That night he dreamed.
A duel between magicians makes a fascinating tale. Such tales are common—and rarely true. The winner of such a duel is not likely to give up trade secrets. The loser is dead, at the very least.
Novices in sorcery are constantly amazed at how much preparation goes into a duel, and how little action. The duel with the Hill Magician started with a dream, the night after the Warlock’s speech made that duel inevitable. It ended thirty years later.
….
And in his sleep he concentrated, memorizing details. A narrow path curled up the hillside. Facts twisted, dreamlike. There was a companion with him; or there wasn’t. The Warlock lived until he passed through the gate; or he died at the gate, in agony, with great ivory teeth grinding together through his rib cage.
He woke himself up trying to sort it out.
The shadowy companion was necessary, at least as far as the gate. Beyond the enemy’s gate he could see nothing. A Warlock’s Wheel must have been used there, to block his magic so thoroughly.
Poetic justice?
He spent three full days working spells to block the Hill Magician’s prescient sense. During that time his own sleep was dreamless. The other’s magic was as effective as his own.
Larry Niven’s novelette “What Good is a Glass Dagger” isn’t generally super well remembered; to the extent people think of it, it’s in relation to the much more famous sequel, “The Magic Goes Away”, which used magic as a metaphor for the oil and energy crisis.
(It’s also one of the first stories to use the word “mana” to refer to magic power; it’s still exotic enough that Niven italicizes it in the text. It’s not the first ever, but I believe it’s the actual source that RPGs drew on when they used that word.)
But this passage has always stuck with me. Wizard duels aren’t flashy explosions of power. They’re very careful maneuvering, with decades of prescience, and the winner is the one who best manages that careful maneuvering around their opponent’s blind spots while creating blind spots for their opponent.
(There’s a truism in D&D3.x that a level 13 wizard, with time to prepare, can kill anything that isn’t preparing in return. And I feel like this story represents that concept really well, though the details are all different.)
Tags:
#storytime #recs #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Brinens and Things 