Days went past and I had completely forgotten my duties as the cleaner, and Galel did not seem to mind. He, in fact, had himself not met many outsider in a while and devoted his time to my studies. Language was still of utmost importance as Galel insisted that it would do me no good if I couldn’t read any of the countless of books held within the tower. Tome in hand, he showed me how to process a tome about magic, the symbols, runes, and everything. I took it all in with a motivation I had never had, but then again, I never had before had any motivation toward anything. What I had done in my previous life, floated unmotivated through life without putting any focus into anything, had not stop my vague want to become a psychiatrist as I got into university with that. I had a good brain and it was readily observable -- now that I was not crippled by its poignant self-destructiveness.
“... and now that you have the most basic understanding of imagining within a magical context, how about a spellbook to go with it?” Apprentice Galel poked his hand into a ornate pouch by his side and pulled out a dark, leatherbound book that could have in no way fit into it completely. “This here, every page enchanted vellum and that is not all, an essentiality for a magician. Make or brake, if you cannot attune yourself to this, then nothing will come of any of this. As I explained, you need the symbols, inscriptions to be depicted within an attuned object for you to be able to work the Weave as a magician. The others, clerics, paladins, warlocks and sorcerers, they do not. Their magic is not learned or earned, partly with the godly folk, but largely no. Anyways.”
Offering me the book, I immediately opened it and began to flick through it. Every page from start to finish was empty. “There’s nothing in it… Isn’t there supposed to be the inscriptions somewhere here for me to have any use for this?”
“Gift horses and mouths… Jay, if I were to give you a book which had something in it, you would be dead in a heartbeat. Firstly, you are a human and therefore have no inner racial magical essence, therefore no experience. Secondly, you have learned almost nothing yet and could not produce anything out of more complicated inscriptions. Thirdly, I have only two of such and need them both, as of Archmage Ilai, don’t even bother asking. Fourthly, even if you were able to do anything with them, chances are when the dust could settles you won’t be within it. Fiftly, just try and attune the damn thing as I taught you already and stop asking stupid questions.”
I pressed book to my chest and concentrated upon it. Closing my eye, I could feel threads attaching themselves from it to me, the Weave connecting us to together, me and the book becoming one. As if my soul had latched onto it, I felt my fingers running on its cover, not as me, but as the book. Sounds disappeared, I was floating, me and the book were. In my mind I saw every part of it clearly, every empty page at the same time, every bit of it in unison. In that moment there were nothing but the two of us, and then like a crash through a waterfall, reality hit.
Gasping, I opened my eye and was hit by the light of the enchanted braziers. Galel, who was just sitting opposite me, had vanished. I tried to look around but saw him nowhere in the study. Then the door opened.
“Who knew that the scroll cabinet would be such a mess!” The Apprentice walked in carrying a handful of scrolls and a strongbox.
“How long was I…” I said, breathless and still somewhat dazed.
“Long, as we all. Half an hour or so.” The elf seemed lackadaisical as he threw the scrolls on to the table and set the box beside them. “It’s time to fill that empty book of yours. Open them up, all of them, and tell me what they are.”
The box had within it a well-crafted quill, a crystalline bottle of sparkly ink, and a small piece of emerald cloth. Everything else seemed clear but the cloth so I switched my attention to the scrolls. Rolling the first one open, it hit me.
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“These are the equipment for me to inscribe spells into my book?”
“Self-evident,” Galel said with a coy smile, “but the scrolls! Can you read them? Can you use them? What are they?”
I took a closer look at the scroll I opened, tracing the symbol in it with my eye and trying to read the runes within it. It took me awhile but I got it. “With this one you create a bolt of fire in your hand, release it by pushing it towards something and… that’s it. No components required, no words or gestures, just a sign --”
“Not a sign,” Galel cut me off, “but a symbol. That symbol. Inscribed in a spellbook and brought to your mind through attunement with it. Be careful with words, Jay, words have meaning. A sign is a picture of something understood, agreed upon and known, but a symbol, now, a symbol is a mystery. Now, your task is to inscribe those symbols into your spellbook, I might add, without any imperfections. Hours, days, I don’t care, but when you’ve done it, come to me and we shall continue. Until then. I have business elsewhere.”
With great precision and care I undertook my task, not allowing myself to make the minutest of mistakes for even a single ink blotch would have made my previous work null and void. The green linen came in handy, not because of its magical properties although it had some, but because excess ink had to be dealt with as a serious obstacle. Like a sponge it drew in all the extra, allowing me to continue with a pace otherwise impossible, although still slow. I had managed to scribble half of the symbol of the firebolt in my book until I stopped. Two hours had went just like that and my focus was becoming not what it should be.
Retreating to dine upon the conjured foods and drinks of Galel upon the fifth floor dining hall, as no magician would ever dare to eat on the regular other people's cooking, I found nothing on the vast table stretching from wall to wall that usually had luxurious cousines on it. Baffled, I searched the libraries, the many studies and laboratories, everywhere I could access and found him nowhere. Rushing through the lobby, I could hear people banging on the doors and screaming, ordering them, whoever were behind, to be let in. Soon the voices stopped and I moved on.
On the twelfth floor I at last found the Apprentice, but he was not alone. Walking through a solid stone wall impervious to me, from behind him came a familiar figure I had not seen for a long time -- the Archmage himself, Ilai Aomen, came after him and through his calm facade seeped out an unnerving, jaw-clenching rage.
“I will return and and bring her here,” the Archmage said to his apprentice.
“To what end,” the Apprentice yelled, trying his best to keep his frustration in control, “to what end… Abandon us as he did, mocked our gains and sneered at our achievements, spat on the seeds planted and stomped them dead… master, Rose is but a pawn and we need time.”
“Enough of this,” the Archmage said, frowning, his apprentice taking a deep breath in and to my surprise, calming down altogether. “Galel, why do you think I served him this long? For his wit and guile? For his unairing rule and righteousness? For his trustiness and loyalty? He has none of those. I served him for my friend’s blood runs through him, as it did his father’s and the father before him. That river has ran dry, empty, diluted by cowards and thieves, by fools and vandals. I had forgiven it all, only for the sake of Darian and his dream, but no more. All is clear now, all is clear… nothing is left of Darian, nothing remains of his glory and truth. No blood of his is left in that decrepit line!”
The Apprentice lowered his head. “As you say.”
“Now, this little jailbird here, listening without a care in the world.” Archmage Ilai stopped right beside me, and for the first time I saw clearly his face. Ilai looked like a walking contradiction, ancient yet juvenile, the grooves on his face cutting deep but having a skin like that of a teen and the gray of his hair looking like it was freshly painted. Adorned from top to bottom with jewelry and gemstones, a wooden carving of a raven that hung from his an elongated ear stuck out like a sore thumb. Even his voice, as deep and commanding as it was, had no blemishes or crack-ups, waivered not at all. “Send him to the terrace at noon. I’ll be waiting there.”
The Archmage left in haste, albeit Galel seeming to have a lot more to say. That night I slept better than most and in the morning I had managed to complete the first inscription to my spellbook, the scroll withering away as its magic dwindled and siphoned into its new depository. All was within my grasp, so I felt.