“It’s changing!” Menild cried. “Look, Hool – Lord Raz!”
No matter how many times I told them to stop calling me ‘lord’, a few of them just couldn’t break the habit, even though we’d only just met. What was it that made a person so subservient, to bow and scrape, to call me their lord even as I refused to recognise it? Did they think they were ingratiating themselves with me, in spite of my words? It was beyond irksome. Menild’s tongue had slipped, using the Telese word for ‘lord’, ‘hool’, and when he’d corrected himself he’d gone on to supply the Mundic translation anyway.
The previous leader of the Night Order was a doddering fool, but his heart was in the right place, of that I was certain.
“Just Raz,” I said for what had to be the fourth time, skirting around my imps as I crossed the dusty chamber to Menild’s desk.
“Apologies, lord,” he mumbled, stepping back so that I could inspect his handiwork from all sides.
Was he that stupid? His Mundic was flawless, barely accented at all, and his work didn’t show a trace of the idiocy pouring out of his mouth in waves. The guy had to be four times my age – yet here he was, making himself my inferior with every word that came off his tongue.
Not that anyone here knew quite how young I really was.
Some people just like being lower down than you, I realised. Comforting, maybe…
“Nicely done,” I said, walking around the desk. “The force-lines seem perfectly attuned with the eighth core.” I raised my voice for the others in the chamber, not taking my eyes off the glowing azure pattern Menild had created – one of them at the back was trying to translate for the pair whose Mundic was poorest. “Has anyone here ever helped to create any infinity runes? Even partial ones?”
Aside from the occasional swoosh of my imps’ broom, I heard only the shuffling of papers, feet dragging under tables, robe-fabric twisting as my apprentices looked at each other. Even the translator’s mumbling ceased.
“No, m’lord,” Jaroan said after a few seconds.
I grinned at him. “Never mind.” I threw Menild a congratulatory nod as I moved away, and the old chap beamed at me. “We’ll get to it. Has anyone else finished their construct?”
Nafala’s dark, starry eyes met my own, then immediately her gaze sank back down to become a fixed stare burning holes in her desk.
“Let’s take a look, Nafala. Woah! Okay, everyone gather round. You can all still see this, right? Good. What you have here is actually the beginning of the half-infinity rune…”
I probably droned on a bit too long, but most of them seemed to be gazing at me, enraptured. Even my brother and sister appeared to be paying attention, now that they could actually see the blue forces with their own eyes.
“… Each one of the motions you see me make has its eleven syllables of invocation in Etheric, or thirteen in Netheric, as you like – the results are much the same. It’s the fifteenth line of the invocation, the fifteenth knot that sets it off. When the seal forms, only then can lock it to each vertex – five syllables, like so…”
I found these things far easier than they did, obviously. Tasks that required them to invest hours of research and practice came intuitively to me. I didn’t have to learn a single incantation, my mind alone supplying shape to the spell. My fingers contained the magic. I reached for the force-lines and they came to me, attracted by my gesture, my intent, knotting themselves almost before I touched them. Something my students could never hope to achieve.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Something I could never hope to teach.
“And there we have it,” I finished. “A completed half-infinity rune. At this point you can embed the structure – this way –” I pressed the magic into the duly-awaiting wooden block, its freshly-carved grooves “– and the spell’s taken hold, ready to absorb a wizard’s light. Now, if you wanted to make an enchanted –”
“But, Lord Raz, how do we put it in there?” Jaroan shrilled. “What you just did – it doesn’t fit!”
There was a murmur of agreement amongst my pupils.
I smiled thinly. He was going to get away with that one too, wasn’t he?
“Practice, I guess.” I shrugged, looking around at the nine faces surrounding me. “Look, there’s lots of things I don’t understand too. You all have to remember, it’s not like I trained to be a teacher… I’ve read far fewer books than I wanted to. When it comes to actually doing stuff, I don’t really have to cast spells like you do. The forms for them, the means of implementing them, comes naturally. Unfortunately you don’t get to cheat like me. But it’s a curse as much as a blessing, believe me. Virdut follows me wherever I go.”
This they seemed to understand, many of them nodding in appreciation.
I set them to work, reading up on their next tasks, and sat on the desk by the window, looking out through the smudgy glass at the wooden street below us.
Plenty of things I didn’t understand. Many more than I’d ever want to let on around those I was supposed be impressing.
I hadn’t told them my book contained the Infernal translations of the ensorcellment spells, but I’d had them try it in both Etheric and Netheric. And yet, whether they used the ethereal sap I’d gathered or the dead-men’s fluids from their own stores, the force-lines were always blue. Now, when the magic came from an arch-sorcerer – some creature born of Materium’s elements, bestowed with the suite of powers I enjoyed – I could understand the force-lines being blue. Evidently each plane had its own colouration – red, purple, blue, green… Amber or yellow, too, if you counted some of Kanthyre’s magical effects, celestial in origin… But surely when the Night Order of Telior performed their spells the lines should be green or purple, the energies drawn forth from the otherworld or the shadowland – at least until completed. But no. The moment a human drew the lines, they were blue. And the more I read, the less sense that seemed to make. I’d never questioned it, back in Mund, watching Ciraya and other sorcerers of her ilk at their work. Now? Now it troubled me.
What even was magic, in general? Where did it come from? How was it used by those untouched by the force that bestowed archmagery? What were these words and gestures – why did they do what they did? How were essences from the ground-up bones of murderers or the tears of a sprite used in the same spell? Why couldn’t they necessarily be used for a different one? What made one reagent different from another, if it was just energy? There were no answers, other than the old answer any child could repeat: the Five did it. The Founders created magic. They created it and let it spread across the seas, the plains. But I had a bit of experience under my belt now, and there was nothing in any arcane text I’d ever read to suggest how it was possible. There seemed to be so much we failed to question.
How in the Twelve Hells do druids shapeshift with their clothes, even their weapons and bags, without having the power to just… transmute objects?
Gristlehead appeared in front of me, his cloth raised to rub at the mucky window. I silently snatched the already too-dirty rag from him, then tossed it back at his chest – he dutifully turned away to give it a clean, his tail lowered and twitching in shame despite my lack of rebuke.
Why? Why all the arbitrary limiting factors? Why could wizards so easily manipulate stone, even raw metals, when forged iron confounded their efforts and true steel was beyond their reach? Why could enchanters touch the minds of eldritches sometimes, the sorcerer’s art, yet not animals, whose thoughts belonged to the druids? It still confused me, even to this day, yet it was the way it’d always been done, even in the oldest stories. No one ever seemed to even consider it – which was almost as interesting. Had a great working of enchantment been placed across the minds of all men? Had everyone fallen prey to the same mass-delusion, that sense could be made of things, that the Five Founders could just wave their hands and invent a process fundamentally opposed to the ordering of the planes…?
More likely, I just hadn’t brought enough books with me.
* * *