Wizard (The Key to Magic)

by H. Jonas Rhynedahll

  Also, his meeting with Zso had raised doubts that would forestall any attempts to stop the wizard's interference -- at least up to the disaster at the bridge.

  That was the pivotal event. Every moment prior to that was his past and every moment after his future. The second after the one in which he had leapt into undertime, he would be free to deal with Zso and Waleck as he pleased and he would have no peril of splitting himself in twain. Any intrusion that he might attempt prior to that event must remain completely hidden both to his earlier self and to those around him.

  Whinseschlos' reference to himself as a thief skulking through undertime had another aspect, one that Mar understood well.

  He would have to be the thief that he was, sneaking through the world unseen, avoiding all contact, and remaining death-a-heartbeat-away silent. With oblivion or worse as punishment for failure, he had to sneak into carefully selected moments to steal the things that he needed without ever once leaving a footprint, shifted candlestick, opened cabinet, or woken guard behind.

  In Khalar, a thief that wanted to keep his head was timid, not bold. A timid thief always ran when he heard an unexpected sound. A timid thief settled for the convenient rather than the valuable -- he took the loaf of bread on the counter, not the coins in the baker's purse. A timid thief did not harbor ambitions beyond his ability -- he tried the windows on a little used apartment rather than those of the house of the Viceroy's mistress.

  Though he had not always strictly obeyed these rules in his thievery, in his wizardry, Mar would be timid. He would with unwavering dedication flee from the unexpected, confine himself to the convenient, and eschew overweening ambition.

  One of his first tasks had to be to mitigate the disaster at the bridge. He could not simply undo what he had done. The destruction of Eishtren's bow and the tremendous explosion that had resulted must take place. That self-inflicted calamity had driven him to flee into undertime and it could not be changed, but something must be done to lessen its power so that at least Lord Ghorn and the armsmen of his army could survive.

  Control of the spells -- almost forces of nature -- that writhed within the bow was beyond Mar's abilities. He could not disperse, ameliorate, or direct them. Those unfathomable modulations had been birthed by some strange aspect of the Quaestor's desperate retreat across the Citadel and could express in only one way -- annihilation. The bow's inevitable fate was to be destroyed.

  The Quaestor, on the other hand, might be saved. Eishtren wished to die in battle. It was not discussed, but everyone knew this. Mar was certain that this desire for self-destruction had augmented and reinforced the bow's spells. On each of the numerous occasions that that craving had been frustrated or deferred, the spells and their potential for devastation had clearly grown stronger.

  Somehow, Mar must devise a way to divert Eishtren from his morbid objective without that diversion becoming known to anyone and further do so sufficiently in advance of the battle at the bridge to drastically reduce the power of the blast.

  But by the blood-soaked, spiky skirts of Lyrgrh, Goddess of Ignorance, Maladroit Craftsmen, and Clumsy Jests, he had no clear guess as to how or when to do that. In the few months before the disaster, Mar had spent considerable time with Eishtren on Number One as they harried the Phaelle'n and prior to that he had been in close contact with the bowman on the trek to the bunker in the Waste, but he actually knew very little about the Mhajhkaeirii and could not recall ever having had a single personal conversation with him. Aside from the Quaestor's perennial stoicism, Mar knew Eishtren to be an able, honorable, and competent officer, a dedicated mentor to the lad Aelwyrd, and a lifelong inhabitant of The Greatest City in All the World. None of these explained the bowman's longing for doom.

  Mar wondered briefly if he should attempt to backtrack through each moment of Eishtren's life to find the cause, but realized that there might be an easier way to discover what he needed to know.

  He would just ask someone that should know.

  This course would coincide with another plan that had been developing at the back of his mind.

  His sweet roll and his meditations finished, he rose, cast a portal, and stepped back into undertime.

  As he surged ahead toward his own proper time he kept his focus on Khalar, but did not watch every moment of his own past; many of his experiences were too disagreeable to relive even vicariously. When the scenes began to show Waleck once more, he paid close attention and examined in particular detail the visions of the old man which took place prior to their first meeting.

  He gained confirmation of many things he had already known in theory and others that he should have suspected. Waleck had indeed lived the reclusive life of a Waste miner during Mar's youth, spending most of his days in the Waste City and tinkering there with bits of magical devices that he recovered. When he had summered in Khalar, the old man had lived openly and without incident, using no magic that Mar could detect as he abided in various taverns and guesthouses. He never utilized any lodging for any length of time longer than a year or two, and though he was generally jovial and social and his coin well appreciated, he never established more than a nodding acquaintance with the tavern keepers and hostellers. Most tended to believe that he had passed away once he had stopped patronizing their establishments.

  Very little that the old man did during these years could be considered even remotely clandestine or suspect.

  This changed on the night that Mar had swum the Ice to elude the Guard. As he watched the old man ready his mules and ponies and then cross the Lower City to sit in wait in an alley that was much out of his way, it was quite clear that the old man had both had foreknowledge of and prepared for their first encounter.

  Mar dismissed and skipped over much of what happened after this, events of which he had been a part, but one final, telling vision just days prior to the end of his journey drew him in.

  Near a fountain in the Old City, he saw Waleck, protected by an ingenious glamour that incorporated a spell very similar to The Knife Fighter's Dirge, suborn Patriarch Hwraldek and set the Khalarii'n rebellion in motion.

  With this as indisputable evidence of the old man's guilt, his determination that he must bring Waleck's interference to an end solidified into an inescapable certainty.

  THIRTY-TWO

  17th Year of the Phaelle’n Ascension, 348th Day of Glorious Work

  Year One of the New Age of Magic

  (Tenthday - Eleventhday, Waning, 3rd Springmoon, 1645 After the Founding of the Empire)

  Imperial Highway, west of Lhinstord

  Whorlyr threw out his feet and allowed his weight to drop him out of the observation hatch as the blast wave struck the algar. The warning that he had been shouting to the others became a cry of pain as the carriage took a giant blow that smashed the forward end, slamming him against a structural rib. For all the weight of its steel armor, the searing wind tossed the algar like a dried leaf before a gust, flipping it end over end.

  Pressed against the rib by the motion, he instinctively laced both arms through a cutout and tried to lock his legs also as the interior contents, both men and equipment, began to be slung about. As the spine of the algar twisted, the rivets holding the benches popped loose and the heavy wood frames went airborne. As it spun by, one hit Whorlyr in the ribs, driving out another cry.

  The left side of the algar struck something -- maybe a tree -- and caved in, forming a rounded crease that opened seams in the shell. The holes allowed fire and smoke to spray in and the clouded air made his heart race as he began to choke. After most of another slow rotation that may have taken all of a second, the rear smacked the ground hard, gouging clods into the interior. This blow succeeded in snapping the algar's spine completely, cracking it open across the beam several armlengths to the rear of Whorlyr. The lower frame kept the pieces together, but the upper rear portion of the shell disintegrated. When the wreckage whipped over again, it began to shed passengers and interior equipment and he tucked his face agai
nst the flange of the beam to shield it from flying debris.

  It was only another moment until the shattered pieces of the wreck tumbled to a halt, grinding into the ground and scooping earth in through the gaping aft end. When the shuddering ceased, the steel rib that had protected him wound up at a sixty degree angle to the vertical, so that he hung upside down over the compacted composite of shredded metal and shattered wood that had been the left side of the algar.

  A quick glance about revealed that he was alone in the wreck.

  Everything hurt, especially his right shoulder, which spiked with pain at every breath. When he let his legs down to take the strain off his arms, he felt another sharp stab from his right foot and a quick look found an unnatural but not pronounced kink in the vamp of his boot. Bearing his full weight on his uninjured foot, he drew his left arm out of the cutout and gave his shoulder a quick and excruciating examination. It had been wrenched from the socket and had begun to swell, but none of the bones appeared to be broken. With a shiver, he used his left hand to lock the crook of his right arm in the cutout and then leaned back.

  It took five tries to set the shoulder back in place and when it was finally done, the residue of the self-inflicted pain left him shivering and gasping with black spots flashing across his vision. He stayed put until the shaking stopped, tucked his aching left arm through his loosened belt, and then began to hobble toward the front of the wreckage where an open breach revealed clouds of greasy smoke and an orange tinged sky. He had to use the lame beggar's stride of hop and drag while bracing with his good arm, but he made it to the breach and climbed out.

  Fires ringed the wreck on every side. Everything that he could see -- snapped off trees, crushed underbrush, a sheered off split rail fence, and a pile that he thought must have been a barn -- was burning and filling the air with smoke.

  A groan drew his attention to a spiky heap of debris spewed out in front of the breach. Two legs pinned beneath a crumpled stanchion showed from beneath it.

  Coughing, he sank down, arranged his right leg to prevent any inadvertent jar to his foot, and began to drag lengths of metal and wood off the Salient with his good arm. Some time later, he had made only minor progress when the Archivist, Brother Zsii, staggered out of the smoke.

  "Are any other survivors with you?" Whorlyr demanded of him.

  Zsii shook his head as he stooped to help. "I saw two dead brethren twenty paces back along the trail of the wreck. One had a broken neck and the other had been impaled by a jagged piece of steel."

  Except for superficial cuts and bruises, the far talking disk operator looked unharmed.

  "You were ejected also?" Whorlyr asked.

  "Yes, brother. By the mercy of Great Phaelle, I landed on the muddy bank of a nearly emptied pond. I think that the blast must have driven all of the water out onto the banks, creating the soft ground that left me with nothing more painful than bruises."

  "The far talking disk?"

  Zsii patted the satchel that hung from his shoulder. "I have it, and it appears to be functioning normally, but none of the other battalions have responded to my hails."

  The trapped Salient proved to be an insensate Senior Ascertainer Sgohlg, who, in addition to his fractured legs, had an oozing head wound. While Zsii attempted to make the man comfortable, Whorlyr first extracted his arm from his belt, rotated it about several times to test the state of its recovery, then dragged himself up onto the side of the wreck to try to get a better view of their surroundings.

  The one manheight high vantage provided little improvement. The smoke, fires, and drifting ash had already reduced visibility to a few dozen steps, though once a swirl in the miasma revealed a brief glimpse of light reflecting from water.

  "I think I saw the river in the distance," he called down to Zsii. "I believe that the algar flew nearly a full league. How is Brother Sgohlg?"

  "He has fallen into a deep stupor, which is probably a mercy. I have doubts that he will recover."

  "Try the far talking disk again."

  While Whorlyr worked his way back to the ground, Zsii seated himself on a protruding timber and brought out the relic.

  The Archivist communed with the device for a moment to marshal his concentration, put on the unfocused look that indicated that he was preparing it for communication, then said to it, "Zsii to Brother Nris. Reply."

  For the next few moments, naught but silence answered.

  Zsii proceed through the entire roster of operators that had been assigned to the algar droves of Whorlyr's army, but received a reply from none.

  "It is possible that the catastrophe created a local disruption in the ether that is disrupting the spell," Zsii proposed.

  "Or all of the other far talking disks have been damaged or their operators incapacitated or both. How long might your ethereal disruption last?"

  "I could not guess. Our limited understanding of the ethereal medium comes from fragmentary and often contradictory ancient texts."

  Whorlyr accepted this standard excuse of the Archivists without voicing any of the unproductive comments that occurred to him.

  "The crash snapped a bone in my foot. I think it's a simple fracture and once it's set and bound that I will be able to walk upon it, but I will need your aid."

  For the sake of his dignity, Whorlyr did not cry out while Zsii assisted with the removal of the boot, the straightening of the foot, the binding with strips torn from Whorlyr's shirt, or the reinsertion of the bound foot into its boot, but the strain of clenching his teeth against the pain left his jaws aching when the tasks were done.

  He stood and stumped about. As long as he was careful to let his weight down only on the heel of his injured foot, he found that he could walk without limping.

  He considered the unconscious Sgohlg, the wreck that would never be anything more than scrap, and the shrouded landscape.

  "We will bivouac here, at least through tomorrow. If the far talking disk continues to fail, we will prepare a litter for Brother Sgohlg and march at our best pace toward Lhinstord."

  Zsii nodded and stirred about in his satchel to produce two ration cakes. "I had these put away." He passed Whorlyr one.

  "Any water? I'm sure that the onboard tanks ruptured in the crash."

  "Sadly, no."

  Whorlyr knew that the whole grain cake had a few ground nuts in it but was otherwise flavorless and dry. He stuffed it in a pocket. "I will eat later. Watch over Brother Sgohlg. I will sift through the wreckage."

  He managed to dig a blanket for Sgohlg from beneath the aft end, but found nothing else of use.

  When night of a sort, an orange-brown haze-filled twilight, fell, Zsii had still not reestablished contact, though once a fragment of sound screeched from the relic. The two of them took turns keeping watch, but nothing troubled them save for an inconsistent rain that started up around what Whorlyr thought was midnight. The rain forced them to move Sgohlg into the scant shelter of the ruined algar and left greasy trails where it ran down the wreck's timbers and plates.

  The rain also washed the air clear and dawn was near normal, brightening into a cloudless day that revealed a landscape littered with the remains of algars and downed trees. Standing on the western side of the wreck and looking back toward the west, Whorlyr was able to count at least two score large pieces of wreckage, though no single wreck was even as substantial as his own. All grass, underbrush, trees, and crops had been burned. A similar devastation extended to the north and south for as much as a league along the floodplain of the river. No living thing, man or animal, moved within his sight.

  His attempt to crush the Apostate and his upstart Empire with one blow had failed.

  Or, perhaps, it had succeeded in an unexpected way. All of the interdicting Imperial land forces must also have been destroyed and it was entirely probable that the cornered Apostate and his illicit ancient weaponry, the failure of one of which seemed the likeliest cause of the devastation, had been eliminated. That meant that Mhajhkaei and the othe
r rebellious cities of the old Principate were his for the taking.

  If only he had another army of algars. Rebuilding the armored carriages for a new campaign would take many months.

  "Brother Whorlyr!" Zsii called to him from inside the wreck. "I have made a connection with Mhevyr!"

  As soon as Zsii had described the location of the wreck, a gateway of the Emerald Gate opened alongside and a full cloister of Salients deployed. Each bore a brace of bolt throwers in addition to their standard swords and armor.

  The commander of the force, a Senior Assault Brother named Khimech, was known to Whorlyr. "Brother Khimech, have a team construct a litter and prepare to evacuate our wounded man, Brother Sgohlg."

  "As you say, brother."

  With a quick command, the officer set a Veteran Brother to the task, then told Whorlyr, "Director of Forces, I bring orders from the Archdeacon. You are to scout the last known location of the Apostate and attempt to determine whether he survived the conflagration."

  "Are you prepared to march immediately?"

  "We are, Director of Forces. Shall I send out scouts?"

  "No, we will travel as a compact group and as swiftly as we can. If we sight the forces of the Apostate, we will withdraw at once. Leave two teams here to hold the exit point should we need to fall back through the Emerald Gate. You and the rest will accompany me. Brother Zsii, are you fit to march with us?"

  The Archivist nodded. "Indeed, brother."

  "Let's go."

  Moving off to the west, Whorlyr, in the lead, set a grueling pace, trotting as much as the rough terrain and his impaired foot would allow. The impassable tangle of the charred and uprooted trees of a sprawling woodlot compelled them to turn to the south after only a third of a league, but the detour caused them to come upon the Imperial Highway. The mostly clear pavement allowed them to hasten their pace to a ground covering jog, but also increased the risk of ambush and he watched the road ahead carefully for any sign of the enemy.