Michael Foster - The Young Magician

An excerpt from the Book of Helum (10:5:3)

A thousand years have come and passed since the demon god, Lin, licking his lips with a swipe of his long, dancing tongue, abandoned the ruined carcass of this world, much as you and I would toss aside a finished supper bone. He called his servants from their probing and picking of bones with a resounding howl and they swarmed like fiendish insects back through the unearthly portal that led to their own hellish domain. With the feasting done, there was nothing left to interest them in this world.

Their mystic gates boomed shut behind them and disappeared with a bang and a crackle of thunder and there was not a hint left behind to suggest the demons’ existence, save the endless sea of sun-bleached bones that littered the ground in every direction.

However, as someone with a little experience does, the demon god had withdrawn his hordes just before the final hour, sparing the final seeds of life-shivering and sheltering in their tiny hollows-from destruction. He knew how these little things clung to their precious existence and that they would one day thrive again, given half a chance.

These creatures eventually stumbled back out into the featureless open and, quite to their surprise, they found there was nothing at all waiting to devour them. They blinked up at the blazing sun and felt a rumbling in their stomachs. Some survived long enough to bear their young and some of these survived long enough to do the same. Very slowly, life began to return to the lands, as the trees and grass took root and crept back out from the crooks and crevices.

The people, made primitive by their long banishment within their caves and refuges, were the last to return, dragging their haggard and wide-eyed families out after them and pointing to the strange and wonderful cities from which their forefathers had fled.

All the living things began to flourish once more and life soon began to fill the waters and cover the lands; the threat of dark gods soon became a dim vestige in their minds.

The people returned to some semblance of civilisation and for many generations they continued to prosper. Occasionally, when a shadow passed or a cold shiver danced up their backs, the fear of things all-but-forgotten and of things all-too-terrible would stir within them and they would tremble inside their homes.

And so they should. Although the demons had departed and the wise-men and magicians insisted such things could not exist, the foul creatures had forged a method of guaranteeing their return, leaving behind them two devices-a lock and a key, of sorts. When the time was right; when man once again covered the earth and had grown great in curiosity or stupidity or both, he would learn how to put these two things together-two devices of such obvious misalignment and such openly-devious intention that even a modicum of common sense should warn that they be kept well-apart.

But devils know the machinations of man well. Eventually, and with complete and utter certainty, the gates of hell will be opened and the feasting will begin again.

The years have passed. The nations are swollen and restless. The time is surely upon us.

A cry came up from the pit and the foreman quickly clambered up the last unsteady rungs of the ladder, wiping the sweat from his reddened cheeks and hurrying into the nearby tent of his employer. Cervantes was sitting before a mountain of maps, papers and surveying apparatus-and he raised his eyes slowly as the foreman stumbled in.

‘Yes?’ Cervantes’ voice was slow and calculated, laden with infinite callousness-smooth as honey and dripping with ill humour. The sound of each syllable had the foreman, who had never been intimidated by any man, look at his bootlaces. Never had he met someone who could make his skin crawl in such an uncanny fashion, yet Cervantes did it easily and without effort-without needing to do anything at all except just look back at him with that soulless, blank gaze.

‘You had better come see,’ the foreman said as steadily as he could, dabbing at his forehead with a filthy handkerchief. ‘We’ve found something.’

From the yells and cries outside, Cervantes suspected they had finally found what he had sought all these months. Still, he waited patiently for the foreman’s report. He could never pass up an opportunity to make someone twitch and jitter uncomfortably before him. It was one of the few joys he had left in this far and forsaken corner of the world. Slowly and with practised precision he stood and adjusted his robes neatly into place, pinning the foreman with his unblinking gaze all the while. His ornate black and silver hem swept the sandy floor behind him as he flung back the tent flap and set out into the searing day. The foreman wiped his face again and took a deep breath before hurrying out after his employer.

The excited workers were gathering at the pit’s edge, shading their faces against the afternoon sun. Some men were still climbing hurriedly out from the digging, clambering and falling over each other, pushing sand over the planked edges with their frantic feet-climbing everything and each other to get out as fast as they could.

The men parted like water on wax as Cervantes carved them aside with nothing more than his imposing presence, to where he could stand at the digging’s edge.

Something wonderful was down in the pit, jutting out from the earth. A great stone tablet lay freshly exposed from the soil, wider than a man is tall, angled over and catching the sun as if it had been dropped by some god. The soil around it was melted and glassed, as if by some great heat, and smoke rose slowly from a charred body that lay outstretched near it. One smouldering, blackened arm was reaching up as if, even in death, it was trying to drag itself from the pit.

All who rimmed the pit were gripped with fear, howling or babbling and staring below with terror-filled eyes-except for one.

Cervantes’ lips curled into a satisfied smile that would surely have surprised the foreman, had he seen.

‘At last.’

The boy examined the blemished apple carefully and turned it over in his hands, screwing up his face with concern. Rolling through the mud had certainly done it no good, but with a bit of luck it could still pass a fleeting inspection-so all was not yet lost. He placed it carefully back into his basket and set his gaze back onto the street, peering left and right for any further sign of more escaped fruit.

Between the many hurrying legs around him, another apple was momentarily visible and in imminent danger of being squished, and the sight roused him immediately into action.

He hoisted up his basket and was away, darting between the heedless folk around him, scurrying to save the imperilled fruit before it could be kicked or squashed or stomped on any further. Reaching it just in time, he plucked the apple from harm’s way-just as a cluster of bleating lambs came dancing and prancing over the very spot. They kicked up the mud with their skinny hooves as they went, driven before the idle gaze of Mr Shuckle who came whistling and clicking his tongue behind them.

With the danger passed, the boy finally afforded himself a well-deserved rest and he set his basket down with a sigh. Tracking down so many lost apples had been draining work and he eyed the unwieldy basket beside him with disdain.

‘Samuel!’ an angry woman’s voice called out from afar, piercing the market din. The village folk were familiar with the cry, for it was often heard carrying across the noise of the markets on such days as this, full of frustration and wrath. Today, however, the woman sounded especially fearsome and Samuel’s only solace was that her hollering still sounded from far away. He still had a little time to make good of his misfortune before his mother found out.