After three days, they had a tangle with another ice serpent while investigating a cave they chanced upon while crawling along the ledges. They defeated this serpent much more easily than the first, with Rahl receiving a bite on the metal plating on his left shin, a bite that did not penetrate the magically Lightened and Tempered metal. They used the serpent’s cave as shelter for the evening. The next day, they plodded on. Just as in the east, the chasm seemed to stretch endlessly. The next day they came to the sheer stone face of a mountain that was impassable without sophisticated climbing gear. Having no other choice, they turned back toward the village, once again staying for the night in the shallow cave they’d wrested from the ice serpent.

Eventually, exhausted from the daily hiking along the rim of the chasm, the party stumbled back into the cold comfort of the village. Every member was covered with cuts, scrapes, and bruises from all the underbrush they’d passed through. The expeditions to the east and west had been a dangerous, miserable waste of time and energy. The only benefit from the trip was the odd Wind and Crystal nodes Connie acquired as the party made their way across the stony terrain and the phlegmatic humor that Theo had extracted from the dispatched ice serpent.

Once camp had been set up in the village. Jalban spent most of the next day applying healing salves to the exhausted party member. The day after that, the party sat around a small, smoldering campfire while they took stock in the situation. No one spoke much, and most stared transfixed at orange embers while despondently contemplating the next move. Connie spent the latter part of the day exploring the forested countryside around the village searching for more nodes.

By the end of the day, persistence had yielded a huge number of Wind nodes and a collectively equal quantity of Crystal, Metal, and Wood nodes. That evening, she perused her spell books to determine if there was a practical way to use the nodes to get them over the chasm. She went through each book page by page. She closed her last spell book deep into the evening with a sigh of disappointment. On their own, the elemental spells just didn’t seem to have the power to carry them over the great chasm that separated them from completion of their quest. His eyes fell upon the cover of the metal spell book. She smiled to herself when she saw the rune. Something about the symbol reminded her of the numeral 4, a symbol in a language she used to be able to write, a language she found herself no longer able to articulate since she woke up in Alyndia’s body. The symbol reminded her of a child's crude, one-dimensional picture of a plane. She ran her finger over the letters. Then Connie had an idea. It struck her with the power of one of Snow’s ninth-order spells. Quickly, she pulled a blank page from one of the spell books. She dipped her quill in ink and began to draw the image she saw in her mind.

After a lackluster breakfast consisting principally of dried jule, Rahl, Snow, and the other party members sat around a smoldering campfire, bundled in fur, trying to keep warm in the frigid air. The sky remained cloudy. A few snowflakes fell from the sky, a grim reminder that snow was already long overdue at the altitude where they now waited.

Connie sat down between Rahl and Snow. “I have an idea,” she announced to the group.

All eyes turned to her. Connie took a deep breath before she began. She was unsure how this was going to go over with the group. “We shall build a flying machine,” she announced. “We will sit in its back and fly it to our destination.”

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“A flying machine,” Theo repeated slowly, not quite believing he’d heard her right.

“Yes. In my world, we call it an aircraft—or simply a plane.”

“What does it look like?” Rahl asked.

Connie withdrew the parchment she had bought with her to breakfast and unrolled it against the ground. The party clustered around her to have a look.

“This is what I propose we build,” she said.

The party gazed at the drawing. Connie pointed out a few of the major features of the aircraft and gave a brief explanation of its mechanism of flight. This craft was to be a glider-shaped vehicle with a propulsion device in its tail. She drew the picture as a crude type of ramjet. She did not know what the party thought of it. She was afraid to hear their responses.

“I will not sit in it if it uses magic,” Yalden said after Connie had described it.

“It doesn’t use magic to fly. It uses the laws of physics.” Something that you all know nothing about, Connie thought haughtily to herself.

“How do the wings move?” Theo asked.

“They don’t.”

“Then how can this contraption fly if the wings do not flap? It will only sit on the ground. It will take us no where.”

Connie smiled. “Theo, this flying machine can take us hundreds of leagues. With this craft, we can sail over the mountains.” She arched her hand away from her in a gesture to illustrate her point.

“Where are we going to find a craft such as this?” Rahl asked.

“We aren’t. We are going to build it.”

A low mutter rose up from the party.

“What shall we build it with?” Jalban asked.

“Wood. We have an endless supply of it in the forest surrounding the village.”

“We cannot build it,” Yalden said. “If it’s as big as you describe, it would take us a year to complete it—maybe even longer.”

Connie raised her eyebrows at Yalden. “Do you have anything better to do?” she asked him.

“I think we ought to return to Roggentine,” Maltokken said.

Connie scowled at the Maltokken, bristling at the thought of giving up. “What? And abandon the quest? Run home with our tail between our legs while Chaos wrecks our world? Nonsense. We must never give up this quest—not if the civilized world is depending on us.”

“We can find another way around the canyon,” Yalden said.

“We’ve already traveled twenty leagues in both directions,” Snow said to Yalden. “How much farther do you want to go?”

“Let’s be rational here,” Connie said, addressing the party. “We can never reach the Atranox until we cross the canyon. If any of you have a better idea, speak up now.”

Connie scanned the party. No one ventured a suggestion.

“So there we have it,” she concluded from their response.

“If we build this craft, do you believe it will fly?” Rahl asked.

“I majored in—” she began. She wanted to say aeronautical engineering, but she could not find the words. She improvised instead to put her meaning across with her Cerinavian tongue. “I learned how to build flying craft in the academy.”

Rahl narrowed his eyes at Connie. “I did not ask you for your education, Connie; I asked you if you believed it would fly if we built it.”

“Yes. I believe it will,” she said.

“So you believe,” Theo interrupted. “Have you ever built one of these before?”

“Not one of this size,” Connie answered with reluctance, “but I used to help my father build model crafts of a similar design. They flew just fine.”

“But as you said, none this large. How do you know it will fly?”

“I would apply the mathematical principles I learned at the academy to build this craft for us. Though some factors would have to be accounted for, such as the weight of the materials we use and the density of the air in this world, it could be done. The propulsion system might require some thought, however, since we don’t have a lot to work with. We might have to use a few enchantments to get the right effect. I have some ideas we might try.”

The party searched each other’s faces for reaction. Eventually, all eyes fell upon Rahl. The swordbearer picked up her illustration. He studied it carefully before he raised his eyes from the parchment to address the party. “We will build it,” he said.

A few gasps came up from the party. His brother, Yalden, was the most vocal.

“This is a fool’s folly.”

Jalban spoke next, addressing Connie. “No offense to you, Connie; although I admire you for your idea, I do not want to trust my life on that contraption.”

Maltokken nodded. “No magic works over the chasm. If we push it from the cliff, we will all plunge to our deaths.”

Snow withheld her comments but gazed only at Rahl, who in turn looked to his brother.

“Yalden, if we were to build this, you would be most instrumental. Both of us are carpenters by trade. And you are far more skilled than I am. I could not undertake this without you.”

“It is a fool’s folly,” he repeated.

Connie fell back to her haunches at the general lack of enthusiasm shown toward her idea. She shook her head. She felt like walking down the mountainside and leaving them all to rot where they stood.

Snow came to her rescue. “Well, does anyone have a better idea? Or are we going to rot on this mountainside until Chaos gets us—or we all die of starvation?”

Connie winced at Snow on hearing her say that, shocked that her words had echoed her thoughts so precisely. Then she wondered if the sorceress were actually reading her mind.

“We ought to return to Roggentine,” Maltokken said.

“Nothing will be left of Roggentine by the time we return. Besides, they are depending on us. We have yet to retrieve even one of the three artifacts. To return to Roggentine now without casting the spell at the Atranox would be a disgrace there, that is, if anyone in Roggentine still breathes.”

“They can send someone else to cast the spell,” Maltokken said. “There’s plenty of time to do that.”

“No. That someone else is you and me—and the time is now. We must succeed. And if we must build Connie’s flying machine in order to succeed, then I say we do it.”

Astonished, Connie looked up at the celestial sorceress after she heard her say this. Snow responded with a smile. Connie thought she saw subtle admiration in the sorceress’s eyes. Just the same, she wasn’t sure if the sorceress really thought her idea was workable or if she was just being contrary, as she often did to amuse herself.

“I agree with Maltokken,” Jalban stated. “We should try to make our way back to Roggentine. They can send us back later if need be. Perhaps on our next expedition we can find an alternative route to the first artifact so that we do not have to cross this canyon. Or maybe we can bring a more useful set of spells.”

“You shall return to Roggentine alone, Jalban,” Snow said.

“Then you shall build your flying craft alone,” Yalden added.

“I say we take a vote,” Theo said in an attempt to soothe the increasingly vitriolic exchange between the party members.

All eyes fell to the swordbearer, who had the final say on all major decisions. “No matter our course of action, none of us will survive if we divide in our cause.” Rahl gave a lingering gaze to each party member as he spoke. “Yes, we shall take a vote,” he decreed. “The majority of votes shall dictate our course of action, and all members are hereby sworn to follow the majority.”

This decree was followed by a consensus of nods. Rahl got to his feet. He withdrew his sword from his scabbard, and with it, he drew a line on the ground away from the fire.

“All of those who wish to build Connie’s flying craft, step to the side of the line where I stand. All of those in favor of returning to Roggentine, step to the other side.”

One after the other, each member of the party took his or her place on either side of the line. Those who stepped to Rahl’s side of the line in favor of building the craft were Connie and Snow. Those who sought to return to Roggentine were Theo, Yalden, Jalban, and Maltokken. It was four to three in favor of returning to Roggentine.

“Well, brother,” Yalden said with glee. “It looks as though we will return to Roggentine.”

“There is one party member who hasn’t voted yet,” Connie said.

She looked across the fire. Taking the cue, so did everyone else. Tristana sat there watching the party with her usual disinterested expression.

“No! That’s not fair,” Yalden said.

“Why not?” Connie asked.

“She’s not a party member.”

“So you say, and yet she eats our food and fights in our battles. She’s saved the lives of a few of us. On top of that, she takes the night watch. For all practical purposes, she’s part of the party. Don’t you agree with that, Rahl?”

Snow and Connie nodded in tacit agreement.

“Connie words are valid,” Rahl said. “Tristana was with us even before our quest began. She must be declared a party member.”

“She takes my vote,” Theo said. “And she votes to return to Roggentine.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Connie countered him.

Theo glared at Connie. “How do you know that?”

“Did you ask her?” Connie addressed the party. “I agree with Rahl. Tristana is a party member. She should be allowed to vote.”

Snow looked back at Connie. “I cannot believe you said that. Tristana is Theo’s conjuration,” she told her in a hushed tone. “She’ll vote the way he asks her to. Don’t you understand?”

“We’ve already lost the vote anyway. What could it hurt?”

Rahl called out to Tristana. “Tristana. We need your vote.”

Tristana sauntered over to the fire around where the party stood. All eyes were upon her.

Rahl spoke slowly to Tristana as if he were patiently addressing a small child, though everyone present knew this was probably unnecessary. “Have you been listening to us?” he asked her.

Tristana responded with a single nod.

“Do you understand what we are voting for?”

She nodded again.

“Then we need you to do this. If you believe we should build Connie’s flying machine to carry us over the canyon, then step to my side of the line. If you believe we should return to Roggentine to regroup, then step over to Theo’s side of the line. Consider your decision carefully, Tristana. Yours may be the deciding vote.”

Tristana stood at the line, seemingly vacillating over her decision.

“Tristana,” Theo said. “You don’t want us to waste our time building Connie’s contraption, do you? Its wings are stiff, not like those of a bird. It would never leave the ground.”

“Hush, Theo!” Snow said.

“Think it over. Vote with your mind, Tristana,” he said to her, ignoring Snow’s castigation.

At that, Tristana momentarily looked up adoringly at Theo, then she glanced at the Connie sketch. She looked over at Theo a gain, then turned her head and stepped over to Rahl’s side of the line. The four who voted in favor of building the craft now faced the four who did not.

“We have a tie,” Rahl announced. “And so it is. In this case, I declare, as the party leader, that we shall build the flying craft.”

“Yes!” Connie shouted.

Gasps of shock came from the losing side.

“But it was a tie!” Maltokken shouted.

“Indeed,” Rahl said. “But I am the leader of this quest. And in such situations, I reserve the right to exercise my leader’s vote.”

Yalden muttered some epithets and stormed off in a rage. Maltokken followed him. Jalban put his hand on his head as if he’d just acquired a splitting headache. He meandered back to the campfire.

Theo remained where he was. “Tristana!” he said, dispirited at his assistant.

The conjuration shrugged. Then a peculiar, pained look crossed her face. Connie witnessed this small interaction between the two. To her, they appeared as new lovers who’d just experienced first spat; they now stared at each other in disbelief, realizing they were not a perfect couple and things would never be the same again. Connie felt sorry for the two. She approached Theo.

He shook his head. “How could she betray me?” he asked Connie.

“She didn’t betray you.”

Theo looked up at her, perplexed by her statement. “You told her to vote with her mind. She thought it over and made her decision. She merely felt that building the flying machine was a good idea. Now if you’d told her to vote with her heart, well—” Connie paused before she continued. “Well, maybe right now we’d be packing for our return to Roggentine.”

Theo stared at Connie, astounded by her words. Wishing to close by letting Theo know she held no hard feelings toward him, she gave him an affable pat on the back. As she walked back to the fire holding out her sketch of the aircraft, Rahl approached her.

“You have won the vote of the party, but their hearts have not been won,” he said to her in a low tone of voice so that none of the others could hear him.

“So?” Connie said triumphantly, rolling up her drawing.

“Four are bitter in that they will be forced to remain and build your flying machine.”

“But the other four of us are happy to be building it.”

“Not so,” Rahl corrected.

“What do you mean? You, Snow, Tristana. Didn’t the three of you vote to build it?”

“Yes. But I didn’t vote because I thought it was a good idea. I voted for your machine only because I would be disgraced as a swordbearer if we were to return, perchance we were fortunate enough to survive the journey.”

“What about Snow?”

“Snow is loyal to me. If I had chosen to side with my brother, she would have followed suit. And Tristana—” Rahl seemed to be at a loss of words for a moment. “Who knows what she thinks? I’m surprised she voted as she did, being under Theo’s influence and all.”

Connie did not like the way this conversation was going. “So are you trying to tell me that we should not build the flying craft and should instead die up her on the mountainside when the Chaos come in the spring?”

“No. Not at all,” Rahl replied. “I want to help you build the craft. I want it to fly. I want it to carry us over the mountains as you say it could. I would give my life to retrieve those hidden artifacts so that we may complete our quest. I want to believe we can see this through together.” Rahl put his arm affectionately on Connie’s shoulder. “All I want to say is you must convince the others that building your crazy flying machine will truly aid us in our quest; otherwise, I sense, your plan will not come to fruition.”

“Rahl, if I didn’t think the plane would fly, I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

He nodded. “You have my confidence, Connie. How shall we begin?”

“I will need some undisturbed time to perform calculations and draw up blueprints. These might take a while since I’ll be working without benefit of a—” The term computer-aided drafting station, not surprisingly, wasn’t found in the Cerinyan lexicon. She sighed. “Let’s just say I’m going to have to do everything by hand. As for all of you—” She looked at the mountainside that stretched above the abandoned village. “We will need some good wood. If you cut down some of those trees with, let’s say, a Chop spell or enchanted axe, you can slide or roll the logs down the slope and into the village.” She then pointed to a large, stone building with a collapsed roof that looked like it could have been a town hall in ancient times. “We must also fix the roof of that building. That way we will have shelter from winter storms and have a place to work and store the machine until it is ready. Then, if all goes well, we will fly across the chasm, carried solely by the wind.”