“The man behind the red door, just down the road. He'll be able to help.”
Those were the words Sirius had been told when he’d asked where he could find some good telekinetics or similar to help move the ship. Mary had been right. Once Sirius had spoken to the man behind the red door and explained his situation, and how much he could offer per person for a few hours work, they’d easily managed to acquire a reasonably sized group. Now he, Amanda, and Shiv, led this group along the beach, back toward the ship.
He leaned in toward his wife. “So, how much did you get the beer and mead for?”
“104 for 125 cases.”
“I thought I said not to go over 100?”
She shrugged. “I think it’s worth it. She was wanting 125 you know.”
“Ah yeah, not unreasonable I suppose. Still,”
“You think you could have gotten better?” she teased.
He smiled sideways at her. They both knew Amanda was the better haggler. Sirius didn’t have the patience for the back and forth. He usually just stayed quiet until someone either met his price or didn’t. Sometimes he got low prices that way, but Amanda could read people better and in being more flexible, she could often get an agreement even with the most disagreeable people, even if it did sometimes cost a little more up front. They’d make their money back on this though, and they both knew it.
“What did our food and board cost end up being?” Sirius asked out of curiosity.
“Half a gold a head, including food,” she replied.
His eyebrows shot up. “That’s cheap.”
Amanda smiled. “Yeah, see why I didn’t mind going a little higher on the drinks shipment and why I didn’t mind us staying in town another night. That and improving rapport with the locals never hurts, especially when you’re beached. How much did you offer this lot?” She nodded back at the crowd following them.
“Two silver an hour, more if we actually get the ship back on the water.”
Amanda nodded.
“Speaking of that,” Shiv butted in. “I’ve got an idea for how we might do this. I wanted to run it by you.”
Sirius nodded and Amanda dropped back a bit to let them talk. She surveyed the surrounding group. Mostly men, mostly telekinetics from what Sirius had said.
One of them noticed her looking.
He sidled over, got almost uncomfortably close and spoke softly in her ear. “Hey, I hear you’re a a good musician. Do you think, maybe later, you could play something for a couple of us? Somewhere away from the town. It’s been so long since we’ve heard music. I know a good spot. I’m sure it would be no risk if it was just a short song. The elders wouldn’t need to know.”
“Oi, Cal!” One of his other friends called. “Leave the woman alone. You better not be asking for a song from the visitors. You know what happened last time,”
Cal swore to himself, he glanced at Amanda but dropped his gaze when she met his eyes. Then he moved back to join his friends.
Amanda was glad of it. He kind of creeped her out a bit. She glanced back toward town and wondered if she should have spared a moment to find the kids before they’d set out. There was only so much daylight to get the ship back in the ocean though, and they probably would need all of it. She wasn’t convinced they had enough people, and Sirius’s frown had suggested he wondered the same. Plus, the kids had already headed out, and probably in different directions. She’d left Benny in charge again, with instructions to let the kids know not to go near the canyons if he saw them.
Behind her, one of the men started up in song, soft at first, but slowly getting louder.
“A heave ho! A rippled snow!
A copper for me heart oh!
The girl was fair.
A merry dear!
She never wore no underwear!
A heave ho! A bare bare show!
A copper for my eyes oh!
The girl was trim!
A fine fine rim, I put it in,
Her gar-den.
A heave ho! A tight tight show!
A copper for my-”
There came a loud wack! Amanda looked back in time to see one of the other men withdrawing his fist from Cal’s head.
“I said no singing! What part of no singing-” The man drew back his foot.
“Hey! Hey! HEY!” Amanda started toward him. Sure, Cal was obviously a creep, but he didn’t deserve a foot to the face.
Seeing her coming the man stepped back away hands raised. He pointed to Cal, who was on the ground but seemed otherwise unharmed. “He bloody well knows though! He ducking knows the rules! And he still has the gall...” He sucked in his cheeks and then spat a lugy at Cal.
Amanda paused, reluctant to get much closer unless she had to.
Luckily the spitter seemed done. He kicked up sand and moved along without another look back. Cal soon got to his feet and followed along behind in a hunch, wiping spit from his face, eyes looking down.
As Amanda watched them continue on, she noticed the same looks of bewilderment on Sirius and Shiv’s faces as she was sure must have been on her own.
“Trev and Cal, a fine fine show,” A woman’s voice remarked beside her.
When Amanda looked at her in surprise the man the other side of the woman added. “No one likes Cal very much, but Trev especially hates him on account of Cal and Trev’s brother once were part of the same hunting party. They were out in the dunes and Cal turned tail when the howls started up, ran all the way back to town. Trev never saw his brother again. That’s why he’s so very hard on us all about the singing too.”
“Trev’s in charge?” Amanda asked curiously.
“Well no, but he has influence with a lot of the council. Who most people call the elders.”
“They’re not all that old though. It’s a mix, young ones too.” the woman added with a smile.
“So most people, they like the singing ban?”
“There are mixed feelings on it,” was the woman’s answer “But it gets the votes, every time, so yes, I would say most people are for it, or at least, they’ve gotten used to it. To some, it’s a part of our town now.”
Amanda nodded a thanks to them.
She sidled up next to Sirius and Shiv. “Are we sure about letting that guy try and lift our ship?” She nodded toward Cal.
Sirius gave a grunt. “No, but we need all the help we can get.”
She glanced back toward the town. “Do you think the kids are alright?”
“I’m sure they’re fine.”
Back in town, Katrina followed the sorcerer with eager anticipation through a dark wooden hallway. Yesterday he had given her some wordy lessons on how to mold magic.
"It's just like music," he had remarked with a wry smile when she had produced the flute with the defunct infusement and asked if he knew a spell to fix it. "The first rule is to listen. You don't tell magic what to do. You ask it. Mold it. Don't force it. Magic is a negotiation."
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Despite his extended and at times confusing talk, Katrina had listened and attempted to understand as best she could. But there really was no substitute for trying something oneself, and today he had promised to let her practice. But despite her longing for real magic, she stopped short once she saw what lay on his workshop table.
There on in the middle of a large wooden block lay a black bird with it’s wings stretched out and fixed with pins. Longer pins pierced it's still struggling body.
Katrina paused. She knew sorcerers used animals but still she hadn’t expected that. Maybe a bucket of blood or even just a quick throat slitting. But she hadn’t expected to see something alive and pinned. She hadn’t expected torture.
“What is that?!” Gemma exclaimed from behind her.
Bobby and Salem arrived a moment later and both made a similar disgusted noise. “Uugh!”
The old man gave them all a derisive look. “Surely you are familiar with the components of spell work? Magic requires sacrifice. Even your own powers take energy from you. Less the more efficient you are but energy none-the-less. A poorly controlled magic user can have their own power eat them alive if they are not careful. You children must know that?”
“Of course,” Gemma answered quickly. More slowly and deliberately she said, “But that bird is still alive.”
He looked at the bird with a mixture of sadness and resignation. “It is unfortunately required for this spell. A dead bird is no good. I need it to sing.”
“You can’t...” Katrina croaked out. She cleared her throat and tried again. “You can’t just use your own voice? Your own blood?”
“Maybe. But any time a witch or a sorcerer uses their own blood they risk their own life. Not just from the blood loss or mistakes made while tired, but from the spell latching on to them, and their very essence. A poorly crafted spell risks the life of the one whose blood it uses. If you’re lucky you’ll wake up on the floor. If not well... better to risk the life of a bird than that of a person no?”
“But it’s not even singing.” Gemma growled. She took a step toward it and reached into her pocket for a knife she kept there, intent on putting the bird out of it’s misery.
The old man took a step forward to stand between her and the bird on the table. “Not yet. But it will.”
She hesitated and watched, wondering if she should stop him or if it would be over soon enough.
The old man stepped up next to the bird and stroked it’s feathers with his hands, gently he removed the pins and one by one he dropped them into a tiny pale green ceramic bowl with a dark liquid inside. The bird began to chirp and flap. But the man held his hand on it, keeping it pressed down. He looked up and his eyes searched for Katrina.
“Now girl, you wanted to do a spell. Take your sister’s knife and come here. Place it on the bird’s neck.
Katrina glanced from bird to knife and shook her head.
His reaction was not pleasant. The disappointment and contempt on his face made her feel like she was the one with pins in all through her.
He looked to Gemma. “You then. Put the knife at it’s throat. See that line.” He pointed at a groove in the board just below the bird’s neck where the blood was likely supposed to flow into.
Gemma stepped forward. The sooner this ended the better she figured.
He nodded at her approvingly. “When I say.” He lifted the tiny ceramic bowl of liquid above the bird’s mouth. He swirled it around. “Don’t touch the liquid, whatever you do.”
She nodded. She could not hear the pins in it. It looked as if they had melted into the liquid.
He poured the black tar like substance into the mouth of the now screaming bird. The bird gurgled and spat.
Gemma shifted her hand to avoid the dark liquid but she stayed close, not condoning this torture but afraid to cut too soon least the bird’s sacrifice was wasted.
“Now!” he commanded. The he switched to a new language and recited words they did not understand.
Gemma slit the bird’s throat with a firm hand.
Still reciting words the sorcerer placed the small ceramic bowl at the side of the board, right below where the blood would drip. Inside the bowl he dropped eight tiny sandstone pebbles, each no bigger than a thumbnail.
He grabbed Gemma’s knife hand and grasped it tightly. His eyes watched the blood trickle toward the bowl.
She widened her own eyes in surprise but did not resist.
He continued his chanting.
As they watched the pebbles in the bowl absorbed the blood and they darkened first to black and then they paled until only blueish white stones remained, not a single stain of red or black on them.
The sorcerer released Gemma’s hand, then passed her a cloth to wipe her knife on.
“I could have healed it!” Bobby remarked suddenly, ashamed that he had not realised it sooner. “I could have healed it while you were doing it.”
The old sorcerer fixed him with a hard stare. “Then that would take from you. Your magic would have become entwined in the spell.”
“Are you saying it would have risked my life?” Bobby shook his head. “That didn’t look like a hard spell. I’ve a lot more blood than a bird.”
“It’s not the amount of blood that matters. It’s more complicated than that. The rituals we do, they are learnt through experiments. Sorcerers have tried many things, with electrodes attached to the skull, with mindwalkers and borrowers in the room, and still we have yet to figure out exactly why some things work and some things don’t. There are rules we have developed over many years of trial and error and observing patterns. We improve on these over time. It is the purpose of a sorcerer. But one thing we know, stick a healer in a spell and your efficiency is cut significantly. Healing afterward is fine, but during...” He shook his head. “As to whether you’re safe doing so, any less than a regular heal, I don’t know. Perhaps I did once, but it’s all blank in my mind. Any change to a spell will likely change how you think about it though, and the casting of magic is intrinsically linked to how we think. Alas, people are horribly horribly variable you know, inconsistency is hard to analyse, statistics malleable and prone to manipulation to achieve one’s personal goals. Sorcerers are not above such things.”
He sighed, and he sat on a stool. “New spells and methods should only be attempted by qualified sorcerers. Even old spells don’t always work the same for everyone. But we have shown over the years that one can learn.” He scoffed lightly and his eyes found Katrina. “Or at least some of us can.”
Katrina had wrapped her arms around herself and she looked down at the bird. The spell had taken all it’s blood, drawn it from it so the carcass left behind was just flesh and feathers and bone. She swallowed hard and she asked weakly, “Are you supposed to still be practicing?”
He had said he got kicked out, and he had implied it was for trying to share spells, maybe to help someone, but now she wondered at that. She wondered if he had even remembered the right reason at all.
He smiled but it did not reach his eyes. “Well, it’s a grey area.”
“What does the spell do?” Gemma asked.
He took the small ceramic bowl and tipped the eight small stones into the palm on his hand. “It traps sound.”
At their frowns he sprung up from his stool. He pointed at Salem, then off to the side. “You stand over there.”
Salem glanced worriedly up at Bobby.
Salem’s face was pale, maybe even a little green. Seeing this, Bobby grabbed his brother and they both stepped off to the side together. He kept himself between Salem and the sorcerer. Then he shot Gemma a meaningful look and a glance at the exit.
She bit her lip but nodded. The less time they spent here the better. But she wanted to see what the spell was first.
The sorcerer placed the four small pebbles around them in a square on the floor, mumbling more words as he did. Then, directly up from each one on the floor, he placed the other four such that each one was above their heads and floated in the air.
“Now,” he turned toward the two girls, who were in the invisible box with him. “Try say something to your brothers, see if they can hear you.”
“Can you hear us?” Gemma asked of Bobby and Salem.
Bobby frowned. “What?” he asked. They could hear him clearly.
Gemma laughed nervously. “I said, can you hear us.” She enunciated the words so he would be able to lip read.
Bobby shook his head, then took a cautious step forward and reached out to put his hand through the barrier. He eyed the sorcerer in case the man might warn him not to. Bobby’s hand passed right through the barrier. Then he stepped through himself. “Wow!” He remarked as he looked around. “I can’t hear anything you say from out there. I mean I can sort of, but it’s very quiet.”
“You can still hear a bit?” the sorcerer inquired.
Bobby nodded.
The sorcerer frowned and sighed. He stepped out of the box. “Talk,” he commanded.
“Uh, testing, testing, 1, 2, 3,” Gemma replied.
The man sighed.
The kids, all except for Salem, who stood warily off to the side, stepped in and out of the box a few more times, testing it’s limits. Eventually the sorcerer collected up the stones.
He shook his head sadly. “It was supposed to cut off all sound. It’s not much good if the music can still get through.”
“You’re making a soundproof box so people can play music again?” Gemma asked.
“Well, not for everyone, just some people. I can’t do it big enough for everyone. I was figuring I’d sell a couple for votes in the next town elections. There’s been restlessness lately. I’m sure you’ve heard about the creatures in the dunes?”
They nodded.
“What are they?” Gemma asked, figuring if anyone knew then it would be the town sorcerer.
But he just shrugged. “Beats me. The thing is I like the peace and quiet, but see, some people, they want to start up the hunts for it again, bring back the music. Bloody rowdy bunch who can’t respect quality silence. That and, every time they do it, we lose a bunch of people and productivity suffers. We end up with food shortages and all sorts of problems. Point is, I figure I can make one or two of these for personal use, enough to cover a small room. That satisfies the most vocal, in return for their silence and their votes.”
“A room would work for everyone wouldn’t it? They could share?” Gemma asked, not understanding why he only wanted to give it to a few people.
The sorcerer took his seat on his stool again. “You don’t know this town, they’ve got their cliques and feuds. There’d be fighting, and I’d never be left alone. And then there are some who don’t like sorcery. No, no, I have to be selective, pick the right few.” He sighed. “Alas it has to be completely sound proof and this one took me a long time to get to this stage so it’s irrelevant anyway. I’m still a long way off. It was hard enough just to catch the bird.”
“Couldn’t you just make one that kept the sound out for you?” Katrina asked, finding her voice.
“I already told you, it’s not just about the sound. And no, it’s easier to trap the sound than it is to keep it out. Don’t ask why, I don’t know. I don’t remember, maybe there is another spell but...” he shook his head and sighed. “What was it you kids were looking for anyway, some girl?”
Bobby nodded, “Yeah, we should get back to looking for her.” He took a step back toward the doors.
The sorcerer eyed him tiredly, then met Katrina’s gaze. “I don’t suppose you’re still interested in learning anymore magic?”
Katrina hesitated. She was. She did want to, but then her gaze found the bird. Not that kind of magic.
He sighed and he reached for a book, part way down a nearby pile. “Well perhaps this then. You might find it useful in your little search too. Come back when you’ve got one of those spells working. I won’t teach you blood magic if you won’t use a sacrifice, so you figure it out on your own and maybe you’ll see why it’s done the way it is. Come back when you’re ready to try again. And you didn’t get that book from me you hear? Now be gone, the lot of you.” He handed her the book and waved them all out.