The Ambivalent Magician Read online

  THE

  AMBIVALENT

  MAGICIAN

  Simon Hawke

  Copyright © 1996

  CONTENT

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  Dedication

  FOR THE SONORA WRITERS WORKSHOP, with warm thanks to my students, Janis Gemetta, Carrie Cooper, Roser Hyland, Davis Palmer, Misha Bumett, Phil Fleishman, Barbara McCulloush, Shiori Pluard, Dan Tuttle, Ron Wilcox and Toby Herschler, with all the best wishes in their own writing endeavors. Also, special thanks to Dave Foster, Margie and James Kosky, Bruce and Peggy Wiley, Bob Powers, Sandy West, all my friends in the ECS and the SCA, and Otis Bronson and my colleagues in the writing department at Pima Community College in Tuscon, Arizona. Thanks for the friendship and support.

  One

  "At last! I've done it! After months of ceaseless scrying, spellcasting and divination, endless, patient searching through the vast, uncharted reaches of the ethereal planes, I've finally found him!"

  "Found who, Master?" the wizard's hairy little troll familiar asked, pausing in his dusting of the ancient vellum tomes and scrolls that crammed the bookcases and were piled high on almost every available flat surface in the sorcerer's sanctorum.

  "The voice in the ether!" Warrick Morgannan replied triumphantly. "That arrogant, omniscient spirit who calls himself ... the Narrator!"

  "Oh-oh," said Teddy, picking his nose and glancing up at the ceiling apprehensively.

  Oh-oh, indeed. This is rather inconvenient. Your faithful narrator wasn't ready to start working on this book, yet. I have too many other things to do. My desk is piled high with papers from my students; I've got to complete some revisions on another novel I've been working on; I'm finishing up work on a graduate degree; my checkbook is hopelessly unbalanced, and the last thing I needed right now was this.

  "Never mind the excuses," Warrick said, his long white hair framing his chiseled features as he bent over the scrying crystal. Dark red eddies swirled like smoke within the pellucid ball as he concentrated on the crystal, focusing his energies in an effort to achieve resolution of an image. "You've been hiding from me long enough! Now I've tracked you down through the ethereal planes and the time for reckoning has come!"

  Reckoning, schmeckoning. I haven't been hiding, I've been busy. Look, I've got enough trouble with readers pestering me about when the next book in this series is coming out without having one of my characters start interfering with my writing process. Now get out of my computer and slither back to the depths of my subconscious where you belong. I've got work to do.

  "No, you shall not get rid of me that easily," said Warrick, staring intently at the swirling eddies in the crystal. "You have meddled in my affairs for the last time. Your powers are considerable, and I must concede a grudging admiration for your skills in this sorcerous art you call 'narration,' but I, Warrick the White, of the House of Morgannan, Grand Director of the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild and Royal Wizard to the Kingdom of Pitt, will not be trifled with by some upstart demigod from the ethereal planes!"

  Oh, please. For one thing, I'm no demigod, I'm just a struggling writer trying to make a living. And you're a fictional character, for God's sake. You don't even exist except in my imagination.

  "Do not attempt to work your wiles on me, Narrator. I think, therefore I exist."

  It's "I think, therefore I am. Cogito, ergo sum." Rene" Descartes. If you're going to quote, get it right. I will not have my readers thinking I'm a sloppy writer. You've already gotten this book off to a really bizarre start, and my editors still haven't recovered from the last time you pulled something like this. They just don't understand how a writer can lose control over his own characters. I had to take some time off from this series and write a serious book just to prove to them I haven't gone totally around the bend. They're still not sure about me, and it's all your fault. This isn't helping any. You're making my life very difficult, you know.

  "Not nearly as difficult as it is going to be," said Warrick, concentrating fiercely on the crystal in an effort to bring forth an image of the Narrator, so he would finally know what the mysterious "voice in the ether" looked like.

  However, at precisely that moment, Teddy, his little troll familiar, had a slight mishap. Only Warrick was capable of hearing the strange, disembodied entity he called "the Narrator," so as he watched his master speaking to the crystal ball, Teddy could only hear one side of the conversation. As a result, he wasn't paying very close attention to his work, and the little troll backed into a chair and knocked over a precariously balanced pile of ancient scrolls and vellum tomes. They went crashing to the floor of the sanctorum, making a tremendous racket and upsetting Warrick's concentration.

  "Very clever," Warrick said, "but you have only succeeded in delaying the inevitable. I have not attained the highest rank in the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild for nothing. My concentration is not so easily broken." He returned his attention to the crystal ball, willing an image of the narrator to appear.

  Unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen, because no matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn't change the fact that this particular crystal ball wasn't equipped for optically correct visual reception. The most it could do was allow him to hear voices from the ethereal planes and see vague, indistinct forms and pretty swirling colors.

  "That's ridiculous!" said Warrick. "Of what use is a scrying crystal if one cannot see images within it?"

  Not much use at all, apparently. Too bad.

  "This is absurd! I have been using this scrying crystal for years and it has never yet failed to serve me properly."

  I guess it must be broken, then.

  "Nonsense. The scrying crystal is functioning perfectly," Warrick insisted. "And as Warrick redoubled his prodigious powers of concentration, despite all the efforts of the Narrator, the swirling eddies in the crystal started to resolve into an image -"

  No, they didn't. And cut that out.

  "Despite all his narrative wiles, the voice in the ether could not control the image that started to resolve within the crystal as Warrick concentrated fiercely, and in answer to his will, the swirling mists within the scrying crystal cleared, revealing -"

  There was a tremendous crash as Teddy the troll tripped over some ancient vellum tomes that had fallen to the floor and knocked into the table, dislodging the scrying crystal from its ornate pedestal and causing it to roll across the table and plummet to the floor, where it shattered into a thousand pieces.

  "Ooops," said Teddy.

  "You miserable, misbegotten warthog! Now see what you've done!" Warrick shouted angrily, his chair crashing to the floor as he jumped to his feet and fixed a baleful glare on the frightened little troll.

  "Forgive me, Master! I... I didn't mean it! It was an accident!"

  "I think not," said Warrick, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. "'Twas the Narrator, working his wiles upon you to interfere with me. I begin to see the method in his craft. He strikes at me through you."

  "But, Master, I would never betray you!"

  "No, not willingly," Warrick replied, "but your will is too weak to resist the powers of the Narrator. So long as you remain with me, he can use you as a weapon with which to thwart my plans. That leaves me with no choice. I must be rid of you."

  "Master..." the little troll said fearfully. "Master, please! I have always served you faithfully!"

  "And in reward for your years of faithful service, I shall not take
your life," said Warrick. "But henceforth, Teddy, you are banished from my presence. Go. Leave me. You are free."

  "But, Master ..." wailed the little troll miserably, "where shall I go? What shall I do?"

  "I don't know, go hide under a bridge or something. Isn't that what trolls usually do?"

  "Under a bridge?" said Teddy. "But, Master, 'tis cold and damp underneath bridges! I shall catch a chill! And however shall I live?"

  "Eat billy goats," said Warrick. "Consume the occasional small child. There are plenty of them running about unsupervised, painting graffiti on the bridges. You would only be doing the kingdom a service if you ate them. I'm sure no one would complain. Now get along, Teddy, I have work to do."

  "Master, please ... don't send me away!" wailed Teddy. "I don't even like children!"

  "You have a very simple choice, Teddy," Warrick said. "You may either take your freedom and go make something of yourself, or become the subject of my next experiment."

  "No, Master, anything but that!" cried Teddy, with an alarmed glance at the strange and frightening apparatus that sat in the center of Warrick's sanctorum.

  "Then go. I grant you your freedom. The Narrator shall trouble you no longer. And as soon as I fetch my spare scrying crystal, we shall see who must prevail in this battle of wills."

  Warrick turned to get his spare scrying crystal from the carved wooden armoire where he kept his magical supplies, but as he opened it and withdrew his spare crystal ball, a punishing blow struck him from behind. He grunted and collapsed to the floor, unconscious. The crystal fell and shattered into a hundred thousand pieces.

  "Oh, no!" said Teddy, staring with dismay at the broomstick with which he had just brained his former master. "What have I done?" Dropping the broom, he bolted out of the sanctorum, fleeing in panic.

  Okay, that takes care of Warrick for a while. Now, where were we? Give me a minute to collect my wits. This book's already off to a rather rocky start. I didn't really plan it this way. Honest. But those of you who haven't read the first two novels in this series are probably wondering what the hell is going on. If you want to start at the beginning, pick up The Reluctant Sorcerer and The Inadequate Adept (Warner Books), but if you haven't read those novels yet and want to know what this craziness is all about, I'll try to bring you up to speed. The rest of you hang in there for a while. One way or another, we'll get this sorted out.

  It all started when Marvin Brewster, a brilliant but absent-minded young American scientist working at the London headquarters of the multinational conglomerate known as EnGulfCo International, invented time travel. This could not have come at a worse time for his English fiancee, Pamela Fairburn, a beautiful cybernetics engineer who had already been stood up at the altar on several occasions because Brewster was so intent upon his secret project that he kept forgetting about such mundane things as wedding dates. The wedding guests had even started a betting pool, wagering on how many times Pamela would have to put on her fabulous, white lace designer gown before she actually got married in it. Pamela's father had stopped speaking to her, because the whole thing was costing him a fortune, and her friends were all convinced she'd lost her mind. But Pamela knew Brewster was a genius, and she understood that he wasn't simply toying with her affections. She didn't know what he was working on, but it had to be something terribly important for him to be so excessively preoccupied, something that was liable to be a significant scientific breakthrough that would bring him international acclaim . . . and scads and scads of money. But when he failed to show up for the third scheduled wedding, and no one had heard from him for days, she became concerned and called the EnGulfCo CEO, who happened to be a golfing partner of her father's.

  Together with Dr. Walter Davies, executive vice-president for research and development for EnGulfCo International, she broke into Brewster's private laboratory high atop the corporate headquarters building in downtown London, only to discover that her fiance had disappeared without a trace. Security monitors showed him entering his restricted private laboratory in the penthouse, but they never showed him leaving. He should have been there. But he wasn't.

  Pamela was not the only one who was upset at this development. The EnGulfCo CEO was very much concerned, as well. Brewster's research had netted over a dozen very lucrative patents for the conglomerate, and the CEO had recently authorized vast expenditures on his behalf for some surplus military hardware and an unspecified amount of something called Buckminsterfullerine, also known as "Buckeyballs," an incredibly rare and expensive substance that Brewster absolutely had to have for his latest secret project. The only trouble was, nobody had the slightest idea what it was, and Brewster had apparently disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving behind evidence of what appeared to have been a sonic boom inside his laboratory.

  Pamela was the only one capable of deciphering his notes and figuring out his filing system, so the CEO authorized her to have complete access to the laboratory in an attempt to find out what Brewster had been working on. And if it had been anyone but Brewster, the CEO would never have believed it when Pamela told him it was time travel, and that he had apparently succeeded in constructing a working prototype of a time machine. The CEO immediately authorized all necessary expenditures for Pamela to duplicate Brewster's apparatus, and at the same time, while reassuring her that he trusted her completely and was only concerned for Brewster's welfare, he put detectives on her tail, had her phone tapped, and set plans in motion to corner the world market on Buckminsterfullerine.

  Meanwhile, Brewster had problems of his own. The first prototype of his machine had failed to return from a test run, due to a faulty relay in a tinier switch. It's always the little things that screw up the whole works, as anyone who's ever had a British sports car would understand completely. Using up the last of his raw materials, Brewster had constructed a second time machine, programmed with the same coordinates, so that he could go back in time and bring the first one back.

  Unfortunately, he not only went back in time, but he crossed a dimensional boundary as well, and crash-landed in a parallel universe where magic really worked. When the time machine's fuel tanks exploded, Brewster was left stranded. His only hope of getting back was to find the first time machine that had failed to return. It should have been at those very same coordinates, but it was nowhere to be found. Unknown to Brewster, three brigands had discovered it sitting in the middle of a road and they had sold it to a nearby adept, who had used a magic spell to activate it. But as we all know from reading owner's manuals, when you don't follow the instructions, things often go awry. The machine remained exactly where it was, but the poor adept wound up being teleported to Los Angeles, where his magic didn't work and he wound up becoming part of LA's homeless population. His apprentice, realizing this was a dangerous piece of enchanted apparatus, loaded it up into a cart and brought it to Warrick Morgannan, better known as Warrick the White, the Grand Director of the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild and the most powerful wizard in all the twenty-seven kingdoms. And that was when your faithful narrator's plot started to unravel.

  Now, whenever I teach character development in my writing classes, I always tell my students that it's not enough to say that your protagonist is boldly handsome or that your villain is ugly and malevolent. You need to pay attention to specific detail. So then what do I do? I describe Warrick as "the most powerful wizard in the twenty-seven kingdoms." Nice going, Hawke. Powerful as compared to what? How about some perspective here? I could have said something about what the extent of his powers were, and what limitations they had, but noooooo... I had to get lazy and throw in a description that had no real specifics. Serves me right, I guess. Now I'm stuck with a villainous wizard who's powerful enough to detect the presence of the Narrator and keeps trying to take over the story. And it's too late to put a limitation on his powers, because he's taken on a life of his own and no matter what I write, he keeps finding spells to counteract everything I do. I really hate it when that happens.

 
And now he's banished Teddy, his ugly little troll familiar, and the chief weapon in my arsenal against him has neatly been shuffled off the stage. I suppose I could write him back in, but Warrick would only drive him off again, or maybe even kill him, and then Earth First! and the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society would be on my back for eliminating a member of an endangered species. Environmentalists would boycott my books, and all the people who hang those little long-haired rubber trolls off the rearview mirrors of their cars would be writing me angry letters. Who needs the aggravation? I'll just have to think of something else.

  Anyway, you're probably wondering what became of Brewster. (Heavy sigh.) How am I supposed to summarize what happened in two novels in a couple of short and cogent paragraphs? If I go on too long, my editors will say it's an "expository lump" and then I'll have to cut it. If I don't cover it well enough, people will write me letters and complain that the first chapter was confusing and they found the rest of the novel hard to follow. I just don't know how guys like Anthony and Asprin do it. They write these series that go on forever and this sort of thing just doesn't seem to bother them.

  Sometimes I think maybe I should have listened to my father and become a doctor. Then perhaps I could get the big money, like Robin Cook and Michael Crichton. Or I could've become a lawyer, and then maybe I'd have bestsellers like John Grisham. Or I could have become an actor, like what's-her-name who played Princess Leia in Star Wars and wrote Postcards From the Edge. If I'd been smart, I would have stayed in radio, and then I could have had monster blockbusters like Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. But no, I had to be a writer. It seems nobody wants books by writers nowadays. Next thing you know, your garbageman will have a bestseller and I'll still be eating ramen noodles. Oh, what the hell, here goes:

  Brewster's crash landing was spotted by a leprechaun named Mick O'Fallon, who pulled our hero out of the flaming wreckage and took him under his wing, because he assumed Brewster was a powerful wizard who could teach him the secret of the philosopher's stone, which in this particular universe had nothing to do with turning lead into gold, but with the manufacture of a much rarer substance known as nickallirium. He set Brewster up in an abandoned keep that had been converted to a mill, complete with a water wheel, and Brewster lost no time in modernizing the crumbling ruin with a complete restoration, including plumbing and electricity. He was assisted in his efforts by the notorious Black Brigands from the nearby town of Brigand's Roost. (Actually, it really wasn't much of a town, more like a couple of shacks and a tavern on the road leading through the Redwood Forest to the Gulfstream Waters.) Black Shannon, the sultry, raven-haired queen of the brigands, cooperated with Brewster in his efforts in return for the promise of significant profits downstream, but as time passed and those profits kept failing to materialize, she started getting antsy.