Wand: A Fantasy of Witches, Wizards, and Wands
Chapter Fifteen

The sorcerer fought another wave of nausea as the sprite he was borrowing zigged and zagged through the forest.

It was amazing it could even focus. Of all creatures, terrestrial or alien, sprites were in some ways the worst to use as his spying eyes. They flew erratically, like flies on speed; their peepers were so tiny that everything in the world loomed huge and menacing. But they were absurdly easy to borrow into. Simple, yielding minds.

His weekly scan of the Preserve had proven unenlightening. The Old One still lay slumbering in its bole. Apparently, today was not The Day.

As he was preparing to recall his consciousness and leave the sprite, the sorcerer spotted a human boy running through the forest. At first it was difficult to focus with the unpredictable movements of his borrowed mythic. But then the sprite landed on a branch overhead as the boy paused behind a tree to catch his breath.

Memory stirred.

At the sight of the very school boy in whom the sorcerer was most invested, astral control wavered. He asserted his will over the sprite so that he was no longer a passive passenger but a boss in the driver’s seat.

Now able to control the little buggers’ every movement, the sorcerer turned its head to try and spot what had made Nick Hammond flee in such haste.

Such was the overpowering drive of the sorcerer’s will that as he sent the astral signal for the sprite to turn its head left, the six-inch mythic nearly snapped its neck. In his EZ-Boy at home, the sorcerer huffed in annoyance. These kinds of close calls never happened with bargs. Those large mythic black dogs had tendons and muscles like tigers. Of course, borrowing into bargs usually meant getting psychically tossed out when the alien canine stumbled across a scent it liked.

Whatever had spooked young Nick seemed too far away at the moment to pose an immediate threat. Then again, sprites did not possess the best senses.

The sorcerer looked down at the boy, this time gently turning the sprites head.

Somewhere off to the left a branch creaked and snapped. Nick jumped. From his countless treks through the forest and these mountains, in both his body and through borrowing into its denizens, the sorcerer knew full well that branches often broke all on their own, quite unaided by nefarious forces. Then again, they did sometimes break because a troll was foraging, or an overly ambitious glimmerling was trying stupidly to animate some tree.

He prompted the sprite to scurry over a few inches on its branch to steal a better look at the boy trembling beneath it. The scratching sound of the sprites’ hands and feet against the branch caught Nick’s attention. He gazed up at them.

Without warning a group of sprites burst from the bole and commenced an attack.

Nick vainly swatted at the semi-nude buggers. Spotting a pair going for Nick’s athame, the sorcerer spurred his borrowed sprite to swoop down. He deftly manipulated his avatar to knock out one of the two thieves and then began haggling with the other one to filch the blade.

His struggle to maintain control over the mythic (always a trial when their hackles were up, like during a tussle) wavered when the sorcerer watched—through its eyes—a stone smacking into his opponent, sending the fluttering critter plummeting to the ground.

In the same instant he experienced a sudden psychic jolt that nearly shoved him out of the sprite.

Barely managing to maintain the tenuous astral connection, he watched helplessly as his sprite struggled and ultimately failed to keep hold of the blade. He flew a few yards away before running out of steam, and then settled onto a flat stone a safe distance from Nick.

“You see?” the boy shrieked. “That’s what happens when you don’t listen to me. When I tell you frigging mythics to do something, you better dang well do it!”

The manner in which the boy spoke, his surprisingly authoritative tone, sent chills through the sprite. It could feel an alien will attempting to hijack its mind. By extension the sorcerer also detected the foreign power. His own psychic commandeering of mythics and other creatures was far more subtle; rarely did any detect his presence. But the boy clearly had the gift.

Ideas swirled in his mind, a vortex of thoughts and imaginings churning in the darkest regions of his psyche. A plot began to take shape. It was vague, but a plan all the same.

For a time the sorcerer followed Nick surreptitiously. He watched amused as the boy asserted control over the sprites, and then followed as Nick fled the presence of a shaga.

It was with an unfamiliar sense of concern that the sorcerer prompted his sprite to tug on the boys’ ear when the stupid teen decided to play chicken with the shaga. Of course, the physical power of a sprite is akin to the strength a man has in his pinky finger, so the effort was a bit fruitless.

In the end his intervention was not needed. The boys’ plan had—against all logic—worked. Warlocks (those annoying conceited heroes) had arrived to save the day. Michael Delving, whom he knew from an encounter years ago, used and lost his stang to slay the shaga.

So he released his hold on the sprite and recalled his consciousness.

ONE

TWO

THREE

The sorcerer gasped, bolting straight up and knocking over the cup of coffee he’d absentmindedly left on the arm of his EZ chair.

“Sir,” a soft voice penetrated his mental fug. “Sir, you’re alright. You’re in—gold—your den here at home. You are back.”

Groggily he opened his eyes to the pleasing sight of Leona cleaning up the remnants of his coffee mug. She would probably try to mend it. Leprechauns enjoyed fixing things, though they tended to make adjustments and tweak the busted items until they hardly resembled their original state. His World’s Best Wizard mug—a sarcastically ironic gift from Endor—could end up saying Best World War.

He rubbed his eyes, shook the cobwebs from his head; sprite-nausea was lingering. He needed crackers.

As he watched Leona scurry about in her leggings (leprechauns had no shame or sense of modesty) the sorcerer recalled events from his recent trip. They came tumbling back in a rush. Jumbled images mixed with half-formed schemes and malformed ideas. The boy was on the cusp. A bit of training up, some proper guidance, none of that narrow-minded myopic wizards-are-the-bomb teaching those illusionists at the Institute were so fond of spewing, and Nick Hammond might be the next big deal.

Of course, there was that whole temper thing and a butt load of annoying teenager arrogance to deal with. But what were these trifles to a notorious sorcerer?

“Leona?”

“Yes, sir?”

“It’s a sailor’s sky,” the sorcerer said, recalling the red-streaked horizon. “I’m going out later today. See if you can dig up my raincoat and galoshes.”

Leona dropped the shards.

After groaning to his feet, the sorcerer patted Leona on the head, pressing down against her green-tinted curls. “Just get them.” He shuffled out of the room. To his surprise, the leprechaun appeared beside him in the hall. Skillfully concealing his shock, he said “Yes?”

“Sir, when will you be leaving for your—gold—um, hunt?”

Without looking down at her, the sorcerer said, “Later. I’m going to have one last go at the troll.”

Leona nearly dropped the shards. “You’re going to try and borrow into the king of the trolls?” Craning her neck to read her masters reaction, she groaned. “Oh golden throne. Sir, he hasn’t been here long enough. Endor has only given him two doses of the potion, and he’s royalty, sir. He’s not like the others. What if—gold—what if—”

“What’s the worst that can happen?”

Tinkling sounds plinked up from Leona’s hands as the shards she was carrying jounced. “Oh sir, he could reverse the polarity. You could get stuck in his mind—without control.”

The sorcerer waved this risk aside. “Nonsense. He’s just a—”

“Just a what, sir?” Leona’s voice had taken on a defensive lilt. “Just a troll? And I’m just a Danaan, or a leprechaun, as your kind calls us. You shouldn’t dis-dis-discriminate. We have feelings. We are people. Just because there are different races doesn’t mean—”

“Calm down,” the sorcerer ordered calmly. “Take a breath and compose yourself. It’s nothing.” He continued on down the hall, reaching the door to the cells.

“It is not nothing,” Leona stomped her foot. A few shards tinkled to the floor.

The sorcerer sighed as he slipped the key into its lock. “I just meant that as powerful as this troll may be, I have been at this a long time. I know what I’m doing. This needs to happen. If I can’t succeed with him then the plan . . . never mind. Go . . . cook something.”

Leona stomped away, descending into the lilting almost musical language of leprechauns. There was no doubt in the sorcerer’s mind that she was cussing him out, but she’d get over it.

He shuffled down the hall of cells. This had to work. So the troll was royalty. What difference did that make when talking about trolls? Sure, it was intelligent enough to learn how to speak English, but so were parrots.

The sorcerer, completely lost in dark musings, failed to notice any of the half-dozen peccadilloes of his guests that he customarily enjoyed observing: the shifter imitating him, its molted skin husk wilting in the corner, the barg growling and smashing into its bars (slow learners, bargs), the golem trying to meld with the concrete walls and floor.

“Hello Waggoner,” the sorcerer said on reaching the troll cage in the paddock.

Troll had not been sleeping (the sorcerer had yet to catch this mythic slumbering, despite creeping up on him at all hours of the day and night). It stood and approached the bars.

“My name is Aggerwon,” the troll snarled. A line of saliva drooled down his chin.

“Hey,” the sorcerer beamed, ignoring the troll to point out a couple of bent iron bars, “I see you managed to pry a couple of the bars further apart. If you don’t eat anything for the next month or two you might just be able to squeeze through.”

“What do you want, perrok?”

Levity vanished at the dropping of that expression, perrok. It was one of ten or twelve words in the guttural troll tongue that the sorcerer understood. Foul, condescending, and decidedly rude, it was not a word for delicate ears. Every troll he’d ever encountered or imprisoned had spat this invective at the sorcerer, or its equally nasty cousin’s klanger and bildrig, right before he shut them up. And it was always uttered with the same degree of distaste.

The sorcerer collected the folding chair they kept leaning against the solid cinder block back wall of the cage, and dragged it around to the front, making a ruckus.

He took his seat before the troll. With his knees spread to a comfortable position the sorcerer set his palms onto them and leaned forward. Without preamble he locked eyes with his prisoner. As expected, the troll did not blink or turn its gaze. It was not in the nature of trolls to avert their eyes from anything; they were proud, fearless creatures.

The initial stage of borrowing into a living being involves the astral projecting of one’s consciousness, but instead of entering the Dreaming, one pierces the psychic veil of his intended victim.

The sorcerer grimaced.

As with all psychic magic, a toll was exacted. By whom or by what force, no one knew, but many assumed it was the Fates. He fought the initial wave of ‘borrowing sickness’ and dug deeper. The troll king was strong. He was resisting. The sorcerer hastily latched onto a single dominant thought, a powerful hatred acting as a psychic thread he could grasp and use to drive his consciousness into that of the troll kings.

It was invigorating. Pure unadulterated abhorrence like this was a powerful thing, a potential source of energy on which to draw. Trolls did not do magic. But if they every learned how to, and if they discovered a way to tap into this reserve of potent bioplasma . . . gods help wizardkind.

With deft skill honed through years of practice, the sorcerer bypassed the trolls’ defensive wall of hatred and burrowed his way in through a soft spot in its memory cortex.

Unseen but not unfelt, he wove his way through the cortex, a system which appeared as a bottomless chasm, the walls a patchwork of memories woven into it like discarded scraps of knowledge. Most were dark, faded with age and disinterest. But the one the sorcerer was using to guide him into the troll king’s mind was bright and well tended. It showed the mythic as an adolescent troll, probably four years old, and already as big as any adult of his race. Stronger, smarter, born to lead, in the memory Aggerwon was surrounded by what appeared to be his parents and siblings; it was hard to tell, male and female distinctions among trolls was negligible at best. By the expression on young Aggerwon’s face, this was a joyous occasion.

As he hovered in the abyssal cortex, the sorcerer observed young Aggerwon being offered a khopesh, a sort of cross between a sword and a scythe. With disturbing calm Aggerwon accepted a series of ritual cuts on his back before receiving the khopesh.

Why was this memory sterling while most others were dull and neglected?

Trolls did not normally dwell on their past, but the troll king clearly revisited this memory of his childhood and home world often. As he pondered these things, the sorcerer heard a strange whistling sound, like a rock plummeting off the edge of . . .

Aggerwon smashed into the sorcerer. The impact had been so unexpected that the sorcerer had not even had time to brace himself; he felt something in his back break.

In his chair the sorcerer bolted upright, unleashing a strangled scream.

He pressed both hands to his bald head, rubbing vigorously. When the astral-induced headache subsided, he opened his eyes to the sight of Aggerwon grinning hideously.

The sorcerer rose to his feet whiplash fast, knocking his chair over.

“You do not have what it takes, bildrig,” Aggerwon sneered. “No wizard can control me.”

Maybe he wasn’t the one. The boy, Nick was one to whom controlling the mythics seemed to come naturally. “Lux!” he screamed for the leprechaun he’d recently put in charge of the paddock.

“Sir?”

“Jeez,” the sorcerer clutched his chest as his heart suddenly started racing. Lux was standing beside him, looking calmly up at his master. The little golden bugger had an annoying knack for appearing instantly. “Have Endor increase the troll’s dosage.”

The sorcerer scrutinized Aggerwon and then sidled up close to the cage. Solid three-quarter inch diameter tempered iron should’ve been sufficient to withstand the strength of even a fully mature troll. And slipping into his mind—even commencing with a spirit walk method—to borrow into his body, the sorcerer knew that Aggerwon should not have been able to overcome his efforts. Perhaps Leona was right; perhaps troll kings weren’t just physically and intellectually different. Maybe they were psychically different as well.

“Just a snag,” the sorcerer said, eying Aggerwon.

“When I get out of here—” the troll began.

“Spare me,” the sorcerer held a hand up. On his way out the sorcerer gave Lux a command: “Take its chair and its bone necklace.”

Behind him came the peculiar cat-call of the leprechaun, a sort of shriek used to call for aid. Soon Lux’s cousins would appear, to zap the troll into unconsciousness so they could safely liberate his chair and necklace. The sorcerer had been on the receiving end of a leprechaun’s zapping magic; he almost pitied prideful Aggerwon.

Almost.

Back in the foyer he found Leona toting in his galoshes and raincoat. As thunder boomed a few miles to the south, he stuffed his feet into the boots, groaning as his toes rebelled. The raincoat next. A small yet distinctly lively thrill flittered through the sorcerer. It had been ages since he’d gone out for this type of work. Hunting mythics was one thing; crossing the mountains to approach the Institute was quite another.

“What are you doing, sir?” squeaked the small voice of Leona.

“I’m going to visit my alma mater,” he answered, opening the door onto a bleak September sky. Without looking down at his servant, the sorcerer zipped up his coat.

Leona gasped. “You can’t! The warlocks—gold. They’ll spot you. Sir, you only just returned again from their dungeons. They won’t take any chances—gold—this time. It’ll be curses and stangs. And they say the legend himself is working at the school now. Even you, sir, have not had good fortune against Agabus Duchaine—”

“What did I tell you about speaking that name?”

Leona trembled but persisted. “They’ll capture you. They’ll capture you—gold—and then we’ll all be stuck here. Please, sir, please think about—”

The sorcerer clenched his fists. Heat waves rippled through the air as the temperature in the foyer increased. “Damn it, Leona. I wish you . . . nothing.” That was close. If he’d wished she would shut up, she would—but that would be the third wish, and Leona would be free to leave.

The two of them stood in tepid silence for several moments, the sorcerer with his back to the leprechaun, Leona shaking as she looked up at his back. Finally she spoke in a low murmur.

“Why are you risking everything?”

A few ticks passed by. “I need help,” the sorcerer confessed.

“You’re the most powerful spellslinger I’ve ever known,” Leona said, tears sliding down her golden-hued cheeks. “Who could help you?”

Hand on the doorknob, the sorcerer answered, “A boy who possesses magic I don’t have.” With that he left, slamming the door and trudging down the porch steps without looking back. Once he crossed the ward he’d erected on the property line, a voice interrupted his musings.

“I’ve had a vision,” it was Endor. Among her many talents, Endor was a seer. She stuttered and spat in a vain attempt to avoid sharing her vision with the sorcerer; his enchantment, however, was too strong to resist.

“Yes?” the sorcerer demanded, latching onto her shoulders and leaning down to peer into her eyes through his sunshades. “What did you see? Was it the Old One? Did it awaken?”

“Y-yes,” she stammered, fighting the enchantment.

He shook her once when she failed to go on. “Well? How did it awaken?”

“I d-don’t know,” Endor spluttered. “The vision began with you. You were moving through mirrors, and the boy, he was on the other side. And then the Old One stirred. That’s all—ass,” she added the last part with a look of sublime pleasure.

The sorcerer released her to contemplate her vision. It was clear the boy was somehow wrapped up in his Plan, but the mirrors . . . it had been long years since he’d used that mode of transportation. Finicky at best, traveling mirrors were. One tiny mistake and they could transport you to the end of space—or inside the trunk of a great sequoia.

He needed to clear his head—and take a spirit walk into his own memory cortex to recall where he’d hidden his traveling mirrors.

“Nick Hammond.” If he could borrow into the boy, he might be able to augment the teen’s burgeoning gifts. Though not his original Plan, this might just work out. And he would gladly pay any price for that.