The Wizard's Secret

by Rain Oxford

  Asiago nodded, tying the strap back on his wrist. “I figured that much. Where is he leading us?”

  “I have no idea.” We returned to the dirt road we were on before and Merlin led us into the forest. When he finally stopped, he turned to us and sat.

  Chapter 15

  “First, explain your disguise. I really hope you are not trying to be something you are not again.”

  I pointed my wand at myself and focused on replacing what was left of my disguise with my real appearance. The spell dropped easily. “I had to change my appearance because the villagers had drawings of us and they were trying to stab us with pitchforks and burn us with torches.”

  “Good. I was worried you were trying to make yourself more like a sorcerer again.”

  “Actually, it’s the opposite.” I explained the fox, how I hurt her, and how I decided I couldn’t be both a sorcerer and wizard. Although he often did it himself, Merlin didn’t like it when I got off subject. “I asked Magnus to suppress it like Livia did. He refused at first, but then when Livia was kidnapped, he said he would do it if I can save her without using sorcery.”

  “Your aunt was kidnapped? Never mind, we will get to that in a minute. So, because you accidentally hurt a fox, you swore off sorcery altogether?”

  After a moment of hesitation, I nodded. “I can’t be both. It obviously doesn’t work and I don’t want to lose control of the sorcery again.”

  He sighed. “Why must you always insist on learning things the hard way? Ayden, you are what you are, and I thought you accepted that. By blood, you are a sorcerer and always will be, but you are much more than that. The only way you can be true to yourself is to accept all that you are.”

  “I hurt a child on accident.”

  “That is because you are untrained. There is no more darkness in your heart than there was when I met you. The reason you accidentally hurt her is because you were not in control of your power. When you accept both your wizardry and sorcery, you will be able to learn to control both. Fighting it is not the same as controlling it.”

  “But if I get rid of my sorcery, I don’t have to control it.”

  He sighed again. “You remind me of a prince I once had to advise. He turned out well, but wisdom did not come easy to him. Explain how you came to be here and who the necromancer is.”

  I explained everything, from how long he was gone to why we came to find him. When I was done, he did not look happy. “I thought you were in trouble. Obviously, I was wrong.”

  “That is not what I am concerned about. I am more concerned with the whispering you have been hearing. You said you cannot remember why you thought I was in trouble, only that it was an urgent desire to find me. I presume you sensed me because of our mental connection.”

  “Well, I didn’t know what the whispers were at first, but then the staff revealed that it had the syrus. The reason the villagers gave me the syrus in the first place was because they could hear whispers coming from it.”

  “That was most likely me talking to myself, or calling for someone to let me free.”

  “So, the whispering I’ve been hearing is probably the chimera.”

  “Quite possibly. We need to find a place to lock it away. I wonder why your staff took it. Perhaps it was owned by a soothsayer before Vactarus took it and it retained some of that power.”

  I could tell how much he hated that idea. He never told me why, but Merlin despised seers. “Why did I feel like you were in trouble if you weren’t?”

  “It may be that I will be in danger soon. As Vactarus tried to explain, I did design the portal to take me back to the time before the curse was created.” I opened my mouth to ask about the paradox, but he raised his paw and I shut it. “I am not foolish enough to endanger all existence via a paradox. The only thing I can do is use my brain. I know I cannot stop myself from being cursed, but I also know Gmork would never free me. I returned early so that I could find out how Gmork created the curse, so I can reverse it.”

  “Gmork is the wizard who took Nimue and caused her kiss to change you?” I asked. He nodded. “You’ve always refused to tell me anything about the actual curse and the wizard who caused it.”

  “It is not a story I am proud of.”

  “How long have you been here? Shouldn’t the portal have sent me here to the same time when you arrived?”

  The wolf smirked. “I am impressed; you have obviously been listening to my lessons. However, I learned to travel from true masters of magic; I know how to manipulate a portal. The symbols I had you draw were to a generalized date and I used a person to guide myself. So, instead of sending me to one moment in time, I had it send me to one person; myself, before I was trapped in the syrus. Obviously, it would not have helped to show up when I was a child, so I created a range of a week. Do you understand so far?”

  “No.”

  “You, however, were focused on me, so it sent you to me as a wolf, but it was still confined to a specific week. Since I was missing for a month from your perspective, you appeared at the very end of the week, whereas I arrived at the beginning. Thus, I have only been here for a week. It is all very simple, really.”

  “I understood that even less.”

  “As it happens, I have been extremely unsuccessful with my time. The problem is, if I run into myself or interfere with anything before the past version of myself gets cursed, it will create a paradox. I need your help.”

  “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, but I’ll help.”

  “It will be extremely dangerous.”

  “When is it not?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “We have a few days before the curse is inflicted. I need you to follow Nimue around, invisible. You cannot follow Gmork because he would sense you if you are with him for more than a few minutes. I know Gmork does something to Nimue, because it is her kiss that changed me. Clear?”

  “Um… follow Nimue and stay away from the bad wizard. It’s still so weird to think of someone as a bad wizard.”

  “Then think of him as a sorcerer. Trust me, Ayden, there is no goodness in Gmork. He was not always so dark, but at this point in time, he is worse than your mother.”

  “Now that I don’t believe. My mother wants to kill me.”

  “Gmork would do much worse than that to you. I cannot say why, either. I suspect it was loneliness that drove him insane. I must warn you… I am betraying Nimue by doing this, but I cannot think of any other way to break this curse… Nimue is in league with Gmork. I suspect he put a love spell on her, but she is the one who locked me in the syrus.”

  I gaped. That, I understood. He was betrayed by the woman he loved and he still tried to protect her.

  “There is one more thing you must be careful of.”

  “Of course there is.” He scowled. “Sorry.”

  “No matter what you see or hear, no matter how badly you want to, you must not interfere. You must not speak to anyone, be seen by anyone, or touch anything.”

  “What if Gmork tries to kill Nimue?”

  He considered it for a moment. “She is alive to lock me in the syrus. Once that happens, it will still be dangerous, but not necessarily enough to cause a paradox. We just have to avoid interfering with our own timelines, or we could end up never meeting.”

  “But if we never met…”

  “Then we would never have come here to break the curse, thus creating a paradox. If that happens, death is the least of our worries.”

  “I think I get it now. Why can’t you see yourself? The you then won’t know the you now.”

  “That is against every rule in the book.”

  “What book? There’s a book on time travel? Can I read it?”

  “It is just an expression, young sorcerer.”

  “Wizard. I want to be a wizard.”

  “You are certainly one of the most stubborn people I have ever met.”

  “We have another problem, though. I’ve tried to make myself invisible twice since coming he
re, and it screwed up both times.” Besides that, using invisibility to spy on someone was sorcery.

  “It is undoubtedly because you are fighting your sorcery, which means your wizardry will suffer as well.”

  When I first learned to do it, I thought invisibility was illusion magic. However, through Magnus’s books on magic, I learned otherwise. Illusion magic could make people not see someone, but it couldn’t change their body. Sorcery or wizardry could actually make someone invisible. Obviously, a wizard could only use invisibility to do good and sorcerers could only use it with dark intentions.

  “So, what happens if the invisibility fails in front of Gmork or Nimue?”

  “Then we are in trouble. We will have to rely on something a little different.” He stood. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  We walked for quite a while. By the time we arrived at a small cabin, the clouds had cleared up and the sun was setting. The cabin was a decent size for a one-room home. There was a front door, a covered porch, and a window to the left of the door. Cobwebs covered the window and leaves blanketed the porch.

  “Who lives here?” I asked.

  “I do. Or, at least, I did. At this point in time, Nimue is being held in Gmork’s castle. The past me left my cabin a few days ago to save Nimue, and is camping outside of the castle, working on the best way to save her. She is allowed out of the castle for an hour every day, but she has to stay on the castle grounds. There is a massive wall around the castle.”

  “Why can’t she run away?”

  “She is being guarded by a dragon.”

  “I don’t want to fight a dragon! They’re already too rare as it is.”

  “I am not asking you to face the dragon. At sunset, two days from now, the past me with make his move and convince the dragon to step aside. The dragon helped me save her.”

  “How did you convince a dragon to help you?”

  “I was trained by a dragon.”

  “What?!” I shrieked, shocked.

  Merlin continued, unbothered. “With secrets about dragons no mortal was supposed to know, the dragon had no choice but to trust me. In all honesty, he adored Nimue too much to hurt her. You should avoid the dragon as much as possible, for he would easily be able to smell you. In fact, your friend should definitely stay behind. The necromancer could be detected from quite a distance.”

  I looked at Asiago. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Noticed what?” he asked.

  “Merlin says you stink.”

  “Like cheese,” Merlin added.

  Asiago scowled. “I’ll have you know I don’t stink. I bathe once a month, whether I need it or not.”

  “You do?”

  He shrugged. “Well, bathe so to speak. This is how a man is supposed to smell.”

  Merlin made a gagging sound. I decided to stop using scented bath oils. “So, what are we here to learn?” I asked.

  “I will explain when we get inside.”

  “Don’t you have a protective ward over the cabin?”

  “I normally do. This time, however, I was in a hurry to save Nimue, so I am pretty sure I forgot. Nevertheless, you should check, just to be sure. It was much stronger than the wards you know.”

  When Merlin first taught me to do this, I could only see magic as a formless cloud, yet Merlin pushed me to practice it often. I closed my eyes and slowly exhaled every drop of the air in my lungs, releasing my magic with my breath. I waited for as long as I could before inhaling just as slowly. As I did, I pulled my magic back into myself. Since I’d had so much practice, the image came to my mind easily.

  There was no magic over the cabin. “It’s safe.”

  Inside, the cabin was dark and warm. There was a bed in the northwest corner and a reading chair in the northeast corner. Beside the reading chair were four pails. A large table, covered with esoteric instruments, took up most of the north wall. On the east wall was a bookshelf full of mostly books, but also bottles of ingredients and other weird things. Although the cabin was the same size on the inside as it was on the outside, the window was larger, and it wasn’t covered in cobwebs. That was odd.

  In front of the bookshelf was a cauldron sitting over a pit. “Open the hatch and get the fire started,” Merlin said. “We do not have all the time in the world.”

  I looked up at the ceiling over the cauldron to see a hatch. I figured Merlin probably always opened it and started the fire with magic. I pushed it open with my staff and pulled my wand out. Fire, I thought, pointing my wand at the pit. Magic shot through me and fire sprang up easily. “What potion are we making?” I asked, pushing the window open just to be extra cautious.

  “First, we are going to make an invisibility potion. It works just as well as the magic you have used, but it lasts longer and it is reliable. Second, we are going to make something in case of an emergency.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Catastrophic if it is improperly brewed and even more so if it is improperly used.”

  “So, yes?”

  “Yes, Ayden, it is dangerous. It is a potion I learned from the dragons. It was their intention to use it to end the war on magic. If a person ingests just one drop of it, they will lose their magic forever.”

  I gaped in horror. “No! I would never use that on anyone!”

  “Even if you had a chance to use it on your mother?”

  “Never! Not even a sorcerer would use such an abhorrent potion!”

  “What is it?” Asiago asked.

  I was a little shocked that I was yelling, but I was too appalled that such a potion existed that I couldn’t stop. “Merlin wants to make a potion that takes away a person’s magic!”

  Asiago went impossibly pale as his eyes widened with horror.

  Merlin sat back and put his paws over his eyes. It was eerily similar to whenever my father rubbed his eyes because I was being particularly frustrating. Although it should have been comical coming from a wolf, it actually went a long way in calming me down.

  “I see the issue is a cultural one. Most people from your world use magic to survive. I should have realized you would be offended, especially since I already knew you care about people.”

  “Don’t you care about people?”

  “If a wizard from this world lost his power, he would still be a person. People can survive here without magic and few people can protect themselves from evil wizards. I would be more inclined to use this potion against a wizard than I would be to kill him. Consider my position; I have no magic and cannot communicate with people. I would still rather be this way than dead.”

  “Well, yes, because you can break the curse and get your power back some day.”

  He shook his head. “I want to do just that, desperately, but it is not worth death, mine or yours. Magic is not everything. I will teach you the potion to become invisible and I promise not to bring up the other one again.”

  Hesitantly, I nodded. “Is the invisibility potion sorcery or wizardry?”

  “You can argue either way. You are trying to help me break the curse, so call it wizardry and move on. Tell the necromancer to go outside, because it will be difficult enough to keep you focused without ghosts and zombies trampling through my cabin.”

  “That’s not an everyday thing,” I said. Still, I turned to Asiago. “Merlin is asking if you would be willing to go outside and be a lookout.”

  Merlin rolled his eyes, but Asiago didn’t see it. He nodded. “Of course.” He stepped outside.

  Merlin sighed. “You certainly make a better wizard than you do a sorcerer.”

  “That’s why I’m trying to become one.”

  “I thought you were happy just being you.”

  “I was, at least until a few days ago. Maybe if I knew what I was…”

  “We can discuss that later. On the fourth shelf up, grab the red bottle and the glass bottle in the middle of the second row up.”

  “I haven’t used a cauldron like this before.”

  “We can manage
. Bring it over to the table.” I obeyed. He put his forepaws on the table and nudged the mortar and pestle. I pulled it towards me and opened the red bottle. It had dried, thin leaves. “Grind together one part dried fern leaf and one part poppy seeds.”

  I poured a small amount of the leaves into my palm, using the creases in my hand to measure it by. “This much?”

  “Very good.”

  The other bottle contained little black seeds, which I measured out just like I had with the leaves. Once I ground them up pretty well, Merlin helped me add the rest of the ingredients. Two parts slippery elm powder, one part myrrh, one part dried marjoram, three parts dillweed. He then pointed out a small measuring scoop and had me use one scoop each of aloe vera leaves, ashes of hindaril, blister pod cap, flame stalk, hound tooth, motherwort sprig, redwort flower, stinkhorn cap, and vampire dust. The last ingredient worried me, but Merlin swore he didn’t personally kill a vampire for it.

  I mixed and grounded it all together, then added nine drops of almond tincture.

  “Grab one of the buckets of spring water and set it on the table. Add just enough water to make everything liquid, and mix it well.” I did. “Now carefully pour it into the cauldron and dry the mixture, stirring it occasionally, until it is lightly browned.”

  It wasn’t difficult to pour it, but Merlin also had me twist the lever at the bottom of one side of the cauldron, which raised it further above the fire. Once it started to boil, Merlin told me to stir it.

  “With what?” I asked, looking around.

  “Your staff or wand.”

  “Isn’t that bad for it?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You have never used your wand to make potions before?”

  “My mother used magic, but I always used a stirring stick.” We used a stirring stick at Magnus’s castle, as well. Of course, the potions Merlin taught me were just practice.

  “Hold your staff right above the potion and move it like you are stirring the potion. As you do this, visualize the liquid stirring. Your magic will fill the potion and increase its effectiveness.”