The map was made of parchment that looked as though it might have been freshly made, as it shone a clear white by the light of the oil lamps dangling above. In strokes that had the flair of a calligrapher, thin lines of black ink had been painted onto the paper. The lines formed a map, with landmarks of geography both drawn and labelled by name. A dotted line made with a thicker brush traced a path from a location marked as “Leree,” which was on the right side of the map, and formed a meandering path from right to left, where it entered what appeared to be a range of mountains, given how they were drawn. A giant “X” marked the place in the mountains where the dotted line ended, but the X did not have any name written next to it to indicate what was there. I know Leree, but I’m not from around here and I have no idea about any of these other places, or even if this map is accurate, Sylis thought. The way those high peaks and cliffs are drawn on those mountaintops is kind of scary, though.

  “I know geography well,” Glorissa said. “I’ve studied it at the Star Knights Academy. This is a map of Leree and the surrounding countryside on the east side of the map, and of the Dark Mountains on the west side of the map. The dotted line on this map traces a path from Leree, through the woods and up the hills, and then into the Dark Mountains. I’m convinced I’m right because the map does say ‘The Dark Mountains,’ you can see it right there,” and she placed her finger upon the map. “The Dark Mountains are about a week’s ride from Leree, and I’ll bet even one of those platinum coins will pay for enough horses and provisions for all of us to ride there.”

  Glorissa paused and began to twirl her hair between her fingers, twiddling a dark-brown strand so rapidly it was a blur. “The journey itself should be fairly easy,” Glorissa said. “That area does not have a reputation for danger. But I’m concerned.” Why does she suddenly look afraid? Sylis thought.

  “By what, girl?” Rose said. “What’s the problem?”

  “The dotted line leads to an X drawn on the map, deep within the mountain range known as the Dark Mountains,” Glorissa said. “The Dark Mountains are part of the broader mountain range called the Western Mountains, which runs north to south along the entire western side of the realm. Other areas of the Western Mountains, such as the Dwarf Mountains and the Goblin Mountains, are inhabited, but the Dark Mountains are deserted. No one has lived in that area for hundreds of years. But once upon a time, someone did live there. Four hundred years ago, an evil wizard named the Dark Wizard called the Dark Mountains home. The Dark Wizard was one of the most powerful wizards in the history of the realm and one of the most evil wizards who ever lived. He ruled the Dark Mountains as his kingdom for many years. But he was not content with his kingdom: he desired to rule over the entire realm. The Dark Wizard raised an army of undead zombies and goblin soldiers, augmented by dwarven and human mercenaries. He controlled a cult of Black wizard necromancers who became the generals of his army. He sent forth his army and tried to conquer the Imperium. A heroic effort led by an alliance between the Star Knights and the Serve-Swords defeated him. Many Star Knights died that day; their bodies are entombed with honor in the Tomb of Heroes in the Star Knights Estate. The legend says that the Dark Wizard died in the final battle of that war, although his body was never recovered.”

  “Omit the history lesson,” Nathan said. “I, too, studied history in school. I do come from a noble family, and I received only the best education. What of it?”

  Do they all know history lessons like this? Kylus thought. Am I the only one here who never went to school?

  “Actually, I am not terribly familiar with the details of the history of you humans,” Yarid said. “I appreciated the information, Glorissa.”

  “I believe, if I’m right, that the X on this map is on the exact location of the Dark Wizard’s castle,” Glorissa said.

  She paused. No one said anything.

  “And?” Kylus asked.

  “And what?” Glorissa asked.

  “So this strange Black wizard wants to meet us at some old castle,” Kylus said. “What difference does it make? What is the problem with that?”

  “Only that it is the site of some of the most evil and horrific battles, massacres, and evil magic rituals ever performed in the history of the realm,” Glorissa said.

  “Is the castle haunted?” Kylus asked.

  “It might be,” Glorissa said. “No one knows for sure; in fact, I don’t recall any stories of anyone going back to that castle after the final battle between the Dark Wizard and the Imperium. I for one am not eager to just happily dance into the jaws of one of the most dreadful castles in all of history.”

  Typical of someone of White, Rose thought. Always obsessed with the battle of good versus evil, never with a wit of practical sense in their brains. “I agree with Kylus,” Rose said. “The Dark Wizard is dead. I don’t think that this fact does make any difference. And don’t read too much into it. I’m sure he, whomever he is, just needs a quiet, secluded place, with walls and a gate, where we can speak in private. An old, abandoned castle sounds like the perfect place for our meeting to happen.”

  Things like this never happened in Tamm, Sylis thought. “If we’re going to go, I’ll need to go back to the inn where I’m staying and get my things,” Sylis said. I can’t wait to tell my mom that I might have gotten a job!

  Rose smiled. “I’m sure we all do,” she said. “Why don’t we separate, collect our affairs, and then meet back up tomorrow, at the city gate of Leree. Let’s plan to meet at high noon, when the sun is highest in the sky. I will take the responsibility to cash in one of these platinum coins for gold coins and then buy the horses and supplies we’ll need to ride into the Dark Mountains. Leree has a gnome banking outpost; I can’t wait to see the look of shock on the gnomes’ faces when I hand them a platinum coin. So, to repeat: At noon tomorrow, we meet at the outer gate, and we’ll depart as a group.”

  “That’s great!” Kylus said, a wide beaming smile on his face. “I’m looking forward to this!” He seems nice and friendly and very enthusiastic, Sylis thought. Kylus might make this journey bearable for me. I hope he turns out to be the type of person that he seems to be at outward appearance.

  “We all are looking forward to it,” Rose said. “Treasure is waiting for us at the end of this little adventure.” She licked her lips as she said it, although no one else saw this beneath her mask.

  Sylis followed the others as they exited the back room of the Grateful Drunkard, made their way out to the bar, and split up. Sylis walked quickly to the front door of the bar and pushed it open, stepping into the late-night darkness, the green of nearby trees visible from the light coming from the Grateful Drunkard’s windows and from that of other nearby buildings. Sylis marched resolutely along the streets, keeping his wizard robes tight against his body to fight the slight chill in the air, the sandy dirt of the roads crunching beneath his blue boots. As he rounded a corner, he nearly stumbled over someone who had been sitting on the ground at the corner.

  “Excuse me,” Sylis said. He could now see the inn where his things, and his mother, were waiting… but he took one quick glance at the person he had tripped over.

  The person was a Green wizard. Her green wizard’s robes were tattered and dirty; the robes were nothing more than a patchwork of green material of different shades that had been stitched together here and there to repair a garment that looked long past the days when it should properly be worn. Her simple green mask hid her face, but strands of loose, gray, dirty hair poked out from between her mask and the green hood of her robes. The mask fit her face too tightly, as though she had bought a mask one size too small by mistake but could not afford to buy a replacement. She was sitting on a green blanket on the ground; the blanket was as threadbare and dirty as her clothes.

  To her side, on the blanket, lay a small diary with a green leather cover. Sylis sensed magic contained within the journal; his magical perception saw it as some sort of Green magic, which was well in line with what he would expect of a wizard dressed in green. He figured that it was her book of magic spells. Greens often used spell books, although other colors did not, probably because Green magic involved rituals and procedures far more complicated than that of any other color. A clay jar was also on the ground beside her, next to the green-bound book. Above the jar was a haphazardly-made wooden sign which read: I Will Hold a Séance with Your Fortunes Foretold, A Prophesy of Your Life and of What is To Come, Secret Mysteries Revealed by Me, the Most Talented Green Wizard to Ever Live. Price: One Copper Coin. Good Results Guaranteed or Your Money Back!

  Sylis grinned. He now felt rich, even though he had not taken the job let alone received his payday of platinum coins. But surely, he could afford a copper coin to spare. Fortune-telling was precisely the type of magic that Green excelled at. Greens loved rituals, rites, complex arcane conjuring, and spells which could do big things and cost a lot of energy, which the Green wizards would drain from earth, air, fire, and water. Green magic did things like creating a curse to give bad luck to someone you hated, or casting an enchantment to make the fields fertile for a farmer, or making a charm to give good luck to an army as they marched into combat, or adding magical powers into an item or a weapon or a piece of armor or a crystal… or seeing the future.

  This Green wizard was probably not the most talented Green wizard to ever live, as her little wooden sign claimed, given that she had fallen into poverty in a remote rural backwoods town. But Sylis admired her audacity in making the claim. She’s barely more than a beggar so I would give her one copper coin regardless of any service she performs for me, Sylis thought. But it can’t hurt to get a prophesy out of it. Maybe she’ll tell me that in two months I’ll be rich enough to buy a palace and ten farms, too!

  Sylis reached into a pocket, pulled out his coin purse (his old one, not the new one which held ten platinum coins), and dropped a coin into the ceramic jar. It plunked in and rattled around, as if it had a lot of empty room in there in which to bounce. The woman noticed and looked up. Sylis could see her eyes almost seem to tear up behind her mask with gratitude as she looked at him.

  “Thank you, good sir,” she said. “The spell will only take a moment. Other Greens might need hours to cast it; I can do so in one minute.”

  The Green wizard reached into her robes and pulled out a small brightly glowing green crystal, which she placed on the blanket next to herself. She then opened her spell book, turned to a particular page, and began to read from it. Sylis did not know what language she was speaking, and he could not read the runes written on the page, although he could see them from where he was standing. Arcane magic words were the domain of Green magic; Blue magic did not use them.

  Suddenly the woman threw her head back and screamed at the top of her lungs, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Sylis looked around frantically to see if he could get someone to help, but no one was around. But then, the Green wizard floated up off the ground, her entire body glowing with green light, and Sylis realized that this was the spell. More impressive than I expected.

  The woman turned and looked at him with eyes that were just white, with no iris or pupil. She opened her mouth, and a strange magical voice, unlike her voice as she had sounded before, said these words:

  “There are those who hold secrets

  Who will one day save your life,

  And there are those who hold secrets

  Who will deliver mortal strife.

  Challenges and trials await you,

  That will test you to the bone,

  You will learn of ancient horrors

  You will wish you’d never known.

  As you walk down this path,

  Trust the friends at your side:

  Some friends are prone to darkness,

  But see past to the light that they hide.

  To save the realm from an ancient evil

  A dangerous puzzle you will have to solve:

  Those who are good will send you on a quest to do great evil,

  While the ultimate evil wears a mask that is good.

  If you want to kill the dragon,

  You can only do so together as one,

  For on the day of final reckoning

  God’s stone will be shattered or won.”

  The woman ceased levitating and fell back down to the ground. The magical green light disappeared from her.

  “Thank you,” Sylis said, except that as he looked at her, he saw that she had fallen over with her eyes closed, and she appeared to be asleep, with her body slumped over as if she had just done something that had required a lot of energy. Merely random meaningless words that any fortune teller could have said to anyone, Sylis thought. ‘Trust your friends.’ ‘The future holds challenges.’ It applies equally well to anyone. I’ll bet she has that same whole speech prepared for every person who pays her. Sylis smiled that naughty mischievous grin he got when he made a joke to himself to make fun of a different color of magic. I’ll bet that’s what they teach Green wizards about how to make a profit from telling fortunes. Just find the right words that work for everyone, then say the same thing every time. His grin vanished. But I wonder what that part about a dragon was? Must be some sort of metaphor I’m not familiar with.

  Sylis kept walking and made it back to the inn. He thought nothing of the woman’s words: he did not understand them and assigned no importance to them. Just as he reached the door to the inn, he remembered something. Good results or your money back, her sign said, he thought. Well, I guess just watching her float up into the air and glow with green light was interesting. I think I’ll not ask for my money back. Sylis walked into the lobby of the inn and jogged up the stairs to the second floor, where his room was waiting for him.

  “Can I ask you something, Sylis?” Kylus said.

  The two of them were seated near the campfire; the dead corpses of some meat-rats were slowly roasting over the fire on wooden spits, and the smell wafted over to Sylis, making his mouth water. I’m glad these weird little animals are native to this region, he thought, and I’m glad that Kylus taught Yarid and Glorissa how to hunt them with him. They taste really good!

  Sylis and the others had been riding for four days, and the low green woods had given way to rolling green foothills that curved up and down in the distance almost like the waves of some strange green ocean that had become frozen in time. Behind the green hills, a range of dark, jagged peaks climbed into the sky: they were the Dark Mountains. And, beyond the Dark Mountains, the sun was setting, its orange-yellow disk only barely visible above the peaks, and its warm white-yellow sunlight giving way to a star-filled blue-black darkness punctuated by the rays of purple, pink and orange that radiated out from the sunset. Sylis had already eaten and had moved a bit away from the fire to be alone with his thoughts, when Kylus found him. Rose, Nathan, Yarid and Glorissa were seated much closer to the campfire, still eating their dinners.

  “Sure, Kylus. Ask me anything,” Sylis said.

  “Um, I’m not sure how to ask this, but…” Kylus began. Then he paused. Sylis said nothing, waiting for Kylus to build up the courage to speak. Eventually Kylus continued: “I never went to school. It seems like you all know so much about the world and magic and history and things like that, and… I don’t know any of that stuff. No one ever taught me anything. I grew up cutting down trees in Leree, enlisted in the Servants of the Sword at eighteen, got kicked out four years later, and that’s all I’ve ever known.”

  Sylis laughed. “You think I’m educated? I’m a farmer who was born and raised on a farm in a small town one hundred miles south of here. I never went to school!”

  Kylus stared at Sylis. “Then how come you know so much? How come you can do magic?”

  Sylis blinked, and then looked again at Kylus. Is that really the impression I give? “Those are two different questions. I’ll answer the easy one first: why I know things. My mother home-schooled me, and she taught me most of what I know. She was a highly educated woman who knew a lot… and it turned out that she knew even more than she told me when she taught me while I was growing up.” She knew a lot more, and still has not told me everything she knows.

  “And is that the reason why you’re a wizard? Because your mother taught you?”

  “Well, yes, sort of. I mean, a person needs to have a certain innate and inherent magical potential, to be able to work magic. But that potential mostly only gets actualized if someone, a wizard who knows how to teach, teaches the student how to use magic. And, on top of that, the teacher’s color needs to match the student’s color, or else there really isn’t any point. So, yes, I guess the two questions do have the same answer: I’m educated, and I’m a wizard, because my mom taught me a lot of stuff when she homeschooled me on the farm where I grew up.”

  “My parents never taught me anything,” Kylus said. “My parents never went to school. Nor my grandparents, nor great-grandparents. I come from a family that chopped trees and sold lumber. That’s all we ever did.”

  “I mean, lumber is really important. On a farm, I used it to build fences, shacks, repairs, for our house… that’s an important job, Kylus!”

  “Are you serious?” Kylus said. “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

  “I’m totally serious!” Sylis said, laughing.

  Kylus also giggled. “Well, you shouldn’t be. Anyway, can you teach me all the stuff you know? Like, can you teach me about magic?”

  “I mean, I can try. You know nothing about magic?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “But you at least know about the six colors.”

  “Yes. Do the colors have anything to do with magic?” Kylus asked.

  Wow, he really does not know anything, Sylis thought to himself. I’ll have to be patient with him. “Um, yes, they do,” Sylis said. “Each of the six colors has a corresponding school of magic.”

  “Oh. Can you tell me about them?”

  Sylis smiled. “Sure! My mother taught me all about them, and I would be happy to give you a summary. White is divinity magic. A White magic spell is a prayer to God, which God either answers or does not answer. God is completely unpredictable, and no one knows how God will answer a spell, or whether God will answer at all. But God is all-knowing and all-powerful, so, if God chooses to answer, anything can happen, because God can do anything. Whites tend to lump the results of their prayers into two categories: small miracles, which are for minor things like getting over a sore throat or finding a lost goat, and grand miracles, which are great big things like recovering from a life-threatening illness or regrowing a severed limb. Grand miracles can change the world in ways that would be simply impossible for any human to ever achieve.”

  “I thought only priests heard prayers and asked God for help on our behalf,” Kylus said. “Leree has a small temple with one priest of White where I used to go a lot when I was young. I asked the priest to pray for me during services; God never answered my prayers, although I know the priest tried his best for me. I have not been to a temple or church in years. But I remember that priest well: His Honor Harold Kellion of White. Is a priest the same thing a White wizard?”

  “No, not exactly,” Sylis replied. “A priest says simple prayers, whereas a wizard of White casts White magic spells. A simple prayer is just opening your mouth and asking God for help spontaneously and using whatever words you can think of and using any idea you have for how to beg God for help. A White magic spell is a specific formula or method or ritual for how to make a prayer, that asks God for one specific thing, which is the only thing it has ever asked God to grant, and which has a high success rate of getting God to give people that specific thing when they asked for it using that specific magic spell in the past. God can still grant or reject any White magic spell regardless of its past performance, even if the spell was cast perfectly, because God can do anything God wants. But the wizards of White say that their magic has a high success rate in winning the favor of God. White magic is more formalized and defined than simple prayer.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Also, a priest’s job is different than the job of a wizard of White. Wizards of White are expected to perform certain formal roles, like helping a king or a noble. Wizards are expected to work many small miracles and to attempt grand miracles, although God rarely grants a grand miracle to anyone, even a wizard. A priest’s job is simpler and humbler: to tend to their congregation, which is often based around their temple in their town or village, and to ask God for small miracles on behalf of the members of their congregation. I think Glorissa is a priest-knight, someone who was trained to be both a priest and a knight, if I understand her correctly. She isn’t a wizard.”

  “I know that she isn’t a wizard. She doesn’t wear a mask,” Kylus said.

  Sylis looked off into the distance and then looked back at Kylus. “But, really, maybe the difference between wizards of White and priests of White is just an ego thing for the wizards to make themselves feel special and superior compared to the priests. I mean, their wizards don’t control God any more than their priests do, so I don’t know why a wizard of White would be better than a priest. I don’t know. I’m not of White. Each school has its own unique customs and beliefs that only they know. The only things I know about White are what those wizards who are of White tell us Blue wizards.”

  “So you’re a Blue wizard,” Kylus said. “What can you do?”

  “I’m a time wizard. White magic has almost no rules in regard to how it works or what it does, whereas Blue magic is governed by a strict formal set of rules, and we’re all about our rules. The key rule of Blue magic is that for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. So, for me to give time to someone and make someone get younger, I have to take time from someone else and make someone else grow older. To send someone back in time, I must send someone else into the future by an equal amount. If I freeze time or stop time in one area, I have to make the time around that space go faster in relation to it by an equal ratio. It’s all about balance, and we Blue wizards really have it down to a science. Like, when I cast a spell, I can predict the result with a high degree of accuracy.”

  “That must be useful,” Kylus said.

  “Well, it’s not the most useful magic for a simple farm wizard like me,” Sylis said. “Green is more typical for a farmer. The most useful spell is that if something breaks, I can rewind time back to before it broke apart. That’s useful for fixing things. But casting a Blue spell is both physically and mentally draining, so even when something breaks, it’s usually easier to just repair something by hand.”

  “Can you rewind time for someone who died? And bring them back from the dead?”

  “No. I can rewind time on a body to repair it, but after the soul leaves, it’s gone. Only White magic and Black magic can bring the dead back to life. God very rarely brings someone back from the dead, so mostly it’s only the magic of Black that can do that.”

  “But you could make yourself live forever, I’ll bet,” Kylus said. “Just keep taking time from others and giving it to yourself.”

  “Um, that would be sick, twisted, and evil, so I would never do it,” Sylis said. “Some Blue wizards do, and that is why some Blue wizards do in fact live for thousands of years. There is an entire order of evil Blue wizards devoted to stealing immortality, called the Order of Winter. But I will not. Even if I did, all it would take would be an axe to the head or an arrow to the heart, and my best-laid plans for immortality would come crashing down.”

  “Could you freeze me in time if you wanted to?” Kylus said. “So I was stuck forever?”

  Sylis paused and thought about it. “Yes, I guess so. I’ve never done that to someone before.”

  “That’s kind of scary, then. I’ll bet Blue magic is more powerful than you take credit for. In a way, Sylis, you’re too powerful!”

  Sylis smirked. “I wish I was! I can cause the segment of time you are in to move much more slowly in relation to the segments of time moving around you, in which case, for all intents and purposes, you would be frozen in time. But that would mean that, while the world around you aged, you would remain as young as you are, until the spell ended. So you would not live, but you also could not die, at least not from old age. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction.”

  Kylus’s eyes were wide with a look that said he was deep in thought. “And would you need, like, magic words or spell books or rituals? Or do you just wink at me and wiggle your fingers, and I’m spellbound in time forever?”

  “No, I just cast the spell in my head, and it happens. Sometimes I point or wave my arms when I use magic, but that’s just to help me concentrate, it’s not necessary to the magic. Green magic is the magic based on rites and rituals and magic words and enchantments and all that stuff. To be honest, I don’t know how Green magic works, I only know that they read words off a spell book or a scroll, and there’s a lot of ritual and pageantry involved, and they even have spell ingredients like a powdered cobweb or faerie dust or the toe of a newt or the hair from a rabbit’s foot, you know, whacky things like that. They also use crystals that glow with magical energy. Then they cast their spell, usually an enchantment, which lasts for a long time or forever. My mother heard a rumor that the way it works is they have magic rituals that drain energy out of wind, water, earth, and fire, and they store it inside of magic crystals, and then they take the energy out of the crystals and focus it into their goals by means of the rituals and arcane words. But that’s just a rumor that my mother told me that some Blue wizard friend of hers had heard from some Green wizard, I have no idea if it’s true.”

  “Um, should I know this? Because I’m Green?” Kylus asked.

  No, you should know it because someone should have given you an education, Sylis thought. “No, not at all. Only wizards know magic stuff. It’s very nice of you to ask me and be curious. You have no need to know.”

  “So, like, if I wanted to become a wizard, I would have to be a Green wizard?” Kylus asked. “Like, how does a wizard get their color?”

  “Well, that’s two different questions. Do you want to become a wizard?"

  Kylus scratched his head. “Um, no? I guess not. I’m a good soldier. I’ve spent a lot of time training in sword combat. When I enlisted, I had lots of hopes and dreams about being in the military. I guess my dreams are still alive, even now after the Soldier Training Program dishonorably discharged me.”

  I wonder why they kicked him out. I’m not rude enough to ask. “A wizard gets their color the same way as anyone else. When you’re a little kid, your parents ask you some questions, and then they pick which color they think suits you, based on the five virtues: Blue for intelligence, White for good, Red for fun, Green for life, and Black for power. As a teenager everyone goes through a phase for a few years where they think about it and question which color they should choose for the rest of their lives, and they make their final choice of whether to stay the color they were as a little kid or go to a new color as an adult, but after that, that’s your color. I’ve heard legends that sometimes an adult will have some sort of traumatic life event that makes them hate their color and then they switch to a new color, but it’s very rare. Most people stick with their color for life.” I wonder why Mom switched from Black to Blue, Sylis thought. It never occurred to me that something must have happened to her. She won’t be able to tell me if I ask her.

  “Yeah, that’s how I got Green,” Kylus said. “It’s hard to believe that something as important as what magic you have is based on something that silly.”

  “Well, it’s not that silly. Each color represents a certain mindset and way of thinking which is crucial and critical to its school of magic. That is why a wizard, and any person, can only have one color: it’s assumed that the virtue and mindset of your color becomes the central focus of how you live your life, so there isn’t room in someone’s life for two.”

  “Then how does a person become a wizard? You told me how they get their color of magic, but not how they get their magic.”

  Does he want to be a wizard? “When you’re young, if a wizard detects natural magical talent in you, then they will teach you how to do magic,” Sylis explained. “And your color defines which type of magic and which sets of spells they will teach you. Usually, only wizards of your color will take you as a student, but that’s same as most other walks of life: most military and religious orders are based around one color, most social clubs have one color, entire towns and cities are based around devotion to a color. If you have the talent and you get taught, you become a wizard. If you don’t, you don’t. To be honest, that’s the only difference between us and all of you.”

  “What about Black, Red and Yellow magic?” Kylus asked.

  “I can tell you what I know about those three colors quickly because I know so little,” Sylis said. “Black magic is mostly necromancy, which means bringing the dead back to life as undead. They also have a lot of attack spells, so they can blow stuff up and make things catch fire, although Red magic can do that too. The magic of Black is so secretive that only wizards of Black know how it works. My friend Jeff used to tell ghost stories about necromancers that went into graveyards at night and performed rituals that involved candles and blood to raise zombies out of the graves. He might have heard that from somewhere, but it might also have been Jeff being Jeff: he was a Red. The wizards who practice Black magic pride themselves on their secrecy. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more. You would have to ask Nathan, although I doubt he would tell you.”

  “I won’t ask Nathan,” Kylus said. “He hasn’t said two friendly words to me this whole trip, other than telling me that he thinks I would make a good zombie for him.”

  “I’m also leaving Nathan alone,” Sylis said. “I tried to be friendly to him yesterday, and he just stared at me like I was something he had dug up out of the dirt. Rose seems a bit more approachable, so you can ask her about Red magic. Red wizards have something called chaos magic, also named rogue magic, which is all based on luck and chance and chaos. They have decks of magic cards where each card contains a magic spell, and they shuffle their deck, draw a card at random, and play their card, and somehow, they make it work. I think they also can choose specific cards to play when they have a specific spell in mind that they want to cast, but the Red rogue way of life says the real fun is to draw cards at random and see what luck has in store for you. Don’t ask me how they make the cards; I don’t know.

  “They also roll magic dice and if the right numbers come up, the Red magic causes things to happen for them. That’s the main way Red wizards handle a fight: they roll dice, and then the dice deals damage to their opponent equal to how good of a roll it was above the baseline average. But if the dice roll comes up below the average, then the spell attacks them instead of their opponent, for an amount of damage based on how unlucky the numbers are. As weird as this is, my understanding is that the numbers that come up are the number of times the spell punches the person in the head, so, like, if the Red wizard rolls a 15 on a 20-sided dice, their spell punches their enemy in the head five time, because 15 is five above the baseline average of a d20, which is ten.”

  “I thought Red magic was all about making high potion and crazy potion and sleep potion and visions potion,” Kylus said. “I don’t do drugs, but my father and my uncle did. A local Red would sell them to them. She would bring them to our house at night in her little magic cauldron and pour them into jugs that uncle kept in the kitchen. She tried to sell love potion to uncle once, although he just laughed and said he could do fine with the ladies without it.”

  “I mean, yes, potions are the one other thing that Red magic does,” Sylis said. “It fits into their whole ‘fun’ mantra, although I don’t find drugs to be fun. I’ve never tried them. They seem creepy.”

  Kylus gave Sylis a sideways look. “Well, I have tried them, and they are weird,” Kylus said. “Some people really enjoy them, or at least they seem like they enjoy them. I do not. I hope you don’t judge me that I’ve tried some.”

  “No, I don’t judge you!” Sylis said, holding up his hands, palms open and empty. “I hold nothing against you!”

  “What about Yellow magic?” Kylus asked.

  “Yellow magic is different from all other colors. The other colors are the magic of humans. Yellow describes the inherent native magical abilities of the elves, pixie-faeries, and other types of fae. They have a dozen different magical abilities that are unique to them. Elves can teleport short distances, they can turn invisible, they can use telepathy, they can give themselves super-strength for a short time, they can do all sorts of stuff. I think some of them can fly, but I think it’s only the ones who have wings that are able to fly. They’re all born being able to use all their magic, and I have no idea how it works. I would tell you to ask Yarid except he probably won’t be able to explain it. I think it just comes naturally to elves.”

  “What is telepathy?” Kylus asked.

  “Speaking directly into someone’s mind,” Sylis said. “Yellow magic does have its price, though. The fae Yellow magic causes them to be honor-bound, which means that if they enter into a fae pact or fae covenant, they must honor it. Being honor-bound also prevents them from being able to lie. But the faerie tales are full of stories about how the fae are masters at finding ways to tell half-truths and incomplete truths to fool people, and they are also good at manipulating fae pacts so that the results don’t turn out as the humans intended. So don’t rely on a fae being honor-bound too much. You’ll regret doing so.”

  “Have you told me everything?” Kylus asked.

  “Do you want to know everything?” Sylis asked. “Everything is a lot.”

  “I want to know. Is that all there is?”

  “Well, yes, pretty much. One other type of spell exists, called a colorless cantrip. Every wizard of any color can cast them. But they don’t do much. There’s the spell for duplication, a few spells to make things appear and disappear, a spell that can transform one thing into another thing, and a spell to make enough light to see by if you’re in a dark place and don’t have a lamp nearby. The colorless cantrips are the type of spells you use for a magician’s show if you want to impress an audience with magic tricks. No self-respecting wizard with a reputation will ever do magic tricks or put on a magician’s show. Only poor wizard vagabonds do that, and they only do it to scrape together a few coins, usually after they’ve ruined their reputation as a real wizard and fallen into some sort of alcohol-or-drug addiction. To any serious wizard, the colorless cantrips are a joke, never to be taken seriously. And, yes, Kylus, that’s it. Now you know everything. Everything in the world!” Sylis laughed at how absurd that statement was.

  Kylus giggled. “Duplication sounds fun. Can you duplicate gold coins?”

  “No. Others thought of that before you did. The Royal Mint has a Green enchantment on all its coins to prevent duplication. It’s one of the most powerful and famous enchantments in the realm.”

  “I think you’re the nicest person in the world for telling me this stuff!” Kylus said. “No one else would—not unless I paid them a silver coin.”

  “My lessons are free of charge,” Sylis said.

  “Thanks!” Kylus said, and he leaned forward so that Sylis could clearly see the big grin showing his teeth. “You’re the best, Sylis! You’re awesome! I think you’re really special and good! No normal wizard would have taken the time to educate a poor ex-soldier like me! You’re the best wizard in the world!”

  Sylis blushed under his mask, although Kylus could not see it.

  “Um, thanks,” Sylis said. “I’m glad you liked it.”

  Kylus said good night and left for the small tent the group had set up for shelter at night. Sylis continued to sit there, outside, alone. All the others at the campfire had finished their dinner by now and gone into the tent to sleep, so he felt like he had the entire wide-open wilderness all to himself, to give him space and peace. The sun had completely set, and the stars were visible high in the sky. Sylis leaned back and stared up into the night. He often enjoyed stargazing and letting his mind wander… and he was thinking about Kylus. Kylus does seem like a really nice person! I think it may end up falling on me to give him the education that no one wanted to give him, although someone else should have. Sylis got up, stretched, and poked his head inside the tent. Kylus was already asleep, as were all the others.

  Sylis got into his travel-blanket sleeping bag and wrapped it around himself.

  Suddenly he heard a noise.

  Oh my God, Sylis thought to himself. Of course Nathan snores. How am I going to get to sleep? He closed his eyes, and a look of intense concentration came over his face as he willed himself to go to sleep. Either Sylis willing himself to sleep worked or he was already incredibly sleepy from this short beginning to his journey because he fell deep into a peaceful slumber.

  The Dark Wizard’s castle cut a gigantic hole in the skyline of the Dark Mountains, its walls and towers forming an imposing, intimidating mass that sprawled around and seemed to take up the space that a mountain would have deserved, spreading out left and right with no regard or regret for the room it was appropriating for itself. It had a moat, but the drawbridge over the moat was lowered, and the moat was empty of water and looked like it had been emptied hundreds of years ago, judging by the fact that many animals seemed to have made their home in it. The castle was made of bricks of a dark gray-black stone, almost the precise color of an accumulation of dirt and dust in a house which has gone far too long without cleaning. The castle featured dozens and dozens of towers clustered behind a high outer wall and multiple ramparts with parapets. It contained a large blocky castle keep in its center which probably could have housed an army of thousands of goblins.

  Its towers rose majestically up into the sky, tapering into long, sharp, needle-like points at their tower-tops, and the parapets of the towers were adorned by gargoyle-like stone statues depicting various undead monsters, especially vampires and zombies. A stone skeleton head had been artistically impaled into the needle tip of each tower-top, similar to how some foes would impale the heads of their defeated enemies on spears. The towers cast long, finger-like shadows from the light of the sun low in the sky behind them; their shadows cut across the entirety of the castle, almost making it seem as though it were chopped up by the shadows like gaps in its gray-black stone.

  I should have a castle this scary-looking, Nathan thought. He smiled to himself beneath his mask. Maybe one day, after I do this job, get paid, and pay off my debts, I’ll buy one.

  The party had made it across the foothills and through the Dark Mountains in just over a week and were now looking at the Dark Wizard’s castle. When they entered the Dark Mountains, Nathan had been pleased to learn that the dotted line on the trail marked a well-worn path through the mountains, a road that was relatively easy and non-treacherous on horseback, despite the massive black mountains arcing high above on both sides of him. Nonetheless, Nathan breathed a sigh of relief when the group finally arrived at the Dark Wizard’s castle. A gentleman of a Noble House should never be forced to suffer the indignity of uncomfortable travel. Nathan’s lips curled up in a snarl, revealing his teeth. Except that you no longer are a member of a dignified Noble House. The fall of the House of Darkchurch saw to that.

  Nathan dismounted and stared at the castle while Yarid and Kylus did the work of driving a stake into the ground and tethering everyone’s horses. Even while still a good distance away, Nathan could see that the massive double doors of the gatehouse were wide open. The doors had been painted black, so Nathan could not tell what material they had been made from, nor did he really care. He did care about what might be inside them, but he saw only absolute darkness when he tried to peer at the entryway and spy into the insides of the castle.

  “I am an elf, and we are good at scouting,” Yarid said. “Give me one moment.” Yarid vanished before everyone’s eyes.

  “He must have used a Yellow teleportation ability,” Nathan observed. Nathan then heard the boy, Kylus, whisper to the other boy, Sylis, thinking that Nathan couldn’t hear them: “I don’t think anyone asked him how the elf disappeared.” Nathan said nothing.

  Soon Yarid blinked back into existence in front of them.

  “I saw, heard, and smelled no one,” Yarid said. “I went a little way into the castle. It’s deserted. The place is full of nothing but cobwebs and dust. The dust was so thick it could have accumulated for a hundred years or longer. And I saw no footsteps in the dust. No one has walked through that place in ages. If I were tracking an animal, I would say that it could not have gone that way, because I saw no trace of it.”

  “I want my money,” Rose said. “We’re going in. And we’re finding this person who hired us. If I have to tear the entire place apart and dig up its dungeon, too, I will find him.”

  Nathan allowed Rose to lead the party into the gates. The castle’s insides were lit only by the sunlight coming through its tall, narrow windows, which were spaced periodically in the stone walls. Somehow the light of the sun, which should have been bright and yellow, took on a gray, dim, dingy feeling inside this castle. The light revealed nothing other than empty hallways, stairs, and room after room of the same gray-black stone, devoid of life, full of dust.

  Nothing stirred within the castle as they ventured deeper inside, other than an occasional small spider or tiny centipede who was startled by their footsteps and then frantically crawled away. The castle’s walls, floors, and even the ceiling, were caked with the same thick gray dust, so thick it was inches high in some places, and in every corner of every room the dust had piled up into tall, yucky, gross, dirty dust-piles. And, in the thick dust that coated every floor and surface like a carpet, no footsteps were visible, no marks of fingertips could be seen from anyone having touched or moved anything. The dust was so complete that it coated every surface in the castle like a field of grass coated by snow after a heavy snowstorm that had gone on for days. Not even an animal’s tracks or markings marred the perfect surface of dust, other than one small set of tiny insect tracks in the dust that Nathan noticed in one room.

  “Is there anyone in this castle?” Rose asked. “I feel like there’s no one here. I’m going to be angry if this was some sort of game and no one is here. Blue, can you, I don’t know, look back in time and see if that person who hired us was in here before?”

  “Um, sorry, Blue magic doesn’t work like that,” Sylis said. “If you’d like, I can send you into the past so you can see, although you’ll be stuck in the past never to return. But I can’t see into the past. Green is really for divination and seeing things and that sort.”

  “That’s great,” Rose said sarcastically. “So all we need is some Green magic and we’ll be fine. Green, do you do magic?”

  “No,” Kylus replied. Kylus sullenly turned away from Rose, but she didn’t notice.

  “I have a spell that can detect the living—and the undead,” Nathan said. “I can cast it quickly. And my spell cannot fail to tell us whether anyone besides the six of us is waiting for us somewhere within this castle.” Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when he said this. Nathan reached a hand into his robes and felt for a small silver talisman amulet in the shape of a skull with ruby gems in its eye sockets that he wore on a necklace beneath his robes. He grasped it and at the same time muttered some magic words under his breath, in a whisper too faint for the others to hear. Suddenly, his eyes were illuminated by a magical second sight. He looked up, down, left and right. He saw the stained, dusty, dark walls, but he also saw whatever life, or lack thereof, lurked beyond those walls.

  “Someone is here,” Nathan said. “Someone is in this castle with us. My spell tells me that he is not alive, but, at the same time, my spell cannot say what type of undead he is. I should be able to read whether he is a zombie, skeleton, ghost, vampire, shade, lich, ghoul, or anything else, but all I am seeing is that someone is somehow there, yet he is not alive, at least he is not breathing and does not have warm blood flowing, as a living person does. I am always able to detect which type of undead I see by means of this spell. I do not understand why it isn’t working properly.”

  “Perhaps it is a type of undead you are not familiar with,” Sylis said.

  “I am familiar with every type of undead,” Nathan replied.

  “Well, this person, whatever he is, where is he?” Rose asked. “This must be the man who hired us. I can’t imagine who else it could be. We need to find him.”

  “With this spell, I gain a second sight: my normal eyes see the physical world, but I can see the world of spirit, and see souls and life energy, like swirling clouds of glowing white light that take the shape of the person whose body they animate. I can see through the walls and see him in the distance; his life energy glows although his light is not quite as bright and radiant as I would have expected of a powerful wizard. He is high above us, and some distance away. I assume he is waiting for us in the upper levels of one of the towers. My spell does not show me the layout of this castle between us and him; it only tells me in which direction we must go to reach him. I suppose that I must lead you all, and you must follow me, like a herd of helpless sheep whom I will lead through the mud with my mercy and generosity. I have no idea what we are walking into—but we will encounter no living or undead beings between now and when we reach this being that I can see somewhere in the castle above us.”

  “Lead us to him!” Rose said.

  “Yes, I already said I was going to!” Nathan said.

  “Thank you, Oh Great and Powerful Necromancer,” Rose said. “We are forever in your debt.”

  Nathan’s cheeks pinched up into a slight bemused smirk, but no one could see this behind his mask, especially not in the dim shadowy light. Nathan began to walk. The other five followed behind. Rose, Sylis and Kylus walked in docile silence. Nathan could hear Yarid and Glorissa, who brought up the rear of the party, having their own private conversation, but they were a bit too far away for him to hear what they were saying. He didn’t care what they were saying, anyway. He was focused on leading his group and hunting for a job.

  The door at the top of the tower that Nathan led them into was painted black, with a black-painted wooden carving of a skull on it, like the skulls atop the towers of the castle. Just as Nathan raised his hand to knock at the door, the door swung open. “So nice to see you again, my friends,” an oily voice said.

  Nathan entered and looked around. The room was a large, spacious oval-shaped chamber, made of the same dark gray-black stone as the rest of the castle, with rounded walls and a domed ceiling high above. Dim light came in from a handful of tall slit-like windows high up, near the ceiling. The room was not as dusty as the other rooms, although it was not perfectly clean. It also contained some modest furniture: a large round wooden table, and seven chairs arranged at the table. The wizard of Black sat in one of the chairs.

  “Yes, we’re glad to have found you. We were getting worried,” Rose said. Nathan, Rose and the others walked into the room and took seats in the six open chairs at the table.

  “Did you not have faith in me, my friends? I told you I would be here,” the wizard said.

  “We have plenty of faith,” Nathan said. “Okay, now we’re here. We came all this way, out to the middle of nowhere, so that we could speak in private. Perfect secrecy never had a better cover in the history of secrets than what we have in this room. What’s the target? Tell us what the job is.”

  “The job that I am offering you is a heist,” the wizard said. “And the payment will be as I had promised back at the inn: one thousand platinum coins.”

  “And what’s the target?” Nathan asked.

  “The Crystal of Light,” the wizard replied.