Patricia White, page 1
A Wizard Scorned
Patricia White
* * *
Another one for you, Bill
Copyright 1998, Patricia White
ISBN: 1-58200-021-2
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. These characters are not even distantly inspired by any individual(s) known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
* * *
Go to Chapter:
Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29| Epilogue
* * *
Prologue
The huge cat stretched, yawned widely, showing an impressive set of fangs, and rearranged his wealth of sleek, black fur, and an even sleeker wealth of underlying muscle, on the dark, sun-warmed surface of an old lava flow. He did it all, and with great deliberation, before he even attempted to answer the young man's question.
"Since, this once, you have the brain to ask my advice before you end up fire-dancing in your bare-feet, I'll give it. Youth, they say, is curable by time and experience; if rash acts don't do you in beforehand. But, it would seem to me, and my motives may not be the same as yours, that you'd be making a very large mistake if you do not accept the task these men have offered you. You have the knowledge and the magic to see it to its end."
The cat's words were plain in his mind, as they always were. The wizard took a deep breath, tried to marshal and somehow dispel his doubts, to rationalize his fear that the task was beyond his doing. That the men who had offered him gold had somehow twisted their words, had let their dreams and needs speak louder than the truth. He couldn't.
To others, Sojourner, the great cat that must forever wander, might be a myth, a winter tale told when the fire was burned to ashes and embers and the wind sang a sad lament outside the walls. But not to Will. Will knew the truth; or as much of the truth that could be known. And if this deed was important to Sojourner, then it had to be-- if Will could make it so.
"Your quest?" Will asked, leaning against the side of the stone, pushing his fingers through his disordered hair, trying to fight off the memories Sojourner, probably without malice but certainly with purpose, had invoked. It was a useless battle.
The hot sun blazed in the summer sky, but Will shivered with another cold. The icy cold of a small boy who stood in the snow and watched, young and helpless, tears of sorrow freezing on his gaunt face, as his world ended in a roaring fire and the screams of his dying parents. And the great, silver-eyed cat, coming from nowhere, curling around the child, warming him, guiding him, saving him from...
It had happened long ago, but was eternally bright in Will's memory. It was all there, the grief and the fear and, above all else, the debt he owned Sojourner. A debt that would not be paid until That Which Was Lost could be found or Sojourner was somehow freed from the terrible burden he...
"Young wizard," the big cat's rumbling voice, audible only in Will's mind, sounded infinitely weary as he said, "time runs too fast. It must be soon or all will be for naught."
"And me fetching the brides will help..."
There was no real answer to the wizard's hesitant question. So many paths spread before them, but only one would lead to Sojourner's freedom, lifting the dark spell that made him both more and less than he had been. He sighed.
"Young wizard, all was tangled at my changing, my magic and my memory were torn by the spell. I cannot see clearly, but, yes, this much I know: the off-world brides have a place in what must be. One of them is terribly important. How that can be, I know not. Only that she..."
Laying his massive head on his forepaws, he closed his silvery eyes. Sorrow was heavy around him, but Sojourner was a cat. That, too, was his eternal bane. Grief was a raw and bleeding wound in his soul, but cats do not weep. They cannot.
"I know not the outcome, young wizard," he said softly," but whether it be for good or ill, this bride fetching must be done and very soon. That much I can see, well and truly."
It was Will's turn to sigh, but the wizard didn't even try to argue.
* * *
Chapter One
"A wizard? Gathering brides to take to some alternate earth? Really, Maggie! The whole concept is positively ridiculous! The man is obviously a fraud!" However much the truth rankled in her orderly mind, Jane Murdock carefully refrained from adding, "And only a fool would believe such blatant hogwash. A silly romantic fool."
Instead, she sighed-- rather heavily and, if the truth be known, with a strong undertone of irritation. Taking off her black-rimmed reading glasses, Jane placed them, with rather too much care, on top of the small stack of file folders on her Queen Anne desk. Then, she switched off the computer, took a deep breath, and walked, marched might better describe her mode of locomotion, across the wide expanse of thick white carpet to where her secretary, Maggie Hilton, was standing. The white-and-gold credenza was to her left, the door to the outer office behind her.
With an effort visible to even the most disinterested of observers, Maggie stood her ground. Trying not to twist her short-nailed hands together, or not to take a step back or even flee the scene entirely, or not to betray her great and still growing unease, her breath came a little too fast. No matter her feelings, she waited for Jane, looking for all the world like a fear-petrified mouse about to be devoured by a very large, very hungry snake.
"Maggie, listen to me," Jane said quietly, wanting nothing more than to continue her work session, to complete the presentation for the Morris job. That's what she wanted but she knew, full well and not a whit happy with the knowledge, that absolutely nothing would be accomplished until she had convinced the younger woman that what she was planning to do was incredibly stupid . Indeed, it was quite possibly dangerous as well. "The things this man has promised you can't possibly be true, and, if you'll just use your head for a moment, think this idiotic premise through, you'll have to concede that. I'm sure that you will be able to find the flaws this whole silly scheme, if you will just examine carefully what this man, this... this...ah...so-called wizard has told you."
Red mouth set, unyielding, eyes filled with stubborn resolve, Maggie didn't looked convinced, so Jane took a new approach. "You are what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?"
"Twenty-three, almost twenty-four," Maggie said, her chin betraying the slightest of quivers. She took a quick breath, swallowed hard, blinked, and even sniffled a little, but she still refused to back down, even an inch.
Jane asked her next question, "And, I assume, since you are very competent in your rather demanding job as my personal secretary, you are reasonably well-educated? High school? Business school?"
Maggie nodded.
"Then, you must know that wizards do not exist, have never actually existed. Given that, why would you, a modern woman, a presumably liberated woman of the 90's, even come close to believing this man can wave his magic wand, or whatever it is he's going to do. He's not going to transport you to some wonderful world. Take you to some utopia in some perfect country on some other earth, where men want wives and aren't afraid of love, commitment, marriage, and all the rest of that garbage he's been feeding you. Don't you know that he's handing you a line of bull big enough to..."
Several inches too wide in the hips, brown hair wisping down from what was supposed to be a French roll, brown eyes large in their fringe of dark lashes, olive complexion smooth, but not in the conventional sense truly attractive, Maggie blushed hotly. Then she gave her employer what could only be described as a pitying look. And she took in a little hissing breath before she said, sounding both sad and slightly embarrassed and stubborn enough to give a mule pause, "Ms. Murdock, I didn't really expect you to believe me. But it is true. Will, he's the wizard, warned us about talking to other people about this. He told us what they'd think and all. But, that doesn't really matter. It's just that you've been awfully good to me since I came to work here, and I couldn't just up and leave without telling you where I was going and why."
More red rushed up to burn crimson spots on her round cheeks and her voice quavered, just a little, but Maggie went doggedly on, finished what she intended to say in a rush of words. "If I just disappeared, you know, just went out to lunch today and never came back, I was afraid you might worry that I'd had an accident, or been kidnapped by terrorist, or something bad like that. I like you too much to make you worry about me over nothing. It just wouldn't have been right to leave without telling you the truth."
Jane hadn't gone out of her way to be nice to her secretary. They had been terribly busy for the past several months and had spent many long days working in each other's company, which led to a certain superficial intimacy. It wasn't a relationship that Jane had, in any way, fostered.
Her position as Vice President of Smith, Smith, and Melrose, a Fortune 500 management consulting firm, engendered a lifestyle that was high-powered, demanding, and time- devouring. It was also a lifestyle that had no room for friendships, casual or otherwise.
Not that Jane had ever had that many friends; her aunt, the one that raised her and cast her out as soon as humanly possible, had seen to that. She had done it for Jane's own good, or so she said, rather often and with great sincerity. According to her, work was the only way out of poverty, work coupled with education and driving ambition. Knowing poverty only too well, Jane had taken her aunt's teaching to heart-- some, mostly disgruntled competitors,
Now, for the most part, Jane didn't care what others thought or said about her. Their talk couldn't actually change anything. She was already on the upper rungs of the ladder to success and had no doubt that within the next few years she would reach the top. It was a goal, it seemed, she had been working toward since her parents' death when she was almost four, the time she had gone to live with her aunt in a walk-up flat in the poorer part of town.
The thirty-three years stretching between the time of her parent's untimely deaths and the present hadn't, for the most part, been what anyone would call easy or enjoyable. Still, now her bank account was growing, her stock portfolio was thick and diversified, and she was already a force in her chosen field. Granted, all the work, dedication, and achievement hadn't left room for much else in her rather hectic schedule; except maybe a frozen dinner tossed in the microwave and a few hours of sleep.
But, it did have its rewards. A personal shopper bought and coordinated her designer wardrobe. Her hairdresser, the Jean-Claud of Jean-Claud Salons, made weekly office calls to keep her shorn locks chic and fashionably gilded. There were drawbacks also; even if they were, at least as far as Jane was concerned, minor. She had never been in love. The men in her life were strictly clients of the firm, with business alone on their minds. Jane knew that she was rather lacking in the sex appeal department and liked it that way; it posed far fewer complications in her work universe. What she considered the worst drawback to her current position had nothing at all to do with men, or ticking biological clocks, or babies: Jane didn't even have time for a cat and she'd always dreamed of having one.
At the thought of the cat a ripple of sadness touched her, but only for the moment. She was too busy to feel sorry for herself. Far to busy to allow the best personal secretary she had ever had to go haring off with a self-proclaimed wizard. The kind who, supposedly, worked real magic, the sort of sizzle-and-crackle, wishes-come-true magic that only existed in children's minds and adults' fantasy books.
Real wizards, had such a thing actually existed, certainly wouldn't have done what Maggie claimed and advertised for brides in the classified section of the New York Times. The whole notion was ridiculous. Totally ridiculous.
Irritated by the delay, the disruption it was causing in her well-planned day, she was determined to prove Maggie, and the rest of the so-called "brides" were being conned. But, Jane knew, with only a whisper of guilt, that her concern was more centered on the fact that she would have to hire and train a new secretary than on anything else; including Maggie's future happiness or lack thereof. Taking care of people, and straightening out their incredibly messy lives, wasn't real high on Jane's list of priorities; especially when they acted, as Maggie was certainly doing, from total stupidity, not reason.
Maggie cleared her throat, made a little gulping sound. "Will is still looking for brides, Ms. Murdock. I thought maybe you might like to come with me...ah...us," she said softly. She looked at the floor, not at Jane, and blushing fire engine red, a burning red that brought little drops of sweat to her brow and upper lip.
Her words were so completely unexpected that Jane was caught off guard, if only for a moment. "Me? Why on earth would you... I can't believe that you would even imagine that I would even consider such an asinine proposal, let alone have..."
Despite her excellent secretarial skills, Maggie certainly wasn't listening to her boss' sputter of protest at that moment. She seemed to listening to her own heart's needs rather than to anything that even smacked of sanity. Her eyes fixed on some inner vision, her blush faded to a becoming pink and she smiled. It lit up her face, made her appear far prettier than her usual wont. It was the smile but the tone of her voice, the longing in her words that gave Jane an almost irresistible urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense back into her silly head. She was, however, too disciplined to give in to urges. She gritted her teeth instead. And listened to soppy, romantic words that were little more than drivel; at least as far as Jane was concerned.
"Babies," Maggie said softly. "I'm going to have a husband that loves me and babies, lots of babies. We'll have a house, a log house, with a fenced yard and yellow roses climbing all over the big front porch. Horses. We'll have a herd of horses, and a dog, a big, happy dog. It'll be just like in the old days. You know, when men loved and protected the women who worked beside them to realize a dream..."
It was too much. Jane snorted in disbelief. "Instead of sounding like a dreamy-eyed I-don't-know-what, you'd better go to the police and see what you can do about getting your money, whatever it was you gave this..."
Still smiling, Maggie shook her head. "It isn't like that at all. We didn't give Will any money or anything else. The men from Will's earth, the ones who ordered brides, did that. They paid for everything. You know, like Will's magic to get us there and our new wardrobes for there and..."
Grinding her teeth together until the cords stood out in her thin neck, Jane clenched her hands into fists. Then she counted to ten. Took five deep breaths. And finally allowed herself to say, with a little less sharpness in her voice than would have actually taken the other woman's head off, but not much less, "Maggie, how can you be so damned stupid about this? Wizards do not exist. Magic only happens at magic shows. It's an illusion, a trick carefully designed to fool the mind into believing something that isn't true. Your so-called magician is a crook, a charlatan, a real phony, and he's getting something out of this. And whatever it is, you're the one who is being took. And not to some alternative earth either."
Raising her head to look directly at Jane and taking a huge liberty, Maggie put her hand on the sleeve of Jane's watermelon-red silk jacket. She didn't exactly beg, but there was definitely a note of pleading in her voice when she said, "Ms. Murdock, even if you are rich and famous and all that, you're still a woman. You have a woman's dreams and a woman's heart. And I know you have to want more out of life than you're getting now, something real and lasting, like love, instead of all this cold-blooded business junk. Please, won't you just come with me and talk to Will and..." Her voice wavered, died. Her hand tightened for just a second before it dropped away from Jane's arm, but Maggie's eyes never wavered-- and neither did the pity and concern and real caring that was so apparent in their depths.
Perhaps it was her own irritation simmering into something very close to fury. It certainly wasn't the younger woman's misplaced pity that made Jane say, "I can see that we aren't going to accomplish a thing until this is settled. Go get your purse, re-schedule my luncheon appointment, and leave word with the receptionist that we will be out of the office for an hour or so. If anything important comes up, she can beep me."
Her secretary, beaming happily, was scarcely out the door before Jane, falling prey to a marauding band of second thoughts, opened her mouth to call Maggie back, to cancel the wizard visit. But, Jane had never backed out on a promise in her life. And, even if this current venture was an exercise in futility, she had no intention of starting now.
Straightening her shoulders, she walked, with unyielding determination in every step, to her desk. After she cleared the top of folders, Jane retrieved her own surprisingly large bag, from the desk drawer, added her reading glasses to the diverse and multitudinous collection of things inside, and was ready to go.
Or almost. Holding the black purse by the shoulder strap, she took a moment to look around the sunny office. She admired the lush ferns, the view of New York from the sixty-third floor, the clean, uncluttered expanse of very expensive carpeting and even more expensive furnishings. Fighting off the odd feeling that she was bidding the whole place a final farewell, Jane slid the bag onto her shoulder, stepped into Maggie's office, and firmly closed the door to her own private domain behind her.
Their cab was fighting the traffic on Fifth Avenue before Jane said a word, and then she only asked, "Are you sure you want to go through with this, Maggie? You could save us both a lot of trouble if you'd just forget all this nonsense. If we go on, I can assure you it won't be pleasant. Men, like this phony wizard of yours, who prey on women aren't exactly the most savory..." Jane shook her head.
