by Ron Collins
He could not hide from this, and he could not merely apologize his way to a new life. Nothing he did for the rest of his time would ever change the fact that he was now a monster.
Chapter 10
“Enough!” Garrick screamed into the nighttime sky, his voice harsh and ragged. He had nothing left to lose.
There was no response, though.
He picked up a short, but sturdy sword he found lying in the dirt. Its edge reflected orange fire as he held it before him. Falling to his knees, he reversed the blade and placed its sharpened point below his sternum.
Everything had happen so quickly.
Garrick thought of his mother, and of Alistair. He thought of Alistair’s apprentices. He thought of Arianna, beautiful Arianna. Had he actually loved her? Perhaps. But he had not really known her. She was beautiful, though. And she had liked him. If nothing else he could have grown to love her.
Not that it mattered.
Arianna was nothing but a bitter dream now. A life he could never have. But he could have loved her. He knew he could have, and as he felt the edge of the blade firmly against his breastbone, that seemed to matter.
He increased pressure on the blade.
He closed his eyes, and he sensed…
…the smell of honey…
…seeping into the clearing.
Garrick opened his eyes to see a cloud of smoke the color of deepest ocean roiling upon itself. It flowed together from the woods, coalescing in the clearing to become a slender man wearing a tunic and a pair of loose black breeches. The man rested one thinly gloved hand on the pommel of the ornamental rapier at his side. Half his face was obscured in shadow, but one green eye was exposed to the flickering light of Sjesko’s fire, and that one eye was piercing.
He lowered the blade from his chest.
“What’s wrong, Garrick? Are you finding the act of deciding who lives and dies to be less comforting than you thought it might be?”
“How do you know my name?”
The visitor smirked. “Perhaps you’ll think more clearly if you get off your knees.”
Garrick used the weapon to stand, feeling the villagers’ energy flow in his veins as he did so. Their flavor was growing stronger as time passed.
“Who are you?” he said.
“You know who I am.”
“You are clearly no mage of the orders.”
The visitor brought a hand to his heart with feigned indignation. “The mere idea stings.”
“But if you were a Torean I would have seen you before.”
The man raised an eyebrow. His gaze was ancient, his bearing firm. “You think so?”
Suddenly Garrick did know who this was—or at least what this was
And once he accepted this as fact, he realized he should have known what was behind this wild hunger all along. He had never needed to think at such levels before, though, and Alistair had mentioned such beings only in passing. To have missed it, in truth, said nothing about him at all.
“You’re a planewalker,” he finally said.
The man bowed with mock formality.
“Braxidane at your service. Though we prefer the term god.”
“I’m sure you do.”
A planewalker, Garrick thought. A life force who lived in the space between the thousand worlds. To mages, these beings were merely creatures of higher power, but to others—those with no understanding of magic—they were often worshiped as the gods Braxidane professed to be.
“You need to fix this,” he said.
“Would you have me create a whole village of the same walking dead you made of Alistair?”
Garrick had no reply.
“Consider this your first lesson, Garrick. I cannot fix what you have done here. Arianna survived because she was still alive as you tended her. You breathed life into Alistair’s dead husk and now he has nothing beyond that magic to keep him alive, so he will be eternally drawn to add to it. If you are to save a living creature, some shred of existence must remain in the body or your energy has nothing to build upon.
I didn’t know.”
Braxidane shrugged.
“You could have stopped me.”
“You chose your own course. The problem is that you did not think things through before you chose it.”
“You could have stopped me.”
“Lessons are best learned by experience.”
“Stop it.”
“The truth does not change merely because you find it inconvenient, nor does it care if you agree with it or not.”
Garrick stared at the planewalker, anger rising. The voices of villagers echoed inside his mind. “You tricked me,” he said. “This whole thing. You knew what was going to happen, and you gave me your magic anyway.”
Braxidane gave a lighthearted smile. “You asked for my help. How could I not reply?”
“I don’t want it anymore. Take it back.”
“I think not.”
“Why not?” Garrick was embarrassed by the pleading edge to his voice.
“I did not trick you, Garrick. You wanted this responsibility. You agreed to take it. I’ve paid dearly to give it to you, and I have no intention of giving you up.”
Garrick raised his sword. “I will destroy myself before I let you control me.”
Braxidane gazed over the bodies littering the ground.
“I don’t think you’ll do that—not today, anyway. Probably never.”
“You’ll lose that bet.”
“No, Garrick. I don’t think I will. You are free to make your own choices, but there will, of course, always be consequences. That’s all there is to life, really, actions and consequences. And you are a good man at heart. If you listen to the voices ringing inside your head for a moment I think you’ll come to understand that if you destroy yourself now, all of these deaths you have created will be for naught.”
Garrick glared at the planewalker.
“Don’t tell me you can’t hear them?”
Garrick grimaced. He could hear them. He could feel them.
The voices were growing more solid inside his mind every moment—the life forces of men and women with desires and dreams still eager to be released rolled through his core, with lessons waiting to be passed on. These lessons filled his senses—simple learnings of practical lives and the wisdom of common sense. He felt their power, tasted their humility. Their history welled up inside him—every person, every name singing him their stories in stanzas and melodies that wove themselves into a harmonic tapestry of sounds.
He had destroyed their bodies, but he had not yet destroyed who they were. If Garrick killed himself they would be gone forever, but if he lived Garrick could return their life forces to this world once again.
Braxidane was right about something else, too.
The more he let the voices in, the better he felt. The purity of Sjesko's life force rose inside him, and as time passed his angst slipped away. If he focused on the villagers Garrick felt…almost happy.
“This is horrific,” he said.
Braxidane gave a sad smile.
“It's not fair,” Garrick said.
“Garrick, Garrick,” the planewalker chuckled. “Sweet, sweet Garrick. Certainly you can see that things like fairness and justice are merely human constructs. Life is not like that, after all. Life is simple. Individuals act, and consequences occur. See? There is no room for thing such as fairness.
“Garrick swallowed. “Am I going to spend the rest of my life like this?”
“Actions and consequences, Garrick—that’s all there is, even for us gods.”
“That is no answer.”
“And, yet, it is the only one I have.”
“You are a fiend.”
Braxidane shrugged again, and a smile played on his lips. “I’ve been called worse. But don’t expect to be released from your agreement. The world is changing, Garrick. Forces greater than you can understand are aligning. Trust me when I say that if I were to grant you your free
dom now, you would find yourself begging for these powers back sooner than you might think.”
Garrick ground his teeth.
“Do all planewalkers enjoy toying with defenseless people as much as you?”
“What else would you expect from gods?” Braxidane said.
Then he was gone.
Epilogue
Garrick looped the blade he carried into his belt.
Standing in the smoking remains of what had once been the village of Sjesko, he wanted to feel shame. He wanted to feel guilty. But, the essence of the villagers filled his body with an energy that could neither hate nor despair. It could not brook hopelessness. It could not allow for self-pity. He nearly swooned as the villager’s life force swelled inside him. A cool nighttime breeze was already working to cleanse the clearing of his foul deeds. The hair on the back of his hand rose as excess energy crackled over his fingertips.
Life, as Braxidane had said, is not fair. The villagers of Sjesko wanted to live.
So, despite himself, Garrick would learn how to live again. He would learn how use this magic of Braxidane’s. He would learn how it worked. He would give it to whatever purpose the villagers’ essence would put it to. In truth, he felt an awkward optimism rising within him as the moments passed.
But he would do it knowing this was all a false comfort. He had felt the darkness before. It would come again. This curse of Braxidane’s was the truest definition of servitude he could conceive.
Forces greater than you could understand, he thought. Begging for these powers back.
The absurdity of Braxidane's commentary made him angry. The notion that Garrick might choose this curse as his fate of his own free will was farcical. But all he could do now was grimace at the planewalker’s hubris.
Garrick could not just let this happen, though. Not if he wanted to live with himself. Life was not as simple as Braxidane wanted him to believe. Life was messy. It was complicated. Life should be fair, though, and justice existed. People mattered.
The planewalker’s magic was strong enough that Garrick didn’t think Dontaria Pel-an would be able to remove it, but he would still try. And he would need money regardless. So he would still go to Caledena. He would still take Alistair’s job.
He needed to break this link more than ever.
There had to be a way.
Prey can turn to predator, after all.
There was so much he had to learn, though. So much he had to absorb.
The breeze brought the scent of the woods around him. Move, his life force spoke to him. It’s time to move.
Garrick took a last moment to linger over the devastation before him, then strode into the dense forest.
* * * * *
This is the end of Glamour of the God-Touched, but the story of Garrick, Braxidane, and the struggle between the orders continues in Trail of the Torean, due to be published in December, 2014!
Available at:
Smashwords
The Saga of the God-Touched Mage includes:
Glamour of the God-Touched
Trail of the Torean
Target of the Orders
Gathering of the God-Touched
Pawn of the Planewalker
Changing of the Guard
Lord of the Freeborn
Lords of Existence
Appendix
Image by Ron Collins
Acknowledgements
The universe of Adruin and All of Existence has many people to thank for its existence, not the least of which are Tim Brown, Mike Cox, Ken and Jackie Peters, and my wife, Lisa.
I need to single out a few others for their efforts beyond all the rest.
My friend, collaborator, and pre-reader John Bodin’s help was—as always—superlative. I want to thank my daughter, Brigid, for stepping into the fray when I needed her. And I want to give thanks to my cover artist, Rachel Carpenter, who was great fun to work with and who did a fantastic job bringing Garrick to life.
Thanks to David B. Coe (D. B. Jackson) for his kind comments on my work, and for his gentle prodding regarding the story itself. I owe you a dum-dum, David.
Mostly, though, I have to thank Lisa for everything she’s done for me. Saga of the God-Touched Mage has gone through more twists and turns than I could ever have predicted when the idea first hit, and she’s been with me through every step. (Don’t worry, honey. It’s really done. Really, I mean it. It’s done. You don't have to read it for the 111th time!).
About Ron Collins
Ron Collins is an award-winning author who lives in Columbus, Indiana, with his wife, Lisa.
Glamour of the God-Touched is the first volume in the eight-part Saga of the God-Touched Mage. He published Five Magics, a collection of his short fantasy, in 2012. Five Magics includes two tales from Dragon Magazine, a Marion Zimmer Bradley’s FANTASY MAGAZINE Cauldron Award winning story, and another tale that was awarded Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s “Years Best Fantasy.”
Ron is the author of two road trip, alternate-history, fantasy, science fiction baseball novels, the first being See the PEBA on $25 a Day (2010), and the sequel being Chasing the Setting Sun (2014).
He has contributed numerous short stories to professional science fiction publications including Analog, Asimov’s, and Nature. His writing has received a Writers of the Future prize, and a CompuServe HOMer Award. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and worked developing avionics systems, electronics, and information technology before spending a decade in Human Resource management.
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The Saga of the God-Touched Mage includes:
Glamour of the God-Touched
Trail of the Torean
Target of the Orders
Gathering of the God-Touched
Pawn of the Planewalker
Changing of the Guard
Lord of the Freeborn
Lords of Existence
How You Can Help
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
Appendix
Acknowledgements
About Ron Collins
How You Can Help
