Songs of the Dying Earth

Glen Cook THE GOOD MAGICIAN

Here a fleeting vision glimpsed high above the River Scaum sends Alfaro, the Long Shark of the Dawn, and a motley, ill-assorted collection of squabbling wizards, on a perilous quest to find a fabulous lost city — one which, it turns out, might have been better left lost…

Glen Cook is the bestselling author of more than forty books. He’s perhaps best-known for the Black Company books, which include The Black Company, Shadows Linger, The White Rose, The Silver Spike, Shadow Games, Dreams of Steel, The Silver Spike, Bleak Seasons, She is the Darkness, Water Sleeps, and Soldiers Live, detailing the adventures of a band of hard-bitten mercenaries in a gritty fantasy world, but he is also the author of the long running Garrett P.I. series, including Sweet Silver Bells, Bitter Gold Hearts, Cold Copper Tears, and nine others, a mixed fantasy/mystery series relating the strange cases of a Private Investigator who works Mean Streets on both sides of the divide between our world and the supernatural world. The prolific Cook is also the author of the science fiction Starfishers series, as well as the eight-volume Dread Empire series, the three-volume Darkwar series, and the recent Instrumentalities of the Night series (two volumes to date), as well as nine standalone novels such as The Heirs of Babylon and The Dragon Never Sleeps. His most recent books are Passage At Arms, a new Starfisher novel; A Fortress in Shadow, a new Dread Empire novel; and Cruel Zinc Melodies, a new Garrett, P.I. novel. Cook lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

1

Alfaro Morag, who, in his own mind, styled himself The Long Shark of Dawn, rode his whirlaway high above a forest. Ahead lay the bloody glimmer of the Scaum and his destination, Boumergarth, where he meant to assume protection of a rare tome currently in the collection of Ildefonse the Preceptor. As a precaution against the likelihood that Ildefonse was not prepared to cooperate in the transfer, Alfaro had surrounded himself with Phandaal’s Mantle of Stealth.

His desire was The Book of Changes, subtitled Even the Beautiful Must Die. All secrets of protracted vitality and unending youth were contained therein. The Preceptor’s volume was the last known copy.

Ildefonse was unreasonably narrow about sharing. He would not allow The Book of Changes to be borrowed or copied, definitely an unenlightened attitude. Certainly Alfaro Morag had a right to review the spells therein. Surely he should have access to the formulae for puissant potions.

Such were Morag’s thoughts as he peddled across the sky, ever more displeased with the Preceptor and his hidebound coterie, some of whom had been around since the sun was yellow, half its current size, and not nearly so far away. Those antiquities considered Alfaro Morag a pup, a whippersnapper, a come-lately interloper enslaved by impatience and lack of subtlety in acquiring properties he desired.

Bah! They just felt threatened by the refugee from somewhere so far south no local map revealed it.

Alfaro drifted right, left, up, down. How best to proceed? He spied a silhouette masking the sun, there so briefly he suspected it must be a time mirage. Yet he felt it was familiar.

He swung back, dancing on the breeze. He found the silhouette again, for seconds only. He had to climb to gain the right angle, up where pelgrane would soon cruise, watching the roads for unwary travelers as the last bloody light faded. Or for other things that flew: gruehawks and spent-owls. And whirlaways too small and primitive to be protected by more than a single spell.

Alfaro’s machine could not be seen but made noise thrashing through the air. Morag himself shed odors proclaiming the presence of a delicious bounty.

Alfaro veered off Boumergarth. Shedding altitude, he hastened to his keep in the upper valley of a tributary of the Scaum, the Javellana Cascade. He touched down yards from the turbulent stream, pausing only long enough to assure that his whirlaway was anchored against mischievous breezes, then headed for the ladder to his front door. “Tihomir! I come! Bring my vovoyeur to the salon. Then prepare a suitable repast.”

Tihomir appeared at the head of the ladder, a wisp of a man featuring sores and seborrheas wherever his skin could be seen, topped by a few strands of fine white hair. His skull had a dent in back and was flat on the right side. He resembled a sickly doppelganger of Alfaro and was, in fact, his unfortunate twin.

Tihomir assisted Alfaro as he stepped off the ladder. “Shall I pull the ladder up?”

“That might be best. It has the feel of an active night. Then get the vovoyeur.”

Tihomir inclined his head. Alfaro often wondered what went on inside. Nothing complex, certainly.

Alfaro’s tower was nowhere so grand as the palaces of the elder magicians of Ascolais. But it was inexpensive. It had been abandoned when he found it. He hoped to complete renovations within the year.

His salon on the third level doubled as his library. A library bereft of even one copy of Lutung Kasarung’s masterwork, The Book of Changes. He took down several volumes uniformly bound in port wine leather, each fourteen inches tall and twenty-two wide, with gold embossing on faces and spines.

Cheap reproductions.

All Alfaro’s books, saving a few acquired under questionable circumstance, were reproductions created in sandestin sweat shops far to the east. Those he chose tonight were collections of artwork, volumes I through IV and VI, of the fourteen volume set, Famous Illustrations of Modern Aeons. Six volumes were all Alfaro could afford, so far. Volume V never arrived.

He finished a quick search of volumes I and IV before Tihomir brought the vovoyeur. “Are the experiments proceeding correctly?”

“All is perfection. Though the miniscules are asking for more salt.”

“They’re robbers.” Literally, actually. There had been a noticeable decline in the number of wayfarers and highwaymen since Alfaro’s advent in Ascolais. He did not boast about it. He doubted that anyone had noticed. “Give them another dram. In the morning.”

“They’re also asking for brandy.”

“As am I. Do we have any? If so, bring a bottle with the meal.”

Tihomir went. Morag lost himself in illustrations.

The one that fickle recollection insisted existed was in the last place he looked, the final illustration in Volume III.

“I thought so. It would be identical if the sun were behind me. And aeons younger.”

He warmed the vovoyeur.

Strokes with a wooden spoon did not spark a response. More vigorous application of an iron ladle enjoyed no more success. Alfaro found himself tempted to suspect that he was being ignored.

Perhaps the Preceptor was too engrossed in his pleasures to respond.

Irked, Alfaro selected a silver tuning fork. He struck the face of the far-seeing device a half dozen times while declaiming, “The Lady of the Gently Floating Shadows makes way for the Great Lady of the Night.”

The surface of the vovoyeur brightened. A shape appeared. It might have been the face of a normally cheerful but timeworn man. Alfaro could not improve the clarity of his fourth-hand device. “Speak, Morag.” Uncharacteristically brusque.