The Elements of Sorcery

by Christopher Kellen

  “I’m lost,” I said, in all three languages, hoping that perhaps one of them had at least heard of a civilized tongue. “Can you tell me where I am?”

  They shrugged and looked helplessly at one another. “K’rdan?”

  Huffing out a sigh, I located a particularly thick stalk of grass and scratched out a rough boat in the dirt, complete with sails. There was no way I could explain my story to them, but I might at least be able to give them a hint. With a vicious slash, I marked an X through the boat. “Shipwrecked,” I said clearly, and then pointed to my tattered clothing.

  At last, some glimmer of understanding dawned in their eyes. The larger of the two, bald with huge bushy eyebrows that raised and lowered frantically as he spoke, rattled off a long string of unintelligible gibberish. I waited politely until he was done, and then shrugged pointedly. He looked crestfallen, as though, having come in sight of land after months at sea, discovered that the salvation he'd been longing for was nothing but a tiny, lonesome island.

  Their gazes had slowly changed from confused, bewildered and wary to something else, but I couldn’t quite place it. My brain was still fairly water-logged, and my thinking slow and sluggish. The two of them conferred at length—arguing about some detail or another, it seemed—and at last, the bald one beckoned me, indicating that I should follow, and turned to head inland. With no better chances for shelter anywhere in sight, I elected to do just that.

  Men loaded down with so much fishing gear weren’t likely to be cannibals, I reassured myself. The chances of my ending up in a cooking pot as the evening meal was slim to none; far more likely to be a feast made from the gaping, bug-eyed fish that lay piled atop one another in their buckets. The less-civilized lands around the edges of the Old Kingdoms were full of strange low-landers with all kinds of odd customs, but these seemed nice enough.

  Hell, for all I knew, I was on an island somewhere and not the mainland at all. I resolved to keep my eyes to the horizon for some hint of my location.

  Now that I was thoroughly warmed, fatigue plagued me from head to toe. Bone-weary, ready to collapse, and yet I must have walked with them for a league or more, watching the grassy shoreline turn into a sparse forest. At last, we came to a trail that seemed well-walked, if not exactly run down by carts and the like. My feet ached, my head was throbbing and my vision was blurring by the time we finally arrived in a small village of ramshackle huts and lean-tos, with a sturdy wooden palisade wall surrounding the whole thing.

  Walls were a fact of life everywhere. In this kind of country, near the ocean, it was often said that the fel beasts and monsters were much less common, as they tended to favor the mountains and thick forests, but one could never be too careful.

  My benefactors opened the palisade, and I followed them inside. As soon as we crossed the threshold, they started shouting something in their local babble. Slowly, but inexorably as the oncoming tide, almost a hundred people emerged from various doors and from beneath animal skin tents, their bodies almost uniformly skinny beneath clothing only slightly less ragged than my own, their dark eyes wide and staring.

  The bald fisherman was pointing at me now, yelling the same word over and over. The linguistically-minded section of my brain finally roused itself like an angry sea monster from its ocean-induced torpor, and mentally translated the sounds I was hearing back through a standard morphology.

  Once my brain locked onto the faint familiarity of the word, my heart sank like a broken and battered ship run aground on a reef.

  “Arbiter!” the fisherman was shouting. “Arbiter!”

  Oh, right. That thing.

  One by one, the people of the fishing village came out of their meager dwellings, locked eyes with me for a fleeting moment, and sank to their knees in worshipful reverence.

  Legend is powerful stuff, I thought, bemused.

  IV

  As soon as the moment of shock and reverence wore off, the entire village exploded in excited conversation. In the confused babble that followed, I snatched little snippets of sense out of the air. The sentence structure and a good number of the words belonged to a language I’d never heard before, but many of the root words and the pronouns seemed to be a back-country descendant of Low Valisian, a language I was quite familiar with. Despite the fact that I still had no idea where I was, the burgeoning panic lurking at the back of my mind eased somewhat. I was not so far from home, after all.

  Valisia lay in the center-south of the Old Kingdoms, stretching long and thin across the subcontinent atop lakes and hills. It did not, at any point, have contact with salt water. Lannth, the kingdom I’d left via an unexpected cliff dive, was almost three hundred leagues northwest of the northmost Valisian settlement, beyond Amaria, where my life had originally begun to slip from my control. By simple logic, I had to be somewhere along the western coast, probably a significant way south of Lannth.

  I knew for a fact that Low Valisian hadn’t spread to the north, and fishermen along Amaria’s thin strip of coastline would be speaking corrupted Amarian, unless something truly strange had happened. All of which meant that by rough estimates, I had to have traveled at least four hundred leagues south beneath the waves, and I was almost certainly standing among the poorest people of Grysalta—a loose collection of settlements and cities, a kingdom in name only, a sad and wretched land ruled by petty nobles and warlords, a fend-for-yourself and don’t-ask-questions kind of place. It wasn’t much, but it might have been worse. If the tides had carried me northward instead, it might have been home.

  I’d never had the pleasure—or lack thereof—of visiting Grysalta, as I tended to stay away from places where they string suspected sorcerers up by their heels on metal wire and leave them for the crows. Just not my kind of place, really. Even worse, it was said that at least one of the nobles had gone so far as to execute an Arbiter who had dared challenge him. Clearly that sentiment hadn’t leaked its way out to these simple fisherfolk, but it was something to think about. Later. After I stopped feeling like I'd have been more at home with fins than legs, perhaps.

  The people of the village proved the Old Tellarian adage that those who lack for worldly goods are the most generous with what they have. It took them only minutes to offer me warm water to scrub the salt away from my skin, clothing to replace the tattered wrecks that I wore, and food—which I politely declined, having no physical need for it. I did, however, clean myself most gratefully, and before long I was dressed in simple country clothing: black fur-lined boots, a simple but comfortable gray muslin tunic and trousers, and a thin woolen traveling cloak complete with dust mask. They also offered a sturdy walking staff, which I accepted with many thanks.

  Every male in the village seemed to be sporting thick facial hair like it was some sort of high-court fashion, so I didn’t ask for a precious metal blade for shaving. My hair, on the other hand, which had been chin-length when I left Sevenstone, now reached my shoulders and was thoroughly matted with salt and other debris. In the end, I did borrow one of their fish-gutting blades just long enough to chop my hair off at a scant few inches of length.

  Clean and clothed, I felt like a new man.

  Though they demanded no compensation for their generosity, I dug into my sorcerous repertoire to amuse and delight them as a way of making some recompense. In a more civilized place, I might have feared that even the peasants would know sorcery from the power of the Arbiters. Perhaps my exhaustion played a role as well in keeping me from fully thinking it through, but I saw no chance that these simple fisherfolk would see through the veil of the Arbiter, and I wanted so badly to do something for them in return. Tiny silver fireworks detonated in the air while children stared, laughed and applauded. I bent light and wind to make glowing figures dance on tabletops and across fire pits, and shaped small rocks into equally small animals and sent them with the youngsters as treasures. Not once did I see a warding sign against sorcery, nor a single dirty look. Only wonder and joy lit their faces, and it felt good to do a good tur
n for them, as they had for me. It seemed that in these parts, the legend of the Arbiters had grown into something much greater than reality, for which I was grateful.

  The villagers offered me a place to stay for the night, within their protected wall, and once again I could not refuse. Communication was not so difficult for such simple wants and needs—a pointed finger or a quick sketch in the dirt served for most. As the stars came out in the night sky and the fires burned low, I sat beneath a tent made from the tanned hide of some unfortunate animal and considered my predicament.

  I was dead.

  Well, obviously, I was still alive, but Edar Moncrief: sorcerer and scholar was a thing of the past. Really, it was my own fault. An assassin had killed him on the streets of Selvaria, and then I’d gone and compounded it by saving my own life with the stolen heartblade. After fleeing that gods-forsaken city, I had driven my own personality into the darkest corners of my mind with an azure-eyed vengeance, and then, after getting my only friend killed—that memory still threatened to make me vomit in terror and rage—dropped off a cliff.

  I held a weak, grim bit of satisfaction knowing that the kingdoms of Lannth and Kalais were likely in chaos right now, thanks to my last-minute quick thinking in Sevenstone, but it soon paled to nothing as I realized that in all the world, not a single person cared that I had actually survived my drowning.

  I had become a lost man, eaten alive by the world of Eisengoth like so many forgotten others, never having accomplished any of the goals I’d longed to achieve. My research was all gone, burned up in my lab in Elenia or destroyed after I fled Selvaria. The library I’d scrimped and saved my whole life to accumulate was nothing but ash, save for the bits I’d committed indelibly to memory. I’d never even written a single book of my own, never committed any of my own innovations to paper and disseminated them. My mind was full of new ideas, and yet at that moment, I was perfectly content to let those ideas die with me.

  Of course, if I was never going to die...

  Maybe it would be best to just find a place like the small fishing village and disappear. I could use my talents to help defend them from the dangers of the night when they approached, and otherwise live a quiet and mostly-peaceful existence. I was tired, defeated, broken. Even though the creative and analytical part of my mind screamed bloody murder at the thought of giving up everything I’d dreamed of, perhaps it would be safer that way.

  Come to think of it, I’d already found a place like that.

  I had always considered myself a smart man, smarter than most. The people around me often seemed to be daft at best and dangerously stupid at worst. I had little difficulty recognizing the signs of a bruised ego and the resulting defeatism that often followed, but I saw them at a distance. My mind may have refused to accept them at first, but I forced myself to choke it down.

  The truth was, I’d been beaten, outsmarted at my own game thanks to hubris, and now I wanted to hide from the possibility of being beaten again.

  An Old Tellarian saying goes something like “truth is the bitterest medicine”, and I sensed the stark veracity of that idiom now. It was bitter at first, recognizing weakness in oneself, but as soon as I called it out into the open, I felt a sense of relief.

  Someday, I promised silently, when all this has blown over, I can go back to work.

  Drawing some small comfort from that thought, I drifted into a sort of meditative trance. Surely the villagers would be honored to have an Arbiter living amongst them, even if that wasn’t really truth. I could nurse my wounds for a while, rebuild my confidence, and then go back to unraveling the mysteries of the universe.

  At length, dawn rose in the east, and I roused from my quasi-slumber. The villagers greeted me warmly, but before I could even take a moment to try and illustrate my thought process to them, the same two men who had found me by the shore made it very clear, even through the communication barrier, that I was to come with them.

  Bewildered by the sudden change—though nothing at all had changed for the villagers, it seemed, for they were very sad but simultaneously resigned to see me go, as though they’d been expecting it all along—I followed the fishermen as they walked back down toward the sea, but not precisely the same way we had come. My sense of direction was far from perfect, but when we reached a broad, open road, I knew for certain that I had never seen it before.

  The bald man stopped on the road and turned to me. He spoke as clearly as he could, but I still could only catch one word in four or five. There was something about honor, something about gratitude—I got the impression that he was thanking me for favoring their little village with a visit. When I opened my mouth to protest, he held up a hand to forestall me.

  With one hand, he pointed down the road to the east. His words were still unclear, but they contained enough familiar roots that I was able to get the import.

  “City,” he said, indicating the open road. “They need your help, Arbiter.”

  “But—” I began to say.

  He shook his head, and made a warding gesture—the one I’d expected to see levied against me—in the direction he had pointed. “Danger. Evil. Help them.” He shuddered.

  With that, they left me standing in the road with my mouth hanging open, as I watched all hope for my chance at temporary peace vanish like an unfortunate explorer lost at sea.

  V

  First thing, once I'd reached certainty that the villagers were safely out of sight, I reconstructed the hasty enchantment that hid the strange glow in my eyes and returned my irises to their normal hazy blue color. If I had become sick of one thing, it was instantly being taken for an Arbiter by every person I came across. I jotted down some mental notes as I plodded on, working on ways to automatically dispel and renew the enchantment so that it would not fester.

  With no other direction to take, I followed the road as the bald villager had indicated. There was likely little I could do to help the folk of whatever city lay ahead, but at least it was civilization. Robbed of my chance at peace, I resolved instead to get back to my work as soon as possible. Somewhere out there was a city which wouldn’t bother me as I spent my time hunting for the secrets of my art, and I was going to find it. In the city down the road, I could at least perhaps find transportation to a more civilized part of the world, and undertake my search.

  The road was long and winding, and sloped gradually uphill as I went. The sparse forest gave way to rolling lowlands, all emerald green and bespeckled with white and yellow flowers. The countryside was really quite lovely, the sun warm and the breeze taking the edge off. White clouds drifted lazily by overhead, and insects buzzed around me without bothering to settle in. It was almost as if the bugs could sense something about me that they didn’t like, and kept their distance, for which I had no complaint. Birds sang songs in the sky and distant trees. It was utter serenity, and in truth, it kept distracting me. I continually wanted to take my eyes off the road and gaze into the distance, which led to my wandering off the path more than once in my curiosity.

  The day went on, and I walked. Morning turned to afternoon, and eventually my shadow elongated as the sun headed toward the sea behind me. It was a pleasant enough summer, one that had started its ascendancy more than two years ago when I’d been on the road with Mendoz, and I wondered how long it would last before winter set in again. Down here in the southern lowlands, it was possible that winter simply meant more rain; I wondered if those villagers even knew what snow looked like.

  When the sun had nearly disappeared, leaving me in dim twilight, and I turned a bend around one hill, a few steep mountains came into view in the distance. I squinted against the dying light, trying to resolve any signs that there might be civilization ahead, but it was too far and too dark to see clearly. A faint rumbling echoed in the distance, enough that I glanced skyward to look for signs of rain, but the pleasant deep violet-blue above gave no hint of ceding its dominance to gray thunderclouds.

  For a moment, I stopped in the twilight. Hadn't the
villagers said something about a city in this direction? Just how far from civilization was I, anyway? It slowly dawned on me that I had been walking all day without passing a single other soul. If this road went to a city in the direction I was going, then where did the other end lead?

  With a frown, I resolved to locate a map as quickly as possible once I reached some sign of civilized existence, but with little else I could do, I carried on.

  Traveling at night was dangerous at any time, but with shelter both too far behind and too far ahead of me, I had little choice but to press on. My endurance hadn’t flagged even a little; it felt like I could go on forever.

  The rumbling grew louder. I looked up, and in the distance ahead of me, I could just make out a flickering light that seemed to be growing in intensity. Eerie blue, not scarlet—for which I was only mildly thankful. The last thing I needed was some sort of fel beast that could make the ground rumble, but the light itself made me... disconcerted.

  Concerned, I stopped and stepped just off the road. As the light grew larger, I could only surmise that it was attached to some kind of carriage. The rumbling sound was the pounding of horse hooves and the cart’s wheels grinding on the dirt. It moved fast; I wondered where they could be heading, as I’d seen neither other signs of civilization, nor any branches off the road since leaving the fishermen behind that morning.

  It disappeared into a shallow depression, but the echoes of a cracking whip reached my ears even at a distance. When it reappeared again, much closer, the rumbling now a roar filling the air, my heart nearly stopped in terror.

  Both the cart and the horses driving it were jet black. The pale blue light cast the driver in a strange, stark relief, making him look almost spectral. There was an old legend, back in my home, of the ghostly driver of the death cart, who rode the countryside at night searching for unguarded souls, and for a moment, the image approaching me looked like it could be that old tale come to life.