Rotten Magic

by Jeffrey Bardwell

  ROTTEN MAGIC

  Jeffrey Bardwell

  Published by Twigboat Press

  Copyright © 2017, 2018 Jeffrey Bardwell

  ISBN-13: 978-1-943289-12-7

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the purchaser. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s wild imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to another person.

  Cover Art designed by Rebecca Frank

  The Artifice Mage Saga

  Rotten Magic

  Broken Wizards

  Hidden Revolt

  Riven Kingdoms

  Fallen Power

  Craven Glory

  Dedicated as my very own message in a bottle

  to my recluse high school friend, Patrick L.

  With fond memories of many, many,

  pleasant arguments critiquing

  our favorite fantasy novels.

  Then we lost touch.

  Miss you, Pat.

  Cheers!

  JB

  NOTES FROM THE ARTIFICER'S GUILD

  No spring is ever wound quite so tight as an apprentice on the verge of becoming a journeyman. This is not the calm facade he presents to the public and it is imperative when that fateful day arrives, you young imps remember to maintain the dignitas and decorum expected of those wishing to enter the Guild Hall as boys and exit as men. But be wary of the danger maintaining such an illusion amongst your friends while you fall to pieces in private. The guild is first and foremost a team of peers. Use that support and thrive. Always remember this vital lesson as you proceed through your own apprenticeships and those springs begin to tighten. Lest the spring snap.

  1. DRUSILLA, YEAR 490

  Nobody else appreciated the dark, subtle change as the light traveled east to west over a tall brass box, pulling it slowly into the shadows. The box sat on a high, lonely shelf in a small room waiting for someone to notice it.

  Entering the box's tiny space with a clean rag and an oil-stained smock, I too was beneath notice. I closed the door behind me. The clamor of hammers and gears overlaid by an even louder clamor of tongues and boots fell silent as soon as the latch clicked. Just like that, I was alone with it. I chewed my bottom lip and craned my neck while the box glistened at me.

  “What are you?” I whispered at the dusty relic as I laid a fresh-inked quill and blank parchment on an empty metal table. Then I reached up to take the large brass box off the shelf. I braced my thighs and squared my shoulders as the thing was half my height and almost as wide. It was supposedly packed with strange machinery from a lost age.

  If I should find myself examining the inside as well as dusting the outside . . . uncovering a few ancient mysterious . . . what's the harm?

  I flexed my fingers, rolled up my sleeves, wrapped my arms around the massive device, and heaved. My knees buckled, but not from the weight. The thing was light as a feather. So the guildmaster had warned me, but I had not believed him. I grinned and tilted my head to wipe off my sweaty brow with my forearm. I set the curious device next to my quill and parchment and bent down to examine the marvel.

  At first glance, it looked like a clock would look underwater, skewed and wavering and not quite clock-like, but almost recognizable behind the distortion. The frame was sound, the little peaked roof was there, and it even had a dial. From a distance, the box looked normal, like any other large brass clock. But the closer you got, the deeper you plunged beneath the water trying to reach it, the more those subtle little differences jabbed at the back of your mind. Oh, with a few modifications and a wrench, I could start turning the outer casing into a nice timepiece, but that wasn't what the thing was.

  Generations of vain and curious folk had fallen into the chasm between the shiny face the box presented to the world and the true nature it kept hidden beneath a brass shell. I was not fool enough to leap across that gulf. My life had enough strange puzzles already.

  “I've got a friend just like you,” I murmured, dusting the roof of the thing. I wrapped the rag around one finger to clean the edges of each delicate, hammered shingle. “He's an artificer, too, yeah? He isn't quite what he seems to be either.”

  The room was eerily silent. The clock didn't tick. I don't mean I had to wind it or reset the weights on the end of their little chains or anything like that. The box was an elegant brass brick. Had been for years. There was no ticker. Scores of curious apprentices and quite a few journeymen who should have known better had smacked their heads against those thick, brass sidewalls. They all begged and pleaded with those intricate gears, tugging at their hair and a few of the more solid mechanicals, but to no avail. The puzzle box swallowed their prayers and their pleas with indifference.

  I had vague plans to diagram a few of the stranger mechanisms inside the device to show my friend, but I knew my limits. I patted the box ruefully as it teased me with its blatant mysteries. “I'm good, but I'm no grand innovator. My friend, now . . . I bet he could make you sing.”

  The apprentices all told ourselves stories of the box singing. It was one of our favorite pastimes. We fantasized about conquering this ancient, mighty puzzle and coaxing a pure, sweet sound from the depths of the machine. Some had even conducted experiments trying to replicate the convoluted system of trumpets and chimes nestled within the puzzle box. But there was no mechanism to power all the wonderful machinery inside it or turn the lonely dial mounted on its face.

  And that dial! It was shaped like a backwards spiral. But the arrow on the tip of that bizarre dial had nothing at which to point. The face of the not-clock was blank and smooth and very easy to clean. I hummed as I pushed my rag in tight little circular motions to polish the sides of the box.

  I chuckled as I cleaned. The more I thought about it, the more my friend Devin seemed just like a human puzzle box. Brilliant, but often left alone. Flashy on the outside, but a mystery on the inside. What makes you fellows tick? How do you work?

  I went to polish the dial and withdrew my hand, blushing. I flicked the latch on the side panel instead, angling the device into the path of the setting sun to peer inside. The wondrous mystery of pulleys and gears beckoned, practically begging me to solve them. Humming a quiet little tune, I set the box down, grabbed my quill and parchment, and began sketching.

  Would that young male artificers opened up this easily, I snorted.

  2. DEVIN, YEAR 491

  The fuel air bomb unleashed an explosion of flaming dragon oil, sending metal shards spewing across the room. It wasn't even a real bomb, just a lamp with delusions.

  The young man shielding the defenseless girl with his body knew the difference. No fuse ignited the spark. No gears unwound a slow, ticking timer. The snap of a finger triggered this explosion. The escalation from soft flickering light to blazing inferno began with the simplest of things: the young man peering out his window.

  Devin peeked through the drapes of his second story bedroom, spying on the Black Guard patrolling the streets below. In this case, 'patrolling' meant squatting on his helmet at the street corner, prying the crotch flap open with one steel wrapped finger, and scratching his balls. Giving that lout a suit of awesome Drake Mechanical Armor Mark 2 was like strapping a fancy, black corset on a pig: a corset hiding gears and springs and levers.

  The youth didn't know what the inside of the mechanism
looked like, but he could describe the outer latches in intimate detail. The spiral-threaded mobius bolt that disengaged the outer plates was particularly fascinating. Devin had never seen the armor up close of course, but he knew it used a mobius bolt by the way the guard's fat sausage fingers twisted in a clumsy figure eight before popping the plate loose to piss on the wall.

  Huzzah for the city's boys in black, the oily voice of a stranger whispered in Devin's mind. Chasing mages and evildoers all over the city. Oh, if they only knew about you . . .

  Devin shook his head. The voices were getting worse, but he didn't dare tell anyone. His mother would say he was breaking under the strain. Maybe even pull him from the Artificer's Guild. What would the guild say? And that wasn't the worst secret. He glanced out the window again before pulling the drapes closed.

  Satisfied the guard's attention was occupied, Devin twisted the nozzle on the gas lamp mounted on the wall until the barest of blue flickers illuminated the dark room. He wrinkled his nose as he leaned over the lamp and ran a finger down the pipe that fed the lamp. The gas always smelled of rotten eggs. The village used candles made from beeswax, which burned brighter and cleaner. Even the candles' light was more wholesome and they always smelled like fresh honey. Lost in his memories of the simple village life, the youth took a deep breath and got a lungful of sulfur.

  Devin stared at the gas lamp. Can't even find wax candles here, he thought. The merchants won't stock them. There's no market for candles in the city. In his mind, it was always 'the city.' It didn't deserve a name. It wasn't really . . . a home was a place where you ate dinner and worked and read by candlelight. He glanced from the gas lamp on the wall to its cousin sitting on the desk: the oil lamp. If the gas lamp was merely a metal box of vapor connecting to a tube in the wall, the oil lamp was hardly a step up to a real machine: just a wick dipped in a pot of oil with a fancy glass flue on top. A simple gear raised and lowered the wick.

  An artificer pining for candlesticks? a second voice scoffed in Devin's head. How absurd. And what is wrong with a simple machine? All this time spent crafting a device to light a bit of wax and braided cotton nobody uses anymore. Your complex designs and metal frippery will be the ruin of you. While the first voice always reminded Devin of a greasy handshake, the second voice felt like a firm and sturdy grip, more wholesome, like candles. In the privacy of his thoughts, Devin had started calling the first voice 'the mage' and the second voice 'the artificer.'

  Devin took a deep breath, feeling his chest swell as he focused and silenced both voices. Not the voices, not even the lack of candles will ruin this day. Master Huron is finally . . .

  Devin's concentration broke as his little sister bounced up and down on the bed, pulling her brother's focus back to her where it belonged. “Gonna do it? Gonna do that special thing you do?”

  “Am I going to do it? Yes. The time is nigh.” Devin wagged his finger. “Only babies and barbarians say 'gonna,' Misera. You're not a barbarian, are you?”

  “Yes I am,” his sister grunted and growled in her adorable approximations of barbarian noises. “Momma said I was a barbarian this morning for picking up my syrup and fritters with my fingers.” She waved her sticky digits proudly and then started licking them.

  “Stop that. Go wash your hands.”

  “Mama didn't catch me,” she said between licks. “You won't neither.” She grunted again.

  “A barbarian is not something one aspires to become,” Devin clucked, swatting his sister's fingers. “It is not an appropriate occupation for little women.”

  “Don't wanna be an artsy facer,” Misera said, kicking one of the random bits of machinery littering the room.

  “Artificer,” Devin ground between his teeth, moving the machinery away from her inquisitive, little toes. “I swear you mispronounce that one on purpose. You don't have to work with machines like I do. You should have years to find a guild to learn a trade you love . . . unless they snap you up early.”

  “Like you,” Misera cried gleefully, clapping her hands. She frowned as they stuck together.

  “Yes, like me.” Devin sat on the bed and cradled his sister, absently rocking one of the half-completed metal projects with his big toe.

  “I could join the Cademy.” Misera said, stretching to hug him. Devin shied away from the girl's sticky embrace. “Be a red sodder or a black gourd or a gold mat.”

  “Red Soldier. Black Guard. Gold Diplomat. Well, you've learned your colors at least.” Devin sighed, ticking them off on his fingers. “I suppose you could do that if Mom didn't haul you off to the Atrium of Justice, first.”

  Misera's eyes widened and her cheeks turned bone white. “She woodin'.”

  Devin smiled. His sister was in for a nasty surprise when she left his room with those sticky hands. He envisioned his mother lying in wait at the bottom of the stairs with a set of manacles, a stiff brush, and a bucket of soapy water. Not a woman easily thwarted. “If it was that or her daughter joining the Imperial Academy? In a trice, Sis.” He reached over and scissored her little nose between two fingers. “They'd chop that little bit off first,” he whispered.

  “Don't wanna join the Cademy,” Misera shrieked, covering her nose with both hands.

  “Settle down.” Devin held up his hands. The last thing he needed was his mother bursting into the room right now. “Settle down or I won't show you the special thing. I need to go soon anyways.”

  “Gonna go to the good hale again?” Misera asked.

  “Yes, I am going to the Guild Hall again. Like I do every morning,” Devin said, smacking his forehead. Maybe if she saw a real barbarian, she wouldn't persist in talking with that horrible accent? She'd get a kick out of their colorful red and black tattoos if nothing else. But it might encourage her bad habits. When did I see the last caravan roll through? Barb speech! Mom would never have let me get away with that.

  Misera reached her fingers up and poked his nose. She reeked of syrup and juice. “Wish you didn't hafta go, Devi. Momma still teaches awesome classes.”

  “Me, too, squirt. But not the right classes.” Devin said, spreading his arms and falling backwards onto the bed. Misera giggled and aped his movements.

  The Artificer’s Guild always got what it wanted and they wanted Devin. They demanded his family relocate to the city. They enrolled the youth in his apprenticeship early for his impressive skills. His mother and sister were thrilled. Devin was not. Entering the Guild Hall was a dream come true, but the city was harder to love.

  The city was a cacophony of screeches and bellows of whistles and schedules. It took in raw materials: eggs, flour, glass, and steel and churned out bread and sweet rolls and girders and green houses. The city was like a machine, but all the gears were people. He chuckled. Some of the screws were people, too. And he loved machines, but he had never wanted to live inside of one.

  The Guild Hall was his sanctuary. Over the years, Devin had thrived in his apprenticeship, but now it was time to move up. Becoming a journeymen was one step closer to becoming a master, and then they could live in a place of peace and quiet away from these wretched slums.

  The youth groaned as he reviewed his schedule. Surely when he became a journeymen, things wouldn't be so hectic? Class time with the other apprentices in the morning. Machine shop time in the afternoon. Family time in the evening. No Devin time. His projects sat neglected. He nudged one of the half-finished machines, rocking the device with his foot. Half the parts were borrowed from the guild, the other half scrounged from garbage piles.

  Devin sighed. I should have finished this by now. Drusilla would have helped assemble it and kept quiet about the stolen parts, but I dare not ask her.

  Don't trust the little artificer wench, eh? the mage asked.

  Trust is not the issue. Devin scowled. He snapped his fingers and a tiny spark flared in the palm of his hand. The less she knows about this, the better. He kicked the machine away and felt a weight tugging on his hand. His sister smiled as he snapped his finger agai
n, but no sparks came this time. Too many people know about it already, Devin thought sourly.

  “You gonna play the dragon game today?” Misera wrapped herself around his arm, eyes wide as she stared as Devin's hand. “I don't like it when you play the dragon game. You come home all scruffy and Momma yells at you.”

  Devin clenched his fist and pumped it in the air. “It isn't a game, Missi. It's a competition among apprentices, a challenge. The greatest challenge.”

  She stuck out her tongue. “But you always lose.”

  “I'm working on something special for my journeyman's piece. I'll show you when it's done. I'll win the competition then. I will win over the entire Guild Hall. I will win everything. You'll see.”

  “Kay. If you say so.” Misera climbed off the bed and gave him one of her twisted shoulder shrugs which loosely translated as: 'I think you're lying to me, but I can't tell for sure and I still love you 'cause you're my brother.' It was similar to the 'you're full of shit, but you're family' gesture she gave their mother when the woman insisted that white clouds were really made of vanilla cotton candy. Outside the home classroom, Mom tended to give her imagination free reign.

  “You see that rock on the desk over there?” Devin pointed to the corner of the room.

  “That's not a rock. It's a pebble, Devi,” Misera said.

  “And what color is the pebble?” Devin asked.

  “Orangey-reddish-yella?” His sister scratched her head.

  “Ochre,” Devin corrected gently. “I don't think Mom has taught you ochre, yet.”

  “It's not an ogre. It's a rock.” Misera giggled. “Ogres don't turn into rocks unless the sun's out. You pulled the curtains, so nyah!”

  “Do you know where they put little girls who sass their big brothers?” Devin said in a sing song voice. “Atrium of Justice. They'll cut your tongue off, too. Better hide it.”