Wizard's Goal

by Alan J. Garner

  "Most recently, hiding out in Carallord enjoying the armed hospitality of the Dwarfs."

  "How are the Dalcornes?"

  "Maddening as ever. The Highlanders are jittery and for good reason. Our rat of a brother has been up to mischief and swiped the Horn of Dunderoth from the Elves."

  Parndolc whistled. “There's no way the Great North Wall will impede the Goblins now."

  "That's one option they've got."

  "How did you find out? I can't see Terwain volunteering that humiliating information."

  Stretching out on the straw pallet that was his cheap bed and rudely disturbing the resident bedbugs, Maldoch explained. “Our evil brother can't do a single thing discreetly. He sank a ship out in the Murant Basin with a fireball and alerted me in the process. I made a few enquiries and dragged the truth out of Terwain. But that's not why I called."

  "So tell me already. I'm not getting any younger here."

  Maldoch obliged. “Something of note has cropped up in the Codretic Text. It doesn't pertain directly to current happenings, but if I'm right it'll have a marked bearing on Terrathian history in the near future, especially for the Gnomes."

  Parndolc scowled. “Hurry up and reveal what you've uncovered. I'm no good at playing guessing games."

  "Have you got your copy of the Dissension Scroll handy? I need to verify what I've decoded from the Text.’ Drumming his fingers on the dusty floorboards, Maldoch waited impatiently as his brother rummaged through the pigsty that was his tower, ferreting through the mountainous pile of plans and schematics sketched for a variety of fanciful machines cluttering the work desk in his circular room. When Parndolc finally found the roll of parchment he was hunting for, the spellcaster directed him, ‘Look up verse three, line one."

  Donning his spectacles, Parndolc squinted at the spidery lettering of a long dead monk's fastidious penmanship. “Something about, ‘Winged snake born anew',” he puzzlingly made out.

  "Bingo!” exclaimed Maldoch. “That matches perfectly with the piece I nutted out. ‘Cold mother alone wakens from deathly sleep'."

  "Don't keep me in suspense, unless you want me to catch my death.” Parndolc shivered violently and his teeth began to chatter. “What do you think you've found out?"

  "That the Wyverns are somehow going to be resurrected."

  "The Dragons and their lesser kin have been extinct for over two thousand years. I doubt they'll recover from death anytime soon."

  "The prophecies haven't steered us wrong thus far, Parny."

  "There's always room for error."

  "This is why I fully intend dropping by Draesdow Hollow to suss things out after I finish pulling young Holbyant back into line."

  Parndolc rubbed his shaven head thoughtfully. “I'm assuming, since you aren't behind bars, you've resolved that little problem of yours."

  Maldoch looked away guiltily. “Not exactly."

  Leering, Parndolc prodded, “How much is the bounty on your head now?"

  "It's irrelevant."

  Parndolc burst out laughing. “That must be some hefty reward on offer, weatherman."

  "Should be higher. The only good thing to come out of this shameful mess is the fact that Omelchor's meddling has been curtailed for the past few years. He fits my description almost to a tee, so must've had a hard time getting about Anarica unnoticed."

  "That would have gotten his goat."

  "Pays to look on the bright side of things."

  "Hold that thought when you get banged up in Alberion. I never thought we'd have two criminals in the family."

  The spellcaster swallowed that dig without comment. “Where's the boy?"

  "Gone fishing."

  "How's he doing?"

  "Garrich has been asking some very pointed questions about his past."

  "That was expected. You handling it?"

  "For now, but you'll have to fill in the blanks for him and me pretty soon."

  "There's nothing to fill."

  "Come now, Mal. I never for one second bought your tale of finding a baby."

  "Believe what you will. Are you teaching our trainee champion bad habits still?"

  The technical wizard feigned shock. “Whatever do you mean, dear brother?"

  "Have you turned Garrich into a drunkard yet?"

  "Why no, but I have every confidence in him."

  The aura of magicked blue enveloping Parndolc's floating head shimmered with a flicker of purple.

  "What was that?” he barked. The interference was evidently happening on his end too.

  "Shush,” admonished Maldoch, “and I'll find out."

  The static worsened.

  "Folks, please do not adjust your reception,” quipped Parndolc. “We seem to be experiencing minor technical difficulties."

  Maldoch concentrated on debugging his transmission spell and failed. “Parny, we're going to have to cut this short,” he announced.

  "Didn't you pay your magic bill?"

  "Shame all that ale you swill down hasn't drowned your sense of humor. I'll be in touch once I figure out the cause of this disturbance. Watch for trouble."

  "Mal, wait. How are you planning to...."

  The perturbed wizard ended his spell with a curt word of command and laid back pensively on his rude bed. Something, or someone, was interfering with his spell, and the only person in all of Terrath with that kind of power and inclination was his meddlesome nemesis. Omelchor was up to his old tricks again.

  Rising at the crack of dawn the next day, Maldoch was on the road to Dunmarl before the other guests started breakfasting on their bowls of overpriced gruel. Snow rarely fell this far south in Carallord, even in the middle of winter, but hoarfrost whitened the emerald firs of Northwood, thinly crusting puddles on the muddy roadway with ice. Dwarfs were not terribly hot on public thoroughfares, so the highway stayed a barely navigable path of wagon ruts and potholes. Traffic was virtually non-existent at this time of the morning and the striding wizard, cloaked against the bitter cold, progressed southwards unimpeded. By midday, after encountering an increasing number of oxen teams carting trade goods north to the capital, as well as transporting lumber south destined for Anarican mills and shipyards, Maldoch changed tack and took off cross-country through the evergreens populating the vast highland forest.

  His prime motive for doing so was anonymity. Unafraid and uncaring of Anarican law enforcers, the outstanding warrant for his arrest more a hindrance than a menace, the wizard nonetheless needed to return to Alberion incognito. His guise of Sulca useless to him now in the realm of Men, Maldoch resorted to good old-fashioned magic. Penetrating the conifer wood to a patch where the industrious lumberjacks had not yet reduced the majestic pines to forlorn stumps, the spellcaster cagily made his way into a shallow dell about half a league southwest of the unpaved roadway. Thick with frozen dew, the small valley lounged completely isolated from prying eyes beneath its broad-brimmed hat of trees.

  "I've never liked this part of being a wizard,” Maldoch whinged to himself, tucking his satchel and staff into the folds of his robe before hunching over, mumbling a complex incantation as he did so. Five hours later he completed morphing into the animal form the divine powers long ago designated as his.

  Only the genuine spellcasters were gifted—or as they often thought, cursed—with the unique ability to change at will to their ordained creature. It was no light undertaking and performed only in times of extreme necessity when inconspicuousness took precedence over discomfort. The process was painfully slow and hurt like buggery. After all, bones were shrunk and reshaped, fur was grown and feathers sprouted out of bare skin, faces contorted into snouts or beaks. And there was the inevitable change in diet. Those factors aside, it was a miraculous transformation. The trifling matter of clothes and other personal effects worn or carried by the changee posed no problem. All very technical stuff and essentially boring, the spellcaster absorbed all exterior items in the first critical hour of the changeover when his or her form became vulnerabl
y corporeal, possessions restored by the spell's reversal. Ycch! Talk about personal luggage.

  Maldoch the badger was a handsome devil, considering he was cousin to the unredeemable weasel and scurrilous stoat. He sported a thick, coarse coat of silver-grey bristles, strongly clawed ebony feet, and a bushy white tail. His broad muzzle was equally white, with ears and eyes accentuated by bands of jet-black running from his shoulders down to his whiskered nose. At two and a half feet in length and weighing in at around 25 lbs, he was also no pushover in the animal kingdom.

  After spending a few minutes getting used to an extra pair of feet again, Maldoch snuffled his way over the frosty ground. Travel was relatively easy going for the short-legged boar, as conifer forests contained sparse undergrowth of ferns, dotted only with the odd fallen branch or pinecone to obstruct his passage. Gaining familiarity with his reformed body, Maldoch picked up the pace. He had a distance to go before he could resume his true self.

  For the next month, the altered wizard embraced the lifestyle of the animal form he assumed, waddling by night and sleeping during the day, catching mice, voles and the odd rabbit in the ways that badgers do in order to eat. Trudging out of Northwood, his little legs making slow but steady progress, he crossed the grassy flat of Greenheath to enter Anarica by way of Southwood.

  Maldoch was fifteen leagues east of the fortified village of Whillcombe when he shuffled into a hollow amongst the roots of a grandfather oak as daybreak approached. He slept away a drizzly day, emerging to a bracing, dampish evening. Winters were somewhat milder here in this part of Terrath and the wizard-badger made a meal of earthworms drawn to the surface of the soil to drag rotting leaves underground to consume. Maldoch in fact made a pig of himself, scoffing down a couple hundred of the wriggly delicacies. On the lookout for more, voices carrying over the soft patter of weak rainfall brought him up short. Badgers are naturally curious creatures, so Maldoch nosed through the sodden bracken to investigate.

  He came across a squad of disgruntled soldiers making camp under the dripping boughs of a copse of rowan. Too wet to even attempt a fire, the troopers dined on a meal of cold rations before turning early into their bedrolls, which accounted for their grumpiness. Chatter was forced and the undertone an unhappy one. Maldoch slunk forward, taking care to avoid startling their picketed horses. His nose twitched furiously. From the look of their regalia the soldiery were Housecarls, so the pseudo badger eavesdropped on the grumblers with unbridled interest.

  "I don't see why our leave had to be cut short, Corp."

  "Orders are orders, boy. You're in the army. Get used to jumping without being told why."

  "But I had a nice little filly lined up in Lorrens."

  "That's about the only date you could get, Yarrel—with a horse."

  There was a chorus of light laughter at that remark. The butt of the joke retorted with injured pride.

  "She's the baker's daughter and has the finest buns this side of the Midden."

  More laughter, this time quashed by the corporal. “Turn in, lads. We've a fearsomely hard ride ahead of us to reach Bridgewater in less than a week."

  Someone asked, “How come we're going there and not the capital?"

  The commanding soldier shrugged. “Don't question orders, son. Just follow them. All I know is that leave is canceled and we're part of a general recall for off-duty Housecarls. We report to the duty sergeant at Bridgewater on getting there."

  "You think these rumors about strife brewing with the West are true?’ another said.

  "Boys, the Goblins have meant to be coming to butcher our children, rape our women, and cook our dogs since I was a sprog being bounced on my pappy's knee. The Borderlanders have been keeping them at bay for more years than I can count, thrashing them soundly and often. I don't expect they'll be wanting a major hiding from us."

  "I hope not.” It was Yarrel whining again. “I wangled a transfer from the regular army to the Housecarls cos it's a cushier number. Guarding the royals is a lot safer than fighting Westies out on the border."

  "There's been stuff all of that,” a fourth talker joined in. “Me mate with the Bordies reckons he hasn't seen action on the Divide for ten or more years. That's downright strange."

  "Pipe down and get some sleep!” bellowed the corporal. “You misfits are worse than a barnyard of cackling hens. Yarrel, since you kicked off all this gasbagging, first watch is yours."

  "Aw, Corp!"

  "Don't give me any grief. Bandits lurk in these woods. If our horses get stolen I'm gonna saddle you and whip your skinny behind all the way to Bridgewater. The rest of you bed down before you feel the toe of my boot up your own backsides."

  Maldoch snuck away as Yarrel, the picture of misery wrapped in a blanket, commenced sentry duty. Loitering by an alder shrub on the mossy banks of a trickle of a stream, the disguised wizard contemplated what he just overheard. The fact that Housecarls were being yanked off leave and sent outside the capital meant two things: Prince Holbyant was either soon going to be or already at Bridgewater, and that something portentous was in the wind. Maldoch consequently changed his plans, abandoning the trip to Alberion in favor of a new destination. Whatever was set to happen at Bridgewater, the badger intended being there too.

  He stuck to his decision, arriving on the approaches to Bridgewater twenty days after the Housecarls he encountered in the forest had ridden in off the Northern Royal Roadway on their lathered mounts to report in. Growling curses at the slowness of badger feet—Maldoch's journey by mustelid standards was nevertheless extremely speedy—he initiated the laborious enchantment to regain wizard form. Luck was on his side. The redeployment of the Prince's bodyguard paved the way for their monarch's arrival, Lindan's heavily escorted carriage only rolling into Bridgewater four days earlier. Not as late as he thought, the wizard indeed had time to spare to get ready.

  Once back to normal, Maldoch habitually counted fingers and toes, checking also he had no residual tail. Satisfied that every digit and body part was shaped correctly and in its rightful place, including the most important one for men, he pulled his travel-worn boots tight, shouldered his trusty satchel and quickstepped from the shrubby hillocks on to the roadway, his staff moving in time with his feet like a bandleader's baton.

  Bridgewater was exactly what its name implied. Spanning Ohnab Streaming in four graceful arches of brick and mortar, this was the current reincarnation of the spindly timber affair built by Anarican pioneers in the early stages of the Second Epoch during the great western expansion fourteen centuries beforehand. Twice widened in the past 600 years, the present construction bridging the principality's longest river was ranked fifth in the Eight Handmade Wonders of Terrath, the others being, in order of engineering marvels:

  —

  1. Great North Wall

  2. Shibar Dam

  3. Stranth Tor

  4. Ishnal Watchtower

  6. Galinorf Seagate

  7. Foran Dearth Prison

  8. Sprinth Lighthouse—

  Compilers of the list—three men, two dwarfs, and an elf—bickered for nine days over what structures were eligible for inclusion, and of those picked which should be allocated the top three spots according to the scale of building feats. It was no contest really. Dwarfs, widely acknowledged as the finest engineers on the continent, worked without equal as stonemasons, and if the Anaricans were manly enough to admit that fact they would pay homage to the architectural consultants from Carallord who oversaw constructing four of their five entries in the listing. The submission of the Galinorf Seagate was more to placate the representative of Lothberen than out of any respectful recognition of Elven building, though it must be said that the huge undersea gates controlling access to the southernmost port of Illebard was an undertaking only realized through expert project management by highland advisers.

  Greeted by a 300-foot tall, square-sided stone tower forming the gated entrance to the span on the near side of the river, Maldoch gave the edifice the cursory once-
over. It was plainly Dwarf inspired, fronting narrow windows and crowning battlements, the Prince's standard—a golden coronet, flanked by a rearing silver horse and ship set with full sails upon a field of royal purple—flying high from a lofty flagpole. Its exact twin squatted on the far side of the bridge, a mirror image of stone fortitude, identical in every way except for the huge flag depicting a galloping crimson horse on a background of orange-brown fluttering in the stiff breeze from its soaring rooftop. The two structures were linked together by a covered walkway extending a hundred feet above the main roadway, effectively forming a second bridge, albeit with no visible entry or exit point. Pennants snapped from the shingled roof of that covered way, flying the varied house colors and arms of the Anarican nobility—bar one. The family crest of Karavere was conspicuously absent.

  Maldoch's haste was vindicated. The importance of Bridgewater was more than mere access over the Ohnab. For a thousand years it provided a neutral meeting place for the gentry, a spot where they could annually discuss affairs of state in a civilized forum presided over by the Prince of Men. Whilst the two most powerful and rival families in the realm claimed each of the riverbanks—the Holbyants the north, the Coramms the south—the middle ground of the upper bridge was the gallery occupied by the lesser nobles. The flapping rooftop banners let all interested parties know which of the major and minor families was in residence at Bridgewater at any one time.

  Maldoch marched bold as brass up to the mouth of the tower and got no further. Housecarls and regular army stood limiting the flow of horse and foot traffic south over the bridge, creating a queue of stalled wagons, fidgety horses, and cranky people. Security was understandably tight, considering the cream of Anarican gentry was housed within. The old vagabond unobtrusively joined the end of the line, attempting to blend in. He did not have much joy doing that either, attracting the suspicious glance of a mounted officer nosing over the column like a hawk scouring the countryside for rabbits. A six-foot wizard sporting a knee-length beard of snow white and carting about a rune-inscribed staff is a little hard to miss!