A Wizard In Absentia
Christopher Stasheff
ISBN: 0-441-51569-X
CHAPTER 1
By the time the sun had risen, Ian had made perhaps three miles. Then, as the first rays touched him, he looked about for a hiding place. A thicket of young fir trees caught his eye, their branches sweeping down to the ground. He went to them and thrust his way between the branches into the brown circle about the trunk.
A man dressed in a green tunic and brown leggings leaned upon his spear, scowling thoughtfully.
Ian froze and caught his breath. A gamekeeper, and one who had no doubt been told to look for a runaway boy!
The keeper sighed, looked up—and saw Ian.
For a moment, they both stood stock-still, staring at one another. Then the keeper’s face hardened and he came toward Ian, his hand outstretched.
Ian turned and bolted.
Behind him, he heard the keeper shout, heard his heavy feet pounding, and ran for his life.
A thicket loomed up before him. Without slackening his stride, he set the heel of his staff against the ground in front of the bushes and leaped. He swung up on the staff and over, like a clock’s pendulum inverted. He shoved hard, and landed on the far side of the bushes. He stumbled and ran on, as fast as he could. Behind him, he heard the keeper cursing as he floundered through the bushes. He had bought a little time. Ian ran, zigzagging between the trees, around trunks. Taking a lesson from the dwarves, he chose trees with low branches that he could duck under, too low for the keeper to follow. Then two trunks appeared, so closely together that there was scarcely room for him to pass. He scrambled between them, but the keeper could not; that would slow him a little, too. His heart began to hammer; he could not seem to get enough breath. Gasping, he forced himself to run on, until suddenly the forest fell away and he was in a meadow, a clearing in the forest, with no place to hide. But a great round rock with a glint of metal to it stood up in the center of the meadow. The Stone Egg!
Ian turned to run back, but heard the keeper crashing through the underbrush behind him. He whirled again and ran towards the great stone egg, swerved around to its far side and crouched down, heart hammering, drawing in quick, deep breaths through his open mouth. Perhaps the keeper wouldn’t see him, would think he had run back into the forest, or had run across the clearing and into the trees on the other side. Perhaps the keeper himself would plunge on across the grass, and not look back…
But the keeper called out, and was answered by another shout from the far side of the clearing behind Ian. Another keeper!
Ian shrank back, gathering himself into a ball, pressing against the lower curve of the boulder, trying to press himself into the stone…
Something clicked.
The surface behind him gave way, and Ian felt himself tumbling, saw a flash of light, then sudden darkness.
Two months earlier in time, and twenty lightyears away in apace, a very unusual asteroid drifted through the asteroid belt around Sol. It didn’t look unusual—it seemed to be just an ordinary, everyday piece of space junk: lumpy, irregular, a few craters, a lot of raw rock, a lot bigger than most, a lot smaller than some—but all in all, nothing special, comparatively speaking. And comparisons were very easy to make at the moment, because it was in with a lot of others of its kind. In fact, you wouldn’t have noticed it at all, if its trajectory hadn’t been so different from those around it. They were moving placidly in orbit, just drifting along in their timeless round; but it was barreling straight toward one of the larger asteroids in the Belt—dodging and weaving around all the other asteroids, and no doubt taking a lot of hits from the pebble-sized junk, but still coming remorselessly toward Maxima. You just couldn’t help noticing. Especially if you were the Space Traffic Control Center on that huge asteroid. “Unknown spacecraft! Identify yourself and sheer off! Maxima Control to unknown spacecraft! Identify yourself!”
“There is no reason not to, Magnus,” the calm voice of the asteroid’s computer said to its pilot—well, passenger, really; the computer was the pilot.
“I agree,” said the tall, lantern-jawed young man. His eyes never flickered from the viewscreen as he watched the worldlet of his forefathers expand into a discernible disk, larger than all other space-sparks around it. “Identify us, Fess, and tell them we wish to land.”
The robot tactfully refrained from telling his aristocratic young master that one did not merely inform Space Control that one was landing, and noted that he would have to explain a few customs to his young charge at the first opportunity. After all, a nobleman could not expect to give orders or pull rank when he was landing on a worldlet on which everybody was an aristocrat. “Spacecraft FCC 651919, under the auspices of the Society for the Conversion of Extraterrestrial Nascent Totalitarianisms, calling Maxima Control.”
There was a moment of shocked silence at the other end of the link. Then the loudspeaker said, “Maxima Control here. How can we assist you, FCC 651919?”
“We request permission to land, Maxima Control.”
“Permission … very good, FCC 651919. Searching for a landing slot for you. What is your cargo?”
“Supercargo only,” said Fess, “Sir Magnus d’Armand, Lord Gallowglass.”
Magnus stirred uncomfortably. “I am not yet a lord, Fess.”
“You are the heir to the Lord High Warlock of Gramarye, Magnus,” Fess reminded him sternly. “Yet I have not been awarded any title of mine own.”
“No doubt an oversight,” Fess replied with airy disregard. “I am certain King Tuan would have given you an official title, for the asking.”
Magnus smiled. “A lord without lands?”
“Certainly analogous to a minister without portfolio,” Fess assured him. “Since your father is the equivalent of a duke, it follows that you must be the equivalent of a marquis—and in any event, you must have a title of some sort, if you wish to be treated with even a modicum of respect by the inhabitants of your ancestral home.”
Maxima Control recovered from shock long enough to say, “Landing at 1030 hours Terran Standard, pad 29, berth 7-A. Approach from Galactic Northwest, declination 38 degrees 22 minutes, right ascension 21 degrees 17 minutes.” Then a different voice spoke, feminine and mature. “Requesting permission to speak with your principal.”
The lady was uncertain as to Magnus’s status relative to Fess, the young man noted—was he owner, passenger, or captive? He leaned toward the audio pickup. Fess said quickly, “Remember, Magnus, to speak in modern English, and to avoid the second person singular.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Magnus said testily, though it would be difficult to catch the knack of speaking without the thees and thous with which he had grown up. He smoothed his voice, keyed the pickup, and said, “Magnus d’Armand speaking.” The name felt strange on his tongue—all his life he had been “Magnus Gallowglass,” the patronymic his father had adopted as an alias when he landed on the psi-filled planet of Gramarye. But Magnus remembered his manners. “Good day to you, Maxima Control.”
“And to yourself, my lord.” The voice kept its punctilious politeness; Magnus may have only imagined the aura of amazement about it. “May I know your relationship to the family d’Armand?”
Magnus frowned.
“Relationships are extremely important to the Maximans, Magnus,” Fess informed him, muting the audio pickup for the moment. “They must know your rank and place, if they are to know how to treat you.”
The very notion rankled in a lad who had been reared to treat everyone with courtesy, but he was the scion of a medieval society, after all, so he could understand the need. “I am the son of Rodney d’Armand, who was a grandson of Count Rory d’Armand, and is a nephew of the current Count.” At least, he hoped his great-uncle was still alive.