Tenebroum

Chapter 152: A Long Time Coming

At dusk Jordan received an invitation to dine with the man that the villagers called the Wise One, or more commonly, Tazuranth, the Great and Powerful. This struck Jordan as a little ostentatious, but then there were many Mage Lords at the Magica Collegium that insisted on such pomp as well.

They rarely named themselves after mages of legend, though, he thought ironically.

Despite not being invited, Sister Annise insisted on coming, and when Jordan told her, “You should probably stay behind until I learn more about our host, and we come to some sort of arrangement,” but she ignored him.

“The Book of Ways says that I am there at dinner tonight,” she insisted as if that meant anything. “So, I am afraid I must attend.”

Jordan sighed inwardly but didn’t pursue the issue further. Surely even the most callous host wouldn’t deny a blind woman food, would he?

Jordan’s concerns were needless, as it turned out, and the servants invited her in, almost as if they’d expected her, further deepening the mystery. It was only when they sat down at a table heavy with food that their host finally joined them.

He wasn’t at all what Jordan had expected. He’d expected a gray master in elaborate robes and extensive titles. He’d expected the typical obsession with protocol and pecking order that he’d come to associate with mages powerful enough to have their own demesne, let alone mages with enough power to raise some kind of illusion around it to protect it from the outside world.

What he found instead was a man that was little older than him, in stained shirt sleeves, who began eating almost as soon as he sat down.

“What?” he asked with a mouth full of roll as Jordan looked at him in confusion. “Dig in. The food will get cold. We can talk about your journey after we’re done. I have an important astronomical alignment to observe in 44 minutes. We must be quick about these things!”

Though Sister Annise continued to look at the man as if he were a snake, the absurdity of the situation was enough to put Jordan almost immediately at ease. This wasn’t an archmage; instead, he was just like any number of other senior students from the Collegium, and that memory was enough to make him smile wide for the first time since Brother Faerbar had left the manor, never to return.

The three of them devoured the best meal that Jordan had eaten since last year's harvest in record time. Honestly, they ate like kings; everything was good, from the mashed potatoes and the boiled carrots to the buttered rolls and the piping hot prime rib.

There was some conversation throughout dinner, but it was limited largely to pleasantries, and whenever Jordan or Sister Annise tried to ask about something more substantive or explain something he would deflect right back to the food, or ignore the statement entirely as he focused on his feast, or checked the hourglass that he’d brought with him from somewhere upstairs.

Through all that, Jordan managed to learn a couple of things. Foremost was that their host seemed to insist on calling him Taz, and he seemed almost allergic to formality. He did listen, though, when his manservant said, “Please, sir, do try to keep your elbows off the table when we have company over.”

Those were all normal enough, but in places, like when Taz said, “Well, sometimes stars do surprising things, even after you’ve been staring at them for a century or two. It’s always best to keep an eye on them lest they start to wander too far.”

The idea that anyone could watch anything for a century or two was impossible, of course, unless they’d stumbled into the lair of a small god, of course. The man almost certainly meant that he was continuing someone else’s vigil that was documented in an old book, or perhaps he was part of an order that devoted themselves to such things.

Jordan didn’t know. What he did know was that he needed to get to the bottom of this. The man was obviously a mage, though. Even though he seemed too young and too relaxed to have any real power, the way he would casually use minor spells to summon food from across the table after he’d cleared his plate or animate a napkin to dab at his mouth instead of simply wipe at his mouth showed that he had real power.

He enjoyed every mouthful, and it was only when the servants were asking about desert that he suddenly stood and said, “Sorry, out of time. Perhaps next time, Bernard.”

He jumped up with his hourglass and ran to the stairs. It was only when he reached them and said, “Well, are you coming? You’ll want to see this, trust me. Its not often that a constellation reorganizes!”

Those words, strung together in that way, meant nothing to Jordan, but he still wanted to see what his host was talking about. So, he stood and followed the other man up the stairs. By the fourth floor of the steep spiraling staircase, he was beginning to regret that decision, but even so, Sister Annise kept up with him while he huffed and puffed without any complaint.

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In fact, if anything, she looked grim, and he made a note to ask her about that when they returned to the barn that had become their temporary home. Right now, there was no time for that, though. Instead, there was just enough time to appreciate the quality of the mage’s observatory and the view it afforded him of the dark sea before the real show started.

Taz had one of the nicest telescopes that Jordan had ever seen. It was the size of a large wine barrel with a mirror near the back, which was certainly an unconventional arrangement. He was just trying to figure out how much light that monstrosity might be able to gather and what the level of magnification could be when their host muttered a few words, and the large circular window in front of it suddenly became… something else.

A moment ago, it had been a large, circular window frame that would have been more than big enough for Jordan to crawl out to the ledge beyond if he’d wanted to. After the runes on the frame began to glow with a soft blue light, though, the air inside of it began to condense and thicken, adjusting its optical characteristics. One second, it had been an open window, and the next, it was a giant magnifying lens almost four feet across.

Taz leaned down to the telescope’s eyepiece, and as he did so, he said, “It’s just a little trick I learned to observe the stars with better resolution. That’s all.”

He spoke as if he’d read Jordan’s mind, but he’d probably just observed his look of shock. Over the next few minutes, he lectured about the phenomena he was looking for. “Stars don’t last forever, you see,” the strange wizard explained. “Just like Siddrim, they all burn out eventually, and its always interesting to see what the given constellation replaces them with.”

The mage laughed at his joke about Siddrim, but no one else did. When Jordan looked at Sister Annise, he was unsurprised to see that her expression had soured.

Before he could say anything about that, though, Taz wave him over, and said, “go on, take a look. Be quick about it. Its hard tonight, because Lunaris is spending more of her power on the affairs of mortals than she should, but that happens sometimes.”

The stars didn’t look any dimmer to Jordan than any other night, but that didn’t stop him from looking through the telescope. It was then that he saw something he never expected to see.

Jordan had seen the heavens through smaller telescopes before at the Collegium, but never one with this level of magnification before. In the past they’d always appeared as glimmering dots, but here, now, as he stared out into the void what he saw was a glowing figure, locked in mortal combat with an inhuman monstrosity that he might have best compared to a hydra, or perhaps a jellyfish.

“What in the name of Lunaris…” Jordan swore softly as he looked on in wonder. “What is it I’m seeing here?”

Taz took the scope back, chuckling softly. “Surely they still teach you the nature of the heavens in school, do they not? That each star is a god onto itself in the service of Mother Lunaris?”

“Of course,” Jordan answered, wondering how the man knew what he’d learned in school. “But it’s a metaphor, not a literal…”

Jordan’s words trailed off as the other mage started to laugh. “A metaphor, he says. If they were only metaphorically defending the world, I assure you that the darkness would have consumed us long ago. No, they are very real, and though not all of them have flaming swords, they all work together to hold back the night.”

Jordan tried to digest what it was he was hearing, and as he did so, he watched the stars through the lens. From that device, he lacked the magnification to make out the details of any of the stars, but he could see the constellation of the Orchid and another wandering star moving toward the one he’d just observed.

“What’s going to happen next?” Jordan asked, watching with rapt attention, even as the stars got closer and closer.

“All stars get old, and they need to be replaced,” Taz told him, “That is the natural order of things.” As he spoke, he made frenzied notes into a journal while he watched through the eyepiece, Jordan saw two stars meet, and then, after a bright flash, there was only one, fixed in the heavens. The constellation adjusted, but only a little.

“Does that still look like an orchid to you?” Taz asked. “No, I think it does. We can leave it unchanged. I was worried it might become the rose or the tulip, and I’d have to change all of my charts.”

“What happened to the other star?” Jordan asked.

“It was devoured,” the mage smiled. “Nothing goes to waste, not on that scale. All the gods are cannibals. Did they not teach you that either?”

“Well, not in so many words, but I understand your meaning,” Jordan agreed.

“Do you, though?” Taz said, finally looking up from his cosmic light show now that whatever he’d been waiting for had happened. “It’s not a metaphor either. Gods die, and new gods rise up to replace them. I know. I’ve seen it plenty of times myself.”

“You have?” Jordan asked, making no effort to hide his confusion.

“He has,” Sister Annise agreed. “Tazuranth the Remarkable is well over four centuries old. He has seen almost as much as Lord Siddrim.”

“He… he what?” Jordan asked.

“More, actually,” the young man said with a slight bow. “After all, I’ve seen all the terrible things that have happened since he slipped up and died, haven’t I?”

“He’s also killed every mage that his stumbled upon his own private world in all the time between then and now,” she said, making Taz’s smile go even wider.

“How does someone… what?!” Jordan blurted out. He’d planned to ask about how even magical immortality could last so long, but Sister Annise’s latest revelation disrupted that entirely. “If he kills mages, then why did you bring me here?”

“Don’t worry,” Taz said, dispelling the lens and sitting down in a chair. “There’s no need to end you at this point. Not only are you an apprentice instead of a fully vested mage, but you’re trapped here. With that monstrosity out there, there’s literally nowhere else for you to go, is there?”