The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (28 page)

“
Where have you been!” I
demanded. “You sent me off to England, and then pulled a
disappearing act!”

Pox sniveled, “I can manifest where
you are when you call me if you are alone. Sometimes I can find you
if you remain in a place long enough for me to locate,
Master.”

“
What are you talking
about? What ARE you?”

“
I am a ghost of my former
self, a phantom. I stayed when I died, and then asked to be bound
as a phantom so I could continue to serve you, as I did in life
before I was killed.”

“
So you’re a
ghost?”

“
No, I am a phantom, this
body is reconstituted from the Ether when I manifest.”

Typically, of Pox, his answers often
confused me more, not less, but I had little time, so I asked, “Why
can you only come when I am alone?”

Pox bobbed his whole squat body up and
down as he said, “I meant only when you are not with other mages,
for their power over reality keeps me from manifesting.”

“
I see; can you help
me?”

He nodded, “I can try, Master, tell me
what you need.”

“
Tell me who my parents
are!” I demanded, realizing I didn’t even need to look at these
dusty old scrolls; here was someone who knew my past!

“
I don’t know,” Pox
answered contritely. “You never told me, Master. When you brought
me back my memory was damaged; I can recall little of my previous
life.”

Great, another brain damaged idiot, we
were a matched set, if you ignored his deformed body.

“
OK, fine then, but I will
still need to find the scroll which tells me about my lineage, but
there are so many.”

Pox exhaled, which stunk up the
chamber to high heaven, and said, “What you need may be called by
your choice.”

Damn, I wanted to punch that little
runt! Every time I asked him something he made it all so confusing,
why couldn’t the putrid pigmy just say, “Oh, it’s THAT one!” And
then point to a scroll with one of his disgusting
digits?

“
Explain that, simply!” I
almost yelled, my saeran eyes kind of bugging out of my scaled
face.

So he tried again, “The scroll you
need is where you know it can be found.”

Ah hell, I wondered if it was against
the law to kill a phantom? Or maybe that was considered a boon to
society? I vowed to find out. But as I considered crushing the
conniving cretin his words kind of made some sense, once I
remembered I was a wizard, and what wizards did for
kicks.

I turned to the room and thought about
how they would have put the important scrolls at the bottom, and
how a mage Third would be on a scroll in the third cubby. Then, my
family, who were no doubt important, would be placed on top. So I
walked to the third cubby and picked up the scroll I needed, from
right on top.

I spread it out on the table. What I
saw was family tree diagram. Hot damn, it had actually worked! All
I had to do was know where the scroll was, and that’s where it was,
which, in essence, was what Pox had said.

In bold letters at the top of the
scroll was a title, House Sivaeral. Below that was a rectangular
box which had just two words, “The Archimage”. From the title,
there were several lines drawn to the next row of boxes below. On
these connecting lines, between rows of boxes, were names like
Esabeth Sivaeral: M, or Karice Albus: 3.

It wasn’t too hard to figure out that
these were the mates of the name in the box above, their house and
their Tier. ‘M’ must be for mundane, and numbers for a Tier. There
were twelve boxes in the second row, each containing a name. There
was a mix of female and male names. All of the names on this row
had a red line drawn through them, except for three: Oberon,
Gunder, and Braun. I noted Medrod was just to Oberon’s left, though
there was a red line through Medrod’s name. Again, it was obvious;
the line meant they were ended. In every case where a line was
drawn through a name, all names down the rows connected to that
name were red lined.

This made the three remaining lines
stand out, as they were the only Seconds not crossed out, and
therefore, every surviving Sivaeral mage was down one of their
lines. If I was a Third, and obviously I was still alive, then one
of these three had to be my father! I quickly scoured the names on
the third line of boxes which connected to each of the three
remaining names above, looking for Nicholas, but my name wasn’t
there.

“
I’m not here,” I said,
stunned, I had been so sure I was about to learn who my real
parents were.

Pox wiped a large glop of snot from
his nose, and flicked it to the ground, and then he snorted
heavily, sucking the remainder back into his pickle size nose, and
then said, “Perhaps your name is hidden.”

“
Hidden? Why would they do
that?”

Pox answered, “When an illegitimate
child is born, often times parents try to protect them from the
Hunters.”

“
Illegitimate? What do you
mean, like their parents weren’t married?”

He shook his ugly head, and I stepped
back lest any of his snot fly off. Then Pox said, “No, Master,
illegitimate, as in ‘against propriety’, or worse, against the
Accords.”

Once again my thought about murdering
the little larcenous leech leaped through my mind, but I held on
and said, “What would constitute ‘against propriety’?”

“
Well, a Bastard child,” he
said like I should have known that.

I recalled Hydan had explained
Bastards, they were the child of two mages of the same Tier and
were often hunted by other mages.

“
OK, but even if I am a
Bastard, how would I know?”

He looked at my left hand and said,
“Use the ring, Master, you told me your mother gave it to
you!”

“
Use the ring?” I said and
looked down at the gold band on my right hand, ring finger. “What
the hell does that mean, what, am I supposed to imagine something
else?”

“
No, I mean, look through
the ring!”

Was this some kind of damned metaphor?
Did he mean the Ring of Ten mages or some other ring?

“
What do you mean, look
through the ring?” I demanded, expecting one of his really
confusing answers, which the gnarled gremlin generally gave me, but
Pox just held up his thumb and forefinger, making a circle, and
then brought it up to his bloodshot eye.

It couldn’t be that easy, could
it?

I pulled the ring off my finger, which
took some tugging; the thing didn’t like to come off. Then, feeling
a little ridiculous, I held it up to my eye and looked at the
scroll through the center of the gold ring.

There was more writing! The additional
writing showed as glowing thin silver lines on the parchment. I
quickly rescanned the three living Seconds and saw a new line
coming off of Oberon! I followed it, and where there should have
been the name of my mother on the line there was nothing written.
However, the line did go to a box, and there it said, ‘Nicholas
Sivaeral: 3’

Oberon Sivaeral was my
father!

I put my ring back on, and then rolled
up the scroll and put it back in the cubby; there was no sense
letting someone else know what I’d been perusing.

“
OK, let’s get back to the
storage room,” I said to Pox, but the little runt had disappeared
again, great.

I hurried toward the storage room, and
then slowed when I could see the door ahead. I waited until all
other saerans were out of sight, and then I just slipped in and
closed the door swiftly. On the floor was a blackened double
circle, with a pentagram inside, so I figured Hydan and Toji had
made the jump to Myrka’s cell.

I waited a couple more minutes and was
just about to go out and tell my guard to take me back to Myrka’s
cell when Toji spun into being and staggered a few steps. Myrka
followed and then Hydan appeared.

“
What happened?” I
demanded.

Hydan shrugged, and then answered, “I
arrived behind the saeran Captain; he had his Actuality knife close
to Myrka to keep her from using her powers. There were several
other guards, all trying to bind Myrka, so the first thing I did
was disabled the Captain.”

“
I thought you said you
couldn’t use your powers close to one of those Actuality
weapons?”

“
I didn’t, I just picked up
the chair which Myrka had been using, and hit him over the head
with it. Then I tossed the Actuality knife into the corner, which
freed us to use our powers.”

“
You didn’t kill the
guards, did you?” I asked.

“
No,” Myrka said
sourly.

Hydan explained, “I yelled out that
you wanted them alive, so Myrka electrocuted them, I think, but
only enough to render them unconscious.”

Myrka sniffed, “Those mundanes laid
their hands on me; they deserved to die.”

I ignored her, and said, “OK, now we
need a plan to get out of the city.”

But Toji said, “Before we go, remember
I was coming to the Hall of Records to find out if there is a Nimue
Sivaeral listed in the records, and where she dwells. If we can
find her perhaps we can obtain Caliburn! That would give you some
protection when we face Medrod, Morgain, and her
necromages!”

I nodded, that was probably a good
idea, so we went back to the genealogy room, and searched for a
sorceress named Nimue. She was listed as a Third, daughter of
Gunder Sivaeral and a mundane Sivaeral named Emalain. Then I asked
Toji, “Well, you were right, so we know she is a Sivaeral Third,
but is she still alive? What should we do next?”

“
We could check family
history,” he replied, and then Toji led us out of the genealogy
section and back to the oval entry room to inquire about history
books. I noticed our guard still there looking bored, so I figured
no one had yet discovered the unconscious guards back in Myrka’s
cell, or at least word had not reached here yet.

We followed Toji and he went to a
shelf with a bunch of large tomes on it, and he selected one
without pause. In moments, he opened the book, right to the page
where the Nimue Sivaeral was mentioned.

“
That ‘knowing you will
find it where you think it is’ thing is really useful,” I
noted.

Hydan looked at me strangely, “How did
you learn to do that?”

“
An ugly bird told me,” I
noted.

Hydan raised a small eye fin and said,
“A chicken told you? How extraordinary!”

Toji read for a moment, and then
reached out to the page and touched it.

I leaned in closer to see what he
touched and spotted a red pentagram symbol on the page. “What does
that do?” I asked.

Toji stepped aside and said, “Close
your eyes and then touch it,”

So I did, and it was like someone had
opened a curtain on a stage in my mind, I was looking at a placid
lake, in some tree covered hills of green. It was just like I was
standing there; I could even feel a breeze and smell the
evergreens. Then I opened my eyes and the image closed down again
and I was back in the Hall of Records.

“
Wow,” I stated.

Toji smiled, “This is an Image Mark,
which only a mage can see if they touch the symbol another mage
created.”

Hydan and Myrka also touched the
symbol so we all had it for the future.

Toji closed and replaced the book on
the shelf and then said, “OK, we know where to find Nimue, and we
can Five Point travel there. Shall we go back to the storage room,
and get out of this city?”

“
What about Mystical
Island?” I asked.

Hydan answered, “I have already been
there, and I can get us close to the island on the coast, but no
one can Five Point travel onto Mystical Island, Morgain has a
massive StarWard running.”

I nodded, so off we went to the
storage room, and Toji started forming a Traveling Star on the
stone floor.

Just as he finished it, I heard the
sound of guards calling out, and boots running. “They are onto us!”
I said, and then Toji motioned for us to jump into the flaming
star.

Chapter
Eleven

I'm your Sword of Light
tonight,

Going to scorch you deep
inside,

Make you glad to be
alive

Because I'm your Sword of
Light

-Horslips

I stepped out of the spinning blur
into the reality of the image I’d seen when I touched the pentagram
in the book. We were standing on a large stone, near the sandy
shore of a lake, which was glass smooth on the surface. The
surrounding tree covered hills were perfectly mirrored on the
glossy lake water. As soon as all of us were there, I said, “Where
to?”

Toji answered, “The book only said
Nimue Sivaeral dwells within the waters of this lake.”

I nodded and walked down to the edge
of the lake and then called out, “Yo, Lake Lady!”