by Greg Curtis
First though he had to find the right spell. Not the exact spell he needed. Just one that was a close approximation to what he wanted. After that he would experiment with it. It might not get him back – not immediately anyway – but at least it was a start.
For the first time in days, he felt a new emotion running through him: Hope.
Chapter Ten
Things were a mess in the study. The two great roll top desks were covered in piles of books and scrolls, most of them looking as though they had been haphazardly tossed there. Still more were on the floor, covering the thick rugs. Some had probably fallen there from the desks. Others had clearly been thrown down when her grandfather hadn't found whatever he was looking for. Carrie found that strange. Her grandfather had never been one to mistreat books.
But it was the same throughout the rest of the house. The entire ground floor, save for the front parlour where they would meet guests, and her chambers, was slowly turning into a trash heap. The library right beside his office was in chaos with absolutely nothing where it was supposed to be. It seemed that her grandfather had got into the habit of not returning anything to its shelf when he was done. He just pulled them down, read what he wanted, and then dropped them on the floor afterwards. As a result, there were now three walls of floor to ceiling book shelves that had nearly been emptied out, with the books being left piled up at their base. He'd even piled books on top of the gas lamps placed by the easy chairs. Carrie was horrified by that. It could start a fire and burn the house down!
The laboratory was worse. It stank from something that had been burnt. She didn't know what he had been trying to create, but he'd emptied out the entire stock of herbs and ingredients as he'd formulated potion after potion. Many of those potions were still sitting on the tables, abandoned part way through their enchantment, and going bad. More were smeared over the walls as he'd apparently hurled the vials around when he'd grown frustrated with whatever he'd created.
And then there was the workshop! She didn't know what he'd been tinkering with in there. All she knew was that at some point a few days before she'd been woken from her sleep by a gigantic explosion, and when she'd arrived it had been completely destroyed. The structure of the house was still solid thankfully, but every wall would have to be re-plastered. The ceiling too. As for the floor, it needed to be rebuilt.
Now he'd moved on to his study.
“Grandfather!” Carrie was growing increasingly bothered by her grandfather's manner. And it wasn't just his recklessness. In the week since the disaster in Edrick's home, he'd almost become a different man. A stranger to her. Even to himself. His madness had changed. Matured perhaps, into something new. Something that made even less sense than what had been.
“What child?” He smiled at her absent-mindedly as he searched the shelves in his study for something. “I'm sorry but I really don't have a lot of time. I have to work on this spell.”
“No. You don't! You have to prepare for the hearing of the Guild.” She tried once more to make him see reason. “They're going to try you. And they're going to find you guilty of bringing the Guild into disrepute. After that the gods alone know what they're going to do!”
And that was what scared her. In theory the Guild was only there to hear the complaints laid about one of their members. Complaints laid by another wizard. It had no power to do anything more than perhaps admonish or even censure a member. It wasn't a court of law. But theory had nothing to do with what was coming she feared. Her grandfather had attacked Lord Ironbelly! The King's Right Hand. And the Lord was angry. It was an affront to him and the realm.
Her grandfather had also killed a nobleman. And he had done so without cause. There would be consequences. By and large the King and his court left wizards alone. They could be useful at times and most of the rest of the time were harmless. So there was an understanding that wizards could do as they wished so long as they didn't make too many problems. Killing a noble – a Lord in fact – was a problem. A big problem.
Now justice would have to be done. As much as the Guild wanted to be just a body that dealt with the academic matters of their members, they would have to act in this case. Lord Ironbelly was sure to speak to the King. Carrie had no doubt that King Durhan would react. The Guild would find itself either having to severely discipline one of their members and render him safe, or be pushed aside and allow one of their members be tried in open Court. They couldn't allow that. So they would have to try her Grandfather themselves and they couldn’t be seen to be lenient. They had to show the King that they were serious about keeping their members in order. Carrie dreaded finding out just how far they would go to appease an angry king.
“Oh hush, child. Whatever it is it'll all blow away. These things always do, you know.” He kept searching the shelves for whatever he was missing, before finally concluding that it wasn't there. “Now, have you seen my copy of Ardoun's Elements of Advanced Enchantment? I can't find it anywhere.”
He smiled at her as if she was still a child worrying about a little rain. Reality seemed to have no place in his world any longer. Only his precious missing spell book.
“No, it won't go away! You injured fifteen people. Five of them badly. You attacked the King's Right Hand, Lord Ironbelly. That will be seen as an affront to King Durhan himself. You also attacked the Guild's wizards and three of them are still with the healers. And you murdered a wizard! A lord! grandfather, this isn't going to go away!”
That last really hurt. Not just because she liked Edrick – had liked him. But because his death was in part her failure. She still had memories of him flying through the air, trailing smoke and flames. Sometimes the memory troubled her dreams.
If only she had told Edrick how bad her grandfather was growing. How deep his hatred of Edrick had become. But she hadn't. She'd thought her grandfather could control himself. Or that if he didn't, she could stop him from doing anything dangerous. Reason with him. Instead he'd completely overcome all her attempts to stop him. He hadn't been able to be stopped by anyone.
“Murdered someone?” He stared at her in surprise. “Who? I would never murder anyone! I'd think I'd remember if I had!”
“Edrick! You killed Edrick! He was a good man. A good wizard. He was helping to support the Argani who you kidnapped and stranded here. And you struck him with a blast of lightning and then dropped a shed on him.”
“Edrick?” A puzzled expression crossed his face. “Who's that child?”
“The wizard you murdered.” Carrie told him for the hundredth time.
“Don't be silly child. I don't know any Edrick. How could I have killed someone I don't know?”
Carrie let out an exasperated groan. She knew he was telling the truth. He simply didn't remember who Edrick was or what he'd done. It was as though that entire part of his mind had gone. Been washed away somewhere. But that wasn't going to help him when the trial began.
“Now, let me concentrate on what really matters. My spell. And where is my book? I really do need it.” Suddenly his face darkened and his smile vanished. “You haven't let that scoundrel Errans in the house, have you? You know he can't be trusted. And it would be just like him to steal something I need. He's jealous you know.”
“No one's been in the house, Grandfather.” That was true. With the house in such a state she wouldn't dare let anyone in. Not to see what it had become. This was supposed to be a grand house. The closest thing to a mansion in Coldwater. They had servants and magic. That is, they had had servants. However, one by one the servants had left as her grandfather’s actions had increasingly imperilled their lives. Now it more closely resembled a shack. A three-story shack. She didn't want to live in it. But who else would take care of her grandfather? He was driving everyone away. Even the cook had fled and she had only come once a day.
She tried to keep up with the cleaning on her own. But lately it had been almost impossible as her grandfather made a mess faster than she could clean it, and destroyed everything in his vic
inity. This last week it almost seemed that he had been on a mission to level the entire house. Meanwhile she was still trying to deal with the Argani – mostly by providing them the silver they needed to build their new homes – fend off the angry demands of the Council, and the endless demands from the Guild for information.
“And yet my book's gone. Someone had to take it! Books don't just run away by themselves you know. And Errans always was a piss pot!”
“Perhaps you lost it? Or perhaps it's been shelved in the library by accident.” She had to stop him before he started a new feud with another wizard, Carrie realised. Especially a Guild wizard who was going to be hearing his trial in another week. This had all the makings of another disaster.
“I have never lost a book in my entire life child.” He puffed out his chest and stood up as straight as he could, as if horrified she could have even suggested such a thing. “And I don't misplace them either. That book should be on my shelves. The fact that it isn't means that someone's taken it! It has to have been Errans. Once again he’s trying to thwart my studies out of jealousy. He never could stand the fact that I was so much better than him.”
“It wasn't him. It was me,” Carrie abruptly blurted out, trying to put a stop to her grandfather’s line of thinking. “I gave the book to Edrick.” Had she given him the book? She didn't know. She might have if it had been one of the books in her grandfather's study.
“You child?” He stared at her, confused for a moment. But then he seemed to come to an understanding. “Of course it isn't you, bless you dear. I know you want to protect Errans but that would be wrong. His jealousy has grown completely out of control. Or maybe it was that cow Yolande? She's always been upset with me since I married my wife. And who is this Edrick you keep talking about? A friend of yours?”
Carrie gave up then and collapsed into one of the leather-bound chairs in the study and buried her face in her hands. It was starting again. The paranoia. Now that Edrick was gone, he had been forgotten, and her grandfather had found a new target – Master Errans. But there was nothing she could do about it. He simply didn't listen to her. He didn't listen to anybody save whatever voice he was listening to in his head.
“I should write a letter to the Guild, outlining his criminal actions.”
“Master Errans is on the Guild Council,” she told him tiredly. “He's one of the ones who's going to be hearing your trial in a week and a half.” He knew that. She'd told him so many times. Was that why he'd suddenly started focussing his paranoia on the wizard?
“What trial dear?”
“By the gods!” Carrie wanted to cry. She wanted to shout and scream at him. She wanted to do anything that would get through to him. But there was simply nothing she could do. He had it in his head that Master Errans had stolen his book, and that was the only thought he was capable of holding. What if he accused Master Errans of the theft at his trial? Carrie shuddered at the thought. If he did she had no doubt it would lead to a guilty verdict. They wouldn't even need to finish the trial.
But in truth he was guilty. Everyone knew that. Even she knew it. The whole tribunal of wizards who would be hearing the case had been there and witnessed what he'd done. But even if he wasn't found guilty of murder since he was too crazed, and in fact he wasn't even being charged with the crime according to the papers she kept receiving, he would be found guilty of bringing the Guild into disrepute. He had attacked the King's Right Hand after all. Lord Ironbelly was demanding justice. And that meant finding her grandfather guilty. The Guild would not defy him. Especially not when their own members had been attacked.
The question wasn't what the verdict would be. It was what punishment they would render. Because simply censuring him wouldn't be enough. Not for attacking the King's Right Hand and killing a lord.
They were going to hang her grandfather. And he just didn't care!
Chapter Eleven
The roof had been fixed. The brazier too. And against all the odds even the shed had been fixed. And that was after he'd chopped it up into kindling.
“Fixed” though was perhaps the wrong way to describe it. Because none of them had been patched or repaired. None had had their broken parts replaced. Rather, they had all been returned to their previous, perfect condition as if the damage had never happened.
It was something he still couldn't believe he had done. After all there was magic in the world – and it was wondrous. But this had seemed like something more than mere magic. Surely this spoke of the power of the gods themselves!
Perhaps most incredible of all he had repaired a plum tree. It had been snapped like a twig and was fit for nothing more than the fire, and yet there it now stood, looking tall and proud and bursting with ripe fruit. Edrick still didn't understand how he’d done it. Magic could not conquer death. That was one of the most ancient understandings of it. And the tree had been dead. Broken in half. Yet here it stood once more; alive and healthy.
Magic had limits. Everything had limits. He had known that ever since he had first come in to his magic and its laws had been explained to him. So, he knew he could slow time but not stop it, let alone reverse it. He could contract space, but not so far as to make it disappear entirely. He could connect worlds through a portal or even a gate, but could not make them one. And above all, he knew that magic could not conquer death. It could not bring the dead back to life; only preserve the lives of the living. And yet the spell he had found in the old wizard's journals that had wrought these amazing changes did not seem to be affected by these limits.
Now, with this spell he thought he might just be able to get himself back to Riverlandia. Instead of having to start searching for another gate, he could simply repair this one. Repair it even though nearly all of the material that had originally been part of the gate no longer existed.
He had been lucky to find the spell. Up until then he’d been planning on simply taking the steam wagon and heading off in search of other gates. It had seemed the only real answer to his problem after all his attempts with the portal spells had proven unsuccessful. But he hadn't wanted to leave before he was fully fit. So he'd stayed and continued to read. And then he'd found this spell in Wilberton's journals.
Edrick had to wonder where Wilberton had found the spell. Edrick had not only never learnt the spell – though that was true of a great many spells – he'd never actually heard of the spell. And he would have thought that a spell that could restore anything back to its pristine condition, would be a spell everyone would at least be aware of. Every wizard anyway.
But then Wilberton had been a great wizard. Edrick kept forgetting that. He kept seeing the argumentative, rambling old man with the crazed look in his eyes and forgetting that once he had been one of the greatest wizards who had ever lived. Before the onset of senility, he had studied and researched and learned every spell there was to learn. He had spent years and even decades doing nothing more than mastering his craft. In that time he had undoubtedly discovered a great many things others didn't know. This spell of perfect restoration was clearly one of them.
And now Edrick knew the spell – and it was time to use it
Edrick set himself in front of the crater where the gate had stood, preparing himself. Focusing intently, he first rehearsed the words – or rather the sounds – in his head, and concentrated on the gestures, even while trying to put out of his mind just how important this was. He had to get it right. He could not afford to be distracted. That could lead to a disaster. Mostly distraction led to nothing but failure. A misspoken word or imprecise gesture causing everything to come to nothing. But sometimes as everyone in Coldwater had found out to their cost these past few years, it led to something far worse, a catastrophic casting. Something with unintended consequences. Who was to say that the Argani hadn't been brought to Coldwater by this very spell misspoken? Or that miss-speaking it might have caused the green? Or the damned ducks? He could not allow that to happen again.
Still, this was his best chance at getting
back to Riverlandia. And having now used the spell a few times he knew some confidence that he would do it perfectly. Why should it not go as perfectly as it had before?
Edrick cleared his thoughts as best he could. Pushing aside any distractions, he rehearsed the spell again and again, until he was certain he had it completely perfect in his thoughts. Then he turned his attention to the crater where the gate had once stood and began.
“Tenda mi nar …”
He began, letting the words – though he was sure these days that they weren't actually words – roll off his tongue. Concentrating on the sound, the rhythm and the cadence. Moving perfectly in harmony with the words as his body seemed to know the gestures. Every sound and every gesture had its correct place. Once more the magic flowed perfectly from him. It was a long and complex spell, but once a wizard had learned the spell, it became fixed in his mind. It was like knowing the plot of a story, so that once you began reading it, you would always know where it ended. There were – or there should be – no surprises.
It was a powerful spell. He could feel the magic swirling around him as he cast. So much magic, all of it needing to be shaped into the order he wanted. It required more magic than he had ever known in any other spell. This was not the spell a minor wizard such as he should cast. And yet it still flowed as easily as it had every other time. It just took a little longer to put it all together. Like building a castle rather than a house.