Robert Hughes - The Wizard in Waiting

Very well. Intimidating an opponent is another form of cheating, said the House.

Pelmen fell out of bed, for the castle had communicated this through a dreadful creaking in the beams that supported the ceiling. His initial instinct was to get under the cot.

Did you hear?

“I… did,” Pelmen responded, a bit shakily. He crawled back out onto the straw covered floor and looked up at the darkness. “I…

appreciate your understanding spirit,” he went on, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

Don’t mention it.

“Can I go back to sleep now?”

There are things that should be said. “I want to talk to you, too, but it’s night. Don’t you sleep?”

There’s been too much sleeping. A thousand years too much.

“You mean you’ve been asleep for a thousand years?”

Since the coming of the dragon to the Great Gate, and the cutting off of magic from this land.

Pelmen felt a rush of intense excitement. Sleep was forgotten in the face of the incredible opportunity. “But what woke you up again?”

The death of the twi-beast, said the Imperial House. A wind stirred through the room, rustling the straw.

Pelmen felt it on his face, and smiled. “You’re laughing about that,”

he murmured.

Wouldn’t you? the castle chortled. “I read about you in a cryptic sentence in a book composed in the ancient times!”

Ancient times! scoffed the Imperial House. It was yesterday! If you’d like to speak with the true ancients, look to the hills!

“Unfortunately, I don’t know their language.”

Few do, replied the House through a change of the room’s temperature.

They speak so dreadfully slow that your human lifespan could not contain a sentence…

“But what of you? Tell me of yourself!”

This House woke under the spell of Nobalog a wizard of some renown, though often taken less than seriously by his peers. He was a practical joker, you see, and got more pleasure from his little tricks than from the major works of his art.

“Such as yourself.”

Of course! the House thundered through the groaning beams.

“Did he not keep some record of his achievement?”

He kept a book of spells, but that is all.

“No wonder I’d never heard of such, then,” Pelmen muttered, biting his lip. “That book has most certainly been lost for centuries.”

So it has. Was found recently, however. “Found!” Pelmen exclaimed.

“By whom?”

That information you must discover for yourself, power shaper This House only knows that at this moment, another House is stirring.

Pelmen stared into the inky room, dumfounded. “Where? What structure?” he asked earnestly.

Such questions humans ask! the House replied. Al The “Wizard in

“Waiting ways talking of where. There is only one place, and that is this place.

“The the other living House is also you?”

Fool! How can there be a House and a House in a House? The other House that wakes shares this world, that’s all. It is semi-conscious now, but it already is clear that the shaper who wakes it is of a malevolent turn.

“But who?” Pelmen asked himself. The House ignored the question.

Why can you suddenly hear? the House inquired. For days you’ve ignored everything that was said to you.

“I’ve known for some time that there was something different about you since the night you teased me out of my sleep and blew out a torch in the hallway.”

Apologies.

“Accepted. But though I knew you were a power, I didn’t know you were the castle itself. I recalled that cryptic saying about you after talking with a woman in your dungeon.”

Her words were heard.

“Do you hear everything that takes place within these walls?”

Of course.

“Simultaneously?”

The House puzzled over the word for a moment.

Everything is heard and known. At this moment the Queen snores in a bed carved of ivory and inlaid with gold, beneath piles of fish-satin sheets. The man with whom you alternately plot and argue, Gerrig, is not in his room, but in the room of

“I have a good idea what Gerrig is doing,” Pelmen interrupted. “But what of the woman I mentioned? The lady named Serphimera?”

That lady paces the floor and invokes for your protection the name of the dragon. Rather silly, the House added needlessly.

“That… cheers me, nevertheless.” Pelmen thought for a moment. “Has she ever spoken aloud about me?”

The woman has a great fondness for you, power-shaper. She calls upon the twi-beast to protect only those whom she regards highly. Why does she? That lizard is long dead.

“That’s just her understanding. I confess, I don’t understand it either, but it’s nice to know I’m warmly remembered.”

Then her understanding isn’t yours as well? Pelmen was surprised. “Why do you ask?”

Because you, too, invoke such a power. Or was it the House you cried out to for aid, when trapped in the jaws of the fish?

“Since I didn’t know you existed at the time, I could hardly have been shouting for you.”

The dragon, then? asked the Imperial House. Pelmen was rapidly growing more sensitive to the castle’s inflections. The House seemed troubled.

“As you’ve said, the dragon is dead.”

Then… what?

“Better whom. I called on the Power, not on a power.”

I know nothing of this Power, replied the House.

“Really?” Pelmen asked. “You didn’t feel the wind that was sent to guide me? You didn’t feel the heat that boiled the big fish in the cistern?”

This House boiled the fish, the Imperial House corrected.

“Oh,” Pelmen said, a bit startled. “Well, I thank you, but—”

But what?

“But why did you?”

The House was quiet for a long time. Then it said: Does this Power make you do things you might not ordinarily do?

It was Pelmen’s turn to ponder. At length, he replied, “I think it’s rather that the Power leads you to do what you should and furnishes the energy with which to do it.”

This must be considered.

“Wait! Don’t go yet, there’s so much I want to know!”

Ask, then.

“Why were you wanting to talk to me?”

Two reasons. Loneliness and pain. “Pain? You?”

Excruciating agony. It occurs whenever some show-off sorcerer like yourself shapes power in the hallways.

“But I didn’t shape you,” Pelmen replied evenly, “though I had the chance.”

Not the night you were teased, no. Thank you. “You’re welcome.”

But you did shape the airs of my dungeons into ulcerous balls of light!

“When I was in the caverns,” Pelmen remembered. “I had no idea then it was you who kept blowing them out.”

Every time.

“I… I’m sorry. If I’d known, I certainly would have stopped.”

You were told enough times! roared the House. Its tone softened, however, and it went on:

But that wasn’t the real pain. The agony comes from that miserable parasite of a trader, the scarlet-and-purple-clad Jagd of Uda!

“Jagd? A powershaperT Pelmen asked, alarmed.

No, fool! the House shouted back. This Jagd causes pain by use of that savagely pointed pyramid of his.

“Ah,” Pelmen breathed, understanding at last. “I’ve had experience with those three devices before.”

Three? There are six of the magical objects. Or were. “I only know of three.”

Powerful magic is contained in each, embedded there from the days of their making, in the last days of the one land.

Pelmen’s mouth opened in wonder. This was a tale he’d never heard. “Go on,” he urged.

They were formed by all the parties in cooperation: those of faith, those of magic, and those of observable nature. The task was to shape a weapon that could destroy Vicia-Heinox, while forming a new unity of all parties in the process. The craftsmen of natural laws operated complicated devices wrought of steel and glass, and produced the six objects in their proper shape. Then the six were intrusted to Sheth, the foremost magician of that age. It fell his lot to pour each crystal full of power, then knit them all together with a mystic bond known only to himself. Thus prepared, the finished object was to be passed to the men of faith, for them to add then- contribution.