The Mage (The Hidden Realm)

by A. Giannetti

  Elerian could not deny that everything Tullius had said made sense. It always came back to the same thing, however. “All you say is still a guess,” he replied.

  “It is a good guess, I think,” said Tullius, “for it bears out everything we do know. It also explains why Urbanus thought you were an Elf.”

  “Why then were there no Elven bones in the hidden home?” asked Elerian. “I found only Goblin bones there.”

  “If they were all killed, and this seems likely for there was never any search made for you, then they were most likely eaten and the bones burned,” said Tullius grimly. “The Goblins would not waste fresh meat.”

  Elerian shuddered at the thought, although he was still only half convinced that Tullius was right in his guesses. No matter what Balbus, Tullius, and Urbanus thought, he still did not feel like an Elf. Elerian stood and stretched tiredly, for the tale Tullius had told was a long one, and he was already weary before it began. “It is late Tullius and high time I went home. Thank you for the meal and the answers you have given me.” He let himself out the front door and set off across Tullius’s front yard toward home, feeling less than satisfied. “Tullius gave me a great deal of information,” he thought to himself as he opened Tullius’s front gate, “but it is all conjecture. Will I ever succeed in truly finding out who I am?” he wondered to himself.

  Behind him, Tullius remained in his doorway watching as Elerian vanished into the forest. “I hope he will be content now that Drusus is dead. If the Ancharian really did slay his parents, then he has avenged their deaths. If he is wise, he will let the past alone now.” Shaking his head, Tullius went off to bed. Although Drusus was dead, his sleep remained restless, haunted by images of Goblins in the forest around his home and at his front door.

  THE PORTAL

  When Elerian returned home and opened the front door, he found Carbo behind it, wagging his tail expectantly. As he stooped to pet the dog, Elerian saw that Balbus was sitting awake by the fire. A smile crossed Balbus’s face at the sight of Elerian. “I thought you might be returning home tonight,” he said. “Carbo has been restless all evening. He must have sensed that you were on your way.”

  Elerian walked over to the hearthstone and sat at Balbus’s feet. “I stopped to see Tullius first,” said Elerian absently stroking Carbo’s ears.

  “Did he feed you?” asked Balbus, preparing to rise from his chair in case Elerian was hungry.

  Elerian smiled. “He did, but the price was another lecture about common sense.”

  “Common sense is a good thing to have, but it is not always the best guide,” replied Balbus with a smile of his own. “If I had used my common sense eighteen years ago, I would have left you in the forest instead of bringing you home. Now, pour us a drink and then tell me all that has happened to you since you set out for Dioges’ farm.”

  Elerian rose and prepared a cup of mulled wine for himself and Balbus before recounting the same story of his adventures that he had related to Tullius earlier. Balbus was a far more sympathetic audience than Tullius. He listened with great interest but offered no criticism as Tullius had done.

  “It seems that Tullius was right after all,” said Balbus when Elerian reached the end of his story. “He thought from the beginning that Drusus might have some connection to your past.”

  “If he did, he took that knowledge with him when he died,” said Elerian regretfully. “All I have gained from my adventure is a curse and more questions that cannot be answered.”

  “You have also rid this part of the world of a murderous creature,” Balbus reminded him. “I think it is fitting, too, that Drusus died by your hand, especially if he had some role in the death of your parents.”

  “We may never know that for certain,” said Elerian pessimistically.

  “Time will tell,” said Balbus serenely. He felt certain, in his own mind, that Elerian was finally embarked on a path that would eventually lead him to discover the secrets of his past.

  After his brush with death in the hunt for Drusus, the time passed quietly, at first, for Elerian. Fall turned into winter, winter into spring, and spring into summer. As his nineteenth birthday approached, however, a strange restlessness began to creep over him. In his own form and in different shape changes, he had penetrated to the heart of the most remote groves in all the surrounding countryside and had swum to the depths of the deepest pools of the forest streams. He had discovered no more pockets of old magic like the ravine where he had seen the water nymph in his youth, and it began to seem to him that there were no mysteries left for him to discover in the forests near his home. He began to think about venturing into the Abercius and the wild country to the north again, but when it came down to actually making the preparations, he found himself reluctant to leave Balbus by himself for any great length of time.

  Balbus was now in his seventy-fifth year. In the winter, especially, he had come to prefer sitting by his fire instead of walking in the woods. More often than not in the evenings, Elerian would find him sleeping in his favorite chair before the fire with Carbo lying at his feet, white hairs gleaming in his fur like frost. Balbus was not helpless by any means, but Elerian did not like the thought of him doing all the work on the farm alone in his absence. Surprisingly, it was Balbus who first brought up the subject of Elerian’s leaving.

  One night, as they sat by the fire after dinner, Balbus suddenly said, “You should go off on your own for a little while, Elerian.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Elerian, sitting up in surprise.

  Balbus laughed softly. His sharp brown eyes had already marked Elerian’s growing restiveness. “I have seen you standing motionless in the yard more than once, of late, facing north and staring off into the distance.”

  “I would like to go off and see some new country, but I do not like the thought of leaving you alone,” admitted Elerian.

  “You need not worry about me,” said Balbus. “I survived for many years before you came along, and I can still manage quite well on my own. It is time that you saw more of the world than what you can see from our back door.”

  “I will think about it,” said Elerian, but his restlessness continued to grow, and his thoughts turned more and more often to Drusus’ lair. If Tullius was right in his guesses, his life might have begun in that place. He began to wonder what other secrets might be concealed there or in the forest around it. Still torn about leaving, he began staying out overnight in the forest, bringing food with him in a leather pack. When he grew tired of walking, he would eat a cold meal high in the branches of some great tree before gathering his heavy, woolen cloak around him, taking an hour or two of the light slumber that passed for sleep with him. Summer changed into fall, and the geese began to fly overhead, their haunting calls resonating with Elerian’s restlessness. The last week of October arrived, and Elerian decided that he would wait no longer.

  “I am going to return to Drusus’ lair,” he said to Balbus on a fresh autumn morning, as he filled his pack with food. “Perhaps I can find some clue there to my past that I missed the last time I was there.”

  “Go then, before winter is upon us,” said Balbus. Unlike Tullius, he was pleased that Elerian was taking an interest in his past again.

  For weapons, Elerian took the two new knives he had made to replace the pair destroyed by Drusus’ corrosive blood, placing one in his right boot and hanging the second from his belt. In his pack, he carried food for a week, but he also took his bow and a quiver of arrows in case he needed to hunt. After saying goodbye to Balbus and Carbo, Elerian settled his pack on his shoulders.

  “Are you certain you can manage on your own?” he asked Balbus one last time. “I may be gone several days.”

  “I will be fine,” said Balbus waving him out the door. He remained standing in the doorway with Carbo by his side until Elerian disappeared through the hedge gate.

  When Elerian closed the hedge gate behind him and entered the forest, a chill wind blew in his face and played ab
out the branches overhead, setting them to creaking and groaning. The leaves were almost all down now, piled into deep drifts of red and pale gold beneath trees that rose like gray, furrowed columns under the pale blue autumn sky. Only a few oak leaves still clung stubbornly to their branches. They clattered sadly together in the breeze that was blowing through the forest.

  Elerian’s silent footsteps took him in a northerly direction, across the east face of the hill on which he lived, but he did not travel in a straight line. He was in no hurry, and he often went off to the left or the right if something of interest caught his eye. The forest was full of game, for the deer and wild pigs were fattening on the bounty of nuts dropped by the trees. Squirrels were everywhere, busily foraging beneath the carpet of leaves that covered the forest floor.

  When he reached the borders of the Abercius, Elerian entered the forest without hesitation, stepping lightly over the brown carpet of leaves under his feet and deriving great pleasure from looking at the ancient trees around him. The miles fell away beneath his feet, and the fair day he had enjoyed vanished with the sun. As it grew dark, a storm began to blow in from the north, and the temperature dropped. Overhead, the sky darkened, covered by ominous, fast moving black clouds. The wind began to howl through the treetops, setting the branches overhead to squeaking and groaning. Bright streaks of lightening played across the dark sky, followed by the sudden, rolling boom of thunder. Occasionally, without warning, some great limb weakened by time or rot crashed to the forest floor. Elerian began to run, for he was close to Drusus’ lair. It would shelter him against the coming storm if he could reach it in time.

  As he ran, the storm broke in earnest. Cold rain came down in sheets, blinding him, but his sense of direction led him unerringly to the old oak with the magic door in its trunk. Elerian cast an opening spell and entered the tree through the magical door that appeared before him. Once he was inside, the door closed behind him, and the sound of the storm was abruptly shut out. He heard only the faint, slow drip of water from his clothes onto the stone floor of the hallway. He lit a small mage light, and after it took up a position above his head, he used its light to illuminate his way down to the underground chamber where he had fought Drusus. When he entered the chamber, he saw that all was as he had left it. From the hallway across the room, a cold breeze entered the room from the passageway that led out to the garden, and Elerian heard the muted sounds of thunder and rain.

  Feeling fortunate to be out of the storm, he crossed over to the fireplace. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, Elerian wished that he could cast a spell that would create a fire that gave out heat. “The common way must suffice,” he thought to himself as he dug his flint, steel, and tinder from out of his pack.

  When the tinder smoldered and suddenly burst into flame from the shower of sparks he rained down on it, Elerian added dried leaves and some smaller pieces of the smashed furniture that lay strewn about the floor of the room. Soon, he had a cheerful blaze burning that threw off a pleasant warmth. Elerian hung up his clothes to dry on the mantelpiece and wrapped himself in his cloak, which had remained dry in his pack. He sat on the hearthstone with his back against the stone facing of the fireplace and stared into the flames. His mind drifted, and his eyelids slowly closed.

  Suddenly, he felt himself lifted by a pair of strong hands. There was a field stone wall before him, and when his feet touched the ground on the far side of it, he heard a clear voice shout, “Run Elerian! Do not look back!”

  Then he was running between enormous trees, pursued by a sinuous, black shape with pale shining eyes that burned with a lust to kill. The beast and the forest abruptly vanished as Elerian started awake. After a moment of confusion, he remembered where he was.

  “I must have dreamed an evil dream, spawned by this place where Drusus once laired,” he reassured himself. Putting the nightmare out of his mind, Elerian rose and stretched, surprised to find that the fire had died down to red coals and that his clothes were dry. “I would have sworn I was only asleep for a moment,” he thought to himself as he dressed.

  Since the storm was still blowing outside, Elerian opened his pack and took out food for a meal, toasting bread, cheese, and dried sausage over the coals. Accompanied by some of Balbus’s strong red wine, it made a tasty, filling meal. When he was done eating, Elerian walked about the room for a time, poking among the ruined things on the floor, but he found nothing of interest.

  “I have wasted my time returning here?” he thought to himself. “There is nothing here but the ghosts of the past and the bones they left behind.”

  Elerian noticed then that the sounds of the storm had faded. In an uncharacteristically somber mood, he walked down the hallway that led out to the garden to see what the weather was doing outside. When he stepped through the ruined door, he saw that the rain had stopped. The air was crisp enough now to make his breath steam. Overhead, the tattered black remnants of clouds still streamed swiftly by, covering and uncovering the bright stars scattered across the night sky. Elerian stepped out into the garden and saw that the flagstone paths had been washed clean by the rain. The grass was dotted with raindrops that gleamed like diamonds in the starlight, and the waterfalls, swollen by the storm, splashed noisily over their ledges and fell with a rush into the small pool at the base of the wall. Elerian stared for a moment at the fieldstone wall that separated the garden from the forest, for it was the same wall that he had seen in his dream.

  “It proves nothing,” he thought to himself uneasily. “I saw both the wall and Drusus before I dreamt of either one. It was no memory that I saw, only some fancy constructed by my sleeping mind.” Visiting Drusus’ lair again seemed even more of a mistake, and Elerian’s dark mood deepened, for there were no answers here for him, only questions and dark dreams.

  He took a last look at the garden and noticed that the stone basin lying on the ground nearby had filled with clear rainwater. Elerian felt himself strangely drawn to it, now that it was filled with water. Approaching the bowl, he knelt by it on his right knee and touched its smooth side with the strong fingers of his right hand. Overhead, a great cloud darkened the stars. A tracery of silver lines, hidden up to now, sprang to life around the rim of the bowl, gleaming brightly like liquid silver in the darkness. For a moment, Elerian’s third eye opened, and he saw a silvery glow spill from the lines to cover the basin and the water it contained. Elerian closed his third eye and, as though he were looking through a window of clear glass, found himself staring down on a gray, barren land, spread across the bottom of the bowl. Leaning forward, in order to see better, he saw that it was night in the bowl. A large company of small, mounted figures, dressed all in black, rode over a wide highway, paved with great flat stones. Their mounts were sleek, dark animals resembling horses, but their sinuous movements made Elerian think of snakes. Instead of hooves, they had great hooked claws on their feet, resembling the claws of birds of prey.

  He leaned even closer over the bowl to get a better look at the riders. Their leader’s face turned suddenly in his direction, as if he had become aware of Elerian’s scrutiny. His features enlarged, as if they had suddenly grown closer, until they occupied a good portion of the bowl. With startled eyes, Elerian observed a pale, handsome face of indeterminate age, framed with sleek black hair tied back at the nape of the neck. Circling the rider’s brow was an iron crown of delicate, intricate work set with red rubies that smoldered like coals in their dark settings. The tips of pointed ears were visible through the rider’s hair, and his eyes were black with red sparks burning in their depths.

  Elerian started in alarm as he realized that he was looking into the face of a Goblin. His disquiet increased when he realized that the Goblin’s cruel eyes were staring back into his own, as if he saw Elerian’s face. The Goblin’s thin lips draw back into a pitiless smile that exposed pointed white teeth. He reached out with his right hand, a heavy silver ring gleaming on one of his slender fingers.

  When Elerian saw the c
ruel nails on each finger’s end break the surface of the water in the bowl, he started back, pulling his hand away from the bowl as he did so. At once, the glowing lines around its sides went dark. The hand emerging from the bowl vanished, as did the scene at the bottom of the basin. A sense of relief, tempered with uneasiness, washed over Elerian. He was certain that he had escaped some terrible, unnamed danger, but he was equally certain that the Goblin with the crown had seen his face. “He was reaching for me,” thought Elerian to himself. “I am certain of it. I wonder if he has some way of discovering my whereabouts.”

  Rising in a single, supple move, Elerian used a broken branch that he found nearby, to tip the water out of the bowl. Then, regretfully, he stretched out his right hand. With his third eye, he saw a small, golden sphere flash from his fingertips and strike the bowl. There was a sudden, sharp crack, and the bowl flew into pieces that scattered across the garden.

  “I would have liked to keep the basin and explore its powers,” thought Elerian regretfully to himself, “but it is better to be safe now than sorry later.” Feeling more at ease, he explored the rest of the garden again, hoping to find some other magical object, but if there were any there, it was beyond his skill to discover them, even with his third eye. Finally, he returned to the underground chamber and, after gathering his things, left by the front door.

  When he reached the place where he had buried Drusus, Elerian was surprised to find that the ground above the grave had turned black and barren; no living thing grew there. The boulder, which marked the head of the grave, was scorched as if burnt with fire.