“Ho, Roland!” I called out, since he seemed unaware of my approach.
He turned and gave me an easy smile, “Mordecai! How goes it?”
“Well,” I answered giving him a quick embrace.
“I did not think to see you out and about again so soon. Lady Thornbear said you were close to death but a few days ago. How is it that you look so hale?” he asked.
“My recovery was speedy thanks to her timely treatment, and Elaine was able to restore me completely once the poison had run its course,” I said succinctly, summarizing an hour’s conversation in one brief sentence. “Is your sister at home?”
“She is not. Father requested her presence in the city two weeks ago. She has been assisting him with the finances of our fair nation. Some of his other ministers proved to be less than trustworthy,” he replied. It was a statement that covered a much larger story I was sure, but I had no time for that either.
I was disappointed, for I had not seen her in almost a year, but I moved on quickly. “I was hoping to catch you both at home, but this simplifies things. I bear ill news of your brother.”
Roland set the brush in his hand down and motioned for one of the grooms to take his place. “Perhaps we should walk outside,” he suggested.
I followed him out. The early afternoon sunshine seemed a stark contrast to the dark news I had to share. “Your brother is dying,” I said, as I embarked upon an intense description of Marc’s situation.
Marc had informed his family of his move but not of his health, so my information was a serious shock to Roland. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to allow him to adjust gradually. “I plan to visit him as quickly as possible; do you want to come with me?” I said at the end.
He looked uncomfortable, “Father left me in charge here…”
“Your seneschal can manage for a while. We can be there within three days and the return will be instant once I construct a circle there.”
“But…”
“This is it Roland. You won’t see him again,” I said bluntly.
He straightened and squared his shoulders before nodding, “Let’s go.”
Taking only the time it required to notify his staff of our departure, we were in Albamarl within half an hour.
Chapter 34
“You haven’t actually said how we are going to travel… have you?” asked Roland uncertainly.
I glanced back at him; we were ascending the stairs that led to the top of Traveler’s Pinnacle. “No, I don’t believe I did,” I agreed.
“The reason I mention it, is because we’re taking the stairs ‘up’, and if you intend to travel by horse, then we should probably be going down,” he said nervously.
I smiled at him, which did nothing to put him at ease. Of course I knew I was driving him mad with my reticence, but as it often did, dark circumstances brought out an equally dark sense of humor in me. Marc dying was certainly one of the darkest things I could imagine, though I was doing my best not to think about it. Instead I gave myself over to enjoying Roland’s unease.
“Unless we’re just going up to pick something up… before we leave,” he added anxiously. “Is that what we’re doing?”
“No,” I said.
“No, what?”
“We aren’t traveling by horse. It would take a week, assuming we didn’t get lost,” I replied.
He slipped for a moment on the stairs before catching his balance. “I didn’t realize you had already put a circle in Agraden,” he commented, clearly hoping that was the case. “Seems like the top of such a tall tower is an odd place to put a circle,” he observed.
I laughed, “It certainly would be.”
Emerging from the doorway, we found ourselves at the top of Traveler’s Pinnacle. As it often did, the view took my breath away for a moment. The wind at this height was fierce and it threatened to make us stumble as we moved into the open. There was no real danger, for we were still ten feet or more from the edge, and there were six foot stone battlements around the edges. Well, the merlons rose to six foot, with crenels four foot in height between them.
Roland looked distinctly pale.
“You don’t like heights very much do you?” I noted.
“Not at all,” he answered honestly.
He won’t like this then, I thought, and reaching into one of my enchanted pouches, I brought out a stone disc heavily marked with arcane symbols. Holding it in front of me I let go, using my power to keep it motionless in the air before me. “We need to step back a few feet,” I suggested, using my hand to indicate the direction we should move.
“Why did you ask about my fear of heights?” asked Roland.
I put a finger to my lips, “One moment, I need to concentrate.” Extending my staff, I used it to tap the stone disc where it hung six feet in front of us. It broke into twenty-eight separate pieces, which began to move steadily apart, maintaining a pattern relative to each other. They continued expanding even as we stepped further back, until they had formed a circular shape roughly twelve feet across. The edge of the circle was bounded by twelve pieces, while six pieces formed a hexagon three feet above the circle, and another six formed a similar shape below it. Fields of magical force filled the wide spaces between the stones, although they were entirely invisible to normal sight… such as Roland’s.
“What is that?” he asked wondrously, forgetting his fear for a moment. He saw only a collection of stones hovering in a strangely rigid formation. My senses showed me something a bit different; a disc-like polyhedron formed of magical planes of force, twelve foot across and four foot thick in the middle.
I hesitated to answer his question, for I knew the truth might cause him to panic. “Are you wearing your necklace?” I asked suddenly.
“Yes.”
“Would you let me see it for a moment?” I told him.
Uncertain, he reached into his shirt and pulled it out. I motioned for him to hand it over and waited as he struggled to unclasp it. Once he had placed it in my palm, I took him by the shoulders and said, “It’s a flying machine.”
“What!?” Roland’s expression was priceless.
“Well, it isn’t actually a ‘flying’ machine; it’s more of a force structure to protect us from the wind, while I move us through the air. Obviously if we just got inside and pushed it off, it would drop like a stone,” I said whimsically.
“Why are you telling me this? I’m not getting in that! I don’t need to know,” he shouted. His eyes were showing entirely too much white now.
I nodded understandingly. “I had to tell you. It would be unethical for me to take you on a trip like this without telling you how we would be traveling beforehand.”
“No need, I’ve decided to…,” he began.
“Shibal,” I muttered softly, leaning forward to catch Roland as he slumped toward the stone floor. “What were you saying?” I asked aloud. When he didn’t reply, I answered myself, “He seems to have fallen asleep.”
Uttering a command word, I caused one of the disc’s invisible panels to disappear for a moment, allowing me to drag Roland forward and place him carefully inside. He had quite a bit of muscle on him, so I was forced to use more magic to lift and guide him inside, otherwise it would have been a very awkward struggle. Sitting next to him inside, I closed the panel, sealing us within the strange device.
I hadn’t counted on Roland’s fear of heights. My bravado had more trouble overwhelming my own good sense when I didn’t have an audience. What I hadn’t told him, was the fact that I had never actually flown this creation of mine. There had been some discussion with Penny, who had strongly discouraged my flying ambitions. She seemed to feel that flying was firmly the province of birds, and not something to be trifled with by the likes of man. She counseled me that my children needed their father and that if I were to survive a crash of any sort, she would make sure that whatever remained inside my injured body, got its own chance to see the outside world.
She could be very poetic.
In truth however, I probably would have gone ahead with my ideas, if it weren’t for the fact that the notion made me nervous as well. My wife’s objections merely put the final nail in the coffin. I didn’t consider myself afraid of heights per se, but I had a healthy respect for them, and from what I had read in the Illeniel library, many wizards had suffered unexpectedly quick ends to their careers while experimenting with flying.
Perhaps I should run through the basics. Historically, wizards had found a number of different methods to achieve flight, the most basic involved simply using magic to control the air around them, using it to lift and move them. A common variation of this included altering the wizard’s mass; making it easier to fly… this involved its own extra problems though.
A few individuals had accomplished the task in a far different manner, primarily by transforming themselves, either wholly, or in part, into various naturally flying creatures. Most of those individuals had been members of the Gaelyn family, whose natural affinity for transformation magics was well known. Gareth Gaelyn for example, was still living, so to speak, albeit as a dragon. His refusal to return to being human was one excellent reason I wasn’t particularly interested in that method.
The only other methods all involved a variety of devices, either temporarily enspelled or permanently enchanted to solve some of the problems that went along with flight. Some of the most spectacular deaths had resulted from a few of those ideas, and a number of amazing triumphs as well. Geoffrey Mordan had purportedly created a sort of giant kite that allowed him to glide through the air at great speed, while conserving his magical strength for use in propelling him through the air and controlling the direction of his flight.
In fact, many of the most successful devices were flown by members of the Mordan family, not necessarily because of any particular skill in enchanting, but because of their family gift, which happened to be a sort of intuitive teleportation. Most members of the Mordan line could teleport virtually at will to any location they were able to see. Those with the greatest gifts could also transport themselves to any place they had been before. While teleportation was technically possible for any wizard, only the Mordan family seemed able to manage it without working through a whole slew of mathematical calculations. They seemed to be born with an intuitive ability to handle the calculations subconsciously, while the rest of us were forced to do by hand.
Because of that ability, they were able to survive many of the mistakes that violently ended other wizards’ aspirations for flight.
Another amazing success had been one of my ancestors, Demandred Illeniel, who had built an entire sailing ship that could fly. He had been a skilled enchanter and had invested almost five years of his life into designing and constructing the massive vessel. It had been modeled after a carrack and had supposedly been over a hundred feet in length with three masts for sails. Demandred had suffered a number of setbacks before finally getting his ship ‘sailing’ per se, largely because flying and sailing were very different endeavors, but he had eventually managed to adapt his design until it was workable. The end result made him famous for a number of years, until he finally set off on an expedition to explore the unknown wilds of the world. He had never returned.
I hadn’t been particularly enamored with any of their designs. Geoffrey Mordan’s style seemed likely to get me killed, and I had no intention of spending five years building a massive floating ship as Demandred had. There was also the fact that his ship was limited to the speed provided by the wind alone.
My idea had been to create something simple that would enable me to fly in the manner of a wizard who wasn’t using any outside devices. What I had created was essentially an aerodynamic shell that would protect me from wind and give me a much larger surface to push against with the wind. I could have done something similar with a temporary spell to create a shield around myself, but this allowed me to keep my attention firmly on controlling our flight and propelling us through the air. It also circumvented the biggest problem Geoffrey Mordan had complained of, which was that at a certain speed the wind buffeting him made it difficult to breathe.
“I hope you’re ready,” I said to my unconscious passenger, and then I began a spell that would allow me to control the wind around us. I could have done it more easily by speaking with the wind directly, but I didn’t intend to use my abilities as an archmage unless my own strength proved to be insufficient.
Quelling the fear that suddenly sent my heart surging into my throat, I used the wind to send my invisible craft rushing up and out over the wide world. My own fears had kept me from doing it before, but desperation had finally provided the impetus I needed.
Holy shit! What have I done!? screamed my inner voice. I might have shouted the words aloud, but my jaw was clenched so tightly I could do nothing to open it. The world beneath us was vivid and bright, as though it had been painted by a giant with a mad passion for color. Blue sky, white clouds, verdant fields, and everywhere the sun reflecting from surfaces that refused to be bound by simple colors. Adrenaline had sent my mind into overdrive, and the world was infused with a clarity that we often talk about but seldom experience.
The sensation of movement, of acceleration, was incredible, and I knew in that moment that I had discovered a new passion. The first minute passed, and my heart rate began to return to something a bit closer to normal as we raced along, driven by a wind that my mind pushed ever harder, giving us a speed unimaginable.
A viewer from the ground would have seen two men, one sitting and the other lying flat, moving rapidly across the sky, if they had noticed us at all. I gained altitude and speed rapidly, putting ever more force into the wind so as not to lose the feeling of acceleration. My face brightened, as I experienced a feeling of pure exhilaration such as I had never known.
The earth below us was moving by lazily, despite our prodigious speed, and I found myself fascinated by the vast distance between us and the ground. I should get closer and see how fast it appears to move then, I thought. Adjusting the wind, I applied a small downward pressure