by Robert Beers
Milward held the shield until he was sure all of the debris had fallen. He looked at the moat-like rent Adam's shaping had torn out of the earth. It encircled them completely and the bank that the female Garloc and her tribe had stood upon was now gone, along with the boulders he and Adam had hidden behind. The moat had to be at least twenty yards deep. Wisps of steam curled up from the bottom.
He combed his free hand through his hair. “I knew you were strong, lad, but ... balls! Adam! Are you hurt? Did any of their blood touch you?”
Adam was staggering and clutching his side. He turned toward Milward. His face had gone white and sweat ran down his cheeks. “M ... my side.”
“Let me see.” Milward gently lifted Adam's hand away from his side. The hand was smeared with blood, and the tear in his tunic was wet, a dark stain spread beyond its edges.
“This may hurt, lad, but I have to make sure.” He undid the frogs on the tunic front, and then pulled the shirt tail out of the trousers as gently as he could. Adam hissed with pain. “Easy, lad, easy.”
He lifted the shirt away from Adam's wound and examined it closely with a small shaping, and watched the results.
“What ... are ... you ... doing?” Adam's voice was tight with pain.
“Wait a bit.” The wizard's voice was muffled. “Ah. Good.” He straightened and wiped his hand on his robe. “It looks like you were struck by a stone from that explosion you caused. Not a chunk of Garloc, as I feared.”
“Lucky me.” Adam grunted.
“You don't know how lucky!” Milward snapped. “Don't you remember what I told you about their blood? Blowing up an entire tribe. Balls, boy! What were you thinking?”
“I didn't want to be eaten.”
“He didn't want to be eaten!” Milward addressed the universe. “You need to be taught ... what's this?” He stooped to pick up a folded parchment.
“That's mine.” Adam took it from Milward's hand. “...and Charity's.” He looked at the parchment. He'd carried it all this way and hadn't really thought about it much. Like his rock, it was a part of his routine. Get dressed, slip the parchment into his shirt, make sure the amulet is secure on his neck, greet the day.
He handed it back to Milward. “No, you should see it. Charity and I really didn't understand much of it.”
Milward unfolded the parchment and his eyes widened slightly, but he made no sound. Adam saw his lips move, and then, “...I have provided clothing and coin, as much as I can...” He looked at Adam, “Do you realize whom this is from?”
“The signature says he was a king.”
“Not a king, Adam.” Milward's tone softened. “The King. Labad ruled the land for a thousand years as their King, their teacher and their guide into civilization. He was the one the Dragons trusted enough to come to his call during the magik war. It was Labad who saved the Dwarves from extinction, and he was chief in the council that planned and succeeded in driving the Sorcerer Gilgafed into exile. His vision, his prophecy, is the central theme in the studies of nearly every culture in the land. Some have spent their lives searching for it. The earliest copies are valued as treasures equal to that of chests of gold, and I stand here now ... holding the one, the original, penned by Labad himself.”
Adam pushed his hand against the wound in his side. Whatever Milward had done helped, but it was still sore, and he could feel it bleeding.
“...All this I have seen. All this I have written. Labad, Philosopher King, Lord of the Western Lands.”
“I couldn't read it very well. Labad must have had terrible penmanship.” Adam looked over Milward's shoulder at the parchment.
“Some believe it was the writing instrument rather than his penmanship.” Milward's voice was small.
“What?”
“It's nothing. How's your side lad?”
“It's still bleeding.”
“Hmm. Must be deeper than it looked. I'll prepare a poultice of Alum and Willit. That should help the bleeding and the soreness, for a while at least, but I think you're going to need some sewing done on you.”
“Milward.”
“Yes, lad?”
“I'm sorry. I tried to control it better, but I didn't know what to do. All I could feel was this pressure. I didn't know what was going to happen.”
The wizard stopped his preparations and looked up at Adam. “No, no need to apologize. If there's any of that to be done, it should be me doing it. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. Of course you didn't know what was going to happen. You'd never done it before.” He bent his head and continued mixing the poultice.
Adam could smell the sharpness of the Alum. “Did the others have that problem. When they were learning, I mean?”
Milward choked back a laugh and it came out as a cough. “No, usually they started at a smaller scale.” Like a pebble to your mountain, he thought.
“Oh.” Adam looked down as Milward applied the poultice. “That helps. Thanks.”
“All part of the calling, my boy.” Milward said briskly. He brushed his hands against one another, whisking away the Alum and Willit residue and picked up his staff. “Shall we continue our journey?” He held out the parchment to Adam.
Adam took only the letter leaving the prophecy in the Wizard's hand.
Milward looked at his hand. “I don't understand.”
Adam tucked the letter back inside his shirt. “Labad wrote the letter to Charity and me personally, but he wrote the prophecy for everyone. I think you should keep it. I'm sure it means a lot more to you than it does to me.”
Milward stood still, looking at the prophecy of Labad in his hand. The boy had given it to him as if he were giving a friend a toy they'd admired. The import of the moment swelled over him like a wave of destiny, and he felt another piece of the prophecy fall into place. He turned his gaze to Adam. “I ... don't know what to say but ... thank you, Adam. You have given me the greatest treasure I could receive.”
Adam felt his side. The wound was numb, and he could feel the Alum tightening the wound, slowing the bleeding. He readjusted his pack and began to step forward, then stopped.
“What's wrong?” Milward sounded worried.
Adam laughed bitterly. “I forgot something. How do we get across?” He waved at the expanse encircling them.
Milward looked in the direction of Adam's gesture. “Yes, I suppose that could present a problem.”
The moat created by Adam's shaping went down over sixty feet, and was far too wide to be jumped.
“A problem, that is, to anyone but me.” He motioned to Adam with his free hand. “Stand back a little, if you can please. Thank you.” The wizard raised his arms and held them straight, away from his side. “Try to feel what I do, lad. This is an example of control and direction in a shaping. Close your eyes and try to picture what you feel in your mind.”
Adam closed his eyes and tried to do as Milward asked. At first his mind jumped around, with random thoughts and images paying brief visits, and then moving on. He forced himself to settle down and consciously quieted his mind.
He began to notice a pressure, but this one was outside his head. He worked to bring it into focus and as its presence became stronger he sensed a direction. The pressure was in front of him on the ground and it was extending away from his feet. He opened his eyes while trying to keep a hold of what he sensed in his mind. He saw Milward with his arms stretched out to either side. Small energy discharges crackled through his hair and around his staff. At his feet was a glowing sheet of ... something. It stretched out in front of him, reaching for the other side of the moat. Adam could feel its growth as it closed in on the opposite side of the trench.
“You feel it, Adam?” Milward's voice showed the strain he was under.
“I do. It's like a pressure I feel outside my body.”
“Eh? Well, everyone's different. At least they were back when there were more of us.” He lowered his arms and stepped to the side. “After you, my boy.”
Adam stepping onto the glo
wing sheet and tested it to see if it would hold his weight.
Milward urged him on. “I don't make bridges that break. Get along, now.”
Adam put his full weight onto the sheet. It was as rigid as stone. He readjusted his pack once more and crossed over to the other side. The wizard followed.
“Now, pay close attention.” Milward turned to face his bridge. “I'm going to remove the shaping, but I'm going to do it slowly so you can follow the process. Remember that feeling of pressure.”
Adam nodded and reached out of himself with his mind. The feeling of pressure was there along with a sense of shape. It was as if he could see a faint outline in his head; the edges of it glowed.
Milward said, “Now...” And he felt the pressure reverse, like a push becoming a pull. The outline in his head began to shorten and then it was gone.
Adam shook his head as if waking out of a trance. He looked down and Milward's bridge was gone. He looked into Milward's eyes. They twinkled with self-satisfaction. “It was as if you sucked it back into yourself.”
“I did.” The wizard put his arm around Adam's shoulders. “One of the things you need to understand about Wizardry, my boy, is that the magik you use comes from within you just as much as it does from without.”
“I'm not sure I follow you.”
Milward nodded and stooped to pick up a rock. “This pebble. Do you know what it is made of?”
“No...”
Milward looked at the pebble and then he grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “Frankly, neither do I, but what holds together, whatever this little rock is made up of, is magik. As a Wizard, you have the ability to tap into that magik, amplify it and join it with your own. That is the power behind the shapings you choose to do.”
“So ... you pulled the magik of the bridge back into you ... t o save power?”
“Marvelous deduction my boy! That is exactly why I did it that way. Creating a shaping uses power. If you create one that uses too much power, it can weaken you substantially even if you are able to draw some of the magik back. If you create a shaping that cannot be drawn back, such as the one you did back there, and it uses too much of your magik ... it could kill you.”
“Then why don't I feel tired?”
Because you are so flicking strong. Milward did not give voice to the thought as he walked alongside Adam. He passed off the question lightly. “Just as everyone has their own way of sensing magik in use, they also have their own levels of strength. You didn't exceed yours, that's all.”
“Oh. Did you know this King Labad?”
“Not personally. I did sit on the council that he called to overthrow Gilgafed, but I was one of the junior members.”
“Were you the Wizard who began the fight with Gilgafed?”
“No, I hadn't been born then. And no, I don't know which Wizard helped start the magik war. As far as Labad, I know he was born a commoner in the West, had a rather uneventful childhood, and discovered his gift, as most do, near the end of his adolescence.”
“Like me.”
“Like you. Now, as to how he became King...”
* * * *
The Alpha Wolf sniffed the air. Winter was approaching; it was time to take the pack to the grotto.
* * * *
“...and that is how Labad became King of the entire land.” Milward finished his tale just as they came to the lip of a grotto. It was encircled on three sides by the sheer cliffs of the eastern plateau. A narrow passage, only as wide as two carts driving side by side, was the way out to the wide plains of the eastern lands. The path ended at the drop off.
Adam looked into the grotto as he digested the Wizard's tale. According to Milward, King Labad could have commanded the cliffs to form a staircase and they would have. He thought there was most likely an element of exaggeration in what Milward had been telling him over the hours of their journey from where they escaped the Garloc cook pot to here, but he felt too kindly toward the old Wizard to tell him so.
He tested the lip of the cliff with his toe. A small cascade of dirt and pebbles tumbled into the grotto a hundred feet or more below. “How do we get down there from here?”
Milward didn't answer, he stood there leaning on his staff and looking at Adam with a grumpy expression.
Adam looked back at him. “What?”
Milward said, “Well?”
“Huh?”
“Frog droppings! Do I have to drag it out of you?”
“Drag what out of me?” Adam was completely perplexed. Milward's mood could change on a whim. This was a side he and Charity hadn't seen the time they stayed with him.
“I suppose I do.” The Wizard muttered to himself. “What did you think of my tale?”
Adam blinked. “Oh, that!” He considered his choice of words. In many ways Milward had a touchy vanity and Adam wanted to avoid another blowup like what happened after his explosive shaping. “There's a lot to think on there ... I'd like to have some time to mull it over. King Labad did so much that I'd have a difficult time imagining half of it. I do have to say you told it well, though. A lot better than the storytellers that used to come around our village.”
“Hmmph.” Milward looked at him through his eyebrows for a second, wondering if the lad really didn't know it was he in his guise of Nought, and then his expression cleared. “I imagine I did, at that. Now, as to how we get down there from here, I believe there is a way. Over there, if I remember correctly.” He pointed to a large Pine off to Adam's left, and continued talking they walked over to the tree. “You should find a narrow stair cut into the cliff face; it's quite steep as I recall.”
“I found it.” Adam called from behind the tree. “You're right, it's steep. Are you sure you can make it down?”
“Don't worry about me, lad.” Milward walked over to where Adam stood and looked down the stair. It twisted back upon itself, as he remembered, and was more of a ladder than stair in its steepness.
“There's a lot more life in these old bones than you may think. Are you sure you can make it?”
Adam shifted his backpack and looked at the climb waiting for him. It was very steep. “I guess there's only one way to be sure.”
Milward affixed his staff into its holder on his back. “I'll be right behind you, my boy.”
Adam stepped onto the ledge that led into the stair and began his descent. He found it easier to go down backwards like climbing down a ladder, except this ladder was made of stone, and had a switch back every fifteen feet or so. Milward waited until Adam was a good half dozen steps below him and then started down. He chose to face outward as he descended. Adam had to admit he'd been wrong again about the old Wizard. Milward appeared to be handling the stair better than he was. He was even whistling a tune as they climbed down to the grotto floor. It had a minor key with a unique octave shift that gave it a jaunty feel. Adam felt his spirits lift as they descended with the tune in the background. He also found himself using the beat of the music as timing for his steps. Before he realized it, they were in the grotto, looking back up at the cliffs.
Milward stood next to him, leaning again on his staff. “They are high, aren't they?”
“Do they have a name?”
“No. This is Wolf territory. The wolves have no names for anything except when they use one for our benefit. They know who they are and where they are. For them, that's enough.”
Adam looked around warily. “There are wolves here?”
Milward looked disgusted. “Oh, settle down! Wolves are peaceful and simple. On the whole, they are a matter of fact, straightforward people, and highly intelligent, in their own way. You've more danger from your neighbor's bad-tempered dog.”
“Intelligent? But you said first they were simple.”
Milward settled onto his staff, a pose Adam had come to learn meant, I'm going to lecture you, so you'd better listen. “You misunderstood the term. Simple, in the way I said it, means to be without guile. Wolves will never lie to you, and they will never break their wor
d, in fact, there is no word in the wolf language for a lie.”
“Uh, excuse me. Wolves have a language?”
“Of course they do. What do you think I've been talking about?”
Adam smirked. “Sometimes I'm not entirely sure.”
“Don't be snide. I said wolves have a language and I'm going to teach it to you. Don't interrupt me; I've a lot to do, and too little time to do it in. Sit down there.” Milward indicated a fallen pine that had long ago lost its branches and nearly all of its bark.
Adam shrugged off his pack and sat down on the log.
Milward stood in front of him and bent over to take hold of his head. “Now, look into my eyes.” His tone of voice said he would not take no for an answer. “Good. Don't try to follow what I say, just listen. And don't lose contact with my eyes.”
For Adam, the rest of the world grayed away. Milward began to talk to him, but the words sounded strange. He could feel the pressure of a shaping, but it seemed to be all around the grotto, and diffuse in nature like a wispy fog. His head began to spin, and he desperately wanted to blink, but he pushed the desire away and kept his eyes on Milward's. The wizard's voice droned on and on and on.
“There. That should do it young pup.” Milward took his hands away from Adam's head.
“I be no pup, gray muzzle.”
“Oh? You be ready for the hunt then?”
“Show me the path of blood, pack leader. I... What am I saying?” Adam stepped back and shook his head. It ... felt full ... of something ... and there was a whopper of a headache forming up, as well.
Milward smiled. “That was Wolfen. It's my name for the language. Search your new knowledge. Tell me if you can find a name for the tongue in there.”
Adam sifted through the new knowledge in his skull, and then went through it once more. Not only could he not find a name for language, he couldn't find what he would really consider a name for anything.
“Can't find one, can you?”
Adam shook his head. The headache was getting worse and his stomach was beginning to get queasy.
“Oh, by the way, you're going to feel a little sick for a while.”