A Broken Spooth - Chapters 1 & 2 (2nd draft of my in-progress comedic fantasy novel)

CHAPTER ONE
(WIZARDREST)


            Charred wooden beams jutted out at every angle and from every direction as Garvey Potvinch pulled himself stiffly from the wreckage. His head felt as though an alcohol spell had exploded between his eyes. He pushed aside one final timber and dragged himself out into the open and collapsed on the grass. For a long while he lay there breathing in the warm air.
            Green grass? Warm air?
            Garvey lurched to his feet and inspected himself. Miraculously, he was uninjured. His gray woolen robe had not fared nearly so well, however. Filled with dozens of rips and burn holes, it hung from him in great sooty tatters. It was in such a state that Garvey was truly perplexed as to how he could have remained uninjured while wearing it.
            Looking around, he saw thick grass growing right up to the chunks of black stone and timber that had once been Wizardrest. Why wasn’t the grass scorched by the same fire that destroyed the tower?
            He took a deep breath and looked nervously out over the mountainside. In the northeastern distance, a lush tapestry of green rose and fell in the jagged waves of the Weelyhi Mountains. Since when was December so green?
            He sucked in another warm breath and smelled the unmistakable scent of pollen and fresh buds in the air. All the evidence pointed to an impossible conclusion: it was spring!
            Elija had done something to time. He must have.
            Garvey tried to recall the last few minutes of the battle. All eight wizards had been standing in a semi-circle on the roof of Wizardrest, facing off against an equal number of black mages on Darkheart a few miles away. The cool fall sky was dark but clear. Illuminated by torches spaced evenly along the roof's edge, the apprentices were clustered tightly behind their masters. To Garvey, Elijah’s only apprentice, they all looked the same way he felt, like useless baggage.
            Helpless as newborn dragons, the wizards-in-training watched as three fireballs slammed, one after the other, into the tower walls. The shock waves sent Garvey tumbling to the hard stone surface of the rooftop. Suddenly, a forth flaming sphere crashed into the center of them. Garvey jumped aside but heard the sizzle of hair and flesh. Screams of a young woman in agony rang out into the night.
            Garvey spotted the single door leading down toward water, but Elija's surprisingly strong hand reached back to grip his shoulder. Silently, without turning back, the old man shook his head as if to say the effort would be futile. Stepping away from the flaming remains, Garvey obediently watched as his master and the other Council members held up all eight of the Wizard Prism shards. The hand-sized gems shimmered with internal energy. Suddenly, wizard's flame shot forth from each shard and spun itself into eight individual balls of fire. Heat seared all of them as the yellow balls hovered for a brief moment before zooming upward and colliding into a colossal, brilliant sphere. Then the sphere whizzed away toward the north, towards Darkheart. Out over the lower hills and valleys, at about its halfway point to the enemy's lair, Garvey saw the wizards' yellow energy globe pass over another equally large, incoming red sphere. Horrified, he realized that the Black Mages' fireball was five times the size of the last few.
            All would be lost!
            The wizards solemnly separated, and all but Elija knelt and closed their eyes in silent meditation. Did they see no choice but to accept this cruel twist of fate? Was there nothing anyone could do?
            In a terrible state of shock, Garvey watched the red sphere grow to the size of a cruel blazing sun. There would be no reprieve. They were all going to die. Horrified, he sought the eyes of his master and found the old man’s back turned toward him, away from their imminent death. The old man’s wizened face creased into a wide grin. The last thing Garvey remembered before the world exploded into red light was that…Elijah had winked at him.
            Garvey stared at the remains of Wizardrest. Knowing it was hopeless but unable to stop himself, he began pouring through the debris, hoping against hope that he might find evidence that someone else had lived. Soon, however, hope gave way to despair. Bits of clothing, shoes and blackened bone fragments littered the rubble. He found nothing larger than a partial finger bone until, sometime near sunset, he noticed a shred of blue underneath a mostly disintegrated wooden beam.
            Elija had worn the blue robe!
            With an unjustified sense of hope, he clawed at the stones and ashes and threw great handfuls of debris aside. But then, suddenly, near the neck of the robe, a gleaming white skull stared up at him with hollow eyes. As quickly as they had risen, his high expectations came crashing down. It was true then. Even Elija had died. Garvey reached out his hand to gently stroke his master’s skull, and it immediately turned to dust.
            For a long while, he sat there in the wreckage and let his tears fall. Though Elija had been a difficult teacher, Garvey had always known the old man cared. "Someday," Elija used to tell him, "you will be a great among the greats."
            Garvey smiled.
            "Someday, but not today," the old man would always add. "Now do the dishes." Or, "Now take care of those books."
            Garvey continued to uncover the crumbling corpse of his master. Ignoring the darkness, he scooped up handful after handful of powdered bone and carried it to the edge of the mountain. There he said a goodbye to each handful and threw it into the strong evening breeze. It took some time but just as the sun was beginning to set below the western mountains, he threw the final handful into the air. No trace of Elija's body remained in the tower’s wreckage. His master’s body had been returned, particle by particle, to the Spoothian land that he had loved so much.
            Somehow knowing it was the right thing to do, Garvey took off his own tattered robe and pulled Elija's blue one over his head. Unbelievably, it was in like-new condition. As the final remnants of Elijah’s remains dissipated, Garvey settled down onto the grass. With his hands pillowed behind his head, Garvey stared up at the darkening sky and tried to make sense of what he had seen. Other than the blue robe he now wore, the few other strips of clothing he had found were moldy and moth-eaten. The fragments of bones from the other wizards and apprentices had been picked clean and were gleaning white. There were so many bird droppings on the stones and timbers of the fallen tower that shrubs and even some small trees had begun to grow. Though the White Council’s battle with the Black Order had happened in the fall, all the evidence suggested that it was spring. Only one piece of the puzzle didn't fit.
            Me. Garvey Potvinch.
            Somehow he had not only survived the catastrophic fire, but had also slept through an entire winter? He hadn't starved. He hadn't frozen to death. Even his clothes hadn't seen the same ravages as those of the others. It just wasn't possible. There wasn’t any logical reason for Garvey Potvinch to be alive.
            He envisioned Elija's grin and final wink again, and the thought brought tears to his eyes. It appeared that his master had cast a protective spell on him, even as he himself had been killed.
            "Thank you, Elija," Garvey said, wiping away the tears. "I'm sorry that I'll never be able to say it in person."
            After a time, the grumbling in his stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten in possibly months. Garvey stood up and whispered a few well practiced words. He waved his left pinky three times, jumped twice on his right foot and stared at the sky as he pointed his left thumb at the grass in front of him. He felt but ignored the familiar burning sensation on his fingers and right heel. Anxious to fill the growing void in his stomach, he reached down to pick up the expected bread but found nothing. Then, in a truly odd delayed spell reaction, a loaf-shaped section of grass suddenly disappeared.
            Confused, he patted the bare spot and felt only damp soil.
            Perturbed at himself, he whispered the spell a second time and made sure he enunciated each syllable exactly right. Again he waved his left pinky three times, jumped twice on his right foot, then stared upward while simultaneously pointing his left thumb at a new spot in the grass. Again, no loaf materialized but moments later a loaf-shaped chunk of grass once again disappeared.
            Garvey brought a handful of the damp soil to his nose. It smelled like dirt. He ran it between his fingers. It felt like dirt, too.
            "Then it must be dirt, you mental giant," he muttered as he threw the clump back to the ground.
            Why didn't the bread appear? He'd used that particular spell at least as much if not more than any of his others. Personal injury wasn't the problem, because that dinky incantation caused almost none. He should have been able to create six or more loafs before his foot or pinky even began to blister. It just didn't make sense.
            Of the dozen or so spells Garvey knew off hand, only three were "create food" spells. The first was, of course, the bread loaf spell. The second was a cranberry sauce spell (he hated cranberry sauce). And the last was a fried chicken spell. Of all of them the fried chicken spell was the most complicated. More often than not the chicken would appear all plucked, breaded but still alive. Not happy, mind you, but alive.
            In the moonlight, Garvey had no problem finding his discarded robe. He ripped out a sizable swath and held it up to make sure it would be large enough to cover a mid-sized bird. At least if the chicken spell went sour, the poor little bugger wouldn't be naked.
            He chanted an intricate series of words, blinked twice with his left eye, while simultaneously twitching his left elbow twice. He stared up at the sky and pointed down with his right thumb. Nothing happened. No chicken, live or dead. A moment later, a spot of grass disappeared and, as might have been expected, the hole was in the approximate shape of a chicken's body. What was going on?
            Garvey tried unsuccessfully three more times then, resigned to his fate, he cast his cranberry sauce spell. As before, he accomplished only a chuck of missing grass.
            Something was terribly wrong, and unfortunately Garvey didn't have a clue as to what it was. He searched about for his book bag. It was nowhere to be seen. Panicked, he found the spot where he had first emerged from the debris and crawled back in. Moonlight filtered readily, if dimly, through the loose pile. He saw the bag's blue strap after crawling only fifteen feet or so. He dragged his prize out from under a small pile of ash and pulled it outside.
            Wiping the soot from the silky blue material, Garvey breathed a long sigh of relief. Without Elija to help, the contents of this bag would be invaluable. Though it was small on the outside, inside was Elija Goodwhistle's entire library of magical text, everything from acne-curing potions to zombie animation spells. Known as a bag of infinite space, someone could literally have carried a flock of dragons in there.
            Stomach grumbling, Garvey settled onto the grass. He intended to scour every page of every book, until he found a food spell that would work. He was famished.
            Fortunately, Garvey's reflexes had grown incredibly acute during his four-year apprenticeship with Elija. One never knew when the next spell would backfire or when one of Elija's impromptu tests would come about. He had only cracked the bag's flap slightly when a dusty tome leapt out like a cat out of cold water.
            Garvey jerked his head aside as the heavy book whistled past and landed with a dull thud behind him.
            "What the…?"
            Holding the bag out at full arm's length, Garvey cautiously opened the flap again. He expected a dozen more volumes to leap skyward like so much popcorn, but none emerged. Taking great care, he inched the bag closer and peered inside. Nothing.
            Nothing?
            "Can't be!" He yanked the flap open and stared inside. In disbelief, he patted, groped and prodded every inch of the bag's interior. It just wasn't possible but nevertheless the bag was empty. A priceless treasury of magical knowledge, gone. Gone. Destroyed, no doubt, in the final fireball's flames.
            A dull ache of loss settled into his chest, this one as bad if not worse than the loss of Elija. Who could say how much knowledge the world had lost in this one cruel fell swoop? Half or more of those magical volumes were singular copies and irreplaceable, some of them dating back generations before Shardon and the Elvish wizards who had preceded him.
            After the shock passed, Garvey laid the bag aside and lifted the single surviving tome. “THE LITTLE BOOK OF MAGIC,” it read.
            "Figures," Garvey muttered. He opened to the first page. Though no more or less valuable than the others, this book contained some of the most difficult incantations in Elija's library. Fate was not playing fair. The Little Book of Magic was to him like thick steak to a hungry baby.
            Garvey's stomach growled. Somehow the food analogy seemed appropriate.
             

CHAPTER TWO
(THE MORNING AFTER)


            Garvey woke the next morning with his head nestled against the pages of the open wizard's tome. In a panic, he rolled away and nearly sent himself sliding down the mountain’s steep slope. After grabbing at a small bush to stop his momentum, he scrambled back up and found a safe seat against one of the fallen tower stones. His breath coming in gasps and sweat beading his forehead, he stared at the heavy manuscript and realized how close he had just come to death. More than once he had seen bestial hands, flames or worse rise from the pages of Elija's books.
            "Stupid, stupid," he muttered as he flipped the leather cover shut.
            The air was warm and the breeze was milder than it had been the night before. Though still confused by how, he was thankful that it was spring and he hadn't woken here in the middle of the winter. Better to die in the tower fire than with ice in his veins.
            After stretching and mentally assuring his cramped stomach that food was forthcoming, Garvey attempted to return the The Little Book of Magic to Elijah’s bag. In the past, dozens of books had always slipped inside easily. This time, however, he had to shove and strain in order to get the infinite space bag to accept one tome. Once he had it in, he snapped the bag's flap shut and tied the strap around the black ivory button. Slowly, he eased his weight off the bag. Thankfully, the strap held.
            Face flushed and the backs of his arms aching from the strain, Garvey was reminded of his wrestling sessions with Madam Goozy's pet lizards. Obviously, the bag's infinite space spell no longer worked. Garvey tried to suppress the thought of so many other irreplaceable spell books being squeezed out into the fire. The thought made him shutter.
            Realizing he was thirsty, Garvey knelt down on his left knee, made an oinking sound and snapped the fingers of his right hand five times. Then, praying that it would work, he held both hands out. For the briefest instant, he weight in his hands and was relieved that a spell had finally functioned properly. But his relief was immediately replaced by a howl as flames leapt from the pile of animal dung that had appeared in place of the mug he'd been expecting.
            He flung the disgusting muck and watched the flames quickly extinguish themselves.
            How much more perverted could his magic have become? The fire must really have addled his brain. Angrily, Garvey stooped to wipe his hands on the grass and ignored the delightful smell of pumpkin spice that came from the warm, brownish-orange goo that he cleaned off on the grass. It seemed he would have to forage for food and drink the conventional way.
            The path down the mountain should have been easy to find.  For centuries, members of The White Council had been making the pilgrimage to the tower for learning, meditation and semiannual gatherings. But,  for some reason, the trail was now overgrown with ferns, vines and even several oak seedlings, some of which were already more than two feet high—
            In one season?
            An uncomfortable suspicion was beginning to setting into Garvey's mind, one which he neither understood nor was particularly comfortable with. Was it possible that he hadn’t lost just one season in the tower rubble? Could he have been unconscious for more than a year? Fears of having slept for centuries flittered at the edge of his thoughts, but he knew that wasn’t possible. No, the mountain trail was still visible, at least, and the ruined timbers of Wizardrest hadn't yet had time to rot. Nevertheless, he realized that his first priority when he found his way back to civilization would be to find out what year this was.
            Garvey's head swam with the possibilities. The sheer magnitude of what he'd been through made his head ache. He took one last look at the remains of the great tower. With timbers charred black and stones dark with the residue of smoke and heat, it seemed unlikely that the majestic structure could ever be rebuilt. The point was probably moot given that the entire White Council, including their apprentices, had died in that fire.
            In his mind’s eye, Garvey could still see the brilliant red flames engulfing bodies all around him. He could hear their screams, smell their flesh burning—
            No!
            Garvey shook his head free of the terrifying last moments of that ordeal. For his sanity's sake, he promised himself not to think any more about it. Elijah’s final wink left him with the tiniest glimmer of hope. Maybe it had all been a bad dream…one that somehow also included the charred remains of Wizardrest.
            Turning away from the ruined tower, Garvey started down the overgrown trail. In a few hours he would be at Abigail's Den where surely someone would know what had happened…and how much time had passed. As he descended the steep footpath, he couldn't keep his eyes from the dense weeds that pulled at his robes and strangled the fruits and flowers at the edges of the trail. With every step, he became more convinced that none of the wizards could have survived. If even a single member of the White Council had survived, he or she would never have allowed the beautiful flowers and berry bushes along the trail to fall prey to such wanton and wild growth. And, most upsetting of all, he was hungry and hadn't seen even one edible berry or fruit.
            Garvey tried his bread and water spells periodically during the long morning descent, and each time got the same earthen hole filled with wet vegetation. He was about to try his fried chicken spell again when he noticed two ratrells circling overhead. The disgusting snakelike-birds must have mistaken his spell-casting for seizures that might soon leave him unconscious and easy prey.
            Garvey didn't pay the fowl creatures much mind until, during one attempted cranberry spell, a leathery tail slapped at the back of his head. Halting his spell midstream, Garvey swung his bag at the vile bird and yelled out a series of profanities that would have left Madam Goozy's ears burning had she been anywhere near.  The ratrell screeched contemptuously at him, but with great swoops of its three-foot wings it soared back up to continue circling with its equally large and disgusting mate. Thank goodness the creatures’ larger cousins the vreel were nowhere to be seen or Garvey would have been racing downward as fast as possible to find tree cover. One of the huge flying vreel could easily have swallowed him down in one bite.
            Garvey ran his fingers through his thinning red hair and decided to hold off on any on any additional spell-casting. For now it was best not to attract any further attention. Besides, the spells were obviously not going to work anyway.
            By midmorning, he found an apple tree, one of many that had been magically fashioned to ensure food for the journeying wizards during the off season. He picked one of the slightly withered fruits and nearly gagged at his first and only bite. The thing tasted like a cross between moss and bat guano. They had always been so sweet. Slightly further down the trail was an orange tree. Quick to learn, Garvey removed one from the tree and peeled only a small section of the delicious-looking fruit. He didn't have to go any further because already the citrus acid had burned the tips of his thumb and forefinger. He pitched the dangerous orb and imagined that it hissed as it struck the slope further down.
            When he discovered a dozen huge, delicious-looking yellow melons in a patch an hour later, he approached them with great skepticism. Fortunately, a life-threatening taste test wasn't required this time. He had only to pull back several of flat emerald leaves to see a dozen decaying rodent corpses slumped against the swollen rinds. From the looks of the tiny tooth indents in yellow skins, the creatures had died instantly. Yet another of the White Council's works gone bad.
            Was it possible that the Black Order had taken full control of Southern Spooth now? Could The Order have undone all the wonderful things that The Council had created over the preceding centuries? The thought seemed preposterous, but a vision of melons surrounded by dead rodents stayed with him for quite some time.
            It was midday when the steep trail leveled and opened out into a wide flat field. Off to his right, a blue granite face rose straight up to the peak—where Wizardrest had once been. No longer being able to see the great tower left a hole in his chest. As his eyes slid back down the shear face of greatwet granite, named for its blue resemblance to the Greatwet Sea, he felt a strong wave of sadness. The Black Mages had managed to do what not even the evil giant Gorbo could accomplish. It was hard to believe they were all gone. The White Council had stood proud and protective over Spooth for nearly a thousand years. It was them who had had melted the very stone of this mountain in order to cover the face of Gorbo's cave. A giant among giants, Gorbo was said to have been as large as he was hateful. The legends were unclear about whether his wings were natural or acquired by magic, but all the stories seemed to agree that he had mercilessly terrorized the population of Spooth for centuries. His reign of terror had only ended when eight of Spooth’s most powerful wizards came together to defeat him. Of those original men and women, only three had survived to oversee the construction of Wizardrest and to begin training new wizards who would take the remaining five seats of what was to become the White Council. Over the subsequent seven hundred years their group would add four more seats to their membership and assume the daunting task of protecting all the peoples of Spooth.
            "Until now," Garvey thought miserably. A vision of the great fireball that had destroyed the tower and everyone on it came to his mind. Who would have thought such an unspeakable disaster was possible?
            Garvey took a deep breath and stepped up onto the stone gazebo which was perched only a foot from the edge of Gorbo's Plate. For someone who had not almost fallen from the edge as a first-year apprentice, Garvey supposed the view from the Gazebo would have been considered breathtaking. But for him, it was a painful reminder of three particularly terrifying days when gusts of wind at this very spot had multiple times threatened to end his less than stellar magical career. He averted his gaze from the deadly precipice and crawled on all fours out to the stone urn that sat in the center of six stone benches. Purposefully keeping his eyes on the gazebo’s stone floor, he pulled several weeds from the urn then reached down into soil until his fingers came across something hard.
            Yes!
            Just then, a light breeze ruffled his robes and sent him scurrying toward the nearest stone bench where he attached himself to its leg like a hungry leach. Visions of dangling over thousands of feet of empty space lodged themselves just behind his eyes. His fear of heights had been almost legendary and a great source of laughter among the White Council apprentices, but nowhere was that fear more pronounced than here, overlooking the breathtaking vista from Gorbo’s Plate. He took deep gulps of air and stifled his urge to scream. 
            Thank goodness Elijah wasn’t there to see him. Surely the aging wizard would have dragged him to the stone rail and shoved his head out over the dizzying ravine until he either puked or passed out. Garvey tried to shake the images and the resulting fear from his mind, but like a receding tide it took a long time to retreat. When the moment finally came when he could bring himself to crawl back to the urn, he kept his eyes closed and tried to ignore the faint breeze against his cheeks. Once his fingers came in contact with the smooth stone urn, he groped inside for the second time. For a fraction of a second, he feared that in his earlier panic he might accidentally have flung his prize, but soon his fingers wrapped around the familiar shape. He almost forgot where he was as he pulled out the tiny carved bone sculpture and gazed at its intricately carved features. Though tiny, he could see tufts of fur sprouting from its ears and could even make out individual feathers on its magnificent outstretched wings. But his appreciation for the intricately carved melted away as his eyes flicked out the open panorama around him.
            Fear clamped like a dragon’s fist around his chest.
            Prize tightly in hand, Garvey gulped and inched his way backward on hands and knees. A scraped knee received in his haste to slide down the half dozen granite steps to the grassy plateau seemed a small price to pay for having his sandals planted firmly well away from the frightening maw of open air. He still shuddered with the memory of sleeping for three exposed nights out on one of the gazebo benches, one of Elijah’s many failed attempts at curing Garvey of his myriad fears and phobias.
            Turning away from the gazebo and the open precipice beyond, Garvey lifted the bone talisman and studied the delicate features of the tiny flying boar. He tipped it from side to side and studied it from every angle. It was almost as though an actual porkasis had been frozen and then shrunk down to a palm size. Garvey could scarcely imagine the sculpting talent it must have taken to create such an exquisite work of art. Even after years of practice, he still hadn’t mastered carving simple faces into the fall pumpkins that, to the delight of the neighboring village children, were always displayed with lit candles at night around Elijah’s castle walls in the fall.
            Wizard's robes were normally quite comfortable, but Garvey gradually realized that the silky blue material had begun to stick to the scrape on his knee. He stuffed the bone porkasis into one of his many pockets and then winced as he pulled his robe up to inspected the minor but surprisingly painful wound. Seeing a little blood, but nothing deeper than a few layers of skin, he figured a quick healing spell should do it. He spoke the three requisite phrases and inserted his right index finger into his left ear—
            What am I doing?
            He carefully removed his finger from his ear and let out a sigh. The way things were going, he might have wound up with a missing kneecap, or worse. Glancing upward, he could see the ratrells were gone but he knew it wouldn't have taken them long to find him if he had inadvertently crippled himself.
            Before anything else could happen, Garvey determined that it was time to get off the mountain. He moved to the center of Gorbo’s Plate, which was well away from the gazebo and the open cliffs below, and blew draw the porkasis sculpture from his pocket. This was always the part that made him feel weird.
            He turned the creatures butt toward his mouth until he could see the small hole in the end of the creature’s tail and pressed it to his lips. After blowing it three times for good measure, he sat on the grass and waited.
            And waited.
            And waited.
            Something was wrong. He blew into the boar’s tail several more times but still got no response.
            He toyed with the idea of hiking the rest of the way down to Abigail's Den but the wizards had hardly ever used the lower portion of the path. Given how much the upper trail had grown over, it seemed likely the lower portion might not be passable. Besides, even under optimum conditions, it would take a full day to reach Abigail's Den. The attempt wouldn't be practical.
            After another substantial wait, Garvey blew the whistle again. What was taking them so long? Porkasi were seldom far from their grazing perches, and Gorbo’s Plate had always been one of the more popular spots with plentiful grub bushes on the mountain plateau. After ten separate attempts on the whistle Garvey stopped counting, but the afternoon sun had ducked dangerously low to the horizon by the time he saw his first glimpse of a fleshy pink creature. The porkasis came up low over the northern slope, but before Garvey could see much more than the creature’s ears and broad snout the beast swooped down out of sight again.
            What now?
            Already, the gazebo's shadow now stretched almost to the base of the sheer rock face that had once been the entrance to Gorbo's cave. Off several miles to the north, the sun illuminated the western surface of Darkheart. Consisting almost entirely of a bare red stone, the twin mountain to Wizardspeak jutted out of the ground like a giant blooded fang. A chill traversed his spine even though his eyes had already looked away.
            Something nagged at the back of Garvey’s mind. Before he could get his thoughts to focus on the problem, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Suspecting but not daring to hope, he slowly turned to look.
            Sure enough, a group of five porkasi was snacking on a grub bush near the opening to the upper trail. Seeing them brought a wash of comfort and normalcy. Ever since Garvey had crawled from the wreckage the previous day, his world had seemed—in fact, had been—out of kilter. The ruined tower, his malfunctioning spells and the overgrown trail, they were all pieces of a world gone awry. But these porkasi were real, the same as they had always been—though, granted, a little late.
            Garvey stood and said, "Here boy. I need a ride."
            Suddenly, they were gone!