The Wizard's Tower
Evenings with Rory II
Copyright Brent Meske, 2013
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The Wizard's Tower (Evenings with Rory II)
Falling. Falling. Crumbling and falling downwards as bricks were crushed and smashed to dust. The bookstands and books slid on rugs until they hit the uneven stone flooring, then toppled as well. Scroll cases fell. Drying herbs swayed and their racks snapped off. They tumbled.
The world tilted on its side, hung impossibly for a few moments as it struggled against gravity. That moment tried, so hard, to stretch into forever. Gravity snarled and reached up its forbidding claws. It ripped rain from passing clouds, and in the sunlight, a rainbow shone out. The wizard's magic said phooey on that, and kept the tower skewed, but stable.
The wizard gathered himself, and ventured awkwardly down the tilted stairs until he reached his weapons room. He kept this part of the tower especially for courageous adventurers looking for enchanted swords, axes, and other nasties for their silly quests. The really brave ones sometimes came up to the tower seeking wisdom and weaponry. Less often wisdom, but what can you do?
What he needed was a bow. He gathered up the killing tools he needed and made his stumbling, cursing way up to the top again, where his bed was lying on the wall and his pillow had fallen out the window.
He had to be quick about this.
Tying one end of the enchanted rope to the enchanted arrow, and tying the other to a hook, he tested the knots and declared the thing ready. With an effort (it was raining in through the almost-sideways window) he climbed out onto the sloping outer wall.
"Kids and their pranks," he murmured.
His robe was getting soaked, and he would have to brush though his beard again. This would not do. Now, to be fair, he hadn't actually drawn a bowstring in ages, and his potions were spilled all over the place down on the fourth level. There was no way for him to get down there, though, since the bottled beasts and mythical creatures had also been smashed to smithereens, and he had no intention of taking on a griffin or a basilisk in his sleeping robes. They would have to be content to try murdering each other for now.
With his wasted muscles quivering, the wizard aimed carefully. Already his spell was weakening, and the tower was shaking again. He let fly.
Up and up the arrow soared, like it had the wings of a wyvern, until it began to descend. Just when the wizard thought he'd better get his magic carpet out of the attic, there was a resounding thud. The arrow was stuck fast in the rainbow.
Now the tower began to sag again, as gravity got very angry and overrode the magic of the spell. The wizard waited, holding his breath. The rope soon stretched as far as possible, creaked ominously a few times, and held.
There the tower stayed.
Well, there was no remaining here, and there was no getting down past the magical beasts floor. But where to go?
The wizard headed up to the attic, trudging up the outer wall, as it was now easier than taking the stairs. Using a circle would be impossible. Maybe there was something up in the attic worth using.
The window creaked open at his command, and he dropped in. Great galloping catoblepas, this was an even bigger mess than his suite. He despaired for ever getting his scrolls, tomes, and manuscripts organised again, and sighed.
"Carpet!" he shouted.
It had been years since he'd used the carpet... he was used to having his staff handy, and chalk, and using those to open doorways wherever he went. Add that to the growing list of things he couldn't do anymore. The carpet hadn't been maintained well, and often pulled to the left, or lost altitude suddenly. You had to watch how many spells you wove into those things.
The carpet hit him behind the knees and caused him to bash his head on the floor. He cursed for a little while, but when he got up, he saw exactly what he needed. Perhaps a bit of a headache was just what the doctor ordered.
The scrying stone lay between a stuffed hydra head (the skin around the nose had started to go off) and his chest of apprentice materials from the academy approximately three hundred and forty-six years, four months and nine days ago. Give or take. It was a smallish piece of lapis lazuli fused with a larger piece of tiger eye, which gave it a very curious color. The important fact was that it was ring shaped, and tied to a strip of leather.
He snatched it up and immediately chanted the words that would bring it to life. As soon as it had smacked him in the chin, he cursed it and dropped the blasted thing into one pocket. Of course, the direction he wanted to go would be right behind him. He would be much more careful in the future.
Who had broken down the foundation of his tower? He was about to find out. Nobody rankled his beard and got away with it.
"Ahh," he said, and turned back. In the apprentice's chest, he found his very first wand. Since his wands and staves were all helter-skelter now, this would have to do. He gave it a flex, and then a swish and flick. It sang with energy.
Someone was going to be quite distraught over this. Oh yes. He stepped on his soggy beard, fell on his face, then remembered his apprentice robes. Gack, they were half-eaten. He sighed, put them on, then got back up and left the tower on his broken down magic carpet.
The scrying stone was pointing east, which was not good. There was another wizard's tower over yonder, one of those new ones with the octagonal faces and side towers coming off hither and thither. Tower designers these days had no appreciation for the art of it. They were just here to slap together a design and be off to the next apprentice with grand dreams.
He began slewing to the left, and cursed the carpet as he made jerky course corrections. Not far off, the stone led him to a fledgling little piglet. You couldn't properly call it a hamlet, not yet. Most of the mud daubing on the buildings was still drying.
Now the offending tower seemed to rise up menacingly over the treeline and stare down upon him.
"Been too long cooped up inside," he remarked, stepping off the carpet and into the muddy roads of the growing piglet. He hadn't looked up at his tower for ages.
The people seemed puzzled by his presence, and the wizard didn't really blame them. He still had on his star-spangled flannel jammies with the built-in footies, now soaked through and clinging to his frail, five hundred year old body, with the moth-eaten apprentice robes overtop. His pointy hat was missing, too.
"Ho, good sir!" he said to one of the residents. The man just stared at him, frozen in the midst of taking a barrow full of thatch to one of these hovels.
"Might you be cognizant of the infiltrator whom I must hold responsible for the incident at yonder tower thither in the west?"
He pointed over to the rainbow, and the tip of his tower just above the trees just there.
The man kept staring, and eventually shoved his barrow of thatching off down the muddy road.
"Imbeciles," the wizard remarked.
This time the scrying stone led him toward the piglet's tiny central square, a place where the smithy and the butcher had their places nearly complete. The smithy also laid claim to the woodworker's and furrier's establishments, for now anyway. The butcher's was also the inn, the market area, and the tanner's, so it was full of people and stunk to high heaven.
This time he repeated his question and got over a dozen blank stares. He rephrased his question.
"Who destroyed my tower?" he shouted. He was cold, wet, and miserable. He would never be able to wash all the muck out of his pajama footies.
Now there was some anxious whispering, and slow movement away from the
wizard. He clearly heard the words 'demented', 'senile', and more than once.
He considered turning them into sheep, but thought they might be happier as sheep. No, they could serve out their miserable, short little-
Somebody was heading out the back entry of the tanner's. Oh ho.
In a flash he was on his magic carpet, only this time he aimed well to the right, and when it veered left he had no trouble immobilizing the wretch scrambling out through the knee-deep mud. The man crashed into the pigpen fence and toppled over, face first.
Jolly good shot, if he did say so himself.
"Rise, waif," he commanded, though he couldn't feel it completely, not with the holey fuschia robes. All apprentices were commanded to wear fuschia to warn innocent bystanders about the wild magic that might possibly smash them in the face. Back when he'd worn these robes, more than one man was accidentally changed into a woman, and that was just in the final year of his apprenticeship.
The young man freed himself from the muck, complete with loud sucking sounds, and stood, shivering, before the wizard.
"I din't do nuffin!"
The wizard approached him, watching his eyes grow and grow until he could practically see his own two foot nosehairs reflected in those giant saucers.
"My scrying stone rarely lies," he lied.
"I swear it, I din't-"
The wizard spoke the words again, and held back his smile while the stone zipped up and smacked the mud-encrusted young man in the face.
"It was the wizard! In the tower!" He pointed lamely up at the garish monstrosity looming over them.
"Harumph," the wizard replied.
"He told me to do it, he made me do it! I swear! Just take this whitewash over the ugly old tower-"
Stop right there. The wizard flicked up his wand, swished it just so, and-
The young man's mouth grew to three times its normal size. The words coming out of that mouth were much more than three times their normal volume.
"So he said that hideous old tower yonder, you know, in the west, wow, that's quite the bright rainbow, innit?"
"Cease your incessant lip-flapping," the wizard said distractedly.
"He says to me 'Donnel, that old tower's an eyesore, and needs to come down. I wish it to stand no longer,' right? Anyway, paint a big ole circle on the tower early this mornin, right? And then put this crystal on the circle until it glowed."
"Stop talking this instant," the wizard commanded.
"It was really glowy anyway, glowed all greenish yellow. Or maybe it was more yellowish green. And bubbles started poppin up in the circle. The smell, my gawd—"
"Shut up! Shut up!"
The muddy-faced, giant-mouthed young man shut his infernal trap and stared at the wizard.
"What you gonna do now, Mr. Wizard?"
The wizard contemplated this.
"Bring me a bucket of whitewash," he said at last.
***
The much younger wizard leaned out of a window, some four or five storeys up.
"Won't work!" he shouted down.
The wizard paused in his work to tip him an icy smile. He was having trouble feeling his feet, to be honest. He wanted something to fill his belly with. He was quite used to about six meals a day, and he hadn't even had his pre-breakfast hot cocoa this morning.
"I've spelled the ground!" the young wizard said, and tipped his nice, fuzzy pointed hat, complete with gold moons and stars and such. "You'll die a horrible, screaming death. There are nightmare hounds and elementals that will pop up just as soon as there's any magic on the premises that isn't authorized."
"You talk too much," the old wizard mumbled, still painting.
"Nice robes!"
"Whipper-snapper."
"Fogey!" the younger wizard said. "Give this up. I'd rather not have your dead body on my lawn. The sight of blood gives me hives."
The wizard completed the circle, and now produced his wand.
The younger wizard rolled his eyes and disappeared. A second later he reappeared with a staff, this one topped with a gorgeous amber crystal.
"You've forced my hand! Prepare to be humiliated."
The wizard said the words, and felt the power flow out of him and into the binding circle. The ground began to rumble.
***
"It wasn't bad, actually. Corralling the medusa spawn and the others, getting them back in their cages and bottles and vials was really no problem, it just took a lot of time. After that, setting it all back to rights was just a matter of convincing the folk of the nearby piglet that they would be better of with arms and legs rather than jellyfish tentacles."
All thirty or so people turned up, even the frog-faced man who'd helped paste a spell circle on the wizard's tower.
"Convincing the rainbow to move and right the tower was the difficult part. In the end it was possible. Sealing the breach was not even that horribly taxing, to be honest. Stone could be convinced to show up, and were happy to help be a part of a wizard's tower. After all, think of all the other stones they'd have a chance to converse with. Plus, stones always feel better once dressed. Wouldn't you agree?"
The wizard glanced over to his mantel.
"You're in another of your moods, are you?"
He advanced across the room, trying to keep from smiling. He didn't want to injure the young wizard's fragile self esteem.
"Come now, speak up."
He put his ear up to the glass. A red bolt of energy zinged up through the air and crashed into the glass.
"Ooh, I've hurt the little one's feelings, have I?"
He picked up the little snow globe and gazed down at the tower and the tiny enraged face peering up at him. Like this, the tower didn't look all that horrid. He could appreciate the artistry involved in drawing up the plans.
"Now hang on tight," he said, and tipped the snow globe upside down.
About the Author
Brent Meske lives near Seoul, Korea with his wife and son. He’s published elsewhere, though not for money. He writes and reads constantly, and often teaches English. He does all his own book covers, and other folks’ covers too. Check out book covers for clients here!