Huddled under whatever threadbare blanket he could find to cover himself when he slept, he whispered the words to each spell he knew and groped for the dormant strands of magic in his surroundings. Again and again he built the symbols for the dimension-step spell, the spell of disguise, the spell of invisibility, or even the simple spell of moving things at a distance. No matter how carefully he worked, the enchantments failed each and every time. Magic had always come naturally to him, as simple as learning to add two and two or think up a bawdy rhyme, but the same actions and confidence that had always worked for him before simply yielded no result. He was certain that he was performing the spells correctly, and still nothing happened.
The mystery of it distracted him constantly. “It makes no sense,” he grumbled as he drove rothe from one paddock to another, instinctively avoiding the vicious brutes’ stamping hooves and goring horns. He clearly recalled the exact process by which he worked magic before waking in the gloomy world of the dark elves; he moved his hands like so, and said words such as these, and shaped his mind around this symbol or that analogy … but now those familiar actions meant nothing. Either he had lost whatever mystic sinew he once possessed that enabled him to shape magic or the nature of magic itself had somehow changed. Dresimil had mentioned something called the Spellplague. Could he have caught some sort of arcane contagion while entombed in the mythal?
Unfortunately, Jack could hardly ask his fellow field slaves about the arcane repercussions of the Spellplague. Most were illiterate or belonged to uncouth kindred such as goblin or orc, who could not be expected to know anything of wizardly troubles even if they weren’t inclined to beat or murder Jack on general principle. The drow were probably much better informed, but Jack had learned that it was never a wise idea to attract a dark elf’s attention for any reason at all. No, if the problem had a solution, he would have to work it out for himself.
In the fields he paused in his work, gathering his full force of will and demanding magic to answer his call, only to sense dimly the elusive energies slipping beyond his grasp. When that didn’t work, he tried to frame his spellcasting as a sing-song in his mind, hoping that rhyme or rhythm might spark some unsuspected connection. Other slaves sometimes stared at him or avoided him altogether, but Jack was hardly the only field-slave who talked to himself or gave an appearance of slowly going mad.
Finally, in frustration, he tried emptying his mind of thought and desire, opening himself to any mystic impressions that might come to him … and fell asleep before sensing anything he could grasp for weaving a spell. Work in the rothe pastures was nothing if not fatiguing. He didn’t awaken until Malmor found him and roused him with a vicious kick.
“Ah, ha!” the bugbear cried. “Shirking shirker! To the paddocks with you, human rat, the paddocks! The rothe must be fed! Work!” He flung a shovel at Jack and moved off.
Jack climbed groggily to his feet. “Shirk, work,” he muttered. “When I regain my magic, you will rue every outrage and indignity you have heaped upon me, Malmor.” The bugbear was already out of earshot, which was probably fortunate for Jack. He picked up the shovel at his feet, and stumbled off for another day-or night? — of toil.
Time passed in gray misery, each day blending into the last until Jack no longer knew how long he’d been a prisoner of the drow. Two times he made the weary trudge up to the castle kitchens with the creaking oxcart and failed to catch sight of Seila, but the third time Jack found her tending the cauldron of mushroom-flour porridge that served as the field-slaves’ provender. He breathed a small sigh of relief to see that no harm had befallen her. His future fortune likely depended on bringing her back to the Norwoods safe and whole, after all, and he was rather fond of her, too. He hurried over to the cauldron with an armful of pails to fill.
Bedraggled and exhausted as she was, Seila found a small smile for him. “Hello, Jack,” she whispered. “Kitchen duty again? Malmor must have it in for you.”
“Simply my luck,” he replied under his breath. “I do not mind, though. Fetching supper provides me with an excuse to see how you are getting on.”
“As well as I can in this awful place, I suppose,” she answered. She ladled the thin porridge into the workers’ pails as Jack loaded them onto the cart. Her sleeve slipped up her arm as she poured out the gruel; ugly red welts and purple bruises marked her forearms. Jack realized that she was working with unusual care, her body tense and stiff.
“What happened?” he whispered.
“I tried to slip out of the castle,” she answered. “The dark elves caught me before I’d gone a hundred yards. They had Grelda beaten for losing sight of me, and then gave me back to her … I fought back, but it only made her angrier. I thought she meant to kill me.”
“Brave girl,” Jack said with admiration. “I doubt that she would murder you outright, though. The drow see some value in keeping a Norwood captive. They wouldn’t be so careless with their property.”
Seila grimaced. “Death seems a kinder fate than this.”
“There is still hope. Your family must certainly be looking for you.”
“If they even know I am alive. Fetterfist and his gang killed or carried off everyone in the caravan. There was no one left to tell the tale.” Seila scowled at the vat of porridge. “If we ever get out of this, I’ll have my father put a price on his head that he’ll never outrun, not if he flees to the very ends of the world. That … pig has much to answer for. And I’ll tell you something more: Fetterfist knew exactly where to find my caravan and how strong our escort would be. How did he know those things? Did he know I would be there, too?”
“I’ll be delighted to put those questions to the slaver when the time comes,” Jack promised. The fact that someone would be looking for Seila was an interesting angle he had not considered before; if he failed to find the opportunity for escape, her family’s agents might come to her rescue and provide him with a chance to accompany her to freedom. And of course it was equally interesting that Seila’s father had the means to set enormous prices on villains’ heads, since in the right circumstances those same funds might also make for a handsome reward, indeed. Once again Jack promised himself to mount an escape at the first opportunity. “For now, be patient, endure as best you can. I will think of something.”
“I hope it is sooner-” Seila abruptly stopped herself as Grelda the overseer approached. The porridge-pails were all filled, and despite Jack’s brave show of arranging them carefully on the cart for the trip back to the paddocks, it was clear that their work was done.
The half-orc paused to glare at Seila. “There’s to be no cavorting with the field-slaves,” she snarled. Then she fixed her piggish eye on Jack. “And you, my handsome fellow, can go back to your rothe. Don’t let me catch you sniffing around my kitchens again.” Her hand dropped to the grip of the stinging-rod at her hip, and Jack quickly retreated. It would be bad enough if the kitchen overseer beat him, but the last thing he wanted to do was give her an excuse to flog Seila on his account. Discretion in this case was the better part of valor.
He caught Seila’s eye one last time as he pushed the cart out of the kitchen, and gave her a quick wink before setting out back down the path to the paddocks.
After the encounter with Grelda, Jack decided to avoid the porridge detail for a day or two, for Seila’s safety and his own. He went back to the fields, dragging sledges full of the rothe fodder out to each of the paddocks, then shoveling the inevitable product onto other sledges that were then dragged back out to the fields where the fungus was cultivated. Working in the dark elves’ pastures was an ironically circular labor, when he reflected on it. He spent no little time wondering why the dark elves didn’t just pasture their livestock in the middle of the fungus-crops and save all the back-and-forth. Failing to come up with an answer, he turned his attention back to the puzzle of his failing spells, muttering nonsense and making odd gestures as he worked alongside the rest of the field-slaves.
Finally, a month or s
o after the wool-shearing, Jack found his break.
He was toiling to reinforce the fieldstone paddock-fence by the castle road with fresh stones, when a team of trolls pulling a heavily laden wagon up the road got their vehicle stuck. The dull-witted creatures broke the wagon’s axle trying to work it loose, infuriating the dark elf wizard overseeing them. “Stupid oafs!” the mage shrieked. “I will teach you to be more careful.”
With a single swift syllable and a subtle motion of his left hand, the wizard expertly conjured a whip of emerald fire to lash the clumsy trolls … and Jack realized that he could dimly sense the subtle strands of magic that shaped the spell.
As the hulking monsters yammered in pain and fright, Jack quickly ducked back down behind the stone fence. “Something has changed,” he murmured. He hadn’t been able to sense any sort of magic since he’d awoken from his slumber in the mythal stone, except when he was brought back to the stone’s locale to tell Dresimil and her brothers stories of Myrkyssa Jelan. Then he’d felt a faint whisper of something in the mythal stone itself, most likely as a result of the powerful enchantments the dark elves were using to restore the device. Now it seemed that he could glimpse magic at work, even when he was quite a distance from the stone. But why now?
Crouching by the wall as the trolls fled back down the road, pursued by the wrathful dark elf, Jack thought carefully. Then it came to him, a recollection of a conversation long ago. “Yu Wei,” he said aloud. Long ago, Jelan’s Shou wizard had told him that his magic was a manifestation of the wild mythal’s power. Perhaps, as the dark elves repaired their ancient mythal, they unknowingly restored something of Jack’s own knack for magic. After tendays and tendays of captivity, the repairs had proceeded to a point that finally returned him some small capacity to sense magic-and perhaps work it.
Jack glanced about, then repeated the same arcane gestures and words he’d been trying for tendays. It took a half-dozen tries, changing the somatic motions and trying out different mental approaches, but then suddenly he felt the subtle sensation of magical energy rippling and responding to his touch.
Quickly he pressed on with one of the most basic spells he knew, a simple cantrip of minor telekinesis. Magic hummed softly in his mind, answering his call. He crooked his right hand and raised it, and at his gesture a large rothe patty twenty feet away quivered and rose into the air. Jack motioned with growing confidence, and the patty bobbed up and down in his telekinetic grasp before he flung it into the air with one final wave of his hand.
“Now I am getting somewhere,” Jack said to himself. He glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to him and ducked down to hide among the rothe as he continued his experiments. He attempted another spell-a spell of teleportation, designed to let him step through the dimensions and reappear hundreds of feet away in the blink of an eye. He’d always found that to be a useful talent, especially when it came to evading capture … but this time the subtle energies refused to acknowledge his command. Jack scowled in frustration, repeating the experiment, but still his dimension-step spell eluded him. Perhaps he wasn’t getting along quite as well as he’d thought.
Did the mythal fluctuate in some way? he wondered. If his powers were indeed born in its magic, the manipulations of the drow might conceivably affect his ability to wield magic. Or had he simply met the limits of his arcane talents in this Weave-less day? At the height of his former confidence and skill, a minor teleportation was about the most difficult spell he could perform. Jack scowled, wondering exactly how many spells remained of the repertoire he assumed to be at his fingertips. Why, he might be no more skillful than a clumsy apprentice, fumbling to strike a small light or levitate a rothe patty a few feet in the air! “An unacceptable outcome to months of trial and error,” he muttered blackly.
“Where is that shirking fool of a human?”
Jack looked over the backs of the nearby rothe and spied Malmor striding in his direction, glaring furiously from side to side. The bugbear fumed and swore, but he hadn’t quite caught sight of Jack yet. The last thing in the world that Jack wanted was for the fat bugbear to find him avoiding work and playing at magic; he ducked back down again and tried one more familiar spell. This time the magic responded to his words and gestures; just as Malmor swaggered into his paddock, scattering the rothe, Jack completed a spell of invisibility and vanished from sight.
Malmor peered about the enclosure, muttering under his breath, then turned and stomped back in the direction of his filthy hut by the feed bins and silos. There would be several overseers and more trustworthy slaves working there; no doubt the bugbear meant to round up a search party and comb the fields until he found Jack. That was the usual procedure when Jack was trying not to be found. The rogue took the opportunity to quietly slip past the restless rothe and hurry two paddocks over, exulting in his momentary ability to avoid whatever unpleasant task the bugbear had in mind.
Jack was just beginning to consider his next move when he felt his invisibility spell fray and fade. He definitely did not possess the skill he’d enjoyed back in the days before his unfortunate encounter with the mythal stone … but he had at least a little magic, and that would be enough. Jack flickered back into visibility, startling the nearby rothe. He laughed aloud, a laugh that was a little uneven around the edges. A pair of goblins working nearby stopped and stared at him over their shovels as he reappeared, perhaps wondering if his sanity had snapped altogether. “Of course I am mad!” Jack called to them. “Mad with genius, my malodorous green colleagues! Oh, much will now be set right, you will see!” He gave them a conspiratorial wink before he ran off toward the granaries and stockades closer to the castle.
Hiding between two shearing-sheds, Jack took a moment to work out his spell of disguise. This one was simple enough, and now that he had the knack of it, the subtle strands of magic fairly hummed in his mind’s grasp. Threads of illusion shimmered around him as he crafted a new appearance, a bigger, fatter, hairier appearance. A crooked fang protruded over his lip; his ears grew long and pointy; his arms lengthened while his legs shortened, giving him a rolling, bandy-legged posture. In ideal circumstances he would have performed his magic in front of a mirror, correcting minor details as he noticed them, but no such facilities were at hand. In thirty heartbeats he judged he was done, and emerged from his hidden corner with a wide-bellied swagger.
Instantly he found himself confronted by the field overseer Two-Tusks, a bald orc with a severe underbite. The orc grunted in surprise.
“What are you doing, you shirking mongrel, you mongrel shirker?” Jack demanded in his best imitation of Malmor’s voice. “I should put you back in the paddocks, the paddocks.”
Two-Tusks cringed and stammered, “The human rat is not at his place, Malmor! The goblins told me he ran off this way. They said he went mad. I go to find him.”
“He is not here!” Jack growled. “Now you listen: Go to the south gate and open it. Drive all the rothe out of the paddocks. No more rothe in the paddocks, turn them out, turn them out.”
Two-Tusks stood and gaped. “But then the rothe will all get out.”
“Of course!” Jack bellowed. “Why would I tell you to open the gate if I did not want the rothe to get out? The drow want the beasts to graze free for a time, so Malmor must let them out. Now do what I say at once, at once!”
The orc turned and fled the scene, dashing off toward the south. Jack could hear him shouting orders to other slaves, lashing about with his stinging-rod as he yanked them away from their current tasks and drove them toward the assignment Jack had given him. Jack grinned to himself, then swaggered off toward the next overseer to catch his eye, the gaunt gnoll Karshk. The unpleasant creature was hurrying across the pasture to put a stop to whatever Two-Tusks was up to. “Karshk!” Jack bellowed, stopping the gnoll in his tracks. “Go at once to the west pasture and drive out all the rothe. Now is the time they are to graze free. Quickly, quickly!”
The gnoll stifled a yip of surprise. “But Malmor
-r-r, we’ll never-r-r catch them all once they get fr-r-ee,” Karshk protested.
“They must have exercise, exercise. So the drow command. Who are we to argue with what our dark masters desire? Who are we, who are we?” He raised his hairy hand as if to backhand the gnoll, but Karshk scampered off westward, heading for the next pasture over.
Jack surveyed his handiwork for a moment, enjoying the spectacle of bleating rothe running in circles before field hands frantically shouting and waving, trying to drive the stupid creatures out the open gates. Next he swaggered his way to the pastures on the far side of the tower, browbeating and threatening every field-slave and overseer he saw along the way. He could hear the confused lowing of the rothe as they scattered out into the open cavern beyond the pasture enclosures, trampling this way and that in the gloom somewhere beyond his sight. How much trouble that might cause the drow and their thrice-cursed overseers, Jack couldn’t say, but at the very least perhaps he’d done something to shake the dark elves’ confidence in their mastery of all they surveyed. It occurred to him that perhaps he might have been wiser to consider carefully the combination of impersonation and misdirection that would provide the best opportunity for him to make his escape, but then he abandoned the idea with a shrug. He was an improviser, not a planner. Didn’t they say perfect was the enemy of good enough?
He circled through the lakeside pastures, ordering slaves to set fire to the feed-cribs so that they could be purged of an imaginary rothe plague. It proved more difficult to convince the field-laborers to actually burn the troughs and granaries, but once he seized a torch and struck a light himself to provide an example, the rest of the field hands quickly followed suit. Then Jack headed toward the bunkhouses and cribs surrounding Malmor’s hut, near the entrance to the paddocks. Despite his bold actions elsewhere, Jack proceeded more carefully here, because there was an excellent chance he would run into Malmor himself, and Malmor, at least, would know that Jack was not him. He circled around the great mushroom-cribs where much of the rothe fodder was stored, and peered around the corner at the hovel where the bugbear slept. There was Malmor, standing just in front of his little bunkhouse, his face twisted in fury as he listened to half a dozen field-slaves and overseers all gabbling on at once about the rothe escaping from the paddocks.
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