JET 8.11: LESSONS UNLEARNED
“Ours is a small church and a narrow ministry. There is no place for us, yet we are here. While lesser gods sit and smile and trade their barbed pleasantries, our goddess sits apart, beyond them, in a silence of her own making. Were she to enter their presence they would each of them strangle, squirm in their seats, and then, making their excuses, depart. For she reminds them: there is no such thing as immortality, even for the gods. Oh yes, they will all use the word ‘mortal’ – the gods, the eldritches, the spirits – even the elves will deign to call us mortal, owing to their ethereal reincarnations and the continuity of existence they believe this will afford them. We are here to serve the Empty One’s function on this mundane plane – to remind them all: even the spirit does not live forever. God-killers exist and cannot be destroyed; it is only a matter of patience. Within a finite time, even Mortiforn will Die.”
– taken verbatim from ‘The Cult of Utenya’ secret recordings, Chraunost 945 NE
Everything was going as smoothly in Telior as could’ve been expected.
Sure, I was an arch-sorcerer. Sure, for my age I had a lot of experience under my belt. But no one had ever asked me if I was a good teacher, and no one really seemed to care. As it was, half my students over-performed, seeking my approval and my company… perhaps seeking some scraps of secret knowledge that the others wouldn’t hear. The other half underperformed, knowing I was an easy master to please: I was quick to praise, and slow to complain; when I did chastise my workers, my attack was always couched in a jest, never given the full force I thought at times it deserved. I knew this about myself, but despite my position and power, I still didn’t want to confront the slackers. They were older than me, and probably wiser in many ways – and yet repeated experience led me to believe that age wasn’t everything when it came to maturity. There were people ten, fifteen years my elder acting like giggling fourteen-year-olds – when they messed up they always descended into jibes and cackling, and even when they got something right the force-construct was always slip-shod, enough-so that I got tired of marking their work and had them bring it to me at my desk upon completion, so that I could tweak the lines, ensure the cleanness of the structure.
My diligence paid off, as much as it could here. Telese high society was alike and yet unlike what I’d witnessed in Mund. There was less pomp, more ceremony. The gods were invoked at meal-times, including Wyrda Virdut herself, and even the nobles seemed to actually take their prayers seriously. The derision directed towards the lower classes was less baked-in to the attitudes of the rich than it had been in Mund – it was more-readily exposed on the faces of those who bore it, and more-easily broken by familiarity with the poor. I’d met merchants with ten houses who felt free to dance with the rag-folk in the markets, laughing gaily along with the crude jokes and jibes of the crowd – and I’d met knights willing to outright punch peasants who merely got in their way. My efforts to bring such cruelties as I witnessed to heel were met with only partial success. The first time, I managed to err on the side of peace, and brought the issue before Deymar in private – but his bright eyes went roving, troubled, gazing out over the sea.
“How easy it would be,” he said, sighing, “to take a boat – sail away…” He looked back at me, and straightened, his voice deepening again. “I will have words with the man.”
For a couple of weeks it seemed to have worked – the particular knight cast me regular shady looks, but I didn’t see it happen again. Whether such incidents were now simply being hidden from me, I had no idea, but when I saw some young lordling kicking a beggar for no good reason I couldn’t help but get in his face, throw him around a bit.
That got me brought before Deymar, in a tense stand-off with a group of armed soldiers ringing me once more. I was chastised, and played along for the king’s benefit more than for my own. I apologised to the young lord, and he apologised to me.
No one apologised to the beggar. I took the poor man food and money instead, but, made suspicious by his answers, I set an imp on his tail – and within the hour Pinktongue reported that he’d sold the food, and used the proceeds along with the silver I’d provided to purchase himself a wrap of something like nailbiter, seasmoke or ‘riilavorr’ as it was called here.
For as much as things were different here – they were the same. It really was like home. The sickness in Mund – it wasn’t from Mund, wasn’t of Mund. It was the world’s sickness. It was the sickness in the human heart, a soul-disease from which there was no escape, no corner of the earth in which to find respite, salvation. Telior was only better than Mund. It wasn’t perfect.
The injustices were tolerable. They used a calendar derived at least in part from the Mundic one here, and it was the dinner of the Ocean’s Eve when I finally plucked up the courage to invite Nafala to go with me. I was always being told to bring a guest to these things, and the twins already had their own places at the table, given the eminence of their brother, their relationship with the crown prince. I did my best to sound nonchalant when I asked my pretty apprentice to go with me, but my hesitancy had been misplaced. Her awe-filled eyes welled up – she trembled, and stuttered as she accepted.
I’d thought inviting a lowborn to dine with the rich might cause some sharp words to be directed at us, never mind sharp looks, but if anything it seemed to reassure the locals that I’d taken an interest in a Telese woman. Lord Marsk Torloy, the man who’d accosted me in front of the throne on my first visit to the High Hall, finally let go of his mistrust – he got drunk with me, and admitted in a hushed whisper in the corner that he was just afraid of me, afraid of my power. His eyes shining with the passion of far too much booze, he confided he wished he had the abilities of an archmage – not to use them, but just to have them, to know he was capable of more than most men. I admitted it did feel good – the self-reliance, the freedom.
“But we aren’t invulnerable,” I told him.
“Eh? Zis – invowneral?”
“We feel like we can’t be hurt,” I explained, “but we can. We can’t do everything.”
He laughed. “I have seen Orcan stop ze… ah… offiod… title vave. Stop ze title vave! Do not tell me zis. You fought off ze dark elves! On your own!”
I shrugged, trying to appear modest, but I felt myself smiling.
Afterwards, I walked Nafala back to the house she shared with her extended family in the lower levels near the docks. We spoke about many things, but work was the one thing we most had in common, so we kept circling back around to sorcery. I told her so many half-stories I lost track, doing my best to couch the truth in lies, hide the reality of my past as best I could without making up a history wholesale. She seemed anxious to make a good impression, which left her only speaking in short, carefully-calculated bursts, and so I ended up wittering on with myself to fill silences. She didn’t seem to mind, and was keen to express her interest in the things I spoke about – “Oh, you must tell me more about zis demon,” “Ze towers in Mund, are zey all like zis?” Her voice sounded happy enough, but the smile on her face seemed to have been glued there, and when I tried taking her by the arm I felt the stiffness, the tension in her body.
We ended up in a dry patch outside her door, just beyond the reach of the moonlit spray that came stretching over the rails towards us. We stood there, just listening to the restlessness of the sea, observing the silver-black expanse before us – and between one heartbeat and the next she spun on me. The wind lashed us, sending her raven hair streaming back as she pulled my head down by the hood, pressed her mouth against mine.
Revulsion.
For the briefest instant I thought again of Emrelet. The first kiss, soaring beyond the Maginox. The wizard’s voice, her surety, her passion.
Then the memories were gone – not destroyed, but shut away, never to return, like those of the girls who’d come before her.
Leaving only the underlying sense of wrongness.
It never left, never even lessened, worsening as the moments extended. The softness of Nafala’s lips, her tongue, the sweet breath exhaled through her nostrils to dance across my cheek – her touch was like fire –
It’s wrong!
She thought I was older than I was. She didn’t know my past. She didn’t know me, what I was capable of. What I was incapable of.
I could never tell her the full truth about me. Never, not without doing something to bind her to silence. A greater sin.
I – didn’t – care. Not on the surface. It felt good, to be wanted. Reassuring. Exciting.
Exciting.
Yet the excitement, the excitement itself repulsed me, the core of my self reaching out to the forefront, taking hold of my hands and using them to push Nafala away.
Moonlight struck offence in her eyes, their starry depths searching mine, accusatory all of a sudden.
Then her expression swiftly twisted into one of horror.
“No! Wait!” I took her hands, impelling her to stay even as she turned to flee. “Please, Nafala…”
She returned her eyes to mine, and I found I couldn’t bear her gaze.
I looked down at our entwined fingers.
“I ju-just…” My voice was a husky mess. “I can’t – right now… But I…”
“I thought you… thought you liked me.”
“I do,” I pleaded, still looking down. “I do like you, but…”
“You need time?” she whimpered.
I met her eyes again, hoping to find understanding there, but the same shock was present as before, the same self-doubt.
“Please – yes.” I tightened my grip on her hand, trying to smile. “It’s not an excuse. I just… I’m not myself.”
She smiled wanly. I put my arms around her to embrace her and she reciprocated, but I could already feel that it was broken. The burgeoning relationship between us had been changed irrevocably: the way she held me… the way I held her… it was awkward. The chill of the night breeze didn’t fade like a wizard’s warmth spell, and when we separated she headed inside without a backwards glance.
After that, it took days for her to speak again in my presence. She used her hair to hide her face when I passed by her work-station, and only mumbled, eyes averted, if I asked her a direct question. I did my best to steer clear of her, give us both some room to regain our dignity. If I’d asked for time, maybe that was the least I could do to help things from my side.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Without so much as a whisper, never mind a bang, it was the twelfth day of the fourth month, Enyara, or Enir in Telese. My seventeenth birthday. Other than the twins, no one had been able to wish me well, and of the two of them only Jaid had put in any effort. As I lay in bed alone that night, surrounded by the emptiness of my spacious chamber, the globes extinguished and books closed with only the moon and stars for company, I started to regret denying Nafala’s advances. I could’ve taken her into my confidences, couldn’t I? I could’ve trusted her, told her everything… What was wrong with me? Why had I felt the way I did? It didn’t make sense to think she was under mind-control, that she was being forced to feel attracted to me. If Tyr Kayn had flown here just to meddle in my love-life…
But I found it didn’t matter. As much as I consciously lusted after Nafala, as much as I thought I could fall in love with her, the memory of the nausea that had washed over me when we kissed was pervasive. The lust was only skin-deep; its fires didn’t touch the cold monster dwelling deep in my heart. I wasn’t pining for Emrelet Reyd anymore – in fact, I hadn’t known Emrelet at all, had I? How could I pine for someone, for something I’d never really known? No. It was something more fundamental, but the meaning of my own disgust was hidden from me. The coins of introspection paid for nothing except sackfuls of frustration.
Eventually I retreated into myself, into my familiar patterns. I sat up, knowing exactly what I needed to do. Couldn’t sleep with the lights out? Put them on, get absorbed back into the texts…
“Happy birthday, Kas,” I said aloud to myself, and, sitting up in bed, reached for the nearest tome. “What’ll it be tonight? Ah yes. More conjecture on the efficiency of using serialised matrices to manage telepathic flow…”
It would be cool to figure out how to make glyphstones. I suspected the actual design specifications were trade secrets of the manufacturers, however, and there was nothing in my books detailing the process…
I woke up late the next morning with the glowing orb still floating above the foot of the bed, useless in the bright daylight. When I tried to move I realised the chronicle I’d fallen asleep reading was still lying open on my chest, and I gingerly lifted it, wincing to see the folded pages, feel the damaged spine.
“Pinktongue,” I murmured as I did every morning, “report.”
The imp appeared next to me on the quilts as I placed the book down on the bedside table, a scroll filled with hastily-scrawled writing clasped in his little claws.
Over the last weeks things had slowly been taking shape downstairs. The bottom levels of my tower – now referred to by most as the Tower of the Warlock, or, more affectionately, the Tower of Raz – had become an ever-extending set of workshops. All around the clock, at least a few of my sorcerer-apprentices would be present, and wizards and druids, enchanters and diviners were coming and going at all hours nowadays. The lights were always on, and our new glow-globes were the brightest Telior had ever seen.
The twins were coming along with their spell-craft, too. They had to put their minds to a profession sooner or later, and I’d snapped out of my sorcerous reverie one night during dinner and put my foot down about their attendance and punctuality. It might not have been the most respected of professions, sure, but at least sorcery would let them bring in money when they grew up – and it was good exercise for their brains. They were smart, but spell-casting was tricky to the extreme, requiring a level of discipline from the mage during every stage of the process. This was something that I, as an archmage, had largely overlooked previously. Now I was confronted with the sheer amount of work that went into refining the gestures, the invocations – even just preparing the reagents.
And, on the heels of that… the fatigue my poor sibling mages were enduring.
“Do you want to go out and buy us a fortify set?” I asked Jaid one afternoon, after I’d worked them to the metaphorical bone all morning and was feeling guilty. “I’d rather not spend half our treasury on it, but if it’s not –“
“Can’t you just get your pets to make you one?” Jaroan cut in. “Didn’t think of that, did you?”
Truthfully, I hadn’t.
“I…” I mulled it over. “I think maybe you’re right… Hey, we could get Zab to draw the pieces in the air, get Butcherking some wood and get him to hack them into shape… I could finish them off.”
But when I picked up the knife to carve the wood, my hand shook and the wraith-form went active of its own accord. I put down the knife, and didn’t end up trying again. By next week my purse had grown considerably fatter, the reward for a particularly impressive set of song-emitting stones and growth-spheres we’d produced… and I simply bought us a set of game-pieces and a board.
It turned out that the twins were too busy now to play much. Occasionally I’d hear them shouting at each other from their rooms below mine – it was good to know that all hadn’t changed in that department. However, Jaroan was advancing faster than our sister, and not by any natural aptitude – in fact, Jaid seemed to have more of a knack for the practical side of sorcerous things. Rather, it was because of his temperament. The change that had taken hold of our brother was fuelled at least in part by rage, and when we had quiet time in our shared living spaces I could see it coming out in the way he studied, frowning at his book, sometimes poking the page or even throwing the tome across the room in frustration. But I soon learned to keep quiet, keep my eyes on my own text – he always went back to the book in a matter of seconds, stomping over to scoop it up and shout at the thing as though it had hurled itself on the ground. A minute later I would glance over at him, to find him scowling again as he was back on the task, puzzling out the arcane passages.
Jaid had other distractions, too, contributing to her lack of focus. In this I could hardly blame her.
The prince.
At the next formal dinner – going it alone again – I was looking down the table at Jaid and Lathenskar. They were sitting together, as usual, and he was speaking words in a voice too low for me to catch, drawing something on the table with his fingertip. And she was giggling. Giggling.
I might not have been able to hear him, but I could hear the sounds she was making, and it was all kinds of wrong – I could detect mania there in the stuttering laughter. This infatuation… whether or not it was the reason she’d wanted us to stay here all those weeks ago, it had to end.
King Deymar caught me staring, and set down his flagon, confirming my worst fears at a single stroke.
“They should be betrothed next spring,” he said. “No earlier.”
My jaw dropped. “My king – Deymar – I don’t know exactly how things are done here, but she’s only ten, and there’s… there’s no way she’s –“
“Hold.” He raised his hand. “Your sister would have to be willing, of course.”
“I don’t think you understand –“
“They could not wed until the day of her fourteenth birthday.”
It turned out that Telese customs in this regard weren’t far off the Mundian standard. You were considered old enough to wed from fourteen – and according to the drunk lord on my right, you could even enter certain intimate professions. However, you wouldn’t even be able to look after your own money until you were eighteen. Further questioning revealed that in such cases the youngster’s guardians would keep and spend their payments – implying that parental consent for this kind of thing was considered commonplace…
Feeling sick, I pushed away my food. I knew a few girls who’d ended up in the love-houses of Sticktown, but they’d always been orphans, at least. No one had put them there. And no one had taken their earnings, at least not in the establishments I knew of. Surely that was the least, the least that the city and the gods owed them…
I sat there for the rest of the meal in silence, seething. The worst thing was that I knew in the end I’d do nothing. I had all this power, all the means in the world to change things, order it as I saw fit. And yet I was blocked, not by some external force, but by every internal pressure, moral and social, compelling me to stay in my seat, stay in my station… Enjoy the fruits of a civilisation that had seen fit to upraise me and those I cared for. Don’t shake the lantern, or risk getting burnt.
Wasn’t that what I’d always done? I’d accumulated wealth. I’d thought of myself as a little lord, all along, saving up to buy a big mansion… I vaguely remembered the first time I’d interacted with servants, the way it had incensed me to be served food and drink by someone paid to do it… Now I looked at myself, sitting at the right hand of a king, eating foreign delicacies that someone had prepared for me. Listening to the self-righteous droning of nobles who thought to joke over parents selling the innocence of children.
I finished my wine, and my brain did exactly what I feared it would:
At least she’s got nearly four years.
I nodded to Deymar before excusing myself, and breathed a little easier thereafter, in spite of everything.
There was a kind of melancholic despair that came with having all your needs met. Nothing really to strive for, nothing with an inherent meaning beyond existing to exist. If there was no hope of a better tomorrow, if today was as good as it got, then tomorrow became not an avenue of change and hope, but a quagmire of stagnation. When the goal each morning was to make each day as alike as possible to the last, all it did was invite complaint and criticism when it didn’t quite match up. Pettiness ensued. If I didn’t quite get as long to read one day, for instance, because of Jaroan acting up or work getting in the way, it blackened my mood worse than an Incursion. The whole state of mind left a sourness in the mouth no amount of mint could mask.
I tried to focus my energies. When people found out I was offering exorcism, not only for free but almost instantly achieved to boot, with the use of no smelly or otherwise repulsive reagents – I almost got my hand bitten off. Five came forward over the course of the first month, of whom two were merely confused mourners – but I found three genuine ghost infestations. Each was swiftly dispatched back to its plane of origin, to the sound of whimpers and tearful goodbyes from their loved ones.
One morning, the ice in the bay was thicker than they’d expected, given the weather, and it seemed the ice-breaker wizards must’ve been having a heavy night on the liquor, because by eight the ships still couldn’t move. Someone sent for Orcan, but I soon heard that the arch-wizard saw this kind of task as beneath him: the magician who mentioned this was passing through the workshop to pick up a box of rune-covered brooches, and when I questioned her it seemed she’d been apprenticed to Orcan at a time, as all wizards of Telior had been. The archmage deigned to teach, but he saw it as the duty of those he taught to deal with such a mundane event as a frozen harbour.
“’Vot’s the point in training zem, if zey von’t do ze job I trained zem for?’ Zat’s how he alvays talks about it.” She gave her best imitative sneer.
It made me purse my lips, and I followed the courier out into the rain.
I floated on my brilliant blue wings down to one of the piers and, drawing a deep breath, I hovered out over the ice, calling forth my bintaborax.
I’d used them this way once before, back when I first arrived in Telior, but that time I’d only used them to clear an isolated corridor, a single channel for the Scaleshaker – I’d undoubtedly drawn some stares, started some rumours, yet this was entirely different. Everyone was watching now. I was performing for hundreds, possibly thousands of people.
I made it a good show.
In order to stop it being too scary, I had the fiends dance to the tune of the chants echoing across the expanse. And rather than set them to their task in a pedestrian fashion, I had Zab conjure the illusions of giant pink rabbits; the bintaborax sauntered after the rabbits, and smashed the ice where the illusions disappeared, only for them to reappear again moments later a few yards away… Soon-enough the word went around, and a crowd of children formed at the front of the harbour-rails, overlooking the demonic escapade.
It filled my heart with confidence, to see the looks on those young faces watching the demonstration. These weren’t faces that would age into a hatred of sorcerers and their pets. These were faces that would grow into a hunger, a desire to learn, to follow in the warlock’s footsteps. This was the revitalisation Telior really needed. Hope, in the hearts of its next generation, shining bright in their eyes. Acceptance, that the world’s life-blood was magic, that sorcery was a part of this. Realisation, that the only evil in demonology and diabolism was in the mind of its wielder, that we were no different to healers, prophets.
That was still true, wasn’t it?
It took me a minute to process the cry, cast as it was in the foreign accent, competing with the hymn of Enye’s singers. But once I heard it, it was unmistakeable.
“Hool Raz! Hool Raz! Hool Raz!”
I had the demons bow graciously to the crowd when the ships started moving once more, and as I waved them away in a series of over-exaggerated bursts of crimson flame, the kids moaned as one, begging for an encore.
I was almost out of energy, but I had enough left for one more summoning. I brought forth Khikiriaz. I let one lucky kid ride the ikistadreng along the docks for two minutes – the longest two minutes of the lad’s poor father’s life. When I returned him to his dad’s arms, the boy was so enthusiastic that the trembling man had no other option than to grin and thank me.
I left them wanting more – I didn’t want to spoil them on this. I wanted it to remain exotic, exhilarating. And by all accounts as I moved through the city afterwards, I’d achieved my goals. I hadn’t made any new enemies, and made a hundred new friends. When I spoke with the king later, he complimented me on my good judgement, expressing outright gratitude (and not an insignificant amount of relief) that I’d stepped up after Lord Orcan refused.
Yes, everything was going smoothly in Telior.
It took almost three months before they showed up for me – almost three months before it all came tumbling down and I found myself there again, amidst the wreckage of my life, wondering how I’d let everything go so wrong.
* * *