Journeyman (A Wizard's Life) (8 page)

There were three of them and he sat with them in his study. They were very respectful, calling him Lord Wizard and bowing before taking their seats.

“Welcome,” he told them. “I do not often receive visitors from so far away. We can dispense with formalities and cut directly to the matter that brought you here. It must be a dire need to drive you to come all this way. How can I help you?”

“Thank you, Lord Wizard,” said one of the elders. He was a short old man with too much hair coming out of his too large ears. “I am Elder Rook. These are Kalder and Hurd.” The elders nodded as they were named. “The problem we have is . . .” The man trailed off. He did not seem to know how to proceed. He looked embarrassed.

The elder introduced as Hurd spoke up then. “It’s a wizard, Lord Wizard. Our problem is a wizard. Begging your pardon.” All three elders now looked embarrassed.

“Are you sure the wizard is to blame for whatever problem you’re having? Wizards are often made scape-goats for ill-luck or failed crops.”

“Yes sir, we are sure. The problem is the wizard himself.”

“Start from the beginning and tell me what exactly is happening.”

“This wizard, he isn’t like you. He comes to our village every harvest and demands we pay him tribute. He takes a share of the harvest and also some of the other things we produce. If we object, he threatens us with violence or curses. One year, we resisted and he cursed a man with excessive flatulence until we relented. The stench was quite potent.” All three elders were nodding in agreement. “He is due to arrive again within the month. We’ve put together our money and have got eleven silver coins to offer you, if you will protect our village from this villain.”

“You’ll have our thanks as well, Lord Wizard,” put in the elder named Kalder.

“I will consider what you have asked, gentlemen. You may be aware that my wife is with child. I am loathe to leave her so close to the end of the pregnancy.”

The three looked disappointed as he escorted them out of his dwelling. “I will have an answer for you in the morning,” he told them.

As they walked away, he heard Kalder say to the others: “I told you he wouldn’t defend us from his own kind!”

That night at supper, Benen broached the subject with Sania. She understood that it was important to him to go and deal with this wizard.

“Go, my love, and show this village that you will stand with the common folk against unjust wizards.”

When he told the elders his decision in the morning, they were overjoyed. He made his arrangements and left with them that very afternoon.

A week later Benen and the elders arrived in the village of Gronin.

#

Eager to complete this task and return to his wife before she gave birth, Benen spent no time in the village itself. The elders had told him the wizard always walked into the village from the north when he came, so Benen headed in that direction to intercept the bully.

Once out of sight from the village, Benen stashed his things into a bag he had brought and changed into the giant eagle that was his favourite animal form. He took off northward, flying in a search pattern, looking for signs of the wizard.

It was not long before Benen spotted something unusual.

Marching south, he saw a mansion carried on the back of a giant elephant. As he got closer though, he realized there was no elephant at all, just four elephant legs coming out of the bottom of the building. Benen would be surprised if this was not the home of the wizard he sought. He flew toward it.

The home spotted him as he approached. It stopped walking forward and hunched down defensively. Benen landed a short distance in front of it and changed shapes back to his human form.

After he was dressed, Benen waited to see if the wizard would emerge from the walking mansion, but no one came out. He flew toward the building then, using the magic of the Pinnacle to lift himself into the air. When he was within shouting distance, he called to the wizard.

“Hello! I have come to speak with you,” he yelled.

There came no verbal response, instead a metallic human form came out of the mansion and stood on one of the many balconies. It moved its arms and hands in strange ways, and Benen recognized too late that the metal being was casting magic. The air around Benen burst into flames and only his quick reactions saved him from severe burns; at the first sign of the fire, he had let himself drop, escaping the worst of it.

Benen did not know what the creature was, but it could cast magic. This was disturbing.

He flew back up, keeping his movements erratic so as to make himself a difficult target and, when he came into sight of the metal being, he used the magic of the Pinnacle once more to pick up the creature, aiming to fling it to the ground below. Unfortunately, his spell fell apart as he was casting it and soon, so did his flying spell. Benen found himself plummeting toward the ground.

As the moment of impact grew ever closer, Benen frantically re-cast his flying spell, succeeding with only a few seconds to spare.

Did the creature cut my spells apart?
he wondered.

Benen took a moment, while out of sight, to cast his spell to reveal magic. He then went upward once more, looking at the metal wizard. It was a mess of enchantments, as was the mansion itself. One of the enchantments he saw was a ward against the Cleaver on the metal form itself, preventing Benen from dispelling the magic directly on it. But when the creature used the Cleaver to try to cut apart Benen’s own spells, he was able to break up the incoming attacks. They were in a stalemate, with both able to counter any magic the other tried to cast.

“Just talk to me for a moment,” Benen demanded of the metal being.

It extended a hand toward him and metal darts started flying at him. He dodged them. The thing had a dart launcher in its arm!

What sort of Southren machinery is this thing?

Benen gave up on being polite and simply flew toward the balcony the thing stood on, evading darts as he went. To the metal being it looked like Benen was charging at it, but when it moved to avoid being hit, Benen went past it and into the mansion.

Once inside, Benen turned around and waited for a moment. The metal being tried to come in through the door, but Benen had other plans. Once it was in the doorway, he charged at it, grabbing it and lifting it along with him. It was heavy! He barely managed to move it the three metres he needed. Once the balcony was no longer beneath them, Benen let go of the creature. He watched it fall the twenty metres to the ground below, where it flew apart in pieces as it hit.

Benen flew back to the balcony and walked into the mansion.

“Now will you talk to me?” he yelled.

There was no immediate response, but after a few minutes an older man, livid with anger, came into the room.

“How dare you!?” he screamed at Benen. “Years of research and work destroyed in minutes by your impudence!”

“It attacked me!” Benen was not about to apologize for defending himself.

“Because I do not welcome guests!”

“Well, this guest doesn’t care. I need to talk to you.”

The wizard looked Benen up and down. “I don’t know you.”

“And I don’t know
you,
but I know that you are harassing a village to the south of here: Gronin.”

“Gronin is mine!”

“I’m not trying to take your
territory
from you, I’m telling you to stop extorting from them.”

“Extorting?! Is that was they told you? What I take from them is my tribute!”

“Call it what you will, it has to stop.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“It is lawfully mine to take,” the wizard insisted.

“You
will
st— er, what? Lawfully?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have an agreement with this village. They pay me tribute in exchange for services I render.”

“They did not mention this to me.”

“They probably don’t remember. It was signed by their ancestors four hundred years ago.”

“Can I see this document?”

The wizard sighed his exasperation and led Benen to a study. There, framed and preserved, was a charter. It outlined that in exchange for his assistance in levelling the land for the settlement and for his continued work in ensuring moderate favourable weather, the wizard Tawn would be paid tribute every harvest. It went on to specify which goods and in what quantities. Benen could not deny the agreement’s validity.

“What if they decide they don’t want your services anymore. Would you leave them alone then?”

The wizard smirked. “If they want. But they had best know what they’re doing, this area was a desert before I helped things along. If I stop maintaining my magic, it will return to desert, eventually.”

Benen did not see this as a good solution either.

“I’ll return to the village and tell them their options. I’m sorry about your, er, servant? Guard?”

“It’s a vessel I project into,” the wizard said with pride.

“Impressive,” Benen said.

“Thank you. I will rebuild it, I just have to retrieve the pieces and see what the damage is.”

“Please, allow me. It’s the least I can do. I am sorry for the damages, but you should have just talked to me to begin with.”

“I do not like visitors and I’d never seen you before. Don’t you go to the moots?”

Benen remembered hearing about wizard moots from the king’s adviser in the capital many years before. He had intended to go to the next one but had missed it, forgotten it really, with all that had happened in his life since.

“No, I’ve not been.”

“Humph,” was all the wizard had to say to that. Benen flew to the ground below and retrieved the pieces of the vessel for Tawn. As he flew back with them he examined the pieces carefully; he thought he might have a use for such a thing himself.

Once the vessel was returned, Benen and Tawn exchanged terse farewells.

Benen flew back to the village of Gronin in eagle form, unsure how the villagers would take the news he brought.

#

They did not take the news well at all.

“But, it’s extortion!” Elder Kalder was outraged. “If we stop giving him what he wants he’ll turn our land to desert!”

“No. This land was desert. It’s only through the wizard’s intervention that you can live here. Your ancestors settled here with his help. He has a lawful document.”

“Bah, we’re not taking your word for this!” Elder Hurd pointed at Benen. “Only you have seen it.”

“You can ask to see it when the wizard comes,” Benen suggested.

The three elders were not impressed. “You well know we can’t read.”

“I’m sorry. You will
have
to take my word for it then, the wizard Tawn has lawful right to payment from your village every harvest. If you stop paying him, he will stop keeping this land verdant and it will soon become inhospitable.”

“I told you he would side with his own kind,” said elder Kalder to the other.

“I’m not siding with anyone!” Benen was out of patience for these men. “Do what you will, but be warned of the consequences.” He stormed out. As he left, he heard mutters of
wizard
behind him.

It’s like they don’t
want
to understand . . .

Benen flew back to his home in giant eagle form as swiftly as he could. He regretted having ever left.

When he walked into the village two days later, having changed back to his human form and dressed before approaching, he was accosted by the first villagers who saw him.

“Benen! Hurry, your wife is not well. We’re so glad you came back.”

He rushed to his home and found his wife being tended by the village’s leech doctor.

“Get away from her!”

Benen had him remove his leeches from Sania. As the doctor complied, Benen looked at his wife; she was evidently in distress. Her skin was pale and clammy and her breathing was laboured.

“When did this start?” he asked the others in the room. It was filled with family and well-wishers.

Pol told Benen Sania had begun to feel unwell two days before and took to her bed yesterday.

“Should we remove the baby from her? Surely it’s developed enough.”

The leech doctor brought out his instruments. “We can,” he said. “It’s always risky, of course.”

Benen did not like to trust his wife and baby’s lives to this man. He wanted to do it himself, but he did not have the knowledge needed. He could use the Cleaver to cut, but he needed to know where and how deeply. This thought of magic made him wonder if perhaps his wife had been cursed. Two days before was just a short time after Benen’s altercation with the wizard Tawn. Could he have somehow done this?

Using his detection spell Benen looked over Sania. He did not see any lines of magic on her, but he did see a knotted bundle of lines in her belly: the baby! Was it casting magic?