Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

Then, with a crack that could be heard for many leagues, Master Vant released the shape, sending it screaming up to the gate where it attached itself like a constrictor to the four pillars and bound them to the stone floor above them. It was perfectly shaped Marjan saw, every single bump and hollow in the stone matched perfectly by the magic, and the pillars themselves, more than just bound to the floor. It was almost as though they had been set in stone themselves. It was a masterpiece of magic, the sort of spell that would be remembered for centuries.

  “The first lock is in place.” One of the sylph made the announcement and immediately drew a round of smiles and relieved breaths. It was only the start, but still it was a start, and that was important. Even Marjan risked a small smile, though his heart was still pounding away. The first spell had been cast, and a grid of pure force, a rigid web of magic ensured that the pillars could not move. They were bound into place with the combined magic of over a hundred powerful spellcasters, and if they couldn’t move then the theory ran that the gate could not be opened. The lock had in fact been locked again.

  Next he knew would come the sealing, the filling of the entire gate with molten rock, turning it into a solid piece of mountain and in effect burying it. By the time that was done the gate would not only be unable to be opened even if someone had a key, it would be inside the mountain itself. And then last would come the levelling as hundreds of mages and wizards and other spellcasters, transformed the upside down mountain into a lake of molten rock. When that was done, not only would the gate be permanently locked, but it would be buried under a quarter of a league of solid stone, permanently hidden from the sight of anyone foolish enough to be seeking the dark wizard’s tomb, and lost. Should any ever try to open the gate they would first have to find it somewhere within a mountain of stone, and then dig it out somehow before somehow breaking the binding, and no single wizard had that sort of knowledge or strength. No small group either. It would take the resources of at least as many masters as had created it in the first place, and there was no way the dark wizard’s followers could be that powerful.

  For the first time Marjan knew a measure of hope that the plan would work perfectly and that the threat would be forever dealt with, until he heard the magic scream.

  “What was that?” He asked even as he suddenly understood that he didn’t want an answer. He already knew the answer. The first spell, the shaped binding of force was somehow twisting. He could feel it almost unravelling, even from a third of a league away, and so could everyone else. The spellcasters were all standing there, staring at the portal so high above them, wondering what was happening, and a few of them, the quickest, were slowly turning pale. They knew something was going wrong.

  “Who’s doing that? Find him.” Master Argus was quick to understand that someone had to be doing it, reshaping the magic after it had been shaped, but slow to understand who. Marjan on the other hand knew the whom from the very first moment he felt the magic twisting. It was the dark wizard himself.

  “It’s Qua’thor. He has meta-magic.” He told them the grim news even as he tried to slow his heart beating, tried to stop the guilt and terror from taking hold of him, and tried not to feel like the fool he was, they all were. The gate was physical, it had no magic, and he knew as he felt the first powerful spell twisting and unravelling, there was a reason for that. Qua’thor had meta-magic, he could take another’s spells and make them his own, and they had foolishly just given an ancient wizard the tools he needed to break free when they had brought so much magic to just within his reach. In short they’d done the very thing they’d tried not to and released him.

  “Stop him!”

  “No!” Marjan had to stop them before they did something else even more stupid and going directly against the dark wizard was death, if you were lucky. “You can’t cast against him. Every spell you use becomes his.”

  It was the plain unvarnished truth, and yet it still left them with nothing. They couldn’t use their magic against the dark wizard. No wonder he’d been such a nightmare. His gift was rare to the point of almost unknown, less than one person in a century was born with the gift, and they had no true power in themselves, only in the presence of other spellcasters, but still that made them the strongest of them all, and a nightmare for the wizards of the day. Qua’thor had to be stopped another way.

  But how?

  There was a sound then, an ominous crack that seemed to come from above, and when they turned to look up at the gate, it was to see an entire upside down mountain, seem to crack and fracture like an egg under someone’s foot, before whole chunks of it began falling away. Then as the cracks spread outward in all directions, it was the whole mountain that began falling on their heads.

  “Bear fangs!” Marjan saw the disaster unfolding in front of him almost as though it was happening under water, and the sense of dread that gripped him was almost overwhelming. But he simply didn’t have time to be overwhelmed, and even as he could see the gate so far above them somehow opening, the wizards spell of force being reworked so that it was actually widening the entire gate, he could see the first deadly missiles coming for them, and raised a shield of force, to block the mountain of rocks falling down on top of them. The entire mountain.

  “With me.” He screamed the command as loud as he could and it seemed to get through to some of them, those that weren’t completely paralysed with fear. Quickly others joined him, instinctively adding their strength to his, and soon the shield was as powerful as anything he’d ever known, and that was good when it had to be. It wasn’t hundreds of rocks falling on them, it was millions, some as large as castles, and their weight would be immense, and if even a single one got through they’d likely all be crushed. But in his heart Marjan knew it was still nowhere near enough. When an entire mountain was falling down on you, there simply was no such thing as enough. The others knew it too.

  “Hold.” He screamed it as loud as he could, knowing that the same fear that was gripping him was surely running through all of them as well, and he could feel the strength wavering as some were surely wondering if they had time to activate the portal and flee. But they couldn’t do that. If they fled then there would be no one left to stand against Qua’thor when he finally emerged from that dark abyss above them, and Marjan knew he had to be stopped here and now. That knowledge was given him, though not the how.

  He screamed it out again, as the rocks seemed to take forever to reach them, but then mortal eyes were playing tricks on their owners, as they couldn’t gauge the true distance of them when the rocks and the upside down mountain above them were so vast, and the waiting was interminable. But it also gave him time and he needed that time as he slowly began to feel a new strength rising up all around him. Magic, not mortal and not controlled, but powerful and fresh, and most important of all, ready for him.

  Terrified and desperate, he reached for it, and then almost wished he hadn’t.

  The magic was vast, overpowering and wild, and from the instant he grabbed it to him it fought him, and he felt like a small boy trying to wrestle a wild lion. It screamed at him, ran through him like lightning, tore all his senses apart one by one, ignited his flesh, and then laughed at his pain and weakness. But still, even when he could feel it burning away inside him, turning his blood to fire, he held it, fighting with his last breath, knowing that if he failed the magic would destroy him, an insect in an inferno, and with it not just he would die but so too would everyone else. So too would Essaline. He couldn’t allow that.

  He fought, and struggled, and took every single blow it could smash him with and still somehow he held it tight as it tried to tear its way free, and by some means he slowly began to win. Seconds seemed to last for hours, the pain was immense, and he could hear a man screaming and knew it was him, but still he held and slowly, infinitely slowly the magic yielded to him, and as each new tiny piece of it learned to obey him he sent it into the shield, adding to it, strengthening it again and again, transforming it from just a shield
of force into something more. Something greater than anything that had ever been built before.

  In time, and it seemed as though he’d been fighting for years by then, he could feel his own flesh once more, and when he finally opened his eyes, never realising that he’d closed them, he could see again, strange vision, gold and green everywhere instead of normal colours, but still vision. Then when he finally found the strength and looked up it was to discover that the rocks had barely moved during the entire eternity he’d been fighting. All that pain, that titanic battle, and it couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. But that was good, he needed the time. He needed to finish the shield.

  Like building a wall of stones, he layered the shield, adding more and more strength into it, transforming it into a magical edifice more powerful than anything he’d ever imagined, and by the time the first of the rocks, a small one barely the size of a house reached them, he knew a moment of hope. That moment became a celebration as he watched it simply explode, shattering on the shield, not just into smaller pieces, but into actual dust and he knew they would survive at least the first disaster. Not everyone else did, and he heard people screaming, giving into their fear, but they weren’t important. Only holding the shield firm mattered, and he quickly forgot about them.

  More rocks crashed down on them, at first one by one and then in their hundreds and thousands, and all of them simply shattered on the shield, turning the gloomy sky above them completely black as the dust turned first to clouds and then to an actual sea in the air above them. The ground shook all around them from the impact of the rocks as they smashed into the stone floor outside of the shield’s protection, and the temblors were as powerful as any earthquake he’d ever heard of. As for the noise, it was like thunder, the gods screaming their rage not just in the skies above but also in the earth below. Between the darkness, the noise and the shaking land, it was actually difficult just to keep his footing. Soon he could see nothing, hear nothing, barely even keep from falling, and it seemed to go on and on without end, and yet still he knew he was winning. Somehow. The knowledge was simply within him, though he wasn’t at all sure it was his.

  He knew it more when the shaking and the thunder finally began to quiet as the last of the rocks completed their long fall to the ground, and when the dust finally began to clear a little, just enough to let a little light through it was to reveal a whole new landscape. They had been in a giant chasm with towering rock walls on both sides of them, and a huge mountain on top of them, but suddenly they were in the middle of a steep sided valley maybe three hundred paces across, while all around them hills of loose dust and rubble towered, reaching hundreds and hundreds of feet into the air.

  Meanwhile of the upside down mountain itself, most of it was gone, hidden somewhere behind the surrounding hills. What remained of it, which was precious little, was more a spire than a mountain, a thin fractured needle of rock piercing the chasm as it reached for the distant sky, and in it he could see the portal still there, still slowly opening.

  People started cheering about then, stunned to be alive and grateful for it, but Marjan knew it was too soon. This had only been the first skirmish. The battle still lay ahead. But he let them have their celebration as he started drawing more and more of the wild magic to him, knowing he needed it. Knowing also that he was to be their shield in the battle, that was his purpose. But that he was not the sword. Who told him that or when and how he did not know, but he was certain of its truth. Half a mage defender. Master Argus had been right after all, but never realised that that was as it was meant to be. If he could hold the dark wizard back and keep the others safe, he would be happy with that.

  Of course there was a price for holding all that magic within him, and as the dust thinned and the light slowly returned and he could see his arms, he realised that it had changed him. His veins and arteries, all of them normally hidden under his skin, were now glowing green and gold, lighting him up from the inside out, and he knew that that was merely the residue of what was flowing through him. Barely even a trace. Other changes were happening deeper within him, in his very bones he could feel the magic making itself at home, like a fire taking hold of a log, and as much as they should have frightened him, they didn’t. Something deep within told him they were good for him, and that more importantly that there was a terrible enemy yet to be faced and this was the way. This had always been the way. There was no time to worry.

  “Beloved.” Essaline had left the other priests and priestesses, breaking the circle surrounding them all, and he was instantly glad of her voice. She always made him happy, and for the first time a smile broke through the worry lines of his face. And then she reached him, putting an arm around his waist and smiling like the sun, and he knew a moment of supreme happiness. She was warm and soft and truly lovely, and he couldn’t help but wrap and arm around her as well. Even in the underworld he would welcome her.

  Something happened then, something he didn’t understand, but as they stood there holding to one another, a new connection was made, something he truly didn’t understand, but something that he welcomed, and something that was also meant to be.

  “So this is what its like.” She spoke to him her words in his ears and in his thoughts at the same time, and he knew that she was speaking of the feeling of magic flowing through her. What he didn’t know was how she was feeling it. Essaline was not a mage of any sort, but he didn’t really care. He could feel her feeling the magic through him somehow, just as she could feel him and it was as though they were both becoming one.

  “This is strange.” He said it not even knowing why. He knew she could hear his thoughts, and that she knew he was puzzled by what was happening, and he knew that she knew absolutely that it was right.

  “It is as it was meant to be beloved. Magic and life. Sword and shield. Husband and wife. You are mine, I am yours and together we are one, complete.”

  She was right, she knew it and she knew it from a source that could not be denied. The Goddess was speaking to her, working through her, just as Ephesus was working through him, and the two of them were becoming a font for their combined magic, as it had been intended from the very beginning. The mortal, earth bound connection between the divine and the mundane.

  “You knew this was coming.” He accused her but with a smile on his face. He wasn’t really bothered. He was relieved. The Goddess was going to act and all he had to do was hold firm.

  “A little. From that very first day when I saw you cast that lightning arrow at the drake and I felt your magic, I knew we were connected. You magic is mine, and my life is yours.” She laughed merrily as she told him the truth and he laughed with her, glad that she was happy even if he didn’t understand it. He didn’t need to.

  “But now my beloved, we must become who we were meant to be. Qua’thor must be destroyed.” She was right of course, though he had no idea of how she meant to do it. But when the rest of the priests started gathering around them both though, he gathered that there was a plan, even if it wasn’t his.

  “Still your thoughts, calm your fears, just hold the magic tight and let others do as they must.” It was strange how much she sounded like his old masters from the guild when she said that, how much he felt like a small boy being given instruction, and yet it felt good. There was something comforting in being told what to do, especially when he didn’t know what to do, and he did as he was told. He simply held the shield tight and let the others do as they must. He didn’t even worry as he saw the dark wizard finally breaking his way free of the portal, and knew the terrible darkness of his soul. That was the true source of his power.

  “Wizards.” The elder called to them all, his voice strong and confident and somehow calming even in the presence of true evil. “The dark one is breaking loose as we always knew he must. Do not strike at him. To strike him is to give him your soul, and to doom us all.”

  “Instead we need him to strike at us, so give all your strength to Marjan.”

 
The strange thing was that as frightened as the spellcasters were, they were listening, and the priest’s words were echoing through their souls, Ephesus and the Goddess both telling them the same, and one thing more, that there was a plan. That mattered when you were facing certain death, and bit by bit Marjan felt the magic of the spellcasters flowing into him, merging with the immense ocean of magic already making itself at home inside him.

  “It is time.” One of the elders spoke, a man though he didn’t know whom, and as one they began chanting. It was a prayer, a strange musical prayer in a language he didn’t recognise though he felt its age, and with it he felt the magic that was bound within him beginning to flow, leaving him and little by little making itself at home in the circle of priests surrounding him, Essaline acting as the conduit. The strange thing was that as the magic left him, more and more magic flowed into him from the untapped wild magic all around him and in the end he became no more than a river, the magic welling up from a mystic spring and running through him, through Essaline, to the sea of priests surrounding them, filling them up.