“And,” Karanissa said warmly, “welcome to the family.”
Hearing that, Tobas glanced at Karanissa and saw she meant it. He smiled. For the first time since he had watched Roggit’s house burning, he felt that he could stop worrying about his future. He had a home, plenty of money, a career as a court wizard, and a family.
It was like no home he could ever have imagined, this castle hanging in nowhere. His money was a fabulously rich dowry, which was not something he had ever expected. His wizardry was inherited from a man centuries dead, rather than learned as an apprentice, and might almost be considered another dowry. His family consisted of two wives, a witch and a princess. Life had played strange tricks on him, certainly, but nonetheless he had a home, money, a career, and a family, and he was pleased with them all.
Any problems that might remain could only be trivial. He felt wonderful. His luck had been good after all.
EPILOGUE
Lador of Sesseran awoke and looked up, startled, as a shadow blocked out the sun. All he could make out was a dark shape hanging in the sky above him. He stared, unsure whether to get up and run, or stay where he was. Thera, at his side, still slept.
A head appeared over one edge of the thing.
“Hello,” a young man’s voice called cheerfully. Lador was slightly relieved to hear the familiar accent of a Freelander rather than the harsher tones of an Ethsharite, but still wary.
“I don’t suppose you remember me,” the voice continued. “But no, that’s foolish, of course you do. I’m Tobas of Telven; I stole your boat.”
Lador gaped, then found his voice. “That was five years ago!”
“I know, I know,” the apparition said. “I’m sorry it took so long, but I’ve been busy. You wouldn’t believe some of the delays. I hope you’ll accept my apology.” The young man tossed something over the side of the hovering object; it struck the ground with the distinctive clinking sound of coins. Lador stared at the purse, then back up at the thing.
Two more heads were peering over the side now; his eyes had adjusted somewhat to the bright sun behind them, and these two looked female. Both had dark hair; one wore it loose and flowing, while the other wore hers gathered up by a coronet. The object supporting them seemed to be flapping at the edges, he noticed; it was perhaps two yards wide and three long and seemed to be made of heavy fabric.
“The money’s my apology,” Tobas said. “And the boat I owe you is down on the beach. It’s not actually the one I stole, but it’s as close as I could make it. The chicken dinner is under the seat, but I substituted white wine; I hope you don’t mind.”
“Why would he mind?” the woman in the coronet asked derisively. “Who drinks red wine with chicken?”
“Shut up, Ali,” the other woman said. “Let Tobas finish.”
“He was finished!” the first woman retorted.
“No, he wasn’t,” the second insisted.
“This is all silly, anyway.”
“Will you two shut up?” Tobas roared, to no effect, as his wives bickered.
Lador simply stared for a long moment, but as the argument continued, he first smiled and then laughed aloud. The world was full of wonders, and this wizard who called himself Tobas of Telven was one of them.
Tobas looked down once more, shrugged and smiled as if to say, “What can I do?” then turned back to his women.
The three on the flying carpet paid no further attention to the couple in the dunes; they were far too busy with their own little family squabble. After a few minutes of bemused listening, Lador woke Thera, who had somehow slept through it all. Together, the two of them went down to the beach together to see their new boat.
NOTES
In Y.S. 5226, when the noted wizard Tobas of Telven consulted an oracular priest in Ethshar of the Spices, his primary purpose was to locate two people he felt he owed an unpaid debt. However, he took the opportunity to obtain answers to certain other questions as well. Those answers are provided here for any readers of this chronicle who might be interested.
Roggit knew perfectly well that Tobas had lied about his age; he was not as far gone as his apprentice believed. He was, however, a very lonely old man and took pity on the boy. Only after accepting him as an apprentice did he have misgivings, which were responsible for the delays in teaching Tobas anything useful.
The area in the mountains between Dwomor and Aigoa where wizardry would not function resulted from the second use of the spell Ellran’s Dissipation. This incredibly powerful but very simple first-order spell was discovered quite by accident in Y.S. 4680, by the little-known research wizard Ellran the Unfortunate; it renders an area of indeterminate size “dead” to wizardry, permanently. Since the military government of Old Ethshar relied heavily on wizardry, while their Northern enemies did not, the spell was deemed to be not only useless, militarily speaking, but exceedingly dangerous, and accordingly it was vigorously suppressed. It was only performed twice: once in 4680, when Ellran discovered it, and again in 4762, when Captain Seth Thorun’s son, a bitter and inept former apprentice of Kalirin the Clever, himself an apprentice of Ellran’s, used it to end a pointless feud with his rival, Derithon the Mage. Derithon’s home was destroyed, and Derithon himself was presumably killed. A secret military outpost devoted to magical research was also rendered “dead” to wizardry, and was consequently abandoned. This was the “village” Tobas and Peren explored. Seth Thorun’s son was tried for murder and treason by a proper military tribunal, found guilty, and hanged on the sixth day of Rains, 4763, and his Book of Spells burned, putting an end to the line of apprentices passing down Ellran’s Dissipation.
Captain Istram of the Golden Gull could not be bothered to locate the rightful owners of the boat Tobas had left in his care, but did not feel justified in keeping it. Accordingly, he sold the boat and donated the proceeds to a theurgical hospital for injured or aged sailors.
Prince Heremin of Teth-Korun did not actually speak Quorulian as his native tongue at all; he spoke Teth-Korunese. His interpreter spoke Quorulian and was unaware of the distinction between the two tongues. Other than differences in the use of the subjunctive and in the genitive-case endings of proper nouns, the two languages are, in fact, indistinguishable.
Dragons were endemic to the hills of Dwomor for centuries, but none caused serious problems before Y.S. 5220 or so, because until then none ever lived long enough to grow to a formidable size. The dragon Tobas killed had resorted to eating livestock and people only when it had devoured everything else big enough for it to catch; if it had been just a little smarter, it would have moved on to a different area, instead, and gone on eating deer. Dragons have no known limit to their growth; but since young ones tend to be quite stupid and easy to capture or kill, very few ever exceed what humans consider a manageable size. They reach reproductive maturity at about six or seven feet in length, so that the tendency to get killed off when they reach ten feet or so has not seriously endangered the species. The linguistic centers of the draconic brain usually develop around the twenty-foot size, but of course, like a human infant, a dragon cannot learn to talk without someone to teach it. The illegible page in the front of Derithon’s book of spells had once held his notes on the making of an athame; they were rendered illegible when his master found them and impressed on his apprentice with a willow switch that the athame was a secret. The lesson took, and the little code symbol Derithon used thereafter was the result.