The Elements of Sorcery

by Christopher Kellen

  "Was that the work of Yzgar the Black?" he asked.

  My throat was dry. I tried to swallow, but all I got instead was a hacking cough. "Yes," I breathed, as I slowly recovered. "How did you know?"

  "It is important to study history," he said, "So that we may not repeat its mistakes. Wouldn't you agree, sorcerer?"

  My enfeebled mind couldn't think of a retort. I stayed silent.

  He reached over and picked up the grey leather tome, turning it over in his hands. "I won't ask where you got this, since the answer would be irrelevant. I will simply thank you, Edar Moncrief, for turning it over into my possession."

  My lips refused to work. I nodded numbly. He could have the damned book.

  Next, he reached into a pocket just inside his tunic and pulled out the heartblade – likely the one he'd taken off my workbench, since it was not in one of the black leather cases. He dangled it before my eyes. "I'll be taking this with me, as well."

  Again, all I could do was nod.

  He leaned back, sliding the tiny crystal knife back into that pocket inside his tunic. "For invoking an incantation written by one of the most hated and dangerous black sorcerers of the past several centuries, I should simply kill you… or have you dragged back to the Tower to await sentencing," the Arbiter mused. "There's even the possibility that I could simply report you as a magical threat to the town guardsmen… it seems they don't like you very much. I'm sure they'd be more than happy to string you up for me."

  "…helped you…" I managed to wheeze.

  "Indeed you did," he said. "You helped me locate and eliminate the vampires which I had come here to find. For that, you deserve to be commended."

  My eyes flew open wide. He was simply staring at me, his face completely serious… but I could see the mocking laughter in his eyes.

  "You knew…?"

  "That Gaerton Daen was dead? Most certainly," he said, with a little dismissive wave of one hand. "Unfortunate, but unavoidable, when one sends a mere stripling to do a Master's job. Think on this, sorcerer… what kind of murderer leaves a corpse lying in the street in the middle of the day?"

  There it was. As I mentioned, I can be an idiot sometimes… mostly when fear is the predominant emotion in my crowded brain. Add in the joy of a discovery, and reason goes right out the window. "You put it there."

  A tiny smile played across his thin lips. "Give the man a gold medallion. I was hoping to lure someone out by placing it in that alley – in fact that was the third place it had been in three days. At last, I found you. Of course, I should have killed you the moment you fed me that line about the 'Sorcerer's Code'… do you think I'm stupid?"

  I could have kicked myself. What I thought had been a brilliant discovery, a series of flashes of insight, a series of bold and calculated bluffs that had led to some of the best acting I'd ever done in my life – he'd orchestrated them all.

  Never again would I underestimate the Arbiters.

  "Why?" I managed. "Why me?"

  He broke into a full smile; a heart-stopping expression. "You are not as widely derided as you think, sorcerer. There are rumors, whispers about you, some of them from very dark places. Someone had to determine if you were a threat."

  Whispers, about me? That was a chilling thought. "And… am I?"

  "That is the question," the Arbiter said, his eyes intent once more on me. "You have invoked a deadly spell, written by a dangerous black sorcerer. You have absorbed more power into you than any man truly ever should… which makes you dangerous, as well. Yet when I gave you the option, you chose to stand against the darkness, rather than run back to your lab and hide away. You are a difficult case, Edar Moncrief."

  "That was a test?" I asked. "You were testing me?"

  "All men must be tested; it is the fires of danger and the choices we make which forge the soul from cheap ore into shining steel," the Arbiter said, his eyes glittering.

  There was no reason to ask what he would have done if I had failed that test. A lump formed in my throat as I considered the grisly demise that my temporary bout of insanity – or heroism, call it what you will – had narrowly avoided.

  "So what do you intend to do with me?" I asked, managing to swallow the lump.

  "You have seen more than most men ever see, sorcerer," he said, his voice sinking to a low growl. "By all rights you should have died invoking that incantation, and yet you stand before me. If the vampires' power didn't kill you, Daen's certainly should have, and yet here you are."

  Silence – uncomfortable, painful silence filled the lab, until I thought I would scream at the agony of it.

  At last, he broke it. "The Arbiters do not take chances."

  My heart sank.

  That was it; I was going to die.

  He pushed himself off my lab table with his hands and stalked toward me. I closed my eyes, waiting for the end.

  "We do not take chances, and yet somehow… I like you, sorcerer," Tal said, though there was no trace of warmth in the statement. My eyes sprang open in amazement. That sentiment scared me more than anything else he'd said since we met.

  "I never saw you here," he continued. "But know this, Edar Moncrief: if I ever see you again – I'll kill you."

  The arctic chill of the Arbiter's mass brushed past me, colliding with my shoulder. I lifted a hand and shoved him off me, though my meager strength made little difference against his bulk. My fingers fluttered as I pulled that hand back to me, and then something caught at the back of my throat. A closed fist, the same hand I used to push him away, flew to my mouth and covered a wracking cough that doubled me over.

  His words lingered in the air as I expelled the breath from my lungs in a vicious fit of hacking and wheezing.

  Slowly, painfully, I recovered, straightening myself at last. I opened my closed hand.

  In the center of my palm lay the tiny, fragile, crystalline heartblade – the one he'd hidden away in that tunic pocket.

  Simple sleight-of-hand. The things you learn to avoid starvation.

  The Arbiter had the book… but I had the incantation. The words seemed to be indelibly written on my brain. There was no possibility that I would ever forget them, now. Together with the heartblade, I held in my hand and my brain the first chance in centuries to unravel the truth behind the secretive Arbiters.

  A hysterical part of my brain babbled that I should tell the Arbiter, remind him that even though he might be ready to burn that book and remove its writings from the world forever, that they still lived on in my brain. After all, the "Sorcerer's Code" meant I could never tell a lie… right?

  I clamped my mouth shut, to prevent either the howling laughter of a madman or a desperate confession from escaping. At last, his presence disappeared from my lab, and my life, forever.

  There was always the chance that he'd discover what was missing, and come riding back for my head, but I was tired of this two-bit town anyway. It was time to move on. As the dawn rose, I would vanish like a shadow.

  In the silence that followed, my parched lips cracked in a grin.

  My work had only just begun.

  <<<|>>>

  Lesson II

  SORCERER'S CRIME

  I

  I rode into that village on the back of the most miserable, broken-down nag of a horse that I'd ever had the displeasure to ride.

  The icy chill in the air was a sure sign that winter approached, and the ankle-deep snow drifts were needling that fact quite insistently into my feet and ankles. Traveling alone through the wilderness with nothing but a cantankerous equine for company was fine while the weather was still relatively pleasant. In the winter, however, it was all too easy for death to creep up on me while I slept away the daytime hours.

  One thing I'd learned quickly in my life on the road: never try to camp for the night in the wilderness unless you have someone to watch your back. It doesn't matter how many magical wards you put up or how well you disguise your makeshift shelter.

  The monsters will find you.r />
  My protective enchantments kept the horse and I from freezing to death, but it was a pale offering. Ever since the weather had turned, my magic was the only thing that warded off the creeping frost. Maintaining protective wards for so long was like gripping a frozen iron bar with every ounce of strength I could muster, and I was exhausted. A fold of my dark grey cloak was wrapped around my face like a muffler and my hands were tucked in tight against the saddle beneath me, and yet it still felt like they had decided to take a permanent vacation and leave me behind with the damn horse.

  The near-full Deadmoon hung in the sky above me, shining its bleak bone-white luminance down on the snow, leeching every speck of color out of my surroundings. The trees were black and the snow was starkly white, and everything else fell somewhere in between. It was always an unnerving sight, but one I had grown used to during my travel. The hairs on the back of my neck were fixed in a permanently-prickled state, though whether that was due to constant vigilance or simply the frozen air I was never quite sure.

  It was somewhere around this state of affairs when I decided that I no longer cared about getting to Selvaria. The city – and my new life, since I had abandoned the one in Elenia for very good reasons – could wait, as far as I was concerned. All I needed was a warm fire and a cot. I'd even settle for a dirt floor as long as there was a blazing hearth.

  The one remnant of my pride hung around my neck, kept in a tiny leather pouch close to my heart. It was the Arbiter's heartblade, the one I'd stolen from D'Arden Tal before he realized what I'd done. Everything else had been left behind in Elenia, burned to cinders when I lit my own lab aflame before disappearing in the middle of the night. I'd regretted the necessity, but disappearing with my life had been far more important than anything else that day.

  All of this was why I ended up riding into a two-horse town in the black of night. With my arrival, it was immediately upgraded to a three-horse town, and there was much rejoicing. Of course, given that the gap-toothed citizenry were certainly all safely tucked into their shacks, the actual celebration would have to wait until morning.

  A sorcerer had come to… I squinted at the rough wooden sign at the edge of town, which had a name printed on it in black letters. It was mostly covered in sticky snow, but I could just make out the glyphs. Varsil.

  Edar Moncrief, the only sorcerer ever to outwit an Arbiter, had come to Varsil. Watch out, peasantry.

  There were no walls here, which was immediately concerning. The horrors that stalked the night were fewer in the wide-open farmland like that through which I rode, but that didn't mean they weren't there. They didn't even build a wooden fence to keep the tiniest of fel beasts from knocking on their doors; a testament to just how comfortable the people in the Old Kingdoms had become with the terrifying night.

  The flickering light from a torch rounded one of the shacks, and I immediately looked up in alarm. Night watchmen, it had to be, though I had no idea how a place this pathetic had scrounged up enough volunteers to keep an eye on the midnight hour.

  "Ho there!" a thin voice called out, and it took me a moment to realize that it was female. "State your name and business in Warsil!"

  Oh, Warsil, I thought. Still, it was better to be safe than sorry. I allowed my broken-down old horse to close in a bit with the citizens before identifying myself. There was always the possibility that they would shoot me down with a crossbow or something, but that's what magic is for, after all.

  It was during this time that I heard another voice mutter, much more quietly, "Better hope he's no sorcerer, or we'll hang him like the last one."

  The words died in my throat even as I opened my mouth to speak. Superstitious folk in a tiny town on the edge of nowhere… the total earnest lack of irony left a foul taste in my mouth. Surely everyone knew that a sorcerer was no one to be trifled with, and certainly not one to be hanged like some common criminal.

  "Identify yourself, stranger, or this will be the end of you," the feminine voice warned.

  My brain whirled, searching for an answer. Was a flat-out lie the best option? Did I instead try to misdirect, throwing them off my scent until I could reveal the true extent of my power?

  I licked my lips, which immediately chapped in the wind. Was it my imagination, or could I actually hear that woman's hand trembling on the trigger of a crossbow? Desperately, I spat out words, hoping that they would make some kind of sense.

  "My name is… D'Arden Tal!" I shouted. "I'm an Arbiter! Don't shoot… for Arangoth's sake, don't shoot!"

  II

  "You don't look much like an Arbiter," the reedy woman observed.

  "And just how many Arbiters have you met in your lifetime?" I sniffed disdainfully.

  "Well…" that seemed to give her pause.

  "Where's yer crystal sword, Arbiter?" sneered one of the others, a flat-nosed man who was missing most of his teeth.

  "Not all of us carry a sword," I lied. "Some of us have… other talents."

  "Oh yeah? Like what?"

  I lifted one hand and spoke a single word under my breath. Blue flame – the exact shade I remembered shining in the Arbiter's eyes – flashed out from my finger and streaked toward the peasant's ugly face. He stumbled backward with a cry just as it exploded silently before his eyes, leaving him shaken, but unharmed.

  The rest of them were staring at me in shock. Before they could raise the cry of "sorcery!" and sic their pitchforks upon me, I made up something that sounded good. "Those who question the Arbiters often harbor corruption within their own hearts," I said, fixing the man with what I hoped was a sufficiently chilly glare.

  That got them. Suddenly their demeanor changed, and instead of being cautiously distant, they began cheering as though I were some sort of champion.

  "It's really true!" the thin woman said, her face alight with sudden hope. I felt my heart sinking as I stared at her. "An Arbiter has come to liberate us!"

  "Liberate?" I asked, but they didn't hear me over the sound of their cheering. Though it was the dead of night, I could hear doors opening all around us.

  "What's going on?" called a sleepy voice.

  "It's an Arbiter!" the watchmen called back.

  Soon the entire village was awake and had taken up the cry. My blood turned to ice as I listened to the genuine joy that suffused the cold night. Adults, elders, children… all of them whooped and hollered into the night in some kind of horrendous concerto.

  Edar, you nattering nitwit, I cursed myself silently. What have you gotten yourself into now?

  "Please, Arbiter, forgive our suspicion," the reedy woman, who'd been the first one to say a single word to me, gushed. "We here in Warsil have lived with a terrible problem for many years, and for so long we have wished for one of your order to come and free us from it."

  "Ah, yes…" my mouth spluttered, "well, you see…"

  "Please, please come with me," she said, interrupting. "We will care for your horse, and I have a fire burning in my hearth. You are welcome to the hospitality of my home for as long as you like."

  Part of me wanted to bolt, or at least to confess the truth to these poor people, even if it meant I would immediately be run out of town. There was certainly no way that I was going to be able to help them with whatever problem they needed an Arbiter to solve. Yet, for all of that, my mind wandered back out over the icy plains I'd been traveling, and the call of warmth and real food was too strong to resist.

  Perhaps I could slip out before dawn, and they'd never be any the wiser.

  "Very well," I said, trying to keep my tone imperious. There was no way I would ever be able to duplicate the bottled fury so effectively communicated by the bearer of the name I'd appropriated, so I settled for gentle condescension instead. "I will accept your hospitality, good woman."

  The joy on her face was overwhelming, and my chest swelled with the adoring praise that was being showered upon me. Never before in my life had anyone looked at me with such rapt attention, and certainly not a whole crowd. Fear,
revulsion, anger, disgust; those I was quite familiar with, but this… this was something different.

  I never forgave myself for what I said next, but when a crowd of people is staring at you with something akin to worship, you tend to say stupid things.

  Really stupid things.

  "Never fear, citizens of Warsil – whatever problem you may have, it will soon bother you no more."

  The cheering erupted anew, and a deaths-head grin plastered itself on my face as I mentally kicked myself over and over again.

  III

  So, in addition to being a dishonest rat of a sorcerer with a big mouth that tended to invite trouble, I had now committed a crime which all but ensured my own death, should my deception be uncovered. Impersonating an Arbiter was surely the worst thing I had ever done in my life; except maybe for getting the better of one in a battle of wills.

  Well, at least I was warm again.

  Sitting in front of the fire, I was at last able to relax the wards that had kept me from freezing to death. Relief overcame me as I released the power that I'd been gripping for days on end, and allowed the manna to flow back into the world. It was dangerous to support a single enchantment for so long – it risked running along the edges of corruption – but necessity always wins.

  Slowly but surely, the feeling began to return to the tips of my fingers and toes with the prickling sensation that always accompanied such events. I resolved that I would never allow myself to ever be that cold again.

  The thin woman – who turned out to be rather attractive in the firelight, with soft blond hair and striking blue eyes, the deep color of the stormy sea – brought me a steaming mug of something that carried a rich, earthy smell. I looked up at her with barely disguised alarm. Did Arbiters need to eat or drink? Was this some kind of test?

  Her only expression was awe and kindness. After only a moment's hesitation, I accepted the earthenware cup from her with a grateful smile, and took a long sip of what turned out to be a hot, bitter tea. "Thank you, good woman."