The Tiger’s Eye
Book 1 of the Angus the Mage Series
By Robert P. Hansen
Copyright 2014 by Robert P. Hansen
All Rights Reserved
Kindle Edition
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Ronda Swolley, of Mystic Memories Copy Editing, for the copy edit, and Linda Foegen of American Book Design for the cover art and Voltari’s Map.
Dedication
For my brother Ken.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Table of Contents
About the Author
Connect With Me
Additional Titles
Voltari’s Map
Angus
Hellsbreath
The Banner of the Wounded Hand
Angst
Epilogue
About the Author
Robert P. Hansen teaches philosophy at a community college and writes fiction and poetry in his spare time. His work has appeared in various small press publications since 1994.
Connect With Me
For updates on my writing, visit my blog at: http://www.rphansenauthorpoet.wordpress.com/.
Although I seldom use it, you can also follow me on twitter (http://twitter.com/frummery).
Visit my Amazon author page at: www.amazon.com/author/rphansen
Additional Titles
A Bard Out of Time: a long fantasy poem accompanied by other fantasy poems.
A Field of Snow and Other Flights of Fancy: a collection of light verse and other short poems.
Corpus Colossal: a collection of all the poems in the collections published in the spring of 2014.
Last Rites…and Wrongs: a collection of macabre poetry.
Love & Annoyance: a collection of poems on love and philosophical speculation.
Of Muse and Pen: a collection of poems on writing and the creative process.
Potluck: What’s Left Over: a collection of poems with no particular theme.
The Snodgrass Incident: a science fiction novel in which the crew of The Snodgrass travels to Enceladus to investigate the formation of a new Tiger Stripe.
Worms and Other Alien Encounters: a collection of science fiction stories.
Voltari’s Map
Angus
1
“Angus?” The voice was distant, filtered through a dense smothering fog.
“Angus, wake up!” Sharp, cold, impatient. Was the man anxious? Angry? Maybe it was a gruff woman’s voice, a rotund barkeep rousting a wayward drunk. Was he a drunk? That would explain the sluggishness.
The voice struck him a ringing clout across his cheek and ear. His eyes flew open, fluttered, half-closed again.
“What?” he asked, trying to focus on the blurry shape hovering over him, weaving in and out of his spinning vision. It looked only vaguely human at first—an oval patch of paleness that gradually coalesced into a pair of intense, soul-crushing gray eyes full of mock compassion.
“Angus?” The stern voice flowed from the toothless mouth and consumed everything in its path.
“I’m awake,” he said, trying to blink into focus the uncertain image looming over him.
“Good,” the voice said, its tone decisive, confident. “You’re alive.” The voice lingered a bit longer before retreating as if it was no longer interested in him.
“I am?” he answered, rubbing his stinging cheek and squeezing his eyes shut again.
He was lying on a cold, hard, smooth surface. He rolled slowly over onto his left side, took a breath. Rock dust. Burnt rock dust. He braced himself, curled up, and pushed against the stone floor. “What happened?” he asked as he slid his legs under himself, his right side reluctant to comply. He managed to settle into a wobbly, lopsided sitting position and rubbed his eyes. No crusty rheum at the corners; he hadn’t slept long—if he had slept at all.
“Don’t you remember?” The voice was expectant, as if he were asking a pupil to answer a simple question, one that should have been learned long ago.
“No,” he said. “I—”
His brow furrowed as he turned his head and leveled his gaze at the old man’s midriff. “I can’t remember.” There were several dark brown pouches—What could be in them?—firmly attached to a broad leather belt of the same color. Difficult to steal. The old man’s airy robe was spun from fine black silk that concealed his hands in the deep folds of its sleeves and swallowed up his feet in the hem. The dainty fabric was a stark contrast to the ruggedness of the workmanlike leather belt. He looked up into the steely eyes of the bald old man, and his chest tightened, collapsing in on his breath. “I don’t remember anything!” he gasped, his hands fluttering as if he were trying to capture a wayward breeze.
The old man stroked his anvil-shaped chin, half-concealing the slight smile threatening to escape from his lips. “Interesting,” he said. There was no kindness in his dispassionate, inquisitive tone, only curiosity—and something else. Satisfaction? Pleasure? “You remember nothing? Nothing at all?”
An acrid taste blossomed at the back of his throat. His chest vibrated with the trembling of his heart, the hesitant urgency of his lungs. He shook his head. “No,” he gasped, trying to struggle to his feet. But his right leg was reluctant to support his weight, and he plopped back down, his tailbone tingling from the heavy impact on the stone floor.
“What happened to me?” he demanded, his voice harsh, frantic. He squirmed until he had his legs beneath him, and stood up in a swift, effortless, gliding motion. His eyes fixed firmly on the old man’s stoic expression. “Who are you?” he demanded, taking a step toward the robed figure. “Where am I?” he continued, ignoring the erratic fluctuations in his tone, the uncertainty of his gait. “What have you done to me?” he accused, his voice rising sharply, threatening to become an incoherent jumble of half-formed words erupting from his mouth. “Who am I?” He cried, grabbing at the old man’s arm. “What—”
The old man’s eyes tightened, dilating until they became a pair of unforgiving coal-black mirrors. A sudden jolt of energy poured from his arms and propelled his confused inquisitor backward, leaving him lying in a crumpled heap on the floor next to the wall.
The old man’s voice was calm, unyielding, eerily soft. “Under no circumstances,” he warned, “is an apprentice to touch his master without having been given leave to do so.”
He whimpered, thrust his singed fingers into his mouth, and began sucking on them. Tiny blisters were already sprouting. He blinked through a film of tears and drew mild comfort from the suckling sound he was making. Drool dribbled onto his chin, and tears streamed down his cheeks, but they did little to deter the intense pain shooting through his hand.
The old man’s eyes paled and settled on an implacable gray as he brushed away the tiny sparks still popping up along his sleeves. He waved away the smoke and said, his voice almost gracious, “Since your emotional comportment has been compromised by recent events, I will not pursue the matter further.” The old man paused and his gray stare pierced through the watery haze as he added, “This time.”
He huddled up against the wall like a chastised child for a long moment before a defiant streak hidden deep within him forced him to lift his head and drop his singed fingers onto his lap. He stared back, gritted his teeth, and said nothing.
“As for your questions,” the old man continued, smoothing the front of his robe, “I am Voltari, Wizard of Blackhaven Tower. You are Angus, my halfwit apprentice. You have just failed a very simple spell with near-fatal consequences. Tomorrow, after you have recovered, we will begin remedial instruction in the use of the magical safeguards you should have mastered months ago. For now, return to your
chambers and recuperate.”
Voltari reached out with a hooked finger, tugged on something that wasn’t there, and vanished.
“But,” Angus wailed into the vacuum left behind, “I don’t know where my chambers are.” He looked around the arched smoke-colored granite walls that tapered to a domed point above him. They were streaked with soot and pockmarked with divots, but there were no doors.
“Or how to get there,” he added.
He spent over an hour looking for an exit before he finally gave up and sat down against the wall, hoping that this Voltari fellow—his master?—would come back, and wondering who he was….
2
Angus stood before the smooth surface of the polished gray-white granite and stared at the distorted image staring back at him. Was he a stranger? A friend? The eyes were narrow—probably because he was squinting—and light-colored. Blue? Hazel? Gray? Brown? He couldn’t tell. It was a strange image, one that was both familiar to him but somehow completely alien. The hair was collar-length and dark. He knew it to be black from when he had trimmed it, but in the image looking back at him, it seemed to be dark brown.
There was a scar near his left ear, a thin crescent hidden beneath his hairline. Had he nicked himself shaving? Had it been a near-miss from a sword or knife? An accident with magic? He ran his finger over the little ridge of flesh, and frowned. Had someone tried to slit his throat? It was the right angle, but too high to slice through the jugular or carotid. A garrote? Would he ever know? He ran his gaze over the rest of his face, looking for other scars, other suggestions that he had had a past before waking up in Voltari’s practice chamber so many months ago.
But there were none. There were never any clues to his past, his identity.
His beard and moustache were new; they were symbols of who he is, not who he was. They were little more than shadows in his reflection, but he had painstakingly nurtured them, cultivated them, trimmed them. Had he ever had a beard before? He didn’t think so—at least, he didn’t have one when he had first awoken. But how would he know? He could remember nothing from before the accident. Voltari didn’t have a beard. Angus thought a wizard ought to have a beard, a long flowing one that tickled his belly. But his barely escaped his chin. Still, it was a fresh start, a new face for a new life. If only he could convince himself of it.
But was it really a new face? If his memory came back, would he recognize it? Was it the past looking back at him, or the future?
The most striking part of his appearance was his age. He had to be in his early thirties, maybe even older, but wasn’t that a bit too old to be an apprentice? He felt much younger than that, though, and here he was in Voltari’s tower trying to relearn the magic Voltari said he had already mastered. Why couldn’t he remember any of it? Even the most basic aspects of magic had eluded him completely until Voltari’s remedial instruction. He hadn’t even been aware of the magical threads permeating everything around him and within him until Voltari had shown them to him. Still, some of what he was learning did seem natural to him, and he was advancing rapidly in his studies. At least, he thought he was; Voltari never seemed to be satisfied with his progress.
And what about his clothes? They were far from the typical garb of a wizard’s apprentice. His under-tunic was simple enough, but not the tunic covering it. It was sewn from supple leather reinforced with a thin layer of chain links and padding. It had nearly a dozen loops for securing who-knows-what (he didn’t know) to it. Hidden pockets…. It had been repaired many times, by the look of it. His trousers were also oddly constructed for a wizard. They looked like normal trousers, but when he put them on, they were skin-tight and the fabric stretched and flexed with every move he made, no matter how slight it was. Though they were light-weight, they provided ample warmth and protection—and more pockets, most of them hidden and empty. The few that weren’t empty held a handful of gold coins and a small collection of garnets, which he knew would come in handy if he left. Still, why did he have only one outfit of this sort? Where had it come from? It didn’t fit in with all the dingy, gray, homespun wool robes of a wizard’s apprentice that he had found waiting for him in his chambers. And why did this peculiar outfit appeal to him so much? Why did it feel so…natural? And why did the black robe Voltari had given him a few days earlier feel so wrong? It was beautifully crafted, woven from black silk just like his master’s, and the threads of the cloth intermingled with the magical threads contained within him when he put it on. While he wore it, it gave him an acute, spider-like awareness of his surroundings and an uneasy sense of invulnerability. It was a perfect wizard’s robe, replete with copious pockets positioned in all the right places for casting spells, but it made him uncomfortable, as if he were wearing someone else’s skin. Voltari will be angry when he sees I’m not wearing it today.…
He reached out for the image and let his fingertip slide down the smooth stone reflection. His nose had been broken at some point, perhaps several times. It started out narrow, bulged out where the breaks had occurred, and then narrowed again to a softly rounded point. Someone had set it, though, and it didn’t impede his breathing. “Who are you?” he whispered to the image. “What did you do?”
But the image didn’t answer him. He shook his head and sighed. It did no good to speculate, and Voltari wasn’t going to provide him with any answers. The wizard was completely dismissive, aloof, and uncaring. “How long have I been here?” he muttered, thinking back through the months since his rebirth. “Voltari tells me I’ve been his apprentice for years, but he treats me almost like I’m a complete stranger. Which one am I?” Both, his image seemed to answer. A frown caused his reflection’s moustache to protrude. The one he knows and the one he doesn’t.
Angus sighed. “There’s no point dwelling on it,” he muttered. “I’m his apprentice, and that’s all that matters now.” To Voltari….
3
“You have progressed at an acceptable rate, Angus,” Voltari said one day, his voice crisp, lacking his normal tone of impatient derision. “Soon it will be time for you to leave.” A hopeful upturn of tone? A bit of pride for having turned an empty mind into a finely honed weaver of magic? Or a touch of gladness for finally getting rid of an unworthy burden?
It didn’t matter. Praise of any sort from Voltari was a rarity, and Angus felt a gentle warmth rising up his neck, threatening to become a crimson cascade. But it turned and buried itself in his beard, as if it were uncertain of its presence. He was not ready to leave. Despite the rapid progress he had made over the past year, Voltari and Blackhaven Tower were the only things he knew, the only things he could remember. His memory of everything prior to his training was still a complete blank.
At first, he had often asked Voltari about who he had been, but his master only waved away the questions and said, “The past means nothing; only the present and future matter. Focus on them.” Whenever he pressed the issue, whenever he demanded answers, Voltari would turn his stony gray eyes upon him, an icy fury raging deep within them, and punish him. Or disappear, if he were feeling particularly generous. Angus knew the answers were there, but Voltari simply refused to provide them. And Angus was not nearly powerful enough to risk truly angering his mentor, so he focused his mind and energy on the magic. He delved deeper into it, striving to gain a better understanding of it. But he never stopped wondering about his lost past, and rarely a day went by when he didn’t have the thought: Magic caused my loss of memory, and magic can restore it. He was certain Voltari knew that magic—or at least where to find it—and when Angus left there would be no more chances to get it out of him. If—
“Now,” Voltari said, interrupting his thoughts. “You must perfect this spell.” He held a scroll out to Angus.
“What is it?” Angus asked, reaching for the scroll. Perhaps later…. He cordoned off the thought to focus on the scroll and the magical threads surrounding him. It would be a challenging spell, a powerful spell, one that would require all of his attention. He unrolled the scro
ll carefully, his excitement tempered by the healthy sense of dread that every new spell brought with it.
Voltari’s gray eyes narrowed as he ordered, “Tell me.”
Angus gulped—another test, another opportunity to disappoint him. He examined the runes and sigils drawn from spider-thin streaks of burnt umber ink streaked with a deep, almost black shade of red. “It’s obviously a complex, powerful spell from the spheres of flame and earth,” he said. Knowing Voltari would demand a more detailed explanation, he looked more closely at the order of the runes, the pattern of the sigils, how each line had been sketched, and the interconnectedness of the threads of ink with the threads of magic. “This is strange,” he muttered. “It seems to be a spell that produces balls of flaming earth rising up to the sky. But,” he paused and shook his head.
“Yes?” Voltari demanded.
Angus did not look up from the scroll as he replied, “I would expect there to be runes and sigils related to the sphere of air, but there aren’t any. It’s as if the flame is bubbling up from the earth like—like geysers of molten rock. I’m not sure, though, since the nuances are beyond me.”
Voltari held his hand out for the scroll and Angus handed it to him. “I disagree,” he said, his voice level, impartial. “You understand the nuances far better than your training would suggest.”
“Thank you, Master,” Angus said, lowering his gaze and fighting back the urge to smile.
Voltari hesitated a long moment, and then said, his voice uncompromising, “Tomorrow, Angus, you will leave. Your apprenticeship is at an end. Come to my chamber at dawn.” Then he tweaked a nearby strand of carefully modulated magic and vanished.
Angus stood still for several minutes, his breathing barely noticeable, his thoughts paralytic. He wasn’t prepared to go outside, into a world he couldn’t remember. What was it like? Where would he go? Who would he talk to? He had read a great deal about it, of course, but reading and being are quite different things. Who am I? he wanted to scream as his fingertip went unconsciously to the scar on his neck and traced its outline, feeling the fluttery pulse raging beneath the surface. And who wants me dead?
The Tiger's Eye (Book 1) Page 1