the wizard’s heir
j. a. v. henderson
©2013 j.a.v.henderson
0.i. the wizard
T
he dark was setting quickly into the snow-swept vale beneath the peaks as the little sentinel shuffled in the cold. Owls were watching silently from the dark forms of the pines, but the magic of the universe was all astir. Someone was coming. Some thing was coming.
The boy sentinel squinted his eyes and searched through the trees. At last: there he was, the lecevea. A snowflake fell on the tip of the boy’s nose and he brushed it off. He rapped on the door.
He was expecting Cercil or one of the other children to answer, but Kirion himself swung open the door. With the candlelight flickering behind him the old wizard had the appearance of a dried branch enwrapt by a peaking cloak. He did not speak.
“Master Morin, Master,” the boy reported. “With Master Thaurim, Master Tryphon…and a goblin captain.”
Kirion the wizard raised his head slightly, and his lips parted as though he had not the strength to raise also the lower one. His breath trailed like smoke in the frosty air. He set one thin hand on the boy’s shoulder as he swung the door back shut, and the touch was at once a reassurance and a command: stay here, no matter what.
He trembled in the cold and stomped his feet. He did not have long to wait, for Morin and his company were already crossing the bridge over the frozen stream. A rush went through the boy, and he felt more than he heard the words being uttered from above, Hyosse diaezavai’ia. The ice of the river burst to life and splashed over the goblin commander alone, freezing its hands together and encasing its feet in a thick slab.
The goblin cursed something dire-sounding and smashed its hands against the railing of the bridge. The ice cracked but re-formed at once. The goblin stared at its hands for a moment in shock, then started to beat them against the railing again, only to be stopped by Morin. Morin touched the goblin, shook his head, and bade him wait there. The goblin looked as though it would have liked to kill, but it obeyed without a word. Then the wizards advanced alone.
“Master Morin, Master Thaurim, Master Tryphon,” the boy hailed the wizards as they arrived, bowing so that the snow sifted off of his hood.
Morin halted directly before the boy to wait as Tryphon opened the door before him, but he did not so much as glance at the boy. He strode through the door with Tryphon behind him and Thaurim flashing the boy an evil glare before he shut the door behind him.
Master Kirion’s voice came from within, “Why have you returned here with goblin arms and a turbulent heart, my old friend?”
“I have come for the ultimate knowledge,” Master Morin’s voice responded. “I have come to fulfill the work of our lives, and to do what you in your placid hearts will not do.”
“My old friend, the world is not your science experiment, nor are you its god. The power sitting there is beyond your understanding and mine. It consumes energy and spirit. It grows more and more powerful. It has gone beyond us. Stop and consider.”
“I have not come to discuss theology with you, Kirion.” With that, the boy heard a ring of steel like the drawing of swords. He gasped, wide-eyed. Carefully, so as to make no sound, he cracked open the door.
“What have you created, my old friend?” came Master Kirion’s voice through the door.
“Don’t be so shocked, Kirion. You yourself just said it could draw in spirits. Here is the validation of your hypothesis. Here, captured in steel, are the souls of three dragonlings.”
“You cannot!”
“Not all of your counsel subscribe to your archaic and irrational code of morals. Stand out of the way now or join me, all you who would live for progress: Cathrandion? Adaria? Jendaon? Arian? Xanthia?”
The boy slipped into the anteroom and saw all the masters gathered facing Masters Morin and Thaurim and Tryphon. Morin held a long, black sword around which the air trembled, growling and crackling, and on either side of him were his two followers, also bearing glowing black swords. Kirion stood above on the stairs leading up to the tower—to the Stone.
The captain of the wizards strode forward—Cathrandion, he was called. “Master Morin—Thaurim—Tryphon: now is not the time for violence, but for increased understanding and cooperation. Let us all lower our weapons and….”
“This is not the time!” Morin broke in. “This is the time for the exultation of the power of the Stone!”
Kirion’s apprentice, Arian, stepped forward, drawing a sword. “If ‘tis between the honor of life and the exultation of your creation, you will need to go through us,” he said. Captain Master Cathrandion and the other masters—Adaria, Jendaon, and Xanthia—also drew their weapons.
Morin did not answer but only grunted contemptuously and swung back his sword. The boy gasped at the realization that this was really happening, but there was nothing he could do. Beside Morin, Thaurim wielded his own sword, sending a flash of fire out from the blade that seemed to growl as it burned through the air.
Arian leapt towards Morin, coming between him and Tryphon. Morin swung his blade to parry the attack, and his sword let out a gurgling scream as it met with the other. Arian’s sword tangled up in an unseen mesh of claws and jerked back, nearly out of his hands. He threw his off-balanced body into Morin’s, rolled free of him, and yanked his sword away. The blade snapped along a deep gash in the metal, the tip somersaulting towards the door. Morin laughed.
At the same time, Cathrandion and Adaria came at Tryphon. Tryphon leered at them, his sword mildly humming behind him. As they attacked, Tryphon’s sword swung in an arc toward them both, whistling through the air and melting through both the swords of its assailants. Tryphon lashed out at Adaria with his foot, taking her down and jabbing the sword through her heart.
The young boy watched in horror. The silvery red hair of the mistress streamed out from her like blood. Fragments of sword glittered mutely across the tiles. Fire flashed through the air and the roar of a sword burned into a wailing body: Jendaon, the husband of Adaria. “Jendaon, no! Cathrandion! Xanthia! Arian!” a voice was crying out. The boy knew it to be the voice of his master, Master Kirion.
The remaining wizards, excepting Arian, who was cut off, retreated up the stairs, unable to match the wicked blades of Morin and his lieges. Tryphon turned to Arian, but Morin ordered him, “Leave him: who is he?” Tryphon seemed ready to object, so Morin repeated, “Leave him now!” Thaurim marched up the stairs, clearing the way before him with slashes of fire from his burning sword. Morin followed with Tryphon behind, reluctantly eyeing the disarmed wizard behind him with hatred.
Arian paced restlessly as the enemies climbed the stairs, pushing Kirion and the remaining wizards inexorably backwards. As soon as they disappeared around the turn of the staircase, he cursed, throwing the broken hilt of his sword across the room, and collapsed to his knees.
“Master Arian!” cried the boy, coming out of hiding.
Arian looked up. “Pollis!” he cried. “What are you doing here?”
“We have to hurry, Master: the well! Is Mistress Metaea still there?”
“The well!” exclaimed Arian. Without another word he grabbed the boy’s hand and ran for the door leading down to the tower crypt.
The stairs leading downward were steep and narrow so that one could reach out and touch the stair in front of one’s face. The light was bluish. By the time they reached the crypt, it had faded to greenish. Thousands of lights filled all the walls, which were smooth, almost glassy, and winding like a little maze. Mistress Metaea sat besides the Well of Night, a smooth, perfectly circular embankment in the middle of the chamber filled with what appeared at first glance to be a hazy sheet of black water. Her eyes were closed—not restfully, but
with the twitching of some evil dream. She opened her eyes immediately as they entered the room.
“Mistress, Master Morin has come to take the Stone!” Pollis exclaimed.
“He has gained the tower,” Arian added. “Adaria and Jendaon have died.”
“You must take the Stone and leave,” Metaea declared. Then, almost in another voice, she declared, “It should be opening to the tower room.”
Arian stalked toward the rim of the Well of Night, Pollis still firmly in his hand. Where the water had been sheer blackness before, there now appeared light: and at the bottom of it, where there had been no bottom before, there now was the tile floor of the tower room.
But it was too late.
The tower room was in chaos. Streams of power smashed back and forth from wall to wall, rocking the tower. The Stone swayed back and forth in the middle of the room, floating above its pedestal as though it were the object of a tug-of-war. Two bodies lay upon the floor, but Pollis could not tell whose they were immediately, they were so badly disfigured. He saw Kirion on one side straining with the power of the Stone as though it would engulf him or tear him apart, and on the other side Morin, struggling against him. A wave of burning red fire swept towards Kirion, then a cyclone of water tore back across the room through it. A volley of stones hurtled out from Morin, only to morph into stone eagles and veer back toward him. The weight of magic dragged Pollis downward until he was nearly touching the well.
Arian grasped Pollis by the shoulder and forcibly turned his head towards him. “Pollis,” he spoke, slowly and firmly, “command the Stone to come to you. Then we will retrieve you. You have to go: I will lower you down, then pull you back. You must retrieve the Stone. Do you understand?”
Frightened, he nodded quickly. Arian helped him up onto the rim of the well while Metaea tied her belt onto his to form a safety line. Arian grasped his hand firmly, and then he jumped.
Cold heat swept through his body. His mind went blank for an instant—it seemed like an eternity—and when it came back, the words to summon the Stone to come had evaporated from his tongue. All he could feel or understand was the growing, gorging power consuming the room with its cold glory. Around him, the flashing magic and surging of fire and ice had given way to something huge, something deadly, something so massive that the whole room seemed to press in not only on the body but also on the soul. The stone walls of the tower bent inwards; all of the wizards were straining or passed out; the air shimmered as though taking shape. It took all the energy the boy could muster just to make his lips move to command the Stone the only thing he could think: “It is departing.”
The lines of space and time and energy bent, crossed, tangled, and broke through, releasing all their power at once. The room turned black, and for a moment every part within it touched every other part.
Pollis crashed to the floor amidst a wave of energy brighter than the sun. He felt heat, burning, searing, and desperately called out for water to come. In the midst of the furnace something like glass clinked together against him, cooling, soothing, drowning.
Out of the holocaust there came a voice—Kirion’s—a word meaning something like “saving.” Opposite it returned Morin’s voice, “What have you done, Kirion?”
Kirion shouted back weakly, “This is the kind of power you have brought about, Morin: destruction!”
Then came Morin’s exclamation: “The Stone!”
As the fire faded, he could see the room in wreckage. All of the masters were strewn like play-dolls. Kirion had staggered to his knees. Morin was on all fours opposite him. The pedestal upon which the Stone had once rested was pulverized: only sand and bits of gravel remained of it, blown all around the room. The walls were groaning. The blocks from which they were hewn were cracked, some of them missing, all of them corroded.
Morin crawled towards the pile of sand and gravel in the middle of the room. “The Stone…the Stone…,” he murmured. Pollis saw broken crystals scattered about the center of the room: the shards of the Stone, he suddenly realized. He sensed the eerie presence he always associated with the Stone scattered about the room, the closest coming from right below his elbow. He looked and saw a bluish crystal glowing next to him. He quickly closed his hand over it and felt a terrifying surge of power through himself. Strange scenes flashed through his mind: an island, storms at sea, an overturned water barrel, a dragon. He shook himself and stashed the broken shard in his breast pocket. He saw one of the other wizards, Mistress Xanthia, rouse to consciousness nearby to find a greenish-glowing crystal pulsating on the floor before her nose. Confusedly, she reached out and took it.
Morin reached out for the shard nearest him, but as he did, it slid away from him. He grabbed at it, only to watch it slide away again and fly into Kirion’s hand. “Kirion,” he shouted, “you have destroyed my work; you have vilified my name; you have ruined the glory of the world. Now you will pay.” He rasped the next word almost under his breath, and a fountain of flames erupted out of one of the shards of the Stone to devour Kirion.
“Shielding!” commanded Kirion reflexively, dodging out of the way of the flames. The gravel remains of the Stone’s pedestal flew up into the air to create a thin earthen shell between him and the fire, but it was too little and too thin: the fire enveloped it, burst through it, and flooded past it. The shell shattered against the floor in a million glassy fragments and the fire washed over Kirion—but just as it did, a fountain of snow erupted through the gaps in the broken tower walls. Kirion looked up out of the snow to see the source of his rescue. The tower walls groaned.
Morin also looked for the source of the snow avalanche, and his eyes came upon Pollis. He heard a stirring beside him. “Tryphon, kill that miserable elf boy.”
“With pleasure,” Tryphon replied, standing and wielding his sword.
“He has a piece of the Stone,” Morin cautioned him.
Tryphon snorted. “What does he know of transcendental physics?”
The world bowed with the familiar, dizzy feeling of rifting. Pollis felt a wave of nausea and looked up. One moment nothing: Tryphon swung his demon sword, screaming like a tidal wave of evil intent toward Pollis: then Arian was there, a rope tied about his waste, and he swung Mistress Metaea’s staff headlong into Tryphon. “Tryphon, you will rue the day you committed your soul to blood and power!” he shouted. “Pollis, follow the rope!”
Thaurim growled and loped toward the young wizard. “Master Arian, look out!” cried the boy. But as he did so, Mistress Xanthia tripped up Thaurim. He sprawled out face-forwards. Arian turned, but his opportunity to finish off that depraved man was cut short: Tryphon lunged at him from behind, wielding his possessed sword once more. A wave of water with claws and teeth exuded from the cutting edge of the sword. Arian turned and raised Metaea’s staff in defense, knowing it could not survive the sword. “Super-freezing!” whispered Pollis. Tryphon gazed at him, stunned, but it was too late. The sword froze white as death and cracked in two upon the sturdy oaken staff in Arian’s hands. Arian whipped the staff around, contacting it against Tryphon’s ear with a reverberating bang. Tryphon stood for a moment paralyzed, eyes glazing…and then he fell.
“Arian!” cried out Kirion, “Take the shards of the Stone to the ends of the earth! Take them away from here and let them vanish forever!”
“Take them if you dare,” growled Morin.
Morin and Arian shouted out the spell of summoning at the same time. One shard shot to Morin’s hand, one to Arian’s. Kirion, who had reached the middle of the room, bent and lifted the last shard of the Stone, a clear, bright, pyramidical-shaped fragment. Thaurim grasped his sword and charged Arian, but Kirion held up the last shard and commanded, “He is fearing.” At the same time Arian whispered something to his own shard, the effect of which blew Thaurim and his sword all the way across the room and against the wall.
The wind smote the walls of the tower room, pushing the weakened structure with its powerful hands. “Pollis, go!” shouted Arian. Poll
is, aroused from fascination, grasped the rope tied around Arian’s waste and followed it hand over hand to where it disappeared in mid-air. A bat darted through the crumbling tower walls and clawed at his shard, but he flung it away. He put his hand out before him and saw it disappear; then he felt a clammy chill, a wave of nausea, and a force like a vortex sucking him in.
A hand reached out to him in the darkness. He took it. Slowly, the lights, the shapes, the stones of the crypt reappeared around him. Mistress Metaea, who was holding his hand, drew him up out of the Well of Night. He was dry.
“We lost our connection to you before,” she said in her honey-toned, grandmotherly voice. “Something interfered with the shape of space. It took a few tries before we could reconnect to you and send Arian.”
“The Stone was broken,” Pollis told her, showing her his shard. He looked around expectantly for Arian to come out of the well, but he did not. Then suddenly the rope descending into the well tautened, and Mistress Xanthia climbed out, scratched all over and bleeding.
“Xanthia!” Metaea exclaimed. “Are you all right?”
“We have got to leave,” Mistress Xanthia replied. She held in her hand the green glowing shard she had picked up.
“Are you all right?” Metaea asked a second time.
Xanthia nodded, looking herself over. There was a look of panic in her eyes…no, not panic, but wildness, seediness, possession.
Metaea put her hand on Xanthia’s shoulder, but at that moment Arian crashed through the Well of Night, wrapped together with Thaurim.
They landed on the stone floor senseless. Two shards skittered out of Arian’s limp hand, sliding across the floor in the flickering lights. The lights around the room were suddenly ominous. Thaurim raised his eyes out of the tangled mess, focusing instantly on Metaea. She met his leer with a sigh and a deadly stern glare. Thaurim lunged for her. She easily avoided his sword, seeming to not to move more than a step but outdistancing his ten. The lights in the room flashed and changed sequence as she said, “Go, Xanthia; I will come and find you later.”
The Wizard's Heir Page 1
