The Galactic Mage Page 6

  These shelves had several things on them, most of which meant nothing to Altin. There was an old oil lamp and something resembling a lute. There were two tattered books that looked as if Tytamon had dug them out of a thousand-year-old grave, and there was a small leather pouch, no bigger than a dehydrated pear. And it was to this last that Tytamon went. He took it off the shelf gingerly, and looked back once more at Altin. “Not one word of magic. Or we’re both dead.”

  Altin watched breathlessly as Tytamon pulled open the drawstrings and poured out the pouch’s contents into the palm of his weathered hand. Three small stones, ugly, yellowish and roughly the size of a peach pit each. That was it.

  Altin frowned.

  “Liquefying Stone,” Tytamon breathed, raising his hand towards Altin and lifting the lamp so Altin could get a better look. The lamp’s golden light augmented the stone’s strangely crystalline luminosity, as if the outer surface were transparent, like crystal, but the inside something else. Altin tried to look deeper into it, unconsciously taking the lamp from Tytamon and leaning down close. Experience suggested that the light could go deeper into the rock, should go deeper, but it just didn’t; it just seemed to disappear. It was like looking into a mirror that only reflected you but not the rest of the room behind. You knew the room was there, that you should be able to see it, but it just wasn’t there. He commented on this oddity aloud.

  “It’s not that the light doesn’t go in,” said Tytamon. “It does. It just doesn’t come out. It can’t. Which is why you must always keep it covered when you aren’t using it. Mana isn’t the only thing this stuff can amplify.”

  “So what is it?” Altin reached for one of the stones as he asked the question, half expecting Tytamon to snatch them away.

  “It’s an amplification stone. A huge amplification stone. Freakish. Not like those meager potions the Conduits try to make.”

  Altin nodded, he liked where this idea seemed to be going, but he didn’t say anything as Tytamon went on.

  “You know how much mana you drew last night? Well, you can pull twice that much if you’re touching one of these and you don’t know what you’re doing—sometimes even if you do. You can pull that much, even in a single cast.”

  Altin scrunched up his face in disbelief. “How? Once I get what I can reach, it’s gone. Cleared space is cleared space. Or does the stone extend my range?”

  “Boy, you have no idea.” He dropped the other two stones back into the pouch and drew the strings tight. “I’ve kept this stuff secret for years. I don’t even keep the things I know about demon summoning as hushed as I do Liquefying Stone.” He waggled the pouch in the air as he spoke to emphasize his point, sending a little cloud of dust billowing around their heads. Altin coughed as the centuries-old sorcerer put the pouch with the two remaining stones back on the shelf and motioned for Altin to leave the claustrophobic little room. Altin happily obliged, gripping the single stone tightly in his hand.

  “No magic,” Tytamon reminded him as they exited.

  “I know,” Altin answered, impatiently. He wasn’t a child anymore.

  “Can’t be too careful,” came the reply as the ancient mage locked the door with the iron key. He pushed Altin towards the exit, remaining behind and making no move to renew the magic lock on the door until Altin was all the way across the room. When he had recast the lock, he rejoined Altin and they started up the stairs. “You need to keep it covered. And not just in your pocket. A hole in the lining and you’re a dead man.”

  Altin promised that he would, but couldn’t help glimpsing at the stone. The cautions were really starting to pile up, almost enough to curb his enthusiasm for running up to his tower and testing out the stone. Almost. And it was just as he was having the thought that Tytamon reached out, viper-like, and snatched the stone from his hand. “You can have it when your headache is gone and you’ve had proper rest. You can have it tomorrow. Now run along. I have things to do to prepare.”

  Altin frowned. “Prepare for what?”

  “To prepare for what you’re probably going to do to my castle. Now go. I’m old and need a nap myself. Belly full of Kettle’s bread and I hibernate like a bear.”

  With nothing to do but wait, and no possibility of rest between now and then, Altin hustled to his room to search his library for any reference he might have missed to the Liquefying Stone. Tomorrow would be the day.

  Chapter 5

  Altin woke the next morning early and excited. Darkness still lay upon the land, and he had to pace about the top of his tower for over an hour before the sun rose high enough for propriety to allow him to go and pester Tytamon—to go and gather the Liquefying Stone and begin the task of learning how it worked.

  He ducked through the narrow door leading down from the battlements, half doorway, half hole in the floor, and came into his chamber. As he moved towards the dresser intending to quickly run a comb through his hair lest he look too desperate to begin, he noticed that in the hour of his pacing someone had brought the loaf of bread to his room as they always did and placed it on the table. He chuckled. All these years and only now had he finally narrowed down the hour. As he looked at the bread in the shadowy, early morning light, he caught a glimpse of movement, a tiny scurrying spot of gray barely darker than the shadows around the bread. He squinted at it and with a word summoned a tiny flame to the candle sitting at the table’s center.

  The light appeared so abruptly that the little mouse froze for a moment, the candle flame glinting in its tiny, black spot eyes. It sniffled in Altin’s direction for a moment and the young wizard could see that it held a portion of his daily bread in its pointy rodent teeth.

  “Why you hairy little thief,” Altin cursed. “That’s mine!” He considered shooting a miniature fireball at it, but recent events stayed his spell. The mouse gave him no time to consider a second option, however, for it was off like a dart, off the table, across the flagstones and into the safety of a dark crack in the wall, not too far from the stairs leading back up to the battlements.

  Altin made a face at it as it vanished into the hole. “That’s all I need. Mice.” He resolved himself to let Nipper know, as such things fell under the old man’s jurisdiction, and allowed the promise of the Liquefying Stone to rinse away any further consideration of the furry pest.

  Near the recently nibbled bread was a stack of books, a thousand pages of fruitless research done yesterday that had garnered him not one word about the Liquefying Stone. He picked them up and headed downstairs. He stopped on the second floor of his tower, his personal library—an extensive collection by any standards for someone of his relative youth—and meticulously re-deposited the works before heading to the kitchen.

  Tytamon was already there when he arrived, and Altin cursed himself for having wasted so much time pacing the battlements in the name of timidity. Nipper was nowhere to be seen, and Kettle was busy looking busy in the presence of her ancient master. Little Pernie was sweeping ineffectually around the hearth, but she looked up and, with no pig butchering to distract her this time, saw that Altin had come in. She grinned excitedly. “Hullo, Master Altin,” she said, beaming at him like a tiny towheaded sun. “I saw a lizard already today, out on the well, but he was still stiff with cold because when I tried to wake him he wouldn’t move at all, no matter how many times I poked him, and I did a lot because he fell into the well and still never moved all the way down. I hope he will be okay, but I don’t know if lizards can swim or not, but he was green, just like sir’s dragon. You should have seen him.”

  Altin rolled his eyes. “That’s nice,” he said and quickly turned towards Tytamon.

  “Pernie, hush,” Kettle admonished the child. “Them’s got business to talk. No time for silliness.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Tytamon, furrowing his brow at Altin briefly before leaning to peek round him towards the girl. “Lizards can be serious business too.” He stood and stepped around Altin, fixing Pernie with a grin. With a few words and the wrig
gling of his thumbs, he created a bright, illusionary lizard on the ground between his feet. “Did it look like this?” he asked. He sent the illusion scurrying across the floor towards Pernie, who screeched with glee and leapt for it, pouncing like a cat. Her hands clutched right through it, at which point it disappeared, causing her to spin round and round like a kitten chasing its tail, searching everywhere, giggling and even lifting Kettle’s skirts to have a look between the woman’s feet. Kettle gasped and pushed the child away, though she couldn’t help but laugh. Giving up, Pernie looked back at the old mage, wonder in her eyes and still giggling for all her worth. His grin grew. Extending his hand, he reproduced the illusion there on his palm, allowing it to rise and float slowly through the air towards her again, dangling as if invisible fingers held it by the tail. Seeing this, she became nearly hysterical with laughter again, and peels of high-pitched merriment echoed through Calico Castle’s labyrinthine halls as she jumped for the wriggling fiction while Tytamon teased her, bobbing it up and down and keeping it just beyond her reach. After a few moments of this, Tytamon relented. But right as the magical lizard was finally within her grasp, it burst into a pink cloud of rose petals, real ones, that rained down upon her for nearly half a minute. Somehow she managed to squeal even louder than before, and she danced about in the shower of flowers trying to catch all the petals as they fell.

  Altin winced at her jubilant screams, closing one eye and marveling that none of the crystal goblets on the shelf behind him shattered with the piercing shrill of Pernie’s noise. By the gods that child was obnoxious, and Tytamon was bringing it on, making it even worse; you’d think he’d know better by now.

  “Pernie!” scolded Kettle finally, clutching at her ears. “You’ll bring the orcs down out of the hills with all that racket.” She turned to Tytamon and added, “An’ yer encouragin’ her with all that fancy stuff.” Kettle’s smiling eyes did not reflect the nature of her words, however, and Tytamon only continued to grin. When the petals finally stopped falling, Kettle handed Pernie the egg basket and pushed her out the door in the direction of the chicken coop. The child began to protest, but a look from Kettle choked the words before they could get out. “That’s enough lizards an’ flowers for one mornin’, thank ya. Get ya busy now.”

  Kettle turned, curtseyed to them both, and followed the girl outside.

  Altin shifted his weight impatiently until they were out of sight. “All right, I’m ready to try the stone. I slept well last night and cast nothing. I’m fresh as April dew.”

  Tytamon, still grinning as he watched the departure of Kettle and the girl, turned back to his apprentice, the merry glimmer in his eyes becoming something that touched on sorrow and perhaps a bit of sympathy. He shook his head and let out a long breath. Altin ignored it all, figuring the old man was having second thoughts about the Liquefying Stone. He kept his mouth shut. This was not the time to give Tytamon any reason to change his mind.

  After a moment, Tytamon reached into his pocket and pulled out a small towel, bundled up tight, and set it on the tabletop between them. They both stared at it for a while.

  Finally the great wizard spoke. “I can feel your impatience.”

  Altin swallowed. So much for hiding it. Tytamon didn’t miss much. “I can’t help it,” he said. “What did you expect?”

  “You can’t be impatient with the Liquefying Stone.”

  He knew Tytamon was going to say that. “I know.”

  “Look, just understand this: this stone is going to dump mana on you. You think you understand what I am saying, but you don’t. It will be like striking flint to steel looking for a spark and then having your dragon breathe on you instead. When you go to make your cast, you need to try to draw almost no mana at all. Even then, you’re going to be shocked at what you find yourself pulling in. So, make sure you pick a spell that allows you to channel extra mana, something that gives you an outlet to improvise and unload, okay? You will need it for the first few tries; I promise.”

  Altin listened carefully to every word. It made perfect sense. If the stone did what Tytamon suggested, he might find himself overwhelmed with mana, overcome; even with a mythothalamus the size of his, he could only channel so much. He could be fried—either literally fried, as in dead, or magically fried, burnt out, his mythothalamus cooked and his magical sight lost as surely as a destroyed retina costs a person’s sight. “I understand,” he said, looking Tytamon square in the eyes. “I honestly think I do. Is there anything else I need to know?”

  “No. Just that. Start slow. Keep it simple, and keep it small. Oh, and remember to keep the stone covered when you’re not using it. That’s the most important thing. Keep it covered, and keep it away from you. Accidental contact is fatal with this stuff. Understand?”

  “I understand.”

  They stood staring silently across the intervening space at one another, waiting. Altin wanted to just out and ask if he could go but didn’t want to seem any more impatient than he was.

  “Go,” said the weathered mage, looking very tired. “Just go.”

  Altin gripped the wadded cloth firmly in his fist, raising it to chest level and invoking a triumphant “yes!” With that he turned and ran back to his tower, victory finally at hand.

  When he’d mounted the tower he stood briefly surveying the land around him. The gray wall cliffs beneath Mt. Pernolde climbed high behind him, looming protectively at his back as the Great Forest spread itself far into the west, a deep green that faded to gray as the horizon blurred it into the distant sky. Everywhere else, to the south and east, lay the vast plains of Merimak, rippling in the gentle wind as far as the eye could see. It was beautiful, and the day was beautiful, and it was the perfect day to finally find the moon.

  A small, weather-beaten and largely burnt table, with a matching and equally decimated stool, stood near the passage leading down into his room. Gingerly, he placed the bundled Liquefying Stone upon the table and patted it softly, as if it needed to be soothed. He needed to find the right spell for trying out the Liquefying Stone. But what?

  He thought about it for several long moments, coming up with many options—and none. He ran back down into his room and took one of his old notebooks from the single shelf above his narrow bed where he kept his most valued and his most frequently used books. It was a notebook from his second year of tutelage under Tytamon, filled with simple, easy–to–cast spells that any D or E-class mage could work with a bit of instruction and some practice. He decided this was probably the safest place to start. Simple and small, just what Tytamon had ordered.

  He leafed through the book for a time and came across the perfect spell. A growth spell—not natural growth, for Altin had no skills in healing magic, but a basic expansion spell from the conjuration sphere instead: take something and make it bigger through the addition of material, more like packing a snowball than nurturing a tree. “Easy as tossing a toad,” he said aloud.

  He read through the spell notes several times, it having been many years since he’d used this particular spell, until he was satisfied that he knew it completely and by heart. The words were simple and the inflections elementary to produce. As he looked them over, they came back to him with an old familiarity. At length he was confident he could start.

  He snapped the book closed and, bringing it with him just in case, headed back to the battlements. Now that he knew what he wanted to do, he just needed something to do it to, something small, small enough that if he drew too much mana, he could simply make it a little bigger than he planned when the spell began. He looked for a chip of stone or some gravel, casting his eyes about the ground, searching along the rounded edge at the base of the parapet. At last he spotted one, a tiny rock, roughly round and about the size of a pea. It would do perfectly.

  He placed the little rock on the floor, dead center of the tower which was roughly twenty paces across and encircled by the parapet, broken only by the open doorway down to Altin’s room. He took the wadded towel from at
op the burnt table and moved to the crenellated wall. He flipped open the notebook and reviewed the spell once more, just to be extra sure.

  The plan was to grow the stone to the size of a cantaloupe, but if he drew too much mana, he could make it as big as he needed too, big as a watermelon or big as a cow. Size didn’t matter. The spell allowed for channeling power directly into the object, which was why it was the ideal spell to use for this initial try. Drawing a deep breath, he put the book down on the wall behind him and opened up the towel.

  He studied the stone for a moment, holding it in his hand and examining it for the first time by the light of day. It still seemed dark inside. And it was an ugly stone. Vomit yellow. He marveled at how it could be so sickening, even giving him a sense of vertigo the longer he looked inside, nausea. But if it unlocked the mystery of the distance to the moon, it would be the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. And so he began to chant.

  The words to the spell were simple, “Ma’h alta megan. Sen horra pen.” That was it. Basic elven words, used more for their ability to focus the mind than for any power inherent to the sounds themselves. All of magic language worked like that, at least for humans. Learned by rote, spoken words served to hone the thoughts to the task at hand. And there was something to the musicality of them too, a harmony that worked to bring the mana into one with the magician’s desire, binding timing, focus and will.

  With great care Altin began to utter the magic words, using a master’s diligence to speak each syllable, to layer each note and beat in its exact place and plane despite the remedial level of the spell. He chanted them meticulously, repeating them as he closed his eyes and opened his mind to the mana all around. The sky was full of mana again, the thick, syrupy ether having flowed slowly back into place since his last Lurian attempt. There was as much or as little as Altin wanted waiting for him to use.