SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Four
Despite the volumes of spells he could recite, the collection of rituals he could perform, and the astral realms he could travel, the sorcerer was still stuck dragging this stinking troll through the forest, using nothing but a titanium-reinforced net and his own brute strength.
Having lain in wait for hours, he’d finally spotted a lone troll—a rare phenomenon. This one, probably on some kind of solitary game hunt, had triggered the Bouncing Merlin: instant bombardment by dozens of talismans imbued personally by the sorcerer. Though it fought and snarled and though its flesh was dense as elephant hide, the troll had eventually succumbed and gone still.
Sweat beginning to bead all over his body, the sorcerer wondered if he shouldn’t hire some help for these little hunting expeditions of his. His leprechaun servants were helpful, but they weren’t very strong—and they kept stealing his shoes. He removed the wraparound sunglasses to wipe sweat from around his radiant eyes. The nose pieces left impressions, so he rubbed the bridge of his nose as well. He hated the shades. But not once had he regretted Seeing the thing that had caused his eyes to glimmer.
The sorcerer closed his eyes and extended his senses, tapping into the varied life forms surrounding him, using their correspondences to expand his Sight exponentially. The forest was prime real estate for sorcerers—an abundance of the elements to fuel their magic without draining their own personal bioplasma. Plants and animals died as the price of sorcery, but there were always more where they came from.
Tapped into a ley line now, the sorcerer detected a party of sprites buzzing a few hundred feet to his left, but other than that there didn’t appear to be any threats in Sight.
Satisfied that he was not being followed, the sorcerer picked up the ends of his net and kicked the troll through its unbreakable links. This wasn’t cruelty, it was self-preservation. Trolls turned to stone under direct sunlight, any dim-wit novice knew that, but in the half light—which was pretty much all light in the forest—a troll might only partially turn to stone. Its legs might not work, but its lungs could still function. It could still bellow for help.
The trolls’ chest was hard as a sheet of plywood; not quite stone, but close enough.
In the sorcerers wake a swathe of scorched earth: wilted flowers, withered grass, tree limbs desiccated, insect corpses littered the forest floor. The cost of sorcery.
A half hour later he lugged his quarry into the foyer of the main log mansion nestled on the edge of Hamilton County. He’d requisitioned Camp Sagamore before his capture, and it’d been maintained during his imprisonment by a Gypsy he’d ensnared with Enochian enchantments.
“Endor?” he called. “Put away your hex bags and get yourself down here. I’ve got another candidate for our trials.”
As the sorcerer was hanging his ancient leather duster on the antler coat rack, a witch with skin the shade of weak coffee strolled into the entrance hall. A pair of three-foot tall men trailed in her wake, their gaudy green outfits clashing with the somber wooden glow of the mansion. The leprechauns—whose golden-hued flesh made it appear as if they’d assumed gold bullion was some kind of candy and therefore consumed it in vast quantities—stopped when the witch paused a few feet away from the troll. She was thin, but toned.
“Well?” the sorcerer said. He did not move or blink, and neither did the witch.
Finally, the troll twitched inside the net.
“There he goes,” the sorcerer kicked it. “Better hurry it along if you want to get him tucked away before he goes all fleshy again.”
Hips swaying, the witch marched up to the troll, snatched the reins to the net and began to drag it across the wood floor. She paused beside her master. Looking up, she spoke in a voice still tinged by a childhood spent in Scotland, “Do you know how much I want to kill you right now?”
The sorcerer nodded. “I do.”
“One of these days I’m going to find a way to break this spell, and tell someone about your plan. Someone with the power to stop you.” She was practically snarling. “I am really looking forward to that day.” She then yanked on the reins and snapped at the leprechauns: “Lipton, Lebanon, help me drag this beast.”
All three dragged the now struggling troll through a pair of solid wood doors.
The sorcerer watched in silence before locking the doors behind them.
In his sanctum sanctorum, a cozy den decorated with various mirrors and antediluvian show stones, all covered in sheets, the sorcerer disrobed. No outside sound could penetrate this sacred place. No outside forces, magical or scientific, could observe him here. All of his scrying devices—except for the Eye of Yog, supposedly dug out of the desiccated corpse of Yog by Algernon Grimwood himself—were one-way tools. Here he could safely observe the known and unknown universe. To an extent. If only he had the Black Mirror . . .
The sorcerer reached into a small white mortar and snatched up a dash of malachite. After placing this in a censer hung from a pentagram-shaped chandelier hanging in the center of the sanctum, he retrieved an eye dropper. Three drops dripped onto the green powder.
Moments later the malachite reacted to the acid, and vaporous fumes began to swirl about the room. Ten minutes of deep meditation followed. The sorcerer stood and drew a sheet off of the largest mirror in the room, a great full-length black-framed scrying pane. It still smelled of rue, fennel, and rosemary from when he had bathed it in an herbal brew earlier in the day.
After lighting a blue candle and setting it on a footstool between the mirror and himself, the sorcerer settled into a cross legged position.
Inhaling deeply, he visualized a swirling silver mist forming within the reflected surface. Then he exhaled onto the mirror. During divination classes as a boy, they’d taught him to voice his intentions and mutter strict incantations. He had long ago moved beyond such mundane rituals. Wizardry was far too strict a path. Sorcery, now that was a broad Art. Swift. It was an infinitely more potent and available brand of magic.
The surface of the mirror appeared to be spinning, its physical nature transforming. If he wanted to, he could use it as a doorway. They didn’t teach that at the Institute.
Shadows flickered, passing over the mirror and the sorcerer alternately. Then, in a flash the candle guttered, split into twin spikes, either one reaching for the scrying mirror and the sorcerer. When the twin flames united again, they briefly expanded in a burst of energy.
The sorcerer’s body sagged as his higher consciousness entered the astral plane. In the Dreaming the sorcerer’s wraith was a shimmering giant. Every inch of him appeared to be comprised of pure reflective silver, like a living quicksilver mirror. Any being that happened to encounter him in the Dreaming would fail to perceive him, fail to avoid him and his intentions. They would perceive only mesmerizing mirror images of themselves.
The sorcerer meditated on his options, on his previous attempts. The Old One of the Forest had to have a weakness, a soft spot he could use to enter it. But he had yet to find it. Years of searching, and still no Achilles heel to be seen. He shot north through infinite space. The Dreaming was comprised of countless dimensions and realities, and one could easily get lost in its labyrinthine corridors and pathway, or run into a wall not meant to be breached, or encounter a door not designed to be opened.
On into the astral realm of the Adirondack Preserve. In here secrets unfolded, mysteries revealed themselves, and beings of light and darkness roamed freely. Unlike in the physical Preserve in the waking world, here in the Dreaming the Preserve writhed in agony. Here it knew that death dwelt within her.
The Old One of the Forest lay sleeping under the withered prehistoric elder tree; its abode since before the Doorways had been opened and the mythics unleashed, its home since it fell all those years ago. Back then they’d called it the Thing in the Forest, the Lurker in the Dark, the Doom That Came to New York, and the Monster Out of Space.
Whatever it was, the Old One could sense the approach of other beings. Though slumbering, it was ever aware.
The sorcerer approached slowly from above.
Energy pulsed through the old pine tree like blue blood pumping through four-dimensional veins. Living light surged from its roots. Bioplasma flowed beneath the ground, which, like most items in the Dreaming Preserve, appeared quite transparent. Living beings trading energies: the strong providing for the weak, the young lending strength to the old.
It was a beautiful sight. But it was paltry compared the energy emanating from the Old One, candles to a star beaming its light across the cosmos. This being, this otherworldly entity, radiated magic like nothing the world had ever seen—not since Yog, anyway. He circled around, gently prodding the tree.
Power cycled through the dead tree.
Backing off quickly, the sorcerer hid behind a felled pine. As he bided his time, deciding on the wisest path, he wondered again at the absence of biological life in this part of the forest. Critters had long ago learned to avoid this area, for primal fear of the Old One. But the insects, that was the truly curious part. No insect inhabited this area. Not a single maggot or spider. It was as if even the most primitive creatures of earth knew better than to disturb the Old One.
Direct contact with the entity always resulted in instant return to his body. So this time the sorcerer decided to take a different tact. Looking at the form of the Old One, its body radiating mystical energies, the sorcerer gathered his will and plunged his hands into the ground, latching onto a tree root humming with correspondences.
He knew that a truly gifted wizard possesses—on a good day—enough bioplasma and will to execute five spells, workings, or incantations, and maybe take one trip to the Dreaming. He was aware that a common cutthroat sorcerer could siphon enough juice from the biology surrounding him to implement a next level curse, summon a demon, and travel the deepest realms of the Dreaming.
He also understood that he was currently tapping into enough raw power to obliterate his astral and physical forms and become one with the Source of Magic itself. Of course, there was also the risk he would set off a chain reaction and annihilate the entire Preserve along with every man, woman, child, and mythic in it.
But with the communion of right focus and his indomitable will, he might just accomplish his true plan here and now.
Channeling ley lines, the sorcerer directed his will towards the sleeping giant, repurposing the mystical and natural flow of the lines. His wraith hummed with power. He could leave off now and return. No. He needed to focus. Distractions could lead to disaster.
The sorcerer gathered his will, visualizing the culmination of his plan, and with a single exhalation of the Great Truth “As above, so below” he expelled the summoned biomagnetic energy in one great roiling wave towards the Old One of the Forest.
In the twinkling span of a breath the alien entity took the hit, recoiled, and struck back.
Shielded by a hardened shell of psychic energy, the sorcerer was not harmed. But the shield could not protect him from other aspects of magic. Powerless to stop it, the sorcerer felt his wraith rocketing away from the Preserve, out of this realm and into another, and another, and on it went. Realm after realm the sorcerer’s wraith passed. Visions and dreams morphed in his sight; monsters and mythics and wizards of every kind were smears to his third eye as he impotently flickered through one dimension after the other.
At last his mirrored form slammed to a halt.
Breathless, weak, defeated, the sorcerer lay motionless with his back pressed against a forgiving surface. In the dark recesses of his mind, using an unconscious reserve of magic, the sorcerer sensed the approach of some unknown being.
It touched him. Mystical shockwaves shook his already weakened wraith.
Acting before he lost focus, the sorcerer turned around, thrust his arm through the opening his impact had made in the Pillar of the Silver Net, and grabbed hold of the interloper. He pulled his unseen enemy over to his side.
In a flash of green light, both wraiths vanished.