Wigg once again turned toward the valley. The three red moons had finally risen, and the lights from the city and the palace could be seen. Darkness was falling quickly. To the prince’s great curiosity, the wizard suddenly stood and apparently began collecting his thoughts, the hem of the gray robe of his office slowly waving back and forth gently in the evening breeze. He closed his eyes and raised his arms to the sky as if in supplication, bowing his head.
The effect was mesmerizing.
To Tristan’s disbelief the sky began to lighten. A gigantic glow began to coalesce. As he watched, it gently started to spin and to turn on its axis. It was becoming a brilliant golden orb, with offshoots here and there of the palest white radiating outward from its center, bathing everything in radiance. From time to time golden droplets of energy would trickle from the slowly spinning orb and fall into the valley, dissipating into nothingness. The Vigors, Tristan’s mind exclaimed. It is too beautiful to be anything but the beneficent side of the craft.
Wigg turned back to face the prince and, as if reading his mind, said, “Yes, Tristan, the Vigors, gathering and materializing in their physical form. Magnificent, isn’t it?”
“But how is such a thing possible?” the prince whispered reverently.
Without answering, the wizard once more raised his arms, and a darker, more menacing form began to take form in the night sky. As the effect grew in size to match the Vigors, it too began to coalesce and spin, but the effect this time was far different—frightening, horrifying, in fact.
Now the same size and shape as the Vigors, the dark shape seemed to push the other orb aside, as if attempting to make room for itself in the night sky. Black and foreboding, it was as grotesque as the Vigors were beautiful. Droplets of dark, menacing energy dripped casually from its pitch-black, shining sides, and bright scratches of lightning shot through the ebony orb’s center, occasionally lighting up the interior of the sphere, showing the complexity of its macabre form. Instinctively the prince knew what it was, and also knew that it was to be feared.
The Vagaries, he thought, mesmerized, as it turned there ominously before him. The dark side of the craft. It has to be.
Completely entranced, Tristan watched as the two great orbs began to move about the night sky. They would slowly, repeatedly begin to attract one another, as if somehow needful of each other. But then, suddenly, just as they were about to touch, they would unexpectedly, violently, repel one another, and the process would continue. In some ways it was almost a pitiful thing to watch, the never-ending attempts to join and the always-failing struggles to stay together, only to be thrust apart, over and over again.
He stood there speechless, his blood calling out to him as never before.
He was finally able to find his voice and ask the question. “How is it that they seem to attract, only to eventually repel one another?”
“Each thing in nature has its opposite,” the wizard said calmly as he stood before the orbs. “Male and female, light and dark. And so it goes throughout the entire scheme of the world as we know it. The two sides of the craft are no different. But, unlike the other examples I just mentioned, the Vigors and the Vagaries cannot join. Indeed, if any aspect of either one is used in combination with the other, the result would be calamitous—a rent, or tear, if you will, in the fabric of each. For as long as we have known of their existence they have been in this perpetual state of similar, yet separate, permanence.” He paused, the weight of his words seemingly heavy upon his heart. “If each, at the same time, had a tear large enough, it is said that it could release the powers of one to join with those of the other, and that such an uncontrolled occurrence would be the end of all we know. This is yet another reason why we wizards took the vows. To prevent any one of us from trying to combine the two schools.”
He turned to look at Tristan, and the prince could feel that the wizard was about to tell him something of great importance. “It is also said that there are invisible corridors that connect the two sides of the craft, that virtually join the orbs,” Wigg continued. “And that until those corridors are traveled through by one of the endowed, neither side of the craft, no matter how powerful it seems to be individually, has even a smattering of the dynamism it would display if the two were joined. This, then, is the ultimate goal of the craft of magic, Tristan. That is, the harmonious joining of the Vigors and the Vagaries, and their control and proper use thereafter.” And the Chosen One shall come, and through the use of his sanguine, perfect blood he shall one day traverse the corridors of the craft, and bring the two sides together without the breaching of their fabrics, he thought.
“And therefore, when you think of the craft, it is proper to imagine it as these two opposites. Turning forever in time, waiting to be properly joined,” Wigg said softly. “And, in addition, when you think of the Vigors, know that this is the craft of the wizards; and when you think of the Vagaries, know that this was the craft of the sorceresses, when they lived.”
“But surely there were women who chose to practice the craft of the sake of good?” Tristan asked.
“Oh, indeed,” Wigg answered. “Especially before the war. And just as there were women practicing the craft for the sake of the good, there were endowed men using it for evil. But once the battle had been won, it was forbidden by the Directorate for women to be trained in the craft. I now believe this policy is wrong, as do others of the Directorate, and we have decided that this issue should be formally addressed after your coronation. We feel it is a decision that the king should help us make. You are to be that king.” He raised the infamous eyebrow at the prince. “As is the case with many such issues, you will have some tall thinking to do.”
Tristan thought to himself quietly for a moment. “Perhaps if women were to be trained, and I think they should, then as a prerequisite we could ask them also to submit to the death enchantments. That would be fair, would it not?”
“Yes, Tristan.” Wigg smiled, pleased that the prince had come to the same conclusion the Directorate had already arrived at. “It would.”
Wigg raised his hands, and the gigantic, glowing orbs began to dissipate, finally fading away until only the ordinary night sky remained. The prince continued to sit in the grass in awe of what had just transpired.
“But once again do not be misled, Tristan,” the wizard added, still gazing across the valley. “Magic is not without its limits, and neither am I. Just like you, I need food to eat, water to drink, and air to breathe. And, just like you, I can be killed. The power of the magic employed is limited by the power of the practitioner and the strength of the practitioner’s ethics, or, in the case of the Vagaries, the practitioner’s lack of ethics. Wizards of the Directorate have taken vows of poverty, service to king and country only, and are sworn to limit their studies solely to the practice of the Vigors. So you see, we do have limits, even though they are self-imposed. I cannot always do a thing simply because I would like to.”
Still stunned from what he had just witnessed, Tristan nonetheless found himself overtaken by a different concern. “Has a prospective wizard of the Directorate ever not taken the vows?” he asked softly. Wigg thought for a moment before answering. “Yes, there was one who did not take the vows. After the rest of us had submitted to the vows he disappeared, and we always assumed he had found the call of the Vagaries too strong to resist, and had abandoned our cause to satisfy his own greed, voluntarily falling into league with the sorceresses. Because of his actions, we unanimously decided then and there to make the vows irreversible. You see, each of the two branches of the craft are also subdivided into two other subdoctrines, namely Achievement and Reversal. This makes a total of four very separate and distinct disciplines. As I said, the study of magic is infinite. One could spend an entire lifetime learning just one of the subdoctrines of just one of the two schools. Those were very dark days, and the stakes were very high. The fate of the known world hung upon we few remaining wizards making the right decision, and then doing the right thing.” He paused. “That is why, in addition to the time enchantments, we also invoked, as a group, voluntary enchantments of death.” With that, he sat back down on the grass next to the prince.