Way of the Wizard Page 9

  Mug said, “Yeah, okay.” He took the book, and paced away, opening to the first page. The sorcerer lifted his glass, and looked at the fire through the last drop of Mug’s self-delusion. The fire told him to empty his glass, so he did.

  By that night, Bill Mug had left on his quest. Good riddance, thought Minus and smiled when he noticed the air smelled like snow. He’d heard on the radio a blizzard was coming. It wasn’t until the next morning when he went to the pantry for eggs that the sorcerer realized his mistake. There was no food left and Mug had taken the car.

  It came to him instantly that he should never have taken Mug’s last drop. He pictured his gray employee, devoid of self-delusion, in the yellow sports car: top down, speeding across the continent with one hand on the steering wheel and the rifle in the other. “God help the spirit of Night and Day,” said Minus. And that’s when it began to snow.

  It snowed hard and constant, the drifts slowly burying the lodge, and Minus grew ravenously hungry.

  Not until the dark afternoon of the second day did he remember the wheel of Gouda. He’d kept it separate from the other provisions, in a locked trunk in his room. Even as he feverishly dialed the lock’s combination, he pictured what might happen when Axis returned and demanded payment. He thought of the rats taking Aswidth’s maid out through the mouse hole and shuddered, but by then he’d already opened the trunk, taken the cheese from its burlap sack, and bitten through the outer wax of the wheel.

  Surely the rat will understand, he thought each time he sliced the golden cheese. “Just a touch to keep body and soul together. Who could argue with it?” he’d say aloud and then listen long and hard to the howling of the wind. The snow rose, the days passed, the wheel, slice by slice, rolled into his stomach. All that Gouda and the loneliness and the dark days, the windows all covered by drifts, made Minus simple. He’d sit for hours before the fireplace, staring until it was dark and cold, his mind in an uproar from the effects of that indigestible drop of self-delusion.

  He thought of Mrs. Aswidth, who’d hired him to relieve Martin of some of his “bullshit,” as she put it. She was a statuesque, dark haired woman with a small chin. She wore tremendously high heels and met him for lunch at an egg and waffle place in the low-rent district.

  “Do you want him to see reality or your reality?" asked Minus.

  “He couldn’t see reality if it sat on his face,” she said. “Just do him.”

  Minus nodded. And woke later, shivering in the dark, wrapped in a blanket in the chair before the fireplace. His mind slipped and swirled into possible plots for Aswidth’s Night and Day. He saw space travel, a story of an alien world, a giant cave filled with cryogenic cocoons, and a dangerous creature at the mouth of that cave. He imagined deeply into this scenario—saw the star-studded black velvet of space, imagined a caretaker of the cocoons falling in love with one of the frozen sleepers, gazing on her face through an icy window—until Gouda cravings commanded him to rise.

  On the day after he ate the last half sliver of cheese, he looked up and noticed he was standing in a beam of sunlight coming through the front window of the lodge. He saw trees and grass outside, and upon seeing them, the howling of the wind abruptly disappeared from between his ears. He opened the door and breathed deeply, a warm breeze powdered with the scent of blossoms. He went to his room and dressed in one of his best Skip Minus get-ups, checkered slacks and a mohair cardigan, with Oxford loafers. Later that afternoon, as he sipped the last of the whiskey, sitting before the fireplace, he heard what at first he believed to be a hard rain. He looked to the window but the sun still shone.

  Axis appeared then, standing on the table, leaning against the sorcerer’s whiskey glass. “Mission accomplished.”

  Minus started at the sound of the rat’s voice. It took a moment to recover his composure. “Did you bite them all?”

  “Every one,” said the rat. “Reality is backhanding them as we speak.”

  “Were there any problems?” asked Minus.

  “They set some cats on us. We killed and ate them and took their fur for our nests.”

  “How was the weather . . . ?”

  “Forget the weather, I’ve got hungry troops to feed. The wheel of Gouda, please.”

  “The wheel of Gouda is elsewhere,” said Minus.

  “Where?”

  “I ate it. I was trapped by the snow. Mug took all of our provisions. “

  Axis shook his head and smiled, “Your strategy is weak, sorcerer, but you’ve still got a lot of meat on you. As I said, my troops are starving.” The rat nonchalantly gave the command and a furry wave of paws and teeth and tails rushed forward from the rafters to devour the flesh of Minus. The sorcerer, screaming, remained conscious through much of the repast and each bite was a sharp spell of agony.

  The eyes were reserved for Axis, and he had them served with mustard when the day was done. Their jellied reflection told him that Minus could have used enchantment to save himself but chose not to. “Fool,” said the rat. He bit down on the first eye and dust exploded into his mouth. “They didn’t call him Minus for nothing,” he said, spitting into the puddle of mustard and wiping his snout. The second eye, when bitten, gushed the drop of self-delusion and tasted sweet as a pineapple candy.

  Years passed and the hunting lodge was forgotten by whoever had owned it. The picked-clean skeleton of Minus sat in its chair before the fireplace. On the day ten years later when Bill Mug finally captured the spirit of Night and Day and minutes later willingly released it before blowing his brains out, the sorcerer’s jawbone fell off into his lap. On the evening when Axis was devoured by a swarm of locusts during the Battle of the Great Plains in the Insect/Rodent Wars, the rotted front chair legs gave out and dumped Minus’s skeleton in a jumble on the floor before the fireplace. The mohair cardigan was eaten, over a decade of summer evenings, by white moths. Weeds grew up through what remained of the planks and sprouted from the skull’s left eye socket. The roof collapsed, the rains came, the drifts of snow and weeds again.

  Everyone who remembered the sorcerer Minus eventually died. His bones were pulverized to dust by the tread of Time. It’s hard now to remember if he ever really existed or was merely some spell of enchantment, perhaps the dream of a space traveler asleep in a cryogenic cocoon. Or something far less: an act of subtraction, diminishing into the future.

  Charles Coleman Finlay is the author of the novels The Prodigal Troll, The Patriot Witch, A Spell for the Revolution, and The Demon Redcoat. Finlay’s short fiction—most of which appears in his collection, Wild Things—has been published in several magazines, such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Black Gate, and in anthologies, such as The Best of All Flesh and my own By Blood We Live and The Living Dead 2. He has twice been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has also been nominated for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Sidewise Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award.

  This next story draws us into Colonial America, a time and place where piracy ruled—even in the provincial government. After all, it’s a well-known fact that most flamboyant of American forefathers, John Hancock, made his fortune as a privateer.

  When Proctor Brown and Deborah Walcott, two young Quaker witches, set out on a mission for General Washington, they expect to use their powers to catch a spy, not a pirate. But when magic goes awry, the pair find themselves pulled into a pocket world of oceans, islands, and never-ending night. In this alternate corner of reality, nothing is as it seems, and while they have found their quarry, he proves just as enigmatic as the strange world they’ve entered. Is he another victim of this place’s magic, or a magician himself? And how can Proctor and Deborah discover a way out of a land that just might be . . . hell?

  In this tale, C.C. Finlay gives us new piece of his Traitor to the Crown milieu. It’s magic on the high seas—in a realm as dark as a pirate’s heart.

  Life So Dear or Peace So Sweet

  C.C. Finlay

  “Is lif
e so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”—Patrick Henry

  The Thimble Islands

  off the coast of Connecticut

  May, 1776

  “I don’t know how we’re supposed to see anything in this mist,” Proctor Brown said in the bow of the boat. The little one-sail wherry bobbed like a cork in a milky morning fog that obscured everything around them, including the British spy ship they were seeking.

  “If you shout a little louder, maybe they’ll hear you and call out where they are,” Deborah Walcott answered quietly behind him.

  Proctor bit his tongue on a reply. The implication to be quiet was a good one, especially since other searchers had gone missing when they chased the mysterious spy ship.

  Deborah’s sharp wit was one of the things that he simultaneously loved and found deeply frustrating. The other was not knowing where he stood with her. The murder of her parents before the Battle of Bunker Hill had complicated things between them, and the friends of her mother who had appointed themselves guardians and chaperones did their best to keep Proctor and Deborah apart.

  The tone of her voice had made it hard to tell if she was amused at him or angry, so he turned to read the clues in her face. It didn’t help. Even though only a few feet away in the middle of the boat, she was little more than a gray shadow.

  “Eyes forw’d, eh,” said the third passenger from the rear of the boat—a weathered privateer named Esek O’Brian. Like Proctor and Deborah, he’d been personally selected by General George Washington for this mission, though the three of them hadn’t met until Esek picked up Deborah and Proctor on a beach this morning. He was built like an iron anvil, equally suited to shape good purposes as ill, and had been a privateer and smuggler in these waters for thirty years. But all sorts of men had joined the Revolution, so Proctor hesitated to judge him.

  “Eyes forward,” Proctor answered. He leaned over the gunwale to watch for the dangerous rocks that lurked just beneath the slate-colored waves.

  A British warship had been seen several times lurking among the rocky Thimble Islands just off the coast of Connecticut. There was concern that the British were landing spies there, maybe even preparing to land troops. The American colonies had still not officially declared their independence from England and a dramatic victory by the British could bring it all to end.

  The colonies had sent several fishing boats and sloops out to find the elusive ship, but four of them had disappeared now without a trace. There were no sounds of battle, no signs of wreckage. People whispered that it was like magic, that even the fog was unnatural. Diverting more and larger ships to search would leave other parts of the coast unprotected.

  So General Washington decided that one small ship, too swift to catch, maybe too small to notice, might succeed where larger ships had failed.

  And just in case the whispers of magic were true, he sent along two witches to deal with it. Proctor and Deborah had already used their special talents to counter black magic in Boston before the Battle of Bunker Hill.

  A wave splashed over the side, the cold water soaking Proctor’s face, salt stinging his eyes. He was wiping his eyes when just yards ahead of them the water broke over barely submerged boulders.

  “Left!” he shouted, then remembered Deborah’s earlier comment about lowering his voice. “Rocks on the left.”

  “Port,” O’Brian said, not bothering to hide the contempt in his voice. “It’s port. Look out, miss.” He tugged on the sail-lines with the same ease that Proctor steered a team of oxen on the farm.

  Proctor turned to help Deborah, but she ducked easily under the spritsail as it swung over her head. He was chiding himself for always wanting to protect her—she had proven more than capable of looking after herself—when the boat tilted sharply and he had to hold on to keep from going overboard. As the boat skimmed past the hazard, O’Brian let the sail fall slack and they drifted where they were.

  “Fog’s a getting thicker, not burning off,” O’Brian said quietly. “Used to be able to see the islands here in the fog from the shadow of the trees. But the army cut down all the trees so there wouldn’t be any place to hide a mast. It didn’t help them, and now it’s not helping us.” He shifted in his seat, rocking the small boat, and the waves slapped harder at the sides for a moment. “So I understand that the two of you are folks with talents, eh?”

  Proctor tensed. Witchcraft was still a dangerous thing to discuss with strangers. “I can play Yankee Doodle on the fipple flute.”

  O’Brian snorted.

  “What were you told about us, Mr. O’Brian?” Deborah asked.

  “Esek,” he said. “Like Esek Hopkins, the privateer. I was named for . . . you’ve never heard of him, have you?” Before Deborah or Proctor could answer, he said, “Never mind. It’s Esek. Mister is for those what think they’re better than other folks.”

  He spat over the side of the boat. “I hear you’re a witch and he’s a wizard, or some such, but I shouldn’t be afraid of you because you’re both Christian. But not good Christians, ’cause you’re Quakers. Though either way, don’t make no difference to me. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. Saw a Chinaman in Macau who could make the cards in your hand change colors and move the gold in your pocket to his. Though that last part wasn’t magic as much as it was just playing cards. So call up a demon if you need to, as long as we find this British ship and I get paid.”

  “There will be no summoning of demons,” Deborah promised. “But I have been working on a focus for a finding spell.”

  Of course, Proctor thought. He figured they would find the ship first, then figure out the magic. Deborah planned more and improvised less. If he had to create a finding spell in a hurry, what would he use? “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Keep your eyes open,” she said.

  She bowed her head and folded her hands in prayer. Silence radiated outward from her and across the craft until even the waves lapping the wherry were hushed. “We hold this need in the Light,” she said. “Bring to light the hidden things of darkness.”

  She opened her palms like a flower and sat quietly.

  “Is that all there is to it?” Esek said. “ ’Cause the Chinaman, he—”

  “Give it a moment,” Proctor said.

  Deborah was powerful enough that she needed to speak a spell only once, and then hold it in her mind in silence. Proctor still needed a physical focus to channel his spells and needed to repeat it. Though he recognized the verse she had chosen from Corinthians, he was more familiar with the Old Testament and would have crafted a spell from Isaiah. As he stared at Deborah, waiting for her spell to take effect, he made a discreet drawing gesture with his hand for a focus and silently repeated the verse. Give us the treasures of darkness and the hidden riches of secret places, give us the treasures of darkness and the hidden riches of secret places.

  As the words ran through his head, a light—supernatural and numinous—bloomed like a spring flower in Deborah’s cupped hands. Esek flinched despite his earlier assurances, and the boat rocked. But Deborah breathed a little sigh of relief and poured her power into the tiny sphere of light.

  Proctor watched her, trying to follow how she did it. But faster than he could track, the light swelled and enveloped Deborah, clinging tightly to her body. Then, just when he thought that was all it would do, it speared outward from the boat like the mirrored beam shining from a lighthouse. It swept through the fog, casting light on one low-lying rocky island after another, each covered with tree stumps and waste, but nothing that could conceal a ship. As it came around the boat, the light, pearlescent and cool, passed over Proctor’s shoulder, setting all his hair on end, leaving its touch like dew on his skin even after it moved on. The light completed one circumference of the boat, then blinked out of existence as completely and abruptly as it had entered.

 
Deborah sagged, exhausted. “Did you see anything?”

  “Um.” Proctor realized he’d been watching her more closely than the beam.

  “I never seen anything like that before,” Esek said, and it was hard to tell if he was impressed or frightened as he craned his head around warily, but he rested one hand on the pistol tucked in his belt.

  “Better than card tricks?” Proctor asked.

  “I dunno ’bout that,” Esek said. “I still don’t see any ship.”

  “Maybe the flashing light scared it off,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.

  He regretted it immediately. Deborah looked at him from under the brim of her plain bonnet, and he could see the tension in the way she held herself. The spell hadn’t gone quite as she had expected, after all. But then, when you worked with supernatural forces, that was often the result. You never really controlled the power, you only channeled it. And like any channel, sometimes it overflowed.

  “We’ll be getting back to the old way of searching then,” Esek said, standing up to adjust the sail.

  “Maybe we should give Deborah another chance,” Proctor said.

  “These have been pirate waters for a hundred years,” Esek said. “Every pirate who was anyone has sailed these waters. I hid a cargo of smuggled tea here from British tax collectors once. But there are only so many places to hide, depending on your ship. Did they say if it was full-rigged or fore-and-aft—?” He stopped as the boat lurched beneath them. “What witchery is this?”

  The sail was slack but the boat moved against the current. Beneath the cold breeze coming off the water and the clammy touch of the fog, Proctor felt a tingle across his skin that told him wizard’s work was being done nearby.

  “It is not my doing,” Deborah said, and that worried Proctor more than anything.

  The sail snapped tight as it caught the wind, then shuddered loudly as the boat continued to push against it. Esek pulled out his revolver, but before he could do anything with it, the fog suddenly lifted.