Wand: A Fantasy of Witches, Wizards, and Wands
Chapter Forty-One

Agravaine shoved the top half of the kitchen hutch off his legs. It had fallen at some point during the melee, probably near the end when he’d invoked that earth elemental. The supernatural entity had been too powerful; in its dirt and rock form, it had torn up through the foundation and burst from the floor like a demon to vanquish the remaining trolls.

It had also very nearly killed Agravaine. Only his quick-thinking application of an ancient banishment spell had saved him in the end.

Agravaine grabbed hold of the granite countertop and pulled himself up, every inch of his body rebelling against the action. He’d taken a few hits. A twinge in his right knee became a full-fledged scream of agony when he tried to walk.

Out the corner of his eye he spotted whizzing movement. Agravaine reacted instinctually, using the air elemental to repel the blow. Endor froze; the five-foot long staff in her hands hovered mere inches from Agravaine’s face. It would’ve crushed his skull, and make no mistake. He reached forward and plucked it from her hands, dispelling the elemental as he did.

Suddenly rotten fruit lay strewn about, having taken the brunt of this latest bout of sorcery. Endor stumbled backwards onto the overturned couch, where she burst into tears.

“Why?” she sobbed. “Why are you still alive?”

“I suspect the Fates are not yet done with me. I’ve work to do.” He inspected the staff. It was a wizard’s rod, complete with quartz crystal embedded in the gnarled top. A leftover movie prop from before wizardkind took over the Preserve. Most likely the buffer’s who’d lived here had purchased it on a whim. Still, it would do the trick in a pinch. Using it for support, Agravaine took a step, then another, and he kept up the rhythm until he was at the busted front door.

“Lipton! Lint!”

Two leprechauns trekked into the atrium. “We’re leaving.” Agravaine stepped over the troll corpses, which reeked even worse dead than alive, if that were possible. “It’s time.”

Beaver Meadow in St. Huberts was a bit of a hike from Sagamore, especially for a man with a crutch. Agravaine had the leprechauns saddle the horses and hitch them to the replica buggy. He despised horse and buggy rides, but there was no traveling mirror at the Meadow, and he could not make it there on foot. Sounds of the forest began to fill night air during their ride: crickets and owls, frogs in the swamps and creeks, bats keening overhead by the score. None of that concerned the sorcerer. He had ears only for the mythic that was hunting them.

He’d first caught its subtle skulking course over the clip-clop trotting of the horses about five miles after leaving the cabin. It couldn’t be a wraith, thank the stars; wraiths never made a sound. If it were a shaga the whole forest would be alive with the crashing clatter of trees tipping over and the ground would be trembling. Could be a troll. Agravaine doubted this though, as trolls tended to attack in hordes, and at the first opportunity.

No, it had to be something else. “Pull up,” Agravaine said.

Lipton reined in the horses. Sudden quiet fell over the road.

The gargoyle flashed down out of the air, startling the horses and forcing Agravaine to duck. As the mythic landed, imprinting its talons in the asphalt, the sorcerer projected his astral will into it; he had to act fast, as you could not borrow into a gargoyle while it was in its rock form. He felt the initial resistance, pushed through this, and borrowed into the beastie.

Controlling it was not his intent here. The mythic’s sudden presence during their late night journey to the Old One was too coincidental.

Inside the simple yet alien cortex, Agravaine discovered a peculiar strand of thought. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say it resembled a prompting.

This creature had been sent.

Agravaine’s shock rocked his astral focus, sending his mind back into his own body.

“What is it?” Lipton’s leathery features were crinkled into the semblance of an old catcher’s mitt. “Did it hurt you, master?”

“It . . . it was sent here.”

“Sent, sir? By who?”

Agravaine reached forward and took the reins, steering the team around. The gargoyle had parked itself in the middle of the road, where it would remain until provoked. Agravaine had no intention of provoking it. Once they’d turned around and entered the forest to take the long way round, he gave the reins back to his leprechaun.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “The Old One must be awake. And it must know we’re coming for it.”

“That savage bonnie knows ’bout us? Yer full of it,” Lint accused.

In all his plans and scenarios, Agravaine had factored in the possibility of the Old One stirring before he could reach it, but he had never calculated its being aware of his intent.

“You musta awoke the beastie by looking in that banjanxed old Mirror, you bloody gorm.”

It was nearly one in the morning by the time they bounced into Keene Valley. A sprawling field of death opened up before them. The Old One had long bled this area dry.

Agravaine carefully stepped out of the buggy. Battle fatigue had set in by now, and the aches and pains of the fight were striking in full force. Near the tan steed, the sorcerer stumbled. He pressed a hand against the horse’s haunch to catch himself, felt an instant upsurge of power. He set the staff aside to lay both hands on the creature and siphon its chi.

By the time he was done and the horse lay twitching on the ground, Agravaine stood ready for round two. His knee still hurt, but most of his other complaints were now stewing and healing in stolen bioplasma.

“Torch,” Agravaine held out his hand. Lipton dug a torch from the buggy’s compartment, lit it with a snap of his fingers, and handed it over.

On the march into the meadow, crunching over dead grass stalks, across boles, bogs, and abandoned beaver holes, Agravaine scanned for signs of trouble, swinging the torch back and forth in his left hand, leaning on the staff with his right. His left foot suddenly dropped.

He yanked and tugged until it popped loose. Under the torchlight he spotted the offender: a scarab nest. One had managed to burrow into his sandaled foot, causing instant intractable pain. Agravaine closed his eyes, entered his astral sanctum, where he could think clearly. From there he was able to direct a jolt of stolen energy down into his foot, transmuting the living power into electricity. Under the onslaught the scarab burst out, dead, through Agravaine’s ankle.

On grounding Agravaine was bombarded with fresh agonies from the exit wound, which was bleeding profusely. One knee buggered, and now the other foot was useless.

Here, at the end of all things. The phrase returned to him, like a mantram. How had the scarab even survived here in the Meadow? Had the Old One set a trap using the scarab?

“What can we do, sir?” Lipton asked, worrying over his master’s foot.

“Oi,” Lint mocked, slapping his cousin. “You sound like a fecking gowl. ‘What can we do, sir?’ You can wrap the spellslingers foot up! Great shades, you’re not a full shilling, you ain’t.”

“Just,” Agravaine interrupted through his pain, “just . . . do your clicking thing and bring me over there, into that clearing. The pain won’t matter—soon enough.”

“Just so’s we’re clear, sir,” Lint said, “you want us to click yer gimp ass from this spot over to that spot, yes?”

“Yes!” He could feel the aura of the Old One fouling this place.

“Savage,” Lint rubbed his hands together.

Lipton restrained him. “No, let me do it.”

“No way, gammy,” Lint protested. “It’s my turn.” The leprechaun snapped his fingers. The air seemed to tremble and the torch flame guttered. Agravaine was lifted bodily by the leprechaun’s alien magic, and floated through the intervening space on an invisible cushion of air. When Lint clicked his fingers again to lower the sorcerer to the spot indicated, he did it quickly, and while wearing a fiendish grin.

Fresh agonies pummeled his back and bum. He released the staff and, with great effort, flung the torch forward as far as he could so as to illuminate the object of his obsession. It was hardly necessary, though. The Old One’s aura illuminated the meadow with an eerie greenish glow.

It was hard to believe the moment had finally come, his years of planning at last coming to fruition.

Here, at the end of all things.

Not far from the gnarled, dead oak, the Old One lay hunkering in slumber. The crater it had made on its impact here was still evident, filled with a tangle of tentacles and twisted limbs—far too many to be some ambitious charlatan’s idea of an alien. There did not appear to be a face or eyes, though Agravaine sensed that the Old One had many visual ports. The form and structure of the thing did not resemble any mythic or animal man had ever encountered or even conjured in his wildest nightmares; its body was more a construct of limbs and crawling appendages of unearthly design than a cohesive form.

“Lint, Lipton, get over here.” Agravaine could not take his eyes off the Old One. Was afraid to look away, perhaps.

The leprechauns cautiously approached from over the rise. They’d been slowly backing away ever since dropping off the sorcerer, and had reached the relative safety of the buggy. Their inherent fear of the Old One was not surprising.

“I have an important job for you,” the sorcerer said. “I am going to make my final Wish.”

Lint trembled spasmodically. He clutched his head, went to his knees.

“What is it?” Agravaine had not expected this reaction—not yet, anyway.

“Someone is summoning me,” Lint sounded surprised.

“Who would dare try to—”

Lint vanished, and his sudden absence caused the air to rush into the space he’d just vacated with a kissing POP.

“Sonofawitch!” Agravaine cursed. He looked to Lipton, who was cowering on the ground.

Across the way a tentacle twitched.

At first Agravaine experienced a chill in the air; he saw his breath puff before him. It was cold out tonight, but even in mid October in the Adirondacks, breath clouds at this elevation should not be seen. Then a pulse raced across the entire meadow, vanquishing any doubt of its deviant origin. More tentacles twitched, breaking loose from a generation-long slumber, making heavy wet slapping sounds like extraterrestrial serpents coiling in conflict.

The sorcerer crawled forward, wincing against the pain. The sight of this being, this crawling chaos, filled him with a nauseating sense of foreboding.

He quit moving after puking the second time.

Covered in blood and vomit, Agravaine was beginning to understand why nothing could live long in this monstrosity’s presence.

Here, at the end of all things.

The boy had not realized it, of course, but during their conversation, Agravaine had projected into Nick’s subconscious mind—and gleaned invaluable knowledge. Nick’s ability to control mythics was borderline supernatural. What the boy did was to unconsciously (and unwittingly) appeal to the primitive nihilistic need of the mythics to be dominated; the boy opened them up to be controlled by him by sacrificing his own personal safety. And it was this sacrifice that had inspired Agravaine.

He could not, of course, accomplish the same thing. He simply did not possess Nick’s brand of magic. But, using a different, ancient practice, he might just be able to conjure the same affect on the Old One.

“Lipton,” the old man said. “Look at me. I Wish for you to go and greet the Old One.”

He did not want to lose his faithful servant, and therein lay the sacrifice. In offering up his leprechaun as a living sacrifice, Agravaine would—hopefully—awaken in the Old One a primeval emotional vulnerability. And in that twinkling moment, while what passed for the entity’s mind was distracted by the sacrifice, Agravaine might just be able to borrow into it, slipping into its mind with his tried and true proficiency in the astral arts.

Lipton trembled from head to toe. “Oh, master, please, I . . .” but he could not resist obeying a Wish.

The little mythic moved a foot, a leg, its body, one step at a time, unwilling but unable to refuse. Its final march across the meadow and the dried up brook took a life-age, but it came to an end eventually, as thing tend to, and when the leprechaun stood trembling before the Old One, wearing fresh vomit on its tattered outfit, he turn his head to look back at his master.

Agravaine nodded, his eyes mysteriously moist.

He would gladly have sent Lint instead, as Lint was an annoying and deceitful little bugger. But someone’s unexpected summoning of Lint had screwed that all to hell.

The entire meadow, and seemingly the world, froze in suspended animation, awaiting the response, if any, from the Old One. Agravaine waited with baited breath. Any moment now.

A giant tentacle burst from the creature, wrapped twice entirely around Lipton, and contracted. The subsequent sound was sickening. Agravaine dry-heaved. He looked away from the sight of his servants’ entrails as they dripped and oozed to the ground.

That was all the time he would devote to grief.

The sorcerer closed his eyes and sank instantly, deeply, into the Dreaming, years of practice doing for him in a moment what Eye of Thoth capsules would take sixty seconds to accomplish.

Colors unfolded, presenting their true natures and meanings and intentions. All sight and sound melded together. All was connected in this place, and everything wanted to devour him.

Here, at the end of all things.

An echoing chant filled the world, distant-sounding and profane.

It was a dirge.

For my death? Agravaine wondered to himself and to the rocks and to the air that wasn’t really there. The Old One was inspecting its handiwork. Lipton’s bioplasma was still humming, dripping down as liquid chi into the ley lines that flowed and pulsed through the Old One.

It was working, the Old One was distracted.

Agravaine steeled himself to ride the mind of this most ancient and deformed of beings. He wondered what it would be like to see through its eyes (if it had any), to perceive the world as it did, to gently steer it if he could. Would he see the patterns of time through the slimy hands of its immortal clock? What would it be like, to know the world as the Old One knew it? Would he smell energy? Taste power? Hear ley lines?

Perhaps. But if so, there was a price. Whenever your understanding of the universe was altered, you always paid a heavy price. Agravaine knew this better than most. He had paid a price for a mere glimpse years earlier, and his eyes had never recovered.

He made the leap, latching onto the pulsing correspondence the Old One had left exposed as it lay distracted by the sacrifice.

As his wraith, his astral self, connected to and merged with the Old One, Agravaine experienced the briefest moment of reverential awe. This thing, this lurker at the threshold, was not what it seemed. It was something more than anyone knew. Its awareness stretched outwards through time and space; doorways to other worlds lay at its tentacle tips. But behind this knowledge and power, beneath the awe and astonishment, Agravaine heard the ancient Rule of Magic: don’t invoke what you can’t banish.

He braced his consciousness as the Old One awakened.