The Choice of Magic

by Michael G. Manning

  “Not yet,” said Arrogan. “Which is why you have to learn the runes first, one by one. Practice and repetition. Even a pig could learn this if it had the capability and enough time. I imagine for you it will only take twice as long.”

  The weeks that followed were long and boring, so much so that Will began to look forward to the portions of each day devoted to reading and even math. He began to dread the practical portion of his training. After two weeks, he was still working on the first rune and the old man seemed to delight in finding new ways to tease him about his lack of progress.

  “This is hopeless!” Will declared one afternoon, thoroughly sick of the entire thing. “I just can’t do it!”

  “That’s the spirit!” said his grandfather, cheering him on. “Accept your own incompetence and you’ll never be disappointed.”

  Will wanted to strangle the old man, and his eyes said as much. “Shouldn’t you be encouraging me?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” asked Arrogan, his eyes twinkling with mirth.

  That’s the light of pure evil in his eyes, thought Will. “How long did it take you to learn this?” he asked.

  “You shouldn’t compare yourself to others,” said his grandfather. “It’s never productive, and you’ll only discourage yourself.”

  “Why?”

  The old man spent a few seconds digging something out of his ear before examining his finger. When he finally answered, his tone was flat. “Because it only took me a day to learn this rune.”

  Unable to take it, Will blurted out, “That’s bullshit!”

  “I was something of a prodigy,” said his mentor. “Which is probably why Aislinn found me irresistible. If I had been an idiot like yourself, you probably wouldn’t be here to complain.”

  “You are such an asshole,” observed Will with acid on his tongue. “Don’t you think I’d learn faster if you were just a little bit nicer?”

  “I was kind to Valmon—look how that turned out,” Arrogan informed him. “I’m not doing this to make you like me. I’m doing it because I think you have potential, and whether it takes a month or ten years for you to learn this matters little in the long run. I’ve got time. Now, if you’re done wasting my time jacking your jaw, start again.”

  Whether it was because of his anger or simply a result of repetition, Will succeeded on his next try, or so he thought. “Look!” he cried exultantly.

  His grandfather sighed. “That’s lun not bruman. It’s turned the wrong way.”

  “It’s a line, isn’t it?” said Will, outraged.

  “Orientation is important,” said Arrogan. “Bruman is horizontal and parallel to your chest. Lun is horizontal and perpendicular to the chest of the caster.”

  Maintaining his proud little line, Will walked around to one side of it. “There, now it’s bruman.”

  His grandfather arched one brow and merely stared for several long seconds, then he burst into laughter. It was a minute or two before he could collect himself enough to speak. “Fine, we’ll count it, this time. From now on remember, it’s defined by the perspective of the caster at the time of creation—all spells are. Otherwise, without an accepted reference point, none of them would make sense.”

  Will’s frustration had vanished, replaced by a feeling of relief and accomplishment. Without waiting to be told, he tried to repeat his feat and succeeded after only two attempts. This time his line was oriented properly. Smiling, he did it the way he had the first time. “There, bruman and lun, I’ve learned two in one day.”

  “It gets much easier after the first one,” said Arrogan. “It’s just a matter of honing your skill at shaping, as well as memorizing the forms. The later runes are more complicated, but you’re over the worst hurdle.”

  His mood was too good to think about what would come next. There was only one thing on Will’s mind now. “What are you making for supper?”

  His mentor chuckled. “You’re spoiled! You think every time you accomplish something, I’ll do the cooking?”

  Will nodded. “I bow before your mastery of the pan. Please have mercy on this supplicant and grace the table with your divine art.”

  His grandfather’s face showed disgust. “You’re going to make me sick with that flowery crap.” When his grandson continued to beg, he finally threw up his hands. “Fine! I suppose you’ve earned a small reward. I can’t stand another day of your cooking anyway.”

  He almost clapped at the announcement. The old man’s cooking was no joke. Over the past two years, he had learned that even with only simple ingredients, Arrogan could produce something surprising, and on occasion he would bring out fresh additions that Will still didn’t know the source of, such as butter, flour, or a variety of spices. He had stopped fretting over the mystery of their origin and now only hoped there would be some special additions.

  They were headed into the house when a breathless voice called to them from the forest. “Will! It’s me, Sammy.”

  Looking back, Will saw his younger cousin standing at the edge of the clearing, her cheeks red and her hair wild. She had obviously been running. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his heart speeding up.

  She was bent over, hands on her knees as she panted, trying to get her wind back. “They took Eric…”

  “What? Who?”

  “The king’s men,” said Sammy at last. “A group came to Barrowden this morning. They rounded up all the men and older boys. Dad and Eric were both taken to join the army.”

  “They took Uncle Johnathan too? How do they expect people to survive?” asked Will, aghast at the news.

  “They gave Mom fifteen silvers, ten for Dad and five for Eric. Supposedly they’ll be able to send their pay home in a few months, but they could be gone for years!” she informed him.

  That was quite a bit of money to Will, but he knew his uncle earned at least two or three times that in a year. He had a family to support, after all. Hopefully his aunt had money saved; otherwise they’d be living in poverty within a year. Remembering the gold crown he had given them for the cot, he hoped she still had it.

  “Where are they now?” asked Will. “Maybe we can sneak them out.”

  Arrogan spoke up behind him, “And do what? Hide them in the forest? Have your uncle become an outlaw? And that’s assuming you don’t get gutted by the king’s men.”

  He looked at his grandfather hopefully. “You could do something.”

  His mentor gave him a sour look. “I could, but I won’t. You still haven’t thought the consequences through. It would only make things worse for your cousins. You also haven’t considered the fact that the first thing they’ll do when they see you is truss you up and haul you back to join the king’s recruits.”

  “I can’t just let them take him,” said Will stubbornly.

  “Eric wanted to go,” announced Sammy. “Mother wasn’t happy about it, and Father certainly wasn’t either, but Eric was glad to go.”

  “There, you see,” said the old man. “He’s happy to serve his country. It’s dangerous, true, but it could be worse.”

  Will was still conflicted. Deep down, part of him wanted to join as well, although the idea also scared him. But the fact that they had been conscripted bothered him.

  “Mom wanted me to tell you to stay here,” said Sammy. “Your mother said you were in Branscombe. As long as you don’t go home, everything will be fine. If you show up now, they’ll just take you.”

  Showing a warmth and generosity that Will hadn’t known he possessed, his grandfather asked, “Have you had supper?”

  Sammy shook her head. “In all the excitement and confusion, Momma hasn’t had a chance to cook.”

  “I was about to make a Darrowan red stew,” said Arrogan. “You can eat with us and take some home to your mother and younger brother.”

  Not having heard of that dish before, Will couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like. “What’s in it?”

  “Beef, red wine, carrots—you’ll see,” said his grandfather. �
��It’s a dish fit for a king.”

  Beef? Wine? Where did he get beef? Will shook his head. He knew better than to ask. The old man had steadfastly refused to give up his secrets in the past.

  “Give me a hand, Will,” added his grandfather. “We don’t have meat often. This is an opportunity for you to learn the art of braising.”

  Chapter 24

  The following week was annoyingly mundane. Despite the excitement and consternation created by Sammy’s news, Will’s life remained the same. Worse, there was no hope of relief from his routine; his grandfather had expressly forbidden him from visiting the village or his mother for fear he might be picked up by a press gang.

  Fortunately, his training wasn’t as frustrating as before. Having managed his first two runes, Will found that ones that followed were more complex, but he was able to produce them each within a day or two now that he could express his power with a modicum of control. His grandfather still found things to complain about, though.

  “Damn it, pick a scale and stick with it!” swore the old man.

  Confused, Will just stared at him. “Scale?”

  “A size, lackwit,” snapped his teacher. “You can make them bigger or smaller, but they all have to match, otherwise you won’t be able to reproduce a written spell—nothing will fit together.”

  “Oh!” said Will, understanding at last. “You mean relative size, like a ratio.”

  “Exactly, oh lord of the obvious,” agreed the cantankerous old man. “If your bruman rune is roughly an inch in length, then all the others have to follow suit. It’s best to practice with them all at a certain size. Later, when you try adjusting them, it will be easier to scale them.”

  “That makes sense,” admitted Will, beginning again.

  Arrogan growled. “Everything I say makes sense. Eventually you’ll figure that out, although I despair of you doing it in my lifetime.”

  Ignoring his grandfather’s dour remark, Will asked, “How many runes are there?”

  His teacher replied without hesitation, “A hundred and twenty-three.”

  “Ugh,” groaned Will. “It’s going to take forever to learn them all.”

  The old man laughed. “You’ll have them down in a month.”

  “Then you’ll teach me some real magic?” said Will hopefully.

  “Hah!” said Arrogan. “You’ll know them in a month, but after that you have to learn to connect them and produce persistent spell structures. It will be at least a year or two before you’re ready to start practicing spells. Another ten or twenty years after that, I might even consider you proficient.”

  “I’ll be old by then!” complained Will.

  “Stop whining,” said his grandfather. “You’ve already gained an incredible boon. Ten years is a drop in the bucket for you now. You probably won’t even get grey hair until you’re over a hundred. Spells aside, you’ve built the foundation for true mastery by learning to control your own turyn before bothering with the more superficial stuff.”

  Will’s mind went blank for a moment. Over a hundred? He had figured out that his grandfather’s training would make him live longer, but he hadn’t considered just how long that might be. “How long am I going to live?”

  “Knowing you, you’ll trip over your own feet and break your neck, but barring accidents and your innate stupidity…” The old man looked off into the distance as he did a mental calculation. “Somewhere between five hundred and six hundred and fifty years; it’s hard to say for sure. Your turyn source is producing roughly one-eighth the normal amount, so you take the years you expect to live, subtract the years you lived before learning to control your source, and then multiply the result by eight to get an estimate.”

  Stunned, he stumbled and almost fell down. To prevent a fall, he quickly sat on the ground. “By all the gods!”

  “Don’t thank me just yet,” his teacher informed him. “It’s not as wonderful as it sounds. It’s as much a curse as a blessing, maybe more. You’ll watch all your friends and family grow old and die, including your future wife and children, unless you train them as well. In my day, wizards often taught their families for that reason, but it isn’t easy. Most fail to learn.

  “Because of that, a lot of wizards committed suicide before getting past their second century, and some refused to teach anyone, which is partly how we wound up where we are today.”

  Uncertain of his meaning, Will asked, “Where are we today?”

  “You and I are the only ones left,” said Arrogan flatly. “As far as I know, anyway. Those two-bit dabblers at Wurthaven aren’t even worthy of wiping the asses of the wizards from my day.”

  The more Will thought about it, the more it seemed that his grandfather’s bitterness and isolation were the real cause of the problem. “Why don’t you teach them?” he suggested. “If you’re so much better, do something about it.”

  “Because I don’t give two shits for what happens in this world anymore,” said Arrogan. “Besides, they’re too old. Training to control your source needs to happen when you’re young, and most importantly, before you start expressing your turyn to perform magic. If you want to try and change the world, that’s your business. I’m done with it.”

  “Then why did you decide to teach me?” asked Will pointedly.

  His grandfather made a sour face. “Trust me, I ask myself that very question every day when you cook.” The old man looked past Will’s shoulder at the sky. “That’s not good.”

  Turning around, Will saw a dark smudge rising above the trees. “Is that smoke?”

  “Shit,” observed Arrogan.

  The village is in that direction, thought Will. Did someone’s house catch fire? He started in that direction. “I should see if anyone needs help. Something must have happened.”

  His grandfather put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go inside. You don’t want to see that.”

  “See what? What happened?” asked Will. “Shouldn’t we be going to find out?”

  “Think about it,” said his grandfather. “Rumors of war, press gangs, and there’s smoke over the village. The most likely possibility is that the Patriarch decided on a surprise attack in a season when no one expected it. You don’t want to see what’s down there. Believe me, Will. You can’t forget such things once you’ve seen them.”

  His heart began to race when he understood. “My aunt is in the village. Sammy and Doug are still there!”

  Arrogan’s face was dark. “By the time you see the smoke, it’s too late.”

  “To hell with that!” yelled Will. His grandfather started to grab for him, but he ducked the old man’s hand and took off running. He knew the old man could outrun him, or paralyze him with a spell, but nothing happened. When he glanced over his shoulder, Arrogan was nowhere to be seen.

  Putting those thoughts aside, Will focused on running. During their daily training sessions, he had started learning to increase his strength and speed, but only for brief periods. His grandfather insisted it was more important to learn to change the rhythm of his fighting than try to fight at top speed the entire time. Surprising an opponent with a sudden increase was often more useful than wasting resources trying to become a constantly furious fighting machine.

  That wasn’t what he needed now, though. He needed to run faster than normal, and he needed to maintain it until he reached the village. I also need to avoid breaking my neck on the way, he thought ruefully as he narrowly avoided tripping over a heavy limb.

  To that end, he expanded and increased his turyn, something he had gotten good at over the previous month, then he took the excess energy and tried to focus it on his legs, heart, and lungs. Rather than try to exceed his best pace, he strove to maintain it for the long haul. His breathing was deep and steady as his legs pounded out a powerful beat beneath him.

  He reached the outskirts of Barrowden in half the time it should have taken, and what he saw was pure chaos. Nearly every building was on fire, and people were running in the streets. The only orde
r to be found was in the armed soldiers that stood between the buildings. They moved in small groups of four and five, cutting down anyone that came close, which was often, since the smoke obscured much of the scene.

  Will ran through the smoke, slowing his breathing to avoid being choked by the noxious air. The grey clouds obscured a lot, but he could see the turyn of the soldiers and villagers. Dodging around and past them all, he ran straight for his aunt and uncle’s home on the other side of town. Cries went up from some of the soldiers as he ran past, but none of them came close to catching him, and he was soon lost to them in the smoke.

  The air cleared as he got closer to Eric’s house. That end of the village was apparently the last to be torched and the flames were just beginning to rise from the houses there. A group of four men stood outside the Cartwright house, laughing as it began to burn. Two of them stood by the door, and Will saw one go inside as he ran toward them. The other two were entertaining themselves by toying with little Doug, who had come out to face them. One kicked the boy’s feet from under him, and the other began mercilessly kicking the child as he lay on the ground.

  All of them were easily fifty pounds heavier than Will. If he’d had any reason left, he would have run and hid, but his rational mind had taken a holiday. They hadn’t seen him yet, since their backs were to him, and when he had closed the distance he reached for the sheathed sword of the man on the left.

  Moving faster than he had ever believed possible, Will ripped the short sword from its scabbard and whipped it sideways, cutting deeply into the soldier’s companion, nearly severing his arm. The man screamed, blood spurting from the wound while the man whose sword he had stolen looked at him in surprise. Will brought the sword around to capitalize on his advantage, but the warrior recovered faster than he expected. The man stepped away and avoided his swing.

  “Not bad, kid,” said the enemy soldier, “but you cut the wrong man. Jenson was worthless, and you’re ten years too young to have a chance with me.” Pulling out a long dagger, he grinned, licking his lips.

  The man at the door turned, as if to help, but Will’s opponent warned him off. “Stay out of it, Ed. Let me have my fun.”