The Reign of Magic (Pentamura Book 1)

by Awert, Wolf

  “Thought-speaking is very unusual for a young girl who has yet to begin her studies. But if the wise women have indeed sent you, you probably have more than a basic understanding of magic; you must be at least a sorceress already.”

  Tiriwi politely dissented. “Thought-speaking is a hereditary gift among the Oas and we do not think of it as magic. I have only just begun to learn and I cannot speak any spells yet.” After a short pause she continued: “Oas rarely use their magic. They are satisfied with knowing it.”

  Thought-speaking, one of the highest of magics, practiced by a young girl who had not yet been taught. Had it really been such a good idea to invite an Oa to Ringwall? Some of the mages began to have their doubts.

  Nill was still chasing after the traces left in his mind by Tiriwi and had to be called on three times before he realized it. He looked up and called quickly: “Nill, my name is Nill.”

  For a moment the Hall was silent again. Then a storm of laughter broke out over them. “A Nothing! There’s a Nothing among us!”

  The only ones not laughing were the archmages. They held Nill in their gazes with thoughtful, curious eyes. Nill felt the strange aura from earlier dancing around him.

  The Magon gave a short nod. “Your lessons begin tomorrow. Your teachers are all the mages you see here, the colored Adepts of the Archmages and the White Mages of Knowledge. Once you have completed your training you may hold the title of sorcerer.”

  The Magon raised his hands, turned around abruptly and disappeared into thin air. The archmages followed suit. Their empty chairs remained.

  The students followed their guides back through the entrance door.

  Nill was shoved rudely to the side by a hard shoulder, where he was jostled by another student.

  “Get out of the way, scum! Don’t you know you’re to make space when your betters are present?”

  Brolok leapt aside and pressed himself against the wall. The Oa stood smiling innocently next to their guide who stared at the noble students with discontent in his eyes. Before Nill could move he was struck again. The mob seemed to have fun shoving him about until he finally found himself face to face with the young prince.

  The prince gave a thin smile. “You haven’t found your place yet, I see.”

  “My place is that of an apprentice,” Nill answered with as much dignity as he could muster in all the confusion.

  The prince raised his head higher, looking down his nose at Nill. “An apprentice has no place.”

  Prince Sergor-Don gave Brolok a quick glance. “Tell him what to expect. And you,” he snarled at Tiriwi, “get out of my way.”

  He turned around with a sharp twist and left the Hall with long, commanding strides.

  Nill looked after the colorful crowd, distressed. “These are the other students?” he asked aghast.

  “Yes. What did you think? The archmages’ decisions are always full of wisdom,” their guide’s bitter voice muttered. “I suppose the reason for me being your guide is a wisdom I will never understand.”

  “You have no rank yet, am I right?” Tiriwi inquired. “You’re one of the older students. I think I can answer that question. Even for mages there are times when they have to consider their actions. We three are the most precious students in Ringwall to the archmages, and they can only give us a guide they can trust completely.”

  A contemptuous expression formed on the young man’s face. “I am the first son of a duke. Do you honestly believe that I can’t see honeyed words for what they are? Do you lickspittle think you can get anywhere with me doing that? Keep yourself in the real world, little witch. The Oas belong to the serving folk as well.”

  Tiriwi was unimpressed. “Oas do not give idle flattery. But even if you do not know our reasons for being here, you should have noticed that all nine archmages were gathered here to greet us. Were they there when you entered Ringwall? Well, it’s the Magon’s decision and not mine how much students may know and what they mustn’t. And now please return us to our quarters.”

  The older student had lost some of his abrasive demeanor and frowned. “I will only bring you part of the way. You must learn to find your way around Ringwall on your own. Your lessons begin tomorrow. Go to the Fire Mages’ quarters. They will be expecting you there.”

  The way back from the Ceremonial Hall to the Hermits’ Caves seemed far shorter than the way they had come, but this was because they were busy digesting what had just happened. Brolok was still shaking from meeting the archmages, yet his practical mind was already thinking about the brewing storm. Their classmates would not only have large portions of the house on their side, but they also vastly outnumbered the three.

  Tiriwi was silent all the way back. She was angry at herself. “Do not betray your powers,” the wise women had told her. “Be quiet and reserved, try to find out as much as you can,” they had told her. And at the very first encounter she had gone and shown the entire world that she had the power of thought-speaking! Tiriwi felt as though she had frittered away all the trust her people had given her on the very first day.

  Nill’s mind, on the other hand, was free of worry at the moment. He absorbed the magic of the walls that had tormented him on the way to the Hall, let it wander through his body and reached after it. He wanted to find out where the power changed; which part of his body it contacted first, whether or not he could move it – and how. He only recovered from his reverie when they had reached the flat-stamped earth of the small hall in front of their chambers. Nill fetched something to eat and drink and sat down on one of the old tree trunks.

  “Good benches,” he said and patted the wood.

  The others sat with him quickly. After a break filled with chewing, slurping and smacking Nill stated: “That was impressive.”

  “It was pretentious,” Brolok said. “I expected it to go like that. You know, sometimes my grandfather still behaves like that. He’s a part of the old nobility, and the nobility reigns over the land. They decide over everything and everyone, and if they feel like it they can barge right into any conversation. They’re damn full of themselves.”

  “I was surprised how much the Magon was courting the new blood,” Tiriwi wondered. “I was expecting more distance and more… spirituality.”

  “Spirituality?” Nill asked in wonder.

  “I don’t know how else to call it. Magic is a thing of body and mind. Did you see the archmages’ chairs? Each one was a little throne. That may be befitting of a duke or a king, but not a man of magic.”

  “Why not?” Brolok said incredulously. “You think a mage should run around in a beggar’s coat? The archmages are the highest council in the world. They preside over Pentamuria’s fate; they’re the absolute lords above everything. I heard they’ve stopped lineages and deposed kings!”

  “Imperiousness and magic aren’t compatible.” Tiriwi’s face began to display stubbornness.

  “They say that the archmages and probably some of the white mages are real great masters of magic.”

  “I’d be interested to see how they do that. Those who serve magic haven’t got the time for anything else,” Tiriwi said. “Magic demands a lot of strength. You’re playing with the very energies that make up our world. The biggest part of any magical education is gaining enough strength to influence the powers in the world. That takes lifelong dedication and training. There’s not much time left for anything else.”

  Nill had admired Tiriwi for her attitude towards the Magon but he did not like her rather patronizing tone. However, this was partly because he did not know much of magic himself and could not participate in the discussion. Before he could say anything Brolok’s face cracked into a wide grin and he said: “So you think a warrior should keep out of debauchery outside of weapon training and healthy living, or he’ll get slow and fat?”

  Tiriwi did not like the comparison of weapons and magic. “I know too little about warriors and fighters,” she said simply.

  Nill had fallen silent. He knew very little about
magic and the world he had been hurled into and felt rather lost. So much was going on in his head. “Nobody speaks of magic in our village,” he said. “So I know little of it. But the mages did not look slow and fat to me.” After his encounter with the strange auras Nill’s admiration for the mages had grown infinitely.

  Tiriwi frowned. There was something to Nill’s words. “I don’t know much about magic either. I have only just been initiated. The other students are probably leaps and bounds ahead of me.”

  “What, you think they can cast magics already?” Nill was horrified.

  “What did you think?” Brolok grumbled morosely. “‘Course they can. Their parents, all of them, are arcanists. Lots of them are sorcerers or white warlocks.”

  Nill looked crestfallen. “So I’m the only one around here who can’t do anything.”

  “You’ll learn,” said Brolok kindly. “If there was any doubt about it you wouldn’t even be here. Now what I’m much more interested in is what magics the Oas have which the mages don’t. Your trick with the thought-speaking caught us all off guard.”

  “Thought-speaking is not magic to the Oas.”

  “So which magic do you enjoy the most?” Brolok went on.

  Tiriwi’s expression softened. “I like beating the drums and ringing the chimes.”

  Nill was confused. He knew about drums, but chimes? He had never heard of them. “What are chimes?” he asked.

  Tiriwi made a gesture in the air and for a moment Nill saw a fleeting image of chimes.

  He shook his head. He still did not quite understand. “Are there any chimes around here?”

  Tiriwi gave a helpless shrug.

  Brolok, too, was surprised. “I always thought the Oas are sorceresses and witches, but I never heard anything about them playing the drums.”

  Nill did not understand how drums could be connected to magic. Drums were very good for dancing, and he had heard tales that they were used to motivate oarsmen, but he never knew what to believe with stories from the sea. There was a lot of talk. Still he asked: “What magic do drums have?”

  Tiriwi looked incredulous. “Can’t either of you play the drums?” She scrutinized Brolok and Nill, unsure of whether the two were just making fun of her and about to burst into laughter. She only saw curiosity.

  “Drumming is pure magic, the oldest magic of life and thus the oldest magic of the Oas. It can heal afflictions, chase off bad dreams and help the body win over its soul.”

  “Can you show us?” Nill asked. “I understand what you’re saying, but it doesn’t make sense to me.”

  Tiriwi hesitated, but then nodded. She stood up with fluid movements and went to her cave. After a while she came back out with a pot and a leathery skin. She placed the skin on the pot, stroked it and waited for the skin to contract. When the proper tension had been reached she began to hit the drum in the middle with her fingertips.

  Bang! Bang! Bang! The same rhythm, over and over. Sometimes she would make the sounds lighter, sometimes darker. The rhythm stayed constant. She did not look at her drum while she played; instead she kept her eyes on the two boys who were eagerly returning the gaze.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “I’m not feeling any magic. It’s just a beat.”

  “Yes,” Tiriwi answered, “just a beat. You can hear it.”

  Tiriwi made her strokes duller and unnoticeably slower. Before long Nill and Brolok had fallen asleep. She let them sleep. When they woke up a few minutes later and asked what had happened, she replied innocently: “Nothing. You went to sleep.”

  “But what did you do?”

  “I was drumming.”

  “But that doesn’t make you fall asleep.”

  “If the pulse is slower than your heartbeat it has a very calming effect, and seeing as you two were tired…” Tiriwi let her sentence hang in the air. “I could have woken you with the drums, too.”

  “But that isn’t magic.”

  “Yes it is, it is a very great magic,” Tiriwi insisted heatedly. “Everything in nature has a pulse, it expands and contracts. Not just your hearts, but everything. If you change that pulse, you change the world. It works with voices, too, but that’s a lot harder to do.”

  Nill bit his lip. He had never heard about this before. “This pulse thing – is this the Oas’ secret knowledge?”

  Tiriwi listened to her inner voices before answering. “The Oas have no ‘secret knowledge,’ but we rarely talk with the mages about our magic. They might never have bothered with it.”

  “They might not even know,” Nill said hopefully. Knowing something the mages did not was an exciting thought.

  “No, they probably do. The archmages know almost everything, but they might have just not noticed how important this pulse is to life.”

  Nill stood up. “I’ve done enough thinking for tonight, my head’s spinning. Want to come along?”

  “Where?”

  “I want to know where the corridor leading off this room goes.”

  Brolok nodded. “I’ll show you. It’s nothing spectacular.”

  The two boys went into the main corridor that led deeper into the mountain. To the left and right of them there were a few smaller holes.

  “I’d really like to know where this goes. Don’t you?” Nill said.

  “I do, but the corridor ends up ahead in a massive door. You can’t pass it. I’ve been down here before. Just before you arrived I explored the whole place. And if the door is properly shut, nobody can enter from the other side either.”

  “The other side?”

  “Yes,” Brolok laughed. “Every door has two sides. If you’ve only seen one you don’t know whether you’re on the inside or outside.”

  Brolok had been right. The path down was disappointingly short and did not lead much deeper into the mountain. It ended in a huge door, in the middle of which was a massive black buckle into the middle of which a lizard had been carved. Where a usual door might have had a lock, this one had a large round seal with different symbols, among which Nill recognized the five directions.

  Tiriwi stopped dead. “Can you feel that incredible magical energy?” she asked.

  Brolok nodded. “Yes, there’s a thin layer of magic over the whole door, and strong, concentrated magic over the lock and the two hinges. They’re sealed too.”

  Nill felt nothing, or rather, almost nothing. There was a hint of something. “It’s flowing around the door, it’s coming out of the wall. Is that what you meant?”

  Brolok sniffed like a hound. “Nope, nothing there,” he said. “I can only feel the magic in the door.”

  Nill laid his hand on the wall. There was a slight tingling sensation, but it felt utterly different to the painful feeling he had had in the corridors of Ringwall. “Let’s try and open the door,” Nill suggested.

  “You can’t open it. The mages don’t do things halfway. The seal is solid, and as long as it’s there you can’t even touch the lock.” Brolok really seemed to know about these things.

  “Then we’ll have to remove it,” Nill said, not prepared to give up on his exciting idea.

  “You want to break the seal?” Tiriwi laughed. “You barely have any experience with magic and you want to break a seal forged by archmages?” She could hardly believe this amount of overconfidence.

  “Seems like good practice to me, testing our own power against it. If all three of us try we ought to find a way.” Nill still clung to his plan.

  Tiriwi shook her head and looked as though she wanted to say something else, but just shook her head again and returned to the cave.

  Brolok simply said: “You’re mad.”

  “Completely out of my mind,” Nill said, but the joke did not catch on. Rather gloomily he followed the others. Ringwall was quite unlike what he had imagined.

  Chapter 4

  Gwynmasidon sat alone at the stone oval, his hands held above the fitful Onyx as though he meant to warm them at a fire. With a slight
breeze Mah Bu entered the room. The Archmage of the Other World glided to his chair silently and after a glance at the Magon imitated his raised hands. One member of the council followed the next out of the many portals. Once they had all sat down they stretched their arms out in front of them after a short period of spiritual preparation. Their hands formed a loose circle while the archmages took care not to touch one another. The Onyx was soothed by the hands’ magical power and shone in the Magon’s golden-yellow. In front of the chair of Nothingness the color stayed grayish-green.

  At last Gwynmasidon opened his eyes. “Archmages of the Circle, greetings. Have we learned anything? Has our knowledge expanded by virtue of meeting our new students? And, especially, was it even worth it? We must not forget that we have never shown ourselves as a full council before our mages.

  “I have news for you, and it is not pleasant. Between yesterday and today you only experienced a night – I, an eternity. After our gathering in the Ceremonial Hall I retired to the peak of my tower and spent the night in the celestial sphere beneath the firmament. There, caught between time and cosmos, between the here and the empty part of the Other World, I haggled with time itself. The few hours between sunset and sunrise became days, moon cycles. I stopped eating, and when my hunger became too strong, stopped drinking as well. Once my body began to shrink away, I forgot to breath and this won me a heartbeat in which I was granted vision beyond our world. The light of eternity was white, blinding; so very unlike the familiar twilight of betwixt. I had barely seen it when it was cloaked in a mist of gray and green.”

  “Wood and Water,” a voice breathed into the silence, and Gnarlhand bowed his head in awe. They had understood. The Magon had paid precious lifetime for a short glimpse of the future.

  The Onyx crackled quietly. The paleness of Nothing expanded and stretched out a tentacle. It reached far enough to bleach the stone in front of Gwynmasidon.

  “I heard the scattered clash of weapons,” the Magon continued. His face had turned gray from the Nothing’s unexpected attack. “Bolts of lightning flashed through the mist and set fire to the earth.”