The Marshall leaned back and laughed dryly. “Oh, they have lots of other reasons they want us not to exist. And while it is true we allow no demon wizards here, I doubt that is even in the top five reasons they want to conquer us. But I’ll not look askance at an ally for whatever reason. Already you’ve given me more hard information on the enemy than I’ve had in months.”
“Marshall, I’ve also heard that the Espilonian forces may have charzen with them, possibly more than one. If that is the case, you really do need me.”
“Charzen? I’d heard wild reports that those cursed things were showing up on this continent, but hadn’t believed them. You’re telling me they are really here?”
“Yes, Sir, I’ve not only seen one but fought with it.”
“Now, this tale gets stranger by the minute. From everything I’ve heard, the things are deadly beyond belief and nigh impossible to kill. And you claim to have seen and fought with one, and obviously survived, since you stand before me. How am I to believe any of this?”
“Sir, I know this is hard to believe. I would feel the same myself, but nevertheless, it’s true.” Eril felt like things had been going well, but now were getting out of control. He looked around for something to make his point.
He saw an ornate dagger, unsheathed in a display stand on a side table beside the Marshall’s desk. He focused on it and pulled it into the air. The stand resisted for a moment, and Eril feared he might have damaged the stand getting the knife free, but he floated it, careful not to point it at anyone, into the space between Eril and the Marshall.
The Marshall’s eyes widened as he watched the dagger float in the air in front of him. Eril started the dagger spinning along its axis until it was only a blur, then he had it circle around behind him and the officer who still stood to Eril’s right. Once it completed the circuit, he stopped the spin and had the dagger drop point down into the edge of the desk, where it stuck.
No one said anything for several moments as they all stared at the dagger quivering, point embedded in the wood. After a few moments, the Marshall said, “I suppose you’ve made your point. That knife could have killed both of us without you moving an inch, am I right?”
“That could have happened, but I wouldn’t have needed to use the knife if I wanted to do that. There are other quicker, and frankly easier ways to do that, but charzen are much harder to kill than ordinary men.”
“So, you killed the charzen you fought?”
“Yes, but not before it had injured or killed nearly two dozen soldiers. And not before two other wizards had tried to kill it. They are very hard to kill.”
“Well, then I guess I’m glad you’re on our side in this conflict. I suppose we need you to get together with Turek as soon as possible.”
Chapter 60
After the Marshall had given the officer accompanying Eril a note, that officer walked Eril out of the building they were in and to the main palace at the center of the city.
The note appeared to be some sort of pass, as they had to get by three different checkpoints where they were challenged. After entering the palace, they went into one of the wings and up into a large tower. There, another bored guard sat at a desk reading.
“He’s in a foul mood,” the guard said. “I hope you either have good news for him, or who knows what he’ll do.”
Eril’s escort just nodded and led Eril along a corridor to a set of closed double doors.
“I’ll wait here for five minutes,” the guard officer said. “You’ll either be coming back with me at that point, be running out, be dead, or least likely, he’ll have you stay.”
Eril didn’t think the guard was joking, but the comment didn’t seem like it made sense. The guard handed him the pass and stood aside. Feeling apprehensive, Eril opened the door and walked into the cavernous room.
The room covered the entire width of the tower and had a high vaulted ceiling. There were tall arrow slits spaced all around the chamber admitting strangely fragmented light. The room was mostly empty except for just to the side of the door Eril had entered. There were a pair of large but battered desks, four squat bookshelves, partially filled with well-worn volumes, a large work-table, and a single pain table. This last surprised Eril as he had not expected to see anything for demons in this land.
Seated behind one of the desks was a man, or at least, Eril thought it was a man. He had an immense mop of dark brown hair sprinkled with grey that flowed down his back, with some draped in front of his shoulders. This framed a face that was barely visible except for two dark shining eyes, staring at Eril from above a voluminous mustache and beard that also flowed down his front.
“Don’t just stand there gawking, boy. State your business, or get out. I told those fools I was not to be interrupted, and yet here you stand,” said a high-pitched voice coming from all those whiskers.
Eril stepped up to the desk, holding out his pass.
“I’m called Eril. I’m a wizard, and I’m here to help, Master Turek.”
The wizard snatched the note as soon as Eril got close enough. He read it, muttering to himself, then looked up at Eril. “It says here that you convinced the Marshall you could help by giving him vital intelligence on the approaching forces. What is this intelligence you gave his stuffed-pigginess himself?”
“I told him the composition and location of the Nitholian army.”
“Oh, you did, did you? And how, exactly did you come by that information?” he sneered.
Eril was feeling more than a little irritated by Turek’s attitude. He was starting to guess why he and Master Silurian didn’t get along. “I happened to fly, while I was invisible, over that army this morning. And before you say anything, I didn’t use a demon.”
Turek made an ugly snorting sound and turned to the thin young man sitting at the other desk, who Eril hadn’t really noticed before now. “Carge, look what they sent us, a what, a supposed zdrell master, right out of the fables.” He made a sound that Eril guessed was supposed to be some sort of laugh, but sounded more like a braying donkey to Eril.
After he stopped, laughing, he said, “Carge, show our guest some hospitality. Try that enhanced missile spell on him. That will at least let me know you’ve finally got it down.”
Eril was both stunned and puzzled by this reception, but saw that the young man, Carge, was standing up and starting a quick set of gesticulations, gathering power.
When Eril made no move to leave, Turek said, “He’ll really do it, boy. If he gets the spell right this time and doesn’t miss, he’ll burn you where you stand.” Turek looked even more puzzled when Eril not only didn’t make any move to leave, but smiled thinly. “Why aren’t you leaving, boy?”
Eril said nothing. He had, of course, raised his shield the moment things had started to look un-friendly, and he was confident in its ability to take the shot. He also felt pretty sure he could re-direct it if he needed to.
Turek looked more closely at Eril, then grunted. “Carge,” he yelled, as Eril saw the young man was about to send his missile at Eril. “Shoot at one of the targets. The boy here has a shield going that is strong enough to deflect your shot, and who knows where it’ll go when it bounces off.”
At this point, Eril noticed three different targets set at the opposite side of the large room, right in between the arrow slits. Carge, still concentrating on his spell, turned slightly and pointed his finger at the middle target. A globule of white energy, flew from his finger and impacted the middle target cleanly. The missile hadn’t appeared much bigger than the ones Eril had seen and practiced back with Master Silurian, but the force delivered by this one was easily five times greater than any he’d seen before. The target was handily blown to burning pieces. This too was different as magic missiles tended to only deliver impact, not heat. Eril was impressed. He was also suddenly feeling less confident that his shield could have easily fended off the missile.
“Not bad, Carge,” the diminutive wizard said. “Got it right on target this ti
me. Good. Only, you need to speed up your incantation by at least triple. I wager our visitor here could have cast at least two or three spells of his own in the time you spent on that one.”
Carge nodded and then muttered, “Yes, Master.” I’ll work to improve.”
“You’ll improve if you want to live, Carge. You have to be fast to survive in battle. Since you don’t have a fancy shield amulet like our boy wizard here, you’ll need to be fast, or an archer will make short work of you. A competent one could have launched at least five arrows in the time it took you to send the one missile. It was good, it was powerful, but if you don’t have time to cast it . . . then you’re as dead as any mundane.”
Carge nodded again and sat down at the desk.
Turek turned on Eril, “So, why should I believe your story. You’ve got a shield amulet, so do I.”
Eril was getting more frustrated. He had come to help, and all anyone did was question his motives and abilities. He decided he could use a variation on the tactic he’d used with the Marshall.
He invoked his invisibility amulet and said, “As I said, I was invisible.” He then lifted himself until he was eight feet in the air, and continued, “And that I was flying.”
At this point, he dropped invisibility and waited, floating in the air. He noted that while he had been invisible, Turek had continued looking straight at him. Carge had shown more than a bit of shock when Eril had spoken while invisible and significantly above the floor.
Turek grunted. “I suppose you’ve made your point. Now, why are you here?”
“I came here to help defend the city, and to learn what I can from you. I am a journeyman after all.”
“What am I supposed to teach you? I can’t fly,” Turek growled in his odd high-pitched voice.
“I was told you’re the most successful war mage living. There has to be something that you know that has made you successful that I don’t know.” As Eril was speaking, he had slowly come back to the ground in front of Turek.
“Most successful living,” Turek snorted. “I guess that’s hard to deny, since I’m the oldest one around who calls himself a war mage.”
“I really know nothing of tactics or strategy in battle,” Eril said. “I’ve only been through two, and frankly neither went very well.”
Turek snorted again. “If you’ve survived two battles, you’re more seasoned than most who dare to call themselves war mages. What were these battles?”
Eril and Turek sat down, and Eril recounted both battles at Dorull’s castle. Turek only interrupted to ask for detail at places in the story. Once Eril finished, the hirsute wizard sat back, scratching his beard and staring at Eril.
“I know Zeldar. He was one of my better journeymen. And you bested him and his partner. Impressive. As to the charzen, well, your hesitancy is understandable. It isn’t often that we’re confronted by nightmares out of legend, but I dare say you’ve learned your lesson there.”
“Yes, Master, I vowed to ensure it wouldn’t happen like that again. Also, Master Dorull drilled me with the troops at his castle to be more vigilant and ready to fight.”
Turek shook his head. “You’ve fought two significant engagements, but you’ve no theory for battle? What about attacking the enemy’s catapults before the battle? That’s prime battle strategy. Remove the enemy’s ability to wage war before the conflict.”
“But that was more something Dorull told me to do. I didn’t think that up on my own.”
“Did he tell you to attack their siege engines?”
“Well, no. He just said to scout them out and see if I could slow them down.”
“Uh-huh. You saw the destruction of their catapults as a way of slowing them down?”
“Yeah.”
“And why didn’t you make another run at them the next day or night?”
Eril paused, the obviousness of the question hitting him. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. Dorull said it was better to see what they’d do. And it never really occurred to me that if we harassed them enough, they might have given up without ever trying to fight. Seems obvious now, when you say it. That’s what I think I can learn from you.”
“Hmmmph. I’ll agree that as young as you are, it’s no surprise that you don’t have a strong grasp of tactics or strategy. But what you fail to understand is that most of both those things are simply asking the right question at the right time, and then taking common-sense action.”
Before Eril could object, he hurried on. “It is true that the best tactics are sneaky or at least non-obvious. Most of that comes from practice against determined opponents. Your Master Silurian has the best army in the continent man for man because they train and mock skirmish continually. For that matter, he could have sent you to train with one of his army commanders, and you would have gotten a fine exposure to tactics and strategy. So, again, why are you here?”
Eril growled in frustration. “I’ve already told you. What else can I say?” He really was feeling like this was turning into a farce. He was beginning to question why he was there himself.
“How do you know, without having scouted their army that the Espilonians have charzen with them?” Turek asked, suspicion in his tone.
“I don’t know who initially got the information. That was just what Master Silurian told me.”
“Ah, Silurian. Of course. That old meddler. So, he sent you?”
“Yes. Though he said since you two don’t get along and it was better if I didn’t mention it at first.” Eril looked at the floor, at once embarrassed and irritated at the whole situation.
“Hah! We don’t get along? That’s the understatement of the year.”
“So, why don’t you get along?”
“Humph, I’m not going to get into that with you. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I will only say that your Great Master Silurian isn’t always as above board and honorable as I’m sure you think he is. He has betrayed folks who trusted him, and I was one of them. And no, I’m not going to tell you the story. As I said, you wouldn’t believe me.
“What I will do is accept your help. Also, if one of Silurian’s informants says the army has charzen, then it probably does.” He stood up on his short legs and began to pace the room.
Turek stopped and looked straight at Eril. “I know what we’ll do. You’ve already scouted the one army. You can use the same tricks and scout out the Espilonian forces. You might even see if you can do something to delay them. But the important thing is to get accurate numbers.” He paced several steps in thought. “Can you draw what you see?”
Eril shook his head. “I’m really no good at drawing.” He paused and then his mouth dropped open as an idea occurred to him. “Do you know that spell where you look at a page and create a copy on another page?”
“I have seen it, though I don’t think I could cast it now. What does that have to do with drawing the armies?”
“I’ve never tried, but if I can use the spell to copy what I see on the page of a book, shouldn’t I also be able to use it to copy what I see when I’m looking at a scene?” Eril said, his excitement growing.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone doing it, but you’re right, it should work. Would you be able to cast that spell while you’re flying, or would you be able to do it from memory when you land?”
“I don’t know. I guess I can practice and see which I can do better. Do you have paper?” he said, looking around.
“I have some, but we’ll need more for you to practice and then do this. The armies aren’t far off, you’ll need to do this quickly if it’s to be much use.”
Eril nodded and reached out for the piece of paper that a bemused Carge held out for him. Now he was the one pacing, remembering the spell and pondering how he might need to change it to reproduce what he was looking at rather than the page of a book.
He held out the paper to the side, held a bottle of ink in the other hand, focused on it and began muttering the spell under his breath and then looked fixedly at
Carge while he finished the spell. For a moment, nothing happened, in a flash, there was a picture of Carge and all the things around him on the piece of paper. It didn’t look like it had been painted or drawn. It looked like a black and white reflection of Carge in a mirror.
It wasn’t a perfect likeness, but the detail of Carge and the area immediately around him was incredible. The further away from Carge items were in the picture, the less detailed they became. All three wizards examined the picture Eril had created with a measure of awe.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Carge said. “The detail is frightening. Do I really look like that?”
Turek continued staring at the picture. “I’ve never seen anything similar either. This really seems to be a representation of just what you saw. Hmmm.”
Looking at it, Eril realized he had seen pictures something like it before. The pictures in the Atlas. He wondered if this spell or something similar had been responsible for it. He also realized that a process like this might have been used to create the zdrell script within the various manuals. If he could picture the words in his mind, might he be able to write just by thinking the words? The possibilities were staggering.
Meanwhile, Turek obviously had been thinking along other lines. “So, could you pull that spell off while flying?”
Eril pulled his thoughts back in the direction of the original reason for this exercise. He imagined what it would be like to cast the spell while airborne. “I can try,” he said, grabbing another piece of paper and positioning himself floating a few inches in the air before one of the arrow slits.
He concentrated on the scene outside the narrow window, all while focusing on the elements of the spell and keeping enough of his attention on flying so he didn’t fall. As he began the spell, he felt his attention split, but then just as he was getting to the hardest part of the casting, he lost the split focus and fell to the ground.
The Journeyman for Zdrell Page 34