The Only Wizard in Town Read online

  Table of Contents

  Daedal

  Lorrika

  1

  2

  3

  Cope Threemen

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  Rantallion Merken

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  “Pictures” Bez

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Newport Pagnell

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  The Bard

  Spirry

  The Only Wizard in Town

  Heide Goody & Iain Grant

  Pigeon Park Press

  ‘The Only Wizard in Town’ Copyright © Heide Goody and Iain Grant 2019

  The moral right of the authors has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except for personal use, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Published by Pigeon Park Press

  www.pigeonparkpress.com

  [email protected]

  Daedal

  Priest Daedal hurried as fast as he could.

  Six bells sounded from the calendarists’ tower, the bells oddly dulled as if they were struggling in the hot wind. Night was falling over Ludens. Daedal would be expected in the temple for daily Summation soon enough, but he wanted to put a question to the imprisoned wizard. However, progress was slow: the crowds around the corn market, even as the market was closing, were irritatingly dense. The city folk of Ludens seemed perversely blind to his urgency. Also, there was the hopping.

  Daedal was not an old man – he still had all his own hair and teeth, and even some residual acne – but even he couldn’t move at much of a pace while hopping solely on his right foot.

  He glanced down to check he was still hopping on his right foot, and not his left. He had attempted Hop all day on one’s right foot some weeks before discovering shortly after lunch he had inexplicably switched to his left. There was no Hop all morning on one’s right foot and all afternoon on one’s left on the List of Things to Be Done; at least not in the sections he had read. It might appear in the Esoteries which only the high priests and Hierophant were permitted to read, but he didn’t feel like speculating on the matter and gave up.

  Today, it was right foot all the way. The guards bowed as he hopped through the great gopherwood gate of the temple, round to the lesser courtyard and the entrance to the Hierophant’s cells of justice. He brushed clumsily against the stone arch as he came to a halt. Ancient loose sandstone powdered against his robes; it didn’t matter. Everything in Ludens was the colour of sand: the stone, the clothes, the people, most of the food.

  As he got his breath back, a dirty youth – one of the jailer’s helpers, a nephew perhaps – backed out of the jailer’s cubbyhole office, bumped into Daedal and almost sent him tumbling.

  “Watch where you’re going!” snapped Daedal, swinging his left leg wildly to keep balanced. “You almost had me over!”

  The dirty creature regarded him thoughtfully. “Have you ever tried standing?”

  Daedal huffed. “Today is the day to hop on one’s right foot.”

  “Is it, now?”

  “Tell me: What will you do today?” asked Daedal, quoting Hierophant Foesen’s era-defining question to the faithful.

  The lad scratched his face. He had fine child-like features, quite feminine under all the filth. “Dunno. I climbed a tower. Ate some fruit.”

  Daedal had doubts. He wasn’t aware of either of those being on the List of Things To Be Done but, if they were, he would have completed them many lifetimes ago. Each strata of society had its own list to be completed before ascending in the next life.

  “Then they are done,” intoned Daedal formally, “and will not need doing again. Where is the jailer? I wish to see the wizard.”

  The lad shrugged and gestured down the stairs. Giving the young fool another peevish huff which Daedal was sure said more than any lecture, the priest hopped slowly and somewhat painfully down the steps to the cells.

  Daedal stopped at the bottom to rest his ankle, giving the jailer time to spot him, waddle over and remove his fat ring of door keys ready to open the wizard Abington’s cell. Ludens was a small (albeit religiously significant) city. It did not warrant a large jail and most cells were occupied – for good or bad – only briefly. Daedal paid regular visits to one prisoner, and one alone.

  “He’s in good spirits today,” said the jailer, unlocking the door.

  “I am not!” roared Abington from within. “I’m in bloody prison!”

  Wizards were not a local phenomenon. Certainly, Ludens and the plains around had their fair share of conjurers, magicians and sorcerers, but wizards…? They were an entirely foreign affair. Daedal had met only one wizard, this Abington, and therefore, as far as he knew, all wizards were tall, cantankerously loud pipe-smokers in the habit of growing beards which were not merely long, but bushy enough to conceal a small troop of monkeys.

  “Ah, Abington,” said Daedal warmly, hopping into the cell.

  Abington’s fierce eyebrows waggled as the wizard glared at Daedal’s dangling left foot.

  “Buqit demands there is a time for everything,” Daedal quoted.

  “Hmph! And does your blasted goddess demand there is a time to bring a wizard a cup of beer?”

  “Yes,” said Daedal. “We did that last month. Remember?”

  “We could it again.”

  “Buqit remembers all. Repetition is redundant, insulting even.”

  “But that was a barley beer, yes? No hops. Do you have beer made with hops in the city?”

  Daedal tried not to glance down, wondering if the wizard was trying to be funny. “Maybe.”

  “Then maybe there’s a time to bring a wizard a cup of that.”

  “I will give it some thought.” Daedal made himself comfortable on the bench beside Abington’s little table, making sure his left foot was elevated. The remains of a meal was scattered across the table top. The wizard’s papers covered much of the unoccupied floor.

  Abington’s cell was as pleasant a place in which one could hope to be imprisoned. Light and dry, it would have served as a decent wine cellar. It was better furnished than many a sea captain’s cabin. The bed was soft and superficially free of vermin. There was a wash stand, a chamber pot, quill, ink and paper, and even a shelf of little jars in which Abington was permitted to keep his magical powders and herbs.

  The wizard was accorded the comforts of a beloved guest; perhaps one who might lose his head to the executioner’s blade within the week, but a guest nonetheless. This degree of hospitality was all Daedal’s doing; Abington was a wizard and Daedal valued his knowledge and insight.

  While Abington harrumphed amongst his papers and magical apparatus, searching furiously for something or other, Daedal got straight to the point of his visit. “I saw a magician today.”

  “How interesting,” said Abington, entirely uninterested and peering into the chamber pot.

  “In the Upgate market.”

  “Did you?”

  “He had an assistant. Do all magicians have assistants? I don’t think he paid her very much.
She certainly couldn’t afford many clothes. Bangles, yes. Clothes, no.”

  “Is there a purpose to your wittering, Daedal?” Abington irritably moved a grimlock skull he was using as a paperweight from one shelf to another and back again.

  “Before our eyes he, the magician, produced a trestle table laden with enough food to satisfy a Hierophant’s banquet. Glazed ham. Dates in syrup. Pigeon, pineapple and pomegranate.”

  “I see,” said Abington, hefting the skull again.

  “You do?” said Daedal.

  “You’ve come to torment a man who’s had nothing to eat today except steamed artichokes.”

  Daedal paused a moment to compose himself. Abington was not only irritable but sometimes quite irritating. “There is a time for eating artichokes,” he said, piously.

  “I had artichokes yesterday too.”

  “Maybe the kitchen has a surfeit of artichokes.” Daedal wished the wizard would put the skull down. “The point of my story is this: did he do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Did the magician actually magic up a whole banquet?”

  Abingdon finally placed the skull on a shelf and left it there. “I wouldn’t know. You were there, not I. Blast it all!” This last was directed at the room and general, and the mess of Abington’s papers in particular. Whatever he was looking for refused to be found.

  “My concern,” persisted Daedal, “is that he performed this feat of conjuring and the people threw him coins. Coppers all.”

  “You think he was overpaid?”

  “I think it was pointless. He had conjured up an entire feast, enough for him, his poorly-clad assistant and a dozen others. If he was capable of that, why not simply cast such a spell every day and eat like a king. Better still, why not open up a tavern and make a grand living selling the best food in the city—”

  Abington had begun ransacking his bed.

  “—And,” persisted Daedal, trying to ignore the wizard, “if this is the case and magicians can produce food so effortlessly, why do we have farms at all? Why send the peasants to toil in the fields when we could just train up a score of magic users to conjure all the food the city needs? It all seems so horribly illogical.”

  “Illogical, hmm?” Abington stroked his beard, as though it were some sort of chin-dwelling pet cat. (It was certainly big enough). His eyebrows abruptly shot up. “I’ve got it!”

  “Have you?” said Daedal hopefully.

  The wizard bent, picked up a slipper, and fished around inside. His hand came out holding a bundle of matchwood, which Daedal recognised as fire-making sticks of Abington’s own devising. With great satisfaction, the wizard struck one of the fire-sticks against the bars of the high cell window and put flame to the oil lamp on the wall. The light produced was a sickly yellow, but very welcome. Night had all but fallen outside.

  “There,” said Abington. He looked at Daedal properly for the first time since the priest’s arrival. “It was a trick.”

  “The magician?”

  The wizard nodded. “Just a trick. Does that mean the man will be punished? Your goddess is none too fond of liars.”

  “Only if he claims to have done something and fraudulently asks Buqit to strike it from the List of Things to Be Done.”

  “You’re pretty keen on punishing magicians, too,” said Abington, holding up his hands, displaying the iron manacles which symbolised his imprisonment and prevented him casting any spells of his own.

  “Your crimes are of an entirely different order,” said Daedal as kindly as possible. “How do you know it was a trick?”

  “For the reason you very eloquently give.” Abington picked up a clay pipe from among his papers, struck another match and put it to the already weed-filled bowl. He puffed gently until the weed was glowing and its pungent smell filled the room. “Casting a spell, or indeed getting any task accomplished, is like a journey.”

  “Is it?”

  Abington nodded and took a deep and deeply satisfying toke. “Imagine one had to transport an army from, say, the Amanni stronghold in Hayal to Ludens.”

  “Why an army?”

  “It’s just an example. The road across the plains would take a matter of weeks. Hiring boats in Carius and sailing round would be a longer journey distancewise but, with a fair wind, take about the same length of time.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s all a matter of time and effort. Same result, different path. So it is with magic. Look at this pipe.” Daedal looked. “How much time and effort would it take to produce such a thing.”

  Daedal gave it a moment’s thought. “A few minutes to roll out the stem. The same for the bowl. An hour in a kiln, perhaps? It would take hardly any effort at all.”

  “It would require some small skill,” said Abington, charitably. “But, yes. A meagre wizard could conjure up more than a dozen of these in a day. Same result, different path.”

  “Ah,” said Daedal. “So what’s the use of magic?”

  Abington harrumphed, expelling a mighty cloud of smoke. “The use of magic is threefold, you unimaginative dolt. Firstly, I can use it to access skills which might naturally be unavailable to myself. I can no more fashion a pipe by hand than you can, let’s not pretend otherwise. Or if we did it would be a very sorry affair and more closely resemble a sausage than a pipe.”

  Daedal had no idea what a sausage was but nodded anyway.

  “Secondly, those skills might be skills which no human has access to,” continued Abington. “Flight. Clairvoyance. Speaking to the dead. And thirdly, whereas a mere human has to expend the effort at the moment of performing the act, a wizard can prepare far, far in advance. Even now, while I’m indulging you in fatuous conversation, I could be galvanising my internals and generating the effort required to produce a pipe in an instant.”

  Daedal scrutinised Abington as much as he dared, in the hope of observing the wizard galvanising said internals. He wondered what spells the wizard might be storing up inside them.

  “The banquet-making conjurer you mentioned,” said Abington, “would either have had to spend the past week mentally preparing himself – which seems unlikely, don’t you think? – or he would have to dredge up the necessary time and effort in the instant. You would have seen him frozen, immobile and insensible, for hours or days before the feast was produced. Certainly, to him, it would have felt as though no time had passed, but the crowd would have wandered off long before he was done.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “He could have theoretically used his assistant to, indeed, assist. A wizard’s touch at the moment of casting: the holding of hands for example. In this way, a willing participant can add their vital energies to the process. Halve the time with two of them. Cut it to a third with three, and so on.”

  “I knew you’d have the answer,” said Daedal, nonetheless feeling oddly disappointed. He leaned back, almost putting his elbow in the remains of the wizard’s artichoke dinner. “Your explanation makes perfect sense, and yet…”

  “It seems quite unmagical.”

  “Yes. Yes, it does.”

  Abington smiled. At least, the form of his moustache and beard shifted into a shape which might indicate a smile somewhere beneath. Daedal had no reason to assume it was a nice smile. “There are few true wonders in the world,” said Abington, “and those few are worth risking all to possess.”

  Daedal knew exactly what the wizard was referring to. “You should be grateful we arrested you before you even entered Foesen’s Tomb.”

  “You have said.”

  “But it’s true. To die in Foesen’s Tomb is to suffer indescribable torture. Do you know how many levels of traps, deadfalls, mazes and doors – locked, false and secret – Kavda the Builder put in the catacombs and dungeons beneath the temple?”

  Abington’s gaze was stony. He placed a hand on a collection of scrolls. “The collected works of Kavda the Builder.” He slapped it down on a bundle of parchment. “The commentary by Kavda’s nephew and my own note
s on that.” He slammed a fist on an untidy sheaf of papers. “The blood-stained diary of Handzame the Unlucky.” He swept the sheaf to the floor. “And months and months of my own notes! Of course I know how many bloody traps and doors are in the tomb!”

  Daedal coughed uncomfortably. “It was a rhetorical question.”

  “Curse your rhetoric, man! This is my life’s work, a hymn to the wonders of Buqit’s temple, and your Hierophant would have me executed for daring to delve into the tomb; to stand before the final resting place of Hierophant Foesen; to gaze upon its awful majesty.”

  “And take the Quill of Truth from Foesen’s grave and keep it for yourself?”

  Smoke billowed from the wizard’s nostrils. “Slanderous rumour!”

  “Well, that will be for the Hierophant to decide,” said Daedal. “But, in truth, even entering the tomb is a crime against Buqit. I am one of her priests and even I am not allowed to enter. Buqit willing, I may be interred there upon my death – my most heartfelt desire – but until that day, no. Still, I do not intend to second-guess the Hierophant’s wisdom.”

  “And when do you expect him back?”

  “His grace returns from the pilgrimage to Qir before the week is out, barring any obstacles or incidents.”

  “I should think there will be precious few of those with the entire Ludens army as his escort.”

  “True.”

  “I’m surprised the city guard have been able to cope in their absence,” said Abington, trying to draw on his pipe. It had gone out.

  “Ludens is a peaceful city,” said Daedal. “They have coped. And we have no enemies who could reach us without coming through Qir first.”

  “Ah, well, then,” said Abington, once again patting his pockets in search of matches.

  “Your slipper,” said Daedal helpfully, pointing.

  “Ah. Indeed.”

  The cell door opened and a serving girl entered. Without a word of apology or any consideration for Daedal’s station, she brushed past him to collect Abington’s dinner things. She was as filthy as the jailer’s boy and, under the grime, had similarly fine, child-like features. So the jailer had a niece as well as a nephew, Daedal surmised, and had been short-changed both times.