Suddenly he put a hand upward toward one of the thraiks and squeezed his hand in the air. The thraik fell toward him, shrieking out its helplessness. The man caught it before it struck the ground and held it so it hovered in midair. He looked deep into its eyes, which were the color of dried blood, except for a golden pattern like a piece of intricately braided thread glowing in the centers. This he studied, nodding to himself.
“You still have the right rune for your seeking. But you were too slow, my pet.” He raised a finger and touched it to the rune in the thraik’s chest. He touched a line, which adhered to the fingertip. Studying it carefully, he caused it to spread apart, leaving a gap between the edges. That gap filled with intricate threads as fine as capillaries. The thraik gasped, then fetched in a deep breath. Knemet nodded. “You feel it, don’t you? That greater speed you will have for all time. Show me now.” It flew at him.
Knemet grinned as he watched, small teeth crowded in his shrunken jaws, looking as helpless as a rabbit. He let the thraik get within a foot of him, then threw up a barrier. The beast saw the floating gray rune too late, and slammed into it. It fell to the ground, landing in a heap at Knemet’s feet.
“Fool,” Knemet said, almost fondly. He poked it with a foot. The thraik groaned, pulling itself up onto all fours. Its wings wavered feebly. “I made you. I can unmake you. Go. Enjoy your gift, but try that not again.”
“Yes, Creator,” it breathed. It gathered itself and sprang into the air. The others, which had hovered out of reach to avoid being dragged into any punishment their fellow might suffer, were drawn into the chase once again. They tried their best to catch up, but the altered thraik twisted and soared, threading in between them without effort. It led them in an intricate pattern, laughing at them for failing to lay a talon upon it.
Soon all the thraiks came to hover near Knemet, timidly twisting their long necks. Each was eager to have that new speed for itself, but they still recoiled away from his touch. He captured each one briefly and recast the rune to the new shape. Now that he had made the change to his satisfaction once, it was easy to draw over and over again. Faster, smarter, more enduring—all those traits were desirable in his hounds. They had but one task. Now they could do it better.
It was not the first time he had changed them. The thraiks’ purpose had once fulfilled a more general need. In the days of experimentation, when he and his colleagues—not yet enemies—had been playing with the stuff of reality, nothing seemed beyond their abilities, no end beyond them.
Knemet put his hand on his heart, feeling it pound at the thought of that phrase. A merciful end. How he longed for one. He had enjoyed deathlessness while he had had a fresh topic to study, one that excited his intellect and curiosity. Like the rest of the Makers, Knemet had had the leisure to watch his creatures grow, breed, adapt, and, sadly, die, but they continued in a natural fashion, finding a niche for themselves in the greater world of Alada. To have some of the scoffers say that all the beings that should ever or were ever to exist already did was a gauntlet thrown down at the Shining Ones’ feet. The critics came around, though. It was a rare king or rich merchant who did not fall in love with the winsome pegasus or admire the courageous gryphon. They clamored for a unique creature of their own. For the right price, a few of the Shining Ones undertook to combine animals that were only found together in a coat of arms, never in nature.
However absurd the requests, the practice brought in both funds needed to continue their studies and the respect of the most influential people in the land, leaving the Makers free to work on the combinations they really wanted to try: mixing humankind with other species. At first they kept these great workings a secret, swearing the volunteers to utter secrecy with terrible oaths and spells, but it soon became difficult to conceal them. The Makers quickly discovered they could not keep centaurs contained on the grounds of their estate. The human-horse hybrid was one of the greatest successes that the Shining Ones enjoyed. The Windmanes, as the new people called themselves, had the curiosity of the human coupled with the restlessness of the horse. The lords east of the Arown had given the fascinating creatures many hectares of open grasslands that were of no use to their own subjects. Within a surprisingly short time, the Windmanes had established a culture of their own in the new home that they called Balierenn. They loved adornments, but cared for little else in the way of possessions. The merfolk were much the same. Calester scoffed at the females as being vain, until the Makers had time to observe the males, who would go so far as to kill or maim another of their number for the handsomest coral or most beautiful pearls. The werewolves were the same, as violent and excitable on land as the merfolk were beneath the sea.
The shapes alone were not the most intriguing facet for the Makers; it was how the new-made beasts lived. Seeing the character of the species develop, their tastes and fears, their likes and dislikes, come into play as if they had been born at the dawn of time, was a heady liquor to the Makers. The Windmanes had a strong tradition of justice and spent much time discussing the rights and privileges of centaur-kind. Merfolk were born thieves. They considered any object that touched the sea to belong to them. They loved to cause mischief among land-born seafarers, who learned that bribery usually bought safe passage. The werefolk were skittish, owing to the instability of their forms. The Makers could not spend enough time wondering over the marvels of the new races.
Reluctant even to consider departing before their fascinating experimentation was finished, the Makers had all extended their lifetimes to a hitherto unnatural degree. They spent the better part of three hundred years at first in close proximity, then spread out across the face of Alada, but still keeping in contact to share their discoveries. At first they were proud of their longevity. It was yet one more piece of proof that though they were commoners in rank, they defied Father Time’s bony hand, but kings and queens must still bow. He had lived long enough to have buried all of his critics and enemies. Or had he?
Knemet did not know if any of the other Makers had followed him into infinitely long life. By the time he had made that breakthrough, few of them were speaking to one another. Success made them cocky and arrogant. Little disagreements became major arguments. Making the Compendium had been the greatest mistake, Knemet knew that now. It provided a focus for those arguments. Every one of them wanted it exclusively. Knemet could not stand to be apart from it for long. It had been his idea in the first place, his hand that drew most of the initial runes and who cast the spell that gave it the ability to gather new ones and change the old to reflect reality. The thought still filled him with rage: how dared they try to limit his access to the Compendium!
Knemet admitted that he was the one who discovered how the rune could change the object, from afar, from anywhere, as easily as the object changed the rune. By accident, the Shining Ones had formed a perfect microcosm. Knemet could not resist playing with the notion. He was successful beyond his wildest hopes. With the collusion of wizards at remote locales, he tried altering places and beings he could only see through the book’s pages.
Calester and Boma were horrified by his action. Calester wrested the Compendium from him. Knemet protested. Did he think that the rest of them were any different than he?
Apparently, they did. When he was not present, they used the book to change some of his marvelous beings back to their old shapes. Their patrons, they explained, were frightened by the new creatures. The intellectual discourse they had previously enjoyed was replaced by shouted arguments, and more. Knemet felt a tickle of power just in time to ward himself against an attack. He barely saw the rune before it disappeared, so he was uncertain who had waged it. What could he have done, with no evidence to point a finger? That was, until the next attack came. That time he was on his guard. He saw the rune before it descended upon him, and fought it off. He saw the telltales, and was horrified to see that it had been constructed by those very three he had accused in the beginning. It was meant to tame his mind. If he had not stoppe
d it, he would have retained his intelligence, but not his full will. He demanded a meeting of the Makers.
The three perpetrators were defiant. No one would give in. Knemet saw his foes as fearful, underhanded, and greedy. They saw him as power-mad and uncontrollable. It was clear to them all that the fellowship of magic they had enjoyed for so long was broken. Knemet was sorry, but he saw no choice. He retreated with the Compendium to a safe place a hundred miles from their college to continue his studies.
By then the others had come to understand the book’s importance, and were reluctant to leave it in his hands. Deelin and Calester came to reason with him that the Compendium ought to be put out of reach, to avoid accidents or, he was rather more certain, deliberate misuse. He no longer trusted the others to make that judgment, since he was well aware that they believed he was the one who would misuse it. He refused to allow it to be taken away. Deelin and Calester withdrew. Knemet knew it was not the end of the argument, but even he was surprised at the ferocity of the attack on him when it came. The war, for war it was, continued for years. He could barely think of that last magical battle. He was no longer whole, and would never again be so, but he still retained the Compendium.
When his power had been so drained he could barely draw breath without risking death, he went to ground, hiding in humble places among some of his own creatures, including the gentle mimburti. Four of the other Makers joined forces to hunt him down. They wrenched the book from him, but spared his life. He had fled on a fast ship to another continent, seeking a haven in which to heal his wounds and muse upon revenge. He hid his trail so none of the others could pursue him. Evidently his efforts had been sufficient. He had never seen his fellows again, nor the Compendium.
Now and again he missed the other Shining Ones. He could not have conceived of a more exciting time to study magic than those years he spent in the company of equals possessed of such intriguing and inquiring minds, the equal or near equal to his own. Every day, every moment, every second, something new came to light to be discussed and exclaimed over, then examined with an eye toward betterment. In collaboration, he and one or more of his colleagues came up with new beings, new plants, or combinations of both. They were solving the great mysteries, in a way that no human mage had ever been able in recorded history or before.
Through the bleak years that followed his defeat and exile to the island-ringed continent of Oscora, he often thought of them. The few times he saw something new, he would turn as if to pass on an insight to his leagues, only to find they were not there. It was like being dead, but without peace.
Nor had he realized how much power they had all devolved to the Compendium. They had grown lazy, relying upon it to describe things for them, instead of seeking out runes and processes for themselves. Once it disappeared, Knemet found himself blind to so much that lay apart from him. He could no longer watch flies land on a beached fish in Tledecra, nor a gleaming sunset paint a glacier in northern Niombra in scarlets and oranges, as he had when he had been able to unroll the big scroll to the correct leaf. Worst of all, he could not see any of his precious creations. All was lost to him. He had sunk into depression, scarcely moving except to renew his body’s vitality, though he cared little. Seeing through Nemeth’s eyes had given him an opportunity as he had not had in centuries. He could not and would not return to the blindness he had suffered. He wanted the Compendium back!
His thraiks had flourished in his absence. They had evolved from the way he had made them, inevitable, perhaps, over the course of thousands of years. He had created them by combining the best traits of humans with silent hunters like bats and swallows. They possessed a sleeker line than he had designed. They looked better. He had furnished them with at least four more back-curving spines on the tops of their wings to cut the air, but over so many years traits that did not make for the fastest and the strongest dropped away. They had also, he observed, grown four more teeth.
Thraiks were a necessary evil, he had argued to his fellow Shining Ones millennia ago. If they made creatures that were a danger to the rest of the world or to themselves, they must dispose of them. In response to this need he had created the ultimate tracker. They could follow a spoor of the most minuscule quantity. Most importantly, they were absolutely obedient to him.
He no longer cared about the greater good. All he wished for was an end. Without the Compendium, he was powerless to undo his own endlessness. He needed its power to unlock his rune. Thanks to the concealment spell cast first by Nemeth and afterward by his successor, the thraiks were unable to follow it directly. All they could do was trace the last places where its changes had been seen. Witnesses, especially those who bore the trace of having been touched by the book’s power, could tell him more.
Knemet turned his attention to the latest such, a pathetic example of what humanity had evolved into over these many millennia. This latest find of the thraiks was a riverman, perhaps thirty years of age, who made a marginal living fishing and tending to boats.
Knemet wrinkled his nose. He could have guessed at the man’s profession without looking at him. The peat-colored rags that clothed the short and stocky body stank of fish, and terror. Knemet had no room for sympathy with the man’s fear. The mark of the Compendium was on him. It glowed faintly, but those with eyes to see or noses to smell, like the thraiks, could detect it. With a gentle nudge of magic, he pulled the man’s head around and stared down into his muddy gray eyes with his multicolored ones.
“You have had time to gather your wits,” Knemet said. “I seek a book, look you. Its pages are pure white with runes of gold. It stands this high.” He gestured from the ground with his hand. The man followed the movement as if the hand were a snake that might strike at him. “A book. A tome containing words and images. You can’t deny you were near it! Tell me what you know!”
“Nothin’, oh, nothin’, terrible master,” the man gasped out. “Don’ know what yer excellence wants o’ the sorrowfulness o’ me. I see no books, not from one year to another. Harbormaster, he might have one—but I never seen it. My wife, my sons—do they live, master?”
Knemet looked up impatiently at the thraiks, who scattered at his impatience. “Have you killed?”
Only taken, master, the lead thraik assured him, with terror in its eyes. Knemet saw they were telling the truth. It was in their runes. They were too frightened to lie. Knemet returned to his subject.
“I know not where they be, but that they may live,” Knemet said. “Now, the book! It passed by you at some time. What will you tell me? Did you observe anything of the weird upon a day?”
“Weird . . .” A chord seemed to have been struck at last in the man’s excuse for a mind. His muddy eyes brightened. “Ah, master, that was it! The fish pie m’ wife made for feastday—sparkled with gold, it did!”
“With gold? Like this?”
Knemet held up a finger and drew a rune upon the air. He made the sign for a pie. No way to tell what kind of fish or other hideous river denizen that this man and his family dined upon. Obediently, the pie came into being, hot and fragrant and as perfect as the sigil that occupied its center.
“S-s-sorcery,” the man stammered. He goggled at Knemet, his round chin quivering.
“Magic,” Knemet corrected him, with a lift of his narrow shoulders.
“What care I? Call it what you will. Did you see this? What feastday was it? How long ago?”
But he had surpassed the riverman’s capacity for accepting the strange. Trembling, the man collapsed to his side and curled into a ball. He lay, muttering to himself and picking at his clothes.
Knemet groaned. No more intelligence could be gleaned from this one. He raised a hand and beckoned. The thraiks withdrew to the highest point of the room and hovered.
Nearer the ground the mossy walls shivered as though they were curtains stirred by the wind. Heavy rectangular blocks of the shaggy greenery pulled away and shambled toward Knemet. The liches surrounded him, waiting for his orders. Unlike
the thraiks, these plant-men were uncurious, utterly obedient, and patient.
“Take him down,” he told them. “Feed him . . . eventful day.” feed him that.” He pointed to the fish pie, now cooling. Its rune had faded as its newness passed. The liches shuffled away and took up the riverman, hefting him up like pallbearers carrying a coffin. The man struggled to his side and appealed to Knemet. His eyes were wide with fear.
“No! Master, let me go, let me go! M’wife, m’sons!”
Knemet waved the protest away. The liches trudged slowly out of the room. They would take the man to one of the dark rows of cells carved out of the living rock below the chamber. He requested that the man be fed and cared for, but Knemet could not afford to let him go. The riverman’s shrieks receded down the echoing corridors.
He looked up at the thraiks, who scattered to the highest corners of the chamber.
“Where found you that creature?” he asked the thraiks.
“On the banks of the Arown,” one replied.
“I could guess that! Where?”
“The western bank.”
Knemet nodded. The book must come south. It was a long way from Oron Castle, but it must pass by his fastness to return to Sheatovra.
A Forthcoming Wizard Page 9
