The Wizard From Vahan

Chapter 3

Four weeks passed. Jasper quickly found that he wasn't ready at all to be a recluse, and he didn't particularly want to sit carving wood all the time. He did his meditation exercises and his Combat Unlock practice faithfully every day, but he felt he was stretched like a tightrope and if he let go for a second he would go insane.

Voices spoke in his head, which he had to hope came from real spirits, and pictures from his childhood rose up constantly and vividly before his eyes. It was unbearable for someone as young as himself to be without friends, lovers or even teachers, for a period of time impossible to determine.

Emin had left him some coarse paper and charcoal pencils and he tried to stick to a routine of drawing during what he counted as morning, and taking walks through the jungle in the afternoon. Jasper had become good at drawing from long hours of practice at Void Star, drawing sigils and seals of spirits for the simplest type of magic spells.

The sigils he was drawing now started to turn into mandalas of cosmic proportions, and he dared not put magical intents into them to go home or to have other people here with him, in case they clashed with Emin's spells. Emin had told him there were some delicate adjustments he would have to make before Jasper could go home without any ill effects. Also Emin had apparently constructed The Retreat as a place solely for himself to live in and had bound it against being colonised by other people; they were only welcome on temporary visits, to discuss problems on Vahan with Emin and ask for his help. Kings and chieftains had come for this purpose; however it did not happen frequently because Emin watched the planet so closely that he usually identified any problems before they did.

One day Jasper sneaked a look around the house for the magical tools they had spoken about. All he found was a locked wooden cupboard, with the black mirror and a large cloth-bound magic book sitting outside, so presumably the rest of the tools were in the cupboard. The book was interesting and potentially useful, and he began to read a chapter from it every day when he came back from his walk.

A day came when he saw a craft in the sky coming towards the area where the house stood. He had no way of knowing whether it belonged to the platypus aliens or to someone else entirely. It was shiny and golden, like a round gold-painted car which had been hoisted up and fired into space.

Perhaps it wasn't prudent to stand pointedly in the open staring up at it, but he was past caring by now. Any company would be good, even hostile company, and he thought that even if someone was to attack him it would have less influence on whether he got back home than what Emin was doing down on the planet surface.

The ship drew near to the ground and hovered, and a dark patch appeared which was a panel door sliding open. A flight of white steps was lowered, and then came a short man with a mop of untidy brown hair descending the ladder. His clothes were pale, diaphanous robes and looked nothing like a space suit, more like a fancy-dress costume.

"Are you the great magician?" he asked, eyeing Jasper.

Somewhere inside Jasper was a voice wanting to say "yes." He ignored it and instead said what they had agreed upon: "I'm his apprentice."

"Oh." The man stopped dead and carried on looking at him searchingly. "Well, can you do the same things that he can do?"

"Some of them", Jasper answered cautiously. "What's this about?"

"I want him to make me a creature that will track my girl, find her and bring her back to me," the man said. "I'll pay him. Where is he?"

"Private business down on the planet surface," Jasper advised, "and I don't know how long he will be. Do you come from Vahan?"

"Of course, same as you do," the stranger said.

Jasper decided not to correct him. He could see an opportunity to escape and also to advance his magical practice up to the next level, for he had read the chapter in the book about making servitors of the same kind as Emin's raven.

A few hours later they were sitting on the grass in front of the house marking out a magic circle with a charcoal pencil, and sprinkling herbs around the outside. Jasper had no idea what names these people used for the four elemental quarters, so he used Earth ones and his companion didn't seem to notice anything.

The client had told Jasper a little about himself. His name was Lonnie and he came from a small village where he had more or less grown up with his girlfriend Jodi. A few weeks ago he had called round to her family's home to find her missing without trace, and no-one in the community could find out what had happened. He was happy to take Jasper back with him to the planet surface in lieu of the payment he would have given to Emin; in fact he would have liked to pay Jasper and throw in the lift free, except that the journey took slightly over twelve hours and would necessitate opening an additional canister of food and oxygen, which were quite expensive.

After setting up the defences around the circle, Jasper picked up a shoulder patch and a fire stick which Lonnie had given him to use in the ceremony. The patch was one that Lonnie wore every day according to the customs of his people, and the fire stick was a weapon. Jasper began burning the name and form of the creature he was creating onto the shoulder patch, and its instructions to track Jodi and bring her back. Then came the more advanced part of the operation: shaping a portion of his own etheric energy so that it would form the body and mind of the creature. He wanted to work in some of Lonnie's as well but that could feel rather harsh and invasive, especially when doing it for the first time, a detail which he hadn't told Lonnie.

"These shoulder patches- do you ever write or engrave on them yourselves?" he asked cautiously.

"The ideal is to sew on them," said Lonnie. "I find that a bit tiresome, so I haven't done it yet, but some of the people in my village have embroidered a whole battle scene or a picture of people trading goods."

Jasper felt relieved. "Perfect! After we've finished I want you to sew on it, 'I bind you to me.' Then I'll make sure the creature is tied to your thread. Could you do that fairly quickly, before we leave?"

"Letters are awkward- but all right, if it will bring Jodi back."

The creature Jasper made was called Trevik and it looked like a combination of a monkey and a dog. The name meant 'track, retrieve.' If you write out those two words and delete the vowels and repeated consonants you get TRKV, which can be rearranged to TRVK. Jasper was pleased with it, but he reflected that if he had been more experienced he wouldn't have kept returning to the thought that it had to be roughly animal shaped: it could just as easily have looked like a bicycle, or a doughnut. It had two modes of walking: upright to move quickly through the environment and on all fours, sniffing the ground with its enlarged nose.

He could see Trevik hazily at the edge of his field of vision, which was a bonus because he didn't want to lose contact yet. But after he had closed down the circle the servitor suddenly became much fainter, almost transparent. A few minutes later he heard a click and wondered what it was, then realized it was a snuffle as he could just about distinguish Trevik putting his large snout down to the ground and beginning to search the area where the circle had been.

After that Lonnie did his sewing, which seemed to be something both men and women in his culture learned how to do at a young age, and Jasper busied himself with putting the finishing touches to Trevik and at the same time trying to make some kind of decent meal for both of them out of bits of vegetable and bitu fruit. Emin was evidently completely vegetarian because the few animals that lived here were not suitable for eating. At least he wouldn't have to live on a diet like this for much longer because they were planning to leave on what counted as the following morning.