The Colors of Magic Anthology (magic: the gathering)

by Richard Lee Byers

"I don't like this," said Jervis. "No one ever comes down this beach. The roads all washed out two years ago."

  "He's probably coming to see Master Wane," said Sabra confidently. "And Master Wane is exactly who he's going to meet."

  "Don't get us into trouble." Damon glared at Sabra, but the brown-haired girl only smiled.

  "Follow my lead." Her voice was high with excitement. "Close your eyes." The others, now dried and dressed, complied.

  In a moment they heard Master Wane's voice. "Open your eyes or you'll miss the demonstration." Sabra was gone, and the master was in her place. "We'll have a little sport," he said with uncharacteristic jocularity.

  Out from behind the cliff came a lonely, little wagon pulled by two mules and driven by someone dressed in gowns of white. The apprentices sat on the sun-warmed rocks watching the wagon's slow approach, all except for Sabra, who stood in eager anticipation.

  When the wagon was finally within calling distance the homely white-robed woman driving the mules called, "Hail and well met!"

  Annarais opened her mouth to respond, but Sabra cut her off. "Approach!" she yelled in Master Wane's voice.

  The wagon continued on its way until the driver called the mules to a halt and climbed down. She stopped, surveyed the little group, stepped forward, and addressed Master Wane.

  "Hail and well met, my friend. Before you stands a humble healer, come from afar to find Master Wane, who has long been a friend to the Kjeldorans, seekers of peace and justice, and an enemy to the evil rulers of Stromgald. We have need of his expertise."

  "But-" Jervis started to protest to Damon.

  "Silence!" Master Wane snapped at the apprentice. He faced the woman. "I am Master Wane, you ugly wench."

  The others were so shocked they couldn't think to laugh.

  "How dare you stand before one such as I, a man of magic and power, when you are but a common wretch? Kneel, or you shall return to your convent in the form of a more useful creature."

  Damon glanced at Annarais and Jervis, their faces frozen in disbelief. He didn't like where this was going, but Sabra's little prank had taken him by surprise as well. She was going too far.

  The healer knelt and averted her eyes. "My fault, Master. I am but a novice." Her dark eyes flickered, and she brushed a lank strand of black hair from her eyes back into the untidy knot on her head. She reached into her loose robe and hesitated. "The Kjeldoran high priestess asks most respectfully for the benefit of your knowledge."

  Damon cocked his head to one side in surprise. Why would the Kjeldorans send someone here, when the Master was there? Perhaps he had not traveled to Kjeldor after all. Maybe something had happened to him! Damon's attention was drawn to the novice's hand as it emerged from her stained robe. She cast her eyes down and revealed a strange, green glass sphere with a short, stoppered neck. With both gloved hands, she held it up in front of her, still not meeting Master Wane's gaze.

  "Please, Master Wane, great and powerful one," said the healer, "as you know, there are many excavations across Terisiare where ancient wonders are being unearthed. We are fortunate enough to have found this magical bottle, and we seek to understand its use. Surely one with your insight and wisdom could help us."

  Sabra cleared her throat and strode over to the kneeling healer. "I am an important man," she began, "and I have little time for such trivial matters. However, the Kjeldorans are worthy of my time-barely. I will take this artifact to the-to my tower and study it." She reached for the item with one hand. "Give it to me and be gone."

  Just as Sabra's hand reached the sphere, the healer dropped it onto the rocks at her feet, and it shattered. Thick, white smoke plumed in the air. The tendrils of smoke touched Sabra and wrapped about her like ropes. The other apprentices saw Master Wane stiffen and fall. Sabra's body went into paroxysms, and blood gushed forth from her nose and ears, staining the rocks. The woman in white stood. Annarais rushed screaming and dropped to her knees beside Sabra, and Damon followed. Sabra was still, but even dead she appeared to be Master Wane.

  The healer stripped off her soiled white gloves, revealing bony, greenish hands. She undid the clasp at her throat and shrugged off her dirty robes. Beneath, she wore a close-fitting black leather vest and breeches, crisscrossed with haphazard leather stitches-repairs to cuts the outfit had suffered from numerous combats. Set in the vest, over her left breast, was a black gemstone the size of a peach pit. The skin of her arms and shoulders was mottled and dotted with pox scars. A curved scabbard perched on her hip, the black pommel of a blade protruding. Her face, creased in a humorless smile, revealed thin scars snaking from either side of her mouth to her neck. To Damon she looked as if she had died many times over but had somehow managed to live through the experience.

  "It's a trick," said Jervis, arms held tightly across his chest. "It's another of her tricks." Damon caught his eye and made a cutting motion with his hand to silence him.

  "Oh, it's no trick, little fish," said the killer. "Your master is quite dead."

  "She's dead," whimpered Annarais, stroking Sabra's hair, hair that looked gray. Damon glanced up at the killer to see if she'd noticed what Annarais had said.

  Paying scant attention to the apprentices, the impostor gave a sharp whistle. "Little fish," she said, "it suits my lords' purposes that you know why I killed your master. The wizards of the School of the Unseen have been on good terms with my lords in Stromgald, but then this rogue-" she kicked Sabra's leg with a leather-shod toe "-took it upon himself to help the Kjeldorans. His imprudent choice of allies was his undoing. When his peers from the School of the Unseen come looking for their fellow, tell them he met the fate of a traitor, that an assassin from Stromgald defeated him. Such a fate awaits any of the rest of them who favor Kjeldor."

  The assassin's wagon had begun to rock. The sound of metal straining against metal came from within. Then the door on the side swung open, and a metal man lurched into the sunlight. The wagon rose noticeably on its springs as the thing climbed out.

  "My lords will be pleased," said the assassin. "If they had known that one little aeolipile was all it took to bring this mage down, they would never have supplied me with a golem, or with this." With her thumb she tapped the black gemstone set in her vest, directly over her heart.

  The golem strode over to the assassin and stood next to her, head and shoulders taller than she. Made of ancient bronze, it had been scrubbed free of patina. The sun glanced off of its polished hide in speckles of broken color. Under different circumstances Damon might have found the hulking artifact beautiful.

  "Pick up the dead man," the assassin ordered the golem.

  The lumbering mass rotated its head so that it faced the ground. Its face swung back and forth as it scanned the earth, but it did not move.

  "I don't believe it," said Jervis. His eyes hadn't left Sabra's lifeless body.

  Damon put one hand on Annarais's shoulder and gave a quick jerk of his head back in the direction of the tower. He stood up, helped Annarais stand, and without a word they backed away.

  "Pick up the corpse!" ordered the assassin. "Put it in the wagon."

  Now the golem complied. It grabbed the body by the ankle and hoisted it into the air. Gears whirred as the golem turned to place the body in the wagon.

  Damon and Annarais reached Jervis, arms still wrapped tightly around himself.

  "It's no trick," hissed Damon. "Let's get out of here."

  Jervis's eyes fell on the blood on Annarais's hands. "Angels of mercy," he swore, "it's true."

  With the sounds of the metal man behind them, the three apprentices stumbled through the large, black rocks that bordered the beach, waded the frigid stream that fed into the sound, and came to the base of the cliff where a switchback trail began. Jervis glanced back nervously.

  "How long will that spell last?" he asked.

  "She's dead," panted Damon. "What happened? What was that thing? Who-"

  "Jervis is right," said Annarais. "The assassin's bound to notice soo
ner or later."

  "She's going to turn back and get us all," said Jervis. He leaped up onto a boulder and tried to spy over the other stones. "How long do you think Sabra's spell is going to last, now that she's-" Jervis stopped short. "What are we going to do?"

  "Keep moving," said Damon. "We've got to get back to the tower. Come on."

  Jervis stood still, his arms hanging limply at his sides.

  "That's the first place she'll look. We've got to split up, hide, get away, maybe get a boat."

  "The tower will be safer," said Annarais. "We can get our fighting staffs. She can't get in. We know our way around, and there's lots of places to hide."

  Jervis looked past the trail. Below them was a steep, rocky slope that led to countless recesses, inlets, grottos, and tidal pools. "Go die in that damn tower," he said, "She'll get you, just like she got Sabra. I can make it on my own. I did it before. I'll do it again." Without looking back, he started picking his way recklessly down the jagged rocks of the slope.

  "Jervis!" yelled Annarais. "We need to stick together!"

  Eyes focused on his precarious path, he yelled, "Shut up. I've got to get to safety."

  "Jervis!" Annarais repeated her plea, but Damon grabbed her arms from behind and compelled her on.

  "He might be right. Let him go. Let him do what he thinks is right, but don't wait here. That assassin will come back when Sabra's spell wears off. Let's go."

  Damon moved ahead and pulled Annarais behind him. The switchbacks seemed to go on forever, one after the other, until it was hard to say how long they'd been climbing, how many times they'd turned, and how far they had left to hike. The cliff they were climbing- which they had climbed hundreds of times-hung over a deep sound. It had once been a strip mine before the ice and the beginning of the thaw. The cliff itself was eroding with the thaw, and the tower was doomed to slide into the water with it. Master Wane was fond of saying, "It's a wise man who knows his house is built on sand."

  When Damon and Annarais were halfway up the side of the cliff, they heard a scream, nearly inhuman in its urgency.

  "Did you hear that?' asked Annarais.

  "It sounded like Jervis," said Damon. "Don't stop." He shoved her forward. Annarais nodded, and they continued hiking, the silence broken only by ragged breathing and Annarais's curses.

  They were both winded when they finally reached the top of the cliff, but they had renewed urgency since hearing Jervis's scream. They scurried to the great, mechanical door at the base of the tower, tripping over rocks and their own feet. The tower rose up more than fifty feet above them. It looked like an old-fashioned lighthouse. The underside of the balcony that surrounded the top floor extended out from the wall. From the ground up to that balcony the walls looked like blank stone, though the apprentices knew there were plenty of windows. Illusions hid them all.

  Damon and Annarais were damp now from sweat and sticky from brine, their stringy hair sticking to their faces and shoulders, their clothes chafing their skin. They stood on the broad stone step at the top of the stairs that led to the door, leaning against the massive, latchless door, panting. The door had always seemed to Damon to be like a great, metal mouth. It was far older than the tower, something Master Wane has salvaged from ages past. The door was smooth, but the mechanisms that surrounded it were complex, with pistons, gears, and counterweights.

  "What do-" Damon bent over, bracing his hands on his knees. "What do you think happened to Jervis?"

  Annarais closed her eyes and leaned against the door. "I don't know, but let's talk about this inside."

  "Neither life nor death," began Damon, reciting through his panting the litany that would open the door, "but existence." He paused to catch his breath. "Neither chaos… nor order… but existence." The litany defined how his master's style of magic differed from the other fundamental types of Dominarian magic. The litany was complete, but the door stood impassive.

  Damon glanced at Annarais, trying to hide his desperation.

  From over the cliff, they heard the rocks knocked loose, falling down the steep slope. It was the sound of pursuit.

  "Oh, great heaven," whispered Damon, and he took Annarais's hand.

  She stood upright, centered herself for a moment, and spoke the litany. It was as if the litany spoke itself, playing her lungs and mouth the way a musician plays a flute. "Neither life nor death, but existence. Neither chaos nor order, but existence."

  With a great commotion of machinery, the iron doors swung up and apart. The two apprentices rushed inside, into the high-ceilinged atrium. The doors clanged shut behind them. Exhausted, they sank to the floor and leaned against the door.

  "They won't be able to get in," said Annarais.

  "But, we've got to prepare, just in case," replied Damon.

  The two apprentices split up, trying to prepare for the arrival of the Stromgald assassin, although neither knew what it would take to stop her. Annarais took the far stairs two at a time. At the top, she raced along the curving walls, heading for the sparring room at the other end of the corridor. She flung the door open and grabbed two metal-shod fighting staffs from their wall bracket near the door.

  Meanwhile, Damon looked around the atrium. He closed the wooden shutters on every window and dropped bars into the holds to secure them. Obscured by illusion or not, an open window was a way in. He ran up to the second floor, whose curving, shadowed hallway overlooked the atrium. Here was their kitchen as well as their personal cells, their study rooms, and the sparring room.

  He found Annarais in Jervis's cell, standing there with the window unsecured, holding a large, round shell in both hands. The heavy shell had been one of Jervis's treasured finds.

  Without looking up, Annarais said, "Master Wane says your life is like the nautilus's shell. It starts very small, and it gets bigger and bigger as you grow. But you know what he forgot? It ends." She put her finger into the empty opening where a living thing had once made its home. "All that's left is something for someone to find on the beach-a trinket."

  A mighty boom reverberated through the atrium. Damon jumped, and Annarais's hand flew to her mouth. They hurried out into the hallway and looked one story down to the floor. Another boom sounded from the door into the tower.

  "We can't fight her golem," said Annarais.

  "We can hide," returned Damon. "Maybe we can get to the training room. Maybe we can even make it to the top, to Master Wane's chambers. He talks to other wizards far away. Maybe he has a magic glass, something we can use to call him. Maybe he can get here, or just get us out." Like closing the shutters, he suspected it was a futile effort at best.

  "The training room," said Annarais. "I know the key."

  She slipped back into Jervis's room and came out with the fighting staffs. She tossed one to Damon. The booming persisted. Damon followed Annarais to the end of the hall next to the sparring room's door. There stood a wooden door carved with sigils in a wavelike pattern. None of the apprentices had ever been up to the training floor without Master Wane, and he had always opened the latchless door himself. Annarais placed herself in front of it, biting her lip. With her two hands, she made a slow, unpracticed series of gestures and then looked at the door.

  "I don't understand." She was becoming more frustrated every minute. "That's exactly what he does. Exactly! Why won't it open?" She repeated the gestures. The boom sounded again, this time accompanied by the sound of metal straining and giving way.

  "What are you thinking?" asked Damon.

  "I'm trying to get through the damn door," snapped Annarais, her voice strained.

  "No," said Damon, putting a calming hand on her shoulder. "What are you thinking while you're doing it?"

  "I'm thinking we're both going to die."

  "Do the litany. Try it while thinking the door litany. 'Neither life nor death but-'

  "I know the damn litany!" yelled Annarais.

  Annarais shivered and began again. Her hands moved smoothly as she repeated the gestures. Below
them, the double doors bent inward, and the heavy, bronze creature squeezed into the breach, widening it. The door before Annarais creaked open, and the two apprentices darted in. The door shut behind them.

  They raced up a narrow flight of stairs which opened into the middle of a curved room lined with racks of scrolls. Near the other end was a row of writing stands where the apprentices practiced their letters and sigils.

  Against the wall was a wide, low chest tucked under a window. To the right was the door to Master Wane's chambers. As the Master had made clear many times, only a wizard could open that door. Near was a black curtain, with the mirror behind it. Momentarily, Damon longed to gaze into that mirror and forget everything that had happened today.

  "There's got to be something here that we can use," Damon cried, frantically searching the room.

  "Maybe there's something in Master Wane's hardwood chest," replied Annarais.

  As Damon approached the chest, a flicker caught his eye. Sitting on one of the writing stands was the flat, mirrored disk that Master Wane had used to create phantasms-horrible but insubstantial images of frightening creatures.

  Damon remembered sitting with Sabra and Master Wane on the rocky beach, waves gently lapping in the background. The master had reached into his stained gray cloak and produced the disk, laying it gently on the pebbles before them. The disk reflected the sun and blue sky. "The blind see only the truth," he said.

  Wane had tucked his age-spotted hands into his cloak and closed his eyes. Sabra reached out for the disk. She pulled it close to her face and peered into it. With a forefinger she pushed at a pimple on her chin. Suddenly her eyes widened, and she dropped the disk on the rocks. Damon looked up and saw behind Sabra a naked, hairless, humanlike form with long, clawed fingers and toes. Its wings made it seem bigger than it really was, but it was the claws, not its size, that looked deadly. It rested on the rocks behind Sabra, and, as she began scooting backward toward Master Wane, it followed her with short hops.

  Learning to ignore these horrific visions had been an early lesson for each apprentice, a lesson in distinguishing that which the eye sees from that which the mind knows. "Our magic is the magic of the impossible," Master Wane would often say, "of the impossible made true."