author : Lyndon Hardy

Alodar was a mere apprentice thaumaturge, learning the least of the five arts of magic. As such, he had ho right to aspire to the hand of the fair lady, Queen Vendora, not even when he saved her during the demon-inspired siege of her frontier castle. But aspire he did.

His quest forced him from one exacting branch of magic to another, with the rewards he earned always going to others. Finally, only the branch of wizardry remained—the great, almost lost art of controlling demons.

It was then he learned of the ancient plot behind his rise—and faced the greatest danger any man could dare!

The laws of the five magics were being set aside. First to go were those of the high art of sorcery. Then true magic, upon which the commerce of all Arcadia depended, had been voided. And now even thaumaturgy, the engineering knowledge of the world, was under attack.

Jemidon had traced the trouble to Melizar, the strange, cold being who had seemingly appeared from nowhere. Somehow, Melizar could alter or negate the laws that had always existed by using a mysterious metagamic – something which only he understood.

If the world was to be saved from Melizar, it was up to Jemidon to save it. But what could he do? He was only an outcast, unable to perform even the simplest ritual without ruining everything.

The worst of the mess they were in, Kestrel knew, was that it was all his own fault. It all began when he’d tried to cheat the lady wizard Phoebe with a load of worthless wood. When she insisted on testing his anvilwood sample, the demon Astron had burst through the fire with some wild tale of a mission to the archmage to save his master from a dread enemy. Then Kestrel had decided, with Astron’s naive help, to bilk the other wizards of their gold. So they were pursued by eleven raging wizards and uncounted imps.

Drifting across the border in a lead balloon brought them to the archmage Alodar. But instead of calling off the pursuit, he had sent them into the perilous realm of the fey. And now they were being shuttled madly across universe after universe, each more dangerous than the last. It wasn’t fair, Kestrel thought, even if it was his fault!

He placed his hands on Briana’s shoulders, paused for a moment more, and then said softly, “The answer is no.”

“You can’t do that!” Briana yelled back. “Even the Archimage has limits to his power. You admitted as much yourself. You cannot order me around like some serf of an Arcadian lord.”

“I do not order you to stay because I am the Archimage,” Alodar said. “I do so because I am your father.”