by Pam Uphoff
"So, before you learn any truly complex spells, you must learn how to containerize." He didn't like how keen Xen was looking. Early power like the boy had was unheard of. Dangerous. His eleventh birthday was just a few months in the past, and the boy just didn't understand the consequences of the spells he was learning. Maybe he shouldn't get the castration spell. Tone down the power available to him. Might save a lot of trouble in the future. He winced at the thought of crippling the boy's power. Don't make me regret this, Boy.
He brought out a box spell. Showed how it was made, how it was visualized, how opening it triggered the spell inside, and closing it ended the active application of the spell. "But it doesn't cancel out the prior application. If it's still ongoing, it will continue. Some spells, Push and Shield are the most basic, require continual renewal, a bit of your concentration on them, otherwise they are just a single flick. Illusions will linger for hours. Close the box and they stay put, very gradually fading. Physical morphs tend to revert over periods of days, often in awkward steps, unless violently disrupted. No, I am not going to be teaching you morphs for a good long time." Xen was looking much too interested. Why did I let him talk me into letting him into this class? And the boy is looking thoughtfully at Dydit. How many times has he seen the goat spell invoked? "Likewise, you will have to learn a great deal more before you can lay on a spell in such a way that it pulls power from the targeted person to maintain itself."
They worked and sweated over the box spell, and as they got it, their spell handling improved. Of course Xen was the first to get it, and he quickly started putting his spells in order, with out needing to be shown how.
Nil sent them home before the first winter storms. His first batch of students were about as safe to let loose as any group of young wizards ever had been.
All but the one.
Chapter Twelve
Winter Solstice 1381
Ash, Kingdom of the West
The Witches spent the night of the Solstice up at their hotsprings. The rest of the village threw a feast at the tavern—Harry returned for a week—and toasted the New Year in with the beverage of their choice.
The tavern got a lot of business that week, Xen’s dad visited with his old friend a lot, and the witches got competitive with their cooking. And flirting. At eleven, Xen wasn’t prepared to be targeted by the witches.
"Ah, you’re such a cute kid, all the girls are just going to swarm all over you." Swish crowded up against him on the front porch of the tavern.
Feelings he hadn’t quite acknowledged all jumped up and clamored for his attention. She tossed a spell. He grabbed, to block and copy it. And stiffened in shock as it slipped through his mental fingers and did what ever it had been designed to do. It was unlike anything he’d learned, and he couldn’t block it. Had no idea how to.
Swish laughed and sauntered back inside. Xen panicked and fled. What had she just done to him?
The snow was three feet deep on the ground. Pyrite and the old Dun were hobnobbing where the sun hit the brick paving of the stable yard. Xen threw himself at Pyrite and clung.
The pair of horses nuzzled him all over and assured him he was fine, no spells on him, nothing changed. Xen gulped and reached for control. Brought out the copy of the spell.
The Old Dun recognized it, and snorted. :: She wants to have your foal, but she doesn’t want to mate with you. She traveled your semen. ::
"I haven’t got any yet! I don't think. I’m eleven years old! I can’t, she can’t . . . How dare she do that? I won’t let her do that! She’d better take it back. I can do something bad to her."
The horses shoved him around with their oversized nudges and got him to calm down. He had trouble concentrating on shields, as his anger boiled over.
:: He’s growing up. Stallions don’t get very good control of their tempers until they’re older, either. ::
Pyrite snorted. :: Stallions never get control. Geldings are much better. ::
The Old Dun wagged his ears in doubt.
Xen shivered at the thought, except . . . "There’s a spell for it. Like gelding, but they don’t cut anything off. Nil will know about it. And a shield against birding like that." His eyes narrowed. "Then I'll do something to her."
Chapter Thirteen
Winter 1381
Ash, Kingdom of the West
Jin drove in with a new pair of students, a week after the Solstice. The corridor went from Gemstone to the old grange barn on the north side of Ash. The tower was ten miles to the south, an easy trip with the roads cleared of snow by a combination of wind and the horse drawn snow plow.
Jin had brought Aero, who was just nineteen. Same age as Jek, and with Xen the three of them would be nice group of baby wizards.
Nil frowned uneasily. He wasn’t sure Xen qualified as nice anymore. The boy had somehow managed to find a mean streak. Or maybe Nil just hadn’t noticed it before. But the puberty suppression spell seems to have helped him keep his emotional swings under control. He snorted. Just goes to show that the Old Scooners knew what they were doing when they castrated the boys at ten. They can deal with puberty in their mid-twenties so much better. Eleven and twelve year olds are simply too young to have both hormones and power. The three youngsters would be getting the basics, and building from there, as their abilities grew and matured with them.
Jina Genaro was twenty-two, a double wizard girl, and would be matched up with the witches coming in for special training. Obsidian, Dydit's daughter and Quartz, his own, were twenty, and needed to learn how to utilize that wizard gene they had backing up their witch gene. He wasn't actually sure how to train them to do that, or whether the recessive gene would be able to do anything. It might be completely overshadowed by the witch gene on their other X chromosome. The teacher will be hard put to keep half a step ahead of the students, with those two!
Then he'd get the older group of boys back for more advanced training after they'd had six months of practicing on their own. Might get interesting, with the girls around.
We’ll see how many of the boys I have to threaten with actual castration to make them all behave. He sighed. Most likely it’ll be the girls I have to threaten with . . . something.
Chapter Fourteen
Winter 1381
Ash, Kingdom of the West
The Old Dun said he'd learned most of his magic from the witches.
"It's different than the wizard magic . . . a little." Xen narrowed his eyes in thought. "It's more healing and making than offense and defense. Some of that healing . . . if it was reversed, it could be really nasty . . . I wonder if I could do something nasty to Swish?" He couldn't help but smirk a bit. The two horses nudged him in concern. "I won't kill her." He heard the defensive note in his voice, and hunched his shoulders. "I don't know enough about things to know what to do, anyway."
Pyrite took him back to Prairie Coast, and after calculus the next day, Xen asked about genetics and magic.
Nil shook his head. "Lady Gisele is the expert. Answer, too. Your mother's pretty good, but she had a spat with Answer and didn't get any more lessons, after she was twelve or so."
Xen blinked, switched his attention from Nil to his grandfather. Dydit was scowling.
"Wretched woman. She used what she knew when she needed to. They were being attacked by those Oners. And then she had the gall to call Rustle a Black Widow, because she defended herself from rapists."
"Mother killed . . . " Xen refused to consider the rest . . . parents weren't supposed to do that. Except of course, his mom and dad obvious had, at least twice. But his mother couldn't possibly have been raped, he couldn't possibly be . . .
"Oh, stop looking so horrified. It was ages ago, and anyhow, you look just like your father." Dydit sighed. "Your mother did some unapproved changes and got into trouble over it. She invented the hormone repression spell, and used it on your Uncle Havi and his buddies. Without getting permission first. Answer took it as a challenge to her authority, and yet another example of
Rustle being careless."
Nil grinned. "She was. But being brilliant with it, which just made Answer madder. Then when she gave birth to a boy, Answer washed her hands of her, and Rustle rode off to let you do some growing up away from all the disapproval."
"Huh. I liked living out in the New Lands. And going to Cadent with the Valasiks."
Xen didn't like how closely they were watching him. He tucked all this dismaying information away. Right now he needed a diversion.
"What's the difference between witches, wizards, mages and gods?"
Grandfather Dydit grinned. "Wizards rule, witches bitch, mages run away, and gods are strange."
"Granddad!"
Nil was laughing silently. "The power genes. The witch and wizard genes are both on the X chromosomes, they are two versions of the same thing. The witch gene has a little trick nestled up to it, a gene that convinces the surface of an ova to reject Y bearing sperm, so witches only have daughters. The mage gene is similar, but it's on the Y Chromosome, so it's inherited father-to-son."
Dydit nodded. "So, witches have only girls, and the mage power is only in sons. The mage girls won't ever have power."
"What about gods?"
"They've got a witch gene and a mage gene. Obviously someone got past the girls-only witch gene, and of course, your father did it." Nil eyed him. "I wonder if you got your mother's witch or wizard gene?"
"Mom has . . . oh. Of course."
His granddad just grinned. "That's why she's so special. May I?" he held out his hand.
Xen hesitantly reached to touch it. Tried to feel what his granddad was doing. Something with his magical vision, looking deep, making things appear bigger. Like his mother had done. But this time, Xen could see how it was done, even if he couldn't see what his granddad was looking at.
Granddad Dydit looked blank and inward for a long moment.
Dydit blinked and looked at Nil. "Am I reading that right? It looks like someone swapped the sex selection gene for the wizard gene."
"What?" Nil touched Xen with a finger and withdrew.
The Master Wizard was even harder to get through to, but Nil suddenly opened his shields and let Xen in. His thoughts were clear and precise . . . A dizzying fall into a hugely magnified view, a slow scan for a cell that was actively splitting, and thus had the chromosomes all curled up tight . . . and focus further on one in particular . . . and an odd lump, not quite as smooth as the rest of the chromosome.
"There's the X chromosome. There's the witch gene . . . and there's the wizard, right next to it. Y chromosome . . . with the Mage gene." The odd vision disappeared suddenly. Nil blinked and sat back. "Boy . . . next time you go to Rip Crossing, talk to the mages out there. Learn their chants and how they work together." He shook his head. "Three power genes. I've never heard of such a thing. I'm going to have to talk to Lady Gisele about this. She may have seen it before."
Granddad looked down at him. "And if you want to know more about genetics, Lady Gisele is the one for you to ask."
"She's taught me a bunch already. I'll ask."
He'd have to be careful, asking her about that tiny little insertion in the X chromosome. Because if he could change it just a bit, if he ruined the Witch Gene . . . a certain witch wouldn't be a witch any more. She wouldn't be able to collect power.
Chapter Fifteen
Spring 1381
Valley of Ash, Kingdom of the West
In the spring Xen helped with the shearing . . . and found himself studying That Ram. The beautiful animal was a lot smarter than a sheep—and he was convinced that he was actually a wolf.
***
The wolf growled at the young human.
"No, it's true. If you just walk up and stand there, he'll take that heavy hair off without anyone touching you."
Every year someone jumped on him, yanked him around, held him, controlled him . . . and that someone was right there, also listening to the boy. He subdued an impulse to attack. And slowly walked up and stood in front of the Bad Man. The man waved his hand and the horrible hair flew off. The boy opened a gate. Back into captivity. If it weren't for all the she-sheep who wanted him . . . lots and lots and lots of them . . .
He walked through the gate, growling faintly.
The Bad Man was shaking his head. "I'm not sure your method is an improvement, boy."
The wolf backed into a corner, in case the Bad Man and the Goat wanted to come and humiliate him as usual. But they just picked on the rams, and left him alone.
***
Five and a half years ago, near enough, the mages who had farmed the fields and bred the livestock had "run away" as his granddad had put it.
Now the witches had taken over. With the experience of five years, they plowed, planted, magically repelled bugs from the orchards . . . and found themselves short of hands for the harvesting.
Xen was delighted to get a break from lessons, and Jek and Aero seemed relieved as well. They fell to, climbing the old fruit trees, racing the young witches to see who could finish a tree first . . .
Then the witches used the corridor that reached more than halfway up Mt. Frost, so they could get to the peak of Mt. Frost by the Solstice. And back in time for the early vegetables.
Five year old Quicksilver came back a Crescent Moon, playing with glowing balls of power.
Nil just shook his head and excused Xen from classes "until she gets a bit better control."
The family spent a great deal of time in Rip Crossing, among the rocks, and his mother spent very little time around books and other flammable material.
So Q only started two small fires that summer.
Chapter Sixteen
Summer 1381
Ash, Kingdom of the West
Xen helped his granddad break and train a nice small horse for Quicksilver.
"He'll be perfect in a couple of years, when he's had more experience and Quicksilver's a bit more mature." Dydit rubbed the gelding's forehead.
This summer, Q was riding an steady older mare, and Xen showed her all over the New Lands, where the rocky terrain minimized her accidentally incendiary outbursts of magic. Blackie was so old and lazy she didn't even spook at fireballs.
And they visited Ash, and the grandparents regularly.
Never was always delighted to take Q for an afternoon. Generally spending it out of doors . . . And as her control improved, she started spending time at the wizard's tower, proudly riding back and forth on her own.
Xen hesitantly approached his aunt Obsidian. Maybe she could help with Swish, get her in trouble with Answer . . .
"Don't bug me, kid. I'm not in the mood."
"You're only twenty. Why is advancing so important? Grandmother says witches used to wait until they were twenty-five."
She looked at him, clearly exasperated. "I'm the oldest one there, now. By four years! My little sister is on the same tier. My niece, my oldest sister's youngest daughter is on the same tier. The first tier, I haven't made it up a single step."
Xen snickered. "I don't think you should count Q. She's very precocious. And . . . do advancements really matter that much? It seems like a bad trade off for diapers."
And suddenly her eyes filled with tears. "I miscarried. Twice. What if I can't ever . . . I started out just thinking about advancing. But, but . . . I want a baby. Maybe not right away, but . . . in a few years. And now I have to wonder if I ever will." She looked down at empty arms, cradling nothing, and the tears flowed.
"Oh." He hugged her, and daunted, went away without asking about Swish.
Chapter Seventeen
Late Summer 1381
Ash, Kingdom of the West
Xen approached Lady Gisele again, about genetics. The genetics of magic, this time. He needed to know more about magic before he did anything.
"There's these things on ends of the witches' and wizards' chromosomes that regular people, like Mr. Brock or Mr. Leaman, don't have. Well, they've got a couple of them."
The Goddess of H
ealth and Healing crossed her arms and stared down at him. "Chromosome insertions. There are six of them—so since we have two of each kind of chromosome—people can have up to twelve insertions. They're small, anything from fourteen to eighteen gene complexes in each insertion. Out of tens of thousands of genes on the rest of the chromosomes."
Xen thought that over. "What does that have to do with witches and wizards?"
"We don't know about all of them. Several, we've identified. They give us specific abilities, talents. But on the X and Y chromosomes there are these tiny insertions, in the middle, not out on the end. They enable the collection of power. Without those, the only magic you can do will be tiny, limited by the strength and energy of your body."
"So, these insertions. You can tell right off if a baby will be a witch or wizard? What if they have the power genes but none of those end things?"
"If they don't have very many insertions, they won't ever be very strong, even if they can gather power. And yes, we can tell. We didn't use to do it, though, so a baby without power wouldn't be rejected or neglected by their mother." Lady Gisele sighed. "But they kicked a few late bloomers out of the pyramid . . . so we started checking, and letting Answer know."
Xen nodded.
And studied various things. The smart horses had a bunch of the insertions, including a tiny little sequence inside the X chromosome. His dogs only had a few insertions, but they all had a single power gene. They just grinned and panted when he tried to teach them magic. They'd never talked, the way the horses talked. "I'll bet the real Hell Hounds talk. And maybe your puppies could talk too. Like Phantom can talk even though his dam's only half smart horse." He drummed uncertain fingers. "Mom said no puppies. So we'll have to wait and find out later."
