Lyndon Hardy - Secret Of The Sixth Magic

JEMIDON'S pulse quickened as he stepped from the creaking gangplank onto the firmness of the pier. Finally, he had arrived at Morgana, the isle of sorcery. He must have scanned a hundred scrolls to make ready, but he felt as uncomfortable as if he were totally unprepared. And this time, unprepared he dared not be.

As the other passengers disembarked from the skiff and jostled past, Jemidon drew his scholar's cape tight against the onshore breeze. His hair was raven-black, combed back straight above a square and unlined face. With deep-set green eyes, he scrutinized whatever he saw, seeming to bore beneath the surface to discover the secret of what lay within. He had the broad shoulders of a smith, but pale skin and smooth palms marked him as one who did not toil in the sun. Although the purse at his belt bulged with a respectable thickness, his brown jerkin and leggings were threadbare and plain. Around his neck on a leather thong hung a smooth disk of gold, the features of the old king long since worn away.

At the end of the planking, Jemidon saw a brightly painted gatehouse, guarded by two men-at-arms who collected a copper from each one who passed. On either side, all around the small harbor, rough-beamed buildings crowded the shoreline and extended precariously over the water on makeshift piers. Warehouses and property barns, canvas mills and costume shops, tackle forges and mirror silveries, and all the services for both the sea and the inland mingled in disarray.

In the bay, three ships lay at anchor; from each, a procession of small boats shuttled men and cargo to the shore. The land rose sharply behind the harbor, first to a wide ledge and then into a jumble of heavily vegetated hills and valleys that Jemidon knew hid the lairs of the sorcerers. He dug into his purse for a coin. With a mixture of reluctance and anticipation, he joined the end of the line paying the landing fee.

"Which path to the hut of Farnel the master?" he asked the guards as he dropped his coppper into the pot. "I see there are many trails up into the interior, and he is the one whom I must find."

The guard on the left shook out of his bored lethargy. "All visitors are confined to the shorelands," he said, "lord and bondsman alike. Stay among the houses of the harbor or on the path that runs from the bazaar to the keep. The hills are for the masters and tyros only." He paused and stared at Jemidon. "For your own protection, they are forbidden."

Jemidon frowned back and clutched at the coin around his neck, running his thumb and fingers over the smooth surfaces. Too much was at stake to be impeded by petty restrictions. Too many years already had been wasted.

"Then how does one meet a master?" he asked carefully, trying to remove all emotion from his voice. Somehow it was important that no one else knew the significance of what he sought. If, by some unthinkable chance, he failed once again, failed for the final time, he wanted no mocking smiles and whispered sniggers when he returned to the harbor to sail away. "How do I engage Farnel in conversation? Talk to him long enough so that I might present a proposition that is to our mutual benefit?"

The second guard looked up from his tally sheet and laughed. "To come eye to eye with a sorcerer other than in the presentation hall is not something that most would wish."

Jemidon tightened the grip on his coin.'"Nevertheless, I must," he said.

"Then wait near the entrance to the hall." The guard shrugged. "Wait in the hope that Farnel decides to come out of the hills this year and give a performance. He is less likely than most, but it would be your only chance with safety. Along the shore, all of the masters have sworn to cast their illusions from the stage and nowhere else."

"But it is for the very fact that he has stopped entering the competitions that I have chosen Farnel," Jemidon said. "If he presents alone, then he might have no need for what I can offer as a tyro."

Another skiff banged into the pier, and the guards' faces warped in annoyance. One returned his attention to completing the tally sheet and the other motioned Jemidon on through the gate before the onset of the next arrivals.

Jemidon started to ask more, but then thought better of it. He turned to follow the rest of his landing party through the gatehouse and onto the beach. In a slow-moving queue, he crossed the narrow stretch of sand and climbed the wooden steps placed in the hillside. Several tedious minutes later, he reached the broad ledge, some ten times the height of a man above the level of the sea.

The native rock of the ledge was covered with a bed of crushed white stone that led away in two directions. To the south, the path angled around the bend of the island to where Jemidon knew the keep and presentation hall for the lords stood. To the north, the trail ended abruptly against a cliff of granite that thrust into the still waters of the bay.

On the beach at its foot stood the bondsman bazaar. Two wavy rows of tents stretched across the sand. Some were grandiose and gaudy with panels of bright colors supported by three or four poles, but others were no more than awnings covering rough podiums, counters, and simple frames. The path between the tents was deserted and the cries of the hawkers silent. Nightfall was still six hours away. In the distance, beyond the bazaar, the hazy outline of mainland Arcadia could just barely be seen.

After looking about for a moment to get their bearings, most of the landing party headed south, carrying goods and trinkets. The rest soon disappeared around the curve to the north, chattering excitedly about last year's glamours and what had caught the fancy of the high prince. Jemidon paused for a moment, deciding which way to go, then finally started in the direction of the presentation hall, but more slowly than those who preceded him.

The advice of the guard was not at all what he had wanted to hear. Waiting for Farnel could take the rest of the season, if the man came down from the hills at all. Convincing the sorcerer to accept him as tyro immediately had been what Jemidon had hoped to accomplish.

As tyro to a sorcerer, he would study cantrips and enchantments rather than incantations, formulas, ritual, or flame. And then, when the instruction was complete, he would become at last a master, to fulfill what had to be his destiny, to make amends to his dead sister, and finally to cleanse away his guilt-to end at last the quest that had started almost as far back as he could remember.

Jemidon's thoughts tumbled as the rock crunched beneath his tread with a hypnotic cadence. He had been precocious as a child, solver of riddles, puzzle maker, and lightning-fast at sums. He would have a choice of crafts, his father had boasted, possibly even give the archmage a challenge or two. He was the gleam of hope for the family, the way out from the oppressive toil of the wheat-lands to lives of their own.

But when the time for testing had come, he had failed at thaumaturgy, the most straightforward and least complex of the arts. And the less remembered about his trials the better.

Then, four years later, when a traveling apothecary came through the village, he had a chance to see if alchemy was his match. For thirty-two months he toiled, scrubbing glassware, digging roots, and grinding powders, just for the chance to try a simple formula from a common grimoire.

There was always an element of chance with alchemy, as everyone knew. No activation could be expected to succeed at each and every attempt. But after a dozen failures with a formula that usually worked nine times out of ten, he was booted out in a shower of hard words about wasted materials and improper preparation.