Mage Quest

To my surprise, he seemed to believe me. The living map of the eastern kingdoms, I realized, would not give him enough detail to be able to see for himself. I presumed he didn’t trust King Warin’s chancellor either and had therefore not questioned him closely about the jewelry worn by the visitors from Yurt. I spread out my own hand ostentatiously, to show my eagle ring set with a tiny diamond.

“It’s probably gone from the Wadi by now anyway,” he said regretfully. “When that servant left for Yurt, he took the ring with him, and I was-well, too weak to stop him or follow him. And I certainly have never liked the idea of wandering the western kingdoms, threatened by school-trained wizards. So I have waited a long time for someone from Yurt to come east, and have never even bothered going to the Wadi.”

“What was hidden there?”

My question came out much louder than I expected and hung in the air between us. The wizard half turned away, then smiled slowly. “Maybe I don’t trust you, either, Daimbert. If you want to know that, you’ll have to teach me much more of the magic of glass and steel.”

“Glass and steel?” I said cautiously.

“That’s what we call school magic here in the eastern kingdoms, your technical magic that can keep working even without an active mind saying the spells. Our magic is a magic of bone and blood.”

I had assumed that the wizards of the eastern kingdoms, without anything comparable to the organization of the wizards’ school in the west, would be hard-pressed to restrain warfare. Instead, it sounded as though war and death were their normal occupations.

“What did you give King Warin’s chancellor in return for the information that we were coming?”

“You have so many questions, Daimbert!” he said, showing his teeth again. “And you’ve given me no information at all yet. Before I tell you anything else, I want to know that spell of yours that allows western wizards to live well past two hundred.”

I considered this for a moment, keeping my eyes on my companion’s black satin suit because I didn’t want to look at his face. The powerful spell that would slow down-though never reverse-natural aging was not taught until near the end of the eight-year program, and the teachers always impressed on us that our oaths to help humanity did not include meddling with nature’s cycle to give all our friends an extra century or two of life

But a wizard, even one here, surely knew that spell anyway. By showing him the spell I might be able to convince him that I had no secret knowledge he wanted. “Give me some paper,” I said. “I’ll write it out.”

It was a long spell and took a while. While I wrote, I thought over what little information I had from him so far. If King Warin, via his chancellor, had some sort of connection with the wizards of the eastern kingdoms, then that might explain why Evrard had called him a sorcerer. The strange form of magic that had shaped this castle and maybe even the physical being of the man across from me might look like the black arts, at least to someone like Evrard who had never actually met a demon.

This would mean that Elerius had not lived for twelve years in the castle of a man who had sold his soul to the devil, which was a relief, though I continued to suspect he might have picked up some form of magic he would prefer not to share with the masters of the school.

I still didn’t know what connection there might be, if any, between Joachim’s brother on the one hand, with his talk of King Solomon’s Pearl, disappearing caravans, and the very real present his wife had tried to send with us, and, on the other, the mysterious object of which Prince Dominic had learned shortly before his death. The only person who might understand the connection was King Warin. And I doubted Warin would trust this wizard either.

I passed the pieces of paper across to Prince Vlad. “Here it is, but I’m sure you already know this spell.”

He seized the paper avidly, but I thought I could again see disappointment in his features as he scanned the spell. “But this will do nothing to make someone younger!”

“That’s what I told you.” I hesitated, then pushed on. “For that you need the supernatural.”

He shot me a sudden glance from his stone eyes. “Or to know something that apparently even you don’t know.”

How to give motion to inanimate objects, I thought, how to prop up a sagging and decaying body with the dead flesh and blood of others, or even with wood and stone. If he had had to rebuild a badly wounded body with incredibly complex magic, no wonder he had not been able to restrain Prince Dominic’s servant from returning to Yurt. “I don’t know anything about it,” I agreed.

“Then it may prove less useful stopping you than I thought,” he said slowly, “unless- Unless you actually did bring the ruby ring with you from Yurt.”

Caught in my lie, I tried to brazen my way out. “We had no idea there was anything magical about that ring itself,” I said, which was true. “You must know that we stopped at Prince Dominic’s tomb to see if it might have any secrets to yield, which we wouldn’t have bothered doing if we’d known the secret was back in the treasury of Yurt.” I paused, then tried to give him an intimidating glare. “If you say you have information for me, why not prove it by telling me who opened that tomb? Was it you?”

This surprised him. “Why would anyone open Dominic’s tomb?”

“You’re lying,” I said, to conceal the fact that I had been myself. “You said we would exchange knowledge, but you opened the prince’s tomb to get something you hid there when he was buried.”

He didn’t take the bait. Instead he shook his head. “Maybe that servant-he always was a fool-let some information drop on his way home. Or our source of information on the Wadi Harhammi may have regretted letting that information out-and, before you ask, I’m not going to tell you what that source was.”

“But you know the opening spell,” I said suddenly, not admitting that we had the ring with us but not bothering to deny it any more either. “That must be more than anyone else has-except, possibly, this ‘source’ of yours. At least one other person is searching desperately for that information but doesn’t have it. Maybe what Prince Dominic called something wonderful, something marvelous, is still there! Do you want to come with us to the East to look for it?”

I jumped to my feet as I spoke. This wizard with the artificial eyes was the last person I would normally have chosen for a traveling companion, but if he was with us, where I could watch him, I would not have to worry what he was doing behind our backs.

“I do not leave my castle,” he said slowly. “I had hoped that, in return for the information you need, you would find it for me and bring it here.”

Something that even such a powerful wizard could covet for fifty years must be marvelous indeed. “You clearly don’t have any knowledge I need or want,” I said. “You’ve been bluffing, Prince.”

“I could tell you what’s concealed in the Wadi. I think you would prefer to know before rather than after you use that opening spell.”

“Come with us, then, and tell us as we go,” I said, “or we’ll find out for ourselves anyway. I’m offering to take you along, but if you stay here you know I won’t be back.”

“You won’t know what to do with it, even with the opening spell, even with the ruby. Swear to me by all the forces of magic that you will bring it back, and I will reveal its powers to you when you arrive.”

“And, once you have it, you’ll get rid of us? Not likely, Prince.”

His eyes came fully open as he pushed his face close to mine. “If you try to rush out of here now, even if your magic can fight past the powers that guard me, I think you’ll find that armies will pursue you all across the eastern kingdoms-until they catch you and kill you.”

I grabbed his arm. It felt almost like a normal human arm. “Then our only safety is having you with us. I don’t care if you don’t want to leave this castle. You’re going to now!”

With force and magic I dragged him from the room. He struggled against me, but I was stronger. The corridor, unlit by any candle, was completely black. I yelled out a spell, and for an instant it was lit up as bright as day, and I could see the corridor’s end and the studded nail doors, opening onto night.

V

I started to rush down the corridor, then heard a gasp from the wizard that sounded like genuine pain. I