Mage's Path 1 Page 4

  Lachlan took Jack up through the tower. The building was divided into three floors, and seemed to have lots of other smaller wings coming off in various other directions. Jack saw an enchanting room with a wide table and weapons in racks. The table and the weapons all glowed with magic.

  Lachlan showed him a library chamber, where stacks of books were lying on the floors and on the tables, and piled on shelves that stretched up to the ceiling. There was a big fireplace with a cozy blaze crackling, and a comfortable chair drawn up beside it.

  There were bedrooms, storerooms, cupboards, bathrooms, large and small studies, and luxurious sitting rooms. The tower seemed to have a strange way with space—there seemed to be more rooms than there was space for, and every time Jack turned, it seemed there was some new room or some unseen corridor stretching away to reveal new wonders.

  “Not all the placements of the rooms are fixed,” Lachlan said, almost in answer to Jack’s thought, “but your room is on the top floor, and this central staircase should always lead up through the tower to it.”

  They climbed the stairs and reached the top floor. Here, the hallways were bare wooden boards covered with rugs, and though it was all still pleasantly furnished, it was not as over-the-top as downstairs had been. Jack breathed a sigh of relief at that. The rest of the tower had seemed almost like a king’s palace, and this humble floor was more like he was used to. He yawned suddenly and raised a hand to cover his mouth.

  “Tired, eh?” Lachlan said, twisting a smile at him. “And it’s not surprising.”

  The mage reached out and opened a red door to the right of the stairs. “This is your room now,” he said. “Remember the red door. Just… be careful of the other doors. Whatever you do, don’t just go exploring and opening doors. The tower has a life of its own and if you go wandering by yourself, I can’t guarantee your safety. This red door won’t change, so just be alert when you’re coming up to bed.”

  Jack looked at the door. It was plain enough, but the handle was gold with a green gem in the middle, and about eye-height there was a little golden plate that said Jack in fine letters on it.

  He looked around the corridor, wondering about Lachlan’s words. The tower had a life of its own, that was plain.

  Another door nearby caught his eye. It was dark brown and had a golden plate with a name just like Jack’s door did. Jack leaned toward it a little and caught the name. “Melinda,” he read out loud. “Who is that? Does someone else stay up on this floor?”

  Lachlan gazed at the door with interest. “I have no idea who or what that’s about,” he said calmly. “Melinda. Interesting. Don’t open it! Honestly, just trust me on that. Don’t open any door but yours, and probably best just keep your interest to yourself, too, all right?”

  Jack smiled, seeing that there were many, many doors on this corridor, many of them with little golden name plates on them. Weird light shone from underneath some of them. From one not that far away, there was a trickle of pinkish purple smoke. Another one—thankfully a good bit further down the corridor—seemed to be occupied by something very large and angry. Thumping and snorting came from behind that door.

  “Very well, Lachlan,” Jack said. “I won’t go wandering.”

  “Good, good,” Lachlan said, sounding distracted. “Now, go get some rest. I have some things to do. When you wake, come downstairs to the main hallway and shout for Ivan. He’ll see about getting you something to eat, and he’ll be able to find me as well.”

  Jack thanked Lachlan and headed into his new room. In the doorway, he stopped and looked back. The strange, red-and-black mage was standing in front of the mysterious door. He held a scrap of paper in his hand and scribbled the name on it. Then he turned and made his way down the stairs muttering, “Melinda. How strange. I wonder…”

  Shaking his head and smiling at the strangeness of it all, Jack stepped into his new room and closed the door. All was quiet.

  It was a cozy, comfortable space, not luxurious, but nothing as humble as the hayloft he’d been sleeping in back in the town. There was a generously sized mattress that seemed to be stuffed with pleasant-smelling herbs as well as with good, dry straw, and the blankets on the bed were good, soft, well-used wool.

  The room was warmed by a fireplace with a small fire burning in it. A stack of logs lay beside it. Next to the fireplace was a bucket with water for washing, a kettle to heat water, and a towel folded neatly on the hearth. A small table and a single chair stood by the shuttered window, and on the table rested a silver jug and a thick, blue drinking glass. Next to these was a candle in a holder, burning steadily.

  Jack went to the fireplace and added a couple more logs to the little fire, then filled the kettle and swung it over the fire on its little hook. Then he went to the table and poured some water into the glass and drank. The water didn’t taste of anything special, but it gave him a strange feeling. There was something more to it than just water, and Jack wondered if it had a few drops of one of Lachlan’s magic potions added.

  He was thirsty after his night’s adventures, and the water was refreshing, so he drank his glass off and poured a second one as he moved around the room. The shutters were latched, but the latch could not be moved, and there was no gap between the shutters that he could look out from.

  In one corner, Jack found a wooden chest with iron bands reinforcing each corner. It had a lock, but the key was in the lock. Jack turned this and heard a satisfying click as the lock opened. The lid creaked on its old hinges as Jack pushed it up and peered inside.

  There wasn’t much there. Jack took out what there was. He found some clothes, a supply of candles, and a few more blankets for the bed. That was it.

  Or so he thought. As he lifted the clothes up and shook them out to get a better look at them, a golden ring dropped from the folds and clinked as it bounced inside the chest. Jack snatched it up and looked at it.

  Just a plain gold ring, he thought, but I wonder if Lachlan meant it to be here? Nothing in this tower is quite what it seems, and a ring found in a mage’s tower might be no ordinary ring.

  He looked at it closely but there was no sign of anything special about it. All the same, he resisted the temptation to put it on. Instead, he laid it on the table beside the candleholder and turned his attention to the clothes.

  Jack held them up and was not surprised to find that they looked as if they would fit him well. He was glad to shed his rusty chainmail and leathers, for they were heavy and a bit constricting. As he took off his chainmail and his boots, he heard the water in the kettle bubbling.

  Half an hour later, Jack was washed and dressed in his new clothes. His outfit was made of heavy linen and soft wool. The pants and shirt were both dark green, and there was a good cloak with a deep hood and secure pockets. There was even a new set of leather boots, and they fitted him perfectly.

  Before he’d washed and got changed, Jack had felt as if he could sleep for a week, but he felt refreshed now that he was washed and dressed in new clothes. So instead of going straight to bed, he went and sat in the chair by the table and thought about magic. It was easy, now that he was just sitting in his chair, to slip into the awareness of his mana pool and his internal pathways and channel a bit of mana to his right hand.

  He felt the familiar sensation of warmth in his palm, then pushed a little more mana to the spell and watched in satisfaction as the light began to glow there. It increased in brightness for a moment, then became stable.

  It’s about as bright as that candle flame, he thought, though the light itself is very different. Much whiter than the yellow candlelight.

  Jack experimented with trying to push more mana to it, or withdraw mana from it. When he withdrew his mana, the light dimmed and then went out, but when he increased the flow of mana to it, nothing really happened. It felt like trying to pour water into an already-full cup. Mana flowed out of his pool to the spell but it didn’t make any difference to the spell.

  He found that he could cause th
e spell to happen in his left hand as well, and experimented a little with conjuring the spell in each hand. Then he tried to pass the spell from his left hand to his right hand, but that didn’t work. The glow seemed fixed in the palm where it had originally been conjured.

  So, I can create this light and maintain it, he thought, and Lachlan seemed so impressed when I did it earlier. But I have to confess it feels a little bit lame. Is this all I can do as a mage?

  He had to remind himself that it was only his first day. After all, how much magic did you have yesterday?

  “I guess it is pretty cool,” he said out loud, holding up the globe of light on his palm. He was pleased that he was able to effortlessly maintain awareness of his mana pool, his pathways, his spell, and the room around him now. After all, I am just sitting down. Let’s try to make it a bit more challenging.

  As an experiment, he stood up from the chair and walked carefully across the room to the wall, holding the spell in his right hand. Then he walked to the wooden chest, then to the fire, then back to the chest. Grinning, he stood on one leg and balanced there, sticking his other leg out in front of him. That was a bit more challenging!

  Jack wobbled and almost fell, and the light in his hand dimmed suddenly, like a guttering candle. Instead of letting it go out, he kept control of all the threads of his awareness and brought it all back together.

  “Nice,” he muttered, as he found his balance again on one foot, and saw the magic light in his palm stabilize. He felt proud of managing to hold that together.

  Jack held the light up in front of him, and suddenly something caught his attention.

  “What the…?” he exclaimed aloud, and dropped his other foot to the floor. There was something inside the globe of light.

  With a sudden rush of excitement, Jack brought the light up close to his face and looked inside it… or rather, he looked through it.

  “It’s not inside the light,” he said to himself. “It’s in the room, on the other side of the light!”

  He looked away, over the top of the globe, then back, looking at the room through its radiance. There was no doubt about it. When Jack looked through the light, there was something in the room that he couldn’t normally see.

  It was a line, a gleaming silver line, not much thicker than the shaft of Jack’s spear. It looked flexible, like a rope, and it ran from Jack’s chest out into the room. He held the light close to himself and peered through it, seeing where it came out of his body, right between his ribs just above the solar plexus.

  When he reached a hand to the spot, he felt nothing, and when he looked normally, he could see nothing, but when he looked through the globe of light, he could see it snaking away from his chest into the room.

  “What in the world does it mean?” Jack wondered out loud.

  The silver line moved slightly as he looked at it. Raising the light, Jack examined it further. To his surprise, he saw that it led from him, around the room, and over to the wooden chest.

  He took a few steps toward the chest, then a few more. The silver line was steady, going around the room to the bottom corner of the strong wooden chest. Jack looked through the light where the line ended. There was some kind of space there, a gap in the floorboards…

  Jack held the light away from himself, holding it up to illuminate the area, but looking at the gap in the boards with his normal eyes. There was something in there.

  Leaning forward, Jack caught a flicker of movement. Something darted out of the hole. It was a little lizard, no bigger than Jack’s finger, but it was a bright electric blue color with vivid stripes of yellow and orange on its back. It gleamed in the light from Jack’s spell.

  As his eyes fell on it, something that Jack had never felt before took over his willpower.

  He opened his left hand and held it toward the lizard. There was a sudden sharp smell like burning meat, and the little lizard was being drawn toward Jack.

  His chest tingled as if there was something tugging on his soul, and in that moment, the lizard disintegrated into a million tiny blue and yellow particles. It was a puff of blue and yellow dust, hanging above the boards.

  Jack gasped as the dust flowed through the air toward him and vanished straight into his chest.

  A deep feeling of satisfaction flowed through Jack’s body and mind. It was like stretching, drinking water, eating food, and breathing deep all rolled into one.

  At the same time, though it was similar to all of those feelings, it was different.

  It was new, in a way he could not put his finger on. He’d never felt that feeling before, that was for sure.

  “Woah, what happened?” Jack said out loud.

  He was horrified suddenly that he’d accidentally killed the creature by magic. He had always loved lizards, and this little guy hadn’t done him any harm. But almost before that thought had formed, there was a shimmering light in front of him, and Jack felt something flow out of him.

  This time, it didn’t flow from his chest, but from his mana pool and out through his left hand.

  He lost control of the light spell in his right hand, and it flickered out as the new spontaneous magic flowed from his left.

  On the top of the wooden chest, something was appearing.

  It was the lizard!

  Chapter 4

  Mana manifested as light as it flowed from Jack’s hand to the lizard that had appeared on the top of the wooden chest. At first, the creature seemed to be exactly the same as it had been before he had disintegrated and absorbed it. Then, as the power flowed from Jack to the creature, the shape of the lizard changed.

  It had been blue and yellow before. But as the power flowed to it, the lizard grew in size and its scales shifted and changed from blue and yellow to a vivid, striking shade of bright red.

  The creature’s front feet were gripping the edge of the wooden chest, its talons extended and digging into the wood of the chest’s side. The feet became wider and stretched longer. The talons extended and went from a dull black sheen to a striking silver.

  Along each of the lizard’s sides, triple rows of small, white horns appeared. They were short, the largest no more than two inches long, and they were curved so the points of the horns faced away toward the lizard’s tail.

  And what a tail! The small version of the lizard had been equipped with a short, thick tail that tapered away to a narrow point, but the new version had a tail that whipped around like a living thing. At the end of the tail was a blade-shaped piece of hard hide, much the same shape and size as the blade of Jack’s spear. Unlike the spear, however, the tip of the lizard’s tail was flexible. Like the spear, it looked razor sharp and deadly.

  As the transformation slowed and the new lizard was revealed in all its glory, Jack raised his hand and summoned the light again. The corner here where the chest sat was as far from the candles as it was possible to be, and so the shadows in the room were deepest here.

  He raised the light and let its illumination fall on the fantastic creature. The lizard gazed up at him from its two huge, intelligent yellow eyes. It was the size of a small dog. It had a solid-looking head, with a short face, a big mouth, and a solid, thick neck. As the creature looked at Jack, it ran a long red tongue around its mouth, and Jack caught a glimpse of teeth. The lizard suddenly stretched and shook like a dog, and then yawned massively.

  “Woah,” Jack said aloud, taking a step back. The lizard had teeth like an army of spearmen ready to charge. If it decided to go for an enemy, he would not have bet much on the enemy’s chances.

  As if reading his thoughts, the lizard sat down heavily and began to scratch and preen at its scales, haughtily ignoring Jack. It used its claws and teeth to work its way along the ridges of horns on either side, polishing them and scratching at the underside of its rows of gleaming bright red scales.

  It seems not to be bothered by my presence at all, Jack thought.

  He watched it for a good while. Eventually, it grew tired of cleaning itself and stood bac
k up, giving itself a good shake again. Then it looked straight at Jack for a moment. He felt no hostility at all from the lizard, and he smiled.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said, reaching for the creature’s nose.

  The lizard made a friendly noise halfway between a bird’s chirrup and a dog’s whine, then leaned forward and butted its head against his hand. Jack scratched the small scales between its eyes, then scratched it around under the chin and the sides of its neck. The lizard growled contentedly, then turned around on the chest a few times and flopped down. It curled up on a ball with its tail wrapped around itself and promptly went to sleep.

  Jack withdrew the mana from his light spell, and it winked out. He walked back over to the bed.

  Sitting on his bed, watching the lizard, Jack had to wonder what in the world he had just done. He’d never heard of a power like this before. What had happened? He had somehow absorbed the creature and then recreated it as a bigger, more powerful version of itself.

  It’s kind of like summoning, I guess, he thought, and it’s kind of like the magic that allows one mage to improve the skills of another with a spell, but it doesn’t really feel like either of those. Summoners create temporary helpers for tasks, and mages that boost other mages use short-acting spells. This guy doesn’t seem temporary at all…

  Jack shook his head. What had he done here? There was nothing he could do to answer the question now, he thought, unless he was going to go out and find Lachlan and ask him for his help. Jack considered that for a moment then decided against it. The lizard seemed perfectly content where he was, and Jack was suddenly very tired.

  Questions and explanations would have to wait until after a rest.

  He blew out the candles then flopped back on the bed and flipped the blankets over himself, turning over to where he could see the fire flickering in the hearth. To his surprise, Jack didn’t immediately fall asleep. He lay, looking at the fire, watching the flames play over the logs. It would go out before he woke up, and he should really get up and put another log on, but he was warm and comfortable. The room would not get too cold, he thought.