He managed the distance in a quarter-hour, but then once he was in the proper neighborhood the combination of thickening fog and poorly remembered directions delayed him further; he actually walked past the warehouse of Mumfort and Company twice before he realized that that was the place he was looking for. With some chagrin, he went up and knocked firmly at the door. “Master Tarandor?” he called.
He heard footsteps on a creaking wooden floor, then Tarandor Delhame opened the door. “Ah, good evening, Master Ravenwild,” the lean wizard said. Jack thought his smile seemed a little forced, but then again, he’d kept the fellow waiting almost half an hour. “I was beginning to fear that you’d forgotten our appointment.”
“In truth, I did not remember it until I heard seven bells struck. Please excuse my tardiness.”
“No matter,” the mage replied. “You are here now; we can proceed.” He stepped back and invited Jack inside with a slight bow; Jack nodded and entered the warehouse. Stacks of wooden crates and small wooden casks lined the walls; several lanterns hanging from posts cast a warm yellow illumination over the otherwise dim and dusty interior. Jack saw that a large space had been cleared in the center of the room. A work table littered with parchment, old tomes, and a couple of curious green glass bottles stood to one side of the room, while a large object of some sort stood covered by a shapeless sheet of canvas in the center of the open area. Several more wizards-a plump young man with a patchy beard, a fetching elven woman with greenish-gold hair, and a Calishite man who wore a fez turned and bowed to Jack as he made his entrance.
“Good evening,” Jack said to the others, enjoying the air of professional camaraderie. “So how might I be of assistance? I confess this is all very mysterious.”
“Perhaps it might be easiest to show you,” Tarandor answered. “Attend, sir.” He walked up to the covered object in the middle of the room, and glanced at the other wizards. Then he took hold of a cord or lanyard hidden under the canvas and gave it a firm yank. In the corner of his eye Jack noticed the other mages in the room averting their faces as Tarandor turned his back fully on the falling canvas shroud. Beneath the canvas there stood a battered old statue of no particular quality, the sort of thing one might have found gathering bird-nests in any poor nobleman’s garden-but the face had been carefully chiseled into a flat, mirror-smooth surface, and there glowed a complex mystic rune. Jack’s eyes fell on the symbol before he even realized that he was looking at it, and a great burst of greenish light sprang from the device. A sudden dizziness swept over him, as the warehouse seemed to whirl away into darkness and shadow and the most peculiar sensation of motion in all directions at once overcame him.
He fell to his hands and knees, and found cool sand underneath him instead of the dusty old floorboards of the warehouse. Jack scrambled back to his feet and whirled around, astounded by his new surroundings. He seemed to be in a small, spherical room made of dark greenish glass. The walls curved inward to meet the low ceiling, which then drew away into a dark passage or flue. Beneath his feet was coarse white sand, which served to level the floor. “What is the meaning of this?” he shouted, and struck at the wall with his fist. The glass was so thick he might as well have been punching at stone.
Jack realized that he could see through the dark glass wall; outside the small chamber that held him, he could still make out the yellow lanterns hanging from the posts in the warehouse, strangely dim and distant. A vast shadow suddenly seemed to move across the wall behind him, and the room shuddered under a dull impact. The whole structure, Jack of course included, seemed to rise straight into the air. He lost his balance and sprawled to the sand again, which now slithered past his hands and knees, shifting to one side as the strange chamber tilted. Jack floundered in the rough sand, cursing … then the face of Tarandor Dethame suddenly appeared against one wall, but vastly huge, easily twice Jack’s height from peppered goatee to gleaming bald brow.
“AH, THERE YOU ARE JACK,” the monstrous visage thundered. “HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR ACCOMMODATIONS?”
“This is outrageous!” Jack shouted. “What have you done to me?”
“I HOPE YOU WILL FORGIVE ME, BUT I CAUSED YOU TO LOOK UPON A SYMBOL OF ENTRAPMENT,” Tarandor’s gigantic image answered.
Jack clapped his hands to his ears. “Cease your titanic demonstrations, Tarandor, and release me at once!”
“I REGRET THAT I CANNOT COMPLY,” Tarandor said. “AND I AM NOT TITANIC, JACK; YOU ARE SIMPLY MINUSCULE.”
Jack examined himself swiftly, looking at his hands and feet to see if they were the same distance from his eyes that they had always been. They certainly seemed to be, but of course if he had been minimalized in some way, why should he not shrink in perfect proportion? He looked back at the strange green room in which he was trapped … and suddenly he recognized the place. He was inside one of the odd green bottles that had been standing on the table beside Tarandor when he walked into the warehouse! The wizard’s spell had shrunk him to the size of a doll (and a small one at that), whisking him into the container Tarandor had prepared for him. Now the abjurer was holding him aloft by the bottle’s neck, peering at him through the glass.
“What is the meaning of this villainy?” Jack demanded. “What have I done to you, Tarandor?”
“OH, THIS IS NOTHING PERSONAL, MY LITTLE FRIEND. I AM MERELY FULFILLING THE OBLIGATION LAID UPON ME BY MY FORMER MASTER, WHO INHERITED IT FROM HIS OWN MASTER, MERITHEUS OF RAVEN’S BLUFF. IT SEEMS THAT MERITHEUS LEFT STANDING INSTRUCTIONS THAT HE OR HIS APPOINTED REPRESENTATIVE WAS TO BE SUMMONED AT ONCE IF YOU ESCAPED YOUR INTERNMENT IN THE WILD MYTHAL. I WILL SIMPLY RETURN YOU TO YOUR CONFINEMENT, AND BE DONE WITH THIS WHOLE TEDIOUS BUSINESS.”
“Return me to my confinement?” Jack stared at the gigantic face studying him, and his heart sank. “Do you mean to say that it was the Wizards’ Guild that imprisoned me a hundred years ago? But why would they have done that? And why in the world do you believe you must imprison me again?”
“AS BEST I CAN DETERMINE THEY IMPRISONED YOU TO SUPPRESS THE MAGIC CALLED WILDFIRE, JACK-SPONTANEOUS MAGIC, APT TO SURFACE IN THE UNTRAINED, THE UNDISCIPLINED, THE UNGUIDED. MY PREDECESSOR FORESAW A GREAT CATASTROPHE DRAWING NEAR, AND REALIZED THAT TO SAFEGUARD THE CITY THE PHENOMENON OF WILDFIRE HAD TO BE CONTAINED. YOUR CONNECTION TO THE WILD MYTHAL MEANT THAT YOU WERE INSTRUMENTAL TO THE PROCESS OF CONTROLLING WILD SORCERY.”
Great catastrophe? Jack wondered. That was why he had been encysted in the mythal? Jack thought back again to that last night of his former life, remembering a stroll through the damp and misty streets of the city on whatever errand he had in mind … and now his memory supplied him with one last recollection, of robed figures appearing from the shadows with wands leveled at him, a crescendo of magic words and stunning spells. “Well, that would have been helpful to recall before now,” he muttered. He certainly would have been more careful about returning to the High House of Magic if he’d remembered that wizards waylaid him before his imprisonment.
He looked back up at the gigantic visage of the wizard and tried a different tack. “Tarandor, be reasonable! Whatever disaster your predecessors foresaw for me clearly was anticipated to occur in my natural lifetime. We are at least forty or fifty years past that span; justified or not, their concerns have been mitigated. There is no point in confining me now!”
“YOU ARE PROBABLY CORRECT. HOWEVER, MY INSTRUCTIONS PERMIT ME NO DISCRETION. DOUBTLESS IT IS FOR THE BEST.”
“For the best?” Jack snarled in anger and pummeled the unyielding green glass of the bottle. “You intend to confine me until the Night Serpent devours the world, and you tell me it is for the best? The obstinacy! The stupidity!”