by Alec Hutson
“Kaleb,” she whispered, but he did not turn to look at her. His face was so pale, so drawn. His mind could not survive much longer untethered.
A hot tear trickled down her cheek and fell upon his outstretched arm. He blinked, color rushing up into his cheeks.
“Grape Nuts?” he murmured.
“Yes,” she said, reaching back to her tether. Quickly she unbraided the frayed end she had brought from Kay’s terminal a universe away and looped it around his body.
This had never been tried, but it was the only thing she thought might work.
“Stop!” screeched the queen, rising from her throne, wreathed by a penumbra of dark power.
But it was too late. Holding tight to Kay, she jerked hard on her tether, and it retracted at the speed of electricity pulsing along a silicon transistor.
They flashed across the Pale, then through the twisting labyrinth that protected it, doors slamming shut behind them.
Gerda came to herself with a shuddering breath. Never had she surfaced so quickly, and her head pounded with the strain.
Beside her, Kay’s limp hand dangled down, unmoving.
She had failed. His mind hadn’t been able to hold onto the remnants of his tether as they fled. A terrible sadness filled her chest, and in frustration she ripped off her skullcap and visor and tossed them away.
At the sound, Kay’s fingers twitched.
“Gerda?”
“FASTER YOU clod-footed lazeabout! The grand vizier is not a man to be kept waiting!”
Hitching his long blue robes up to his knees, Jerrym quickened his pace, his sandals slapping loudly on the floor of polished obsidian. Yet despite his awkward attempt to hurry the gnarled little imp flitting about his head continued to rain down insults and imprecations.
“Idiot! Lackwit! May the Forsworn feast on your rotund soul! The archmagus could have asked one of the cripples of the Maimed God to retrieve the wand instead of you, and it would have been in his hands a half-watch ago!”
“I just… I just didn’t know which one to take,” Jerrym panted, feeling his belly start to churn. Vomiting up his porridge now would not improve his day at all, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold his breakfast down.
The imp chittered a laugh. “Two years as an apprentice and still you can’t recognize something infused with the essence of a basilisk?”
“You could… have told me.”
“Ha! And miss watching you try to run and waddle at the same time? This is the best entertainment I’ve had in an eon.”
Jerrym tried to swallow his anger. “Did I take the right one? Can you tell me that, at least?” The dusty storeroom the archmagus had dispatched him to had been overflowing with rods and staves and wands and staffs carved from every substance imaginable. He’d strained to catch the whiff of basilisk, but it’d been difficult to pick out that particular scent among the swirling mélange of magical fragrances.
In reply the imp flashed tiny pointed teeth and swooped on ahead, vanishing through a massive stone archway incised with shimmering runes.
Bastard. For the hundredth time, Jerrym imagined slowly pulling off the imp’s bat-wings as the creature screeched and squirmed.
Jerrym slowed his pace as he passed beneath the arch and entered the soaring Hall of the Dragon. He really did need to catch his breath and let the stitch in his side subside, but it also felt disrespectful to run beneath the bones of Old Balgeron. Hanging from the ceiling was the skeleton of the Dawnscourge, the Dread Flame, the last and greatest of the ancient mountain wyrms. The archmagus had slain the monstrous beast in single combat a century before Jerrym had been born, and hung his black bones within the Schola Arcanum as a visible reminder of his power.
Jerrym felt like something watched him from the dragon’s hollow eye sockets, a lingering malignance, and he shivered. The dragon’s outstretched wings spanned the width of the great chamber – when he had first been brought to this hall, ushered through while clinging to the arm of his tutor on his way to meet the archmagus, it had seemed to Jerrym that Balgeron was suspended magically. Now he knew that filaments of silk drawn from the giant spiders which infested the jungles of Chel bound the bones together. Amazingly, it was only a single thick strand, sunk into the ceiling, that kept the entire huge skeleton aloft. He’d daydreamed about spinning such a material into armor for the empire’s legions, but when he’d told the archmagus about this idea, his teacher had smacked him in the head with his staff and told him to stop being such a fool.
“Even assuming we could extract enough of the stuff,” the archmagus had said scornfully, “do you truly think it a wise idea to gift a nigh-invulnerable army to a fifteen year-old boy hungry for conquest and glory? Do you want to be responsible for the ensuing bloodshed? A true sorcerer must wed his great power with greater wisdom, or disaster will result. But it appears you have neither. Now go scrub the chamber pots.”
The memory brought a twinge of embarrassment. What would the archmagus do to him if he returned with the wrong wand while the grand vizier was standing only a few paces away? Change him into a garden slug for a week? Command him to muck the Schola’s countless privies? No, the archmagus always knew exactly where to stick the knife and twist. That meant he almost certainly wouldn’t be allowed into the city anymore in the evenings to listen to Alia sing in the dockside taverns. The thought turned his burning shame to icy fear, and his hand instinctively went to the wand of red bone secreted in his robe’s inner pocket. He prayed to all the risen gods that his guess was correct.
Jerrym steeled himself as he finally reached the shimmering blue portal that led to the archmagus’s inner sanctum. After another muttered prayer and an indrawn breath he plunged through the barrier. Arcane energies from the powerful wards coruscated over his body, making his skin tingle and the hair on his arms dance. For a honey-slow moment he seemed to be falling from some great height, and then the door spat him out with a faint popping sound, apparently satisfied that he posed no threat to those inside. Jerrym staggered as he appeared in the sanctum, his legs suddenly as weak as a newborn foal’s.
The room was large, its recesses lost in jumbled shadow. Only a small circle was clear of magical detritus, as the rest of the space was filled by listing towers of stacked books, mounds of scrolls, strange instruments fashioned from metal and glass, the stuffed remains of a six-legged arthropod the size of a small horse, and a long table covered with vats and flasks of bubbling green fluids.
The archmagus and the grand vizier turned toward him as he appeared. Both were men well into their twilight years, but there was no hint of weakness in either of their postures. The archmagus was tall and broad-shouldered, his black hair and perfectly-trimmed beard shot through with silver. By contrast, the grand vizier was bald, his scalp laced with tattoos of strange geometric designs. Yet despite his lack of hair, his skin was smooth as marble, and his black eyes glittered with the same fierce intensity Jerrym had once glimpsed when the hood had come off his cousin’s desert falcon.
“Master,” Jerrym said, then was seized by a moment of panic when he realized he didn’t know what he should call the grand vizier.
The imp perched on the archmagus’s shoulder grinned, noticing his confusion.
“My lord,” he finally ventured, glancing at the archmagus nervously.
His teacher did not lash out with his staff to rap his ears, so that appellation must have sufficed. Jerrym relaxed slightly.
“Your apprentice?” the grand vizier murmured, his words strangely flavored by some foreign accent.
The archmagus sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. Though a few of the scullery maids might rival him in sorcerous aptitude and outstrip him significantly in mental acumen.”
Jerrym ducked his head, trying to hide his flush of shame.
The grand vizier rasped a chuckle. “So he’ll not be the one to inherit your staff, Demonachus?”
The archmagus’s snort of derision was like a blow to Jerrym’s stomach. “No. The s
taff would never accept one like him.”
“How many apprentices is this, then? Twenty?”
“Twenty-three.”
“And none were worthy? What happens if the necromancer or one of the pashqua’s pet warlocks manages to strike you down? Who will defend the empire?”
The archmagus tightened his grip on his staff, and a shiver of energy played along its length. “The Schola Arcanum is impregnable. No enemy could possibly reach me here, yet still I can impress my will upon the world.”
The sorcerer’s contemptuous gaze returned to Jerrym. “That is, I can work my magic if I have someone to help me who possesses even a shred of competence. Did you find the wand?”
Jerrym stepped forward, fumbling with the wand as he pulled it from his robes. “Here, master.”
The archmagus received the wand, glanced at it, then casually tossed it over his shoulder. His staff flickered out like a striking serpent, and Jerrym fell to his knees, his head ringing from the blow.
“Fool! Can you not tell a basilisk’s resonance from that of a cockatrice?”
The imp, clutching its belly, cackled so hard it nearly slipped from the archmagus’s shoulder.
The grand vizier frowned. “I don’t have much more time, Demonachus. I am expected in the palace’s audience chamber shortly.”
The archmagus waved his hand. “Go. I will complete the divination later, and send my familiar to tell you what I discover.”
“That inconveniences me slightly, as I’d planned on confronting the duke with his treachery today.” The grand vizier turned his piercing gaze to Jerrym. “I hope the boy will be punished.”
The sorcerer also glowered at his apprentice, his lip curling. “He certainly will. Something unique, I think, to reflect the gravity of this particular failure.”
The grand vizier raised his eyebrows. “Interesting. I am always fascinated by novel forms of punishment – they do so often come in handy. Perhaps I can stay a moment longer.”
Cold fear coiled in Jerrym’s belly. Every night he dreamed that he failed his master in some spectacular fashion; this was like one of his nightmares made real.
The archmagus stalked over to an overflowing scroll rack and pulled a slim ivory tube from among the mess. He unscrewed the end and pulled out a sheet of ragged, yellowing parchment.
“And what’s that?” asked the grand vizier as the sorcerer unrolled the scroll and laid it on his worktable.
“It was called des’gurva alenak by the witches of the Jade Coast – ‘a guide to the soul’s hunger.’ A less prosaic translation would be the map of secret desires.”
“A map?” The grand vizier sounded unimpressed, but to Jerrym the thought that a map could play some role in his coming punishment was absolutely terrifying. How might that be possible? From his vantage a few paces away, he could see the contours of the known lands picked out in striking detail, almost as if he gazed down from a perch among the stars.
“A magical map. I found it in the hoard of Old Balgeron. It is enchanted so that it shows us where what we desire most can be found. If you lust for wealth, a mark might appear on the map where treasure is buried. Or it could reveal the location of a lost lover.” The archmagus glanced sideways at the grand vizier. “Or perhaps the gift for the emperor that raises one up to be first among his advisors.”
“And why do we want to know what the boy desires above all else?”
The archmagus chuckled. “Because then I can ensure that he never attains it.”
“Snuffing out his most closely-held dream – even if it is some silly boyish fantasy, as I’m sure it must be – is certainly a fitting punishment for wasting our time. Ha! You’ve intrigued me, Demonachus. Let us peek into his soul.”
“In good time,” the archmagus murmured, picking up the map again. “First I am curious what it will show me.” His lips thinned as he stared hard at the map. A slight breeze passed through the sanctum, and then a small crimson circle like a drop of blood appeared in the eastern reaches of the empire, near one of the border fortresses that dotted the plains.
“So what you desire most is there?” scoffed the grand vizier. “It could be anything.”
“Wait,” the archmagus said softly, and after a moment the image on the map faded away. Another picture emerged, welling up from beneath the parchment as if it were a sea-creature rising from the ocean’s depths. This new image was something a bird might see as it flew overhead, a cluster of sod roofs huddled within a large clearing hacked from a great sea of grass.
“A barbarian village,” the grand vizier said. “There are hundreds of them scattered across the eastern fringes of the empire.”
The village blew away like wisps of cloud in a windy sky, and was replaced by another picture. Now the map was transformed into a window, and they peered into what Jerrym suspected was one of the huts they’d so recently gazed down upon. A small boy sat cross-legged beside a dead fire pit, playing with crudely whittled dolls.
“Is this your long-lost son, whelped by some barbarian princess?”
The archmagus ignored the grand vizier’s jest, his brow furrowing. “There,” he suddenly cried, pointing at a doll that had been discarded in the dirt.
Except that it was no longer in the dirt. As they watched, the doll lifted from the ground and floated to the boy’s outstretched hand; he plucked it from the air casually, as if this were a perfectly normal occurrence.
“Magic,” Jerrym whispered, awed that such a young, untrained boy could so deftly fashion a levitation spell.
“Could you do the same?” asked the archmagus.
“Y-yes,” Jerrym stammered, and his master snorted.
“You could not. The boy is half your age, and without schooling, and he can manipulate sorcery better than you.” The archmagus jabbed his finger on the image of the boy, who suddenly sat up straighter and glanced around wide-eyed, as if he had felt something. “This is my new apprentice. This boy could grow to become a sorcerer worthy of holding my staff.”
The world seemed to drop out from beneath Jerrym. A new apprentice to replace him? He would be cast out of the Schola Arcanum in disgrace, and his family would shun him as a failure. He’d be reduced to performing cantrips for the amusement of others. A vagabond, half-trained wizard, like the pathetic souls who had sometimes come calling at his father’s door, begging for scraps. His dream of wooing Alia would be shattered.
The grand vizier clapped his hands together loudly. “Excellent, Demonachus. The emperor will be thrilled you’ve finally found a worthy successor. I can have a hundred xenochi horsemen rounding up all the little boys in those lands within a fortnight.”
“No, I will send my own servants. I don’t want any accidents to befall this child.”
The grand vizier inclined his head. “As you wish.”
“Now you,” the archmagus said, motioning for Jerrym to approach the map. “Your time as my apprentice may be rapidly coming to an end, but I still wish to make sure that I can deny you what you most desire. Two years of bungling ineptitude should not go unrewarded.”
Jerrym stared down at the map, which had reformed to show the sweep of the known continents. On the fringes of the scroll the unexplored lands were hazy and ill-defined.
He tried to empty his mind of all thought and give the enchanted map nothing, but to his horror a pinprick of red appeared over the imperial capital of Kalist – the same city in which they now stood.
“Aha!” cried the archmagus. “I knew it. It’s that golden-haired singer you go to moon over in the evenings. I doubt as a failed apprentice she’d spare you even a second thought, but I think an enchantment that renders you horrifyingly ugly in her eyes would make certain you never could be together.”
The archmagus’s triumphant smile faded as the map changed to show a sprawling building of dark stone studded with glimmering crystalline towers: the Schola Arcanum. “What’s this? Is there some artifact or treasure you’ve secretly been lusting after? Have you been dreaming ab
out stealing from me, fool?”
Again the picture evaporated and was replaced. Now they gazed into the Hall of the Dragon, the black bones of Old Balgeron nearly obscuring the ceiling. The archmagus studied the scroll for a long moment, and then turned towards Jerrym, confusion clear in his face. “What do you desire there?”
Jerrym shrugged helplessly. “I… . I don’t know.”
The archmagus frowned. “Come with me.”
As he swept past Jerrym, he grabbed a handful of his apprentice’s robes and began dragging him toward the shimmering blue portal. The imp riding the archmagus’s shoulder tightened its talons so it wouldn’t be shaken off, and stuck its forked tongue out at Jerrym.
Sorcery enveloped them as they passed out of the sanctum, and when it cleared they stood beneath the arched entrance to the Hall of the Dragon. The grand vizier groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Why do wizards insist on teleporting? It gives me the worst headache.”
The archmagus strode into the center of the hall. He turned slowly, peering into the corners of the room, and then glanced upward at the dragon’s skeleton. “Is it the wyrm’s bones? They do have some magical properties, though nothing you could make use of with your paltry abilities.” His eyes snapped back to Jerrym. “What is it? What do you desire here?”
Jerrym swallowed, looking around the hall. What could it be? What was in the hall that he…
Oh.
Without stopping to consider the wisdom of what he was doing, Jerrym plumbed his depths for all the sorcery he could muster. The archmagus was wrong – moving objects was one of the few spells he could reliably cast. He reached up, thrusting his power around the stone in the ceiling from which the dragon’s skeleton dangled. He pulled, and the stone loosened, ever so slightly.
But not enough. “What are you doing?” the archmage snarled, placing both hands on his staff and summoning forth a protective ward. “You’re using sorcery. Do you think to challenge me?”