The Galactic Mage

by John Daulton

  He climbed out of bed, his head a bit sore from last night’s effort, and ran back up to the battlements to make sure he’d properly stored the Liquefying Stone. He had. That was a relief. He was taking great pains to make sure his habits with the dangerous little rock were safe ones and becoming reflexively so.

  Satisfied that all was right on the tower top, it was time to address the gnawing in his stomach. He hadn’t eaten properly in a while and he was famished. Judging from the position of the sun, moving steadily down towards the horizon, he might be just in time for supper. He ran down the stairs, taking them three at a time, and soon emerged in the large dining hall where dinner was always served and quite despite his being absent from it at least half the time.

  The chamber was huge and high-ceilinged, fit for a banquet with at least five hundred guests, but spider webs in the rafters high above spoke to the frequency of such events, and one could smell the musty scent of age clinging to the ancient tapestries hanging along the walls if the cobwebs were not evidence enough. Tytamon no longer felt compelled to entertain.

  The weathered old sorcerer was already seated at the end of a table that was far too long for one man alone. Altin headed towards him eagerly, bare feet slapping audibly on the flagstones as he jogged, the sound echoing up into the cavernous shadows above and sending spiders scuttling for crevices amongst the oaken beams.

  “Good evening, young Altin,” greeted Tytamon as his apprentice took a chair to the aged magician’s right, sitting before a plate, silverware, goblet and napkin that were all in place, set, as always, in expectation of his irregular appearance. Places for both magicians were set every night, waiting, always the same, and the servants had no end of complaining about how often neither of them arrived. Many a great meal had gone to waste in waiting for these two to come downstairs to eat.

  “Good evening,” Altin replied, sparing no time in spearing a slice of mutton from a wooden tray with his fork. He stabbed a second slice, and with equal disregard for formalities, he added, “I finally did it. I put a seeing stone on the moon.”

  “Really?” said Tytamon, sounding genuinely impressed around a mouthful of boiled carrots and pouring wine from a bronze decanter into Altin’s cup. “So you pulled it off at last. The Liquefying Stone has made the difference we hoped it would?”

  “Entirely so.”

  “That’s splendid news. Splendid news, indeed. A first for Kurr. A first for the world. You should be very proud.”

  Altin nodded and stuffed an enormous chunk of mutton into his mouth, chewing ravenously.

  “So what did you see? Are the stories true? Did you see the satyrs and the Never Ending Dance?”

  Altin snorted, his mouth too full to laugh. He gulped his food, masticating just enough to choke it down. “Hardly,” he said. “There’s nothing up there. It’s desert. All desert, I’m almost sure. I need to spend more time exploring it, but I’m fairly certain there’s actually nothing going on up there at all.”

  “Really? Nothing? Wouldn’t that be a terrible shame.”

  “I’m sure the Church will be annoyed.”

  “No doubt about that. You’ll want to be careful how you let that information out. No sense causing a ruckus just on the heels of such a momentous accomplishment.”

  Altin almost spat. “I’m not one for politics, Master. Perhaps I’ll leave the announcements up to you.”

  “Well, I’m happy to deal with the Queen and her court, but the press is up to you.”

  “Well, we just won’t tell them, will we?”

  Tytamon laughed. “The greatest diviners in all the land don’t find things out as fast as some of those journalists do.”

  “That’s what happens when you have no magic, I suppose. Blanks. I imagine it beats digging ditches though. Getting paid to snoop on others must be easier than having real work to do.”

  Tytamon grew momentarily stern. “You know little enough of real work, young man, and much less of the lives of blanks. You’ll do well to not harbor such contempt for the decent, common folk of this land. It’s those people upon whose hard work and success this nation is built and dating back long before the Magical Revolution came along.”

  Altin lowered his face to his plate so that Tytamon could not see him roll his eyes. “Yes, sir,” he said as he took another bite. The man was such a mood killer.

  Tytamon resumed the previous line of conversation and prodded Altin’s enthusiasm quickly back to life. “So what are you going to do after exploring Luria some more? What next?”

  “Well, I think to begin I’m going to go up there myself. The Liquefying Stone seems to have a really nasty effect of exhausting me, even though I don’t quite feel it coming on. I think I’d rather teleport up and then do the rest of the exploration from there. I can teleport around without the stone, use my normal magic, and maybe get a lot more done. I’d rather not sleep entire days away if I don’t have to. The Liquefying Stone does not come without a cost.”

  “This is very true,” agreed Tytamon. “However, you do get more and more used to it as you go along. It’s rather like the warriors who exercise at lifting rocks. The more rocks they lift and the heavier ones they choose, the stronger they become. Working your mythothalamus with the Liquefying Stone can have a similar effect. To a point.” He punctuated this last with a flourish of his fork, sending a bit of meat soaring half the distance to Altin’s plate.

  “Why don’t we use them all the time, then?” Altin asked. “It seems silly to leave such an important tool buried in a dusty old room.”

  “It’s because of the dwarves. Because of Duador.”

  “You mean Melane Montclaire used the Liquefying Stone to summon the demons on Duador? Is that why there were so many?”

  “No. But that is why the stone cannot be used at all. If man or, admittedly, man and elf, could do such a monstrous thing as what was done to the dwarves without the use of the stone, think what could be done with it? Think of it, Altin. You are young, but you understand the many hearts of men. You’ve read the histories of the ancient empires. Can you imagine Korgon the Beast or, worse, the terrible Cerrina Coldfist having access to one of those little yellow gems?”

  Altin nodded as he accreted a stack of carrots on his fork in a series of successive stabs. “Another ice age. I can see it now.”

  “Exactly.”

  They ate in silence for a time, both matching the names of various villains through the ages with the atrocities they might better have been able to commit with help from the Liquefying Stone. It was a sobering thing to contemplate.

  “So why did you give one of them to me?” Altin asked after a time. “That seems rather risky, really, now that I think about it.”

  “Because I know you well enough to know....” He let the sentence trail off.

  “To know what?”

  “I just know you.”

  “Did you divine it? Have you already seen? So you know I won’t go mad?

  Tytamon was silent. Altin watched the man eat. Almost eight hundred years and yet some things remained impossible to hide.

  “You did divine it, didn’t you? So what did you see? What happens? Was it clear enough to tell?”

  “It was like they always are, Altin. Vague. Suggestions. Images that, as usual, tend only to mean something after the event has passed.”

  “That’s a deflection if I ever heard one. Look, if I’m going to die because of the stone, I’m fine with it. I’ve resigned myself to it. You know what they say about Sixes.”

  “I thought you weren’t a Six.”

  Altin laughed. “I’m not. I’m just trying to get you to tell me what you saw.”

  Tytamon laughed too, but his expression mellowed just as quickly as the mirth had come. “Mostly blackness, Altin. That was all.”

  “Well, of course you saw blackness,” Altin replied, taking another bite, as if relieved. “I’m traveling into a vast and awesome night. What else would you see? You’re divination simply gave you a gli
mpse into the sky.”

  “Perhaps,” said Tytamon. “But I didn’t see any stars.”

  “Divination is always short on details,” Altin countered quickly.

  “Spoken like a mage who’s never cast the school.”

  “I’m blank there, why would I?”

  “You said yourself that your being blank in that school defies the laws of circularity.”

  Altin groaned, fearing another debate about his Six-ness coming in the wake of Tytamon’s dark divination. “Well, I’m not going to kill myself, so your spell probably meant something else. Maybe I’ll get the plague and die, and the Liquefying Stone can just go back downstairs.” He stuffed another huge chunk of mutton into his mouth, chewed it quickly and then added, “It’s not like I don’t have the rodents in my room to catch plague from anyway.”

  “You have rats in your tower?”

  “Just a mouse.” He swallowed and took a drink of wine. “Just one. I’ll get him. I was trying to make a joke.”

  Tytamon recognized a subject change when he saw one and took the cue. He was not in the mood for an argument with the boy either. Altin could be easily brought to ire some nights. Once more he returned the conversation to the moon.

  “So, you’re planning on going up there yourself soon, eh? What is that going to entail?”

  Altin finished off another bite of meat before replying, washing it down with wine. “I have a few things to do first. I reckon it’s as hot as Taot’s breath up there; the sun looms huge in the sky, so I need something for that. And, perhaps paradoxically, I believe it can get very cold too. So, I’ll have to get a new fur coat, maybe mammoth skin. I don’t think I’ve worn mine in several years and I’m certain it no longer fits. Other than that, I think I’m mostly ready to go. I may make a fast-cast amulet to get me home, just in case something unexpected happens. Just as a precaution. Rather waste a night on one of those than be plagued by something that fulfills your nasty divination dream.”

  “I didn’t say it was nasty, just ambiguous. And I think a fast-cast amulet should be a requirement at the very least, if not perhaps even considering sending a surrogate explorer first.”

  “Surrogate explorer?”

  “A rabbit or a lamb. Just something before you go yourself. Something… expendable.”

  Altin chewed slowly as Tytamon finished making his point. It was a good one. Caution over speed. “You’re right,” he said at last. “You’re entirely right. I should have thought of that myself.”

  “We can’t all be geniuses,” Tytamon chided over the edge of his wine cup.

  Altin gasped and made a show of being completely taken aback. They laughed and eventually the conversation moved on to other things.

  After dinner Altin returned to his library to search within his shelves of scrolls and tomes and books. He had a lot of work to do. First, he had to find a teleport spell that would work on an unwilling target, for he assumed that whatever he sent was not likely to be too excited about going to the moon, even if it didn’t understand. Second, if he was going to protect this surrogate traveler from Luria’s raging sun and life-defying cold, he would need to find some spells that would account for that as well. A mountain of research. He definitely had a lot of work to do.

  Chapter 11

  Altin woke late the next morning after a good meal, several hours of sleep and a night’s reprieve from using the Liquefying Stone. Sometimes the body just needed time to recover, even a young body like his. He got up and after a quick wash and change of robes, prepared to go down to the goat pens to procure himself a surrogate traveler to the moon, when a motion on the table stayed his hand upon the door. The mouse was back and once again having its fill of Altin’s morning bread.

  “All right, mouse, that was your last free meal,” he said as he began the words for a minor fire spell. He conjured a tiny fireball, a miniature meteor no larger than a grape, and held it hovering above his hand. He was just about to throw it when he got another idea instead: the moon did not require a goat. Nor did it require a rabbit or a lamb. In fact, the spell that Altin had discovered in his research last night, called Teleport Other, only required a “willing subject,” an “enclosed or encapsulated subject” or, as now, “one too simple to fight against the magician’s will.” This last had come with a caveat regarding emotional states and elevated will, but this was a mouse after all; how emotional could it possibly be? And a mouse would do just as well as a goat for simplicity. Altin growled at the little beast and moved towards it with a malicious grin.

  Crouching, he circled round to a position where he would be hidden from the mouse’s view by the curve of the bread. On tiptoe, he approached as silently as he could, cursing the rustle of his robes with every step. He snuck up quietly to the bread and, hands cupped ready to pin the mouse securely to the table planks, he lunged over the top of the loaf. The mouse darted from beneath his grasp and leapt to the floor. Altin knew this game and dove to intercept. He actually caught the creature as it was about to enter into the safety of the crack, but the defiant little beast twisted in Altin’s grip and bit him on the knuckle, sinking its tiny teeth nearly to the bone.

  Altin released it with a yelp. “You little monster!” he cried as the mouse vanished safely into the hole beneath the stairs.

  “It won’t be that easy,” Altin vowed rising from the floor. “I’ll have you yet, you’ll see.” Jaw clenched, he scanned about his room for something into which he could teleport the mouse. He spotted the wine cup he’d brought up from dinner last night sitting across the room on the nightstand near his bed. That would have to do. He began chanting his familiar seeing spell. Once within the magic, he let his vision sink down onto the floor and then moved it into the dark recesses of the mouse’s hideaway.

  He snaked his vision through the passage, up and down, left and right, until at last he found the mouse resting contentedly in a tiny little chamber illuminated by a crack in the tower’s outer wall. Several bits of bread crust were strewn about the tiny lair, one of which the mouse was lazily nibbling on as Altin’s vision brought it into view. A small patch of straw in a corner revealed that the mouse had also made itself a bed, apparently intent on setting up permanent residence. Altin suddenly understood why his mattress had recently sprung a leak. He grunted at this revelation as he let the mana go; such vandalism would soon be coming to an end. Having what he needed from the seeing spell, familiarity with the place, he could now cast his newly learned teleporting spell to catch the little whiskered thief.

  Certain he was within the requisite twenty paces needed to start a teleporting loop, he began the chant that would send the mouse directly into the wine cup by his bed. He smiled grimly, efficiency in action; he would capture the rodent and get a practice run with the spell prior to a Lurian attempt—forked lightning splits two trolls, as they say.

  Having spent the night studying the spell, it was fresh enough in his mind to come off without a hitch, and after a few gestures and a brief dip into the mana stream, Altin teleported the mouse from its nest directly to the cup of wine. And it was to wine that it went, for apparently Altin had not finished his libation last night. The mouse suddenly found itself nearly drowning in several inches of the alcoholic beverage and, quite baffled, began to flounder about, squeaking dreadfully in the panic of its plight.

  Altin released the mana as he uttered the last word of the spell and quickly ran to the cup, intending to cover it with a book from the shelf above before the mouse could scramble out. But upon arriving at his nightstand, he discovered the mouse in desperate circumstances indeed. He actually felt a moment’s pity for the rodent as he watched it struggle in the wine, its little paws scrabbling desperately at the slick brass sides of the goblet, grasping for a hold while its hind legs kicked furiously to keep its head above the surface of the wine. Picking up the cup, Altin went to the window and, covering the cup with his hand, poured off the liquid so that the mouse was no longer forced to paddle for its life. It was not his
intention to torture the pesky thing, merely to send it to the moon.

  Once the cup was empty, Altin righted it and moved back towards his bed planning once more to place a book atop the goblet, but the mouse, wet and squishy now, and with dry “land” from which to launch itself, began bouncing off his palm in an attempt to leap out and escape. Over and over it leapt, determined at all costs to break through Altin’s palm and run for the freedom of its hole and becoming more and more agitated as moments passed, squeaking hysterically, and beating itself into a frenzy against the cup and Altin’s hand. Altin began to worry if this was the “emotional state” that the spell description in his book suggested could give a target an “elevated” and spell-denying “will.”

  The soggy mouse was remarkably strong for its size, and as it continued to leap for freedom, the thought came to Altin that had the wine cup been empty, he might not have caught his prey at all. The mouse would easily have jumped out and run off before Altin could have gotten to the nightstand and grabbed a book. Imagine having been twice outwitted by a mouse, and in a single day. How humiliating to even contemplate. He also realized that now, in the time it was going to take him to replace his hand with a book, the mouse might still leap out and get away. The little crumb raider continued to keep him at something of an impasse.

  But then the mouse began to slow, its leaps becoming less and less frequent, its squeaks less piteous, until at length the mouse no longer moved inside the cup at all. Altin chanced a glimpse between his fingers to see if the little biter had finally given up. It had.