The Light Fantastic

seven-league boots stirred restlessly in a cage. A whole library of grimoires, not of course as powerful as the Octavo but still heavy with spells, creaked and rattled their chains as they sensed the wizard’s covetous glance on them. The naked power of it all stirred him as nothing else could, but he deplored the scruffiness and Galder’s sense of theater.
    For example, he happened to know that the green liquid bubbling mysteriously through a maze of contorted pipework on one of the benches was just green dye with soap in it, because he’d bribed one of the servants.
    One day, he thought, it’s all going to go. Starting with that bloody alligator. His knuckles whitened…
    “Well, now,” said Galder cheerfully, hanging up his apron and sitting back in his chair with the lion paw arms and duck legs, “You sent me this memmy-thing.”
    Trymon shrugged. “Memo. I merely pointed out, lord, that the other Orders have all sent agents to Skund Forest to recapture the spell, while you do nothing,” he said. “No doubt you will reveal your reasons in good time.”
    “Your faith shames me,” said Galder.
    “The wizard who captures the spell will bring great honor on himself and his order,” said Trymon. “The others have used boots and all manner of elsewhere spells. What do you propose using, master?”
    “Did I detect a hint of sarcasm there?”
    “Absolutely not, master.”
    “Not even a smidgeon?”
    “Not even the merest smidgeon, master.”
    “Good. Because I don’t propose to go.” Galder reached down and picked up an ancient book. He mumbled a command and it creaked open; a bookmark suspiciously like a tongue flicked back into the binding.
    He fumbled down beside his cushion and produced a little leather bag of tobacco and a pipe the size of an incinerator. With all the skill of a terminal nicotine addict he rubbed a nut of tobacco between his hands and tamped it into the bowl. He snapped his fingers and fire flared. He sucked deep, sighed with satisfaction…
    …looked up.
    “Still here, Trymon?”
    “You summoned me, master,” said Trymon levelly. At least, that’s what his voice said. Deep in his gray eyes was the faintest glitter that said he had a list of every slight, every patronizing twinkle, every gentle reproof, every knowing glance, and for every single one Galder’s living brain was going to spend a year in acid.
    “Oh, yes, so I did. Humor the deficiencies of an old man,” said Galder pleasantly. He held up the book he had been reading.
    “I don’t hold with all this running about,” he said. “It’s all very dramatic, mucking about with magic carpets and the like, but it isn’t true magic to my mind. Take seven-league boots, now. If men were meant to walk twenty-one miles at a step I am sure God would have given us longer legs…Where was I?”
    “I am not sure,” said Trymon coldly.
    “Ah, yes. Strange that we could find nothing about the Pyramid of Tsort in the Library, you would have thought there’d be something, wouldn’t you?”
    “The librarian will be disciplined, of course.”
    Galder looked sideways at him. “Nothing drastic,” he said. “Withold his bananas, perhaps.”
    They looked at each other for a moment.
    Galder broke off first—looking hard at Trymon always bothered him. It had the same disconcerting effect as gazing into a mirror and seeing no one there.
    “Anyway,” he said, “strangely enough, I found assistance elsewhere. In my own modest bookshelves, in fact. The journal of Skrelt Changebasket, the founder of our order. You, my keen young man who would rush off so soon, do you know what happens when a wizard dies?”
    “Any spells he has memorized say themselves,” said Trymon. “It is one of the first things we learn.”
    “In fact it is not true of the original Eight Great Spells. By dint of close study Skrelt learned that a Great Spell will simply take refuge in the nearest mind open and ready to receive it. Just push the big mirror over here, will you?”
    Galder got to his feet and shuffled across to the forge, which was now cold. The strand of magic still writhed, though, at once present and not present, like a slit cut into another universe full of hot blue light. He picked it up easily, took a longbow from a rack, said a word of power, and watched with satisfaction as the magic grasped the ends of the bow and then tightened until the wood creaked. Then he selected an arrow.
    Trymon had tugged a heavy, full-length mirror