by Colin McComb
I was losing my grip on my sanity. I began to have some sympathy for my old master. I began drinking, and one night, I found myself at the door of Dame Dolores, my old childhood tutor, and I was cursing at her manservant. I would have skulked home had not the lady of the house appeared and insisted that I come inside. I accepted without grace and fell asleep in the library where I had spent so much time as a boy.
When I awoke, I was in the guest room of her mansion, my clothes neatly folded at the side of the bed, my accoutrements set neatly atop those. My staff leaned near the headboard, close to hand. And at the foot of the bed sat Dame Dolores, her hands folded in her lap, watching me. I flushed and began to stammer out apologies, but with one elegant finger she quieted me.
“Magus,” she said, “I understand your loneliness. You are surrounded by people who have no idea of the secrets that lie in your history, and rather than overcome their ignorance, they live in fear. They have known you your entire life, but still they fear you because of the mantle you wear.”
I could not express my gratitude, but she read it in my eyes.
“As with me, Alton. As with me. I spend my days here teaching the few children whose parents are brave enough to see their offspring educated. Sometimes I receive an invitation to dine with a mercantile family or the speaker, but in the main I spend my nights constructing stories about the people I have known. Everyone has a story. I would like to tell you the story I have made for you. May I?”
“Of course you may, Dame,” I said. She had taught me grace as well.
“Before I begin with your story, I must tell you mine. Please do make yourself comfortable. Would you care for something to drink? Something to eat? Never mind, I see that you’re turning green. Where shall I begin?
“When I came home from Terona, I was the same person I had always been, but I had the misfortune of my pregnancy—a malady all too common around here, I assure you!—and the whisper of ill luck that rode behind. I was willing to put this snub aside when precious Emelyn arrived. She was my life. I would have given anything, anything for her. Do you understand? When her father came to see her, I thought that he would take us from this benighted town and give my daughter her birthright.
“Instead, he had her killed, bought off the physician who examined her corpse, and assassinated the doctor as well when he decided that the man could not be trusted. Of course, he was with me at the time and could account for his retinue, but I knew it was him. He was devious, but I knew.
“He returned to Terona and left me here, and I have wasted away ever since, surrounded by suspicious bumpkins and precious few of any intellect except those I have molded, and of them, you are the only one who has not left this town, Magus.
“When you began your apprenticeship, I thought you would certainly be sent to Terona. You were the brightest of all my pupils, and I would have thought the Archmagus would make a demand for you when your master told him of your accomplishments.”
“But the Archmagus never did,” I said.
“That is how I knew that Underhill had locked you up, hidden you away, as a treasure or a weapon.” She leaned forward and studied my face, and said, “Maybe you knew something about him, or maybe he had plans for you. One way or another, he was holding you back from the recognition that should have been yours.”
I kept my face carefully expressionless.
“Of course,” she said, leaning back, “this is all conjecture. All I know is that you sported occasional bruises, as apprentices will, that you became withdrawn and taciturn, and that one day you appeared in town clutching your master’s staff. He was never seen again. Not long after this, strangers passed through town, and I do mean strangers. There was magic done around Underhill Tower, possibly a battle, and you have come out of it the victor, though not, I think, unscathed.
“And now you are the magus of this place, and you have discovered what all the other magi know: intelligence and power make one lonely. How can you trust anyone and be certain they do not seek something from you—a secret, perhaps, or your death? How can you find someone who can speak to you, and with whom you can speak? I know the limits the Archmagus places on you. I know why he does so, and I know that all you magi know, too, and none of you is willing to push those limits for fear of Terona’s wrath.”
“How do you know this?”
“Alton, ever since I realized I was not going to leave the Pippens, I have made it my solemn duty to befriend anyone with a glimmer of intelligence. Your mentor was one of those. He drank heavily, too, as I’m sure you know, and it grew worse the longer he had you as an apprentice.”
I winced and began to make an angry retort.
“Now, now,” she said. “This is not a reflection on you. He stopped talking to me after he took you on because he didn’t want me to influence how he taught you. He told me as much, and he apologized for it.”
“Why would he be concerned about your influence?” I asked.
“Because I recommended you to him. He asked for my brightest pupil, and I told him that you were the one. He asked my permission to take you under his tutelage, and I assented.”
“So you let him tear me away from my family and friends?” I regretted the question instantly.
She sighed. “Would you rather have been a farmer, eking a living out of the ground and watching your wife grow fatter and fatter? Would you rather have had the joys of an intellectually dead life, one step up from a boar in the trough surrounded by his piglets? You would have died, Alton, if not your body then at least your mind. I suggested you because I thought you would revel in knowledge.”
I looked down at the floor and held my aching head in my hands for a minute. At last I looked up and apologized to her as best I could because she was completely correct. She thanked me, rose, and left the room. Shortly, a servant—a new one, acquired past my time under her care—brought me some juice and bread.
At length, I rose, dressed, left the room, and found Dame Dolores in the library. I thanked her for her courtesy, and we bantered for a time, never engaging in any topics of serious discussion. At last, I rose to see myself out, and at the door, I turned and asked, “Who was Emelyn’s father?”
“Why, I thought it was obvious,” she replied. “The man who is now our king. Athedon.” And with that she closed the door.
I saw more of Dame Dolores after that, remembering the pleasure I had taken in her company and discovering in her a great wit that had not been entirely apparent to me when I was a child. I received invitations to some of her more lavish entertainments, which I knew she despised, and which I attended only briefly. Don’t think for a moment that these galas rivaled anything thrown at the Baron’s keep, to which of course I was not invited. Still, they were more socialization than I had had in years, and they led to invitations to smaller, more intimate events with several others present, among them the new speaker for Lower Pippen, the speaker for Upper Pippen, some of the more discerning merchants of the towns, and the ecclesiasts and churchmen who ministered to the people. Though they were not exceptional intelligences, they were more than I had expected from that wasteland, and I began to make an acquaintance with them. The ecclesiasts were brighter, but Father Church was a power center of its own, involved in its own researches, and those faithful kept a respectable distance from me.
Dame Dolores warned me against becoming too close to any of them. They would, she said, come to me expecting favors, dragging me into affairs that I would be best advised to avoid. To my eternal dismay, I did not heed this warning—not as well as I should have.
It was from these contacts that I got involved in healing some of the townsfolk of the area, using medicines I made from recipes I received from friends via the farspeaker. Remembering the thrill of my episode with the wolves, I began to hunt the dangerous animals of the wood. I wanted my area to be safe.
I focused on that for a time and neglected my researches. I was gratified to discover that the people of the town stopped staring at me
with fear, though they still avoided talking to me. I liked it. I resolved to keep them safer.
And that’s how Crenshaw the merchant, Squire Lohan, and their coterie finally convinced me to do something about the brigands who were operating just outside of what I considered my territory.
They caught me in town, just outside the market, and they explained to me how badly the brigands were hurting their profits. I suggested that they hire guards. We did, they said, but the guards got killed. More guards might do it, I replied, and their response was this: Maybe we’ll just stop coming to the Pippens if we can’t get here safely. If we can’t afford to come, we won’t. We’re not doing this for charity.
That caught my attention. Fewer caravans to town meant fewer supplies, fewer supplies meant leaner times, leaner times meant discontent, and discontent meant danger.
“Fine,” I said. “Meet me here in two days. I’ll make a surprise for them.”
I did. I keyed some hunter spheres into three generator boxes and sent the boxes out. I made sure, damn sure, that the merchants knew not to open those boxes. Then I waited, watched Lohan’s caravan roll out of town, and waited some more. I waited three more hours, working idly on a mask that could help its wearer see better in the night, and then I gathered three hunter spheres and a shield sphere and took the transport system as far west as I could go.
I found that the bandits had destroyed all three of my hunters. All three! The time I put into designing and creating my tools had been wasted. I was furious—not so furious that I couldn’t take some joy in seeing how well they had worked, mind you: they accounted for a good twenty-five to thirty of the outlaws before the criminals crushed the generators. I gathered the remnants of my work and left a note under a rock for the brigands to read—assuming they could read.
If they could, they’d surely cease their attacks. If not, well, I was involved and invested in this fight now. As it turned out, they couldn’t read or they didn’t care. They struck back harder at the merchants, and for the first time, they entered my dominion and burnt down a warehouse belonging to Squire Lohan. That was it.
I offered another hunter to them, and it was destroyed before claiming a victim. That told me they were being cautious. Very well—I’d check their caution with a version of the farspeaker. This told me how they arrayed themselves around their loot, and so after that, my next gift I designed for their formation. I gave them an explosion.
Better, I gave them death that night. I had finished more of the ruby nightmasks, and I gave those to human hunters. I told the trackers that they’d find their quarry’s trail at the site of the explosion that would be coming that day. To make sure they finished the job, I rode out an hour behind them, with two hunters, a lightning sphere, and a shield sphere. I brought another bomb on the donkey I left behind me.
I came first upon the site of the explosion. Bodies lay scattered, and the carrion eaters of the night fled at my approach. I followed the marks left by my trackers and came upon the final bandit encampment. At first I thought my woodsmen had slaughtered the last of the brigands, but closer examination in the light of my own mask showed me that I was mistaken—all six of my trackers were dead, their masks missing. I did not think that the remaining bandits would return—not after my final statement on the matter.
I set the timer for the bomb and returned to Underhill Tower, thinking dark thoughts upon the bandit leader.
I waited in the market the next day, standing in the shadows until Crenshaw passed me by. I stepped out beside him as he passed me, and he jumped only a foot or two when I spoke to him.
“I think your problems may have been solved,” I said, “but in case they haven’t, I want you to carry a box I have prepared for you on each of your journeys in and out of town. Once you’ve passed the outer range of the bandits’ predations, you can unload the crate until the next time you come back.”
“How large is this box, Magus? What is in it?”
“It is man-sized,” I said. “And it will be empty unless you need me to defend you, and then it will contain me. You will find it in your warehouse. You will carry it until I am confident the bandits have fled.”
I walked away before he could ask me any more questions and repeated the conversation with the other merchants.
What was in each crate? A modified transport disk—good for a two-way trip—with a farseer and alarm attached to it. I would carry a detector on my belt until I was certain of the safety of my domain. I wasn’t sure how well the transports would work, but I was angry and wanted to end the menace posed by these brigands.
I had the occasion to test the transports two weeks later.
The alarm at my belt shocked me to life in the early hours of the morning. I dressed hastily, snatched my staff, raced to the transport room, keyed alive four spheres, and leapt onto a disk. I staggered off the disk at the other end and out of the crate, the world swirling into focus around me, and I heard my shield sphere snap into a defensive hum as the lightning spheres crackled to menacing life.
My eyes focused then, and I saw that I was in a warehouse in Lower Pippen. Surrounding me—cowering away from me—were Crenshaw and his guards. He was terrified, but above the terror was a different kind of fear.
“My daughter!” he said. “My daughter!” In his hands he held a ruby nightmask.
I set out that morning with a local woodsman, one recommended by the speaker. I did not bother to learn his name, as I had no intention of speaking to him. I was livid, furious, incandescent. The brigands had snatched the daughter of a man under my protection, in my dominion, using artifacts I had created.
We rode hard along the trail the kidnappers left. They had taken no pains to hide their tracks. They were headed west, toward the Eschback Mountains.
We followed the trail to the spine of the mountain range, and the tracker cringed behind me as we looked upon the Sickened Lands. Thunder rumbled from the clouds, and the scent of rain hid the smell of the hot dust on the mountaintop.
“No further, Magus, please,” he whined.
“Can you follow a trail a day after the rains hit?”
“No, sir.”
“Then we go on.”
When he hesitated, my spheres rose up behind me like wings, and he bent back to the ground, trembling.
The tracker fled when the primitives of the Sickened Lands came upon us. They did not give chase to him, but they surrounded me. Their leader, clad in poorly cured hides and slathered in grime, pointed his spear to the west. He grunted to me and inclined his head, as if inviting me. At no point did he menace me, nor did his followers, though their eyes burned. They were more like an honor guard. Many of them wore sores or nodules of disease on their half-stripped bodies. They kept their distance from my spheres, and we made good time.
They led me to a camp near a stand of crazily bent trees far out into the grassland. These poor subhumans had been here for some time, judging by the muddy path they’d beaten in the grass. Filthy women smoked meat over a guttering fire. Racks of hides hung in the setting sun, attracting flies and small scavengers, some of which were unlucky enough to be struck with rocks hurled by the camp’s urchins. In all, a scene of disease, filth, and despair for the knowledge that these people thought they were living well.
Standing before the fire, holding the hand of Crenshaw’s daughter, was a wiry man with greasy braids bound up with magpie feathers. Patterned scars traced his chest and face, and though I was taller than he, he seemed to loom larger than his skin.
Before him kneeled five others, two women and three men. My missing nightmasks hung from straps around their necks. These were my brigands, the source of my troubles.
The wiry man said, “You have come, bearer. These vessels brought you to me. They are yours, if you want them.” He pushed the girl toward me, and she bolted toward my safety.
“I want safe passage for one of them,” I said, “to return this girl to her father.”
“You can have safety for them a
ll,” he replied.
“Just one.” My eyes did not leave his in all this time. His eyes were large, like pools, like dancing candles in a dark room.
“Which?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “Let them pick one, and you can do what you will with the rest.”
I kept my eyes fixed on the little man, ignoring the bandits as they drew lots or danced fingers or whatever as they chose who would go to safety. At last, a woman came to stand next to me.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“Doreen,” she replied.
“Doreen,” I repeated. “Doreen, if you do not return this girl to the merchant Crenshaw as quickly as you can, I will hunt you to the corners of the sky and make your death last ten thousand years.”
She laughed softly and said, “You’re not leaving here alive, Magus. Whatever reason that shaman has for bringing you here, he’s more than able to keep you now that he’s got you.”
I sneered. What harm could this greasy little man do to me? “Go. Remember my promise.”
Doreen laughed again, bitterly, gathered the little girl into her arms, and began the long walk east. She did not say farewell to her comrades as she left. What could she say to them?
The shaman also said nothing. He watched our conversation, his eyes studying our faces.
As soon as Doreen had passed beyond the perimeter of the camp, the shaman nodded once to the guards behind me. I heard the wet sound of flint hatchets and knives in fresh meat, and the squealing and screaming began.
I watched the shaman, and he watched me. I watched him as the noise behind me subsided and the blood began to trickle between my boots.