The Artifice Mage Saga Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Jeffrey Bardwell

  “Drink, drink,” the wizard made wafting motions with his hands. “Do not worry over the fate of the cup. Or that I will evict you before you can drink it.”

  “How did you . . . ?” Devin asked, sipping the tea. A faint aroma of jasmine and ginger caressed the youth's nostrils. Jasmine and ginger. His mother used to twine jasmine up a trellis when they used to live in the village before his sister was born. The sharp scent of those pale, little flowers always breezed through the kitchen window. He sat watching his mother cut ginger into transparent slivers. His mother always saved the end piece, flipping that sweet, tangy root with a flick of her knife. He danced barefoot on the sun-baked tiles to catch it. “ . . . know?” Devin clutched the cup with both hands, blinking away his tears.

  The man laughed, his sides jiggling. “Oh, we gossip amongst ourselves, child of the empire, and you are fresh news. That nosy old stick was wrong to push you out the door before serving his guest.” The fat man winked. “We are not all so brash and inhospitable. Besides, I have a small stock of imperial tea. And I thought you might enjoy a little taste of home,” he finished quietly.

  Devin startled, spraying the tea. He dropped the porcelain cup which landed unbroken on the soft, thick rug. The wizard rolled the cup across the rug with one slippered heel before snapping his fingers. The cup vanished.

  “See, I told you. You are destined to shatter greater things than my old tea set.” The wizard snapped his fingers again. A refilled cup appeared on the table next to the youth.

  Devin picked up the hot cup, and blew ripples in the tea. “As you say, master,” he choked out the words. The more he thought about it, the less attractive another apprenticeship became. But what other options did he have?

  “I am a master, but not yours. Finish your tea in peace. And may I suggest you trim your nails if you wish to tinker with magic rather than machinery? The man who may consent to be your mentor, but never your master, has a fetish for good grooming. Now go and meet your future, child of the empire. That evil place coils around your destiny like an ancient, hungry dragon toying with its last meal. I only hope you realize the true potential of your talent someday.” The fat wizard sighed, waving the youth away. “Magic is so much more than a tool for crushing enemies. Go find someone else to teach you, child of the empire, and unleash your havoc far outside my city walls.”

  Devin left the city comforts for the stark, Corelian countryside. It seems most wizards did not surround themselves with large numbers of people. And the more he learned of magic, the less he understood. Maybe this mage thing isn't worth the hassle. I could unlock the secrets of mechanical armor if I tried hard enough. Craft an awesome sword to match. When Captain Vice comes, I'd be ready for him. Maybe I should go back to the city. Apprentice myself to a smith. Devin sighed. More and more, Devin had trouble thinking of himself as any kind of apprentice, but some invisible yearning pushed him forth to seek the next master wizard.

  Food and lodging weren't a problem and yet their bounty weighed on his shoulders. Once he abandoned himself to this strange, new role, villagers fought for the honor of hosting a young mage on his quest. But every meal was flavored with sour guilt. They were treating him like imperial citizens treated a missionary on his pilgrimage to convert the northern heathens. The red cloak was starting to feel like a stolen cassock and the wool grew heavier and itchier with each passing night. Strange people, these Corelians. Sometimes it seemed like they venerated magic more than the gods. Such blasphemous folk. Under the watchful eyes of the five, Devin may have supped at meager Corelian tables and slept on rough Corelian cots, but he didn't enjoy it.

  The next master the refugee found after trimming his nails and trekking halfway across the kingdom placed more faith in muscles than magic. Devin walked into a gymnasium rather than a house, barely having time to glance at the esoteric designs on the walls and strange equipment before the master put him to work.

  The youth balanced on his peg leg at the old man's behest. He held a bucket of water in each hand, arms raised at shoulder level. His arms started shuddering and the peg wobbled. The old man paced back and forth behind the boy, beard wagging as he thumped a large, wooden staff on the ground.

  “I do not care about your beginnings,” the wizard stated. “I do not care about your ends. If you are to be my apprentice, your time belongs to me. Your origins are nothing. I will mold you to suit me. Your goals? Meaningless! Your goals are now my goals. Continue holding those buckets.” The old man swatted the youth across the shoulders with his staff. “Higher, boy, higher.”

  “Master,” Devin gasped and huffed as sweat poured down his face. “How does this exercise test my magic skill?”

  “Magic skill?” the man asked, scratching his long, flowing beard. “You may have magic in your bones, boy, but I want to see the meat on them. You will spend many years in my service to pay me back for my teachings. I want to be sure of my investment before risking anything on this venture. Nothing personal, you understand? I need to make certain you are worth your hire.”

  “I cannot hold the buckets much longer, master,” Devin said. Hire? If there's payment involved, why can't it be money? What about the apprentice's investment? I never realized how twisted this system was until I saw someone twist too far.

  “If you proclaim your failure before you even try, you are doomed.” The wizard clenched his fist. “Proclaim your success, instead. See where that takes you.”

  Devin dropped the buckets. Another failure. Bless the five gods! This man treats his apprentices like chattel.

  The wizard shook his head, clucking. “Flabby arms. Flabby mind. Phillip, Horten, Quill: help him clean. Then show him to the door.”

  A trio of young, rosy cheeked lads whisked into the room, arms bursting with mops and buckets. Devin waved them aside. “No, I made the mess. I will clean it myself. Just leave me the mops and a single bucket.”

  “Well, that's shows some spirit, anyways,” the wizard said, running his fingers down the length of his beard.

  “But not enough . . . ?” Devin sighed theatrically, wringing a wet mop.

  “Not hardly.” The master pushed the youth away with his cane.

  Good riddance! Devin stumbled from the gym and hobbled down the path, working his way quickly around several large boulders. The large spring he affixed to his peg made uneven ground less of an adventure than it used to be. The sharp edge doubled as a weapon. Devin kicked a pebble and tripped. The spring still needed work.

  It's all so stupid, Devin railed. Every one of those wizards has his own standards and all of them are warped. My magic is not normal enough? My motives are not pure enough? My muscles are not grand enough? Ha! There should be one common test, one hoop. I don't care if you have to leap through it or burn it or make it vanish.

  They would never do things this way in the empire, in the academy or the guilds, Devin thought. But of course the empire would never teach magic in its schools. And I have yet to see a single dragon in this supposed land of dragons. Did I just imagine the flames that night on the mountain?

  Who knows what you've been imagining? the mage chuckled inside his head.

  Devin ignored the voice. Lost in his thoughts, he tripped over a rock. The pack slammed against the back of his head as he hit the ground. He lay sprawled on the dirt and glared at his legs. Uneven, again?

  The youth sat with his screwdriver, untwisted the mounting screw, and extended his peg like a telescope. The sliding peg was his own invention, created after the original became too worn and too short. He compared one foot to the other. If his legs kept growing like this, he would need to install a new peg soon. Devin gave the mounting screw a vicious twist. His screwdriver snapped.

  Oh, of course the screwdriver snapped. Devin stared at his hands. Can't use my fingernails. I trimmed my damn nails at urging of yet another wizard who threw me out the door to placate the one I haven't met yet.

  Devin grappled with the screw by hand, which chewed his fingers raw. He swallowe
d his rage and disappointment, feeding tiny pieces into his gut. He felt the familiar wellspring of power release a tiny trickle of magic. There wasn't much left: the well was getting smaller every time he used it and control was still a dream. He unclenched. The power receded.

  Devin examined the buttons on his cloak. The garment hardly fit him anymore and had become ragged. The trail kicked up dust and the gold was beginning to dull. Devin wet the button with his tongue, wrapped the cloak around his bleeding fingers, and buffed. By this point, he was more spit than polish.

  I can't control magic, but at least I can control metal. My iron foot will crush the competition. My golden buttons will blaze like fire. I will polish my pitch until it dazzles. I have one last chance to shine. The last master will beg me to learn from him. Devin shied away from thinking or saying the word apprentice. It was starting to stain his thoughts and threatened to shatter his hopes.

  6. STYX, YEAR 494

  Despite the shattering events heralded by my birth which lashed the world and peeled the bark away from my eyes, I shall always cherish my first memories of the person who would awaken my senses and become my father. He stood lost in every sense of the word in the middle of a field at the edge of my little copse of trees. I would have beckoned to him if I could move my arms, comforted him had I but known the words. His travels left him cold, parched, and wilted. My father still bloomed, a fierce, frozen rose, but he did not know where to plant himself and spread his roots.

  His dirty, flaxen curls clashed with his heavy, cherry red cloak, but not its sun-dipped buttons. Most of those buttons were missing, but in the cold morning light, the gold twinkled at me like some part of my father was winking at the world despite his grim visage. I wanted to wrap him up in my arms before I even knew what an embrace was. That feeling was buried deep inside my heartwood. Something about him brought it to the surface like sap rising. Maybe my body knew what was coming before I did.

  My father paused trudging through the field, looking at the rough cobble stone road stretching before him. He surveyed the rooftops and smoking chimneys looming behind the foothills and then glanced up at the mountain looming behind them. Somewhere at the end of this long cobblestone road winding between those two hills he knew lived his master-to-be, my grandfather.

  “Is this even the right town?” Father asked himself, glancing at his map. “Ingeld?”

  Yes, you have arrived and you are here and I rejoice in your coming, I wanted to say, but could not. So frustrating, if I could only feel frustration. Had I perceived my own emotions, I would have blown and billowed alongside my father.

  “What am I doing here?” Father ruffled his map like a leaf caught in the wind. “Why should this next wizard be any better than the others? What use is all this magic if I cannot harness my own powers? Nobody from the empire bothered tracking me down. I think I'm safe. Is that what I want: to be safe? Nobody from home is following me or coming for me. I'm on my own.” His shoulders slumped like two piles of wet mud slapped on the ground. “I am alone.”

  No, my dear father, you are not alone. The bold thought was there somewhere, but I could not express it. Had I been capable, I would be thinking thus. If I could speak such phrases, I would be shouting until the foothills answered: I am here; I am here. I was waiting all this time without knowing what I was waiting for, but I am here and you are here and now we are here together. Throw up your arms Father and celebrate for you shall never be lonely again.

  Father threw up his arms, tossed the map, and ground it into the dirt. “I still don't know where I am. No idea where I'm going. No clue how to get anywhere. I'm so tired of wandering.”

  My father dug a pebble from the frozen earth with his peg leg and threw the missile into the clouds. Father says the priests insisted the five gods lived in a large alabaster tower up there in the heavens with all their servants and minions. Somewhere on that tower, my father suspected some prissy demigod was lounging by the window eating sweets and sipping ale, watching his life unfold like some poorly scripted play.

  “Are you punishing me for my arrogance?” Father waved his arms as he screamed at the sky. “For my magic? Nothing I've ever read in the Blessings forbids the arcane arts. What do you want me to do? Give me a sign! Wasn't losing my foot enough? Or my family? My mother? My little sister? My damn career? What about my country?”

  My father glared at all the nature and nature glared back in all her subtle, silent ways. The frosted waist-high grass soaked his pants. The hidden rocks made his feet trip over themselves. Then his peg leg lodged in a gopher hole. A fluffy bird observed from a tree and tittered at him. My father struggled with the gopher hole.

  I watched, unseeing, as Father turned away, but I remembered later how that saucy, little bird buried her head beneath her wing and tittered again. I remembered the act, and later understood the mockery of mother nature, but I have never shared that memory with my beloved father. Though they are estranged, I adore both my parents without favor and would not see them quarrel amongst themselves over petty slights and insults. Winter always makes mother cranky.

  “You think this rustic pig pit can ever replace the shining jewel of the empire?” My father pulled his leg free. “I've wandered from one end of Corel to the other and thank you for that little journey. This isn't a country; it's a loose patchwork of shoddy towns and half empty villages stitched together with muddy roads and dirty streams. It's a shambles, a sham kingdom!” He shook the map. “And I'm stuck here somewhere in the middle of it. Gods? Are you listening to me? Where am I headed? Where am I?”

  “Welcome to Ingeld,” my muffled voice replied. I greeted him the only way I knew how, stretching my loquacious vocabulary to the greatest, verdant heights to reach the sun and make this person feel welcomed. Even as a rude mechanical, some fiber in my wooden body recognized his importance and imminence and called out to him: “Welcome to Ingeld! Welcome to Ingeld!”

  “What?” my father asked, a fresh rock half raised. He ventured farther into the field and closer to my grove, making a broken path in the frost. There was nothing nearby except a dark copse of trees. He told me later that my voice seemed to come from the shadows.

  “Welcome to Ingeld!”

  Father forced his way into my thicket, kicking and clawing through the brambles, fighting his way into the trees. The ground crackled with twigs and detritus as he stomped them underfoot. He once said the copse smelled like a warm broom closet and then had to stop and explain what a broom closet was. Thorns tugged his cloak and bark dust scratched his throat. “Who's back here?” My father coughed. “Who said that?”

  There he found me: a wooden man standing in a dim clearing in the middle of a copse. I am embarrassed to admit my father mistook me for a tree until I bowed, shedding layers of dead moss and shriveled leaves to reveal myself. My father yanked the vines and detritus still clinging to my bark and swept the last of the leaves aside. As he worked, my glorious, simple shape emerged. I was so simple in those early days, gestating in that dark, warm, womb-like copse it almost pains me to remember that stranger, the someone else whom I once was.

  “Did you call me out here?” my father asked, poking my arm. “Were you lonely?”

  “Welcome to Ingeld,” I said, bowing. How could I see you struggling and alone and not reach out to you, Father?

  My father says I resembled a carved statue, obviously magic, yet wonderfully mechanic, with simple joints made of painted wood and brass fittings. He saw that someone had dressed me with a wide-brimmed, tall peaked hat on my head and star-speckled cape trailing along the ground. I've always enjoyed that outfit, but nobody agrees with me; of all the senses Father gifted me that day, fashion sense was not among them. He did attempt to remedy that lack later.

  “Well, just look at you.” Father whistled, examining his new friend. “Brass gears. Solid, light construction. Fully articulated, sealed joints.” He kicked a rotten stump with his iron peg and punched me in the arm. “I could take a few body building tips
from you, champ, but that wardrobe needs upgrading.”

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome!” I boomed. I think I was built for you, Father. I was created for this glorious moment when we meet for the first time.

  “Thank you,” my father laughed. “It's nice to be appreciated, even by an old automaton.”

  I doffed my peaked hat and after swirling my cape, bowed with grandiose airs to my father. I couldn't bow all the way without smacking into the trees. My fake wizard horsehair goatee dipped down and brushed my knobby knees. My father held his nose. He said I smelled of musty loam and rotten mushrooms, which sprouted all over my clothes.

  “Let's get a closer look at that face,” my father said, admiring my artistry. “What wonderful attention to details.”

  Father grabbed my wooden jaw. My painted smile opened to reveal a silver tongue and dried corn kernel teeth set into my head. Like real teeth, most were white; a few had yellowed, cracked, or fallen out; and all were crooked. He peered deep into my mouth at a glint of metal to discover fake fake teeth.

  “I want to meet the gentleman who puts dentures in his dolls,” Father said. “The more I see, the more you impress me.”

  Thank you, Father. I suspect Grandfather would be pleased to hear those words. He used to love watching people ohh and ahh over me; I think the poor gentleman confused praise for me as praise for him, but he is getting old.

  “Someone put a lot of time and love into crafting you, buddy. I wonder who built you? Is the wizard around here good enough to make the likes of you? Well, I've seen the gears on your body; let's look at the gears in your head.”

  I fear I may disappoint you, Father, but I hope you see me as a challenge rather than a burden. I think you were sent here at this time, at this place, to preside over my birth into the world.