Just then, Mithris heard the rustle of the devinist’s passage through a nearby patch of tall reeds spreading along the river’s edge. He looked up and saw the demon, perhaps three dozen paces beyond his outermost ward. The creature would reach the barrier soon. It moved far slower than the omnitors, but it would tear through the wards much more quickly.
He jerked his eyes away from the floating demon, returning his attention to the spells. He had to find a spell.
Master Deinre could have defeated a devinist, Mithris was sure. One did not survive in the wizarding world for as long as Deinre had without becoming a formidable duelist. That was just a fact of magical life.
Mithris, though, had been apprentice for less than a decade. He did not have five hundred years’ experience to draw on. But he did have Master Deinre’s most prized collection of spells. It would have to serve as a distillation of those centuries of study and practice. Mithris just prayed it offered the spell he needed, and that he would be able to recognize it.
Grasp me. The words flared in his mind. It was not that the voice was louder than before. It was, of course, silent. The words just seemed bigger somehow. Mithris dropped a hand to his pocket and drew out the foundation crystal before he even realized what he was doing. The stone rapidly grew hot in his palm.
Concentrate on what you need.
Mithris needed to find a spell that would repel a devinist. Preferably, one that would also kill the devinist.
Dark colors exploded in his mind, imaginary fireworks in grim shades of midnight. The acrid stench of the approaching devinist burned in his nostrils, and he heard an unfamiliar word in the voice of the crystal.
The pages of Deinre’s spellbook flipped of their own accord as the devinist reached the first barrier. The demon lifted one arm, raising the smooth stump to the invisible ward. The air sizzled with magical energy. Mithris felt the failure of the ward like the gut-wrenching vertigo of a sudden drop. The pages stopped flipping. He looked down at the spell and groaned.
At the top of the page was another sketch of the foundation crystal. It stood to reason that Deinre’s best spell to fight a devinist would make use of the crystal. But how…
I speak in your mind. It won’t be so easy with something more complicated, but this was child’s play.
“But what did you do?”
Read the spell, Mithris. If you live, I’ll explain.
“Great,” muttered the apprentice, baffled. His stomach lurched again, and he looked up. Only one ward remained standing. The devinist floated in the air not three paces from him. The simmering coals of its eyes burnt into him.
Read the spell.
Seizing his casting wand from the ground, Mithris began to read the spell. He tried his best not to stumble over the unfamiliar words. But as he continued through the lengthy incantation, his heart sank. There were too many words he didn’t know. Without the right mental projections accompanying them, the spell would surely fail to resolve.
And then the devinist, which was reaching out cautiously to the last remaining ward, would kill him.
The first breath you take outside on a cold morning as it turns to steam. Ripples on a pond passing through the reflection of full moon at midnight.
Mithris did not so much hear the words the crystal spoke in his mind as experienced them. They were tiny memories that had never been there before, inserted sharply into the folds of his brain. He felt them the same way he would have conjured them in his thoughts, except he had never managed to call up the imagery with such skill.
The crystal was helping him cast the spell. How was that even possible?
This was not the time to puzzle it out. The apprentice still had to utter the incantation. It took all his concentration to strike the correct rhythm and avoid mispronunciations. He thought he understood what was happening, anyway. The crystal could put the ideas in his mind, since it could speak to him that way. But it could not cast the spell directly, only aid him in doing so correctly.
Mithris was caught up in casting the spell. His wand scribbled runic swirls and lines in the air as if of its own accord, and concepts blossomed in his mind and faded with each spoken sound.
Distantly, he felt his stomach lurch for a third time. The devinist was through.
Mithris spoke the final word. The devinist stretched out an arm, a low and mournful howl rising up in its throat. Mithris felt an otherworldly pull drawing him toward the demon.
The devinist reached for him, its mournful song ringing in his ears. His wards were collapsed. He had spoken the final word, and the spell resolved itself.
With a deafening roar, the air behind the devinist opened as though the forest were a painting and the canvas had torn. Impenetrable blackness swirled beyond the ragged edge. Shrieks of torment and fury formed a raging maelstrom of sound. Mithris flung himself on the ground and covered his ears with his hands.
The devinist tried to flee, leaning away from the terrible hole and driving itself forward with all its magical strength. It did not succeed. Adding its own enraged voice to the howling chorus, the devinist was dragged violently through the wound in reality. Back to the Second Foundation.
The portal closed, and the forest went still. Mithris tentatively lifted his head and stared in wonder at the empty air where the demon had vanished.
Mithris stood in disbelief at what had just occurred.
“That wasn’t me,” he said, speaking to the voice in his head. The foundation crystal.
I barely helped you, Mithris. You had to cast the spell. I was only your lexicon, your dictionary. I gave you the meanings. Only you could speak the words.
“Master Deinre’s words,” Mithris argued sullenly. He was no longer sure if he argued with the crystal or with himself. The delirium of his fever was too strong. He was so confused. He looked up at the squat fortress hanging over the edge of the cliff hundreds of feet above him, and wondered why he was here.
I shouldn’t have helped you even that much, I see. The voice in his head—whose voice was it?—sounded disappointed. When are you going to see that you can’t hide behind Master Deinre or anyone else? You defeated the devinist, Mithris. You must do what comes next.
“What…comes next?”
But Mithris did not hear the answer. The fever overtook him, and he slumped to the ground in a dead faint.
Mithris awoke in a comfortable bed. A young man, barely older than Mithris himself, sat watching over him. A much older man stood behind the first, fingers of one hand scratching idly at his closely trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.
Mithris swallowed, or tried to. His mouth was dry and his tongue was sandpaper. A pained croak escaped his lips. The old man cleared his throat, and a pitcher of water floated over. The young man poured some into a cup, then allowed it to dribble slowly over Mithris’ parched lips.
“Where am I?” asked Mithris when he felt able to speak.
“My tower.” The old man spread his arms. He was a chubby-bellied wizard who looked to be somewhere in his third or fourth century. His eyes twinkled with joviality. He wore loose-fitting robes of gray cotton. He seemed an affable, fatherly sort of wizard. “I’m Master Nethrin.”
“Master…Nethrin.” Mithris remembered the name. Strange, he could not remember how he’d gotten here. “I was looking for you. But…”
“Konnor here found you at the base of the falls,” explained Nethrin, patting the younger man’s shoulder with obvious affection. “My apprentices are always going in and out of the passage behind the base of the waterfall. Even though I’ve told them time and again not to.”
The stern look Nethrin affected was not convincing. Mithris was beginning to think Master Deinre had sent him to a very nice old wizard indeed.
“It’s a good thing, in this case,” continued Master Nethrin. “That fever would’ve had you in another hour or two. How on earth did you end up poisoned by an omnitor? Took all my considerable skill to clean you out.”
“Master Deinre is dead,” Mithris
said, feeling hollow as he spoke the words aloud. “His tower was taken. He sent me here. The omnitors chased me.”
He fell silent again, looking away from Nethrin and Konnor. There was a small window set in the stone wall on the other side of his bed. Near, he saw only the tops of trees. But in the distance, where the forest thinned, he saw the rooftops of a city near the horizon.
“I see,” said the wizard softly, sounding rueful. “I’m afraid I had suspected as much. I have to admit, I didn’t know the old goat had taken on an apprentice. You’ve not been at it long, though, by the look of you. Well, lad, don’t fret. You’ll have a home here. My other apprentices are all quite eager to welcome you to the flock, in fact.”
Nethrin cleared his throat again. “Well, that can all wait. Right now, you just rest up. Get your strength back.”
His apprentices can’t wait to meet you, whispered a voice in Mithris’ head. And Nethrin here can’t wait to get his hands on Deinre’s spells and the foundation crystal you carried.
Mithris sighed, turning back to Master Nethrin. His eyes flickered to a table in the corner of the small room, where he saw his belongings stacked together. The two spellbooks, his wand, and the crystal. He looked back up at the smiling wizard.
You must do what comes next.
“Thanks,” he said, smiling uncomfortably. “But to be honest, I think I’d rather keep moving on. Can you tell me if there’s a city nearby?”
Nethrin looked sharply at him. “You do not wish to continue your studies?”
“I…” Mithris hesitated. He was actually not sure, not sure at all. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Definitely not until my head settles. Yes, I think I’ll just move on.”
And keep away from wizards for a little while…
Mithris wasn’t sure if this time, that thought was the crystal’s or his own.
Chapter 12
Avington
A young man with unruly brown hair stood gazing into a wide, shallow bowl of water. The bowl was chipped porcelain, the outer surface decorated with curling vines of pale green tipped with delicately lacquered flowers of pink and blue. A matching pitcher sat on the rough, splintery wooden floor beside the washstand. The surface of the water, placid and still, reflected a ghostly image from far away.
Mithris studied the image in his wash bowl. Rather than a reflection of a second-floor bedroom in a rundown, shabby inn at the outskirts of civilization, he saw an imposing structure of marble and stone. The squat building had the look of a temple, with fluted white columns along the front and a broad entryway letting into a central courtyard dotted with statues and fountains.
With only four stories, Mistress Ileera’s was the shortest wizard’s tower the lad had ever seen. But there was a simple majesty to the structure. Mithris hoped that indicated a powerful sorceress with admirable self-restraint and a willingness to compromise.
Seems like a long shot, whispered the ever-present voice at the back of his thoughts. Mithris did not so much hear the voice as feel it like a vibration in the center of his brain. And anyway, are you certain that’s the right place?
“I’m not certain about anything,” replied Mithris, who had grown accustomed to talking to himself over the past few months.
Remind me again why we haven’t acquired a proper divination bowl?
“Remind me again where I misplaced the coin for a divination bowl,” snapped Mithris. Straightening up from his wash basin, he crossed his arms across his narrow chest and looked archly over at the faintly glowing, multi-faceted crystal which sat atop his traveling chest.
The voice in his head emanated from that gemstone, in truth one of the rarest magical artifacts in all creation. A foundation crystal, it was like a shard of the nearly mythical First Foundation: the realm from which all others rose. It was actually more of a protrusion, a piece of that First Foundation which extended through the other, later foundations – piercing each one like a sheet of fabric, and sticking through. The foundation crystal could speak to him – it was alive, after a fashion – and it frequently offered advice and opinions. It was also sarcastic, smugly superior, and supremely irritating.
“Because I can’t remember ever having that coin,” Mithris continued. “I barely earn enough coin to pay for this luxurious suite…”
The room was threadbare and drafty at best. But the innkeeper let Mithris stay at a discount so long as the young magician agreed to put on a show in the common room each night. Silly things like making coins disappear then reappear elsewhere, or pulling small animals from unlikely containers. It was humbling work, but it kept him indoors at night.
You could have stayed at Nethrin’s tower.
“And let that old man get his hands on you? I thought you were the one who urged me to leave.”
I don’t remember urging you to leave. I merely warned you that Master Nethrin’s motives went deeper than what he told you. I didn’t mean we had to leave the tower completely.
“Yeah, well,” said Mithris, dropping his crossed arms and scowling. “Even if you hadn’t told me, I didn’t trust the man.”
You barely met him.
“Nethrin’s a wizard, and wizards…” Mithris shrugged. “I’m just not sure I want anything to do with wizards anymore.”
Mithris had spent nine of his seventeen years as a wizard’s apprentice, studying under Master Deinre. Five hundred years old and a stickler for endlessly practicing passive wards, Deinre was the previous owner—if such a thing could be possessed—of the foundation crystal. He’d entrusted the priceless stone to Mithris moments before being slaughtered by a rival wizard’s summoned minions.
That was often the way of wizards, Mithris had come to learn. This one slew that one. One stole another’s tower. Wizards harbored fierce rivalries which often lasted for centuries and ended only with death or total domination. It was a dangerous profession.
Master Deinre had sent Mithris fleeing his tall, slender spire as soon as the attack came. He’d given the apprentice the crystal, and his personal spellbook and bid him seek out Master Nethrin. It had been a long journey, one Mithris barely survived.
Nethrin had seemed like a jovial, fatherly sort of wizard. He had seemed kindly. Beneath his kindly smiles, however, Mithris knew Nethrin was as selfish and greedy as any other wizard. He had offered Mithris a place with his apprentices, but what Nethrin really wanted was the crystal and Deinre’s spellbook. Rivalries and one-upmanship. Sometimes, it seemed that’s all there was to wizards.
That was why Mithris had left the safety of Nethrin’s tower. Healed of his wounds, but still weakened, he’d set out for the nearest city and sought to lose himself in the throng of humanity. Unbeknownst to him at the time, the foundation crystal had other plans for the former apprentice.
So here they were, in this dusty inn in a mostly forgotten corner of the world. Avington—a small city on the backside of nowhere. Avington just happened also to be home to one Mistress Ileera, wizard. The foundation crystal demanded Mithris seek her out.
Mithris sighed. The crystal did not even have to say it. He shook his head and scooped up his coin purse. “I guess we’d better go scout the place out,” he muttered, telling himself to look on the bright side. Since leaving Nethrin’s tower, they had not encountered a single omnitor or devinist or any other dark, summoned creature.
Whoever that wizard had been who’d killed his master, he had sent no further monsters after Mithris. Maybe he’d forgotten about Deinre’s last apprentice, or maybe only realized Mithris posed no threat. Either way, he was well free of that particular situation.
Eaganar stroked the delicate lip of his jewel-encrusted, silver divination bowl. This exquisite bowl was just one of the many treasures he had acquired, along with the impressively tall and slender tower, when he had finally struck down that fool Deinre. And, like the tower itself, this bowl had resisted him for months.
But no longer. Towers took time to settle when a new owner moved in. Magical artifacts could be finick
y about who used them. It had been a lengthy and tense process, in some ways more difficult than the battle to seize the tower. At last, however, Eaganar had achieved total mastery of this tower and all its contents.
Time to return his attention to another pressing matter. The divination bowl showed him what he desired. An underfed youth with a mop of brown hair wearing stained, ragged robes and a haunted look of resignation. The apprentice. Eaganar hated leaving anything incomplete.
Leaning over the bowl, he studied the image it brought him. The apprentice stood on a dusty street corner in some unidentified city. Not a very wealthy city, from the look of things. Looking this way and that, the youth finally started across one of the streets.
The view in Eaganar’s bowl followed him as he crossed and then passed by an open-air market. In the distance, Eaganar saw four multicolored pennants flying atop the ramparts of the city wall. A cruel sneer crawled onto his lips.
“Avington…” the dark wizard hissed in triumph, then abruptly turned and swept away from the bowl. There were arrangements to make.
Chapter 13
Depths
Mithris pulled his thin, threadbare cloak tighter around himself and tried not to shiver. It was cold in Avington, which lay far to the north. Winter was still a month off, but already the weather was colder than Mithris had ever known. As with most aspects of his new life, he hated it.
Look, spoke the foundation crystal in his mind, there’s a clothing shop. Why not stop and buy a warmer cloak?
“I can’t waste the coin,” Mithris grumbled under his breath.
Then why did you bring your coin purse?
“Because I learned what happens when I leave it in the room,” answered Mithris. He had been robbed in two different inns on his way to Avington. Nothing like that had happened to him in this small city thus far, but he was through taking chances with his money.
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