RS01. The Reluctant Sorcerer (12 page)

“Well,” said Brewster, “suppose I were to tell you that I know of a way for you and your brigands to at least double your profits and, eventually, perhaps to increase them even further, without having to waste all that time skulking by the trails and lurking in the hedgerows?” “Increase our profits?” she said. “With no lurking or skulking? How?” “By a process known as manufacturing,” said Brewster.

“ ‘Man-u-facturing’?” she repeated, enunciating the unfamiliar word with care. “ ‘Tis some sort of sorcery?” “Well... in a way,” said Brewster.

Shannon sat down on the table, crossed her legs, placed her elbow on her knee, and rested her chin on her fist. “Tell me more, friend,” she said.

Warrick Morgannan was unquestionably the most powerful sorcerer in all the twenty-seven kingdoms, so powerful that he even disdained to use a magename. Wizards generally went in for that sort of thing, because there was an old belief that knowledge of one’s truename rendered one potentially vulnerable to enemy adepts. While this belief was not entirely without substance, most adepts used magenames primarily because they sounded more dramatic.

In fact, all adepts had their truenames registered with SAG, as that was one of the requirements of the Guild, partly to keep track of its membership and partly to insure that there would be no disputes over magenames. If someone had already chosen Graywand or Wyrdrune and registered it, then you simply had to pick another name, no matter how much you had your heart set on it.

This sort of thing could prove rather taxing to the imagination, as the membership rolls of the Guild accounted for every adept in all the twenty-seven kingdoms and most of the good names had already been taken. If an adept died, then it was sometimes possible for his name to be passed on to someone else, but only provided that provision had been made for it in his will prior to his death and this didn’t often happen. The only exceptions were generally with sons who were inheriting the business or with apprentices who had gained especially high favor. Most of the time, the magenames were simply retired and entered on the Scroll of Eternity.

Because of this system, newly sanctioned adepts often found themselves stuck for an original magename, or were so fond of the one they’d picked, only to find out that someone else already had it, that they had to settle for a number. While this practice was not encouraged, it had been adopted out of necessity. It saved the Guild Membership Committee having to come up with new magenames all the time for newly sanctioned adepts to draw out of a hat. Consequently, on the rolls of the Guild, there was now a Darkrune 4, a Blackthorn 2, and Gandalfs 1 through 6.

Warrick sounded quite properly dramatic all by itself, and with Morgannan added to it, it even sounded dashing and romantic, but that wasn’t why he stuck with it. Warrick used his truename because, when he had first been sanctioned, he had wanted to ram it down everybody’s throat. He had wanted to be an adept since early childhood and he had never even considered any other occupation, despite the fact that everyone had told him he had no talent. This only infuriated him and made him study that much harder.

It had taken him years to find a Guild member who would take him on as an apprentice, and then the only one who would accept him had been Batshade, a blind, arthritic, and senile old humbler who lived in a cave and was more popularly known as Batshit, because of all the droppings covering his pointy hat and robe. It had been a miserable existence, but old Batshit had all the necessary scrolls and lab equipment, and on the days when he wasn’t stumbling around the cave and raving to himself, he could actually be a pretty decent teacher. Still, Warrick had served a fifteen year apprenticeship, when even the slowest students generally made it through in ten.

Finally, there had been some controversy over his sanctioning exam, which occasioned a debate among the Membership Committee. Some of the committee members had felt that he wasn’t sufficiently dramatic with his technique, and they didn’t like that he eschewed most of the traditional sepulchral chants and ancient gestures, accomplishing everything he did with a minimalist approach. In other words, they felt he lacked a certain style. However, in the end, it was decided that this was not sufficient grounds to exclude him from membership, especially since he had the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone down pat, and knew all the other requisite spells as well. So they accepted him, but several members of the committee were rather condescending in their final personal evaluation remarks.

Warrick was not the type of man to overlook this sort of thing. When they asked him if he had chosen a magename, he had replied that he would use his own truename, which had raised more than a few eyebrows. “I shall be remembered,” he had told them firmly, “and in time, I shall eclipse each and every one of you with my abilities. Mark well my words, for I shall be the greatest wizard of them all!” Well, the committee took some exception to this, but they wrote off his remarks to youthful arrogance and merely gave him a lecture on proper deportment and respect for his elders. However, as time passed, they were forced to eat those words, especially in the cases of those members of the committee who had been rather harsh in their personal evaluation remarks, for Warrick had hit them each with a spell that made them go down to the Guild Records Chambers, go through all the files until they found the evaluations they had written, then stuff them in their mouths, chew them up, and swallow them. Needless to say, this display of power had not gone unnoticed and in the very next election he was voted Grand Director of the Guild. His words had proved prophetic. He had, indeed, eclipsed them all.

As Grand Director (or as the Guild members referred to him, “the G.D.”), he was entitled to do things pretty much his own way. He avoided the traditional trappings of the Guild and never wore robes, but dressed in a plain, unadorned white velvet suit consisting of a high-buttoned cleric’s tunic, close-fitting breeches, and matching, calfhigh, velvet boots. The color went well with his long ash-blond hair, green eyes, and sharp features, but it was a most unsorcerly appearance. The most popular colors were generally murky green, deep purple, midnight blue, and, of course, blackest black, but his white suit set him apart, and in time, he became known as Warrick the White.

He had come a very long way, indeed, which only goes to show how far you can go if you apply yourself, and whatever he may have lacked in natural ability in the beginning, he had more than made up for with diligent study, perseverance, and just plain hard work. He lived for his art, and had developed powers and thaumaturgic sensitivities of a very high order, which- “Who’s there?” said Warrick, turning away from his massive study desk to peer anxiously over his shoulder.

“ ‘Tis only I, Master,” replied his familiar, an ugly old troll whom Warrick had named Teddy.

“I didn’t mean you,” said Warrick, scowling and glancing around. “I suddenly had the distinct sensation that someone was talking about me.” Teddy had been with the sorcerer ever since the day the troll had the misfortune to jump the teenaged Warrick from beneath a bridge. Trolls generally weren’t very large, though they were quite strong in proportion to their size, but Teddy was a runt as far as trolls go, standing only two feet tall, with arms as long as he was high, so that his knuckles perpetually dragged upon the ground.

“Talking about you. Master?” Teddy said, glancing around.

“But there is no one else here!” Warrick frowned. “I heard a voice,” he said. “But it seems to be talking about you, now.” “Me?” said Teddy, sounding alarmed.

He had been lurking underneath the bridge, as trolls do, when Warrick had passed by overhead and Teddy jumped him. Warrick, who was no slouch himself in the physical strength department, had pounded the living daylights out of him and then placed a spell of submission on the troll, whose hairiness and musky smell reminded him of a bear cub. Having never been given any toys or stuffed animals when he was a child, Warrick had named him Teddy and had kept him around ever since. He had tried sleeping with Teddy at first, but trolls are fitful sleepers and Teddy squirmed too much. Besides, the musky smell had a tendency to build up on you, so Teddy had been banished from the warm covers of the bed to the dust balls beneath it.

“Hmmm,” said Warrick. “There are strange forces abroad in the land tonight. Voices in the ether. I don’t know what the world is coming to.” He shook his head and turned his attention back to the musty scrolls spread out on his desk. From time to time, he would glance back over his shoulder again and scowl, frowning at the strange contraption that sat on the stone floor of his laboratory. It looked somewhat like a large bubble on sled runners, with a curious, shiny tube running all around it.

It was, needless to say, Brewster’s missing time machine and here is how it came into Warrick’s possession: You will recall that it had been programmed to travel back into the past ten minutes for ten seconds, so that it should have appeared in Brewster’s top secret London laboratory high atop the corporate headquarters of EnGulfCo International, remained in Brewster’s immediate past for a scant ten seconds, and then returned automatically. However, it had not done so, because of the faulty switch in the auto-return module. Brewster had thought that he had diagnosed the flaw, but in fact, something else had happened, as well, something Brewster hadn’t counted on at all.

Ripping holes in the time/space continuum can be a dicey business, and what happened was that when the machine dropped through the field of temporal disruption it had created, it experienced a sort of temporal version of an atmospheric skip, the result of an intangible temporal congruity of a universe that existed in a continuum plane parallel to our own. Now Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for talking about stuff like this, so your narrator isn’t going to push his luck by going into any greater detail. Suffice it to say that Brewster, quite by accident, had not only discovered time travel, but travel to parallel realities as well. What one might call “a real trip.” When the first time machine arrived in the Kingdom of Frank, in the Land of Dam, its temporal skip had been slightly greater than the one Brewster himself had experienced, so as a result, it had not materialized in the same place. It had actually arrived about twenty miles away from Lookout Mountain, at a somewhat greater altitude. Its parachute had automatically deployed and carried it a certain distance downwind before it landed without mishap in the middle of the road leading from Franktown, the capital city of the kingdom, through the Redwood Forest, to the town of Dudley’s Port, on the coast. The first people to spot it were Long Bill, Fifer Bob, and Silent Fred, who had been serving their shift lurking in the hedgerows.

Long Bill and Silent Fred were playing chess with a little set that Fred always carried around with him, while Bob played on his little wooden fife and watched the road. He had finished off one tune and asked, “Any requests?” “Aye, put that stupid thing away,” growled Long Bill. Bob put his fife to his lips and started playing a ribald ditty called “Put That Stupid Thing Away,” which had pretty racy lyrics but lost something when it was performed as an instrumental. Besides, it wasn’t what Long Bill had in mind, anyway. He fetched Pifer Bob a clout on the back of his head, which succeeded in jamming the fife halfway down Bob’s esophagus.

“You sure you want to make that move?” asked Silent Fred, who spoke in complete sentences only when he played chess.

“Aye, why not?” asked Long Bill, frowning.

“Well, ‘tis mate,” Fred replied with a shrug.

“What? Where?” “Oh, in about sixteen moves,” said Fred.

“I don’t like you,” Long Bill groused.

“Afmpfrrgh!” said Pifer Bob.

Without looking at him. Long Bill walloped Bob on the back and the fife was dislodged. It flew out of Bob’s mouth and landed about six feet away.

“By the gods!” said Fifer Bob. “What in thunder is that thing?” They turned to gaze in the direction he was looking at just in time to see the time machine bump to a gentle landing in the center of the road. The parachute collapsed and draped over it.

“S’trewth!” said Long Bill.

They ducked down even lower behind the shrubbery and stared at the thing fearfully for a while, but when nothing more happened, they ventured out cautiously. After a while of circling around it, they reached out to touch it hesitantly, not having any idea what to expect. Clearly, this was some sort of magical contrivance. When none of them was blasted into oblivion by contact with it, they cautiously joined efforts and dragged it off the road a short distance into the trees, where they covered it up with leafy branches.

A quick and heated debate then ensued as to what should be done about this discovery. Normally, they would have reported it to Shannon, but she was away on a scouting expedition and there was no telling when she would return. The immediate question, therefore, became how best to profit from this situation. It was quickly decided that the best way to profit from it would be to ensure a three-way split, rather than a split with all the brigands. This ran directly counter to Shannon’s articles (no one knew exactly why she called them “articles,” but it was generally thought she chose this term because it sounded slightly more palatable than “rules”); however, what Shannon and the other brigands didn’t know could hardly hurt them. Or, more to the point, it could hardly hurt Long Bill, Fifer Bob, and Silent Fred.

A cart was obtained and then, after much perspiration and heavy breathing, they managed to lift the time machine up onto the cart, still covered with the parachute, upon which they threw a lot of mud and dirt, so that no one would think anything terribly interesting was underneath it. They then drove the cart to the residence of Blackrune 4, who was the nearest adept and lived alone in the forest about six days travel north.

All the way, they argued about how best to negotiate the deal, because concluding business arrangements with a sorcerer could be somewhat risky. Adepts, after all, could bargain from a position of considerable strength. It was finally decided to send Fifer Bob to the sorcerer’s residence to initiate the dealings, while Silent Fred and Long Bill waited nearby with the cart. This decision was reached by casting lots, which meant that Fifer Bob was cast from the cart lots of times, until he finally got tired of running after it, only to be dumped off again, and agreed to undertake the task.