With a Single Spell

CHAPTER 6

Long Wharf, Tobas discovered, was indeed very long; it wound its way in from the deep waters of the Gulf, across the shallows and rocks around the western lighthouse, and split into two diverging causeways just short of the high-water mark. He chose the more traveled route and turned left, toward the southeast.

The smell of the sea and the constant splashing of wavelets against the stone piers were quickly buried beneath the thick odor and steady clatter of the city. Ethshar’s smell was compounded of fish cooking over charcoal in a thousand kitchens, the wood of a thousand homes slowly decaying in the harbor’s damp air, and a myriad of other human activities, leavened with spices and perfumes that gave it a strange and exotic tang, and blessedly free of the outhouse aroma that clung to most human settlements; the city boasted an efficient sewer system.

The causeway Tobas followed curved to the east and quickly became a street along the water’s edge, lined with shops and taverns and brothels on the right and open to the sea on the left, with an occasional dock or wharf jutting out into the water; he wandered along aimlessly at first, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells.

The brothels caught his eye immediately; where the shops and taverns relied on signboards and window displays to attract customers, the handful of brothels, although they also had signboards, were distinguished by balconies above the doors, where comely young women, and sometimes young men as well, leaned over railings, occasionally calling suggestions to potential customers. They wore attire not quite like anything Tobas had seen before, tunics cut low across the breast, skirts that clung to the hip enticingly, hems cut at a slant to display one ankle, all of expensive-looking fabrics, soft and shiny, or filmy, or glittering with golden threads.

Telven had no brothels. Although Tobas had heard that Shan on the Sea had half a dozen, he had never come across them in his few brief visits there. He had never given such establishments much thought before, but here they were hard for a newcomer like himself to ignore. Some of the women were very tempting, but of course he had no money.

He noticed, also, that some of the women were older, than they had appeared at first glance and that no customers were to be seen going in or out; business was obviously not good.

By the time Tobas paused to consider his destination, he had lost sight of everyone he knew from aboard ship. Overawed as he was by the city’s unfamiliarity, he could not bring himself to ask passing strangers for advice. Even strangers were in fairly short supply; this was obviously not a thriving neighborhood. Most of the spaces at the docks were unoccupied, and maintenance of the port facilities was clearly not what it should be. He wondered whether the actions of privateers back in the Free Lands had anything to do with the empty slips and shuttered shops, had trade suffered that much from their depredations?

He shivered. If the pirates were to blame and anyone here recognized him as a Freelander, his life would probably be short and unpleasant.

He considered going back to the last brothel and asking the women on the balcony for directions, but could not quite get up the nerve. Instead, when he came to a particularly large wharf that did not seem as badly decayed as the others, he turned right, onto the street leading directly inland from the docks. He did not care to stay on the waterfront, under the circumstances; sailors would be far more likely to recognize his accent, if they heard it, and to do something about it, than would people who remained safely ashore.

He walked silently along two long blocks lined with warehouses and shipfitters’ shops, marveling at the size and splendor — and age! — of the buildings and at how very straight the street was, then found himself emerging into a market square.

Unlike the waterfront shops, the market was far from deserted; shipping might be poor, but the difficulties did not appear to have reached two blocks inland as yet. Knots of men — and a sprinkling of women and children — were scattered thickly across the hard-packed ground, and the air around him was awash in their conversation, as loud and constant as a heavy sea breaking on rocks. A good many wore the blue kilts of sailors, and most of the others had on tunics and breeches no different from the everyday garb in Shan on the Sea, but a few were clad in strange and fantastical gowns, robes, jewels, furs, odd caps, or leather harness. Tobas was not sure what to make of these.

A strong smell of spices hung over everything, more heavily than in the streets he had previously traveled, though he could find no source for it; he guessed it came from the surrounding warehouses.

He saw relatively few booths or carts displaying goods, and those which he did see held not grains and produce, as he was accustomed to finding in markets, but rope samples, ironmongery, candles, or other hard goods, generally of varieties that would be useful aboard ship.

Most of the market, however, was taken up with people clustered about individuals with no visible goods at all. Some of these stood on boxes or stools; others made do with the ground.

Curious, Tobas stepped up to the back of one group, composed mostly of sailors, and listened.

“...further, you need have no fear of passing the Pirate Towns!” the man was saying, “because we will have aboard not one, but two magicians of the first order, the incomparable Kolgar of Voider, wizard, and Artalda the Fair, warlock! Either one of these mighty enchanters can easily defend the ship against the best the pirates can throw against us, and they will be sleeping in alternate shifts, so that at no time can our vessel be caught by surprise! A minimum of risk for a maximum of gain, all the wealth of Tintallion there for the taking! Who among you will sign aboard the Crimson Star for this voyage?”

“Where’s her old crew?” one aging sailor demanded.

“Ah, my friend,” the recruiter replied, “you haven’t been listening! The Crimson Star is a new vessel, fresh from the shipyards!” He waved a hand toward the west, which Tobas assumed to be the direction wherein lay the shipyards. “Who will sign?”

The old sailor turned away and saw Tobas at the outside of the crowd. “Don’t listen to him, lad,” he said. “Tintallion’s a cold and miserable place and no richer than we are here.” He stalked off.

Tobas had had no intention of signing up for a journey to Tintallion; he, too, turned away, but only to move on to the next group.

That group was listening to a similar harangue; this recruiter claimed he needed only three skilled sailors to replace men lost in a storm. The third was different, a soldier in a yellow tunic and red kilt was announcing, in a loud but bored and monotonous voice, various recent decisions of the city’s overlord, Azrad VII, that would affect the shipping industry.

The fourth group centered around a young woman in a flowing gown of white velvet, the hem spattered with mud; her hair was bound up in a manner Tobas had never seen before, held in place with jeweled clasps. She claimed to be a princess, apparently, and sought brave young men to restore her to her rightful inheritance in some place called Mezgalon, whence she had been driven by treachery and violence. Tobas stared in fascination; he had never seen a princess before. Her story sounded much like some of the more lurid tales he and Peretta had heard as children at her mother’s knee; he found it hard to take the woman seriously.

For one thing, quite aside from the difference he had always assumed to exist between fiction and reality, this princess did not quite fit the mental image he had always had of princesses; despite her finery, she was plain-faced and flat-chested, with an unpleasantly nasal voice and a singularly ugly accent. Some of the whores on the waterfront had looked more like the traditional storytellers’ description of a princess.

Well, Tobas told himself, not all princesses can be beautiful, can they?

It seemed very odd to be in a place where anyone could even claim to be a princess; he wondered if perhaps some of the old stories he had taken for mere tales were truer than he had thought and seemed like fantasy to a Telvener only because Telven was an exceptionally dull part of the World.

Tobas moved on, intrigued by the idea that there might be far more to the World than he had realized. Perhaps, he thought, he would find an opportunity here that would be better than trying to make a living off wizardry. It seemed unlikely, but it might be possible.

The next group was again recruiting for a ship, and the one after that hiring miners to work in the diamond mines of Tazmor; Tobas began to lose interest. This was all very well, but none of it was getting him anywhere. These job opportunities were not what he wanted, and he berated himself for his momentary foolishness in thinking he might find anything worthwhile here. He had no money, no food, no place to sleep, and the afternoon was already on the wane; he had done nothing about learning more spells. If he really wanted to, he could come back here later; right now, though, he had more urgent matters to attend to.

What could he do, though? He had not thought this out in advance. He cursed himself for wasting all the time aboard ship that he could have spent thinking and planning for every eventuality.

He had no money, so he could get no food or shelter save by stealing or by selling something. He had nothing to sell save himself and his single spell and he was not yet desperate enough to sell himself into slavery — nowhere near it! — and could not imagine why anyone in this vast and wealthy city would want fires lit by magic. He might find work of some sort — would have to, he supposed — but all the recruiters in this particular market appeared to be hiring for work outside the city, usually dangerous or unpleasant, and he was not yet ready to leave the city, nor desperate enough to sign up for anything that might get him killed. He would prefer to learn more spells, somehow, and become a proper wizard. To learn more spells he needed a teacher, and surely, if there were wizards anywhere in the world, there would be wizards in Ethshar of the Spices!

And that brought him to his one feeble hope of establishing himself without immediately having to undertake any hazardous or strenuous work. He could appeal to his Guild brothers, tell them his tragic tale, and hope that they could spare him enough to keep him alive until he could find a worthwhile position.

They might even teach him more spells at no charge.

First, though, he had to find them. Gathering up all his nerve, he tugged at the sleeve of a man listening in amusement to a particularly incoherent speaker.

“Excuse me, sir,” Tobas said when the Ethsharite turned, “but I’m newly arrived... ah, from Tintallion. Could you tell me where I might find a wizard?”

“Wizard Street, I suppose.” The man stared at Tobas’ rather worn and dirty clothes with obvious disdain.

“Of course, sir, I should have realized. Ah... how do I get there from here?”

The Ethsharite smiled unpleasantly. “I’ll be damned if I know,” he said. “That’s not my part of town. The Wizards’ Quarter is all the way across the city, down by Southgate.” He pointed in a vaguely southeasterly direction.

Tobas thanked him and looked about. Seven streets radiated from the marketplace: three to the north, one each east and west, one to the southwest, and one to the southeast. He chose the last and began walking.

After half a dozen long blocks of shops, tenements, and warehouses, he found himself in another market, this one a long, narrow triangle pointing to the south, with its eastern side open to a canal. This market was more traditional than the other; piles of goods were on display on all sides, and no one in the milling throng was making speeches, though a raised wooden platform stood empty on one side. The goods were obviously freshly arrived by ship, furs, fabrics, jewelry, carvings of stone and wood, and boxes, jars, and bottles of herbs and spices.

That meant, Tobas realized with a shock, that he was still in the waterfront district, Shiphaven, the sailors had called it, when he had walked a distance as great as the entire width of Shan on the Sea. The depth of the city, as seen from the ship, had been no illusion. He marched on, deeper into the metropolis.

The streets leading out the south end of the second market were a confusing tangle, and Tobas found himself doubling back and going in directions he did not care to go before he finally emerged onto a broad avenue running due south. He followed this for a few blocks, then paused when it crossed another avenue just as broad and busy, full of the clatter of cartwheels and the acrid smell of hot metal from somewhere farther on.

By this time the shadows were beginning to lengthen; where the buildings topped four floors, their shade reached clear across the avenue and partway up the faces of the structures on the east side. Tobas was hopelessly lost and knew it. Reluctantly, he tugged the sleeve of a strolling passerby and again asked for directions to Wizard Street.

The Ethsharite, richly clad in black velvet, smiled at the ignorant foreigner and explained, “Follow High Street through the New City, then turn southeast on Arena Street, and about a quarter of a mile past the Arena you’ll see the signboards.” He pointed east along the cross avenue to indicate High Street.

Tobas thanked him profusely and set about following the directions.

By the time he arrived at his destination, he was tired, hungry, footsore, and convinced that he could not be surprised by anything else the city might have to show him; he had walked past mansions and collapsing slums, past the huge arena, among people of every description, for a greater distance than he had imagined could be enclosed in a city’s walls. The sun was invisible behind the buildings on the west side of the street, and the sky above them dimmed to red, when he finally reached Wizard Street, just in time to see torches and lanterns being lit to illuminate signboards and storefronts.

He knew Wizard Street immediately, beyond question; he had passed any number of signboards that afternoon, but none like these.

At a corner a broad green board announced, “TANNA the Great, Wizardry for Every Need, Love Charms a Specialty.” The next shop proclaimed in red letters on peeling gold leaf, “Alderamon of Tintallion, EXPERT WIZARD”; a third was labeled “THORUM the MAGE, Love Charms, Curses, Sundry Other Spells.” Similar advertisements hung on every shop on both sides of the street for as far as he could make out the writing. Strange sounds, thumps, and flutterings, trickled from the surrounding shops; colored lights flickered eerily in one nearby window, and a smell resembling fresh lye soap, but somehow not exactly right, reached him.

Tanna the Great sounded slightly intimidating, so Tobas skipped by that door and knocked at the next, beneath the board announcing Alderamon of Tintallion. He hoped, also, that a fellow foreigner might not be upset by a Freelander accent.

The door opened to reveal a large, middle-aged man wearing a black tunic, brown suede breeches, and a carefully trimmed reddish beard. An odd, squarish black cap adorned his head and, Tobas guessed from the visible expanse of gleaming brow, hid a sizable bald spot.

“May I help you?” he asked.

“I hope so,” Tobas replied. “I’m a wizard myself — sort of — and I’d like to ask a favor.” He looked hopefully up at the red-bearded wizard.

Alderamon stared at the stranger for a moment, seeing a ragged and exhausted youth plainly on the brink of despair. He stood aside. “Come in,” he said, “and tell me about it.”

The interior of the shop was draped in red velvet and gold brocade, and furnished with three low black tables and six velvet-upholstered chairs. Tobas noticed, even in his weary state, that the upholstery looked somewhat worn; he could not decide if that was good, because it meant the man had a lot of customers and was therefore presumably a success, or bad, because it meant that he was too poor or too lazy to pay for new fabric.

It was clean, at any rate.

At Alderamon’s invitation, he sank into one of the chairs, infinitely relieved to be off his feet; the wizard sat across the table from him.

“A little wine?” he offered.

“Yes, please,” Tobas agreed.

The wizard rose again and vanished through a draped doorway at the back of the shop, to emerge again a moment later with a tray bearing a decanter, two glasses, and a few small cakes.

“I’m afraid the cakes are a bit stale,” he apologized.

Tobas saw no need for the apology as he wolfed down all but one of the cakes and drained a glass of thin golden wine.

When he had recovered himself somewhat, he sat back, a little shamefaced at his display of ill manners, and tried to think of the best way to begin.

“You said you’re a wizard?” Alderamon prompted.

“In a way; I was apprentice to Roggit of Telven, but he... he died, before the apprenticeship had gone very far.”

“Oh? How far had it gone?”

Tobas was too tired and desperate to lie. “A single spell; he taught me one spell.”

“Which one?”

“Thrindle’s Combustion.”

“Hmmm.” Alderamon stared at him thoughtfully for a moment, then asked, “May I see your dagger, please?”

Puzzled, Tobas drew his athame and handed it to the wizard.

Alderamon drew his own knife and very carefully touched the two blades together, point to point.

A sharp crack split the air; multicolored sparks showered the table, and an odd smell that reminded Tobas of the air after a heavy thunderstorm filled the room. “I didn’t know it would do that!” he exclaimed.

“Now you know,” Alderamon said, as he handed back the knife. “You are indeed a wizard, beyond question, since you own a true athame. An athame has many special properties, including that sensitivity to others of its kind; even the experts don’t know everything an athame will do.”

“Roggit never told me that; he just said that I would need it for most of my spells and that it was the mark and sign of a true wizard.”

“It is that and rather more; did you know that so long as you touch its hilt, you cannot be bound? No rope or chain can hold a wizard so long as he has his athame. Touching the points, as I have just demonstrated, will tell you whether another knife is an athame or just a dagger, and thereby whether its owner is a wizard or a fraud; the intensity of the reaction varies with the proximity of the rightful owner, so that, had you stolen the knife from him who made it, the noise and sparks would have scarcely been noticeable.”

Tobas was fascinated. “Really?”

“Really.”

Tobas stared at the dagger in his hand for a long moment, then recalled himself and returned the blade to its sheath.

“Now, you say your master died after teaching you only one combustion spell?”

“Yes.”

“When was this?”

“He died about three sixnights ago.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” Tobas admitted reluctantly.

“And in five years he taught you just one spell?”

“Ah... I was older than twelve when he took me on, and he was a very old man, slow to teach me.” He stared at the worn floorboards, wondering what Alderamon would do about this confession of unforgivable irregularities in his apprenticeship.

“Oh, well, it’s none of my concern,” Alderamon said. “What’s done is done, and you’re a wizard now, however it happened. What do you want of me?”

“Well, I’m alone in the world now, my parents are dead, my master is dead, my cousins have thrown me out. I was hoping that the Wizards’ Guild would take care of one of its own and help me out. I have no money, no place to stay, and no prospects as a wizard with a single spell. Could it be arranged that I be taught more spells, so that I can earn a living?”

Alderamon stared at him for a moment. “Why did you come to me?” he said at last.

“You were the first wizard I found,” Tobas replied.

Alderamon shook his head. “Boy, I am no Guildmaster, no member of the inner circles, if there truly are any inner circles.”

“But you’re a wizard, a member of the Guild!”

“Well, yes...”

“Can’t you help out a fellow wizard, then?”

“It’s not my problem, lad; why should I burden myself? The Guild has done little enough for me over the years, and you’ve done nothing for me at all.”

“I’d do anything I can for you, in exchange for being taught more spells, but what is there that I can do?”

“Nothing, that’s just the problem. I have an apprentice of my own coming next month, when she turns twelve, so I have no need for a student, particularly as you can’t be apprenticed at your age in any case. You have no way to pay me for food or shelter, let alone teaching you spells. We don’t do that, you know; a wizard’s spells are his stock in trade, and he’s not likely to give them out to the competition. I’ll trade spells on occasion, teach a fellow one of mine in exchange for learning one of his, but I don’t sell them and I certainly don’t teach them for free.” Seeing Tobas’ look of utter desolation, he tried to soften the blow by adding, “But you can stay here tonight; I can do that much for you, keep a roof over your head for one night and give you breakfast in the morning. When you’ve rested and had a good meal, the world will look better. Perhaps you can find someone on Wizard Street who will take pity on you.”

Tobas nodded in mute acceptance.

“All right, then. I’ll show you where you’ll sleep; I have an extra bed upstairs that my apprentice uses, when I have an apprentice. You’re probably weary from your travels and ready to sleep, aren’t you?”

Tobas nodded again and followed.