Xanthia glanced at the Well of Night but remained rooted where she stood. Pollis hid beneath the rim of the well. “You will go nowhere!” cackled Thaurim. He swung his sword, and for a moment the fiery red streak produced by the blade lit up the smooth, shiny wall glittering with lights: then it sliced through the wall, sending up a fountain of white light and thunder. The Well of Night went dark, then started flashing red, then turquoise, then gold, then grey then blue then violet. Steam vented out across the floor in thick clouds as the lights around the room began to blink and change color.
Metaea used the opportunity to retreat out of range of Thaurim’s sword. “Go, Xanthia! I will still find you!” she urged. Thaurim turned, growling, to Xanthia. His glare awoke her from her stupor, and she backed away from him toward the well. He swung his sword: she stumbled and fell upon the rim of the well. Under the cover of the clouds of steam filling the room, Pollis grimaced and took hold of Metaea’s staff where Arian had dropped it, and he swung it into Thaurim’s knees as hard as he could. Thaurim shouted out and flew headlong. Xanthia let out a scream and slipped into the well—to whatever destination it was open to when she fell. Clouds of steam eddied around the room. A burst like lightning arced harmlessly from one wall to the other.
Thaurim’s head and fire sword burst out of the vapors. “Where did you send her, witch?” he demanded.
“You will never find her,” Metaea answered. Her voice seemed to come from three places at once. “You have destabilized the well. She could be anywhere on the face of the earth…or in the middle of the sea, for all we know. The shard she carried is beyond you forever.”
“I will find it and her and you and I will kill you both!” Thaurim spat.
Metaea appeared on the rim of the Well of Night for a moment, its flashing scenes bathing her in one color after another at random. She dangled one of the shards of the Stone in her hand as though to tease Thaurim. “You will never find her or me,” she declared…and before he could scramble up onto the stony rim, she dropped into the well and vanished completely.
Thaurim let out a long, wordless stream of fury. He was answered only by his echo and a staticky discharge from one of the walls. He yelled again; then one more time for good measure. Pollis backed away as slowly and quietly as he could. Two of the shards were beyond Morin’s and Thaurim’s grasp forever: he had to get this third one away too.
Thaurim stopped yelling. From his panting, it seemed he was out of breath. Pollis continued to slink away from him…and it was at that fateful moment that his foot contacted the second shard Arian had been carrying.
He froze. Thaurim stopped breathing. Pollis stopped breathing.
A voice came from the panels of lights, Connection failing. Preparing to initiate repair cycle.
Thaurim’s face exploded out of the clouds screaming, his sword flaming through the vapors after him. Pollis rolled out of the way and collided with Arian’s clammy body. He touched blood. Thaurim saw the shard and picked it up, breaking out into hysterical laughter. Pollis swung Metaea’s staff at him through the fog. Thaurim gasped, clutching the shard, and fell sideways towards Pollis. Pollis scrambled away as Thaurim brought down his fire sword. He felt the fire spirits singe his arm hairs as he cleared its reach. Metaea’s staff caught fire as the sword hit the bottom of it. The fire was fast: evil spirits darted through it and directed it toward his hand. He flung it away from him and heard a shower of sparks as it hit the wall.
Thaurim slunk after him through the vapor and flashing darkness. “I’ll murder you, you elf-whelp,” Thaurim cursed, dragging himself across the floor. “I’ll murder you and then I’ll hunt down every last elf whelp in this world and I’ll murder them all!”
Pollis turned. He sensed the accelerating degradation of the Well of Night. The walls sparkled and arced lightning though the thick vapors. Most of the lights were blinking red, but one last light flickered green. Thaurim threw himself at the boy, and Pollis dove through into the night.
the wizard’s heir
I.i. hydris
T
he waves and the sky rolled, one above the other, mile after mile across the Raging Westward Sea. At August the seas were choppy and the whitecaps at high tide engulfed the reefs with their silvery spray and clawed the beaches with their perpetual flow. Down there, oysters with precious pearls, leathery rays and skates, and stinging eels like serpents built their houses in the sand and in the coral spires; and above, on the mainland of the isle, people did the same.
Two trader ships had arrived that day. The busy work of unpacking and repacking the ships in preparation for their return journeys had already begun. The weather was as fine as it ever could be, but it was dangerous, so late in the season. Tonight they would eat, drink, and be merry; then they would be gone on the bellowing tide.
One wave washed up against the shore and yielded up a small boy covered with ocean dews and sun-sparkles. He swam onto the shore, bare except a pair of shorts and a stringy necklace of corals and twigs and stones, drew a knife out of his belt, and quickly slit the head off of the sparkling silver fish struggling in his hand. On one side of him he swept the sand over the pearl eyes of the still-quivering head, while before him he washed the blood out of the fish’s body into the waves. Then without further ceremony he devoured the fish whole, leaving only scales and bones.
When he was done, he dove into the waves once again, washing the blood and the grime from his chest and mouth, and surfed back onto the shore. He climbed to his feet and ran up the beach beyond the tidal zone to a patch of soft, pristine sand, where he threw himself down belly-up to bask in the warmth of the beautiful sun.
Just as suddenly he was up again and running and skipping across the sand. He picked up a stone here or a piece of crab there, but never stopped or slackened his pace. Everything he picked up he tossed away a few moments later. He was about ten years old. He had brownish hair and bluish-green eyes. He was not too tall but was somewhat thin. He headed for the docks.
The merchants and longshoremen always hated having him underfoot playing with their cargo, so he slowed down to a walk and took the path along the foam to where the ships were unloading. The water here made him nervous. He moved like a wild cat. Heavy crates lay in the sand and sailors bustled everywhere, muttering under their breath and trying (it seemed) to pick quarrels with the docile longshoremen as they carried and unloaded their cargo. Here and there the rich trade captains could be seen on the ships or with the island merchants in grass huts on the beach. A few blond-haired, watchful sailors paced sternly along the rails of the ships high above, their shirtsleeves rolled back to reveal the kind of arms that could crush a cat without a second thought. The boy watched them carefully; glanced back at the trade captains on shore; glanced back at the watchmen. There was something disturbing there....
At that moment there was a crack of breaking wooden slats from the deck of the ship above. The boy ducked into the water with a muttered senseless phrase and disappeared completely. “What’s that?” called one of the sailors. A little girl in a ragged, heavy dress stumbled out of a broken crate and crawled toward the rail. She slipped through the rails as the sailors approached and splashed noisily into the sea right where the boy had disappeared. One of the merchants and several sailors turned toward the noise, but a sudden spray of the sea veiled the children in a magnificent halo rainbow, and when it had settled, there was nothing to be seen.
The boy dragged the ragged girl ashore, soaked and shivering, far down the beach, out of sight of the docks. He held up a finger to her and slipped back into the sea. She shivered in the heavy sea-chill and waited, numbly. Her skin was bluish. She was about the same age as he, or perhaps a year or two older, by her appearance. She had very pale, almost inhumanly blonde hair and long ears and she was very tall—not much short of six feet. She was half-starved.
When the boy appeared again it was not from the sea, but from behind her, and he was carrying two cloaks and a towel. He sat down in front of h
er and offered them to her, saying, “Neschaf-handaf teh ce-hegras’a.”
“What?” she asked. But, getting his meaning, she added a “thanks” and took them. He smiled slightly and she sat huddled with the dry clothes. “Don’t look,” she said, and he turned around and gazed at the mirror sea while she changed and dried.
“What’s your name?” she asked while she changed.
“Alik,” he said.
“Don’t look yet,” she said. “How old are you?”
“Kav,” he said.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Kau...av,” he said, waving his hand as though to say, “forget it.”
“I’m twelve years old,” she said. “Thanks for helping me, Alik. You can look now.”
He turned and looked at her appreciatively for a second and then looked down. The sun sparkled on a blue crystal shard woven into his necklace among the corals and lobster legs and other finds. “That’s a pretty necklace,” she said. “Did you make it?” It swelled and bobbed and fell upon his breast with every breath and heartbeat. He got up suddenly and began to leave but stopped. She got up after him, trying quickly to flatten down her hair and feeling a little faint, and jogged up to his side. “Who are you?” she asked. “Where are we? The island?”
He nodded at that and murmured, “dolkif.” He turned to her and said, “Teh mis-sa?”
She paused, unsure. He pointed at himself and said, “ce-sa Alik.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’m Saria. I’m from the north. Tryphallia.”
Even further, he thought. Unconsciously he touched her ear.
She recoiled a bit. “You are strange,” she remarked. She changed the subject. “Do you...um, have anything to eat?” She made a motion like eating which he didn’t seem very pleased at.
He picked up the extra cloak, threw it over his head, poked his head and arms through and tucked in his necklace, and said to her, “Keaeya, Saria,” and ran away down the beach.
“Hey!” she shouted, and ran after him. She could not keep up, though, because she was so weak, and she collapsed in the sand. “Ahg!” she hissed. She saw something slithering into the sand and then for a moment everything was swimming in water.
Alik stopped and glanced behind him, and resignedly sat down, cross-legged, in the sand, facing Saria.
To her, the sand was like snow, and the sun only glared from it without heat. The hooves of a war-horse pounded through the slosh, sending up ice and mud over her covered head. She had to get up, now. She did, gracefully and as though waking from the most refreshing sleep. Somehow she reached him.
“Get up, boy,” she said.
“Teh sa dol-Tryphallian,” said Alik, getting up.
“Why don’t you speak normal speak?” Saria demanded.
“Nish-sha,” he replied.
“You are rude,” she snapped.
He circled to her other side and she followed him, but all he said was, “Keaeya auo dol.” Then he took her by both hands and swung her around him (nearly to the ground) and took off up the slope of the beach toward the city.
From the docks a short, wiry trader (by his appearance) in a dull, dark brown cloak watched the two children circling and running and playing across the beach. He squinted in the sun, tightened his cuffs, and headed down the gangplank past the stream of crates. They disappeared in the brightness of the day. Was it his luck, he wondered, to have found the shard so quickly? Finally, a break—in the last hour. He would find them again, he had no doubts. They had gone into the city. It was an island.
“Stowaways? Stowaways!” someone shouted nearby. He turned smoothly and observed a fat trader with an ostrich hat shouting at the longshoremen over a broken crate. “I’ll not have it, I tell you! You guards are supposed to be responsible for stowaways! Where are they? Hmm?” The longshoremen and the guards did not know. The trader—he was a Ferrian, by the look of him—threw up his hands and left them with a choice threat. The longshoremen shrugged at each other and went back to work.
The man in the dull, dark brown cloak wandered over to the crate and peered inside. Cloaks and tunics from Tryphallia, boots from East Tryphallia or Yllan. One hollowed-out spot with a few crumbs and some tatters of soiled fur. The lid of the crate had evidently been forced from within, apparently at some length, for the boards looked as though they had been chewed to shreds around the nails. He strode down the gangplank and went down the beach towards where he had seen the children come from. It took him much longer than he had thought it should. It was too far for anyone to swim without coming up for air. But then again, that fit. Then there were the footprints. At last he reached them. The footprints of the girl were long and light and had a way of swimming in the sand as though to gain the greatest forward momentum with every step. He had never seen anything like that, man, dwarf, elf, goblin, or beast. He turned his attention to the waterfront, where the sudden rainbow flash had distracted him earlier.
As for the fat trader, for all his bluster he would be none the worse off for this, if he lived. The island was without tariff and conducted its trade by contract, for which its deposit was the nominal cost of the voyage one way and the award of the return contract. These return contracts were usually quite valuable, as the spices, seafood, pearls, tropical corals, and exotic fruits exported by the island always received a good price. In return, the linens and foodstuffs the island depended on for its wellbeing were easy to procure and inexpensive. There were, moreover, very often rich nobles willing to underwrite costs for the voyage and the goods in exchange for one of the most pleasuresome vacations that could be had throughout the world. So the traders thrived, the islanders were fed and clothed almost for nothing, and peace and all its concomitant blessings flourished there perennially.
In fact, the traders not only thrived, but were lionized while they were on the island, and they loved to play the part. The highest officials threw for them extravagant seaside dinners nightly, and the best and brightest poets, artists, artisans, bards, and musicians of the island (and there were many of these) and even a few rich old expatriates from the mainland appeared at these dinners, both to entertain the traders and vacationers and to promote the success of their art on the mainland. In this way the traders served the dual function of artists’ agents, and actually brought with them one or two skilled critics or artists to this end.
All this served both to ensure the economic and cultural welfare of the island, but also to protect it from outside aggression. For the traders to whom they awarded their contracts were the most powerful merchants and entrepreneurs from throughout Tryphallia and the Anthirian nations. The island trade had made them so. They were well aware that the peaceful independence of the island was key to the continued enlargement of their fortunes. This led to a lot of bribery and innumerable trade wars, the result of which was that the island had never been attacked, required a military force no greater than eight swordsmen, purely for policing, and had survived and flourished with the same government and laws as it had always had since the day of its foundation.
It had been founded—so the story goes—by a group of nine men and women fleeing Anthirion during Morin I’s Second Stone War in the 655th year of the twelfth age: two hundred forty-four years before. The leader of the group was a visionary called Pollis (but this may have been a title rather than a name), of whom it was said only that he was able to pierce to the heart of every matter unfailingly and that the sea always favored him. For such an important figure of history to be so little known could only be explained by his sudden disappearance, along with all his family and possessions, after he had ruled the island for only eight years.
There were eight laws: obey your superiors; preserve the best interests of your inferiors; show charity to all people; show charity to yourself; be courteous to outsiders; all value is owned by the state; superiors are to be elected by a council of those immediately superior to them, in the absence of whom they must be elected by a council of their peers; if at any time people of a
n inferior degree believe their superiors to be acting counter to the best interest of all people, the matter must be decided by a general election, in which superiors may not attempt to exert any authority and in which the tally is to be supervised by a representative of the plaintiff and a representative of the state. The government was hierarchical, and might have been described as an oligarchy of the people. Every official of the state was supervisor and counselor for eight people of the rank immediately below his or her own, and that official conducted all transactions between those people as well. If people from different groups wished to conduct transactions, it was done through their superiors’ superiors—a condition that resulted in most transactions on the island being performed on credit. For the most part, superiors were interested only in promoting the charity and well-being of those below them, who were usually neighbors, friends, and relatives. Whenever superiors had contrary interests, it was obvious enough to their inferiors and to their superiors. There was also a special committee for uncovering corruption, managed by the treasurer of the island council. Punishments were discretionary but usually consisted of demotion, terms of ban from office, and compensation—in extreme cases, of exile. Foreigners—mostly traders and vacationing nobles—also had to abide by these laws, and their superior (or guardian, to use the local term) was the port authority, a special officer of the highest rank.
Alik was a special case, being an orphan and a wild boy. His mother had died in carriage and his father had disappeared when he was four: just old enough to understand his father’s last words commanding him to go and hide and to keep safe with him the blue jewel that he still wore on his necklace, which Saria had noticed. The islanders knew he was there and would often give him something to eat or to wear when it was cold, but they did not know what to do about him when he ran away. One of the high councilors, Arran Delossan, a man with spectacles and silver-speckled black hair, had taken it upon himself to be Alik’s guardian. Alik made special pains to hide from this man.
The Wizard's Heir Page 2
