The Colors of Magic Anthology (magic: the gathering)

by Richard Lee Byers

  The bar was jammed solidly. Gritting his teeth, Crucias rose and kicked. The bar shifted upward. Another kick, and the thing had nearly cleared its bracket. "Nothing can be easy. Not even this." He kicked one last time.

  A creaking groan began, and he shied back. Wood splintered. Something struck the door, and it split, spilling rubble out on him. A beam rammed Crucias's belly. A cargo hook struck his head. He would have spun away except for the debris that mired his legs. The landslide of wreckage continued over him, burying him to the waist. Crucias twisted, struggling to wrench himself free of the pile, but a jabbing pain began in his side.

  The ache intensified, stretching out through his chest and into his neck.

  "This is it, then," he thought bitterly and slumped down in the debris. "This is it."

  "Sit down, Daddy. It's getting cold," Nunieve said the next morning. She was on the verandah overlooking the sea, red bricks and grape vines embracing her in the cool air of morning.

  Crucias stood where always he did, though this time, he knew it was only a dream. "There was no next morning, Nunieve," he said sadly. "You died last night."

  She shrugged, leaning over to pat a little metal seat beside her. "I just wanted to see if you would make it through."

  "If I would make it through?"

  "Yes, through the night," she said simply. Her smile would have seemed almost mischievous had she not been so sad. "Now, come and sit."

  "Oh, darling, this is only a dream."

  "Yes. In this dream, I always ask you to sit, but you never do," she replied scoldingly. "It's a dream, Daddy. You can do whatever you want. Come, sit with me."

  "Yes," he said, releasing a grateful sigh. "Yes."

  With elaborate decorum, she lifted the teapot and poured his cup to the brim. The brown liquid sent up a gentle fragrance. Her hands were small and tan above the white porcelain.

  "I broke these cups last night, too."

  "Yes," she said. The tea poured contentedly from the little pot. "But you made it through. I was afraid you wouldn't. I was afraid your life would end."

  "It did, darling. It did," Crucias assured. This time the tea was not scalding or bitter. "You were my whole life and future. I tried to go on. I built a ship in your name, but she wasn't you. And I couldn't provide for her, either. She wasted away, just as you did." He shook his head and let out a rueful laugh. "When you died, darling, my world had come to an end. And when the ship I named after you died, the whole world came to an end in a great explosion that consumed everything. The ship was destroyed by the blast and the storms afterward. I was blinded and battered and buried in a pile of rubble."

  She looked at him over her cup of tea. Her eyes seemed older, her expression grown-up despite her young face. "What did you do then?"

  A look of perplexity crossed his face, and he lowered the teacup, only half emptied. "What did I do then?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, darling-" he laughed darkly, "-I died. That's what I did then."

  Her look turned to one of consternation. "You died?"

  He nodded. "I died."

  "You were one of the last people left alive in hundreds of miles of ocean, and you didn't make it through?"

  Crucias reached over to take her hand. "What reason did I have to live? If I had had a reason I could have done anything. I could have crawled out from under all this rubble. I could have braved the storms to clear the deck. I could have manned the pumps by myself and found some way to smell for land or listen for stars. If I had had you beside me, I would have had my whole world again, and I could have done anything."

  "You have me." Her voice had changed, eager still but not young, the voice of a woman instead of a child. Her face was fading-her face and the verandah and the morning sea beyond. A pulpy darkness seeped through the fabric of dream, and only the woman's voice remained. "You do have me. I thought I was the only one left alive until you opened the hold door."

  "Nunieve, you're only a dream," he said wearily, groping for her hands.

  "I'm not a dream," she answered. She clutched his hands tightly. "And I am not Nunieve. My name is Elgia. I'm Lady Gheiri's niece."

  "Elgia?" Crucias replied. Where am I? "I was dreaming," he said into the tangled darkness of the cyclone. "I thought you were my daughter."

  "Call me what you will. I want you to get up. I want you to get this ship back under control. I want you to take me to land."

  He shook his head and felt icy brine dripping onto his shoulders. "I can't. I'm done."

  "What about all the things you just said? About pumping out the ship and clearing the decks and steering to land?"

  "I don't have any fight left in me, my dear. I'm worn-out-battered, blind. There is nothing left to believe in-"

  The answer was immediate: "Believe in me. I want to live. Isn't that enough? I want to live."

  So like Nunieve. So strong and determined and brave.

  "It wasn't enough for my daughter."

  "It should have been," Elgia said, desperate. "It should have been enough."

  So like Nunieve.

  "Yes. It should have been. But out there is a monster, perhaps a god, that sees all the should-have-beens in human lives and makes them impossible. Call it what you will-fate or curse, hatred or caprice-but it remains, the implacable darkness."

  "I can see, Captain. I was below decks when whatever happened happened. I can see, and I can lift and tie and pump and anything you need me to do. You just tell me what to look at, and I'll see for you. I want to live."

  A new breath entered him. For the first time since his daughter had died, Captain Crucias really breathed. "I was Yotian, Elgia. My daughter was Yotian. There is an ancient Yotian belief that every person has many souls, that you can always be redeemed. At any moment, you can let go of the old souls that ruled you, let them fall into damnation and begin a new soul. That's what my daughter was to me. Whenever I was sure my life was over, she appeared and brought me back up into the light of heaven. That's what Nunieve was to me-my keeper of souls."

  "Listen to me!" Elgia's voice was desperate. There was a loneliness and fear in her tone, the sound of utter abandonment. "I want to live! I want to live!"

  Crucias smiled. He actually smiled. Blind and battered and trapped in the Sargasso of his old life-trading off a damned soul for a newborn one-Crucias smiled. "Then help me dig my way out of this mess, Elgia. I want to live, too."

  The Mirror of Yesterday

  Jonathan Tweet

  Damon had managed to levitate a few inches above the rocky beach. Arms crossed over his chest and eyes closed in concentration, he hung in midair, bobbing slightly. Three fellow apprentices watched with mixed emotions. They were excited to see Damon demonstrating a new magical ability, one that they would all have themselves some day, but each was envious that someone else had succeeded at levitating first.

  Damon, for his part, was using the sound of the surf as his mantra. The waves rolling in and out had ceased to be water hitting beach. For him, it was only an audible impression, the come and go of the fundamental forces of the world, the cosmos breathing. He was nowhere.

  Then he remembered he had a forehead because it suddenly hurt. Something hard hit his feet and then his hip and arms. He had become unexpectedly intimate with the beach, and he opened his eyes to find himself lying on it. He felt a buzz of pain on his forehead.

  "Do you understand?" someone said.

  Damon looked up to where Sabra, Jervis, and Annarais sat watching him. Sabra had spoken.

  The question "Do you understand?" was one that Master Wane put to them frequently-when he had just thwarted one of their fledgling attempts at magic. There were only two answers to the question: "No," which meant you were still an apprentice, and "Yes," which would mean you were now a wizard. None of them had ever correctly answered the question.

  "Dammit," said Damon, standing up and brushing the grit off his leggings and elbows. "A rock? Did you throw something at me?" He looked accusingly at Sabra.
She met his gaze, but her face was impossible to read.

  "Well," she said innocently, "the first time you show that trick to Master Wane, he's going to smack you on the head with his staff to test your concentration. I was doing you a favor."

  "Go to hell," muttered Damon. He put his hand on his forehead where the rock had hit him and then ran it back over his close-cropped head.

  "All right, I will," said Sabra. "Maybe I can find hell over among those boulders." She jumped up and stalked off down the beach, gone in a moment among the big, black rocks behind them. Her footsteps were soon lost in the sound of the glacial runoff that tumbled over the cliff and cut through the rocks below on its way into the sound.

  "Congratulations," said Annarais, raising two fists in a victory gesture. She was smiling with genuine approval.

  "Yeah," added Jervis. "I bet you can't wait until Master Wane gets back so you can show him that stunt."

  Damon looked away. Tears of frustration burned his eyes. He no longer heard the soothing surf. Instead he was back in the training room, in front of the mirror with Master Wane. As the mage closed the curtains over the mirror he said, "You will never become a wizard." Master Wane had leveled that judgment the day before he left, and Damon was grateful the other apprentices had not been there to hear it.

  "Sabra always steals the show, doesn't she? Don't let her get to you."

  Damon came back to the beach at the sound of Annarais's voice. "Yes," was all he could muster before the waves slipped from his ears once again.

  He had tried, again and again, to prove he had what it took, that certainly he, of all the apprentices, would become a wizard. In that rare moment alone with his teacher, Damon had almost burst with pride when Master Wane had told him that he was ready for a special test. First the master shaved Damon's head. Then he led him to the draped mirror in the training room. The mage pulled the black curtain aside and revealed the glass.

  "Whom do you see?" the teacher asked his student.

  Damon blinked. Something was wrong, but he couldn't tell what. He looked in the mirror and saw himself. He. had long, brown hair, just as he always had, and that seemed right to him. "I see me," said Damon. "Us." He wondered what this test was all about.

  "And what day is it today?"

  "The fourth day of the month, the day of the full null moon."

  "No," said Wane, running his hand over Damon's bare pate. "Today is the fifth. The null moon was full last night. And you have no hair left on your head. You are seeing yesterday."

  "Master?"

  "This mirror shows you as you were yesterday," said Master Wane. "The common mind believes the body's eyes. You become what you believe, and so you think it is still yesterday. The mind of the mage knows better than to believe what the body sees. The mirror does not sway it. I see this body of mine as it was yesterday, but I know myself to be what I am today."

  Master Wane closed the curtain. "You will never become a wizard."

  A moment later, Damon realized what day it was and touched his shaved scalp. In front of the mirror he had lost himself.

  "Never…"

  Damon, unconsciously running his hand over three weeks of growth on his head, remembered the present… and Jervis's words. "And it's not just some stunt, Jervis! You try it if you think it's a stunt."

  Jervis didn't answer. He was looking out over the sound. Jervis was the least likely to become involved in petty competition, Damon thought. He opened his mouth to apologize for his sharp words, but Jervis spoke first.

  "Master Wane has been gone a long time," Jervis said quietly, as if he didn't realize he was speaking aloud. "I don't like it."

  This was the longest Master Wane had ever left them alone. He had been gone more than three weeks now and had neglected to tell them when he would return. His only words were of visiting his colleagues at the School of the Unseen, but they had all seen the carrier pigeons he occasionally sent flying from the top of the tower.

  Sabra had told them the Kjeldorans used those pigeons. She had been picked up by Kjeldoran troops in the months following the flood that had washed her village into the sea. It was the Kjeldorans' alliances with Master Wane that had brought Sabra to the old mage's tower on the hill. The apprentices assumed the master had political business in Kjeldor, but three weeks was a long time to be away, even for politics.

  Damon tossed a pebble at the surf. "Jervis, you know Master Wane doesn't want us talking about what he's doing or even knowing about it. His allegiances have nothing to do with us. If he didn't know what he was doing, he wouldn't have been around to take us in." Damon thought briefly of the first wizard who had found him, when he had just been orphaned. That wizard had preferred less tasteful magic and had eventually sold Damon to Master Wane. The memories made him shudder.

  Annarais stood up and stretched. "He's probably going to look back in time and see that we were here on the beach when we were supposed to be studying."

  Jervis pointed a thumb at Damon. "We are. studying. He's demonstrating a new trick for us. That's studying, isn't it, Damon?"

  A voice boomed from down the beach, "It's bobble-dy-cock!"

  The apprentices jumped in recognition of Master Wane's voice and his favorite term for tomfoolery. Damon looked past Annarais, who spun around. Moving swiftly toward them from among the tall, dark rocks was their master. He had always reminded Damon of a seagull, loud and a little dirty, with hair the color of ground-up oyster shells.

  "Who is the wizard who makes the sky blue?" demanded Master Wane. He raised a gnarled staff to the sky and shook it. He'd put that question to them many times before, and they were to have solved it by the time he returned. "Damon?"

  "Welcome back, Master Wane," Damon said lamely.

  "To leave is to return. Who is it?" shouted the wizard, pointing his staff at the apprentice.

  "I do not know, Master." Damon dropped his gaze and looked at the pebbles on the beach.

  "I'm going to beat you ten times," said Master Wane, swinging his staff for emphasis. "Then maybe you'll know. Annarais! Who is the wizard who makes the sky blue?"

  Annarais cleared her throat. "The sky is like a great mirror, and it reflects the blue of the ocean." She tilted her chin upward sharply as if confirming her theory.

  "You," yelled Master Wane, "I shall beat twenty times. Jervis! Who is it?"

  "The sky is not blue, Master," said Jervis in a voice that was almost firm.

  "And this rock," replied the master, picking up a good-sized stone from near his foot, "is not hard!" He let it fly at Jervis, who dodged expertly. "Thirty times!"

  "Now," continued Master Wane, looking around, "where is my most promising pupil, Sabra? She's as smart as she is beautiful, and that's saying a lot. I'm sure she knows the answer. What did the three of you do-drown her out of envy?"

  Sabra? Master Wane had no favorites. Damon lifted his eyes from the sand to take a closer look at the wizard. Had Master Wane taken a bath while he was away? The sense that something was amiss grew into a certainty.

  "Sabra!" accused Damon.

  Master Wane turned, but it was Sabra standing there, not the master.

  "Great heavens," said Jervis. "It's you, Sabra. That's amazing."

  "Thank you, thank you," said Sabra, smiling and bowing to Jervis, Annarais, and Damon in turn.

  Damon tried to picture what he had seen in his mind. He could remember seeing Sabra's smooth face, not Master Wane's wrinkled visage. He had seen Sabra's brown hair, her young woman's shape, and her apprentice's frock, yet he had recognized her as Master Wane. He was convinced she was Wane. "Sabra! Did you-? How did you do that?" he asked.

  "There is seeing, and there is seeing," said Sabra, chuckling. "Annarais, I like your answer to Master Wane's question. I think I'll use it myself."

  "You're welcome to it," said Annarais. "I'm sure it's wrong."

  Sabra laughed, and the others joined in.

  By afternoon the sun had climbed high enough in the blue sky to shine down o
ver the cliff where Master Wane's tower stood. Its imposing presence had guarded the cliff for decades, maybe even longer. Leading up to it, along the sheer cliff wall, was a trail of switchbacks, and next to that was a chilly waterfall fed by thawing glaciers miles and miles inland.

  On rare occasions while exploring the abandoned lands around the tower the apprentices had come across broken or burned items that looked as if they had once been of some use. As a game, they would try to fit names and functions to some of the more recognizable pieces. Sabra showed the first of these items to Master Wane, quizzing him about its origins. The squarish stone was warm, even when wet, and buzzed slightly. Wane snatched the blackened, worn blue object away from Sabra, threw it to the ground, and roared, "Remnants of a not-so-forgotten war. These things were made to destroy. No good can come from them, and your ignorance will kill us all!"

  The three other youths slinked off, and Sabra was left trembling before Master Wane's wrath. But that seemed a lifetime ago. Now any object they found was secreted among the apprentices' things. They made a pact that the first to achieve a wizard's status would have his choice of the few artifacts.

  Now that the sun warmed the beach, the apprentices stripped to their breech-clothes and swam in the chilly water. Master Wane had told them that magic is like the ocean. If you are patient and calm, it will hold you up and take you to fantastic places far away, but if you flail about and lose your concentration you'll go under. Even if you know how to stay afloat, there are dangers lurking under the surface.

  From her perch on a slick, craggy rock protruding from the waves Sabra dove into the water and swam into the shallows where the other three were wading and joking.

  "Someone's coming along the beach," she said, "someone driving a little wagon. He's just around that bend." She pointed her tanned arm, glistening with seawater, toward a dark cliff farther down the beach. "Let's have some fun."

  The apprentices waded up the beach and began wiping themselves dry.