The Choice of Magic

by Michael G. Manning

  The old man’s eyes perked up, sending his bushy brows to new heights. “What’s different?”

  “Their turyn, or whatever you call it. If everyone’s is different, maybe that’s what makes you feel sick when you get someone else’s…”

  “Now you’re starting to think,” said the hermit. “Here’s something else to consider. Long ago, some mages would make the elixir of turynal and sell it to more skilled wizards. Even today, warlocks use it to barter with their patron spirits. If it makes the user sick when they imbibe someone else’s turyn, why do you suppose it has value to others?”

  It sure isn’t the taste, thought Will sourly. Then he remembered something the old man had said a few moments before. “You said I lacked ability. Maybe someone with skill can use it without getting sick?”

  The hermit smiled. “You’re not as stupid as you look. A proper wizard would never drink a vial like that in a single draught, unless it was his own. He would sip it slowly, taking time to absorb and convert its essence. Very few, and only those with great skill and experience, could manage to take an entire dose all at once like that.”

  “Then why did you tell me to gulp it down?” exclaimed Will angrily.

  The old man smirked. “I didn’t. I never said anything about how you should take it.”

  “Well you could at least have warned me!”

  “It’s better this way anyway,” said the hermit. “If you had tried to drink it slowly, you’d have wasted most of it. I doubt you could have taken a second sip.”

  Standing up, Will kicked loose dirt over the products of his insulted stomach. “I don’t see how it’s better. I threw it all up.”

  “How do you feel?” asked the old man innocently.

  Will paused in mid-thought. He hadn’t noticed before, but his bone-weary fatigue had vanished. Even the nausea had faded into the background and seemed to be rapidly disappearing. In a word, he was better. Much better. He looked at the old man in surprise. “How? It came up almost immediately.”

  “The elixir is just a vector or intermediary,” explained the hermit. “It contains and sustains the turyn until it reaches its destination, which in this case was you.”

  His head was spinning with unfamiliar words. “Vector?” asked Will.

  The old man frowned for a moment. “Vector has several meanings, but in this case, I’m talking about a substance used to convey something from one place to another. Once you swallowed the elixir, it only took a few seconds for the turyn to diffuse from a small area of high concentration into the relatively empty space of your half-dead body. I’m using alchemical terms to describe it, but the principles are the same, although true drugs take quite a bit longer to diffuse, but I won’t get into osmotic pressure right now.” He paused, scratching his beard for a moment. “Actually, I suppose I should say ‘etheric pressure,’ since we’re talking about turyn.”

  Will stared at him as though he were speaking a foreign tongue. “Huh?” was all he could manage.

  The brief speech seemed to have improved the hermit’s mood somewhat, because he gave Will an apologetic look. “Pardon me. It’s been a long time since I had occasion to talk about any of this. I forget you’re not versed in it. Not to worry, I’ll loan you a primer this evening. Reading through it will help improve your vocabulary immensely.”

  “Primer?” asked Will.

  The old man nodded. “A book meant for learning.”

  “Oh,” said Will, understanding at last. “You’ll have to just tell me. I can’t read.”

  His new guardian stared at him as though he had grown a second head. “You can’t—what? Didn’t Erisa teach you?”

  Will shook his head. “She says talking is faster anyway, so there’s no point in it,” he replied confidently.

  The old man growled. “I don’t have years to sit around telling you everything. Besides which, since I’ve been alone so many years, speaking only to myself, I’ve forgotten how to communicate with ignoramuses. So, if you intend to learn anything from me, the first thing you’ll do is learn to read. We’ll start in the morning. I’m too tired to even think about it right now. I’ll show you the stove and you can start dinner.”

  Will shrugged. “You expect me to cook? I don’t know how to cook.”

  This was too much for the hermit. Throwing up his hands he shouted at the boy, “Then what good are you?” The sudden movement, combined with the noise, spooked a doe that had been grazing nearby, and the hermit’s eyes tracked her as she sprang away. In the space of an instant, he forgot about Will entirely. “Deer?” he muttered, as though he had forgotten the very existence of such an animal.

  Seconds later his face reddened, and his eyes seemed to catch fire. Furious, he sprang to his feet and began running around one side of the house. “Fucking deer! Get away!”

  Will watched him go with wide eyes. “He’s mad, utterly mad.”

  From the far side of the house, he could hear the old man screaming, “Nooo! Stop! You bastards, what have you done to my squash?” The voice receded slightly as the hermit got farther away, but the volume of his voice was such that the words were quite clear to Will’s young ears. “I’ll kill every last one of you misbegotten wretches!”

  Chapter 7

  The next morning arrived bright and early, and Will greeted it with muscles stiff from spending a night on a cold, hard floor. The old man’s home had turned out to have two rooms. The front room, which Will had at first assumed was the entirety of the small house, was dirty, cluttered, and without a bed. Its main feature had been an old stone hearth that he had been forced to cook dinner over.

  His efforts had been rewarded with singular praise from his new guardian. “That was by far one of the worst meals I have ever been forced to endure.”

  “You didn’t have to eat it,” Will responded sullenly.

  “Trust me, I won’t again,” the old man said. “But I did so out of respect for your talents. You have a lot of promise, boy.”

  “Huh?”

  The hermit nodded. “Definitely. When I eventually kick you out for laziness, stupidity, or some other yet undiscovered fault, you have a great career ahead of you. You could do well as the chief cook for King Lognion’s dungeon. One taste of your food would have his prisoners begging to confess their guilt. They’d probably entreat him to send them to the gallows just to escape your culinary torment.”

  Will pressed his lips together firmly. He was quickly learning that the old man loved to goad him to anger. He wouldn’t reward the bastard this time.

  “Let me ask you, though,” continued the old bastard. “Where did you get the inspiration to combine raw turnips with oat gruel?”

  Will ground his teeth, refusing to respond.

  “And not peeling the turnips, that was pure genius.” The old hermit sighed. “I can still taste the dirt and grit in my teeth. Do you think you could make it again?”

  “You said you wouldn’t eat it,” Will replied.

  “Oh, I won’t! I was just thinking that if we spread it around the garden, it might keep the deer away from my plants.”

  The old man laughed long and hard after that, before eventually retiring to what must be his bedroom—the door to which Will had somehow failed to observe until the hermit rose and opened it. When he started to follow, the crotchety bastard had turned back to face him. “You sleep out here.” Then he shut the door and locked it.

  With no blanket and no bed, Will slept on the floor beside the slowly dying hearth fire. Stretching to relieve the soreness in his shoulders, he glared unhappily at the old man when the door to the back room opened the next morning.

  The cruel bastard’s first words of the day were, “Do you know how to cook eggs?” When Will shook his head ‘no,’ the old man showed him, supervising this time to prevent a repeat of the previous night’s disastrous dinner.

  After that, he brought out a large flat piece of dark grey slate and a piece of chalk. He began scratching symbols onto it. “This morning you�
��ll learn the sounds of the alphabet.”

  Will frowned. “Shouldn’t you be teaching me something more important?”

  Large, bushy brows went up questioningly. “Such as?”

  “Magic,” said Will immediately.

  “Why the hell would I do that?” said the old man in genuine astonishment.

  “But…”

  The hermit went on, “You can’t cook or read. Your vocabulary is so poor as to be nonexistent. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to find you’d never learned to wipe your ass. You have far more important things to learn than magic.”

  Will was beginning to get used to the insults, so he refused to take offense. Instead, he asked, “After I learn to read, you’ll teach me magic, though, right?”

  “I’ll teach you herbology, and if you’re lucky, a little alchemy.”

  Will’s shoulders slumped. “If I wanted to learn that, Mom could teach me,” he complained.

  The hermit’s eyes twinkled with hidden mirth. “Who do you think taught her?”

  Surprised, Will answered, “She told me it was her great-grandfather.” Then he remembered his previous doubt. “She lied, didn’t she?”

  The old man grew still, his face taking on a serious expression and his eyes misting slightly. After a long pause, he said, “No. No, that’s the truth.”

  Will couldn’t believe it. “You’re not old enough!”

  “Hah!” said the old man. “I don’t look my age. How old do you think I am?”

  Trying to think of the oldest person he had ever met in the village, Will guessed, “Sixty?”

  The hermit began to laugh. “I’m a bit older than that, but if anyone asks, sixty will do.”

  Something else occurred to Will then. “What should I call you? Mom says I can’t use your name.”

  Hard eyes bored into him. “She told you my name?”

  Will shook his head. “I overheard the two of you. Your name is Arrogan, right?”

  “No,” declared the old man. “Arrogan died a long time ago. He’s a historical figure. Best to forget him. Someone mistook me for him once, and it’s caused me all sorts of trouble ever since.”

  “Who was he?” asked Will, his curiosity piqued.

  “The betrayer of Darrow,” said the hermit, referring to a country that neighbored Terabinia. “After you learn to read, you can look him up in one of my books. I’m not interested in talking about him.”

  He could sense that the topic was considered closed, so Will went back to his previous question. “Well, what should I call you? You do have a name, don’t you?”

  “You’re barely weaned from your momma’s teat. Calling me by my name would be disrespectful,” said the old man, deflecting the true question.

  Will thought for a few seconds. “If I’m your apprentice I should call you ‘Master,’ shouldn’t I?”

  “Probably,” admitted the hermit, “but I’d die of embarrassment if anyone heard you and attributed your idiocy to my teaching.”

  “How about ‘Grampa’?” suggested Will, watching the old man carefully.

  The hermit froze a second, then blinked, his face taking on a strange expression. “Why would you do that?”

  “Well, if you’re Mom’s great-grandfather, then you’re my great-great-grandfather, so we’re family,” said Will hopefully. He wasn’t sure why he had made the suggestion. The only family he’d ever had were his cousins, his uncle, and his mother. For some reason the thought of calling someone ‘father,’ or in this case, ‘grandfather,’ appealed to some inner need he didn’t fully understand.

  The old man coughed, then cleared his throat. When he answered, his voice seemed thicker than before. “Fine. You can call me Grandfather if you want, but if we’re ever around other people use ‘Master.’”

  “You said that would be embarrassing,” Will reminded him.

  His grandfather glared at him. “Not as embarrassing as having people know I’m related to a lackwit.” He pointed at the slate. “You need to learn these ten letters. Once you’ve managed that, I’ll show you the rest. If you can name them all and tell me their associated sounds, I’ll teach you something interesting after dinner this evening, assuming you don’t poison us.”

  “Magic?” asked Will hopefully.

  The old man paused. “Why are you so damned interested in magic?”

  Will looked evenly at his grandfather. “You and Mother both seem to think I’ve got some talent. That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?”

  “I brought you here to teach you to be an herbalist,” said his grandfather. “Along the way I hope to teach you only enough magic to keep you from killing yourself or getting yourself put in prison.”

  Defiantly, Will spoke up, “I don’t want to be an herbalist! I want to be a sorcerer, like you.”

  The old man’s face hardened. “What did you call me?”

  “You’re a sorcerer, aren’t you?”

  His grandfather stood, towering over him, his face angrier than Will had yet seen. “I’ll take your ignorance into account this once, boy, but if you ever call me that again I’ll cut your ears off and sew them on backwards. Do you hear me?”

  Confused, Will nodded. “Aren’t the most powerful mages sorcerers, though? Like the king?”

  The old man’s eyes lit with fury. “Sorcerers are the weakest, most morally corrupt, vilest, and most despicable examples of humankind ever to crawl mewling out of their mothers’ wombs. They aren’t even fit to be called ‘mages.’ I’d sooner be accused of trafficking with demons and named a warlock as to be called a sorcerer.”

  The vehemence in his grandfather’s voice set Will back on his heels. It made little sense to him. All the most powerful nobles, and even the king himself, were sorcerers, commanding powers so vast they could wipe out entire armies, or even level mountains, if the stories were to be believed. It had been King Lognion’s distant ancestor, the first sorcerer, who had defeated Darrow and established Terabinia’s independence. By comparison, warlocks were known to be degenerate magic wielders who traded with demons and evil spirits for their powers. Being named one was a capital offense.

  So what does that make him? wondered Will. He remembered the old man saying he had once devoured a demon’s essence. Was he really a warlock?

  The old man noted the fearful expression on his face. “I’m not saying I am a warlock, dunce! That was a rhetorical device.”

  Will wasn’t sure what ‘rhetorical’ meant, but he got the gist of the old man’s statement. “Then what are you?”

  “Someone who isn’t going to teach you magic,” spat his grandfather. “You’ll learn to be an herbalist, and I’ll teach you just enough magic to keep you alive and to understand why you don’t want to be a sorcerer.” Will didn’t reply, and after a moment the old man took his silence for acquiescence. Pointing at the slate, he said, “I’ll go over the letters again. Pay attention. I expect you to use the rotten gourd you call a head.”

  Will did his best, reciting the sounds as his grandfather repeated them to him. Fortunately, he had a pretty good memory, not that the old man would ever praise him for it. Once he could repeat back all the names of the letters and their related sounds, the old man stood up to leave.

  “I’m going to check the garden,” said his grandfather.

  A few minutes later, he could hear the old man bellowing from behind the house. “Gah! Get away! I’ll hunt every one of you demon-spawned quadrupeds down and exterminate you if you come back again!”

  There was a short silence, and Will laughed quietly to himself, imagining the old man running around behind the house in a panic. Then his grandfather started yelling again, “Fuck off! I’ll curse you and your offspring unto the tenth generation!”

  Chapter 8

  That evening, after a dinner of peas, roasted carrots, and yet more turnips, Will’s grandfather sat with him in front of the hearth. “Ready to learn something interesting?”

  “How was the food?” asked Will warily. Th
eir latest meal had been bland, but the old man had walked him through the preparation step by step. He suspected his grandfather might be planning to punish him if the food wasn’t up to his standards.

  His grandfather replied, “Barely edible, but if you keep this up we might not starve to death.”

  “As if you could do any better,” Will huffed.

  The old man sat up straight, affronted. “I’ll have you know I’m the best cook from here to eastern Darrow. Watching you mutilate vegetables is downright painful for me.”

  Will’s eyes narrowed. “First you said you were an herbalist, now you claim to be a chef. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “The best chefs are herbalists,” declared his grandfather self-righteously. “Now, do you want to learn this or not?”

  Cautiously, Will nodded.

  His grandfather rose and went to a side cupboard before returning with what appeared to be a tallow candle. Sitting back down, he placed it on the floor in front of Will. He glanced to one side suddenly. “Look over there!”

  Will did, jerking his head around, but the moment his eyes left the old man he felt a sharp pain in his chest. Whipping his head back around, he saw that the candle was now lit. He glared at his grandfather. “Did you pinch me?”

  The old man smiled evilly. “No.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  His grandfather picked up the candle, holding it in front of Will’s face. “I’ve linked your life to this candle. The flame represents the turyn within you. Whatever happens to it represents what is happening within you.”

  Will wasn’t impressed. Then his grandfather reached over and pinched his arm. The flame shot several inches into the air, flaring in correspondence with Will’s temper. “Damn it! Stop!” exclaimed Will. “That hurts.” The flame died down slightly, but continued to flicker angrily.

  “Did you see what happened?” asked his grandfather excitedly. “Do you understand?”

  Will rolled his eyes. “You’d make a great entertainer, if it wasn’t for your foul attitude.”