David Grace - The Accidental Magician

"You'll help?"

"As much as I can."

"Excellent. Perhaps we'll show that midget a thing or two yet. Let me just get a few hours' sleep. It's been a tiring day. Soon I'll be fit as a fiddle."

"No sleep, not now," the Fanist commanded.

"My friend-what did you say your name was?"

"Chom. You can call me Chom."

"Chom, I am absolutely exhausted. Just a few hours' sleep is all I need."

"I suppose each race knows its needs best. I would not interfere with a human, but you understand that an hour after sunrise Shenar will cut off your hand, and by lunch he will have made you ready for the pickup."

"The pickup?"

"Naturally Shenar will distribute your spare parts to the supplier for the Sawbones' Guild who will appear here tomorrow at the fourth hour."

Half a second later Grantin had leaped to his feet and reached the bars, ready to begin work. He bent over and with exaggerated care studied the joining between the iron bars and the floor of the cell. He could discover no crack or crevice at the juncture. With exquisite deliberation Grantin clasped his hands around one of the rods and pulled back on it with slowly increasing force. Nothing happened. Beneath his fingers the metal was cool and remarkably slick.

Off to one side the Fanist quietly watched Grantin's exertions but made no suggestions of his own. After another minute or two of futile effort Grantin shrugged his shoulders and turned to Chom. "I suppose I'll have to take a chance on an impromptu spell."

Standing back three feet from the barrier, Grantin held forth his left fist, pointed the bloodstone at the base of the center bar, and sucked in his breath preparatory to casting an extemporaneous spell.

"If I may ask, friend human," Chom interrupted somewhat diffidently, "specifically what spell you plan to cast?"

Grantin held his breath for a moment, then let it out in a whoosh. "Since we are imprisoned by these bars," he replied somewhat waspishly, "I am going to command them to be gone from our way." Grantin turned away from Chom and again began to raise his hand, only to be interrupted once more.

"If I might make a suggestion before you start," Chom said while his lower right hand restrained Grantin from commencing the spell, "if you merely command the bars to be gone, they must go somewhere, and I would estimate that they will travel perhaps ten feet until they hit the far wall of the room. From there I calculate that they will rebound back toward us and will continue to ricochet throughout the chamber until they have reduced themselves to a state of molten metal."

Grantin opened his fist as if he clutched a red-hot cinder and immediately let his arm drop back to his side.

"Perhaps if I called up a tongue of flame to cut through the iron…?"

"That would be a good idea except for the fact that Shenar has sheathed the rods with the energy of one of his most potent incantations. Any flame strong enough to bum through them would roast us both."

"Well, I might…"

"And of course an attempt to shrink the bars would pull the ceiling down around our heads."

"There's always…"

"I have considered bending them to one side, but their energy field has made them brittle. They would shatter and cut us to shreds."

"All right, I give up. What would you have me do?"

"Of course it's not my place to tell you how to use your powers," Chom began diplomatically, "but perhaps you know the incantation necessary to shrink us to a small enough size to fit between the bars?"

"That sounds rather complex. Do you think I could make it up as we go along?"

"That particular spell tends to give unreliable results unless recited perfectly. I fear that random attempts might result in a grotesque rearrangement of our internal organs."

"Well, what am I supposed to do, then? We can't cut the bars. We can't bend them. We can't shrink them, and we can't shrink ourselves. I don't know what to do, unless…" Turning away from the barrier, Grantin pivoted to study the other portions of the cell. "Can you tell if there's a spell on the walls?" he asked Chom.

The Fanist rubbed all four hands along the surface of the back wall. After perhaps a thirty-second investigation he looked back at Grantin and shook his head in a gesture copied from the humans.

"No, they seem to be mere stone," the native declared. "Well, then, we'll ignore the bars. Let's see if I can use the ring to cut a tunnel through the wall."

"Possibly a workable idea. May I suggest that we begin over here?" Chom said, pointing to the right-hand edge of the enclosed area near the bars. "When Shenar enters in the morning this is the place that will be most hidden from his immediate view."

Grantin nodded in agreement and approached the indicated section of stone. Holding the bulge of the bloodstone only a few inches from the juncture of two granite blocks, Grantin tensed his muscles and visualized a white-hot flame six inches long erupting from the surface of the ring. Forcing his eyes open while retaining the image, he spoke in a hushed voice.

"Flame, hot flame, jolting flame, burning flame! A torch to cut us free I order there to be."

A white-hot pencil of light appeared in the air a fraction of an inch above the surface of the ring and buried itself in the stone. Dust and fumes bubbled from the fissure, and globules of molten rock dripped to the floor. Scared and shaking, Grantin slowly lowered his arm and lengthened the fissure. In a few minutes the smoke and stench and heat had long passed Grantin's limits of tolerance and he commanded the flame to die. Staggering back, he collapsed in an untidy heap against the opposite wall.

Chom was apparently undisturbed by these adverse conditions and advanced upon the work site to examine Grantin's progress. Commencing at a point three feet above the floor, the line slanted downward slightly out of true for eighteen or twenty inches.

"Good, very good. Only eight or nine feet more and we will be able to escape."

"Eight feet more! I haven't gone two feet yet and I'm exhausted. I've got to rest."

"Plenty of rest you will get on the sawbones' shelf if we do not finish by morning," Chom replied.

Wearily Grantin pulled himself to his feet, approached the wall, and rekindled the flame. It was just before dawn when a feverish, exhausted Grantin cut the last inch of the escape tunnel, then promptly collapsed. Chom pulled Grantin to one side and, using all four of his arms for grasping and his two sturdy legs as levers, he began to worry the eight-inch thick plug from the wall. After several minutes' struggle the section fell clear.

Unceremoniously Chom grabbed the unconscious human by the shoulders and dragged him through the exit. Depositing Grantin in the unlighted chamber beyond, Chom crept back to maneuver the plug in behind them. Using his belt like a sling, straining every last bit of energy from his powerful arms and legs, Chom at last managed to guide the granite back into the wall in the hope that their method of escape would not be discovered until at least ten or fifteen seconds after Shenar entered the room.

After a minute or two of futile search Chom discovered a glowpod at waist height, which, he reminded himself, would be as high as the dwarf Shenar would be able to reach. Carefully removing the cellulose-like pod from its cradle, he rubbed it gently until static electricity had excited it to a weak phosphorescence. In the torch's feeble glow he soon determined that he and Grantin had taken refuge in a storage chamber. He returned to the sleeping human.

A rough prodding of Grantin's shoulders failed to wake him. So deep was the human's exhaustion that Chom was forced to slap Grantin's face in order to bring him back to consciousness.

"Wake up! Wake up! Shenar will be coming any minute now. You must make ready to conquer him with your spells."