Wizard's Conclave

by Douglas Niles

  "I can imagine!" Cory declared, almost breathless at the thought. Three full moons on one night! She sighed, taking in the splendor of the scene, marveling at the things she had yet to learn.

  Dalamar placed a hand on her shoulder, a hand that felt very warm, understanding… simply wonderful. She welcomed his presence as he took a step forward, welcomed the warmth, the soothing smell, of his soft black robe, and she allowed herself to lean back against him. She felt very grown-up tonight.

  They stood in silence for several minutes, watching the moon and the rugged landscape. Dalamar finally spoke.

  "There are not many people who can do what you do, you know."

  Coryn was startled, simultaneously pleased and puzzled. It sounded like a compliment, but she wasn't entirely sure of his meaning. "What is it that I can do?"

  "It seems to me as though you listen very carefully when you hear a magic spell cast. And then you are able to repeat the words yourself. Not just say the words, but cast the spell! I have seen you do that with the magic missile, and I suspect you were doing that with the light spell, also. Without study, reading, training. I don't know anyone who has ever done that."

  "Oh, really? Huh! I guess I've always known I was a little different. As a child I could work magic with water, with wood-"

  "That was not true magic!" Dalamar interjected, with startling intensity. He turned her around so that he could look at her, his hands on both of her shoulders. Her own palms were against his chest, but she wasn't pushing him away. His eyes burned with something that she didn't understand, and she wanted desperately to understand. But her attention was already drifting. He was so close… so warm. His robe surrounded her with comfortable smells, like spices and a pleasant kind of sweat.

  "That was sorcery, wild magic," he explained. "A feeble balm, perhaps, while the moon-gods were gone from the world. I even dabbled in it a bit myself, to fill the time. But you should know that it is a poor relation, weak and corrupt by comparison to the immortal gifts bestowed by Nuitari and his cousins! I have cast it aside, forever, and you should do so, too."

  "You're right—I'm sure you're right. I know I should. I guess I've been fortunate. My grandmother had a small spellbook, and I read it after the Night of Two Moons. I found I could understand the words!"

  "Remarkable. And still… Jenna doesn't know?" Dalamar asked, shrugging as if the answer meant little to him.

  "I… I'm not sure." Coryn knew that she had been furtive where the Red Robe was concerned. "I guess she didn't see the pebble. And I didn't tell her about the magic missile in the bandit camp because, well, maybe because I didn't want to worry her. Didn't you give me that advice?"

  That sounded foolish even as she said it, though Dalamar nodded calmly. In fact, she had been hiding her skill from Jenna, for reasons she didn't exactly understand. "I'm sorry-I guess it wasn't very forthright of me."

  "Perhaps not," the dark elf said with a smile. "But it was smart. It is best to keep some secrets, when it comes to magic. Jenna is also smart, and she's very wise. But her goals are her own, and she is determined to achieve them. If she thought she could achieve them by sacrificing you, she would."

  "No-she wouldn't do that!" Cory argued. "What do I have to do with her goals?"

  "You don't know the history of the Red Robes," Dalamar said, not unkindly. "They are ever seeking to serve their own ends. I can't blame her, not very much, anyway. She's the last of her order, and she is desperate to continue that legacy. I suspect she intends to make you her protege, the next Mistress of the Red Robe."

  "What!?" Coryn looked flabbergasted, but she was quick with another question. "And what are the Black Robes striving for? What do you want?"

  "A fair question. The Black Robes strive to further the glories of magic for our brethren, and for posterity. As for what I want…" He leaned in, his face very close to hers, just a little above. There was a different kind of light in his eyes, now, a very warm and appealing brightness.

  Coryn held her breath as his lips closed in, touching hers. She felt a fluttering in her belly as she pressed close to him, relishing his kiss. Her arms were suddenly around him, his chest broad and powerful against hers, and she more than equaled his passion with her returning embrace. She pulled him close, still breathless, and felt that warmth turn to genuine heat.

  Abruptly, then, he pulled away from her, roughly breaking the embrace, and in the moonlight the expression of anger that flashed across his face chilled Coryn. He was furious- looking past her, furious with another. The girl gasped and stepped back as Jenna's voice lashed out of the darkness.

  "I expected better of you-much better!" she snapped. It was she who had spun Dalamar around. Now she faced her rival, her tone like ice.

  Dalamar smiled, almost a smirk. Coryn did not think it was a very attractive expression, nor did she like the vicious tone of his words.

  "Haven't you waited a little too long to turn into a prude?" he asked.

  Jenna spun to glare at Coryn, her jaw set, the sparks blazing in her eyes. "You silly twit! Did you let him charm you with Black Robe lies?" She turned back to Dalamar, her fury rising. Then she snapped out the command word to another magic spell, one that the girl had heard before.

  It was the cone of silence. Once again Jenna was shouting at Dalamar, just a few steps away from her, but Coryn couldn't hear a word she said.

  13

  Call of the Woods

  Coryn's emotions churned between embarrassment, humiliation, and anger. She was mortified that Jenna discovered them, had interrupted her and Dalamar at such a precious moment. And she was appalled at the transformation in the dark elf as he turned to acidly confront the Red Robe.

  Had he "charmed" her, as Jenna accused? She was certain he hadn't used magic, but had she been manipulated by his charm? Perhaps she had been foolish-but was she a "silly twit?" Those words still stung, as if they were echoing back and forth through the canyon, now and for the rest of the night. Coryn looked at the two wizards, ensconced under the cone of silence, their angry faces only a few inches apart. They gestured furiously, with mutually contemptuous expressions. Neither so much as glanced her way.

  Of course they were talking about Coryn, so why shouldn't she at least be entitled to know what was going on? The answer: she was entitled to know. And how to find out was obvious; she already had the idea.

  She turned the word for the cone of silence spell over and over on her tongue, felt the harshness at the beginning and the smooth, sibilant conclusion of its enunciation. She tried it back and forth, then discovered a breaking point, a place in the middle of the sound where the purpose of the spell was emphatically declared with a sharp, uprising "ee." Working from that, she shifted the shape of the vowel in her mouth, dropping it through deepening tones until she was at the bass end of the spectrum, making an "oo."

  Then Coryn pronounced the spell-the cone of silence—staring at Jenna and Dalamar as she completed the word, then feeling the giddy rush of magic as it slipped away from her, and insinuated itself amidst Jenna's spell.

  "—a slip of a girl, by the moons' sake!" the Red Robe was hotly declaring. "She's barely out of childhood! Were you so impatient that you couldn't wait until we reach a town where you could buy yourself a whore?"

  Shocked at Jenna's words, Coryn felt her jaw clench with anger. A forceful denial rose within her throat, but with effort she quickly bit it back, remembering that Jenna didn't know she had penetrated the cone of silence. Instead, she turned pointedly away, even walked a few steps along the cavern rim. Her knees trembled and she wanted to scream. Instead, she kept listening.

  "I was just having a little fun with the 'servant' girl," Dalamar said, his tone coldly mocking.

  Now Coryn felt as though she had been struck squarely between the shoulder blades. She was afraid she would give her emotions away, she trembled so; she walked a little farther away, losing herself in the shadows beneath a huge pine. Her arms wrapped around her chest—now the night seemed
cold-as she turned around and watched the two wizards argue.

  Dalamar continued to speak in his cold, mocking tones. "She's rather pretty for a human, after all. I meant nothing serious, simply a little diversion. No harm was intended, nor done. Jenna, I should think a woman of your, um, appetites would certainly understand!"

  Jenna hissed back in fury. "I never knew you to turn your head for just a pretty face-especially one so youthful! No, there's more to it than that-you want something from her! I know!"

  The elf shrugged. "Maybe I've changed, and you can't recognize that. Elves don't age in the same way as you humans. Sad, they say humans inevitably forget their youthful passions as they wither and gray."

  "Bastard!" Jenna shot back, as the elf went on, his voice darkening.

  "I was in a very cold, very barren place for too long. Now I am alive again—and what makes a man feel more alive than a woman's embrace?"

  "She's a mere girl!"

  "Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps you underestimate her-I certainly felt her kissing me back. It was not as though she seemed reluctant. That is no child, Jenna! Besides, you continue to insult me. Anyone can see that she's no more a servant than I am a Knight of Solamnia. There are quite a few things that you are keeping from me, and I think you're keeping them from her, as well."

  "I keep my own counsel," Jenna declared.

  "Such secrets are at cross purposes with our quest! How are we going to find the Tower of Sorcery if we don't trust each other and work together? It's time you stopped pretending," the dark elf said. "Tell me, why did this 'mere girl' come to you? Did you really know her grandmother?"

  Coryn took a step forward, taking care to remain in the shadows. She willed her heart to cease pounding, anxious to hear what the woman would answer.

  Jenna drew a sharp breath then lowered her voice. "Yes. I sent a letter to her grandmother, right after the gods returned. Actually, I sent dozens of letters, to people all across Ansalon. But Scharon was one of the few to reply, and to understand the situation."

  "You were seeking wizards, new apprentices for your order?"

  "Not really. I was seeking older wizards, those who might still be alive after all this time. And not just my order—any of the orders, even the black! Scharon was once a White Robe, if that makes any difference to you. Just a young apprentice at the time of the Chaos War, though she showed some promise. When the gods disappeared, she left the Tower and went back home."

  "And in response to your letter, she sent her granddaughter?"

  "Yes. She thought Coryn might take the Test, someday. And that I might help her prepare. But that is all premature. I simply brought her along to help with the mules! We can't even locate the forest, much less find any sign of the Tower! Until we do, I don't want to encourage the girl to do any magic. I must get to know her better. I need to find the Tower, first, to obtain the counsel of the Master. Then I will decide about her."

  Coryn waited for Dalamar to spring to her defense, to tell Jenna that she was ready, that she could learn spells, could absorb them in ways that Jenna didn't even suspect. Instead, he seemed to agree with her.

  "As you wish. Your secret is safe," Dalamar said. "She doesn't seem to know anything about magic anyway; nothing about the orders or the three robes. I have no wish to dispel her ignorance." He glanced over at Coryn, and she felt as though his eyes penetrated right into the thick shadow before he turned back to Jenna. "Besides, I was already bored with her when you appeared out of nowhere to cause a scene. She is, as you say, just a girl."

  Cory didn't want to hear any more. The two wizards resumed their conversation, but Coryn was already making her way back through the woods, toward the dying fire in the middle of the cold forest.

  The moon was gone by the time Coryn got up again, though it was not yet dawn. Cool mists penetrated the trees, raising enough of a fog to limit visibility to a few feet. Jenna and Dalamar were now sound asleep, wrapped in their bedrolls on either side of the now-cold fire pit. First the girl cast the cone of silence spell over herself; then she rummaged through Diva's saddlebag, taking her bow and arrows and her small knapsack. She wondered if she should take anything else-after all, she felt as though she had earned some remuneration for all of her labor on Jenna's behalf. She was tempted by those spell books… but no, she was not a thief- and besides, there was nothing the Red Robe possessed that she needed.

  She slipped into the woods, moving quickly, the sounds of her urgent passage swallowed by the cone of silence that moved along with her. Daylight started seeping through the murk about an hour later. And by then Coryn was more than two miles away, still moving with youthful speed. Much of her route had followed the stony rim of the canyon, where she would leave no tracks. She didn't know where she was going, but she knew she didn't want to be followed. Not by those two… not by anybody!

  In daylight, the forest was pleasant. The path at her feet was wide, smooth, and clear of debris, winding through a bed of soft grass; broad birch trunks, alabaster white, jutted up from the ground. The canyon lay behind her now, as she moved steadily away from the precipitous rim. She followed a game trail that avoided the densest trunks of the woods, and it was nearly midday by the time she realized that she was getting hungry. Why hadn't she thought to take some of Jenna's food?

  Because it would have been stealing, she reproached herself sternly. "But I don't need your food; I don't need anything!" Coryn whispered to herself, as if afraid that the Red Robe could hear her thoughts.

  She came to a ravine across her path, and shimmied down a rotting tree trunk toward the bottom, crying out as she scraped her leg on a stub of a broken branch. Her eyes swam with tears as she cleaned the cut and wrapped a thin piece of cloth torn from her increasingly tattered shirt around the wound. She found an easier way out the other side of the ravine and limped slightly as she proceeded on the trail.

  Still, she was making good time, and her long trek on the dry stone of the canyon rim would make it difficult for her former companions to pursue her. When she thought about the way they had talked about her, it made her so mad she felt like weeping. But she wouldn't let herself do that.

  Coryn dropped to her knees to crawl under another large birch deadfall, wincing as her cut leg scraped along the ground. Climbing to her feet on the far side, she patted her hip, making sure that her quiver of arrows was safe. It was then that she noticed the sudden darkness of the forest floor in front of her, the closeness of the looming evergreens.

  Indeed, she faced a newly darkened and murky expanse. The pines were so thick here they prevented any sun from penetrating, and the dense brush all across the ground was wet with dew. It would take only moments for Coryn's moccasins to be soaked; her leggings felt damp and chill all the way up to her thighs, and she didn't relish the discomfort.

  Moss dangled limply from many of the low branches, and she did a double-take as she glimpsed one beardlike bloom-she could have sworn that someone was watching her from behind impenetrable whiskers. But it was only the natural vegetation, thick and cloaking on all sides. She listened carefully for a long time, but heard nothing that indicated any person, or any other kind of animal, moving through the woods. Even the birds had fallen silent, however, and that realization made her feel very much alone.

  Where were the birches, the open, grassy woodland? Coryn didn't remember the forest changing, but the transition was sudden, absolute. She looked behind, saw the birches and grassy terrain extending behind her as far as she could see. Should she go back and try another way? Could she even find her way back?

  The thought was a little unsettling. Even more unsettling, however, was the clear memory of crawling under that big, dead birch. She had just stood up, a moment earlier, after making that tight squeeze, but when she looked back, now, that deadfall was nowhere to be seen.

  The wood was changing before her very eyes. A shiver passed down her spine. She spun through a quick circle. She couldn't see any sign of danger-but all the same, this wood was darker, mo
re ancient than before. She stood upon a wide trail, but couldn't see as far as a few steps away, where the path vanished around the bole of a massive, gnarled oak. Hesitantly, and limping slightly, she walked around that huge, white-bark tree, and found that the path continued, wide and smooth, before her. Yet there were shadows on every side of the path, and she sensed that things lurked in the shadows. She heard a noise and ducked, looking behind her. But she saw nothing except the oppressive, cloaking forest.

  It was then that she noticed the birds; they were now crying strange sounds, raucous and strangely compelling. She sought to find the birds in the branches, but they remained just out of sight. A dark shadow flashed in the distance, and another whisked around the trunk of a knotty tree, but she couldn't be sure if they were mere shadows. Still, the sounds came so close, so clear, she expected to spot the feathered denizens around each bend of the path. Instead they seemed to flit ahead just enough to keep out of sight.

  The cries of the birds then took on a note of urgency, and as Coryn pushed herself along, she heard the cacophony ebb and flow together, forming a melody that was repeated over and over. She chuckled wryly, imagining she heard words in the birdsong. No doubt the solitude was getting to her!

  And then she froze, listening.

  "Come, girl of the white moon… Come, we will be there soon… Come through the woods… Come along the trail… Come with us… Come to your future, and your life."

  She found herself unafraid, walking again, though she wasn't aware of consciously moving her feet. It was more like the pathway was gliding beneath her, as she effortlessly progressed. The song was seductive, and she felt a sense of wondrous curiosity-she just had to see those birds.

  A bend in the trail, the pines and oaks parting with almost visible movement… and the vista opened to reveal a small clearing, and an astonishing sight: a lofty, double-spired structure. As she stepped forward, the birdsong ceased, and she advanced into the meadow with a sense of awe.