Zelazny, Roger - Wizard World 02 - Madwand.pdf

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MADWAND
By Roger Zelazny
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
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I
I am not certain.
It sometimes seems as if I have always been here, yet I know that there must have been a time before
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my advent.
And sometimes it seems as if I have only just lately arrived. From where I might have come, I have no
idea. Recently, I have found this vaguely troubling, but only recently.
For a long while, I drifted through these halls, across the battlements, up and down the towers,
expanding or contracting as I chose, to fill a room—or a dozen—or to snake my way through the homes
of mice, to trace the sparkling cables of the spider’s web. Nothing moves in this place but that I am
aware of it.
Yet I was not fully aware of myself until recently, and the acts I have just recited have the dust of dreams
strewn over them, myself the partial self of the dreamer. Yet—
Yet I do not sleep. I do not dream. However, I seem now to know of many things which I have never
experienced.
Perhaps it is that I am a slow learner, or perhaps something has recently stimulated my awareness to the
point where all the echoes of thoughts have brought about something new within me—a sense of self
which I did not formerly possess, a knowledge of separateness, of my apartness from those things which
are not-me.
If this is the case, I would like to believe that it has to do with my reason for being. I have also recently
begun feeling that I should have a reason for being, that it is important that I have a reason for being. I
have no idea, however, as to what this could be.
It has been said—again, recently—that this place is haunted. But a ghost, as I understand it, is some
non-physical survival of someone or something which once existed in a more solid form. I have never
encountered such an entity in my travels through this place, though lately it has occurred to me that the
reference could be to me in my more tangible moments. Still, I do not believe that I am a ghost, for I have
no recollection of the requisite previous state. Of course, it is difficult to be certain in a matter such as
this, for I lack knowledge concerning whatever laws might govern such situations.
And this is another area of existence of which I have but recently become aware: laws—restrictions,
compulsions, areas of freedom . . . They seem to be everywhere, from the dance of the tiniest particles to
the turning of the world, which may be the reason I had paid them such small heed before. That which is
ubiquitous is almost unnoticed. It is so easy to flow in accordance with the usual without reflecting upon
it. It may well be that it was the occurrence of the unusual which served to rouse this faculty within me,
and along with it the realization of my own existence.
Then, too, in accordance with the laws with which I have become aware, I have observed a
phenomenon which I refer to as the persistance of pattern. The two men who sit talking within the room
where I hover like a slowly turning, totally transparent cloud an arm’s distance out from the highest
bookshelf nearest the window—these two men are both patterned upon similar lines of symmetry, though
I become aware of many differences within these limits, and the wave disturbances which they cause
within the air when communicating with one another are also patterned things possessing, or possessed
by, rules of their own. And if I attend very closely, I can even become aware of their thoughts behind,
and sometimes even before, these disturbances. These, too, seem to be patterned, but at a much higher
level of complexity.
It would seem to follow that if I were a ghost something of my previous pattern might have persisted. But
I am without particular form, capable of great expansions and contractions, able to permeate anything I
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have so for encountered. And there is no special resting state to which I feel constrained to return.
Along with my nascent sense of identity and my ignorance as to what it is that I am, I do feel something
else: a certainty that I am incomplete. There is a thing lacking within me, which, if I were to discover it,
might well provide me with that reason for being which I so desire. There are times when I feel as if I had
been, in a way, sleeping for a long while and but recently been awakened by the commotions in this
place—awakened to find myself robbed of some essential instruction. (I have only lately learned the
concept “robbed” because one of the men I now regard is a thief.)
If I am to acquire a completeness, it would seem that I must pursue it myself, I suppose that, for now, I
ought to make this pursuit my reason for being. Yes. Self-knowledge, the quest after identity . . . These
would seem a good starting place. I wonder whether anyone else has ever had such a problem? I will
pay close attention to what the men are saying.
I do not like being uncertain.
Pol Detson had arranged the seven figurines into a row on the desk before him, A young man, despite
the white streak through his hair, he leaned forward and extended a hand in their direction. For a time he
moved it slowly, passing his fingertips about the entire group, then in and out, encircling each
gem-studded individual. Finally, he sighed and withdrew. He crossed the room to where the small,
black-garbed man sat, left leg crooked over the arm of his chair, a wineglass in either hand, the contents
of both aswirl. He accepted one from him and raised it to his lips.
“Well?” the smaller man, Mouseglove by name, the thief, asked him when he lowered it.
Pol shook his head, moved a chair so that his field of vision took in both Mouseglove and the statuettes,
seated himself.
“Peculiar,” he said at last. “Almost everything tosses off a thread, something to give you a hold over it,
even if you have to fight for it, even if it only does it occasionally.”
“Perhaps this is not the proper occasion.”
Pol leaned forward, set his glass upon the desk. He flexed his fingers before him and placed their tips
together. He began rubbing them against one another with small, circular movements. After perhaps half a
minute, he drew them apart and reached toward the desk.
He chose the nearest figure—thin, female, crowned with a red stone, hands clasped beneath the
breasts—and began making a wrapping motion about it, though Mouseglove could detect no substance
to be engaged in the process. Finally, his fingers moved as if he were tying a series of knots in a
nonexistent string. Then he moved away, seating himself again, drawing his hands slowly after him as if
playing out a line with some tension on it.
He sat unmoving for a long while. Then the figure on the desk jerked slightly and he lowered his hands.
“No good,” he said, rubbing his eyes and reaching to recover his wineglass. “I can’t seem to get a
handle on it. They are not like anything else I know about.”
“They’re special, all right,” Mouseglove observed, “considering the dance they put me through. And
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from the glimpses they gave you atAnvilMountain, I have the feeling they could talk to you right now—if
they wanted to.”
“Yes. They were helpful enough—in a way—at the time. I wonder why they won’t communicate now?”
“Perhaps they have nothing to say.”
I found myself puzzled by the manner in which these men spoke of those seven small statues on the
desk, as if they were alive. I drew nearer and examined them. I had noted lines of force going from the
man Pol’s fingertips to them, shortly after he had spoken of “threads” and performed his manipulations. I
had also detected a throbbing of power in the vicinity of his right forearm, where he bore the strangely
troubling mark of the dragon—a thing about which I feel I should know more than I do—but I had seen
no threads. Nor had I noted any sort of reaction from the figures, save for the small jerking movement of
the one as the shell of force was repelled. I settled down about them, contracting, feeling the textures of
the various materials of which they had been formed. Cold, lifeless. It was only the words of the men
which laid any mystery upon them.
Continuing this commerce of surfaces, I grew even smaller, concentrating my attention now upon that
figure which Pol had momentarily bound. My action then was as prompt as my decision: I began to pour
myself into it, flowing through the miniscule openings—
The burn! It was indescribable, the searing feeling that passed through my being. Expanding, filling the
room, passing beyond it into the night, I knew that it must be that thing referred to as pain. I had never
experienced it before and I wanted never to feel it again.
I continued to seek greater tenuosness, for in it lay a measure of alleviation.
Pol had been correct concerning the figure. It was, somehow, alive. It did not wish to be disturbed.
Beyond the walls of Rondoval, the pain began to ease. I felt a stirring within me . . . something which had
always been there but was just now beginning to creep into awareness . . .
“What was that?” Pol said. “It sounded like a scream, but—”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Mouseglove answered, straightening. “But I just felt a jolt—as if I’d been
touched by someone who’d walked across a heavy rug, only stronger, longer . . . I don’t know. It gave
me a chill. Maybe you stirred something up, playing with that statue.”
“Maybe,” Pol said. “For a moment, it felt as if there were something peculiar right here in the room with
us.”
“There must be a lot of unusual things about this old place—with both of your parents having been
practicing sorcerers. Not to mention your grandparents, and theirs.”
Pol nodded and sipped his wine.
“There are times when I feel acutely aware of my lack of formal training in the area.”
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He raised his right hand slightly above shoulder-level, extended his index finger and moved it rapidly
through a series of small circles. A book bound in skin of an indeterminate origin appeared suddenly in
his hand, a gray and white feather bookmark protruding from it.
“My father’s diary,” he announced, lowering the volume and opening it to the feather. “Now here,” he
said, running his finger down the righthand page, pausing and staring, “he tells how he defeated and
destroyed an enemy sorcerer, capturing his spirit in the form of one of the figures. Elsewhere, he talks of
some of the others. But all that he says at the end here is, ‘It will prove useful in the task to come. If six
will not do to force the wards I shall have seven, or even eight.’ Obviously, he had something very
specific in mind. Unfortunately, he did not commit it to paper.”
“Further along perhaps?”
“I’ll be up late again reading. I’ve taken my time with it these past months because it is not a pleasant
document. He wasn’t a very nice guy.”
“I know that. It is good that you learn it from his own words, though.”
“His words about forcing the wards—do they mean anything at all to you?”
“Not a thing.”
“A good sorcerer would find some way to learn it from the materials at hand, I’m sure.”
“I’m not. Those things seem extremely potent. As for your own abilities, you seem to have come pretty
far without training. I’d give a lot to be able to pull that book trick—with, say, someone’s jewelry.
Where’d you get it from, anyway?”
Pol smiled.
“I didn’t want to leave it lying around, so I bound it with a golden strand and ordered it to retreat into
one of those placeless places between the worlds, as I saw them arrayed on my journey here. It vanished
then, but whenever I wish to continue reading it I merely draw upon the thread and summon it.”
“Gods! You could do that with a suit of armor, a rack of weapons, a year’s supply of food, your entire
library, for that matter! You can make yourself invincible!”
Pol shook his head.
“Afraid not,” he said. “The book and the jumble-box are all I’ve been keeping there, because I wouldn’t
want either to fall into anyone else’s hands. If I were traveling, I could add my guitar. Much more,
though, and it would become too great a burden. Their mass somehow gets added to my own. It’s as if
I’m carrying around whatever I send through.”
“So that’s where the box has gotten to. I remember your locating it, that day we went back toAnvil
Mountain . . . ”
“Yes. I almost wish I hadn’t.”
“You couldn’t really hope to recover his body or your scepter from that crater.”
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