The Accidental Sorcerer

by K. E. Mills

  'No, Y'Majessy! Lovely gift! Never expected it!' With difficulty he extricated the ring from its box. It was cool, heavy, and slid on as though made for him. Weighted his hand and—

  —closed around his left forefinger like a vice. He was caught, trapped, held fast in a web with strands of metaphysical steel. He could breathe, move his eyes, but that was all…

  In a searing burst of pain and light his foggy mind cleared and he remembered everything. The hunting expedition. The Wizard Trap. The captured images of all those other wizards screaming, burning, their powers ripped from them by magics fouler than the deepest pits of hell. Lional, laughing .…

  Make me a dragon.

  Drenched in sweat and horror, he stared. Oh, God. Oh, God. 'I remember.'

  Lional appeared mildly interested. 'Really? I wondered if you might.'

  Gerald's gaze shifted to the almost empty crystal carafe. Rising fast, understanding laced with bitter shame and self-derision. When Reg hears about this she'll go spare… . 'The wine?'

  'Your glass,' said Lional. He was smiling, a thin nasty curve of unkind lips. 'Coated with a neat little concoction I cooked up in my spare time. Very handy for rendering impotent any wizard who might fight back.'

  He tried to wrench the ring from his finger but he couldn't even lift his hand. His body was like a sack of wet sand. Inert. Immoveable.

  You fool. You fool. You let your guard down…

  Lional laughed. 'There's no escape, Gerald. Not even you are strong enough to break this binding. Trust me, after what happened in the woods I made quite certain of that.'

  I'll bet you did, you murdering bastard. He'd never felt anything like this before. As though he were a puppet and his strings had been cut. 'You're wasting your time,' he said, forcing the words out. 'I won't make you a dragon.'

  'No?' Lional shrugged. 'Well, we'll see. Now look into the sapphire, Gerald.'

  Head pounding, he fought the command. The effort hurt him all the way to his bones. Lional's binding incant held a compulsion element too. 'No 'Look into the sapphire!

  Lional's voice lashed him like a whip, breaking his fragile resistance. Against his will his gaze began drifting downwards. He tried to close his eyes, turn his face away, but the impulse to obey was overwhelming. No. No. Fight him, you have to!

  It was hopeless. On a despairing cry he stared into the sapphire's heart. The gemstone flared from blue to crimson, pulsing like a captive sun. He was falling… falling… fallen.

  The crystal held him fast, like a fly in blood-soaked amber.

  'Dear me, Gerald,' Lional said lightly as he stood and crossed to the dining room door. 'Didn't anyone ever tell you? Never accept gifts from strange wizards.'

  Voiceless and paralysed, he watched as Melissande's murderous brother opened the dining room door and snapped his fingers. Almost immediately a nervous servant entered the chamber and bowed. 'Your Majesty?' With a friendly smile Lional rested a hand on his shoulder. 'Davenport, isn't it?'

  The man paled. 'Yes, Your Majesty.'

  Lional nodded and brought up his other hand in front of Davenport's face. His fingers crooked into a strange, vaguely threatening, almost obscene gesture. Davenport stiffened, his brown eyes bulging.

  'Listen carefully' said Lional, silkily persuasive. 'The professor and I are retiring to my private chambers, where we are not to be disturbed. Shortly after that he will return to his apartments for extensive meditation upon matters of grave magical importance. Nobody is to be concerned if they neither see nor hear from him for some time and under no circumstances is he to be called for or have his contemplations interrupted.'

  Davenport's eyes were glazed in his blank face. 'Yes, Your Majesty' he whispered.

  'You will share this information with every palace servant assigned to the professor's suite, Davenport, and any others you happen to encounter.'

  'Yes, Your Majesty'

  'This conversation did not happen.'

  'No, Your Majesty'

  Transfixed, Gerald watched Lional pass his crooked fingers before Davenport's face left to right, right to left, down and up, and finally up and down. Then he pressed the ball of his thumb to the man's forehead. Davenport gasped as though the collision of flesh and flesh was an agony. A white hot brand burned like a furnace between his eyes.

  Lional stepped back. 'Go now. Take Tavistock with you and make sure he gets a nice rump of something for his supper.'

  By the time Davenport reached the door, a complaining Tavistock at his heels, the brand had faded. With a flick of his fingers Lional swung the door open then shut it behind them. He was grinning.

  'I'll bet you weren't expecting that, Professor! Clever, aren't I?'

  Diabolically. Gerald's stunned and captured mind reeled.

  Reg, Reg, come back. I'm in trouble.

  'Oh dear. Has the king got your tongue?' Chuckling, Lional sauntered to the wall opposite the door. Ran his hands over the patterned wallpaper, pressed the centre of one floral bouquet and watched, humming cheerfully, as a part of the wall swung soundlessly inwards to reveal a small wooden platform and a spiral staircase, leading down. 'Come, Gerald. Time to go.'

  Numb, enslaved, he felt his body jerk. He stood, then plodded gracelessly forward. When he reached the opening in the wall Lional held up his hand and he stopped, teetering on the brink of darkness. Lional snapped his fingers and torches set into the wall above the wooden platform sprang into life.

  'After you, Professor, and do mind your step,' said Lional, jaunty as a bus conductor.

  And although he didn't want to, although he struggled against the force of Lional's voice until it felt like his heart would burst, he stepped through the hole in the wall, onto the platform and down the spiralling staircase. Lional came close behind, swinging the door closed in their wake, a steadying hand on his shoulder. He felt his skin crawl at the touch.

  They travelled in a capsule of light, torches dying behind them, kindling ahead. Down and down they climbed, stair after stair after stair. The air was clean but faintly stale. Exhausted, he stopped fighting the merciless grip of the incant wrapped round his mind and threaded through his bones. Instead, he let it move him as it willed and surrendered himself to waiting.

  After a lifetime of stairs they reached ground level and continued along a low-ceilinged, narrow-walled corridor of stone. On and on it unwound, sinuous as a snake. The temperature fell. Here and there the torchlight flickered on threads of moisture trickling down the dark, dank walls.

  He lost track of time and distance. Thought suspended, he just put one foot in front of the other, following Lional without question or hope of defiance. Eventually there was no more corridor so they stopped. Set into the rock wall before them was an ancient rough-hewn door. Ugly glyphs, crudely carved into the weathered timber, marred its splintered surface. The shape of them woke fresh dread, reminding him of the obscenity of Lional's fingers as he worked his will upon the servant Davenport.

  Humming again, Lional pulled a ring of keys from one of his pockets and began to sort through them. After a moment he turned, his shadow-flickered face grotesque with self-mockery. 'Aren't I a silly? You'd think I'd remember which one it is by now. Ah! Here we are… You know,' he added confidingly, a big brass key in his hand,'I could just as easily lock this with a spell but there's something so satisfying about a key' He fitted it into the door's lock and turned it. There was a click. Lional pushed and the door swung open. 'After you, Gerald.'

  The space beyond the open doorway was pitch black and cold. He felt loose dirt underfoot. Lional locked the door again and pocketed the keyring. There was a snap of fingers and a whispered word and the absolute darkness disappeared in a coruscation of light. Unable to shield his eyes Gerald squeezed them tight shut instead and saw the world as a blood-red shadow.

  'Come along now, Professor, don't be a spoilsport,' Lional's hateful voice reproved him. 'Don't you want to see your new home?'

  What he wanted was to wake up from this nightmare to f
ind himself safe in his shoebox room at the Wizards' Club. He wanted to be nothing more exalted than a probationary compliance officer, answerable to Scunthorpe, despised by Errol Haythwaite and benignly bullied by Reg.

  Reg.

  Oh, lord. How long before she reached Ottosland and Monk? How long before she could raise the alarm?

  'Gerald.' said Lional and slapped him, hard. 'Pay attention!'

  Cheek burning, he opened his eyes.

  He stood in a cave as large as a ballroom. It was lit like a ballroom, too, bobbing round lights clustered high beneath the rocky ceiling. Unlike most caves, this one had no mouth. The only way in or out was through the carved wooden door behind him.

  'Excellent!' said Lional. 'You know, Gerald, you'll find we'll get along very much better if you just do what you're told when you're told and how you're told to do it.'

  He tried to speak but the words wouldn't come. He heard himself grunt, an animal sound.

  Lional frowned. 'Oh dear. I think we'd best put you back the way you were, Professor, before you embarrass yourself Pulling a green stone out of one black silk trouser pocket he breathed on it, whispering, then held it up before his captive's eyes. 'Look deep now, Gerald.'

  Helpless, he looked.

  A rush of burning, as though the incant sunk through his flesh and bones had suddenly caught fire. A spinning dizziness, the feeling of being drawn swiftly upwards by an invisible thread. The ring on his finger flared, searing. He cried out in pain, another animal sound.

  And then he was free. He staggered backwards until his shoulder-blades met the unforgiving cave wall, ripped the signet ring from his finger and threw it into the dirt.

  'Reg was right. You tried to kill me.'

  Lional considered him thoughtfully. 'Not… precisely. And really, is that any way to treat a present?'

  'Fine. You tried to steal my power then kill me.'

  'Close enough,' Lional conceded. 'The goal was indeed to appropriate your magicali potentia, as I appropriated the potentias of the five wizards who came before you. Your death, like theirs, would've been a convenient side effect.'

  Gerald laughed, unwisely triumphant. 'But I'm not like those other wizards, am I? You failed… Your Majesty.'

  A muscle leapt along Lional's jaw. 'Don't get your hopes up, Gerald. I haven't failed yet.' His eyes lit with an inner fire and his aura ignited, crackling fiercely, silently, in a nimbus of purple and black. 'I am a wizard, after all.'

  Despite himself, he flinched. The malevolence radiating from Lional's display was choking. He felt befouled, nauseated. 'You're no wizard. You're just a thief.

  Lional's fist quenched the flare of power. The fire in his eyes dwindled to a pinprick of crimson light, flickering deep. 'Wrong, Gerald. I am unique!

  'What you are is stark staring bonkers. Raving lunacy on legs.'

  All of Lional's masculine beauty vanished. Twisted with hate and a brooding malice he took a step forward, fist raised. 'Don't push me, Gerald! I can be quite… vengeful… when I'm pushed.'

  'You've already been pushed, mate, right over the edge!'

  'Insolence.' hissed Lional. 'Hold your tongue, peasant! It's time for you to make me a dragon.'

  Gerald swallowed. Keep him talking. That was all he could do, keep the mad king talking and pray that Reg got back in time with Monk and the Department's cavalry. 'Are you deaf as well as insane?' he sneered. 'How many times do you need me to say it? I will never make you a dragon. And anyway, even if I did it, wouldn't do you any good. The Kallarapi aren't stupid. You just wish they were. Shugat won't buy your fake dragon any more than he bought Reg and Tavistock. He'll let loose his holy man powers on you and once you're dead the world will be a better place!'

  'Shugat?' Lional laughed, the sound raggedly bouncing from wall to wall. 'Shugat will burn! Zazoor will burn! Every last Kallarapi shall burn to ash and bone and their desert will be mine.'

  And that really was crazy. 'Yours? Why the hell do you want their desert?'

  An indrawn breath, then Lional stopped. The fury and rapacity wiped clean from his face, as though his features were made of fine pale sand and a smoothing hand had passed across them. He smiled politely, urbanity incarnate. 'All in good time, Gerald.'

  He pushed away from the wall. 'I don't have good time. I'm leaving.'

  'I don't think so,' said Lional and clapped his hands.'Impedimentia implacato.'

  Gerald's feet froze to the cave floor in mid-stride; he paddled the air frantically, trying not to fall over. Balance regained, he snapped his fingers. 'Nux nullimia!'

  Nothing happened.

  'You're wasting your time,' said Lional, eyes glinting with petty amusement. 'Ingeniously hidden in this cave is a lodestone, calibrated to suppress all thaumaturgical signatures except my own. A rather clever modification I designed, feel free to be impressed. Until I say otherwise, your formidable powers are completely inaccessible to you, Gerald. So you see? You have no choice but to help me.'

  A lodestone. Things just kept on getting better and better… 'I'll help you all right. All the way to a full tribunal hearing at the United Magical Nations and from there into a not too comfortable cell where you can spend the rest of your miserable, manipulative, criminal life!'

  'No, I can't say that's what I had in mind,' Lional mused. 'I was thinking more along the lines of us crushing the Kallarapi and ushering in New Ottosland's bigger, brighter future.'

  'Us?' Gerald laughed. Even to himself he sounded unsteady, on the edge. 'There's no us here. There's just me and a well-dressed murderer.'

  Lional pulled a face. 'Oh come now, Gerald, there's no need to be parochial. You're a wizard, man. You have to think beyond the mundane. Yes, some people have died. But it was in a good cause. New Ottosland's cause. Their sacrifices will be remembered, I promise. I'll put a plaque on a wall somewhere with all their names on it, how does that sound?'

  'Insane,' he said grimly. 'Just like you.'

  Lional lifted a warning finger. 'Careful, Gerald.'

  He gasped as a bolt of pain shot through him. Blood trickled down the back of his throat. He swallowed, gagging at the metallic taste.

  Don't antagonise him, you fool. Keep him talking. He wants to boast. Show off. Encourage him, don't make him angry. Every minute he keeps talking is a minute that gets you closer to rescue.

  'You put the kybosh on the crystal ball.'

  'I did,' said Lional, smiling complacently. 'I wasn't entirely convinced your memory was gone. Didn't want to risk you making any inconvenient calls. Polarised lightning! He laughed. 'I do wish I could've seen your face as I fed Melissande that rigmarole. I expect it was priceless!'

  Gerald felt his fingers clench into fists. 'You knew I was there.'

  The complacent smile returned. 'Of course. The potentias of five wizards, remember? Why do you think I made up all that drivel in the first place? For Melissande? Hardly'

  'Well I'll give you this much, Lional. You may be crazy but you're not an idiot.'

  'No, Rupert's the idiot in my family,' said Lional, then raised a sharp finger. 'And I'd appreciate it, Gerald, if you addressed me with just a little more respect.'

  Another flaring bolt of pain. Another rush of blood down the back of his throat. Anchored to the floor by Lional's incant he dropped to his knees, nearly breaking both ankles. 'All right, all right! I'm sorry, Your Majesty.'

  Lional looked down at him. 'That's better.'

  'Fine. Now would you please release the impedimentia implacatcR You said it yourself, I can't hurt you in here and I think the blood's stopped flowing to my feet.'

  After a moment Lional nodded. 'Very well. Since you asked so nicely' He waved one hand and whispered under his breath.

  Gerald felt a tingle run through his legs. Moving carefully, he levered himself back onto his feet. Stamped them to get the feeling back. 'Thank you.' Lional's eyebrows lifted. 'Your Majesty' Keep him talking, keep him talking. 'I wonder… can I ask you something else?'

  'If you must,' sig
hed Lional.

  'Rupert—His Highness—said you had no magical aptitude. If that's true how is any of this possible?'

  'Rupert said?' Lional frowned. 'Well, well. What a little rattle-tongue young Rupert is proving to be. I shall have to speak to him. Severely'

  Damn. 'Don't! Rupert's as harmless as one of his butterflies, you know he is. Leave him alone.' With an effort, he moderated his tone. 'Please, Your Majesty.'

  Lional considered him. 'Well… perhaps you're right.' He shrugged. 'And so is Rupert. I have no real natural metaphysical aptitude of my own.'

  'Then how did you steal—'

  'You'd like me to explain?'

  'Yes. I would.' Because he really did want to know. Not just for himself but so—in the unlikely event he got out of this mess—he could tell the authorities. One Lional in the annals of thaumaturgy was one too many.

  Lional consulted his pocket watch. 'I suppose we've a few minutes before we must get down to business. Pull up a patch of dirt then, Professor, and I'll tell you my fascinating story.'

  He sat on the floor with his back against the rough cave wall and watched as Lional closed his eyes and raised one finger. A moment later an armchair appeared beside him; with a pleased smile, he sat in it.

  Gerald swallowed dismay. Oh, hell. A thought. He can translocate objects with a thought. And we must be miles from the palace, we walked for ages. He can translocate objects over miles with just a thought.

  His only consolation was that Lional was unable to steal his potentia. Why that was he didn't know or much care. So long as Lional couldn't rip it out of him, as he'd done to Bottomley and the others, there was still a chance of thwarting the mad king's plans.

  I don't know how, but there must be a chance. Because if I don't stop him people are going to die.

  Lional cleared his throat. 'Are you listening, Gerald?' he demanded, a distinct and razored edge to his voice.

  He wrapped his arms around his knees. Keep him talking, keep him talking. Whatever you do, don't make him angry. 'Yes, Your Majesty.'

  'Then in the tradition of all good fairy tales we shall begin with "Once Upon A Time",' said Lional, legs crossed, hands elegantly at ease, the epitome of genteel sophistication. 'So. Once upon a time, the kings of New Ottosland were magically talented in their own right. As far as I can tell they never actually did anything with it, but nevertheless the talent was there. Unfortunately, over the ensuing generations and most likely due to indiscriminate breeding, our abilities became more and more diluted. In fact until recently we were good for little more than parlour tricks. I mean, Melissande's a dab hand with a crystal ball, Rupert can make butterflies land on his head and with a lot of effort and some nose bleeding I could levitate a pencil half an inch into the air.' He chuckled. 'I can do a trifle more than that now, of course.'