Defenders of Magic 01 - Night of the Eye

by Scorpion ZS 256

  "We prefer the nonpejorative term 'dark side,' " interrupted LaDonna.

  Justarius nodded in respect to the black-robed woman's request, but under his mustache his lip curled up in a slight smirk. "Both Good and Evil exist in all creatures. We believe that to try to eliminate one or the other is not only futile, but an undesirable goal. It is when these two opposing elements are balanced in an individual—or in a society—that life has the richness we all seek. Wizards of the Red Robes use their magic to encourage and maintain that balance."

  "Realize this, too," added Par-Salian, "before you make your decision. Every wizard, no matter the color

  of his robe, vows his primary allegiance to magic. All wizards are brothers in their order. All orders are brothers in the power. Though we may disagree on method, particularly during important conclaves, the places of High Wizardry, such as this tower, are held in common among us. No sorcery will be suffered here in anger against fellow wizards." Par-Salian shifted a bushy white brow.

  Guerrand pondered all that they had said, conscious not to take too much time in his evaluation. Finally, he said, with a nod to Par-Salian and LaDonna, "With all due respect to your disciplines, I believe the philosophy of the Red Robes, as outlined by Justarius, most closely aligns with my own outlook on life."

  "You are certain?" asked Par-Salian. "Are you prepared to declare loyalty to that order?"

  Guerrand nodded solemnly. Clearing his throat, he said with great formality, "I, Guerrand DiThon, do hereby pledge my loyalty to the Order of the Red Robes." He was rewarded with a warm smile from Justarius.

  "That is done." Par-Salian's ringed fingers slapped the arm of his stone chair in satisfaction. "There is one last piece of business to conclude today's interviews." The door behind Guerrand flew open abruptly, and the same disembodied voice that had called Guerrand forth from the foretower drew in the two young mages still waiting there.

  "Welcome once more," said the white-haired wizard as the other young mages seated themselves next to Guerrand. "Our last bit of business is to ascertain or assign masters so that you may all begin your apprenticeships.

  "Stand, Nieulorr of Swansea Valley," called the head of the conclave. The shrouded elf slid gracefully from the chair, almond-shaped eyes fixed on the elderly mage. "You have declared your allegiance to the White

  Robes. Have you a master, or are you in need of placement with a suitable archmage? The council has a number of approved wizards who are currently without apprentices."

  "With respect, Great One," the elf said humbly, "I have regarded Karst Karstior of Frenost, of the White Robes, as a mentor for nearly two decades. He has kindly agreed to accept me as his apprentice."

  "Karst Karstior," repeated Par-Salian, tapping his chin as he pondered. "Ah, yes. I remember. He is a good mage and a better person." The head of the conclave nodded decisively. "I approve." Par-Salian withdrew a coarse, white robe from the shadows behind his chair and held it toward the slender elf. "Return to your village and begin your apprenticeship. We look forward to adjudicating at your Test in the future."

  The elf nodded, took the white robe in his thin-boned fingers, and quickly fled the scrutiny of the powerful wizards in the Hall of Mages.

  Justarius's eyes demanded Guerrand's attention. "Guerrand DiThon, as representative of your chosen order, I give to you a novitiate's red robe." Guerrand stood and approached the circle of chairs, nodded reverently, and accepted the rough-spun garment. "You've already stated that you've had no master but books. Have you considered to whom you might apprentice yourself?"

  Guerrand's thoughts flew to the wizard in Northern Ergoth. "No," muttered Guerrand. "I've known only one mage, the one who suggested I come here, but he seemed uninterested in taking an apprentice. I would ask if you have any suggestions."

  "As a matter of fact, I do," said Justarius, considering Guerrand closely. "I already have one apprentice under my tutelage, but my home is large and my patience considerably larger. I would be willing to take on another who seems determined to overcome ignorance

  to realize his talent."

  "Thank you." Guerrand smiled awkwardly at the half compliment. When one reached Justarius's level of skill, Guerrand supposed diplomacy was a secondary concern. Besides, of the mages he'd met—and that now numbered a mere four—Guerrand felt most comfortable with this mage of the Red Robes. He could scarcely believe the second-ranking mage of his order would consider him. "I am honored, master, and humbly accept the position."

  "Good," approved Par-Salian. "You are a fortunate young man," he said, wagging a finger at Guerrand. "You two may speak afterward about—"

  Suddenly a door banged in the shadows behind the semicircle of chairs. There was much bustling and shuffling, and a voice said, "I am sorry to be late again. I got involved in research and the time slipped away from me, I fear."

  A muscle in Par-Salian's jaw twitched. "Well enough, today, but you would do well to remember your duty to your order in the future. As it turned out, we scarcely missed you. Justarius has done a fine job in your stead."

  Par-Salian's warning was not lost on anyone in the Hall of Mages. Guerrand had frozen at the familiar voice coming from the darkness. He gasped as the mage himself emerged. Belize! He was the Master of the Red Robes. Considering their last conversation, Guerrand could not decide whether he should call attention to himself or pretend to not recognize the man. In the end, it wasn't his decision to make.

  Justarius leaped from his chair beside Par-Salian, stumbling over his own left leg. Scowling, Guerrand's master dragged the limb back next to his other, the first outward sign that Justarius had a game leg. He waved Belize toward the seat, in deference to his rank. Belize lowered himself into the warmed seat with a baleful look at his substitute. "The Great One is too kind," said Justarius. "I did little enough, though I found a new and challenging apprentice."

  Belize's shiny pate shifted up almost grudgingly, and he squinted toward the two remaining mage hopefuls. His dark eyes lingered on Guerrand, probing for placement.

  Feeling like a bug in a web, Guerrand felt forced to said, "Good day, master." He cursed his quivering voice. "It seems I must thank you for encouraging me to come here."

  Justarius looked from Belize to Guerrand. "You two are acquainted?" Guerrand alone nodded. "Well, then, Belize, since you knew of Guerrand first, perhaps you wish to take him as a student."

  Belize merely looked puzzled, obviously still trying to place Guerrand. "I'm not looking for an apprentice—"

  "How long has it been since you've had one, Belize?" cut in Par-Salian. "Twenty years?"

  Guerrand felt his chest tightening. He had no wish to study under the frightening mage. It was obvious their encounter had meant little to Belize, since the mage didn't even remember him. Yet Guerrand could think of no way to voice his objections without insulting the master of his order.

  "I've done my duty to magic and its advancement," snapped Belize. "I've lost count of the spellbooks I've written so that scores of young mages have ready reference works."

  Beside Guerrand, Lyim jumped to his feet. "Excuse me, but I am one of the scores of mages who've read those books," he said boldly, his eyes scanning the council and resting on Belize's ruddy, pock-marked face. "You have been my mentor. It is because of you that I wish to become a mage."

  Belize brightened at this break in what was beginning to sound like an inquisition. "Is that so?"

  Lyim's handsome face was earnest. "Yes." He closed his eyes as if summoning courage. "I never thought to have this chance, and it makes me bold. If ever you would take an apprentice, I would ask that you consider me."

  "Lyim Rhistadt has an excellent natural talent," prompted Justarius.

  Belize's eyes traveled from Justarius above him, to Par-Salian seated to his right, then to Lyim's hopeful face. "Yes, yes, all right," he muttered irritably. "Am I right in assuming this concludes today's business?" Par-Salian nodded. "Good," said Belize. He squinted one last time at Guerrand, then sh
ook his head.

  Standing, he addressed Lyim over his shoulder as he walked into the darkness again. "Justarius will give you a robe and fill you in on the traditional initiation challenge to apprentices of the Red Robes. I can scarcely remember it." With that indifferent line, Belize was gone, leaving two relieved apprentices in his wake.

  Chapter Seven

  With a wave of his arm, Belize swept the beakers and vials off his laboratory table onto the slate-gray floor. The enraged mage didn't hear the glass shatter, didn't even feel the combustible preservative liquid splash the hem of his crimson robe, where it began to eat through the expensive brocade. Hen hearts bounced at his feet like fish out of water. Powdered diamond flew up in a sparkling cloud. Had he noticed the loss of components that had taken years to collect, Belize still wouldn't have cared. He was too furious at circumstances that had caused him to be doubly duped. The hue of his pocked face surpassed the color of his crimson robe, all the way past the shady ring of stubble that surrounded his head.

  Something about the lanky apprentice in the Hall of Mages at Wayreth Tower had nagged at Belize, unsettled him. Seeking supernatural guidance, the mage, upon returning to his domed villa in Palanthas, had immediately cast a vision spell. The spell finally revealed to him what his memory had been unable to conjure. Justarius's new apprentice was the brother of that wretched Ergothian who intended to tear down the magical pillars, thereby sealing a portal he didn't even know existed. The bigoted bastard! The red mage pushed another beaker to the floor.

  Belize had scarcely looked at the boy the few times he'd spoken to him; this Guerrand was just a piece in a much bigger puzzle. Besides, he'd sent the young man on his way to the tower, certain the youth was so inept and bucolic that he'd either die from the rigors of shipboard life, or be killed shortly after by wild animals in Wayreth Forest. Either fate mattered little to Belize. His only purpose in speaking to Guerrand had been to remove the youth from his environment so that the wedding between the two families, which would place Stonecliff in the local lord's hands, would not occur.

  Belize had thought that arranging the death of the first brother, the strapping young cavalier, would be sufficient to prevent Stonecliff from reverting to the hands of a magic-hating oaf. The possibility that the magical portal would be torn down was so grave that Belize might have called in the Conclave to prevent it, had he not had very specific and secret plans for the plinths of Stonecliff himself.

  Belize's gaze fell on his spellbook, open to the page he'd been studying when he'd recalled the appointment at the Hall of Mages in Wayreth. Remember the coal, he told himself now. The rest is incidental. He only wished the Night of the Eye, when the three moons—white Solinari, red Lunitari, and black Nuitari—were to align was sooner than five months hence. Magic would be at its most powerful that night, and Belize would need every jot of power conceivable.

  He had already waited over two years for this singular event, which happened only once every half decade.

  Belize shook his bald head in disbelief. He could scarcely accept that it had been only two years since he'd come into possession of the millennium-old spell-book of Harz-Takta the Senseless. It had lain undisturbed in the submerged ruins of blasphemous Itzan Klertal. No mortal could have recovered it, including Belize. Even the fiend Belize had enslaved to perform the task barely escaped with its sanity, such as that was. Belize had feared so many possibilities: the book might have been destroyed along with the city, or disintegrated over the centuries; maybe it never existed at all; perhaps even its horrific master was only a rumor. But the creature had returned with the tome, as commanded. And then the real work had begun.

  At first Belize had been unable to even open the book. Neutralizing the magical seals had taken three weeks, and that was only the first hurdle. The book had opened to reveal a magical script that was completely unknown to modern scholars. That mind-twisting grammar, for it was not truly a language, had to be deciphered and then painstakingly translated.

  The writings told of an ancient place Belize had heard of long ago, in the history lessons of his apprenticeship. The Lost Citadel was the first bastion of magical knowledge. In PC 2645, at the end of the Second Dragon War, the dragons had returned to Krynn against their queen's vow and were ravaging the land. Three wild mages summoned potent magic and commanded the ground to swallow the dragons for all time. The dragons were defeated, but the magic ran amuck and thousands died. The three mages, fearful for their lives, called upon the gods for help. Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari heard their cries. They seized the tower in which the mages stood and moved it beyond the circles of the universe, where the gods could teach the three mages the foundations of wizardry in peace. The tower became known as the Lost Citadel.

  For one hundred years, the gods trained their disciples in the ways of magic. At last, the three mages returned to Krynn to lead other wild mages out of hiding. They constructed five bastions in remote regions to shelter all mages from the hostile world; these became known as the Towers of High Sorcery. The gods then closed the way to the Lost Citadel, believing the knowledge it harbored was too powerful to fall into the hands of ordinary mages or mortals.

  In the centuries since then, the role of magic in the world had changed greatly. Not the least of these changes was that three of the five Towers of High Sorcery had been abandoned or decimated during the Cataclysm. Only one, Wayreth, was inhabitable. The stories of the Lost Citadel had slipped away into the category of legend among mages, much like dragons had to the population of Krynn.

  Except to Harz-Takta the Senseless. One thousand years before, he had devised and recorded in his spell-book a means of entering the Lost Citadel. The brilliance of the mind that formulated the process was astounding. According to Harz-Takta, more than a dozen magical portals existed across the face of Krynn for the primary purpose of interplanar travel. Harz-Takta searched for a secondary purpose and claimed to find it. His writings proposed that, during a Night of the Eye, just one of these portals, a different one each time, would gain the caster entry into the Lost Citadel when combined with the appropriate spell.

  Even Belize had doubted it would work until he broke through the conceptual barrier of standard magical thought. The process was so nonconventional, even counter-rational, that it required relearning a tremendous amount of what Belize had been taught and what most mages simply took for granted. Harz-Takta posited a completely alternate view of reality, one unrelated to the known senses. Step by step, for almost two years, Belize had tested those hypotheses, and so far, they seemed wholly valid.

  Belize had no way of knowing what had happened to Harz-Takta. His writings stopped just prior to his attempt to pass through a portal during the triple eclipse on a Night of the Eye one thousand years before. History had recorded nothing of the outcome. A pessimist, or even a realist, would have assumed that he'd failed.

  But Belize had grasped Harz-Takta's brilliance, and now he would follow in that great man's footsteps. He risked everything, but would gain a universe. When Belize entered the Lost Citadel he would have the knowledge of the gods. For two years he had worked with only that goal in mind. To hone his gating skills— the ability to pass from one place to another by way of an extradimensional gate—he secured a spellbook on the subject by the great wizard Fistandantilus.

  Next he searched the continents for maps or other clues to the whereabouts of the ancient magical portals referenced by Harz-Takta. Then he'd spent a year reviewing lunar probabilities to determine which of the portals was most likely to open a gate to the Lost Citadel during the next Night of the Eye, which was then a half year away.

  That led him, just a month before, to the plinths known as Stonecliff. He'd quickly determined the current owner, a merchant named Berwick, and offered to buy the land to ensure that he could carry out his research there whenever he wished. Unfortunately, the man would not sell to him, having promised the land as part of a dowry to a titled lord to the west. That lout, Cormac DiThon, had proven e
ven more intractable. First, he'd rejected a ridiculously generous offer of money for the land, when it was obvious from the shabby state of his castle that his fortunes were severely diminished. What was worse, the man was a terrible bigot about mages. Though he knew nothing of Belize's intentions, the lord viciously vowed to tear down the plinths, which were reputed to be magical in nature, just to spite all mages. Then he'd thrown Belize out.

  The Abyss had no fury like a mage scorned. An answer, and an image, came immediately to mind with a spell cast on the nobleman that revealed what his surface thoughts had been during their encounter. If the land was to be exchanged as part of a marriage, the marriage had to be prevented. It was simple work for Belize to track down the bridegroom and arrange for his death within minutes of Belize's confrontation with the lord. The wedding had been stopped.

  Until the brother with illusions of wizardry, the one who'd been deemed unacceptable, was substituted. Belize learned that the wedding was back on, which meant the land would still revert to the impoverished lord. Belize's first thought had been to simply kill the second groom. Then he remembered the stoning he'd witnessed in the village and the young man's sympathy for magic. This obvious conflict between the lord and his younger brother provided Belize with a way to prevent the marriage without further bloodshed. He was. after all, still a mage of Neutrality.

  And it had worked; the young man ran away before his wedding like a thief in the night. With the transfer of land stopped, Belize had forgotten entirely about the wretched Ergothian lord and his family. Until the scene in the Hall of Mages. If only he'd remembered the young mage while he still had a chance to claim him as an apprentice, he would have had control over him.

  Belize felt himself tensing up again. He had difficulty now determining which part of this foolishness angered him more—that he'd arrived at the Hall of Mages late, or that he'd gone there at all. The latter had caused him to be saddled with an apprentice he neither knew nor wanted. He cursed himself for letting the eager young man's flattery go to his head. Belize had accepted him before he had time to recall why the other young man seemed familiar.