Magic Zero (10 page)

“Yes.” Carlyle yawned. “Somehow I knew you would say that.”

“The magics it must take to keep it aloft,” Timothy said, more to himself than to his riding companion. This was business as usual for Carlyle. But for Timothy, well . . . it was more than he could comprehend.

The craft began its descent to SkyHaven. With amazing precision the carriage dropped out of the sky, passing beneath an ornate stone archway covered in thick flowering vines, to land in an open courtyard before the estate’s most prominent structure.

Carlyle’s door sprang open of its own accord, and he climbed down from the carriage. Timothy pushed his own door open, and as he stepped out he saw Nicodemus emerge from the castle, appearing as though from nothing in front of a pair of metal doors as tall as a Yaquis tree. They were ridiculously high, the boy thought, for who or what could the Grandmaster invite into his home that was as tall as that?

Nicodemus looked regal in long, flowing robes of vibrant green, and he carried his hairless feline familiar in his arms as he strode across the courtyard toward the carriage. Those two absurdly large doors swung open and an entourage of ten robed men and women emerged, bustling closely behind their lord and master.

“Welcome to SkyHaven!” the Grandmaster called out as he drew closer, a charming smile upon his distinguished
features. “Welcome to my home! Do you like it?”

Timothy was certain that the grand mage could tell he was impressed just by reading the expression on his face, but he answered anyway, simply to be polite. “It’s amazing!”

“More than three thousand, four hundred spells of weightlessness are perpetually maintained to keep my floating paradise aloft,” Nicodemus said proudly as he stepped up beside Timothy, and then the two of them turned to admire the castle together.

Carlyle joined them, standing on the other side of the Grandmaster. “The boy was rendered nearly speechless by SkyHaven’s majesty,” the assistant said with an overly dramatic flourish of his hand.

Nicodemus chuckled. “Can you blame him, Carlyle? I conjure-built the estate myself, every tower, every room, and yet to me, it is still the most wondrous of sights to behold.”

The door to the adjoining carriage swung open and there came a fluttering rush of wings. Edgar cawed loudly, angrily, and took flight from within, soaring above their heads, stretching his wings after being confined so long. Sheridan stepped out into the courtyard after the rook’s abrupt departure, followed by a very cautious Ivar, who looked at the ground beneath his feet as though he did not trust it.

Timothy forgot all about the Grandmaster for a moment, and rushed to join his friends. “Can you believe this?” he asked excitedly. “It floats! Above the ocean!”

“Truly spectacular,” Sheridan said, his head rotating three hundred and sixty degrees to take in all the sights.

“Caw! Caw!” Edgar cried. “I think the place has grown
even bigger since I was last here,” the rook said, surveying his surroundings from a branch in one of the many fruit trees that grew around the courtyard.

Ivar had not moved from the shadows cast by the sky carriage, and his entire body was a golden yellow, toned to blend with the color of the craft.

“It’s all right, Ivar,” Timothy said, approaching his friend and extending a hand. “We’re going to stay here for a while.”

The Asura looked about nervously, before gravely allowing himself to be drawn from cover. “This place,” he said, his skin returning to its natural shade. “It is unnatural.”

“Precisely the sort of reaction one would expect from a savage,” Nicodemus sniffed. The Grandmaster strode toward Timothy and Ivar, the cat in his arms. He was not sneering, not cruel, but there was something cold in his eyes when he looked at the Asura. “It is we—the mages of the world—who determine what is natural and what is not.”

Timothy felt the blood rushing to his face. He didn’t like the way Nicodemus treated Ivar; not at all. “He’s not a savage. He’s the last of the Asura, a noble tribe of—”

Nicodemus made a dismissive gesture, then beckoned a pair of powerful men from his entourage toward them. “Yes, of course he is, Timothy. I’m well aware of your primitive friend’s background, thank you.” The Grandmaster seemed about to turn away, but then he paused and focused his gaze on Timothy, his eyes strangely sad, yet also, now kind. “You were born of this world, son, but you have never lived here. There is much you do not understand of our ways, our
culture, and our history. Some things will delight you, others will disappoint you. This is the way of the world.”

Two attendants stood on either side of Ivar, tensed as though expecting trouble. The Grandmaster gestured to them again and nodded.

“Allow my staff to show your . . . friend . . . where he will be staying,” Nicodemus commanded.

“You mean, where
we’ll
be staying?”

Nicodemus shook his head. “I’m afraid that cannot be. Rules of the house, you understand. The familiar may stay with you—and that toy of metal,” he said pointing to Sheridan. “But the sav— Asura,” he corrected himself, “will sleep elsewhere, and will be barred from the main chambers of my home. When you know more of this world, you will understand.”

Timothy looked to Ivar, unsure of what he should do. “I . . . I don’t think that’s—”

The Asura signaled him to be silent. Ivar tilted his head slightly to one side and fixed Timothy with a steely gaze. “It is—”

The boy sighed knowingly. “Inconsequential,” he said. And yet as he watched Ivar allowing himself to be led away to his quarters, he could not help feeling that it was not inconsequential at all. Ivar was sacrificing a great deal so that Timothy could be safe, and the boy felt the responsibility of that weighing heavily upon him.

“Come, my boy,” Nicodemus said, his robes flowing around him as he turned and walked toward his residence. He lifted
Alastor to his shoulder and the hairless cat curled itself around his neck and rested there. “Let me show you to your room so you may settle yourself before joining me for dinner.”

Timothy hesitantly followed.

“A toy?” Sheridan whispered indignantly at Timothy’s side. “I’d like to see a toy do half the things I can.”

Edgar fluttered down from above to land on Timothy’s shoulder. “If you thought the outside was impressive, wait till you see the inside.”

They followed Nicodemus and several members of his staff up the stairs and through the doorway into a grand hall. Again Timothy’s breath was taken away by SkyHaven’s opulence. The ceiling was at least fifty feet high and gilded with a strange design of spirals turning in upon themselves, radiating into a starburst at the apex of the concave ceiling. High arched windows of translucent energy allowed a view of the sky, which even now was darkening to the blue-black of evening. The moons and sister planets had never seemed so clear. Upon the walls of the grand hall were tapestries and portraits, sculptures and pictographs like those in his father’s house.

“This way,” the Grandmaster urged, and Timothy followed obediently up a winding staircase, constructed from smooth, white stone flecked with streaks of solid black.

They left the other aides behind, Carlyle included, and at once Timothy let out a breath. Despite Nicodemus’s treatment of Ivar, he felt more comfortable with the great mage when no one else was around, when there were no
servants bowing to him as a constant reminder of his power and stature.

With Sheridan clanking along the hall, emitting a peep of steam now and again, and Edgar riding upon his shoulder, Timothy followed the Grandmaster for what seemed miles along winding hallways, until they came to a wing of the castle whose door was made of wood and seemed imperfect to his eye, as though it had been carved by hand and not by magic. He found himself letting out a small breath, taking comfort in the presence of at least one thing that, like him, did not have the perfection of magic.

“Yes,” the Grandmaster said, noticing Timothy’s focus. “I thought you might like that.” With a wave of his hand Nicodemus opened the door and led them into the small yet elegant foyer of a suite of smaller rooms. A door to another room stood warmly open and the Grandmaster went through it, gesturing for the boy and his mechanical man to follow. Edgar leaped from his shoulder and glided inside the bedchamber to perch upon a bureau of dark wood.

“Not bad,” the bird croaked.

Timothy was shocked to see that his satchels were already there.

“Get acquainted with your new surroundings, my boy,” Nicodemus said, stroking Alastor’s head, the hairless feline still draped over his shoulders. “I’ll send someone to fetch you as soon as dinner is served.”

Then the Grandmaster departed and the door slammed closed behind him as though a great wind had blown it shut.

Timothy sat down upon the large, four-poster bed and glanced around the room, shivering, for it was strangely cold there. Though he had Sheridan and Edgar for company, he felt more alone at SkyHaven than he ever had on the Island of Patience.

CHAPTER FIVE

N
o matter how hard he tried, Timothy could not sleep. Carefully, so as not to disturb Edgar, who was perched atop the headboard of the bed, the boy threw back the bedclothes and padded toward one of the room’s large windows. He chanced a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure the rook hadn’t awakened. Edgar remained still, eyes closed, his perfectly streamlined head lowered to his feathered breast.

“Timothy?” asked a hollow voice from beside his bed.

The boy’s finger shot to his lips. “Quietly, Sheridan,” he whispered. “We don’t want to wake up Edgar.”

Sheridan shuffled away from the wall with a series of soft clicks and whirs. The mechanical man’s eyes shone eerily in the darkness, and Timothy could hear the faint, sibilant sound of steam hissing from the release valve that protruded from the side of his head.

“You’re right about that,” the machine said, the volume of his voice lowered significantly. “An unrested Edgar is an irritable Edgar.”

Timothy nodded knowingly and smiled at his companion. Sheridan was the boy’s greatest achievement, the ultimate example of his mechanical aptitude. Certainly, he had built all manner of fabulous mechanisms, but in the creation of Sheridan, Timothy had built much more than that. He had built a friend.

“Are you all right?” Sheridan asked with concern in his metallic voice. “Why aren’t you asleep? Nicodemus has a big day planned for you tomorrow, and you’re just as grouchy as Edgar when you don’t get your rest.”

The Grandmaster of the Order of Alhazred planned to introduce Timothy to the masters of several other guilds in the morning, to prove that he was neither threat nor abomination. Just a less-than-ordinary boy who wanted to be left alone. Timothy was nervous. That was one of the things keeping him awake. “I’m okay,” he told his friend softly. “Go ahead and shut yourself down for the night.”

“Don’t stay up too long,” Sheridan cautioned before reversing his direction and returning to his place against the wall. “Good night, Timothy.”

“Good night.”

Timothy turned his attention to the sprawling estate outside the window. The celestial illumination cast by the night sky’s myriad moons filtered through the magically conjured windowpanes, and cast the boy in a strange,
rose-tinted light. He reached out to touch the window and the magical pane began to waver, and then was no more.

“What?” Timothy whispered, taken aback. He pulled his hand away, and the window reappeared. Timothy reached to touch the spell-glass again, and once more it wavered to nothing. Now he understood. His touch disrupted the spell that kept the windowpane in place.

Cool night air rushed into the room and Timothy sighed. “Of course. Magic.”

The boy leaned his arms on the cold stone of the sill and peered out into the night. The castle fortress and all the lands of the estate hovered weightlessly hundreds of feet above the dark, churning ocean. There was a beauty to this bit of extraordinary levitation, and yet there was a terrible power in it as well.

Timothy gazed down into the cold waters, grateful that his propensity to interfere with the validity of magic was very limited. Magic did not work on him, and his touch could disrupt it, canceling it out, but only if he actually had contact with the spell itself, with the substance of magic. He could not imagine how horrible it would be if that antimagic effect radiated beyond his touch, canceling out the work of a navigation mage driving a carriage, or even worse, undermining the spells that held SkyHaven aloft.

Timothy shuddered. He was learning to live with being an anomaly, a blank place on the matrix of magic that made up the world. But there was no one else like him anywhere, and this knowledge made him feel very, very alone.

He glanced at Hito, the farthest and smallest of the moons, hanging white and cold like a sphere of ice, and wondered at the mysteries beyond it. There had been a moon like Hito above the Island of Patience, but it had been alone in the sky. A simpler heaven above a simpler world. A pang of sadness washed over Timothy as he thought of the tiny island he called Patience. His father had made a home for him in that other world to keep him safe from this one. Gazing out that window, Timothy looked across the ocean to the radiant majesty of the lights and spires of the city of Arcanum on the far shore.
Fear me,
this new and awesome world seemed to say, and Timothy had no choice but to oblige.