Kennef sneaked out of the garden door of the house, closed and locked it quietly behind himself, and furtively moved to the small door that led through the massive wall to the road beyond. He picked up his wizard's staff, yew darkened to a deep brown, almost black but smooth, uncarved with any wizardly symbols or words of power. He had only come of age, sixteen years old, two days before. There would be plenty of time to accumulate and inscribe loresigns when he became proficient, always assuming he survived the trials he was likely to face in the next few days.
'Trials' was exactly the right word. Now that he was of age he could enter the arena for practice matches. Until now he had been limited to instruction and practice, which was relatively safe. Facing an opponent in the arena, even for practice, was dangerous. He and his opponent would be isolated from the rest of the world, beyond mortal help. Things could go wrong very fast when dealing with magic.
Closing the door behind himself, Kennef waited in the alcove, watching the road and the forest on its opposite side. Summer was half fled and the mornings should have been dry but a mist hung between the trees over there and he though for a moment he saw a dark figure standing there in the pre-dawn dark. His wizard senses showed him nothing, but that didn't reassure him. The stranger who had come to live with them for the last few months, the man his mother told him was his father, didn't appear to his wizard senses. The stranger, this Andrew, was there to the eye and ear and nose. He could be touched. But to a budding wizard, who depended on wizard senses to distinguish what was real from illusion, Andrew seemed unreal, a phantom.
Kennef shivered. Except for that momentary glimpse, there seemed to be nothing lurking in the mists among the trees. And exactly why would Andrew be waiting in such a place in the hours before dawn anyway? No doubt he was asleep in Mother's room and I'm just having a case of nerves. Kennef stepped out onto the road and started along it, at first fitfully, constantly looking around and behind himself. When nothing untowars happened he walked more briskly. He broke into a trot where the road and the light made it possible to do so safely. He had about twelve miles to travel to get to the Wizards' Arena.
The sun was well up by the time Kennef arrived at the arena, a small field beside a terraced hillside, both sculpted by some ancient flood. The terraces served as seating for the audience, already numbering about forty, mostly men. A large terrace near the center of the field had been set up with a large stone throne, several smaller seats and a pair of benches. The district Wizard King, Armand of Wester, sat on one arm of the throne watching a group of young men prepare for a practice bout. Armand was dressed in dark riding pants and boots with a light straw-colored tunic thrown loosely over but not belted. His peaked wizard's hat rested on the back of the throne on top of his riding gloves, his long, white hair being held in place by a red cloth band. Armand chatted idly with half a dozen of his cronies as the preparations concluded, then watched intently as the bout began.
The two young wizards in the oval ring were both about five or six years senior to Kennef. One of them, Jaroke, had instructed Kennef in the proper construction of the double-shelled wizard's arena, drilling him repeatedly on the rituals involved in creating the practice arena and the more formal match arenas. The difference was vital. Students had to be able to escape a practice arena if something went wrong but contenders in a formal match might only destroy the arena by mutual consent or, in the case of a death match, when one wizard died
The outer shell of an arena served to protect viewers from the magic used inside, often violent in nature, and to protect the combatants inside from outside attack. The inner shells protected the two wizards from each other until they both consented in dissolving it. In a practice match such as this, the inner shell would close whenever either wizard willed it. In a formal combat match, the inner shell simply vanished.
Both shells were transparent in a number of important ways. They could be seen through, so the spectators could determine what was happening inside. Magic being used inside became visible to those outside, to give them an idea of what kinds of spells or forces were being used, but it often took an expert to determine precisely what was happening magically, causing some bouts to become the objects of endless debate. The aura or condition of the fighters could also be judged, a wizard's aura going black and disappearing as he died. Most favorable was a blue aura, with pain generating reds and fear generating yellows.
Inside the shells, the wizards had no such aids. They had to depend on their skills and education to determine their opponent's condition and the kind of force being used against them. The magic used was invisible except to such magical senses as they had been able to develop. Just being able to build the shells from within required a certain amount of mastery of combat magics but not enough to insure survival. Kennef had practiced the procedure for building and dissolving the combat shells, as had any apprentice, and had been trained in basic attack and defense techniques. But he had never been in the arena for a practice combat. He had not been of age until now. Any of the others here could easily beat him in combat. The two entering the ring now could probably do him serious damage. Those on the king's tier could kill him.
The two wizards took their places, staffs grounded before them. They chanted in unison, accompanying the chant with small movements of the tips of the staffs. The outer shell formed simultaneously with the inner shells like a set of soap bubbles. The wizards lifted their staffs and the inner shell lifted to join the outer shell. The two staffs each took on multicolored lives independent of the auras of the two wizards, shooting out rays, beams and objects to be obliterated by the powers of the opposing staff. Jaroke sent what appeared to be an owl at his opponent, it being met by a large black arrow. One small purple ball didn't dissolve when struck by the beam from Jaroke's staff; it fell to the ground, then slowly moved toward Jaroke, finally touching his foot. Jaroke's aura shifted to bright red. The inner shell dropped and the wizards stepped back to a neutral position, Jaroke staggering slightly. Then the shells vanished. The practice was over.
The match had taken under two minutes. Jaroke had treated his injury himself within another minute. Now everybody would spend between half an hour and several hours discussing the various techniques used. Kennef wanted to know how the purple ball thing was done; he had never seen anything like it before.
"Get in the ring with me, kid," said a tall, dark man from the king's tier, "and I'll demonstrate a few multistage spells for you." The man was Rolloch, who they called the Black Marshall. He was ranked as second only to the king in battle magic.
"I mean no disrespect, sir, but I have never been in the battle arena. I think I should start with something safer than techniques I've never seen before demonstrated by one of the most powerful wizards here. Even if I should survive the encounter, I am so ignorant I would learn little of value as a result."
"Nonsense, kid. It'll be a great experience for you. I'm doing you a great honor by asking. Don't refuse."
"I cannot refuse. But I beg you to reconsider your invitation."
"Grab your staff. Meet me on the field."
In moments the field was cleared except for Rolloch and Kennef. Those in the stands were quiet, watching intently what was happening on the field. Kennef took his place in the arena and, at a nod from Rolloch, started the chant. As the outer shell formed, the outside world vanished, an effect Kennef hadn't expected. The shell was light blue and featureless. He could see Rolloch gesturing to him through the inner shell as if to say, "Come on. Open the shell and let's get started." Suddenly he knew Rolloch meant to kill him, and there was no escape.
Then Andrew walked in through the outer shell. The man invisible to magic simply ignored the magic and did the impossible. He took Kennef by the elbow and walked him through the shells on the other side. Suddenly the two of them were outside the combat arena and Rolloch was alone inside. The inner shell was still down, one side unoccupied. Rolloch was unable to dissolve it. It had required two wizards to build and it would take either two wizards to dissolve it ... or the death of one wizard.
"He was going to kill you, you know," Andrew said.
"Yes, I figured that out after the shells went up."
"Come. Let's talk with this king. He ordered your death."
"Are you sure? How do you know?"
"How I know doesn't matter, but yes, I'm sure. You have great potential, enough to challenge him in a decade or so. He's a good judge of such things. He makes sure great potential doesn't survive." As they climbed towards the king's tier, Kennef realized that many of the wizards were casting spells at them. Deadly spells which, somehow, were doing nothing.
Not exactly nothing. They were annoying Andrew. He halted, looked around at the wizards. His voice, when he spoke, was soft enough, but it could be heard clearly throughout the area: "Enough. No more magic. If you won't use it constructively, I won't let you use it at all."
The wizards were stunned. Some kept trying to invoke spells. Others rubbed eyes or ears that now reported only mundane sights and sounds rather than highly trained magical senses. Several screamed as if in agony. One ran toward the pair, prepared to strike them with his staff, but he tripped, fell on his face and lay still. Eventually, all became quiet and simply watched Andrew and Kennef.
They arrived at the throne. Andrew dropped Kennef's elbow and seated himself in the giant stone seat with the king still sitting on its arm.
The king said, "Who are you? What are you? And get out of my throne."
"I'm Andrew Jamison. I'm the Chosen One, although you probably don't understand what that means. It is no longer your throne. I've deposed you. I'm the one who gave magic to this world. Now I'm going to take it away."
"What! Why?"
"Why? Because you tried to kill my son because his talents were strong enough he might eventually have deposed you. Because having magic isn't making people better, it's making most of them worse. I've kept the magical powers growing for eighty thousand years. Technology has almost vanished in the last thirty thousand years, the population has diminished to a scattering of rural communities and, most of all, I'm tired of stupid people like you doing stupid things for stupid reasons. No more magic for you or for anybody here. Anybody who attacks any of you with magic will lose their magic, too. Nobody else will be born with magic from now on. Nobody who now lacks magic will be able to acquire it. In another century, nobody at all will have magic. All because of you. I would have found another excuse pretty soon, but you gave me a good enough excuse now. Now get out of here. All of you."
Gradually the one-time wizards, now powerless and with only human senses, left the area. They knew they had no more magic. A few carried their staffs or wore their peaked hats but most didn't bother. It was pointless. Andrew steered Kennef towards a cluster of trees behind which he had hidden his vehicle. It looked something like a bicycle but was large, massive in comparison, and had strange pedals. Andrew stood the machine up and told Kennef to get on behind and hold on tightly. They quietly raced down the roads Kennef had run earlier, returning home in less than half an hour. The noon meal was on the table when they arrived.
"You did it this time, didn't you?" Jelda, Kennef's mother, asked the question as soon as the two had washed up and seated themselves at the table. She sounded calm and not the least surprised.
"Yes. The King set his Black Marshal to killing Kennef, as I rather expected he would, so I used that as an excuse to start taking magic away from this world."
"Hey! I just remembered. What's going to happen to Rolloch, stuck in that arena by himself?"
"I left him his magical powers. There actually is a way he can get out of the arena alive using magic but I doubt if he'll think of it. It requires a close analysis of the ritual used to form the arena and he would have had to notice an error you made during the formation ritual. If he figures it out, he'll escape and then lose his powers. Otherwise, he'll die trapped in there. I don't care which. After all, he did try to kill you."
Jelda asked, "How long does he have to figure it out?"
"No more than three days. He has no water and the arena traps heat. It will continue getting hotter and hotter inside, especially if he tries using a lot of magic, and that will dry him out faster. Why? Do you want to watch him suffer?" Jelda threatened to throw a piece of bread at Andrew.
Kennef said, "You said, 'This world'. Are there others? And what was that business you told the King about being the Chosen One?"
"This universe is full of stars and worlds, many of which are much like this. There are many more universes, equally full of stars and worlds. In some 60,000 of those universes I have chosen a world, populated it and played a number of games with it. Some of the games I've played have been to free myself from tormenters, other Chosen who tried to bedevil me. Other games, such as the magic I let the people here believe in, were for my own interest and amusement. All this was made possible by a different kind of people a long time ago in yet another set of universes who made some very powerful machines to serve themselves. Machines that worked in multiple dimensions. Not magic. When they discovered our kind of people, they chose one representative, me, and gave him the use of those powerful machines, which make it possible to travel between the universes and to live almost forever."
"Almost forever?"
"Well, obviously forever isn't over yet. I'm still alive. So are the ancient ones who made the machines."
"They -- you -- never die?"
"At first we die quite often. I've been dying about every eighty years. I just don't stay dead for much more than three days at a time. Just long enough for my soul to be cleansed and recover."
"Your soul? Your immortal spiritual part?"
"Not exactly. It isn't exactly immortal, and it's more like an extradimensional parasite than a part of us. They accumulate around humans and other complex beings, forming an image but accumulating a lot of trash as time passes. Every once in a while they have to shake off the extra stuff they pick up and they can't do that while we're alive. It just takes a couple of days. Without a cleansing, the soul gets smothered and dies. Some other forces can also dissolve or destroy souls, but they are more likely to be damaged by merging with others or by dividing into several, either situation causing an identity crisis. But don't worry. Whatever happens to the soul has almost no effect on the body."
"How ... how old are you?"
Jelda said, "I've had this, my present body, for just over fifteen years. I've lived in this house for nearly a thousand years, off and on. Before moving to this little place I lived in the mansion on the other side of the road, now hidden by a wild forest of trees so that you wouldn't know it was there, for seven thousand years. Again, off and on. I travelled a lot back in those days. There was a runway behind the mansion and I flew my own airplanes."
"What's an airplane?"
"It's a vehicle for travel through the air. There aren't very many of them left any more. They used to be quite popular."
Andrew said, "They are also good for transporting cargo. I've kept the airfield behind the mansion clear and there are several aircraft there now, including a helicopter. The mansion is in good condition, too. You just can't see it until you get about a hundred yards off of the road. I could have the whole yard cleared in a couple of days and brought back to its former glory in a few months."
"By the way, when I left this morning I thought I saw somebody standing on the other side of the road among the trees, watching me. At first I thought it was you ... but then I decided you weren't likely to get up so early. Was it you?"
"No, it was one of my agents. I have a number of servents who watch over me and my interests. They followed you to the arena and informed me so that I could take action. I got there barely in time. If I hadn't arrived in time, they would have rescued you. That would really have scared the assembled wizards."
"Why?"
"Well, like me they are immune to magic. They could have plucked you from the combat bubble just as I did. But they are much more impressive physically than I am. They would probably have hurt or killed a few wizards, too. I imagine they would have scared you, too, but they would have done their best to protect you, even from yourself."
For several minutes the three ate in silence. Finally, Jelda said, "Besides this world and Earth, my home world, I have lived on two other worlds. The first of those worlds I visited for about a year each time, returning to Earth for five days after each visit. After many visits to that first world I had an accident and was offered a chance to live many lives on my second world. It was buried deeper in time and each visit took me sixty years, more or less, and whenever I got old I would get a new body, one that was physically about twenty-five years old. Then I met Andrew and came here. This world is not so deep in time, so my visits are under twenty years, but there are too few people here. The problem has been the magic, of course. Too few people are born and it is too easy to kill each other off. People have been forgetting technology and medicine. Today they die of diseases we could cure even fifty years ago. In twenty thousand years, the people of Earth will have access to this world. If they find it an empty, backwards place, they will overwhelm it."
"Mother, how old are you?"
"Oh, my. I haven't thought about that in a long time. I guess I'm about fifteen thousand years old. Nowhere near as old as Andrew."
Andrew said, "Before you ask, I'm about one billion, two hundred million years old. When I have all sixty thousand worlds synchronized with Earth I will have lived six billion years on them. I have come about twenty percent of the way. I have a long ways to go."
"And you claim you are doing this without magic? I find that too hard to believe."
Jelda said, "That's why I've told so few of my kids over the centuries. It's hard enough to believe even on worlds without magic. Not that there really is such a thing as magic."
© Copyright 1999 - 2001, James E. Henderson (WordJames) and the authors listed. All rights reserved.