Bob the Mage
By Frederick Key
(Although He Probably Regrets It)
Chapter 3
Losing the light was not a bad thing, really. It was absolutely
catastrophic.
“The light, mage!” cried Chokolost,
gripping my shoulder so hard I could almost hear the bones creak. “Summon the
light!”
Something growled happily, and it
was not a grub.
“Hold on!” I groped around for the
bit or quartz I needed for the spell, but it wasn’t in my pouch or any of my
pockets. With a chill I realized it must have fallen out when I was digging
through the dirt, and I tried to explain that to Chokolost. He was not a good
listener.
“What? Huh? Do something!”
“Let go of my shoulder! I need
elbow room!”
“Oh, right.”
“So long.”
After what he had done to my fellow
wizards, I had little sympathy for Chokolost. Let him rot, that was my motto
now. Let his casual disregard for human life lead to the dispensing of his own.
I gained a lot more sympathy for
him when I realized I could not find the passageway out of the room in the
dark.
“I’ll try a different spell,” I
said. I had found my feather and bit of wire while groping through my pouch,
and I drew them out to go into the routine that should have struck the monster
down with a bolt of lightning. Really, half these spells have you dancing
around like an electrified chicken, and this one was among the worst. Perhaps I
didn’t wiggle my epiglottis right, I don’t know, but rather than the bolt of
lightning I got a brilliant flash of light that lasted a second or two, much
like my light spell.
“I think I’ve blinded it!” I lied.
“You’re on equal footing, Mighty One!”
Chokolost released a war whoop, and
all sorts of crashing about ensued. I went back to feeling around for the exit.
Instead I bumped into the pillar with the Gallstone. What the hell, I thought, and grabbed the stone. With it tucked
under one arm, I kept searching and soon found an egress.
The sounds of battle faded behind
me. While my sense of direction is no substitute for a good compass, it had to
be better than Chokolost’s, and I was certain I had gone through a different
door than we had come in. For one thing, the walls weren’t squishing me in this
passageway. Sure, it could lead to a pit full of poisoned spikes, but that
seemed like a better option than wandering through that maze in the dark.
In fact, about fifty yards on, the
passage opened up to starlight. There was a gaping hole in the side of a cliff.
I had wondered where the air was coming from down there.
If we had climbed around the side
of the mountain, which would have been tricky but not impossible, we could have
avoided the hidden door and the maze entirely. But no one knew about this
opening.
Proudly, I stepped into the night
air. Stupidly, I tumbled down the steep slope to a ledge below.
I was content, though bruised. I
had found the treasured artifact, which I now put in my sack. Justice seemed to
have found Chokolost, who, let’s face it, had probably died doing what he
loved. And I was free.
“Yippee,” I cheered.
“Why so happy?” said someone nearby.
My backbone melted for a moment,
but the speaker wasn’t Chokolost. By the sound of the voice I realized it was
Lefro. In the little bit of moonlight available that night I could see the
smile on his smug face. He picked his way along the ledge and sat down next to
me. He no longer wore the armor or heavy helmet.
“You’re alive!” I exclaimed.
“I’m more surprised than you,” he
said. “I’m starting to think this spell business has nothing on a big sword and
some good iron trousers.”
“You mean the armor protected you
from the fall?”
“Well, the fall hurt like hell, but
yeah. And it saved me from drowning!”
“Saved you?”
“Sure. I can’t swim, so if I’d been
without it I probably would have panicked and drowned. But the armor weighed me
down so I sank to the bottom. The river’s not real deep here. Took me a minute
to crawl back to dry land.” He shook his legs and said, “Had to ditch it all,
though. The chafing was bad.”
“Any sign of Farp? He hit the cliff
pretty hard.”
“Yeah, Farp didn’t make it. Must
have whacked the melon pretty hard. Same thing for the mule. The soldiers all
survived, and as soon as they stopped rolling they went AWOL. What happened to
you and Chokolost?”
I told him about my smoke screen,
which made him laugh, and about our wandering lost in the Labyrinth of Misery,
and the reason for our stupid quest, and the monster that was probably eating a
Chokolost sandwich now. “Buddy, I’m glad to see you alive,” I said. “I’m glad
to see me alive after the day I’ve
had.”
“So that’s the Gallstone of the
Gods in your bag?” he asked, pointing to where it sat on the ledge.
“Yeah. Not much to it, huh? Heavy,
though. So let’s get it back to Maximo the Seventh (may he blah blah blah) and
get the reward and do the town. Get so faced we won’t be able to sneeze out our
noses. Sound good?”
Lefro laughed. “Bob, ol’ pal, I’ve
got just one thing to say to that.”
“Yeah?”
“Good night.”
With one sudden shove, he tossed me
from the ledge.
I didn’t get killed, or even knocked out, but I did land
gut-first on a slab that was nothing like a featherbed, then rolled off that
into a big bramble bush way below. By then the air was knocked out of me and I
couldn’t move without getting brambled, and I guess I just passed out.
When I came to, the sun was beating
on my aching head with a mallet. Gingerly I removed myself from the bush, peed
on it for spite, then looked up the mountain. I could see the opening I had
used to escape the labyrinth way above; below that was the ledge where I’d met
Lefro, and then all the various things I’d hit after he sent me on my way. Of
Lefro, of course, there was no sign. He would have taken the bag, which by the
way had my rations in it—jerky, water, dried fruit, and so on. All I had was some
coppers and the measly spell supplies in my pockets and pouch.
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “I’ll
have his union card for this.”
For the next several minutes I
contrived elaborate acts of vengeance for Lefro, ranging from the Death of a
Million Stings to random slashing to simply beating him so badly his mother
wouldn’t know him, but by then the sun’s warmth and my growling belly brought
me to my senses. I was in a barren wilderness with just enough life to support
a small, economical coyote; it was several days’ travel to civilization; and I
had nothing helpful on my person. I would have panicked, but I couldn’t afford
the sweat. This was a shame, because I have a knack for panicking.
I didn’t think I could make it as
far as Tegora, at least by Chokolost’s route, with no food. I could follow the
Spyro River, but I’d heard it eventually turned into a chasm of rapids, where a
horde of trolls hung around picking their teeth and waiting for travelers.
Trolls always lie in wait downriver, you know.
I thought I’d heard of a few
city-states and baronies north of here, and I knew eventually it led to the sea.
Could I live off the land until then? Probably not. I’d get lost. I’d spent my
life in cities; what I mainly knew about the wilderness was that it was full of
beasts and monsters. Maybe I should just climb up to the hole and let the
monster that ate Chokolost for dinner have me for breakfast.
At least
it would be faster.
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