Wizard's Goal

by Alan J. Garner

  Standing unharmed with the immutability of a mountain against the explosion, Maldoch viewed the settling dust with a measure of surprise and murmured, “I never meant to give you that much."

  The Goblin came up off the floor, a wild look in his eyes. Maldoch was for real! The silence of the moment shattered when muffled shouts of confusion and alarm sounded from the adjoining room, followed by fists pounding on the connecting door now blocked by the ruins from the jailbreak. Discovering that the stolid door would not budge, the agitated coppers blew shrilly on their confounded whistles for backup.

  Whirling around, Maldoch tapped his cell door with a finger and smugly watched it topple over, hitting the floor with a resounding clang and puff of dust. Casually strolling over to the locker containing prisoners’ personal effects, he grabbed his and Garrich's belongings. Calling, “You coming, boy, or are you taking up permanent residence?” he ambled out his cell through the hole to freedom

  Garrich scrabbled out over the rubble into a tiny courtyard hemmed in by block walls on all four sides. “Gee, old man, thanks for rescuing me. I never would have made it this far without you,” he wisecracked. “Now what?"

  Thrusting his staff at Garrich, the wizard commanded, “Hang on tight to this, sonny. You ain't seen nothing yet.” Maldoch commenced reciting an incantation, the mumbled words of power more ancient than even the old wizard himself.

  Grasping the staff for all his worth, the Goblin heard a dull roar before the surrounding walls blurred into gray nothingness as an icy draught brushed against his face. Bouncing through the featureless void of Space/Time like a playing globe in a pinball machine, Garrich lost all sense of direction. When the grayness cleared heartbeats later, he and Maldoch were unbelievably ceilinged by a dull overcast pressing down on a limitless plain of windswept grass.

  "Where in Terrath are we?” gasped the astounded youth.

  Screwing up his face, looking up at the swirling clouds, Maldoch pronounced, “I haven't the foggiest idea."

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  Chapter Nine

  The plain seemed endless to Garrich. Lying on his stomach on the grassy slope of a small knoll, he poked his head over the breezy crest to glower at the boundless sea of green stretching from horizon to horizon and the troop of horsemen cantering across it.

  "Stay down!” Maldoch hissed in reproach. “We're not out of the woods yet."

  Frowning, Garrich ducked back down behind the rounded hill. They were well clear of the nearest forest some 300 leagues away to the northeast. The wayward pair had spent the past month dodging patrolling Lancers, taking advantage of the undulations in the rolling grassland. The Stranth was anything but perfectly flat.

  Garrich lolled on his back and grumped, “All this hiding is getting boring."

  "And whose fault is that?” retorted the wizard, resting on his elbows, keeping his hawk-like gaze on the cavalry squad steadily riding south under a blackening sky. Maldoch was not in the best frame of mind. His bones were predicting rain, the fugitives destined for a thorough drenching out on the treeless, unsheltered grassland when the brewing storm did break.

  "I said I was sorry,” Garrich petulantly offered.

  The watchful spellcaster scowled. “Being sorry won't put things right, boy. This is a fine mess you've gotten us into. We're on the run thanks to your stupidity."

  "But you are a wizard, Maldoch. Can't you magic things back to normal?"

  "I'm a spellcaster, not a magician. The folks in Alberion are funnily enough a law-abiding bunch that won't rest until justice is served. You're wanted for murder and I busted you out of jail. Those inconveniences aren't about to go away in a hurry."

  Garrich threw back his hood. Over the weeks the blonde dye lightening his hair had gradually grown out, leaving wispy streaks of yellow running through his black locks. He and Maldoch had barely spoken two words since the breakout and the air between them badly needed clearing. “I was only defending myself,” he mumbled.

  "You're still a cop killer.” Maldoch had not forgiven Garrich for his indiscretion. “Where did you get the knife anyhow?"

  "It belonged to the archer who killed Tylar. I kept it as a trophy."

  "That was macabre."

  "Father said a soldier should never forget the first time he kills. He figured a keepsake was a good way of remembering."

  The wizard gave a snort of disgust. “Soldiers are more superstitious than old washer women!” Maldoch eyed the receding riders and motioned to Garrich once they shrank into dark specks on that emerald background. “On your feet, boy. We've a long way to walk yet."

  "You haven't said where we're heading?"

  "My home."

  "And where's that?"

  "Over 200 leagues that way,’ the irritated wizard muttered, pointing south. “You've totally stuffed up my travel plans, you realize. In all my years never have I been a wanted criminal. A hunted man, for sure, but never a lawbreaking fugitive. And now I'm running in the wrong direction.” Maldoch rose and glared at his unmoving ward. “Are you planning to let the grass grow under your feet all day?"

  Garrich considered his poor, aching tootsies as he got up, adjusting the cumbersome broadsword strapped across his back. “Why don't you just wave your hand and transport us in a flash like you did to spirit me out of Alberion?"

  The vein in Maldoch's temple began throbbing—a sure sign of an impending lecture. “Magic isn't a simple snap of the fingers! Well, not true magic anyway. Spells need to be memorized and then recited verbatim aloud without a single mistake, otherwise they won't work properly."

  "You don't always speak when you're performing magic,” challenged Garrich. “I've seen you wiggle your fingers too."

  "Finger-speak was a silent form of communication for the Ancients and words still have to be formed accurately with it for spellcasting purposes. It's just an unspoken way of talking."

  "Interesting as that is, what has it to do with saving us a few weeks more of legwork?"

  "I'm getting to it. The youth of nowadays have no patience whatsoever. Leapfrogging hundreds, even thousands of leagues over the countryside isn't like a Free Day stroll down to the park. The original teleportation spell was penned ages ago and formulated for short hops, such as from room to room, where the user has a clear idea of his destination and no obstructions. It wasn't meant for transcontinental travel and as such is a hit and miss affair. After dematerialization, your incorporeal self gets bounced off navigational landmarks like buildings and hilltops in a zigzag fashion. It'll plop you down in the general area of choice, regardless of whether the landing is in the middle of a swamp or at bottom of the sea. That spell is reserved for the direst of emergencies and even then only used as a last resort.'

  "We were lucky to wind up here then,” Garrich supposed.

  "Luck schmuck!” rubbished the wizard. “I planned to set us down in the Stranth. I just couldn't be sure exactly where we'd pop in."

  Garrich looked cheesed off. What use was magic if it had limitations? “I guess we go back to walking,” he sighed, shouldering his pack and tramping southwards.

  "That would work if you were going the right way,” mocked Maldoch.

  The boy came to a halt and protested. “You said we're going this way."

  "Yes, but first we travel due west for a few leagues and then turn south."

  Garrich glanced to his right at the foreboding line of crags snaking their way down the southwestern edge of Terrath. “They're the Unchained Mountains,” he deduced.

  "Glad to see your geography is improving,” Maldoch said dryly.

  His confidence boosted, Garrich worked out, “That gap between the peaks out west must be Montaine Divide."

  Shaking his head, the wizard stalked away from Garrich, muttering, “I'm gonna have to get that boy to swallow an atlas."

  The passage splitting the longest mountain range on the continent Maldoch marched towards was in fact Gortal's Cleft, an eighty league wide portal to the inhospita
ble southwest coast. Named for an otherwise unremembered First Epoch seafarer, the cleft was gateway to a contrasting region of bogs and rocks seldom visited by choice and supposedly uninhabited.

  Grudgingly traipsing after the old walker, Garrich was forced to admit, “You sure know your way around the place. How long have you been hiking throughout the land?"

  "Since before the birth of Men,” was Maldoch's astounding reply.

  Unsure whether or not to take that answer at face value, Garrich chose not to comment on it at all.

  Wending their way through one of the hundreds-strong cattle herds meandering across the lush grasslands at will, the pair elicited wary glances from the nervous longhorn beasts which lowed warningly at the two-legged intruders. Garrich returned their mistrust by poking his tongue out at them. Semi-wild cows were an unknown and the sweeping, horned headgear they sported a definite worry.

  "Keep an eye open for outriders,” Maldoch cautioned him. “Though the Strantharians let their horses and cows roam freely, they do post herd watchers to deter bloodstock thieves. We need to avoid them."

  "Do you think they'll have heard of our escape from Alberion?"

  "It's probable. Bad news travels fast. However, they're just as likely to ride you down on the spot."

  "Me?"

  "Did you forget you're a Goblin? They aren't too popular in these parts. Back in Alberion you'd have been given a trial before your interrogation and hanging. Out here, a Lancer will spear you to death without so much as a formal charge being read aloud."

  "They won't find me an easy target,” Garrich said bravely. His training from Tylar Shudonn, plus his body count of three brigands and one constable so far, was giving the young warrior an invincibility complex.

  Maldoch clouted the boy about his pointy ears with the tip of his staff. “And one who stupidly leaves his sword lying around a boarding house like a stick of firewood!"

  "Ouch!” Garrich reacted, rubbing his smarting head. “I didn't think it wise to go sightseeing in the city lugging a massive broadsword around with me. It might have caused me bother."

  "These are dangerous times and Tylar's piece of sharpened steel is more valuable than you'll ever know.” The wizard thrust a bony finger at Garrich. “From now on that sword never leaves your sight, boy. You'll eat, sleep, and shit with it. Are we clear?"

  Garrich actually did not need reminding of that fact. Shudonn made sure early on his charge learnt the lesson that his sword is a soldier's best friend. There would be no repeat of his carelessness. “Is it the same with that staff of yours?” he quizzed the spellcaster. “The walking stick is always by your side."

  Maldoch blinked. Totally unanticipated, the question gentled his temper. “In a way it is,” he admitted. “The staff is an extension of me."

  "Is it magical?” pressed Garrich. “Does it hold a measure of your power?"

  "No, boy, it's just a prop."

  That was not strictly true. Inscribed with a jumble of single-spaced runes carved in unconnected lines along the length and around the girth of the crooked stick, the ancient staff was in point of fact a set of cue cards. With hundreds of spells to remember, Maldoch periodically needed a clue to jog his memory to recall a specific enchantment and his lettered staff gave him such hints. After all, as age increased memory lessened. But there was no way he would confess to a sprog barely out of his nappies that he was becoming forgetful.

  Gortal's Cleft proved to be a week's walk away, Garrich constantly amazed by Maldoch's unending vigor. Whatever the wizard's real age was, he strode fast and tirelessly. They were a third of the way to the pass when on a rain soaked afternoon they encountered the broad paving stones of the Southern Royal Roadway. The major commerce route looked plainly in need of repairs, if the weeds and thistles thrusting up profusely from the uneven flagstones were any indication. Halting within shouting distance of the highway, the resting pair waited out the day in a shallow basin of coarse, knee-high grass, buffeted by the constant wind that was as much a trademark of the Stranth as was its ocean of fodder. Traffic on the road was light and constituted several galloping mail riders preceded by a tax collector's boxy wagon and escorting soldiery. When nightfall dropped with its darkening regularity, boy and spellcaster hurriedly crossed the manmade thoroughfare and continued east.

  "From hereon in we sleep by day and move at night,” Maldoch tersely informed Garrich. “Stranth Tor is less than half a day's ride away and we don't want a horde of thundering Lancers to come swooping down on us."

  Garrich went along with the wizard's skullduggery. Stranth Tor might be an unimposing inky blot on the deep blue of night out north on the expansive flatland, but by day was an intimidating landmark. A dome-shaped slab of red sandstone rearing up out of the green plain like an angry welt, Garrich recalled Tylar's military tutoring that the monolith was a natural, virtually unassailable fortress and home to Terrath's premier cavalrymen. Maldoch elaborated further, saying that the Tor housed the entire Strantharian populace, which was in effect a mini nation itself. Formerly nomadic herdsmen, they had settled and fortified the tower of rock that in time became the cradle of civilization for humankind.

  At the end of the fifth night after crossing the royal byway, boy and wizard reached Gortal's Cleft. Impressively named, the pass looked as if a giant fist had punched a hole through the Unchained Mountains, littering the surrounding country with the rubble. They camped amongst house-sized boulders as the sun peeped over Shieldrock Range far to the east.

  Garrich shivered in the folds of his damp cloak while sitting in hiding amongst the weather-beaten rocks. Having not eaten a hot meal or warmed himself by a fire in weeks soured his outlook. A gust of wind wafted an unpleasant smell past his nostrils and he wrinkled his face in disgust: he had not bathed either. Maldoch had snuck off shortly after daybreak to spy out the lay of the land and replenish their meager supplies. Garrich silently questioned the morality of the wizard's method for obtaining food. He suspected the old rascal was not above stooping to thievery to get what he wanted. When the usual query of why he did not simply resort to magic was put to him, he made the excuse, “The use of magic creates a footprint. The more complex the spell, the bigger the track it leaves. This residue is readable by anyone in the know and can be traced back to the practitioner, like a trail of breadcrumbs. This is why I use magic sparingly. I prefer to keep the cat guessing as to the whereabouts of the bird."

  The foraging wizard reappeared midmorning carting a hunk of cooked meat, two loaves of week old bread, and a waterskin brimming with mare's milk appropriated from who knows where. Garrich sampled the mystery meat and found it to his liking. Maldoch neglected to tell him that the Strantharians celebrated their love affair with the horse by bizarrely dining on horsemeat every so often, ingesting they believed the noble equine traits of spirit and stamina. He figured such knowledge would not aid the boy's digestion.

  That night turned bitterly cold. A baleful globular moon, framed by silver tinged clouds, cast its unheated glow earthwards, turning grass and rocks alike into grayed renditions of their daytime livery. Cursing the lunar brightness, Maldoch decided to risk making the run through the Cleft anyway. Gesturing for silence, the wizard and his Goblin companion stole through the moonlit darkness, completing the unmarked crossing from east to west over the course of two fretful nights, mercifully unseen by unfriendly eyes.

  Daybreak on the other side found the twosome in a broken, tortured land of gravel plains and stark outcroppings of twisted stone. “Rocky Sheer at last,” said Maldoch, actually sounding glad to see the desolate place.

  "What's that god awful smell?” Garrich coughed, gagging on the stench blowing cloyingly on the swirling breeze.

  "The Bog of Solke Dharr—a five hundred league long salt marsh running north up the coast to Trgah Ort. You get used to the stink. Don't worry, boy. We're going in the opposite direction."

  Safely distanced from danger, the hikers resumed day travel and Garrich wished otherwise. At least
the darkness hid the bleak monotony of the boundless rockscape from view. Rocky Sheer proved no improvement at all over the Stranth plains. They had merely swapped grass for stones.

  Maldoch unerringly led the way east for a few more leagues before turning due south, stopping here and there at individual spires of deformed rock inscribed with a faded rune or two. At first Garrich took these to be obscure signposts marking a route through this alien land, but he discovered them to be much more than that. A number of the markers were in fact storehouses for minute caches of dried food and bottled water stashed in scooped out hollows in the base and concealed by a cover stone. They subsisted solely on that tasteless fare once the milk soured and the bread and meat had run out, but after two weeks of mouth-breaking jerky and stale water Garrich could stomach no more. On top of that the nights were growing decidedly colder and there was scarcely so much as a twig to snap let alone fuel a fire with. “How much farther?” he whined.

  "A fortnight, if you don't dawdle,” the wizard answered laconically.

  Garrich slowed to a halt. “It's gonna take that and then some."

  Detecting the defiance in the youth's voice, Maldoch stopped and turned, planting his staff firmly in the shingle. “What's your gripe?” His own tone was one of exasperation.

  "I went to Alberion with you. Now spill the beans on who I am and where I come from."

  The wizard smacked his lips. “Hmm, beans would make a nice change from cured meat."