Secret of the Sixth Magic

by Lyndon Hardy

  “Away with the summons,” Jemidon heard Farnel growl from behind the door. Indeed, the master had already returned. “The presentation is not until noon. And I need not rush. The loose tongues of the other masters made clear how their votes would be cast. I have seen enough tokens bestowed on Gerilac. One more time will hardly matter.”

  “It is your tyro!” Jemidon shouted. “And I have a problem—something that your experience with the ways of the island may be able to resolve!”

  The door creaked open. A bleary-eyed Farnel in a rumpled nightshirt squinted out into the growing brightness. He grunted recognition and motioned Jemidon inside. With a second wave, he indicated the fruit on a side table and lumbered back toward the bed.

  “Jemidon offered me aid when I was most needy,” Delia said without moving. “I hope the kindness of a master will be even greater.”

  Farnel turned back, rubbed his eyes, and looked closer at Delia. He shook himself suddenly awake. “Speak again,” he said slowly.

  “I ask for your help,” Delia replied.

  “And more, something that gives difficulty to the tongue.” A hint of excitement crept into Farnel’s voice. In an instant, he was transformed from a groggy-headed old man into a straight-backed master of sorcery, dancing eyes hinting at the dart of thought suddenly alive within.

  Delia paused, then spoke again, puzzled. “Do you mean things like fresh cheese or six sick sheep?”

  “The voice is a pure one.” Farnel looked at Jemidon, rubbing his hands in satisfaction. “Perhaps you have been of some value after all.”

  “Her delights do not matter,” Jemidon said. “That is not why I have brought her here.” He was still exhausted from the struggle. The pain in his arm was now a constant throb.

  “Nor are they my interest,” Farnel snapped. “Can you not hear how she speaks? Are you so intertwined with theories that practicalities of the art totally escape you? That voice! No one on the island, tyro or master, has one that comes close to its purity. Wrapped around a charm, it would be perfection. My peers would offer much of their learning in order to cast a cantrip or glamour with such clarity.” He stopped and thought. “Yes, we must try it. It is worth the effort. Far better than debating the virtues of Gerilac’s style or struggling with meaningless competitions. If the others hear the value of faultless words, then convincing them of the purity of my art will follow easily. How could anyone resist the truth of what I always have maintained, if it is so perfectly spoken?”

  Farnel glanced around his hut and scowled in annoyance at the disarray. “Come in. Come in and make yourself comfortable, lass. I am most curious as to how you will repeat what I will tell you.”

  “But that is not why we are here,” Delia said as she and Jemidon passed through the doorway. She looked around the rough furnishings and eventually sat in the only uncluttered chair. “Drandor may have been close enough to see us enter. I do not care to confront unprepared anything else he might fetch from his tent.”

  “To aid in some petty squabble is not why I have asked you in.” Farnel waved away the words. “We will select the charm before anything else.”

  “Then make it a Wall of Impedance.” Jemidon grimaced as he lowered the lattice to the floor. Farnel’s flying off on some diversion of the art was not something he wished even to contemplate. And he was annoyed with himself for not recognizing the potential of Delia’s voice as had the master. “A Wall of Impedance, some sort of chant to block the hurt.”

  Farnel noted Jemidon’s pained expression, and then his eyebrows rose in question marks as he saw the bloodstained sleeve. “Erid?” he asked.

  “Later.” Jemidon shook his head. “After I have some rest.”

  Farnel frowned and looked about the hut. “I have some sweetbalm here,” he said. “Payment by an alchemist who wanted a private glamour two seasons back. It is old and stale and, as a side effect, it sometimes produces a great desire to sleep. But it might aid until a charm is cast.”

  Farnel rummaged through a box at the foot of his bed and then tossed Jemidon a small tube of salve. Jemidon grunted thanks, removed his tunic, and applied the balm to the cuts in his shoulder. Almost instantly, the throb diminished and the swelling began to subside.

  Farnel watched the red begin to fade from the wounds and turned his attention back to Delia. “Each of the other arts has its place, I suppose,” he said. He smiled at Delia as he approached. “Now the Wall of Impedance. Yes, just the thing to teach the lass. Simple enough that it is one of the first instructed to the tyro, but with enough potency that the enunciation must be exact.”

  The sorcerer took the imp bottle from Delia and set it on a table. “Pay attention to the beginning,” he commanded. “The last few syllables are not quite the same, and that makes all the difference.”

  “The help I seek is not one of instruction.” Delia shook her head slightly and looked out a small window facing the trail. “But if I can remain hidden long enough, perhaps the trader will give up the search and sail on to Pluton, as he had planned before I fled.”

  “Pluton,” Farnel said. “A trader will find little to barter there. Fortunes are measured by sums and abstractions on paper, not by trinkets from faraway lands. Why, even the common gossip of the day must be bought, rather than freely received.”

  Delia ignored the comment. “Will you provide the shelter and more active aid, if that is what I need?”

  “Will you attempt the charm?”

  Delia looked once more out the window. She touched the iron around her wrist, and her shoulders sagged. “Oh, if you must, tell me the beginning,” she said. “It is far less than what I would otherwise have to pay.”

  Farnel rubbed his hands together like a small boy anticipating a new toy. Jemidon settled down onto the floor beside the lattice and tried to make himself comfortable. He was still aware of the wound in his shoulder, although the pain was much reduced. And now, without its distraction, Farnel’s interest in Delia began to grate as an irritant. Perhaps it was the fatigue and tomorrow he would think more clearly; but, by the laws, he was the master’s tyro, not someone of only a few moments acquaintance. If there was to be instruction, he was the one who should receive it. And with no previous exposure, it would take Delia considerable time to grasp all the subtle shades of intonation.

  For the Wall of Impedance, he had required more than two hours, practicing each syllable over and over until it was spoken correctly. The effort had been such a drudgery that he had not even bothered to string them together and try the complete charm when he was done. None of them had he practiced. Once one was explained to the end, his interest had waned. Far more intriguing was how the next cantrip or glamour was begun.

  As Farnel droned on and Delia echoed, Jemidon idly fingered the coin about his neck and tried to recapture his feelings when Drandor had projected his images on the beach. He looked at the lattice and frowned as he struggled to understand its structure. Near his arm, the basic pattern was highly symmetrical. Nodes spaced themselves evenly in a cubic array. Connecting vertical struts were red; the horizontal ones were blue in one direction and yellow in the other. Most of the vertices connected only to their regularly spaced neighbors; but along one row, additional green wires stuck out at an odd angle, extending to nodes isolated from all the others.

  In other regions of the lattice, orange wires branched in yet another direction; elsewhere there were lines of purple and black. Jemidon followed the progression of wires and saw regions in which green, purple, and orange formed the regular cubic array and the red and yellow connected the outliers. In the dense center, all seven colors competed to catch the eye in some unifying pattern that one could not fathom in a single glance.

  Near the edges, the lattice was thin and sparse. Long tendrils of a single color rayed away from the center, like a mine following a vein of ore. At the regularly spaced intervals, stubs of unit length branched off like exploratory shafts, occasionally sprouting little sublattices that ran on other courses for
two or three units more.

  “Why seven directions, each with its own color?” Jemidon mused aloud as he reached for a bead that clung to one of the nodes.

  “The Postulate of Invariance.” The imp in the bottle sprang to life. “The Postulate of Invariance. Seven exactly. There can be no more. It is Melizar’s, and you must not touch.”

  “Quiet,” Farnel snapped. “I am in the midst of instruction.”

  “Seven exactly.” The imp’s eyes gyrated in uncoordinated circles. “Nor can one force there to be any less.”

  “Cease the provocation so it will be silent.” Farnel scowled at Jemidon. “At the very least, you understand how important it is that I not be misheard.”

  “As you said, the sweetbalm is old,” Jemidon answered. “The pain is not totally gone. And an idle wait for several hours to learn a spell I already know is not something I would freely choose.”

  “An example recital of the completed charm would speed the process, I admit,” Farnel said, “but the ale from last night makes me slow enough that I dare not try it myself.” He watched Jemidon cautiously test the mobility of his arm. “But perhaps necessity will be a better motivator than a master,” he said, rubbing his chin in thought. “Show us what you have learned. Speak the charm for yourself.”

  Surprisingly, Jemidon felt a spark of excitement through his fatigue. The sense of dread which had accompanied all the other opportunities somehow was totally gone. He felt no confusion, no doubt that he might fail. Instead, it was an opportunity to redeem himself in Farnel’s eyes. He glanced at Delia, who was looking at him expectantly. He searched through his memory to see if he still could recall the beginning and found that the first words were there, sharp and firm. Quickly he rose and walked to the mirror.

  Jemidon licked his lips and rattled through the first few syllables in a rush. He paused briefly, expecting the nauseating backlash of a miscast charm, but he felt none. He saw Farnel’s reflection nodding approval. Encouraged, he concentrated on the next grouping.

  Again the words sprang from his lips with crispness. He caught the cadence of the chant and, with rising confidence, completed the first recital. Jemidon smiled as he began the repetition. Each charm had to be spoken three times to be enacted, and the difficulty increased with each enunciation. But his words remained clean and firm, projecting forth without effort, as if he had cast them a thousand times before.

  He raced into the final recital like a boulder crashing downhill. The words tripped from his tongue unfailingly. His voice rose from a whisper to a booming shout. Hands on hips like a great orator, he mouthed the last phrases at his reflection. With a flashy bow, he concluded the charm and turned to receive Farnel’s reaction.

  “Perhaps it is to be sorcery, after all.” Jemidon smiled. “It all came easy, both the recall and the casting.”

  “A bit too dramatic, but well spoken nonetheless,” Farnel said. “It is a pity that you could not have done as well for the other masters.”

  “But at least it is a better promise of what is to come from your instruction.” Jemidon started to wave the thought of his previous failure aside, but winced at a sharpness in his shoulder. “How soon until the pain is totally blocked? It feels no better than before.”

  “You should be numbed upon completion of the last syllable,” Farnel said. “There is no delay in sorcery.”

  “But my arm—”

  Farnel frowned. He studied Jemidon’s puzzled expression and shook his head. “Then it is another miscasting,” the sorcerer said. “Somehow, with your dramatic flourishes, you garbled the charm.”

  “I feel no other ill effect,” Jemidon said, “and you heard it all the way through without pointing out any error.”

  “Probably it occurred in the leading phrase of the first recital,” Farnel said, “just as the charm was beginning. An error there would render the rest a mumble of nonsense without power or meaning. Yes, that must be the reason. It was indeed too much to expect for you to get through it all so easily.”

  Jemidon opened his mouth to frame some sort of a reply; but before he could, a heavy pounding shook the door. With a crash, it flew open and banged against the wall. Canthor and four men-at-arms entered the hut. One pointed to Delia and the bottle beside her. Canthor nodded and looked back to Farnel, shaking his head.

  “To the keep, old friend,” he commanded. “The trader Drandor has charged that you have possession of three of his properties and demands their restitution.”

  “This is not a matter of harmless bickering, to be forgotten after a night in the keep.” Canthor tried to scowl at Farnel, who sat at the other end of the table. “Morgana must show to everyone that its justice applies to master and bondsman alike.”

  Jemidon and Delia stood between two men-at-arms behind Farnel’s chair. Up and down the length of the table sat the other sorcerers of the island, all puffy-eyed and slack-jawed from the night before. When a charge was brought against one, then they all had to be present to hear the evidence and decide what must be done. Drandor paced behind Canthor’s high chair, and his footfalls echoed off the round walls. A faded banner hung behind the trader, splotches of mildew mingling with tattered threads. Spiders nervously scampered across the fitted stone and into niches in the crumbling mortar. Recently broken webs hung in the doorway. The council room of the keep was seldom used in Canthor’s administration of the island. From two small slit windows, the morning light stabbed into the shadows.

  Even though it was a bracingly cool morning, Jemidon felt increasingly tired and disheartened. He had been up all night and dosed with sweetbalm besides. Again he had miscast a spell in front of Farnel, and now there were additional complications, additional obstacles between him and the robe of the master. He gripped the back of the chair tightly to stand erect and grimly forced his sluggish thoughts to follow what was happening.

  “Justice I expect,” Drandor said. “Of the evidence there can be no denial. The imp bottle, the lattice, the girl, all belong to me and my partner Melizar. I have the bills of possession here for you to examine.”

  “But it is so unlike a master to bother with material objects,” the tall sorcerer on Canthor’s right said. “Our work is what we can shape with the mind. And to summon the full council for what surely must be a private matter is most unwarranted. Did you not deal directly with master Farnel? Despite his antiquated techniques, he is most honest and reasonable.”

  “I did try my own negotiations.” Drandor shot Jemidon a glance. “But they met with mishap at the base of the granite cliff. Prudence directed that I appeal to a higher authority, rather than attempt more on my own.”

  “Trader, justice you shall have.” Gerilac rubbed his forehead irritably. “And the quicker you are quiet, the quicker it will be meted.” He looked around the table through bloodshot eyes. “After last night, I am sure we all wish to move quickly to settle this matter. And since we are all here, we can also cast the final vote and present the supreme accolade. Let us be done with everything so that we can return to much needed rest.”

  “You need not show such haste,” Farnel growled. “We all filled our cups as many times as you. And the tokens from previous years are keeping you in a pampered style. The five hundred from this season probably will add little difference.”

  “Five hundred tokens?” Drandor asked. “This sculpting of phantoms brings so much to the one who performs it best?”

  “That concerns only the masters,” Canthor replied. “We are here at your behest, trader. And when the complaint has been settled, you will be dismissed before we proceed to the other.”

  “But five hundred!” Drandor persisted. “It is indeed a very large sum.”

  “Much more than the objects you are making such a clamor about,” Canthor said. “You have disturbed my sleep and that of a good many others. Is it not sufficient to return them to you and let the matter drop?”

  “The lattice and bottle are the trader’s,” Jemidon blurted. “Take them and begone.” He
stepped around Farnel’s chair and looked at the assembled masters through heavy eyes. “But surely someone here can meet the price for the girl. Pay what is required so that Delia need not accompany the trader as well.”

  Jemidon frowned and slowly puzzled out how he felt. He was as much surprised at his outburst as the rest. Delia was an appealing beauty and in need of help. He should have done no less than he did. And yet she was the one responsible for Farnel’s present predicament, as well as the cause of the additional complications that could only delay his quest for the robe. In the hut, he had chafed when the master instructed her in sorcery. Certainly he did not want competition. How could she be more than a passing distraction?

  “Five hundred tokens.” Drandor ignored Jemidon’s interruption. “And I infer that the selection of the winner has not yet been made.” His eyes narrowed, and he showed his teeth in a crooked smile. “I, too, deal in trinkets for the mind. And if I may be so bold, I wager that what I can create has greater merit than the best you have to offer.”

  “You are no sorcerer,” Gerilac said. “You can do no more than the imitations of the bazaar.”

  “That is not so.” Drandor’s smite broadened. “My charms are far more powerful than any you can muster.”

  “Tradesmen’s banter,” Gerilac massaged his furrowed brow and slumped his elbow to the table. “Anyone truly trained in the arts can tell the difference.”

  “Then put it to the test,” Drandor said. “I am willing to make a wager. Perform your best sorcery before the masters as judges, and I will invoke mine. Let the better win not only the accolade but five hundred tokens more that I will secure from my partner Melizar.”

  “Why this sudden interest in our art?” Canthor asked. “You have camped in the harbor bazaar for many days, but never ventured forth before.”

  “Before, I did not know this recognition carried with it such tangible worth,” Drandor said. “A large cache of tokens I must assemble. Melizar wishes it so.” He turned and smiled at Canthor. “Besides, I cannot pass an opportunity that is now such a sure proposition.”