5

I was still smiling and thinking of Chris when I drove into the garage. Maybe my luck with girls was changing? Shifting focus was surprisingly difficult, but I managed to wipe the smile away and put further thoughts of my now favorite redhead on backburner.

I needed to learn a great deal more. Had the book been evasive? It certainly seemed likely. There were large holes in the information I’d received. I’d just finished securing the trike in the garage, and it was there. It had probably felt me mentally shouting for it.

What is the ratio of archwizard to wizard? I asked mentally. How do they relate to each other? Am I in any way unusual for a potential archwizard? How many books of wizardry are there? What happened to your last student? How may archwizards exist, and how can I find them? What polices archwizards? Questions and more questions ran through my mind.

This book of wizardry was created 7,203 years ago in the laboratories of the Archimagical College. The college still exists, though there are no directions leading there herein, nor spells that would permit such approach. Seven archwizards voluntarily bound themselves to protect it, and they and their books now reside there, in stasis. They may not leave the college, but their powers there are magnified sufficiently to assure safety. They are likely to welcome your presence and aid you, as that is part of their original purpose, to restore and uphold the Conclave.

I did not fail to notice the ‘likely’. There were too few guarantees in this business.

It is widely thought that the elemental courts hold at least a few archwizards captive. The archwizardess Kylavria Verthular Amandine Terstar is the keystone for the lock on one of the planar warps demons once used to invade Earth in the War of Shattering, and she still lives. She may be found beneath the northern ice cap. Exact co-ordinates will not be offered at this moment. There are no others.

The last archwizard to utilize this book was Demarthos Alkavrin Kelletar, who perished in battle in 1911 in the Alps. He was facing storm giants, earth drakes and a fane of ice. They caught him at a disadvantage, as he was severely weakened after defeating a demon invasion that erupted following the corruption of an earth cyst by diabolists. He was 296 years old at the time.

An earth cyst is a power center where at least three pure elemental deposits meet at high pressure, never forming less than a kilometer beneath the surface.

Diabolists is the general name by which demon worshipping cultists are known.

There were never many of your potential. The Conclave at its height held only 819 of the immortals.

All archwizard potentials are cerebral persons. The personality types differ. Those who never realize their potential are generally divorced from humanity and unfeeling. They are prone to depression and recklessness. These rarely live beyond 200 and were derisively known as the ‘suicide squad’.

Others are boisterous and outgoing, hiding their difference by wallowing in sensuality, art or creative endeavors, and generally represent the face of the Conclave. They were called ‘hedonists’.

You represent the most common and numerous variety, with at least a modicum of attachment to humanity and a focus and dedication that are unsurpassed. The type of focus varies widely, with the most common centering on magical research and defense of the Earth. These were the leaders and fingers of the Conclave, and were known as ‘maniacs’ for their obsessive, suspicious and uncompromising nature. Should you meet another such as yourself, make it a priority to ascertain their focus. Should such prove complementary with yours, you will find co-operation to be almost instinctive and achieve gestalt with ease. Maniac teams are the sole reason humanity exists today.

In the unlikely event that you locate a person with archwizard potential, you will be instructed on the means of creating a copy of this book. You may not otherwise instruct them, as this book is a template key to an archwizard’s potential. If anything less might suffice, it remains lost with the gods.

There is no documented correlation between the number of wizards and archwizards. In the days of the Conclave, each archwizard kept between 500 and 10,000 wizards. 500 were the minimum number allowed, and few were interested in maintaining a ‘stable’ larger than 10,000.

There are legends of terrible conflicts between wizards and their masters in ancient times. From that age grew the power of the Conclave of Archwizards and the Grim Panoply of Salubrious Resolve and Arcane Might, which forced each and every wizard to swear allegiance and eternal loyalty to a single archwizard, and prevented the archwizards from coming into conflict or betraying the Earth. This book contains no more information on the subject. It is likely that no further information is available outside the archives of the Archimagical College itself.

You may make this book available to any person with the potential for wizardry or teach them yourself, and all such will be bound to you for life and beyond. A wizard’s loyalty may not be influenced by any means, and though they may be deceived into acting against your orders, plans or well being, they are incapable of dealing you direct harm.

Do not take this to mean that every wizard you meet will be your disciple. The lost archwizards trained many wizards, and these passed their lore on. If there remain any means of gaining the loyalty of practicing wizards, they are most likely hidden in the college.

The binding will not change the basic nature of the disciple, but your actions may adjust their responses and slowly shape them to your will. Complete information will be made available before the first binding, which is formalized upon sexual union and the rituals of the third circle of life. Prior to that, your students will be loyal and accommodating, but not obedient or perfectly resistant to persuasions, nor will you be immune to their assaults.

The only leash on archwizards is the book of wizardry itself. No archwizard may act against the Earth or humanity, nor may archwizards come into conflict. Only one of the gods ever attempted to circumvent this protection, and she was not successful.

If you proceed with the determination and efficiency inherent in your personality type, you should reach archwizard status before your thirtieth birthday.

You will not lose your humanity by means of magic. The changes time and possession of great power will force upon you are likely to alter you beyond the limits of your present understanding.

Wizards generally live four to six centuries, though favored and capable servants are usually rejuvenated by their archwizard. The binding ceremony invariably involves sexual union.

As an archwizard you will be able to exchange minds and bodies, thus binding male disciples will not be limited by the present bounds of your sexuality.

By Jove! The bloody book was calling me childish because I wasn’t willing to have sex with guys. Anger seethed for a moment, before I managed to dismiss it as irrelevant. After a few centuries of regular sex, I probably wouldn’t retain this attitude. Probably.

Archwizard before thirty sounded good. I knew I could manage that, barring the unforeseen, because the book knew me better than anything and anyone could. I now had a strong enough connection to it that I ‘felt’ that it was not capable of lying to me, or presenting anything with less than complete factual precision. I now believed that it couldn’t even lie by omission, nor could it allow me to gain a false impression or retain incorrect assumptions. I knew that this could be a form of subtle manipulation, but it was very difficult to retain a suspicious attitude when the feeling of knowing was so very strong.

I did not fail to heed the warning embodied by the death of my predecessor. I needed as large a stable of wizards as possible, and…

More words appeared before my eyes, You are capable if initiating disciples here and now, though you may not bind them until you complete the first enhancement rituals. It is distinctly recommended that you retain your virginity until the first ritual and choose a virgin as your partner. This will significantly improve the results.

Reading your impressions, there is a 93.6% chance that Christine possesses wizard potential. There is 89.1% chance that your sister is a potential wizard. The superficial nature of your interaction with most females precludes further analysis, but it is a virtual certainty that at least one of your sister’s friends is a potential, and a proper search of your high school should furnish you with at least a score of possible candidates. Recall that males have greater potential in general, but females are more numerous.Wizardly potential is not rare, but the discipline and mentally agility to advance beyond student status is.

It is recommended that you initiate a minimum number of wizards at present. An arcane confluence will alert the elemental courts, rogue demons and independent wizards. Secure the allegiance of those closest to you, and go no further. Yes, the book of wizardry is imbued with tactical and strategic advisory capabilities, considerably in advance of humanity’s computers.

A grid map of my home and the area around it appeared for a moment, followed by an extremely detailed map of Stettin Park liberally dotted with strange markings.

The markings on the battlemap form a key you will be able to read with ease once you master the first circle of mind. Mastery or completion of a circle is accomplished by learning all the spells of that circle available in this book. Breaking a circle grants you improved facility with the spells available within its bounds.

Well, I could certainly understand why the book had kept the information back. Too many shocks aren’t good for one’s system. This was a major one. The one biggest, most important basic value I’d grown up with was the autonomy and freedom of the individual. For a minute I’d thought of wizards as tokens to gather, like the figures in a computer game, building armies as in most strategy games. Explore, gather resources, build, develop, seek, destroy.

This was no computer game. The mention of Chris and Lee shook me. I was basically going to be a slavemaster. It made me almost physically ill. Benevolent or not, there was no sense in being politically correct about it. The uncompromising way the book had put it made things crystal clear.

But there was just no way around it. There was no other way to gather enough power to survive the early years, where discovery would mean certain destruction or worse if I remained on my own. Even a full archwizard NEEDED that sort of support, and my suspicious and less than social nature left no other avenue. Caesar had learned exactly what trust bought you in such circumstances. There was no margin for lying to myself and I didn’t even try to delude myself.

Sex with hundreds of women (and never mind what else) had never been part of my fantasies. It was pure silliness. No one could handle more than two girls, or perhaps three, assuming they had decent sexual appetites.

And my own sister! The very reason I wasn’t exactly terribly sanguine about relationships with anything female. We’d had a nice enough relationship until three years ago, when she turned absolutely poisonous. Quite enough to make me doubly wary of girls.

Oh, she was a looker, all right. Mom said that when I was a baby, I was blond and blue eyed, like her and Lee, and the colours had gradually darkened to its present dark and brown, respectively. You just couldn’t fail to notice the fact that Lee had developed just fine, thank you, not with the tatters of clothing she wore. Haut couture fashions for fourteen year olds these days seem to focus on ‘less is more’, and Lee is as fashionable and popular as they get. Or so I assumed from the snatches of girl-giggle-conversation pieces I’d caught on the fringes of the over perfumed gaggle of jail bait she brought home, all too often for my taste.

Adolescent fantasies and porn aside, incest wasn’t really my thing. Not because of the rules, which were a burst dam and honoured more in the breach anyway, considering what took place in reality, nor out of some outraged sense of morality. I remember the genetic problems with inbreeding perfectly well, though that seemed irrelevant. I was troubled because I wasn’t at all attracted to my mother, and my sister’s physical attractiveness did not match her insides. At least the goat buggered piece of braided cephalic coprolite matter hadn’t mentioned Ellen. Probably because, I looked down, Adults’ wizardly potential is frozen. No one over twenty-five years of age can learn magic, and few over twenty.

So, from serious potential girlfriend I was still feeling bubbly about, Chris had ninety plus percentage of being a slave, and I would soon have to start hunting for a harem. The idea was repulsive, not because of the sexual part – for the first time since I’d cast my first spell, I was erect – it was the abrogation of free will that had me gnashing my teeth.

Sure, I had power fantasies, and now I’d get to carry them out easily and relatively soon. I was angry, nauseous, aroused and mightily confused. What with this being Saturday, RPG day, I couldn’t help but recall that my characters invariably and gleefully cut down all the slavers they could find. That summarized how I felt about such things perfectly.

I took another look at the book. It is possible to leave disciples in ignorance of their status, but not forever, the words appeared slowly, almost hesitantly. Obviously, it wasn’t too happy with the idea, but there was just no way I was going to turn from a champion of freedom to the biggest slaver in the world. Required to save humanity from demons or not, I knew that intention and purpose did not detract from the awful institute the Conclave had created.

I’d teach and eventually bind, but I couldn’t stomach the dictator part. I’d weave the wizards’ feelings of loyalty into something that did not resemble a ‘stable’. What it would be, I had no idea.

I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to settle myself. The warmth inside that Chris had kindled managed to return, and I was surprised to note that I was still erect. It was strange, after several days without that physical imperative.

I’d stood there for less than ten minutes, I saw from a glance at the clock. When I turned back to secure things in the garage, I noticed that the book had more to say. It detailed a second order spell of the circle of life, which allowed a wizard to ensure that his seed remained sterile when he came. Obviously, the only way to actually try it out was to spill seed, and since I was now once more capable of doing so…

The spell was much more complicated than I’d anticipated, and I left it for the moment, locking things up in the garage and going to the kitchen for a cold drink.

I spent over an hour studying the spell, while I ate a couple of sandwiches and prepared a big meal. A single casting of something like that would be exhausting. There was also the enormous distraction entailed in ejaculation, which made me wonder why the book had chosen that particular spell for breaking the first circle of life. It seemed unusually difficult.

Preparations complete, the structure of the spell and the material it worked on, spunk, memorized, I started to masturbate. It took a surprising amount of time, as having to keep the spell in mind was not entirely compatible with my Chris fantasy. Trying to imagine the location of any freckles below her neck, recalling the sparkle in her green eyes, picturing what she would look like naked in various postures and those dirty, naughty things we were going to try, were not conductive to spellcasting. I finally came, breathing heavily and trying to mouth the spell and gesture properly, but my mind just wouldn’t co-operate, and lassitude spread from my groin outwards.

My conjecture that the book wanted me to fail remained unvoiced, and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening practicing spellcasting and learning more first order spells. Very minor things, from cleaning a spill, drying an object and creating a smell, to setting a small fire and quenching it. It was going more easily, I noticed, and left me the slightest bit less weary, stomach growling less insistently. The book confirmed my impression, and advised that I would doubtless break the first circle of life tomorrow.

I was an absolute mess, physically, emotionally and mentally. I spent some time trying to relax in the hot tub, but my thoughts kept spinning in all directions.

For the first time in quite a while, I had problems falling asleep. After twenty restless minutes underneath the sheets, I switched the light back on.

I left a phone message with Dan’s answering service, informing him that I would not be present on Monday’s Jiujitsu practice. Chris was somewhat more important, and I’d blurted out Monday at lunch, so Monday it would be.

Then I asked the book for something that would put me to sleep. It obliged with a series of mental and meditation exercises. Eventually, it worked.

I woke up much later than I usually did, and felt enormously refreshed. Obviously, the exercises were something more than mere meditation. Hopefully, today I’d learn how to activate wizard sight, and finally see the currents of power.

Taking a minute to adjust to the light, I hurried through my morning routine and gathered a great big heap of foodstuffs. I spent the entire morning casting spells, again and again. I was extremely energized and mentally alert, despite the temporary debilitating effect incurred by each and every spell.

I had to stop at noon, for in my enthusiasm I’d brought myself, once more, to the edge of collapse. According to the book, if I maintained this pace, I’d complete the first circle of the three common circles – life, transmutation and energy control – within a fortnight. It added that maintaining the pace would kill me within eight days, at the most.

I took a break from magic with some physical exercise, and learned that the meditation I’d performed yesterday were a life ritual of the first circle that offered rejuvenating sleep.

After a hot shower, I repeated the ritual and caught a nap. Three hours of sleep, and I was feeling almost as good as new. I opened the book, and began to study the spell of wizard sight, from the second circle of life magic.

It was hard going, much more difficult than I’d thought it would be. It made the safe sex spell look like a cantrip, and I realized that it was only the problem with co-ordinating spell and ejaculation that made that one so difficult.

Second order spells were an increase of magnitude, what with the complex memorizations and images the wizard was required to hold in mind. Having to do three things at once, while keeping absolute concentration on all of them, was very demanding. One had to perform very precise gestures, mouth throat shattering syllables, and envision portions of the interior of both the eyes and their connection to the brain, superimposing magical threads drawn in a complex pattern over them. All at the same time, of course. It took over an hour before the book informed me that I had the gestures perfected. Three and a half hours more passed before I managed to croak the incantation together with the requisite somatic component of the spell. It was 2 am before I had the images and the shifts in them the spell required down solid, and it took another hour of combining just two elements together before I tried to really cast the spell.

I was concentrating so hard on being precise, that it took a moment before I noticed the lack of resistance to the image I was forcing. I opened my eyes, still holding the image in the back of my mind. It was that concentration that kept the spell active, and a practiced wizard could keep several such magics active.

It was like watching a split screen. On one side, everything was exactly the same. On the other…

It was a different, magical world. I could see colours and shades that did not exist. I could sense, how and with what I could not say, the lifeflow and powerflow all around, above and beneath. The sensual barrage was overwhelming, impossible. I staggered back and struck the cold kitchen cabinet with my back, breathing raggedly.

Needles of pain struck the center of my head, pierced my eyes from the inside out. With a low groan, I released the spell.

I slithered down bonelessly, until I sat on the cool tiled floor, a pure and clean white, back leaning against the cabinet. My skin tingled and I felt like a pincushion. That really, really hurt.

But pain or no, the vision had been utterly glorious. The beauty of the vistas offered by nature or computer graphics was nothing, nothing. I couldn’t imagine how wizards could live with that vision and perhaps much more, always on, always there. I now had the first glimmer of understanding as to why elementals did not consider wizards to be human. I was a novice, not just as a student wizard, but in the nature of my understanding. I’d thought of magic as a different realm and world, but not in the literal sense. As there were different realities, so were there more levels to this reality than I’d realized.

I’d received just the barest glimpse of the hidden world, but I was already addicted. The sensations were impossibly… more. I’d always looked down on druggies, alcoholics and chain smokers. All you need is a bit of will, to kick the addiction. I was a fool. No wonder some archwizards had dedicated their entire immortal existence to magical research, to the search for more.

Not that I had the barest comprehension of how such research might be accomplished. The spell I’d just cast seemed impossibly complicated, and anything more would stretch me to the breaking point. It was now obvious why the third circle changed the student wizard physically and mentally. Spell research seemed light years away.

Once the pain diminished from a blaze of fire in my head to something more bearable, I hissed as I felt the terrible weight of fatigue. Every muscle was dragging and even breathing was an effort.

I forced myself to eat, and it was a good thing that I’d thought ahead and prepared some bite-sized servings. I’m not sure I was up to cutting anything.

Even after the food and ten minutes’ bed rest, I just wasn’t capable of the meditation that would improve the quality of my sleep. Trying it was like hitting an already shattered bone with a mallet. When I could see again and the white flashes of agony were gone, I simply lay down, and collapsed into a dreamless sleep.

I woke up feeling exceedingly tired. Monday and the big date with Chris, hopefully my first recruit and ally. Though, to be truthful, that’s not exactly how I thought of her. I was not going to practice spellcasting today, at all. Too much of a good thing could kill you, as the book had made clear.

Instead of taking her to a fancy restaurant and trying to impress her with my suave and debonair manner and how much money I could spend in an evening, I was going to bring her here, to something I cooked. What that thing would be, I wasn’t sure yet. That’s what the afternoon was for, cooking.

The morning, I spent doing all the things I should and would have done if magic hadn’t showed up. From taking care of the garden and pool to answering e-mails and touching base with friends, ordering more groceries and visiting an exotic food shop to stock up on spices, sauces and sundry edibles.

When I finished all of that, I took a couple of hours of power sleep. Waking up, I felt divine, and spent all that energy cooking enough food to last ten people three days. I actually enjoyed doing something so mundane for a change.

I took a long and luxurious shower to get rid of all the smells. Cooking is hot work. I’d manage to resist too much taste testing, so I might actually be able to eat instead of making her uncomfortable by staring at her when she ate.

I put on slacks and a dress shirt, made sure that I was shaved and presentable, dabbed a bit of perfume on – with the very first spell I’d cast today – and entered the car.

When dad last changed cars, six months ago, he’d let me buy his old Mercedes at a bargain price. He felt better knowing I’d be using the same car I’d trained on, one he knew was mechanically sound.

I didn’t believe Chris was expecting another bike ride, and forcing her to change if she’d picked something with a skirt wasn’t polite. I also didn’t feel like waiting for a girl to pick what she wanted to wear when going out. Popular literature and TV made it very clear that it sometimes took hours.