The Wizard at Mecq

by Rick Shelley

But the first guess had weaknesses, and long before Silvas quit spinning and tossing, he had discarded it. My magic would not work if I had been taken by a god of the Blue Rose. I could not have calmed myself. That brought a measure of peace to his soul, despite the fact that his circumstances had not improved.

  If my magic still works, there must be a way to win free of whatever this is. That turned his thoughts to more productive courses. If there was a solution within his power, there would be a way to find it. He had the training and experience. And now he had the calmness to apply them.

  For the first time his brain started to register some of the things he was seeing—an alien landscape that would not fit in any "present" or "past" that Silvas knew. There were people here, wherever "here" was. They were dressed strangely, but they were people and didn't seem to be undergoing the tortures of the damned. There was a lot of stone and metal and glass. Enclosed wagons of shiny metal and glass hurled past as if they had been slung from catapults; no animals pulled them. Noises echoed and screeched, threatening hearing with their constant insanity. The smells were different from any Silvas was familiar with, but the air itself seemed sufficiently noxious for any priest's visions of Hell. There were people walking, others riding in the peculiar vehicles, but no one in this vision showed any awareness of Silvas.

  Silvas continued to chant spells of knowledge and power, looking for a key to escape from this place of nightmares. His incantations muted the screaming noises and slowed the mad pace of the people and their peculiar vehicles.

  He started to hear faint traces of someone speaking to him. Filtering the static that separated the voice from his mind took longer. Silvas focused himself as tightly as he could on the voice, but still had to guess at some of the words.

  "This is the world to which you were born. This is the time and place where Auroreus found you and drew you back to his castle. He scoured all of time for his successor. This is far, far in your future... if that future ever comes. If you fail, people will not say, 'It would have been better if he had never been born.' If you fail, you will never have been born... and then you could not fail, and the world that comes, if it comes, will be the world as it would have been had you never lived."

  Silvas did not begin to understand, but the voice kept speaking, so he didn't have time to figure it out.

  "This world, this time, is so different from the world you know that it would remain completely unintelligible even if I took the time to explain all of the differences in minute detail and answered your questions fully for a year."

  The alien scene paled into hazy transparency while Silvas tried to fix the words in his mind and listened for any continuation. But the message seemed to be over. The wizard found himself floating in a bright void, as if he were drifting in a noontime sky—though no sun was visible.

  Then, suddenly, Silvas was no longer alone.

  The wizard stopped spinning. He seemed to be walking now, though there was nothing but air to support him. A figure approached from a distance. There was light behind the figure, and he remained indistinct, more a silhouette, a shadow, than anything else.

  Silvas went down on one knee and bowed his head. He had a sudden awareness that he was meeting his Unseen Lord face to face, or as close to that as he had ever come. The wizard recognized the feeling of power that flowed from the blurred figure against the light.

  After a moment Silvas looked up, knowing it was expected. The figure of his Unseen Lord remained indistinct. He couldn't see the figure clearly enough to give any description, but it had always been like that. Their few meetings had always had a dream-like quality, though none had been quite this dramatic.

  Silvas stared up at the face he could not really see. He let his Unseen Lord flow over him, through him, around him, content for the moment to absorb whatever he was about to be given.

  "I give you knowledge."

  Images flickered through Silvas's mind, too rapidly for him to keep everything before him at once. But the knowledge was being firmly planted. It would be there for him to retrieve later. For the present, all he could hold was an overview, an outline.

  He learned how much was at stake in Mecq, or wherever the final confrontation might occur. It was most definitely coming. And the stakes were even higher than Silvas had dared to fear. The gods of the world and time were arming for war among themselves. The outcome of their battle would affect the entire history of the world, past and future.

  As that other voice seemed to be saying, Silvas thought. And before the figure of the Unseen Lord vanished and Silvas dissolved back into himself, the wizard was left with one more very clear message:

  Gods will DIE before this battle is over!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Silvas woke with the feel of cold marble against his cheek. He was flat on his face in the center of his pentagram. Without looking, he knew that his body had to be crossing at least two of the crystal lines. His first thought was to draw in his arms and legs, to get free of the lines of power, but he didn't have the strength. He could scarcely move a finger.

  Slowly now, he told himself. Take your time. Feel out your body. Let your mind search. Despite his lack of physical strength, there was no clouding of his mind. Silvas breathed as deeply as he could in his uncomfortable position and thought through a simple spell. Feeling started to return to his body. Encouraged, Silvas moved on to the more complicated chants that would bring back his strength.

  There were no wounds, no pain. Silvas had not been injured. There was only the exhaustion. A Council was a draining magic to start with. The additional excursion at its conclusion must have been similarly draining, Silvas decided. He pulled his arms and legs in toward his body, and moved his head enough to see that he was now within the five center lines of his diagram. The lines were channels of power when the pentagram was activated. It was quiet now, but this wasn't something to take chances with.

  Silvas lay motionless for several more minutes, continuing to attract more power—not magical power, simply the physical energy he needed. There was still work to be done.

  As his strength returned, Silvas set his mind drifting around the Seven Towers. There were no alerts, no signs that the defenses had been breached. Whatever the cause of the disruption to his Council, it had not touched the Glade.

  Velvet and Satin came out of their circles and over to the edge of the pentagram. Their tails made nervous little twitches, their eyes narrowed as they watched Silvas. They relaxed a little when he started to get up. The wizard paused to rest on one knee, then got slowly to his feet and moved back to the center of his diagram.

  "We're not through yet, kittens," Silvas said, and the cats went back to their circles. The wizard took several deep breaths, holding each for a count of twenty before he released it. He turned through a complete circle and ended up facing the north point of his pentagram again. After another series of three slow deep breaths, Silvas started the incantations that would close down the special defenses he had erected for his Council. The spells could have been left to decay on their own, but that was not the way Auroreus had taught him. "Always clean up your spells when you finish, even those that will fade away on their own. That way there is less chance of having them interfere with later work. Surprises are rarely welcome in our craft."

  As he disassembled the individual spells, Silvas examined them closely. Some showed strain, but none had come close to failure. There had been less power directed against the Glade this night than last, he decided. This was no attempt to do real harm. He wasn't sure what to make of that. It was simply one more fact to keep in mind. Perhaps the rationale would become clear later.

  When the last of his housekeeping was finished, Silvas stepped out of the pentagram and the cats came to meet him. They were still nervous, looking for reassurance. Silvas reached down to stroke their necks and to scratch under their chins. "Let's go to bed," he said.

  Silvas discovered that his body was still weak and uncoordinated as he walked. He needed to almo
st consciously direct each step to keep from stumbling. The cats stayed at his side, but a little farther apart than normal, keeping out of his way. Silvas reeled down the corridors and stairs like a drunk.

  There was a single candle burning in the bedroom, and it was low. Silvas stripped off his clothes, blew out the candle, and collapsed on the bed next to Carillia. She didn't wake, and Silvas was asleep even before the cats settled into their customary positions.

  —|—

  Silvas knew immediately when he woke that it was far later than his usual waking time. The morning was half gone. It was not a pleasant waking. A sense of foreboding hung over him. The new information his Unseen Lord had given him had settled firmly on the wizard. "Gods will die before this battle is over." Silvas didn't speak the words aloud, simply rolled them through his mind. They led quickly to another thought. If gods will die in this battle, what chance do I have? What chance does any mortal have in that kind of battle?

  Silvas rolled over on his side. Carillia was still sleeping soundly, the muscles of her face totally relaxed. I am not yet tired of living, Silvas decided. How could I ever tire of a life that has Carillia in it? He stared at her for several minutes, but the rhythm of her breathing did not change. She didn't wake. Finally Silvas rolled in the other direction and sat up on the edge of the bed, moving carefully so he wouldn't waken her.

  The cats were gone at the moment. In the daylight they weren't always underfoot. It was as if they knew that they were off duty during the day unless something special came up. They might be in the kitchen eating, or merely curled up in front of a window somewhere, basking in the sun. If Silvas called for them, they would come. But there was no need now. The Seven Towers were peaceful.

  —|—

  There was hot food waiting when Silvas entered the great hall, bathed, dressed, and freshly shaven. He even had a strong appetite. Food would replenish him more readily than magic, and it would hold him longer. Silvas ate quickly and heartily, as much as he might eat in an entire day when no special demands had been placed on his wizardry.

  When he had finally sated his appetite, he went to the stable. Bay was munching at his hay. Bosc wasn't around.

  "Did you experience anything unusual after the Council?" Silvas asked.

  "Nothing out of the ordinary," Bay replied. "Your question implies that you did."

  "A strange passage." Silvas told Bay about the first part of it, the journey through insanity and the message he had received. Then he said, "I believe that I saw our Unseen Lord, as much as he can be seen, after that, before I was returned to my body." He withheld the details of his one-sided conversation with the Unseen Lord. The basic substance was enough for now.

  "Are you certain you can trust this vision?" Bay asked. "Could it be a deception by the Blue Rose?"

  "I believe I can trust it," Silvas said. He shrugged. "I don't rule out the possibility that I trust it because it fits so well with what I have felt from the time we first saw Mecq."

  "I am relieved to see that you are finally regaining your sense of caution," Bay said. "How do we proceed?"

  "We can only proceed as we would in any such place. I'll do whatever magic the people of Mecq ask of me and start assembling what I will need to solve their water problems. Beyond that we can only wait and be alert."

  And for two days, Silvas did little but routine magics. The people of Mecq came to him. Old Maga had spread her tale. Berl was up and about, and by the second day he was back working in the fields—if only lightly. His wife joined her sister in lauding Silvas and his power. The wizard treated all who came to him alike. He listened to their problems and if there was anything he could do, he did it. Each time he looked carefully for the signature of the Blue Rose. Only a couple of times did he find it. Of the other problems, most were minor, and a few were imagined, but Silvas dealt with each person. He talked with them, helped them. Sometimes all that was needed was advice or a show to help people "get rid" of problems that were completely within their imagination.

  It was a casual time on the surface. Silvas fell into the languid routines of the village. He spent time in the fields, talking, asking questions about the drought and about the dam that had been built and dismantled. All of the people whose troubles bore the mark of the Blue Rose had helped with the dam. But not everyone who had been party to that work had suffered.

  Silvas also spent time walking the course of the Eyler and walking through the dusty fields. Occasionally he would pick up a handful of dust in the fields and let it dribble between his fingers. At one point he borrowed a hoe and dug a foot and a half down into the ground at the edge of a grain patch. Then he got down on his knees and grabbed handfuls of dirt from the bottom of the hole. There was very little moisture even at that depth.

  On the third morning after the Council, Silvas didn't emerge from the pillar of smoke in the morning. He spent those hours in his library and conjuring room.

  "I think it's time for an experiment," he told Carillia at lunch.

  "What kind of experiment?" she asked.

  "Partly I want to show good faith to the villagers over their water. A few are already asking under their breath when I'm going to quit talking and produce the water I promised." He smiled and shook his head. "They wait patiently on the seasons, watch their grain grow mote by mote, but they expect me to increase the Eyler a hundredfold at the snap of my fingers."

  "The matter of water is vital to them," Carillia reminded him.

  "I wasn't indicting them for their hope. But besides the show of good faith, I want to do something very visible to see what response it draws from the Blue Rose."

  "That might be dangerous."

  "It has to come sooner or later. Drawing action when we're ready for it instead of waiting until the Blue Rose chooses to attack again may work to our advantage." Silvas shrugged. "I have less than inexhaustible patience, I fear."

  "When will you put on your show?" Carillia smiled and laid her hand over his.

  "This afternoon. The middle of the afternoon should be the best time. I've spent the morning at my preparations. When I go out, you might want to watch from the turret, my love."

  "If you think I should," she said.

  "You might help me considerably. You may spot any response quicker than I do. Your senses are keen for that sort of thing."

  "You think the Blue Rose might respond instantly?"

  "I can't guess," he admitted. "But even if they don't, you might find some gauge of the people of Mecq in their reactions. Perhaps a hint of something other than relief will show itself."

  "You think that the Blue Rose may lie hidden within this valley and not with the Duke of Blethye?"

  "It is too soon to rule it out, my love," Silvas said. "If Auroreus taught me anything, it was to be both careful and thorough. And the stakes this time..."

  "I'll be there, my heart." Carillia gave Silvas's hand an affectionate squeeze.

  —|—

  Silvas emerged from the smoke an hour past noon. Most of the villagers were in their fields. A few tended the garden plots behind their cottages. Silvas walked to the center of the village green, carrying his metal-tipped quarterstaff. In a place where the grass had been eaten down to the roots by the livestock, Silvas used his staff to draw a pentagram in the dirt. He used the silver ferrule for this drawing, putting strength into his strokes, leaving a diagram that was quite visible. He concentrated wholly on his work, speaking the spells that would make this pentagram more than just a design in the dust. The pentagram in Silvas's conjuring chamber might possess power of its own, but the wizard would have to infuse this diagram with power himself. No one appeared to take any special notice of him at first. No one had time to watch the stranger at his games.

  At first. Perhaps someone noticed how much time and care he was taking at his task, the look of intense concentration he wore—and then recalled that this was not just any stranger but a wizard who had demonstrated power from the moment of his arrival. The pillar of smoke
was a most visible reminder that the stranger was indeed a wizard-potent. Neighbor called to neighbor. Fingers were pointed. People started to take some interest in what the wizard was doing.

  When Silvas finished scribing his pentagram, he took up his usual position in the exact center. He leaned his staff against his shoulder, then put his hands on his hips and stretched, working out an ache that his drawing had brought to his lower back. Then he took the staff in hand again and turned in a slow circle, examining every line of his pentagram. It was precise. It was perfect. It would do.

  Silvas looked up at the sky and made another complete, slow circle. There were only a few high, wispy clouds. The sun beat down on the dust of Mecq, making it drier with every moment.

  Oh Lord, let me continue to be a fit vehicle for executing your will. Open my eyes that I may see what I need to see. Give me your direction, your help. Protect me that I may continue to protect your people.

  The prayer was silent. As Silvas went through the words, he recalled the blurry vision he had been given of—he believed—his Unseen Lord. He recalled the dire predictions that had been placed in his mind, the visions of gods arming for war, the warning that gods would die before the battle was finished.

  "And I am about to issue a challenge here," he whispered. It had to make him pause. A wizard's power did not make him immune to fear. It didn't rob him of second thoughts, of worry.

  Carefully Silvas erected his safeguards. Uncertain how much power he was about to challenge, he took precautions that he would rarely have considered. But he was not planning to remove a wart from a peasant's nose now.

  "I am ready," Silvas whispered when he was certain that he had left out no measure of protection that he could take. It didn't stop the fluttering in his chest and stomach, but neither did those sensations deter him.

  Once more Silvas started to chant. At first the words were too soft for anyone to hear. Only as Silvas became more involved in casting the web of his magic did his voice become louder. He faced the north point of his newly drawn pentagram, holding his quarterstaff in both hands, low, parallel to the ground, the silver tip to his right, the iron tip to his left. This was a complicated incantation, with stanzas to be addressed to each point and then to each base of the pentagram. At the end Silvas was facing south. His chant had become almost a shout. He could see the beginnings, the materialization of his conjuration.