The Mage (The Hidden Realm)

by A. Giannetti

  “Did the Ondredon know all along that my new knowledge would not do me any good?” wondered Elerian. “He is probably laughing at me even now,” he thought to himself as he ate a brief, cold breakfast.

  After eating, he resumed his journey north, searching the ground for any sign that the builders of the hidden home had passed this way on their journey south. He remained near the feet of the Panteras, traveling through a rough, broken country covered with enormous trees. In the early evening, he arrived at the stony bank of a dark, swift flowing river. From studying Tullius’s maps, he knew this was the Avius and that it had its source in the heights of the Panteras.

  “Do I go on or do I go back?” Elerian asked himself as he eyed the dark, uninviting waters of the Avius. He had seen no sign of any Goblins, so it was probably safe to return home. On the other hand, it seemed a shame to abandon his explorations after such a short time. “I will go on,” Elerian finally decided, “but it seems pointless to continue any farther north.” From looking at Tullius’s maps, Elerian knew that a day’s journey beyond the Avius, the Mare Caerulus stretched for over one hundred miles into the north. West of the great lake, the Abercius continued on all the way to the borders of Fimbria. The Mare was the abode of water dragons, and who knew what dangers lurked in the Abercius. It was unlikely that any survivors fleeing from Fimbria would have attempted to travel either over the lake or through the forest. “It seems more likely to me that the people I am searching for came from the east,” thought Elerian to himself. “Those were settled lands before and after the Great War.”

  With his mind made up, Elerian followed the Avius east for four days, passing, without knowing it, the place where Drusus had flung himself into the river eleven years ago to escape Sarius and his Goblins. On the evening of the fourth day, he heard a steady murmur that grew to a loud roar as he drew closer to the source of the sound. Just as the sun’s light was fading, he came to a place where the Avius emptied into another far greater waterway. At the junction of the two rivers were a number of rapids and rocky reefs over which the combined flow of the two watercourses foamed white in the gathering darkness, filling the air with the muted roar that Elerian had heard from a distance. Beyond the broken water, the main channel of the larger river looked to be almost a half mile across. From the faded maps Elerian had looked at in Tullius’s home, he knew that that it must be the Ancharus, which had its source at the outflow of the Mare. Flowing south toward the Bay of Haterius, it divided Ancharia from Hesperia.

  “Another dead end,” thought Elerian to himself. “There is no way anyone could have crossed the river here, even in a boat. I may as well return home,” he thought to himself, feeling both frustrated and disappointed, for despite all the long miles he had traveled and all the dangers he had endured, he had discovered nothing new about himself or the people who had lived in the hidden home in the Abercius. The roar of the rapids filling his ears, he aimlessly walked along a wide shelf of stone that angled out into the river. To his left, the current ran swiftly along the side of the stony barrier he walked on, but on his right was a great backwater where the river flowed slowly in a counter clockwise direction. Elerian suddenly heard the heavy splashes of large fish feeding at the surface of the slack water. The last rays of the sun gleamed silver on the concentric ripples that spread across the still surface of the great pool wherever the feeding fish broke the surface.

  Forgetting his disappointment, Elerian eagerly took a thin, strong hand line from his pack. After tying a small, bright lure, in the shape of a narrow willow leaf to the end of his line, he cast it out into the depths. Almost immediately, he hooked a large, powerful fish. The fish made several long runs that took almost all of his line, but after a long struggle, Elerian pulled it out onto the stony reef. It lay quietly on its side, its gills gasping for air, but its large eyes glittered fiercely in the starlight, as did its mouthful of long, sharp teeth. Elerian recognized it as a lupatus, a water wolf. He had never imagined they grew so large, for this fish was at least four feet long. As he stared admiringly at the great, gleaming fish, Elerian was reminded of a childhood story told to him by Balbus about a magic fish that led a boy to a hidden treasure.

  “Do you also have magical powers?” he asked the great fish, smiling at his flight of fancy. Oddly enough, the lupatus fixed him with its fierce eye, giving him a peculiar, knowing look that seemed out of keeping with a mere fish. Impulsively, feeling slightly foolish about his decision, Elerian decided to forego his opportunity for a fish dinner. Immobilizing the lupatus with a spell, he removed his hooked lure from its toothy jaw before extending his shade into the shining body beneath his hand and exploring all its secrets. Although it appeared to be an ordinary fish, Elerian still pushed its shining body back into the river, at the same time releasing the lupatus from the spell that kept it motionless. With a flick of it powerful tail, the great fish slid smoothly beneath the dark surface of the river.

  “Let us see if you will lead me to a treasure like the fish in the story,” thought Elerian to himself as he shed his pack. For a moment he hesitated, gazing at the dark, mysterious depths of the river, wondering what lay beneath the surface. Then, a flow of golden light spilled from his right hand, covering him from head to toe. His clothes vanished, and his body changed into an exact copy of the lupatus he had released into the river. No longer a creature of the air, he gasped and flared his gills, unable to breathe properly. A powerful thrust of his wide tail pushed him from the reef into the river. Cool water flowed over his gills, bringing a rich flow of oxygen to his blood. With a sweep of his tail, he swam deeper into the slack water by the reef. His great eyes pierced the clear, starlit waters around him, revealing the watery world that lay beneath the surface of the river. Schools of small vertically striped fish fled before him. In the distance, he saw the great shapes of other lupatus pursuing the smaller fish, but they seemed to have no interest in him.

  Elerian swam farther out into the river, sliding through tall clumps of water plants like underground forests and swimming over and around boulders and house-sized outcroppings of dark rock. At the edge of the slack water behind the reef, he saw a large lupatus suspended above a great outcropping of rock that rose out of the riverbed. It appeared to be watching him with great interest, and Elerian had a sudden strong notion that it was the fish he had released earlier. With a flick of its tail, it turned and dived down behind the outcrop. Curiously, Elerian followed it. Once he cleared the wall of stone formed by the outcrop, he saw the wreckage of a large galley below him, firmly wedged against the side of the rock. Water plants grew around it, waving languidly in the current, and shoals of fish swam over it, wheeling all at once this way and that like flocks of land birds. Of the lupatus, there was no sign.

  A surge of excitement flowed through Elerian. “Perhaps the fish I released has led me to a treasure, like the fish in Balbus’s story,” he thought to himself.

  Gliding down through the water, propelled by strong, sweeping strokes of his broad tail, Elerian swam down to the ship and went below decks through the open hatches of the galley. White skeletons were scattered about on the floors of the compartments he found inside the hull, lying silently in tarnished armor with weapons still locked in their dead hands. From the shape of the bones, Elerian could see that Goblins had died here and humans too.

  “So much for my enchanted fish,” Elerian thought to himself, chiding himself for his foolishness as he entered a narrow passageway in the bow of the ship. “I will likely find nothing but bones and ghosts of the past on this ship.”

  His prediction held true until he reached a small room at the end of the passageway. There, gold and silver coins gleamed unexpectedly in the faint starlight that leaked in through a ragged hole in the side of the ship, spilled from rotted leather sacks that were stacked on the floor. As Elerian nosed among the shining coins, he felt his initial excitement fade. He had found treasure, but it had no real allure for him, for there was nothing that he wished to buy.
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  “Still, it seems a shame not to take some of it,” he thought to himself. “Perhaps Balbus and Tullius will be able to make use of it.”

  Picking up one coin at a time in his toothy mouth, Elerian sent them to the place where he kept his spell book. Despite their small size, he was surprised at how much power it took to move the metal coins through the portal. He soon tired of the endeavor, and abandoning the treasure, swam unhurriedly through the hole in the side of the galley, deeply absorbed in thoughts of the ship and the battle that had sunk her.

  A sudden turbulence in the water disrupted his thoughts. Instinctively, he twisted to his left, barely avoiding a set of long jaws lined with cruel, backward curving teeth. Again and again, they snapped shut a hair’s breadth from his body, as Elerian darted wildly first one way and then another to avoid the long, narrow head that repeatedly rushed at him from the end of a long, sinuous neck.

  With no knowledge of how he got there, Elerian found himself near the surface of the river. The dark bulk of the reef reared up before him. With a powerful surge, Elerian leaped clean out of the water and began changing even as he fell to the ground. As his shape and his clothes returned to him, he stood and looked behind him. Frighteningly close, a horned head with large, dark eyes and gleaming teeth surged out of the water, borne aloft on a long, muscular neck covered with small scales that gleamed wetly in the starlight. Beneath the water, Elerian could see the dark outline of a long, powerful body.

  “An anguis,” thought Elerian to himself as he snatched up his pack and sprinted along the stony reef toward the shore. The flat, motionless pictures in Tullius’s bestiary had not prepared him for the frightening reality of the water dragon. Hissing like a great snake, it pursued Elerian along the reef, a white curl of water foaming before its scaled breast, as it thrust strongly though the water with powerful legs and webbed feet. Fear lent wings to Elerian’s feet, and he drew away from his pursuer. He did not slow his flying feet until he was under the trees that lined the shore. From the safety of the forest, he looked back and saw the great, scaled bulk of his attacker rolling sinuously through the water. The long head was still turned in his direction, and the eyes gleamed hungrily in the starlight. Elerian retreated deeper into the trees, unsure whether the beast would leave the water to pursue him on dry land. Climbing into a great oak tree, he paused to rest and calm himself, far above the ground.

  “I would not care to tempt such a guardian again,” he thought to himself. “Had I lingered a few moments longer over the coins I found, it might well have trapped me inside the treasure room, in which case I would be sitting in its belly instead of up in this tree.”

  Feeling that he had stretched his luck to the limit with all his narrow escapes, Elerian decided that it was time to begin his journey home. Certain now that the anguis would not leave its watery element to pursue him, Elerian climbed down out of the tree in which he had taken refuge. He shivered, for a cool, damp breeze blew through the forest from the river, chilling his skin, which was still wet from his time in the water. Taking his warm cloak from his pack, Elerian wrapped it around him and turned his footsteps southeast, toward home.

  Over the next four days, he traveled through a gently rolling land covered with trackless forests. The clear streams he passed provided him with silvery trout for his meals, and his bow brought down grouse, fat from gorging on the fall bounty of nuts, so he did not lack for food. Here and there among the trees, he discovered the remnants of old stone fences and walls, proof that men had once lived in this part of the world before the forest reclaimed it. More than once, Elerian wondered what had driven them away from such a rich land. Occasionally as he traveled, Elerian tried to talk with the trees around him, but except for the whispered word half-blood, a suspicious silence was all he got for his efforts. Whenever he stopped to rest, he brought back more of the coins he had sent through his spell book portal, until he had collected all of them into a small leather pouch.

  When he neared the hill on which he lived, Elerian decided to stop and see Tullius before returning home, for the old mage’s house lay along the path he was following. It was evening when he arrived at Tullius’s clearing. At his knock, the front door opened, and Tullius was outlined against the bright fire burning behind him in his fireplace.

  “Where have you been off to all this time?” asked Tullius sternly, without a word of greeting, when he saw Elerian. Worry made his voice harsher than he had perhaps intended. “You have been gone so long Balbus and I were afraid something had happened to you.”

  “I have been away up North, as far east as the Ancharus,” said Elerian, ignoring Tullius’s brusque manner. “I have brought you a present.”

  Bringing out his pouch full of coins, he walked into Tullius’s house and spilled half the contents of the pouch into the middle of Tullius’s table. The bright flames of the fire played over the small heap of coins, raising gold and silver gleams from the treasure.

  “This is for you,” said Elerian proudly. “I took it from an old shipwreck in the Ancharus.”

  Tullius barely glanced at the coins. “You could have stayed home and spared yourself the trouble,” he said harshly. “I have no need of any gold or silver.”

  Elerian was somewhat put out at Tullius’s indifference to the treasure he had brought back, but he pushed his irritation aside. “Underneath the hard words, he means well,” he thought to himself. “Have you anything to eat,” he asked, taking off his pack and cloak. “All my own food is gone.”

  “If you had stayed home where you belong, you would not need to trouble me for food in the middle of the night,” grumbled Tullius, but he rose at once from his chair to fetch bread, cheese, and wine. After serving Elerian, he returned to his chair by the fire with a cup of wine in his right hand. After he had satisfied his hunger, Elerian took his own cup of wine and joined him, making himself comfortable on the wide stone step, which extended out from the fireplace.

  “Well, what have you been doing all this time?” demanded Tullius abruptly as Elerian sipped his wine in silence. Despite the mage’s brusque words, Elerian noted with satisfaction the interest in Tullius’s dark eyes as he settled back to listen.

  “Ten days ago,” began Elerian, “I decided to return to Drusus’ lair in the Abercius to search for more clues about my past. I reached the place without incident and took refuge inside to wait out the storm, which broke that night. I found nothing of interest inside, so when the storm ended, I went out into the garden that lies behind the dwelling. There was a stone bowl lying in the grass that I had seen before, but now, it was filled with water from the storm. When I touched it with my hand, the rim came alive with lines of silver light.”

  “More argentum,” said Tullius nodding his head wisely. “The same metal that was in the spear head you found before.”

  “So it also seemed to me,” said Elerian, “except this time there was no sign of the lines until I touched them. As I watched, the water within the bowl turned silver before becoming clear again.”

  “You found and activated a portal,” interrupted Tullius. “Surely you did not look into it,” he said in an agitated voice.

  “There seemed no harm in it,” said Elerian defensively. “I looked into the bowl and saw that a strange brown land was now visible through the water. It was empty of life except for a column of armed, black clad figures riding on strange, dark steeds very like horses but with great claws on their feet.”

  “Atriors,” interrupted Tullius apprehensively. “They are the favored mounts of the Goblins.”

  “I was not sure who the riders were at first,” continued Elerian, “so I leaned over the bowl for a closer look. The face of their leader suddenly enlarged, so that it seemed as if he stood only a few feet away from me. I recognized him then as a Goblin by his features. He wore an iron crown set with rubies on his head.”

  “Torquatus!” said Tullius turning pale. “No one else would dare to wear the iron crown of Nefandus. Think Elerian, did he see yo
ur face?”

  “He may have,” said Elerian reluctantly. “He seemed to stare right into my eyes, and he reached out his right hand toward me. When his fingertips emerged from the basin, it startled me enough that I let go of the bowl. The images within it vanished at once. After that, I tipped the water out of the bowl before destroying it. It seemed to me too dangerous to leave it intact.”

  “That, at least, was well done,” said Tullius, gloomily, “but too late, I think, to do any good if Torquatus saw your face.”

  “He saw a nameless Hesperian for a brief moment,” said Elerian. “Why should he search me out or even care who I am?”

  “Because he is not a fool like some that are sitting not far from me,” said Tullius becoming impatient. “By opening the portal, you revealed yourself to him as a person of power. That alone will interest him, for Torquatus keeps many mages as captives in order to feed their power into his ring. He will almost certainly command his minions to capture you.”

  Tullius fell silent for a moment and then said urgently, “Elerian, you should leave immediately, for you are no longer safe here. Take the treasure you brought back and go south into Hesperia. Hide in one of the larger cities. He may never discover you there.”

  “I will not run away, leaving you and Balbus to fend for yourselves,” said Elerian stubbornly.

  Tullius’s eyes flashed with impatience. “Do not be a fool,” he said harshly. “If you fall into the hands of Torquatus, he will quickly discover that you are wearing a disguise. It will not take him long to link you to the Elf who escaped him years ago. Knowing his evil nature, he will not be content to kill you quickly,” said Tullius ominously. “He will also seek to punish those who helped you to hide from him.”