The Shadow Stone ta-1 Read online

  "It's in your nature, Aeron. Almost anyone can learn a cantrip or two of the magician's art if they put their mind to it, but only a handful in a generation can become mages, and you have the potential to be a great mage. Magic comes naturally to you. Resist the call if you want to, but I don't think you will ever be truly happy if you do."

  "I'm content now, and I haven't cast a spell in months."

  "Are you? Are you truly content? Or do you feel lonely, out of place?" Fineghal smiled sadly.

  "Even if you are right, you know that I cannot risk casting a spell. I told you about the Shadow Stone and its effect on me. Anything I touch, I might destroy."

  Fineghal returned his gaze to Aeron. "Let's consider that for a moment. Tell me, what is 'elven' magic?"

  Aeron looked up. "The Weave," he answered automatically. "The forces of nature. The power of the elements-wind, earth, fire, and water-and also the intangible spark or spirit that lies within every living thing."

  "This is the essence of our magic, although many humans can also touch the Weave. But the Weave is not the only source of power in the world." Fineghal frowned and pressed his hands together, considering his words. "The Weave is a positive force, an energy that is creative and necessary to the order of things. Even events we view in a negative light-death, for instance, or the elements raging out of control in a forest fire or a great storm-are natural. The magic of the Tel'Quessir is bound by the circles of the world around us.

  "Yet there are forces from beyond the circles of the world, forces that seek to insinuate themselves into our own world and poison it. The Shadow Stone, I suspect, is a manifestation of one of these forces."

  Aeron shook his head. "I don't see what that has to do with me, other than to reaffirm my fears of trying to use magic. If the shadow magic is all I can reach, then it would be better if I did not cast spells at all."

  "Listen to me, Aeron. When I was young, long before the fall of Calmaercor, my instructors told me of creatures their own masters had fought in the very beginning of things. Many of the old elves possessed the gift of mage sight, as you do, and they reported that the fiends and sendings they battled used no magic that we could perceive or comprehend. We often wondered where these forgotten sorcerers and monsters had found their magical power. This is how I know that the Weave is not the only way in which a spell may be crafted."

  "I wonder if they knew the Imaskari," Aeron said quietly. "I learned that a few of the ancient human wizards gained the power to shape shadow magic by binding themselves to powers from the planes beyond their own. They sold their souls to master a sorcery no other beings of this world dared to touch."

  "I believe it could be so," Fineghal replied. "You have touched this, Aeron, but I cannot perceive it. It is beyond me. You, however, with your human blood and your human determination, may be capable of wielding this magic."

  "The shadow magic is evil," Aeron said emphatically. "Believe me, Fineghal, I know."

  The elven wizard fell silent for a long time. They listened to thunder booming in the distance as a storm gathered about the mountain peaks miles away and began to descend toward the Maerchwood.

  "Here is my thought," Fineghal said at last. "Magic is not 'good' or 'evil,' although some forms of magic clearly lend themselves more easily to noble purposes or sinister ones. As an elven mage, I can only perceive the Weave, the natural energy of the world around me. And since this is natural to me, it is hard to pervert into something innately evil. Similarly, magic derived from a darker source, such as the Shadow Stone, lends itself to fell purposes, and if that were the only magic one knew how to use, then eventually it would corrupt. But what if the truth lies somewhere in between?"

  "You believe that I may be able to find some balance between the two?" Aeron said. "I think you're mistaken. I don't have the strength to resist the taint of magic drawn from darkness."

  "Very few things are wholly good or wholly evil, Aeron. The dark Weave does not even exist for me. I cannot sense it or shape it to my hand. But you might be able to. And if this is the price you must pay for your magic, then so be it."

  "What if I fail? What if it masters me instead?" Aeron whispered. "I saw what the Shadow Stone did to those who set their hands on it."

  "You must decide if you are willing to take the risk." Fineghal sat down on a boulder across the path from Aeron and drew out his pouch of spellstones. "I see that you have lost your glyphwoods," he observed. "If you wish to, you may borrow my spell tokens again and begin to rebuild your collection of enchantments. I suspect there are few spells in my repertoire that would be beyond your skill now."

  Aeron wavered. He could sense that Fineghal's words had an elemental truth to them. The elven magics were not enough for him, but he feared the black, seething malice of the Shadow Stone. The road to wisdom and power lay somewhere in between. With a grimace, he reached out for a spell token. "We'll see how it goes," he said. He looked down at the pebble. It was marked with the sign for the charm of invisibility. It took only a few moments to commit the symbol to his mind, locking its potential like a line of poetry held ready behind his tongue.

  "You have the spell memorized?" Fineghal asked.

  "I'd forgotten what it feels like," Aeron replied. He hadn't had a spell readied in months. "Now what do I do?"

  Fineghal shrugged. "Cast it," he said. "With this spell, you normally weave from the spirit and the air. I do not know what other sources you may be able to tap."

  "Should I try to use the shadow magic?"

  The elf shrugged. "See what forces answer your call."

  Aeron licked his lips, closed his eyes, and muttered the syllable that unlocked the spell's power. He stretched out his senses, seeking the delicate threads and forces that he needed to weave the spell. Instantly he realized his perceptions had changed from his earlier days. Before he'd seen the life, the light, the energy of everything around him. He'd drawn on the motion of the wind, the strength of the earth, the life-force blazing within his own breast. But now, in his mind's eye, he perceived a black echo of each of these threads. The rock beneath him was old and fissured. The wind held the telltale imbalances of the storm brewing over the mountains. Even the vital flame of his own spirit guttered with uncertainty and the frailty of his flesh.

  Carefully he tried to avoid plucking the dark strings of energy, grasping only for the bright threads he'd used with impunity before. But as he seized the wind's sighing breath in his mind, he also gathered the anger of the coming storm. When he used the living energy of his mind to shape the spell, the darkness and doubt followed. Aeron struggled to disentangle them, but it was useless; light and shadow were intertwined, and the effort to part them was exhausting him. His heart thundered in his chest, and he gasped for breath, caught on the cusp of a spell that was indiscriminately drawing its power from his own body.

  "Aeron! Finish it!" Fineghal shouted from a great distance. "You cannot power the spell without the Weave!"

  In desperation, Aeron seized the dark with the light.

  Shivering with fear at the power he touched, he wove the invisibility spell and vanished from view. Shaking with fright, he held his head in his hands, trying to understand what had happened.

  "Aeron? Are you well?" Fineghal asked the night.

  "I … I think so," he answered. "Did it work?"

  "You wove the spell well. I cannot see you."

  "This is not so pleasant an experience as weaving a spell from nothing but the Weave," he said carefully. "It's like. . grasping a rose that cuts with its thorns."

  "Did you feel the stone's influence?"

  "In a sense, yes, but I suspect the Shadow Stone merely opened my eyes to something present all along. Maybe under the stone's influence a wizard is forced to accept only the dark forces of decay and corruption." Aeron felt his voice shaking. He was maintaining the spell, but it was not an unconscious effort.

  "So you did not tap any power directly from the Shadow Stone," Fineghal observed. "You simply use
d magical energy, both dark and bright, that exists all around us. I never suspected I stood so close to the shadow."

  Aeron ended the spell and took stock of himself. He seemed unhurt, although his hands ached with cold and his muscles were weak and watery. "So the stone is not the sole source of shadow magic. It serves as a magnet, a lens of some kind, blinding you to the living Weave of our world." He leaned back, staring up into the sky. "I can't imagine what I would have seen in the world around me if I'd been fully caught by the stone's curse. All the world would have been an open grave in my eyes."

  "What will you do?" asked Fineghal.

  "I think I will resume my studies," Aeron said. "But more carefully this time."

  The summer passed, lazy and golden, as Aeron worked out the forms and rules of the magic he now wielded. Fineghal helped where he could, but the noble elf was blind to half of what Aeron wrought. Aeron had to devise a new method for recording his spells, a new symbology and logic for casting them, and he had to learn how to use his power all over again.

  Two summers came and went. Aeron painstakingly defined the structure of his sorcery, the medium by which he could record and speak his spells, the techniques with which he could wield both the Weave and the shadow magic from the endless dusk. He moved carefully, setting aside his studies for weeks at a time to roam the forest with Fineghal or to visit with Kestrel and Eriale, spending days helping Kestrel with his woodcutting, trapping, and hunting.

  In his third summer with Fineghal, war swept through Chessenta. Cimbar and Akanax spent months battling in the rugged lands along the Akanamere, while their allies and supporters fought to a standstill elsewhere. Soorenar stood neutral, still husbanding its strength for the future. But the tide of conflict never ran as far south as Oslin, and the Maerchwood was undisturbed. Aeron wondered if Oriseus or Dalrioc had anything to do with the strife, but there was no way he could find out without returning to Cimbar, and he was not ready for that. He doubted if he ever would be.

  In the winter that followed the temporary waning of the war in the north, Aeron translated all the old spells he had once known by heart, rephrasing them so that they made sense to his symbology. He spent long, lonely weeks in the paneled libraries of the Storm Tower, transcribing his old notes. He'd been forced to abandon the glyphwoods; the old elven spell tokens could not encompass the magic he worked to master. Instead, he used written spellbooks after the style of the college, but he phrased the spells in his own cipher.

  Within the year, he mastered all the spells he had formerly learned from Fineghal and even worked out transcriptions of several spells he'd been taught at the college. Fineghal studied his writings intensely but could not make the leap to Aeron's unique symbology. "Your cipher seems meaningless to me," he told Aeron on one occasion. "Yet the structure seems familiar."

  "Elven magic accounts for the Weave, and so the glyphs and runes you've taught me work for recording part of my spells," Aeron explained. "But it does not account for the shadow magic, the powers of darkness and entropy that exist in the planes alongside our own."

  "You've found an answer, I trust."

  "That's what I've been trying to work out," Aeron said. "I've found that the notations and the logic behind magic as it's taught at the college are useful. The forms of human magic work, regardless of which powers are manipulated."

  "That is why your work seems familiar," Fineghal said. "It is derived from human magic. But if human sorcery is capable of wielding power from beyond our world, how do human wizards resist the corrupting influence of shadow magic and similar forces?"

  "Many do not," Aeron replied. "I believe a great portion of the magical lore that has become rite and rote for human wizards is shielding, protection against the darker influences that might otherwise swallow a mage. Sorcerers who are unwilling or unable to take these steps are devoured by their work. That is a road I don't want to walk."

  "You seem to have survived so far."

  "I don't think I'm the same person I used to be." Aeron closed his book and rose, pacing over to the window. "Everything is ambivalent now. I used to be able to tell the difference between strength and decay, between growth and sickness, but now I can't sense one without sensing the other. I can't find beauty anymore, Fineghal. There's always a flaw, a cancer in the rose."

  The elf lord was silent for a long time. "I had no idea you'd have to pay such a price," he said quietly. He set his hand on Aeron's shoulder and left him to his work.

  Late in the following spring, Aeron visited Saden for several weeks, helping Kestrel to clear some land and raise a sturdy new house to replace the simple cabin the forester had first built when he settled in the freehold. It cheered him to see how happy Kestrel and Eriale were, although it saddened him, too. He was reminded again of the loneliness of his chosen life. Aeron made up for it by throwing himself into the work, chasing the cobwebs and unsettled fears from his mind with hard physical labor.

  On the last night of his stay, they all enjoyed a fine dinner in the newly finished cabin with a handful of their neighbors. After the cider and ale were passed around, Aeron went outside and sat on the porch, gazing out into the woods. The door creaked open behind him, and he glanced up as Eriale joined him. "You don't care for company?"

  "I've become used to my own," he said with a smile. They shared a long silence, gazing up at the clear stars that glittered above the rustling trees. "You've done well," he said after a time.

  "I didn't know I needed your approval," Eriale laughed. "But thank you. I think so." She reached out and pinched his arm. "Do you have any thoughts of settling down?"

  Aeron frowned. "I am settled down."

  "All you ever do is study, locked up in that tower. What are you going to do when you finish your studies? What's the point of it all?"

  "I can't finish, Eriale. That's the nature of magic, of being a mage." He thought for a moment, seeking the words to express what he'd come to recognize over the last few years under Fineghal's tutelage. "I'm not an apprentice, learning a craft to earn my keep for the rest of my days. Magic isn't what I do; it's what I am, and what I'll always be." He laughed quietly. "You might as well ask me what I'll do with myself once I learn how to be human."

  "No one's meant to be alone, Aeron," Eriale said. "What did you do to deserve such a lonely existence?"

  "Even if I lived in a house in the middle of Maerchlin, I'd still be on the outside," he replied. "People fear what they don't understand."

  Eriale shook her head and looked away. "Do you ever wonder how things would have turned out if you hadn't met Phoros, Regos, and Miroch on the path that day? What you'd be doing now, what your life would be like?"

  Aeron glanced at her. "It never occurred to me."

  "Not once? With a mind as sharp as yours?"

  He closed his eyes and tried to picture it. He'd have stayed in Maerchlin, working Kestrel's land on the outskirts of the village. Maybe he would have finally escaped Phoros Raedel's notice when the young nobleman inherited his father's seat. He thought of the girls he remembered from Maerchlin, but he couldn't imagine being married to any of them. "I don't think I was ever meant to be anything but a wizard," he said at last.

  Fineghal and Baillegh were not at the Storm Tower when he returned, so Aeron returned to his studies. He was engaged in devising a new spell, and it quickly absorbed his full attention, so that he didn't notice for three more weeks that Fineghal had still not returned. This wasn't unusual; over the years he spent more and more time pursuing his own studies, while the elven wizard went his own way, but as each day passed, a vague unease settled over him.

  Finally, a month after his visit with Kestrel and Eriale, Aeron set out to some of the places he knew Fineghal often lingered. At first he followed a methodical pattern, moving from place to place to cover the most ground, but within a day, he felt he was being guided to one particular spot. At sunset of the second day of his search, he found himself standing on the ancient hilltop of Forest's Stonemantle, the s
ame place where he'd withstood Fineghal's test seven years before. Patiently he settled down to wait.

  His intuition did not disappoint him. As the dusk deepened and the stars emerged, Fineghal appeared, leaping gracefully from stone to stone as he ran up the path in his effortless stride. Baillegh bounded behind him, dancing with delight. "Greetings, Aeron. I see you received my summons," he called.

  Aeron scrambled to his feet just in time to meet Baillegh's playful rush. He scratched the hound's ears while she rubbed her head against him. "I didn't realize you wanted me," he said. "I'm afraid I delayed a day or two."

  "No matter." Fineghal settled himself on a boulder, a smile flickering across his face. He almost seemed to shine with the starlight, radiant under the night sky. The night was warm, with a steady breeze out of the east that carried the sounds and scents of the woods up to the rocky heights. The elf lord's gaze settled on Aeron. "Tell me, Aeron, are you content in this existence?"

  "Content?" Aeron blinked. "Magic challenges me in a way that I never could have imagined. It's a dark and silent path we walk, but I had no choice but to follow it."

  "What would you have done differently?" Fineghal asked. "Would you have stayed in Maerchlin to face Count Raedel's justice for wounding his son? Would you have allowed Kestrel to die in Raedel's dungeons, or remained in Saden instead of going to the college?"

  Aeron weighed Fineghal's words. "No," he said. "I don't think I would have made any of those decisions differently."

  "Then what does it matter if you had any choices or not? You would not have availed yourself of them. You would not be the man you are today if your life had followed a different road, so why waste time on regrets?"

  With a rueful smile, Aeron shook his head and sat down by the edge of the precipice. "I guess that in a thousand years you learn to accept the decisions you made in the past. If you had to bear the weight of every mistake you'd made over such a long time, you'd be useless."