LITMIR.BIZ

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it with ease as long as the enemy is outside of our walls. With our powers combined we can resist all change and even deny fate. We must only be prepared. But if we break all rules and traditions that have protected us thus far, blind and deaf to the consequences of our actions, we will set change in motion ourselves. We will become our own enemy. In the end we will fight amongst ourselves. Mark my words; remember them when the time has come.”

      Silence spread through the room. Nosterlohe and Gnarlhand sat still as two rocks at the table and even Ilfhorn had lost his ease. The Onyx was almost black now, only in front of the stool of Nothing was it still unchanged and gray.

      “Well,” a quiet voice emerged. “The enemy must enter Ringwall by the gate to defeat us. If it does so in the shape of a student of nobility, not all of our traditions will save us, and it will be in our midst, unseen. If Ringwall’s gates are opened, it may dare enter as a stranger, as a guest or as a magical presence. We would see it for what it is in that case.”

      Mah Bu, the Archmage of the Other World, was an unimposing man with a dry, passionless voice who lay rather than sat on his chair. His long, outstretched right leg scuffed along the floor with its ankle, as though he wanted to make sure he was actually in this world. His voice was always quiet and he never raised it, nor did the pitch ever change when he spoke – if he even spoke, that is. He looked at Bar Helis as though he intended to add something, opened his mouth but decided against it. He shook his head begrudgingly.

      The Onyx remained unchanged, dark. Mah Bu’s thoughts had not reached it.

      Dakh gave Nill a light push and said in a bright voice quite at odds with his serious expression: “Come, we do not want to spend the night out here.”

      Nill did not notice Dakh’s wariness. He stood, enthralled, before the unfamiliar building, the sheer size of which outclassed anything he had ever imagined back home in Earthland. It was less the height of the wall that kept his attention so raptly than the blocks it was made of. From Earthland Nill only knew the flat bricks made of mud and straw, baked in the fire, and the strange light stones from the quarry that the villagers had brought to build the well. The stones of Ringwall were dark and smooth, as wide as he was tall and as tall as a ram. No man except a sorcerer could have moved these blocks.

      The gate itself was decorated with magnificent carvings of defensive spells and strange symbols, and had neither guards nor bolts. To Nill it seemed like a special display of strength, confidence or recklessness on Ringwall’s behalf that the gate was half open. It opened to the outside, which made it look as though the left part of it was beckoning visitors inside. If locked it would probably be difficult to break open, even with a heavy battering ram. In the right part a small door was built into it that opened to the inside, easy to defend and as a preventative measure to make sure the residents of Ringwall could not be trapped inside the city by attackers. Nill admired the construction, although he knew that the war times had long since passed Ringwall. These days, apparently, no threat was felt, and the right part of the gate stood comfortably in the evening sun.

      The gate separated the bleak path leading up the Knor-il-Ank from the equally dismal footpath connecting the walls of the inner and outer circles. It’ll be completely muddied up here in winter, Nill thought.

      The look Dakh-Ozz-Han was giving the half-opened gate was anything but sympathetic. “A gate that welcomes its newcomers should show it, too,” he muttered to himself, frowning. “And not just stand open a tiny, treacherous bit. I see no guards and nobody to report our arrival. I have seen worse traps than this half-opened wooden beast’s jaw.”

      The druid closed his eyes and allowed his other senses to take over. Ringwall’s walls breathed magic, the gate was enchanted with numerous protective spells, and the footpath smelled of countless bearers of magic who had trodden it. It was all as the druid had expected. Apart from that he found nothing to give weight to his mistrust, but nothing, either, to make him let down his guard.

      “Wait,” he said, as Nill attempted to wriggle through the open crack in the gate. He struck the wood with his staff and it opened wide with a deafening sound, allowing a better inspection of the space between the outer and the inner wall.

      “Now we may enter, and you can be certain that everyone knows now that we have arrived. It is good manners to knock when entering a room or building that is not one’s own.”

      Ambrosimas hummed contentedly and gave an apologetic smile as he lifted his mass. Nothing about his movements was reminiscent of the elegance that surrounded Bar Helis. Ambrosimas required the aid of his mighty arms as he stemmed his weight against the table. His chair slid backwards noisily and the Onyx sent sparks in all directions in protest. Ambrosimas’ dulcet voice was quite at odds with his cloddish shape: he was not only an Archmage, but also a singer of ability unparalleled in Pentamuria.

      “One or two of you may have wondered why, in the time between the last two winters, I barricaded myself in my quarters and barely appeared at the meetings of our council. Well, I had left Ringwall and was wandering in the guise of a traveling sorcerer around Pentamuria. I can tell you that I have rarely undertaken such a momentous effort and that I was nearly starved to the bone.” Ambrosimas patted his enormous belly, but the airiness in his words went to waste. The Onyx exploded in cascades of light, flying in all directions. Time itself stood still in light of the pause Ambrosias had thrown into his speech. Breath froze in the air, hearts forgot to beat and the magical power of the archmages sitting at the table retreated, for a moment, into the deepest depths. The Magon alone seemed untroubled. Suddenly, the spell was broken and muttering broke out, as if to regain the moments lost. Bar Helis, Gnarlhand and Nosterlohe gave each other disparaging glances. Queshalla and Ilfhorn seemed not to know what to do, and even Mah Bu shifted in his seat. It was more than unusual for an Archmage to leave Ringwall. There were plenty of magical ways and possibilities to travel, and it was not necessary to endanger one’s body doing so. If a person was accepted into Ringwall, they did not leave at their own decision. In rare cases the Magon sent out one of the mages as a sort of trial, and every mage hoped never to be picked for one of these tasks in their entire life.

      But Ambrosimas was beaming. He enjoyed the moment and absorbed the attention like sunlight, like a butterfly in the sunshine after the rain. Bar Helis and Gnarlhand, who deeply disapproved of Ambrosias’ peculiar ideas and general fooling about, looked expectantly towards the Magon, hoping for him to be reprimanded. Nosterlohe’s gaze was fixed on Ambrosias. His fists opened and closed again, the only actors in the play of his inner struggle. Nosterlohe was angry, for in Ambrosias’ folly he saw only irresponsibility. Ringwall needed its archmages and could not afford weakness. The Magon, however, remained silent.

      Ambrosias waited for the commotion in the room to settle down. Then he continued: “As I was saying, I wandered around in the guise of a sorcerer, and I visited the tablets of Sonx, listened to the songs of Kryll along the water roads and I found the broken pillars near Asrax. It was an uncomfortable amount of climbing up there in the mountains of Metal World, I can say. I looked for magical traces of truth in all the songs and myths I collected on my journey, and…” Ambrosimas paused for effect before continuing, “I found them. These truths are in… how did our Magon put it? Gossip and lullabies, that’s where. The old truths still exist. They are hidden deep down, and I cannot tell whether it is possible to bring them all back from down there. Too many worthless elaborations have been laid upon them by generation upon generation, and too much that does not belong together has been mixed up. What I can report is this.

      “In the magical traces left by the thoughts of this world we can see that all thoughts evolved from a single word. From that word came a sentence, and from the sentence came a story. This story is older than humanity, and parts of it are recognizable in plants and animals. It is hidden so deeply that I can neither read nor understand it. But much points to the conclusion that this story was the content of the first book in our world. The Book of Wisdom, or as it is also known, the Book of Creation.”

      “The Book of Wisdom is a crazy idea that many fools have tried to follow, my dear brother,” Gnarlhand growled. “I doubt it was ever written, and even if it was, I doubt a story from before our time can offer advice on how to avoid the future held

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