Douglas Niles: Wizards' Conclave

No trace of amusement showed in Kalrakin’s face now when he lifted his head and stared out across the lake of death. Vapors still danced and swirled, spires of lethal gas moving in uncanny synchronicity. Another geyser spurted, this one farther away but bursting upward to a nearly impossible height—as tall as the Tower of the Sun had once risen above the fair city.

“I fear this place,” Luthar admitted. “That ruined tower taunts us, wards us away.”

Kalrakin sniffed. “That tower is nothing to us, an insignificant piece of wreckage. Yet there is another… somewhere. It is calling us through this stone.”

“Another tower? Where?

“The stone will show us the way. Now it is time for us to go,” the tall sorcerer said simply.

Luthar nodded. “You are holding the key,” he acknowledged.

Kalrakin raised his hand and struck a rigid pose. His left arm hung motionless at his side, but his right—with the hand still clenched into a fist around the pearly stone—he held straight out before him. Slowly, gravely, he called upon the wild sorcery of the world, the power that had brought him great, even exalted, status among the Gray Robes. He flexed the fingers of his hand, opening his fist, palm downward, spreading his fingers into a widespread spider of five golden legs. The artifact remained tight against his skin, held in place by an unseen magnetism.

Magic pulsed visibly, a flash of light beating along the shore, swiftly swallowed by the cloaking mist. The stone glowed warm, then hot—a thrilling, gratifying heat. The warm power surged outward and down, eager to do its master’s bidding; tendrils of sorcery penetrated the ground, seizing hold of the bedrock.

The tall sorcerer remained rigid, except for his fingers. These flexed and twisted., each motion delicate, subtle, masterful. He played the wild magic as if it were a lute of infinite, invisible strings and Kalrakin were the musician summoning his melody from that instrument. The power arced downward from each of his fingers; crackling conduits of golden light stroked the ground. That same magic pulsed upward through his feet and legs, drawn by the force of his will and the skill of his spellcasting, amplified by the power of the precious artifact. He started to raise his right arm, his lips parting as, through clenched teeth, he uttered a sound that was half groan, half hiss, a mingling of desperation and pleasure.

Luthar shivered as the sorcerous magic began to respond. A ripple creased the surface of the flat lake, spreading outward from Kalrakin’s position on the shore. The ground trembled underfoot and, back in the fringe of the forest, several tall trees toppled over, tumbling in splintering crashes that seemed shockingly loud against the backdrop of the dead land.

The power was truly great here, thought Luthar, for this was the site of a hallowed place of ancient sorcery and the grave of a monster of nearly unspeakable power. The great Tower of the Sun was a ruin here, the summit marking the gravesite not just of a city, but of an entire people. The mansions and manors of Qualinost, the crystal towers and silvery domes, had vanished; all had been swallowed by this reeking mass of putrid liquid.

But the ancient magic of this place, the ancient power of the elves and of the world itself, lingered, lurking beneath the brackish surface. Now that rich legacy of magic fulfilled its promise, as the tall sorcerer sent tendrils of his power into the bedrock beneath the lake, the city, the very world. Kalrakin’s hand, still clutching the stone, was thrust nearly straight up in the air now, and the inarticulate sound of his casting grew in volume and intensity. Amplified by the power of the Irda Stone, wild magic seized the bedrock of the land, and began to twist, to pull, to lift.

Larger ripples splashed across the water. A breath of wind stirred the brackish pools, dispersed the thickets of mist. Tremors convulsed the ground.

Finally he thrust his fist straight upward, and a storm of spuming liquid boiled along the surface of the lake in a line extending straight away from him, and from the shore. Brackish, foul water spilled away to both sides, pouring off a surface that rose gradually into view. The fumes swirled more thickly now, and Luthar pressed a cloth to his mouth, coughed through his gag, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Pools of acidic liquid steamed and hissed on the flat stone pathway, flowing off to the sides, trickling back to the lake.

If Kalrakin felt any hesitation or discomfort, he displayed no sign. He held his hand aloft, long arm extended over his head. Light flashed from the stone, cold white beams brightening the long, straight pathway that now stretched out before them on the surface of the lake. Gradually that trembling surface ceased to move, took on an appearance of permanent solidity.

A stone causeway had appeared, wide enough for two men to walk side by side, a smooth surface only a foot or two above the brackish surface. Connecting to the shore before them, the path extended until it vanished into the mists that still masked any attempt to see a far distance.

“Come—we have but minutes,” Kalrakin said sharply.

“I can’t see!” protested Luthar, blinking and wiping his eyes through another fit of coughing.

“Hold the tail of my robe,” snapped the tall sorcerer, taking his companion’s hand, giving him a fold of the brown cloth. Luthar clutched the material as if it were his lifeline, which indeed it was.

Kalrakin strode onto his magical causeway, ignoring the seething lake bubbling and churning to both sides. Luthar took a moment to get his balance, then stumbled along behind. In moments the two of them had started across the wild magic causeway through the great span of the toxic lake.

Coryn pushed herself to her feet, and turned to retrace her steps back along the rim of the gorge. Her legs were weary after the morning’s long climb, though she knew she was capable of many more miles of hiking. More burdensome than her fatigue was the disappointment of the fruitless hunt: To this point she had not even seen a deer track, much less caught sight of any prospective quarry. There didn’t seem to be any point in probing farther into the highlands toward the Icewall, when there was probably just as much chance of finding game along the bluff near the village.

That would be just her luck, she thought sourly—to hunt all this distance and then find a huge buck and bring it down with a single arrow, within sight of her village! She resolved to follow the high path back to the edge of the bluff, where the view was good and she could still find concealment if she needed it. She’d hunt just a little longer.

When she reached the edge of the escarpment, she peered ahead, imagining that she could see her village, though it would still be a long, hard march of many miles before she would feel the warmth of her parents’ hearth fire.

Her how remained strung, suspended easily from her shoulder, though she hadn’t used it once all day long. This after she had boasted—not just to her father, but to all the village elders—that she would bag a doe and a fawn today with her tough, sharp arrows. Why had she opened her mouth?

Umma was always telling her not to brag or boast. She thought of her grandmother with grudging affection. The old woman certainly had a lot of good advice, and wasn’t the least bit shy about sharing it with her sixteen-year-old granddaughter. Why couldn’t Cory do a better job of listening?

Umma was certainly the wisest person in the village, the only one Cory knew of who had ever been beyond the Ice-reach. People told stories claiming that, as a young woman, she had gone as far as the grand city of Tarsis, though Coryn had never known her to speak of that faraway place. But the girl liked spending time with Umma in her cottage. She would go there to wash her grandmother’s dishes, to chop wood, tend the fire and the mending, and help out with the countless other chores that the old woman’s frail fingers and failing eyes had grown too feeble to easily accomplish.