The Green Wizard

Mushroom Most Deadly

Hatless and barefoot, Ladomas sprinted down the curving stone hallway of the Wizard Tower as if a dragon was snapping at his heels. He pounded up a steep, narrow staircase and stumbled into his master's study—and promptly tripped on a protruding flagstone. He sprawled face-first onto the hard floor.

"Every time . . ." he groaned, his cheek and big toe throbbing.

Ladomas scrambled to his feet and hopped around a large mahogany desk, its fine wood imported from the forests of Quetzelquazanga across the Middle Sea. He rifled through the desk's wide top drawer, drawing out a silver inkpot and a red, yellow, and blue-feathered pen—the plume plucked from a mythical quethuatl, part bird, part serpent. Standing on his tiptoes, he retrieved The Collected Journals of the Wizard Winklesmith of Sheffield—Master Neyhün's chief rival—and a fresh vellum scroll from the massive bookshelf behind him.

Ladomas opened the heavy book and gazed at the complex diagrams, formulas, and theories within, running his hand over the book's gilded pages and sniffing the fine ink. He understood the mantras and intricate gestures of The Weave: a scientific artistry to channel arcane energies from the ether, but he was a poor student. His frustration was exceeded only by Neyhün's disappointment.

The door creaked open and Master Neyhün strode across the study in a billow of fine, purple robes. He brushed past Ladomas and sat heavily at the desk. The old wizard looked expectantly at the gangly lad.

"Of course, Master!" Ladomas ran to the sideboard and poured a goblet of weak beer, Neyhün's morning digestive, which he laid gingerly on the desk. "Master, might I spend more time practicing my Weave today?"

Neyhün regarded his apprentice with a cocked eyebrow and sipped his beer. "You have important business this morning, or have you forgotten?"

Ladomas searched his fuzzy brain. Errand? He had to clean his master's chamber, scour new acquisitions for arcane script, then came transcription, lunch, component pre . . . that was it: "I will obtain the components this afternoon. I have not forgotten!" Ladomas flashed a toothy grin. 

Neyhün didn't look reassured. "This morning, Ladomas. I will not have valuable ingredients snatched up by lesser wizards, or that devious Winifred. Those specimens are for the learned, not lurchers."

"Of course, Master. You can count on me!" Ladomas dashed through the doorway.

"Comport yourself with dignity. You represent the Preeminent Wizard of Lanesford," Neyhün called.

"I will exhibit only respectability!" Ladomas shouted from down the hall.

Ladomas returned to his windowless cell, dressed in a grey tunic and green hose, and, with a knife and hempen bag on his belt, tore through the tower like his future depended on it; which it did. He rattled down the steep back stairs and careened into a blank wall of grey stone. After several jabs at likely bits of stone—he could never find the damnable catch—one depressed with a click. A section of wall ground into the floor, and he passed through an adjoining basement filled with barrels, jugs, and jars stacked to the vaulted ceiling. He hopped up a steep flight of stairs, made his way through a steel-banded door, and stopped in the filthy alley outside.

What specimens did his master require?

He paced the alley, kicking errant garbage and beating his knuckles against his thick skull. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He remembered Neyhün listing the plants he needed last night, but Ladomas hadn't been listening—his mind on the new Weave he had been practicing. What did Neyhün want?

Wrigglewort?

Judas leaf?

Spritemoss?

Ladomas wandered to the end of the alley and slouched against a wall at the edge of cobbled Main Street. "Troll-something."