The wizard waited for the fool to die.

He could not see the fool. Not without his spyglass, and certainly not at night, when the shadows were forever growing deeper and the stars over the black Cormorbo River seemed more distant with each passing day. He could not yet bring himself to say the word, not that there was anyone left in the lonely tower to hear it. Had he grown so meager that he could not even admit it to himself?

Charlot the Cabalist, last of seven, survivor of twenty-one duels, slayer of twenty-one fools. The master arcanist who raised the Crimson Citadel with will alone, and ruled all that he could see in any direction. Charlot the Fearless, who called upon demons, dealt with the black lords of the Void, and parlayed with the terrors of the nether. Charlot, who could make flames rise with a word and bring lightning down with a cry. Charlot, who had seen beyond the great veil without succumbing to madness. Could he not even name his ailment?

“Blind,” Charlot said, finding the sound of his own voice jarring. It was the first word he’d said in months. “I am going blind.”

A surge of pride at finally finding the courage to admit it was swiftly drowned in a swell of despair. The echoes of his hoarse rasp lingered in the room.

Once he would have slain the fool on the river and gone at once to his laboratory. Inside, he would have set about finding a cure in a frenzy of clinking glass and hissing flames, with sputtering acid and burbling oil. Indeed, he thought he ought to do just that, but the word ought no longer had the power to move him. There were so many things he ought to do, so many things he ought to have done already. To consider any one task was to be reminded of all the others left undone and to plunge into despair.

The fire that moved him had dwindled to embers, and the thought of setting off on some great ill-conceived alchemical spree seemed an impossible effort. No doubt he would produce little more than an extremely expensive mess and a bad smell that would linger for weeks.

Still, the fool’s progress rankled Charlot. He could not see the interloper, but he could sense him.

The Cormorbo River ran black and swift in this stretch, its opaque depths concealing murderous currents and deep caves where unpleasant things dwelt. Charlot’s orbs of peerless proprioception were scattered across its depths, perfect spheres of smoked glass worked with arcane signs inlaid in pure silver. Through them, Charlot could sense the little canoe gliding across the current like he might feel an ant walking along the nape of his neck.

Now, he felt the kraken wake! As the intruder paddled across the river, the writhing beast rose from its lair beneath the depths and shot to the surface like an uncoiling spring.

Charlot heard the intruder’s oar drop into the water as the sudden thrust of the beast’s massive bulk broke the surface of the Cormorbo. Furious tendrils as thick as tree trunks hammered the tiny boat and blasted it to splinters as the fool tried to swim away!

Though they had laid beneath the river for decades, the orbs remained sublimely sensitive. If he concentrated, Charlot could sense every tiny bubble roiling in the foam, each kick as the intruder thrashed toward the shore, swimming for his life. Charlot knew the pursuit would be far swifter, and he narrowed his eyes, awaiting the unpleasant ending. Powerful tentacles would constrict, the wicked maw would gnash, and the man would become meat. He would have to feel it all. The magical orbs could not be stifled.

There was no pursuit. The monster was flailing and quivering, and Charlot could sense it wrenching something long and narrow from its body. Was it a spear or a harpoon? It was but a toothpick to the beast, and Charlot fully expected the intruder to be overtaken and devoured. But the beast fled! Twitching and thrashing, it dove deep and retreated to its lair, a deep fissure in the stony riverbed.

The interloper kept swimming until Charlot’s orbs barely registered his ripples. Then, he was gone, scrambling up the riverbank to the western shore. Too late, Charlot realized he should have been trying to form an impression of what the intruder looked like from the arcane sensations. If he’d only concentrated, Charlot could have pictured his face, his whole body down to the smallest hair, and now he was left only with the dim recollection that the intruder was smaller than a grown man.

Blast it all! How stupid to neglect such a basic detail! And the squid had failed, too. Charlot could not believe the monster had given up so easily. He paced about his bedchamber, caught between anger at the guardian’s failure and relief the idiot had survived. It was not a pleasant thing, to experience someone being devoured.

What could have turned back the squid? A dim memory of something he’d read tugged at him, but he could not recall it, even though it felt important. Could not remember, could not see what had happened. How terrible it was to grow old!

High in his tower beneath the ever-fading stars, the wizard frowned, eyebrows like unruly white thistles above his sunken eyes. For an instant, a flicker of anger kindled between his eyes, and he wondered if he ought to call down the lightning.

He could imagine it now, the white bolts of fury shattering the ancient oaks into shards and howling black wind lifting the pieces up into a mangling cyclone that nothing could escape. Let all who passed see the price of the fool’s trespass! Let them come to pick the pieces of the interloper. There wouldn’t be a thimbleful of him left to bury!

But Charlot was tired, and he knew such an effort would be painful. His joints would hurt, and he would feel empty and faint for days afterward. It might even kindle one of his ruinous headaches, and Charlot recoiled at the thought. A single idiot was not worth such a grim price. Furthermore, he would surely tell others how he hadn’t even made it across the river before he was attacked.

Yes, Charlot told himself, it was wiser to let him live. This was, after all, the first trespasser in many, many years. As he tried to convince himself, there was a black thought behind it all, one he hated and denied.

Could you even call the lightning if you tried?

He shook his head, banishing the question without answering it. Tomorrow, Charlot resolved to go down to the shore and check all the standing stones he’d placed along the periphery of the riverbank. Every fifty paces there was an obelisk of polished obsidian, each engraved with warnings and vile curses. To set an eye on one was to risk the eyes boiling in the skull, to cross the plane they guarded was to be torn apart at the seams and siphoned off to the Void. To lay a hand on one—better not to even consider it!

In the past, Charlot had walked along the outer reaches of his domain once per full moon to make sure nothing had obscured the deadly sigils. Back then, there were many rivals, assassins from Urth’Wyrth and thieves from Fang, rival wizards from Yarlsbeth. All of them constantly probing him for weaknesses. They looked for any opening to kill him and seize his tower full of wonders, his priceless research, and most of all, the silver pears, a treasure beyond measure.

It had been so long since any had dared. Had it been twenty years? Forty? What was his name, Regusk? Rebus? The fool had not even made it to the tower. On a full moon long ago, Regusk had blundered into Charlot’s living grove. As the would-be challenger fought against lashing branches and tangling vines, a spell-serpent slithered behind him. Two ruby fangs sunk into his ankle and that was that. He died without a whimper.

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Blinking, Charlot realized it might have been five decades since he’d checked his wards. They were good wards, forged of molten obsidian bathed in the blood of a true demon. Five decades was nothing. In five millennia, they would still be as potent as the day he drew them from the living flame. But still, he should check. Tomorrow.

Charlot did not check his wards the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that; it was raining. The clouds closed in and wept for a week, until the ground was a spongy muck and all the bones Charlot had ever broken ached and complained. The arcanist had no intention of venturing out into that awful stew. What was the point of checking a ward meant to preserve his life if he caught his death of cold checking on it?

It was good to have the rain. His orchards were always thirsty, and the last gasp of winter had been unreasonably dry. The tower’s cistern had been down to the quarter mark, and now it was overflowing into its drains. The wards could wait. Surely the fool would not return.

As the rains fell, Charlot became embroiled in the three epics of Uthravine, the sublimely licentious Wyrth heretic who ignited a civil war among three islands with nothing more than her pen and her privates. However overwrought her verse, there was no arguing against its efficacy.

Five thousand men had died in the uprising before the Wyrth priests captured Uthravine. The Wyrth version of a trial was to ‘deliver the accused into the embrace of Urth’Wyrth,’ meaning they threw the prisoner into the volcano and tried to interpret the resultant smoke.

Superstitious, savage, stupid! Had the priests found Uthravine’s epics, no doubt they would have followed her into the volcano, but one of her lovers escaped with manuscripts and carried them all the way to Yarlsbeth. The epic’s sober conclusion was penned by Anonymous, and Yarlee scholars had debated the savior’s identity ever since.

As Charlot read the thick tomes one after the other, he wondered at what might have been. What if she had escaped the ambush? What if the rebellion had succeeded? So much of the history of the north since had revolved around the continual cycle of Wyrth aggression.

A city could stand only as long as it had walls and men to resist the legion. It meant that the only good leaders were soldiers. All surplus went to defense, and that the sword always hung heavier in the balance than the quill. It was no surprise that the Art was vanishing.

Charlot blinked as he thought about it, wondering when he had decided he was never going to conquer Urth’Wyrth. It was one of those goals he had always intended to complete, but at some point during the last few decades, it fell by the wayside. He had focused on building the tower, creating the grand orchards, forging the golems that tended them, and cultivating the silver pears to the exclusion of all else.

And, of course, dealing with the flow of challengers and thieves had diverted some attention. He’d told himself that he would get down to working on his conquest once the flow of assassins and rivals slowed. Now, he could barely remember the last one.

With sudden fire, he thought he ought to look over his journals and review his grand scheme. It all depended on Charlot’s Comet. What year was it now? Had the comet just passed, or was it still to come?

Once every twenty-seven years, Charlot’s Comet arced across the far north and lingered in the sky for two days. Charlot was the first to chart it, but the savage tribes of the Malskernoor had worshipped it for thousands of years, if one believed their oral histories. The closest tribe, the wendig would not even go outside while the comet burned. They hid themselves away all night and constructed special long-tents to keep their great packs of dogs safe from the maddening light.

For it was no mere frozen stone in the sky. At the core of Charlot’s Comet was a prisoner encased in ice, whispering promises to any who were fool enough to listen. While the comet drew near, the captive blanketed the Arc with ill omens, and stole into the dreams of seers and madmen driving them to heinous acts of blood sacrifice and gory idolatry.

Three cycles ago, Charlot spoke with the prisoner at the comet’s core and began to negotiate a deal. It was all quite perilous. He had no idea what was truly within the comet. The prisoner would speak to him only in an archaic, opaque form of the Black Tongue where every utterance was layered with conniving double-meanings and twisted insinuations.

Was it a sïthur lord? An immortal magus? A demigod? Charlot could find no record of its banishment, nor of its banisher. Who could have managed such a feat? Not Charlot at the height of his powers, or even as a member of the Cabal of Seven. Perhaps one of the legendary magicians—Arath the Unraveller, or Merriweather the Master–but Charlot suspected not even they had that kind of power. The prisoner might predate mankind itself.

There were only seven hours each pass where the comet was close enough for Charlot to speak with the prisoner. It was impossibly cagey, unwilling to tell Charlot anything of its nature or its origin. It was likely folly to even speak with the prisoner, much less to consider setting it loose upon the Arc.

But if a comet were to crash into the Wyrth Capital and an ancient power, practically a demigod, were to rise from the ashes and attack, then the whole might of the legion could not save the city. Perhaps the devil beneath the mountain might awake from its slumber at last and rise to battle the invader!

What a boon to the Arc if it were to finally be destroyed! And yet, then there would be the problem of the prisoner in the comet. It, too, would need to be destroyed, lest he exchange one monster for another.

There was nothing simple about it. There never was when one dealt with ancient powers. Charlot could only guess at the size of the comet and its speed, but to exert a force on the ice prison’s orbit just enough so that it struck exactly the city of Urth’Wyrth on its next pass would be particularly difficult. The calculations alone were fiendishly complex.

The prisoner had offered to do them for him, but Charlot would not trust it. The captive could just as easily trick Charlot into bringing the comet down on his own head.

For years now, Charlot had struggled with Amorranuman, a book of formulas and theories written by Mansilikis, an eastern scholar who wrote about equations with a disquieting, almost carnal intensity. No matter how he’d tried, Charlot could not make the figures add up the way he wanted them to. He could not tell if he wasn’t grasping something about Mansilikis’s method, or if a completely different approach was needed.

At the last approach, he’d been nearly ready to concede and allow the prisoner to guide him, but then disaster struck. Two nights before the comet was to arrive, he developed one of his headaches, perhaps the worst he’d ever had. The pain was so bad he’d gone totally blind in one eye for a week.

For ten days, the left side of his body was pure agony and the right was wholly numb, so that he could not even walk. Somewhere in the suffering his vision split, so that he was seeing half in the mortal realm and half in the land of the dead. He expected to be there soon. He was certain he was going to die.

As the comet hung overhead, the prisoner demanded his attention again and again, but he was mad with pain and could only writhe in bed. Then, like always, the headache vanished as if it never was. One moment all was agony, the next blessed tranquility.

All these years later, he was no closer to an answer than the day he first cracked the cover of Amorranuman.

How soon would the comet come again? Charlot raised his eyes to the highest bookshelf, where he kept his journals.

To his surprise, Charlot found he could not read the spines. He rubbed his eyes and blinked and squinted, but no matter what he did, he could not tell which volume was which.

A sudden fury gripped him. Stupidly, he was angry at his own eyes for betraying him. He wheeled the ladder along its squeaking track and clamored up the rungs ignoring the complaints from his joints and the lightness in his head. From this distance, he could read the spines, and he seized a volume bound in vermillion leather. Without descending, Charlot skimmed the pages until he found the date. The comet was not due for almost a year.

Charlot shoved the book back into place and climbed down, so angry he was shaking. Couldn’t see his own shelves! Nearly fainted climbing a ladder! He had a sudden desire to cast a final spell that would release all his power at once and end this farce. He would consume himself and the entire citadel, raising a crimson pillar of flame so bright the gods themselves would balk! Why go on if he couldn’t even read the spines of his own journals? Why wait around to succumb to the darkness?

For a moment, he teetered on the brink. As a younger man, perhaps he would have gone mad and ended it all. But he was old now, and well aware that even the most powerful compulsions would pass.

“I act the fool!” Charlot rasped aloud. “The most powerful artificer upon the Arc and I bawl like a child! Enough!” His hoarse shout echoed back at him from the empty room, and he set to work.