Wizard (The Key to Magic) (25 page)

In this he found confirmation of something that he had always suspected: that the reality of the Early Empire did not live up to the glowing image presented by modern scholars. The conquest of the northern continent was not a swift and inevitable succession of brilliant triumphs over hordes of savages, but rather a plodding campaign of bribery, road building, intimidation, commerce, and often short, brutal battles in muddy fields against well organized forces.

He saw the Imperial Seat become a metropolis connected to every corner of the Empire, saw the construction of the dykes necessary to hold back the expanding waters of the spring fed lake that would eventually consume it, and saw Commander Rhwalck, son of Lord Dhreckal, receive a commission from Emperor Ihrexhs III.

It was no great revelation to learn that the event had not proceeded exactly as was recorded in the annals of Khalar.

“It shall be your final duty," the Imperial Herald read, "to extend the boundaries of the Empire into the hinterland, from the edges of the Silver Sea to the unknown reaches of the Purple Ocean, for the greater glory of the Emperor and the Gods."

Ihrexhs III, an emaciated, balding man with a permanent look of distaste, had further told Rhwalck, who stood before the splendid Imperial throne in chains, "A
nd failing that to die in the most miserable and demeaning fashion for the crime of insolence against the holy person of the Emperor. Were it not for the matchless service that your father has given to the Empire, I would send you to the gibbet.”

Thereafter, Mar's views followed Rhwalck and over the course of three desperate years he saw the cultured courtier become a humorless officer with a quick temper and an intolerance of contrary opinion. By the time the lean remnants of the 12th Legion began to clear a hillock in the marsh west of the confluence of the Red and Blue Ice rivers, Rhwalck was scarred, walked with a limp, and was a proficient warrior who could and would kill any man that raised a hand against him.

"I still don't see the point of erecting the pylon,"
an officer in a bear skin mantle said to Rhwalck as the commander swung a hammer to drive a stake. The officer wore a surveyor's badge pinned to the left shoulders of the mantle. One of his eyes had been taken out by something that left a hideous scar and he squinted from the other.

"
Orders are orders
," Rhwalck said as he moved to set a second stake on its mark.
"The Viceroy would have apoplexy if I he heard that I had disobeyed the Emperor."

"If the Emperor were dead,"
the surveyor mused,
"then his successor could commute your punishment and in that case I doubt that even your father could find fault with the fact that we had not died to the last man building useless pylons."

"
Fine,"
Rhwalck agreed without heat
. "We'll go down the river and kill the idiotic whoreson."
He swung the sledge to finish driving the stake.
"But we're still building the pylon."

This intriguing historical insight caused Mar to slow even more to observe the construction of the Old City and the eventual growth of the Lower City. He watched as Viceroys, Patriarchs, priests, zealots, merchants, scholars, bondsmen, craftsmen, and beggars came and went, living lives that were important in their moments but which often had little lasting effect on the fortunes of Khalar.

Then, a surge like nothing that he had yet seen passed through undertime and his view shifted to an alley and a trash pile.

“Coo, what have we here now?”

The old woman looked just as Mar remembered her -- wrinkled, filthy, and starved. What passed afterwards, though, were things that he had no memories of. He saw the woman, Lyrhae, who had nursed and then mothered him for two years until a wasting sickness had taken her and thrown him back into the rough arms of Old Rag Mahlye. He saw himself learn to walk amongst the rubbish and dirt of back alleys and be smacked for crying when he fell, learn to talk by repeating the oft voiced curses of his adoptive mother, and learn that weeping when he was cold or hungry or lonely would gain him no respite.

It was with an almost morbid fascination that he watched himself -- not a twin generated by wizardry gone awry, but his own authentic being -- grow and survive under the distracted care of Mahlye. When the old woman expired in her sleep and left him alone, the visions began to coincide with the life that he remembered.

At this point, he decided to pause, his reasons being twofold: he wanted to confirm that he would have no difficulty in creating an exit portal and he was hungry -- or at least he thought that he should be. For reasons that he had yet to discover, hunger, thirst, and other common bodily needs had yet to plague him in undertime. Considering that he had travelled many thousands of years, he felt that his belly
ought
to be empty. Regardless, he was in a mood to eat and Khalar, being
his
city, a place whose eccentricities and everyday perils he knew well, should be a safe spot to attempt his first foray into normal time with little chance that he might be discovered or be overtaken by simple hazard.

Recalling with pleasure the apple, nut and raisin sweet rolls sold by an old baker at a certain neighborhood market in the western part of the Lower City, he skimmed through the days until he saw a viceregal flag bearing a horned stag and bordered in mourning purple flying above the Blue Ice Fortress. That particular ensign marked the death of Viceroy Szervithiamic XXVII, whose rule had lasted only two months due to the sudden onset of poison and indicated a time when Mar had been half grown, more or less. The old baker had not died, taking his unequalled recipe with him to his grave, until two years after that.

With a twitch of his head, he found a view of crowded Muddy Lane, just a few streets north of the market and held to the vision. Appearing in a busy thoroughfare seemed inherently unwise. In his memoir, Whinseschlos had said that he had travelled undertime as "a thief skulking through the attics and cellars of the history of the world, peeking out of mouse holes as others go about their fixed lives and fearing to tread lest an unwary step cause a sound that would alert those upon whom I spy." Though Mar had moved about with little concern in the ancient past, here in his own time he thought it best to adopt the rambling wizard's method, lest he inadvertently disturb the course of his own life and wind up, as Old Mar had termed it, a cull.

He made a minor adjustment and gazed upon the broad, sunlit roof of a warehouse overlooking the lane, liked what he saw, cast his portal, and moved through it. His exit from undertime was controlled, upright, and unhurried, as if he were simply stepping down from a carriage. Judging the effort an unmarred success, he began to move across the rooftops towards the market, falling easily into the familiar routine of leaping gaps, scaling low dividing walls, and avoiding paths that might place him in the unobstructed view of windows or balconies.

When he was no more than twenty steps from the edge of a building that overlooked the market, he sensed an undertime portal opening directly in his path, skidded to a halt to crouch behind a chimney, and immediately cast the glamour that hid him from sight.

The wizard that trotted back into normal time was not old, perhaps no more than twice Mar's age. He had a well-trimmed beard, sandy hair, and an otherwise bland face. By far, his most interesting aspect was the fact that he wore clothing in cut, fabric, and style similar to that which Mar had seen in ancient Dhiloeckmyur.

Moving straightaway toward the parapet, the wizard did not appear furtive and gave no consideration to his surroundings other than whatever object had fixed his gaze. Stopping two long paces short of the low brick wall at a spot that Mar knew would not permit him to be seen by anyone in the streets below, the man scrutinized the upper storey of a building directly opposite.

As it was clear that the new arrival was unaware of his presence, Mar stayed put and watched.

A hoarse shout took up from the open space of the market. "Stop! Stop in the name of the Viceroy!
Stop, boy! Stop now!"

After a few seconds, an Imperial drill pipe began to screech:
Bring aid!

Then Mar remembered.
The grapes!

After a moment, during which he mentally retraced the energetic bounding leaps of his adolescent self up to the balcony, the taunting of the guardsman, and then --

The wizard made a fist and shook it in a particular sequence, and Mar felt the ether stir with the generation of a spell very similar to that which Prim had used to alter her voice. Then the wizard splayed his fingers and made a shoving gesture to cast another spell that had elements similar to the one that Mar used to amplify his voice.

"Boy! You'd better get going! Look down at the corner to the left!"

The wizard's voice came out as that of the woman of indeterminate age and as soon as he had given the warning, he spun on a heel in some hurry and walked back from the parapet.

Mar infused the wizard's clothing with a lifting ardent-gold and trapped him in place.

As shock registered on the man's face, Mar dropped his glamour and rose to confront him. "You're Zso."

He had addressed the wizard in Standard and as he thought to repeat his accusation in Common, he found that the ancient language had left him.

After a pause of recognition, Zso submitted to the restraint of his garments, flashed a smile, and replied in a cheerful unaccented Standard, "I must say, this is quite unexpected. I was not informed of this intersection."

"Then you know who I am."

"Yes, of course. I am unsure of your exact point in the progression, but based upon your apparent age and appearance, I would guess that you are returning from your first venture into the age of magic?"

Mar saw no need to confirm this. "You just meddled in my life."

"True, but I am only an instrument. The group that has commissioned my services are the ones that have chosen to order your progression in a certain fashion. I am naught but a professional wizard, an independent craftsman if you will."

Mar frowned. "So you're nothing more than a workman for hire."

"Just so."

"What's your price?"

"I'm not sure that I understand."

"What's the cost of your hire? If it's just a matter of gold, I'll pay you to leave me alone."

"My apologies. My current contract with my patrons is exclusive. I am unable to take on other work now or in future."

"Then I'll just undo everything that you have done."

"This has been tried before. My patrons monitor all changes in the progression and have always dispatched me to set events back to the course that they desire."

"I could just kill you."

"I don't doubt that you could and would do so, but that choice would be contrary to your interests. You are who you are due to the assistance that I have provided along the way. Kill me now and all future assistance that I will provide -- from your perspective have already provided -- will not occur. That, as you surely know, would erase the progression that has made you who and what you are."

Mar grimaced. "A new twin would take my place."

"Exactly. A twin, I would project, that would never become a magician or a king. As an example, had I not just interceded, you would have continued to taunt the Imperial as other Guardsmen crept up through the building and onto the balcony behind you. After a brief but energetic struggle, you would have been captured. By the end of the day, you would have been branded as a thief and thrown into a cell under the Blue Ice Fortress. You imprisonment would have lasted for some months and then you would have been sold off as a bondsman to a mining concern. The mine foreman would have kept you constantly in shackles due to your numerous attempts at escape. An infection in the sores opened by the daily application of a whip to your back would have killed you before you finished the first year of your bond."

His
unease
telling him that Zso's prophecy felt
wrong
, or at least incomplete, Mar shook his head. "That's not certain."

"True, but the probabilities are very high that that is the exact sequence of events that would have taken place."

Mar waved that off. "What sort of future are you trying to force me into?"

"I am not privy to that information. My patrons only provide me with such detail as if necessary to complete my assignments."

This statement also struck Mar as untrue. "You're lying."

"Yes, of course, but I have distracted you long enough to prepare my portal."

Zso vanished and Mar cursed.

THIRTY-ONE

Where to go and what to do?

Sitting between the knobby feet of the statue of the Avatar of Silglm atop the bell tower of the Temple of N'm that was only a few blocks from the market, Mar fought with these two questions as he enjoyed his sweet rolls.

Warnings abounded in Oyraebos' text, in the words of the Wizard Whinseschlos, and in the hints that Old Mar had voiced. Mar could only believe that the use of undertime to affect normal time carried the threat of inescapable danger and horrific consequences.

Nevertheless -- and the intervention of meddlers and madmen notwithstanding -- he still believed that his future was his own to mold. Although he had nothing but his own gut feelings as proof, he was convinced that if he used undertime to make the right changes and take the proper actions, he could reverse the disaster at the bridge, bring down the power of the Phaelle'n, bolster the Empire, preserve the people who had come to matter to him, and return to Telriy.

But just as Old Mar had done, if he made a single misstep he could easily destroy who he was and leave himself adrift forever in a world in which some other Mar lived in his place.

To prevent the possibility of creating a usurping twin, he knew that he could not intervene in any way that would alter the established events of his life. He could not do anything to ease any of the struggle or hardships that he had endured as a youth. He could not prevent the starvation and beatings. He could not erase the fear and despair. And he could not under any circumstance prevent the God's cursed meeting with Waleck or any of a thousand other events that had filled the days since that moment.