by Aaron Pogue
"Of course." A school of fish skipped past, one great shadow just beneath the surface. "What now?"
"Now we go to the Academy. You will be safe there, and in time I will go back to the capitol to set things straight."
"Won't he kill you?"
Claighan smiled. "Wizards are not easy to kill. I imagine I'll survive."
I nodded. In my head the sheep were bleating, the sun beating down on a cold pasture, the flock milling idly beside a quiet stream. Terrailles had plenty of quiet streams. I sat in the shade of an old tree and watched the day melt.
"Tell me about magic."
The wizard snorted at me, and I took it for a question. I turned to face him and waited until he met my gaze. "You set that up," I said. "You did all of that so you could teach me a lesson about magic." I took a deep breath and let it out. "So go ahead. Tell me about magic."
Claighan looked up at me, then took the pipe from his mouth and stood to face me. "There is...reality. We all know reality, and we are all part of it, but..." he looked around, tapped the deck of the boat with his foot, "nothing that we sense is real. The world we work with, live in, is a flexible framework we build on top of the underlying reality."
I nodded. He chuckled. "Fine, pretend to understand me." He drew a deep breath, and turned to look at the sea over his shoulder. "The inner structure is Chaos. It is the power on which we build reality as we know it. Like the deep currents, fast and strong, far beneath the water's surface."
He pulled a scrap of parchment from a pocket of his robe, frowned at it for a moment, then flicked it over his shoulder. I watched it slice down through the air to settle lightly on the water's surface. It stained to dark, but even when it was soaked it didn't sink far. Claighan faced the other way, so he watched my eyes instead of the paper, but he nodded.
"We are not creatures of Chaos, humans. We are creatures of Order. We do not fare well among the rushing and tearing forces of the deep currents, so we prefer to live our lives somewhere far removed. We're driven by the power of Chaos, but we live above it, away from it. We take a million little filaments of nothing and drape them over the Chaos like a dress, until our reality is shaped by true reality, changed by true reality, but it is far, far separated from true reality. Then, and only then, does the world make any kind of sense to us."
While he spoke I stared out over the waters. Now before my eyes they danced across a deep, terrible web of pulsing filaments. Claighan went on, "Every time we speak, every time we accept some sensory impulse as real, we help maintain that façade that keeps the human sane. Once you understand the façade, though, you understand it's not real. It's not necessary. So whether you see a harmless wave over there, or," I felt him wave a hand behind me, and in the distance the sea waters rose into a terrible wall that came hurtling toward us, matched with a roar that shook the boat, "or a great tidal wave, either way it's the same thing, and your mind makes use of it."
Terror gripped me as the waters rushed toward us. I grabbed the rail and tensed every muscle in my body preparing for the impact, but through all the fear Claighan's words fell like little drops of rain, and at the last the crushing wave splashed harmlessly into the sea below and was gone.
My fear did not disappear so quickly, though. My heart still raced and my stomach burned sour. I threw a frantic, furious look at the wizard, but he seemed entirely at ease. The sailors beyond him were as well, casually going about their chores.
I caught my breath and frowned at Claighan. "So it is all illusion?"
"It is all illusion, but the 'it' is bigger than you think. It's not magic that's the illusion. Not at all. No, reality is illusion—a complex, communal hallucination that keeps us all sane—and we as wizards bend that hallucination to meet our needs. The underlying fabric is the real power, the real substance, but it is not something I would toy with."
I turned back to the sea, trying again to imagine the complex web of energies I'd envisioned before. I thought of great and terrible powers far beneath the feeble illusion of reality and imagined taking hold of those powers, bending them to my will. "Is that... is that what you would teach me?"
He sank back down to his place on the deck, relit his pipe with a word. "No. Even Masters of the Academy rarely study such forces. It is not in our power to shape them, but when you understand how they work you gain insight into everything else. When you can see what is real, it becomes a somewhat trivial matter to change what is illusory."
"And that is everything," I said.
"And that is everything." He tapped a finger to his temple and nodded to me. "No, you do not need to learn sorcery to become a special power. You need only learn the practice of will in support of the practice of body. I believe that alone could make all the difference." He took a deep breath, and let it out in a sigh. "Though I don't know that I will be able to teach you at all."
Two days ago he'd ripped me from Jemminor's resistant arms, and now he was almost ready to give it up. So much had gone wrong, so quickly. I frowned, thinking it over, and then I said into the silence, "Who is Lareth?"
His eyes narrowed. "You're perceptive." He wrinkled his nose. "You have heard of the duke Brant?"
I nodded. "A lord of Southern Ardain, right? He has been trouble for years."
"He's the lord of Tirah, one of the most important cities in all Ardain. Second only to the capitol in all the kingdom, probably." Claighan shook his head. "And he is more than trouble. He has been working his way up to treason for years now."
"I've heard rumors."
"Well, the rumors finally came true late last year. The king's taxmen didn't return, which probably means the dozen king's soldiers sent with them were killed. That means war."
"Rebellion," I said.
"In the middle of our nation. It will tear us apart, and it is not something we can afford, not now. Our army is too small as it is. So I advised the king to seek other methods. We sent one of our recent graduates to the Court, and I advised the king to use him as an emissary, to negotiate a peace that would not send thousands of soldiers to die on Sarian soil."
"What happened?"
"He turned. The wizard, Lareth, ceased contact with the crown on the same day he reached Tirah, and ever since there have been reports of a powerful magician fighting for the rebels."
We both sat for a while, those terrible words hanging in the air between us. "And the king blames it all on you?"
"Of course."
"And since I was with you...."
"The king has a very short temper, especially of late. He was prepared to hold you as a traitor just for being in my presence."
"Of course." I forced a smile I could not feel. "Then it hardly matters that I have added another high crime to my record."
He shook his head. "I have made many mistakes, Daven, and I fear now you shall have to help pay for them. I...regret that."
I looked at him for a long time. He was small and frail again. I gave him an easy little shrug. "I've been paying for my father's mistakes all my life," I said. "I can pay for yours, too."
He did not look sad when he turned to me. He looked proud. "If only I can make it work, it will still be worth it. Give me time, and I will make you a legend."
I shook my head. "Give me another hole in the wall, another job to fill my days, and I will be as happy as I was before. Give me anything else and you've done me a favor."
He rose and tucked his pipe away somewhere in his robes. "You are a good boy. Better than most." Out over the waves the sun was setting, casting deep crimson rays into the ocean's depths. "I am going to sleep, we have a long ride tomorrow. There is another bed in the cabin, if you like, or you can take one of the rooms below. Good night."
He left, his boots thumping on the weathered wooden planks. I sank down to lie on the deck and stared up at the sky. I watched until the stars came out, a billion brilliant points penetrating the night's darkness, and I thought of yesterday and tomorrow. And then I thought of dragons.
5. At Gath
-upon-Brennes
I woke to the sound of voices, danced softly from unconsciousness by the rolling of the boat. The early morning sunlight cut in sharp rays above and painted a picture on the deck, but I was in the shadow of the low rail. I sat up with a yawn, stretched sore arms, and looked for the source of the voices.
Near the helm Claighan stood talking with one of the two sailors. The sailor looked confused, and the wizard's strained patience showed clear on his face. I moved a little closer to listen.
"No, no!" Claighan said. "The others tie to the Swifts' docks. You sail into the harbor and tie to a normal dock."
The sailor shrugged, "All right, but they will know the ship on sight, anyway."
"I will take care of that. It is a simple thing. Just be careful docking." The sailor scowled at him, but Claighan had already turned away. The old wizard smiled when he saw me. "Daven! You're awake. Excellent. Come into the cabin, and I will arrange your disguise."
"Disguise?" I asked.
He caught me by the elbow and led me toward his cabin. "Yes." His smile slipped. "Yes, according to these sailors the king has a strong garrison in Deichelle. And we know he now has access to at least one wizard hostile to my cause. Edwin will have done everything he can, but still I suspect there will be guards waiting for us at the harbor."
Sudden fear gripped my heart, but the wizard seemed unafraid. I did my best to feign the same casual air and simply nodded. Even when I'd lived in Chantire, I'd never run afoul of the king's justice. I had seen what that kind of life did to my father.
I shuddered. "Will we be able to escape them?"
"Oh, easily." Claighan said. "The king has not had time to prepare a proper search for us and I doubt even Seriphenes would have made a traveling to come this far." He hesitated, but his hand rose up and felt the empty air, and he smiled. "Anyway, it seems unlikely. They will have communicated with the garrison here. That is a simpler matter. But these soldiers should have only a few words of explanation. I will weave some simple illusions—make us merchants or farmers, I think—and we will slip quietly through the town, pick up a couple of horses, and be on our way to the Academy before anyone notices our passage."
He pushed open the door to the cabin. The room was small and cramped, with two beds against the walls and a tiny area between them. Claighan sat on the edge of one bed and waved me to the other. He began digging in several small leather pouches strewn across the bed, searching for something.
I tried to sound casual as I interrupted his search. "So we ride to Pollix?" My heart sank when he nodded. I was not a skilled rider. "That will not be a quick way to travel. Can't you...." I didn't know how to finish the question. "After all your talk of problem-solving, surely a wizard could do something better than riding."
He stopped fiddling with the pouches' contents and sat staring blankly at the bed for some time. After a while he turned to me and said, "Magic is not a...simple thing." He paused again, searching for the right words. "I told you last night about the illusion of reality. People need that illusion, most of the time. That's why it exists. When wizards change that, people see flashy magic and mysticism because they need some kind of explanation for their sturdy, reasonable reality suddenly shifting."
I nodded. "That makes sense. But—"
He discarded my interruption with a wave of his hand. "Most magics are that easy for people to cast aside. They think in terms of 'spells' and rites and even a pillar of fire that just destroyed some poor farmer's house, when really a wizard only changed the seeming of reality so the house was destroyed. The how of it is a mere matter of perception. That's how it usually works, and people adapt just fine. But to do what you suggest...." He fought for the words once more. "To bridge vast distances—to make a traveling as we call it—that would require me to shift all the fabric of reality between here and there. I must make it so, for us at least, there isn't really any reality between where we are and where we are going. That makes the intervening space...soft. It doesn't feel real for weeks afterward. It makes people uncomfortable, and it makes magic there...a bit too easy."
"You do it, though." He looked at me sharply, but I shrugged. "I've heard about it. Everyone's heard about it. Magicians travel like that all the time. Edwin cast us out of the palace and you sent the... the bandits back there."
He sighed. "Of course. It's possible, and I know how, and there are those even among the Masters who use travelings far too lightly." His brows came down angrily. "But I will not. Besides, the distance is of great importance. Edwin's projection threw us perhaps a hundred paces. If I were to send us from here to the Academy it would weaken reality across half a thousand miles of farmland." He shook his head, sure and serious. "The things we do with magic only hasten the day of the dragonswarm, and I mean to delay it as much as I can."
I leaned forward. "You really believe in the dragonswarm? Here and now?"
He frowned. "Yes," he said. "I do." He shook himself and met my eyes. "But not as here and now as the king's soldiers." He returned to his search and began to draw out some herbs. Finally he withdrew a small bit of folded parchment from the bottom of one of the pouches. It looked old, and he moved with deliberate care as he pulled it free of the other items in the bag.
"Now, here is our map." He unfolded the parchment, and my breath caught. It was an ancient map of the Ardain, divided into kingdoms. It must have predated the FirstKing. Claighan chuckled at my response.
"This is the only map I have handy. I'd intended to present it to the king as a gift for his Royal Collection." He very carefully spread it out and traced a finger from the north coast to a place just above the center of the map. It was a long journey—half a thousand miles. "We will avoid towns for the most part, but we cannot miss them completely. We will stop here, at Dann, and here at Gath-upon-Brennes, and I believe that will be all. We can slip through both towns quickly, change horses if ours have problems, and be at the Academy by the middle of next week."
He folded the map with care and returned it to his pouch, then turned to look at me once more with a frown of concentration. "Farmers, I should say. Returning from market." He spoke strange words, unintelligible but alive, and as they hung in the air, writhing, they took on a more powerful aspect. Something in the world around me began to...flow. Everything—the boat, the bed, even the air in the room—everything suddenly became soft. Pliable. I felt dizzy at first, but nothing seemed solid enough to support me. Then in an instant I felt a tightening, and a sudden constriction as Claighan's voice dwindled, and then all was real once more. The ship rolled heavily to one side, then settled back, and when I had my balance again Claighan was sitting with a satisfied smile, staring at me.
"They won't know you from any other country boy, gone to town to sell your father's goods." A cry came from without and Claighan's smile returned. "And now we are there. Come, Daven, and see the Continent."
Just as we emerged from the cabin, the ship rolled lightly, bumped softly against the padded docks, and settled to a stop. The two sailors darted forward and dropped a gangplank in place, moving swiftly. The small port was nearly deserted, with here and there a sailor hurrying past on some errand, and nowhere a sign of curious townsfolk or anxious merchants. Two other ships rested quietly against a pier further down, no sign of movement or business on their decks.
As in Souport, a low wall bordered the dock area, with a gateway through into the city. Just inside the wall stood a knot of fifteen soldiers, armored and armed and looking surly in the early morning sun. As I stepped to the gangplank, I watched half a dozen soldiers swarm onto each of the other Swifts. A captain remained by the barrier wall with a handful of guards around him, and as we made our way across the empty docks he stared at us. Claighan grabbed my elbow as if he needed steadying, but his breath reached my ear. "Be calm. They'll never know you." My heart pounded despite his words.
The wizard stepped up to the guard on the gate and nodded toward the Swifts. "Some bit of commotion, eh captain? What've them wiz
ards got up to now?"
The captain glanced down at him with a look of disgust. He took half a step away from the disguised wizard. "It's all king's business, old man. Move along." Claighan opened his mouth to ask something else, but the soldier jerked a thumb toward the gate. "Now!"
Claighan shrugged then shuffled through the gate and down the lane beyond. I followed him, entirely unnoticed by the captain. Before I slipped through the gate I glanced back toward the Swifts still swarming with soldiers, and I looked toward ours, too. It wasn't there. In its place, instead of the glamorous magical vessel that had flown across the sea, sat a battered old ferryboat, the boards of its hull nailed on three layers thick, and so coated in tar that not a bit of wood showed through. Its rigging was a mess, its sails tattered, and even from twenty paces away it reeked of old fish. I frowned at it, trying to see the truth within the illusion, but Claighan grabbed roughly at the back of my collar and dragged me on my way.
We turned down the first major street and once we were a good distance from the docks, he stood straight and began to walk with his usual strong gait. "As I said, boy, they had no idea what to expect. No trouble at all."
"They'll find out soon those ships were empty."
"Aye, that they will. They'll catch on pretty quick that our ship was a Swift, too. The seeming on her doesn't run very deep. That's why we need to be out of town. Come this way." He led me directly through the town, walking as though he knew the way well, and near the south end of town he stopped at a large inn. "I know the keeper here. Go around to the stables and wait for me there. I'll only be a moment."
Minutes later we were mounted on two fine Southern horses, slipping quietly out of the town with a loaded packhorse following on a lead. Deichelle had no walls, and consequently no suspicious guards to scowl at us as we rode out onto the royal highway that stretched all the way to Tirah. Claighan glanced back over his shoulder once, just as the town slipped from sight behind us, and sighed. "Don't grip so tightly, Daven. You're scaring the horse. We have a long ride ahead, and it wouldn't do to wear him out early."
