Moon Mirror by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub

ONE SPELL WIZARD

In all professions there are not only the inspiring great successes and the forgotten failures, but also those who seem unable to climb the tallest peaks, yet do not tumble hopelessly into the pits in between. There were magicians in High Hallack of whom nobles were quick to speak with reverence when in company; what they said in private remained private if they were lucky. One could never be quite sure of the substance of shadows, nor even of the pedigree of a web-weaving spider. Such uncertainty can be nerve-racking at times. Near the other end of the scale there were warlocks and wizards who barely made livings in tumbledown cottages surrounded by unpleasant bogs or found themselves reduced to caves where water dripped unendingly and bats provided a litter they could well do without. Their clents were landsmen who came to get a cure for an ailing cow or for a stumbling horse. Cow—horse—when a man of magic should be rightfully dealing with the fate of dales, raking in treasure from lords, living in a keep properly patrolled at night by things which snuffled at the doors to keep all unhappy visitors within their chambers from dusk to dawn—or the reverse, depending upon the habits of the visitor. Magicians have a very wide range of guests, willing and unwilling.

Wizards have no age, save in wizardry. And to live for long in a bat- and water-haunted cave sours men.

Though even in the beginning, wizards are never of a lightsome temperament. A certain acid view of life accompanies the profession. And Saystrap considered he had been far too long in a cave. It was far past the time when he should have been raised to at least a minor hill keep with a few grisly servitors, if not to the castle of his dreams. There was certainly no treasure in his cave, but he refused to face the fact that there never would be. The great difficulty was the length of Saystrap’s spells—they were a hindrance to his ambition. They worked very well for as much as twenty-four hours—if he expended top effort in their concoction. He was truly a master of some fine effects with those; he was labeled a dismal failure because they did not last. Finally he accepted his limitations to the point of working out a method whereby a short-lived spell could be put to good account. To do this, he must have an assistant. But, while a magician of note could pick and choose apprentices, a half-failure such as Saystrap had to take what he might find in a very limited labor market.

Not too far from his cave lived a landsman with two sons. The eldest was a credit to his thrifty

upbringing, a noble young man who was upright enough to infuriate all his contemporaries in the neighborhood to whom he was constantly cited as an example. He worked from sunrise to early dusk with a will and never spent’ silver when copper would do—in all ways an irritating youth.

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