David Grace - The Accidental Magician

"Well, uncle, don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining, and of course I have complete faith in your abilities, but will you be able to expand me again once you've removed it?"

Greyhorn hesitated a moment before answering, then turned a somewhat distracted gaze to the ceiling. At last he replied in a roundabout fashion.

"Well, I suppose something or other could be done if you want to be picky about it. I'm sure that I can bring you back to more or less your previous size."

Grantin sucked in his breath, then, tasting the harsh fumes of the mummy plant, tried to halt his breathing, choked, and coughed. The spasm jerked Grantin's arms. The beaker slipped from his hands and crashed to the workroom's stone floor. As the liquid contacted the granite blocks it foamed and exuded a sudden cloud of dense white smoke. In an instant an acrid fog enveloped the room. Hacking and coughing, both half an inch shorter, Grantin and Greyhorn fled the laboratory.

Wheezing, the men staggered down the hall, finally coming to rest at the massive oval window at the end of the corridor. There they sucked in great drafts of cool air until, at last, the spasms subsided.

"Cursed… why am I cursed with the likes of you?" Greyhorn wheezed. "Now, with victory almost within my grasp, you bungle everything."

As inconspicuously as possible Grantin attempted to retreat from the window and slink back down the hallway toward his room.

"Where do you think you're going? Come back here- come back here with my ring!"

"Uncle, you're tired and upset. You should rest. I'll go and fix us some dinner, then you should take a nap. When morning comes you'll be fresh and able to think more clearly. Perhaps there is a solution that we haven't considered."

Still weakened from the potion's noxious fumes, Greyhorn hesitated a moment, then leaned wearily back against the wall and nodded his assent. The wizard trudged down the front stairs and into his study while Grantin made his way to the rear first-floor kitchen and prepared a light meal.

After dinner he cajoled Greyhorn into reclining on the parlor couch, whereupon the wizard fell into a deep sleep. Now Grantin had only a few hours to make his plans and, if necessary, flee. First he must scour the library for some reference, some hint to the nature of this strange ring. Possibly in some dusty volume was recounted a spell which could free him from its weight.

Grantin first checked the common references: A Thousand and One Spells for All Occasions; Hancough's Compendium of Useful Chants; The Wizard's Guide to Advanced Magic-all to no avail.

Hours later, Grantin turned the last page in Puffin's Quaint Spells I Have Known and Used without finding so much as a single useful passage.

Beyond the library windows night surrounded the manor in purple black. Grantin's single lamp glowed feebly, and as the charge slowly ebbed away it flickered with an almost hypnotic rhythm. Overcome by the day's events, Grantin slumped forward, head on his hands, the bloodstone pressing hard against the center of his forehead. Reluctantly he surrendered to Morpheus's blandishments, all the while promising himself that he would only rest for an hour or two and then awaken refreshed to finish his search or, if necessary, flee into the woods.

A strangeness pervaded the scene, but Grantin had to concentrate to determine the nature of its peculiarity. It seemed as though images approached from a great distance, danced in front of him, and then roared past him and disappeared. With a start Grantin realized that a colored fog shrouded these scenes until they were quite close to him. The visions themselves were composed predominantly of reds and oranges, yellows and tans, but the fog that surrounded them, without actually touching them, was itself a pale pearly green.

Each succeeding vision persisted for a longer time. Grantin began to catch fragments of entire scenes, all of a uniquely frightening nature: dungeons, cells, humans, Ajaj, and Fanists in chains, storms, blood, and torture. In spite of his revulsion Grantin stared fixedly at each picture, trying to drink in all of its details before it flickered away. More and more he thought he discerned a common link between all of them-in each vision he detected the hint if not the actual presence of a bloodstone such as that affixed to his own left hand. Grantin was intrigued by one apparition in particular, one that he realized he had been watching for some time. This picture filled his entire field of vision. Grantin avidly watched the events silently unfold.

A small, chunky, baldheaded man, childlike in size but bearing the grizzled face of age, tramped down a gray-walled corridor. Bandy legs moved piston-like beneath the folds of his wizard's gown. In a few paces the magician reached a wooden door broken in the middle by a small barred window. The portal was flung open by his touch. The room beyond was brightly lit by several glow-pods. The chamber was circular. Down its center was a line of floor-to-ceiling bars spaced only a few inches apart. Imprisoned in the right half of the room was a four-armed creature, a Fanist of a clan unknown to Grantin. The native's hairless, pebble-gray hide did not yet bear the network of wrinkles and seams which distinguished the elders of the tribes. This native was young, barely into adulthood, although even after five hundred years of cohabitation humans were unsure what his age would be as man reckons time.

The wizard's mouth worked angrily and he shouted in silent frustration at the impassive Fanist. An instant later bolts of red and green leaped from the wizard's fingertips, passed through the bars, and discharged themselves into the native's flesh. The Fanist writhed in agony but refused to answer the wizard's questions. Another bolt struck him, and, as the Fanist crumpled to the floor, the scene began to fade. In the last instant before the vision failed Grantin saw, or sensed, affixed beneath the tough flap of skin which covered the native's forehead a glowing milky blue jewel set there in an indentation of the skull itself.

With a snap, like a spark of static electricity, the scene pulsed brightly, then went dark. Grantin awakened to find himself still sprawled in the library, with dawn beginning to tint the far horizon. Soon Greyhorn would be stirring, looking for Grantin. With him he would bring his knife.

Grantin raced from wall to wall, shelf to shelf, searching for a book, any book, which might provide a clue which would save him from his alternatives of amputation or penniless flight. In desperation he yanked volume two of the Ajaj history from the bottom shelf and as fast as his eyes were able began to read.

The first human city, Integrity, was established on the banks of the Resurrection River two miles east of the site where the Lillith had first landed. Under Amis Hartford's direction the colonists pooled their efforts to construct the first rude settlement while the Ajaj withdrew to the pinnacles on the far bank of the river. Crops were planted and the first year's harvest was…

No, no-that was no help at all! Grantin madly flipped the pages forward, reading a line here, a fragment there., The sun was now halfway above the horizon. Grantin turned the pages in a mad dash for some clue to the nature of the bloodstone.

"…Thus the Gogols were forced to retreat far to the west and to halt their attacks on the newly established Hartford villages."

Wait a moment! How did the Hartfords force the Gogols into retreat? Grantin flipped back to the preceding page and read the ensuing paragraphs with great interest.

… Edgar of Ilium, the first of the great Hartford magicians. By rumor Edgar's grandfather was a learned colonist of the tribe known as geologists. That ancestor passed down special knowledge to his heirs. Edgar himself refused to reveal the nature of the device by which he hurled energy bolts at the attacking Gogols and so saved the Hartfords from domination and slavery. It was commonly believed, however, that Edgar through the use of his grandfather's teachings discovered a rock or crystal which amplified the power of his spells. Edgar would neither deny nor confirm the rumor but always contended that the power he used was too awesome and too frightening for normal men, that the uninitiated would likely be driven mad by contact with his device or the use of his spells.