The Archimage's Fourth Daughter
Lyndon Hardy
Volume 4 of Magic by the Numbers
© 2017 by Lyndon Hardy All rights reserved.
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Version 2
EBook ISBN: 978-0-9991320-0-5
Other books by Lyndon Hardy
Master of the Five Magics, 2nd edition
Secret of the Sixth Magic, 2nd edition
Riddle of the Seven Realms, 2nd edition
Visit Lyndon Hardy's website at: http://www.alodar.com/blog
Cover by Tom Momary http://www.tomomary.com
Map by Ana Maria Velicu http://facebook.com/ancart7
1. Fantasy 2. Magic 3. Adventure 4. New Adult
To my granddaughters, Alison and Zelda
Contents
The Laws of Magic
Map
Prologue
Part One Stranger in a Strange Land
Part Two So Many Women, So Little Time
Part Three An Expanded Reality
Part Four Turn of the Ratchetwheel
Part Five Eightfold Path Neverending
Part Six Briana's Choice
Author’s Afterward
What’s next?
Glossary
Part One Stranger in a Strange Land
1 The Magic Portal
2 Father and Daughter
3 Preparation for Adventure
4 Planetfall
5 A Typical Street
6 Exiled forever
7 A Second Encounter
8 Magic castles
9 The Purchasing Agent
10 Steps Along the Way
11 Surfing the Net
12 No Need for a Philosopher’s Stone
13 Zero
14 A Purchase Order
15 The Noose
16 Partners in Crime
17 Fetid Air
18 Initiative
Part Two So Many Women, So Little Time
1 The Waverton Family
2 Comparative Religions 101
3 Repeating Opportunity
4 Dinner at Eight
5 The Circles of Life
6 Not So Safe
7 A Disciple of Murphy
8 The Modern Woman
9 No Luck Involved
10 A Working Interface
11 Discovery
Part Three An Expanded Reality
1 The Staff Meeting
2 Heat
3 Reorganization
4 Tigerwasps
5 The Interview
6 Experiment Results
7 Love Potion Number Nine
8 Tattoos and Alchemy
9 Make War Not Love
10 The Tryst
11 A Final Shot
12 CERN
13 The Basis of Truth
14 Cosmic Pranksters
15 Bump Hunting
16 Imp in a Haystack
17 The Queen of the Eight Universes
Part Four Turn of the Ratchetwheel
1 Escape
2 Convergence
3 Brainstorm
4 To Hilo
5 The Weight of Leadership
6 The Catalytic Seed
7 Rising Stakes
8 The Warehouse
9 Watch and Wait
10 Burning the Ship
11 Watch and Hurry Up
12 Watch and Hurry Up Again
13 Mount Etna
14 Mount Bagana
15 Mount Kilauea
Part Five Eightfold Path Neverending
1 The Magic Eightball
2 Souvenirs
3 Words of the Master
4 No More Waiting
5 Interplanetary Stowaway
6 Plan the Work, Then Work the Plan
7 The Spoils of Victory
8 Decisions
9 The Loyal Minion
10 Return from Exile
11 Randor the Tribunal
12 Vanish the Thought
13 Unwanted Distractions
14 A Star is Born
15 Prelude to Enlightenment
Part Six Briana's Choice
1 Counter Incantation
2 Two Brothers, Not Three
3 A Stranger in Paradise
4 The Eve of Battle
5 The Technology of Warfare
6 Move and Counter Move
7 A Tale for the Sagas
8 Only by Her Wits
9 Three Scoops
Glossary
1 Aerogel
2 Alchemy
3 Angkor Wat
4 Arcadia
5 Archimage
6 Aeriel
7 ATLAS
8 Bette Davis Eyes
9 Buckaroo Banzai
10 Hernando Cortez
11 CERN
12 Charm
13 Circles of Life
14 Clue
15 The Company
16 Demon
17 Devil
18 Fluorine gas
19 The Fort
20 Gluons
21 Histograms and Bump Hunting
22 Imago
23 Imp
24 Lanchester Square Law
25 Lateral arabesque
26 Lawrence Bragg
27 Level Three Trigger
28 Lost Horizon
29 Magic
30 Magic Eightball
31 Mark 50 Torpedo
32 Money
33 Murdina
34 The Prisoner of Zenda
35 Procolon
36 PYTHIA and GEANT
37 Robe
38 Rock Paper Scissors Strategy
39 Rule of 72
40 The Scarlet Pimpernel
41 Sorcery
42 Southern Kingdoms
43 Spell
44 Stock Market 128 Swindle
45 Subordinate
46 Sulfur hexafluoride
47 Commercial Sulfur Transport
48 Supersymmetry
49 Test and Set
50 Thaumaturgy
51 VIN
52 Wizardry
53 Zorba the Greek
The Laws of Magic
Thaumaturgy
The Principle of Sympathy — like produces like
The Principle of Contagion — once together, always together
Alchemy
The Doctrine of Signatures — the attributes without mirror the powers within
Magic
The Maxim of Persistence — perfection is eternal
Sorcery
The Rule of Three — thrice spoken, once fulfilled
Wizardry
The Law of Ubiquity — flame permeates all
The Law of Dichotomy — dominance or submission
Prologue
DINTON HESITATED for a moment and felt the luxurious fur on his arm ripple under his tunic. Without some specific tag to search for, he had no control over whose mind he would latch onto next. They flowed by in a fast moving stream without any rhyme to the order by which they came. Such was the nature of the charm.
But this one, the one he was in contact with now, might serve well enough. No strider on this world’s stage to be sure, but he woul
d be ideal for the experiment he had wanted to try.
Primitive and stupid, the natives missed what was essential for true alchemy time and time again. Yes, they dabbled in concocting all manner of ingredients to see what would happen, but no one, not a single one, had ever stumbled on the necessity for having activation formulas as well.
So, with a simple suggestion, one so subtle that his target would not even suspect that it came from elsewhere, would start him down the correct path. A second hint that he create potions that released great passions and the deed was done.
Dinton hesitated a second time. Even if he never returned to this mind, it did make sense to get a tag, just in case. But probing further ran the risk that the target would begin to suspect, and everything he had planted could be lost.
Just for a moment, he told himself, and he began scanning random memories as they emerged. A name would be best of all.
After fruitless monitoring for a dozen heartbeats, the target mentally began to stir. No identification had appeared. Dinton grabbed at a last garble as it floated by. Reluctantly, he pronounced the final words that ended the charm. All contact with another mind was no more. The sorcery was complete.
“No more craft,” he said. “Yes, this would be the very last time.”
Part One
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Magic Portal
“IF I don’t do something soon, my life is as good as over,” Briana thought. She was a sylph of a girl; barely twenty, slender as a reed, and with long flaming red hair like her mother. Pale skin; large, deep green eyes. In the fashion of all proper young ladies, she wore brown leggings, tunic, and cloak.
Briana shook her head. How could she have been so stupid? So stupid as to sign a contract for marriage after only a single day of attention, some smooth, flattering words, and three glasses of wine. And betrothed to Slammert of all people. The worst possible choice — so disgusting, so coarse.
Everyone could talk about nothing else when it was finally disclosed what he had done to his first wife. At the time of her mistake, Briana had not known. At the harvest festival, sitting with his bride up on the dais in the feasting hall, Slammert had ripped her bodice away and fondled her bare breasts while his minions watched and roared with laughter. The next morning, they discovered the unfortunate girl had hanged herself, one of her belts tight around her neck and her body stiff like a slaughtered lamb.
Briana grasped the chairback of the wizard seated in front of her to bring her focus to what was happening now. The massive round table in the center of the council chamber had been removed to make more room for spectators. Alodar, her father and Archimage sat in the very center of the row of chairs, leaning forward, as eager as the rest. On either side like pieces in a board game were arrayed the most senior practitioners throughout all of Murdina: thaumaturges, alchemists, magicians, sorcerers, and wizards. From Procolon, the Southern Kingdoms, and even Arcadia across the Great Ocean. Everyone seated wore their robes of office: scarlet red for the archimage, brown, white, deepest blue, gray, and black for the others. At the far left, she even recognized one of her childhood tutors: Fordine, the Master Thaumaturge.
The finery denoted in which of the distinct crafts each master was proficient, but even without them, one could tell. The eyes of the sorcerers were deep and piercing, able to enchant others with their charms and see far in space and time. Haughty and unyielding as steel, the faces of the wizards seemed almost to dare demons from another realm to challenge them for dominance.
Although they wore pristine and unblemished garb reserved for ceremony, the alchemists’ hands were soiled and blotched with stains from the exotic substances they manipulated to produce sweetbalms and potions of love. The magicians had a faraway look, always contemplating the rituals from which came the swords, mirrors, and rings of true magic .
The lowly thaumaturges were the friendly ones, eager artisans hoping for a few coins in exchange for raising heavy beams to the top of a new tower or causing trees to drop their fruit all on the same day. Only Fordine was different. He had been brilliant with counterspells in his youth, but practiced no more — instead was quite wealthy running an academy to train apprentices and journeymen for others.
Five distinct skills, each with its own disciplines. Only one, her father, had mastered them all.
The chamber was as somber as a tomb. Wall frescos had long faded centuries ago. Heavy curtains blocked any incoming daylight. On the other side of the room, tall sconces with multiple arms upraised with flickering candles illuminated a small, hastily constructed platform.
No one spoke.
Standing at the chairback on Briana’s left was a young lordling still in his teens. He flexed his grip and looked nervously about. Obviously, this was his first time.
“It will be all right,” she whispered to him and smiled. “We are only here to emphasize the importance of the masters. All we have to do is stand erect and look serious, no matter what is said.”
She returned her attention to her own thoughts. It was because she was so sheltered, she concluded. Confined within the compound for her protection, her only experiences were simple flirtations with a few of the pages her own age. And when the baron from the far west, a man and not a boy — tall, muscular, smoldering eyes, a beguiling smile. He had said he was lonely and asked if he could dine with her. Of course, she had said yes.
Had her three elder sisters done the same? Anything to get out of the dull, polite conversations with men old enough to be a grandfather. Snap up the first one younger with a pulse. Wed him, see some of the world, have children, perhaps even adventure a bit on their own.
As a muffled chime from a clock in an adjacent room marked the hour, the air in front of the chairs started to shimmer, at first barely perceptible, but then with increasing violence; like smooth water encountering rapids, it distorted more and more until the blank wall behind was no longer visible.
A door took shape within the swirl, solidified, and, after a few moments more, swung open. Briana gasped, as did more than one master, even some nearing a hundred years of experience. Wrapped from head to toe as if for burial, a figure stepped forward and with effort raised one arm in a sign of greeting.
He was shaped like a human in every respect: head, neck, torso, arms and legs, hands and feet, but the coverings hid every feature. Not thin sheets of linen, but bulky strips from what looked like brilliant white woolen blankets swirled around the entire body. No eyes or mouth could be seen. In their place were opaque goggles and below them a circle of thin parchment where there would have been a mouth. Bulky gloves covered his hands. So, this was the purpose of the formal council meeting — a parlay with the one who had brought the tome.
“You may call me Randor, Randor of the Faithful.” A tinny voice in a strange accent vibrated from the paper beneath the glasses. “Do you understand everything in the volume left for you? Are you confident you can work the controls?”
“Yes, the high council has studied the contents,” Alodar answered. “And if your doorway had not appeared so suddenly and unannounced a year ago, they would have no credibility.”
Briana watched the visitor intently as did everyone else. The being must be of such grossness that he dared not appear in his natural form, she thought. In the writings that had been left, there were illustrations of what looked like men — beings that could easily pass without notice here on Murdina. But there were no pictures of any other type of creature, no hint of what unwinding the swathing would reveal.
She should not even have been allowed to see the book after it was deposited in the great library for study by the masters, but the page had told her how to bypass the safeguards for a single kiss. She had spent many late evenings reading and rereading what the tome contained.
“I have asked you a direct question,” the visitor said. “I expect a direct answer.”
“We have questions as well.” Alodar’s tone hardened. “Why did you leave this book
with us that speaks of another world in the cosmos? Is that where you are from?”
“Two questions rather than a single answer,” Randor said. “Your race is an impertinent one.” One of the enveloped hands waved the concern away. “But no matter. It is one of the reasons why you were chosen.
“Our entire race is not exiled on the orb of which I speak. We, the Faithful, remain pure. Only the vanquished of my kind, the ones who call themselves the Heretics Who Proclaim the Truth, have been imprisoned on the hellish world described in the text. The descriptions in the tome concern only the primitive natives, not ourselves. We judged that such information would make your own journeys more efficient. You would not have to spend time relearning what we had gleaned from so many trips ourselves.”
“Heretics?” Alodar asked. “Our own journeys?”
“The heretical crimes committed by those now banished is a matter of no concern to you. And yes, we, the Faithful, have made the journey many times, once every hundred or so of your years for some ten times or more. Now, we grow, let us say … less able to guard against the possibility of the return of contamination.”
“Over a millennium!” the magicians with the neatly trimmed goatee exclaimed. “You live that long?”
“No, as individuals, we normally do not. Only the exiles wear rings of eternal youth — and only if they so elect.”
“A ring of eternal youth!” The magician grabbed at his beard. “Then the suspicion in our guilds is correct. One can be made! Your magicians have done so. What is the ritual? How is it performed?”
“Some say we should have killed them.” Randor ignored the outburst. “But that would be only a passing satisfaction. Instead, as of our last visit, the Heretics remain imprisoned as we planned. Originally eleven hundred were entombed; now only some seven hundred are still alive.
“Death is swift and is but a shadow of the agony of an eternity of captivity. Death is too gentle a fate for what they continue to experience. The only way they could escape from their confinement is by the use of one of the crafts. And for that, our sorcerers enchanted them all, forced them to forget everything they knew about any of the arts when they were defeated. By now, the despair of their situation should have caused them to end their existences by their own hands. It is exquisite for us to contemplate. Ones so proud reduced to ending defiance by the exercise of their own crumbling will.”