Chapter 1
Zeke had just opened and was wiping down the counter when the doorbell clang and he looked up, then down into the face of a dried apple doll, with wild Janis Joplin hair that flowed around her head like an aura. She wore a lavishly embroidered peasant blouse and multicolored long skirt. She couldn’t be an inch over four feet tall, Zeke estimated. She peered at him intently through dark round glasses, which only added to the Janis image.
“What can I get you?”
“I’ve come to see the wizard.”
“I have pastry and I get great bagels from Moravski’s deli. There’s coffee and tea of course, but sorry, no magic.”
“We shall see,” she nodded and sat down on one of the big overstuffed chairs near a table. Zeke quickly produced for her tea and a bagel. The old woman studied it for a moment, took a bite, and her face lit up. “Well, this is a delight.”
“Like I said, Moravski’s has the best.”
“Yes, this bagel is marvelous, and the tea is also good.” She continued eating as she talked. “I must see the wizard, don’t deny it, I haven’t the time. All the signs show he is here.”
“It’s just a coffee house, no wizards, no magicians. No magic of any kind, in fact. Though, I have poetry readings that can be magical under the right conditions. I also have book discussions Thursday nights. We’re no ‘City Lights’, but we…”
She politely tuned out his sales pitch as she considered the signs. “The signs cannot be wrong,” she thought. Everything pointed to a wizard being here.
Zeke moved and the sun shone behind him. Bruhana stared while his aura flickered and shimmered. It was white! He moved again and the aura blazed so brightly, she put her shades back on. “It is you.” She announced.
“I’ve been me for as long as I can remember, though there are times I don’t remember and I might have been someone else,” he said with a grin. “I am pretty certain I have never been a magician or wizard.”
She nodded. “And yet, here you are. I have searched for you for a long time.”
“I’ve been here the whole time.” Zeke grinned.
“I had all but given up. When the sun hit your aura, I was stunned.”
“I’ve got a groovy aura?”
“You have an extraordinary aura.”
“How can my aura help you?”
“I have no tyro,” she said, as if that explained anything. Zeke stared at her, hoping for enlightenment. “A great evil has come upon my world and a wizard alone can scarcely hope to face what is coming.”
“I’m familiar.”
“The wizard Xanthipi is ensnaring and controlling a great evil that threatens my world. We have lost many wizards so all the tyros have been matriculated and we need more tyros to train and teach. I needed a special tyro. The signs lead me to your world, though I like it not at all.”
“Evil wizards are a real drag. You see what Nixon's doing, He's a real evil fu... sorry,” Zeke said in sympathy.
“I do not know this Nixon, though evil has many forms. I have been gone from Woolton Wood for too long and worry about the state of affairs. Now that I have found you, we must leave.”
“Leave?” Zeke looked at the old lady as she began to shimmer like a mirage on a desert road. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and a cold finger ran down his spine. She reached out her hands. “Quickly take my hands, it will be…easier for you.” Zeke grasped her hands, papery soft with a scent of lilac. She whispered in a language Zeke had never heard before and for a minute San Francisco faded, as if fog had suddenly rolled in thick and heavy. Zeke blinked and then the street was gone. He looked behind, and could see his coffee house as if at a great distance. A wind blew up, cold and harsh off the ocean and Zeke shivered. It grew very dark, the sky rumbled and the wind whipped wildly. Rain pelted down on them, in sharp icy drops. Suddenly he felt pulled and twisted in every direction at once, as if he was caught in the vortex of a tornado. He had the sense he was moving forward very quickly, seemingly propelled by the winds. The rumbling was deafening and his eyes blurred with tears caused. His stomach dropped as if he’d fallen from a high tower. Then…nothing.
He barely had time to discard his bloody sleeping garment and clean the blood from his hands and feet before he heard his pursuers’ bare feet slapping the stone floor as they neared the kitchen. He left the pump running and dove for the pantry where he hid, naked and shivering among the bags of potatoes and onions. He hoped there was enough chaos and water on the floor to obscure any footprints leading to his hiding place. There was shouting as the men stumbled into the kitchen. “Get a light on.”
“Look!” Tris knew that voice. Garlord. A more mean spirited boy he never knew. “There are bloody footprints all over the floor.”
“Here’s his sleeping tunic,” said another who lifted the wet, bloody mass from the water trough. Then dropped it with a squelch.
“The garden door is ajar,” said another voice
“There’s no way out of the garden,” said another who sounded remarkably like his long-time friend Alger!
“Maybe Tris don’t know there’s no way out,” Garlord grumbled.
“He’s lived here his whole life,” said Al.
“Don’t mean he knows everything,” replied Garlord. Tris could feel the sneer in his voice.
“Well, you’ve certainly made a mess of this scene!” cried the captain as he arrived. Tris heard the click of his boot heels on the stone floor as he marched across the wet floor. “There is water everywhere, and footprints going every which way. Any ideas on which way he might have gone?” he asked archly.
The room was suddenly very quiet, the only sounds dripping water and the breathing of the men just a few feet away. Tris sincerely hoped they couldn’t hear him breathing.
“The garden door was ajar when we came in,” said Garlord. “We were just…”
“What are you lot waiting for? Into the garden, all of you. I want that murderer found!”
Tris heard them march out into the garden calling loudly to each other, and calling his name as the gardener, who had a small cell behind the kitchen, rushed out in his nightclothes. “Stop! Stop!” He waved his hands and watched as the Guardians stumbled over little heaps and seedlings. “You’re trampling the new plantings.”
Tris listened to the fracas in the garden while he filled a bag with stuff from the pantry. Potatoes, carrots, some turnips. He grabbed a variety of nuts and several apples. He tied the bag closed and slid back behind the sacks of potatoes to wait for the Guardians to return.
They were in the garden about an hour when they finally marched back into the kitchen followed by the gardener, berating them wickedly for destroying his planting beds. The captain shouting at his guards for their failure to find the boy. “You, Garlord, that way. You two follow him.” He shouted more orders to the others and Tristam could hear the footsteps fade down the hall. Then it was quiet, except for the sound of dripping water. Cautiously Tris climbed from the pantry, stiff and smelling of earth. He grabbed a small loaf of bread, a skin of water and two knives, threw them into his pack and hefted it over his shoulder. He stuck his head out the door and looked around for the gardener. Tris spotted him out in the garden trying to save his plants muttering curses. Tris stepped into the gardener’s quarters and quickly donned some of gardener’s clothes, then slipped into the dark garden to wait for the old man to leave.
Kahi exalted in a sense of freedom she’d never known before. As the wind blew through her hair the tension she had been feeling melted away. Gone were restrictions placed upon all wizards by the Council. A 7th Level wizard, she was entrusted with the care of Kuthmudun and its many inhabitants. Noisy, obstreperous, dirty and greedy, she would not miss them or their foul cities. She would deal no more with pesky citizens and their endless demands. She could spend all her time studying magic and perfecting her skills. She would be an 8th Level wizard.
She squirmed uncomfortably in the talons of her “ride” trying to get a better view of the receding castle. Her always-simmering anger flashed briefly when she thought about her manner of deliverance to Khazban, but the view was too breathtaking to dwell on it. She thought she’d never seen anything so beautiful. Seeing the stars from the air was to be surrounded by stars. She was awed by the size of the people and buildings. Rivers, ponds and lakes were black mirrors reflecting nothing but stars.
Farther and farther she was carried. Large shadows and small rose and disappeared as she travelled into lands she did not recognize. The sun was rising and there on the horizon she could see the Dark City of Khazban, with its tall spires and smoking stacks. Between her and her destination lay a wide expanse of sand with huge dunes and dotted with small ponds reflecting orange and pink of the sunrise. She’d never seen anything quite so awe inspiring.
The wing beats of her conveyance began to slow and they dropped lower in the sky. She looked up at the gargantua, which flapped its wings slowly and weakly. Their descent was increasing rapidly and she barely had a chance to invoke a spell of personal safety before they began to plummet to the ground. The spell wasn’t working and she continued on her path to destruction unabated. She gripped the edges of her cloak tightly in her fists, dropping her stick in the process. She spread her feet wide, and used the resistance to slow and control her descent, which ended abruptly when she came to rest face first in a sand dune.
There was a way out of the garden, if you were small enough. And Tristam was. At least he used to be. It had been some time since he had been there. At the back corner beyond the apple orchard, behind the mulberry tree, beneath the thorn berry bush, was a small hole in the stone fence. A small boy, Tris used to hide here from some of the boys, like Garlord who sneered at him and told him his father was a traitor. “That’s why he never came back from the Expedition. He was in charge of that mission. It’s his fault my father never returned.”
Garlord was from a wealthy family and Tristam’s was not. Garlord was big with an inferiority complex and Tristam was small. For many years the garden was his refuge. He could hide in the garden for hours, and sometimes he worked at the loose mortar from between the stones in the wall, imagining running away from the Fortress and go home. He was just a child then and had learned the importance of his job as Guardian since then. His duty now was to tell the truth of Kahi’s disappearance. He had to get to the Council enclave in the Mistyk Marshes.
After some struggling and numerous piercings from thorns, he was lying under the bush. Then behind it. He dragged his bag behind him. It was well shaded here and if he moved very little, no one should notice him. Unless the Captain orders another search of the garden, and very few people came to this old corner, so he felt safe. With the leaf litter as a bed, a thorn in his arm and his little bag of belongings as his pillow, he slept through the day.
It was near sundown when Tristam woke with a start. He ate an apple and waited for full dark before climbing from his hiding place. As he chewed, he pondered his next move. He grew up on the island, and knew it well, both North Port and East Port and the land in between. East Port was very near the Fortress and would certainly be watched. As would the roads. He knew it would take the Guardians a day at least to organize a party to follow him on zorseback and they would begin the search in East Port. They should be on their way by now, he figured.
Tris squirmed from his hidey-hole and slowly stood up. He was still barefoot, covered in scratches, and armed with nothing but the two knives from the fortress kitchen. Neither could be considered large, but he hoped big enough. The food taken from the kitchen dangled in a burlap sack from his shoulder. He struggled through the scrubby brush just outside the fortress walls and made his way at last to an open field. He stood and looked at the pathless face of Mount Mogol, the highest point on the island.
He moved methodically all night, tripping over stones, scraping knees and elbows when he fell, he worried about leaving a trail of bloody footprints. When the sun rose, he found a small rock outcropping and crawled into its shade, ate some of the coarse bread and a carrot, and lay down. He was tired to the bones, lonely, scared, and had no clear idea what to do, except escape. Escape to where, though? He thought he should make his way to the Council to present his story, and clear his name.
He tried not to relive the horror of the last two days, but when he closed his eyes he could see the blood and hear his mistress scream. He could even smell the fetid breath of the beast that killed her and flew off with her body. He opened his eyes again. Perhaps the worst of it was the way the others, men he had lived and trained with for since childhood, accused him so easily of the murder of Kahi—his own mistress! How they could accuse him? His friends? He did not want to think about it, but his mind had a will of its own and the scene replayed in all-too-frequent intervals. He crushed his fists into his eyes and willed himself to relax, as he had been taught. It was no use.
He could hear her screams as they echoed in her chambers and brought him straight out of bed. He grabbed his sword and ran to her rooms. He swung open the door, and there before him was a gargantua, which screeched in his face, then backhanded him across the room. The floor where he lay was pooled with blood and he jumped to his feet hearing new screams—they came from him now.
Tristam stood and looked at the second monster standing between him and his mistress. He took a deep breath of the foul, fetid air around him and steeled himself to attack, with nothing but a single short sword. He ran between the gargantua’s trunk-like legs and dropped to his knees beside Kahi, unconscious, and apparently dying. He began to lift her, but slipped in a warm sticky puddle. He regained his feet and got his hands under her arms, and began to drag her from the room. She moved her lips and Tristam leaned in to hear her. “Let it have me,” she said. Confused he shook his head and tried to pull his mistress away from danger. It was his only thought when the monster grabbed him and threw him across the room where he hit his head against the stone wall with a sticky crunch. Just before his eyes closed he saw the thing lift Kahi and fly out the window on great leathery wings.
Next he knew he was being shaken by the other tyros, who found him bloodied and his sword lying in the middle of the puddle of blood on the floor. He saw the accusation in their eyes and struggled from their grip, he raced from the room.
…
