Mages path 3, p.15
Mage's Path 3, page 15
With an effort of will, Jack narrowed his focus and moved his awareness across the land, deliberately aiming for the Shadow Tower. His mind moved across the vast distance at the speed of thought, woods, mountains, streams, and valleys flying past so quickly he could barely see them as his mind flew toward its destination.
He was pleased with his ability to keep his split focus. One part of him was aware of his physical body, walking the brown hills above Sheepfold village in the pale winter sun of the late afternoon. Another part of him—the aethereal part—was flying at the speed of thought across the land, seeking his mentor.
In the very early days, when he had just met Lachlan Woe, Jack had learned how to maintain his focus while doing different magical tasks. Back then, even walking down the road while maintaining Guiding Light had been a challenge.
He smiled. He’d come a long way since then.
Here was the Shadow Tower before him suddenly, and he arrowed down toward it, finding his way rapidly through the corridors to Lachlan’s mind.
“Jack?” Lachlan said, sitting up at his table from a scroll he’d been working on.
In his mind’s eye, Jack saw his mentor’s red and black striped face, his yellow warlock’s eyes, the strange little yellow nubs of bone that poked like short horns from his forehead.
“Yes,” Jack said.
Lachlan did something—he reached out in a way Jack couldn’t fully perceive. His warlock magic steadied the connection between them, much as Melinda did when she and Jack had joined their forces to examine the Silas-werewolf creature’s mind.
Jack felt a connection between his and his teacher snap into place, pulled tight as if they were each holding one end of a rope.
The visual impression of Lachlan faded, as did Jack’s awareness of his own aether body. He blinked, coming back to full awareness of his physical body walking back toward the village.
“What happened?” he said inside his mind.
Lachlan’s voice replied inside his head, as loud and as clear as Melinda’s had been when they had communicated back in the mine. “You don’t need to keep a part of your awareness physically with me for us to do this, Jack,” his mentor said. “Now that the connection has been established, we can maintain it without you having to actually send part of yourself to me.”
“You’ve done this kind of thing before then?”
“It’s a warlock thing,” Lachlan said, and Jack heard the smile in his voice. “I didn’t think you could do it. How are you? Is everything going well? How have you learned this trick of communicating over distances? I don’t sense Melinda here helping you…”
“She’s not,” Jack said. “Not this time. But I’ll tell you the whole story from the beginning.”
Jack found that he was able to bring Lachlan up to speed much more quickly than he would have if they had actually been sitting together. The thoughts flowed easily and quicky between them, and in less than half an hour Jack had covered all the main events and answered all of Lachlan’s questions.
“What do you think about the blue sand?” he asked. “Have you ever heard of it before?”
“Not by that name,” Lachlan said. “It reminds me of enchanter’s gold. Remember the stuff we got from the quarry back near Oakwood?”
Jack did remember. Enchanter’s gold was like normal gold except it took enchantment better than any other substance that they knew of. Iron or steel, or even regular gold could be enchanted with an attribute, as could cloth, stone, or any other material you cared to name. However, it was not easy to do, and if the enchantment was at all complicated the material would break down under the strain.
Enchanter’s gold was different. It could hold incredibly complex magical spells within its substance, which made it highly valuable.
The robes Jack was wearing right now had decorations made from enchanter’s gold. It had a powerful armor spell, so complex and powerful that he could, with just a pressure of his willpower, cause a suit of red-hot stone armor to snap into place around him in an instant. He had worked with Ivan to make it when he’d first been given the workshop.
A normal piece of gold would never have been able to hold such complex enchantments, but enchanter’s gold was perfectly suited to the task.
“I do remember that,” Jack said to Lachlan. “And I see why you say the blue sand reminds you of it—they’re both powerful elements that occur naturally in the earth, they both hold impressive magical qualities.”
“Indeed,” Lachlan said. “In the old days, in Nightvale before the war, we used to have a range of things like that. There was enchanter’s gold, of course, and there was also a substance we called sorcerer’s silver, that could be used to contain curses. Then there were the various crystals and trace metals that could be used to contain magical energy of different forms. But this blue sand—a substance that gives a power boost to a mage—I’ve never heard of anything like that before. The implications are…”
Lachlan trailed off thoughtfully.
“What about the story that it was used to create blue glass?” Jack asked. “It seems unlikely, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does seem unlikely. No, there’s certainly more to that story than meets the eye,” Lachlan said. “When you get back to the village, find out more if you can. Have a look in the abandoned houses, ask around for old folks who may remember the industry when it was in its prime, that kind of thing.”
“Very well,” Jack said, and then asked what else had been going on at the Shadow Tower.
“Well,” Lachlan said, “you know that Spark has evolved and left us, of course. Max is pining, but she’s busy with her hatchlings and is not too worried about…”
“She?” Jack broke in. “Her hatchlings? What are you talking about?”
Lachlan laughed. “You won’t have known, of course. We just found out ourselves. It turns out Max is not a he at all. Max is a female, and apparently she and Spark have been… well, they’ve been getting along rather well, if you know what I mean, and the result is that she now has a clutch of fairly monstrous eggs that she’s caring for fastidiously, as you’d expect. A few of them have hatched already, but there are many more to come. Ivan is obsessed with them. It is a most fascinating event. Such a union is, well, unusual to say the least. Two magical beings of different types, mating to create offspring… unheard of, really.”
“Fantastic!” Jack said. “I’d never have guessed it!”
“You and everyone else,” Lachlan chuckled. “The offspring are growing slowly, though, so there will be plenty of time for you to get to know them once you get back.”
“Right,” Jack said. “This will take a little getting used to. But Max doesn’t mind that Spark has left?”
“To be honest,” Lachlan said. “I think it’s for the best. Since she laid her eggs she’s had little time for him. She snapped at him if he got too close, and he spent his time moping around the garden and the kitchen.”
Jack was more amused than he’d been in a long time. “How about the tower?” he asked after a pause.
Lachlan spoke reluctantly. “The tower is… quiet,” he said. “Sheobeth went down to the core chamber before you left, as you know, and since then both of them have been quiet. I’ve not seen Sheobeth, and I’ve not heard from Maia at all.”
Jack nodded thoughtfully. Sheobeth, an aether god of the old world, had returned to the Noonlands when she heard of the coming of Jack the Aetherborn. She had come to help them, and had warned them that the agents of Nightvale had taken Jack’s home village prisoner.
After the rescue, however, she had disappeared into the tower’s core chamber.
Maia, the almost-human spirit that inhabited the crystal core deep under the Shadow Tower, was another enigma. She was in some ways like a dungeon. She was a spirit occupying a crystal, with the ability to summon monsters. Like a dungeon, her spirit occupied the whole tower and was aware of everything that went on within its walls.
But unlike a dungeon, she had a name, and her character was much more human than that of any dungeon Jack had ever encountered. The dungeons were alien creatures in many ways—bloodthirsty, dramatic, and without any instinctive sensibilities or moral compass. They learned to behave in appropriate ways so that they could survive in the world and continue to attract adventurers, but they did not do so by nature.
Maia, by contrast, was a moral being. She did not fully understand what she was herself, and so neither did Jack or Lachlan.
“Perhaps Sheobeth will be able to help Maia discover more about herself?” Jack suggested. “She’s something of a mystery to herself as well as to everyone else. It would do her good to delve into her true nature.”
“I agree,” Lachlan said. “And it’s out of our hands now. All has gone very quiet in the tower, though the various magical influences that work throughout the building remain in place. I confess I’m a little worried that if Maia is somehow detached from the tower and given human form—which I suspect may be the outcome of this—that the tower will cease to be a functioning base for us. But that’s unfair of me to begrudge Maia her freedom for that reason. If Sheobeth can release her from the tower crystal, that’s good for both of them.”
Many ideas that Jack had only half formed before now slipped into place. “You think Maia is a human spirit trapped in the tower crystal?” Jack said, amazed.
“Well, yes,” Lachlan said, sounding surprised. “I thought you knew that.”
“I’d never thought of it that way,” he admitted.
“There’s no question about it,” Lachlan said. “I don’t know much about the origins of the tower—it was fully formed when I found it—but it’s not unheard of for a human spirit to get trapped in a dungeon crystal. I suspect something of the kind happened in this instance, but there’s more to it than I know. The transfer of a soul from a body to a crystal at the point of death is a deeply traumatizing experience—I can imagine that even Maia does not fully understand what happened.”
“And you’re content to let that happen? To let Sheobeth free Maia and potentially remove the magic from the tower?”
He felt Lachlan’s shrug. “It’s in motion,” he said. “I have little choice. But yes, I’m content to let it happen. If Maia was trapped in the crystal against her will, who am I to stop her from being freed?”
“Noble of you to do the right thing.”
Lachlan chuckled. “What choice do I have? Anyway, I feel that there are things in motion here that are bigger than me or what I know about the situation. I’ll let events take their course. I’ll be interested to see what happens.”
Jack came to the edge of the dip where the village of Sheepfold lay as Lachlan spoke. He placed his hands on his hips and looked down on the sleepy village for a moment. Then he sat down on the grass, with his cloak folded under him.
The sun was dropping toward the horizon.
“And what about your work?” Jack asked. “Have you been doing anything of interest?”
“My work is always of interest,” Lachlan said sharply. “But I assume you mean any work of interest to you and to our shared quest?” He sighed. “I’ve been searching high and low for a way through to Nightvale. I’ve found nothing. That’s good for us in a way, because it means that King Bain cannot send anyone through to attack us. But we’re going to need some way through if we’re going to rescue Elena and if Hannah’s going to find her way back. That’s got to be our goal in the end.”
“I agree,” Jack said. “I suppose we have to assume that Roland Redhands just created his own portal through to the Noonlands and that’s all there is to it.”
“But it doesn’t make sense,” Lachlan said. “The Grand portals that lead between the worlds don’t work like that. You can’t just open one. It takes immense amounts of power to even try, and to make a Grand portal a deep, profound understanding of dungeons is required. No one in Nightvale has that anymore, for there are no dungeons!”
A deep, profound understanding of dungeons, Jack thought. Something cold crept through his belly, a shard of ice slipped through his veins. Could there be someone out there besides himself who could have a deep, profound understanding of dungeons and their workings? Deep and profound enough that they could have created a Grand portal?
“There must be someone like that, though,” he said. “If there’s no other way to open a Grand portal then that has to be the case. They must have found some way of doing it.”
“Only the Aetherborn could have such a knowledge,” Lachlan protested.
“But the fact remains that they did manage to open one for Redhands to travel through. I saw him go through it, I saw it collapse afterward. Could there be…” he swallowed, then pushed himself to say it. “Could there be another Aetherborn?”
Lachlan was silent for so long that for a moment Jack thought the connection between them had been broken.
“Another Aetherborn?” he finally said, softly. “I had not considered the possibility. Perhaps… there is no rule against it, I don’t think. I just assumed…”
“A second Aetherborn,” Jack said, feeling a rush of excitement all of a sudden. “One in the service of the King of Nightvale. One who could reawaken the dungeons in Nightvale, as I am doing here in the Noonlands. Admit it, it makes sense!”
“You’re right… It would explain a lot. I must speak to Hannah Dwimmer about it. Perhaps in the light of this possibility, some of her more recent knowledge of Nightvale can be reinterpreted.”
“Lachlan, I’d better go,” Jack said. “It’s getting dark here. Can I reach out to you again like this?”
“Yes,” Lachlan said. “Melinda should be able to help you if you can’t establish the connection on your own. Be wary of using the blue sand, Jack. It may have some unexpected consequences. Find out what you can about it, and get back in touch with me soon.”
“It’s good to hear you’re well, Lachlan,” Jack said, standing up and stretching his arms out above his head.
“And you, lad,” Lachlan said. “Take care of yourself.”
He broke the connection.
Jack felt as if his ears had popped. Thinking about all Lachlan had told him, he made his way back down the hill toward the village in the gathering gloom of evening.
Chapter 11
“How’s Silas?” Jack asked Melinda. She had met him in the main square of the village.
The scene was different from when they had arrived. Then, they had just been two travelers, and of little interest to most of the villagers except possibly as potential customers. Now, Jack could tell that the village had heard the news. Silas the bard had been found and returned to them, and the monster that had been threatening their sheep had been neutralized.
In the village square, several of the villagers had gathered to see Jack as he came back in from the hills. In the gloom of early evening, some torches were lit. The faces of the villagers were friendly and interested, though a few of them did look rather scared.
“Silas is fine,” Melinda said in answer to his question. “He’s in the room at the inn where we slept last night, and the innkeeper Esmerelda is looking after him. He’s exhausted, but no worse than that. He’ll sleep for a while, but I’m sure that when he wakes he’ll be himself again.”
Jack suspected Melinda of having intervened in Silas’s sleep a little. That was the kind of thing she would be able to do easily with her warlock magic.
He was glad of it. He wanted a chance to talk over everything that had happened with Carson the blacksmith, who came shouldering through the crowd at this very moment, his arms spread wide and his face beaming with pleasure.
“Jack!” he cried. “Melinda here tells me there’s no need to fear the monster of the blue sand cave anymore?”
“That’s right,” Jack said, shooting a glance at Melinda. “As far as I can tell, the monster who was eating your sheep has been well and truly dealt with.”
“Good, good!” Carson boomed. “I can’t thank you enough, and that goes for all of us here in the village.” There was a general murmur of agreement from the crowd. “Our sheep are our livelihood, and the threat to them was a threat to our very existence. We’re a humble people, but we like living here and it would have been a sore blow to have been driven out of our village by something monstrous attacking our sheep!”
“I’m very glad to have been able to help!” Jack smiled in reply. “But I understand that poor Silas, who was captured by the monster, has been put up in our room at the inn?” Jack thought that the idea of Silas being ‘captured’ would be easier for the villagers to understand. He didn’t want to get into explanations about a magical binding that even he did not fully understand yet.
“Ah, yes,” Carson laughed. “Silas is in the room above the inn, being cared for by Esmerelda the innkeeper. She will nurse him back to health. But have no fear. My wife and I have a large room in our house that you can stay in for the moment, and if that’s not to your liking we can come to some other, more permanent arrangement.”
“A permanent arrangement?” Jack said.
“Oh, yes,” Carson said. “You will be staying a while, won’t you? Right, right, you’re not from these parts. We northerners get a taste for these things, and there’s no doubt about that.” The big man glanced knowingly at the sky. “The snows are coming, and when they do, there’ll be no traveling on the roads. Yes, you and Melinda will be well advised to set up here until the deep freeze passes. We’ll be glad to welcome you.”
Carson the smith was not wrong. That very night the snow began to fall, lightly at first, then heavily and steadily, until the whole village was muffled under a soft white blanket. The cold was profound, and by the next morning the drifts would have buried a horse up to its neck. Even if they had been able to get horses, Melinda and Jack would have struggled to make any progress on the roads.
