The Artifice Mage Saga Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Jeffrey Bardwell

  “Greenhouses on rooftops, eh?” Cornelius said, turning aside while Devin wiped the tears from his eyes. “So it really does rain fresh fruit from the sky in that mechanical wonderland.”

  Devin shrugged. “Once I helped a journeyman service and repair the convective flow through regulation system on the greenhouse over a factory. Hot gases were ducted from the chimneys through one way valves right beside the grow beds. The roof vents were tied to temperature sensitive pistons. Soot from the factory was gunking up the gears. A practical system. Simple to understand. The functional rules are apparent and easy to manipulate. Unlike magic.”

  “Manipulating magic is a serious business, Devin.” Cornelius fluttered his fingers and the knife ascended back to its hook above the sink while the turnip slices zipped across the room into the large kettle hung over the fireplace. “As simple in its own way as your pistons and gears once you understand the principles behind it. I have been waiting to see whether you had the makings of a serious scholar. I judge you worthy of learning, but I don't think you're ready to start experimenting with magic.”

  “That took all those days huddled over books and touring the town?” Devin asked, glancing at the neat pile of books Cornelius had made him stack on the table before going to be the night before. “I'm ready to start learning something other than basics and theories and where all your students live, Cornelius. I'm an artificer. I know how to run tests and conduct experiments. I know how to examine theories and refine techniques. I am ready to start learning magic.”

  The relief of not finding himself chained to another traditional apprenticeship had already started fading. At least those chains were familiar. The rules governing scholarly partnership seemed to change according to Cornelius's whims. They had yet to start reviewing the rules governing magic. How could they be true equals when the old wizard refused to share his secrets?

  As if sensing his thoughts, Cornelius placed a pebble on the table. “Perhaps you are ready for something basic. Unlocking the secrets of magic all starts with a single, simple experiment. Consider this a chance to explore the first dimension. I want you to practice holding this rock above your head. With your mind. Stationary. For as long as you can, lad.”

  Devin tossed the pebble in the air and caught it. “And this will teach me magic?”

  “As well as melting scrap metal teaches you to forge new machines. Magic is a mysterious process.”

  A mysterious process? The man seemed to treat magic like a shrouded, complex machine emitting low pitched metal growls and curious vibrations hidden beneath a large, black tarp. Cornelius had eagerly explained the significance of every contour of the dark, heavy fabric. The old wizard kept saying that Devin must truly understand how the world worked before manipulating it. They had poured over manuals of useless esoterica until Devin was beginning to regret his desire for diagrams.

  Cornelius had buried the youth under a pile of books detailing mathematics, natural history, physical sciences, and everything but magic. Devin wasn't sure if the old man was stalling or just over proud of his bloated, ponderous education. But after two years of searching for answers, all the youth wanted was to bury his fingers in the greasy mechanics of sorcery, to strip the thing to pieces and discover how all the components meshed together. Now, it seemed Cornelius was finally ready to discard the books and get his hands dirty.

  “But simple exercises will not address your base problem: your magic is uncontrolled and reckless. You cannot replicate that which you do not consciously understand. Do you want to learn how to use magic properly without relying on bursts of instinct?” Corenlius asked, swirling the dark liquid in his mug. “You want to direct that fantastic talent of yours instead of letting it direct you?”

  “More than anything.” Devin's gut clenched. Was it finally time to start learning how to tame his wild magic powers?

  “There is one paramount thing you must do. It cannot be taught. It must be felt. It is knowledge you must grapple with before you can even begin to comprehend it.”

  “Yes? Yes?” Devin leaned forward in his chair.

  “You've been pestering me about secrets?” Cornelius set his mug aside and crossed his arms. “Well, this is the secret to controlling magic. The one trick which separates true wizards from the bunglers.”

  “Yes?” The youth quivered. “Tell me!”

  “You must face the tiger.”

  “What?” Devin rocked back in his chair. In his mind, the black tarp shrouding Cornelius's mysteries had now acquired gaudy, orange stripes. The wizard peeled this fabric skin to reveal a grotesque, pulsing block of flesh and metal. A four stroke pump drove viscous, black blood through a web of pulsing, metal veins. The block uncurled into something vaguely cat shaped. Steam hissed through a vent shaped like a feral smile of sharp, iron teeth while green, glowing eyes stared and started to blink. “You're not serious? A . . . tiger? Cornelius, you tell worse jokes than Styx.”

  The old wizard shook his head. His beard swayed. “I knew you weren't ready.”

  “Ready for tigers?” Devin asked, shaking his head, replacing the mental image of the machine beast with a striped kitten. He formed his hands into little claws and pawed the air. “Are you trying to tell me that magic is like a giant cat?”

  Cornelius assumed that particular trilling monotone cadence and slipped into what the youth had started mentally calling the Cornelius Lecture Voice. “Kings, queens, and despots may run their little kingdoms, but magic rules the world. It is the wild, primal force that flows unchecked through plant and man and beast. Magic is an ancient, mythical force of nature, a spirit who grants power. Close your eyes. Feel around the edges of your consciousness. That is the magic, prowling, sniffing, examining your worth. Let it take shape in the foggy corners of your mind. Its lanky, muscled shoulders. The sinuous, twitching tail. Those long, dagger canines. Magic is a prehistoric, saber-toothed beast. Reach out, Devin. Touch the tiger.”

  Devin sighed. He was almost afraid to ask if ancient tigers had stripes. He opened his eyes.

  Cornelius faced him, nose tip to nose tip. He could smell the man's sour, minty breath. “Touch the tiger.”

  Devin scooted his chair back. “I have wrestled with magic these last two years, Cornelius, but with myself, not some mystical animal. I never saw any magical tigers prowling through my mind. All the power comes from a well within my gut.” Devin smiled, patting his stomach. “From the belly, not the beast.”

  “Your core, boy. Magicians call that the core.”

  “There were no tigers, Cornelius. Not a whiff. Not one hair. No twitching tail. You're draping a fur hide over a gift from the gods.”

  “Well, magic takes different forms for different people, Devin. Yours may not be a tiger. You might see a bird or an otter or a fish. A magic fish swimming around inside you.”

  “I don't want a magic fish swimming around inside me.” Devin rose and smiled as the thought came to him, finger poised in the air. “What about a dragon?”

  “A dragon?” Cornelius snorted. “Representing the spirit of magic with a magical creature? The thing cannot symbolize itself. I've never heard of anything so ludicrous. You may as well ask a sword to forge its own steel or a quill to ink its own feather. A frog or a newt would be stretching the bounds of propriety, but an actual dragon? Be sensible!”

  “So is this tiger like a spirit animal?” Devin slumped in his seat, still dreaming of dragons, and the seat flexed playfully. If the old wizard was going to personify magic as an animal, why not a magic animal? “The northern tribes in the empire worship animals. The men paint black and red tattoos on their bare, hairy chests. It's all very sweaty and barbaric. I thought you were a scholar, not a heathen. Do you worship tigers, Cornelius? Can I see your little tiger tattoo?” He stretched and started plucking the buttons on the wizard's robe. The old man's chest was surprisingly hairy.

  “I have no barbarian tattoo. The very idea,” Cornelius sputtered, changing direction with all the grace of a paunc
hy, wingless wyvern. “So your magic comes and goes, does it?”

  At last, he's done talking about tigers, Devin thought. “Constantly rising and falling. Like an old stone well with a broken pulley cable that keeps getting narrower and narrower. It all started about three years ago when I . . . ”

  “Yes, yes,” Cornelius waved, distracted by his own thoughts. “Masters Azumel and Ranunculus provided concise reports on the nature of your affliction.”

  “Reports on what?” Devin cried. “I did not spend one whole afternoon with the pair of them.”

  Cornelius quirked an eyebrow. “They are both talented, ancient Masters of Wizardry. How much time do you think they required to probe an unstudied, spontaneous mage talent such as yours? Never mind that, their reports contained more questions than answers. I think they merely sent them to vex me.”

  “Oh,” Devin said, feeling slightly better, but puzzled as to why. Surely, I should prefer to have my questions answered? Will working with Cornelius generate more questions than answers?

  “I just wanted to hear this alternate magic condition in your own words. Odd that you should conceptualize magic, a process rooted in nature, as a mechanical device of cables and pulleys. That implies some sort of imperial cultural bias. Fascinating.”

  Devin repressed the perverse urge to leap to the defense of a country which mutilated and exiled him. Years of working up to my elbows in grimy machine parts is all it implies. “What imperial cultural bias? And who says magic must come from totemic nature spirits? The very idea is an affront to the five gods. What is so wrong with the notion that magic comes from the spirit of men?”

  Ahem, are the artificer and I not some form of spirit, too? Oh, we can be spirits of men, the mage chuckled. So, either these affronts to the gods are real creatures . . .

  The artificer sighed. Or the will of the five gods remains inviolate and we cannot manifest outside your thoughts. The logic is irrefutable.

  Oh, there's still plenty of violating, the mage said. Your mind is our plaything, boy. Because either these strange wild spirits exist or magic is slowly driving you insane.

  “Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't, lad. Whatever the source, you certainly gave Azumel a fright. He usually lets his apprentice applicants finish their tea before he expels them. I thought the old twig would burst into flames describing what he saw lurking in your head. I cannot delve so deeply into the mind myself, but anything that shakes up that hidebound coot has my full support.”

  “My magic comes from me and me alone,” Devin said, squelching the voices in his head.

  “Of course, any magician could say the same, but where does it ultimately derive? I've never heard of magic like yours. Those periodic fluctuations and this well make quite the academic mystery. It bears investigating. In the meantime, there's something we can try in a few days to widen that well and get your magic flowing again after we review the basics.”

  “Thank you, Cornelius. I'm looking forward to it.” Devin clapped his hands together. “So when do we get started on those lessons, Professor?”

  “Patience.” Cornelius held up his hands. “We shall investigate your magic together. Slowly. Meticulously. Just one of the many scholarly questions along our path. Did I not tell you magic is the study of a lifetime?”

  “Knock, knock. Bread delivery.” Abigail pressed her face against the window. “Talking about magic, sir?”

  A woman interested in magic? Would that make her an aspiring witch?

  “Abigail, how long have you been listening?” Cornelius asked.

  “Only long enough to catch all the juicy bits, sir.” She opened the window and the scent of yeast and dough wafted inside.

  “I have told you young lady time and time again that magic is an improper pursuit for the gentle sex.”

  “I respectfully disagree.” The young woman shook her head and her ponytail bobbed. “Magnus says gentle sex is a myth, sir. Then he teaches me to bend horseshoes with my bare hands.”

  “This is the rest of your payment for the next class, I presume?” Cornelius asked. “Is there another reason you're here?”

  Abigail passed her breads to the wizard and leaned across the window ledge. “Master Magnus wanted me to apologize to that boy sitting over there. Not the boy's fault he's a disrespectful lout. You got a metal foot, boy? Master Magnus is really excited about that.”

  Oh, to talk about the craft of metal working with someone knowledgeable again, Devin thought wistfully. Even if he is just a blacksmith. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed it.

  “Master Magnus,” Cornelius snorted.

  “Yes, I do.” Devin smiled and propped his foot on the table.

  “Yep, that thing's as ugly as I thought it would be,” Abigail said, turning towards Cornelius. “Why not make this boy a proper wooden foot, sir? You built that wooden automaton; how hard can a wooden foot be?”

  “You will discover just how hard a wooden foot can be when I kick you if you do not stop insulting my father,” Styx said, entering the kitchen and hugging the youth. “Grandfather, why do you not evict this vicious vixen from our house?”

  “Ha!” Devin slapped his knee and grinned.

  Abigail stared at the wooden man as though unsure what to make of him. Then she smiled. “Vixen. I like it.”

  “It's my house,” Cornelius said. “I will have whomever I please in my house without permission from the talking blockhead and it pleases me to have Abigail in my house.”

  “Why thank you, professor.” Her gaze fixated on the Professor's open robe as she dimpled and curtsied. Cornelius continued drinking his weak tea, oblivious to the girl's prying eyes.

  Devin frowned. She's not interested in magic. She's interested in the magician! He's old enough to be her grandfather, yet the girl won't even glance at me. That's just disgusting. His eyes dropped from Abigail's smug face to the wooden coins clutched in her hands. “What's wrong with metal?” Devin asked, patting Styx on the arm and then pushing him away. “We use it for everything in the empire. Did you bake that bread in a wooden oven?” Going to defend the empire again, are you?

  “My family crafts our bread in a proper earthen oven, thank you very much. No metal boondoggles or iron stoves for us.”

  “The money that pays for that bread is metal. Unless the whole misbegotten country barters like Cornelius. I've been to your bakery and I've seen money change hands, Abigail.”

  “The professor's money is his business. Wooden tokens and barter work just fine. Who buys a gold ingot's worth of bread?”

  “How much would I get for two brass imperials?” Devin struck.

  “Two brass? Six loaves.”

  “Ha! So you do deal with real money.”

  “I handle pig shit sometimes, too. Doesn't mean I like it.” She shrugged. “Brass, silver, and gold spend sweetly enough if they're solid royal mint.” She put her head in her hands and sighed. “The king is stingy minting any coins but brass, though. Not that we see much gold at the bakery.”

  “Brass imperials, I said.” Devin rubbed his fingers together. “We mint . . . they mint . . . they mint all sorts. Never see any proper imperial coinage in this backwater town?”

  “Most of our customers are foreigners with their weird coins and funny accents. Proper coinage? Don't make me laugh. The empire adulterates all its coins with iron fillings. Magnus could melt the worst of them to make horse shoes.” Abigail crossed her arms and leaned over the window ledge to glare at the youth.

  “So much better to use wooden coins and empty promises,” Devin said, turning his chair away from Cornelius and Styx to confront the girl. He scooted closer to the window.

  “At least tokens and barter are honest,” Abigail said. “They're a transaction built on trust. Can't trust an imp: coin or citizen. You think you're the first one I've seen?”

  “You are the first imperial wizard she's seen,” Cornelius said, pulling Devin and his chair away from the window. “Peace, Abigail! He's not some customer trying to
swindle you.”

  “Imperial wizards,” the girl said, looking Devin up and down, “are such dull, endangered birds. Normal imperials have such striking, satin feathers when they land in my store. Lost your flock?”

  Would those imperials in her shop even recognize me as one of their own? Devin pinched his rough, linen tunic between his thumb and trigger finger. Am I transforming from the outside? Neither Imperial nor Corelian?

  “Quiet, Abigail. I shouldn't have to remind you that you know exactly what it's like to lose family.” Cornelius turned to the youth and shrugged. “I don't meet many imperial mages either, Devin.”

  “Can't imagine why.” Devin tapped his iron leg. “Mages tend to keep themselves hidden in the empire. Officially, we don't exist.”

  “At least our mages strut their plumage. You imp mages cower like fat, little quail until they flush you out,” Abigail said.

  “Prudence is not a crime, Abigail.” Cornelius shook his head and patted the youth's shoulder. “Devin here is lucky to be alive. Perhaps luckier than he realizes.”

  Devin smacked the floor with his iron peg, letting the pain spike up his leg. “I don't feel so lucky.”

  “Luck nothing, boy,” Abigail said. “Don't you know what the Iron Empire does to the wizards they capture in their realm? And you imperials call us uncivilized. It's grotesque.”

  “What is your fascination with wizards and birds today, girl?” Cornelius chuckled as he carried the loaves to the back of the kitchen. He turned around and reached up to store the bread in a wooden cage suspended from the ceiling.

  “I must be hungry for some meaty drumsticks,” Abigail said, tapping her fingers on the window sill, eyes staring past Devin.

  Devin followed the girl's eyes as they swiveled like a hawk's. She ignored him. Elbows propped on the window ledge, the older girl squeezed her breasts a little watching the wizard's robe rise like a theater curtain to reveal the main attraction: the man's thighs.