Nature's Servant

by Duncan Pile

  …

  Gaspi was filled with nervous energy on the day he was due to leave. He was excited about studying elemental magic, but he hated leaving Emmy behind. The last month had been great with her; it would be like leaving some crucial part of him behind. Taurnil and Lydia were still here in Helioport of course, so at least she’d have her friends, but he knew she’d miss him just as much as he missed her. He was the one who had the exciting new thing to do, but she would be left with life as she knew it, with a big part of it missing.

  He was due to leave with Hephistole straight after breakfast, so there wasn’t much time for a lingering goodbye, but he figured that was no bad thing. He and Emmy had said all that needed to be said the previous night, and now that the time had come, he’d rather just get on with it. They met at Lydia’s room for breakfast, using the little kitchen in her corridor to cook up sausages and eggs, along with some toasted bread and a pot of coffee. Just as they were about to tuck in there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” Lydia said, and Taurnil entered the room.

  “I thought you were on duty,” Gaspi said.

  “I begged Trask and he swapped my shift,” he said. “Couldn’t miss your farewell breakfast,” he said, sniffing the air hungrily.

  Gaspi laughed. He knew Taurn would have wanted to say goodbye, but the promise of Lydia’s cooking was probably an equal draw.

  “Sit down mate,” he said with a grin.

  “It’s a good thing I made extra,” Lydia said, kissing Taurnil on the cheek as he plonked himself on her bed. Normally, anything Lydia cooked was consumed with involuntary noises of pleasure from everyone present, but apart from Taurnil, who ate with his usual relish, they consumed their food in silence. Gaspi could see just how hard Emmy was trying to put a brave face on it, and even Lydia seemed a little sad.

  Taurnil finished his plate of food before anyone else and pushed it aside with a satisfied sigh. “Gonna miss you mate,” he said, stating in his simple, honest way what everyone else was avoiding talking about. Emmy gave a little sob and Gaspi put his arm around her.

  “Me too,” Gaspi said. “Let’s not drag it out eh?” he said, glancing down at Emmy. Lydia shot Taurnil an exasperated glance.

  “Right you are,” he said, looking sheepish.

  “Sorry,” Emmy said with a sniffle. “I’m being stupid. Come on, let’s go down to the gate.”

  Gaspi kissed the top of her head, blinking rapidly to dry up the tears that were starting in his eyes. They washed the plates and left Lydia’s room, heading down towards the city gate, where Gaspi had agreed to meet Hephistole. Gaspi wasn’t taking much with him. He’d be staying with Heath into the autumn but his enchanted cloak took care of the need for warm clothes, and Hephistole was going to bring food for the journey.

  They made light conversation as they walked through the campus and down the long, spiralling road that cut through the city.

  “How do you reckon you’ll travel?” Taurnil asked as they neared the gate.

  “I dunno, but knowing Hephistole it could be anything!” Gaspi said. “Massive purple horses, floating rugs?” Taurnil chortled to himself.

  To Taurnil’s disappointment, it turned out Hephistole had been entirely sensible. He was waiting for them at the gate, seated in an ordinary looking cart, drawn by two non-magical looking horses. “Gaspi!” he called out enthusiastically. “Ready to go?”

  “Yeah,” he said, swinging his backpack up onto the seat. “Just give me a minute to say goodbye.”

  “Of course,” Hephistole answered, and Gaspi turned back to his friends.

  Taurnil shook his hand, eyeing him seriously. “Stay out of trouble,” he said.

  “I will mate,” Gaspi answered.

  Lydia kissed him on the cheek. “Take care Gaspi,” she said warmly, and stepped back, pulling Taurnil away so Gaspi could be alone with Emea.

  Emmy looked up at him bravely, the expression on her pretty face vulnerable but determined. “I’ll miss you so much Gaspi,” she said, “but I want you to make the most of it and learn everything you can. Don’t waste time worrying about me. I’ll be fine.”

  Gaspi smiled. “Thanks Emmy,” he said quietly. “I’ll miss you like crazy.” He felt the tears starting in his eyes again, and saw Emmy’s swim with moisture too. “I’d best go eh?” he said, kissing her quickly and pulling her into a tight hug. He held her for a moment and stepped away, walking determinedly towards the cart. He clambered in besides Hephistole.

  “Ready?” the chancellor asked gently. Gaspi just nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Hephistole flicked the reins, clucking twice as he did so, and the cart lurched into motion. They passed through the gates, removing the temptation to look back, and emerged into the wide open plain.

  Section Two

  Five

  Shirukai Sestin drew the last of the drapes shut, blocking out all light from the observatory’s large, curving windows and leaving himself only in faint, candlelit radiance. He had already checked the markings he’d chalked out on the floor twice, but when summoning demons, a third check was always a good idea. He carefully went over the arcane markings, making sure the lines bisected each other correctly, and that no part of any line was broken. Large candles were placed at every point where two lines crossed, and twelve more were spaced evenly in a wide circle around the pentagram’s edge.

  Sestin stopped after his third check. Three checks were sensible, the fourth would be weakness. He breathed deeply, assessing his strength. Summoning was difficult, and the penalty for failure was the most horrible kind of death, but he was up to the task. He wouldn’t have to be doing this at all if Hephistole hadn’t proved to be so damned resourceful. Summoning those ten Bale-beasts had taken just about all of his strength, and they had been completely destroyed. Destroyed! Just thinking about it made him furious.

  Fortunately, the den-chief he’d sent to lead the wargs had transported back and told him what had happened: Hephistole had discovered a Nature Mage, and that mage had been instrumental in Sestin’s defeat. He had thought long and hard about this Nature Mage. What were the chances that someone would be born with that ability for the first time in over two hundred years, just when he, Shirukai Sestin, was about to unleash hell on the magical world? It made him…uncertain, and uncertainty wasn’t something he could afford. He’d decided that he had to remove it from the equation as soon as possible. The Nature Mage was young and inexperienced - he could be killed.

  So Sestin had changed his plans. He still intended to abduct his old pupil, Hephistole, and use him till he was a dried-up husk, draining off his power and storing it for his eventual plan, but first of all, there was the boy. He’d killed the den-chief, of course. No-one, especially not a glorified dog, would be allowed to remember his failure, and after months of recovering his strength, he was ready to summon more Bale-beasts. He’d not send them to Helioport this time, which was well defended and expecting his attack. No, he’d send them north-east to the pagan tribes of the Eagle’s Roost mountains. Bale-beasts were feeders, designed to drain magical energy and store it in their bodies. If they drained enough they evolved into something else altogether; something much more sinister and deadly: A Darkman.

  Sestin smiled greedily, a hungry light blossoming in his storm-grey eyes. A Darkman was the ultimate assassin, both demonic and corporeal, its touch destroying both the body and soul. Tireless and without remorse, it would seek its prey until its life was extinguished. If he could control a Darkman, he would send it after the Nature Mage.

  Sestin turned his mind to the task at hand. It was time. Narrowing his focus, he began to chant. Though the words would be unintelligible to any person unlucky enough to overhear, they would know that every utterance was against nature, a discordant sound that ripped at the very fabric of existence. He continued in a low, guttural drone, the phrases oddly structured, halting and stuttering as if out of rhythm. Each malformed syllable widened that rip, rending what was right and normal and openi
ng up a hole in space and time - a hole that led right into Hell.

  The candles flickered and dimmed, and the sound of gale force winds tore about the room, though no breath of air actually stirred. A hole opened up in the air before him, widening second by second, and though nothing could yet be seen through it, no-one watching could have been in any doubt that the ultimate horror waited on the other side.

  Sestin’s voice rose above the shriek of the wind, using those mind-rending syllables to command, to coerce. The hole stretched even further, wide enough for a man to step through, and a dark shape loomed on the other side, hungry to press through and destroy the being who dared to summon it. The hole bulged as the dark creature pushed its way through, until what looked like a heavy head and bulky shoulders emerged over a body that tapered away to nothing. Its face was undistinguishable from the rest of its black body except for two even blacker pools of darkness, swirling with power. Those baleful eyes fixed hatefully on Sestin, and another gaping hole, as dark as its eyes, opened wide in the lower part of its face as it hunched its shoulders and howled.

  The mind-ripping sound would be enough to threaten a normal man’s sanity, but Sestin was prepared for it, binding the demon in stinging, painful hexes designed to contain and control the rabid creature. The Bale-beast, for that is what it was, fought against him, trying to shake off the hexes that were bringing it into subjugation, but Sestin piled on layer after layer of spell-work, binding it to his will. The Bale-beast made one last effort to resist him, but Sestin sent a massive shock of pain blazing through the lattice of binding hexes, lines of power that covered and constricted it like burning chains, and finally it gave in, bowing its head in submission to its master.

  Sestin smiled, sealing off the hole into the underworld. Creatures from Hell only understood the language of pain and power, and they were his to command. He’d have to spend a while recovering from such costly spell-work, and then he’d summon another, and then another, until there were five. He whispered to the creature, binding it with added compulsions. He showed it the North, and the tribespeople of Eagle’s Roost. He drew its attention to their shamans, practicing their primitive form of magic.

  “Go and feed, my servant. Fill yourself and bring them horror. But do not return to me until you are replete; until you are a Darkman.”

  The Bale-beast howled again, but this time with hunger and anticipation, and slid heavily from the room.

  …

  As Gaspi travelled with Hephistole, he was glad the chancellor was sensitive enough to avoid conversation for a while, and they journeyed in silence until he felt the tide of his emotion begin to recede. It was stupid really. He knew it was only for three months, but when it came to Emmy his feelings were often overwhelming. Thinking of her just made him feel upset again, so he pushed her out of his mind and settled down in his seat, watching the scenery as it passed.

  “So how far is it to where Heath lives?” he asked, breaking the long silence.

  “Two days travel,” Hephistole answered, slipping into conversation as if they’d been talking comfortably the whole way along.

  “So we have to stay somewhere overnight?”

  “Sorry, call it three days, two nights,” Hephistole clarified.

  They travelled on through the day, moving westwards across the plain. An old wagon track ran alongside the river, leading them towards the distant mountains, and the further away from the city they got, the wilder the terrain became. Cultivated fields slowly gave way to hard grasses and dense gorse bushes, and the track was developing more than a few pot holes.

  As the afternoon drew on towards evening, they passed through a small village. Gaspi expected Hephistole to stop for the night, but he drove the horses right on through and passed back out into the wilds.

  “Er…where are we stopping for the night?” he asked.

  “You’ll see,” the chancellor answered infuriatingly. Gaspi tried to pry more information out of him, but Hephistole was having none of it. It was getting late and he couldn’t see another village anywhere along the path ahead of them.

  As dusk was settling in, Hephistole pulled the cart off the main track and steered them up a trail barely wide enough for the cart to pass through.

  “Where are we going?” Gaspi asked, peering with some bewilderment up the hill they were climbing.

  “Almost there,” Hephistole said, but wouldn’t explain any further. The horses pulled them a little further before they turned off the trail and stopped by a small grove of trees. Gaspi looked around in confusion.

  “Is this it?” he asked, staring at the grove, which was nothing more than a cluster of trees with a stream running through it.

  “This is it,” Hephistole confirmed with a knowing smile, stepping down from the cart. He entered the grove and sat on the ground with his back against the largest tree, looking at Gaspi expectantly.

  “We could have stopped in that village!” Gaspi said, trying not to let his irritation show.

  Hephistole chuckled to himself. “Okay I’ll come clean,” he said. “I want you to get a bit of practice. You’ll be living very simply with Heath, so you’d better get into the spirit of things as much as you can. Druids are quite wild, you know, preferring to be outdoors rather than living under a roof.”

  “Oh,” Gaspi said, speculating without much pleasure. Sleeping rough for three months would not be much fun.

  “I also can’t help feeling a little curious,” Hephistole continued. “What can a Nature Mage do? My challenge to you is to make this grove as comfortable as possible without damaging the environment for the things that live in it.”

  Gaspi looked around speculatively and broke into a smile. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  “I’ll give it a go,” he said, looking around at the grove to see what he could do. The first thing he noticed was that although the branches spread out broadly overhead, they only partly covered the grove, and if it rained they’d still get wet. Making a watertight shelter seemed like a good place to start. With Hephistole watching on, he stretched out with his senses, tuning into his environment. The flood of sensory input he received was so great he almost let go of his power. It was teeming with energy - much more than he’d ever sensed in the city! There was an abundance of life in the soil, coursing up through the roots and trunks of trees.

  He reached out to that life and teased it upwards, causing it to flow even more fulsomely up the tree trunks and along the branches. He directed the energy carefully, stimulating growth all through the canopy. All around him, branches sent out tiny shoots, thickening the cover over his head. Buds appeared on the new growth, swelling and unfolding into fresh greenery. He withdrew his power and looked at the canopy critically. Spotting a couple of areas where it was a bit patchy, he fed energy into the nearby branches, causing new growth to fill in the spots he’d missed. When he was done, the covering was lush and thick all over.

  “Wonderful!” Hephistole enthused. “I wish I could do that!”

  Gaspi glanced at him, smiling. One of the things he liked about the Heppy was how little he cared about acting as a chancellor might be expected to. Here he was, one of the most powerful arch-mages in the land, enthusiastic as a child shown a new trick. It seemed strange to him that the powerful chancellor couldn’t do things that came so naturally to him, but he supposed that’s what came with being a Nature Mage.

  “We’ll need some warmth, and something to cook on,” Hephistole said, interrupting his thoughts. “Can you magic us up a fire?”

  “I reckon,” Gaspi answered, eyeing the branches and kindling that lay generously around the grove. He had manipulated fire before but he’d never actually created it, and even a fire summoned by a Nature Mage would need something to consume. Anyone who’d grown up in Aemon’s Reach could build and start a fire, so he started gathering twigs from around the clearing and built a small pyramid in the centre of the grove, structuring the kindling in such a way that it would get plenty of air. He
piled larger branches off to the side before considering how to create the fire itself.

  When the villagers of Aemon’s Reach started fires, they cut a groove in a branch, and used a bow to draw a length of coarse bowstring rapidly back and forth. The string quickly made the wood very hot, and when it began to smoke, the bow was removed and a small amount of moss placed in the heated groove and blown on until it started to smoulder. The small flame could then be nursed and fed until it was a fully-fledged fire. He tried to think of a way to replicate that process using magic, but nothing sprang to mind.

  It occurred to him that there might be some kind of energy in the air he could draw on instead. Closing his eyes, he reached out with his senses, searching for the energy store he needed. The gentle breeze passing through the grove was a form of energy, but he quickly bypassed that in favour of a much more abundant source of energy than the wind. Even in the fading evening, the light contained a flood of energy that he instinctively recognised as a form of heat. It was everywhere! He didn’t know what to make of that, and stored it away for further thought, wanting to complete his spell while the light lasted.

  Realising how easily he could use the heat energy transmitted by light to make the wood burn, Gaspi laughed out loud and opened his eyes. He spread his arms wide, palms upwards, drawing on the widespread energy flowing through the lingering sunbeams. He focussed it to a single, narrow point, just above the kindling. The focus instantly became red hot, appearing as a small, glowing circle of intense flame. When fiery red turned to searing white he realised that he’d drawn in far too much energy. Panicking, he directed it down onto the kindling, and a solid beam of pure white fire bolted from the glowing circle of energy, igniting the twigs in a moment. A high-pitched yelp and a scuffling sound from behind told him Hephistole had scrambled away from the fire. Quick as he could, he released his power, letting the energy he’d captured dissipate into the air. The small pyramid of twigs had been burned to ash.