A Wizard's Life Complete (Omnibus) by Eric Guindon

Author:Eric Guindon [Guindon, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melancholy Stegosaurus Press
Published: 2014-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Timmon was the one who noticed that the signal flag in the village had been raised by the folk below. Benen had set up this system so the villagers could request an audience with him as needed. They had never used it before.

Benen used his magic to descend to the ground, taking Timmon with him. The headman of the village was waiting near the flag, with him were two Southren men. Nearby, three waggons and their handlers waited.

“What is this?” Benen asked of the headman, though he already knew.

“These Southren folk say they have business with you, Lord Wizard.” The headman was always very formal.

Benen spoke to the Southren pair in their own tongue: “I am Journeyman Benen, my man tells me you have business with me.”

They bowed when he presented himself and introduced themselves as Pkor and Swod. They claimed to be technicians. Benen was familiar with the word from his study of Southren. A technician was a kind of tinkerer versed in the more difficult aspects of mechanical devices.

“We are to install the telescope for your greatness,” they told him.

Benen pointed at his flying tower, very high up above them all. “The installation needs to go up there.”

The technicians were quite willing to allow Benen to fly them up to the tower, but the waggons were another matter. In the end, Benen decided it would be easiest for all concerned if he simply landed the tower for the time needed to complete the installation of the telescope.

Everyone watched in awe as Benen gradually lowered the tower down from its usual position in the sky. The earth trembled when it finally made contact with the ground. When Benen looked around, he saw everyone had a mix of fear and awe on their faces — everyone but Timmon, that is. The ghost was not so easily impressed by magic anymore.

After that the installation proceeded smoothly. Benen spent a lot of time watching the technicians and their labourers work. He found the whole thing fascinating; everything they worked with was so complex and fragile. These technicians were wizards of a different kind from himself, but impressive nonetheless.

The telescope, once completed, was bigger by far than Oster’s; Benen guessed this was a much newer model than the old wizard’s. The technicians told Benen many technical specifications about the machine, but he could barely follow what they were saying. In the end, they gave him a manual, took their payment, and left, bowing as they went back to their waggons and away.

Benen returned his tower to its proper place in the sky and waited impatiently for the moon to rise so that he could begin his studies of the Grass anomaly. When the time came, he first had to spend two hours fiddling with the telescope’s alignment and settings before he had it pointed at the right place in the heavens.

At last, Benen looked into the eyepiece of the telescope and took new observations of the star he had named Grass. Again he saw the tendril of the star’s fire reaching out into space.

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