Journeyman (A Wizard's Life) (9 page)

He looked closer, trying to see the details of the tangle. It seemed almost to
be
part of the baby. When the lines pulsed, as they sometimes did, Sania cried out in pain.

She’ll die,
he thought.
The baby isn’t right. This is killing her.

Benen nodded his ascent for the leech doctor to go ahead and try to cut the baby out of Sania. He hoped he would not regret the decision.

Everyone other than Benen and the doctor was sent out of the room before the operation. Benen was to assist the man; he would have refused to leave anyway, so he may as well be of use.

The doctor began cutting into Sania with an expert hand; he had done this before.

“How many times have you performed this procedure?” Benen asked him.

“Thirty-six,” said the man.

“How many of the babies survived the operation?”

“Six.”

“And the mothers?” Benen was afraid of the answer.

“One.”

Benen told himself that those mothers and their children had not had a wizard on hand to heal them like Sania did. He hoped it would be enough.

As the doctor’s cut exposed more of the inner womb, a sour smell began to leak out, along with fluids which did not look at all like those normally found in any human body.

The doctor’s next incision showed the baby; both he and Benen recoiled at what they saw. The thing was not human in any way and the moment air touched it, it began to unravel before their eyes. Benen could see that the baby itself was the knot of magical lines he had seen. Soon, the baby was a mass of unrecognizable ooze. When Benen looked to his wife, he saw she had not survived even this far. Benen’s grief overwhelmed him then and he withdrew into himself, unable to face the world. He became catatonic for a time.

He later found out that his father-in-law had protected him from villagers who blamed him for the monstrous baby he had put in poor Sania’s belly. The doctor had spread the tale far and wide and made it clear the wizard had killed Sania, if indirectly. The people of the village screamed for his blood.

Pol had a cooler head. He did not blame Benen for the death of his daughter, and had sheltered him.

The morning after the dreadful operation, Benen came to himself again, much as he might have preferred not to. Pol was sitting nearby, watching him.

“They blame you for what happened with Sania and the baby,” he told Benen.

“They are right to do so.” Benen wanted to let the villagers do to him whatever they pleased. “The baby was not right. It was a thing of magic.” He couldn’t continue.

“Did you know it would happen like that?”

“No.”

“Then it is not your fault, Benen. I have known you for over ten years now and I know you loved Sania as much as I did. This is not something you would have chosen to have happen. We all share the pain of Sania’s passing.”

“No! It’s my fault. I should have known. Wizard don’t have families, this is the reason. I never asked and no one told me, but this is it. We cannot have children. All those miscarriages. I should have known something was wrong!”

Benen cried and raged like this for a time and Pol let him. Sometimes Pol argued with him, other times he cried along with him.

There were visits from Dania as well. Cool, unemotional Dania had cracked a little at the death of her sister. She offered her sympathies to Benen and they shared a hug for a long time, she holding him while he cried.

Brenia never came. She blamed him for her sister’s death, Pol told him. Benen was not surprised and did not hold it against her in the least. He too blamed himself.

After a week of hiding in the headman’s house and grieving, Benen worked through his emotions until he was left numb. He hated himself. There was no doubt in his mind that he should never have tried to make wizards accepted by the common people. It was obvious to him now that they were never meant to mingle with anyone, not even each other. Wizards were solitary creatures and it was for the best.

He left in the middle of the night, sneaking out of the headman’s house and then out of the village. He took with him from his own house mementos of his time with Sania; a book and a knitted scarf. He also took some of his laboratory journals and the lenses he had been using to try to make a telescope. He told Timmon he was leaving and the cold presence came with him. He still had a promise to fulfil to the ghost.

They disappeared into the night and out of the lives of the village he had called home for a decade.

CHAPTER 4: HERMIT

When he set out, Benen had no plan. He just knew he had to get away from people. He couldn’t risk hurting someone else again, ever, even if it meant being alone. Well, as alone as a man with a ghost for a companion could be.

He walked, even though he would rather have flown, in consideration for Timmon. If he flew, he would be abandoning the ghost. For the same reason, he travelled at night; the ghost seemed to fade away during the day — dreaming, it claimed.

He headed east: he knew that if he walked east far enough he would reach the eastern desolation. This arid wasteland would suit his mood, he felt. There, he would be alone as he wished to be.

It took the pair three weeks to reach the edge of the desolation.

It had been slowly receding for centuries, Benen now knew this was the work of wizards, like Oster and Tawn. He guessed they set up their domains on the edge of the desolation and made it habitable and desirable. Then they exacted tribute from those who settled on the new land. Benen had no interest in making the wasteland habitable; he wanted somewhere no one would go.

When he arrived, he surveyed his new domain. It was a place of sand and rock, with some scrub trees struggling to survive on the meagre rainfall the area received. It was perfect.

Benen waited until day so that he would have privacy from Timmon and then unleashed his anger and frustration on his surroundings; cutting loose as he had never before.

The Cleaver was his constellation of choice for this. He found an outcropping of rock several metres tall and bisected it with one spell. He welcomed the pain and fire in his veins from channelling so much power at once. The outcropping did not fall apart as he had hoped; his cut had cleaved the rock in two, but each piece still stood up independent of the other. He wanted it destroyed!

He knew how to do this. It would require three celestial bodies working in concert for the exact effect he desired. This was no minor feat, but he did not care. He was beyond caring.

The first body he needed was the Sun, it was evidently in the sky since it was day. It would provide fire, the spark.

The second body he needed was the Cleaver. He had been using it to cut before, but its magic was more than simple cutting, it governed all destruction. It amplified the whole, turning fire into something greater.

The last body the effect would use was the Gull. This constellation’s magic was key to all spells involving air as substance. Benen wanted his fire to be well fed and the Gull portion of the effect would make sure of this.

He strained to keep all three portions in his mind at the same time, mixing their motions together, and blending their incantations. When the magic came it ravaged his body, coursing through him like a river of fire. It nearly knocked him out; nearly, but he hung on: he needed to see the effects of his spell.

The outcropping exploded in fiery molten fragments and globs with a sound like thunder. Much of the central part of the rock was sublimated directly into steam. Barely conscious, Benen revelled in the sight of his power unleashed.

But it was not enough. Even this devastation did not match the emotions raging in his soul.

Using the power of the Sun, Benen cast a new spell, a simpler spell of pure fire. This time he sent flames along the ground to scour the area, burning away all traces of plant life and whatever small lizards, bugs, and other animals called this place home.

He was now in constant agony. This was the most magic he had ever channelled in such a short span.

But he was not done.

He wanted to see more destruction. He wanted the desolation around him to match what he felt in his heart. He did not care if the magic killed him — a part of him secretly hoped it would.

Benen called on the Gull once more, this time he brought clouds filled with rain into being with his magic. He pushed himself, willing into being clouds enough to turn day into night. The power ravaged him, making his stomach heave its contents on the charred ground, but the clouds came. Soon drops of rain fell from the dark masses of cloud above and Benen was drenched. He added his tears to the rain running down his face.

“More,” he whispered to the desolation around him.

With arms extended to the side, he looked to the heavens and called upon the Gull a third time. Benen brought down lightning from the skies above, pelting the ground with bolt after bolt. The thunder was deafening. Every bolt he called down was for something he would never have or that he had lost. There were many, many bolts.

When his list finally came to an end, he let himself collapse onto the ground and curled up into a ball. He passed out and was lost to the world until late that night. He awoke cold, hungry, and still in pain from the day’s channelling.

Gritting his teeth, he stood up, pushing through his aches. He had to eat if he was going to live.

“Are you all right?” Timmon asked. “I thought you might have died, you were so still.”

Benen tried to say something, but his throat was raw and his mouth dry. He must have screamed himself hoarse in the thunderstorm, giving voice to his torment. Instead of speaking he nodded.

Timmon left him alone then, giving Benen time to grieve in solitude.

The wizard undressed and changed to a normal-sized variant of his usual bird form and flew up and away, leaving his things where he had slept. He searched for prey on his way west, out of the desolation, but there was nothing in the desolation itself. He had to go a bit further to find game. He ate his first catch and carried a second back with him to the wasteland.

It was well into day by the time he returned. He saw clearly then, for the first time, the destruction he had wrought and was shocked at its extent.

I did all this?

The ground was charred black for hundreds of metres and large areas of sand had been turned to glass by repeated lightning strikes. The outcropping of rock was no more, its few remaining parts transformed into slag, scattered about the area.

I can destroy, this I never doubted. Building is where I fail.

Benen changed back to his human form and dressed. He put aside his second catch for later. He started that day to use his magic to create for himself a place of his own, away from all others, out in the desolation.

The work was not fast, he often had to leave the wasteland to get food, but there was progress. He started by making basins to hold water and then making clouds to rain down water to fill them. He then made a spell for himself using the Builder constellation combined with the Trickster to change sand into a moldable clay of sorts, which he used to build his initial shelter.

Building something, using mostly his hands to do the work, was rewarding to Benen. He took pride in his little circular one-room hut.

The problem of food needed his attention. He solved it first, temporarily, by using a constellation he was less familiar with: the Shepherd’s Crook. Its power over animals was exactly what he needed. For a focus he chose one of his water basins. He enchanted it with a powerful spell from the Crook. It would attract animals of all sorts to the basin, from quite far away. It was a difficult spell, but it soon bore fruit — or game, in this case.

As a more long-term plan, he worked to enrich the soil around his abode so that he could grow vegetables. He laughed at the thought that he
would
farm after all. This was something he had to do gradually, using many different effects from different constellations, but he had time and, in the interim, was subsisting adequately on the game his magical basin was attracting.

At night, he and Timmon would talk around a fire Benen built to warm them both. It seemed the ghost felt best around a nice hot fire; Benen liked to oblige him.

As the months passed, Benen’s area of the wasteland became verdant from his efforts and he began to keep some of the animals that he attracted, raising them as livestock. He created fencing for this purpose and, in preparation for winter, built a barn. He used wood for this construction. He had flown far and wide to gather seeds and saplings of all sorts so that he may have trees in his oasis in the desolation. He had planted these and then enchanted them for faster growth. It did not take long for him to have a small forest he could use as source of wood. He also placed trees for aesthetic purposes and as habitats for some of the animals that had come into his domain.

Making planks out of timber was easy for Benen, he simply used the magic of the Cleaver. It made perfect cuts exactly to his specifications.

For metal he had to go to the nearest town, using up the remainder of the funds from his previous life to buy pots and pans, hammer and nails, and other needful things he could not simply make for himself. He imagined he might be able to draw out metal-bearing ore from the depths of the ground with the right magic, but he did not feel it was worth the effort.