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Chapter I: Scraps of Paper
Just a bit over two dozen days into the eighth year of his apprenticeship, Ardeus was visited in his room by the master of the guildhall that he had gotten used to calling home. He knew because he heard the sound of said master’s approach.
But he kept watching out of the window, into the gardens and woods that surrounded the guildhall, and glanced occasional across the calm lake in the middle of it all. A slow-rising sun added a glistening reddish-golden sheen to the normally dark waters, and songbirds chirruped in the dawning light of a new day. High above, the sky was stained with red, gold and purplish-blue, with not too many clouds to be seen. The ones that could be seen were shaped as if to add to the almost picturesque nature of the scene.
Ardeus could already see the distant forms of guildhall servants collecting water from the lake into buckets before breakfast. Also he could see a few of his own fellow apprentices, all laughing and socialising amongst one another in the gardens. He was himself only one out of two dozen apprentices who learned at the guild, and he could see at least eight of his peers out there.
It was going to be over for at least five of the twenty-four. At the end of the coming week, as it happened every year, those whose apprenticeships were considered complete would be graduating and becoming fully-fledged guild members. It was a thought both chilling and exciting. Ardeus himself had been indicated as a possible member for graduation. Another result of that was that there were a handful of young new faces seen about the guild, all of them to replace those who were leaving.
He’d already heard the sound of footsteps, and the clicking of a staff, upon the flagstones approaching his bedroom. But he was only finally roused to attention when he heard a series of hard knocks on the door. Ardeus had almost leapt out of his seat in surprise when he heard them echo about the room, but he managed to keep his composure.
‘Come on in, the door’s unlocked,’ he called out. As an afterthought, he stood up straight and began tidying his robe to make sure that he was presentable.
With a creak of rusty hinges, the door swung open and he was greeted by the sight of a tall man of advanced years. The master of the guild, Drossyn Mobek, was gaunt and pale; so skeletal that it looked as if his skin had been tightened around his bones. In one gnarled hand he clutched a worn black staff, leaning heavily upon it. The effect of his thinness was somewhat lessened by the hooded black robes he wore, and his dark beard, but what features Ardeus could see were thin enough to be disconcerting.
But possibly even more disconcerting was that the guild-master had a friendly smile on his face as he cheerfully said, ‘Good morning, young student. I trust I am not disturbing you?’
‘Not at all, Master Drossyn,’ Ardeus said, bowing out of a sense of courtesy.
‘Ah, excellent!’ he said, chuckling somewhat and taking a few limping steps into the room and then glancing about at the sparse living space. All Ardeus had in his room was a bed, a stool by the window and a desk upon which there was a short stack of books. ‘Then it seems that I have something to discuss with you, if you will grant me the time.’
‘I’m honoured, Master Drossyn,’ the apprentice said, mostly unsure of what to make of the guild-master’s presence. Drossyn Mobek was not known for making habitual appearances to students of the guild. ‘What is it you wish to discuss with me?’
‘Well, it is a delicate matter that I shall discuss with you later on; in private,’ Drossyn said quietly, his face becoming a little more graven. ‘But I must ask for a moment why you did not open your door like the other students would have?’
Ardeus looked puzzled for a moment, confused by the question. ‘What do you mean, sir?’
Drossyn turned and pointed his fingertip at the door and then murmured something under his breath. A sudden flash of bright light leapt forth from his fingertip. The door slammed shut loudly, seemingly doing so of its own accord. Drossyn waved his finger to one side, and then it opened itself wide once again with a piercing creak.
‘Why did you not open the door using that method?’ he asked again. ‘We teach you magic here so that you might use it. Any other student would have used magic; why did you not?’
Ardeus gulped. Was the old man toying with him? It took him a while to reply. ‘I just think that it’s a waste, sir.’
Drossyn treated him with an odd expression. ‘ “A waste”?’ he repeated. ‘Would you so mind indulging an old wizard and elaborating on your opinion?’
‘A waste of magical energy, I mean,’ said Ardeus. ‘Why use a spell for something mundane when you could save the energy for something a little more important?’
‘Excellent!’ the old wizard laughed. ‘It is just such a pity that most students don’t realise it earlier; no matter how often we teach the lesson of conservation, it seems that only a bare handful pay attention!’ His voice quietened. ‘And that is part of what I have to discuss.
‘But of course, I shall leave the rest of this conversation until a later time; we shall meet in my private study tomorrow before dawn, for there is much to discuss, and it is not to be disclosed to other apprentices. Not yet, at least.’
‘Yes, Master Drossyn,’ Ardeus nodded. The old wizard nodded back and limped away.
‘Your tutors say good things about you,’ Drossyn said, pausing at the door. ‘I can see that it is for more than one reason. But I implore you to keep our later meeting secret.’
The incident left him wondering, and worrying, about his future. And he wondered if it was going to involve what was going to happen in the guild by the end of the week.
The guild library was quiet. And it was particularly private where she was sat in the corner behind the one of the bigger bookshelves. There was a little lost in comfort and warmth when compared to the rest of the library, but for her the solitude and silence was its own sort of luxury. Especially so late in the day, when the library became an unofficial place of congregation for students.
At that very moment she was uninterested in having the new apprentices stare at her; she was quite sick of being considered different. It happened to everyone who wasn’t quite as human as the rest of them. Having eyes that shimmered both blue and gold depending on the light, a very slight point to one’s ears, and a few inches of height over the average woman was different enough so that anyone who didn’t know her was slightly deterred by her very slightly abnormal appearance. So that was why she sat and read in the dim and quiet corner; out of sight, out of hearing and out of mind.
She was tired of being the half-elven oddity, for all the wrong reasons was she an exception even among the exceptional. It wasn’t a problem among the ones who’d known her for a while, however, even if they didn’t become too friendly they didn’t choose to constantly stare. But newcomers were always quite difficult for her to deal with.
She heard footsteps; the repetitive clacking sound of someone approaching.
‘I didn’t think the private corner was taken,’ that someone said.
She looked up to see a grey-eyed and blond haired student looking at her from the opposite end of the bookshelf; she didn’t know him very well. She didn’t even know his name; all she knew that he was son to a wealthy family, and that he was the tutors’ general favourite for being both a good user of magic and possessing the right anatomy. Society, and life, seemed to favour men in general, and that was something she had just learned to live with.
‘Well, hello there,’ she greeted him. ‘Do you want me to move?’
‘No, Lady Ajara Half-Elven,’ he replied, ‘you were here first, and it is worth remembering gallantry in the presence of a lady; I shall simply share the solitude with you.’
‘It isn’t solitude if you’re sharing it,’ she said with a cold edge to her voice, marking her page in the book and standing up as if to leave. She then glared at him. ‘And I would appreciate it if you didn’t use that name.’
He winced somewhat, meeting her gaze. ‘I’m sorry… Dynamene. That’s the nickname isn’t it, milady? Not your birth name, but the name you chose for yourself?’
‘That’s better,’ she nodded, ‘I dislike being reminded of what I am; it’s enough that I have to look in the mirror every morning without constant reminders from others.’
‘I said I was sorry, Dynamene,’ he said, stretching out his hand politely.
She ignored it and continued on out of the library, storming away to her room within the cloistered guildhalls. Left behind was a slightly confused young mage who didn’t quite know what he’d actually done that was so wrong.
Visna watched him impatiently, leaning up against the wall of the dimly-lit laboratory as he worked tirelessly in reading the large book that lay open on his table. Often he paused to turn a page, sometimes pausing to take a scroll from a separate pile and begin reading it, sometimes writing down a note but mostly just reading the same lines over and over again in an attempt to figure out some sort of hidden clue.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t mind watching him. Tahlreth was handsome and tall, with dark skin which was mildly tinted with blue. He had long silvery-white hair, perfectly groomed and often undecorated while his mildly pointed ears poked out from beneath his silvery mane and blue-gold eyes carefully examined every little detail he saw. But it was often infuriating in how he’d simply go off and study magic before paying attention to her.
She wasn’t ugly, with her delicate features and long hair that was stark white in colour and very dark brown skin that fit for a dökkálfar. She wore a tight white dress which left her arms bare and went down to her knees. Her eyes shimmered with an odd silvery-green hue, often considered beautiful among dökkálfar and ljósálfar. Her clothing rarely left much to the imaginations of ljósálfar, dökkálfar, and most things between. But he didn’t seem to have even noticed her.
‘What are you doing with all these bloody scrolls?!’ she exclaimed at him finally with an air of frustration as he put another box down upon the table. ‘Are you sure that you know what you’re doing with them all? I certainly don’t!’
‘Of course I know what I’m doing,’ Tahlreth said dismissively as he began looking through the scrolls, one by one. ‘I may be tinged around the edges with madness, but there is indeed some kind of method to it all… I am a wizard after all, it is my perogative’
‘I can’t even read or figure out the writing,’ she said, glancing at one. The letters and glyphs didn’t only seem alien to her, but they shifted periodically around the paper as she tried to take a single glance at them. They also seemed to glow occasionally.
‘And if anybody could read my scrolls, I would not be doing my task as a wizard as well as I should be doing,’ he said quietly. ‘If even a single line of the text were to find itself in the mind of someone with limited magical prowess, like yourself, it would send them insane. It would send you insane.’
‘Are they all your scrolls, or did you collect them from somewhere else?’ she asked, changing the subject and moving up against him with catlike grace and seductive intentions. If he noticed her sudden movement and presence up against him, he hid it well.
‘Some of them are mine, some of them aren’t, others are debatable,’ he said. ‘And I’m afraid that I can’t quite remember about the rest; mostly because I’ve had them for so bloody long that…’
He trailed off, not finishing the sentence and proceeding to tidy up a small pile of scrolls and make a note down on a different one. Waving a hand in the direction of the large book in the middle of the desk, he caused it to skip a hundred or so pages.
‘What are you doing, anyway?’ she asked. ‘I hope it isn’t anything too dangerous; I would not want you to end up dead just because I wasn’t smart enough to stop you from being an utter idiot.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said reassuringly. ‘It’s just the preparation work for a new spell, and a bit of tidying and reorganising.’
‘What kind of spell is it that it requires several dozen scrolls just to make it work?’ she sighed with exasperation. ‘It’s not as if you can move mountains with it!’
‘I could, if I wanted to with this one,’ he said, chuckling. ‘I could even lift up and turn a mountain upside down to create a flying city with this spell, if I could put enough power into it; it’d be certainly fun to shove in the face of those bastards in Veritholt, anyway.’
‘Some dökkálfar mage you turned out to be,’ she remarked with a sarcastic tone. ‘You turn out to be a half-ljósálfar, you dislike the wintry forests, and you now want to build your own mountain city to get you even further away from it!’
‘Yes but I’m powerful,’ he retorted, turning to present her an amused expression and a sly grin. Gazing at her, he added, ‘There’s nothing wrong with powerful magic that can move a mountain. Why not become capable of it? It certainly earns respect from the right people; and I was speaking theoretically, not literally.’
She opened her mouth to reply but couldn’t think of anything to retort with. ‘All right,’ she said eventually. ‘You win this round.’
There was a sudden blast of sound, as if the boundaries of reality were screeching in terrible pain and hopeless agony. Someone was manipulating the walls of reality itself with powerful magic; Tahlreth could almost hear space-time groaning as it was being agonizingly stretched and contorted. It was excruciating to his elven hearing, and he winced.
‘What’s going on?!’ Visna shrieked over the terrible noise.
Tahlreth was already half-way through the casting of a spell to try and nullify the noise and make whatever it was stop what it was doing. As he uttered numerous words of command; the noise began to dissipate and a cloud of smoke had formed out of nowhere in the centre of the room. The magical effect had completed, and his spell was wasted.
As he lowered his arms and cursed under his breath at the needless loss of the magical energy, the cloud began to shrink and it shaped into a single scrap of parchment which fluttered to the floor. He snatched it up and read it without pause.
‘Does it say anything?’ Visna asked.
‘I’ve an old associate to meet,’ he replied distantly, dropping the note to the floor. ‘He has a deal to make with me.’ After a moment, he added, ‘This will put off my research a bit, I think, but it will apparently be well worth my time. It’s intriguing, though…’
‘How so?’
‘I’m almost sure he should have died decades ago. He was human and not much of a wizard by most accounts. Mundane humans don’t normally live this long; I’ve known him for almost two centuries; this is quite confusing, and almost disturbing.’
Dynamene stood shivering upon the rock in the middle of the dark ocean, feeling its cold, damp surface beneath her bare feet. She glanced around at what she could see of the water; it churned with the winds as storm clouds gathered in the sky above. The winds howled, and she was drenched by endless raindrops with only a flimsy nightdress to protect her. But she found that it was all hazy, and dreamlike rather than terrifying.
Nothing about it seemed to be real; the cold wasn’t painfully so as it should have been, the winds were merely loud and not quite deafening, she could see even in the dark, and she could not smell nor taste the salty air of a real ocean. It must have been a dream, or maybe more accurately a nightmare.
The last thing she remembered was going to bed in her room back in the guildhall; she’d been angry. Livid in fact. Perhaps this dream was the result? How was she even able to think of that it was a dream in the first place?
‘Where am I?!’ she cried. ‘What’s going on?’
As if it was an answer, a gigantic flash of lightning lit the skies above, striking down with an arc of its electricity upon the tip of a nearby stone spire, causing her to gasp with surprise and shock. But instead of the expected ear-splitting crack of thunder, she heard a muffled pop that echoed a few times over in her head. And instead of vanishing, the lightning bolt itself seemed to gather into a crackling sphere of pulsating light that very occasionally spat out harmlessly small arcs of electricity.
The winds died down very suddenly. It stopped raining, the sea calmed and the gathered storm clouds began to slowly vanish, but the orb of light remained where it was. It pulsed again, and then it seemed to let out a rumbling thunderous voice, alien and detached yet somehow friendly and familiar.
‘I bid welcome,’ it proclaimed loudly. ‘I have a message for you, Ajara Kansal-Gajaren, or would you prefer the name you chose for yourself?’
‘How do you know me? What do you want’ she asked. ‘Who are you? For that matter what are you?’
But she suddenly woke into her room, normal as ever, before she could receive any sort of answer to her questions.
She was almost willing to accept it as a dream until she suddenly realised that she was clutching a drenched piece of paper in one hand.
The Wizard's Legacy
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Narsil
- Jedi Knight
- Posts: 332
- Joined: Fri Aug 18, 2006 9:59 am
Chapter II: Meetings
Dynamene mumbled a series of simple words, still shivering with disbelief. As she put her will into those words of command, a point of magical white light flashed into existence at the tip of a finger on her free hand. She held up the drenched piece of paper and began to examine it by the spell’s light. There was only a single line written upon it, and the ink somehow hadn’t run despite how truly drenched it was.
The words and symbols were in an old form of the Veritholt tongue, words that might have been magical once but had lost their potency. It took a moment for her to search her mind for the relevant translation.
‘ “You must follow the disciple of womb, field and spell”…’ she recited.
She mused for a moment what it was that the message could mean, glancing outside of her window to see the first light that indicated the coming sunrise. The sky was already turning into a lighter shade of bluish-purple, brightening slowly. When she looked back, the paper had vanished from out of her hand; but her hand was still quite wet from having held it.
She treated the events quizzically, and thought for a while about what was actually going on while she dismissed her light spell.
Perhaps it was a joke, a trick played on her by a fellow student. But she didn’t know any of them capable of such power, and a while a teacher would have the power to do something of this magnitude, she didn’t think any would devote attention to it. Not Master Laestis, not Master Roldin, not Mistress Arakad, not Master Drezdany, and almost certainly not the mysterious Master Drossyn Mobek.
She didn’t know if they were even allowed to do such things. It might have been illegal or against the rules of the guild itself. Unless it was a test of some sort. Was it a test? It could be; just the guild gauging her reaction, or giving her a task in advance for graduation. That could implicate Master Drossyn, maybe.
Perhaps if she cleared her head, she might be able to make sense of things. Gain a new perspective; and it was early enough so that her private spot in the lake wouldn’t be about to be invaded by the prying eyes of others.
Yes, that would do nicely enough for her.
Dynamene glanced again at her wet hand, and then dried it on her sheets before getting up to quickly wash herself in the neighbouring room and then don her apprentice robe. It was a simple garment of red cloth that all apprentices wore before they were accepted as proper magi; but she utterly hated it. It was graceless in form, a repulsive shade and dreadfully uncomfortable.
She made her way out of her door and out into the corridor, glancing around and seeing by the scant light from the candles in the wall brackets. It was easier for her to see in the dark than it was for most people, something she had discovered at an early age. Her half-elven blood made her able to see relatively well in all but absolute darkness and even conversely adapt to the brightest of days, which she supposed was something of an advantage. As was her ability to hear a pin drop in the next room over yet manage to avoid wincing in a thunderstorm.
Dynamene was also vaguely aware that she would have a much longer lifespan, but didn’t put too much thought to it.
It was quiet, in the halls, except for the ever-present sounds of people walking along in their own distant parts of the building. Hearing a constant tap-tap-tap of footsteps in the distance was possibly the most irritating thing she’d ever had to get used to. Then she heard someone else approaching from around the corner in a much closer tap-tap-tap.
Soon she saw faint a dancing and flickering of warm light being cast against the corner of the wall. When the footsteps were close enough to come around the corner, she frowned at the irritatingly familiar young man with a shock of blond hair and grey eyes that she’d seen just the evening before. Ardeus chose to greet her with a polite nod.
‘You’re awake early,’ he said with a bemused expression.
‘I’m not the only one who’s out and about, obviously,’ she said quietly. ‘I was going out to the lake for some fresh air. What’s your reason for being up at daft o’clock, eh?’
‘I’ve got a…’ he hesitated for a moment and the end to his sentence vanished. ‘I’ve just got something important to do. I’d hate to be rude, but it’s a private matter and I really must be getting to it, Dynamene; though I’d like to apologise again for my thoughtlessness.’
‘It’s all right,’ Dynamene replied diplomatically. ‘I’ve got enough other problems to worry about than just your recent slip of the tongue, I assure you. Just run along to whatever it is that you’re doing.’
‘Right, goodbye for now,’ he said before continuing on at a brisk pace without giving her a chance to reply.
She glowered at his retreating form for a moment, but dismissed him from her mind as she began to think again of the note and what its message had really meant. She also wondered vaguely what was the thing, that orb of light, that had spoken to her in her dreams. Aside from a trick of some sort, it could be anything.
The night skies above the village in the depths of the woodland valley were filled with stars that all twinkled like distantly scattered diamonds. It was an early summer’s morning that had yet to be touched by the approaching dawn, and the moon’s orb shone bright enough to cast an ethereal silvery radiance over the sparsely-spread village.
Tahlreth travelled easily under that cloak of silver. He could see in a specific night-time detail afforded to all elves. Blooming flowers that were in many colours during the day became ghostly and silver, pre-sunrise dew twinkled like the stars above, and the trees were all silhouetted by a strange nimbus of moonlight. The night was a beauty in its own right; and it was one that no human could appreciate.
But his half-dökkálfar eyes beheld more than simple night-time beauty.
He could see another traveller heading along the road upon horseback, galloping away from the village. In one hand he held a staff, like that which a wizard would hold; it was a thing that Tahlreth himself would never bother with, preferring to do magic without such aids.
The rider’s path had him arrive next to Tahlreth for a moment; the man was seemingly pulling up to regard the dökkálfar. A familiar wrinkled face cast a one-eyed gaze upon him from beneath a flat broad-brimmed hat that drooped over his brow.
‘Tahlreth!’ the man exclaimed, waving his staff to the side and . ‘You’re late.’
‘Being a fellow wizard, you of all people should know that a wizard is never late old friend, especially not an elven wizard,’ he laughed. ‘Or is your memory failing, old man?’
‘I’m the better and more powerful wizard, and as such you should arrive precisely when I mean for you to,’ was the old man’s laughing reply.
‘Ah, Grimnir; you just couldn’t wait for me to get there in my own time, could you?’ the elf remarked. ‘Though your constant impatience hasn’t stretched to an impatient mortality, it seems; I would have thought you to be dead by now but you haven’t even aged a day!’
‘It has been but a moment and already you try to be rid of me?’ Grimnir asked wryly, scratching his chin through his big bushy beard before dismounting from his horse. He soon put most of his weight onto his staff, using it as a walking stick.
‘Well, old friend, what was it that you wanted to speak to me about? Your letter wasn’t all that detailed,’ Tahlreth said. ‘If it wasn’t signed by you, I wouldn’t have come at all, most likely, with such little detail involved.’
‘Ah, but I’ll get to that in a minute,’ he replied, straightening out his cloak and stretching from exhaustion. ‘It is good to see you again, Tahlreth; the last I saw of you was almost a century ago during that issue with the dragon.’
‘Of course,’ said the elf, ‘but it was easily fixed, was it not?’
‘So what has happened since then?’ asked Grimnir, ‘A whole ninety-two years is a very long time, even for an elf.’
‘I’ve discovered some new scrolls, mostly simple charms and hexes but with a few decent ones here and there, I’ve been thinking of marrying Visna,’ he said, ‘and I’ve been working on a new spell that might allow me to move a mountain, if it works properly.’
‘It’ll never work,’ Grimnir remarked after some thought.
‘Hmm? So you’ve tried such a spell before?’
‘No, what I was referring to was your thought-of marriage.’ Tahlreth remained silent as if he was simply expecting an explanation. Grimnir went on, ‘You’re far too caught up in your magic and hexes and spells to commit to a proper marriage, Tahlreth; there can be no doubt that she’s noticed it herself. Ultimately, you’re better off with someone as magic-obsessed as you are, or at least capable of doing magic, rather than poor Visna.’
‘Maybe you’re right, Grimnir,’ Tahlreth said after a while. ‘I shall think on this.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Tahlreth, you’re still young for an elf. And we came here to do some business and business we shall do,’ said Grimnir. He reached into a pocket in the folds of his cloak, then produced something small that was wrapped in cloth. ‘I think this thing may interest you,’ he said, holding it out towards Tahlreth. ‘It has a great amount of magic that I can detect, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it does.’
Tahlreth took the bundle tentatively, and opened it to reveal a glass orb, bound in what seemed to be a web or lace made out of gold. It seemed to hum, shimmer and glow of its own accord when exposed to the moonlight, a constant pulsating of magical light its own type of energy. He turned it over, once or twice, and then covered it up again..
‘Where did you find it?’ he asked. ‘And when?’
‘Upon a visit to the tower of departed old teacher of mine,’ Grimnir said. ‘Last year I found it in a chest, up in the attic. It’s amazing what one can find upon a second view, is it not?’
‘This is its own amazement,’ Tahlreth laughed. ‘An orb like this hasn’t been made for well over sixty, maybe seventy thousand years; and that is when they began to become rare and dwindle in elven society, according to the archaeologists.’
‘What is it?’
‘It is an orb of knowledge; like an old elven version of a grimoire,’ he said. ‘The only major problem with them is that you would need to be a descendant of whoever created it to be able to access it, or very powerful and elven.’
‘What if you were not elven? Would it be impossible to access?’
‘You would need to be astronomically powerful to open it if you were not elven, certainly possible but also at the same time very improbable,’ said Tahlreth. He was fascinated by it, gazing at the covered orb with the same lust for magical knowledge and power that Grimnir had described just moments before.
‘Well, old friend, you may have it; and perhaps you will have more luck accessing it than I have had,’ Grimnir said, laughing. ‘Just be sure to tell me what’s in it!’
Ardeus arrived at the door to Drossyn’s private study and took another moment to adjust his robes and look presentable before entering. He opened the door to see a large and truly expansive room, with tables full of various items that were clearly magical in nature to some things that were less obvious. He paid strange attention a small top-like toy that spun in the air of its own accord, going sometimes higher and lower and sometimes flipping itself upside-down.
In the far corner there was a skeleton of some beast or other; it seemed to be that of a dragon, only much smaller. Next to that there was a loose stack of books and scrolls, all of them covered in symbols and language that Ardeus couldn’t possibly recognise. Not without a spell of comprehension, at least.
And then above, he saw suspended a strange creature that was sleeping or dead, or perhaps a machine of some sort. It had a long central body that seemed to be made of wooden tubes and leather straps. It also had two widely-spread wings with a wooden frame, and red silk stretched and stitched in place around them to serve as feathers. Either a creature that looked like a machine, or a machine that looked like a creature.
‘It is a flying machine, or at least it’s supposed to be,’ he heard Drossyn say. ‘It doesn’t work, though.’
Ardeus turned to look at him. The guild-master was standing by a table upon which there was a small pile of letters. He had been reading one of them, but he set it down gently and then he smiled good-humouredly.
‘As I said earlier there is business to be had at hand, and this business may concern you, or it may not,’ Drossyn said quietly. ‘But first I must congratulate you, for you are among the five who have been chosen to graduate at the end of the week.’
‘Thank you,’ Ardeus said. He felt like laughing, a graduation was its own reward. ‘You think that I’m ready to become a mage? A proper mage?’
‘Certainly, that was never in doubt, though the business here is related to that,’ said the old guild-master. ‘It is the tradition that wizards must perform at least one notable duty of magic to the Order of the Eclipse before too long.’ He grinned. ‘Nothing too difficult, often a simple errand to be made or easy task to be completed; sometimes if the task is difficult we shall apply more than one graduated student.
‘In your case it is a simple task, but one of importance, so we are allowing you to take one more graduated student of your choice.’
‘If it is so important, why not send a wizard of greater power or experience?’
‘It would be easier, wouldn’t it?’ Drossyn said. ‘To send a mage of great power to fulfil such an important task, but it is not so much important in the sense of continued survival of our guild as much as something that might be a great embarrassment if it were to go badly.’
‘What is it that you expect of me?’ Ardeus asked.
‘A simple errand. You must go to the North, west of the area where the many tribes of wild men and dwarves live, and visit my older brother,’ Drossyn said. ‘He is old, and too weak to travel, as I am, but he has in his possession a sceptre of great power that shall become a part of our stores in this very guildhall.’
‘So it is my task to go there and bring it back?’ he asked. ‘It seems a simple task.’
‘Certainly too simple for an advanced and experienced mage, but not for just-graduated apprentice,’ said Drossyn. ‘And it gives out the impression that we aren’t placing much in the way of importance on the sceptre, so you should attract less unwanted attention. If you accept the task; there will be a suitable reward in it for you.
‘I am too weak to go myself, or I would do so if only to see my brother again. Though if you want to; you can choose another graduate wizard to take with you on this task as I have already said.’
‘Who are the others graduating?’ he asked. ‘That seems like a decision that should be thought about in detail.’
‘Let’s see, apprentice, there’s Tinoll, Draril, Vereroth and Ajara,’ the old wizard said with a chuckle. ‘But I don’t think you’ll want the latter, she’s only a woman after all.’
Ardeus mused that for a moment. ‘But she is an elf, or at least half of an elf, and as such may have quite a bit more of a connection to magic than most of us might have.’
‘Not enough so that a human cannot by any means match an elf, and a half-elf is often not as good as their elven kin,’ said Drossyn. ‘But it is your own decision to make, and not one that I can make for you after all. And you cannot make anyone else go with you.’
‘I shall think about it, Master Drossyn, but I humbly accept the mission.’
‘Good, my brother calls himself Karanjit Mobek. Now run along, young wizard, and prepare yourself for the journey. You may benefit from knowing a few spells to aid in combat, but you should seek to avoid such combat unless you have no choice.’
Ardeus nodded. ‘But, before I go, have you any advice?’
‘A little warning that you should avoid considering yourself more powerful than you actually are, young one,’ said Drossyn. ‘As I have discovered many times in the past, overconfidence leaves one a lot more open to attack than cautiousness would. You must remember not to waste magic; for using too much of it can wear you out. And also be very wary as to who you choose to trust on your journey.’
‘Thank you, Master Drossyn,’ Ardeus said politely. ‘I shall think upon the task, and prepare myself accordingly.’
‘I shouldn’t worry too much though, young Ardeus; you’ll make an excellent mage if you play your cards right.’
Dynamene mumbled a series of simple words, still shivering with disbelief. As she put her will into those words of command, a point of magical white light flashed into existence at the tip of a finger on her free hand. She held up the drenched piece of paper and began to examine it by the spell’s light. There was only a single line written upon it, and the ink somehow hadn’t run despite how truly drenched it was.
The words and symbols were in an old form of the Veritholt tongue, words that might have been magical once but had lost their potency. It took a moment for her to search her mind for the relevant translation.
‘ “You must follow the disciple of womb, field and spell”…’ she recited.
She mused for a moment what it was that the message could mean, glancing outside of her window to see the first light that indicated the coming sunrise. The sky was already turning into a lighter shade of bluish-purple, brightening slowly. When she looked back, the paper had vanished from out of her hand; but her hand was still quite wet from having held it.
She treated the events quizzically, and thought for a while about what was actually going on while she dismissed her light spell.
Perhaps it was a joke, a trick played on her by a fellow student. But she didn’t know any of them capable of such power, and a while a teacher would have the power to do something of this magnitude, she didn’t think any would devote attention to it. Not Master Laestis, not Master Roldin, not Mistress Arakad, not Master Drezdany, and almost certainly not the mysterious Master Drossyn Mobek.
She didn’t know if they were even allowed to do such things. It might have been illegal or against the rules of the guild itself. Unless it was a test of some sort. Was it a test? It could be; just the guild gauging her reaction, or giving her a task in advance for graduation. That could implicate Master Drossyn, maybe.
Perhaps if she cleared her head, she might be able to make sense of things. Gain a new perspective; and it was early enough so that her private spot in the lake wouldn’t be about to be invaded by the prying eyes of others.
Yes, that would do nicely enough for her.
Dynamene glanced again at her wet hand, and then dried it on her sheets before getting up to quickly wash herself in the neighbouring room and then don her apprentice robe. It was a simple garment of red cloth that all apprentices wore before they were accepted as proper magi; but she utterly hated it. It was graceless in form, a repulsive shade and dreadfully uncomfortable.
She made her way out of her door and out into the corridor, glancing around and seeing by the scant light from the candles in the wall brackets. It was easier for her to see in the dark than it was for most people, something she had discovered at an early age. Her half-elven blood made her able to see relatively well in all but absolute darkness and even conversely adapt to the brightest of days, which she supposed was something of an advantage. As was her ability to hear a pin drop in the next room over yet manage to avoid wincing in a thunderstorm.
Dynamene was also vaguely aware that she would have a much longer lifespan, but didn’t put too much thought to it.
It was quiet, in the halls, except for the ever-present sounds of people walking along in their own distant parts of the building. Hearing a constant tap-tap-tap of footsteps in the distance was possibly the most irritating thing she’d ever had to get used to. Then she heard someone else approaching from around the corner in a much closer tap-tap-tap.
Soon she saw faint a dancing and flickering of warm light being cast against the corner of the wall. When the footsteps were close enough to come around the corner, she frowned at the irritatingly familiar young man with a shock of blond hair and grey eyes that she’d seen just the evening before. Ardeus chose to greet her with a polite nod.
‘You’re awake early,’ he said with a bemused expression.
‘I’m not the only one who’s out and about, obviously,’ she said quietly. ‘I was going out to the lake for some fresh air. What’s your reason for being up at daft o’clock, eh?’
‘I’ve got a…’ he hesitated for a moment and the end to his sentence vanished. ‘I’ve just got something important to do. I’d hate to be rude, but it’s a private matter and I really must be getting to it, Dynamene; though I’d like to apologise again for my thoughtlessness.’
‘It’s all right,’ Dynamene replied diplomatically. ‘I’ve got enough other problems to worry about than just your recent slip of the tongue, I assure you. Just run along to whatever it is that you’re doing.’
‘Right, goodbye for now,’ he said before continuing on at a brisk pace without giving her a chance to reply.
She glowered at his retreating form for a moment, but dismissed him from her mind as she began to think again of the note and what its message had really meant. She also wondered vaguely what was the thing, that orb of light, that had spoken to her in her dreams. Aside from a trick of some sort, it could be anything.
The night skies above the village in the depths of the woodland valley were filled with stars that all twinkled like distantly scattered diamonds. It was an early summer’s morning that had yet to be touched by the approaching dawn, and the moon’s orb shone bright enough to cast an ethereal silvery radiance over the sparsely-spread village.
Tahlreth travelled easily under that cloak of silver. He could see in a specific night-time detail afforded to all elves. Blooming flowers that were in many colours during the day became ghostly and silver, pre-sunrise dew twinkled like the stars above, and the trees were all silhouetted by a strange nimbus of moonlight. The night was a beauty in its own right; and it was one that no human could appreciate.
But his half-dökkálfar eyes beheld more than simple night-time beauty.
He could see another traveller heading along the road upon horseback, galloping away from the village. In one hand he held a staff, like that which a wizard would hold; it was a thing that Tahlreth himself would never bother with, preferring to do magic without such aids.
The rider’s path had him arrive next to Tahlreth for a moment; the man was seemingly pulling up to regard the dökkálfar. A familiar wrinkled face cast a one-eyed gaze upon him from beneath a flat broad-brimmed hat that drooped over his brow.
‘Tahlreth!’ the man exclaimed, waving his staff to the side and . ‘You’re late.’
‘Being a fellow wizard, you of all people should know that a wizard is never late old friend, especially not an elven wizard,’ he laughed. ‘Or is your memory failing, old man?’
‘I’m the better and more powerful wizard, and as such you should arrive precisely when I mean for you to,’ was the old man’s laughing reply.
‘Ah, Grimnir; you just couldn’t wait for me to get there in my own time, could you?’ the elf remarked. ‘Though your constant impatience hasn’t stretched to an impatient mortality, it seems; I would have thought you to be dead by now but you haven’t even aged a day!’
‘It has been but a moment and already you try to be rid of me?’ Grimnir asked wryly, scratching his chin through his big bushy beard before dismounting from his horse. He soon put most of his weight onto his staff, using it as a walking stick.
‘Well, old friend, what was it that you wanted to speak to me about? Your letter wasn’t all that detailed,’ Tahlreth said. ‘If it wasn’t signed by you, I wouldn’t have come at all, most likely, with such little detail involved.’
‘Ah, but I’ll get to that in a minute,’ he replied, straightening out his cloak and stretching from exhaustion. ‘It is good to see you again, Tahlreth; the last I saw of you was almost a century ago during that issue with the dragon.’
‘Of course,’ said the elf, ‘but it was easily fixed, was it not?’
‘So what has happened since then?’ asked Grimnir, ‘A whole ninety-two years is a very long time, even for an elf.’
‘I’ve discovered some new scrolls, mostly simple charms and hexes but with a few decent ones here and there, I’ve been thinking of marrying Visna,’ he said, ‘and I’ve been working on a new spell that might allow me to move a mountain, if it works properly.’
‘It’ll never work,’ Grimnir remarked after some thought.
‘Hmm? So you’ve tried such a spell before?’
‘No, what I was referring to was your thought-of marriage.’ Tahlreth remained silent as if he was simply expecting an explanation. Grimnir went on, ‘You’re far too caught up in your magic and hexes and spells to commit to a proper marriage, Tahlreth; there can be no doubt that she’s noticed it herself. Ultimately, you’re better off with someone as magic-obsessed as you are, or at least capable of doing magic, rather than poor Visna.’
‘Maybe you’re right, Grimnir,’ Tahlreth said after a while. ‘I shall think on this.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Tahlreth, you’re still young for an elf. And we came here to do some business and business we shall do,’ said Grimnir. He reached into a pocket in the folds of his cloak, then produced something small that was wrapped in cloth. ‘I think this thing may interest you,’ he said, holding it out towards Tahlreth. ‘It has a great amount of magic that I can detect, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it does.’
Tahlreth took the bundle tentatively, and opened it to reveal a glass orb, bound in what seemed to be a web or lace made out of gold. It seemed to hum, shimmer and glow of its own accord when exposed to the moonlight, a constant pulsating of magical light its own type of energy. He turned it over, once or twice, and then covered it up again..
‘Where did you find it?’ he asked. ‘And when?’
‘Upon a visit to the tower of departed old teacher of mine,’ Grimnir said. ‘Last year I found it in a chest, up in the attic. It’s amazing what one can find upon a second view, is it not?’
‘This is its own amazement,’ Tahlreth laughed. ‘An orb like this hasn’t been made for well over sixty, maybe seventy thousand years; and that is when they began to become rare and dwindle in elven society, according to the archaeologists.’
‘What is it?’
‘It is an orb of knowledge; like an old elven version of a grimoire,’ he said. ‘The only major problem with them is that you would need to be a descendant of whoever created it to be able to access it, or very powerful and elven.’
‘What if you were not elven? Would it be impossible to access?’
‘You would need to be astronomically powerful to open it if you were not elven, certainly possible but also at the same time very improbable,’ said Tahlreth. He was fascinated by it, gazing at the covered orb with the same lust for magical knowledge and power that Grimnir had described just moments before.
‘Well, old friend, you may have it; and perhaps you will have more luck accessing it than I have had,’ Grimnir said, laughing. ‘Just be sure to tell me what’s in it!’
Ardeus arrived at the door to Drossyn’s private study and took another moment to adjust his robes and look presentable before entering. He opened the door to see a large and truly expansive room, with tables full of various items that were clearly magical in nature to some things that were less obvious. He paid strange attention a small top-like toy that spun in the air of its own accord, going sometimes higher and lower and sometimes flipping itself upside-down.
In the far corner there was a skeleton of some beast or other; it seemed to be that of a dragon, only much smaller. Next to that there was a loose stack of books and scrolls, all of them covered in symbols and language that Ardeus couldn’t possibly recognise. Not without a spell of comprehension, at least.
And then above, he saw suspended a strange creature that was sleeping or dead, or perhaps a machine of some sort. It had a long central body that seemed to be made of wooden tubes and leather straps. It also had two widely-spread wings with a wooden frame, and red silk stretched and stitched in place around them to serve as feathers. Either a creature that looked like a machine, or a machine that looked like a creature.
‘It is a flying machine, or at least it’s supposed to be,’ he heard Drossyn say. ‘It doesn’t work, though.’
Ardeus turned to look at him. The guild-master was standing by a table upon which there was a small pile of letters. He had been reading one of them, but he set it down gently and then he smiled good-humouredly.
‘As I said earlier there is business to be had at hand, and this business may concern you, or it may not,’ Drossyn said quietly. ‘But first I must congratulate you, for you are among the five who have been chosen to graduate at the end of the week.’
‘Thank you,’ Ardeus said. He felt like laughing, a graduation was its own reward. ‘You think that I’m ready to become a mage? A proper mage?’
‘Certainly, that was never in doubt, though the business here is related to that,’ said the old guild-master. ‘It is the tradition that wizards must perform at least one notable duty of magic to the Order of the Eclipse before too long.’ He grinned. ‘Nothing too difficult, often a simple errand to be made or easy task to be completed; sometimes if the task is difficult we shall apply more than one graduated student.
‘In your case it is a simple task, but one of importance, so we are allowing you to take one more graduated student of your choice.’
‘If it is so important, why not send a wizard of greater power or experience?’
‘It would be easier, wouldn’t it?’ Drossyn said. ‘To send a mage of great power to fulfil such an important task, but it is not so much important in the sense of continued survival of our guild as much as something that might be a great embarrassment if it were to go badly.’
‘What is it that you expect of me?’ Ardeus asked.
‘A simple errand. You must go to the North, west of the area where the many tribes of wild men and dwarves live, and visit my older brother,’ Drossyn said. ‘He is old, and too weak to travel, as I am, but he has in his possession a sceptre of great power that shall become a part of our stores in this very guildhall.’
‘So it is my task to go there and bring it back?’ he asked. ‘It seems a simple task.’
‘Certainly too simple for an advanced and experienced mage, but not for just-graduated apprentice,’ said Drossyn. ‘And it gives out the impression that we aren’t placing much in the way of importance on the sceptre, so you should attract less unwanted attention. If you accept the task; there will be a suitable reward in it for you.
‘I am too weak to go myself, or I would do so if only to see my brother again. Though if you want to; you can choose another graduate wizard to take with you on this task as I have already said.’
‘Who are the others graduating?’ he asked. ‘That seems like a decision that should be thought about in detail.’
‘Let’s see, apprentice, there’s Tinoll, Draril, Vereroth and Ajara,’ the old wizard said with a chuckle. ‘But I don’t think you’ll want the latter, she’s only a woman after all.’
Ardeus mused that for a moment. ‘But she is an elf, or at least half of an elf, and as such may have quite a bit more of a connection to magic than most of us might have.’
‘Not enough so that a human cannot by any means match an elf, and a half-elf is often not as good as their elven kin,’ said Drossyn. ‘But it is your own decision to make, and not one that I can make for you after all. And you cannot make anyone else go with you.’
‘I shall think about it, Master Drossyn, but I humbly accept the mission.’
‘Good, my brother calls himself Karanjit Mobek. Now run along, young wizard, and prepare yourself for the journey. You may benefit from knowing a few spells to aid in combat, but you should seek to avoid such combat unless you have no choice.’
Ardeus nodded. ‘But, before I go, have you any advice?’
‘A little warning that you should avoid considering yourself more powerful than you actually are, young one,’ said Drossyn. ‘As I have discovered many times in the past, overconfidence leaves one a lot more open to attack than cautiousness would. You must remember not to waste magic; for using too much of it can wear you out. And also be very wary as to who you choose to trust on your journey.’
‘Thank you, Master Drossyn,’ Ardeus said politely. ‘I shall think upon the task, and prepare myself accordingly.’
‘I shouldn’t worry too much though, young Ardeus; you’ll make an excellent mage if you play your cards right.’