The Search for Magic Part 2

"We will win today," said Grantheous, exuding confidence.

Cool and levelheaded, Stynmar agreed. "Even if we die, we will win, for this day we fight Evil."

"Evil that is the bane of the existence of mankind-"

"Oh, get on with it, sirs!" Fetlin pleaded.

Stynmar took a few steps back and then, putting his shoulder into it, charged the door at ramming speed, just as the sinister man opened it.

Stynmar was almost halfway across the warehouse before he could stop himself. Turning, regaining his dignity, he looked about to see that he was standing in a dusty warehouse confronting a black-cloaked old man who was laughing at him.

The old man had a face that hadn't laughed at much, seemingly-a face that was so wrinkled that his wide open, laughing mouth broke the face into mismatched laughing pieces. Stynmar closed his eyes, hoping that if he opened them again, the old man would turn out to be an illusion.

That didn't happen.

"Gerald!" Stynmar gasped. He sidled over to stand beside Grantheous.

Grantheous didn't say anything at all. He simply stared, his mouth open.

"Since when do you call your superiors by their first name?" growled Gerald, scowling. "You will call me Archmagus, as you used to do."

"Yes, Archmagus," said the two mages, cringing.

"We heard your were dead, Archmagus," Stynmar added.

"You sound disappointed," replied Gerald.

"Well, maybe a little," Grantheous admitted.

"No, no," Stynmar babbled, stepping on his friend's foot. "We're glad you weren't eaten by ogres-"

"Oh, shut up," snapped the Archmagus. He waggled a bony finger at them. "You two have been disobedient. Broken all the rules. Using magic to sell beer!" He snorted. "Come now. Speak up and be quick about it. I am not getting any younger."

"You stole our scroll!" Grantheous cried.

Gerald scowled. "Of course."

"But why?" Stynmar wailed. "We worked over a year on that recipe."

Gerald shook his head. "I don't care if you worked a hundred years on it. It was foolish, and I will not abide by such behavior." He adjusted his robes and, almost as if it were an afterthought, said, "And tell that scrawny apprentice to come out from his hiding place."

Fetlin crawled through a side window and stood there, crossbow in hand, feeling foolish.

Grantheous twisted his beard and shuffled his feet. His voice rose an octave. He might have been the young student again. "Master, begging your pardon, but what we do with our magic does not concern you."

"We want our scroll back. Now," said Stynmar with a bl.u.s.tering attempt at defiance that was spoiled by the fact that he kept trying to suck in his sagging gut.

"Please," Grantheous added.

"You must give them back the scroll, sir," said Fetlin sternly, and he raised the crossbow.

Archmagus Gerald laughed. He hacked and wheezed until he nearly fell over. "Apprentice," he said to Fetlin, "the scroll is gone."

"What?" Simultaneous gasps of horror and shock.

Gerald wagged his finger again. "I tried to instill certain lessons into these two over-grown children, but all my teachings seem to have fallen on deaf ears. I should have held them back, to be honest."

Grantheous and Stynmar bowed their heads and shuffled their feet.

"That scroll was their work and my work," said Fetlin. "You have no right to it, Black Robe!"

"Black robe?" Gerald glanced down at his cloak. "Oh, this. Nonsense." He whipped off the black cloak to reveal dingy white robes. "I have every right to the scroll, Apprentice. I taught Grantheous and Stynmar everything they knew when they were no older than you."

"But that doesn't make you responsible for everything they do!" Fetlin protested.

"You'd think so," said Gerald with a sigh. "But life doesn't work that way. If they were to slay a dragon or solve the riddle of the dying magic, they would be proclaimed heroes. Would anyone say of them, 'Heroes taught by the great Archmagus Gerald himself? No. Not a word. But if they had gone through with this dunderheaded plan, all you would hear would be: 'What do you expect? They were taught by that supreme idiot, Archmagus Gerald.' "

Grantheous and Stynmar both protested, but a cold look from Master Gerald sealed their lips.

"I told them this Immortal Truth many years ago, and I will repeat it again, for apparently these two are slow at learning. Apprentice," he said to Fetlin, "you listen, too, and remember. Magic is serious business to be pursued by serious-minded people. The last thing a proper wizard should do is go about magicking beer. And as for you"-he pointed a bony finger at Srynmar- "keep to the courage of your convictions. You knew this was wrong, yet you let yourself be persuaded by a mixture of self-righteous claptrap and filthy lucre.

"And you." The bony finger went to Grantheous. " 'I'll die when the magic dies,' he whines. Bos.h.!.+ You've other talents, inner resources. I can't think what they are, right now, but you must have something."

Grantheous and Stynmar hung their heads.

"Wh-what did you do with our scroll, Archmagus?" Stynmar asked meekly. "Did you rip it up or burn it?"

Gerald shook his head. "No, no. I told you that I wanted to teach you a lesson." He folded his arms across his chest. "I cast the spell."

"Where? On what?" The two gasped.

"The Palanthian City well, of course," said Archmagus Gerald. He pointed to the window. "And it seems to be having quite an interesting effect."

That day, in the city of Palanthas, something strange and wonderful began to happen. It was as if the G.o.ds had cast down a fiery mountain of revelry, a Cataclysm of Hope, directly on the city of Palanthas.

And none could escape its effects.

Children ran through the streets, giggling and playing. Adults ran through the streets, laughing and cavorting with the children. The rich decided that they owned too much for their own good and opened their doors to the poor. Gnomes made sense. Render emptied their pouches. Innkeepers erased debts. Politicians spoke the truth. Dark Knights of Neraka played hopscotch. Everyone began dancing in the streets. Mages forgot that their beloved Art was dying and joined in the celebration. With what little power they had left, they tossed magical fireworks into the air to mark the festivities with a shower of blue and gold sparks and images of water lilies and lilacs.

And while everyone was in the streets having the time of their lives, the members of the Thieves Guild sneaked into the empty houses-but only to return items they'd stolen in the past with little notes of apology.

The two mages and their apprentice wended their way through the mob and finally, after much hugging and kissing and pounding on the back, Grantheous, Stynmar, and Fetlin reached their house. Racing inside, they bolted the door and, then and there, took a solemn vow to destroy their notes for their recipe for hope, distilled into the perfect pint.

The frenzied celebration ended at dawn. People rubbed their eyes and went to their beds. When they awoke, a day and a night later, they went back to doing what they had been doing, but each knew in his or her heart, that for a brief moment in time there had been true peace in their world. It had left them with heartburn and sore feet, but also a more kindly feeling toward their fellow men, though no one could remember a thing about what had happened.

No one except for two aging mages and their apprentice, who, after witnessing the effects of their best intentions, resolutely refused to drink anything other than plain milk from then on.

Just in case.

The End

NANCY VARIAN BERBERICK.

Be careful, Jai," said the librarian, Annalisse Elmgrace.

Jai Windwild bent low over the worktable to see the parchment sheets better. Three were stuck together. He suspected they were held fast by the beginnings of mildew.

With great difficulty he bent to one knee so his eye was level with the table, but he held his position only for a moment. Gripping the edge of the table and gritting his teeth, he quickly levered himself up again. His shattered left kneecap had long since healed, or at least the bones had grown together again, though they had never knitted well. Sometimes, Jai felt the bones grinding against each other, the pain like lightning shooting through him. It had been his bad luck to break his kneecap in the dark years after the G.o.ds had left and taken magic with them. There had been no one to heal him, mage or cleric or sorcerer.

"Be careful, Jai," Annalisse murmured.

He said, "Yes, madam," but didn't look around. The librarian cared only about her books, scrolls, and ma.n.u.scripts. Fond though she might be of him, her best apprentice, her true love was for the Library of Quali-nost. This Jai knew, and he didn't resent it.

"Ah, excellent," she said, as he slipped one page from atop another. "These pages are among our most precious treasures."

Jai waited, hiding a smile, for he knew what she'd say next. He'd heard those words a hundred times.

"We can't forget who we were, Jai. It's how we know who we are, and how we can guess who we will be."

He said, "Yes, madam," as he had a hundred times. Hearing her dictum over and again did not lessen his belief in the truth of it.

Head bent, Jai returned to his work, for another thing the librarian liked to say was this: "Results. I care about results, and the only result that matters to me, or should ever matter to you, is that we preserve our Library in the best order."

They did that, the Lady and all her scribes and cat-alogers and recorders and preservationists. Their devotion was to the Library of Qualinost, heart and soul, and each had sworn the quiet vow required upon entering the service of the Lady Librarian: There will always be a Library; there will always be History's h.o.a.rd in Qualinost.

There would always be, Jai thought, his fingers teasing the edges of the parchments, looking for a way between. Yet the collection was not growing. Few new books came to the library these days. Annalisse and her staff tended what books they had in their collection. They repaired old ma.n.u.scripts, brightened faded illuminations, deepened the ink of an ancient script, tried to maintain the various rooms at the proper temperature and level of humidity to keep safe ma.n.u.scripts that were penned as long ago as the Age of Dreams. In the days before the Dragon Purge that had been easier to do. Then there had been elven mages to weave spells to keep the climate of the great Library of Qualinost at perfect balance.

No matter the difficulty, this was the dearest work of Jai's heart, this careful preservation of a race's history in the face of war and a dragon's oppression. Most especially because of those things. Some elves stood against the dragon's overlord-some with their bodies armed in secret or, as Jai's own parents, standing as small links in a slender chain of shadowy resistance. Jai served in his own way, safeguarding the records of ancient elven heritage, the history to stand forever as a light against the darkness. In these days after G.o.ds, in these dragon days when House Cleric did not send its sons and daughters to temples but to libraries, Jai did holy work.

Beneath his hand now lay the Histories of Kings, the tales of all the rulers of the Qualinesti elves since fabled Kith Kanan himself had separated their race and led the people out of Silvanesti and into the forest. The thin page felt like silk. So did the breeze slipping in through the high window. Out that window the towers of Qualinost rose golden-lovely structures round which a great span of bridgework ran. Upon the bridge used to walk proud elven warriors who kept the kingdom and its gleaming capital safe.

But those were older times. Jai had been but an infant in his mother's arms, and the king had been Solostaran. In these days of the dragon Beryl, all the Qualinesti had for leaders.h.i.+p was Gilthas, the misbred son of the old king's daughter, Princess Laurana, and her half-elven husband, but he was little more than a puppet on the Dark Knights' strings. A marshal ran the kingdom now, a human named Medan, and no one doubted it was he who pulled the strings that made the weakling king dance.

At the Marshal's order, the Qualinesti warriors had been disbanded. The young king did not make any significant protest. Troubled with ill health, when he roused, it was to dance the nights away with pretty women and then lull himself to sleep with his own- by all accounts turgid-poetry. While Gilthas danced, Medan's black-armored Knights patrolled the silvery span round the elven city and sat in their squat, ugly barracks drinking, gambling, and making certain no elf doubted the ruthlessness of the green dragon's minions.

The conflicted dragon balanced between her hatred of elves and her love of the tribute Medan squeezed out of them.

Jai's hand shook, and his breath caught ragged in his throat. Very carefully, he slipped one thin sheet of parchment from atop the other, like brus.h.i.+ng a shadow from a shadow.

Behind him, Annalisse said, "Don't work too late, Jai."

"I won't," he said, but they both knew he'd been long at his work and would be longer still.

She laughed. "Well, at least take time for your supper, will you?"

He said he would try, and the librarian said nothing more to discourage him from returning to his work. Those sheets needed separating before more damage occurred, and Jai Windwild had the patience for the work.

In the purpling twilight, Jai lurched down the garden path and home to his supper. He owned no crutch or cane. He owned only a slanting gait. It was his, and if he did not run on sun-dappled forest paths anymore, he'd taught himself not to regret that too much. He went each day to better places, into the lands of legend and the proud realms of elven history. There, he would have been happy to spend all his days.

The first golden fireflies danced ahead of him into the darker shadows beneath the arbor at the front of his parents' little house. The heady scent of wisteria filled the twilight. Thick bunches of the amethyst flowers brushed Jai's shoulders as he pa.s.sed. He caught the door latch, balancing a little against the jamb, and the door opened under his hand.

Face white as the lone pale moon, his father gestured him inside.

"Father, what-?"

Emeth Windwild shook his head and closed the door behind his son. "Come in," he said. "We must talk."

Jai saw his mother beyond his father's shoulder. She sat still as stone in a cus.h.i.+oned nook near the window that overlooked the little stream beside the house. Marise Windwild loved no place in her home better than this. She did not look out though. Her eyes darted from her husband to Jai, then to Emeth again.

Someone has died, Jai thought. The house had that kind of stillness, the breath-held quiet when sorry news has come. He thought of his father's uncle who lived down in Mianost, a man so old it had been a wonder for the last ten years that he'd wakened each morning. When he turned to his father again, words of sympathy on his lips, he saw Emeth's hand trembling. That trembling quieted every word Jai would have spoken. He had never seen fear in his father. Not during the terrible Chaos War, when all the world seemed to run mad, nor afterward when the dragon came. Not even when his son had shattered his knee, nor when he watched Jai struggle to walk again as healers warned he would not win that battle.

"What's happened?" he asked. Marise Windwild drew a breath, as though her son's question freed her. She shuddered, and her eyes welled. "Your father . . . he has been . . ."

She choked, tears spilled down her cheeks as Emeth finished her sentence. "We have to go, Jai. We have to leave the city. A message to one of the agents of the resistance went astray."

Jai's heart slammed hard against his ribs. "Father. . ." he said, whispering as though agents of Marshal Medan crouched in the shadows. "Father, something that implicates you?"

Emeth shook his head. "I don't know. A spy was found in Medan's household, and right after, someone disappeared-someone along the chain I work with." Cold understanding chilled Jai's blood. His father was like a number of others who aided the resistance: only a small link in a chain. He would, now and then, hand a note to a tailor, information disguised as an order for clothing. He'd speak a word to one of the bakers in the household of a woman known for her shy and retiring ways, something that only seemed to be about bread or the price of wheat. Intercepted, these seemingly innocent messages and others like them would appear to be nothing more than the daily business of an ordinary man. But in the right ears, they were more. No man or woman pa.s.sing a word understood the whole of the message, but all the words together became news when they reached their destination. Somewhere, perhaps in a dark and deep forest glen, the leader of the resistance, that fierce warrior known as the Lioness, would see to it that a plan of the Marshal's would turn suddenly sour. Black-breasted Knights would die with elven arrows in their necks, and the elven warriors would vanish.

Simple men and women made this work, risking their lives and the lives of their families every day in the cause. Now a link in the secret chain had been broken and the delicate trust betrayed to the enemy.

"The damage has been done, Jai," his mother said. "One by one, those who had to do with this matter will leave the city. You, your father, and I will go at dawn, for we have a plausible excuse for leaving and will arouse no suspicion."

They would go to Mianost, the three of them. They would leave before first light, making sure that messages were left behind to say that Emeth's uncle was failing fast, that the family wanted to gather one last time to be with their venerable relative. Pa.s.ses would be secured to take them safely out of the city and past the checkpoints manned by the Dark Knights. In an occupied city, not every elf was trustworthy, not everyone a partisan. The whole of the plan to escape was not revealed to everyone who had part in it. Each knew only what he must.

"This much your mother and I know," Emeth said, "for the rest, we will do what we're told when we arrive in Mianost. We are confident that once we reach Mianost there will be a way to true safety."

Stunned, Jai spoke without thinking. "Leave . . ." He shook his head. "I just got to the last page of the histories of the kings-"

"d.a.m.n the kings!" Emeth cried. "Jai, listen to me. We have no choice. If we don't leave tomorrow, we must take our chances here. I forbid that." His hard expression softened. He was not unaware of his son's love for his work. Indeed, he had fostered it. "I'm sorry, son. Events give us no choice. We must leave. I know very little, but if I were ever made to tell even that, others would be found out."

Jai heard that as though hearing his father's death sentence, for there was a place in Qualinost not so old as the lovely houses and homes of the elves. It dated only to the time of the dragon's conquest-a crouching, ugly building of sandstone, hard planes, and biting comers. Narrow windows, like suspicious eyes, glared round the square structure. Ironbound doors opened only at the order of one of Marshal Medan's soldiers. There the Knights were barracked, and below that place was an unlit hole of a room. In that chamber, no man or woman had ever survived the torturer's attentions with all secrets intact. The telling was the fee paid for death at last.