by Sean Wallace
Glabro had placed the Sphere of Diverse Utility on a plinth in his study. It was no longer his most prized possession, but it still deserved pride of place among the wealth of thaumaturgical artifacts that adorned his shelves and lurked within the drawers of his cabinets. His overstocked library would have been the envy of any wizard in the Three Lands – if, that is, he had ever invited a colleague to peruse his collection; but he never would, because any of them would soon discover volumes that had gone missing, under circumstances so mysterious as to be baffling, from their own.
A conclave had been called, at the estate of Yssanek the Paragon, to discuss the scourge of disappearances. The attendees had eyed each other with suspicion, and veiled accusations had been whispered when allies put their heads together. Familiars and gate-guardians had been summoned and grilled – in one case, literally – but all inquiries had led to indefinite conclusions.
Glabro had attended the assembly, but no one had deigned to seek his opinion or invite him to join any cabals. He went home wrapped in secret smiles.
For his part, Raffalon was storing up treasures of a more worldly sort. The wizard paid him in coins, weighty ingots, and sacks of gems. And in that regard Glabro was unstinting, his acquisitions having given him the means to whip up chestfuls of precious goods on demand. The thief bought a small house with strong walls and doors and built an even stronger room in its basement, where he stored his earnings, safe from his fellow Guild members.
He and the wizard had established a “system without a system”, as Raffalon put it. They made their strikes at different times of day and night, and never at regular intervals. They chose their victims and their targets randomly, so that no pattern would allow their prey to predict their next raid.
Sometimes the thief would watch from the void as snares and ambushes were prepared for him, then will into being a portal to some other part of the target’s manse, where he would stage a noisy diversion. When the defenders rushed there to respond, he would return to his original view of the trap, delicately extract the bait, and be gone before the alarm could be raised.
It was a happy time for the partners. Glabro found that he was perfectly suited to the life of a secret gloater. Raffalon was considering early retirement, perhaps to open an academy to train the next generation of purloiners.
They had agreed to a long hiatus before their next outing, but Raffalon came to the wizard’s manse a week before to discuss the intended target – the curio collection of Firondel the Incomparable – and plan a reconnaissance. They made themselves at ease in Glabro’s study, where the wizard conjured up a flask of the golden wine of sunny Abrizonth, though that fair land had drowned beneath the invading waters of the Stygmatic Sea 10,000 years before.
The magician sipped from his long-stemmed glass and indicated a well-worn tome that lay open on his table. “I have been researching the phenomenon that is enriching us,” he said. “And I have found something of interest.”
“Will it put more gold in my strongroom?” said Raffalon. And when the answer was in the negative, he shrugged and drained his glass, then held it out for a refill.
“At first,” said the wizard, “I thought we had discovered a tenth plane – such a thing is theoretically possible – but one which the Demiurge left unfilled when he assembled the universe.”
Raffalon made a noncommittal noise and looked out the window.
“But then I came upon this” – he indicated the old book – “that we got from the highest shelf of Zanzan’s library.”
“While he rushed off to see who was trifling with his menagerie of fanciful beasts,” said the thief, adding a short, dry laugh.
“I had to summon up a ghost from Old Edevan to help me translate the script.”
“Old Edevan?”
“Fourteenth Aeon.”
“Never heard of it.”
Glabro showed mild irritation at the interruptions to his flow. Raffalon noticed but offered no apology. “In any case,” the wizard went on, “it’s a record of how the present version of the universe was—”
“There have been others?” Raffalon was not interested in the answer. He liked to goad the magician occasionally; he had not forgotten the touch of Jhezzik.
“Several. Now let me finish. This is interesting.”
The thief waved his hand in a somewhat regal manner. “Pray proceed.”
“The nub of it is that, for convenience’s sake, the Demiurge first built himself a workshop.”
“Sensible.”
“It was a setting that enhanced his axial volition, which of course was already vast.”
Raffalon swallowed the mouthful of Abrizonth he’d been swishing about his teeth. “What’s axial volition?”
“The technical term for what you would call ‘will’. It’s what the universe runs on. If you have enough of it, you can become a wizard. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter how much studying you put in, your spells will always dissipate like a fart in a fresh breeze.”
“Really,” said Raffalon, holding out his glass. “A little more, I think.”
Glabro handed him the flask and the thief poured for himself. “The thing is,” the wizard went on, with enthusiasm, “he seems to have left the workshop still standing after the work was finished.”
The thief shrugged. “Perhaps he kept it in case he needed to modify things later.”
“I suppose,” said the magician. “He might decide to adjust the gravitational constant or add some more colors to the spectrum.” He paused to pursue the thought on his own.
“So what about Firondel’s curios?” said Raffalon. The flask was now empty, and in a moment, so was his glass.
“If I’ve got this right,” Glabro said, “that thing you call a void is actually the primal chaos from which everything was made.”
Raffalon shook his head. “Chaos is busy-busy, everything higgled and piggled together. The void is nothingness.”
“No,” said the wizard, “chaos is the seeming nothingness from which the four elements of creation – matter, energy, spirit, and gist – are generated.”
“Something from nothing?” said the thief, feeling a stir of interest. “By axial whatsit?”
“Exactly.” Glabro consulted the tome. “And it may still be workable.”
Raffalon sat up straighter. When his brain was engaged, it was capable of cutting through fog straight to wherever profit might be found. “Are you saying that, in the void, an act of will creates something from nothing?”
“I suppose I am.”
“What kind of something?”
“Any kind.”
“And how much of it?”
“That would depend on the strength of the axial volition. The Demiurge’s was powerful enough to generate an entire universe.”
Raffalon was thinking now. His will had been powerful enough to show him any place he thought of, and to let him penetrate the barrier between chaos and creation. “Hmm,” he said.
“Of course,” Glabro was saying, “there might be repercussions . . .”
But the thief was not listening now, though he did say, “Hmm,” one more time.
Raffalon hung in the void. Before him, seen as if through a window, was the tabletop on which Firondel the Incomparable kept his remarkable collection: a small cube of immortal flesh said to have been cut from the heart of an incarnate deity; a sextet of ivory figurines that, when brought into proximity with each other, performed simplified versions of a hundred classic dramas; the curved horn of a beast long thought to be mythical; a lens that permitted views of the fifth plane, adjusted to make them comprehensible to third-plane eyes; a thunderstone found in the belly of a great fish; and several other singular items.
The thief examined the surroundings for traps and defenses. And found one: above the table, concealed by a masking spell, hung a mechanical spider equipped with injector-fangs loaded with a powerful soporific, poised to fall upon any hand that reached for one of the small treasures. But Raffalon
had learned that, when viewed from his present vantage, objects or persons supposedly screened by magic were nakedly visible to him.
Having surveyed the scene, as a good thief should, Raffalon now opted to pause before continuing the operation. Since his discussion with Glabro, he had been thinking about what the wizard had revealed concerning the effects of will exercised in the Demiurge’s workshop. He now held out one hand in the void, and willed that something should appear in its cupped palm. Nothing happened. He concentrated. For a moment, nothing changed. Then he felt what he could only describe as a ripple pass through the void around him, and through his own being. He felt the sensation go down his arm and exit through his outstretched hand. And when it was gone, in his palm lay a pea-sized globe of purest gold.
Ah, said the thief, and so. He tucked the bauble into an inner pocket of his upper garment then repeated the exercise, this time concentrating on a jewel. Again, the ripple passed through him, and when it left his fingers he saw that he held what poets call a gem of purest ray serene, and thieves a nice bit of sparkle.
He put the jewel with the gold pea. The experiment was concluded. Next time, he would make preparations: first he must expand his strongroom to several times its size, so that it could hold all the abundance he intended to will into creation and pass through the membrane. No, better yet, he should buy himself a manse.
But first he had to complete the lifting of Firondel’s curios. He adjusted his point of view so that he was now seeing the mechanical spider from above. His eye traced the pattern engraved on its gold-chased back then his hand reached through the barrier and turned its activating screw from energetic to inert. The threat of the spider thus neutralized, he repositioned himself again so that the membrane was just above the tallest item on the tabletop.
The thief had become so skilled at working from the void that he could will the intervening membrane to be mere inches from whatever prize he had come to collect. To anyone observing from the third plane, all that could be seen of Raffalon was his fingers and a portion of the back of his hand – and then only for the moment it took to appear and seize the item.
He reached for the thunderstone, drew it into the void, and popped it into a satchel suspended by a strap from his shoulder. Next he picked up a silver flute known to have been played by the siren Illisandra. Into the satchel it went. Then, one by one, the six thespian figurines.
Methodically, he stole Firondel’s treasures. The second-last was the cube of deathless god’s heart. But as he reached for it, it moved away of its own accord, crossing most of the tabletop to stop at the farther edge. Raffalon, lulled into a routine, did not think to withdraw his fingers, reposition himself, and try again from closer up. Instead, he merely extended his arm through the barrier until his fingers closed on the wandering morsel of meat.
But when he picked it up, he felt resistance. The cube was on the end of a string that had been used to lure him. Immediately, he dropped it, but immediately was not fast enough. Even as the fragment of godstuff was falling back to the table, a steel manacle was closing around Raffalon’s wrist with a fateful snick.
He pulled, but the only effect was to make taut a strong chain that connected the ring around his limb to another bracelet – and this one was around the wrist of the man now coming out from under the table: Hurdevant Ironhand, his grim features set into an image of triumphant vengeance.
The wizard pulled, but his strength could have no effect on a man anchored in the Demiurge’s workshop, although the steel slid down on to Raffalon’s exposed hand and compressed the bones and sinews, causing him pain. Now Hurdevant was moving his free hand in a complicated pattern and speaking a string of syllables – but again to no effect; magic could not trouble the membrane.
That left only one option. If the robber could not be pulled into the world, the wizard must go to where he hid. Hurdevant seized Raffalon’s hand and thrust it back toward the barrier.
This suited the thief, whose quick mind had already assessed the situation. Hurdevant no doubt thought that his thaumaturgical arts would serve him well once he had his adversary cornered. But magic had no effect in the void. It was a place where only will mattered.
Hurdevant, as a wizard in his prime, would be equipped with willpower well beyond the ordinary. Raffalon had no illusions that he could match him. But the thief knew the ground, and the magician did not. While Hurdevant was learning that magic was of no avail, Raffalon would be willing a last unpleasant surprise for the man on the other end of the chain.
He focused his will, and the wizard came through the barrier. The thief saw two surprises register on the other man’s face: first, at the nature of their surroundings; second, when he recognized Raffalon.
“You!” he said. And now that look of savored revenge was coming back. The wizard lifted his free hand, crooked its fingers in a certain manner, and began to utter a spell.
But Raffalon was already at work. He willed a pair of adamantine shears to appear in his unfettered hand. In an instant, they were there – I’m getting better at this, he thought – and a moment later the chain was severed.
He let the shears float and saw that Hurdevant had already digested the meaning of his spell’s failure. Now the wizard reached into his robe and came out with a springer, which he deftly cocked with a practiced motion. Raffalon had no doubt that the barbed tip of the missile in the weapon’s slot would be coated with poison.
There was nowhere to flee and no time to create an exit; it always took several heartbeats to pass through the membrane, and Hurdevant’s dart would make sure that one of those beats would be Raffalon’s last. He needed to will something into existence that would change the dynamic of impending events. And he needed to do it now, as Hurdevant raised the springer and aimed it at his belly.
As a boy, Raffalon had been entranced by tales of adventure and derring-do, in which stout-hearted individuals faced down terrors and won through to rewards of great renown. One of those tales had featured a monster that had so frightened the young lad that it came to him several times afterwards in nightmares. The shaggy, brutal creature of some storymaker’s imagination remained Raffalon’s private definition of the worst thing that could happen.
On impulse, he willed it now into existence, just behind Hurdevant. Thus, as the wizard’s finger tightened on the springer’s release, a thick, muscular limb, clad in matted gray fur and ending in a paw tipped by two claws like black crescent moons, slid around his waist. The weapon dropped from the wizard’s grasp as he was hoisted backwards and upwards – the monster was oversized – and delivered to its serrated fangs.
The thing ate the wizard in two bites. Then its yellow eyes fell upon Raffalon, and the thief remembered that, in the story, the creature’s appetite was insatiable – and that, in his worst dreams, it pursued him wherever he fled.
He willed it to disappear – to no effect; perhaps the Demiurge had another workshop for destruction – and so he willed instead the existence of a portal through which he could exit the void and find help.
Only one such place came to mind: Glabro’s workroom. As Raffalon appeared out of the air, the wizard looked up from the book he’d been reading and said, “How did it—”
“Coming behind me!” the thief shouted. “Destroy it!”
Then his feet hit the carpet and he ran for the door, seizing the latch and yanking it hard. Behind him, he heard Glabro say, “What’s—” and then a sharp intake of breath as the nightmare willed itself through the membrane in pursuit of its next meal.
Unfortunately for Glabro, he was not much talented in the art of wizardly improvisation. While he was assembling a spell in the forefront of his mind, the monster swept aside his study table and sank its cruel claws into his middle. Raffalon, at the other end of the corridor and fleeing down the steps at his best pace, heard the scream and then the sounds of crunching bones.
By the time he reached the bottom of the steps and opened the door into the wizard’s back courtyard, h
e could hear the beast’s slobbering vocalizations descending the stairs. He flung wide the gate and bolted into the alley, slamming it shut behind him. Moments later, he heard the skreek of its hinges being torn from their posts. He put on more speed. Raffalon had often been pursued – desperate chases were part of being a thief – but never had he run with such conviction.
Glabro’s manse was on the crest of a hill that ran down to the city gate and the road to Carbingdon. The thief sped along the cobblestones, leaping down the occasional flights of marble steps, until he came to where the road debouched into a small square. Here customs inspectors examined incoming wagons and mule trains and the watch apprehended ne’er-dowells. There were always men with weapons about.
As he entered the square, he need not look back; he could hear the ogre’s claws clicking on the stones behind him; it was closing on him. He saw the halberdiers clustered near the gate, their faces turning toward him in surprise as he raced toward them, shouting, “A monster! A monster!”
Then he saw their expressions change as the beast came into view. Raffalon had never cared for guards of any kind – their interests and those of thieves were almost always opposed – but he vowed to give a warm thought to these men as they charged their weapons and formed a resolute line – through which he passed by scrambling between their legs on hands and knees.
The halberdiers slowed the nightmare. It reared up on its hindlegs and swatted at their points, roaring and slobbering. Raffalon ran on through the gate, then paused long enough to look back. He saw a team of cannoneers reversing one of the great guns that stood behind the crenellations and depressing it to aim down into the square.
He had not gone another ten paces before he heard the boom of the weapon followed instantly by the crack of its missile exploding. After that, he heard no more roars – only a hubbub of voices as the crowd formed. Raffalon kept going; the incident of the ogre would attract inconvenient questions. He walked some miles out of the city, to where an inn stood at a crossroads, and used his gold pea to buy himself supper and a bed.