Short Story – “Wilward the Wise”
A teleportation spell would only get you so far. The bumbling dwarven wizard had managed to get a decent way up the mountain, but for the last part, he would need to trek through the knee-deep snow. Wilward looked upon his destination with determined interest. A dark tower stood on the nearest peak, caked in snow. It was tall and thin, covered in spikes to ward others away, and was made of a black stone which, as he had learned in his previous ventures, was designed to conceal the powerful magic held within.
‘Tower one hundred and fifty-nine,’ he muttered, pushing his weight through the snow. That’s how many he had found scattered throughout the Doomgar mountains. What a massive undertaking it must have been, he thought, all those years ago to build such magnificent structures and then conceal them from sight. It had been the work of some of the most powerful mages in known history. Hundreds of them. All donating their power for the greater good.
Lighting a bright flame on the tip of his thumb, Wilward pushed through the frozen door and entered the darkness beyond. Despite the frigid conditions, a gentle warmth greeted him in the first room, followed by the musky smell of dust and disuse. According to the transcripts, there was supposed to be a rune priest here to greet him. There was no one, though. Any dwarves of sufficient power to look after these towers had been conscripted into the war and subsequently killed. Or, he thought sullenly, they had been killed even before the war had begun.
Taking a moment to close the door behind him, Wilward pressed on towards the circling staircase that would lead him to the higher points of the tower. Step by step, creak by creak, he manoeuvred himself higher and higher until he was standing on the tallest landing. It was dark in the tower, an effect of the stone he knew, but his thumb managed a good enough job of leading the way through the ensuing corridors. Wilward didn’t quite know where he would find it, as the location often changed from tower to tower, but he knew it had to be here somewhere. After all, that was the tower’s entire purpose.
Bedrooms, dining quarters, an armoury, door after door led to mundane rooms that cobwebs and time had eaten away. Taking a handkerchief from within his robes, Wilward pushed up his pointy hat and dabbed at the sweat on his brow. He’d been doing this since the end of the war fifteen years ago, and it was getting exhausting. There was a toll to be paid for visiting so many magical places in such a short amount of time for a dwarf, and it had come in the form of ageing him heavily.
Wilward was mid-sigh when he heard the noise and shot up straight. It had been a loud slam, which could have been anything from a door closing to something dropping on the floor. Without a second passing, the dwarf doubled his resolve and brought a staff to his hand as if from the air itself. A twisted, gnarled oak staff with runic writing down the side of the handle — writing that even Wilward himself had not yet managed to translate — and a curving tip meant to help balance the powerful magic within.
With the tip pointed forward, Wilward slowly approached the source of the sound. The wizard was no fighter, even going as far as to detest violent acts, but over his three hundred years of life, he had done a great deal when it came to defending himself and others. He had come to know that hesitation got you killed, but you had to balance quick action with seasoned judgement.
There was another thud. Wilward quickened his step. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he pushed open the door and readied the staff for judgement. The wizard had been expecting an animal or, worse, some kind of monster. It wasn’t unheard of for dangerous things to be attracted to places like this, and in the other hundred or so towers, he had been forced to fend off midnight creatures that could turn the hair of a seasoned warrior white. What he saw now made his eyes go wide as never before—a complete turn of unexpected events.
A dwarf sat in the corner. One with wild white hair and a beard full of stone beads. In his hands, he held a tome that was in remarkable condition, better than the dwarf himself anyway, and was reading it with disinterested eyes. It took him a moment to even realise that another person was in the room, and with a grunt, he stood up. Wilward saw that beneath the overgrown beard, he was wearing plate armour. Every inch of it was carved with small runes in a language that only one kind of creature could interpret.
‘You’re a rune priest,’ Wilward gasped.
‘If you’ve come ter break the seal, you’re already too late.’ The priest waved a careless hand. ‘It was destroyed quite some time ago.’
Wilward stepped into the room, not allowing the staff to falter. ‘How are you here? All of the rune priests died in the Dondros War? Did you not receive the call?’
‘Oh, I received it alright,’ he muttered. ‘Then I spat on it. I weren’t abandoning my post for nobody.’
‘But there is no need to stay here anymore,’ Wilward reasoned. ‘Most of the seals in the other towers had been broken already. The defensive magic had already been dispelled.’
‘Most!?’ the priest exclaimed. ‘What do you mean most?’
‘I think you’d better sit down.’ Wilward watched the priest retake his position on the bed and thought about how best to say his next words. ‘My name is Wilward, Wilward the Wise, some call me, although that’s not a name I ever chose for myself.’
‘I’m Kand,’ he replied, crossing his arms.
‘For the past decade and a half, I’ve been visiting the Towers of I to investigate their seals,’ Wilward started. ‘Most have been broken, their defensive magics lost, but there are still some that remain intact. I’ve been casting spells to ensure their protection while trying to figure out exactly how they were broken in the first place.’
Kand sniffed. ‘Well, it was the Great Lich.’
‘Wait? You know who broke the seals?’ Wilward was sitting now, the weight of this revelation proving a little too heavy for him. ‘How?’
‘I was here when it happened,’ replied Kand, looking away.
‘There have been no recorded survivors of priests in the towers after these seals were destroyed.’
‘He was a powerful foe, alright, and I reckon he thought he had killed me,’ replied Kand. ‘I possess something though that other priests wouldn’t have had.’ The dwarf reached into his beard and pulled out a necklace. Hanging on the golden chain was a remarkable piece of metalwork depicting two golden hands lifting a three-way split ruby.
‘One of the periapts,’ Wilward said. He was very familiar with this kind of magical object; it allowed a person to stave off death.
‘When I woke up, he was gone, and the seal was broken.’ Kand replaced the periapt back within his beard. ‘I must have received the summons a little later, but I thought he might come back, and I was never one for abandoning me post.’
‘Remarkable,’ Wilward chuckled. ‘Absolutely remarkable.’
‘Right.’ Kand pushed himself up off his knees. ‘Would you like to see the seal then? Continue your investigations?’
‘Only if we can walk and talk,’ replied Wilward.
The wizard followed the rune priest along the corridors, a little grateful that he didn’t need to trawl through the entirety of the tower by himself. On the outside, they appeared thin and tall, but that was a method of magic, for within, they could be quite expansive. Their conversation mainly focussed on the devastating effects of the war. Wilward told him about their success and failures, the rebuilding of Falaspe, and the decision of the dwarves to take the seat of power for themselves and reunite the Further Kingdoms.
Finally, they came to a door which looked like any other door in the tower—another cunning ruse. The wizards of old would never have marked a valuable location with an obvious out-of-place door. Kand pushed on it once, and together they entered a large round chamber. Pillars followed the shape of the room and held up the ceiling, but the real prize was in the centre of the room — a golden disk that rose a little slightly out of the floor and was covered in the same runic language as what adorned Wilward’s staff and Kand’s armour. As expected, the seal was fractured, broken right down the middle.
‘You saw this Great Lich do this?’ Wilward knelt before the seal, carefully examining the break with his fingers. ‘What did he do?’
‘It was necromancy at its finest,’ Kand said sullenly. ‘By the time I got here, he was already halfway through breaking it. The, I assume he was a wizard, was channelling dark magic into the disk until it fractured.’
‘That’s impossible.’ Wilward stood back up, talking more to himself now than to Kand. ‘Even the most powerful wizard known would have to be channelling their full strength into the seal for a year at least before it would shatter like this. Yet, somehow, he managed to destroy most of the seals over the course of what must have been six months. Maybe less? How could a person achieve that?’
‘Maybe he had help.’ Kand shrugged.
‘You say you only saw one of him?’ Wilward asked. ‘No other wizards?’
‘Just him.’
‘Perplexing.’ Wilward adjusted his half-moon spectacles. ‘I can’t even imagine what kind of creature could possess such incredible power as to undo these seals like that. It’s unbelievable.’
‘There’s more,’ said Kand.
Wilward raised an eyebrow as the rune priest crossed the room to the farthest wall. The wizard watched as Kand raised a hand and allowed divine energy to flow through it. Dancing letters appeared around his digits, floating absently in the air, and Wilward couldn’t help but smile. The power of the rune priests was the power of words. Never again did he think he would see it in his lifetime. After a moment, something materialised on the wall. It was a symbol — a crossed grid with three distinct dots.
‘By the stone breath of Modgomorrix,’ Wilward breathed.
‘I discovered this a few years after the seal was broken,’ said Kand. ‘I always knew there was something hidden in this room, but it took me a while to reveal it with the right runes.’
‘I’ve never encountered this symbol at any other tower,’ replied Wilward. ‘Even after days of casting detection spells.’
‘Should’ve used runes, brother,’ replied Kand. ‘Do you know what this symbol is?’
‘I do.’ Wilward pulled off his hat, as he often did in times of unease, and began to fiddle with the dangling star on the tip of it. ‘That’s the symbol for Myph, the once Goddess of Heroes.’ Wilward narrowed his eyes. ‘What it’s doing here, though, I don’t have the foggiest. It seems this revelation has only opened up more avenues of enquiry.’
‘Well,’ said Kand, turning for the door. ‘You’re welcome to stay until you figure it out.’
Wilward stayed for another few days, keeping conversation with the rune priest and feasting on the mountain goats and birds that hopped about these peaks. There was nothing more to learn, not even with his detection spells at work. The mystery around the seals breaking had deepened, but at least now he had a name to affix with the disaster. The Great Lich. A fairly generic identifier but one that provided some valuable insights. According to Kand, he had looked either human or elven, as it was hard to see through his shadowy cowl, and possessed very little in the way of armour or weapons. He’d also knocked Kand’s socks off with nothing but the point of his finger.
Wilward straightened up in the first room of the tower and flexed his fingers, preparing a spell of teleportation that would take him back to High Mountain. ‘I think you should come with me.’ Wilward turned to Kand, who had come to witness the spectacle. ‘The practices of the rune priests are a lost art; you could come and share your expertise with a new generation of priests.’
‘It’s a nice thought,’ replied Kand, ‘but I won’t abandon my post.’
‘I thought you might say that,’ replied Wilward. ‘That’s why, if you’d be willing to train them, I’ll bring the dwarves to you instead. This tower could be your school.’
Kand thought on that for a moment, then nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I’d be up for the task.’
Wilward smiled and nodded back. ‘One thing before I do go, though. Why did you call this dark figure the Great Lich? Did he name himself?’
‘He did.’ Kand thought back. ‘Before he made an attempt on me life, I asked him who he was, and he told me that he was the Great Lich and everything that follows was his design.’
‘Everything that follows was his design,’ Wilward repeated. ‘Thank you.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘I must ruminate and inform the parliament,’ replied Wilward. ‘Please stand back. I wouldn’t want to accidentally remove one of your limbs, kind priest.’
The wizard wriggled his fingers and concentrated on the spell. In his mind’s eye, he saw the Stafflike Spire in the city of High Mountain and focussed every thought after it. While he didn’t see the spell, he knew what it would look like to Kand. The wind picked up around him, placing him within a twister. Parchments, dust, debris, and anything small and loose began to whirl around him as crimson sparks shot within the forming cloud. Then, as fast as this effect started, it instantly ceased, and when he opened his eyes, he was somewhere different. Back within the familiar grand halls of the mountain — a hundred miles from where he had been a second ago.
A dwarf with a receding beard came rushing towards him. ‘You have returned, master Wilward,’ he said breathlessly.
‘It appears I have,’ replied Wilward, looking down at himself in mock amazement.
‘How was your journey? Did you find the tower?’
‘That and more.’ Wilward pushed forward, forcing the dwarf to follow him. ‘Dandy, I want you to send a call out to the Grey Robes of Qor, tell them that I wish to meet them at once and quite urgently. It seems that we now have a lot of work to do.’
If you enjoyed this short story, why not consider supporting us on Patreon? We’re dedicated to bringing high-quality weekly tales to our audience, and any help we can get in funding artwork, editing, and beta reading for future projects will always be highly appreciated!
