by Guy Antibes
Somebody’s stomach gurgled. Helen stood up. “Time for dinner.”
They filed out of the house. Jack looked back. He had thought he would ride into Dorkansee right to the wizard’s house, get the object of power, and leave the same day. It now looked a lot more complicated than that.
They left the house and wandered a few blocks until they found a pub. After stepping in, Helen almost reversed course and left. The serving girls wore low cut blouses. Jack looked around for the “ladies,” like the ones that frequented the pub his father frequented, but he didn’t see any.
“This isn’t likely to be that kind of place,” Tanner said.
“Pity,” said Quist, looking around.
After sitting down, a serving girl walked up. “New in town?”
“Today,” Helen said. “What is available?”
“Fish stew. The fish were caught today and are very fresh. We have fried chicken and roasted potatoes if you want something land bound.”
“I’ll have the fish,” Tanner said.
Helen and Quist joined Tanner, but Jack never liked the perch and trout caught back home. “Chicken for me,” he said.
Jack leaned over to Quist. “Would you mind if I had a sample? I’ve never eaten ocean fish before.”
“What?” Tanner said from across the table. “You should have ordered the stew, Jack. This is an adventure. You might as well be adventurous.”
“I have been, for me. I haven’t been my usual self ever since I left Raker Falls. I have a reputation, but I haven’t exactly lived up to it on Fasher’s errand.”
“What kind of reputation?” Quist asked. “I joke around, drink when I can sneak some ale, but that was before I was eighteen. Pull pranks, kiss the girls and make them cry.”
“Other than kissing some girls, I’ve seen you do those same things. The outhouse shield was…” Quist smiled at the thought, “a monumental prank as was the shot at the duke’s bum. Alderach knows you’ve done your share of drinking.”
“Well, it hasn’t felt like I’ve been ripping it up,” Jack said.
“I’d hate to see what ripping it up was in your home village,” Helen said sarcastically.
“I guess being eighteen takes some of the sparkle out of it all,” Jack said. “Less is forbidden.”
“Ah, now that is a good analysis,” Tanner said. “Think about that some more. Fasher would be impressed you came up with that insight.”
“What?” Jack said.
“What he means to say is people go through stages,” Helen said. “Life doesn’t move in a straight line. Certain things happen that throw us in different directions. Becoming a legal adult does it for some, getting married,” Helen, who was making the comment made a face, “is another.”
“Oh, like someone close to you dying?” Jack said.
“Or getting put in prison for a long time,” Quist said, “or losing one’s wizardly power.”
“Except it hasn’t changed you enough, Ozzie,” Tanner said.
“I guess not,” the wizard said, frowning.
The food finally came, and Jack tasted the fish stew before Quist devoured it. It tasted much different from what he had in Raker Falls, but Jack didn’t know if it was the taste of the fish or the spices that made the difference. Now he knew enough to try it if he had a chance, but he hoped he would have the orb in his hands tomorrow and be on his way south, back to Raker Falls.
The night wasn’t too far gone when they returned from the pub. At least they found there was a market a few blocks farther in the same direction. They would get some supplies, but Jack hoped they would be carrying some of them out of Dorkansee.
Helen and Tanner elected to sharpen their weapons, but Jack wasn’t in the mood, so he sat down with Quist in the sitting room. There was a study on the other side of the hall, but there was no furniture in that room. Jack took off his wand and slid the sword’s buckler over his head.
Jack pulled out the book that Fasher had given him. “This is all I know about the possibilities of wizardry,” he said, handing it over to Quist.
The man thumbed through the pages. “This is an Alderachean manual. It won’t do you much good. I can find a better one tomorrow if we pass a wizardry shop.”
“They have something like that here?”
“There is a shop for everything in the capital, especially if your orb is in the Second Ring. What would you like to know? I know much more than is in that little book,” Quist said.
“I’d like to shift somewhere.”
“Shift?”
“You know, go from here to there instantly.”
“Teleportation? That is a very advanced First Manipulation. Some even consider it a Fifth. Don’t think you’d be able to teleport home. Even a helper wouldn’t be able to do that,” the wizard said. “But maybe we can train you to teleport about three feet, maybe from one room to another without going through a door. Would that be acceptable?”
“Would it!” Jack said
Quist merely smiled. “This is what you think of. There is a void, a blackness that you will glide through. The gliding is important. If you think of a step, you will move one step. Jumping isn’t advisable, either, since you might materialize a foot or so up in the air. Gliding is best.”
“Like a bird?”
“Right,” Quist said. “Like a bird. The spell word is different for each wizard, but use ‘flight,’ or even your description of ‘shift’ might work. You never know.”
“Do I close my eyes?”
Quist laughed. “It is never advisable to close your eyes for any manipulation. Just keep them open. You certainly shouldn’t try to move through a wall first, maybe from one side of this rug to the other. Three feet is an average length, as I said.”
Jack took a deep breath and concentrated on gliding across the carpet to the other side. “Glide,” he said.
“That was interesting,” Quist said. “Your body moved and shoved the carpet ahead.”
“I thought it would work better than that,” Jack said. “I could have taken a step over the carpet.”
Quist sighed. “Not all manipulations are practical, Jack. Try it with the other word.”
Jack moved the carpet back to its original spot and took another breath. He concentrated on the image of being on one side of the carpet and then appearing on the other side. “Shift.” He said with just a bit of force behind the word.
“I did it!” Jack said. “My eyes saw a flash of blackness, and then I was over here.”
Quist stood up. “I honestly didn’t think you’d be able to do that with virtually no training.”
“I am a wizard’s helper, after all,” Jack said proudly.
Jack couldn’t move his body more than six feet after six tries, but Quist was still very impressed. “Most wizards can’t teleport that far without an object of power. You weren’t holding onto your wand, either.”
“One more to try. I want to teleport through a wall.”
“You don’t move ‘through’ anything,” Quist said.
Jack grinned and stood in the hallway. He checked again to make sure there wasn’t anything on the other side. “Shift!” he said. The blackness seemed to last a bit longer, but he ended up back in the sitting room.
Quist shook his head. “You are a very good helper, Jack.” The man yawned. “But it is too late to appreciate your stunning achievement.” He yawned again. “It’s time for me to head upstairs. Douse the candles when you are through playing.”
Jack sat down and analyzed the little book. He couldn’t see anything about teleportation in the Alderachean magical primer. Perhaps teleportation was somehow heretical. Jack couldn’t see anything wrong with the little trick he had just learned. He hoped Quist could find something more useful for him to read the next day.
After stocking up at the market and right after lunch, they mounted and headed to one of the gates that would take them to the Second Ring. The trip through the Third Ring was creepy, Jack thought. A wide avenue
went straight from the Fourth Ring to the Second. The gates coming and going were heavily guarded on the outside, but there were no stationary guards in the Third Ring since they passed armored guards on horseback patrolling the road. The buildings lining the road appeared to be crumbling, but then Jack remembered the inn in Bartonsee and wondered how deprived all the inhabitants of the Third Ring were. To his mind, it was a city within a city where the laws were different and not in favor of people like him.
The Second Ring seemed like heaven to Jack as they passed through the guards. The streets were cleaner, and the buildings looked better in every way. They paused at a square.
“Let’s go to the address that Fasher gave you first,” Tanner said.
Jack nodded and gave him the instruction page.
“Not too far,” the man said.
They rode for a few minutes and stopped at a tan townhouse. It had seen better days compared to its neighbors. Tanner knocked on the door. A guard answered the door. “Yes?”
“My companion has business with the man who lives here. Is there something wrong?”
“Perhaps. Is your companion a priest of Alderach?”
“No,” Tanner said.
“Then your business won’t take long. The owner is dead.”
~
Jack looked up at the guard in shock. “I needed to talk to him,” Jack said.
“Like I said, you’ll need a priest to talk to the man who now rests with Alderach.”
“I came to retrieve something that my master lent to Derr Mason.”
“Mason is the victim, I can tell you that. What did you come to get? You will have to make a good case. Can’t have people arriving at the door wanting his stuff.”
Jack pulled the authorization letter signed by Fasher. “I was to give him this,” he said, handing the page to the guard.
“You have come all the way from Raker Falls? That is far to the south, isn’t it?”
Tanner nodded. “There is a description on that page. We won’t take anything else,” he said.
The guard looked them over and nodded. “Come in. Don’t disturb anything. As far as I know, Mason died without any living relatives, so we expect vultures to descend any time.”
“When did Derr die?” Quist said. “As it happens, I met the man long ago. We were both wizards.”
“What did he look like?” the guard asked.
Quist gave a detailed description.
“That is him, except he picked up a little gray hair along the way. That is two pieces of verification, so I will feel better about having you go in. We haven’t taken the body away yet.”
“When do you think he died?” Helen asked.
“Yesterday or last night. He was stone cold when found in his study by the housekeeper. Don’t disturb the body.”
“How did he die?” Quist asked.
The guard shrugged. “Probably from some kind of wizardry. There are no marks on the body, but there was a tussle. Mason had some long strands of hair between his fingers. We might know more when the body is taken away and stripped for examination.”
Jack shivered at the thought. He hadn’t seen too many dead bodies in his time, and the worst one was Penny Ephram when he thought he had killed her. They filed into the room where the body sprawled on the floor.
Tanner got down on his haunches. “Not a mark on the neck.” He looked up at the guard. “He was here when you found him?”
“He was.”
Jack spotted something on the man’s shirt. A tiny hole burned through. “I might know,” Jack said, dreading what he thought he would find. He unbuttoned the shirt and found the hole persisted through the man’s undershirt and definitely penetrated the skin. “He was killed by magic.”
“How do you know?”
Jack pulled out his wand. “With one of these. They shoot out a thin lightning bolt. I can’t make one this thin, but I would think it went right through his heart.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Me? No, I didn’t. I was in the Fourth Ring last night. Tanner told me people didn’t trespass in the third one after dark, plus we ate at a pub. They probably remember us.”
The guard wrote down something on a piece of paper. “I’ll have to take your names and addresses.”
Tanner laughed. “I am a mercenary. I don’t have a home, and neither does she.”
“I don’t have a home, either,” Quist said, “but the boy does. He lives in Raker Falls.”
“That is right. The wizard’s servant.”
Jack nodded. “Can we look around for the orb?”
“Is that what you call it?”
Jack nodded again. “Can we?”
The guard knelt down and looked closely at the wound. “I would haven’t noticed that,” he said. “If you killed him, the last thing you would have done would be to the point that out. Go ahead. Leave everything as you found it.”
“Except for the boy’s orb,” Helen said.
The guard left them to confer with one of his comrades while they went through the room. Quist found an old polished box. “It was here,” he said. “I found it in the desk drawer.”
“Was?” Tanner asked.
Quist raised the lid. The velvet liner held the outline of a half a ball about two inches in diameter. “I’ve never seen it, but it matches the size of the description. Derr was killed for it.”
“Jack, pull out your seeker cube.”
“Of course! We should have consulted it before we left the house,” he said. The blue edge pointed west-southwest. “What is in that direction?”
“The Third Ring and the docks. We can go to the docks, next,” Tanner said.
Jack had to sit down. The orb was gone, and he had failed in his errand. “It is in the hand of a powerful wizard. What are we going to do?”
“Go after it. Perhaps it is sitting in a fence’s office in the Third Ring?” Helen said.
“So we use the cube to find the wizard?” Jack said.
“I thought you didn’t know what to do?” Quist said with the hint of a smile.
Jack clamped his lips shut and shook his head.
The guard walked back in the room. “Did you find it?”
Quist showed the man the empty box. “It wouldn’t be out of the question to think that Derr Mason was killed for the Serpent’s Orb.”
“Serpent’s Orb, eh? An object of power?”
Jack nodded.
“Wizards!” the guard said impatiently. “Wait here for a few minutes, my superior will probably want to talk to you before you leave. Are you going to try to recover it?”
“Yes,” Jack said. He lifted the cube up for the guard to see. “This points to the orb.”
“I’ll have to take that from you, then. The murderer can be captured with that.”
Jack put it in his hand. “And how will you use it? I am the only one who can.”
The blue side disappeared and appeared again when Jack touched it. “See?”
“It looks like the Dorkansee guard has a new recruit,” The guard said.
“New recruits,” Helen said. “Where Jack goes, we do.”
The guard shrugged. “Wait for our captain in the sitting room across the hall.”
Jack was happy to leave the study and the body of Derr Mason. They stepped into the sitting room and took seats except for Quist, who rubbed his hands, looking at one wall filled with bookshelves.
“Derr was a magic theoretician,” the wizard said. “I imagine Fasher left the orb with him to study its properties—if it was Fasher’s in the first place.”
“Wizard Tempest would lie to me?”
Tanner arched his eyebrow. “Are you immune to being lied to, boy?”
“No.”
“I did say ‘if.’ Most wizards seek unique objects of power. They are tools of our trade. I don’t use them because I cannot restore one if I used it up, and they do get used up. When it comes to the more exotic ones, and I don’t know anything about the Serpent’s Orb, the
y are fought over.” Quist said.
“We don’t know if the murderer took the orb,” Jack said.
“We don’t?” Helen shook her head. “The seeker jumped to the west from last night. It wouldn’t do that if someone didn't move the orb. If Mason wasn’t murdered because of the orb, it was stolen, and that is all we should care about.”
“What about the murder?” Jack said.
“The man died. Do you grieve his death?” Tanner said.
“I, uh…I feel bad he is dead,” Jack said.
“But you feel worse that the orb is gone, don’t you?”
“Well…”
“I don’t mean to be hardhearted, just realistic. The guard said he didn’t have a family that we know of, so I pity his passing, hoping that my own won’t be so… lonely.” Helen said.
Jack was surprised by her comment. It was the most heartfelt thing he had heard her say.
Quist had been looking at the bookshelves. He grabbed Jack’s wrist and waited for him to look in his eyes. “Here, take this,” the wizard said quietly, handing Jack a thin leather bound volume. “You will want to study this. This is better than anything I would have found in a Dorkansee bookstore.”
Jack shoved it in his shirt.
“You have taken what doesn’t belong to you before?” Helen said.
Jack could feel his face burn. “I have.”
She smiled. “I have too.”
Her comment made Jack relax, but he jumped when the door opened. A man wearing a fancy, polished cuirass walked in. His face was pinched, and he wore a mustache that was clipped to look like a line across his upper lip. “You are the wizarding band?”
Tanner laughed. “We don’t have a full wizard among us, but we are a band, nevertheless.”
“Gare said the boy has a seeking device.” He looked at Jack. “You must be the boy?”
Jack stood looking down at the captain.
“A big boy,” the captain said. “The device.” He held out his hand.
Jack showed him the blue edge and turned the crystal cube around. “The blue edge always, always, points to the orb.” He placed in the man’s palm, just like he had with Gare, the guard.