The Sun Mage
The Isles of Esgarona, Chapter 2
The next morning Loucet went to see the wizard.
After what seemed like an endless flight of stairs, he came to a white villa at the top of one of the hills overlooking the city.
Pausing before the gates, he took off his cocked hat and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. The surrounding hillsides were dotted with oaks and juniper, and as he caught his breath, his nostrils filled with the scent of sagebrush and oregano. A few wisps of cloud passed overhead, guided by a gentle breeze. His gaze was drawn out and down, to where the peaks of the islands rose from the fog like gargantuan turtle shells. Not twelve hours ago, he had almost been dragged to his death amid those islands…
“They are calling to you,” said a voice.
Loucet turned, shaken from his reverie, to see a man with rich, cocoa-brown skin standing at the gate, smiling back at him. The man was of indeterminate age, with long, golden hair twisted into locks, and a shapely beard. He wore sandals and white robes trimmed with a gilded geometrical pattern. His eyes were extraordinary: glowing nuggets of gold. Such eyes, Loucet knew, only belonged to very powerful wizards.
“They call to me, too. Exquisite, isn’t it? The sublime. Like the sensation produced by great music. Or the yearning for a woman one loves, yet knows to be unattainable.”
The man walked slowly up to stand next to Loucet. Atop an ivory staff held nimbly in his ebon hand, a perfect crystal sphere reflected the sky in miniature, as if it contained the heavens within. The staff was the key to the Golden Tower of Irthun, and the man holding it was Archmage Salomen the Sun Catcher, whose craft was so powerful it could bend the essence of light itself to his will. Loucet felt his stomach tighten, and his loins ascend. He drew a bracing breath to steady himself.
The wizard sighed, and tapped his staff thoughtfully.
“It’s why I built my villa here,” he said at length.
“So you could always feel it?”
Salomen smiled enigmatically.
A short while later, Loucet and Salomen sat at a stone table in the villa’s garden, drinking glasses of orange juice. Occasionally, the wizard cast sparks into the glasses from his fingertips, which formed crackling pieces of ice, and sent condensation dripping down their hands.
A tiny waterfall trickled joyfully near their feet, scattering flecks of light across the alabaster walls. With his myth-sense, Loucet felt dozens of complex, interlocking spells at play among the flowers and lawns. He wondered how much of what he saw was mere illusion.
“I have been living on this hill above Esgarona for fifty years,” the wizard said, his eyes twinkling as they wandered across the travertine towers and red terracotta rooftops arrayed below. “I have watched the city grow from an ignorant backwater into a flourishing center of culture, knowledge, and beauty. They call it the ‘Jewel of the West,’ now, in Tyveria, did you know?”
Loucet did not find that hard to believe, having passed through the lively markets, vibrant gardens, and elegant arcades that morning on his way to the wizard’s home.
“My daughter lives down there. A quiet life. She is a scholar at the Academy.”
He grinned, every bit the proud father, and it seemed to Loucet that his paternal instinct applied to the city just as much as his own offspring.
Loucet had never met Salomen. Although he was a member of the Council of Irthun, Salomen had left the wizard’s city long ago, and participated in absentia. Like most, Loucet knew him only by his reputation: independent, reclusive, and uncompromising.
“It’s said in Irthun that you’ve devoted yourself entirely to Esgarona,” said Loucet. “That without your influence, the city would be nothing. That singlehandedly you opened the Southern Channel to maritime traffic, and the trade with the South that has brought such riches.”
Salomen offered the hint of a smile.
“I had the backing of the Republic, but it was my Arte that gave the sun’s fire to the lighthouses along the cliffs, and forced back the mists that befouled the channel. In that respect, I have some stake in the city’s prosperity.”
He had the look of a man who had fought hard, won, and was content with his bounty. Yet there was no mistaking the flicker of ambition in his golden eyes.
Loucet wondered, as he always did around a mages of high rank, how old Salomen was.
“It seems to me that very little can stand in her way,” said Loucet. “Especially with a mage of such power to watch over her.”
Loucet’s statement produced a strange effect. A shadow fell over the wizard’s face, spreading across it like spilled ink, and he seemed to age by twenty years in an instant. The sudden change made Loucet’s skin prickle.
“Would that that were true,” Salomen said. “Would that that were true.”
The mage fell silent for a long time, so long, in fact, that Loucet began to wonder if he had gone into some sort of trance. When Salomen finally spoke, his voice was strangely cold and distant.
“Are you prepared to know the purpose of your visit, Loucet, Inspector of the Magi?”
Loucet straightened, and placed the sweating glass on the table.
“I am, my lord.”
“Then…” The wizard lifted his staff, and a halo of golden light appeared at the edges of Loucet’s sight. “See.”
Loucet felt a wrenching sensation, then a flood of vertigo. The golden halo consumed his sight. In an instant, the world before him disappeared. Into its place rushed a stone tower, surrounded by a howling leaden sky. Loucet found himself standing high above a heaving sea. Waves thundered into white spray about his feet.
Loucet’s myth-sense told him that the wizard had used a powerful spell, but whether it was an actual teleportation or some kind of illusion, he could not tell. He looked about, blinking as the aura faded.
Salomen stood beside him, wind-whipped locks lashing about his face and robes rippling. The wizard raised a hand and pointed towards a shoreline of dark shale cliffs in the distance. A harbor lay nestled there below the towers of a city.
“That,” said Salomen, shouting to be heard over the tearing wind, “is Mournvelle, on the southern coast of Anchentaine. What do you see in that harbor?”
A cluster of masts was packed into the crescent enclosed by the harbor’s steep walls. Now Loucet saw that there were dozens of ships there. They were Anchen argosies, the mightiest vessels in the kingdom’s armada, and they were readied for war. Lines of soldiers marched towards them along the docks, and hordes of laborers struggled up their gangplanks bearing loads of provisions and armaments.
Loucet was on the verge of asking what this signified when a long, echoing shriek pierced the rolling boom of the waves. A winged shape fell from the clouds, sharp and cruel as a dagger. It wheeled down, wings spread wide, and landed on the deck of the Anchen flagship. The specks of soldiers on board scattered before it, their officers forced to bully them back to their ranks. The monstrous form had just settled itself on the deck when another fell from the clouds, and another.
“They have gryffins…” Loucet breathed.
“Hundreds of them,” Salomen said in a voice of stone.
The next scream came from immediately behind them, and made Loucet’s bones feel as if they were tearing out of his flesh. Before he could turn, a black shadow swept over the rocky pinnacle, and a massive creature swooped into view, swimming through the air like a shark through water. It had huge pinioned wings, like those of a sea eagle, and a grey feline body rippling with muscle.
The gryffin burst open its wings, catching the wind and twisting to face them. A raptor’s head and scythe-like beak came into view. Eyes like shards of topaz fixed on him, and Loucet was seized by an irresistible urge to run.
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the scene vanished. Loucet sat blinking in the sunlit garden of Salomen’s villa. All that remained of the dreadful vision was the lingering shriek of the gryffin, still ringing in his ears.
Salomen sat staring at him from across the table. The wizard’s visage was tranquil once again, but his gaze had turned to iron.
“Anchentaine has declared war,” said Salomen. “Those ships will make sail for Esgarona within the hour. Against such force, even a wizard can offer no protection. Esgarona is not a warlike republic. The gryffins will lay waste to our scant navy. They will plunder our towers, burn our libraries, and raze our academies to the ground. The men will be murdered. The children will be placed in bondage. And the women? Well…”
The wizard let the word drift like a raft in an empty sea. He fell silent, overcome with emotion. Loucet could only watch as his gaze roamed the beloved city in a torment of helpless frustration.
“What can I do, my lord?”
Salomen’s eyes leapt from the city and clung to Loucet’s.
“You can save her.”
“My lord? I have no Arte to match yours.”
“You have something greater,” said Salomen.
Loucet shook his head, confused. Salomen raised a hand for silence, and continued.
“On your passage from Rouvignon, no doubt you witnessed the Norven fleet? It was assembled at the behest of King Veselgrin, to whom I sent an urgent plea. His ships lie ready to fly to our aid.”
“But how could they reach us?” said Loucet. “With the shifting of the Restless Isles, the channel between Esgarona and Rouvignon is closed. To take a fleet through it would be utter folly.”
Loucet pictured the chaos that would ensue if warships tried to navigate the murderous, shifting, rock maze he had barely slipped through in the Smuggler’s tiny pinnace. But Salomen nodded, his eyes tempting Loucet to consider a further possibility.
“Earlier you commented on my opening the Southern Channel to trade by use of the Arte. I would do the same to the north.”
A soft snake of foreboding shifted in Loucet’s innards.
“But… That would involve cutting into the veil of the Restless Isles.”
“So it would.”
Loucet blinked, dumbfounded for a moment as he tried to comprehend Salomen’s meaning.
“Are you suggesting an alteration? Of… of the mythar?”
“I’m suggesting that we save this city.”
Salomen stared at him with uncanny intensity. Loucet felt as if he had become an insect, pierced by the pin of the wizard’s gaze.
“You have been given a very special gift, Loucet,” Salomen said at length, “a gift that appears but once in a generation. That gift is the key to our salvation. The myth-sense will allow you to go where even I cannot: into the Restless Isles, to the very heart of the mythar.”
So that was what Salomen had meant when he said Loucet had ‘something greater’ than his Arte. Even among wizards, the myth-sense was envied; it was mysterious, and all wizards envied that which they did not understand. Salomen drove on.
“Once you have found it, you will install an artifact of my manufacture, which I will use to reopen the channel. This is no time for half-measures, Loucet. All is to be gambled on this roll. Anything in my power or under my protection is at your disposal, whatever, whoever it takes. There can be no excuses, none of your self-righteous ‘swordsman’s honor.’ For if you fail, whatever the reason, all is lost. All I have worked for, all we have sacrificed to make possible here.”
Loucet was desperate for time to think, but Salomen’s gaze bore down on him. The wizard wanted a response.
“Is such a thing even possible?” Loucet asked.
“I have made it so.”
The wizard made a sign, and Loucet felt the tidal rush of a Summoning spell. He looked down to see that a lantern had appeared on the edge of the table. Within the housing was a queer light that burned but was not a flame, so bright that Loucet could not look at it directly.
And there was something more; a faint, numinous glow hovered about the lantern, in a spectrum beyond vision, only visible to his myth-sense. He had never before encountered a glow like that.
“Deliver this beacon to the heart of the Isles, and the veil will be pierced. Of this I am certain. I will then repeat the process I used to clear the Southern Channel.”
Salomen gestured to the lamp.
“The lights of my lighthouses, all springing from the same true seed, long to be reconnected, one to the next. That is their natural state. A chain along the northern coast has already been placed in wait, but they are not strong enough to penetrate the mythar and find one another. They are like lost children, waiting in the mist. Only when they see the beacon placed at the heart of the Isles can their lights be reunited, the channel cleared, and Esgarona saved.”
Salomen leaned forward, his eyes ablaze with righteous passion.
“This, Loucet of the Sword Class, Inspector of the Magi, is the task I have set for you. Nothing less than the survival of our city, and more, our way of life, is at stake.”
Salomen spoke with such clarity and conviction, but what he asked was impossible. Surely there must be something here that was lost on Loucet. Was it not always the case that the wizards of the Council saw further and more clearly than could their servants? Yet even as he doubted his instincts, somehow he knew he must express his misgivings.
“Forgive me,” he said hesitantly, “but would that not count as… as Interference? According to the Magelaw, an active myth—”
“Inspector,” Salomen interrupted him, “I have been tolerant of your questions thus far, out of respect for your reputation. But you would do well to remember your place. You are a servant of the Council whose prerogative it is to create the Magelaw.”
Salomen’s dark gold eyes darkened. There was danger here, and this was Loucet’s warning to steer clear. But an instant later, the menace vanished, and was replaced by a patient, fatherly air.
“Suffice it to say that the situation calls for extraordinary action, and that you have been chosen to carry it out. This is a chance for glory, and for honor, real honor, not the kind won in the streets by shedding the blood of fools.” Then, with a knowing smile: “I believe the Ivory Tower is paying special attention to what happens here.”
Loucet’s pulse quickened at that. The Ivory Tower meant Nystraea of Erebos, and by association her daughter, Yyara. Yet the wizard’s answer had done little to dispel his uneasiness. Questions hovered in the air between them, but before Loucet could voice any of them, Salomen reached out and placed his warm brown hand on Loucet’s shoulder.
“I have discussed this matter with the others,” said the wizard, in a reassuring tone. “My word is the Will and Doom of the Council.”
“I understand, Lord Archmage.”
“Very good. Your duty is clear?”
Duty. Loucet straightened himself and nodded, thrusting his doubts aside.
“Perfectly.”