Vicious Magick (21 page)

The ship pulls into the Arcania, the wizard
city, without incident. As the first contingent prepares to unload
crates of books, Zanther, Novanostrum, and Madra step onto the
dock. They can see spires and towers through the drizzling rain.
Dock workers mill about in their long raincoats. A few of them mill
closer to the three of them, surrounding them. Zanther gives
Novanostrum a panicked look, and half a dozen workmen shed their
raincoats, revealing cloaks, and our hapless protagonists find
themselves at the business end of a half-dozen staves.

Novanostrum has his own magic stick drawn,
but he finds it levitated right out of his hands. Their aggressors
part, and an older, taller wizard makes his way toward them.

“Novanostrum…I was under the impression we
banished you quite permanently. And yet, here you stand. You look
surprised to see me. Wait…hold that pose!”

“Rassamander, you
bastard!
”

As he says this, the old man waves his staff,
freezing the three of them, knocking them into suspended animation.
Madra, eyes wide, with both hands over her mouth. Zanther, one hand
on the hilt of his still-sheathed longknife, and Novanostrum
rolling his eyes.

Rassamander snaps his fingers and his
statuesque victims are placed on a wooden platform drawn by a
horse. He walks towards the main boulevard, trailed by the parade
float and his contingent of elite wizards.

Varello sees this from his cabin window. He
climbs the stairs leading to the captain’s quarters and knocks on
the door.

“I assume you saw what happened to them.”

“What can I do? It’s not our place to fight
wizards. We’re
librarians
.”

“I think I can save them, but I need your
help. I need your crew find me every book on this ship about
songspells.”

People in the streets are positively freaking
out, swarming merchants to purchase supplies so they can barricade
themselves in their homes, fleeing to the countryside, fleeing to
the city from the countryside. In the midst of all of this
simultaneous, undirected fleeing, rumors fly of an army of daemons
killraping and murderslaughtering their way across Upper Kleighton,
seemingly headed towards…Arcania.

Somewhere within the scurrying masses, a few
plucked notes make their way into the general noise, nearly
unnoticed. Rassamander leads his procession towards the central
tower complex that governs both the city and the magical academy of
Arcania, the King’s New Omimagic Tower, long since referred to as
‘the Knot’.

It should be noted here that Arcania never
had a king, as it had always been ruled by the Wizard’s Council,
which is led by whichever wizard has the tallest hat. At the
moment, Rassamander is that wizard.

The King’s New
Omnimagic Tower

The Knot is a squat, thick building which
started as a stone box with a tower atop it and swelled out with
annexes and smaller towers and tunnels and connecting skyways until
it became a supercomplex mass of rooms and spaces and corridors
navigable only by its cleaning staff, who were given immortality
because it was easier than training new people to find their way
around.

Today, the Knot covers a square half-mile,
stretching an average of twenty stories into the air and some
unbelievable number of levels underground. There’s a rumor that
some of these lower levels are actually heated by magma pumped up
from below the planet’s crust.

This is, however, probably just a rumor.

Within the crowd, a strange thing is
happening. Instead of running around in anxious circles, some of
the people are skipping in the rain, moving their bodies in time
with the lutist. A woman carries a giant pitcher of water, swinging
it around like it’s her dancing partner. She almost hits Varello.
He leads them through throngs of serious-looking wizards, and when
he draws near the rolling wooden platform, there’s a subtle shift
in tempo, and the melody changes.

It takes a few seconds, but once the melody
has run its course, Varello sees Novanostrum’s eyes unfreeze. With
his eyes, Novanostrum indicates the staff of the wizard marching
nearest the float. Without skipping a beat, Varello kicks this
wizard, grabs his staff, and tosses it to Novanostrum.

The other two are starting to snap out of
their stupors, and Novanostrum is blasting the confused wizards
with fireballs and lightning.

Rassamander conjures a shock wave, knocking
his own wizards off the street and into second-story windows and
awnings, but Novanostrum swings his staff like a bat and deflects
the energy toward a philosophers’ guild, which explodes in a shower
of wooden planks and sophistry.

At the bottom of the crater, two bearded men
sit at a table smoking pipes.

“The worst thing is,” one of them says,
“we’ll never know for sure what caused this explosion.”

“How can you be certain an explosion even
occurred?” his partner asks.

A few seconds later, a stray fireball crashes
down upon them and knocks them to the ground, burning and writhing,
trying to put their beards out.

Rassamander pulls his staff into two
identical staves and crosses them, sending a barrage of meteorites
showering down from the sky. Just before impact, Novanostrum pulls
a tiny knob on his wristwatch, and the celestial projectiles stop.
The rain hangs in midair, confused about the sudden lack of
gravity. The people stop moving. Next to the float, a paused bolt
of lightning looks like a giant tower, a tree of light. Novanostrum
massages his temples.

“Still have your father’s watch, I see,”
Rassamander observes.

“Comes in handy sometimes.”

“And yet, even with that trinket, he was
perpetually late…still is, I hear.”

Novanostrum snaps. He plucks Zanther’s
longknife from his frozen hand and wings it at Rassamander,
piercing him through the chest.

Time resumes. The meteorites melt into dust,
but the rest of the carnage continues unabated.

Zanther spins around, looking for his weapon,
finds it lodged in a wizard, and pulls it free, wiping it clean on
the sputtering old man’s cloak.

Seeing their leader dead, the remaining
wizards drop to their knees in deference as Varello, Madra,
Novanostrum and Zanther walk calmly towards the city gates.

“Hey, uh, Nove,” Zanther says, “what happened
back there? Did I save the day?”