Off to Be the Wizard

by Scott Meyer

  “I was worried it might be too flashy, but from what I saw on Martin’s first night in town, I didn’t think too flashy would really be a problem.”

  Martin hastily shed the red loaner robe and hat. Gwen held the new robe by the shoulders so Martin could easily slip it on. It fit perfectly and instantly felt like a part of him. The silver hat sat easily and comfortably on his head. The cone of the hat did not flop over completely, but instead bent back slightly. Unlike Phillip’s brimless hats, Martin’s hat had a three inch brim, the color of his robe’s trim. Martin spread his hands wide and looked down at himself. Gwen directed him to the mirror, which was really a highly polished sheet of metal, but it did the job.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  Martin said, “I look bitchin’!”

  “That’s good.” Phillip explained to Gwen.

  Martin wanted to strut back to the shop, but Phillip had insisted that Martin teleport them instead. They thanked Gwen, then paid her a great many gold pieces. The fabric was not cheap, but she knew wizards were good for it. Martin put one hand on Phillip’s shoulder, and held his staff aloft with the other hand. In his most impressive tone of voice, Martin said the magic words, “Transporti al Phillip butiko,” and they were standing in the front room of Phillip’s shop.

  “Good. The shell is recognizing the robe and hat. Gwen does excellent work, but nobody’s perfect. It’s always a good idea to test a new robe before you try to do magic in public. Try shooting a beam.”

  Martin pointed at a dead squirrel in a jar of yellowish fluid on the shelf and said “Trabo de ruĝa lumo.” A ray of red light shot from his hand, illuminating the jar, which was unfortunate. He moved his hand around, watching the beam track with the direction of his finger. After a moment Martin said, “Halti,” and the beam stopped as if someone had flipped a switch. Martin then tested the hat by producing two burritos for their lunch. As they sat in the crystal ball room, enjoying their meal, Martin asked what was next in the training schedule.

  “Well, I’ve shown you all of the basics. Now we concentrate on getting you ready for the trials.”

  “How long do you figure that’ll take?” Martin asked between bites.

  “Two days.”

  “That’s pretty specific,” Martin said as best he could while chewing.

  “Very specific,” Phillip said. “Your trials are scheduled for two days from now.”

  After Phillip had administered the Heimlich maneuver, Martin immediately started yelling, or would have if he’d caught his breath enough. Instead, Martin gasped emphatically.

  “What do you mean the trials are scheduled for two days from now?!” he wheezed.

  “I don’t know how to state it any more plainly than you just did,” Phillip answered. “In two days, we are going to go to London. Jimmy, as the chairman, will throw a party in your honor, all the while referring to himself as Merlin. Try to enjoy the party. There will be many wizards you haven’t met, pretty much every wizard in Europe. There’ll be food and drinks, and many top-notch insults will be hurled at Jimmy, by me. At the end of the dinner, you will show everyone the most impressive macro you can come up with. The next morning, you will face the trials. By that night you’ll be a full-fledged wizard.”

  Martin smiled and said, “Thanks!”

  “Or naked and hogtied in the back of a squad car.”

  Martin sneered and said, “Thanks.”

  Martin spent most of the next two days at Phillip’s house, hunched over his laptop. Phillip would occasionally stop by to quiz him on his Esperanto, or to take him out for a quick practice flight, but most of the time was spent with Martin working on his macro, and Phillip away at the shop, staying out of Martin’s way. At one point Martin had a question, and rather than just calling Phillip, he decided to stretch his legs. He teleported to Phillip’s shop.

  After he materialized in the front room, the one designed to look like a shop, Martin thought about how easy it would be to become lazy as a wizard, and how much he looked forward to it. His eyes landed randomly on a small, ornate box, sitting among the other random objects Phillip had placed on his shelves solely for their ability to look mysterious. The box was about five inches long, made of wood, and its proportions were similar to a coffin. It sat on tiny, carved, clawed feet. Its hinged lid and sides were decorated with carvings of dragons. He called Phillip’s name and got no reply. He tried again. Still no response.

  Humming quietly to himself, he moved cautiously into the crystal ball room, around the table, and faced the door that led upstairs, the door that no person could open or enter but Phillip. He knocked, and waited several seconds. No reply. He knocked again.

  Martin decided Phillip wasn’t there. As he turned his back to the door upstairs, he noticed that the shelf built into the crystal ball table that usually held Phillip’s beloved Commodore 64 was empty. He looked into the crystal ball and saw that the TV was also missing. Martin was so engrossed in peering into the crystal ball, he didn’t hear the door behind him open.

  “Can I help you, Martin?” Phillip asked.

  Martin jumped, then tried to sound casual. “Uh, I, uh, I just wanted to get out of the hut. I thought I’d come see what you’re up to,” Martin said.

  “I’m not up to anything,” Phillip said as he stood framed by the open door, drying his hands on a modern hand towel. He was wearing his powder blue robe, but not his hat. The forbidden staircase stretched off into darkness behind him.

  Martin pointed to the empty shelf where the computer had sat. He could see a rectangular patch that was free of dust. “Why’d you move the Commodore?”

  “No reason,” Phillip said.

  “Oh,” Martin said, as if that explanation simply hadn’t occurred to him. The two men stood, looking at each other in silence for a moment.

  “Well,” Phillip said, “you’d better get back to studying and working on your macro. Tomorrow we go to London, and the day after, you face the trials. I’d hate to have to strip you naked, tie you up, and send you back to your time. Especially the first two parts. Never pleasant.” Phillip started closing the door as if Martin had already left. Martin raised his hand and said cleared his throat like a school boy with a question.

  “Yes, Martin, what is it?” Phillip said, now just poking his head through the partially closed door.

  Martin held up the small wooden box he’d taken from the shelf. “Mind if I make a copy of this to use? It’s your box, so I thought it’d be polite to ask first.”

  Phillip looked down at the box. For a moment all irritation drained from his face. “Ooh, that’s the perfect size, isn’t it? Make a safety copy or two if you like, but the box is yours. It’s a gift. Take it and go home, Martin.” With that, Phillip closed the door firmly. Martin knew not to knock again.

  Martin spent the rest of the day working on his Macro. Phillip had told him that the wizards would expect to see what they liked to call a salutation – the set of effects used at the beginning of a duel, or when feeling threatened by the locals, to show that everybody knows they’ve got a powerful wizard on their hands. The night he and Phillip first met, the light show that ended with Martin flying backwards into the forest had been Phillip’s salutation.

  Wizards also used their salutation as a means of both entertaining and demonstrating their power and creativity. Phillip had often called it the wizard’s form of breakdancing. It was a dated reference, but Martin thought it fit.

  Martin asked Jeff some questions about his work on importing video game assets into the real world. Specifically, Martin wanted to know about displaying and animating three-dimensional assets in space and playing audio files. Later, he asked Gary about smoke, light, and particle effects. He had seen that Gary had a good grasp of the subject. Also by not asking any one wizard all of his questions, he had a better chance of keeping his macro a sur
prise. He spent the rest of the day searching the web for code snippets and existing animations to speed up the process. He ran a simulation or two, and was happy with the results.

  Phillip returned from the forbidden zone above his shop at dusk, acting as if nothing had happened. They dined on burritos from Phillip’s magic burrito hat. Phillip had many other food choices he could produce, but a selection of specialized burritos is all the variety most men need. After dinner, they went for a fly and found themselves back at The Rotted Stump, the inn where they’d first met. When they went in, Martin noted that the place looked exactly as it had when he first arrived, and yet it felt totally different. It seemed less hostile, less frightening. He figured it was partly because he was more familiar and comfortable with this era now, and partly because he knew he could level the whole building with a few words of Esperanto.

  Pete was behind the bar, wearing what appeared to be a windbreaker made out of used cling film. He had collected all of it from the patrons and had Gwen help him fashion it into a shirt, but it was devilishly hard to put on and take off, so he cut it up the front and used it as a jacket. He said it still turned inside out every time he took it off, but he just wore it inside out the next day, and because it was transparent, nobody could tell. Gert was also there. She greeted Martin in the friendliest way she knew how. She cracked her knuckles.

  Phillip tried not to look too proud when, without any urging, Martin apologized to Pete and to Gert for the scene he’d caused on his first night in town, and asked if he could do another trick to make up for it. He pointed to an empty flagon that was on the bar in front of Pete and said, “Kopiu.” He repeated this fifteen times and fifteen more flagons appeared on the table. Then he removed his hat and produced enough gold to pay for enough beer to fill all of the flagons. He announced that the next round was on him, then he leaned in close to Pete and said, “Feel free to keep all of the flagons.”

  Pete replied, “You gonna help me wash them?”

  “Do you wash the ones you already have?” Martin asked.

  “Good point.”

  Chapter 20.

  The next morning, Martin woke early. He lay in his hammock, listening to nothing. He didn’t often hear nothing. He had discovered that living in a medieval town was not much quieter than living in a modern town. Sure, cars make a lot of noise, but so do hooves, and while in a modern house the road noise is filtered through modern windows, here it came through either rough, single glazed glass or a simple hole with wooden shutters. It was quiet now, because it was early, barely dawn.

  Martin wasn’t totally awake, but not totally asleep either. He was in that hazy, semiconscious state where the dreams of the night before dovetail with the reality of the day ahead. That time where you find yourself thinking how unfortunate it is that your lower half has been replaced with the body of a crab, and how difficult it will be to explain to your boss that you couldn’t come in to work because your pants are now impractical.

  Martin opened his eyes a crack. A light streamed in around the edges of the window shutters. Phillip was in his bed, snoring lightly. The light illuminated the dust that hung in the air, swirling lazily in space. Martin thought about how in a dark room you couldn’t see anything, and in a brightly lit room you only saw large things, but in a room with very little light, you could see very little things, like dust. As the sun rose, more light came in, and he watched the dust slowly spiraling in random patterns as the shaft of light got larger and brighter.

  Martin opened his eyes all the way, then immediately squinted. There was clearly a void in the dust, next to Phillip’s bed. It was barely discernible, but dust was flowing around the empty area. The void was irregularly shaped and appeared to be moving. It seemed still toward the floor, but there was a churning quality about the upper part of the void. Martin lifted his head so he was no longer looking at it sideways. He squinted harder, and for just a moment, the dust seemed to form the outline of a person leaning over Phillip, as if he meant to attack. Martin gasped. The form turned suddenly to face Martin, who recoiled in shock and fell out of his hammock.

  Martin hit the ground and cursed loudly. He looked up and saw that the form was gone, if it ever really had been there. Phillip was sitting upright, looking at him. “What’s wrong with you?” Phillip asked.

  “I, uh, I fell out of bed,” Martin sputtered.

  “Yes,” Phillip said, rubbing his eyes. “That’s just a symptom, not the root problem, but whatever.”

  Martin chose not to tell Phillip what he’d seen. Bad enough that he’d had a silly half-dream and freaked himself out. No need to make it worse by telling everybody about it. Still, Martin was unusually quiet that morning, partly because of the strange start his day had, and partly because he was nervous about the trials. Phillip did his best to calm Martin’s nerves.

  “Look, there’s no point in freaking out about the trials and ruining your day,” Phillip said.

  “I know,” Martin agreed.

  “Freak out tomorrow. That’s when the trials are. Today is meant to be a day of fun. Possibly your last.”

  Martin didn’t think that Phillip’s best was terribly good.

  They ate their breakfast, had a conversation about the infinite adaptability of the humble burrito, then ran through a quick checklist of all the things they would need for the trip. It was not a long list. Wizard robes, wizard hat, wizard staff, completed macro, and a positive attitude. Martin asked if he would need his laptop.

  “No,” Phillip said. “Remember, many wizards are from a time before useful portable computers. The trials were designed in such a way that directly accessing the shell is not needed. Besides, you’ve got your pocket computer. If anything, you’ve got an advantage, not that it’ll help.”

  Martin spent a couple of hours going over his macro a few more times. He was certain it would work. He asked Phillip to quiz him on the things he’d need to know to pass the trials. Phillip asked him some Esperanto vocabulary questions and quizzed him about the finer points of conjuring and flying, but Phillip didn’t seem terribly concerned. Martin thought this was either encouraging or maddening, he wasn’t sure which.

  Finally, Phillip seemed to get bored and asked, “Ready to go, Martin?”

  Martin said that he was, but he was not sure of it. Phillip could sense his hesitation. “Buck up, Martin! Two days from now, you’ll be a fully trained wizard with full shell access. Or you’ll be in jail. The point is, you’ll know. All the uncertainty will be over.”

  Martin asked, “Have I told you that I’m going to miss your little pep talks?”

  Phillip said, “No, you haven’t.”

  Martin said, “There’s a reason for that.”

  Phillip put a reassuring hand on Martin’s shoulder. “I have every confidence in you. You’ll be fine.”

  Martin shook his head, and started to thank Phillip, but Phillip interrupted him. “Either way. Transporto londono kvin!”

  An instant later, they were standing in a pasture. Martin did not react well. Sometimes, people will forget what kind of beverage is in their glass. They’ll get it in their head that they have a glass of milk, when in fact it’s soda. If they take a drink without looking, the pleasant mouthful of pop will, for a moment, taste like the most messed up mouthful of milk in history. Martin had expected city, and instead got a mouthful of pasture. It was a pleasant enough pasture, but Martin had expected a city.

  “I thought you said we were going to London,” Martin said.

  Phillip smiled. “We’re in London. This pasture, those woods, that river bank over there, especially that river bank, all of it will be London. If we stand right here, a little under a thousand years from now, we’ll be standing in front of a really good curry stand I know, and it’d be a good thing, because by then we’ll be hungry.”

  Martin looked around. The landscape was dotted with cot
tages. There were people in the distance tending to sheep, working in their gardens. A relatively busy road, by medieval standards, led off into the woods. More people were headed toward the river than away from it. Martin had never really been one for agriculture, but it was all very picturesque. “Okay,” he asked, “So why’d you pick this spot? What’s your point?”

  “I wanted you to have a moment to prepare yourself for what London is at the moment. You’ve grown up with pictures of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. I wanted you to be prepared for the fact that none of that is here. When I showed up, all there was that was recognizable were the beginnings of Westminster, and the Thames.”

  Martin shrugged. “Well, at least there’s something recognizable.”

  “There was, back in the Pre-Jimmy period of English history. Now it’s been replaced by Camelot and the river Jems.”

  Martin was confused. “Why’d he change the river to Jems?”

  “It’s spelled James.”

  Martin was starting to see why Phillip hated Jimmy.

  Phillip held his staff aloft, preparing for flight. “Shall we?” he asked.

  Martin followed suit, and soon they were flying through the air. Martin was deliberately lagging behind, allowing Phillip to lead. They skimmed over the farms and fields, toward the river James. In the distance, beyond the trees, crowded along the far bank of the river, Martin saw what he had to assume was London, or as it was now known, Camelot. From a distance it looked a lot like Leadchurch. Actually, it looked like ten Leadchurches packed in together. Martin’s entire life, he had thought of cities as places where there were tall buildings, but aside from one notable exception, there were no tall buildings to be found. The technology simply wasn’t there yet.

  Phillip swung in a low, lazy arc around the city. Martin followed. Chaotic patterns of narrow streets and squat, mostly brown buildings spread out below him like a field of wooden blocks. The one exception was a large building next to the river, slightly to the left of the city’s central mass. The building was surrounded by a wall that was at least three stories tall, and seemed to be covered in highly reflective gold. The building itself was not just a castle. It was the castle. It couldn’t more obviously be a castle. It bristled with parapets, towers, arrow slits, sky bridges, and buttresses, all covered in the same shiny gold leaf as the outer wall.