Deep Magic - First Collection

by Jeff Wheeler

  “Waracabra tigers are the emissaries of First Tree, the spirit of wildness and the heart of the forest,” Temaro said, affronted. “It is the ultimate test of skill.”

  That seemed to only amuse Naxeen further. “Skill.” He rolled the word around on his tongue as if tasting it.

  “Well, what are you doing here, traveling with tigers?”

  “As you say, the tigers serve First Tree.” Naxeen spread his hands in a gesture meant to encompass the whole of their surroundings. “The forest is dynamic, ever changing, and First Tree abhors the clean and static ways of man. So is it any wonder that First Tree loves his sister, Puwai the Transgressor, patroness of deviants? Puwai, who spits in the face of the sun and seeds misfortune among the men.”

  Temaro stared for a moment, unsure what to make of the stranger’s odd manner and verbosity. “So you control them?”

  Naxeen laughed. “I can no more control the tigers than I can order about the sun and moon. The tigers do as they please. Right now, it pleases them to lead me to you.”

  A prickling sensation crawled up Temaro’s spine, a feeling of being watched and hunted. He did not want to know why this deviant sought him out—in fact, he suddenly felt desperate not to know.

  Naxeen told him anyway. “You are a sorcerer, Temaro.”

  * * *

  Temaro ran. Panic clawed at his chest, quickening his heart until it fluttered like a baby bird’s. He didn’t pick any particular direction to run; anywhere would suit him fine as long as it was away from the crazy man and his tigers. Temaro could not be a sorcerer—deviants were not tolerated among the Appenuni people. Stretching his legs, he let his feet find footing on the root-riddled forest floor and ran until his lungs burned.

  He paused at a creek to quench his thirst and finally admitted to himself that he was behaving foolishly. He could easily get lost at such a speed, and he had none of his provisions with him. He needed to go back, at least to pick up his warishi. Perhaps the deviant would have given up and left by the time Temaro found his way.

  It took him a while to retrace his steps. He hadn’t left much of a trail to follow despite traveling fast and clumsily, so he reconstructed his path from what landmarks he remembered. A tree-fall gap, a scattering of bright red seeds, an old and gnarled liana. When he stepped astray, a feeling of wrongness bubbled up from the depths of his mind to guide him back on course, but it was only an Appenuni’s natural sense of direction. Absurd to think it could be magic.

  Eventually, Temaro found his way back to the ironstone ridge where he’d hung his hammock. As he approached, he caught glimpses of the tigers from between the trees, and his stomach felt as if he had swallowed stones. Naxeen and the tigers were still there. Temaro decided to ignore them, go about his business here, and leave as quickly as possible.

  The deviant watched, calm and implacable, as Temaro once again climbed the giant palaway, this time to untie his hammock. He took the hammock down with him and approached the fire, but only because his warishi lay near it. Taking long, controlled breaths, Temaro forced himself to adopt a pretense of calm as he began to repack the warishi.

  “Tell me,” said Naxeen, “Do you truly love the life of the Appenuni?”

  “Yes,” Temaro said, knowing the word for a lie as soon as it spilled from his tongue.

  “You delight at the prospect of returning home a man? You are so eager to build a hut of your own, to take a wife, that you have not a moment to spare for what I offer?”

  Temaro said nothing.

  Naxeen raised an eyebrow. “If you are so certain no trace of any magic lies buried within you, then you have nothing to fear from sitting with me for a moment.”

  Clenching his jaw, Temaro sat, if only to prove a confidence he did not truly feel.

  “Every month on the night of the new moon, bizarre dreams disturb your sleep. Sometimes you feel plagued by a sense of longing for something you cannot express. Things that other boys your age obsess over hold little interest for you. And your happiest memories are of your mother—perhaps staying up all night to help her stir the fermenting kasiri? Women’s work.” Naxeen cocked his head to one side, a bird-like inquiry, and watched for Temaro’s reaction.

  Temaro tried not to react at all. He would not give the deviant the satisfaction of seeing how deeply the words cut him.

  Naxeen smiled knowingly. “Reach inside yourself, deep down into the dark places and hidden corners from which dreams bubble up. You will feel them lying dormant there, the threads of Puwai’s magics, curling and shifting just beyond your awareness. You can reach out and call them awake, if you wish.”

  The deviant sure knew how to talk—and talk and talk and talk. Temaro grew short-tempered with him. “Why would a god bother to seed magics in me?”

  “The world of man is static and structured. You and I, we do not fit within that structure and so we are a threat to it. This pleases Puwai. She gives us strong magics in the hope we will go forth and spread disruption. The forest teaches us that only through disturbance can we attain a new equilibrium—perhaps a better one.”

  Better for whom, Temaro wondered, suspicious of the deviant’s charming words. He thought of his home. While he wasn’t very good at that life, the shortcomings were his own—he did not blame his family or wish them any ill will. “I do not want to be a deviant,” he said. “I do not want to transgress.”

  “It is not the act of transgression that earns us our powers. We are deviants—and sorcerers—down to our bones. You cannot bury who you are by pretending to be one of them.”

  A tiger sauntered up to Naxeen. This one was tall and lean, with a moon-bright pelt and dark spots speckling its haunches. The tiger and Naxeen touched noses, sniffing one another, then rubbed their faces cheek to cheek, eyes closed with pleasure. Temaro stayed silent while he watched the exchange, aghast.

  Naxeen opened his eyes, and upon seeing Temaro’s expression, his lips quirked with amusement. “To them, we are but one more kind of waracabra tiger.”

  “And you?” Temaro said, disgusted but feeling unaccountably bold. “What is your transgression? What do the tigers love you for?”

  Naxeen absently stroked the tiger with one hand, and it lay down beside him. His gaze stayed focused on Temaro in a most unsettling fashion. “I was born a girl. It did not suit me. And that did not suit my people well at all.”

  No. It was all too strange—Temaro had to get away. He’d been a fool to listen to the deviant’s ramblings for even a moment. He gathered up his warishi and finished stuffing his hammock into it.

  Naxeen watched with dispassionate interest, as if he—she? Temaro could not bring himself to think of Naxeen as a she—were studying Temaro the way a child might study a trail of kushi ants. Temaro did not appreciate being made a subject of observation.

  “So that is your choice?” said Naxeen.

  “I have to return. The city-men travel the river, and we must find a way to resist them. This is no time for me to abandon my home.”

  He shook his head ruefully. “As an emissary of Puwai, it is not your concern. You are from them, but not of them.”

  Temaro had no response for Naxeen’s clever words, which seemed to twist down into his mind, planting seeds of doubt to go along with his supposed seeds of magic. Instead he stood and shouldered his warishi.

  Naxeen sighed. “If you are determined to return, take with you this advice: you cannot win against the city-men with spears and slingshots. If they want to raze your very island in pursuit of their precious rocks, move aside and watch. Or die.”

  Temaro nodded—a reluctant sort of thanks—and set off down the slope of the ridge.

  “Temaro,” Naxeen called after him.

  He paused a moment, turning back just far enough to see Naxeen over his shoulder.

  “Think on what I have said. I will wait five days, and then I will depart.”

  * * *

  There was no celebration when Temaro returned home alive; they had no time for one. The
city-men’s boats had been spotted just downriver of the village, and every able-bodied man was preparing to defend the island.

  The village’s tushau formulated a plan: they would surround the city-men on three sides and drive them back downriver. Some of the men would ride in the dugouts, and the rest were ferried to either shore. When Tushau gave out the assignments, Temaro stayed close to Kainu and they both were picked for the eastern side. Someone passed him a fishing spear, and all too soon it was time to go to battle.

  Temaro crept along the bank, two steps behind Kainu, careful to stay far enough in to be hidden from sight. He breathed in shallow nervous gasps, too distracted to master his lungs. The rest of their band was arrayed in front and behind, wary men taking careful steps. When they reached their positions, Tushau let out a low hiss, and they all hunkered down to wait. Aside from the river lapping at its banks, the forest fell quiet, as if the birds and insects sensed their fear.

  Temaro watched through the undergrowth as the city-men rowed slowly into view. Their boats looked awkwardly broad, sitting two oarsmen side by side, and each was overburdened with at least six men. The city-men themselves were tall and lanky and dark as palaway bark after a rainstorm. At their hips, they wore long curved blades—a man stood in the prow of the lead boat, and Temaro saw sunlight glint off the metal. Kainu crouched in the brush beside him, quivering—his brother, usually so proud and blustering, was terrified.

  Temaro realized several things at once.

  First, that Naxeen was right. The Appenuni people hunt small game mostly—bringing down a tapir is cause for a festival, with friends invited from the villages upriver and downriver to share in the bounty. Appenuni do not make war among themselves. They were no match for the city-men with their forged-metal weapons and their combat experience.

  Second, Temaro realized that his brother had neither seen nor heard the waracabra tigers. Kainu was full of false bravado. Perhaps none of the villagers had ever seen the tigers, aside from Temaro himself.

  Third, he knew that his people would need the interference of a god to save them. Or the help of a god’s chosen emissary.

  Temaro shut his eyes, trying to focus. If ever there were a time he needed power and talent, now was it—even if that meant revealing what he was to the people he loved. Even if it meant banishment.

  He cleared his mind of all thought and reached inside himself, searching for the subtle touch of Puwai upon his soul. The magics stirred, whispering against one another like ripples and eddies in the water.

  Holding onto the feeling, Temaro slid down the bank and splashed hip-deep into the river. Looking up, he thanked the gods that the city-men’s boats had not yet reached his position. He laid out his open palms, barely touching the surface of the water. Then he closed his eyes again and sorted through the intertwined magics for one that felt right and ready, and he let that magic trickle down his arms.

  A swell of water rushed away from Temaro’s hands, sweeping toward the city-men’s fleet. Some of the boats rode the wave, others capsized. The air filled with surprised shouts from city-men and Appenuni alike.

  “Ooooo-eeeee!” Temaro called, to get the attention of the lead boat. “This is our river and you are not welcome here!”

  They did not answer him. The man standing in the prow of the lead boat bent his head to confer with another city-man, but Temaro did not want to give them time to strategize. He sent another swell, larger than the first. Now fully half the city-men were drenched and struggling to right their boats while the current slowly dragged them downriver.

  From behind him came a muffled scream. And another one, closer, each fading into terrified whimpers. Then the tigers appeared all at once, silently padding up to the edge of the riverbank, their eyes flashing in the dappled sunlight. The villagers scrambled to get out of their way, but the tigers paid them no heed; they fixed their gazes on the city-men instead.

  Temaro’s breath caught in his throat at the sight. Waracabra tigers—emissaries of First Tree, hunters of men, driven by ancient and unknowable purpose—had come to his aid. He could not guess what that might mean.

  The city-men must have had some idea, though, because they turned their boats and fled.

  * * *

  When the city-men had gone, Temaro went back to the village with the others, but only to repack his possessions. He hoped that if he moved quickly, Naxeen would be easy to find; the tigers had come down to the river, and he guessed the northerner would have come with them.

  Kainu offered to row him ashore. On the walk to the dugout landing, Temaro locked his gaze forward, not wanting to meet his brother’s eyes.

  “Is Father angry with me?” he said.

  “Angry?” said Kainu. “No, Temaro, not angry. He is bursting with pride that his youngest son was the one to save the village.”

  Temaro took in the news stoically. He used to dream of performing a great deed and earning his father’s praise, used to imagine how it might feel to burst with pride. Strange—now that he had finally earned the respect of his family, it seemed no longer to matter.

  “You could stay, you know.”

  Temaro shook his head. “We both know that isn’t true. Tushau could never allow it. I don’t know what lies ahead, but this life is not the one for me.”

  Kainu nodded and launched the dugout. With a few deft strokes of the paddle, he delivered Temaro back into the arms of the forest.

  It did not take Temaro long to discern the whereabouts of Naxeen. There was a magic for that, he discovered—a little thread of air that unfurled before him to guide his footsteps in the proper direction. With each use, the magics became more lively and present in his mind, rising out of the murky depths where they lay hidden for so long. In a short while, Temaro found Naxeen sitting alone on a fallen log, no sign of the waracabra tigers anywhere.

  “You came,” said Naxeen.

  Temaro nodded.

  Naxeen tilted his head, narrowing his eyes. “What you’ve done here is most unusual. I do not know if Puwai will look favorably upon your actions.”

  Temaro pursed his lips pensively. After a moment of silence, he found the courage to say, “Is it not transgressive, to take a gift meant to tear a community apart and use it instead to save them?”

  Naxeen laughed. “Why yes, Temaro, I do believe you have transgressed.”

  “What now?”

  “Now, my young sorcerer,” Naxeen said, rising from the log to step deeper into the forest, “now begins the rest of your life.”

  Temaro followed, ready to find out what that might be.

  Gwendolyn Clare

  Gwendolyn Clare writes science fiction and fantasy. Her debut novel — INK, IRON, AND GLASS — is the first in a steampunk duology about a young mad scientist with the ability to write new worlds into existence, forthcoming from Macmillan/Imprint in 2018. Her short stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, Asimov's, Analog, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others, and her poetry has been nominated for the Rhysling Award.

  She holds a BA in Ecology, a BS in Geophysics, a PhD in Mycology, and swears she's done collecting acronyms. She lives in North Carolina with too many cats, too many ducks, and never enough books.

  Wizards and Wizdom

  By Ronald D. Ferguson | 14,100 words

  The wizard does not face me, does not turn from his mountain path to acknowledge me, but he speaks as if he reads my intention, perhaps my mind.

  “I am Tovenaar. I’m on a dangerous quest, Eric, and I have no time for a pupil. Besides, you are too old to be an apprentice.”

  Forestalled and unsure of how to phrase my plea, I fiddle with the hilt of my sword. The wizard pauses at a redwood fallen at the boundary between forest and meadow. Will he enter the woods to avoid me? I’ve never before feared a forest, no matter how dark. Why this sudden apprehension? Has he spelled me?

  Tovenaar walks the length of the fallen fern-framed tree. My feet refuse to move.

  From the depths of the forest, a dog howls, or
perhaps another large beast like a wolf or lion. Now a mournful cry that grumbles into an angry cough. Unfamiliar. What sound does a dragon make?

  When he passes alongside the nearest standing redwood, I call, “Master Glibone sent me.” Despite my reluctance to follow among the forest giants, I can’t give up. All day, I tracked him from a distance before I dared this approach. Now he offers a few preemptive words and then ignores me.

  I shiver. My thin shirt is made for the plains, not this altitude. The growing mistral-like wind from the mountains carries a warning: autumn tends to winter. Winter? In the mountains? Where shall I go if the wizard does not accept me? Still he does not speak.

  “I’m an excellent student, Master Tovenaar.” I raise my voice for the distance in case he does not hear well. “Ask Master Glibone.”

  “Nonetheless, you are too old. How old? At least, eighteen years.”

  I want to answer “twelve,” but a wizard knows when you lie, doesn’t he?

  “Master Glibone took me in as a baby. He guesses I’ll be fifteen before this year ends.” Does the wizard compel me to the truth? Encouraged that he listens, I spill too many details. “He wasted years teaching me the warrior’s path. I learned to fight but have difficulty accepting orders. Neither do I aspire to rally men. However, I am a good study. I will learn whatever you choose to teach.”

  “Almost fifteen? Still fourteen? You’re the biggest fourteen-year-old I’ve ever seen. Bigger than most men at any age and likely still growing.” Tovenaar pauses and cocks his head but still will not look my way. “Is that an iron sword at your waist? Are you good with a sword?”

  “Yes.”

  “And have you killed many men?”

  “So far, I have not found that necessary.” I don’t want to tell him that I’ve never been in a fight to the death, despite years of practice.

  “Yes. Well, we’ve had four years of uncommon peace. No wars to season a young man.”

  Feet suddenly loosened, I step closer. Why does he ask about my sword? Steel holds an edge better than bronze. Is that it? Perhaps iron impresses him. I must find a way to impress him too.