by Ethan Spears
By the end of the day, however, no progress had been made. She ate her dinner in fuming and sulky silence, feeling like a day that could have been devoted to study had instead been wasted on a frivolous pursuit. She at least bade her mistress goodnight before she turned in, but it was forced and hollow.
Her mind was buzzing and active as she lay there, numbers and letters burned into her brain, twisting and jumping in front of her eyes. It took all of Ezma’s training to clear her mind enough to find sleep, but even that was fitful.
She dreamed of Xenodej, or at least the way she always imagined him: a buffoonish human with a long and thin mustache, bone-white skin, hollow eyes, and a gratingly broad smile. He hopped around a field in purple raiment far too big for his body, laughing as Mergau tried to catch him. She was becoming angry again. She fought to control it, but the laughter and his obnoxious smile were doing nothing to help.
Suddenly he was bobbing right in front of her. One of his hands snaked out, his arm moving like it had more joints than it should, and found her shoulder. He gently pushed her down, sitting her on a cushion. Behind him, a flat slab of black stone burst from the ground, stretching so high that it vanished from sight in the sky above. He pushed a finger up his nose until the third knuckle disappeared. When he pulled it back out, a stick of chalk was balanced upright on its end. He proceeded to draw a rectangle on the slab, slowly and deliberately, so unlike his other jaunty movements that Mergau knew there was some meaning behind it.
Was this one of those prophetic dreams Ezma had mentioned when they started working on theory? It was hard to tell as she’d never had one before, but Xenodej was acting oddly as he drew and bobbed in place, bouncing on his legs like a rabbit. Mergau relaxed on her cushion, determined to learn what he had to teach her.
Xenodej finished drawing; each side of the rectangle was made with a single thick stroke, slowly and meticulously drawn so the box had perfectly straight sides without even a hint of curving off course. The rectangle became transparent, the fields beyond the slab showing through. When Mergau tilted her head to get a better look, he fanned out his cloak to block it from her view. Seeing her frustration seemed to entertain Xenodej, who danced in place on stubby legs. He lowered his cloak, the slab clear of markings once more. He drew again, even slower and more deliberately than the time before. Again, the rectangle grew transparent, and again he hid it from her with his cloak when she tried to focus on it.
Annoyed, she stood and approached. In a blink of her eyes, he was gone, now standing behind her. He waggled the chalk at her as if to say ‘pay attention,’ then again drew the rectangle with thick, solid lines. When the rectangle became transparent, he shifted his cloak to hide it from view. Then he turned back to Mergau and smiled, vanishing along with the chalk, the slab, and the rest of her dreams.
***
Mergau awoke to find Ezma retrieving the ingredients for breakfast. Usually when awake this early she would turn over and wait for breakfast to finish, but today she kicked off her blanket and stood. Her pen and her notes were still lying on the floor by the door. It was odd that they were there when the mistress usually put them in the other room for the night, but maybe the mistress knew what to expect. It was things like this that made Mergau wonder how often Ezma must use her future-seeing abilities.
“Good morning,” Ezma said as Mergau arose, then, “you shouldn’t practice before breakfast,” when Mergau went for her books. Mergau ignored her, snatching up the pen and focusing on it. She could feel her magic flowing down her arms and enter the pen as naturally as her own finger. She reached up to draw the window in the air.
She had realized in the night during some half-remembered dream about purple and black and chalk white that every time she built the frame for the scrying window, she created the four sides together and brought the window into existence all at once. But maybe if she constructed each wall of the frame by itself, like she might if she were drawing it, she could focus on them and give them the permanence to sustain themselves. When all four walls were complete, then she could combine them into one structure.
She drew the left side of the fame, sensing that it was there rather than seeing it. A stroke for the top and downwards on the right, becoming more real to the eye. The bottom, the pen’s tip perfect for making each wall uniformly thick. The lines weren’t to her liking and she obliterated them with a thought, starting again. Slower, she told herself. She drew them steadily, making them thick and even. On her second attempt, it felt right. She willed the edges together, and they obeyed, smoothly bleeding into one piece, and suddenly she was looking elsewhere.
There was the hut. Mergau could have scryed for the Elf again, but she knew she shouldn’t, that he would break her focus again. Instead of forests, she saw sand and dirt and thick, hearty plants. Jierta opened the door and strode out stretching in the early morning sun. Did they wake at the same time? It seemed too serendipitous, but she let that thought wander away. Jierta looked thinner but still healthy, hugging her body as a chill autumn breeze tousled her black hair, yet unbraided for the day. Tana peeked around the frame of the door, but the cool wind drove him swiftly back inside.
“Using an implement?” said Ezma, causing Mergau to jump. “We haven’t covered that yet. Looks like you handled it well enough, and the frame looks solid.”
“This is private,” said Mergau, moving to shield it. But then she remembered that Ezma shouldn’t be seeing the frame in the first place. She was supposed to be hiding it from view. She needed to wrap it up in something protective.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jierta’s dress billowing in the breeze. The idea sprung to her then. She could wrap the spell and herself in a protective ‘cloak’ of sorts. It seemed so obvious now that she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it earlier. She had tried to block Ezma’s sight with walls before, but they were thick and clunky and exhausted her. A cloak, or some thin, flexible barrier, would be barely perceptible to Ezma’s magical eye while still obscuring what was behind it.
She could feel the magic gathering on her back. She pushed it off in thin sheets, sliding it sideways like cloth, stretching it up and down. It shone dimly with a green light, not invisible as Mergau had hoped, but she heard Ezma hum in a satisfied way that must have meant it was working.
“What sweet dreams you must have dreamt,” Ezma said with a knowing smile. When Mergau looked confused, she continued. “Dreams are just the mind playing with the ideas that they worked so hard on throughout the day. Tell me, what did you dream of?”
Mergau tried to remember, but it was difficult while also focusing on the window and the cloak. There was grass, right? And something was there, hopping. A… rabbit? Maybe?
“I don’t remember, mistress.”
Ezma sighed. “A pity. I never remember my dreams when I use the tome, either.”
“Use the tome?” Mergau felt her spells slipping from her control. She turned to give Jierta one last look, but she had already disappeared back inside her hut and was nowhere to be seen. Oh well, she could look whenever she wanted to, now. She did what she was taught to extinguish the light spell: she pulsed a bit of magic into the frame, letting it tear itself apart and be gone. Soon, nothing was left but a faint trace of magic, the most recent residue of the many spells that had been cast in the hut. Remembering her cloak, she did the same, melting that too into nothingness.
“What do you mean when you dream after using the tome?” she said, turning to Ezma as she finished her breakfast preparations.
“They call it many things,” Ezma said as she pulled plates and cutlery from the other room. “The Dreambook, the Tome of Answers, the Tome of Madness, and so on. Those who read from its pages just might have their questions answered in their dreams. Xenodej knew magic that no other person would ever know again, possibly because his madness and genius mingled in ways we cannot comprehend. This book was a mystery creation of his, and no one is quite sure how it works. Copies of it cause dreams just
like the original, but only the first four copies of each creation and only after four copies down the line—that is, a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t worry, no one does. Somehow, the magic in the book spreads to copies on its own. How it knows what is a copy and what isn’t, scholars haven’t the faintest clue. How Xenodej created this book in this way is beyond even the greatest enchanters and, because of the odd properties, only a few hundred copies exist besides the original. When one is destroyed, no copy can be made to replace it, making them valuable beyond reckoning.”
“But I held it in my hands. I didn’t feel any magic in it.”
“Nor can anyone else. Another mystery. There are many things I do not know, child, things that even the wisest of mages will perhaps never understand. It’s possible Xenodej himself did not understand what he was doing, but he did it, and it is done. Come, sit and we’ll eat. It’s too early to talk of such things.”
Mergau did as she was bidden and reached for her cup, but remembered something. “Why do they call it the Tome of Madness? ‘Dreambook’ and ‘Answers’ I understand. That other name seems out of place.”
“Ah,” Ezma said, spearing some greens with her fork, “that’s because half of the time when the tome is used, the reader goes utterly insane.”
Mergau spilled her water. “And you let me read it?! Why?”
“You were perfectly safe. Seer, see the future, etcetera, etcetera.” She popped the fork into her mouth. “Eat your breakfast.”
***
Practice went smoothly. Mergau could now craft the frame, the scrying spell, and the cloak with relative ease, but holding them all at once was draining. “You must train and stress your mind as you train and stress your body, exercising it and building strength. Much like your body, too much at once can be damaging, but the proper amount will improve your strength in the future. Consider every spell as another run, every moment that spell is sustained another step forward. You must push yourself faster, farther, and harder if you hope to make any progress, but also know when to stop and rest.”
So she sat and drew her windows faster and faster, many being oddly shaped and quick to collapse from her haste. At first, she was doing two or three a minute, but as she practiced, her strokes became more accurate until, by nightfall (according to her scrying), she was at ten. By the time Ezma said they should turn to theory for the rest of the night, she was closer to twelve, two of which even worked. Her head buzzed and ached, but it was a good kind of pain. Maybe it was because of the analogy Ezma used, but the pain reminded her of the burning in her arms and legs after her morning workout.
“Today’s practice will be similar to yesterday’s,” she said as they prepped the following morning. “We’ll be using a different spell, though, something that will probably be more useful to you: fire.”
“Fire does sound useful against an elf.”
“Quiet. You need to feel the heat and the burning in your hands. Memorize this incantation, visualize it in your mind, and we can begin.”
Mergau studied the runes Ezma had written on the board. The language of magic was something she didn’t understand, but it contained hundreds of runes, sixty of which they had reviewed and memorized, her brain prepared to absorb language after all her work with Krik. Each rune represented a specific sound, meaning a mage could read anything in the language aloud, even if they couldn’t understand it. Ezma assured her that a more in-depth understanding of the language wasn’t necessary unless she intended to discover new spells, which she didn’t. Reading the runes was enough to activate the power.
Her light ‘spell’ was a visualization of her inner magical power, meaning it used no runes whatsoever. Learning to create a flame was different in more ways than just requiring runes, since it reacted with objects it touched in ways that light did not. Likewise, while scrying did use runes, it also caused the senses to stray outwards while the flame had them stay focused. All this was why Mergau thought it would be a new ordeal to learn to create fire, and why she nearly lost control when she succeeded on her first attempt.
“Ah!” she cried, whipping her hands in the air and scattering flames about the hut, fearful that she might burn herself. They bounced harmlessly off the walls, quickly fizzling out into wisps of smoke. “Did you see that?” she laughed. “Incredible!”
“Yes, spectacular,” said Ezma flatly. “Fortunately, my hut is warded against flame, or we would be having a different conversation.”
“But how did I do that so easily?”
“Partly because you’ve been studying the theory of magic, and partly because you’ve learned another spell already. Going forward, you will be able to grasp new magic with relative ease, and fire is an especially primitive force. We may hit a wall when we start delving into controlling the minds and emotions of others as those can be far more delicate, but I believe you’ll find yourself more comfortable from here on out.”
Mergau felt giddy. That was great news! “If magic is so easy to learn, why doesn’t everyone use magic?”
Ezma scoffed. “It’s hardly ‘easy.’ You have a rare talent for learning magic, a mind well-suited for it when not roiling with rage and sadness. I’d not have taken you on as a pupil if this were not so, as I do not have the time for a slower student. It was not lightly that I said your life was bigger than your vengeance, so keep that in mind next time you spring a nosebleed. Or other peculiar bleeding.”
Mergau nodded mutely.
“We learn to control the flame from here and summon it at will. Try to summon and dismiss the flame twice, as quickly as you can manage.”
Mergau nodded, seeing that it was indeed like yesterday’s scrying practice, but this time she didn’t need a drawing implement or to move quickly about, merely to concentrate on her hand and focus her thoughts on the incantation of fire.
The flames licked to life over her hand, swaying and casting shadows along the wall. Just as quickly, they shriveled back into her palm and died. Her hand tautened, the incantation for the spell drifted through her mind, and she summoned the flames once again, only to sink back into oblivion once more. Satisfied, she turned to Ezma, who was now staring at her golden watch.
“Fourteen seconds,” she said, snapping it closed with a flick of her wrist. “Not bad if you want to start a campfire, useless if you’re trying to end a fight.”
“That felt pretty fast,” Mergau opined.
In lieu of an answer, Ezma held out her hand. Mergau was staring directly at it when it erupted in vibrant flames, startling her. They licked the ceiling and extinguished, bursting forth again so quickly and brightly that Mergau had to look away. In an instant, it was over. “Five times in a second,” Ezma said, dropping the watch back into the other room. “It would be preposterous to expect you to reach that frequency with even a year of practice, but you can certainly do better than twice in fourteen seconds.”
Mergau was able to open one eye and squint Ezma into focus. “How did you get so fast? That speed is unreasonable.”
“It is not unreasonable. It means I can summon up the spell of my choosing in an instant. I brought myself to this speed for the sake of ease, but you will need to match it if you hope to survive. Ten years of training it took me, but you could probably reach that level in seven or eight.”
Mergau didn’t want to wait seven or eight years—that would mean several more years the Elf escaped her justice—but she didn’t want to argue with Ezma either. Instead, she sat, turned inward, and focused on her hand.
It was surprisingly challenging to increase the casting speed of the spell. There was a whole incantation that she had to ‘say aloud in her mind,’ as Ezma put it, and despite fire being a ‘primitive force,’ the incantation contained twenty runes in a language she did not comprehend beyond sound. Her mind struggled to say the words properly, but every time she finished thinking the incantation, the flames sprang to life. Then she had to do the same, thinkin
g the short incantation for release, letting her magic devour the spell and snuff it from existence. She sat this way for hours and—though she didn’t have the watch to time herself—was certain no progress was being made.
Then something curious happened.
Ezma, who had been writing letters as usual, shifted her arm, nudging her inkwell off the edge of her desk to send it shattering on the ground. She cursed and bent to clean it up.
At the same moment, halfway through the incantation, Mergau jolted in surprise from the sudden crash and ceased reciting. Even as the words fluttered away in her mind, however, the flames billowed forth from her hands, scaring her so badly that she almost sent them flying across the room again. She turned to make sure Ezma saw what happened, but her mistress was preoccupied with her mess, cursing as her fingers became stained with ink and blood from where the glass cut her.
Mergau studied her own fingers. What was that? She had to replicate it. Where was she in the incantation? Somewhere in the middle, the part that went Kalak gol ra, she was sure.
She recited again, stopping at ra, but she felt no heat. Maybe if she trailed off like she did? That seemed silly, but she gave it a shot. She got nothing for her efforts, however, not even a hint of smoke.
Something was different about the way the words had gone through her mind when she was surprised, but what? She couldn’t remember what happened. She wasn’t even sure she had properly said the words, just kind of pictured the rest of the incantation in her mind without any attempts to read or interpret it.
…That could be something, she thought. It goes against what Ezma taught me, but it’s something I haven’t tried before. I just have to imagine the incantation and not read it. That’s… actually quite difficult. Okay, concentrate. Picture the incantation and clear your mind. Think of nothing and let the incantation pass before your eyes...
