“Thank you, good sir,” said Thaddeus, taking the beer and sipping it. As far as he could tell, it was simply beer, with nothing added to it to insult or harm him. “Though forgive my asking, and my curiosity. Why the change of heart?”
The bartender shrugged. “Nothing in particular, sir. Sometimes you meet a man, and the first thing you do is despise him, often with no good reason. And out here, even in this new age, a man can’t be too careful of strangers.”
A shot glass appeared next to the beer, filled with what Thaddeus could only guess to be whiskey. “And you, sir, you appear to be the good sort of chap after all,” the bartender continued. “A bit down on your luck, perhaps, but that’s nothing new out here. I would like to hear your story. Call it curiosity.”
Thaddeus had recovered from his initial shock and had relaxed a bit. Taking another sip of beer, he said, “I’m not really sure where to begin . . .”
“You could start with your name.”
Thaddeus chuckled. “Fair enough. Thaddeus Wohltat, at your service. Though I doubt I could provide you much service these days. Originally from Philadelphia, I came here to Colorado to make my fortune. What came after that, you’ve likely heard many times. Fickle investors, unscrupulous partners, and claim jumpers have left me with nothing but the coins on your bar and a train ticket back to Philadelphia.”
Thaddeus paused and ventured to take a sip of the whiskey. It burned, but not in an altogether unpleasant way. “After tomorrow, I’ll have neither of those. I’ll return home and, if any luck remains with me after this, return to work at my old profession.”
“And what might that be?” asked the bartender.
“A magician,” answered Thaddeus quietly. “Earth Magician.”
Those four words did what his entrance and the bartender’s generosity completely failed to do; the other patrons stirred and murmured, two of them getting up and leaving the saloon entirely. Thaddeus couldn’t help but notice the disturbance, and glanced up at the bartender to see if the old man’s generosity would vanish as quickly as it had appeared.
The bartender’s next words were cautious, but not hostile. “Don’t get many of your kind around here, these days.”
Thaddeus nodded carefully. “Indeed, fewer choose to follow the path of magic with every passing year. I’m certainly not the first seeking to find his fortune by locating and collecting the elements of the earth. Magicians are not immune to the desire for wealth, after all.”
“And you thought Colorado could use another Elemental Master, did you?” asked the bartender sourly.
Thaddeus shook his head. “Oh, I’m no Master. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I know the ways of only a few spells. I managed to conjure an Elemental only once, a very small one, and even then could not control it and had to beg my colleagues to unbind it for me. A total disaster, that was.”
Thaddeus threw caution to the wind and drank down the entire shot of whiskey. “And my one talent,” he continued in a raspy voice, “the one thing I am good at, that I thought could help me find my fortune . . . worthless. No one cares. Gold and silver, that’s all these people care about. All the wonders of the earth, and that’s all they want. Gold and silver. Bah!”
“What would that be?” asked the bartender, his curiosity getting the better of him, “Your talent, that is.”
“Quartz.”
“Beg your pardon?”
Thaddeus took a deep breath and looked the old man unsteadily. “Quartz, my good man. I have the ability to sense, locate and identify any type and quality of quartz. No other magician in living memory has made that claim!” He took a long sip of his beer and muttered, “Of course, now I have a pretty good idea why no one has . . .”
The bartender looked a bit confused. “Yeah, no wonder you went broke. Why would anyone want the stuff?”
“WHY WOULD—” Thaddeus coughed and flustered. “It has plenty of uses! Quartz can harness the energy of the earth for use in a multitude of spells of any element. And it has uses for ordinary folk, as well. It is used for fine jewelry, cut crystals in many colors of the rainbow.” He pointed a slightly unsteady finger at the bartender. “And did you know . . . they’re even using it in the latest phonographs!”
The bartender raised an eyebrow. “I’ll take your word for it, sir,” he said, pulling away the empty shot glass and barely touched beer. After a moment’s pause, he added, “So that’s really it for you, then? Giving up this search for your fortune in quartz, not doing any more of your magic in these parts?”
Thaddeus nodded. “Completely done, old boy. Come this time tomorrow, I’ll have nothing left of Colorado but the dust on my clothes. I’ll have said farewell to the Rocky Mountains.”
There was a lengthy pause after this proclamation. The bartender broke the silence by refilling the shot glass, drawing a fresh beer and sliding both in front of Thaddeus. There was an unusually large smile on the old man’s face as he said, “All the best to you then, Thaddeus Wohltat. Here’s to leaving nothing but memories that’ll fade, and to magicians who know where their place in this world is.”
* * *
When Thaddeus awoke, it was with a sudden jolt that had him sitting upright in his seat without a hint of grogginess. He didn’t know what caused it. There was nothing he could recall dreaming that would have startled him, and there was no danger from his surroundings. In fact, he was completely alone in the saloon he’d wandered into the evening before.
Thinking back, he tried to recall exactly how much he’d had to drink. It wasn’t enough to cause him any discomfort, but obviously enough to make him unable to find a proper bed. He was also aware that he had other matters to attend to that were more important. Namely, he had a train to catch, and he had no idea what time it was.
Thaddeus stood up and made a tidy pile of the bottles and papers scattered around him on the bar as a small courtesy to the owner. Making his way outside, he looked up and saw that the sun had only just cleared the mountains. Thaddeus was relieved that he hadn’t lost much of the morning. Still, he wasted no time in wrapping his thin coat tightly around him to ward off the morning chill and walking briskly toward the train station.
Even though the town was small, it still took Thaddeus a few minutes to reach the station, as it was almost on the opposite end from the saloon. As he arrived, it was clear that there were no trains there. He didn’t know if this meant he was early or late, since there were no clocks to be seen. He approached the ticket booth and cleared his throat to get the clerk’s attention.
“Beg your pardon sir, do you have the time?”
The clerk glanced up from his newspaper. “Haven’t you got a watch?”
Thaddeus sighed. “I do, but at the moment it’s at a pawn shop in Buena Vista. So it doesn’t do me much good.”
The clerk scoffed and returned to his paper. “Quarter past nine,” he said, paying Thaddeus no more attention.
Thaddeus’ shoulders slumped. He had missed his train after all. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance the #34 to Denver is running late this morning?” he asked.
“Train arrived and left spot on time, sir,” answered a new voice behind him.
Thaddeus turned around and tried to look less startled than he was. The rugged man needed no introduction; the brass star pinned to his chest said it all. That alone wasn’t what startled Thaddeus. It was the fact that the sheriff’s hand was resting on the grip of his pistol, ready to draw.
“If you had been on it, there’d be a heap of trouble going down the telegraph line and waiting for you at the next stop.”
Thaddeus blinked and found it hard to swallow. “What trouble have I caused, sheriff?” he asked nervously. “I can’t recall anything I’ve done against the law . . .”
The sheriff shook his head and replied, “You haven’t done anything yet. But if you were on that
train, you would have. It means you would have left town with an outstanding debt, and although that might not mean much to you city folk, it means quite a bit out here.”
“N-no . . .” stammered Thaddeus, “I get the meaning, and I’ve done everything I can to settle my accounts before leaving. I’m just at a loss as to whom I owe, sir.”
“The saloon keeper you just left,” answered the sheriff, “Seems you had quite a bit last night. I take it that you didn’t bother to read the bill he left you.”
“I—I—” Thaddeus stammered again. It seemed the bartender’s generosity was only a show. He couldn’t recall being told that he had to pay for his drinks. There had been several papers on the bar when he awoke, and it was true he hadn’t stopped to read any of them. He simply wanted to make his train and be on his way home.
“I can make good on my bill,” he said. “I just need to contact a few people first.”
The sheriff stared at Thaddeus. It wasn’t a cold stare, but it certainly didn’t have any warmth in it either. “See that you do, Mr. Wohltat. And don’t stray far from town. If you haven’t settled by sundown, you’ll be spending the next several nights in a cell. Just something for you to keep in mind.”
Thaddeus smiled as best he could and nodded to the sheriff. The smile vanished as soon as the other man was out of sight, replaced by mild panic. Thaddeus had told the lawman a complete lie. There was no one in the entire state who would give him any more money. He wasn’t even all that sure there were any on the East Coast, either.
He walked away from the train station and, like the day before, paced up and down the streets of Forest City. Every name he could think of, every claim partner he’d lost, none of them would help him out. He was sure of that.
Thaddeus found himself at the end of a road heading north into the wooded mountains. “Fitting,” he said, though there was no one there to hear him.
As he stood there, cold and alone, an answer came to him almost like a revelation. If anyone had seen the smile that crept back onto his face, they would have said it was a bit of a crazy one. Looking out at the snow covered peaks, then back at the town, and then back at the mountains, it became clear in his mind what it was he had to do.
Thaddeus ran.
* * *
By the time the sun was almost touching the western slopes, Thaddeus was completely lost and exhausted. Although he’d headed in a mostly northeastern direction, with all the steep slopes and trees in his path, he would be amazed if he had made more than ten or fifteen miles.
He long ago stopped questioning what possessed him to run in the first place. It was madness, pure and simple. A sane man would have owned up to his debt and made an arrangement to work it off. A sane man would not have run into the wilderness without any supplies nor any plan. Still, he kept running, sure that he would hear horses and gunfire behind him at any moment. The sheriff and his men would probably look for him along the roads first, but it wouldn’t take them long to realize he wasn’t on any of them and to start searching the mountains.
Thaddeus’ lungs were burning. It was the only thing that kept his mind off the numbing cold in the rest of his body—his already inadequate coat had been torn to shreds by the pine trees, so he’d abandoned it hours earlier. He vaguely hoped that someone hunting him would find it and aid in his capture. Spending several nights in a jail cell would be better than freezing to death in one night out here.
The first stars of evening were coming out now, and Thaddeus couldn’t push himself any farther. He stopped to catch his breath before facing the decision that could save his life or end it: keep going, hoping to stumble upon even the smallest sign of civilization, or find whatever shelter he could here, and hope that the early November night wouldn’t leech the last of the warmth and life from his body.
As he pondered his equally grim options, a loud crack echoed from the northeast. Thaddeus bolted upright, sure that a posse had finally caught up with him. But he didn’t hear any sounds of men or horses approaching. A moment later, there was a low rumbling and the same crack. It didn’t sound like gunfire or a mining explosion. Curiosity got the better of Thaddeus, and he headed toward the sounds.
The trees thinned out, and the ground sloped down into a valley. There were no signs that this place had ever been seen by man, though that seemed unlikely. It was 1901, after all, and prospectors had been over most of the Colorado Rockies by now.
But something else had caught Thaddeus’s attention more than the pristine beauty. There was magic here, very strong Earth magic. He could feel it throughout his numbed body. But surely, with a place this strongly steeped in Earth magic, he would have felt it, even faintly, in Forest City. So it couldn’t have been the valley itself, rather something in it that had recently appeared. When the rumble and crack repeated, he saw it.
It was a sight that took away what little breath he had regained. Down in the bowl of the valley, two great creatures were doing battle. Mesmerized by the sight, Thaddeus began to descend toward them without thinking.
The larger of the two was a giant, terrifying bull, dark and shimmering and easily three times as big as a normal bull. As Thaddeus carefully approached, he recognized the shimmering as the fading light reflecting off crystal. His senses tingled, telling him it was indeed a large beast made out of quartz. An Elemental perhaps, or a golem of some kind. He’d never heard of either being made of quartz crystal. Whatever it was, it snorted, stomped, and paced in front of its adversary, acting like a normal bull in every way.
Its adversary was as magnificent as the bull was terrifying: a stag of perfect white fur, shining with an inner radiance that was just short of blinding. It was easily twice as tall as even the largest elk any man had ever seen, but it was still clearly a creature of flesh and blood. But as Thaddeus watched only several dozen yards away, the size difference didn’t stop the stag from pressing the attack. It circled around the bull, stamped the ground, and charged.
The ground rumbled as bull and stag ran at each other, heads lowered. Thaddeus knew what would come next. The beasts collided, their horns interlocking with the same crack he’d heard before. They struggled for a moment before the bull threw its head back and sent the stag flying backward. It landed only a few yards from Thaddeus, who was rooted to the spot. The stag got to its feet, snorted and shook its head, and then prepared itself for another charge.
Thaddeus wasn’t sure what possessed him to speak just then. Just being near the white stag and in the presence of such strong Earth magic filled him with courage he had never felt before.
“Wait!” he shouted, “There, where the legs meet the torso. The two edges of crystal come together. Strike there, and the quartz will shear clean in two!”
The stag’s ears flicked back, snorting once. Thaddeus was sure that he’d been heard and understood. He would know very soon if such was the case, as the stag lowered its head, stamped the ground, and charged once more.
The bull stood its ground as before, waiting for the stag to get close. Its dark horns lowered once more, ready to meet the stag again. In the last few seconds, the bull rushed forward and the ground rumbled under its hooves. But this time instead of the loud crack of their horns meeting, the stag darted aside, ducked its head, and brought it up as hard as it could exactly where Thaddeus had told it to.
The bull reared up on its hind legs with a mighty bellow that rang throughout the valley. Just as Thaddeus had predicted, the quartz crystal of the bull’s chest split at the leg from the force of the blow. The stag had seen this, too. It ducked its head once more and then lunged up as hard as it could, driving its horns into the bull’s chest.
The roar that followed was deafening, but final. The beast fell to the ground and shattered. Tiny fragments of quartz flew everywhere, and Thaddeus panicked and threw himself face-first onto the ground with his arms over his head. But that turned out to be the least of
his worries. A few seconds after the bull fell, the ground itself began to tremble, shaking with a fury Thaddeus had never felt before. Birds for miles around took to the air and cried in alarm. The tremor lasted nearly half a minute, as if the earth were letting out its pent-up fury.
It was over as quickly as it had begun. The birds settled and the valley was quiet again. Thaddeus was alone with the stag and what remained of the bull. Thaddeus approached carefully. The stag was kneeling on the ground a few yards away from the remains; its radiance had all but died away. Its brilliant white coat was covered in gashes from the explosion of quartz crystal. Some of the shards were still embedded in its hide.
Thaddeus knelt beside the stag. His brain whirled as he tried to think of anything he could do to help. Perhaps some Earth magic that could at least lend some energy to this creature and help heal it.
The stag seemed to sense his thoughts and shook its head with a snort. It nudged Thaddeus’ hand towards the remains of the bull. Thaddeus nodded, stood up, and approached them. To his continued shock, what he saw instead of a pile of smoky quartz was a large man—seven feet tall if he was an inch, but a man nonetheless. If not for the fine robe, Thaddeus would have taken him for a simple mountain man.
The hem of the robe caught Thaddeus’ attention. The old runes and wards sewn into it told the true tale; this was no mere Earth Magician. This was an Elemental Master. And you thought Colorado could use another Elemental Master, did you? The bartender’s words came to Thaddeus clearly, and with them their true meaning.
Glancing back at the stag, he realized that he’d just witnessed nothing less than a grand battle between two Earth Masters. Not only that, but he’d helped in it. As selfish as it was, he wanted something to remember this moment by. In the fading light, Thaddeus caught a glint of gold. He looked closer and saw a chain around the Master’s neck. As he did so, his sensing talent flared up within him. There were shards of quartz all around him but this was something that stood out even from that.
Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elemental Masters Page 10