“What? Now?” asked Aubren.
“No time like the present,” said Feista. Fate had given her a treasure, and she planned to squeeze every drop out of it. She grabbed her cloak, told Aubren to watch the pups, and burst through the front door with so much enthusiasm it threatened to fly off its hinges.
The door swung shut. The clank and thud of Dwarven and Human footsteps faded in the halls of the building that housed the transitional Tower of Twilight. Patches eventually abandoned hope that the guests’ departure heralded an imminent walk to the park and went back to his bed. Jynn Ur’Mayan stared at the back of his office door, his body motionless while his mind rifled through his life’s work, which recently had extended to include his father’s life’s work.
Jynn had locked cabinets filled with information on Detarr Ur’Mayan’s projects, along with the soul of Detarr Ur’Mayan himself. Aya of Blades had provided some insights back during the liche’s invasion. The omnimancer had acquired the collection of Teldir of Umbrax through an estate sale. He’d even issued a guild quest to retrieve the lost writings of Win Cinder, though few heroes signed on and they’d yet to return.
Since childhood, Jynn had known about his father’s joint venture with the kings of Ruskan and the Freedlands. Teldir’s papers noted that the goal of their collaboration was a way to escape death, either by achieving true immortality or at least securing a return from the dead. The kings had assembled five wizards and started a project named for Mannon’s great escape from death at the hands of the gods: the Leviathan Project. The project wasn’t necromancy—it was explicitly stated not to leverage necromancy in the contracts Jynn had found—but the participants were given wide leeway to skirt the borders of the dark arts in pursuit of new solutions. His father worked on soul-binding, but other mages took other avenues of inquiry. Aya of Blades researched cures and potions created by the ancient masters of low magic. Win Cinder had tried to entice or ensorcel a minor god to steal souls from Mordo Ogg’s threshold. Teldir tried to bind souls into golems, as one might enchant a magic weapon.
Detarr Ur’Mayan once called the Leviathan Project “unsightly work,” which meant that it was the sort of endeavor that usually brings villagers with torches and pitchforks. The five noctomancers hired henchmen and thugs in quiet arrangements to avoid attention, and many assumed they had gone villain. But they hadn’t—the noctomancers were operating under full royal authority and protection. At least, until Az’Anon the Black made a grave mistake.
Jynn wasn’t sure exactly what Az’Anon did wrong. Whatever it was, it frightened the other four noctomancers on the Leviathan Project and turned the kings of Ruskan and the Freedlands against them. Days after the project’s charter was terminated, the Heroes’ Guild was on a hunt for its participants. The deed had marked the beginning of the wizard’s descent from being Az’Anon the Black to becoming the Spider King, dabbling in true necromancy, and threatening Andarun. Yet Jynn could find no record of what, exactly, he had done.
There would be records, of course—guild contracts and documentation for the justification of the quest—but those were kept under the protection of the royal archivists. Such papers were sealed in the Royal Archives of the Heroes’ Guild Great Vault beneath the Palace of Andarun, and not available to the public, not even an Archmage of the Academy of Mages. This point had been made emphatically and repeatedly clear in Jynn’s prior correspondence with the royal archivist in the guild office on the Fifth Tier, who advised the wizard that such records were not to be released to the public until the sun froze over and the Pit released the dead.
That left Jynn with no good options left. He had no way to locate and speak with the mages of the Leviathan Project, living or dead, except perhaps his father. And while Jynn had risked much to pursue Detarr’s knowledge, using necromancy on a warded phylactery was a bridge too far, and too interwoven with explosive counterspells. The omnimancer’s research on the project had been nearly at a dead end for months.
Then Gorm showed up, with evidence linking his father’s remarks to the dragon attacks. And Heraldin was there, perhaps summoned by Jynn’s own experimental prophecy, with a way to further investigate the issue. Two of the few people he knew, arriving on exactly the same day, with information related to Detarr Ur’Mayan’s coded words. Looking back, had he not been recruited by the Al’Matrans, he would never have met Gorm and Heraldin, would have never found his father’s work, foiled his father’s schemes, or found Patches. The litany of serendipity went on and on.
It was all coincidence, Jynn knew. Yet he also knew that coincidence and destiny are much the same, in the way that raindrops and the ocean are the same; one might have been more vast and powerful and dangerous than the other, but they were made of identical components, and in sufficient quantities the lesser became the greater. Too many convenient coincidences were a sign of fate, but if you saw the hand of destiny at every coincidence, you’d wind up looking as silly as a captain trying to sail a schooner across a puddle. The trick, the essence of low magic, was to know the difference.
Eventually he stood and pulled a slim volume off his bookshelf. About halfway through the thin leather journal he found the most often cited quote of the Third Age omnimancer Salam Abdus.
Note, dear reader, that destiny is like a cat that you wish to call to you. Give it your attention, try to coax it into place, and it shall have naught to do with you. Play coy as a maiden, and it shall surely come running. Yet turn your back on the bastard at your deepest peril.
Jynn took a deep breath. Regrettably little remained of Adbus’ teachings; he was most famous for this observation being quoted in Nove’s Lex Infortunii, wherein the great philosopher-scientist noted that shortly after writing the quote, Abdus was eaten by a Dire Ocelot.
Still, the archmage could see that wisdom remained in the ancient omnimancer’s words. It would do little good to meddle in matters of destiny—his experiment with the prophetic vault had shown him the folly in that. Yet it seemed like folly to ignore the confluence of events that had brought him so close to his father’s work. If fate had really brought him this far, perhaps it might take him further still. Perhaps even into the Royal Archives. It was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, without using magic to do so.
Predicting the future is notoriously fraught, but predicting a wizard’s course of action is relatively simple. The likelihood that a mage will do something can be expressed as a ratio of the power or knowledge of secrets gained against the effort and risk of gaining it. Since Jynn stood to gain insights into his destiny and possibly access to his father’s research without engaging in any actual low magic, his decision was easy. The only question was where he should be until his next meeting with Gorm and Heraldin.
“Come, Patches,” he said, fetching a leather leash from the shelf between two arcane tomes.
A sudden, frenetic cacophony erupted from the bed beside his desk; the scrabbling of claws on wood playing under earnest panting. Patches skidded around Jynn in a tight circle, his paws flailing in all directions, his tail wagging hard enough to bend his body into alternating right angles.
“Yes. Yes, it is time for walkies,” Jynn assured the dog dancing about his feet as he pushed the door open. “Perhaps all the way down to the Fifth Tier.”
Chapter 8
Laruna didn’t expect Jynn Ur’Mayan to step through the door.
She expected her father, as she was standing in her childhood home, or maybe the magefinder from the Academy who had found her among the ashes of that very house. Yet it was Jynn who strode into their thatched hut, looking sharp in the rich purple robes of a noctomancer.
“What are you doing here?” Laruna demanded. “Why you?”
“Oh, Laruna,” said Jynn, looking startled. “Um, it is good to see—”
“You’re an omnimancer now. And an archmage.”
“Ah, yes.” Jynn sounded confused, but his robe changed instantly and, after a moment’s indecision, a black glove appeared on his left hand. “Do you remember when we were together?” he asked, and looked behind her.
Laruna turned, and found the back half of her old house was now, in fact, the Plains of Aberreth. Another Laruna and Jynn were lying in the long grass, watching the stars dance above them. He was smiling as if in conversation. The other Laruna was staring at the sky with a conspicuously blank expression. She whipped around, and the Jynn in the house was gone.
The wizard in the grass looked back and forth from the vacant-eyed Laruna to the one still standing in the hut, confusion plain on his face. His robes flickered from purple to gray uncertainly, as if waiting for her to decide which he should be wearing.
Laruna set her jaw. She could feel her anger rising for some reason, but the important thing was to stay centered. “Let’s start with some questions,” she said, striding into the grass.
Her body double melted away, leaving a space next to the reclining wizard, who recovered admirably. “I… come and lay in the grass with us. With me,” said Jynn.
The solamancer stopped at the wizard’s feet, bent down, and said, “Now listen. This can be a fun little chat, woman to metaphysical presence, or it can get really nasty, really thrice-cursed fast. And it all depends on how quickly you drop the act.”
Jynn’s smile went rigid, and his eyes darted left and right as if looking for an exit. “I’m not sure what you—” he began.
“Last warning,” said Laruna.
“I just wanted to taaARRRRRRRGH!” Jynn’s protest turned into a shriek of pain as Laruna traced arcane sigils in the air.
“Let me know when you’ve had enough,” the mage said, patterns of light and fire dancing around her fingers. Similar threads wove around Jynn’s wrists, ankles, and neck. “You’re the spirit that gave my friend some life-changing wisdom, and I’m here to get the same.”
“I’m not supposed to break character!” whined the wizard as he scrambled to his feet.
“And I bet I’m not supposed to invoke the Binding of Forseth either,” said Laruna. “But here we are.”
Jynn’s eyes widened at the mention of the spell, and he raised his hands as a courier might when confronted by an aggressive dog. “All right, all right, I know these dreams can be frustrating, but if you just listen to your heart youaaAAAAARGH!” The threads of sorcery around the wizard’s extremities flared with crimson light. His features bulged and distended and dribbled down like a painting splashed with turpentine as he screamed.
“My heart is telling me that if I make this spell intense enough, this smug little spirit will answer my questions,” Laruna said, her voice rising above the shrieks. “Let’s see if it’s right.”
