Wizard's Resolve (Ozel the Wizard Book 3)

by Jim Hodgson

  Chapter 9

  It was, as Ozel expected, a relaxing few days on the road. Ergam decided that even though he wasn’t a horse anymore he could still pull a cart, so progress was a lot faster than it might have been had they walked at Ozel’s pace. They breezed through Kanat, which was mostly empty thanks to the extramortals heading either south to work on the tunnel through the mountains to Ilbez, or north to work on the new extramortal home in the frozen wastes beyond. When they arrived at the boundary of Guzul the Fierce’s land, however, Ozel felt it like a tugging weight at his heart.

  As they approached, the magical hedge which protected Guzul the Fierce’s home parted to admit them. Ozel wished he would see Guzul herself standing on the other side, her wizened old frame hiding great strength and wisdom. But she wasn’t there. She was gone.

  The grounds looked as immaculate as they had when she was alive. The tall hedges gave way to flowering bushes, then lush green grass. Ozel didn’t know how long that magic would last. He made a mental note to talk to Wagast about it. What would they do when the magic dissipated? They couldn’t just let the place fall into ruin. It was a shrine to one of the most powerful and fearless wizards who ever lived. Luckily it seemed to be managing itself for the moment, but could it do that forever? Ozel didn’t know. He climbed down from the cart as Ergam slowed to a stop on the pea gravel near the house walkway. They walked together up to the front door and Ozel pushed his way inside. He had a flash of panic that the house would have some magical defense that wouldn’t recognize him as a friend, but there was nothing like that.

  It smelled clean inside, which was surprising. Any other house closed up for a few years would smell like … well, like a place closed up for a few years. This one smelled like it had just been cleaned that morning. They walked through the house and even the creaking of the old wooden floorboards sounded welcoming.

  Ergam ran his fingers down the spines of the old books in the library until he found a volume which caught his attention. He skipped over it at first, but the title stuck in his mind: “Deep Mountain Denizens.” He returned to it, opened it, flipped quickly through a few pages, then said, “Fuuuck.”

  Wagast’s bearded face appeared in the green flames of the communicator. “Ah, Ozel. You’re alive, I see. Everything all right?”

  “Yes,” Ozel said. “Except you’re going to have to tell Usta to stop the work on the tunnel.”

  “Oh, yes? Why’s that?”

  “Ergam found a book. Having looked at it, we agree it’s oddly credible. Anyway, according to the text, there are some nasty things down there, deep under the mountain. The book calls them lavadams.”

  “Lavadams?”

  “It says they’re giant, unkillable monsters who eat stone. The rumbling noises the tunneling crews hear are the monsters digging up the rocks for dinner.”

  “Huh,” Wagast said. He stroked his beard. “Sounds like a load of horse shit to me. If there were anything like that in the mountains, Yonca or her spiders would have seen one.”

  “I object,” Ergam said, from across the room. He was still reading the book.

  “What’s that?” Wagast asked.

  Ozel shook his head. “It’s Ergam objecting to you using anything horse-related as a pejorative.”

  Wagast nodded. “Ah. Bullshit then. Either way, I think it highly unlikely a giant, unkillable monster lives underneath the mountain and eats rocks. I was hoping to find something more along the lines of deep-mountain rivers or some such.”

  “Nothing like that in here,” Ergam said. “Just giant rock men. But there’s something else. It says when they eat rock they can’t digest gems and other hard substances, so their turds are highly valuable.”

  “You are making that up,” Ozel said.

  Ergam shook his head. “I’m not, but the author probably did.”

  Wagast let out a sigh. “Did you see any more serious volumes on the subject?”

  Ozel shook his head. “Afraid not. We can check again?”

  “No. Just bring that volume back with you, if you don’t mind.”

  “What if the magic Guzul the Fierce put on this place blows us to bits for leaving with her book?”

  “I think if there were any magic like that you’d never have gotten through the hedge. Or if you did, then you’d have been blown to bits.”

  “That sounds right,” Ergam agreed.

  “Well,” Ozel said. “That makes me feel … better.”

  Wagast was scratching his chin now. “Out of the sheerest curiosity, who wrote that book?”

  Ergam closed the book with his finger holding his place and looked at the spine. “Er, someone called Felucite Zhuger.”

  “Never heard of ‘er,”

  Chapter 10

  The following day, they paused for a moment in the clearing in the Tangul Forest where they’d first met.

  “Don’t catch me on fire again with an errant fireball, please,” Ergam said.

  “Don’t worry, I know a lot more magic now. You’d never know what hit you.”

  Ergam flicked his mask’s eyebrows up and shrugged, the point made, and they headed toward Bilgehan. They’d also been asked to look in on Aysu’s family home, which they did. Members of the family had moved in to keep an eye on the place and seemed to be doing so.

  Ozel felt himself getting unexpectedly excited to see Wagast’s old tower. He had a lot of good times there. In fact, all his best memories as a child were in or around that tower. He watched the treetops for the glimpse of the old stone and it brought back thoughts of the quest that had sent his life down the crazy, spiraling path which now led him back to the tower.

  He was about to mention this to Ergam when something off the side of the road caught his eye. At first he thought there might be a dead bush among the trees, since he’d caught a glimpse of something brown, but now that he focused on it he could see it for what it was; a fence.

  “Has there always been a fence here?” Ergam asked.

  “No?” Ozel said. He hadn’t meant for it to come out as a question, but here it was. As they rode closer, they could see that it was, indeed, a tall fence.

  “Maybe he started keeping goats?” Ergam said.

  “Could be.”

  The fence continued along the verge to the point where Ozel knew the path should come down to the road. There was a heavy wooden gate.

  Ergam stopped and Ozel dismounted from the cart.

  “There are a lot of people around,” Ergam said. “Maybe a dozen. Can’t tell exactly, but I hear a lot of talking.”

  Ozel shook his head. He tried the handle on the gate, but it was locked, so he pounded on it instead.

  There was a swishing noise behind, then the sound of a piece of metal sliding. A rectangular door at eye level opened to reveal a young woman’s face. “Yes?” she asked, giving Ozel and Ergam a critical once-over. She apparently didn’t like what she saw.

  “I’d like to see Alan, please,” Ozel said, feeling a bit irritated having to ask someone for entry to his own home to see his own apprentice. “Tell him Ozel is here.”

  “There’s no one here by the name Alan, I’m afraid,” the woman said. She moved to close the portal.

  “Who owns this property then, if not Alan?” Ozel asked.

  The woman rolled her eyes. “No man but the Master lives here. And he’s a powerful wizard. If I were you, I’d be on your way before you get yourselves hurt.” She slammed the little door.

  Ozel looked at Ergam. Ergam’s face looked as confused as Ozel felt.

  Ozel stepped back so that he could get a look at the top of the tower. He knew he was in the right place, but just wanted to make sure one more time. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Alan? Are you in there? It’s Ozel! Come out at once!” He listened. Nothing. “Do you think he’s in danger?” he asked Ergam.

  Ergam lifted his shoulders. “Who could this ‘The Master’ be? We know all the wizards in the land by name, don’t we?”

  “I’d have t
hought so,” Ozel said. “What do you hear?”

  Ergam cocked his head and listened. “Some hurried discussions, but it sounds like women to me. They are inside and whispering so I can’t make it out too well.”

  “No screams of pain or anything like that?”

  “No, but sometimes the worst pain is quiet.”

  Ozel considered this a moment, then said, “Right. Get your bow ready. We’re going in. If it turns out we’re breaking in by mistake, we’ll repair the door.”

  “Make a hole in the fence instead,” Ergam said. “Easier to cut and replace logs than to hang a new door.”

  Ozel pointed at him. “You are smart.”

  “Death is an invaluable lesson. Raises one’s acuity across all disciplines.” Ergam nodded as he readied his bow.

  Ozel couldn’t help but give a chuckle. He readied a thin stream of fire, preparing to angle it downward so there would be as little collateral damage on the other side of the fence as possible. It wasn’t likely anyone would be standing there. Ergam would have heard them.

  Ozel cleared his mind, focused his energy, and spoke the words, “amnis ignis.” He drew the thin, hot stream of magic quickly from the ground up to the top of the fence, then added a downward stroke a few feet away. Then he stood back as the section of fence fell outward into the dust of the roadway.

  It revealed a lush, beautifully manicured garden with gravel walkways between rows of sculpted bushes. Here and there, colorful beds of flowers grew in geometric designs. In the distance, as Ozel stepped through the gap, he could see some beds for food growing as well. Ergam came through behind him and scanned the tower. There wasn’t anyone aiming a bow, which was nice, but a few faces that had been watching out of upstairs windows withdrew hastily.

  “All right,” Ozel called out. “I don’t want any trouble, but this property is owned by my master, Wagast the Wise. It was my home for many years. I am looking for my friend, Alan the Gardener. I would like to speak to whoever is in charge, immediately. I do not want to break into Wagast’s tower, but if that’s what I have to do to get answers, I will.”

  Ozel looked at Ergam still scanning the windows. “Lots of discussion now. I think someone’s going to come out.”

  Sure enough, there were sounds at the door. It opened to reveal a woman wrapped in white cloth. Though the wrappings went around her body and limbs, it was arranged so that it hid almost nothing about her shape. She walked with a liquid, rolling gate that accentuated her curves. From the way she held Ozel’s gaze as she did this, it was clear that this was a technique about which she was confident, but Ozel was focused on the possibility of attack and too annoyed at being fenced out of his childhood home to be beguiled.

  The woman stopped and struck a pose, one leg slightly bent, arms at her sides, chin high, back straight and breasts thrust forward. Behind her, several other women gathered at the doorway. They were all similarly clad. One was bare from the waist up.

  “Er,” Ozel said. “About Alan—”

  “I am sorry, gentlemen,” the woman said in a breathy voice. “You have entered our sanctuary in error. There is no Alan here. This is the domain of The Master. I am his humble servant, Yasmin.” She pronounced it “Yaz meen.”

  Ozel heard a quiet creaking sound of leather behind him as Ergam leaned forward. “Upstairs window,” he said.

  Ozel flicked his eyes upward. There was a figure at the window for a split second. The face was a bit longer than Ozel remembered it, thanks to a few intervening years, but it was definitely Alan. That was good.

  “Madam Yasmin,” Ozel said. He spoke loudly so the women inside the house could hear too. “We mean you no harm. I don’t want to threaten or alarm anyone here, but I’m concerned about my home and about my friend. I’m going inside now.”

  “You do so at your own peril,” Yasmin said. She shrugged and incorporated some liquid arm and hand movements as though she were swimming. Ozel had never seen anyone act this way, except perhaps street performers in Dilara. “The Master is a powerful wizard. Just look at the grounds of the estate.” She swept her hand across the garden. “If he can do this with simple earth, what could he do to you if he put his mind to it?”

  “He’s always been a capable gardener,” Ozel agreed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Ozel took a step forward, and a couple of things happened at once.

  Yasmin jerked one of her hands around in front of her, palm out, and barked, “Stop!” There was a swishing noise behind Ozel that he knew to be Ergam drawing his bow. The ladies clustered at the door, seeing this rise in tension, let out gasps and surprised noises.

  Ozel waved at Ergam without looking. This was unnecessary, because Ergam would never have shot anyone who didn’t need shooting and Yasmin was neither armed nor a wizard. Ergam had drawn specifically to give Ozel the opportunity to wave him off. It was a little bit of a dirty trick, but so was whatever was going on here.

  Ozel brushed past Yasmin, crunching up to the door on the pea gravel. As he passed her, he noted that Yasmin was wearing some form of scented oil. At the door, the scantily-clad ladies looked at one another, unsure.

  “Excuse me, please,” Ozel said, in a polite but businesslike tone. The ladies let him pass. “Thank you,” he said.

  Inside, the tower was a lot dimmer than he remembered it. There were silks and other lengths of cloth draped on the walls and over the windows. The air was thick with smoky scents with which Ozel wasn’t familiar.

  Yasmin bustled in behind Ozel, looking more flustered and less seductive than she had a minute ago. She was using both hands to hold her wraps so she could walk without tripping, while also trying to keep them arranged. “See here,” she said. “You can’t enter The Master’s chambers. Only we initiates can do that!”

  Ozel crossed the room to where someone had slid a couple of chairs to block the foot of the stairs and hung some drapery to try to mask them. He pushed the chairs aside, stepped through the drapes, and headed up the stairway. Yasmin lunged after him, but Ergam caught her firmly by the elbow.

  “Please don’t,” Ergam said.

  He must have managed to hold her back, because Ozel reached the top of the stairs without her interference. When he did, he found Alan standing in Wagast’s old study amid a sea of pillows. He was wearing a pair of loose, billowing pants, but was shirtless. He’d grown a lot of muscle in the last few years.

  Alan was wringing his hands. “Is she gone?”

  Chapter 11

  It took some doing, but Yasmin was eventually persuaded to leave. Ozel offered to pay for a night’s lodging at the inn in Bilgehan, but she acted offended at this. She took a few minutes to change into some traveling clothes, then slung a satchel over her shoulder and made to leave. Two of the younger women packed to go with her, but the youngest one didn’t. At least, she seemed young. She said her name was Sefa, and gave her age as eighteen, same as Ozel. She put on some clothes, which earned her a glare from Yasmin as she headed for the door.

  Yasmin stopped. “On your feet, girl.”

  The girl shook her head. She didn’t look up.

  Yasmin moved toward her but Alan stood. “No, Yasmin.” He looked Yasmin in the eye for a long moment. “Enough.”

  Yasmin twisted her mouth contemptuously, then stalked out. The two women behind her glared over their shoulders, but then were gone too. Ozel and Ergam followed them out.

  They watched the women leave through the gate, then saw them briefly through the hole Ozel had made in the fence.

  Ergam listened a while longer, then nodded. They weren’t doubling back.

  Ozel went back in the house to find Alan and Sefa looking forlorn.

  Ozel’s first instinct was to demand, hands on hips, just what in the hell all that was about. But since he could see this was a tense situation, he decided to ignore that. Instead, he said, “Right. Who’s hungry?”

  Alan and Sefa looked at one another, then nodded in unison.

  “I’ll put that fence right,” Ergam said
.

  Ozel went out into the garden. The sun would set in an hour or two and was already taking on a softer golden tinge. The gardens were impressive. He thought he detected some use of gardening magic in the carefully sculpted sections, but the food-bearing area of the garden seemed mostly natural. Alan was much better than Ozel had ever been at it. The vegetables were colorful and delicious-looking. As Ozel walked back toward the tower with an armload of vegetables, he saw Ergam had found a hammer and nails somewhere. The fence wasn’t perfect, but at least the hole was plugged. Though the road never saw much traffic, it seemed wrong somehow to leave it disassembled.

  Inside, Ozel dumped the vegetables on a table, then began tugging at the drapery to let the sun in. As Ozel pulled a few of them free, it seemed to release a spell that had kept Alan and Sefa sitting and staring blankly into space. They both rose and began pulling the material down off the walls. Alan swept the floor. Sefa rearranged the furniture.

  Ozel left them to it and got a cook fire started. When the pan was hot he put some chopped vegetables in. The house began to smell the way Ozel remembered it.

  When the meal was ready, Ergam joined the other three at the table. Ozel knew better than to set him a place, but Sefa was looking at him oddly.

  “Aren’t you hungry, sir?” Sefa asked.

  Ergam smiled, shook his head. Thanks to the magical mask he looked human most of the time—that is, until someone really looked at him. Sefa was really looking at him.

  Ergam could tell. He stood, put his hand out and took Sefa’s, and bowed. “A pleasure, my good lady. I will be among the diners, but I’m not among the living.”

  Sefa’s eyes went wide.

  Alan stuck his hand out to Ergam and they shook. “Thanks for saving us,” Alan said.

  “Well, I’m not sure what we did, but if you two fine people are glad we did it, that should suffice,” Ergam said.

  “Shall we eat?” Ozel asked.