Mage's Path 1 Read online

  As they walked, Lachlan guided Jack through an exercise. First, he had Jack just become aware of the world around him in detail. He told Jack to breathe deeply and be aware of the scents of the wood, to listen to the stirring of the leaves around him. Then he told him to be aware of the feeling of his own body, the sensations of his feet inside his boots, of the feeling of the spear in his hand, and the weight of the pack on his back.

  “You are able to feel your feet holding up your weight, but also hear the breeze in the leaves and see the way ahead, are you not?” he asked.

  “Well, yes,” Jack said. “Of course.”

  “Of course you are,” Lachlan replied. “Because you’ve practiced it. Magic is like that—a sense you can use, a thing you can feel, while doing other things. Start by just bringing your awareness to your mana pool, but don’t try to do anything else for now.”

  This time, Jack managed to do it while maintaining his awareness of the world around him. It took a bit of effort at first, but after a few tries, he was able to hold awareness of his pool while walking. Lachlan had him hold that awareness steady, then got him to describe out loud the things he could see, or hear, or feel.

  Once Jack felt confident with that, Lachlan instructed him to extend his magical awareness to his internal magical pathways.

  At first, Jack found his steps slowing and his awareness of the world fading, but they took it slowly. Again, with a little practice, he found that he could do it.

  “It’s more tiring than I’d expected,” Jack said.

  Sweat beaded on his brow, and his mind was starting to feel foggy, the way he sometimes felt if he was trying to concentrate but had not had enough sleep the night before.

  “It will be, at first,” Lachlan said. “This new magic, it’s like a part of you that you’re learning to use in a new way. Tell me, Jack, can you read and write?”

  “Yes,” Jack said, “my stepfather was always very insistent on learning that.”

  “A wise man. And do you write with your left or your right hand? I’m guessing you use your right hand, from the way you hold your spear?”

  “Yes…”

  “Have you ever tried to write with your left hand instead of your right?”

  Jack was taken off-guard by the question. He thought for a moment, then laughed. “Well, yes, I guess I have. It never went well!”

  “But it was not impossible, was it? And if you’d practiced, you’d have gotten better?”

  “Well, yes… It would have taken a lot of practice but I guess so…”

  “That’s what we’re doing here. Everyone has magic in them, Jack, but in most people, it’s weak and only used in small ways, without the person really knowing that they’re doing it. You’re learning to use something you’ve always had, but you’re doing it in a new way. Try to push some mana through the pathway now.”

  With a great deal of effort, Jack continued placing one foot steadily in front of the other, while also making sure he didn’t walk into any trees, and managed to draw some mana from the pool and along the pathway to his hand.

  Warmth flared there, as before, and he grinned.

  “Careful,” Lachlan said as Jack stumbled over a tree root, “keep your focus.”

  Jack felt as if he were trying to carry a glass full to the brim up a winding flight of stairs. So long as he stayed relaxed and kept everything in balance, he could do it, but the slightest wavering would cause him to lose part of it.

  He breathed deep, and then made the effort to push the mana to his hand again. This time, he was rewarded with a glowing light in his palm as well as the sensation of heat.

  “Excellent!” Lachlan cried, clapping his hands. “Look at that! You’re doing it! Now count backward from ten!”

  “What?!” Jack spluttered. The light wavered.

  “Come on,” Lachlan said, “you can do it, keep walking.”

  Jack drew in a long deep breath and began to count backward from ten, while holding his awareness of the world and not walking into any trees. When he got to the end, he withdrew the mana back into his pool and then stopped, leaning over and placing his hands on his knees as if he had just sprinted.

  “Haha!” Lachlan whooped, and Jack looked up to see the strange red and black mage capering about him like a lunatic. Lachlan leaped into the air, clapped his hands, and danced a circle around Jack before coming to a stop in front of him.

  “Have you any idea,” Lachlan said breathlessly to Jack, “how long it takes for most apprentices to successfully pull that off? Weeks, three weeks of daily practice at least! And you just did it on the first attempt!”

  “Weeks?” Jack asked, disbelievingly.

  “Yes!” Lachlan said. “It’s unheard of for a student to master that level of split focus so quickly! Ah, but this justifies what I’ve been saying for years—we in the guild limit ourselves by only taking apprentices from the high-born. You, young Jack, you will be the proof of it, an orphaned blacksmith’s lad from the mountains, mastering the basic focus exercise in under an hour!”

  He rubbed his hands in glee, then, seeing that Jack was exhausted, he reached into a fold of his robes and pulled out a little glass bottle full of a blue liquid that glowed faintly in the dimness of the night.

  He handed this to Jack. “Take a drink of this potion,” he said. “It’ll give you the boost you need to get you back to the tower.”

  Jack unstopped the bottle and sniffed. It smelled good, like honey and wildflowers. “What is this stuff?” he asked as he raised the bottle to his lips and took a mouthful.

  “It’s just an energy booster potion. A special mixture that I created myself.”

  The liquid felt both cool and hot at the same time, and it tasted as sweet as it smelled. Jack felt the effect of it move through him immediately. It started as a warm boost in his stomach, but then spread out through his chest and down his arms to his hands and feet. He felt energized and warm, and the exhaustion that had been affecting him a moment before was gone.

  He straightened up as he corked it and handed it back to Lachlan, who took it in one gloved hand and hid it away inside his black robes again.

  “That’s good stuff!” Jack said, wiping his lips. “If you sold that down at the tavern in town, you could make some serious money.”

  Lachlan chuckled. “That would not be wise,” he said. “Even mages can get an unhealthy taste for such things, and regular folks like those in the town would be very vulnerable to becoming addicted to such things. Potions are extremely useful, but they should always be handled with care.”

  “Will you teach me how to make potions, Lachlan?” Jack asked.

  “Of course!” Lachlan said, slapping his apprentice on the back. “It’s all part of the trade, and I’ll be teaching you everything there is to know about it eventually. But, first things first. Let’s get ourselves home. I can smell rain on the air.”

  Jack looked at the strange mage at his side. “Where exactly is home for you, Lachlan?” he asked. They had been walking for a while now, and there seemed no sign of the forest ending, or even becoming less dense, but Jack knew enough of the forest to know the general direction they were headed. He felt that they were coming uncomfortably close to the Shadow Tower.

  Even as Jack asked the question, the two of them passed into a clearing.

  Without answering, Lachlan led Jack up a slight slope, and then they were looking down into a small, narrow valley that opened out below them, with the forest surrounding it on every side.

  The valley looked about half a mile long. It was overgrown with brambles and low, stunted thorn trees, and a dark stream snaked down the middle of it.

  Beside the river there was a stone-flagged road, all overgrown with grasses and brambles, the stones cracked and shifted by many years of unchecked growth.

  At the far end of the valley there was a tower. It was a circular drum tower made of black stone, with dark, barred windows below the battlements at the top, and piles of broken masonry arou
nd the base. Ivy had taken over one side of the tower, and twisted thorn trees clustered around the base of the tower and grew out of the cracks between the bricks.

  “The Shadow Tower!” Jack exclaimed. “I know where we are now! I’ve been here once before—one of the apprentices in the stables showed me. It’s haunted, Lachlan, and no one dares go near it! You’re not telling me that is where you live?”

  Lachlan threw his head back and laughed. “The Shadow Tower, that’s right. Don’t worry, Jack, all is not as it seems. Trust me, lad. Come on down, and you’ll understand the true nature of the Shadow Tower.”

  Chapter 3

  The rain spat as they walked down into the overgrown valley. Jack shivered as the cold droplets hit his cheeks. It was cold. Jack looked up and saw that the moon was setting and the gray light of dawn was just beginning to brighten the world around them. More time had passed than he’d realized since his entry into the mysterious forgotten dungeon.

  The overgrown brambles and twisted thorn trees looked strange and eerie in the valley, and the tall pine trees that clustered around the top of the valley cast gloomy, ominous shadows.

  Jack looked around and for the first time, he felt a little doubt. But Lachlan Woe seemed cheerful, chatting quietly about how he’d lived in this tower for several years now, and how, when they got inside, Jack would understand more about the place and its appearance.

  I’ve trusted him this far, Jack thought, and he’s already taught me some new things about magic. I’m not going to let this creepy ruined tower scare me off now.

  He squared his shoulders and stood up straight, looking out over the valley as he walked in.

  Lachlan led Jack down a treacherous path of broken stones to the road that ran up the middle of the valley to the creepy tower. Jack had to be careful not to trip on the road’s broken flagstones. Ferns and small trees grew up between the flagstones, and mosses and lichens made them slippery to walk on. It must have once been a well-made and well-used road, because it was broad and the flagstones were wide and of good quality. What had happened here to cause the tower and the road to be abandoned?

  The river ran beside the path. It came down from the deep tangled woods behind the tower and flowed away down the valley, flowing alongside the road in a deep bed. The water was thick and silty, and it seemed deep. Trees overhung it, and thick growths of ivy dripped from the trees and trailed in the slow-moving water.

  Raindrops stirred the dark brown surface of the river, and Jack’s feet squelched in some mud where a flagstone was missing.

  Lachlan seemed to sense Jack’s disappointment at the unglamorous setting. He turned his head to look over his shoulder at Jack. There was a twinkle of amusement in his eye.

  “Don’t look so disheartened,” he said, smiling his knowing smile. “As I keep telling you, there’s more to this than meets the eye. Trust me. In a moment, you’ll see!”

  Jack nodded.

  They approached the entrance to the tower, and Jack looked up. The black tumbledown stone loomed up above him, blocking out the pale light of the early dawn. The door was a yawning black space with an oversized spider web across one corner. Jack shivered. It looked like a den of ghosts, not a welcoming home.

  But then Lachlan raised his fingers to his lips and whistled. The note was loud, and startled a flock of ragged crows from the crumbling tower top. There was a shimmering, like a heat haze, over the door to the tower.

  As Lachlan’s whistle echoed round the desolate valley, the shimmering passed over the door of the tower. When it passed, Jack blinked in surprise and then passed a hand over his eyes.

  “How… how can that be?” he gasped.

  “I told you there’s more to this than meets the eye!” Lachlan said with a mischievous chuckle.

  Where the empty doorway had gaped, there was now a real door. It stood slightly open, and it was no longer ruined. The stone doorway was well-made, the edges clean and sharply cut. Above it was a beautiful coat of arms showing a dragon in flight.

  The door itself was heavy timber dotted with gleaming iron studs. The wood glowed as if it were freshly oiled, and the whole doorway gleamed as if the sun was shining on it, despite the fact that the light all around was still gray and rainy.

  Jack examined the ground around the doorway. Here, too, everything had changed.

  A yard of neatly raked gravel path led up to the doorway, and on either side of that was carefully mowed grass of a vibrant, healthy green. The effect seemed to extend about a yard in every direction from the doorway.

  When Jack looked up and around, he saw the forbidding tower, gloomy in the gray dawn, but the doorway itself and the space around it had been transformed.

  “That’s amazing, Lachlan!” he said, and his mentor smiled proudly.

  “I do like it,” Lachlan said. “Glamors are one of my favorite kinds of magic.”

  “Glamors…” Jack said, looking around the gloomy valley. “So all this… this is not real?”

  Lachlan shrugged. “Oh, it’s real enough. But so is the other version, the version that’s kept secret for you and me.” He grinned. “Come on. I don’t get to show this to people very often.”

  Lachlan was obviously pleased with the illusion and proud of his tower. Jack smiled at the idea that such an obviously powerful mage could be so excited about showing off his illusion to his pupil. Jack had expected that a mage would be haughty and aloof, and would not get excited about things like this. It just showed again that Lachlan was different from Jack’s idea of what mage would be.

  Jack followed Lachlan inside the tower, passing through the beautiful doorway into a luxuriously furnished hallway. Jack stood in the doorway, his mouth open in amazement. The floor was covered in a thick carpet of deep forest green, and the walls had dark wood panels, with the stone of the structure showing through here and there, creating a tasteful contrast.

  Pictures hung on the walls. Jack had never seen anything like them before. They were huge paintings, some as tall as Jack himself. They depicted battle scenes, mostly, but every picture seemed to feature Lachlan himself in some heroic pose. In one, he stood over a vanquished monster that looked like a cross between a dragon and a scorpion. In another, he leaned over a desk of papers and glass potion bottles, a steaming test tube in one hand.

  There were tapestries in the hallway too, red and green and gold. Some of them seemed to be just landscapes or hunting scenes, but there were several that showed monsters—huge lizards, lumbering trolls, and in one a graceful dragon. Again, every tapestry had an image of Lachlan somewhere in the picture.

  Jack closed his mouth and drew a breath to speak. As he did, he stepped into the hallway, his boots sinking into the plush green carpet.

  A sudden voice interrupted him. It was high-pitched and strange-sounding. “Wipe your feet! Wipe your feet, please, young fellow! And that goes for you, too, master Lachlan, or must I put a sign up again? You know how well that went when I tried it before!”

  Jack looked around in surprise and saw the most unexpected figure imaginable. The newcomer was small, about half Jack’s height. He was bald, with dark green skin, almost the same color as the carpet. His strange yellow eyes were unnaturally large and seemed to pop out of his head like a frog’s. A pointed chin, pointed nose, and long, pointed ears finished the little creature’s monstrous look.

  It was a goblin, there was no doubt about it. A goblin dressed like a butler.

  The little green fellow was wearing a suit of black clothes and gleaming black leather slippers. He had a white shirt and a collar of cream lace at his throat. His clothes were spotless and flawlessly pressed, and they made Jack feel suddenly ashamed of his rustic leather and chainmail.

  But… a goblin? As a butler?

  “Sorry! Sorry!” It was Lachlan speaking now. He had walked into the hallway but now hurried back toward the doorway and carefully wiped his feet on a huge mat by the door, while the goblin stood with crossed arms, watching carefully. Jack, stunned by th
is new development, followed Lachlan’s example.

  “That’s better, that’s better,” the goblin said, nodding and eyeing their boots. “I just cleaned this carpet.”

  Jack looked at Lachlan. Lachlan smiled and looked at the goblin. “Jack, this is my good friend Ivan, who keeps things livable around here, as you can see.”

  The goblin butler bowed to Jack.

  “Ivan, this is Jack,” Lachlan continued. “He’s an adventurer who is going to be staying with us for a while. I want you to do everything you can to make him comfortable.”

  Ivan the goblin looked Jack up and down with a bright eye. “An adventurer, eh?” he said, and his nose twitched as if he was sniffing for an elusive scent. “And a mage, too, or my nose is lying.”

  “Ivan can smell magic,” Lachlan explained to Jack, before turning to the goblin. “That’s right, there’s magic in him. I’m going to be teaching him how to harness his powers. I’ll put him in the tower top bedroom, I think.”

  The goblin bobbed his head in acknowledgement and hurried off. “I’ll see to it straightaway, sir,” he said.

  Lachlan smiled as he took Jack up through the main hallway. “I guess you think it’s a bit unusual to have a goblin as a butler,” he said. “There’s a story there, but it’s a story for another time. Ivan has been with me for many years, and to be honest, I don’t know what I’d do without him! But you can trust him completely, that’s all you need to know. Come on, I’ll give you the tour.”