Michael Manning - The Line of Illeniel

“Are you ok Rose?” I asked. She was sitting on the floor rubbing her injured leg. The calf and ankle were forming an ugly bruise. “Here let me see if I can help.” I knelt down to put my hands on her leg.

Penny whispered in my ear as I passed her, “Careful now, I’ve got my eye on you.” Women! You’d think I was half goat by the way she acted. I gave her a wink to put her at ease.

Placing my hands on Rose’s leg I closed my eyes and focused my attention inward, first within myself and then within the leg I was holding. Broken blood vessels and inflamed tissue were the main problem. I repaired as many vessels as I could but the general inflammation was beyond my skill. Hopefully I had limited the extent of the bruising but I couldn’t be sure. I also used a trick I had learned the year before, putting the nerves transmitting pain signals to sleep, numbing the sensations from that area.

“How’s that?”

“Better,” Rose replied, “Thank you.” She put her hand on my shoulder and used me as a support while she got to her feet. “Doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would,” she mused.

“I numbed it a bit. It will start to hurt more later, but with luck the worst will be over by then.”

“I think perhaps I’ll stay closer to you while we search. Most of the magics here seem to recognize you as their master.” Rose was a wonder. She had just been shaken within an inch of her life and she was already calmly reasoning out the best course.

“That does seem wise,” Penny put in, nervous now that it was clear how dangerous the house could be.

A random thought crossed my mind. I wondered how Penny would look hanging upside down. Her legs were easily a match for Rose’s. I considered suggesting we test the theory, but I doubted she would take to the idea. Maybe if we used pillows in Magnus’ hands, so that it didn’t bruise her…

“I don’t like that evil grin on your face Mordecai. What are you thinking?” Penny asked.

“Nothing,” I replied innocently. “Did you find anything interesting in here Rose?” See, I’m learning the fine art of misdirection. Penny pursed her lips, she wasn’t fooled.

“I was just walking around, reading the titles on the spines. I saw one over here titled, ‘The History of Illeniel’, but when I reached up to pull it down your rock monster took offense,” Rose responded.

“And that was when Magnus inverted you?” Something about the word inverted just sounded funny to me. I’d have to find more ways to include it in future conversations.

“I’d like to know who perverted you Mort,” Penny commented dryly.

“Actually I think it meant to warn me away at first, but I was so startled I kicked at it and… well you saw the result,” Rose looked almost embarrassed. That was new to me; normally she was rather like a cat, devoid of shame.

I reached up to pull down the volume that had started all the trouble. I had to admit the title was intriguing. The book was inscribed with runes to preserve it against age and decay so it was difficult to judge how old it was, but I had the feeling it was incredibly ancient. The secrets of ages might lie within its pages. Considering the depths of my ignorance the contents of the library were daunting.

Opening the cover I scanned the first few pages. It had been penned by someone named Arador Illeniel. The name was unknown to me, not surprising since I knew next to nothing of the history of wizardry. The year written under his name was 546 A.S., just a few centuries after the sundering. Given that the current year was 1123 A.S. that made the book nearly six hundred years old. My mind reeled at the age of it. I began scanning the first page.

The first to carry the name was known simply as Illeniel. If he had a surname it is no longer known but his descendants bore his name as their surname from that time forward. There were no ‘great’ wizard lines then, simply men born to power. Over time the families that produced the greatest wizards gained fame and their descendants were watched for signs of it.

Mages were more common then and Illeniel is thought to have been born the son of a farmer. Early accounts claim that Illeniel was the first to hear the voice of the earth and later used this ability to raise the mountains known to modern men as the Elentirs. Why he did this has been lost over the passage of many generations but some legends claim it was done to end a war between mankind and an elder race known as the She’har.

The age that followed has been called the ‘golden age’ of man as humankind grew and dispersed across the continents. The wizards of the line of Illeniel and the other great lines: Mordan, Gaelyn, Centyr, and Prathion, developed many fantastic magics now lost to knowledge. Many lesser lines of mages were alive then but only those of the great lines were sensitive enough to hear the voice of the earth, and few among even them.

“You can read the book later Mordecai. We should examine the rest of the house,” Rose said, bringing me back to the present. I considered what I had learned in just a few paragraphs. There had been another race before mankind, five great lines of mages had existed, and the first Illeniel had created the Elentir Mountains! I was stunned. And what had the book meant by ‘the voice of the earth’? Less than a page into it and I was already full of questions.

“What?” I responded. Smart as I was I could only keep track of one conversation at a time and my own internal dialogue had filled that spot.

Penny sighed, “She said we should keep looking around. You can read later.”

I balked internally but I knew they were right, “Ok let’s finish exploring. You and I will be spending the night here anyway.”

Penny turned to Rose, “Would you like to stay the night with us Rose? The house is a bit dusty so you might have to rough it but…”

“Of course!” Rose interrupted. She loved nothing more than mysteries and my new house was chock full of them. “We can make a slumber party of it.” She gave me a smile full of mischief, “I’ll have some fresh linens brought over for the beds so we don’t have to ‘rough’ it.”

They spent several minutes making plans for the evening, a conversation in which I was purely a bystander. I stepped out into the hall and examined the rooms nearby. Across from the library was a short hallway lined with stone alcoves. From the outside it appeared to be the sort of room that might have a variety of statues set into each alcove. Curious I went in.

The alcoves were empty. Where statues might have stood in each recess there was instead a raised stone circle inscribed with magical runes. Having seen something like them before, I knew immediately what they were… teleportation circles. Each alcove had a name written above it, probably listing the destination, but all of them were unfamiliar… except one. ‘Cameron’ was the name written there.

The more I considered it, the more it made sense. Having married Elena di’Cameron my father would have wanted an easy way to visit her family. The matching circle at Cameron Castle must have been destroyed when fire gutted the keep. It made me sad to think my parents had probably been so close to an easy escape when my father died. I could only imagine how desperate their situation must have been.

I made up my mind then. Before we left I resolved to find the necessary books to build my own circle. There were plenty of examples of well-constructed circles here and once we returned I would build a new mate to the circle here. We would never be more than a moment away from my house here after that was done.

I went back into the hall and found the ladies both patiently waiting for me there. “The golem must have ‘shaken’ some sense into you,” I quipped, since they hadn’t gone exploring on their own. They failed to see the humor in my remark. Once again I was saddened that the world would never understand my comic genius.