EverMage - The Complete Series: A Fantasy Novel

by Trip Ellington

  Mithris dismissed his various wards, allowing the energy to dissipate. Then he went to the door and listened for a long minute. He heard nothing.

  Satisfied, he quickly checked to make sure he wasn’t leaving anything behind. His willow casting wand was secure in its pocket. Each of the foundation crystals was in place. He had brought nothing else. Nodding to himself, Mithris headed out into the corridor to search the black tower.

  Chapter 53

  Five minutes later, Mithris came to the end of the corridor and the same bedchamber he had just left behind. There was the bed, the dresser and table, the washstand and the turned-around mirror. Scowling, he turned and headed in the other direction.

  And came to the same room again in five minutes time.

  Why not just wait for Ranyegar?

  “Because he’s trapped me,” Mithris said in a whisper that was nearly a snarl. “I’m a prisoner.”

  It may not be malicious. It’s just the way this tower works. Wait and see.

  “I will not,” insisted Mithris. He knelt down in the doorway and gripped the hem of his robe in both hands. Stretching and worrying at it, he worked a thread loose. Holding the robe in one hand, he pulled at the loose thread gently with the other.

  When he had unraveled several dozen paces of the thread—undoing the entire hem of his robe in the process, he stood up and tied the end of his string to the doorknob. Then he turned and set off along the corridor, playing the string out behind him as he went.

  Five minutes later he stood in the same doorway, looking in on the same room. The thread from his robe stretched out behind him. An identical string was tied the the doorknob in front of him, running off along the corridor. The two threads lay side by side on the floor. Mithris tugged his string. The other string jerked.

  “This is intolerable,” he muttered.

  There is some kind of singularity in the exact middle of this corridor, said Vapor in a musing tone. A point where you turn around without having to turn around.

  Mithris screwed up his face at that. “Okay,” he said slowly. “How do you make a hallway that always takes you to the same place? More importantly, how do you change the destination?”

  Vapor did not answer right away. “You don’t know do you?” asked Mithris.

  No, came the rueful answer. I’m afraid we don’t, but Ember and Terra both agree that this is exactly the sort of thing Absence would tinker with.

  Mithris blinked, shaking his head. The information really wasn’t all that helpful. “We already knew the voidstone was here,” he noted.

  This would lend credence to the possibility that Absence is with Ranyegar.

  “Was there ever a chance that an ancient wizard and a foundation crystal were both on this island and somehow not together?”

  Even we have trouble detecting Absence, said Vapor. Even when it wants to be found.

  “And you’re sure it does want to be found, right?” Mithris asked, frowning.

  Quite sure, Mithris.

  “Okay.” The young wizard thought for a moment, gazing down at the string in his hand without really seeing it.

  Then he closed his eyes. Clearing his mind as best he could, he relaxed his awareness. With a sixth, magical sense he probed his surroundings. Mithris could feel the enclosure of volcanic rock, its weight and solidity. He felt the tiniest stirrings of air and the most insignificant fluctuations of energy. The ley line which lay most directly beneath this corridor, more than deep in the earth but also folded halfway into other dimensions, became a luminous cord of icy blue fire in his mind’s eye.

  He smelled the residue of spells lingering on the ether. He could almost taste them, an acrid tang on his tongue. Fresher magic, only recently cast, hovered somewhere far over his head and directly above. It made only a gentle disturbance in the fabric of this foundation. Something passive, Mithris decided, most likely Ranyegar’s wards.

  The ley line felt further away than it should have. It came to him unexpectedly, in a burst. Since entering the black tower he had climbed no stairs, nor descended any. But the ley was more distant than it had been when he was outside.

  With a start, Mithris realized he was on one of the black tower’s middle floors, perhaps halfway up the slender spire.

  He shouldn’t be surprised, he decided. On first entering, following the tower’s ancient resident to the feasting hall, he had noted the corridor seemed far longer than it should. He had been sure they walked further than the diameter of the tower could possibly allow in a straight hallway. And if the two ends of the hall could be in the same place, and whatever place the wizard who controlled it wished, how was vertical height any different from horizontal length?

  The ley line, suggested Vapor.

  “You’re right,” Mithris said at once, his eyes snapping open in realization. He snapped his fingers, grinning. “That’s it!”

  After a moment’s consideration, he nodded to himself confidently. It should work.

  He had spent months studying Master Deinre’s notes and conjectures, repeating his former teacher’s experiments. Deinre had found a way to manipulate raw magic, the unshaped power which bled through ley lines into the fifth foundation. The centuries-old wizard had only just begun probing the mysteries of shaping that energy when Eaganar murdered him.

  His apprentice had come much further. Mithris knew he had some innate affinity to the raw power. It must be why Deinre had chosen him. Somehow the old wizard had seen it in him, even as a babe. Deinre had known.

  Mithris reached out a psychic muscle. That was how he thought of it, anyway, though in truth the words to describe it did not exist. This was how he took hold of the energy; this was what Deinre had been unable to do, having instead to rely on spells to do the work of a sculptor’s hands.

  It was not a spell Mithris cast. It was not like the magical fishing line he’d used to retrieve Ember, or the spell which allowed him to push off the earth and fly through the air. This thing he did, it was a natural part of him. It required no magic. It was as though he had a larger, invisible body with many hands. Those hands were sculptor’s hands.

  They sank through stone and soil and slipped into the folded crevice in reality, the river of magic that was the ley line. Ethereal fingers curled and grasped. Holding tightly to the ley in several places, Mithris exerted himself.

  Before, he had been able to turn spells cast against him. By twisting and retying the threads of power, he altered those spells. The first time he had done so, it was an accident which could have killed him. There was far more power coursing through the ley than in even the most powerful spells, but Mithris held its pulsing, throbbing, burning, freezing essence confidently and began to pull.

  As he did, he imagined himself turning as well. The river of magic was like a straight pole laid across a table, the circumference of the tower being the table top. Mithris grasped that pole at both ends and turned it.

  It moved.

  The ley line was the narrow ridge across the round surface of a dial, and Mithris was turning the dial. He could not actually shift the ley line itself. That was embedded through the fabric of all realities. It was absolute. No, what Mithris did was merely move the foundation itself.

  He was exultant. He had never imagined something so…incredible. He was literally turning the world!

  Chapter 54

  When he had shifted the alignment of the hallway to the ley line perhaps five or six degrees around the circle, Mithris felt something new.

  It was somewhat akin to feeling a person’s pulse with his thumb against their skin. A single heartbeat, like a thrum against his flesh. It was like the feeling of a bolt sliding into a lock carried through the door to his hand.

  Mithris ceased turning the hall and opened his eyes. The string in his hand still fell to the floor and trailed off behind him. But there was no longer a second string coming out of the hallway. The door before him was not the same one. It was wider and taller and had a grilled window set at eye level.
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  That was amazing, said Vapor. We’ve descended forty levels. Terra says we are below ground level.

  “It’s a dungeon,” said Mithris, examining the sturdy door. It was oak reinforced with iron straps. The bars in the grilled window were thick and criss-crossed too tightly for him to get more than two fingers through. He recognized a dungeon when he saw it. He’d spent some time in one.

  It certainly has the look of one.

  “And the smell,” added Mithris, wrinkling his nose at the fetid odors wafting from the small aperture in the door. “There’s someone in the cells. Has to be. An unoccupied dungeon wouldn’t smell so ripe.”

  Human or beast, said Vapor, the stench is not from Absence. The voidstone isn’t likely to be down here. But now you know the trick, you should be able to search out all the other possible rooms.

  “Plenty of time,” mused Mithris, scratching his chin. “May as well take a look.”

  It seems Depths and Tempus agree.

  “Just those two?”

  Correct.

  “So it’s three to two?”

  Correct.

  “Why do Depths and Tempus agree with me?” Mithris asked. He had every intention of opening the door and at least checking out the dungeon, whatever the crystals thought. Still, their advice had usually been helpful in the past.

  Depths says there has been much change here recently. It can’t be much more specific than that. Depths has an affinity for mutability, you know, but it’s not very good at interpreting changes. Vapor paused for a long moment. Ah. That makes sense.

  “What?”

  Tempus says the occupant of the dungeon is extremely old.

  “So?”

  Tempus also says that the wizard Ranyegar is not very old at all.

  Mithris shook his head. “I don’t understand. Ranyegar must be two thousand years old, probably older. Unless…unless he just looks old. Some kind of spell that makes him appear older?”

  I’ve changed my mind, said Vapor without explaining further. Let’s open the door.

  Now Mithris hesitated. A moment ago he’d been ready to charge in, but now he was not so sure. Something was going on here, something he couldn’t quite get his mind around. He was afraid that, in coming to this island, he’d walked into the middle of something he shouldn’t have.

  “This tower doesn’t actually belong to Ranyegar, does it?” he asked slowly, putting it all together.

  You’ll likely find the best answer to that inside the dungeon.

  Sighing, Mithris pushed on the heavy, iron-banded door. It was not locked, and swung ponderously open on creaking hinges. The chamber within was dark and musty. Unlit torches hung in iron brackets on the walls, leaning diagonally out. Mithris cast a spell, lighting two of the nearest torches.

  A sizable stone chamber was thus illuminated. A rickety wooden table sat close inside the door, a matching chair pulled out behind it. A set of keys lay on top of the table, nothing else. Beyond this table, the far wall was lined with doors of solid iron.

  Third from the right, said Vapor.

  Mithris went into the dungeon, scooping up the keys as he walked past the rickety table. He went to the door Vapor had indicated and started trying the keys one after another. The fourth one he tried turned the lock, and he pulled the heavy door open.

  Behind the door was a tiny cell. An emaciated figure lay curled on the straw-covered floor. The very old man threw up one bony arm across his face, blinded by the sudden illumination from outside his windowless, black stone cell.

  “Ranyegar!” Mithris exclaimed. He stepped into the cell and knelt beside the old wizard. Ranyegar was clothed only in a filthy loin-cloth. Slat-ribbed and painfully skinny, he was covered in bruises and open sores. His long beard was tangled and caked with dirt.

  The old man blinked large, colorless eyes. He opened and closed his mouth without sound. A dry croak sounded low in his throat.

  Mithris rose and went out of the cell. Hunting through the outer chamber of the dungeon, he found a washstand in an alcove. He took the pitcher, half full of dingy water, and went back to the man in the cell.

  “It may be putrid,” he warned Ranyegar, showing him the pitcher. The old man’s eyes had finally adjusted to the dim, flickering torchlight. He looked at the pitcher and nodded. Mithris held it over his face and tilted it so a thin trickle of the stagnant water ran down into Ranyegar’s mouth.

  The old wizard held his hand up after a moment, and Mithris set the pitcher down. Ranyegar swished the stale water in his mouth then turned his head to spit in the corner. When he turned back, his face was twisted in disgust.

  “Ranyegar,” said Mithris again, and the wizard looked at him sharply.

  “Who the devil is Ranyegar?” he asked in a hoarse voice barely above a whisper. “And who are you? Are you with him?”

  “Him?” Mithris echoed. “Oh. The one who took your tower? I’m not with him. He’s masquerading as you, though. I mean, he looks just like you. He told me his name was Ranyegar. When I found you, I just assumed…”

  “My name is Rethbrin,” the old man said, drawing himself up self-importantly. The effect, given his state of undress and the extensive bruising, was almost tragically comical.

  “Rethbrin,” Mithris repeated, astonished. His mouth fell open and he stared at the debased wizard.

  “Heard of me, have you?”

  “Extensively,” Mithris said. “I was Master Deinre’s apprentice.”

  “Deinre!” Rethbrin turned his head and spit in the corner again. “Now there’s a disappointment. Never have I so foolishly attempted to train a more hopeless apprentice than that imbecile Deinre!”

  Chapter 55

  “Imbecile?” echoed Mithris, taken aback. “Hopeless?” The corner of his lips quirked up, twitching toward a smile. He leaned closer to Rethbrin.

  “Grandmaster,” he said, unable to resist the smile despite the grim surroundings. “Tell me more.”

  “Pah,” said Rethbrin. “Always shirking his lessons, always whining about how I never taught him anything interesting. To hear him tell it, I had him toiling on wards for thirty years! Well, if he’d only applied himself he’d have mastered them in three. It’s hardly my fault all he ever wanted to do was traipse around the wide world having adventures and sampling exotic recipes for steak and kidney pie!”

  Mithris clamped a hand over his mouth. He was not sure the irascible-seeming old man would appreciate it if he suddenly laughed aloud.

  Why ever not? In such luxurious apartments and with no pressing concerns, who wouldn’t engage in mirth at a time like this?

  “Shut up,” Mithris muttered.

  “What did you say?”

  “I was talking to Vapor, sorry.”

  “Who’s Vapor?” Rethbrin’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he strained to peer over Mithris’ shoulder.

  “Vapor is a foundation crystal.” Mithris shifted, bringing the airstone sewn to his robes into the light. “It speaks to me, although the other four don’t.”

  “Remarkable.” Rethbrin was quite obviously impressed. He ran his pale eyes over Mithris with renewed interest. “You say you were Deinre’s apprentice? You hardly seem old enough, yet you carry five of the foundation crystals. Remarkable! Are you quite sure we’re thinking of the same Deinre?”

  Wizards! Vapor made the word sound like a curse. The crystal’s silent voice was exasperated. Have both of you forgotten the circumstances completely?

  “Hm,” grunted Mithris. “Steak and kidney pie? That’s him, alright.”

  “It seems he made something of himself after all, if he has an apprentice who consorts with foundation crystals. I know a little about foundation crystals. I have one of my own, you know.” Suddenly, the old man’s face crumpled in dismay. “I suppose I should say I had one. The rogue who threw me in my own dungeon has it now.”

  “Who is he?” Mithris asked.

  “Heh?” Rethbrin looked up at the much younger wizard. “No idea, my boy. None at
all. Some upstart who envied my tower, my privacy? Or perhaps he came for the voidstone, I’ve no idea. But now that you’re here, well…”

  Naked hope showed through the look Rethbrin gave Mithris then. The young wizard smiled, nodding in agreement.

  “Can you make the hallway move?” Mithris asked.

  “Of course I can,” snapped Rethbrin, levering himself up off the straw-covered floor. Leaning against the black stone wall, he pushed himself upright and stood unsteadily on his feet. “This is my tower, after all. Three centuries I’ve lived here. The upstart only arrived yesterday.”

  “How is it he can control the hallway then?”

  “You said he was disguised as me,” Rethbrin said. “A good enough disguise would fool my tower for a brief time. The Mirror of Illusions spell might do it, I suppose.”

  Rethbrin nodded to himself, and then a thought struck him and he froze. Turning slowly toward Mithris, he narrowed his colorless eyes. “How is it you managed to find your way to the dungeon?” he asked. “How did you turn the axis?”

  “Oh, that,” said Mithris, affecting a humble shrug. “I have a…talent, I suppose. I can manipulate the basic energies of magic.”

  “Energy shaping, huh?” Rethbrin considered. “I’d have thought that a fairy tale, but…No, I see how it could be done.” He looked up at Mithris again. “Remarkable!”

  If you two are quite finished, Vapor muttered.

  “Okay, okay,” said Mithris. “Come on, Grandmaster. The crystals are getting restless.”

  Rethbrin had to lean on Mithris, throwing an arm across the young mage’s shoulders. The old man hobbling at his side, Mithris led the way out of the dungeon. When they reached the hallway, Rethbrin closed his eyes.

  “Yes,” he muttered. “Yes, old girl. It’s me.” He opened his eyes and turned to Mithris. “Which chamber?”

  “Wherever Absence is most likely to be,” answered Mithris.

  That seemed to startle the bi-millennial wizard, but then he nodded. “I see, I see. Well, it’s my good fortune, I suppose.” Whatever he was thinking, Rethbrin did not elaborate. He merely spoke a low word under his breath and made a twisting motion with his outstretched hand.