A Wizard In Absentia Read online

  A Wizard In Absentia

  By 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 space, 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 psifilled 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.

  He was. "We shall inform his lord
ship that his great-nephew is landing," Maxima Control said, with a hint of reproach in her tone.

  Magnus took it in stride. "I would appreciate the courtesy. I sent a message a week ago by hyper-radio, but I could not at that time give them an exact date of arrival."

  "We understand." The voice seemed to thaw a bit. "How has Rodney Gallowglass come into possession of a title?"

  Magnus stiffened. "In recognition of his services to the Crown of an interdicted colony, which he entered in his role as an agent of SCENT. You understand that any information more specific than that is also interdicted for protection of that colony, and may not be spoken publicly."

  "I understand." But by its tone, the owner didn't. "Surely you can notify the head of the family of Rodney's . . . excuse me, Lord Rodney . . . of his location."

  She wasn't sure the title was legitimate, Magnus noted. "Certainly," he said. "As head of a major corporation, he is cleared for secure knowledge, is he not?"

  "He is. May I request visual contact?"

  "At once! My apologies. Fess . . . " But before he could say, "if you please," a smaller screen suddenly came to life, filled with the picture of an imposing woman, imperially slim, with coiffured iron-gray hair and a face that was a tribute to the cosmetician's art. "I am your great-aunt Matilda, nephew Magnus. Welcome to Maxima."

  Fess explained it on the way down—the robots took care of all the routine chores, such as traffic control, but when an unusual situation arose, requiring human judgement, the traffic computer would refer the matter to whichever human being happened to be on duty that day—and since everyone on Maxima claimed to be an aristocrat, it followed that even a countess had to take her shift at supervision. Besides, it lightened the boredom.

  There was a great deal of boredom on Maxima, as Magnus quickly found out. Everyone thought of himself or herself as an aristocrat, and consequently did very little work. Of course, their ancestors had been commoners, though outstanding ones—scientists, manufacturers, and businessmen, and many had been combinations of all three. They had come to Maxima for the freedom to do basic research into artificial intelligence and cybernetics without the interference of the Terran government (which became more and more restrictive as the Proletarian Eclectic State of Terra took hold more and more firmly, or to apply that research to making bigger and better robots. To support themselves, they went into manufacturing, and quickly gained a reputation for making the best robots in the Terran Sphere. Some of the sons who matured about that time had a bent for business, and by the second generation, every family on Maxima was wealthy. Since they lived like lords, they decided they should be lords, and in their legislative assembly, started ennobling each other at a startling rate. Since they were a sovereign government, even the Terran College of Heralds couldn't deny the technical legality of it, though they could certainly cast a skeptical glance.

  On the other hand, many of the noble houses of Terra had had similarly disreputable founders.

  After five hundred years of learning aristocratic ways, though, the Maximans had become nobility so thoroughly as to be indistinguishable from the old Terran families, in behavior if not in lineage. The more energetic of the sons ran the family businesses, thereby giving the lie to their pretended nobility, though they maintained the facade of leaving the business to their robots; they merely amused themselves by setting policy. Those activities couldn't absorb more than a handful, though, so some of the best and brightest began to emigrate to other planets—and as the centuries rolled by and the businesses came inevitably into the hands of the eldest sons, the brain drain increased. Additionally, Maximans tended to marry Maximans, even after they had all become cousins of one another, and the inbreeding took its toll.

  Magnus's father, Rod, had been one of the energetic ones, as well as one of the brighter souls thrown up by inbreeding—and if he wasn't completely stable, well, who was? In any event, he had also become part of the brain drain, leaving Maxima for a career of high adventure and low income. Being the second son of a second son had had something to do with it, but so had boredom.

  Which may also have had something to do with Magnus's feeling like a canary invited to a cats' party, as he stepped out of the airlock of his ancestral mansion to find himself confronted with a milling mob of richly dressed people, loud with excited conversation—which stopped abruptly as they realized he was there, and all eyes turned to him. Magnus felt like bolting right back into the boarding tunnel, but he remembered that he came of a warrior sire, and stiffened his spine, drawing himself up to his full height. He was much taller than the norm. He was, he knew, an impressive figure, and he smiled slightly at the reaction of the crowd.

  Aunt Matilda stepped forward—or the Countess d'Armand, Magnus reminded himself—and said, "Welcome to Castle d'Armand, nephew Magnus."

  Magnus suppressed the jolt of surprise he felt at the term "castle"—this glittering assemblage of baroque and rococo towers and arches might have been a palace, but certainly not a castle—and inclined his head politely. "Thank you, Countess."

  It was the right choice; she smiled, pleased, but assured him, " 'Aunt Matilda,' nephew—we are all family here."

  That was true enough, Magnus reflected—for the whole asteroid, not just Castle d'Armand.

  "Your relatives." Matilda gestured toward the mob behind her, and one buxom, blonde vision pushed forward, eyes alight with curiosity and eagerness, reminding Magnus that he was probably the biggest event to happen all year—anything to break the monotony. The Countess tried to give the girl a frown of displeasure, but she couldn't sustain it. "My youngest granddaughter, Pelisse."

  The lady stepped forward, extending her hand. Magnus bowed his head and pressed Pelisse's fingers briefly to his lips, trying to adjust to the notion of his uncle's youngest being nearly of an age with him, the eldest of Rod's children—but Uncle Richard was older than Rod by a few years, and had no doubt begun his family at a younger age.

  Then Magnus looked up into the largest pair of sky-blue eyes he had ever seen, framed by a wealth of blonde hair so light as to be almost white, and froze, feeling as though he'd been filled with a humming energy, and as though his brain were not quite within his skull any longer. Desperately, he reminded himself that she was his first cousin, and that helped—but his hackles were still raised.

  "I shall look forward to your closer acquaintance, cousin," she said, with amusement in her heavylidded glance, and the Countess cleared her throat. Pelisse made a moue and stepped back. Aunt Matilda said, "Your cousin Rath," and a long, lean individual stepped forward to give Magnus a perfunctory bow, and a look of morose hostility.

  It helped bring Magnus back to the reality of the situation. He returned the bow stiffly, and Aunt Matilda said, "Your cousin Robert . . . "

  Inwardly, Magnus sighed, and braced himself for a long session of bowing and kissing hands.

  A long half-hour later, he straightened up from greeting the last relative, and turned to Aunt Matilda with a frown—which he quickly removed. Fess, I've not met the Count!

  It would be impolitic to ask why, Fess replied, broadcasting on the frequency of human thought, but in the encoded mode of the Gallowglass family. You may, however, request permission to greet him.

  "This has been a most excellent pleasure, milady,"

  Magnus said. "However, I would also be pleased to greet my great-uncle, if I may."

  "Of course, dear boy—yet surely you must have some refreshment first." Matilda glided over to him, hooking a hand through his elbow and using it to steer him through the mob of cousins. "You must be quite wearied from your travels, if not from your arrival. A glass of wine and a little nourishment will restore your strength."

  Magnus followed, wondering why she was stalling—or did he really need to be fortified to greet the Count?

  He did.

  Count Rupert sat in bed, propped up by a halfdozen pillows. His hair was white, his face drawn and lined. Magnus stared, then covered the gaffe with a bow—surel
y they were mistaken! Surely this ancient was his great-grandfather, not his great-uncle! Fess, he is aged immensely, and so fragile that a breath might blow him away!

  "Courteous," the invalid croaked, in a voice that still had some echo of authority, "but impetuous. I am not a king, boy—you need not bow at the door. Come closer to me."

  Magnus obeyed without speech, for he was listening to Fess advising him, Do not inquire as to the nature of the disease, Magnus. We will no doubt learn of it later.

  Magnus stepped up to the bedside, and the Count looked him up and down with a rheumy eye. "Your garb is quaint. They tell me you have come from a distant planet."

  "Aye, sir—one where your nephew, my father, has made a place for himself."

  "And you have left him?" the old man said with a touch of sarcasm. "Well, I am accustomed to that." He frowned up at Magnus, who was still trying to digest the shock of his words. "You have turned out well, young man—tall, and broad. And there is something of your father in your looks—strong features, let us say—but so much broader, so much heavier!"

  The first part surprised Magnus; he had never heard anyone comment on his resemblance to his father—nor to his mother—since he had changed from child to young man. As to the second . . . "The bulk is the gift of my mother's father, milord." Which was true, proportionally; there was no need to mention that his maternal grandfather, Brom O'Berin, was scarcely three feet tall, though stocky as a bull.

  "Yes, your mother." The old man frownedalmost painfully, as though even moving his face cost him great energy. "What is she? How did my nephew marry?" Before Magnus could answer, he waved away the reply. "Oh yes, I know that every mother appears as an angel to her son—and she must be a wonder, to hold Rodney together long enough for him to stay till you grew. But what is she like? Tell me the externals!"

  "Well . . . " Magnus collected his wits; it had been a startling view of his father, though one he could believe. "She is the daughter of a king, milord." He didn't think he needed to mention that Brom O'Berin was the King of the Elves—or that Gwen didn't know he was her father.