The Galactic Mage (20 page)

However, the “living” portion of that idea was pressing the limits of the term. The sparrow came through the shield without any trouble, but it lay writhing at Altin’s feet. He grimaced as he watched it and could not help but pick it up. “I’m sorry,” he said to the bird. “I guess you weren’t expecting my shield to pop into your path.” He could feel the warmth of the bird’s body in his hands and was reminded of how the mouse had felt when he’d dried it that day he’d sent it to the moon. He found himself once more fighting off an ominous sense of guilt. And with that guilt came annoyance. It vexed him that his euphoria could be so easily threatened by such a simple thing. It was just a stupid bird. He couldn’t believe he was actually considering taking the broken bird to Leekant to see if he could get it fixed. What in the nine hells was wrong with him?

He stared down at the bird lying in his hands. It was barely moving, and it was making a wet spot against his palm where blood leaked from a fractured bone that had poked through the skin. Its shiny black eyes, little onyx dots that were beginning to fade, stared up at him blinking. Its tiny beak opened and closed slowly as it uttered faint rasps of anguished breath that seemed an accusation, a proclamation of Altin’s capacity for doing magic and dealing incidental death.

He wished he could heal. Why couldn’t he heal? What was the point of all his power if he couldn’t heal a stupid bird? All this magic. The largest mythothalamus in a thousand years. And he couldn’t heal a lick. It seemed ridiculously unfair. And this wasn’t like his zero score in divination either. Deep inside he felt that his divining issue was just a block. But healing. He knew he couldn’t heal. He was incapable. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. He would never heal. Never. He grew so angry watching the bird’s torment that he dashed it to the ground and crushed its head beneath his heel. Out of its misery, he told himself, it’s what needed to be done. He hated it. And he hated that he could not heal. And he hated being helpless; he hated being weak.

He also hated when these sudden moods came on him, and he tried to banish the emotion from his mind. He blamed it on too much to drink last night and found himself cursing Aderbury and his endlessly friendly ways. Everything seemed to try to keep him from his work.

He was just disciplined enough to know that this sudden mood left him in an improper frame of mind to cast. He was tired. He needed to get more rest. Reluctantly, he resigned himself to a nap. He’d sleep this mood off and be ready to cast when Luria was bright against the sky. Tonight would be the night. Tonight he was going to the moon.

Chapter
20

B
y the time he woke up, Altin had completely forgotten about the bird. He felt much better and much more capable of maintaining a disciplined mind. He even allowed himself the time to eat a chunk torn off the loaf of bread before he went immediately back to work.

He went up to the battlements and had a look around. Luria was darkly red in her waning phase and gave very little light, barely more than a crimson crescent painted upon the face of a black and distant night. Still, the air was cool and refreshing with a gentle breeze serving up meadow scents from the ground below. The perfect night for a trip up to the moon. But first he had to check and see about the goat. He went to the basin and brought up the image of the kid. The goat was curled up on the blanket and for a moment Altin felt anxiety grip him in the guts again. Fortunately, a close-up view confirmed that the goat had merely gone to sleep, its little ribs moving rhythmically up and down proving it still breathed. Good enough. It was time to get to the business of going up there himself.

Turning from the scrying basin, he closed his eyes and began to chant the portion of Polar’s shielding spell that addressed the body of the shield itself. The magic dome was still up from when he’d cast it earlier in the day, and he pushed his mind into the energy it contained and had a look around, probing it and checking its every inch to make sure that it was safe. He could feel its energies pulsing, teeming with power, solid and strong. But there were other things he wanted to check on beyond just its strength. Thinking of the fishbowl, he wanted to make sure that his container was not going to have any deadly leaks. He could imagine air hissing out of it through some crack in the stone or through some undetected creature’s burrow.

While still immersed in the mana and in Polar Piton’s shield, he traced with his mind the segments of the shield where they passed down and around the castle’s curtain wall. There were segments of wall in two places where the shield was parted, the shield giving way to the solidity of the stone, straddling it as one’s hand might pin a large block of butter to a plate. He spent a great deal of time studying these intersections, concerned for how teleporting the tower out was going to impact those two spots and if there might be places for his air supply to escape. He was glad he did, for, just as he suspected, the shield did not pass through the wall. It attached to its surfaces, tightly, but did not go through. The energy bound itself to the stone blocks as if they were simply part of the “ground” as defined by Polar Piton’s spell. Best not to mess with that connection, Altin thought, but he did resolve to include an extra length of curtain wall beyond the shield on each side when he teleported, just to play it safe.

Which left only the ground below. The shield ended abruptly at the ground. It did not penetrate the earth beneath, though it was attached more firmly than the castle was itself. Altin decided that he would have to teleport a cut of ground as well, so as not to break his airtight seal, he could in essence scoop out a solid foundation of earth from below to make sure his shield had a significant “cork” of dirt to stand on when it appeared upon the moon.

Letting go of the mana that had immersed him in the shield, he spent a bit more time exploring with a seeing spell, scurrying around the tower with his magical vision to make sure that nothing was awry. Once he was confident that all was well, he ran down to his room and scribbled a brief note on a sheet of parchment:

Tytamon,

Gone to moon. Will have tower back by morning.

Altin

He teleported the note to a basket that sat on Tytamon’s desk for the express purpose of receiving such things and, with that done, ran back up to the battlements prepared to cast.

Unwilling to take any chances, Altin uncovered the Liquefying Stone and held it in his hand. He didn’t want to miss leaving something critical behind; the teleportation spell he was going to use was little different than the one he used on himself almost all the time, but it did include a significantly larger mass: his entire tower! He dipped his mind into the mana currents, seething now with the effects of the wondrous Liquefying Stone, and carefully drew off a large quantity of the whirling purple mass. He flattened it with his mind, spreading it thin like a sheet, which he then cast over his tower’s Polar shield like a giant net. He pushed the net down through the curtain wall, a pace beyond where the shield was anchored to the stone, and he stuffed its edges down into the very surface of the earth, pulling underneath the tower as well, almost as deep as he was tall, and yanking at it with his mind as if trying to wrap the tower in a sack. He squared it off beneath the tower as best he could, wanting a flat base beneath him when he set the tower down upon the moon, but it was so dark beneath the ground that he had to do much of it by “feel.” Snugging the mana net firmly into place, he took a moment to make certain that all the significant parts were tucked inside. They were.

With that portion of the spell complete, he shifted the cadence of the chant for the transition through space and attached a cord of mana from the “netted” tower up to the tiny seeing stone on Luria countless measures above his head. He funneled the mana easily, despite the difference in mass, and found himself on the verge of distraction at how simple the Liquefying Stone made such a monumental task. Once the link was made, Altin drew the tower back, stretching the whole of himself and the entire castle corner backwards in the empty place where mana dwells, and then released it like a shot. The next thing he knew, he was on the surface of the moon.

He opened his eyes and there he was, gazing out into the most enormous night he’d ever seen. Stars were everywhere. Ten times more than he remembered from his seeing spells before. An awesome sight, beyond anything he had even thought to imagine prior to being here. One just doesn’t think in terms of this.

And then there was Prosperion. He looked up and saw it, momentarily surprised that it would be “up” where the moon should be. But there it was, shining like an enormous pearl of blue. Real this time, radiant, a far more mesmerizing sky light than Luria could ever be. Altin was suddenly jealous of himself, knowing that most nights would find him back down there with only pink Luria’s face to see. How unfair that the denizens of his world had only this small pink disc to gaze upon. After such a sight as this, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be so impressed with a face as featureless as was the moon’s.

It took him a while to move through his moment of newfound awe. But at length he did, and he paced excitedly around the battlements, looking at everything. As he did, he realized that the tower was tilted just a bit, and it was with some degree of humor that he discovered he’d cut himself out an uneven granite base. His tower leaned like a poorly made chess piece set upon a rocky board of red. Still, not bad for a bit of guesswork he decided, and gave a dismissive laugh. Experimentation was never without its risks. If he’d gotten himself to the moon and all he had to suffer was a five degree incline, he figured he’d done it decently enough. Far more than anyone else had done. At which point he grinned.

He allowed himself to fill with the appreciation for what he had just achieved. Altin was the first man on the moon. Ever. Two magicians had tried before, or so he’d read, but neither had made progress of any note. One had simply vanished several hundred years ago, and the other, a P-class teleporter, was found dead, his mythothalamus burnt to a crisp inside his head. Altin was sure that he now knew why. He glanced at the Liquefying Stone lying safely in its bowl. There was no way anyone could get here without that stone. At least not the first time. The unknown element was just too impossible to outcast. Especially for a P.

But Altin was certain that he could teleport back without it now, at least himself and quite probably the tower. The distance wasn’t a problem, at least not for him. The problem had always been the colossal ambiguity that made blind casting such a strain. But now he knew exactly where “here” was. That poor P-class teleporter had never had a chance, as uniquely powerful as he most certainly was—a P rating was no common thing. No, finding the moon was a project for a Z. And here he was.

He hopped giddily about his tilted tower and shouted with glee. It was just so exciting. And there was no one else around to see, so it didn’t matter how silly he may have looked. Glancing down from the wall, he happened to spot the little goat sitting out there all alone in the faint glow of the seeing stone below. He gave a start. Poor thing. He’d completely forgotten about the goat. He calmed himself enough to cast and brought the goat and the flagstone back inside, the flagstone returned to its proper place in his bedroom down below. He ran down to make sure that the goat was all right, and, satisfied that it was, came quickly back up top. He was still jubilant, like a child, and it took several more moments to prepare his mind again so that he could make yet another cast, this time one that would take the tower to the edge of the first big crater that he had found while using Sight to explore.

Viewing the yawning hole in person, from his tower, was more impressive than it had been with simple magic sight; the perspective of a flesh-and-blood man, physically present, gave the site a sense of scale that had been missing merely seeing from Prosperion. The scale of the crater, wide and dark, punched into the ruddy landscape as if by the fist of a god, was humbling to behold, spectacular in its magnitude and in its presentation, encapsulated by stars and with bright Prosperion looming high above. Altin could not help but be in awe. He wished that there were someone else here to see it too.

He found himself thinking of Aderbury and his wife. Aderbury would love it up here, and Hether would scream in absolute delight. Then, as one thought tends to lead to another, he realized that this was where Aderbury should build his amusement park, not down in Murdoc Bay. Suddenly Altin’s mind filled with images of a giant Polar’s dome covering measures of Luria’s open space. No place on Prosperion afforded so much land ready to be used. The moon was already cleared and leveled. Imagine the demand. Aderbury could make a fortune up here and leave that tiny office and insipid Thadius far behind. Yes, he was definitely going to pay Aderbury a visit when he got home.

And he also wanted Tytamon to see. He decided at once that he should go down and get him; he should go and teleport Tytamon back up. His mentor had lived for nearly eight hundred years, had seen almost everything there was to see, but he’d never seen this. Altin was suddenly intent on nothing else. And besides, he wanted to see if it was going to be as easy as he thought to send himself back without the Liquefying Stone. In the matter of casting, there was not so much difference between a goat and a man as one might think.

Using the scrying basin to spy out a dark corner of Calico Castle’s vacuous dining hall, an area safely behind the mounted armor of a long dead knight, Altin determined that the corner was indeed devoid of any life. So confirmed, he closed his eyes and cast the teleport spell that he felt certain would bring him home.

A moment later found him standing in the dark. His vision took a moment to adjust and, after reaching out a hand to confirm that there was indeed cold metal armor on his left, he knew that he was home. Two tiny spots of light marked where candles still burned on the table far across the giant room, and Altin jogged over to them only to discover that the table had long ago been cleared. He wasted no time and rushed to Tytamon’s tower.

He took the stairs three at a time—well, three for a while, then two, and finally one at a time—as he made the arduous trek up to Tytamon’s private rooms, but, despite being out of breath by the time he finally arrived, he was still completely energized as he stood upon the landing and beat upon the door.

He was called inside immediately by the sound of Tytamon’s gravelly voice. He burst in and without a salutation of any sort breathlessly spilled it out. “I made it,” he proclaimed. “I made it to the moon and I’m on the surface right now as we speak, looking up—or down —at Prosperion. It’s beautiful and you have to come see. Right now. You truly do. You’ve never seen anything like it in all your life.”

Tytamon raised a bushy eyebrow, just one, cocking his head slightly as the other brow pressed downward over a somewhat doubting eye. “You’re where?”

“I’m on the moon. Right now. You really have to see.” He was still panting.

“Hmmm,” Tytamon uttered, nodding gravely and giving Altin a patronizing look.

“What?” Altin said, seeing the disbelief. “Didn’t you get my note? Haven’t you seen the tower?” He ran to Tytamon’s window and pointed down to the missing section of the keep. He was somewhat taken aback by what he saw. Whoa! He certainly had excavated a large chunk of Calico Castle’s wall. But that didn’t matter now. He put the vast gap in the fortress out of his mind and gestured eagerly out the window for Tytamon to see. “Look!”

Tytamon moved reluctantly to the window and looked down into the court. “Good heavens,” he said. “What have you done?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I told you in the note. I’m on the moon. Right now.”

“My boy, you’re standing right here. Perhaps you’d better have a seat.”

“No, not now. Well, I mean, not
right
now. But… I just was. And I can go back. Please. Just come. I promise it’s worth the time to see.”

“Ah,” said the wizard finally caught up. “So you’ve really done it, eh? You’ve actually put a man upon the moon?”

“Yes,” said Altin beaming. “And I’m about to put two on the moon if you’d care to come along.”

For a moment Altin thought Tytamon was going to decline, to hesitate on the grounds of prudence or some spurious safety fact, but after a brief pause to consider, the great mage put the spell components he was holding back down upon the bench. “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked with some slightly nervous collaboration taking place between his eyes, his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth.