Wizard (The Key to Magic)

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  Maintaining her distance, Olfew pointed a tubular device at the perpetrator for a few seconds, then nodded at Beltr.

  Beltr addressed the man once more. "Do you understand me now?"

  A look of surprise passed briefly across the captive's face. "Yes."

  His pronunciation, being rather neutral and correct, did not have the midlands urban inflection that was most widespread in Dhiloeckmyur, but Beltr saw no problem with this as he thought the common speech of the denizens of the city to be decadent, slothful, and a product of indolent thinking.

  Interestingly, the perpetrator contented himself with this simple answer and appeared to be waiting for Beltr to speak again. Often, offenders brought in for an inquisition were full of frantic questions. At the very least, a legal resident of the Commonwealth would have requested to have the counsel of an advocate.

  "What is your name?"

  "Plydro."

  None of the monitoring equipment that whispered constantly in Beltr's ear reported any physiological indications of falsehood, but that did not mean that the perpetrator was not lying and Beltr's gut told him that the utterly unfamiliar and foreign-sounding name was a complete fabrication.

  "What is your residential province?"

  "I am not from here."

  "Which state then?"

  "The Republic of Pyra."

  Again no reports of falsehood, but this statement was patently untrue.

  "I happen to know that by governmental mandate all Pyrai are taught Common in secondary school. Why is it that you were unable to understand me before the micro-nodes were administered?"

  Beltr watched the perpetrator's face, but the other's placid features evidenced no distress at the exposure of his lies.

  "I have only recently been released from stasis. My tongue is one only spoken on the island where I was born."

  An alarm beeped insistently in Beltr's ear and then an automated message played. "Intelligence Section Bulletin: the word 'stasis' is a censored term. Isolate and silence individual immediately. Do not interrogate."

  The priority of his investigation gave Beltr the authority to ignore this automated order and he chose to do so. He did not know what "stasis" meant, but trying to find out at a future point was no doubt ill-advised and likely dangerous; the Intelligence Section was famous for making people disappear without a trace, regardless of their status or position.

  Rather than attempt to chip away at the perpetrator's facade of deception, Beltr decided to put everything out in the open and see how the man reacted.

  "The practice of wizardry without a dispensation is a grievous violation of the Internal Magical Restrictions of the Oaurlervy Faction Commonwealth and is punishable by summary execution. I am prepared to enact that sentence immediately."

  In an unexpected display of bravado, the perpetrator produced a broad, toothy smile that struck Beltr as more predatory than jovial.

  Then the lights in the chamber went out.

  THREE

  Mar snap cast The Knife Fighter's Dirge as the overhead lamps, ethereal in nature and possessed of an uncomplicated admix of three similar sound-colors, failed in response to a thick wash of steadfast burping-gray flux. Contrary to his expectations, this left the strange space so utterly dark that he might as well have been blind. He had guessed that the cell in which he had awoken might be in the dungeons of a fortress, but he had never known a place so well sealed that no hint of light whatsoever could be perceived. Even inside the bowels of the massive Mhajhkaeirii'n palace on a moonless night a suggestion of illumination was always present -- reflected starlight peeking around corners, a distant candle leaking under a door, the fading embers of a hearth oozing across the floor. For a person like him who had spent a life learning to navigate after dusk, those faint wisps of light were as useful as lanterns.

  Rather than trouble him, though, this impenetrable gloom was almost a comfort. When he had come to, he had felt an immediate and near paralyzing fear. Unbidden and unwanted, memories of his last imprisonment had seized his thoughts. The horror and agony of his Khalarii'n execution were never very deeply buried and not being able to see helped him shrug off that nightmare and focus on his immediate and primary need: escape.

  His bindings were formidable. Chained with steel and enclosed by a magic that made him feel as if he were buried in sand, he was unable to move more than a third of a fingerlength in any direction.

  The steel of the manacles ignored several varied attempts at enchantment and it was immediately apparent that the intricacy of the sound-colors of the spell that pinned him in place had been specifically designed to foil direct manipulation. Shifting continually into new configurations, the gyrations followed no pattern that he could discern and at times it almost seemed as if the spell was ready to simply dissolve into the background ether. None of the ancient magic that he had encountered in his own time had had a similar construction, and he remained at a loss as to how to break the spell.

  After a few more minutes of futile effort, he decided that he had little choice but to make a light so that he could look about in the hope that some mundane opportunity might present itself.

  A ball of ethereal fire would take only a thought, but he decided to try to copy the spells that had fed the cell's lamps. Those had put off neither heat nor smoke and such a lamp would be preferable in this confined space. Making sure to create the spell within the creeping time of the ethereal envelope created by The Knife Fighter's Dirge, he succeeded on his first attempt and happily hung his new magical lamp in the air just above his head.

  Unable to turn his head because of the spell, he could only see those of his captors who stood in front of him. Each of the five was fixed in place by the ethereal blanket of normal time, motionless in a state of interrupted life. His questioner, who was clearly in command, gave off a residue of strong magic that was equal to if not greater than that of Waleck. The woman, who Mar took to be a surgeon or perhaps as Llylquaendt had been a medic, radiated a much weaker disruption into the background ether and the majority of her magic seemed locked in the items attached to her garment. A man to the questioner's left and rear, who wore a similar yellow livery, had the stance of some junior flunky and hardly registered any magical presence. Standing further back near the blank, olive wall were two guards, identically arrayed and armed, who had varied presences, but neither matched even the minor level of the medic. Mar could also sense four more guards behind the chair. All four had magical presences similar to the visible two.

  As for opportunities, there were none. Save for the couch upon which he reclined, the cell was bare, leaving nothing that might be enchanted and brought to his aid.

  Anxious, but determined, he again strove to divine the confining spell, but after a considerable length of time gave up once gain. Having failed to gain an exact understanding of their nature, he had to accept that he would not be able to disperse the modulations. Therefore, his only remaining option was to smash the spell with an overpowering bolt of ethereal flux and try to contain any reaction released when the spell's Vessel collapsed.

  Unlike the often quiescent near-uniform gray background ether of his own proper time, that of this age was a roiling saturated soup of leaked sound-colors. Especially here in and about the dungeon, magic was omnipresent and the number of spells that he could detect within his range numbered in the hundreds. Such an abundance of raw material made it a simple matter to pool and filter skimmed dregs into a compact lance of pure whistling black. With patient care, he began to refine the aim of the lance so that it pointed unerringly at the central juncture of the confining spell.

  "You've become so adept at making the ether dance to your own tune that you've neglected what you read in the first of Oyraebos' texts. You should have realized that practically all spells of this age are designed around a Key. Finding this particular Key would be the simplest way to release the hex. It would also certainly avert an uncontrolled and disruptive flux release that will take out half the buildin
g."

  Magic had taught Mar to avoid thinking in terms like "impossible," but still he jumped when he heard the voice. It was a considerable shock to learn that another magician could pierce the magic of The Knife Fighter's Dirge.

  Another realization that caused him some consternation was the fact that the language that the sourly critical voice had spoken had been that of his own time, not the peculiar one that his captors -- and now he, by dint of the surgeon's spell -- spoke.

  Mar's bonds would not allow him to turn his head far enough to catch sight of this intruder. "Come around so that I can see you."

  "Certainly."

  Nimbly avoiding the obstacles of the frozen armsmen, the man came into view as he circled to Mar's left, taking a position between the questioner and the surgeon. This intruder wore clothing that struck Mar as normal -- that is, tunic, trousers and boots appeared to have been sewn of materials and in styles natural to Mar's native era. As far as the individual himself, he was shriveled, near bald, and moved with the care of someone plagued by aching joints. He was old. Older, or at least frailer, than Llylquaendt, it seemed.

  "You're me," Mar said as recognition immediately dawned. He knew the face -- sags, wrinkles, age spots, untrimmed white beard, unfamiliar scars, and hard expression notwithstanding.

  The wizened man laughed raggedly. "No. I am me and you are you. It just so happens that we are both Mar and possess identical life experiences up to a point of divergence. For the sake of accuracy, I must admit, given the current state of the event sequence, that I am the duplicate -- a cull in common wizardly parlance."

  "So, a future version of me."

  "Yet again, no. While our experiences up to the divergence are identical, we are separate individuals. Our paths diverged many days before the debacle at the bridge. Quite obsessively, I focused on the journal of the Wizard Whinseschlos and learned to step safely into undertime while still in Mhajhkaei. However, the specific event sequence that influenced me to attempt wizardry before you did so was afterwards altered so that you followed an entirely different path. I am, at least in your terms, now no more than a what-if."

  "I don't understand."

  "Neither do I, fully. I suspect that my path was manipulated out of existence by another Mar, perhaps you, perhaps another entity entirely."

  "But --"

  Somewhat impatiently, the old Mar waved a hand in a palsied, negating gesture. "Logic may be applicable to most of the magical disciplines, but it absolutely does not apply to wizardry or to travel through undertime, so you're just wasting breath. For once in your life, stop trying to figure out a way to dodge around something that you don't want to accept. It is what it is."

  Mar did not let the rebuke irritate him. "Why have you come to speak to me?"

  "To offer one bit of advice and some information."

  "I'm listening."

  "Just so you understand -- there are a number of things that I won't tell you because it would cause problems if you knew them now."

  "So, more riddles and more lies."

  "No, actually not. It's just that there are many facts that you have to discover on your own. When you have more experience in wizardry, you'll understand."

  Mar made a face. "So what can you tell me?"

  "A few important things. You know that you're in the deep past relative to your starting point?"

  "I'd guessed that, yes."

  "In our terms, this is 3211 Before the Founding of the Empire. To put a number to it, you're four thousand eight hundred and fifty-six years in your past. When I saw to when your unguided journey had brought you, I was sorely tempted, in spite of all that I have experienced to the contrary, to believe in fate."

  "Why is that?"

  "You -- we -- are from here. You didn't know that, did you? This is our time. Just two years ago, we were born on this continent not very far from here."

  Mar shook his head. "I was born in Khalar. I was a trash baby. I don't remember much of the old woman that took care of me when I was small, but I remember her telling the story of where she found me more than once. My mother had to have been a harlot."

  "You were found in the trash, true, but you -- again, we -- were born here in this time and sent -- apparently by pure chance, as hard as that is to believe -- through time and space to Khalar by magics that are as far in advance of my own wizardry as wizardry is of simple enchantment."

  Old Mar paused. "I can see that you don't believe me. It doesn't matter. Just remember one thing -- you must resist the temptation to change your own past. If you succeed, which is not guaranteed, you will destroy everything that you know and become as I am, a homeless vagabond adrift in uncaring time."

  "You changed your past?"

  "I changed my future. All of it. I created my own fate. I saved the world from destruction, defeated the Phaelle'n, and nurtured magicians so that a new age of magic came to be. It took several normal lifetimes, but I did it."

  "But you don't like what you've done."

  "Exactly. I want to make sure that you entirely erase the future that I created."

  "Why?"

  "A purely selfish reason. My future is one in which I am forgotten. Because I spent the entirety of my life as a steward of my own vision, I had no time for anything else and I neglected living. The family promised to me by the Moon Pool never came to be. A year after I leapt into undertime, Telriy despaired of my return, left Mhajhkaei with our daughter, and never returned. I thought of seeking them out many times, but never did. My future is a place where I know no one and none know me. For all of its vitality and magic, it's a lonely and desolate place."

  Mar pointed out the obvious. "Our paths have been and are different and therefore my fate must be different from yours. The future should already be changed."

  "Not until you actually change it. No potential future comes into being until the events that create it are accomplished. Should you die --"

  "So you can't see what happens to me?"

  "Wizardry doesn't work that way. I'd have to follow you through time, significant moment by significant moment and I frankly don't have life enough left for that. For all of its power, magic cannot make a man live forever. Even the old man -- no, forget that. You know that the world is a dangerous place and that life is fragile. Travel through undertime is a thousand times as dangerous. You and I aren't the only versions of us who have learned wizardry. I saw three others die in very uninspiring ways. One of them I could have saved but did not, since in my opinion he was a stupid and very selfish man. As far as I can tell, all of the other culls were failed experiments. They made flawed choices and paid for their errors. I'd like you not to do the same. I want to see a better future, not one just as depressing as my own."

  Mar did not hesitate. "As soon as I escape this dungeon, I'm going to search for magic that will help the Mhajhkaeirii defeat the Phaelle'n and when I find it, I'm going to make my way back to my own time."

  Old Mar nodded in approval, but showed no expression. "You'll find everything that you need in this time."

  "No specifics? Wouldn't it be easier just to tell me what I should do?"

  "No. On too many occasions, I've tried managing every little detail. That's a recipe for certain failure."

  "You said advice and information."

  "Both of which I have already given you in sufficient measure to allow you to succeed. But I'll add this -- don't presume that wizardry gives you all the time in the world. You only have the time of your life, so don't waste any of it."

  Mar blurted out the first question that came to mind. "Did you hide the texts?"

  Another of the things that he had accomplished while ensconced in undertime had been a critical reexamination, starting at the very beginning, of all of his assumptions. One product of that had been the realization that he had no proof other than Waleck's assurance -- which like everything else that the old man had said was now entirely suspect -- that the author of the text and the author of the badly rhymed note were the sa
me individual. The appearance of this other Mar added weight to the argument that the latter was simply someone masquerading as the former. Llylquaendt had described the man who had given him the second cylinder simply as "an old fellow" and Old Mar certainly fit that meager description.

  "No, that was ... someone else." Old Mar gave a short laugh. "Another meddler."

  "Who?"

  Old Mar shook his head. "You'll have to find that out on your own."

  Mar let his lips press into a thin line. This was not quite confirmation that the second Oyraebos was an imposter, but the implication was certainly there. "If you don't like what I'm doing, are you going to 'meddle' again?"

  "No. Henceforth, you're on your own. I have one last thing to see to and one last place to be. After that, if I find the future that you create appealing, I might tarry there for the years left to me, but my own path is of no concern to you. I wish you good luck and success."

  Old Mar vanished.

  The background ether hardly stirred, indicating that the visitor had slipped away with impressive finesse into undertime.

  Mar did not bother to dwell on the implications or consequences of the visit, but rather immediately returned his thoughts to the priority of the moment -- escape.

  He knew that could have left the room as the Old Mar had -- save without the finesse of course -- but felt reluctant to re-enter undertime. He still did not understand how to navigate in that ethereal place and could not predict at what point in time he might exit. More importantly, based upon what the recently departed version of himself had said, another unguided foray into undertime would appear unnecessary. Though he had not said as much, Old Mar obviously had believed that escape from this cell was an uncomplicated task.

  To be specific, the old man had said that Mar needed to find the Key.

  Though he had read it only once, he had no trouble remembering the relevant passage in the first text: All enchantments consist of three basic elements: the reservoir matrix (or Vessel), the flux containment bond (or Binding), and the release sequence (or Key).