Ah, the marketplace! The exotic goods from distant lands! The throngs of humanity in all its multifarious modes! The redolent aromas of rare spices and delicacies from a thousand nations!

Yeah, as if they’d have anything like that in the Tin Isles. No, this marketplace was five old women selling tired cabbages to eight equally old women, and the only aromas were of pig dung, wet cabbage, and rat-gnawed old bread. So you can understand that the other Lemurian kind of stood out.

She walked purposefully toward Iason and me. Strode, even. She had a businesslike air abound her, and a touch of a sneer which, for some reason, seemed more directed at me than at the schlubs surrounding us. But I didn’t care; she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Not really, but come on! She was CLEAN, and her hair was COMBED! Kind of short, actually, about chin-length, but clean and combed and neatly cut, not the masses of tangles the locals carried around. And her clothes! A neat black tunic and pants, finely woven, not the big burlap sacks local women called “dresses.”

I barely registered her face or expression; all I saw was an incoming opportunity for an actual civilized conversation.

“Librarian Lemma?” the woman asked. “I am Agent Lia Tanat; you know who I represent. Please come with me.”

Well... fuck.

Five minutes later, we were at a table in a largely deserted tavern, being eyed suspiciously by the keeper. Mugs of the local beer sat untouched in front of us, quietly eating away at their cheap tin-and-leather tankards.

“Librarian Lemma,” Lia said in Lemurian. “We have a bit of a problem, it seems.”

“Yeah?” I asked. I tried to keep an aura of cool; what did the Enforcers want with me?

“Yeah,” she said. “Your geas; rather, the lack thereof.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. I chuckled weakly.

“You know the rules, Librarian. Nobody leaves Lemuria without a geas preventing them from revealing certain secrets. And nobody leaves on a government mission without... extra protections.”

I should have seen this coming. The contract I signed to complete the geas was probably designed to signal somehow if the geas stopped working, or maybe Archmage boKorell was sensitive enough to feel when I broke his spell. After some of the stories I’ve heard, I wouldn’t put it past him.

“It’s not my fault—” I protested, but Lia cut me off.

“We know. However, the secrecy of your mission has been compromised. The southern Tin Islands region is full of rumors of you.”

I grinned. So, I was starting to build a reputation, huh? Awesome. “What sort of rumors?”

“They tell of a skinny little girl who hunts for magic books, assassinating nobles, destroying inns, terrorizing townsfolk, and setting people on fire everywhere she goes. As you can understand, we are concerned about the potential for... embarrassment.”

“Hey, I only did those things once! Well, okay, I may have destroyed two inns, but the other things I only did once.”

“You’ve set four people on fire, Lemma,” said Iason in Tin Islander. “Since I met you, I don’t know how many before.”

“Oh, it was three, tops. And since when do you know Lemurian?”

“I’ve picked up a little here and there over the years,” said Iason. “You never spoke it, so there was never a reason for me to try to.”

“Can we stay focused, please?” asked Lia.

“Right,” I said. “Look, I only assassinated one little nobleman, and technically that was Iason, not me.”

“Not what I meant,” said Lia. “Listen, you’re doing overall acceptable work. But you can’t be allowed to continue on your own. There’s too much risk to Lemuria.”

“So what, I get a watchdog?”

“Woof woof,” said Lia.

Iason looked back and forth between us. “Uh... I’m not sure I caught all of that... is Lia giving you her puppy?”

Well, this trip just got ten times more obnoxious.

Outside town, Lia, Iason, and I trudged through the chalk hills. “We’ve identified a lead on a book,” Lia said. “A group of druids have a sacred circle in these hills.” We were speaking in Tin Islander again, for Iason’s benefit.

“More like fifty bazillion groups of druids have a hellajillion stone circles,” I muttered.

“Quite,” said Lia. “But strange things have been happening at this particular circle for the last couple of years. Strange disappearances, unexplained magical phenomena—nothing with any particular pattern to it, just weirdness.”

“Weirdness like invaders from the vampire dimension, or weirdness like flying pudding?” I asked.

“Weirdness like vampire pudding.”

“Oh.”

“If it’s a book, shouldn’t Lemma be able to sense it?” Iason asked. So he does pay attention!

“Well, it could have been shielded somehow, but if it’s powerful enough to be creating the sort of effects Lia is talking about, I doubt a bunch of druids would be strong enough. Or else...”

“Yeah,” said Lia.

“Shit,” I said. “It’s gone feral?”

Magic is powerful stuff. It’s been here a lot longer than we have, and it’s gotten into everything. Magic is like a big complicated mass of threads, stretching around and through the whole Earth and everything and everyone on it. If you know the different kinds of threads, you can weave them into patterns, and so impose your will on the world. That’s High Magic.

But magic is also like a living thing. The threads interact, they twist and twine together, break apart and reassemble. Sometimes a spell will just pop out of the blue; not an organized, purposeful spell, but a tangled mass of writhing, random magic. Some people claim to be able to use it, or don’t understand what they’re playing with; they always end up dancing to the magic’s tune in the end. That’s Wild Magic.

High Magic is the magic of priests and sorcerers, of gods and demons; it’s human magic. It is strongest in organized, civilized places: libraries, temples, cities, orchards. It is, of course, the kind I use.

Wild Magic is the magic of witches and druids, of monsters and fairies; it’s natural magic. It is strongest in wild, chaotic places: mountaintops, dark forests, swamps, the ocean. It’s dangerous, kids! If someone you know is playing with Wild Magic, get away and tell an adult, okay?

Sometimes, if you leave a lot of powerful magic lying around, like say in an unattended spellbook, the separate spells start blending at the edges. A strong, old spellbook is already a little bit alive, a little bit aware of its surroundings, but as the spells start mating and fighting and multiplying and eating each other, it gets more alive and more aware. Eventually, it stops being anything recognizable as human magic, and turns into a mass of Wild Magic: it goes feral.

So that’s my amazing magic lecture for today. Back to the story!

By sunset, we stood at the bottom of a hill. At the top was a stone circle, and based on the flickering firelight and the sound of eerie music filtering down, there was either a really, really bad party or some kind of dark occult ritual going on up there.

“So, how do we get the book?” I asked.

“Like this,” said Lia. She charged up the hill toward the stone circle.

Iason and I stared after her for a moment. I shrugged. “Well, let’s have some fun. Charge!”

I raced up the hill, Iason right behind me. At the top, I paused to catch my breath, and Iason ran right past. Ahead I could see Lia giving one hell of a display of acrobatics, as she lightly flipped, kicked, and spun her way through a battle with three cudgel-wielding druids. In the center of the circle was a raised stone altar, like a lectern, with a book lying open on it. A young woman in white robes stood in front of it, reading intently, apparently not noticing the melee going on around her.

A couple of druids and one druidess noticed me. The men had cudgels, and the woman had a nasty-looking knife, all barbs and unnecessary curves, the sort of thing designed to shred on the way out whatever it didn’t slice on the way in.

Over their heads, I could see Lia continuing her athletics, while Iason picked up a druid and just threw him across the circle. I was kind of surprised. Not surprised that Iason was brute-forcing his way through, that’s what he does when he’s not taking the fight seriously, but that Lia was fighting physically, too.

Oh, right, the angry druids. No biggie, I just mixed some fire and wind magic together to create a wave of fire that knocked them off their feet and started their clothes burning. What can I say? I’m a fan of the classics.

I ran into the center of the circle, where that girl was still reading. I pushed her aside and reached for the book, but gasped when I saw what was written there.

Lia stepped up beside me. “What is it?”

I shook my head and scooped up the book. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

We ran for it. Unfortunately, it was already night, so we found a reasonable-looking copse and camped out. I fell asleep pretty quickly.

And I dreamed...

I opened the book to the first page. It had no title, no section headings or chapters. But the first sentence was exactly what I expected, what I feared, what I hoped for, the single sentence I read in the circle: This is the story of how Lemma finally became a slave.

“Finally?” I repeated aloud. What did that mean? I read on. The Lemma in the book was almost exactly likely, at least in looks and personal history. But she wasn’t anything like me in personality. This girl was violent, brash, and impulsive, full of self-doubt and arrogance, and she’d never really had a place to call home. One day, someone wanted her bad enough to try to claim her, to keep her, to make her his property, and she thought she’d finally found where she belonged.

But the man who took her was a monster, and in the end she went free. Free to make mistakes, to doubt herself, to be alone.

Nothing like me at all. I mean, she didn’t even explode anyone!

As I read the story it got sadder and sadder, Lemma cursed to a long and lonely life of making her own decisions by herself. But there was still hope for me—her, I mean. There was still someone who could make her a slave...

The dream shifted. I stood in darkness, words floating and shifting all around me. Lia stood in front of me, naked, the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “Kneel,” she commanded.

I could say no. I could choose not to do as she said. But I’m nothing like the Lemma in the story! I’m not! I’m not lonely. I’m not going to spend my life cursed to lonely freedom.

A shiver of excitement ran through me as I knelt.

“Strip,” said Lia.

Oh, gods. I could feel myself getting wet. I pulled off my clothes as quickly as I could, feeling so sexy as I obeyed.

“You love to obey,” said Lia.

I nodded frantically, so turned on I could barely stand it.

“Play with your breasts.”

My nipples were already hard enough to cut diamonds. I ran my hands over my breasts, closing my eyes tightly, gasping and whimpering. I couldn’t think of anything but how badly I wanted to cum. No doubts, no questions, just total focus.

“Cum,” Lia ordered, and I did. I screamed, I writhed, I collapsed to the ground at her feet.

When it was finally over, when I was done shuddering and moaning, I whimpered, “Please...”

“Please what, slave?” asked Lia imperiously, and I nearly came again.

“Please... command me...”

Lia smiled. “Swear to obey me.”

“I swear!”

“Say I’m your mistress.”

“I’m your slave, mistress!” I gasped, cumming a second time.

“Worship me.”

“You are my absolute goddess!”

Lia laughed. “You are the first, Lemma. The entire world will worship me soon.”

I nodded emphatically. “I’ll do anything to make that happen.”

And I did. We strode across the world, burning and conquering. Mistress built an army of slaves, a nation, an empire. Lia became the Goddess-Empress of Lemuria, and then the world, and I sat at her feet, her most loyal servant, obedient to the core. Eventually, there was almost nothing left of Lemma. There was only the adoring slave, kneeling before her laughing mistress.

Almost nothing left.

“Are you done yet?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” snapped Lia.

“You really think any of this is real? It’s a dream. A story in a book.”

“Silence, slave!” she snapped.

“I’m not your slave,” I said. “You’re not a goddess-empress. That’s just the book figuring you out, what you want and need, showing you what you can get in exchange for serving it.”

Lia shook her head. “That’s not—I can’t...”

“I don’t belong to you,” I said, and smiled. “I belong to the book. And so do you.”

Slowly, Lia slid from her throne, the crowns of a hundred kingdoms tumbling from her head. Her clothes disintegrated as she fell, until at last we knelt, naked, facing each other. “I... I belong to the book,” she said.

“We belong to the book,” I answered, smiling, infinitely happy.

“We belong to the book.” She smiled back.

I closed my eyes and opened them again. Lia and I stood in the center of the stone circle, staring at the last page of the book. I closed it, picked it up, and turned to see Iason knocking out the last druid. Lia and I looked at each other, nodded and smiled. The book would be pleased.

I walked to Iason and opened the book in front of his eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, he took it from me and looked down at it, his eyes furrowing as he scanned the lines of text.

“It is only a matter of minutes, now,” Lia said.

“In a moment he will belong to the book, too,” I answered. It felt so good to please the book!

“Huh,” said Iason. Then he threw the book in the air. I heard a scream, mine, Lia’s, or both, I don’t know. Then Iason’s sword sliced whistling through the air, one powerful swing that intercepted the book and burst it into a flurry of pages.

There was a moment of strained silence, and then lightning speared down from the clear night sky as the universe tore open shrieking, the death of a potent, living spell.

I picked myself gingerly out of the wreckage of the stone circle, wincing. Bruises, cuts, nothing seemed to be broken. “Everybody okay?” I called out.

Iason stood in a shower of chalk dust and gravel. “I’m fine. Where’s Lia?”

We searched for a while, found a couple of druids, but there was no sign of Lia, alive or dead. She was just gone, as if she’d never been.

“This was a weird one,” said Iason as we walked down the hill. “You think Lia was connected to the book somehow? Did destroying it vanish her?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I think I would be able to sense something like that.” I walked quietly for a while, thinking. “Somehow I doubt that’s the last we’ve seen of her.”

And boy was I ever right—but I wasn’t going to find out how right I was for a while yet.

I got a hint about five minutes later, though, when Lia melted out of a stand of trees, giving me at least three quarters of a heart attack.

“I’ve finished evaluating you, Librarian Lemma,” she said. “You pass, but we’ll be watching.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I began pulling together threads, quietly, motionlessly shaping my spell. “What happened to worrying that I’d be an embarrassment?”

“Yeah,” said Iason. “I don’t think this time around really proved she’s not going to be one.”

You can stop helping, dude. It’s fine. Really!

“Okay,” she said. “Look, I just nearly got enslaved by a pile of paper, parchment, and ink, and then there was an explosion. I want to get out of this with my skin, so I’m going to report you’re fine. I figure you’ll die before you embarass us.”

Oh, it’s on now, bitch! I brought my arm around in a throwing motion, as if hurling a spell directly at her. A fireball erupted from my hand, and Lia leapt to the side, while my spell shot off at right angles and dissipated harmlessly, just like I told it to.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Thought so. You can’t see magic. You’re no Enforcer at all. You’re not even a mage!”

“Hmph,” said Lia. “How’d you figure it out?”

“I’ve suspected for a while,” I answered. “But it was only confirmed a moment ago. A real Enforcer would be under a geas, just like I was. You couldn’t simply choose to cheat on your mission.”

“Damn,” she said.

“So, what are you?” I asked. “You’re definitely Lemurian, and you know a lot about this library. It’s obvious, really: You’re working for whoever stole the books.”

“You’re not as dumb as you look,” Lia said. Her hands blurred, and suddenly Iason’s sword, still in its scabbard, was in front of my face. I irritably shoved it out of my way, but it was too late; Lia had already vanished into the trees.

“Dammit, Iason! Why did you—oh.” I stopped as I looked at the other side of the scabbard, half a dozen slender, sharp needles still quivering, buried an inch deep in its leather.

“Wow,” I said. “Um, thanks. That’s twice today.”

Iason shrugged.

I looked at the trees where Lia had vanished. “This whole last couple of days...” I began.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Totally sucky,” I said. “On to the next town?”

“I guess so,” he said.

So off we went.