by John Daulton
Given his work over the past several weeks, he was able to teleport completely out of his solar system in just one cast, roughly four times the distance that Naotatica was from the sun. From there, however, it was back to work with the Liquefying Stone.
He took a seeing stone—both his crates freshly refilled with newly enchanted stones made during a recent trip back home and augmented with the new stasis spell, given what he’d learned from Naotatica about things tending to drift out here—and sent it far out into the night, aimed directly at his chosen star.
He didn’t even bother to check on it in the scrying basin, and instead he immediately picked up another seeing stone and sent it skipping off the first. He repeated the process eleven times, growing wearier with each successive cast, before finally looking into the scrying basin to see what he had done. Which turned out to be nothing. No change. No closer than before.
He knew it, of course, and there was no surprise, no disappointment. Just the establishment of fact. He was in for a long haul, and the early stages of this new pursuit were going to be about fathoming new extremes of distance. And so to that he set his mind.
Every day, Altin cast and cast his stones. Every day, for seven to ten hours, he would send seeing stones out into the night, aimed each time at his private, distant star. He cast until he was exhausted, throwing stones so far into the depths of space with each successive spell that by the end of the third week the stones were vanishing from his hands with an almost thunderous crack. After a day’s labor, for labor it was, he would collapse in his bed—if not onto the flagstones beneath his feet—following a last attempt and sleep for seven to ten hours. He’d eat, sometimes wash up, sometimes not, and begin again. And so it went for nearly a month and a half, a grueling display of discipline, Altin’s will only becoming more entrenched the longer that it took, an obdurate thing buried in resolve with roots deeper than a mountain’s and even less pliable. And still his star was no closer. After the month and a half, he’d actually spent two hours on his bed contemplating the nature of his own frailty, of his quest’s impossibility, but that moment quickly passed, and he was back to casting again. And so it went for yet another month. And then a month after that.
His occasional trips home—he’d taken to teleporting home every so often in person just to get his laundry done and get more seeing stones—yielded him a scolding from Kettle for his disheveled look. Pernie stared at him from shadowy corners on those occasions when he arrived, looking almost afraid. A glimpse in the mirror showed that he was indeed a frightful sight, but such things were not in his realm of concern. He had a goal and he would get there if it killed him. No matter what. And to hell with the history of the Six.
At times he was delirious after days of casting endlessly in a row. He knew he was walking on the edge, and he caught himself on two occasions mumbling over the scrying basin with nothing conjured in the water at all. He shook himself to sense both times and put himself to bed. He had an endless headache now as well, had had it for at least six weeks in a row. And he noticed that he didn’t smell the same. He caught whiffs of his own scent sometimes and realized that something in his body odor had changed, had turned more acrid, more acidic somehow. And his robes hung off of him like rags. But he did not care. He would go on, would continue to press his limits every day, press the Liquefying Stone. And he was having success when it came to that. The distance of his teleports became something too vast to be explained, even to himself, space so incomprehensible he had no way to describe it symbolically. He simply called each cast a “stone’s throw” and sufficed himself with that.
Somewhere just past his third month out—time was really something of a blur—was when he first encountered movement in the eternal dark of night. He’d just finished a string of six successive casts and was sitting on his stool catching his breath and having a bit of cheese when he saw it. He had to squint to be sure that he’d seen what he thought he saw, but sure enough, against the star-spotted curtain of sky there was a spot of total black, round and looking as if he’d caught a portion of space in a yawn. The yawn continued to widen, however, and it wasn’t long before Altin realized that the dark spot was moving. Very soon it was looming up at him blotting out a good portion of the night, as much as would a fist held out at arm’s length against the sky. It seemed to stop then, and just hovered quietly beyond the tower for a while.
Once more Altin felt himself cursing the unknowable distances of space. He couldn’t be sure if the dark spot was huge, like Naotatica, and still very far away, or if it was relatively small and right outside the shield. He took a torch from the sconce by the stairs and walked it over to the parapet, holding it out as far as he could reach. Its paltry flickering flames did nothing to illuminate the black ball dangling in the night.
Altin squinted up at it again and shook his head. It began to move again, or to swell, he really couldn’t tell which, and he got an uncomfortable sense of vertigo as it grew considerably bigger and drifted to the side. He wondered if his stasis spell had failed and maybe it was him doing the moving all the while. He quickly mumbled the words that would put his mind inside the Polar’s shield. No, the stasis spell was working as it should.
“Hmm,” he muttered aloud. “Well, at least I’m not alone. Unless it’s just an empty rock.” He had to admit that movement did not necessarily mean life. Nothing else since leaving Prosperion had. There was no reason to believe that this spot would offer anything new. In fact, it was his experience that most of the round things out here possessed no life at all, Prosperion being the sole exception to the rule. However, this object did not seem to move randomly or by chance.
He didn’t have much time to ruminate on it, however, for the black spot suddenly began to grow again, and the next thing he knew his tower shuddered as if an earthquake had struck.
“Nine hells!” he cried, staggering against the wall with the violence of the attack. The tower stopped shaking almost immediately, allowing him to regain his balance and to curse again. “Manticore’s milk, what did I do to deserve that?”
He cast his eyes around him seeking out the dark spot against the sky. He plunged the torch into the scrying basin to aid his vision; the light had made it difficult to see very far into the darkness. There it was, off to his right and slightly above. It was small again, not much bigger than a walnut from Altin’s point of view, and still shrinking. But it stopped a moment later, and once more began to grow. Altin, considered by most who knew him to be a quick thinker, stood transfixed. He was out of his element here.
Again the spot became huge and swept past his tower, once more battering the Polar’s shield with an incredible, stone-rattling blow that this time knocked Altin to the floor.
“For the love of Mercy,” Altin muttered as he scrambled to his feet. He wasn’t sure which would fall apart first, the Polar’s shield or his tower, but either way, he couldn’t just stand there any longer and let that thing beat upon him like it was, or his adventure through space was going to come quickly to an end.
He looked out at the spot again, once more diminishing in size as it passed him by. It stopped, and then headed back. He knew that he didn’t have time to cast a full teleport and for a moment considered using the amulet he had made. But that would be akin to him having run away. He wasn’t about to do that.
And just what was this gods-be-damned thing anyway? And why was it attacking him? In fact, how dare it attack him! He’d done nothing to deserve this offense. Only orcs attacked without provocation, not civilized beings like men or even elves. This was an affront to his honor, and he would not be put to flight.
However, the words of the stasis spell came back to him now: Applied physical force can, and will, destroy the object if said force is too great. Altin suspected he’d found the kind of force the spell was talking about, if not of any origin that the creator had had in mind.
With a word he released the stasis spell, granting the tower at least the luxury of absorbing the blow in the same manner
that a warrior might roll with a punch or fall away from a truncheon blow. That done, he plunged his mind inside the shield to see how it was holding up. The strands of mana with which it was woven were indeed beginning to vibrate as the energy of the two great impacts struck them like strings upon a lute, but for now it seemed as if they were holding remarkably well. He just needed time to go down and run through his book of combat spells to see what he could use. He was going to put this black spot in its place.
He was halfway down the stairs when the next impact sent him tumbling the rest of the way into his room. He rolled into his bedchamber in time to see the bookshelf empty itself onto the floor.
“Damn it,” he spat as he scrambled to his feet.
The candle rolled off the table and fell onto the rug upon which the table sat.
Altin ran over and stomped out the small fire that ignited on the rug and put the candle back in its holder, mashing it firmly into place. He then ran to the pile of books lying near his bed, tossing tomes aside and looking for his book of combat spells. Finally he found the one he needed and flipped it right side round so he could have a look.
He leafed through it hastily, not even sure what he was looking for, when he came across an old familiar spell called “Luminous Aura.” Perfect he thought; that would help him see the dark ball better against the night. He scoured the spell rapidly, and memorized it with little trouble at all. Such was the beauty of the Military Book of Spells, everything in it was designed for combat efficiency, and it did not hurt that Altin, as a mage in service of the Queen, had been forced to read them nearly every day for the duration of his two-year stint. The incantation came easily back to mind.
But he needed more than just a way to see it. He flipped through some more, looking for something else. The tower shuddered as another impact shook it to its ivy-covered base. He ignored the impact and continued paging through until he found a spell called “Combat Hop,” a quick reflexive teleport spell meant to, in essence, “blink” combatants out from beneath descending blows. He thought he might be able to add it to the Polar’s shield. It would be fantastic if he could make it work, but he still needed something else. The tower shuddered again, and a light rain of dust and grit fell onto the pages of his book.
He blew the grit away and paged past the fire spells; no need to read them, he would never forget those after the drilling he got with them in the service. He stopped briefly in the section on electrical spells. He wasn’t sure if he could conjure lightning out here, but there was a simple version that wouldn’t hurt to try. It was a short spell with a single word release. It only took him a moment to get it in his head. He realized when he was done, however, that it required that he touch the target to release the spell. Rushing was causing him to make stupid mistakes and to waste valuable time.
The tower shook again, violent but not as bad as the last. More dust came down and settled on the page. It was like having orcish trebuchets launching boulders as big as wagons against his shield; the raw insult of it was really beginning to stir him to a fury, particularly as he’d done nothing to deserve this unwarranted attack. The candle rolled off the table in the middle of the room again.
He rose and replaced it in its holder once more, and then leafed quickly through the rest of his combat book; there wasn’t much else in it that he didn’t already know by heart. He’d have to make do with what he knew. Besides, the volume of dust falling from the ceiling suggested he didn’t have time to continue looking for a better set of spells.
Back on the battlements, back in the total darkness of the night, he spun round until he spotted the black spot way off to the left and somewhat down below, although it was circling the tower in an odd and oblong way. But, despite the new looping-round tactic, it was growing larger again, returning for another pass. He would not have time to cast the Combat Hop, but the Luminous Aura was an easy thing to do. So, as the spot came on at its incredible pace, he muttered the words and cast the glowing aura upon its charging mass. As soon as the spell took effect, Altin could see it much more clearly as it moved.
It turned out to be a large brown ball of rather rough looking material that reminded him of a coconut without the hair, organic looking and perhaps no tougher than a block of wood. As it rushed in, he saw it open up a portion of its surface and emit a long chunk of something that was obviously very hard given the mighty blow that it struck upon the Polar’s shield a moment after the release. The tower was rocked to its foundations again, and Altin watched as the coconut chased down its projectile and reclaimed it into itself, presumably to be used for yet another pass.
“So that’s how it works,” Altin said aloud. “Well, we’ll just see about that.” He planted his feet firmly beneath him and waited for the next attack, easily tracking the coconut now thanks to the Luminous Aura spell—and despite the very unnerving round and round flight pattern that the spot was using now. In fact, as the spot moved farther away, it became harder and harder to see, and by the time it was small enough to be considered walnut-sized again, the circular movements were taking it completely out of view. It was as if it were orbiting his tower around the vertical axis for some inexplicable reason.
That’s when it occurred to Altin that he’d released the stasis spell.
“Of course!” he cried, and quickly muttered the word that would fix the tower back in place. Immediately after, the coconut no longer seemed to whirl about the tower, although it was now out of Altin’s view. He felt the next impact as it struck the stone at the base of Altin’s tower. He suddenly wondered if he’d cut deep enough into the granite at Mt. Pernolde’s base to hold off such a monstrous blow. His foundation was either going to be a strength or weakness here, and he was now in the unfortunate position of having to find out which would be the case. It was not a pleasant thought.
“All right, these harpoon things need to stop,” he said as he watched the coconut nearly disappear above him against the stars. He began the chant that would add the Combat Hop to his shield, hoping he had time to get it off. He met with an ambiguity that made his incantation flounder in his mouth. He had to release the spell midway through, which filled his head with a burst of light, and nearly knocked him to the floor. Incomplete magic was a dangerous and painful thing.
The problem was, casting the spell required he specify from what, precisely, the tower was supposed to hop away. Apparently, he did not “precisely” know what the spot was throwing at him. He tried again, this time struggling to define the object in terms that would activate the spell. Meanwhile, the giant coconut got off another shot.
This impact did knock him to the floor and the disruption of the magic once again blasted his mind with an explosive burst of light, blinding him for a moment and leaving him gasping on the floor. The aggressive brown ball hit the tower twice more before Altin was able to raise himself from the flagstones, and when he did, he could smell smoke coming from down below. He guessed that the candle had fallen to the floor again, and he cursed himself for having twice put it back in the same unstable spot.
He glanced up and saw the coconut coming back for another shot. His hand went reflexively to the amulet around his neck. He could just run away; his room was on fire, and this thing was beating his tower to death.
But he couldn’t do it. He would rather die.
He stood up, nearly passing out with the effort and stared defiantly as the brown ball came on. He braced his hands against the wall and waited for the impact to shake him to the ground, staring intensely at the spot and intent on watching its missile every instant that he could. It came, he watched, and then he was knocked to his knees despite his grip on the parapet. But then he rose, immediately, and began to cast the Combat Hop again. He knew enough to get it done now; he’d watched it very close. He closed his eyes and drew the mana to him, gathering it round into a ball of his own, then rupturing it into a thousand tiny threads that snaked out like rays emitted from an invisible star, each one a potential path for the tower to take.
Some went far, perhaps a half a measure, others only forty paces or so. Most were somewhere in between. And then he locked the spell on the idea of what he’d watched just pound into his tower, on the idea of a long, stony-looking shaft emitted from a large and charging ball flying through the night. Once that was done, he cast the center of the magic’s core, the essence of the spell from which all potential hops were born, into the Polar’s shield, watching it as the mana permeated the energies encapsulating his tower and mingled with the threads of the stasis spell. He hoped his impression of the spot’s weapon was good enough to work.
With the spell in place, he let the mana go just in time to brace as the coconut was letting lose its shaft again. He grabbed the wall and prepared to take another hit. But then the stony harpoon was gone, as if it had vanished in the night. Altin let out a whoop of glee. Combat Hop had worked. And just in the nick of time. He spun and watched as the coconut chased its weapon down. He allowed himself a smile.
The Combat Hop spell was a bit disorienting at first. Every time the coconut came at him and released its brutal battering ram, the tower leapt away, sliding randomly and instantly down one of Altin’s enchanted mana threads. After each pass, he had to search out where the coconut had gone again, as it could be literally anywhere in relationship to his new locale. But that was a small price to pay. The coconut could no longer beat upon his shield.
He cursed at it as it came in for yet another pass, and made a rude gesture with his fist. But Combat Hop had bought him time. Time to go put out the fire before it got too big in his bedroom down below.
He ran downstairs and saw that his rug was engulfed in knee-high flames, and the legs of his table were now beginning to burn as well. I’m sure hard on furniture, he thought as he tried to conjure a small cloud of rain. It was a simple version of the spell he’d used several months back when the ivy had caught fire, but, small as he tried to make it, it didn’t do the job. It wasn’t a total failure; he got a bit of rain puttering from wisps of clouds that were more mist than cumulus and that tried to form near the ceiling of his room. But what came was such an abysmally small amount of water that it hardly reduced the flames at all. He should have known. There wasn’t enough moisture in the air beneath his relatively tiny dome to conjure a storm of any size. He recast the spell, channeling directly at his scrying basin and the pitcher on his dresser across the room. This time it worked, and at once the fire was put out, filling his room with steam and whorls of stinking yellow smoke. The rug was wolf pelt and the smell of burnt hair was going to be in everything for a while. He fought back a gag and went upstairs.
