Michael Newsham

Birth of the Wizard King

Saraces was immune. To everything, apparently. All medicinal and magical attempts by his parents or the Magistrate to make him normal eventually had to be given up as fruitless. Whenever some new method arose, some way of socializing him enough to allow him contact with the world, the entire Council would pack into the tiny chamber where he was kept – chained, of course - with hope etched into their features like age lines. But Saraces would docilely submit to their attempts to change him, and then giggle maniacally under his breath, because he knew that it could never work. He was immune, and he was crazy, and he was going to live forever, whether they liked it or not.
For fifteen years, he had contemplated escape from his prison. With his abilities, it wouldn’t have been impossible. Difficult, because Saraces had not yet learned to consciously control his abilities. If things got out of hand, he knew, the entire village would be a pile of kindling, and he would be too weary from the magical expenditure to move for days. If there were survivors, they would simply stab weapons into his body until he was dead. If there were none, he would be picked apart by carrion eaters and scavengers before he ever awoke. Saraces knew that his invulnerability was somehow dependent on the store of energy he felt always burning just under his skin. So escape became a distant thing. A goal for the future. But now the future was here. He was twenty years old, and the outside world was as alien to him now as the family he never knew. It was time to see, to be reborn.
It was time, in essence, to stop submitting.

********************

“These chains are chafing my wrists something awful,” he murmured to the guard in a low voice. The guard, a young recruit barely the age of the prisoner he guarded, looked concerned – hell, he even began to move towards him – before training got the better of conscience. He raised his hands and shrugged.
“Aye, well … I gather that they’re not supposed to be comfortable. You’ve worn them long enough now to know.”
“Oh, but I don’t need them removed,” Saraces told him sincerely. “I wouldn’t dream of asking that. I simply need the sleeves of my shirt pulled through them to soften the weight of the iron.”
“Well, do that yourself. I’ll not be fooled by you, kibruth!” The guard snarled, using the Mountain word that meant “prisoner” and also “excrement.”
Saraces took it in stride, and gestured at his position. His chains today had, in fact, been pulled rather tight. He was unable to reach his wrists together, and demonstrated this to the guard.
“I can’t do it myself. See? They won’t reach.”
The guard muttered under his breath, but Saraces could see his decision being made. The guard dropped his keys pointedly on the desk, removed his sword and boot dagger, and moved towards the prisoner.
“There. I’ve got nothing useful for you to try. So don’t be thinking of it!” He reached Saraces and began tugging the sleeves of his frayed linen shirt through the iron cuffs he wore. As he moved to the second wrist, he stopped and looked at Saraces as if compelled. The prisoner’s eyes had gone completely white. He leaned in closer. Saraces made a face that seemed remorseful and whispered something.
“Wha –“ was all the guard ever got to say before he felt a hot explosion in the back of his head and the ground, fast turning black, rushed up to meet him. The keys that had levitated from the desk and exploded through the guards skull floated to the iron cuffs that Saraces had worn for fifteen years and clicked them open. He rubbed his wrists, raw but unharmed, and moved toward freedom.
As he reached the door, he turned back to the guard.
“Terribly sorry.”

4 years later . . . .

The apprentice flinched in fear at the master’s approach.
“How many times do I have to tell you, fool?  You need to harness it. The energy is inside your body, and you can be easily consumed if you do not learn to harness it!” He cuffed the cowering young man. “Are you looking to die?”
“No, sir!” Saraces cried out. “I’m looking to live quite a long time, in fact.”
The master appeared amused. “Why this obsession with eternal life, Saraces? No one has ever created a spell or a potion to allow that. Even potions of youth have limited effects. Time is stronger than all of your magic.
“But what if I managed it?”
“You can’t.”
“But what if –“
“You can’t.”
“But, Master, I –“
“YOU CAN’T!” He exploded, cuffing his young apprentice repeatedly. “It is an uncrossable threshold. Like reviving the dead. It simply can’t be done. The energy required is too great, and any who attempt it are consumed by the power they are trying to tap.”
“But I thought the dead could be revived? Wizards have caused whole graveyards to erupt into life.”
“That’s different.” The Master replied. “What you are so foolishly describing is called reanimation. It’s a necromancer’s trick that imbues a corpse or skeleton with a rudimentary form of life. No intelligence, only driving hunger and a perfect capacity for following orders. It’s filthy magic, and against natural laws. But it is still not reviving the dead. To take a man – or a woman – and bring her back from that dark sleep . . . it simply can’t be done.”
A knock at the door caused the startled pair, Wizard and Apprentice, to jump. The Master’s daughter flounced in, giving her crotchety father a cursory kiss on the cheek and turning her smoldering gaze on the apprentice.
“Will you walk with me, Sarry?”
“Melinda, I’ve repeatedly asked you to spare me that impossible nickname.”
“But will you?”
Saraces glanced at the master for confirmation.
“Of course, I will, Melinda.”

Twelve years later . . .

“I love you.”
“And I you, Sarry.” A weak giggle.
“Don’t leave.”
“What other choice have I, beloved? We can’t live forever. We can’t raise the dead. We must take what Time is willing to give us.”
“No. I will find a way to do both. I do not accept this.”
Melinda looked gravely at her husband.
“I’m disappointed, Sarry. After all the years with my father, all the years with me, you still haven’t learned that life is not yours to control. You cannot become the Gods, love. You must learn this.”
“I must learn NOTHING! I have discovered things … things that make me believe it is possible. No. I accept nothing.” He paused. “If . . . If I do find the way . . . you will come back to me?”
“My spirit will always be waiting. I will rejoin you, in this world or the next.”
Her spirit flew, released of all trappings mortal. Saraces wept like a broken child.

Three Hundred and Ninety years later . . .

The ancient, balding crone walked with a young man’s step around the circle, checking for imperfections. The wizardly King knew the price of failure.
The chant completed. A hulking figure took shape in the middle of his circle.
“Demon Lord!”
The thing turned, leaking acidic drool from it’s canine fangs. Saraces was fearless.
“They tell me you know all, Demon Lord.”
“I know all, and more,” it growled gutturally. “Ask what you may, foolish Wizard, and let me begone.”
Saraces paused, his rheumy eyes narrowed. A sticklike wrist wrapped about his staff – one he had carved over a century previous – and his cruel, desperate face twisted. He asked the question he had been unable to answer on his own.
“How does one reverse a curse of eternal life?”
The demon laughed. “Human, why would you want to?”
“Look at me!” the Wizard King cried. He grabbed a scroll and uttered the demon’s true name, wracking it with discordant magics that twisted at the threads that brought it into his world. It caused the demon unbearable pain.
“Arggh! I will answer.”
Saraces stopped murmuring, and looked up, hope in his eyes.
“You have found eternal life, Wizard?”
“I have lived for centuries.”
“And you tire of this life?”
“I am old. I am alone. There is nothing left in this world for me.”
“And you cannot be killed.”
“Apparently not by conventional means. Out of sheer annoyance, I’ve been forced to kill several parties of adventurers who sought my life as a means to find glory.”
The demon began laughing, a hideous sound that was more like coughing.
“What is so funny?” The Wizard demanded.
The demon stopped laughing and fixed his red eyes on Saraces.
“I would get a hobby, Wizard. One that is very time consuming.”
“What do you mean? Answer at once.”
The demon paused, but hurried to answer as the Wizard raised his scroll again.
“It cannot be undone! You are eternal. You will always be.”
Saraces nodded grimly. “I feared as much. Then tell me, all-knowing: how does one create a youth that is not impermanent?”
“Aye, for what good is eternal life without eternal youth, right?” The demon chuckled.
“Right. Have you an answer.”
The demon laughed, fading into mist as he returned to his own plane of existence.
“Wizard… I have no idea.”