Wizards Conclave aom-5

by Douglas Niles

  "You're a wizard, now?" he gasped.

  She smiled at him. "Yes, but I'll still take your help, next time we need to go to the market."

  "But"-he looked crestfallen-"you got a white robe? Not red?"

  "Sometimes you get a better painting when you use more colors," Jenna called out obliquely, from the stairway. "Now stop staring and help us, Donny-we have important work to do."

  Dalamar, a stack of Jenna's books teetering in his arms, staggered toward the wide stairway. Coryn, a box tucked under each arm and several leather pouches clutched in her hands, followed Jenna to the second floor. The girl was startled when, at the top of the stairs, she got her first glimpse of the Red Robe's grand laboratory. It was one very long room occupying two wings. Many arched doorways connected portions of the lab to the hallway, and a broad terrace flanked both outer walls, which were lined entirely by tall glass windows. The whole space was bright and cheery, even at sunset.

  Dalamar, brushing by with his load, scolded her for gawking. Coryn set down her load and rolled up her sleeves as she followed the enchantress into the room and a far recess of the lab.

  "Now, what can you tell me about this spell?" the older woman asked.

  Cory took the wand from her outer pocket and held the slender reed of wood in her hands. It was pliable-she could bend it nearly into a circle if she wanted-but very strong. And she knew just from touching it lightly that the knowledge and power was there, contained within, ready to be used.

  "We'll need high heat; we have to melt glass. And we also need to blow the glass. Each of us must make one globe. Let's see… we'll need platinum dust, dried kelp-golden kelp. And…"

  She rattled off a list, which Jenna scribbled down as quickly as the younger woman could talk. On the list were platinum, numerous coal- and charcoal-type components, pure alcohol, and others. But each of the three brews would have distinct characteristics-Coryn's required bat's eyes, while Jenna needed those of a blindfish. Dalamar's recipe didn't call for any eyes, but required something just as rare-the stinger of a giant scorpion.

  "Good," Jenna said in satisfaction as Coryn finished the list. "Would you please help Donny with the books while I start collecting everything? Besides what I have stored here, we'll need most everything from Dora's load."

  Coryn nodded and hurried back downstairs. The volumes were heavy, but she and Donny went down and up several times. Her face was red by the third trip. Dalamar had a fire raging and now closed a pair of flat steel doors cut into the sides of a cast-iron furnace-the largest firebox or oven Coryn had ever seen.

  Jenna caught her eye and indicated a large book on the table, laid open to a page of arcane inscriptions. It was one of her personal tomes, not one of the ones Coryn had unloaded from the mules and carried upstairs.

  "Hmm. I was just doing a little reading while you were bringing things up," the Red Robe explained. "I learned a few important things-unfortunately, though, nothing I learned seems to be good news."

  Coming to peer over her shoulder, Coryn noticed an illustration of a small, pale stone on the open pages. The drawing was rendered in black ink, but, using great swirls and arrows, the mage who had made the drawing had indicated the power of the artifact.

  "Yes, that looks like the Irda Stone, the one that Kalrakin had." Squinting at the strange symbols, she was surprised to realize that she could read the writing, though this was the first time she had ever seen such script.

  "It is an artifact dating back to the Age of Dreams, isn't it?" Dalamar asked, coming over to join the women in examining the tome. His robe was already thick with coal dust.

  "Yes." Jenna summed up what she had learned thus far for the other two. "It was created out of chaos-its power is very attuned to wild magic and has a parasitic effect. As you observed, it allows the one who holds it to absorb the power of any spells or magic-any enchanted weapon-that is used against it. Not only is the spell negated, but the Irda Stone actually draws from the spell and fuels the power of the one who wields the stone. And when Kalrakin wants to cast a spell, the energy stored within the stone will multiply the effect of his casting. To an unimaginable extent, depending on how much magical power the stone has had a chance to absorb."

  "So I actually bolstered his magic when I cast the fireball, and the stone absorbed the lightning bolt? I made him stronger?" Coryn was dismayed to remember her losing battle with the sorcerer.

  "You had no way of knowing what was happening, but yes, that's what transpired," Jenna said bluntly. "We're starting to understand what we're up against."

  "Any clue in your book as to how he must have gotten the stone?" asked Dalamar.

  Jenna shrugged. "Not really. It was held in the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth for thousands of years. But some time ago-the records are sketchy-it was granted to the Speaker of the Sun in Qualinesti, for him to use in combating the forces of the Queen of Darkness. There is no trace of it after that, but no doubt the Dark Knights expropriated it when they occupied Qualinost. Perhaps Kalrakin simply stole it from the knights, or the elves, as the elven realm was falling. Who would know to stop him?"

  "He will be hard to defeat with magic," the dark elf noted. "But perhaps we can use uncommon spells to distract him, to get close enough to strike without magic, to slip a dagger between his ribs," he added coldly.

  "We might," Jenna said cautiously.

  "There must be some way to trick him!" Coryn exclaimed.

  "If there is, we'll find it," Dalamar said fiercely, his words having a calming effect on the young woman. "We have much work to do."

  "And time is wasting," Jenna added tartly, addressing Coryn. "Here-after you change your robe, put these on." The Red Robe indicated a rack of several leather aprons, sooty and worn. She handed the younger woman a pair of stiff leather gloves and some sort of bowl made out of the same material.

  "No, it's a helmet-you don't want to burn your hair off, do you?" explained Jenna, amused at Coryn's obvious confusion. "Put it on and fasten it-I'll attach your face-plate before we open the furnace." She turned to Dalamar. "Bring more coal. The glass is almost melted, but we'll need to keep the heat up while we're working."

  The dark elf had already removed his robe, Cory saw, looking trim and muscular in his trousers, boots, and suspenders. Like Jenna and Coryn, he, too, slipped into a leather apron and protective mask.

  The leather bowl fit comfortably over Coryn's scalp, with a flap that protected the long dark hair she bound at her nape. Very curious now, Coryn allowed Jenna to attach a stiff visor at her forehead. When it fell into place, she could see out of two small, glass-covered holes; the rest of her face, from the helmet down to her throat, was protected by the barrier.

  "Take one of these poles." Jenna said, sounding remarkably confident, Coryn thought, as she offered a long tube to the younger woman.

  "This is platinum dust, powdered by dwarven smiths in the mines of Thorbardin," Jenna explained, removing a small vial from one of the many nooks and crannies over her workbench. "I obtained it at some expense years ago-this small bottle alone cost the equivalent of ten thousand pieces of steel. You will need three pinches of it, to start with."

  Coryn had been about to reach for the vial; she looked up, startled. "These are such rare ingredients. How can you afford them all?" she asked.

  Jenna's lips curled in an expression of wry amusement. "When you have magical powers, you find plenty of ways to get rich." She cast a glance at Dalamar, who was bringing several more buckets of coal to them. "You'll find plenty of ways to get poor, too," she added, with an amused shrug.

  Hesitantly, Coryn took three pinches of the grainy, gray-colored powder, and dropped them into a clean bowl. In short order she added the other items as directed by Jenna, including talc, powdered charcoal, some crushed mint leaves, and a few shavings of hardwood. Dalamar, meanwhile, worked on his mixture, so that all of the spells would take shape simultaneously.

  Next came the more exotic components: Cory painstakingly counted ou
t twenty-five tiny black specks that, Jenna assured her, were dried bat's eyes. Then she broke apart a blue feather, from some bird called a parrot, and scattered the bits of fluff across the top of the odd-smelling mixture in the bowl. Finally came the tinder, dried bits of scrap purportedly made from seaweed that had been harvested from the bottom of the ocean, and then dried for ten summers in a desert climate.

  "That, my dear, cost a sum of diamonds, twice as much,

  by weight, as the dried seaweed." She looked at Coryn and actually grinned. She was enjoying herself immensely, Coryn realized. "I actually paid for that."

  So was Coryn. "Who sells things like this?"

  "I myself did, for a long time-many, too many years. Now that I have closed my shop, there are others-none so knowledgeable, nor with such a complete selection, as I was proud to maintain. I got this from an importer who brought it across the ocean from Kothas. Palanthas has more of such merchants than any other city in the world, though you will find magic-sellers in Sanction, Caergoth, Haven-even in rat-holes like Tarsis."

  "Of course there are other ways to gain certain components," Dalamar interjected. "Go out yourself, snare a hundred bats, then dry them in a kiln so carefully that you can remove their eyes, their fur, and their feet, still intact. Takes a bit of learning, and time-but saves you the cost, and dealing with fools."

  "I will learn how to do exactly that one day," pledged Cory.

  She turned her attention to her glass, which had been heating up all this time. Following instructions, she gathered a medium-sized lump of the molten material on the end of one of the long tubes. Heating it carefully, she watched it soften, and turned the pole quickly to keep the gooey stuff from falling into the furnace. Soon it was soft and malleable.

  "Now-we move to the well," said Jenna.

  All three smoothly shifted to a depression in the floor where cooling white mists swirled. Coryn spun the pole as fast as she could, watched in amazement as the soft glass swelled into a small, perfect globe. She looked up, questioningly, as Jenna nodded. The Red Robe spoke a word of magic that kindled a spark into each of the three bowls of components.

  Immediately, smoke began to churn upward, a thick vapor as pure white as any soft summer cloud. Dense and compact, it roiled and spun over the bowls. Coryn tried to watch the sputtering flames. She knew that she had only seconds to act from the last spark of the flame until the cloud started to disperse. And instinctively she understood what she had to do.

  Judging her moment without so much as a glance at the other two wizards, who were busy with their own spell preparations, she exhaled completely and leaned down to touch her lips to the edge of that churning white vapor. Slowly, care-fully, she inhaled through her mouth, drawing that mist into her lungs. She felt no shortness of breath-if anything, the pure white smoke was strangely invigorating. She inhaled for a very long time, until all the smoke was gone.

  She started blowing through her pursed lips as she touched the end of the shaft to her mouth. The globe of molten glass hung loosely on the other end. Carefully she puffed, filling the soft globe with smoke, watching as it assumed a spherical shape and began to swell. Coryn felt a wonderful sense of release as the smoke rushed out of her, faster and faster, surging into the soft glass. The globe expanded, the glass pure and thick and clear.

  She felt drained; the smoke had exhausted her, her limbs were weak and trembling. But she could not falter now. Cory twisted the pole, breaking the connection to the globe, and then she snatched up the cork Jenna had left nearby. She sealed the glass orb tightly and leaned down to pick it up. It was cool to the touch, and strangely light, almost buoyant. Gingerly, she carried it to the work table, setting it on the third wooden stand. Dalamar and Jenna had already placed their own perfect spheres to either side.

  They rested there-three perfect globes of smoke, red and white and black murk swirling in their respective containers.

  The clouds were impossibly dense, opaque, yet they gave the impression of massive depth, as if one could look inside them for a great distance. Each was a perfect color: red, black, and white.

  Coryn didn't say anything-she was too weak to say anything, as she collapsed into the chair and drew deep breaths. But even through her half-closed eyelids she could see the three globes, and she was proud.

  The white one was the largest of them all.

  Though it was invisible to the vast population of Krynn, Dalamar watched the black moon as it crested the eastern horizon. The cold, lightless presence filled his heart with sublime power-power that focused, and expanded through the smooth orb of glass he held in his hands. It was past sunset on the Night of the Eye.

  Within that globe, black smoke churned and swirled, angrily pressing against the shell of its prison, desperately striving for release, while all around Dalamar was a vast gulf of space, with the steep slopes of the mountain falling away from him. He had teleported here by himself, impatient for the magic, and knowing that the women would soon follow.

  "Not long… soon you will have the world," he whispered, caressing his creation, the churning sphere of black smoke.

  He looked up to the heavens. Solinari, the white moon, was high in the dome of the night sky, the brightest object up there. Red Lunitari chased her alabaster cousin. The black, with its faster orbit, would soon close the gap, and indeed pass the other two before the dawn.

  Dalamar felt a small rush of pleasure at the knowledge that he alone could actually see the black disk of Nuitari.

  To Jenna and Coryn, it would be but a dark space against the backdrop of stars. To a Black Robe, however, it was the very pulse of life itself. Nuitari had the fastest cycle of all the moons, and though it was far behind the others now, by the middle of the night, it would arrive at zenith with Solinari and Lunitari.

  And at that midnight, the Night of the Eye would reign over the world.

  Suddenly impatient, the dark elf again gazed at the firmament. He stood at the very crest of Worldsmont, crown of the High Kharolis and the loftiest summit on all of Ansalon. Even in the midst of summer, the air was cold, the night breeze-while gentle-carrying a bite of late autumn. Yet Dalamar felt no discomfort; tonight, magic would warm them all.

  He saw Jenna climbing toward him, coming along one of the ridges draping away from the summit. Carrying her orb of red smoke, she made her way steadily along a bank of snow, kicking her steps in the frozen slush as she ascended. In minutes she had joined the dark elf at the summit.

  She did not meet the eyes of the other wizard, not at first. Instead she faced the east, head tilted back so that the red light of her moon washed across her face, bringing a bloody brightness to the smooth folds of her robe. "She is beautiful, is she not?" she asked reverently, after a time.

  "Yes-though hers is a cold beauty," Dalamar said. "I feel the majesty of my own moon, burning hot as it courses through my veins."

  "Where is Coryn-have you seen her yet?" asked the Red Robe.

  "No. But I'm not surprised-she will arrive lower on the mountain than either of us."

  "Of course," Jenna agreed. Since each of the two of them had been to this mountaintop before, they had been able to teleport unerringly. Coryn, however, had been forced to rely on the coordinates provided by her fellow wizards. For safety's sake, they had directed her to a broad, flat shoulder, where there was little chance of a miscalculation that might send her tumbling down the slope.

  "There she is," noted the enchantress, pointing down the west ridge.

  Dalamar saw the speck of whiteness, Coryn's robe, moving with painstaking slowness along the snaking crest. He cast a glance at the sky, worried. "She'd better hurry."

  "Don't worry. She wouldn't dare let herself be late," Jenna replied.

  Indeed, as the moons drew toward the zenith, they could see the young wizard increase her gait, stepping from rock to rock with lengthening and stronger strides, holding her large glass sphere cradled in her hands. She arrived at the summit with minutes to spare.

  Pl
ans had been made, the spells memorized and rehearsed during the long afternoon. Now, there didn't seem to be anything more to say. The trio of wizards simply stood and stared, as the three moons drew into very close proximity at the very zenith of the sky. The three gods of magic embraced the world, their power flowed, and the Night of the Eye was upon them.

  Jenna began the casting. She held her globe high over her head and addressed the heavens. "Praise to Lunitari the Red. May the blood of life ever reflect your vitality and power."

  As still as a statue, she maintained her pose while Dalamar hoisted his own orb.

  "Hail to Nuitari the Black. May the perfection of your immaculate darkness ever shroud yourself from danger and threat."

  Then he, too, held still, as Coryn raised her pale sphere.

  "Honor Solinari the White," she chanted. "May the purity of your essence bring balm to the very body of the world."

  They turned in unison so that they were facing each other. On silent cue, they cast down their spheres onto the rock at the very summit of Worldsmont, the glass shattering simultaneously in a smoky explosion.

  Wind whipped their robes. Dalamar blinked back the dust and smoke that stung his eyes, felt needles of icy wind lashing his face and his bare hands and arms. He kept his balance, staring upward, feeling as though he stood at the base of a cyclone. Howling noise surrounded them, colored vapors exploded, and rose boiling toward the sky. The tumult only grew, surrounding and enveloping them, but without menace.

  The three pillars of smoke coiled together, rushing upward as if striving for the moons themselves. A hurricane gale now lashed at the wizards, but they remained in place, fixed like statues. The column of vapors suddenly whirled apart, high overhead. The smoke of each color diffused into tendrils, dozens or more of each of the three colors blasting across the sky with meteoric speed, trailing plumes of red, black, or white, flying to the far corners of Ansalon.

  Chapter 21