The New Magic

HEGGY THE FIRST “It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.” – Zen proverb Heggy was a sloppy, mop-headed boy with a wonderful laugh and no last name. His given name, Hej, was his mother’s father’s name and a family name from five generations, but the town knew him as Heggy. “Heggy the First,” he called himself. Galè of Lor was a few shades older, a head taller, a wasteland leaner; a copper-skinned scarecrow clutching a candle in otherwise darkness. The night puffed into the cave, damp with distant winter and the itch of a chill at sandaled ankles. “And this is safe?” asked Galè. Heggy added some chalk to the jumble of circles and writing on the floor before a knee-high mirror and stepped back, careful not to disturb the inscriptions. “The wards are what they are,” said Heggy. He still had a child’s voice, girlish and funny. “They’ve worked for a thousand years.” “And where did you learn it?” “Magister’s book. I wrote them down until I could remember them.” The candle sputtered, nearly died, then found itself again. “I don’t trust you,” said Galè. He had some magic—he’d been able to make things fly since before he could walk—but he had nothing like this. “Light it,” said Heggy, “and we’ll see your father.” Galè touched the candle to each of the red and black candles that dotted the intersections of the inscribed figures. “Nath of Tanol,” Heggy called to the mirror. He did his best to lower the register of his voice. Galè thought it sounded silly. “Nath of Tanol, warrior of Lor,” said Heggy. “Rise from death. Rise from rest. Join us in the dark. Your son is here.” The candles flickered in the stillness. “I don’t see anything,” said Galè. “Don’t blink,” said Heggy. “Nath of Tanol,” he said again. “Rise from death. Rise from rest. Join us in the dark.” “Heggy, I don’t th—” “Nath of Tanol!” Heggy shouted, the words ringing off the rock walls. “Your son is here!” “Heggy, I—” And then he saw it. A face in the mirror, distant, grayed; obscured as if by smoke and as tenuous as if the wrong thought or even a careless breath could banish it. “Father?” asked Galè. He blinked, and it was gone. Staring again, it reassembled, twinkling. “Father?” “My son,” said the face in the mirror, still a blur and a glint. The voice seeped from all corners of the room. “I miss you, Father,” said Galè. “Who is with you?” asked the voice. “Heggy,” said Galè. “Greetings, Heggy. I miss you, my son,” said the voice. “I can’t see you,” said Galè. “And your voice is not your own.” “You must break the glass,” said the face. “Break this glass. Open the door. I will return.” Galè shot a sidelong glance to Heggy, who shrugged. “It’s his mother’s mirror,” said Galè. “It’s not mine to break, Father.” “A small price to pay,” said the face. The voice was now definitely coming from the mirror. Galè looked again to Heggy, who nodded. Galè, a warrior in his father’s footsteps and now under the tutelage of the knights of their tiny crossroads hold of Lor, handed the candle to Heggy and slipped his father’s axe out of its thong at his side. “Go ahead,” said Heggy. Galè stood before the mirror, squared his feet, and drove his axe into the glass. The mirror collapsed inwards, the shards tumbling multifaceted and breathtaking into a weightless black beyond. The cave erupted in billows of smoke and the roars of wild animals. Unseen hands wrenched the axe from him. The last thing Galè saw before it all went completely dark was that he had kicked apart the wards. Galè crawled for freedom in the dark. Images of demons and monsters drove him, his elbows and knees thrashing at the sand, sure of clawed vicious things inches behind him. He found the opening and rolled down the hill, deafened, throat searing, sulfur on his tongue. Caustic smoke surged from the cave, as if the world itself was on fire and the rocks burning. “Heggy!” His voice was a hiss, the name held against a grindstone, uselessly small in the vast waste of stars and sand. The lilac glow of the ringed moon behind the hill cast the smoking cave in shadow. “Heggy!” His gut reaction was to run for the magister’s house at Lor. He looked down the canyon, judging the amount of time it would take him to reach town, explain, and bring help. Heggy staggered out. “Heggy!” Galè started up the hill as Heggy lurched down the slope, stumbling, carrying Galè’s axe. “My father’s axe,” rasped Galè. He could tell that Heggy was possibly burned, or stunned, or injured. “I owe you a hundredfold.” The face that met his, once Heggy’s, was horribly charred, eyeless on the right, hair blasted away, teeth showing through skin burned to tatters. “Oh, Heggy,” said Galè, choking on the words, the back of his throat in shreds. “We’ll get you to the magister. You’ll be all right. I can carry you.” Heggy raised the axe with a roar of a hundred voices joined in anguish, all the rage and longing of hell itself unleashed at the skies. The stars shuddered at the noise. Galè threw out a hand and knocked Heggy into the dirt and briars with the force of his heart, the force of the world. He unlocked his knife from his belt and dropped to a knee and drove it, panicked, frantic, into his chest until the last of the voices from the Heggy-thing—no longer Heggy, he was sure—faded and gurgled. Galè wiped the knife on Heggy’s tunic and sheathed it, then took up his father’s axe and ran. Galè slammed his fist on the door to the magister’s house, a grip in his gut. He’d killed Heggy. Poor, fat Heggy who loved books and jokes and the magister. His friend. Everyone’s friend. Magister Ramour was the town wizard, a slender, serious man in the manner of many magisters. He opened the door, which scraped on the floor, and the moon reflected on his wisps of white beard and his dark pate. “Magister,” shuddered Galè, “I’ve done something terrible.” He went into a breathless explanation: stealing the mirror, summoning his father, breaking the wards, the mirror collapsing. And, lastly, killing Heggy, although he neglected the part about using his magic. Even Heggy hadn’t known he’d had any magic. Halfway through, Ramour had brought the boy inside and sat him down, made him some tea, and listened with his fingertips pressed together. It was an odd house, Galè noted. Tidy and sparse and smelling of tea and candles, and yet from the inside it appeared that none of the angles quite came together. Corners met dispassionately and with no readily apparent regularity, and the roof felt like it sagged overhead. All in all, it had a lethargic, unindustrious feel, and Galè was surprised that the town magister couldn’t have afforded to have someone build him a better home. “It’s likely that Heggy didn’t know what he was doing,” said Ramour. “A boy in that much pain may not even have known who he was. If you killed him defending yourself, I don’t think anyone will question your actions.” “You don’t think there was any chance that . . . that it wasn’t Heggy?” asked Galè, sipping his tea, which was remarkable, strong and tinged with honey and whisky. Perhaps the magister had other priorities than straightening his walls, Galè thought. The chairs were comfortable, the larder stocked, and the tea was the best he’d ever had. “The face in the mirror?” he continued. “Was that—” he choked on the words, “—did it become Heggy? Was it the thing in Heggy?” The magister chuckled. “Don’t be ridiculous.” Galè felt ridiculous. “There was no face in the mirror,” Ramour explained. “When you stare into a dark mirror, you will see what you want to see. There is always a face in the mirror: yours. Your eyes adjust to the darkness and the face appears to become more visible. “You kicked over a candle, which set fire to whatever it was that poor Heggy had made his wards from. Sugar, or sulfur, or somesuch. He should have used chalk, if anything at all. I’ll have to see what’s missing. That’s very old magic, physical wards. Marks, as wards,” he sighed. “Obsolete. I have to wonder where he learned it.” Galè didn’t tell him that Heggy had mentioned learning it from the magister’s own books. Had the magister not read his own books? The skin on the back of his neck tried to crawl off his spine. “This was an unfortunate accident, two boys playing. Nothing more. That you came to me with it, instead of the town marshal, only certifies that you did what you thought was right. Sad about Heggy, though.” “It certainly seemed real,” said Galè, finishing his tea. His hand trembled as he set the mug down. “That’s why I’m certain you imagined it,” the magister assured him. “It’s when it seems unreal that you need to worry. That’s when you’ve done true magic. Now, we should go wake the marshal, and Heggy’s poor mother. Who will replace her mirror?” he wondered, as he pulled on a long cloak and a cap. “I will work for her until she feels it’s replaced,” said Galè. “I owe her much more than that, though.” “You’re a good boy,” said Ramour. “Your father did well with you.” Galè grunted. He wondered how he’d tell Heggy’s mother, a town woman named Hun; no last name, no husband, and now no son. His mind spun at the obligation to a woman for taking all she truly had in the world. That’s what he was, now, he thought: a thief. He’d stolen Heggy from her, from all of them, in an instant of stupid, childish panic. Not warriorly at all. He could ask if the small keep here in Lor that had taken him in would take in Hun, as well. He imagined how lonely Hun’s house would be without the girlish laughter and infectious smile of fat, funny Heggy. The boy had been blessed with a laugh. “I should have carried him home,” he said at the door. “I should have calmed him and carried him home.” In a thundering howl that defied the still of the town, Heggy-That-Was smashed the door off its hinges and tore past him into the house. Galè heard Ramour’s screams and the many-voiced wailing of whatever the hell Heggy had become as he ran. He kept running. FOUR YEARS LATER