The Elements of Sorcery Read online

  THE ELEMENTS OF SORCERY

  SORCERER'S CODE

  SORCERER'S CRIME

  SORCERER'S BLOOD

  SORCERER'S WAR

  SORCERER'S TRUTH

  CHRISTOPHER KELLEN

  CC-BY-SA 3.0

  2014 Christopher Kellen

  1st Kindle Edition

  Original Cover Art by

  Christopher Kellen

  Novellas originally published 2011, 2012, 2013

  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, may or may not have been intended by the author. Should you recognize something, you’re almost certainly imagining things.

  Omnibus Digital Publication Date: July 20, 2014

  Eisengoth Independent Books

  Lesson I

  SORCERER'S CODE

  I

  I love this town.

  There's just something special about a place where the name changes twice a year, when some new warlord or monarch declares themselves in charge. Right now it's called Elenia, I think, and the rumor is that the new queen likes to bathe in the blood of virgins. To each their own, of course; I'd have a different use for those virgins, but they're probably just rumors anyway.

  Every time the name changes, there's a huge celebration. People pour into the streets, shouting and cheering the name of their new ruler. It's an amazing sight. These spontaneous parties usually last better than a day and a night, and everyone is sopping drunk by the end. The streets are practically paved with wine and spirits. You can see people hanging out of doorways and windows for days afterward, just trying to recover from the massive collective hangover brought on by that extreme level of debauchery.

  There are always a few fatalities, from fights and the accidental trampling. It's an unfortunate, but inevitable, byproduct of that much alcohol.

  Of course, no one ever actually uses the new name; not even the town guards. The declining nobility still calls it Vrydanus, which was its name before the Empire crumbled. The merchant class usually uses some diminutive, like Vryd – except for traveling merchants, who don't know any better and don't want to offend whoever might be in the pocket of the current monarch.

  The poor, the thieves, the drunks and the murderers call it the "Old Bitch." That's how I tend to think of it, too. No matter how awful a place is, though, you just can't argue with a huge drunken bash.

  It was just before twilight, after the latest of these celebrations, that I found the body.

  Stumbling across someone too drunk to move isn't uncommon in these situations, but when I tripped over this one – my mind was thoroughly absorbed by the calculations behind Lord Azegrath's theorem of manna distribution, and I wasn't paying attention – and it didn't emit so much as a groan, plus the limpness of how it rolled as I stumbled, gave me the clue that this one was dead.

  Normally when one trips over a corpse in the streets of the Old Bitch, especially before the sun has set, one does their best to look innocent and move on quickly – before, for instance, the town guards get off their drunk arses long enough to arrest you for manhandling a corpse. This one, though, inexplicably caught my eye, and forced me to take a closer look.

  He had short brown hair, cut close to his head, and his face was plain. He was dressed in the dullest clothing I'd ever seen. It had none of the frills and ruffles so popular in the Old Kingdoms, no extraneous adornments at all. He had clearly needed a new tailor before his untimely demise, but it was too late to develop a fashion sense now.

  Naturally, anything valuable would have been long gone, but it was rare that anyone stole clothing from the dead. These days, you didn't want to stick around long enough to find out whether the body was going to wake up and decide to take it back by ripping off your face.

  The plain blue tunic the body wore had just a few patches of darker color on the front, and there was a heavy leather belt encircling his middle. Across his back was an empty, black scabbard that would have held a long, thin sword.

  Even though my good sense was screaming at me to move on, my natural curiosity overcame my better judgment. Gingerly, with one foot, I pushed the body over. The cause of death was plain – there was a huge open gash at the base of his neck, and the back of his tunic was veritably covered with a dark, bloody stain.

  Someone had caught him by surprise, I mused; simple enough. Still, something was bothering me. It wasn't the fact that there was no blood on the ground around the body, which clearly meant that he'd been moved some time after death. The stage of death was hard to pin down – somewhere after rigidity had faded but before rapid decomposition had set in, putting the death somewhere between one and five days past. That was a long time for a body to be lying in the street, but even that wasn’t impossible.

  It didn't quite click in my head until I looked at the scabbard again. The blade it would have held was straight, as long as my arm, and slender. Now, I'm no expert on weaponry, but I am an expert on materials. It comes with the territory. A sorcerer who couldn't quote you the tensile strength of steel, copper and silver alloys without checking his notes was a sorry sorcerer indeed. It was this knowledge that led to my next conclusion: any steel blade that thin would have been next to useless in a real fight, which meant that it was no usual weapon.

  Something had fallen out of his tunic, perhaps from a hidden pocket inside, when I had accidentally kicked the poor sod over, so I retrieved it. It was a small, dark leather case, rigid to the touch. It was fastened with a small buckle on the front and a knotted strip of black cloth. I untied it and opened the case, dumping the contents into my hand.

  A tiny, glimmering, needle-like dagger fell into my outstretched palm, leaving a shallow scratch across the creases of my hand. I yelped and nearly dropped the thing, but managed to catch it by the handle with the tips of my fingers.

  It was barely four inches from pommel to tip of the needle-sharp blade. Most curious of all, it seemed to be made of some kind of transparent substance, perhaps crystalline in nature.

  Crystal.

  The individual pieces suddenly resolved into a clear picture, much as the pieces of a stained-glass window become an image when you take three steps backward, and I realized what kind of person this was, laying on the ground before me. The thought took my breath away.

  This is an Arbiter.

  Someone had killed an Arbiter.

  A part of my mind – the good sense that I mentioned before – suddenly overwhelmed everything else and started screaming at me to run, damn you, run before you get yourself killed!

  I wanted to run. I really did, but getting the signals from my mind to my limbs was like wading through a neck-high swamp. Nothing would move.

  "Ho there!" a voice called from the far end of the alley I was passing through.

  Of course.

  "Um… hello?" I choked out.

  "City guard!" exclaimed the voice. "Everything all right down there?"

  "Uh… well…"

  My body finally decided to move, but it was too late. All I managed to do was to shove the tiny blade back into its case and slide it into one of my many pockets. Three monstrous town guards, clad from head to toe in dull steel links of chain, jangled down the street toward me, where I was standing over a dead man. The only way it could have been any worse was if I'd still been holding that tiny knife in my hand.

  I looked into the faces of the three guardsmen. Unfortunately for me, they all appeared to be stone
-cold sober, and the unpleasant expressions on their faces seemed to reflect that as being a significant impediment to their enjoyment of life.

  "I'll have you know, I didn't touch him," I babbled.

  The apparent leader of the three guardsmen looked me up and down, and then ran his gaze over the crumpled body on the street. He looked at me again, his glower deepening. "And just who are you?"

  My throat constricted. I considered lying, but if they decided to take me back down to the barracks, it would be too easily found out. Instead, I steeled my quailing will and bit down hard on my words. "My name is Edar Moncrief, sorcerer and scholar. Is there something I can do for you gentlemen?"

  "Moncrief, eh?" grumbled the guard. "Ain't you that hedge wizard, makes love potions and wart remover?"

  "Those are some of the things I do, yes," I stammered, bewildered that my name had actually been recognized. "A man has to make a living, you know, and there's not much coin in scholarly research…"

  The guard's frown was changing to a glower, and I knew I was just digging myself in deeper.

  I'm at my best when I'm in charge of the situation, when I know that I have the leverage. As soon as the odds are against me, my mouth starts saying stupid things, which tends to make the odds even longer.

  "You'd do well to just keep moving on," I blurted.

  Case in point.

  The guardsman seemed to gain three inches in height – or maybe I was just shrinking in fear after those idiot words left my lips. "What?"

  "Um, nothing, I was just…"

  The world exploded into color and light.

  A few minutes later, I found myself lying on the dusty street, staring up at the sky. It felt as though my jaw had shattered, but working it gently back and forth told me that it wasn't broken. Thankfully.

  I could have retaliated. The strike had been unprovoked, and it was far from beneath me to defend myself. Unfortunately, sorcery really only has only two modes: deliberate, tinkering research and apocalyptic bloodbath. If I had risen from those cobblestones with fire in my eyes and the intent to kill, the guardsmen would have died in screaming agony, melting inside their armor as they pleaded with me to stop the pain.

  It was a pleasant enough thought, and I entertained the vision for a moment. Of course, were I to do such a thing, these guards would only be replaced by more, and those by more, until I was either overwhelmed and killed or driven from the city like a dog. Neither of those options was particularly enticing, and thus I stayed silent.

  "What do you think?" I heard one of the guards say.

  "Couldn't have been him," said the leader. "Ain't got no spine."

  Hah.

  "What do we do with the body?"

  "Drag it off. Nobody gonna come looking for a dead Arbiter. Most will be happy to see him that way."

  "Know I will."

  Instead of moving, I chose to lie still and admire the white clouds drifting by in the blue sky overhead. It was easier that way, and they were really quite lovely. Long strands of cottony mist strewn across the heavens, carefully crafted in lines as though an artist had painstakingly detailed each one. Every small movement of my head and neck caused pain to darken my vision.

  Despite the agony, a giddy thrill rose up in my chest. It took everything I had not to start laughing out loud; first, because it would have drawn the guards back to me, and secondly, it would have only worsened my suffering.

  I had a heartblade.

  In my possession was one of the most treasured and secretive artifacts in the entire world.

  Despite my best efforts, I snorted with glee. Thankfully, the guards were far enough away and distracted by their grisly task to notice.

  I waited there, in the dust, for a long time.

  Eventually, their voices had died away and I was certain that they were gone. Testing my jaw and neck once more, I decided at length that nothing was broken. Slowly, deliberately, I picked myself up off the ground and looked about.

  The street was entirely deserted now. The only trace of the body that had been lying there moments before were light drag marks of sand on the paving stones, and those would be erased soon enough by the wind. There was no blood left behind, which still struck me as odd – but there were many things I did not know about Arbiters. Mysterious men all, locked away in their Tower in the lawless lands of the east, only venturing out when something needed killing.

  Another laugh bubbled up within me, and this time I let it out – a wild, cackling sound that reverberated off the nearby walls. Those mysteries were about to become much less mysterious, if I had my druthers.

  Nearly singing to myself, I headed off in the direction of my lab, patting the leather case beneath my shirt with gleeful intent. As I did, a misplaced step jarred my neck, causing pain to lance through my jaw and skull, the pain so bright it felt like it would blind me.

  With a muttered curse, I rubbed my aching jaw and sullenly walked the streets back to my lab, making sure to keep my neck still and straight.

  II

  My workbench was in ruins. The devices I used to create my potions and charms, the things that kept food on the table and a fire burning in my hearth, lay in disarray across the table and the floor where I’d swept them aside in my haste to begin the experiments on the heartblade.

  None of that mattered. Beakers, vials, coins and trinkets could all be replaced. This was the work I lived for; unraveling ancient mysteries and developing my understanding of how manna truly functioned. It was believed by most to be entirely arbitrary, but I knew that could not be true. I was a sorcerer, and I had an inkling of the system behind the mystery. There was logic, purpose and reason there, somewhere. I had touched it, used it… but even I had only tiny fragments of the knowledge necessary to truly exert control over that force.

  My hand holding the dropper quivered with excitement, and two extra drops of solution fell into the dish where the heartblade rested. The whole thing immediately gelled into a syrupy purple paste.

  “Damn it,” I muttered for the dozenth time.

  Nothing was working. My frustration level was rising – this thing was a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a tiny knife. The layers of magic around it were tied so tightly, woven and intertwined like a masterful tapestry. They were intricate, detailed in a way I had never before seen woven around any kind of physical artifact.

  In the homes of very rich men for whom I occasionally worked, I had seen devices meant to track the passage of time, much the way the common soldier does with his marks on the candle. The master craftsmanship of the layers around this blade reminded me very much of the inner workings of those timepieces – careful and delicate, the type of work which would have taken a good practitioner a lifetime to develop.

  Wrinkling my nose against the smell of sulfur, I carefully lifted the heartblade from the violet goo and shook off the worst of it. In order to determine just how the enchantments would come undone, I first had to understand what each of them were for, and even the most basic one on the outer edges was beyond my understanding.

  I laid the heartblade on my workbench, and stared at it for a long moment, watching its pale light glimmer and flicker to some kind of unfathomable rhythm. It was mesmerizing, really; I found that my eyes were focused intently on it, almost as though it were drawing me in somehow. The pattern of light was almost hypnotizing in its randomness, and many times I was certain I could see repeating patterns, and then they would not resolve, continuing on to some other sequence that did not quite fit.

  With a sigh, I turned away from the workbench and back to a shelf of ancient, musty tomes that I had collected over many years of searching and practice. Very few were brave enough to even open a tome of sorcery, for fear that the mysterious Arbiters might come for them in the middle of the night and make them disappear. I had no such fear, of course. The Arbiters were rarely seen in the Old Kingdoms – the dead man in the street was the first one to cross this city in more than a decade. They spent their time in dark
caves filled with horrors, not the realms of civilization.

  Selecting the tome I wanted, I pulled it from its place on the shelf with my slender fingers and placed it open on the workbench, a few inches to the left of the glittering knife. I leafed through the pages of Madmen of the Dark Spire with my left hand, trying to find the passage that I was looking for.

  The author of this particular book, an eccentric gentleman by the name of Urzugan the Unworthy, claimed to be a rejected Arbiter, dismissed by the mysterious order at a young age, who knew all of the secrets of the Tower. Naturally, as with most such works, the book was heavy on rhetoric and inflammatory exaggeration, and short on real facts.

  With a sigh, I slammed the book shut. I needed another way.

  Inspiration hit me in a flash, and I snapped my fingers as the thought struck. There was something else I could do, an incantation which would provide a kind of feedback for the enchantments surrounding the heartblade. If I were to employ it properly, the spells which were woven around the tiny crystalline knife would slowly unravel as I called their power in reverse, and I could observe the intricacies of their creation as they came apart. It would render the heartblade useless, of course, but something had to be done.

  "Another book, another book," I muttered, sliding Madmen of the Dark Spire back into its place on my shelf, and searching instead for the grey leather-bound tome I wanted.

  At last, I laid my fingers upon the spine and drew it out slowly. The work of Yzgar the Black was rare and highly prized by certain circles, and I had obtained an early copy of one of his experimental grimoires in a particularly clever transaction several years back. The owner hadn't known what they had acquired, and I'd gotten it for easily a tenth its full value.

  Yzgar himself had been dead for nigh on three hundred years, but he'd had absolutely no scruples about his practice or his theory work. The Arbiters had made an attempt to destroy all of his work after they'd killed him for the mass corruption that he'd accomplished in one of the southern kingdoms, but they hadn't gotten all of it. You can never completely snuff out the written word – someone is always willing to sacrifice everything to preserve it.