The Archmage Unbound (6 page)

“That must be the armor Dorian was
telling me about,” Marc said as he walked up. He hadn’t announced himself when
he entered but that was hardly necessary anyway.

I didn’t bother replying, gracing him
with an unintelligible grunt instead. I had my hands full of red hot metal and
although I wore heavy leathers to protect my body and had spelled my hands and
arms for hardness and heat resistance I still didn’t dare relax my attention. Careless
smiths didn’t work for long, and that probably was doubly true for mage-smiths…
if that was the proper term for what I had become. Maybe wizard-smith would sound
better?

After a few minutes I found a good
stopping point and set my work aside to cool, and then I gave my friend my full
attention. “What’s on your mind?” I was a little worried he might have come
up with a ‘plan’ but I had decided not to mention it to him until he brought it
up himself.

He gave me one of his old grins, the
sort that meant he might be up to mischief. “I’m bored,” he said finally.

“Nothing new there,” I replied. “What
are we going to do about it?”

“Well I’ve been thinking, about your
offer. Now that I have that ahead of me it seems I don’t need to rush things.
Instead there might be a few things I’d like to do first.”

I kept my face smooth but inwardly I was
smiling. “Such as?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking about what you told
me before… about the things you read in that book on the history of Illeniel.
I’d like to know more,” he answered.

“You think you can do something about
it,” I concluded.

“No, but that’s the point. I don’t
know. Until now I’ve been a victim, and that’s part of what makes it so
painful. Not only did she manipulate and betray me, she left me with the
knowledge that nothing I do will matter. No action I can take now will affect
her or the other gods in the slightest. Mankind as a whole and me in
particular, we are insignificant… unworthy of regard or consideration.” Marc
leaned back and gazed at the cooling metal I had set aside.

“You think there might be knowledge that
will help?” I suggested.

His eyes snapped back to my face, “Yes.
The story you told me about the sundering, if true, is proof of that. If the
gods were once less than they are now... then they aren’t immortal, eternal, or
unchanging.” He clenched his fist as he spoke and I could see the anger
simmering beneath his cool exterior.

“And if they aren’t?”

Marc gave me a grin that sent a shiver
down my spine, “Then they aren’t gods, and if they aren’t gods then they can be
brought to task for the things they have done.”

“Even if they aren’t omnipotent it’s
very likely you still won’t be able to hurt them,” I reminded him.

“I have a friend who might be able to…,”
he said, looking squarely at me.

I suffered a moment of self-doubt,
“That’s a big leap. There’s little indication anyone might have that sort of
power.”

“Moira Centyr did...,” he said bluntly.

“She was an archmage.”

“So are you,” he replied.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “In any case, she
only defeated one god... and that was with a lot of help.”

“It doesn’t matter Mort. I’ll seek what
knowledge I can find. If any of it proves useful then I’ll have made some sort
of difference. If not... well I feel much better knowing you’re there to help
me… if it comes to that,” he stopped there.

“Where do you plan to start?” I asked.

“Your house... there may be more
histories in your father’s library. After that I’ll scour the libraries of the
nobility... and if I can get to them, the records of the churches.”

That gave me pause, there might be
information there that none of us could guess at. “You’re an ex-saint, which
makes you about as popular with the followers of the evening star as a skunk at
a tea party. You think they would let you near their coveted records now?”

“No... but I need a challenge,” he
declared. There was a light in Marc’s eyes again. He wasn’t the same man he
had been, but he was better than the broken creature I’d found in his room a
few days before. Revenge might be a poor motive, but it was better than
despair.

“I’m assuming you want me to take you to
the capital.”

“Of course,” he said with a smile.

“I’ll take you after dinner this
evening. I was planning to make a trip that way in a few days anyway. Now I
can use that as an excuse to check on your progress,” I informed him.

“Why are you going to Albamarl?” he
asked.

I gave him my own evil grin, “I promised
the king I would stop by and visit him.”

A frown passed over his face before
being replaced by a smirk, “You know… since you came and spent that week with
me over a year and a half ago you’ve done nothing but make enemies. The list
just keeps getting longer.”

“When you have friends as good as mine
you have to find a way to balance things out,” I replied jokingly. Then I took
a chance and asked a more direct question, “Are you feeling better?”

“If you were someone else I would say
yes,” he answered with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’m not
going to get ‘better’ Mort. I’m just going to get even, if possible.”

“So your good humor has just been a
façade?”

“Mostly. Even so, my façade is better
looking than you do, even on a good day,” he snapped back.

“Ha!”

“Anyway, Mort, I do need to thank you. I
still don’t really want to live, but you made me realize I had the choice and
if I’m going to stick around a while longer I might as well do something to pay
the bitch back for what she did to me. No sense in wallowing in self-pity
meanwhile. When I’ve had enough I’ll let you know.” He stepped closer and
embraced me in a bear hug.

Marc left after that and I collected my
thoughts and returned to my work on the armor. As I worked my thoughts kept
returning to what he had said, particularly the part about Moira Centyr. I
still had a lot of questions about her. I hadn’t spent much time exploring my
new abilities since the day Penny and I had broken the bond. I wasn’t even
sure if I should call them ‘abilities’. For the most part it just seemed like
a broader form of communication.

Things like what I was doing now…
working with the metal before me, those were clearly normal wizardry. I was
using my own power to shape the material in my hands. So far I hadn’t seen
anything impressive about this ability that supposedly meant I was an archmage.
Sure I could hear the earth, the wind, and a myriad of smaller things, but thus
far it seemed to be mainly an informational ability. There were a few things
that puzzled me though, such as when the earth had shaken back in Albamarl,
when I threatened the banker. Or the way the wind had tossed Ariadne’s hair a
few days back, just after I had thought about it. In each case something had
happened, but I hadn’t felt directly responsible. Unlike wizardry, I hadn’t
exerted my own power, but nevertheless something had happened which coincided
with my own thoughts and feelings.

Moira Centyr in particular was a
startling example of something far beyond the ken of normal wizardry. Whatever
she had done a thousand years before had changed her into a creature of the
earth itself, an elemental being. How such a thing could happen was beyond my
ability to guess, but as I pondered it I realized that I didn’t have to guess.

My last contact with her had been while
I was desperately trying to heal Penny. Naturally I hadn’t had a chance to ask
any non-essential questions at the time, but there was no reason I couldn’t ask
them now. I had actually been considering trying to contact her since that
day, but until now I had had too many things distracting me to make a serious
attempt.

The metal in my hands had gone cold.
Startled, I realized I had been standing idle for several moments. I set the
piece down and decided the time had come to do something. Walking outside I
washed my hands and face in the water trough near the door.
I should find
someplace a bit more private,
I thought to myself.

I took a walk, through the village and
out the gate. As I went I studied the repairs to the outer wall. During
Gododdin’s siege of my home they had breached the outer wall that encircled the
town of Washbrook. After our victory it had been the first thing on our list of
important things to rebuild. The work had gone well and now the section of
wall that had been torn down was only remarkable by the difference in color
between the new stone and the older stone of the undamaged parts of the wall.

The masons were now laying the
foundation for a much larger wall that would encircle the area where our
palisade had been… and more. The most uncomfortable thing about the siege had
been the crowding created by the fact that some of the town was outside of the
defensive walls. If it ever came to that again I intended to make sure that we
had room and then some for any future sieges. Once the new outer wall was
built I would have several large barracks constructed, along with storehouses
for food and supplies.

I didn’t actually anticipate needing to
fill those barracks with soldiers, but if I had to shelter the people of the
county again there would be plenty of space for the farmers and their families
to stay.
I should probably consider having a second well dug to provide
easier access to fresh water,
I thought.

My steps took me beyond the walls and
down the road toward the valley. I followed it for several hundred yards
before I turned aside and headed into the trees that flanked the road on either
side. I kept going till I found a comfortable looking spot to sit beside a
large oak and there I settled myself, leaning my back against the massive
trunk.

Closing my eyes I began slowly clearing
my mind. My mage-sight had already made sure the surrounding area was clear of
people so I felt secure in my privacy. A more careful scrutiny reassured me
that there were no ‘empty-places’ that might indicate shiggreth nearby. I had
not forgotten them despite the fact that they had remained in hiding since
their attack on the village before the war.

Listening I focused my attention on the
deep and steady thrumming of what I thought of as the heart of the earth. My
awareness of my own body slipped away and was replaced by a more acute
awareness of the ground beneath me, the feeling of the stone and dirt that
stretched away for miles in every direction. As my connection to the earth
grew firm I cast my ‘voice’ outward, calling her name,
Moira.

I had never tried to contact her before
so I wasn’t entirely sure it would work. At first I felt nothing in response
to my call but after an unknown period of time I felt… something, a more
focused intelligence, approaching. Power moved in the earth around me and I
felt the ground rise up slowly in front of where I sat, flowing and forming the
shape of a woman.

“You called me,” she said quietly. The
sound of a purely physical voice surprised me and I opened my eyes to see her
standing next to me. As before, she had taken the form of a human woman, perfect
in every detail, except for the small fact of being made of earth and stone.
Even her voice sounded almost normal, though it had a certain dry quality to
it.

“You can speak,” I said. I was mildly
surprised, in the past she had spoken to me only in my mind.

“Why would you think otherwise?” she asked,
though her face betrayed no visible emotion or curiosity.

“I assumed you could only speak to me
directly, mind to mind. If you could talk like this you should have been able
to talk to me even after I formed the bond with Penny,” I told her.

“You are laboring under several
misconceptions. I can only speak, move, or indeed act at all because you are
not
bound,” she replied.

That made no sense to me. “The bond
only interfered with my ability to communicate directly with my mind, how would
that affect your ability to speak?”

“Who do you think you are talking to?”
she asked.

I sincerely hoped she wasn’t going to
make a habit of answering my questions with questions, but with a sigh I
answered anyway, “Moira Centyr... or have you changed names?”

“That is probably the best name to use,
but it is not strictly correct,” she said with an infuriatingly calm demeanor.

“Listen, I’m not really in the mood for
this, if you aren’t Moira Centyr then tell me who I
am
talking to. I’d
rather not spend all day playing word games,” I said impatiently.

“If I were still alive I’d have you
punished for such impertinence,” she answered with a faint hint of a smile.
“In one sense I am the earth, in another I am a remnant of Moira Centyr, and in
the most important sense I am you.”

“Well that really clears things up,” I
said sarcastically. I should have expected an answer like that; magical beings
never seem to have straight forward answers. I got my frustration under
control and decided to tackle the subject systematically. “Let’s start with
the first thing you said, ‘if I were still alive’, I thought you
were
still alive. Did you die after you joined with the earth and defeated
Balinthor?”