Journeyman (A Wizard's Life) (17 page)

Benen thought there was disapproval in the old man’s tone. He chose to ignore it.

“Please, you gave a lecture a decade ago, about the Lovers. I need to know more about what you discovered.”

Alack warmed immediately; Benen assumed few asked the old wizard to lecture them of their own free will.

“Well, that’s a fascinating topic. I’m glad you want to talk about it. The Lovers are a binary system: two stars orbiting one another. But these are unstable. I predict they will fall into each other in the next few million years.”

This was not as fascinating to Benen as it evidently was to Alack. Why did Mellen ask him to speak to this man?

“Listen, Master Alack, I’ve seen a star that is extending a tendril into space. It looks like it’s reaching for something, but there is nothing there. Master Mellen thought your Lovers lecture would shed some light on this for me, but what you’ve told me doesn’t clarify anything.”

Alack’s face had worked through many emotions as Benen had spoken. It had first shown distaste at Benen’s tone in addressing him, then changed to interest as Benen described his anomaly, and finally it settled on amazement.

“The Lovers, they reach out for one another, just like you describe! It’s what brought them to my attention: the tendrils.”

Benen got it then; it
was
an amazing discovery. He turned to leave, thanking Alack absentmindedly as he got up. The old wizard got up too and followed him.

“What star was this?” he asked.

“Sorry, I’m not ready to share that yet.” Benen sped up his pace and left the old man behind.

Alack called out: “I get some of the credit for the discovery . . . right?”

Benen left the moot altogether and sped home.

#

When he finally arrived at his tower, Benen raced to his observatory. Thankfully, it was night
and
the moon was still in the sky — for another hour at most. He did not stop for Timmon, who was surprised to see Benen returned early from the moot.

In the observatory, Benen set the telescope hastily to look at Grass once again. Timmon burst in just as he was finishing.

“What’s wrong?” Timmon asked.

Benen turned to face him, his expression manic. “Nothing! Nothing at all anymore!”

He turned back to the telescope and took a look through the eyepiece; he was not willing to waste any more time explaining things to Timmon, right then.

What he saw was still as before but now, he tried to imagine a black star in the place where the tendril from Grass reached. It did not quite fit. He kept looking at it for the hour that remained before the moon set and then withdrew his eye from the eyepiece. He saw that Timmon had brought him a few sandwiches and a tall glass of milk. He sought out the ghost and thanked him.

“I’m sorry I was short with you, Timmon. I was excited and had no time to spare.”

The golden form shrugged. “It’s all right, Benen. I understand.”

Benen watched his friend as he went about cleaning the tower and wondered for the first time if Timmon was happy. They had certainly had happy times together, but how fulfilling could being Benen’s manservant be for the former brigand? He resolved to look into this later, when he had finished his master piece — if he ever finished it.

The rest of the night and the next day, Benen pondered the anomaly. He had been so sure it had to be a black star being revealed by the tendril, but it didn’t fit. He continued his observations of the anomaly, trying to come up with an explanation for it that did fit.

One evening, he asked Timmon to stay while he ate his dinner.

“Timmon, please sit a spell with me,” he asked the ghost. The golden man took the seat opposite Benen. Benen described the anomaly and even had the ghost look at it with his sight enhanced by the wizard’s magic and the telescope.

“It’s as you described it,” Timmon agreed. “What could cause that?”

“That’s exactly the question I’m asking myself.”

The two retired together to Benen’s study.

“Do you agree it doesn’t look like a black star?” Benen asked the golden man.

“No. But I also wouldn’t know what one of those would look like.”

Benen had to agree with this, but he felt the whirlpool effect did not work with the black star explanation or with what he imagined a black star would be like.

Benen again abandoned the topic and resumed his observations of the Spill.

The breakthrough came months later. The wizard had been looking at a star he had newly named Blue Hexagon — though the star was neither blue nor shaped like a hexagon — when he heard his name being called in alarm by Timmon. He rushed to go find the ghost, finally locating him in the kitchens.

“What is it?” Benen asked the moment he was in the room. Nothing seemed amiss.

“The sink!” Timmon pointed.

Benen approached the sink. It was a modern contrivance that took the water away when its use had come to an end. It was easier than washing dishes in a tub that then had to be carried to the loo to be emptied. The sink had a drain at the bottom through which the water went into pipes to be transported to the same room the contents of the loo went to. This room, when it became full, was emptied by Benen through his use of a spell effect that drew its power from the Cleaver.

He saw nothing unusual with the sink when he looked at it.

Timmon pointed again, at the drain this time.

“Benen, whirlpools happen when two currents meet but also happen when water goes down a drain!” Timmon poured some water from a bucket into the sink. Benen looked at it drain. When there was little water left, it
did
look very much like a whirlpool.

What did this say about the anomaly? Was there a hole drawing away the star’s fire?

Timmon was still excited. “It’s a hole Benen! The anomaly is a hole!”

Benen wasn’t ready to agree just yet, he needed time to think this through.

He spent the next month alternately watching water go down drains and observing the Grass anomaly. The two effects looked so similar, he had to concede that the thing Grass was reaching for had to be a hole. A black hole in space.

Having decided this, Benen wondered if it would be of use as source of flavour for magic. He knew that if he tried it without having a proper understanding of the celestial body involved, he could be hurt — perhaps badly — by the attempt. He approached this with caution, making sure to put in many more hours of observation before making his attempt.

What he tried first was using just the black hole and thinking of nothing for an effect. As with most stars, if this worked, the effect produced — if any — would be indicative of what the hole’s usefulness in magic was.

When he completed the spell, he suffered such agony as he had never before. He seized and lost consciousness, but when he awoke, the pain was still there, his limbs still twitched. There was definitely power to be derived from the black hole, but no effect had occurred — Timmon had witnessed the attempt.

A week later, when he was recovered, Benen tried again. This time he used the black hole in combination with another celestial object: the moon. The resulting effect, unguided by Benen’s mind, should be a detection or healing spell of some sort, but somehow twisted or modified by the black hole. What he got surprised him.

When he finished the spell, the agony came again, and he lost control of his body, but he managed to hold on to consciousness — just barely. When the pain ebbed enough for Benen to be able to open his eyes and try to move his body, the effect became obvious. His senses were heightened. This in itself was not unusual, but what was unusual was that the effect of the black hole on his spell seemed to be amplification; massive amplification. Thankfully, it was only his sight and hearing that had been affected, Benen could not imagine what the pain would have been like if his sense of touch had also been enhanced.

With his eyes he could see microscopic creatures crawling on the nearby walls. Their presence further startled him.

What other small things creep about us without our knowledge?!

With Timmon’s help, Benen went to the observatory; every step was a thunderclap of sound in his ears. When Timmon tried to speak, Benen covered his mouth with his hand. Even this was almost too loud to bear.

It was all made worth it when Benen looked at the anomaly through the eyepiece of the telescope. This time, with the additional amplification, Benen could see so much more clearly. It was evident then that the anomaly was indeed a hole in space, drawing the nearby star’s fire away and into it. Satisfied, Benen let himself fall unconscious.

Benen repeated this experiment over the next year, trying all the different effects he could, combining them with the black hole. Each time, the results were similar: the black hole enhanced the spell’s effect at the cost of aggravating the side effects of spell casting. Thankfully, the pain had not been as bad as the first time since Benen had taken the better observation of the black hole. This enhanced knowledge of the anomaly had helped mitigate its ravaging effects on him. It was
almost
bearable.

What disappointed Benen was that although he had found something new and powerful, he had not found teleportation. Still, he persevered in studying the effects of the black hole on his spells.

There were a few surprises along the way. The first such Benen found was when he enhanced the Cleaver’s cutting using the black hole. He had used the effect to cut a piece of stone, and the stone had been cut as usual, but where the cut had been made was a rent in the very fabric of space. This sucked all the air from the room and drew many objects toward the cut until, a few seconds later, the cut healed itself and disappeared. Benen resolved not to try that again unless truly desperate.

Another surprise was the result of combining the black hole with the communication spell Benen had used to speak with Mellen from a distance. The enhanced effect created a temporary link between the two where they could exchange thoughts and mental images as well as share each other’s senses. Benen apologized for the intrusion and assured the older magician that he would explain this later before breaking the connection.

The final and best surprise of all was when Benen tried to enhance his scrying spell. At first, Benen thought there had been no enhancement at all; the scrying spell worked as usual. Confused, Benen had touched the surface of the water used as a window for the scrying and was surprised that he felt no water at all. His hand went into the image. Benen dispelled the scrying then and tried again, this time scrying on a place within his own tower. He made sure to place the scrying window close to a wall. When the window was established, Benen reached through the water and touched the wall. He felt it! Excited, Benen stepped into the pool of water and found himself falling into the place he had been scrying.

He had discovered teleportation!

At first he could not believe it, but he repeated the exploit over and over until he was convinced.

He took to using a mirror for his scrying, an allowed variation, and this let him have a vertical portal to step through; much more convenient.

Exultant in his success, Benen scried upon Oster’s tower.

He was surprised to find that the view he got of the landing balcony at the bottom of the tower gave him only a black portal. He tried again, this time putting the portal ten metres lower than the balcony. This gave him another black portal. He tried one more time, placing the portal ten metres above the balcony.

The portal worked properly this time, but it showed Benen something unexpected: the tower had crashed! Many parts of it had crumpled from the impact; others were buried into the ground. Benen could not believe it. What had happened to Oster?

Placing the portal properly on the ground near the tower, Benen crossed over to the crash location.

#

Benen looked through the wreckage of the tower, lifting brickwork using magic of the Pinnacle as needed. He excavated the entirety of the place without finding any trace of Oster. Benen tried to find indications of a struggle, but he could not tell; the tower was too damaged from its impact with the ground.

The telescope, when he found it, was ruined; there were gears everywhere from the apparatus used to turn and aim it. When Benen saw it and the extent of its destruction, he wept for the loss of this delicate work of artifice.

Once he recovered from the shock of seeing the wreck of the place, Benen tried contacting Oster using his communication spell. When that failed, he tried the black hole-enhanced version of the spell with similar results. Benen thought Oster might have shielded himself from this type of magic, but he found that unlikely. Much more likely was that his old master had passed on.

I took too long
, Benen raged against himself.
Now the bastard is gone and I can
never
show him that I have done what he never managed!

Benen smashed his fists into the nearest wall of the tower and screamed as much from anger and frustration as from the pain of breaking his knuckles.