The Archmage unbound

Chapter 10

The next day I took a break and went out looking for some privacy. I wanted to talk to Moira again. Finding a quiet place in the forest I sat down and called her silently. I probably could have chosen a quiet room in the castle just as easily, but the weather was nice and it seemed more appropriate to call her in a more natural setting. She appeared within moments, rising silently from the earth.

“You need me again?” she asked. Today her eyes were composed of some translucent blue stone, making it look as though they had clouded over. I wondered if she actually saw through them or if they were just for show. Each time I called her it seemed her body was created on the spot from whatever materials were at hand.

“I just wanted to continue our conversation. I have more questions. You don’t mind do you?” I replied.

“Mind?” Her lips curled into a smirk. “Remember Mordecai, I am not a living person. I am a memory of a person, I only exist because your will breathes life into that memory.”

“Well you must have some feelings. You just smiled at me… and as you’ve shown before you definitely have your own opinions,” I said in return.

“Do not confuse ‘seeming’ with ‘being’,” she said. “You might paint a picture of a person, but it still is only oil on canvas. I am not much more than that.”

“So I am supposed to believe you aren’t much better than a clockwork mechanism? Do you honestly propose to tell me that you have no emotions either?” I said bluntly.

She stared at me intently, “No… I do have emotions… I think. I am as much a victim of the illusion as you are. While we talk, while you invest your focus on me, I feel… much as I did once, long ago. But I still remember this is an illusion, as soon as you turn your will aside I will return to dust.”

“What if I kept my focus on you? It doesn’t seem to cost me anything. You could live again perhaps…” I suggested.

“No!” she interrupted loudly. “I could not bear it. The longer I am here, the more I remember, the more it hurts.”

“But you succeeded… I would think perhaps you would have at least a few good things to remember,” I continued.

“I won,” she agreed, “but that is not necessarily the same as success. I lost everything I was fighting for, but I won. Almost everyone I knew or cared about was dead by the time I made my final choice and the one good reason I had left for fighting was rendered…” She stopped then and her face told me she had gone further than she intended.

“Forgive me for prying,” I apologized, but inwardly I wondered what she had been about to say.

“It isn’t your fault. I am not ready to share the more painful parts of my story yet, but perhaps someday I will.” She closed her eyes and lowered her head, as if communing with the long dead spirits of her friends and family.

I waited for a long minute before continuing, “Actually, I had a more practical reason for disturbing your rest.”

The memory of Moira Centyr opened her eyes, “Good, my reason for existing is entirely practical. It might be best to stick to such things.” Staring into those alien stone eyes I could not help but be touched by the emotion I felt lay behind them, but I kept my tongue firmly in check this time.

“When Penny and I were bound together, she gained great physical strength and speed. Cyhan told me it was a side effect of the bond. Because of it she gained extra strength in proportion to my power,” I said explaining. “Do you understand how it worked?”

“No. I can guess, but in my time such bonds were not made. Such a thing would be dangerous for both people involved, exposing them to pointless risk of life and, as you discovered, limiting the sensitivity of the mage,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“I just thought it might be useful for other warriors to possess such physical advantages, if there were some way to do it without putting my own life at risk,” even as I spoke it seemed frivolous. “It’s probably a foolish question isn’t it?”

She laughed showing white pebble teeth as her mouth opened, “Not at all. You just want to create a targoth cherek. ” My knowledge of Lycian now was good enough that I already understood the words, ‘earth guard’, though the context was foreign still.

“I’m not sure what that is,” I admitted.

“That is no surprise,” she said, “There haven’t been any since the last archmage passed into the earth.”

“You mean yourself?” I asked.

“Yes, Gareth Gaelyn and I were the last to create such bonds,” she replied.

“So they were men?”

“And women, occasionally. They were given power to protect their charge.”

“So they were similar to the Anath’Meridum?” I questioned.

She frowned, the expression seeming almost completely human despite the exotic composition of her cheeks and lips. “No, the Anath’Meridum, from what I understand, were created by wizards… after the sundering. They were an effort to appease the church and the people of the time I do not doubt. Very likely they were inspired by the memory of the targoth cherek.”

She paused for a moment before elaborating. “Despite the superficial similarities they were entirely different than your pact-bearers. Each targoth cherek was given his or her power to protect an archmage. They served as bodyguards, rather than executioners.”

I couldn’t help but interrupt, “Were their lives connected to the archmage they served?”

Moira snorted, which seemed odd given her form. “Absolutely not, they were connected to the earth not another human being. We weren’t stupid enough to link two people’s lives in such a foolish manner.”

“Why weren’t there any more created after the war with Balinthor?”

“There weren’t any archmages,” she said matter-of-factly. “The creation of the Anath’Meridum made sure of that.”

“So only…,” I began.

“Yes, only an archmage could facilitate the bond between a mortal being and the earth,” she said answering my unfinished question.

“Hmmm,” I said sagely as I considered her words.

“You don’t understand why, do you?” she asked pointedly.

“No,” I admitted.

“Any such bond, such as the bond you took with your wife, is a bond between two mutually consenting beings. It cannot be forced. A wizard is unable to communicate with the earth… and for that matter so is everyone else. An archmage must facilitate, must communicate with the earth or no such bond can be formed,” she explained.

I was beginning to get the general idea, but I still had many questions. “Were the ‘miellte’ you mentioned before, the watchers, were they also ‘targoth cherek’?” I was referring to the watchers that observed archmages to keep them from overusing their powers.

Moira laughed, “No… that would be pointless. The ‘miellte’ were wizards themselves and such a bond would have limited their ability to listen, to communicate, just as your pact kept you from hearing the earth. A bond with the earth, or anything else, would keep the miellte from hearing the mind of the archmage they were tasked with watching.”

Now that she said it aloud it made more sense to me. “So the targoth cherek were created as guardians?”

“Of a sort,” she replied. “They were almost exclusively bodyguards for the one or two archmages alive at any given time.”

It was time to get down to brass tacks. It sounded as if the earth-bond she was describing might be perfect for my purpose but I needed to know what its effects were, as well as how to create it. “So to be more specific, is there a limit to how many of these earth-bonds an archmage can create, and what are the drawbacks?” Experience had taught me that there had to be problems.

Her eyebrows, or what passed for eyebrows anyway… shot up in surprise. “You would attempt something like that? You have barely begun to learn to control your ability.”

“My life, since learning of my magical gifts, has been rough. The only thing I am sure of is that I rarely have as much time as I should. If I don’t move forward I will be caught by my enemies before I have learned how to deal with them,” I told her.

“You just slew an army of over thirty thousand men, how many enemies could you have left?” she asked, but there was more than a question in her eyes, there was a challenge there as well.

“More than when I started. Those men were never my enemies; my true enemy was always the dark god behind them, Mal’goroth. Since I stopped them he is only stronger and the shiggreth he created are loose upon the land. Even now they are multiplying somewhere that I cannot see them,” I replied.

“Are those your only enemies?”

Her question gave voice to my fear and suddenly I knew for a fact that my paranoia must be correct. “No, there are others. The other dark gods certainly, and I suspect the shining gods are worse than neutral; they may actually be malign as well. Beyond that I have no idea, but I must assume I have a growing crowd of ‘admirers’ among my own kind as well.”

She nodded her head in agreement, “You are right to fear the shining gods. They may be your greatest foes. Whether they are malign to humanity I do not know, but they certainly bear you no good will.”

Her statement reminded me of my recent run-in at the royal palace. “I spoke with Celior not long ago. He said something I didn’t understand.”

“It is rare that they say anything worth hearing,” she commented.

“He said that I bore ‘Illeniel’s Doom’ and that I should die before destroying us all,” I told her. “Have you heard of it before?”

She sat for a long time and I almost gave up on her answering. “I have heard of it. My Mordecai, the one that died long ago, mentioned it once,” she said. Her expression had grown distant, as if she was remembering times and places far removed from the present. I suppose she must have been thinking of her lover, the Illeniel she had known in her time that had born my name. At last she stared at me again, “I do not know what he meant. It was related to some sort of secret your family kept. All he would tell me was that it was an old family shame, something that went back to the founder, the first Illeniel.”

That’s just what I need, more secrets, I thought quietly to myself. “How will I find out?” I said aloud, more to myself than to her.

“That’s for you to figure out. Perhaps you will never know, though if it were that important I would think your family might have kept some sort of record,” she said.

“Perhaps in my father’s house,” I said, thinking aloud. There was still a lot that needed exploring there. I had barely begun to scratch the surface of the books there. In fact I had only read four of the books from my father’s library so far… one of history, one regarding teleportation circles and a couple relating to the use of illusions. Those last two I was still coming to grips with. I shook my head and spoke again, “You’ve let me get sidetracked. I wanted to know about the limitations and drawbacks involved with the targoth cherek.”

She smiled, “It isn’t my job to keep you on track. Besides, only one of us is completely ‘real’, so I can’t be blamed.” Her face took on a more serious expression then. “To answer your question, yes, there are limitations and drawbacks, very serious ones. You remember the stone I had you work with the last time we spoke I am sure. Let us use it as an example. That stone, small as it was, had a small amount of latent power of its own, as well as a minimal level of consciousness. When you listened to it your task was to make the stone a part of yourself, a part of your consciousness, a part of your ‘body’. The risk, which I described to you then, was that you might accidentally make yourself a part of ‘it’ instead of the other way around. You remember all of this, don’t you?”

“Yes of course,” I said immediately.

“You also should remember the loss of self you experienced when you tried to ‘listen’ to the wind and went past your limit. An occasion like that is why having a miellte present can be very important, that girl… Ariadne, she saved your life when she got your attention and brought you back to yourself. The same principle applies when you work with the earth. A small stone is a small risk; it is easy to maintain your ‘self’. A large stone is more risk, and more difficult to make a part of yourself, without you instead becoming a part of it. Does all of this make sense so far?”

It seemed logical, so I nodded my head in agreement.

“There are two factors that are important to the creation of the bond. One is the person being bonded… particularly how resilient their mind is to being in close contact with something as alien and different as the earth itself. The second factor relates to the archmage and how great a portion of the earth he or she attempts to bond to the subject. The greater the portion is, the more powerful the targoth cherek will be and the faster they will devolve. An archmage can only bind as much of the earth as they can actively work with themselves, without being overwhelmed so that…”

I interrupted, “Wait, what do you mean ‘devolve’?”

Moira gave me an irritated look, “I hadn’t gotten to that part yet, but it is a pertinent question. A human being is not meant to be in constant contact with the earth, along with the power they receive they also find themselves becoming more like the earth itself. The effect is similar to what happens to an archmage when they go too far, except that a targoth cherek has little control over the process. They cannot break the bond on their own, or reduce the amount of earthpower they are bonded to. Eventually they become creatures of stone and earth themselves, or very nearly so. They become golems, intelligent, sentient creatures of stone, with minimal will or self-awareness. At that point there is little anyone can do to restore them.”

“Like Magnus,” I said remembering the golem at my father’s house in Albamarl.

“What?!” she said, startled. “Where did you get that name?”

I carefully related the story of the golem I had met guarding my father’s library. I didn’t get into too much detail regarding how it had ‘inverted’ Rose, though the memory still brought a smile to my face. When I finished I noticed that Moira had gone rather still and her face was somber.

“I never expected to hear that name again, though it makes sense… poor Magnus,” she said after a while.

“Did you know him?”

“He was the only targoth cherek I ever made, as well as being a close friend. He was a noble man. I had hoped to free him before it got so far but events got away from me. I sent him away, to protect ‘my’ Mordecai when things got desperate. I can only assume he succeeded… since you are here.” Her voice was thick and crystal tears had formed at the edges of her eyes.

Her obvious pain should have made me more sensitive, but my curiosity overrode my better sense. “What do you mean ‘free him’? Is there a way to prevent what happens to them?”

“Yes,” she answered. “The archmage that created the bond must unmake it, before they go beyond the point of no return. In my time, though it was risky, most of those who became targoth cherek were freed before they suffered irreversible effects, usually after a matter of years or sometimes decades. It was rare for one to be left to his fate as Magnus was. It could only happen as an act of deliberate cruelty or perhaps if the archmage died without warning, before the bond could be broken.” Shame and sorrow were written in her gaze.

“I’m sorry,” I said, realizing I had asked too much.

“It isn’t your fault. I hadn’t thought of it since that time. Not till I heard his name again. I was cruel, and my love for your namesake was so great that I ignored the consequences. I sent Magnus to protect him, and I did it knowing that I would probably be unable to return later to remove the bond. It was a selfish request on my part, yet he swore to do it anyway. My guilt is not your fault.” She had sunk to her knees now, and her stone dress had spread out around her like water upon the ground, her posture was one of dejection.

“Moira…” I started but she interrupted me.

“Would you mind letting me go, for now? Let me return to nothing and forget. These memories are too much. Please?” She looked up at me then and I could not refuse her.

“Rest Moira, I will call you another time,” I told her and before the words had finished leaving my lips she was gone. This time she had vanished so quickly she didn’t even bother to return the body she had fashioned from the earth to the ground. Instead she left it there, like some exquisitely perfect statue of a woman kneeling upon the soft earth. I might have thought she was still there but for my arcane senses, I knew she was no longer present.

I sat staring at the form she had left behind for some while, wondering at the woman she had been. Clearly she had her own demons, things she would rather forget. Her story was already finished, yet because of me she was repeatedly forced to return and relive it, neither alive nor properly dead. For a moment I considered not calling her again, but my need was too great and her knowledge too valuable. No matter how much I might wish to leave her in peace the things she could teach me were too important to ignore. I suppose someday I will be able to add this to my own list of regrets, torturing a woman from the past with her memories that she might teach me, I thought to myself.

I rose and began trudging home, there was nothing more to be gained in the forest today.