by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Aoife’s Kiss, Issue #33, June 2010
The shore bubbled and frothed under Bryen’s sotto voce chanting. His hands trembled, conducting currents in the air, and he squinted his eyes tight.
“Knock it off!” Charles yelled at his brother. “How will I ever get a fish to bite if you keep that up?” He kept preparing the boat as he grumbled. “Bunch of rubbish,” he said. “Scares all the decent fish away.”
Bryen finished his spell, and a gentle wave slid along the sand, pushing all the “treasure” it could find. Boots and bottles, shiny shells, and colorful broken glass. The same haul Bryen made every time. He slogged through the soggy sand, leaving round boot prints, as he picked through the rubble.
A final check and the boat was ready to push off. Charles called to his brother, “Let’s get a move on,” but Bryen was stooped down, holding a black and gold object. He brushed wet sand from it, tracing his fingers around the vase’s mouth.
“Look what I found!” Bryen called.
“Great. You can put flowers in it and take it to your elf mother,” Charles said, cruelly. They both knew Bryen’s mother died birthing him. “Would you get in the boat already? We’ll have to get well out to sea if we want to catch anything after that stupid trick of yours.”
Bryen’s face was still turned toward the sandy vase. He placed his fingers over its gold etched patterns. He felt a power in it. “Maybe I will take it to my mother,” he said. Then, “Maybe I’ll put it by her grave.”
Charles looked at him strangely. “That’s a long hike, brother. Get in the boat.” But, Charles could sense that Bryen wouldn’t come. He’d be fishing alone today. And why? Because Bryen found a vase in the drink. “Is there something special about that vase?”
“There might be…” Bryen looked up and grinned. “I’ll ask my mother when I get to her.” His magic was always more powerful where his mother was buried.
Charles snorted to show disdain, but he felt burning jealousy. Well, Bryen could play his elf-magic games. For him, there was fishing to be done. And, Bryen’s limited magic had never gotten him far anyway. Charles pushed the boat off to sea, while his brother began his long hike into the woods.
For the next two days, Charles stewed at sea. He cast his line but caught few fish. Without Bryen’s charms, these waters weren’t fruitful. Charles had heard the charms many times before, and he tried mimicking Bryen’s chant. To no avail. Charles had no magical training, and he had no elf-blood in his veins. He cursed his half-brother.
On the third night, Charles felt a rumbling in the earth as he slept. He threw on his robe and rushed out of his hut by the sea. In the distance, Charles could just barely see a shape blacking out the stars where nothing used to be. The shape was up the coast and inland, the direction Bryen took to his mother’s tomb. Even with the strong light of the newly waning moon, Charles couldn’t make it out. Perhaps Bryen would bring him news of the dark shape when he returned.
Still, Charles stood for a long time on the beach, peering into the distance. What kept him staring was this: the shape seemed to be growing
In the morning light, Charles could see what he hadn’t seen in the dark of night. Stone by flying stone, a castle was building itself deep in the forest. Charles stayed home from fishing that day — he wouldn’t catch much without Bryen anyway — to watch the castle grow. Towers, turrets, ramparts, parapets. The pieces assembled themselves like a giant puzzle.
By the evening star, a flag flew, independent like a bird, to the highest tower and perched to unfurl in the wind. It was green cloth bearing Bryen’s elven symbol intertwined with a picture of a rose. What powerful magic was in that vase?
The answer came to Charles the next day. While he crouched on the shore, untangling fishing line, he heard a rustle in the bushes. He turned around and saw a man emerge. The man wore a green tabard; he had come from the magic castle.
“Do you bring news of my brother?” Charles asked.
“I do,” answered the man. “I am his page, and he sent me to bid you join him in yonder castle.”
“How does Bryen come to have a castle? Three days ago he left here carrying nothing but a tide-strewn vase.”
The page stood calmly, looking at Charles. “There was a genie in the vase,” he said. “The genie offered my Lord three wishes.”
“And the castle was Bryen’s first wish?”
The page verified Charles’ guess with silence and a nod. He was a quiet man, with a stillness in his eyes. The longer Charles looked at him, the stranger the page seemed. “Where are you from?” Charles asked. “How do you come to be a page for my brother?” This man was of no genealogy that Charles knew: his skin had a greenish cast; his hair was wide and flat like grass; his hands were tough and sharp at the knuckles.
“My lord’s second wish,” the page said.
“For a page?”
“For a court to fill his castle. Will you come with me? My lord bids me accompany you to the castle, if you will.”
“What about the third wish?” Charles asked.
“My lord has not spent it. Will you come?”
“Tell Bryen I’ll think about it.” And after a moment he added, “If Bryen really wants me, he can use that third wish to make me come.” And he sent the page on his way.
Days passed by, and Charles grew used to fishing alone. He trudged into town to sell his fish, and he watched the castle on the horizon. He was looking for a sign that Bryen had spent his third wish. He searched his soul for a sign too — but he did not feel an inexorable calling to join his brother. Of course, he did not expect his brother to expend his third wish on him… Nor would a wish necessarily be visible in the sky.
When the page paid his second visit, Charles immediately asked the question: “Has Bryen spent his third wish? Are you here to force me to the castle?”
The page’s petal-pink lips broke into a gentle smile. “My lord does wish for your presence, but he would not force you to come.”
Charles heard the page’s words, but he twisted them around in his brain until they meant something quite different: Bryen does not think you are worth wasting a wish on.
“I am a fisherman, and there are fish to be caught. Tell my brother I will stay here.”
The page lowered his head in obeisance. “My lord was afraid you would answer thus. It will sadden him. However, before I return to the castle, let me bestow on you this gift.”
The page held out his hand, filled with sparkling, colorful baubles. Charles took the gift and looked at the page with questioning eyes.
“Baits for your hook,” the page answered. “My lord imbued them with the fishing charms he used to cast for you.”
Charles thanked the page, but the words turned sour in his mouth. Bryen possessed his own magic; why did fate give him a genie too? As Charles watched the page recede into the forest, he resolved to begin studying magic.
He sold the fishing charms at an exorbitant rate and used the money to buy books of spells. He studied the books at night, poring over the pages in his hut. While he fished, he recited the chants over and over in his mind. He practiced the hand motions. His diligence slowly paid off.
The next time the page came, Charles refused his gift and told him to tell Bryen, “I’ve learned a little magic of my own.” To prove it, he fluttered his hands, muttered a few words, and the page’s tabard changed: Bryen’s elven symbol and rose were replaced by a simple embroidery of a fishing pole. “Show that to my brother. Remind him where he came from.”
Years passed by, and the page came less often.
Charles’ magic increased, until the nearby villagers hailed him as their fisherman-sorcerer. His spells were simple: fishing charms, spells to make heavy boots feel light, weak love potions… exactly the kind of spells that simple townspeople craved, paid well for, and were impressed by.
Yet, Charles was discontent. Every time he looked over the forest at the castle on the horizon, he felt his hard-earned magic dwarfed by the magic that luck had given Bryen.
How had Bryen spent his third wish? Had he spent it? Perhaps, if Charles went to his brother, then Bryen would gift the wish to him…
But Charles was middle-aged now, with a stiffness in his back, and he was set in his ways. He was used to fishing in the morning, trudging to town in the afternoon, and studying his magic books at night. So he did not go to his brother.
One day, the page came again. In fact, it was not the page — it was a new page, but he wore the same tabard and had the same strange coloring: that greenish cast to the skin. His features were a little different: vine-like hair, that curled at the ends; a suppleness in his limbs; and long, long fingers.
The page said, “My lord, your brother, is ill.”
The words took a long time to sink into Charles’ brain. It had been many years since his last communiqué from Bryen, but his brother was half-elf and would not have aged as much or as gracelessly as him. “What ails him?” Charles asked.
“The royal physician does not know, but methinks it is heartsickness.”
Charles laughed derisively. “What could make my brother heartsick? Whatever it is, let him use his last wish to make it better.”
“I do not think he can…” The page suddenly looked abashed. “But, it is not my place to be speaking so. Will you come to the castle?”
“Is he dying?”
“No sir.”
“Then he’s simply calling depression illness in an attempt to manipulate me to come. It won’t work. I have fishing to do and spells to work for the villagers. Tell Bryen he’ll have to do better if he really wants me to come.”
But, before the page left, Charles added, “Bring me news if my brother gets worse.”
No news came for many months, and Charles convinced himself that his brother had never really been sick.
As time passed by, Charles felt his aging bones more and more. He sat on a simple chair in front of his hut at night, and he watched in the distance as the torches lit up along the castle parapets. Ornate and elegant became warm and secure, a particularly enticing combination compared to the hut’s growing chill. Perhaps Charles would join his brother, if a page came again. It would be nice to live in a castle. It would even be nice to see Bryen again.
When the page finally paid another visit, he was harried, hurried, and out of breath. “My lord… your brother… is ill,” he said between huffs of air.
Charles looked at the page strangely, but he said, “It will take a few days for me to tie up my loose ends in town.”
“You will come?!”
“I can find my way alone. I don’t need you to stay and lead me.”
“But you will come?!” The page was relieved when Charles agreed. “Come quickly,” he admonished, but Charles replied, “I will come when I can.”
Since Charles didn’t believe his brother was ill, he felt no sense of urgency. A spell book he’d ordered would arrive with the next caravan to town, and he’d promised to work a few charms for controlling the local shepherd’s unruly sheep. Then, it rained, and he didn’t want to travel in the rain. It was little things that kept him, but he could always make the journey tomorrow.
Then an evening came when the castle didn’t light up with the darkening sky. Charles was afraid. He knew in his heart that he’d missed his chance. He wanted to believe it was another ploy to make him come. But he knew better, and he suspected his brother was dead. If only he had listened to the page…
Though the next day was cold and drizzly, Charles packed his knapsack and began his journey to the castle. He hiked all day, barely stopping to rest. By evening, he arrived at the front gate of the castle, but no one was there to let him in. There was no bell to ring. No guard standing inside, ready to take a message. Just a giant, locked, wrought iron gate.
Charles hollered and rattled his walking stick against the iron crossings, but no one came. Eventually, he seated himself on the dusty ground to one side of the entrance and leaned his back against the rocky wall. He would have to make his own way in. He knew the right spell, but it would take all his concentration, all his strength. And he had been walking all day.
So, he rested awhile, drawing patterns in the dust with his finger. He noticed a cut pine-branch lying beside him, and he used it as a broom to clear away the patterns when he wanted to start anew.
How odd that the branch should be so convenient, when all the trees were cleared for at least twenty feet in front of the castle. Charles looked over and noticed that another branch lay on the other side of the gate. The two of them lay right where he would have expected guards to stand.
As ready as he would be, Charles rose to his feet and began to chant. He trembled his fingers with the words, swirling the air into currents that magnified with the chant. He tensed his body, in physical concentration, until his muscles were wracked with pain. But, the spell worked, and the air flowed around him, pulling him gently up and over the castle wall. He collapsed in a cold sweat as he landed, cursing the weakness of his magic. Surely, a truly great sorcerer could fly without so much difficulty.
Finally inside Bryen’s castle, Charles began a shaky search for his brother or any news of him. He walked the grounds, the halls, and through echoing rooms draped with tapestries. He found no people but everywhere cut flowers and branches on the floor. Finally he made it to the quarters at the top of the keep. These had clearly been Bryen’s. Velvet pillows and silk draperies adorned the bed. Bushels of wilting and drooped flowers filled vases about the room. The furniture was jewel-studded, and the wash-basin could have held a horse. It must have taken many servants to fill it with warmed and sudsy water. These were the quarters of a king. Charles felt a stab of envy, and then his face flushed, realizing he’d been such a fool. Bryen had invited him many times. Well, he was here now.
Charles searched among the vases. It didn’t take long: the vase that had been belched up by the sea stood out among the others like a lame mule among noble steeds. The black paint was corroded by saltwater, and the gilt ornamentation was chipping. Charles grasped it, reverently, and removed the decaying bouquet.
At his touch, the vase seemed to swell. Its gaping black mouth became a gateway to infinity, and the rest of the room skewed around it. Furniture angled towards the vase, and the empty air bulged, though there was nothing there. Space itself took on a luminescent quality. A scent of fresh flowers wafted over Charles, and he heard a voice in his head but not with his ears:
“You have come to learn of my late master?” the voice boomed.
Years ago, when Bryen had found the vase, the genie did not reveal himself so quickly or so easily. Bryen studied the vase with the guidance of his mother’s spirit in the elven burial grove which now lay to the west of the castle’s walls. Bryen had to coax the genie out with a ceremonial offering: five white roses, freshly cut under the light of a full moon.
Charles’ book-learned magic had not the knack of reading a genie’s mind, figuring out what would please him. However, Charles was lucky. He came to the vase with seemingly pure intentions. There was no one else to tell him of his brother’s passing, and he fervently hoped the genie would know how it all befell. The genie could not resist such a natural, heartfelt motive.
“Yes,” Charles answered. “How did Bryen die?”
Charles could hear the silence in the room, even as the genie spoke in his mind: “Quietly, in that bed.” The canopied frame grew in Charles’ perception, and he felt his head turn towards it. It was the genie’s way of gesturing.
As Charles looked upon the empty bed, the genie filled his eyes with a vision. He saw his brother lying under the rumpled coverlet, and a regally attired woman, as fair as a rose, knelt beside him. “That was your brother’s queen.”
Charles asked with a touch of bitterness, “Where is she? She couldn’t have been very faithful to have fled already.”
The genie turned his perception to a single brown-edged rose, cast carelessly on the floor by Bryen’s bed. It had once been red, but the bruise of death covered its former color over. It lay where the queen had knelt.
A new vision filled Charles’ mind: Bryen, as young as Charles remembered him, standing before the newly built castle. Bryen trimmed cuttings from the trees and picked only the most perfect flowers. At the behest of the genie, under order of Bryen’s second wish, the cuttings became soldiers and the flowers maids. Thus was his castle peopled by a court, and that court was bound to him.
The queen-rose was the only bloom taken from the bush that grew over Bryen’s elf-mother’s grave. “Your brother’s choice was short sighted. It was easier to make a queen than find one, but a rose is a rose. She could not bear children. She had no history, no family, no life except for my Lord Bryen. All the court was the same. But, your brother loved them before he realized it, and he found himself ensnared in an unreal world. He hoped you would come and lend it reality, by sharing it.”
Charles was dazed. His brother had truly wasted away, wishing only to see him again. “Why did he not use his third wish to summon me?”
“Then you would have become as unreal as the queen.”
Charles kept running the past through his mind, trying to find a way to rewrite history without changing his part in it. “He could have come to me,” he said. “He could have come himself, instead of sending pages…”
“I think pride runs in your family,” came the genie’s retort.
Truth stings, and Charles’ tentative feelings of regret rolled up and were stowed away behind his umbrage at the truthful charge. “How did Bryen use his third wish? What did he think would save his life better than summoning me?”
“My lord never made a third wish.”
Charles was stunned. How could you have three wishes and never use the third? “Can I claim it?” he asked, greed pressing him, and making it hard to breathe at the thought of being granted a genie’s wish for himself — or, horrible thought, not being granted it.
The genie’s words shattered his hopes: “When my lord died, I used his third wish in his stead to give him a proper burial. His court reverted to their natural form,” the genie summoned a vision of all the finely dressed courtiers suddenly whisping back into nothing but cut branches and falling to the floor, “so there was no one else to perform the funeral.”
“I would have buried him!” Charles exclaimed. It was outrageous to have his wish stolen for something so humble and, yet, so unobjectionable. Even as he raged, Charles knew it would have been wrong for the genie to leave Bryen lying there, decomposing in his bed, as he waited for a brother who might have never come. “Where is he buried?” Charles asked, his voice become small.
“In the castle courtyard, beneath the yearling willow tree.”
“I should go to him.”
“Yes, my master.”
Charles stopped short. “Master?”
“Of course,” the genie affirmed. “When I revealed myself to you, I bound myself to you. You may claim your three wishes whenever you are ready.”
The room reeled around Charles. He felt dizzy, and he couldn’t tell if it was the genie’s doing or the work of his own stomach making summersaults. “Three wishes.” He had hoped, at best, for only one — the one Bryen hadn’t used. Pulling himself together and addressing his ethereal genie, he said, “I will have to think on it.”
Charles left the genie’s vase where he’d found it, and he headed out to the castle courtyard. He took the wilted queen-rose and gathered other former courtiers on his way. When he found the willow sapling, Charles spread the crinkly dry foliage bundled in his arms in front of the simple tombstone that marked his brothers grave. He sat in the grass, and he leaned against the keep wall. The willow was small, but it would grow. It would make an honorable sentinel over Bryen’s eternal sleep.
Charles thought about his brother, and for the first time felt pity for the hard line he’d walked between being elf and being man. Charles had been jealous of Bryen’s magic, but that feeling was gone now that he knew he’d become a greater magician than Bryen had ever been. The magic came easier to Bryen, so what? He didn’t exercise it, practice it, or fine tune it. His magic was only good for fishing charms and culling driftwood from the sea.
Really, it had been harder for Bryen. Charles lived in the hut by the sea because he disliked the idea of living in town. Bryen lived in the hut not by his own preference but because he knew it was a more comfortable distance for the villagers. Among elves, he would have been slow, bumbling, and ungainly. Among humans, he inspired jealousy, exactly as he had inspired jealousy in his own brother.
Charles felt bad for adding to his brother’s hardship. No wonder Bryen had died alone in a castle with only phantasms of his own desire to comfort him. Charles would not make that same mistake. He knew what his first wish would be.
Returned to the top of the castle keep, Charles planted his feet firmly on the floor in preparation for the surreal distortions caused by the genie’s presence. He put his hands to the vase, and he felt his eyes dilate. The room grew swimmy. “I am here,” spoke the genie in his head. “Will you make a wish now?”
“Yes,” said Charles. He measured his words carefully, nervous that he would misspeak or find himself confused by the genie’s perturbing presence. “I do not need to wish for a castle, because I can live here in Bryen’s.”
“True,” the genie agreed.
“What I need, then, is a court.” Charles took a deep breath before committing himself to the following words: “I wish for you to summon all the half-elves in the land to this castle where they will serve me as my court.”
There was a long pause before the genie spoke. “Are you sure?”
Charles was taken aback. He had not expected his wish to be questioned. “Of course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I be? Are there not enough of them? There can’t be too many to live comfortably in the castle. Half-elves aren’t that common.”
Charles heard a soft murmur of numbers pass through his ears, as if the genie were counting all the half-elves in the land. Or, perhaps, the genie was merely counting to keep his temper. When he finally spoke in his usual booming voice, he said, “You are right that the number of half-elves is in accordance with the number of courtiers needed to fill your castle. But has it occurred to you that they might not be… pleased by your summoning them away from their own homes and lives?”
“Are you implying that I’m bringing them here to be my slaves?” There was genuine outrage in Charles’ voice. From whence he’d summoned it, he hardly knew. “There is no place for half-elves! And, this is a nice castle,” Charles looked about appreciatively. It really was a nice castle. And it was his. “They would like it here, all of them together.”
“I was only reacting to the wording of your wish, my lord. Perhaps you meant to wish for me to invite all the half-elves in the land to join you in your court.”
The genie and Charles both knew that hardly a single half-elf would respond to such an invitation. The genie hoped it could be a learning experience for Charles; one wish was a small price to pay for an important lesson. Charles, however, thought the genie was simply trying to cheat him. The half-elves would understand his true intentions when they got here.
“I’ve made my wish,” Charles said, his voice icy. “Now it is up to you to make it true.”
The genie’s voice did not speak. But as the luminescence drained from the room, and the furniture squared back to its original shapes, Charles knew it had been done.
There were a few quiet days before the half-elves began to arrive. Needless to say, some of them must have had long journeys between them and the castle. Charles used these days of respite to familiarize himself with the castle. He found an armory with which to outfit his imminent troops. He found well-stocked supply rooms. He even found a treasury with enough coin of the land to buy any supplies that were missing. When the first half-elf arrived, Charles greeted him heartily and gave him his first task: to take enough coinage and travel to the nearest town to buy chickens and livestock. The castle barns had been empty.
The half-elf, who reminded Charles a little of his brother, took the bag of gold and silver with a grim face. He bowed deeply to Charles, and he offered no resistance to Charles’ new lordship over him. However, there was no joy in his demeanor. The same was true of all the half-elves as they arrived.
The only open displeasure was expressed by the few elf mothers who came bearing their half-elf babes, too young to run away and travel alone. Charles explained to the full-elf mothers that they need not stay; there were plenty of half-elf women to look after the babes. But every one of the elf mothers took exception to the idea of her babe resting in another woman’s arms. The elf mothers stayed, and Charles set them up as the finest ladies in his court. He sensed that the deference did not fully appease them.
In fact, Charles was uneasy with the half-elves’ easy submission. He had not told them about the genie, but he heard murmurings among the court. Were they merely biding their time?
Once all the half-elves were arrived and settled into their new home, Charles called for a grand celebration. A feast was held in one of the castle’s great halls. All of the court attended, although some of the half-elves mainly served rather joining in the revelries. Well, there must be some servants, and Charles reassured himself that they were still lucky to be a part of such a grand court.
The funny thing was: many of the half-elves were happy. They liked living among their own kind, gathered into a single castle. Before, they had been spread so thinly among elves and men that many of them had never seen another half-elf before. Yet, they asked each other, why should a man rule over the kingdom of the half-elves?
The more wine was poured, the more the question rang out. Why should a man rule over the kingdom of the half-elves?
Of course, none of Charles’ subjects put the question directly to him. They whispered it behind his back and in the corners of the hall or while leaning close to a partner on the dance floor. But Charles could see them whispering, and he had itchy ears. So, he muttered a spell and magnified their whispers to his ears.
As he sat in his throne, overlooking the revelry and overhearing the rumors, he pulled upon his gray beard. He was startled by what he heard. His subjects not only knew about the genie, they were hatching plans to find him and claim him as their own.
Charles slipped away from the revelry and made it to his rooms at the top of the castle keep as quickly as he could. Behind the cracked open door, Charles heard noises, movement, a rustling. Was he too late? He flung open the door to find the half elf who reminded him of his brother jumbling the silk and velvet pillows on his bed.
“Are you lost?” Charles demanded in his most kingly voice.
The half-elf looked at him guiltily but did not deign to answer. Charles gruffly sent him on his way with stern orders to stay out of these rooms. Inwardly, Charles breathed a sigh of relief. He grabbed the vase. It had been sitting in plain sight.
Spinning, vertigo, and a blurring in his eyes: Charles experienced a multitude of unpleasant sensations as the genie’s presence filled the room. The furniture rocked as if it floated in the ocean rather than sitting firmly on the floor.
“Have you come to make a second wish?” the genie asked.
“I have,” Charles said, for he had a plan to protect the genie against thievery better than any hiding place could. “But, first, I must ask you a question. Can you work magic for yourself? Without the command of a master?”
“No,” the genie answered.
Charles was relieved, but then he had a second thought. “What about burying Bryen? No one commanded that.”
“True,” the genie answered. “I could only do that because it was on your brother’s behalf. If he had used all his wishes, or if burying him had gone against his inherent desires, I could not have done it.”
“Excellent,” Charles responded. He looked for more loopholes in his plan and asked, “Can you serve more than one lord at a time?”
The room fluttered as if the genie was shifting his weight. “I see that your first wish is not going well,” he said. “You are worried one of your servants will try to steal me?”
Charles bristled but answered truthfully.
“If one of your servants successfully claims me, then I will be bound to him, and your remaining wishes will become forfeit.”
“Then here is my second wish… that I will be your last master.” There was triumph in Charles’ voice.
“If I grant your wish,” the genie said, wheedling, “then your third wish will be the last magic I ever perform.”
“Grant it,” Charles commanded.
“It will also be the last magic I ever perform for you.”
Charles did not waver — his third wish would be his last anyway –, and the genie granted his second wish.
Nonetheless, the genie’s gibe did rankle Charles. The genie’s magic was much more powerful than his, and now he was down to one wish. He did not know what the future would hold or when he might need the genie’s magic the most. Yet, he would not be taunted into saving his third wish as Bryen had. If he could not rely on the genie’s magic for the rest of his life, he would have to rely on his own.
“I will make my third wish now too,” Charles said. He drew a deep breath. “I wish to be the most powerful sorcerer in the world.”
There was a long pause. The furniture seemed to dance as the genie silently measured out Charles words. The mouth of the vase looked blacker and deeper than ever as the genie pondered a world under Charles’ magical thumb. Phantoms of visions danced in the depth of the vase — soldiers on warhorses, elves huddling in concentration camps, a great conflagration — all horrible images.
Charles might start with good intentions, but the genie foresaw a slow hardening of Charles’ heart as future good deeds went wrong. With each magical work that backfired, Charles would grow more indignant that the world was not grateful for his magic. He would become callous, tyrannous, and dangerous. The genie could not let it happen, but he was bound by the words of Charles’ wish. Thus, his deliberation eventually ended, as it had to, in acquiescence.
The genie’s voice boomed a single word, “Granted,” and Charles laughed out loud in elation.
He took the vase and hurried down to begin his new reign. The dancing was stopped, and there was a murmur in the great hall before Charles arrived. It seemed the half-elves had sensed the change in the balance of magical power in their world already. Charles stepped up to his throne and held the vase above his head. “Here is the genie you tried to steal from me!” he cried. “But, you will not be able to steal him now.” Charles set the vase upon his throne and began chanting an explosive spell whose execution had always eluded him before. He tossed the words lightly off his lips; simple charms like these would be easy for him now.
When Charles’ chanting was done, there was a slight hum in the air. The vase wobbled a little and toppled over on its side, rolling about the broad seat of the throne.
Charles’ chewed his lower lip in consternation, and his cheeks colored. The embarrassment soon passed, for he realized the murmuring throng wasn’t even watching him. The eyes of the half-elves were all turned toward one of the full elf mothers who had fallen into a swoon.
“Gone! All gone!” she cried. The half-elves pressed around her, offering comfort, waving smelling salts under her nose. None of it did any good. She pressed her hands to her head, then passed them over her body, as if her limbs had become foreign to her, crying, “I can feel it draining out of me!”
“What have you done?!” a handsome, young half-elf turned to Charles, accusing him with his voice and a pointed finger.
“Nothing,” Charles faltered. Despite his throne beside him, and the crown on his brow, Charles had never felt less kingly. The half-elf’s eyes burned into him. “I made my last two wishes. That’s all.”
Scorn filled the half-elf’s voice: “What did you wish?”
Charles pulled the emerald-studded crown from his brow as he answered.
The half-elf laughed derisively in response. “And you say you’ve done nothing?”
Charles held the crown in his two hands before him. He was confused, and he felt old. “I do not understand,” he said, but the half-elves were no longer interested in sparing time or attention for him. They were caught up in their own miseries and wailings. Their kind would die from the world in only a few generations — elves would become as ordinary and un-magical as men. The most talented of them already felt the loss in their powers.
Since the genie could not refuse Charles’ wish, he had followed it to the word — but not the spirit. Charles was not a whit more powerful than before making his third wish, but there was no one more powerful than him.
It was as if the genie had reached beneath the mountains and the forests of the world and pulled out a giant plug. Swirling downward, all of the world’s magic had begun draining away.
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