Near the western stretch of the walls, at the foot of the hill that was crowned by the palazzo of the Lord Paramount, the moothouse of the Most Wise Council of Nine, the treasure house, hall of records, the barracks of the city guard, along with the manses of the dozen or so most powerful local families, stood the tower of Melanthus the Mordant, practitioner of arcane magicks most subtle and artful.

  As towers went, it was better appointed than most, but as wizard towers went, it was nothing spectacular. It didn’t reach the clouds and pierce the heavens, no components of it floated, it wasn’t spun from crystal that refracted the sunlight or assembled with blocks of adamant quarried by giants, it didn’t rotate on its axis, nor was it raised upon gigantic legs that could animate and take the abode elsewhere if its denizen needed a change of scene. It was four stories high with stepped corner buttresses, constructed of the same ashlar masonry used on the other finer buildings of the city. It had a wrought-iron balcony at the third floor that overlooked the lower part of the city in the direction of the rivers, and wide bay windows that cantilevered out at the uppermost level, in contrast to the small recessed and shuttered diamond pane affairs elsewhere below, of the sort usually found in fortified and defensive structures – or places where discouraging thieves was sound practice. Probably the most remarkable aspect of it was the enchanted globes flanking its entrance and crowning the roof, which automatically began to shine every evening at the precise moment of sunset and wink off again at sunrise the next morning. Well, those and the enchanted mouth implanted on the entry door of iron that demanded prospective visitors announce themselves and declare their business.

  As for the interior, envision the sort of furnishings and accoutrements you would expect a magician to possess and you would not be far off the mark, although perhaps the rugs would be more sumptuously plush and the hardware would be more expertly crafted than one would expect. And that was because Melanthus considered himself a man of some taste and urbanity, with an eye for the finer things. After all, if he was only grudgingly ever going to leave his abode, then he wanted it to be as comfortable as possible.

  One of those “finer things” he had an eye for was his housekeeper Thayla.

  The sight of her bending over to place the basket full of foodstuffs she just bought from the market on the floor greeted him as he came to the bottom of the stairs of the ground level, which housed the scullery, small dining room, and parlor, where he received the occasional guest or client. He let his gaze linger on her rear end a moment, contemplating the likelihood of various amorous possibilities before calling out and disclosing his presence.

  “Hello Thayla, and why do you tarry here so late? Is it not time for you to return home? And where is my goblet of hippocras? Apprentice? Apprentice!”

  Thayla straightened her back and immediately went to berating him. “Drinking already? It’s barely noon!”

  “Is it? Wait, is this three days to Mid-summer or two now? Apparently, I have lost track of time. Hmm. Merril would be so displeased!” he chortled.

  “At any rate, I’ve more than earned this indulgence. There has at last been a breakthrough,” he proclaimed momentously, and here he smiled serenely to himself.

  Thayla couldn’t help it, she was curious by nature, and working for a powerful wizard allowed her to often gratify her curiosity – even as her daily visitations provoked it. “And what is it, Melanthus? You’ve been toiling at some intractable problem for over a fortnight now.” The sorcerer did not, as a rule, discuss his research and experimentation with his housekeeper, but she knew from experience the times when the mercurial man would be amenable to divulging the nature of his work.

  “Ah…” he said, looking like an imp who had just caught and swallowed a bullfrog whole, “I’ve been looking into modifying the process of teleportation to develop a more powerful version of the spell.”

  “Teleportation?” Thayla breathed with wonder. “That’s something you rarely use, right?” She never understood why Melanthus had so many powerful theurgies at his disposal yet chose only seldom to use them.

  “Well, there is hardly anywhere I want to go, so yes, I hardly ever use it. But I would probably use it more if it didn’t have a serious limitation. You see, in order to teleport you have to be able to envision the location to which you are being transported, down to the last detail. The more you can recall about your destination, the higher the probability of success. Imperfect or faulty recollection of your intended endpoint can lead to disaster – as Theremin the Bold found out a decade ago, much to his cost.” Here Melanthus shuddered.

  “Why, what happened to Theremin the Bold?”

  “He failed to remember that the audience chamber of Castle Harbaw had just been damaged due to an assault during the last time he was there, and a wall that created an entry vestibule had been demolished in the attack. Well, since his last visit that wall had been erected once more, and not knowing or suspecting its existence he materialized right into the middle of it. ‘Twas a ghastly scene.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Now it was Thayla’s turn to shudder.

  “The implication of all this is that you can only teleport safely to a location you have been to before – and one that you have been to multiple times if you want to increase your chances of survival. So you can only travel to places to which you’ve already been, and are reasonably sure have not been altered in the meantime. In practice this means most wizards restrict the use of teleportation to go to either one or two places of absolute security – say, a safe house that only they have access to, or to return home to spare themselves the latter half of an arduous round trip - or locations in their immediate vicinity, preferably within their line of sight when the spell is cast so no remembering is required. Thus, teleportation is quite handy when trying to escape from, say, oh, I don’t know…” and here Melanthus looked rather ornery, “a rabble of angry townsfolk who misconstrued the terms of a contractual agreement, but it is decidedly not handy for infiltrating the fortress of an enemy nobleman to rescue a comrade held in its dungeon. Unless, of course, you yourself had spent a considerable amount of time in the said dungeon.”

  “Anyway, I had the idea that if I could somehow combine the elements of scrying, to familiarize myself fully with an area, with a spell of teleportation I could vastly improve its utility. Sort of like an incantation with a ‘one-two punch.’ “

  “Of course, other people have attempted similar efforts in the past, but marrying spells of different magical schools – for clairvoyance is a form of divination whereas teleport is an alteration – requires extremely fine technique, which many wizards do not possess. Clairvoyance has its own limitations, and few are truly skilled at it. Fortunately, I have a Seeing Sphere, and this augments the amount of detail garnered from scrying and allows me to access hitherto unknown spaces with much greater ease than I would otherwise.”

  “Is that the orb you use to speak with High Priest Merril?”

  “Yes, that’s the one – it supports clairaudience as well, obviously. So last night I finally hit upon what I think is the perfect amalgam of the two spells, and in conjunction with the powers of the Seeing Sphere, I can transport just about anything almost anywhere from my location. As long as it’s on land. On this material plane of existence. And if there’s ambient light so I can see the destination while I cast the spell. Now all I need to do is verify my results and try it out on someone. Hmm…” Melanthus looked thoughtful. “Apprentice! Apprentice?” he called out, then frowned. “Confound it, where is that boy? – he’s never around when I have need of him,” he muttered.

  “I wish I could teleport,” Thayla said wistfully, “then I could get in anywhere I wanted – I would never need a key to unlock a door, ever.”

  Melanthus grinned indulgently, pleased his efforts were appreciated enough to instill envy. “Still, you are rather privileged, aren’t you?” he said placatingly. “You are the only one to have a key to this tower - as well as to my heart,” he added a bit dramatically, now openly leering at her, as he occasionally did.

  Thayla rolled her eyes. This sort of banter had been an ongoing thing between them since she took employment here two winters ago. A young widow with a wee daughter at home, Thayla hailed from the countryside, though she was not of farming stock herself; rather, she was the daughter of a village schoolmaster who had instilled in her a love of learning. She had only come to Eskemar as the new bride of an ambitious merchant. Unfortunately, he had been killed when his caravan was raided by a marauding pack of gnolls, and the debts his uncompleted mercantile activities had left behind had well-nigh beggared her. It had been a stroke of fortune indeed to catch wind of this position and shine relative to the other applicants, and her employment here, while not the life she had envisioned for herself, was not very taxing. Furthermore, it often exposed her to very interesting sights that few others in the city had ever beheld, and Melanthus, for all his eccentricities, paid well and treated her with a certain warm courtesy - the occasional bawdy comment or flirtatious salutation aside. And these she didn’t even mind so much – she was a woman, after all, and liked to be reminded occasionally that she was still comely. Still, there were appearances that had to be observed for the sake of propriety…

  At that moment a wide, thick-lipped mouth appeared on the inside face of the door, and in a deep, mellifluous voice made an announcement. “The honorable apprentice Tesslihm desires admittance.”

  “Ha!” cried Melanthus, “at last! We’ll see what that knave has been up to! Admit him,” he ordered.

  In truth, the knave was an attentive, studious, and reasonably obedient apprentice, and not lazier than was normal for a young man of his age. Nonetheless, a certain amount of abuse and hazing was required and had to be meted out at regular intervals, just to keep him on his toes. The master/apprentice relationship was carefully circumscribed within various limits by centuries of time-tested convention and deviating from its traditional form was almost scandalous and a reliable way to court ruin. It was the way of things.

  The workings of an intricate lock could be heard, gears grinding, concealed rack and pinions shifting and bolts recessing. Then the wide iron door opened inward on well-oiled soundless hinges, revealing a somewhat disheveled young man with blond hair in red robes on the threshold. Suddenly confronted with his master, he blinked a few times.

  “You! Just where have you been, you wretch! Shiftless varlet!” Melanthus yelled while Thayla stood to one side, suppressing an amused look for the sake of Tesslihm’s pride. Tesslihm began to stammer, “Master, I waited until the stroke of ten, but you never –“

  “Enough excuses! There’s work to be done!” and saying this Melanthus snatched a hunk of cheese out of Thayla’s basket over her protest and began to climb the stairs again. “How would you like to go on a really quick journey, eh, lad? But first, fetch my hippocras!”

  It was another typical day in the wizard tower.