What a sorry state things were in!

When he set out to restore his sight, Charlot had begun eating breakfast again after many decades of not bothering. He had to, or else he would run out of energy before noon. What a waste of time! First, he had to pry a pot from the unstable tower of cookware beside the sink and scrub the film of grease off it. Then, he had to cook the porridge and salt fish. Finally, he had to actually sit down and eat it, resenting every moment spent away from his laboratory. All idiot tasks, suitable for a golem, but he would not allow golems within the tower.

Only fools became comfortable around their constructs. Some even slept with their golems guarding their rooms. Recklessly complacent! Then, when some unforeseen interaction wrecked the bonds of control, they were always surprised when their mindless servant went mad and destroyed everything it could lay its hands on.

His golems were all spoken for anyway, their tasks carefully crafted. It took months to get a good routine going for a golem. The process of instructing them was exhaustingly dull. They learned as ponderously as they moved. The longer a golem worked at a task, the harder it was to get them to stop doing it. You would give them a new set of instructions, and they would often stop midway through and go back to doing their old routine, like a dog that returns home no matter how far away you set it free.

Furthermore, a golem wasn’t something he could just whip up in an afternoon. They took months to build, and it took a soul to animate one. Charlot did not want to go through the whole rigmarole of calling up a demon and bartering with it just to get out of doing a simple task.

He wasn’t about to abduct some hapless villager. That would be distasteful. It was a fine way to get the farmers organized into a militia, and then he would have another problem to deal with! He was too busy to waste his morning incinerating yokels.

Still, the pile of pots teetered by the sink. Every corner of the place was thick with cobwebs. All the doors squeaked, and countless other things needed mending. All morning, the desperate condition of the tower had been bothering him. Before today, he’d never considered that things could be different. It hadn’t mattered when he was just puttering around waiting to die, but in the throes of this great work, it would be a relief to have someone else to take care of all the drudgery. He picked up a dirty bowl that was precariously balanced on the edge of the counter.

“I shouldn’t have sent the boy away,” he muttered, placing the filthy bowl atop another caked with dried rice, taking great care to avoid toppling the tower of soiled dishes. Then, he went into the larder to see if there was anything he could eat without needing to cook.

In fact, there was no food left at all. Not so much as a grain of rice. The preserves from last year had all been eaten or sold, and nothing was ripe in the orchards. Dimly, he remembered that he had eaten the last of the rice yesterday. He’d meant to send one of his birds to find out what had become of his trader, but then he’d begun working on the crystalline matrix and encountered that alignment problem which lead to an afternoon of tinkering. Ultimately, he had forgotten to send the bird.

Now that he stopped to think about it, he realized he’d done the same thing every morning for a week, slowly allowing his situation to go from concerning to desperate.

“Old fool! What good is sight if you starve?” Charlot reprimanded himself. The dark voice whispered that he was surely finished if he couldn’t even remember to feed himself!

The bare larder was a problem. Charlot couldn’t send the silver wolves out to pick up eggs and cheese. The farmers would be terrified. The trader came but once a full moon, careful to carry Charlot’s mark with him. Had he not come last moon? Charlot struggled to remember before concluding that it must have been quite some time since the trader came at all.

Charlot hoped he was all right. The trader was one of those rare men who never spoke a needless word and always did what he said he would. If he was sick or hurt, he would be difficult to replace.

Again, Charlot thought of the boy.

It was too late. He’d sent the boy away, likely to his death. He felt a slight twinge of conscience. Why had he done that? It had been a long time since he’d caused anyone’s death, aside from the assassins and hungry wizards who came to the tower to die. He thought for a moment of sending a falcon to try and bring the boy back, but all the birds were out, and the wolves, too.

Did it have to be the boy? He needed a servant, not an apprentice. Perhaps he would be better served to go into town and try to find a farm girl, an illiterate who wouldn’t go sticking her nose into his work. Someone demure and shy, who did as they were told without questions. Perhaps slightly plump, with red hair and green eyes.

Surely the tower would be intimidating at first but, in time, she might come to enjoy the stern direction of a powerful magus. He blinked, catching himself in a flight of fancy. How many years had it been since his thoughts had taken that turn? How stupid. Of course, no one would let their daughter work for a wizard.

And how would he even go about finding someone? March into the town square and proclaim he was looking for a scullery maid? The farmers were like as not to try and burn him at the stake, and then he would have to do something terrible. It would be such a waste of time and energy for everyone involved.

His stomach growled, and he was startled at the sound. Charlot shook his head. The basest drive save breathing, and he had forgotten it.

“Too long!” Charlot cried, startling the industrious spider who had all but entombed the corner of the room in cobwebs. “Too long have I sequestered myself in this dusty citadel! It’s time I went out!”

Having so resolved, it was clear at once what he ought to do. There was a tiny hamlet just less than a day’s walk south of the citadel. Five families that had fled up the Cormorbo to avoid the legion or taxes or some such misfortune. Charlot would go among them in disguise and barter for foodstuffs.

With a bit of luck, he would intercept the boy along the way and tell him he’d changed his mind about stealing the Forever Flame, then offer him the apprenticeship. With a grin, Charlot realized if he had the boy, he would not have to carry any of the supplies. Never again would he worry about something so mundane as the dishes!

Perhaps the boy would even have a knack for the Art, a worthy receptacle for the vast wisdom Charlot had accrued. It was a capital plan. He hustled about collecting the things he would need for a simple day’s outing, tucking gold pieces and a few minor gems for bartering into a belt full of arcane components. There was a spring in his step, and he wondered that such a simple foray could make him so excited. Once he’d set out on journeys that spanned the whole lake! Now, walking to town to buy cheese was enough to get his blood up.

Charlot reached first for his simple walking stick, and then, thinking better of it, spoke the words of unwarding and unsealed the grand armoire where he kept his fine clothes and articles of power. The smell of cedar rose around him, and a faint hum vibrated in the air–vast energies were bound within these artifacts.

There was a sword with a half-moon guard and a blade made of blue crystal that once pierced the heart of a titan. Hanging from a hook was a silver gauntlet with ten thousand runes etched onto overlapping plates of metal as fine as the scales of a fish. With it, he could reach into the most dangerous planes of existence. There was a wand of purest black yohl, and a heavy robe woven of a sorcerous thread no blade nor arrow could pierce.

There were also three beautiful staves, and he selected the center one, a seven foot tall rod of copper that gleamed as if it were newly forged. At its cap, two serpents spread their wings around a gleaming metal eye with an iris of thirty-three fire rubies and a fire opal the size of a crabapple for a pupil. One could afford to be ostentatious when they carried this staff, for it had great power. Its name was Flaccaro.

Charlot reminded himself the boy might still be a ruse, intended to lure him from his tower. If he was going to the river, he ought to be prepared for anything. He took Vitserpadag, the phase dagger as well.

The grain of the metal rippled before his eyes as the blade slid in and out of the real, the all-permeating edge honed to pierce through a hundred realities in a stroke. He slid the blade into its sheath, feeling a hint of discomfort. The dagger had been free a long time and did not wish to be holstered again.

Despite that, there was a flicker of excitement that mirrored his own, and a potent desire to rend and sever that belonged to the dagger alone. Charlot felt a pang of guilt he’d neglected the blade for so long. It had a right to do what it was made for. He almost hoped there was an ambush waiting for him, if only for the dagger’s sake.

There was a drawer of neatly-divided squares lined with black velvet. In each there was a different ring: some set with fabulous stones, some forged of exotic metals, all imbued with powerful enchantments.

Charlot took a moment to consider them all and, as always, his eyes lingered on the turquoise band with the shining golden sun inlaid on its face. But he shook his head and, instead, he selected a band of gold where his insignia was engraved in the inner band, so faint it was almost invisible. It was Nemonullus, the first ring he’d ever forged.

Charlot slid on the ring of protection and skin after skin of force settled around him, making the air shimmer and ripple. There were proofs against fire and lightning, wards against force and fury, and half a dozen useful cantrips. It was the least of his rings, but it had saved his life more times than all the others put together.

Despite its efficacy, Charlot did not like to wear Nemonullus and usually kept it in his pocket as he traveled. He could not feel the sun shining on his face or hear the birds singing with such potent wards surrounding him. Worse, it diminished his already poor vision.

Hermit though he was, Charlot could not stand the feeling of being isolated from the world itself. He left it on for now. There was every chance he was walking into a trap.

Well equipped, he selected his favorite cloak, blood red and still fine after many years. It was kitted out for travel, and inside the inner pockets there were all manner of wizardly necessities.

Charlot held his hand before the tower door and concentrated, willing the threads of sorcery into alignment. Each of the seven sigils represented a secret Charlot had never told anyone. Together, they made a melancholy combination, an emotion he had a vain suspicion no one had ever felt but himself. Satisfied, the door slid apart, and he stepped out into the day, wary at once for any sign of ambush.

He could hear nothing but the unnatural silence created by Nemonullus. He saw birds flitting through the shade yews without sound and golems plodding soundlessly through the orchards, but no assassins.

Satisfied there was no immediate ambush, he slid the ring off and tucked it into his pocket. The clever ring still afforded him some protection, even when he did not wear it. How fine to be freed of the dampening, to hear the river burbling and the birds trilling!

Charlot blinked. Beneath his feet was the patch of blackened stone where the door knocker had snorted fire and made the boy somersault backward. Poking free from the soot was a spot of green, fringed with deepest red. A crimson clover! Ignoring the protest from his back, Charlot bent for a closer look and found it had four leaves. Most auspicious!

Still, Charlot frowned. How had it sprung up overnight? If it had been trying to grow in the crack, it would have been roasted by his flame breath. Instead, a germinating seed must have been stuck to the boy’s clothing and been knocked loose as he leapt backward.

The old wizard shook his head. He was not so blind that he could not see an omen when it was right in front of his face.

Some force had certainly protected the boy to get him this far, past the kraken and the traps, and even through an encounter with Charlot himself. Perhaps the gods had some design on the boy, and therefore, on Charlot.

If he went ahead with his plan to find the boy, was he playing into their scheme? Had they intervened to cause him to spare the lad? It was certainly not like him to spare a trespasser. Charlot hadn’t even maimed him!

Could he return to his tower and avoid the whole mess?

Charlot wondered what star would even try to include him in such machinations. Red was the color of Tyrias, but the boy seemed an unlikely vessel of the Bloodstar. The Winterstar had no love for the peoples of the south. The Greenstar, perhaps, since the omen was a growing thing, and of course, Charlot himself had a great affinity for plants and wild things. But the more Charlot considered, the more he thought it was likely the work of the Laughing Star, Audera.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

This was just the sort of thing she would do–send a wandering boy traipsing halfway across the lake to be sent on an impossible task. How she loved her misfits and lost causes!

“What do you want from me, Audera?” Charlot asked aloud. Of course, there was no answer from the clover. Perhaps it was only a sprig after all, and he was but a fool for reading a portent in it.

With great care and much creaking protest from his knees, Charlot pulled the little clover from the seared crack and transplanted it into a bit of soil at the edge of the paved entrance to the Citadel. Portent or not, he saw no reason to let the rare clover starve in a barren crack.

Afterward, Charlot strolled through his orchards and wound his way to the stand of Silver Pear trees, his greatest treasure. There were three adult trees, and around each of them were three concentric stone rings, the largest almost fifty yards in diameter. Every stone was carved with exquisite care, and though he had neglected much else, he had always taken great care with these wards.

The stone circles protecting his silver pears were perhaps the most potent wards wrought by human hands anywhere on the Arc. Within the center ring, it was always the temperature of a perfect spring day, whether the sun boiled, or a blizzard blew outside. The energies contained within those stone rings were immense.

Charlot had spent ten years building them. He suspected nothing short of divine intervention could break them. Perhaps they could even vex the gods themselves. Pure hubris, surely, but still, there was a part of Charlot that wondered and wished to see what would happen. Could that be what the business with the boy was all about?

A single golem was trusted to tend the silver pears, the most finely crafted and carefully trained. Charlot squinted at the soft periwinkle blooms from a distance, looking for one a shade darker than the others that might herald the coming of a golden pear. His eyes simply were not up to it, and the golem tender would have alerted him at the slightest sign. A golden pear might come once in ten lifetimes. He certainly never expected to see one, but he looked each time without fail anyway.

Charlot entered the circle and felt warmth surround him and the indelible scent of the blue blossoms filled his nose. He steeled himself. It would hurt, but it was time. Solemnly, he selected a pear and reached up to pluck it. A tremble ran through the golem. The training ran very deep. Even though it knew Charlot was permitted to take the pears, it still felt alarm at the loss of one of its charges. Charlot kept a careful eye on it. The golem was capable of incredible feats of destruction in defense of the orchard.

The pear parted easily from the branch, where it had been ripening for decades. Charlot leaned down with his back against the tree, prompting another twitch of consternation from his golem, which he ignored. They were his trees, raised with incalculable care and expense, and he could lean against them if he liked.

Charlot cleared his mind of all but sunlight and warmth and bit into the pear. Though it gleamed like a mirror, it was soft as a peach, and the juice sang tartly on his tongue. He chewed slowly, savoring the rush of sweetness, and the stunning bitterness that followed.

A sudden, thrumming alertness rushed through his fingertips and toes. His heart beat harder, his breathing deepened, and his nose was suddenly clear of all obstruction. For an instant, everything was in perfect focus, and there was no pain.

An instant later, there was only pain. Sharp lances in his joints, burning itches, and throbbing headaches. Every slight and injury he’d suffered since the last pear pressed on him all at once. Then, the joys rushed in to comfort him. Alas, these were but few, and the pain was back all too swiftly.

He sat with his back against the silver pear tree, reeling between the two extremes until at last he found equilibrium, with the bittersweet taste still ringing on in his mouth.

Then, the pear was done, and at once he wanted desperately to pluck another one, to never lose that feeling. But already he was forcing himself to stand, shoving one foot in front of another and forcing himself from the stone circle with steps as mechanical as the golem’s.

One and no more–he’d done this dance many times before. Each time he did it, it was harder to resist plucking a second. He knew he had waited far too long this time.

Charlot’s steps were lighter on the other side of the ward, his strides longer and swifter. Each of his joints felt as if they had been loosened a turn, and the pain hiding behind every motion diminished with each step. Why had he waited so long to leave the tower?

It was a wonderful day out. He could hear the sweet songs of the birds and smell the fragrant blooms from his orchard. The master arcanist breathed in the sharp pitch of the blackpines and the subtle pollen of the shade yew. The sun felt wonderful on his face. In the bones of his hands, he could feel rain on its way, but he suspected it would only be a brief shower later in the afternoon.

Charlot made his way down to the river, where he was astonished to find that the whole ring of obelisks was inactive! He walked the grounds until he found the overgrown center obelisk.

How in the Arc had that happened?

His eyes flickered with iridescent light, and he scanned the area around the obelisk with care. It was entirely possible someone had laid a trap for him here. Peering through the planes, he could see at once the null, dead blot on the obelisk. It was just a wasp’s nest. Puzzled, Charlot squinted and muttered a cantrip of incineration that should have set the papery nest ablaze. Instead, he felt the power wrenched from him, and his guts twisted with nausea. He had to lean heavily on Flaccaro to stay upright. Snake lead.

The damned wasps had used mud tainted by snake lead to build their nest. Just traces of the awful stuff, but it was still enough to eat his cantrip and break his ward. Wretched magebane!

Carefully, Charlot used a stick to scrape the tainted nest off the side of his obelisk. The hornets poured out in a fury to defend their home, but the moment they left the nest, they lost the corrupted clay’s protection.

Charlot invoked another cantrip, carefully avoiding the snake lead, and the wasps burst into flames as they issued from the nest. He pulverized the nest with the stick, breaking apart the combs until he was satisfied every wasp and larva was dead. To think that those meddlesome pests could overcome a ward that could turn back an army! Surely there was a lesson there.

Taking a handkerchief from his cloak, Charlot bound it around the point of another stick and soaked it in the river to create an impromptu mop. Then, he used it to clean the tainted clay from his obelisk, taking great care not to get even a speck of it on himself or Flaccaro.

This was just the kind of problem that a regular inspection could prevent. What if the boy had been a real threat? What if Charlot had died because he didn’t want to get his feet wet? The old wizard shook his head at his carelessness and thought that he ought to find the snake lead deposit and bury it under several tons of rock, so that this could never happen again. Surely a task for after his return. He scrubbed the last traces of the nest from the obelisk.

A metallic hum rose around him, like someone ran a file across a tin plate, and then an oily ripple shot through the air all the way around the island as the ward roared back to life. From time to time, motes of red light flared as flying insects struck the barrier and were annihilated. The ward drank their lives to replenish its own.

How long had the obelisk been down? Charlot wondered if he ought to feed it something large to recharge it, such as a ram or an ox. But he possessed neither, and besides, there was no time. He had to move quickly if he wanted to find the boy.

Just how had the boy gotten to his door in the first place? The wasp nest explained how he’d gotten past the outer wards, and the void moon explained crossing the enchanted grove, but how had he crossed the river unharmed? How had he survived the first encounter with the squid? Why hadn’t he been attacked at all the second time?

A little way down the river, Charlot could see a piece of the first canoe caught between two jutting rocks. “Squid! Arise and answer for your failure!” Charlot bellowed, looking across the black expanse of the Cormorbo. Though the water was dark, he could see what was within it through his wards.

Charlot knew the monster was in its cave, yet he felt no movement to answer his call. His brow furrowing with annoyance, Charlot lifted Flaccaro. Thunder rumbled, even though the day was clear, and ripples shot across the surface of the river.

“ARISE!” Charlot commanded, and there was a rush of motion from the cavern beneath the river as the beast rose in a flurry of tendrils. A nightmare broke the river’s surface, with gleaming black-green tentacles and two great golden eyes with many irises, rings within rings. One pupil was easily as large as Charlot’s head, and the monster had a wicked beak large enough to swallow the sorcerer whole.

“Now!” Charlot began, his voice booming with authority. “On two occasions a boy stole across the Cormorbo in a canoe and set foot on my island! He did not bear the mark! Yet, he lived! Tell me, why do I suffer your presence, squid?”

The river demon was silent, each of the many irises of its golden eyes twisting independently of the other. The effect could be hypnotic to a mundane who’d never seen such a thing before. To Charlot, it was merely annoying.

“You are meant to eat anyone trying to cross the river, excepting me and those who bear my mark! In return, I do not destroy you! Yet, you cower within your cave like a frightened child! Why?”

The demon moved to sink beneath the black river, disregarding Charlot.

“Oh, no you don’t! NYLACOME! I command you, answer me!”

A shiver of revulsion shot through the glistening hide of the beast as Charlot invoked its true name, and it rose, opening its beak to display the yellow barbs of its radula.

"Rancid! The boat was rancid, coated with poison! The whole river tainted for days by that awful taste! Foulest foul! Vilest Vile! I cannot eat something so wretched!"

The demon spoke in the black tongue, invoking every word with the intensity of a shout. Charlot was on guard to make sure there was no spell woven into the utterance. Forever testing and scheming were the children of the moon.

“A poison so potent it turns back a demon? Interesting…”

Charlot cast his eyes downriver toward the debris stuck in the rocks. With a word of power, he wrenched a plank free, and it floated through the air to him. He inspected it carefully, then sniffed the air and blinked. Charlot reached out and plucked the plank from the air and let the magic sigh away, certain enough to handle it with his bare hands.

“Myrica. Not poison at all. Just meant to make the boat glide through the water a bit faster. Do you mean to tell me that an ancient devil was driven back by nothing more than bayberry wax?”

"Keep it away from me! It's awful!"

Nylacome shied away from the plank, averting his eyes as if he didn’t even want to look at it.

“How many ships have you sunk, beast? How many men have you devoured?”

"Hundreds! Thousands!"

“And yet here you are, defeated by a boy with a jar of fragrant wax. Pathetic. Begone, squid! Leave my river and trouble me no more!”

"The river is not yours, mortal fool! The Swallower will take you, the Void shall have you soon! I shall remain a thousand years after you are gone!"

“Pah! A thousand years as a sneaking, shriveling squid! What a curse! Leave my sight while you are still able, craven cephalopod!”

Charlot hurled the plank at Nylacome, and the kraken was gone in the blink of an eye, diving so fast the water was churned into a froth. The plank bobbed in his wake, and then drifted downstream.

“Bayberry wax is devil bane?” Charlot mused aloud. He’d never read such a thing in all his years of research. Surely, it was just some peccadillo of Nylacome. How could the boy have known?

For a moment, Charlot stood there, staring across the river, and he felt certain the boy had had no idea, just as he hadn’t known the ward was down. It was simple dumb luck, far more of it than any single mortal should be allotted. Had the canoe he’d stolen not been waxed, he would be dead. Once again, Charlot had the ominous feeling that some power had their finger on the scales.

Nylacome had lurked in the river since long before the archmage decided to make the island his own. How many generations of Cormorbo shipwrights had coated their hulls with bayberry wax? Was it only a tradition now? Had the reason been forgotten? Had they ever even known, or was it merely a fortunate coincidence?

Did the wax actually make boats slide through the water faster, or was that mere superstition? It seemed to him it ought to; a smoother surface would have less drag. Didn’t southern trading ships plate their hulls with copper? He’d read one of Captain Laecke’s chronicles in which the famous explorer had described his ship cutting through the water like a blade, swift as a zephyr.

Charlot was struck by the sudden desire to find out, to run a series of tests on different waxes and coatings, in order to design the fastest ship ever to sail. Wasn’t that always the way? When you were focused on a great project, other inquiries were forever tempting you.

“The boy,” Charlot said aloud, with a shake of his head. He’d been woolgathering at the river’s edge for some minutes. What foolishness!

“SQUID! If the boy returns, do not attack him!” Charlot shouted, sending his voice through his orbs to rattle the bottom of the river. He turned to the obelisks, wondering if he ought to try and create an exception. He’d given orders to build the bonfire on the far bank, but would the boy listen?

Charlot could not do it in any case. He didn’t have a drop of the boy’s blood or a strand of his hair. He hadn’t even asked his name! It meant that Charlot couldn’t even scry for him. How could he have forgotten something so simple? The boy would have surely told Charlot had he but asked. The master arcanist had simply never expected to see the boy again. Charlot shrugged. There was nothing to be done.

He walked along the river to his western boathouse only to find there was a hole in the roof where a storm had blown some of the tiles away. Water had gotten in and rotted out the bottom of his boat. It was his own fault for holing up in the tower for so long and neglecting his affairs like a fool!

He was angry, and he wondered if he ought to go down beneath the river and battle Nylacome. It had been so long since he’d had a fight, and surely destroying the impertinent demon would raise his spirits. As tempting as it was, there was the dark voice, whispering that he would lose the fight and meet his fate beneath the black river.

His lip curled with disgust. Since when had he had such doubts? Why was the master arcanist of the Crimson Citadel afraid to battle an overgrown squid? He nearly goaded himself into doing it but, at last, he shook his head. It was a fool’s errand. He had Nylacome’s true name. There could never be a fair battle between them.

Instead, Charlot set about to do a bit of real sorcery. He gestured at the river and concentrated until the water hardened into a block of ice. He stepped onto it, gingerly as if he were testing a hurt leg to see if it would hold weight. He had not cast a spell like this in many years, and he felt a little fear that the frozen raft would not hold him. Yet, it was solid as stone. With his confidence buoyed, Charlot stood upon the frozen platform and willed it across the river.

The cold seeped through his boots, and he wriggled his toes as he stepped onto the opposite bank, struggling to remember the last time he had strode this path. He noticed the boy had pulled the stolen canoe up onto the bank and flipped it over so it would not fill with rain. How fortunate the boy had opted to walk downriver rather than canoe! It meant Charlot’s chances of catching up were far better.

The day was warm and the sun was bright, allowing the chill in his feet to pass swiftly. He walked toward the town and his anger at the squid grew more distant with every step. It was simply too fine a day.