The Dark Lord Page 18

  “That’s not the way my magic works,” I explained.

  He stopped midstride and looked at me with dawning understanding. “Your magic makes no sense,” he said in an awed whisper.

  “Exactly.”

  “My magic also makes no sense!” he crowed with glee.

  “Precisely.”

  “All magic is barking!” he concluded with a whoop of joy.

  “Now you’ve got it,” I said, pocketing the acorns and rising to my feet. “Let’s use some of this nonsensical, barking-mad magic to get filthy rich just like Adams did.”

  “Deal,” he said, and picked his spell book up from the ground where it had fallen. “How do we start, Wizard Avery?”

  “We start with you not calling me Wizard Avery. We are both professional mages, so it is just Avery to you.” I stuck out my hand so we could shake on it.

  After a moment of stunned disbelief, a wide grin split his face. He took my hand and began pumping vigorously. “Deal again . . . Avery.”

  “Good,” I said, and I did feel good, maybe for the first time since coming back. I had spent nearly all my time in Trelari worrying about the land, but ignoring the people. Whether it hurt or helped stop Vivian, this felt much better.

  I was still mulling over my feelings when I noticed that Sam was staring at me expectantly. “What?” I asked, suddenly nervous that I had forgotten to say something else, and that he would burst into tears again.

  “Getting filthy rich? Remember the rest of the party is out spending all your nonexistent gold,” he prompted.

  “Oh, right,” I said, relaxing. “I thought there was a problem.”

  “But isn’t there? I don’t understand how two wizards can conjure gold if it’s impossible for one wizard to do it.”

  “Ah,” I said, extending a finger into the air and laying it aside my nose, “but then you didn’t hear the end of Magus Adams’s story in which he invented a remarkably useful spell, which in the right circumstances can turn anybody’s pockets into an infinite source of money, and which led him to become the richest magus of his age.”

  I scratched my head, wondering where to begin this part of the lesson, since I would be making most of it up. “Where did I leave off?” I mumbled.

  This was meant more for myself, but Sam answered eagerly, “Magus Adams had just proved it was impossible to conjure something from nothing.”

  “That’s right,” I said with a snap. “But you missed the most important part of that story. He did his explaining while drinking more than a half-dozen pints of beer.”

  “Well, why is that important?” Sam asked.

  “Because the barkeep had been keeping a count, and also did not seem to appreciate the magical history that had been made in his establishment. He demanded that Adams pay at once for everything he’d drunk.”

  “Gosh!” Sam exclaimed with a whistle.

  “Gosh is right,” I agreed, “but the word Adams used was, I believe, a bit more profane. Fortunately, Adams was not a mage to let impossible situations get him down. After all, he’d spent a century or so trying to do the impossible. I will now show you how he got out of this particular jam.”

  I went to my horse and dug through my saddlebag. I needed a box or a bag or something. My hand fell on the belt pouch Seamus had given me that I’d had yet to wear. I pulled it out and held it up. “Here is our solution!”

  “A pouch?” he asked skeptically. “I have one exactly like it. Seamus gave us those, along with a mess kit, and fifty feet of rope, and—”

  “Yes, yes, and a ten-foot pole,” I interrupted. “But this is not the pouch Seamus gave me.”

  “It sure looks like the same pouch,” he said skeptically.

  I leaned in close to him and whispered, “If you had a magic item that could transmute objects into gold coins, wouldn’t you disguise it?”

  “Golly, yes!” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “‘Gosh’ and now ‘golly’? We’ll work on your expressive vocabulary later. For now, let’s get started on the spell.” I put the pouch on the ground at our feet, making sure the flap that covered the opening was only open a crack. Then I plucked a thin branch from the tree. I stripped the leaves and began twisting it into a circle. “You will be the focus of the magic.”

  This made him stand up a bit straighter.

  I positioned myself so my foot was on one of the tree roots and began drawing power from it. In the shadows it was difficult to see the subtle graying of the trunk. Harder to disguise was the yellowing of the leaves. To draw his attention away I began tracing the branch with my finger and filling it with energy. The circlet began to glow a brilliant green color.

  Truth be told, the pattern I was drawing—called the probability distribution pattern—is exceedingly simple (consisting of a series of undulated wavy lines), and I could have done the magic without the branch. But probability bending, which is what I was going to attempt, depended entirely on belief or at least a willing suspension of disbelief, on the part of the subject. And given the fact that Trelari magic had all these weird material component requirements, I thought it would help Sam believe in the spell more if he could touch something.

  I placed the circlet on Sam’s head and said very somberly, “I will now ask you to focus your thoughts on each of the acorns I pass to you. If the magic is working, they should begin to glow green like the circlet. Once they’re glowing, slip each one into the pouch.”

  I pulled an acorn from my pocket and held it up in front of his eyes. This gave me a chance to examine the shimmering field of improbability that I’d cast on him. It covered him from head to toe and looked strong enough for me to make the attempt.

  I passed the acorn to him and as I did so I pushed a little power into it so it glowed green. “Great!” I said with a clap. “It’s working perfectly. Now, focus all your thoughts and energies on the acorn, and when you’re ready drop it in.”

  With a trembling hand and almost maniacal focus he carefully slipped the glowing acorn into the top of the pouch and I shut the flap. There was a metallic ring, which made sense because I’d put the tin cup from my mess kit (another standard item Seamus had given me) at the bottom of the pouch.

  However, the effect on Sam from this simple deception was dramatic. His eyes grew wide and he whispered, “It’s working.”

  I held a finger up to my lips for silence. “Concentrate.”

  He nodded his head seriously. The next several minutes were spent in a solemn but ultimately ridiculous ritual where I would pass him acorns and he would place them surgically into the pouch, listening each time for the metallic ring that would indicate that a “transformation” had occurred.

  I would have been just as excited had any magic actually been taking place, but it wasn’t. Certainly transmutation wasn’t happening. Transmutation of matter from one thing to another was only slightly less impossible using Mysterium magic than was conjuring something from nothing. It turns out it is really hard to alter each and every atom of an object from one type to another and takes enormous power to do so—world-ending power. In fact, over a hundred years ago Mysterium and the innerworlds signed the Transmutation Test Ban Treaty because mages kept blowing up subworlds trying to make solid gold castles and diamond encrusted towers. The truth was, all Sam and I were doing at this point was dropping acorns into a metal cup, and almost anyone can do that. The real magic was going to come next, and everything else we had done up to this point was designed to increase the probability that the most improbable thing would happen, which is that when we reached into the pouch we would find gold coins where, by all rights, there should only be acorns. This was the magic of probability bending.

  Probability bending was devised on the very same night Magus Adams got drunk and came up with his conjuration paradox. The story goes that after Adams explained his paradox, the barkeep explained to Adams that, impossible or not, he’d better find a way to conjure up some money to pay his bar tab or he’d be introduced to the parado
x of the five knuckles. Adams, in a fit of desperate logical brilliance, then came up with the single greatest magical parlor trick of all time.

  It is said that Adams calmly explained that he could easily pay his bar tab with the coins in his own pocket. There was a lot of skepticism at this claim, because Adams was known to be fairly destitute at this point. He then pulled out a piece of fazestone chalk and drew around his barstool the probability circle I’d just placed on Sam’s head. Addressing the bar he said, “I don’t know with any certainty how many coins I have in my pocket today. It might be none, but then it also might be any other number. If we assign even odds to all possibilities, this means that there is one out of an infinite number of chances that I have no money, but an infinite number of chances that I have one or more coins. Logically, this means that it is far more probable that I have all the money I need to pay my tab than it is that I am broke.” To the surprise of everyone, including himself, he proceeded to pull coin after coin out of his pockets until there was a fair mound of them on the bar. When the barkeep was satisfied, Adams gave an unsteady bow and staggered out into the street.

  This is precisely what I wanted to happen here, absent maybe the staggering.

  As the last of the acorns went into the pouch I said solemnly, “The transformation is done. Reach into the pouch, Sam.”

  With trembling hand he did, and voilà—he was holding a glimmering golden coin. I will spare you the details of the next ten minutes, but at the end of it we had filled a substantial portion of my backpack with lovely spendable money. When we had enough I cut off the flow of power to the circlet. And not too soon either. My head was swimming at the effort of holding the probability pattern (another bad sign that Trelari was getting closer and closer to Mysterium), and the tree had begun to lose leaves at an alarming rate.

  Sam noticed nothing. He was glowing with pride at this point. I gave him a pat on the back and smiled to myself. Given his credulous nature and his ability to believe the most absurd things, I had known that Sam would be a perfect candidate for Adams’s probability bending spell. I myself could never make it work, because I was a natural cynic and usually never had enough money to get drunk enough to forget how little money I had, which is essential to the working of the spell.

  “I can’t believe you did it!” Sam crowed.

  “We did it,” I corrected. “Without you it wouldn’t have worked. Now, let’s go spend this, and remember we’ve got to keep this on the down-low or someone might try to steal the pouch.”

  “Right,” he said solemnly. “This will be between you and me.”

  What I didn’t add was that we needed to spend the money now before the improbability field associated with the coins’ existence started to collapse and they began to disappear. Effectively, we would be stealing everything we bought.

  Chapter 18

  A LICENSE TO QUEST

  For the next hour or so Sam and I ran through Hamlet paying for this and buying that like we were everyone’s favorite rich uncle. I won’t go into the total damage, but safe to say had we been spending real money and not stuff I’d conjured out of a fundamental misunderstanding of probability and statistics, I’d have been angry.

  When at last we’d managed to track everyone down and had settled their debts, I offered to buy Sam a well-deserved ale. He would have none of it. “I can’t,” he said with an earnest shake of his head. “I haven’t studied my spells all day, and I have to be ready if you need me again . . . Avery.”

  With a spring in his step, he headed back to the tree beside the weaver’s shop to read his spell book. I wasn’t sure if Sam would ever be a talented wizard, but he was a good fellow and I was glad to see his spirits revived.

  To revive my own spirits, I decided to retreat to a place where I could drink some spirits. I found Valdara and Drake in the common room of the Bread Dragon Inn and joined them. I know what you’re thinking, But, Avery, inns don’t serve alcohol—remember!

  Apparently, this universal rule did not apply to Hamlet, as Drake patiently explained to me when I asked him about it. “Kid, you don’t survive long in a town built on adventurers if you don’t serve something that will get them drunk.”

  I was into my second ale, and starting to feel human again, when Rook bustled up, eyebrows bristling vigorously. “What are you all doin’ sittin’ around drinkin’?”

  “Hoping to get drunk?” Drake answered for all of us.

  The dwarf rolled his eyes. “No time for that, and probably not enough drink in all the town for you inebriates.”

  “Lighten up, Rook,” I said in the expansive tones of someone that has a good buzz on. “We’ve been on the road for weeks. What will one day’s rest matter?”

  “It’ll matter when we can’t get a license for a quest and get stuck here for the next month waitin’ for the Master to open up shop again,” he rasped in response. “I thought you were in a hurry, but maybe I’m wrong.”

  I heard the words he was saying, and I understood them individually, but put together they had made no sense. “What are you talking about, Rook?”

  “I’ve been askin’ around, and the only way to get one of the quests around Hamlet is to buy a license from some fella named the Master of the Dungeons,” he answered. “But he only issues them once a month—today—and it’s already afternoon. All the other adventurin’ groups got their licenses first thing this mornin’ . . .” He glared at me. “Before dawn!”

  I ignored the gibe. I had other things to worry about, like the Master of Dungeons. I had completely forgotten about him. He was a construct that I’d created in the early days of my experiment to help me regulate access to important items and quests. I had been worried that if someone other than the selected group of Heroes found a specific item or defeated a key monster that the entire spell pattern might be disrupted. I had no idea that the Master would survive the fall of the Dark Lord, much less that he would set himself up here. I began to understand why Hamlet was such a strange place. The Master is extremely powerful within his limited domain, and he could very well be warping reality around him. The expression “old sins cast long shadows” popped into my head. I groaned.

  Rook cocked his head to one side and gave me a one-eyed squint. “That’s right, laddie. I’m also worried. Worried that all the good questin’ licenses are already gone.”

  A thought occurred to me and I turned to Valdara and Drake. “Did you two know about this?”

  They didn’t answer for a second and then Drake said quietly, “Yes. We ran into the Master back when we were looking for the Mage Staff.”

  “How could you not tell me!” I shouted, and slammed my tankard onto the table. “You know how important finding Justice Cleaver is and now you may have ruined our chances.”

  Drake had the decency to look abashed, but Valdara narrowed her eyes and said unapologetically, “I told you I didn’t want to come to Hamlet. The entire place is corrupt and the Master is the worst of all.”

  I shot Valdara a glare, which she returned in kind. I was obviously going to get no apology from her, and there was no use arguing about what was done. I needed a plan. I rubbed my eyes and tried to think of something. “Could we join up with one of the groups that already has a license?” I asked Rook.

  Rook shook his head and tugged at his beard irritably. “We might have been able to had we tried a couple of hours ago, laddie, but the groups have all gone off already. Haven’t you noticed how empty the town is?”

  I looked about the common room. He was right; apart from the bartender, we were the only people here. I hadn’t noticed, but while we’d been drinking the village had emptied out. I banged my tankard on the table in frustration.

  “Well, we’ll just have to go to the Master now and see if there is anything left.”

  I stood and looked down at Valdara and Drake, dropping a couple of coins. “Drink up—it seems to be the only thing you two are suited for at this point.”

  I gathered the rest of the company t
ogether and we marched over to the Master’s office. It turned out to be a relatively modest building in the center of town.

  Rook paused before opening the door. “Now, when we get in there let me do the talkin’,” he growled. “I don’t want to risk our standin’ with the Master by havin’ one of you sayin’ something stupid.” He took a moment to glare about at us in warning, lingering on me a bit more than the others. When I nodded my agreement, he barked out, “Seamus, did you get the food like I asked?”

  “Yes, Rook,” Seamus said, holding up a couple of heavily loaded bags.

  He nodded brusquely and opened the door. The room was dark as a cave and it took my eyes a minute to adjust. When they did I saw that the walls were lined with shelves loaded to the point of collapse with brightly colored books and boxes. In the middle of the room under a single lantern was a large table covered in maps and little figures. On our side of the table were set a half-dozen or so chairs. A foldable screen about a foot high blocked the view of the other side of the table, and it took me a moment to realize that the Master was sitting behind there. All I could see of him was his bald head, on which sprouted a few tufts of thin white hair.

  Rook marched up to the table with the rest of the group shuffling in nervously behind him. I stayed purposefully at the back of the group. He’d never seen me in person, but I didn’t want to bring too much attention to myself.

  The Master remained unmoved behind his screen for close to a minute. The only sound was the scratch of his pen on paper. At last he peeked up above the edge of the screen. I saw two piercing brown eyes, a small nose, and a broad smile. “Hello, you may call me the Master . . . of Dungeons. What adventure do you seek?”

  Immediately ignoring Rook’s earlier warning, the entire company pressed in around the table. “Ask about the Fortified Safe of the Dark Elves,” suggested Ariella.