Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  That made no sense, especially when he should never have even known of Kyran in the first place.

  It was almost as if they both had had the same master. One who had taught them both of the dark arts, and one who had told Dimeter of his predecessor’s demise.

  But they didn’t. Master Silas was Dimeter’s master, and he had not even been in Gunder when Kyran was there, and he would never have taught him the dark arts. Kyran’s master had been Master Conte, a stern and elderly wizard who again would not have countenanced his student learning such things. He had been impossibly strict with his students when it came to Guild law, and it was sometimes joked behind his back that he was actually old enough to have been one of those who had first forged it.

  In fact none of the masters that he remembered from his time in the Guild would have tolerated such teachings. And in truth they shared their students, so that if one had done something so terrible, the others would have learned of it quickly enough and stopped it. The masters could not be to blame. But still they had clearly learned this knowledge during their time in the Guild. Or found it.

  As the pain threatened to send his thoughts spinning again, Marjan suddenly remembered back to his time in Gunder, and to his years spent with Kyran, listening to his endless threats and put downs, and his wild claims of all the power he had found in the catacombs. The boy had had a need to tell everyone of his power, he wanted them to fear him. And like Dimeter, he wanted power. That maybe, was the thing that defined them. A hunger for power that overran everything else. And somewhere in the Guild, down in the endless catacombs he realised, they had both found it.

  But what?

  Journals and tomes were kept in the library, access by the students to them strictly controlled. Artefacts, those of any known power were also stored under lock and key, and warded as well. What the boys could have found in those endless tunnels could have been only curios. Things of little value except maybe sentiment, as the remains of the lives of the centuries of other wizards who had lived and died in the Guild, had been put away for safe keeping. Nothing of a wizard’s life was ever thrown away. Not in the eight hundred years since the guild had been reformed, and probably not even in the millennia before then.

  Which meant it was old!

  Marjan clung to that fragment of insight as the pain kept lancing through him, understanding that no master since the end of the unseen war would ever have told the boys of necromancy. Guild law banned it. But the Guild had existed before then, and some of the things of those ancient wizards were probably still housed in the catacombs. The knowledge they had was ancient. And when he thought of ancient wizards there was always only one name that sprang to mind.

  Qua’thor. The dark wizard.

  His name was legend, the tales of him the stuff of nightmares, and if even a fraction of them were true, he was a monster of immense power. And as Marjan slowly remembered, he had another title by which he was known, the great necromancer.

  “Oh sweet Lord!” As the healers held him, walked him around like a puppet, and the pain of his wounds made themselves known again, Marjan suddenly understood the answer to the other question that had troubled them all. Who had Dimeter given his soul too? And even as it answered that one it revealed so much more.

  “Beloved.” Essaline was with him of course, even as the healers had told her to keep her distance, that it would be painful, but necessary, that they could not spare him.

  “No.” He held out his arm to stop her before she tried to help him. He didn’t need that sort of help much as he might want it.

  “Please my sweet Essaline, can you get Master Argus and Master Silas, and also an elder and some priests, soonest. I know why Dimeter hates me. Why he hated me long before he met me. And I know whence his terrible knowledge comes.” And he did, it had just never occurred to him. Something so simple, so stupid, and now it appeared, so deadly.

  That knowledge must have shown in his eyes as she stopped part way, and stared at him, concern in her eyes, but also understanding. Like everyone else she believed that he was sometimes more than a man, that he was an agent, and that he did things, knew things others did not. Maybe this time she was right. He had the knowledge from his past, and from simple logic, but the certainty came from somewhere else. Somewhere outside of him.

  As he watched Essaline hurry away to find the masters, he hoped that it was so, because what he was going to tell them was fantasy. Little more than madness.

  It was a long time before she returned with the promised people, but that was good as it gave Marjan a chance to put his thoughts in order, in between bouts of terrible pain as the healers continued with his exercises. But at last they were there standing in front of him, and for a short while, the torture could stop as he needed to speak.

  “I know who our enemy truly is.” It was maybe a strange thing to say when they already knew who it was, or they thought they did, and when the one saying it was dressed in sick robes and being held upright between two healers, who were no doubt tired of the job.

  “The void -.”

  “No Master Silas, the wyrmlings are just the tools. The army. But that which sends them out, that which directs them is another far more dangerous. It’s Qua’thor.”

  All of them stood there and stared at him in varying degrees of disbelief and shock. All of them of course knew the name, in the same way they knew the names of the Gods, good and evil. They were mostly just names. Legends, myths, and for the most part, nothing more. But Qua’thor was different. It was just that no one had guessed it until then.

  “Please hear my words honoured ones, before you dismiss them. If I did not know them for the truth I too would believe them madness. But I know them in the same way that I know why Dimeter hates me, how Kyran tried to kill me so many years ago, and why the world has been so terribly destroyed.” It must have been enough as they remained silent, listening, at least for a while.

  “A long time ago when I was but a boy, Kyran tried to kill me, and things went wrong for him and I both. This you know. What you do not know was that for many years before that, as he constantly sought to defeat me in any and every way, he was searching for power. Searching for knowledge. Searching for anything that would make him great. And he found it.”

  “I did not know that then, no one did. We knew he was spending long nights in the underground vaults, wandering the catacombs, hunting through them for anything that could grant him power. We knew that he had claimed to have found the ability to summon Qua’thor, and that he used that threat to terrify the younger children. But we, I, never thought he had actually found anything. We thought him telling tales. And then after the duel, it didn’t seem to matter. He was dead, his threats were forgotten.”

  “But now I know he found it, whatever it was. I know this because I know that Dimeter also found it. And I know that Kyran had in some way partly awakened the dark wizard. I know this because he must have been infuriated to only be partially awakened, and he must have hated me for stalling the process, and killing Kyran did just that. And when Qua’thor is angry, his servants are angry. Dimeter hated me long before he met me, and it wasn’t for being a maverick, nor for killing Kyran, it was for stopping his master from reawakening.”

  “This then is the source of Dimeter’s knowledge. Ask him, he will not deny it. He cannot. His master would never allow one of his servants to deny him, even at the cost of his own life. That is spoken of in all the tellings. Qua’thor does not tolerate being disregarded.” Qua’thor did not tolerate much at all, and he was a vindictive and evil wizard. The tales of what he had done to people who had even merely spoken ill of him in passing were too monstrous to be true. But true he suspected, they probably were.

  “Qua’thor has other servants too. Those who opened the portals to the void at his command, and those who direct the void creatures, and the others. Those who turn them from a rabble into an army. And some of them have knowledge too. Qua’thor’s knowledge. The knowledge of the underworld.”


  “That is how the stone trolls travelled through the world after the wards had been set. They did not travel through it. They travelled through the underworld, arriving at parts that were not warded because the wards were already behind them. And then they struck from the rear.” Simple, ingenious and evil, but not as evil as his purpose in sending them.

  “More than that however is now become clear to me. First Dimeter did not summon a great beast to fight the void creatures as he claimed. He summoned the beast to destroy Evensong, and maybe with luck, to kill me as well.” Which explained why he could sit in that court for a whole day and listen to the testimony of those who had lost loved ones and seemingly not care, merely uttering a lame excuse again and again and again. He didn’t care. His master had ordered him and he had obeyed.

  “The knowledge he has of the undead, of Kyran’s death and of the blood wraith, that too comes from his master. Qua’thor was a necromancer, the great necromancer, and he has granted some of that evil to his servants.”

  “It is also how Dimeter escaped custody. His master’s knowledge of the underworld granted him passage through it that the living could not follow.” In fact he had used the same route as the stone trolls.

  “But worst of all I know where Qua’thor is, and why he is not fully restored to life even now. He is in the void. He is the great darkness that drove the others mad, he is the evil that drives them, the terror that will not let them stop. And he is the one who sends them out to find whatever it is that he needs to free himself. And they are hunting. Destroying, killing, feeding, but always, everywhere they go, hunting for something, the key perhaps to his prison.”

  “Do you have something more than words to say this?” The elder was right to ask, but she wouldn’t like the answer. No one would.

  “Yes elder. We all do. We have the tale of his fall. He fought and killed and murdered, and brought his enemies down without number. His armies of the undead roamed the world, killing without end, his priests levelled entire cities. And at the end it is said, he was banished. We have all heard that, but never asked the obvious question, where was he banished to. Now we know the answer. He was banished to the void, along with his underlings, his black priests, my guess would be that they are the deformed, body snatching wizards we have encountered, busy trying to rebuild themselves.”

  “And we know one thing more. We know that the ancients, who surely created the void to hold their greatest enemy, also turned it into a convenient prison for their other enemies. So they opened the void from time to time, marched their enemies into it, and thought them gone forever. They never realised they were feeding Qua’thor, making him stronger. They never realised that he would create an army from their trapped dead souls. They never understood that someone so well versed in the knowledge of death and undeath could find a way to survive in the void where others could not. They sent him into the realm of death, and he made it his own.”

  “Then if the void is open why is he not free already?” The elder was right to ask the question, he only wished he didn’t have to tell her the answer.

  “Because it is not open. His servants on this side have opened portals, small doorways in and out of the void through which his servants can flee, but the void was built especially for him. It is his prison. The rats and mice may escape through the bars, but he may not. He needs to open the door, and that is what his servants are doing, hunting for the key.” And that was all they were doing. Everything else, the killing, the destruction of towns and cities, of the great forests, all of that was just the inevitable consequence of releasing so many tortured and tormented souls upon the world with the ability to take over bodies. So much death and pain, and all of it only an incidental side effect.

  There was silence all around him after he finished, as the elders all tried to work out of what he was saying could be true, or if he was mad, or maybe both. But it was a matter easily answered when they had Dimeter in their custody and he could not lie about his master. But there was one thing more they needed to know, and as he stood there, hanging from the shoulders of two good elves, he wondered if he truly wanted to tell them. It was a dream, a fancy no more surely, and yet he had had it every time he had slept since the attack, and he suspected it was because of it. The undead arrows had poisoned his flesh so that it did not heal as it should, but perhaps it had also shown him something.

  “Honoured ones, there is another matter to be spoken of. A dream perhaps, a vision maybe. But while I was asleep, after Dimeter had been taken away and I had been brought here, I saw a place. A mountaintop, a plateau of dark rock just below its summit. A place of rock and wind and snow. A dark and frightening place. And on this plateau there were four stones, four pillars, each the size of a house maybe, and markings on the ground between them. Great circles and wards that spanned the rock beneath them. I think maybe, that this is the portal. That the rocks move when the wards are set in motion, and that the gate opens and closes.” It was a dream and yet it felt so real, so important, and Marjan knew he was doing the right thing in telling them all of what he had seen, even if it sounded like madness. The others though, maybe they weren’t so sure, and the silence fell again.

  “The Goddess, she brought you to safety.” Essaline was suddenly alive once more, and he could see the wagon wheels turning behind her eyes.

  “A wounded, heart sick, exiled wizard of potential, yes, but one thing more. An enemy of the dark wizard, named by the servants of the dark one himself, the one who is the eternal enemy of life. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So she brought you to safety, helped you become the master of hiding and defence that you are, the mage defender that we needed even when we didn’t know it. She knew that the dark wizard would show his hand when he sent his servants against you, and when he showed his hands he became visible.”

  “Masters, elders, you feel the truth of this as I do. My husband to be speaks from memory and placing the pieces together into a whole, and the vision is complete, but his certainty comes from the Goddess herself as she works her will through him. Still it needs showing, and Dimeter is already in your care. He must be questioned again, and then, we must find the other dark servants, and whatever they search for.”

  “They search for a key, beloved. They search for the key to open his prison and release him, and if they find that key, the world will likely be destroyed. That is his nature.” It was the simple truth and he hated saying it, but he had to. There could be no doubt about what the dark wizard wanted.

  “Describe the place in your vision.” The sylph seemed remarkably intense as he released his question, and he stared directly into Marjan’s eyes, trying perhaps to find the truth there. Though it was surely important information to know, Marjan wondered if there was something more behind his question. Still it wasn’t his place to ask, and so instead he closed his eyes and tried to summon back the dream. It wasn’t that hard since it had been so intense.

  “I see a plateau, a small dark stone terrace below the crooked peak of a tall dark mountain. The winds are cold and they howl across its surface, the snow and the sleet are blown with it. The rock itself that forms the terrace is dark, far darker then normal, and worn smooth with age. It was carved and levelled for certain, but that was long ago.”

  “On the terrace itself there are four large pillars, each the size of a small house, each with a triangular base and each sloping inwards as they rise though they do not come to a point. The outer corners rise and curve inwards while the inner one stands straight and sharp. The pillars are dark too, even darker than the terrace, and yet somehow the lines of the symbols that were etched into them are clear to the eye. Symbols, letters, writing and strange geometric shapes carved into the outward facing side of each of the pillars. The other two sides are polished clean and shining and the point that they come to faces the very centre of the circle on which they are aligned.”

  “The circle though, carved deep into the terrace, is made only of geometric shapes, circles and
spirals, and strange geometric lines extending outwards from its centre, and there is a smaller shape in the middle, a square, where if the pillars were all to move forwards together until they touched, it would form their outer edge.”

  “There is power there, ancient knowledge and ancient magic of which I have never felt the like. But it too is old and sleeping, dormant for thousands of years, and yet still ready to burst back into life at the touch of the key.” Though what that key might be he didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.