The Delusionist's Son Read online

  Silva called but received no answer. Climbing the stair, he found his father on the tower’s crenelated flat roof, reclining on a chaise lounge with his closed eyes turned toward the sun. Naked except for worn leather sandals.

  When his father was knocked unconscious in the initial blast, Silva’s mother and the other mages who had caused the disaster had ignored their own wounds and thrown away their lives in a failed attempt to contain the otherworldly pollution released. The stripes carved through the muscles on his father’s left side and melted muscle from bone were no surprise. Neither was the missing left arm.

  The smell, like rotten eggs and unwashed socks, was new. As was the wrinkled texture of skin which had turned walnut brown in the sun. Hair and beard were a long matted mess and his once impressive muscles were emaciated and thin.

  Have I come home to a corpse?

  Father opened his eyes when Silva's shadow fell on him. “Welcome home. I didn't expect you until noon.”

  “You knew I was coming?”

  “Your mother told me.”

  “Mother died eight years ago.”

  “Of course she did,” Father snapped and stood up. “But here you are.”

  “Why didn't you answer when I called for you?”

  “I didn't hear you over my music.” Father walked over to an empty spot on the roof, and made a motion like lifting the arm of a phonograph from a record. “Ah, that's better.”

  “Do you know you're naked?”

  “Am I?” Father gestured and nothing changed. “Better?”

  Silva shook his head. “Still naked.”

  Father sighed and trundled down the stair. “Fine, I'll grab something downstairs.”

  “Let’s get you a bath first.”

  “As I told Ms. Meadowbrook, I bathed in rainbows this morning.”

  “How is Ms. Meadowbrook? I want to talk to her about how she’s been taking care of you.”

  “She died last winter. She’s been much more agreeable since then. Even your mother noticed it.”

  Unopened wax paper packages of soap were where they had always been. Silva dragged a tub to the shore and filled it directly from the lake. If the townspeople across the lake had seen his father naked long enough for his skin to resemble tanned leather, a little longer wouldn't make any difference. Washing the matted tangled hair was nearly impossible and Silva eventually took a straight razor to the whole mess. He changed the water three times before he was satisfied, his father complaining about the fuss the whole time.

  Back in his father’s bedroom on the tower’s third floor, an overflowing chamberpot went out the window while Father picked out a clean robe.

  “It’ll be good to have a fresh male perspective around here,” Father said as he dug through a small wardrobe. He pulled out two empty hangers and held them up. “Which do you think would fit me better?”

  Silva yanked the wardrobe door fully open and paused. Four purple robes hung, pushed to one side, in a closet full of empty hangers. Three of the robes bore muddy-mustard colored stripes on the sleeve. The fourth was in better condition and exhibited wide doctoral bands in different colors: red, orange, and sunshine yellow. He pulled it out.

  “You can look, but I don't wear that one any more.”

  “I know, Father.” Silva touched the yellow band. His mother had also worn bright yellow. All eight of them had. “Do you miss them?”

  “Would you like to talk to them? We're getting together tonight to talk about the portal's aftereffects.”

  Silva hung up the unused robe and grabbed another one. He couldn't bear to sit with his father in the dark, talking to people who were eight years dead and gone. Of all the people lost to the disaster, he missed his father the most.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Silva spent the remainder of the day cleaning from the top of the tower down. Father sputtered over what all the flowing water was doing to his phonograph and other imaginary magical constructs, but Silva ignored him. He again regretted not buying more clothes. This robe would be ruined before the week was out.

  It was nearly dark when he reached the room his father had dubbed the new library on the first floor. The room was in better condition than most of those above, but thick dust and cobwebs infected all the corners. He paused cleaning to retrieve his master scroll and compare the sigils within it to those in the few reference books. The spell, as a whole, was simple with few sigils, but Dr. Delan had been right. Almost all of them were unknown to Silva and the books in his father’s library were insufficient. The only books added during the last few years were about herbs and agriculture. He added a copy of Unabridged Encyclopedia of Signs and Sigils to his growing wish list. A list which was already discouragingly long. He had no money and no concrete plans on how to get more.

  Father strolled into the tower as Silva put back the last book. His pace quickened as he walked toward the scroll and Silva hurriedly rolled it up and stuck it in a pocket.

  “That was uncalled for,” Father said, scowling. “I could help. I have three doctorates in magic, after all.”

  “No thank you, Father.” Why did he owe a crazy man an excuse? Because, no matter what he had become, this was his father. “I'm supposed to figure this out myself.”

  Father nodded and turned toward the staircase up to the bedrooms. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  That’s it? He knew his father was delusional, but he’d still expected some comment about his mage robes. Even for a crazy man, was “I’m proud of you, Son,” too much to ask?

  When Silva woke the next morning, his father was not in bed. He dressed and shuffled blearily around the tower, only the scuffing noise of his boots breaking the silence inside the tower's thick stone walls. For a moment, it was as if the last five years in the bustling student dormitories had not occurred and he was thirteen again, escaping the tower's oppressive silence to hear a birdsong or babbling brook.

  After a slow walk through the tower, he climbed to the roof and instantly felt the light morning breeze blowing gently off the lake. The sun was shining, as it often did in the arid lands east of the mountains, and his father was on his threadbare chaise lounge, eyes closed, facing the sun. Naked again.

  “Candles cost money and ley lamps don’t work here,” Father said by way of greeting when Silva's shadow fell across him. He didn't bother to open his eyes. “You need to get in the habit of going to bed earlier.”

  “Father, you need to get dressed.”

  He sighed, opened his eyes, and got up. “Fine. Don’t listen to your father. But at least don’t be rude to Kate. I talked to her yesterday and she said you haven’t visited. If nothing else, she might be able to help you retrieve something from the old library for your master scroll.”

  “When did Kate die?”

  Father scoffed and pulled on his robe. “That woman is unkillable.”

  Inside the great absorption shield dome, nothing moved. Past the transparent blue wall of energy, great stone slabs still rested where they'd fallen, years before. Too many had used their life force as fuel for the spell which erected it. People didn’t know, back then, the damage had already been done. The portal to another world, at the dome's center, had been closed, but the pollution released during the disaster covered more than three acres. The dome was too small.

  When a woman nobody knew was discovered inside the dome, bleeding and injured, there was nothing anyone could do. Kate Janos spoke an unknown language and wore a sturdy men's shirt and poorly-tailored trousers, like a field hand. A field hand wearing brighter colors than anything in Sparro or anywhere else on the planet. Although she didn’t speak Sparian, it was obvious from her demeanor and gestures she thought she had been captured intentionally. The few remaining adults tried to communicate with her, then focused on father.

  What happened. What did you do wrong. Father was in no condition to answer them.

  Silva leaned a hand against the dome, the wall of energy as unyielding as it had been eight years earlier. When Silva
had finally cried over his mother’s death, it had been against this wall. His mother didn't have a proper grave. Kate had buried her corpse under a pile of rocks inside the dome.

  Over the months following the disaster, Kate had been amazingly resilient, raiding the pantry of the remaining canned goods then cobbling the glass canning jars together into a tube to make a contraption which was sufficient to start a cooking fire. Burned holes in fallen timbers allowed her to lash together a lean-to with branches inserted in the holes.

  The remnants of the lean-to had been pushed over while Silva was gone, forming a vertical screen. Yanked out of her own world by forces beyond her control, and trapped in a bubble no one could break, Kate had died with only a crazy man for company.

  Silva beat on the dome with his fist and a single drop of moisture formed on the dome’s interior. He followed the drop down the side of the dome until it collected in a small depression at ground level … a depression which hadn't been there five years earlier.

  What was that shallow trough made from? Pottery? With his eyes, Silva followed other droplets as they formed the smallest trickle and fell into a pipe. The entire four hundred and thirty yard circumference of the dome was lined with them. Every bit of condensation collected and stored. Slowly, he noticed additional details. The garden had been weeded. A compost pile contained fresh clippings. Piles of dirt clustered around the fallen slabs. She’d been digging. A lot of digging.

  Kate appeared, rising from behind her little screen like she was walking up stairs. She was emaciated, as dirty as Silva had always remembered her, and her clothes were threadbare and no longer bright, but she was alive. She dumped a bucket of dirt and stretched backward, pressing on her lower back with her hands, before turning back toward her staircase.

  “Kate!” Silva energetically waved his arms.

  She set down her bucket, walked over to the edge of the dome and studied Silva critically, as if he was the one trapped like an animal in a zoo instead of her.

  “I assume from the robes you are here to ask me nonsensical questions," she said, leaning a hand on her hip. "You can go tell your colleagues I’m done answering stupid questions. Release me or leave me alone. I no longer care which.”

  Silva grinned like an idiot. “Your Sparian’s improved. You don't recognize me. It’s the beard, I guess.” When she still didn't seem to understand, he added. “I’m Silva.”

  “I've had eight years to learn Sparian.” She spoke clearly, but still had an obvious accent. Instead of the delight Silva expected, her face still appeared closed and wary. “So, when they couldn't get to me, they brain scrubbed you?”

  “It's brainwashed, and no. I'm a mage now. A real mage.” He gestured to the blue band on his sleeve. “Not crazy. Not a … a delusionist.”

  “Congratulations then, I guess. Are you staying?”

  Silva nodded. “I want to help. Not just you. Everybody.”

  “He’s been getting worse.”

  “I saw.” Silva didn't need to be told who he was. “Father said some of the old library may have survived. I need a sigil.”

  Kate’s expression grew calculating. “I'll make the same arrangement I made with your father. Fair trade of information for information. But not Muriel’s Sigil, so don’t ask unless you release me first.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of Silva's mouth. He’d give Kate whatever he could, no strings attached. But he'd play along, if only to see what a person in her situation could ever want from somebody like his father. “How do I know you have what I need?”

  “Tell you what, I'll give you the first one free.”

  Silva gestured and smiled at Kate’s skeptical frown. She'd seen meaningless gestures for far too many years.

  Silva called to mind a rote he had written for precisely this occasion. A blue glow formed on the tip of his finger and became a sparking line. Slowly, he etched a sigil in the air. The symbol shined blue and impressive, three feet wide.

  Kate crossed her arms. “I don’t see anything.”

  Was something wrong with her, some artifact of her extraplanar origins? Was she actually incapable of seeing magic? He wove in a movement sigil and the glowing symbol floated closer to the dome.

  The transparent blue dome exactly the same color as the blue sigil. Idiot.

  He wove a color element into the light spell. When the sigil shifted from blue to red, only a few feet from Kate’s face, her head rocked back and her mouth fell open. The light show was taking a lot of personal power, but Silva added in an auditory component and the symbol crackled like static electricity. Small probers flew in from the lake and the tiny bugs whirled around the image.

  Silva felt his energy depleting and dispelled the effect before he was tempted to draw ley energy from outside. He forced himself to breathe shallowly, disguising how tired he felt, and tried to appear nonchalant. “I’d appreciate if you could discover what that sigil means.”

  Kate was still standing, stunned, when Silva sauntered away and saw his father leaning against the doorframe of the tower. The secret smile on Silva's face fell as he approached the scowling man.

  “You know a chalkboard would have worked as well.”

  “Perhaps,” Silva agreed. “But she needed to see that. To see magic is real.”

  “My magic is real.”

  Silva moved to push past his father and didn't reply, until Father grabbed his sleeve. “What?”

  “I know what they call me, but my magic is real,” Father repeated.

  Silva stared at his father, biting back years of anger and frustration. One question bubbled to the surface. “Why didn't you ever tell me you were proud of me?”

  Father glanced down and ground his teeth, as if also biting back words. Finally, he held up the blue stripe on the sleeve he was clutching. “I expected more. Yellow. Or at least red. Instead I got back a street performer.”

  Silva jerked his sleeve out of his father’s grip. “Who cares about a damn stripe? My robes are black and I earned them! Nobody — not even you — will ever tell me otherwise.”

  Father smiled thinly. “There’s the son I raised.” He started to say more, but stopped himself. He patted Silva's arm and said, “You have more raw personal power than your mother. More than me. Try to be conscious of what you've inherited and conserve your energy, in case you need it, in the future.”

  Silva took a deep calming breath. His heartbeat pounded in his temple, still ready for a fight. “I will.”

  “And never pull from the line.”

  “I know, Father. I remember.”

  Father patted Silva's arm again. “I have work to do. I'll see you this evening. Tell Kate to look for that sigil in the identity volumes, probably entomological. I haven't seen that one before, but I'm pretty sure it's some kind of flying bug.”

  Silva stopped, stunned, while his father wandered away. Had he identified an unknown sigil by category, subcategory and order by the general shape? No, that was impossible. Just his delusion talking. Nobody was that skilled.

  Silva was halfway up the stairs when the trembling started. He had cast a spell in the middle of Winterhaven. Up on the roof, he adjusted his vision and inspected himself. His power levels were low, but blue. Stepping to the edge of the roof, he gazed out and down. He stood above a sea of greasy yellow, floating atop deep green. One of the greatest natural collections of ley energy in the world. Useless.

  Tap into that pool and the yellow diatoms seeped into you. Expend blue ley energy and the yellow remained. The bulk of the yellow floated on top the blue, but you couldn't dig deep enough to get under it all. Use personal energy and draw in more, and a little more yellow reduced the reserves which remained until there was nothing left. Every mage who spent any significant time working in Winterhaven left as a wounded drudge. No exceptions.

  Something moved in the yellow pool and Silva saw a humanoid shape writing with his finger on the wall of the dome. No traces of power followed the lines his father drew, although the wounded m
an glowed bright in the green depths. Tears blurred Silva's vision and he returned his vision to normal.

  He tried to calm his mind as he lowered himself into a kneeling meditation position. Above the pool of polluted energy, he pulled up the solar collector he had last used at the Twenty Mile Inn. No exceptions only meant it hadn't been done, yet.

  Silva would be that exception, the first mage to live in Winterhaven without permanently losing his power. Hopefully.

  *****

  The sun shone in the east when Silva woke on bare stone. The blanket from his backpack was draped across his body. He sat up and saw his father, naked and eyes closed, on the chaise lounge. “Thank you for the blanket.”

  “You're welcome. You were exhausted and comfortable so I thought it best not to disturb you.”

  Silva stretched and his joints protested audibly. The early summer nights were warm enough, but a blanket on top of his body did not make bare stone under him “comfortable.”

  “When I was your age, I used to fall asleep when meditating. All the time.” Father sat up and pulled on his purple robe before Silva could comment. “What are your plans, once you finish acting like a maid and pouring water all over my constructs?”

  “After I finish cleaning this place up, I thought I'd clean up Winterhaven’s ley lake, rescue Kate, decipher my master scroll …” Silva finished stretching and grinned. “… then have lunch.”

  Father smiled back. “Care to accept a suggestion?” He waited for Silva's nod before he continued. “Visit the town and see what you can do for them. They stopped accepting help from me, but they pooled their money to pay for your training. You owe them.”

  “I have enough to do here I thought I would wait for them to come to me.”

  Father shook his head. “They have too much pride. You need to go to them. Today. You're a mage now, the cleaning will wait.”

  Silva blinked. Father had said, as casually as if he’d noted the sun was shining, You’re a mage now.