“Who sent you,” Mithris whispered to himself. It was the question Zerto had asked him. Mad as the millennia-old wizard might be, he had still known Mithris too young to be anything but an apprentice. He hadn’t believed the truth about Master Deinre, probably dismissing it as some trick. No, Zerto would assume Mithris’ master had simply told him to say that.
Mithris rubbed his chin in thought. It might work. Scooting backward along the corridor until he could no longer hear Zerto’s mad laughter, the young apprentice sat down on the crystalline floor and pulled Deinre’s spellbook from the oversized pocket of his robe.
What are you doing?
“I have an idea,” Mithris said.
We hate it when you say that.
Master Zerto bustled about his magical altar, lighting the candles and throwing incense onto the glowing coals in the braziers. They thought they could take from him. He would show them.
He gathered up the implements he would need. The apprentice who came first was certainly well trained. Zerto had underestimated the boy. That had surely been part of the plan. The wizard who sent the boy was a keen-minded foe. But Zerto knew that, now. He wouldn’t be fooled again.
Brushing aside spellbooks and ancient, dusty scrolls, Zerto slammed an iron pot down on the surface of his altar. He began dumping ingredients into the miniature cauldron. As he worked, he chanted an incantation to heat the iron and cook the potion he concocted. Zerto worked quickly. Steam rose from the cauldron. In one motion, he grabbed it up and tipped it back. He swallowed the vile concoction in one draught.
He felt it working instantly, seeping through his body, carried by his blood. It invigorated him. It attuned him. Zerto’s awareness of the spheres opened up. He could see in new dimensions, discern different horizons. These were the hazy boundaries of foundation itself.
He had chosen this location for his enchanted grotto for its ley lines. The lines of power that marked where the lower foundations brushed against this one were key to a wizard’s strength. Dozens of the leys crossed here, in this spot, directly beneath his tower.
Master Zerto stood in his Arcanium, his feet planted directly above the largest nexus of otherworldly power he had ever seen. His potion worked through him, heightening his awareness of the energies he could harness and increasing his affinity for them.
When he was like this, he could simply reach out and pull the invisible strings that held the world together. Oh yes. He would show this wizard what it meant to try and steal from Zerto!
Such power! What should he do with it? The spell he delivered with such authority must be suitably grand. Zerto flipped through his most precious grimoire, looking for the ideal way to utterly destroy his foe.
The sound of footsteps alerted him. Zerto looked up, and gasped in shock. The wizard had come, but he was not alone.
There were three of them. Their long, flowing robes were silk embroidered with fine lace and golden tassel. One wore crimson. One wore jade. One wore amethyst. They were old ones, fifteen centuries at least. Their beards hung white and straight and long. Their eyes were cold and saw far. Their lips were set in grim lines of condemnation.
Each of the wizards held a wand in one hand, raised and ready. Zerto licked his lips. He had not expected this! He had known wizards to collaborate for brief times before, but they always turned on one another. The more valued the prize, the sooner the betrayal. Yet here they were, three wizards united against him in his inner sanctum.
And they were powerful, so powerful. They could not embrace the leys the way Zerto could with his potion, but they would sense the proximity of the fault lines and be able to draw power from them. Zerto’s eyes flicked from angry face to angry face. He wondered if they would attack together, or separately.
“Master Zerto,” said the one in the middle, the ancient wizard in crimson robes. “We have come to claim our prize.”
Zerto clutched at the pouch hanging from his neck. He’d known it could be nothing else. Prized though his many possessions were, and as rare as his tower, they were nothing beside the foundation crystal. He tugged at the pouch. The leather dug tight into the back of his neck and then snapped. He held the pouch tightly in his hand.
“You cannot have it,” he cried, and then he attacked.
Chapter 33
Thrice Fooled
Mithris crept along the floor against one wall of Zerto’s Arcanium. He moved in a low crouch and kept darting glances at the paranoid wizard before his smoking altar. So far, the plan seemed to be working.
Mithris was hidden by a version of the same spell that made the three angry wizards. There weren’t really three wizards, of course. It was an illusion. Mithris hadn’t been able to get the spell right on the first try, and there were still elements of it he could not grasp, but he believed the images of the wizards were made of nothing but air and water. Fortunately, with the help of Vapor and Depths, air and water were his playthings.
Whereas the three illusion spells brought those elements together to make an image, the one shrouding Mithris used them to conceal. It was a hiding spell, but it was not meant to be used when moving. If Zerto looked directly at him when he moved, Mithris would be visible—if indistinct and blurry. Paranoid as Zerto was, the old fool would probably blast him to pieces without a second’s thought.
The idea was for Mithris to get around behind the mad wizard without being seen. If he could sneak up behind the fool, maybe he could see a way to get the crystal away. He still had no idea how he would do that. The first part seemed to be going well, at least.
Zerto stared at the three false wizards, eyes wide and fearful. He reached for the pouch beneath the collar of his robe. Mithris knew the foundation crystal was in that pouch. The mad wizard would be more dangerous, more powerful, with the crystal.
There was something else, as well. Mithris could not figure it out. It was a feeling in the air, a strange heaviness. But it was also a weird crawling sensation on his skin, a tickling itch in his gums. It grew worse whenever he looked in Zerto’s direction.
He’s taken an elixir, explained Vapor. It increases his awareness and affinity for the ley lines.
Mithris frowned. Remaining still, he closed his eyes and extended his awareness in a way Deinre had taught him as one of his first lessons. He recoiled at what he sensed, nearly losing hold of the shroud that hid him.
There were dozens of ley lines intersecting somewhere just below this room. No wonder he had been able to defeat the earth elemental. Though he had not been aware of doing so at the time, Mithris knew he had drawn greater strength from the proximity of the magical fault lines. But Zerto would have the same luxury. And what had vapor said about that elixir?
It makes him even more powerful, Vapor said, able to read the direction of Mithris’ thoughts clearly for once.
Zerto tore the pouch from around his neck, snapping its cord. The withered old man opened his mouth and an impossible roar sounded in his throat. The fortress shook with his rage. Zerto flung out his empty hand and seized hold of something only he could see.
Mithris could feel the air vibrating all around him. He could hear the inaudible shriek of reality twisting at the ley lines as they bulged and stretched under a massive in-flow of power from other, primordial realms of existence.
One by one in rapid succession, the three false wizards disintegrated. Still retaining the image, the air and water making up the illusion split apart into millions of tiny fragments. Then the color bled from them and they hung suspended a moment, a fine mist that dispersed and evaporated a moment later.
Zerto stood blinking and staring at the empty spot where a moment ago three wizards had stood. He muttered to himself, hopping from foot to foot. Then his busy white brows shot up on his head and he leaped away from the altar, spinning around in midair.
He came down and made another grab at empty air, wriggling his fingers and speaking a word. Mithris felt his misty illusion rip away. The magical shroud blasted to fragments and faded from
existence. Mithris crouched in the floor, fifteen paces from Zerto, staring at the mad wizard in grim terror.
“So!” Zerto howled, stomping his foot on the floor. He lifted his hand, once more clutching at nothing. Mithris felt the ley lines responding.
Leaping to his feet, he threw himself sideways across the room just as the floor where he had stood heaved up and cracked. A jagged spar of crystal shot up. If he hadn’t moved, Mithris would have been impaled.
“Bah!” snarled Zerto, twisting his hand in the air. Mithris dodged again. Another crystal spear shot up from the floor, narrowly missing him as he dove away.
Wards! Vapor’s voice was frantic in his head. Mithris did not feel like arguing. Surging back to his feet, already diving in a new direction, Mithris threw up a ward around himself. He placed its lower edge above the floor but beneath the soles of his feet.
Hoping he’d placed the magical barrier correctly, Mithris threw himself forward. The ward he’d placed was an invisible sphere of energy that surrounded him. It rolled across the floor like a bubble with a wizard inside.
Mithris spun end over end inside the magic bubble. Upside down and facing back the way he’d come, he saw the lower half of his boot-soles resting on the floor where his ward had sliced through them. Above the floor, beneath his feet. He’d shaved it close, literally.
Then the bubble swung him round again and he was facing Zerto. A crystalline spear erupted from the floor directly beneath him. It could not penetrate his ward, but knocked it upward like a ball thrown in the air.
“Great,” Mithris griped through clenched teeth, thrusting his hands out against the inner edge of his ward. “I’m really glad I cast this spell!”
The invisible balloon crashed down to the floor just as another spike shot up beneath it. Mithris caromed back into the air, hurtling directly toward Zerto.
The mad wizard grabbed empty air and screeched an incantation. Mithris plunged toward him, tumbling. A blast of power shot from Zerto’s fingertips. Striking the ward, it eradicated the invisible barrier instantly.
Free of his tumbling bubble, Mithris fell directly into the paranoid wizard as Zerto rushed to get another spell out. Crashing together, the two sprawled on the floor. The two wizards tumbled and rolled. Zerto buried his knee in Mithris’ stomach. Mithris struck Zerto across the face with an elbow.
They came out of their tumble, Mithris rolling off of Zerto and flopping on the floor next to him. Both were bloody and dazed. Zerto groaned, spitting blood from his split lip. The mad wizard heaved himself up and threw out a hand to cast a spell.
Mithris scrambled up and flung himself to the side just as a blast of fire shot past him. His eyes fell on the pouch, lying on the floor several paces away. Zerto had dropped the foundation crystal in their fall. Mithris dove for it.
Seeing the pouch on the floor, Zerto shrieked. He reached out and seized the energy of the leys and flung it mercilessly at the scrambling apprentice.
Chapter 34
Terra
Mithris crashed to the floor, his fingers closing around the leather pouch as he slid past it. An instant later, the floor where the pouch had lain exploded upward. Crystal fragments blasted into the air. Several sliced Mithris open as they flew by.
Panting and dripping blood, Mithris rose to his feet. He held Zerto’s pouch in one hand and grinned at the mad wizard.
“You give that back!” screamed Zerto, holding back his assault as if fearing to damage the foundation crystal. Mithris doubted that was possible, but he was glad for the brief respite.
“Listen to me,” he pleaded with the mad wizard. “I did not come here to fight you!”
“You came to take what’s mine!” Zerto howled. For all his advanced age, he sounded most like a petulant child in the middle of a tantrum. The mad wizard stomped his foot angrily. The image was so comical, Mithris nearly laughed at it in spite of the serious danger he was still in.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Mithris tried again.
“Bah!” Zerto roared with laughter. “You? You can’t hurt me, boy! ” With that, the mad wizard reached out with both hands and grabbed at the invisible energies filling the chamber. He clutched at them, squeezing, his fingers turning white with the strain. Then he twisted them around and wove something of the energy with muttered words. Zerto flung both his hands out at Mithris, and the lad could almost see the wave of magic approaching him.
As the pulsing energy flew at him, the spell began to resolve. Mithris could not tell yet what shape Zerto had given the spell. There was no time.
Mithris was not sure what he did. He acted more out of some unknown instinct than from any training or study. For the briefest of moments, he saw.
He shouted a single word, casting one of his best cantrips. It was the one that seemed to slow time. Distantly, Mithris knew that time did not slow—the spell sped him up. That knowledge floated somewhere just outside his focus. All his attention was on that onrushing spell.
Mithris moved in a blur. He leaped forward with arms outstretched. Somehow taking hold of the magic before it resolved, he grappled with the energy as it struggled to form a spell. He felt it in his hands like a solid thing. It could be twisted and reshaped, and so Mithris did. Wrestling the magic into a new form, he shoved it backward with all his might.
With a wordless cry, Mithris fell back to the floor in a limp sprawl.
The spell, though, had been reversed. Zerto just had time to realize what Mithris had done—but that was impossible! The mad wizard’s eyes bulged in stupefied disbelief. The spell struck him with its full force.
A clamoring sound rang out, shaking the Arcanium and deafening Mithris. Zerto’s mouth opened in a howl that was drowned out by the cacophony of the backlash spell.
Mithris, still sped up from his cantrip, saw it all as if time really had slowed. Zerto’s dirty robes lifted around his body as if he stood before a strong wind. Sparks flickered at the tattered edges of the fabric, dancing in the air and winking out almost as soon as they were born. The sparks spread inward along the garment, and when they passed nothing was left.
Next, the wild tips of Zerto’s bushy brows began to smoke and then sparks formed there as well. The wizard’s fingers glowed a brilliant orange, the color of lava. Zerto’s skin boiled away to vapor and dancing sparks. His skeleton stood caught in the force of the spell and then it too dissolved, the ashes and dust blowing away on a wind that bore them through the cracks of reality to be swept up in another foundation.
The spell continued, unsated. It ate through the wall behind Zerto and escaped into the grotto beyond. Moments later, a stony rumbling sounded.
We had probably better go, suggested Vapor just as the cantrip wore off and time resumed its normal speed for Mithris.
“Go? Oh yeah, that’d probably be good,” he said breathlessly. What in all the foundations had he just done?
One of the topaz shards from outside crashed through the Arcanium ceiling, high above Mithris. It plummeted, crashing to the floor a dozen paces away and shattering the crystal there. The entire fortress shook from the impact. Mithris could see cracks spreading across the ceiling.
Traveling spell.
“What?” Mithris shook himself, rising from the floor on shaky feet.
Traveling spell!
“You told me not to remember that one!”
And you always listen to me, don’t you? Now cast it, Mithris!
The fortress shook again. Broken chunks of glassy crystal, gone dull and lifeless now that Zerto no longer summoned his lights, fell in a hail all around Mithris. He still held Zerto’s leather pouch in one hand.
Seeing the cave crumbling around him, his sleeping mind pulsed into awareness. He shoved his other hand into his pocket and took hold of Vapor, the words already formed on his lips.
As the serpentine spell left his lips, he glanced up toward second shard of falling topaz right above him. It struck the floor where Mithris stood like an angry fist from a titan. But Mithr
is vanished a heartbeat before it did.
Mithris sat on a small stone ledge halfway up the face of the mountain. The slope above and below him was steep and treacherous, but this flat shelf was stable. He was going to have to use the traveling spell to get down, though. He sighed. When his sleeping mind was awake, he could see how the words of magic weaved together. It made casting magic now feel like trying to recall a fading dream.
“You were right,” he said, taking Vapor out of his pocket and gazing at the opalescent stone.
Aren’t I usually?
Mithris snorted and set the foundation crystal aside. Lifting Zerto’s pouch, Mithris tugged it open and dumped its contents out in front of him. A handful of rich, dark brown soil and another foundation crystal.
This one felt heavier than the others when he lifted it. Its surface appeared smooth, but felt rough and grainy to the touch. It was the same color as the dark earth it had been packed with.
“What’s this one’s name?”
Terra.
Mithris nodded. With the earthstone, Zerto had been able to create his paranoid paradise under the ground. He had controlled the rocks and stones and the molten stuff below. Maybe that was why he had crawled under his mountain.
You know better, said Vapor. And Terra says Zerto was mad long before he went to hide in his grotto. Mad with fear.
“Who says he was wrong?” Mithris asked. “His greatest fear was that a wizard would come to steal from him and murder him. Well? Isn’t that just what I’ve done? Vapor, I’m as bad as the rest of them! I’m as bad as…as Eaganar himself!”
Terra says you had no choice. Depths and I agree. The crystal hesitated. Mithris could feel its uncertainty. Mithris…I hope you’re not still insisting on trying to keep away from magic.
Bond of Magic Page 14
