The Mage (The Hidden Realm)

by A. Giannetti

  “I had best hide the body,” he thought to himself, “but first I will take its hide. I have never seen such a wonderful skin before.”

  This was easier said than done, however, for the small, hard scales resisted his razor sharp blade. Eventually, he was forced to resort to a parting spell to separate the glittering hide from the body. Elerian hid the remains of the anguis inside of a building that stood near the pool. When he emerged back out into the open, ripples still crisscrossed the surface of the pool.

  “I need to find someplace where I can pass the rest of the night,” he thought to himself. “Judging from the large, well developed eyes of the anguis I killed, these creatures are night hunters. I may be able to cross the rest of the swamp unmolested if I do it under the light of the sun.”

  Extinguishing his mage light, Elerian resumed walking north on the road. He left his pursuers behind but remained wary, for who knew what other dangers lurked nearby? He began searching for a place to spend the rest of the night and several ruined towers, rising like skeletal fingers high above the city, caught his interest. As he drew closer to them, it struck him that their shattered windows resembled empty eye sockets, and he found it easy to imagine hidden watchers in those dark recesses. Shaking off his uneasiness, Elerian approached the tower that was in the best repair. “This is no time for flights of fancy,” he thought to himself. “I must have shelter that will put me out of reach of the anguis for the rest of the night.”

  As he neared the building, however, Elerian felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck as a pale, bluish light, man high but of indistinct shape, suddenly swept around the right hand corner of the building. Hovering a foot or so above the ground, it slowly approached him.

  THE TOWER

  Taken aback by the strange apparition before him, Elerian prepared to retreat before it, but before he took a single step, the strange light suddenly veered off to his left, eventually disappearing behind another tower. Elerian slowly let out the breath he had been holding without realizing it.

  “What was that?” he wondered to himself. “It was certainly no mage light, for it seemed to move about under its own direction, almost as if it possessed intelligence of some sort.”

  The light did not return, and Elerian finally shrugged his shoulders and splashed through the shallow pool of mud and water that surrounded the tower he had chosen to climb, for he still needed shelter for the rest of the night. The tower was round in shape, built of closely fitted black basalt blocks. The base was at least one hundred feet across, and it rose for twice that distance into the air, tapering gradually in diameter. At one time, it must have been even taller, for the top course of the tower was ragged, as if some mighty blow had swept part of it away. Great blocks of masonry were scattered all around the base of the tower. Picking his way around the rubble, Elerian climbed the six broad steps that led up to a wide stone landing. At the end of the landing, beneath a curved arch, was a doorway, but the door had long since vanished.

  Elerian cautiously stepped through the doorway, with his right hand ready on his knife hilt. He found himself in a large, high ceilinged, circular room that seemed to take up most of the first floor of the tower. Enough starlight came in through the shattered windows to show Elerian that the room was empty. Rubble covered the floor, and a smell of must and decay filled the air. On his right, Elerian saw wide stone steps that spiraled up between the outer wall of the tower and a second inner wall. The stone staircase was exactly what Elerian was looking for. He began to climb the stairs, hoping they would take him out of reach of the anguis and the odd light he had just encountered. He went slowly, for his ankle still pained him and the going was treacherous. Some of the steps were damaged, and others had loose stones. At every twelve feet of rise in the stairs, Elerian found a landing. To the right of each landing was a tall, narrow window that gave a view of the drowned city. To the left, Elerian found doorways leading through the inner wall of the stairwell. The doors were long since gone, and he paused to examine each room for any sign of danger, but each of them proved to be empty. He could have stopped to rest in any of them, but outside the tower, the roaring of the anguis had resumed, shattering the stillness of the night and encouraging him to climb even higher into the tower. Eventually, the stairway ended at a room that was missing its roof, although its walls were mostly intact.

  Overhead, the night sky was dusted with bright stars, and a chill wind blew strongly through the roofless room. Elerian walked over to a window with a deep embrasure. He was at least two hundred feet above the ground, with a good view of a major portion of the city and the swamp that lay beyond it. The city resembled a deserted graveyard, full of ruins and stark shadows. Nothing moved between the buildings, and, thankfully, Elerian saw no more of the blue lights. As he stood there, with the wind whistling mournfully around him, he could hear the roaring of the anguis in the distance. Then, it seemed to Elerian that he heard other, odd cries, but whether with his mind or his ears, he could not tell. His third eye opened, and he started when he saw indistinct, red lights moving among the ruined buildings of the city. Unbidden, the memory of Drusus’ shade returned to him, for the shapes before him bore a strong resemblance to the shade of the dead mage.

  “What sort of place was this?” Elerian wondered to himself uneasily. “Is it haunted by the shades of the dead, or is there some other explanation for the lights that I see?” He began to regret taking refuge in the tower, where he now felt trapped, but it was too late to seek refuge elsewhere with the wraiths prowling the streets below. Feeling too exposed where he was, Elerian decided to seek shelter in one of the intact rooms below. He descended the stairs to the next landing, pausing there with a puzzled look on his face. He had paid little attention to the landing when first passed it by, but he noticed now that there was a window on his left but no door on his right, only a blank wall.

  “Why is this landing different from all the others?” he wondered to himself. Curiously, he ran his right hand over the wall on his right, where he might reasonably have expected to find a door. As his fingertips slid over the dark stone, a slender silver line suddenly gleamed in the dark, outlining a square shape resembling a door. Elerian took his hand away, and the line went dark. He touched the wall again with his hand, and the line reappeared, a bright silver thread running through the dark stone.

  “There is a hidden door here,” he thought excitedly to himself, wondering what was concealed behind it. He cast an opening spell, and the portion of the wall between the silver lines swung inward on silent hinges. A musty smell emanated from the room beyond the door, as if damp and mold had held sway in it for many years. It was also pitch black, so Elerian lit a small mage light that suspended itself above his head.

  He found himself looking into a windowless room about thirty feet across. The air in the chamber was breathable, indicating there were vents to the outside somewhere in the walls or ceiling. The walls were lined with wooden shelves covered with scrolls, sealed jars, flasks, and retorts, as well as many other objects that were harder to identify. In the center of the room was a large table of polished black stone, covered with a thick layer of dust. Dust also covered everything else in the room, and spiders had spun their webs in many places.

  “No one has entered this chamber in many years,” thought Elerian to himself. “It has never been plundered like the rest of the city.”

  Wondering what ancient knowledge he might discover there, Elerian eagerly walked over to one of the shelves and attempted to pick up a scroll. It crumbled under his fingertips, destroyed by damp and mold. Disappointed, he began to examine the bottles and jars instead. Many contained unknown powders and liquids, but a few held small, unrecognizable nightmare shapes that gave him a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “This room was dedicated to magic,” thought Elerian to himself, “but it appears to have been dark magic.

  Feeling he ought to leave this place, Elerian took a last look around. His eye was suddenly caught by a small crys
tal globe, about six inches in diameter, which he had overlooked before. It rested in a three-fingered stand of black iron, shaped like a clawed hand. No speck of dust clung to its smooth, perfect curves, and it gleamed softly in the rays of Elerian’s mage light. The globe seemed out of place among the other items on the shelves, for it did not seem to lend itself to dark magic. Irresistibly drawn to it, Elerian carried it to the table in the center of the room. Setting it down, he admired its perfection and tried to guess at its purpose. Extending the first finger of his right hand, he lightly touched the cool, smooth surface of the globe, extending his shade a little way into it so that he could explore its form and structure. Before he could sift through the new knowledge that flowed into his mind, a muted silver light suffused the orb, attracting his attention to it. He was at once reminded of the basin he had found in the hidden home in the Abercius. “Release it,” warned a small voice in the back of its mind. “It may be another portal.”

  Elerian ignored the warning, watching in fascination as the light faded, leaving the interior of the globe clearly illuminated by some unseen source of light. As if he were looking through a small, round window, Elerian found himself watching several tall dark robed men as they labored in a round room, the very room he was standing in, he realized after a moment. Some of the actions the silent men performed were ordinary, such as the tedious mixing of liquids and powders to achieve some unknown end, but Elerian found others horrible to behold. He watched in revulsion as the dark robed men cast spells on living creatures, some of them men, rendering them into awful forms for arcane reasons of their own.

  Abruptly, the scene in the globe changed. Now, there were only two men in the room. Elerian glimpsed one of their faces and was startled to recognize Drusus, as a slightly younger version of himself. He and his assistant were engaged in casting a ring of bright silver out of molten metal. Elerian watched in surprise as the man he had taken for Drusus’ helper, without waiting for the ring to cool, removed it from its mold and set it on the third finger of his right hand. As the dark figure admired the gleaming band on his finger, Drusus knelt at his feet with a subservient look on his face.

  The scene suddenly vanished, and for the second time in his life, Elerian found himself looking at a now familiar lean face with pitiless black eyes. An iron crown graced the Goblin’s pale brow. He jerked his finger away from the globe, as if it had become red hot. The orb darkened for a moment. Then, a tracery of red hued lines, like miniature lightning bolts, flashed across the inside the globe. Some sixth sense made Elerian dive under the table an instant before the globe exploded with a thunderous crash that sent deadly shards of crystal flying in every direction across the room. The concussion of the blast shattered containers on the shelves all around the room and reduced the scrolls and books to powdery fragments.

  Under the table, Elerian was deafened by the explosion. Choked and blinded by the dust and acrid fumes that filled the air, he crawled out from under the table, blindly making his way across the room on his hands and knees. Somehow, he found the doorway. Still coughing and unable to see clearly, Elerian crawled to the top floor of the tower. Gulping in fresh air, he waited for the ringing in his ears and the burning in his eyes and chest to subside. When he could see and hear again, Elerian wrapped his cloak around him and sat with his back against a wall where he could watch the entrance to the stairwell. In his mind, he tried to sort out what had just happened in the room below.

  “The orb first showed me scenes from the past,” thought Elerian to himself, “for Drusus is dead. The assistant helping Drusus must have been Torquatus, but that scene was also from the past, for his magic ring was made many years ago. The last scene must have been from the present, however, for Torquatus looked exactly as he did when I last set eyes on him. Somehow, he must have sensed that I was looking into the orb. When he appeared in it and saw my face, he tried to kill me by shattering it. He very nearly succeeded too,” thought Elerian to himself. “I hope that he thinks I am dead now. I certainly should be dead,” he thought ruefully to himself as he considered the narrowness of his escape.

  He spent the rest of the night where he was, preferring the clean air and the stars of the night sky to the chambers below, which might hold even more unpleasant secrets than the mage’s hidden workroom. He continued to hear weird cries from the city streets, or perhaps they were only echoes in his mind, he could not be sure. The bellows of the anguis in the swamp were certainly real.

  Elerian kept his third eye open all night long, fearing that some wraith would come creeping up the stairs and fall on him unawares, draining away his life force like some great insubstantial leech. As he waited for dawn, his thoughts often returned to the crystal orb that had almost cost him his life. When his shade had touched the orb, all its inner mysteries were laid bare to him, and he was certain that he could recreate it if he wished.

  “It would be risky, though,” he thought to himself. “Could I look into it without encountering Torquatus again? Twice now, when I have looked into a portal, he has somehow sensed it. Perhaps it would be better to avoid such things entirely,” Elerian thought to himself, but deep down, the lure of exploring a new form of magic remained.

  At first light, after a scanty breakfast, Elerian was happy to leave the tower and put it behind him. He made his way back to the road and followed it north again. As he had suspected, the anguis did not trouble him under the light of the sun. The deep pools on either side of the road were still and remained free of any ripples. With each mile he traveled, the land around him rose a little, and the swamp became shallower. By evening, the roadbed was visible once more and a thick wood appeared on either side of it.

  A half mile or so from the swamp, Elerian plunged into the forest on his right. In the center of a grove of tall ash trees, he cast an illusion spell that made him invisible to anyone who walked by. Trusting to his spell to protect him, he sat on a twisting tree root, eating a biscuit and some strips of dried, smoked beef for his dinner, washing it all down with a pull of wine from his leather flask. With his hunger satisfied, he now had to decide whether it was worth going on.

  “Common sense tells me that I should go home,” thought Elerian to himself. “In the short time I have spent in this dangerous land, I have already come close to losing my life three times, without discovering anything new about my past. On the other hand, I did find out a little more about Drusus, so perhaps I am on the right track after all. Tullius would probably advise me to go home, but Balbus, I think, would counsel me to travel on a little farther.” Elerian finally decided to take Balbus’s imaginary advice. Ending his illusion spell, he climbed high into a tree and slept for several hours. When he woke, the sun was setting. Eager to be on his way, he climbed down to the ground. Although his ankle was still sore from the mauling the anguis had given it, it bore his weight well enough for him to walk on it.

  “What other adventures and discoveries await me in this strange, desolate country,” he wondered to himself as he set out through the trees along the right hand margin of the road, where he would remain concealed from unfriendly eyes.

  AN INVITATION TO DINNER

  Night fell. The sky was clear, and a light breeze rustled the leaves of the trees. Favoring his left ankle only a little, Elerian breathed deeply of the soft spring air as he walked along, happy to be free of the dank, unpleasant odors of the swamp. As the miles unfolded beneath his feet, the land on his left began to rise, and by morning, tall forest-covered mountains rose up in the distance, their tumbled foothills reaching almost to the road. Elerian stopped after sunrise to eat and rest for a few hours before continuing on his way once more. The road led him through a wild, forested country, empty of all signs of human habitation. Near sunset, Elerian came to a place where a small, swift stream, spilling from the mountains, had carved a deep gully between two of the hills on his left. It crossed beneath the road through a large stone culvert before continuing on its way east. Huge hemlocks and oaks grew on either side of
the gully formed by the stream, their branches meeting overhead to form a dark tunnel. Elerian’s water bottle was low, but he hesitated to enter the gully to fill it, for a strong, rank scent drifted down out of the trees, borne on the evening breeze.

  “What can be the source of that smell?” wondered Elerian apprehensively. “If it comes from an animal, then it is one I have never encountered before.” His common sense urged him to distance himself from the gully and seek water elsewhere, but he did not move away, for he suddenly felt a strong compulsion to enter the ravine, so strong that he actually raised his right foot to take the first step before he caught himself. Alarmed at his loss of control, Elerian hardened his will to resist any outside influences, and the pressure to enter the sinister gully subsided. Opening his third eye, he stared into the gloomy depths of the ravine, which even his night gifted eyes could not penetrate. A red curtain of light flickered beneath the trees, the tell tale of an illusion spell. Behind the shifting, rippling curtain was a huge, indistinct red shade.

  The illusion suddenly vanished, as if the creature in the gully realized that it had been discovered. Elerian closed his third eye and saw a pair of green eyes glowing in the murky depths of the ravine. Warily, he began to retreat up the road as they drew closer. A shadowy shape took form under the trees, and a moment later, an enormous, manlike figure emerged from the gully. Now that it was illuminated by starlight, Elerian had a clear view of the creature. He stared at the strange being with a mixture of caution and curiosity, for he was sure that he was looking at a Troll, a creature that lived only in legend in his own country. It stood at least eight feet tall, and thick, corded muscles ran beneath its hairless skin. The features of its face were manlike, but thick and coarse. Large pointed ears framed its bald head, and strong, black talons tipped its fingers and toes. Its only clothing was a dirty leather kilt that hung below its ample stomach.