He threw on the best of his borrowed Norwood cloaks, chose a jaunty cap, and informed Edelmon that he would return in a couple of hours. Then he ventured out into the streets of Tentowers. It was overcast and blustery, much more typical for springtime in Raven’s Bluff than the fine weather of the previous day, and Jack shivered as the wind bit through his clothes. Fortunately, the High House of Magic was only two blocks south of Maldridge on MacIntyre. A few minutes’ dignified stroll brought him to the foot of a small, spired castle that stood in the middle of the fine houses and well-heeled shops. Jack had always thought the headquarters of the Wizards’ Guild was rather pretentious, and he was not surprised to see that a hundred years hadn’t moderated the tastes of its occupants in the least.
He climbed the steps to the tower door and gave it a firm knock. A moment later the door opened, and an officious-looking chamberlain-a tiefling, to judge by his horns and tail-answered. “Yes?” he said in a sepulchral voice.
“Good morning!” said Jack. “I am a wizard of some skill, and I might be interested in joining this arcane fellowship if a tour of the premises and introduction to the staff convinces me that it would be worth my while.”
The tiefling bowed and showed Jack inside to the dark-paneled foyer without another word. Seven busts of stern-looking mages stood in small alcoves, seeming to study Jack with disapproval. He gave them a casual glance; he was not terribly interested in the Guild’s long-deceased assortment of notables and benefactors. But the tiefling chamberlain paused in the middle of the foyer and addressed the collected statuary. “An applicant for membership, honored archmages,” he intoned.
“A peculiar tradition,” Jack observed. “Still, far be it from me to criticize your quaint superstitions.”
The marble busts stared blankly ahead, and Jack began to form the unpleasant suspicion that he was indeed under some form of examination. The last time he had ventured into the High House of Magic to join the Guild, there had been no such procedure, but of course that had been more than a hundred years ago. He looked more closely at the stone faces, and realized that he recognized a couple of them. Over on the left end stood the lean, bearded visage of Alcides van Tighe, archmage of the guild in Jack’s day, and two busts to the right was a round-faced mage with a thin, drooping mustache and a bored expression-the wizard Meritheus, who’d been a minor functionary in the guild when Jack knew him. Apparently the fellow had succeeded in climbing through the ranks in the decades after Jack’s imprisonment.
Jack grew a little restless as the tiefling waited in silence, and he began to fidget with the buttons on his coat. “Exactly how long will we continue to pay our respects?” he whispered to the chamberlain.
“This sorcerer is known to me,” the bust of Meritheus suddenly said. Its stone visage came to life, eyes blinking and lips moving as it spoke. “Bid welcome to the Dread Delgath, master of time and space, an affiliate member since the Year of Wild Magic. His dues are in arrears by one hundred and six years. And I am reminded that I have a message for Master Silverlocke; please notify him at once.” The statue adopted a sour expression as it regarded Jack.
The tiefling remained expressionless as he looked down at Jack. “It seems that you are a member already, Master Delgath.”
Jack stared at the bust for a long moment before answering. “The Dread Delgath bestrides the years as lesser mages might pace across a room. If I have no recollection of joining your guild, it is simply because I have not yet done so. Clearly I will travel to the Year of Wild Magic at some point in my personal future, and join your fellowship at that time.” That struck him as eminently plausible for a master of time and space, and he folded his arms across his chest in a pose of unshakeable confidence. “For that reason the matter of one hundred and six years of dues is not relevant. My dues must be calculated on the basis of my personal experience, not the simple turning of years that signify nothing to the Dread Delgath. Now, shall we continue inside? I have important business to attend in this strange and marvelous year.”
The tiefling looked again at the bust of Meritheus, then frowned at Jack. “Do you know the Master Silverlocke of whom the archmage spoke?”
The name was dimly familiar to Jack; it took him a moment to place it. Silverlocke had been one of the old guild officers back in his proper day, but Jack didn’t recall any dealings with the fellow. Most likely Master Silverlocke was in charge of woefully dated membership rolls or collecting long-owed dues or some such thing, and because he’d just suggested to the chamberlain that he had no memory of joining the guild in the past, he decided not to admit otherwise. “I am afraid I know none of your guild members. Becoming acquainted with your fellowship was indeed the purpose of my visit.”
The chamberlain considered Jack’s reply, then shook his head. “I am uncertain how to proceed,” he admitted. “I do not know any Master Silverlocke. I cannot enroll you again, nor can I excuse the unpaid dues. Please wait here while I summon Initiate Berreth.”
“As you wish,” Jack replied magnanimously. The tiefling departed through a doorway leading deeper into the tower, leaving Jack alone with the marble busts. He wondered if they preserved any of the memories of their originals or if they were instead enchanted to simply recognize members and thus inform the chamberlain about who should be granted admittance to the tower. He occupied himself with trying to perfectly mimic their expressions as the doorman fetched whomever he’d gone to fetch. After a short time, a rather short and studious-looking woman with mousy brown hair and thick spectacles bustled into the room.
“Master Delgath,” she said with a small frown. “The chamberlain tells me that you are a lapsed member?”
Jack decided on the spot to overpower the bookish mage with pure charm. “Why, hello,” he answered with a wide smile. “I suppose that to your records I might seem to be a century in arrears, but things are not as simple as they appear. During my travels I have skipped across the years like a pebble hurled across the surface of a pond. I am, however, now likely to remain in this era for some time, and may be interested in resuming my membership. Of course I would like to look around before making up my mind. I am not a hasty man, oh, no.”
Berreth’s frown deepened. “Chamberlain Marzam said that you had not actually yet joined the guild in your own timeline-”
“I have joined, and I have not joined. Both are equally true; traveling through time engenders many paradoxes. The chamberlain undoubtedly failed to comprehend this.”
“Can you offer some additional proof of your unusual claims?”
“That will prove difficult. I could hop back to yesterday and meet you then, but of course that would become our first meeting, and this encounter would not take place; you would have no memory of this discussion. Or I might time-stride to tomorrow and return, but who’s to say that I didn’t just teleport off and hide for twenty-four hours to give the appearance of having leaped a day ahead?” Jack shook his head solemnly. “Your excellent archmages have already identified me as one and the same with a person who belonged to the guild one hundred and six years ago, and you can see that I am about thirty years of age and perfectly human. Is that not proof enough?”
Berreth’s brow knitted as she listened closely to Jack. “Perhaps it would be easiest if I just marked you down as a lapsed member,” she said.
“Please proceed in whatever manner is most convenient for you.”
The studious mage drew a small ledger from her sleeve and scribbled furiously in it. “That was Delgath?” she asked.
“The Dread Delgath,” Jack corrected her.
“And what can we do for you today, Dread Delgath?”
“I would like to tour the premises, meet the charming staff, and determine whether to renew my membership. You must remember, my experience of the Guild’s facilities-which may not have actually happened yet-is a hundred years out of date.”
“Very well.” Berreth seemed more than a little relieved to close her ledger and turn her attention to a more manag
eable task than recording the comings and goings of the Dread Delgath. “Please, follow me.”
Jack followed the mage as she led him on a tour of the High House. She provided perfunctory explanations as they wandered through laboratories, lecture halls, scriptoriums, rooms full of curios and exhibits, meeting chambers, and vaults. Jack feigned great interest in everything he saw, and went out of his way to compliment Berreth on the evident depth and variety of her learning. It was difficult to tell if his efforts were bearing fruit, since his solicitude seemed to puzzle her more than anything else; apparently she was not accustomed to being the recipient of such attentions. At one point they paused in a large library, filled with tall bookshelves that were crowded with strange and curious tomes.
“I don’t suppose you have a book known as the Sarkonagael somewhere in your collection?” Jack asked.
Berreth gave him a stern look. “Oh, you’re one of those, are you?”
“One of those?” Jack repeated.
“For three days now the High House has been besieged by fortune hunters who believe that first, any missing spellbook must naturally be in the Wizards’ Guild, and second, we do not read the daily handbills and haven’t noticed the reward offered for the book.”
“Please forgive me,” Jack replied. “I do not demean your perspicacity. I simply believe that one should eliminate the obvious possibilities before proceeding to more obscure solutions. It is my rigorous mental discipline that leads me to ask.”
“Well, you may eliminate the High House’s library. No Guild member knows the book or has any idea why it might be so important to whatever party is offering the reward through Horthlaer’s.”
Jack offered a small smile; here was a chance to bait a hook and see what came of it. “Ah, but in that you may be mistaken, dear Berreth. In a past that may or may not come to be, I encountered the Sarkonagael in the library of the necromancer Iphegor.”
The mage peered at him through her thick spectacles. “Indeed? Can you tell us anything about its contents? What is it? Who would want it?”
Jack paused, thinking it over. Any information he shared might help the Guild to recover its lost book, and provide him at least a partial claim on the reward … but he could also use the opportunity to sow disinformation, and perhaps throw the investigators off the track so that he could recover the book-and its substantial reward-himself. “I propose a deal,” he said. “I will tell you what I know about the Sarkonagael, if you will help me find out what became of several prominent wizards I knew back in my previous visit with the guild. I am very curious about their respective fates.”
Initiate Berreth gave him a skeptical look, perhaps wondering if he really knew anything about the Sarkonagael, but she nodded. “The library contains records of prominent wizards and their activities. I think I might be able to help you.”
“Excellent,” Jack replied. “In that event, I will tell you that the book was subtitled Secrets of the Shadewrights, and was a lengthy dissertation on shadow magic. It held a particularly dangerous spell that allowed an unscrupulous wizard to create a simulacrum or copy of somebody else by crafting it from the stuff of shadow. And the tome once belonged to the necromancer known as Iphegor the Black.” All that was true enough, of course. “As to its appearance, it was bound in smoky gray dragon leather, and its pages were made of a strange sort of black vellum. The writing was in a silver ink that could only be read by the light of a magical shadow-lantern.” That was entirely fiction, made up on the spot to confuse any Guild efforts to locate the book by its physical appearance. If he was ever caught in the lie, he could always claim that the book must have been magically disguised when he saw it a hundred years ago.
Berreth pulled out her journal again and added more notes with her quill, scratching away at the yellowed parchment. “Fascinating,” she said. “The archmage and the deans will be very interested in this; you know more about this book than anyone else of this day, it seems.” She shut her book and tucked it back into her sleeve. “Now, let us see what we can find out about these old Guild members of yours.”
Jack spent the rest of the morning with Initiate Berreth, searching through the guild’s ancient records. He’d hoped that he might find some hint or suggestion to identify which of the powerful wizards of his acquaintance had imprisoned him in the wild mythal, but that hope proved ill-founded. The Guild records noted that Yu Wei, the Shou wizard who served Myrkyssa Jelan, was deceased as of the Year of Wild Magic, years before Jack’s imprisonment. That made perfect sense, of course; he’d seen Yu Wei struck down by Zandria’s spell of chain lightning in the final battle against the Warlord and her minions. Still, it was reassuring to know that Yu Wei did not somehow escape certain doom and return to vex him.
Zandria’s fate was more difficult to piece together, because she’d left Raven’s Bluff a year or so after Jack’s adventures with her. Fortunately, the Guild was in the habit of hoarding news of notable wizards wherever they might be. During the Year of the Bent Blade, she was living quite comfortably in Elversult, having recovered some great treasure or another from Chondathan ruins in the area. In fact, it seemed that she had won herself a noble title for her efforts and was counted as one of the city’s high councilors. “Zandria might have returned briefly to Raven’s Bluff to visit some sinister scheme upon me,” Jack mused, “but I simply don’t believe she was that angry with me, especially if her circumstances in Elversult were condign.”
“What did you do to earn this Zandria’s anger?” Berreth asked.
“I solved an impossible riddle for her and helped her to win a legendary treasure, but she was difficult to please,” Jack answered. “What of Iphegor the Black?”
Berreth consulted the appropriate tomes, and in half an hour more Jack had his answer. The story of Iphegor the Black, nightmare of rival sorcerers and plunderer of ancient lore, was quite peculiar. He vanished from the knowledge of the Wizard’s Guild until the Year of the Black Blazon-a full six years after Jack’s imprisonment-at which point he returned to Raven’s Bluff at the head of an army of necromantic mice. He sent his tiny skeletal horde into the home of Marcus, Knight of the Hawk, capering and cackling with maniacal glee in the street outside as the undead creatures devoured the hapless knight in his bed. Then he vanished with the cry, “Thus ever to mouse-murderers!” and was never heard from again.
“What a strange fellow,” Berreth said after reading the account. “Why should he care if this Marcus had killed a mouse?”
Jack grinned from ear to ear. Marcus had been the personal author of two severe beatings upon his person; he was not at all unhappy to discover that the Knight of the Hawk had met his end in an unexpected fashion. “The mouse in question was the beloved familiar of Iphegor the Black,” he told Berreth. “Iphegor always blamed Marcus for the mouse’s death, which was perhaps unfair, because I was more directly responsible. Well, the wheel of a cart had something to do with it, too. In any event, I can rest assured that Iphegor never learned what role I played in the whole unfortunate affair, and he continued to blame Marcus. He had no reason to suspect my involvement, and therefore he was not responsible for what befell me.”
While Jack pondered the question of what other wizard might have acted against him, he heard the distant chimes of the Temple of Holy Revelry announcing one bell after noon. Remembering that he might be expecting the attentions of a tailor at Maldridge, he excused himself to Initiate Berreth … but not until she’d exacted from him the fifty gold crowns to renew his affiliate membership in good standing. He cheerfully paid; it might prove useful to maintain good relations with the High House of Magic, and he might be able to trade other morsels of information about the people, places, and events of his time for additional favors.
He strolled back to Maldridge and found that Edelmon had obtained the services of the halfling tailor Grigor Silverstitch. Jack spent the better part of the afternoon with the fussy little fellow, giving thorough attention to every detail of his wardrobe, from boots (
five pairs, in various styles and colors) to hats (four of those, including two jaunty caps and two wide-brimmed for inclement weather). Jack always considered himself a bold dresser, and he had a good eye for fashions; when Master Silverstitch departed, the tailor was beaming at the prospect of several hundred crowns’ worth of business that would allow him to showcase his talents in a style that more conservative clients might shy away from.
Jack saw to the strongbox full of gold that had been delivered from his counting house, admiring the coins before locking up the strongbox in the most secure vault he could find in the house, and then he ventured out again to visit a couple of booksellers. He hoped against hope that someone had simply stolen the Sarkonagael from the person offering the reward to fence it, although it seemed unlikely other treasure-seekers would have overlooked something so obvious. The effort proved as fruitless as he expected, although he did meet some of the city’s dealers in rare and ancient tomes-one never knew when those acquaintances might come in handy. Finally he returned home, where he enjoyed a fine dinner of roast beef accompanied by a dry Chessentan red.
After dinner, Jack enjoyed a glass of port by the fire and leafed through a recent travelogue he’d picked up during his foray to the booksellers’ shops with the idea of acquainting himself with the changes in lands and cities wrought by the Spellplague. A discrete knock came at the study door, and the valet Edelmon entered. “I beg your pardon, sir,” the valet said. “The staff has gone home for the evening. If you do not require anything else, I shall retire.”
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