I woke to the smell of frying bacon in a wood. My campsite had been a lonely and sad place after leaving Christmasville, but over the last week, I had used my magic to make it homey. A twigling servant I conjured built me a hut, and my prayers brought ravens with meat ready to be cooked hanging out of their mouths. I could have banged a rock, and drawn forth water, but a creek was a tenth of a mile away, and it seemed rather pointless. Any bacteria in the water would have to be extremely adept and tough to survive the modifications I had made somewhere, I forget in what universe, to my stomach and gastrointestinal tract.
Maybe, I should have done something more than just camp out in the woods, but frankly, I felt the need to relax. The thing was, I had no bacon. Eggs, yes, tubers ground up and fried in a pan, check. Oil from a pod that grew wild on a stalk, also check, but no bacon.
I opened my eyes, and palmed my dagger.
A man in robes of gray, red, green, and silver fringe sat on a rock across the fire pit. His staff with intricate engraving that I recognized as magic, he used to poke up my fire a bit more.
I liked him, and palmed my dagger. Something bothered me, but I shrugged it off.
“Enjoy. Be at peace with me.” He gestured to the bacon, and a nagging something shouted at me, but looking into his sweet, guileless eyes, I pushed it back in my greed for bacon.
After I ate three strips, he stood up and his manner changed. Brisk, businesslike, brusque even described him now.
He stood and holding his rod, he began to walk around me. Every three steps, he brought the rod down on the earth with a thump. I was relieved to see him walking sunwise, so I had not met a practitioner of the Dark Arts, but still I had not volunteered to have a spell cast on me.
“Why don’t you stop?” I asked rather weakly.
He just smiled at me. And he completed the first circle.
“Listen, you don’t stop, I’ll have to stop you.” I said and chose one of my minor spells to catch his attention. A ball of flame rolled off the tips of my fingers, and back into the palm of my hand. It was a simple spell learned in the Schools of the Arts Magica by second-year students. Thing is, I could remember that evaluation, but not the school itself. My amnesia slowly improved, but still sometimes I felt so claustrophobic inside my head like I could not breathe when I ran into these blank spots.
“We are bound by peace, and you do not know I mean to harm you.” He paused to chuckle in his chant, and suddenly like a flash, I felt a snap in my brain, and I saw how I had been asleep at the wheel. Eating the bacon had been a spell which I had agreed to. No doubt while I slept he had bespelled me to make me vulnerable to his wiles.
I tried to throw the ball of flame, but my arm jerked aside at the last moment. The fire hit a pine tree, and it roared into flame.
“Careful now.” He said finishing the second circle.
Desperately, I fled into my own brain, and sought to break the spells enchaining me. I found a “I am your friend” spell which I broke easily, and then I had to shift to try to break the chains he was laying on me. Massive things with dozens of multi-coloured coils wrapped about me in my inner mage sight. I struggled, and I did have spells to fight whatever this was, but I was weakened by his spells, and he was just better than I was at magic.
I came out in time to hear him pronounce.
“Now, Tadeusz, I bind you to the completion of the quest for Sword of Night. Once you have the sword, you will bring it back to me, quickly. You will commence on this quest immediately. So mote it be.” His voice kept getting louder, and louder until the trees shook and shivered. Birds miles away shrieked in protest, and took to the sky. I stood there, and fought back with a killing intensity.
I would rather die than submit to this treacherous archmage, and I fully intended to burn out, and verse out, and leave him with a significant magic backlash as the target of his spell disappeared, and the magic energy had to ground itself.
Thing is, as stubborn as I was, ruthless, cold, and all the rest, it was never a fair fight. He had the weight of a mountain in the form of his geas spell, and the skill of a consumate professional in wielding it, and a mind of arrogant fire to back it up.
I collapsed to the ground weeping in frustration.
A minute later, not feeling like it, I forced myself into a berserk state, and suddenly pain and weakness were gone in the cleansing tide of murderous fury.
I bounced to my feet, and palmed my dagger, and came charging at him with dagger and titanium nails outstretched with a wild Rebel yell crashing through the clearing. He looked up, still gasping for breath, and stared nearly too long in amazed horror.
Then he blinked his eyes, and ‘pop’, he appeared on the far side of the clearing.
“You can’t, the geas holds you to deliver…” He said holding out an arm in a ‘stop’ gesture. I think it was a compulsion spell, if so, I hardly felt it in the depths of my anger.
“I’ll deliver it, all right. I’ll plunge it through your grave.” I snarled sprinting across the clearing.
He spoke a quick word, and I instinctively waved my left arm in a tossing away fashion. It had to be instinctive because doing magic in a berserker rage is not something often done. His second spell failed, and I learned something.
The archmage was better than me at magic, but at magic and combat mixed together in the lethal cocktail, named ‘war wizardry’, I was his superior.
‘Pop.’ And he disappeared.
“I’ll talk to you a bit more when you are more reasonable.” I heard the wind say across the tops of the trees. I’d been ripping those selfsame trees with my titanium claws not caring that I might well break them in this low-tech environment because they were high-tech cyberpunk claws, and high-tech is prone to break in low-tech worlds.
Ten minutes later, I fell down, totally exhausted. Gashes on my arms, and several shredded trees testified to the strength of my berserker state. Now, I would be weak as a kitten for a couple days, at least.
He reappeared, about twenty yards away. I turned my face from him.
“Now. Listen here, Tadeusz, there’s no need to take that attitude.” He began briskly, expecting me to agree. I turned and smiled which should have warned him. It didn’t.
The glob of spit caught him on the nose.
Words streamed out of his mouth, and I screamed high and piercing enough to break glass.
“Just go ahead and kill me.” I said. I figured mistakenly that world transitioning would free me. He corrected that notion.
“I could. I could, Tadeusz, but the geas will still hold you. Across the worlds and the centuries, it will hold you, compel you. So how about you get over your sulk, and get down to business, hmmh?” He gave me a superior smile that I so badly wanted to bash in, but I lacked the strength to sit up.
“You slaver, I ought to rip out your throat.”
“Slaver?” He seemed genuinely wounded by my insult. “I’m no slaver, you’re an adventurer, and I need the Sword of Night.”
I understood him. Because I was an ‘adventurer’ and he was a ‘wizard’, it was ‘ok’ for him to geas me without permission.
“No.” I said, and scarcely had the word fallen from my mouth to the clearing floor then pain like I had rarely experienced flooded over me with the kind of soul-twisting force that warped a mind. Time passed, I could not say how long. Shuddering, I came back to the outside world.
“Now that we have that silly bit of rebellion finished, lets get to it, shall we?” He said brightly, and tossed me a map in a scroll.
Inside my heart, I fought a battle with my hate. I wanted to cry out to the Darkness for power to destroy this vile wizard. Part of me was perfectly willing to be Sauron to this world if it meant, I could have the archmage’s head on a stick in my throne room.
I begged Heaven for mercy from the doom I sought, and opened my eyes to see a full canvas bag, a sword, a pair of boots, and a cloak laying next to the map.
“Quit sleeping, we have important things to do.” He said irritably. I looked at him with a kind of awe.
“You are such a moron.” I told him with incredulity. He stared back frowning in non-comprehension, and then shrugged it off.
“Look, I’ve given you a lot of valuable magic items so how about we call it a truce, and hey maybe we can be friends later.”
I just laughed hollowly, and then bust out laughing. He asked me what was so funny, and that set me off again.
The sword was magic, of course, it gave a little skill and it glowed with a blue fire that burned. I liked my gladius better.
The cloak kept you warm or cool as the needed. Grudgingly, I put it on.
The bag held gold doubloons, five hundred worth, in a bag that made them light, and shrinked them in size until they were removed from the bag.
The boots were seven-league boots, and I put them on.
The map would tell me where I needed to go, he explained from across the clearing as he finished the spell that gave me enough strength to stand up. He threatened to ‘put me to the pain of the geas’ if I did not let him strengthen me.
‘pop.’ He was gone. Since we were such good friends, I set out on the archmage’s quest. Burning rage alternated with amusement at using the boots, and attacks of the shakes because I was still not really healed from my berserk rage despite his spell. I could feel the geas in the back of my mind evaluating my actions to see if it needed to prod me.
Walking toward the setting sun for several hours brought me past the foothills of a great mountain range which I had been camping in, and into a vibrant green forrest that was mature. Tall, enormous trees, and clear undergrowth consisting of flowers and mosses and ferns delighted the eye.
Then I heard a cold voice in Elvish say.
“Not a step, human invader.” An Elven male flanked by four others of differing species, much shorter, and armed with bows stepped out from behind a tree. He wore boots similar to mine.
“I demand to know…” The spell of compulsion irked me, and I brushed it off. His haughty face showed surprise.
“A human wizard, unattended by guards, and infiltrating the Ancient Greenwood?”
“I’m on a quest. Geased. I mean no offense.”
He raised an eyebrow elegantly, and then looked at me with his mage sight.
“I see, a most powerful working, and you fought back to near death. I feel pity for you human. Know that your quest is worthy. The Shadowfang is needed to destroy the Abyssal Gate.”
“You are in league with this wizard?” I grated out, my hand finding my gladius even though I tried to stop myself. The gremlin, and the ‘hairball in humanoid shape’, the halfbreed pixie, and the ‘thing that looked like a walking sapling’ all tightened their bows.
“Leave off, children races. The human’s anger is justified if mistaken. No, there are only five wizards in the wide world who could cast that spell against such a will, and it is well known that Archmage Valastin seeks the Shadowfang, or the Sword of Night as he calls it.”
“He’s going to get it. I’m going to ram it into his heart.”
“Perhaps. The Archmage is most accomplished, and he now has your measure. He will be prepared. But I could not object. If he were to pass, then it might be easier for us to reabsorb the rebel kingdoms of the Humans. They cast off our rule a little while ago. They supposed in their youthful arrogance that they knew better how to rule themselves than those who were old when their grandsires were young.”
He shook his head sadly, and then looked at the ‘child races’ with him. It turned out that the Elves were the overlords of the Greenwood, and all the other races who swore allegiance to the Light at the Beginning in the forrest were ruled by them. They had a benevolent paternalistic democracy with only Elves having the franchise. A few heroes, and great wizards among the ‘child races’ also had the vote.
They brought me before their council, as I was supposed to ask them for passage across the Gulf of Pirates toward the setting sun. In the cloud-topped island of the pale elves I would find information I needed.
There was some argument about gettng involved in a ‘human caused matter.’ A faction seemed to think that a rogue human wizard opening a gate might inspire the humans to seek their ‘natural place in the universe’ which is to say under the overlordship of the treehugging elves. I did not see that happening.
My geas wanted me to do something as I sat in the treehouse over the natural amphitheatre.
The wizard appeared to warn me to get right of passage or else.
I tossed the magic sword over the edge of the tree house, and it plunked tip first quivering into the sod in front of the Speaker’s Rock (donated by the Dwarven kingdom of UnderSeaUnderStone, I’d been told.)
“Its a gift. Will that help?” I called out. It seemed to do so. Giving away a magic weapon seemed almost unheard of, and it was quite valuable. The arguement of it costing too much money to send me by boat was suddenly rendered moot.
The wizard was livid that I gave away the sword, he’d given me. I enjoyed that very much.
The next morning, we set out away from the sun for the Gulf of Pirates and a gnomish sail-powered hydrofoil. My bags were full with travel bread which tasted quite good, and the Elves highest wizard who was nearly about to ascend to Patron, and watch over his people as some sort of sentient star, gave me some good advice on the breaking of geases. One thing he showed me was that geases tended to trick the mind into trying the same method to escape them over and over again. In my case, that meant rage and willpower, were encouraged as methods for me to escape, and the spell specifically defended against that.
I’d need to find something it did not defend against, but that would be hard because a proper geas was strong, subtle, and durable.
I thanked him for his advice, and he walked away glowing with a light that he could barely supress. Soon, within the year, I was told he would float up into the sky.
The trip to the gulf was quick since everyone had boots.
Tadeusz
