A Forthcoming Wizard

by Jody Lynn Nye

  A

  Forthcoming

  Wizard

  Also by Jody Lynn Nye

  An Unexpected Apprentice

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  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A FORTHCOMING WIZARD

  Copyright © 2009 by Jody Lynn Nye

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Nye, Jody Lynn, 1957–

  A forthcoming wizard / Jody Lynn Nye.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1434-5

  ISBN-10: 0-7653-1434-7

  I. Title.

  PS3564.Y415F67 2009

  813'.54—dc22

  2008046416

  First Edition: April 2009

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To the memory of my dear friend and editor,

  Brian M. Thomsen,

  without whom this book would not be.

  Thanks for a lifetime of encouragement.

  Acknowledgments

  The author wishes to thank Tom Doherty, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and Kristin Sevick for all their support and kindness on this project.

  A

  Forthcoming

  Wizard

  Chapter One

  nights! Form ranks,” ordered the Abbess Sharhava. “We ride.” The imperious, pale-skinned woman in the light blue-and-white habit ignored her pain as she sat erect on her mount’s back. She raised her bandaged right hand to the sky, then pointed down the trail. The ancient and long-abandoned castle of the kingdom of Orontae lay behind them. Ahead lay the ruins of a beautiful river valley.

  Tildi Summerbee slumped on Rin’s black-and-white-striped back. She scarcely sensed the bump as the dark-skinned centaur shifted her hips and began to walk, nor did she feel the cold wind whistling past them down the mountain. The smallfolk girl did not look back over the file of riders at the gaping wide doors of the once-grand entrance. The remains of stone giants that had only hours before tried to kill them had vanished with Edynn.

  Her entire attention was fixed upon the bundle in her lap, a bundle nearly the size of herself. The Great Book was hers—no, not hers to keep, but hers to protect and see secured against all harm.

  Around her, the Knights of the Word, the so-called Scholardom, rode in a square. They were not there to protect her so much as they intended to prevent her escape. Occasionally, they glanced at her sidelong, as though they found it hard to believe that one such as she, who was no larger than a child of their kind, with large brown eyes, and collar-length brown hair grown shaggy and rough along the trail, could be considered a woman of power, to be feared and guarded. And yet, she was. As a smallfolk girl growing up in the Quarters, in the province of Ivirenn, she had known nothing of these solemn men and women who wore armor under their blue-and-white habits, and possessed both weapons and the skills to wield them. In the last few hours she had spent in their company, she learned they were an ancient order whose purpose was to possess and protect the Great Book, whereas she, an apprentice wizard at the beginning of her training, was the only living person in all of Alada who could touch the substance of the book. Anyone else who tried was burned horribly or killed.

  The book was too real for them, more real than anything else in the world, for it contained the world. The runes drawn in gold upon its pure white pages described everything, living and nonliving, that existed, changing as they changed, vanishing as they ceased to be. The runes moved of their own accord, growing larger and smaller, though no one else seemed to notice the changes when she tried to draw attention to them.

  Within the sphere of the book’s influence, a radius of many yards, those same runes that described everyone and everything appeared upon that which they described. Tildi looked down upon her own rune, a complicated glyph that glowed upon her chest like a burning brand. It seemed right side up no matter from what angle she looked at it. She had become used to seeing it, but the wonder that it existed at all still sent a thrill up her spine. These runes were not mere labels; they truly described what they marked. If these runes were interfered with, they could change the shape of the thing or, terrifyingly, the person. At the rear of the file of riders, unarmed and under heavy guard, rode two soldiers who served King Halcot of Rabantae. Captain Teryn was all right, a fair-haired human woman of middle years, but Morag, her sergeant and contemporary in age, had been terribly deformed a few years before by the wizard Nemeth, he who lay dead in the castle behind them. Morag looked like a wild boar in human form, with an underthrust jaw and snaggled teeth, and thick, coarse black hair that never seemed to lie neatly no matter how long or short it was. He usually went with his head bent so no one could get a good look at his face. His hands were more difficult to conceal: thick paws with misshapen fingers. Everything he did seemed difficult. He persevered, though it surely cost him pain.

  Tildi’s life had been utterly changed. A few hours before, she was a wizard’s apprentice, barely trained in the basics of her craft over the course of mere weeks by two masters. Now, though she possessed the most powerful object in the whole of the world of Alada, she was a prisoner in all but name. They had tied a rope around her waist. The other end of the cord was held firmly in the hand of the knight who rode at her right hand.

  “As no one can safely touch you without sustaining injury,” the abbess had said, sounding sweetly reasonable as two gigantic human males in armor had descended upon her, “we must have some means of saving you if you should fall or be carried off by some foe.”

  Tildi felt the rough sisal chafe at her skin through her clothes, but didn’t dare to put it off. The Scholardom had seen her use magic to climb the air like a ladder. They were taking no chances that the object of their desire should take itself out of their reach in that fashion. She was not robust enough to take any of these gigantic humans on physically. Later, she promised the book. Later, she and her friends would find a way to free themselves and find a way to safety. More than anything, she wanted the book to be safe. Faintly, she felt that she should be frightened for herself, but her feelings were dimmed and removed from her as though they belonged to someone else.

  “Let me pass!”

  The wizardess Serafina pushed her way in between two of the knights. Her dark eyes flashed with anger. The knights regarded her with suspicion, but they did not challenge her. The abbess Sharhava must have instructed them not to interfere with any of Tildi’s friends who wished to speak with her, so long as they did not try to remove her from the protective circle. The book must not be harmed.

  Tildi glanced up at her. Her long dark hair was spread out over the shoulders of the moss-green cloak she wore over her white wizard’s robe. She looked as neat as if
she had just stepped out of a boudoir rather than in the aftermath of a few hours of a magicians’ battle and many days hard travel. Tildi felt like a rag doll in comparison.

  “Are you all right?” Serafina asked, her voice carefully even.

  “I think so,” Tildi said.

  The young wizardess patted her upon the shoulder, then snatched her hand back. Tildi breathed in a hiss of sympathy. Serafina’s golden skin reddened and puffed as if blistered by the brief contact. The wizardess touched the irritated digits with her other hand, and the color returned to normal.

  “It’s nothing to be concerned with,” she assured the smallfolk girl.

  “I don’t want you hurt,” Tildi said.

  “Don’t worry about me.” Serafina said hastily. Their exchange had two meanings, as well Tildi knew. Tildi envied her easy skill of healing the body. Neither she nor Serafina had the means to heal their hearts. Serafina had lost her mother, Edynn, and had become the de facto head of their party—if one did not take into consideration the mistress of the company of armed scholars surrounding them. None of them had had the chance to work through the many changes and sorrows they had suffered in only a few hours. Tildi knew, as though she could read on a page, that the wizardess was angry, frightened, and overwhelmed. She regretted that she might be the cause of any of Serafina’s pain, but she could not help it. Things were happening to her, rather than by her own effort. All of them were caught up in a fierce tide of fate. Who knew where it would cast them ashore?

  “We must do something to balance the power flowing through you. Rin, are you in any discomfort?”

  “I will bear it,” the centaur said, shaking her head until the jeweled ribbons in her thick hair were a colorful blur. “Your spell gives me some protection, and I am acquiring a tolerance. Not as great as the little one, here, but enough. I am a Windmane, and we do not shrink from a challenge. I will carry Tildi and her new treasure as far and as long as she needs me.”

  Serafina turned her worried gaze back to the smallfolk girl. Tildi was aware of her scrutiny—indeed, she was aware of the world in a way that she never thought possible—but her awareness came with a sense of distance, as if she only lightly touched the surface of it. The book occupied too much of her mind at the moment. The voices coming from it enthralled her. She wanted to pay attention to what was going on around her, but they were so interesting . . .

  “Hold fast, Tildi,” Serafina said, laying a hand on her shoulder. The touch brought the smallfolk girl back from the inner world to which she was succumbing. “And do not do any magic. I am concerned you would have too much of a result, rather than too little. Do you understand me?”

  Tildi pulled herself together enough to smile up at the young wizardess.

  “I won’t.”

  Serafina nodded sharply and fell in alongside Rin.

  Tildi felt grateful to her. The wound they both carried in their hearts at the loss of Serafina’s mother, the great wizard Edynn, was so fresh that neither could speak of it yet. Tildi wanted to take the girl’s hand and let her pour out her sorrow, but she dared not. Serafina might feel that her sympathy wasn’t genuine, though it was. Edynn had been so kind to her, a runaway from her homeland, orphaned by the winged demons called thraiks. Serafina had carried the knowledge for years that the day would come when her mother was taken from her, and when the prophecy had come to pass Edynn had made her choice, and it had saved all their lives.

  The threat of thraiks, however, still hung over them. The way that they had taken to reach the castle had been largely underground, but that road was closed off now for good. Tildi scanned the overcast skies. No shapes were silhouetted against the clouds, but they could appear at any moment. She feared them more than any other nightmare. They had killed the rest of her family. She was the only one left.

  “Psst!” The voice belonged to Lakanta. The blond-braided trader clung to the back of her stout little horse in the file ahead of Tildi and Rin. As one of the imperious guards glanced down at her, the dwarf woman gave him a cheeky grin. He raised a hand as if he might deal her a blow, then turned hastily away. His expression of mixed horror and disgust made Tildi shiver. The knights hated her—indeed, all of them—for what they were. The abbess had assured her that they didn’t, but she could read it in their runes. The book in her arms was the work of the great magicians of old, the Shining Ones, human beings who had brought into existence the sentient peoples known as dwarves, centaurs, merfolk, werewolves, bearkin, smallfolk, and perhaps more of whom she had not yet heard. Tildi shook her head. All her folk had believed for centuries that they had come about naturally, engendered by time and nature. The truth, which she had learned only a couple of months before, that only humans and elves were of normal origin, had been long forgotten. Perhaps the elders in the Quarters knew, but kept the terrible knowledge to themselves. They disapproved of all things magical. They would see Tildi as eternally disgraced for her participation in that anathema.

  “I ask you again to turn back and postpone this journey,” Serafina said, spurring her steed forward to confront the abbess. “Allow us to return to shelter until others of my order can come to augment us. Night comes soon. We are in danger. You did not hear the warning Nemeth gave us before he died. Others seek to possess the Great Book, others who have great power. I am not strong enough to protect a group of this size.”

  Sharhava did not rein back her horse. She leveled an authoritative eye upon the young woman. “I have told you, I have nothing more to say on this subject. We have agreed that the Scholardom will protect you upon your journey. The chapter house is much closer than any of your other safe havens. The sooner we reach it, the better. We must go quickly. The book and its guardian”—she aimed her gaze at Tildi—“must be protected.”

  “I tell you again,” Serafina said, narrowly containing her fury, “you do not understand the book’s powers. You will cause harm to yourselves, to everyone around you, if you do not take greater precautions than you are.”

  Sharhava did not seek to bridle her own anger.

  “Do not lecture me! I know more of it than you do. Our order has studied ancient records and scraps of copies for millennia. The book is sacred to nature. We are ready to take on its stewardship . . . until it reaches its final destination.”

  Serafina’s shoulders stiffened. She let her horse drop back, and was permitted to ride alongside Rin within the guarded circle. Even Tildi, feeling far away from emotion, knew that she was beaten for the moment.

  “It sounds to me like you are just finding excuses for doing everything wrong,” Lakanta said.

  Sharhava rounded upon her, sea-blue eyes glowing.

  “Silence!”

  “You might as well ask my horse not to eat oats,” the stocky merchant said, imperturbably. “I talk. It’s something I do. When you are on the road as long and as often as I am, you exercise your voice, or it tends not to work when you get where you are going, and for a trader, that’s as good as losing money. If I say what I think a bit more than you’re comfortable hearing, then don’t listen!”

  Rin let out a snort of laughter. Sharhava’s fair skin reddened.

  “You forget yourself.”

  “No, highborn lady, it’s you who’s forgetting what just happened, not half a day ago. That boy back there”—Lakanta aimed her chin at Magpie, who was listening openly with every evidence of delight—“suffered a terrible hurt. That madman back there turned him into a monster—no offense to you, Morag—and little Tildi there turned him back again. Then you pop up through the floor like a mole burrowing into a greensward and say, just as boldly as you please, ‘You risked your lives for that book, but give it to me anyhow.’ The wonder is that you have the squeak to act so fearlessly about it when it bit you hard.”

  Only Lakanta was daring enough to speak openly of what had happened. Tildi saw astonishment written upon all of the knights, though none of her friends were surprised.

  Nemeth had lain dead in the smoke-filled cha
mber only minutes when the knights forced their way in and surrounded them all.

  Fire seared her memory. In her mind’s eye, Tildi saw the flames again, the blazing ring that Nemeth had thrown up to protect himself from her and her companions. He had made lightning and handfuls of flame like blazing coals that he had flung at them. Tildi felt her skin sear as she dared to jump through the blaze to reach the book. She had wrapped her small self around it to protect it. Once she had touched it, all the pain was worthwhile. She could do wonders with it near her. On the stone floor, Magpie had lain, perverted in shape like poor Morag. Then the scholar-knights had burst into the chamber, demanding to know what was going on.

  Tildi was still coming to terms with the wonders of the magic of which she was now capable. To her own astonishment and the awe of the others, she restored Magpie to his normal appearance from the freakish caricature of humanity into which the mad wizard had rendered him. Tildi still could not believe that he had retained that little scrap of parchment with his rune that she had drawn for him back in Master Wizard Olen’s home months ago. It felt as if it had been years. She was relieved to be able to have helped him. Not only was he a kind man, but a very good-looking one, with his curious yellow-green eyes, his tawny skin, and his long dark hair streaked with russet and white. She was torn between wanting to look at the book and wanting to reassure herself that she had not made any mistakes, that Magpie was going to be all right.

  Serafina left her to tend to the others who had sustained wounds in the fight, but returned immediately to her side when the abbess came to loom over her. Tildi had traveled with humans, and lived in Olen’s company. All those people treated her with respect, even kindness. Sharhava was a different and most compelling figure. She seemed larger than all the other humans as she towered over Tildi. The smallfolk girl saw greed and excitement in her as well as anticipation of triumph. The combination was so overwhelming that she cowered. How could she, so small and frail, withstand her?