The Mage came closer, peering at her. “You are hurt, Mechanic Mari?”
“Master Mechanic Mari,” she muttered automatically, then reached out and grabbed his arm. “I’m not imagining this. You’re real.”
“Nothing is real. All is illusion. But I stand here,” the Mage agreed.
“Don’t confuse me. I can’t handle it right now.” Mari worked to control her breathing and to calm her nerves. Realizing she was still holding Mage Alain’s arm in a tight grip, she let go. “Never touch a Mage.” “Why would I want to?” “How did you get in here?”
“I learned that something ill had befallen you,” he explained without apparent feeling. “I felt your pain.”
“You felt my pain? You’re not talking empathy, are you?”
“Empathy?” Mage Alain shook his head. “I do not know that word. No. It hurt. In this place.” He reached up to touch the back of his head.
Mari staggered back to the cot and sat down. All right. Stop and think. A Mage felt me get hit on the head. Then he walked through a wallto find me. But either I’m crazy, or it happened. If it happened, then I can analyze it, figure it out. “Let’s take this one step at a time. How did you know where I was?”
“I could sense your location,” the Mage said dispassionately. “A thread connects us.”
She looked down at herself. “A thread?”
“That is…a metaphor. I sense it as a thread. It is not real, but it is. I do not know why it exists, or its purpose.” Something about the way the Mage said that made it sound…accusing? She must be imagining that.
I don’t think I’m ready to examine the question of why there’s a metaphorical thread connecting me to this Mage. Or why he thinks there’s some thread. “I’m sorry, but I know nothing about Mage stuff.”
“The thread is not the work of a Mage,” Alain said.
“Then who—?” Her head pounded again. “Never mind. Next topic. Where are we? Still in the city hall?”
“Yes,” Alain confirmed. “A city hall with a dungeon. It is what would be expected in Ringhmon.”
“You’ve noticed that about them, too, huh?” Mari swallowed and pointed to the wall. “How did you do that?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Mage secret?”
“Yes.”
Mari took a long, slow breath. “They use smoke and mirrors and other ‘magic’ to make commons think they can create temporary holes in walls and things like that. It’s all nonsense.” “Mages actually can make real holes in walls.”
“No.”
Her head hurting with increased intensity, Mari glowered at the Mage. “You didn’t make a hole in the wall?”
“I made the illusion of a hole in the illusion of the wall.”
Mari looked at Mage Alain for what felt like a long time, trying to detect any sign of mockery or lying. But he seemed perfectly sincere. And unless she had completely lost her mind, he had just walked through that solid wall. “If the wall is an illusion, why can’t anybody walk through it?”
“It is a very powerful illusion,” Alain explained.
“But you made it go away, so you must be more powerful than that illusion.”
“No,” Mage Alain said, shaking his head. “Even a Mage cannot negate the illusions we see. What a Mage does is overlay another illusion on top of the illusion everyone sees.”
In a very strange way, what he was saying seemed to make sense, or at least seemed to sustain a consistent logic, if logic was the right term for something that involved walking through walls. “We can get out the same way that you got in?” Mari asked. “Through imaginary holes in the imaginary wall?” She wondered how her Guild would feel about seeing that in her report. Actually, she didn’t have to wonder, but she also wasn’t about to turn down a chance to escape.
The Mage took a deep breath and swayed on his feet. “No.”
“No?”
“Unfortunately—” Alain collapsed into a seated position on the cot next to her—“the effort of finding you has exhausted me. There were several walls to get through. I can do no more for some time. I am probably incapable of any major effort until morning.” He shook his head. “I did not plan this well. Maybe the elders are right and seventeen is simply too young to be a Mage.”
Mari stared at him. “Are you telling me that you came to rescue me, following a metaphorical thread through imaginary holes, but now that you’re in the same cell with me you can’t get us out?”
“Yes, that is correct. This one erred.”
“That one sure did. Now instead of one of us being stuck in here, we’re both stuck in here.”
The Mage gave her a look which actually betrayed a trace of irritation. He must have really been exhausted for such a feeling to show. “I do not have much experience with rescues. Are you always so difficult?”
Mari felt a sudden urge to laugh, but cut it off when the laughter made her head throb painfully. “To be perfectly honest, yes. You’re not the first guy to ask me that, by the way. Thank you for coming. Thank you for getting this far. At least I have company. Unless I’m insane or drugged and imagining all of this, of course. Maybe you’re not real.”
“I am real,” Mage Alain said. “You are not.”
“You know, that’s really not helping.” Mari spread her hands. “I have no way of getting out of here. You don’t have any more tricks?”
“Tricks?”
“Sorry. What do you call…?”
“Spells.” Alain shook his head, his weariness again obvious to Mari. “Small ones. I cannot open a hole large enough for either of us to pass through. Not for some time. The effort required grows rapidly as the size of the opening increases.”
“Well, sure, that makes sense. Does it increase by the square like an area measurement or a cube for volume or is it some exponential progression?”
It was his turn to look at her, saying nothing, for a long moment. “I do not know,” Alain finally answered. “Do those words have meaning?”
“Yeah. I guess Mages don’t spend much time on math, huh?”
“Math?”
“Never mind.” It was as if she and Mage Alain occupied two entirely different worlds even though they were sitting side by side on the cot in this cell.
“Do you have any Mechanic…tricks?” Alain asked her.
“I haven’t come up with any yet that can get us out of here.” Mari looked glumly toward the door of the cell, then her eyes fixed on the lock. “You can’t make another big imaginary hole for a while, you said. Can you make a little imaginary hole right now?”
He followed her gaze. “Yes. It will be very tiring, but I feel certain I can do that. Where do you need it?”
She stood up carefully to prevent another bout of dizziness, then walked over to the door and pointed at the armor plate protecting the lock. “Right here. About this big,” Mari added, outlining an area with her cupped fingers. She didn’t stop to think about how much sense any of this made. As long as it worked, it could be pure crazy. If she could get at the back of the lock, maybe she would be able to jimmy it open before the Mage’s imaginary hole disappeared.
“If you believe this to be important, I shall do so.” Mari watched nervously as the Mage narrowed his eyes and seemed to concentrate, then opened his eyes wide. “Hurry with what you wish to do. I cannot hold it long.”
She turned back to the door, and stopped, aghast. There was a hole there, a little bigger than she had asked for. But there wasn’t simply a hole in the armor plate. There was a hole right through the plate and the back of the lock and the lock itself and out the other side of the door. She could look through into the passageway.