Sagaria (53 page)

Some of the other councilors were nodding their approval.

“Yes, Grand Master,” said the one named Deicher eagerly, the reprimands delivered to him by both Fariam and Samzing obviously already forgotten. “These humble travelers have made it safely as far as this city, and for that they’re to be highly commended, but how are we to know that their success so far hasn’t been just a matter of blind good luck? We’d be insane to leave the fate of the three worlds in the hands of this child. I can’t imagine what Queen Mirabella was thinking. Probably who she’d ask to be her beau at the next costume ball, if I know her.” Deicher gave a brief, contemptuous laugh. “All this talk of destiny … well, just look at him. He’s only a boy, and not a very prepossessing one at that. He doesn’t look terribly bright to me, if you want to know.”

“I don’t,” said Fariam sharply.

“Yes, Deicher,” said Samzing, interrupting again. Sagandran hadn’t known that the old wizard could sound so commanding as this. “Queen Mirabella may possess less magic than you do, but she has greater wisdom in her merest eyelash than you will ever know.”

Samzing strode forward, past his friends to stand in front of Fariam and the semicircle of clucking councilors.

“How dare you, Deicher, and you too, Renada,” he said jerking his head toward the elderly woman in the red robe. “How dare you speak so dismissively of my good friend Sagandran? How dare you? He hasn’t just drifted here through chance or good fortune. I’ve been observing him these past days. He stands here in Qarnapheeran by right. His determination and his courage are what have brought him to this room; those and his honesty and goodness of heart, which have earned him the true friendship of the wayfarers you see gathered before you.”

“Yes,” said Perima, clenching her small fists and directing a gaze full of daggers toward Deicher. “While you’ve been sitting here congratulating yourself on how all-fired clever you are, Sagandran’s been outside among the perils of the world with us. You sneer at him, you sneer at all of us.”

“Damn right,” chirped Flip, scuttling forward. He looked up into the face of the woman called Renada. “Besides, you’ve got a zit on the end of your nose.”

With a cry of dismay, the red-robed councilor put a hand to her face.

“My views are in accordance with those of my companions,” pronounced Sir Tombin. There was steel behind the measured courtliness of his words. “I would place my life in the hands of Sagandran; indeed, I have already done so. He has my allegiance, as I know I have his, the allegiance of true friendship. If you seek to take the Rainbow Crystal from him, its rightful bearer, I shall resist you up to my dying breath, whatever magic you might throw at me.”

Fariam, in the meantime, was staring at Samzing, a wicked smile beginning to crinkle the corners of his mouth.

“I know you,” he said.

“Wondered when you’d recognize me, Chickenlegs.”

“It’s Fishface, isn’t it? I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Chickenlegs!”

“Fishface!”

“What in the world possessed them to make you Grand Master, Chickenlegs?”

The two old men were beaming, the rest of the room lost to them.

Fariam finally turned to his councilors. “This is Samzing. Do you remember him, any of you?”

“Ah, yes. Samzing.” Deicher’s voice was full of scorn. “I recall him only too well. He hasn’t been seen by anyone in Qarnapheeran since we had to excommunicate him from the Elemental Orders, has he?”

Fariam raised a twig-like finger and wagged it angrily at the younger man. “You continue to calumniate Samzing, do you, Deicher, even though the truth of the whole affair has long been known?”

This time, Deicher had the courage to defy the Grand Master.

“I think you should know,” he said, addressing the companions in a precise, condemnatory tone, “the exact nature of the one you have been traveling with.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sagandran noticed that Samzing, oddly, seemed totally unperturbed. He stood easily, his hands on his hips, occasionally smiling at his old friend Chickenlegs, who was slyly grinning back.

“In his younger days,” Deicher went on, oblivious to this, “Master Samzing was one of the best students in Qarnapheeran, a real teacher’s pet, if you like. I say ‘one of the best’ because there was another who was equally good, another outstanding young magician. His name was—”

“A detestable name,” hissed Fariam, turning his head briefly.

Deicher shrugged. “Another wizard,” he said, “who shall be nameless. As one of their final tests in high magic, they were instructed to battle each other using spells of attack. Of course, this wasn’t to be a real battle to the death, just an exercise. They were to use the words of the spells, but they had been instructed to withhold the full magical force that ordinarily would lie behind them. As an additional precaution, a protection spell had been laid in the arena where the test was due to take place.”

He smirked, confident of his audience.

“In other circumstances, it is strictly forbidden for wizards to use spells of attack except in order to stop another from killing, or in self-defense. The day of the test came, and the two wizards confronted each other. It became immediately apparent that Samzing (the one whom all the older wizards admired so dearly) had tampered with the protection spell. He raised his hand, he spoke the incantations and a thunderbolt streaked from his palm toward the head of his adversary. It was only by sheer good fortune that the other student saw what was happening in time, and was able to summon a reflection spell that turned the thunderbolt back to its origin.”

The younger man wrapped his arms complacently around himself. “The impact of that thunderbolt nearly killed Samzing, who well deserved it. Even though he escaped with his treacherous life, he was sorely damaged forever more. As,” he added, “must surely have been obvious even to you people.”

Deicher glared challengingly at each of the companions in turn. Flip hurried to hide behind Perima’s leg.

“Yes,” Deicher continued more quietly, turning to the Grand Master beside him, “you’re right. It was never actually proven that Samzing deliberately perverted that spell of protection, but it was plain as a pikestaff that it must have been him. Who else stood to profit by it? Who else would have benefited had his dastardly plot succeeded and the other student been slain?”

“But,” said Fariam icily, “no one ever knew. Not then. Not until later. So, Samzing wasn’t formally excommunicated. He agreed to leave so that the Council would be saved the embarrassment of a trial. Is that not so?”

“A mere detail!” cried Deicher, smacking away the words with the back of his hand.

“Except that later, we did find out the truth.”

Again, Sagandran felt a shiver up his spine. Fariam’s voice was like a serpent sliding through long grass. Deicher was too wrapped up in his own self-righteousness to notice it, but everyone else in the chamber had.

“It never crosses the minds of people like yourself that there can be more explanations of something than the one that first occurs to you, does it?”

Now even Deicher was beginning to realize that there was something awry. “What do you mean?”

“There was one person who stood to gain far more than Samzing from the encounter, was there not? One who, in fact, did gain more from the result of their contest. Has it never dawned on you, Deicher, that Samzing’s opponent was preternaturally swift in his response to the thunderbolt cast at him, almost as if he were expecting it?”

“That’s preposterous!”

“Really?”

“Yes,” said Deicher, but his voice had become unconvincing.

“Think of it,” said Fariam, pursuing the point ruthlessly. “His opponent was not as skilled as Samzing, as you said. Oh, he was good, make no mistake about it, but Samzing was still the better of the two, even if by only a whisker. This was the final test where that difference would be proven to all. Can you imagine the evil scheme hatching in the adversary’s duplicitous mind? The test was a formalized one. Both students knew the spells of attack they were to use, and the order in which they were to use them. Defense against a thunderbolt is easy enough if you know the thunderbolt is coming. So—”

“You mean it was the opponent who deactivated the protection spell?” gasped Perima.

“Yes,” said Fariam. “You have quick wits, my dear, quicker than some of my
councilors have.” A brief, wintry smile crossed his face as he glanced at her. Then he returned his attention to Deicher, who by now was refusing to look at him.

“The opponent secretly nullified the spell of protection before the contest. Samzing should have realized this as soon as he entered the arena, but his head was too full of thoughts of the coming encounter and so his concentration was lax – foolish and slovenly of him, to be sure, but hardly reprehensible. We would probably all have made the same error ourselves. The start of the tournament was declared, Samzing raised his hand, still unknowing, and uttered his first spell of attack. To his horror, the thunderbolt that should never have been called into existence sprang from his hand and shot across the arena.

“But the other student had anticipated exactly this. He was ready for it. He had plenty of time to concoct his own spell. His only failure was that the returned thunderbolt did not strike Samzing dead on the spot as he’d planned, though it came within a hair of doing so.

“During the long days that Samzing lay near death, it was assumed he was the villain of the plot, and he was tried and convicted in the court of gossip. His opponent was declared the victor by default; it was in triumph that he left our city to go out and practice his wizardry in the world. We thought this meant he would roam Sagaria putting his magic to the service of good. Little did we know that his intention was to take his powers to another world altogether.

“Then the day came when Samzing awoke. Two of us were by his bedside; two old friends of his who couldn’t convince ourselves that our dear chum, Fishface, would ever stoop to such treachery. Yes, I was one of those two. The other was Fats, er, Fattanillo, I mean.

“Samzing began to speak to us, his voice barely audible. He was so weak at first that he could hardly say more than three words in a row before resting, but it soon became clear to Fats and myself what happened.”

Fariam crossed his hands on his knees. “And there you have it, Deicher. Samzing wasn’t excommunicated. Fats and I took our story to the Council of the day, and they were appalled. Had there been any justice in the world, Samzing would have been held in the highest honor, his opponent excoriated. But the blow of the thunderbolt had crippled poor Samzing. The physical injuries he would eventually recover from, but the mental and magical wounds ran far deeper and could never be cured. With good fortune, he would still regain enough of his magic to become a wizard of respectable power, and perhaps even more than that, but the levels of attainment he had earlier gained would forever be beyond him.

“By now the truth about his opponent—no, I
will
say his name, though I long ago vowed I never would. By now the news had come to us that Arkanamon had taken himself and his magic off to the Shadow World to use his powers in the pursuit of evil. Fats and I, though we were mere students, urged the Grand Master of that age to hold a trial of Arkanamon in his absence and proclaim Samzing’s innocence. The Grand Master was leaning toward our argument, but then Samzing himself declared that such an enterprise would be futile. All it could do would be to bring shame to the very gates of Qarnapheeran. There was little left here for him now, he said; he was a broken wizard. Far better for him to retreat quietly to some distant part of the world and live his life out in peace. I thought he was wrong. Fats thought he was wrong. But the Grand Master was persuaded by the argument. He always was a smooth talker, was Samzing.

“Of course, the Grand Master’s eagerness to avoid shame (a short-term shame, a scandal that would have blown over soon enough) resulted in a far greater shame, an ugly stain upon the integrity of the Elemental Orders and Qarnapheeran. Yes, the shame of injustice, which the passage of years does not wash away.”

There was a long silence.

At last, Fariam spoke. “Welcome back, Samzing. Fishface.”

“Thank you, Chickenlegs.”

Not surprisingly, Deicher contributed little to the conversation for some while thereafter. Most of the other councilors gathered around Samzing, congratulating him, beseeching his forgiveness for the thoughts they had nurtured concerning him. Seats were produced for the remaining companions, so they could sit down while they watched all this going on. Samzing himself had never seemed so alive as he was now. Every once in a while, he and Fariam would throw their arms around each other; two staunch friends whom fate and human perfidy had kept apart for many decades, for most of their allotted spans of life. Sometimes they wept at the tragedy of it all, sometimes they guffawed for sheer joy that they were together again. They re-told dearly loved anecdotes of their adventures during their student days, tales that made Sir Tombin and most of the councilors blench, and profoundly mortified Sagandran, but to which Perima listened in rapt fascination.