Way of the Wizard Read online

  “It’s one reason,” she said. “Simon, this is important. Things are getting out of hand. Your family’s trying to incite a—”

  “My family?” he said. “Your brother—”

  “Malcolm,” she said cooly, “is a boor. A childish one. Ignore him. The only person he’s a danger to is himself. It’s your side that’s the threat. That’s another reason I can’t just run away with you, even if I wanted to.”

  Simon chuckled. “So you’re all that stands in the way of the mighty Franklin clan? You must think pretty highly of yourself.”

  “Well, maybe I do,” she said.

  “And yet Sebastian sickens every day.”

  “Which is sad,” she said, “but no fault of mine. Sometimes people get better and sometimes they don’t. You know that.”

  “Or maybe you’re not as powerful as you let on.”

  She stood. “Keep pushing me, Simon, and we’ll see how powerful I am.”

  He laughed again. “Is that a threat? You think you could beat me?”

  “I know I could.”

  Simon said, “I’m the one who unraveled the greatest spell of Victor Archimagus.”

  “Which is impressive,” Meredith said acidly. “Impressive that you’d waste so many years trying to match the egomania of a man you despise. But while you were busy with your precious tree, I was busy with all the other areas of study that I’m sure you neglected, including battle magic, so don’t take me on, Simon. It’ll be no contest.”

  He said loudly, “I made my ‘precious’ tree for you. For us. So that someday—”

  “Well I never asked you to!”

  They stood there in the darkness, angry.

  Then she said, “I think this conversation is over.” She added, more gently, “Rein them in, Simon. For both our sakes. If you ever loved me, rein them in.”

  She turned and strode off down the path, flanked by rows of poplars that stood like sentinels. And beyond her the garden wall, and beyond that the crest of the hill, over which loomed the long black limbs of Victor’s tree.

  When she was gone, Simon remembered that other night, long ago.

  “You can’t marry him,” he’d told her. “It won’t work out. You’ll never be happy. Meredith, you don’t have to go through with this, it’s not too late. Come away with me, now.”

  And she’d told him all the reasons why not, and asked him where they’d go.

  “I don’t know,” he’d said. “We’ll figure something out.” And when she’d refused again he’d said, “Well, I’m leaving. Tonight. No matter what. You can come with me or not. I’ll pack some things and wait for you in the garden, in case you change your mind.”

  And he’d stood there, by the marble bench, watching her window, as the night grew chill. He’d watched her lights go out, and then, later, when he knew she hadn’t changed her mind, he’d walked away, and never looked back.

  And now he strode down gravel paths, thinking over her reasons—again. In the end only one of them really mattered. Family. As he slipped out the garden gate, he paused to glare up at Victor’s tree.

  Just then there came a great cracking sound that echoed across the violet sky, and one of those branches tore free and tumbled down, plummeting to the earth.

  The following afternoon the Archimagus family gathered at their private cemetery on a hill overlooking Victor’s tree. The sky was a solid gray slate, the air thick and oppressive. A few words were said. Elizabeth wept ceaselessly.

  Simon avoided eye contact with Meredith, who was now the focus of near-unanimous suspicion from the children of Franklin. She kept her face devoid of expression. At one point during the service, from the back of the crowd there came a single soft guffaw, perhaps in response to some whispered remark. Bernard glanced back over his shoulder, in order to identify the offender. Simon didn’t have to look, he knew the voice. Malcolm.

  Bernard’s eyes were full of a cold, dead rage, and for a moment Simon half thought—and in that instant half hoped—that Bernard would go tearing through the crowd and disembowel Malcolm. But after a few seconds Bernard hunched his shoulders and turned back toward the grave of his son.

  The next week was stiflingly hot. Simon slept on a blanket on his balcony, and even so he awoke constantly, bathed in sweat. During the day most members of the Archimagus family congregated in the great hall, where the air was cooler, but even that expansive space began to feel cramped, as the children of Franklin and the children of Atherton vied for tables, jostled one another, and exchanged words.

  One afternoon there came a hurried knocking at Simon’s door. He opened it to find Garrett standing there, panting. The boy said, “It’s Malcolm. You have to come. Now.”

  Simon strapped on his sword, and followed Garrett down the stairs.

  When Simon arrived in the great hall, he saw Malcolm’s gang lounging at their accustomed tables, which were covered with an assortment of potted plants. Nearby stood a knot of young men from among the descendants of Franklin, including Bernard, who were glaring at Malcolm and his cousins and conferring angrily. The rest of the crowd, several dozen relatives, were evenly split between the children of Franklin and the children of Atherton, and the two sides eyed each other with open hostility. Simon hurried forward.

  “Simon!” called Malcolm then, with false cheer. “There you are. Come take a look at this.”

  Simon approached, wary.

  Malcolm nodded to the plant in his hand. “I’ve discovered the most delightful diversion, the perfect way to pass a hot summer’s day. An acquaintance of mine delivered these last night. They’re all the rage in certain foreign climes, I’m told.”

  Simon frowned at the plant, which was some sort of miniature tree with spindly limbs and dense, brushy foliage.

  Malcolm held up a large knife. “Here’s how it works. You shape these trees into the most elegant forms simply by removing branches you find undesirable. So, take this one here.” He poised his blade below one of the tree’s tiny branches. “I don’t like it at all.”

  He flicked his wrist and the branch fluttered down, landing on the toe of his boot. He kicked the branch aside onto the floor.

  Bernard began hurling curses. A few of his relatives herded him away, murmuring at him to just ignore Malcolm, who affected nonchalance as he leaned back against the table and remarked, “I guess he’s not a fan.” He returned his gaze to Simon and held up the knife again. “How about you, Simon? Want to give it a go?”

  “No thanks,” Simon said.

  “Pity.” Malcolm slipped the knife back into his belt sheath. “It’s quite fun.”

  “Well, I think you’ve had enough fun for one day,” Simon said. “So why don’t you take your little tree, and your little friends here, and move along. Now.”

  Malcolm smiled. “No,” he said airily, crossing one leg over the other, “I’m comfortable here.”

  “But here’s the thing,” Simon said, sketching a diagram in the air. “I can make you rather uncomfortable.” Pale blue smoke rose from his fingers. He was bluffing though. He had no intention of unleashing magic in a situation like this.

  And Malcolm knew it. He laughed. “You think you’re so scary. That’s why your mother summoned you back here, to frighten us. But you and I both know that if you harm me, my sister will destroy you.”

  Everyone in the room was watching. Malcolm stood up, so that he was eye to eye with Simon, and hissed, “It’s you who’s afraid. Because she’s good. The best wizard in the family. Too good for you.”

  That struck a nerve, more than Malcolm could know, and Simon felt a hot rush of fury.

  Malcolm called to the assembled children of Atherton, “You’re all afraid of him! Why? What’s he going to do?” He shoved Simon in the chest, forcing him back a few steps. “Huh? What’re you going to do?”

  Simon glared, smoldering.

  “Ha,” Malcolm said, turning away. “You see—”

  Simon launched himself at Malcolm, tackling him to the ground.r />
  The room erupted with shouts, as Simon straddled Malcolm and belted him several times across the jaw. Malcolm clawed for Simon’s face, but Simon swept those arms aside and punched him again.

  Then Malcolm went for his knife.

  He drew it from its sheath and waved the blade at Simon, who grabbed Malcolm’s wrist and slammed it against the floor, once, twice, to jar the weapon loose.

  Then Simon was flung aside, onto his back, by Bernard, who had a rapier in his hand. As Simon watched, Bernard drew back the sword, then skewered Malcolm where he lay.

  No! Simon thought.

  He rolled to his feet. Weapons were being drawn all around him.

  “Wait!” he cried. “Stop!”

  But it was too late. The children of Franklin and the children of Atherton came together in a clash of steel. Malcolm’s gang rushed Bernard, who backed off, slashing at the air to keep them at bay. Simon drew his own sword and leapt to help. Malcolm, hacking up blood, was dragged away from the fighting by one of his cousins, Nathan—a stolid young man who for whatever reason had always been fiercely loyal to Malcolm.

  Simon ducked and cut and parried. He didn’t use magic—he might need all the magic he could muster to defend himself against Meredith, he knew—but some of his relatives let loose with spells, and there were occasional flashes of light and small explosions. The whole chamber convulsed with violence, generations’ worth of rivalry and mistrust unleashed at last, there in front of the shrine to Victor Archimagus. Soon Simon’s blade was slick with blood, his hand sticky with it. Faces appeared before him—angry faces, faces he remembered from childhood, faces he hadn’t spoken to in years, and he thrust his sword at them.

  Sometimes one of the descendants of Franklin fell—Simon saw Garrett cut down by one of Meredith’s uncles—but more often the casualties were among the descendants of Atherton, and soon many of them lay strewn across the floor, trod on or tripped over by the remaining fighters. Then the children of Atherton broke and ran, retreating pell-mell up the great staircase that led to their branch.

  Meredith, Simon thought. He had to find her, though whether to protect her from his family or to protect his family from her he couldn’t say.

  He followed along as the children of Franklin pursued the children of Atherton up into their branches, many of which had now withered and fallen, with no male heirs left to sustain them, and Simon saw one of Meredith’s cousins cornered and slain while pounding at a solid wall that had been an archway just moments before. There was nowhere for the children of Atherton to go except higher into the tree, no way for them to escape except a doomed leap from a window or balcony.

  As Simon hurried through the chambers of Meredith’s grandfather, he heard a handful of men from among the children of Franklin shouting, “This way! They’re up here,” and the men went charging through an archway and up the stairs into the branch of Meredith’s uncle Kenneth, Nathan’s father. Simon followed.

  He caught up with the men just as they burst into a large parlor, at the far end of which stood a group of people clustered around Meredith, who knelt over the prone form of Malcolm, her hands pressed to his gory chest as she attempted to heal him. Meredith’s mother was there, and a few cousins by way of her uncle Fletcher, and a few other relatives, many of them holding swords. Nathan stood by a window, gazing out. “No!” he cried. “No! It’s falling! It’s . . . it’s gone.”

  Meredith sagged. Malcolm’s branch had withered. He was dead.

  Nathan glanced toward Simon, then drew a sword and moved to Meredith’s side. Simon eyed him. Nathan’s brothers had been slain in the battle downstairs. And his father. Simon had seen the bodies.

  Meredith stood then, turning to regard Simon. She was tall and grim and wrathful, her hair dancing on ethereal winds, arcs of lightning adorning her fingers, eyes full of a fiery hatred. Simon beheld those eyes and knew there could be no more pleading, no more chances. His dreams had died along with Malcolm.

  The men beside Simon hesitated, reluctant to confront the family’s most powerful sorceress, and Simon didn’t blame them. “Get out of here,” he told them. “Go. I’ll handle her.”

  The men exchanged glances, then fled.

  Meredith strode forward, deathly silent. Don’t take me on, she’d told him. It’ll be no contest. He was terribly afraid that she’d been right.

  She halted in the center of the room, her arms outspread. “I warned you, Simon.” Her voice trembled with rage. “You brought this on yourself—so help you. You think you can face me? Well, here I am. Take your best shot. You won’t get another.”

  One shot at this, Simon thought.

  He thrust his palm at her, hurling from it a double dozen points of magical light, which spread apart as they flew, growing larger and transforming into spinning daggers, so that she faced an incoming wall of lethal blades.

  Meredith raised her hands, summoning a glowing ghostly shield. Daggers that struck it vaporized, and the rest sped past her. She regarded Simon almost with pity then.

  He turned and bolted back down the stairs.

  “Coward!” someone cried.

  And Simon was afraid. But not of Meredith, not then, as he vaulted the steps three at a time.

  For some of the daggers that had passed her by had impaled themselves in Nathan, including one that had caught him full in the throat. Meredith would see this, and would guess that he’d been the intended target after all, and would wonder after the fate of his father and brothers. And then she’d realize . . .

  Simon ran. The branch around him shuddered, the wood fading, becoming dry, gray, pitted. Through the windows he saw leaves turn brown and blow away in great dark clouds.

  He neared the archway. A rift appeared in the ceiling ahead, spilling down rays of sunlight between him and safety. As the floor gave way he leapt across the threshold.

  A deafening crack. He turned and saw Meredith, back up the tunnel, dashing toward him, dragging her mother by the hand, other relatives running at her side, as the branch plunged from view.

  Simon rushed forward, to see what had become of them. But even as he tried to peer out, the archway, now framing blue sky, was absorbed back into the tree, and wood grew to seal the breach, and the portal shrank and shrank, like an eye closing itself, forever.

  A few days later the Archimagus family gathered at their private cemetery to hold a mass burial. The battle had been distinctly one-sided, and the children of Atherton were now a much smaller contingent. They stood in silence, looking weak and frightened. As per the terms of their surrender, they’d accepted full responsibility for the whole unpleasant affair, had handed over all their weapons and valuables, and would soon be exiled. Simon wondered where they’d go. They’d lived their whole lives in Victor’s tree. Simon couldn’t picture them anywhere else.

  After the ceremony, as people drifted off, Simon lingered over the grave marker that read Meredith Wyland.

  His mother sidled up beside him and said, “I knew you could beat her.”

  He was silent.

  She added, “We’re safe now. Thanks to you.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder at Victor’s tree, its two halves now absurdly unbalanced. The sun shone between its branches, making Simon squint.

  His mother said, “I just hope now you’ll be happy.” She began to walk away.

  He called after her, “What does that mean?”

  She paused and looked at him, then at the grave marker. “You know, Simon, that dreadful girl always had a most unwholesome influence on you. That’s all.”

  He said slowly, “Mother, I have a terrible intuition that much of what has transpired of late has done so according to some design of yours.”

  “Of mine, dear?” She laughed. “Oh Simon, you always were such a brooding, mistrustful child. I blame myself. Silly, I know.”

  She turned away again. He was about to say more when there came a horrendous creaking noise that filled the valley. As the Archimagus family watched, aghast, Vic
tor’s tree began to list to the right, from the weight of so many Franklin branches. Then the tree toppled, slamming to the ground, dashing those branches to pieces and raising up a massive plume of dust that could be seen for miles.

  Simon Archimagus galloped his horse along a moonlit ridge. He’d been going on more and more of these solitary rides lately. He liked the calm, the peace. When his horse ran, its hoofbeats and the wind sometimes drowned out his thoughts, for a time.

  Finally he rode back to his tree—the tree he’d thought to one day share with Meredith and the children they would have together. Sometimes, on nights like this, as his horse sprinted through the dark, reality seemed less certain, and he would imagine that it had all been a mistake, that she’d survived somehow, secretly, and would come to him. Or that their duel had been just a terrible nightmare, and that his dreams of a life with her were the true state of things.

  He passed through the gate, beneath the portcullis of thorn branches, and into the stables.

  He made his way up the staircase.

  “Dad!” called a boy’s voice. “Dad!”

  Simon wandered into the kitchen. A blond boy poked his head through the door and said, “Oh, hi Simon. Have you seen my dad?”

  “No,” Simon said. “I just got back. Is something wrong?”

  The boy scowled. “Jessica took my horse and she won’t give it back.”

  “Your . . . horse?”

  “My toy horse,” the boy said. “Dad gave it to me, and I told her not to touch it, but she took it and now she won’t give it back, even though it’s mine.”

  Simon said, “Well, maybe you should just—”

  “I should kill her,” said the boy, without irony. “Like you killed that evil witch Meredith.”

  Simon stared. “Look, Brian—”

  “I’m Marcus,” the boy said.

  “Marcus.” Simon sighed. “Let’s go find your dad, okay?”

  The boy trailed Simon through halls and up stairs. Books and toys were scattered about. Sometimes children barrelled past, heedless.

  Simon found the adults up at the top of the tree, lounging on the balcony. Bernard was there, and Elizabeth, and Simon’s other brothers, and a few other relatives. It’s only temporary, Bernard had promised, just until we can find someplace else to live. But they showed no signs of moving on, and had even begun hinting to Simon that he should command his tree to grow larger, to better accommodate the children.