by Tanya Huff
Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World
Copyright © 2015 Tanya Huff
All rights reserved.
This edition collected and published as an ebook in 2015 by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
1. The Last Lesson, AMAZING STORIES September 1989, (reprinted ON SPEC Summer 1996, collected Stealing Magic 1999 & 2005)
2. Be it Ever so Humble, MZB's FANTASY MAGAZINE, Winter 1991 (reprinted Best of MZB's Fantasy Magazine, Warner October 1994, collected Stealing Magic 1999 & 2005)
3. Mirror, Mirror on the Lam, WIZARD FANTASTIC, DAW Books Inc., November 1997 (collected Stealing Magic 1999 & 2005)
4. Third Time Lucky, AMAZING STORIES, November 1986 (reprinted ON SPEC Fall 1995, collected Stealing Magic 1999 & 2005)
5. And Who is Joah, AMAZING STORIES, November 1987 (reprinted ON SPEC Winter 1995, collected Stealing Magic 1999 & 2005 )
6. Nothing up Her Sleeve, AMAZING STORIES, 1991 (collected Stealing Magic 1999 & 2005)
7. We Two May Meet, DAW 30th ANNIVERSARY ANTHOLOGY, 2002 (collected Stealing Magic 2005 and Finding Magic 2007)
Cover design by Tiger Bright Studios.
ISBN 978-1-625671-15-8
Introduction
If I could be any of my characters, I'd be Magdelene. Not because she's the most powerful wizard in the world, although that certainly wouldn't suck, but because she's unapologetically who she is. She's curious, she's kind, she's lusty, she's lazy. She knows what she likes and what she wants and she's not afraid to go after it. She likes comfort and warm sun and cool breezes and men who make music. She's not beautiful and she doesn't care.
For the most part, she wants to be left alone to sprawl in her hammock and spit watermelon seeds over the seawall.
She has incredible amounts of natural talent and no ambition at all.
And she's very, very dangerous. Because she really is the most powerful wizard in the world... and some people tend to react badly to that.
When I created the Magdelene stories, I began with the premise of her literally being the most powerful wizard in the world. No hyperbole. No exaggeration. Fact. There's almost nothing she can't do, should she want to. Now these kinds of incredibly powerful protagonists are tricky because story requires conflict, and if they can't be challenged or defeated, they're, well, they're boring. This is why vampires – strong, fast, immortal, occasionally shape-shifting, almost always hypnotic – can be taken out with a sunlamp and a number two pencil.
I had to give Magdelene a weakness to balance her strength.
And that weakness would be... Magdelene. She doesn't much care about power. Oh, she enjoys it, and she certainly takes advantage of it, but she can be happily distracted by a little sweaty flexing or a slice of key lime pie. As there's no one else who stands a chance of taking her out, Magdelene, as the most powerful wizard in the world, is in conflict with her own nature.
And, occasionally, demons.
Creating plots got me thinking of stories about gunslingers in the American West. (Canadians didn't have gunslingers. We sent the North West Mounted Police out west first. And then Tim Hortons.) (Kidding. Do you honestly think we could get the police to go west if they didn't have coffee and Timbits waiting for them?) (rimshot)
Anyway...
I was thinking about the fastest gunslinger in the west tropes – saving the town, challenges from young hotshots, friends and family attacked to get to them – and I thought, what if the part of the gunslinger is played by a cheerfully lazy woman with no fashion sense and eye for a nice pair of biceps?
And that's Magdelene.
I hope you like her as much as I do.
The lizard? Oh, there must be lizards. Lizards are compulsary.
Order of Appearance
The six Magdelene stories can be read two ways: more or less chronologically, or in the order I wrote them. Both ways have merits. If you read chronologically, you get Magdelene's life in order, or at least in as much order as Magdelene's life ever manages to be. If you read in the order the stories were written, you get to see how I developed as a storyteller, and how Magdelene's life got richer as I became more skillful.
The table of contents lists them both ways, so you can decide.
[Publisher’s note: The default order for this ebook is the order in which they were written. If that’s your preference, feel free to dive right in! If you’d rather the chronological order, select "The Last Lesson" to go to the first chronological story directly, or from the Table of Contents. At the end of each story, you will find a link to the next chronological story to help you navigate, and each title will bring you back to the Table of Contents.]
Table of Contents
Introduction
Order of Appearance
in chronological order
1. The Last Lesson
2. Be It Ever So Humble
3. Mirror, Mirror, on the Lam
4. Third Time Lucky
5. And Who is Joah?
6. Nothing Up Her Sleeve
7. We Two May Meet
in the order I wrote them
this is the default order, nothing special required!
4. Third Time Lucky
5. And Who is Joah?
1. The Last Lesson
2. Be It Ever So Humble
6. Nothing Up Her Sleeve
3. Mirror, Mirror, on the Lam
7. We Two May Meet
Also by Tanya Huff
Publication History
Author's Note for "Third Time Lucky"
I wrote the first draft of this story while I was on vacation in Cuba. Now this was almost thirty years ago so even the main tourist areas weren't as, well, touristy as they currently are, but that didn't really matter because we were nowhere near the main tourist areas. We were in a re-purposed resort for workers in the sugar industry at the other end of the island. Isolated. Gorgeous. Significantly cheaper. Slight danger of being electrocuted in the shower but, hey, nothing's perfect.
While exploring the property, I found a set of hidden concrete stairs that lead down into a tiny cove, and every day after that I sat on the top step for a couple of hours with an old spiral bound notebook and an assortment of pens and wrote a story about what happens when the most powerful wizard in the world is also the laziest wizard in the world. The small, friendly lizards who watched me work became a part of not only this story but of all the Magdelene stories to follow, along with a representative of the semi-feral cats who dined on them. (Pregnant cat, dead lizard; true story.)
The first friend who read "Third Time Lucky" moved all my commas one word to the left. That still happens, but now professionals do it.
I sent the story first to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress. She rejected it. Then to Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. They rejected it. Then I sent it to Amazing Stories and George Scithers, the editor at the time, called me making suggestions for improvements. (It was a simpler time.) A little confused, I asked if this meant that he wanted to see it again after I implemented his suggestions. He sighed and said, "Yes." So I did. And he did. And he bought the story. I got the letter the day before I left on a trip to NYC where I met Sheila Gilbert and passed over the manuscript for Child of the Grove. (Again, simpler time.) And when Sheila asked me if I had any professional credits, I told her, "I just sold a story to George Scithers at Amazing." Maybe that meant she took the manuscript more seriously? Who knows.... but talk about third time lucky.
Excluding the two poems I had published in the Picton Gaze
tte when I was ten (although they paid me five dollars each, I usually do exclude them) "Third Time Lucky" was my first professional sale – the contract is dated 13th September 1985 and it appeared in the November 1986 edition of Amazing Stories. Because of publishing schedules, it was the second story to come out – the first was "What Little Girls are Made Of" in Magic in Ithkar III – but this, this is where it all started.
Third Time Lucky
The lizard had no idea it was being observed as it lay on top of the low coral wall, its mouth slightly open, its eyes unfocused golden jewels. Its only concern was with the warmth of the spring sun – not that the spring sun was much different from the winter sun.
"The real difference," Magdelene explained every spring to a variety of sweating guests, "is that it goes from being hot to being damned hot."
"How can you stand it?" one visitor had panted, languidly fanning himself with a palm leaf.
Magdelene's grey eyes had crinkled at the corners. "I like it hot." And she'd licked her lips.
The visitor, a handsome young nobleman who'd been sent south by his father until a small social infraction blew over, spent the rest of his life wondering if he'd misunderstood.
The lizard liked it hot as well.
Silk, Magdelene's cat, did not. She was expecting her first litter of kittens, and between the extra weight and the heat she was miserable. She did, however, like lizards.
The lizard never knew what hit him. One moment he was peacefully enjoying the sun, the next he was dangling upside down between uncomfortably sharp teeth being carried into the garden where he was suddenly and painfully dropped. He was stunned for a moment, then scuttled as fast as he could for the safety that beckoned from under a broken piece of tile.
He didn't make it.
Twice more he was lifted, carried, and dropped. Finally he turned, raised his head, and hissed at his tormentor.
Which was quite enough for Silk. She lunged with dainty precision, bit the lizard's head off, then made short work of the rest of it.
"Are you sure you should be eating lizards in your condition?" Magdelene asked. The crunching of tiny bones had distracted her attention from her book.
Silk merely licked her lips disdainfully and stalked away, her distended belly swaying from side to side.
Magdelene laughed and returned to the story. It was a boring tale of two men adventuring in the land of the Djinn, but the friend who had brought it to her had gone to a great deal of trouble, and books were rare – even with that printing device they had come up with in the east – so she read it.
"Mistress, will you be eating in the garden today?"
"Please, Kali. It'll be happening soon; I want to enjoy the peace while I can."
"Happening again, Mistress?"
"Some people never learn, Kali."
"One can hope, Mistress," Kali sniffed and went back in the house to prepare lunch.
"One always hopes," Magdelene sighed, "but it doesn't seem to do much good."
She had lived in the turquoise house on the hill for as long as anyone in the fishing village that held her closest neighbours could remember. Great-grandmothers told little children how, when they were young, their great-grandmothers had told them that she had always been there. She had been there so long, in fact, that the villagers took her presence for granted and treated her much the same way as they treated the wind and the coral reef and the sea: with a friendly respect. It had taken them longer to accept Kali and the visible difference of red eyes and ivory horns, but that too had come in time. It had been years since it was considered unusual to see the demon housekeeper in the marketplace arguing over the price of fish. It was, however, still unusual to see her lose the argument.
Occasionally it was useful to have Magdelene for a neighbour.
* * * *
"Carlos, there's a dragon in the harbour."
The village headman sighed and looked at the three heaps of kindling that had been fishing boats a very short time before. It had been a miracle that all six fishermen had survived. "Yes, M'lady, I know."
"I guess," Magdelene mused, squinting into the wind, her skirt and the two scarves she had wrapped around her breasts snapping and dancing about her, "I should go out and talk to him."
"I'll ready my boat." The headman turned to go, but Magdelene held up her hand.
"Don't bother," she said. "Boats are tippy, unstable little things. I'll walk."
And she did. She got wet to about the knees, the swells making for uneven footing, but, while the villagers watched in awe, she walked out until she stood, bobbing gently up and down with the waves, about five body-lengths from the dragon.
"Well?" she asked.
"Gertz?" replied the huge, silver sea-dragon, extraordinarily puzzled. He turned his head so he could fix her in one opalescent eye.
Magdelene put her hands on her hips.
"Go on," she said firmly. "Shoo!"
The dragon, recognizing the voice of authority, however casual, suddenly decided there was much better fishing further south and left.
The villagers cheered as Magdelene stepped back into the sand. She grinned and curtsied, not gracefully but enthusiastically, then waved a hand at the wreckage. Wood, rope, canvas, and the bits of metal received in trade for fish, shuddered, stirred, then danced themselves back into fishing boats.
Everyone stared in silent surprise. This was more than they'd dared hope for.
"We don't know how to thank you," the headman began, but his wife interrupted.
"Just say the words, for Netos' sake," she muttered, knowing her husband's tendency to orate at the slightest provocation. "The lady knows what she's done, she doesn't need you telling her."
Carlos sighed. "Thank you."
Magdelene twinkled at him. "You're welcome." Then she went home to browbeat Kali into baking something sweet for supper. She hadn't got halfway up the hill before the boats were putting out to replace the morning's lost catch.
* * * *
Two days later the soldiers came.
"It is happening, Mistress."
"Yes, Kali, I know."
"What would you have me do?"
"I think..." Magdelene shaded her eyes with her hand. "I think you should make lunch for six. We'll eat in the garden."
The captain had been sent by his king to bring back the most powerful wizard in the world. What he and the four soldiers he'd brought with him were supposed to do if the wizard refused to cooperate was beyond him. Die, he suspected. The wizard had been ridiculously easy to find; legends – and the memory of some of them caused him to shift uneasily on his saddle – had led him right to her. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it wasn't a woman around his own age of forty, with laughing eyes and a sunburned nose who was barely dressed.
"I'm looking," he said stiffly, stopping his small troop at the gate in the coral wall, "for Magdelene, the Wizard."
"You're looking at her." Magdelene liked large, well-muscled, dark-eyed men with grizzled beards – even if they were wearing too much clothing – so she gave the captain her best smile.
The captain showed no visible reaction, but behind him young Colin smiled back. The most powerful wizard in the world reminded him of his Aunt Maya.
"I am here to take you to Bokta..."
"And where in the Goddess' creation is that?"
"North," he said flatly; worship of the Goddess had been outlawed in Bokta for several dozen years. "Very far north."
"Why does he always go north?" Magdelene asked Silk, who had shown up to see what was going on. "What's wrong with east, or west, or even further south?"
Silk neither knew nor cared; and as she didn't much like horses, she padded off to find some shade.
Magdelene looked up to find the captain glaring at her and was instantly, although not very sincerely, contrite. "I'm sorry. You were saying?"
"I am here to escort you to Bokta so you may prove yourself to be the most powerful wizard in the world. My king does not
believe you are."
"Really? And who told him I wasn't?"
A small smile cracked the captain's beard. "I believe it was his wizard."
"I'll bet," said Magdelene dryly. "And if I don't come?"
"Then I'm to tell you that the wizard will destroy twenty people daily from the time I return without you until you appear."
Magdelene's eyes went hard. "Will he?"
"Yes."
"That son of a bitch!" She considered that for a moment and grinned ruefully at her choice of phrase. "We can leave tomorrow. I'd travel faster on my own, but we'd best follow procedure."
She stepped back and the five men rode into the yard. Suddenly, there was no gate in the corral wall.
"Oh, put that away," she chided a nervous soldier, who clutched his sword in an undeniably threatening manner. "If those great big horses of yours can't jump a three-foot wall, even in this heat, you're in trouble. Besides, you couldn't kill me if you wanted to. I've been dead, and it isn't all it's cracked up to be."
The sword remained pointed at her throat.
"Garan!" snapped the captain.
"But sir..."
"Put it away!"
"Yes, sir."
Scowling, the captain swung off his horse. "Then we are your prisoners."
"Don't be ridiculous, you're my guests. Unsaddle your horses and turn them loose over there. They'll be well taken care of." She turned and headed for the garden. "Then you can join me for lunch. I hope you like shrimp." She paused and faced them again, noting with amusement that they were looking slightly stunned. "And please don't draw on my housekeeper, her feelings are easily hurt."
* * * *
A small problem arose the next morning.
"You have no horse?" the captain asked incredulously.
Magdelene shook her head. "I can't ride. No sense of rhythm." She slapped her hands in front of her to illustrate the point. "I go one way, the horse goes another and we meet in the middle. Incredibly uncomfortable way to travel."
As children in Bokta rode before they walked, it hadn't occurred to the captain that the wizard would not have a horse. Or that she'd be unwilling to get one.