by Ron Collins
He stood in the room’s quiet stillness, then. Alone again. He had no plan. No direction. His sense of isolation was staggering. A few days ago his life had actually been happy. He realized that now. Just a few days ago he had been with Alistair, and, of course, with the rest of Alistair’s apprentices. He hadn’t realized until now just how much he enjoyed being in something akin to a family. He hadn’t realized exactly how happy he had been.
Garrick shouldered his bag to the floor and threw the blanket on the mattress.
The rattle of the gambling wheel reverberated up through the floor slats.
He remembered the excitement of watching games when Alistair had first brought him to Caledena, and his fingers went to his pouch. The coins there were hard and cold. Their edges were sharp.
Could he win enough to pay Dontaria Pel-An?
What did he have to lose?
Nothing. He had nothing to lose.
And if he did win, well, that would go a long way toward solving his problems. A wave of certainty came over him. Perhaps it was his stubbornness kicking in, or maybe it was the voices of Sjesko still speaking to him, but he found it impossible to be morose for long.
He was still Garrick, still a fighter.
And he had to do something.
A wave of energy rolled over him as he stood. Yes, he thought. He had to do something.
Chapter 4
The gaming floor smelled of stale tobacco and the residue of tallow lamps that burned throughout the nighttime. The clatter of the dragongriff ball called to Garrick as he descended the stairwell. Five men and a woman stood around the table, watching as the wheel spun.
The woman was short. She wore traveling breeches and a blouse frayed at the neck. Garrick stepped between her and an older man who was thin and frail, and whose face was deeply lined. A small copper coin and a few bristling hairs darkened the ear of this older man, the coin placed there, Garrick assumed, for luck.
The croupier was as large as a bear and nearly as hairy. A pair of daggers jutted from a sheath at his belt.
Across the table, three others leaned in to watch the ball run along its track.
The old man pleaded. “Griffin,” he whispered, rubbing a tattered rag between his thumb and fingers so hard Garrick thought the cloth might catch fire. “Give us a griffon.”
There was pain here. Loneliness. There was a liver gone bad of drink.
He thought Sjesko’s energy would be drawn to this pain, but something about this man felt wrong—he lacked something Garrick could not place.
The ball of bone jumped across the wheel.
“Dragon seven,” the croupier announced, placing new coins before the woman and another man across the table.
The second winner was a younger man, probably Garrick’s age—thin, with dark eyes and darker hair cut short. He wore a mustache that looked like a wooly worm with leprosy. As he gathered his winnings into a tighter pile over the dragon square, the young man gave the croupier a playful glare and called out “Play on!”
“Place your bets,” the game master grumbled, his voice deep enough Garrick could feel it in his chest.
Mustache gave Garrick a toothy smirk. “Draw your sword or run, my friend,” he said.
“I don’t run,” Garrick replied. He stacked two copper on the square labeled “Dragon.”
“That’s what I like to see,” Mustache said, his expression expanding to a full smile. “Follow me and you’ll be fine.”
The old man slipped a coin onto the dragon box, too.
The ball traveled around the wheel.
“Dragon,” the old man whispered, rubbing the cloth and closing his eyes in another prayer. “Give us a dragon.”
Garrick brushed the man’s shoulder, and the essence of Sjesko’s life force finally swelled in response. Its sweetness was pleasant against the backdrop of stale tobacco. This energy was different from the flow that came from the plane of magic in the same way that an ocean is different from a river. It rose and fell on its own. It shifted and roiled with never-ending motion. The traditional magic that Alistair taught came in a single vein that could be restrained with the gates and locks a mage created from his own sense of control and discipline. But Braxidane’s magic ran wild. Braxidane’s magic flowed with inner power. It needed. It yearned. It rose up against his gates as if they were toys to be played with or as if they were distant mountain to be climbed and explored. Braxidane's magic seemed to actually be excited at their discovery.
Could he mix these two powers, he thought as the ball rolled—was it possible?
Now was not the time to experiment, but perhaps he would try it later. Perhaps tomorrow he would leave the city and go someplace where he could be alone to work on it. The ball slipped down the bowl and circled in oblong loops.
Without conscious thought, Garrick found himself molding life force around the dark disease that permeated the man’s liver. When he completed his work, the cancer was no more.
The ball clattered into a well.
The old man clenched his fist in victory.
“Dragon two,” the croupier called. He tossed coins toward Garrick and the rest of the winners.
Mustache smiled and stood taller.
“I told you,” he said, looking at Garrick. “Follow me and you’ll soon be rich.”
“Place your bets,” the croupier said.
Coins rattled. Garrick picked up two of his four coppers to place them back into his bag.
“Pulling lucky money off the table?” Mustache said.
Everyone stared at him.
“I don’t need you to tell me how to play,” Garrick replied as he firmly slid all four of his coins to a different box on the grid.
“Griffin five,” he said.
Mustache’s eyes sparkled.
Garrick would win only if the ball fell into griffin five—not just any griffin slot. For the added risk, the bet paid off twenty times rather than a mere doubling.
“Well played, sir,” Mustache said. He slid his own pile to the same griffin box that housed Garrick’s bet. “This time we’ll see where your lead takes us.”
Garrick smoldered, feeling somehow belittled.
The rest of the players placed their bets, and the croupier rolled the ball. “Griffin,” the old man said, rubbing his cloth again. “Give us a griffin.”
The ball clattered over empty wells to fall into a basin.
“Griffin five,” the croupier said.
The players gasped and cheered.
“Well done, my friend. Well done,” Mustache said.
“Follow me and you’ll be fine,” Garrick replied.
The croupier’s nostrils flared. “Something’s not right,” he said, glaring at Garrick, then the Mustache.
“What do you mean?” the old man asked.
The croupier put his hands on the table. His forearms were like the trunks of oaks.
“I got no complaint against travelers stepping to the table and winning twice, but I draw the line when they stink of sorcery.”
The old man gasped. The woman stepped swiftly backward.
“What do you have to say for yourself, wizard? You reek of Torean waste.”
“I used no sorcery on your game, sir.”
“He’s won fair and square,” Mustache piped up from across the table.
“Fair and square my arse,” the croupier said, keeping his gaze on Garrick. “The two of you walk in here a few minutes apart and start to winning. A minute later there’s sorcery in the air. I don’t like what that suggests.”
“Are you calling us both cheaters?” Mustache said, his jaw jutting at a severe angle.
The croupier stood taller and crossed his arms to expose his daggers. “Perhaps you are not as unintelligent as you appear. I think it best the two of you leave.”
Garrick nodded.
“Not until we get our winnings,” Mustache argued.
“I said I think it best the two of you leave.” The croupier’s hands shot forward
, grabbed them both by the collars, and pulled them near. “Do you understand?”
Garrick gave Mustache a sideways glance. A surge of life force let him know he could remove himself from the croupier’s grip with barely a moment’s thought, but he didn’t want to draw that kind of attention.
“We’ll take our original stakes and leave,” he said.
The croupier released his hold.
“That’s better.”
Garrick scooped up his coins.
Mustache did the same.
Garrick stalked out the door, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. He was mad now, humiliated at having been accused of cheating, and upset because he had no idea of what to do next.
“Hey,” Mustache said behind him.
He didn’t stop.
“Wait,” Mustache called, dodging foot traffic to catch up.
Garrick kept walking.
“That was fun.” The young man hustled along beside him.
“You have a strange definition of fun,” Garrick replied, still walking.
“You really shouldn’t have brought magic into the game, though. That’s really dangerous business.”
“I didn’t.”
“You don’t have to jink with me. I smelled it. That’s why I followed you. I would have put everything I had on griffin five, but that would have been way too obvious. Not that it mattered in the end.”
Garrick stopped.
“Look—I didn’t do anything. I needed to win there. I needed it, you understand? And you completely destroyed any chance of that happening. I’ve got no idea what I’m going to do with the rest of this colossally unpleasant day, but I know for certain it won’t include hanging around with a hustler who wouldn’t know sorcery if it bit him in the backside.”
Mustache smirked. “Do you know you get red when you’re angry?”
Garrick glared, then disappeared into the crowded city streets.
Chapter 5
Garrick lay still on the dry reed mattress and strained his ears, his attention snapped to focus on a single point.
It was nighttime. Pitch dark.
The sound was a creak of some kind, the sound of wood being stressed against wood.
Was it a footstep?
Despite the hour, Garrick’s life force kept him awake. His mind had been resting, though, dancing on that line between lucid thought and dream. Muffled cheers rose from the gaming room below, mixing with the energy of Sjesko’s villagers in random ways that was finding interesting.
His energy sensed each person below, caressed them. He knew them in ways that were at the same time distant and more intimate than seemed proper. The essence of their lives was a constant churn of imagery and emotion that boiled up to make him feel like a voyeuristic god.
But that noise, that churn, that grind of humanity. It had all stepped aside for just the briefest of moments to let him focus on this one sound.
It was, he decided, a footstep.
A footstep that creaked outside the door.
Then, slowly, another.
He remained still in the darkness, his mind startlingly clear.
A shadow passed through the line of light under the door. The faint odor of blood drifted into the room.
Koradictine wizardry!
He sat up in a controlled motion, grabbed his dagger and stood quietly.
The floor was cold against his bare feet.
He padded in silence across the room and put his back against the wall, assuming now that surprise would be to his advantage. The door would open to the right. His assailant was to the left. Whispers of spell work came from the hallway. An acidic smell rose and suddenly Garrick felt like he had swallowed cotton. Sweat broke over his forehead. His vision swam.
Poison vapor!
This was no time to wait.
Garrick put his head down and crashed through the door, swinging his knife toward the unseen spellcaster as he fell into the hallway. The blade hit something, and the Koradictine gave a yelp of pain. Garrick rolled, then rose to a crouch and waved the blade blindly before him.
The Koradictine wore a red robe that reflected a vivid sheen in the lamplight's guttering shadows. The mage held his arm gingerly where the knife had found its mark, but pointed his other hand toward Garrick.
A red shaft flew at him.
Garrick ducked, and the bolt scorched the wall above.
A glut of life force rose inside. Magic ran through his mind. He needed time to think, but the Koradictine tossed another string of fire down the hallway.
In desperation, Garrick flung the dagger. It went wide of the mark, and the Koradictine was quickly able to cast another spell, this one taking Garrick in the thigh.
The pain was immediate and abrupt. He fell against the wall, screaming. His heart pounded, and he almost had to will himself to breathe.
The Koradictine’s grin turned ugly as he blocked Garrick’s path to the stairwell and prepared another magic.
An oil lamp sputtered on a shelf above. Garrick grabbed it by the base and tossed it at the mage. Its glass hood shattered, and tongues of flame spewed forward to catch the corner of the mage’s robe.
The Koradictine yelled and batted at it with both hands.
Garrick launched himself forward, doing his best to ignore the stabbing pain from his thigh. He ducked his shoulder to push the Koradictine into the wall. A shard of broken glass sliced his foot as he ran past, but Garrick ignored it, too, as he tumbled to the end of the hallway and scrambled pell-mell down the stairs.
A wall of heat and stale human sweat met him as he descended.
Every head in the gaming room turned his way.
The old man from this afternoon stood at the bottom of the stairwell, his mottled face gazing upward in anticipation. His expression fell, and a truth clicked into place—this man had sold Garrick to the Koradictine, he had succumbed to temptation and taken whatever small bounty there was on Garrick's head.
So much for good deeds.
Garrick had no time to waste, though. His foot left a bloody trail as he limped across the room, pushed through the swinging doors, and made his way to the street.
“Stop him!” the Koradictine yelled as he came to the top of the stairs, but Garrick was already gone.
A pair of drunks cursed at him as he ran through the dirt-lined street, and ducked into a black alley. Two rapid turns brought him to a shadow-draped alcove. He pressed himself to the wall and caught his breath before reaching down to remove the remaining shard of glass from his foot. Blood welled from the cut, and the pain was suddenly intense.
The Koradictine came to the mouth of the alley, and Garrick pressed himself more tightly into the shadows.
“Taroth?” the mage called as he wandered closer.
“I am here,” an amused voice replied from near Garrick’s hiding place.
A dark form emerged from the shadows, his gaze obviously on Garrick’s position. This second man wore a cape with its hood drawn back. His dark clothes merged with the nighttime to make him one with the alley. But he held up a ghostly finger, crooked into the shape of a fishhook. The sleeve of his robe slid down one arm, exposing a triangular scar that marked him as Lectodinian.
The robe was blue.
“If this is the best the Koradictines can do,” Taroth said, “then my order is in no trouble.”
The Koradictine stepped into the alley opposite the Lectodinian.
Garrick was trapped between them. Life force flared within as his gaze darted to each of his captors. Life force flared within him. He tried to fight it down, tried to focus on his link to the plane of magic and bring up spell work he knew he could control, but his anxiety ran free and he could not bring the proper discipline to his mind.
Concentrate.
Garrick could hear Alistair’s direction from across time.
“I’ll show you how this is done,” the Lectodinian said.
Garrick panicked.
As he set his links, Sjesko’s energy burned in
his mind. He twisted his finger to set his spell’s focal point, and the gate opened—too soon, he thought—the spell points were not yet finished, yet magestuff poured forward and met an equal tide of Braxidane’s wilder magic. Exotic aromas of heat and steam slammed together. Power exploded in his chest. He felt the two mages more than he saw them.
Garrick spread his arms wide, palms open, one facing each mage. Then he clenched his hands into tight fists and let loose blasts of energy that lit up the alley with a blue-white strobe.
The air sizzled, and the honey-ripe smell of Garrick’s sorcery grew thick.
He breathed the night air through every pore of his body.
The mages’ screams combined into a single anguished tone, and they flew backward as if each had been punched by a great battering ram, their eyes bulging, their faces contorted with expressions of pain-filled terror.
Then, for one of those pure half-seconds, everything was perfectly silent.
Garrick sensed the life force of both mages separate from their bodies to float free to hang in the alleyway. Waiting.
He wanted to eat that power. He wanted to take it.
He wanted to breathe it in, just as he had breathed in the energy of the villagers before. But the power of Sjesko still burned inside him, and even with these last exertions the weight of that power was still too large, it still filled him beyond the point of need. He was sated, and his dark power was still unable to absorb more. He left the two souls alone to seep back into the fabric of the world like rain water soaking into ground.
Sounds of the night trickled back to his senses.
Footsteps. Distant voices. Perhaps music.
He glanced both ways and saw holes twice the size of the mages burned into the walls behind where they had once stood, the edges of these marks still flickering with flame.
He stared at his hands, eyes wide.
Garrick had never seen anyone cast such a spell, not even Alistair.
He gazed first one direction then the other, his mind taking in the full meaning of the two bodies. Torean wizards who killed mages of the orders rarely lived long thereafter. He had to get out of Caledena. He had to get his things now, and he had to leave.