The Artifice Mage Saga Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Jeffrey Bardwell

  “Never mind the book. Yes, I made that doll right there,” the wizard pointed. “What did you do to my doll?”

  Devin took a deep breath. He tried to let his emotions wind down by opening the book and rereading notes he'd written in the page margins. “Your theories on dragon mating rituals are fascinating. I've always wondered about your deductions on page 62. I wanted to meet you my whole life and you want to talk about dolls?” Devin looked up from the book. “Did you not hear him speak for himself? He's not a doll. He's Styx; he's a magical creature now, like the ones in your book. All those magical creatures and not one mention of magic or mages. No, don't tell me. You wrote another book. Where is it? I must have it!”

  The youth covered his mouth with both hands. Not exactly the sales pitch we've been practicing, his mind clucked. Wind. It. Down. Yes, he's Cornelius Gander. But I need to be more than just another hero struck apprentice.

  “Never mind that.” The wizard stepped back, hands held up, bracing against the verbal onslaught. “My doll, lad,” he prompted. “What precisely have you done to my doll?”

  “Styx? By the great blessings of the five gods, and some small skill of my own, I poured life into him.” The youth bowed his head to acknowledge that miracle. “Surely, there are better ways? It must be one of the first lessons you teach. One of the opening chapters in your new book.”

  “There is no new book.” The wizard clenched his jaw. “Tell me, one mage to another, please, what you did? I will sign anything you ask if you only let me know how you did what you did.”

  “I don't know.” Devin scratched his scalp. I'm not supposed to teach him. He is supposed to teach me. “I'm no mage. I barely know any magic. I'm an artificer. Styx is a metal-jointed construct with hinges and gears mounted on a wooden chassis. It felt so simple, too simple.” Devin shrugged and hung his head. Any process that felt so easy in the guild hall usually meant I had missed some crucial step. Even the most fumble-fingered, metal thumping apprentice knows that the ease with which one accomplishes any given project is positively correlated to experience and negatively to complexity. Surely, proper wizardry has some element of this? “Please teach me how you do it,” Devin pleaded. “I'm tired of fumbling with my magic. I just need instructions and diagrams. Show me the proper technique.”

  “An artificer, are you? Just gave him life with the five gods looking over your shoulder, did you? Poured it into an empty vessel like filling a glass of water? Just like that?” Cornelius snapped his fingers and a glass of water appeared. The man sipped and sighed and wiped his lips on a handkerchief. He snapped his fingers again and the water disappeared. “I suppose I should share my own knowledge of the matter first.”

  Finally, someone willing to explain the secrets of magic. Devin stared at the magician. A riot of conflicting emotions fought for supremacy behind his eyes. Is this the first lesson? he wondered. Making object disappear? What about Styx?

  The wizard squared his shoulders, grabbed his lapels, and launched into it. “The crafting of an artificial man is as much an art as a science,” Cornelius began. “One must study the true nature of life intimately before ever attempting to construct a crude model. How does the chest beat when we breathe? What shapes do the lips form when we make different sounds? How is every large movement a coordination of several tiny fluid motions working in concert? One can even imbue the model with a piece of oneself to affect crude mimicry of movement or speech, but don't delude yourself. That doll is still a mockery of life.”

  “Yes, but these are only bits and pieces, loose gears and widgets. How do you assemble it all together? How do you build thought, will, consciousness and make a complete, functioning person?” Devin asked

  “In the womb, boy, with a woman.” The magician deflated. “I cannot share the proper technique. There was no proper technique before today and its author stands before me gaping like a sneeze struck wyvern.”

  That wasn't an explanation at all, Devin thought. “What do you mean?”

  “You have accomplished something unique, something dangerous, something from a dream. I have never seen the like and I doubt I could replicate it. I would not dare to try. Still, what exactly did you do to my automaton? And why give it a crown?”

  I didn't give him a crown. Devin glanced at the cornet around Styx's head, usually hidden by his ridiculous, black hat. Magic gave him that crown. Does my magic have a will of its own? Does it know something about Styx I don't? Devin searched his thoughts for an answer, but his inner mage had retreated.

  The doll touched the thin metal cornet running along his brow. “I seem to have a tiny brass band on my head.” He farted. “But the trumpets got left behind.” Giggles like tiny chimes escaped his lips. The doll covered his mouth, composed himself, and then bowed once to the magician and once to the artificer.

  “Ranunculus was right, you are still a child despite your man-sized ambitions, mature diction, and that scraggly beard.” Cornelius sighed. “Only a boy would make such a coarse, dirty mind. What bizarre alchemy did you stuff into its head?”

  “Who in the world is Ranunculus? I used rocks, twigs, and clay,” Devin replied, shrugging as he ticked the ingredients on his fingers. “They were the tools close at hand.”

  “Of course you did.” Cornelius put his head in his hands.

  “Also, my lock picks,” Devin added. “Had to include a piece of myself in there, didn't I?”

  “Did you?” Cornelius asked, quirking one of his bushy eyebrows. “I'm sure I don't know, but I suspect there is more of you imbued in that doll than a set of lock picks.” The wizard examined the roof of doll's mouth, where a silver palate had formed to match the silver tongue courtesy of the melted metal teeth. He struck the palate with his fingernail and the doll's mouth resonated. “Well, that explains the thing's voice, at least.”

  “I don't know how I did it,” Devin said, raising his arms. “It's magic. It doesn't operate by a set of rules. It just happens.”

  Cornelius crossed his arms. His eyebrows knitted together as he scowled. “It most certainly does not 'just happen.' I'm surprised your accomplishments don't collapse under the weight of your ignorance. That doll should be a tangle of wood chips and shrapnel.”

  Devin pointed to the hand print on the puppet's chest. “I just magicked him alive. I don't know if I can teach you how. That's your job, isn't it, professor: teaching things?”

  “Never you mind,” the wizard said. “You managed to succeed in spite of yourself. Plenty of time to dissect and examine the details of the process later after you rectify your appalling lack of even the most basic arcane knowledge. Hmmm, you are just as the others described. Iron peg leg. Blonde, curly hair. Red cloak. Gold buttons. No long fingernails, I'm pleased to see.”

  Devin kicked a brown stone down the street. “So, the other masters gossiped about me?”

  “They did indeed. Masters Azumel, Ranunculus, and Ninox all had something to say about you.” The wizard raised his hand, swirled a pebble above his fingertips, adding a fresh stone for each exotic name. “Azumel said you were arrogant. Ranunculus said you were violent. Ninox said you were impotent. Did they not even tell you their names?” Cornelius asked, glancing at Devin's scowl.

  “No! The pricks,” the young artificer said, booting his stone with the metal foot. The rock made a satisfying thunk, which vibrated up his iron peg.

  “My colleagues rejected you. I've not seen such a prodigy in ages and they reject you. They seemed to imply you didn't really want the honor that you were requesting. Well, I always knew my colleagues were daft. Only I, The Great Cornelius, have the eyes to recognize true talent. The pricks, indeed.”

  Cornelius tossed the three pebbles over his shoulder, striking the doll, and reached towards the brown stone Devin was kicking. The stone flashed through the air mid kick and the wizard clenched it in his palm. “So, you visited every master wizard in the kingdom? All those irritating old men? That takes nerve, boy.”

  No nerve, just lots of wa
lking. “Some more irritating than others.” Devin grabbed a large rock with a silver streak and tossed it to the wizard. The artificer grappled with the idea that he accomplished a feat through happenstance that his magic idol Cornelius could not even fathom. “So you run a school?"

  “It is a small, select school,” Cornelius demurred, letting the rock and pebble orbit each other. “Did the other master wizards not tell you of my school?”

  “No,” the youth shook his head. “Are there many students in your class? Is there room for one more?” Maybe I could take classes instead of suffering through a second apprenticeship? A student is a young scholar after all, not some menial laborer. I could be a student and put all this apprentice nonsense behind me.

  “I have quite a few students already,” Cornelius said. “One of them helps her father run a bakery over there. See, with the blue sign? The girl in the window? Her father makes the most fantastic breads and muffins. I barter lessons for a kinder rate than I should.”

  Devin glanced along the side of the building from the crude sign depicting a cherry-topped muffin to the weathered siding to the blue window frame, eyes drawn to the movement inside. A buxom older girl, bouncing black ponytail contrasting with her playful flour-streaked face, strutted back and forth behind the open window carrying trays of steaming breads. Their warm, home-baked scent drifted outside. She paused by the window to retie her white, dusted apron. Her father bustled in the background wearing matching, yet less alluring, attire.

  That delicious, tantalizing aroma. The aprons were almost too evocative of the Butcher, but the cozy smells and warm sights shooed the hateful Black Guard from Devin's mind. But a man wearing an apron? How bizarre. “Where is the girl's mother?” Devin asked.

  “Her mother was abducted. Let us never speak of that again. The topic pains her. Her father cares for her and bakes as well as any woman. Young Abigail is becoming quite the baker herself, of course. Ah, those muffins.”

  “You trade magical knowledge for muffins?” Devin asked.

  The magician snorted, dropping his hand. The two stones crashed to the ground. “I suppose you saw the typical arrangement with all those other wizards? Master and apprentice? Master and slave, more like. And what will the slave get for the pleasures cooking his master's meals and running his master's errands?”

  “They are more like drudges than students,” Devin agreed.

  “And what will that drudge get? A few lessons here? A tip or suggestion there? If he is lucky, a quick demonstration before it's time to weed the garden? It's nothing but a scam, boy, perpetuated by frauds who call themselves scholars. I am the true scholar.”

  “My name is Devin. What do they call frauds who run schools?"

  “Poor Cornelius,” the wizard laughed. “Most people who run schools are poor. My colleagues call me that for other reasons, however. The students don't all pay me with muffins, Devin.”

  “But they pay you to teach magic?” the artificer pressed. “Do you accept gold buttons as currency instead of baked goods? How many buttons would you take to teach a special class with one student in it?”

  “It's not a school for magic, Devin. I don't teach magic!”

  “But you're a magician,” the youth said, biting his lip. You're supposed to teach me magic.

  “I am a scholar.” Cornelius shrugged. “I teach economics, mathematics, biology, and geography to all the town children. This is a citadel of merchants lad, not magicians. My humble contributions make the children better merchants than their parents. A point of fact, I taught most of their parents, too.”

  “But what about the marvelous, magical wooden automaton?”

  “Yes, what about me?” Styx interjected.

  “That doll was nothing more than a living sales pitch, a marketing trick, a sign post with legs.”

  “I was a sign post with legs?” Styx asked, pulling his hat lower to hide his face.

  “You really don't teach magic?” Devin felt as though someone punched him in the gut. He steeled himself long enough to pat the doll on the back. “You're more than a walking sign post. You're special.”

  Devin turned back to the so-called wizard. “How can a magician not teach magic? Only frauds who call themselves magicians don't teach magic.”

  “How could I begin to teach magic?” the old man scoffed. “True magic is an art, a mystic wonder, the study of a lifetime. It is a personal, transcendent journey into the unknown. I am but magic's humble servant; how can I teach it?”

  “Why not teach magic?” Devin reasoned. “The empire has an academy for the diplomats, the police, and the army. The guild each run schools to train their own members. So why is there no school for magic here in the land of dragons?”

  “A school to teach magic?” The magician chewed on this thought, grimacing before spitting the poisonous notion from his mind. “What a horrible idea. All those wizards cooped in one place with too much power and too little sense? You've met them, boy. Do you imagine we all live scattered across the kingdom because cooperation and good will come easily to us?”

  “I think gathering all the magicians in one place is a good idea,” Devin said.

  “We are all masters with no master.” Cornelius waved his arms. “A school to teach magic, to train all those spell-wielding megalomaniacs and make them more dangerous? A group of wizards isn't a congress, it's a natural disaster waiting to happen. It defies belief. The world will survive longer if we keep our numbers low and spread out to minimize the carnage.”

  “It is not a terrible idea.” Devin crossed his arms. “Anyone who wants to learn magic should have the chance. How well have secrecy and mysticism really served the magicians of the world?”

  “Secrecy has served magicians in your empire quite well. I sympathize lad, I do, but the idea stinks. No, as much as I am loathe to admit it, the master-apprentice model works for a reason. Take a novice; rob him through his formative years with shackles of servitude. While he does all the work, you bask in all the credit. Then when your lackey gains enough competence to do any major damage, throw him out the door. Throw him to another continent, if possible, and then wipe your hands of him.”

  “That's a horrible system,” Devin said. Wizards have their little dragon drudges; we have baby grease monkeys. I was an artificer's apprentice for six endless years and the guild caught my curious fingers in their gears when I was only ten. No more! Not after tasting freedom for two years.

  “I agree,” Cornelius replied. “I didn't say it was honest or fair. I said it worked.”

  “So,” Devin said. “We have a town with one magician, a gaggle of merchants, and a school that teaches no magic? What about that little jingle you taught Styx? How is Ingeld the 'Sorcery Capital of the World'? It's a capital with no sorcery, just an old magician who doesn't teach magic.”

  Cornelius smiled. “There's more to magicians than magic, Devin. How much have you seen of this town?”

  Devin grinned at the wizard. “Why don't you look into my mind and see for yourself?”

  Cornelius leaned against the wall of a building, cleaning his fingernails. “You look at me, at some rocks over my hand. You look at that doll or a girl in a window. You focus too tightly and miss the world around you. Take a moment. Tell me what you see.”

  Devin glanced around, shifting the weight of his pack as the left strap carved into his shoulder. It wasn't the smallest place he had visited, but it was depressingly familiar. Any decent sized imperial city would swallow this quaint, little hamlet and spit out the cobblestones. No, I've finally found a proper wizard. Not just a wizard, but a teacher . . . of sorts. This might work. Ingeld may be my home for awhile. His eyes were drawn to the grand peak rising above the town. The mountain in the background gave the whole setting an undulating charm. The town had no artificial walls, but Devin supposed the tall foothills surrounding the place sufficed as a natural defensive barrier against marauding bandits or invading armies. The youth grinned. As if these people had anything worth pillag
ing. He glanced at Cornelius, remembering the oddly deferential thieves outside the last Corelian city. As if anyone would dare attack a wizard's town. Devin peered into the nearby windows. Most of them were storefronts. Strong, familiar rock foundations. The same boring, plastered daub and timber walls. Nothing he hadn't seen in dozens of villages and towns spread across this whole backwards country. At least, some of the shop signs are creative, Devin admitted to himself as he turned to face the wizard. “I see buildings.”

  “Look harder,” Cornelius snorted. What are the merchants selling? Look at the signs over their doors and the displays in their windows.”

  Devin tapped his peg on the cobbles. “I see a wooden figure of a lady with no clothes wrapping herself around a staff with a stars and sparkles shooting out of it. Classy.”

  “Never mind what they're selling.” The wizard took the youth by the shoulders and turned him around. “What else do you see?”

  “I see a wizard's hat over the large building near the center of town,” Devin pointed.

  “The inn,” Cornelius nodded. “What else?”

  “I see little wooden dolls and knights marching in a window.” He turned away, sniffing. Misera used to play with those. The smell of the fresh bread was too strong, uprooting old, tainted memories.

  “The toy store,” the wizard said, smiling.

  “I see your student,” the youth said, wiping the moisture from his eyes as he reburied the spreading, twisting thoughts entangling his mind. No, that bread smells nothing like my mother's. “She is setting her wares down to cool. The breads are shaped like moons and stars and pipes and pointy hats and . . . oh, by the five gods, what have you done to this town?”

  “What did this town do to me, you mean,” the wizard chuckled ruefully. “You can only teach people in the habit of turning ideas into gold for so long before those habits start to rub off. Some towns mill grain, others manufacture swords and armor. Some export music. We export magic. We sell an image. Spells and mystic crafts are a business here and business is great.”