Echoes of the Fourth Magic (31 page)

T
HE
U
SURPER TURNED
his untrusting eye at Reinheiser. “And what do you desire?” he asked, his words heavy with the cynicism that dominated every aspect of his life.

“Desire?” Reinheiser echoed with feigned surprise.

“Do not be evasive,” the Overlord warned, but though he smiled knowingly, the physicist held fast to his naive facade. “What do you ask,” Ungden demanded, “in return for your part in delivering the map?”

“Why nothing, my lord,” Reinheiser replied. “I only did what I believed was proper.”

Ungden nodded approvingly, though his expression showed that his doubts remained. Tainted by his own perverted outlook, the Usurper recognized personal gain as the primary motivation for any man’s actions and suspected treachery in anyone who claimed otherwise. He knew that Reinheiser was lying. The wizard beside the throne again smiled under his hood. He knew it, too; and furthermore, he understood what it was that Martin Reinheiser sought.

“Although,” Reinheiser continued, as if a small favor had occurred to him as an afterthought, “I would truly appreciate a tour of this magnificent palace, and perhaps of the city, too.”

“It shall be done,” Ungden said. “And more than that,
for you certainly deserve it, you shall remain in the palace, comfortable and respected as my royal guest.”

“Thank you, gracious lord,” Reinheiser said, and bowed low as if honored, though he realized that the invitation was just Ungden’s way of keeping an eye on him.

The Usurper accepted the bow with an unenthusiastic wave of his hand, indicating that he was through with the two strangers and the meeting at an end.

   Reinheiser saw many splendors that day, artworks as wondrous as any from his own world. Unfortunately, the manner in which they were thrown together and cluttered about in every room assaulted his senses with an overload of images and insulted the artists who had devoted months, even years, of their lives to create them. Like the dragons of mythology, Ungden hoarded his treasures without any idea of appreciation for them. To the Usurper, owning seemed an end unto itself, and mere placement, aesthetically insulting, showed that his greed far outweighed any love he had for the art.

Yet Reinheiser, too, cared little for art. His desire to see the palace had nothing to do with observing masterpieces, and it took quite an effort for him to hold his facade and convince the wary guard that he was interested in the tour. It wasn’t until the afternoon that he found what he was truly looking for. As his guide led him to his room, they passed a darkened, unadorned hallway. Right away Reinheiser suspected something important about this corridor, for it was the only area he had viewed in the entire palace bare of Ungden’s pillaged collection.

“Take me down there,” he demanded.

“Nay, I cannot,” the guard replied.

“You wear the ring of a Warder of the White Walls,” Reinheiser promptly reminded. “Your Overlord granted me this tour and you are bound to carry out his will. Now, take me down there.”

The guard returned Reinheiser’s threatening glare with
a dangerous look of this own. “ ‘I cannot,” he stated again. “That passage leads to the tower of Istaahl, and he alone determines his guests.”

“Even above Ungden?” Reinheiser stated the question rhetorically, meaning to unnerve the guard and remind him of his loyalties, but the Warder remained resolute in his refusal.

“Overlord Ungden has granted Istaahl full rights of privacy and sovereignty over his tower,” the man explained. “We may approach only at the invitation of the mage.”

Reinheiser had run out of arguments, though it wasn’t of much consequence. He had discovered what he set out to find, and was confident that he would meet with the wizard soon enough; that had been predetermined. He would have to be patient for a while.

Just for a short while. Conveniently, Reinheiser’s room was close by. He entered and shut the door behind him, stopping to listen for steps as the guard departed. But no footsteps moved away; as Reinheiser had fully expected, his room was to be watched. Frustrated, he reclined on his bed, rehearsing the speech he had planned for the wizard and trying to formulate a plan to slip past the sentry. Wearied from the long ride, he was soon fast asleep.

He woke with a sudden start, and thought at first that someone had shaken him, as the last rays of daylight eked in through the small window of his room. He crept to the door and listened again. Still the hall was silent, completely so. “Time to go,” Reinheiser told himself, though he had no strategy completed, deciding in his arrogance and impatience that he was mentally quick enough to adlib his way through. When he opened the door, though, he found that deception wouldn’t be necessary, for the guard lay curled up in a sound slumber against the wall across the corridor.

From the impressive tales Ardaz had told him of the Warders of the White Walls, Reinheiser understood this neglect of duty to be more than uncharacteristic. Not about
to stop and question his good fortune, he slipped quietly away and headed down the corridor to the tower of the mage, pausing in the shadows beside the iron-bound tower door for a few seconds to be certain he wasn’t being followed. Then, satisfied that he was alone, he knocked lightly on the hard wood.

No response. He rapped as loudly as he dared, but still there came no answer. Reinheiser found himself faced with a difficult and dangerous decision. He knew that he was playing with trouble, perhaps even risking his very life. On the other hand, he realized that he had been fortunate even to get this far and that it was unlikely that this opportunity would come again soon. He boldly cracked open the heavy door and entered the room of the mage.

It was a circular chamber with a stone stairway arching up along the wall on the left to an opening in the second level. There was only one small window, barely more than an arrow slit, meager resistance against the shades of gloom that hung about every nook of the room like splotches of midnight horrors. Reinheiser stood motionless, gripped by an illogical apprehension that disturbing the deathly silence would clue some hidden, poised demon to murderous action.

He gingerly shuffled his way to a chair against the wall behind the open door and softly pushed the door closed. He had to admit to himself that he was intimidated by the mysterious magic of this world. Even so, the hunger for knowledge overruled any fears, for Reinheiser desired—craved—to learn and master this art that hinted at tremendous personal power.

As he scanned the room for clues about its resident, his eyes were drawn to a large oaken desk against the wall across from where he sat, its top cluttered with quills and inkwells and various arcane artifacts: a jeweled knife, a skull, and the eyes of some unfortunate creature. But whether these were actual components in spellcasting or macabre scarecrows against inquisitive trespassers, the physicist
could only guess. Two tall, many-fingered candelabrum with twisting and intertwining stems balanced the real corners of the desk, and between them stood an upright case sectioned into dozens of compartments, most of which contained rolled parchments.

What dark secrets must be penned upon them! Reinheiser thought. Despite the presence of so great a lure, he dared not approach and risk the spells the wizard might have cast to protect his works.

Sunset came soon after and the room blackened quickly. Reinheiser sat very still and noiseless, feeling small and vulnerable to the hiding demons his imagination assured him were all about. He fought off panic with every passing second and wondered if these overwhelming fits weren’t some trickery of the wizard, a subtle suggestion of promised horror, a mental ward against thieves.

After what seemed an eternity, the door creaked open and the white-robed mage entered, bearing a candle. Without taking notice of the physicist sitting in the shadows, he limped across the room, leaning heavily on his small staff, and mumbling a quick spell to close the door, then another to light the candles on the desk. Reinheiser sat amazed and amused at these small feats of wizardry and watched with continued interest, squinting to discern every movement in the weak and flickering light as the mage’s bony hands began slowly pulling back on the cowled hood.

“It should be black, I suppose,” Reinheiser said finally, smiling with satisfaction at having caught so wise a man by surprise. The hands kept moving without a hitch, undisturbed by what should have been an unexpected voice, and it was the physicist’s composure that was shaken.

“Your mark, I mean,” he continued in a less certain, almost defensive tone. “It should be black, since black is the mark of Morgan Thalasi, and that, unless I miss my guess, is who you are.”

The wizard turned slowly to Reinheiser and gave a laugh that sounded more like a hiss. “You play dangerous
games, Dr. Martin Reinheiser,” he said calmly, pulling his hood back to let the intruder see what he was dealing with.

Reinheiser shuddered at the sight, for the man before him was indeed the Black Warlock, Morgan Thalasi. He was completely bald, with pallid, sickly skin that seemed stretched beyond its limits just to cover his bony frame. His black eyes showed as no more than holes in deep, sunken sockets, his cheeks hollowed and taut, as if he had wasted away, like a starved man who should have died long ago. Centuries of wickedness had indeed exacted a heavy toll on Thalasi, eating at his physical being, but not at his evil will, for that was all-enduring. The many-faceted black sapphire that was his wizard’s mark glistened from its setting on his forehead as if newly cut and polished.

“I knew it was you,” Reinheiser said, and he laughed meekly, trying to seem at ease. Despite his effort, the tremor in his voice betrayed his true feelings of terror. “I reasoned that only the mighty Thalasi was capable of the feats that the mage, Ardaz, credits to Istaahl.”

“So you were right,” the Black Warlock mocked, his voice remaining unnervingly calm and sure. “Small comfort in light of the terrible death that is about to befall you.”

Reinheiser stroked his goatee and tried to hold fast to the control and reason he needed now to get him through this. Something was going very wrong. He had never figured his meeting with Thalasi to be like this, not even in the worst of his scenarios, and his imagined pictures of the Black Warlock fell far short of the true horrors of the being standing before him. This man, appearing so physically fragile, exuded an aura of overwhelming evil and limitless power, like Satan incarnate a black hole of morality that Reinheiser knew could sweep him away on a whim to an eternity of hellfire.

“Kill me?” he asked incredulously, trying to put the idea into a preposterous light. “Why would you want to kill me?”

“For knowing my identity and intruding on my privacy, or for talking to that dog, Glendower, that you call Ardaz,” Thalasi replied. “That is surely reason enough. Or I might dismember you merely for the pleasure of dealing pain.” He hissed that wicked laugh again, as if the last idea had appealed to him.

And Reinheiser knew without doubt that this heartless creature was more than capable of such random murder. “But you summoned me!” he cried. “The mist that allowed us to escape; you had to have sent it! That’s how I finally knew your true identity. Istaahl’s magic is limited to the seacoast, and he couldn’t have reached that far inland.”

“I did conjure the mist.”

“And the sleeping Warder?”

“A simple task.”

“Then you brought me here for a purpose,” Reinheiser reasoned.

“For the map, that is all,” Thalasi said. “I reached to possess your mind; and you, thinking that some knowledge was unfolding before you, let me in. I had not the time to take control, but I saw through your eyes and perceived that you were among the night dancers. Yet I could not discern exactly where that was. So I brought you here for the map, and that is all.”

“But Mitchell—” Reinheiser began, desperately grabbing at anything that might save him.

“Mitchell is a fool!” Thalasi interrupted. “ ‘I commanded an army of millions,’ he said. Ha! I, too, lived in the United States before the holocaust, and I remember no General Hollis Mitchell. And I assure you, my memory is excellent.

“I remember you, though,” Thalasi continued. “Your work, at least, and the departure of the
Unicorn
from Woods Hole.”

The reminders of that other world caught Reinheiser by surprise, but in them he saw a chance and boldly forced himself under control. “Then you know that I, too, mastered an art,” he stated as proudly as he dared. “I was a
master of physics and technology. I thought that was why you sent for me, for if we could combine our knowledge—”

Thalasi cut him off with a loud burst of laughter, mocking the physicist’s pitiful attempt to save his life.

“You laugh?” Reinheiser cried, leaping from his seat in anger. He realized that Thalasi would probably kill him then and there for daring to argue, but so frustrated was he by his miscalculations, and so confused by the Black Warlock’s responses and attitude, that at the moment he hardly cared. “You who knew the wonders of the world before the holocaust doubt the power of science?”

“Power?” Thalasi echoed, with such strength in his voice that it made Reinheiser huddle back into his chair. “Destructive, yes,” Thalasi went on. “That has been proven, poignantly so. But do not equate the ability to destroy with power. You confuse the two. A bomb reduces a city to a pit of bubbling tar, and you term that power. What is gained?”

Reinheiser stared at him blankly.

“Annihilation is not power,” Thalasi went on, “but the antithesis of true power.” He clenched a fist and raised his eyes to the ceiling, and Reinheiser shuddered at the sheer evil reflected in those smoldering orbs.

“Control!” Thalasi hissed. “Bending another’s will to do your bidding. Dominating his every move. That, you fool, is power!”

Still terrified, but also intrigued, Reinheiser forced himself to sit straighten Here was the master who held the key to the secrets he desired, and his craving demanded attention even above the threat to his life. “And what of knowledge?” he asked with urgency. “Does knowledge play a part?”