The Zero Curse

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  I assume - I hope - that you know what that means. You have no link to the magic field. You can no more cast a spell than I can - and I was taught my trade in the Eternal City. But you should be aware of your own talents. I have done everything in my power - working complex runes into the stone walls - to ensure that you would not be able to enter this chamber without you knowing something of your talents. But too much can go wrong over the centuries for me to be entirely sure.

  I don’t know just how much time has passed between my sealing the chamber and your arrival. Decades, at least; centuries, perhaps. I certainly intend to ensure that no one returns to this complex for months, long enough for my work to take effect. And I don’t know how much you know of the underlying truth behind magic, the truth we discovered ... the truth that eventually wrecked the empire. Knowledge of us - the Zeroes - was kept hidden, even as the empire conquered most of the known world. You may be staggeringly ignorant, by my standards; you may look upon me as a child, struggling vainly to impress his elders and betters. It doesn't matter. I know you don’t know why the Eternal City fell because I am the sole survivor of the disaster. No one else, in these terrible times, knows the truth.

  There have been times when I considered taking the secret with me to the grave. Would it not be better for the truth to remain buried? But it is the way of things that secrets never remain undiscovered indefinitely. And so I have left this letter for you, my successor. If you read this, you will know the truth. May the gods have mercy on you.

  My name is Tyros of the Eternal City. I am the last of the Zeroes.

  I was born in a simple farming hamlet, several hundred leagues from the Eternal City. Magic was a rare thing there, largely because none of us had access to anything more than shamanic knowledge passed down from parents to children. I certainly didn't know any spells, which - coincidently - kept me from realising my true nature. There was no reason to expect anything other than following my father and grandfather onto the farm. I would marry young and have children, keeping the farm in our family. As it happened, the gods had a different fate in mind for me.

  I was thirteen when we were summoned to the village school, all of us. Boys and girls alike, from eight to eighteen. My father grumbled, saying that we would soon put on airs and graces and forget the farm, but we had no choice. The empire had ordered that all of us were to have at least two days of schooling per week. I didn't like it. What was the point of learning to read, I ask you, when there was literally nothing to read? Only a handful of second sons professed to enjoy learning and they wouldn't have a hope of inheriting anything from their fathers. I didn't begrudge them their chance to leave the village for good.

  My brother and I walked down to the schoolhouse with Cynisca, a girl from the neighbouring farm. She was the same age as me, her body just starting to show signs of curves that caught my attention and held it. Her blonde hair seemed to shine in the sunlight. I was, I believed, hopelessly in love with her. My father had even promised to talk to her father, once we both came of age. We did our best to chat, but I was tongue-tied. I never quite knew what to say to her.

  The schoolmaster greeted us as we entered the schoolhouse, then pointed towards the main hall. He was a stern man, always willing to apply vigorous correction to any miscreants, but on that day he looked almost fearful. I realised why when I stepped into the hall. A grim-faced man wearing black was standing at the front of the room, watching us. His outfit - black, covered in silver runes - marked him out as a quaestor. He had the power to do anything in search of the truth, we knew. We stayed quiet, like mice before the cat, as the last of the schoolchildren trotted into the chamber. I don’t think it had ever been quite so full.

  I watched, fearfully, as the quaestor rose to his feet and brandished a wand at us. My head seemed to go dull, just for a second. I felt tired, too tired. And then the sensation was gone, as if it had never been. I stared at him, wondering just what had happened, then glanced at my brother. He was standing beside me, his eyes dull and vacant. His hands hung helplessly at his sides. The entire room was silent, utterly silent. I was the only one who seemed to be able to move.

  “You,” the quaestor said. “Come here.”

  I obeyed, fearfully. Up close, he was a truly fearsome man. I wanted to run, but I knew it was futile. All I could do was wait, trembling, as he cast spell after spell over me.

  “You’re coming with me,” he said, once he’d finished his tests. “Now.”

  I swallowed. “Sir, my parents ...”

  “Will be informed,” the quaestor said. “Come.”

  He turned and strode out of the hall. I hesitated, glancing back at the rest of the schoolchildren. They stood there, unmoving.

  “Go,” the schoolmaster hissed.

  I took one last look at Cynisca. She was standing there, as helpless as the rest. Her hair was as shiny as ever, but her eyes were blank ...

  By all the gods, I wish I’d never lived to see that!

  The quaestor took me back to the farm and had a long chat with my parents. I learnt later that he’d paid them for me, as if I was a cow he’d bought at the market, but at the time all I could think of was that he was taking me away. I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye. He ordered me onto his flyer and carried me off, casually. I was on my way to the Eternal City before I even knew it!

  Ah, the Eternal City. Do they tell tales of it in your time? Do they tell you that the streets were paved with gold? That a man could walk a hundred miles without ever touching the ground? There was truth in many of the stories, too. Half the buildings hung in the air, balancing on strands of stone or floating, held up by magic. The walls glowed with a pearly white light, illuminated night and day. Even the poorest amongst the city-folk dwelled in luxury, a luxury made possible by the empire and its magicians. And, of course, the Zeroes.

  I hadn't quite realised it, but my life was now devoted to the empire. Until, of course, it wasn't.

  The quaestor and his comrades searched every year for children with high magic potential and no magic potential. We Zeroes were rare, it seemed. There were only two others in my class at the Eternal City, Tristan and Helena. They would both shape my life and, ultimately, change it.

  Helena was a young woman, a year younger than myself. She came from a senatorial family and had been raised in the expectation of marrying someone who would cement her father’s grip on power. Or she would have, if she hadn't been attacked by a werewolf two months ago. One half of her face was stunningly pretty; the other half was scarred, despite her father’s doctors. She’d been shunned in polite society, everyone expecting that she’d turn into a wolf at the next full moon. When she hadn’t, they’d known she was a Zero and sent her to us. She was a very bitter girl, understandably. Her parents had told everyone that she’d been disowned.

  Tristan was an angry young man, a year older than me. He would be calm and composed at one moment, then snapping and snarling the next. It was never easy to tell what would set him off. I watched him bite his forearm weekly, just to burn off some negative energy. He acted as though he’d been cheated by life, even though he was a Zero. I never knew much about his background, but from what little he’d let slip it was clear that he hadn't had a happy childhood. His older siblings had tormented him with their magic, I believe. It certainly made him bitter, too. I used to think that Helena and Tristan were well matched. As it happened ...

  Well, I’ll get to that in due time.

  I won’t bore you with the details of my training. I doubt you’d find it interesting. I had a great deal to learn, but so did Helena so at least I wasn't alone. Tristan knew more, yet he was always willing to help - to help both of us, it turned out. He was calmer, somehow, while he was explaining things. The three of us grew to maturity together, remaining friends even as we graduated. None of the older Zeroes had much time for us.

  It was Helena, oddly enough, who started asking the obvious questions. Why were we different? What separated us Zeroes from the a
verage low-magic user? Why could we make Objects of Power? And why, perhaps most importantly to her, did the werewolf curse have no effect on us? Tristan and I struggled to answer her questions, delving deeper and deeper into the true nature of magic. Dare I say that I miss those days, even now? We sat in our workroom, drinking and chatting and theorising and devising experiments to confirm our theories ... we had fun. And, eventually, we solved the mystery that had bedevilled us for years.

  You see, there’s no such thing as a magician.

  I’m sure that shocks you, just as much as it shocked us. Tristan wasn't the only one to suffer at the hands of his empowered peers. I too had been hexed mercilessly as I struggled to devise Objects of Protection. Magic was real, right? Well ... yes, it was. But it wasn't what we thought it was.

  What we discovered was the existence of a magic field, blanketing the entire planet. It was this field that powered magic, just as humans breathed oxygen to live. Magicians had a talent for controlling and directing the magic field, but they didn’t have any inherent magic of their own. If they were deprived of contact with the magic field, we theorised, they would be unable to cast spells. Our Objects of Power actually worked along the same lines. Our inability to touch the magic field allowed us to create Objects of Power that wouldn't be warped and twisted by magic.

  Tristan insisted we should keep this discovery to ourselves. Helena sided with him. And I, reluctantly, agreed.

  We spent the next six months putting together a prototype Object of Power that would drain the local magic field. Tristan thought it would be useful. I didn't realise, at the time, just what he had in mind. Our original plans were to craft something we could use to safeguard our homes from magic, but Tristan had a far grander plan. He wanted to show his family how it felt to be helpless. He told me that he wanted to deprive his siblings of their magic, just long enough to teach them a lesson.

  Helena thought it would be a great joke. And I rather thought, to be honest, that the empire needed the lesson. Our grasp of magic had turned the Eternal City from a tiny city-state on a tiny continent to the undisputed master of much of the known world. We - the Zeroes - had made the city great. And yet, we were treated poorly. Maybe we weren't slaves, but we were expected to work for the empire. I had been taken from my family and brought to the Eternal City because of my nature. I’d never been offered a choice.

  Our plan was to show off the new Object of Power during the Summer Festival, a week when the great and good of the empire would assemble to pledge their loyalty, once again, to the emperor. Tristan wanted to use the device in his family home, giving his family a fright before revealing what we’d done. A week before our planned date, I helped him transport the device into his former bedroom, then returned to our mansion. He insisted on remaining behind to talk to his father.

  That night, Helena seduced me. We spent the next week in bed together. Tristan told us to have fun, that he would handle everything. I was too busy being grateful for her caresses that it never occurred to me to check what he was doing. I was otherwise occupied as the city filled with the great and the good, with the best and brightest of the empire moving into homes surrounding the palace. Not that anyone moved into our mansion, of course. There was a reason we were on the outside of the city, after all. Zeroes like us upset people. They found us useful, but they detested us.

  If I’d known what Tristan was planning, when he’d left us at the mansion and headed into the city, would I have stopped him? I don’t know.

  Helena and I cuddled on the rooftop at sunset, intending to watch the fireworks exploding above the floating city. Instead ... I watched in horror as hundreds of buildings literally fell out of the air, crashing down on the city below. The ground shook violently as thousands upon thousands of spells failed. Hundreds of thousands of people died in that first catastrophic instant. More earthquakes followed as spells intended to keep the city stable abruptly failed, collapsing entire districts into the waves.

  Helena laughed. It was a chilling sound. And that, more than anything else, told me what Tristan had done.

  The Eternal City was dependent upon magic. Its absence brought the entire city tumbling down. None of the ward spells held, none of the magicians could use their powers to save their lives, let alone the city ... the great and good of the empire died before they even realised that they were doomed. I looked at Helena in horror. There was an expression of smug satisfaction on her face. I wondered, grimly, just how long the two of them had been plotting the city’s downfall. They both had good reason to want revenge.

  “The empire falls today,” Helena said, quietly. “A brave new world begins.”

  She was right.

  Of course she was. Every nobleman, every general, every foreign aristocrat eager to claim some of the crumbs from our table ... they’d all been in the Eternal City. Everyone who thought they were someone had been there, when the towers fell. Most of them were dead now and the survivors would not live long. And much of their knowledge was gone too. The great universities where magicians had studied advanced magic had collapsed, taking their students and teachers with them. Even the remainder of the Zeroes, Tristan included, were dead. The flames already licking through the remains of the city would finish the job.

  Tristan had had his revenge. It had cost him his life, but he’d had his revenge. The empire was broken.

  Helena and I exchanged harsh words as we struggled to flee the collapsing city. The Object of Power had drained the magic over a terrifyingly wide area, leaving me wondering if we'd somehow broken magic itself. We heard strange sounds behind us as we fled, joining thousands of helpless civilians in search of elusive safety. But there was none to be had. By the time we reached the nearest unaffected city, it was clear that the empire was starting to collapse. It had been held in place by magical and military force and now much of that force was gone.

  I didn't tell anyone what had happened, afterwards. It would only have gotten us both killed by the survivors, if they believed us. I remembered enough about farming - and basic blacksmithing - to make a living, once we found somewhere to stay. We stayed out of the civil wars, as best as we could. Helena never took well to the simple life, the restrictions placed on common-born women - and, perhaps, the guilt of knowing what she’d helped do. She took poison two years after the Eternal City fell and the wars began. In truth, she wasn't the only one.

  That, then, is the truth of what happened to the Eternal City.

  People started to forget quickly. The rubble was practically abandoned, strange tales of weird wild magics and dark apparitions scaring away all, but the most determined of fortune hunters. Now, a Zero is a low-level magician, not someone without any link to the magic field. The stories I heard of the city, even a mere five years after the fall, made it sound like a long-lost golden age. And they are right, aren't they? The empire wasn't wonderful, perish the thought. It was still better than the chaos that followed the collapse. The civil wars devastated the continent as surviving officers fought for supremacy. Lacking us, lacking the empire’s magical base, their wars eventually stalemated. By then, millions of people had died.

  I found this place, ten years after Helena died. A young magician hired me to help outfit his home, laying geas after geas on me to ensure I didn't betray him. I didn't tell him that his spells were useless, not that it mattered. I had no intention of betraying him. All I really wanted was to create this chamber, then ward it. The only person who could find it, once I had completed my work, would be another Zero.

  I’m finishing this scroll now, then sealing the chamber. I’ve done things to the mansion, ensuring that a new Zero - and there will be one, sooner or later - will be steered down here and shown the door. I certainly have no intention of returning ...

  There’s nothing I can do about my role in the fall, not now. Tristan fooled me with Helena’s help. If I’d noticed in time, perhaps I would have stopped him. But it is now too late to change anything. I have to live with what I did - and w
hat I failed to do.

  I wish I had something to impart, beyond the notes I’ve hidden here. What use you make of them is up to you. I suggest, however, that you keep the truth a secret. Magicians will not thank you for telling them that they can be deprived of their power in a heartbeat, with the right Object of Power. But that too is up to you.

  Good luck.

  Tyros of the Eternal City.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I sat back in utter shock.

  No magicians? No real magicians?

  It couldn't be right, could it? I’d grown up with magicians. I knew that Alana and Bella and my parents - and everyone else - had power. And yet ...

  “There were duels, once upon a time,” Magister Niven had said. His words echoed in my mind. “Twelve magicians to a side, winner takes all. And the more they cast ... sometimes, the spells weakened for no reason, sometimes the magicians would find it harder to cast newer spells. Everyone thinks there were just too many spells and the different spellforms were interfering with each other. But is that true?”

  I felt cold. It wasn't true. If Tyros was to be believed, there were no true magicians ... just a magic field. Perhaps the demand for magic had been so high that the field had dropped, long enough to make it hard for the duellists to cast spells. And yet ... I’d thought that magicians were trained to cast stronger and stronger spells. Perhaps, instead, they were being taught to absorb, store and manipulate magic from the magic field.