Magician’s End. Raymond E. Feist

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      After a moment, Kulgan said, ‘Nothing.’ He looked sad. ‘It’s nothing.’

      ‘What?’ asked Pug. ‘You don’t look as if it’s nothing.’

      ‘It’s just an old man’s imagination, but I thought I heard my name called, from far away.’ He let his voice drop. ‘I thought it was Meecham. Of all those I’ve left behind …’ His voice fell to silence.

      ‘You were together a very long time,’ Pug said quietly.

      ‘More than forty years.’ He looked at Pug. ‘What became of him after I died?’

      Pug tried to be matter-of-fact. ‘He left Stardock. We never had word of him again. I assumed the memories were just too painful.’

      Kulgan nodded. ‘That was so like him. I always joked he’d have to die first, because I’d be reasonable about it, but he’d go off and crawl into a cave like a wounded bear and wait to die.’

      ‘Perhaps nothing so grim,’ said Pug, suddenly feeling guilty for not having done more to locate Kulgan’s companion. He was a franklin, a free man in service, but over the years they had become so much more than master and servant, forging a deeper bond than most Pug had seen. Pug had thought at the time that if it was Meecham’s wish to leave, it wasn’t Pug’s place to stop him. Yet now, all these years later, he wondered if he hadn’t had a duty to Kulgan’s memory at least to keep a watch over the man.

      He glanced over and saw Kulgan’s expression and felt, not for the first time, that his old teacher could read his mind. ‘Perhaps nothing so grim,’ he repeated softly.

      Kulgan nodded. ‘Let’s move on,’ he said in flat tones.

      The silence between them highlighted the deep and oddly conflicted emotions Pug had felt since encountering Kulgan. Since his first confrontation with the demon Jakan, ending with Pug lingering at the point of death, he had been cursed with a prophecy, that he would die in futility, after having seen all he loved lost. During the Riftwar he had lost his boyhood friend, Squire Roland, killed by raiders as he tried to protect a herd of cattle. He hadn’t learned of his death until his return from Kelewan, after a dozen years of war were ended.

      Since then he had lost the two women he had loved most in the world, and the appearance of the demon Child in the guise of Miranda had reopened that wound as if it were fresh. Pug’s ability to move forward with the actions necessary to preserve his world only masked the pain that echoed from years gone by. As it had been with the three children he had outlived. No one, save perhaps his son Magnus, would ever see a hint of the pain Pug bore every day.

      Kulgan’s death, at least, had been a natural consequence of a mortal’s span. And he had died surrounded by those who loved him; yet now, finding himself in the presence of his old mentor, Pug again revisited that loss.

      Glancing around, he realized that the beautiful vista beyond the meadow, the magnificent range of mountains above, were all indifferent reminders of how fleeting life could be and how indifferent the universe was to a single life. Pug felt diminished.

      He stopped. ‘Kulgan, I think I understand.’

      Kulgan stopped and said, ‘What, Pug?’

      ‘Perspective,’ said Pug softly. ‘This world is vast, and it is but a tiny part of a much larger universe. I feel humbled.’

      Kulgan nodded. He put his hand on his former student’s shoulder. ‘Greatness, smallness, these are relative concepts, Pug, and it is important to remember that. But this doesn’t change the fundamental reality that what stands before you is a challenge that seems trivial compared to the vastness of which you speak.’ He narrowed one eye in an expression Pug had seen a thousand times before, one that showed he was coming to the point of a lesson. ‘But though the task before you seems trivial, the consequences may be anything but trivial in reality.’ He nodded. ‘More than once I’ve taught you the lesson of the keystone, the one brick that when removed can bring the entire building down upon your head.’

      He pulled out his unlit pipe, a long churchwarden in style, and tapped Pug on the chest with it. ‘Just be outside the building when you do it,’ he laughed.

      Pug tried to enjoy the mirthful tone, but inside he felt darkness gathering. ‘What I’ve lost sight of is the fundamentals of magic.’

      ‘Probably not,’ suggested Kulgan, ‘but rather the simple roots of even the most complex causality; you look at a chaotic outcome, well, it’s easy to overlook that it may have begun with the simplest cause. A stray spark from this pipe I hold could eventually lead to a conflagration that would destroy this entire forest,’ he added with a sweep of his hand.

      ‘And amid the chaos,’ Kulgan continued, ‘it’s also easy to lose sight of multiple causes of an event. Consider a storm that lashes the Far Coast. You know from the time you were a boy that often the worst storms are not a single storm, but a convergence of two, one coming down the coast from the frigid north, the other sweeping in from the south-west where it’s warm and turbulent.’ He left his pipe dangling from his mouth as he linked both hands together, fingers intertwined, and twisted his hands in a wrenching motion. ‘Together they combine to be so much more than each was separately.’ He took his pipe from his mouth and tapped Pug on the shoulder with the tip. ‘Which then leads us back to where each storm comes from …’

      ‘I’m still not seeing this,’ said Pug. ‘But I’m getting a sense of it.’

      ‘It’s about the fundamentals of things, Pug. What is the nature of a storm?’

      ‘I’m not sure what you’re asking. It’s a storm?’

      Kulgan sighed. ‘It’s all that time on Kelewan. Had you the knack for what those Tsurani call the Lesser Path of Magic …’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, had you studied weather magic—’

      Pug remembered a long conversation he had had with an elven Spellweaver named Temar. ‘Equipoise,’ said Pug, and Kulgan stopped talking.

      A slow smile spread out over the old teacher’s face. ‘Equipoise? Go on.’

      ‘Storms are the most extreme examples of nature seeking balance, equipoise. There’s too much energy built up in one place and it seeks …’ He shook his head. ‘The sphere! All different energy states. The difficulty of moving from one to another because of that. The magic needed to survive in higher states or lower states.’

      Kulgan nodded. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about specifically, but if I’m guessing right, you’re on the right path.’

      ‘If you come to a higher energy state place, such as this one—’ Pug waved his hand in a circle, indicating the entire world, ‘you need protection so that you don’t absorb energy too fast, don’t burn up from it. If you go to a lower state world, the entire environment sucks the energy right out of you, like a spider sucks an insect dry in its web.’

      ‘There you have it, then,’ said Kulgan. ‘Your first clue, I expect. This all has something to do with the energy states of the sphere … whatever that may be.’

      ‘Ah, Kulgan,’ said Pug with a sad laugh. ‘You have no idea—’

      Kulgan interrupted. ‘Did you hear that?’

      ‘What?’

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