FSF Magazine, August 2007

by Spilogale Authors

"How long?” Bone asked.

  "Centuries, perhaps. Or perhaps years. But that will be the ultimate result of your blasted book."

  He knew he was not up to the challenge of ending this threat. Indeed, all he knew who had both power and stamina—his colleagues of the Old School—he couldn't trust. They would instead try to master the book, enslaving the world or hastening its doom. The dark, fierce eyes of Sarcopia blinked in his memory, unbidden.

  You will have no legend, no songs, came her remembered voice. At the core of you lies nothing ... so any multiplication of your power will amount to the same. My consort must be a Something.

  Gaunt was saying, “Master Krumwheezle? Is there a way to destroy it?"

  He was jolted again from memory. This Gaunt, as fierce as Sarcopia, yet so different....

  And here was the true bafflement about his visitors. This Gaunt was not really a rogue, but a kind and beautiful soul, seeking good for the world. A soul such as he'd tried to become since leaving the School.

  And yet she orbited a conniving man, one with an undeserved span of days, older than Krumwheezle himself yet possessed of unnatural youth.

  They looked at him expectantly. He rubbed his temple; such thoughts were unworthy.

  "I fear this problem is beyond me. My training is classical, and the classical methods are out of reach. The subterranean candlewyrms ebb low in this age, and volcanoes burn cooler. The fires of the arkendrake Kindlekarn might suffice, but rumor puts him in the uttermost East, mating with the rain-aspected females of his kind. If two of the Levitating Lands collided, the book might be shredded between them; yet in these late days most are shattered, and who can predict the survivors’ motions? And if you can distill the Universal Solvent, you are better wizards than I ... or any now living.” He sighed. He might have added there were wizards they could consult, of greater skill. But he dared not. “You may consult my library if that will help."

  Gaunt bowed. “They say a wizard's library is worth its weight in ambrosia."

  Krumwheezle smirked. “They do if they haven't tasted any."

  Imago Bone was peering up at the waves. “What did you say about our world?"

  The man's slowness annoyed Krumwheezle. He sighed. “It is a world suffused in meaning, and thus vulnerable...."

  "No. You said the Earth is flat. I always knew that. But I did not think.... Gaunt, can we not simply throw the book off the edge?"

  She nodded. “Yes! Yes. It seems too obvious. But sometimes obvious solutions are best."

  Krumwheezle knew at once she was doomed, and that it was useless to dissuade her. How many other lovely young women had followed the wrong man off a cliff? Gaunt was only doing it more literally than most.

  He thought this, but said only, “I will advise and equip you, but I will not accompany you. Forgive me.” He feared Gaunt detected too much pain in his voice, and it was suddenly important that she never guess his feelings. He summoned a tone more befitting a wizard. “But there is a price."

  "Oh?” Bone said.

  "I would analyze your aura, Imago Bone. You are ... strangely prolonged.” Krumwheezle raised the monocle. “Hold still."

  Bone narrowed his eyes. “And what do you hope to gain from this?"

  "What else?” Krumwheezle said. “Extension of my own life."

  But though they agreed, they did not perceive that the wizard of the Old School spent more time surreptitiously studying Gaunt than looking directly at Bone.

  Whether reality unraveled or Krumwheezle's body gave out, either way his world would end sooner than not. He meant to grasp a memory of beauty until that day.

  * * * *

  In a time when Myth passed its torch to Fable, when the sun rose in the south and set in the north, a band of wizards raised the New School. They were not like the wizards of Krumwheezle's time, cloaked, bespectacled, surrounded by tomes. These were men in animal skins as fierce as warriors, who bound the souls of their enemies in fingerbones, who carried their power in song. Their chants split wind and stone, and screeching gales lofted three dozen natural pillars to a silent grotto in the desert. At the heart of their stone circle they raised a Headstone from the Earth's secret depths. They drew lots and with their gnarled staves beat the brains of the loser into the massive rock. They did this for generations, and the Headstone became wise.

  After the gods at the world's either end vied for the sun and its course was changed, after mortal heroes supplanted demigods and Fable raised its torch high, the School was still there, though no longer New. Its place in the desert was still hot and quiet, and the sun still passed directly overhead, though by a different road. The Headstone still presided over students, now white-robed men with tall hats and crooked knives. They learned the lore of wind and ghosts and stars, and sacrificed but one human being a month, and believed themselves civilized.

  When Krumwheezle came, brash and ambitious, to what was now the Old School, the pillars were worn and the Headstone retained a mere impression of eyes, nose, and grimace, and cloaks and codices were the equipment of the day. The students learned many mysteries, how to capture shadows and domesticate demons, how to snuff the bright fire behind a man's eyes. They only sacrificed one person a year in secret conclave, and believed themselves refined.

  And in the seventh year of his instruction, the first among the graduating class dropped the appointed knife unstained and fled the jeers of the woman he loved—she who was second among the class, she who raised the blade in Krumwheezle's stead.

  * * * *

  Six months passed after Gaunt and Bone's interview. These were months in which Krumwheezle took to energetic seaside walks and expeditions against certain monsters which might threaten Scuttlesand should they wander west a hundred miles. He studied various theoretical matters, including, it should be said, viral enchantments. On three separate occasions he believed he'd ceased obsessing over Persimmon Gaunt.

  The day after the third such occasion she and Bone returned.

  "We require your help,” Gaunt said.

  "Come in, come in,” Krumwheezle said. He hadn't believed he would see the rogues again. His struggle to forget the woman was forgotten in her aroma of sweat and sea-salt, in her flash of auburn hair.

  Krumwheezle brought them to the solarium and tried to mask his impatience as he finished repairing a magical toy. Eight-year-old Molly Mucklecomb stood with sober intensity beside a table bearing a three-legged wooden horse. Krumwheezle had already reknit the basic enchantment. All that was left was replacing the fourth leg and incanting the sealing spell. He did so carefully, to all appearances an avuncular figure. No one could suspect he imagined tossing Molly and horse into the sea. The girl was a champion swimmer, after all.

  "Be a good horse,” he whispered in the tongue of lost Nobeca, and the figurine reared and gave a reedy whinny.

  "Thank you for fixing my toy,” said the girl in wonder.

  "That's fine, Molly. You and Thunderwidget know the way out."

  "You look well, Master Krumwheezle,” Gaunt said. She appeared kinder and shapelier than before.

  "I go walking more.” Krumwheezle fetched tea and cakes.

  Above the solarium, the salmon prepared for their journey upriver to spawn. Silver arcs descended and rose with a splash.

  "I hope scanning my aura,” Bone said, “was helpful to you.” He seemed to Krumwheezle leaner and more cloying.

  "Mm,” Krumwheezle said. “So. Were you successful?"

  They nodded in silence, in their reticence more like monks than thieves.

  "You have done,” he admitted, “what I thought impossible. It may be I owe you what years remain to me. How might an old man help you?"

  "Of those magic-workers who haven't sent us against improbable odds, smothered us with enchanted scrolls, or tried to harvest our skeletons,” Bone said, “you are the best. So we would have your advice on something.” Where Bone's voice had been blunt, it now became skulking and circumspect. “We, ah, have considered a new direction
in our lives, and...."

  Gaunt squeezed Bone's shoulder. “Master Krumwheezle,” she said, “you recall our last interview?"

  "It was memorable."

  "The book does make an impression,” Gaunt said. “Or made, rather. Leaving aside the particulars, the thing's passing was dramatic."

  "Magical effects were spendthrift at that moment,” Bone said. “We saw many strange things—including visions."

  There was a pause. Then their voices came in a rush, one overwashing the other, as if these rugged wanderers were both adolescents.

  "I saw a boy with my face and Bone's eyes,” Gaunt said, “in the role of cruel monarch."

  "I saw a girl with Gaunt's eyes and my face,” Bone said, “riding beside the ocean like a happy maniac."

  "We do not understand the visions’ meaning, and fear to know,” Gaunt concluded. “But we must know."

  Krumwheezle let out a short, directed breath. He clasped together his hands.

  "Since we last spoke, have you, ah, conceived?"

  They shook their heads.

  Krumwheezle offered more tea. He was proud of his outward composure, even as a petty part of him enjoyed the likelihood of Bone's infertility.

  Stupid, stupid old man, he thought.

  "So,” Krumwheezle said, “though the book is gone, it is possible Bone remains tainted. But then how to explain the visions of children? Perhaps you both merely saw what you hoped."

  "Yet why,” Gaunt said, “would I hope for a child imperious and cruel?"

  That did trouble Krumwheezle. The rogues’ visions had a mix of the bright and the dark, as life did. Mere hopes and fears did not as a rule have such texture. His daydreams about Gaunt, for example, held no shadows at all.

  "I must think about this,” he said.

  * * * *

  Krumwheezle's body curled like a question mark as the moon descended from the ocean and cast a silvery glaze over the rumpled sheets of his cot. He watched it drop into the night sky, obscuring the constellations and their portents. The stars hadn't helped him anyway. Nor had tea leaves, nor consultation of the Book of Jagged Lines, nor the divinatory guts of his salmon dinner. Dreams had not come, but he expected no better from them.

  A calm observer may divine a person's best choice of action, they had taught him at the Old School. But a divided heart cannot divine for itself. He was simply too close to the problem to see clearly. For he was smitten.

  Krumwheezle rose, and knowing it was a foolish act, lit his pipe.

  It was not the smoke he feared, for all that younger wizards claimed it was bad for your health. Wizards were a hardy bunch, and besides, Krumwheezle had learned a few things from Bone's aura. No, it was the pipe itself, cut from a dragon's brainpan and the wood of the World Ash, that was perilous.

  When the tobacco from Turtle Island filled Krumwheezle's nostrils—making all physical objects seem mere shells concealing a deeper reality—he puffed and waved the pipe. The smoke took the shape of a wide circle touching floor and ceiling. The view through the circle ceased presenting the bureau and armoire and revealed an onyx, inverted tower in a blue-lit cavern beneath the earth.

  Then the view clouded and reclarified, and Krumwheezle beheld another bedchamber, this one with a vast canopied bed of teak, its vertices carved into snarling beasts. There were three slaves standing at attention, human, delven, and goblin, below an iron chandelier studded with candles in humanoid shape. Each candle was lit, each shuddering a bit. Through the portal of smoke, Krumwheezle heard thin moaning.

  He swallowed hard and said, “Archmage. I claim the right of audience."

  A tall, raven-haired, snow-skinned woman approached in a silken robe loosely donned. She remained young and shapely, for she practiced arts Krumwheezle would not. Her walk conveyed two messages: that the robe could easily slide off, and that it never would do so, so long as he watched.

  "You,” came that bright voice, “you claim your rights? You who never graduated?"

  "We've been over this. Your predecessor agreed my perquisites—"

  "Prattle, prattle, prattle."

  "The ceremony was a formality,” Krumwheezle snapped.

  "Then why did you flee?"

  "I had a sudden urge to travel."

  She narrowed her eyes. “You spurned me, Krumwheezle. No woman tolerates that."

  "Most women want jewelry and kisses, Sarcopia. Not blood."

  "The blood of a rival, spilled in honor of the School. Oh, after all this time, Krumwheezle, cease the sanctimony! Surely you understood the whispers of the faculty, those six graduations prior. Why it was so important not to graduate last."

  "Believe it or not,” Krumwheezle said, “no. I was a conniving, ambitious snot, and capable of murder. But of sacrificing a trussed-up classmate, even Gibberly? No. I was naive enough to interpret certain references metaphorically, until it was too late."

  "A wizard must be careful of metaphor. For we make our own realities. We forget that sometimes a dagger is just a dagger, not a symbol of the cunning mind.” She smiled. “Or of lower organs."

  He smiled back. “Given the nature of our towers, Dark Lady of Ebontide, technically those organs are higher."

  She laughed. “It doesn't really matter if you've the right of audience. It's diverting to fence with you in your decrepitude. What do you want, old man?"

  He bit his lip, said, “I've been drafted as something of a family counselor.” He outlined the problem, leaving out his compromised feelings.

  "Rumors reach me of these rogues,” Sarcopia said. “They are linked with disturbances all along the Isles and Spiral Sea, as well as the eastern deserts and the frozen north. You have dangerous clients, Krumwheezle."

  "I get little news in Scuttlesand. But I am not surprised. They have formidable auras."

  The Archmage cocked an eyebrow. “You lust for the woman."

  Krumwheezle flushed. “A fancy of my ‘decrepitude.’ No harm to anyone."

  "This is free advice, one Schoolmate to another. Be rid of Gaunt and Bone."

  "Any other advice?"

  Sarcopia sighed. “To break their malady, you will need the power of a god."

  "The gods are dead. Or sleeping."

  "Then they'll be less angry when you steal their power. Wait.” Sarcopia crinkled her lip and the human slave departed, returning with a familiar dagger, its gray-green blade the wavy shape of a snake.

  "What are you doing with that?” Krumwheezle said.

  "My Scruplegore? My valedictorian prize? I thought I might loan it to an old friend."

  Without warning she tossed the blade toward his viewpoint, muttering a phrase of drowned Nobeca. The smoke shimmered, and the knife emerged from the scene within, nearly slicing Krumwheezle before piercing his bedsheets.

  "Your lost honor,” Sarcopia said. “It can be yours again, and it amuses me to help you. You want this Persimmon Gaunt? Then take her. You are a wizard. It is your due. More, the Scruplegore responds to the appetites of the wielder. Honor your hungers, and it will make you strong, vital—young."

  The dagger lurked in Krumwheezle's awareness like a viper, but he forced his eyes to stay on Sarcopia. “There is no honor in that."

  "Oh? Do this thing, and I'll see to it you're an honorary graduate of the Old School."

  "Gaunt loves this thief."

  "Then discredit him, tempt him, or kill him. That should be child's play to a skilled wizard. And you are skilled, Krumwheezle. You might have been Archmage. I am not too proud to say that."

  "But you are proud. Why are you doing this?"

  "You pretend to such ethics, Krumwheezle. You spurned me for your ideals. If I'd lost you to another woman, I would have seen her turned to a pig and fed to your wedding party. But since I lost you to your conscience, it is that I would see destroyed. This audience is ended."

  The vision faded and dispersed. Krumwheezle turned, meaning to throw the dagger into the sea. But he hesitated, remembering sitting cross-legged in the desert he
aring the Masters’ droning lectures ... and feeling the cool night air above him and Sarcopia below, upon the still-warm sands. Though the air tasted of sea-spray, his mouth was dry with smoke and desire. He stared at the empty bed, the blade upon it.

  "I can throw you away tomorrow,” he said.

  * * * *

  "I believe your bodies are working fine,” he told them next afternoon beside the fireplace, whose flue lanced out the towertop then bent skyward in a U shape, beyond the gravity reversal. Out one window they could watch the smoke coiling down and skyward.

  "Bone's fertility,” Krumwheezle said, “does seem slightly impaired by his strange longevity. But that is not your true difficulty."

  He took another long, sharp sip of tea (he'd removed the leaves for fear of seeing the future) and needlessly poked the embers. “I told you months ago of the viral enchantment."

  "We are still cursed?” Bone said, pacing and glowering. “Though the book was destroyed?"

  "It is a subtle malady,” Krumwheezle shot back, “acquired only because you carried the thing so long. This residual ill-luck can trouble you only on the level of the very small. One day, for example, it may spawn harmful cells."

  "I don't see what prisons have to do with it,” the thief snapped.

  Krumwheezle tried to keep the condescension from his voice. He failed. “A term of Art, Imago Bone. Your stuff and sinew are composed of invisibly tiny living components we call cells. If they grow in the wrong manner they can harm your body. But your more immediate problem is that the ill-luck is weakening your reproductive cells. Your seed, in other words, is failing to reach Gaunt's eggs."

  Gaunt nodded, and asked, “What of my vision? The cruel and powerful child?"

  "I am not certain,” Krumwheezle told her gently. “There's much we don't know about the development of traits. Much may be decided at the level of the very small. Here again, ill fortune may have its day. Even should you and Bone conceive, your offspring may prove unlucky for the world. I am sorry."

  Bone stared into the crackling fire.

  "Strange,” he said. “When we sought to destroy the book, I didn't so much mind risking life and limb. Yet this little hurt depresses me."