Wiz - 1.06 - TABLE

Wiz - 1.06 - TABLE

I happened to be there the day of the first demonstration of my Master's power.  Or maybe it was not happenstance: frequently I stood, watching, from some corner, out of sight, while he struggled.  And he struggled much.  He has told me that he thinks the lead mages had specifically limited his power.  I do not understand this: it makes no sense.  The mages wanted a new kind of power: why would they cripple a wizard they had struggled to bring across the vast gulf from ... wherever it is he come from.  My Master will often repeat the proverb from his land about being careful what you wish for: your wish might come true.  Equally often he will tell me that my objection proves that I am well outcast from my society, and repeats another proverb about a one-eyed man in the country of the blind being considered crazy.  (For some reason I feel that this is not the original proverb.)  Most often he will simply sigh and say that we all have a mind, but none will ever know the maze of the mind.

As I say, he struggled greatly.  Simple tasks that were the first that any apprentice mage could master were an effort and a struggle for him.  To light a candle took great effort, and like as not ended in a headache for him.  Lifting anything heavier than a chair, with the hands of the mind, took visible effort on his part.  So it was that I

found him one day, in a storeroom in the dungeons.  He was attempting to move a table, and had probably chosen a spot where, away from the taunts of the other students, he could try and exercise.  The open-sided alcoves were often used to hold unneeded furniture, and this area had enough room if one of his attempts overturned the table.

His struggles were quite visible, in the ojbect, if not in his face.  It might creak, or wobble, and then he would lean back against the wall, panting and looking as if he were still trying to will it off the floor.  I watched from another alcove across the hall.  I had no fear that anyone would trouble to find me: thanks to his suggestions my work for the day was done much earlier than the others.

We were alone in our separate recesses, I resting where I could not be found and given another task, and he leaning against a wall, spent after yet another attempt.  The first we knew of the disturbance was the sound of shouts and cries, off down the halls.  Then the flickerings of torches as the shouts drew nearer and grew louder, clarifying now to shouted instructions to get closer or grab it, and cries of pain, along with the ring of metal tools or weapons on the stone of the floor, walls, and ceiling.  And then it was here.

Had it chosen my alcove the story would be very different: likely I would not be writing it.  For whatever reason it bounded into his room, leapt upon the table, before it turned to face its tormentors.

The lead mages had been experimenting again, my Master told me much later.  Again they had tried to find new powers, but this time of a more direct and deadly kind.  Whether the monster had been brought, like my Master, or twisted from some existing beast, or created altogether, it was here.  In the dark it was hard to see, for it was covered with a swarthy fur that was twisted and spiked rather than smooth like the pelt of a normal beast.  The creature itself seemed oddly twisted, and wrong somehow.  But the limbs spoke of power, and the weight was clear from the groans of the table under its massive and clawed feet.

It leapt to the table, stopped, and, from my vantage across the hall, for a moment I could see the least powerful mage in the lands facing the most powerful creature I had ever seen.  The wizard was still.  He had no room to move in any case, but seemed to look with interest at what was surely to be the instrument of his doom.

Then the crowd caught up, and the monster turned to face them.  Brandishing the teeth like knives and claws like swords that had, an instant before, been an arms length away from a lone man.  The horde stopped, and recoiled slightly.  Creature and crowd assessed each other.  There was a timeless pause.  And suddenly the realization

seemed to flash to every mind.  The ceiling was not high, and the archway that partially formed the alcove even lower.  The crowd, compressed as it was by approaching the constricted room and by the followers who had continued when the leaders had stopped, was packed so closely that they could not swing weapons effectively.  The beast would probably be subdued in the end, but here was one last chance to take not a few of its tormentors with it before it died.  No one had time to move, even as you could feel the crowd getting ready to flee, and the monster to fling himself among them.

It happened too fast to see clearly.  There was only the impression of the table and figure rising, faster than a man would fall if he jumped off a roof.  There was a boom that rattled the walls around us, and then the sound of pieces of the former table crashing back to the floor, and the yells and retreating footsteps of those on the edge of the crowd who had managed to keep their feet, turn, and run.  Most of the people were on the floor, unhurt save for cuts and bruises from the weapons that had fallen among them.

In the midst of the litter of broken boards was a larger, darker mass.  The central pedestal of the table had impaled it, but it also appeared flattened and shapeless.