David Grace - The Accidental Magician

Almost as if in a trance Grantin studied the mirrored highlights reflected in the blade. He brought it closer to his finger. Almost against his will he planned where he would begin his butchery. Grantin juggled the blade clumsily. Its needle-fine point pricked his skin just above the knuckle. A brilliant scarlet bead welled up in high contrast to the nut-brown hue of his flesh. The sight of the blood snapped Grantin from the spell which Rupert's threats had cast over him. He remembered the incantation he had tried while lost in the forest.

In the blink of an eye he again balled his fist and pointed the ring at Rupert. Before the deacon could utter a word Grantin screamed: "Out of my way!"

Like a stone flung from a slingshot Rupert's body was hurled backward, up through the trees, until in a moment it had passed from sight toward the far horizon.

Shocked by the effects of the spell, Grantin paced forward until he reached the spot Rupert had occupied mere seconds before. Looking up, he could see the tunnel of broken limbs which Rupert's body had bored through the forest canopy. Perhaps a thousand yards ahead the trail reached an apogee and then slowly straightened and curved downward.

Off beyond the tree-line Pyra was beginning its evening descent. Grantin had to hurry. He must leave the woods before full dark. Slapping his hands together, he brushed the dirt from his palms, then sprinted toward the portal of the castle of the mad wizard Shenar.

Invisible gusts of heat rolled from the caldrons scattered about Hazar's basement kitchen. One human only was present to supervise these, the most demeaned of the Ajaj. Obese and sweat-stained. Cockle, the chief cook, reclined on a stool near the far wall.

Higher than Castor's waist, the edge of the wort bin presented the Ajaj with yet another obstacle on this his first day of kitchen service. Straining forward to the limit of his reach, his fingertips touched the end of one of the cylindrical yellow-gray roots. The vegetable wobbled. Under the prodding of Castor's questing fingertips it bumped forward over its hair-fine filaments until it was fully within his grasp. Shifting his weight backward, Castor allowed his soft-furred stomach to slide across the edge of the bin until he had moved far enough for his feet to touch the floor again.

Wheezing heavily. Castor pushed himself back from the box and stood up straight. A momentary wave of dizziness rocked him. He shook his head, clearing it, then paced across the overheated kitchen to the caldron where the midday stew was already beginning to boil. A few feet from the kettle Castor hesitated, then changed direction and headed for the cutting board. His tread made no sound except for the occasional clicking of his toenails against the stone floor. He raised his right arm toward a six-inch-long knife hanging from a peg on the wall.

A stunning buffet sent him spinning across the floor. "Just what do you think you're doing, you furry little sneak?" Cockle growled.

Castor turned and forced his eyes to refocus. Cockle stood aroused and belligerent in front of the preparation table. A roll of illusion-plant leaves hung from the overseer's mouth. His pale, sparsely haired belly protruded from the inadequate confinement of his shirt.

"I was merely going to trim the tendrils from the wort root," Castor said in a voice that seemed to him too calm to have issued from his own lips.

"For Lord Hazar you trim the tendrils. Everyone else takes what they get. That stew's for the guards. They'll eat whatever's in there and like it. And while I'm giving you a lesson, here's another: guards like wort root. As a matter of fact, they love it better than meat or anything else. They're always begging me to put more wort root and less meat into the stew, so you go back to the bin and get five or ten more. And don't never go near those knives again without asking me first. Well, what're you waiting for? Get to work!"

"There aren't any more. The bin's empty."

"Buster," Cockle shouted, "do I have to do everything around here? Have you let us get low on supplies again? What's this about no more wort root?"

An old Ajaj, crippled in the left leg, limped painfully forward. Head down, shoulders bent in what appeared to be a permanent cringe. Buster approached the kitchen steward. The grizzled white fur around his muzzle twitched with fear.

"Send somebody out to the depot to get some more, you old fool! It'll go hard with you if you don't return in time to finish dinner. Here, take this smart aleck with you." Cockle placed a meaty hand on Castor's shoulder and shoved him across the room, then grunted and ponderously reseated himself upon his overseer's stool.

"Yes, my lord, of course, my lord," Buster responded. "Come along. Castor."

Buster led Castor down the hallway and up the flight of stairs which separated the scullery from the alley near Hazar's quarters. With a nod from Buster the doorkeeper slid back the portal.

"Where are we going?" Castor asked once they had left Hazar's apartments behind.

"To Topor's supply depot," Buster replied. "Don't you know where the food bins are?"

"Until today I was a senior empather. The closest I got to Lord Hazar's food supply was the luncheons given to me during the term of my duties."

"Well, then, a bit of a lesson's in order, isn't it?" Buster limped along the outer ring road at a brisk pace. "This street we're on is called the First Circle, although it's not a circle at all but a series of five straight stretches which parallel the five-sided walls beyond. The five first lords, Hazar, Nefra, Topor, Bolam, and Zaco, retain for themselves the quarters bordering the city's five gates."

"Why are the most powerful Gogols housed at the edge of the city instead of its center?" Castor interrupted. "It doesn't make sense."

"It doesn't make sense to a Gray," Buster responded. Already he had lost some of the feeble appearance he projected in the scullery. Now, by indefinable means, his gait had become stronger and his visage had taken on a sly, hardened aspect. "A Gray thinks only of security, of safety. The higher the status of a Gray, the deeper his tunnels, the thicker his walls, the more he hides himself from the outside world. The Gogols, on the other hand, think in terms of power.

"He that controls the gates controls the city. Also, if worse comes to worst, he who lives on the outside wall can flee. Ah, that's heresy to our people, the thought of fleeing one's home, running out into the open country. But not to a human. The lords' main enemies are within the city, not without. There now, up ahead, the street to the left, we go that way."

Castor turned his head and saw that at the angle where two walls of the inner pentagram normally would be joined there was a street which ran through the walls toward the center of Cicero. Two Gogols guarded the lane but let the Grays pass unmolested after Buster executed a gentle bow. Once out of sight of the guards Buster resumed his monologue:

"The guards know me as Hazar's scullery clerk and so let me pass without interrogation. Look to the right and left and you'll see a bit of Cicero's past. There and there," Buster said, pointing, "see the roughly chiseled stone, the crudely cut blocks? At one time there was a gate here, five gates in this ring of buildings between the First and Second Circles, and five more in the next, on into the center of Cicero. "But the system proved unworkable, too much internal strife. Every lord and deacon and subdeacon and acolyte strove to control a gate and then use that position as a springboard to move outward until at last one of the five main gates themselves was under the wizard's sway. For two hundred years the energy of the Gogols was dissipated in internal struggles.

"Twenty years ago Hazar's father, for a brief period, accomplished a combination of all of the outer lords against all of the inner deacons. Thus they forced the destruction of all of the gates save their own. Now, as a courtesy, the residents of the inner walls are allowed guards in the corridors leading toward the center of town, but two guards only and no gates at all. The whole city is now under the sway of the five lords and the five lords alone. For the first time in decades the Gogols have the energy to turn their eyes outward and make new plans for conquest."