The Wizard Book

by Radu Aldea

  On the other hand, the ritual might not do anything. This could just be a waste of time. Then, she would have to go to Julia. She would be disappointed if the book contained nothing but delusional texts. This book, so treasured by generation after generation of her family, would be worthless. Somehow, that bothered her more than dying.

  “Only one way to find out. You might die! So what? Everybody dies!”

  First, she had to perform the cleansing part of the ritual. You had to clean every part of your body, to purify it. The pool was very conveniently located, but she suspected that was the reason the shrine was there. There were enough legends of how the Creuis sprang from the dry rock. Some of them spoke of the involvement of the White Goddess. Those were probably senatorial legends slipping into the popular folklore. Kara didn’t give credence to any of them.

  She took off her clothes and went in the rock pool. The water was clear and cold. She should’ve expected that. Kara started shivering almost from the moment she went in. The pool was not that deep, it only reached to her waist. The cleansing took time and you couldn’t do it in haste. She submerged until she was completely under the water.

  The cleansing ritual was not about cleaning yourself. It was about preparing yourself mentally. Kara started the cleansing while holding her breath. The shivering stopped and the numbness started to take over. She was prepared for that now. Every thought was released from her mind until she believed there was only emptiness. The quiet pool of her power came to the fore. When she thought of nothing the almost endless pool was in her mind. The connections with few other minds were also there. When she had no thoughts the thoughts of others were with her. She was never alone. Not unless she broke every connection she had with humans. Those connections tied her to the world. Break them and she would be isolated.

  Submerged under the cold water she understood her power better. It was deep and calm and it had to be used. Not using it would lead to madness and the destruction of the mind from inside. She thought she controlled it and in a way had perfect control, refined over most of her life. In another way it was uncontrollable, wild and hungry. It only seemed calm.

  Kara came out for air. The new understanding of her power troubled her. She knew she had never tapped into the wild part of it, which was imprisoned by her iron will. She was on the brink of a revelation. It was waiting just beyond her reach. She continued the cleansing.

  When she was done she got out of the rock pool and grabbed a dagger. She didn’t bother dressing, she was just numb and no longer cold, and went to the sacrificial stone. Without hesitation she cut her left palm and let the blood drip on the stone. She didn’t cut very deep and she hoped it was enough. She started reciting the incantation.

  The words of the incantation didn’t matter. They just helped with focusing on her power. To make this work she had to achieve a deeper understanding of it. This was instinctive, nowhere in the book was it mentioned, but she didn’t think it would be. If she had written a book like that she would’ve done the same thing. Keep it vague and don’t make it easy for anyone to achieve their goal. The ritual represented the means and not the purpose.

  Performing the ritual successfully could give someone a lot of power and nobody wanted that kind of knowledge to fall into the wrong hands. There were also many dangers the supplicant had to navigate. Kara knew the risks. Even if the ritual went perfectly, there still wasn’t any guarantee she would achieve her goal. And the ritual didn’t seem to be working.

  Kara watched the blood drop on the stone in slow motion. She heard herself recite the incantation. Her power stirred. The calm pool was hit by a storm. The will that imprisoned the wild side of the power collapsed and it was now free. Her power was a conduit for her will or a representation of it. It had always been that for her and every other senator. The will was a result of both reason and emotion. Yet the only part of her will she used when she unleashed the senatorial power was the controlled, rational part. That was her training, every senator’s training, otherwise they could not control it. And now the emotional component of her power, which had been locked for so long, was free. It exploded and was searching for a mind to make a different kind of connection. Her intuition said this connection was unique and the distance between the two minds didn’t matter. The power found the other mind and made the link. It was so beautiful she was speechless and it wasn’t even completed yet.

  Kara collapsed on the wet ground. For a moment panic gripped her and the thought she had failed angered her. It was so unfair because it looked as if she had been successful. She had created something unseen and unique and no one would know. She hit the ground.

  Kara opened her eyes. She had been unconscious and she didn’t have any idea for how long. Soft grass touched her skin. She got up and looked around. This place was so beautiful, almost magical. And she definitely wasn’t anywhere near the shrine. That proved it. She was dead and she had gone to the afterlife. She was in a meadow and a beautiful woman was smiling at her. The stranger seemed to be shining. She was all dressed in white except for the breastplate and the helmet that were brilliant silver. A white wolf was at her side. A round shield and a spear were on the grass. Kara recognized her immediately. How could she not? The woman was always represented this way. That’s how she knew she was truly dead. Death didn’t seem so bad, but she had hoped she would live long enough to avenge her father.

  “Well, I have to say I’ve never thought you were real. Yes, I prayed to you, but I’ve never truly believed. That shows what a fool I have been.”

  “You are not a fool, you are my beloved daughter. It matters not that you don’t believe in me. Your actions make me proud. Who you are makes me proud.”

  “You honor me, White Goddess, by bringing me here and with those words. This place is so beautiful. I have gained such insight into my power only to die a moment later. I regret that.”

  “Who says you are dead and you have failed?”

  “Well, I’m in the afterlife and not at your shrine and I don’t feel my power or my connections to the humans. I am pretty sure I am dead.” Kara had known her power was gone the moment she opened her eyes. She felt strange without it.

  “I am the White Goddess. Don’t you think I could bring you here in a blink of an eye?”

  Kara guessed that could be true. This was a goddess after all, so she didn’t know what to say. She had hope, again. Maybe she wasn’t dead and she was really glad.

  “You have not failed, Kara. In fact, you have succeeded. This is the last part of the ritual, receiving my blessing. You did read about it, didn’t you?”

  Again, Kara didn’t know what to say. The White Goddess was right, so she nodded.

  “This connection you have created holds danger for you. If it is broken, it may leave emptiness in your soul you will attempt all your life to fill and you may never succeed.”

  “I know! If it’s broken I may not create another one again.”

  “It is almost impossible to perform the ritual successfully a second time. Fear and the loss of the first one will stop you. I hope you had chosen well and you won’t have to attempt it a second time. Your power is now balanced in a way that has not been seen in a long time.”

  “You mean the ritual was performed successfully before?”

  “It has a few times. It didn’t start as a ritual, it started with a senator who balanced her power and was looking for a different kind of connection. She explained how it was done to her descendants and they recorded it in your book as a ritual. I have to ask something from you.”

  “Anything!”

  “The world is unbalanced. You must bring balance back to the world.”

  “I don’t understand. Do you want me to teach other senators to balance their power?”

  “Alas no! The senatorial power works the way it does for a reason. Only few of my children can manage it and control their power afterwards. The world is unbalanced.”

  “I still don’t understand! Please tell me exactl
y what you want me to do.”

  “You will! This has to be this way. My requests are always voiced in a way that won’t affect your free will. Let your sense of right and wrong guide you. You are my beloved daughter. You have my blessing. Now it is time for you to wake up.”

  Kara opened her eyes. She was lying naked on the wet ground in front of the stone altar and was shivering again. The ritual was complete, her power felt strange in a way and although the pool of it in her mind was no longer calm, there wasn’t a storm either and she was still in control. Now it was time for her to get dressed and return to the camp.

  Chapter thirteen

  Michael set the tents and decided not to start a fire. He knew the reasons it was a bad idea. Smoke can be seen from far away even in the mountains and fire left traces that were difficult to hide. Now that the rain had ended he was sure they could be tracked. It was enough for someone trained to find one little mark of their making and it was all over. He knew what swarmed in the mountains. Soldiers came here and they had trackers with them.

  First there were tens of them, then hundreds and now they numbered in the thousands. In a way, that worked in their favor. There were so many tracks that his and Kara’s could belong to anybody. The soldiers seemed to move in larger groups, so there was still a risk. The greater problem, however, was their numbers. It was getting increasingly difficult to avoid them.

  He knew what the soldiers meant. War was coming. Suttland was preparing to invade Cuttland if it hadn’t already. Small groups of southern soldiers had probably crossed the mountains already. Michael wandered if Suttland’s senators could actually win. Cuttland was the largest province and had more people. He didn’t know that much about senators and Kara didn’t explain everything. She did say they were divided and more of them lived there than in Suttland. Yet by the looks of it the Suttland senators seemed to be confident.

  Cuttland’s size was an advantage and a disadvantage. It made it difficult for any one person to control everything, and it took a long time to coordinate a counterattack. Any response would be slow. That was the disadvantage. The advantage was that any invading army had a lot of territory to conquer. Cuttland seemed too immense to be defeated by anyone else.

  He would have to remember to ask Kara about it sometime. Not that he was sure she would answer him. She might not. In fact, she lied when she said she went to the sanctuary to pray and seek guidance. She had some kind of plan she didn’t want to share because it probably was dangerous. The strange thing was he still trusted her even though she didn’t tell him the truth. That was all right, he didn’t tell her everything either, and she seemed to trust him.

  It was a conundrum. Their kinds were enemies, but the hostility didn’t transfer to them. He had saved her life and that probably decided it for Kara. Michael was not sure why he trusted her, but trust her he did. She was the most powerful person he was ever likely to meet. She was also gorgeous, brilliant, compassionate, when she needed to be, and ruthless, when she needed to be. But above all she was a senator and had the morals of her kind.

  Michael knew how difficult it was to go against what you’ve been taught from a very early age and live in a world where everyone hated you and would like nothing better than to kill you. He had no idea what Kara had been taught by her parents, but she managed to make her humans like her. And that could’ve been perceived as weakness by her enemies.

  Michael didn’t give it any more thought. He figured whoever underestimated her would pay the price soon enough. Then he realized she had not been underestimated. She had been defeated, but nobody could’ve foreseen his involvement. Even now he wasn’t quite sure why he had intervened. He hadn’t regretted it and she hadn’t given him any reason to. She had been given every opportunity to take over him and she hadn’t so far.

  Soon he was getting bored. He scanned the area to make sure nobody was coming for them. Kara was somewhere at the edge, but her power was like a beacon for him and he could sense her easily. They were still alone. There wasn’t another human being anywhere near them. Michael started perusing through the books they brought with them. Many were left with Matilda, but Kara didn’t want to part with some under any circumstances. She had let him choose from the books for wizards she owned, but he had already read all of them. Michael had taken after Kara in this. She had a little ritual. Every time they stopped she read, one book in particular. He hadn’t seen what was in it, so far, but he was curious and knew it was important.

  There wasn’t much he could do with the senator books. He decided on a recent history written by them. He wasn’t sure why she had taken it. The book wasn’t that valuable and it described events almost everyone knew about. The reason it interested him was because it told the story of the war between the wizards and senators from the point of view of senators. He started reading the account of Raphaella and Malthus.

  The senator Raphaella and the wizard Malthus had fallen in love. Both kinds did not desire this union and they knew there was struggle ahead of them. Both kinds were distrustful of each other. The senators avoided the wizards as they suspected quite rightly that the wizards took every opportunity to kill them. Some senators had already been killed after they were accused of abusing their power. Wizards avoided senators because they thought senators wanted to take over them, although it was well known senators could not control wizards for extended periods of time. In this atmosphere of distrust Raphaella and Malthus fell in love.

  Opposition to the union was understandably stronger on the wizard side. Even a small suspicion that Raphaella had taken control of Malthus could lead to retaliation. In the end, that was what happened. Why would the wizards have such an extreme reaction? There was the deeper fear that if senators have control of one wizard, even for a short time, they could use him to take control of others. That fear was unfounded. During the war some senators managed to take over some wizards, but that wasn’t followed by the capture of others. Most senators who attempted this paid for the hubris with their lives.

  Surprisingly, there was opposition from senators, as well. Some thought the wizards would use this opportunity to start a war. Even if Raphaella didn’t take over Malthus, others senators might use the opportunity to do it. Raphaella’s family had enemies even among other senators who could use a wizard to destroy them. The senators didn’t want a war, while wizards saw this as an opportunity to curtail the rising power of the Order.

  Was this the rationale that led to Raphaella’s decision to take over Malthus? Was she concerned about her enemies? It is possible, but we’ll never know. Raphaella herself didn’t give an explanation before her death or if she did those close to her followed her in the afterlife soon enough. We do know that Malthus had agreed to the connection. We know this because the connection had been in place for a considerable period of time, which allows us to state with certainty that Malthus could’ve broken the connection had he wanted to. The step Raphaella had taken strongly suggests she was foolishly more worried about senators than wizards.

  The conclusion of the story is well known. Wizards found out what Raphaella had done and they killed her in the night. Their mistake was to think there would be no consequences. Unlike the other senators who were killed for abuse of power, Raphaella had a strong family behind her and they wanted revenge. Three wizards, including Malthus, were killed in retaliation. Raphaella’s family considered them responsible for her death. The war had finally started. Those who doubted it soon realized the truth. Senators everywhere were hunted by wizards. Humans allied themselves with them. It looked like senators were losing.

  A final question is, why did Raphaella’s family hold Malthus responsible for her death? The simple answer is that Raphaella might’ve still been alive had she not fallen in love with him. Others suggest, although there is no proof, that Malthus let other wizards know about the connection between him and Raphaella. What is beyond doubt is that the two lovers were among the first casualties in the Great War.

  Michael finished r
eading the account and set aside the book. He noticed some bias in favor of the senators, but it wasn’t as bad as he expected. The book considered the senators mostly well-intentioned and painted wizards as schemers who wished the destruction of the Order. Michael was under no illusion that his kind was innocent. Some of them undoubtedly wanted at least to bloody the senators badly. Some senators must’ve understood they had become more powerful than the wizards. They were right and in the end the senators won. The final battle was the bloodiest of the war, the senators won and the wizards were almost annihilated. After years of fighting the wizards knew they were not going to win. The losses had been so severe on both sides nobody was going to agree to peace. Some wizards tried when it was too late and their overtures were refused. The remaining wizards decided to retreat to what they considered an impenetrable fortress on top of what is now known as Crimson Hill, because the hill turned red with the blood of the dead.

  They thought the fortress was impenetrable, but they were wrong. Soon after, the senatorial armies arrived and laid siege. It was the largest senatorial army ever assembled and it numbered more than a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers. It soon became obvious wizards could not hold the fortress forever. The senators had unlimited numbers of humans to throw at them. Siege machines were built, although they were mostly ineffective and the wizards destroyed almost all of them. A frontal attack didn’t seem to be working, but the senators’ strategy was to tire and starve the wizards until they could not fight anymore.

  The fortress had been well provisioned but the food could not last indefinitely and the senators were not going anywhere. The most powerful wizard, who had the gift of foresight, betrayed his kind. Maybe he had seen in the future that all was lost or he was just afraid and wanted to save his life. He made a deal with the senators. He would help them end the siege and, in exchange, he became emperor. The betrayal worked and the siege ended. The senators kept their word. He ruled over the humans and sorceresses and the Senatorial Order became the true power of the empire and answered to nobody.